Falling Up(wards)

A sermon delivered on
the Feast Day of Adelaide Case
July 19th, 2011
at the Summer Convocation of
the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory
Mt. Alvernia Retreat Center
Wappingers Falls, New York

by Richard E. Helmer, p/BSG

Just under two weeks ago, a devoted member of a neighboring parish gave me a copy of Richard Rohr’s latest book. It was as timely a gift for me as it was gracious. In his new book, Rohr explores what he calls the two halves of our earthly pilgrimage: the first half being consumed with building up of self, of identity, of ego, of accumulating skills, goods, and achievements. The second half, and a half that not everyone undertakes, is of giving away, of turning our life over to service — of turning to what we could call the religious life, in whatever manifestation of that life God summons us into.

The process of engaging this second half of life is what Rohr calls “Falling Upwards,” hence the title of his new book. Seeing that title immediately took me back to the third grade in the small-town Midwest, sitting on the orange carpet with my classmates, listening with delight as Mrs. Klenda read to us Shel Silverstein’s poetry, which later included this little gem called Falling Up:

I tripped on my shoelace
And I fell up –
Up to the rooftops,
Up over the town,
Up past the treetops,
Up over the mountains,
Up where the colors
Blend into the sounds.
But it got me so dizzy
When I looked around,
I got sick to my stomach
And I threw down.

Now I ask you: What could be a better description of the journey of the religious life?

It has only just dawned on me that Shel Silverstein was in his own fashion the first philosopher, if not the first theologian, I encountered as a child. He offers more than mere milk for infants. He pens, in his earthy, humourous way, solid spiritual food for young stomachs being weaned by grace.

Tripping on our worldly shoelaces and falling up in the religious life can indeed give us a sense of spiritual vertigo, and at times it makes me queasy. Does it you? As in the gospel passage we just heard, the world can turn topsy-turvy when we take on religious disciplines and community: what is secret is revealed, gifts become demands for service, and inner light becomes the illumination for the outer darkness. When I joined this journey with all of you just over a year ago, I was warned to expect to lose everything. The prospect was as terrifying as it was compelling, and I can say that unpleasant expectation has been more than fulfilled! But in surprising ways. What was lost, what is being lost, either returns more vital and vibrant because it truly matters, or it is shed forever for being truly worthless. These days I find everything from my my marriage to my family life to my ministry in the parish to the community in which I’ve been planted looking, feeling, tasting, and smelling very different than it did a year ago. And there is yet so much further to fall….so much further, I hope and suppose, to fall upwards.

Falling has a long and hallowed history in our tradition. But it often is painted in a negative light, whether it’s popular notions of Augustine’s musings on Original Sin or good old threats of hellfire and brimstone. It is easier, truly, to imagine ourselves falling down into the hands of an angry God who is all about wrath and punishment, easier to obey the gravity of our worldly fears and failures projected onto the divine…than it is to consider falling upwards into the transformative grace of a counter-intuitive, loving Savior. God, it seems, is either our severe, judging and punishing über parent, which leaves us forever infants crying for our spiritual milk; or God is the faithful Father and wise Mother calling us to grow up, to live into the grace we have been offered, to take on the solid food that has been placed before us in the feast of the Kingdom. The distance between these two understandings of the divine may well be a measure of our faith, either a faith built on fear or a faith built on love.

So we all fall indeed, but how we fall matters, and falling upwards, defying the gravitational logic of a cynical world bent on self-referential ego and trappings of power, demands much more than passivity in the midst of our imperfections. It demands action, self-emptying self-offering, and a commitment of nothing less than everything we are. In short, falling down is easier than falling up. That’s why Christian vocation, however it manifests in our lives, is always the narrow, difficult road for each of us, and why we need community to pick us up, dust us off, and keep us on that road with grace leading the Way.

* * *

“In no area of life is it so true as in the area of religion that we are living suspended between two worlds — a past that has gone and a future that is yet to be.”

Adelaide Teague Case, whom we commemorate today, penned these words just over eighty years ago. She was a shining example, a light out from under a bushel, of what it means to fall up rather than down. After serving as a vibrant teacher at St. Faith’s school for girls barely a stone’s throw from here in Poukeepsie, she witnessed against the insipid sentimentality and Sunday morning sequestering of much of what passes as Christian education, and she soon ascended the ladder of brilliant secular academic achievement. But she, too, tripped on her worldly shoelaces and fell. She ultimately set aside an illustrious career as an esteemed professor and chair of religious education at Teacher’s College, Columbia, to answer a call to the less-well-endowed, male-clerical-dominated world of Episcopal theological education. At the Episcopal Theological School, she became the first woman to be made full professor at an Episcopal seminary, where her radical insistence on putting the students’ needs before professorial ambition and ego compounded her challenges in an institution more patriarchal than even early- to mid- twentieth-century secular academe. It is said students refused to take her classes at the seminary simply because she was a woman. But she was eventually recognized for her gifts to the Church, gifts which were almost uncountable as she served and taught all her life. From Women’s Auxiliary lectures to organizing for peace in the 1930′s and 1940′s, she reflected to her generation and generations to come the gifts of Lady Wisdom — that enigmatic, captivating figure in Proverbs, working constantly and often unassumingly in our midst — another image of Christ hinted at by mystics and theologians from Julian to Anselm: transformative grace undaunted by our often narrow vision and blighted hope.

For Adelaide Case, that fall up into the paths of Lady Wisdom first began with a young adult conversion to the religious life — she joined the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, a lay order of women committed to simplicity of life and social action. Maybe this move was initially provoked by chronic illness (she was diagnosed early with tuberculosis of the bones, which haunted her for much of her natural life), but it was ultimately nourished and sustained by the sacraments and a life devoted to prayer. By falling up, Dr. Adelaide, or Dr. A as she came to be lovingly known by some of her students, was long remembered — like many saints — not so much for her theology or academic writing, but by exhibiting a life deeply planted in Christ.

What remains striking to me about her writing, however, is how it continues to speak with prescience to our age today, and to us here and now gathered in religious community. In the same pages where she reflects on our being suspended in religion between two worlds, Adelaide Case opines that we generally in the Church talk about religious life just about as clearly and directly as we talk about sex — which, of course is to say not very clearly nor very directly at all. At best in much of our society we tend to be voyeuristic about both.

I needn’t begin you tell you, dear Brothers, about the way the religious often risk being treated as church ornaments. Romantic notions about the religious life projected on the vowed religious parallel the same sort of unfulfilled fantasies projected onto the characters in an episode of Desperate Housewives or The Tudors. In the past year, I’ve had to confront in people I serve odd but understandable fears, rumors hatched on golf courses even; worries that I might run off to the monastery, habit flapping in the wind, leaving my wife and son bereft at the side of the road. The apostolic religious, I’ve learned, make less sense to many of our sisters and brothers in Christ than the cloistered monastics, which I suppose makes us all the more dangerous: dangerous perhaps most of all to the voyeuristic approach to religion, an ever-present danger of the Anglican tradition. And yet that brings us back to the challenge of this afternoon’s Gospel. The grace we have been given and the call we have received can ill afford our hiding our light under a bushel. And for those to whom much has been given, Jesus warns us, much is expected.

