Sermons On Line

Here is a sampling of sermons preached by The Reverend Philip W. Dougharty, Rector of St. John's-Grace Episcopal Church. 

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, August 8, 2010

Readings: 

Genesis 15:1-6; Psalm 33:12-22; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

From Hebrews: “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

You have noticed, I am sure, that we have reconfigured the worship space a little by removing some pews and rearranging some things.  Before Charlotte Vogelsang’s death she was an ardent advocate for anything that would make our building more inclusive and more accessible to all people.  The idea of “loosening up” the worship space was the subject of many discussions during her three years on the vestry but, by the time there was some consensus around trying some things, her illness had taken much of her attention.  It has been since she died that one or two vestry people said, “What about Charlotte’s ideas for the church?”

The changes give a more open look to the entrance area, an inviting place to gather, they give a more comfortable place to seat people in wheelchairs, and they place the baptismal font in the appropriate liturgical place: at the entrance to the church.  I don’t know what the final outcome of these small changes will be; I do know that even in Charlotte’s last days she reminded me at one point, “Don’t forget accessibility.”

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  There is a sense in which Charlotte never gave up her quest for our being accessible, partly because she believed that we were, at heart, people of accessibility and inclusion – that solid banks of dark, hardwood pews were less inviting, and that our goal should be that of a welcoming community.

Today’s texts ask us this really crucial question about our quest in faith: “What is it that we are willing to pursue even if we know that we will not, ourselves, see it come to pass?”  We have become so focused on what our faith does for us that we cannot see what we may never see – what our faith will do for those coming after us.  That is one real test of faith, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction” – or, as the King James Version says, “the evidence” – “of things not seen.”

When Bible 101 read Genesis about eight years ago we realized that God came to Abram five times with the same promise: “Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  So shall your descendents be.”  Why five times?  Was God so unreliable that he had to continually make the covenant?  No, it was Abram’s human inability to see beyond what he could see that caused God to have to keep reminding him!  God kept planting the seeds of the future in Abram’s heart so that God’s vision would take root, Abram would get a sense of it and pursue it.

This is the challenge we face at St. John’s Grace: to get a glimpse of God’s vision for us as God’s People.  If we can ever get that glimpse and move together into a future in the heart of God, then some other issues will come into perspective.  This is what Jesus was trying to say to his disciples in today’s Gospel: “Don’t be afraid: God wants to give you the kingdom, so sell your possessions and give alms.”  In other words, get rid of everything that keeps you from pursuing the kingdom – and turn your attention to others.

What keeps us from plunging whole-heartedly into a pursuit of the promise is that the vision must precede the plunge.  Vision is a language of the heart.  It cannot be “thought up” or “figured out.”  Vision is a gift to which we surrender!  We can never follow a vision that is not given and received.  The potentials that a vision provides are beyond what we can do for ourselves.  That is why I am always attracted back to the Ephesians text that promises that “…God’s power working in us can do more than we can ask or imagine.”  But we must be willing at the outset to surrender to “more than we can ask or imagine” because our own “ask or imagine,” in the scope of God’s vision for the world is simply not enough.

Now back to the original issue of faith; we must be willing to follow even if we are not to be there to see the end result.  In Charlotte’s case she never gave up the hope that her vision for a more inclusive, accessible worship space would become reality – and died with that hope practically on her lips.

The point is this: God’s time is not our time.  The Hebrews text says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”  The idea of this building in this place is a result of the dreams – the promise – of a preceding generation.  We will do them an injustice if we succumb to losing a dream.  The dream – the promise of St. John’s Grace – must be renewed and pursued!  We can either operate from the position that we do not have enough people, money, resources, leadership… or we can renew the dream of a People of God on this corner of Lafayette and Bidwell Parkway as a beacon, summoning people to the Good News that God is in this place.  We will not all see it happen as we dream it.  We are all, in a sense, sowers of the seeds of the Gospel in this place.  As we are harvesting the labors of the past, so we must sow our own seeds for the future generations.

If there is not a promise to pursue there is no reason for us to continue.  We are a people of faith – believing that for which we hope, convicted of things we cannot see.  Contemplative Prayer is one method by which, as Laura Swan told us last week, we quiet the hurry, the crowds and the noise to be able to hear the voice of God to our hearts.  Faith is, in the words of the old ‘60s poster, stepping up to the very edge of darkness and taking one more step.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 1, 2010

Readings:

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

Psalm 49: 2 – “My mouth shall speak of wisdom, and my heart shall meditate on understanding.”

I have spent some time this past week reading the “Desert Fathers” and “Desert Mothers.”  These were devout lay people – rarely priests – in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries that moved into the deserts of Egypt, Syria, Persia and present-day Turkey in an attempt to seriously journey with God.  They lived what is called a life of “asceticism,” a form of self-denial in which they limited their input of food, their access to conveniences, and even limited their contact with the outside world.  In her book on the Desert Mothers Laura Swan says, “The desert refined their inner strength and resolve and deepened their sense of utter dependence on God.”  She continues, “Desert ascetics believed that the greatest enemies of the inner journey were hurry, crowds, and noise.  The desert was a place for quieting the inner noise that kept them from hearing the whispers of God.”

I have several friends who are part of monastic communities that have as their goal to emulate this simple, devotional life; however, none goes to the extent of the early hermits and devotional communities.  We continue to read and learn from the early monastics, though few if any of us will follow their example and move to the desert to live off the land.

Those statements by Swan, though, give clues as to how one might go about carving out a life of wisdom and understanding.  It would depend on a certain amount of self-control of food intake and verbal output – and a lot of quiet solitude listening for the “whispers of God.”

Today’s texts lead us to consider our relationship with outer stimulation: the reading from Ecclesiastes finds “the Preacher” – ostensibly Solomon himself – reflecting on the nature of material possessions that he has gained by working hard.  That word “vapor” says so much about the lasting quality of accumulation, and the writer is anguished about the meaning of it.  Particularly poignant is the lament that “sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it.”  This may have been the motive of those who went to the desert: to discern what in life is truly of value. 

It is no secret that while I am a participant in it to a certain extent, I am also a critic of what I call “consumer culture.”  When I worked in television in New York City I became very aware that the “client” to television networks – the person that must be kept happy – is not the viewer, as one might think, but, rather, the advertiser who pays for the time.  Boycotts of advertisers in recent years have made the difference in what we see on television because the networks work for the advertisers, not the viewer.  We are sold hundreds of products minute by minute and lament that our children are too materialistic with their desire for more and more entertainment, beauty, convenience and luxury.  This is not new; it goes back to Wisdom literature – to a reflecting writer who wants to know “what it is all for.”  One of the Desert Fathers, Abba Anthony, said, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, whey will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’”  The consumer culture has convinced us that we are mad if we are not enthusiastic, full participants.  The same can be said for a military culture, a fundamentalist religious culture, a short-sighted patriotic culture – commonly called jingoism – even a liberal or progressive culture is not immune.

Jesus is approached in today’s Gospel reading by a man who says, in essence, “Make my brother give me what is coming to me.”  While it may have been tempting for Jesus to be a problem-solver, he turned the situation into an opportunity to introduce the petitioner to the problem of “stuff” that was pondered by the writer of Ecclesiastes: “…the things you have prepared – acquired – whose will they be?”  This is not legalistic, moralistic talk from Jesus but, rather, the work of Wisdom Master Jesus, leading the man into a deeper relationship with real reality: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”  This is not a religious leader using religion to control a person; it is a Wisdom Master leading someone into deeper, richer life.  As Cynthia Bourgeault says, “Wisdom is not knowing more, gaining new information; it is knowing deeper with more and more of yourself.”  In this case Jesus is offering a view from a different angle of the prism.  Did it make a difference in this case?  Only eternity knows.

Paul knows the Jesus of Wisdom.  His language is that of an attorney, but he knows the essence of Jesus as Wisdom Master.  “So if you have been raised with Christ,” if you have entered the sphere of “knowing deeper,” “seek the things that are above…. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth….”  This was the quest of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.  In our view they were extreme, (mad?), but their intention was to eliminate as much distraction as they could from their relationship with God.  Were those the days when people really believed, or is it in some way an example of how we can journey with God in the midst of our own cultures?  What can we do to avoid some of the “hurry, crowds, and noise” of our own time?  Swan says, “Desert spirituality is characterized by the pursuit of abundant simplicity – simplicity grounded in the possession of little – and the abundance of God’s presence.  Yearning for complete union with God, desert ascetics sought to remove all obstacles to the deepening of this relationship.”  Does this kind of intense search for relationship with God have any relevance for the 21^st Century Church?  I would say that it is not the rituals themselves, or the structures or the amiable groups of people that have kept the Church alive these 2000 years; there is something in the journey into the heart of God that keeps the Church fresh and vibrant.  When that is missing, the core of our life together turns stale and mechanical.

Paul’s writing is passionate on these subjects.  He continues this line of thought.  He says, “…seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”  We are ever being made new as we move toward that image that is named in the first chapters of Genesis.  And, Paul continues, we find that our renewal gives us a new view of humanity itself: there are no longer the divisions that keep us apart – us against the “Other,” but, in Paul’s words, “Christ is all and in all!”  The major result of the lives of the Desert Fathers and Mothers was that they lived their lives for the sake of others.  Christ is all and in all!  All else is vapor and a chasing after wind.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 25, 2010

Readings:

Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

From our Gospel: “Father, hallowed be your name.”

Sometimes when we do what is referred to as the “contemporary” Lord’s Prayer, people say, “Let’s go back to the one that is in the Bible.”  Today’s Gospel from Luke is a surprise when we realize that the “contemporary” Lord’s Prayer is actually in the Bible.  The more familiar one is the one found in the Gospel of Matthew, a later manuscript than Luke’s passage. 

When I typed that familiar sentence, “Father, hallowed be your name,” my grammar check wanted to change it to, “Father, hallowed is your name.”  If we were writing it today, that is how we would state it: “Father, your name – your nature – is hallowed.”  But that word “hallowed gives us pause.  We rarely refer to something or someone as being “hallowed;” it is just not in our vernacular to use that word.  Growing up we were taught that “hallowed” meant something like “revered” or “honored.”  “Father, your name is honored,” we might say.  You will not, though, be surprised to hear me say that “hallowed” is etymologically related to healing and wholeness.  “Father, your nature or your character is Wholeness.”  This is very exciting when we remember that another healing/wholeness-related word is “holy,” as in, God’s instruction to “Be holy as I am holy.”  It is not a demand for some moral strictness, but an invitation to be “put together.”  Isn’t that what we yearn for – to be made whole?

And so, as we continue to look at the life of Jesus, Wisdom Master, this lesson in prayer is important.  As you pray, begin with, “God, your nature is Wholeness.”  How does this change what follows in our prayer?  Does this make a difference in what follows immediately?  “Your kingdom come.”  What kind of kingdom would we be looking for from a God whom we refer to as “Whole?”  We hope that it denotes a culture of justice and compassion.  That is what we have come to understand Wholeness to be: our ability to move beyond our own brokenness to a larger picture where all are recognized and acknowledged as God’s own.

Part of God’s Wholeness is explored in the Genesis text that finds God being talked into ignoring God’s own standards in order to save the lives of unrighteous people.  A God of justice, we might say, would punish the evildoers no matter what.  In this case, as in the case of Jesus’ story of the neighbor begging for food, God is described as almost being a patsy because Abraham or the hapless neighbor was persistent.  His rules must not be very important if he is so willing to bend them – even ignore them.  Then we see that God’s willingness to overlook the sinfulness is on the side of mercy.  Abraham, because of his regard for the people, continues to go to God with more and more ridiculous bargains and is rewarded with signs of God’s care and compassion for people.  In Jesus’ story, it is said, you will give the man what he wants not because you are friends, but because of your persistence – just like Abraham.  This is a window into what Wholeness is in God’s eyes: not that God makes up his mind what justice is and proceeds to execute it.  Wholeness in God’s eyes leans toward justice tempered with mercy and compassion.  In Genesis God can be talked out of what we would call “justice” if it means showing compassion.

Jesus’ parable about asking and receiving then explodes with new meaning as Jesus the Wisdom Master comes to the end of his lesson on prayer.  “If your child asks for simple sustenance will you respond with something that will harm her or him?  How ridiculous!  You will give them the best you have!  So, if you know how to give good gifts, don’t you think that God is willing to give you the best?” he asks, and answers his own question with this cryptic remark: “how much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”  Remember that passage from The Wisdom Jesus?  “Wisdom is not knowing more, but knowing deeper.”  He has turned the whole thing around from asking for temporal things to a search for Wisdom, the Holy Spirit - God’s best, God’s nature, God’s name, God’s self! 

Today’s theme is expressed in the collect for the day: “multiply upon us your mercy… that we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.”  Believe me, scarcity we will always have with us – just like the poor – but God’s gift of Wisdom and the Holy Spirit is what we seek.  If we were a temporal corporation we would concentrate on the financial bottom line, but we are not; we are the people of God, listening for the languages of God to empower us to change this temporal world into the Kingdom of God!

Paul’s real contribution to the Christian world is his incisive view of what we are about.  In today’s Colossians text he says, and I paraphrase, “Don’t let anyone make you sweat the small stuff.  These are the trivialities of life – only a shadow.  What really matters, the substance, is Christ!  Quit thinking that you have all the answers because you are smart or clever or even spiritual; keep your eye on the source of our life together and concentrate on receiving the growth that comes from God.”

My cousin Drew Cottle, with whom I spent time last weekend in Virginia, is a young guy, a Methodist minister in Pennsylvania.  He and his wife Donna have a ten year old son, and Donna has been living with a brain tumor for a year.  Her care is constant.  In addition, his ailing mother lives with them and requires a certain amount of care as well.  As we drove along a country road to our ancestral church Drew said to me, “You know I am addicted to reality.”  When I expressed my confusion at this he continued, “I really have a hard time sitting in long, meetings where we talk about trivialities.  I find myself saying to them, ‘Look, I am here to be your minister.  How can I do that?  I am spinning my wheels here listening to you talk about nothing and pretending that it is important.  Let’s talk about what is important….”  The circumstances of his life have shown him what is important in his experience at this point.  That is what Paul is begging for in this passage.  Our “religion” is not about the small stuff – it is about Christ, it is about real reality; and that is what we should be about.  “Multiply upon us your mercy…” says our Collect, “that we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.”

May our prayer be “Father, hallowed, holy, Wholeness is your name.  May the kingdom that is defined by your nature, your name – Wholeness - come to our world in our time.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Vauter’s Church, July 18, 2010

From Genesis: “One of the strangers said to Abraham, ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’”  And Sarah laughed.

When we began to talk about the possibility of my preaching for this very special occasion I asked my cousin Andy Cottle what I should preach on, and he suggested “The Begats.”  Very insightful.  So here are our begats as we understand them: Bartholomew Vawter, who seems to have been the original human in the Garden of Eden,  sprung directly out of the mud, (actually born somewhere around 1665), and Winfred Hodgson, (whose parents William and Onah we do know of), begat Edward in 1701;  Edward and Elizabeth Boulware begat Thomas in 1735; Thomas and Mary Pitts begat Ludwell in 1774; (Ludwell, incidentally was the first to discover the correct spelling of the name and inserted a “gh” before the “t”), Ludwell and Frances Robinson begat Thomas H. in 1813; Thomas H. and Susan Bond begat David Crockett in 1844; David and Tennessee (Tennie) begat William in 1881.  Bill was my grandfather; he and Bonnie Wade begat four girls, Rhea, Marian, Aline and Margaret.  He died in 1955 when I was five years old.  It does not take much to realize that the marriages of those girls ended the Vaughter name in our line.  As Georgene Jurgenson pointed out in her session, we were “daughtered out.”  We are all now Cottles, Moores, Boneys, and Doughartys.  It is particularly poignant for us to be connected to such an auspicious family because those of us who grew up out west are convinced that we have no ancestors.  It is nothing short of a miracle (of the internet) that we have come to know of our place in this family.  And it is perhaps one of the great highlights of my career to stand in this pulpit today.

There are several things that are said about membership in families: one is “you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you cannot pick your family.”    The other is “family is where they have to take you in no matter what.”  Perhaps we all resonate with both of these at some time in our own experience.

I love that the book of Genesis today tells of the very beginning of one of the most famous dynasties in Western Civilization.  The promise of God to Abraham was that his descendents would number more than the sands of the seashore.  How impossible that must have seemed to Abraham, who was approaching the age of 100 – and even more to Sarah his wife, who was near 90.  I tell my aging congregation, “See, anything is possible” – and the older women give me terrible looks!

The path to being parents of a great nation was not straight or smooth, as we know from reading the rest of Genesis, but there is a sense, 5,000 years later, in which that dynasty still provides the structure for what is the Hebrew nation through Abraham and Sarah’s great grandsons, the sons of Jacob.  This has been much on my mind as I have perused the Geni website to find that the branches are seemingly endless!  My ancestor, Edward, was the seventh of ten children from Bartholomew and Winfred!  The extensions are amazing!  And Sarah laughed when she heard it.  I suspect that Winfred did too.

The story of Abraham and Sarah includes all of the makings of that great American literature, the Soap Opera.  It includes deceit, murder, and adultery (lots of that!), family in-fighting, sibling rivalry – you name it!  So with ours as well; Edward’s will includes this line that carries a lot of baggage in it: “It is my will that my mulatto girl, Sene, should be freed from that time of servitude as she incurred by having two bastards.”  Seems we are in good company with the biblical patriarchs.  I guess my point is this: God has chosen to work through human beings in structures known to us as families, knowing full well that they will be subject to all of the human exigencies of existence.  It is to us that God’s Kingdom of justice and compassion is entrusted, and we reach new understandings of what that means as we move through it.  This sentence in Edward’s will carries with it the human condition: we know what is right, but struggle with letting go ourselves to make what is right a reality.  We would rather leave it to the next generation to make our amends!  Edward’s consideration of this woman, knowing what she has done for the family and in the context of the family is quite admirable.  I am touched by it, though I am personally offended both by the reality of slavery in the family, as well as the informal way in which children were introduced to it.

Jesus’ visit to the home of his friends says so much about the humanity of the family unit.  In this story the tension between Mary and Martha is one that is recognized by most of us: one is doing all the work and the other is sitting listening to the master’s teaching.  What it really explores, however, is the two activities in which we must engage in order to become fully human – made in God’s image.  The more obvious of the two is hospitality.  Martha was correct in spending the time and effort – and love? – making the home a gracious and welcoming place to entertain the Christ in Jesus or in any other guests that might be in attendance.  However Mary was also correct to tend to the more contemplative needs of her Spirit – the languages of the heart.  It is true that we can be, as they used to say, “so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good.”  But it is equally true that hospitality that proceeds from a legalistic context – one of duty rather than a transformed heart of love – is rigid, brittle, the antithesis of the hospitality it espouses.  We seek a balance between the two because each informs and forms the other.

Finally to Paul; love him or hate him, he always gets to the real heart of the Christian faith – though it may take a long time to get there.  In today’s passage from the Letter to the Colossians he speaks of the knowledge which is now known to all people: “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory;” the mystery hidden for ages: Christ in you, the hope of glory!  What an idea!  My favorite book these days is by an Episcopal priest, Cynthia Bourgeault, called “The Wisdom Jesus.”  In it she says, “…you are the vessel, the instrument that receives the wisdom.  As you attune and fine-tune your instrument, you will know.  It’s not knowing something more, like a new fact or piece of esoteric information; it’s knowing deeper, knowing with more and more of your being engaged.”  That is the journey into Wisdom, the journey into God that compels us.  How fortunate we are to have Abraham-like ancestors who invested, ultimately, in us, in who we are and what we can become as we become the transformed instruments of God’s grace to an ungracious world.

Sunday after Pentecost, May 30, 2010

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power.

I have come to believe that it is this sentiment that Jesus meant in today’s Gospel reading.  He says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth….”  It is this larger truth that is the gift of the Holy Spirit which we welcome at this time of year.  I have asked the Altar Guild to give us another week or two of red hangings and vestments so that we can explore this gift of the Spirit.  In fact, I would propose that we spend a few weeks in what I would call a “season of Wisdom,” a celebration of a biblical tradition about which little is known or celebrated. 

You would not think that there would be political factions vying for control over the Bible and those of us who love it and use it as a manual for living, but it is true.  Over the centuries the “law and order” segment of Christianity has prevailed over a much richer biblical tradition that is found threaded throughout the biblical text, from Creation through the Revelation to John.  I am referring to a Wisdom tradition of which Jesus was a major figure for those of us who call ourselves Christians.  I am hoping in the next few weeks to help us reclaim a rich heritage in the words and actions of Jesus that may change our lives.

There is a reason that the “law and order” party has been so prevalent through the generations: it has to do with power.  If the Church can keep its adherents in line by demanding obedience then there is no danger of losing control.  When I was researching labyrinths in France a couple of years ago I learned that many labyrinths were removed from cathedrals because the clergy could not deal with the idea of laity milling about on their own!  If the Holy Spirit is allowed to move in the lives of individuals and communities of faith the unexpected might happen.  New avenues of compassion and justice might erupt; the Kingdom of God might break through in our own experience.  The fire of Pentecost might continue to burn past one Sunday service.  This is what I believe Jesus was warning his disciples of: an outpouring of the Spirit that can change everything!

In today’s Proverbs text Wisdom introduces herself not only as having been present at Creation when all the marvels we know – and some we don’t know! – were established, but also as an ever-presence, “rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”  This is a great text, and I encourage you to read through it again at your leisure.  If you are ever wishing for great poetry to spark your imagination, this is a good place to start.  Wisdom continues past today’s reading with these words, “And now, my children listen to me; happy are those who keep my ways.  Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.  Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.”  And here is the punch line: “For whoever finds me finds life.”

So what does this “Wisdom” thing mean after all?  You know that the dictionary is my best friend, so I went to my online dictionary and found, “wisdom – noun.  1. The quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight.”  Note that in this definition knowledge of what is true or right is coupled with a just judgment as to the action that truth demands.  “…that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which you have been called.”  This is the vocation, the calling of every person who journeys with God. 

One of the differences between “law and order” religion and a life of Wisdom is that wisdom is very interested in the whys and the struggles of the every day in which we live.  “Law and order” provides easy answers to questions that we find complicated.  The life lived into wisdom invites us into the struggle for meaning, for relationship, for depth.  Paul’s admonition to the Romans today is straight out of a wisdom approach to life: “…we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…” and I love the rest of this sentence: “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” 

While law and order religion gives (demands?) easy black and white answers Wisdom invites us into life in which God’s love has been poured into our hearts!  This is, I must say, a much messier approach to life.  Without easy answers we move into the unknown in faith in which even the most difficult of situations cannot defeat us and, in fact will bring richness – the love of God poured into our hearts in ways we would never know with easy answers. 

The world of Wisdom also returns to us an essential element that religion has lost on so many levels but which we must recover.  That element is a sense of mystery.  Somehow we must recover a sense that there are some things that we cannot understand nor can we control no matter how far our brains can take us in scientific knowledge.  It is the yearning for mystery that brings us weekly to rehearse our liturgy, to be with a community of faith, to hope for something that will stir and change our hard hearts and that will make us weep for something greater than ourselves.  We yearn for something that will release in us compassion that is lost in the everyday struggle.  We yearn for Wisdom.

So to paraphrase the prayer for the beginning of Lent, I invite you into a season of Holy Wisdom.  I invite you to join me in a journey into this forgotten biblical call – a call into mystery, uncertainty, and discomfort; a journey into the very heart of God.  The mystery includes the fact that we will never really reach a destination.

One more note: as I mentioned several weeks ago in my review of the movie “As it is in heaven” real music making doesn’t begin with making sounds; it begins with listening – listening deeply to the unique music God is implanting in each of our own hearts.  Take opportunities, as we are doing in the Holy Listening groups, to listen to the music in the hearts of others.  Sometimes this means setting our own agenda aside to listen to the agenda of the Holy Spirit.  I do believe that when we are in touch with the music that the Spirit of Wisdom is playing in our hearts we are more apt to be able to play in tune with others.

And so I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power to those of us who believe.

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, January 31, 2010

In today’s Gospel Jesus finds himself whiplashed by reaction from those listening to him.  First they are amazed and “spoke well of him,” taking pride in his being a “local boy done good.”  This admiration soon turns to anger – to the point of trying to kill him – when he tells them what his message really is.  I can hear them saying, “Well, you’ve made a real name for yourself; what are you going to do for us?”  Here is that tough message that got him thrown out of his hometown: “it is not, in the final analysis, about you.”  That is a phrase that is heard very frequently in our culture, and for good reason.  Part of the attraction of our culture is the perpetuation of the notion that it is about each individual.  You are beautiful, smart, and special.  If anyone dares to question you they must be wrong.  It is, after all, about you.  Some wiser heads have finally begun to question that conventional wisdom to say, “Enough!  It is not always about you.”  This was what got Jesus in trouble.  His message contained a code that revealed that God’s power in the lives of the early prophets was directed not to themselves, but to the Other: to the widow in Sidon, not Israel, and to the Syrian military captain of Aram, not Israel.  Jesus’ first message to his own people was, “This is not about you; it is about the Other.”  Remember, he had just read the prophet Isaiah, last week’s text that promised hope for the poor, release for the captive, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.

It seems to be human nature to see ourselves as the oppressed or poor – perhaps the captive – and so we need reminders that we are among the Haves.  Last Tuesday’s New York Times ran an article entitled, “Fighting starvation, Haitians share portions.”  It is quoted as saying, “Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group.  He had to make it last.  ‘My mother has 12 kids but a lot of them died,’ he said, covering his meal so he could carry it to his family. ‘There are six of us now and my mom.’”  Here is the kicker: “For Maxi and countless others… new rules of hunger etiquette are emerging.  Stealing food, it is widely known, might get you killed…. [But] everything must be shared.”  Another, “Ms. Perdriel, a no-nonsense cook with her hair pulled back, displayed a pot with half a chicken cut into pieces.  ‘This should be for two people,’ she said.  ‘Now it will have to do for 20.’”

What struck me about reading this particular article was that only three days earlier I had endured a particularly emotional and tense meeting of our finance committee in which we struggled over how to expand our half-million dollar endowment and reduce our dependence on it.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I know that this is a sort of “apples and oranges” situation.  I have some sense of how many hours our treasurer spends making ends meet for us – and I am conscious that we will have to take some steps to secure our existence past the next five or six years.  I was just struck by the juxtaposition of these two approaches to survival.

Look, I believe that St. John’s Grace is receiving the message given to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”  We often respond like Jeremiah, “You’ve got to be kidding!  We are not big enough; we do not have enough resources to remain here ourselves.  What can we do for the nations when we cannot figure out our own future?”  I think that God responds, “Do not say you are not enough, for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid!”  I imagine that somewhere in the heart of God there was a vision of us as ministers of God’s Word in the very founding of St. John’s and Grace Churches.  We are destined for greatness if we respond to something larger than ourselves.  It is, after all, not about us.  Archbishop of Canterbury John Templeton is famous for having said, “The Church is the only institution that exists for those who do not belong to it.”  We exist to change the world.

This is not a popular message.  It almost got Jesus thrown off the cliff!  The Church often focuses on the two elements of 1 Corinthians 13 that relate to our experience of God, Faith and Hope, but Paul reminds us that there is “a better way.”  He says, “If I speak with the tongues of mortals and angels and do not have love I am just noise.  If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith, so that I can move mountains, and I do it without love I am nothing.  And, if I give away everything I own – even my own body, but do not have love I gain nothing.”  We will not change the world until our hearts are changed toward the Other.  It is not, after all, about us.

So, while I do love this building – it is what attracted me here in the first place – and I do love the full-time job that you graciously employ me to do, and I believe in the programs that we organize and promote, I am most impressed by the people that you are.  When I see individuals and groups taking on projects like resettling a refugee family, engaging the neighborhood through the Grant-Ferry Association or the Taste of Diversity, offering prayers for healing, planning meaningful liturgies, designing attractive communications, making our building beautiful and safe for the variety of groups that use it, performing simple acts of kindness like picking someone up for church or bringing desserts for others to enjoy at Coffee Hour, collecting food or clothing or money for those in need – all without any motivation for return – then I know that Jesus’ ministry to feed the poor, liberate the captive, heal the blind and free the oppressed is indeed what we are about.  We may be tempted to think, “Oh, what we have to offer is just not enough.”  Paul’s message to the Corinthians rings through the ages, “If you had enough and did not understand the basic concept it would mean nothing.”

The key to real loving comes from being truly loved.  Paul concludes this rich hymn to love with this cryptic image: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  What this means is that we get only a hint of how fully we are loved and cared for by God and by others – of how we are actually seen.  The time will come when we will know fully, and it may come as a result of the reflection in that mirror: how fully we are loved may be reflected in how fully we love.

Let me return now to God’s call to Jeremiah, a call we can all hear.  “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.  See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down… to build and to plant.”  To quote someone I really believe in, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 24, 2010

Did you see the NBC News story last Monday night about the woman in Haiti who was trapped for six days?  She was trapped on her knees in a supermarket that had pancaked on top of her.  Her husband knew where she was, and stayed right with rescue workers as they struggled to make contact with her.  When, after six days on her knees, (she said they were sore), she was brought out of her living tomb she came out singing a song with lyrics something like, “never be afraid of death!”  Over and over the spirituality and faith of the people of Haiti have astounded us as they struggle with death of loved ones, loss of homes, businesses, and entire ways of life.  Does that lessen the impact of the tragedy?  Not generally, but in the case of some it certainly does seem that it has lessened the impact.  It has changed not only their perspective on life’s priorities, but in many cases ours as well.

Isaiah’s prophecy led him to utter these immortal words in Chapter 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor – and the day of vengeance of our God.”  It was left to Jesus to have the audacity to add, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  (Jesus left out the vengeance part).  What does this mean, that these promises have been fulfilled?  It certainly does not mean that from that time forward there would be no more poor folks, no more captives, no more blind or oppressed.  It seems to mean, at least from the standpoint of some Haitians, that Jesus has ushered in a new age of perspective of what those things mean.  For the woman trapped in the supermarket death had completely lost its power; she had experienced it, and she had won.  Had she been crushed, death would have not had the final word!  True liberty is experienced when we realize that the worst cannot do us in; the joy of the Lord is our strength!  We have yet to experience that “strength that comes through the joy of the Lord” until we undergo extreme loss of health, of material goods, of relationship, even of life itself.  It is amazing to me how often people tell me that illness or loss was the best thing for their spiritual growth.

It would be tempting to simply say, “Well, let’s just let the Haitians joy in the Lord take care of them if that is the case.  We are doing just fine here with our blessings.”  As I mentioned last week, though, and Paul continues to remind us through his description of Christ’s Body, we are part of a Whole.  We are the Haitians, as they are us.  Paul says in today’s passage from 1 Corinthians, “God has so arranged the Body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members have the same care for one another.  If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”  We suffer with our Haitian members, and invite them to rejoice in our blessings.  I would add semi-parenthetically that the same holds true for all of Creation; we all suffer when the earth is raped and pillaged, and we all rejoice when strides are made to keep the earth intact.

I am always deeply moved by this passage from Nehemiah.  It portrays a People who have been in exile for several generations.  They are a fragmented People to say the least; their actual identity has come near being lost.  When they return to the Land of their ancestors there is found the foundational document that tells them who they are as a nation belonging to Yahweh.  When the document is read publicly for the first time in decades they first stood up.  What a picture that is: a Nation of people standing in honor of their founding document.  And, what is more, they weep through the entire reading.  I think that Ezra and Nehemiah misunderstood the weeping of the people.  They seemed to think that they were tears of grief over the loss of the nation.  I think that they were tears of joy over the recovery of a sense of who they were!  Maybe it was a bit of both.

I yearn for the day that we will stand in tears during our worship time together as we recognize who we are as the Body of Christ – stumbling, bumbling through the world proclaiming good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.  It starts with us!  We are the poor, the captive, the blind and the oppressed, in poverty, captivity, darkness and oppression of our own making!  The Church will be irresistible when it is truly Good News!  It does not mean that trouble and suffering will cease, that we will all have big cars and large houses; it means that we will get a new perspective of what we actually have: the joy of the Lord is our strength!

There is an unfortunate but necessary break at the end of the 1 Corinthians text.  Paul talks about the various gifts that make up the work of this body in its Wholeness, and ends today’s reading with these words: “But strive for the greater gifts.”  That seems to be a sort of teaser, and it is.  The next sentence is, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”  Do you know what comes after that?  If you have been to a wedding lately it should ring in your ears: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”  The rest is very familiar to you: “Love is patient; love is kind.  Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the Truth.”  Finally, and most memorably, “And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

The Haitians are teaching us about the first of these three.  Their hands are pretty full, so we are not really getting the whole picture.  I pray that, in these days that are focused on an already suffering nation, we will find a renewed opportunity to respond with “the greatest of these,” that our hearts will be so entwined with those of others of our “members” that when the crisis has passed we will not forget who we all are in the body of Christ, that we will remember the words of today’s Psalm, the words of the Lord are “more to be desired than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb.”  May we find that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Second Sunday after Christmas, January 3, 2010

There is nothing I would rather do than talk about the passage from Ephesians today.  I pray that, as that text says, “…the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation…” as I reflect on the Holy Innocents.

It is not long after the adoration of the child on Christmas Eve that we are faced with the harsh light of day – a return to the world as it currently exists.  Such was the case for Joseph in today’s Gospel passage.  In this short passage Joseph is reported to have been guided by no less than three dreams to lead his little family out of harm’s way into the safety of Egypt and back to establish a home in an isolated town in Galilee called Nazareth.

This is a great recommendation for listening to your dreams.  Many of us have found that our inner lives, sometimes revealed through dreams, have been able to shine light on paths that we should take – sometimes away from danger.  Actually, sometimes the right path is into danger!  In today’s Gospel Joseph responds to a rumor – revealed in a dream – that the king, Herod, is looking for this new-born king.  What torment Herod must have lived with to fear a child as a rival!  The second dream is a bit odd: it suggests that the family return to Israel upon learning of the death of Herod.  Did the dream not know that what was waiting was Archelaus, Herod’s son, worse than Herod himself?  So it takes a third dream to get Joseph to bypass the main roads and settle in an obscure village. 

All of this, according to Matthew, was to fulfill certain Old Testament prophecies: the flight to Egypt to rehearse again the exodus of God’s People from that country, and the return to a town called Nazareth for some strange reason that scholars cannot really figure out.  It may mean that Jesus is to be a “Nazarite,” which is a person set aside for a particular purpose with a particular rule of life.  Others suggest that the word Nazareth is similar to the word for “branch,” suggesting that Jesus is the sprout that bursts forth from the stump that is left of Jesse’s family tree.  Jesse, you remember, is the father of King David, from whom the nation of Israel is to retain its strength and prominence.  Jesus, by growing up in the “branch town” revives the promise of productivity for the nation of Israel.  All of this is written to a Jewish audience to convince them that the Messiah has indeed come, and he is Jesus who has re-experienced the exodus and then becomes the new hope for the nation, the continuation of King David’s family tree.

You will notice that the citation for today’s Gospel leaves out three verses, numbers 16-18.  Here is what they say: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” 

The feast day for the Holy Innocents is celebrated on December 28 as a remembrance that the coming of Good News often results in unnamable tragedy.  Good News almost always upsets the balance of comfort.  When I began the study of Reiki my mentor said, “Don’t be surprised if, as you get better, those around you get sick.”  It is not a curse that is put on others.  It is that we become complacent in certain patterns of life, and any change – particularly one toward wholeness – upsets the comfort level.

