Abiding in California

M11

Acts 8:26-40
Ps. 22:24-30
1 Jn. 4:7-21
Jn. 15:1-8


“Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15).

Between heaven and earth suspended on updrafts above the redwood forests and just below the chaparral of Mount Tamalpais hovers a red-tailed hawk. This keen-eyed hunter seems oblivious to this magnificent setting, to the skyscrapers of the financial district and the massive tanker slipping out through the Golden Gate past Seal Rock and Ocean Beach. Great bridges and cities seem so insignificant in comparison to Mount Diablo, the expansive Bay, the ancient forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the infinite Pacific Ocean.

On Friday night we celebrated a friend’s sixty-fifth birthday at the West Point Inn on Mt. Tam, accessible only by a two-mile hike, seventeen hundred feet above sea level. The huge city, the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country, seems so quiet up there (where the wingspan of a swallow at sunset seems larger than Sutro Tower in the distance). I sat there on the porch of that historic building and gave thanks to God that we live here together. I tried to understand what it means to make this place my home, what it means to abide here.

Abide is a thoroughly archaic word, eight of seventeen uses in the Oxford English Dictionary are obsolete. We never use it. We don’t say that people abide together before marriage. We don’t ask new acquaintances where they abide. I suspect that Christianity is the only thing keeping this word alive. Abiding represents a central idea in the gospel of John from the first chapter when John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus where he abides (Jn. 1:38) to the last supper when Jesus tells his own disciples to abide in his love. Jesus promises quite simply, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (Jn. 15). What does it mean to abide in Christ?

Understanding what it means to be a Californian helps us to see the challenges that we face as we try to abide in Christ. I want to begin by thinking about three elements of abiding in California.

1. Fiction. I hope that by this time all of you recognize that California is more than a place. Even if you don’t claim it, it is part of your identity. Even if you don’t recognize it, its stories are yours. Its stories are you.

From the beginning California was a fictional place. In 1510 the Spanish writer Garci Ordonez de Montalvo wrote a bestselling novel (Las Sergas de Esplandian) about the siege of Constantinople. There at the battle was a race of Amazons under the command of Queen Calafia. They were from a place he invented. It was located “on the right hand of the Indies… very close to the Terrestrial Paradise. It was rich in gold and gems. He called it California.

The dominant stories of California share in common a hope for surprising and unexpected success. The fictional wealth of El Dorado motivated the Spanish explorers who discovered California. Gold rush dreams led to a population explosion and sudden statehood. The entrepreneurial story of changing the world and accumulating wealth and power along the way still exercises a powerful claim on our imagination. I don’t know how many, but this week more people moved here to become a star.

2. Conflict. California is not just a fiction. It is not just a dream or a hope. It is also a shared history of conflict. Some scholars have suggested that one third of all Native Americans in the continental United States lived in California before European contact. This population was almost completely wiped out in a way that highlights the difference between how the mission system operated in Mexico and here.

By the 1920’s there were more Latinos living in Los Angeles than any other American city. Millions of these Americans with their American born children were forcibly repatriated to Mexico during the 1930’s by a program which historians rightly call ethnic cleansing. The persecution of Japanese Americans didn’t begin during World War II when 110,000 of them who were locked up behind barbed wire in remote relocation camps (227). In the early years of the twentieth century the White California movement, which included the most powerful politicians and business leaders in the state, worked to segregate public schools and to prevent Japanese from even owning land (223).

Our history includes vigilante terror campaigns against non-white populations. It consists of large landowners in combination with law enforcement officials brutalizing the laborers and farm workers who were essential to California’s prosperity. Racism, exploitation and conflict are part of who we are as we abide in this place.

