The Tao of Jesus -- Seeking and Letting Go

I've cited a couple of sources at the header that strike close to home in my search:

• "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (NRSV, Matthew 16:25)
• "The Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone." (Tao Te Ching, chapter 37)

While these might seem to have only passing relation, scripture is a funny thing. It says different things to different people. That's not to say that the words are different--unless, of course, you care about different translations--rather, I mean that scripture is a means through which the Holy Spirit speaks to us. The Holy Spirit says different things to each person because (as I've said before) we need different things. But I digress...

In my discernment process, I've made plans. Admittedly, I'm slightly obsessive-compulsive--somewhere between what the Air Force calls "attention to detail" and a control freak. I've been trained to solve problems, to overcome obstacles, and to plan my life. And this is where, I'm afraid, my scientific education and my Air Force training come to odds with the formation of my ministry. Both Jesus and Lao Tzu write about the folly of struggling with the details at the expense of the big picture, of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Jesus warns us that too much attention to the details of our plans (overanalysis) can make us lose sight of why what we're doing matters. We are all called by God to some vocation. What do we say to God: yes or no? Do we cling to what we want for our life--and lose it--or do we let go of what we want and reach out to God's embrace--and find it?

Lao Tzu's "non-action" is often interpreted here as inaction, but that's not entirely correct. Instead, "non-action" is action that flows from the Tao rather than from the personal will. The personal will is flawed, only the Tao is perfect.

See any similarity? Here you see--and I rediscover--a piece of my theology.

God has given us the gift of free will. Yes, God wants our love, but it's not love unless we give it freely. If we don't want to love someone, then we don't love that someone.

But it's a dangerous gift that God has given us. Armed with this seemingly insignificant portion of God's power, we (humanity) has done immense harm to the world and to ourselves. It all began with one human placing personal will above God's will--the original sin of eating the forbidden fruit. It grew into a darkness in the human psyche--so dark that humanity could scarcely see God's will, let alone follow it.

Finally, Jesus came as the light of the world, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." (NRSV, John 8:12) But we have to make a choice: Do we follow Jesus or not? Do we try to save what we want, or do we lose our life for Jesus' sake?

Coming back to my own search, I have to remind myself of this from time to time. And I've been reminded of it by others as well. I have the same weakness as the rest of humanity--imagine that! I want to do what I want, when I want, and how I want. But--to put it bluntly--that is the essence of sin. God calls me to do what God wants me to do, in God's own way and on God's timetable. What I'm doing by trying my own way is not only the essence of sin, but it's an exercise in futility. After all, in a contest between me and God, who do you think would win?

My second sermon -- 1 Cor 4:1-5

This is my second sermon, written for the Preparing to Preach course. I intended my first sermon for St. George's Episcopal Church, Dayton, Ohio, for the second Sunday after Pentecost (Year A), which fell on 25 May 2008.

I did not preach this sermon at St. George's, however, as it ended up being the first Sunday after Carol Hull's retirement and the first Sunday of Jim Larsen's ministry at St. George's. I did preach it as my final sermon for the course, however.

The primary text is 1 Cor 4:1-5, though I pull in a bit from the Gospel reading, from the Sermon on the Mount.

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A few weeks ago, I attended a training class for work. The class began by breaking up into small teams, with each team having a set time period to build a tower out of index cards. At the end of the exercise, our tower was the only one not standing.

Ultimately, the problem with our tower was similar to the problem in the church in Corinth. In today’s reading from Paul, we have a fight within that church, involving the followers of leaders such as Apollos.

In the case of our tower, each member of the team had an idea how we wanted to build it, and we argued about that until our time was nearly expired. We were still divided even as we built the tower, and that division made for a very shaky foundation.

Now, the division in the church in Corinth isn’t a over how to put together index cards, but over more serious matters, like what work the church will do, or what theology the church will believe.

As biblical scholar William Orr writes, this is a church in danger of schism. And there certainly have been schisms in the church since then. Schism is a word we’ve heard quite a bit recently in connection with our own church. The news media have swarmed about that word, like sharks smelling blood in the water. With headlines like “Division looms for Episcopal Church,” or “Church leader battles division,” the media pronounce the impending schism of our church. And many of the controversies of our secular society become controversies within our church.

Like the members of my tower-building team, we almost hear the threat: “Time’s up.”

But the Christian church has often been controversial, even from the very beginning. Christ’s earthly ministry was a litany of challenges to his culture and the hierarchy of the time. One only has to read the Sermon on the Mount for a few examples. We often call Christ ‘counter-cultural,’ for that very reason. Can we expect to be both Christian and part of worldly culture? Jesus challenged his own culture, why shouldn’t we challenge ours?

