Give your power away. November 24, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:35-43

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. Some of you may be familiar with him because he’s the host of a popular podcast called The Science of Happiness. Among other things, he has devoted a lot of time to studying leadership skills and organizational behavior. A couple years ago he published a book entitled The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence.  The thesis is this: those who want to have power, which he defines as the ability to influence people and events, need to act collaboratively to get it. They work well with others; they are team players; they are a positive presence in meetings; they listen to the ideas of others; they support others. This is what leads to promotions and higher positions. This is what garners them positive attention and votes and whatever else they need to acquire power. But here is the paradox as Dacher Keltner sees it: once people accrue power, they often abandon the behaviors and practices that brought them power: they become self-centered and self-serving; they don’t listen to others, but treat others with indifference or contempt; they become isolated and out of touch — all of which leads them to having less influence and less power.

This dynamic can be seen in many different organizations: businesses, law firms, country clubs, churches, committees. Probably many of us have seen this played out in one form or another. So you can imagine, for example, a hypothetical priest named Gertrude. Gertrude has lots of energy. She is a great colleague who enjoys working with her fellow priests. She becomes dean of her region, and loves talking to clergy and supporting them in any way she can. She remembers people’s names and she is always willing to listen to them, always has a kind word for them. She is widely known, liked, and respected. She gets elected to the Standing Committee of the diocese and becomes a delegate to General Convention. Not surprisingly, she is eventually elected bishop. But then Bishop Gertrude changes. She loses patience with meetings; she wants things her own way; she becomes more dictatorial; she does not encourage her staff but pushes them hard; she’s critical of priests when she visits them; she becomes an isolated and disliked person. And although she is the bishop, she actually loses a lot of her power and influence as she abandons the social skills she practiced in her rise to power. That is the kind of thing that Dacher Keltner says happens all too often.

And he identifies a remedy, what he calls the power principle. It’s very simple and it goes like this: “we keep and gain power by giving it away . . . . Our power expands as we empower others.” The people with the greatest power are not the people who horde it the most, but the people who share it the most. That finding comes out of research in social psychology and is supported by work in done in other fields as well, like anthropology and economics. But while the scientific branding may reassure us, the truth being presented is not new. We see it graphically illustrated in our readings today.

Jeremiah castigates the rulers of Judah, the shepherds who have failed so miserably: Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Says the LORD . . . It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and have not attended to them. Instead of sharing power for the good of the people, they are abusing power for the good of themselves. New shepherds who will actually use power to care for the people must arise. But we can’t stop there. The message goes even deeper than that. Because, according to Jeremiah, who will raise up those new shepherds? God. Think about that for a moment. The LORD does not directly govern the people of Israel, but delegates it to others. God Almighty exercises power by giving power away. The power principle described by modern psychology is rooted in reality because it reflects the very nature of the Creator.

And that leads me to the Gospel. Today is the last Sunday of the church year, the Feast of Christ the King, the day when we proclaim Jesus to be King of kings and Lord of lords. So we would expect the Gospel passage to reveal Jesus in the most kingly and powerful way possible. And so it does. But unless we grasp the power principle I just laid out for you, we will never understand the Gospel today. Because Jesus is hanging on the cross. He forgives the people who are executing him. He offers Paradise to the criminal being crucified next to him. Slowly suffocating, he gives his power away to the very end, to his last dying breath. This, we are told, is Jesus Christ at his most powerful. This, we are told, is the perfect revelation of God’s power. From the very beginning, when God speaks the universe into existence and says Let it be!, she exercises power is by giving it away.

Now this would all be marvelous if we were just supposed to sit back and admire it. But we’re not just supposed to admire it: we’re supposed to imitate it. We are called to live in Christ, to have the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God, live in us. Not so that we can earn our way into heaven but so that we can begin to experience heaven now. We often think the key to a happy and successful life is amassing power in one form or another, but it’s not: the key is giving power away. As Paul writes to the Philippians, Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.

We don’t have to accept this on blind faith. We can see it in others: the most powerful

and influential people I have ever personally known have been great lovers and great givers, people who readily give power away. But we can also live this and see how true it is for ourselves. All of us, after all, have power. So here’s the charge I give to all of us as we honor Christ the King: think of how you will give your power away this week. There are many ways we can give power away. We can encourage others. We can help others. We can share our gifts and resources with others. We can serve other people. We can listen to others. We can defer to others. We can forgive others. We can treat others the way we ourselves want to be treated. Doing that is not always easy, of course, but doing that does lead us into the great paradox at the heart of our faith, the great paradox at the heart of all creation: the more we give away our power for the happiness of others, the more power we have and the happier we are.

