Ministry, Plans, and Changes of Plans

A sermon preached at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, September 6, 2009

Mark 7:24-37

A novel I began reading this week opens with a scene of a Swiss professor walking across a bridge. He sees a rather distraught looking woman who suddenly appears to be on the verge of jumping off the bridge. He is ready to intervene when suddenly she stops, turns, and writes on his forehead a telephone number that, lacking paper, she wants to remember. She follows him to class. He only has the briefest conversation with her, but it is enough to impel him to leave his teaching post and travel halfway across Europe to Portugal, where she had come from.

I can’t tell you more because I have barely read more. But I don’t need to. It is a weird beginning, in a way. And yet it is thoroughly believable. Not because it happens every day: it does not. Yet there occurs in nearly all our lives an occasional incident whose effect on us is out of all proportion to its content or circumstances. It contains the power completely to rewrite our scripts, to alter the ways we look at the universe, or at the very least thoroughly to shake up our plans.

Such an incident forms the gospel for today. If you are tracking Jesus in Mark’s gospel, you can tell an enormous amount about the meaning of the story simply from knowing the geography of Jesus’ travels. Jesus and the disciples have crossed the Sea of Galilee a second time. They have gone to a deserted place, presumably on the eastern bank. People have followed on foot the several miles around the northern shore of the sea. It is there that he feeds them by multiplying the loaves and fish. The group comes back across the sea, and lands at Genessaret, where immediately a throng besieges him, begging for his healing power. After going around the farms and villages and cities to the north and west of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus encounters a deputation of religious leaders who upbraid him for his and his disciples’ being careless about matters of ritual purity. Then he does something that, up till now in the story, he has not tried. He heads into Gentile territory. He moves away from his native stomping ground in Galilee, and heads towards the Mediterranean coast. Mark’s readers are aware that Tyre and Sidon are largely non-Jewish centers. The notion seems to be that Jesus is on retreat. He enters a house—we don’t know whose—and he specifically does not want anyone to know that he is there.

We cannot say what Jesus’ plans really were, even in the context of Mark’s narrative. But we do know that this is not the first time in this gospel that Jesus has encountered a Gentile. The first incident happened a few chapters back on the first trip he and his disciples took across the Sea. Now that is significant in itself, because the land to the east of the Sea of Galilee was also Gentile territory. We know that it was because it was near Gerasa that Jesus encountered the demon-possessed man out of whom he drove the demons into a herd of swine. Jews don’t raise hogs; Gentiles do. The pigs promptly ran down the bank and into the sea and drowned. It is a terrifying story, and does not do much to show deep sensitivity to a Gentile farm economy, this exorcism. Nonetheless, after only this one incident, in which the demoniac is healed and ordered to stay on his side of the lake, Jesus and his disciples cross back over to Jewish territory.

So, while he is visiting in this home somewhere near the coast, comes this woman who is identified as a Syrophoenician, a Gentile. Her little daughter has an unclean spirit. The woman bows down at Jesus’ feet, a gesture of obvious humility and supplication. She begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Then Jesus says something that to many ears sounds utterly incomprehensible, given the usual suppositions about Jesus’ universal inclusiveness. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Choke! Might it not be that Jesus, good Jew that he was, actually saw the world in these terms? What we can say with some assurance is that at this point, Jesus’ ministry takes a decidedly different turn. He does not in fact, return to the familiar towns of Galilee, but instead heads through Sidon to that eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the Region of the Decapolis, more Gentile territory.

Assuming that Jesus was not playing games with the Syrophoenician woman (some commentators have suggested as much), she clearly had an impact on his ministry, and quite likely on his self-understanding. Certainly, her persistence that he heal her daughter caused him to change his mind and attitude towards her. And it was not just her persistence, but her willingness, as a foreigner and outsider, to state her claim on Jesus’ power and attention. Matthew tells the story a bit more elaborately. There the woman is like the importunate widow elsewhere in the gospels, clamoring for attention, bugging the disciples, annoying them beyond their patience. In that account it is clearer that the woman is outside her rights to insist on a healing when she is not even a member of the household of Israel. Mark simply says that Jesus tells her, “For saying this you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”

As the story continues, it seems clear that this encounter has changed the nature of Jesus’ mission. For when he goes to the Decapolis, the Gentiles bring one of their own, a deaf man with a speech impediment, to be healed. He does not respond by arguing that the man has no claim on healing or other blessings because he is not a Jew. No, this time Jesus has not entered Gentile territory fundamentally to get away from it all, but specifically for the purpose of ministering. Now the interesting thing about this deaf man is that he embodies exactly what Israel thought of Gentiles. One of Israel’s poets, contrasting his faith with that of the Gentiles, wrote,

Our God is in heaven; Whatever he wills to do he does. Their idols are silver and gold, The work of human hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak; Eyes have they, but they cannot see; They have ears, but they cannot hear; Noses, but they cannot smell; They have hands, but they cannot feel; Feet, but they cannot walk; They make no sound with their throat. Those who make them are like them, And so are all who put their trust in them. [Psalm 115:3-8]

In almost no other healing account in the gospels do we get so graphic a description of Jesus’ healing as we do in this one. He takes the man privately, places his fingers in his ears, spits and touches his tongue. We have come a long way from Tyre when Gentiles were accorded the status of dogs.

There is no doubt that the most significant achievement of early Christianity is that, instead of remaining a sect within Judaism, it consciously, if at first hesitantly, embraced the Gentile mission. If we think that the Church is wrestling with explosive issues today in the realm of human sexuality, we should remember that these issues hardly compare with the gigantic breakthrough of the Early Church in smashng down the wall between Jew and Gentile. The way Mark tells the story, it is clear that Jesus himself is the origin of that movement. And how did that come to be? The key incident is that one day a Syrophoenician woman implored him to heal her little girl, resolved not to take “No” for an answer, and argued that, if she were a Gentile dog, she could still gather up the crumbs that fell from Israel’s table.

Ministry, yours as well as mine, is frequently about revising our plans and notions, even those we are completely committed to. That itself is something that a great many people have trouble seeing. Humans hold on to the past with a vengeance, whether it is a personal past or a social or religious or political past. Often the impulse to preserve what has worked well serves to protect and to extend important learnings. But all the great breakthroughs in any sphere of life are by their very nature events that blast open the confines of previously accepted wisdom. They are breakthroughs precisely because they break through barriers and ceilings and take us to new places. Yet those new places are always scary to a great many of us. We don’t know how to think or how to behave without familiar charts and conventions. Our pattern is usually to resist, and ultimately to fall back into the more familiar patterns, at least for awhile. Thus, the Early Church had its Judaizers, seeking to undo at least the thrust of the Gentile mission’s insight that the center of our freedom is in a Risen Christ and not in keeping kosher. The Reformation on both sides did not take long to devolve into a new orthodoxy, in some ways and places as rigid as the old. Vatican II, which many of us remember as shaking loose the ossified establishment of Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has been followed by decades of retrenchment.

Nor is religion the only place we see the dynamic at work. Scientists are notoriously slow to revise their mindset when an Einstein or a Heisenberg comes along with an unorthodox notion that challenges established theory. Much of what we have been seeing this summer in the way of political overreaction in the health care debate is the clash of undeniably new thinking with people’s patterned responses which they employ and defend despite all reason.

Jesus could certainly have made a case—indeed we see him making one—in Tyre which would have left the Gentile woman with a mentally ill daughter indefinitely, a case based on his own plans and the received mindset of his people. Instead he allowed himself to be changed.

Yes. Even Jesus learned what it meant to take a deep breath and look into space and say to himself, “Ephphatha! Be opened!”

Ministry in the Time of Folly

Wisdom as Source and Center of Ministry

A Sermon preached at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, August 16, 2009

Proverbs 9:1-6

Suddenly with the aid of Facebook I am in contact with people I have not thought about nor heard from in forty or fifty years. I have discovered three or four people from my past who turn out to be interesting, agreeable, thoughtful souls with surprising insights. I find myself suddenly liking these people who I only knew casually in high school or college because (who would have guessed?) they share my views and opinions at virtually every turn.

Not so sweet, though, is to reconnect with an old friend who turns out to be disgruntled, or hyper-sensitive, or simply idiotic. I exaggerate, of course. One such acquaintance sent me a note last week of a media event that promises to include all the features of something I would deliberately avoid. We exchanged a civil and polite series of messages, during which I told him that I totally disagree with his point of view, his party, his politics, even though I might see, here and there, flaws in some of the positions I myself hold. And, with a flourish of humility, I ended by saying, “But, hey, I could be wrong.” He wrote back: “You are.”

There is nothing new, of course, about divisions, arguments, and heated conflict between political or theological opponents. Church history is littered with the nastiness that Christians have exercised towards each other. We Americans frequently imagine that all of our sainted Founding Fathers were civil to each other, but try telling that to my friend Jim Elson who has studied how downright mean Thomas Jefferson was to Patrick Henry. And that is just one example of a number of estrangements and hostilities that lodged in their hearts. When we go through a period of tea-bagging and angry demonstrators at town hall meetings, it is easy to forget the horrors of even relatively recent things like civil rights demonstrations and anti-war protests in the Viet Nam era.

