ELISHA vs THOMAS JEFFERSON

Evangelicals rely on Scripture alone.

Secularists rely on Reason alone.

Episcopalians pay attention to both,

         and we also have a third leg on the stool – Tradition.

Our Old Testament story is about tradition.

Elijah had had one heckuva life.

He’d done some pretty dramatic stuff.

But now his earthly race was run, so he said to his disciple, Elisha,

“So long buddy, I’m off to Bethel.”

        

But Elisha hung on to his teacher and went with him to Bethel.

Elijah then said, “Adios, Elisha. It was nice knowing you.

         I’m going over Jordan.”

But Elisha said “Not so fast I’m going with you.”

Finally Elijah said, “Goodbye Elisha I’m off to heaven.

         Anything I can do for you before I go?”

  

Elisha answered, “Give me the power to keep on doing

         what you’ve been doing -- only more of it.”

Elijah said, “Only if you can follow me into heaven with your eyes.”

When the chariot swung low comin’ for to carry Elijah home,

         Elisha watched him until he was out of sight.

Then Elisha tore off his own clothes and put on Elijah’s mantle.

For those who have seen the 1982 film classic Barbarossa,

         it’s the same thing Gary Busey does to become Willie Nelson.

If you haven’t seen Barbarossa, just skip this sermon and watch it. Point made.

With that mantle came prophetic power.

Earlier in the story, on their way to Elijah’s point of departure,

         they had to cross the Jordan River.

Elijah had struck the water with his mantle

         and it parted for him as the Red Sea parted for Moses,

and as this very Jordan River had parted for Joshua       

when he took over the leadership of Israel.

With Elijah gone, Elisha headed back the way they came.

When he got to the Jordan, he did the same thing.

He struck the water with his mantle, and the waters parted

as they had done for Elijah, Joshua, and Moses before him.

Elisha was carrying on a tradition stretching back over the centuries,

from his teacher Elijah all the way to Joshua and Moses.

Elisha had followed his teacher as far as he could go.

When his teacher was gone, Elisha tore up his own clothes,

         his own identity, and put on the mantle of Elijah and continued his work.

That’s tradition.

Americans are not so fond of Tradition. Take Thomas Jefferson.

He was all about Reason but he had no use for Tradition.

He insisted the world belongs to the present generation.

No law, no constitution, no form of government should last over 20 years.

Jefferson worshiped at the Church of What’s Happening Now.

He tore up the mantle of his ancestors to put on his own clothes.

Jefferson and Elisha represent two opposite attitudes.

Native cultures are our best example we have of Elijah’s way.

Native Americans honor their traditions.

They hold their ancestors in reverence.

They respect the elders of the tribe.

Anglo-Americans treat our elders as burdens to be warehoused.

We are certain that the wisdom of today

         is to be preferred over the benighted ways of our forbears.

We don’t want to be burdened by yesterday. “Yesterday’s done.”

We do not expect future generations to pay any attention to us.

The Church of What’s Happening now

         acknowledges no debt to the people who got us here

         and no duties to those who will come after us.
“Imagine all the people living for today.”

We want to wear our own clothes, the ones in fashion this year

–      not some dusty mantle from an old guy like Elijah.

It’s popular these days, even among some Episcopal leaders,

         to junk the Tradition.

Sell the churches, meet in bowling alleys, and make up a ritual

         if we feel so inclined at the moment.

The ritual we make up will express

         what we think, what we feel – something we like –

         nothing that might make us uncomfortable.

There was a time I’d have said “sign me up” for that.

But there came a point when I was not so sure of myself anymore.

I wasn’t positive that my opinions were better than the teachings

of ancient spiritual masters,

         or that my feelings were nobler than those of the saints.

And I had children to think of.

When I began to feel a responsibility for the next generation

         I simultaneously felt a responsibility to the past generations.

That’s when I became an Episcopalian.

That’s when I began to tear up my own clothes

         and put on the mantle of Elijah.

