February 17 reflection

 The following is the second in our Lenten reflections that St. Francis and Christ the Healer are involved in.  You can reflect throughout Lent with a daily thought by a member of St. Francis or Christ the Healer.  It is a wonderful way to observe Lent, and it expresses the diversity that exists within our faith communities.  The link to access the reflections is:  http://www.stfrancisstamford.org/blog

The author of this piece is Rev. Kate Heichler.  Enjoy:   

Luke 9:18-15

Once when Jesus* was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say that I am?' They answered, 'John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.' He said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered, 'The Messiah* of God.'

 He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, saying, 'The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.'

 Then he said to them all, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?

 

Ding! Ding! Ding! Peter hit the jackpot in the "Who is Jesus really?" game show. "

I know who you are - you are the anointed one, the Christ, the Messiah of God.  The one we've been waiting for." And what's his prize for getting it right? "Son, you have won yourself a lifetime of hardship and persecution! Come on down!"

So why do we follow, or even explore following this One whose identity people have been trying to figure out for millennia?  What's in it, if our life doesn't get easier?

Self-denial ain't all it's cracked up to be. (I like what someone said about the Pope's resignation:  "Pope Benedict giving up the papacy? That sort of WINS Lent.")

What if we read it, "Those who focus on their lives will lose them. Those who focus on my life will gain new life."  We have been given the gift of Christ's life alive within us. It's the only thing about us that is eternal.

This Valentine's Day, open the love letter God sent you at the beginning of time...

and as we learn to read that letter, we let that love into our lives, we will find our lives becoming fuller and richer - not always easier, but more meaningful and purposeful. Focus on the love, and the life will just keep coming.

 Blessings.

Mark

January 20 post

It's not everyday that I am accused of being irresponsible (though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if it happened more often!), so when a colleague called me less-than-responsible recently, I took notice.  My irresponsibility had to do with not having a plan for flu prevention in the parish.  (You know where this is going don't you?)  So, in an effort to not just be irresponsible, but more importantly to make sure we are on the same page and doing what will be helpful to hopefully prevent any sickness in the parish, here are some thoughts.

As one community of faith noted, we are in the midst of what is considered one of the worst years for flu transmission and a virulent strain at that.  I do not want to sound alarmist and demand that we close church or quarantine people.  However, I think that common sense and the St. Francis approach of people doing what makes sense to and for them is a natural way to proceed.  As in so many avenues of life, there is no cookie-cutter way that demands conformity.  There are many ways to co-exist.

So, some things to consider:

1.  If you are coughing, sneezing, or feeling any symptoms of illness, resting and staying away from public gatherings is probably not a bad choice.

2.  Washing and hand sanitizing is doubly important at this time of year.

Regarding the liturgy and our time together on Sundays, here are some further thoughts:

1. With the possibility of contamination, the common communion cup, may be a risk to some.  As we have stated before, there are many ways to commune, and they are all valid.  Consider:
a.  You can take the bread and drink from the cup.
b.  You can take the bread and intinct (dip) the bread in the cup.
c.  You can take the bread and acknowledge the cup with the words of promise but you do not consume any wine.
d.  You can take the bread and kiss the cup and hear the words of promise but not drink any wine.
e.  You can take the bread and forgo the wine altogether.

Again, what you are comfortable with and what makes sense to you is the important thing, and we honor all ways of receiving communion.  Christ is the host of the meal, and as many ways as people can imagine communing, so too can Christ come.

2. Regarding the sharing of the Peace, you may want to alter the way you share and honor what other people are comfortable doing.  Here are some ways to share the peace:
a.  With a handshake and the words of promise
b.  With a hug ATWOP
c.  By bowing toward another person ATWOP
d.  You can visually acknowledge another and offer the Indian "Namaste" (the God in me honors the God in you).

Similarly to communion, there is no one way of sharing the peace that is demanded.  Indeed, Christ's peace comes to us, perhaps, in the very moment that we think about sharing it with another?!

3. We do have Purell bottles in the entry way of both churches and in the sacristy of the churches.  Please avail yourself of this cleanser as needed.

I hope and pray that we all stay healthy during this season when we can be so prone to illness and at a time when a particular bug is such a threat.  At present, I do not know of anyone in our community who has the flu.  If, God forbid, you were to get sick, please let me know.  There is a cadre of individuals who are more than happy to help with meals, etc. if there is a particular need.  It is at times like these that sensitivity to others and their needs is obviously a part of our religious practice.  Honoring the many ways to be active and present in worship is, itself, honored.  Thank you. 