Nonetheless, I suggest that, although it is neither novel nor distinctive, we are in fact living during a time of folly. Our institutions, like Congress, creaky and cantankerous, are unable to chart a coherent course for the future and to implement it. News media have a few things in their arsenals that they overuse: mockery, sniping, lampooning, trivializing, and masquerading at being fair and balanced. We have now seen that the machinery of capitalism is vulnerable to excess and collapse, and if you are noticing carefully, you can see how, like a monster that is wounded but not dead, it is reviving to continue devouring whomever it can. The populace wants to believe that there are simple answers to complex questions. They continue, against compelling evidence, to argue that there is nothing wrong with our environment, nothing basically wrong with our health care system, nothing fundamentally flawed about our energy policy. People fling about old bromides such as the epithet “Socialist!” as if to do so immediately negates the thing thus labeled. And, equally foolish, people like me trick ourselves into thinking that having a rational discussion is an actual possibility in a climate of irrationality.

We actually have among our treasures in Judaeo-Christianity a tradition that addresses such situations as the one we are in. It is the wisdom tradition. You heard a snippet of it this morning in the Old Testament lesson from the Book of Proverbs. Unlike other traditions in the Hebrew scriptures, the wisdom tradition is at once more skeptical (the Torah and the Prophets never are) and more practical. In fact, the wisdom tradition is, to a great extent an ancient Hebrew philosophical theology. The books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, and Sirach are intended as means of instructing people in how to live good lives. The Book of Job is a drama which questions the easy answers of prevailing theology. Job promotes serious inquiry into the nature of good and evil, and suggests that situations are far more complex than at first they seem.

Wisdom literature at first glance looks as if it is just another collection of folk sayings, full of competing proverbs and simplistic answers. Some of it may be. But when one actually reads it, particularly after reading, say, Deuteronomy, one finds a fresh perspective on things. God, for example, is not cast in the mold of an old man frequently getting upset over human events. In fact, the wisdom writers often use a word for “God” that connotes a being who creates and sustains the universe and brings all human acts to completion. Wisdom writers assume a divinely implanted order in the universe, encompassing both nature and human nature.

But what is Wisdom? It is hard to pin down, because it means a cluster of things. First, wisdom is practical counsel on how to live a good life, beginning with respect and awe for the Lord. And yet, human wisdom has its limits. Wisdom is both something you must work at, and is at the same time a gracious gift from a gracious God. And fourth, the wisdom writers reflect on wisdom itself, frequently speaking of wisdom as an attribute of God, or even as a kind of being that they think of as a female who shares with God in the governance of the universe.

But, as our lesson from Proverbs shows today, wisdom literature sometimes sets forth a teaching of two distinctly different and mutually exclusive ways. One is the way of wisdom, sometimes known as Lady Wisdom. The other is the way of foolishness, of stupidity, of wrong action or evil intention, sometimes called the way of Dame Folly. These are not invariably contrasted nor consistently thought of as competing. But they are two distinct ways of living. One sermon cannot tell you all about being wise. You will have to read and study the wisdom books for that. But what we can do is to see that wisdom offers a way of navigating stressful and conflict-heavy situations, and we can test whether we want to practice it.

The way of wisdom has enormous potential for helping us not to get stuck in lots of foolishness swirling around us. In fact, without putting too fine a point on it, I want to suggest that our ministry, mine and yours, especially in a time when foolishness or folly seems to be the situation du jour, is to drink deeply from the spring of wisdom, to be centered in wisdom, and to be guided by it. Notice that I don’t expect our ministry to dissuade all the fools going off on various tangents in all directions not to be foolish. It is perhaps true that, if we picture Wisdom as a woman, we can imagine her sending out servant girls to call out to the simple, “You that are simple, turn in here. Eat my bread, drink my wine. Lay aside immaturity and live, walking in the way of insight” (Proverbs 9:1-6). But I doubt that we would get very far if we just adopted the script of biblical Wisdom.

So what would happen if we “steeped ourselves” in wisdom? How would we likely behave in, for example, the health care debate? To begin with, a disclaimer. I am not advertising myself as an expert at this or believe that I have accomplished it. Not only that, but I publicly confess to practicing some of the folly that on the whole causes me to retch. But, I think, first thing to do is to get in touch with the sources of wisdom. Read and re-read the wisdom literature and reflections upon it. Read and listen to other sources as well. One of the wisest books in the world is the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese wisdom of Lao-Tzu. Much of it, not surprisingly, accords with Hebrew wisdom. Get acquainted with the poetry of Rumi, the Islamic poet of the Middle Ages. And these are only a beginning.

In addition, stay in what I would call “a state of wisdom,” a mind-set, an attitude. It is marked by careful inquiry, always doing your homework, reading and reflecting on things. In the words of Kipling, keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.

Out of that grows another behavior. Ask questions. For example, one of the things I have been trying to do of late is instead of shouting people down, simply ask questions with the aim of getting them to clarify their positions. “All right, so you don’t like a particular plan that is being proposed. Do you agree we should have health care? Who do you think should be left out? Really? You would leave illegal immigrants out? So what about the child of an illegal immigrant who has been taken to the ER with a ruptured appendix? How would you handle that? There is no need to do anything much more than ask questions. This is not necessarily for the purpose of converting anyone to your point of view, but sometimes it does encourage people to think and that is a good thing.

And that leads me to my next suggestion. Know what you believe and why. Our friend Jim Wallis of Sojourners, who has had enormous influence on getting people, especially evangelical Christians to re-think their positions on poverty, for example, did not exert influence simply by asking questions without having a very clear position himself. Know what you believe. Know why you believe it. Be able to state what it is. And, if you are Christian, do not be afraid to say that, “My faith—or my understanding of the gospel—leads me to believe that such and such is the right thing to do.” That is called bearing witness. It is not antithetical to being wise.

We are not called upon to make all the decisions or to know all the answers or to be able to solve all the problems of the day. We are, however, charged with working for the spread of God’s reign, and that means working and giving and praying and investing in those things and spaces where Justice can be clothed with might and where human needs can be met and where hurts can be healed. Our baptismal covenant sets the tone and pattern of our ministry with our commitment to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. It leaves no question as to whether we are to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. These things are not optional, and they require no apology. How can you very firmly and clearly let your family, friends, Facebook acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors know that the values we collectively call “the Kingdom of God” or “the Reign of God” are important to you?

And finally, a part of wisdom is never to be so sure you are right that you fear questioning your own assumptions. Someone once told me that the signature phrase of an educated thinker was the use of five words: “it seems to me that….” It is a way of acknowledging, “Hey, I could be wrong,” and you do it, even when somebody comes back at you saying, “You sure are.” You are wise to that, and you stay wise, for God’s sake.

© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Straight, Not Narrow: So How DOES It Feel to Be Gay?

Straight, Not Narrow: So How DOES It Feel to Be Gay?

Touching the Holy and Holy Touch

The Importance of Human Touch in Ministry

A sermon preached in St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8), June 28, 2009.

Mark 5:21-43

Madeleine L’Engle, author and theologian, once said that evil is great good gone awry. Good things have a way of getting twisted. Many times human beings start out with a good idea that we turn into a good reality and proceed to make the reality into a system. First news you know, the good idea has become infected with systemic blight. Education systems, health care systems, welfare systems, economic systems, legal systems, and religious systems are just a few of those we can readily point to as having started out as good ideas and have ended up corrupted to one degree or another.

Holiness is such an idea. It has its roots in a primal human experience which we could call awe. Human beings encounter aspects of nature or dimensions of interpersonal relationships and sometimes, without any warning, we strike a vein of profound mystery. It shakes us to the core. Sometimes we are wounded, sometimes we are healed. Sometimes we are crazy with fear, sometimes we sink into unsurpassed peace. Out of such primal experiences we encounter a Reality far above and beyond us, too big for our imaginations, and certainly too great for us to control. Although it might look a little primitive to us on some days, on other days we can see clearly that ancient human beings responded appropriately to these experiences of transcendence with respect, reverence, awe, and even fear. Such experiences led our ancestors to mark off certain things as too live to touch—like so many high voltage wires or third rails that simply were too powerful to play with. Sometimes those perilous things they observed as connected to disease or relationship-destroying behavior. So they began to compile lists of things that were taboo. Every culture has its taboos. Almost no taboo is universal, but no society is without its own.

