SJF • Epiphany 4a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Because Easter comes late this year, we will have a full set of nine Sundays after the Epiphany — which means we will be hearing, starting today and for the next four Sundays, selected passages from the Sermon on the Mount. I want to take advantage of this opportunity to reflect with you on some of the key elements in the teaching that Jesus gave the people.

Today, we start with the Beatitudes — a well-loved text of promised blessings. But who are the blessings for? Not the powerful, but the meek. And in keeping with Micah’s prophecy and Jesus’ words, I want to explore today the meaning of meekness — which is not weakness, but humble strength that trusts in God.

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To get some idea of what it means to be meek, let me tell you a story. Some years ago, a governor was running for re-election, and one day he arrived late at a church barbecue, having skipped breakfast and lunch on the campaign trail. As he moved down the serving line, he held out his plate, and the elderly woman on the other side of the chafing dish smiled graciously as she placed one barbecued chicken breast on it. The governor looked down at the lonely piece of chicken, and then smiled and bowed a little, and said to the woman behind the chafing dish, “Excuse me, could I get another piece of chicken.” The woman replied, “I’m sorry, sir, but to have enough to go ‘round it’s one piece to each person.” He appealed, “But I’m starved,” and again, shaking her head gently and smiling, said, “One to a customer.” Finally, he decided to use the weight of his office and said, “Madam, do you know who I am? I am the governor of this state.” She answered, “Governor, do you know who I am? I am the lady in charge of the chicken!”

That is meekness — a humble power that will stand up for what is right and fair regardless of who is issuing challenges, who is using position or power to take advantage. Meekness is not lying down as a doormat to be walked over, but the strength to be true to oneself and, as the Quaker tradition puts it, to “speak truth to power.” It is the pin-prick that takes the air out of all fo those who are too full of themselves; it is the strength of a Rosa Parks to stay in her seat when told to move; of an unarmed man standing there to face a tank in Tiananmen Square; dare I say we’re seeing some of this at work in Tunisia and Egypt even now — people who have had enough standing up. It is the voice of the child that is honest enough to say that the emperor has no clothes. It is not weakness, no not at all, but a kind of confidence and trust in what is right and true and just and fair, regardless of the powers arrayed against you. It is reliance on that promise given by God, who chooses what is weak to shame the strong, the foolish to shame what is wise. It is the answer of truth to the lies of power.

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This is all the more important when people pretend to impress the one who has the real power — God himself. All of us stand in that situation in the face of God. And today’s reading from the prophet Micah shows us the absurdity of trying to impress God. As I’ve said from this pulpit before, God knows us, through and through. God not only knows who and what we are, but knows every possible who and what we might become, for God is not only the Lord of what is, but of all that might be. So it’s no good trying to fool God, or trying to impress God.

Not that people don’t try. I suppose sometimes we get so used to impressing each other that we figure we can impress God, too. And rather than trying to frame our lives along the best possible course that God has laid before us — and since God can see all our journeys and our resting places God knows which is best for us — instead of trying to do what God wants for us, we, like the ancient Israelites, worry more about how good we look in God’s eyes, or think how good we look.

Micah, like most of the prophets, shows us that God has a bone to pick with his people. They’ve gotten the idea that God’s primary interest is in how many sacrifices they can carry out. We all know it is a sign of wealth to show how much you can give up — when people buy hundred thousand dollar cars when they could do perfectly well for a quarter of that to get where they’re going, but want to spend more to show off — like the rich man who lights his ten-dollar cigars with twenty-dollar bills. So the people of Israel wonder how high they have to pile their sacrifices: these burnt offerings and calves, thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil. They are even willing to sacrifice their own sons and daughters — imagine — that is how far they have strayed in their foolishness and wickedness.

But God is not impressed by all this show. Remember, God knows his people intimately, and will not be fooled by their showy display of sacrificial zeal, showing how much they can give up in their religious exercises. As Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said, “It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly interested in religion”! God isn’t interested in religion, God is interested in people, in the standing of their hearts, not in the number of their sacrifices. God cannot and will not be bought off. You can’t fool God, and you can’t impress God.

So Micah tells the people what God really wants, or rather reminds them of what God has always wanted: for them to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with their God. It is meekness that God desires in his people: a commitment to fairness, justice, integrity and humility.

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Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, and Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, reaffirm this timeless teaching. Those who are blessed are not those who succeed in making themselves look good — the rich, the powerful, the wise. No, on the contrary, the blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the seekers after justice, the workers of mercy, the peacemakers and the pure in heart. Within and behind all of this blessedness, all of these beatitudes, is a simple attribute, a simple virtue: meekness, the attitude of humble witness to the truth.

