Kathy's Good Word

4 Epiphany Yr B Jan 29 2012

2012-01-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

Remember last week I described the gospel of Mark like a roller coaster ride, and here we go again. No time to process any of this. Jesus is already teaching in the temple and casting out unclean spirits and we're only in chapter one verse twenty one. Mark doesn't mince words. We want Jesus to teach with words, the other gospels are full of words. They try to explain the parables, the healings, the miracles. But not Mark. Mark shows us who Jesus is through healings, through presence, through action. In Mark, Jesus teaches by what he does.

We know that Mark's gospel begins with “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” It then goes on to show us what this Son of God looks like. The Son of God is baptized in the Jordan, and a voice came from heaven and says, “You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” The Son of God is cast out into the wilderness and battles Satan. The Son of God calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, who left everything to follow him. The Son of God was in the habit of going to the synagogue on the Sabbath. He was also in the habit of breaking many of the rules of the Sabbath. The Son of God taught with authority. All of this is what the Son of God looks like.

Robert Browning, the English poet, once said, “If the most powerful people in the world came into this room, the King, the President, we would stand up. But if Jesus came in, we would kneel down, and that’s the difference.” We could add to Robert Browning’s list of powerful people, the kind of people today that are lifted up as powerful sports stars, movie, television or music stars. Maybe even today’s billionaires would make this list, people like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. Well, today’s gospel is about is what the Son of God looks like, and the Son of God looks like authority, and authority that looks nothing like those who think they have authority today, and an authority that brings us to our knees.

In this gospel story, Jesus’ authority creates something that no one had ever experienced previously, and I would venture that Jesus’ authority creates something that no one in our culture experiences today. Today I think we experience authority as power, and that gets transferred to the power to buy and consume and have. The scribes, who were the educated and literate people, had never before experienced the kind of authority that is shown to us in this lesson; we only encounter this kind of authority when we encounter Jesus.

What kind of authority is this? What does this authority look like? It is Jesus’ being. Authority is who Jesus is, authority is Jesus’ being, it is not something that Jesus’ possesses, or something that Jesus owns, not even what Jesus says. True authority, authentic authority, is not derived from power but from trust and respect. True authority does not control, it authors. Authority comes from the same word as author. It is a word that indicates something that creates, something that causes an increase, something that causes growth.

This authority is quite different from power. Power, in the Mediterranean world, as well as in our own world I would suggest, is understood as a limited quantity. If one person has more power, then the other has less. In the Mediterranean world, honor was also a limited quantity. The honoring of one resulted in the shaming of another. Power and honor are linked in the Mediterranean world of Jesus’ time, and I do believe they are linked in our culture as well.

What the scribes noticed immediately in this story is that Jesus speaks with an as-yet-unheard-of level of authority. Suddenly the years of compounded knowledge, confined logic and entrenched tradition offered by the scribes begins to pale in comparison to the message that Jesus brings, Love wins. When Jesus was around, something was created, something was increased, growth was happening, the story was being rewritten. Scribes were “because it has always been that way” theologians, that is to say the kind of theology that is built on its past and nothing new really comes about. But things were definitely not the same any more.

It is in this new reality that people began to see that this must be God’s work, because it is only God who can author this new story. There is only one God, one Lord, and neither you nor I are it. What this passage says to us is that nothing is really settled except for the always present love of God and the ministry that Jesus calls each one of us to participate in. The unclean spirit was no match for Jesus;
the unclean spirit was standing in Jesus’ way. By following Jesus we are called to clear away all of those things that stand between us and truly experiencing anew how the life and ministry of Jesus calls us to live.

We are called to be authored anew if you will. We are called to put aside all that stands in the way of truly being that new creation that God wants us to be. We must look at ourselves, name our own demons, and let Jesus call them out of our being, so that Jesus can take over and create us anew so that we may be transformed.

What are the things, ideas, prejudices and excuses that you’ve got to get out of the way so that Jesus can really work in your life? So that love wins in your life? Only you can name these things, no one can do this for you. And once you do, the work begins. This Christian journey is a lifetime project. None of us are transformed in an instant, we come face to face with our demons at every bend in the road, we stumble over them, we carry them with us.

The good news is that the new creation that Jesus calls us to be is already forgiven. It’s not that our demons will never rise up again, it’s not that we don’t continue to miss the mark, the truth is that when that happens, the relationship that we are in with Jesus and this company of faithful in which we belong, calls us to see the goodness and the life that our lives can bear.

You and I know that submitting to Jesus’ authority, naming our demons, becoming the new creations that God wants us to be, and embracing the ministry that grows out of that is a lifetime project. But when we do, our story begins to be rewritten and the fruit of transformation is ministry and discipleship.

We know this is a life time project because we know that today we can decide that this is the day that we begin anew, that this is the day that we decide to let nothing get in the way of making choices that show God's love, mercy, and compassion.

We know this is a life time project because we know that today we can decide that it’s time to get serious about our own spiritual formation and get involved in bible study.

We know this is a life time project because we know that today we can decide that this is the day that we do something about people going hungry, and we bring food for the food shelf.

Today is the day to get started on the lifetime project of submitting to Jesus’ authority knowing full well that tomorrow we may just have to begin again. God’s love is ever present, God’s love is abundant, God’s love will always call us back. Love wins.

3 Epiphany Yr B Jan 22 2012

2012-01-21T17:59:00.001-07:00

In the gospel of Mark, there is no pussy-footing around. There is no nativity story as there is in Luke, there are no begats like in Matthew, and no metaphorical language like in John. No, Mark gets right to the point. In the first sentences the writer says, this is about the Good News, who is Jesus the Messiah. John announced Jesus, Jesus is baptized, and the next thing you know Jesus is calling disciples. Not even enough time to get strapped in before we hit the first 200 foot climb followed by a one second drop. Mark gets down to business.

It's not much different for these fisher people. Just imagine this. Just imagine being in that fishing boat with Simon and Andrew, with James and John, having fished all night. You're exhausted, and you must fix the holes in your nets before you can call it a day. You just want to get the work finished, take your haul home, and go to bed. And Jesus passes by. He yells from the shore, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." Who is this guy? How can you make a living fishing for people? How's that going to pay the bills? How's that going to put food on the table? How's that going to bring any honor to the family? This is just crazy. And yet you go. And yet you step out of the boat and follow. What is so compelling about this man that causes you to leave your father, to leave your livelihood, to leave your honor, and follow.

Mark doesn't give us a whole lot of clues about what is so compelling about this man Jesus, except to tell us that this is the Good News of Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus is the truth, Jesus speaks the truth, Jesus knows your truth. And that is compelling. And when you say yes to the call, you don't really know what to expect, except that your life will be changed. You will be transformed. When you say yes to the call, Love wins, mercy prevails, compassion lives.

Because that is the way it is with Jesus, it isn't easy, comfortable, or clear. So what does saying yes to the call look like? It looks like a guy who walks to the other side of the road to help someone who had been attacked by strangers. It looks like a woman who gives a man a cool drink of water at the well. It looks like the soil that is rocky, that is thorny, and that is fertile. It looks like the tiniest of seeds.

Being perfect, or even having our act together, is not a prerequisite to saying yes to Jesus' call. Remember the Old Testament story that is before us today from Jonah. What we heard is the conclusion of God calling Jonah. The beginning of that story goes like this. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Jonah's response to God's call was to turn tail and run. Not unlike most of us when we hear God's call. Jonah ran from God until he could run no further, Jonah said no to God for as long as he could. The result of Jonah's eventual yes, was that everyone turned away from their evil ways, maybe in other words, they turned toward mercy and compassion.

Saying yes to Jesus' call is what frees us to be who we are, and to live the truth of who we are, beloved and forgiven. I think the reason people say no to God, and say no to church, is because of the mistaken believe that you have to be perfect to stand before God and others. I think the reason that has happened is because some who call themselves Christian have set up some sort of perfection checklist, some sort of standard of behavior that no one can live up to, and everyone begins to live a lie.

Saying yes to Jesus, is to say yes to the truth. The truth of who we are, We are people who are broken, we are people who make mistakes, some huge mistakes, some not so much. We are people who betray. We are people who love and who fall short of love. We are people who get ourselves into trouble with wanting too much and expecting too little. We are people who believe we can make it on our own and forget we are not the center of the universe. We are people who erect and worship idols. We are people who build walls around us so thick to guard our brokeness and to look perfect.

Saying yes to Jesus, saying yes to the truth, looks like the guy who spent some time in jail, and who can listen to others trying to find their way. It looks like the mom who struggled to live through addiction, and who can listen to other moms who are so afraid to face up to their own lies. It looks like couples who work through the depths of sadness, recommit to each other, and listen to those who can't see the possibility. It is each and every one of us knowing we are just inches away from losing our job, or losing our home, or losing our spouse, and living in the midst of hope and joy anyway, because Jesus lived it all too.

Saying yes to Jesus is to say yes to the truth. And the truth will set you free. Saying yes to Jesus is to let love win, it is to let the mercy and the compassion seep into our scars and heal us. It is to let love win and let the the mercy and the compassion transform us. When you say yes, your life begins to change, you are in the presence of God, and your truth begins to invite others into healing. Jesus' truth, your truth, your life in God's presence invites others to live a live fully alive, a live filled with truth, with love, with mercy and compassion. Your life begins to show forth the moral decision making that is apparent in the baptismal covenant. You begin to do what is right, instead of what is selfish or greedy. You bear Jesus' light in the world, and those you encounter, those who encounter you, witness the truth of your life and are invited to be healed by Jesus. Come and see.

Studies are showing that people today and especially those under 50 don't so much want to GO to church as they want to BE the church. I'm wondering how we can empower one another, as we go to church, to be able to live out our calling as we seek to be the church. How do you live out your calling, out there in the world? At work, at school, at play. That is being the church. As you do that, more and more, as you make the invitation into Love, others will come, you will see.

2 Epiphany Yr B

2012-01-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

It had been raining for days and days, and a terrible flood had come over the land. The waters rose so high that one man was forced to climb onto the roof of his house. As the waters rose higher and higher, a man in a rowboat appeared, and told him to get in. "No," replied the man on the roof. "I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me." So the man in the rowboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him. The waters rose higher and higher, and suddenly a speedboat appeared. "Climb in!" shouted a man in the boat. "No," replied the man on the roof. "I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me." So the man in the speedboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him. The waters continued to rise. A helicopter appeared and over the loudspeaker, the pilot announced he would lower a rope to the man on the roof. "No," replied the man on the roof. "I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me." So the helicopter went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him. The waters rose higher and higher, and eventually they rose so high that the man on the roof was washed away, and alas, the poor man drowned. Upon arriving in heaven, the man marched straight over to God. "Heavenly Father," he said, "I had faith in you, I prayed to you to save me, and yet you did nothing. Why?" God gave him a puzzled look, and replied "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you expect?"

I begin with this joke today because it's funny, but it also illustrates the very funny story we have in the Old Testament from 1st Samuel. Poor old Eli was trying to get some sleep, and that Samuel runs into his room three times with "I heard you calling me, what do you want." Finally Eli realizes who is calling Samuel, and it's not him, it's God. It's a good thing Eli finally figured this out, who knows how long this would have gone on if he hadn't. And as Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.

This persistent calling of Samuel story is paired with the calling of Nathanael in John and Psalm 139, which happens to be my very favorite Psalm. O Lord you have searched me and known me, even before a word is on my tongue Lord, you know it, you knit me together in my mother's womb, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Years of psychoanalysis will not get me to know myself like God knows me, and in all of that, God still loves me. This is truly amazing. God loves me, God loves you, not because of who we are or what we've done or not done. God loves. Love wins. God knows and God still loves.

The Gospel from John seems hard to break open. Is it a story about Philip, to whom Jesus said, follow me. It is a story about Nathanael, who seems to know whom Jesus is, the Son of God.

Our Epiphany stories have all been stories that show and tell us what incarnation looks like, they are stories that show and tell us about how incarnation changes everything, and how then we must go home by another way. I think the collection of stories we hear today follow the same theme, they are all stories that illustrate how different the story of God is from the story that the world in which we live tells us, whether that world is hundreds of years before Christ, whether that world is first century Israel, or whether that world is 2012 years after Christ.

Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. The job of a prophet was to tell people what they least wanted to hear. That they need to shape up, change their ways, and turn to God. What we hear in these stories is the invitation to live another way, not the way of the world. To take seriously the amazing and abundant love that God has for us. The story in Corinthians is a story about belonging. We belong to God. The author of Corinthians wonders, don't you know that you are not your own. You belong to God. And in John,
we hear clearly the invitation to live by a different way, to be a part of the story of God, who is here in our midst.

What is so powerful in this set of stories today is that we hear about God's activity in the lives of God’s people in and through history. And at the same time, we are invited to be part of God’s mission.
Today, we are invited to be a part of what God is up to now. Unfortunately, sometimes we are like Samuel, who couldn't figure out it was God calling, and sometimes we are like Philip and Nathanael,
wondering how and where Jesus gets to know us so intimately, although we know God knows us intimately because of Psalm 139. Each one of us is invited to step into the unknown, and live this radical life in relationship with God, without knowing really what to expect, except that we are called to be faithful.

When we say yes to God’s call we don’t know what that will bring. Like Samuel with Eli's encouragement before us, it is our turn to respond to God with here I am, here we are. It is our turn to respond to Jesus who says, follow me. What does our response look like, our response as an individual and our response as a church? We must imagine that, we must begin to see the possibilities. Come and see, Philip says. Maybe we need to picture the people populating these pews. Who will they be? Maybe they are young families. Maybe they are Episcopalians, but probably they are not. Maybe they are people disaffected from other denominations for various reasons, maybe they are just people looking for love and acceptance in a house of God. Maybe they are people seeking Christ; maybe they are people seeking meaning. I’m hoping they are people finding Christ and finding meaning here, finding love and acceptance at this table, and in this body. Maybe they are people who want to understand who they are and who they are called to be, they are people who want to seek and serve Christ in all persons, here behind these walls, and out there, in the community. Maybe they are people who will challenge you to grow and develop in your own spiritual journey, because you will accompany them on their journeys and be changed by them.

But on some level they are people who want to be a part of the story, and not bystanders. The story we tell about how God created humanity, how God blesses the creation, how God promises to always be God. This is the story about how we turned away from God, about how we worship so many things other than God, and it is the story about how God calls us back, calls us back, about how God will not let us go. It is the story about how God loves us so much, that God came as one of us, as Jesus, and lived and died as one of us, and brought us back into relationship. We can belong to God, because we know God is right here, right now, in the midst of us, in ways that are evident, and in ways we can only imagine and dream about. This is our story; this is the story that makes us a people.