But the greatest wisdom of the religious life, Adelaide Case reminds us, is found not so much in our thinking, skills, or knowledge, our sophistication and erudition, or our cleverness or projects of power and influence. Rather it is found in devoted, faithful, practice of the Gospel of grace. In 1948, while on her death bed and enveloped in prayer, Dr. A received the sacraments daily. Her last reported words were simply,

“What can I do for you?”

I reckon she would recognize the charisms of this community, and be at home this week with us in prayer and Eucharist. She would understand our shared vocation in learning to live a life of service, planted in our various callings, struggling frequently, challenging ourselves and others to stop hiding the light of Christ under bushels, and cultivating more than sentimental Sunday morning spirituality. She would appreciate our shared labor, and our yearning journey to fall. . .to fall up. . .to fall upwards into the life of our beloved Christ.

Bibliography:

“Falling Up” from Falling Up by Shel Silverstein. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Background on Adelaide Teague Case from Holy Women, Holy Men and the Talbot School of Theology website: http://www2.talbot.edu/ce20/educators/view.cfm?n=adelaide_case

“Religion and the child’s life” from Dorothy Canfield Fisher & Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg (Eds.) Our children: A handbook for parents. New York: The Viking Press (1932), pp. 307-317.

Atlas Shrugs. Jesus Weeps.

Originally published at Daily Episcopalian.

I find my recent ministry haunted by none other than Ayn Rand — a name I barely knew until a few years ago when she came up in a pastoral conversation. Since then, I’ve learned she was an inspiration at some point in a number of our parishioners’ life journeys. Something about her words captured youthful aspirations towards self-actualization and independence. When I at last started reading more about her, I realized in a profound sense that I did know her, or at least her ideas, from my own youthful ambitions as a concert pianist. Rand’s perspectives captured in many ways my hyper self-absorbed, rugged, rationalizing pursuit for success in a competitive world where my own mettle and skill — even in generating something as moving to the soul as beautiful music — mattered more to me than anything or anyone else.

While our nation’s body politic currently is filled with the stench of half-truths, shocking indifference, bureaucratic paralysis, and bitter hyper-partisanship, Rand, though long deceased, has suddenly appeared very close to the forefront of our discourse. I confess a pit forms in my stomach at the thought of paying to see the recently released movie of her wildly popular book, Atlas Shrugged. I can dine on most theatrical fare, but the idea of wallowing in hours’ worth of Rand’s philosophy — if it can rightly be called that — gives me enormous pause. Objectivism, the heart of Rand’s meandering corpus, eyes the world with a mirthless, cold stare. One of our parishioners, before she became a Christian as an adult, explored, amongst various philosophies and belief systems, Ayn Rand’s works. Recently, she reflected to me that she once met a thorough-going objectivist who said there was no such thing as a truly happy objectivist. When material reality and our perception of it is all there is, when reason is without divinity and intuition and inspiration are marginalized, when other human beings and the wider world are means to whatever selfish (and Rand used the word in a technical sense) means we devise for ourselves, when life is a race against time to achieve for me and mine alone, what room is there for old fashioned happiness?

In a recent excoriating commentary in Newsweek , Jonathan Chait notes how the new, smart-as-a-whip congressional budget leader, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, openly brings to bear Rand’s economic philosophy on his political ideals and budget proposal. It’s easy at first to understand why Rand is the resurrected goddess of portions of the neo-conservative, libertarian, and tea party movements. Her strident support for laissez faire capitalism is matched only by the creeping social Darwinism of her attitudes. And her best-known protégé, Alan Greenspan, arguably is the most influential individual on the economic system we have inherited, more so even than any President or congressional leader.

But Donald Luskin in another recent editorial, this one in The Wall Street Journal, reflects how in other respects, Ayn Rand could be considered a liberal’s liberal. She was a fiercely independent woman who, by refusing to live in the shadow of any man and by paving her own career path, could be considered among the first wave of mid-century feminists (though she apparently publicly criticized feminism, and her relationship with the movement is conflicted at best). She deplored racism, supported integration of public schools, and staunchly opposed the war in Vietnam. Luskin notes how Atlas Shrugged casts almost as many aspersions on Big Business as it does on the bogey-man of Big Government. Rand, he writes, ultimately offers us a celebration — though that might not be the right word — of the innate dignity of the individual.

But for many conservatives and liberals alike, Rand poses considerable moral problems. Her infamously open marriage and her hyper-sexualized characters betray something deeper than simply a political philosophy that fits whatever contemporary agenda we’d like to inflict on her memory, whether governmental spending cuts or individual rights. Ayn Rand was an atheist of a sort that meant that the fiercely individualistic “I” was ultimately self-referential. The element of her conflicted popular philosophy that is mysteriously endearing to the American grassroots psyche is the rugged, no-holds-barred lack of accountability, an amoral construct that is truly all about the individual me. It captures our cultural navel-gazing and our simultaneous fascination with singular supermen and superwomen: our tragic obsession with pseudo-heroic egoism that, if unchecked, risks landing us with a Donald Trump as Commander in Chief, CEO of America, Inc.

The well-heeled intellectual elites of our society have too long dismissively pooh-poohed Rand, much to all our peril. The egoism she promoted, our rampant egoism she reflected in her work, makes for a slavery to self that wreaks havoc on the fabric of our relationships. Integrity, Rand seems to assert, is only internal and individual. But of course it isn’t, unless we are prepared to arrogantly chuck out the very heart of thousands of years of moral tradition that has weathered the storms of humanity in multiple cultures and spiritual traditions around the world. The current madness around Rand’s legacy is our collective madness, a reflection of our shared humanity wrecked on the rocky shoals of our hyper-protected egos now laid waste by crises too many to number.

The poor, the invalid, the destitute, the homeless: they all threaten our egos by reflecting our interdependence and vulnerability. No wonder we want to shrug them off. But we are not supermen or superwomen, we are frail, yearning creatures capable at times together and individually of awesome works and horrific acts. And sometimes we are plain down and out. We could conceal this messy, fleshy reality from ourselves when times were good. Now they’re not, and now we can’t anymore.

I am struck, along with many, that ostensibly Christian politicians openly embrace the sometimes ankle-deep and oft-tangled philosophical constructs of someone who once remarked that the Church is little more than “the best kindergarten of communism possible.” But I suppose Ayn Rand can be forgiven for this slight. The idea of living to serve others and something far greater than ourselves probably felt far too much like the autocratic threats to essential human dignity of the Soviet regime in her native Russia. And I suppose objectivist eyes cannot see anything but silliness in what I spend a lot of time these days doing: devotion to what a Rand fan I once met somewhat derisively called my “invisible best friend.”

The real irony for me is wondering whether or not Rand would welcome the mercy of Christian forgiveness. John Piper, a Baptist pastor in Minneapolis offers a succinct and compelling simultaneous appreciation and critique of Ayn Rand’s ideas, concluding that her Godless world view was most critically devoid of mercy: that foundational Christian virtue that understands an imminent and transcendent God loving us and all Creation into being and ultimately — not because we deserve it but because we need it — salvation. God shatters Rand’s ideal of relationships built on objective transaction, the philosophy of life structured around the quid pro quo. The God of faith, beyond all human logic, needs nothing from us, and yet offers us everything, from our first breath to our last, and beyond.

