Sermon Dec. 3 2017-Father Cunningham

         I made an observation the other day and it is probably not original and probably not entirely true, which may make you wonder why I am going to share it, but hey I needed an introduction.  Anyway that observation is that the amount of Christmas decorating someone does is inversely proportional to their church attendance and general ascent to the basic tenets of the Christian faith.  Incidentally, this idea came to me when I was speaking to a Unitarian who was unboxing a giant inflatable lawn Santa and so at least anecdotally I think I am on pretty solid ground.  Anyway, I am not sure of the reason for this inversely proportional relationship, but I hold out hope that it has something to do with our reading from Isaiah today describing the coming of the Messiah.  Just listen to its opening:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- 

as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil-- 

to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

          Not a mention of red nosed reindeers or dancing snowmen, but instead a sense of power and justice.  God coming down to earth is not seen as sentimental or kitschy, but is actually looks a bit dangerous.  So maybe the more you know about God coming to earth the more you are unsure about decorating for it.  The image of fire kindling brushwood and nations trembling at God’s presence is not something that would show up in a Hallmark Christmas special and does not make for wonderful inflatable lawn decoration.  And I know that this is not how everything played out, that when God became man a dwelt among us it was not the burning fire and trembling nations type of appearance but I don’t think we can totally discount such predictions as those found in Isaiah.  The reason I say this is because it helps us think of Christmas a little differently.

            In many ways what we think of as “Christmas” is much more of a secular celebration than it is a religious one.  And please don’t think I am here to say it is all terrible – I like Christmas trees and decorations as much as the next guy, but the specialness of the season seems to be ascribed to something besides God.  Yes Jesus get’s an occasional nod, but he is really just a piece in the overall celebration.  Christmas is less about the incarnation and more about something vaguely called Christmas magic.  In fact if you don’t believe me put Christmas and magic together in a Google search and you get 36 million hits.  Whereas if you put Christmas and “tremble at your presence” you get a mere100,000 hits.  But anyway the point is I think we might need to up our game a little bit on how we deal with Christmas.  The word magic does not seem to be the right word on which to focus in this season partly because it sounds a bit too much like a Disney World commercial.  Magic is a cheap version of the true wonder that we are to have.  Instead of magic I think we need to instead focus on the word mystery – not in the Scooby Doo sense but rather in the sense of how does this God as described by Isaiah show up as a baby in Bethlehem?  How does the all powerful God of the universe become so meek and mild?  And, of course, we will get into more of that as we get closer to Christmas, but I want to take a few moments and focus on what that act tells us about God.  What the God as described by Isaiah must be like. 

            Now I know it is very out of favor to conceive of God as fearful and perhaps even a little wrathful.  In our day and age we have a very comfortable forgiving God.  A God who, like Santa Clause, may know who is naughty and nice but does not really do anything about it.  This God understands when you skip church because you stayed up late watching the directors cut of “Dude where’s my Car?”  This God would prefer that you have certain moral standards, but really just wants you to be happy.  Now I am not calling for us to conceive of God in a completely Jonathon Edwards, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” sort of a way but I do think there needs to be a balance.  Christmas, as currently conceived by our culture, offers a glimpse of a god who is a rather saccharine god, who is really just there to make us feel good about ourselves.  And I think because of this most people do not have much of a relationship with God because what they are presented with is not much with which to have a relationship.  Just as a Hallmark Card is a rather thin distillation of a relationship, the Hallmark Christmas is a rather thin distillation of Christmas.  What I mean by this is we do not get to see any of the power of God and why God became man and dwelt among us.

