Time For You, And Time For Me . . .

Proper 18a.08.St. Paul, Sparks
Lyrics of the classic rock group Chicago, asked:
“Does anybody really know what time it is?”
Time is the context of everything that happens.
So how we relate to time, how we experience time itself,
colors our view of life.

Chicago said we are disconnected
from time and that’s why we run
from place to place not knowing where we are going.

In 1994, Hootie and the Blowfish
revisited the subject.
They regarded time as a corrosive, corrupting
agent of death and loss, something to be defied,
so they sang, “I don’t believe in time.”

Angst over time appears in pop culture
from Paul Simon to rapper Flava Flave;
and literary masters from Shakespeare to T. S. Eliot
have shared their struggle.


People are not at ease with time.
That is why they spend so much energy and money killing it.
You can witness the brutal murder of time
at video poker machines,
in front of televisions,
or with a little chemical help at bars.
Nothing wrong with any of that in itself.
The problem is that time is making people nervous,
so they are killing it – even though their lives
are made out of time,
so to kill time is a form of slow suicide.

Back in my Buddhist days, I made a careful study of time.
I watched it pass with as much precision as I could muster,
watched each moment, breath by breath.
I got to know what a moment looks like.

And that is why I find Paul so fascinating.
Paul had a unique perspective on time.
He believed we live in a kind of temporal paradox
called “the already, not yet.”


In today’s lesson, he says to the Romans,
“you know what time it is;
it is the time for you to wake from sleep.”
Paul sensed in the “already/not yet” paradox of each moment
a spiritual urgency that rang like an alarm clock.

If we can get Paul’s sense of time,
it may help us wake up.
So please bear with me
as we go through a little course in Time 101.

The Greek word for ordinary time is chronos.
Ordinary time consists of moments set between past and future.
There are really only present moments.
As Jack Kornfield said,
“Everything that ever happened to me,
happened in present moment.”
The only thing truly real is the actual situation at hand, the now.
The past is an idea in our memory.
The future is an idea in our fantasy.
But the present moment is crisply and precisely real.
We can see it, touch it, taste it. It is and it is here, now.
There is only the relentless now, then now, then now again.

But each moment contains within it memory.
The remembrance of things past is part of the present experience.
Likewise the future we anticipate is part of the present experience.
Each moment is exquisitely real in itself,
but it is always on the brink between past and future.
Each moment is like that point in the river
at the precise top of the cataract,
where the water first plunges downward.

Paul found each moment to be fraught
with the grace already accomplished.
Grace creates each moment, and allows us to live in it.
Each moment is an accomplished miracle.
That is the “already” part.

But the grace is incomplete.
We are on the brink of hope’s fulfillment.
We live in the light of God’s promise
to redeem us, complete us, and perfect us,
to unite us fully and finally to himself in light.
That is the “not yet” part.

So ordinary time, chronos, is flowing along horizontally
in the “already” of remembered grace
and the “not yet” hope for grace to be fulfilled.
It is flowing along horizontally, when God’s time breaks in.
God’s time is a vertical shaft, a lightning bolt from above,
a mountain thrust up by seismic shifts from below.
God’s time is called kairos in the Greek.
It means eternity.

But eterinty isn’t just extending ordinary time indefinitely.
It is a whole different order of reality
from our mundane experience.
It is the depth and wonder of things.
Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich called the intersection
of ordinary time and eternity “the eternal now.”
The Kingdom comes in each and every moment.
God happens in each and every moment.

The 17th Century Jesuit Spiritual Master, Jean-Pierre de Causade
wrote about “the sacrament of the present moment.”
He meant God is in such moments.
Ram Das wrote a modern spiritual classic in the 60’s.
It was called “Be Here Now.”

Maybe God read it because that’s what God does.
God is here now.
The point is for us to wake up and notice.
That’s what Paul invites us to do.

A moment is a point defined as the intersection
of ordinary time and God’s time.
That is one of the often forgotten meanings of our Christian symbol,
the cross, the cruciform nature of time – history and eternity
crossing paths at a 90 degree angle.

It happens now and now and now again.
So Paul keeps shouting “wake up and notice.”
But how? How shall we stop killing time and
start living time by encountering God in each moment.

