St. Peter's By The Sea
The Episcopal Church in Narragansett, RI
June 22, 2008
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Good morning. As the summer solstice has come I want to wish you all a joyful and blessed summer. I love the summer and it is a very special thing to be here in Narragansett for the summer.
So I was hoping to give an upbeat and maybe lighter sermon for the beginning of summer, and then early this past week I read this morning’s Gospel lesson in which Jesus tells us, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
And then he goes on to tell us about setting family members against one another, saying “one’s foes will be members of one’s own family.” And as if this weren’t hard enough, Jesus tells us that if we want to follow him we must take up our cross and lose our life in order to find it. So at first, I thought: not my favorite topics for summer: family warfare and crosses and dying …
I count on my 3 year old daughter Ava sometimes for an inspiration, so what does she say? One day this week, while I was driving, little Ava pipes up from the back seat and tells me: “Daddy, I know one thing it’s good not to talk about … dying.” I thought to myself “Oh, great!” of course now we have to talk about dying, and how right here at the center of our spiritual lives is the reality of the cross and of dying.
So this morning I would like to share a few actually happy thoughts about the sword of Christ, the cross of Christ, and about dying …
I love the summer here in R.I. partly because of the long days, the warmth, and the beach and the ocean. But also just because of the wonder of the earth’s renewal and abundance, and the renewal of life here and now.
Our ancient ancestors were also impressed with the cycles of nature and our earliest religions centered on the fertility of the land and the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. And even our major church holidays, Christmas and Easter, come where they do because of the ancient connection with the Winter Solstice and the renewal of the earth in the Spring and Summer.
The reality of dying and the cycle of death and rebirth is part of our very nature. It is an archetypal pattern that embodies a central truth not only of the world of nature, but also of our psychological development, and our spiritual transformation. Our very lives are a series of deaths and rebirths, we are in a continual process of an old identity dying and a new one being born.
The other day my four year old son Rafe showed me a bit of this reality of change, of the stages of our lives and how soon we become aware of them. Rafe said to me: “Last summer was a great summer. It was my best summer.” Then he added, somewhat wistfully: “Last year was a really good year. Being 3 was the best year of all.” And when I asked him, he said being 4 was pretty great so far, but clearly he could feel that his three year old identity and experience was already passing, that he was a new guy at 4. That’s part of our natural cycle of death and rebirth, our natural cycle of change and transformation.
Marcus Borg shares a story he was told about a three-year old girl. He says, “Several years ago I was told a story about a three-year old girl. She was the firstborn and only child in her family, but now her mother was pregnant again, and the little girl was very excited about having a new brother or sister. Within a few hours of the parents bringing a new baby boy home from the hospital, the girl made a request: she wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door shut. Her insistence about being alone with the baby with the door shut made her parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they had installed an intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, so they realized they could let their daughter do this, and if they heard the slightest indication that anything strange was happening, they could be in the baby’s room in an instant. So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room, shut the door, and raced to the intercom listening station. They heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the baby’s room, imagined her standing over the baby’s crib, and then they heard her saying to her three-day-old brother, ‘Tell me about God – I’ve almost forgotten.’ ”1
In Zen Buddhism the master will ask his pupil to meditate on the statement: “Show me your face before you were born.” And in the gospel of Thomas Jesus tells the disciples of this inner knowledge we have forgotten. He says: “The kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.”
I think Jesus came to tell us about this other reality, the reality of the Spirit, the reality of the presence of God at the core of our being and our true (if forgotten) identity as children of light, children of the living presence of God. And he explains over and over that the way to this new reality and new identity is the way of the cross, that is, a process of death and rebirth.
Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” He is telling us that our death, like that of the seed, is part of a process of transformation, leading us to a new life.
In the gospel of Mark Jesus tells his followers “If anyone wants to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) Marcus Borg writes that “At the heart of the … wisdom of Jesus was the path of death and resurrection understood as a metaphor for an internal psychological and spiritual process. It involved dying to an old identity and being born into a new way of being. The new identity and new way of being was a life radically centered in God …”2
Jesus is calling us to wake up to the kingdom of God, to the presence of God, and his way to the kingdom is a path of transformation that leads through death and resurrection.
Paul speaks very clearly about his own experience of dying and rising with Christ. He writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:19b-20a) And he tells us “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17)
So for Jesus and for Paul the dying process was a letting go of an old identity, of truly being changed, becoming a new person. The great German mystic Meister Eckhardt says that this death takes place when we let go of our old self, and abandon ourselves to God. He says then, “God must pour out the whole of himself with all his might totally into everyone who has utterly abandoned himself.”
This death to the old self and the revealing of the new self can happen very suddenly, as it did to the English clergyman Leslie Wheatherhead, who was suddenly filled with the glory of God and who saw that all of us are shining and glorious beings who in the end would enter incredible joy. And as in all true experiences of the divine, his was marked by love … He says “I loved everybody … It sounds silly now, and indeed I blush to write it, but at that moment I think I would have died for any one of the people (on that train car with me).”
I remember the summer before I went to Seminary I worked as a construction laborer lugging steel rods to the steel layers. They were a very seasoned and rough group of guys. One day at the lunch break they were asking me why I or anyone would even think about going to Seminary. So I told them or reminded them of the story of St. Francis of Assisi, of how as a young man Francis was rich and enjoyed wine and women and led a rather wild life. Then one day he saw the other reality, the reality of God’s presence. And Francis gave up everything, he went through a death and rebirth, a spiritual transformation.
So I said to them, look it practically: Francis saw that there was a much greater beauty and joy and peace to be found and he gave up everything for it, and he became for the world from that day to this an example of love not only for all people, but for the whole of creation.
Jesus tells us that it is God’s great pleasure to give us the kingdom and he tells us over and over not to be afraid, because he knows we are destined to be transformed in God’s love. In order to have this experience, though, we must be willing to die small deaths: to allow old parts of ourselves to be sloughed off so that new parts can find air and grow. This happens bit by bit, perhaps even unnoticeably; until one day, we realize that a whole new thing has taken root within.
May prayer is that this might be the best summer of your life and that you might find a new you.
In His Name. Amen.
1 Marcus Borg, Heart of Christianity, pp. 113-114.
2 Marcus Borg, Heart of Christianity, p. 90.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:26 am
Category: Sermons