“To boldly go.”

Homily for the Feast of St Peter & St Paul                            24 June 2018
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

Eternal light, shine in our hearts. Eternal hope, lift up our eyes. Eternal power, be our support. Eternal wisdom, make us wise. Amen.

Derrick Johnson. Not a household name, but he aims to be one in the next decade or so, right up there with Christopher Columbus, Lewis and Clark, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin.How? Johnson ─ along with about 200,000 others ─ has applied to be among the first cohort of humans not only to land on Mars, but to build a permanent, self-sustaining colony on the dusty hulk.

The name of the mission? Mars One. “One,” as in one-way. Yes, the privately-funded mission aims to launch the successful applicants into space, land them on Mars, and attempt to keep them alive for the length of their natural lives.

One-way. Exponentially cheaper than a round-trip.

That means Mars One has lots of critics. For example: Can it really be done on the shoe-string budget planned, they ask? Is it ethical? Is it a scam?

Let’s say it’s all on the up-and-up. Would you do it? Would you sign up for a one-way trip into the history books via Mars?

I suppose it would depend on a lot of factors: What you want to do with the rest of your life. The ties that bind (spouse, family, friends). The lure of fame or the gravitational pull of going boldly where no one has gone before.

A one-way, no-exit enterprise raises questions like that.

That’s why Derrick Johnson is beginning to get cold feet. That’s because ─ what else? ─ love. Johnson, now 32, wasn’t in love when he first applied for Mars One. Back then, he thought he would never fall in love, never find the “one.” But love ─ earth-bound Jonathan ─ has found Mars-bound Derrick Johnson. Aw-w-w-w-k-ward.

And now, in light of a love he never saw coming … in light of a law he never saw coming ─ equal marriage in all 50 states, thanks to five fair and forward-thinking justices on the Supreme Court almost three years ago to the day ─ in the event he makes the final Mars One cut, Derrick Johnson has to decide what he really, really wants to do with the rest of his life … what he really, really has to do.

In other words, while Johnson hasn’t yet resolved his dilemma, he’s discovered that bumping into the future ─ in his case, two competing futures ─ has a way of changing your life … changing your mind … changing the course of just about everything.

That’s Jesus’ point when he asks Peter once ─ twice ─ three times, “Peter, do you love me?” hitched once ─ twice ─ three times to Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me.” Why the repetition? It’s Jesus’ way of saying, “Follow me: It’s a one-way mission. What, then, do you want? What do you have to do?”

Peter doesn’t quite know what to think of the question. From where he stands, the future looks pretty good. The trauma of Good Friday is far, far behind him. He has just realized the perfect day: caught a mother lode of fish … on a glassy sea … dug into a steaming breakfast … on a pebbled shore … with each and every one of his best friends in the world. And with Jesus … alive once more!

Now, not all our tomorrows end in gloom-and-doom. I mean, sure, we don’t get out alive. But getting there isn’t necessarily a steady drumbeat of gloom-and-doom. Just the same, where will a one-way future lead Peter? Because, according to Jesus, all this, too, shall pass. “When you grow old,” Jesus suggests, “you will stretch out your hands, Peter ─ searching and unsteady ─ and someone else (a captor) will restrain you with a leather strap and drag you into a future not on your bucket list.” Destination, as it turned out? Death on a cross, like Jesus. Only, for Peter, hung upside down.

Of course, at this point, Peter doesn’t know the specifics of his less-than-rosy future, pushing him to determine, “What do I really, really want to do with the rest of my life? What do I have to do?”

It’s a question no less urgent for Paul, whose witness, ministry, and martyrdom we also commemorate today.

When we first meet Paul, the world is his oyster: Inquisitor-in-Chief commissioned to stamp out the early Christian sect. Stamp out any vestige of Christians. Period. And he’s very good at it ─ killing them, that is, without pity, without regret. With fanatical efficiency. Zero tolerance.

But if his victims are anything like the deacon Stephen — whose stoning Paul supervised … Stephen, who knew what he had to do and, even as life escaped him, prayed, “Lord do not hold this sin against them” ─ this prelude-to-holocaust must have taken its toll on Paul, eroded his confidence, challenged him to look at his victims as neighbor. Because he, too, soon comes to a point in his life ─ that point being the road to Damascus ─ Damascus, where he hoped to launch even more mayhem on the Christians there ─ Paul comes to the point where he must determine what he really, really wants to do with the rest of his life. What does he really, really has to do.

