Homily: The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost [October 30, 2022]

 

            For some reason which I fail entirely to understand, every few years I rewatch an old TV series from start to finish. After the presidential inauguration in 2017 I felt compelled to view again The Sopranos in its entirety; something about Tony Soprano and his family helped me understand the newly installed occupants of the White House. And just this year I decided to rewatch all five seasons of Breaking Bad, a series that presented the travails of Walter White, a terminally-ill high school chemistry teacher who starts cooking and distributing methamphetamine as a way to leave his family some money. While I didn’t note any presidential similarities this time, something about the anti-hero’s moral confusion seemed to encapsulate our current national moment.

            Both of those shows became famous because they featured protagonists whom some thought “lovable rogues”, but their surface attractiveness masked deeply flawed interior lives. That these characters could elicit both our admiration and our scorn told us something about the complications of our affections. As I find myself liking Tony Soprano or Walter White in spite of myself, I may need to rethink how I understand my own morality.

            I bring up my complicated response to these two disreputable TV malefactors because they help me understand my feelings about Zacchaeus, the guest star in our gospel for this morning [Luke 19: 1-10]. If you’ve been around the church for a while, you’ll know that Zacchaeus has long been a favorite of Sunday Schools. We routinely make kids sing songs and act out plays about the little guy up there in the branches. He’s a compelling figure: he’s short! He climbs a tree to see Jesus! Surely, we think, someone with whom the kids can identify.

            The problem with the way we use Zacchaeus, though, is that he is actually a lot more like Tony Soprano than he is like the Mayor of Munchkinland. Zacchaeus was short, it is true. But he was also the chief tax collector of Jericho, and you might know that the tax collectors of Jesus’s day were not like today’s IRS bureaucrats. First century Jewish Palestine was occupied by a Roman standing army, and the Romans taxed the population outrageously to feed and house them. Jewish tax collectors were recruited by the Romans to exact these taxes from the already strapped Israelites. As a result, tax collectors were seen more as mob bag men (like Mr. Soprano) than as cuddly little tree climbers. And for Zacchaeus to be the chief tax collector only exaggerated the problems.

            Which is not to say that Zacchaeus doesn’t become a hero. It is to say that he does undergo a transformative journey to get to a good place. You might even say he goes through something like a conversion experience.

            In order to get Zacchaeus to this new good place, both he and Jesus have to take some action. Clearly intrigued by Jesus and what he has heard about him, Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree in order to get a view of this mysterious figure. Just as Zacchaeus moves towards Jesus, so Jesus moves towards him, and says "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today."  

            When Jesus accompanies Zacchaeus to his house, the crowd murmurs, "He has gone to be the guest of . . . a sinner." And they’re right. Zacchaeus is a sinner, if by “sinner” we mean one who publicly defies Jewish law. The people of Jericho are scandalized: they clearly had thought of Jesus as a healer and teacher who would do his good works for respectable people. But here he is accepting the hospitality of the town’s biggest gangster.

            No one is prepared for what happens next. Something about his encounter with Jesus changes Zacchaeus. Luke doesn’t tell us what it was—perhaps just being seen and acknowledged by Jesus, perhaps Jesus’s willingness to risk disgrace by entering his house—this moment with Jesus changes Zacchaeus dramatically, and he blurts out,

"Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." 

            This certainly is a remarkable turnaround. It’s as if Al Capone had suddenly turned into Mackenzie Scott, going from gangster to philanthropist in a zero to sixty turnaround. The biblical standard of generosity is 10%. Nobody gives away 50. And the scriptures call only for one eye for one eye, not four for one. What is going on here?

            In the story of Zacchaeus and his conversion, Luke is telling us something about the nature of repentance. It is clear that this Jesus moment has made Zacchaeus renounce his former life, and he instantly vows to make amends by giving away his ill-gotten gains and paying oversized reparations to those he has injured. This, says Luke, is what true repentance looks like.

In our everyday parlance, we tend to think of repentance as akin to “feeling bad about” something. “Gosh, I repent hurting your feelings, drinking so much last night, investing in Enron.” For you and me today, repentance is regret. But it wasn’t that way for the Jews of Jesus’s day.

The Greek word the gospels use for repentance is μετάνοια, a word which literally means “turning around”, and figuratively suggests “a transformative change of mind”. Μετάνοια means a lot more than what we would call “repentance”. It means entirely changing your thought, and as a result, changing your action. When Zacchaeus repents, he experiences μετάνοια. He doesn’t say, “Gee, I feel bad about my ill-gotten gains.” He says, “I’ll give away half of what I’ve got.” He doesn’t say, “Sorry if I’ve offended you.” He says, “Here is four times what I illegally took from you.” His encounter with Jesus has totally converted and transformed Zacchaeus, and he honors that change not only in language but in action.

What can we learn from this interaction between Jesus and the repentant chief tax collector? Here are two quick thoughts.

First, Zacchaeus’s repentance is one of action, not words. Perhaps it’s the influence of social media, but we 21^st century people seem to think that saying something is the same as doing something. “Of course I work against climate change. I tweeted about it just yesterday!” Not only do we confuse tweets and Facebook posts with doing something; we also spend a lot of our time saying things that we don’t then back up with action. I regularly receive emails from institutions (including universities and churches) that say, in their signature line, “We acknowledge that we occupy unceded Chumash, or other Native American, land.” I have yet to receive an email which adds, “therefore we’re giving it back.” True repentance needs action to be complete.

Thought two is tied up with what Jesus says at the end of our passage: 

Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

We tend to think of sin as a personal matter, something we do in private. The nature of Zacchaeus’s sin was public. In his role as chief tax collector he had violated other people and the norms of his community. Over the centuries, the church has asked us to focus on our personal, private actions. But the Bible is more concerned with our social behavior. Zacchaeus may have had impure thoughts or eaten meat on Fridays, but that’s not why he’s a sinner. He’s a sinner because he defrauded and abused people. And in his repentance, his μετάνοια, his complete change of mind and behavior, he is restored through his reparations to his community. “He too is a son of Abraham.” He will remain in Jericho and work it out. His new life will be hard, but it will also be joyous.