3. Technology. Our orientation to science and technology also sets us apart. By the mid 1920’s fifty thousand commuters were passing through the San Francisco Ferry Building each day making it the busiest terminal in the world except for Charing Cross station in London (186). This need combined with technology and boldness led to the construction of a trestle bridge at Dumbarton point and then to the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. During the same period one third of all the country’s air traffic was operating out of fifty landing fields in greater Los Angeles (255). In many respects California inventors and companies made the airplane a California technology. Indeed, we are not the first generation here to depend for our livelihoods, recreation and for that matter our water on the most advanced technologies of our day. We forget that the transcontinental railroad was an engineering miracle.

These technologies build on each other. The Pelton Turbine made hydraulic gold mining possible and washed away whole mountain slopes in the Sierra’s. This same technology vastly increased the production of hydroelectricity. This in turn made it cost effective to work with aircraft aluminum in Southern California. Pioneering work on vacuum tubes was done here in the 1920’s. In the 1930’s California led the world in atom-smashing. Then in the 1950’s it was semiconductors. This led to a leading role in the personal computer revolution and now the Internet. California is modern, always influenced by ever-receding dreams of becoming a technological utopia.

We abide here. Different regions in California place a different emphasis on these three elements but the shared fictions, our history of conflict and orientation toward technology define us as a people.

Jesus is right. If we only abided in California we would be lost. I suspect that we already know this. We are just as acquainted with the California nightmare as with the California dream. I believe that abiding in Jesus fundamentally changes our experience of the fiction, the conflict and technology. Because of him we can have lasting hope. The promise that we receive at our baptism is that California can never completely own us because we belong to our God.

Jesus describes this relationship by using the image of the grape vine. His primary point is that without our connection to God we cannot accomplish anything. Our success will always arise out of our relationship to God through the church. Secondly he says that the defining feature of our connection to God is the productivity of our lives. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” We are defined as Christians by our connection to Jesus through the church and by the fruits of our lives, not by what we believe as individuals.

An image of this that sustains me is the altar guild. No one here at Christ Church serves on the altar guild in order to be famous or rich. Each of these women spends a lot of time with Jesus and each other. They attend to the most meticulous details of our worship services together. They spend hundreds of hours each year dedicated to God’s glory making this church beautiful. When I was a child, my mother served on the altar guild and I would go with her to set up the weekday service. In the quiet of that silent church in the presence of those dedicated women, I felt the presence of God.

I have hinted at this. It is hard for us as Californians to understand abiding because it means really settling down, being present through thick and thin. The women of Christ Church’s altar guild have done this. But others of you know what it is like too. Those of you who really abide with your spouse realize that loving does not mean maintaining a certain mood. Contrary to what you see on TV, love is primarily a gift and a task, only secondarily is it a feeling.

In conclusion, our story of hope differs from that of other Californians. We do not put our trust in a twenty-first century Gold Rush. We are not first of all entrepreneurs or aspiring stars. Instead we believe that Jesus invites us into a community that will change the world and he gives us the power to do this. As Christian Californians we recognize our share in the history of conflict that surrounds and penetrates us while having faith that God can make us agents of reconciliation. We understand that technology is a kind of power but also that God is love and it is love that makes us whole.

I want to leave you with one final picture of what it means to abide in Christ. Last week I visited with a friend for what is likely to be the last time. Brian Thompson has accomplished a great deal in his life. I think he owned a bus company. Growing up he loved trains and as an adult he collected them. In fact all of you have seen these vehicles in Hollywood movies. This interest along with his unmatched passion for California history led him to start the railroad museum in Sacramento.

But above all Brian abides in Christ. These days his wife has Alzheimer’s disease and he is dying of cancer. He amazes the doctors not just by surviving beyond any of their expectations, but by living. Brian continues to live joyfully as a Christian fully connected to the body of Christ and because of this he I see him bearing fruit to the very end. As our last conversation wore down he said, “Malcolm you’ve got to tell them this. You never realize the depth of your faith until the chips are down.”

Brian’s confidence shows me the gift of the spirit. I still see him in my imagination, like the hawk flying over the ridges of Tamalpais, Brian is surrounded by beauty somewhere between California and heaven.

