A Great Light
Good Shepherd, Berkeley 7/21/13
• Isaiah 9:2-7
• Psalm 96 •
• Titus 2:11-14 •
• Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
The Gospel reading for Christmas is so beautiful, so well-known, so cherished, that I am amazed every year that it touches me, almost as if I had never heard it before. The story slowly, inevitably pries opens our reluctant hearts. It speaks of hope in the midst of deep darkness, hope in the cold and the rough shelter of a barn, hope to the lowly and despised shepherds, hope to a young woman, giving birth in the most desperate of circumstances- hope for us all.
Hope is sung out to the shepherds by a lone angel- cracking the sky open with light, and then by a great heavenly host, loudly singing out the dearest hope of an oppressed and brutalized people- peace on earth.
I wonder- did the shepherds then just leave everything when the angels called them? Did they leave their flocks and throw down their staffs as the fishermen later left their boats and their nets? It sounds like it. The angels swoop back to heaven, and the shepherds can’t wait to go and be witnesses to “this thing that has happened”.
The angels gave very poor directions- the only sign given was that the baby would be wrapped in clothes, as every baby was, and- less expectedly- lying in a manger. But the shepherds had no trouble finding the baby, even without the benefit of the start that the magi later navigated with.
From every detail of the story, we are made to understand that this Messiah came, not to the comfortable, but to the lowly. The marginalized and homeless, the young and terrified, the holy family living among the animals because there was no place for them in a place of comfort- a place of privilege- no place for them at the inn.
Mary had had quite a night. She had just had the epiphany, after great pain and struggle, that every new mother has. She has the certainty that she has survived the greatest miracle of her life. Mary must have been startled at the arrival of the rough and fragrant shepherds, clamoring around her precious newborn. But the shepherds were irrepressible and told Mary and everyone else who would listen what the angels had told them. That the long-awaited Messiah had indeed been born. Mary had birthed the Christ, this holy child, now lying in a manger.
And so, after the hardest, and the holiest night of her young life, Mary listened and pondered, and was left to “treasure all these things in her heart,” even as we now treasure this story in ours.
The remembrance of this shining night every year is truly magical. It seems like the one time of the year where we are allowed to be innocent, to be hopeful, joyful, peaceful, expecting and deserving comfort and joy. The unexpected happens. Those who would never darken the door of a church sing with full passionate voices, “Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!” And “Hark the herald angels sing…”
People who usually speak intelligibly, sing “Ba rumpabum bum, rumbabumbum, rumpabum bum. And all to praise the coming of the angels, the coming of the Light.
The people who walked in darkness, the lowly, the cold, the oppressed, the desperately poor, have seen a great light. To those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined.
At this time of year, on this shining night, we are all called out of our deep darkness. We are all a people called in from the cold, given the most precious possession imaginable, shown that all our fears, our pessimism, our cynicism, our every dark crevice are all flooded with light.
The baby Jesus is ours, the baby Jesus is us. We hunker down with the Holy Family to look at the luminous child shining from the manger, to see the radiant but exhausted face of Mary, the fearful face of Joseph, the shocked silence of the cow and the donkey and the lamb, the joyous confusion of the breathless shepherds. We are, all for this one night, part of the Holy Family, no matter our origins. We have come to adore him, to proclaim Joy to the World, to spread the good news of great joy, like the shepherds and the angels before us.
The lowly in all of us is lifted up. Our deepest hopes are answered and prayers we didn’t even pray are fulfilled, because the Christ child himself is the answer to every prayer.
Something is born in us that is shining with light, something long awaited and vulnerable as a newborn. It is not only possible but, this night, manifest, that we will be at peace, that our struggles and longings will cease, that we will be saved from ourselves and our circumstances. We will be forgiven, loved, redeemed, lifted up. We have only to listen to the song of the angels.
The Beatle Mass
on the Second Sunday in Advent
Here Comes the Son
Good Shepherd, Berkeley 3/31/13
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Matthew 3:1-12
Perhaps every Beatles fan thinks this, but I really feel that I was just at the perfect age when the Beatles came to America. They were a huge and healing force for us all, but for a 13 year-old loner misfit like myself, they were true salvation.
After the Beatles came, it changed all of us. We were no longer a depressed people living in a violent country, mourning, the death of our beloved president, John Kennedy. We were now transformed. We were Beatle fans- we were loved, and we loved them, yeah, yeah, yeah!
For me, personally, when the Beatles came, the world went away. My brother became slightly less cruel. My father’s drinking seemed to lessen. I suddenly had a common love with the kids at school who despised me. Because ALL the kids at my school, the greasers, the hoods, the good kids, the bad kids, the nerds and the geeks and the misfits ALL loved the Beatles.
My best and only friend, Alison and I had long felt that all rock music was imbecilic. But we both agreed- the Beatles were different. The Beatles transcended rock music. In those days, oh my children, if you wanted to see a movie multiple times, you had to go to the theater and pay to see it. I don’t know how we found the money, but my girl friend and I went to see “A Hard Day’s Night” again and again.
Things began to look up so dramatically that after a while I actually had a boyfriend. He, of course, adored the Beatles too.
For my sixteenth birthday, he took me to see the Beatles at DC Stadium in Washington DC. It was to be the second to last performance they ever did.
So August 15th is always lovingly enshrined in my memory, because it is not only the Feast Day of the Heavenly Assumption of the Virgin Mary, but it was also the day I saw and heard the Beatles.
John Lennon had a life-long fascination with Jesus. When I saw the Beatles on that day in 1966, a contingent from the Prince George's County Ku Klux Klan, dressed in robes and led by the Imperial Grand Wizard of the Maryland clan, held a parade outside the stadium to protest against John Lennon's comments that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
He later desperately tried to explain that he wasn’t saying that it was GOOD that the Beatles were more popular. He said, in fact,
"I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this."
John was brought up in the Church of England, and the giant Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool towered over his house. Paul McCartney recalled it looming up at every window when he visited John. I am sure that the harmonies of all those hymns John sang in in the junior choir informed their songs. As a child, John attended St. Peter’s Parish Church, sang in the choir and was a member of the bible class. He belonged to the youth group, which was then 170 strong, and he was at church events four nights a week. It was at the annual Fete of St Peter's Church, Woolton, July 6, 1957, that John first met Paul McCartney, after a performance of John’s band, The Quarrymen. They met in the same church parish hall where John had attended all those bible classes. Three months later, he asked Paul to join the band, and the rest is history.
After the Beatles became famous, and John had gotten together with Yoko Ono, he visited his Aunt Mimi, who raised him. He hadn’t seen her in a long time. John’s hair was now shoulder-length, he had a long beard, and he was dressed all in white, as he and Yoko often were. Mimi took one look at him and then said, “So what is it, John? Is it the second coming, then?”
It could be that this comment took root in his subconscious, because not long after that, according to John’s boyhood friend Pete Shotton, John urgently called a meeting of all the other Beatles and the officials of their company, Apple Corp. With Yoko at his side, he announced that he had realized that he was, in fact the second coming of Jesus Christ. He wanted to issue a public statement to that effect immediately to the press. Apple’s press officer Derek Taylor, who was also present, listened attentively but wisely ignored the plea, hoping that John would wake up the next day and realize that he was, in fact, John Lennon.
But it is not entirely clear to me if John ever stopped thinking that he was the Christ. He described himself in various ways; as a working class hero, as a loser, as someone crying for “HELP”, and he finally said, “The way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me.”
As he matured, John’s songs delved deep. He sang, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” Then, in case we didn’t get it, he sang, “I’ll say it again, God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” John’s life was one that was forged in pain. His father deserted him when he was three, and then popped back into his life when he was five, at which time he was asked to choose between his mother and his father. When his mother, whom he chose, began living with another man, he was sent away to his Aunt Mimi’s house to live. As a teenager he became very close to his mother again, and then when he was 18, she was hit by a car and killed as he waited for her to come home. He never entirely recovered.
Perhaps it takes someone steeped in that much pain to create a paradise to escape to, to create a heaven on earth. Or perhaps when you have felt that much pain, you gain the courage to be prophetic- you no longer fear pain yourself.
Tragically, like Jesus, like John the Baptist, his prophetic voice put him in very dangerous waters. Eventually he was killed. But as Yoko said, we hear his words still.
"Produce your own dream.… Don't expect John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.
That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see… … I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you.”
John had much in common with the John of our Gospel reading, John the Baptist. John Lennon emerged out of the wilderness of the rough and tumble seaport town of Liverpool, and there is no doubt that in those days the people of Liverpool and then and all of England were going out to him, and being baptized by the transforming music of the Beatles. And like John the Baptist, he urged those who followed him to repent- or in a more accurate translation, to transform.
Among the many prophetic things John ever did, and one that generated the most violent hatred, was to fall in love with and then marry Yoko Ono, a Japanese avant-guard artist. But even more astonishingly than that, he staunchly considered her to be his equal, to be on his own level of importance. He considered her work equal in value to his own. The Women’s Movement was barely flickering into existence when he wrote “Woman is the N-word of the World” and presented it to a shocked fan base.
In the end he was killed by a fan. And oddly enough, it seems that John the Baptist was killed by a fan as well. Apparently, King Herod went out to hear John, like the rest of the adoring throngs. In the Book of Mark we read that Herod was perplexed by what John said, and yet, we read, he liked to listen to him. Many were perplexed by John Lennon. Many were transported, and many were transformed.
I sometimes think that I experienced something like a baptism the first time I heard the Beatles- maybe even a baptism of fire. My old life was definitely dead to me- I was born again as a Beatle fan, washed clean of my previous life of misery.
Maybe this is true of many of us. Why was John’s music so transporting, so redeeming? Were our sins forgiven? Was our chaff burned away? Did we die in baptism and rise again with him? Something transforming occurred.
One of our parishioners here said that the years from 1963-72 were so awful, with the assassinations, the war and the brutal racism, that we desperately needed the music we were gifted with.
Thank God it was given to us.
And as for the Beatles, they were a pure shot of God’s grace. Thank God that when we really needed them, they wanted to hold our hands. And thank God that somehow, it seems, they still do. Amen.
On All My Holy Mountain
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Church of the Good Shepherd, Berkeley, 11/24/13
• Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Psalm 46 •
• Colossians 1:11-20 •
• Luke 23:33-43
Given Good Shepherd’s preference for non-hierarchical and gender-inclusive language for God, it seems ironic that what we celebrate on this last day of the church year, the Sunday before Advent, is “Christ the King”. And actually, wherever I have celebrated, this Sunday always seems ironic to me, given what I read as Jesus’ radical anti-hierarchical teachings. I think he meant what he said: “the first shall be last,” “the meek shall inherit the earth,” and even, “call no man ‘father’ on this earth.”
But there is a way in which our Gospel reading is very appropriate for this Sunday. Because just this last week, was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, where all the transgender victims of hate crimes are honored. And so it is sadly appropriate that today’s Gospel reading is about the crucifixion.
It is no coincidence that of the many transgender people honored at the Day of Remembrance, the vast majority of these crucified peoples are people of color. Those who are transgender AND people of color are twice targeted. The numbers of people who died are staggering. Last year 238 transgender people were murdered worldwide last year, and this number does not include suicide.
The very recent example of the attack on Sasha Fleischman (the Oakland teen who was set on fire on an AC Transit bus) is a very different kind of tragedy in some ways, but in some ways it is very much the same. It must be noted that, first of all, Sasha survived the attack, which is a great blessing, and second of all, unlike so many of the transgender tragedies, Sasha is white and from an affluent family. But the reason for the attack, sadly, was just the same. Fear, ignorance, literally blind rage at the unknown and therefore despised.
And in the case of Sasha Fleischman, there is another tragedy that took place simultaneously. The other side of this tragedy is the child who set the fire. Unlike the medieval picture of a burning at the stake, it was not a figure of authority, not a power or principality, who set the flame. The attacker was, as Jesus would say, among the least of these my brethren.
The theologian Walter Wink teaches us much about Powers and Principalities, and the evil they can create, as well as the good. He writes that every institution has it’s own spirituality, it’s own personality. People in the system act from this corporate spirituality, for good or for evil.
He uses as an example, the South in the 60’s when racial discrimination was supported by Jim Crow laws, by state and local police, and by extra-legal acts of terrorism. These things were supported, passively or actively, by the vast majority of white citizens. Our passivity, our lack of action implicates us all in the holocaust that transgender people have suffered.
Wink writes that we have repeatedly been shown that people who fight domination with violence become as evil as those they oppose. We have to find the third way; the way Jesus talked about- the way around the “myth of redemptive violence.”
But as I recently read, we are all ready to plunge right into redemptive violence, meted out on the person of a 16 year old child of color, Richard Thomas, who was formally charged in the attack on Sasha Fleischman. Richard is to be tried as an adult for a hate crime, aggravated mayhem and felony assault. God only knows how long he will be in prison.
Richard Thomas goes to Oakland High, a school in the deeply distressed area of East Oakland. I know very little about him aside from what his actions and his situation would suggest. He is an African American child in a society and a location where being a young African American male defines you as an endangered species. At the court hearings he was accompanied by his mother and grandmother, no father figure was in appearance. I couldn’t help but wonder if he gone to the spectacular private school that Sasha Fleishman attended (I know because my daughter went there) whether he would have committed such a crime. If he were not in a culture permeated by violence and fear, if he had been educated about the realities and beauty of gender diversity…
In our Reading from Colossians we hear that Christ
… is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
And yet if we are to believe what Jesus said about the first being last, we have to believe that Christ is in Richard Thomas, as Christ is in all of the dispossessed, the marginalized, the outcasts, the crucified, the children.