Jesus concludes by saying, “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." This is true not only for Zacchaeus and the people of Jericho. It is true for you and me. Jesus has come to be the guest of us sinners, and the result is that salvation has come to his house. In the same way, Jesus has come to be our guest, and his presence within and among us at first will expose whatever we need to repent. Are our relationships, both personal and social, unjust? Are we behaving in our family or our community in ways that betray our deepest values? If so, we need not to feel bad but to repent, to change, to turn around and live new lives where we are. That’s never very easy to do, but it is the only way to personal and social wholeness.

“For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." Jesus is not only talking about Zacchaeus here he’s talking about you and me. He has come today to be the guest of all us sinners. Our best response, as always, is not to feel bad about our pasts but instead to be open to the forgiven future he offers, and so to change, to turn around, to follow him, and always to give thanks that we have been seen, known, and loved. Amen.

 

 

Homily: The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost [October 23, 2022] St. James, Newport Beach

            One of my all-time favorite church jokes goes like this:

            A man of the type we used to call a “captain of industry” goes into an Episcopal church in Manhattan. Struck by the gothic majesty of the building, our powerful industrialist goes to the altar rail and sinks to his knees.

            “Use me, Lord!” he cries. “Hopefully in an executive capacity.”

            This joke always comes to mind when I hear Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, our gospel reading for today [Luke 18: 9-14]. For many years I worked for George Regas, the late, long-time former rector of All Saints, Pasadena, and the industrialist, like the Pharisee, is the kind of person about whom George would often say, “I know that man!” Both of these characters exhibit a presumption of self-importance which I often see in myself. The captain of industry is sure that God wants to use him in upper management. The Pharisee is pleased to let God know that he is not like other people. Neither of these men seems to suffer from a bad self-image.

            In today’s gospel Jesus makes a clear comparison between two characters. We’ve already met the Pharisee. He is joined at prayer by a tax collector, a somewhat disreputable character who simply says, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Before I unravel the threads of this story, it’s important to understand what it meant to be a Pharisee or a tax collector in the world of Jesus and his companions.

            First, to the Pharisee. The Pharisees were the dominant strain of first century Judaism in Palestine. When presented the opportunity to follow Jesus, they declined. As a result, the New Testament is not exactly objective in the way it presents them:  the gospels almost always depict the Pharisees in cartoonishly evil terms. They are legalistic, self-important villains who skulk around trying to trip up and entrap Jesus. 

            That depiction is not even remotely fair. The Pharisees were simply a group of believers trying as best they could to apply their faith to the dilemmas of everyday life. They had the Jewish law, the torah, as their guide, and they were using it as best they could to answer their spiritual and ethical questions. They were the establishment, and they were doing their best to live their lives in the world with the religion they had. In other words, they were the first century’s Episcopalians. In the words of George Regas, “I know that man!”

            Second, to the tax collector: we shouldn’t think of this character as a contemporary IRS agent. First century Jewish Palestine was occupied by a Roman standing army, and the people there were taxed beyond belief to feed and support those forces. So-called “tax collectors” were distrusted because they were Jews who collaborated with the Roman enemy, acting more like mafia bagmen than government bureaucrats. They were seen as at best gangsters and as at worst traitors.

            We need to see these two men in their first century context, not as 21^st century stereotypes. The Pharisee prays in a conventional way. It was common in the scriptures for praying Jews to remind God of their faithfulness. If you’re not going to make your own case for God, who else will? The Psalms are shot through with the kind of self-congratulatory things the Pharisee says. Similarly, the tax collector in this story resembles the kind of outsider who may live a less than exemplary life but who is nevertheless drawn toward Israel’s God because of the depth of grace and forgiveness evident in the Hebrew scriptures.

            So that’s who these two people are. At the end of the story, Jesus says this about them:

“I tell you, this man [the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

To me, Jesus’s parable turns on the word we translate, “justified”.  Today, we use the word “justified” to suggest something like “proved right”—like when you’re in an argument with your spouse and you say, “see, I was justified” in doing whatever fool thing you’re being called out on. That’s our common use of the word, but it differs a bit from the word Luke uses here.

That word is δεδικαιωμένος, a form of the verb δικαιω, and the sense of that verb is something like “to make right”. It’s a legal term, and one way to understand it would be our English word, “acquitted”. As is often the case in the Bible, Jesus is portraying a legal procedure here. Two men stand before the divine court pleading their cases. The Pharisee argues for his virtue by reciting a list of his moral achievements. The other simply acknowledges himself to be a sinner. They are making their cases. Only one of them, the tax collector, prevails. He has been “made right” with God.

What’s going on here is less about a verdict than it is about a relationship. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector stand before the altar in the temple because they know they are out of right relationship with God, and they are asking to be restored. The Pharisee thinks he can get that by reading God his résumé. The tax collector has no such illusions. He seeks to be restored to right relationship with God by acknowledging his need for mercy and forgiveness.

This story of two different men at prayer is not a story about who is right and who is wrong. It is a story about how we relate to God and each other. The Pharisee thinks that the system and its rules will save him. The tax collector knows that being right with God depends on first acknowledging one’s need. The Pharisee is arrogant because the system has told him that virtue somehow equals accomplishment. The tax collector is humble because he knows, from the outset, that he needs help. That’s why Jesus ends the parable with the saying, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

The humility Jesus describes here is neither false modesty nor low self-esteem. The humility of Jesus is a humility that begins in an honest assessment of our condition. It’s an acknowledgement that we are God’s creatures and can get into trouble when we forget that. Human systems—philosophies, cultures, even religions—can trick us into thinking that we are totally independent of God and each other. It’s easy to think that when everything is going your way. But sooner or later life teaches us that we are not in control, and in those moments we are thrown back on our need for God and each other. The tax collector knows that now. The Pharisee will know it one way or another pretty soon.