            And so what I think I am asking for in this season of Advent is not a return to seeing God in purely fearful and wrathful terms but rather to view God as who he truly is –seeing the mystery of God as being both all-powerful and all loving.  If we say that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe – this is a pretty big deal.  It implies an amount of power that we cannot understand.  And if we further believe that God is pure good it should at least make us pause and ponder what such a God might do with the things that are not pure good.  On Christmas Day, we know that he did not wipe us from the earth or blow up the earth like the Death Star did to Alderaan.  But we need to keep this in mind because it will make the Christmas all that much more meaningful.  If we realize just who this God is it will make a big difference in how we look at Christmas.  I think too often the wonder and magic of Christmas become clichéd sayings that give us a vague warm feeling but should rather be seen in the context of this God who has come to begin a mission of setting the world right.  A God who is capable of behavior that would strike fear in us, but instead came in the most vulnerable of ways.  God has granted us a reprieve not out of an inability to act, but out of love.  That may be the take home from Advent I, for us to act with love and mercy.

            The other day I was on what purported to be a Christian website and all of the articles were about what other Christians were doing wrong and how these Christians were on the fast track to perdition, if they did not come around to this website’s way of thinking.  I got the feeling that if it were in this websites power to destroy all of those with whom they disagreed and get away with it, there would be no hesitation.  But is that what we are building towards in this season of Advent?  Is the power and wonder of God with which we open going to end in apocalyptic ways on Christmas Day or are we building to the first act of the greatest act of mercy in the history of the world?  As partisan bickering, anger and mistrust are so prominent in our world maybe we should not be worried about Christmas magic, but rather Christmas mercy.  Maybe when we have the power to inflict judgment we should instead hold back and through our mercy invite others into the mercy of God.  As we begin this journey of Advent it is a time to contemplate God and our relationship to him so that we might show forth his power and grandeur not in works of vengeance but in works of mercy, so that we may be his both now and forevermore.

Sermon Nov. 12 2017-Father Cunningham

         There are certain things that we say which really have no bearing on reality, but they make us feel better, especially when you are a parent.  We tell our kids to be safe or study hard.  Comments like this makes us feel like we actually are doing something and then if the kid comes home with a bad grade we are off the hook because we told them to study hard and darn it they just didn’t listen.  And if you were being cynical you could say that the snippet we have from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians was just this type of advice – sort of a grey skies are going to clear up type thing.  But I am working on my cynicism and so that is not the route that I am going to take. 

          Paul is writing to the Church in Thessalonica and he seems to be initially addressing something that was a prominent question in the early days of the Church, but something about which we don’t give a whole lot of thought to these days.  Most in the early Church believed that Christ would be returning very soon, and by very soon I mean within their lifetime.  And so as time went on, some of those who believed that Christ would be returning before they died, died.  And for those who remained, a concern arose over what happened to those who had died, because the expectation was that none of them would see death before the return of Christ.  That is what Paul is getting at when he says, “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.”  In other words he is assuring them that those who have died do not have to worry about anything – they are not going to miss out on the return of Christ and the resurrection of the body and all that.  So that is the reason for Paul writing this section of the letter and while that is interesting historically, I want to take a minute and focus on the other stuff.   And by using the technical term other stuff I mean to ask a question about the assurance that he is offering and why is it more than just happy talk that does not reflect reality?

         The main point of what Paul is saying is that we are not to be as ones without hope, which is why he says, “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”  But there is another piece to this that can kind of be missed if you read through this too quickly.  And just in case you are worried let me assure you that we will return to the bit about hope, but I want to start with the first part, which is about grief.  Notice Paul does not say that we should not grieve; it is simply that the grief should not be like those without hope.  And I think this is very important because it dispels an issue that sneaks into Christianity now and then which has to do with the way in which we handle death.  Some Christians, who for charity’s sake we will say, believe that because we are Christian we should not mourn.  Some may even push it as far as saying we should celebrate when a loved one has passed because they have gone onto their reward.  But notice Paul does not say to avoid mourning, only to not mourn as those without hope.  And this may seem like hairsplitting, because mourning is mourning isn’t it?  But really it points to something that is very important. 