The good idea of holiness and its corollary taboos developed into the holiness code in the Book of Leviticus. Jesus inherited that, as did his whole society. It would be highly incorrect to say that Jesus dismissed all ideas of holiness. Clearly he did not, as the Lord’s Prayer attests: “Hallowed [holy] be your Name.” Moral and spiritual holiness are distinct from ritual holiness, however. Two of the many taboos in place to protect ritual holiness were the taboo against having contact with a woman who was bleeding and the taboo against contact with a corpse. If you don’t understand the strength of those two taboos, there is little way that you can understand today’s gospel, in which both taboos figure.

You can imagine what is going on in the mind of this woman in Mark’s story. Not only is she sick; she has a condition that alienates her from the rest of society and taints her as ritually impure. Even menstruating women had to undergo purification. For her, however, there was no let-up, nor had there been for twelve years. By this time, no longer is she merely sick, she is bankrupt, having spent all her money on doctors who have not helped her. Sick and poor (did you ever here of that combination?), she has heard about Jesus. She comes, anonymously, untouchable as she is, desperate for healing. She reasons that if she only touches his clothes, she will be made well. It is easy to do, so many are crowding around him. She reaches out, touches him, feels in her body the hemorrhage stop, and quickly slinks into the throng. He stops. “Who touched me?” he asks. He has felt power leave him. He looks around. Perhaps he spots her, catches her eye. She knows she is caught. Trembling in fear, she comes, falls down before him, confesses the whole thing. Usually it is his touch that heals. This time it is her touch that has brought forth the healing power. It was an act of hope, trust, faith. And it worked. Her faith had made her well. Touching him, she was healed of her disease. He says so.

It has all been an interruption. Jesus is off to the house of Jairus, synagogue leader and father. His twelve-year-old daughter is sick and at the point of death. Jairus has come up, pleading, “Please, please, please, Master, please come and lay your hand on her. I know that if you do she can make it.” By the time the nameless woman has intruded herself into his journey, what takes only a minute or two in the story is long enough in reality for Jairus’ little girl to die and for messengers to come announcing the sad news to him.

“Why trouble the rabbi any further?” There is a world of difference between a sick body and a corpse. Not only from the point of view of Jairus and any others who loved her, but from the point of view of the holiness code. Don’t you dare touch a dead body, else you will be contaminated. And until you are ritually cleansed you will be as a corpse yourself, an alien to your community, untouchable. Jesus tells Jairus not to fear, only to believe. When he arrives at the house, the mourners have started the funeral rites. Perhaps defensive and embarrassed at what seems like his silly remark—she is not dead, only sleeping—they laugh. Nuts! He puts them all outside, takes his in circle with him along with Jairus and his wife. He touches the untouchable corpse and says, “Talitha, cum.” “Little girl, get up.” She breathes again! She gets up, walks. He tells them to give her some food.

Ministry is about reaching across boundaries and chasms and touching. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes it is metaphorical. But if we get nothing else from the stories of Jesus in the gospels, we are bound to see that he paid no attention to all the prohibitions that the holiness code set up, largely erecting barriers to keep people from polluting the religious cult. He cared enormously about ethical decisions, and profoundly about spiritual holiness. In Matthew’s gospel he enjoins his followers to participate in the very life of God by being all goodness, all righteousness. But if it is a matter of keeping the Sabbath instead of healing; if it is a decision between eating corn or going hungry; if it is a matter of observing the purity regulations or healing a leper; if it is a matter of steering clear of a corpse or raising an only daughter to life; if it is a matter of reprimanding a ritually isolated woman for “stealing” his power or confirming her healing, there is no issue for Jesus. Down come the barriers as he reaches across them. To him, nobody is untouchable. And no regulation takes priority over human need.
It is not the things which go into the body that defile a person, he says in one place. It is rather the things—the words, the behaviors, the acts—that come out of the heart of a person that defile.

For some time now I have been thinking with you about ministry, looking at the scripture through the lens of ministry. Jesus’ example teaches us something of singular importance about ministry: you can’t do much of it without touch. And you surely can’t do ministry if your notions about holiness are all mixed up. Because ministry, which in a real way is the expression of God’s holiness in the sphere of human activity and relationships, creates and restores community. We can never subordinate it to ritual purity. To do so is to take a great good and make it just the opposite. For nothing is further from the Reign of God than the depreciation of God’s children, or for that matter, anything that God has made.

Do we need even to point out that the very regulations that Jesus ignores in the holiness code are frequently those things that religious people pull out to cause or to extend alienation among people? You have eaten the wrong kind of food, taken the wrong kind of lover, had the wrong kind of sex, worn the wrong kind of clothes, gotten yourself tattooed or pierced, looked at the wrong things or read the wrong books, they shake fingers and warn. But you will never hear him saying any of that, as strong as some of his denunciations can be.

Ministry is about reaching out and touching. It is laying a hand on bread and blessing it to be the Body of Messiah. It is laying a hand on wine and touching the cup to be as his blood. And it is about taking the bread and wine into one’s own person and being transformed into the one whose body and blood it is. Ministry is laying hands on the sick and praying for the power of the Holy Spirit to possess them and heal them. It is about washing those who come to Christ in the laver of baptism and touching them with the cross of his death and resurrection. There is little place in Christian practice for stinginess with touch, though there is a large place in Christian practice for ensuring that that touch always be loving and respectful. We at least touch hands at the time of the Peace. Lovers take each other by the hand in holy matrimony, and give each other their bodies as the sacramental meeting place of human flesh and divine reality.

A young priest once went to his first parish, located somewhere near the Bowery in New York City. On his first night in the parish’s shelter for the homeless drunks, he found himself disgusted, sick with the filth of the guests. Nervously he fidgeted with the buttons taking off the shirt of a man who had thrown up all over himself. A presence beside him whispered. “Let me help you. Don’t be afraid to touch,” counseled his mentor. “That’s how they know we care.”

When Abraham took little Isaac to the foggy land of Moriah to be sacrificed, how did he take him? By the hand. And when he found that God wanted life, not sacrifice, and he brought his living son back down the mountain, how did he take him? By the other hand. Touch. In the realm of God, there are no untouchables. In Messiah’s ministry, nothing can separate us from the love of God. And whenever something threatens to, that is the very moment that an unseen but sure Presence takes us by the hand. Or, at the very least, we can reach out our hands believing that if we could only brush his garment, we would be as good as new.


© Frank G. Dunn, 2009.

Not So Fast in Dispensing With Doctrine!

Theology and Ministry

A sermon preached in St. Stephen and The Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, Trinity Sunday, June 7, 2009

Anglican Christians, generally speaking, are not stirred by doctrine as much as we are by worship. Sometimes we are accused of not even having any doctrines. I hope that by the time we have finished with the liturgy today you will know better. Today is the one day in the whole year that we focus on a doctrine. We call this Sunday “Trinity Sunday,” falling always a week after Pentecost Day. But we have no other feasts—not officially, at any rate—that celebrate doctrines or teachings.

When we do focus on the Trinity, it is sometimes not in the most helpful way. I don’t even want to count the number of sermons I have heard on Trinity Sunday that either lamely try to explain the Trinity or that declare exasperation with the complexity of Trinity. Today, I want to draw back a step or two and look with you at the issue of why having a theology is important to ministry.

As I continue to look with you at ministry as fundamentally the way we live our lives in the light of God’s Truth, offering all that we are and do to God for the sake of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, I am struck by the way theology shapes action and behavior. You may think you don’t know what theology is, and you may be convinced that you not only don’t own one or even care to. But trust me: theology is the, or a, or your “word about God,” your understanding of God, whatever that is. Even if you aren’t too sure about God, your very uncertainty impacts (and not necessarily negatively) your actions and behavior. Even the atheist has a kind of a-theology—an understanding of the God not to be believed in.

Theology is essentially a story. Whether or not it is a good story depends partly on how well it is told, and partly on the storyteller. Limiting the focus just to Christian theology, we can survey the field and fairly readily see that there have been (and are) some pretty awful theologies floating around. For example, there are all the theologies that see God as essentially at war with creation. Matter is opposed to spirit. Therefore do not trust anything material. Very strange. Then there are theologies that emphasize the afterlife to the point that everything is judged by whether or not a belief or action will help or hurt your chances of getting into heaven. And there are other theologies that only take the positive aspects of existence into account, without dealing with negative, dark, shadow-side of reality. These are just three possibilities out of dozens of really bad theological possibilities.

What difference does any of this make? Let me illustrate with a couple of cases. Suppose, let us say, that you have a theology in which you view the human race as the central feature of the natural world. God, you might think, really created the world principally for the enjoyment of the human race. It has no intrinsic value. Such a theology acts not only to validate, but to encourage the destruction of the natural world. Climate change is of no importance, except as a matter of concern and convenience for the human species. Other species can live or die. God is uninvolved and unconcerned. God, rather, is concerned only about narrow choices of personal morality. Now, almost no one really believes that hook, line, and sinker. But you can readily see that, if a person or group tells such a story consistently, they come out at a very different place from the person or group that holds a theology which sees humans as being accountable to God for the way they tend to the natural world.