October is the month when Episcopal congregations talk about stewardship, about what you and I give to advance the mission and ministry of the church. Over the course of my working life I’ve heard and given a lot of stewardship sermons, and many of them are what we might this morning call “Pharasaic”: they are a list of programs and accomplishments. They all add up to “Give to the church because it’s so fabulous!”

Jesus’s praise of the tax collector’s humility suggests that there is another reason that you and I give to support the church and what it does. We do so because we want to be “justified”, made right with God and each other. We do so because life teaches us, over the years, that we are not autonomous but dependent. We need God, and we need each other. We need a place like this where we can come together to acknowledge that need and, as best we can, support each other when life hits us upside the head with one of its many two by fours of suffering and loss. We need a place like this so we can witness to the world that, as we acknowledge our own pain and loss, we can respond in generosity and love when we see such suffering in others. 

As we hear this story in stewardship season, let us respond as those who would humble and not exalt ourselves. I am not saying that a generous pledge to St. James will put you in a right relation with God—only God and your own self-examination will do that. But I am saying that giving to support this place is one sign that you see life’s meaning in relation to something larger than yourself—you see it in relation to God and the community which tries in its own way to acknowledge and give thanks to God in its common life and in service to the world around it.

“Use me, Lord! Hopefully in an executive capacity.” “I know that man!” I do know that man, and I’m grateful that over time my life in the church has helped me bit by bit to become less like him. And that is one of the many, many reasons I give to support the church and what it does for me, for my family, for my community, and for the world. I invite you to join me in this generous and joyful work to support what God is up to. Amen.

Homily: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost [October 9, 2022] St. Athanasius, Los Angeles

            I don’t like to think of myself as a hostile or passive-aggressive person, but perhaps I am. The older I get, the more annoyed I become when people seem to take basic courtesies for granted. Whether it’s holding a door open for someone or letting a car enter a congested lane of traffic, I am increasingly surprised at how few people pause to offer a word or gesture of thanks. Luckily for them, I have appointed myself the messenger of manners. “You’re welcome!” I often shout, usually in a sickly-sweet, cloying voice. I always feel better, but my sarcasm never seems to make much of a difference.

            This morning’s gospel reading [Luke 17: 11-19] shows Jesus’s response to this kind of social ingratitude, though (luckily for us) without the passive-aggressive hostility or sarcasm. Ten people suffering with leprosy encounter Jesus, and (knowing him to be a healer) they ask that he cure them. When he does so, only one turns back to him and offers thanks. Clearly a bit stunned by their ingratitude, Jesus asks, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

            It is not incidental to the point of this story that the one grateful healed person turns out not to be an Israelite but a Samaritan, an outsider. As in the other Lucan story of the Good Samaritan, the gospel seems to be telling us something about the universal nature of human goodness. It isn’t always the chosen people who do the right thing.

            But the identity of the one grateful person in the story is really a side-issue. The main point, I think, has to do with the whole question of giving thanks as central to our human relation to God. And to get at that—and with apologies to Gerti, your theologically educated warden-- I’d like to offer what I promise will be a brief but pithy little lesson in Hebrew.

            There are two words in Hebrew which may sound alike but which denote a world of theological difference. The first, todah ( תּוֹדָה) means “thanksgiving”. The second, torah ( תּוֹרָה) is more familiar to us. It means “law”. Jews often use torah to describe the first five books of the Bible, but that is because Judaism considers those books to be the law. Though todah and torah may sound similar, they describe two very different attitudes toward God, the holy, and life itself.

            Let’s begin with todah or thanksgiving. In the earliest days of Israel’s life—from the Exodus in around 1400 BC to the Exile in. 587 BC—giving thanks was the primary act of Hebrew worship. The great event of Israel’s common life—the Exodus—was an experience of deliverance from slavery and oppression into freedom. The worshipping life which grew out of that deliverance was one of giving thanks—of making an offering and sharing a meal with God and the community in celebration of and thanksgiving for both the corporate deliverance of the Exodus and whatever personal deliverance (a good harvest, healing, the birth of a child) had occurred in a person’s life. This todah way of relating to God was the primary characteristic of Israel’s life and worship for centuries, right up until the Babylonian exile and captivity of 587. Our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah this morning recalls that horribly disruptive period in Israel’s life.

            When the Israelites returned from exile and rebuilt the Jerusalem temple, they made the move from todah(thanksgiving) worship to torah (law) worship. In the book of Nehemiah chapter 8, the priest Ezra reads the torah to the people and they commit to follow its teachings and abide by its rules. In the twenty-year period of the Babylonian exile, a significant shift has occurred: what was previouslyiii a living religion celebrating God’s ongoing presence among us by giving thanks changed to a more static observance, finding God at work most reliably now in the five books of a historic past which we can but remember. This is not to say that Jews did not still give thanks for personal and social blessings. But it is to say that gratitude was subtly replaced by obedience as the primary way one related to God, other people, and the world. Todah had become torah. Thanksgiving turned into law.

            Now this rendering is a bit simplistic, but it helps us understand what Jesus is up to in this morning’s gospel. When Jesus heals the ten, he tells them to “go and show yourselves to the priests”.  In terms of first century Jewish life, this command has the force of torah, of law, and the ten healed persons immediately proceed to follow orders. They’re on their way to the priest to become ritually clean and then to rejoin society. This is all conventional Jewish practice, totally in keeping with post-Exilic ritual standards.

            But one healed person turns back to give thanks. It’s not that he won’t go to the priest and get purified. It’s more that he remembers an earlier aspect of Jewish life that his fellows seem to have forgotten: he remembers that what has happened to him is not so much a cleansing as a deliverance. He has been delivered from the disease of leprosy and set free to live a more abundant life. His response to that deliverance is like that of earlier Israelites. He comes back and gives thanks. He has moved from law to thanksgiving, from torah to todah.

