In the animated film Fantasia hippos were dressed up in tutus, Which was funny because, at an average of 3000 pounds, they are no ballerinas. The word hippopotamus basically means river horse. Which is interesting because genetic science has revealed That the name is somewhat backward. A hippo isn't a water horse, it's a land whale. Sometimes we, and our institutions can feel like that. Like a whale trying to live on the land.
Fiona the hippo was not born knowing how to be a hippopotamus. There are ways in which she does, and many ways in which she does not. All of which make darling videos. Likewise we human beings are born into the world both knowing how to be human and very much not knowing how to be human. We who try to follow Jesus we don't begin knowing how to do it. Neither did the church begin churchiness knowing how to be effectively churchy.
One of my favorite poems about churchy things is by TS Eliot and it's called ‘The Hippopotamus’. The poem describes a hippo in the mud, seeming so firm and formidable but pointing out that this is just an everyday creature of flesh and blood. This hippo in the swamp is contrasted with an ideal church, a kind of a Platonic shape of a church. One that could be the elite church, the part of our life that dresses up in starched white layers and polishes brass (thank you altar guild). Yet it could also be the ultimate church, the one that is the Eternal now, the Reign of God. Poet Eliot hints that there are moments in the life of being the Church where it seems like this hippopotamus sprouts wings and soars, when the earthen church meets heavenly church. Moments where the complications are shed and we can feel the echo of the eternal now as weightlessness.
However, where the hippo lives and breathes and is its full blessed hippo-ness is Is in the swamp. The real church of Jesus wouldn’t need to exist If life were not all kinds of metaphorical swamps. Trying to follow Jesus isn’t always soaring. Most of the time it is grounded, right here in all this abundance and its decay and its bittersweetness. Recently I was reading about Martin Luther King, Jr’s expectations When he took the call to pastor a church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was finishing up his doctorate and the real glory in the Black church of his era was not academia, But a prestigious pulpit and pastorate. So he took the call in a viciously segregated place and time to a rather polished and never revolution rousing church. He went to Montgomery expecting to have a quiet enough life and ministry to finish his dissertation, while also building a name for himself as an excellent preacher and good pastor. He didn't go in expecting to become the leader we know. Dr. King didn't arrive knowing how to be a civil rights movement leader, he didn't accept the call knowing how to be the prophet and healer and provocateur. He didn’t seem to have even an inkling of who God was calling him to be. I would never put myself in the same league as him, but I can feel some sympathy with that story. It can seem that the experience of calling and being called Whether Episcopalian or Baptist, Is a little bit like hippos dancing. Inelegant and firmly rooted to God’s intention by gravity itself, compelled to keep moving even if like gravity we don’t really understand it (or like it).
The Pauline letters bear witness to a church that doesn't know how to be church yet. That loose association is so far from the organization that we connect with the word church That current scholars write about it as the Jesus movement. Language which is supposed to ground us in the energy and intent and underdog quality of the first Jesus follower gatherings. This early church-ancestor, the one that Paul is involved with in the 2nd letter to the Corinthians is a huge mess. Wanting to soar, but being people making their way with God through a swampland of competing commitments and challenges. They do not know how to do this church thing yet. Likewise Paul is following his call even if he doesn't quite know how to guide them through this yet. Part of the reason that the Epistles continue to speak to us - even with all their unsystematic qualities, their written on horseback style, and their culturally bound difficulties - is that they continue to compel us because we are still a Jesus movement that doesn't quite know how to do this love each other and the whole world mission yet. Rather like a baby hippo learning how to hippo. There are bursts of harmony where we know the love of Jesus, and we feel the burdens lift but there are also moments that are heavy with the chains of injustices. And it is both of those moments that keep us trying and learning and striving to be a people formed by Jesus. We are not dancing hippos because we practiced very hard. We are dancing hippos because we are filled and empowered by the grace of God.
As many of you know this is my last Sunday as part of the staff here. And Saint Paul's letters to the various churches are a place to start thinking about what our relationship is going to feel like going forward. It may be similar to Paul’s relationships with the churches of the letters, in that I will be far from you. It will be different in that I will not be telling you what to do. It expect it to look like my relationships with all the churches I have served. I will remain your friend who interacts and celebrates and mourns and feasts when we can. I will remain someone in prayer with you I'll remain curious about what St. Paul’s is doing and not doing. I will answer factual type questions such as where did you buy x or where did you store y. I will help as I would help anyone who asks. But I will be absolutely useless if you want me to stick my nose in and tell so and so how they should run things. I am deeply grateful for this community and all we have shared, both the brilliant laughter and the way we learned to dance together through the muddy complications. The best thing I can do is to be a friend, rooting for you, and caring for you as we all dance wherever we are.
The muddy streets of frontier era Walla Walla have been paved but they're all around us in new forms of instability and struggle. And at the same time the life giving liberating love of God is sprouting from the messes we encounter. Love is rising for the lost the last the least and the loneliest. It is emerging for the learned and the legendary as well. It is the swamp itself that calls to us to be creative witnesses and performers of God’s Love In Jesus’ name. Questions about church and character and power and process are all over our readings today and they are as old as religion itself. And God’s answer is hardly ever what we expect, so can we trust the mystery of God? Can we trust gravity? Let us seek to be surprised and moved by God’s intention, let us keep reaching for the heavens and learning to embody these hippo land whale bodies with the love of Jesus, right here in the beloved and blessed swamps both near and far.
Let us pray.
Gentle us, Holy One, into an unclenched moment, a deep breath, a letting go of heavy expectations, of shriveling anxieties, of dead certainties, that, softened by the silence, surrounded by the light, and open to the mystery, we may be found by wholeness, upheld by the unfathomable, entranced by the simple, and filled with the joy that is you. In the name of the Holy Trinity, One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, World without end.
Amen.
Prayer by Ted Loder
June 10, 2018
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Walla Walla, Washington
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