Jesus was deeply influenced by the vision of non-violence painted in his beloved scripture, in the Book of Isaiah, where even in the animal food chain, domination was turned on its head:
"The wolf shall live with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid
The calf and the lion and the fatling together
And a little child shall lead them.
…They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain…"
Walter Wink went to South Africa in 1987, and witnessed the horrors of Apartheid first hand. But he also witnessed what he described as “perhaps the largest grass roots eruption of diverse non-violent strategies in a single struggle in human history.”
He wrote a small book entitled, Violence and Non-violence in South Africa, and with the help of several American churches, he mailed 3,200 copies to black and white clergy in South Africa. Reading between the lines of his great book, The Powers that Be, this mailing seems to have been the well-planted seed that later generated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. This movement brought healing and closure to many victims of atrocities. And it was utterly non-violent.
When I attended the Forum on Gun Violence at St. Paul’s Church in Oakland, I heard of a program in the schools that addresses the atrocities happening weekly in Oakland in a thoughtful non-violent way. It is called Restorative Justice, and it has much in common with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Victims or the families of victims and perpetrators are brought together face to face. The perpetrators are faced with their actions in a way no other circumstance could offer, and the victims or families are able to tell their feelings to the attackers. And all non-violently.
This would be my vision of the Holy Mountain; that Sasha and Richard could meet and reconcile. That together they could educate Oakland youth about the beauties of gender diversity. That they could both became free of violence, free of fear.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus finds himself a victim of institutionalized violence. He finds himself in the place of the utterly despised, the desperate, the criminal. Crucified between two thieves, he still manages to live out the last minutes of his life suffused with love, suffused with forgiveness. What is the paradise he offers to his fellow sufferer?
Perhaps it is the Holy Mountain. Perhaps it is a land of harmony and grace where there is no earthly violence, where all the children of God, made in God’s image, male or female, male AND female, will live together, and “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all that holy mountain.”
Amen
The Blessed Francis
Good Shepherd, Berkeley, October 7, 2013
• Habbakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 and Psalm 37:1-9 •
• 2 Timothy 1:1-14 •
• Luke 17:5-10
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Before I saw the readings for today, I was looking forward to writing a happy little sermon about that lovable saint, Francis of Assisi. I really did not want to preach about violence, about the law that becomes slack and the justice that never prevails. But then I saw the readings, and given what is happening in our nation and our neighborhood, I saw no other option. I felt like Habbakuk’s oracle, crying out to God,
"Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention rise."
Although it can be all too easy to go back to normal after a trauma has occurred, these readings bring home to me the suffering and the violence that we have witnessed in this very neighborhood in the past year. On February 4, a little over a month after the Sandy Hook disaster, Zontee Jones, a 34 year old maintenance man, was fatally shot at 10th and Delaware, literally around the corner from our parish hall where we were happily chatting and making sandwiches. We did a short liturgy for him a week later, and also read all the names of the Sandy Hook children and teachers. We wrote letters to our representatives and had area ministry meetings about what we could do to fight gun violence. But we didn’t really do much else. On August 1, Dustin Bynum , 24 years old, was fatally shot across the street from the first killing, in front of Bing’s Liquors. He was a Berkeley boy, attending Jefferson Elementary, MLK Jr. Middle School and Berkeley High. The whole neighborhood was in shock.
So we had a huge neighborhood meeting here at Good Shepherd. Councilwoman Linda Maio brought 4 police officers and they all seemed to be at a loss for a solution, as everyone did. It seemed there was nothing we could do. I had attended a Friday night Oakland Ceasefire walk a few months before this. The joyousness of the walk astonished me, as did the feeling of safety, as 70 people of diverse cultures and faiths walked and talked together through some very scary places. Lots of pit bulls. I planned to go once a month, but I never made it back. Then, at our neighborhood meeting, I suggested that we do a Berkeley Ceasefire walk against violence in our own neighborhood, and there was a lot of nodding of heads. It was at least something that we could do. After a while, I got busy, I lost courage, and I kind of forgot about it. But then the third murder happened, at 10th and Camila. His cousin, who I later met, described the victim, Anthony Madearis, another boy from Berkeley High, a 22 year-old father of three, as the shining star of his family.
I then woke from my stupor. I got in touch with (BOCA) Berkeley Congregations Organizing for Action, and I asked them to help me organize an Oakland Ceasefire type of walk. They were happy to spread the word.
I went to the diocesan forum of gun violence at St. Paul’s to promote our Oct 3rd Walk against violence, and I heard more and more horror stories. I met Loraine Taylor who founded 1000 Mother’s Against Violence. She had lost her 22-year-old twin sons- BOTH of them to gun violence in East Oakland. After a long period of depression she found she could do nothing but work against gun violence, and provide comfort to the mothers of the victims. The most striking speaker was 16-year-old Precious Brazil. This young woman had just lost her best friend, Olajuwon Clayborn , an honor roll student and an athlete. He was a really good kid, she said. Just wanted to do good in school and help his friends. She could not remember how many funerals she had been to since she had been at East Oakland’s Castlemont High. She said among other things that now a lot of girls are starting to carry guns, out of fear, and out of a desire to outgun the boys. We heard about one woman who was just leaving the Oakland Whole Foods after a shopping trip. A bullet hit her and nobody ever figured out where it came from. Bullets were literally flying from everywhere. We heard about the most tragic of realities: an eight-year-old child, Alaysha Carradine, who was killed as a gang retaliation for the South Berkeley killing this year.
Finally, there was a ray of hope; we heard Representatives of Restorative Justice, a program based on the Truth and Reconciliation program used in South Africa, where victims and perpetrators actually talk to each other. The perpetrators learn to take responsibility from hearing directly from the victims’ families, and both sides learn to talk to each other, to talk about their feelings, find out how to communicate, find out how to forgive. This what they are trying to teach in East Oakland schools.
I was kindly given a moment to urge people to join us on October 3rd at Good Shepherd for our Berkeley Ceasefire Walk. I thought about the vastness of the problem in Oakland, and I hoped they could even hear me, talking about the third death in our neighborhood.
So, on Oct. 3rd, last Thursday night I stood in our parish hall at about 6:30 with Antony Burrill, the office manager for BOCA (Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action) waiting for people to show for our walk. We counted 25 people.
“Not bad!” He said, “You never know how many people are going to show up for these things.” We began a half-hour orientation and by the end of it we saw that people had filled the parish hall to such an extent that latecomers had to wait outside for the walk to begin. Fourteen different congregations were represented- Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Evangelical and, even five Episcopal churches! Also of course, many neighbors and others from the Atheist faith. The League of Women Voters, 1000 Mothers Against Violence, Linda Maio and Daryl Moore from Berkeley City Council, and the Berkeley Rotary Club all showed up too! There were 200 people, not including those outside.
It seemed that our faith, which was certainly no larger than a mustard seed, had given us something. It had given us the ability to, as Habakkuk did, stand at a watch post, and to keep watch together on those streets. We were able, together to be a witness, even if “ the law becomes slack and justice never prevails” where we desperately need it.
We walked our streets together, stopping at the scene of each murder for a moment of prayer. Finally, we stopped at the scene of the third murder, that of Anthony Medairis. It seemed that his family had heard about the walk, and there they were, wearing pictures of their shining star on their chests. Rabbi Menachem Creditor was leading this prayer, and we were both speechless at the wall of grief we had before us. He so rightly said there was nothing we could say to ease their pain. But we could tell them that there were 200 people here to honor Anthony with them. They prayed with us and then joined the march, all the way back to Good Shepherd.
It may seem that nothing will increase our faith, but we act anyway. We act for those who are too paralyzed with grief to act for themselves, to weak with mourning to do much. And perhaps here is where I can bring in the Blessed St. Francis after all.
We have an epidemic on our hands of a disease that resists attempts to cure, that spreads to and kills the innocent, that tragically targets the young.
And although Francis is popularly known for preaching to birds and bunnies, what Francis was actually about was embracing and trying to heal those most grievously diseased- those most marginalized in society, those who most suffered. Francis would wash their wounds, would sit with them, would eat with them, clothe them and love them. I think we need to find a way to do this for the sufferers of our own modern epidemic. Walking and witnessing with them might be a good start. It just might be a way to begin to bind their wounds and ours as well.
Amen.
The Potter’s House
Good Shepherd, Berkeley 9/8/13
• Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 •
• Philemon 1:1-1:21 •
• Luke 14:25-33
•
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
•
In reading Jesus’ daunting declaration in our Gospel today, I have to ask myself: just what is the transformation asked of us? What shape is the mashed up clay supposed to take in the potter’s hands?
"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." –Mt 23:9
What is demanded here? A desertion of what makes us human? A renouncing of the strongest love we are likely to feel? Even the love for one’s own child?
Commentaries often chalk these kinds of passages up to what is known as “rabbinical hyperbole” – in other words, Jesus didn’t really mean it! But I think that seems too easy.
Because contrary to what you might hear in certain sectors, Jesus was not, above all, a family values kind of guy. He in fact had no wife or children, and his relationship with his family was famously problematic. For example, nowhere in the Gospels does he ever say a single word about his father Joseph. He does however command the disciples to:
"Call no one your father on earth, for you have one father, the one in heaven." - Mt 23:9
In the Gospel of Luke, an ecstatic follower says these words to Jesus after he casts out a demon:
"Blessed is the womb that bore you and blessed are the breasts that nursed you!" -Lk 11:27
Jesus’ reply to this lovely benediction to his mother’s not insubstantial role in his life was,
"Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!" – Lk 11:28
In the Gospel of Matthew, someone in the crowd says to him,
"Look, your mother and your brothers are outside wanting to speak to you."
But Jesus only replies, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my mother and my sister and my brother.” Mt 12:46-50.
Jesus did not share the exclusivity and tribal instinct of his people, or for that matter, people all through the ages. He was after something truly revolutionary, truly unheard of: love equal to that you share with your nearest and dearest for those outside your family, outside your tribe. He modeled this in many instances, shocking his disciples to the core. Jesus shared water with a woman from the despised tribe of the Samaritans. He told the story of the Good Samaritan, understanding that this phrase would be heard as a contradiction in terms. He was compassionate toward Gentiles, healing the servant of the Centurion and the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman, even as he acknowledged that she was not of his tribe.
Jesus was radically anti-tribal in a brutally tribal society.
Is this the transformation Jesus asks of us? Is this the way the clay is to be utterly reformed on the potter’s wheel? As if this wasn’t enough, Jesus casually mentions at the end of the gospel, “Oh, and another thing: none of you can be my disciples unless you give up your possessions.” But who are we without our exclusively precious love for our family, who are we without our essential and precious possessions?
We here at Good Shepherd have had a taste of this poverty, and an experience of this kind of loss. This parish hall, a worship space that is decidedly not of our tribe, has become as dear to us as the hallowed landmark we lost. Our beloved church was taken from us, and although we pray it will be restored to us, it will inevitably be transformed, even as we have been. We discovered what it is to worship in poverty, in loss, in faith. And we found out that all the people living around our church, of so many different tribes and cultures, cared about our church in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
In my wanderings I have heard amazing things from them. Giovanni, who always comes to our free Friday lunches said he needed to talk to me- it was important. He said that he noticed that we cut down a large limb from the Giant Sequoia that graces our churchyard. He asked me what we are going to do with it.
I don’t know, I said, I’m not sure yet. He became adamant.
Listen, he said. All through your churches’ history the people of the church, for more than a century have walked around this tree, breathing out carbon molecules and nourishing it. Part of those people are in this tree now- all those people through the ages, they are in the tree, and they are in the branch you cut- you have to build something for the church out of that branch! I thought of M.R. Ritley and of Susan Finch Hicks, of Jim McInerney and all those who had gone before. I was stunned to think of this huge memorial to them, and I told him I would be thinking about this for a long time.
Last Sunday, after our deacon Ellen’s sermon about inviting the unlikely, I approached a group of young men standing outside their house on Delaware Street. I was wearing my collar, and as I began to speak to them they practically jumped out of their skins with surprise. “Hi! I am the pastor from the church right over there at 9th and Dwight. You know, the one that burned. We have services every Sunday at 11:00, come and join us sometime.” Two of the young men, sprouting piercings and attitude to spare, silently turned their backs to me and looked deliberately in the other direction. But one of them began to speak to me. For all his tattoos and pierces he looked to be about 18. “We don’t go to church, he said. But we DO believe in God. He put a tattooed hand to his chest and said, “We believe that God is here, in our hearts.” Once I regained my composure, I said that I believe that too. "Well, I said, it is really cool that you believe in God." A young woman with a child came out of the house and they all stared to go inside. “Nice to meet you,” I said..