            In making that move, the one healed person encapsulates the entire Jesus experience. Jesus’s critique of first century Palestinian Judaism is a critique any of us might make of any religious system that claims to have a lock on holiness and purity. As an observant Jew himself, Jesus follows and honors torah, the law. But he realizes that the law is there properly not as the object of our worship but as a way into relationship with God, other people, and the world. To Jesus and his companions, just as for the earlier Israelites, the real point of following God is todah, giving thanks. When you put following the law first you can fall into the trap of thinking of yourself as self-sufficient. “Look at me: I’m doing everything right!” When you put giving thanks first, you realize something deeper—you realize that you are the recipient of a divine generosity that gives you not only what you have but even life itself. Following the law tends towards self-righteousness. Giving thanks tends towards compassion.

            In his praise of the one who returned to give thanks, Jesus is leading us not away from the law but to putting law in its proper context of thanksgiving. This teaching suggests two ideas—one social, one theological—which all of us might ponder in the days ahead.

            We are approaching elections at the state, city, and county levels next month. There seem to be two primary types of people in our political life: we might call them the “law-abiders” and the “empaths”. Some candidates argue for tough, legalistic solutions to our social problems. Others argue for compassionate actions that emphasize our solidarity with each other. When looking at these candidates and issues, we might ask ourselves the old evangelical question: WWJVF? Who would Jesus vote for? As Christians we are also citizens, and as citizens we need to be mindful that we’re all in this together. For us, thanksgiving will always take precedence over law.

            That’s the social thought. Here’s the theological one. It won’t have escaped you that “eucharist”, the liturgy we do together this morning, is the Greek word for “thanksgiving”.  As followers of Jesus, we identify ourselves first and foremost as those who give thanks. We come now, together, to gather around God’s table, and we do so not in celebration of our purity but in acknowledgment of our dependence. For our life, our purpose, and our fulfillment we rely not on ourselves but on God and each other. What sets us people of faith apart from our individualistic culture is that we are the people who know and acknowledge our need for each other and God. We are the people who realize, as a mentor of mine once said, that “we’re all on cosmic relief”. That’s why we work for justice and peace. And that’s why, this morning, as we do every Sunday, we now proceed, together in this Eucharist, to give thanks. Amen.

            

            

            

            

Homily: George Regas [May 7, 2022] All Saints, Pasadena

There are at least a dozen great preachers in this room today, and each one of them is now asking themselves the question, “Why is that mook up there doing the sermon instead of me?” I have to say, when Mary showed me George’s detailed plans for this liturgy and I saw my own name after the word “sermon” I was both honored and surprised; in fact I asked myself the same question. "Why me?" But then, casting my eyes to the right, I saw the answer. In parentheses after my name were the words, “ten minutes”.

George Regas never preached for ten minutes in his life, but he knew his colleagues well. He was certain that I, among all his former staff members, was the most likely to follow his instructions. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but where George is concerned, I always do what I’m told.

            George designed everything about this service. He chose the readings, the hymns, and the participants. And if you worked with George on anything, you know how intentionally he did things. So it is no accident that our two Hebrew/Christian scripture readings George chose for today are proclamations. They are announcements not only of God’s vision for the world. They are proclamations of how things actually are. George was first and foremost a preacher. Proclamation was his life’s work.

 

            Our reading from Isaiah 61 is well known to all us progressive religious folk, both on its own terms and as the scroll which Jesus reads aloud when he visits his hometown congregation in Nazareth in the fourth chapter of Luke’s gospel.

 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
            because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
   to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
   and release to the prisoners; 

            For Isaiah, this passage announces the new, joyous reality of Israel’s life after its return to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile. It is a proclamation of a new, restored world, a transformed community in which justice reigns and wrongs are set right. And when Jesus later chooses to read this passage as the inaugural announcement of his own ministry, Isaiah’s words take on an added resonance. Following Jesus will mean giving oneself over not only to the proclamation of this world. Following Jesus will mean working with others to make this world a reality.

For countless generations of Jews and Christians, Isaiah’s oracle has served as the warrant for prophetic utterance. If you want to see what God is up to, look to Isaiah’s list: bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, releasing the prisoners. Established religious communities can fall into the trap of seeing themselves as the custodians of the status quo, defenders of the oppressive systems they are asked to bless. Isaiah and Jesus remind us that God is on the side of those up against it. Critics of us progressive preachers always say that we’re mixing religion and politics. Isaiah’s joyous oracle reminds us that you can’t authentically talk about God without also proclaiming God’s desire for justice.

            When I think of this Isaiah passage in relation to George, the things that he stood for over the course of a lifetime in ministry simply name themselves: civil rights, peace, economic justice, interfaith relations, equity for women and LGBT people in the church and world, healing the sick. Yet when I think more specifically about George, the specific idea of prophecy as “good news” rings clear and true. George was more of a joyous than an angry preacher. One reason you left church feeling exalted following a George Regas sermon was that he always provided not only an analysis of the problem but also an avenue to get together and work with others to address it. George always believed that concerted faithful action could actually change things, and he consistently held out a vision of the hopeful future to which God is calling us. I’ve heard (and delivered) countless prophetic issue sermons in my time, and to my ear they often sound like religious versions of Eyeore complaining about the burrs in his tail. People signed up to hear and follow George Regas because he preached good news. His good news wasn’t always sunny. But it was grounded in a hopeful vision of the just future God holds out to us. And the legacy I take from his life, ministry, and preaching is that we are all called, not to wait on God to free the captives and feed the poor but actively to participate with God in these acts of liberation we proclaim.