Our world right now seems littered with odd new juxtapositions. I am caught in this season of Resurrection reflecting on Ayn Rand outside the tomb of Lazarus — a strange juxtaposition indeed!

Martha notes that our body politic, like the body of her brother, stinks.

In reply, Ayn Rand’s Atlas shrugs.

For his part, our Jesus weeps, and then calls forth the dead into life.

- Richard Edward Helmer, p/BSG

Kingdom of Heaven Bread

Originally published at Daily Episcopalian.

A few months ago the makings of what looked like a curious science experiment began to appear on the shelves of our kitchen. Knowing our seven-year-old’s propensity for putting things in water and watching what happens – with sometimes rather gruesome and foul-smelling results – I initially thought nothing of the proliferation of jars and their strange contents. But as they persisted, curiosity began to grab hold. In one jar was a layer of swollen raisins floating in water that was slowly turning a golden color. In another was a doughy paste that was starting to slowly bubble.

The coin didn’t drop for me until a few days later when some delicious bread appeared for dinner. My wife and son had, of course, been making bread starters. I discovered the benefits of our car port, where the back-end of our hatchback got enough sun during the day so my wife would put a culture in back to enjoy the warmth. The yeast was completely natural, started from the skins of everyday raisins, gently tended into a culture ready to mix with whole-wheat flour. In a few days, the resulting starter would expand, and a few teaspoons would go into a bread recipe made from scratch.

It was so much fun, I had to get into the act, and soon I was preparing bread starters from next to nothing to donate to our annual parish bake sale. It was great fun, but it demanded patience. The yeast would sit in a new clean jar with the flour for two or three days doing what seemed to be nothing, and then it would – one night when I wasn’t watching – take off, announcing that it was ready to be kneaded into some dough. My wife was far more patient, giving a sometimes daily batch of dough several hours to rise and noting the huge difference a cold, damp day would make.

She was also the one who grasped the theological implications of what we were doing long before I did. As we sat down for dinner one night, she said the experience reminded her of Jesus’ parable about the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13:33, among the briefest of all Jesus’ parables: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

In our age of store-bought packages of quick-rise yeast, bread-making machines, and impatient schedules, the full meaning of this simplest of parables hadn’t dawned on me until my wife connected Jesus’ words with our making bread-starters and baking simple breads from scratch. In her connection, I discovered a valuable lesson for all our ministries in the church and the wider world: Ministry, working with God’s grace in cultivating the “kingdom of heaven,” requires the simplest of ingredients: like raisins, a bit of flour, and water. . .the yeast is already naturally present, like God’s Spirit waiting to act, if only given the right conditions. Our job is to gather those ingredients and create those conditions, offer the water it takes to build up the sacramental life, the “flour,” the food it needs from our shared stories and experiences, and the warmth of love in community that it takes to spread, take nourishment, and grow.

Ministry requires patience. It’s a no-brainer, but it’s the hardest discipline of the lot in our age of quick gratification and instant success. How many times to we go to the ecclesiastical grocery store to buy our quick-rise “yeast” program off the shelf – packaged and guaranteed to deliver? And how often are we disappointed that our efforts produce a ho-hum spiritual bread devoid of the joy of labor well done, of prayerful work committed over a long period? Waiting for the yeast to take hold is like waiting for the Spirit to act. When we create the right conditions for God’s grace to enter our lives and the lives of others, we are on God’s time. And God comes – as does the “Son of Man” – just like the yeast: a bit of a “thief in the night.” We wake up one morning to find our efforts by grace have taken root, the Spirit has acted, and what began with simple ingredients has blossomed into a culture of abundance, ready to leaven a whole batch of folk and an entire community with the life, hope, and vision of the kingdom.

Ministry is organic. It ebbs and flows with time and conditions – many of which are outside of our control. Yeast works faster when it is warm, slower when it is cold. We have to ride with its cycles much as we do with the cycles of life in our communities of faith and vocation. How often I have brooded over a down year or two in our parochial report! But experience shows that often these down times make room for a new infusion of grace and people, itching to engage in the deep life of the Gospel. We have to keep the best of the culture going, trusting in the natural life-cycle of the yeast. Sometimes, new clean jars are needed. Sometimes, we just have to start over. But faith is measured more in our long-term adherence to the Gospel calling – our kneading together the simple recipe of love of God and love of neighbor, the hope in Christ’s life-giving presence, the promise of grace that hooks into our life-cycles and demands our deepest trust and greatest devotion.

My wife and I chuckled over calling the bread coming out of our kitchen “Kingdom of Heaven Bread.” We chuckled because it seemed silly at first to gather such theological meaning out of something so everyday as break-making. But then, that is what the Christian life is about: God making the ordinary extraordinary; the everyday becomes miraculous. At that point, I suppose our chuckling became a bit more profound, a bit more leavening for life we had discovered, mixed in with three measures, and rising into Christ Jesus.

- Richard Edward Helmer, p/BSG

Zacchaeus – A Little Man and A Big Vocation

Sermon by Br. Karekin Madteos Yarian, BSG

Delivered at Church of Our Saviour, Mill Valley, California on October 31st, 2010 for Proper 26.

Linked from Sandals at the Gate.

Listen to the audio.

Good morning! What a pleasure to have been asked to visit with you this morning and to spend time in worship with the community of Our Savior in Mill Valley. My prayers have been with you for a long while and I hope that from today I shall remain in yours.

My name is Br. Karekin and I am a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, a religious community in the Episcopal Church. And I am pleased to have an opportunity today to tell you a little about my life in our beloved community.

I have to admit that I was extraordinarily happy to be asked to preach today, especially when I read the Gospel lesson for the morning, the story of Zacchaeus. It is one of my favorite Gospel stories, particularly because I believe it is the story of vocation. The vocation of a man who was called away from a life of isolation and separation into a life of service to others. So I wanted to take some time this morning to unfold this story in a way that might let you have a little insight into my vocation as a brother in the Gregorian Way. And to prepare the way in your hearts and minds to answer whatever vocation might be planted in your spirit waiting for an invitation to inspire your hearts to action.

Zacchaeus, chief among tax collectors, has climbed into a tree to catch a glimpse of the Lord Jesus walking by. Chief among tax collectors, or as they are referred to elsewhere in the Scriptures, a publican.

The publicans in Roman times were not the most pleasant of characters. They were, more often than not, crooked and deceitful men. They were fabulously rich, which is why they were usually hired by the Romans to collect their taxes. They had the money to invest in the imperial system and were able to capitalize on their wealth to make more wealth – almost always off the backs of those from whom they were responsible to collect the taxes for the Roman government. They were despised and shunned by their communities, not just for collaborating with Roman occupiers, nor for merely collecting taxes which the Jews, much like modern Americans in our current climate, found abhorrent. But because the choices they made for their own security and power and comfort caused them to not only abandon but even to abuse the neediest among their own people.