In the past two days, two very marginalized, very distressed people have walked into this church building for pastoral care. They walked in here because they feel our welcome, and they know they will not be turned away, whatever their situation, whatever their tribe. A homeless gentleman who had just come out of the hospital was devastated, not so much because of his injury, but because of the fact that it was someone in his family who hurt him. He knew he could come in here and sit and cry and get a glass of water and a hug and some groceries. Yesterday a woman I knew of but had never met finally walked though our doors. I knew her only by her lengthy answering machine messages, which she has left us frequently. I heard her voice and recognized it right away, and to her surprise, I greeted her by name. “I want to see the pastor,” she said. Then, when she found out that was me she said- “I am a lesbian- is that OK with you?” Yes, I said. That’s fine. “I saw the rainbow flag before,” she said, “so I figured… “
We had quite an intense talk, and then she gave me a knuckle bump and said she was glad to meet me. I invited her to church and she said,
“I can’t come to church, I am an atheist. But I believe in people.”
“That’s who you will find here on Sunday,” I said, “People.” She smiled.
"I like your church and I’m really sorry it burned,” she said.
What is the transforming process we are called to? Will we be able to continue to transform into a church that is ever less tribal, ever more accepting of the stranger, the other, the outcast? Will we be able to welcome more children from the neighborhood? Will more day laborers join us for worship? Will our new church really be a house of prayer for all people?
Jesus makes it clear that transformation is not easy. He asks us to take stock before we attempt the challenging way of the cross. To check out our foundations- see how much of an inner militia we can muster. But we here, in this place have a lot of history and a lot of grace behind us.
I hope and pray that our trajectory will continue; that we will honor our roots of radical inclusion and social justice. That we will continue to give the community a spiritual home, and fill the needs of many. And I can’t wait to see the newly formed vessel, refined with fire in the hands of God. Amen.
The Better Part
Good Shepherd, Berkeley 7/21/13
Amos 8:1-12 and Psalm 52 • Colossians 1:15-28 • Luke 10:38-42
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
In the mysterious realm of Old Testament scripture, it is possible to go from the lovely and fragrant offering of a basket of summer fruit, to the wailings of the damned and the casting out of dead bodies in the twinkling of an eye.
How can this be?
It seems to us, and even to the prophet Amos, apparently, like the beginning of a happy, or at the very least very appetizing story. But it turns out that the basket of summer fruit is meant to symbolize Israel, as the first fruit, the first born of the Lord our God. In the Book of Exodus, along with many other commandments, there is the following: “The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.” The fruit was brought into the temple, and no one but the Levitical priests were granted the right to consume them.
But it seems that many who are not so authorized have been consuming Israel, the first-born of God. Continually guilty of this sacrilege were those who trample on the needy, those who bring ruin to the poor of the land. They have no patience to observe the Holy time of the new moon, the sanctity of the Sabbath, before they resume their customary occupation robbing and cheating the poor.
We hear God tell Amos of the day when God will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. We hear him compare this disaster to the mourning for an only son. This might well conjure up for us the day of the crucifixion, the most grievous injustice imaginable.
But at the end of the passage, the Lord God threatens a reality that is shown to be the most devastating of all the horrors described. A famine. But a famine not of bread, or of water; a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. A famine, we might say, of the Bread of Life.
Well, in a sermon only a few weeks ago, I was jubilant about the advances for social justice and equality that had just begun to dawn. But our cheers had barely begun to fade when a whole raft of new legislative injustices rolled our way, almost as if the legers had to be balanced toward the dark side.
These new horrors attack the poor, the young, disenfranchised and, of course, women.
Everyone has heard about the miscarriage of justice in the case of Trayvon Martin. It seems that he was tribally at risk in this society, being young, black, and male. The most succinct analysis I saw was a headline in Al Jazeera English: “In the Trial of Trayvon Martin, the US is found Guilty.”
And even as we rejoiced at the decisions about prop 8 and DOMA, a vital section in the voting rights act was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The Court cut out the heart of the of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, freeing nine mostly Southern states, to change their election laws however they might wish, without federal approval.
The current system, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, is “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.” Of course they don’t. Because there is no racism in our country today- and certainly not in the South!
In a further victory in the War on the Poor, last week the House of Representatives passed the Farm Bill, and in an unprecedented act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, was entirely struck out, stranding the millions of families who depend of it. Republican leaders said the revised bill merely strips out “extraneous” provisions that would prevent the bill from passing.
But the 47 million people who are on SNAP are not extraneous. They are important. They are part of our community. They are our brothers and out sisters. Our own California Democrat Barbara Lee called this a “new low” for the House of Representatives.
In other news, in our continuing war on the young, Federal Stafford subsidized student loans rates were recently doubled, making it even more impossible for the less than wealthy to get a decent education- particularly considering skyrocketing tuition costs. Curious about what this will actually mean for the US government (I know what it will mean for students) I found that the projected profit from these loans for the US government in 2013 is a staggering 51 billion dollars! Exxon’s projected profit is only 44 billion! This I find astonishing. The government is milking its young like a heard of cows. We used to do just the opposite, at least here in California. We used to offer free tuition, so that everyone, regardless of economic status, could get a good education, for the good of the students, for the good of the people, and for the good of the country! Those days are apparently long gone.
Well, finally we come to the latest salvo in the War on Women. The House GOP just passed the most radical federal anti-choice bill we've seen in a decade- legislation could set us back to the sixties in terms of women’s reproductive rights.
And even though it is unlikely that the bill will see the light of day given the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House, it has rekindled the war on choice and the War on Women. Since anyone with enough money can always get an abortion, this is really a war on poor women.
All of these things all sound to me like that trampling of the needy, and bringing to ruin the poor of the land that Amos rails against. Like buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling them the sweepings of the wheat.
It could be that the authors of all these travesties are suffering from a famine- Amos’s promised famine of the word of God. The word that speaks of compassion, mercy, grace, generosity and the constantly offered commandment to care for the poor and marginalized. It is, of course, most frustrating when these victims of drought proclaim themselves to be thoroughly Christian, which, unfortunately, is often the case.
Now, let me pause in my Old Testament-style ravings, to consider Jesus of Nazareth. In our reading from Luke today, we see a portrait more compassionate than mine of one who suffers from a drought of the word of God. Martha, like many of us, just wants to get things done, and get them done her way. She sees her sister as somewhat misled, perhaps lazy, and simply wants Jesus to set her straight.
Both Martha and Mary are in the presence if Jesus. This would seem an unimaginable privilege to most of us. But Martha, like so many of us, is “distracted by her many tasks”, all of which seem so much more important than what Mary is doing. Even as the voice of Jesus sounds in her ears, she is distracted and worried and determined that Mary should be so too.
Mary, living in the radical patriarchy of first century Judaism, is studying at the feet of Jesus, shockingly oblivious to tradition, with Jesus’ blessing. She has lived all her life with a poverty of the word, with no opportunity to be with a teacher, any teacher, let alone the master of masters. But now she has won the role of the disciple and she has, as Jesus says, taken the better part.
Martha wants her to leave this holy place at the feet of Jesus, and join her in the place a woman should rightfully hold- slaving in the kitchen! Like Martha, so many of us feel that we know. We feel that the word of God is just too difficult to hear, and so we surge forth with our many tasks. We surge forth, missing the sound of Jesus’ voice, gently urging us to drop our myriad chores, to sit at his feet, to stop trying to disrupt the bliss of our sisters or brothers, and listen to the word of God, the sound we were created to hear.
Amen
Clothed and at the Feet of Jesus
Good Shepherd, Berkeley 5/23/13
Psalm 42 and 43 • Isaiah 65:1-9 and
Psalm 22:19-28 • Galatians 3:23-29
• Luke 8:26-39
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Of all the poor unfortunate souls Jesus came to heal, it seems that the Gerasene demoniac is the most desperate case of all. He is so despised, so lowly and damned, that he seems to be a hopeless case. We learn that he has had a long history of demonic possession. He lives in the tombs- the most shockingly unclean abode imaginable- and he has not a shred of clothing to his name. The demon’s name is Legion- indicating that the demons possessing this poor man number 6,000. He is bound and shackled, and, as the demoniac is often cast out into the wilderness by his legion of demons, he is constantly watched over by a guard. And yet grace comes to the demoniac, and he is set free.
The story is powerful because even this most wretched soul, this most hopeless case, is not beyond redemption, not beyond the power of God to save. At the end of the story, he is clothed, and sitting at the feet of Jesus, in his right mind.
At times I have felt that the world in general seems to be possessed by at least 6,000 demons, is certainly not in its right mind, and is, basically, a hopeless case.
But just lately, like the sun breaking through thunderclouds, like 6,000 demons fleeing a possessed man, it seems that some kind of change is beginning to come.
Some of the most entrenched and unmovable institutions in our world today seem to be going a strange and invisible exorcism.
Now I have great respect for the Catholic Church as a whole, and the great work done by so many of that faith. And I have many beloved Catholic friends. But there is no denying that at least the leadership of the Catholic Church has not had social justice and the needs of the poor on the very top if its priority list. And there has been obstruction and harassment of the one group in the Catholic Church that most clearly does the work of Jesus- the nuns, God bless them.
And we have long come to expect obliviousness to the welfare of certain sectors of the world’s population. For example, those of us who have sexual orientations that are not traditional, women who do not want to have children, and those who want to be ordained, but do not fit the model of the church’s requirements.
But possibly, just possibly, some kind of dawn seems to be breaking. Pope Frances has used the words of Jesus in his sermons, imploring Catholics world-wide to take care of the poor, to lose their addiction to money, to “foster a heart that loves, a heart that suffers, a heart that rejoices with others, a heart full of tenderness for those who bear the wounds of life and feel like they are on the periphery of society.” Most astonishingly, he has said that, “ A Christian who is not a revolutionary today is not a Christian.”
Possibly of interest to us here at Good Shepherd, he points out that unlike the parable of the 99 sheep safe in the fold with the one lost sheep still out there, we as religious institutions only have one sheep in the fold and 99 are out there! It is tempting, he says, to stay home with that little sheep, combing and caressing it. However, we are called to be shepherds, he says, not hairdressers to sheep. The new Pope also is strikingly anti-capitalistic- as Jesus was.
In a similar revelation, Exodus International has closed its doors. This organization has long been in the business of tormenting gay men and their families with the absurd proposition that the men might be “cured” and turned into heterosexuals. Alan Chambers, an apparently gay, or bisexual man who is the International president of the organization, has issued a long apology. He said, in part,
"I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts that stigmatized parents. …I am sorry that I failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. "
Most incredibly, he said,
"I am profoundly sorry that many have walked away from their faith and that some have chosen to end their lives. For the rest of my life I will proclaim nothing but the whole truth of the Gospel, one of grace, mercy and open invitation to all to enter into an in severable relationship with almighty God."
Exodus international did their awful work for almost 40 years. Well, better late than never! There are also more and more reports that Evangelical Churches- especially the young members- are increasingly accepting of LBGTQ people. Ten years ago I had a young Evangelical man from a Christian college on my team at Sojourn Chaplaincy at San Francisco General. He was very vocal about how he saw gay men. “I hate the sin but love the sinner,” he said, clearly seeing this as a highly progressive approach. Unfortunately one of the other team members was an out gay man, and did not see it that way. I rejoice to think that if this happened today, that young man, only 21, might have had a very different approach.
Like the towns people in our Gospel story, we might have difficulty in accepting these miracles. We might have difficulty in accepting that the work of the Spirit seems to be seeping into the consciousness of the most unlikely institutions.
We have longed for these changes. Like our psalmist, when our souls were cast down, when we felt a taunting from our adversaries, when we felt a deadly wound in our bodies, we longed for this evidence of Grace as a deer longs for running water.
This rush toward justice, toward equality, calls to mind the words of Paul, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, no longer male and female, “ and, I add words that I feel belong so well, “There is no longer gay and straight.” It is dizzying to imagine what impact a newly enlightened Evangelical Church, let alone a new Pope could have in the world today.
The responses to Jesus’ miraculous exorcism in our Gospel are varied. The swineherds run off and tell it in the city and in the country. The people who came out to see what had happened were afraid. And all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes were so terrified that they asked Jesus to leave them.
But the man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might stay with Jesus. Jesus sends him away, without really sending him away. He sends him out to proclaim throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
He was no longer imprisoned. He was no longer stuffed with demons. We may be experiencing something like this worldwide- a release from our demons, a sudden blow by the grace of God.
And when this happens, will we be afraid of these transformations? Will we be jealous of them? Will we be skeptical? Or will we cherish them, fall down before this glorious grace, and maybe even tell those multitudes still untouched by the Spirit, that we are no longer imprisoned, no longer naked and homeless, but that we are all clothed with Christ, and all, all, children of God.
Amen.
Ruach Elohim
Good Shepherd, Berkeley 5/19/13
Acts 2:1-21 ;• John 14:8-17, (25-27)
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
After the resurrection, after the sighting of the Risen Christ, after the ascension of Jesus, the surviving disciples didn’t seem to know what to do. The Book of Acts tells us that the eleven (12 minus Judas) came down from the Mount of Olives and met in that upper room again, devoting themselves to prayer. All eleven disciples are named “together with certain women, (unnamed) including Mary, the mother of Jesus.” Peter takes the lead and affirms that they have to choose a twelfth member to replace Judas. It occurs to no one, of course to nominate any of the women. So they cast lots and Matthias is elected. The ragged band of followers now numbers 120 souls.
It has been 50 days since the Passover, and the Jewish Festival of Weeks, the ancient harvest festival is upon them. The Greek word for this feast is which also commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, is Pentecost.