            And then there are the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 1-10). As did Isaiah, so here does Jesus turn our conventional wisdom on its head. The Greek word makarios, which we usually translate “blessed”, more accurately means something like “happy”. Conventional church wisdom is more comfortable talking about the poor, the meek, and the peacemakers as “blessed”. We become a bit more uneasy when we think of them not as pious recipients of our largesse but as the people who, unlike most of us, are actually happy. As the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann once said right here at All Saints, “If you want to see authentic hope, look not to affluent suburbs but to the barrios of Buenos Aires.”

            If Jesus is right—if true happiness exists primarily among the marginalized—what hope is there for the rest of us? How do those of us who are relatively affluent and privileged find a place in this parade? Jesus’s Beatitudes could be seen as a prescription for renouncing the world. It was George’s genius to use them as a way into building solidarity across economic, racial, class, gender, and sexuality boundaries. George spent his life preaching prophetic good news to people whose relative affluence and privilege could easily have inoculated them from having to think about war, injustice, poverty, racism, and oppression. One of his many particular gifts was to accept everyone he came across as they were and, nevertheless, to call them into a deeper understanding and higher commitment in the service of whom Isaiah would proclaim good news and whom Jesus would call happy.

            George never fell into the trap of presuming to “speak truth to power”. Even when George directly addressed and confronted President Nixon, the Pentagon, Pasadena City Hall, or the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, he wasn’t really speaking truth to power. He was speaking truth with power, insisting on staying in relationship with those who resisted his vision, leading them not only by argument but more importantly by empathy and compassion to a new truth which all could embrace and celebrate together.

            It was my good fortune to work with George his last five years here at All Saints, but the trajectory of our relationship started much earlier and lasted long after his retirement. I first got to know George in the 1970s, working with him on issues like the ordination of women and the nuclear arms race. And I stayed connected to George long after he retired. He preached at my installation at the National Cathedral in Washington, and he delighted me when his call for the cathedral to renounce militarism prompted a dozen or so people to get up and leave in the middle of his sermon. I’m sure he would have chased them down and brought them back to talk it through if the decorum of the occasion hadn’t prevented it. 

            Jesus would remind us that abundant living has nothing to do with our privilege and everything to do with our openness to being instruments of God’s love and justice. If you saw George from a distance, you probably only know that he worked hard. If you saw him up close, you also knew that he played hard. George was a great phrase maker, and he often talked about people who had “gone to sleep on life”. George Regas never went to sleep on life, he was always awake to life in the way Isaiah and Jesus were. He knew that living into God’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth called for hard but joyous living. And those of us lucky enough to work with or for him came over time to know that, too.

            Right after George retired in 1995, Bishop Fred Borsch asked him to address the Los Angeles Diocesan Convention. George used that occasion to reflect on four decades of ministry here, in Tennessee, and New York, and he listed the myriad causes he had championed over time. At the end of his address, as he had described what it meant to work with others to proclaim God’s justice, peace, and love, all he finally could say was, “What a privilege. What a privilege.”

            There is so much to be pained and angry about right now: the war in Ukraine, the right wing SCOTUS draft opinion ending Roe versus Wade, assaults on voting rights and LGBT equality to name a few. I wish George were here not only to preach. I wish he were here to organize. But we know where he would stand, and he has left us with an extended interfaith community in which to engage, reflect, and act for the justice which Isaiah, Mohammed, and Jesus demand.

            I said at the outset that George Regas never preached a ten-minute sermon in his life. Apparently, neither have I. But one thing you learned sooner or later working with George is that sometimes it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. 

There will never be another George Regas. But my life and all our lives have been changed forever by loving and being loved by this extraordinary, complex, faithful, loving, and brilliant man. I hope I speak for all the great preachers gathered today by using George’s words to describe what it meant to walk this hard, beautiful road with him. What a privilege, George. What a privilege. Amen.

            

 

 

Homily: The Third Sunday of Easter [May 1, 2022] St. Alban's, Westwood

I grew up here in Southern California, and when my parents divorced early in my childhood my father moved from Toluca Lake out to Malibu and got a house there because, if you can believe this now, it was cheap. So I spent many of my elementary school weekends at the beach, and that early experience probably colors the way I hear the 21st chapter of John’s Gospel when it is read. I cannot hear about Jesus at the beach sitting around a charcoal fire without thinking of what that looks, feels, and smells like from my own early experience. 

One of the things I remember best about those Malibu weekends was going down to the beach and sitting around a fire. In that seaside setting you have all the elements which early humans thought made up the universe: earth, air, fire, water. There is something primordial and eternal in that kind of moment, and also something fleeting: everything in the scene is ephemeral; nothing will remain as it is for long. As a setting which mixes the eternal and the ephemeral, a fireside by the water is the perfect place for Jesus to say hello and goodbye at once.

Since my earliest days of reading the Bible with some care, I have been moved that the risen Jesus’s final meal with his companions occurred on a beach gathered around a charcoal fire. As much as Easter is about the joyful return of Jesus to his friends, it is also ultimately about the loss of Jesus, too. Jesus is returning to the One he calls his Father. This is the last time his companions will see him. And without trying to sound impious or inelegant about it, it means something at least to me that Jesus leaves his friends after a final beach cookout, and the meal he shares with them takes place in the setting not only of a beautiful natural place but also in the context of the work of fishing, the stuff of their daily life.

If this is the last time Jesus will see his friends, it is also the first time he has seen Peter since his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. And you’ll remember that things between Jesus and Peter did not go well back then. Despite his protestations that he would remain faithful, Peter denied Jesus. And he did so not once, but three times.

It is no wonder, then, what Peter does when he hears that Jesus is back.  “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.” This is, at first, a surprising detail. And then it makes sense.  I guess you’d run away from Jesus too if the last time you’ve seen him was to deny him three times.

There is so much going on in John’s 21^st chapter—the final appearance of Jesus, the big catch of fish, the symbolic meal Jesus and his friends eat together around the charcoal fire, the questioning of Peter about love and the commandment to feed the sheep. Among all those details, this story seems primarily to concern forgiveness. On this third Sunday of Easter, let’s sit with Jesus and Peter as they attempt to reconcile.