I didn’t shut down my mind.

Reason is still one of our sources of authority.

We still think. We still feel.

But if there is a conflict between my opinions

and the teachings of the Church,

         I seriously consider the remote possibility

that I might be wrong.

 Sometimes I love the Tradition. Sometimes I hate it.

But it’s always there for me to learn from,

         sometimes by arguing with it.

For example, I have never been comfortable with the Nicene Creed.

But I keep saying it and that makes me look hard at what it means.

One year, a particular line offends me to the core.

The next year, I have found a new meaning for that line

         and I love it.

But by then, another line bothers me.

I don’t say the Creed because I’m comfortable with it.

I say it because I’m uncomfortable with it. It makes me think.

Sacred Tradition is essential to our spirituality,

         right along with Reason and the Holy Scriptures.

This chasuble we wear represents Elijah’s mantle. It is a symbol of Tradition.

Apostolic Succession, having bishops made by bishops in a chain

         of inheritance going back to the apostles

                  is a symbol of Tradition.

But it takes some caution.

We all know that Scriptures can be used for good or ill.

Our Reason can be used or misused.

It’s the same with Tradition.

It can guide us into the future or it can trap us in the past.

The key is to recognize the difference between Sacred Tradition

         and a stodgy lack of imagination.

Sacred Tradition is about our core values – the stuff that makes us who we are.

It isn’t about singing one style of music instead of another;

         or whether we use an organ or guitars.

It isn’t about whether we use the 1928 Prayer Book or the 1979 Prayer Book.

It’s about having a Book of Common Prayer,

         so that we pray in the way of the church

         instead of what each of us makes up to suit ourselves.

Sacred Tradition connects us to our power source.

Elijah passed onto Elisha a mantle of prophetic power.

Jesus passed on to the disciples the power to heal

and proclaim good news.

The Tradition is a power source.

It has sustaining power to get us through the day.

When life hits us in the face and we have no words f

or how we feel or what we want,

         the Tradition has prayers for us,

“Surely it is God who saves me.

I will trust in him and not be afraid.”

The Tradition has transforming power to open up a new future.

It gives us this prayer,

         “Let the whole world see and know that

         things which were cast down are being raised up,

         and that things which had grown old are being made new,

         and that all things are being brought to their perfection. . . .”

The Tradition isn’t stodgy or nostalgic.

It’s dynamic, unfolding, challenging us

to become more than we are.

Our Tradition is written in poems and prayers.

It is recorded as stories of the saints.

We act it out in ancient rituals.

The poems, the prayers, the stories, the rituals

         have all been sanctified by holy lives of Christians.

By that sanctity the Tradition is charged with power

                  like Elijah’s mantle.

WHEN WE AIN'T FEELING IT

Sometimes we have religious experiences; sometimes we don’t.

Elijah’s experiences were dramatic – like himself.

He was the original action hero – dispensing justice

            with lots of violence, explosions, and drama.

His God was a lot like himself.

Not surprising in those days.

The human race was still primitive.

Their idea of God was primitive.

So Elijah’s God was an action hero too – pretty explosive.

In today’s lesson, things had been tough for Elijah.

So, like most of us, that’s when he went looking for God.

Elijah looked where God lived  -- Mt. Horeb.

In Elijah’s time, God had an address.

It was Mt. Horeb, 89406.

Greek gods lived on Mt. Olympus.

Yahweh lived on Mt. Horeb,

            which I hear is s one awesome and mysterious place.

Elijah’s even more primitive ancestors  worshiped a mountain,

            before they worshiped El Shaddai, the God of the Mountain.

They also worshiped powerful forces of nature like the desert storm,

            the earthquake, and the forest fire.

So Israel experienced God in those natural dramas.

Psalm 97 says:

            “Clouds and thick darkness surround him . . . .

            Fire goes before him . . . .

            His lightning lights up the world.

            The earth sees and trembles.”

That’s what a religious experience was – God doing dramatic stuff.

