Dust is dust and faith is faith. Pentecost 22 Yr C 10. 25.10

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that when we fast we’re to wash our face and comb our hair, to not draw any attention to ourselves because we’re fasting. The lesson, I think, is that:

Faith isn’t something to display, it’s something for others to notice about us.

I learned this lesson many years ago, at the end of an Ash Wednesday Liturgy back home in suburban Chicago. I was probably 10 or 11 and our parish priest, Fr Muth, suggested, as we were leaving church, that we wipe our foreheads free of the ashes he had just imposed. His rationale was, that as we returned to the secular world, we weren’t to wear our piety, our faith on our sleeves—or in this case, foreheads. That true piety, true faith is in the action, not the appearances. So, to this day, I wipe the ashes from my forehead as I leave church—not because I don’t want people to see that I am a faithful Christian, but because I want them to know—to experience—that I am a faithful Christian.

I don’t wipe away the knowledge that I am but dust and to dust I shall return—I wipe away any sense of entitlement, honor or praise which may be given to me because I went to church on Ash Wednesday. I don’t wipe away my faith, I wipe away my arrogance.

I ‘m not saying everyone should wipe their foreheads off on Ash Wednesday, it’s just something that works for me---it’s humbling, reminding me that all that I am and all that I have is because of God…that without God I would be but dust.

This knowledge—that all that I am and all that have is because of God, is humbling. And humility…humility is a big part of who Jesus wants us to be.

Humility is a good thing. But it’s often misunderstood. Humility is not humiliation. Humility is not about being a worthless wretch. Humility is realizing that although we can never earn the blessings God bestows upon us, we can never earn the love God has for us we can be grateful for that love and gracious in our accepting of it. We can ask for it, receive it and, out of gratitude, strive to do everything in our lives for the glory of God.

Not us, not me, but God.

That’s humility.

To not notice and remember God in all we do? That’s arrogant.

Humility and arrogance lie at the crux of both last week and this week’s Gospel.

Sometimes we’re arrogant, sometimes we’re humble. Sometimes we’re the Pharisee or the unjust judge, other times we’re the tax collector or the persistent widow.

But all the time—all the time—we’re nothing without God.

The Pharisee wasn’t humble. Neither was the unjust judge. Both of them were full of themselves. So focused on hoarding what they had—money, power, prestige and their own sense of righteousness, that they failed to notice the widow, to notice the tax collector.

To notice God.

In many ways the Pharisee looked like a righteous person---he donates 10 % of his worth to the temple, he worships, he doesn’t lie or cheat or steal. Not a bad guy….but he fails to give credit where credit is due. He forgets that without God he is but dust. He is a self made man who takes all the credit for his success.

He’s not grateful, he’s not humble. He’s not gracious.

As Lutheran Theologian David Lose states, the Pharisee’s prayer of gratitude may be outwardly spoken to God, but inwardly the praise he offers is for himself. He proclaims his own righteousness when he states: “God I thank you that I am not like other people [I am good and righteous].”

It sounds like he’s thanking God for making such a swell guy such as himself. This isn’t humility, it’s arrogance. It’s not prayer, it’s self promotion. What looks like righteousness is actually self-righteousness.

At first glance, the tax collector doesn’t appear righteous at all. He makes his living off the backs of the poor and disenfranchised. He’s done much to offend the law, the Temple and God. But he has enough humility, he has enough self-knowledge, to realize this….he’s not praying to God out of thanksgiving or out of gratitude. He doesn’t pray to God out of self-love, like the Pharisee. He prays out of self-loathing. Out of disgust. He prays to God out of desperate need. Out of longing. Out of hope against hope.

The tax collector prays to God on the off chance—the off chance that this God truly is an all forgiving all loving God who responds to all who call out. He prays to God counting on the sheer unconditional abundant love of a God who promises to grant mercy on all who come to God with hearty repentance and a desire to amend their life. He prayed to the God spoken of by the prophet Joel in today’s first lesson, that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The tax collector doesn’t approach God out of duty, but out of desire. He doesn’t pray to God out of habit, but out of faith.

The Pharisee approached God out of duty, out of show. He prayed to God because that’s what righteous people do. His faith isn’t bred out of longing and desire, his faith is bred out of duty and expectation.

The tax collector doesn’t want to be noticed by anyone, he just wants to be heard by God.

The Pharisee wants to be noticed by everyone while he fails to hear God.

The Pharisee isn’t a bad guy….but he is arrogant. The tax collector isn’t a saint, but he is humble. The Pharisee appeared to have faith while the tax collector had faith. The Pharisee looked righteous while the tax collector, in his humble and desperate appeal to God, was righteous.