What does your response to Jesus’ call, follow me, look like? It is timely that we hear this call of Samuel, and of Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael, on this day, so close to the anniversary of the birth of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. A man who answered a call, and risked everything to respond to Jesus’ call of equality in the new covenant. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that responding to Jesus’ call has to be in some particular way, but that is not true. Responding to Jesus’ call is to live out loving God and loving your neighbor in every aspect of your life. Responding to Jesus’ call, follow me, is to live out your baptismal promises in your work, in your school, in your play, in your family, and in your business dealings.

These stories we hear today are a challenge to you to live out Jesus’ invitation to follow. How will you respond to that invitation?

Alleluia. The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

Feast of the Epiphany 2012

2012-01-07T16:59:00.001-07:00

The poet Isaiah envisions the light, new light, come in a way that had not happened previously. The Lord’s light rising upon us. And we hear in the Gospel of Matthew the wise men from the East observed the star in it’s rising and led them to the place where the child was. They bowed down before the child. The Light that shone forth for these wise men from the East is of God, it is the Light that overcomes darkness, it is the Light that will not be put out, it is the Light that we call upon now in what sometimes seems like a world out of control, a world in chaos.

We are called to go out into the world in mission and ministry. We are called to be Light bearers. You and I are called to be light shining in the darkness. The Light we are to bear is the Light that shines revealing the love of God made real in Jesus Christ. And this is the love that bears all hurt, it is the Love that comes into the midst of pain, into the midst of isolation, into the midst of separation, and this Love pulls it together, this Love makes whole what is torn apart, this Love wins.

Paul’s letters tell us that the Love of God in Jesus Christ is for all people. Paul, a circumcised Jew, brings the Good News to Gentiles. Early in the first century, there were basically three groups of people. There were Jews who were circumcised and who followed Jewish law, there were God-fearers; people who found Jewish law attractive and followed it, but were not circumcised, and there was everyone else, those were Gentiles. According to the Hebrew scriptures, only Jews were included in God’s plan of salvation; with the new revelation of God in Jesus Christ, humanity experienced God's love for all people, that all people are included, not just circumcised Jews. We learned that we cannot limit God because God’s love for the creation is limitless, boundless, abundant, extravagant.

We watched or read about this Christmas the stories of people who had gone to KMart and other places, and anonymously paid in full the bills of those who had put merchandise on layaway. Surprising, unexpected, maybe even abundant and extravagant.

God was born into this world, the shepherds knew it, the angels knew it, the wise men knew it, and on some level, Herod knew it too. Herod was frightened of the child, this baby born in a barn. Frightened by the unknown. The wise men learned in a dream that after finding the child, they would need to go home by another way; if they returned the way they came, Herod would find the child.

I find it very significant that after having seen the true Light, after having witnessed the child who is God, the wise men went home by another way. They were changed; they could not go home the same way they came. The stakes were too high. They now were bearing the Light that they had encountered and everything was different.

When I think about the wise men going home by another way, I am reminded of my baptism. Because in baptism you see, we journey to the water and we encounter the Light, we encounter God in Jesus Christ, we encounter the Holy Spirit, and we cannot be the same ever again. We throw in our lot with Jesus and are made new; we are a new creation. Remember that the waters of baptism are at the same time life giving and life taking. We are made new, and we enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Water is powerful. And, we can’t go home by the route we came by, we must go home by another way.

We get a glimpse of that other way in baptism, and in the words of the baptismal covenant. What happens in baptism is three things. First, we journey to the water. We come from wherever we are to the living water. Not unlike those wise men. Next, we in a sense are separated from our parents to be immersed in the water. These are dangerous waters. Personally, I find that separation holds fear for me. Separation from loved ones, from family, from God, I am afraid of all of that. But what happens next is the amazing part. After being immersed in the water, separated from family and parents, we are reintegrated into a greater whole. We now are members of the body of Christ. We are re-membered in the body of Christ.

And we most assuredly go home by another way. We are not the same people as we were before entering those waters of baptism. And, we are not the same body of Christ we were before baptism. We are made a new person in baptism, and we are made a new community in baptism.

What is the alternative route by which we return home? It is a radical route. It takes us through green pastures, and more dangerous waters, it is a route that is filled with wolves and sheep. This is a route that calls us through transformation to wholeness; it is a route on which the adventure is not about you, but about whom we are together, and how we are related to God. On this route home we are called to be Light bearers. We are called to be Love bearers. We are called to bring God’s Love to dark corners, to mountaintops, to raging waters.

We are called to bring God’s Love to a fragmented society, to a culture that is pulled apart by greed. We are called to bring God’s Love to a culture that engages more and more in name calling and judgement. God’s Love, God’s Power, is the most powerful integrating force in creation. God’s Love moves us from brokenness, from fragmentation, to wholeness, to healing. You and I bear the scars of that brokenness, we bear the scars that fragments cut us with, and we bear the healing Love of God. It is that Love, that Light that we carry into the world. The work that our baptism equips us for is out there, bringing the Light into the world.

How do you bring God’s Love and God’s Light into the world, how do you bring God’s wholeness into your work or your school? It is our call, to bring God’s transforming love to those who have not yet seen or felt or known that love. It is our call to bear the Love that wins into the world. Be the light-bearer, be the love-bearer, just like those wise people of so long ago, and you will go home by another way.

Alleluia. To us a child is born: come let us adore him. Alleluia.

Holy Name, Jan 1 2012

2012-01-06T14:51:00.002-07:00

"What's in a name?" asked Juliet. Everything, my dear, everything. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In the beginning was the word, lest we forget. And the word was made God, and God was the word. What's in a name? Who is this little child, born in a barn, to upset the accepted order of things. Jesus, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Jesus, name above all names. Emmanuel, God with us.

The story we have before us today from Luke is the Hebrew naming ritual, and a marking ritual. It is the thing that makes a Hebrew boy, a Hebrew boy. Christians have a similar ritual, we call it Baptism. The first thing we do at Holy Baptism is to name the child. And then our children are marked as Christ's own forever. Naming is very important. Many cultures understand a name as that which a child will become. It must be chosen carefully, it may even be prophetic. Some of us are named for our ancestors, we carry the name of those saints who went before us, we may honor that person by the way we carry that name.

In Philippians we hear, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Each of us carries the name of Jesus by virtue of our baptism, maybe even by virtue of our shared humanity, Emmanuel, God with us. That's what is accomplished in the incarnation. This very God is re-presented in our world, born just like we are, with hands and a heart and eyes, with desires and expectations and fears, and given a name. Jesus. A name which both identifies him, that is, sets him apart from us, and meanwhile joins him to us. God no longer is located just in the Ark of the Covenant, or in the Temple, but God is located in all of creation, in you and in me. Each of us carries the holy name of Jesus, Prince of peace, with us, wherever we go, wherever we are.

So not only do we live our lives confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, at the very same time we live our lives filled with the divinity that is God with us, God in our midst. This Good News is transformational. It changes us, and all that we are and all that we do. The God who is love, the God who is creator of all that is seen and unseen, the God who this human story is all about, is also the God who lived, and loved, and suffered and died, so that we, humans, may be joined together to effect God's love, God's peace, God's compassion, God's mercy in this life. Love wins, love incarnate, wins.

You and I are covered, enveloped, by God's love, we are indeed imbued with God's holy name, Jesus. And that name calls us to be people of mercy and compassion, it calls us to be God's peace right here and right now. Not only are we assured of God's love, assured of being fearfully and wonderfully made, we have all we need to show forth God's love, Jesus' holy name, mercy and compassion, peace, in all that we are and all that we do. We are God's new creations, we are brought back into wholeness with God.

On this first day of the year, how will you bear God's holy name? In this year, how will love be born in you? How will love be born by you? How will incarnation transform you? This year, at this time, your response is critical. Today this is a year of possibility. It is new, and so are you. God has given you love, God has come into your life and your heart. Love wins, amen.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-23T12:03:00.001-07:00

It is time. We have been staying awake, we have been preparing for the faithful one. Love bursts into our world and our lives. Love interrupts us. Love wins. Sing a new song, let the heavens and earth be glad! For the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. It is time to join our yes with Mary's yes. We can hardly contain our joy for this good news.

Incarnation. Inconceivable, incarnation. Unreasonable, inconceivable, incarnation. God with us, born in a barn, in the muck and the mess of the stable, to a young girl, not yet married to her betrothed, Joseph. The romance of the birth of this long awaited baby Jesus soon turns into the flight of his parents into Egypt, to escape the tyranny of the emperor. The stars in the heavens signaled his birth, showing the magi the way to find him, but they had to return to their home by another way, to protect the little one.

This birth means no more business as usual, signified by the events of that night and the circumstances of this birth. They were waiting for a King and all those kingly things, and here was a child born in a barn with shepherds in attendance. They were looking for the Messiah, the one who would rescue them, and they received a boy, who brought his father's message, Love one another, as you have been loved first. But this birth is not just about rehabilitation, it is about resurrection.

For us that means that even our lives, sometimes filled by regret and disappointment, sometimes colored by cynicism, sometimes fueled by revenge, are transformed by this birth. It means that God even comes into our deepest sadness and pain and bears it for us, so that we may begin again.

This is a scary proposition because we've invested a lot to keep our lives as they are, and it can be down right frightening to give up what we know. But that's what Advent has been all about, keep awake, prepare, be ready to give it all up to the love that is born in our hearts, our lives, our world. It is scary, and it's thrilling at the same time, because this promise speaks to a place deep down inside each of us that wants something more, something more than a better job or higher income, something more than a more comfortable home or enjoyable retirement. These things may all be good, but they don't satisfy for long. We desperately want a sense of meaning and purpose, we desire to believe that there is more to this life than meets the eye, we need to hold onto the hope that despite all appearances we are worthy of love. This birth is about that love, this birth shows us that Love wins, every time.

And so God comes into the muck and the mess that is this barn, and that is our lives, to speak quietly but firmly through the blood, sweat, and tears of the labor pains of a young mother, and cry of her infant that God is absolutely for us, joined to our ups and down, our hopes and fears, and committed to giving us not just more of the same, but something more. Christ comes, that is, not just to give us more of the life we know, but new and abundant life altogether. For in Christ we have the promise that God will not stop until each and all of us have been embraced and caught up in God's tremendous love and have heard the good news that "unto you this day is born a savior, Christ the Lord." No wonder we sing, "Let heaven and earth rejoice!"

This incarnation, this unreasonable, inconceivable, incarnation, this birth, is about this God who creates us, who loves us so very much, this God comes to be with us, delivered into our world 2000 years ago as a baby just like us, crashing into our world as the miracle of birth. This God comes to us as a still small voice that we may only be able to hear at the most desperate times in our lives, when we fall to our knees and give it all over. This God comes to us in the indescribable words of prayer. This God comes to us crying in the voice of those who continue to be hungry and thirsty. This God comes to us singing in the voice of the child. This God comes to us in the multitude of voices calling for reason as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This God comes to us in the unfamiliar voice of the immigrant, looking for a better way. This God comes to us in the howling voice of the wind and the rain, redrawing the landscape of our lives. This God comes to us in the voice of the one who cries, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. This God comes to us when all will be fulfilled at the end of time.

This is the God who loves you so very much, unreasonably so, not because of what you've done or not done, not because of who you are or what you're worth. Not because of anything, other than you are a wonderfully and fearfully created child. And it is this love that wins, it is this love that transforms your heart, and your mind and your soul. It is this love that grows in you, that gives you reason to live fully and completely alive. It is this love that doesn't judge whether you have enough, are enough, or even give enough. Indeed, it is this love that makes dead people alive.

Love wins, Alleluia, to us a child is born. Come let us adore him, Alleluia!

4 Advent Yr B

2011-12-17T10:35:00.001-07:00

How do we begin to approach and try to understand this incredible, inconceivable story of incarnation? So far this advent we have heard, keep awake, pay attention, prepare for this one who is faithful. Today we hear yes to God’s offer of Love, Mary says yes, you and I say yes. But what if an angel came to you and said, “Fear not here comes God.” I don’t know about you, but I would be afraid. An angel comes and tells me not to be afraid, I’m gonna be terrified.

When I close my eyes and try to imagine this scene, I see Mary. In my imagination, Mary is a very young girl, and yet very excited to be a woman, and ready to be married to Joseph. Mary is a Jewish girl; she knows well the stories of God’s activity in the life of her people. She has lived her whole life in this community of faith. Mary has lived her whole life in the community of people who believe there is a special relationship between God and them. They believe that their story, the story of this community, day in and day out, through slavery, wilderness, kingdoms, and exile, is the story of God’s working through them to accomplish the divine purposes on earth.

God is trusting God’s people to have raised Mary in the right way, to have taught her the story of faith, taught her to recognize God’s hand at work in her life. Gabriel has made the proposition. The great archangel has announced God’s purpose, the heavenly messenger has posed the question, and the girl is clearly troubled.

Mary is perplexed. Perplexed in Greek leans much more towards “to be in doubt” or “not to know how to decide or what to do.” In my imagination, this is much closer to how I see Mary responding. Mary must have been terrified. She must have wondered what was happening to her, being visited by an angel was a new thing, there weren't stories of her people anyway about an angel visit.

“Not me, no way, I can’t do that. Don’t ask such a thing of me, I’m only a girl. You’ve got the wrong person. The God bearer should be royal, a person of honor, it can’t be me.” She must have doubted herself; she must have doubted her own capability to be the God bearer. Any young girl would. What must have gone through her mind?

And Gabriel responds, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” Mary, you are the one. Gabriel does go on to remind Mary of the story she already knows, the story of her people, and who this son is to be. Mary wants to know how this can be, since she is so young and yet a virgin. Mary voices the question each of us has as we hear this story.

How can this be? This is incredible, inconceivable, incarnation is unreasonable. This doesn’t make sense. Gabriel explains that the Holy Spirit will take care of it, and then gives her evidence of the possibility, her old, barren cousin Elizabeth is also pregnant, nothing will be impossible with God.

How can this be? How can Mary get pregnant by God? Is all of Christianity founded on this inconceivable possibility? I ask this question, because this question has been asked of me, by adults and children alike, by your children, by my children. I turn to one of my favorite writers, Madeleine L’Engle when I ponder these things. She writes in a book called Bright Evening Star, “It is not that in believing the story of Jesus we skip reason, but that sometimes we have to go beyond it, take leaps with our imagination, push our brains further than the normally used parts of them are used to going.” She goes on to write “I had to let go all my prejudices and demands for proof and open myself to the wonder of love. Faith is not reasonable because it wasn’t for reason, but for love that Jesus came.”

It is for love that Jesus came. And so, for love, Mary says yes. She actually says “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary says yes. And it is in love that we light the fourth candle on the advent wreath today.

Do you think Mary considered the implications of her yes? Of course there is the question, “What will people think?” But how does this particular baby change her, how does this particular baby change everything?

