Category: SERMONS

Second Sunday of Advent, Year B
Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
The Reverend Richard Smith, Ph.D.

[Watch a video of this sermon.]

This past week, I was walking down Folsom Street with a swaggering young businessman. Tall, good-looking, well-educated, charming, he’s got the world by the tail. He owns property on a prominent corner in the neighborhood–property he hopes to sell soon, no doubt for a fortune.

We were talking about all the changes happening in this part of town–the many new luxury condos, the upscale restaurants and coffee shops replacing the old mom-and-pop grocery stores and taquerias.

I told him I wasn’t too excited about all these changes because they come at a great price:

• So many families, after many generations here, are being forced out, some becoming homeless;
• More and more homeless encampments–like the ones just outside our church door. So many of the now-homeless used to have apartments and homes here but were evicted after the rents went sky high. With the homeless shelters now full, and over 1000 people on the waiting list, these people have nowhere to go but the streets.
• I told him about the many undocumented people fleeing here for their lives from Central America, many of them like Floricel, an undocumented mother of three kids who’s been in detention for months, away from her kids, now threatened with deportation back to the country she had fled for her life.
• And about the constant threat of more police violence as SFPD increases its use of force against young Latinos in the Mission.

Needless to say, I was a regular Little Mary Sunshine.

My businessman acquaintance was stoic. He said the gentrification was one of those inevitable things that, like it or not, we have to get used to. Then he said, “Tell me, what evidence do you see that all the old families will not be driven out by gentrification, and the entire Mission become one big Valencia Street? What evidence?”

I couldn’t think of much, other than the fierce resolve of many of us to resist all the economic and political headwinds for the dignity of struggling families that have made their homes here, have made the Mission what it is today.

I couldn’t come up with many signs of immediate relief. The cloud probably won’t lift anytime soon.

That’s just here in the Mission. I won’t mention the orange nightmare that has engulfed our country and world, bringing us to the brink of war, increasing the numbers of those thrown into poverty, threatening our civil rights and the viability of our planet. Not much evidence this dark cloud will lift anytime soon either.

In such a context, where is the hope? Where’s the hope? It’s a question we ask ourselves in these dark times, and one that threads its way all through these wintry days of Advent.

Vaclav Havel was the first president of the Czech Republic and, prior to that, a political prisoner for many years. He was no great defender of religion. He was asked about the dark years of the 80s in his country. “Do you see a grain of hope anywhere…?” He replied not with an analysis of the world but with a look into his own soul.

I should probably say first that the kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it’s a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not a [prediction of the future]. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons….I think the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urges us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” I feel that its deepest roots are transcendental.

For Havel, hope is found not in the external world around us, but in the human heart. It’s what enables us, despite the bleakest of forecasts, to withstand the cruel realities of the present. Hope is that relentless and inexhaustible power we have to choose love over fear, to stand firm, to resist whatever the world may throw at us.

And, as Havel also notes, hope is something “transcendental,” “as it were, from elsewhere.”

We followers of Jesus have our own take on all this. With Havel, we say this unstoppable hope really is a transcendental thing in our hearts. But for us, it is also a gift from the One who made us, and it is grounded in an unshakeable promise we’ve been given.

In today’s gospel, Mark lifts two verses from the prophet Isaiah, part of today’s first reading. Those verses were written when most of the Israelites were captives of the Babylonians. Their homeland was no more; the Babylonian armies had destroyed it. Now they were in a strange land, enslaved by their new conquerors. Dark times.

And then, in a transcendental moment, as if out of nowhere, Isaiah proclaims that God is on the way to rescue us.

If the classic metaphor of spiritual writers is that life is a journey, a pilgrimage, in which we overcome various obstacles and meet many challenges to reach our ultimate destination, Isaiah and Mark flip that metaphor around. Now it is not we who are the pilgrims, the travelers. Rather, Someone else, “from elsewhere,” is making the journey toward us. God, in this revised metaphor, is moving heaven and earth to reach us: leveling mountains, sweeping away fallen branches, and straightening ways that are crooked.

This darkness? It is the darkness of the womb and not of the tomb as Gene Robinson reminded us last week.

This crazy, inexplicable, transcendent belief in what we call the coming reign of God grounds the hope we carry. This promise and the hope that rises from it will see us through, help us stand firm, resist whatever the present dark moment throws at us.

But there’s more: This hope is not just for Israel, and Israel as a people must now proclaim that hope to the larger world. Isaiah tells them, “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear…” The imagery is beautiful and muscular. And also tender, and understandably savored by Handel and many great poets and composers. “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” These are words about a God who comforts, protects, nurtures. Words that give light in a dark world, hope in the midst of despair.

