What is Your True Name

Proper 16 - Cycle A

My name is Willa. I was named after my mother’s best friend, who was also the nurse in the delivery room. It’s not a common name. Whenever I hear somebody else being called Willa, I stop to introduce myself. The other Willa never thinks this behavior is strange. She tells me how she got her name, too.

 

My son Jacob has a last name with no vowels in it. It’s spelled K-R-C-H. He spends a lot of time spelling it for other people.

 

You have stories about your names, how you got them, the trouble they may have caused. For better or worse, a baby’s name will influence the rest of his or her life. If you think your parents made a mistake, our faith holds a special promise. According to the Book of Revelation, we get new names in heaven, the ones by which God already knows us. Those names ought to fit us better than the ones we got at birth, from parents who were strangers at the time.

 

Once, in anticipation of these heavenly names, Jesus gave a new name to one of his disciples, Simon son of Jonah. Jesus already knew that Simon’s true name was Peter. “Petra” is the Greek word for “rock.” “Your name isn’t Simon,” Jesus said. “It’s Rocky.” And that’s how we know him today.

 

The other Rockys I know are boxers. Rocky Marciano and, from those movies in the1980s, Rocky Balboa. Maybe they were named after Peter.

 

It’s a strong name, the name of a heavyweight. Sometimes we give heavyweight boxers credit for less brains than they actually have. In any case, brains are not their strong suit. What it takes to be a heavyweight is heart. They think with their hearts. They fight with their hearts. And if they lose heart, they don’t fight anymore.

 

Peter fits that image. He was born into a fisherman’s family, given a fisherman’s name, Simon bar Jonah. That was his trade before he met Jesus. Like Rocky Balboa, who was a meat cutter, he built his body doing a hard day’s labor. But in his heart, he was a heavyweight waiting to be revealed. When Jesus told him that the rulers of Jerusalem were out to hang him, Peter spoke from the heart, “Just let me at ‘em, Lord.” When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, it didn’t bother Peter that they were outnumbered. He grabbed a sword and swung.

 

Both times Jesus stopped him. Not that Jesus didn’t want Peter to be a heavyweight. Jesus was the one who gave him his name. Make no bones about it, the Church needs its boxers, as it needs its teachers and its dishwashers. But to be a boxer, sometimes you have to pull your punch.

 

I saw that happen once. I saw a boxer pull his punch.

 

I used to watch boxing on Sunday nights. Once, when the actions was “live from Atlantic City,” all the big matches ended early with TKOs, technical knockouts. They had to fill time. So they showed what are called “walk-ons,” bouts between newcomers.

 

There was this boxer named Greggs, who was beginning to make a name for himself, and somebody else who really was a “walk-on.” Charity draws a veil of forgetfulness across his name. I do remember that he was a police officer from Miami. He looked like a good man to have on your side in a parking lot brawl. That’s how he fought in the ring.

Greggs would set up a combination, and this other guy would charge him, pin him against the ropes, and swing wildly at Gregg’s kidneys and the back of his head. I think that’s called a “rabbit punch.” I know that it’s a foul. It might work in a parking lot. But it’s not boxing.

 

When Greggs escaped the pin, the other guy would spin around with a backhand punch, another foul. Some of these blows would land, some wouldn’t. Some the referee would catch, some he wouldn’t. The ref kept breaking up the clinches, giving a warning. Then they’d start again. Greggs would throw a punch, and the other fighter would charge, while the spectators and the boxer got more and more frustrated.

 

Eventually the referee would stop the bout and give the victory to Greggs. But meanwhile, the third round got messy. People at ringside were holding the fighters inside the ropes. The other guy was worn out. He had Greggs on the ropes again, but Greggs spun around. This time Greggs raised his fist for the backhand. He tensed, ready to deliver the blow—Then he shook his head and backed away. You could almost hear him say to himself, “I am a boxer.”