Today, I ask the question, what does Mary’s yes to the love of God, have to do with us? Mary’s active, engaged yes, empowers each of us to say yes to the possibility of God in our midst. Mary’s yes can be our yes. Indeed, it may be because of Mary's yes that Love wins. The angel Gabriel announced to Mary, “Hail favored one, the Lord is with you.” The Lord is with you, these are not just words spoken to Mary, these are words spoken to each of us and to all of us. Mary said yes, God waits for each of us to say yes.

The terrifying part of Gabriel’s invitation is what will happen if we say yes? What does God-bearing look like? Mary didn’t know, she risked everything when she said yes; she risked everything on the promise that God was with her. All we know is that saying yes to God changes everything and risks everything we have.

When we say yes to God, no longer are we the central character in the story. The story is about God and God’s love for us. It’s about the promise God made to Mary and God makes to us to bring us out of a life of greed and why not me, into a life that bears hope and promise. The real world is the world in which Mary said yes to God, and the world in which each of us says yes to God. It is living fully and completely, it is feeling pain and joy, it is giving and receiving, it is life, and it is death. This world is messy and confusing. A world into which God is born in a dirty barn, so that love could burst forth. It is a world in which we enter into relationships with one another, where we see each other face to face, it is a world in which how God created us is wonderful, it is a world in which we understand the sacred in each of us and treat each other as if we were all God-bearers.

“Fear not, here comes God.” We may be terrified, and reassured at the very same time that our yes brings Christ into this world. We Christians have been taught to look for the Christ in everyone we meet, to practice a radical hospitality to serve the Christ in each other, for in serving them we are serving Christ himself. What do we -- each of us -- have to offer the Christ this year? Where do we see the signs that Christ has been born among us?

Mary’s yes didn’t just happen all those years ago, Mary’s yes happens everyday you and I bear love ourselves. God is still up to something. God continues to burst forth in our lives. Love wins.

Keep awake, pay attention, prepare, fear not!
Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore him.

3 Advent Yr B

2011-12-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

Keep awake, repent and forgive, prepare, bear God's light and joy. This third Sunday of Advent we are so close, but not there yet. The path takes us through the waters of baptism with John and by the oaks of righteousness with Isaiah, to the place where our anticipation of the incarnation soars. In the Christmas season, where shopping and party’s have traditionally been the activities, we are reminded in Thessalonians that the one who calls you is faithful. Keep awake, pay attention, prepare for this one who is faithful.

The way we prepare is to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances. I don’t know about you, but that sure isn’t the way I hear the Christmas message coming from my TV, or the newspaper, or from what's trending on yahoo. The Christmas message that I’m getting is that the key to Christmas is to buy and buy and buy.

We are in a place and a time where this message; rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, the one who calls you is faithful, couldn’t be more appropriate. Here is where hope lies. Today we light the third candle on our advent wreath, the pink candle. We are filled with hope in the one who is faithful, the one who is to come, the one who has come, the one who will come again. We positively burst with excitement at the possibility and the reality of the light coming into our dark world.

The hope that we look at today is not to be confused with wishing. That often happens, wishing gets confused with hope. We misuse hope all the time when we say, hopefully, things will change, or I hope I get a new iPhone for Christmas, or I hope those Twins can sign Michael Cuddyer. Those are really wishes. We can wish for much, but it still isn’t hope. Christmas as we see it presented in the marketplace is all about wishes, but not about hope.

Hope lives in the reality of God with us, hope lives in the reality of the incarnation and in the resurrection. Hope is in the faithfulness of the one who calls your name. Listen to this Good News carefully. Hope is in the faithfulness of the one who calls your name. For me this is truly good news, hope is not in my ability to have enough faith, or any faith at all, those things live much more in the realm of wish, sometimes I may say to myself, I wish I had more faith. Hope is not in my ability to earn more money and buy more things; hope is not in wall street or the marketplace. And wishing all that won’t make it true. What is true is that the one who calls you and me is faithful. The one who calls you and me is trustworthy, reliable, devoted. This is the one in whom hope lives. This is the one who has made you and me new creations; this is the one who delights in us. This is the one who we prepare our hearts and our minds and our souls to receive into our lives now, this is the one who came 2000 years ago, and this is the one who will come again.

Joy is a result of this hope. Hope is similar to joy as wishing is similar to happiness. Happiness is something that the marketplace wishes to fulfill. You will be happy if you build a bigger house, you will be happy if you buy a nicer car, you will be happy if you make a lot of money, none of this has anything to do with joy. Joy lives in the reality of being the beloved of the one who created us, joy lives in the incarnational wonder of the one who created us.

Hope and joy are the realities of Emmanuel, God with us. The response to hope and joy is to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is a compelling reminder of the faithful response of a community that celebrates God’s saving actions in Jesus Christ.

How can we faithfully witness to the joy of God’s delight in us? And how might our actions and responses move us away from a climate of complaint to the creation of a climate of rejoicing? I turn to John's gospel. I am reminded of a mirror that reflects light. The mirror itself is not the light, but just think of a world in which each of us reflects the light, each one of us testify's to the light, just think how much light there would be, when we bring light into every dark place. We are in desperate need of light, we are hungry for God's glory to be revealed to us. Be a piece of that mirror, reflecting the light, all of us together reflecting the light, like John, begin to approach God's glory.

Keep awake, repent and forgive, prepare,
reflect God's light, watch for God with us.
Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore him.

2 Advent Yr B

2011-12-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, the first week of Advent we heard stay awake! Stay awake, something amazing is about to happen, stay awake, you don’t want to miss it, you don’t want to be so busy doing paying attention to something else that it passes you by. Stay awake!

Our collection of readings this second week of advent shows us how to tell time. One of my favorite stories to tell in Sunday school is the story about how the church tells time. The church tells time differently than the way our culture tells time. I’m reminded of a very old song by Chicago, the lyrics are, “As I was walking down the street one day, A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, And I said, Does anybody really know what time it is, Does anybody really care, If so I can’t imagine why, We’ve all got time enough to cry.” And then, “I was walking down the street one day, Being pushed and shoved by people trying to beat the clock, And I said, People runnin everywhere, Don’t know where to go, Don’t know where I am, Can’t see past the next step, Don’t have time to think past the last mile, Have no time to look around, Just run around, run around and think why.”

When we tell time the church’s way our year begins with the first Sunday of Advent, and our year begins in quiet waiting rather than loud revelry. Telling time the church’s way causes us to stay awake and to prepare for this amazing thing that God does in Jesus Christ. Telling time the church’s way causes us to take time to be present to ourselves, to one another, and to God. Telling time the church’s way helps us to live fully alive, fully engaged, and not to run around in circles, always wondering why we are alone, always wondering why we never get anywhere.

In Isaiah we hear that all of creation is getting ready, even the wilderness prepares the way of the Lord, every valley is lifted up, every mountain and hill are made low, everything is being rearranged for the day when it can be shouted, Here is your God! And in second Peter, one day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day. Does anybody really know what time it is, does anybody really care?

Advent not only marks the beginning of time, it also marks the beginning of the end of time. We begin the year again, we wait patiently for and prepare for birth, the coming of God into our world, and at the very same time, we wait patiently for and prepare for our Lord coming into our world again, the fulfillment of all things, as God promises. Does anybody really know what time it is, does anybody really care?

John the baptizer knows something about time. In fact I think he really does know what time it is, and he really does care what time it is. John knows that to live fully in the present, it’s time to repent; it’s time to be forgiven. It’s time to be prepared for the One who is to come. All creation is getting ready; it’s time for us to be ready. How are we to be fully present to God who is with us, and how are we to get ready for the One who is to come?

I’m not sure that the season our culture experiences as Christmas has much to do with repentance and forgiveness. I’m not sure that the season our culture experiences as Christmas has much to do with being fully present to God in our midst. I’m not sure that the season our culture experiences as Christmas has much to do with being ready for the One who is to come at all. But if it really is time for repentance and forgiveness, we’d better get around to it. Repentance and forgiveness are about turning away from that which keeps us from a relationship with God and with others. lf it is time for repentance and forgiveness, as John the baptizer says it is, what is it that we need to turn away from? Where is it that we miss the mark? Not only individually, but collectively. How do we even know where the mark is? I think we can find the mark in our baptismal covenant. Seeing as this story from Mark is a story of baptism, maybe it is good to look at our baptismal promises as the mark.

As we live fully present to God in our midst and as we prepare for the One who is to come, we may measure ourselves against this: we are to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers; we are to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; we are to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; we are to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves; we are to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

This is the mark to which we point ourselves. And when we miss the mark, when we fall short, we repent and ask for forgiveness, and we try again. Does anybody really know what time it is? According to John the Baptist, it is time to repent and seek forgiveness.

As we live fully present to God in our midst and as we prepare for the One who is to come, like Mary and Elizabeth, like the Shepherds, we may also look for those signs that show us the way, those signs that tell us that this is Advent, the time of preparation for Immanuel, God with us. God signs. What are the things, the people, the circumstances that call us to be fully present to God with us, fully alive as the new creations we are. What wakes us up and causes us to say, hummm, that was a God sign. There are God signs all around us, signs of God with us, signs that may even cause us to see how we miss the mark, signs that help us to know what time it is, signs that show us that Love wins.

I encourage you to spend some time this advent being fully present to God with us, I encourage you to spend this new year fully awake and aware of God with us. I encourage you to share with one another the God signs in your life. Keep awake, prepare, repent, and watch and wait.

Feast of St. Andrew

2011-12-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

In the Jewish tradition, the name you give your child has everything to do with your hopes and dreams for who that child will grow up to be. Many people name their children for beloved aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. Names have meaning. This community of faith is named for St. Andrew. I’m thankful we are St. Andrew, and not St. Barnabus, after the red barn that our forebears met in during the early years, and that burned down.

Andrew was a fisherman, a very obvious occupation for a boy who grew up on the Sea of Galilee, and who probably sat by his father in his father’s boat, and had it not been for Jesus, Andrew would have raised his boys to be fishermen too. But Andrew encountered Jesus, and Jesus said to Andrew and some others, Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.

This encounter changed Andrew’s life forever. Andrew left a sure occupation, a certain paycheck, to follow Jesus, who he really only knew by reputation, the teacher, the rabbi. Not only did Andrew leave his livelihood, he also left his family, and in Andrew’s culture, it is the family that confers any honor and status. Now being a fisherman wasn’t a lofty profession, but being a hardworking son had a degree of respect. Andrew and the others left that to follow this teacher, this one who had no home to lay his head, had no discernible livelihood, had no food to eat, for the promise that he would fish for people.

I can’t even begin to imagine what that meant to Andrew. Maybe it was just about adventure, maybe it was about hanging with a brotherhood, maybe Andrew experienced something in this man, Jesus. What we know from this side of the story is that something amazing did happen, but Andrew couldn’t have known that.

I look toward Andrew as an example of discipleship. Jesus encountered Andrew and Andrew was changed. He didn’t have all the answers, but he knew greatness when he saw it. He may have been judged by his boyhood pals he left behind as being stupid, or even wrong. But discipleship is not about being right or being wrong, discipleship is about being changed by this encounter with Jesus.

Jesus’ life and death and pain and suffering and resurrection from the dead is about the new life that God offers us, and that new life, that new creation, changes us, transforms us. Living in the new life that Jesus begins for us, is exciting, and scary, and it isn’t easy. Discipleship isn’t easy. But as Andrew did, when we are changed by this encounter, we invite others to join us. We invite others into this transformation that God offers.

New life is about hope in the midst of difficulty, hope when all hope seems lost. You and I, just like Andrew, can offer hope in this broken world. We must be the ones who invite, come and see, come and see what this new life looks like, come and see, what wholeness and peace looks like. Come and see.

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come and see.

Christ the King Year A

2011-11-19T18:41:00.003-07:00

Recall your math classes in school. I for one, was not much for the math option. I did get through Algebra 1 and Geometry successfully, but the rest, Calculus, Trigonometry, Statistics, not my cup of tea. I was a good student, I listened in class, did my homework, and relied heavily on the answers in the back of the book. I am ever thankful for those answers in the back of the book.

The book we read together, our bibles, the story of God's activity in the life of God's people, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on our need for answers, has no answers in the back. And that is especially frustrating in the midst of this book of Matthew, it would be so much easier if we could just turn to the back and have it all worked out for us. We find ourselves in this place where it just keeps getting harder. Story after story shows the demands for discipleship, and Jesus' impending death, and there are no answers.

What these stories show us is that Jesus did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive. New life is not about right answers, it is about responding to God's amazing and abundant love. New life, transformation, conversion, whatever you want to call it, demands a response, and that response is about being a disciple, and disciples feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the sick and visit the imprisoned.

In the story before us today, we see the Lord of all creation, the King on the throne of glory, with everyone gathered together. For some this is a scary story, we may ask ourselves, am I a sheep, or am I a goat? Do I sit on Jesus' right? Do I enjoy eternal life or am I to be banished forever? I think these questions are all beside the point. The truth is that we are not totally one or the other, ever. And I don't think it's about a percentage of goodness or badness. Did I do the right thing 51 percent of the time, and is that enough? That's not the way Jesus acts here.

Our reality is that we don't always respond to every opportunity of Jesus in our midst with total generosity, we don't always give away our coat, we don't always provide a meal, we don't always visit those who are sick or imprisoned. I think what is really going on here is a story about discipleship, and what really gets us into trouble is doing nothing. Jesus is Lord over all the earth and has something so say about what we do, and what we do is to love God with all our heart and mind and soul, and love our neighbor as ourselves. We aren't asked to do it perfectly, but we are expected to do it. That is what followers of Jesus do. This story is about that expectation.

This new life that Jesus gives us, this transformed life, is all about relationship, relationship with God and with others. It is not about following a particular set of rules, it is not about being perfect, or being perfectly bad, it's about relationship. It's about relationship with God who is creator of the universe. It is about a relationship with Jesus who walked this earth to show us that Love wins. It is about a relationship with others in whom we believe Jesus lives and moves and has his being.

It is in this relationship and these relationships, that we are fully alive. We don't feed hungry people, clothe naked people, visit sick and imprisoned people because of the reward, or because we work at earning God's love. We do these things in response to the amazing and abundant love that God lavishes upon us, and that we experience in the life, the suffering and death, and the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus came to make dead people alive. Living fully alive is the fruit of resurrection.

Author Anne Lamott said in her graduation commencement address to the students at Berkeley, “Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are." And by one much, much, much earlier than Anne Lamott, St. Irenaus of Lyons, "Man fully alive is the glory of God."

Our lives have already been given by God, and we have already been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever in baptism. God is already in relationship with us, we have already been born again, we have already received new life, the dead have been made alive, Love wins. We are to embrace that reality and live it fully and completely, we are to live fully alive, we are to live as disciples, and the way we do that is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. As we do these things which are the right things to do, God is blessed.