The adage, "Better to be safe than sorry," comes to mind at this time.  May you all be safe, and may none of us be sorry this season.

Blessings,

Mark

January 13 reflection

One of the simple pleasures of January that I enjoy begins on Monday the 14th.  It is the Australian Open.  Beyond my love of tennis--and I LOVE tennis and the amazing athletes who create artistry in motion with simply a ball and racquet and the confines of baselines and alley lines--the "thing" that gets me is watching players sweating under the sweltering heat of Australia's summer, while I stoke the fire with another log in Connecticut's northern hemisphere.

The juxtaposition of the southern and northern hemisphere's opposing seasons is an easy reminder of how vast the globe is.  It's one more opportunity to recognize the great mystery of what one of the Eucharistic prayers expresses as this fragile earth, our island home.
And this global climate flip-flop is, well, just COOL!  It reminds us, again, of how very small and inconsequential we are.  Which, I hope, is not interpreted in a pejorative way.  I actually think that an awareness of smallness and inconsequentiality is, actually, helpful, important, or, as Proverbs 9.10 would proffer, "the beginning of wisdom ."

However, global awareness, coolness, or simply the recognition of humanity's place in this--to quote John Prine--big old goofy world is really not what, ultimately, attracts me to the juxtaposition of hemispheres.  What I love is the ongoing challenge to our assumptions that must be made when we become aware of the larger world, and the possibility of thinking--and hopefully acting--in ways that are not simply in lockstep with our surroundings or what we have known but nimble enough to see another way, a different way, a way, nonetheless, that is just as good or true or apt as what we have done or will continue to do.

Mainly, I think about Christmas.  In the northern hemisphere, it makes complete sense to hold Christmas at the point in the calendar--and the reality of the world around us--when we are locked in the darkest time of the year.  In this context, it is easy to catch the resonances of the light returning, light flooding the darkness and driving it away, and light filling and warming our hearts.  Our hemispherical ontology is a direct analog to what we hope and trust occurs in God coming in Christ:  the light is the light of the world. . . the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

However, if you live in the southern hemisphere, you observe Christmas at the point in time when your surroundings are just the opposite.  The weather is balmy.  You have just observed the longest day of light in the year.  And now you begin the long and steady slog through summer to the darkest day on JUNE 21!

Some recognize this situation as hemispherical colonization:  the north imposing its will on the south.  Others, meanwhile, respond with the classic, "Get a life."  There are more important things to consider.  Still others will ask in what ways the context of summer in the southern hemisphere might be able to express the fullness of Christmas' imagery and symbolism.  (There is no doubt that the eternal SUN is shining as brightly and hotly as it will all year at this time, and one can make an easy connection of how brightly and hotly the eternal SON shines in our lives.)

Yet, I often wonder what would happen if we, as the global church, allowed communities in their various contexts to worship and observe the festivals at the times when they resonated the most?  Why do we need to be on the same schedule?  Why do we pretend that we observe in the same way?  Why do we think that there is ONE way of believing or acting or praying or worshiping that is right? 

Again, the vastness of the globe expressed in the hemispherical seasonal dichotomy is a helpful reminder that there is soooo much diversity in the world, soooo much variety, soooo much infinitude of thinking, being, expressing, desire, enjoyment, and soooo much more.  Why do we need to confine everything?  Demand conformity?  Rather than sacrilege and heresy, could even the observance of major festivals in our tradition at different times in the calendar be a way of marking off the multifaceted world which God has created and the manifold ways that God comes to us not least of which is because of the particular uniqueness that we possess?

Just a thought.  I'll mull it over a bit more as the Australian Open plays out. . .

Blessings,

Mark

In the beginning. . .