As Paul writes to the church in Corinth, we are “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.” Following our baptism, the priest or bishop chrismates us, smearing oil in the sign of the cross on our foreheads and saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” With this, we are bound to Christ.

And being bound to Christ makes us one.

As with my tower-building team, sometimes we just have to acknowledge our differences, so we can get something out of the class, and move on to more pressing challenges, even if we never finished the tower.

Great things can come of our differences, if we can weather them and learn from them, and let the Holy Spirit work through them.

For example, the differences in the early Christian church led, in large part, to the meeting of the council of Nicaea. Out of that came the Nicene Creed, which forms the statement of our core belief that we recite each week.

In her Pentacost letter, our Presiding Bishop writes, “None of us is alone. We cannot engage the fullness of God’s mission alone, nor know the fullness of God’s reality alone. Together as members of the Body of Christ, we can begin to try.”

As stewards of God’s mysteries, we have work to do.

We have changes to make—both in the world and in ourselves—if we are to be found trustworthy.

In this week’s gospel reading, from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Although my team wrote off our tower, we still became a team. We learned from our differences, finished the remaining team exercises, and completed the class.

Victor Paul Furnish, professor at Southern Methodist University, writes that the Corinthians are a “congregation ‘called’,” and that “God’s call is to be a holy people, ‘sanctified in Christ Jesus.’” Likewise, we should think of ourselves as a congregation called by God.

As we say responsively at the beginning of our baptismal liturgy,

There is one Body and one Spirit;

There is one hope in God’s call to us;

One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism;

One God and Father of all.

Amen.

My first sermon -- John 14:1-14 (Easter 5A)

During the Spring 2008 semester, I took the Preparing to Preach class at United Theological Seminary. As the main part of that course, I wrote and preached two sermons to develop my homiletical abilities.

I intended my first sermon for St. George's Episcopal Church, Dayton, Ohio, for the fifth Sunday of Easter (Year A). I preached the essence of this sermon at the Cornerstone service on 19 April 2008. The primary text is John 14:1-14.

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When I was a child, my mom sent me to church as a way to get me out of the house for a few hours. I attended Sunday school, but I was taught about Jesus only through activities that emphasized memorizing Bible verses. Finding meaning was irrelevant. And I’m fairly sure one of those Bible verses wasn’t this week’s gospel reading.

At about age 12, I had a run-in with an overzealous Sunday school teacher. I’m sure she meant well enough, but her brand of faith didn’t feel right for me. Instead, it made me want to leave. When I had the opportunity, I ran out the door.

And I didn’t stop there. I left the church entirely. And I kept running.

In the eighteen years since that time, I entered a church but one time, and only because it was required of me.

As I grew up, I felt a tug at my soul now and again. It grew into a longing that I couldn’t identify, let alone satisfy. God was calling, but I didn’t recognize the sound of the phone. So how could I possibly answer it?

What I hadn’t understood as a child—or as a young man—was exactly what Jesus says to his followers in John’s gospel for this week.

“In my Father’s house are many rooms.”

C. S. Lewis paraphrases this in the preface to his book, Mere Christianity, that Christianity is a house with many rooms, and each person is suited for a particular room.

The trick is finding that room.

By the time I became an adult, I’d stopped running, but I was lost on a dark and foggy road. Like someone driving in the fog, I didn’t really know where I was. Even worse, I didn’t have a clue what my life meant…or what that ringing sound was in the back of my soul.

During that period spent outside the church, I tried to satisfy my longing by reading about other religions and philosophies. In other words, I tried to find myself. Many of us have an idea how well that normally works. I was still lost in the fog.

When I began graduate school at the University of Texas at Dallas, I made some new friends. Among those new friends were Mark and Abby, a married couple with whom I became very close. We all worked away the days and nights in our physics classes. And they were quite happy. While I didn’t have too much difficulty with the class work, or the spent days and nights, I wasn’t quite so happy.

And, as always, there was that phone ringing in the back of my soul.

But there was a ray of hope. As it turns out, Mark and Abby are members of the Episcopal Church. Through them I finally recognized the sound of a phone. I respected them and the lives they led. And I respected them more that they weren’t the same overzealous people I’d fled so long ago.