So what does it mean when we don't do these things. Does God love us any less? Are we ultimately in peril? Once again, no answers at the back of the book. But it seems to me that not doing these things lessens our lives. Not doing these things means we are not living the new life that Jesus has given, not doing these things is not living fully alive and not blessing God.

I also want to point out that what is absent in these discipleship instructions has quite a loud voice. What is absent is "live for yourself, be narcissistic, make as much money as you can and don't share it with anyone." What is absent is "use other people and creatures and things and when you're finished throw them out." What is absent is a list of the kind of people you can fall in love with.

Come, you that are blessed, all of you, when I was hungry, you fed me, when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, when I was a stranger you welcomed me, when I was naked you gave me clothes, when I was sick you took care of me, when I was imprisoned you visited me. It's not complicated, it's not easy, we aren't perfect. We are loved, we are blessed, we are broken, we are sent. The Lord who is of all things seen and unseen, asks us to love each other, to treat each other with mercy and compassion, to show the world that Love wins.

Amen

22 Pentecost Yr A

2011-11-12T18:51:00.001-07:00

I see the television show, Fear Factor is back on, all new, and even more fear. Fear sells, we see that with the proliferation of vampire and zombie stories on television and in the movies. Fear sells, we see that as simply as teasers for the news, "see how the air in your house is killing you, tonight at 10." You show up to watch and they'll sell you the next wonder product. Fear sells, we hear ads for various and sundry medications, "afraid of loosing your hair, take this red pill." But what the gospel tells us is that the highest good is God's kingdom, not our security or our longevity, or immortality. In a culture of fear, it is hard to believe that God is enough.

Some would say we live in dark and fearful times. Granted, there is much uncertainty about leadership, about economics, some may even say national security. A culture of fear promotes the idea that the accumulation of wealth is a reasonable response to uncertain times. But I say our actions in dark and fearful times say who we are. And it is high time we say who we are, and who we want to be. I think we must examine our consumerism and our consumption and we must learn to use less. I think we must examine our impact upon our Mother Earth, and we must learn to live with less of an impact. I think we must examine our relationships with our neighbors and learn to respond with mercy and compassion. Our actions in dark and fearful times say who we are.

Our actions in dark and fearful times say who we are. So, who are we? We are people of hope. We are people of joy. We are people of mercy. We are people of compassion. We are people who believe that there is always new life after suffering and death. We are stewards of God's abundance. We are God’s children, and God has poured out God’s abundance upon us. We are people who do not give in to fear. We are people who take risks for the kingdom, not for ourselves, but for the Kingdom.

That is what the parable in Matthew shows us today. This story shows us that fear limits our capacity to be the children that God has created us to be. This story shows us that fear limits our capacity to participate in the mission and ministry that God has called us to. This story shows us that fear limits our capacity to be the new creations that God has made us to be. This story shows us that we are people of hope, and that we must move from fear to hope.

Many things have been said about the third servant in Matthew’s story. I say that servant was living out of fear, and that fear limited his ability to be the disciple God had created him to be. He focused all his energy on preserving things as they are, and missed God’s abundance. Fear caused him to be unable to experience God’s abundance. Fear caused him to be unable to risk living fully as a new creation. Fear caused him to be unable to see that he was created in God’s image. When we live out of fear, when we risk experiencing God’s abundance because we are afraid, we are much like that servant. Not only do we lose sight of God’s abundance, but we begin to lose the gifts that God has given us as well. Fear keeps us from claiming God’s abundance, and separates us from a relationship with God and with others, we indeed choose the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

What are you afraid of? Not having enough? Something happening to your children? Dying before you're ready? Failure? Being abandoned?

Moving from fear to hope seems like folly to many in our culture. But the rules of God’s economy are quite different than the rules of the marketplace. In God’s economy, as Matthew shows us, everyone is abundantly gifted, everyone has value and worth. In God’s economy, to risk is to claim God’s abundance. In God’s economy, being a steward is a given, the choice is between being a good steward or not. In God’s economy, to risk losing what our culture counts as valuable is to gain everything. Well-done, good and trustworthy servant. In God's economy, there is always life after suffering and death.

If these are indeed dark and fearful times, our actions say who we are. We are God’s creation, and we are stewards of that creation. The question remains, as we move from fear to hope, what kind of a steward do you want to be?

Find a way to be generous; there is so much need in our community. We are well fed, people are hungry. The shelves at the food bank are empty, our cash can fill them. I ask you today to be a bold steward. I ask you today to put your trust in God’s economy. I ask you today to move to action. I remind you today of our hope in Jesus Christ. If indeed these are dark and fearful times, I ask you to be generous, not only to our St. Andrew’s budget, not only to the mission and ministry we can do together, but to just be generous for the sake of the Kingdom and the sake of God’s economy. Our actions in dark and fearful times say who we are. We must respond in hope, what we do matters to the kingdom, what we do matters to those we share this earth with.

Act out of hope. Act with mercy and compassion. Act generously. Act as the beloved child of God that you are. Act boldly. Risk everything. Love wins.

All Saints Day Yr A

2011-11-07T09:21:00.001-07:00

Twenty-three years ago on this day, our son Tom was baptized, and twenty-one years ago on this day our son Willie was baptized. All Saints Day is my most favorite church day, next to the Easter Vigil. I love it because in word and sacrament on this day, we are so clearly part of something beyond ourselves, we are part of a communion and a community that shows forth God's amazing and abundant love. We tell a story in which we are active participants and that connects us to all those who came before us, and to all those who will come after us.

It is important to be active participants in this story, it is important to tell the story, and it is important to shape the story as it moves into this young 21st century. That's what we, as saints, as part of the communion of saints, do. In the New Testament, the word “saints” is used to describe the entire membership of the Christian community, and in the collect we read for All Saints Day the word “elect” is used in a similar sense. Our problem with the word "saints", is that from very early times, “saint” came to be applied primarily to persons of heroic sanctity, whose deeds were recalled with gratitude by later generations.

But we use “saints” today in the former sense, to describe the entire membership of the Christian community. This day we are intentionally connected to all those who have come before us, all those who are here today, and all those who will come after us. Today we stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder as we remember the stories of our people, and we look toward those stories to show us the way of this life of discipleship. We are shaped by these stories, and who we are and what we do in these days, shapes the world around us. Who we are and what we do makes a difference here today, and each day makes a difference. Those we baptized here today enter into this story with us, and make a difference to the communion of saints.

These people we have called upon today lived or live lives that attest to the Beatitudes, the passage we heard from Matthew. Their stories attest to the struggle to live lives that have been formed and informed by Scripture. Their stories are part of the bigger story. Our stories attest to the struggle to live lives that are formed and informed by Scripture.

These are stories of creation, of blessing, of sin and our need for forgiveness, of being reconciled, of dying and rising to something absolutely new and different. As we tell our stories we reflect on our own suffering and joy, we realize that we are participants in the story of God with us. Our stories tell of our relationships with one another, our relationships with God, our relationships to those who came before us, and our relationships with those who will follow us.

The importance of telling our stories is two fold. First, so that we can find our place in the story of God in our midst, and second, so that we can find our place in history, we can see how we are related to one another and to the world; so we can see how all of us have been given a gift of relationship, and how with that gift is a responsibility to care for one another and to care for the created order, and to care for ourselves.

It is responding to that gift that makes us participants in creation, and as participants, we are not perfect. That's why it's unfortunate that word "saint" has taken on a meaning that connotes perfection, or heroism. There is nowhere I can find in the bible that God has required any one of us to be perfect, but time and time again I find where God has required us to respond to what life throws at us with mercy and compassion, born out of our suffering and sadness.

And it is on this most appropriate of days that we baptize Hannah, Alivia, and Kaitlin. There are four days of the church year on which Holy Baptism is especially appropriate: the Easter Vigil, the Day of Pentecost, this day All Saint’s, and on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord.

On these days, and at each baptism, we renew our own baptismal vows. We renew our resolve to respond to the gift of Jesus Christ in our midst in ways that form us as disciples.
We renew our commitment to live as saints, as participants in the coming of Christ, as participants in the story of new creation, as participants in the story that Love wins.

On this most festive of days, let us give thanks for the communion of saints, for the saints that have gone on before us, for all who gather here this day and who gather around the world, and for those who will follow us.
Amen

20 Pentecost Yr A

2011-10-30T07:23:00.002-06:00

Many years ago, my husband Rick managed the Episcopal Ad Project, which produced some amazing ads for the Episcopal Church. It was at that time that we became Mac people. Rick worked on one of the very first Macintosh computers, it was a box that sat on his desk and it was a wonder to behold. He got to do all of his work on, and I even got to use it too. We’ve only bought Apples since then, although sometimes we have to use the other ones. In those days who would have thought that each of us would have a computer on our desk, and each of us would carry one in our pockets and in our purses. Who would have thought that I'd be standing here today with what I want to say on my ipad? Who would have thought? Steve Jobs thought, and all those who worked closely with him. As I have spent some time reflecting on Steve Jobs life and death, I think his example of innovative thinking, I would call it imaginative thinking, serves us well. What, besides Steve Jobs death, would cause me to begin this sermon with this story? I think what we have in our readings from Matthew lately is Jesus’ critique of peoples’ failure of imagination. Jesus kept at the Pharisees, whether they were in the gathered crowds, or lurking at the edges like in our reading today, encouraging them to think and act from their center, from their hearts, to listen to their intuition, and not to limit their imaginations, indeed, to follow their imaginations. What I think we can learn from Steve Jobs is about imagination. Not only did he think outside the box, he made a whole new box, and the cloud has a whole new meaning. Steve Jobs did not suffer from a failure of imagination. In the passage we have before us today, as in all the recent passages from Matthew, there were many, including the Pharisees, who were very happy and comfortable with the status quo, with the way things are. There is no judgement in that, but what Jesus was doing was calling them, and us as well, to a whole new way of being. Jesus calls us to act from our centers, from our hearts and from our guts, and to live lives of mercy and compassion, to create something new, something almost unimaginable, especially for those who lack imagination, and that is a compassionate reality. Jesus called the Pharisees and all who gathered to hear him, and Jesus calls us to an absolutely new paradigm, an unbelievable paradigm, maybe even unimaginable, all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.Remember that the culture of the first-century world was built on the foundational social values of honor and dishonor. Honor was seen as the first and foremost value. The system was not based on values of good and bad, but on behavior that is viewed as disgraceful, or behavior that is viewed as noble, and the honor or disgrace a particular behavior will bring to the group. As modern day Americans we have some trouble with this, because these values are held as group norms, and we live in an individualistic culture. But it is important for us to know these things as we read this New Testament text, so that we may grasp even a little of the paradigm shift, the great imagination that it takes to understand what Jesus is saying and doing in these texts. The Pharisees' desire for prestige and honor comes under fire with the accusation that they act solely in order to win praise from others. They wear showy prayer shawls with long fringes that will draw attention to themselves, and they always want to be in the most conspicuous places so that folks will see them, treat them with deference, and reward them with titles of honor. "Rabbi," "father," and "instructor" are specific titles to be shunned by Matthew's community. These are all titles that carry both status and authority in the value system of the Empire in which all of these people live. "Father" in particular was the term for the head of a household, whose total life-or-death authority mirrored the role of the emperor. To seek such roles and titles would be seen as desirable and in conformity to the hierarchical values of the Roman Empire, but those values should not prevail for Jesus' followers.For them the vision and practice of an egalitarian community, with God and the Messiah as the only authorities to be accorded honor and obedience, are hallmarks they share with the divine reign whose coming Jesus proclaimed. So it is into all this that Jesus says, "All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted." This is unimaginable for all but those who can think outside the box. Jesus is asking his followers to imagine a new world, a new kingdom, in which there is no honor garnered by what you do or to whom you belong, a new kingdom in which every person, tax collector, woman, child, jew or greek, has equal access to love and worth. Every person has access to a community that affords new life in a world that would trample them underfoot. This new world that Jesus is making possible and Jesus' followers were invited to imagine is a world in which those who have two coats give one to the one who has none, those who have much to eat give to those who have little to eat. It is a world in which worth is assigned by being a child of God, the delight of God's life. God inaugurates this new world in Jesus, that is how we understand the resurrection, God recreates reality as they knew it in their time. You and I are living in the same new creation, our lives are transformed by God so that we may also live as new creations, alive to the absolute and abundant love that is available to us. And we, members of this community of imagination, of new birth and new life, are called to be partners in living this compassionate reality. We are called to live generously and abundantly with all that we are and all that we have. We are called to speak for those who cannot speak, we are called to give for those who cannot give, we are called to love so those who cannot may learn to love themselves. We are called to imagine the world Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead for. We are called to live each and every day, each and every moment, in the truth that Love does indeed win.