When nothing spectacular was happening, they felt cut off.

So they prayed in Psalm 83:

            “O God, do not keep silent,

                        be not quiet O God, be not still.”

A silent God was an absent God – a God who did not care.

That was Elijah’s religion when he went looking for God on Horeb.

And the dramatic stuff happened.

There was a windstorm, then an earthquake, and a fire.

But this time, Elijah just wasn’t feeling it.

The wind was just  wind; the earthquake, just an earthquake;     

            the fire, just a fire.

And Elijah thought, “Is that all there is?”

A powerful emotional religious experience is a great thing.

God can be in it.

That’s why religions have a whole panoply of different techniques

            designed to give us different experiences.

We have born again catharsis, baptism of the spirit ecstasy,

            Cursillo intimacy, contemplative union, or we go to a beautiful spot

in nature and say “isn’t it all so beautiful!”

We feel a certain way and call it “spiritual.”

That’s all good at the time it’s happening.

But we can get stuck in it.

We can keep trying to have the same experience.

We keep going to the same event, trying to feel that way again,

            pretending that we do, but inwardly

            -- no matter how loud we shout “hallelujah” --

it just ain’t happening for us.

That’s how it was for Elijah who had always found God

in wind, fire, and earthquake.

But this time, God wasn’t there.

Then after the powerful forces of nature passed,

            there was a silence, a profound palpable silence

            -- like the silence of Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley.

It was precisely the silence that, in Elijah’s religion,

meant God was absent.

But instead of praying,

            “O God, do not keep silent,

                        be not quiet O God,”

Elijah wrapped his face in his mantle as a sign of reverence,

            because he knew God was there.

Precisely in the absence of religious experience,

            Elijah believed in God’s presence.

Different cultures, different faith traditions,

            and different people define religious experience differently.

So which one is right?

Is God really in the wind, in the earthquake, or in the fire?

 Is God really in the born again catharsis,

            the baptism in the Spirit ecstasy,

                        or the mystical experience of unity?

And where is God when we are not having whatever kind of feeling

            we think of as spiritual?

God is infinitely greater than our capacity for religious experience.

God is in our religious experience. We do meet God there.

But God is vastly bigger than our feelings.

Theologians from Dionysius in the 6^th Century

            to Karl Barth in the 20^th Century to John Hick today

            caution us not to limit God to what we think of

                        as religion or spirituality.

At those times when God seems utterly silent, totally absent

            – at those times we do not feel the least bit spiritual

                        and have no sense of God whatsoever --

                                    God is there.

St. St. John of the Cross was the greatest spiritual master

 to base his teaching on Elijah.

He taught that  as long as our religion is just about spiritual experiences,

            we don’t love God.

We just love the way we feel.

Faith comes when we love the God

who is unseen, unheard, and unfelt

 – but utterly and absolutely real.

Spiritual experiences are not false or bad.

We all start there, but faith outgrows feeling.

Carl Jung had these words inscribed over his door

            and on his tombstone,

            “Bidden or unbidden God is present.”

The great Baptist preacher, Carlyle Marney, told the story

            of a little boy was trapped by a fire

                        in his second story bedroom.

In the yard below, his father called to him,

            “Jump son, jump. I’ll catch you.”

The child shouted back, “Daddy, I’m afraid to jump. I can’t see you.”

“That’s alright,” the father answered.

            “Go ahead and jump. I can see you.”

The silent God is present – watching, caring.

The very silence of God is our invitation to faith.

The very absence of spiritual experience,

            invites us to a deeper encounter with God

            – just as Elijah met God more profoundly

                         in the silence than in the storm.

Theologian, Francis Fiorenza, once asked our class,

“Do you want to have a religious experience,

            or do you want to experience everything religiously?”//

I have been pondering that question for over a decade,

            and it has finally begun to form into an insight.

So when we aren’t having a religious experience,

how do we experience all of life religiously?