Take another example. If your conception of God is that of a being that metes out judgment according to strict standards, it is quite likely that you will develop a theology that creates not a little anxiety about how well a person measures up to God’s standards. If “heaven” is contingent on meeting those standards, the thrust of that theology is likely to inspire behavior in accordance with God’s perceived will. If, on the other hand, your understanding is that God’s judgment has already been issued and that humanity has already been saved, clearly what motivates you to behave ethically is not your struggle to achieve an afterlife in heaven, but rather thanksgiving for what God has already given you.

So, if theology is important, what kind of theology is actually helpful? In a word, a Trinitarian theology. And what is that? It is an understanding of God that holds three important dynamics in equilibrium. One is the notion of God as a supremely transcendent Being, at the core of the universe, the creator of all. The second is the experience that God has been revealed most thoroughly in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. The third is that God is present and active here and now in all people, but especially in the community of faith centered in Jesus. We traditionally speak of the Trinity as one God in three persons. Although the language is not necessarily orthodox, I would suggest that we can get at the central idea by speaking of God as the Truth manifesting itself in at least three distinct but interdependent ways. God is transcendent. God is also revealed in human life, especially in that of Jesus. And God is accessible and real in the present. To emphasize any one of these things over the other two is to create a story that inevitably leads to a lop-sided theology that is apt to produce or at least encourage lop-sided behavior.

What would it look like if we were to have a Trinitarian theology undergirding our ministries? First, we would likely live with the understanding that not all truth can be squeezed into rational categories. We would hold that God is greater than any of us. We would accept the fact that there is a “givenness” to the universe: limitations and laws and even the irrational are part and parcel of the reality we live in and live with. Life is not all about human beings. We are a part of creation, certainly not the only part, and dubiously the most important part, despite our powers and possibilities. We would see that there is an overarching Benevolence which spans all life.

We would begin to feel more comfortable with Jesus, realizing that, for Christians, Jesus is indeed what makes us unique. Rather than debating about whether Jesus is the only way to God (which is a poor way to spend time), we would see rather that, for us, Jesus is the connecting link between divinity and humanity, so much so that we say he fully embodies both. Divinity and humanity live together in him at peace and in harmony. We would see Jesus as our model, and that his life, death, resurrection and ascension form a story that is the pattern or our own stories. We would find ourselves living, breathing, eating, drinking Jesus, forming our minds and hearts in him, until we reflect his his life to the point that people would know him because they knew us.

And we would have a pneumatology, a doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which understands God as not only transcendent and other, not only as historically located in Jesus of Nazareth, but every bit as real and as present with us here and now. We would understand that God did not stop with Jesus, but continues to unfold Truth through us. We would reckon with the fact that Jesus said, “I have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. I will send to you the Spirit, who will guide you into all truth.” We would see ourselves caught up in an ongoing revelation in which our lives and our experiences became the vehicles through which God is discovered and known as Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.

© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Pastors Are Neither Who Nor What You May Think

Pastoral Ministry

A sermon preached at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2009

Few images have lasted longer in Christian experience than the image of the shepherd. One of the most common terms among Christians everywhere is the term “pastor,” which, of course, is from our Latin past the word that means shepherd. This is altogether very interesting, if you don’t happen to live in sheep country. I have told you before that I grew up on a hog farm and really never met a sheep till I was grown. Others here grew up in cattle country. If we were looking for metaphors that connected more immediately with daily life, shepherd would not cut it for many of us. Yet, though our images of shepherds and sheep be somewhat romantic and precious, still it is hard to see Our Blessed Lord pictured in stained glass as a cattle drover the way he often is depicted as a shepherd. And it would be thoroughly ahistorical to picture him doing anything with pigs besides driving a herd of them down a bank and into the Sea of Galilee.

Yes, our proto-shepherd is Jesus, connected by many of us to everybody’s favorite psalm (which people used to know by heart), the 23rd, “The Lord is my shepherd.” I don’t know that the “Shepherd’s Psalm” is the best place to learn about pastoral ministry, but it is certainly a starting place. You might notice, to begin with, that the voice of the psalmist (let’s call the psalmist “sheep,” for clarity’s sake) focuses on the relationship of shepherd and sheep. The shepherd is the only thing necessary for the sheep. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” is perhaps not the best translation, but it is arguably the most fortunate. In this world where our wants are continually stirred up by incessant advertising, it is radical to say that God is absolutely everything that we need. The Lord makes us lie down in green pastures, leads us beside still waters, restores our souls, leads us in the paths of righteousness and through the valley of the shadow of death. The shepherd comforts, feeds, and protects, and heals the sheep. What could the sheep possibly want or need beyond that? So the key to the pastoral relationship is a great defusing of want.

To come quickly to the point: is there any way that we can reasonably see that pastoral ministry as something that we all do? Or is it something that fundamentally only God does—or in Christian terms, only Jesus does? Is this the place where we run into a special need to designate some people in the community as “pastors” or shepherds, people that we then ordain and begin following? By now you know my own answer to this question. There is a sense in which God alone is the Shepherd of our souls, and the human embodiment of that shepherd is Jesus, the Good Shepherd, as he calls himself. And there is definitely a need for “some to be pastors and teachers,” St. Paul says in discussing the organization of the Christian community. But the pastoral ministry of the Body of Christ is something that all baptized Christians share in the care the we exercise for each other, and ultimately for our world.

If pastoral ministry is something that we all share, then that must mean that we need to see ourselves every bit as much as shepherd as sheep. Some would argue that the shepherd/sheep language is really archaic and not helpful at all in this regard, but I want to contend that it is neither outdated nor inappropriate. One of the great problems we have in this society is that we too readily identify as sheep. That is not always the case, but it certainly is a continuing theme. And little wonder. It is much easier to be led, to be dependent, to be uncritical, to let out an occasional bleat here and there but to accept nothing of responsibility for the journey, the meal, the healing, or the accountability for the pasture. When people are too sheepish, they ignore the bad judgment of their shepherds, and become complicit in things like torture, for example, and other behavior not uncommon among bad shepherds. Or they bleat and carry on a little, but let a bunch of banker-shepherds play games around who really owns the flock. You get my point—and yes, I know that not all bankers or elected officials are to be lumped together and labeled bad shepherds. The point is not to judge the shepherds but to try to knock some sense into the sheep. Take ownership of the pasture! Conduct, do not just follow! Be a pastor, not simply an agreeable follower.

Ha! That is not what we expect of “pastoral” ministry, is it? “Pastoral,” especially in the Church, has come to mean compliant, lenient, easy-going, non-demanding, non-confrontational, even wishy-washy. The situation is not helped much by the current fashion of seeing God as all or most of those things. But the pastor, the shepherd, is capable of being quite assertive, and indeed must know how to be. Shepherds have to do battle with coyotes and wolves, if they are to have much of a flock. Shepherds, it is true, carry a crook, the bent end of which is for pulling straying sheep out of trouble spots. But that crook has a sharp point at the other end so that sheep can be confronted and, if necessary, jabbed. The best pastors have a wide repertoire of skills to do those kinds of encouraging, challenging, reproving things. And the very best pastors have brains strong and nimble enough to know what to do when. And all good shepherds know how to discern what the sheep and their situation call for.

To exercise a pastoral ministry means that you be willing to see yourself as having some responsibility, a good deal of responsibility. But something is wrong with this picture if we think of leadership merely as being in charge. Quite obviously, not everyone can shepherd every flock every day under every circumstance. We have to have a kind of “shepherd cooperative,” if you will, each taking turns at doing pastoral things, but doing them in such a way that the flock holds together. This is the great challenge for the human species at this point in time. We went through a century (or a millennium or two or three) in which totalitarianism held sway over long periods of time over vast swaths of geography and peoples. Are we capable of sharing leadership in a way that avoids just a lot of chaotic competition between pastors?

What might help us to be better pastors, not just to each other in the Body of Christ, but in situations where we are dispersed throughout a larger and frequently indifferent society, is to recall three things that are at the heart of the art of shepherding. Those things are comforting, clarifying, and confronting. We need all three. And, if we are to be effective shepherds, we need to be able to supply all three, or at least know the one or two that we are best at supplying.

Some of you are great comforters in the best sense of the word. You are like Joan, an old friend of mine, whom Joe and I recently visited. Joan is a person on whose doorstep I know I could show up admitting that I had done the most heinous thing, and she would say, “Come in, dear, and have a cup of tea.” You are the pastors I would want to have near me when I am in trouble. You are the pastors I hope are there when I lay dying.

Others of you are smart clarifiers. You ask good questions. You think well and clearly. You probe. You test. You analyze and scrutinize. Those are great pastoral skills. Jim is a friend of mine whom I call up when I get into a situation that is often swamped by a morass of emotions which cries out for a dispassionate, thoughtful, non-reactive response. He can sometimes ask just the thing that I have not thought to ask myself. You are the pastors that help us figure out what to do. And you do it best when you keep pushing us to ask the hard questions ourselves, rather than dispensing advice or trying to fix things for others who need to fix things themselves.