19 Pentecost Yr A

2011-10-22T18:22:00.001-06:00

Which commandment in the law is the greatest? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, this is the greatest and first commandment, and the second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees, who were the experts of their day, is straight out of the Hebrew scripture. Jesus knows those scriptures well; he didn’t have them written in front of him, like we do, he had them on his heart, and in his soul. Those scriptures are part of the very fiber of his being. Those scriptures were what each Hebrew boy and girl heard every day of their lives. They new the story of creation, they knew the story of Noah, of Moses, of Exodus and Exile, of David, the Prophets, they knew the story about the angel passing over their homes when they put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts; they knew the stories of their ancestors. We need to know our story, knowing our story, knowing where we came from, knowing to whom we belong gives us value and worth. Our story teaches us, shows us, tells us that we are created in God's image. That story is ultimately important because being created in God’s image is where love is located. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind is about the truth of the story that constitutes us, that makes us who we are. So God’s love for us is not about how we feel on any given day or at any given time. God’s love for us is the in the pattern of action that is the story that tells us who we are. You have heard your story many times, I have told you this story many times. It is the story of creation, of blessing, of separation and independence from God, of repentance, reconciliation, and resurrection. In this story, God who is the creator of the universe, comes to be one of us, Jesus, lives, loves suffers and dies, and is raised to absolutely new life. It is the story that shows us Love Wins.But we usually don’t see the arc of the whole story all the time. From our point of view it's hard to see the wholeness of the story. We sometimes find ourselves in one part of the story, or we catch glimpses of ourselves in the story. When we are engulfed in darkness it's very hard to trust that there is light. But it is when we come out of suffering and sadness with hope and joy that we really can experience the love and the light, and the new life that God has for us. And we remember, we remember God's love for us and for all of creation. Sometimes, when we listen carefully, we can actually hear God’s love for us in the voices of the people whom we encounter, especially at times of deepest sorrow or quiet joy. But how do you know about love and how can you see God's love if you don’t know where you come from and who created you? Or if you don't know that God's love is a love that gives, a love that looks for the best for the other. It is a love that is patient and kind, compassionate and merciful. God's love does not look much like the love that we witness in so many places in our culture. If the only love people know is like what they watch on TV and see in movies, their view of love is indeed distorted. That love is all about sexual attraction. That love is all about excitement. That love is about revenge and passion. That love is all about what you get out of it, it is about demanding a return. But love in the bible really has very little to do with how we feel. Love in the first-century Mediterranean world was not a vague warm feeling toward someone, but a pattern of action -- attachment to a person backed up with behavior. The two commandments Jesus gives demand nothing less than heart, soul, and mind -- in other words, every part of a person capable of valuing something – and that those capacities be devoted to God and to every neighbor. There is no one exempt from the category of neighbor, the Parable of the Good Samaritan shows us that. So what we read today is a continuation of what we read last week. Last week we heard that everything comes from and belongs to God. Everything. This continuation of that reading demands nothing less than everything, heart, soul and mind. Jesus' call will compel each one of his followers to take the fullest extent of God's love to the furthest reach of that love, to every person whom God made. As God has first loved us, we will love others.This is Jesus’ call to us to ministry. Everything comes from God and belongs to God, and that demands a pattern of action, love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor; remembering that love is not how we feel, but a decision we make, a pattern of action. Love is a pattern of action. The pattern of action that God shows forth is, creation, blessing, dependence on God, forgiveness, and new life. This is how we are to love our neighbors, and our neighbors are everyone, the outcasts and the sinners, you and me. So what does that look like? Our Old Testament passages of late have given us some parameters. Those stories show us that there are no other Gods, and no idols, and after that comes keep Sabbath. Keeping Sabbath means that every seven days, every seven hours, every seven minutes maybe, we should stop what we are doing and rest, maybe even pray, “thank you lord for your abundant love and blessings, thank you for this moment to give you glory and praise.” We are to respect the people to whom we are related, and we are all related, we are not to murder, we are not to be promiscuous, we are not to steal, we are not to lie about our neighbor, and we are not to be greedy. These are the actions of love. The results of all these actions of love are right relationships, and an attitude of abundance and thanksgiving. When we act in love we adopt a posture of mercy and compassion. The original question the Pharisees ask Jesus is which commandment in the law is the greatest? Jesus answers not with law, but with the pattern of action that is love. You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all you soul, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does indeed win.

18 Pentecost Yr A

2011-10-16T07:41:00.001-06:00

The Pharisees ask Jesus two questions of great importance, or so they think. One of those questions we will hear next week in Matthew's gospel, which is the greatest commandment, and Jesus’ answer to that question is: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. The other question of great importance is really a group of questions all around the acquisition and use of wealth. The rich young man asks Jesus who can be saved, Jesus answers, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. There is the story of the widow who gives all that she has, the story of the talents, and on it goes. And of course the question the Pharisees ask of Jesus in Matthew's gospel today. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? But what we have is actually one of the oldest tricks in the book. Entrapment. That’s what the Pharisees are about in this story, pure and simple. They know very well the Jewish law against creating images. We read all about that last week in Exodus. The Israelites took all the gold from their ears, their sons’ ears, and their daughters ears, melted it down and made an idol out of it. Not making and worshiping idols is the commandment second only to loving God. The Pharisees know what they ask of Jesus creates what we today call cognitive dissonance. You can’t act one way without compromising your morals; it’s the slippery slope. We go about rationalizing these things all the time. I do it on a smaller practical scale all the time, should I eat that doughnut, or should I eat that apple? I want the doughnut because I believe it will make me feel good, because I like it, because I deserve it, because it’s fun… But I eat the apple because I believe it’s good for me, because it tastes good, because I need the vitamins, because it will help me in the long run. What we do has to do with the priorities we choose for our lives. If you’re a list maker, you’d list the pros in one column, the cons in another, and make your choice. The Pharisees are trying to entrap Jesus, if Jesus says we don’t pay taxes to the emperor he’s guilty of sedition, but if Jesus says we use these coins with an image on them to pay taxes to the emperor, he’s guilty of breaking the commandment. Caesar or God? This is not just a slippery slope, it is a no win situation. But Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees question, as is his answer each time they ask him questions about wealth is really simple. It’s all God’s. It’s all God’s. There is no hierarchy, there is no priority list, and there are no top ten things that belong to God. The question is pointless. It is all God’s. You see, there is nothing that is the emperor’s. All wealth comes from God. And wealth includes so much more than money. There are some ramifications of this for us today. All wealth comes from God, we live in a land in which order is kept by a mutual agreement that everyone shares in the responsibility of government and infrastructure and protection. Therefore we pay your share. But all we have still comes from God. The story that informs us and transforms us is that we are created by God in God’s image, and we are related to all of creation. God’s abundance in creation is already bestowed upon us. Our job is to hold it in trust, and to care for it. This then becomes what we call stewardship. God’s abundance, give to God the things that are God’s, and everything is God’s. But here in America many continue to live by the narrative of frontier individualism. Every man is more or less for himself, a good neighbor is one who needs no help. But this narrative runs counter to the primary virtues of Jesus Christ, which are compassion and community. The understanding of wealth in the bible has nothing to do with frontier individualism or individual portfolios. It is not about acquisition, and it is anathema to greed. No wonder we have so much trouble talking about money, we hardly know the words to use. The understanding of wealth in the bible has everything to do with God’s abundance, with compassion, community, and relationship. So if wealth has everything to do with God’s abundance, with compassion, community and relationship and with all of creation, what does that mean for us? Events in the world around us have been making many nervous lately. The stock market, the housing market, the price of gas. I don’t know what it all means, but I’m sure many of you are feeling much anxiety. So a passage like this, telling us in no uncertain terms, that none of our wealth belongs to us anyway, that we are to be compassionate, and that God’s abundance is clear, may make you more nervous, or it may give you the freedom you need. You see, the real measure of our wealth is how much we'd be worth if we lost all our money. Consider Richard Semmler: Semmler, a 59-year-old mathematician, teaches calculus and algebra at Northern Virginia Community College. He can explain how to find the derivative of a polynomial and all sorts of complicated equations. But in his private life, Semmler has reduced his existence to the simplest equation. In the last 35 years, by working part-time jobs and forgoing such everyday comforts as a home telephone and vacations, by living in an efficiency apartment and driving an old car, Semmler has donated as much as half of his annual income or more to charity. His goal: $1 million before he retires. Semmler said ‘If I didn't do all of the things I was doing, I would probably have a new car every two years and I would have a huge house with a huge pool,’ Semmler donated $100,000 to build a Habitat for Humanity house, which he also worked on himself to build. Percentage-wise, Semmler's generosity is exceedingly rare among the middle-class -- or the rich, for that matter, say those who study philanthropy. Each year, U.S. households give away an average of 2 percent of their income to nonprofit and religious organizations, according to Giving USA, which tracks donation trends. A household with Semmler's annual income, $100,000, donates an average of $2,000 annually to charity. Last year, Semmler gave away $60,000. Semmler believes life isn't always about multiplying what you get, sometimes it's about subtraction.* What could we accomplish if we decided not to give just 2%, or even 10%, but if we would live with the attitude that it's all God's anyway, and by keeping any of it we're stealing from God. Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s. It’s all God’s.

17 Pentecost Yr A

2011-10-08T21:32:00.001-06:00

The Rev. Kathy Monson Lutes17 Pentecost Proper 23 Yr A Oct 9 2011Exodus 32:1-14Psalm 106Philippians 4:1-9Matthew 22:1-14Page of 1We are at a time in the live of our family where there are many weddings to attend. It started three years ago with my nephew’s wedding. That wedding was north of Duluth MN, north of Two Harbors for those of you who may be familiar with Lake Superior’s north shore, just before you get to Gooseberry Falls. Two more nephews have been married since then, and two nieces. The weddings have varied, three of them were outside on the shore of lakes and two of them were very traditional church weddings. And, we've witnessed amazingly varied wedding wear on the diverse people that have been gathered for these weddings. The most interesting wedding wear was at the wedding of my nephew the actor who lives in New York, there were many New Yorkers there, young like him, 30ish, very well tattooed and pierced. The wedding attire ran the gamut from amazingly dressy to jeans and t-shirts, there didn’t seem to be any expectation of appropriate dress. That wedding was also the first time I’d received a postcard, about 9 months previously, advising me to save the date, that seems to be the norm now as well. I appreciated that little notice, because it really helped me to make plans to be there, about 4 weeks before the wedding we received the actual wedding invitation. People came from far and wide to be at this wedding celebration. In my life, the invitation to a party is an exciting thing. Part of the fun of a party is the expectation, the anticipation. Part of the fun of a party is being included, belonging. The “save the date” postcard I received for my nephew’s wedding went on my refrigerator door; the date went on my calendar. As soon as I received the actual invitation, I replaced the postcard, I looked at it often, imagining the fun, imagining the family gathered, imagining the celebration we would have at the very first wedding of any of my mother’s grandchildren. It’s a bit unlike the response of the people in our story from Matthew today, they made light of the invitation, and even killed the messengers who delivered the invitation. The king may have shrugged and said, well then, if the chosen are not interested in the wedding celebration, then go and invite any one you want, they went to the outer reaches of the kingdom, they went to the margins, and those who came to the celebration were honored to be there. The God of abundance has made a great offer, come to the feast. The God of abundance has set the table, has prepared a wonderful banquet. The thing about an invitation is that we can choose to come, or not. The thing about this relationship with God is that we can choose to be in it or not, we are never compelled. As all these people arrived, people from all over the kingdom, people who were honored to be there; the ones who were tattooed and pierced, the ones who were curious and doubtful, the ones who were questionable and the ones who were upstanding, the ones who loved and hated, but all people who respected the king and the occasion for which they gathered, these people received a wedding garment, a robe. The people gathered for this wedding banquet mostly were the people gathered from the margins, they were the people who responded yes to the great offer made to them. They put on the wedding garment with honor and respect to the King. Except the one in our story. He won’t put on the wedding garment. Not putting on the wedding garment is the very same thing as not saying yes to this relationship into which he was being invited. The outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, is of his own choosing. Putting on the wedding garment, putting on the robe, reveals a willingness to respond to the abundant banquet that is available to us now, and available to us at the fulfillment of time. When I reread this story, I was reminded of the garment each of us puts on at baptism, figuratively and literally. The baptismal garment re-presents to us that new creation we become when Jesus calls us over the tumult of our life’s wild restless sea, day by day his clear voice sounds, saying “Christian, follow me.” We are dressed as one ready, ready to follow, ready to be a voice in the cacophony, ready to dive into the relationship that is offered to us by the one who prepares the banquet of abundance, the one whose heart's desire is to be in relationship with us. When we put on the wedding garment, or the baptismal garment, it does not signify that we are finished, that we have arrived, or that we are perfected or done, because we are only beginning. We are saying yes to the abundant and amazing love that waits for us. We are saying yes to the journey of life and yes to the knowledge that the journey is not by ourselves, but with the one who creates us, the one who reconciles us, the one who revives us. Life is not a journey that should be taken by oneself; it is a hard and treacherous journey, as well as a joyful and exciting journey. It is a journey of love and forgiveness; it is a journey of grace and mercy. And it is a journey that our creator God desperately wants to accompany us on. So much so, that God came into this time and space, to be just like you, just like me, with all the joys and hopes, all the pain and the suffering, that human life has to offer. And so much love, that Jesus was willing to put himself in our place, to offer himself to suffering and death, so that you and I are not condemned to pain and sadness and tragedy for ever. This abundant banquet is there for the taking. Nothing is held over our heads, no strings attached. The love that provides the banquet flows in and through and among us, and we have the opportunity to respond. We have the opportunity to pay that love forward. We have the opportunity to show forth the love that has been offered to us, and to be people of love and forgiveness ourselves. The response to this abundance that God offers to us through God’s son Jesus, is to offer that same love and forgiveness to others. It is not to hoard, it is not to keep to ourselves. It is to offer ourselves, as Jesus offers his life to us, we offer this love to others. The hard part is that Jesus offers this love to everyone, sinners included. Thank God for that, because that means you and I have a place in this amazing kingdom too. And equally exciting is the abundant banquet that is in store for us at the fulfillment of time. We get a foretaste of that banquet in the bread and the wine that we share together each Sunday we gather. We get glimpses of grace, and those glimpses are powerful. One of those glimpses of grace is that everyone is included. You and I are included, the liar and the cheat are included, the tax collector and the sinner are included. I think what is hard for us is that we come to believe that the abundance is the reward for right behavior, so that those whose behavior is not up to a particular standard can’t be part of the banquet. But that’s not the way it works. It’s the invitation that changes us. It’s the abundance that transforms us. It’s the anticipation and the expectation of seeing our friends and our loved ones that causes us great joy. Once we put on that wedding garment, or baptismal garment, we are not the same. We are made new, God’s love, God’s power, God’s abundance changes us. We can love others, we can forgive others. We no longer live for ourselves, or for greed, or for power. We no longer live for ourselves, but we live in relationship, and in relationship we find joy and peace. Thanks be to God.

