Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, 2018

We have heard the words "keep watch", "stay awake", "be ready" often these last few
weeks. We have been lighting one candle at a time. Mary and Joseph are still making their way
to the creche, and the Wise Men have a long way to go. We’ve been told (wisely!) to savor
the Advent season, not to rush straight to Christmas. But what exactly are we waiting to
celebrate? The "birth of Jesus" is certainly a reasonable answer. God incarnate is another
answer that those more theologically inclined among us would probably give. The question,
however, still remains: what are we waiting to celebrate, and more importantly, what does
it mean for us?

I have decided not to make a fool of myself and pretend I have some insights to offer
into the theological mystery of the Incarnation. After all, it's called a mystery for a reason!
What I would like to do instead is to share with you some reflections on the implications
of the Incarnation, and perhaps on the misconceptions about the Incarnation, and what it
all means for us. This, as we will see, truly is Good News, and at the same time it is pretty
scary stuff.

First of all, there is the issue around the event itself. Was the Incarnation a once and for
all deal that had never happened before, and was never to happen again? I have to confess
that I don't quite believe that is was. Of course I'm not denying that the birth and life of
Jesus were exceptional. Quite the contrary: after all, history was profoundly changed as a
result, and we are still feeling the aftershock of those events after more than 2,000 years. I
do believe that Jesus' birth and life were an exceptionally clear example of what being truly
human and truly divine looks like.

However, by emphasizing how inconceivable, utterly other Jesus' life was, we kind of
bailed from what I believe was God’s plan all along: to allow us to grow into our own
divinity. The funny thing is that this idea may sound radical and perhaps even heretical
today, but it is firmly embedded in the writings of the early Church fathers, who I think
would have agreed with me. But don't take my words for it. See, for example, what St.
Cyril of Jerusalem (who lived in the fourth century) has to say about this:

"Now that you have been baptized and have put on Christ, you have become conformed
to the Son of God. Hence, since you share in Christ it is right to call you Christs." Or look
at the first page of the Bible, that tells us the story of how the first human was created in
the image of God. But wait, there is more! The Eastern Orthodox Church has a lot to say
about the process of theosis, which is "the transformative process whose aim is likeness to
God", quoting Wikipedia. In other words, this is exactly what I was referring to when I said
that God’s plan, all along, was to allow us to grow into our divinity. To be clear, growing into and realizing our divinity does not translate into becoming God. I don't believe that you
or I can speak a word and create a parallel universe just like that, pronto. However, the
whole idea of being able to transform ourselves and realize our divine potential is simply
mind blowing. To me this is Good News, or even Great News. That's one of the things
Jesus came to teach us about, and more importantly, to fully live into as a perfect example
of what realizing one's divinity while retaining one's humanity looks like.

But, there is a catch. As I said at the beginning, this leads to some scary stuff. For
example, we have been outsourcing being "God-like" to Jesus for a very long time. But,
outsourcing being "God-like" is not going to cut it anymore if we realize we are called to be
divine. It becomes our responsibility. Sure, there are cases where we are utterly powerless
and can only put things into God's hands, so to speak. I have been through some of those
moments, and I am sure many here can relate. Sometimes even simply realizing that can be
a great relief. Often, this is the beginning of a powerful healing process. However, in many
other cases we are invited to play the role of active co-creators with God, and as I said
outsourcing "being God-like" to Jesus is not going to cut it anymore.

I have what I believe is a perfect example of that: building the "Kingdom of God" or
"Reign of God". If you read the Gospels, you quickly realize that this was truly Jesus'
obsession. Scholars of the Bible disagree on almost everything, but they are all in agreement
that the Reign of God was a primary concern for Jesus. Time and again Jesus reminded us
of our role of active co-creators in bringing about this incredible reality, which is not up in
the sky, available to us only when we die, but within us and among us, as Jesus time and
again taught us.

What is this Reign that we are invited to co-create with God? I believe that it is
something that runs deep in our DNA here at St. Martha's. It is about utter inclusion, with
no preconditions. It is taking care of the poor, the immigrants, the oppressed minorities, the
disenfranchised. It is about welcoming everyone, no strings attached. It is, in other words,
summed up by one of the most abused and misunderstood words in our culture: it is about
Love.

