Today’s sermon

It may be being 71 but I’ve been remembering lots of things lately; that I went to dancing classes in the  early spring of 1958 when I was 12 years old at the Crocker Dance Academy on 38th and Jay Street in Sacramento, California during my first semester in the 7th grade and there was a girl named Virginia Otwell attending from my school and there was at least one diagram of something called a box step painted on the floor of the main studio.

My understanding is the box step was invented and even patented, by a man named Arthur Murray, who, with his wife Katherine, founded a worldwide chain of Dance Studios, all with the box step, at least one, painted on the floor; so we may have had an unauthorised version. 

Now the box step consists of six moves,  left foot forward, right foot moving alongside, but not too close, then the left food joining together with right foot, the right foot moving backwards, the  left foot moving alongside, but at a distance, and then both feet finally together again. The diagram helped for awhile, but it also tended to box you in, make you think there was only one way to do this, which is not the whole truth about dancing, but is what you have to get beyond in learning to really move, and that I think tells us something about the tension between following the law as compared with following love.

Now it’s important to note the diagrams, the blueprints, the rules and laws and standards are  not wrong, for they, and the kind of knowledge they stand for, tell us how much, how many, where and when; gives line, outline, location and that’s very important. But other ways of knowing go deeper into questions of who and how and why; get you moving better, swivel your hips, so to speak, get your hands going, push your breath a bit. And that second way of moving into life differs from the legal and  diagrammatic knowledge as recipe and formula differs from bread and wine, as studying a road map from beginning a journey, as looking at a house plan from building and moving into a new home. And I think in the long run we need to leave those first steps behind and dance more freely with the deeper stories — the ones that stop us in our tracks and turn us around, gasping for new air and wide-eyed, looking at who and where we are as if we are seeing everything for the very first time.

That’s where we meet today’s story from Matthew’s gospel. Three acts: a slave owes his king lots of money;  king orders the slave and his belongings be sold for partial payment could be made; the slave pleads for patience, king feels compassion, and forgives the whole shebang. Second act: slave sees another slave who owes him less and demands payment; second slave pleads for mercy but is thrown in prison. Third act; Fellow slaves report this to king, who summons slave saying: "I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I did on you?" And hands him over to be tortured until he pays the entire debt. And Jesus summarises, “God will do the same to every one, If you do not forgive your brother or sister in your heart."

The truth is the gospel is full of nasty stories with tough endings and Jesus tells them to shake up our tendency to diagram, to destabilise our rigid accounting and conceptual structures. Because Jesus wants, I think, to break them open at precisely the right time to give us a new angle and insight on what is right in front of us and how we can start again. So the tough truth is that looking head-on at a bad ending can serve as a way to begin again. Quoting Ecclesiasticus: "Remember the end of your life, and cease from enmity, Remember destruction and death, and be true to the commandments."

So here’s another memory: in the mid eighties there were several TV shows about the effects of a nuclear holocaust: terrible pictures of the light and the wind and the fire that would follow dropping those big bombs. And even if we survived, it would be a silent world where bees, birds and the “dumb” animals had been blinded by that false light. So the spring following would have fewer colours, less song after that infernal grey blossom had fallen.

I was in seminary then and whenever I would hear the campus bells striking the hour I would stop what I was doing and look at the possibility that it all might end. To look around while the bells were ringing, and people, animals, plants and trees were moving and breathing together and think: "It could all be over, vanished, finished." And when the bells stopped ringing and the sounds of everyday came back I would look around and think; "There is a chance, we are not dead yet."

We need to forgive each other because we are not dead yet — and there is a chance in a  mysterious and graceful way, that we are newborn, like children, full of possibilities, full of innocence and promise, full of beginning. We have that choice.

The man in the story Jesus tells makes an error when he doesn't take the chance to renew himself and the world where he lives. Instead, he looks to get it for half-price, accepting the fact of mercy and forgiveness given him but not passing it on to others. And that’s what ends up cutting him in two!

For Jesus says that the measure you put out is the measure you receive. Like the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” like the Beatle’s White Album, “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” We are called to be coworkers in the harvest, spreading forgiveness and blessing based on how much we give and how much we give up. For, I think, in forgiving others we allow them the chance to be born anew: we assent and assist in the birth of God in this daily world; allowing the possibilities of the mystery and forgiveness and renewal of God's life to begin once again: in them, in us.

This is not to say that you need to check your mind at the gate. This does not mean you lose all your choices. You don't have to keep patting the dog who bites you, but you need to know what you can share with each other on the deepest level of it all, where we can all begin again.