          To understand this a little better, we need to go back to the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible.  If you remember from John Chapter 11, Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha and was very ill and died.  Jesus went after this had happened and was met by those mourning for the loss of Lazarus.  As the story continues Jesus would eventually raise Lazarus from the dead, but in between Lazarus’ death and his raising we have in verse 35 a verse which simply says that “Jesus wept.”  Now think about this Jesus has lost someone that he loved, while at the same time he knew that he had the power to raise him from the dead and yet he still wept.  You could hardly say that Jesus was without hope; I mean he was the Son of God and had control over life and death as he would show.  Yet at that moment when he saw that his friend Lazarus was not there he felt the terrible sting of loss.  And so you see mourning someone does not mean we are without hope instead it represents the feeling of loss, the feeling of emptiness that had previously been filled by another person.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that God keeps this gap empty so as to keep our former communion alive even if it causes us pain.  Jesus felt the pain and it is okay for us to feel it as well.  We can miss someone or mourn someone and still have faith and still have hope. 

         But this brings us to the second part.  We realize we will feel pain at loss, but we also have hope and the question is what distinguishes hope from foolhardiness?  I mean Linus had hope that the Great Pumpkin would come for all the good that did him.  And, so, what is the difference between our hope and simple wishful thinking?  Well the answer like many in the Christian faith comes down to the resurrection of Jesus.  The Resurrection was not just a neat trick, but rather it was the sign that death was not the final word.  We know that death is not the final word because we have someone that went before us.  Someone who was dead but rose again.  This signified that there was more.  Death was just a moment before the eternal glory that was to come.  We do not rely on feel good stories but rather we rely on an actual event.  The hope that we have comes from something that happened which shows that through belief in this person who rose from the dead we are able to conquer death as well.  The author of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.  He is the pioneer because he went first.  He passed through death and came out resurrected on the other end.  And just like a pioneer we are to tread the way that he trod.  We are to follow knowing that it has and can be done.  We do not live as ones without hope because we have seen that death is not the final word. 

         And I would be remiss today if I didn’t mention the loss of our brother Gerry Bay.  I was taking Gerry communion weekly over the past few months and I would get the question from others of how he was doing.  And I always felt there were two parts to this answer.  There was the physical question to which the answer was that he was obviously declining, but there was also what we would call the spiritual question and the answer to this was rather incredible and rather inspiring.  Gerry was not living as one without hope.  He was ready to go to his reward, he was ready to rush out and meet the Lord.  Gerry was what we are called to be as Christian.  He did not ignore the physical reality.  He knew that his body was failing, but he also knew that there was something beyond this, something to which Christ calls us.  This is the life lived as a Christian, we may mourn, we may suffer, but we also hope.  And we do not hope in an unrealistic way but rather our hope is found in him who died and rose again so that we may have life and have it abundantly both now and forevermore.

Sermon Nov. 5 2017-Father Cunningham

          I am never sure how I feel about All Saints Day, which we commemorate today even though it was really this past Wednesday on November 1st.  The reason for my ambiguity about today is not because I am opposed to all of the saints, or any of them for that matter, it is just that something seems to get lost when all of the saints are lumped into a big bucket.  It feels kind of like the participation trophy of Holy Days.  Sort of like when they decided that Washington’s Birthday would become President’s Day.  In reality what this meant was that Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson were commemorated in the same way as Warren Harding and Millard Fillmore.  I am sure Warren Harding’s mother loved him, but being remembered for the Teapot Dome scandal is not quite as impressive as being remembered as the Great Emancipator.  But back to All Saints.  The history of it is a little tricky, but here is what we know.  In 609 at the rededication of the Pantheon, Pope Boniface IV declared it to be dedicated to St Mary and All the Martyrs, but the day on which he did that was May 13th.  It would only be later, in the 8th century that it was moved to November 1st by Pope Gregory III, and shortened to All Saints Day.  Anyway we commemorate it today and now we now have to decide what to talk about for the next eight and a half minutes.

