"Top Secret"

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent     19 March 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”                                                                                                                    John 4:29a

Itzhak Goldberg is a professor of radiation oncology at Yeshiva University in the Bronx. His business is generating data — medical data — that uncover truths about patient health.

It was that commitment to truth — coupled with a healthy appetite for sleuthing — that drove him to solve a mystery: a family secret his father, a Holocaust survivor, seemed to want revealed, but only long after his death.

As Bruce Feiler tells the story in Secrets of Happy Families, Itzhak Goldberg inherited his father’s watch: an 18-karat gold Patek Philippe in a red box.

Tucked inside the box, in the folds of the manufacturer’s guarantee, Itzhak discovered a tiny, yellowing photograph of two women he didn’t recognize, roughly a generation apart.

With the door on what looked like a skeleton in the family closet left ajar, Itzhak couldn’t rest until he had tracked down the identities of the women in the fading photograph.

What did he learn from the online records of Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial in Israel) and follow-up research?

The older woman in the picture: a woman named Chaya. Turns out she was married to Itzhak’s father before the war. The other woman? Their daughter — also named Chaya. Both gassed by the Nazis at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.

Revealed, then, a marriage. A secret family. A family secret.

Reflecting on the Goldberg family secret, Bruce Feiler suggests that Itzhak’s father understood that ultimately, “certain truths” — too painful to discuss — “deserve to be shared.”

“Certain truths deserve to be shared.” That’s how Jesus sizes up a total stranger he meets — a Samaritan woman — as he breezes into alien territory at high noon.

Picture this: Jesus risks tripping alarms when, trying to take a short-cut from Jerusalem to Galilee, he crosses the frontier between Judea and Samaria, two mutually-exclusive No-Fly Zones.

What’s that all about? A North-South feud-without-end. And in that part of the world, memory is long. History as immediate as yesterday.

Proof? Hundreds of years earlier, when the population of the South was carried off into exile in Babylon, the people in the North — what would become Samaria — weren’t uprooted. When the Jews returned from exile, the Northerners did all they could to stifle reconstruction in the South. It was survival of the fittest. And the South was competition.

Add to that the reliably deadly blend of theology and culture: The Jews believe God’s earthly residence is the Temple on Mount Zion — in Jerusalem. The Samaritans say God is headquartered in their territory — at a temple on Mount Gerizim.

Problem is, roughly 150 years before Jesus takes the shortcut, the Jews decide it’s payback time. They invade Samaria, level the temple on Mount Gerizim, and torch the Samaritan capital.

The Samaritans take their time retaliating. But finally — roughly 25 years before Jesus crosses paths with the woman at the well — Samaritan terrorists infiltrate Jerusalem at Passover and trigger a bloody riot.

By the time the Samaritan woman encounters Jesus — a Jew — at a Samaritan watering hole … asking for a drink of Samaritan water … under the harsh Samaritan sun … we have a scene ready-made for point/counterpoint. Because with Jesus, it’s never just about H₂O.

Complication: The rules of engagement say that neither Jesus nor the Samaritan woman should be talking to each other, much less sharing family secrets. It's a bit like the evils of Jim Crow segregation in the South: The Jewish rabbi and the Samaritan woman drinking from the same water fountain? Strictly taboo.

And yet, Jesus strikes up a conversation with the stranger/enemy. Not just a chat, but a probing back-and-forth ─ driven by the woman ─ about what constitutes a well-watered life ─ the good life — the life God wants for each of us.

Now, on the surface, it looks like Jesus wades into the morally-murky waters of the woman’s marital history: five marriages and what might be a current live-in arrangement without benefit of nuptials.

The neighbors have taken note as well. They shun her, leaving her to draw water in sun-searing isolation when most people choose the cool shade.

But the woman's dodgy history doesn’t appear to be a problem for Jesus. He knows a lot. And he tells what he knows. Not surprising, that gets the woman’s attention. Soon she realizes that Jesus sees her as she really is. In turn — through quizzing, sparring, engaging — she begins to see Jesus differently ─ as he really is.