Back to the Holy Innocents, though, I am always struck by the picture of Rachel, inconsolable, weeping and wailing for her children because they were no more.  Such holy grief!  Such needed inconsolability!  How can one look upon such violence and not be changed? 

Some years ago I showed a documentary to the vestry on retreat entitled, “Invisible Children.”  It was about children in Africa kidnapped from their homes and forced to fight as soldiers in petty civil wars.  Many commented on one young boy’s reaction to being able, after a long time, to openly grieve the death of his brother.  The sound of his weeping was almost bestial it was so intense.  One reaction I heard from viewing the program was that it stirred up too much emotion for some – that it was too intense an experience for us to undertake.

I would submit that these are exactly the experiences we must force ourselves to have if we are to be true witnesses to the coming Kingdom of God.  If we do not confront these realities square in the face and determine to at least speak up against them, then we become colluders with the corporate and political Herods that allow and force these conditions to occur.  Our church, for whatever reasons, has become aware of the plight of refugees in our neighborhood over the past six years.  I believe that God has sent these “tired, poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free” to our doorstep.  We will not, for the most part, visit Africa as some courageous people do, but we have been given opportunity to make a difference in the lives of some who have been placed on our doorstep.  We have heard the stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan.  Who can help but be changed by that?  We have wept as our own dear Salvatore was sent (by God?) back to his own war-torn country, Burundi, to make a difference there.  How can that not make a difference in how we live our own lives?

You see, this is where our worship needs to come alive in the part of our service called the Confession.  It is all too easy to accept absolution for “things done and things left undone” if we do not genuinely understand and grieve for the things both done in our name and the things we have done nothing to address.  In Matthew Fox’s Creation Masses the time spent in confession is substantial, giving opportunity for real grief to be expressed over the reality of the world that faced Joseph after Christmas Eve, and which we must confront if we are to be faithful People of God.

The Good News that the Savior has come into the world forces us into a place of discomfort.  We can no longer turn our eyes from the suffering, starvation, violence, injustice, disease, poverty of an increasingly smaller world – a global village.  We must stand up to the Herod’s, listen to our visions and dreams for a world where all of God’s Children are safe.  In 1993 I was in seminary in New York City.  The evening news each evening showed miles of people walking with all of their belongings out of Rwanda to escape the genocide that was occurring.  Little did we know that the opposite genocide was occurring in neighboring Burundi.  To this day I hear a voice somewhere deep inside that said to me, “You should be there.”  But I had an education to obtain, a relationship to cultivate, things to do.  What would I have done had I actually gone?  I do not know.  I do know that part of my responsibility to you and to my call as a minister of the Church is to insist that you listen to the calls that come to you to work for justice for all of God’s People despite the discomfort that comes with Good News.

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009

In his cantata for choir entitled “The Touch of God,” William R. Miller writes this text: “The touch of God comes as a sweet surprise; when you least expect it, a tap on the shoulder.  Just when you think that the Maker of the universe has wandered away or lost interest or maybe never was, out of the winter comes a light.  In the least expected time and place, the familiar voice is there, above and behind us, calling our name in the whisper of a dream or a sky full of angels, and the message is always the same: ‘Do not fear.  I am here.  I will be with you and I will guide you.  I will always love you.’”

It comes as no surprise this Christmas Eve, as with those that have rolled around for centuries that the nature of our existence tends toward difficulty and despair.  If you are not experiencing some kind of discomfort, disappointment or anxiety you may want to do a reality check, because for the most part life presents us with what we might call “persistent challenges” throughout our span in what the country folk used to call this “veil of tears.”

I just returned on Monday from a trip to Albuquerque to celebrate with my daughter on the occasion of her graduation from college.  Do you know that traveling during the holidays is really difficult?  People were anxious to be the first on and the first off the planes, unhappy with their seats, the service from the flight crew – and I was not one of the ones stuck in the “storm of the century” on the East Coast!  Even if one stays home there is a whole raft of duties to perform, people to please, functions to attend, and meals to prepare.  Is it any wonder we get to Christmas Day and say, “Thank God that is over!”

Every once in a while, however, as I boarded a plane or sat waiting to take off, a wonderful child would board with his or her parents.  It was obvious that the child was on an adventure.  They were wide-eyed in expectation of the trip and the rewards that it would bring.  There are times of revelation - of illumination - that remind us that “the touch of God comes as a sweet surprise.” 

It is in these precious moments at worship on Christmas Eve that we find that “the touch of God comes as a sweet surprise.”  We may have, as Miller says, come to the point where we “think that the Maker of the universe has wandered away or lost interest or maybe never was.”  And then we gather together to look into the face of a child.  It is this glimpse into sheer beauty and expectation that reminds us of what our life is really about after all; not the entanglements of despair and distraction, but the promise of the new – the promise of a coming Kingdom where justice and compassion are the norm.

But is that really what we want?  Is it not precious for those moments of illumination to come as a sweet surprise?  Perhaps that is the Kingdom to which we are called.  Perhaps the difficulties are a part of that Kingdom.  If everything were wondrous all the time we might never really experience the joy of the sweet surprise.  In reality the trip to the manger is our reminder that what is beautiful and good is what we pursue after all.  When our lives demand of us that we succeed, that we buy, that we clamor for position, that we acquire even above making ends meet the sweet surprise is that, in the words of the song, the best things in life really are free (or at least reasonable): the eyes of a child at Christmas, the simple, gentle touch of a loved one, thoughtful sentiments received in cards and messages, meals lovingly prepared, a simple glass of wine and conversation with a friend or group of friends.

When the machine of our culture – rapidly spreading to global proportions – makes us think that the planet is done for because nations are more interested in power plays, that genuine health care reform cannot be accomplished because the bottom line really is the bottom line, that our lawmakers are more interested in being reelected than they are in providing equal opportunities for all God’s children, then we return to the manger.  In the wide, expectant eyes of a small child, born into poverty, we find hope. 

It is this child in the manger that redefines God for us.  We have grown up with a demanding God who either manipulates us, holds us hostage or ignores us altogether and this baby is the revelation of something quite revolutionary: God is present in humanity. 

Paul grasped this, and in his letter to the Colossians, and other places, tried to press on his listeners the importance of this revolution: “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is, Christ in you, the hope of glory!”  You see, the really sweet surprise is that God is revealed in each of us.  I distinctly remember that Christmas came on March 7 in 1984.  It was clear to me that the birth of Kristina Paige Dougharty was the revelation of God that year.  I did not need a manger to realize what life was supposed to be about.  We say it in our Baptismal Covenant: “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”  We all respond, “I will, with God’s help.”

Now, what about you?  Have you discovered that you are the mystery, that the mystery hidden for ages is Christ in you, the hope of glory?  Bill Miller concludes his musical work for choir with these words, “The wind of God that was and is and shall be blows where it will in a darkened world, uninvited, unsettling, unmerited, finding us, touching faces, filling voids, disquieting, displacing, disrupting our reality, and disturbing heart and mind, seeking in new and unexpected ways to say, ‘Here is who I Am.  I came, I am with you, I will come to you.’”  And I would add: “The wind of God blows where it will saying, ‘I am Christ, in you, the hope of glory.’”

May you and yours experience in new and meaningful ways the touch of God which comes as a sweet surprise.  Merry Christmas.

Advent 2C, December 6, 2009

The reason we use blue as our liturgical color in Advent is that we are pursuing this first season in the liturgical year not as penitential, but as anticipatory.  We are not spending the time bewailing our manifold sins and transgressions, but we are anticipating in hope the coming of God into the world as someone like us – as a human being.  We are waiting in joyful anticipation for the dawn of God’s presence among us. 

In the Creation lectionary the Sundays of Advent were devoted to introducing the four, now very familiar, “Vias.”  The second week of Advent was to look at what is known as the “Via Negativa,” or Negative Path.  It sounds negative – even punitive – but, as you know, I rather consider the Via Negativa to be an invitation rather than a threat. 

Our lessons today call us unmistakably to repentance, a word that sometimes conjures up images of a cruel taskmaster whipping a slave into shape or recapturing a slave that has found his or her freedom.  In any event repentance almost always carries the idea of getting caught doing something one ought not to do.  The lesson from Malachi describes the messenger as a refiner’s fire or fuller’s soap.  This is not a prediction of the coming of Jesus but, perhaps more correctly, the coming of one like John the Baptizer; this is one who prepares for the coming of God’s Kingdom by getting us ready – getting us “cleaned up.”  It is not a particularly inviting picture in this sense if one is not eagerly anticipating the coming of the Kingdom.  However, if we are anticipating the coming of something greater – a favorite relative’s visit or the return of a lover after a long absence – we eagerly go about evaluating ourselves in order to get ready for that event, cleaning up the house, getting a haircut, cooking the loved one’s favorite food.

The invitation is really to let go of those things that keep us from recognizing the Kingdom when it is in front of our faces, and embracing the promise of the new.  It is an invitation to remove the blinders of our hearts to recognize the possibilities beyond our own limited vision of ego, ambition, and even addictions.

I have just read a wonderful book by the great contemporary mystic Henri Nouwen called “Reaching Out.”  In it he works with the three essential relationships with which we are very familiar: our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.  He calls the first a movement from loneliness to solitude, the second a movement from hostility to hospitality, and the third a movement from illusion to prayer.  These overly familiar subjects become magic in the hands of a true spiritual giant like Nouwen, but in the end they can all be summarized in that famous text from Paul’s letter to the Philippians which says: “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”  The term for the phrase “emptied himself” in the Greek of the original New Testament, “Kenosis,” means, literally, “poured himself out.”  Henri Nouwen’s bottom line for the right relationships in this life is to “pour ourselves out” in order to be filled with the fullness of the Via Positiva, the abundance of God’s goodness and riches. 

Repentance does not mean to suppress or deny the gifts and characteristics that make us who we are; repentance gives God the opportunity to amplify those things and make us who we really are – free of the restrictions placed on us by ourselves, others, or our ideas of who God is and what God expects of us!  Our canticle says it: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free!”  He has set us free from all the biases, attitudes, prejudices, limitations placed on us by others but, most of all, by ourselves.

The Church is called to repentance as well – to embrace the freedom to which we have been set.  In “Reaching Out,” Nouwen says concerning the People of God: “It is of special importance to remind each other that, as members of the Christian community, we are not primarily for each other but for God.  Our eyes should not remain fixed on each other but be directed forward to what is dawning on the horizon of our existence.  We discover each other by following the same vocation and by supporting each other in the same search.  Therefore, the Christian community is not a closed circle of people embracing each other, but a forward-moving group of companions bound together by the same voice asking for their attention.”  “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free!”

So we might read our Gospel as saying, “…the word of God came to John in the wilderness.  He went all around proclaiming a ‘washing up,’ a ‘refining by fire’ for the purpose of healing brokenness, of breaking the limits; ‘Prepare God’s way! Make the path straight!  Clean up that highway!”  Metaphorically we might say: “The lowly shall be brought up, and the powerful and mighty shall be leveled; the unjust shall embrace justice and the oppressed shall be unshackled.  Look, everyone; there is God’s salvation!”

So we return to Baruch where we started.  “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.  Put on the robe of the righteousness, (don’t forget ‘right relationships’), that comes from God; put on your head the crown of the glory of the Everlasting; for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven.”

Where is that dismal image of repentance now?  The sorrow and affliction of giving up, letting go, loses its sting in the promise of that “beauty of the glory of God.”  You can fly, as the saying goes, but you have to quit hanging around with turkeys.  Just as we embrace healing as the mending of our broken selves we embrace repentance as our emancipation proclamation.

This Advent as we look with joyful hope to the coming of God in the face of a small, poverty-stricken baby let us remember that what we are expecting is not sentimentality but new life with new expectations, not a hunkering down against the assaults of the prevailing culture – or, worse, a buying into the culture – but a promise of a new life that transcends all of those false promises, not stagnation because we have found a sort of false security in the staleness of the known, but a vision of what can be as we look deeply into the face of the one who calls us by name and calls us to let go.

Transformativa 23, November 8, 2009

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.”

Last week I made the comment that we would probably not see the Kingdom of God in our lifetime, and Kim Smith asked if I really thought that to be true.  After thinking for a moment I responded that I think what we get is a glimpse here and there.  Believe me, we see the Kingdom of God most profoundly in the places where this saying of Jesus is lived out.  “Love your enemies” is one of those places where Jesus “quits preaching and goes to meddling.”  It is the true sign of the reign of God – the real sign of reconciliation, of Wholeness - that what was broken is restored – especially in relationships.

This past week I saw a movie version of a familiar story: the story of the Christmas Eve truce in 1914 in which warring armies from Scottish, French and German forces laid down arms in celebration of the birth of Christ for one evening.  Many things struck me about this event, but mostly how difficult it was for them to resume hostilities when they had become acquainted face to face.  The movie is called “Joyeux Noel” and I have scheduled a special holiday Movie Night on Tuesday, Dec. 8 to show it.  I hope you will come because it is not a simple “feel good” story.  It is complex, and the action of truce itself creates unforeseen consequences.

In his legal brief to the church in Rome Paul goes beyond a “be nice to your enemies” ethic.  He suggests,”…if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.”  Of course he can’t help but drive in a little bit of a knife by suggesting that such actions would really aggravate their enemies!

How is it possible to love our enemies?  Frankly it is not possible.  What loving people accomplish is to change the category of the enemy; to love an enemy is a contradiction in terms because to love someone automatically means they are no longer an enemy.  You know that old saying, “the best way to get rid of an enemy is to make them your friend.”  The problem is that it does not happen by legislation.  You cannot “obey the rules” into loving someone you find unlovable.  This is really the message of today’s Gospel passage: “It is from within, from the human heart that evil intentions come.”  Likewise, it is from within, from the human heart, that loving intentions come.  This saying of Jesus was addressed to a society and a religious culture that was very concerned with dietary and sanitation laws.  They felt that a person could be made better or worse by what they ate.  This is perhaps true on a superficial basis, but Jesus moves beyond that argument with a pretty graphic illustration: “things that you eat just go in one end and out the other,” he says.  “They don’t make that much difference in the long run.  Be more concerned about what is going in and out of your heart!  That is where the real danger lies!”

This is a beginning place for us: it is not so much which rules we obey or disobey but, rather, what goes in and out of our hearts.  It is the difference between a legalistic religion that kills the soul, and a transformed heart that is life-giving to all around.   Here is a simple little exercise I invite you to experiment with right now: simply close your eyes and visualize the person that gets on your nerves the most.  Do you actually have an enemy that you can place before the eyes of your heart?  It can be anyone from Mahmoud Ahmandinejad of Iran to the next door neighbor who brings his or her dog over to do its business on your lawn.  Who is the person who disturbs your peace more than anyone else?  Now, as you hold this person before the eyes of your heart, see them as a loved, graced child of God – difficult as that might be.  Hold that image of them as held in God’s arms as one beloved.  Is it possible to feel the resentment and hatred melt even a little? 

Are you willing to repeat this little exercise daily for a week?  Would you be willing to consider the possibility that they are not, after all, the reason for your unhappiness?  It is possible that we can, as the Baptismal Covenant suggests, “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves?”  How about “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our enemies as ourselves?”  The next part, of course, is to make some attempt to realize the change in our hearts by some visible action.  Write a note, say a kind word, find a way to explore common ground with that person in the days and weeks to come.

There are very few in this world who actually do what this simple little exercise suggests.  Imagine the change in a world where this kind of reconciliation was a normal part of our spiritual journey.  It would turn the world right-side up!  Viewing our enemies as people loved and cared about by God is like forgiveness.  We find that demolishing our enemies by loving them out of existence is really for us, not for them.  Chances are they don’t really know or care how we feel about them; we are the ones who exert too much energy keeping the relationship fragmented.  This is an exercise designed to make us whole!   It is an exercise not of rule following or obeying; it is an exercise of transforming the heart.

We are nearing the end of this season of Transformativa.  In two weeks we will celebrate the feast of Christ the King – the realization of all we have spent our lives working for.  This time we will be surprised with what God has for a universe in which Christ is King or ruler.  We will find that it has less to do with power and might, and more about right relationships – with those we love and with those we do not yet love.  The important thing about this for us now is that, as we approach the end of time by changing our hearts, we travel deeper on the spiral that will bring us again to anticipate the coming of God in human flesh at Christmas.  Will the hearts that we cultivate during these last days of the year open us up to new ways in which the Christ can be born in those hearts in the days to come?

I invite you to struggle with God in the coming days regarding this “love your neighbor” thing.  Change is hard but necessary, and as we move more fully into the path with God we find the depths of God’s love and healing power more than sufficient for our own limitations.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.”

Feast of All Saints, November 1, 2009

In 1731, 45 years before the Revolutionary War, Bartholomew Vawter donated land on which to build a replacement for the original 1704 building, a part of the St. Anne’s Parish, in Loretto, Virginia.  It has been known these 278 years as Vauter’s Episcopal Church, and is still an active parish.  I have told you about Vauter’s Church before because my mother’s maiden name was Vaughter.  It was one of those cloudy legends in the distant memories of our family that knew very little about its actual history.  As a result of internet possibilities this year we found out more about our connection to this quaint little church; Bartholomew Vawter, as it turns out, is my 7^th great grandfather.  A little more research found his will on the internet – very interesting reading.  It included a bequest of one cow and one calf to his daughter Margaret, (also my mother’s name, some 5 or 6 generations later). 

Have you had this experience of suddenly becoming part of something much larger than you imagined? It has been difficult, because of my family’s displacement to the Southwest part of the country, to own a place in the larger history of the nation until this unveiling of a direct link to our pre-revolutionary heritage.  Suddenly we are part of a long chain of Americans stretching back to before the nation existed.  That is the essence of our celebration of All Saints.

All Saints is an odd Feast for us to celebrate.  Instead of being based in Bible stories we find Bible passages to help justify our own histories for All Saints.  We know of saints stretching from the first century martyrs to modern day heroes like Jonathan Daniels, who stepped in front of a bullet, saving the life of Ruby Sales in 1965.  Saints are our heroes, the ones we look up to as examples of what the godly life is about.  We also have All Souls Day to celebrate tomorrow, November 2; that is for us common folk who just go about our daily lives doing the best we can with what we have.  That is probably more the category that Bartholomew Vawter falls into.

“The souls of the righteous,” our text says, “are in the hands of God.”  For most of us the “righteous” are those saints who did everything right, were martyred for the faith, who saved many lives, who could leap tall buildings with a single bound.  In fact, I have begun translating “righteousness” or “righteous” as “being in right relationship.”  That is, after all, what we spend our lives trying to learn – how to put the pieces together so that we live in the peace of right relationships.  Our own family histories are full of people like that, who put family above personal gain, community above their own convenience, God above everything.  It is these, the “righteous,” of whom the writer of this Wisdom text speaks. They are, in the writer’s words, “in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.”  They are supposedly rescued from the trials of this world, and are even above and beyond what this world might say about them. 

They, however, according to this text, have power to affect our continued existence in this life.  It is this one line that fascinates me for this particular observance of All Saints Day: “In the day of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.”  This is the reason that we honor and revere those heroes who have gone before: they show us what life should be like and help us to understand what is really important – like sparks running through stubble, burning off the things in our lives that are second rate, things left over from the real harvest, things that take up space in our lives meant for more important things.  This poetic text does so much more than call us to discern what is important; it gives us an image of power, of electricity, of illumination and luminance.  “In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.”

Likewise the Revelation text calls us to a higher venture for humanity: “See, the home of God is among mortals.”  When we use this passage for memorial services we dwell on what God will do for humans in the final analysis: God will wipe away all tears from their eyes and death will be no more.  In fact the power of this text is in the first line: the dwelling place for God is within us!  God says, “I am making all things new – and that means You!”

What we have come to know is that making things new is not comfortable; it is hard work, and it means letting go of whatever is keeping us where we are.  The fear or dread of loss is what hampers all moving forward in this life. This is true of individuals, families, churches, cities…. You get the picture.  Change is never something we readily seek, but it is the constant.  Our option is to choose to resist change – which always ends in some sense of our destruction - or to embrace its possibilities and become agents of change.  This is the story of the heroes – the saints.  They are the ones who risked everything – who even gave their lives so that this world could be made new in significant ways – so that we would sense in some new way what it means to be the dwelling place for God.  It is the story of a promising young seminarian who puts his own life between a bullet and a young woman of another race.  His work for voters’ rights was his statement of God’s habitation in his life in order to make all things new.

Perhaps you remember my speaking a few weeks ago about Black Elk, a visionary in the Sioux Indian nation.  In his vision he received gifts for his quest for healing from five of the six grandfathers who appeared to him.  It was only years – a lifetime – later that he realized that he was, himself, the sixth grandfather.  Part of the vision for him was to determine what gift he would add for the next generation – for the seventh grandfather, if you will.

All Saints is much more than an opportunity for us to reminisce about forebears or to celebrate the lives of the “righteous” through the centuries; it is a challenge to us to regard our own places in this ever-expanding temple – this dwelling place from which God continues to “make all things new.”  If we see ourselves as simply beneficiaries of the gifts of those who have gone before, then the chain ends with us.  We must receive the gifts of the Bartholomew Vawters, the Jonathan Daniels, the ever growing cloud of witnesses to God’s “newness” not as gifts to be hoarded, but as temporary gifts to which we add our own giftedness.  We will not, probably see the Kingdom of God in our day, but we can present ourselves as “living stones” being built into a habitation to God’s glory, becoming part of the great plan of the ages in our own day.

Transformativa 18, October 4, 2009

For preachers this Creation lectionary has sometimes been a roller coaster trying to decide what it is that its author is about.  Generally speaking he has chosen the first lesson to be representative of Torah, the Law, most often from the first five books of the Old Testament.  It is from these books – and most specifically from the Law as given to Moses in the desert – that the moral and legal foundation for a nation was born.  That, of course, includes the Ten Commandments. 

On occasion the author of this lectionary has chosen to represent Torah with a reading from one of the Gospels.  This is true today, and will be for a few more weeks.  Here is what it means: Jesus is being set in the context of his role as a rabbi, a religious leader specifically in the Jewish faith.  In coming weeks you will hear from this first reading frequent use of the phrase, “You have heard it said,” followed by, “But I say to you.”  What Jesus is doing in these teaching passages is not, as some think, devaluing the Mosaic Law but, rather, expanding on it to lead his listeners into fuller life, not restrictions and legalistic claims on their lives.  All of today’s lessons belie an attitude that God is only interested in making life miserable.  God is interested in, as John says in his Gospel, “life – life more abundant!”

We’ll get to these familiar Beatitudes, or as some call them, the “BE-Attitudes,” in a bit.  A quick glance at the Ezekiel and the Gospel texts illustrate this promise that God is really about Life with a capital L. 

Jesus’ contribution to the wedding feast in today’s Gospel, as I have mentioned before, amounts to about 86 gallons of wine – now there’s a party!  Various times during his ministry Jesus was accused not of being too strict with his followers, but was described as a drunk, a reveler, a party guy.  Somehow we have to reclaim our Jesus as someone who loved life, loved company, loved good food – and who, in fact, probably laughed a lot.  We have lost this great sense of a “Jesus of Joy.”  A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the quote from Auden to the effect that, “As a general rule it is the pleasure-haters who become oppressive.”  Isn’t that true?  Bad religion is most often run by those who have no life of their own, and so steal any sense of real life from everyone else.  Jesus came to give life, good wine and, one might surmise, great chocolate!

If the picture of Jesus providing enough wine to swim in is dramatic, the familiar vision of Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones is stuff fit for modern movie technology.  Ezekiel finds himself in a valley that is strewn with human bones scattered everywhere.  “Can these bones live?” asks God.  I can tell you what my answer would be – perhaps the same as yours: “There is no way – these bones are closer to returning to dust than they are to containing life.”  It becomes clear through a few progressive steps that those bones can live.  If you have ever heard the song, “Dem bones” where the toe bone is connected to the foot bone and all the way up, you, like the choir, are ready to shout, “Now hear the word of the Lord!” when it reaches its climax.  God says to Ezekiel, “I am going to open up your graves, and bring you up from your graves…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live!”  When I hear that and think of it in terms of the Church I want to shout, “Now hear the word of the Lord!”  It is the picture I envision of a church not only joined together physically, but inspired – in-breathed – by God’s Spirit not to follow rules, or be entertained by great music, or to do business networking, but to bring Life where there was none!  This is real Transformation!

In Matthew 5 Jesus, in true rabbinic style, sits on the side of a mountain to discourse with his disciples about what it means to be in right relationships – especially a right relationship with God.  He is talking in what we might consider eschatological terms: when everything that is wrong is finally turned right, what will it look like?  It will be defined, says Jesus, by the attitudes by which people relate to one another.  They will think of others before themselves, they will yearn – or mourn – for a just culture in which no one is marginalized or excluded, where peace will mean more than a cessation of war – it will mean true healing of heart, body and soul.  This, in Jesus’ teaching, and in the “Law of the Lord” is the true nature of things.  It is the world turned right-side up.  So the Law becomes not punitive or oppressive, but “more to be desired than gold… sweeter than honey.”  The Law of the Lord breathes Life into its lovers.

I have recently reread “Black Elk Speaks,” the story of a Sioux holy man’s vision of Wholeness for his people and his “call” to bring that wholeness and healing.  In the vision he is met by six grandfathers.  Each, except the sixth, gives him a symbolic gift to help bring wholeness to the nation: a gift of life, a gift of destruction, a gift of healing and so forth.  We all know that, rather than the Indian nations becoming strong and influential, the Natives of the plains were virtually obliterated over the decades of European expansion into the West – most notably at the massacre at Wounded Knee, at which Black Elk was present. 

At the end of Black Elk’s life he mourned what he considered his failure at fulfilling his call to heal the nation.  He’d had such promise only to see his dreams and his vision go unfulfilled.  As he reflected on what seemed to be such a failure, he remembered something that I did not tell you about his vision.  Remember those grandfathers who gave him gifts to empower his mission?  The sixth grandfather gave him no gift because, as he realized in the vision, the sixth grandfather was him.  And so he ended his life without realizing, in our terms, the “Kingdom of God” in his time, but joined the other grandfathers to empower the next generation.  The Beatitudes take on new meaning if we can lift ourselves out of our need to see the end for ourselves.  The chances are very slim or nonexistent that we will see true Wholeness in this life but it is our calling to be faithful to the ideals of it so that those who come after will have our example and our gifts to empower them to transform the world.

Transformativa 16, September 20, 2009

From Ephesians: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.  …In Christ the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”

Our journey through Creation Spirituality this year has led us to embrace the goodness and abundance of God, to make decisions concerning what we can release and do without, to recognize what is being born in us and in our community and world as we are more wholly committed to the Kingdom of God – and finally, in this Via Transformativa, to the process of transformation of ourselves and the world we live in.  These texts today speak powerfully of what I call “radical reconciliation,” the possibility that anything is possible if we are a transformed people.

In 1949 a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical opened on Broadway.  Among the great hits that we have from that show are “Some Enchanted Evening,” “I’m Gonna’ Wash that Man Right Outa’ my Hair,” and even “There is nothing like a Dame.”  The show, of course, was South Pacific.  But there is one lyric that is sung that has as much profound meaning to us now – or more – than it did then.  It says:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Each of today’s texts expresses the hope that unity – even love – can proceed from the most hopeless of situations.  Jacob – now Israel, because he had wrestled with God and survived – was on his way to meet his worst nightmare.  His anticipated reunion with his brother, Esau, was the stuff of our worst dreams.  He had, after all, cheated his older brother – albeit by only minutes – out of what was Esau’s rightful inheritance.  Jacob had every reason to expect to be killed on the spot – but was not.  Lo, and behold, God had blessed his brother not only with material goods, but with the ability to forgive and move on in relationship with a cheater, a usurper of a brother.

Zacchaeus was, as we know, a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.  But more than that Zachaeus was a traitor, a collaborator with the Roman Empire.  Jesus, though, summed up his mission with these words, “The Son of Man has come to seek out and to save the lost.”  Paul says it like this, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self.”  But that is not the end of it.  Paul goes on to say, “and [Christ] has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.”

Most poignantly, perhaps, for our day, is Paul’s explanation of how sworn enemy tribal groups or ethnic groups can be made to serve together as a “dwelling place for God.”  Our own American culture has, in the last couple of weeks, found itself reviving the hateful rhetoric of race and tribalism masked by so called discussion over more important issues.  There have been language and images used that we thought were gone from our landscape since at least the ‘70s if not before.  But, as the song says, “you’ve got to be taught” and many of us have been taught very well.  What is it that we on whatever side would like to see?  Will we not be happy with anything less than total dominance on the part of our own group?  Does not the promise of a People of all tribes, languages, peoples and nations who form a dwelling place for God hold out the greatest promise for humanity at its greatest?

I think it is true that “you’ve got to be carefully taught” how to hate others, but there seems to be something – a kind of self-hatred in our DNA – that insists that all of our problems must be caused by some malevolent Other.  In the best of cases we seem unable to function without the invention of an Other on whom to blame our insecurities, our failures, our disappointments or our fears.  And so the other appears in our sights as male or female, black, white or Asian, gay or straight, African or Iranian, Catholic or Protestant, Progressive or Conservative, Christian, Jew or Muslim – even, believe it or not, Republican or Democrat.  Without real transformation these chasms will not be bridged by diplomacy or conquered by military might.

It occurs to me every so often that you may think that I only talk in terms of unreachable idealisms.  “Why don’t you talk about the way things really are?” you might say.  Why always talk about the Kingdom of God as though it will really occur on earth in our lifetime?  This is really a hard question.  I am faced daily with the unlikely prospect of heaven coming on earth in my lifetime.  On many occasions it occurs to me how much easier it would be to just buy in to consumerism, exploitation and greed.  I continue to preach it, though, because I would rather strive for the Kingdom than to let our culture of greed and death take over completely.  We must live in hope that God is in control or we will perish in despair.

We are a community of faith that believes that God’s Kingdom exists where justice finds a voice, in people who find the Other to be, instead, a neighbor, in the small kindnesses that are offered to the unlikely suspects, in our hope that a better day is in the future for the human race.

Let us be joined together and grow into a holy temple in the Lord; let us be built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

Transformativa 14, September 6, 2009

From Galatians: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

In a sense these reflections might be seen as “Times Tables – the Sequel.”  Last week I spent the whole time talking about the need to move beyond the essentials of the Law; today I want us to consider what that might mean.  In 1908 Friedrich von Hugel published a book entitled, “The Mystical Element of Religion,” in which he proposed that spiritual growth includes three aspects of the person.  Those three are: institutional, critical and mystical.  It is the institutional in which we find the Ten Commandments which we encountered last week – and for as many weeks as we have been alive it seems.  Institutional “knowledge” includes all of the things we have been told and taught.  Some of these things are good, and others erroneous, but they are, none the less, the foundation of what we know.

The critical aspect of the human is what every teacher in public schools wants to teach: basic problem solving.  It is the ability to think about those institutional “knowings” and determine whether or not they hold up to intelligent argument.  The Critical results from discussion, research, and experimentation, and leads us to deeper knowledge of the world and of ourselves.  It is the intelligence part of our being, the thinking, the academic.

The third aspect is the mystical.  It relies more upon things we cannot see or prove with formulas.  It is the knowledge that shows up in dreams, in body language or involuntary responses; it is what “gut reaction” is about.  In an age of knowledge through the head the mystical is not only the most neglected, but actually is suspect.  We have been taught to distrust our feelings, our gut reactions as being somehow dishonest or a product of some evil spirit dwelling in our sinful selves when, in fact, the mystical part of ourselves is as much a part of our creation in the image of God as the rest.

The point that needs to be stressed is that none of these elements is dispensable; they are all to be used to make us Whole as God is Whole or holy.  What we must pay attention to is the balance given to each.  There are values to each as long as we recognize which one is which and which one we must depend on for certain circumstances.

While last week’s Exodus text was full of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” this weeks text fleshes out some of those commandments to reflect some of the other aspects: “you shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing” and “you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice” imply that some decision making must be done to determine what wrongdoing or perversion of justice is being done - as well as a decision that the majority, in this case, is not right in its actions.  “When you see the donkey of one who hates you laying under its burden… you must help to set it free.”  This not only commits one to compassionate action, but to compassionate action toward one whom you hate!  These are not simple “following the rules” situations; they demand that we use our brains as well as our hearts.

The religious leaders who confronted Jesus in today’s Gospel passage thought they had the moral upper hand because they had caught a woman red-handed in the act of adultery.  (I don’t know where the man caught in adultery was!)  Jesus’ reaction, however, showed them to be completely out of balance in their spiritual response to the woman.  In their zeal to honor the Law, to worship the tradition, they completely lost sight of the fact that they were passing judgment on a Person!  Do you see that Jesus saw right past the law to see the person standing there looking him in the eye?  He had moved to compassion that overtook the law, put it in its right perspective, re-humanized one of God’s children.  In doing so he revealed the depth of his own humanity that was not dependent on structures or argument.  He was not interested in “that’s just not the way things are done,” or “that will destroy the fabric of society if we accept that behavior.”  He simply moved past into a “mystical” place – a place of acceptance even of the marginalized and “sinful,” informed by his own acceptance of his divine/human nature. 

There are many reasons that today’s response, Mary’s Song or Magnificat, is one of the greats of human literature, set to music by practically everyone, as attested by the number of fine settings we are using in today’s service.  It affirms, among other things, that God is not committed to rewarding the powerful or the smart or the rule-keepers.  God is interested in Humanizing even the most vulnerable.  “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” “he has brought down the powerful from their places of power,” he has “lifted up the lowly,” “he has filled the hungry” not with bread and water, but “with good things.”  God invites us into “radical counter-intuition” – a transformation of self that leads us into service for others instead of exploitation of others.

If you would permit me just a bit of personal reflection on an issue that is dear to me:  There is no doubt but that some Bible passages are direct about the issue of same gender relationships.  If you will, these are the institution, the basics, of human relationships: humans are meant to procreate, to reproduce, and that is why there are two genders.  It takes a little more brain work to get past the idea that two people of the same gender in a relationship will tear apart the fabric of marriage as we know it.  However, there are those who deduce from the institutional that such will be the case.  Many scientists who study such things are convinced that there are reasons for some people to be attracted to someone of their own gender that lie deep in our DNA.  This critical approach is a bit more help than simply “it is not done that way.” 

In my mystical experience of this volatile issue, however, I have been forced to move past both the institution and the critical to become who I am authentically.  I have known deep in my soul the love of another man; my dreams and my body instincts tell me that, despite what anyone can do to try to convince me otherwise, I discovered my true self after many years of denying what was most dear, most deeply embedded in the core of my divine image.  I cannot convince anyone of that by rules or argument, but I know that in acknowledging my own same-sex orientation I answered a call that is no less than Samuel’s to whom he answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

This message is not about the gay issue.  It is about using every tool we have to experience God in our lives.  It is about listening to God in all of the languages that God has given us: through the traditions of the faith and church, through the gift of our intelligence and our reasoning, and, not least, through the unique, individual languages that God has implanted in the very core of our beings – the languages of the heart.

Transformativa 13, August 30, 2009

From Galatians 3: “The law (The Ten Commandments) was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.   But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.”