           The reading that we have from Matthew today to commemorate All Saints is from the Sermon on the Mount and this particular section is generally referred to as the Beatitudes, which comes from the Latin word beatus meaning blessed.  And since most of the verses in our reading start with the word blessed, it is pretty easy to see where it got that name.  I assume this section was selected as a reading for All Saints because it was seen as a kind of description of the saints – the meek, the hungry, those who mourn, those persecuted for righteousness sake, etcetera; which may make us ponder if we really want to be included in the list of all the saints.  By having this reading in such a context, it seems to be saying that this is prescriptive.  In other words, it seems that we are being told to go and become meek and hungry and then we get to go to heaven in a righteous robe.  And while that may be the case of what those who put together the lectionary wanted (I don’t know because I never met them), I am not sure that this is what Jesus was getting at. 

            In this country and probably in others we tend to suffer from an incomplete and often incorrect version of what Jesus came to earth for.  The popular view is that if we believe in Jesus, then when we die, we float up to heaven and strum our harps and dance around in clouds.  And in such a context when you read this passage from Matthew the tendency is to think that it is telling you to just sit tight.  If you are suffering or persecuted it will all be okay once you die and float up to heaven.  The issue with such an understanding is that not only does it put too great of separation between earth and heaven, it also puts too great of a separation between us and heaven.  Jesus is not saying that if you believe in him that he will one day help you get out of this dump, but rather that one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth and in that joining much will be the opposite of the way that it is now.  When God’s Kingdom is ultimately fulfilled a lot of things will be set right.  But see this is the thing with today’s reading; it is not to be read passively.  We are not to sit back and say, “Well that will be nice when God takes care of all of those poor people persecuted for righteousness sake.”  Instead, it is a call and a call that is on us to participate in.  This is the call that was answered by the saints we remember today.  These are the people that set out to comfort those who mourn, to feed the hungry, to show mercy to the merciful.  The reading today is not about something that God will take care of, but rather about something that the saints, through God’s help, took care and are taking care of.   And so really the call to be a Saint has nothing to do with the first half of the statements but rather with the second half.  Jesus is announcing a new a different kind of world and we, if we want to be saints, are called to participate in that new world. 

            And in some ways we might like the first interpretation better because it does get us off the hook.  If we see someone suffering we can just tell them to cheer up because God will fix it after they die.  But God does not let us off that easy; he wants us to help.  He wants us to look around and ask how we may comfort and feed those who are in need of such things. 

            One of the problems that has come as a result of the vast strides in communication is that we know too much about other people’s problems.  What I mean by this is that if you lived in Philadelphia 200 years ago and something bad happened in Charleston it would be several weeks before you heard anything, if you heard it at all.  Now if you pick up the paper or watch the news you have a whole smorgasbord of tragedies to choose from.  You not only hear about bad stuff in Charleston you also get the bad stuff from Miami, Cleveland, New Orleans, London, Seoul and any other place around the world.  We get more bad news quicker than at any other point in history.  And the problem with this is that it can sort of freeze us.  If we do something in our community it seems so insignificant compared to whatever the latest world tragedy may be.  How can visiting the lonely ever be as significant as stopping a mass shooting?  But here is the nice thing about the call of the saint.  It is not about geography or working on only the worst of tragedies.  Rather, it is a call to help with injustices we see in our everyday life or with things you can actually do something about.  Think about Jesus’ ministry.  From the northernmost point to the southernmost point in his three-year ministry it was not much more than 75 miles.  I mean that wouldn’t quite get you to Sheboygan from here.  But should we look at Jesus and say well sure you healed a blind man in Bethsaida, but what about the Lepers in Alexandria – there were like hundreds of those guys. 

            There is a statement about saints that you have probably heard me use, but it bears repeating.  A saint is not an ordinary person who does extraordinary things, rather a saint in an extraordinary person who does the ordinary things that other people will not do.  A saint will probably not solve the fighting in the Middle East or get rid of North Korea’s nuclear program, but they might comfort a friend who suffers or help out at a woman’s shelter.  One of the benefits in commemorating all of the saints at once is that it reminds us that saints come in all shapes and sizes and that we are only really asked to leave the campground cleaner than we found it.  We don’t have to fix everything, but we have make things a little better.  Or as Calvin Coolidge put it “We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”  The call of the saint is to make our little corner of the world a little better, a little more like God created it so that we may be God’s not only now but forevermore.