Confronters have a special pastoral ministry. If you are a confronter, you are a person of courage. I hope you are also a person of courtesy, because confronting shepherds who disdain sheep can be awful. The prophet Nathan in the court of King David comes to mind as an effective confronter. He is able to speak the hard truth to David (“Thou art the man!”) without fearing the consequences. Confronters sometimes demonstrate, sometimes remonstrate, and often debate. The Church could use more of them, precisely because they are willing to say things that are unpopular. No matter what you think of him, Bishop John Shelby Spong is a confronter. He has confronted people, institutions, behavior, positions, and issues from racism to sexism to homophobia to anti-Semitism. Many people do not like confrontation, and not only shy away from confronting or being confronted, but from confronters themselves. No society is deeply invested in changing its shibboleths and taboos. All the more reason that we need pastors in our lives who are willing to speak the truth to us, come what may, cost what it will. The best confronters never let us forget that the ones they confront are the ones they love.

It is fine to be a sheep. In fact you will always be one, in some fashion or other. “We are the sheep of your pasture,” reads the 100th Psalm. But we are all called to be shepherds as well. Look at your gifts, your personality. Are you comforter, clarifier, confronter, or some combination of them? When we are lucky enough to have pastors that find their voices, the sheep will know and follow their leading, very likely becoming shepherds themselves (something only human sheep can do, by the way). And goodness and mercy might likely follow us all the days of our lives until we live in the house of a Great and Good Shepherd forever.

© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Get Real. You Have Something to Say.

Apostolic Ministry

A sermon preached in St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, The Second Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2009

John 20:19-31

Most of the time the Scriptures we read on Sundays vary. There are a couple of Sundays, however, when we hear the same story year after year. This is one of them. Every year on the Second Sunday of Easter we hear the story of Thomas. Except that it is not the story of Thomas, exactly. It is the story of the Risen Lord’s encounter with his community. Because Thomas figures prominently in the story precisely because he was not in it to begin with, we tend to fix our attention on Thomas.

There is a reason why we read this story every year. It is John’s account of what we call Pentecost. Luke tells a story about how the Holy Spirit came to the disciples when they gathered at the Feast of Weeks, fifty days after the Resurrection. John, however, presents the Risen Lord recreating a community on the very day of his Resurrection. This story is of such importance that we need to hear it three times more often than other stories of the resurrection. We need to hear it and remember that at the heart of Easter is the new community that Jesus creates and sends into the world just as the Father sent him.

The other stories that we hear on this Sunday, however, are not invariably the same. Today the gospel is paired with two interesting stories. One is from the Book of Acts, telling us how for a time the Church in Jerusalem practiced a form of communism, sharing all resources voluntarily. The other is from the First Letter of John, accentuating the intimate connection between the fully incarnate and risen Lord and the forgiveness of sins. When we put all three of these together a picture of apostolic ministry and teaching emerges. Before we look at that picture, just run through your mind and see what images of apostle you are carrying. Saintly male figures in robes, worthy of stained glass? Beards, sandals? What about knives (Bartholomew), an upside-down cross (Peter), an x-shaped cross (Andrew), all instruments of exotic martyrdoms? I suspect that most of us don’t feel much intimate connection with the apostles as a group.

So, the picture that emerges: let’s look at it. First, the picture of disciples on the evening of what we call Easter Day, hovering in a room behind locked doors, out of fear. Into their midst comes Jesus. He speaks a word of Peace, the first account we have of the Peace being exchanged (or at least given) in the New Testament. Then he says, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” And that is the making of an apostle. Up until now they have been disciples, followers and learners, attracted to their rabbi, Jesus, and attached to his teaching. But when Jesus sends them, they become apostles. That is what the word “apostle” means: one who is sent. “Αποστελλω,” I send, is the Greek equivalent of the Latin emitto. So an apostle is one who is sent out on a mission, and is therefore the same as an emissary, or, if you will, a missionary.

Notice, however, that the apostles don’t just jump up and run the minute that Jesus says, “I am sending you.” First, Jesus breathes on them. Just has Yahweh had breathed life into the nostrils of the proto-human, Adam, Jesus breathes on the disciples giving them the breath of New Life. He specifically gives them the authority to do what he has notoriously done: forgive sins. The point of this account is that apostles are filled with the Risen Life of Christ, which is synonymous with the Holy Spirit. They also have the power of the Risen Lord. They are connected with Jesus.

Thomas’ absence from the band when Jesus first comes is an important detail. But like all details in the Fourth Gospel, it has more to do with the message intended for the hearers (you and me) than it is about Thomas. Because we, too, are the ones who were not there when Jesus appeared, we, like Thomas, have the problem of responding to Jesus when we have no actual part in the appearance episode. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet who believe” is deliberately said for our sake. But we are not the only ones who weren’t there when Jesus appeared. I don’t have the complete list, but I am fairly certain that Paul was not there. And Paul, writing his letters in some cases decades later, begins them “Παυλος Αποστολος,” Paul, an apostle… Paul is able to call himself an apostle because he is convinced that his relationship with the Risen Lord is as real, as authentic, as valid, as palpable, as any relationship that any other apostle had. Furthermore, he considers himself “sent,” on a mission to the Gentiles. It is not certain, but fairly close to certain that there were others—Barnabas, Silas, for example—who were not privy to Jesus’ appearances but who became apostles just like the eleven.

Through our baptism, we are committed to remaining in the “apostles’ teaching and fellowship.” That means that we are apostles too. In fact, one of the reasons that our tradition lays such heavy emphasis on confirmation is that the bishop, as the successor to the apostles (and thus an apostle) lays hands on us not only confirming us but commissioning us as emissaries in the apostolic ministry. We are sent, and we go with “orders” to share our testimony, or story, of the Risen Lord and what he has done in our lives. Jesus has breathed his life into us, and we go in the strength of that breath to do what he has done. That is what it means to be an apostle.

So. You think you can do it? Do you want to? Or are you back where Thomas was on that first Easter evening? “Fine, folks, if you had the experience. But I just haven’t had it yet. Furthermore, I really don’t much believe you, and I don’t want to be made a fool of. Let me see some evidence before we get too strung out on this,” etc., etc. I want to compliment you if you are like Thomas, because whatever else Thomas is, he is real. I have a feeling (and legend tells us as much) that Thomas made a very good apostle not in spite of his hesitancy to believe but precisely because of it. He was authentic, and I imagine that his testimony was credible.

In this last week, the news has been full of a somewhat frumpy, plain, unemployed Scotswoman named Susan Boyle. Appearing on a show called “Britain᾽s Got Talent,” she shocked audience and judges when she opened her mouth and began to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. Susan Boyle said to a reporter this week that she was totally “gobsmacked” at the response from around the world to her voice. One of my friends misheard her and thought that he had said, “God-smacked.” What a lovely thought! A God-smacked woman with a song that stands the world on end. Partly it is because the world loves the sound of her voice, and finds the song she sang beautiful. But the greater part of it is that Susan Boyle is real, unmodified and unpackaged by media, just being who she is, singing her song as truly as anything. That is what apostles do. They are touched with the genius, filled with the Spirit of Jesus, simply holy spirit. And they sing for the world their song of love, testifying to its truth, delivering its message.


© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Demasiado Grande

Tu ministerio empieza al sepulcro

Un sermon predicado en la Iglesia San Esteban Episcopal, Washington, DC, el día de Pascua, el 12 de abril 2009.

San Marcos 16:1-8

El evangelio según San Marcos es un milagro. Marco nos dice que los discípulos no entienden nunca de la enseñanza de Jesús. Entonces, no es posible decir que si Jesús estuviera aquí con nosotros, podríamos tener más sabiduría y cambiar las ideas. Marcos da una cuenta muy simple y clara sobre Jesús, para clarificar que Jesús sabía exactamente lo que hacía, aunque nadie lo entendía, sino los demonios, una extranjera con una hija difícil, y también el capitán romano al fin de la escena de la crucifixión. Tal vez Pedro, que in el medio de la historia proclamó a Jesús el Mesías, pero inmediatamente después, mostró que no entendió nada de lo que Jesús pensó en eso.

¡Gracias a Dios por San Marcos y su evangelio! Porqué contando la historia del arresto de Jesús, el dice claramente que todos los discípulos—todos los hombres en el grupo—lo huyeron. Pedro es el único discípulo que furtivamente volvió, en tiempo preciso para cumplir la previsión que el gallo no hubiese cantado dos veces antes de él había negado a Jesús tres veces. Marcos nos dice que un grupo de mujeres estaban allá a la cruz y miraban donde se puso el cuerpo de Jesús. Cuando es el momento para un acontecimiento de la resurrección, el da una cuenta en los sonidos de silencio. Solamente oímos las mujeres que están murmurando en el amanecer sobre quien puede remover la piedra grande, a fin de que entren en la tumba para ungir el cuerpo. Entran en la tumba. Encuentran a un joven vestido de blanco (llámenlo “angel” si quieres, pero Marcos no le llama eso). Ellas se están asustadas. No dicen nada. Solo el joven habla. “No se asusten,” les dice. “Ustedes buscan a Jesús el Nazareno, el crucificado, no está aquí, ha resucitado; pero éste es el lugar donde lo pusieron.”