Given the many good writers and interesting perspectives that make St. Francis a vibrant and interesting community, members' reflections are highlighted in this space from time to time.  Today Philip Calabrese prods our thoughts:

John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
On Sunday, December 30, we read 

the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John, one of the most inspiring passages in the Christian Scriptures.  John was the last of the four gospel volumes that came to be admitted to the canon.  Letters/Epistles that are considered to be genuinely authored by Paul, while not gospels per se, are also an important witness to the earliest Christian confessions.    An easy to remember

heuristic is that-give or take a few years--the historical chronology is as follows:

60 CE for Paul 

70 CE for Mark
80 CE for Matthew
90 CE for Luke
100 CE for John

It is interesting to note that the later the text, the earlier is the claim for what we might call the moment when Jesus' divinity is recognized and/or proclaimed by each witness.  Paul says Jesus was, "designated Don of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom.1:3-4).  Mark writing later, has that moment at Jesus' baptism, as he rises from the waters and the heavenly voice says, "Thouart my beloved Son; with thee, I am well pleased" (Mk 1:11).  Matthew and Luke, writing later still, place this moment within their birth narratives.  And finally John, writing in his first chapter, places the moment of divinity "in the beginning." That famous line from Genesis presaged God's inauguration of his creation, humanity. John's genesis is the very beginning of the cosmos. Jesus was there with God from the "logos." the fourth evangelist tells us.  Jesus' sonship did not happen by human agency, nor at any point in human time.  Jesus was co-existant from all eternity, incarnate NOT from the virgin Mary, for John, but forever incarnate of and with the father. 

What this all is a succession of ever higher Christology, which is a fancy term for the evangelists' several claims of the meaning of Jesus' identity, and the place of that identity in God's promise of salvation to Israel, "spoken through the prophets" as we confess so many Sundays. There is a certain amount of one upsmanship" going on.  In a secular analogy, it is a little like a bridge game where each successive evangelist plays a higher "trump."  Just as the Christological confessions for divinity increase, so do the attempts to trace Jesus' ancestral humanity back in time.  Mark leads with a low card, and calls Jesus "Son of David."  Matthew plays a higher trump, and traces Jesus' lineage back to Abraham, Israel's first patriarch.  Not to be outdone, Luke plays his highest card, and develops Jesus' ancestry to the very "Ur" of humanity, Adam himself.  But it is left to the Fourth Evangelist to take the trick.  He slaps down the Ace, with the declaration, quite simply, that Jesus always was. 

These first eighteen verses of John are usually called the prologue, a summary of the gospel author's understanding of Jesus' place in relation to God the Father.  It precedes his narrative of Jesus' public ministry.  Looking behind the text, it is impossible not to note that in addition to elevating his Christology, the Fourth Evangelist takes extra pains to reduce John the Baptist to a subordinate role.  Mark, Matthew and Luke all report that Jesus was baptized with water, and have the Baptist say that someone greater (Jesus) is coming, who will baptize with the holy spirit.  Only John' gospel does not directly tell of Jesus' baptism; instead, it is only referred to obliquely.  The question we might ask is, simply, why?  Why go to all this literary trouble to make him inferior? 

Remembering that Christianity began as a solely Jewish movement in the time we now call Easter, in the years following the crucifixion, as Jesus' disciples wrestled with the meaning of his life and death,  the facts of his life and ministry--so recently known and impossible to deny--were at odds with the expected "warrior king" of Jewish prophecy.  While the Jesus movement at first co-existed within Judaism, and with some Jewish Christians preaching the good news within synagogues, Judaism came to reject Christian claims for Jesus in the years following the fall of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE.  The Jewish understanding was that Jesus was, at best, only a prophet.  The gospel writers all wanted to dispel such an understanding, and looked through the Hebrew Scriptures to find verses that supported their Christological claims.  Perhaps more than any other text, this prologue of John's gospel became part of the foundation of what would become the theology that Christians confess to this day as we, too, wrestle with who Jesus is for each of us.

Thank you, Philip.

Blessings,

Mark

Christmas Sermon

Many of you have heard this.  It is the Christmas Eve  

sermon. . .

Is it real? Or is it Memorex? The question either takes you waaay back to another era, or it may not even register in your lexicon (lucky you!). Like so many marketing campaigns left in the dust of the digital age, Memorex's seems almost quaint in this era of instant everything. And while Memorex's slogan may have been catchy, its promise, we know, was always elusive. Real? Or Memorex? C'mon. Of course, we know the difference, and nothing can compare to the real thing, the live encounter, the moment that you talk about for days, weeks, and even years to come. We all remember those first concerts, memorable games, and grand performances, and nothing can compare to being there. Right?

I often feel that during this yearly remembrance of the birth of our Lord there are not just a few people who would prefer the real encounter rather than the annual retelling through Luke's gospel. Yes? We all become a little like doubting Thomas in these moments and wish to touch just a portion of this narrative, to verify it, to ensure it is real, so that we might believe. If we could travel back in time, back through the darkness of human history, could we arrive at a point and witness what the angels proclaimed and the shepherds beheld? Would the light of truth then illumine all the nooks and crannies of our questions and drive away all of our doubts and fears? Were we privy to know beyond the shadow of a doubt, would we be freed from the vicissitudes of life, the fickleness of the human heart, the violence oozing out in our society and world, or the heartbreak of events in places like Newtown?

