The Baptism of Phoebe and Sienna

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

Of all the Biblical stories to be scheduled for this day of Baptisms, the sacrifice of Isaac is probably the worst. For those of you not familiar with our system, and perhaps still in shock over the appallingly bad taste of this lesson, let me assure you that it was not by choice but by assignment that this lesson appears.

Our system of readings puts scripture on a three year cycle so that at the end of this time, most of the Bible will have been read and presumably taught about. It's just our luck of the draw that we read about a father being commanded to sacrifice his only son in a rather grim fashion. If the story line of fathers sacrificing sons sounds familiar, this lesson is used in frequent parallel with God's sacrifice of Jesus.

However, before we get carried away with some of the gritty details, let me offer that the word "sacrifice" also means "gift." In Biblical terms the gift of one's life often included death, but I'd like to suggest that the giving of one's life can take other forms.

The four parents of Phoebe and Sienna have sacrificed your lives to have these children and raise them. You have given yourselves to this care and very sacred work. You have declined the many other possibilities open to you, so that you could raise these children. Whether professional options, or traveling, or material possessions -- time spent on yourselves or in any one of so many ways you could have lived your lives without children, you gave those up. You sacrificed them to bring these new lives into the world. You have made commitments to them, to your spouses and families, to the communities of which you'll be part, and to yourselves that you will do this work. And it is a sacrifice.

I would invite you to consider also the possibility that you are offering the sacrifice of your children to the good of the world of which they are now a part and will grow deeper as time goes on.

The Poet and priest John Donne wrote about hearing the funeral bells ringing after the death of a person that no one knew. He mused, "For whom the bell tolls? It tolls for thee." We are so connected to each other that our world is comprised by every living being and it is impacted and diminished by the death of every human being, regardless of who knows them. We ring bells for death, but also for happier occasions like weddings and birth and if we had them to ring, we'd ring them today and proclaim to the world that it has been enriched by the Baptism of these two babies.

Consider that you have made a gift of these babies to the world. As they grow and become young women and take their place in the world, the gifts and talents God has bestowed on them will become more evident and indeed enrich the world.

At some point all parents have to let go of their children, and allow them to make their own way in the world, to make their own mistakes, follow their dreams and meet their own challenges. If I were to ask you now, it would probably seem like a long time before you begin to let go of your children to let them become the adults they are meant to be.

If I were to ask your parents, I suspect they would say it's a lot shorter than you realize. Their sacrifice has been to give the four of you to the world to bring hope and good news and new life into it. Your sacrifice will be to give your children to the world.

Abraham's willingness to give Isaac's life gives a vivid image to the reality of how painful it can be to let go of a child and let them enter into a life that God has called them.

Fortunately for this sermon, the Gospel lesson gives us a much nicer portion of scripture to deal with and far more appropriate. In this lesson Jesus talks about how important it is to show welcome. Welcoming the strangers is a common theme in the Bible and the connection is often made that whoever welcomes a stranger may be welcoming angels unawares. And in another case, a Latin inscription on a building at my alma mater translates to say "A stranger comes, Christ comes." The rewards to welcoming others is to be enriched by the gifts that they are, even more than any gifts they might bring. And Jesus continues to say that "Anyone who gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple - truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

I'm sure you give them more than a cup of cold water, and I'm sure that the rewards you feel have already outweighed any sacrifice you made to welcome them into the world. The love of God is like that too. As St. Francis said, "In giving we receive."

God's love welcomes us and brings us into community. Sacrifices we make in the name of God, or in the love of God are both gift to others and reward. Not only do we bring Sienna and Phoebe to the water, we sacrifice them through the act of Baptism by which they "die to sin" as St. Paul says so that they may be resurrected to new life. With al the possible ways you could have chosen to raise these children, you have chosen a Christian path. We initiate them into the life of worship, service, sacrament and discovery. We renounce evil and its manifestations, we embrace the life and teaching s of Jesus, we take hope in His resurrection and hold to the promise that we too will have everlasting life in the love of God, whatever shape that takes. We promise to seek forgiveness when we have made mistakes and to tell others about this faith that means so much to us -- because it just might make the difference in someone else's life that they're looking for.

