Advent 3A: "The Greatest Show on Earth!"

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Preached by the Rev. David K. Fly at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, December 5, 2010.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS! CHILDREN OF ALL AGES! WELCOME TO THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!

         I don’t know about you but when I hear those words my heart starts to beat more quickly and my excitement begins to build. A ringmaster wearing a top hat and tails and wonderful leather boots takes his place in the center ring – the brass band plays a fanfare. The circus is about to begin!

         The task of the ringmaster is more than simply announcing the acts that are soon to come before us. It’s his job to build anticipation so that we put away all our cares and worries and look to the future. Something magnificent is about to happen. And within moments we begin to experience a world we didn’t believe could exist: animals jump through hoops, acrobats walk on the air above us, people are shot out of cannons and yet, they live! And in the midst of all these wonderfully talented people, the clowns fall flat on their faces and we laugh. It’s a sight to behold.

         “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near . . .’ And John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist . . . then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river . . .”

         The ringmaster/ John the Baptist? The circus/ the Kingdom of God? Strange bedfellows, eh? However, Dr. Loren Mead in his book A Celebration of Life says this:

To the contemporary world of strife, violence, tension, suffering and anxiety, both the circus and the Kingdom of God present a view of a wholly different kind of world. Not a world of business as usual. Not a world of things as they have always been . . . but a world of surprise and delight . . . a world of new possibilities . . . a world that’s unpredictable . . . a world where all participate, where no one’s left out . . . even the fool . . . a world in which the unexpected and the unprecedented can happen . . . a world of celebration of all life . . . a world of laughter as well as tears. A world that celebrates Easter.

         John the Baptist doesn’t come into the world wearing a top hat and leather boots but he’s certainly a dramatic character and especially during the season of Advent he’s like the ringmaster proclaiming the coming of a kingdom and the arrival of a Savior. Jesus enters the center ring after his introduction and suddenly angels appear to shepherds and to Mary in the garden after the resurrection, the dead are raised, the lame walk, the blind see, the hungry are fed, untouchables are touched, even Paul, a persecutor of the Jews, runs away with the circus and describes himself as the least of all the apostles who walks at the end of the parade – no one is left out.

           Once we’ve known the kingdom Jesus brings, things will never be the same again. And you and I are called to play active roles in making the kingdom of God a reality. Not only are we called to repent – to leave the old life of sin and death behind – but to allow the new life of Christ to live in and through us.

                  When my daughter Jessie was three, I took her to the Ringling Bros./Barnum and Baily circus. As the ringmaster came to the center ring, Jessie’s eyes grew wide, “Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages (it was almost as if he had called Jessie by name!), welcome to the GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.” And suddenly, high over our heads, there was an avalanche of activities as the acrobats filled the air over the ring and lion-tamers and clowns danced into the three rings. It was a sight to see and I was so entranced by all that was going on that I didn’t keep my eye on my daughter. When I turned around to say something to her I discovered she had left her seat and was walking down the aisle. I caught up with her. “Where are you going?” I asked. “Out there!” she said, pointing to the center ring. I said, “Oh Jess, circuses are only for watching.” And I tried to explain that even if she made it to the center ring, someone would have to turn her away.

         Well, three years later, the tables were turned on me when my old friend Nick Weber, a Jesuit priest, came to town. Nick had created something called the Royal Lichtenstein Three-Quarter Ring Sidewalk Circus and they travelled the country. They were in St. Louis doing a show in the parking lot of a shopping mall. I took Jessie. We stood and watched as Nick, a wonderful clown and mime in whiteface, came to the center ring. He stopped and looked at the audience and then, motioned to Jessie, calling her out of the crowd to join him, and when she did, he had her stand on a pedestal in the center of the ring. And while she stood there with a smile that could be “heard around the world,” he made her a paper flower out of dirty, old newspapers. Jessie was the star of his act.