There is a general answer and there is a specific answer.
The general answer is agape – that amazing form of love
uniquely prescribed, praised, and proclaimed
in the New Testament.
Agape is the unconditional love
that delights in reality just for being real.
Agape is an equal opportunity enjoyer.
It doesn’t discriminate. It just savors.
But you may fairly ask how we got to that point?
Or as another popular song asked,
“What’s love got to do with it?”

The key is in the 1st Epistle of John,
which says “God is agape.”
This remarkable kind of joy and wonder
is the very soul of God.
It is the impetus that keeps God
generating these moments.
When we practice agape too, we join God.
We share the sacrament of the present moment with God.

But that general answer is way too abstract.
Moments are not abstractions.
They are absolutely real.
Abstractions like love can actually separate us
from the concrete situation.



So a general answer to the question “how do we wake up to God
will not serve.
We need the specific answer.
The bad news is: I don’t know what it is.
The good news is that you do.
My part is to give you a clue.

The way to encounter God
is not by thinking about the idea of God.
It is by looking at the reality at hand,
the reality of your own life,
in a spirit of compassionate, joyful, appreciation
-- then do the right thing.

It doesn’t take a rule book of abstractions.
Paul says, “one who has loved another has fulfilled the law.”
He calls that “putting on Jesus.”
That isn’t exactly imitating Jesus except in one respect.
Just look at your reality the way Jesus looked at his reality,
with compassionate joy, then do the right thing.



We are each invited to practice this awakened life
in our individual situations.
And we are called to practice this awakened life
together as the body of Christ in the world.

So have to ask: what time is it at St. Pauls?
You have a new rector.
The polar ice caps are melting.
There is an epidemic of meth addiction.
Half the world has given up on Jesus
and the other half has built a warmongering, bigoted
idol, named it Jesus, and is worshiping him.

In the midst of this mess, grace abounds.
God persists in happening over and over,
in moment after moment.
You know your situation better than I do.
You will know it even better if you look at it
with agape’s eyes.
Then you will know what to do.
“You know what time it is.
It is time to wake up” to God.
Amen.

Cowboy Up

Proper 20a.08.St. Steven’s
I first read today’s Gospel lesson
about 50 years ago,
and it didn’t make much sense to me then.
I studied it in seminary and I’ve heard
at least a dozen sermons on it.
In fact, I’ve preached a few on it myself.
But I never felt like I got it until this year.

It clicks for me now because I’m looking at it
from a new perspective.
My new perspective comes from a lot of years
laboring in the vineyard of the church
and from the novel I’m reading these days.
Sometimes literature can shed light on Scripture.

So let’s start with the novel.
I am reading Larry MacMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
The principal character’s in Lonesome Dove are driving a herd of cattle
from the Rio Grande Valley to Montana.
Even if you haven’t read the book or seen the mini-series,
I’m sure you get the picture.
The crew has to work together, hard work,
dangerous work, facing and surmounting hardships.
There isn’t any room for ego-pampering.
There isn’t time for jealousy or competition.
There isn’t any tolerance for whining.
The only thing to do, day in day out,
in good times or in bad,
is to cowboy up and get on with the drive.
The heroism of Augustus, Captain Call, and the other characters,
when they are heroic, is just this: they get the job done.

I have always read this Gospel lesson
from the standpoint of the laborers
and I have accepted unquestioningly
that their purpose in working is just to get paid.

But let’s look at it for a minute from the perspective
of the landowner.
His goal is to produce a crop of grapes.
He may have paid those who worked an hour
the same as those who worked all day
out of some eccentric view of justice.
But more likely he just wasn’t that interested
in his personnel costs.
He didn’t want to buy a time clock,
or hire a human resources department,
a comptroller, and an EEOC compliance officer.
He didn’t bother to keep track of the time sheets.
He was just trying to grow some grapes.
If it doesn’t help you to imagine this guy
as Robert Duval in Lonesome Dove,
then try Henry Fonda in Sometimes a Great Notion.
Sometimes you have to just get the job done.

Now what do the laborer’s care about in today’s parable?
At their best, the real heart and soul cowboys
in Lonesome Dove cared about the cattle drive.
They cared about the cattle
and in their cantankerous Texan way,
they sometimes even cared about each other.




