ermons for 2010

Deacon Patricia Marks

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 Last week, we cleaned out the Florida room, which is a large garage converted into an air-conditioned workspace. And oh! The things I found. Half-knitted sweaters and a Dept. 56 Christmas house waiting to be glued; a box full of various kinds of tape, a collection of orphan buttons, and lots of thread on wooden spools. There were treasures galore, too— a souvenir knife from WW II, labeled “Morotai 1945”; and my Uncle Lionel’s pastels and my father’s watercolors, along with some really fine drawing pencils and sable brushes. But that just skims the surface. So we kept on cleaning, disrupting the spiders’ housekeeping by washing the drapes and scrubbing the tile, and then for a day or two gloried in the empty space.

That was until we emptied the kitchen cabinets. Anyone who has ever redone a kitchen will understand what happened. I found a host of weird and wonderful implements that I used to cook with—a pasta-drying rack, for instance, from my Italian phase; a “wasserbadform,” or steamed pudding mold used many Christmases past; and a whole box full of walnut-shaped candy forms complete with untranslatable recipes, given to me by a Russian exchange faculty member years ago.

You get the picture. Signing the order form for new countertops was easy—and then reality and chaos set in.

How on earth will I have the time to write a sermon, I asked myself?

Well. All of that is a long way of saying that I sympathize with Martha! To be sure, Abraham  also did a lot of running around to arrange dinner for his three visitors; but he had Sarah back in the tent, helping him make the dinner.

When you think about it, Martha is rather courageous. She takes the astonishing step of welcoming Jesus into her home. Perhaps today it wouldn’t matter; but in those days, in that culture, for a woman to entertain an itinerant preacher was to risk social disapproval, especially in a small village where neighborly gossip could make or break your reputation.

On top of that, Jesus did not arrive by himself.  Abraham had three visitors, but I’ll bet Jesus had a crowd. Everywhere he went, he was surrounded by flocks of people needing something, crying out, reaching for him.

Can’t you picture it? The disciples follow him into the house, laying down their  staffs and shaking out their sandals. They pile their cloaks on the floor and sit elbow to elbow. Martha, who seems to have no servants to help her,  would have to find plates and cups, bread and wine for them.

And her guest of honor is a dangerous man! He doesn’t ask your name or nationality before he heals you. He breaks the laws to help the hurting and the hungry; he eats with tax collectors and sinners; and he adopts a group of disciples from all walks of life.

Then, just when the fish is on the grill and the lamb stew is bubbling, when the flour is measured and ready for kneading and the wine needs pouring, Martha finds her sister contentedly sitting at Jesus’s feet. No wonder she is annoyed!

Martha has put her name and reputation on the line, but let’s not forget that Mary has done something radical as well. No respectable woman would  make herself at home near a man in that way—as old rabbinical saying goes, "It is better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman." Yet there is Mary, curled up at Jesus’s feet, listening heart and soul to His teachings.

So Martha complains. But listen carefully to what she says. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve all alone?” “Do you not care.” I think that Martha feels left out, overworked, unrewarded, and unthanked. And I’d guess that she suspects she hasn’t juggled her time well—every hostess knows that cooking dinner and attending to guests don’t always mesh.

Perhaps Martha needed someone like Brother Lawrence at her side—perhaps, in fact, we all do. Brother Lawrence was a 17^th-century monk assigned to his least favorite place, the monastery kitchen. It was one of the lowest duties; but there, amidst the pots and pans, amidst the chaos of bubbling soup and chopping onions, rising bread and impatiently outstretched hands, he found something marvelous: the presence of God. "Our [holiness] does not depend upon changing our works, but in doing for God's sake that which we commonly do for our own," he said, and went on cheerfully washing dishes and wiping up spills.

So I think that  like Martha, we are not being asked to let the stew boil over and the wine ferment, but rather to clean out the heart’s shelves and toss away those things that make us anxious and troubled.  We are being asked to decide what is important to keep, so that we may focus on the good portion and become, like Brother Lawrence, both active and contemplative at the same time. It is a radical transformation, no doubt about it: to be in the world but not of it, to be in the presence of God as we go about our business, whether it is teaching or scrubbing, looking at stars or planting corn.