         Later that afternoon, while near a wishing well at a local shopping mall, Jessie stopped to drop in a penny. When I asked her, “What are you wishing for?” Jessie said, “That Nick would take me away with him to the circus.” And by the time we got home, she had her colored chalk out and was drawing clown faces and beginning to practice juggling. It had taken her three years but she made it to the center ring!

         Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Children of all ages. I don’t know how long it’s taken you. I don’t know what you long for but it’s here for you. The Kingdom of God is at hand. And no one is excluded. No one left out. Every Sunday, when we stand before this altar and the priest says, “Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit” and we respond, “And blessed be God’s Kingdom, now and forever. Amen”, we, in the presence of the Holy Spirit manifest a whole new world – an entire way of thinking about our lives and the world around us – we, like the ringmaster of the circus who welcomes the world to the greatest show on earth and John the Baptist in the wilderness, who says, “Jump on in, the water’s fine!” we say, “Hurry on down the aisle to the center ring and find the special place that God has prepared for you since the beginning of time.” Amen.

"Paint Me!" - Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

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Preached by the Rev. David K. Fly at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, July 11, 2010

“But wanting to justify himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” Luke 10:29

Ida was a prostitute who lived in Paris. When the artist Romare Beardon met her in the late 1920s, his first impression was that she was one of the ugliest people he’d ever seen. But he liked Ida and was sorry she chose the life of a prostitute. He became her friend and was able to get her another job for which she was always grateful. As a way of expressing her appreciation, Ida arrived every Saturday to clean Beardon’s studio.

At the end of the studio, Beardon had placed a large piece of brown paper. Saturday after Saturday, when Ida arrived, the brown paper would be hanging in its place and would be as empty as the Saturday before. She finally asked what he planned to do with it. “I’m eventually going to paint something there,” he said, “but as yet have no idea what I’ll paint.”

“Paint me,” said Ida. Bearden was so taken back that he couldn’t respond to this unattractive woman who said, “Paint me.” In the following Saturdays, Ida brought up the issue again. Finally, Beardon, who didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her the truth said that he just felt he couldn’t paint her and that was that. “If you can’t paint me, you’re in the wrong profession,” Ida told him. Beardon who eventually became a main figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement was shocked by her words. Here was an emerging young artist being confronted by a lowly prostitute. But Ida went on to say, “I know I’m ugly and I know that’s why you feel you cannot paint me. But when you can look at me and find what is beautiful, you’ll be a great artist.” Romare Beardon sadly confessed many years later that he never did paint Ida the prostitute, but that her words never left his memory.

The story of the artist and the prostitute came back to me when I read today’s gospel. A lawyer who wanted to test Jesus asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life and Jesus asks him what he had read in the law. And, of course, the lawyer rightly answered that he should love God with all his heart and soul and strength and mind and love his neighbor as himself. But then the lawyer pushes his luck. He asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And that’s when Jesus turns the tables on the lawyer much as Ida turned the tables on that young artist in Paris. Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus describes the ugliness and then tells the lawyer to paint it!

And for the lawyer, there’s a lot of ugliness in the story. The first unattractive part is that the main character is a Samaritan, an unclean person who should never be the hero of any story. The lawyer knows that much. The second character is a man broken and bleeding in a ditch along the road to Jericho. And then Jesus describes a couple of upright citizens not unlike the lawyer, who are too busy or too offended to bother responding to the man’s need. Of course, it’s the Samaritan who takes care of the man, bandages his wounds, takes him to a place where he can recuperate and pays his bills. “Which of the three,” asks Jesus “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer, the one who had just described the answer to the eternal life question, has to respond, “The one who showed him mercy.” Notice, the lawyer doesn’t say, “The Samaritan.” Perhaps he just couldn’t get those words out of his mouth! So Jesus simply says, “Go and do likewise.”

“I know I’m ugly,” says Ida the prostitute to the young artist Romare Beardon, “but when you can look at me and find what is beautiful, you’ll be a great artist.”