I imagine Zacchaeus, climbing that tree trying to catch a glimpse of Jesus walking by. Avoiding the hustle and bustle of the crowds to get a better view. For as Scripture says, Zacchaeus was small of stature. Many modern translations substitute the word short for small… to the detriment of the deeper meaning of the story. For the fact of Zacchaeus’ spiritual crisis is hardly revealed by the word short.

The story might be better read this way – Zacchaeus sought to see Jesus but he could not, for the crowd held him in little esteem and he could not hold his head up for shame and so climbing a tree, he sought a place apart so that he might see the Lord.

Zacchaeus is in crisis. He lacks for community, He is an outcast, captive by the choices that he made along the way of accumulating his wealth and status. Zacchaeus has constructed for himself a lofty tower of security and power at the expense of his community. And now he finds it deeply dissatisfying because he is alone and separated from the fellowship of his own people.

And when Jesus says, “come down” I don’t suppose he is merely talking about the tree! I believe it is every bit as much about the place of privilege and power and wealth that Zacchaeus has constructed for himself – a place of isolation, and haughtiness, and lack of concern for his fellows who suffer under the rule of an oppressive regime. A place of loneliness.

But, I believe Zacchaeus has already repented too, and wants to amend his life, but can not find a hearing among the crowd. Notice that it doesn’t take much but an invitation for him to come down for him to offer to give away half of his wealth and to repay four fold anything he may have defrauded. A call from Jesus has a way of inspiring, yes. But Jesus did not ask anything of Zacchaeus except to stay in his home. Zacchaeus, rather, is given a hearing by Jesus’ invitation and offers to make amends for his past so that he might be a part of the community again.

Can any of us identify with Zacchaeus? Well, it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that many of us, in our own way, can be like him. We live in a society of wealth and privilege. We spend out time consumed with being successful, achieving status. And the longer we are at it, and surprisingly the more successful we are, the more insulated we feel at times. And the more distant we become from the realities of those who have nothing or who have very little. And we slowly become less and less concerned with others and more concerned with holding on to what we have worked so hard for. But, we yearn for community. And havens like Our Savior can often be the very places we find it. And then – along comes Jesus who says “come down from there, for I need to stay at your house.”

The story of Zacchaeus is the story of vocation – a subject near and dear to my own heart. Not a call to those who are holy or special or who have some spiritual gift, but a call to those of us who are ordinary, dissatisfied or even sinful.

Once upon a time that seems like a million years ago, I had another life. I was beginning my first career – a very successful one. I was recovering from a painful, manic youth spent mainly on the street with the wrong people, doing the wrong things. I was an avowed punk, anti-authoritarian, with a tendency toward self-hatred and violence and abuse. It was the eighties, and the pressure for success and status was relentless. And I bought into that way of life with a passion, channeling all of my sense of entitlement and resentment. I worked hard, and played harder, filled my life with lots and of things, and crowds, and self-indulgence. I made a lot of money, treated people very badly, and was miserable. And like our Zacchaeus, I felt small in stature, walked with my head down, and felt dreadfully alone. I earnestly wanted to repent of my selfishness and find a way to amend my life.

When I came back to the church in my mid twenties, I rediscovered a love for God that while present for most of my life, my discomfort with my choices and my selfishness kept me from indulging too deeply. The call of Jesus as embodied in the community of the church inspired me, much like Zacchaeus, to want to give more of myself to God and others in service than was – strictly speaking – required. And so I pondered the Baptismal Covenant, and the hallmarks of what it meant to be a good follower of Jesus. Prayer, worship, service, love, compassion, justice. I knew in my heart that I wanted to do these things, but I had 26 years of experience to prove that – left to my own devices – I wouldn’t. I yearned to express this longing among my friends, but those who knew me in those days – knew me too well – and I could not get a hearing among them.

Like many people who explore the idea of vocation in our church, I thought perhaps I wanted to explore holy orders as a priest. Thankfully, I had a priest in my parish who knew about religious life – and particularly about a little known community “The Brotherhood of Saint Gregory.” I entered the community at the age of 27, the first gen-X member of the community. And my history (and maybe the pink Mohawk and nose ring) caused the brothers to nickname me “the Punk Monk.” A name that has stuck with me even still at the age of 45, even though the punk has mostly – if not entirely – left the building.

The call to Zacchaeus, “come down from there, I want to stay at your house,” is embodied in the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory. Jesus doesn’t say “come and stay at my house.” Jesus wants to stay at mine. At yours.

The Brothers, in response to this call, live their religious vocations fully in the world. Having longed for community, we opt not for an isolated one, but one that expands into our very families, neighborhoods, communities – modeling a religious vocation in the world rather than apart from it. We live a Rule of Life, take vows to serve, love, and obey Christ in the way that we believe all Christians are called by our Baptismal Covenant to live. By serving others.

Like Zacchaeus, the invitation of Jesus has inspired us in religious life to give away not just half but all of our lives in service to the Gospel, and to repay fourfold or even more in gratitude by the turning of our lives towards service on Christ’s behalf to others. And what blessings we have received in turn.

The question this morning is this: Once we have caught a glimpse of Jesus, and heard the words of invitation, how far down will we have to climb to answer it? And like Zacchaeus, in gratitude, what will we be willing to sacrifice to claim our place in the beloved community of God’s people? The Baptismal Covenant belongs to all of us as a Rule of Life. I urge you to look it up again when you have a chance on p. 304 of the BCP. For those of you wonder what vows are like, or who have taken vows of some kind, whether in marriage or ordination – see what would happen if you applied the same weight to the Baptismal Covenant that you do to those other vows. See how your life might change.

The Vow of Poverty

Originally published at Daily Episcopalian.

One early story of Francis, long before he openly renounced all worldly possessions and founded the friars minor in the early thirteenth century, is that he was approached by a beggar while selling cloth in the Assisi marketplace. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Francis would have recognized the affluence of our context. Growing up, he had every imaginable worldly comfort – and that most enticing and precious of all commodities of affluence: choice. He tried his hand as a businessman, as a soldier, as a man of decadent leisure. But here, with a beggar asking for a mere few coins, Francis was confronted with the greatest choice of all: how to best help the lost and forgotten among us.

One of the latest debates in my parish’s largely affluent community is whether or not panhandlers should be permitted to beg at one of our busiest intersections. It made the front page of the the local paper the other day, with a respectable citizen, born into a respectable family in town, asserting concerns for traffic safety over and against the need for a bit of money to buy food or water for those passing from one shelter to the next. It’s a smaller version of the perennial debate in nearby San Francisco over what to do about panhandling. The real issue, it seems to me, is not traffic or public safety as much as the unsettling reminder the begging poor bring to the midst of our affluence – a reminder of the injustices of our economy, and more profoundly a reflection of our own vulnerability that we can often deny, however falsely, with our material wealth.