Jesus does care—he cares indeed. He gives Martha, he gives us, permission to stop, to take a quiet moment, undistracted by ever-present tasks, to focus on the one thing needful—God’s presenceis God’sG. With Martha, with Sarah, we are invited out of the tent onto a spiritual pathway. There, we are called to a dinner where we are guests by grace, where the bread has the lovely flavor of risen life and the wine empowers us with spirit.

Amen.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. +

 It must have been dark in those caves that served as tombs. With the bright sun shining outside, your eyes would be dazzled. At night, crouched there with only the bygone spirits of those loved by others—who had no love for you—it would be lonely beyond measure. Nothing to keep you company but the pinpoint eyes of some unidentifiable creature whose teeth grew sharper in your imagination as the night progressed.

Your lack of clothing would have made it worse; huddled there, on the bare soil, you would have nothing to cushion your back, nothing to wrap yourself in. And the sores around your wrists and feet, where they had bound you, would keep you awake like an incessant reminder of your imprisonment.

Perhaps we have all been in that kind of cave, if only for a short time. Elijah was, when he sheltered in a cave on Mt. Horeb. Fed only by his terror of pursuit, how lost and abandoned he must have felt—until, that is, God spoke to him.

Looking within the heart’s landscape, ­we may find the darkness of hidden deeds,  or  choices we wish we had not made. We may feel the weight of stones, sharp as words that are regretted. Or feel the frost of a heart that forgot charity.

And like the man possessed by demons of the past, who cries out wildly when he sees Jesus, we too may find it frightening to come out into the light; frightening to admit that there are indeed shackles and chains that may be invisible to others—because, in a sense, we’ve forged them ourselves.

Anyone who has ever been tongue-tied by the two hardest words to say—“I’m sorry”; anyone who has ever wounded a friend, made an enemy, or told a lie will know how hard it is to come out of the cave and confront not just the person you’ve hurt but yourself made transparent in the blazing sunlight.

So it’s no surprise that the man fears Jesus; no surprise that he thinks healing will be torment. But what is astonishing, and what literally leads to his healing, his salvation, is that he recognizes Jesus for who he is. The Son of God.

It is the first step, the one step that counts for all of us, the step that means we are no longer imprisoned and guarded. It is what leads us out of the prison of the self to the recognition of our own identity as children of God. With faith, freedom has come indeed.

And that is why we find this man of the city, this Gentile, sitting at the feet of Jesus, a Jew, clothed and in his right mind. No wonder he wants to follow Jesus, no wonder that he begs to stay in the presence of someone who has literally raised him from the dust.

But Jesus knows better. Like the Lord God who sent Elijah back from his cave to Damascus, Jesus tells the man to go home. In fact, he makes a real disciple of him by sending him out to declare how much God has done for him. His very healing is testimony; his life bears the imprint of Christ.

Like that man, we come to Christ from our own dark places, and that is the first step. Here we have arrived at a thin place, a place where the material and the spiritual worlds intersect.  Here there is no darkness; yet nothing is quite what it seems on the surface. Look at the candle that burns – the Paschal candle—it seems only a tiny light; but it shines in the darkness of our lives, it is the light of Christ that has  come into the world.

Look around. Those pews you are sitting on are wood, yes, but the very grain holds a memory of green leaves and roots stretching deep into the earth, into the dust recreated as a rich and fertile thing.

The floor you are walking on seems swept clean; but in fact it carries the memory of all those who have gone before. Brides have walked here and babies carried to baptism; the aisles have borne the weight of families in mourning and children in Epiphany pageants.

The people you are sitting in front of behind, next to: these marvelous complexities of flesh and blood—they too bear an imprint. We are changed, changed utterly, for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. 

And the bread and the wine? It is a banquet, a memorial, a tangible reminder that fills us with healing and courage; it allows us to put on the clothing of salvation and the right mind of God, so that, like the man in the tombs, we may sit at the feet of Jesus.