And being confronted by Jesus in a vision on that Damascus Road, as Paul describes it, that thoroughfare becomes a one-way wormhole into the future, because Paul knows that others will rise up to take his place to persecute ─ annihilate ─ him (the fresh-minted follower of Christ), as he has done to Christians. Hoisted on his own petard.

And so, like Peter, Paul chooses the costly one-way mission Jesus offers him.

The urgency of a one-way future, then, pushes each of us to ask: What do we really, really want to do with the rest of our life? What do we really, really have to do?

For example, it’s been a whiplash week for the victims of the Administration’s determination to halt the flow of immigrants across our southern border, engineering what one advisor has called a “final solution” … by scapegoating … by whipping up the base with a fiction: that the immigrants are murderers and rapists. If you can’t build a wall, erect a lie.

The whole situation is a bloody mess, with no one quite sure what the President’s executive order — reversing his earlier policy to separate children from parents criminally-charged for crossing the border — means.

Good news: Newly-charged immigrants won’t get their kids ripped out of their arms.

Bad news: They (the entire family) will be held indefinitely — and illegally — likely in our burgeoning internment-camp system.

Worse news: There’s no plan in place to reunite with their parents the roughly 2300 kids and infants already detained, triggering a crisis of soul-searching: What do we really want to do with the rest of their lives … lives condemned, at this point, to a future irreparably-scarred by the trauma of separation and no-end-in-sight incarceration? What do we have to do?

As followers of Jesus, then, we’ve got a problem. We believe that God dreams of a one-way future for each and all that’s designed to expand: Expand justice. Expand human dignity. Expand equality.

Factoid: This isn’t “fake news.” The prophet Micah himself describes that future: “Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly" — one step in front of the other into the future — "with God.”

Bonus factoid: That expansive future isn’t in God’s hands, despite what you were taught in Sunday School. That future is in our hands.

In other words, God’s justice didn’t come to a dead stop with the signing of that executive order banning future separation of kids from their parents. God’s justice will expand when we decide that we want what God wants: just and humane treatment for all families, especially families with their backs up against a wall of unimaginable violence in their home villages and neighborhoods.

God’s justice didn’t come to a dead stop with taking down Confederate flags and monuments to racism, relegating them to museums. God’s justice expands when we decide that we want what God wants:  the elimination of racism altogether, once and for all.

God’s justice didn’t come to a dead stop when equal marriage became the Law of the Land.  God’s justice will expand when, in the spirit of all Jesus stands for, we decide to march and fight, resist and vote to end altogether — in each of the 50 states — discrimination against LGBTs in housing and hiring and bathroom use and the purchase of wedding cakes and the death-by-a-thousand cuts of everyday bias so many of us experience.

Taken altogether, that’s an agenda that includes checking in first with Jesus when we espy the one-way destiny of days ahead. Consulting with Jesus, then ... Jesus — just up ahead — who asks each of us, “What do you really, really, want to do with the rest of your life? What do you have to do? Read: Follow me.”

That’s a one-way adventure Jesus guarantees that we and each and every one of our neighbors — not one person left out — can all live with.

Amen.

“Caged.”

Homily for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost       17 June 2018
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love that we may minister your justice with compassion.                                                                                               Pentecost 4, Proper 6 Collect (excerpt)

Does the Bible justify separating children from their parents … ever?

More specifically, does the Bible justify separating children from their parents at our border with Mexico?

Drilling deeper, does the Bible justify caging 1,995 children in the past six weeks — torn, in our name — by agents of our government implementing the barbaric policies of this Administration?

To recap: Close to 2,000 children (roughly 45 per day) ripped from their parents’ arms, caged in warehouses — some destined for a tent city on an El Paso TX military base, in 100-degree daytime temperatures — with no plan in place for their reunification with their parents.

No end in sight to this abomination, this degradation of all we stand for as a people … and all that Jesus stands for. Jesus, who unequivocally said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

Two questions, then, for people of faith: Can this atrocity be reconciled with our prayer this morning, that we minister God’s “justice with compassion”?

And, is it justified by the Bible, as unscrupulous and biblically-illiterate political operatives assert that it can be?

Short answers: No. And “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

In reverse order: The claim that the Bible justifies caging kids ripped from their parents’ arms. That’s the whopper Attorney General Jeff Sessions hawked on Thursday. He argued that the government just has to separate the kids from their undocumented, border-crossing parents so the adults can be criminally prosecuted and incarcerated.

