blog | rick morley

proper 27c: all is well

October 27, 2010

It’s only November 7th, and we’re already descending into the mysteries of the Season of Advent and the expectation of the Lord’s coming.

For almost a decade now I’ve been on a crusade (er… so to speak) to recapture the true meaning of Advent. Every Advent -I remind people that it’s not just the season of gift buying and wrapping to get ready for Christmas. The Season of Advent is a serious season about the second coming of Jesus. Advent, through it’s appointed collects and propers, begins with the remembrance that Jesus said that he’d return again. And then as the season moves on it shifts slowly from waiting for Jesus’ second return to remembering his first coming in a manger in Bethlehem. But, where Advent begins is so very important.

Most people smile and nod politely (including my wife), and tolerate my Advent crusade, but spend their time and energy fluffing up the poinsettias.

Oh, the hard life of a preacher.

This week’s lessons is such a wonderful set-up though, that my crusade just HAS to work this year!

(ha ha)

Our epistle lesson today is from the earliest Christian document that the world knows of: Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. Long before the Gospels were penned, Paul had written this letter to the Christian congregation in the city of Thessalonica to encourage them in the faith.

He was writing them because they were scared to death. OK, that might be a bad way to phrase it… They were scared because some people in their congregation were dying.

And they weren’t expecting people to be dying.

They were expecting Jesus to return and take everyone away – while they were alive.

In the years and decades immediately following Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension the first Christians were expecting Jesus to return. Any minute. Like maybe tomorrow. Or the day after that at the latest.

They assumed that Jesus would return in glory BEFORE they died. They were hoping that Jesus was going to come and vindicate them and their faith right there and then, and that the believers would be alive and well when he came.

The problem that the Thessalonians were dealing with was this: Jesus was taking so long that people were starting to die.

Which posed a theological quandry: what would happen to them? Did their loved ones miss the boat? Was Jesus taking so long that some of their fellow brother and sister Christians (and family members and neighbors) were going to miss out on the joys of paradise when Jesus returned?

I know it seems a little silly to us today – a full 1,900 years later – but for them this was an existential question with personal and eternal significance.

And so Paul wrote them to quell their fears. They were going to be fine, Paul says. In fact, when Jesus arrives not only will those who have died in the Lord rise with Jesus, but they will go first. Not only are they not going to be left out, they have the better seats.

Paul: All is well. Don’t worry.

On the cusp of 2011, we’re in a very different place than the church in Thessalonica. Don’t get me wrong, there are some Christians who spend a whole lot of energy and emotion on the return of Jesus (and there’s a small sect that thinks it’s going to happen in May of 2012…), but for the majority of us we’re just doing the work of the church. Tending to the sick, conjuring up efforts to grow, teaching our kids and youth, and trying to balance the budget.

And so, on the outside it may look like the worry of the Thessalonians might not have much to say to us.

Except for urgency. They remind us of the urgency of faith.

For them, Jesus was real. He was really coming. And Jesus and his return was going to have an immediate and all-encompassing impact on their lives.

Their faith was driven by urgency.

I don’t recommend spending every waking moment obsessing on the return of Jesus. But, if we could find a way to infuse our faith with a bit of the urgency of the faith of the Thessalonian Christians at the mid-point of the first century, we’d do a lot of good for ourselves and the whole world.

The other kernel of truth we can take away here is Paul’s unbounded trust in the goodness of God. What we see here in Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians is his ability to be theologically supple.

Surely he too believed at one time or another that Jesus was would return quickly – certainly before his current generation had passed away. But, now with the reality of that generation beginning to die away he had to do break some new theological ground.

He didn’t have some cute little verse that he could quote to tell him and others that everyone would be ok. He had to step back and trust in the goodness of God. God in Christ would not abandon them. He believed that in his core – it was a foundational element of his faith.

And if that was true, then he could follow that with: all is going to be ok. In life, and in death, Jesus would take care of his own.

How might we, the church, grow into faithful urgency? How can we be confident in the hope of God at the same time?

proper 26C: prayers of the people

October 23, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

proper 26C: railing into the night

October 21, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

proper 25C: prayers of the people

October 14, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

proper 25C: casting off spiritual arrogance

October 14, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

comment 1

Acts / Epistles / Gospels / Lectionary / New Testament

“Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt…”

Imagine such a crowd of people approaching Jesus! They “trust in themselves,” instead of trusting in God. They trusted that they were “righteous,” meaning that they were in right relationship with God. And they looked on other people “with contempt.”

Oh, yes, this is just the type of people that Jesus loved to hang around with… Ahem.