But there’s more. That walk to the altar is really the beginning of the journey. Because it is there that if we listen carefully, we hear a still, small voice sending us out into the world in the name of Christ to love and serve the Lord.

 “What are you doing here?” it says. “Go out and declare how much God has done for you!" 

Thanks be to God.   Amen.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.+

Last Monday, downtown on the courthouse square, the earth was warm with the promise of summer, and the green-growing grass wove itself into a carpet for my feet. The same grass grew ahead, behind, all around me under the sandals and shoes of those sitting on the folding chairs and camped on the grass. This was, I thought, the same earth on which the disciples had stood so long, long ago.

The breeze blew here and there, gently touching each of us in turn. It  ruffled my hair and  stirred the hijab, or head covering, of the woman in front of me. Her scarf, which was woven into a quietly beautiful design, was long enough to drape across her head and neck and fall low in back. And up the stairs of the courthouse clambered a tiny little girl, her hair in two curly pigtails. Her look of delight at her adventure was evident even to those seated at the back of the crowd. The same smile flitted across our faces as we shared her joy.

And then the program started. Clergy of all stripes and shades, from a priest to an imam, from Alpha to Omega, were there on the stand to celebrate the Interfaith Day of Prayer. One after the other, in English, in Spanish, they stepped forward to pray and give thanks.  

Then, for me, came the highlight. An Indian acquaintance of mine—a colleague who works at VSU—led her mother forward. She was tiny, and dressed in traditional clothing. For her, I’m sure, it was her normal daily dress. But by the time she finished chanting a Hindu prayer, something very special had happened. Pentecost had come, come early. Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit spoke in a multitude of tongues.

No matter the language, we all heard the same thing. We all heard prayer and praise to God.

I know the good Lord heard us that day. Surely he smiled to see his children gathered together, the sun’s light joyfully dancing around them, the wind of the spirit blowing through them as they prayed together to the glory of his name—no matter how it was pronounced.

And that is why I thought of those other disciples, so long ago, gathered together on God’s green earth around Jesus while he prayed for them. Did they know that something momentous was about to happen? They had been there at its beginning. Their feet had been washed; and they had shared bread and wine with their dearly beloved friend and mentor. They had heard him say something stunning—that he was going away from them. And he had blessed them with only one rule of life to follow—not the 613 that their forefathers had been given. Just one.   

“Love one another,” he had said. “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

How simple. How difficult.

And now he was no longer speaking directly to them, but to God Himself. He had laid hands on them; and now they were being lifted up in prayer by those same hands.  

Listen to him!

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. . . The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one,

Jesus was praying that all of his disciples, who came from different places, different walks, be one. But what is more astonishing is what he goes on to say: that He, Christ, will be in his disciples; and that God will be in Him.

Stop and think about it for a minute. It is breathtaking. It goes against all possible conceptions of the way the world and the flesh work. But—there it is. To pray that “all may be one” is another way of saying “love one another.”

And there’s more. If you love one another, you will also love God. You don’t need to read Aquinas or Augustine; you don’t need to speculate on theological matters. You need only be one.

And we, we are disciples too.  The same good earth they stood on, we stand on. The same breath of life that blew through them, blows through us.  And the bread and the wine? It is here, dear friends. It is here.

And it is freely offered. But think twice before you take it.

Because if you see Christ in your neighbor, and in Christ you see God, then . . . what follows? You will walk the same path that Christ did. Your eyes will be opened to hunger and sorrow as well as to the glory and joy around you. And you will feel—oh how you will feel. You will walk in the shoes of friends and strangers. Your muscles will throb as you walk past a workman lifting a burden too heavy. Your heart will ache for the woman who pushes a cart down Ashley Street full of the trash she thinks is treasure.

But you will also laugh with the children who are climbing life’s stairway, and you will feel the deep peace of the quiet evening. And your life will be rich beyond measure because you will be living out the words of the St. Francis blessing:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers and half truths, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation, so that you may work for justice, freedom,  and peace.

May God bless you with tears shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

And that foolishness, my dear brothers and sisters, is to love one another, no matter who that “other” is.

Amen.