But when pressed to address this policy’s lack of humanity, Sessions beamed, “I would cite you to [sic] the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans Chapter 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”

Keep talking like that, and before you know it, we’re in Handmaid’s Tale territory.

Later, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders parroted, “It is very Biblical to enforce the law.” In fact, she parroted it over and over.

This is rank dishonesty. Sessions and Huckabee Sanders are pulling a bait and switch. The question on compassionate peoples’ minds deals primarily with the treatment of the children — what health professionals across the board are calling “government-sanctioned torture.”

The Attorney General and the White House spokesperson are switching that most self-evident and Christian of concerns — the well-being of the kids — to the apparent law-breaking of the parents. Obviously, Sessions and Huckabee Sanders don’t want to talk about the children. Jesus roundly condemns people like them who harm children. Think, as Jesus says, of a millstone wrapped around the perpetrators’ necks, the offenders “drowned in the depths of the sea.”

That actually is a very appealing picture at the moment. But I digress.

Now, you might be wondering what St Paul, in Romans Chapter 13, says. Yes, he says, “Obey the law.” He even argues that agents of the government enforce the law with God’s blessing. So, yes, that is problematic for libtards like me.

What’s up? Why would Paul say, “Obey the law”? Answer: Context. He wrote that as a survival strategy just as the imperial government was cracking down on minorities (like the followers of Jesus) fomenting civil unrest. Paul is basically telling Christians in Rome, “Avoid arrest. Don’t get beat up. Stay out of trouble.”

He also might be inoculating himself against charges that, as a leader of folks who see Jesus as a higher authority than the emperor (who just happens to be Nero!), Paul might spearhead a bit of rabble-rousing himself and be hauled in. To protect himself, he’s leaving a paper trail.

On top of that — and this is a point lost on anyone who crows, “Obey the law. It’s in the Bible! It’s in the Bible!” — forget that Jesus ran afoul of the authorities all the time. Forget that, leading up to the Civil War, this passage was used to justify the institution of slavery. You don’t even have to get trapped in the weeds of how a fully-formed conscience is bound to over-ride civil law when they conflict.

Think, instead: Church and State. Separate. Not even separate but equal. Separate.

Read: It’s a dubious enterprise — no, make that contrary to the spirit of the Constitution — to use the Bible to interpret and determine the Constitution, laws, and statutes of our secular-by-design republic.

Third: Resorting to “Obey the law! It’s biblical.” Factoid: Not everything in the capital-B Bible is lower-case-b biblical.

Take a footnote in our reading today. Samuel’s coup d’état deposing Saul as king and anointing David in his place. Why? Saul runs afoul of God.

But why does God — albeit reluctantly — sign off on the people’s choice of Saul in the first place? Saul is from Central Casting. He’s perfect. Until he’s not.

Because far into Saul’s reign, God commands him to wipe out the pagan Amalekites. “Put every man and woman and all the Amalekites’ livestock to the sword.” Oh, did I forget to mention “wipe out all the Amalekites' children, too”?

News flash: This isn’t God at God’s best. But the story isn’t about theology. It’s not even history. It’s myth, the tall tales people tell about their unique place on the world stage. In this instance, Israelites good. Pagan Amalekites — who not-so-coincidentally reside in territory the Israelites want to annex — bad. They have to go.

So, Saul carries through on the blood-binge, sort of. Yes, even kills all the kids. (And we’re worried about Trump putting them in cages!) But he saves the livestock … for himself. Ships them off to Mar-a-Lago … or maybe that’s Marrakesh. Well, somewhere.

Why show Saul the exit? For making off with the animals, for disobeying God. But okay with kiddie cadavers. It’s right there … in the Bible. à

But — to repeat — not everything in the capital-B Bible is lower-case b biblical. Biblical, in our Anglican tradition: having the moral force of the commandment Jesus places just about above all other commandments, opinions, suggestions, glosses, and advice. Paul even reiterates it after all his “obey the law” talk: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

He even adds, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Raising the question: Can Attorney General Sessions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or any of their accomplices in the federally-funded child abuse business claim that what they are doing does no wrong to their neighbor? Do they consider the immigrant their neighbor? Immigrant children, immigrant parents their neighbor?

Leading us back to our first question: Is it possible to “minister justice” in this case without compassion?

What is justice? What is compassion?

As to justice, looks like the homewreckers are saying ‘tomato’ and those charging them with the injustice of child endangerment are saying ‘tomahto.’ Tomato, tomahto. Concepts of justice poles apart.

