Tag: church

Finding Peace through Community and the Holy Spirit

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave 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

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Understanding God’s Call: Lessons from Saul and Ananias

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

I’m going to tell you a secret, we could have heard a shorter version of the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, but I don’t like skipping or over simplifying things, so we heard the entire passage and because of that the service will be about 30 seconds longer today. Truthfully, when I read the story of Saul’s conversion, I immediately heard the faith story of us all.

Saul was a faithful Jew, in fact he was a Pharisee, which means he believed that all written and oral Jewish law should be strictly adhered to and this is why he didn’t like what the new Christians were up to. Interestingly, Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead, in the immortality of the soul, and that they would be either rewarded or punished after death. They believed in the importance of keeping rituals and the need to convert the Gentiles. However, their adherence to the law was so meticulous that it often came at the expense of their inner faith and which is the very thing Jesus was challenging time and time again.

One of the hardest parts of living a God centered life is not really understanding that faith in God is paradoxical by nature. There are moments when faith feels literal and tied to the rule book (hold up BCP) and there are moments when it feels emotionally raw. There are moments when we realize that the rulebook doesn’t matter because the rulebook is not God, and there are moments when we cling to the rulebook because it provides us comfort.

As Rev. Anna often says, we are shaped by how we pray, which is not unique to Anglicanism, but we are unique in our emphasis of it. What it means is that our liturgy, the work we do as the people of God, transforms us. Though this transformation does not come because of the rituals themselves, the ritual is simply a means through which we truly open ourselves to God’s redemptive love, and is why Jesus was constantly challenging the Pharisees to set aside the rulebook and listen to what God was asking of them.

As a Pharisee, Saul sought to persecute Christians because they were breaking all the rules and it was on his way to oversee the arrest of a new crop of Jesus followers that he truly heard the voice of God for the first time, and the experience blinds him; or perhaps the encounter reveals his blindness, which was caused by his refusal to believe that the rules he clung to are not truly from God. Ultimately it is Ananias, who being sent by God, restored Saul’s sight; but Ananias, knowing of Saul’s history, was also resistant to what Jesus wanted him to do, so doesn’t that make him just as blind as Saul?

The world is filled with Sauls and Ananiass. How many are blind to the teachings of God, and the story of redemptive love? How many of those who are blind to God’s teachings are professed Christians? How many professed Christians share the doubt of Ananias when faced with the Sauls of the world, but do not have the spiritual fortitude to follow through with God’s commandment to Love when we doubt the motivations or worthiness of others to receive that love?

We are all very aware of the current climate of our nation. Many things feel unfair and chaotic and many of us are aware of how changes to US immigration policy have affected this very community. I have met people who are ready to move overseas, I have met people who are shocked and I have met people who are indifferent. Whether we like what is happening or not the call to Love our neighbor does not change, that is a constant, and the only thing we can truly control is the degree to which we allow the politics of the human world to separate us from God and their mission in the world. I am wondering if Ananias would still have agreed to heal Saul if he knew he voted for the opposing candidate? Would he have denied the sharing of God’s love because he didn’t like what Saul believed or who he voted for? I truly believe that the answer is no, he still would have laid his hands on Saul and restored his sight because despite having doubts, Ananias trusted God. He trusted that the message of the Gospel would prevail despite his misgivings about Saul and we are called to do the same. God does not seek to improve the lives of their people by directly interfering in human matters, they don’t sit on a throne and issue judgements based on whether we follow their rules, let alone the things we think are their rules. God lives in us and thus improves the lives of their people through us, through our liturgy, through our work. The book of Acts says that Saul was healed when Ananias laid his hands on him, but we should not take this literally. Saul had faith, he loved God, and he placed his trust in the rule book. His healing likely came through the teachings of Jesus as conveyed to him through Ananias, which means that his figurative blindness to God’s true plan was cured by the teachings of Christ.

I am afraid that we are so wrapped up in the political climate of our time that we are forgetting that all of the issues facing our country, and the world, and our community remain the same. There are still people who are physically, emotionally, and spiritually poor and whether PBS exists or not that will remain true. I was recently giving a lecture on The Great Society programs, the crux of which focused on ending poverty in America. In 1959 there were approximately 39 million Americans who were considered poor, in 2023 the number was 36.8 million, which is not a huge difference when you are dealing with numbers of that magnitude. The problem is that we never talk about actual numbers, we like to look at percentages, so let’s do that. In 1959 22% of Americans lived in poverty and in 2023 11.1% lived in poverty. When we look at it that way it looks like we have cut our poverty rate in half and statistically we have, but not because we have greatly reduced the number of people who live in poverty, we have simply increased our population by nearly 50%. The truth is that we don’t really do anything to solve the issue of poverty, we simply change the definition of what it means to be poor so it looks like we have done something about the issue. The reality is that the number of actual people who are poor has remained relatively the same.

If Jesus were standing here, I suspect that he would be wondering why we are spending so much time worrying about things that we can’t control instead of doing the work he has given us, work that will have a real impact on the lives of others. We did that work when we rallied behind a family who needed our support as they uprooted their lives and moved over 2000 miles away. Ananias questioned the work Jesus wanted him to do, but ultimately, he did what was asked of him and because he did, we were given the gift of Paul, which is the Roman name of Saul, and his letters, from which we learn what it looks like to wrestle with the integration of faith and daily life.