Suddenly, in that upper room, something thunderous, otherworldly and elemental began to rush around them. It seemed to be the same Spirit of God, the same Ruach Elohim that moved over the waters in creation. And it created them into something else. They found themselves on fire with it, burning with it, and transformed by it.
And then, in a strange reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel, where language confuses and isolates, the disciples can suddenly speak every language of every pilgrim in Jerusalem. Remember they are inside, and upstairs, so they must have been even louder than that rushing wind, as people on the street can easily hear them and even understand exactly what they are saying. They were so loud and so spirit-filled that people naturally thought they were drunk.
Brushing off their ignorance, and, filled with the Spirit himself, Peter “stands up with the eleven” (I guess Matthias was still too green) and unleashes his beautiful sermon. He begins with the words of the prophet Joel, which leaves no uncertainty that the gift of prophecy is one that is given to all people.
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
Because of certain events of late, I have been thinking about another band of eleven disciples, who were as surely lit up by the Holy Spirit, as surely moved by the force of the Ruach Elohim as the twelve in the Pentecost story.
In 1974, eleven deacons, filled with the Holy Spirit, were given the courage to go to the Philadelphia Church of the Advocate, another name for the Holy Spirit, and get ordained. The ordaining bishops knew that these were “irregular ordinations,” but these bishops and the women they ordained were so surrounded and enveloped by the Holy Spirit, that they could not hear the loud complaints over the rushing of that Pentecostal wind.
As in a wedding ceremony, the presider was required to ask: “If there be any of you who knoweth any impediment, or notable crime " in any of the women to be ordained priest, "let him come forth in the name of God and show what the crime or impediment is. “
Obligingly, Rev. Canon Charles H. Osborn stood and said, "The proceedings here enacted are unlawful and schismatical constituting a grave injury to the peace of Christ's Church."
The Rev. R. Dewitt Mallory, New York City, begged the assembly "not to shatter the unity and peace of our Church, " but rather, "to obey the will of the Church.”
The Rev. George W. Rutler, of Pennsylvania, said, "You do not gain 11 priests today, but you lose four bishops… God here now as father and judge … sees you trying to make stones into bread. You can only offer up the smell and sound and sight of perversion. "
The flabbergasted clergy at the ordination were as amazed and perplexed as the crowd in the Pentecost story. They needed a preacher like Peter, and they got one.
The Spirit moved Charles Willie, the preacher at the event, to say that he participated in the service not because he wanted to speak out but because he could not remain silent.
“It was an unjust law of the state," he said, "that demeaned the personhood of blacks by requiring them to move to the back of the bus, and it is an unjust law of the church which demeans women by denying them the opportunity to be priests."
Bishop Ramos, of Costa Rica then said, “This ordination event stands as a prophetic witness on behalf of and for the oppressed. It is an act of disobedience, done to abolish a system of canon law … which can no longer stand the judgment of the liberating Christ."
There was one among the eleven who continued to prophesy all her life. Katrina Wells Swanson, who was ordained by her father, Bishop Wells, never stopped fighting for justice for oppressed peoples. She worked faithfully for seventeen years as an inner-city priest, celebrating a bi-lingual Eucharist, and founding a school for inner-city children that grew to be one hundred strong. She died of cancer in 2006, but before she did, she had visions and she dreamed dreams.
The Equal Rights Amendment went down in flames while Katrina was still alive, and she realized it would be a long and harrowing struggle to pass it. I read that it was during the devastation of the hurricane that bore her name that Katrina peacefully passed away. At that very moment, her namesake hurricane, another violent rush of wind, revealed how brutally the poor and oppressed are treated in this country.
These events have special significance to us here at Good Shepherd because within our own flock is another pioneer woman priest who endured protest at her ordination, not so very long after that of the Philadelphia 11. And also within our flock is the daughter-in-law of Katrina Wells Swanson, who fights on, tirelessly, for Katrina’s Dream.
We here at Good Shepherd Church have the poor and oppressed right under our noses. What languages do we need to speak, what wind of the Spirit is rushing around us that we need to take note of?
When I walked the neighborhood to let people know about our progress with the church, I heard many languages. I saw Yolanda coming out of her house, 3 doors from our church, with her 3-year-old granddaughter. I know them both because they always come to our free Friday lunches. She was sweet and chatty, and I could follow her swift Spanish enough to understand that she was begging me to hire her to clean my house. I guess she would have brought her little girl with her. I heard and I understood the language of poverty.
At the next house I saw a business-like man darting into his front door. “Do you live here?” I said. “I don’t know what you are selling, but I am not buying it.” He said.
“I’m not selling anything, I just want to let people know about the progress of the rebuilding of the church.”
“We don’t go to church and we don’t care about that.” He said. “But it’s part of your neighborhood, its right on your block,” I said, handing him a flyer. He took it from me with an exasperated sigh and said he would show it to his partner.” I heard and I understood the language of indifference.
At the next house I was warmly greeted by our Buddhist neighbor, Barbara. She was very interested in the rebuilding of the church, and her eyes lit up suddenly- “I have something for you!” she said. She went and got a journal that she published, in which she had written an article about the fire. I learned, upon reading it that her husband had climbed up to the roof of their house and trained their water hose on our parish hall roof. He did that even as they were scrambling to gather possessions and evacuate in case the fire consumed their house as well. I heard and I understood the language of loving-kindness.
On Feb 4th we had a shooting one block from the church, and until recently there was a small shrine to the neighbor who died there. As I walked by I felt the shock of that day, and I felt in my bones the language of violence.
Finally I went back to my office in the parish hall and began to put away the flyers. Someone called from the door and I went out to see who it was. It was a disheveled man of about 50, gently asking if there was a hot lunch that day. “I’m so sorry, that was yesterday.” I’ll see what we might still have.”
I rummaged in our supplies and got him a box of granola bars that he ate so quickly it made my head spin. His gratitude was endless. I saw and I understood the language of homelessness and the language of hunger.
Listening to all these varied, confusing and daunting languages, we might be tempted to say, as Phillip did in our Gospel reading, “Just show us God and we will be satisfied.” We want to know- “Where is God in all of this?”
But instead, Jesus gives his peace to us, and bids our hearts to be untroubled. He promises to send, to those troubled hearts, the voice of the Holy Spirit, that we might hear and that we might understand. The Spirit will teach us everything, he promises, and will remind us of all that Jesus said to us.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Ashes, Ashes
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad, 2/22/12, Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10; Mt 6:1-6, 16-21
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Our readings for Ash Wednesday leave no doubt as to the seriousness of our situation. We have a fatal diagnosis. We are all going to die.
The great dramatic effect of our Old testament reading gives us shivers with it’s assurance of doom:
“…a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.”
I suppose you could see death like that. An army whose like has never been seen, a fact that no amount of fighting or wishing or praying will defeat. How can we live with this fact? We are all going to die.
In the Tebetan Buddhist tradition, it is seen as a very important practice to contemplate your own death. It is thought that it is only by truly realizing that we will indeed die will we realize how precious and short life is. And it is to be hoped that, knowing this, we will do what we can to live life fully- to make it meaningful.
And by understanding the death process and familiarizing ourselves with it, we can potentially remove fear at the time of death. This, in the Tibetan tradition, ensures a good rebirth. For us it might enable us to have a good death and passage into the afterlife. Traditionally, in Buddhist countries, one is actually encouraged to go to a cemetery or burial ground to contemplate death and become familiar with this inevitable event.
Our Old Testament readings mean to thunder at us until we rush to repentance before our own personal day of the Lord will come. We are urged to repent, both in our Psalm and in our reading from Corinthians. We all hope that may do this before the hour of our death, but better late than never.
Jesus words, however seem to speak to the way we should live our lives now. It even warns against over-piety in our prayers and fasts. The advice is put simply and so beautifully:
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal;
6:20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.
6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Jesus leaves it up to us to figure out how we are to “store up for ourselves” treasures in heaven.” From everything else he has said it is a good bet that he too is speaking about repentance, but repentance perhaps without the baggage. The Greek word for it is metanoia- transformation. Transforming from our almost irresistible tendency to store up stuff that rots, to learning habits which transmit love. Or, as the Buddhists would have it, loving-kindness.
There is a beautiful side to all this. We are dust and to dust we will return, but we are also the stuff that stars are made of- the stuff of our great Mother Earth, materials infinite and eternal.
My father was cremated last week, and I had to think about how much he, the geologist and soil scientist would have enjoyed the fact that his body is surely returning to the earth. I listened to a tape my brother recorded 5 weeks before my father died, and much of it was all about the earth, soil science, hiking in nature, his brother’s example going before him into the field of soil science, how much he loved the science of the earth.
I remember when I was in 4th grade my father gave me a whole tray of soil samples in little glass vials to bring to my classroom. Some kid made fun of me, saying, “Esther’s father is a dirt scientist.” Even then, I know that was not an accurate way of looking at things. I loved those little samples: sand, loam, humus, clay. Not bad company for the body to return to. These of course are the elements that make things grow- that make things resurrect, and that is the hope of repentance, of metanoia. We have to let old things, old habits, old shackles die and fall away to live the kind of life we might be proud of on that great day.
I recently heard a song, at a birthday party of all places:
When you were born you cried, and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die
The world will cry, and you will rejoice.
Amen.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10; Mt 6:1-6, 16-21
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Our readings for Ash Wednesday leave no doubt as to the seriousness of our situation. We have a fatal diagnosis. We are all going to die.
The great dramatic effect of our Old testament reading gives us shivers with it’s assurance of doom:
“…a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.”
I suppose you could see death like that. An army whose like has never been seen, a fact that no amount of fighting or wishing or praying will defeat. How can we live with this fact? We are all going to die.
In the Tebetan Buddhist tradition, it is seen as a very important practice to contemplate your own death. It is thought that it is only by truly realizing that we will indeed die will we realize how precious and short life is. And it is to be hoped that, knowing this, we will do what we can to live life fully- to make it meaningful.
And by understanding the death process and familiarizing ourselves with it, we can potentially remove fear at the time of death. This, in the Tibetan tradition, ensures a good rebirth. For us it might enable us to have a good death and passage into the afterlife. Traditionally, in Buddhist countries, one is actually encouraged to go to a cemetery or burial ground to contemplate death and become familiar with this inevitable event.
Our Old Testament readings mean to thunder at us until we rush to repentance before our own personal day of the Lord will come. We are urged to repent, both in our Psalm and in our reading from Corinthians. We all hope that may do this before the hour of our death, but better late than never.
Jesus words, however seem to speak to the way we should live our lives now. It even warns against over-piety in our prayers and fasts. The advice is put simply and so beautifully:
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal;
6:20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.
6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Jesus leaves it up to us to figure out how we are to “store up for ourselves” treasures in heaven.” From everything else he has said it is a good bet that he too is speaking about repentance, but repentance perhaps without the baggage. The Greek word for it is metanoia- transformation. Transforming from our almost irresistible tendency to store up stuff that rots, to learning habits which transmit love. Or, as the Buddhists would have it, loving-kindness.
There is a beautiful side to all this. We are dust and to dust we will return, but we are also the stuff that stars are made of- the stuff of our great Mother Earth, materials infinite and eternal.
My father was cremated last week, and I had to think about how much he, the geologist and soil scientist would have enjoyed the fact that his body is surely returning to the earth. I listened to a tape my brother recorded 5 weeks before my father died, and much of it was all about the earth, soil science, hiking in nature, his brother’s example going before him into the field of soil science, how much he loved the science of the earth.
I remember when I was in 4th grade my father gave me a whole tray of soil samples in little glass vials to bring to my classroom. Some kid made fun of me, saying, “Esther’s father is a dirt scientist.” Even then, I know that was not an accurate way of looking at things. I loved those little samples: sand, loam, humus, clay. Not bad company for the body to return to. These of course are the elements that make things grow- that make things resurrect, and that is the hope of repentance, of metanoia. We have to let old things, old habits, old shackles die and fall away to live the kind of life we might be proud of on that great day.
I recently heard a song, at a birthday party of all places:
When you were born you cried, and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die
The world will cry, and you will rejoice.
Amen.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Powerless
Genesis 9:8-17 • Psalm 25:1-10 • 1 Peter 3:18-22 • Mark 1:9-15
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 2/26/12
When I hear the words of our Gospel reading, I feel that we are all being included in the life of Christ. First of all, for some reason, which no one really understands, Jesus had to be baptized like any sinner. In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, he insists on it after John tried to get out of baptizing him. Then, at the moment that Jesus emerges from the water, God says to him, as he says to all of us if we just get quiet enough to listen,
“You are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.”
And just at this transcendentally perfect moment, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, which so often seems to happen in real life. And Jesus, just like us, is tempted, as he struggles to survive in that wilderness.
Our reading today is from the Gospel of Mark, but in the Gospel of Matthew many more details are provided about these temptations. And they sound familiar. First of all, Jesus is really hungry, and he is tempted. But he resists temptation with the help of a little scripture. He chooses the word of God instead of eating a stone. Always a better choice.
Then the devil leads Jesus to the very pinnacle of the temple, and temps him to jump off. Jesus does not jump, although, if we are to believe the scripture, he is tempted. Lastly, Jesus’ Messiah complex is challenged.
The devil again brings him to a very high place, where he can look down on all the kingdoms of the world. “All these I will give you, says Satan, if you will fall down and worship me.” Once again, Jesus, although tempted, does not fall.