Today we welcome Phoebe and Sienna in the name of Christ, we offer their lives to God mindful that the world can be a dangerous place. It can also be a beautiful place ful of love and God's grace. Wherever their lives take them, they will know that they are loved and precious in the sight of God, their parents and the community of saints that welcomes them this day. We witness the vows their godparents make and renew these vows ourselves. They are reminders just in case along our life's path, we have forgotten them or let them get a bit rusty. Our sacrifice, our gift, is to live the life God has given us, in a way that honors God's love and reflects it to the world.

Amen.

© 2008 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ

Not Peace, But a Sword

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

Some of the most disturbing words in the Bible are in this passage from Jesus, saying "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Setting family members against each other, and saying those who put family members before God are not worthy of God seem cruel and even more confusing as it appears to be against the commandment to honor one's mother and father.

The answer to this difficult passage, I believe, lay in the paradox which follows it: Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

The easiest approach to this passage is the explanation that the Gospel of Matthew was written during the time of persecution. It was politically subversive to be a Christian since Christians would not recognize the authority or especially the divinity of the emperor. Being caught in Christian company or at worship was an offense punishable by at least prison and more likely by death in any one of many gruesome and agonizing ways.

On the religious level, Jewish synagogues also considered Christianity a threat to their law and established way of life. Traditional Jewish teaching did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, as Christians insisted, and steadfastly upheld the law of Moses which Christians no longer felt bound to obey. The inclusion of Gentiles into the membership of Christianity only aggravated the animosity the Jews felt toward Christians. Punishment from the synagogues regardless of those handed out by the Roman government were severe ostracism and expulsion from the temple membership. Moreover, if someone was discovered to be a Christian, their whole family could be under suspicion and face similar punishments on both religious and governmental levels.

Families were indeed torn apart by matters of faith. Relatives did turn each other in to avoid suspicion. Horrible choices were made and grisly consequences followed. There were Christians who denied their faith in Jesus to avoid punishment and were then excluded from the Christian church on the grounds of betraying Jesus and also for fear that no one knew where this person's loyalty lay. They might just be a spy to turn in the fugitive Christian community.

It's against this backdrop that the Gospel of Matthew was written and those hearing the Gospel read would have listened very somberly and knowingly of the truth in these words. The convictions of one's faith have far reaching impact. As I said earlier, that would be the easy approach. To put it in the context of history and therefore safely out of the way.

But taking that approach wouldn't do us much good. We need to be able to bring these scriptures into our lives and wrestle with them especially when they make us uncomfortable. One question that echoes down through the centuries from this passage is, "What do you believe so fervently that you would risk your family, your life and everything you've ever known, rather than deny it?" Agonizing stories and situations that try to answer this question make up a good deal of literature. One of my favorite stories, A Man for All Seasons, has Sir Thomas Moore prepared to go to his death burning at the stake rather than approve King Henry VIII's divorce. His wife and family beg him to reconsider, the pressures of politics hound him, yet he stays steadfast in his ideals and it causes his death and he dies with the knowledge that his choice will bring immense hardship on his family after he dies. The bitter cost of integrity. It is a sword, and yet it is true to life.

Our truth, what we know of ourselves, what we value, who we are all get wrapped up in our integrity. Whether in dramatic instances or less, we all have faced or will face times when voices will want us to concede a point of our integrity. These scriptures address such times. Jesus said in another part of scripture that he is truth. If that God-part of him is truth, just as the God part in each of us is truth, we cannot deny it and live. If Thomas Moore had recanted his truth, something more important in him would have died, even if his body lived. Earlier in our Gospel Jesus told his disciples not to fear those who can kill the body but not the soul, rather, fear those who can kill both body and soul.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was often asked during the Apartheid era if he was afraid of being killed. His consistent response was that no one could kill him. They might kill his body, but his soul belonged to God and no one could kill that.

Our truths are a very real part of us and need to be embraced, no matter the cost. Since this is Gay Pride Month I'll tell a personal story of how I relate to this scripture. When I was in my mid twenties I had already come to terms with the fact that I was gay. It was the secret I held close all through my childhood, high school, and college years. I lived in fear that others would find out and that I would become the focus of the kind of torment I'd seen other boys go through. My deepest fear was that my family would disown me and want nothing to do with me. Such things were common stories at the time, they still are tragically for that matter. Even today Christopher Street in Manhattan is one destination of teens thrown out of their homes for revealing their sexuality or as the result of others cruelly outing them. Homeless and afraid, they enter lives that are cruel and from which they can't even begin to lift themselves.

It boggles my mind how families can turn out children they claimed to love just a day before this information came to light. And just as it is true today, it was true thirty years ago when I lived with my secret. I didn't know how my family would react and I didn't dare take the chance.