Now, I have to confess that at some point in my life I started feeling that the word "love"
was used way too often and almost started to feel like a cliché. I almost got tired of hearing
it. The problem, it turned out, was with my limited understanding of this word rather than
its use in church. In my mind the word love was still mostly about warm and fuzzy feelings.
While it can certainly mean that, there is way more than that to this word. A tricky word
indeed. For example, the option to love is what John the Baptist (whom we hear about a
lot during Advent) chose when he firmly denounced the powers of injustice of his time. By
doing so, he acted as co-creator in bringing about God's Reign. I believe we are called to do
the same in our own times.

So let us wait for the birth of Christ in this season of Advent. And when Christmas
comes, let us celebrate with great joy the mystery of the Incarnation. But let us not lose
sight of the fact that, perhaps on a smaller scale, we were also born in a manger (or cave, pick
your birth place!) in Bethlehem; a star announced our birth also; wise men did come to visit
us too. You get the point. Let us all reclaim our divine image and accept God’s invitation
to become active co-creators of God’s Reign here on Earth. It’s a huge responsibility (hence
the scary part I was talking about at the beginning!) but we are never, ever alone in this.
I wish you all a blessed Advent.

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 12 2018

The Gospel of John we just finished hearing has Jesus saying something that must have sounded very bizarre to those he was talking to: "I am the bread of life." For a moment, let's put aside all that we know about the Eucharist, which might be the first thing that comes to mind when we hear this passage, and think about this strange proclamation. What can this possibly mean? The beauty of Scripture is that there is almost always more than one layer of meaning, and often times the meaning that turns out to be the most meaningful for our lives is the one we get at once we "unlearn" all that we know about that passage, once we approach the text without any preconceived notion of what it's supposed to mean. At least that is my experience. "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." What can this possibly mean?
In addition to trying to "unlearn" all that I know about a passage of Scripture, another thing that helps me make sense of difficult passages is to look at their context, at the story they are part of, and if necessary at the whole of Scripture. In this case we don't need to look very far: Chapter 6 (the chapter these verses are found in) begins with the incredibly famous feeding of the five thousand. We all remember from Sunday school or from paintings, or songs, that Jesus multiplied two small fish and five loaves of bread and fed with those over five thousand people. Interestingly, the word "bread" shows up 75 times in the New Testament, and of course it is part of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, the "Our Father." If we add to these 75 occurrences all the episodes where Jesus is reported to have sat down to eat, we immediately realize that the actual nourishment of the body is a pretty significant issue in the New Testament, and is often the door to spiritual insights and revelations.

One could argue that in the passage we read this morning Jesus must have talked of a purely spiritual kind of nourishment. However, that is not how early Christians interpreted it. In first Corinthians, Paul describes in some details what scholars call "agape meals", or "Lovefeasts", which was the way in which the Lord's Supper was celebrated by the early Church. In addition to being celebrations of the Christian mystery, those meals were actual meals that nourished people. In fact, one of the main concerns that Paul expresses in that letter is that people of means could afford to come early to those meals, and ended up eating almost everything, leaving little to nothing for the poor who could only show up later because they were working. Paul admonishes his church by saying, referring to the Lord's Supper: "So then, my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat, you should all eat together."

The point I'm getting at, is that the early Church didn't have a rigid separation between the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist and the physical act of eating. Moreover, the Eucharist was a communal event that was supposed to bring together rich and poor, and enabled the latter to get something to eat, probably for the first time that day. If we fast forward to the very end of the Gospel of John, we see Jesus reminding Peter three times to "feed my sheep". Again, I suspect that the feeding he was talking about was as much spiritual as it was physical. I'm very grateful that here at St. Martha's we use real bread to celebrate the Eucharist, and not paper-thin hosts. Not to sound irreverent, but I once heard from someone that it takes more faith to believe that the paper-thin host is actual bread than it takes to believe it's the body of Christ! Jokes aside, sharing a meal is one of the most fundamental, time-honored ways that every culture I know of uses to bring people together. In our Christian language, we could say that whenever we celebrate the Lord's Supper we are kneaded into the body of Christ as one.

Now, if we only had the words of today's Gospel, "I am the bread of life", we might be content to just celebrate the Eucharist. However, these words are sandwiched (pun intended!) between the feeding of the multitudes and the injunction (repeated three times) to "feed my sheep" at the end of the Gospel. And so, as a community we must do that.