I mean who wouldn’t want to hang around with them! I love being with arrogant people who think their stuff doesn’t stink and who hate everyone else. That’s a good time.

Arrogance is actually something of a theme in the 18th chapter of Luke. The chapter starts out with an arrogant judge who won’t hear the plea of a widow. And then comes today’s scene, which is followed by the disciples who are trying to keep little children away from Jesus (he’s very serious, you know – no time for frivolous games). And then Jesus is approached by the Rich Young Ruler, who arrogantly states that he has followed all the laws of God since he was a youth.

Socially, arrogance is the mentality which follows from the belief that one is better than those around him. However, religiously/ spiritually arrogance goes a bit deeper. Religious arrogance says that you know the mind of God better than anyone else.

It’s the mentality which follows from believing that God agrees with you. Instead of the other way around.

It’s the mentality that manifests itself in saying, “Oh, I know that God said not to eat from THAT tree… but, what’s one little bit?”

It’s the mentality that manifests itself in saying, “Oh, I know how to be like God… we’ll just build this little tower over here.”

It’s the mentality that manifested itself on the night before Jesus died. “It’s just one little kiss.” “I don’t know the man.” “I have power over you.”

And, it’s the arrogance that comes with just knowing that this or that person is going to Hell, that your interpretation of a biblical verse is absolutely right, and that your church is the only church that God loves.

In Acts 15 the leaders of the Jewish Christian Church centered in Jerusalem and some of the leaders of the Gentile Christian movement, including St. Paul, gathered together to hammer out the answer to this question: Do Gentile Christians need to be circumcised? Genesis 17 is absolutely crystal clear that without circumcision God will cut his people off. There isn’t even a little wiggle-room there. And the Jewish Christians who gathered in Acts 15 knew it. But, the Gentile Christians came with the stories of God and the Holy Spirit moving in the lives of Gentile Christians. Wasn’t that proof enough that God was blessing their venture without circumcision?

St. James, the brother of the Lord, stood up after all the arguments were made, and said this to the Gentile converts: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: ²⁹that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled^* and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.’”

For it has seemed good.

Not, “Thus saith the Lord.” Not, “I have been to the mountaintop, and I have seen the answer.” Not, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”

It seems good.

Here’s the decision we’re going to make, not because we’re certain, but because it seems like this is where God wants us to go.

And there, in the first generation of the church, is the spiritual presence of the Tax Collector: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

I don’t have all the answers, I don’t know if I’m on God’s side or not, I’m just trying to muddle my way through – but all the while seeking truth and mercy.

Now, gather a group of people like that, and we can have some fun.

And, so would Jesus.

proper 24C: prayers of the people

October 11, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

comment 1

Prayers of the People

O God, you have written on our hearts the covenant you forged with us on the cross of Christ; now hear the cry of our hearts as we pray to you:

Lord, we pray for the church, that we might know you, and that you might forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more. (We pray especially for… church leaders… and all the people of God.)

O Lord, You are our God, and we are your people.

O God, we pray for our nation, our community, and all in authority; that we might be people who learn to pray always and not lose heart.

O Lord, You are our God, and we are your people.

Lord Jesus, you are a righteous judge who hears the cries of your children day and night; we pray for the nations of the earth, that your justice and peace might reign and that you will find faith on the earth when you come.

O Lord, You are our God, and we are your people.

Lord Jesus, you will not delay in helping those who need you, we pray that you would heal those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit, especially ________.

O Lord, You are our God, and we are your people.

Your words, O God, are sweeter than honey to our mouths; we pray for those we love and who also sweeten our lives (and we especially remember today those who celebrate their birthdays… anniversaries…). Give them your grace.

O Lord, You are our God, and we are your people.

Lord Christ, you are the judge of the living and the dead, and of your Kingdom there is no end; we remember before you those who have died and entered your Kingdom, (especially…) that they may rest with you in eternal glory.

O Lord, You are our God, and we are your people.

Lord Jesus, mold and form our hearts into hearts of prayer, that with the comfortable knowledge of you as our judge and redeemer we might never lose heart and pray without ceasing. Amen.

proper 24C: of diapers and covenants

October 7, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

comment 1

Eschatology / Exodus / Lectionary / New Testament / Old Testament / Pentateuch

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt– a covenant that they broke…

When my parents first took on the responsibility of parenting me, they made some implicit promises – to me and to society at large. They were promising to feed me, change my diaper, stay up with me when I cried through the night, and nurture me with parental love.