We intentionally look at everything through God’s eyes.

We just watch without judging.

We observe the world around us with a serene compassion.

We do the same with the world inside us.

We watch the thoughts rushing through our minds,

            the emotions passing through our hearts,

                        the very physical sensations of our bodies.

We meet God -- not by seeing God --

            but by seeing everything as God sees it.

God is light -- pure and perfect light.

We don’t really see full spectrum light.

In itself, full spectrum light is invisible.

Instead, we see things illumined by the light.

Just so, we don’t see God.

We see the world differently because God illumines it.

We see ourselves differently in the light of God’s grace.

Religious experiences are the divine light refracted into various colors.

That’s why we have different experiences – all valid.

But the rest of the time, God is still with us

            – not as storm, quake, or fire, but silently watching.

We can know God by joining him in the watch

            – by doing nothing – dropping our efforts to be action heroes

            -- just watching with God’s infinite compassionate patience.

ARE THEY STILL FIGHTING? -- HOW CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES MAKE US WORSE

A new priest at one of our small town churches goes to a local gathering place. He tells the people he is the new priest at St. Swithens. The locals ask, “Are they still fighting?”

A layperson at another small town church tells a friend where she worships. The friend says, “I’ve been to several events there. Every time, your church members are gossiping about people here in town. I wouldn’t want them to know much about me.”

Most of the church people I know are pretty good folks. Members of faith communities are statistically healthier, happier, and more likely to do civic good where they live. There is plenty of objective evidence that we are doing something right. So here’s what I wonder about:  Why is there also so much unhealthy behavior in congregations: selfishness, power grabbing, cultural insensitivity, undermining, manipulation, stinginess, and a whole list of moral failings? People who have been practicing Christian spirituality their whole long lives, people who love the Lord and receive the sacraments behave in ways no self-respecting garden club would tolerate in its members. Truth be told, it shakes my faith – not in Christ, but in Christianity. The only proof of any religion is that it makes people better. I’m not sure we are doing that as well as we might. People outside our walls are outside our walls because they don’t like what they see going on inside our walls. They are not entirely wrong.

The Epistles (and the New Testament in general) teach that Christianity is a group project. Our Bible is a guide to how we are to behave toward each other so that we can be the ongoing incarnation, the Body of Christ in the world, the human channels of God’s love and mercy. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” the song says. That’s what I don’t always see us doing very well. Again, most church folks do quite well and churches do plenty of good. But the good we do is eclipsed in the eyes of outsiders by all the petty badness – emphasis on petty because we misbehave in big ways over embarrassingly small issues. So what’s up with these good people doing bad things?

My hypothesis: a big part of the problem is good intentions badly implemented. Meaning well actually gets us in moral trouble. “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” We start with this right principle: The Church should accept, befriend, and embrace people the rest of the world does not. Some churches understandably don’t do that. But most of us do accept the outcasts. The problem is: what then do we do with them? This is where the trouble starts. To make them feel welcome, we put them in charge – not always formally, but de facto.

Dennis Maynard’s book, When Sheep Attack, is about how small minority groups in congregations can destroy a pastor’s ministry and run him or her right out of town. That isn’t all they do. Vocal minorities do all manner of mischief in faith communities. Maynard characterizes the small minorities as pathological. But the problem isn’t the pathological minorities. It’s that the congregation as a whole defers to them. The least healthy people in a congregation often seek to control it and are able to do so precisely because all the nice church folks want to appease them. Love means doing whatever it takes to make the crazy folks happy. The result: a nutocracy. Maynard prescribes pretty aggressive responses, a sort of surgical removal of the malignant cells. I don’t’ think that is either right or effective. But his analysis of church dynamics is on the mark.