Following Peter’s attempt to swim away from this meeting, Jesus invites his companions to join him in a meal of bread and fish. It is not stretching things to suggest that this meal has symbolic, Eucharistic overtones. In the early church the Eucharist was not the polite, institutionalized ritual we have come to perform over time. It was an actual meal, often featuring not only bread and wine but also milk, honey, and fish—real food with scriptural saving significance. The first audience for John’s account would have understood this.

It is only after this meal that Jesus approaches Peter with his threefold interrogation: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Jesus asks a version of this question three times, and Peter answers each time, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Given that Peter had denied Jesus not once but thrice, it shouldn’t be surprising that Jesus questions Peter a similar number of times; and Peter’s answers are also predictable. The surprise comes with Jesus’s response to Peter: “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.” Roman Catholics will see here a prediction of Peter’s role as Bishop of Rome and founder of the papacy. But prior to any institutional connection, Jesus’s directions to Peter seem to offer the clue to his pathway to forgiveness.

Jesus’s interrogation of Peter ends perhaps differently that we 21^st century people would imagine. There are no cultural markers of forgiveness in this interchange. Jesus does not offer Peter an extended hand to shake, nor does he embrace him in a reconciling bear hug. He simply gives Peter two commandments. “Feed my sheep,” and “Follow me”. 

You and I tend to imagine things like love and forgiveness as some kind of mental states. To our minds, loving someone or forgiving them has primarily to do with how we think about them. We’re convinced that the most important aspect of something is what it means.

This way of seeing these core biblical concepts is alien to the world that gave us the scriptures. Love and forgiveare not gaseous mental notions, floating somewhere around in the ether. Love and forgive are verbs. If you love someone, you behave a certain way toward them. If you forgive someone, that pardon is made real in action.

In his post-betrayal, post-resurrection encounter with Peter, Jesus bypasses the endless therapy session that you and I imagine they might have been forced to endure. Instead, Jesus gives Peter two commandments. He tells Peter to feed his sheep, that is, to do something concretely loving toward his fellow disciples. And then Jesus tells Peter, very simply and directly, to follow him.

If you are like me, questions of forgiveness and reconciliation are always somewhere not far from the top of your consciousness. There are folks in my life I both need to forgive and be forgiven by. What I take from this morning’s seaside cookout is a new understanding: the way to enact forgiveness is not through thought; it is through action. Rather than stew over the offence either committed or received, the way to get myself and the other past it is to do something new: feed and follow. Because our culture seems to be so in love with endless talk, we think that we can work out our differences merely by introspection and dialogue. But Jesus offers us a different, and more pragmatic approach. 

As Western, 21^st century, media-savvy Christians, you and I live too much in our heads. We imagine we will solve our problems by turning them into rational, intellectual concepts. What Jesus offers is something entirely different: a call to get out of our heads and into our bodies and hearts. We love Jesus not only by praying to him but by feeding the people he cares for. We love Jesus not only by saying the creed but by living and acting as his disciples. In this morning’s encounter on the beach, Jesus offers forgiveness to Peter as a new way of acting in the world. The implication seems to be that when we get out of our heads and into our hearts and hands the hurt and betrayal that had seemed so vital becomes less important than the human need that, together, we can begin to address.

We all carry so many burdens of offenses both endured and committed. What Jesus offers us this morning is a way through and out of our obsessions. If you want either to forgive or be forgiven, feed Jesus’s sheep. If you want release from the injuries or the guilt you carry, follow Jesus in living a life of compassion, justice, and love. Jesus never promised Peter that he would feel better about things. He promised Peter that, in giving himself over to loving God and serving others, he would find a new life that would cause his worries ultimately to fade away.

You and I live in a world of such desperate need. From the war in Ukraine to the streets of Los Angeles, from suffering on a grand scale to the loneliness and illness of those close to us, there is no shortage of sheep for us to feed. On this third Sunday of Easter, as we celebrate the risen life of Jesus, let us claim our share in that Easter promise, too. As he called Peter, so Jesus calls you and me. A new life of joy and purpose is on offer for all of us as we gather around God’s table. We claim that new life by stepping into the deeds and actions Jesus calls us to do. “Feed my sheep.” “Follow me.”  It sounds so simple. Yet it’s the life-changing renewal all of us so deeply want and desperately need. Amen.

 

Homily: The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany [February 6, 2022] St. Alban's, Westwood

            Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be with you again. I’m Gary Hall, a retired priest who spent my early career here in Los Angeles (vicar at St. Aidan’s Malibu before my friend Susan Klein, senior associate at All Saints, Pasadena for many years). My wife Kathy and I left L.A. for a long time, but we returned here from Washington D.C. when I retired in 2016. Since then I’ve had a number of interim ministries and even preached here a few times when Susan was rector. I’m old enough to have known every St. Alban’s rector since Parker Jones. I went to graduate school at UCLA in the 1980s, and Norm Ishizaki regularly let me park in your lot. So I’ve always been fond of St. Alban’s, and I’m happy to help as you begin the next phase of your common life.

Today’s gospel is Luke’s account of the miraculous catch of fish.  [Luke 5.1-11] In this tale, Jesus gets into a boat near the shore.  Though the fishermen had been out all the night before fishing, they had caught nothing.  Jesus tells them to go farther out and let down their nets. Our friend Peter scoffs in disbelief, but he obeys Jesus and is astonished by the number of fish they bring up.  They catch so many fish that their nets break and the boat threatens to sink.  When Peter realizes the size and extent of this miraculous catch of fish, he falls to his knees in front of Jesus.  And what he says is both surprising and authentic.  He doesn’t say, “Thank you, Jesus, for helping me catch so many fish.” He does say, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" In reply, Jesus tells him not to be afraid, for soon he will be fishing for people.

There are many amazing things in this story, but there are two I’d like to talk about, one on each side of the big catch: Jesus’s initial response to the fishermen, and Peter’s reaction when he realizes what’s happened. Let’s think for a moment about each.