That’s because defenders of the Administration’s break-up-families policy think justice — whether it’s in the Bible or the Constitution — is all about punishment. “Disobey the law and, goshdarnit, we’ve got to, we’ve just got to punish you.”

Problem is: They haven’t really studied the Bible beyond all the “thou shalt nots” or opened their eyes to the arc of justice that soars above its pages. Justice, as it appears in the Bible and as it has been understood by all advancing cultures since recorded time, is giving to each and all what they are owed: fairness, equal treatment, dignity, respect.

And, yes, that might mean jailing or penalizing guilty perps, because the perps’ victims (or their survivors) are owed some sense of redress.

In the case of the immigrant families, the balance of justice tilts toward victims as well: the most vulnerable, the children. What are they owed? They are. Not. Owed. Cages. But what all children — in all places — in all conditions (immigrant or citizen) — in all fairness — are owed: family, security, compassion.

That’s compassion, as practiced by Jesus. Immersing ourselves fully in the pain, confusion, and helplessness of the children to alleviate it and correct it.

Bottomline: Can we in all honesty say that this policy — and those who have invented it, are thumping their Bibles for it, executing it, and profiting from it — can we say agents of our government — caging children — are ministering “justice with compassion”?

And then, are we — if we are being completely honest with ourselves — ministering justice with compassion if we conspire with them by remaining silent and allowing this injustice — this petty, mean-spirited, politically-motivated, this anti-Christian injustice — to continue?

Amen.

"Will She or Won't She?"

Homily for the Third Sunday after Pentecost       10 June 2018
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”                                                                                                               Mark 3:35

The Case of Mrs. Bergmeier. An as-yet-to-be-released episode of ‘Sherlock’? Not quite. The Case of Mrs. Bergmeier. A classic in the annals of decision-making … moral decision-making.

Beware: The Case of Mrs. Bergmeier just might keep you up at night.

Picture this. Nazi Germany. Mrs. Bergmeier, as you might gather from her name, is married. She has two young children. Her husband’s health is patchy, at best. She’s behind bars, serving out a six-year sentence without parole. Her crime? Helping her Jewish neighbors avoid detection, arrest by the Nazis, and, ultimately, deportation to a death camp.

After months of imprisonment, Mrs. Bergmeier learns that her husband’s health is deteriorating — fast — aggravated by his having to care solo for the children. She hears that the children are malnourished and unkempt.

But Mrs. Bergmeier learns something else. Due to overcrowding, the prison has been releasing pregnant inmates held for lesser crimes, like hers.

And then, there’s the guard — the leering guard — who hits on Mrs. Bergmeier relentlessly. It’s prison. It happens. It shouldn’t.

For Mrs. Bergmeier — a deeply religious woman, deeply devoted to her husband — it’s a quandary: Stay faithful to her husband, honor her marriage vows, and stand by, helpless to prevent the destruction of her family.

Or — to secure early release — submit to the guard, get pregnant by him, and save her family.

If you were Mrs. Bergmeier, what would you do?

What did Mrs. Bergmeier do? She chose to give in to the guard’s advances.

Outcome? Three months later, Mrs. Bergmeier — pregnant — gains her freedom. She returns to her home to care once more for her husband and children.

Before all that, however, what do you suppose the will of God is in the Case of Mrs. Bergmeier?

Because that is what Jesus is asking us to consider — using the language of family — when he tells everyone within earshot, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

So, what is the will of God? Or, in a fraught situation like Mrs. Bergmeier’s — or perhaps the not-quite-as-weighty dilemmas we face — we might be tempted to ask, “WWJD”?  Yes, it was overly trendy for a time and probably passé now. What would Jesus do?

Problem: That’s the wrong question. At least, it’s not the best question.

Meaning: Sure, we could all stand to be more like Jesus. But when you look at Jesus’ interactions with people, they’re about choices emanating from his character … about the sort of person he is and consequently the impact he has on others, his neighbor … what he’s open to seeing, what he cares about, how he responds. And how he clones that seeing, caring, and responding. How he wills it.

And in so doing, extending that “will” to each of us and how we negotiate our challenges and opportunities to grow, strive, and move into God’s future of loving more and loving better.

Truth-in-advertising: It’s not easy. Hard work reorienting all of our life in God not into “What would Jesus Do?” Not even “What should I do?” But rather, because Jesus is in the character-building business, answering in all honesty three questions posed by the practice of Virtue Ethics:

First, “Who am I?” For example, how just am I? To what extent do I ensure that I give my neighbors what they are owed as members of the human race? And what are they owed? The assurance and the experience that their lives matter.