Tal vez nosotros nos preguntamos la consecuencia de ese mensaje para las mujeres dolorosas. Marcos no lo explica. Pero continua el mensaje del joven: “Vayan a decir…” Pero ellas no fueron y no hicieron. Salieron la tumba, asustadas y asombradas, por el miedo que tenían. El fin del evangelio.

Después de un poco de tiempo, muchas personas no pusieron creer que eso era el fin que Marcos había planeado. Entonces, supusieron que se ha perdido una pagina del libro y decidieron añadirla. Prestaron un poco de material de aquí y allá u hicieron la capitula 16 más larga y menos creíble.

Si. Es el fin. Las mujeres encuentran a un mensajero, escuchan las noticias, y se van, que tienen demasiado de miedo para hablar. Sin embargo, los lectores saben que algo pasó. La aparición de Galilea que el mensajero había anunciado claramente ocurrió, sino la cuenta de la previsión ciertamente se habría reprimido. Pero, hay algo que se puede creer sobre un grupo de personas abrumadas de tristeza y miedo para decir nada. Las mujeres parecen como nosotros exactamente.


A muchas celebraciones de Pascua, se proclama que Jesús ha resucitado. Pero, ¿qué más? Quizás está bastante cantar las aleluyas, ser asegurado de la vida eterna y una resurrección personal, y dejar con un corazón de alegría que hay una posibilidad de nueva vida. Tengo la idea que la Iglesia hoy (y quiero decir tan liberalmente que te incluye, no me importa quién eres) está sin palabras, y está miedosa como las dos Marías y Salome esa mañana a la tumba. Escuchamos la proclamación. Tal vez porqué parece imposible, pero pienso que es probablemente que parece frecuentemente desconectado de nuestras vidas ordinarias que salimos sino saber lo que necesitamos hacer. Está demasiado.

Yo hice un pacto con ustedes hace unos meses para examinar las escrituras de la perspectiva de ministerio. Debo explicar. Decir de ministerio no es hablar mucha jerga de la iglesia sobre clérigos. Ministerio, en el vocabulario cristiano es el terma que usamos para significar todo que somos y todo que hicimos. Su ministerio incluye todas sus relaciones, todas sus esperanzas, todas sus fuerzas, su trabajo, sus risas, sus sueños, y también sus pecadas. Lo que hice su ministerio cristiano, si es cristiano, es que todas las cosas de su vida expriman el muerte y la vida de Jesús, y que tu glorificas a Dios que Jesús revele y que revele a Jesús. El propósito de todo ministerio en el nombre del Cristo es hacer lo que Jesús pasó su vida haciendo: conectar el mundo a Dios, y en el proceso, abrir al mundo a su verdad más profunda.

Eso es un reto muy grande. Unas personas tendrían muchas dudas y dirían, “No gracias. Tal vez debo investigar otra religión, y abandonar la causa de religión completamente.” Pero es exactamente este punto cuando el testimonio de Marcos sobre la resurrección nos encuentra. Escuchamos la proclamación y estamos confundidos. ¿Vaya y digan? ¿Qué decir? Si Marcos lo planeó o no, es el resulto que el fin extraño de su evangelio puede causar. Tenemos figurarlo, y nadie va hacerlo para nosotros, aún Jesús. Si se puede juntarnos con él a Galilea, por ejemplo, ¡tenemos empezar empacar!
La piedra grande que nos causa nuestra estar nerviosos en la madrugada ya no nos importa mucho. ¡Debemos irnos!

Marcos nos invita a cumplir la historia con nuestro ministerio. ¿Que es eso? Vamos a contestarlo en pocos minutos. Vamos a viajar a la fuente de baustimo, como nos acostumbramos en la iglesia San Esteban. La fuente, entre otras cosas, significa la tumba. El jueves santo en la noche, pusimos el cuerpo de Jesucristo, en la forma de pan y vino, en la fuente, diciendo gráficamente que la fuente y la tumba son iguales. Pero la tumba, al fin, es el lugar donde nuestro ministerio comienza, porqué es allá que el hogar de muerte está lleno con el agua de vida nueva. ¡Somos bautizados, crisitianos! Fuimos sepultados con Cristo en su muerte por bautismo, y por las aguas Dios nos ha levantado, nos ha resucitado con Cristo.

Ese ministerio, como la vida de Jesús, consiste en cinco cosas que prometemos muchas veces. Prometemos que continuaremos en comunidad uno con otro, en la fracción del pan y en las oraciones. Prometemos que proclamaremos por palabra y acción que Dios nos da perdón y no nos da condenación. Prometemos que daremos toda nuestra energía para cuidar a todas las personas lo mismo como a Cristo. Prometemos que no dejaremos antes de justicia y paz extienden a todo el mundo. No hay ministerio más que eso.

¿Que pasa cuando sales a la tumba hoy? ¿Las palabras se pararán en su boca? ¿Estará demasiado?

Polly era una amigo muy querida de mi. Era mi directora espiritual hace más o menos 25 años. Me dijo que una noche, unos años antes de conocer, estaba yendo en su carro del Connecticut a los Berkshires. Solo durante el tiempo largo, estaba rogando para muchas personas en su vida que le han pedido sus oraciones. Muchas cosas terribles estaban pasando con sus amigos, sufrimiento, tristeza, dolor, violencia, todos de un gran montaña de problemas. En sus oraciones, ella se dejó. Gritó en el silencio, “Dios, ¿porqué, porqué? ¿Porqué permites todo? ¡Es demasiado grande!” Ella dijo en el silencio que sigue, escuchó una voz—no voz humana, pero que lo parecía—diciendo, “Es mi intención que sea demasiado grande.”

Si nuestro ministerio no sea demasiado grande, nosotros podríamos desarrolar la fantasía de que podemos hacer todo por nosotros mismos. Podríamos salvar la tierra, terminar las guerras, sanar las enfermedades, porqué somos inteligentes y santos. Pero no. No somos nosotros mismos que servimos en este ministerio, pero el poder de Dios que vive, la presencia de Cristo en nosotros. No se preocupe. Habrá días, posible de esta semana, en los que se dirá, “Simplemente demasiado.” ¿Porqué tratar de eso? ¿Porqué intentarlo? Dios mio, soy solamente muy pequeño y el reto es tan grande. Cuando lo dices, recuerda la proclamación que escuchaste a la tumba. Su Señor ha resucitado. Y el mismo poder que le resucitó de entre los muertos, te dará la vida nueva también.

© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Is It Just Too Much?

The Ministry That Begins in a Tomb

A sermon preached on Easter Day, April 12, 2009, in the Episcopal Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation, Washington, DC.

Mark 16:1-8

One of the God’s best miracles is the Gospel according to Mark. Were it not for Mark, we would not know so well that the disciples of Jesus were a bunch who never got it, dispelling for all time the notion that “if Jesus were only here” people would somehow have access to deeper insight and might actually change their minds. Mark tells a no-frills story about Jesus, making clear that he knew what he was doing but that nobody else actually did, with the possible exception of the demons, a gentile woman with a problem daughter, and a Roman centurion at the end of the crucifixion scene. Allowance can be made for Peter, who mid-way the gospel proclaims Jesus as the Messiah, only to demonstrate in the next breath that he understood nothing about what that meant in Jesus’ mind.

Thank God for Mark! In telling the story about Jesus’ arrest, he says flatly that all the disciples—the males, that is—deserted him and ran away. Peter is the only one who sneaked back, just in time to fulfill Jesus’ prediction that the cock would not crow twice before he had denied knowing Jesus three times. Mark tells us that a band of women stood by and watched the crucifixion from a distance, and were on hand to notice where the body of Jesus was placed. When times comes for him to tell the resurrection story, he does not pull out the trumpets, like Matthew, or the violins, like Luke, or the camera like John (I say that not to disparage, but to compliment the richness of the other three). Rather, Mark tells his story surrounded by an eerie silence. We only hear the women muttering in the early morning about who will roll the stone away, so that they can get into the tomb to perform the anointing of the body. They enter the tomb. They encounter a young man in a white robe (call him an angel if you will; Mark does not). Alarmed, they say nothing. The young man does the talking. “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”

We may well wonder what effect such a statement had on three grieving women. Mark does not go into that quite yet. He continues the messenger’s message: “But go, tell…” And that they did not do. They went out of the tomb, full of terror and awe. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. End of gospel.