These are words Israel as a people is to proclaim to a larger world plunged in darkness, and what we as a community in a rapidly changing and struggling community must proclaim as well–whether through Nightwalks, or the work of the Gubbio Project, or the other ministries we do here. Words and actions that proclaim hope and a promise–not because we see any evidence the dark clouds will lift anytime soon, but because we stubbornly believe the promise God has made to us, and in the capacity the Creator has given us to choose the holy even in the face of the hellish.

It’s the Second Sunday of Advent. A promise has been given to us, a vision set before us: Someone is approaching, a new world is coming to birth. The question we must answer in these dark, wintry, Advent days is whether to trust that promise, believe the vision.

THE TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
November 12, 2017
The Rev. Dr. John H. Eastwood

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. 1 THESSALONIANS 4:13-14

Our lessons today are about the Advent theme of Christ’s final coming in judgment, the so-called second coming at the end of time. We hear a portion of Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica which is dominated by the expectation of Christ’s return in glory. Christ had promised to return and gather up the faithful, living and dead, and bring a new era of God’s reign. A life of living fully in God’s eternal joy was what they were waiting for. But as the days and weeks progressed, the church folk were getting restless and beginning to wonder when this was going to happen. As time passed, their hope began to wane. Some had stopped working and were just waiting. They were grieving, as Paul writes, as a people without hope. They were left only with their sadness, a people without hope.

Sometimes mourning can be like that. Darkness all around, everything seems overwhelming for a time. I know what that is like. In those first days after Judy died in mid-January, I could not break into a smile. Life alone without her seemed grim. I was entering into a dark, uncharted territory in my life. After 46 years together, I was alone, without my partner to love and to support, and to feel her warmth and loving care in return. The future seemed bleak.

And so it was for the Thessalonians. But, Paul had a tip-off from Timothy, who had recently visited, about how the people were feeling, and so Paul put on his pastoral hat. He wrote words of comfort and encouragement, placing the strengthening meaning of Christ into their grieving. He reminded them that God had been through what they were going through. In the death and resurrection of his Son, those who believed could find the basis for their hope, a “steadfastness of hope” as Paul puts it earlier in his letter. Here the Thessalonians could find the source from which to draw comfort, encouragement, and faith in the face of their loss.

“Blessed are they who mourn.” Have you ever wondered what Jesus meant by these words? In my experience, I have had to find the meaning of those words, too. One day, in passing, my daughter asked me the question I am asked frequently by friends. “Are you okay?” I don’t like that question. I don’t feel okay sometimes, and I didn’t then. She wondered what was going on. Later, when we had time to talk, I explained that sometimes I feel like I am walking down a road in a fog. As the road goes downhill, the fog darkens. As the road goes uphill, it lightens. That’s the sadness, and that’s how some parts of my days are, but, there is something else about this fog. I see light coming through down the road, sometimes there are glimmers of light, at other times there are times of peace and serenity. After traveling this road for some months, I now see that while the fog remains, it is lighter, and the light is stronger. There is sadness as well as joy, a meaningful life we lived and a new life yet to come. In the end, as the wise ones say, joy follows sadness.

I think for us, in our day, it is important to understand the importance of mourning, and, unlike the people in that long-ago time, have a sense that good news can follow sadness. I was reminded of this by a doctor I see regularly. In our office visits, he is usually quiet, says very little. In March, I saw him and I disclosed to him that my wife, also a patient of his, had died. He asked how I was doing. After I shared with him how I was trying to manage this new life, he said “Pay attention to your grief. Take it seriously. Too many people today don’t do that. Denial is the way people handle it often. It is not healthy. It won’t go away. It will come back and haunt you!” I left his office with that sobering message feeling encouraged.

Mourning is not simply a personal experience. We mourn as a society, don’t we? The headline in a New York Times article recently read “In Places of Worship Scarred by Bullets, Long Memories, and Shared Pain”. The article chronicles the places of worship where we mourn the losses due to gun violence in our culture – a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, an AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, Sutherland Springs, Texas and other houses of worship. “Every time this happens we feel the pain again”, said a priest of one of the congregations. Grief remembers other griefs. Violence in all its forms – guns, racial hatred, hatred of gays, and other forms – cause us to mourn for safety and peacefulness on our streets, in houses of worship and all public places.