That pushes the woman to steer the conversation away from what she has been hiding to what else Jesus can reveal.

Basically, she says, “You’ve got answers. I’ve got questions. First, where does God prefer to be worshipped after all? Who’s right? Your people, with your Jerusalem thing? Or my people, with our Mount Gerizim thing?”

Jesus’ answer? “You know, ma’am, God doesn’t really care! But God does care about honesty. God cares that we approach God together ─ Jew, Samaritan, other ─ telling the truth about ourselves … all hearts open … all desires known … no secrets hid. That’s life. That’s living.”

And then, emboldened by the breathtaking expanses of Jesus’ answer, the woman pops the question that is on the minds of everyone in that part of the world ─ Jew and Samaritan and anyone groaning under the heel of Roman oppression. “Topic: the Messiah. According to the prophets ─ and, it looks like you’re one of them ─ the time is ripe. Who will be the Messiah-Liberator? Will you identify the specific person God has sent to tell us everything about what it takes to be God’s people ─ free ─ once and for all ─ for all time?”

Read: The woman drives the conversation forward, pushing Jesus to reveal a secret about himself. “The Messiah? I … am … he.”

Cue some very dramatic music: dum-da-dum-dum-dah!

And then, in perhaps the worst case of timing in a history of ill-timed maneuvers, the disciples burst in, stepping on Jesus’ Messiah line and driving the woman off so fast she leaves behind her water jar!

But driving her off to buttonhole — euphorically — neighbors predisposed to shun her: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

Result? The woman, her tut-tutting neighbors grudgingly admit, is reaching out to embrace a new life of openness and integrity that can withstand even the glare of God’s scrutiny.

Proving the value of “no secrets!” for people who strive to become the unfailingly straight-shooting, honest-to-God people of God.

And that striving — not coincidentally — is a particular project of Lent. We’re each engaged these 40 days in one self-examining exercise after another, confessing, for example, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” All tongue-twisting aside, these exercises can come across as self-flagellation. More positively, they generate truths about ourselves that “deserve to be shared” with God. Exercises we have in common with our new-life-discovering sister from Samaria.

Pushing us to return to Itzhak Goldberg’s quest for the truth about his father and the two women in the hidden-and-yellowing photo.

In a matter of weeks after Itzhak solved the mystery, his daughter gave birth to a baby girl. They named her “Chaya.” Yes, Chaya. “Life.”

The family secret would be secret no more.

Amen.

“Making ‘What If’ History”

Homily for the First Sunday in Lent  5 March 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.                                                                                                                    Matthew 4:1

The book cover is enough to make an Anglophile swoon: Britain’s reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, sporting her tastefully-restrained grin, and gamely bearing up under the considerable weight of diamond tiara, diamond necklace, and diamond-encrusted badge of the Order of the Garter.

In the near distance, over her right shoulder, the Union Jack flutters — without apology — atop … the White House.

Yes, the White House. Meaning: What if we had lost the War for Independence? The fallout? At this year’s Super Bowl, Luke Bryan would have had a crack at ‘God Save the Queen.’

Improbable? Well, it’s possible in the parallel universe of alternate endings set up by What If? America, edited by military historian Robert Cowley. It’s a history of what didn’t happen.

For example, what if the Mayflower, whose original destination was Virginia, hadn’t been blown off course? Result? No Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers, no Plymouth Rock, no First Thanksgiving.

And those anti-Anglican and politically-radical Pilgrims rubbing shoulders with the mainstream Anglican gentry of Virginia, with its more forgiving climate than New England? What would be the alternate ending? The Pilgrims’ vaunted values of individualism, godly living, and hard work, coupled with their arguments for religious tolerance, according to Crowley, “might never have gathered the force and influence [they] were to achieve over the next centuries” in America.

The point of the speculative exercise, then: Pivotal moments in history tempt us to fantasize, “What if?”