After awhile people simply could not believe that that was the end that Mark really intended. So they decided that a page must have been lost from his book, requiring that they make up something to round the story off. And they borrowed some stuff from here and there and gave chapter 16 a bit more length and a lot less credibility.

So that is how it ends. Women encounter an angel, hear the news, and clear out, too scared to talk. Readers know, of course, that something happened. This Galilee appearance the messenger had announced must certainly have happened or the report of its prediction would surely have been whited out. Still, there is something immanently believable about a group of people too overwhelmed and scared to say anything. In that sense, the women are just like most of us.

If you are like me, you have been to a few Easter celebrations, and all of them have proclaimed that Christ is risen. But then what? Maybe it is enough to sing the alleluias, to be reassured of everlasting life and a personal resurrection, to come away with a gladdened heart that no matter how bad things get, there is always the possibility of new chances and new life. I have more than a feeling that the Church today (and I want to define that liberally enough to include you, whoever you are) is just about as speechless, as stymied, and frankly as scared as were the two Marys and Salome on that morning at the tomb. We hear the proclamation. Perhaps because it seems so unlikely, but I think maybe moreso because it frequently seems so disconnected from our workaday world, we turn to leave and simply don’t know what to say or do. It is just too much.

I made a pact with you some months ago to look at the scriptures from the perspective of ministry. I must explain. To talk of ministry is not to talk churchy talk about clergy. Ministry, in the Christian vocabulary, is the word we use to talk about everything we are and everything we do. Your ministry enwraps all your relationships, all your hopes, your efforts, your work, your laughter, your dreams, and even your sins. What makes your ministry Christian, if it is Christian, is that all the stuff in your life is in someway expressing the death and life of Jesus and glorifying the God whom he reveals and who reveals him. The point of all ministry in the Name of Christ is to do what Jesus spent his young and short life doing: bringing the world to God, and in the process, opening up the world to its deepest Truth.

That is a tall order, and one that not a few people right here would shake their heads at and say, “Wow. Maybe I better check out another religion, or maybe abandon religion entirely.” But it is exactly at this juncture that Mark’s resurrection story intersects with us. We hear the proclamation and we stand confounded. Go and tell? Tell what? Whether or not Mark intended it, that is exactly the effect that his gospel’s weird ending can have. We have to figure it out, and nobody is going to do it for us, including Jesus. If we are to meet him (in Galilee, for instance), we have to get a grip. We have a trip to make, and perhaps a hundred other things to do. In retrospect, the stone that we worried so about earlier in the day seems pitifully insignificant now. We ourselves have to get rolling!

Mark invites us to finish the story with our ministry. And what is that? We are going to answer that question in just a few minutes. We are going to make a pilgrimage to the baptismal font, as is our custom in St. Stephen’s. The font, among other things, symbolizes the tomb of Jesus. On Maundy Thursday night, we placed the Body of Jesus, in the form of Bread and Wine, in the font, saying graphically that font and tomb are one. But tomb turns out to be the place where our ministry begins, because it is there that what was the place of death becomes filled with the water of life. We are baptized, people! We have been buried with Christ in his death by our baptism, and through those waters God has raised us to a life united with our risen Lord’s!

That ministry, which is startlingly like Jesus’ life, consists in those five things that you and I keep promising over and over again. We promise that we will continue in community with each other, breaking bread and praying. We promise not if, but when, we fall away, we will repent and return. We promise that we will proclaim through what we say as well as what we do the Good News that God is about forgiveness, not damnation. We promise that we will spend our lives treating everyone as if even the dumbest and the worst were Christ himself. And we promise that we will not rest in the fight for justice and peace until the dignity of every human being (and I would add all creation) is assured. That’s it. There is no other ministry than that.

So what happens when you leave the tomb today? Will the words stick in your throat? Will it just be too much?

Polly Wiley was one of the dearest friends I ever had. She was my spiritual director about twenty-five years ago. She told me that one night, years before I knew her, she was driving the long and dark way up Route 7 in Connecticut to the Berkshires. Alone for several hours, she was praying for a host of people in her life who had asked her prayers. Some awful things we happening to some of them: intense suffering, grief, tragedy, all piled onto one another. In the middle of her prayers, she stopped. Gripping the steering wheel, she shouted out, “Why God, why? Why all this? Why do you let it happen? It is just too much, too much!” Polly said that in the silence that followed her outburst, she distinctly heard a voice—not a real human voice, but a voice as real as if it were—saying, “I mean it to be too much.”

Were it not too much, this ministry of ours, we should fall too swiftly for the fantasy that we could do it all ourselves. We could save the planet, stop the wars, end the suffering, cure the illness, all because we are just that smart and just that holy. But no. It is not we who live and work and do this ministry, but the power of God, the living Christ within us. Don’t worry. There will be days, probably even this week, when you will say, “It’s just too much.” Why bother? Why try? My God, I’m just so little and the task is so big. And when you do, remember the proclamation you have heard at the tomb. Your master is risen. And the selfsame power that raised him from the dead, raises you.

© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Until We Laugh

A sermon preached Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2009, in the Episcopal Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation, Washington, DC

John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Three-year-old Savannah cried every day she was in the parish day school. Sometimes she would wail. At other times she would whimper. Her incessant crying got worse when she would come to chapel.

Savannah was blind. Maybe because she could not see, the strangeness of school frightened her. Or maybe her emotional problems had nothing to do with her blindness. For the priest, leading a chapel service with Savannah in it was challenging. Her moaning seemed to be a poignant commentary on the emptiness of words.

Maundy Thursday came. The day school director asked me if I would come and explain to the children about Maundy Thursday. “Let’s do a foot-washing,” I suggested. I gathered the children around. “Jesus looked for a way to show his friends how much he cared for them,” I began. Savannah began to cry. “The people where Jesus lived had a way of showing their guests respect. When people would visit them, generally a servant would take off their sandals and wash their dusty feet.”

“Jesus wants to wash your feet,” I said as I poured water into a basin. “He wants to show you how much he loves you. He wants you and me to understand that there is nothing better or more important to do than to love one another as he loves us. And as a sign of that, he wants to wash our feet, as if he were a servant whose only job was to do that.”

I had no idea how children would react to foot-washing. Would it seem silly? Invasive? Too strange? One by one they took off their shoes and socks. They all held their feet over the basin. I poured warm water over their feet, washed and dried each one. Some giggled a bit. Most were mesmerized. “Remember to love everyone as Jesus loves you,” I said as I washed each little foot. A few hung back. The room grew quiet, but for the sounds of water washing, the clink of my ring on the side of the pan.

A teacher held Savannah, who was strangely silent, but for a little sniffling. She bent down, holding Savannah’s bare foot over the basin. I poured water. “Savannah, remember…” Savannah let out a little giggle. And another. Then she threw her head back and laughed deeply. “Again,” she said. I poured more water, pressed her foot between my palms. She laughed and laughed. Then another couple of children picked up the laughter, and like a blaze it spread across faces and foreheads till the whole room was laughing with Savannah.

The water of life runs over fearful hearts and stony, runs down the cracks and crevices and gets to places that nothing else can reach. Teary places, scary places where no light ever comes. Lord, do not wash only my feet, but my hands and my head and my heart and my soul and all the places where I hide from the truth and all the places where I keep my bad dreams. Wash me through and through in the places where my secrets weigh me down. Wash away my sins, but wash away my fears as well. Let me feel you holding my feet, even when I cannot see you. Wash me, Lord, wash me, until I laugh again.

© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

Hasta Que La Risa

Sermón para Jueves Santo, predicado en la iglesia de San Esteban y La Encarnación, Washington, DC, el 9 de abril 2009

San Juan 13:1-17, 31b-35

Savannah era niña que tenía tres años. Todos los días lloró a la escuela para niños de la parroquia. A veces gemía. A veces lloriqueó. Su llanto incesante empeoró cuando venía a los servicios en la capilla de la escuela.

Savannah era ciega. Tal vez porque no podía ver, la extrañeza de la escuela la asustó. O tal vez ser ciega no fue la causa de sus problemas emocionales. Para el cura, la dirección de un servicio en la capilla cuando Savannah estaba allá era difícil. Su lloriquear parecía un comentario muy penoso sobre palabras vacías.

Jueves Santo ocurió. La directora de la escuela me pidió venir y explicar a los niños la significación de Jueves Santo. “Que lavemos los pies,” le sugerí. Cogí a los niños. “Jesús esataba buscando una manera para mostrar a sus amigos cuanto se preocupaba para ellos,” yo empecé. Savannah comenzó llorar. “La gente que vivía en el país de Jesús tenían un costumbre para mostrar respeto a sus huéspedes. Cuando personas les visitaban, un siervo tendría sus sandalias y lavaba sus pies polvorientos.”

“Jesús quiere lavar sus pies,” yo dije mientras vertiendo agua en una palangana. “El quiere mostrarles tan mucho los ama. El desea que entendamos que no hay nada más importante que amar a los demás como él nos ama. Como un símbolo de eso, quiere lavar nuestros pies, como fuera un siervo de quien el único trabajo era hacer eso.”