I must confess to you that I have a real love/hate relationship with the “times tables.”  When I was eight years old, in the third grade at Columbian Elementary in Raton, New Mexico, Mrs. Gregory made sure that everyone in her class knew the times tables.  In fact, to avoid having to spend time in class teaching them she had everyone stay after school to study flash cards until we could do them perfectly.  We would go to her desk individually and she would drill us: “4 X 7, 8 X 6,” and so on.  If we missed one it was back to our desk to study until it was our time again.  I was not – and am not – a mathematician; not even in times tables.  Oh, yes, I was pretty good at, say, 4 X 5 or 6 X 6, but to this day I have to think pretty hard about 7 X 8 or 9 X 6.

By the time I got to high school there were some of my colleagues that had really mastered the math thing.  There was no way that they were living back in the age of times tables; they had moved way past those third grade days of anguish over the times tables.  I was not one of those.  There are actually a lot of times that the times tables come in handy, but I still live in the third grade mathematically, struggling with the times tables. 

It seems sort of a tragedy to spend your whole life as a third grade mathematician, (I did learn a few more things along the way), but I what I find to be much more troubling is that it is acceptable among people of faith to remain third grade believers.

This, of course, brings us to the Ten Commandments.  Have you seen the bumper sticker that says, “They are not called the Ten Suggestions?”  Somehow the implication is that they are somehow to dominate our spiritual and moral lives.  Court battles are fought over the right to display them on public grounds; groups of people hold onto them as though everything might fall apart if they are questioned. 

Here is what I think: they are the times tables of faith and morality.  Are they important?  Yes, they are important in the same way rudimentary, elementary education is important; you spend time learning them, but hopefully move past them at some point.  At some point we need to use the rudiments to be able to fly!  Jesus tried to explain this to the religious leaders of all people.  In today’s Gospel I can hear him saying something like, “What good is obeying some dumb elementary principle for itself alone?  Can’t you see that these guys are hungry?  The law says, ‘use the six days to do your work,’ but there has to be some common sense to realize that there is a difference between harvesting an entire crop and grabbing a snack because you are hungry. 

I am afraid that the heart of faith is ripped out of Christianity and other religions because it becomes such an exercise in nit-picking that it brings no life or joy.  And that is really what we want our lives to be about isn’t it – life and joy?   Matthew Fox quotes W. H. Auden in Original Blessing when he says, “As a rule, it was the pleasure haters who became unjust.”  We tend to concentrate not on what life is about, but on the elementary concepts that are meant to help us on the way to flight!

This is the heart of the Via Transformativa.  We find ourselves on the journey to adulthood – literally to maturity, to Holy Wisdom! – and we use the rudiments to give us a foundation for where we are going.  This was the message of Jesus to his generation – and particularly to the generation of religious leaders that kept the people enslaved to trivialities – much like religious leaders often try to do today.  I am much more interested in raising up a generation of believers who take seriously their own unique journey with God, and use the basics as “shadow schoolteachers,” the Mrs. Gregorys in our past, who have instilled into us the foundations for who we are and where we go.

Paul speaks of the journey as Freedom.  “But don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,” he says in today’s reading, “but through love become slaves to one another.”  That doesn’t sound much like freedom, does it?  But it is the same freedom that a mathematician has who has done the hard work beyond the times tables.  It is the freedom a pianist has who has spent hours practicing scales so that their performance of complicated music sounds effortless.  It is the freedom of anyone who does something well because they have taken the trouble not only to learn the basics, but to use the basics merely as stepping stones to move far beyond them.

The products of such discipline, Paul says, is a fluency in such things as love, joy, peace, patience and so forth -  and you will have no time for impurity, idolatry, jealousy, anger and quarrels.

Am I mad at Mrs. Gregory for putting me through all of that youthful angst since I did not become a great mathematician?  I guess not.  I am surprised at how often those rudimentary skills pop into my head during various problem solving dilemmas.  I do not give a lot of thought to the times tables, though I have a real sense of what it took to learn them.  They have become subconscious tools that I use every day.  Do I “believe” in the Ten Commandments?  I believe in them like I believe in musical scales or times tables; they are deeply imbedded in me as a foundation for who I am.  Do I spend large periods of time thinking and worrying about how they are perceived by the rest of the world, how closely they are being observed by our culture as a whole, how literally they should be taken as religious truth?  I guess not.  What is more important to me is that I have found a way to move beyond them to things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 

Like a mathematician who has moved beyond even algebra and calculus to concepts I cannot even imagine, the journey of my life moves past those rudimentary exercises to plunge into the worlds of meaning and joy prepared for my life by a God who is not interested in my staying a third grader forever.

Transformativa 11, August 16, 2009

“Yahweh went in front of the Israelites in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night.”

If there is any question left in anyone’s mind who listens to me on a regular basis, this experience of God for God’s People is an experience of Journey.  There are some religious groups, Christians among them, which teach that a relationship with God is a one-time decision. “Once for all” is a hymn that we sang in my childhood days; “Once saved always saved.”  That might be true for a religion that worships a one time event or deity.  If God were, in fact, encased in stone or concrete we might find that our relationship with God could be relegated to occasional visits to a shrine or gravesite.

Fortunately, (but inconveniently), we have discovered that our God is alive and working in this world – and calling us to be alive and growing and working and being God’s People in the midst of life.  God calls us to new experiences with God’s self, to transformation of our lives as we move along – I like to say deeper and deeper in a spiral as we move into greater depths with God.  I am reading a lot these days about the great mystics of the Christian faith and others; what strikes me most is their unfailing call to give one’s self totally to the journey with God: no more holding big parts of our lives separate from the “religious” or “spiritual” aspects of our lives.  This, in the mystical tradition, is not seen as giving up one’ self or ambitions, but as a response to a great cosmic invitation to experience life at its fullest!

There are at least a couple of things about this Exodus story that intrigue me: one is that they take with them physical evidence of their heritage, the bones of Joseph.  This is the only time those bones are mentioned in the long narrative that follows as they trek through the desert.  Somehow, though, it was important for the storyteller to say that their original “savior,” Joseph, was not forgotten, but was, in fact, brought along on their journey.  It is important that we as individuals and as a community of faith keep with us sometimes physical reminders of what has brought us to this point.  Are they family memories, traditions, jokes or stories that ground us to our heritage? 

As a “southwesterner” I have enjoyed hearing and embracing stories of my family from the frontier, settlement days of New Mexico: of my grandfather who homesteaded with his brother in what is now a ghost town, Taiban.  There is a story that was told by my grandmother of how she saw an angel in a vision carrying her stillborn baby sister away upon her birth.  These are stories that give meaning to my family far and wide.

This church has its share of personalities from the past, traditions, plaques and artifacts to remind us of who we are as a result of who we have been.  One of our treasures, a reredos commissioned in the 1940s from famous 20^th century artist Hildreth Mieire, is being featured in an exhibition by the Regina A. Quick Art Center at St. Bonaventure University over the next year.  It was very controversial when it was commissioned, and was not installed for very long before being taken down, but it is now representative of who we were as supporters of the arts in the middle of the last century. 

The problem with revering our legacies too much is that they hold us in an ancient place, unable to move forward to new milestones.  This is true of many ancient creeds, practices and beliefs as well.  It is well to bring them along on the journey as long as they do not, themselves, define the journey.  This is probably why Joseph’s bones are never again mentioned: the people were engaged in their journey to a new promise.

The other thing that strikes me about this story is that God leads the people not only by the cloud in daytime, when the way is clear, but also by fire at night when the path is obscured, dangers lurk and the possibility for getting lost is real.  Symbolically we assume God’s Presence when the way is clear, the sun is shining, and we are making good time along the highway.  When finances are tight, goals are obscure, mission is hazy then we need the pillar of fire to illumine the way through the desert.  I know that we here at St. John’s Grace have depended on a certain pillar of fire at times when we were not sure which direction we should go.  What God requires at these times is simply that we remain faithful to the journey.

These signs of Presence and leadership never left the people.  Were the people always aware of the signs?  After forty years I suspect that these signs of leadership, rather than being supernatural, were commonplace.  Some adults had never known life without the guiding symbols of God’s leadership and Presence. 

Today’s gospel tells of a woman who is on the journey literally bent over by what the story calls “a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.”  For very many of us our journey is hampered by a “spirit” that bends us over, making the journey one of burden and inconvenience.  I am interested that it is not – at least in the story – a problem of osteoporosis.  Today doctors would give her a diagnosis and proceed to treat the symptoms.  In this case the cause of her ailment is identified as a “spirit” – perhaps an “evil spirit.”  How often is it possible that we are hampered by those “ghosts,” those “spirits,” things of which we are afraid, that lunge at us in our dreams, things that convince us that our journey is unworthy or inferior?  Are we held back by the shadows of ourselves, the deep fears and anxieties that bend us over?  Do we as a community resist moving forward because we have experienced failures in the past, had to deal with difficult situations or people, or we just can’t see our way clear in the dark? 

It seems a bit cavalier for Jesus to simply, after eighteen years, say, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  Can you hear the protests arising from her?  “What do you mean I am set free?”  “Where have you been while I have been suffering these many years?”  None of that, though.  The story says that “when he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”  Healing is available!  We can be freed from the spirits, the fears, the barriers that keep us from journeying with joy. 

That is the news of the Gospel for our journey: We have been set free from what has kept us back – sometimes for eighteen years or more!  Healing of body, mind and spirit is what The Healing Center at St. John’s Grace is all about.  Let us launch out and claim God’s invitation to abundant life.

Transformativa 7, July 19, 2009

From 2 Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!  God has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.”

Many of you know that I am a fan of Netflix.  I watch on an average three movies per week, and I keep about fifty titles on my queue all the time.  I have, at times, listed movies from the “Faith and Spirituality” category, but I am almost always disappointed; they seem to be determined to make some point about a moral issue, or they portray an unreal world that I know does not exist.  The movies that grab my attention are well-written and filmed stories about people in real life – great stories in which a believable tension is portrayed and often resolved.  Often it is the case that diverse people or situations come together against all odds.  The resolution is often unexpected and occasioned by an unseen or unforeseen force.

Today’s Genesis text is the climax of the Joseph saga.  Last week’s very long reading left us at the end saying, “Tell them who you are, Joseph!  Quit stringing them along; tell them already!”  Today is the payoff.  It is, in my mind, one of the great moments in dramatic literature.  Joseph, whom the brothers had been referring to as “the man,” finally cannot contain his emotions over seeing his family after so many years.  What must the brothers have thought as Joseph cried out for everyone to leave the room; and then to reveal that he was the one they had sold into slavery so many years ago.  Imagine the mixture of feelings; fear, wonderment, joy, did I mention fear?  And the story says that Joseph wept so loudly that the Egyptians and the whole household of Pharaoh heard it.  This is a great story of reconciliation.

“Reconciliation” at its root is the Latin, conciliare, literally, “to meet.”  Add the “re” and you have a word that means “to meet again.”  I find that while it is wonderful to meet someone for the first time it is sweeter, and often more powerful to “remeet” someone after an absence or after an argument.  This is the picture of Creator God who is the author of our existence but who, like the father of the Prodigal Son, rejoices at the reunion of one who has taken a leave of absence from the presence of God.  This is Reconciliation!

This is where we meet the sons of Jacob – actually the sons of Israel – in today’s reading.  What will Joseph do?  And he shocks them with these words: “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here….” What?!  What is he saying?!  And then he continues, “for God has sent me before you to preserve life.”  And in Joseph’s hand lies the ability to cause the reconciliation.  Think of it: the reconciliation did not happen because the brothers found out and came to apologize to Joseph; it happened because the victim of their plot – even after all that it cost Joseph – to say, “This has all happened so that I would be in a position not to get revenge, but to save your lives.” 

Reconciliation is not easy, but it is necessary if we are to live lives of Wholeness.  That is what healing is all about: the “remeeting” of the parts of our lives that have been absent from one another, or in some other way alienated.  It is that picture of the shattered mirror in which God seeks to find God’s own reflection.  What God sees is a fragmented reflection of God’s own self until the reconciliation process begins.

In religious terms Reconciliation is the sacrament of confession and absolution.  It is a symbol of coming to God to acknowledge that shattered image in order to know, once again, the all-inclusive acceptance of a loving parent who stands by while we make our way through to Hell and back and whom we find standing at the gate awaiting our return.  Our Prayer Book has two services for Reconciliation.  In the second of the services is this wonderful acknowledgment of the penitent: “Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed me from the dust in your image and likeness, and redeemed me from sin and death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ.  Through the water of baptism you clothed me with the shining garment of his righteousness, and established me among your children in your kingdom.  But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.”  So is set the opportunity for “meeting again,” for reconciliation.

The journey with God is not to a destination; it is a continual journey of reconciling again and again.  With each step we not only experience the joy and relief of relationship restored, but we are stronger in the skills that reconciliation requires.  The infractions and forgive nesses of childhood appear small compared to the wide chasms that our adult relationships suffer, but we are the adults that we have become, and are becoming, because of those simplest of reconciling tasks.

Today’s Prayers of the People are a litany from the Celtic tradition that reveal all of our life’s fragments as opportunities for reconciliation.  They will give opportunity for you to respond to the invitation to forgive, to put pieces back together, to allow parts of you to, indeed, “meet again” so that you will know God’s power to make us whole.  Do you think this may be impossible in some areas of our lives?  Paul, to the Christians in Rome, addresses this: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”  “No,” he concludes, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else  in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Perhaps it will be that when those giant fragments of our broken selves find their way back together the world, like all of the “Egyptians and the household of Pharaoh,” will hear our uncontrollable weeping for joy at the appearance of “a new creation.  All things will, indeed pass away, and we will be come new.”

Transformativa 6, July 12, 2009

It is important for us to remember the words in today’s text from the Acts of the Apostles: Peter says, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears [God] and does what is right is acceptable to [God].

Today’s readings represent the extreme in length of the narratives offered by the Creation Spirituality lectionary that we are using this year.  The lesson from Genesis covers two full chapters of the fourteen chapters that comprise the Joseph saga.  If you have been following along for the last few weeks you recognize that, as Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers because he felt that he was destined for greatness according to his dreams, now we find the roles reversed: Joseph has control over whether his family survives the world-wide famine because of his position of power.

Have you ever just wanted to say, “I told you so,” to someone long after an incident in which they seemed to have the upper hand?  Have you ever had the dream that someone who wronged you needs a recommendation for a job that only you can supply?  What would you say?  How would you remind them of what had transpired in the past?  We often rehearse these hypothetical scenes in our minds.  Joseph’s story gives a kind of vicarious satisfaction to anyone who has been in that position.  It rarely if ever happens that we get to experience that satisfaction, so it is gracious of God to include such a story in the Bible.

One of the characteristics of this what is called “post-modern” era is that we search for stories to give meaning to the experiences of our lives.  We look for a narrative that pulls all the pieces together in a tidy package.  In Bible 101, which meets Thursday mornings at 10:00 we often run across a Bible passage that wraps up a series of events by saying something like, “This was all done so that….”  We always sort of laugh and say, “Well, that is a handy way of justifying what happened.”  It always has to do with God’s leading in a particular area.  That habit has followed us through the centuries; we still say things like, “God really made that happen for me,” or “I can see now that all those things had to happen for a purpose.”   My mom was famous for wrapping things up in some kind of “God’s larger plan” statement.

Please don’t get me wrong; I am not downplaying the value of these stories.  It is what I want us to do as individuals and as a community: to try to discover where God is in the events of our life.  Many people find themselves rescued from illness or addiction “by the grace of God.”  My interest in you and in us as a community is to try to map out what it is that God is trying to accomplish – not in the events that God necessarily sends our way, but in how we respond as God’s People to the events that are a part of life.  If we view the events of our lives as what God is sending then we too easily become victims of an impersonal or vindictive God – (What have I done to deserve this?!  Why is God punishing me for those indiscretions in my youth?)  On the other hand if we experience much blessing we can easily attribute it to something we did to deserve it.  It can actually lead to a sort of self-righteousness that leads us to wonder what others did wrong that their lives are not as fortunate as our!  I would rather see this process as one in which we look at the events of our lives and try to discern how we met challenges and/or blessings with the intent of becoming more compassionate or more loving, exhibiting characteristics that define us as People of God; people in every nation who fear God and do what is right.  As I have said so often, I think that God has far less interest in what we believe intellectually or even what we do morally as God is interested in who we are; what are the God-like characteristics that define us as People of God?  How do our life’s events lead us to an understanding of who we are and what our developing role is in the Kingdom of God?

The story of Joseph is an extreme one – the stuff of mythology.  He is thrown into a dry well, sold into slavery, sexually harassed and framed by the boss’s wife, thrown into prison for many years where he is forgotten.  Yet, his gifts, his intelligence, his sensibility to dreams, his ability to get along with others, lead him along the way.  The story does not indicate that he says in any way, “Just you wait, I am going to strategize a plan that will lead to those brothers standing in front of me squirming while I decide whether they live or die.”  The story is rich with drama as Joseph speaks to them through an interpreter while knowing what they are saying, and he does seem to relish the opportunity to find out what has happened to his younger brother and father, but it does not seem to be a result of a plan that Joseph has devised.  After all, the brothers have come to him for help.

What does it mean for us?  We are in need of narratives that tie our lives to reality, to those we love, to those we hate, to the God that we believe is interested in justice and mercy.  We fear being adrift in a cosmos without meaning or anchor of any kind.  We want to know that we matter.  Particularly when things are difficult we want to know that there is something on the other side of the difficulty.  It is that yearning for a redemptive narrative that we call Hope.  Our faith is about that Hope.  We trust that there is a thread of commonality in the narrative that comprises our life.

I have mentioned before that I am writing a paper entitled “My Story as Sacred Story” for my program in Spiritual Direction through the Haden Institute.  The purpose of this exercise is to deliberately identify my own story with one of meta-stories that make up our Holy Scripture.  It is an exercise that will examine the major decisions that I have made, the difficult paths I have chosen, the setbacks and opportunities.  It is an opportunity to map the journey that I am attempting to walk with God through my life and my career.  It is a bit of the opportunity I am asking you to take through small group experiences this fall.  I hope that you will take the opportunity.

We are given one journey with many choices and changes.  How will knowledge of God’s working in our lives make a difference for us and for our families and communities?  It is our responsibility to seek our place in this network of God’s People to turn the world right side up.

The Ordination of a Priest, Mark A. Cutolo, June 21, 2009

From the letter to the Colossians: "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."

A friend reminded me this past week that the term "presbyter," to which Mark is being ordained, means "elder." I don't know what Mark's entry into this collegium of elders means to you, but.... I know how old Mark is because he is three months older than my daughter. It was a bit harder for me to visualize Thomas Mitchell as a "son" in this process, but Mark...!

I was looking through the Book of Common Prayer to remind myself of the riches of this particular service when my heart rested on these words from the Bishop's prayer for the newly ordained priest, (page 534), "Grant that in all things he may serve without reproach, so that your people may be strengthened and your Name glorified in all the world." I am fascinated by "so that" statements. It is interesting to see what precedes the "so that," but I am much more interested in what follows.

The Bishop will, in a few moments, pray that Mark will, "in all things serve without reproach." I have been struggling with this term "reproach." It means to serve without shame or being reprimanded which begs the question, "Why would someone serve with shame or in need of reprimand?" That is where the "so that" comes in. Herein lies the point of serving with diligence and honor: "so that your people may be strengthened and [so that] your name [will be] glorified in all the world." These two facets of the "so that" encapsulate what we are about as presbyters, as elders in the faith of Jesus Christ. I am not sure that these are specifically taught in seminary or even in continuing education courses, but they are the heart of who we are.

First, "so that your people will be strengthened;" note that it doesn't say "so that the membership drive will be strengthened," and it doesn't say, "so that your pledge campaign will be strengthened," and it certainly doesn't say, "so that your reputation will be strengthened," or even "so that your career may flourish." We are first, as the writer to the Ephesians says so eloquently, to facilitate "speaking the truth in love... growing up in every way into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped... each part working properly, promot[ing] the body's growth in building itself up in love." What a commission! We are called to invest our lives in the lives not only of others, but in this supernatural, transcendent, organic entity, the Body of Christ - made up of the infinite variety of gifts and limitations that God's People bring to it.

The prayer will say, "so that your people may be strengthened and your Name glorified in all the world," but I hope that you will hear "so that your people may be strengthened so that your name will be glorified in all the world." These "so thats" simply build one upon another; I pray that you will be without reproach so that God's People will be strengthened so that God's Name will be glorified in all the world. The end of the prayer for Mark's priesthood is that God's Name will be glorified in all Creation, if I may expand the prayer's scope. This sentiment is reflected in all of the texts that Mark has chosen for us to hear on this occasion. Isaiah, for instance, says, "you shall be called priests of Yahweh, you shall be named ministers of our God." There is this picture of the priest standing between the People of God and their God, a sort of umbilical cord to pass back and forth the strength and riches that nourish the relationship between God and Humanity. That is a much different picture than that of the religious CEO that pervades today's church.

On Friday I saw a movie from 2005 entitled "Beyond the Gates," in which William Hurt played Fr. Christopher, a priest who served in Rwanda for 30 years as Director of a Technical School. The story takes place during the 1994 genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda, a story that is dear to our hearts through our relationship with our dear Salvator. In the course of the massacres the school becomes a haven for 2500 Tutsis because it is also housing UN peacekeeping troops. As we used to say in 8^th grade book reports I will not tell the whole story so that you will see it for yourself. I will say, though, that when Fr. Christopher refuses to leave with the peacekeepers he explains to his protégée that he cannot leave because, among other things, "God is here," and besides that, Fr. Christopher's own heart and soul are with his people - even in the face of certain slaughter. "And," he says, "I am afraid that if I were to leave I would not find them again." Fr. Christopher is quoted later as having said, "Sacrifice is the most you can love someone." There is much in those two quotations for us to contemplate as priests. Most of us will not be called to give our lives in a dramatic way for an "alien" people on another continent. But we are asked to invest ourselves so fully in God's People to whom we are called that it can be said of us that our sacrifice is the most we can love them.

Fr. Christopher's life had indeed been hidden with Christ in God. He had been called, as Aaron had, to stand between the living and the dead. It is the vocation we have accepted - to sacrifice so that, in the end, when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, we shall also be revealed with him in the Glory of the Name of the God whom we serve.

There may have been a time a few generations ago when priests were revered and honored simply because of their station or, perhaps in reverence for the institution they represented. I think that we are finding in this post-Christian world that those motivations for becoming a priest no longer matter. They no longer exist! We are called to search deep within ourselves for the vocation to the ministry of strengthening God's People so that God's Name will be glorified throughout Creation.

Mark, you are entering the priesthood at a most exciting time in the history of the Church. If you believe some, we are in the midst of the perhaps fourth major reformation since the time of Jesus. The institutional Church as it is will not be adequate for the spiritual needs of generations to come. God's People will have to dream great dreams and experience dramatic visions of what God has in store for the future. You are, in many ways, better equipped than most of us for this challenge. You are a member of the new Church, one of its architects. We have already seen in you mighty gifts that will allow you to be prophetic to a new generation that God is calling. Some things will not change. God will continue to call devoted young people to "Set your mind on things that are above, not on the earth." God will continue to call young people to "die so that their lives can be hidden with Christ in God." I am proud to say that we have been part of this continuing story of God's work in the world through your life.

Transformativa 3, June 21, 2009

Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes and said, "Can you see anything?" "I can see people, but they look like trees walking." Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again... and he saw everything clearly.

We are looking at ways, in this season of Via Tranformativa, to transform the world - to turn the world right side up, as it were. What we find, though, is that to transform the world begins very close to home: it begins with transforming ourselves and our own worlds.

Last week many of us identified with Joseph's brothers, sons of inheritance who felt disinherited because of their father's favoritism toward Joseph. Some may have identified with Joseph, wondering why so much animosity is directed toward us, when we are simply living life in the context we are given. One of the poignant lines in the Genesis text is the very last sentence of last week's reading, "His brothers were jealous, but his father kept the matter in mind ." It is often left to parents to ponder and puzzle regarding their children. It reminds me of the line in the Lukan version of Jesus' birth as he concludes the story with, "And Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart."

Today we have two stories of blatant exploitation of persons - young people, in both cases - for money. In Joseph's case the brothers wanted to get rid of him - some even suggested that they kill him - but they decided, rather, to make some money off him instead. The comment they made is outrageous: "What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh." And it is not enough that they justified the sale of their brother; they sold him to cousins, as Abraham was the father both of their own grandfather, Isaac and the slave traders' ancestor Ishmael by separate mothers. Besides performing such a despicable act against their brother they seemed to have no concern for the dismay their actions would cause in their father. "Serves him right," they may have said.

The narrative from Acts relates an event that seems so common place that it served only as an irritation to the disciples as they went about their business. They did not seem to be as concerned about the fact that this young woman was being held as a slave, as they were that she was following them about being a pest. It mattered to her handlers, though. The story says, "When her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities." What happened to that young woman? We do not know; what we know is that she was no longer useful to her owners, and, so, dropped out of the narrative.

I am sorry to say that exploitation of other people, while not always as blatant as these examples, is an integral part of the human experience. We do it all the time. We see people as "prospects," "customers," "clients," even "parishioners," functionaries that reflect their value to us. We may not be selling people into slavery, but we are often valuing people according to the potential they hold for us through their skills or gifts. Our consumer culture is focused on this. You should see the effort and time that is spent on simply choosing the host for a television program or a star of a commercial; it is based on which person will appeal to the widest range within a desired demographic. Now there is a word: demographic. That word is you; it is who you are, what subgroups you fall into, what race, what age, what gender, what social strata, what income level, what sexual orientation, your preference in pets, what you like to wear, where you went to school.... You get the picture. Marketing is about exploitation of people for profit. That is why I am always very cautious about how we use cultural words in relation to how the church exists in the world.

What we want to revive is a sense of relationship. The Gospel of Mark relates a healing experience in which Jesus touches a blind man and says, "What do you see?" "I see people walking around," says the man, "but they look like trees." It was with the second touch that the man was able to see people as they actually were - as actual human beings. You see, we, for the most part, see people as trees, as objects walking around that either help or hinder what we do, that are useful or negligible, that are attractive or unattractive, that are like us or too different. What we need is the second touch - the Jesus touch, if you will. It is the touch that allows us to see all people through Jesus' eyes, as children of God, worthy of existence simply because they are.

We get a little glimpse of this at the end of the Acts reading. The jailer's life was as good as over because he has allowed, even in the event of an earthquake, the escape of prisoners. Since his own worth was tied up in his function as a jailer he was ready to end his now worthless existence. Instead, the prisoners, rather than escaping as they should have, stayed - for the sake of the jailer? What is going on here? This is all upside down! The scene that follows is a picture of God's Kingdom on earth: the jailer bound the wounds of his prisoners, fed them, the prisoners showed the jailer and his family a new sense of worth - one found in themselves alone without regard to their function. This is real healing and wholeness. This is "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth...."

How does this translate to life in 21^st century Western New York? Perhaps you are already struggling with those places in your own life where people view you as a means to an end - or where you view others as disposable for lack of value to you. Is it coworkers, neighbors, drivers in traffic, store clerks, harried mothers with too many children in the supermarket aisles, immigrants, "those people," liberals, conservatives, evangelicals...." Again, the list is endless. This is what I mean when I say that the church will become irresistible when it truly becomes Good News. The restoration of humanity to itself and to God is a gift that is not being offered by anyone else in this society and culture. It is the work of the church. Can we transform the world? We can do it one person at a time by recognizing the Christ in every person, as our Baptismal Covenant requires. In the Eastern traditions there is a common and quite respectful greeting, "Namaste," which literally means "the God in me recognizes the God in you." It is the intent of the sacrament that we practice following the confession and absolution of sin, what we call The Peace. In that period, too often mistaken for the early coffee hour, we acknowledge the Jesus touch in our own lives and the lives of others. No longer do we see them as functionaries, as office holders, as people we need to use for some purpose. We look each other in the eye and say, "Namaste," "The Peace of God be with you."

Transformativa 2, June 14, 2009

From Celtic Prayers from Iona: "As I utter these prayers from my mouth O God, in my soul may I feel your presence. The knee that is stiff O healer make pliant, the heart that is hard make warm beneath your wing, the wound that is giving me pain, O best of healers, make whole, and may my hopes and my fears find a listening place with you."

"Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need," the reading from Acts tells us. What a controversial example of life together as believers! In the 20^th century such a social philosophy was demonized in America under the heading of Communism; yet it is held up for us as a model for how the transformed life is shared in community. Imagine a community in which there is no want because those who have actually sacrifice for those who do not. These are they, in the words of the Revelation, who have transformed the Ordeal, who have, in more familiar words, made "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" more than just words; they have acted on it.

There have been, throughout the centuries - even into the present - communities that aspire to this ideal: to be a society of justice and mercy where no one goes without what they need. We don't know what happened to this early Christian community or how long it lasted. We do know that some adherents that tried to keep some of the proceeds of their wealth were actually struck dead. That is a great story in Acts 5 - the story of Ananias and Sapphira. It is clear that the community's commitment to sharing all that they had was a serious one. Now we just dismiss such behavior as eccentric, "hippie, free-love druggies," or even anti-American because it runs counter to capitalistic entitlement. My purpose is not to convince you that we need to establish such a community, but to show that the transforming experience of this group of believers resulted in a radical search for the Kingdom of God in their own experience. How does such idealism get derailed?

Let me leave this train of thought for just a moment and go to the story of Joseph. Hopefully the threads will come back to an intersection before I am done.

The first lesson for the next six weeks comes from the book of Genesis, the book of Beginnings. This segment is, without a doubt, my very favorite Genesis passage: the story of Joseph, born eleventh son out of twelve. The passage suggests that Joseph is his father's favorite because he was born when Jacob was old, but, in fact, he was a favorite because he was the son of his favorite wife who had been barren for all these years. Joseph was a miracle baby - the one Jacob and Rachel had yearned for all the years of their marriage. The older ten brothers, on the other hand, were sons of Leah, the wife that Jacob had been forced to marry when it was Rachel he wanted all along. This is the setting into which Joseph was born - favorite of his father by default, not his own accomplishment. How difficult it must have been for the "brothers of inheritance" to contend with this upstart favorite! And then there was that coat!

I am so glad that God has given us this written record of how family values are to be modeled! Not! It seems as though sibling jealousy and rivalry are not an invention of our own families after all. They are part of the Ordeal. They are part of the human drama in which we all participate. My own family is very non-confrontational yet, on the day of my mom's death last year, my two younger brothers were caught up in an expression of hurts that had never, in over 45 years, been expressed. It could have been a real tragedy resulting in fragmentation of our family had they not both had the insight and skills to deal with the situation. We are all part of the Ordeal. We all harbor hurts, anxieties, and wounds that affect how we move about in the world, how we relate to others, how successfully we negotiate through this life. Many of those wounds are a result of justice issues - at least at a perceived level; someone else has received the father's blessing or favor, someone else got the opportunities, someone else got the education, someone else was the "loved one." The experience of the newly transformed community of believers in Jesus was that they found that they were the ones who were loved and were freed to love one another. What keeps us from generosity is a fear that we do not have enough. What keeps us from loving fully is a fear that we are, ourselves, not loved or lovable.

The writer of Ecclesiastes had a deep sense of the Ordeal. Qoheleth, or The Preacher, as he is called, lists the extremes that we can expect to experience in this Human Ordeal: "a time to be born, a time to die; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to keep silence, a time to speak." It is our stories of these times and seasons that provide a place for God to live.

It later became clear to Joseph and his brothers how God was working in their stories of jealousy and anger. This is an important step to take in the journey with God - the ability to see, even in retrospect, how God works through our own Ordeal. Many people simply become bitter and resentful about the Ordeal. Attitudes become brittle and relationships forever fragmented. "I am who I am because...." (you fill in the blanks). The late Henri Nouwen, in an article entitled, "All is Grace," says, "I realized that true gratitude is a profound acknowledgment that every part of our lives, not matter how apparently insignificant or difficult, can be remembered as a part of God's work among us and within us, the work of preparing us yet again for a new mission. The Eucharist... invites us to convert all that has happened in the past into one great wellspring of gratitude and then to move with growing freedom into our future." This is the reason for meeting together as people of God to look at our own Holy Scriptures, the stories that God is writing in us, to help us to "convert all that has happened in the past into one great wellspring of gratitude," and then to "move with growing freedom into our future." I hope that you will give me a call and participate in these new emerging groups in our community.

Our closing hymn today is called, "Give thanks for life." The first stanza says this: "Give thanks for life, the measure of our days, mortal, we pass through beauty that decays, yet sing to God our hope, our love, our praise, Alleluia!" Who are those folks who are robed in white, singing Alleluia around the throne? It is us! We are the ones who are going through the great Ordeal. The passage goes on to say, "For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night... the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; the Lamb will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

The Feast of the Names of God, June 7, 2009

"When the Israelites ask me, 'What is his name, this God of our ancestors, what shall I say to them?' Moses asked. God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM.'"

Eyebrows are sometimes raised when, in reciting the Nicene Creed, people hear me say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son; with the Father and the Son She is worshiped and glorified; She has spoken through the prophets." Doesn't everyone know that God is male - in fact we even have a picture of Him in our minds, sometimes an old man on a throne with a beard? We have a difficult time picturing God as a "Her," let alone anything else.

This Sunday after Pentecost has become Trinity Sunday in our church calendar. It is a sort of wrap-up of the "drama of God" that we have experienced in the past six months. The idea of the Trinity is a construct put together to try to explain how Jesus can be God along with the Holy Spirit that showed up on Pentecost. It is a handy tool for talking about the various characteristics or functions of God; but nothing can adequately define or summarize or even approach the idea of God. It is when we think that we have God defined that we are in big trouble.

In this Creation Spirituality lectionary we are sharing this year the author suggests that this day be given not to a celebration of the artificial construct presented by the Trinity, but that it is given to a celebration of the fact that God cannot, in fact, be named. We must continue to explore this idea naming the unnamable. This tradition goes back to our Exodus text; Moses is used to having things neatly named and packaged, and so is wondering how he will introduce this voice he is hearing to the Israelite people. God's answer, "I AM WHO I AM" can as easily be translated, "I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE." In other words, God simply IS, and will elude any attempt to be put in a box - even a doctrinally correct one like the Trinity. The Nicene Creed which we will recite together in a few moments is distinctively Trinitarian, but, as the introduction we have added says, it is an ancient attempt to formulate who God is. As you know, St. John's Grace has an Affirmation of Faith that was authored by a group of parishioners to try to better articulate what we believe God to be about; we try to use it in our worship fairly often.

The Bible, contrary to popular belief, actually promotes this idea that God will be Whom God will be - not whom we will have God to be. One example is given to us today in our response from Isaiah: "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you." In the Bible God is often portrayed as feminine: nurturing, feeling, consoling. What a tragedy that we have lost a certain reverence for traditional feminine characteristics since success is so dependent on a mastery of masculine characteristics! God, in God's dealings with the people of Israel was not content to use masculine force or authority; she often, as Jesus said, "would have gathered them together as a hen gathers her chicks...." What difference might a feminine God make in your own experience of God? Have there been times when you really needed that God instead of the Almighty, Omnipotent?

Today's Gospel reading is an interesting one for a discussion of this topic of "names of God." Jesus has not said to his disciples that he is God, but he is interested to know what his reputation is among the population. "Who do people say that I am?" he asks. The response from Simon Peter has been made into a feast day: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God." Is this, though, a creedal statement meant to encompass all of Christendom? Is it a Messiah that we need in a God? Do we know what a "Son of the living God" would be like? Does this acclamation really speak to our needs to name what and who God is for us?