Take Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness. We know how the Temptation ends. Tempted by Satan three times, what’s the score? Jesus shuts out Satan (bing-bing-bing). Nevertheless, there are haunting ‘what ifs’ hanging in the air: What if the score had ended up Jesus 0, Satan 3?

Look at the First Temptation, the “turn stones-into-bread” mini-drama. What’s the real issue? Is it the temptation for Jesus to go on a carbo-loading binge after a 40-day fast? No. The real issue is much larger. It’s about world hunger in relation to God’s love. That is, if God is all-loving, why do people — why do families — go hungry?

What if, then, it played out like this: “Jesus,” Satan purrs, “if you are who you say you are — the Son of the loving God — turn these stones scattered about into bread.” Jesus hesitates for a moment. Then — in a flash! — every pebble, stone, and boulder in sight — every pebble, stone, and boulder in on the planet — turns to bread. That’s a lot of bread. A lot of bread for a lot of hungry people. Imagine: World hunger obliterated once and for all in the blinking of an eye.

What a different story that would be for the starving children of the world, for communities that riot over food, for regions and governments that go to war over food and drinkable water and other life-essential resources.

What a different story that would be for Jesus. A Nobel Prize for the construction worker/turned-home-schooled-philosopher/turned philanthropist. Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” caught by paparazzi lounging in early retirement.

What a different story that we be for us. No soup kitchens. No outreach. No panhandlers or hand-outs. Our only need? To feed ourselves. Others’ hunger wouldn’t be our problem, because access to food wouldn’t be a problem for anyone, anywhere, at all.

What a simpler story that would be, thanks to ‘what if’: no hunger in our souls to live beyond ourselves.

But Jesus didn’t turn stones into bread, because Jesus didn’t give in to the temptation to make an idol of food. Proof? “One does not live by bread alone.” That’s Jesus’ counter-argument, the sort of thing a loving God says — the God who created whole people to be more than the sum of their appetites … because the struggle for justice, equality, and dignity doesn’t begin and end with the fight for food.

Round One: Jesus 1. Satan 0.

The Second Temptation — what we might be tempted to call the “jump as if your life didn’t depend on it” episode. Strip away the High Anxiety optics, and what’s the real issue? "Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Picture this: We’re perched atop the dizzying pinnacle of the Temple, the highest point in Jerusalem. Satan makes his pitch: “Jesus, it’s pure Vulcan logic. If God is as all-powerful and as just as you say, bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. Now, Jesus, you’re a good person. Go for it. Jump!”

Of course, we know how it turns out. Jesus stays put.

But ‘what if’? Whoosh! Jesus does a swan dive! The crowds below scream in horror. And out of nowhere, legions and legions of angels rush in to break his fall. When the dust clears, a relieved Jesus is left standing … jumpstarting the “Legend of the Jerusalem Jumper.”

What a different story that would be for Jesus. While the angels in the background mug for selfies, on the spot, the people proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. Result? No agony and bloody sweat in Gethsemane … no beatings, no pierced hands, feet, or side … no pain at all … no pain ever.

What a different story that would be for us. We — good people, one and all — would have a green light, when the going gets rough, to throw all caution to the wind and test — no, dare — God. And God, who can't ever get enough of risk, would be honor-bound to bless a new, alien world in which trust without risk would be the norm.

But that ‘what if’ didn’t happen. Jesus didn’t become the Jerusalem Jumper. He did make the point that trust in God isn’t a bad thing (far from it!) … but expecting God to be our constant safety net is.

Consequently, Jesus counters Satan’s argument with “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

That makes Round Two: Jesus 2. Satan 0.

What about the third, fall-down-and-worship-Satan temptation? Distil the drama, and what’s the issue? If God promises liberation, justice, and peace to all people, why the delay? Why not “freedom now”?