Then, because life in God as Jesus crafts it is about striving and geared to the shape of things to come: “Who ought I to become?” That is, am I becoming a better person? What would it look like if I got better at ensuring that my neighbors’ lives matter? Going from merely caring to boldly intervening, marching, lobbying, and resisting.

And third, “How ought I to get there?” If the future is the engine, how do I get more aware of my neighbors’ needs now? What skills and habits do I need to acquire and practice to get better and better at impacting their lives for the good … and for good?

Now, there was an added layer of complexity for Mrs. Bergmeier. Remember, she was caught in a dilemma. In answer to “Who am I?” she concluded she was a wife, committed — in all fidelity — to her husband.

And yet, she also understood herself to be a caring person. Proof: Look at how she tried to protect her Jewish neighbors (making her a just person as well). Moreover, she saw herself as a caring woman charged with the welfare of her family.

What, then, in terms of striving and becoming, would it look like for Mrs. Bergmeier to be a more faithful wife? I suppose that would mean: continue fending off — more adamantly — the guard’s advances, survive somehow six years of incarceration … but, in the end, likely lose her family.

And to be a more caring person? Do the unthinkable and live free once more to care for husband and children, including — let’s not forget — the child fathered by the repugnant prison guard. That alone — even absent increasingly difficult circumstances brought on by the war — will be a stretch. That will require character: courage, forgiveness, patience all around in order to flourish, to grow.

To flourish and to grow. This, then — for Mrs. Bergmeier and each of us — is doing the will of God.

Sidebar: Framing the will of God in terms of flourishing and growing — or character formation — may mean a re-calibration for those, like myself, brought up in an evangelical culture. In that tradition, the “will of God” is often cast as “God’s will for your life,” phrased more ominously as “God’s plan for your life.”

According to this off-kilter understanding of God’s will, God has mapped out your life in minute detail. Your job is to read God’s mind. For example, this scheme proposes that, before the foundation of the world, God picked out for you the perfect mate. You just have to find that person, obviously — because we’re talking evangelical culture here — that special person of the opposite sex. That’s where it kind of all came to a screeching halt in my case.

But that mind-reading task also extends to other choices, both momentous and mundane: college, career, house, car, supper, Netflix. And, believe me, you get all tied up in knots, with God micromanaging like that. Think job security for therapists.

And if you don’t pick God’s choice? Is God going to punish you with a bad marriage … or a messy divorce … until the next round of mind-reading begins?

God is just not like that. Why would anyone of sound mind choose to follow a god like that?

That’s because the will of God, as Jesus frames it, is “to learn more, to understand the needs of ourselves and our neighbor better, and to search for ways to make the lives of all people (including ourselves) better.” That’s how my seminary professor James F. Keenan puts it.

The decision-making process starts when we choose to be open to God and neighbor.

For example, Jesus — miraculously, the evangelist Matthew tells us — feeds 5,000 people in one sitting. Starting point? Jesus is the sort of person who tosses and turns at night, troubled by the fact that people go to bed hungry. Hence the “miracle” from five loaves and two fishes.

In turn, Jesus organizes his disciples to share the bounty. And to collect the leftovers for people to take home and share, in turn, with their underfed neighbors.

The point: Just ask Jesus. It is God’s will that all — absolutely everybody, no one left out — be fed. It can be done. We’ve got the data.

Another example: Jesus heals people. A lot. From lepers to paralytics to people with severe psychological problems. Jesus is the sort of person who is aware of people who need healing. And he heals them so they can flourish and grow, earn a living, engage in the world.

Read: It is God’s will that all have access to affordable healthcare. It can be done. We have the data. Do we have the political will? That’s the question.

And Jesus teaches. He’s the sort of person who cares enough that people not settle for what they’ve got trapped in their brains. Jesus thinks. And he shows us how to be thinking people. Take his interaction with critics in this morning’s Gospel. They lambaste him for casting out satanic demons. How? Through the power of Satan, they charge.

Jesus’ counter? He goes all-Spock. “Illogical. Why would Satan want to abolish all things satanic? Think!” Jesus says in exasperation. “Use the brain God gave you!” That’s Jesus: the sort of person who values and pursues and shows how to do wisdom, logic, facts, critical thinking so that others might value and engage in the rut-crushing enterprise of brain expansion.

