From the Pulpit:

 
                                                                                                  Prophets are like that!

I read this week that the author Anne Rice has left the church. You may know her from her vampire books, which were all the rage in the late 80’s and 90’s.  She’s a little older than I am, and grew up Roman Catholic in New Orleans . but when her little daughter died of leukemia she left the church because God didn’t give her the miracle that she prayed for.

She became an outspoken atheist for most of her adult life. It was only a few years ago that she returned to Christianity, and she returned very publicly and vociferously, going so far as to write a couple of  autobiographical novels about Jesus in the tradition of Jewish midrash, and filling in the details of his life that the gospel writers don’t tell us.

She is a gifted writer. But now she is gone, as far as the church is concerned, and she has slammed the door shut behind her. She has spoken out that she cannot be part of an institution that is anti-women, anti-gay, oppressive and filthy rich while people in much of the world are suffering. While parts of the church are guilty of those charges, she has got her fingers in her ears against all the invitations to listen to other voices in the church, to hear about progressive movements in the church to speak out with fellow Christians against discrimination, to embrace humanity in all its peculiarities as the expression of the image of God, and to challenge all of us to live out the radical hospitality of Christ. No, thank you, she says. I’ll keep my image of the church as I see it. I’ll lick my wounds in private, and pray to my God without you and without that communal meal you call Holy Communion. (1)

I’m deeply sad. I’m deeply sad because she is seeing only what she wants to see, which is exactly what she doesn’t want to see, and she is throwing out the holy baby with the bathwater. What Anne Rice needs is a good dose of a real prophet. She needs one of these difficult people to shake her
by the shoulders and tell her to get over herself. She needs Sister Joan Chittister.

If you want somebody to cite chapter and verse, to confront head on all the wrongs done in the name of Christianity, and more particular her own Roman Catholic Church, Sister Joan is the girl for you. I showed a video of hers at Christian formation at my old church – she was speaking, as she frequently does, about wealth –  and the rector got four calls the next day demanding that I be fired. I was not fired. But Sister Joan gets people that upset. Especially rich people. Especially comfortable people. That’s what prophets do.

They step into the status quo and create chaos, and if you know anything about quantum physics, you will know that all creation comes out of the deep heart of chaos.

In Israel at the time of the prophet Isaiah, whom we will be reading for the next several weeks, there were two kinds of people to whom were entrusted the religion of God’s children. There were the priests, and to them was given the task of maintaining order, of seeing that only the cleanest
of the clean got close to the heart of God, that the rules are followed, all 613 of them, that hands are clean and only the right food is eaten.

The prophets, on the other hand, stirred things up. When people were fat and happy, they reminded them that God expected more of them, and that God would get the best of them, like it or not. And when people were destitute and in despair, the prophets reminded them of God’s infinite love and forgiveness. This is the dual role that Sister Joan fulfills and don’t think for a moment that the Vatican is pleased as punch. No, she tells the truth and tells it straight. If Sister Joan doesn’t make you squirm, nobody will.

Prophets are like that. Take, for instance, a fourteen year old prophet named Hannah Salwen. Her dad was driving her around in Atlanta in 2006, 
I imagine them doing the kinds of errands one does with their kids on Saturdays –  soccer practice, the hardware store, the dry cleaners -- and when they pulled up to a stop light Hannah noticed that they were sandwiched between a guy in a Mercedes convertible and a homeless man with a sign saying he was hungry. “Dad,” she said, “if that guy just drove a less nice car, then people like him could have plenty to eat.” Well, we do know that the reality is a bit more complicated than that, but later when she repeated her observation at the dinner table, her mom said, “So what do you want us to do? Sell our house and give half the money away?” Take a deep breath. After a lot of serious discussion that is exactly what the Salwens did. Granted, they lived in a two-million dollar mansion, and they moved into another comfortable home, but, even so, it is a radical action to downsize 
by half and to give the money away to organizations that care for the dispossessed. (2)

Isaiah was preaching to the kings and the priests of the northern kingdom at a time when they had lost sight of God’s values. Having lost the ability to sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem when the kingdom was divided after King Solomon’s death, they had reverted to what was available, altars at high places where God had made himself known. The problem was that other gods were now worshiped there as well, the gods of Baal, little gods, idols and fabrications, gods that supposedly did the bidding of whoever offered sacrifice there. The people of Israel probably thought there was no danger in it. They were just covering all their bases, accommodating their neighbors, double dipping maybe, as far as divine favors were concerned.