As I graduated Seminary and entered into a relationship I knew the truth had to come out, and me with it. It was a difficult time with my parents, to give you a taste of New England understatement. But at the end I knew they still loved me and wanted me to be happy. Years of secrecy, fear and shame opened up to healing and truth. I consider this story to be a large part of why I find the healing ministry to be so important. Many of our injuries are not to the body, but the soul and while doctors can tend the sickness of the body, spiritual healing addresses the injuries that lay deep and festering in our souls.

It was in claiming my truth and as the years unfold, living my truth that have given me life. I had reached a point where I was willing to die to my family because the truth in me could not be remain hidden. It was a risk, that turned out happily for me regarding my family.

We all have our truths that we might be living or that might be deep within us yearning to be free. These truths could be our identity in so many ways that can be understood. Our truths may be the intellect or creativity we are afraid to use. Our truths may be our beliefs or doubts. Our truths may be in our business practices. Whatever they are, they are worth risking for.

We might be afraid of negative consequences, perhaps even to death. But unless we grasp our truths, we die anyway in our souls. The whole point of resurrection is trusting that new life will come from whatever death we might imagine or actually face as we grasp our truth. Even if we lose everything and gain the truth that is in us, new life will grow in a far better way. If we lose our lives for Jesus, that is the Jesus who says "I am the truth…" we will indeed gain it.

The scripture that causes us so much trouble as we read it simply brings to light a deep spiritual truth. It does so in the gritty language of a culture two thousand years ago. But it's clear that the truth still applies. Ultimately the sword that Jesus brings cuts through the slavery of fear, or shame, or anger or whatever else might prevent us from living the life God made us to live. Ultimately the words are of liberation and life. Tell your truth to some one, tell it to God, though I suspect, the One who is Truth already knows it. We surely must tell it, live it, embrace it and know that God loves us in the secrets we keep and in the truths that we shout. And that love brings us life.
Amen.

© 2008 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few

By Elaine Bennett

The bulletin says we're celebrating a lot here today at St. George's, including our Sunday School teachers and Juneteenth.

I'm not an authority on either subject, but I will say this: How we raise our children speaks volumes about who we are as a parish today, and what the world will be like tomorrow. I am always moved and amazed when I encounter the work going on in our Sunday school. So thank you.

And Juneteenth is a holiday I never heard about before I came to St. George's. It commemorates the day that slavery finally ended in the United States. Those of you who know your history will know that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 -- it went into effect on January 1st, 1863. But for obvious reasons, that particular law was not observed in the Confederate states.

And it wasn't until June 19th, 1865 that Union soldiers got to Galveston Texas and told the men, women and children who were enslaved there that they had been free for the last two and a half years.

They had always been free under God's law, of course. But I imagine it's hard to feel free when there's a guy with a shotgun who says he'll kill you if you leave the plantation.

So Juneteenth has a lot to teach us about freedom. And about how easily institutions can deny it. Especially if we allow them to.

And as a gay Christian, that is a subject I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

So Happy Gay Pride Month, everyone.

And Happy Father's Day, too. Since it is Father's Day I thought I'd start with a little story about my father, Charlie.

When I graduated from college, I moved back home with my parents. And that summer, I went to my first Gay Pride March.

I was excited about it but I was also a little nervous. See, I get sunburned really easily, and I knew if I was outside all day, marching from Greenwich Village to who knows where uptown, I was going to come home with a big sunburn and I needed a cover story. A friend of mine told me to say I was going on a picnic.

So when I left that morning, I said, "Bye! I'm going to a picnic in Central Park."

Little did I know that the Gay Pride March would be culminating in a huge rally in Central Park. And also little did I know that that the entire affair would receive massive coverage on the evening news.

When I came home that evening, my father made a big joke about it. He said, "How'd you like your picnic with the..." and then he used a crude word for gay men.

Well, that got my attention -- my father never used words like that. He was a pretty sharp guy in some ways and I felt he was trying to tell me that he knew about me. So the next day when we were alone, I came out to my father.

I said, "You're right, Dad. I was at the march. I'm gay."

I'm not sure quite what I was expecting him to say. But what he did say was, "You're our daughter and we love you.... Just don't tell your mother."