And that’s why the truth of forgiveness does not fit on a diagram or a flowchart; because the real actions of life are both bigger and finer than that: we are born to move and to dance in the middle of a moving mystery that will always, by Gods grace, be beyond what we know. 

So in late March of 1958 I attended the Spring Dance at Kit Carson Junior High School and danced with Virginia Otwell. The decorated gymnasium was crowded and hot and the music was loud and there were no diagrams on the floor. I think I stepped on her feet several times and she may have even stepped on mine. But we got through it, making mistakes, making progress, forgiving each other,  dancing a  bit closer and faster, moving on. I don’t know whatever happened to her, haven’t thought of her for over fifty years, but I am glad to be dancing with you today. 

 Amen

Funeral Sermon for J. L.

One of the good things about being a retired priest is that you don’t have to go to church unless you really want to – so sometimes on Sunday I stay in bed with my iPad for devotional reading and meditation — and there is an app for that — and other times I go to church and am surprised how much I enjoy sitting back and watching, being fed, even though I’ve always  known Christianity can be a great spectator sport.

But on Wednesday mornings at 10 AM I sometimes show up at the Lady Chapel – off here to the side — for a weekday mass. It’s a small group, 6, 8, 12 or more people sometimes, sometimes music, sometimes not, often I am one of the younger people — except I kept seeing Jude there in the last few months. I had met her and C. here right after the Jazz Mass some eight years ago, remember her telling me how proud she was of C. singing in the choir, and now here we were on Wednesday mornings and I wondered why.

Let me tell you more by sharing another memory; in the late 1950s there was a US TV show called American Bandstand where the host would invite people to dance to a new song and then give it a score. Some would say, “the message was good but there’s no rhythm” or conversely, “I didn’t understand the words but I sure can dance to it!”

Now most people don’t think of the mass, the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper or Holy  Communion, if you like, as one of Christianity’s greatest hits; and fewer would think of it as a participatory sport, or as any kind of a dance, but at heart it really is. It’s not the only one.

I once wrote a paper called “Serving God” on the theology of tennis. I said that playing the game was a pleasurable way of hoping and holding, opening to the deep holiness contained in every moment of time. It was, I wrote, “to serve, receive, and return bright vehicles of meaning” and I went on to say the only difference between tennis and theology is that in tennis love means nothing and in theology it means everything. And that is what the Eucharist is like.

You see, Jesus, this human of mercy and compassion and principal, is gathering his community together for what looks like the Last Supper and he gets hold of the bread and the wine and links them up to the actions of his life in four simple steps: take, bless, break, share. And we’ve been trying to dance to that ever since.

What I think it means is; Jesus takes up his whole life, his wants and needs, hopes and fears, plans and possibilities and blesses them with this ever enlarging understanding of light, love, charity, compassion, call it God if that works. He lets that hopeful possibility break down, breakthrough, break into the particulars of his situation whatever the end may be, and open it up, and he shares that life and death action with the community he cares about the best he can, even invites them (invites us) to participate in this as much as we like.

So if tennis means serve, receive, return: then Jesus means take, bless, break, share. Either one is a way to dance with love that you can do ‘round the altar, on the court,  at dinner, in bed: wherever and whenever life turns ‘round and the road looks new or the destination dubious, whether  you’re angry, scared, alert, whatever — it’s the perfect  dance for the middle of life and death.

And my hunch was J. was there, doing those steps well. I don’t know why or what lyrics or music, because nobody really knows anybody else’s story, but I had this strong sense that she was involved in some great and important steps in the dance. It wasn’t too much later that I heard she was sick and getting sicker and when  Fr Ken told me she was in intensive care I went to see her and she wasn’t in good shape and I talked and prayed with her and her family, and then came back a few days later and on the following day she died peacefully.

OK. One of the most amazing things about being a human being is that you get to share some very vulnerable moments; and I don’t think J. would mind if I told you that I am convinced she was doing those steps all the way up to the end, moving with Jesus in that four step rhythm of “take, bless, break, share.”

You can go a long way with those moves; taking up all your life and looking with love on where to go next, letting yourself be blessed by the hope of a reality that’s bigger than you know, willing yourself to be broken open to some new understanding of how to share love in the middle of all this difficult and wonderful existence.

And J. was there, her breath getting softer and closer to the end in every inhalation and exhalation, the receiving and relinquishing, the taking up and letting go, she was living with love and love was with her all that time. And that’s what I want you to know — what I saw in J’s dying. Love living, love never ending, she was already where no one ever gets lost from love. We see that so dimly from here, but now I believe she knows it, breathes it, sees it now face-to-face. She finished the dance, she found that great peace, may we share that vision.

Amen