Yesterday morning, the fragrance of early spring bathed my garden. Two house wrens, returning from their winter sojourn, were busily deciding where in my carport to nest; and the sun lit up the petals on my purple plum.

 How can we carry this bouquet, this joyful promise of new life with us, I thought;  how can we so absorb it that we transform everything we touch?

 I think of Wednesday nights at Christ Church, when the fragrance of holy oil drifts through the air as those who ask a healing, strengthening, life-giving blessing come to kneel at the altar rail. The scent dances to the sound of the music, it plays in the shafts of light, it lingers like the trace of a lovely memory. Here is the promise, here is Spring itself.

 Here a cross of life is traced on our foreheads with holy oil, enlivening the cross of ashes that we receive on Ash Wednesday.  Like the incense of Easter, this chrism marks us as a praise offering, a sweet scent to the Lord. That anointing is our St. Patrick’s shield, with us and before us and within us as we face the swift and varied changes of the world.

 It gives us the courage to go forth in the name of Christ. And since holy oil was once used to anoint David and Solomon at their coronation, it reminds us  that we are royal children of God. But we are not kings—far from it. Rather we are penitents, praying that God’s grace will fill us and make us a new thing.

 But what about the nard that Mary pulls out and so lavishly spills on Jesus’s feet? This is spikenard, a costly fragrance that came from the Himalayas on camel back and by ship, over mountains and rivers, on ancient trade routes. And it was precious indeed.

 But Mary didn’t anoint Jesus’s head, as was the custom. Something else intervened, something else caught her attention.

 Do not remember the former things,

or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? –says the Lord.

And Mary saw it—saw that the Messiah was more than an earthly deliverer.  And overwhelmingly moved, she  sacrificed her reputation to appear at dinner in an attitude of mourning.

 We know that the dinner was given for Jesus—maybe as a celebration for the raising of Lazarus. Maybe Jesus simply hoped for a quiet dinner with old friends before his final act of courage.

 So there is Martha, and she is serving, of course. She is the practical one, waiting on tables well before the first deacon Stephen was called to do so.  But she is also the one who said to Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God."

 There, too, is Mary, about to serve in a different way. About to become another disciple, or perhaps a prophet of Jesus’s crucifixion.

 And there is Judas, concerned, as ever, with money.

 Perhaps here, among friends, at a familiar table, perhaps here is the best place for Jesus to acknowledge where his path is really leading.

 Perhaps here, at Christ Church, among friends, among brothers and sisters, at the altar which holds the bread of life, perhaps here is the best place to acknowledge where our path is leading.

 It is at Martha’s table that Jesus, the one who will be crucified, sits with Lazarus, the one who was raised from the dead. And fittingly, it is there it is that Mary performs her prophetic act.  She loosens her hair in mourning; and, taking a pound of one of the most precious ointments to be had, she anoints Jesus’s feet.

 Not his head; his feet, as if he were being embalmed. Perhaps the nard was left over from the funeral of Lazarus, who was embalmed and then returned to life. Martha, that icon of hospitality, has served the food; and Mary has served as Jesus will serve at the last supper as he washes the feet of his disciples.

 But the one dissenting voice is . . . Judas. Why wasn’t the nard sold and the money given to the poor, he asks.

 And Jesus comes to Mary’s defense. “leave her alone,” he commands. And he speaks of his burial: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

 It is stunning—these words from the one who has been feeding and healing all whom he meets. “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” But he is, I think, giving permission to Mary—permission to us—to take time for worship, time to be immersed in God’s presence. And for some of us, the Marthas of the world, that is very hard to do.

 As Isaiah says, we are the people whom God formed for Himself, so that we might declare His praise. And so today we take time to come to the table, where the bread of life is served. Here, we are given permission to weep over Jesus’s death and to rejoice in his rising; to weep over our own transgressions and to rejoice in our renewal.

 Here we become a new thing, our mouths filled with laughter and our tongues with joy. Here, Spring has come; and filled with God’s fragrant Eucharistic grace, we are given the strength and courage to transfigure worship into service, to make a way in the wilderness for those who are lost and to find rivers in the desert for those who are hungry. Amen.