In case you're wondering, I did eventually come out to my mother, too. Buy me lunch sometime and I'll tell you about it. The bottom line is, I was able to tell both of my parents that I'm gay, but to the day they died, I was never able to tell either of them that I'm Episcopalian.

Hey, we were Roman Catholic. And I was very Roman Catholic.

You know how hard it is for most parents to get their teenagers to go to church? My parents had trouble getting me to come home. In fact, I regularly attended two masses every Sunday: I was the lead guitarist with the folk group at 9:30 and then played and sang as part of a duo at one of the two masses held at noon.

Growing up, just about every major event of my life revolved around church, including my first date and my first kiss. And in high school and college I went to weekend-long retreats designed to fill me full of the self-esteem teenagers so badly need. They gave us buttons and banners along the lines of "God Loves You."

My favorite one said -- quote -- "God Don't Make Junk." I was never able to figure out whether the bad grammar was an attempt to be hip or a subtle commentary on the nature of the Trinity. "God Don't Make Junk."

Well, a couple of years after I graduated from college -- I was living in the city -- and my parents decided that we should go to Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. So we did.

Then the following June, the Gay Pride March rolled around again. Now, every year during the march, the gay Catholic Group -- Dignity -- used to stop at St. Patrick's and hold a brief prayer service on the Cathedral steps. But that year there was a new Cardinal in town, and Cardinal O'Connor said gay people praying on the Cathedral steps was "sacrilegious." Can you imagine -- telling anyone that praying is a sacrilege?

Cardinal O'Connor announced that he was going to block off the steps of the Cathedral. In fact, he didn't even want gay people walking on the street in front of the Cathedral. So the Archdiocese sued New York City, trying to get the entire Gay Pride March rerouted off Fifth Avenue.

He lost his lawsuit, but I got the message loud and clear: When the church -- my church -- didn't know who I was -- when I was just one of the nameless thousands at Christmas Eve mass, I was more than welcome. But when they did know who I was, they didn't want anything to do with me.

It was the ecclesiastical version of "You're our daughter and we love you, just don't tell your mother."

And that was the last day I considered myself a Catholic.

It took a long while for me to trust God -- and organized religion -- again. People told me I needed to learn to separate God's actions from man's. But it's hard to remember that you're equal and loved by God when "man" -- in the form of the Archbishop -- won't let you in the church door.

(One of the other actions Archbishop O'Connor took was to ban Dignity from meeting or celebrating mass in Catholic Churches. And that edict spread to other dioceses, which is why to this day, the local Dignity group meets here at St. George's. I came across their meeting by accident one day. They were playing Bingo.)

So I struggled with religion for a long time. But eventually I found the Episcopal Church at St. Ann's in Brooklyn. And when my partner and I were getting ready to move to Maplewood, we found St. George's.

The Gay Pride March played a role in that, too. Oasis -- the gay & lesbian fellowship of the Diocese of Newark - was marching in the parade. We went up to them and talked with some people and Cheryl Notari and her partner Sharon told us about this fabulous parish right in our new hometown. I'm not sure I believed them, but I decided to see. And I have been here happily ever after.

Now, as these "coming out" stories go, mine is pretty tame. My parents didn't throw me out of the house. But I do feel that Cardinal O'Connor threw me out of my church. Through his actions, as the representative of God and the Roman Catholic Church in New York, the community that I had always relied on suddenly decided, "Well, after all, you know, maybe God Do Make Junk. And -- guess what? -- you're it."

I'm willing to bet that most of the gay people here have some sort of story like that.

And so do the vast majority of gay people who are not here. Because, remember, there are thousands of people out there who are too scared or too hurt to even think about walking into this building.

Now we know that once they get in here, they can sit in any pew, shake hands with any person and find someone who welcomes them and cares about them and wants to give them space to repair their broken relationship with God. We know that. But how do they know?

These walls are pretty thick. Nobody outside can hear what we're doing in here. The windows are really high up and full of all that colored glass. People can't pass by and see what's going on inside. So how do we reach out? How do we tell those scared, hurt, unchurched gay people that not only does Jesus love them, but we do too?

How do we do it? We do things -- individually and collectively, as a community.

We have events. We have "Marriage Equality Weekend" and put a rainbow flag banner across the front of the church. We march in parades, like the New York City Gay & Lesbian Pride March coming up in two weeks.

Last year, with our elders riding in style down the route, we showed that support for gay people is not limited to the young. We had a lesbian priest marching in her clerical collar -- strangers hugged her. We also had many other parishioners, gay and straight, toddlers riding on their lesbian moms' shoulders, young Keenan walking out front, waving like the Mayor of New York.