Yo no tenía la menor idea de cómo los niños reaccionarían al lavado de los pies. ¿Le parecería una tonteria? ¿Invasivo? ¿Demasiado extraño? Uno por uno se quitó los zapatos y los calcetines. Cada niño puso sus pies sobre la palangana. Vertí agua tibia sobre sus pies, los lavé y sequé. Algunos se reieron. La mayoría estaban cautivada. “Recuerde a cuidar a todos como Jesús te ama,” yo dije como lavaba cada pie pequeño. Algunos dudaron. La capilla creció tranquila, a excepción de los sonidos del agua de lavado, el tintineo de mi anillo en el lado de la sartén.

Una maestra tuvo a Savannah, que estaba tranquila extrañamente sino un poco de lloriquear. La maestra dobló hacía abajo, y puso el pie de Savannah sobre el cuenco. Vertí agua. “Savannah, recuerde…” Savannah comenzó a reirse un poco. Luego, se rió más. Ella tiró su cabeza hacía atrás y se rió profundamente. “¡Otra vez!” me dijo. Vertí más agua, apreté su pie entre mis palmas. Ella se rió más y más. Luego, otros niños empezaron reirse, y como un fuego, rapidamente las risas se extendieron sobres los rostros hasta todos en la sala se estában reyendo con Savannah.

El agua de vida desciende sobre corazones temerosos y pedregosos, desciende en las fisuras y grietas y corre hacía abajo a los espacios donde no se puede llegar nada más. Lugares de lagrimas, lugares de miedo donde la luz no viene jamás. Señor, lávame no solo los pies, sino también las manos y la cabeza y mi alma y mi corazón y todos los lugares donde me oculto de la Verdad y en todos los lugares donde guardo mis sueños malos. Lávame completamente en los espacios donde mis secretos me pesan mucho. Purifícame de mis pecados, pero quitame de mis timores también. Dejame sentir que tu tienes mis pies, aun cuando no puedo verte. Lavame, Señor, lavame, y dejame reirme otra vez.


© Frank G. Dunn, 2009

The Moment You Have Been Waiting For

Ministry and Evangelism

A sermon preached at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, March 29, 2009

Text: John 12:20-33

You have just heard what has to be one of the most confusing passages in all the New Testament. On days like this I sometimes think we should change the response to the gospel reading to something like, “Praise to you, Lord Christ, we think.”

Some Greeks are attending the Passover in Jerusalem. It is clear that they are not just Greek-speaking Jews but are in fact Gentiles, most likely converts to Judaism. They ask Philip, who happens to have a Greek name and to come from a generally Greek-speaking area of Galilee, to speak with Jesus. For whatever reason, Philip goes to Andrew, the other disciple with a Greek name. Andrew then does what he is frequently pictured in the gospel narratives as doing: he brings people to Jesus, along with Philip with whom he frequently works as a team.

The careful reader of John’s gospel will have noticed that for the last several chapters, Jesus has been saying things that suggest a universal appeal of the Good News. He has sheep other than the fold of Israel who will hear his voice and come to him, so that there will be one flock, one shepherd, for instance. The arrival of the Greeks, who come looking for him, marks a climactic moment. Their very coming is so important that the gospel writer leaves them standing there as he delves into the meaning of their arrival. Like Nicodemus in Chapter 3, the Greeks are left to drift off the pages of the gospel without the benefit of a conclusion to the narrative that brings them there.

The other gospels deal with the arrival of the gentiles in different ways. Matthew tells the story of the Magi, thus presenting the gentiles as having been among the first beyond the holy family itself to recognize the true identity of Jesus. Mark tells his story in such a way as to reveal the gradual dawning upon Jesus himself of the mission to the gentiles, presenting as a climactic moment the appearance of a Syrophonœcian woman (another Greek-speaking gentile) who seems to have caused a kind of epiphany for Jesus, not just an epiphany of Jesus. Luke writes the most gentile-directed gospel of all, and overtly places the notion of a gentile mission in the birth narratives by having the aged Simeon at his presentation in the temple refer to him as “a light to enlighten the gentiles.” So this is the way John handles the idea, by telling an account of how, in his narrative, the first gentiles come to Jesus.

The point is that what distinguishes Jesus’ ministry more than any other single thing is that it blasts open the wall that separates Israel from the rest of the world, and brings to the table of Abraham all those who were formerly left out. And, speaking of Abraham, this very notion is embedded in the Covenant with Abraham, where the promise of God is to furnish descendants of Abraham as numerous as the sand on the seashore or the stars in the heavens. Isaiah picks up the theme by saying that the vocation of Israel is to be a light to the nations. Jesus fulfills these hopes and promises by willingly laying down his life by being lifted up on the cross so that he might draw the whole world to himself.

You may recall that I have bargained with you to look at Sundays’ scriptures through the lens of ministry. What does this passage have to do with ministry? What light does it shed on what you and I do as disciples of Jesus? In large part, the way we answer that will depend on how we read the story. Is the story, for example, about how we have been included? Perhaps. But consider another narrative. I once lived in an idyllic New England town. Its very name—“Newtown”—suggested an imaginary place that existed a bit outside the everyday world. It was not uncommon, I found when I moved there, for the topic of party conversations to be, “Don’t you just love Newtown?” People would frequently swap stories about how they were glad to have moved to Newtown, how much they liked—no, loved—it. But some of us noticed that there was an element in the “I love Newtown” story that went like this: “Now that I am here, I want to make sure that I am among the last to come here. Let’s do everything we can to keep the town from changing. And that means we need to limit who comes in.” I say all this publicly because it was no secret. During the thirteen years that I lived there, some of us, led by the churches, had to talk openly and persuasively about the kind of exclusionism that that attitude bred. In order to do ministry there, we had to prick the bubble of illusion that somehow we were without problems, without pain. And we had to work to dismantle the wall that separated Newtown from the “gentiles,” the others, who were unable to come in.

The single biggest reason that Jesus got nailed to the cross was his penchant for including the outsider, the other. And nothing is better attested about his ministry than that. Whether it was a teaching about a Samaritan, the healing of a woman who was ritually impure, a conversation with a morally questionable Samaritan woman, his open table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners, his ministry over and over crashed the presuppositions that folks behind the religious fences were safe from invasion. Whether he believed that from the start or whether, as Mark seems to suggest, he came to that position gradually, clearly by the end of his brief ministry it was clear: no one was excluded from the realm of God.

And nothing less can characterize and shape our ministry. Like Philip and Andrew, our job is to bring people to Jesus. For us, it is not just a matter of escorting a delegation to Jesus for an interview; it is bringing into his presence and community all people who show the slightest interest in being a part of it. And it is even moreso our responsibility to issue invitations to people to come meet Jesus by meeting his community, the Church.

I am going to assume that that point needs no further elaboration. But I think we do need to spell out what specifically it looks like when we practice a kind of hospitality and outreach that mirrors Jesus’ own ministry. First, there is nothing wrong or offensive about inviting folks to come with you to your community of faith. It all depends on how you do it. “I’d like you to join me this Friday for supper at our church,” is one way. “Would you like to come with us to St. Stephen’s?” is another. Second, respect the fact that the answer might well be no. Folks may wish to decline. And if you have ever been cornered by someone’s insistence that you do something you don’t want to do, you know how uncomfortable that can be. So leave plenty of room for someone to say no, thank you. Respect for boundaries is a basic tool of hospitality.

But what about a more pointed matter, sharing your faith? The courteous thing to do is to invite someone to share their faith—or lack of faith—before we start sharing ours. To begin with, we frequently find that someone who we might have thought didn’t have much faith actually has a good deal of it. And not uncommonly, our own faith is enriched by someone else’s. I try to make it a point to ask questions rather than make statements. “What gives you strength?” “What do you value most?” It is not surprising that when we practice asking questions, we usually inspire others to ask them too. And when someone asks you a question, that is your entrée, their invitation to share your faith. What does give you strength? What is important to you? Where do you go to look for meaning?

You might well be wondering what all this has to do with what Jesus says at this climactic moment when the Greeks come seeking him. I don’t know that his parable about the seed falling into the earth and dying so that it can produce much fruit has much to say about expanding the boundaries of the community of faith. But there is something about his response that addresses our reluctance to do the ministry of evangelism (did you know that is what we have been talking about?) or anything else that might seem hard or off-putting. Jesus lets us know that nothing of worth happens without considerable risk. “A little of us has to die in order to grow again,” says El Gallo in The Fantasticks. And it is true. The only way we will ever follow Jesus is by letting go of our fears and preconceptions, and by daring to follow the example of his authenticity.

Don’t be surprised, when you find yourself doing that, if you have the strange sensation that “the hour has come.” It might be that you begin to taste what it is like to be doing what your were created to do, and finding an unutterable beauty and freedom in doing it.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2009