Today's opening hymn by Brian Wren begins to break through to some other images of God that might be useful for us: "Strong mother God, working night and day..." or "Warm father God, hugging every child...." Old aching God, grey with endless care" may be one that is increasingly familiar to many of us, but I love the image of "piercing evil's new disguises, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair." It is an image that can be useful to the youngest of us as we look for new ways for God to speak to our experience. Likewise the "Young, growing God, eager, on the move..., crying out for justice, giving all you have...." brings a sense of hope even to the oldest of us.

Summed up, Wren says, "Great, living God, never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home." This is the God I seek to follow: a God that cannot be defined and confined by what I know. I need more than I know or have experienced. The writer to Colossians says, speaking of Christ (maybe or maybe not Jesus), He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.... He is before all things, and in him all things hold together....In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...." And I can never get very far from the revolutionary phrase used by the writer to the Ephesians: "[my job is] to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages... so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to all creation." The fact is that God cannot be fully named because of that rich - even infinite - variety of God's wisdom and the rich variety of the names for that wisdom.

Today we celebrate a paradox: our God is beyond naming, and is closer than breath itself. If we allow ourselves to embrace that ambiguity we come closer to "knowing the unknowable," "naming the unnamable."

The Ordination of a Deacon, Thomas J. Mitchell, June 2, 2009

"I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."

"Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad." Probably the first words learned in Hebrew by a young man or woman, these words form the centerpiece of the Jewish morning and evening prayer service. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" is one translation of this famous quote. It is the one I prefer, and you will soon hear why. I was surprised to discover that this simple phrase has been exegeted to death - even being used, (not to get into it now), to proof the reality of the Trinity. I always love it when there is controversy because it gives me an opportunity to tout my own idea, and that is what I intend to do now.

I think that we generally think of this short text as a basis for a monotheistic doctrine. As printed in the folder it says, "The Lord is our God, the Lord alone." In thinking about it this week, however, I would like to suggest the possibility that the famous "Shema" reveals something deeper and more exciting about the nature of God; I would suggest that "the Lord is One" means that God, Our Lord, is undivided, Whole, complete Health in the extreme sense of the word, Whole - indeed, Holy. Since we are never completely Whole, it is this characteristic of God that taps our imagination to pursue a God in whose image we are formed but without the fragmentation that we experience. "You shall be holy, for I am holy," Peter reports God as having said to God's People. Aren't you tired of this holiness thing being some kind of moral millstone tied around our necks? Can't we actually become holy - Whole - as God is holy? Can we not be healed of the brokenness and fragmentation that characterizes Humanity?

It is this quest for Wholeness that brings us to this point tonight. Thomas Mitchell has spent the best part of his life looking for the piece of the puzzle that brings him one more step toward Wholeness. He has had a sense that it has to do with ordained ministry, but his life has been defined, to a certain extent, by institutional restrictions regarding personal relationships, cultural expectations regarding marriage, and a successful career that has blessed generations of students at Trocaire College. As happens to many people who reach a certain point in life where they recognize that all of the good things accomplished do not substitute for following their Bliss, as Joseph Campbell taught us - what we call Vocation - Thomas embarked on the journey to follow a voice - a voice that said, "you can be made Whole. Follow Me." "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is Whole." We are called to pursue Wholeness, even as God is Whole.

Every once in a while a lectionary text begins with some conjunctive like "therefore," or "after that." It drives me crazy. I always feel like I have to back up and supply what the listener needs to be able to understand what comes after the "therefore." There is not a "therefore" following the Shema, but there should be one: Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is Whole; therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might." And we hear in our own ears the addition, "and your neighbor as yourself." That is really the power of the text: "God our Lord is Holy, so you must love." The vehicle by which we are instructed to acknowledge God's Wholeness is Love.

I cannot let the opportunity pass to call attention to call attention to this most rich passage from the Letter to the Ephesians. The writer spends some time talking about the makeup of the Body of Christ, about the various gifts given for its composition, and the description of what it will look like, saying: "until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." But it is a bit later that the writer makes "the rubber hit the road," as it were: "But speaking the truth in love, (literally 'truthing in love'), we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ," and this is the exciting part, "from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up - in love." Imagine being linked so closely by bands that allows each member to function at maximum capacity, that individually and corporately the organism attains Wholeness. Now, as Paul says to the Corinthians, "we see as in a glass, darkly" that stumbling, battered Body of Christ lumbering through the world shouting, "Come here - I can give you life!" "But then, face to face... we will know - even as we have been fully known." Paul knew, and so do we: "These three abide: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these...."

Thomas, here is the Good News of Jesus to us: "This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you." The implications of this simple statement are mind-boggling. It lifts us out of struggles with The Other for power, it frees us from self-defensive anxiety and worry, makes us vulnerable and truly able to serve from the heart. In short, Jesus' command to love is the commission to one seeking to be ordained a deacon. It is not a mistake, I think, that a priest, at least for now, is ordained first a deacon. The deacon is, after all, a servant/leader - not really an oxymoron. A deacon is one who leads by the example of one who has nothing to lose. This is the path to Wholeness. This is the path to Holiness.

Amen

Easter 5, May 10, 2009

From the Prayers of the People, Form II: "I ask your prayers for all who seek God, or a deeper knowledge of God. Pray that they may find and be found by God."

I have always been fascinated by this intercession which we share often. I think that in some sense we have convinced ourselves that "finding God" is a life-long exercise in futility - something that we should do, but something which we never actually experience. This prayer is clear in suggesting that the journey with God is not only something that we are responsible for, but that, in fact, God is there waiting to surprise us with the Divine Presence.

As I prepare to preach I often try to put a title to what I have to say. It gives me a focus and helps me to pull my thoughts into - hopefully - a single train of thought. In looking at all three of today's stories I originally named these reflections "Encountering the Christ," but it became clear at some point that, in reality, these stories are about Being Encountered by the Christ in a variety of circumstances. None, in fact, are about searching for God and finding God; they are all about being found by God. I would like for us to consider today the possibility that our most powerful experiences of God are those times that God picks us up and turns us inside out - "rightside out? - and points us in a new direction.

The most dramatic of these stories is the famous story of the conversion of St. Paul. Saul, who had been forcefully stamping out this new cult of Jesus followers, was in no way seeking a confrontation with the God of these followers. His goal was to eradicate them from Israel; they were probably an embarrassment to Judaism because of their radical ideas about having an intimate relationship with God, as taught by their leader. He actually had the audacity to call himself God's son, giving himself the position of a god himself. This passage from the Acts of the Apostles tells us how, in the performance of his calling, his vocation, Saul was struck blind and a voice from heaven corrected his thinking, as it were. He was rendered helpless, and his salvation came through the kindness of the very people he had sought to destroy. His complete direction was changed and he became the inventor, if you will, of the Christian Church. In a supernaturally dramatic way Saul had been found by God. We get the sense that he did not have much choice in the acceptance or rejection of the learnings of this encounter. He seems to have been instantly altered for life though he, in his later writings, refers to his former life with a bit of veiled pride. It is clear that this is a turning point not only for him but for the whole of what becomes Christendom.

The story of the Good Samaritan is fiction, of course. It is a story told by Jesus to make a point concerning who we are to consider "neighbors." There is, however, often not much difference between fact and fiction. Often fiction contains the most powerful seeds of Truth, as portrayed in this story. The Good Samaritan becomes the agent of the Christ in this tale, and he comes to encounter the man in question at the point of his greatest need; he has been badly assaulted and left for dead. Much of the power of this story is lost in our entitling it "The Good Samaritan;" in truth it is as though our hero has been rescued by the absolute scum of the earth - literally unmentionable in polite society. It is sometimes true that we are found by God not only at the point of our greatest need, but by the least desirable or least expected source. What a combination! Again, our hero doesn't seem to be in a position to turn down the help of this untouchable; what is he going to do, die instead of accept help from someone he hates?

So far we have been found by God through a dramatic change of life and through a point of our greatest need - delivered by a most unlikely - even unwelcome - source. Finally, in our Gospel reading from Luke, one of the most understated occurrences in the disciples' experience with this odd carpenter/preacher/prophet, Jesus, happens. On the day of Resurrection some disciples are simply walking along the dusty road talking, perhaps trying to make meaning of the things that have happened, when someone joins them and joins in the conversation. Wouldn't you love to have been there! (Except like them, we would not know the importance of what was happening!) When Christ's presence is finally revealed it is in the breaking of the bread. In the act of a simple meal the disciples reflect, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?" The disciples had been found by God in the most basic activities of life - walking the path and sharing companionship around a table. It is true that they had been talking together, seeking meaning at a crucial time in their lives, but they did not realize that the meaning was being made in the very mundane experiences they were sharing.

It should not be too hard to make the connection between being found by God and the Via Creativa. The experience of being found by God causes us to be a New Creation when we respond to it. I suppose that it is possible to let such experiences go by unnoticed. In fact, I suspect that it happens all the time. However, if we can allow ourselves to be found by God despite our deepest convictions, as in the case of Paul, in our times of greatest need - even delivered by unwelcome sources - or in the simplest community contexts, we will not only be found to be a New Creation, but we will be equipped to facilitate New Creation in the world around us; in our families, in our relationships, and in our neighborhoods and cities.

Here is the hard part: we must be ever on the lookout for opportunities to be found by God. We most often become so overwhelmed by our surroundings, by what is being done to us, how we are keeping everything together, that it becomes impossible to see the work of God in the experiences of our lives and the lives of those around us. We are still so self-sufficient that we are looking for ways to solve the dramatic traumas that confront us, to get ourselves out of the ditch rather than to accept unwanted help, or to see our everyday experiences as mundane and not worthy of God's presence or engagement.

If, indeed, we see this life as a journey with God we will allow God's Spirit to make our lives into something great - something new! It is the reason I continue to encourage you to tell your stories to one another and to me! It is Holy Scripture that you are writing as you recognize God's involvement in the most dramatic, the most difficult, and the most mundane of our experiences. Let's get together. We all have journeys to share!

I ask your prayers for all who seek God or a deeper knowledge of God. Pray that they may find and be found by God.

Pluralism Sunday       Easter 4, May 3, 2009                      

"Peter began to speak... 'I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.'"

Today we join with many other congregations around the world to observe Pluralism Sunday, sponsored by The Center for Progressive Christianity, a network of churches of which we are a member. One of the 8 points that TCPC promotes is this: "We recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them as our ways are true for us." Is it possible that this agrees with our emphasis on Via Creativa, the birthing of a New Creation as a result of Christ's resurrection? It may be a new creation to consider the possibility that God has been working among the Peoples of the planet throughout history! It certainly sounds, through the words that we have read together, that God's character is revealed through Sacred Scripture in a variety of traditions.

What these texts appear to tell us is that religious traditions throughout the world are based on love for God and respect and honor for all human beings - a sort of universal Golden Rule, if you will. What are the chances that human beings around the globe would arrive at these conclusions that counter human nature without being prompted by divine revelation of some kind?

What has happened, however, through the ages, is an isolating of Peoples from one another - an exclusivity based on the assumption that one individual or group holds the key to final truth. When this happens several results occur.

First, those with the Truth inevitably use that truth as a weapon against those who are not part of the group in power. It results in class wars, national antagonisms, demonization of the Other - sentencing others to eternal damnation. Secondly, it results in a kind of condescension: "We should not judge those who are not as fortunate as we are to be born into the Truth. We must pray for their conversion and work for them to see the Light." Is it any wonder Peoples of the world resent such an attitude?

So, what does this mean? Can we assume that all religions are the same - that it doesn't really matter what you believe? I hardly think that we would say that is true of any what we would call "extremists" in any religion. We must recognize, however, that the Muslim extremist is no more damaging to God's Creation than the Christian extremist that seeks to dominate human behavior or dehumanize those who do not agree with them.

You will not be surprised to hear me say again that God is not nearly as interested in what we believe, what we think, or what we speculate as God is interested in who we are as a result of an enlightenment that takes us beyond our "First Creation" impulses. If our natural greed is transformed into a supernatural generosity, if our natural fear of those who are different is transformed into a courageous stepping out to engage those who are different, if our natural self-centeredness is transformed into an embrace of all humanity in every generation, then the Resurrection has occurred once again. We can, frankly, quote the Bible to "prove" whatever we want to believe; the real proof of our faith is what difference it makes in the world in which we live.

Can you see how this attitude toward our faith and the faiths of those around the world who commit themselves to what we have read from their Scriptures this morning would lead us to bind ourselves to them - to look for ways in which we can together bring about God's realm of justice and peace? The world has simply gotten too small for us to protect our own little territory of Truth. We are not going to convert enough people to Christianity to bring about God's Kingdom. In fact, history shows that the spread of Christianity through the world has often brought more displacement, more ethnic cleansing, and more antagonism within indigenous people of the world. The reason we are at odds with Anglicans in Africa and Asia is that our missionary efforts that created churches in those areas stopped short of giving them a real vision of Christ's kingdom, leaving them with a legalistic anger that in no way resembles Good News.

I have said this many times: when the Church of Jesus Christ truly becomes Good News, then our message will be irresistible! We will have to hold services all week long to accommodate everyone who has come within the reach of Christ's loving embrace. This is a project with whom we should be partnering with all whom, in the words of today's Acts reading, "in any nation fears him and does what is right." The point is not to bury ourselves away in little enclaves that argue over what Truth is; we should be binding ourselves to anyone and everyone who understands that God's commandment is to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. This is the New Creation!

Finally, just a note about the New Creation here at St. John's Grace. The latest edition of the new online Church Acts contains three major stories of projects here at St. John's Grace. As I move about the diocese I hear more and more often people talk about the energy that is centered here on Colonial Circle. Activities are just a symptom of what is happening in a community, but it is clear that a new energy is indeed at work here. Part of my joy over this is that I am spending more time being a priest and less being a promoter or an initiator of programs. The Spirit - the Breath of God is working here to bring together a People to the Glory of God. I am pleased that you are a part of it, and I am honored to be called to be your priest at this point in your history.

The Resurrection has happened. God's Spirit is moving in our midst. We are moving to acknowledge God's work in our community and our neighborhood. I anxiously await the revealing of God's plans for us in the coming months and years.

Easter 3, April 26, 2009

On the Day of Resurrection the disciples met and locked themselves away because they were scared. Jesus stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

The ordeal is over. Jesus has been killed and we survived that horrible weekend. Then on Sunday some of the women reported the impossible: his body was missing, and he was reported to have come back to life. Everyone dressed up, the women wore their new hats, little girls had new dresses, little boys got haircuts and even the men wore their ties and jackets. It was fun singing "Jesus Christ is risen today." The brass added such energy like we don't always get. What joy it was to have the church full! Spring was finally here - oh, I mean Jesus had been risen from the dead! It was great fun that day, but, in the final analysis, what difference does it make?

Chances are that by the third Sunday of Easter we don't talk to each other much about the resurrection. We are sort of back in our regular routine. In fact, we may fear that to say too much about the resurrection this far after Easter may cause people to wonder if we are religious fanatics or something. Let's just get back to singing and praying and listening....

The disciples were afraid of what Jesus' resurrection might mean for them. What would the religious leaders think or do to them if it was true? "We'd better get our stories straight - we'll meet in the secret hideaway and set our strategy," they may have said. Had they forgotten what they had actually experienced? Their leader/mentor was no longer dead! Perhaps it would have been easier if he had stayed dead. After all, we always recover from loss. "Give it some time," they might say, "life will get back to normal soon." But resurrection short circuits a "back to normal" life. Because of the resurrection life will never again be normal.

This is the threat and promise of a resurrection life - life will never again be normal. It will be fuller, richer, more frustrating, more threatening, less secure, less certain, but the resurrection life will never again be normal - it will never be the same.

The two stories we hear this morning are strange stories of resurrection. They are, oddly enough, stories of runaways, one who ran to retain his life of comfort, and the other who ran from the comfort of his home to adventure. Jonah knew what God had planned for him, and was beating a hasty retreat to someplace else! What seemed an impossible task led him - if you'll pardon the expression - into really deep water. It was there, in the belly of the great fish, that Jonah experienced resurrection. This is one of the greatest hymns I know: "I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of death I cried, and you heard my voice....As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple." The resurrection happened in the midst of deepest despair - and resulted in a complete life-change for Jonah. He relinquished his own plans for his life and moved to accomplish God's work armed only the assurance of God's presence.

The Prodigal Son, on the other hand, runs from the comfort and predictability of life with the family in search of adventure. While I always encourage people to venture out, this particular excursion ended in tragedy. The young man learned soon that he couldn't buy friends, and that what his secure life had offered was more than comfort. At the nadir of his experience, his resurrection came to him in a realization of who he actually was and what his inheritance really meant. "Even my father's servants have enough to eat and I am dying of hunger! I'll go back and beg my father to take me on as a hired hand." Little did he realize that his father was not only willing to take him back, but was actively looking for his return.

I saw a newly released video on Friday entitled "Mulligans." It turns out that Mulligan is a golf term for a second chance - a sort of "do over." In this movie a man, married for 25 years comes to admit to himself and to his family - through a series of uncomfortable events - that he is gay. The realization and the acknowledgment is a resurrection, but it does not come without a great deal of pain and discomfort. I resonated, as you can imagine, with this man's story. He, (like me), was not particularly courageous about this "second chance." Like me it was, in a certain sense, thrust upon him. We could say the same for Jonah and the unnamed Prodigal Son. It sometimes happens that a new life - a resurrection - is thrust upon us, throwing us into the deep, landing us in the pig pen, watching secure, dry land fade as we drift into a voyage to the unknown. My guess is that most of us here have had such an experience. Perhaps we are now in such an experience. The fact is that change is the only thing we are guaranteed. If we live life to the fullest we will find these deaths and resurrections to be a regular part of our lives rather than "once in a lifetime" occurrences.

So, what difference does the Resurrection make? More than a once a year celebration with bunnies and easter eggs, Easter is an invitation to our own resurrections - complete with the fear and discomfort that they bring. They invite us into life at its fullest - a return from whatever deaths have held us - but demanding that we let go of the comfort of the fish's belly or the security of the pig pen. New life dawns on the horizon for the one who looks to move deeper into the life of God. We move toward the Easter morning knowing that there may be a locked door to hide behind, and not a little bit of fear as we move into the future. This is embracing not Creation, as we did in Christmas and Epiphany, but embracing a New Creation - a new role as co-creator with God as our lives are made new, our old skins are shed in favor of new garments, as we are newly equipped to be God's People for a new world. How can we resist?

What is the resource given for this journey into the unknown? The disciples, frightened as they were, learned the answer simply and directly as they hid from enemies known and unknown. Huddled together for support and comfort they received the resource we all yearn for as Jesus stepped into their midst and simply said, as I say to you each week in encouragement for your own journeys: "My sisters and brothers, the Peace of God be always with you."

The Day of Resurrection, Easter, April 12, 2009

"From now on we regard no one from a human point of view.... [if] anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"

Someone sent me a joke last week - one of those ministerial type jokes where the minister steps into the pulpit on Easter Sunday and announces, "The theme of today's sermon is, 'Where the Hell have you all been since Christmas?'" That is not the theme of my sermon. In fact I have a pretty good idea where many of you have been; you have been living life, going to work, trying to figure out your finances, raise children, and maintain a happy existence with spouses and coworkers. You are living life to the best of your ability, often putting one foot in front of the other day after day. Where is that promise that "if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation?" Is there anything beyond what I see in front of my face?

Since Christmas we have been exploring a paradigm for faith based on Matthew Fox's "Original Blessing." It suggests that, as children of God, made in God's image, we are called to embrace this journey of life given us to its fullest - taking full advantage of both Creation's abundance and delights and the richness of the journey itself, even in its difficulties.

In Lent we talked about what things we might need to let go of in order to allow room for something greater. We considered our need to let go of grief, to make room for Wisdom, to surrender our fears to be able to fly! In this Easter season we are invited to see, through the rich mythology of the Resurrection, a New Creation - to discover that what is being born in us will not only change our lives, but will change the world around us. How will we be the agents of change in our homes, our neighborhoods, or our cities? As the text to the Corinthians says, "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation."

The two Gospel texts read this morning reveal interesting responses by individuals to the news that Jesus had risen from the dead. Most found it unbelievable. In the Luke text the women return to tell what they have encountered, but to the apostles, the passage says, "these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them." Not believe them?! These are the apostles we are talking about! How could they not believe what Jesus had been telling them all along? How can we be expected to believe if the apostles did not? The fact is, however, that they were changed by the event, and we can be as well.

Too often in church we are encouraged to engage in what it is that we believe about the Bible, the historicity of Scripture. Can we actually believe in some of the things that seem, in our age of scientific knowledge to be impossible? Here is what I think the Day of Resurrection tells us: the message of Easter is not what you believe or think or logically figure out that is. It is how are you made new as a result of God's spirit coming to dwell in your life.

The passage from Isaiah invites us into a vision of what might be: "I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating!" Not what I have created, but what I AM creating! He suggests no more weeping or distress, longevity as a norm, reasonable prosperity, houses to live in, produce from one's own labor. He suggests such ridiculous signs of peace as wolves and lambs feeding together - and not one on the other. Can we hope for such peace in our time? Is there a possibility that the lions and lambs of our time will sit together in peace? It is the promise of Easter that makes us hope for such outrageous peace. It is the promise that death does not have the last word - that life springs out of death. It is the promise of spring when green life sprouts from the dead, brown leftovers of the winter. It is the promise of new life when all of our own resources have been exhausted, when we think that all hope is gone, and that we have reached the end of our rope.

I daresay there are few in this congregation today who have not experienced what I am talking about. It is the nature of the human experience. We all reach times in our lives when what we need is a resurrection - a new start, a new creation.

"If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" For most of us the coming of Easter means that the winter is finally past. As the Song of Songs says, "the rain, (or snow, in our case!), is finally over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land." The placement of Easter in the calendar at this time of year is meant to link the renewal of the earth with a renewal of our spirits. It is a reminder that death does not have the last word. The call to be Easter people is a call to renew our hope in a new Creation - to claim our place in a new culture where God's reign of justice and mercy triumphs over the death-dealing cultures that dominate our planet. Easter is the opportunity to renew our commitment to making it happen, as we pray, "on earth as it is in heaven."

Believe me; we know that there are many things vying for your attention in this culture. We at St. John's Grace want you to know that we are with you to encourage you, and to provide spiritual resources for the journey. We have moved beyond being a sort of social club that says God things. We are engaged in this journey into God's creation and we invite you to engage with us as we, animated by the spirit of the resurrected Christ, move into this world with a message of hope for our time.

And don't be a stranger.

Easter Vigil, 2009

"I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act," says the Lord.

This is one of the great stories of the making of a people - or, I should say, the re-making of a people. While it seems epochal in its scope I think that it speaks to this, an intimate gathering of us who have come the night before Easter to sit vigil awaiting the resurrection of Jesus. Actually, as you know, I am partial not only to this text, but to the one that precedes it; the one about replacing our hearts of stone with a heart of flesh. These stories go very well together.

In the story of the dry bones the word "breath" or "breathe" is used eight times in preparation for this great army to arise. While we are used to thinking of the story in terms of bones coming together and sinews and skin coming upon the bones, the breath of the structure is mentioned more than anything else. We are experiencing an organic reorganization of something that is presumed to be dead. "Can these bones live?" asks God. The prophet replies, "O Lord God, you know." What strikes me is that putting together the structure seems to be a fairly simple operation. One can almost imagine Ezekiel out in the field like a CSI arranging the bones and stretching out the ligaments and skin over them. The real trick is not putting together the structure; the real trick is how to make it live.

This is the heart of all Frankenstein-type stories: we can find all the parts that are required, but how do we animate them? How can we make them live? God suggests that Ezekiel appeal to the four directions for the breath to come. The answer, God suggests, can begin in Nature. Scientists have for generations looked for the very spark in Creation that causes life to occur when the structure is in place. At times we hear a news report that suggests that we are near the place where we can create life. Perhaps we are, but it remains one of the great mysteries of our existence: how to get life into the structure.

Corporations spend big bucks to try to answer this question for their organizations. Consultants get big bucks to instruct and motivate workers to bring life to a corporate structure. Long range planning seminars are designed to make us more in touch, more organized, more forward looking, but we are almost always disappointed that none of this, in the final analysis, provides the Life - capital "L" - that we are seeking. If I may, I might suggest that we often look for life and motivation in the "heart of stone" from the previous Ezekiel reading as opposed to the "heart of flesh" that provides the organic life stimulus.

We all want real life - we want it for our families, our work environments, our social networks, our love relationships, and our church. We feel that if we can only get the structure right it will happen. We will rely on an artificial heart pump to get everything working right as long as there is little or no pain involved. Let's just get this machine working efficiently and get to being productive. "I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live," says God to God's People. What we find, though, is that God's spirit is not always efficient, does not always conserve resources, is not always clean and neat, and is almost never interested in our structures. In addition, God has created human beings in a way that the "heart of flesh" route to life almost always includes pain. Ask any woman who has born children what the cost is to bringing new life into the world. Real life involves messiness and pain; it is our legacy as humans - and it is our reward.

"Throw away those artificial means," says God, "and surrender your structure to me, and you shall live, and, in addition, I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act." This is the reminder that we seek as we return to the tomb after our days of mourning. It is in turning from our own systems of pumping life into our structures and allowing God's spirit to enter our experience that we discover, as I hope that we do in new ways in the days to come, a New Creation, a new home on our own new-found soil. We are beginning to experience in new ways this New Creation in ourselves, in our relationships to one another, and in our mission as God's People in this place.

Thanks be to God.

Lent 5, March 29, 2009

From the Book of Common Prayer, Service for the Burial of the Dead, "None of us has life in himself, and none becomes his own master when he dies. For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord. So, then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's possession."

Does this seem like a strange introduction to a sermon? I have struggled all week with what today's readings have to say to us as we near the end of our Lenten journey. What I think they say is this: we must reach a point of acceptance of life and death as parts of the same journey. We live in a culture where we are raised with death as a taboo; a subject that is improper or unacceptable for conversation. As a result we are led to believe that death is something that will not happen to us - that we will live forever. Like sex, death is a subject that causes embarrassment when it is raised in conversation. This is the reason that so many of our jokes and various kinds of humor revolve around sex and death: jokes put those subjects into a form in which they can be somewhat acceptable because the discourse ends in a laugh, releasing the tension that the subject itself has caused. We are, perhaps, being called to let go of our fear not only of death, but of talking about death.

If we are to embrace God's Creation, we must figure out how to find ourselves in the land of the dying and dead as well as the living. All of Creation is made up of the same matter - arranged into different forms. If we believe that - and scientists tell us that it is true - then we figure out a way to see ourselves as part of the "stuff" of Creation whether we live in our present bodies or move to a different form in death.

One of my early learnings regarding death was the impression of being truly honored to be in the presence of someone on that Ultimate Journey. It is the experience of being a witness to the ultimate mystery: someone is in the room breathing, perhaps talking, struggling - and in the next moment falls silent. When that moment came for my father in January of 2004 I had the distinct sense of him dissipating into the cosmos, each particle retaining a part of his personality, but moving into the farthest reaches of Creation - becoming One with Creation.

In today's readings we are face to face with death. I once did a monologue for an acting class in which the character, Jack Sparrow, told the story of his marriage breakup. The breakup was a direct/indirect result of a drowning - the drowning of his five year old daughter. When I reached the part where the actual cause of his anguish was revealed I fell apart emotionally because, you see, I was at that time the father of a five year old daughter. I could not imagine such a loss and I could not even articulate it through the words of someone else. We can only imagine the grief of Jairus of today's Gospel lesson. He was a leader of the local synagogue, a man of influence and power, but he had no power over what was most important in his life. I remember hearing a childhood friend tell of her father's death at a very early age. Her mother had gone so far as to take him to one of those shady "faith healers" to seek remission for the brain tumor that was taking his life. What sticks in my head decades later is this comment, "She would have tried anything to save his life." This is where we encounter Jairus; at the point of trying anything - even falling at the feet of this controversial itinerant rabbi to beg for help. Defying all of the naysayers Jesus says, "Let's take a look. Maybe she is just sleeping." The healing of the little girl is almost anticlimactic because what moves us so deeply is her father's compassion for her.

The love child of David and Bathsheba, the child for whose sake murder had been committed, has fallen dreadfully ill, and his father, King David, wracked with as much guilt as grief over the situation, is falling apart. You can imagine the atmosphere in the palace as the death watch proceeds. David is refusing to eat, refusing all company, and begging God to spare the child's life. We know that feeling. The servants were actually afraid to tell David when the child actually died.

Wonder of wonders, when David is told of the child's death he surprises everyone. The story says, "David rose from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes." He went from there into the House of the Lord and worshipped. What happened to all of that grief that he expressed when the child was ill? David's explanation is simple, but perhaps unbelievable to us who know how we might react. "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and the child may live.' But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?" And here is the astonishing part: "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me."

David seems to have not only a sense of what The Lion King calls "The Circle of Life," but also a sure sense of the direction in which that circle turns.

While initially obtuse, the reading from Amos may hold for us some words regarding the end of things. The image that God has given to Amos is that of end-of-season fruits and vegetables. He then describes how the end of the people of Israel will be marked by an abundance of fruits of injustice - trampling the needy, cheating customers in the weights of their purchases, selling the trash that is left over from the regular harvest - literally buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. The common denominator when we reach that final breath is not what we gained, but what legacy we have left. If we have spent the resources of our lives sharing those resources with others, not hoarding, not living in fear that we do not have enough, then our lives continue long after our mortal bodies cease to breathe.

When I was working at Christ Hospital in Jersey City I experienced, in an hour and a half, three deaths on the floors. The first was an elderly man who left no family except one brother who was listed as a next of kin. We left a message on voicemail asking the brother to please call Christ Hospital. The call was not returned. In a second instance a younger daughter of an African American woman showed up soon after her mother's death. She was visibly shaken by her mother's departure and wept openly but, as other family members began to appear she slipped out of the room. I caught up with her and said, "I think that your family will need you now." She shook her head, "no," and headed on down the hall. I ran after her and insisted, and so she went back in and was embraced by her siblings, obviously long alienated. The third was a Hispanic woman whose Roman Catholic family showed up, encircled her bed and prayed and sang for a very long time. In each one of these situations the person's legacy was revealed. Do you get it?

I was moved to tears by Bishop Spong's reflection on Jesus' legacy. He said something like, "Jesus was a person who, upon entering into the city to cheers and hosannas, said, 'I love you.' When he was betrayed he responded with 'I love you.' When he was mocked and spit upon his response was 'I love you.' When he was being killed he spent his dying breath saying to everyone around him, 'I love you.'" The distance between life and death is too short for us to act as though it does not exist. We will go to those who precede us, but they will not come back to us. The issue at hand is this: what difference does it make? What difference do we make in our living and in our dying?

Lent 2, March 8, 2009

From the first letter of John: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love."

My friend Louie Crew is fond of saying that the opposite of this familiar saying is as true as the saying itself: "fear casts out love." That is really what the second part says. It is impossible to exhibit real love where fear is dominant. This is true in relationships and in religion: if we have some unsettling fear regarding a friend or partner - or even God - it will be impossible for us to truly love the Other. True love grows out of that intimacy of which I have spoken, where one is completely known and loved in spite of oneself.

Often true love is prohibited by our own fear of ourselves, our limitations, our reactions, and our avoidance of hurt. Each of today's stories tells of people who were able to stand up to potential fear because they had a healthy sense of self. In this second Sunday of Lent I propose that, having given up our grief last week - in search of gold in its place - we give up our fear in order to exercise our True Selves.

In each of the instances read today, David, Amos and Jesus, our character was faced with opposition to convictions of their true selves. At first glance Jesus is faced with a temptation to transcend his mortal limitations. "If you are the Son of God," says the tempter, "throw yourself down. You won't get hurt because your Father will command all the forces of Heaven to protect you." Did Jesus have any tinge of doubt that he could accomplish this supernatural feat? Whatever his attitude toward the actual act, his response reflected a self image that pointed to something greater than the act itself. "I won't do it, not because I am afraid, but because I know who I am and I have nothing to prove to you." He might have said, "You cannot hold me hostage by appealing to any need I might have to win your approval. I simply am who I am, and I do not need spectacular feats when there are more important issues at hand. In what way will such a publicity stunt make a difference in human history? I have my eye on greater things." Instead, his simple, "Do not test God" puts the temptation in its rightful place. He was not afraid of the temptation because he had such a clear, laser-beam sense of who he was and what he was about.

This passage from Amos makes me laugh. His own description of himself, in an understated way, undermines the frantic nature of his tormenter. Amaziah, the High Priest is so threatened by this herder/farmer that he tries to scare him out of this vocation to which he has responded. "You'd better get out of here because you are treading on dangerous political ground." What he meant was that Amos was treading on Amaziah's turf. "Look," says Amos, "you don't have to worry about me. I'm not a professional. I'm just a farmer with a message from God!"

We briefly met David last week as part of God's plan for Samuel to move past his commitment to Saul as King of Israel. David was a little kid, the youngest of eight sons, literally the least of the bunch. His father did not even think of him when the prophet was shopping for a king. Samuel had to ask, "Is this all you've got?" when the others had been rejected. Does that give you an idea as to how David was viewed by his brothers? His elevation by the prophet, I am sure, did nothing to make his brothers happy. Through a series of coincidences, however, David came to the attention not only of the prophet, but of the King, Saul, himself.

(These days we are calling coincidences "synchronicities," a term that indicates that some things are working together to produce otherwise unanticipated results. Have you had an experience in which a series of events led you in a completely different direction? Did you think that it was an accident? People for many years have referred to "God's mysterious ways," but today's spiritual directors are taking them seriously. Remind me sometime, if you have not heard it, to tell you the story of my becoming an Episcopalian!)

In today's text from Samuel we are in the middle of the story in which young David becomes a national hero by slaying the notorious enemy warrior, Goliath. We find David talking with some of the soldiers, trying to discover what the reward would be for killing Goliath. Imagine the humiliation of his brothers, especially the oldest, to David's insolence. "What are you doing here, you little twerp? Don't you have work to do back in the fields? All you want to do is come over here and watch the battle." I love David's answer: "I was just asking!" Just like a little kid -

Given the opportunity to talk to the king, David continues to respond in a sort of innocent way that suggests, "I really think I can do this whether or not you think I can." Saul has tried to dissuade him by comparing his youth to Goliath's experience; then he tries to load him up with a lot of armor that David regards as troublesome - it would just get in the way. As we leave this portion of the story David is moving into position to do battle - imagine it! - with five little rocks and a sling shot. Does some peoples' confidence ever strike you as ignorant arrogance? This certainly must have been the thinking of all of those around. What David had, instead, was a sense of who he was. He had survived attacks by wild animals using the tools and weapons that he knew; what should keep him from being successful this time?

Here are three very different examples of individuals who prevailed, despite opposition, not because of their innate power or force, but through the moral strength of their True Selves. They each had a picture of who they were, what strengths they brought to the situation, what their limitations were, and how they were uniquely prepared and placed to face that specific challenge. They were not facing all challenges; just the one ahead of them. In doing so, however, their character was shown to be sufficient and, in each case, the meeting of the challenge prepared them for others to come.

This is our vocation: to move boldly into unknown territory with the gifts and weapons supplied by our True Selves. We may be blessed with charismatic personalities, but do we have a vision of how that gift is best focused for the challenges we face? We may seem to be placed in insurmountable situations, but do we have a sense that we may be the right person at the right time? There is that great line that Mordecai delivers to Queen Esther as she is about to risk her life on behalf of the Nation of Israel, "Perhaps you have come to this place for such a time as this." I do believe that God's People exist to make a difference in the world: to recognize injustice and speak out, to show mercy not to the easy to love, but to those most in need of mercy. Most of these situations require courage to overcome our fears of inadequacy, of being overwhelmed by whatever foe stands in our way, of being poorly armed for the battle.