Pushing us to ask, “Would Jesus make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple?” We know Ruth Bader Ginsburg would. But Jesus? I think initially — culturally — that would be a stretch for him. But, as Jesus shows time and time again, it’s the will of God that we stretch in ways that are more just, more loving, more caring.

So, yes — riffing on a Facebook feed this past week — I think Jesus would bake the damn cake. And throw in a blender. And dance at the reception. Dance up a storm. With Mrs. Bergmeier!

To prove once more — in full, rainbow-sequined fabulosity — “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Amen.

“Three's Company”

Homily for Trinity Sunday       27 May 2018
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity! 

“Jesus and Nicodemus Meet Abbott and Costello.”

That’s what you could call it: the prime-time routine emerging from the strictly-hush-hush encounter between inquisitive Nicodemus and controversial Jesus.

It reads a lot like “Who’s on first?” A refresher on how that goes:

Abbott: They give ball players nowadays very peculiar names.

Costello: Funny names?

Abbott: Nicknames, nicknames. Now, on the St. Louis team we have Who’s on first. What’s on second. I Don’t Know is on third.

Costello: That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team.

Abbott: I’m telling you. Who’s on first. What’s on second. I Don’t Know is on third.

Costello: You know the fellows’ names?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: Well, then who’s playing first?

Abbott: Yes.

And you can get the rest on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZksQd2fC6Y). But the point is: Abbott and Costello. Each using the same words. But each talking past the other to comic effect.

Same with Jesus and Nicodemus. Words, pretty much the same. But they’re talking past each other.

Jesus: You have to be born all over again.

Nicodemus: Isn't birth a one-time deal? Can’t be born all over again.

Jesus: Yes. You have to be born all over again.

Nicodemus: But you can’t do the whole birth thing again, yes?

Jesus: Yes. You have to be born all over again.

Maybe not quite the comedic punch of Abbott and Costello. But Jesus and Nicodemus are talking past each other, too. Jesus mentions being “born all over again.” That is, re-engineering … now … in the present … our primal, love-and-justice-limiting DNA into the pristine, fresh, life-changing, life-giving DNA of God’s Kingdom. Love-in-full-bloom for God, neighbor, and self.

Nicodemus hears “being born all over again” and thinks obstetrics.

That’s the sort of thing that’s going on when we talk about the Trinity, especially as our convictions about the Trinity — traditionally configured as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — are expressed in the words of the Nicene Creed, which we proclaim together just about every Sunday.

In other words, we say and sing today what we’ve always sung and said, variations on

And we think we know what we mean. Frankly, I’m not so sure.

There’s another complication. If you walked in off the street this morning having never before heard of God — or, at least God expressed as Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit — you’d think we worshiped three gods, not one God.

Or at least you’d think we tolerated a contradiction — a contradiction that doesn’t make sense at all: One God in Three Persons. Three “people” somehow comprising something called the “Godhead” (that’s another term thrown into the mix) that’s one, but also three.

“I get it,” you’d say. “You worship a God who lives in three parallel universes. Is that what you’re talking about? … No?”

“Oh. You worship a shape-shifter. One minute, a father-figure … next minute, his son … and then (poof!) some sort of airy-fairy spirit thing that’s neither here nor there, but everywhere. A shape-shifter. Have I got that right? … No?”

“Ummm. How about a sci-fi collective-consciousness, ‘We are Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated’ thing? Got it!”

And that’s just a sampling of responses a stranger might have to the words we use on a day like this.

What about our images: stained glass, statues, paintings?

For much of the Church’s history, the three persons of the Trinity were depicted as triplets. Identical. Triplets. The earliest set is from a third-century sarcophagus: God as triplets creating Eve out of Adam’s side. Of course, the Eve-Adam-rib thing is problematic on its face. But the triplet act? Try getting a total stranger-to-things-churchy to swallow that one.

Not to mention the depictions of the Trinity triplets favored in icons and illuminated manuscripts: all seated at a table-for-three (set by Old Testament patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah) … anachronistically dining on what appears to be the Eucharist. Where to start?

My favorite, however — from a 16th-centuruy illuminated manuscript — is as creepy as it is comic. This Trinity sports a singular, hefty torso topped by this one-headed, Godhead thing. Three heads mashed into one: three noses, three mouths, and three bearded chins, but four eyes (only two of which are visible). Shades of The Island of Doctor Moreau. A genetic-engineering Science Fair project gone awry. A project called “The Trinity.”

“Houston, we’ve got a problem” … because you want your brand — your witness to God’s work in your life and in the world — to be understood, persuasive, and memorable (in the most positive sense).