They didn’t have to sign a dotted-line – and neither did they look me in the eyes and say that they would do this, so help them God. It was a given.

But, they were promises to be kept, and they were.

And, those promises couldn’t just stay the same. When I was five years old, they still had to ‘feed me,’ but not in the sense of putting a bottle or spoon in my mouth when I cried. The promise changed, implicitly, to making nutritious food available to me to consume – and to make sure that I ate all my veggies so I could grow up ‘big and strong.’ They no longer had to change diapers, but they had to care for my tiny body in different ways. And, when I was five, there was a new promise: they promised to educate me, to get me to school properly dressed and with a lunch box in hand.

As the years went on the promises changed over and over again. Soon the promises had to do with making sure I was acquiring and maintaining appropriate relationships with my peers – in cub scouts and in church. Later they promised to drive me day-in-and-day-out to youth group, to choir practice, to drama rehearsals, and they promised to sit on sunny days and miserable days on cold bleacher seats and watch me run around the track.

And, of course, that all changed again when I went to college, when I began my adult life, when I got married, and when we had kids of our own.

The relationship between a parent and child is one that is meant to embody love, devotion, and dedication. But, the ways that that love and devotion are manifest change. The core of the relationship never does, but how it’s lived out changes as each stage of life is entered and an old stage of life expires.

The same is true of God. God has loved us since the moment that He created us. That love has never changed – but how that love is manifest has changed over and over again. God related to us differently in Eden than He did in Egypt. Differently with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob than he did in the time of Jesus. And, differently with the early church than when the Heavenly City of Zion will one day descend and a new heaven and a new earth is manifest.

After the flood waters receded God made a covenant with Noah, his family, and all creation. He would never flood the earth again. The sign of the covenant was the rainbow that was set in the sky.

Years later he talked to Abraham, and told him that he would be the God of his family forever-after, and that he would give them a land. And Abraham’s side of the covenant – and the sign of the covenant itself – was circumcision. All Abraham’s family forever-after was to be circumcised.

Then God enriched the covenant with Moses on top of Mt. Sinai with the giving of a new law, and the coming promise of a land flowing with milk and honey, and the abiding presence of God.

And then, on another mountaintop, God ratified a New Covenant with all people, as Jesus died on a cross. And the sign of this covenant was bread broken, and a cup of wine shared, for the forgiveness of sins.

The story of God and humanity is a covenant-story. And the story tells us, and shows us, over and over again, that God always seeks to be in relationship with us. And, admittedly, the story also shows how we always try to wriggle out of the deal. And, yet, God never stops the pursuit.

And, because humanity is constantly growing, and evolving, and changing (and finding new and creative ways to sin) God’s relationship with us is always changing and evolving.

His love never ends. That love never changes. But, how he loves us, and how he seeks us in relationship, and the very terms of the relationship are always in flux.

How has your relationship with God changed through the years? How do you
imagine your relationship with God will continue to change?

proper 23C: prayers of the people

October 4, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

comment 1

Prayers of the People

Lord Jesus, if we have died with you, we will live with you;
if we endure, we will reign with you; we pray to you for all the needs and
concerns on our minds and hearts, knowing that you always remain faithful.

Lord, we pray for the church, that we might do our best to
present ourselves to God as one approved by him. (We pray especially for… church
leaders… and all the people of God.)

Jesus, Master,

Have mercy on us.

O God, in your might you rule forever, and your eyes keep watch over the
nations. We pray for our nation, our community, and all in authority.

Jesus, Master,

Have mercy on us.

Gracious God, all the earth bows down before you, and sings out your name. We
pray for the nations of the earth, that your peace may protect us all.

Jesus, Master,

Have mercy on us.

Lord Jesus, as you healed the ten lepers between Galilee and Samaria, we pray that you would heal those
who suffer in body, mind, or spirit, especially ________.

Jesus, Master,

Have mercy on us.

You hold our souls in life, O God, and you will not allow our feet to slip. We
pray for those we love (and we especially remember today those who celebrate
their birthdays… anniversaries…). Give them your grace.

Jesus, Master,

Have mercy on us.

O God, we remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David; and
we remember before you those who have died, (especially…) that they may rest with
Christ in eternal glory.

Jesus, Master,

Have mercy on us.

Lord Jesus, in your faithfulness to us, you shower us with grace,
mercy, love, and all we need; we pray that you would shape our hearts that they
would be filled with gratitude, that we might always return to you and give you
thanks. Amen.