Although it is the opposite of pride, which is pretending to be more than you are, meekness doesn’t mean pretending to be less than you are. Meekness isn’t about pretense at all, it is about knowing exactly what and who you are, and speaking the truth you know. Such an attitude is merely reasonable here in our present life: who looks more foolish than one knocked from a high horse! But it is all the more reasonable as we stand before the one who can’t be fooled, the one who knows us through and through, from beginning to end. Meekness is integrity and authenticity and honesty — for if honesty is the best policy when dealing with each other, it is all the more so when we are standing before the one who already knows the truth: God, who is, as we well know, the only foolproof lie detector.

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But though ultimately it ends with God, it starts with us: learning and understanding that meekness is important in our interactions among ourselves: knowing exactly who we are and who it is we’re talking too, when we speak to each other. Though I may be the governor, that doesn’t entitle me to extra chicken; and though I’m the one serving, I don’t have the right to deny that one piece or to dole out extra helpings. Meekness is about understanding exactly how and where one stands, and not being afraid to stand there.

It is both in treating each other with proper respect, and acting with proper dignity — both sides of what it means to be a child of God — that we can come to learn how to walk in true humility and meekness with the one who is above all. This life, sisters and brothers, this life is the school of charity, and we spend our semesters learning to love our neighbors so we can learn to love God. Why is it that Jesus so often used stories about household servants and their interactions among themselves as they awaited their master’s return? (I’ve been watching “Downton Abbey” on PBS, so this is on my mind!) How impressed is the master when he sees his servants treating each other badly? Rather than that kind of power-playing, the proper operation of God’s household depends on each doing the task given to us, the gives given to us, working with the skills God has given. When we learn to honor and celebrate the gifts that others have, not denying our own, but offering them so that all can share, we will by walking in meekness, doing justice and loving kindness with each other, and that is how we will learn how to walk humbly with our God.

Meekness, as I said, isn’t about pretense; it is the ultimate reality check; And as with each other, it doesn’t need to take the form of telling God, “Look how small I am” — God knows that already! — but confessing “Lord, how great thou art!” As we stand before him on our last day, God will recognize and welcome us there because we have not feared to stand before him and walk with him here, in our earthly pilgrimage, following him in the way of justice and humility practiced towards each other.

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Let us not boast of anything, except the cross of Christ. What does God ask of us? Not countless sacrificial offerings; not the cleverness of human wisdom, nor the pomp of earthly majesty, not reliance on noble birth, nor the wealth of things that are valued in this world; not physical strength, not power nor boasting. God wants each of us just as we are, without one plea, boasting only in the cross of Christ, boasting only in the Lord, and doing justice to each other, showing loving-kindness to each other, and walking with him in meekness, knowing who we are and who he is.+

SJF Pentecost • B 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.+

On Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, and in fulfillment of the promise he had made, the apostles saw and felt the Spirit descend upon them in tongues of fire, and began to proclaim God’s saving deeds in many languages. But given the amount of woodwork in this church, if we were to see tongues of fire distributed and alighting anywhere we would likely sound a fire alarm! Clearly, when the Spirit comes to us — and I have no doubt of the Spirit’s presence, as I shall explain in a moment — when the Spirit comes to us it is in a less inflammatory fashion. We don’t see flames alighting on the tops of each other’s heads, we don’t find ourselves speaking languages we never learned to speak. How, then, do we know when the Spirit visits us?

We might begin by noting that even with such marvels as tongues of fire and the miraculous gift of languages there were still some folks who failed to see the Spirit at work on Pentecost in Jerusalem on that day so long ago. They attributed the disciples’ inspiration to hitting the bottle rather early in the morning, accusing them of being drunk and disorderly. Some, it seems, can not recognize the Spirit even when the Spirit is most obvious. So how, then, do we recognize the Spirit?

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The first sign of the Spirit’s presence with us is community, for the Spirit calls and summons us, drawing us together, or rather back together: re-membering us as members of the church so that we can remember God together.

There have been great souls who have been able to go it alone, great saints whose solitary encounter with God is the stuff of legend and sacred history. These are the spiritual athletes who encountered God flying solo, out in the wilderness, like Moses and Elijah, or the monks who dwelt in the Egyptian desert, some of them going so far as to live solitary lives on the tops of pillars, as far away from human society as they could get. But unlike such rare souls as the desert hermits, most of us will not find God in solitude on top of a pillar, but in community. If we are spiritual athletes, it is only as team players.