I'm sure you all know about the feeding program at the Cathedral. Deacon Nancy plays a key role in it and is there almost every week, and several of our parishioners help with cooking, cleaning up, etc. I asked my spiritual director, Br. James Dowd, whom some of you have met and who is also involved in the program, what I could do. In spite of my Italian heritage, I am not a spectacular cook, and we all know about the "too many cooks in the kitchen". He told me that he grabs something to eat and sits down with the guests to eat and talk with (not to) them, if they feel like it. He emphasized how essential it is that he eats with them, as opposed to simply sitting down and talking with them. I was struck by this, and it made a lot of sense. By not sharing what the others are eating we immediately set ourselves apart as "others". So I went and tried that. I grabbed something to eat and sat down with other people at a table. While eating, we struck up simple conversations. Interestingly, nobody asked me the question I am usually asked, on account of the way I speak: "Where are you from?, often followed by a "No, but where are you really from?" if I don't give a reason for my non-American accent right away. An innocent question. A question, however, that has the ability to other the people that are asked. Interestingly, no one asked that question down at the Cathedral the times I have been there.

I believe that one of the most important things Jesus came to do was (and is!) to bring down walls, barriers that we humans build to separate body from spirit and soul, us from them, poor from rich, and the list goes on. If we want to use fancy theological language, Jesus came to preach a non-dual way of thinking. The divine spark that shines in all of us makes us one with God and one with one another. "Love your neighbor as yourself" does not simply mean as much as yourself, but as if that person were yourself, because in a way she is.

The message I would like to get across today is quite simple. The Eucharist, eating that bread of life that we heard of in today's reading, is a wonderful opportunity that God uses to knead us into one body, Christ's own body. And it does not end on Sunday. As the body of Christ, we respond to God's love by going forth and taking care of the body of Christ, which is everyone. One way of doing that is by providing nourishment, spiritual as well as physical nourishment. These need not be artificially separated. Again, the non-dual thinking mode that Jesus hints at several times.

Making sure our fellow humans are taken care of is one of the ways we respond to the love that flows from God and passes through us on its way back to God. If we open ourselves to truly receive that love, we almost have no choice but to release that love back to the body of Christ and back to God. I am grateful for the example provided by the feeding program at the Cathedral, and I look forward to seeing what shape our response to God's love manifested in the Eucharist that we are about to receive will take as we go forth into the world. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 2018

It is quite appropriate for Trinity Sunday to occur right after Pentecost. Last week we
celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit and the first bold steps taken by the early Church.
Some people like to call Pentecost the “birthday” of the Church. I prefer to think of it as the
day when God took the training wheels off. At any rate, the whole doctrine of the Trinity
– of God as three Persons in one Nature – is something that emerges from that Church.
Although we can already find some nuggets of that idea in the New Testament (for example,
in Matthew 28:19 where we read "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [...]"), the doctrine
of the Trinity took many years to take shape, and remained a highly contentious theological
concept for quite some time. In fact, to this day there are several large nontrinitarian
Christian denominations in existence.

If we think about it, the largest portion of the Nicene Creed that we recite together on
Sunday is nothing but a fairly detailed exposition of this doctrine. The reason why the
doctrine of the Trinity takes up so much space in the Nicene Creed and other creeds (and
one could argue, the reason why such creeds exist in the first place) is not just because of the
theological importance of this doctrine, but also because lots of people in the early Church
had disagreements on some or all of its main points. Hence, the need to clearly articulate
the doctrine in formulas that could be recited and could be used to demarcate "orthodox"
belief from what ended up being labeled as heresy.

Although studying the major disagreements in the early Church on the doctrine of the
Trinity can be a useful exercise, and I’m sure it has been a source of many instructive (but
perhaps a tad boring!) sermons, I will take a very different route this morning. The question
I want to explore is the following: "Is the doctrine of the Trinity helpful to us, and if so,
how?". Even more broadly, "Is theology helpful to us, and if so, how?" By us I mean people
trying to live faithfully today as disciples of Jesus. My personal answer to this question is
yes, theology (good theology, that is) can be very helpful to us, but how? In order to answer
this question, I need to explain what I have come to believe is a central point. My belief is
that no human being can ever fully experience the totality of God. All we get are glimpses
into this Mystery.

I find the following quote by the Episcopal priest William Countryman very helpful to
explain this point: "Since we are, by nature, finite beings, each of us limited by space and
time, none of us will ever experience directly more than one life's worth of God, of Truth, or
Reality. What each of us comes to know are fragments of something immeasurably larger
than we can grasp. My neighbor knows other fragments, which may well be the ones that
make sense of my own." This points to the fact that we need a language to articulate our
experiences of God, to communicate those experiences, and to learn from one another about
those experiences.