But do we mourn in hope, or simply grieve like the people in our scripture today who are sad but have given up that anything can be done? That is a question that confronts us all. And our answer, here at St. John’s, is in being a place of safety, sanctuary, and in our providing for ministries like the Gubbio project for the homeless and Night Walks in protest of street violence. That is what it means to grieve as a people with hope!

Clarence Jordan offered an interesting reflection on “Blessed are those who mourn.” He said, “real mourners grieve over injustice in God’s world. There are ‘fake mourners’ who say ‘Sure, the world’s in a mess, and I guess maybe I’m a bit guilty like everybody else, but what can I do about it?’ What they’re really saying is that they are not concerned enough about themselves or the world to look for anything to do.” His point is that mourning elicits courageous, hopeful engagement. When we, at St John’s join with other congregations and walk the streets of the Mission on our regular Night Walks, we do so not simply in sadness for those who have been killed or wounded on our streets. We do so in hope that awareness of the problem is raised and that we witness to the fact that there is plenty to be done with our policing and community support for reforms in justice about gun violence and its root causes. Jordan, clearly not a fake mourner, warned:

You’d better watch out when a fellow gets that certain gleam in his eye and a certain set to his jaw. He’s getting ready to ‘mourn.’ And he’ll be awfully hard to stop because he will be receiving tremendous strength and power and encouragement from seeing his mourning become deeds.

We grieve as those with hope.

Similarly, that is the way Henri Nouwen ended his little book entitled “In Memoriam.” He went to the side of his dying mother as a son and as a priest in the last days of his mother’s life. He read psalms to her, gave her the last rites, celebrated the Eucharist at her funeral, and prayed over her grave. It was a time of safety until he could discover the “strange joy” as he put it, of becoming a “man alone in a new way.”

In closing, Henri wrote these words, about the way losses can bring hope, and hope can bring important new deeds. They are very important to me as I hope they are to you.

Mother’s death is God’s way of converting me, of letting his Spirit set me free. It is all still very new. A great deal has happened in these weeks, but what will happen in the months and years ahead will be far more than I can now understand. I am still waiting, yet already receiving; still hoping, yet already possessing; still wondering, yet already knowing. . . I know that I must be patient and allow her who taught me so much by her life to teach me even more by her death.

AMEN

21st Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev’d Richard Smith, Ph.D.
Proper 25
Sunday, October 29, 2017

Matthew 22:34-46

There were over 600 laws governing the day-to-day lives of ordinary Jews in the days of Jesus: how many steps you can walk on the Sabbath, how to wash your hands, what kind of diet to follow and how to prepare the food, what kinds of fabric to wear in your clothing. But, for the young rabbi named Jesus, none of these laws made any sense without love. If you miss the love behind those 600-plus laws in the Jewish code, you miss the whole point. The whole system hangs on the command to love.

But if love is so central to everything in life and especially in the spiritual life, how do you do it? And how do you learn to love?

Jesus gives one subtle hint. When asked what is the greatest law, he cites the Shema, the prayer from the Book of Deuteronomy. This prayer is said by practicing Jews every morning and evening. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

And the next verse says, “These commandments I give you today are to be ON your hearts.”

Now the rabbis loved to wrestle with the sacred teachings, sometimes vigorously, trying to figure out what they meant, and how to live them out.

And they wrestled with these words: “These commandments…are to be ON your hearts.”

“Why should this teaching be ON our hearts? Shouldn’t it say the word should be IN our hearts. Wouldn’t that make more sense? Why should the teaching, the commandment, be ON and not IN our hearts?”

Finally, after a vigorous back-and-forth, one of the elder rabbis put it this way. The teaching is to rest ON our hearts just as the scripture says so that when our hearts break open–as they inevitably will at some point or another–then that teaching can fall inside, become part of us, become the source and guide of our actions.

It’s when your heart breaks that you can begin to understand the sacred teaching. It’s then that you can learn to love.

Which is to imply that if your heart never breaks open, you will never learn this teaching, you will never learn to love.

Parker Palmer writes: “[T]here are at least two ways for the heart to break: it can break open into new life, or break apart into shards of sharper and more widespread pain.”

“The broken-open heart,” he continues, “is not restricted to the rare saint. I know so many people whose hearts have been broken by the loss of someone they loved deeply. They go through long nights of grief when life seems barely worth living. But then they slowly awaken to the fact that their hearts have become more open, compassionate, and welcoming — not in spite of their pain but because of it.