14 Pentecost Yr A

2011-09-17T20:36:00.001-06:00

So your teenager walks into the house after school, or after football practice, or band rehearsal, or just takes a break from homework, or even about an hour after dinner, and looks through the cupboards, opens the refrigerator door, and says, "Mom! There's nothin to eat." Just like the Israelites in this part of the Exodus. Whining, whining, whining, "God, we have nothing to eat, and what’s more, we don't like what you’ve given us to eat." But I do think that if I were wandering in the wilderness with Moses and Aaron for 40 years, I might be a little whinny too. “God, we’re tired, we’re hungry, we may as well have stayed in Egypt for all this gets us.” And they are reminded that in Egypt they were slaves, at least in the desert they are free. This is a great story. In the verses that follow these we just heard God instructs them to gather up what they need for themselves and their families. Each family got just what they needed, no more, no less. Then Moses instructed them not to save any of it, don’t leave any until morning he told them. Well, some didn’t listen to Moses, and hoarded the food that God had provided for them, and it got wormy and smelled bad. So not only do they not seem to want what God has provided for them, they go ahead and eat it anyway, and then save some up for later, only for it to go bad on them. Lord, lord, lord, give us something to eat, give us something better to eat, we don’t like what you’ve given us, but even though we don’t like it we’ll save it for later and risk losing what is right here in front of us. God provides, God provides enough. Even when it doesn’t look good. It’s all God’s anyway. Matthew’s gospel is paired with this story from Exodus and it carries the theme even farther. Matthew’s story always seems so topsy-turvy. The day laborers that show up at the end of the day get paid the same as those who showed up early to work, and work or no work, everyone gets paid the same. The kingdom is not business as usual. Remember, kingdom parables serve to show us that God is doing this absolutely new thing, there is no business as usual. In this kingdom everything is re-ordered. It’s not even as simple as the last will be first, and the first shall be last. God coming into our midst, living, loving, suffering, dying, and being raised from the dead makes this absolutely new. So this kingdom parable didn’t sit well with those who heard it centuries ago, and it doesn’t sit well with people who hear it today, because we are trained to believe there is a reward. The simplest statement of that is if we live a good life, we’ll get our reward in heaven. This parable refutes that conventional wisdom. Our wages are paid at the baptismal font, not at the grave. The new life that God has affected is available from the beginning. We live our whole lives loved by God, the delight of God’s life. The Christian life is not about earning our wage or our reward in heaven. The Christian life is about responding to God’s amazing and abundant love, about receiving God’s grace, right here, right now. The Christian life is about the fruit of our baptism; the Christian life is about responding to the joys and challenges of our lives in ways that show forth the grace that God has given us. The Christian life is not easy nor is it clear, it is not about finding Jesus, it’s about being found by God’s love. The Christian life is about grace and forgiveness, the grace and forgiveness that God offers us, and the grace and forgiveness that we offer one another as we love our neighbors as ourselves. So when did we get so greedy? When did we begin to hoard what we have? These stories we hear today remind or maybe even teach us that we’ve got all we need, and there’s enough for everyone. One of the seminal stories about who we are and to whom we are related is the story of Moses and the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Moses relayed the ten commandments to the Hebrews as they wandered. Moses said to the people, “God spoke all these words: I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery. No other gods, only me.” No other gods, only me, the Hebrew people, like us, had so much trouble accepting God’s gift of enough. God asks us for our undivided attention, and God gives us all we need. The Hebrew people couldn’t accept God’s gift of enough, and instead made their own god out of the gold they had and found. They got greedy. We get greedy, and we are encouraged in our greediness by a culture that constantly encourages us to buy more, and bigger, regardless of our ability to do so, regardless of need. Now, as much as the Hebrew people needed to hear “no other gods, only me,” and as much as the Jews of the first century needed to hear the inbreaking of God’s kingdom re-orders all that they knew to be true, we, in the 21st century need to hear this message that we are sought and we are found, that God loves us abundantly and claims us. Our wages are paid at the baptismal font, we are new creations. This is good news indeed. Good news in a world that needs good news. Good news that this life isn’t just about you, but it is about how you, and me, and every one of us is loved, and how you in turn love one another. It is about how you are the delight of God’s life, and about how you pay that forward. It is about how God transformed the world with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and how God continues to transform us and the world as each of us goes out into the world to do the work we are called to do, to love and serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. Today we identify and celebrate the ministry that God has given us. We don't hoard the abundance God showers upon us, and we are not greedy about it either. We show forth so much love by being the church in the world, by being the body of Christ. Our baptismal ministry is lived out in so many ways. We celebrate God's abundance by loving and serving our neighbors, by volunteering in schools and hospitals, by knitting hats and prayer shawls. We celebrate God's abundance in our work as we create a culture of mercy and compassion wherever we find ourselves. We are ministers, every one of us, by virtue of our baptism. God's abundance enfolds us, empowers us, saves us, sends us.

13 Pentecost Yr A

2011-09-11T12:23:00.001-06:00

In a small apartment building in North Minneapolis - a 59-year-old teacher's aid sings praise to God for no seemingly apparent reason. Indeed, if anyone was to have issues with the Lord, it would be Mary Johnson. In February 1993, Mary's son, Laramiun Byrd, was shot to death during an argument at a party. He was 20, and Mary's only child. "My son was gone," she says. The killer was a 16-year-old kid named Oshea Israel. Mary wanted justice. "He was an animal. He deserved to be caged."And he was. Tried as an adult and sentenced to 25 and a half years -- Oshea served 17 before being recently released. He now lives back in the old neighborhood - next door to Mary. How a convicted murderer ended-up living a door jamb away from his victim's mother is a story, not of horrible misfortune, as you might expect - but of remarkable mercy.A few years ago Mary asked if she could meet Oshea at Minnesota's Stillwater state prison. She felt compelled to see if there was some way, if somehow, she could forgive her son's killer. "I believe the first thing she said to me was, 'Look, you don't know me. I don't know you. Let's just start with right now,'" Oshea says. "And I was befuddled myself." Oshea says they met regularly after that. When he got out, she introduced him to her landlord - who with Mary's blessing, invited Oshea to move into the building. Today they don't just live close - they are close.Mary was able to forgive. She credits God, of course - but also concedes a more selfish motive. "Unforgiveness is like a disease," Mary says. "It will eat you from the inside out. It's not about that other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me. It's for me."For Oshea, it hasn't been that easy. "I haven't totally forgiven myself yet, I'm learning to forgive myself. And I'm still growing toward trying to forgive myself." To that end, Oshea is now busy proving himself to himself. He works at a recycling plant by day and goes to college by night. He says he's determined to pay back Mary's clemency by contributing to society. In fact, he's already working on it - singing the praises of God and forgiveness at prisons, churches - to large audiences everywhere."A conversation can take you a long way," Oshea says to one group. Which explains why Mary is able to sing her praise of thanks."How many times should I forgive?" Peter asks. "As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times." The number seventy-seven represents unlimited, infinite. What Jesus says to Peter is that you forgive, and forgive, and forgive again, there is no end to forgiving. Unforgiveness is like a disease says Mary, it will eat you from the inside out. Jesus knows this. We are not asked to forgive, we are not asked to love our neighbor, we are not asked to love our enemy for the others sake, but for our own. Jesus knows this. If you don't forgive, you will be eaten up, from the inside out. This passage isn't about asking for forgiveness, it is about forgiving. There is a huge difference. Forgiving is about freedom, it is about liberation, it is about the journey from death to life, and it is not about forgetting. Forgiving doesn't mean that we arise unscathed or unscared. Indeed, we carry the scars of being wounded with us always. But we carry scars, not open, festering wounds that eat us from the inside out. Forgiving is what causes us to heal. There is nothing in scripture about forgiving and forgetting, there is everything in scripture about forgiving, forgiving, and forgiving.It is in that forgiveness that mercy and compassion grow. I was at Trinity church in Pierre for clergy conference on Friday, and I noticed that out of the cracks in the sidewalk were growing some wonderful flowers, any way I think they were flowers, but they could very well have been weeds, I've been known to mistake one for the other. Forgiveness is like that, out of the cracks, out of our wounds, healing gives rise to the beauty of mercy and compassion from which reconciliation and peace arise. On this day we observe the anniversary of what we have come to know as 9/11, although it continues to be our son Willie's birthday. And today I wonder how we grow a post 9/11 anniversary community committed to the mercy and compassion from which reconciliation and peace may arise. In our community, in our church, in our families, how does forgiving create reconciliation and peace? How does forgiving create sacred conversation? How does forgiving create the possibility of new life and new creation? We are capable of sacred conversation. We are called to mercy and compassion, to reconciliation and peace, because we take seriously the work that God has done and continues to do through Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection. Those are the wounds from which we minister, those are the cracks from which the flowers, or the weeds, arise. Forgiveness brings healing, nothing else does, nothing else. Forgiveness creates a compassionate reality. This post 9/11 anniversary community committed to mercy and compassion from which reconciliation can grow, a community that forgives and therefore will be healed, is what we are called to, indeed, it is what is demanded of us by our baptism. The forgiveness that is made possible by the work that Jesus did on the cross and in the resurrection, and that we enter into at our baptism can and will transform our families and our communities. We must live our lives differently, differently than the revenge seeking, self-centered, model that is splayed all over our social media today. We must offer forgiveness, seven times, seventy-seven times, every time, all the time. Mercy and compassion will change the world and love will win.

12 Pentecost Yr A

2011-09-03T19:37:00.001-06:00

Some of you have heard this story before. That's the way of very important stories. Just about every other year since I was in junior high, the Monson family has gathered together to renew our bonds and tell our stories. I heard over and over the story of my ancestors coming to America. I know the story well. My family lived in a valley on the inland point of the Nordfjord, in a place called Stryn. Once upon a time in the Nesdahl valley there was a great avalanche that collapsed the sod hut in which the family lived. Marta died in that avalanche, and later, Jacob, my great great grandfather, decided to come to America. He came and settled in Adams, North Dakota. He married Anna, and they had 11 children, Nelbert, my grandfather was the oldest. Nelbert married Inga, and eventually they settled near Glenwood, Minnesota. Nelbert and Inga had five children, including my father, Juel. One of those children died in an accident as a teenager, and Inga died when my father was a small child. Nelbert married again, and he and Lucille had three daughters together, and Nelbert was killed in a farm accident. Lucille married Guy, and together they had one daughter. This all resulted in many children that I call cousins. When I was 23 years old, I went on an European adventure, part of that adventure was to visit my Norwegian relatives. I arrived in Stryn, Norway, after having taken a ship across the North Sea from England, a steamer up the shoreline of Norway, and a bus inland along the Nordfjord, to Stryn. I arrived on a very rainy day, without exact directions or even contact phone numbers. Unsure of what to do next, after getting off the bus, I went into the business that was right there, it was like a AAA, some sort of travel store. I must have looked like something the cat dragged in, and I asked the young woman across the counter for help, in English of course, as far as I had gotten with my Norwegian was “tussen tak.” She answered me, in beautiful English of course, and I told her my story. She just happened to be neighbors to the relatives I was looking for, so we got in her car and went straight to the family farm. She ended up being my interpreter for the time I spent with my uncle and aunt. My uncle took me on an excursion through the countryside, and in the best English he could muster, he told me the very same story I had heard over and over at each of our family reunions for all those years. The point of all this is that this story, of course there are many more details I’ve skipped over in this telling, contitutues us as a family, it tells us who we are. Over the years it has been added to as we have learned more about our grandfather Nelbert, and as all these cousins have had families of our own. It is a story of heartache, of survival, and of tragedy, and it is our story. And yet it is not unlike many stories of Scandinavian immigrants.The story of the Exodus that we have been hearing, and that we will continue to hear is like my story. It is a story that contitutes Israel as a people, and it is a story that remembers who they are. Today’s portion of the story almost reads like a recipe, and yet it is a call to remembrance and to reconciliation. It says this is who we are and what we do together, and who we worship. It calls Israel to remember. It too is a story of survival, of tragedy, of heartache, and of hope. It says, if we can hang together, we can make it. In the gospel of Matthew today our family story tells us about how we are to be Christians together. The writer of this gospel couldn’t have known that a church would be founded around his rabbi, Jesus, so we can’t say that these are instructions for the church. But what we do have is some very practical advice on forgiveness and reconciliation. You see, as Christians we believe Christ is reconciling the whole world and each of us in it to God and to one another. In the teachings in our prayer book, on page 855, it says that the mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. Reconciliation is all about making whole what is broken. Reconciliation is about being transformed by God’s amazing and abundant love. When Christians take conflict as an opportunity to practice reconciliation, what they do can stand as a visible sign for the whole world of what we believe Christ is doing in the world. An outward and visible sign of a grace that we believe is happening in a broader and more mysterious way in the world. And that is the definition of sacrament, handling conflict well can be sacramental, the way we handle conflict can be a sign to the world that Christ is in fact working in our world. Conflict is a reality in our lives and in our church and in our families. In fact, when we meet someone who is really difficult, inside and outside our families, we can rejoice and be glad in that day, because we get to love them, and in the process we get a sense of how much God loves each and every one of us. When folks look at you and see that you handle conflict in this sacramental way, they’ll see that you mean what you say.But we are witnesses to the rhetoric of revenge and division often on our nightly news and in our newspapers. The news reports about folks whose loved one has been terribly hurt or died at the hands of a monster. The family member calls for revenge, for more blood. Reconciliation, unity with Christ, and forgiveness are not at all what any one of them wants to hear. But maybe it is what is called for.We are at a place in our politics that calls for reconciliation. The divisiveness of our political parties, the hatefulness in our language when we address one another, the lack of civility in our public conversation result only in a breakdown of public discourse. If we were to approach one another like Matthew exhorts us to listen to one another, if we can point to ways in which our own behavior has contributed negatively to the situation, if we listen to each other with the goal of reconciliation, real conversation can take place. And we are at a place in the greater church that calls for reconciliation, a place where the family story must be remembered and told again, to remind us who we are and who we are related to. What we really have to do is stand as a visible sign for the whole world of what we believe Christ is doing in the world. We need to be that outward and visible sign of grace that we believe is happening in a broader and more mysterious way in the world. As we enact forgiveness and reconciliation we are the agents of new life and resurrection that God calls us to be. We become the carriers of grace and God’s abundant and amazing love. We remember who and whose we are, we tell the story of God’s activity in the life’s of God’s people, we tell the story of God who loves us so much that God came and continues to come into this world, we tell the story of how that love suffered and died, and rose again. Hope is made real and Love wins.

10 Pentecost Yr A

2011-08-20T18:27:00.000-06:00

Who do you say I am, Jesus asked Simon Peter. And Simon Peter announces, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Who do you say I am, Jesus asks each one of us. Who do you say Jesus is? We come here, every Sunday morning, and who do we say Jesus is? Who do we say Jesus is when we arrive at work on Monday morning? Who do we say Jesus is when we arrive at school each day? Who do we say Jesus is when we are sitting in traffic, or deciding how to spend our hard earned money, or wondering about what government services should be cut?

Who do you say I am? Like Peter, I announce Jesus is the son of the living God. But I also think those are just words, unless they are backed up by what I do with my time, my talent, and my treasure, how I make my decisions and how I treat people. You and I aren't the kind of people who have a ready answer to the question, who do you say I am? The words don't come easily, but I guarantee the words don't really matter if our lives don't speak of mercy and compassion.

Jesus is teaching disciples in these stories. Jesus is trying to impart all he knows and all he is as he prepares for his last days in Jerusalem. Jesus is developing ambassadors of the kingdom, you and I are ambassadors of the kingdom, our work is to live the answer to the question, who do you say I am, with our words and with our lives.

What you do this week will change the world. In the Exodus story,
a single act of resistance saved an entire people. The King had commanded that all male babies be killed. The baby in our story, Moses, was hidden from that awful fate, until the daughter of Pharoah found him and raised him as her own. Moses went on to lead his people out of Egypt into a new land and a new life, Moses led his people from slavery into freedom. What you do this week will change the world. That is the butterfly effect. We just don't know how what we do will effect that change, but it will, and it does. Who do you say I am? How your life answers that makes a difference.

Last week I said to you that our words matter. This week I say to you that what we do matters. Jesus’ teaching is to love your enemies, to come before God in prayer in worship, to forgive one another, and that Jesus’ life will be given for ours. This is the kingship in which the God who created the heavens and the earth inaugurates this new creation. And even the ancient story of Moses
shows us that what we do matters to God.