I have been very familiar with addiction all my life, because even as a child, I was aware of my father’s alcoholism. I never took to alcohol, perhaps because of my father’s negative example, and although I came of age in the sixties, I never took to drugs in a serious way. When my boyfriend would go to Haight Ashbury to get drugs, like any self-respecting hippie, I would sneak down to the corner liquor store to buy- snicker bars!
The year I left home for my gap year in the Tenderloin, I gained 60 pounds. Sugar was my drug of choice, and I really could not stop eating it. This may not sound like a serious problem to you, but early in life I became aware of another negative example that frightened me ALMOST enough to make me stop. My grandmother, an artist, singer, poet and musician, ballooned up to 300 pounds, and, according to my father, was always trying to “reduce.” Obviously she could not. She eventually solved the problem in the most tragic of ways, by committing suicide when she was 42. I have her genes, I did not want to share her fate.
All of us here are familiar with temptation. Some of us have been lucky enough to name and accept and find a program for our temptations. But the more I learn about the 12 steps the more I believe that we all need them. If nothing else, we all seem to have an addiction to toxic modes of thinking that are not only encouraged but almost required by our society. Our culture brilliantly plays the part of Satan all the time. We are made to feel unworthy, made to feel that we must acquire stuff to become worthy, and made to feel that it is proper and right to then feel superior to those who have not acquired the stuff/looks/house/job that we have killed ourselves to obtain. As a culture, have eaten the stone, jumped off the pinnacle AND accepted the wrong kind of worship.
I have been reading a beautiful book called "Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps" by Richard Rohr. If you have an addiction, the 12 step philosophy maintains that it never goes away. Even in recovery, the water is still over your head, but you learn to breathe underwater. This may seem like an impossibility, like a miracle in fact, and that is what it is.
My father died recently, and so I have been pondering my lineage and the good and bad things I have inherited. Several personality types keep appearing again and again in my ancestry: Priests, alcoholics and artists. Appropriately enough, I have one brother who is a filmmaking artist, one who is an alcoholic, and I am the sugar-addicted priest. My father was something of all three, even though he did not believe in God.
But I think my first addiction, like so many is the addiction to negative thinking. This is from "Breathing Under Water"
We keep doing the same thing over and over again, even if it not working for us. That is the self-destructive, even “demonic” nature of all addiction and negative thinking, in particular. We think we are our thinking, and we even take that thinking as utterly true… We really are our worst enemies. It seems that humans would sooner die than change or admit they are mistaken.”
The destination, the end result of surrendering our negative thinking to God, is that we are able to fully live in the grace that is, in fact, all around us. As Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, “The winds of grace are always blowing- we have only to put up our sails.” Richard Roher describes the reality of the addictive mind as being like the child of a very rich family, who, nonetheless, insists on living in rags. And Jesus was always calling himself the bridegroom because it is the bridegroom who invites us to the great wedding banquet. This is our birthright- to live in that kind of abundance.
The first step of AA is “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.” There are so many things to be addicted to that one might just say, “Admitted that we were powerless over __, and that our lives had become unmanageable.” It seems that we have to have some kind of “death”- we call it a bottom in the 12 step programs- that makes us able to be born again. Very much like the dying with Christ and then being reborn in baptism. It is the death of the ego, and it is no easy task. I reached my bottom by weighing about 180 pounds- that is what it took to get me into recovery. For some it takes much more, for some, less. And certainly being religious is not necessarily enough to get you there. An often quoted phrase I have heard is that “Religion is for people who want to go to heaven. Spirituality (here I would say the 12 step program) is for people who have been to hell and back.” Richard Roher gives a good description of the need to reach bottom before you can be saved:
Until you bottom out and come to the limits of your own fuel supply, there is no reason for you to switch to a higher octane of fuel… unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot “manage” you will never find the true manager.
That higher octane of fuel, of course is God. But the genius of the 12 steps is that they do not exclude anyone, including the atheist or agnostic. And so God is always referred to as “God as you understand him.”
This is the power we surrender to, this is the one who takes control out of our death grip. This is the surrender that is the beginning of salvation. The Buddhists call it mindfulness. St. Paul called it the Mind of Christ. We might just call it serenity.
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 2/26/12
When I hear the words of our Gospel reading, I feel that we are all being included in the life of Christ. First of all, for some reason, which no one really understands, Jesus had to be baptized like any sinner. In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, he insists on it after John tried to get out of baptizing him. Then, at the moment that Jesus emerges from the water, God says to him, as he says to all of us if we just get quiet enough to listen,
“You are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.”
And just at this transcendentally perfect moment, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, which so often seems to happen in real life. And Jesus, just like us, is tempted, as he struggles to survive in that wilderness.
Our reading today is from the Gospel of Mark, but in the Gospel of Matthew many more details are provided about these temptations. And they sound familiar. First of all, Jesus is really hungry, and he is tempted. But he resists temptation with the help of a little scripture. He chooses the word of God instead of eating a stone. Always a better choice.
Then the devil leads Jesus to the very pinnacle of the temple, and temps him to jump off. Jesus does not jump, although, if we are to believe the scripture, he is tempted. Lastly, Jesus’ Messiah complex is challenged.
The devil again brings him to a very high place, where he can look down on all the kingdoms of the world. “All these I will give you, says Satan, if you will fall down and worship me.” Once again, Jesus, although tempted, does not fall.
I have been very familiar with addiction all my life, because even as a child, I was aware of my father’s alcoholism. I never took to alcohol, perhaps because of my father’s negative example, and although I came of age in the sixties, I never took to drugs in a serious way. When my boyfriend would go to Haight Ashbury to get drugs, like any self-respecting hippie, I would sneak down to the corner liquor store to buy- snicker bars!
The year I left home for my gap year in the Tenderloin, I gained 60 pounds. Sugar was my drug of choice, and I really could not stop eating it. This may not sound like a serious problem to you, but early in life I became aware of another negative example that frightened me ALMOST enough to make me stop. My grandmother, an artist, singer, poet and musician, ballooned up to 300 pounds, and, according to my father, was always trying to “reduce.” Obviously she could not. She eventually solved the problem in the most tragic of ways, by committing suicide when she was 42. I have her genes, I did not want to share her fate.
All of us here are familiar with temptation. Some of us have been lucky enough to name and accept and find a program for our temptations. But the more I learn about the 12 steps the more I believe that we all need them. If nothing else, we all seem to have an addiction to toxic modes of thinking that are not only encouraged but almost required by our society. Our culture brilliantly plays the part of Satan all the time. We are made to feel unworthy, made to feel that we must acquire stuff to become worthy, and made to feel that it is proper and right to then feel superior to those who have not acquired the stuff/looks/house/job that we have killed ourselves to obtain. As a culture, have eaten the stone, jumped off the pinnacle AND accepted the wrong kind of worship.
I have been reading a beautiful book called "Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps" by Richard Rohr. If you have an addiction, the 12 step philosophy maintains that it never goes away. Even in recovery, the water is still over your head, but you learn to breathe underwater. This may seem like an impossibility, like a miracle in fact, and that is what it is.
My father died recently, and so I have been pondering my lineage and the good and bad things I have inherited. Several personality types keep appearing again and again in my ancestry: Priests, alcoholics and artists. Appropriately enough, I have one brother who is a filmmaking artist, one who is an alcoholic, and I am the sugar-addicted priest. My father was something of all three, even though he did not believe in God.
But I think my first addiction, like so many is the addiction to negative thinking. This is from "Breathing Under Water"
We keep doing the same thing over and over again, even if it not working for us. That is the self-destructive, even “demonic” nature of all addiction and negative thinking, in particular. We think we are our thinking, and we even take that thinking as utterly true… We really are our worst enemies. It seems that humans would sooner die than change or admit they are mistaken.”
The destination, the end result of surrendering our negative thinking to God, is that we are able to fully live in the grace that is, in fact, all around us. As Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, “The winds of grace are always blowing- we have only to put up our sails.” Richard Roher describes the reality of the addictive mind as being like the child of a very rich family, who, nonetheless, insists on living in rags. And Jesus was always calling himself the bridegroom because it is the bridegroom who invites us to the great wedding banquet. This is our birthright- to live in that kind of abundance.
The first step of AA is “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.” There are so many things to be addicted to that one might just say, “Admitted that we were powerless over __, and that our lives had become unmanageable.” It seems that we have to have some kind of “death”- we call it a bottom in the 12 step programs- that makes us able to be born again. Very much like the dying with Christ and then being reborn in baptism. It is the death of the ego, and it is no easy task. I reached my bottom by weighing about 180 pounds- that is what it took to get me into recovery. For some it takes much more, for some, less. And certainly being religious is not necessarily enough to get you there. An often quoted phrase I have heard is that “Religion is for people who want to go to heaven. Spirituality (here I would say the 12 step program) is for people who have been to hell and back.” Richard Roher gives a good description of the need to reach bottom before you can be saved:
Until you bottom out and come to the limits of your own fuel supply, there is no reason for you to switch to a higher octane of fuel… unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot “manage” you will never find the true manager.
That higher octane of fuel, of course is God. But the genius of the 12 steps is that they do not exclude anyone, including the atheist or agnostic. And so God is always referred to as “God as you understand him.”
This is the power we surrender to, this is the one who takes control out of our death grip. This is the surrender that is the beginning of salvation. The Buddhists call it mindfulness. St. Paul called it the Mind of Christ. We might just call it serenity.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Luminous
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley 2/19/12
Kings 2:1-12 • Psalm 50:1-6 • 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 • Mark 9:2-9
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Today is transfiguration Sunday. Every year I see this Sunday as a kind of great galactic burst of light before the dark and germinating forty days of Lent. I felt somewhat challenged this week to preach about the glorious mountaintop experience of the transfiguration, since my father’s death was only three weeks ago, and I have been intermittently visiting the valley of the shadow of death.
But I am glad to say that amidst the mourning I have experienced a new perspective- I only remember the good and luminous things about my father, as is so often the case when you lose someone. I treasure the time I got to spend with him, and I thank God that it was such an amazingly long time- he lived to be 89 and was absolutely lucid right to the very end.
My father was a life-long atheist, but I had no doubt at all that he would be welcomed into the loving arms of God. His name after all, is David, or, in Hebrew, Dovid, meaning, “the beloved.” And I imagined that once he woke up into the next world, in the living presence of God, he would have the surprise of his life! I even imagined that he might be somewhat annoyed to have his atheism proven wrong.
The day that he died I initially felt OK. I felt that I had done my grieving when I heard that he was in hospice care, and anyway there had been all those death bed visits when he revived, again and again. And it was certainly time. But then evening fell and it began to get dark. I was seized by fear and I realized that I had never had to make it through the night without my father. I remembered C.S. Lewis’ striking first sentence in his amazing book, “A Grief Observed.”
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness… I keep on swallowing.
My father was a geologist, who had a great love of the bursting glory of the cosmos above and around us. I remember my father first showing me the milky way out in a field on a snowy night in Ithaca New York, when all the stars were out. He explained that our view was from within the galaxy, and so the milky way was just the thickness of the multitudes of stars as we gazed through the breadth of the great spiral. I remember lying down in that same field in the summer with my father and brothers, just waiting and watching until we saw a shooting star. I remember my father first telling me that the sun was a star and the earth was a planet and the moon was, well, a moon.
Since I had in-house lecturer on Astronomy, Geology and Physical science from the time I can first remember hearing words until I was 18 and fled from home, my interest in science was eventually dulled. But now when I hear people talking about science, about astronomy, when I hear the new concepts in particle physics and string theory (pet loves of my husband’s) I am drawn to the science, because it reminds me of my dad. Perhaps, in spite of myself, like Elisha, I am to inherit a double (or at least a single) share of my father’s spirit.
I sometimes feel that as a religious people we should be uniquely qualified to believe in some of the most far-fetched scientific theories. If we can accept the infinite nature of God, God’s love, God’s power, God’s strength, as described today in our psalm, we should have no problem believing in the infinite nature of the universe. Or many of the more fantastic and glorious notions of modern science.
Last week I heard an explanation of the theory of the Holographic Universe. This has become a particularly favorite of mine, brought to us by Quantum Mechanics. It yields a surprisingly God-like picture of the universe. The theory of the holographic universe was inspired by the discovery that when any object enters a black hole out in space, all of the information about that particular object is somehow recorded on the surface of the black hole (what they call the “event horizon”) after it goes in. And apparently, the magic of string theory allows that ALL of the information for all that is or will be or has ever been is recorded- sort of “painted” on some surface boundary of the universe- the “cosmological horizon.” And even more incredibly, our living reality is quite possibly a projected hologram of that information. All that was is and ever will be. If all the information that ever was or ever will be could be seen as the mind of God, could it be said that we, and all around us are the thoughts of God? Or the luminescent dreams of God, lovingly and eternally projected forth?
Way back in 1930, before string theory was a twinkle (or a loop) in anyone’s eye, James Hopwood Jeans wrote: “The stream of [scientific] knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”
Jeans felt that consciousness came first, then the matter it created. Consciousness like the infinite scroll of information “painted” on the cosmological horizon- the “tent” of the universe.
The last time I saw my father I asked if I could give him a blessing. He always said yes and always seemed grateful and touched. Since I felt I could not mention God at the death bed of this devout Atheist, I prayed that the earth, that he loved so much, would give him its balance and beauty and peace, and that the cosmos that so delighted him would support him and love him and give him energy and light.