If you think about the context of this story, what you see is a tale focused on a group of people who are deeply discouraged. As Peter says to Jesus early on, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” And what does Jesus do when he sees this discouraged group of people? He doesn’t admonish them or give them false comfort. Instead, he gets in the boat with them and enters their experience.  To me, the great miracle of this story is that, in company with Jesus, a group of depressed people find a new way to get on with life and its business.

Now it doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see how this story might speak to you here at St. Alban’s this morning. The departure of a rector under any circumstances is always traumatic. This parish has a history of rectors who served long tenures. To have a priest leave after a year-and-a-half is no doubt upsetting, especially when that year-and-a-half was lived under the strictures of a pandemic. I wouldn’t be surprised if, one week after Yein’s departure, many of you are all over the emotional map about her leaving and the prospects for the parish’s future.

And this is where today’s gospel helps us. God’s response to discouragement and disappointment is not to judge them but to accept them. Jesus knows the fisherfolk have good reason to be bummed out. Before Jesus does anything else, he enters their world and shares their problem. Following that logic, it’s not too much to suggest that God knows you all have a welter of feelings about the current moment and the way forward. This gospel story suggests that God is sharing your experience and getting in the boat with you. That’s kind of like the whole Jesus story in a nutshell. God comes to us in our loss and transforms our pain into something new. Disappointment and loss are the materials God seems always given to work with. Discouragement can be turned into something like a miraculous catch of fish, bigger and better than anything we could have imagined.

So the first point is simply to say, as an old seminary professor of mine used to say back in the day, “It’s OK to be where you’re at.” Wherever you are on the emotional spectrum, it’s OK to be there. God will be with you in it. That’s the first point. And here’s the second.

When Peter sees the gigantic catch of fish that Jesus has pulled off, he says, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" This is how it always is in the Bible. When God calls Isaiah, the prophet’s first response is to say, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” Every time God appears directly in the Bible, the first reaction is usually an experience of personal unworthiness. Who am I to be the recipient of such a glorious and transcendent vision?  Yet that is the deep and paradoxical truth of the glory of God as made manifest in this season after Epiphany.  God’s glory spreads out over these weeks, beginning with the magi on Epiphany and ending with Jesus’s transfiguration on its final Sunday. As this glory reveals itself, it lights up the world’s beauty and its shadows--those parts of us that we would rather deny. In this moment, Peter sees both his blessedness and his unworthiness. He knows himself both the recipient of a great gift and a sinful person. That, in brief, is the paradox of the Christian life. None of are worthy to be here, yet God loves us so deeply that we’re called forward toward a future of blessing and promise and hope, sometimes in spite of ourselves. 

            In this moment of parish transition, and as we move together through this season of expanding glory and light, I believe that God wants us to take in the powerful truths spoken to us in Luke’s Gospel account.  The miracle story points us toward what the whole divine drama of the Jesus story is about: new life, hope and transformation—these are the touchstones of the Christian life.  Caught up in our own personal struggles, sometimes even in larger church struggles, we can forget why we are here.  God has offered each and all of us new and abundant life with one another in Christ.  We are and will be risen, just as Christ is risen, and that means we are free to live hopeful, generous, compassionate, lives free of anxiety and fear.  That is the central truth of Christianity, and sometimes we let other things get in the way of living it out.  

When Jesus famously says, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people", he reminds us that God’s call extends not only to us.  We have been given this gift of hopeful, fearless life so that we may call others into it. That’s what churches are for. Like the fishers in Luke’s story, God has called us to be people who cast the net inclusively, inviting not just mysterious wise people but the full range of the human community into our life and fellowship. God invites everyone to the table. The promise is that when we do that, our nets will be full to the point of breaking.

So: God understands how a parish church, like a group of fisherfolk, can experience times of loss and discouragement. God understands that in the face of a setback we may want simply to give up or go away. God’s response to our depression is to get into it with us, to lead us back to the reason we came here in the first place. The church is the place we come for solace and refreshment. It’s also the place we come for challenge and renewal, to be reminded that God is up to something glorious and transforming, even and most especially when things look pointless and bleak.

So let us acknowledge the bleakness. And let us also, with Jesus, set our eyes on the glory, made manifest in Jesus and in each other.  Let us spread the invitation to God’s banquet to everyone, especially those we don’t usually make room for around our tables.  And let’s acknowledge that though we each have some work to do, God is in and among us as we get ourselves together for the next phase in this divine process. 

As you navigate the night of disappointments, open yourself to the dawn’s proclamation of gospel news. Even now, Jesus is getting into the boat we call St. Alban’s alongside you. This isn’t just a fish story. It’s a promise of the abundant life we will know as we accompany Jesus on this miraculous road. “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” It’s an audacious and scary promise. But we do not pursue it on our own. Jesus, our brother, savior, and friend, will be with us every step of the way. Amen.

 

Homily: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost [September 26, 2021] St. James, Newport Beach

 

            I want to begin by thanking Cindy for her gracious invitation to be with you this morning. I don’t want to reveal my age, but the last time I was here at St. James, John Ashey was the rector. You have certainly been through a great deal since that time, and I want to thank you for your faithfulness, perseverance and the obvious creative vitality and pastoral leadership evident in the leadership and ministry of Canon Voorhees. Who else would think of using swim noodles for the socially distanced passing of the peace? I’m glad to be here.

            As the bulletin tells you, my last job before I retired in 2016 was to serve as dean of Washington National Cathedral. I had a great time there—what’s not to love about a beautiful gothic building in a dynamic place like Washington, D.C? We put on a lot of programs in my years as dean—working against gun violence, advocating for same sex marriage, voting rights, and environmental activism--but my favorite event was a one-week endeavor each January called “Seeing Deeper”. During that week we would take all the chairs out of the nave and do music, dance, prayer, and other offerings that made use of the entire transcendent empty space and invited people to respond not just mentally but physically. Seeing a big church like that without chairs is a revelation. We think of churches much as we do classrooms—as places where everyone watches and listens passively to a reasoned presentation. Emptying the space out and using it as a place for using not just our heads but our bodies was, as we said in the 1960s, a mind-blowing experience.

