Monday, May 26, 2014

Letting Go - a note concerning Best Practices


Yesterday I made a tough call – I postponed an upcoming June 10 mission trip to Haiti. The reason – Chikunguya Fever, an illness similar to Dengue. Not fatal, but certainly not pleasant.

The decision to postpone was reached only after two weeks of tracking this newest of health challenges for Haiti; a detailed discussion with a Haitian doctor in Port au Prince, who is also a trusted friend; a lengthy conversation with our team’s medical director; and many hours of research and prayer.

This is not the first trip to Haiti that I have postponed – actually, it is the fifth such trip, all planned with detailed and loving care in an effort to support our brothers and sisters in Haiti who have faced incredible challenges throughout their brief but turbulent history.

Two trips were delayed due to hurricanes, one due to the malaria epidemic when it was at its peak, and one due to the extreme political unrest that preceded President Martelly’s election. Each of these trip delays was a painful reminder of just how little control we have when it comes to carrying out the wishes and intentions of our hearts through mission work in the world as Christ’s disciples.

The June 10 team is disappointed and I would imagine a little angry. Several of the team members have never been to Haiti and were experiencing that wonderfully innocent enthusiasm of a first time missioner. Two experienced missioners were set on going despite the possibility of contracting Chikunguya. Others were resigned. I am heartsick.

Yet, once again, I will be unable to connect with those whom I am trying to help. Those who are geographically so close; but, in reality, so very far away.

As I struggled through the night combating thoughts of failure with prayerful requests of guidance from God, I came to this conclusion – one I can live with.

The Best Practices for Medical Missions to Haiti has put me in touch with gifted medical personnel in Haiti. They have been to the proposed June mission site. I will send them to do the work that we had intended to do. As for the other components of our planned trip – they can wait patiently for a few months. Indeed we can continue to perfect the plans for a poultry farming project and work harder at raising funds for the solar project already handed over to a Haitian company for an initial design and implementation plan.


This morning God’s message has burst through the feelings of failure. I am seeing a bit more clearly that if the Best Practices project goal is to create sustainable projects that “will be there after we have gone” then that is what we must do. We must gradually let go of our need to be continually present while the seeds of our work grow at the hands of those who own the fields. Freedom and growth comes from a love that does not cling. We all know that – We all need God, and perhaps Chikunguya too, to remind of that, so that with our love and prayerful support others can grow.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

If We Fail in Love...


Sermon
Sixth Sunday of Easter
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church  -  May 25, 2014

John 14:15-23

Those of you who know me, know that I –like everyone else - have my “idols.” Walter Brueggemann and Thomas Merton are right up there on top, along with Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoffer, and Henri Nouwen. On a more secular level, let’s not forget Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Katherine Hepburn, and Helen Mirren. All fascinating and gifted people. People who have had the talent and courage to in some way “make a difference.”

However, at the very top of my list is someone that we don’t hear about all that much these days. Someone who entered my life very briefly many years ago as the priest who counseled and married my first husband and I. Someone who I really wish I had had the opportunity to know better and to work with. Someone who was incredibly passionate, direct and “right on.” Someone who had the most charismatic, yet love-filled being that I have ever encountered.

Someone whom I will never forget - William Sloane Coffin.

William Sloane Coffin, as some of you may know, served as chaplain of Yale University and Williams College, was senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City, and president of SANE/FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security. He became famous at Yale, where I knew him, in the 1960s for his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was jailed as a civil rights “Freedom Rider,” indicted by the government in the Benjamin Spock conspiracy trial, and was immortalized as Rev. Sloane in the Doonesbury comic strip.

Towards the end of his life Coffin wrote in his book CREDO,Credo – I believe – best translates ‘I have given my heart to.’ However imperfectly, I have given my heart to the teaching and example of Christ, which among many other things, informs my understanding of faiths other than Christianity. Certainly religions are different. Still most seek to fulfill the same function; that is they strive to convert people from self-preoccupation to the wholehearted giving of oneself in love for God and for others.” (Credo, p. xv)

Later, in one of his sermons, Coffin preached “Make love your aim, not biblical inerrancy, nor purity, nor obedience to holiness codes. Make love your aim, for (and here he quotes 1 Corinthians 13): ‘If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.’”(1 Cor. 13:103)

Coffin ended the sermon with these words, “I doubt if in any other scriptures of the world is there a more radical statement of ethics. If we fail in love, we fail in all things else.”

In today’s brief but powerful Gospel reading from John, Jesus emphasizes, once again, his all-consuming theme – love. Today’s gospel passage begins and ends with love.

Jesus opens with, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” He concludes with “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

It is interesting to note that in John’s gospel Jesus gives only a single commandment, and that commandment is: To Love – “Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

We hear this commandment first as Jesus washes his disciples’ feet after the last supper. We hear it again in the chapter directly following today’s gospel passage as Jesus continues his dialogue with the disciples by referring to himself as the true vine, and God as the vine-grower. He says to these reluctant believers once again, “…abide in my love (or, be one with me in my love)…This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:9; 12-13)

The author of John’s gospel would have been quite pleased to hear William Sloane Coffin’s claim to his fellow Christians, “If we fail in love, we fail in all things else.” Most certainly Jesus would be clapping his hands in joy.

The disciples may have been puzzled and reluctant to fully understand the importance of Jesus’ great commandment, but William Sloane Coffin and so many others have not only taken it to heart – not only understood its centrality to the well-being of humanity – they have also put it to work through their work in world.

In the Bible, the word love is mentioned between 500 and 700 times, depending on which version of it you are reading. In John’s gospel Jesus uses love verbs 57 times. Overall, love is the core principle that defines our identity as Christians and drives our life of faith and mission as we live and move and have our being as Christ’s disciples in a fragmented and troubled world.

Love, in the sense that Jesus used the Greek word – agape – is selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional. It is not simply affection or friendship, and it is, of course, not eros, or needful love.

The love – agape - that Jesus refers to is not something be achieved by certain acts, or anticipated as an end product.  It is not a lust for pleasure. It is not a desire to work hard, and to be the best. It is not the camaraderie found at a gathering of friends. It is not a love to be found in the future.

The love that Jesus refers to is an unconditional love. It is a love, agape, to be entered into in the present. The commandment is: To Love. It is the love of God or Christ for humankind. It is the covenant love of God for humans, as well as our reciprocal love for God. It is also a love that mandates agape for our fellow man.

The love that Jesus refers to is a love that is our salvation. It is a love that brings us into one being with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus assures us, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you.”

Jesus concludes this part of his message with two verses not included in the lectionary version of this gospel passage. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 13:21-23)

Everything that matters, that is, our relationship with God, our salvation – our eternal peace – exists right now. We don’t have to wait for God. Abundant life is available in the here and now. If we understand and abide in Jesus’ command to love in the broadest sense of agape, a world filled with peace is a possibility.

Memorial Day is a time to remember those who have died in service to this country. It is a time to honor the men and women who gave themselves and their lives in the many wars waged in the hopes and dreams of a better, more peaceful, world.

However today, as never before, does it seem less and less possible to achieve peace through war.

Today, as never before, does it seem critically important, indeed - essential, to achieve peace through a series of international, inter community, and interfaith dialogues that are brought about by bridges of communication built with love, with agape.

Love, agape, is our refuge, the rock of our salvation.

John reminds us “Those who keep my commandments are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by the Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Paul reminds us, “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes in all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”  (I Cor 13:4-8)

William Sloane Coffin reminds us, “Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.”

Love is our salvation. “If we fail in love, we fail in all things else.”