Moreover, the Holy Spirit appears to favor the public assembly over the private audience. “The disciples were all together in one place” when the Spirit came upon them. They were not pursuing their own personal holiness, but praying together — for and with each other — when the Spirit blew through the windows and set their souls on fire. It is in community — from the most intimate community of a loving couple, to the wide community of the church — that the Spirit comes to us, revealing Christ in our midst. Community, then, is the first sign of the Spirit.

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And the Spirit reveals Christ gathered with us too, revealed in our midst, revealed foremost as one who serves, who before his death washes the feet of his friends, and afterwards responds to their betrayal and lack of belief with words of peace, who offers them forgiveness so that they might be able to forgive in turn. This service and forgiveness find their natural home in community. For just as it takes two to tango, so it takes at least two to serve, two to forgive. Service and forgiveness flow from community as naturally as dance flows from the music, when you simply have got to move your feet to the persuasive beat.

So the ministry of hospitality, which combines service and mercy, and grows from community, is the second sign of the Spirit’s presence: as I have said many times before, “see how they love one another” is Christ’s identity badge for the church, a sure sign of the Spirit’s presence.

Hospitality takes many forms, in a parish coffee hour or visit to the shut-in; in an act as simple as an outstretched hand to help someone up these steps to the altar, or as formal as baptism. We offer a hospitable welcome to each newly baptized person, welcoming them “into the household of God” — a dwelling for the Spirit whose building-stones are ourselves — our selves, souls and bodies — as the church’s members.

Remember the children’s game: here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the little people. The outside of a church looks like a building, but when the doors are opened the living, human construction is revealed — as a community. So hospitality is the natural response of the gathered community we call the church, the second sign of the Spirit’s presence.

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And what the disciples did upon the Spirit’s arrival was to proclaim the story of salvation to each other in many languages, so that those outside the house were attracted by the sound, and were astonished to recognize their native tongues.

This proclamation is the third sign of the Spirit’s powerful presence. The children of Israel knew this, and they were always telling their story to each other. Their story sustained them through exile and captivity in Babylon; and through and beyond the destruction of the Second Temple, and even up to this day — as we are reminded of the bombing attempt at two synagogues right here in the Riverdale section of the Bronx — through and beyond the most terrible and single-minded efforts to exterminate them. The Jewish people have told and retold their story to each other, in synagogue and schul, down through the years, and the Christian church’s story is added to theirs; and each of us has a story, too, like footnotes and annotations expanding the history of salvation — so that the whole world could not contain the books that might be written.

As if the world even cared! “The world” that confronts us today, is a world where community is shattered, a world that doesn’t know how to serve, a world that has forgotten its own story. The world will not stop talking — or Twittering, or blogging — long enough to hear the gracious possibility offered to it.

Well, the world needs a wake up call. And the responsibility to give that call falls on us, the members of the church, the Body of Christ: to tell the story of salvation to the world. If we at Saint James Church faithfully proclaim that story, the world may stop its chatter for a moment and overhear: that’s how it worked on Pentecost, and it can again. People who have forgotten that they are God’s children, in the midst of this great but terrible city, might suddenly hear a voice speaking a language they haven’t heard for a long, long time, but which they recognize at once: a language from home, reminding them who, and whose, they are.

If we at Saint James Church then open our doors and our hearts and welcome them in, we will be magnified, and together we will offer glory to God such as never yet has rung from this corner of the Bronx.

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The Spirit reveals Jesus’ presence in the gathering of the community, in the hospitality they shared, and in the telling of the greatest story ever told. But the Spirit also reveals Jesus to us through a last sign unlike any other: in broken bread and a cup of wine. In the fourth sign of the Spirit’s presence, in the eucharistic feast, the one serving at the table reveals himself as the bridegroom, and the story takes a classic turn: like Richard the Lionheart casting off his pilgrim’s cloak, revealing the king’s bright red cross on his chest to an astonished Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. And suddenly, everyone drops to their knees.

Suddenly, though the doors be locked, we realize who has been among us all this time, and we can hear his breathing. Suddenly the Holy Spirit descends upon us and upon these gifts and we remember and are re-membered into the Body of Christ.

Once one special Pentecost, that ancient Jewish harvest festival, the Spirit gathered the apostles together like a harvest of grain once scattered on the hillside. And together they welcomed, served, proclaimed, and feasted: in fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in prayer. We, their successors, can do no less. The Spirit has gathered us together. It is the Spirit’s doing, not our own. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, and the Holy Spirit our Pentecost has come to us. So come, let us welcome; come, let us serve; come, let us proclaim; and come, let us celebrate the feast. +