            The first year we did it The Washington Post ran a  front page story [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/national-cathedral-opens-worship-space-to-free-classes-and-more-to-boost-profile-coffers/2014/01/14/216f87b4-7d3f-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html] in which I was directly quoted in perhaps not my most PR savvy remark. Michelle Boorstein, the religion editor, came to our opening night, and as we sat there in the empty space watching a large group doing tai chi, she asked me how this all made me feel. Without thinking two seconds, I enthusiastically pointed to the length of the space and said, “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest.” [“National Cathedral opens worship space to free classes and more to boost profile, coffers” The Washington Post, January 14, 2014] 

            Now it wasn’t the most controversial thing I said there, but it wasn’t the best quote to soothe the worries of the staid, traditional lovers of a cathedral who already saw this smart-alecky Southern California import as a dangerous innovator and change agent. Isn’t this the place where they bury the presidents? The idea of rollerblading past Woodrow Wilson’s tomb was too much for some, and you can be sure I (and the bishop, and the cathedral chapter) heard about it.

            “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest.” Was saying this a mistake? Yes, in that it scared some people who thought I would actually do something like that. No, in that it was an authentic expression of the real exuberance I felt when I opened myself up to the transcendence of a big, holy space.

            This experience of saying something at once unwise yet authentic gets to a kind of doubleness we all experience and which Jesus explores in the Gospel for today [Mark 9:38-50]. He says two things that, on their surface, seem to be in direct contradiction with each other. The first one:

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.”

And here’s the second one:

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

            How do these statements conflict? In the first, Jesus tells us not to be a stumbling block to others or to tolerate aspects of ourselves that make us get in our own way. Not to take us into a big word study here, but the Greek word σκάνδαλον literally means “the movable stick or trigger of a trap”, hence anything that would cause one to stumble or fall. It’s where our English word scandal comes from. Jesus uses σκάνδαλον to denote how we can be two kinds of stumbling blocks. We can be a stumbling block to someone else. We can be a stumbling block to ourselves. We can so offend someone with our words or behavior that they will look askance at the causes we stand for. We can so get in our own way that we make problems for ourselves that wouldn’t exist without our helping them along.

            To use our example of the day: a smart-aleck dean saying “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest” about a sacred space might very well offend someone and turn them off not only the cathedral but the state of modern Christianity in America. The idea of a priest skateboarding anywhere is probably too much for some.

            But then we have Jesus’s second statement:

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Again, not to be a dictionary hound, but the Greek word for salt (ἅλας) denotes a mineral that in Jesus’s day was at once a seasoning, a preservative, and a purifier. If salt has lost its “saltness” (KJV) what use is it? The “saltness” of salt is the thing that makes it worthwhile. If salt isn’t salty, then who needs it?

Seen in this light, a cathedral dean saying “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest,” is doing something, well, salty. For every person who wants to preserve each tradition exactly as it is, there is probably another person who finds our whole church enterprise hide-bound, stuffy, and stodgy. Taken under the rubric of “saltness”, a smart-aleck remark can be taken as a breath of fresh air, a refusal to take oneself or one’s cathedral too seriously.

Now the point of this little exercise is not retroactively to justify my remarks. (Yes, I probably shouldn’t have said it, and yes, I’d probably do it again.) It’s to make a point about this doubleness which all of experience in life. How many times in your life have you said something that you thought was funny but turned out to be hurtful? And how many times have you held back from expressing yourself and so failed to bring your needed perspective to the conversation?

When it comes to self-expression, we are caught in a double bind. A lifelong priest friend of mine used to say, “One person’s painful dichotomy is another person’s creative tension.” We need always to consider the feelings of others and to weigh carefully how our words or actions might injure, offend, or actually abuse someone else. And we also need to be true to ourselves by saying and doing the things that arise from our own individuality. We are no good to the world if we are always stepping on each other’s toes. And we are no good to the world if we squelch the particularity of our own gifts and talents out of fear of being misunderstood.         

            One of the most helpful distinctions I have learned over the years is the one between intent and impact. My words or actions may have an impact on you that I do not intend. When I offend you—which I have probably done several times by now—you need to realize that my words or deeds may have an impact on you that I did not intend. And I need to realize that, even if I did not intend to hurt or offend you, I am responsible for the impact of my behavior on your heart or mind.

            Two seemingly contradictory things are true this morning. Jesus calls us to be aware of our own words and actions and the unintended impact they may have on another. He cautions us not to be a stumbling block to ourselves or others when we speak or act. He asks that we take responsibility for our words and actions.

            And at the same time, he admonishes us to stay faithful to the unique “saltness” that is our own particular gift to the world. If you do not bring your own insights and experiences to the conversation at home, at work, or in the public sphere, who will? Your “you-ness” is precious, and it is a sin to hide it like a candle under a bushel out of mere fear of being misunderstood.

            We come now to gather at God’s table, the one place in our life where we are both members one of another and uniquely precious just as we are. As we are fed with what Jesus calls the “bread of life”, let us take that bread both as a sign of our togetherness and as an emblem of our uniqueness. Your sisters and brothers are too precious to hurt or offend. And you are too precious to squelch the things that make you “you”. We need both to honor each other and to cut ourselves some slack. Walking this doubleness tightrope is never easy, but we’re strengthened to do it, because before us there is Jesus, who in his life and ministry, shows us how both to respect others and value ourselves at the same time. Honor each other, and honor yourself. It’s a risky business, more of an art than a science. This creative tension is the thing that makes us human. And this compassionate care for us as humans, in all our wonderful, mixed-up frailty and magnificence, is what God’s love for us is finally all about. Amen.