Communal hope and faith. November 17, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 21:5-19

We live in uncertain times. But that’s nothing new. Every age and every life deals with uncertainty. And often the way we deal with it is to hold tight to things that make us feel secure.

Back in first century Palestine, it was the temple that offered this sense of security to the Jewish people. Just to look at it conjured up feelings of strength and safety. Made up of gigantic stones weighing anywhere from two to five hundred tons, the temple covered the equivalent of twenty- nine football fields in Jerusalem. It was a sight to behold. A remarkable feat of engineering which was only dwarfed by the grandeur it held in every Jewish heart as the center of everything sacred and dear. 

And then Jesus goes and drops a bomb. A verbal bomb that is, smack dab in the middle of the temple. “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." Which is followed by a series of apocalyptic, end time predictions. Wars, rebellions, earthquakes, famines, plagues, family betrayals. It’s fearful and frightening, to say the least. But we need not get bogged down with the particulars here because, sadly, Jesus’ predictions are not unique to any particular time or place. Every age has its own disasters.

And everybody has their own temples. Some temples are made out of stone, but more of them, especially in our day, are made up of people, places, values, identities, beliefs. Some we have inherited. Others we have built for ourselves. But whatever that shape or form our temple takes its role is always the same - to provide us with a sense of stability, security, identity, meaning - something solid that we can hold onto in an uncertain world.

But part of Jesus’ message to us is that whatever our temple, no matter how seemingly strong or secure, eventually it will fall. So what then? What do we do when our temple falls? When what we have depended upon fails us? Well, what we often do is what the people did in our reading from Luke’s gospel. Upon hearing the shocking news of the coming destruction of their temple they grasp for some sort of certainty even if it’s just some meager details - “When will this be?...What will be the sign?”  they desperately ask - hoping that an answer might give them something to hold onto, some degree of clarity in the midst of the unknown. But that’s not what Jesus offers.

Jesuit philosopher, John Kavanaugh, tells of a time when Mother Teresa asked him, “What can I do for you?” As Kavanaugh had been ministering to the poor in Calcutta with her and all the while had been wrestling mightily as he tried to figure out his life path. “Please pray for me,” he answered. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. “Pray that I have clarity,” he requested. Her response, though, took him by surprise. “No. No, I will not do that,” she said emphatically, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” Confused by this Kavanaugh explained to her that she, Mother Teresa, always seemed to have the clarity in what she was doing and that was what he longed for. Which made her laugh. “I have never had clarity,” she told him, “what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Clarity is the last thing we cling to when our temples crumble and fall. When we feel unsure, insecure or just completely lost we seek explanations, reasons, answers to why things are the way they are. But instead of offering those kinds of answers, Jesus calls us to what we really need. To be still in the midst of chaos or calamity. To resist reacting out of fear or despair. And instead to remain present and faithful in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. Trusting that even when, or especially when, we are at a loss and things are unclear that God is very present and at work.

Honestly, though, that sounds like a mighty tall order - to be still and present and faithful when things are falling apart? And then to add to that the part about enduring, specifically when Jesus says, “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” The stakes seem way too high. But know this, Jesus isn’t telling us to simply buck up, tough it out, and soldier on. Nor is he calling us to a type of fatalism where we passively accept of life’s hardships. Rather the endurance Jesus speaks of is a communal hope and faith. It’s not something we do on our own, by ourselves individually. But by the power of God’s spirit living in us and moving through us, together, we are able to believe and hope and trust and endure - all the while knowing that at any one time some of us are really solid in the faith while others of us are barely holding on. So that even when our temples fall we hope together trusting ultimately not in our own powers to endure, but in Jesus’ enduring presence which will save our souls in all times and in all places.

Life is uncertain. And all the temples of this world will eventually fall - the one in Jerusalem fell in the year 70. But what will never fall or fail us is God. The love of God. The love of God that promises in Christ that from our ruins, whatever they may be, that there will always, always come new life. 