 

It wasn’t easy to be a boxer under the circumstances. He had a lot of power in that fist, and a lot of frustration and provocation to use it. But the punch wasn’t a boxing punch. And to be a boxer means to play by the rules, to let the referee end the match.

 

To be a Christian means to let God end the match. When the enemy doesn’t fight fair, we do what is right. If we have to, we take up a cross, and we follow the one who first carried the cross.

 

Jesus didn’t have to go that way. He certainly didn’t want to go that way. The night before he died, he struggled in the garden. He raised his fist to deliver the backhand. And then he dropped it, “Not my will, but thine be done.” He told the heavyweight at his side, “Don’t you know that I could call on my Father for help, and at once he would send twelve armies of angels?” But to be who he truly was, he had to pull the punch. To save us, the King of Heaven had to let himself to be taken.

 

Eventually Peter would know who he truly was, not a brawler, but the Lord’s own heavyweight. He had the strength and the heart to live, and then to die a martyr in the Lord’s service. To pull a punch is a sign of strength, a sign that you know who and whose you are.

 

There is struggle in this life. And we are much provoked. It doesn’t always look like the good guys are winning. Some of us are called every day to battle. You know the battle that you fight. It is first and foremost a spiritual battle, to remember who and whose you are.

 

We are called to give up our lives, our carefully guarded pride, our determination not to let the other guy get the best of us. Keeping the upper hand is not our job. We let the referee end the fight.

 

If we must struggle, we must do so with all the strength and the discipline and the heart of one who loves, who loves all the way to the end. Then we will live up to our new name. And they will call us – “Christian.”

                                                                                 Amen.

 

photos from pixabay.com

photo of rabbit punch from Hock's Close Quarter Concepts Facebook page 

painting of Peter from catholicsaints.info

What Endures Through an Ice Age

Proper 9 - Cycle A

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,

and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Do you have a bible verse that sticks with you? Maybe just a snatch of words, a short phrase. Jesus wept. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Here I am, Lord.

What’s your verse? I’ll be quiet for a few seconds, and let you remember it.

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My guess is that your verse comes with a story, some event that it got you through, a question that it resolved, a sorrow that it helped you to bear.

I’ll be quiet again for a few seconds, while you remember your story.

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And now I’ll tell you my story. It was thirty-some years ago. After half a dozen different marriage counselors over half a dozen years and three individual therapists, as well, I knew that my first marriage was over. Regardless of who did what to whom, regardless of those half a dozen attempts at counseling, it felt like a personal failure to file for divorce. It felt like sin.

For months I struggled with my sense of obligation to my vows, my responsibility for my child, my pride. And then one night, driving home from work in the dark, that verse came to me.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I remembered about the yoke. In Jesus’ day, farmers plowed with teams of oxen yoked together. If one ox were stronger than the other, the stronger might pull ahead, which made the plow turn, and the furrow crooked. Well, you don’t find oxen of equal strength. One is always a little stronger than the other. So to compensate, farmers added weight to one side of the yoke, and lightened the side carried by the weaker of the two.

Jesus used that metaphor to remind us that he walks beside us through the day. He yokes himself to us. And he tells us to take the easier side.

That is when I remembered—in the relationship between Savior and saved, he’s the one who is the Savior. I’m the one who is saved. It was time for me to give up my righteousness, God help me, so I could get on with doing what I knew, under the circumstances, was right.

I am a strong person. I carry heavy loads. But between me and Jesus, there is no contest. And I do a better job of plowing the furrow that is mine to plow, if I let him share the load.

So I did. I did. It broke my heart with grief, the loss of the life that I thought I would lead with that marriage, the loss of my image of myself who would never fail in that way. The next few years were a struggle. But I did not bear the burden alone. And I got on with the life that God really had in store for me.

I thought about that story last week during Jeff’s sermon. Bear with me here. This discussion of blizzard, winter, and ice age as images for COVID-19—I looked up the article he referred to. Here is the link. That passage from the gospel is for me something that endures, something to carry me through an ice age.

