Repentance and Healing: A Path to God’s Kingdom

Published on by The Rev. Jason A Burns, DeaconLeave a comment

I am not ashamed to admit that I found it difficult to determine how to approach the story Luke tells of Jesus healing on the sabbath. The obvious theme is that Pharisee’s need to get over themselves because bringing God’s grace to a woman who is hurting is certainly more important than observing the rule to do no work on the sabbath. The problem I have with this interpretation, even though it is one that rings true for me, is that it directs our attention toward our world and away from God. The parables and stories included in scripture are intended to point us to God and their kingdom, yes this often involves pointing out human folly, but we must be careful not to focus all of our energy in this one area.

I think that we naturally slip into the rhythm of looking for the obvious in scripture primarily because we are not as familiar with the entire arc of scripture as we would like to be or think we are. The positioning of these stories is very intentional and when we take them out of their context some of the meaning is lost and I suspect that is why we tend to gravitate to the obvious instead of stepping back and looking for the broader message.

This particular story lands right between the parable of the fig tree, which is about repentance and the parables of the Mustard Seed and Levan which are both about how the kingdom of God cannot be controlled. When we take this all together a broader understanding of God’s kingdom begins to appear. The parable of the fig tree recounts a vineyard owner who was ready to have the tree cut down because it didn’t produce fruit for three years, the gardener asked him for one more year during which time he would give it special attention, we do not know what the owner decided, but the implication is that he changed his mind or repented. The story of the woman’s healing immediately follows, implying that repentance will bring healing.

On the heals of Jesus’s rebuke of the temple leaders he immediately describes the kingdom of God as a mustered seed whose growth cannot be stopped and the yeast that causes bread to take shape. The implication being that once repentance and healing occurs nothing will be able to stop the kingdom of God from growing.

As I reflect on the state of the world, and our country, our state, and even my own community I am prepared to accept that I am nervous about our future. Something is broken and I don’t mean the usual level of brokenness that is just human existence; I mean that our culture has shifted to the point that what was once the standard for civility has shifted. What was once said behind closed doors is now shared openly without regard for impact. There has been a breakdown in respect for authority under the guise of freedom. There is a pervasive sense that everyone is entitled to an opinion on everything and they are free to share it. There is a growing sense of entitlement in general as if we are all free to go wherever and do whatever we want. My greatest fear is that we are moving further and further from realizing the kingdom of God and I think that frightens me more than anything else, but instead of cowering in fear I believe that it is our duty as followers of Christ to ask where is God’s grace in all of this? Where is the immediate forgiveness and love that is God’s grace?

God’s kingdom is manifested in many ways and we are all forgiven and loved whether we ask for it or not, but that truth does not immediately transform the world, that would be a true miracle and an example of God directly intervening in the world, which we all know God doesn’t do.

The formula to transform this ever more broken world into the kingdom of God is simple, at least on paper it’s simple and we find that formula in Luke’s gospel. Step one, repent. Reflect on our words and actions, find the errors in judgment, recognize them and learn from them. It is only after we realize our mistakes that we can truly change our behavior. The vineyard owner was urged to change his mind and allow the fig tree more time, which presumably resulted in a tree full of figs the following year.

Step two, heal. This means many things, but there are two components that are vital. Seek the forgiveness of the people you harmed and accept God’s forgiveness, or what we might call forgive yourself. It is by seeking forgiveness of each other that we experience the manifestation of God’s grace in the world. Healing is truly about wholeness, and we will not feel whole when a wrong goes unresolved. We may bury it for 30 years and forget about it, but deep down the feeling of hurt or guilt will still be there and it will affect us without us realizing.

Step three, recognize repentance and healing for what it is, a freely given gift from God, first manifested in the flesh as Jesus Christ as a sure sign of the kingdom of God. The healing of the woman on the sabbath is a window into the kingdom. It gives us a glimpse of the healing power of God’s grace of forgiveness and love and demonstrates for us that in God’s Kingdom things will be different.

While I am nervous about the state of our world, I am also hopeful. I am hopeful that with time and the grace of God that our species will realize how our new technologies and attitudes are affecting the fabric of our society and adjust our societal norms in recognition of the fact that rabid individualism and entitlement are not healthy and are causing great damage. I am hopeful because the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, once it takes root very little can dislodge it.  

Reframing Faith: Jesus, Love, and Secular Priorities

Published on by The Rev. Jason A Burns, DeaconLeave a comment

I have been preparing to lead a class on seculosity and spirituality so when I read the lessons for today the idea that we should put the things that are from God first in our lives caught my attention.

