“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth"

Pentecost

Fr. Joseph Britton

24 May 2015

Christ Church

I grew up as a Southern Baptist, but about the time the Southern Baptist Church took a sharp turn toward the right, my brother and I decided we were going to have a look around to see what else was out there. On a whim, we decided to go to the local Episcopal church for the midnight mass of Christmas, and all I can say is that I was hooked. The following Advent I was baptized and confirmed, and have lived my life in this church ever since.

Thinking back to my home parish (St. Luke’s Church in Fort Collins, Colorado), it’s not too hard for me to name why it so captured my imagination as a high school kid. It was moderately catholic in churchmanship, and I loved the drama of the liturgy and the clear sense that it was part of something ancient and much larger than itself. Yet the worship was also thoroughly modern—even the church building itself had only recently been built—and it seemed like we were always at the cutting edge of the church’s worship. 

The parish had its own art gallery, where as the rector said “We’re going to hang the work of local artists and see what we can learn from it.” It had an active music and concert series that culminated each spring in a Bach festival; yet St. Luke’s also looked forward to the annual Mariachi mass when musicians from the Hispanic community led us in a worship fiesta. 

Somewhat to the scandal of my Baptist roots, the parish had an annual party at the Safari, which was a rather shady nightclub “on the other side of town” (as they say) that the church took over and turned into a vaudevillian music hall. One of the most famous acts was the town’s chief of police (who was a rather large man) dancing in a tutu the troika from Tschykovsky’s Nutcracker ballet.

When hard issues came up, like women’s ordination or prayer book reform, the parish’s response was to invite experts from across the spectrum of perspective and opinion to speak, and then parishioners would gradually make up their own mind what they thought. In the end, they decided to support both, though that’s not where they started.

Each Advent, St. Mary’s Guild sponsored a fair known as the Kaffee Klatch, which was a highlight of the season for the whole town. A group of senior citizens, not to be outdone, decided to form their own guild which became known as the “Keenagers,” and they sponsored lively luncheons for anyone over a certain age on the third Thursday of each month.

Concerned about the segregation of Fort Collins into Anglo and Hispanic communities, the parish partnered with Holy Family Catholic Church (the Spanish language parish) to build bridges and support social services to migrant farm workers. It also supported fair housing practices among local lenders, even underwriting loans for several families.

For young people, the parish had two options: a youth group and an active acolyte corps of kids who not only served on Sunday mornings and at the daily services (the Thursday mornings 6:30am mass was the one at which I served), but we also regularly went on such outings as a weekend away at a rustic cabin up in the nearby Rocky Mountains. In short, St. Luke’s was a bit of a Camelot: it was spiritually alive, theologically grounded, socially active, and creatively inclined. 

Now, since those days when I was growing up in St. Luke’s Church, I have seen a lot of Episcopal churches. In fact, as a seminary dean it was part of my job to travel around the country to represent the seminary in all sorts of congregations—and I have seen both moribund churches but also dynamic congregations that reminded me a lot of my home parish. 

And as I have visited these churches, it has been my observation that in congregations that are healthy, vital, and alive, there are four characteristics that they typically have in common. 

First, there is a culture of curiosity. Parishioners are interested to know what’s going on in both their neighborhood and the world, and how their Christian faith can inform their understanding and encourage their involvement. 

Second, there is an enthusiasm for creativity. The church aspires to do things thoughtfully and well, and to find new and interesting ways of experiencing and expressing the reality of God. 

Third (and this is a product of the other two), the members of the congregation feel bound together in a sense of community that gives them a place where they feel they belong, are known, and to which they can contribute. 

And finally, all of these characteristics are held together by a strong commitment to personal spiritual growth and renewal. In other words, the people take to heart the pursuit of holiness that is the hallmark of Anglican spirituality, and they seek to apply it in their own professional, familial, and communal lives. [Now that’s where my list ended until early this morning, when I read in the paper about the beatification yesterday by Pope Francis of Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador. And then I realized that I had missed a fifth characteristic that is absolutely crucial: compassion. Vital churches care for the poor, for those in need. So I want to add that to my list.] Those five common threads then (not four), have in my observation run through every truly prospering church I have encountered: curiosity, creativity, community, commitment, and compassion.

Now I hold these traits up for you today because Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, has everything to do with them. Think of the description of the day of Pentecost given in the Book of Acts: the Spirit comes upon the disciples, who were gathered together but apparently a bit uncertain what to do next, and suddenly it inspires their enthusiastic proclamation of the gospel so that people of every tongue and nationality are able to hear and understand. The Spirit motivates their enthusiasm, inspires their commitment, and binds them together into a community of proclamation.

If God’s love is like gravity, holding the whole cosmos together (as we heard here a couple of weeks ago), then the Spirit is like the sunshine: it is the animating source of energy from which all living things draw their sustenance. It is the light by which we see. It is the brightness which pushes back the dark and leads to clarity of vision and focused recognition. It is the warmth that draws us from behind closed doors into new adventure and delight. 