There is a story of a young boy who was once playing hide-and-seek with another boy. He hid himself well and waited for his playmate to find him. After waiting a long time, he came out of his hiding place, but the other boy was nowhere to be seen. The boy who had been in hiding then realized that the other boy had not looked for him from the very beginning. That made him sad and so he ran to his grandfather to tell him what had happened. Tears welled up in his grandfather’s eyes as he listened to what the little boy was saying and then he told the child, “God says the same thing: ‘I hide, but no one wants to seek me.’”

Our God hides in the bodies of those whom we have discounted, in those who are hurt and broken. As Archbishop Tutu has said, we don’t have a choice of neighbors in this world – God is to be found in all people – ALL PEOPLE – black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful, gay, lesbian, so-called straight – Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist – God hides in you and in me. If we recognize God in our neighbors, how can we go on spending obscene amounts on budgets of death and destruction, knowing full well that a minute fraction of this money would insure that children everywhere have clean water to drink and food to eat and adequate and affordable health care. God is to be found walking in the grand palaces of the Church but God suffers in the ditches of Soweto, and Santiago and St. Louis. When we learn to look on the world and see its beauty we discover the hidden face of God. And God longs for us to seek and find him. For as we do we will come to know our neighbor and as we learn to love our neighbor we will find the answer to the lawyer’s question of Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Amen.

"Walk in Love" -- Easter 7C

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Preached by the Rev. David Fly at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, May 16, 2010

“Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.”

You might recognize that line because it’s often used as an offertory sentence at the Eucharist. It’s from Ephesians, but could just as well be a summary of John’s retelling of the words of Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples. Today’s gospel is the final prayer of Jesus with his friends before he goes to the Garden of Gethsemane. His final words before they go out are a prayer to the Father:

“Father, the glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. . . I made your name known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

As Archbishop Tutu has said, “It all comes down to this: that at the center of the universe there is a heart that beats with love and it is that love that empowers us to love one another because God first loved us and gave himself for us.”

So, this morning I want to spend a little time talking about what it means to walk in love. When I first moved to St. Louis in 1981, my fourth daughter Jessie was only a year old. By my second year at Grace Church, Jessie had just begun to walk. Thursday nights were very special for us because it was my night to be alone with my daughter while her mom went off to choir practice. Usually we had time for me to give her a long bath, to tell her a story or read her a book, and to have some quiet time with her before I put her to bed. On one particular Thursday night about this time of the year, it was evident that Jessie didn’t want to play inside – it was too pretty outside and she was just discovering that wonderful thing called walking. So, off we went on a long walk around the block. Because I had been so busy, I hadn’t taken the time to really focus on how much she had developed her newly acquired skill. Carrying a little purse on her arm, she toddled down the sidewalk, eyes wide open, taking in all the sights and reaching for my hand only when she came to a major obstacle, like an uneven crack in the sidewalk. It was one of those lovely moments that many of us have had with children. I was enchanted as I watched her toddle along. I was filled with admiration and, I must admit, I was feeling a good deal of pride at her accomplishment. As I saw the smiles of the passing motorists watching this father/daughter scene, I could feel my chest puff out just a bit.

It was when we approached the halfway point in our little journey that I saw another father/daughter scene that had a profound effect on me. Across the street and half a block away, another father was walking with his daughter. The difference was that he was older than me and his daughter looked to be in her early 20s.

The man walked slowly, his daughter carefully holding his arm. In her other hand was a cane which she used to steady herself. Each step looked difficult and, from time to time, she looked to her father for reassurance and he would smile and gently urge her forward. I don’t’ know the history that lay behind what I saw, but it was clear that some awful event had occurred that had produced the brokenness that was now seeking to be healed. I imagined that this man had once walked with his daughter as I was now walking with mine, delighting in her innocence, proud of her display of new-found skills and, probably like me, aware of the passing motorists that smiled as they drove by.