Beyond our imagining. November 10, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Luke 20:27-38

No marriage in the world to come. No sex in heaven. That prospect does not actually sound very . . . heavenly. There are a variety of ways for human beings to be intimate with each other, of course, but certainly vast numbers of people enjoy and depend on the sexual intimacy of marriage. Which is why so many people have found the words of Jesus today so disturbing. There will be no marriage in the resurrected life. But we know God is love, so we can be sure that whatever we will experience in that life, it will involve more loving, not less. So if these verses bother us, I am guessing the problem is not with God’s plan but with our imagination, or lack thereof. C. S. Lewis writes insightfully about this in his book, Miracles:

I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer “No,” he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of.  The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fullness awaits us we anticipate fasting.

We anticipate fasting. We talk a good game. We proclaim that God is awesome, we profess that God’s love is all powerful, but then we limit what God can do to what our human brains can envision. So 0ften what we call a failure of faith is really a failure of imagination. The Sadducees in this Gospel are trapped in the smallness of their own minds. If a woman is married to seven different men in this life, then whose wife will she be in the next life? The Sadducees cannot imagine how to resolve that — “Look at this big problem! How can you fix it? You can’t fix it!” — so they conclude that there is no life after death. And Jesus responds by saying that God is so much bigger than that and has something so much greater than that in store for us.

This is a common theme in our history: God is always inviting us to envision things that seem beyond our imagining. We see in that reading from the prophet Haggai today. The people of Israel are finally going home after their long exile in Babylon, and what they find is Jerusalem in ruins and the temple destroyed. But while they may feel hopeless, the LORD says through Haggai that the latter splendor of this house will be greater than the former. Just because you can’t imagine it doesn’t mean God can’t do it.

In fact, Scripture shows that being filled with the Holy Spirit means opening our minds and expanding our imaginations so that we can share in the dream God has for creation. The prophet Joel says that when the Spirit is poured out, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions (Joel 2:28). One of the  reasons we are here today, we who are Gentile Christians, is that Peter had a dream from G0d that blew him away, a dream of a vast sheet covered with animals being lowered from heaven, and all of them — all of them — being declared clean by God. A first century Jew could not imagine enjoying table fellowship with unclean Gentiles, but God imagined it and brought it to pass.

And this is not just true in the Bible. During our lifetime, many people could not imagine a woman standing at the altar, celebrating the Holy Eucharist. During our lifetime, many people could not imagine embracing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people as they are and blessing same-sex marriages. But God could, and the Spirit, moving through faithful people open enough to get a glimpse of what God is doing, brought it to pass. And the movement of the Spirit is not limited to the church. Not that long ago, it was impossible to imagine that Jim Crow laws would be overturned and that black children would attend school with white children. We have a long way to go to achieve full racial justice, but what progress we have made is due to open-hearted, open-minded people sharing in God’s seemingly impossible vision for humanity. What was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most famous speech? “I have a dream.”

What is God’s dream for us? That is not a sentimental question: it has a direct bearing on how we live our lives. The Sadducees live sadly diminished lives. They can’t see past their own myopic vision: death conquers everything, and all we do in this life just ends in oblivion. Jesus teaches us that God’s love is so much greater than that, a truth made fully manifest in his resurrection. He doesn’t want us to live constrained lives, always fearing the finality of death, but to live lives filled with hope and expectation. God always has greater things in store for us. Everything this parish does, from building the Mission to feeding 44 children every weekend to giving out Play-Doh on Pride Day, it does because people among us dare to dream with God and do things that we might once have thought impossible.

And the same holds true for our individual lives. We can get hit hard: a loved one dies, we receive a bad diagnosis, things fall apart. We might not be able to see anything but darkness ahead, but God’s vision is never obscured by darkness. God is never finished with us; even at the moment of death, God is not finished with us. The Gospel today and the Good News of Jesus Christ in general set us free from the worst sin of all. And despite conventional wisdom, that sin is not pride, and it’s not even the inveterate human tendency to worship idols. The ultimate sin is despair — and Jesus will not let us go there. Nothing defeats God’s love. Nothing. As that old Raymond Rossiter poem puts it, “Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”

And from God’s perspective, the view is limitless.

Known to God as saints. November 3, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 6:20-31

Tennis, chess, poker, Chutes and Ladders, soccer, charades. Many of the games we know and love could be described as zero-sum games - where in order for one person to win another must lose. But it’s not just with games that we think in zero-sum terms. We do it in the world too, especially when resources are limited. Like if you have a pie. The bigger piece of the pie someone else gets means that there is less for me. That’s zero-sum thinking which can be summed up with the motto, “Your gain is my loss” and vice versa, “your loss is my gain.” 