Who do you say that Jesus is? This question presupposes that what we believe about Jesus matters. It matters to you and to me,
it matters to our church, and most importantly it matters to the world.

It also assumes a relationship; there is no way to begin to say who Jesus is without the relationship. And in this relationship with Jesus, we learn who we really are. In response to Peter’s naming Jesus,
Jesus tells Peter who he really is. You are Peter, a rock. In this relationship, Jesus knows who we really are, we are named and marked as Christ’s own forever, you are my beloved, the delight of God’s life.

I think this is the most important part of this story. Not the right answer to the question who do you say that Jesus is, but the relationship the question presupposes, you are the delight of God’s life. We might not be very good answering the question with words,
but we can begin to show the world that Jesus matters, that this relationship with Jesus matters.

That brings us to the image that is presented in Romans, we, who are many, are one body in Christ. This is an amazingly counter cultural image, one body, with different graceful gifts. This new creation that God inaugurates in Jesus is all about a completely new way to live on this earth. We live not for ourselves, but for the greater good of God’s creation. Do not be conformed to this world,
but transformed by the amazing and abundant love that God has for you.

How do we live in the world as the body of Christ? How do we live in the world as the delight of God’s life? How do we live in the world as people to whom Jesus matters? How do we live in the world as agents of new creation? How do we live in the world as a people transformed by God’s love? I think we do that by showing forth love
not only for those it is easy to love, but for those we count as enemies as well. I think we do that by empowering those without power. I think we do that by showing mercy and compassion. I think we do that by caring for God’s creation.

One of the things that is very important to me as your rector here at St. Andrew’s, is that we be a witness to the diversity of the body of Christ. What that means is that we stay in the conversation, we stay at the table with people who hold very different views about God than we do. This is not to say that everyone here at St. Andrew’s
has the same view and understanding about God, in fact it is to say that here at St. Andrew’s we may have very different views, and that is exactly who we are. We witness to the diversity of the body of Christ.

So by staying in the conversation, staying at the table, even when that is challenging, difficult, and sometimes infuriating, the whole body shows forth. And by staying in the conversation, the whole body is transformed. We all begin to see with transformed eyes and hear with transformed ears, and love with transformed hearts. We are better able to respect the dignity of every human being; we are able to show forth the love that God has for us.

The same is true on the congregational level. We stay in the relationship, we stay around the table, no matter our disagreements, because we are the body of Christ, and the body is lessened when we don’t show up. The question then, who do you say I am, may be answered by our presence, by our showing up at the table, by the mercy and compassion that we show to all people,
by our showing that we love one another because we are all of God’s creations, to show that Love wins.

Who do you say that Jesus is?

9 Pentecost Yr A

2011-08-13T19:36:00.001-06:00

It's been a hard year. We've seen people we know and love fall through the cracks of these difficult economic times. St. Andrew's and the people of St. Andrew's have helped more of own than ever before. It's been a hard month. It seems that people are behaving badly all over the place, We've been stretched to breaking with the demands on our patience and on compassion. It's been a hard couple of weeks. Our community has experienced the tragic death of three of it's members, two police officers and a young man we know very little about. Three people who all have families and friends who love them and care about them. There have been young people of our community die accidentally and tragically. We have experienced so very closely the broken world in which we live. There is goodness all around us, in so many places and in so many people, but it is a broken world, and we have seen much of the brokenness in these days.

And we have before us a hard lesson from Matthew and this continuing story in Genesis of Joseph and his brothers, brothers who sold him into slavery because they didn't like that he was a dreamer. What are we to make of it all? What are we to make of the readings and what are we to make of the reality?

In the verses from Matthew we have before us today, Jesus really seems mad. He's been spending all of his time teaching the disciples and other followers, parable after parable, story after story, trying to impart everything he can about humanity's relationship with God, his father. He experienced the tragic death of his relative, John, he's fed thousands of people, and all he wants is to get away by himself for a little R and R. He's got to walk on the water out to the boat to save those hapless disciples, and after all that, the Pharisees come all the way from Jerusalem to entrap him. I imagine that the telling of this story has quite of bit of censoring and editing, I imagine Jesus' language may have been much more harsh than we hear today.

Jesus says that what comes out of our mouths and from our hearts can be disastrous when we don't speak with love and truth. Jesus says, our words matter. Our words have the power to create a compassionate reality, and our words can challenge the darkness, our words can be the light in the darkness. We just spent the last week here in Vacation Bible School, watching A Wrinkle in Time, a story that is all about how our words and our actions have the power to dispel the darkness. We learned about our special gifts, following in the footsteps of the saints who came before us, about daring to be different, foolishness, faith and free will, and about the greatest call and commandment, loving one another. What we say to one another matters, our words matter.

The words that dispel the darkness are words that come from a heart that is filled with mercy and compassion, a heart filled with love for each and every gift of God's creation. Even in the midst of sadness, even in the midst of tragedy, we are called to speak words of mercy and compassion, words of God's love for all of God's creation. We are called to speak words of mercy and compassion into every darkness. If we don't do it, if we don't speak words of love, words of mercy and compassion, the darkness cannot be dispelled. That is what Jesus is trying to show us in this gospel today, and that is the truth of what God in Jesus has done and continues to do. Darkness does not win. Love wins. Our words can create a compassionate reality. And we are desperate for a compassionate reality.

The second half of the story from Matthew paints a picture of Jesus that may be even harder for us to understand. He is angry, and mean, and in this particular story, Jesus claims an exclusive mission. He says he is sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. What is amazing in this story is that the Canaanite woman challenges Jesus, and her challenge creates a new compassionate reality. She challenges Jesus to include not just the lost sheep of Israel, but everyone in the known world.

In this story, the Canaanite woman is absolutely and completely the other, the foreigner, she doesn't look like us or talk like us. But she's also a mother. Jesus is speaking to a mother whose daughter's life is at risk. Many of you know that when your child's life is at stake, you will do most anything, go to any lengths, you'll stay by their bedside, you'll take them to the hospital in the middle of the night, you'll pray and ask everyone you know to pray, you'll even bargain with God. This is that mother. She's not an insider, she's not an Israelite, she's a foreigner, and even Jesus, this Jesus who I have always believed includes everyone, says no. Maybe he's just too tired, maybe he's had a hard day, maybe he's fed so many people he's just spent. I've felt that way.

But then, when you don't think you can do one more thing, help one more person, listen to one more story, something happens. Something shows forth the light, the love, the healing, the hope. Lord, help me she prays. And he does. Something breaks through. And the break through expands the love, she challenges Jesus, and the result is not just her baby being healed, but it is healing for everyone, for all of us. The light shows forth, mercy and compassion are possible.

We are desperate for this compassionate reality. Our words matter. Love wins. What we do and what we say in the midst of sadness and tragedy, are capable of healing. Remember, what Jesus does on the cross is to take evil out of the world with him. He does not look for revenge, and surely he is the one who would have the right to. Instead he loves. Instead he forgives. Instead he heals.

8 Pentecost Yr A

2011-08-06T17:44:00.001-06:00

I get to tell one of my favorite jokes when we read this story. A priest, a rabbi and a minister were all in a boat out in the middle of a lake. The Minister says, "I’m thirsty. I’m going to shore and get something to drink." So she gets out of the boat walks across the water to shore, gets a drink, walks back across the water, and gets back in the boat. The minister says, "I’m thirsty also. I’m going to shore and get something to drink." So he gets out of the boat, walks across the water to shore, gets a drink, walks back across the water, and gets back in the boat. The rabbi thinks to himself "pretty cool. I’m trying it." So he says, "I’m thirsty also. I’m going to shore to get something to drink." He gets out of the boat and falls in the water and sputters around. Then the priest said to the minister, "Do you think we should have told him where the rocks were?"

The walking on water story goes like this in Eugene Peterson’s translation in the Message. Jesus came toward them walking on the water. They were scared out of their wits. “A ghost!” they said, crying out in terror. But Jesus was quick to comfort them. “Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.” Peter, suddenly bold, said, “Master, if it’s really you, call me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said, “Come ahead.” Jumping out of the boat, Peter walked on the water to Jesus. But when he looked down at the waves churning beneath his feet, he lost his nerve and started to sink. He cried, Master, save me! Jesus didn’t hesitate. He reached down and grabbed Peter’s hand. Then Jesus said, “Faint heart, what got into you?”

This story is the story that has given rise to the expression “oh ye of little faith.” But I’m not convinced it’s a story about a lack of faith, as much as it is a story about having a little faith. Peter actually has a little faith in this story, what he needs is courage after he steps out to keep on going. I think Peter is the quintessential human being. Peter is just like me. There are days I have a little faith, and days I need a lot of courage. Peter gives me hope.

Let’s check this out. We heard the mustard seed story just two weeks ago. Jesus says in a version of that story, “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Now we know that a mustard seed is a mighty tiny seed, so having faith the size of a mustard seed is a little faith. But these are stories not about what faith is lacking, and it is not about not having enough faith, it is about the faith that Peter has that causes him to courageously step out of the boat. And it is about you and me, who, on most days, like Peter, have a little faith.

So how much faith do you need to make a difference, to change the world, to move mountains, and, like the rest of the disciples in the boat that day, to know that Jesus is lord? You need a little faith. Faith is not about having enough, faith is not about knowing for absolute sure, faith is not about clarity or certainty. Faith isn’t about shouting most loudly about knowing exactly what God’s specific plans for everyone are, faith isn’t about knowing the future.

Well then, what is faith about? Faith is a willingness to risk. Faith is about the courage to take that step out of the boat, to respond to Jesus when he says “come ahead,” and to do it whether you think you’ll sink or swim. And faith proceeds from love, the kind of love that makes a person willing to be the first to say “I love you”, not because of a certain expectation of a particular reply, but because of the possibilities that saying “I love you” opens.

Faith doesn’t connote belief in a particular outcome, and it isn’t an intellectual assent to a particular proposition. It does suggest trust in and allegiance to a person. But believing in Jesus does not mean believing that we’ll be successful in a particular enterprise that Jesus is calling us to. Having faith in Jesus means a willingness to follow Jesus, not because we believe that we’ve already got the rest of the story plotted out once we’ve made that decision, but because we take seriously that Jesus is Lord.

So faith is the courage to risk, faith opens up the possibilities, and faith is taking seriously that Jesus is Lord. This faith opens up the possibility that we are fully capable of loving one another, that we are fully capable of respecting the dignity of every person, and the possibility that we must die in order to live again. This kind of faith also opens up the possibility that we may fall, and that we may wallow in the mess. And when that happens, we can look to resurrection and hope, and know that Jesus is right there with us in that mess.

Faith is not certainty and it is not security in a right future. Faith is living each day knowing that Jesus lived each day. Faith is the courage to risk. Jesus loved, Jesus was hurt, Jesus even hurt others, Jesus risked everything, Jesus died and Jesus rose from the dead. Faith is responding to Jesus’ invitation, “come ahead, have courage,” and being transformed by the relationship.

Faith is risking it all and being together in the mess. Peter wasn’t alone in that boat. All the disciples were there with him. Faith is finding love and hope here in the body of Christ. Because this risky business of faith is not to be undertaken by yourself. It is to be undertaken together, it is to be undertaken in the body of Christ. We do this together, no one is out there alone undertaking this risky business of faith, it’s too important, it’s too dangerous, it’s too perilous. Every one of us needs a support team.

The body of Christ, the community of faith, is our support team in this risky venture of faith. I could not be your priest without all of your prayers and words of encouragement. I depend on your prayers, as you depend on my prayers and the prayers of all of us gathered. Not one of us can accomplish the risky work of faith out in the world without the support team that is our community of faith. I go to Sr. Margaret at St. Martin’s monastery once a month for spiritual direction, and I know I am in the daily prayers of the sisters there, they are our support team.

My favorite author, Madeleine L’engle once said during her recovery after a horrible accident she was in, that she could no longer pray, but that she knew that there were people who were praying on her behalf. That is the body of Christ, the community of faith doing its work.

I believe faith is not one sided. Faith is not just about us. I believe that God has faith in me, and in us. Imagine the risk God takes at the creation of each and every child, each and every planet, each and every star. Will it be all that God intends for it to be? Will it be creative, will it be life-giving, will it fulfill all the hope in its creation. God is faithful. God risks everything with each and every one of us. If we have little faith, the size of a mustard seed, God has humungous faith, the size of millions of universes.

It is God’s huge faith in me that enables me to have little faith in Jesus. Little faith is enough to make a difference, little faith is enough to bring Light into the mess, little faith is enough to move mountains, and little faith is enough to find the rocks in the water so that we can make it to the other side.

7 Pentecost Yr A

2011-07-30T14:06:00.000-06:00

Our son Tom has a tee shirt that says “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” It’s a tee shirt from Philmont Boy Scout Ranch, a high adventure base in northern New Mexico. I’ve heard it said that Philmont is the adventure a boy scout loves to hate. At the very least, a boy who goes to Philmont doesn’t return the same way he left. Besides being dirty and hungry, with plenty of scrapes and bruises, there’s a change in the way a boy sees the world. Jacob could’ve been wearing that tee shirt in this story today. The story of Jacob wrestling with God, and the story of the feeding of five thousand and then some in Matthew are both stories of transformation.

Jacob’s story is not unlike ours, except for the two wives, two maids, and eleven children, I hope. Jacob wrestled through the night with God and lived through it. But we’ve learned elsewhere that no one survives a face-to-face meeting with God without dying and rising to the new life that God promises. Jacob wrestled with God and was made a new man, he received a new name, and he received a new wound. Transformation is not an easy journey, it is a journey on which we die to ourselves, our obsessions, our materialism, and we rise to the new life that God offers to us.

There’s a friend of ours from a long time ago, Jenny, I've told you about her before. At age 18 she was skiing in Colorado, and her life was suddenly changed. She fell, and never got up again. That fall resulted in Jenny being quadriplegic. She was an athlete in high school, a diver. Jenny wrestled with God; her wound is deep and permanent. But Jenny has worked hard at her independent life, and has been executive director of an organization called Helping Paws. Helping Paws trains dogs and their people to manage life together. Jenny would tell you that she is thankful for the new person she became after her injury. Her injury has made her completely different, and in her opinion, better. The people who know Jenny would attest to the gift she is just the way she is, she has shown that ministry happens out of being wounded.

All of us don’t have that outward wound that Jenny has. Most of our wounds cannot be seen. But just the same, the new life we receive can be a gift. It is not the same as our old life, and it is marked by our wounds. Jesus’ journey to the cross, Jesus’ wounds, and death on that cross is what makes it possible for you and me to survive the wounds that this world deals out, and the wounds that sometimes we inflict ourselves. That wound is the place from which we minister. That wound is the place from which our compassion grows. That wound is the place from which our love for our enemies have meaning. That wound is what gives us hope.