Given the birth narrative from Luke, it is highly unlikely that even if we could return to the exact moment of Jesus' birth we would recognize this remarkable thing that God was doing in the child born in Bethlehem. The story-while replete with amazing events like angel hosts singing in the highest heaven-is rather uneventful, unimpressive, and extraordinarily ordinary. A peasant girl gives birth to a child in a stable in a backwater town in the Roman empire. How many millions of times did this happen? The riff raff-shepherds-are the first and, really, only witnesses. Why involve a fringe group in society with one of the most important events in the tradition? Indeed, the birth of Jesus to the rest of the world in the first century would have elicited the same response in the myth of King George writing in his diary as the American colonists ratified the Declaration of Independence: Nothing much of importance happened today.

Which is, perhaps, part of the exercise of this observance and this season of incarnation. We are called to see God coming to us not in spectacular spectacles of power and might, stopping the laws of nature to pluck us our of every pickle we find ourselves in. Rather, we are invited to see God present to us and for us in the mundane and oh-so-ordinary moments of life, enfleshed in those very human hearts and hands with whom we interact. God coming incognito, but God coming nevertheless to enter fully into our lives in all their nuances. As Frederick Buechner aptly notes:

Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he

will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of

self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of [humanity]. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present

there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place

we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to

break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he

seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least

expect him that he comes most fully.

It is this divine-coming-to-us that is such an important part of this night and the life of Jesus. Indeed, the name we give Jesus-Emmanuel-underscores the God-with-us reality of Jesus' life. This connection with our humanity is the divine surprise central to the Christian journey. While recently watching a recording of James Taylor and Carole King's Live at the Troubador concert, I glimpsed an image of the implications of incarnation that was compelling. As the performers ended their set, they moved toward the audience, and the camera captured close ups of fans and artists reaching out, grasping hands, and holding on for an extended moment. We all know this scene, and, perhaps, we have reached out ourselves at various venues whether a concert, game, or political rally. We reach out to touch that which we are awed by or respect or value. It's almost as if by touching the object of our fondness, we may receive a portion of their gifts, a human talisman as it were.

The coming of God in the incarnation, however, alters this encounter ever so slightly but surely most profoundly. In the divine-human engagement, it is God reaching out to touch us. God, in mystery and passion, desires to receive a portion of our reality, our humanity. Which, perhaps, seems a bit odd, as we spend so much of our time trying to transcend or escape the limits of our humanity. Yet, that is the heart of the incarnation. God reaching out to know us, to connect with us, to be one with us. Again, Buechner:

         The Creator himself comes to dwell within his own creation, the

         Eternal within the temporal . . . It is as if Shakespeare could somehow have entered the world 

         of  Hamlet . . . becoming a character in

         his own plot although he well knows the tragic denouement and submitting himself to all its       limitations so that he can burst them asunder when the time comes and lead a tremendous exeunt by which his whole dramatis personae will become true persons at last.

God enters in to transform our reality and welcome us into-not just a little but-the totality and fullness of our life. Thus, this night is holy, and all moments are hallowed, for there is no place that God is not. God reaches across space and time to grasp a hold of our hands and bless our human drama by entering fully into it with us. The divine light shines ever so brightly-and yet vulnerably-in our midst through the embodiment of a young child who grows and enters most fully into that cross shaped place of abandonment. God robed in flesh sanctifies this earthly journey, and continues to journey with us toward a time where all flesh shall see and know the fullness of God's grace. We may not always sense this, and Lord knows we experience enough to wonder, and yet, the promise returns again and again. Our task, in part, is constantly to remain ready to take the hand that is offered, recognize the live moment that continually meets us, and acknowledge the gift of the most very real thing present before us. Life.

Blessings.

      Mark    

Thanksgiving Sermon

From a bird's eye perch, the plowed fields of autumn in southeastern Minnesota create an agrarian quilt alongside the harvested corn and bean fields.  Seen up close, the acres upon acres of turned soil appear as waves of brown loam, rolling one into another.  To the untrained eye, these plowed patches are just sections of soil, districts of dirt, but to the farmer whose livelihood depends upon these patches of turned earth, these are the promise of a future, the hope for another crop, and the base upon which life is built.