If grief is like one of those great black holes in the universe, then what is the information left on the outside? What remains from that which vanishes? We live on the surface, where all the precious information still abides- the face of our loved one- their smile, their stories, their loves, their passions. They are with us still, maybe not in the same bodily way, maybe more like a transfigured dream of them, glowing in our memory, keeping the their very shape and colors in our hearts and minds .
I have just been looking through my albums for pictures of my father. I found a great one taken when he was in the best of heath, at 31 years old, when my whole family had just climbed a mountain in New Hampshire. His hands are on his knees as he sits on the top of the mountain, beaming this enormous smile. I was, like Peter, basically thunderstruck at his radiance, and, like Peter, I tried to quantify and house the experience of him by some futile gesture. My father immediately turned his ever-present camera on me and said, what are you doing?
“Counting your feet.” I said. And sure enough, another picture shows me, at five years old, with my counting finger out, pointing to one of his boots. My mouth is open, saying either “one,” or “two,” measuring the dimensions of my infinite universe.
Kings 2:1-12 • Psalm 50:1-6 • 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 • Mark 9:2-9
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Today is transfiguration Sunday. Every year I see this Sunday as a kind of great galactic burst of light before the dark and germinating forty days of Lent. I felt somewhat challenged this week to preach about the glorious mountaintop experience of the transfiguration, since my father’s death was only three weeks ago, and I have been intermittently visiting the valley of the shadow of death.
But I am glad to say that amidst the mourning I have experienced a new perspective- I only remember the good and luminous things about my father, as is so often the case when you lose someone. I treasure the time I got to spend with him, and I thank God that it was such an amazingly long time- he lived to be 89 and was absolutely lucid right to the very end.
My father was a life-long atheist, but I had no doubt at all that he would be welcomed into the loving arms of God. His name after all, is David, or, in Hebrew, Dovid, meaning, “the beloved.” And I imagined that once he woke up into the next world, in the living presence of God, he would have the surprise of his life! I even imagined that he might be somewhat annoyed to have his atheism proven wrong.
The day that he died I initially felt OK. I felt that I had done my grieving when I heard that he was in hospice care, and anyway there had been all those death bed visits when he revived, again and again. And it was certainly time. But then evening fell and it began to get dark. I was seized by fear and I realized that I had never had to make it through the night without my father. I remembered C.S. Lewis’ striking first sentence in his amazing book, “A Grief Observed.”
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness… I keep on swallowing.
My father was a geologist, who had a great love of the bursting glory of the cosmos above and around us. I remember my father first showing me the milky way out in a field on a snowy night in Ithaca New York, when all the stars were out. He explained that our view was from within the galaxy, and so the milky way was just the thickness of the multitudes of stars as we gazed through the breadth of the great spiral. I remember lying down in that same field in the summer with my father and brothers, just waiting and watching until we saw a shooting star. I remember my father first telling me that the sun was a star and the earth was a planet and the moon was, well, a moon.
Since I had in-house lecturer on Astronomy, Geology and Physical science from the time I can first remember hearing words until I was 18 and fled from home, my interest in science was eventually dulled. But now when I hear people talking about science, about astronomy, when I hear the new concepts in particle physics and string theory (pet loves of my husband’s) I am drawn to the science, because it reminds me of my dad. Perhaps, in spite of myself, like Elisha, I am to inherit a double (or at least a single) share of my father’s spirit.
I sometimes feel that as a religious people we should be uniquely qualified to believe in some of the most far-fetched scientific theories. If we can accept the infinite nature of God, God’s love, God’s power, God’s strength, as described today in our psalm, we should have no problem believing in the infinite nature of the universe. Or many of the more fantastic and glorious notions of modern science.
Last week I heard an explanation of the theory of the Holographic Universe. This has become a particularly favorite of mine, brought to us by Quantum Mechanics. It yields a surprisingly God-like picture of the universe. The theory of the holographic universe was inspired by the discovery that when any object enters a black hole out in space, all of the information about that particular object is somehow recorded on the surface of the black hole (what they call the “event horizon”) after it goes in. And apparently, the magic of string theory allows that ALL of the information for all that is or will be or has ever been is recorded- sort of “painted” on some surface boundary of the universe- the “cosmological horizon.” And even more incredibly, our living reality is quite possibly a projected hologram of that information. All that was is and ever will be. If all the information that ever was or ever will be could be seen as the mind of God, could it be said that we, and all around us are the thoughts of God? Or the luminescent dreams of God, lovingly and eternally projected forth?
Way back in 1930, before string theory was a twinkle (or a loop) in anyone’s eye, James Hopwood Jeans wrote: “The stream of [scientific] knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”
Jeans felt that consciousness came first, then the matter it created. Consciousness like the infinite scroll of information “painted” on the cosmological horizon- the “tent” of the universe.
The last time I saw my father I asked if I could give him a blessing. He always said yes and always seemed grateful and touched. Since I felt I could not mention God at the death bed of this devout Atheist, I prayed that the earth, that he loved so much, would give him its balance and beauty and peace, and that the cosmos that so delighted him would support him and love him and give him energy and light.
If grief is like one of those great black holes in the universe, then what is the information left on the outside? What remains from that which vanishes? We live on the surface, where all the precious information still abides- the face of our loved one- their smile, their stories, their loves, their passions. They are with us still, maybe not in the same bodily way, maybe more like a transfigured dream of them, glowing in our memory, keeping the their very shape and colors in our hearts and minds .
I have just been looking through my albums for pictures of my father. I found a great one taken when he was in the best of heath, at 31 years old, when my whole family had just climbed a mountain in New Hampshire. His hands are on his knees as he sits on the top of the mountain, beaming this enormous smile. I was, like Peter, basically thunderstruck at his radiance, and, like Peter, I tried to quantify and house the experience of him by some futile gesture. My father immediately turned his ever-present camera on me and said, what are you doing?
“Counting your feet.” I said. And sure enough, another picture shows me, at five years old, with my counting finger out, pointing to one of his boots. My mouth is open, saying either “one,” or “two,” measuring the dimensions of my infinite universe.
Calling...
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14; 1 Cor. 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley 1/22/12
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
It seems that soon after Jesus emerged from the wilderness, having been tempted by Satan, and surrounded by wild beasts, he decided he did not want to go it alone.
He began to assemble his tribe soon after he emerged from the wilderness, perhaps becoming aware of how easily he could be approached by temptation when all on his own. Particularly after the death of John the Baptist, he must have felt the need to begin to create his own community.
He wasn’t very choosey about these first members of his tribe. Or maybe he was. Fishermen, like shepherds, were the uneducated, low-status and unpretentious equivalents of our truck drivers or street-sweepers. He was not looking for erudition, brilliance or ego. He was, perhaps, looking for faith, and for people willing to leave everything- if only because they had so little to leave. But still- their livelihood, their fathers.
I think as Christians, as people of compassion, we are constantly called away from that which we do not want to leave. We are called into community- called away from our material obsessions, called out of our technological worm holes.
I was musing about the meaning of my dependence on my Mac Book Pro, which sometimes seems like my little instant community, when I began to meditate on the apple symbol on the cover. It is not just a symbol of a apple, but of an apple with a bite taken out of it. This, of course, brings to mind a certain biblical story, whether or not that was the conscious aim of the designers. Not just the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, but specifically, the bite that was taken from the apple that hung on the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the fall from grace that it engendered. It made me think that we may have bitten off more than we can chew.
In the early church it was traditional to pray five times a day, as is still required by Islam. If you had a burning question, you might take it to God. You had five times a day to do that. I am sure I consult Google or Wikipedia five times a day. My dependence was unveiled last week in London. I had seen the initials IHS on the chalices in the Tower of London, and although I had learned this long before, and I knew they were Greek initials, I just couldn’t remember exactly what they stood for. Since my Iphone wouldn’t work in England, I had to ask several people in the tower itself. Although none of them knew the answer (except that it meant Jesus Christ, which should have been a big hint for me) I had several lovely conversations. When I got back to the states, and first sat down at my computer to look it up, I found that Wikipedia was on strike to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act. So I had to look it up in my Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. I was forced to speak to 2 humans and open a book because of my enforced fast from Wikipedia. It is a corruption of the first three Greek letters in the Greek name for Jesus- Iota, eta, sigma. Finally!
There is a kind of safety we find in true community which we do not actually find in the fraudulent communion of zinging electrons that sometimes pose as company, or even as “friends.” Sometimes I think that humans are not so very different from any herd featured in a National Geographic’s special. We are like that lovely flock of Wildebeests, hewing together, roaming over the hills and valleys in one great mass. It is the strays, the loners, who get picked off by the jackals, just as we are much more likely to get felled by depression or addiction when we stray too far from community. So we feel the call to stay with our herd, we sense the danger of an isolated life. This is one good reason we are called to come to church!
Bishop Gene Robinson, was asked why he went to Zocotti Park to participate in the Occupy Movement. He first of all said that, as a Bishop, he was always looking for God. And he saw something of God in this movement. He said that the Occupiers were trying to move away from the “every man woman and child for themselves” model, and back into community. He said it was the most peaceable kingdom he had ever participated in, with food and clothing being freely handed out, a library and think tank, a profusion of art in every imaginable form. He said the movement is being called to a time when my wellbeing depends on your well-being. A time of community.
Very recently, I experienced an unexpected call in the middle of my all-too short vacation in England. This journey did not end up being the vacation of my dreams. The first thing I was confronted with was that my daughter had chosen to follow a call of her own. Right in the middle of that beautiful face of hers, right under her perfectly shaped lower lip, there was now a big silver stud. It looked to me like the Mona Lisa had been slashed in half with a razor blade. But she had felt a call- perhaps a call to freedom from the good graces of her mother. I realized that if I had liked it would have ruined her required rite of individuation. So I was already off balance when the next strange thing happened which was a call for me to leave my family. My brother called to say that my father was dying in the ICU in Baltimore and that I should come home. This was a horrible choice. Do I leave my father, as it were, in the boat with the hired men, or do I stay with my family who I had reunited with only 3 days before? I have rushed to my father’s bedside (not a simple matter when you live 3,000 miles away) at least twice before, and he always perks up. The first time this happened was 15 years ago.
I remembered Jesus’ words to the disciple who wants to follow him, but had to bury his father. “Let the dead bury the dead.” Said Jesus, in one of his more severe moments.
But I followed the call. I left my family in York and sped down by train to Heathrow where I just missed the flight. I booked the next flight which was to leave in 6 hours. While at the airport I got on line and my niece had left me a message saying that my father had stabilized, and that I should go back to my family and come to Baltimore after the end of the vacation, which we did. Predictably, my father had revived, was very weak but absolutely lucid. But perhaps lucid in a different way. He saw me and said, unfortunately in the presence of my two brothers “You have an aura of love around you.” I found this very touching, and both my brothers found it hysterically funny. After I left, my brother sent me an e-mail saying: “Thank you so much for coming to Baltimore. And of course, thank you for your aura.
I was glad to be back in my community, in California
Maybe we should all be looking for God, like Bishop Robinson. And maybe we will find it in Community. We are all imperfect- more like Jonah than Jesus. Jonah refused the word of God, got swallowed by a whale, and it took him three days to figure out that he better start praying. Jonah was a different kind of fisherman- actually, I guess maybe he might be more in the category of bate! But he was called by God, as the fishermen were called by Jesus.
Jonah’s experiences with community were not great. He was thrown off a ship by his on-board community, and then, even as he succeeded in changing the hearts of the people of Nineveh, he boiled with anger when God chose not to punish them, as he had said he would do. In the end Jonah said he was angry enough to die.
But God continued to reason with Jonah, continued to provide him shelter and then remove it, as Jonah still had lessons to learn.
We are a community of imperfect disciples, sometimes making the right choice, often fishing in all the wrong places. But Jesus brings us the good news that our imperfections are not indelible. That he loves us precisely because of them. And that we can always experience metanoia, repentance, and that is what Jesus comes to bring us. He brings us not judgment, not even comfort, but the experience of transformation and the journey from isolation to communion, because the Kingdom of God has come near.
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley 1/22/12
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
It seems that soon after Jesus emerged from the wilderness, having been tempted by Satan, and surrounded by wild beasts, he decided he did not want to go it alone.
He began to assemble his tribe soon after he emerged from the wilderness, perhaps becoming aware of how easily he could be approached by temptation when all on his own. Particularly after the death of John the Baptist, he must have felt the need to begin to create his own community.
He wasn’t very choosey about these first members of his tribe. Or maybe he was. Fishermen, like shepherds, were the uneducated, low-status and unpretentious equivalents of our truck drivers or street-sweepers. He was not looking for erudition, brilliance or ego. He was, perhaps, looking for faith, and for people willing to leave everything- if only because they had so little to leave. But still- their livelihood, their fathers.
I think as Christians, as people of compassion, we are constantly called away from that which we do not want to leave. We are called into community- called away from our material obsessions, called out of our technological worm holes.
I was musing about the meaning of my dependence on my Mac Book Pro, which sometimes seems like my little instant community, when I began to meditate on the apple symbol on the cover. It is not just a symbol of a apple, but of an apple with a bite taken out of it. This, of course, brings to mind a certain biblical story, whether or not that was the conscious aim of the designers. Not just the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, but specifically, the bite that was taken from the apple that hung on the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the fall from grace that it engendered. It made me think that we may have bitten off more than we can chew.