And here he was years later called to make sacrifices that he could not have foreseen: called to walk with his daughter in a new way – to walk with her that she might learn to walk again. That moment affected me in a profound way because it pointed to an unknown future – a future that might well call upon me to walk with my daughter when things were not so easy, to walk with my daughter when the going got tough, to be with her in love even when it cost me a great deal more than a pleasant Thursday evening stroll. As the father of five daughters, I have learned the truth of that lesson taught to me on a spring evening in 1982. Those times have come, those tough times when the going wasn’t easy, but a father’s love was very much needed.

Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us. Love is not primarily a function of the emotions – love is an act of the will which necessarily involves commitment, involvement and sacrifice on the part of the lover. It means sticking with another in the bad times not just the good, weeping with another and not just sharing laughter. It means accepting the brokenness of another and not demanding perfection as the cost of love. Those who walked with our Lord – those who sat around the table with him in the Upper Room – came to know this kind of love because he lived it daily – he embodied the love of God, the God who has been loving his people since the beginning of time.

Earlier, during that same meal, Jesus says, “As the father had loved me, so have I loved you; abide 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 ones life for ones friends.” Just think of the context of these words and the final prayer we heard earlier. This is the table talk at the Last Supper! In a matter of hours he is betrayed and denied and his friends run away leaving him alone on a cross. And yet, though he senses their lack of understanding and their inability to be faithful, Jesus loves them to the end.

Bishop John Coburn, former Bishop of Massachusetts in his book The Hope of Glory tells the following story about Arthur Lichtenberger who was the Bishop of Missouri during the 1950s and a former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. During the last three years of his life, Bishop Lichtenberger was a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School where Coburn served as chaplain. Bishop Lichtenberger suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Coburn writes:

“During the last three years, he became increasingly disabled, shuffled rather than walked, mumbled rather than talked, pointed rather than wrote. One winter morning as I sat alone in my study, I was going through one of those moods that we all go through, just feeling sorry for myself. I happened to look out the window, and there up on the road, shuffling along those icy paths, came Bishop and Mrs. Lichtenberger arm in arm. Just as I looked at them there came a surge of strength as if I were experiencing a rebirth. All I could do was to rejoice in them.”

Bishop Lichtenberger, in spite of all the adversity he suffered, was a tower of strength to many. But as I considered the story of Bishop Coburn and the question of what it means to walk in love, I focused on Mrs. Lichtenberger who walked arm in arm with her husband. Surely they had walked together many times and the going was easy – as easy as dancing. But now she was called to give herself in a way she could never have anticipated. But she was there with him, just as that father I had seen walking with his daughter. Those two images form for me a powerful picture of the kind of love Jesus prayed for us on the night before he was betrayed.

It is only after the resurrection that the disciples are led to understand the gift they’ve been given and are empowered to walk with the world in love as Christ walked with them. And because they were faithful to their calling, they have enabled us to walk with one another. It won’t always be easy and it may not always feel good and people may not meet up to our expectations and we may find ourselves called to walk with those who need to learn to walk again. And we will only be able to walk in that kind of love as we come to know the Lord who walks with us and reassures us that we can lean on him for support and he will go as slowly as we need. Amen.

Good Friday -- The Rev. David Fly

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Preached by the Rev. David Fly at Christ Church Cathedral at the Evening Service on Good Friday, April 2, 2010

Lent 2C

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Preached by the Rev. David Fly at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, February 28, 2010

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. But for today and tomorrow and the next day I must go on, since it would not be right for a prophet to die outside Jerusalem.’” (Luke 13.31)

Reading this passage always reminds me of a very powerful dream I had when I was a boy. I can still remember it clearly to this day. In the dream, I was alone and drifting into the darkness of space. The only lights were the minuscule stars so very far away. As I continued to drift, I became smaller and the stars began to disappear. Finally, I was only a tiny dot against the blackness of space. The darkness surrounded me and the silence was overwhelming. I knew I was coming to an end and I had to struggle to the surface of wakefulness to save myself.

Dreams get interpreted in lots of different ways. For me, that dream was a coming of age in which, for the first time, I faced my mortality. I realized that there would come a time when I would die and I was frightened. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross suggests that somewhere deep inside, we are convinced of our own immortality (and that is certainly true for adolescents). To be confronted with the prospect of our own death can be a shattering experience that becomes as hard to shake as it was for me to shake that boyhood dream. When illness touches our lives, when friends and family die, it’s as if we too are moving into the darkness and the stars are beginning to fade.