It was along one of these furrowed fields in southeastern Minnesota that an image of the very kingdom of God was revealed.  While I participated in an internship with six rural churches, a contingent of farmers from what was then war-torn El Salvador had come to meet with their counterparts in this rich and fecund river valley in the heart of Minnesotan farm country.  Sustainable farm practices were discussed and relationships developed that would transcend national boundaries.  The image that remains with me occurred near the end of the El Salvadoran's visit. 

As a group stood around pickup trucks and discussed the remaining itinerary, two men—one El Salvadoran and the other from southeastern Minnesota—moved to the edge of what looked like a sea of loamy soil.  The plowed field rose above them ascending a hill on this particular farm, and the two farmers kneeled by the edge of the earthen sea and began to pick up chunks of turned soil.  Nutrient-rich dirt crumbled between their hands and returned again to the sea.  What was so amazing about the image was the tidal wave of realization regarding all that divided these two and, yet, all that connected them.  War.  Immigration.  Language.  These were the barriers that made rapport so difficult and complex.  And, yet, the land connected them.  Bound them together.  Earth to earth and dust to dust.  Their common heritage as tillers of the field allowed them to speak a language that moved beyond the particulars of their distinctive pasts, allowing them to connect, to see their shared humanity, and, perhaps, to understand a bit more about the other.  It was communion at a profound level.

Meanwhile, the exchange between these two farmers was not earth shattering.  Indeed, the only record of it exists within this reflection today and the memories that they themselves share of the event.  Yet, the exchange was one of the innumerable encounters that exist in life where we become aware of all that divides us and, simultaneously, those things that connect us.  Throughout human history, we have exhibited too often the desire to differentiate, to divide, to distinguish between one and another.  Within this propensity to discriminate—with all the positive and pejorative resonances that that inveighs--invariably, one is better, the other worse.  One is worthy, and the other not.  One is valued, while the other is dispensable.  The structures that we have developed as individuals and societies often obfuscate the privilege that we enjoy.  The miracle of our fortune to be born at a specific time in a specific place allows for untold opportunity.  And while we can be mindful of this reality and even act to try and level the playing field so that others may share in the opportunity we enjoy, there may exist a barrier that we experience in understanding our need, our limits, and—strange as it may seem to say in this beautiful and prosperous location—our poverty.

Ironically, reading the story of the ten lepers from Luke in today's gospel may reveal this very situation.  It is very easy to read the story as a lesson in thanksgiving.  That is, the 9 lepers are examples of how not to respond to the good that befalls us, and the one leper is our crowning example of how to properly give thanks.  However, the story is filled with the complexity of the social history that permeates every society and this complexity cannot help but impact how we read this narrative.  The truth is that the one leper who returns to Jesus is not an example of how to give thanks so much as he is the example of what to do when there is nowhere else to go.

Indeed, the world in which he lived viewed him as doubly troubled.  That societies discriminating eye saw his skin disease—leprosy—as a punishment by God for something he must have done.  Meanwhile, as a Samaritan, he would be considered unclean, and no self-respecting priest would have anything to do with him.  Therefore, after Jesus dismisses him to go and see the priest, he literally had no place to go.  Thus his thanksgiving as a model for our thanksgiving is a bit odd.  We consciously choose to offer thanks today.  We actively engage in thanksgiving.  And the idea that we might be unacceptable or unworthy to stand in this space and offer thanks is, probably, not something we are used to thinking about. 

Yet, that is at the heart of this lesson, and here we are.

And the example of the one leper who returns to Jesus is instructive for us.  Rather than an example of how to give thanks, perhaps the story exists as a reminder of how we all—to varying degrees and in various situations—have moments where we have no place to go.  In those moments, God in Christ is the very place that we are told will always receive us, regardless of the situation.  Furthermore, the great equalizer that does connect us one to another is the mortality that we can consider.  Like the farmers kneeling beside that vast field of plowed earth, the soil of our life sifts through our hands, and we cannot help but recognize all that divides us and, yet, the profundity of that which we share. 