Read: The way we talk among ourselves when we try to make sense of the Trinity and the images we use? They’re utterly unintelligible — worse, they’re grotesque — to the people God sends our way to share the Good News with.

That’s not evangelism, it's nostalgia. Moreover, we end up talking only to ourselves. And even then, we’re not sure exactly what it is we’re talking about.

This situation is unsustainable ... if we want our neighbors to enjoy the benefits we experience as the People of God and the responsibilities and burdens we share.

The root of the problem, then, is another “Who’s on First” routine — this one performed by the Early Church Fathers and us. Again, same words, but we’re talking past each other. Blame translation challenges and the migration of the meanings behind words from a fourth- and fifth-century world to now.

For example, the Church Fathers attempted to put into words their experience of Jesus. Jesus not only as Messiah and then Son of God, but ultimately God. As St. Paul says, “Christ, the image of God.”

Well, that opened up a whole can of worms. Because you have: the One Jesus calls ‘Father’ is God … Jesus is God … and, as our Gospel this morning puts it, “God is Spirit.” Do the math: 1 + 1 + 1 = … 1? Or, "We believe in one God.”

How do you wrap your mind around that?

The Church Fathers made a noble effort. They appealed to images. For example, they spoke of Jesus as “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” Sound familiar? From the fourth-century Nicene Creed. But helpful in the 21st? Doubtful.

That’s because experiencing God shouldn’t require a Ph.D. in fourth-century Aristotelian and neo-Platonic metaphysics. And if you’re scratching your head and saying, “Aristotelian and neo-Platonic metaphysics, wha’?” Well, then, that proves the point!

As a result, rescuing the Creed from the fourth century means asking, “What do you mean by ‘person,’ as in the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity?”

Now, when we each think of ourselves as a “person,” we’re thinking “individual” … that each of us is essentially an autonomous, singular, conscious entity. The Trinity, then, as three “persons”? Three entities? Before you know it, we’re back to the Trinitarian triplets.

Not the fourth-century writers of the Creed. When they say “person,” they’re thinking more of attributes — what makes up a personality. So, to them, the Creed isn’t really talking about three individuals, but basically a “trinity” of attributes that correspond to our experience of God, say, as Creator, Savior, and God alive and active in us today.

But rather than attributes — which strike me as rather static — I prefer to talk about impulses: God’s forward-into-the-future creative, sparking, regenerating impulses.

Triggering questions: Should we abandon the Creed? Should we re-tool our hymns?

Awkward.

What should we do? Answer: Find words — new words — that capture our experience of God. Words that respect the contours of our tradition, and yet words that pop for us and — more important — pop for our non-ChurchSpeak neighbors.

But what words, as in the “30-second Rule”? How can you explain — to a stranger — the Trinity in 30 seconds … in a way that is clear, persuasive, and memorable … or at least curiosity-inducing (as in “tell me more”)?

For starters, it’s all God, one God, and one God only we’re talking about.

And our experience as a community attaches three impulses to God — primarily three expressions of the nature and activity of God:

(1) God’s “creative” impulse (the One Jesus calls Father).

(2) God’s “saving” impulse lived out by Jesus, in whom God’s Spirit was so uniquely and fully active, we experience God uniquely and fully in Jesus. By “saving,” we mean Jesus’ work to restore our relationship with God, with each other, and with all creation.

(3) God’s “striving” impulse … striving to see replicated in humans Jesus’ behavior and his relationship to God. That impulse we call “God’s Spirit.”

Bottomline (in 30 seconds): We see God in the face of Jesus Christ. This knowledge or experience is made possible through the power of God’s Spirit, who reveals all truth about us … and about God … and works through us to achieve God’s dream for all creation.

Okay, that was 15 seconds.

Even better, we join with the whole Church throughout the world today — and spanning the ages — in one unending hymn of praise:

To God the Father,
God the Son,
and God the Spirit,
Three in One,
praise, honor, might, and glory be
from age to age eternally!

Amen.

“Drop-dead Amazing”

Homily for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany       28 January 2018
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

"They were all amazed.”  Mark 1:27a

Tuesday. Benton, Kentucky. Population roughly 4,000. A 15-year-old sophomore walks into his high school, pulls out a handgun, opens fire. 16 fellow students drop. 2 dead. 14 wounded. The Administration's commentary a gobsmacking 24 hours later? A tweet: “My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.”