The outcome depends upon our vision of who we are - that sense of our True Selves - that we are Children of God who have nothing to lose and everything to gain in being faithful to the various calls we have received to act as God's agents in the world. Perhaps we are hearing the voice of God in this Lenten season to give up our fear in order to speak and act for God.

Lent 1, March 1, 2009

"So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart." The King James version says, "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

It happens to me in the fall, not in Lent. What I mean is that sometime during the autumn I am overwhelmed by a scent that can be tasted, it is so palpable. What is contained in that fragrance is a deep nostalgia in which my whole being reenters places and events, people and feelings from decades ago: around the fireplace with friends at Glorieta during winter, some experience that Adrian and I laughed about together, something precious that Kristina said or did as a baby. I have always assumed that this happens to everyone during autumn, but I am not sure that is true. In looking at it over many years there is one very odd thing that I have learned: it is how deep and rich the beauty of grief is. Doesn't that seem strange? When we are in the throes of grief we regard it as punishment inflicted - sometimes unmanageable despair. But after a while grief takes on a certain patina that we recognize as some of the deepest treasure we have in our lives.

A friend of mine wrote a piece of music for men's choir some years ago in which he uses this text by Peter McWilliams: "I shall miss loving you. I shall miss the comfort of your embrace. I shall miss the loneliness of waiting for the calls that never came. I shall miss the joy of your comings and the pain of your goings and, after a time, I shall miss missing loving you." We reach a point where we want to hold on to the feeling of loss because it gives a sense of meaning to our experience and value to the things that have meant so much to us. The loss has turned to gold.

Samuel never wanted a king to begin with. Beginning with chapter 8 of 1 Samuel we hear all of Samuel's reasons for resisting a monarchy. However, through God's help a leader is found, the young, handsome warrior, Saul. God leads Samuel through the process of choosing Saul and anointing him as king of Israel. Samuel has realized that if there has to be a king, Saul is the person who can win his loyalty. By the time we reach this reading in chapter 16, though, Saul's behavior has become arrogant and erratic. He shows signs of what would probably be diagnosed today as bipolar, and God has changed his mind about Saul. Today's story is not about Saul, but is about the choosing of David to succeed Saul as King of Israel.

What poignant words begin today's reading: "The Lord said to Samuel, 'How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel.'" One can imagine Samuel shouting at God, "Why did you bother to have me go down this road if you are going to change your mind?" We might ask those questions: Why should I get trained in this field if my job is to be obsolete? Why should I bother to invest so much of my love in this person if they are just going to betray me - or die? Why did I bother having these children if they are going to mean nothing but heartache for me? The answer may lie in this: God has the ability to turn our loss into gold. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes, through our own resistance to change or to the pursuit of something greater, our loss turns into bitterness, brittleness, ashes. What we seek - what we really yearn for in the waning years - is to know that what we loved and lost were worth it. "So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart."

So, the first word to wrestle with today is "Wisdom." Does it surprise you that the word itself is related to "magic" or "witchcraft?" I would say that it is more appropriate to connect Wisdom to "alchemy," a process in which various materials are combined together to create something more valuable. A medieval process of alchemy, for instance, worked with base metals or other materials to create gold. This is the nature of Wisdom: the ordinary, everyday materials of our lives are mixed together, heated in the oven of our passions and emotions, cooled by our faculties of knowledge and discernment and what is distilled is Wisdom.

Samuel's disappointment at God's rejection of Saul was one of the bits of material that was put into the alchemist's mortar so that he would recognize God's choice in David to succeed Saul. His understanding of a godly kingship was enriched by his ability to take what he knew and turn it into gold. Wisdom is the real goal of life. Its effects are just about all that is left of a well-lived and well-alchemized life. Knowledge is not enough; it must be processed in the cauldron of judgment and discernment.

So now we turn to our Gospel and our second word. This Gospel text, poor thing, is so short it is hardly worth the trip down the aisle. However, it contains a word that scares most Christians and angers the rest of us: repent. For most of us it means, "Quit doing all of the things that you enjoy and become like the hypocrites you can't stand." In fact, its roots are more along the line of "to feel pain," "to regret," literally, "to creep or to crawl," or "to change direction." It means to lose one thing in order to pursue something else - hopefully something greater.

In this Lenten season we will be looking at the Via Negativa; after embracing the Creation and the God who created it and our journey within it, we are faced with constantly changing direction, leaving one path in favor of one that takes us farther in the direction God has for us. All of the junctures are opportunities to add material to our cauldron, to heat up our journey, to discern and judge in order to move further into the gold that is the Wisdom of our lives. Lent is the time to examine all of the broken pieces that can be thrown into the cauldron and melted together, making us further Whole. What hurts are we holding on to that restrict our movement into fuller lives? What limits are we putting on ourselves or on others that keep us from flying? How will the losses we experience - both losses we choose and those things that are yanked away from us - lead us deeper into the mystery of God, turn our experiences into gold?

Perhaps this is the time to remind you of the story my daughter, Kristina, told me. The week before she turned fifteen she put all of her childhood things in a box - all of her stuffed animals and the like - put it away in the closet and sat on the edge of her bed and wept. Something in her was grieving for the little girl that was dying, and something else was fearfully anticipating the young woman that was coming into being. Grief and fearful anticipation shared the same tears. The alchemy of her experiences and the passage of her childhood were turning to gold.

Perhaps the way forward from Ash Wednesday, on this first Sunday of Lent, is to hear the voice of God ask us, "How long will you hold on to that grief over a betrayal, over a perceived slight, over unrealized dreams, over a relationship cut short?" Let us hear the invitation of God to take all of our grief, ("he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows!"), and turn them into beauty. What would you rather do with them? Is it better to harbor hurts, cultivate disappointments - even seek revenge? The invitation of God in this Lent is to release our grief so that they can be turned into gold - into Wisdom.

Ash Wednesday, 2009

"Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living."

Ash Wednesday is always a day to make a choice. It seems strange that we should be called on to make a choice for or against God; haven't we all had that choice made for us since our baptism? Somehow, though, it seems appropriate for us to stand together, to take on the badge of choice on our foreheads, and to proclaim with the people of Israel, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods....We will serve the Lord, for he is our God."

The choices that Joshua sets before the people, though are not to be trivialized in their appeal. He suggests that we may choose to serve the gods of the past and/or the gods of the culture instead of the God we serve in name, Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts. Do you hear that? "Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River," or, in other words, "Give me that old time religion: it was good enough for mother and dad, and it's good enough for me." The other option is to worship just like everyone around you, the Amorites who occupy the land. We might say, "Choose this day whom you will serve: the consumer god, the god of cynicism, the god of partisan politics, the god of success at any cost, the god of greed and acquisitiveness." "No," shouts the population, "We will serve the Lord, for he is our God."

I am fascinated by this story of the woman who bathes Jesus in a very expensive ointment. In a culture where daily baths or showers were unheard of a woman might rely on some sort of scent to keep herself presentable. Add to that the possibility that this woman used the fragrance to attract business, her "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" was literally a choice to give to Jesus from her profit margin. Is it any wonder that the disciples were appalled at her smearing the symbol of her immorality all over their leader. "What will people think when we leave here - and you smelling like a French whorehouse," they might have said. Her choice to follow Jesus meant giving up some of her devotion to her own profession. For a woman who made her living seeing men as objects - just as they saw her as an object - this man moved her to the very core. "She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair." These were not techniques she had honed; these were authentic responses to a transformed life. She was moved to give everything.

Ash Wednesday is an opportunity to make choices. It appears that this woman was moved to give not only everything she owned, but everything she was, in her perception of herself. Her offering may not seem appropriate to us - it certainly did not seem so to the disciples - but Jesus was very clear that her choice was the right one for her - and for him.

May we be moved to make courageous and generous choices in this Holy Lent.

Epiphany 7, February 22, 2009

From Jeremiah: "Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known."

Perhaps you have been surprised that our exploration of the Via Positiva has included so much of what might be considered negative. We would love to stand out in Nature and bask in the beauty, loving a God that is so generous and loving. The problem is that we don't, for the most part, live in Nature. Even if we did we would find it to be cruel and unforgiving. Particularly in our urban culture, our sense of Creation cannot be relegated to vacations or retreats. We have to be able to find God and embrace the abundance of Creation in the context of our own lives with all its ambiguities.

All of this week's texts reflect the acknowledgement that life contains discomfort and inconvenience as well as sheer joy and contentment. The Jeremiah passage recalls the near extinction of the nation of Israel by the Chaldeans, with a promise of how the nation will be restored - in ways that they could not have imagined. That is the message of today's wrap-up of the Via Positiva: when we think that life has become hopeless, we are asked to embrace every aspect of the situation. As the writer to the Ephesians says, "Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do more than we can ask or imagine." The image is not one of an all-controlling God who treats humans as some kind of puppets at his whim; God is an organic force that works through the very things we bring to the process to create new worlds - miracles, if you will. In embracing God and God's Creation we are offering ourselves as co-creators in a project that is beyond our control, and which promises to surprise us in its magnitude.

To paraphrase my opening quotation from Jeremiah, "If you will bother to ask, I have much more to show you than you can imagine." I do love, however, the phrase, "I will show you hidden things you have not known." We have all grown up in this scientific age that, perhaps unconsciously, assumes that everything can be explained - there is nothing that cannot be proven. This word from God to Jeremiah invites us into something that we do not give enough attention to: Mystery. Mystery is why we insist on meeting together to partake of the Body and Blood of someone who lived 2,000 years ago. It is not about the elements; it is about something far less tangible - something that happens to us that is beyond what we can explain. It is what great writers call us into: suspension of disbelief. We are asked to believe that God can intervene in our situations, can "restore our fortunes... like the watercourses of the Negeb;" that, in fact, "those who sow in tears" may "reap with shouts of joy," that "those who go out weeping... shall come home with shouts of joy."

Panic struck the disciples one night as they ferried across the lake, as they did very often. They were seasoned sailors, fisherman many of them, who had weathered many a storm. This must have been particularly severe to make them so anxious. The story says that the boat was actually being swamped, so great were the waves. Everyone was busy bailing, I would imagine, except for one person, who was asleep with a pillow in the stern of the boat. What was it that they wanted from Jesus? "Don't you care that we are perishing?" they asked. My sense is, however, that they did not say to themselves, "Let's wake up Jesus so that he can quiet this storm down." I think they just wanted him to be awake so that he could worry with them. Maybe they just wanted him to help with the riggings. Maybe they were just indignant that he was relaxing while they were doing not only the work, but all the worrying as well.

Imagine their surprise! Whatever their expectations of how Jesus could contribute to their survival, I am sure that they did not expect him to calm the storm! His response to the crisis went far beyond their expectations or hopes. "They were filled with great awe, and said to one another, 'Is that what you were expecting? I didn't know he could do that!'" ("I will show you hidden things you did not know!")

Here is an idea: maybe we are called to embrace the storms in order that God can reveal something we do not know. I look out at you, and at this church which we all inhabit, and I see countless storms. We are all bailing frantically, individually and collectively, calling out to God, "Don't you care that there are times that we seem to be perishing?" Or even better, "Are you sleeping?" What is it that we expect of God in times of economic crisis, injustice in our own country as well as around the world? Do we want God to just help to bail as our relationships fall apart, as we deal with health issues, as we face uncertain employment futures, as our endowment tanks and our retirement accounts do the same? Do we want to know that God is worrying with us about our kids, our grief over the loss of a loved one, our mortgages, crime in our neighborhoods, incompetence and unconcern in our governments? Do we want to wake God up to realize that our building refuses to heat itself without our paying the gas bills, that our neighbors are driving us crazy with their nosiness and their loud music, and that there are times that we cannot make sense of our lives and the demands that are put on us? In fact, it may be that God is asking us to embrace Creation and all that means - injustice, ill health, inconvenience, disappointment - so that, if we bother to ask, we might find that God will "show us things we have not known." It may be that what we experience is, simply and beautifully, calm.

Part of my call to this church to become an authentic community of prayer comes from a conviction I have that God has not finished speaking in our time, in our city, in our neighborhood, in our church. God has hidden things of which we have not and do not know. They are not part of simple formulas learned in seminars, but they are hidden things - hidden in the depths of the problems themselves. This is part of the Creation we are called to embrace - it is a part of the abundance of God. In Bible 101 this past week I expressed a thought that I believe is alien to most Christian expectations: rather than being called to easy, black and white solutions to problems large and small, I believe that we are called to embrace - to hold on to - ambiguity in our lives individually and together. I believe that God has miracles to show this church for God's glory. I believe that we have not begun to tap into the mysterious power that God has in store for those in our care if we just bother to ask.

Next week we enter into the Via Negativa, our guide in the season of Lent. We will be talking about what will be necessary for us to release, to let go of, in order for the Via Positiva to become a reality. It may prove to be more discomforting than giving up meat or chocolate. We are on a journey in this life. God asks us to embrace Life with a capital "L" and everything it brings us. The Incarnation of God in Jesus is the mythology that God is with us in the storms, calling us to greater levels of faithfulness and trust.

"Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known."

Epiphany 6, February 15, 2009

From Romans: "I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.... Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

There is an odd statement at the end of the Gospel According to John. John, the Beloved Disciple says of himself: "There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." That may be something of an exaggeration, but it is, for me, a clue into the process by which John wrote these pages of biography. John's Gospel was written near the end of the first century AD, and is the most unusual of the four accounts of Jesus' life that are included in our Bible. It is much more reflective, interpretive, and mythological, if you will. The years that John spent composing, in his own mind, what he wanted people to know about this Jesus must have distilled into his memory and his writing not only what he wanted to tell, but also exactly how the story would be told.

It is for that reason that this story of Jesus' encounter with a woman by a well deserves to be looked at not just as a diary entry or a moral story about a woman who "gets saved and turns from her life of sin." It must be an archetypal story - perhaps a construct made of several such stories - that holds deeper meaning that defines who we are in relationship to this traveling rabbi, Jesus.

It is important to note that this woman was at the margins. She came to draw water at the hottest time of the day - not when most women would be out getting water and socializing. We find out later that she is not successful at relationships for some reason or another. For many Christians this is a justifiable reason for her being an outcast. Suffice it to say, her standing in the community had to be just about rock bottom. If that is not enough, a Jewish man is at the well, and obviously doesn't know the rules: Jewish men - or men in general - do not speak to Samaritan women. "Look," she must have wanted to say, "I've got enough on my plate without your adding to my troubles!"

This guy is really intrepid, though. He gets right into an argument about how superior his water is to hers - "living water," he says. Do you suppose that she is really so obtuse that she thinks nothing is up as he lures her into this conversation about how the water he provides gives permanent quenching of thirst? This is a wonderful banter between two intelligent people - a game of one-upsmanship! "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water," she says. I think it interesting that Jesus has no comeback.

Instead he says, "Go get your husband," as if to say, "Let me speak to the man of the house." Maybe he does know the rules, and is visibly flaunting his breaking of the rules. It is at this point that we discover why she is on the margins of her community as she is led into a confrontation - all be it a respectful one - regarding her marital status. For a woman of the day and culture she was worthless without some status in relation to a man. Jesus has the upper hand now and she parries with a comment designed to change the subject and to create a more intellectual climate: a religious argument. This is a great passage with wonderful interpersonal dynamics between two intelligent and forceful individuals. Perhaps she is trying to seduce him!

Note, however, that the result is not anger, but respect. I would venture to say that the result was healing to a certain extent. The woman ran back to town with a new confidence in her ability to contribute something important to her community. And, lo and behold, she did exactly that. She changed the complexion of the whole town by her testimony of having been completely known, respected and loved at the same time.

Now, what does this have to do with embracing God and God's Creation? God is available to all of us when we are outside the gates of our culture's expectations. God is always for us when we are on the margins. And it is not a presence that says, "Boy, you really screwed up now, and you are really going to need me!" God comes to us to restore our own sense of the dignity with which we are already endowed. I would go out on a limb to say that Jesus is of no real value to those of you who have it all together all of the time. Jesus' job, as the Incarnation of God, was to remind us who we are: Children of God by birth - and if that's not enough, by adoption as well!

The picture from the Song of Songs was so vivid as I thought about this story of the woman at the well: "My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the window, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: 'Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.'" If you would allow me, I think that Jesus in this encounter was seducing this woman, not into one more sexual encounter like the ones with which she was familiar, one that would further alienate her from her community and even from herself, but into a relationship with God that would bring Life! It worked! She could not contain her joy at this new discovery, and ran back into town to tell everyone of the encounter. Is it any wonder that Jesus could not eat - his food was the essence of a newly rediscovered Child of God!

We are all this woman. We have messed things up and had them messed up for us, and what we need is someone to remind us who we are. That is Paul's convoluted lament from Romans: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." And he continues, "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

We have found, and it is written throughout our Holy Scriptures, that we cannot figure out how to make things work all of the time. The good news is that God finally figured out that to remind us who we are he would have to send an emissary to show us what we are really worth. Thanks be to God!

Epiphany 5, February 8, 2009

From Psalm 30:6-7: "As for me, I said in my prosperity, 'When I felt secure, I said, 'I shall never be disturbed. You, Lord, with your favor, made me as strong as the mountains.' Then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear."

It may be the hardest lesson of all to learn, that the Via Positiva calls us to embrace and celebrate God's Creation over which we have little or no control. For humans, the idea of having no control over ourselves and our destinies is the worst we can imagine. While we may have moved past the idea of a human-like God who punishes and rewards like a sometimes erratic parent, we are faced with the idea of a Creation that is at once chaotic and unpredictable; one in which violence often is revealed in its elements. Earthquakes and floods - more lately, Tsunamis and other unheard of natural events - strike without warning, and without any sense of responsibility that human lives are at stake.

The animal kingdom is set up on a predatory model in which humans can be caught up - so-called victims of animal cruelty. We forget that animals are created to survive in ways that animals do! In reality, humans are set apart for survival not because of strength or power, but mostly because of our mental ability to cope with an otherwise whimsical and naturally dangerous world.

I was without power for five days in October of 2006, as most of you were. The church had no electricity for longer than that - (though attendance at Sunday's service would belie the possibility that we were without power!) There was nothing we could do to get our lights and heat back. We were not in control, and it was frustrating. Many of you have retirement accounts that are looking pretty sad these days - a result of a different kind of catastrophic event outside our control.

We really want to be in control but the fact is that for most of our lives we live within boundaries that are not set by us; they are simply out of our control. Jesus puts it like this, "Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? If you are not able to do a small thing like that, why do you worry about the rest?"

We are often reined in by forces beyond our control. The passage from the Psalms that I cited at the beginning is so evocative: "I said in my prosperity, 'I shall never be moved. By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain;' you hid your face; I was dismayed." In the same sentence a human is exalted and dismayed to both ends of the spectrum. Psalm 104 speaks of God as Creator and says, "...the earth is full of your creatures.... These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die." What a personal way of expressing the most essential of our boundaries - our "out-of-controledness" - "when you take away their breath, they die."

The Israelites were led day and night by what seems to be a supernatural sign: a cloud that moved to show them the way, appearing like fire to stand vigil and protect them by night. Seems pretty straightforward and easy; but we don't see many of those kinds of signs any more. We seem to be more beset by afflictions, indecision, what we might consider tests of our judgment or our character. There are people that I have described like this: when they are not in control, they are out of control. That is one way to respond, but not the response suggested by our texts today.

Are we to respond as robots, taking for granted that God has placed these limitations on us, and to question or move against the obvious is to jeopardize our relationship with the Creator? What ever happened to free will? Do humans have no contribution to make in this life? I believe that we do, and I also believe that God makes available opportunities for us to use our brains - even our creativity to give birth to new worlds - using the adversities and frustrations that we face. There was one short passage in the Isaiah text that just captured my imagination this week. It says this: "Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right, or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'"

The Healing Team has begun a book by Thomas Keating about Contemplative Prayer or Centering Prayer which suggests that, as Elijah discovered a few weeks ago, God is not to be heard in the loud distractions of the exterior, but in the "sound of sheer silence" which is our deepest authentic Self. It is not easy to reach that place where God can brush away all of our distractions and simply "Be" with God's human children. We are distracted by all of the concerns of life that, like an hour's span of our life, we do not control. Do we respond to not being in control by being "out of control," or can we, with the eyes and ears of our hearts, see our Teacher and "hear a word from behind us" that says, "this is the way; walk in it.," in our authentic selves?

We are spending this season learning to celebrate and embrace God's Creation. We are unable to do so adequately if we have some sense that we are in control of Creation. We are not God, but, rather, hold in ourselves a sense of the Divine Creativity that sees the Cosmos with all of its limitations and continues to move into new frontiers, guided by that "word from behind us," beside us, within us, that word that assures us that "this is the way." Don't forget Jesus' last words on this subject: "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

Epiphany 4, February 1, 2009

From the Isaiah text: He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

A cousin of mine who lives in Delaware sent me the following story:

"A seminary professor was vacationing with his wife in Gatlinburg, TN. One morning, they were eating breakfast at a little restaurant, hoping to enjoy a quiet, family meal. While they were waiting for their food, they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting with the guests.  The professor leaned over and whispered to his wife, 'I hope he doesn't come over here.'  But sure enough, the man did come over to their table.

'Where are you folks from?' he asked in a friendly voice.

'Oklahoma,' they answered.

'Great to have you here in Tennessee,' the stranger said. 'What do you do for a living?'

'I teach at a seminary,' he replied.

'Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you?  Well, I've got a really great story for you.'  And with that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the couple.

The professor groaned and thought to himself, 'Great... Just what I need ... another preacher story!'

The man started, 'See that mountain over there?' (pointing out the restaurant window.)  'Not far from the base of that mountain, there was a boy born to an unwed mother.  He had a hard time growing up, because every place he went, he was always asked the same question, 'Hey boy, Who's daddy?' He would hide at recess and lunchtime from other students.  He would avoid going into stores because that question hurt him so bad.

'When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church.  He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, 'Who's your daddy?' But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast he got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. Just about the time he got to the back door, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, 'Son, who's your daddy? The whole church got deathly quiet.  He could feel every eye in the church looking at him.  Now everyone would finally know the answer to the question, 'Who's your daddy?'

'This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following to that scared little boy, 'Wait a minute! I know who you are! I see the family resemblance now. You are a child of God.'

'With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, 'Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.'

'With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person.  He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, 'Who's your Daddy?' he'd just tell them, 'I'm a Child of God.''

The distinguished gentleman got up from the table and said, 'Isn't that a great story?'

The professor responded that it really was a great story! As the man turned to leave, he said, 'You know, if that new preacher hadn't told me that I was one of God's children, I probably never would have amounted to anything!'  And he walked away.

The seminary professor and his wife were stunned.  He called the waitress over & asked her, 'Do you know who that man was -- the one who just left that was sitting at our table?'

The waitress grinned and said, 'Of course. Everybody here knows him. That's Ben Hooper.  He's the former governor of Tennessee!'"

That is a retelling of the story we heard from Genesis this morning. The unnamed son of "the Egyptian Hagar" is the son of Abraham, but not the right one. It is not his fault that he was born of a slave woman, but it is the fault of her mistress that the two of them find themselves in this life-threatening situation. Sarah's jealousy - from wherever it stems; is she afraid of Abraham's feelings for the boy or for Hagar? - has forced Abraham to abandon them. The moral, though, is voiced in our Psalm: "If my father and mother forsake me the Lord will take me up." The truth is that God has no illegitimate children.

There is a joke going around the email circuit to the effect that a man dies and goes to Heaven where he is surprised to see a large number of people he knew on earth - but they are the obnoxious, the immoral, the unattractive, and so on. What they have in common in Heaven is that they all seem amused at something. Upon asking about this, St. Peter, (or whoever his guide is), says, "Well, they are all surprised to see you here!" Like Ben Hooper, we are liberated to be who we are by the recognition of our family likeness - we are all daughters and sons of God.

Our focus in this Christmas/Epiphany season is to recognize the goodness and abundance of God's Creation and our place in it. One of the discoveries that we make is that God's goodness and love are infinitely inclusive despite our attempts to make it exclusive and available only to what and whom we know - those who look and sound like us. In this story Hagar is told of her son, "God has heard the sound of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him." A great nation? Why, that is the promise given to the real son - Isaac is the one Abraham and Sarah have been waiting for! Not this - -...! Never forget, God has no illegitimate children.

Today's Gospel text has such possibilities for exclusion: "Everything the Father gives me; I should lose nothing of what has been given me; all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life." I prefer, however, to see this as radical inclusion: "Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and will not be driven away." The Father has given the whole of Creation into the hands of God's Incarnation. God is the divine parent of all, and all will be raised up on that last day.

Now the message gets a bit tricky in today's context. While unnamed throughout this narrative, the boy, Hagar's son, is Ishmael - loved by his father, Abraham - and father of a great nation, indeed; the Arab people are the descendents of Ishmael. The wide world of Islam has become a great nation by the blessing of God on its founding father, Ishmael, whose father Abraham is father of us all!

"He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth," the marginalized, the illegitimate, if you will. Only then shall, "the wolf live with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together - and a little child shall lead them."

Dare we hope that the day will come when this huge, dysfunctional family of God finds ways to celebrate our common source of existence? What will it take to realize that that for which we pray weekly - daily, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven?" We must claim not only our place in God's Creation, but insist on claiming that place for all of God's Children. Only first, like the preacher, we must recognize the family resemblance.

Epiphany 3, January 11, 2009

From Psalm 100: The Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

On Tuesday I was privileged to spend some time observing the inaugural ceremonies at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, our companion church on the East Side of Buffalo. One time when I was there the rector, Mother Gloria Payne-Carter, announced that I was considered a member of that congregation, and I admit that I feel a real bond between us. I could not imagine being any place else on this particular inauguration day. I sang loud, "Lift ev'ry voice and sing," in the service of Holy Eucharist celebrated by our Bishop, and I joyously joined in the standing ovation at the swearing in of Barack Obama as President. It was an important milestone for the African-American community to celebrate. However, there was no illusion that this was the end of the journey for equal rights and recognition for this segment of America's population. Even to obtain the highest office in the country will not insure that all Black Americans - or anyone else - will receive just or merciful treatment. That said it was a tremendous and joyous milestone on the journey.

Today's readings speak to us of milestones on the journey of a people toward a Promise - a promise of a time when God's reign of justice and peace will be recognized throughout the planet. Last week God invited Abram to look into the heavens and count the stars as an indication of the extent to which his influence would be felt on earth. "What a laugh," Abram must have thought. He and Sarai were already far past child-bearing and rearing years. They may have been wondering why they were even still around. Despite their doubts and misgivings today's Genesis reading relates that Isaac is indeed born. What a milestone for a couple who had spent nearly a century dreaming of the Promise. And Sarah is so audacious as to say, "God is making me laugh so hard that everyone who hears me will be unable to keep from laughing themselves!" Did Abram say, "So here is the fulfillment of the promise?" It was not the fulfillment - it was a milestone toward those countless stars in the heavens. Don't forget, it is not long afterwards that God demands Abraham's sacrifice of this most precious progeny. What must he have thought of the Promise at that point!

The story of the People of Israel through the Bible is a story not of fulfillment, but of milestones. I would prefer to call them Seeds of Hope. Each of the milestones from the rescue of Jacob by the goodness of Joseph in Egypt to the liberation from Egypt to the entry into Canaan to the building of the Temple in Jerusalem were merely signs of Hope in the midst of terrifying and seemingly hopeless situations.

In the Nehemiah text there are survivors of the Babylonian exile returning to Jerusalem where they hear, for the first time in several generations, the reading of the Law of Yahweh, the foundation of who they were as a people. Imagine being exiled from everything we know and love as Americans and hearing again, after an extended time, "America the Beautiful" or a quoting of the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg address. These people wept openly to the point of distraction. Ezra and Nehemiah pled with the people, "Do not weep: this is a great milestone, holy to the Lord your God." They could not restrain themselves from weeping. This was a great sign that the journey was not complete, but that the Promise was still alive in their experience. In this event lay the seeds for hope in the future.

For the people gathered on that hillside on the Sea of Galilee this marvelous sign of provision, food where there was none, seemed to say to them, "The time has come! This is the one for whom we have waited! This is the Promise come to pass in this person Jesus." Jesus knew better. He was determined that his ministry was to be a sign of the coming Promise. He was sowing seeds of hope among a generation that was ruled by outside powers. He reminded them that the journey was long, but that God's presence among them was to lead them toward the prize - the Promise of a day when true Justice and Peace would cover the whole earth.

Why can't God just "cut to the chase," like in the movies? Why are we stilled strapped to a journey that is hard and wearing? As you might expect, I looked up the word "hope" this week. Its root seems to be something like, "to leap up in expectation," (related, interestingly enough to "hop"). Its definitions include, "a feeling that what is wanted is likely to happen," or "desire accompanied by expectation." Hope is what makes Christmas so appealing in families with small children. We long to recover that sense of expectation that something wonderful is about to happen. Hope is a gift from God in God's Creation. It gives our lives focus and meaning. What happens when something we desire and hope for finally comes to pass? What happens to people who have nothing to look forward to, nothing to expect, nothing toward which to hope? It seems strange that one of God's gifts is something that leaves us incomplete, hoping. In the midst of the hoping God gives us milestones that remind us of the Promise - that plant Seeds of Hope in us. One of the quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr. that was brought to my attention in this past week is this: "The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice." There is this sense that milestones sow seeds of hope in a more just, a more peaceful future.

Here is the trap: that we forget the Promise - that we don't hope because we have lost sight of what it is that animates our hope. For groups of people who are conscious of oppressive systems, the Promise remains alive, hope remains vital. For those of us who live relatively comfortable lives, for whom justice is defined by personal injury attorneys as a sort of profit-driven revenge, the Promise is in danger of being lost. How much time do we devote to pursuing our hope for the Promise by our work for real Justice for those living in oppressive systems, to those millions in the world who die from hunger or the lack of clean drinking water, to those escaping brutal political regimes, to those destitute because of lack of employment opportunities? We can help make the milestones happen - we can sow the Seeds of Hope for millions. If you have not done so yet, please check out our website and go to the page, "St. John's-Grace and the Invisible Youth Network." There you will find pictures of some of the young people you helped recently by providing school supplies with Kim Smith. There are many ways in which we can be called on to reanimate the Promise not only for others, but for ourselves in doing so. This is our greatest danger: forgetting that we are part of the Promise.

One of the Psalm verses from Morning Prayer this past Friday caught my attention in preparing for this morning: Psalm 31, verse 21 says this: "Blessed be the Lord! He has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city." This is our challenge when we forget that milestones do not always signal the end of the journey. We really want to reach the end of the journey; we want the answers to be revealed; we want to know if the butler really did it. If we continue to trudge on without a sense of the Promise we lose. However, if we continue to look for the "wonders of God's love in a besieged city," dancing on the journey, then our lives are awakened with a Hope, an expectation that gives us Life.

Epiphany 2, January 18, 2009

"O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away."

There are elements of our worship from the Book of Common Prayer that elude our attention when they become common place. One such element is the so-called "Collect for Purity" which we say immediately after the salutation. It may seem extraneous to some, and the title itself is off-putting; however, I see it as the key to our worship together. Rather than a threat: "God knows what you're doing so you'd better shape up," I see this prayer as a promise of intimacy with God and a promise of the potential of the human person in that intimate relationship.

"To you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid." I take great comfort in the idea that God really knows what I desire at the deepest core of my being, holds it deep in the heart of God, sometimes grants it, and often forgives it. One of the great preachers of our day is a Texas Baptist, Gerald Mann of Riverbend Church in Austin. I love his definition of intimacy. "Intimacy," he says, "is being fully known and truly loved anyway." What a concept! Being loved in spite of - maybe even in the midst of - being ourselves!

You know how contrary I am regarding the trivializing of words. The word "intimacy" has come to mean, in our sexuality-driven advertising world, simply the act of sex with whomever. True intimacy is the yearning of all our hearts! It is the most desired, yet most elusive experience the human person experiences. How I would love to convince every couple who comes to me for marriage preparation that true intimacy will come after a few - or many - years of suffering through a relationship that involves two real people with diverse gifts and hindrances; that intimacy will come when both are fully known by the other and fully loved anyway.

This is the revealing of God for this 2nd Sunday after Epiphany: God is revealed in the value of the human person, in the good and the bad. There is no greater example of this promise of intimacy than is found in Psalm 139. I have used it to introduce seminars on Healing and Wholeness because of its acute understanding of the complexity of what it means to be human, and to be valued by God - to know true intimacy. "It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well." It is no surprise that this text brings such life to gay and lesbian individuals like me! As Ethel Waters is credited with saying first, "God don't make no junk!"

In our exploration last year of personal mythology I said that your own stories - your own Sacred Scripture, if you will - is unique. It is the only witness to God's relationship with humanity that you can give authentically - and you are the only one who can give it. Think of all of the people who have lived on this earth - and the countless who will follow us. You are the only creation of God like you - and only you can witness to the power of God from the standpoint of your experience. It is to know absolute intimacy: being known and being loved all at once. It is Abram looking up at the sky to count the stars, knowing that the ripples of his life would be endless. It has taken the relatively recent prominence of DNA technology to focus for us the value and uniqueness of the human person and his or her relationship to the past and to the future.

I am continually impressed with Jesus' method of calling his disciples: he invited them one by one - not with television advertising or bus ministries. "Where did you come to know me?" asks Nathaniel. "I saw you sitting under a tree," Jesus responds. Something about Nathaniel sparked Jesus' imagination for what was possible: "Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit." The Gospels are clear in their depiction of each of the disciples as uniquely gifted and limited individuals - equally valued by this unique and offbeat rabbi, each with a part only they could play in the unfolding drama that was to come. That is us! We each have a part to play in God's great drama that no one else can play. This is the revealing of God's self through the Creation of Humanity. Just think of it! How can we be content to be herded about by media or by political groups or public opinion polls? We are each "fearfully and wonderfully made!"

Now, back, briefly, to our defining "Collect for Purity." Once we have acknowledged this relationship of intimacy with our Creator we pray, "Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name." Here is an exercise for us to try at the beginning of each service: we sit quietly for a few moments and "inspire" - "breathe in" - the comfort and challenge of the Holy Spirit - deliberately and intentionally seeking to "perfectly love God" and "worthily magnify God's holy Name." Would such an exercise help us to enter more fully into the meaning of worship or "worth ship?" Worship is, after all, the core reason for our being together in this place. The rest of Creation is created to worship; it is only Humanity that makes a deliberate choice to do so - that has the opportunity to inspire, to "breathe in" the breath of God.

God has been revealed to us through a scruffy little baby in a shack in the past few weeks; God has been revealed, as is often our experience, in the "sound of sheer silence," and through a commitment to care for the stranger. Last week God was revealed to us through an invitation to embrace the Journey with all that it means, and this week God invites us to realize God's Creation in the value of Humanity - not generally, but uniquely in the face of each of us scruffy creatures that bear in ourselves the very likeness, the image of God.

I invite us to pause just a moment to once again pray that prayer that is uniquely human, deliberately intimate, the so-called Collect for Purity, found on the first page of your worship folder:

Let us pray:

"Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Please take a few moments to "breathe in" God's Spirit in this time and place, and to experience true intimacy: being fully known and truly loved all at once.