So today I thank Fr Muth for teaching me that faith isn’t something to flaunt like the Pharisee, but it’s something to seek, like the tax collector.

Yes Fr. Muth, I understand it now, faith isn’t what you show, it’s what you live.

Amen.

God is dancing on our hearts-- Proper 24 Yr C

In JD Salinger’s book, Franny and Zooey, Franny, a college student, has decided to take St Paul’s instruction to “pray without Ceasing” (1Thessalonians 5:17) to heart. This, in her opinion, is the only way she can fully bring God into her life. Her efforts cause her to have a mental breakdown and she has returned to her family home to recuperate. In an effort to get her out of her almost catatonic state, Franny’s brother Zooey berates her for thinking that she needed to somehow entice God into her life, telling her that we’re all carrying God deep with in us where we are often to stubborn, to distracted, to look. Zooey’s characterization of carrying God deep within us is the best definition I’ve heard yet of our “incarnational faith.”

I talk about this all the time because I think it’s what makes our brand of Christianity so special. The idea that we embody our faith-- that God is in us and we are in God---makes sense to me and comforts me. So I talk about it. A lot.

We’re to ingest our faith—as so beautifully played out in the Holy Eucharist--to have it become completely in us and of us. It’s a give and take proposition, God’s in us and we’re in God. But, because we are who we are, we spend a whole lot of time looking for God, seeking God out here when, as Zooey tells Franny, God is already here. Totally and completely. Always.

God promised this from the beginning of time. We hear of it in today’s reading from Jeremiah---“I will be their God and they will be my people. I will write the law on their hearts.” Can’t get much clearer than that. God wants us so much that God is written on our hearts---suggesting that, if we really listen to our heart’s desire, if we settle ourselves to notice what is already deep within us, we’ll find God. Because God is in us and we are to be in God.

Just like Zooey says.

Franny’s efforts to get closer to God aren’t wrong---praying without ceasing is bound to increase our awareness of God---but it doesn’t bring God any closer, because God is already close. It’s funny, we spend a lot of time and effort trying to get closer to God, assuming that God is some elusive force outside of us when God is already within us, just waiting for us to notice. But,

Connecting with God is a two way street, a type of dance. We long for God and God longs for us…we just need to meet in the middle.

In the parable of the persistent widow, a widow ---remember in Jesus’ time there was no lower socio economic status than that of a widow-----is seeking justice against an unnamed adversary. Justice, in this case, can only be granted by the local judge---an, by all accounts, unpleasant man who had no fear or love of God and no respect or love of people. A scoundrel of a sort, but the local magistrate nonetheless. The widow had no choice but to pursue justice through him. The point Jesus makes is: if such a jerk like the judge would listen to the persistent pleadings of such a meaningless member of society—the widow-- then imagine how , if we are as persistent in our own pleadings as the widow, a just and loving God will respond to us. But, are we always the widow in this story? Is God always the judge? I don’t think so.

Sometimes we’re the widow: fervently, and persistently seeking God. But then there are other times—probably more than we care to admit, when we’re the unjust judge, and God is the widow. Times when we ignore the tenacious pleadings of a loving God, who longs to reach us, who longs for us to listen. A God who just wants to be noticed. A God who wants to be found. A God who wants to be heard.

Jesus sums it up at the end of Gospel when he asks---“when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”---will he find us engaged in a dance with God?

Will he find us seeking God as God seeks us?

That is the question.

God is waiting for us to seek God out as fervently as God seeks us.

This is what Franny was trying to do with her attempts at unceasing prayer. She thinks if she continually prays, God will magically appear.

But what Franny forgot, what we all forget , is that God doesn’t need to be coaxed out of hiding—God is hiding in plain sight, waiting for us. Longing for us to seek out the divine as earnestly and as urgently as the widow seeks out the judge because then—when we have sought God so fervently, so tenaciously so deliberately and persistently---we will discover the secret Zooey knows, that God was and is deep with in us, residing on our very hearts where we were a little too stubborn, a little too timid, a little too dense to look.

This is the dance of our faith---God longs for us to notice God and we cry out to God, longing for God to notice us.

God loves the persistent widow part of us-- the Franny part of us that seeks to connect with God without ceasing.

God also loves the unjust judge part of us—the part which tries to deny the persistent, tenacious voice of God until finally we succumb, finally we give in and finally we discover that God has always and will always be, dancing on our hearts and filling our very souls.

As I begin this wholly unexpected journey of cancer my prayer is that I’ll remember to be tenacious in my seeking of the God I long to know and radically receptive in my welcoming of the God who longs to know me. My prayer for all of you is that you’ll join me in this journey, you’ll join me in this dance we’re all invited to, a dance between us and the Divine, a dance of love, a dance of hope and a dance of health.