Proper 23C: betwixt, between, nowhere, everywhere

September 28, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

comments 4

Lectionary / New Testament / Old Testament

I’m intrigued by John Carroll’s insight on Luke 17:11-19, in which he identifies the story as taking place in a ‘liminal space.’ Luke tells us that this story takes place while Jesus is in the region between Samaria and Galilee. And so Luke drops this story right in the middle of the DMZ: we are not in Samaria, and we are not in Galilee. We’re in no-man’s-land.

The concept of liminality as laid out by preeminent anthropologist Victor Turner—and then drawn on by a myriad of sociologists, liturgists, and theologians—is a concept which helps us realize that there are times when we are neither-here-nor-there, but somewhere in between. The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word limnus, which of course means “doorway.” When we are under the limnus, we aren’t in THIS room, and we aren’t in THAT room, but rather we are in transition. We are betwixt.

There is danger here—because the uncertain nature of being beneath the limnus can produce much anxiety and stress. There are countless moments in people’s lives where we know this to be true in our bones. During the time of adolescence a person is in transition from becoming a child to a young adult. And yet, during adolescence they are neither. They aren’t children – and they will buck at being treated as such at every turn. AND YET, they aren’t adults, as much as they would like to be.

Is there really any doubt that adolescence is a time of great anxiety and pressure?

As people make the transition from education to the workforce, there is a similar time of anxiety and pressure. The same goes for couples who are engaged, and waiting to be married—they aren’t a “married couple” yet, and yet they aren’t “just dating” anymore. The period of engagement can be very stressful to a couple’s relationship.

And, the stressful experiences of the ‘mid-life crisis,’ approaching retirement, and deciding whether nursing care is needed – are all experiences of liminality.

We’re moving somewhere else, but we’re not there yet. Maybe we can’t wait to get there. Maybe we’re dreading it.

My guess is that our ancestors who traveled across the ocean by boat understood this concept keenly. Their voyage wasn’t 8 hours of leisure by on-board entertainment systems. It was months. It was rocky seas. It was wondering if they’d ever lay eyes on dry ground again.

Now that’s liminality.

The Scriptures are chock full of people in transition. The people of the Bible were wandering people. The Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness. They spent a generation in Babylon. Paul moved from place to place, and then had to wonder if the gentile Christians he was converting would have a place at the table.

And here, in the 17th chapter of Luke, Jesus takes his disciples to a place that is in-between. They aren’t in the land of the Samaritans. And they aren’t home either.

Where are they? They’re nowhere. They’re everywhere.

As much as liminal periods are opportunities for danger, they are also opportunities for growth. Liminal periods are places where we can grow, where we can ‘find ourselves,’ and where we can orient our lives to shape what the next room we’ll inhabit will look like.

Where are we going? Where is God taking our lives? When we’re beneath the limnus we can take the opportunity to find out. To ask God. To make it happen.

The people of God would never have come into their own without that experience of being in the wilderness with Moses. Being slaves in Babylon shaped them again, and brought them to the love of the Scriptures and the search for their identity. The disciple’s experience in the Upper Room after Jesus’ death forged the church from being a rag tag bunch of rebels, lovers and poets into a force to be reckoned with.

Those three days in the tomb changed the world.

The liminal story of “the healing of the ten lepers” (or sometimes known as “the one grateful leper”) is a story which explores the concepts of the mercy, gratitude, healing, and faith. Ten people, beloved of God, are in distress and anguish looking for a miracle. Danger abounds – they may sicken Jesus and his cohort. They may remain sick and ostracized forever. But, the situation is also one where incredible potential resides. There is the hope of healing, and the promise of gratitude.

Under the limnus they may find nothing. Or they can be touched by God.

The tension between those two potential outcomes is so hot it’s like trying to contain onto nuclear fusion.

And in the end, healing abounds. Gratitude… not so much.

When you come through the wilderness, the yoke of slavery, the impending reality of graduation, marriage, or retirement – the potential for the grace of God is rich. And the potential for us to miss the holy significance of it is also rife.

(Resource cited above: Carroll John T., “Between Text & Sermon, Luke 17:11-19,” Interpretation, 1999.)

Proper 22C: Prayers of the People (updated, en Español)

September 24, 2010

by Fr. Rick Morley

comment 1

Prayers of the People

O God, as we pray for the church and the whole world,
rekindle in us the gift that is within us already: the grace given to us in
Christ Jesus before the ages began.

Lord, we pray for the church, that we might hold to the
standard of sound teaching that we have heard from the prophets and apostles,
and guard the good treasure entrusted to us. (We pray especially for… church
leaders… and all the people of God.)