The implicit cultural norm of churches is to not only tolerate but to appease unhealthy behavior. Some clergy undertake to police those behaviors, but those clergy don’t usually survive long. The policy of appeasement always wins if the ordained leader is the only person trying to change the system. The worst part of it is that by cow towing to bad behavior in our midst, we encourage our weakest members to act worse. And people who might behave well in the rest of life learn that church is the place they can act out their worst selves because church is where they can get away with it. The normative behavior of a congregation does not look like the Kingdom of God and the people do not function together as the Body of Christ.

So how might we turn this around? The first generation Christians understood their fellowship as a crucible of moral and spiritual transformation, a place where we are changed. My pastoral consultant once said to me, “Programs don’t change people. People change people.” True enough, but how can we organize our relationships in way that allows us to make each other better instead of worse?

I have three basic suggestions for starters:

1.    Behavioral Covenants.  A tennis court needs boundary lines. We all need to know where they are. It doesn’t work nearly as well for an authority figure (the pastor for example) to draw the boundary lines. Then the pastor becomes the enforcer and will soon be driven out by a congregation that never owned the boundaries. We need boundary lines drawn by the community itself. A clergy leader can facilitate a process of setting behavioral norms, but cannot be the lawmaker. Gilbert Rendle has written a helpful little book, Behavioral Covenants In Congregations, available from Alban Institute. It is a guide to how a congregation can establish its own healthy boundaries. Of course, people are imperfect. We will hit the ball out of bounds from time to time. Any of us will do that. But the community that has drawn the boundaries will recognize when the ball is out of bounds and can remind the out-of-bounds person of the norms for discourse in the community. Examples: What kind of communications can be done by e-mail? What communications need to be face to face? What is it appropriate to say about someone who is not in the room? What kind of communication is appropriate for confidentiality? Which are unhealthy secrets? Having answers to those questions in advance can make a huge difference. I know of one congregation that went from crippling civil strife to vibrant health and growth thanks to such a behavioral covenant. I know another that weathered a short failed rectorate without falling into blaming each other, again because of a sound behavioral covenant.

2.    Circles Practice. Attentive listening, intentional speaking, and mindful relationship do not come naturally, especially when we are enculturated to act contentiously. These practices require skill and discipline. We can teach people these skills in church. These are basic skills for virtuous participation in the human community. Christians ought to be good at that; so the Church ought to be in the business of training us. There are a variety of approaches to these practices. I started with Industrial Areas Foundation broad-based community organizing where I learned one-on-one and small group relational meeting skills. I moved from there to Parker Palmer’s Circles of Trust work. The main book is Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness. Training is offered through the Center For Courage & Renewal. http://www.couragerenewal.org. The clearest, most usual friendly book on how to do such a process may be The Circle Way by Baldwin and Linnea. The World Café is another approach to this kind of respectful discourse. http://www.theworldcafe.com. We can intentionally create safe place situations for honest conversation. We can cultivate healthy, wise habits like speaking from curiosity instead of judgment. These are processes we can use to deepen and improve relationships, build character, and strengthen our communities to become what we were meant to be.

3.    Alternative Models Of Decision-Making. We could combine behavioral covenants and circle practice to change our ways of making decisions. That would profoundly transform the power dynamics in congregational life. Today, most congregations have two decision-making processes – the formal visible one and the informal invisible one. Formal visible decision-making is done in public meetings with Roberts Rules. Motions are made and voted up or down. It is a contest with winners and losers. But we rarely actually make decisions that way. When we do, conflict has become hotter than the system can bear for long. Usually, those formal public meetings just document the decisions that have been made informally. The informal invisible process is consensus achieved by finding the lowest common denominator. The person in the room who is hardest to pacify wins by getting his or her way. A third option is to pull the informal process into public view and talk things through in a healthy way using a circles practice like World Cafe. We can find an authentic consensus of those operating inside the boundaries.

These are just three starter suggestions for how a church might shift its culture. We can become the kind of community that people want to join because we are a safe place to be ourselves and explore new truths, a place that challenges us to change without coercing us with guilt. We can become clearer channels for grace. But it won’t happen without an intentional decision to undertake a process of deep change in how we go about being Church.