June 09, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
So next time you are driving down 219 or the 400 and you see a long-legged old crow hopping over to munch on a dead skunk, don’t be thinking “Yuk!” – roll down your window and yell, “Bon a petit!” In the end it doesn’t much matter how it happens, whether it is via a short straw or a decisive act of intention, you and I are sanctified by what we do… or not.
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Sermons @ Trinity
May 24, 2009
“Crow & Jesus”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
Good morning.
I love crows…
they may even be my favorite bird,
although there are lots of cool birds to pick from.
But I didn’t pick today’s Liturgical reading
because I really like crows –
I picked it because I really do not like
the two readings from the Bible
that I don’t get to choose!
The reading from the Book of Acts,
where they pick a replacement by drawing straws,
is either a really bad case of magical thinking
or conflict avoidance began really early in the Church.
Then there is that mind-numbing,
rambling speech
that John concocts
for his character of Jesus to speak.
So I found Mary Oliver’s “Crows”
because I remembered the Legend of Crow
that cuts to the chase better than John.
I do not remember which Native American tribe
told this particular version of the legend
because I have read several versions of it.
But it seems that the future of humankind
was seriously in question
by what we would call an Ice Age.
It had become frigid
and the sun would not return
and many in the animal kingdom were endangered.
A council was held
and the birds were inventoried
as to which one of them would fly to the sun
and bring back fire.
The biggest and most powerful birds
were asked first.
Then the fastest.
Then the most magnificent.
None of them would go
because they all knew is was a fool-hardy venture.
Whoever went would become consumed by the fire.
Finally Crow offered to go.
Crow was not graceful
and an ungainly scavenger of others’ left-overs.
Crow had not a hint of color –
an albino among the glorious plumage of others.
But Crow was willing to try.
To make a long legend short…
Crow does indeed make it back
with a burning coal
but is singed and blackened in the process.
The Creator heals Crow
and bestows great powers upon Crow
in gratitude for Crow’s bravery and love.
Crow’s present color
is the sign that the Creator sanctified Crow –
set Crow apart among all the other animals –
because of Crow’s great deed.
So next time you are driving down 219 or the 400
and you see a long-legged old crow
hopping over to munch on a dead skunk,
don’t be thinking “Yuk!” –
roll down your window and yell,
“Bon a petit!”
In the end
it doesn’t much matter how it happens,
whether it is via a short straw
or a decisive act of intention,
you and I are sanctified by what we do…
or not.
Sanctified.
It is such a religious word –
jargon dripping with bad taste
and worse smells,
and why would I use it in a sermon
when I spend more time than you want to know
deleting religious jargon from our worship
where I can…and sometimes where I shouldn’t.
Because John isn’t all bad.
In the midst of all the gobbledy-gook,
John has Jesus pray for God
to sanctify his little community
so that they will be in-the-world
but not belong-to-the-world.
Let’s pause on that a moment…
Like slow-roasting chestnuts
rather than like Crow picking at carrion.
“Sanctify” it.
Like stone-age priests were sanctified…
Like the ancient’s sanctified animals
before murdering them on the altar
and smearing their blood in the name of God…
Sanctified…
Like how people and places were set apart for God’s business and smeared with blood…
“Sanctify them” Jesus asks God,
at least in John’s imagination.
Sanctify them.
What a bewildering idea.
This prayer Jesus prays in chapter 17 of John,
is a lonely prayer.
The Church calls it
Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” – and that means
the Church likes to think of Jesus as a priest
instead of a prophet.
How convenient for the Church.
But this prayer,
as composed by John,
consists of a series of reports Jesus makes to God,
like a field commander reporting in.
The prayer lets loose a flurry of petitions
for God to care for Jesus’ little community of friends
from whom he is about to withdraw.
And then, at the end,
Jesus makes a final request
that that his band of friends be sanctified.
Sanctified.
It is the same word his ancestors in Israel used
to describe the nation as “set apart.”
It is the same word used to suggest
Israel was to be a model of relationship with God.
It is the same word used to describe the temple priests as “set apart” to function around the altar.
It is the same word used to describe the animal
without blemish and set apart for sacrifice.
“Sanctify them,” Jesus asks,
“and for their sakes I sanctify myself,
so that they also may be sanctified…”
It is a bewildering idea for us.
And you should be sitting there wondering
what all this could possibly have to do
with people who work for a living;
who have houses and gardens
and monstrous amounts to take care of;
with people who have places to go and people to see, commitments to be fulfilled,
bills to pay,
children to nurture…
People like you and me
who are not set apart
but live with our feet rooted in the mud of life.
What does an other-worldly
high priestly prayer
like the one John wrote for Jesus,
have to do with us right here in Buffalo, New York
who are trying to live and thrive
on the cusp of difficult and changing times?
Just this: we are baptized.
If you haven’t been around since Easter Day,
or sleeping through my sermons,
we have been thinking about baptism.
This is the last week of the Easter season
and next week we move on.
But here is what we need to think about.
If we are the spiritual descendents
of those first sanctified pals of Jesus –
and through baptism and tradition
we are in fact
that same community
gathered in a another century –
we need to know what we are sanctified for!
If we are distinguished,
differentiated,
given a special role to play,
made peculiar for a reason that God intends
will benefit the Creation –
like Crow was,
like Jesus was,
like so many have been –
what is it?