That scene in southeastern Minnesota and the leper returning to Jesus rightly frame our Eucharistic gathering here.  The communion of the two farmers is a communion that we participate in as well, albeit in a different time and space.  The life sifting through their hands is replaced with the life placed within our hands, and the reality of what connects us and transcends us hopefully is never lost.  Meanwhile, the leper's thanksgiving—literally Eucharist—is one that emerges not out of power and control but out of limitations and vulnerability.  Our coming to this table is a participatory echo of that truth.  We, too, have no place else to go, and the face that met that leper millennia ago meets us in this meal.  Accepting us as we are and calling us to replay this gift in our own lives and in the myriad ways that we might for our own life and, equally, for the welfare of those farmers in El Salvador or southeastern Minnesota, or for the lepers in our own midst, or, another way of saying it, is for the salvation of the world.

Weekly Reflection--May 10, 2012

Celebrant:    Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? 

People:  I will, with  
             God's help.

Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People:  I will, with  

              God's help.

Thus ends the questions to parents, godparents, and the gathered community during a baptismal service in the Episcopal Church, and thus begins the profound work that we all are invited into as we enter the community of Christ at baptism.   

These are hard concepts to live into!  Serve Christ in all persons?  Respect the dignity of every human being?  What happened to picking and choosing?  What about those whom we consider worthy or unworthy?  There doesn't seem to be much wiggle room for compartmentalizing people or distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable.   

Everybody means everybody!

Thus, we are continually reminded (every time we witness a baptism and every time we review this rite) that we cannot avoid the difficult call that is central to Christianity:  seeing Christ in the "other" and respecting the dignity of every human being.  And why?  Because that is what Jesus would do.  No.  Better yet, that is what Jesus has done and continues to do.  

It is with this background that I write about President Obama's decision to support marriage equality.  I do this recognizing that there exist naysayers regarding this type of discussion everywhere.  Those who will say that politics shouldn't be discussed in the Church.  Those who will say that the President is driven by the basest of motives:  political calculation.  Those who will interpret this shift in the marriage equality debate as negative or positive based solely on their view of the current President.   

I would like to step back from such knee jerk responses and inquire what it might mean that this political figure has come out where he has on this issue, especially in this way.   

If you read the link in the "Going Deeper" section, you will read, in part, about Obama's Christian faith informing his change of heart.  Far from being support for this President, I am intrigued by the use of Christ and the Golden Rule as a way to enter into a difficult social issue of our time.  Of course, I believe--whether politically motivated or not--that the President gets it right on marriage equality, precisely because his change of heart aligns with what we espouse in the baptismal covenant:  seeing Christ in the "other" and respecting the dignity of every human being.  (Indeed, the leadership of this parish is on record  as seeking to change the  restrictions on priests in our Diocese that do not allow them to officiate at same sex marriages, and there is a committed group that, over time, has sought to influence the discussion of the Episcopal Church at large.) 

To those who say that Christianity is not to be political, I would say that Christianity hopefully is not partisanly political.  However, the Greek root of our politics directly references citizens, people, human beings.  Thus, at its core, Christianity is very political, because Jesus was very concerned about people and the welfare of humanity.  Of course, Christianity is not political in the present day pejorative sense that many people hold for politics and politicians.  Nevertheless, to read the gospel narratives about Jesus, one cannot be easily separate faith and life.  Like it or not, the two are intertwined.  

The refreshing argument put forward by the President regarding marriage equality is that the rhetoric of vituperative and virulent Christian conservatives is called out for the xenophobic and un-Christian expression that it is.  Of course, Jesus had nothing to say about marriage equality.  The idea, within his culture, would have been anachronistic.  However, Jesus does have a great deal to say about welcoming the "other", caring for those marginalized, recognizing the humanity of all people, and affirming-in-ways-that-transcend-rules the love and commitment that exists between and among people.  And those who clamor for "saving marriage" by refusing to recognize the love and commitment of others need to ponder the breadth of Jesus' ministry and the baptismal covenant that is at the heart of our life together.   

I don't know that if those who oppose marriage equality were to do this anything would change.  I like to believe that were they to reflect upon such exhortations of seeking Christ in the "other" and respecting the humanity of all, the fear that drives so much of their efforts might melt away and the face of Christ might emerge upon the very individuals they seek to marginalize.  Lord knows, that as I write this, I am aware that I, too, am called to see Christ in the face of the one that I believe to be driven by fear.  There is no easy out in our tradition.  As I mentioned at the outset, these are hard concepts to live into.  Though if we trust that God does call us to such a life, we have to wrestle with the difficulties. 

Indeed, what can we say?  God is an equal opportunity challenger of all of us! 

     

Blessings,

Mark