So it has been my observation that when this same Spirit—this animating, clarifying, warming, invigorating force—is welcomed into a community of Christian people, well, that’s when you start to see the patterns emerge which I have been describing as curiosity, creativity, community, commitment, and compassion. 

For what is it that evokes our curiosity, if not the Spirit that leads us into all truth? And what is it that inspires our creativity, if not the Spirit which hovered over the waters in the beginning of creation? And what is it that creates a since of community, if not the Spirit that makes us one in the Lord? And what is it that grounds us in commitment to building the kingdom, if not the Spirit that causes us to hope for things unseen, as our Epistle reminds us today. And what is it that motivates our concern for the poor, if not the Spirit that binds all things into one?

This, I think, is the meaning of Jesus’ words to his disciples, when he promises to send to them the Advocate, the Comforter, who will lead them into all truth. God is not yet done with creation, nor with us as individuals: we groan inwardly, as Paul says, awaiting our full redemption. We have yet many new ways to grow, and many new things to discover and conceive. So God sends the Holy Spirit to us, to be the driving force behind this continued evolution as individuals, as a species, and as a church.

At the end of this mass, we will ask in the final blessing that the Spirit enlighten us, make us to shine with God’s presence, strengthen our faith, and then send us out to bear witness to Jesus in word and deed. As I leave Christ Church after what I hope has been a productive and fruitful year with you to move on to a new call in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it is my heartfelt prayer that the Lord will send his Holy Spirit upon this community to nourish and increase in new ways those gifts of curiosity, creativity, community, and commitment that are already tangible among you. 

Embrace them, and let the Spirit do its work: let it inspire you, strengthen you, even change you—and then go confidently into the future that lies open before you. 

Now Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory to him from generation to generation in the church; and in Christ Jesus for ever. Amen.

Making God Credible

V Easter

Fr. Joseph Britton

3 May 2015, Christ Church

God’s love was revealed in this way: God sent his only Son into the world  so that we might live through him. (I John 4)

In preparation for today’s baptism, A.’s parents asked if I could recommend something for them to read by way of revisiting the essence of Christian faith. The first thing that popped into my mind was Rowan Williams’ little book, Tokens of Faith, in which the former Archbishop of Canterbury offers his own introduction to Christian belief.

Now for any of you who know Williams’ work, you know that he is never an easy read, even when he tries to be as transparent as he possible—as he did in this book of Christian apologetics, which was originally delivered as a series of Lenten lectures in Canterbury Cathedral. So it was no small task that G. and B. took on in reading it, and I want to commend them for their perseverance.

Their example encouraged me also to go back and have another look at Tokens of Trust myself, and what struck me most in rereading it is that when Williams tries to help us to understand who Jesus is, he doesn’t resort to any complicated metaphysical musings on how God could become human, or humanity divine. There are none of those words about which the early church had such terrible controversies: homo-ousios versus homoi-ousios, or anything like that.

Rather, Williams speaks more directly of how Jesus enacts for us God’s purposes in such a way, that we are able to catch sight through him of who God is, and what sort of life God intends for us to live. In the pattern of self-giving and self-offering that Jesus puts at the core of his life, we come to realize that this is what God is like too. Here is a human life so shot through with the purposes of God, so transparent to the action of God, that we come to speak of its as God’s life translated into our own. For Williams, this is what we mean by speaking of Jesus as God’s own son. God no longer exists remotely and abstractly, but immediately and immanently by sharing his life and love with us through the person of Jesus, so that we may in turn share them with one another. Perhaps this is what John meant by saying in today’s epistle, that “God’s love was revealed in this way: that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.”

But there is more: saying “yes” to the kind of life which Jesus models for us—one that is lived for others, and not turned inwardly upon ourselves—is to live in a new world that Jesus calls “the kingdom of God.” Through Jesus, we not only see what God is like, we also see what human life is like when it is ruled by the reign of God’s love. As Williams puts it, “Trust this … [and] you will be living in the everyday world in which many other powers claim to be ruling; but you will have become free of them, free to co-operate or not, depending on how far they allow you to be ruled by God. Your life will be a foretaste of God’s rule; and it will be directed … to resisting the powers (natural and supernatural) that work against God and seek to keep people in slavery.”

So this is the kind of life into which we today baptize A. It is a life in which we live in the new community founded by Jesus, the community we call the church, a community that trusts in the promises and the power of God to enable us to live life graciously, expectantly, generously, joyfully—without fear that we will be overwhelmed by the forces of darkness, death, and destruction.