Less dramatically, though powerful nonetheless, each of us have experienced those little “deaths” as we move into situations that seem too big for us or demand too much of us, and leave us feeling small and inadequate. There are times when decisions are called for and we alone must make them. When that happens we are moving into our own Jerusalems and experiencing the pain of decision-making that Jesus faced as he moved into the city at the end of his life.

As we face the uncertainty and insecurity of our lives we look to the life of Jesus as a model of living in the face of death. His life becomes a pattern for living into the puzzles that each of our lives presents us. It is not we who ask questions about the meaning of life, rather it is life that asks us questions and in responding to those concrete, real, daily questions we find the meaning in life. Let me give you an example. When I was a college chaplain, eighteen and nineteen-year-old students would wrestle with the question: “Who am I?” I used to respond, somewhat facetiously, “Get a job and for at least 8 hours a day, you’ll know who you are!” In other words, as we enter into the reality of daily living, we will be confronted with situations and questions that call forth who we are in very concrete ways.

The Pharisees came to him and said, “Leave this place, because Herod means to kill you.” How often have we been tempted to “leave this place” (this vocation, this painful situation, this relationship) because we feel that we are inadequate to the task or that we are taking on something more than we can handle and don’t want to risk the little death that might be in it for us? But Jesus understands that he would not have been in this place had he not been called there. So he responds, “Go tell Herod not to try and trick me. I will stay in this place and do what I have to do.” Jesus stands his ground. There is nothing particularly heroic about what he does. Jesus simply understands that to be true to himself, he cannot run away. He is faithful to the task at hand. We’re not called to be heroes either. We’re called to be faithful to the situations in which we find ourselves. If we leave, we may never discover the reasons we were called to those places by God’s Spirit.

“Today and tomorrow, I must go on,” says Jesus, “and the third day attain my end.” Today and tomorrow, we must go on, however inadequate or mortal we feel, making those decisions that life brings us: decisions to go on loving when love seems to fade; decisions to change when change is laid upon us; decisions to be faithful when we are tempted to be faithless. We are on a journey that has an end and a mission to accomplish.

Jesus “goes up” to Jerusalem and there he meets his end. It is in the end that we find the powerful reason for his going on – for our going on. Because somewhere, at the end of it all, love is the answer to our daily quest for meaning, but it can seldom be discovered without Good Friday. Love isn’t abstract and it doesn’t come cheap. It very often leads us to suffering before it leads us into glory. And meaning is found in loving our way through all the little deaths that befall us.

Jesus gives himself over to that which calls him: “Let your will be done, not mine.” His mortal life drifts into the darkness of space, stars flicker and fade, and death has its way with him. Like the end of a day, night comes, black night, with no stars. He is alone. The only sound is silence. To enter into this moment with Jesus is to enter into our own “dark nights,” our own dreams of meaninglessness, our own feelings of impotence in the face of greater odds.

Darkness. Darkness gently penetrated by light. Night pushed away as dawn approaches. Dawn comes and birds sing like angels. A new beginning invades what we believed to be that end. Going on in the face of darkness has brought the light. The Resurrection is God’s final affirmation of Jesus, his willingness to journey onward with all the odds against him.

Learning to live means learning to “go on.” It means willing to have our hearts broken by the things that break the heart of God. We must move on into the darkness, up to our own Jerusalems, knowing that, although we are afraid, he is with us, and that if we weep, the one who wept in Gethsemane understands. For in the darkness, there is light, and in the shadow of death, there is life everlasting. One of my favorite songs goes like this:

It’s the heart afraid of breaking

That never learns to dance.

It’s the dream afraid of waking

That never takes the chance.

It’s the one who won’t be taken

That cannot seem to give

And the soul afraid of dying

That never learns to live. Amen.