            Seculosity is a new term, coined by David Zahl, to explain the lateral move from faith-based religion to secular based religion. How many of us have heard someone say “I’m spiritual, but not religious”? While the term seculosity does apply to this growing group of people, Zahlclaims it applies to atheists as well. His basic argument is this, “religion is…. the lens through which you sort the data of your days, rank your priorities, and focus your desires.” With this definition we are able to widen our lens and see that our drive to make more money, to have and use the latest technology, to plan every moment of our children’s day, to be the highest achieving student in school, to fight injustice in the world are all religions if they are the central factor in our lives.

             To be clear there is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money, with planning activities for our kids, getting good grades or fighting injustice, that is not what is at issue here. The issue is twofold, first claiming to not be religious and then using a secular -ism or task to organize your life is in fact a religion it is just not a religion based on God. Second, and more applicable to us, is that claiming to be religious but then using secular tasks and -isms to shape our time and energy is, by definition, sin, but let’s not dwell on that, instead let’s focus on Jesus’s call to be ready and Paul’s pressure to be faithful.

            The day I left for the UK I was having lunch with my best friend Tyler and we quickly found ourselves talking about how religious zealots have coopted Christianity and our political system. Tyler is a card-carrying atheist and has a profound respect for those of us who choose to believe in God, primarily, he says, because of his friendship with me. While he has no interest in believing, he has seen the positive impact faith has had on my life and that helps him to see that the zealous bigots who get all the press are not in fact all that religion has to offer. Religion is being used to shape government policy, which is problematic for two reasons. First and most obvious is that government is supposed to protect the rights of all people, not just the people those in power prefer. Second, the version of Christianity that is being used is not the only version of Christianity that exists, and more importantly I think it important to name what it is, it is the Pharisee version of Christianity. It is the version that has set strict and unbending rules, even when bending or even breaking those rules may in fact be the morally and ethically right thing to do, the thing that demonstrates the love God, as taught to us by Jesus.

            When Jesus tells the disciples “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” He is not telling us to be good little slaves and obey our master; he is indicating that in God’s kingdom things will be different by using the language that his disciples will identify with. The Master will trade places with his servants and take care of them, not because the Constitution says that all people are equal before the law, not because the Universal Declaration of Human rights says that all humans have a God given right to life, but because in God’s kingdom Love rules the day. The whole point of the Gospels is for us to learn that God’s kingdom is counter cultural, it is a new and different way of living, a way that doesn’t just bend the rules, it gets rid of the rulebook because the rulebook is not faith, it is religion and over time humanity has a habit of replacing faith with religion.

            Paul tells us that Abrham faithfully obeyed God and because he truly believed that God would fulfill their promise and God did so. What God asked of Abrham was to leave behind the life that he knew and trust that God would lead him to newer and better things, so Abraham did so and from his faith came generations of faithful people. People who sought a homeland of their own, a land that would be ruled by God. We are the descendants of those people and the promise of God has not changed, but we have.

            As we have become more sophisticated and enlightened as a species we have moved further and further away from faith and have claimed to reject religion, but what David Zahl has pointed out is that we have not rejected religion, we have simply replaced one religion with another.

            We have replaced the simple teachings of Jesus, the call to love others as much as we love ourselves with a love of material goods, straight A’s, being the top of our professions, being the best mom or dad and then wonder why we feel tired, and stressed, and unsuccessful. We don’t feel that way because of what we do, we feel that way because we are always viewing our lives through the lens of those things and that is what David Zahl means by seculosity. If we view every moment of our lives through the lens of our professional life then we will inevitably feel that when we are not working, we are somehow failing. If we view ourselves through the lens of being a student who needs to do well in order to have a good life then we will inevitably feel like a failure when we get a lower than expected score or when we achieve our degree, we will feel incomplete because the thing by which we defined ourselves is gone.

            Utilizing secular lenses to define ourselves and to shape our worldview is fine to a point, but ultimately all roads lead to the same place, a place of unhappiness and loneliness. A place where people go hungry or eke out a meager existence based on the rules their society have written down, rules like constitutions and lists of Human rights. Jesus gave us a different lens, not a lens that blocks the other lenses, but changes them, like when the optometrist flips and twists their magic machine. The lens of faith simply allows us to view the world with love in our hearts. It does not keep us from striving to be good at our profession, but it does help us to ensure that we do not harm ourselves or others as we do so. Jesus does not say to stop doing your best in school, but does ask us to think about if our efforts to be the best are harming ourselves or others.

            When I think about at the religion of the past, the religion that required adherence to strict rules I get why so many people have left it behind and I get why so many people are fearful or more accurately angry about the religious zealots who are forcing their views on us all. I also get why so many people have latched on to zealousness, because it is easy. It is easy to boil human existence down to a list of rules that help you easily decide who is right and wrong, but that is not what we are called to do. We are called to be people of faith, people who love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbors above all other things. People who consciously choose to be counter cultural and out the love of all people ahead of our secular beliefs. Amen.