So, what exactly does a life such as that look like? Well, Williams notes that Christians have used many images to try to describe what such a life looks like. One that he says he has found especially helpful is the performance of music. “When you see a great performer,” he writes, “a singer or instrumentalist, at work realizing a piece of music, you are looking at one human being at the limit of their skill and concentration. All their strength, their freedom, and you could even say their love is focused on bringing to life the work and vision of another person.” Christian life might be thought of in a similar way: when we commit ourselves to be followers of Jesus, we commit ourselves to offering a performance through our own life, of the kind of life which Jesus lived. We become his interpreters, as it were. Or as John put it in his epistle, “if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

This is why, incidentally, the church has traditionally taken such an interest in marriage, and why from a Christian perspective, the arguments before the Supreme Court this last week rather missed the boat. Before the Court, the arguments were primarily about rights, and equal protection before the law, and indeed those are important issues. But those are arguments regarding civil society, and unlike civil society (which understands marriage primarily in terms of a social institution useful for the support of families—however that term might be understood), Christian marriage understood in a catholic/sacramental tradition like our own focuses upon the mystery of the relationship between two persons such that they are willing to give themselves to one another fully and without reserve, vowing to live not for themselves, but for one another. There is nothing greater that can be said between two people, than that phrase they say to each other as they exchange rings during a wedding ceremony: “with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you.” That in microcosm is an example of the kind of reconciliation that the church seeks among all people. 

So the reason marriage is important to the church, is that a married couple plays a sacramental, or iconic, role in making visible to all of us the spiritual grace of a life devoted to loving another to which our epistle calls us this morning. Traditionally, of course, this relationship has most often been thought of in terms of the relationship between a man and a woman. But in our own day, we find ourselves asking the question of whether that kind of self-offering to another person can be made in a variety of relationships, and increasingly we are able to say, well, yes, of course it can—and so we feel called upon to respond to those relationships in a spirit of welcome, blessing and encouragement (as we did here in this church in a wedding between two young men yesterday afternoon).

But back to baptism, which is the real subject for this morning. We are offering to A. here today the opportunity in her life to say “yes” to a life lived with Jesus. We are offering her a chance to respond to the love with which God first loved her; to “abide with him, as he abides with us” (as John put it in today’s gospel); to live her life in God’s kingdom, where Jesus has shown us there to be peace and reconciliation with God and one another. In Jesus, these things are not just made visible, but possible, for in the way in which he showed us the Father, he is the one who makes God supremely credible and trustworthy, the one in whom we can truly put our faith as we say, “I believe,” I trust, I have come home to God.

© Joseph Britton, 2015

Carrying our Crosses

God does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty;neither does he hide his face from them... Psalm 22:23

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

“What images have competed for allegiance in your life? Which have you chosen and which have chosen you, perhaps overcoming your better judgement?”, my homiletics professor Tom Troger asked our class last autumn.

What image has claimed allegiance over my life, despite my better judgement. I let the question sink into me but immediately I knew the answer, or to be more precise, I felt the answer. My memory pulled me back to a time before I became a Christian.

Back then the strongest images of God I had was sovereign, powerful, present but untouchable.

Weaving creation into being, all powerful but distant. Abstract, safe...

Yet one day, while studying abroad in Ghana, my breath fell short, my assured and confident bones lay quaking and fevered, suffering sick in bed. Suddenly the sky seemed to turned black and I was struck with a vision of a naked man strung up, lynched on a Tree More than anything else I felt the weight of his beautiful body, hanging, pinned, suspended by heavy pain- and I knew it was God. The way the truth the life, eternity stepped into time, that was executed by a military state and rejected by even his closest friends.

That vision entered my chest, coursed through my heart, throttled my mind changed my life.  We proclaim Christ Crucified. I now see God as present, and touchable, powerful but weeping with the broken, begging us to turn from selfishness to communion. God is acutely present with the suffering. Calling us from self absorption to being acutely present with the hurting.

Crosses are all over the place. But before this experience my mind had written God out of the cross. I did not see Jesus there. The cross was placid and plastic to me, common. Iconic, nonetheless, but empty of the Divine.

It isn’t hard then for me to understand where Peter is coming from in today’s Gospel. Jesus tells everyone where this road is going, that it is leading to a brutal, public and humiliating death. Death on the cross. This is not abstract. This is not safe. The cross was not placid and plastic to those in Jesus time. The disciples knew exactly what it meant. In 1st century Palestine, the cross was torturous slow death awarded to any who threatened Caesar’s kingdom and supremacy.

Peter knew what the cross meant. I imagine him violently gripping Jesus’ arm, pulling him aside and rebuking him. I can hear him painfully saying “I won’t let you die like this.” I understand Peter’s impulse to protect his friend. And I also understand the desire to obscure and avoid the violence of this world. At all costs to look away, not have to witness, experience and be shattered by wretched violence. ]

Yet Jesus calls this impulse a temptation of the devil. Get behind me Satan! Jesus then turns toward the entire crowd and ups the ante. Not only will I suffer, he says, but if you want anything to do with me you must deny yourself, take up your own cross and follow me.