Would it be too much to hope that vinedressers
might care about the vineyard?
Sure they would expect to get paid what was promised,
but assuming that was done,
their minds might be on the vineyard
instead of competition.

They might be more interested in whether
they had properly pruned or tied the vines,
than in how the landowner kept his books.
When they begin whining about someone else
getting too much pay, the landowner replies
in a way that sounds to me a lot like,
“Just cowboy up and get on with the drive.”

Jesus is teaching a religion here,
but it isn’t the one we may think of as Christianity.
He’s talking about the Kingdom
which turns out not to be a reward for our morality
but a way of life committed to doing God’s will.
God’s will is to give us a mission.

We Anglicans spell out that mission
as five fundamental projects.
1. To proclaim the Gospel to the world – that’s evangelism.
2. To Baptize and educate new believers – that’s Christian formation.
3. To respond with mercy to suffering – that’s charity and pastoral care.
4. To challenge unjust social structures – that’s prophetic advocacy.
5. To sustain and renew God’s creation – that’s earth stewardship.

At stake are the lives of children.
A child dies of hunger related causes every five seconds
while more of our foreign aid goes to buy guns
than to buy food.
At stake are the hopes of people falling into despair
in a culture grown cynical and grim.
At stake is the survival of our planet.
Global warming becomes irreversible in 98 months.
Our mission is bigger than a grape crop, bigger than a cattle drive.
There is no room in it for pettiness, jealousy, or ego-agendas.




Yet the typical parish church spends half its energy and attention
making sure everyone who wants their way
gets it often enough.
I have seen church people at each other’s throats
over the kind of floor covering to put in a parish hall,
while the polar ice caps are melting.

Likewise, dioceses dissipate their energies making sure this parish
does not feel slighted by some attention to that parish.
Then there is the competition of denominations,
and jockeying over moral superiority
or whose theology can be more orthodox or erudite.

When I look at Church squabbles, I hear Christ say,
“Cowboy up and get on with the drive.”
Unless and until we do that,
I don’t know why people outside the church
should get mixed up with us.




I used to think the pettiness, jealousy, and bickering
in churches was just human nature.
Maybe it is, but I think there is also something wrong
with our religion that makes these vices worse, not better.
Too many of us have gotten the idea that Christianity
is about doing something, or believing something,
or having some kind of experience
that is our ticket on the Wonderland Express of salvation.

It may be moral living or orthodox thinking
or spiritual giddiness – but the idea is to earn some spiritual wage,
to get the gold star of God’s blessing.
And we would like to be more moral, more orthodox, or more spiritual
than the next guy so we can get more of the blessing
or be more sure that we have our religious nest feathered.

But Jesus says in this parable, “it isn’t about that.”
The kingdom of heaven is not like Oz at the end of the yellow brick road.
It is like this story of the vineyard.
The kingdom is laboring in the vineyard for the sake of the vineyard.
We don’t save the planet to get a Nobel Prize.
We do it because we love the planet.

We don’t share the gospel to show how good we are.
We do it because we love the gospel and the people we share it with.

Suppose we lived -- not just our church lives --
but all of our lives without so much concern
for getting our fair share of credit.
Suppose we lived like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Theresa of Avila or any of the saints
so caught up in the mission they lost themselves in it.
Suppose we found our true lives
by losing our egos in God’s Kingdom.
Then we might come into ourselves and live life fully,
enjoying the game for the thrill of the game,
not distracted by keeping score.
Amen.

Priest Sermon # 2

Ordination.09.St. George’s, Austin
As we ordain Darla today,
we clothe her with the church’s authority
to offer a special kind of ministry;
and we invoke the Holy Spirit upon her
empowering her to do that ministry.
But what is it? What is this ministry she is to do?

There is an expression we still sometimes hear.
It’s a relic from the old days of Canon 9.
We sometimes say this priest is a “mere sacramentalist.”
That language has now been repudiated in Total Ministry circles.
It’s been repudiated because experience taught us
that isn’t really what happens.

There are two ways the Church has tried to make “mere sacramentalists.”
One is in big city Roman Catholic parishes.
A priest shows up early on Sunday morning and says Mass
for a congregation, but he does not know their names.
He doesn’t know their stories or what is happening
in the lives of their parents and children.
He says Mass then leaves without shaking their hands,
and rushes off to the next place to do it again.