I can't tell you how many people shouted "thank you." Some cried. Others said, "I know someone who lives in Maplewood." And thousands of people saw tangible evidence that "Christian" does not always mean "homophobe." And that at least some Episcopalians really do mean it when they say, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."

Because as wonderful as St. George's is, it's easy to forget that not every Episcopal church really stands behind that slogan. And I'm not just talking about parishes in Florida or Texas or Virginia, where there are bishops and priests who want to separate from the U.S. church because we allowed an openly gay man to become a bishop. There are parishes right down the road -- parishes in our very own diocese -- where gay and lesbian people do not feel welcome.

These are the parishes Bishop Beckwith was talking about when he said one of his goals for the diocese is to practice "radical welcome."

You know, for the longest time I didn't even know what the phrase meant. The Bishop would talk about "radical welcome" and I was like -- "Huh? It wasn't until a month ago, when we had the priest from Connecticut come down to talk about becoming a welcoming parish that I realized that the phrase "radical welcome" basically translates as "being nice to gay people and people of color." Radical.

I guess there are a lot of parishes that need to work hard at that. It's pretty much business as usual at St. George's, thank God.

But once we leave the friendly confines of our parish, and of this town, the rest of the world is not quite so radically welcoming. In fact, especially in the last year or so, parts of my new church have started to feel a lot like my old church.

Case in point, the Lambeth Conference that begins next month in England. That's the gathering that happens every 10 years, when all of the bishops of the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church gather to talk. And once more, the media will be filled with stories about how Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, is being excluded. These stories will mention that the only reason he is being excluded is that he lives in a committed relationship with another man.

Now, imagine for a minute that you're someone who doesn't know much about the Episcopal Church. You know about as much about Episcopalians as I know about the Lutherans or the Amish. Which is to say, you know they're there and they believe in Jesus. But that's about it.

Now imagine being a gay man or a lesbian who left or was thrown out of his or her church. And you start hearing these stories about the Episcopal Church. Yes, it's great news that one tiny, little state "hired" a gay bishop. But the whole rest of the world seems to be mad about it.

So if you're an unchurched gay person, which part of that story makes the bigger impression on you? The part that offers hope -- or the part that reinforces everything you've already learned about organized religion?

We may believe that when it comes to the future of the Episcopal Church, there's much more reason to hope than to despair. We know our bishop is a good guy. And we know that there are lots of other good guys and good women wearing those pointy bishop hats. But I've been an Episcopalian for 15 years and a part of this incredibly loving, spirit-filled parish for 16. And I have to tell you, some days it's hard for me not to think, "Here we go again."

If all those leaders of my church won't welcome Gene Robinson to God's table with his brother and sister bishops, then maybe I'm not welcome either. Not really.

On days like that, it's hard for me to remember that I'm safe here. That even though our Bishop and our Presiding Bishop are going to leave Gene Robinson behind physically -- and leave me behind metaphorically -- when they walk through the doors to the Lambeth Conference, we will still be in their hearts. And they will be advocating for us.

You know, 15 years ago when I was received as an Episcopalian, confirmations were still held at each parish. So I was received here at St. George's. Bishop Spong was here and our Rector, Barry Stopfel, was standing at his side. And of course Barry was one of the few priests at the time who was openly gay. His presence gave me the courage to believe that this church really was different.

There I was, an open lesbian, with my partner standing up for me, and the Episcopal Church was saying, "Yes, Elaine, God loves you. We love you. Be with us."

And when I knelt down before Bishop Spong, I just burst into tears. I mean, I turned into Niagara Falls. I couldn't stop crying. And the Bishop looked at Barry and whispered, "Is she okay?"

And Barry whispered back, "She used to be Catholic."

I still cry a lot in church. And not just at weddings and funerals like everybody else. I cry at baptisms -- and I cry buckets at ordinations. I think it's because even after all these years there's still a part of me that doesn't trust that the welcome the church is extending in those sacraments is going to last. There's a part of me that's still waiting for this church to pull the rug out from under me just like the last one did.

As members of St. George's, where everyone truly is welcome, that may be hard for you to understand, but I think it's very important for you to hear.

You know, in many ways St. George's is an island, a "radically welcoming" island. And that's great. But we have a choice. Are we going to be a tiny island, the St. Kitts of the Episcopal Church? Or are we going to be an island like Australia -- so big and expansive that it takes up an entire continent?