In the early church it was traditional to pray five times a day, as is still required by Islam. If you had a burning question, you might take it to God. You had five times a day to do that. I am sure I consult Google or Wikipedia five times a day. My dependence was unveiled last week in London. I had seen the initials IHS on the chalices in the Tower of London, and although I had learned this long before, and I knew they were Greek initials, I just couldn’t remember exactly what they stood for. Since my Iphone wouldn’t work in England, I had to ask several people in the tower itself. Although none of them knew the answer (except that it meant Jesus Christ, which should have been a big hint for me) I had several lovely conversations. When I got back to the states, and first sat down at my computer to look it up, I found that Wikipedia was on strike to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act. So I had to look it up in my Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. I was forced to speak to 2 humans and open a book because of my enforced fast from Wikipedia. It is a corruption of the first three Greek letters in the Greek name for Jesus- Iota, eta, sigma. Finally!
There is a kind of safety we find in true community which we do not actually find in the fraudulent communion of zinging electrons that sometimes pose as company, or even as “friends.” Sometimes I think that humans are not so very different from any herd featured in a National Geographic’s special. We are like that lovely flock of Wildebeests, hewing together, roaming over the hills and valleys in one great mass. It is the strays, the loners, who get picked off by the jackals, just as we are much more likely to get felled by depression or addiction when we stray too far from community. So we feel the call to stay with our herd, we sense the danger of an isolated life. This is one good reason we are called to come to church!
Bishop Gene Robinson, was asked why he went to Zocotti Park to participate in the Occupy Movement. He first of all said that, as a Bishop, he was always looking for God. And he saw something of God in this movement. He said that the Occupiers were trying to move away from the “every man woman and child for themselves” model, and back into community. He said it was the most peaceable kingdom he had ever participated in, with food and clothing being freely handed out, a library and think tank, a profusion of art in every imaginable form. He said the movement is being called to a time when my wellbeing depends on your well-being. A time of community.
Very recently, I experienced an unexpected call in the middle of my all-too short vacation in England. This journey did not end up being the vacation of my dreams. The first thing I was confronted with was that my daughter had chosen to follow a call of her own. Right in the middle of that beautiful face of hers, right under her perfectly shaped lower lip, there was now a big silver stud. It looked to me like the Mona Lisa had been slashed in half with a razor blade. But she had felt a call- perhaps a call to freedom from the good graces of her mother. I realized that if I had liked it would have ruined her required rite of individuation. So I was already off balance when the next strange thing happened which was a call for me to leave my family. My brother called to say that my father was dying in the ICU in Baltimore and that I should come home. This was a horrible choice. Do I leave my father, as it were, in the boat with the hired men, or do I stay with my family who I had reunited with only 3 days before? I have rushed to my father’s bedside (not a simple matter when you live 3,000 miles away) at least twice before, and he always perks up. The first time this happened was 15 years ago.
I remembered Jesus’ words to the disciple who wants to follow him, but had to bury his father. “Let the dead bury the dead.” Said Jesus, in one of his more severe moments.
But I followed the call. I left my family in York and sped down by train to Heathrow where I just missed the flight. I booked the next flight which was to leave in 6 hours. While at the airport I got on line and my niece had left me a message saying that my father had stabilized, and that I should go back to my family and come to Baltimore after the end of the vacation, which we did. Predictably, my father had revived, was very weak but absolutely lucid. But perhaps lucid in a different way. He saw me and said, unfortunately in the presence of my two brothers “You have an aura of love around you.” I found this very touching, and both my brothers found it hysterically funny. After I left, my brother sent me an e-mail saying: “Thank you so much for coming to Baltimore. And of course, thank you for your aura.
I was glad to be back in my community, in California
Maybe we should all be looking for God, like Bishop Robinson. And maybe we will find it in Community. We are all imperfect- more like Jonah than Jesus. Jonah refused the word of God, got swallowed by a whale, and it took him three days to figure out that he better start praying. Jonah was a different kind of fisherman- actually, I guess maybe he might be more in the category of bate! But he was called by God, as the fishermen were called by Jesus.
Jonah’s experiences with community were not great. He was thrown off a ship by his on-board community, and then, even as he succeeded in changing the hearts of the people of Nineveh, he boiled with anger when God chose not to punish them, as he had said he would do. In the end Jonah said he was angry enough to die.
But God continued to reason with Jonah, continued to provide him shelter and then remove it, as Jonah still had lessons to learn.
We are a community of imperfect disciples, sometimes making the right choice, often fishing in all the wrong places. But Jesus brings us the good news that our imperfections are not indelible. That he loves us precisely because of them. And that we can always experience metanoia, repentance, and that is what Jesus comes to bring us. He brings us not judgment, not even comfort, but the experience of transformation and the journey from isolation to communion, because the Kingdom of God has come near.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Prophet in a Trenchcoat
The Spirit Has Anointed Me…
• Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
• Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55
• 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
• John 1:6-8, 19-28
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 12/11/11
As an Episcopal Priest in Berkeley, I not infrequently find myself at dinner tables or in group conversations with all kinds of people. And at the revelation that I am a priest, a kind of shocked and horrified silence often settles upon the crowd. And I hear all sorts of unsolicited opinions. Some that have been stated before they know I am a priest.
“All religion is absurd!” I hear.
“Why does there need to be a “magical being who controls everything?”
or “We don’t need God to be good people”
“More harm than good has been done in the name of religion”
“And finally, “You have no hold on reality”
Once I gather my tenuous hold on reality, I say,
“What a bleak world it must be, to believe only in science, to believe only what is visible, what is scientifically provable. What would we do without people of imagination, people of faith, people of the Spirit, what would we do without our prophets? What new invention could come into being without the inventor having imagination, taking a leap of faith, trusting in something that has not yet been proved, and that possibly never can be? What artwork would be created if everything had to have a logical and practical use and explanation and be proven to fit into the scientifically defined realm of reality?
And what force would help us to resist our human tendencies toward greed and self interest and spur us on to a compassionate and just world?”
None of these arguments particularly convince.
I am used to being around atheists here in Berkeley, and I am used to seeing intelligent people on the news or on talk shows who seem to share those views. So I was quite astonished to hear this from the brilliant comedian and writer of the priceless “The Daily Show,” John Steward. He said the following when referring to the great economic inequities in our country. “It’s not Christian!” Then recovering himself, he said, “Or Jewish or Muslim!” He himself is a Jew, married to a Catholic. Then soon after, on a different news show, I heard the wonderful and always controversial Keith Olberman say, when describing Michael Blomberg’s destruction of the Occupy Wall Street camp, exactly the same thing- “Its not Christian!” he bellowed.
But nothing surprised me more that the amazing words of the prophet Chris Hedges.
Chris Hedges is a modern day prophet, whom the Spirit of the Lord has surely anointed. He is a hugely talented, Pulitzer-prize-winning author, journalist and war correspondent, who is also, I found to my amazement, a faithful Christian. I had no idea of his religious background until he made an extraordinary speech, and I looked him up. Then I read that he had gone to seminary at Harvard Divinity School, and that his father was a Presbyterian minister. He has been absolutely fearless, as a prophet must be, covering wars all over the world, and seeing the inevitable horrors. He is quoted in the beginning of the award-winning film about the Iraq War, “The Hurt Locker:
"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."
And yet with all this experience, all this knowledge that would turn most people cynical, he has held on to his faith- in God and in humankind.
Chris Hedges wrote a book, as it turns out, called “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” which came out of a series of interviews he did with three prominent authors, who have been called “The New Atheists.”
Chris Hedges compares the new Atheists with the Christian Fundamentalists, in that the Atheists have made science an absolute religion, whose every word must be taken for absolute truth. They see nothing in shades of gray- everything is absolute- everything is black and white. There is no room for diversity of thought, diversity of belief.
Then I saw another astonishing piece written by Chris Hedges that truly had the passion and fiery certainty of an Old Testament Social Justice prophet, and the blazing heraldry of John the Baptizer proclaiming the coming of something great. This was a defense of the occupy movement, which was also a defense of Christianity, pointing out the great social justice movements in history have been inspired or led by religious leaders. He urges the church of today to embrace the Occupy movement- not let it die. The name of the piece is “Were You There when they Crucified my Movement?”
He started out by saying that outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied….
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
He goes on to point out that it was the church, and its expression in Liberation Theology in Latin America, which gave moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship in the bloody 1970’s in those desperately oppressed countries.
It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the Communist regime in that country.
It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal, that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution.
And of course it was the church, and especially the African-American church, that made possible the civil rights movements. Not only Martin Luther King Jr, but other the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rev. John Duffy and so many faithful lay people.
In Advent, when we celebrate hope, when we remember in the church how Mary and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem, we remember who it was who came into the world. We remember who was incarnated on that holy night. Who it was who gave us the Gospel’s radical message of justice and compassion. Who gave us the message of love.
I saw a film of Chris Hedges as he was walking down a New York street, talking to someone about the Occupy movement. He said something like, “I’ve got kids now (he has four as it turns out) and this is not about us anymore, it is about the next generation, my children’s generation. This is about them. My passion for the justice of what you young people are doing, and I would even use the word love, is that you are fighting for the future of my three year old daughter [and here this hardened war correspondent began to cry] and he said, God bless you for it- God bless you.” An unnamed long-haired young man appeared from outside the frame of the film, and, Jesus-like, embraced the tearful prophet, bringing him good news, indeed.
Amen.
• Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
• Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55
• 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
• John 1:6-8, 19-28
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 12/11/11
As an Episcopal Priest in Berkeley, I not infrequently find myself at dinner tables or in group conversations with all kinds of people. And at the revelation that I am a priest, a kind of shocked and horrified silence often settles upon the crowd. And I hear all sorts of unsolicited opinions. Some that have been stated before they know I am a priest.
“All religion is absurd!” I hear.
“Why does there need to be a “magical being who controls everything?”
or “We don’t need God to be good people”
“More harm than good has been done in the name of religion”
“And finally, “You have no hold on reality”
Once I gather my tenuous hold on reality, I say,
“What a bleak world it must be, to believe only in science, to believe only what is visible, what is scientifically provable. What would we do without people of imagination, people of faith, people of the Spirit, what would we do without our prophets? What new invention could come into being without the inventor having imagination, taking a leap of faith, trusting in something that has not yet been proved, and that possibly never can be? What artwork would be created if everything had to have a logical and practical use and explanation and be proven to fit into the scientifically defined realm of reality?
And what force would help us to resist our human tendencies toward greed and self interest and spur us on to a compassionate and just world?”
None of these arguments particularly convince.
I am used to being around atheists here in Berkeley, and I am used to seeing intelligent people on the news or on talk shows who seem to share those views. So I was quite astonished to hear this from the brilliant comedian and writer of the priceless “The Daily Show,” John Steward. He said the following when referring to the great economic inequities in our country. “It’s not Christian!” Then recovering himself, he said, “Or Jewish or Muslim!” He himself is a Jew, married to a Catholic. Then soon after, on a different news show, I heard the wonderful and always controversial Keith Olberman say, when describing Michael Blomberg’s destruction of the Occupy Wall Street camp, exactly the same thing- “Its not Christian!” he bellowed.
But nothing surprised me more that the amazing words of the prophet Chris Hedges.
Chris Hedges is a modern day prophet, whom the Spirit of the Lord has surely anointed. He is a hugely talented, Pulitzer-prize-winning author, journalist and war correspondent, who is also, I found to my amazement, a faithful Christian. I had no idea of his religious background until he made an extraordinary speech, and I looked him up. Then I read that he had gone to seminary at Harvard Divinity School, and that his father was a Presbyterian minister. He has been absolutely fearless, as a prophet must be, covering wars all over the world, and seeing the inevitable horrors. He is quoted in the beginning of the award-winning film about the Iraq War, “The Hurt Locker:
"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."
And yet with all this experience, all this knowledge that would turn most people cynical, he has held on to his faith- in God and in humankind.
Chris Hedges wrote a book, as it turns out, called “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” which came out of a series of interviews he did with three prominent authors, who have been called “The New Atheists.”
Chris Hedges compares the new Atheists with the Christian Fundamentalists, in that the Atheists have made science an absolute religion, whose every word must be taken for absolute truth. They see nothing in shades of gray- everything is absolute- everything is black and white. There is no room for diversity of thought, diversity of belief.
Then I saw another astonishing piece written by Chris Hedges that truly had the passion and fiery certainty of an Old Testament Social Justice prophet, and the blazing heraldry of John the Baptizer proclaiming the coming of something great. This was a defense of the occupy movement, which was also a defense of Christianity, pointing out the great social justice movements in history have been inspired or led by religious leaders. He urges the church of today to embrace the Occupy movement- not let it die. The name of the piece is “Were You There when they Crucified my Movement?”
He started out by saying that outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied….
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
He goes on to point out that it was the church, and its expression in Liberation Theology in Latin America, which gave moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship in the bloody 1970’s in those desperately oppressed countries.
It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the Communist regime in that country.
It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal, that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution.
And of course it was the church, and especially the African-American church, that made possible the civil rights movements. Not only Martin Luther King Jr, but other the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rev. John Duffy and so many faithful lay people.