That is a mere sacramentalist, but it is an impoverished sacrament.
It lacks something.
It lacks the human connection of the priest with the people.

We have also tried to create mere sacramentalists
in towns where the priest lives among her people,
knows her people, and shares their lives.
There something quite different happens.

Let me tell you the story of one such priest.
Jean-Baptiste Vianney was a young man in 19th Century France.
His career prospects were not promising, because – to be frank –
Jean-Baptiste was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

His family was at a loss for what to do with him,
but they had a card to play.
The Vianney family and the Bishop were old friends.
So they said to bishop,
“We have this boy who isn’t good at much.
Could you make a priest out of him?”
“Sure, no problem,” the Bishop said. “We are old friends.”

So off they sent Jean-Baptiste to seminary.
After two unsuccessful runs at that,
the professors wrote a letter to the bishop.
“Your grace,” they wrote, “we have tried,
and we have tried, and we have tried
with this young man.

But it is no use.
There is too much empty space between his ears.
We cannot educate him for priesthood.”

And the Bishop said,
“Ok, I am not surprised.
But his family and I go back a long way.
Here’s what we’ll do.
Just teach him how to say one mass.
Just show him how to hold his hands.
I’ll ordain him, but don’t worry.
I’ll send him to some remote village
where he cannot do much harm.”

And that’s what they did.
He was sent to the village of Ars to be a mere sacramentalist.
But it did not go according to plan.

He celebrated his one basic Mass with such deep reverence
- he listened to his people with such genuine concern
- -- he spoke with such simple, humble honesty
- that the villagers experienced him as holy.

Although it was quite a way to the next village, word spread.
People began coming from the countryside to visit him.
Then they began to come from all over France
to tell him their stories and to hear his words.

Now about his words, I have read them.
I have read his sermons.
They are – ok. They are a C+.
But he meant what he said and that’s what counted.

Once a pilgrim travelled from the farthest corner of France
to visit Ars and when he got back home,

What did you get out of it?”
He answered, “I saw God in the face of a man.”




So the Church tried to create a mere sacramentalist
who would not do much harm.
Instead, they got the Cure d’Ars,
Blessed Jean-Baptiste Vianney,
the patron saint of parish priests.

Nevada has had some of that experience.
The folks we ordained under Canon 9 were more gifted than Vianney.
That’s not the similarity.
What is similar is that we ordained them to be mere sacramentalists.
But the people in the pews saw through that non-sense.

The people in the pews recognized the sanctity
of Jean Orr, Judson Calhoun, Estelle Shanks, and the rest.
Any priest who stands at this altar like Elijah at Mt. Carmel,
to call down the fire of the Holy Spirit upon our offering,
will herself be scorched with holiness.


And with that holiness, comes a certain authority.
It will not do to pretend it is not there.
If we pretend it is not there, the flock
will be without a shepherd.
And it is likely that the authority will creep in unconsciously,
indirectly, and do actual harm.

I hope for Darla what I hope for all of our priests
-- that she will accept and wisely use the authority
of her office and her vocation
for the good of God’s people here in Austin.
I hope she will be a servant leader.

A servant leader doesn’t do all the work.
A servant leader doesn’t rule, doesn’t make all the decisions.
A servant leader listens, nurtures, and encourages others
to do God’s mission.
A servant leader helps other people to become servant leaders.

Someone said, “A servant leader is a person of character
who puts people first.”
She does not dominate. She inspires and encourages.
She does not exercise power. She empowers others.

The priesthood carries an inescapable authority.
But it is not the authority to give orders.
It is the authority to give permission to those
who cannot give it to themselves.
It is the authority to call forth worship leaders, eucharistic visitors,
teachers, healers, evangelists, and church gardeners.

The church is the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
We build up the Church by building up the people.
That’s the authority of the priest – the authority to build up.
Paul said it to the Thessalonians,
“Encourage one another and build each other up.”


That is the ministry we entrust to Darla today,
to gather the scattered,
to bring out the best in God’s people here,
to make them stronger, freer lovers of God
and of each other.
In that ministry, God is truly glorified.
Amen.