Here again, we know how the scene turns out. But what if — perched on the summit Satan takes Jesus to — surveying all the political and economic power available to accomplish the outcome closest to Jesus’ heart (the liberation of the planet from all oppression and lack of opportunity once and for all, for all), seeing that it could all be his in an instant … for such a small price … a slight compromise, what if Jesus would simply grovel and kiss the feet of Satan? Isn’t “freedom now” worth it? Doesn’t a noble end like liberation justify slightly-compromised means?

What a different story that would be for Jesus. No Crown of Thorns, but an imperial crown. No mocking “Hail, King of the Jews,” but a rousing “Hail to the Chief.” No inscription over his cross (“This is the King of the Jews”). In fact, no cross at all.

And what about us? What would be the lesson for us, if that’s the way it would have gone? Answer: Raw power? Even the power to do good? Seize it, exercise it, and keep it at all costs. Because Jesus would have championed the grim fallacy that the end always justifies the means. And by all means, get power!

But that ‘what if’ didn’t happen. Jesus neither made an idol of power nor did he issue a bankrupt moral imperative (“the end justifies the means”).

Round Three. Jesus 3. Satan 0. Clean sweep!

Recap: Jesus didn’t turn the stones into bread. Jesus didn’t jump. Jesus didn’t kiss Satan’s feet.

Read: Jesus didn’t make an idol of food. Jesus didn’t make an idol of risk-free trust. Jesus didn’t make an idol of power.

And because Jesus made the choices he did, we are here today. Otherwise, borrowing from historian Robert Cowley, Jesus’ ministry — and the Church established in his Name — “might never have gathered the force and influence it was to achieve” over the next millennia.

That means we now have the burden and the opportunity to make world-in-the-balance choices doing our own riff on Jesus’ Temptation.

Bottomline: Given the choice each day this Lent to make — or not make — an idol of food or any other proxy that inhibits ourselves or our neighbors from becoming whole persons in a whole world, what will it be?

Given the choice each day this Lent to take the kind of risks Jesus took and, like him, live with the consequences, what will it be?

And given the choice to achieve good ends — like justice, peace, liberation — by good means alone … or to cut ethical corners … to tarnish noble ends with murky means … what will it be?

By day’s end, then — each day this Lent — how will history turn out for each of us? The stakes are always high, because for each of us Lent is a ‘what if’ blockbuster!

Good news: Jesus has been there. And Jesus is here … with us … in each round … each temptation … to show us the choices he would make. But the choice is always up to us: What if?

Amen.

“It’s About Time”

Homily for Ash Wednesday  1 March 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!                                                                                                     2 Corinthians 6:2b

We kick off Ash Wednesday with Paul’s motivational mantra: “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!”

In other words, Lent. It’s about time.

That’s because everywhere we look in Lent, we bump into time. Most obvious temporal factoid? Lent is roughly 40 days and 40 nights. But also, we begin Sundays in Lent — this coming Sunday — with Jesus fasting 40 days in the desert. And we continue with Jesus on his pre-meditated journey to Jerusalem — a countdown to confrontation, with fatal consequences.

And, of course, our liturgical calendar demarcates the Sundays in Lent in terms of time: The First Sunday in Lent, Second Sunday in Lent, and so on.

As Lent reaches its climax in Holy Week, we have the time-warping Triduum (“three days-in-one”): Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday — all hurtling toward the Easter Vigil — celebrated as one liturgical day.

Even more time-based number: Jesus’ hours on the cross are calibrated … from noon to 3 o’clock.

Lent, then, is about time, but time with a twist … because Lent is moving us into time that has yet to make it onto a clock — the future God is absolutely positive each of us can accomplish … if we begin each day with a twist on Paul’s mantra that plays as, “It’s about time I lived like ‘Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!’”

But what does that mean?

Take “Now is the acceptable time.” Pretty straightforward. With apologies to Elvis, “It’s now or never.” Read: What are we waiting for?

But “now is the day of salvation” is a bit more problematic. It’s that word “salvation.” It’s been pretty tarnished by televangelists and other people who market the notion that salvation is all about being “saved” from the fires of hell. Talk about making people jittery. And making jittery people open their wallets. “Our operators are standing by.”