It's not what we do inside this building that makes us Christians; it's how we take what we do here out into the world. In today's Gospel, we heard Jesus tell the apostles, "The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore, ask the Lord to send laborers out into the field."

We can't wait for somebody else to send the workers. We know what needs to be done; we have to do it.

So, please, don't just enjoy the inclusiveness of the St. George's community while you're here -- take it out into the world with you when you leave. Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers. Come out of the closet -- whether you're gay or straight, come out of the closet as Christians who welcome gay and lesbian people into community with you.

Take back the word "Christian" from the bigots and the haters. Their voices are loud right now, but our voices can grow louder as more people join in our welcome and our island expands, until the whole Diocese is on the same island, and one day the whole Episcopal Church will be, too.

I've had people say to me, "I'd like to talk about this stuff, but what can I say?"

Talk about your experiences, talk about your life. I think any sentence that combines the words "gay," "church" and "welcome" will be a revelation to many people.

And if you prefer to use humor -- my father always told me that people remember things more if you can make them laugh -- here's a quotation that was given to me by a dear friend of mine who happens to be straight. It's a quotation from that famous theologian, Dorothy Parker.

Now, Dorothy Parker started writing in 1919 and she wrote all the way through the 1940s, so you know this quotation has been around a long time. Dorothy Parker wrote, "Heterosexuality isn't normal; it's just common."

I want to close with a prayer Bishop Beckwith used as a blessing at the end of his Consecration. I can't offer a blessing, but I can share it with you as a prayer. So please pray with me:

May God give us grace never to sell ourselves short,
Grace to risk something big for something good,
Grace to remember that the world is too dangerous now for anything but truth
And too small for anything but love.
Amen.

© 2008 Elaine Bennett

A Mighty Fortress

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

Our opening hymn is one of those "old chestnuts" pretty much known to anyone who grew up in a mainline Christian tradition. The author of the lyrics from the year 1529 is Martin Luther, known as the great Protestant Reformer. His passion for God and the beauty of the church led him to speak up against its abuses and his protests became the match that set ablaze the long simmering anguish of a people in misery.

The emergence of the Reformation is a long, complicated and fascinating chapter in human history and the hymn we sang captures a glimpse of its passion and some of the elements of the conviction of its author. First of all, he wrote it in the language of the people and he used music that was popular and well known. In our day we sanitize the past, but Luther took a favorite tune sung in the bars for his tune while putting in it the lyrics we've come to know. Its orignal rhythm is different than what we're used to, and we tried it this morning going for the spirit of the hymn.

Our own National Anthem uses words by Francis Scott Key and also borrows the music from a German beer song demonstrating how we borrow from different sources to convey what we think people will listen to. Imagine if our hymn writers today took their lyrics and set them to the music being played in bars and clubs to sing in our morning service. Wouldn't that be a change of pace!

Being a man of zealous character, Martin Luther the musician once wrote in a book, that, "Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts and spirits... A person... Who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs." -- Martin Luther, Reformer and Musician.

It's the passion of this man that is captured in his words, music and actions. It's also his strong conviction of the battle we do with evil. Evil is powerful and requires an equally powerful strength to overcome it. That strength, says Luther, comes from God. No one or no thing can supply us with the strength we need to overcome the evil in the world, only God.

Just as we in the present day like to sanitize and paint pietistic pictures of very earthy and rough characters in the Bible and church history, we have a tendency to minimize or relativize the evil around us. This comes in part from the very real dynamic of people who call out evil often pointing at others who point back at them shouting the same accusations and getting nowhere but deeper into trouble and solving nothing but creating bigger problems.

Never the less, evil exists. It grows in the fertile ground of greed, fear, intolerance and prejudice. Each of us is capable of tremendous evil on a personal level, evil we can do to each other, and evil we can do to ourselves. As a collective society we are capable of evil done to the environment and to whole segments of humanity.

One of the icons of evil is Adolph Hitler. But he was just one person. Without the help of others around him, he couldn't have gotten anywhere. Books are written about the dynamics involved in people's participation in evil through ignorance and denial as well as outright complicity. Genocide in the concentration camps, eastern Europe, Africa, the American Frontier West, all have stories that should be told and secrets that are kept about evil.