It was Francis who re-discovered, in a radical move that echoed Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel, how to undermine the whole argument. The young Francis, the story goes, ran after the beggar in the marketplace in Assisi, and when he caught up with him, he emptied the entire contents of his pockets into the beggar’s hands. It would be like handing a panhandler your entire wallet or purse – an invitation to a complete stranger to run through your whole credit line, empty your bank account of cash, or give away the power of your identity. Francis was scorned by his friends and severely chastised by his father for such an act of radical generosity. But how a move like that would radically change the climate of the debate over whether or not the indigent poor can stand at an intersection begging for a few quarters, a bottle of water, or a snack from a passing car!

Francis, when he at last embraced abject poverty as not just a way of life, but the Way he would follow after Christ, found himself re-anchored in the earth. Taking Jesus’ instructions literally, he walked unshod and barely clothed, begging his way for food and carrying not even a bag or a walking stick with him. He touches us in our context as perhaps the first Christian hippie, the first Christian environmentalist. He probably smelled. Rumor has it he even talked of befriending the lice on his scalp – enough to give our contemporary school officials fits of apoplexy! He called the scorching sun his brother and the cold moon of chilly nights his sister. From helping lepers to the legend of his making peace with a ravenous wolf, Francis became intimate with the very things from which our worldly affluence and comforts were meant to protect us: cold and hunger, death and disease, danger and vulnerability. In this way, Francis embraced the Christian humility of accepting our true reality. And it is no small irony that Franciscans remain one of the largest religious orders in Christianity, and the largest in The Episcopal Church and wider Anglicanism, now eight centuries later. They offer an alternative to the narrow and often stifling confines of our socio-economic climbing and covetousness.

Would Francis recognize a world of highways, cars, airplanes, and the complexities of Western free market capitalism? Would he understand the power-brokering of our politicians and the tug-of-war between wealthy corporations? I would venture to guess he would see at work in our lives the very same dynamics he decided to set aside in the early thirteenth century. Would he understand our desire to have our pets blessed around the time of his feast day each autumn, of our friendships with the creatures of the earth, whether they swim, walk, slink, or fly? I’m sure he would, though he might point out as a dog trainer I know muses, that it is not so much our pets as we ourselves who require tough training in the realities of these relationships!

When I recently attended the life profession of a Franciscan brother in San Francisco, the preacher at the service made note of a critical aspect of Franciscan spirituality, rooted as it is so deeply in the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “Poverty,” he said, “is not the absence of riches.” For Francis discovered a different kind of riches when he set aside the affluent lifestyle of his family and renounced his material inheritance. He discovered a charisma that built a movement capturing the attention of popes and prelates, politicians and peoples, and the imagination of a Christianity yearning to free itself of corruption. He discovered a wealth of inspiration that brought about the rebuilding of churches throughout Assisi and beyond, and radically challenged the indolence of overly wealthy monastic communities and the machinations of ecclesiastical officials.

“Poverty is not the absence of riches, but the absence of power.”

Francis gave up control over his own destiny, and made no pretense to take the helm of the movement his witness unleashed. While he was called upon to engage in high-level conversations with the rich and the powerful, he eschewed authority for simplicity and lived quietly and generously in a society of friars and sisters for many years. It was entirely the work of the Spirit moving among the people that re-formed Western Christianity subversively and from within at the height of the Middle Ages. When Francis embraced poverty, he gave up his personal power to control what God was doing in his midst and through him. And in an irony worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Francis became more powerful than he could have imagined, perhaps in the way our prayers in the Daily Office offer as a closing benediction: “Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”

Poverty in the fullest sense of the Franciscan vow and the witness of Christ and his first followers is about setting aside the personal power: the panoply of choices we all covet, the craven grasping to control our own destiny – so that God’s power, the unleashed an unpredictable wind of the Spirit, the insatiable life of the Divine, may go to work in and through our lives. It is an irony worthy of the Gospel that our worldly understanding of power and control diminishes us to the point of utter deprivation, of soul, of spirit, of community. Our material goods serve too often to more isolate us than comfort us, to dominate us with anxiety rather than to serve us with peace. Our pursuit of wealth as a culture not only poisons the earth, but poisons us into a false sense of security and control. Francis’ way of radical renunciation of material goods and choice actually unleashed more influence and power flowing from the Spirit of God than a hundred popes, corporate moguls, or presidents could muster – with all of their economic, political, and military might – for the Ages.

Francis discovered this in the marketplace as a youth when he emptied his pockets for a beggar. He was a laughingstock, yes, but isn’t it an interesting thing that we remember Francis’ generosity today, eight hundred years later as saintliness, his generosity as a reflection of God’s grace – and we cannot name even one of his friends who derided him as they clung so easily to their personal power and prestige!

To live into one of the greatest of all spiritual lessons, to give away power, to embrace poverty – it all begins with generosity: a generosity that Francis knew flows directly from the heart of our most generous God. . . from our God in Christ who embraces not just the beggar and the forgotten, but every leaf, every slinking creature, every speck of the Cosmos, every one of us. . . who gives away divine life even on the cross for us. . .and as Francis reminds us, wraps us up all together in a love of infinite abundance that transcends even death itself.

- Richard Edward Helmer, p/BSG

The Gregorian Graces

“A brother must endeavor to witness to our Redeemer’s love with quietness, patience, humility, charity, courage and prayer, knowing that it is not he who shall finally bring the light, but only that he shall become a messenger for the One who is the light.” — Of the life of a brother, Rule of BSG

I ponder this statement from our Rule probably more often than any other, since it acts as a roadmap for me on whether I am living as God intends and as best benefits those I am called to serve. It is no small feat to read these words without self-judgment or spiritual pride. But, it is a marker that I find very helpful for asking the right questions.

The one I always trip on is “humility.” I can never claim humility for myself. Once I do, I have lost it. The best I can often hope for is that I can lay claim to the desire for humility. I am often disappointed. But I do continue trying, hoping, forging ahead with the realization of how little I really know about what God desires.

Quietness is also a difficult one for me. Just ask anyone who knows me well! But I have learned over the years that the biggest impact I can make comes more often not from what I say, but from what I am willing to leave unsaid. My husband can vouch for that.

Listening is so much more valuable to someone who is hurting than anything we can say. Quietness often comes to me after prayer. As someone who says the Daily Office, it should not be surprising that it does not come during prayer. There are so many words. But there is a rhythm to them that, more often than not, leads to silence – to stillness and quiet. The call to quietness is also about how we walk through the world. It is about how loudly we voice our opinions, or how intrusive we are in a world occupied by others. Quietness calls us to be mindful of that, so that we may be gentle presences in a world that is often hard edged and relentless.

Patience is something I am not very good at. I try, God knows. But patience is learned over time, and I hope I still have quite a bit of that left to learn it. I am least patient with myself. But, of course, it has to start there before it can truly be extended to others. With others, I am not necessarily patient, but I try to be kind. There is a difference. Patience does not seethe after the fact that someone has not done things in my time or in my way. Patience understands that my time and my way are the least of the worlds concerns. Least of all, God’s. I do know, however, that in God’s Kingdom, the only thing we have in absolute, unlimited abundance – is time. All things will be well.