 When Saul was persecuting Christians, it was because he was trying to stop them from breaking the rules and it took an encounter with God, through his interaction with Ananias, to see the error of his ways and become a fully faithful follower of Jesus. When we are focusing our energy on doom scrolling or cuts to federal programs, we are forgetting about the people who are right in front of us and the fact that they are the people we are called to minister to. What happens to government programs, that are at best band-aids for symptoms not cures, does not change the mission because whether those programs exist or not there will still be poor people, some of whom are likely sitting in this room and are most certainly a part of our communities. Saul didn’t understand God’s call, but Paul did. Ananias understood God’s call and even though he didn’t like what Saul stood for he ministered to him because he was the person in front of him. We are called to minister to the people in front of us and trust that God is working on the other things through people who are better equipped to affect the change we hope for. Saul was transformed by his encounter with God, he truly saw God for the first time because of his encounter with the body of Christ  and ultimately became the means through which countless others came to be followers of Christ Jesus. Are we prepared to be transformed by God into the next Paul so that we can be the vessel through which God reaches the world or are we going to be like Saul and stubbornly cling to our rituals and fail to recognize the risen Christ that is seated right next to us. Amen.

Awakening to New Life: Jesus’ Invitation to Change

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

Why do we gather, year after year, to retell the same story? We all know how this ends. Jesus was executed on a cross, he was clearly dead and then he wasn’t. We all know what this means, right? It means that if we believe in Jesus then we will also get to be alive after we die and until that happens, we just need to limp along through life and do our best to be good people. The end.

Today the cross is seen as a symbol of forgiveness, redemption, resurrection and even comfort and our adoration of the cross is not misplaced, but I fear that we have lost the most important part of its meaning. In the first century it was ultimate symbol of a painful death. It was a very painful tool of execution, yet we don’t view it that way, which is unfortunate because as Bonhoeffer said “When Christ calls a man, he calls him to come and die.” Which is not a very inviting message, yet it’s true. It is true because important things have a cost, love requires us to sacrifice a part of ourselves for the benefit of another person; taking the time we need to regenerate after a long day requires that we put aside the to-do list even if it means something important has to wait; living in a committed relationship or raising children requires that we give up some of our desires and habits; and living a God centered life requires us to give up parts of ourselves because the love and joy of Easter, of resurrection, of new life requires that we die, but not just any death, not a peaceful in our sleep death after a lifetime of good living kind of death. It requires a hard death, a death that will involve some pain and fear and even anger. A death that requires us to willingly suffer the very real pain and raw emotions we know will come when we give ourselves over to it. The kind of death we would experience if we were hung from a cross, the kind of death Jesus had.

The reason we need to tell the same story every year is because we very quickly forget that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not only about the simplified cycle of passive belief in God so many people think it is. It isn’t only about getting to go to heaven, which isn’t even what people think it is anyway. It isn’t only about being resurrected after we die. It is about having a new life now. If the life of Jesus was about life after actual death, then why would he have spent three years healing the sick, and telling parables that are so abstract and mystical that we learn something new about ourselves every time we hear them?

Reducing our faith to the belief that Jesus died for our sins so that we can go to heaven is not wrong, but it also isn’t the whole truth. Jesus invites us to die to this world every day with the knowledge that new life is not only possible, but guaranteed. The Gospels are filled with examples of how Jesus helped people receive new life. He helped countless people walk, and see, and stand, and speak, he helped people feel whole and if that is not new life then I don’t know what is; but in order for these miracles to happen a very specific things had to occur, they had to be willing to give up the life that they knew before they could have a new life.

New life can look like many things, we all know it can literally mean life after death, that is the obvious definition, but also not likely what Bonhoeffer was referring to when he spoke of Christ’s invitation to death. The invitation to death is an invitation to have a change of heart, it is an invitation to change how we view and approach the world. It is an invitation to die to selfishness, to approach every person with the assumption that their intentions are good and trust that they too desire peace; to approach every situation with the assumption that a positive outcome is possible, most especially when it feels like the intentions behind the situation are rooted in selfishness and even evil. This is not an easy ask, allowing yourself to trust other people, to assume that their intentions are good even when their actions indicate otherwise; to trust that the systems we have made to facilitate our interactions, while flawed, are infused with God’s love and that the people who work within those systems want to do what is best to be good people even if the work they’re doing appears contrary to what we would call good. Even when we don’t believe that God is at work in other people, we have to trust that they are, we have to trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in everyone and by loving them, and trusting them, and praying for them, they too will choose death and allow the Holy Spirit to take control.

The miracle of Easter is not just that we receive new life after physical death, it is that we can receive new life now, we can be free from the control of the fear, and anxiety, and sadness that grips us; but to be free of these things we must first choose to face the cause of them because unless we do, death is not possible and neither is new life. Facing the things that cause us anxiety and fear and sadness is painful, but from pain comes new life.

We retell the same story, year after year, not to remind us that we will receive new life after death, but to remind us of the possibility and the reality of receiving new life now; but it is only possible if we first allow our need for control to die and begin assuming that good exists in all people because it does. If we do not believe that people can change, if we do not believe that we can change, then it is a sign that we do not trust God; that we do not believe that new life possible and we are not ready or willing to turn ourselves over to death. Accepting Christ’s invitation to death requires that we do the spiritual work that is necessary to become better people, it requires that we engage with scripture, learn from it, take it to heart, and allow it to guide our thinking and decision making to the point that seeing the potential for good in people and in situations becomes second nature, not because every person is a good person, but because everyone has the capability to be a good person if given the chance and we give them that chance when we believe they are capable and trust that they will not betray us. Sometimes this means that we will be hurt, sometimes it means that events will unfold in unhelpful or painful ways, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because accepting death and new life is not about living a perfectly peaceful life, it is about living a different life, a life that is countercultural, a life that puts the needs of others, telling the truth, and trusting both God and humanity ahead of what we think is best. Jesus often put the needs of the people he ministered to ahead of himself, he always told the truth, and he most certainly trusted God and humanity. He trusted that God would not abandon him and he trusted that humanity has the capability to follow his lead, accept death, and in doing so help God restore creation to its intended purpose. Amen.