Using food and medicine in a global poker game for economic gain is evil. Focusing hate on groups for their color, ethnic background or sexual orientation, or for any reason is evil. That kind of evil is aggravated by the calculated use of it to keep the spotlight off other abuses perpetrated by government or corporations on the societal level and individuals on the personal level.

There is evil in the world. Heinous crimes against individuals and societies. Human rights violations, abuse of the environment -- intentional wrongdoing and giving pain for reasons ranging from greed to sadistic pleasure. Evil exists. It's devastating in its physical damage and devastating in its spiritual damage. The existence of evil through intentional wrongdoing is the premise of the Noah story. If nothing else, it tells us that evil has always existed and always been a puzzle for people to face. But intentional evil is not the only form of suffering.

So is catastrophe from natural disasters. So is even the natural loss of life, property, jobs or reputation. From large scale to the small and everyday, pain, hurt and suffering are part of the world and part of our lives. Some is caused by others, some is simply part of the natural world and some we cause ourselves. In his Epistle to the Romans Paul talks about how we all fall short of the glory of God. In the end, he reassures his readers, we are loved by God and embraced by grace.

The question raised for me in these readings becomes what do we do about it? How do we maintain our balance, our spirit in the face of any mishap that befalls us? The people suffering in China, the atrocities of the wars we're fighting and the deaths and injuries related to it, all the way to the arguments we may have with our spouses, partners, friends or children. How do we deal with these things?

Jesus said, "Not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father..." In a more expanded study I'd try to demonstrate the point that I'll make briefly here, namely that rather than keeping people out of heaven, Jesus is stating a spiritual truth that it takes work, spiritual work, to confront the pains and sorrows of life. The Kingdom of Heaven can be defined in many ways, but one way is surely the sense of peace and serenity we can find in our lives. And it takes more than complaining to God to achieve that.

When I'm on the tread mill after lunch I'll cry out Lord, Lord I feel sick. And the voice of God says, not everyone who calls out Lord, Lord, will get into good shape. Wearing the latest work out gear and sitting on state of the art machines isn't enough to lose the weight or build up the muscles. It takes work. Having a nice briefcase and suit isn't enough to make it in the business world. It takes work. Not everyone who says, 'Lord, Lord' will succeed. But the ones who do the work that needs to be done, will achieve the goal.

So it is in spiritual matters. When Jesus talks about building a house on a foundation of rock versus a foundation of sand, it certainly seems to refer to the kind of discipline we engage in our spiritual practice. Prayer and meditation, the study of scripture, the wrestling with issues of faith and the participation in a worshiping community is an intentional discipline, sometimes fun and easy, sometimes not so. But necessary in any case to build a spiritual life.

In the news recently Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The Kennedys have been larger than life American icons for well over a generation. Despite one's political leanings we watch this family in fascination. Tragedy and folly, hubris, accident and illness have visited them often. Some of the suffering has been from outside their control, much of it has been from within, and again as St. Paul says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet, one of the most fascinating aspects of this family is the strength of the faith they share that allow them to overcome tragedy and personal failings.

One of the most moving accounts of that family's journey for me was reading that when she heard about John Kennedy's assassination, Rose Kennedy went to church to pray.

When devastation hits we can be paralyzed, embittered, or die inwardly. Or we can grieve and overcome. Whichever we do is a matter of our strength and choice. And not ours alone but that of God working in us. Working in us, not for us. One of the hardest lessons humans can learn is that we have to do our own spiritual work, no one can do it for us. Plenty can help, but we still have to do the work ourselves. This work is what Jesus refers to as building the house on a foundation of rock.

What is the work? Prayer and worship. Meditation. Scripture reading. Self examination and confession. Self care and laughter. Living with intention, generosity and gratitude. It's not really difficult, but it does take attention and intention. There are very few things in life we can predict, but good times and bad times will come. Good times we know how to handle, bad times... not always so well. Scripture gives us a handle on how to start. Our life here builds on that. Our worship, prayer, singing, outreach and fellowship helps us. Our study and prayer groups help. There are many ways in side and outside this church that will help, but it's work that we each have to take on for ourselves even in the company and with the support of each other. The good news is that God is with us during our spiritual work, our joys and our sorrows. God is the source of strength we draw on to confront the evil and mishaps in our lives. And God is the glint in the eye when our joys are full.

Martin Luther wrote and sang his songs with passion and faithful fervor. We can sing them to articulate ours, or we can write our own. There's many a beer tune waiting for new words.

Amen.

© 2008 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