Epiphany 1, January 11, 2009

A paraphrase from the Genesis text: Leave everything you know; I will show you where to go, and you will be glad you went.

Our exploration of the Via Positiva, the revealing of God to humanity, began on a cold night in a little town in Bethlehem in a shack. It seemed as though God could have done a little better job of providing for this great uncovering of God's self, but that is what God chose. Last week the revelation of God came in "the sound of sheer silence" - the absence of God? This is not getting a lot better. To make it even more difficult God spoke to us about loving and providing for the stranger. This is the Via Positiva? What will it be like when we get to the Via Negativa? We are coming to see that the greatness of God's Creation is not so much in sitting on the beach with a Corona or enjoying a mountain landscape from the comfort of a cabin with a fireplace, but is, rather, in the embrace of the Promise of the Journey.

Today's readings invite us into the "sudden intuitive understanding" or "flash of insight," - last week's definitions of Epiphany - through the Journey. We have really spent a lot of time on journey in this church. It is the journey that is crucial to Judeo-Christian thought about life and our relationship to God. This idea is not so far from our consciousness, as we spent Ordinary Time last year on this same journey beginning with Abraham and Sarai.

Taken as a myth for our lives we hear God's invitation to leave everything we know and love and venture into the unknown because of some elusive promise of blessing down the road. What we seem to deny along the way is that the journey will be hard.

T.S Eliot begins his poem "Journey of the Magi" with these words:

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."

It seems as though we are living a large part of our life in "the very dead of winter," as the Wise Men did. Particularly if we make the commitment to a life of authenticity - of Wholeness - in which we attempt to resist cultural pressures to consumerism, get-aheadism, greed and selfishness do we find ourselves in what seems a wasteland, shut out from some of the pleasures that seem to define the Good Life in our culture. I remember years ago, during the cold war, hearing a comment attributed to the Christian community in the Soviet Union. The statement suggested that what the American Christian life lacked was any sense of oppression from which it could find vital life. To be sure, it was such oppression in the early centuries of Christianity that provided fertile ground for its growth and spread. To be a Christian in America is often sold as an easy way to the Good Life. I am absolutely appalled when I surf through the religious television network to hear someone saying, "Operators are standing by to receive your seed sown in faith for your coming prosperity." How do these people sleep at night? The fact is that God's invitation to the Journey is an invitation to leave the known and move into the unknown without having control of either the journey or the destination.

So it makes it all the more poignant when we read in John's Gospel something like, "and God's cosmic Idea, the ideal for humanity, actually became human and joined us on the journey." As I recall, even that "Word made flesh" did not find the journey always lined with adoring crowds and beds of roses. What he did find was the Presence of God revealed in the journey. This is not a God who is far away, watching to see how we do. That is what we hope for and trust in: that God is not only with us, but already inhabiting the next few steps that we cannot see.

In Eliot's poem the Magi find that, for all of the dismal experiences of the journey to Bethlehem, they return to their homes and find that they have been changed, and that their previous comfort is unsatisfying because they have encountered Greatness in that scruffy infant. It is not infrequent that I, in time of frustration, say to myself, "Why did I ever decide to do this?" meaning leaving Albuquerque, Kristina, my townhouse overlooking the Rio Grande Valley, and a secure teaching job. The fact is that the remembered simplicity and security of those years spent pale in comparison to the difficulties and graces I have encountered on the journey in the past 16 years. As Maya Angelou famously said, "Wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now!"

What we often find along the way is that, "the eyes of the blind will be opened, waters break forth in the desert, burning sand become pools," is not a foretelling what is to come but, rather, describing the experience of the actual journey - that God's grace is found not in spite of, or subsequent to, but inside the difficulties of the everyday. It is the difference between trudging the long dusty trail and dancing the long dusty trail. We are all on the same journey with the same companion - and different perspectives on what is occurring.

Not "the desert shall rejoice," as we sang, but the desert does rejoice when we embrace the journey with a God whose job is not to rescue us from hardship, but to inhabit us as we are moving through the hardships. You know that I love to have you tell your own stories, your own mythology of journey, and one of the great stories you could tell each other would be an instance in which you found God revealed to you in the difficulties of the journey.

When Adrian and I were faced with finding housing in New York City in the course of 48 hours, we were overwhelmed with packing, trucks, conflict between us, getting around the city to collect keys, and finding storage for half of our stuff. "How late are you open?" I asked the voice at the storage facility. God's grace reached out and grabbed me at a difficult time when the response was, "When will you be here?" It was my first hint that we would survive.

I am well aware that this message of journey is not a real self-seller. At a time when we are interested in attracting people to Christ it seems counterproductive to invite them to such a difficult life when there are other, more attractive options. May we, like the Magi, find the journey to the manger to be life-giving in new ways. May we see the fulfillment of today's Gospel - "and the Word became flesh and pitched his tent with us." And may we be transformed to behold his glory.

Epiphany 6, February 11, 2007

Blessed are those whose trust is in the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green. In the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

I am deeply moved each year when I get to this Sunday to find that the Altar Guild has dedicated the altar flowers to an observance of the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. It took so long to get to the point of ordination that I can never forget the date Feb. 10, 2001. In fact, I always pause just a bit to reflect on why I went to the trouble, and try to evaluate whether or not I am still living into the commitments that brought me to that point. It is most gratifying to have you do some of that reflection along with me. I continue to remind myself, when it is easy to get distracted by day to day details, that to simply keep the church going without consideration to what we are about would be a real waste of my life as a priest. We are confronted with issues of finances, growth, outreach, program, Christian education and many other factors that contribute to the life of the community that it might be tempting to simply make those things our reason for being and forget that we are first and foremost followers of Jesus on a journey into relationship and connection with some deep source that we have come to call "God."

I love the picture that is portrayed in both the Jeremiah text and the Psalm - famous Psalm 1 - that describes those in such a close relationship with God as being as a tree planted by the source of water and nourishment. When you fly across my home state, New Mexico, from north to south you always know where the Rio Grande is because it is the green strip that cuts through the desert below. While the deserts on both sides of the riverbanks have their indigenous scrub brushes and cactuses the green trees grow on the banks of the river. And, not coincidentally, the place that the trees grow near the river is also where humans settled for much the same reasons - to be near deep sources of nutrition and life, along with transportation and communication. The trees have discovered through natural processes that they cannot survive in the middle of the desert and sometimes we make the same discovery.

There are so many temptations in preparing a sermon on these texts to rely on well worn platitudes that suggest that somehow we turn our brains off and throw our lives on the altar of God's Will - sure that it will produce miserable but righteous lives. "Just trust in God and reject worldly desires and passions," or, as in the first part of the Jeremiah text, "Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals...." I wish that it had been worded, "Cursed are those who trust merely in mortals!" This concept is often cultivated by religious leaders because it helps to retain a sort of power over people, their behavior, and their thoughts. "Don't get too uppity because you will be going directly against the will of God if you use your own abilities too much."

The normal reading of today's Gospel passage does not help, does it? "Blessed are you who are poor...Woe to you who are rich; blessed are you who weep...woe to you who are laughing." Well, frankly, I would enjoy being a little richer, and I doubt that it would result in spiritual poverty for my life. In fact, I'm convinced that I could do some really great things with a bit more wealth! Likewise, I refuse to live a life of "righteous remorse" rather than one of joy and laughter in hopes of some later reward, or in fear of hexing my life for sometime down the road. It is easy to set up either-or situations for our lives on the journey with God: choose God and reject everything else or, vice versa, choose the beauty and joy of this life at the risk of losing eternal salvation. Is that really what Jesus taught? No, I rather think that Jesus was not prescribing as much as he was describing what life is like for human beings. The fact is that we all enjoy times of grace and abundance and we all suffer times of devastation and loss. None of these have to do with how good or bad we have been: they are products of the human condition. Living means gain and living means loss. I somehow think that these texts are not about the experiences of abundance or scarcity, but about our response to them as a result of our proximity to the source of nourishment and life.

I really tried to resist bringing Anna Nicole Smith into this because I don't want it perceived that I am using her as a negative example for any specific reason. For those of you who may have been living in a cave since Thursday, Anna Nicole Smith died at the age of 39. The New York Times described her as a person who was most famous for being famous, which is a pretty good description. She was a one-time stripper/model/actress who became famous for marrying an extremely wealthy man four times her age and then battling for his estate after his death. She had a mercifully short-lived television series that portrayed her as clueless and unattractive, in short, a joke. Most recently the soap opera of her life was focused on the death of her twenty year old son, Daniel, for whom her very public grief was shown to an embarrassing extent on tabloid television. My point in mentioning Anna Nicole Smith and her death is this: her life was an intense example - a microcosm - of life as we all live it. Here was a Child of God caught up in the voracious celebrity machine. She experienced wealth and fame far beyond what most people will ever imagine, while fighting bankruptcy battles in court. She was a highly desired commodity who found that the most private battles that she had to fight were not only broadcast, but analyzed and repeated over and over on videotape on a daily basis. While it is easy - and for many Christians, natural and right - to hold her up as an example of dissolute living and its rightful consequences, I would rather simply suggest that she was planted too far from the source of nourishment and life. She found herself, as Jeremiah put it, "in parched places of the wilderness, in a (highly populated) uninhabited salt land."

Face it: we all make terrible decisions as we move along this journey. If we were to decide that the success or failure of the journey was based on how well we personally "ran the race" we would all be in big trouble. What we can hope to do is to plant ourselves as near the source as we can - and continue to live with gusto the life that has been given us, confident in the hope that God's Will for us is Life - and that Life in abundance.

Epiphany 3, January 21, 2007

"Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law."

I know that I am not a great preacher. I am even embarrassed to say that I have very little actual training in preaching - a fluke of my seminary education. My dearest wish as a preacher and as a pastor is to articulate how profoundly I feel God's call to us as God's People in this place. This is how I see two great preaching opportunities in today's readings.

You know that I don't always believe the Bible is literally true, that it needs to be interpreted in light of our ability to live into myth and metaphor, and so I don't think, as some commentators might, that the newly returned refugees to Jerusalem wept necessarily out of a deep sense of regret or repentance over their apostasy as revealed by the reading of the law. Rather, I think that these folks, living between the times of deliverance and fulfillment of a promise, wept because they were deeply moved by the unearthing of something deep within themselves that called them to a new understanding of themselves and their role in their world. In a nutshell, that is what I think that great preaching would do: to call out something from the depths of our existence that propels us into the promise of the future.

These folks in the reading from Nehemiah were early returnees from exile, commissioned to rebuild the temple, a project that turned out to be disappointing when they recalled the glory of the previous temple. They were economically challenged, leadership challenged, challenged in every way - full of despair over the future of their rag-tag little nation. Something, though, demanded their attention to the reading of these traditional Scriptures. For six hours, the narrative tells us, they stood literally, "with their ears pointed toward the book," like my amaryllis leaves point toward the sun. They automatically rose to their feet to hear what the Word would be for them, and they wept. What great preaching that must have been!

The Gospel of Luke gives us a similar picture of Jesus' return to his hometown synagogue. He was initially a returning "homeboy" with great promise. The text says, "a report about him spread through all the surrounding country," and "[he] was praised by everyone." After his reading of the prophet Isaiah Luke says, "the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him." Were the eyes fixed out of admiration, curiosity as to what he would say, or suspicion of him? After all, this text is followed by some confusion, Luke saying, "All spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words...," while others said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" as if to say, "What does he know - he is just one of us!" The point is that Jesus evoked in them an engagement with what he had to say. And what he had to say bordered on blasphemy: "I have been appointed to bring good news to the poor, to release captives, and to restore sight to the blind." This message would never be a welcome one in most churches, occupied as we often are with numerical growth or financial survival, or in the halls of congress, in the corporate boardrooms where the bottom line is profit or control of resources or even control of population. But it was great preaching indeed; even changing the lives of those who changed the world.

The message of the Millennium Development Goals has been hard to hear in the halls of power where, quite frankly, the alleviation of extreme poverty, the empowerment of women, even the basic education of the world's population presents a threat to the control of all of those people as enjoyed by the world's most powerful governments and corporations. Those in power don't want us to know that there is enough to go around. They want to convince us that we will lose if we are persuaded to try sharing a little of what we have to provide for the sheer survival of millions around the globe.

So Jesus steps to the podium in our day to read the same passage: "The Spirit of God is upon me, because I have been anointed to bring good news to the poor. The Spirit sends me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of Jubilee," - a year in which the earth's resources are redistributed so that everyone has enough. This is no "commie-pinko" plot to destroy American Capitalism. This is an invitation to participate in the arrival of God's Kingdom - a society where the poor sit down with the rich, the disabled with the gifted, and the prisoner with the captor because we are all Children of God, created in God's image. And in my case it only costs $331 per year - or .7% of my income - to help empower some of these changes to come about through the UN-sponsored initiative to alleviate extreme poverty and illiteracy by the year 2015.

This brings me to a point I touched on last week - one that Paul expands from his message to us in last week's description of Christ's Body. We are not alone in our efforts to bring about God's Kingdom; we are parts of an organism in which everyone plays a part, large or small, but all integral to the whole. This passage is really hilarious to me, and I always enjoy hearing it read, or reading it silently myself. But it rejects two false conclusions that we might make regarding our participation or non-participation in the process of Kingdom-making. The first objection we might make is that because we cannot make what we or someone else might consider the most important contribution, our particular contribution is less important, and should not be made. Do you hear this in the little complaint that the foot makes, "I'm not a hand, so I'm not part of the body." The point is that if the foot does not fully embrace its "footness," insisting that unless it gets to be a hand it will not play, its own particular uniqueness will be lost.

The second false conclusion we may be tempted to make is that because someone else finds their fulfillment in a way that is different from ours, they must not be on the same mission as we are. Paul has the eye saying to the hand, "I don't need you" and likewise the head to the feet, "You aren't like me, so get out of this body." In fact, Paul goes so far as to say, "the parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable, and those that we think are less honorable we protect as though they are more honorable." The fact is that if we refuse to function using our own specific gifts, allowing others to function using their specific gifts, then the healing Body of Christ, moving through the world with its message of hope and power, is further crippled in its efforts to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed."

So if I were a great preacher this would be my goal: to speak the Word of God to our hearts that would make us weep, that would delve deep into our hearts to quicken a new hope that the Kingdom of God is truly within reach, and that we actually have a hope of bringing it to a reality in our own time and place.

Epiphany 2, January 14, 2007

The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people. BCP, p. 423

The text from Isaiah is an interesting partner to the miracle narrative in the gospel passage where water is turned into wine. I hope that I can make a coherent connection between the two. Isaiah holds out the hope of restoration as he says, "You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her...." What follows is a description of a woman who is not desolate because she has someone on whom she can depend to support and adore her.

Isaiah is comparing Israel to that woman married to her God who will protect her and rejoice in her in what seems to be a sort of patronizing fashion. It is certainly not the 21^st century image of marriage that we understand. With a few exceptions we have been convinced that the concept of "trophy wives" is an outdated one. Likewise, our concept of a relationship with a god that dotes on us in such a patriarchal way probably needs to be set aside in favor of a new model: one of an equal partnership, a unit that works because each member of the partnership brings active and valuable gifts to the marriage - gifts that perhaps the other does not possess or is unable to exercise.

Rules governing the marriage relationship in the Bible are pretty well prescribed, as you can imagine. Briefly stated, the woman had no rights, and only existed as a possession of the man. I can hear the hackles being raised even as I speak. Because the woman in the relationship had no integral position in the marriage the wedding was a celebration more of the man's conquest - along with the hope of his wife's bearing many children, primarily males. This is the picture that Isaiah gives us - not his fault; he is speaking out of his own context. The picture that he gives is one of joy at becoming the "apple of the eye" of the beloved. When we read these texts we see what was valued by a culture: safety, protection, being looked on with favor. I have noted, to the shock of some who hear, that the only time in the Bible, (that I have been able to find), where two people stand before one another and before God and profess their love for one another in a relationship of equality, swearing their allegiance to one another beyond death is the exchange between David and Jonathan. The idea of marriage as we know it is simply not to be found.

I rather see not only the marriage relationship but the relationship of God to God's People, as suggested by our marriage ceremony, in the manner described by Paul in the letter to the church at Corinth: "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." We are not only member of one another, but members of the cosmos, the Creation from which we came, each uniquely gifted and charged with contributing our part to the working of the whole. This is true in a marriage. It is the reason that we can no longer dream in terms of the "absolute, perfect mate;" we find a mate with which our gifts and characteristics have the potential to form a whole - and then work like crazy to make it happen.

This is the picture of God's People, "all activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses." We choose the particular community that in some way calls us to fit ourselves into the plan of God that is being revealed in a particular place. We are then invited to use OUR gifts to perform OUR functions, (no one has to be responsible for everything!), and work like crazy to make it happen. There is no room in the New Testament picture of the church for anyone to be in the role of either the patron or the patronized! Each works equally to contribute to the whole. (Parenthetically, sometimes in both the case of the marriage and of the community of faith it doesn't work. Do we throw up our hands and quit when that happens? No, we move on into the deeper journey as we continue to make choices and decisions that help us to better move into the life of grace and fulfillment.)

Now to the wedding at Cana; it is no accident, I think, that John uses a wedding to introduce the ministry of Jesus. Obviously Jesus had performed some kind of miracles previous to this. Otherwise, why would his mother insist that he take this matter into hand? We don't know much about the wedding itself, or the persons who were being married. The Gospel says that Jesus' mother was there, and that Jesus and his disciples had actually been invited. I have a lot of questions about this story: why the lack of preparation that led to a shortage of wine? Did the bridegroom and the sommelier actually try to find out where that great wine came from? Was Jesus just playing games, being mischievous with his gifts? But here is the question that really caps them all: why did he make as much as 180 gallons?! That must have been a big party! And the wine steward indicates that most of the guests are already wasted anyway! Why would Jesus waste a perfectly good miracle on people who were in no condition to appreciate it?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I hope I have caused you to wonder about some of these things that we take for granted in Scripture. What I sense from this story is this: Jesus was willing to be extravagant with his gifts - even wasteful! He provided enough wine for the wedding party to bathe in - and most never even knew that it happened. John does not report that the Cana Times reported a generous outpouring of unexplained wine at a local wedding. We are not told that everyone at the party turned their attention to following Jesus as a result of his obvious abilities. I think one clue can be found in Jesus' description of his own ministry about halfway through the Gospel of John. I paraphrase it to say, "Look, I didn't come to teach you to be penurious or to load you down with more religion. I didn't come to take advantage of you or hurt you. I came that you would find out what life in its abundance is really about."

That is what the equal relationship is about - abundant life. Whether it is a marriage relationship or a community of faith, seeking to be faithful is about extravagance of spirit, abundance of generosity. How have we lost that in the Church of Jesus Christ? Even more importantly, how do we recover it? Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher in the 19^th century articulated the problem so graphically: "Christ turned water into wine, but the church has succeeded in doing something even more difficult: it has turned wine into water." In all of our lives may we seek the laughter, the joy, the extravagance and generosity of turning the mundane into the extraordinary instead of the other way around.

Feast of Epiphany, January 7, 2007

"Where is the child who has been born...? We have observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."

On January 9, 1927, 80 years ago this coming Tuesday, the congregation of St. John's Church met for the first time in this building, what was then known as the "new church." Services were conducted by Bishop Charles Henry Brent, a saint of the church whom we celebrate on March 27, and by the rector of St. John's, The Rev. Dr. Walter Russell Lord. The realization of this building had taken much more than the actual two years of construction; initial plans for building had begun as early as Dr. Lord's arrival in 1908. But life happens; small things like the first Great War and reluctance over encumbering the congregation with a mortgage caused the parish to settle for expansions of what is now our parish hall building to be accomplished first. In Dr. Lord's words, "if we had built earlier, our building in beauty would have been far short of what we have now." For the frustration of delay, they were - as are we - grateful for the eventual outcome.

Among the first words spoken from this pulpit on January 9, 1927 were these: "This fabric of stone and mortar, please God, is the outward and visible sign of the invisible St. John's." He continues, "The invisible is the fellowship of cooperation, loyalty, friendship, faith, and love for God and man." I assume that he meant to include women, too. He concludes, "That this church may fulfill its responsibilities and that the inward spiritual fabric may be no less real and noble than the outward, is today the prayer, hope and purpose of its true friends." Do you recognize his describing the building as a sacrament? I would suggest that we here today, 80 years later, in new ways that fit new times, commit our life together to making this place a sacramental springboard to fulfilling responsibility and to inward spiritual fabric.

I don't think that it is actually true that we are located on a hill here on Colonial Circle. I know that during this time of year you can drive on Richmond and, looking in the rear-view mirror, see the towers of the 1^st Presbyterian Church on Symphony Circle and the Richardson Complex on Forest Avenue at the same time. Somehow, though, I always imagine us as a sort of vortex for the area between those two points - radiating out into the neighborhoods and commercial areas, setting us on a kind of metaphorical hill. Certainly when I drive toward the church from any direction I am struck by the bell tower and the architecture so appropriately set on this corner.

What I am suggesting, in a roundabout way, is that we have been given a gift in this building that should allow us to be, if you will, a beacon, a lighthouse - dare I say it? - a star to lead people to new relationships with God and the Church. It has already worked: you are here for whatever reasons that have brought you. I am here through recognition that this is a place where my gifts can be magnified through this community to introduce or reintroduce people to the God of abundance and love, of compassion and justice. This is what the astrologers followed to the manger: a star of hope.

I have a sense that the St. John's congregation in 1927 was not nearly as interested in some of the aspects of the Gospel as we are here today. It can be heard in some of the language I read, "fellowship of cooperation, loyalty," and so forth - all worthy goals, descriptive of us, but falling short of the images that define life under this beacon in 2007. We live in a changing neighborhood with conflicting cultures living next door to one another, in a city that has lost a great deal of the wealth that made this edifice a reality, (parenthetically, built for about $150,000). What are the outward and visible signs of the "inward and spiritual grace" that this building reflects for us in this day? Each one here will answer that differently depending on how you see the community and your place in it. Next week I will try to denote some of the manifestations of grace as I see them during our congregational meeting, and I invite you to share your thoughts with me as I prepare. You may be recognizing God's work among us in ways that are escaping me.

These signs and symbols are evidence of ferment among us serve to remind of why we are here. The bumper sticker says, "Wise men still seek him," and we are here to serve as the "star at its rising" to lead them to new questions, deeper experience of God, broader vistas of God's hope for God's creation with us as faithful stewards.

Finally, let me remind you, as I always do when this Ephesians text is read, that Paul, (or whoever wrote it), describes his purpose in life in these terms: "this grace was given to me...to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to all of creation. This is an understanding of the plan of God that even the builders of this lovely building may not have understood; it is in the creative tension of the new and the old, the novel and the comfortable, the mundane and the sublime, the inward looking and the out reaching, the planning and the waiting for spontaneity that the Glory of God will be seen - and I want us to be the "star at its rising" to lead the way.

Christmas Day, December 25, 2006

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory...full of grace and truth.

As you know, this particular text has become, for me, the absolute essence of the Christian faith, and why I remain a Christian. One of my favorite questions to ask the Bible 101 group on Thursday mornings is, "Is this YHWH, the God of the Old Testament, the God that you believe in?" They generally answer in the affirmative, and with good, well-thought-out answers. But I can only affirm YHWH for myself in light of the very text that I read.

I cannot believe in a God that commands that entire nations be wiped out in order to make room for "His People." Nor can I agree with the same philosophy as it is pursued today in the land of Palestine. I cannot believe in a God that punishes people for mistakes that they make, and I can't even believe in a God that will wipe out my enemies if I am good. I have a sense that any God that welcomes me will also welcome people with whom I disagree or with whom I am at odds. I cannot believe in a God that uses other nations to whip his People into shape, as is described in the Old Testament. I cannot believe in a God who demands exclusion of anyone who is different from the accepted norm, such as homosexuals. I cannot believe in a God that advocates slavery or inequality for any race or gender, as YHWH seems to do very often in his instructions to the Children of Israel.

Here is what I can believe in: at the moment of creation, God had an Idea that brought creation into existence. And, as our Eucharistic Prayer C says, "From the primal elements God brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason and skill. God made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against Him...." And as a result, "we turned against one another." The history of the human race is God's attempts to recreate the Idea that first produced his ideal creation, until, as John says, "The Idea became flesh, and pitched his tent right here among us." Only then was it possible for us to understand what God was up to all the time, and "we have seen his glory, full of Grace and Truth."

You would expect me, wouldn't you, to stop as I read that over and over and wonder, "What does he mean by 'grace and truth'?" Taking to my trusty internet dictionary, (bookmarked near the top, as you can imagine), I find that "grace" is from "gratia" or "pleasing." And "truth" has had a long journey from its origins that mean, "loyal or honest." I hope that from these two words one of several jumps to your mind as a result of our being together for some time: I would prefer that a word like "Wholeness" would occur to you right away, or perhaps "Integrity." A pleasant loyalty or a gracious honesty brings to mind a saint - not one who is a moral bookkeeper, or a pedantic do-gooder, but one who lives a life in gratitude for the life he or she has been given, radiating the good news of Life to the world in which they live. "And we beheld his glory - full of grace and truth."

But the birth of the Idea is only the beginning of the revelation of that grace and truth. We will spend the next several months following this Idea as it develops in "real time and space," as it faces resistance from friend and foe alike, as well-meaning friends try to shape the Idea to fit their own expectations, instead of looking to see what the Idea really is. This is a journey of hope and of tragedy. The Idea has become flesh, dwelling among us, and we have only begun to see its glory - full of grace and truth.

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2006

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined.

I suppose that every preacher is faced with the dilemma of what to say on Christmas Eve that will in some new way reveal what God has revealed to humankind in the person of Jesus - the one we call Christ, the Anointed One. In so many ways the story and the event that we celebrate has been domesticated - even taken over by commercial interests of every sort, from toys to clothes, to food and finance. Corporations are making it easy and convenient to spend money, even offering gift cards so that they get the money ahead of having to deliver the goods purchased.

What I have found in the past several years is that Christmas takes on a completely different feel without young children constantly around and under foot. Christmas is really about children for some reason; the anticipation, the sense of wonder, our own desire to recapture the fun and wonder of a more innocent time in our own lives. We all have stories to tell of Christmases past, of feelings, smells, sounds and sights. They are woven into our DNA almost - we are, to a certain extent, those memories of Christmases past. In short, it is hard for a preacher to present anything new. Let me try, though, with the help of an unlikely source, the text we have heard from the letter of Paul to Titus.

At first glance it sounds like typical old boring Paul saying a lot about nothing. Using the language of his own legal back ground he sounds like some old-fashioned camp counselor to young people, talking about "renouncing impiety and worldly passions," living lives that are "self-controlled, upright, and godly." It is the stuff that drives young people away from the church when it is presented in a way that minimizes the passion and enthusiasm that youth brings to life, and tries to force that enthusiasm into an unnatural and unhealthy legalism that kills rather than creates Life. There is so much baggage around words like "impiety" or even "piety," "upright," "godly." They are words that make us want to run the other way because of the connotations that have been given to them.

In fact, Paul is, in a sort of back door way, inviting us back into the sense of wonderment that we miss so much from our childhood. The roots of "impiety" or its opposite, "piety" are found in terms that mean "wonder, reverence, awe, or devotion." What Paul really wants us to do is to recover a sense that, indeed, we are not the center of the universe, that it is possible to be deeply moved by something outside of ourselves. To paraphrase what he has said, we are invited to "throw off the numbing effect of adulthood, of overwhelming responsibility, and to recapture a sense of the Goodness and Majesty of Creation and the Creator."

"Worldly passions" in this context really has to do not with wanting to have sex, but with embracing ambitions and goals that have short-term benefits rather than going for the real gusto: Life with real passion, doing what we are made to do, in the words of Joseph Campbell, "following your bliss." Having "following our bliss" as our guiding star we are free to live lives that are reconciled to God and Creation, reflecting - even radiating - the Wholeness that becomes ours when all of the fragments of our lives come together. It allows us to reject the fragmentation in ourselves and in others that kills life and numbs our capacity for true Wonder. That is how Paul finishes that sentence: "[that we] live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ."

When you hear it that way you realize that this is the message you hear from me almost every time I speak to you: reconciliation with God does not mean taking on some artificial "goodness" that rejects our natural passions and love of Life; it means discovering who we really are as Children of Creation, made in the image of God and commissioned to reflect to the world what real Passion and Life are all about.

We are really in the place of the shepherds tonight as we occupy our places of responsibility: doing the job, paying the bills, minding the store, doing the right thing, living life one step at a time, wishing for something more. May we be confronted by an angel who breaks through all of that and once again informs us of Good News in the form of a child, come to bring us back home where we belong in the land of awe and wonder - angels singing, along with us, Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace. And don't let the season pass without getting the chance to watch at least one child as they stand before the gleaming tree or as they anticipate the unexpected, or as they bring a whole new energy to cookie baking, or as they wake up long before you want them to, or as they squeal, or as they.... You are witnessing what God want for us all: the real joy of Life.

Advent 3, December 17, 2006.

"You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ...the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So, with many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people."

I think that many of today's preachers have taken lessons from John the Baptizer. They think that it is good news to proclaim judgment and destruction. The subtext of their messages seems to imply that the good news happens when you come around to their point of view. Of course, for many it seems as though the path can be made smoother if you send money. I have really had a hard time hearing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the judgmental tirades of many of today's Christian leaders.

For many of our Christian communities Advent is a season of repentance, of denial of self in favor of self flagellation of some kind - a sort of mini-Lent; thus the purple vestments and hangings. If you have listened to me much you know that I see Advent as a time of hopeful anticipation, of expectation of what God is about to do among God's People. As a result we have changed our liturgical color for this season to a blue that anticipates the dawn. We gaze into the approach of the Light of Lights, looking to the Word which was from the beginning to guide us into the ways of Truth. Does this sound like an emphasis on repentance? Must we spend our time of preparation on soul-searching and sorrow for how terrible we are?

I would rather see us observing Advent as individual candles, pitting ourselves against the darkness that pervades the world we know in the form of blind consumerism, of the objectification of humans by huge corporations for the purpose of our giving them our resources. I would rather see us stand up as lights against the forces that deny that our planet is in danger of implosion as a result of industrial waste and global warming. I would like to see our repentance be one of sharing our single little lights with a few of God's children in Africa or other parts of the planet, where darkness can be alleviated through opportunities for literacy, business opportunities to feed families, cures for diseases that devastate entire cultures.

We should not approach Advent as a time of self-denial; rather we lay claim to ourselves as God's own image, lights in the darkness. "Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!" God says through the prophet, Zephaniah. "The Lord your God is in your midst... he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival."

The good news really is there in John's message for those who ask: If you have two coats, share one, don't collect more than is due, don't extort money, but be grateful for the abundance you are given." The problem is that if we fall into fear that there will not be enough we become oppressors of those who stand in the way of our acquiring more and more, instead of being grateful and sharing what we have. There really is enough for all. The repentance that God requires is that we commit ourselves to helping make sure that the "leveling" between heaven and earth, (spoken of last week), applies to all of God's children.

Advent: the season of expectation - not expectation in the sense of anxiety, but of anticipation. That is the real difference. If we are looking for the return of Christ it is in joyous anticipation of what is to come in God's reign of justice and mercy as we participate as God's children in turning the world right side up.

Advent 2, December 10, 2006

God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that God's People may walk safely in the glory of God. Baruch 5:1-9

The most memorable things happen on mountaintops. Just think of the times in the Bible when transforming or pivotal events happen on top of mountains: Moses receives the Law which begins the process of forming a People and Moses later views the promised land from the top of Mount Nebo. Countless references in the lives of the prophets Elijah and Elisha testify to God's communication with humans on mountains. Jesus, in his ministry, teaches on mountains, takes his disciples to mountaintops to reveal his place in their worldviews - in fact is even crucified on a mountaintop. It would be an interesting speculation to suggest that the Tempter's offer to Jesus that he could own the whole world was a "mountaintop" experience for him!

In our own experiences mountains play a large part in our spiritual journeys. How often we speak of "mountaintop experiences," whether or not they actually take place on mountains. Churches look for mountain property for youth camps in order to provide such an experience. Mountain climbing is regarded as an enviable activity, and those who are successful are thought of as heroic.

In fact, mountains serve as symbols of some of the "thin places" between heaven and earth. Mountains are what we would call archetypes of the experience of earth meeting heaven - certainly that would be true of the stories in the Bible; Moses' receiving of the Law was certainly such an experience, as was the disciples' experience with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. And we, too, think of our own "mountaintop experiences" as times when we both see and feel beyond our normal, "earthly" capabilities - times when God seems particularly near - when earth and heaven seem to be very close together.

What, then, is the significance of the text from Baruch and the quotation from Isaiah found in today's Gospel lesson? They both speak of mountains and hills being brought low and valleys being raised up. They promise a kind of "leveling of things - perhaps an indication that the distance between heaven and earth may be attainable without all that mountain-climbing. If the archetype suggests that we must climb to reach communication with God, and God's promise is that the mountains will come down, then we should no longer have that "going back down into the valley" syndrome that always follows mystical occurrences in our lives. But look at the other half of the equation: not only do the mountains come down, but the valleys are elevated to an equal level. Humanity in its "valleys" is invited to a level playing field with divinity.

This is the promise of Advent: God comes down to humanity to show what it is that he was trying to tell for all those generations through the Law and the Prophets. And in doing so, humanity is raised to its rightful position as co-creator, as true image of the divine.

The story is told of a man who, though a very good man, had no use for religion or any of that "Jesus" stuff that his family believed in. On Christmas Eve one year he sent his family off to services as was their custom, and he settled in for a comfortable evening by the fire to await their return. The night was cold and snowy, and the temperature was dropping even more when he saw, out in the yard, a flock of birds standing around in the snow. "What dumb birds," he thought. "Don't they know that they will freeze in this temperature?"

Being a good person, and not wanting the birds to freeze to death he bundled up and went outside to try to shoo them into the garage where, at least, there was no snow, and they might escape the freezing cold. As you might imagine the birds flew in every direction trying to escape his waving arms - every direction except the one he was indicating, of course. He was increasingly frustrated with his inability to communicate that he was trying to help, not hurt them, when a thought finally occurred to him: "If only I were a bird, then I could fly into the garage and they would follow...." Then the bell at the church rang to proclaim the birth of Jesus.

I keep saying that Advent is a time of anticipation, of expectation of what we are not quite sure. It is a movement from darkness to glimmers of dawn somewhere in the distance. Perhaps as we gaze into the tiny gleam of the distant light we also hear the (perhaps disquieting?) sound of mountains crumbling and feel the ground beneath us begin to move. Spread the news - the great leveling has begun.

A Season of Creation, Fifth Sunday, November 19, 2006

"All the hazards of life are elements out of which we can fashion whatever we like." Novalis

This Gospel passage contains a very odd contradiction. Did you catch it? The very last part of it says this: "When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs." In other words, when you see the end coming, know that it is the beginning of the beginning - the beginning of contractions; something new is being born!

We live in a time of devastation, of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the famines in Africa - many of them caused by human negligence and abuse. Tsunamis are being reported more and more often, war is rampant over a large part of the planet, with humans fighting over land, idealisms, power. In addition, we experience loss and - even worse - change in our lives, threatening our sense of comfort, of stability - sometimes threatening our own existence. When we hear of catastrophes like the tornados in North Carolina this past week we ask ourselves, did these folks know what was headed their way? And if not, how can we protect ourselves from some unseen crisis right around the corner? The answer is: we cannot protect ourselves. Change and challenge happen to everyone. One of the things we talk about in the ministry of healing is that we are, after all, still subject to the process of nature - that process of birth, maturation, change, death - and, we believe, resurrection to something greater.