Isaiah was given the awe-inspiring task of speaking for God, and the people, the kings and priests in particular, were not tickled by what God has to say. Forget the sacrifices. Forget your liturgical correctness. Forget keeping the calendar straight. God says, what I want is your heart. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; and now he tells them what is good, and it is not wearing the right outfit to church or bowing in the right places in the liturgy or knowing the words by heart. No, he says, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

You know that I am passionate about stewardship, and I hope you have heard by now that St. Alban’s has been picked to be one of only eight churches in the whole country to participate in a vibrant stewardship research project. I’m so excited, and will tell you more as it unfolds. But stewardship is not about a pledge drive in the fall, although that is a very real expression of it. Stewardship is more than anything developing awareness. It is the awareness of all we have been given. It is the awareness of how much we truly need  and what we can very well do without.

It is the awareness of the needs of others and that there is enormous joy to be experienced when we share what we have to alleviate suffering. In our Christian formation group that meets before the 10:30 service we’re reading a very challenging chapter in The Holy Longing. It is the chapter on the spirituality of justice, and the author says, very straightforwardly, that in the end we will be judged on only one criterion: how we treat the poor. Period. The end. The worth of our lives will never be judged by what we have but rather by what we give. (3)

Sister Joan writes: “Clearly, the purpose of wealth is not security. The purpose of wealth is reckless generosity, the kind that sings of the lavish love of God, the kind that rekindles hope on dark days, the kind that reminds us that God is with us always. It creates in the holy heart a freedom of spirit that takes a person light-footed through the world,  scattering possibility as it goes. The only security holy wealth looks for is fruit of the good business practices it takes to keep on making enough money to give it away to those who need it more.” (4)

I hope you read or heard what I thought was a breath-taking news story this week. Sandwiched between reports of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , the savage massacre at the beer distribution plant, and the iffy capping of the oil spill in the gulf, there was some radical good news. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett put a challenge to eighty other billionaires that they give away half their wealth to charities, and forty of them signed on. (5)

I’m stunned. But in a good way. I know we’ll be hearing more about this as it becomes more than a pledge. I’ve heard a number of commentators estimate what this will mean for the non-profit world, that these gifts over an undisclosed time period will exponentially increase the funds available to cure disease, to educate those who can’t afford it, and to feed the poor. We’ll only know for sure with 20/20 hindsight, but, still, just the pledge is a huge commitment, and as one commentator observed, when imagining what their children must think of it, what could be a better gift to give your 
heirs than a better world in which to live? A world with less poverty, less disease, less violence and war.

Which brings me back to Anne Rice, who I imagine is a perfectly nice person, but one who has chosen to pray to her God privately rather than in the messy, mixed up place that is the church, which this is the body of Christ in the world. She can bolt her door against the prophets, but she’ll be cheating herself of deep communion with God. Prophets can be awfully inconvenient and unpleasant, but they are the voice of promise for all of us. As they call us into the midst of chaos – and I know that selling your house and giving half away or pledging to give 50% of your billions  is something most of us will never experience – still, I do know that whenever we faithfully take the risk to give freely more than we think we ought to of what we have to serve God’s plan for his kingdom on earth, what we experience is a joy that nothing else can give. Not shoes or a house or a meal. Not self-righteousness or correctness or decorum.

This is the promise Jesus gives the disciples in Luke’s gospel as he tells them to sell their possessions and give alms, to make purses for themselves that do not wear out, for where their treasure is, there their hearts will be also. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. The kingdom. He wants us to have the kingdom. He has already given us the kingdom. Where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.

Amen.

      (1)   CNN  news, July 30, 2010
(2)   The Power of Half by Hannah and Kevin Salwen
(3)   The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser
(4)   Uncommon Gratitude by Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams
(5)   New York Daily News, August 5, 2010