I still didn’t know if I’d like their church, so I planned a visit while they were out of town so there wasn’t any pressure on either side. Imagine my surprise to find that God was leading me, through them, back to the same church. Of course it wasn’t the same physical building, but it was the same household of God that I’d fled as a child. I kept going in, but I found myself being led to a different door. This new door led me into the Episcopal Church. By the end of the service, I knew that God had called me home, and I was baptized at the very next Easter Vigil, with Mark and Abby as my godparents.

As Episcopalians, we live in one room in the Father’s house. And the Father’s house includes the entire Christian community.

In this passage from John, I have found words for God’s call to me. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” These are the words I hear when I finally pick up the ringing phone in the back of my soul.

As a child, I fled one such room that didn’t fit my soul, and I ended up running away from the Father’s house entirely. I’ve since found my way back to the house, and I’ve found my dwelling place. But what about those who haven’t found their dwelling places? What about those who wander in the darkness outside the household of God?

In John’s gospel, Christ promises that he goes to prepare a place for each of us. We receive the Holy Spirit, just as the disciples receive the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathes on them after the resurrection. In receiving the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, we enter the Father’s house, and become members of the household of God.

As Jesus promised his disciples, so he promises us, he has gone to prepare a place for us, and he has come again to take us to himself. When Jesus tells his disciples about his Father’s house, he’s not talking about an earthly house. Maybe he’s not even talking about a house as a physical structure, but rather, he’s talking about a social structure—the Father’s home, or the Father’s family, as one might refer to a house of nobility.

Wes Howard-Brook writes that the house of God “is not a building but a relationship among those who hear God and do God’s will.”

The Father’s house is the “one holy catholic and apostolic church,” as we say each week when we recite the Nicene Creed. It represents not just our church, but every church, the whole of the Christian community.

Just as Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Father’s house is the House of Houses.

The single point that both Thomas and Philip miss in this passage from John’s gospel is: How do we enter a relationship with God? Or, how do we enter the Father’s house?

As Jesus responds to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” This is not a statement that any particular church is the right way to God. Rather, it is a statement of Jesus’ status in the Father’s house. Jesus is the only Son of God and therefore acts on behalf of the Father and the Father’s house, much as would the eldest son of any family in Jesus’ time.

As with any family or household from Jesus’ time to the present day, being a member of the household of God, or living in the Father’s house, is a commitment that brings both obligation and benefit. And we can ask for Jesus to do things on our behalf. We bear obligation in Jesus’ words that, “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” We gain benefit as well. As Jesus promises, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

We are called to perform Jesus’ work. In our Baptismal Covenant, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self. Jesus calls us all into the Father’s house. But God’s call isn’t a one-size-fits-all form of generic spirit. The Holy Spirit gives different forms of nourishment to different people because that’s what we need. So we can’t assume everyone will fit in the same room in the Father’s house. But, even though we have differences, we are many faiths living in one house—the Father’s house.

Having been the person alone in the dark, I find that part of the promise I’ve made in my own Baptismal Covenant is to try to help people to find their own dwelling places. My promise is threefold:

• First, I’ve promised to be a butler, so to speak, to greet those entering the house, to help them find their own dwelling places.
• Second, I’ve promised to help those fleeing wrong rooms, so that—with God’s help—they don’t flee the Father’s house entirely.
• Third, I’ve promised to be a guide, to go back outside, back into the darkness, to help the lost find their way toward the house of God.

This time, even going back into the darkness and fog, I’m not lost any more.

Amen.

Who are you?

"A dangerous question. There's never a good answer." --Lorien, Babylon 5

Like many of us, I'm seeking the answer to the question, "Who are you?". Hence the title of my blog.

The basics:

• I received my B.S. in physics from the University of Dayton in 1994, and my M.S. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1998.
• I worked for the Transportation Security Administration, from 2002 to 2005, as a screener at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
• I joined the United States Air Force in September 2005, and was commissioned in December 2005. I was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant in December 2007.
  

Seeking:

• I joined the Episcopal Church in September 2004, and I was baptized at the Great Vigil of Easter, 26 March 2005.
• I feel a call from God to the priesthood, and specifically to service in the military chaplaincy. I have been exploring that call since May 2006.
• I'm almost 1/3 of the way through the M.Div. program at United Theological Seminary.
  
• I am about to be deployed to Iraq.

My primary aim for this blog is to record my spiritual journey in preparation for, during, and after, my deployment as I continue to explore God's call to me. To that end, a lot of this blog will be spiritual/religious in nature.

I also aim to record, to a certain extent, my physical journey for my friends. To that end, the balance of this blog will likely describe my personal life as I travel away from them for a one-year deployment.