In Advent, when we celebrate hope, when we remember in the church how Mary and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem, we remember who it was who came into the world. We remember who was incarnated on that holy night. Who it was who gave us the Gospel’s radical message of justice and compassion. Who gave us the message of love.
I saw a film of Chris Hedges as he was walking down a New York street, talking to someone about the Occupy movement. He said something like, “I’ve got kids now (he has four as it turns out) and this is not about us anymore, it is about the next generation, my children’s generation. This is about them. My passion for the justice of what you young people are doing, and I would even use the word love, is that you are fighting for the future of my three year old daughter [and here this hardened war correspondent began to cry] and he said, God bless you for it- God bless you.” An unnamed long-haired young man appeared from outside the frame of the film, and, Jesus-like, embraced the tearful prophet, bringing him good news, indeed.
Amen.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Occupy Christ
Reflections on Is. 64:1-9; Ps. 80: 1-7, 17-19; 1 Cor. 1:3-9; Mk. 13:24-37
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 11/27/11
The first Sunday of Advent is a good time to come to church. If you stay awake and pay attention, you will hear that all the dark scriptural readings we have just heard are trying to prepare us for something. Clearly, it is something other than Santa Claus.
The readings are dark powerful and alarming. These are not quiet readings, These are not peaceful readings. The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give it’s light, the stars will fall, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
The vision of the coming of the Son of Man, in clouds and great glory, comes directly from a dream. It is the dream of Daniel the prophet, which begins by describing four surrealistically horrifying beasts who emerge from the sea:- a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear with three tusks, a winged leopard and most horrific of all, a gigantic beast with ten horns and steel teeth. The Son of Man arrives on his clouds of glory, interrupting the fourth beast as it tries to destroy the enthroned Ancient One, robed in white. With the coming of the Son of Man, the beast is vanquished. Darkness and chaos are overcome.
The readers of Mark would have been quite familiar with this image and this story from the Book of Daniel, where the Son of Man is placed on his heavenly throne, and given dominion over everything. But in our Gospel reading, the coming of the Son of Man marks the second earthly coming of Jesus, When he comes he faithfully gathers his elect, from all the corners of the earth.
This is an end-time story we hear at the very dawn of Advent. But we are cautioned to stay awake- to keep watch. Because, as the prophets have foretold, something really extraordinary is beginning. From darkness and chaos, something revolutionary will emerge. The whole order of the world will change, the world will be flooded with light, and the forces of darkness will be repelled. After all the suffering, tidings of joy, are heralded.
The truth is, if we are awake at all, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see, we will behold striking expression of the Advent times here in our streets and all over the world- a moving of the spirit and a caution to stay awake that is hard to miss.
My parents we proto-beatniks and they loved nothing so much as to share a bottle of wine and then waft out into the woods, reciting poetry to each other and then (according to my mother, my hand to God) actually embrace the trees. So, from the very beginning, because of my genetics and through no fault of my own, I never had a fighting chance of being a Republican. So I do admit to a weakness for radical movements, a weakness, in fact for revolution. And that is one of the big reasons that I became a Christian. Jesus is just SO RADICAL! He started, from a very unpromising little band of brothers and sisters, who began Occupy Galilee, a most profound and lasting revolution that is still as challenging and radical as the day it was born. And he did it non-violently. Jesus and his disciples kept a common purse, kept no extraneous possessions- and so they were radical in their self-imposed poverty. Jesus told them, “Call no man your master, call no man father, he said “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” He said let me do the work of a slave, let me wash your feet. So I even I believe he might have preferred a leaderless movement if he could have had one. I believe he would still like that.
Tuesday November 17 I was safe at home in my fold. It was my day off and I was really enjoying doing nothing. But my husband bounded through the door and said, “Robert Reiche, (the wonderful writer, professor and political philosopher), is going to speak at the UC Campus at Sproul Hall at 8:00- let’s go hear him!” It was warm in my house, and I was betting it would be cold at Sproul Plaza, no matter how inspiring the talk. But I decided to stretch my comfort zone and leave the nest. When we approached Sproul Plaza, it was clear that we were not the only ones who decided to come. It looked to be about 5,000 people milling about or sitting in little organized circles. It turned out that these organized circles were the General Assembly of Occupy Cal going full force.
The Wednesday before, the protestors at Occupy Cal had set up tents, as had so many occupy sites, and as in so many other cases, the police were called to pull them down. But what was so astonishing was that the very first action by the police was to viciously (I saw the tape) drive their night sticks into the rib cages of the students who had formed a circle, linking arms to protect their campsite. Well, on Tuesday night, the General Assembly was taking a vote on whether or not to erect the tents again. I was floored at their courage. I was floored anyway, because I had not seen anything like this many young people protesting for peace and justice in just about exactly forty years. I lived in Washington DC during the Vietnam War, so I saw a lot of mass protests of young people then. But not since then. Eighty percent of the students voted to put the tents up again. The motion passed.
At bottom the Occupy movement is about compassion and justice, and not only economic justice. But according to the author of Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein, it is about much more than that. He says it is about nothing less than creating a new world, a world of equality and peace and healing that our hearts tell us is possible. Tidings of great joy indeed. I went on a site called globalrevolution.tv, a switchboard for live streaming coverage of the Occupy movement, and up came a picture of a broadly smiling young woman with bright pink hair, holding a sign. It said “Compassion is Revolutionary”. I couldn’t agree more. Then came the live-streaming part: I saw police bristling with nightsticks in riot gear roughly shoving protestors who were trying to march. I thought about the beast with the steel teeth. One woman was poignantly speaking to the policeman pushing her back- “Please don’t fight us-we need you- join us- don’t fight us- we are you!” Then a chant sounded as the police began the arrests “This is a peaceful protest! This is a peaceful protest!” As people were being pushed to the ground the chant changed “The whole world is watching!” The whole world is watching. And compassion is revolutionary. And expensive.
In this Advent season, amid the unavoidable chaos and darkness, we pray for the peace to slow down and open our hearts. For the grace to be ready to embrace the coming Messiah- Emmanuel- God-with-us. For surrender to get our hearts and minds around this amazing and precious notion of God coming to us as a helpless infant. What could be more radical than that? What could be more radical than the incarnation? What could possibly be more radical, more revolutionary than God flooding into a mortal being that he might grow in grace and wisdom and flood into all of us? Last week we heard the gospel reading that showed us that the compassion of Jesus was so complete that he not only identified with the us, he insisted that he actually WAS us; “When I was hungry, you gave me food, when I was thirsty, you gave me drink, when I was a stranger you took me in …”
Even with all its imperfections, the remarkable modern movement we have been witnessing seems to contain something of that spirit- something of divine generosity, something of the Reign of God. All the nations seem to be gathered before us, as the needs of the poor and marginalized are being lifted up to the public attention world-wide- proclaimed in the marketplace, in our modern temples, and on the street.
There has been a lot of anxiety that the movement seems to have no leader. But what I see is the incarnation of the radical Jesus in thousands of leaders in this movement, over-turning the tables of the money changers in the temple, and pointing out the hypocrisy of the mighty. People also complain that there are no specific demands. I would say that they have one great demand, very like the one spoken by the prophet Amos, and taught by Jesus:
"Let Justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
Stay awake- something remarkable is going to be born.
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 11/27/11
The first Sunday of Advent is a good time to come to church. If you stay awake and pay attention, you will hear that all the dark scriptural readings we have just heard are trying to prepare us for something. Clearly, it is something other than Santa Claus.
The readings are dark powerful and alarming. These are not quiet readings, These are not peaceful readings. The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give it’s light, the stars will fall, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
The vision of the coming of the Son of Man, in clouds and great glory, comes directly from a dream. It is the dream of Daniel the prophet, which begins by describing four surrealistically horrifying beasts who emerge from the sea:- a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear with three tusks, a winged leopard and most horrific of all, a gigantic beast with ten horns and steel teeth. The Son of Man arrives on his clouds of glory, interrupting the fourth beast as it tries to destroy the enthroned Ancient One, robed in white. With the coming of the Son of Man, the beast is vanquished. Darkness and chaos are overcome.
The readers of Mark would have been quite familiar with this image and this story from the Book of Daniel, where the Son of Man is placed on his heavenly throne, and given dominion over everything. But in our Gospel reading, the coming of the Son of Man marks the second earthly coming of Jesus, When he comes he faithfully gathers his elect, from all the corners of the earth.
This is an end-time story we hear at the very dawn of Advent. But we are cautioned to stay awake- to keep watch. Because, as the prophets have foretold, something really extraordinary is beginning. From darkness and chaos, something revolutionary will emerge. The whole order of the world will change, the world will be flooded with light, and the forces of darkness will be repelled. After all the suffering, tidings of joy, are heralded.
The truth is, if we are awake at all, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see, we will behold striking expression of the Advent times here in our streets and all over the world- a moving of the spirit and a caution to stay awake that is hard to miss.
My parents we proto-beatniks and they loved nothing so much as to share a bottle of wine and then waft out into the woods, reciting poetry to each other and then (according to my mother, my hand to God) actually embrace the trees. So, from the very beginning, because of my genetics and through no fault of my own, I never had a fighting chance of being a Republican. So I do admit to a weakness for radical movements, a weakness, in fact for revolution. And that is one of the big reasons that I became a Christian. Jesus is just SO RADICAL! He started, from a very unpromising little band of brothers and sisters, who began Occupy Galilee, a most profound and lasting revolution that is still as challenging and radical as the day it was born. And he did it non-violently. Jesus and his disciples kept a common purse, kept no extraneous possessions- and so they were radical in their self-imposed poverty. Jesus told them, “Call no man your master, call no man father, he said “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” He said let me do the work of a slave, let me wash your feet. So I even I believe he might have preferred a leaderless movement if he could have had one. I believe he would still like that.
Tuesday November 17 I was safe at home in my fold. It was my day off and I was really enjoying doing nothing. But my husband bounded through the door and said, “Robert Reiche, (the wonderful writer, professor and political philosopher), is going to speak at the UC Campus at Sproul Hall at 8:00- let’s go hear him!” It was warm in my house, and I was betting it would be cold at Sproul Plaza, no matter how inspiring the talk. But I decided to stretch my comfort zone and leave the nest. When we approached Sproul Plaza, it was clear that we were not the only ones who decided to come. It looked to be about 5,000 people milling about or sitting in little organized circles. It turned out that these organized circles were the General Assembly of Occupy Cal going full force.
The Wednesday before, the protestors at Occupy Cal had set up tents, as had so many occupy sites, and as in so many other cases, the police were called to pull them down. But what was so astonishing was that the very first action by the police was to viciously (I saw the tape) drive their night sticks into the rib cages of the students who had formed a circle, linking arms to protect their campsite. Well, on Tuesday night, the General Assembly was taking a vote on whether or not to erect the tents again. I was floored at their courage. I was floored anyway, because I had not seen anything like this many young people protesting for peace and justice in just about exactly forty years. I lived in Washington DC during the Vietnam War, so I saw a lot of mass protests of young people then. But not since then. Eighty percent of the students voted to put the tents up again. The motion passed.
At bottom the Occupy movement is about compassion and justice, and not only economic justice. But according to the author of Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein, it is about much more than that. He says it is about nothing less than creating a new world, a world of equality and peace and healing that our hearts tell us is possible. Tidings of great joy indeed. I went on a site called globalrevolution.tv, a switchboard for live streaming coverage of the Occupy movement, and up came a picture of a broadly smiling young woman with bright pink hair, holding a sign. It said “Compassion is Revolutionary”. I couldn’t agree more. Then came the live-streaming part: I saw police bristling with nightsticks in riot gear roughly shoving protestors who were trying to march. I thought about the beast with the steel teeth. One woman was poignantly speaking to the policeman pushing her back- “Please don’t fight us-we need you- join us- don’t fight us- we are you!” Then a chant sounded as the police began the arrests “This is a peaceful protest! This is a peaceful protest!” As people were being pushed to the ground the chant changed “The whole world is watching!” The whole world is watching. And compassion is revolutionary. And expensive.
In this Advent season, amid the unavoidable chaos and darkness, we pray for the peace to slow down and open our hearts. For the grace to be ready to embrace the coming Messiah- Emmanuel- God-with-us. For surrender to get our hearts and minds around this amazing and precious notion of God coming to us as a helpless infant. What could be more radical than that? What could be more radical than the incarnation? What could possibly be more radical, more revolutionary than God flooding into a mortal being that he might grow in grace and wisdom and flood into all of us? Last week we heard the gospel reading that showed us that the compassion of Jesus was so complete that he not only identified with the us, he insisted that he actually WAS us; “When I was hungry, you gave me food, when I was thirsty, you gave me drink, when I was a stranger you took me in …”
Even with all its imperfections, the remarkable modern movement we have been witnessing seems to contain something of that spirit- something of divine generosity, something of the Reign of God. All the nations seem to be gathered before us, as the needs of the poor and marginalized are being lifted up to the public attention world-wide- proclaimed in the marketplace, in our modern temples, and on the street.
There has been a lot of anxiety that the movement seems to have no leader. But what I see is the incarnation of the radical Jesus in thousands of leaders in this movement, over-turning the tables of the money changers in the temple, and pointing out the hypocrisy of the mighty. People also complain that there are no specific demands. I would say that they have one great demand, very like the one spoken by the prophet Amos, and taught by Jesus:
"Let Justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
Stay awake- something remarkable is going to be born.
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