The blizzard is the temporary hunkering down, the stay at home orders we thought would be over in a couple months. The winter is the longer-term hard time, maybe where we are now, beginning to realize that the consequences of the virus and its disruptions will take a while to recover from, longer than we first thought, still wondering how and when we will get back to normal. And the ice age, the thought that we don’t want to speak out loud, that we will not get back to normal, that life will be different going forward in ways we don’t even anticipate yet. The ways we were in the world and in the church have to change.

What are those changes? The first change for St. Andrew’s is how we gather since the blizzard first struck. It is a change we are negotiating, though there are some cracks around the edges. Some of our newer members are missing from this gallery in front of me. They were not fully on board to come with us through the change. That happens in blizzards. We constrict.

The way we draw in new people has been disrupted. Our evangelism has often been building-based. We worked hard to make our new building beautiful. And it was working, it was drawing people in to experience a new space. So we worked it. People enter our fellowship by coming to a central place on Sunday morning. When they come to us, then we proclaim the good news, pass the peace, break the bread, and listen to their stories over a cup of coffee and a gluten-free cookie.

As the winter of COVID continues, we have some thinking to do about that—now how do we invite people into discipleship, to become followers of Jesus. The blessing box has been one way, both feeding and inspiring others to do the same. But there is a depth to the regular practice of prayer and study of scripture, that process of exploring together and becoming like Christ—we haven’t figured that out as the winter continues.

We don’t have to have it figured out yet. I put it out there to invite you to give it some thought. Because that’s what happens in an ice age. People think about what is important, what is the core that carries through. And then they create new things, new ways to be in the world, and new strategies to do what is still most important to them to do.

I think where we are right now is maybe working through our grief for a way of life that is passing and taking stock of the resources we still have. What is most important, what is really most important remains.

Our stories remain, those snatches of scripture that attach to our life-changing events, our most significant relationships, our secret sorrows, our deepest sense of self.

The Old Testament lesson today is something of a gift this morning. It’s an obscure story about an obscure woman. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the fathers of the faith, though once his father didn’t kill him, Isaac is pretty much overlooked. And his wife Rebekah isn’t one of those names that leaps to the front of bible history.

But she has her moment. And today’s story is it. Will you go, Rebekah, with this man? He’s not a total stranger. He works for a kinsman, Abraham, a kinsman whom God called to leave behind the world and the ways that he knew. God called him to an adventure, a life of faith. And now Rebekah is asked, Will you leave what is familiar to you, to join this adventure? Will you go, too? She said, I will.

What did Rebekah have to learn in her new land? The climate was different, there was less water. The food would have been different, but she learned to cook it. When it came time to give birth, her mother was not with her. Did the women of Canaan have different practices around childbirth, and child rearing? What was this circumcision thing?

Were there times, did she grieve her old life, its familiar ways, its certainties?

Nevertheless – “She said, I will.” There’s a snatch of words from Scripture that we can attach to these days, as we set out on a new world to come. We come from a people of faith, people like Rebekah, not always of great stature and fame, but a willingness to go forward.

Here is a quote from that article about blizzard, winter, and ice age, about what is most important, what we take with us as we go forward:

“Christian creativity begins with grief — the grief of a world gone wrong. It enfolds it in lament — the loud cry of Good Friday, the silence of Holy Saturday — and still comes to the tomb early Sunday morning. We are burying and saying goodbye to so much in these days, and around the world people are burying and saying goodbye to those they loved.

“But we do not grieve without hope. If we grieve with Jesus, and make room for others to grieve, we can hope to be visited by the Comforter, the Spirit who breathed over creation before it was even formed. And that Spirit will guide us in the choices we have to make, even on the hardest days that are ahead.”

My friends, remember your story. Remember your hope. And this week, when so many need to find hope, need to find what is most important to carry us forward, go find somebody else and tell your story.

And listen to theirs. Amen.