Theology gives us the language to try and articulate this Mystery, to learn from one
another, and from our fellow humans who came before us. Theology helps us expand our
awareness of God. Good theology should not be seen as a long list of things we believe in
our heads, or worse as a convenient test to determine who is in the "club" and who is out.
Rather, I believe that good theology can be a great gift, which gives us the language to speak
about God and more importantly enables us to encounter God more often and more fully,
to become aware of God's presence more often and more fully in our lives. I’ll repeat that
one more time: Good theology should enable us to become aware of God's presence more
often, more fully. How can the doctrine of the Trinity help us in that regard?

Let us think about the first person of the Trinity: God as Maker, Creator, Father (or
Mother!), the living force that brought everything into existence. Some of you know that
I love to camp (or glamp, as I have been accused of!) and to travel around the country . It
truly is America the Beautiful! The red rocks of the South West, the otherworldly landscape
of the Badlands, the snow-capped Rockies in midsummer. These are all opportunities to
become aware of the presence of the Creator. Creation is not something that happened once
in a mythical past, but it continues to happen every day. However, it's not only when we
are surrounded by sublime landscapes that we experience God as Creator. We can become
aware of the first person of the Trinity every time we marvel at how lush and bustling with
life our backyards become after a bleak winter. It seems truly miraculous to me, although
I have to confess I'd rather have slow growing grass that doesn't need to be mowed every
three days! It's not only in contemplation but in action too that we can become aware of
God the Creator. When we take care of this planet, we remind ourselves that we are called
to be faithful stewards of this earth, that we can never possess the land but we can only take
good care of it. Even small things like recycling can become a spiritual practice. In other
words, we can become aware of God the Creator in the Grand Canyon and in our backyards
too.

How about the second person of the Trinity? In today's reading we heard the story of
Nicodemus, coming to see Jesus at night. In the highly symbolic gospel of John, darkness
stands for the brokenness of the human condition. Nicodemus gets a chance to be made
whole by encountering Jesus. We don't know whether in the end he truly gets what Jesus
is talking about, but my guess is that the encounter completely transforms him into a new
being. So, the second person of the Trinity reminds me that even in our brokenness we can
become aware of God, sometimes especially because of our need to be made whole again.
We encounter Jesus in the great acts of generosity, of selflessness, but also in holding the
door to a stranger and in the farmer's greeting we exchange when driving on a dirt road. St.
Benedict reminds us to welcome the stranger as Christ.

How about the third person then, the Holy Spirit? It’s a little more tricky to put it into
words, but here it is. I like the definition of the Spirit given by the theologian Gittins as
a presence that disturbs. A presence that nudges us ever so gently (and sometimes not so
gently!) towards God. Again, we can feel that nudging wind in the great choices we make, in
the famous saints giving everything to the poor, but also in the small occurrences of everyday
life. Have you ever felt moved to come to Church on a cold or lazy morning, in spite of the
many excuses you could have come up with? It's happened to me before. As a Companion
of Mary the Apostle I commit to asking each day what God is doing with me. This simple practice – which I highly recommend, by the way – reminds me that when listening to the
Spirit the ordinary actions of our often ordinary lives can be holy.

To conclude: if you find that your head starts spinning when you hear about God having
three Persons but one Nature, of the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son (or
perhaps just the Father!), and so on, don’t worry. My head spins as well, and that’s a good
thing. It’s actually a very good thing. The moment we think we have God all figured out,
we risk getting further and further away from the experience of God, an experience that is
often better served by silence than by so many words. Theology (good theology, that is) can
help us better articulate our beliefs, but it can never replace the encounter with the mystery
of God.

So, here is my invitation for all of us today: instead of thinking about the Trinity and
trying to make sense of it, or worse, instead of using this doctrine to figure out who is in
the club and who is out, let us explore how it can help us get closer to God. In being good
stewards of God's creation we encounter God the Father (or Mother), in seeing the face of
Christ in all we meet and in being the face and hands of Christ in serving our neighbor
we encounter God the Son, in asking every day what God is up to with us and in listening
deeply we encounter God the Holy Spirit. May we all become more aware of God in our
lives, more deeply and more fully. Perhaps this is what Jesus was referring to when he was
telling Nicodemus about "being born from above". Amen.