But what if salvation isn’t being saved from something, and instead, being saved for something? What if salvation means what Jesus — and Paul in 2 Corinthians — says it means? Union with God, being reconciled to God.

In other words, salvation isn’t about “getting your clock cleaned” by God … now … or at the end of your time on earth (death) … or the end of Time itself (the so-called Last Judgment).

Salvation is about striking up and nurturing a friendship with God … because doesn’t Jesus himself say the night before his death, “I no longer call you servants … but friends”?

From the lips of Jesus: friendship with God. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Consequently, the Church’s message in each of the roughly 40 days of Lent is: “Now is the day!” Not some day when it feels just right because this “isn’t a good time.”

Not some day when we’re in the mood or when the stars are in alignment.

But now is the day — this moment and each moment of Lent — now is the time for each of us to become close-closer-closest friends of God.

What will that look like?

Hint: Over each of the next 40 days-or-so of Lent, what is the most outrageous thing you can imagine that will make you a close-closer-closest friend of God?

Re-make your own self-image — spiritually, emotionally, and, yes, even physically? Well, get off the couch and on to the treadmill, for God’s sake!

Just a related sidebar on that score: This time of year, some people like to go on a diet or restrict their carbs intake or alcohol consumption — all under the banner of “giving something up for Lent.” Naysayers pooh-pooh this approach. They wheeze, “Lent isn’t about going on a diet.”

Bull pucky. Of course, Lent is — or can be — about going on a diet. Dieting is perfectly compatible with Lent … only we don’t call it a “diet.” We call it a “fast.” Renewing a “right spirit” … in our bodies.

As long as you don’t slide into anorexia, then, I think it’s just great to diet as a Lenten discipline … as long as … as long as it answers the question: “What kind of a body will give me the energy, the joy, the zest for living that will help me love God and my neighbor more and more, better and better, longer and longer?”

So, a rigorous Lenten fast: that might be the most outrageous thing you can imagine that will make you a close-closer-closest friend of God.

Or how about:

Revitalize your prayer life? (Or consider starting one.)

Re-align your relationships? (Ditch the Dementors!)

Re-tool your calendar (your priorities and how you spend your time)?

Re-acquaint yourself with Jesus (especially in the way he welcomes outcasts and works his fingers to the bone achieving justice for all our resource-stretched neighbors)?

And then there’s this outrageous thought: Re-think how you use resources that negatively impact the long-term sustainability of the planet God has given us to take care of and enjoy, in that order? Perhaps drive your car 20 percent less. Or reduce electricity and water use by 20 percent this Lent. Think of it as a carbon fast.

Or expand on your Lenten discipline from last year. Hike it up (as Buzz Lightyear trumpets in Toy Story) “to infinity and beyond!”

Oodles of future-realizing strategies to get on your calendar in the next 40 days and nights.

Complication: How will you upload these strategies off your calendar and into your head, heart, muscles, skin, and all the rest to make “infinity and beyond!” the new “normal”?

For starters, it will take prayer. Pray each morning in Lent for the creativity, the candor, and the challenges to discover the outrageous thing God is desperate to do in your life.

Ask God, in the words of Psalm 51: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Sustain me with your bountiful Spirit. Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.” Start with that prayer, and the rest will follow.

If that’s what Lent might look like for you, what won’t it look like?

It won’t look like the definition of history one of my seminary professors used to delight in skewering: “one damn thing after another.” Round and round and round, just one same-old-same-old, tedious experience after another. Yawn.

It will look more like a countdown to the future, an Easter-dawning future of new life for each of us and our neighbors.

Now is the time, then — this Lent — to show up at Mass ... engage in our Lenten Learning Series (“The Five Marks of Love”), beginning Thursday evening, March 9 ... help secure the future for one of our youngsters with your Lenten Offering. Now is the time to engage your heart, mind, and soul … here … with us at Saint Paul’s.

Because there is no better time. There is no other time. “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!”

Amen.