Amen.

Lamenting is Good News 10.3.10

Today’s readings from Lamentations are Good News. Really.

You may ask: Where’s the good news in laments such as: How lonely sits the city that once was full of people? Or the thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall?

You see, the Good News of our faith isn’t always bright and cheery. A whole lot of scripture involves mourning, lamenting and grief.

And that’s ok, because Holy Scripture provides a road map back in time, showing us that the human condition has been the same for generations. Human beings, whether in exile after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, which is the setting for the Book of Lamentations, or whether a 21^st century people in a rust belt city trying to maneuver their way through this modern world; worry bemoan grieve and cry.

We, because of our hard-wired need for companionship, for community, because of our ability to love, experience loss. Relationships end, people leave us---they die, they divorce they move out they move on. We lose things too---jobs, homes, security, hopes and dreams. And when we lose these people and these things, we often become sad. Or mad. Or both. And when mad, when sad, we complain, we yell, we cry, we lament.

So, where’s the Good News in that?

The Good News is that God loves us in all sorts and conditions---God wants to be with us in all the things, at all times. Even the times when we are really really ticked off at God. Even when the pain we feel seems so unbearable we can’t stand it.

As you know, last weekend we hosted a group of jr high students from across the diocese. We got into a discussion of how they explain their faith to their friends.

One young woman, I’ll call her Emma, mentioned that you can’t really explain God, that you must experience God.

When Emma was 8 years old, her mother died of cancer. It was a quick death—some 8 weeks between diagnosis and death. Emma said, that when people would try and comfort her by saying, “now dear don’t cry, your mom is with God now,” she would feel worse. How dare God taker her mommy from her!

Finally a wise adult urged Emma to express how mad she was at God.

By having these self -described temper tantrums at God, Emma began to experience God, she got to know God.

By experiencing God, instead of trying to understand God, Emma came to a place in her grief which, although still incredibly painful and sad, became bearable. Manageable. God bless the adult who sat down with Emma and let her lament, let her rail against God and let her express her pain. For in doing that Emma showed an incredible faith. She let God have it without fear that God would abandon her. By letting God have it, Emma was able to welcome God back into her life. Because she was honest, because she showed God exactly who she was, she became more sure in her faith. At 8 years of age.

When my father died, my nephew John was not quite 14. Now many of you met John when he visited for my installation. Now 31 years old, John has severe cerebral palsy and as a result, cannot speak. In the middle of the memorial Eucharist for my father, John began to cry…not just the quite flow of tears so many of us were crying that day, but he let out a wail which ripped my heart out. It was an honest and real lament of a young boy who had lost his grandpa, his father figure, his confidante and his pal. To this day people remember John’s wail as emblematic of the pain we all felt. On that day, John let God and everyone else within earshot, know of his sorrow.

Lamenting is good for us. By expressing our sorrow, our worries, our anger, our grief and our sadness. By letting God have it, as it were, we’re doing exactly what Christ has asked us to do…. we’re giving ourselves---all of who we are---to God.

And that’s what God wants. God wants us just as we are, even if just as we are in any moment in time is angry, hopeless and despairing. That’s having faith. Faith that God accepts us in all the varied conditions we find ourselves in.

Suffering is a huge, unavoidable element in the human condition. To be human is to, at one time or another, suffer. No one gets an exemption from this suffering. the Book of Lamentations gives dignity to this suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is our companion in it.[1]

God is a companion in our suffering, God is a partner in our lament---now that’s good news.

Faith isn’t just what we have when things are going well. Faith isn’t just what we have when things are not going well and we reach out to God in calm and measured tones. Faith is also what we show when we love God enough—and trust God enough—to moan, bewail, cry and lament at God.

Faith is how we tap into the immense power of God in our lives. Faith is the invitation we give God, at any particular moment in time, to lead us. Faith is when we stop trying to be in charge and let God be in charge.

Lamenting is an act of faith---by railing at God, by screaming out to God, by quietly weeping in a sorrow so intense and so deep we cannot see anything else around us, we are laying ourselves bare before God.

And that’s just what God wants us to do.

For when we allow ourselves to be completely honest---and a lament is nothing if not honest----we’ve opened our hearts and our minds and our souls to God.

So don’t worry if your faith some days is the size of a mustard seed, don’t worry if some days you have only sadness and anger to give to God. For in sadness and anger, in loss and despair, in lamentations and exhortations we are presenting ourselves to God just as we are, just as God created us to be.

And that is, indeed, Good News.

Amen.

---

[1] Eugene Peterson, Introduction to Lamentations, The Message).