This is not abstract. This is not safe. There is no going around the ugliness and brutality of this sinful world, but only into it. And only there can it be transformed. Love does not go around the violence of this sinful world, but confronts it.  

On that intense day in Ghana when I became a Christian, beholding the violent brutality of the cross I was terrified. I wanted to turn away. So did Peter, when he heard Jesus predict his death. The cross is scandalizing, it challenges our desires to sanitize and shield ourselves from the violence of this world. Jesus says we have to follow him all the way up calvary.

But I want to run the other way. Just like I want to turn away from the violence of this world. I want to ignore the slaughter houses where my meat comes from. I want to ignore the homeless. I don’t want to sit with my friend when she processes what it is like to live with bipolar. I don’t want to confront the depth of my own self absorption. I want to pretend that police brutality and violence against people of color has nothing to do with me. I want to be shielded from the wickedness and horror of the world. Especially horrors that I benefit from. I want to hold onto a false sense of security that everything is fine in this world. I don’t know what particularly you struggle with, what you avoid and turn your eyes away from- but I believe the Cross of Christ demands our attention, and calls us to confront all that we wish to shield our gaze from. At the soup kitchen I hear stories that I want to pretend are not true. Stories of people so caught up in cycles of desperation they sell their children to get out of drug debt. Stories of poverty in New Haven that is the kind of stuff the Prophet Isaiah says, “from which people turn away their eyes.” (Isa. 53:2-3) I want to turn away. But Jesus has a word for us. Deny yourself. Follow me. Loose your life for the sake of the good news. Become my disciple.

Gustavo Guiteraz says that sin is a turning inwards and selfishness that leads to fundamental alienation, which is the root of all social injustice and exploitation.  Self denial means relinquishing our isolation, alienation and indifference to the suffering of others. This is hard work. In a culture that thrives off of fear, alienation and individualism, with gated communities and class segregation. This is hard work, when my heart is so hardened by selfishness. The way of the Cross calls us to turn outwards, to gaze upon our wounded Saviour, to not ignore suffering and pain. Jesus calls us to shoulder each others burdens, like Simon of Cyrere who carried Jesus’ cross with him. We worship a broken saviour, and we must journey to the places of suffering.

Yet the incredible and good news is that when we enter into the pain of the world, God is there also. And though our hearts will have a greater capacity for suffering, they will also magnify in our ability to rejoice, have compassion and feel the presence of our Lord. Being formed by a love that seeks communion and solidarity, becoming seriously invested in the wellness of those that are suffering. It is only because of the generous grace of God that we are able to be strong in suffering. There is no way we can do this journey alone, and this is precisely why we need each other and need to break out of isolation. We need the hearts of one another, to cry to laugh to love to heal together.

This is the paradox of the Gospel, without entering into the suffering of one another and God’s pain on the Cross, we shield ourselves also from the depth of joy available to us when we enter into radical relationships.

In building relationships, listening to the needs of others, and truly loving each other, God is present. I see this in the Saint Hildans who serve people in need, and then testify to feeling God change them into more compassionate and loving human beings.I see this in the tireless work of employees of the soup kitchen, some of whom themselves live in poverty- yet still volunteer their time with others out of love. When we open our hearts and commit ourselves to the betterment of one another, new life is possible. For as Paul in our letter from Romans said today, we worship a God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Hoping against hope, let us believe.

Let us love so radically it makes the demons shudder and the powerful hasten to plot our demise.

In the stations of the Cross that we do here on Fridays in Lent, we as a community gather to kneel and pray we enter into the suffering of Jesus. In this pilgrimage of the Cross we follow the God who loved us so deeply and confronted this world so harshly, that the powers of this world had him executed. Jesus took the path of radical love and did not avoid the consequences of doing this in a military state. He did not take the safe road, ignoring the suffering of the world. This Lenten season as we pilgrimage with Jesus to the Cross, let us all examine how we are being called from selfishness to shouldering the suffering of others. Jesus came to draw us forth from sin, heal us, reorder us, embody another way.

In this ritual we meet Jesus’ sorrow and are called to repentance, turning, following, becoming His disciple. In the Stations of the Cross we are pulled into the writhing pain of God, to not see the cross as a placid and plastic symbol. This act of penance should help curb our egos and self absorption that we might be able to go forth from these walls and no longer turn a blind eye to the sorrows of this world. We are called to turn from selfish isolation to community; mission instead of individualism, to be invested in the healing of one another and the world.

So we bow our heads and pray one of the collects from this pilgrimage: Stir up our conscience O God, and make our hearts break at the sorrows of those who suffer injustice and let us weep at our own waste of your great gifts- that we may know and repent our sins. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.