We get to rehearse this process all the time in this life. Our journeys begin in one direction, move along smoothly or with various obstacles, reach a point of focus, end, and often lead us into some realm of beauty, bliss, challenge, or interest that we never imagined. It would be an interesting exercise for each of us to make a timeline of our lives so far, noting the date we were born and marking the important events in our lives that we consider turning points. What happens at those times that we think we have reached the end of the road? It is, as Novalis notes, those hazards out of which we fashion the rest of our lives. It is the co-creative role that we share with God, making completely new and unique futures of the "stuff" of the present and the past.

An example: I think that I have told you before about reaching a point in my journey toward ordination when it was clear that I was at a dead end. I had sold my house in Albuquerque, (which I loved!), moved to New York City, spent three years of my 40's in classes and field experiences, put myself $25,000 in debt, only to be told that I could not be ordained in the denomination that I claimed as mine. I literally stood in front of my bookcases, filled with texts, books of inspiration and class notes, and yelled at God, "Why the hell have you brought me here? I thought you told me this is what you wanted me to do!" The answer was not immediate - there were many months of plodding along wondering if I should invest my life in the television industry where I was working, if I should just pack up and go back to New Mexico where my daughter was waiting for my return, whether I should move to another part of the country where the church would be more friendly to folks like me. Never in my wildest dreams did I suspect that, unknown to him, Bishop Spong was waiting in his office for me to show up and offer myself to the Episcopal priesthood. And even after a long journey into that process, I wondered where, after all, I would end up. You see, the hazards of the journey were fitting themselves together to "birth" a new journey no one could have predicted.

Even now, having been here almost five years, I sometimes sit on the edge of my seat; I want to be the first to see where God is leading us next!

This is the process of creation. Creation is birthed out of the chaos of nothingness, according to Genesis 1. It is the Spirit of God that breathes into the chaos, if we permit and recognize it, to bring life and meaning out of what seems to us to be destruction and ruin.

Again today we witness the process of Creation from the beginning. Adults and youth are coming to this church and saying, "I am ready to start a new chapter in my life; please join with me as God gives birth to something new in my life." And so, when we get to the part of the Service of Baptism where I say, "Let us greet the newly baptized," we will joyfully remember God's work in our own journeys - the easy and the difficult - as we respond, "We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood!"

A Season of Creation, Fourth Sunday, November 12, 2006

If the only prayer you say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice. Meister Eckhardt

One of the great things that we do liturgically is a gesture that happens during the sacrament of baptism. It is the pouring of the water into the basin while giving thanks to God for the gift of water - even reciting some of the mighty acts of God in which water played a part: "through it you led the people of Israel out of their bondage..., in it your Son Jesus received baptism." That act of pouring water is very sensual, causes us to think of movement, energy, vitality. For a while I had a small fountain in my office, and people were always commenting on what a peaceful atmosphere it gave. Either that or it made them want to go to the bathroom.

The reading from Philippians is actually an ancient hymn text thought to have been sung by the early Christians. In it Jesus is described as having "poured himself out," taking the form of a slave. That is the meaning of the phrase, "emptied himself." In the Greek it is kenosis, or "pouring out." It is such a sensual picture of, not only giving oneself, but the active giving in a specific way - not just, "Here, take it," but a deliberate move of grace and gratitude. It is the way we give to someone when we are saying "Thank you," when we are giving attention to something important. We sometimes say something like, "Boy, she really poured herself into that project," signifying that the commitment made to the project was made deliberately, totally, and, perhaps, even lovingly.

In today's Gospel we meet a woman who sacrifices in this same deliberate and loving way. We are given the picture of the powerful scribes who make their religious ritual an opportunity for social jockeying, showing off their clothes, playing games at dinners to gain attention and honor for themselves - even as they create long prayers that keep them in the spotlight for longer periods of time. There is that little aside that they, "devour widow's houses."

The point is that, while all of the attention is going to those with "stuff" to show off, this woman is lovingly pouring herself into the offering that she presents, though it is monetarily much less than the others. It would be wrong to portray her as making some legalistic sacrifice; she is pouring herself into this offering.

Rob Petersen mentioned in this month's newsletter that Bible verse that reads, "The Lord loves a cheerful giver," taking issue with it and suggesting that God loves even a grudging giver, a miserly giver - or even a non-giver. I think that it has become clear to us that God's love and offer of abundance is extended to all of his creation. I think that Rob really hits it on the head, though, when he concludes, "Perhaps it might have been better said that a cheerful giver reflects God's love or God's love shines through a cheerful giver." It is the picture of this woman who pours herself into her gift, sacrificing - making sacred - everything that she has. Surely she would be exempt from making a temple offering, don't you think, since she has nothing, is a woman without support, trying to make it on her own. Her gift, though, is not a requirement; it is a sign of gratitude, a sacrament, if you will. Her "attitude of gratitude" is what defines her - not her clothes, social status, or power position. What defines her in Jesus' eyes is her gratitude. She has a realistic and blessed perspective of who she is in connection with the God of Creation. It really makes the people in power look shallow and artificial - even mean - doesn't it?

This is not really meant to be a pre-stewardship sermon - though, if it works that way I will not complain. But I hope that it is obvious how closely our connection to Creation and to God is linked to our ability to be grateful. At its best, our attempts to speak to financial stewardship and support for the church and its ministries is tied up in calling us to a greater sense of gratitude and an expression of it in tangible, financial ways, rather than by giving some guilt trip, manipulation, or simply appealing to our ability to pay the bills. We would like to think of our financial pledging as a way of pouring ourselves into what we believe in, cherish, and, yes, even love. It is the call to pour ourselves into some project that reflects God's love through the Millennium Development Goals - out of gratitude not only for what we have, but also for what we experience as God's children.

Being the sometimes forward thinker that I am, I have already written my column for the December newsletter. It grew out of a quotation that I came across from Howard Thurman, a great theologian, educator, civil rights leader. It says, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." That is the story of this woman. She has found something to pour herself into. We certainly hope that you find a way to pour yourself into the support of this church in financial ways, but we are more anxious that you find your passion - find what makes you come alive, and go do it. Our neighborhood will find irresistible a group of people who, through their gratitude, have found how to pour themselves into the things that make them come alive.

All Saints, Nov. 1, 2006 (Diocesan Altar Guild)

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.

As far back as the early 3^rd century after Jesus' life there have been recorded observances - mostly celebrations - of the lives and deaths of martyrs, those who died while proclaiming their faith. I don't say "defending the faith" because we believe that the Faith in not in need of defending; it alone stands on its own merits, and does not need a lawyer or a schoolyard bully to protect it or defend it. Nevertheless, it has been important to celebrate the lives of those who have lived exemplary lives and passed on to what we believe is a richer, fuller existence somewhere in the cosmos that we call Heaven. Somehow we have the sense that they continue to be part of our lives here on earth, and people speak of conversing with or being influenced by those who have gone before.

This text from the Wisdom of Solomon seems an apt text for All Saints: "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seem to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace." On the surface this is a comfort to those of us who have lost loved ones, who want to be assured that they are in better hands for having passed from this life to another. I would like to make a case for the possibility that the writer could just as easily be talking about those who still live on this earth - that, in fact, we can dwell in the hand of God where no torment will ever touch. I don't mean that we never experience sorrow, loss, or hardship, but that the confidence that "though in the sight of others, [we] are punished, [our] hope is full of immortality." This goes against the grain of much that passes for modern day Christianity. Some today would say that if we seem to be punished it must be because we have done something terrible; that God intends only happiness and prosperity for God's Children, that the souls of the "living righteous" are free from any ambiguity or concern, and anything that departs from that is untrue to God's will for "the souls of the righteous."

If we take seriously this possibility - that we are presently in the hand of God - and that our present lives, though seemingly difficult, are, in fact, full of immortality, then a kind of erasing can occur between what we call the living and the dead. We can see that we are one Creation with those who dwell in the invisible realm beyond the world that our limited sight can apprehend. This is the real meaning of resurrection - that new life can be realized out of death even on this planet. We must believe this or the little deaths that we experience on a regular basis will overwhelm us and we will not be able to function! You know the kinds of death I am talking about: the death of a career, of a relationship, deaths of dreams, of plans carefully laid for a comfortable retirement, dreams for our children or grandchildren. The list goes on. You know the kinds of deaths that appear as though we have ceased to exist, that nothing good can come of them, that we are at the end of the rope, so to speak.

It is at this point that we claim - by faith - the promise that the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and, though torment is all around, it will not be able to touch us. Today's Gospel passage is a great parable of Jesus regarding resurrection. Never thought of this story as a parable? A parable sets up a comparison of two sets of situations. In this story Jesus, who, as everyone knows, has the power to heal his friend who is ill. For some reason, however, Jesus has chosen to delay his visit, resulting in his friend's death. Imagine the anger, the grief this caused his family and friends surrounding him. "if you had been here my brother would not have died." Death pervades the atmosphere; imagine - and you may not have to imagine - an atmosphere of death. You may have been there, may know how it feels, how it tastes, how it smells. Jesus does not even hide his own grief. He knows what it tastes and smells like. But in his own grief he is connected to Resurrection. While everyone else is preoccupied with the nastiness of the situation, the hopelessness, Jesus is tuned in to Resurrection.

The words from Revelation are not the words of the future: they are a present day reality! "Behold! The home of God is among mortals! He will dwell with them (does dwell with them!) as their God; they will be (are!) his peoples, and God himself will be (is!) with them; he continually wipes every tear from their eyes." Death no longer exists, as a final threat. While mourning and crying and pain have not quite passed from the scene, we have a new perspective of death that leads to resurrection. Along with Lazarus we come out our graves of disappointment and fear to hear Jesus say of us, "Unbind them and let them go!" Let them go to live full lives without fear, without a need for certainties on the all to often uncertain journey, with full confidence that, when all is said and done, "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God."

Proper 20B, September 24, 2006

Grant us even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those things that shall endure.

That is really the point, isn't it? We spend so much of our time trying to decide what is right or wrong or even what is better or worse that we forget that what we really want is what will last in a world where everything seems to be disposable. I have given up on purchasing small appliances that can be repaired or for which replacement parts can be found. It is most often less expensive to throw something away and buy new than to try to fix something. It is a time of disposable - just about everythings! Our best friends change sometimes from week to week, relationships last only as long as they work without much inconvenience. How do we find what is really lasting?

This is not a new problem. In today's Gospel passage Jesus addresses just this situation. The dilemma faced by the disciples is, "Who will get to be the boss when Jesus establishes his kingdom?" Or, in other words, who will have the power? The pursuit of power is perhaps the most insidious and dangerous temptation humans have faced through the ages. If I don't have power over someone else they may gain power over me. The other "biggies," money and sex, boil down to this one power issue. If I can "have" someone sexually then I will wield a kind of control over them. If I have enough money then I can have control not only of my own destiny but others as well. In fact, even if I don't have sexual or financial control I may be able to fake it if I am associated in some way with those who do. And so we flatter those that we perceive have the power, do what we can to identify with them, and take advantage of what ever benefit it may bring us. We rarely think to "cozy up" to the homeless or unattractive. What benefit would that bring us?

So the disciples are caught bickering over who will be greatest. Who will be chosen? Who will win the election? Jesus' response seems to be unrelated to the issue at hand; sure kids are cute and innocent, but what does that have to do with who gets the good stuff? The connection is that Jesus did not choose the child for its cuteness to prove how someone will be kind to innocence or out of some sentimental reflection of an idyllic childhood. Jesus, in the context of his time, was reflecting, rather, on the disposability of children, the vulnerability of these little liabilities that took up space and food without producing anything in return. There was none of the "ideal childhood" sensibility that many children in our country enjoy. They were often lucky to reach adulthood - they were simply disposable. Do you see the scandal of Jesus' lesson to the disciples? "You guys are worried about some position of power that you would probably have to continue to fight for, to manipulate other people for, to be worried about keeping. Look here, what really lasts is how you treat the most vulnerable - the disposable." He said this while taking a child in his arms - actually paying attention to one of those little urchins! This is the call of Jesus to us today. He would have us be less flattering to those in temporal power in order to support those who can give help us to cultivate something more permanent: character, justice, true self-determination for the most vulnerable.

The passage from Wisdom describes how the ungodly will use their power to "insult and torture" the righteous person simply because they are called to account for their actions and attitudes - not by anything the righteous says, but simply for what he or she is. The passage ends, though, with these words: "their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of holiness (wholeness), nor discerned the prize for blameless souls." That is what the disciples missed: they had their eyes on power that was passing away without knowing the secret purposes of God that could be revealed to them in the person of a helpless, vulnerable child.

James really hits the nail on the head though as he speaks of the fractured nature of the human condition: "Where do those conflicts and disputes come from? They come from the internal war being waged inside of you! You want something and can't have it so you conspire to get it at any cost. You don't get what you want because you are looking for the wrong things - the things that will not last."

Boy, this sermon is a downer! You shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that - where is the Good News? What is the Gospel for us in these readings? I think that, over time, we have discovered the good news about those little "good for nothings" known as children: they do reflect for us the essence of goodness - of God-ness. We have learned how to look into their eyes and be graced by the simple wisdom that they have to offer. We rejoice in every new word, phrase, gesture that they make. We have found how they enrich our lives. Children around the world do not always have the luxury of being doted on as we do our own. Children are still among the most at-risk humans on the planet, as the research for the Millennium Development Goals tells us. But in our neighborhood and culture children have it pretty good. It is the single mother scraping to make a living that we do not honor for her lasting value, the laborer or the part time worker without health insurance that we do not flatter or consider, the difficult or socially challenged that we would rather not engage in conversation. Will our culture advance, as we have in the area of our children, to the point that we, as the Baptismal Covenant says, "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving all of our neighbors as ourselves," and that we "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?"

I mentioned in passing last Sunday a movie you should see, called "The Girl in the Café." It is a wonderful love story told in the context of a man involved in a G8 conference in which the MDGs are in the mix of priorities. His love interest is a mysterious woman who confides in him her defense of a child that was being abused. "Was it your child?" he asks, and her response resonates through the world where children and all vulnerable persons lack power: "Does it matter whose child it was?" Real, lasting power for the Christian comes not from influence, but from defending those who cannot defend themselves.

Proper 19B, September 17, 2006

Wisdom is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. In every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God....

This pivotal event in the ministry of Jesus and the development of his disciples is often singled out for us, as Christians, to answer the same question, "Who do you say that I am?" One of the commentators that I read this week suggested that the first part of this "test" for the disciples, "Who do people say that I am?," suggests a sort of "gossip theology;" it is often much easier to talk about God, or what others say about God, than it is to make a personal claim to who God is. In this case Peter gives the correct answer, but is completely wrong! His proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah seems, at first blush, to be exactly the right answer, but his immediate display that his understanding of who the Messiah is reveals that he doesn't have a clue. His definition of Jesus is bound - as are our own - by his own context and expectations for what Jesus will deliver to him.

Another commentator, one who has a better sense of the mentality of the times says that, in fact, Jesus was not asking about himself personally, as it was not part of the thinking of the time to think of one's individuality, but, rather, of one's place in a group or community. In other words, Jesus was asking, "Who are we?" "How does what we are doing fit into the larger culture?" "What are we doing that will leave lasting effect on our surroundings?" I might ask you in this way: "Who do you think that we are?" What is it about this community that keeps you involved, interested - that keeps you coming back? What are your hopes for this community that will create a lasting effect on our neighborhood and culture? We say that we are here because we are drawn by some devotion to God through Jesus that we call Christ, but what, actually, does that mean? We will all answer those questions out of our own contexts and bound by our own expectations - many having to do with what we want to happen for ourselves. In answering we, like Peter, will be correct and dreadfully flawed all in one breath. The fact is that our journey with Jesus is just that - a journey - an education, a learning experience that demands that we continually reevaluate and redefine what we are wanting, expecting and demanding.

In slips Wisdom. Wisdom is the "reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, an image of his goodness," in the words of today's Wisdom passage. To tell you the truth I had never read this passage before, and was very surprised that this theology of the reflection of God's goodness existed. It is this picture of the mirror image of God's image that has shaped my own sense of who we are - made in the image of God, but broken, fragmented, as I have said, like a broken mirror. Wisdom, the passage says, is "the spotless mirror of the working of God" - not the flawed, fragmented version that we seek to heal as we pray each week. It is Wisdom that we seek to make us Whole. And this passage promises that, "in every generation, she passes into holy (wholly) souls, and makes them friends of God." Wisdom has the potential of bringing our contexts, our expectations, and our demands into sharp focus as to what the working of God is - and our place in it.

What does it mean to live "in Wisdom?" I think that it means taking the time and effort to try to think, move and live through the mind of God rather than what might come naturally to us. We all know, and probably remember, times in which we have made decisions or said something on impulse, only to be sorry later. We wish that we had taken a little more time to sort out the potential consequences of our actions or words. This is not to say that Wisdom does not lead us to say difficult words or make difficult decisions. In fact, our impulse might often be to assuage or to avoid difficulty or confrontation when the hard thing is the best thing. The point is that our immediate reactions, words, actions are often products of our context, our needs, or our demands without the aid of Wisdom's perspective.

I hardly need to mention today's passage from James. It is so self-revealing and self-illustrating that it preaches itself. The fact that the tongue is the smallest of members with the most power for good and ill is almost self-evident, though I am always surprised by some who have no sense of the need for its control - or at least a nod to Wisdom before it gets used. This text from James is powerful and entertaining as well, so you may want to revisit it on your own later.

So, who is it that people say that we are? I think the days of our being known as the "church with the gay rector" are over. When I am out and about the diocese it seems as though we are known as the "healing" church. Perhaps we are beginning to be known as the church with a heart for the West Side of Buffalo through our activities with the STAR program, Westside Diversity Coalition, the Grant-Ferry Initiative, the Massachusetts Avenue Project, Pastor Aristote and the Messianic Missionary Church, the Elmwood Festival, our Food Fair, our hospitality to recovery groups, our increasing involvement in Journey's End and our attachment to refugees like Salvator. I like the possibility that we might be known for those things. I like the phrase that we have been using to describe who we are, "An Inclusive Community of Faith and Compassion." I want to hear that being said about us a lot. Who do people say that we are?

Secondly, who do you say that we are? Like the disciples who stayed with Jesus because, as they said, "to whom shall we go? This is where we find the words of Life!" I hope that you stay here because you are finding the words of Life, of healing, of challenge to make a difference in a broken and fragmented world. I hope that your context is constantly challenged to new vistas of what Jesus as the Messiah means for you.

One last observation: if you do find those kinds of healings and challenges that make you a part of this community, it is a sure bet that you know someone else who is looking for the same thing. We are evangelists for something every day: for our cars, the latest movie, our favorite peanut butter or "Dancing with the Stars." What is it that keeps us from suggesting to our colleagues on a daily basis that we know a place where they can find the Words of Life? I urge you to mention it to one person this week and offer them a ride to church with you next Sunday.

Proper 17B, September 3, 2006

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone."

I had a choice of Old Testament texts today. The one "not traveled" was from Deuteronomy, which was several paragraphs saying, "obey the commandments that I am giving you." This passage would have been a great complement to the Gospel passage about obeying religious tradition, had that been a message I believed in or felt like God has for us. Instead I chose a poem from the Canticle that does nothing but celebrate romantic love between two young people. I hope that I can make clear why I made that choice.

Jesus' condemnation of religious tradition still rings through the ages. There are still religious leaders who want to control not only what you think, but what you do about what you believe. Ritual hand-washing was not part of the original commandments given to help shape this Israelite nation; it was a result of interpretation of the Law, a sort of twisting of the Law to suit the needs of those in religious power - and certainly not a sign of particular devotion to God or a wish to be more totally dedicated to a life of Wholeness. We can hear in Jesus' response to the Pharisees' criticism something like, "You know, it doesn't matter nearly as much what you put into your mouth as it does what comes out of your heart." So much of the church is still tied up in what you do and how you do it - and with whom you do it - that the Church, the instrument of the Gospel, the Good News, is rendered impotent and irrelevant - no longer Good News. While change is the only constant we have, it is still true that people are attracted to authenticity rather than orthopraxy, or doing what is perceived by those in power to be the right thing. Jesus' ministry struck a chord with those who were disempowered by the demands of those religious leaders who, out of their authority, sought to control their behavior and, in doing so, their beliefs.

Last Wednesday's Gospel passage, (Matt. 23: 27-32), parallels today's in an encounter in which Jesus compares the Pharisees with "whitewashed tombs which, on the outside, look beautiful, but inside they are filled with the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth." They are what even today's world knows as a hypocrite, a stage actor, or someone who pretends to be what they are not. The fact is that while an artificial life can be made to look like a model home - or a whitewashed tomb - an authentic life is much messier. Don't you know this in your own experience? We love to look at the pictures in magazines of model homes, but we always come away saying, "But that would never suit my family or my lifestyle. That beautiful setting wouldn't last ten minutes with my crew." Authenticity is messy.

Authenticity in our lives is messy. There are very rare, if any, occasions when everything is in place in our lives, and we can stand back and say, "There, that's just how I envisioned it." Most of the time we are hiding the dirty laundry, trying to get the place picked up and ready for another onslaught or upheaval. According to the passage from James, the test of true religion does not have to do with "getting it right - washing hands or saying the right prayers, or projecting a "Christian image," - but it consists of caring for orphans and widows, and retaining a sense of God's priorities. "Keeping one unstained by the world," in our culture might mean resisting the culture of consumerism and exploitation - where a person's worth is measured by their buying power. Or it might mean resisting a mentality that says that "might must be right," otherwise it would not be might. Maybe it means resisting the feeling that we are who we are by our own accomplishment - so those who have not made it to our level can simply go to Hell.

I would suggest one other way in which we can resist becoming whitewashed tombs: that is to fall in love again. Nothing is more authentic than the helplessness we feel when we are engulfed by passions beyond our control. Religious traditions and strictures gain power any time we forget what we really love. After all the attention given to the Ten Commandments Jesus says, "The really important thing is this: love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength - with your whole self," (you know I love that word, Whole), "and, at the same time, love your neighbor and love yourself." The entire commandment is wrapped up not in our ability to follow the rules, but in our ability to love authentically. It will be this ability to love that will make this church a powerful force for change in our personal relationships and in this neighborhood. It is this ability to love that helps us, as we said last week, to "take on" the suffering of people in other parts of the country as they undergo tragedy. It is this ability to love that will awaken our hearts to the devastation on most of this planet as people live in abject poverty, children die of starvation and disease caused by drinking water, and children are abducted and forced to be soldiers in turf wars around the world.

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past and the rain is over and gone." In a late 18^th century commentary, Matthew Henry suggested that the Song of Songs, or Canticle, was a picture of Christ and the Church. We still use that language in our wedding ceremony. I do think that the Canticle is about falling in love - in finding an object of desire that has the ability to transport us out of our own mundane rule-keeping and give us new life. Frankly, if I cannot discover something of the "newly in love" feeling, of eroticism, of fun and excitement in being together in the Church, I have more important things to do. I pray for the winter of expectations, of "shoulds" and "oughts" to be over, for the rains of other peoples' disapproval, of inauthentic religiosity, to be over and gone for us all.

I probably don't have to remind many of you that the state of being in love is, like a life of authenticity, a messy business. There are unruly emotions, charting new courses, accommodating another person's ways, plodding on, one step at a time, toward what we hope will be a marriage of the two - the two becoming one, as we say. So I invite you to embrace this messy religious life - a life of authenticity and of falling in love once more with what brought you here to begin with!

We Will Stand With You, August 27, 2006

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

I am very uneasy about preaching from this Gospel text today. I am only too aware that to preach it to this congregation is very different than if I were to have to preach it to St. Paul's Church in New Orleans on this anniversary observance of Hurricane Katrina. Here, where we are relatively secure in our lives and our situations, we run the risk of saying, "Ho, hum. Sure, don't be worried about what to eat or drink or clothes. We get it." In New Orleans, where, one year after massive devastation, life is nowhere near normal, I might face a violent protest just for reading such scandalous words. "What do you mean, "Don't worry?" Don't you know that my family has been scattered for a year, that we have no home, that the insurance refused to cover our loss, that we are still living in this makeshift thing that the government provided after many months, that we have no way of making a living, that our businesses are gone, our employers have moved out and may never return, that we literally do not know what fresh hell tomorrow will bring? What do you mean, "Don't worry?"

And I am reminded by the presence of Laurie Leous and her daughter, Valerie, in our community that there are many who have lost everything including their sense of "place," as they have been completely uprooted from psychic and geographical locations. How will they begin again?

The challenge for me today, I think is to link up those two sentiments - those two groups of people - and see what God has to say for us all, though you will be the only ones to hear it. The simple resolution is to call upon you all to express sympathy for those that are suffering - to respond empathetically to persons in distress. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? I began, as I often do, to explore this idea of sympathy - of empathy - to see what it might really mean for us if we choose to do it. In fact, the Greek root of both of those words, "sympathy" and "empathy" is "pathos" or, literally, "suffering;" and the prefixes "sym" and "em" mean "with" or "together." So to sympathize or empathize really means "to suffer together with." In fact, the prefix "em" goes one step further and suggests that we "enter into" the suffering of another, to step into their shoes, to not only feel what they might feel, but to enter into their experience so that the suffering is diffused, cut in half, that we "take on" the suffering of another.

Does this sound familiar to you from a theological standpoint? We are told that Jesus "took on" our sins - that "Christ died for you." Jesus, in effect, is said to have felt the greatest sympathy for the human race by taking on its brokenness and suffering. Is this what we are being asked to do for our neighbors on the Gulf Coast? I don't suppose that we can imagine coming to worship in a place that is totally devastated, where not only the pews are rotten and broken, but that the lovely altar and hangings are moldy and destroyed, our lovely pulpit destroyed, and our organ totaled. It makes our little flood a few weeks ago seem tame by comparison.

We will take a special offering in a little while that will help to alleviate their suffering to a certain extent - that will help them to restore the material things that are useful or that give them comfort or familiarity in their worship. I wonder, though, if giving out of our abundance will truly provide for us and for them a sense of our "taking on," of "stepping inside" their suffering. I am not sure how to do that, but I am reminded by Matthew Fox that our time of Confession following our prayers is not only a time to speak those "things we have done and left undone," but is a time to actually grieve over the brokenness of Creation, to embrace loss and to take on suffering. Perhaps today as we are called by Deacon Cecily to confession, we can actually step into the shoes of those who have lost everything - perhaps even those shoes. Somehow we use the idea that the healing team uses as we pray with you for healing: to make ourselves a funnel for the Holy Spirit to move through our lives to diffuse the suffering, to cut the suffering in half for those who are carrying the entire burden of loss. Perhaps we use some of our confession to visualize a person or a family that is facing an uncertain future - or a certain catastrophic future - asking God to enter into their experience and bring about, as the reading from Isaiah suggests, "new heavens and a new earth...former things not being remembered or coming to mind," a place where, "no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress." We can call upon God to restore a place where, "they shall not build for another to inhabit, nor plant for another to eat - where like the days of a tree shall God's people be," not exploited by ruthless contractors, indifferent and arrogant government officials, empty promises and dead-end hopes.

God calls us into sympathy with our human family. We are "one Body, one Spirit in Christ." How can we respond to the needs of those on the other side of the continent? Our monetary offering is a beginning, and God's Spirit will accompany those gifts. But how do we offer ourselves to those in need? There is a question that God will answer in our own hearts and our corporate heart as the Body of Christ.

I got an email from Kim Smith last week which I have asked permission to quote: "I have been asked if I do not see the end of days at hand with the dire state of affairs around the world. All I can say is that I have had my end of days on several occasions, and in the aftermath I have always found God and new life. If your faith is founded in hope and love, I say you will meet those days with celebration. If it is founded in suspicion and fear...well you might want to renovate and old bomb shelter." He continues, "One of you receiving this once told me that if you have the Peace of God within you, it matters not if the world around you is at peace." That person to whom Kim refers is Salvator. We don't know from one day to the next if Salvator is alive in his war-torn Borundi, desperately scraping to provide for his young, struggling family, but we do know the Peace of God through his life and witness.

"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the field...your heavenly father feeds them. Consider the lilies of the field...even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these." And to the people of St. Paul's and others with them: We will stand with you.

Proper 15B, August 20, 2006

Don't get drunk on wine," says the writer to Ephesians, "because it only distracts you from your duty. Instead, get drunk on the Spirit!

Each week when I begin preparing to preach I am reminded of a book title I once saw, "Trembling at the Edge of a Text." It is always true that I am intimidated by the prospect of approaching Scripture texts and coming before you to share what I think is "God's Word" for the day. However, today's texts, particularly the Gospel, have been more vivid than most.

Baptist always use this verse from Ephesians to promote a lifestyle called "tee-totalling," or total abstinence from consuming alcoholic beverages, but they rarely move to the second part of the verse that, in effect, says, "If you want to really get high, try guzzling the life of God in huge quantities." I want to suggest today that we have three texts that invite us into what I might call an "alternative gluttony," a voracious appetite for the Life of God.

Beginning with the passage from Proverbs, it is Wisdom, the female counterpart of the male "YHWH," a female God, if you will, who invites those of us who are simple, ignorant in any way, slow to catch on, to eat of her bread, to drink of her wine - a meal that produces not a bloated stomach or a hangover the next day, but Life, a "growing up" into a life of insight. There are overtones of sacrifice in this passage, the setting of a table, the slaughter of animals and ritual mixing of concoctions to drink. If you remember from a few weeks ago, the root of the word "sacrifice" is simply to make sacred. We are invited to a feast in which what we consume makes our lives sacred, infuses our lives with the Life of God. So it is with Wisdom's feast. She invites us to the sacrificial feast of meaning and richness of life.

The Gospel for today is much more graphic in its depiction of this same invitation. "Eat my flesh and drink my blood," says Jesus, "so that you can participate in the Life of God." We have become so comfortable with this language that this type of cannibalism has become commonplace language for us. We hear it every week, and rarely does anyone rush out of the room in disgust or sick to their stomach at the prospect of eating the flesh of a human being or drinking their blood, though, when we think about it, that seems to be the appropriate response. Not only does this text demand that that kind of consumption be done, but that it be done gleefully, with abandon - almost greedily.

This particular text is not found in the context of the Holy Eucharist as others are. In fact, John's Gospel does not even give us an account of the Last Supper as is found in the synoptic gospels. Rather, in this account, Jesus is using outlandish, overly-exaggerated, counter-cultural language to make a powerful point. For the Jew the consumption of blood - even in cooked meat - was prohibited because it was what was sacrificed to YHWH. Blood, more than anything, was seen as the vehicle of Life Force. Blood is where Life resides and the way that it is transported through the body. We still speak in terms of "life blood." Likewise the fatty part of the meat - the part designated by this term "flesh" - was also the part that was burned up in the sacrifice. Both were considered sacred because of their connection to Life Force - that to consume these elements was to, as it were, steal Life from God. The actual Hebrew word for murder translates as "to steal blood," or to rob someone of Life Force. It is in this idea that the scandal of Jesus' teaching is revealed: "take this Life Force of mine - I give it to you - and consume it voraciously, as though you were starving. Only in doing so will you receive true meat and true drink." So, taken out of the context of this familiar ritual that we enact on a very regular basis, the consumption of the very Life Force of God through Jesus is a serious matter indeed. Without it, as Jesus suggests, all we are consuming is artificial life support.

How does this translate into our everyday life? The writer to the Ephesians suggests that how we live is crucial. "Be careful how you live," he says, "not as unwise people, but as wise, making the most of time." Sounds like Wisdom's invitation to dinner, doesn't it? I have struggled with the phrase, "because the days are evil." Some commentators suggest that this means something like, "it is particularly important that you make the most of time in days like this when the world is most in need of real meaning." Did he listen to the news this past week? For a document that is 1900 years old, it seems very contemporary. I think it can mean that the world really needs people who have been deeply transformed by what they have consumed, the Life of God. But I also think that the word "evil" might be substituted with the word, "precious." Live as people who are wise, making the most of time, because time is precious. It is what we expect to last forever and never does. Life is precious. Be careful what you eat. Make sure that what you are consuming is providing the Life Force of God.

Now back to the opening statement regarding not getting drunk on wine? Many of us in our culture have come to know in stark reality that to depend on wine for a really good time is an empty promise. Out of control it wrecks families and lives, relationships and careers. Fortunately, in the past 50 years, groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have allowed people to address this addiction, and the addiction to many things that cannot be consumed in large quantities without severe consequences. There is, however, one thing which we can consume for Life! It is the reason that most of you continue to meet here week after week, year after year. It is the Life of God - the flesh and blood that makes our lives sacred - that keeps us coming back for more. We are a sacramental people. We believe in those outward and visible symbols of inward and spiritual graces. We do come to devour with fervor those symbols of God's Life. So do not count on mere physical food and drink for life. God provided manna for the Israelites in the desert, says the letter to the Ephesians, and they eventually died. But the one who eats this bread - this flesh and blood - will live forever.

The Transfiguration, August 6, 2006

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.

Most recently our texts have taken us to explore our "mudness," our very human natures, as they relate to God and God's plan for Humanity. Transfiguration Sunday, on the other hand, gives a glimpse into Glory; our texts relate supernatural events, (in the most basic sense of the word, "exceeding natural"), as happening to a human individual and affecting another group of people. In fact, the individual in question is not just any individual, but, rather, a member of the group - a leader of the group. These events convey what it might be like if the Glory of God were to be realized in Humanity at any particular place and time. The problem with them for us is that we see these two events as stuck in a particular place and time - miracles for us to look at, wonder at and believe in, but unrelated to our own experiences.

Moses' encounter with God causes his face to literally shine forth with rays of light so that he must keep his face veiled except when he is speaking to the Israelites on behalf of God. Likewise, Jesus' face is "changed" and his clothes become "dazzling white" causing all kinds of confusion among the three disciples who are with him. Don't we wish that God would speak to us so deliberately, so dramatically, and so precisely? Our life in God would be so much easier if we had a definite word - commandments to disseminate and live by, or conversations with Holy Men of long ago. There are a few people who claim to have had such experiences, and I do not doubt them - but why not me? I seem to plod along wondering whether the directions I take, or in which I try to lead, are really the most productive or even the right ones. There was such a distinctive, definitive quality about the Giving of the Law (capitals) or the discussion Jesus had with Moses and Elijah. Does God not speak so clearly any more? Are we left to our own devices to know what God's plan for our community is? Wouldn't it be easier if He just illuminated His plan to your rector and it would be obvious by some sign like glowing skin or, better yet, a dazzling wardrobe? Instead, the rector, the wardens, and the vestry struggle along on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to try to discern the direction God wants us to take as a community. And there is never agreement among us as to what that might be. And we try to recognize in one another the possibility that God may be leading and speaking through us. It would be so much easier if God would just take us to a mountaintop and make it clear.

(Parenthetically, there is an opportunity for us to do something like that next month, as we have reserved space for 40 people to spend two nights at Stella Niagara living with an instrument called the Enneagram - discerning spiritual gifts and how they relate to who and what we are as a community. We have not attempted a congregation-wide retreat on this scale since I have been here, and I feel it would be very valuable and empowering. I encourage you to go and be part of this expression of St. John's Grace's life together.)