_____________________

Kevin Starr, California: A History (NY: Modern Library, 2005), 5. Page numbers in text refer to this book.
If I chose a fourth element that is essential to our identity as Californians it would be our orientation to our natural environment. This physical setting has a huge influence on how we see ourselves.

Disbelieving for Joy

M10

Acts 3:12-19
Ps. 4
1 Jn. 3:1-7
Lk. 24:36b-48

“And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered… he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…” Luke 24

I learned this week that three million Americans believe that aliens visit this planet in UFO’s. At the same time there are 2.2 million Episcopalians. This leads me to ask, what are the aliens doing that we are not doing?

It is so easy to find fault with the church, to criticize our failed good intentions or our constant struggle just to get organized. We haven’t done that much to feed hungry people or to advocate for the poor. Furthermore, we don’t handle the holy well. Sometimes we priests come to God with a false kind of professionalism a pompous dignity that keeps the radically transformative work of the spirit at arm’s lengths.

Other times we probably look more like a circus act, forgetting that our microphones are on, missing cues, saying the wrong things, interrupting each other and talking too fast. Sometimes we present you with unsingable hymns and jump around the prayer book as if we were administering a wacky intelligence test. The truth is that for most people church can at times be boring. There should be a disclaimer in the bulletin that says you should not operate heavy machinery while participating in worship.

When I was a child I thought that in Jesus’ time things were different, but the closer I read the scriptures the more human the disciples seem. When they see the risen Christ they don’t conclude that God’s kingdom is breaking into the world. They are startled and frightened. They don’t believe. They disagree. Because some of them think he is a kind of ghost, he invites them to see and touch him. Even then they still disbelieved for joy and wondered. Jesus goes to the absurd length of showing them that he can eat broiled fish.

Then he teaches them. The Bible says that he opens “their minds to understand the scriptures.” In this life and in resurrected life Jesus looks deeply into their souls. He sees what they most long for. He understands the part of them that stands between them and true joy. He shows them how their relationships can be healed, how God can restore their lives. Imagine someone who knows you so well that he or she can heal your soul. Imagine being part of a group of people who are on fire with the Holy Spirit.

What would it take for us to believe? Or more importantly what can we do to help others to have their lives transformed by Jesus? We accomplish both these tasks when we become better at telling our stories and at listening for connections between our lives and those of the people around us. The German thinker Max Weber described modern life in an industrial society as an “iron cage.” I believe that one of the effects of our hectic times is that it suppresses our stories, even the stories of our salvation.

Last night at a family party I had the blessed opportunity to spend a few hours with Melia’s godfather Mario who is a law professor at Miami University. I told him that as a citizen I was alarmed that the number of people incarcerated in this county has quadrupled in only twenty years. If our Gross Domestic Product or the population of San Francisco, or the size of our own family or unemployment rates or any almost any other figure like these had changed so dramatically in such a short time, I would want to know what caused it.

I asked, “Is the legal profession taking concerted action to address this serious problem.” It amazes me that he said, “No.” I asked him about the causes of this phenomenon. He said that mandatory sentencing rules, heavy prison terms for relatively minor drug crimes, increasing poverty all have contributed to this, along with a far more retributive approach to justice that is not at all concerned with rehabilitating prisoners. In Europe many nations simply address the drug problem differently. In Europe there is less violence associated with property crime than here and this also reduces prison terms.

Mario talked about the experience of going through the court system. Police in this country are allowed to lie, to say that they have witnesses to your actions when they don’t, to say that they will arrest your family when they can’t. In one famous case police told an unusually dim-witted suspect that the fax machine was a lie detector and convicted him on the basis of this confession.

Mario told me that the purpose of this is to force a suspect to fit into categories, into preconceived stories that this system uses to simplify the process of administering justice. In that world the details of your story are erased and your identity gets compressed so that you are merely an African American involved in urban drug culture, or a suburban white-collar criminal, or an Islamic terrorist.