“A brittle heart,” Palmer says further, “will explode into a thousand pieces, and sometimes get thrown like a fragment grenade at the perceived source of its pain — there’s a lot of that going around these days. But a supple heart will break open into a greater capacity to hold life’s suffering and its joy — in a way that allows us to say, ‘The pain stops here.’”

In our American culture today, we’re heavily fortified against having our hearts broken. This fortification didn’t just happen. This is no accident. There are carefully crafted laws and zoning ordinances to keep us from living near people of a different color. There are racist, misogynistic and homophobic cultural norms that vilify people of color, blame the victims of rape and sexual abuse, and scapegoat immigrants as criminals and rapists and “bad hombres”. We live siloed in different neighborhoods, economic classes, and cultures.

For example, those of us who are white have probably never experienced police brutality ourselves, and when we read in the paper about the police killing a young person of color, we probably don’t get it. Our first question is likely to be, “I wonder what that black or brown kid did wrong to force the officer to kill him.” We don’t get what’s going on there, that our very police system was founded as a way to keep black people enslaved. And since we don’t have many opportunities to talk with those who do experience police brutality, to hear the stories of black and Latino mothers who have lost their kids to police violence, our privileged and protected hearts never break.

Those of us who are citizens have little idea of what undocumented immigrants go through just to find their way to this country, and then to find decent jobs to feed their kids, all the while living in constant fear of la migra, the immigration police. We almost never hear their stories; our hearts never break.

Lately, it’s clear once again that it’s not only the victims of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Bill O’Reilly, and Donald Trump who have suffered rape, sexual harassment, groping, and abuse, but also many of our dearest friends, women we know and love and admire. Perhaps more than we knew.

Our lives are carefully siloed, deliberately kept apart by laws and cultural taboos. We never really share or hear each other’s stories, much less have a chance to have our hearts broken, let God’s word sink into us, grow in compassion, and maybe even become friends.

But should we ever have that opportunity to hear each other’s stories, draw close to each other’s’ pain–I’m very sure of this–our hearts would then break. We’d begin to understand what our brothers and sisters are going through every day. And at that moment we would have the blessed opportunity, the grace, of having the word of God sink into our hearts, become part of us. A moment of learning to love.

Poet Mary Oliver had her heart broken by the bitter effects of climate change as she witnessed one day the death of a loon, one of those beautiful and melodious birds that inhabit many of our North American lakes.

Lead
by Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

All of this is very relevant to us here at St. John’s in this stewardship season. Because this is a place where, if you let it happen, your heart can be broken open. Here, you can grow in love.

For many years before I became vicar, I worked in Silicon Valley. All week long, I was surrounded by “the best and the brightest,” Ph.D.’s from Harvard and MIT and Stanford, people highly successful in business and technology. And then each Sunday morning I would walk here to St. John’s for Mass. Along the way, I would pass people who were very different from my colleagues at work: homeless people, Latino children calling to their playmates in Spanish, shopkeepers sweeping up the broken wine bottles and syringes on the sidewalks. And once I arrived here at Mass, I sat next to people so very different from the supposed “superstars” who occupied much of my time the rest of the week.

That walk to St. John’s became an important moment in my week, a necessary part of my spiritual practice, an opportunity for my heart to break open even if just for a moment. A chance to grow in love, even if only a little.

It’s why I love St. John’s, and why I hope you do, too. It’s why I hope you are drawing on your most generous nature now in these stewardship days to keep our parish strong, not just financially, but as a place

• Where homeless people and professors, retirees and little kids, people of different races and sexual orientations can stand shoulder-to-shoulder at this table, just as God intended, knowing they are welcome here
• Where you can tutor a young person making their way through high school, serve a meal to people who are homeless, walk with immigrant families, take a stand against the violence of both the gangs and the police
• Here, we can hear stories we might not hear the rest of the week
• Here, all our hearts can continue to be broken, even if only a little, and we can slowly learn to love more and never close our hearts again to the rest of the world.

Sunday, October 8, 2017
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22, Year A
Matthew 21:33-46
The Rev’d Richard Smith, Ph.D

Back in the nineties, grade school kids were reading Choose Your Own Adventure novels. These were slim volumes, written in the second person, that allowed you as the reader to decide at key moments how the story would proceed. (“If you decide to jump down on the woolly mammoth, turn to page 29. If you decide to continue on foot, turn to page 30.”) The books were the kind of thing you could find in a child’s backpack alongside Matchbox cars. (See “THE MOVIE WITH A THOUSAND PLOTLINES; Will interactive films be this century’s defining art form?” By Raffi Khatchadourian. The New Yorker.)