Charity is one that I think I understand and live pretty well. That is because I understand that charity is not about what we give, but how we give it. When we understand that our lives are not our own, but God’s; when we recognize that everything we have is a gift; when we know that our purpose is to love and serve – then charity becomes like breathing. It is un-self-conscious, natural, and necessary to our health. Charity is a natural response to gratitude. It is concerned with others before ourselves. Charity recognizes that other people are a gift.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is to act in spite of fear. There is not much I am afraid of these days. Least of all the two driving fears that most of us have – not getting what we want, or losing what we have. Courage comes from letting go. None of it is mine anyway. It’s all just a gift to begin with. Courage comes from reflecting on my life – all of the times I was afraid – and seeing that it all worked out in the end anyway. Courage requires trust. I have learned to trust God. If not to provide, then at least to give me strength. That is more than enough.

Prayer is the place where all of these things start. Without prayer, I have nothing. Without prayer, my understanding of my own experience with God would be impossible. I don’t claim to know what God is, who God is, what God wants except as these things relate to my own experience with God in prayer. Sometimes, my experience of God in my life coincides with what the church says. Sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why I don’t always agree with the things my church chooses to do – or not to do. It is why sometimes the language the church uses about God seems to me to fall so terribly short. But it is also fair that what the church teaches – sometimes – really does coincide with how God works in my life. And that is why Jesus’ revelation of God as Love really resonates with me.

As a religious, I take prayer very seriously as the vehicle within which I will discover God in my life. In the case of our Gregorian virtues, I know that prayer is the means by which I will, one day, reach them. Quietness, patience, humility, charity, courage…all these wonderful gifts of the Spirit. Our Rule, a roadmap for reaching them. But as much as prayer might be a means to these ends – prayer IS the end in itself. Because it is there that I find God and come close enough to carry the residue of the encounter with me into the world.

And if it doesn’t benefit the world then what, after all, is the point of it?

- Br. Karekin Madteos Yarian, BSG

On Christian Hope by Br. Karekin

I have often struggled with the choice between two futures; one that I can discern with my limited vision and the other that belongs to Christ. I believe that there are, in fact, two futures.

The first, the one that I discern, is the future that is obvious to me given the facts that I can see. Given the circumstances of today’s world, that future seems mighty bleak. It is filled with the effects of environmental degradation, poor international relationships related to human politics, a lack of social justice, and a culture that seems increasingly divorced from ethical and moral direction. It is into this future that I often project all of my plans, my hopes and desires for my life… my career choices, my future education plans, my desire to one day own a home, or whether I will write that collection of poetry I’ve always wanted to write.

It is that other future that I often lose sight of, the one that is rooted in the faith that God is working in the world in surprising ways, and that God in Christ has a plan for the whole of Creation that includes redemption, real justice, and the love that typifies the reign of God on earth. As Saint Paul says in Ephesians… we are to “set our hope on Christ” who has a plan to, in the fullness of time, gather up all things in himself – all things in heaven and on earth.

Being raised among die hard Scottish Presbyterians in a rural community of like-minded Protestants, I am afraid that I was raised with a rather pessimistic view of human nature and our capacity for redemption. It is a legacy that I often hope I have left behind in my decision to become an Episcopalian and, hence, a member of God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Our catholic view of humanity is very much at odds with the Protestant understanding that I was raised with. It is a view that believes that human kind is good, innately good, and predisposed to goodness in spite of our sin. The Protestant view that I inherited believes quite the opposite – that we are predisposed to sin rather than goodness and that given a choice we will almost always choose sin. Therein lies my struggle and my choice. Either I believe that I am redeemed or I do not. Either I hope in a future that has been redeemed by God… or I do not.

I entered religious life in my twenties as a way of participating in the redemption that God has planned for the world. I believed then, and still do, that God has a plan for the future that is beyond my knowing and beyond my understanding. My choice to live my faith in this concrete way in the world was a choice to enter into God’s purpose as a way of life. It is a choice to do the work I believe God calls me to do as a way of helping to bring forth that purpose in the world. It is an act of hope and an act of trust. Having made this choice, I daily try to confront the future that I can discern with my two eyes and say “No… God has something better in mind.”

It is by the choice to live in this manner, dedicated to the work necessary to prepare the way for the reign of God, that I avoid the kind of quietism that is a danger to our lives as faithful Christians. It is too easy to slide into apathy when we believe that God alone will take care of the future – and quietly retreat into lives of inaction or complacency. In Baptism, God and I established a Covenant with one another. God promised me certain rights and gifts when I was baptized, but also asked that I take on certain duties in return. I need to remember that these duties are not simply about the way I see or think about the world in my life of faith. They are not simply about what I believe but what I do – the actions I take as a result.

I am asked to strive for justice, to resist evil, to continue in faith, to respect the dignity of all, to proclaim the Good News, to seek and serve. These are all duties that involve choice and action. All of these duties come to bear on the future that I choose to live for and the hope that I choose to live into. Further, before I make these promises, I vow to renounce the forces of wickedness and evil, to renounce desires that are contrary to God’s purposes, to accept Christ as the power that transforms and saves me, and most importantly… to put all of my trust in Christ’s grace and love. These all have profound implications for the measure of Christian hope that I allow to take hold of my vision.

If I were a perfect Christian, then the choice between the kind of future I see and the kind of future that I trust God will unfold for us would be a simple one. But I am not perfect and my faith often falters. To live a Christian life within my Covenant with God, with all of its benefits and responsibilities, requires a great deal of patience, humility, quietness, prayer, and above all trust. I try my best. The delicate balancing act between these two futures is the story of my faith life in its entirety. The struggles, the victories, the doubts and the hopes all have their rightful place in this struggle.

As long as I still see as through a mirror, darkly, I choose to hope in a future beyond my capacity to see or understand. Although I am often tempted to allow my own view of the future to eclipse the one that Christian hope demands, God reminds me at the Eucharist of the vision of the future to which we are called. If I choose to act with the certainty that God needs our participation to make that future happen, and as long as I am willing to do my part, then my hope shall never be lost. Christ will surely see to it that all will be well.

Wikiklesia Projecet – almost here (Br. Karekin)

Publication Date: 23 July 2007

Distributed by: Lulu.com

Wikiklesia Press, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-9796856-0-6

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 9 July 2007

Voices of the Virtual World explores the growing
influence of technology on the global Christian church. In this premier
volume, we hear from more than forty voices, including technologists
and theologians, entrepreneurs and pastors… from a progressive
Episcopalian techno-monk to a leading Mennonite professor… from a
tech-savvy mobile missionary to a corporate anthropologist whom Worth
Magazine calls “one of Wall Street’s 25 Smartest Players.” Voices is a
far reaching exploration of spiritual journey contextualized within a
culture of increasingly immersive technology.

ABOUT WIKIKLESIA: Conceived and established in May 2007, the Wikiklesia Project is
an experiment in on-line collaborative publishing. The format is
virtual, self-organizing, participatory – from purpose to publication
in just a few weeks. All proceeds from the Wikiklesia Project will be contributed to the Not For Sale campaign.

Wikiklesia values sustainability with minimal structure. We long to
see a church saturated with decentralized cooperation. The improbable
notion of books that effectively publish themselves is one of many ways
that can help move us closer to this global-ecclesial connectedness.
Can a publishing organization thrive without centralized leadership? Is
perpetual, self-organizing book publishing possible? Can literary
quality be maintained in a distributed publishing paradigm? Wikiklesia
was created to answer these kinds of questions.