Dear reader -- this was preached to St. Andrew's Church in Prineville, Oregon. I invite you to put your own bible verse, your own story in the comments below.

photo of Oxen plowing near Lima taken by an employee of the US Department of Commerce, in the public domain

phtot of Prospect Heights Blizzard, 02-12-06, from Flickr, used under the Creative Commons license

Rebekah at the well by Harold Copping, in the public domain 

Genesis 1 vs. White Supremacy - Two Theologies

Trinity - Cycle A

Are you all heartsick this morning? Exhausted, overwhelmed by the events of the last few weeks, and just heartsick? I sure am. And I come to you on Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday of the church year dedicated to a doctrine.

Does it really matter what we believe about God? Well, the writer of our first reading, Genesis 1, thought so. I’ll get back to that.

First, the way I believe that it does not matter. I believe that at the Last Judgment, we will not be handed a test, a check list: Do you believe this about God? Do you believe that? Do you believe there is one God, three Gods, a whole bunch of gods? – Check one. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Do you believe that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or proceeds from just the Father?

I do not believe that our entrance into heaven depends on getting the answers to these kind of questions right. You may disagree with me about the importance of some. I’m just going by what Jesus said about the issue when he separated the sheep from the goats, the day before they strung him up:

“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

See, that’s what he meant when he said as in today’s gospel, “Make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” These doctrinal issues don’t matter.

And yet they do. They don’t matter at the final judgment. They do matter, what we believe about God is of desperate importance right now today, because – what we believe about God forms what we believe about ourselves and our place in the universe.

Social Isolation and -- Peace

2 Easter - Cycle A

You know, they were in that Upper Room for fifty days. Fifty days. They fled there after he was crucified, and ventured out, mmm, once for fish, according to John. But they did not speak to another soul, until the Holy Spirit threw them out of there at Pentecost.

Well, we know Thomas didn't stay put. His first trip out, he was checking out the lay of the land. Just how serious was this danger they were in? Were the soldiers rounding up disciples? What was the word on the street?

Thomas was the intrepid one. Before they ever got to Jerusalem, when they didn't want Jesus to go there because they knew he'd be arrested, Thomas told them that he was read to die. Maybe he was the one they sent for groceries those seven weeks.

Seven weeks. I wonder how they got along.

God So Loved the World. And You.

2 Lent - Cycle A

God so loved the world.

God so loved the world.

And I learned about love from my grandma.

“When you was a little girl…” That’s how the story began, told by a woman who was born in 1911 in Drumright, Oklahoma—she told it to another woman who was no longer a little girl. And yet still is. And she hung on every word.

“When you was a little girl, you was the sweetest thing. And you loved that baby Jesus. Your mama would bring you over at Christmas time and you went straight for the figures. You loved to play with the baby Jesus. Then when you went home, as soon as your mama walked in the door, the phone would be ringin’. ‘Baby Jesus is missin’ again!’ and there he’d be, in your tight little fist.

“We was always takin’ that baby Jesus away from you, and you’d kick up such a fuss. Then you started hidin’ him in your shirt. Your mama would find him when she got you ready for bed.”

You loved that baby Jesus.

So here is a proposal for you. The Christian life is an invitation to fall in love with Jesus. Because, here’s the thing, Jesus is in love with you. Is his love requited?

The Way of the Magi/The Way of Love

Epiphany - Cycle A

It was a lousy time to be born. I mean, of all the times and all the places, why bring a baby into that world?

A tyrant was on the throne, known for his cruelty to children, even his own. A nervous tyrant, no less, indebted to a foreign power, as he was. If he couldn't maintain his authority, he knew they had the goods on him, and were just as cruel as he. So when he trembled, everybody around him trembled. They knew he would not go down easy.

It was a lousy time to bring a child into the world, when anything could happen, and it was not going to be good. And it's not as though these parents had any resources to protect this child, hardly more than children themselves, on the move, sleeping rough, soon to be refugees depending on the hospitality of people whose language they did not speak.

It was a dark time to bring a child into the world.