“Thoughts and prayers.” The official response to a staggering number of mass shootings over the past year. The official response to skyrocketing death tolls and soaring numbers of wounded, including:

November 5. First Baptist, Sutherland Springs, Texas. 26 dead, 20 wounded. Response? “Thoughts and prayers.”

October 1. Las Vegas. 58 dead, 851 wounded. Response? “Thoughts and prayers.”

“Thoughts and prayers.” Up to our necks in bloodshed and bullet-riddled bodies, do “thoughts and prayers” cut it?

We could ask Jesus, but he’s just one data point. Let’s go for a larger sampling: folks — in some respects like those church-goers in Sutherland, Texas — assembled for Sabbath worship at a neighborhood synagogue in Capernaum, the Galilee town Jesus settles into after the grand opening of his public ministry.

Picture this. With freshly-minted disciples in tow, Jesus makes a guest appearance at the synagogue. As is customary, a discussion of the day’s scripture is on the agenda and the local experts chime in with their two-cents … until Jesus hijacks the commentary.

Mark the Evangelist observes that it’s a jaw-dropping performance. “Astounding” is the way he puts it, “authoritative” even. In Mark’s opinion, light years ahead of the same-old/same-old parsing indulged in by the certified experts on tap each Sabbath, the scribes.

And before anyone — least of all, Jesus — can savor the moment, all hell breaks loose. A local described as being demon-possessed — we would say he has mental health issues — causes a wild-eyed ruckus. “Out to destroy us?” he shouts at Jesus. “I know who you are!” The high drama of full-blown paranoia.

Jesus’ response? “My thoughts and prayers are with you."

Ummm. How far do you think Jesus would have made it that day — or any other — with “thoughts and prayers”?  Proof? Fast-forward:

Blind man Bartimaeus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus: “My thoughts and prayers are with you.”

A leper: “Jesus, if you choose, make me clean!” … “Thoughts and prayers.”

The non-Jewish woman who harasses Jesus: “Have mercy! My daughter is tormented by a demon!” … “Thoughts. Prayers.”

And perhaps the most eye-popping case of all: In the shadow of the death of her brother Lazarus, Martha of Bethany shames Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

“You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.”

But, of course, while Jesus is often thoughtful and perennially prayerful, the amazement he triggered that day in the synagogue is stapled to the fact that he didn’t stop with thoughts and prayers. He did something. He healed the man. Gave him what he needed: sanity.

And that gives the people that morning ― and the hordes Jesus encounters in synagogues and streets and byways all over the region from then on ― their scarcest commodities: hope, vision, and a model for action … because ― compared to the scribes, let’s say ― Jesus does what most only talk about.

Meaning: The people. What do they need? Well, look at their situation. As an occupied population, they suffer one indignity piled upon another. Disease is rampant. Unemployment rife. “Opportunity”? For them, not a word in the economy’s vocabulary.

That makes them chronic victims who have a right to complain, “We don’t need thoughts and prayers. We’ve had it up to here with good (or at least, professed) intentions. We need relief, we need healing, we need jobs, we need food, we need dignity. We need action.”

And, by restoring the disruptive man to his right mind, Jesus shows he concurs. “Thoughts? Terrific. Prayers? Can’t knock ‘em. But they pale next to taking one step after another and another to achieve God’s justice: abundance, ranging from food to jobs, to healthcare and security. All satisfied. No one left out.

And that’s why the people are so electrified — so astonished and amazed — that morning. They can sense ― they can see ― Jesus is one with his message.

And that’s the challenge for each of us after Benton, Sutherland Springs, the Las Vegas massacre …  and the 15,583 gun violence deaths — suicides not included — in the past 12 months … with no end in sight … and scant reason to hope … as we witness one mass shooting after another: one neighbor, one high schooler, one child after another … senselessly ripped apart … while the NRA and their cronies in Congress pump up the body count — a body count that will not be wished away by thoughts and prayers.

That’s the rallying cry of progressives who can taste God’s justice. Progressives like Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut. In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, he took to the internet. “To my colleagues in the Senate and in the House: Your cowardice to act [on gun control] cannot be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers.

“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing … again.

“None of this ends,” the senator concludes, “unless we do something to stop it.”

And none of this ends unless we do something to stop it … unless we stand up, speak up, show up at the polls to vote out the saboteurs of gun control.

Otherwise, thoughts and prayers? That’s all there is? Echoes of Peggy Lee: “Is that all there is, is that all there is? If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.”

Yes, then let’s keep dancing … dancing around the issue, while — one by one — more innocent victims in the crosshairs … drop.

Amen.