Wikiklesia may be the world’s first self-perpetuating nomadic business model
- raising money for charities – giving voice to emerging writers and
artists – generating a continuous stream of new books covering all
manner of relevant topics. Nobody remains in control. There is no board
of directors. The franchise changes hands as quickly as new projects
are created.

I’m one of the voices along with friends Brother Maynard, Ed
Brenegar, Andrew Jones, John La Grou, Len Hjalmarson, Rick Meigs, and a
host of other great writers that includes Scot McKnight, Bob Hyatt,
Drew Goodmanson, Kester Brewin and Heidi Campbell. Check out the full
list here.

A Sacrificial Economics by Br. Karekin

In the Name of the One, Holy and Living God. Amen.

Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine and noted culture critic once said (and I paraphrase) “The only thing [sic] becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.” Today, I’d like to talk about abundance and about scarcity; about a trip to Africa – a pilgrimage that I made – one that continues to unfold within me even now that I have returned home; and about the story of a woman with a pound of costly perfume.

Many of you know that I have just recently returned from overseas. In conjunction with an organization that my colleagues and I run called the Recycled AIDS Medicine Program and another called Zimbabwe AIDS Relief. My partner and I and our colleagues travelled to Central Africa loaded down with suitcases full of collected medications to distribute to people with HIV at an open clinic in Zimbabwe. In doing so, we have probably saved the lives of over 400 people with very little cost to us, save for the time spent traveling through airports and some hours of planning and preparing. But this story is not about heroics or good works. It’s about sin. Well… and it’s sort of… also… about accounting.

Let me get to the beginning… I want to start with this idea of abundance. Our culture is saturated with it. We are truly one of the most affluent nations on the planet. We consume abundantly and we are consumed by our own abundance. And the sin… is that even while surrounded by so much, we have absolutely no concept anymore of value.

We pay much more attention to a thing called “cost”. And, sadly, more often than not, cost equals value in our final analysis. And I suggest that this approach is reaching the end of its usefulness for us as a people and as a nation. It is, in addition, contrary to the Gospel for us as a Christian people.

Before we get tangled up in a strange paper on Christian Economic Theory, let’s look at some examples of how, in our limited perspective as a Western, affluent nation, cost equals value.

I have a good friend who just bought a brand new, very expensive, very large SUV. She was very excited about this new purchase. And I am happy that she is happy. I hope that her happiness will last a lot longer than the time she will spend paying off the debt her new car.

For my friend, this vehicle is worth a lot of money… it is of great value. In terms of freedom, in terms of mobility, it really doesn’t have any more value, per se, than any other car half the size and a third the price. Both kinds of cars would suffice to get her from point A to point B. But, because it costs a lot in terms of money … for my friend this car has great value both in terms of benefit and status. Cost equals value because, frankly, why would one spend more money on a car that does the same thing as a vehicle that costs less?

Here’s another example: I recently went to a store to buy a new CD. I will often pay about $20 for some new music CD by an artist that I enjoy. I don’t often do much with the CD, usually I just burn it on to my computer, being very technologically savvy about such things, and then toss it in a drawer. Most of my CDs are very scratched, some are missing cases, some cases are missing CDs. But in my mind, it doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s only $20. Cost equals value.

Until I begin to analyze things more closely. Traveling to Africa tends to make one analyze things more closely. When I realized that it will take my friend in Zimbabwe who is a doctor nearly two months to earn that $20, then suddenly the cost of a drawer full of scratched CDs tends to take on a whole new significance. And then to discover that Zimbabwe has an unemployment rate of 80% makes for an even starker reality. The relative value of $20 skyrockets into another realm.

RAMP exists because it understands the value of HIV medications has not been diminished because their recipients have changed regimens or died or the medications are no longer effective. Medications worth many thousands of dollars languish in closets and cabinets because the recipients of them no longer need them. They are just shy of refuse. Insurance companies have received their money so they don’t want them back. In fact, they can’t even take them back to give someone else once they have been distributed. Agencies in the United States can’t take them because they are too worried about legal liability. So… medications that can cost as much as $30,000 a year go to waste.

We occasionally hear from grateful people thrilled to find out about our organization, simply because they didn’t know what else to do with these medications and they somehow knew that throwing them out was not the right thing to do – if only because they COST so much. But, for many people, there isn’t even any impetus to do anything with these medications. They just sit until after they have passed their expiration date and it finally occurs to folks that perhaps they should see if there might be something to be done with them. No sense of urgency, because they are no longer useful to us. I shudder to think how many medications are lost because of this situation… cost has been considered, value has not.

And so, RAMP collects them. We took suitcases full of these medications to Zimbabwe early this month. 17 people each laden with the maximum number of bags allowed by the airlines, most of which were full of these medications that we had carefully collected, sorted, bagged, and labeled in individual three month supplies.

We took them hoping that we would not be stopped by customs agents in the airport, knowing that if discovered they would be confiscated and likely sold on the black market somewhere for high prices to desperate people. People who know the value of them.

What did it cost us to do this thing? Well, in terms of time… about a few hours a month over three months to collect and sort medications. About 24 hours of travel time to ZImbabwe. Factor in an hour here or there to get vaccinations and have planning meetings. So, in terms of time… it didn’t cost very much.

How about money? Well, the plane tickets cost a bit. Time away from work. Lodgings, meals, and transportation in ZImbabwe don’t cost much when dollars are involved. The economy is pretty bad and the dollar goes a long way. So in terms of money… it didn’t cost very much either.

But… what was the value of this journey? Well… I suppose we should ask any one of the over 400 people who now have medications to keep them alive for the next three months until the group goes back again for another open clinic. How do you measure the value of over 400 people who now have a shot at life they didn’t have before? Contemplate the ripple effect on families and children who now have hope they didn’t have before that their family members will stay healthy. A child who may now not lose her mother to HIV? A woman who will now not lose the economic support of her husband? Suddenly, the cost of this transaction doesn’t seem to matter at all. But the value is immeasurable. Ask Charity, who started as “Patient One” in Mutoko, who was near death and who now, as about as robust as she can be, offers her time as a nurse in the clinic there to help other people. She has a new life.

Our organization, by the way, does what we do on an annual budget of $5000. Last year, we gave away nearly $2 million worth of medications. Most of our budget is spent simply getting word out about who we are and what we do and where people can drop off or send medications. This year, we hope to do even better. So, let’s add it all up. Annual budget, plane fare, few hours a month, carry the one, round up. Let’s say $10,000 saved the lives of 400 people this year. Hmm… would you be willing to pay $10,000 to save the lives of 400 people today? How much would you be willing to pay? One dollar a day? I remember those ads from when I was younger, Sally Struthers and that guy who played Trapper John MD… “for just the price of a dollar a day, no more than the price of a cup of coffee, you can save the life of a child…”

Cost, the thing we most consider in our country, is always about how much time, or money, or effort I am going to have to spend to get what I want. And the most important thing is to minimize the cost. But, once the cost is paid, it’s paid. There is no more to consider other than how long it will be before I have to pay again. And once the costs are paid, and a thing has fulfilled it’s purpose, we throw it away or cast it aside. What is the life of a child worth? Or the lives of 400 people with AIDS?