Finding Peace through Community and the Holy Spirit

Published on by The Rev. Jason A Burns, DeaconLeave a comment

Pentecost is one of the church festivals that is often overlooked, though it wasn’t always, in the Medieval church it was a Holy Day of Obligation, and it still officially is in the Catholic Church. It doesn’t evoke the happiness of Christmas or the Joy of Easter for most of us or bring in the crowds like those two holidays, but without Pentecost those two, seemingly far more exciting holidays wouldn’t exist.  Pentecost is the celebration of the birth of the church, it isn’t the celebration of the cementing of the physical bricks that shape this or any other building, it is a celebration of the one thing that binds us together regardless of our backgrounds, the language we speak, or even the depth and understanding of our faith in God. It is like the mycelium Rev. Anna has often spoken of, or the Force from Star Wars; it is discernable, yet unexplainable and mysterious, it binds us to each other and to God and its name is The Holy Spirit.

            In John’s Gospel Jesus calls the spirit an advocate, as in one who is a supporter, a defender, and a guide. It is the Holy Spirit that remains with us at all times, that reminds us to breathe, that nudges us to remember the teachings of Jesus as we strive to be at peace with the world, with each other, and with ourselves. The disciples had a lot of questions and if you are like me, I often take this to mean that they didn’t understand and truthfully, they probably didn’t at first; but we should not fault them for this, they were experiencing Jesus’s teachings for the first time and they were likely nervous about the idea of him leaving and not understanding everything he was talking about. I recently read that we should take their questions as a sign of the strength of their relationship with Jesus, that they felt comfortable enough to ask for clarification. Why they couldn’t then write it down in a clearer manner I don’t know, but what I do know is that discerning meaning in these stories is a lifelong pursuit and it is a pursuit that we are not meant to do alone.

            One of the things that has often confused me is the line “Peace I leave with you; my own peace I give to you”, While confusing I have never really thought too much about it, assuming it just means we are never alone because Jesus is always with us, which in all honesty has never given me much comfort because knowing that an invisible all powerful creator that never talks to me is with me at all times doesn’t help me feel better; talking with my family and friends helps me feel better. I read a commentary this week by the Rev. Dr. Chelsea Brooke Yarborough, who implies that the context in which Jesus offers peace is very important, she says “Jesus, knowing that these disciples both have experienced and are headed into harsh times, offers this word: “peace.” Peace then feels like an invitation to community and trust. The peace is found in the collective.” This simple sentence caused a light bulb to appear above my head, “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you” is not just the idea that Jesus is always with us, it is the fact that we will find peace among each other because Jesus, who is and was and will always be, is in us. His commandments, his stories, his love of all people is all a part of us, that is the peace he left us, and the peace he gave us is the Holy Spirit. The gift is not just the presence of Jesus through his teachings, but the gift of literally always being in community with God, through the Holy Spirit, even when we are sitting alone. Accepting that and drawing strength and comfort from it is probably the hardest part of being a Christian. We know intellectually that God is with us, but do we feel it? If you do, I am very happy for you, because I suspect most of us don’t which is why we are here. When we are together as a community, we, at least sometimes, feel the comfort and the peace we were gifted from God and we feel it because we are bound together by the Holy Spirit and the closer together we become the stronger the bonds become. The Spirit is like a magnet, the closer it gets to another magnet the harder it is to pull it away. A lone magnet will occasionally latch onto something, but it is strongest when it is grouped with a bunch of its friends, (don’t check the physics on that, remember I’m a historian and amateur theologian, math and I don’t get along and we’re both fine with that).

            The gift of the advocate and the peace that comes with it is not intended to be a replacement for the commandment to love each other. It is itself an act of love and a demonstration of what it means to love each other as God loves us. Jesus could sense the disciples fear, he knew that they would encounter resistance in their ministry; he knew that they would have more failures than successes as they built the church. It is no different for us, yet the call remains the same. How do we love all people, not just the ones with whom we feel connected? How do we help others feel the love of God, even if they don’t believe in God? How do we help them feel the happiness of Christmas and the Joy of Easter, even when they don’t participate in the celebrations? How do we help each other feel the happiness and joy? How do we embody the peace Jesus gifted us?

            The answer to these questions will not only be different for all of us, they will be personal. Some of us may already know the answer to some of them, some of us may feel confused about them, and no matter where we fall on the spectrum of our understanding about God’s call to love, what matters most is our awareness of God, that we are drawn together by the Holy Spirit, and that it is that awareness and togetherness that makes us the church. What we choose to do with that awareness is an entirely different sermon and a life long conversation and what I will be spending the next nine weeks pondering.

            While I am away, I will most certainly be thinking of you all, I will be thinking about how I can best support our community and you as individuals, and I will be taking some time to renew my own relationship with God.

            As today is a celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church I will end with a portion of the Prayer of St. Patrick, which dates to the 5th century. This prayer is a reminder to me of what the church is, with every invocation of Christ I see you because Christ is in you.

Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

Amen