3 EPIPHANY

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.+

You and I have just prayed a radical prayer. “Give us grace, O Lord,” we said, “to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ.”  Here in this quiet, safe, and holy place, with our friends and families nearby, we have offered ourselves up to God, made ourselves vulnerable. And that is radical in the root sense of the word. It should shake us to the very core.

For me, it comes on the heels of another prayer that someone forwarded to me, a prayer of thanksgiving for common things and a plea for help for those in Haiti:

Lord, I just want to say THANK YOU, because this morning  I woke up and knew where my children were. Because this morning my home was still standing, because this morning  . . .  I was able to drink a glass of water, . . .  but most of all I thank  you this morning because I still have life and a voice to cry  out for the people of Haiti.

Last week, as I walked out into the beautiful clear air of the afternoon, with the birds singing and the camellias budding, I thought of trees uprooted, of concrete slabs crashing down, of electrical lines sparking the dust in the air.  And I thought of the people. All those people.

And I felt conscience-stricken. So in a very quiet voice I gave thanks for everything that I didn’t deserve, from the shoes on my feet to the street itself, which was paved and clean.

And I prayed. “Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ.”

But what is that call we are to answer so readily? We cannot singlehandedly cure  the ravages of the earthquake. It is the way of the world we were born into: the natural laws that create the quake are the same ones that created the continents. But oh the devastation! It makes me think about other kinds of earthquakes, events that turn our lives around.

Events like that call, the one that comes sometimes with a thunderous roar and sometimes in a still, small voice.

Jesus heard it and returned to Nazareth, to the synagogue, to his hometown neighbors, the ones for whom his carpenter father had built barns and laid flooring, repaired carts and benches and boats.

But the child who had carried the nails and held the cross beams, this same child had grown up. Baptized by the Holy Spirit, he had resisted the devilish temptations in the wilderness and was now on a path to Golgotha.

It is to him that they hand the Torah, that beautiful hand-lettered parchment of the first five books of the Old Testament.

And holding that scroll, wound on two carved wooden posts known as Etz Chaim, or the Tree of Life, his eyes fall upon the stirring words of Isaiah. So he begins:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.”

Did anyone in his audience squirm at that? I do. I may not be wealthy, but I am rich in so many ways, from the food in my cupboard to the peace in my house.

Jesus continues:

“He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."

Didn’t his audience, sitting there in the synagogue with their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, wonder whom he was addressing? Again, I do. Who are the captives? Maybe I am one of them, entrapped by my own possessions and prejudices. Who are the blind? Could I not have seen the need in Haiti before the earthquake? And who are the oppressed? The near coming of Lent makes me feel all the more the weight of those things that I have done and left undone.

And then comes the real stunner, the real earthquake, the statement that turns their world, our world, my world upside down.

"Today,” Jesus says, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

And with that, the word is no longer static upon the page. The word—the word of the prophet Isaiah; of Moses, of the law; the word has taken life. It is transfigured into the living, breathing Son of God. “I was sent to proclaim release and sight and liberty,” he says. “God’s Jubilee year is here!”

It is that same Word that shakes up the complacent,  makes the wealthy question their status, and  brings up the uncomfortable notion that the prisoner, the poverty-stricken, the blind, are the ones who really count.

All, all has changed, changed utterly, as the poet Yeats would say, much, much later. What was dead is alive; what was low has been raised. And what was written as 613 laws in the book of Moses is transformed into a way of life, a way of acting so that one’s love of God is expressed through love of one’s neighbor, whether that neighbor is a helpless orphan in Haiti, crying among the bricks and mortar; or the Haitian migrant workers who no longer have a home to return to; or the woman pushing her life’s possessions in a cart down Patterson Street.

No matter who we are, high or low, enslaved or free, we are baptized into one body and one spirit. We are the body of Christ.

In just a few minutes we will pray for God’s grace “to answer readily the call . . . to serve Christ in unity, constancy, and peace.” And when we do, we are asking for perhaps  more than we ever bargained for—we are asking that we may go out into the world as the bread of compassion and the wine of mercy.  Amen.

S