So is that what’s going on here in our reading from the gospel of Luke? Jesus begins by proclaiming blessings to the poor, the hungry, the sad, the excluded. And then moves onto pronouncing woes. Woes to the wealthy, the full, the happy, the popular. Is Jesus suggesting that God’s world operates with a zero-sum model where every winner necessitates a loser or that every one of today’s pleasures will be repaid with a punishment tomorrow?

No. I pray that we all know Jesus well enough to discern that answer. Far from dividing people up as winners or losers, God’s kingdom is all about breaking down the walls that separate us all through the power of love - a love, a mercy, a grace that has no limits, no bounds. It never runs out. God’s abundance is available to all. No one is left out and no one is the less for it. And what Jesus is talking about is the way that we can enter more fully into that abundance which is found in God’s kingdom. A kingdom that not only exists in some distant future but is right here among us, unfolding in our very midst. And no matter who you are or what your condition - poor or rich, hungry or full, sad or happy, excluded or popular - Jesus does not want any of us to miss it.

So instead of playing some kind of zero-sum game, what Jesus is offering with his blessings and woes is more like the childhood game Hot and Cold. Perhaps you know it? Somebody hides an object and then the seeker moves around an area until the hider says something like, “You’re warm,” to signal to the seeker that she is getting close to the object. But if the seeker starts to unknowingly move away then the hider might warn, “You’re getting cold.” And if the seeker is really going in the wrong direction the hider might call out, “Your freezing!” in order to get the seeker back on track.

 Jesus’ blessings and woes aren’t judgments about winners and losers - a declaration of who’s in and who's out. Rather he’s calling to us, letting us know if we are either warm or cold, getting close to or moving away from God’s Kingdom. To those who live relatively comfortable lives, particularly those who act as if they are saying, “I’ve got mine. I’m good. I’m in. Close the door behind me.” Jesus cries, “Woe!” You are getting cold! Freezing, even! You’re going in the opposite direction of the Kingdom of God. But to those who suffer Jesus declares that they are blessed. They’re getting warmer. Not because there is anything good or holy about suffering in and of itself. But because it seems that God’s kingdom of full of love and grace and mercy is more easily found by those who are keenly aware of their need.

For when we recognize our needs and our weaknesses and entrust them to God we are moving in the right direction and come closer to God’s kingdom and God’s people. God’s people who, on this All Saints’ Sunday, we especially remember and celebrate. For in Christ and through Christ we share an intimate unity with one another no matter the differences or distances that separate us here on earth or in the heavenly realm. The connection we have with all people in all time is part of the mystery of our faith. And another part of that mystery is that no matter who we are or what we have done, we are known to God as saints. 

Now, of course, there are the famous saints. The ones whom the Church lauds for their holiness of life like St. Paul, St. Francis or St. Teresa of Avila. Those are the ones whose stories make it into our Sunday bulletin inserts. And then there are the rest of us - the not so well known and, perhaps we’d say, the not so holy either. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if we really knew the whole truth about any saint’s life, famous or not, we’d find a truth more complex and less holy than the legend or the story. For no matter who we are there parts of our lives where God’s love shines brightly and there are parts that exist in the shadows.

That complicated nature is certainly revealed in the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She died in 1997 and in 2016 the Roman Catholic Church canonized her as a saint. But before that, during her lifetime many regarded her as a living saint because she poured her life into caring for India’s poorest of the poor. But after her death letters she wrote to spiritual confidants revealed that this icon of Christian faith spent most of her years of ministry in deep doubt. One time after watching the other sisters of her order pray in chapel, Mother Teresa reflected, “I see them love God, and I am just alone, empty, excluded.” In another letter she confessed that, “As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” This wasn’t just a dark night of the soul. This crisis of faith plagued her for over forty years. These writings were made public not in order to diminish her reputation, but to reveal to the world the fullness and the complexity of who she was. She loved the poor because of her faith even as she struggled with her faith.

Mother Teresa’s struggles and doubts were in no way sin, but I don’t think she or any of us would argue with St. Paul in the book of Romans when he makes the sweeping, but nonetheless accurate, assessment that, “we have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (3:23). Yes, we may be called saints, but we are far from perfect. Yet it is when we humbly acknowledge our imperfections, our brokenness, our weaknesses that we actually come closer to the Kingdom of God and to the love that connects us one to another. And as we do, Jesus proclaims to us that truly we are blessed.