What is the value of anything? As a nation, we throw away more each year more than some nations consume in a year. We are so saturated with abundance that we don’t even recognize it. We rarely stop to contemplate value much anymore even though it is always, relatively speaking, a net positive for someone if not for ourselves alone.

There’s one more thing to consider when discussing the way we deal with the issues of cost and value. We tend to see most things, including even our relationships and responsibilities from a transactional perspective. Cost paid versus value received. We want our relationships to be “low maintenance”, friendships to be easy-going, non-threatening. The result is that even our relationships and responsibilities seem to have become as disposable as our possessions in our culture of abundance. This was recently recognized by the House of Bishops in it’s response to the Dar es Salaam communique when they said: “one of the worst tendencies of our Western culture, [is] to break relationships when we find them difficult instead of doing the hard work necessary to repair them and be instruments of reconciliation. The real cultural phenomenon that threatens the spiritual life of our people, including marriage and family life, is the ease with which we choose to break our relationships.”

Relationships are simply another type of transaction. In order for any transaction to be seen as equitable, cost must equal value. The negative and the positive must balance each other out at the very least. And a really GOOD transaction is one where the value exceeds the cost. We are particularly uncomfortable in our culture when a transaction is out of balance. Firstly, if the cost of something exceeds the value we feel ripped off. We feel cheated if we pay for something and don’t get exactly what we feel we’ve paid for.

I noticed this side of our transactional thinking when in Africa some of our traveling companions began trying to negotiate prices down on things they wanted to buy. It’s always better when you can try to save a dollar here or two dollars there on a rug or a carving, right? Especially when you’ve just witnessed what endemic poverty does to a people in a country with 80% unemployment. Because a dollar is so much more valuable to us than to someone who may not eat tonight, especially when it is roughly the equivalent of three days wages. But there we were, an affluent group of Americans in the underdeveloped world, saturated with money, trying to make sure we didn’t pay a dollar too much for a piece of art.

On the other side of our transactional thinking, we grow uncomfortable when the value of something exceeds the cost not due to our negotiating skills but because of unexpected generosity. When someone gives us a gift unexpectedly and we suddenly feel indebted. I notice this when I get a Christmas card from someone NOT on my Christmas list. How long do you think it takes me to have a card in the mail to them, or to certainly make sure they’re on my list for next year? How terribly strange does it feel when confronted with moments of random generosity?

So.. let’s turn to the interesting thing in our Gospel reading today. Judas is complaining about Mary’s use of the costly perfume to anoint Jesus’ feet. Here is a moment of extraordinary, random generosity. Mary has done an extravagant thing. She has anointed Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. Remember that… it is costly. Judas is angry and the gospel makes no bones about telling us that it’s because Judas is feeling ripped off. Since he steals from the common purse, this lost money hits him directly. Now, Jesus knows that the money from the perfume wouldn’t benefit the poor in any event because Judas is a thief. He may try to hem and haw about caring for the poor, but for Judas it is clearly about a transaction that is out of balance, by about 300 denarii to be exact, and the cost of the perfume vastly outweighs, in Judas’ mind, the value of anointing Jesus’ feet because of its cost to his own pocketbook.

Even if we put aside that Judas was a thief, if we go back to this theory about cost versus value we’ve talked about up until now, we’d all have to admit that we have to agree with Judas, right? Shouldn’t we, given our cost, value analysis be indignant that such an expensive thing was wasted when the 300 denarii clearly could have been used to benefit the poor. It is the right thing to do. But this assumes that the thing of great value in our story is really the costly perfume. See… here is my sin. Cost equals value.

Jesus turns our thinking upside down. Cost notwithstanding, the thing of great value in the story is not the perfume, but is Jesus himself. What happens to our analysis then? “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Jesus knows what the disciples have not yet figured out. That Jesus is about to engage in the ultimate transaction, the ultimate out of balance transaction where the cost to him far exceeds anything we could afford, and the value to us leaves us indebted in a way that we still haven’t unwrapped completely these two thousand years later. What Jesus is about to demonstrate with the approach of Holy Week is that our relationship to God, to each other, and to the world around us are NOT intended to be transactional! All of his teaching about the poor, our responsibility to care for one another, lay down our lives for each other… what do they mean in the final analysis? His rebuke of Judas is meant to indicate that, as Christian people, our relationships and our responsibilities should be, instead, sacrificial. And we are about to see just how much is being asked of us. In the coming weeks, Jesus will show us in very real terms the sacrifice required of his followers.

What kind of sacrifice are we talking about? What of the poor? Have any of us stopped to consider how much we owe the poor? Do we even realize that we are indebted to them? Ask yourselves how real that is the next time you go to the market. At what cost do we have so many choices? The vast accumulation of choices that rely on labor paid sub-standard wages labor in sub-standard safety conditions to keep things inexpensive. How about the import of vast numbers of goods at rock bottom prices from the developing world under the guise of helping poorer nations pay off international debt. What is the cost of an unbridled capitalism that allows the few to have so much at such high cost to the many, and allows the many to have so little left for themselves? Do we recognize that this is why we have amassed so much? Because we have ridden the backs of the poor to a level of abundance that we no longer even recognize as such… and because, somehow, we have come to feel entitled to what we have.

A Muslim Imam was instructing his followers about giving to the poor. “Fill your pockets with change before you leave the house. When a poor man on the street asks you for money,” he said, “give it to him. This is your responsibility.” One of his followers asked, “How do I know he will not use that money to drink or to buy a prostitute?” The Imam replied, “What he does with it is between him and God, and God who is compassionate will sort it out. But of you, God requires giving.”

The Gospel for me, today, is an illustration of what happens when we have either lost a sense of value, or have come to value the wrong things entirely. What is abundance? And what is scarcity, truly? What does it mean to stop thinking about things in terms of a cost versus value transaction? What are the implications of such a Christian economics, a sacrificial economics, for the way we spend our money, or what we throw away? For the way we give ourselves in relationship to others? For the way we perceive our responsibility to others? What are the implications for the environment? For social and economic justice?
In Africa, I started a personal pilgrimage of coming to terms with our affluence and the abundance we are surrounded with as Americans. I went on a humanitarian mission to give hope to people by providing them medications that, for us, no longer had any value. In doing so, I learned about the cost of discipleship, and the value of sacrifice. After a long journey, I feel like I am starting to understand Paul’s words: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus…For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”

I guess what I’m asking of all of you this morning is this: Can we, as Christian people, begin to re-evaluate? And by that I mean, literally, to “re-value” – to re-value what we use and how we live and what it really means to share our abundance with others? Can we start to hold ourselves to a different standard of generosity than the prevailing culture? Can we begin to come to terms with our abundance both as a community and in our personal lives and start making the kinds of sacrifices necessary so that none of God’s children have to do without without? And can we do this without considering the costs to ourselves?

technorati tags:punkmonksf, poverty, zimbabwe, trinitychurch