Think of today’s gospel story as something like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. Jesus sets a scene, but you get to decide how the story ends.

Here’s the scene. A man plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a winepress in it, and builds a watch-tower. Then he leases the vineyard to tenants and goes to another country. At harvest time he sends his slaves to collect the produce. The tenants beat, stone, and kill those slaves. He sends a second delegation; they beat and kill them as well.

Finally, he sends his son–”They will at least respect my son,” he reasons. But they throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him.

That’s the scene. Now, choose your adventure. “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” How do you want this story to end?

When Jesus poses this choice to the religious leaders in today’s gospel, they choose an ending of violence and retaliation. “[The owner] will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Don’t pussy-foot around with petty dictators. Throw them out! Give them a taste of their own medicine!

This ending they choose reflects the logic of the Roman Empire they have aligned themselves with. Although they themselves are oppressed Jews in a land brutally occupied by the Romans, these religious leaders have nevertheless bought into the logic of Rome. It’s the logic of retaliation echoed today by the current president and his evangelical admirers: “If somebody hits me,” the current president says, “I have to hit them back harder. I have to.”

Jesus chooses a different ending to the story. He quotes one of the psalms.

Have you never read in the scriptures:

“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes”?

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.

The “fruits of the kingdom”: Things like compassion, forgiveness, a welcome to the outcast, justice for people living under oppression. The shorthand word for the adventure Jesus chooses is “resurrection”. That which was rejected–the path of Jesus–is lifted up. The way of Jesus, of mercy and redemption, has the final say.

Play this out for a second. Imagine what this second ending, the one Jesus chooses, might look like. Say you are one of the tenants on this vast estate. You’re working in the hot sun while a well-dressed boy, the heir of the estate, coolly walks by with his father on his tour of the place. You and the other workers resent this kid. You rebel. The grapes start to grow wild diminishing any chance of an abundant harvest.

A few years later, the son, now a young man, returns to collect the produce. You join in the attack and kill him.

Then comes the reckoning. You and your fellow tenant are dragged before the judge, and you fully expect to be sent up for life. But instead, the owner of the vineyard shows up in court–with the son you killed. Although this young man’s wounds are still very real, he is very much alive. You’re shaking in your boots.

Then, to your amazement, the father gets out his will and announces that he is bequeathing the entire vineyard not only to his son but also to you and all the other tenants. The father and his son welcome all of you back to the vineyard as joint owners. You are no longer workers but fellow heirs–invited to go back to work, cultivating the grapes, producing so much wine for the wedding feast it will never run out. (See reflections by Andrew Marr.)

These two possible endings–that of the religious leaders and that of Jesus–could not be more different. One is a story of shock and awe: It follows the logic of an empire rich and powerful and exacting revenge. The other is a story of resurrection in which the path of Jesus, the way of mercy and the possibility of redemption have the final say.

Which ending do you choose? Which path?

The choice might seem easy when we’re sitting here in church. Not so easy when we get out there, where the voice of Empire, sometimes loud, sometimes subtle, seeks to hold sway over our hearts, our feelings, the choices we make.

Faced with an onslaught of messages from the Empire, choosing the path of Jesus can be difficult. Which is why we need each other. Compassion is not a one-person show. When it comes to following Jesus, no one can go it alone.

Staying faithful to the way of Jesus requires a community in which, as Ram Dass says, we’re just walking each other home. In such a community, we can hold each other accountable to our deepest values, comfort and support each other in the ups and downs along the way.

It’s why we have this community of St. John’s. We need each other.

If in this Stewardship season, we each wrestle with how we’re going to help with the financial needs of this community, it’s precisely so we can provide those material things that help keep us together, keep us faithful:

• Money to cover the costs of this sacred space in which we wrestle with the Scriptures and what they call us to, this space in which we gather for Eucharist, in which we laugh and cry together as we tell our stories and celebrate the important moments in our spiritual journeys–our baptisms, weddings, funerals.
• Money to hire a musician, a parish administrator to run the office, a priest.
• Money that makes possible the many ministries we organize and sustain: ministries to the homeless, the victims of violence, the hungry, our friends in Nicaragua who need clean water, the young people in this neighborhood who need a little extra help with school.

The adventure of Jesus has many practical implications for how we live our lives, including financial implications. Our decision to give money to this community flows out of our deep desire to remain faithful to the gospel of Jesus, walking the path he walks, choosing the adventure he chooses.

None of us can do this adventure alone. For this, we need each other.

Maya Angelou puts it this way:

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

…

Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.