He told me that if your crime is especially heinous they will listen more carefully to the details of your story and if you have a lot of money to hire legal experts they will too.

Millie Simpson was an elderly African American domestic servant who lived in Newark, New Jersey and commuted out to the wealthy suburbs by bus. She had an old car in her driveway that she never drove. One day an acquaintance took the car without asking and was involved in a hit and run accident. A witness identified her license plate and she was brought before the court. The first judge was only interested in her plea. After hearing that she claimed not to be driving the car, the judge entered her plea as not guilty.

The next judge interrupted Simpson when she tried to explain what happened. Even though her public defender was out of the room and he didn’t see any evidence, he ruled that she was guilty and sentenced her to a fine, community service and revoked her license. Because of the community service Simpson could no longer work after hours for one of her suburban clients. They needed her so badly that they hired a lawyer who went before the same judge and had the previous sentence dismissed. Simpson was quoted as saying, “I couldn’t understand what [the judge] was saying… I didn’t know what he was talking about.” Simpson's employer, however, had a different comment on Simpson's legal experiences: "[T]his was 'the typical story of American racism. To get justice, the poor black woman needs a rich white lady."

This is not an exception. Mario’s point was that part of the problem is that institutionally and through culture our criminal justice system and society in general suppress our individual stories.

I sometimes think that it is unfortunate that you did not know me before I became a priest. Mostly this means that you are in the habit of thinking that I am different than you. I sometimes wonder how this affects the way that we talk about Jesus together. At my class reunion last summer, although the people who really knew me expected it, most of my old friends from high school were surprised to learn that I had been ordained. Many of them learn only about Christianity from television dramas. Few of us have had much experience with younger clergy.

After the Vietnam War the leaders of my home diocese thought that there were too many priests. They stopped ordaining people who were in their twenties. They told young people to go and have another career and then come back to the church with their wisdom. There are many great second career priests. But this policy effectively told the world that the spirituality, the faith stories, of young people was less important.

I grew up in a community of people who firmly believed otherwise. St. Martin’s Episcopal church in Davis included me as a teenager in adult Christian education programs. They insisted that I serve as an acolyte and gave me the responsibility of teaching Sunday School for younger kids. When I expressed an interest in being ordained they supported me through the process and cut through the red tape that could have held me back. Most of all they always listened to my story and saw its connection to the Bible.

Jesus is not present in a general way. The Holy Spirit is not vague. These are the tangible ways that I saw God at work in the world. When my friends or I needed help, when I was tempted to go astray, God was saving me through the church.

I bring this up because I feel Jesus more and more present at Christ Church every day. In the holiness of the Lent that we shared together, through our ministry at Ventana School and Rebuilding Together, in the care we show to sick and suffering people, God is here. At the retreat last week four year old Melia Young and Lynn Saunders painted a picture together and what was most beautiful about that picture was that as they did it they shared their stories.

In a world which suppresses the unique stories of individuals, we are finding our voice. I want to ask you to do more to tell your story about God’s grace to people who have not yet discovered Christ Church. This is not to tell them that the way they see the world is wrong, but to let them know there is a place where their stories can be faithfully heard. Invite your friends to church. We are ready to receive them.

Someone once asked a French poet, “if the Louvre Museum were burning and you could only choose one work of art which one would you save?” He replied, “I would choose the fire.” In your life and your calling as a child of God be free to choose the fire. Allow yourself to be the way that God transforms the world. Let go of the stories that others tell about you which imprison or control your life-giving spirit. Let the risen Christ appear to you and appear in you, even when you are confused or afraid. Then we shall “be called children of God” and “when he appears we will be like him” (1 John 3).
___________________________

The first example and the concluding one about the Louvre Museum came from the presentations that various bishop candidates made during this week. The first came from Bonnie Perry quoting Jonathan Jensen. The second was from Marc Andrus.
Mario Lamont Barnes, “Black Women’s Stories and the Criminal Law: Restating the Power of Narrative,” 39 U.C. DAVIS L. REV.