Clearly it is not for moral purity
as the Puritans and others have struggled to achieve.
Clearly, we in the church,
are not distinguished by our virtuous living
or high moral standards;
no way, no how,
has the church, or many of us for that matter,
ever fulfilled that mission.
So maybe that is too big of a question.
It is a question worth asking for ourselves
as individuals who are baptized to be agents of God among those with whom
we live and work and play.
And it is worth asking about ourselves as a community,
as the 21st century version of Jesus’ community.
What sets this place apart?
Trinity I mean – this community?
It is not its beauty – Jesus wasn’t about beauty.
It is not those of us here – surely we are like most anyone else we might meet in Buffalo.
It is not Trinity’s overly proud and glorious history –
Jesus doesn’t gush about the glory of any synagogue.
It is not our liturgy or our sacraments –
we can go to any of a thousand sanctuaries
and find a way to be fed, challenged,
and infused by the Holy Spirit.
What sanctifies Trinity?
What distinguishes us?
What differentiates us?
What special role have we been given to play?
For what peculiar benefit to creation has God brought together this present mix of Crows?
Here we are,
a community of strangers
whose destinies have become intertwined
because we found or were led
through those massive wooden doors.
For what purpose has God invited us here?
Again, there is a two-fold answer: yours and ours.
Yours is worth thinking about:
Why did God invite you to this particular place,
with these particular people,
at this particular time in your life?
In two weeks we are welcoming Bishop Garrison
who is coming to confirm and receive people in this community who have answered that question…
at least for this part of their spiritual journey.
They know why they are here…
and they are renewing their baptismal promises…
and they are moving from affiliation to Trinity as a particular congregation
and becoming Episcopalian as well.
In an act of solidarity
with those among us who have been asking themselves
“Why here, why now?”
I invite all of us to be asking ourselves that question.
You may have been a part of Trinity for 30 years
but that is not an answer to the question:
longevity is not an answer
it is only to be moved by shear momentum.
To consider why God has invited you to be here,
in this place with these people
at this time, if indeed it is God’s invitation,
is more than longevity.
Finally,
there is the communal dimension of that question:
Why did God invite us together,
and how does our being together
in this place
at this time
sanctify us – or set us apart –
as an act of love for the creation?
There is a short answer.
Now I realize that you may think
that you just walked in off the street,
or got here out of habit,
or because you don’t want to look for another church
after all these years.
That would be the rational,
unimaginative answer.
But there is another reason
why Trinity Church,
with its very present configuration of people
is here…now
…in this moment in history.
What sanctifies us is rooted in the past
but utterly different from the past.
What sanctifies us is straight out of the Gospel
but clearly not an obvious part of our tradition.
What sanctifies us is obvious but risky,
absurd yet profound,
ridiculous but absolutely ordinary.
What sanctifies Trinity Church
at this very moment in time,
and at no other before,
is the clear intent and willful desire to be
a metropolitan house of prayer
and a center for worship and spiritual inquiry welcoming all people.
Metropolitan, that is,
not a neighborhood or district congregation.
That is, a place that invites,
draws
and reaches as far as we possibly can.
House of prayer, that is,
a place to be at home with, or even encounter, God.
That is, a place in which to lament or shout,
praise or rage in passionate participation with the holy.
Center for worship and spiritual inquiry, that is,
a place in which worship and service,
inreach and outreach
is a seamless garment
and not a yin and yang of opposites.
That is, an open place
where material facts are not a limit on truth,
dogma and doctrine are not a final explanation,
and where the mystery of God
is both the beginning and end of all spirituality.
Welcoming all people, that is,
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, Atheist, Baptists, Hindu and UFO’s – unidentifiable fumbling observers.
That is, all people are welcome to worship here, eat here, sing here, pray here, love here.
Now clearly we are not yet what we aspire to,
but we are sanctified – set apart –
by recognizing that we have a mission
and by responding to that mission.
Discerning a mission
among the whispered voices of God
and the willful intent to fulfill it,
sanctifies Trinity Church
and those of us here
at this moment in time.
I do not know if the reason you are here
dovetails with the way in which Trinity
is sanctified or “set apart”
but if I was going to start looking
for God’s invitation to you in all of this,
that is where I might begin.
So back to John as a way to wind down and end.
Jesus summons his community to a final meal
and as a loud noise scatters crows from the corn,
Jesus shoos their hands from bread
with his words.
He speaks to them as one who is leaving.
He tells them what he has been up to.
He offers them a vision of the road ahead.
He invites them to be sanctified –
set apart
by becoming an act of love for the creation.
His friends flutter about;
they flap with anxiously,
searching for some way out of the present grief.
But Jesus,
like the crisp light before dusk,
is everywhere present and calm.
That is the center of our community, here and now
and yesterday and tomorrow.
That peace-stilled presence
in the midst of flutter
that regardless of the day,
and no matter what the time,
is here waiting for us
inviting us
welcoming us
feeding us with himself –
flying to the sun
bringing back fire at great personal risk
and sustaining us through every age.
If we,
this community,
do what God has invited us to do,
we will continue to thrive
regardless of our eventual shape or size or beauty.
If you and me,
as individuals,
do what God has invited us to do,
we will continue to thrive
regardless of our eventual health, or wealth or beauty.
That is the message of Crow…
and that is the message of Jesus.