So do these opportunities never come our way? Is God's Word set in concrete with no new revelation, no new visions or "aha" moments in which God's Word for us is made new, refreshed, made clear? I have to say that I will be very disappointed if all we have to work with is a couple of events that happened several thousand years ago. The God that I committed to serve must speak today or "He" is useless to me. And, in fact, if that is true that God has spoken, never to speak again, then I made a huge mistake by turning my life upside down to become a priest - a leader of a group of people who profess a belief in a life-changing God. I am personally in need of one of those life-defining events that makes everything clear, that taps into the passion of the faith community and, frankly, makes my face shine. Are you?

There are several aspects to these events that seem to be common to the extraordinary experiences related on Transfiguration Sunday. The first is that they happened as a result of prayer. Prayer is a sort of strange term for Episcopalians because of our connection to the idea of Common Prayer - formulas that we share with other Christians throughout the world. I think it is safe to say that prayer in these events signifies a deep and abiding relationship and communication with God, not simply a litany in God's ear as to what we want done for us and our friends. It is through a continuous relationship that God's Presence shines through. We need to be people not only of the prayers that we share together in worship or in specific quiet times before sleep, but people who live in a constant communication with God - or as Paul says, "praying without ceasing," or remaining in a spirit of prayer.

Secondly, the people were not always aware of what was happening in their experience. Moses, for example, did not know that his face was shining until someone told him about it - and the disciples almost slept through the Transfiguration! Is it possible that we are near, within view of, or in the middle of a Defining Moment in our lives together as a community? How will we know, and how will we prevent our sleeping through and missing it?

The fact is that we do experience Glory at times. When we least expect it God breaks through our "mudness" and gives us a glimpse of something greater, transcendent, beyond our imaginations. What we have to remember is that it sometimes takes forty years in the wilderness, a lot of hunger and thirst, complaining - a few waterfalls from the rocks, lesser miracles. It always takes weeks, months - even years - of walking the dusty road with the teacher/healer Jesus, marveling in ordinary healings, as we do during Ordinary Time every year, to be able to experience the Glory.

It is well also to remember that these experiences represented the culmination - the highest point - of these particular journeys: Moses' receiving the Law from God to form a new People and Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem. Don't forget, it was Jesus' death that he was talking about with Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop, not a naive grand scheme early on in his ministry. It was an expression of the bottom line meaning of his ministry - his death.

One last observation about moments of Glory: the last sentence of the Gospel indicates that the disciples did not speak of the experience in the days following. It is often true that moments of Glory reach so deeply into us that they cannot be expressed. There is no language to describe the event, and we would not want to express it if there were words to suffice.

While I long for a transfiguring moment, I pray that, as we trudge through the valley we will remain alert for those moments in which God's Glory is given as food for the journey in small everyday ways.

Proper 12B, July 30, 2006

1 John 4:18: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

My friend Louie Crew paraphrases that verse to reflect the opposite truth: "perfect fear casts out love." It seems to be true that the things that we fear are the things that stand in the way of our being totally committed to something or someone, of our becoming totally who we are meant to be. Somehow we as humans have come to believe that we are worthy of punishment only, as John implies, and not love. For that reason we live in a sort of chronic fear, thinking that punishment is around every corner, rather than committing ourselves to the gracious love of the Creator God.

This dynamic is at work in today's Gospel lesson. When faced with the unknown - a figure walking toward them on the sea - they assume that it is a malevolent force rather than assuming that it is a saving force. We are programmed to expect the worst. I think that this goes directly against what we are taught about God in the Bible. Paul says to the Romans, "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry Abba! Daddy! it is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." Religion has taught us to be careful of offending God; the presumption is that God is essentially looking for reasons to punish. What do we think of a situation in which a child fears - even dreads - the arrival of a father because it means punishment or abuse? Paul says that we, as children of God, look forward to the appearance and presence of God because it means good things!

One of the commentaries that I looked at this week suggests that the Gospel speaks of Jesus walking on the sea - not the water - for a specific purpose: "to walk on the sea is to trample on a being that can engulf people with its waves, swallow them in its deep, and support all sorts of living beings." The writer continues, "Given the structure of boats in the period, people who traveled over or worked on the sea literally put their lives in the hands of the spirits or deity that revealed its moods in the varying movements of the sea, from stormy, to rough, to calm, and the like." This is the story of Elijah and Elisha as well. It was revealed that Elisha would be God's Holy Man, the successor to the great Holy Man of God, Elijah, because, just like Elijah, he had power to subdue the Jordan River, to make it part just as Moses had done at the Red Sea. In doing so they not only "parted water," as it were, but they actually had power over demonic forces. That is what signified that they were Holy Men. Jesus is in their tradition - a person with power over the Deep.

It is strange, but understandable, that the disciples had occasion to fear in this case: they had just experienced the feeding of the five thousand. Didn't they understand the power and generosity of God as shown in his ministry through Jesus? See the point is this: the disciples believed in the power of destruction that they faced on the sea, but could not trust the power of love as evidenced in the feeding of so many people. There is a cryptic allusion to this fact in the last sentence of the Gospel, "They were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened." The feeding of the five thousand which we read last week - that display of the abundance of Creation in which a little became much in the hands of the Lord of Creation, should have been a clue to the nature of the abundance of God, but they didn't get it.

The Gospel writer cannot help but rub in this notion: they saw Jesus as a savior from violence, but could not understand his basic generosity in providing for all. They wanted safety for themselves, but were hardened against a wider generosity. We are not so different. We most often see God's power as a personal safety provision, but do not understand God's interest in providing for all God's Children. This can be heard in a statement such as, "God takes care of His own." Are we not all, after all, God's own?

I cannot resist the opportunity to mention this great passage from the letter to the Ephesians. Paul, or probably a member of the "Pauline School of Theology" some time later, says, "I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called." What is that calling? It is the calling into adoption as Children of God. And how do we live into that calling? It is expressed in how we relate to one another as siblings: with humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another, not out of a sense of duty, but through love.

The second paragraph of today's reading, though, is crucial to our understanding of our roles as Children of God because it reveals the innate diversity that the family will exhibit when it works right. What it reveals is that every member of the body will be differently and richly gifted, functioning as each is called - not necessarily as others expect. A Child of God - a member of the Body of Christ - is responsible only to use his or her gifts in the operation of the body: "joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped - each part working properly - promoting the body's growth in building itself up in love," but also to respect and empower the gifts of others. Does it free you to know that you are not responsible for anyone else, or for the success of the whole, but only to make your contribution fit into the larger picture? When that happens there can be no fear of punishment. The greatest accomplishment will happen when we all recognize our own contribution, and that of others, joyfully and generously contributing to the whole body.

So we are back to where we started: "Perfect love casts out fear." If we are totally engaged and committed to this Body of Christ thing, then we do not fear failure because of our own weakness, nor do we fear the differences that others bring to the process. We are free to be fully and joyfully who we are without fear of punishment for being less than we are. May we continue to live into the abundance and total acceptance God intends for us. It is the experience of being human.

Proper 11B, July 23, 2006

The disciples said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send these people away to buy something for themselves." Jesus said, "You give them something to eat."

"This is a deserted place and the hour is late." What dismal words! Particularly when they are followed by "send them away," do we hear a sense of despair in the disciples' voices. Can you imagine the thoughts that went through their minds when Jesus answered, "You give them something to eat?" They were exhausted and Jesus himself had recognized their need for a respite, inviting them away for a well-deserved rest on the other side of the lake. "What happened to our vacation," we might well hear them mumbling behind Jesus' back. "Isn't that just the way! There is just never a moment to ourselves! Why don't these people just go away and leave us alone?" My guess is that, like in my own experience with God, the disciples had a few choice words of their own to share.

Out of this frustration and exhaustion, though, comes one of the most profound examples that Jesus gives us concerning the abundance of Creation: the fact that there is enough! "Take inventory," says Jesus. "What do we have to work with?" In the organizing world this is known as an "assets-based" inventory. "Let's not worry about what we don't have for the moment," this line of thinking says, "let's figure out what we actually do have, and go from there." The inventory, as we all know, yielded five little pieces of bread and two fish; not a sit down feast with wine and dessert, but something to start with. It turned out to be not only enough, but too much! Did it change the world permanently? No, people are still hungry; Jesus said that the poor would always be with us. But it did change the world in that place at that moment. And the ripples of that event still echo down to us two thousand years later, urging us to take the plunge. Find out what you have and use it, the story says to us these many years late.

See the problem is that we focus on what we don't have: we are in a deserted place and the hour is late for many of us. We are exhausted by life, "wearied by the changes and chances of this life," as my loved prayer goes, and not willing to take on the problems of someone else. Why did they leave home without a lunch? Were they just too lazy or dumb to make adequate arrangements? After all, weren't they issued the same bootstraps as we were?

I submit that much of our reluctance to put ourselves out for others stems from this "us vs. them" thinking. If they only had the same common sense that we have, if only they were one of our group, if they had shared in the hard work that we have been doing.... Do you hear your own voice in those accusations? I certainly do.

The writer to the Church at Ephesus speaks today of the "us vs. them" mentality in that day. In this case the difference is race: Jews vs. Gentiles. Today the same arguments prevail. The Middle East is still fighting over who gets what land. What those parties - and we need to hear as well - is the words of this letter: "In Christ Jesus you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace...he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall." In providing for the masses to be fed Jesus broke down the dividing wall between the "ins" and the "outs," the "us-es" and the "thems." "There is enough for all," says Jesus' act of appeal to God to divide the assets available so that everyone is satisfied. According to the letter to the Ephesians, when the "us vs. them" problem is solved, "then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens together and members of the household of God...joined together and grow[ing] into a holy temple...a dwelling place for God."

The keys to these texts seem to be these: First, recognizing the "us-ness" of Creation. Jesus has become our peace and has broken down the dividing wall that keeps us thinking in terms of "us vs. them." Here are some "them" things for us to think about, taken from the material on the Millennium Development Goals: One billion people in the world live on less than $1 per day; more than one hundred million children are not in school; every three seconds a child under the age of five dies of malnutrition, bad water or lack of medical treatment. Not our problem? If we see Creation as an "Us" rather than an "us vs. them," it is our problem - our opportunity to join our living stones with those of others to build the holy temple, a dwelling place for God.

Secondly, we are invited to inventory our assets, not our scarcity. The basic question asked by the MDG campaign: "What can one person do?" If we take seriously a belief and a commitment to the theological proposition that there is enough for everyone, we can find a lot to do. A dollar goes a long way when applied with other dollars to feeding people around the world. Please take a brochure for the Millennium Development Goals and make your participation part of your prayer life. We can get involved in all of the academic or even destructive and divisive issues of the church or the political world or we can inventory our own assets and determine what we can actually do - and do it!

Finally, we return to Isaiah through whom God reminds us of the "big picture." Want to build a temple in which God can dwell? Here is the architectural requirement: "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the spirit of the contrite." Obviously the word humble comes from that same word we have encountered so often that simply means "creature of dirt," "mud-babies!" "Contrite" is from a word that means "to grind," or to regret. The transformation God requires for his temple to be built, for God to move in is that we recognize our "us-ness" with all of Creation, and to regret its brokenness enough to do something about it. Will we change the world permanently? Chances are that we will not, but we can change a particular circumstance in a particular time and place - and perhaps set into motion ripples that will be heard long after us. May it be so.

Proper 9B, July 9, 2006

Dust of the Earth/Crowned with Glory and Honor

Samuel H. Miller: "O man, what is man? Full of dominion and power, tangled and tortured, with eyes wide open to wisdom and shame, born of the dust and marked with the sign, reaching beyond darkness for light, servant of the All High, tempted by truth and terror.

The term "man" in the beginning quotation is, of course, not a reference to gender, but is the word taken from the Hebrew adamah, or "dirt" as we know it. It is used to denote the temporal, limited nature of all humans. In a sense all of today's texts grow out of visions of God and God's purpose for and the nature of humanity. The passage from Ezekiel relates God's call to the prophet following an ecstatic vision, in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, of God's throne on wheels, guarded by angels, omnipresent and powerful. At the point of our entry into the scene God speaks to Ezekiel and immediately reminds him of his dual nature: "O mortal, stand up on your feet" - or, better, "Look here, you little mud baby, I have something to say to you!" And immediately following: "And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet." This is the challenge of humanity: we are made in God's image/born of the dust and marked with the sign of Cain, the murderer. We are made for greatness and weighed down by our "mudness." This is the dilemma of our lives: we can fly but we are rooted to earth.

Paul relates a similar ecstatic experience in which he is transported to a place that defies description by any human language and immediately follows that story by telling of the "thorn" that keeps him rooted in his everyday suffering and human experience. And what he has to say following that is the key to what I think today's texts have to say to us: "Three times I appealed...that it would leave me, but God said, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me....[For] whenever I am weak, then I am strong." The bottom line is this: our strength is not exhibited in our being brought to divine experience, ecstatic visions, or supernatural miracles; our strength is exhibited in God's Spirit being infused into our human experience, our sufferings, our foibles, insults, hardships and calamities. Then, as God says to Ezekiel, "Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."

In today's Gospel passage Jesus is rooted by his human nature and that of the folks who saw him grow up. "Oh, that's just Jesus from the neighborhood. Who does he think he is? He's no better than us! And if he is, why am I not more?" And the text poignantly says that he could not do more than just a few "simple" healings - not because he was no longer a healer, but because he was limited by the response of the people who knew him best. Even his divine nature was rooted in his humanity. We are reminded that it was less his healing power than it was the faith of those coming to him that enabled the healing. How often Jesus said not, "I have made you whole," or "I have healed you," as though it was something he was imposing on them, but, rather, "Your faith has made you whole." They were healed not because they were elevated to some divine experience of healing, but God's healing Spirit entered into their human experience, into their suffering.

The Psalm that best conveys this duality of human nature to me is the familiar Psalm 8. Again, realizing that the term "man" is used to mean "mud being" the King James version is quite powerful as it says, "When I consider the heavens, the works of thy fingers, What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man (child of mud) that thou visitest him. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honor." Eugene Peterson, in his modern paraphrase, puts it this way, "I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? Yet we've so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden's dawn light."

Do you suppose Jesus had God's words to Ezekiel in mind as he was rejected in his home town? "Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them?" According to the last sentence of the Gospel story he did not. It says, "...he was amazed at their unbelief." This story comes immediately out of last week's encounters with the woman who was healed of 12 years of disease and Jairus, whose daughter Jesus resurrected! Wasn't it apparent that this was a person of power, with a special relationship with God? How could these dumb local yokels be so blind to who he was?

We often are struck by the incapacity of other people to see the integrity of our actions or the wisdom of our contributions. God says to Ezekiel, though, "whether they hear or refuse to hear...." Even Jesus had to face the fact that not everyone was going to respond to his brand of Truth. He was amazed that such a response would happen. God's message to Ezekiel, to Jesus, to Paul, and, perhaps to us: Do it anyway. "Mud-child, do not be afraid of them," says God to Ezekiel, "and do not be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions; do not be afraid of their words, and do not be dismayed by their looks." To Paul God says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

So when we are discouraged by our "mud-ness," our inability to ride high on celestial visions all the time, when it seems as though we are all too rooted in our humanness and not spending enough time flying we, with Paul, affirm our humanness: "Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." Thanks be to God.

Proper 8B, July 2, 2006

Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.

I have always been uncomfortable with stewardship sermons. Even when we try to make them painless, funny, or entertaining they always seem to come off as manipulative or whiny. I have always wished that stewardship were something that came naturally so that it didn't have to be addressed. I suppose if that were true we would not be a human community. Some of the most painful issues we have to address revolve around the things that we "own."

It is really not my intention to preach a stewardship sermon. After all, it is not November, the only time that we venture into that territory. But I do think that these texts lead us into an investigation of what we might call the "mystery of generosity," a year-round discipline. As you know my perspective on the Bible is that it portrays God's Creation as abundant, gracious, hospitable - broken, and in need of healing. The sermons that I preach are designed to be invitations to enter with God into the process of healing the world - abundant in design and broken in practice. And a compulsion to ownership of anything is one of those areas of brokenness in need of healing.

From the larger, cosmic sense of Creation and its inherent wholeness there are some things that generosity is not: it is not, initially, a divinely-ordained mechanism by which you save money on your income taxes. It is neither a tool to make the donor feel good about themselves or a way of gaining power over the beneficiary. Real generosity is a conviction that there is enough to sustain Creation and a commitment to restoring the balance that requires - a leveling of sorts. Generosity is possible when one truly believes that there is enough to go around. True generosity does more than pass property from one person to another: it actually levels the playing field, breaking down barriers of inequality inherent in the concept of ownership. Classes of people develop over who owns more of Creation than others - and the true act of generosity is a statement that all are invited to participate in the abundance of God's bounty. It is a move by one person or group toward another that says, "I am confident that I have not only enough to survive myself, but extra to share."

Unfortunately we do not always have the confidence that we have enough. Our natural inclination is that we can never have enough. It is part of our human brokenness - not an "evil" in itself, but a brokenness that refuses to see ourselves as blessed. However you can understand how an obsession with possessions becomes an evil when it affects our relationship with the rest of humanity or of Creation. Comparisons with others and struggles with our own wants and perceived needs keep us from entering fully into the leveling dance of the Spirit.

Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians is a wonderful example: he says, "Look, with all of the resources that you have you should be a major part of this appeal for the Christians in Jerusalem. Why the Macedonians, (probably the Philippians), are begging to give and they are poverty-stricken! How much more you can do if you just realize and commit to the restoration of humanity in this way." The Deuteronomy passage grows out of interpretation of Hebrew Law. In ancient Israel the Law called for the complete forgiveness of debts every seven years. You can imagine that while someone might well loan to someone in the first year or two, when the possibility was great that they would be repaid. But in the sixth or seventh year, when the possibility is more that it will not be paid back, generosity finds fewer friends. The message from both of these passages is to give without hesitation or concern over whether you will be paid back. In the grand scheme of things that old invocation that we still use (at 8:30) still applies: "All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee - (or to any of your creatures)."

These lessons on generosity of money have really given me a lot to think about this week - I have struggled with them, particularly wondering how the "leveling" of Creation and generosity's part in the dance applied to the Gospel lesson for today, since no money exchange is involved in this story. In it Jesus is confronted by a leader of the local synagogue who pleads with Jesus on behalf of his young daughter who is ill, near death. We always focus on the healing miracles of Jesus in these stories, but in actuality the generosity exhibited in this story is shown by Jairus, the father! Can you imagine what this act of begging cost him? It would be as though the mayor of a city fell down in front of a wandering street evangelist to plead for equity for the most down and out, marginalized person in town. Women in Jesus' time were simple commodities and young girls were only valuable in terms of their marriagability - and still no more than cattle. It is particularly poignant for me, as the father of a daughter, to envision this man of power and influence begging from an itinerant preacher of questionable parentage for the sake of his daughter. He was seeking a leveling - seeking justice for one of the marginalized, the least of God's creatures, and risking his own status and reputation to do so. Who of us would be so generous as to risk those valuable "belongings?" He seemed to be throwing away his most prized "possessions" for the sake of leveling God's abundance of health.

I am sorry that the lectionary chose to leave out an interruption in this story - the encounter with the woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. If we can successfully domesticate, through our own cultural eyes, a father's love for his daughter, this incident is a little more readily seen as outrageous in the context of Jesus' time. Here is a woman, first of all, unclean for 12 years, (the 12 years of the little girl's life!), who should, by Jewish Law, be quarantined for uncleanness, who dares to defy all conventions, push her way through a crowd, and approach a man - even touching him! The outrage still doesn't translate into our culture, does it? We would have to put together our own scenario of cultural taboos that would really bring to life the generosity and the risk that Jesus took in this instance to bring about leveling - justice - for this outcast woman. These are stories of radical social upset! This is risk-taking generosity for the sake of giving to God's creatures at great cost to the giver.

As we gather this week as families to celebrate the gift given us of this nation and its offer of freedom it is appropriate that we remember that we are the world leaders in the area of generosity. Too often, though, we have used our generosity as a sort of hostage-taking device - a ploy to gain control over the beneficiaries of our "generosity with strings attached." The General Convention a couple of weeks ago reaffirmed its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals that have as their goal the elimination of abject poverty around the world within ten years. What better use could be made of government and private contributions than for the sharing of our love and commitment to freedom with the rest of the world? Certainly an investment in alleviating poverty is more generous than bombing nations and further impoverishing their people for the purpose of winning their freedom! I urge you to find out about the MDGs, the Millennium Development Goals, and see if this is a way for you to practice radical generosity.

The mystery of generosity is another mystery of transformation. It is a commitment to the concept that not only is there enough for us, but, through our help, there is enough for all. Our corporate culture, as someone recently said in my hearing, is geared so that even our education system's main function is to raise up consumers. We are owned by our own "possessions," whether they are tangible or intangible. What risks are we willing to take to "buy in" to God's plan for all Creation? Will our insecurities over possessions keep us from completely living into and embracing God's transforming power or will our attitudes toward what we own be transformed so that God's Kingdom is realized in our time and place?

Proper 7, Year B, June 25, 2006

God says to Job, "Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Declare if you know all this."

One of my favorite prayers is found in the service for late evening known as Compline. The vestry closes each of their meetings with this service, and I almost always include this prayer: "Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord." This idea of change which upsets our equilibrium lies behind the episode we hear in today's gospel. The disciples are overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control - namely the wind and water that are overtaking the vessel in which they are engulfed.

In dream language "wind" signifies "change." The stronger the winds the more dramatic the forces behind the changes taking place. Likewise, "water" signifies depths out of view, emotional energy which drives us positively or negatively. Driving waves signify a struggle with erupting emotions that toss us about in our life, grabbing control out of our own hands and threatening to capsize us. Have you had dreams of wind or of water? If you do, give some thought to what emotional changes you are either facing orin the midst of.

So let's take a look at this event in the life of Jesus as though it is a dream of sorts. We find ourselves far enough away from land to risk loss of its security when unexpected turbulence begins to rock the boat. Winds of change threaten to throw us off our course, and the waves of strong emotion threaten to completely overwhelm. We are panicked! We cannot survive and we are completely out of control. If we take this dream image a bit farther we realize that there is one (probably sleeping somewhere below) who can calm our fears and the storm as well - like the disciples we may well think that our "inner Jesus" is unconcerned with our safety, blissfully sleeping somewhere out of sight. Dare we wake this "God in the vessel" to demand salvation? Can't we really just take care of yet this one more situation ourselves and just let him sleep? Turns out, when we do finally wake the Christ inside we are chastised for either not asking sooner or for trying to take matters into our own hands. The dream would instruct us that at the center of our beings is one who actually can control the winds and waves.

Controlling water and wind: now there is a real trick! Who can do it? From a strictly literal perspective, none of us can really dictate to the wind and the waves how to behave. We are at the mercy of the natural forces. We can ride them out and/or be swept away in their power, but we cannot control them. Likewise with the winds of change or the waves of unruly passion or emotional energy: we may try to avoid the churning of the waves from deep within, but chances are we will be swept away in the unmanageable forces, resulting in depression, physical illness, mental instability or worse. We are faced with the need, I hate to say it, for a savior.

Throughout the biblical narrative the ability to control wind and water is a real mark of the person of God. Moses was able to part the waters of the Sea of Reeds to allow the Israelites access to freedom. In the 2nd Book of Kings Elijah performs the same mighty act by touching the water with his mantle or cloak - and the evidence that he is to be succeeded by Elisha is that Elisha is able perform that same trick! And let's not forget that the phrase, "to walk on water," a recounting of Jesus' power over the elements, is often used to describe someone who have complete control over his or her surroundings, (or thinks that they do!).

God's response to Job indicates that, even more than God's "simple" control of these forceful elements, God knows and understands their very sources: "Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?" If we have discovered that we do not understand or control the deepest recesses of ourselves, then we look for one who can help to control the winds and waves. Otherwise, we are helpless and without hope. It is then that we turn to the "Christ in the vessel" to calm the tempest - in traditional religious language, "to bring salvation."

Finally I come to the passage that I see as the real text for today - from the 2nd letter to the Corinthians: "Look, if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; everything old has past away; see, (or Behold!), everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation...." This is the text used so eloquently by former senator John Danforth at the General Convention last week. The traditional Eucharistic Prayer A that we use most of the year says it very well: "And when we had fallen into sin, (brokenness, helplessness), and become subject to evil and death, you sent your only and eternal son to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all." We might say, "the Source and sustenance of all." It is very hard to consider ourselves to be ministers of reconciliation if we have not identified our own "Christ in the vessel," if our own experiences are ones of overwhelming winds and waters. It is true for the church as for individuals: if we allow our existence to be dictated by unchecked emotions or fear of change - not depending on our onboard "Calmer of winds" - then we simply thrash about gasping for survival.

We use the dream of overwhelming tumult to find direction for ourselves and our community. We trust our inner Christ to calm the winds and waves of fear, of "change and chance. We move into the future confident that the God who knows the very source of the deep for each of us also has control over those forces, which cannot overtake us as we move deeper into the ministry of reconciliation and help to lead our neighborhood into reconciliation with God and a realization of God's Kingdom in this place.

Proper 6, Year B, June 18, 2006

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

I think that I have told you before that when my daughter, Kristina, was about 12 years old she said, "Dad, there's only one thing that I hate, and that is change." The response, of course, is, "Well, that's really the only thing that we are guaranteed! Things will change." It is true: nothing ever stays the same. Life is not a straight line, but, rather, a series of cycles that leave us transformed in some way at every turn.

This is the story of the seeds: the cycle of their lives, while fleeting, reflects our own journeys. Change is basic to the life of seeds. I can imagine a little meeting of seeds the night before the sower goes out to sow: "What is going to happen to us? We don't know what lies ahead for us. I am really frightened that things will not be the same for us when tomorrow comes." In fact they are right: the bag of seeds lying in wait for tomorrow becomes, as a matter of course, a wide field of waving stalks - amber waves of grain, if you will. What are they saying to one another now? "Look what we have become! We are beautiful and tall! We will surely live forever!" The point of their existence, though, is not how beautiful and tall they have become, but how they fulfill their purpose for their lives - in feeding many families and providing income for their farmer. They cannot last forever because they are part of a larger cycle of life.

God sends this message to Pharaoh through the prophet Ezekiel: "Let me remind you that even the strongest of trees does not make it to its fullest height through its own cleverness or resources. It is part of a larger cycle. It was nourished by deep waters, becoming part of a watershed - an environment that is shaped by the water that runs in and around it. While it may "tower high above all the trees of the field, its boughs growing large and its branches long...[so that] all the birds of the air make their nests in it," it will not last forever. It will find itself toppled and "on its fallen trunk [will] settle all the birds of the air, and among its boughs lodge all the wild animals." This is not punishment: it is transformation. The chastising of God regarding its fall is that the tree thought that it had attained its height on its own: "It towered high and set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height." The lesson is that we are all part of a larger system: none is exempt from the transformation.

Paul addresses this change process with the church in Corinth, speaking of the mortal body as though it is a garment or a temporary dwelling place: "For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling." Do you hear the meeting of the seeds? "We don't know what is going to happen to us once we are planted. What is on the other side of the next step?" Paul's assurance to the Corinthians is that "even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord - for we walk by faith, not by sight." I would take issue with Paul to say that rather than being away from the Lord, we embrace the fact that it is God that uses our very mortal dwelling in the fulfillment of the larger purpose, just as the farmer uses the bag of seed in the fulfillment of the larger purpose.

These scriptures are often used to lure us toward the life after this life - to convince us that life after this life as we know it is greater and better. This is true. As Christians we have come to believe that "life after death" or life after life as we know it, is a return to an existence that is more natural, more fulfilling - that this life is somehow a preparation for the greater life to come. This is probably true, but I think that the lessons of the seeds, of the great tree, of Paul's picture of the earthly dwelling, holds great potential for how we approach this life as well. Like the tree we often grow tall, raising our heads above the clouds and proclaiming our own greatness, charitable though we may be. What we forget is that our greatness only serves the larger plan - that we may find ourselves toppled to provide nurture in a different way. We are called to offer ourselves as seeds to the process of the Great Resurrection that glorifies the God of Creation rather than hanging on to our own paltry dreams, accomplishments and goals. We can never, on our own, live up to the potential that God has in store for us. We must make ourselves available for transformation like the seed.

This embracing of the transformation process has implications for all areas of life. The prophet Ezekiel was sent to speak truth to power of a major political force of that time. The same must be done today. Our nation and our leaders must be reminded that we do not "tower high above all the trees of the field" by our own cleverness or entrepreneurial spirit. We too are subject to the larger forces beyond our control. We have received some hint that we are not invulnerable, and have squandered the lessons, striking out blindly in our arrogance - we "have towered high and set our tops among the clouds, and our hearts have been proud of our height." We have forgotten that we are made strong in order to help the weak, and that our status as the tallest will not last forever.

Churches often lose sight of the cycles of transformation, setting their sights on financial survival as the essential virtue, or numerical growth as evidence of strength. The fact is that no tree towers above the clouds forever. Our responsibility is to continually be faithful to the role we are asked to play: the deaths we are called upon to experience in the hope of the resurrection. It means continual transformation - letting go of the old in order to allow the new.

I know that I have told the story several times of Kristina's sitting on the edge of her bed the week before her 15th birthday, putting her childhood treasures, stuffed toys, photos, into a box, and weeping - for the passing of the little girl that was and in fearful anticipation of the woman that was to be. That is the story of our journey - the story of the discovery of the resurrection: "They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them." They were excited and scared of the transformation taking place in their experiences.

Here is the mystery of transformation: change happens and we know not how. Our lives are planted, like seeds, like trees, and we are nourished by waters we don't understand. We are shaped by winds and weather that we have no control of. We are part of a living system - a system larger than ourselves. Kristina did not will herself to be an adult, but, rather, surrendered to the natural process of maturity. It happened almost while she was sleeping! The one mistake we can make is to try to resist the changes. It cannot happen. The changes will take place - we know not how.

What does all of this mean for us? I think that it means diving into the ground, embracing change not for change sake, but in the hope of a larger life on the other side of the dive - a resurrection to greater and more productive life. I'm like Kristina - the only thing I really hate is change. But it is the one guarantee we have - and the only way that we move into newer and fuller life in God.

Pentecost 2006

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body...and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

If asked, "What is the most intimate and powerful force imaginable?" our modern minds, satiated with 20th/21st century marketing, go immediately to sex. Why? Sex sells! And corporate advertising knows that only too well. So our concepts of intimacy and power ripple out from this central locus: we concern ourselves with how we appear, what we wear, what attitudes will make us attractive to the desired "other," that will make us more "mateable," no matter what our sexual orientation. We become identified with the exterior attributes associated with a biological social and biological function that, while very important, and necessary to address, is not the most intimate or powerful force imaginable.

No, I speak of something much more intimate - way more powerful - that of Breath. Take just a minute to think about your own breath. Close your eyes and feel your breath - cool air in/warm air out. Take a deep breath - feel it filling your lungs and supplying oxygen to your whole body. Hold it for several seconds and enjoy the "buzz" of the breath. Have you ever been under water long enough to need to come up for air, gasping and gulping for breath? Think about it - breath invades the deepest, darkest regions of our beings and literally controls whether or not we live or die. Even the flow of blood through our bodies is determined by the presence of breath - simple oxygen in/carbon dioxide out. The psalmist makes it clear: speaking of every living thing, the psalmist says, "You hide your face and they are terrified; you take away their breath, and they die and return to dust." It seems so elementary to say that breath is essential to life.

Two words are used traditionally to designate the Breath, the Spirit of God: the Hebrew is a powerful word, Ruach. It is this Ruach that moves over the depth of the void to bring about Creation. The other is a Greek word, Pneuma, from which we get terms like pneumonia, a disability to breathe deeply, ultimately the inability to breathe at all! Interestingly, the term "spirit," from these two roots, designates "the vital principle or animating force in human beings." It is what gives us life! In various parts of the Bible the idea of Breath is used in a variety of ways, most of the time as the word "Spirit." Breath is used 84 times to 615 times for the word Spirit. The opening words of Genesis picture God breathing into a formless void to create the world. Remember, it was the Breath of God in the vision of Ezekiel that restored life to dry, dusty bones. And, it is Jesus' breathing on the apostles in today's Gospel reading that gives them power to forgive sins! Imagine the breath that moves in and out of us being the power to perform acts of God such as creation or the forgiveness of sins.

It is interesting that a term like spirit - actual life force, something that is essential to our being - is such a "religious" word. You know, that religion that we do on Sunday, but which has no real effect on what we do the rest of the week - or, better yet, religion, that old dinosaur that most of America either dismisses as quaint but irrelevant or uses as a weapon against those who differ in opinion over a variety of issues - that religion that is mostly the subject of jokes or cartoons. In fact this religious word determines whether we live or die! Spirit - breath: the most intimate and powerful force we can imagine!

Let me just insert this: the core of the ordination service for priests, which was not that long ago for me, and will be repeated at least twice in the next couple of years right here in this space, is the hymn that we sang at the sequence, at the time of the laying on of the bishop's hands upon the candidate. "Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire, and lighten with celestial fire. Thou the anointing Spirit art, who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart. Thy blessed unction from above is comfort, life, and fire of love." Another version of this is "Veni Creator Spiritu," Come Creator Spirit. As a sacramental people we believe that this invocation of the holy, creative Breath, along with the laying on of hands, is the beginning of a person's journey as a priest. I can testify to its empowering effect.

And so we come to the day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit - the Holy Breath - upon the apostles gathered in a certain place at a certain time in history. What a dramatic scene this is: violent wind, fire resting on their heads - and filled with this breath that causes them to speak with power! People thought they were drunk! Their mundane, everyday religion was turned into a powerful, transforming force - a not so mundane, everyday breath of air. The account in Acts goes on to say that 3,000 people joined them that day. Talk about New Member ministry! How did they get all those folks to make name tags during the coffee hour? The point is that the power of God's Spirit made their message irresistible. That is the key, not to the mere survival of the church, but to its relevance to our culture and its irresistibility to those looking for direction and meaning. We must risk being accused of drunkenness or mental instability that runs counter to the superficial expectations of our corporate-run society and its goals to sell us more sexy stuff!

And how do we find this Spirit, this breath to speak with power and to be irresistible in our proclamation of God's good news? I am reminded of the quotation used by Matthew Fox in Original Blessing from the poet, Kabir: "I laugh when I hear the fish in water is thirsty." Ghandi said, "Earth and heaven are in us." Later in Acts Paul addresses a Greek audience and says, "The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since it is he that gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. He quotes one of the Greeks' own poets as he says, "For in him we live and move and have our being."

In today's familiar passage to the new Christians in Greek, cosmopolitan Corinth Paul suggests a radical approach to relationships - an organic one rather than a mechanical model based on laws and organizational structure. I have spent a great deal of the past four years talking about this model for the Body of Christ to move through the world, but the bottom line of the model is found in the last line of this text: "In one Spirit we were baptized into one body...and we were made to drink of one Spirit." One gets the image of someone gulping for air as for water in the desert. We are baptized into a body that is not as concerned for dogma or belief as we are in gorging ourselves with the Spirit of Christ. At some point we find that we are less "Jesusians" than we are, if you will, "Pneumatologists" gasping for the breath Christ to enliven and fill us.

The violent wind is here - dwelling in us. The fire is available to rest on our heads. The Spirit, around and in us, waits to speak new languages to a new generation whose perceptions are numbed and jaded by artificial religious language - the language of prosperity, consumption, boredom, workaholism, getting ahead, financial security, physical attraction. The new language speaks of passion, justice, meaning, direction - of LIFE.

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