Hope. Woundedness gives us hope. Seems like an odd sort of thought, doesn’t it. It seems counter to what everything in our culture would tell us about hope. Hope is about a secure future. Hope is about the American dream, including a house, a yard, healthy children, a pension and good retirement. No wonder we hear so much of hopelessness these days.

But the hope of the gospel is nothing like that. Hope is about dying; hope is about being wounded, hope is about having everything you think is important being stripped away, and surviving it. Not just surviving it, but being given a new name. Beloved, delight of God’s life.

The disciples in the story we heard from Matthew today, were forgetting about the hope that Jesus offered. After Jesus retreats for some peace and quiet, and the crowds won’t leave him alone, Jesus teaches and cures the sick. As the afternoon wore on, the disciples thought they would send the 5000 or so people into the towns to find something to eat. Can you imagine, out there on the hillside, sending the crowd into town to find something to eat. Someone wasn’t planning ahead. Instead, Jesus tells the disciples to give them something to eat. Their response, “we have nothing to offer, except these five loaves of bread and two fish.”

The disciples responded to Jesus with an exasperation that tells of their lack of hope. And their lack of understanding of what Jesus was capable of doing. The disciples responded to Jesus from a position of scarcity. “We have nothing here.” They did not see the five thousand and some people in front of them, with all their woundedness, with all their suffering, with all their joy and excitement to just be in the presence of this rabbi.

And Jesus shows them the abundance that surrounds them. Look what we have, five loaves of bread, and two fish, and all these people with everything they bring with them. “We have enough,” Jesus says, “we have enough.” Jesus blesses what they have, and everyone was fed that day. Not only were they fed, they had leftovers. Twelve baskets of leftovers, enough for everyone in the whole world to be fed.

Too often we approach the world like Jacob, and like the disciples. We approach the world from a position of scarcity. Scarcity that is about the wall we put up around us so that no one can see our fear, our lack of hope, our belief that we are not good enough. God wrestles with us to break down that wall, and in the encounter we are wounded. Scarcity is about letting our woundedness be a source of despair, rather than a fountain of strength and hope. It is in that place that we begin to see the blessing that God has given. We begin to see the abundance that God has for us.

Abundance and blessing. We are transformed. We are fed with the bread and the fish. We are nourished and healed. But the abundance doesn’t end with us. That’s the wonder of the twelve baskets of leftovers. Our blessing is to get those leftovers out to those who need them. We meet God in the encounter, and we cannot be the same because of the encounter, we meet one another face to face as we break bread together, and we have enough to bring out into the world to those who need to be fed, healed, and transformed.

It is our woundedness, our broken hips and our broken hearts, that make us compassionate ministers. We are nourished by the abundance of God’s blessings, in one another and in the bread. We have enough, we have all that is needed, to feed the 5000 and then some, we have enough, we have all that is needed, so that everyone is fed, no one needs go away hungry.

5 Pentecost Proper 11 Yr A

2011-07-16T14:22:00.001-06:00

Scripture is full of literature forms, the lists of who begot who is a form. The beginning of the gospel of Luke, which is the dedication and the birth narrative, is a form, its purpose is to set up the status of the one the story is about. The Beatitudes are a form; they set up a list of virtues, and then a list of vices. The parables are a form. Any Jew of Jesus’ time, as soon as they heard “The Kingdom of God is like….” or in Matthew, “The Kingdom of heaven is like…” would know that a parable would follow, and they would also know that the meaning of the parable is left up to the interpretation of the hearer. We heard the one about the sower last week, we will hear many more this ordinary season. The use of irony, idiom, and metaphor are part of how a parable is told, and those literary devices rely on context and delivery. No wonder we have such a difficult time with parables.

Another thing about parables is that Jesus told them to effect a response in his disciples, and in you and me, who are also disciples. That response may be surprise, it may even be shock. If you aren’t at least surprised by a parable, you need to take a closer look.

So let’s take a closer look at this morning’s parable. The farm hands of the householder have discovered that someone has sowed weeds in the wheat, and they are beginning to grow alongside the wheat. The farm hands want to pull the weeds, but the householder tells them not to because pulling the weeds would destroy the wheat as well. The householder tells them to let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time collect the weeds first and burn them, and then gather the wheat. Not too much shocking there, but that’s because we are not insiders, we don’t get the irony, we don’t know the idiom, we have to learn some things and then take a closer look.

The wheat and the weeds grow up together. To remove the weeds is to kill the wheat. These are a particular kind of weed. The weed, or tare, in our gospel parable is a specific plant—darnel—a grass that grows in the same zones where wheat is produced. Darnel looks very much like wheat when it is immature; its roots intertwine with those of the wheat and its toxic grains are loosely attached to the stem. The problem of what to do with an infested field does not have a simple solution—pull up the shoots and you pull up the wheat; wait until the harvest and you poison the grain and contaminate next year’s crop with failing seeds.

Parables elicit many interpretations, today I would propose two. The first one has to do with judgment and mercy, the second with death and resurrection.

It is reported that the one who is responsible for the weeds is an enemy. But instead of attacking the enemy who put the weeds there, the householder let the weeds and the wheat live together until harvest. If the householder is like God, the field hands are disciples like you and me, the weeds are those who we may consider bad, or evildoers, or even merely those with whom we disagree, and the wheat is those who we may consider good, right thinking, or merely those with whom we agree; the point is that Jesus’ disciples, you and me are to let the wheat and the weeds grow side by side and leave judgment to God.

Now, that is shocking. Judgment is up to God, Not up to you or me. God’s judgment, God’s righteousness, God’s perfection is perfect love and mercy. Blessings of sun and rain fall upon the righteous and unrighteous alike.

What has happened here is that Jesus has removed the burden of judgment from our shoulders. Jesus went to the cross and absorbed and contained the evil of the world, the evil of his tormenters. Jesus has freed us to give in to love. Don’t be afraid of those weeds, don’t give in to fear. We are not called to serve as judge, judging will only make us more anxious as we try to maintain constant vigilance, always eyeing our neighbor to try to pick out the enemy.

Our vocation is to love, as God first loved us. Jesus is the merciful judge; we don’t have to worry about how to do his job. Jesus is the merciful judge, and so we have access to an unshakable hope, the blessed assurance that we will be judged with the same infinite mercy, as will our enemies.

The wheat and the tare are intertwined; to pull the weeds is to kill the plant. It’s a desperate situation. But we know from this side of the story that Jesus is in a desperate situation. We know that his life leads him to suffering and death on the cross, and we also know that ultimately God inaugurates the new creation in Jesus’ resurrection, but not without the suffering that precedes it. Another way to experience this parable of the wheat and the tare is to let it teach us about death and resurrection. Maybe the householder is wise in letting the wheat and the tare grow up together because the householder knows something about suffering and death. The wheat will die because the tare kills it off. Maybe this parable is about dying to that which is killing us so that we may rise again to the new life that God has in store for us. What is it that is killing us? What is it that we need to die to so that we may have the new life that God promises? What is it that we need to die to so that the clutter is cleared and we may hear God’s call to us?

I spent quite a bit of time this week asking people about weeds. I asked about the difference between weeds and flowers, I wondered how people determine what is a weed and what is a flower. Many of them look alike to me. I heard that weeds are really only weeds when you don't want them in your garden. When I was out in my yard, my little neighbor Maddie brought me a beautiful bouquet, of dandelions. I've been following the Pickles cartoon in the paper. Earl is battling his dandelions. Earl's grandson Nelson says to him, "whoa grampa, you've got a lot of dandelions, I thought you hated dandelions." Earl responds, "I did, but I've made peace with them. If you look at them with unbiased eyes, they're actually rather pretty."

Maybe this parable is about justice and mercy, maybe this parable is about dying and rising again, maybe this parable is about dying to that which is killing you, maybe this parable is about the beauty of all God's creation, but most assuredly, this parable is about God's amazing and abundant love for you and the guy next to you. Who really knows which of you is the weed, and which one is the wheat.

4 Pentecost Yr A

2011-07-09T16:03:00.001-06:00

The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who sows seeds, some fall on the path and the birds eat them up, some fall on the rocky soil and they spring up and wither quickly, some fall among thorns and are choked, others fall on fertile ground and bring forth grain.

The Kingdom of God is like… always precedes a story like this one, whether or not the words are actually there. Jesus teaches his hearers about the Kingdom of God when he tells these stories that at times seem so difficult to enter into. But remember, you can find yourself in the story somewhere,
that is one of the wonders of the parables, you too are a character in these stories.

These Kingdom of God stories, these parables, are all about you and me and our role in God’s kingdom. We are agents of new creation; the new creation is the Kingdom of God. God began something absolutely new with Jesus. Just as God created the heavens and the earth and all the creatures in the beginning, God recreates the heavens and the earth with this new thing he does in Jesus. In the incarnation, in the word made flesh, in the midst of you and me. This new thing is the Kingdom, it is the new creation, it is where you and I belong, it is where you and I live.

In this particular Kingdom of God story, it is clear that the Kingdom is diverse. There is the path, the rocky soil, the thorns, and the fertile ground. In God’s Kingdom, we are at one time or another like any one of these soils. I’m not going to say to you today be like the fertile soil or else. I don’t think that’s the way of the Kingdom. The way of the Kingdom is that as human beings we are at one time or another like the thorns, or the stony path, or the rocky soil, or the fertile ground. But it is also very clear that when we are like the fertile soil, we will bear fruit. And bearing fruit is what the gospel writer Matthew is all about. The marker of one who participates fully as an agent of new creation, as a co-creator with God of this absolutely new thing that God is doing, is all about the fruit.

There is not a single story that tells us exactly what kind of fruit we should bear. There are stories about figs, olives, dates, pomegranates, which would all make an interesting salad. And there are no stories about tomatoes or mangos that are themselves delicious. The stories of the Kingdom are not about a particular kind of fruit, but they are about fruit that is tasty and healthy.

Being an agent of new creation, participating in the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is a fruit bearing activity. It is to encounter Jesus in our midst, it is to live a life transformed by the resurrection so that resurrection is abundantly evident in all you do. Living as an agent of new creation is to take incarnation seriously. God in the flesh, God in our midst, is a reality that each one of us embodies, and that is embodied by people we may encounter every day.

Fertile ground receives the seed, and the seed is transformed into something that is absolutely different than it was when it went into the ground. All transformation presupposes death. The fruit that is born from the fertile ground and the seed is fruit that is born from suffering and death. There is no other way. When we walk with Jesus, we open our lives to the suffering and death that is inherent on the way. And when we walk with Jesus, we also become agents of new creation, bearers of the love that God has for all of us. We proclaim God’s love and delight by the fruit that we bear.

In Matthew's theology, "bearing fruit" means living out the kingdom of God. This has nothing to do with piety, nothing to do with syrupy pronouncements, nothing to do with vague decisions, nothing to do even with worship. It means "following on the way," which means imitating Jesus, and doing what he did.

What kind of fruit do you bear? Is it a sweet juicy tomato? A wonderfully tart lemon? An exotic pomegranate? A beautifully ordinary apple? In all that you are, in all that you do, do you offer your fruitfulness to the people you encounter? You see, I think that's what this parable is about. It's about living in the world as an agent of new creation. It is about being the one that offers God's abundant and amazing love to everyone you encounter. You are the one who can make the world sweeter. You are the one who can change the course of events. You can offer those whom you encounter the beauty and sweetness of mercy and compassion, you can offer those whom you encounter the fruit of hospitality, the fruit of welcome, the fruit of forgiveness.

3 Pentecost Yr A

2011-07-02T13:20:00.000-06:00

There are a a few different pictures of Jesus in the gospels, the shepherd, whose sheep know his voice, the charismatic leader who the fisher folk follow at the drop of a net. And this picture we get of Jesus in this portion of Matthew. This is not your warm and fuzzy Jesus. This is much like the Jesus who turns the tables in the temple.

Actually, I am reminded of a scene in C.S. Lewis' story, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The children in the story are sitting in the living room of the Beavers. Mr. Beaver is telling them about the Lion, Aslan. Lucy asks "Is he a man?" Mr. Beaver responds, "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion--the Lion, the great Lion." And Susan responds, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." Mrs. Beaver responds "That you will, dearie, and no mistake, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." Lucy again, "Then he isn't safe?" "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Jesus is not safe. But he's good, he's the King. This is what our passage from Matthew shows us today. This, I do believe, may be the first big "come to Jesus" meeting. Jesus has words for these people and these communities, Jesus is clear that if they don't shape up there will be consequences.

I preach over and over again God's love for all God's people. I preach over and over again that there is nothing that can get in the way of God's power to bring all creation into right relationship. I preach again and again that Love wins. Paul, in Romans knows that only too well. Paul is quite aware of his humanity, his imperfectness, his struggle. Paul indeed speaks the truth of and to all of us. That somewhere in the mess of our glorious humanity, somewhere in the struggle to hear God's love for us no matter what, there is indeed a need to respond to that love with right behavior and moral decision making, and to treat ourselves and others with mercy and compassion. Paul knows the struggle and the difficulty of this journey of the spirit.

Jesus' call to us to live as citizens of the new kingdom, as the new creations God intends for us, is a call to freedom from bondage to that which will kill us. Thanks be to God, Paul says, for the freedom from the power of the bondage to sin that Jesus Christ offers. Paul speaks about that which will kill him, it is whatever holds power over him, it is whatever holds power over us. This is not necessarily about what is right and wrong, and not necessarily a moral judgment about good and bad. But it most assuredly is about being out of balance, it is about not be centered.

Why do we pray? Why do we quiet ourselves? Why do we return to church each week? Not because of some sort of moral betterment, no, we engage in these activities to be balanced, to be centered, to be able to go out into the world and act from our belovedness. We go out into the world to live in response to that amazing and abundant love that God offers to one and all.

This is a life that prioritizes differently than the world prioritizes. This is a life that puts love and mercy and compassion for ones neighbor ahead of individual wants, needs, and achievement. It is a life that puts community and relationship ahead of personal freedom. It is a life that runs counter to the individualism of our culture. It is the freedom to loose oneself in the love of the other, in order to find oneself.

That said, there are consequences for our choice to live outside of God's way. When we don't love God and love our neighbor there are consequences, and God does put some mighty big no's in our lives. You know how that goes especially when you are raising your children. No, you can't run ahead of us into the street. No, you can't take that toy from your brother. No, you can't play with the knobs on the stove. No. We don't like it because it is, well, just plain negative, just plain offensive, just because. We all struggle with the no's in our lives. We want what we want for a reason, and "no" always runs contrary to those reasons, wants, and desires.

At the same time, as we mature we recognize the value of "no," not only for others but even for ourselves. By saying no to the extra helping of dinner we stay healthier. By saying no to television before studying for the exam we earn a better grade and we learn more. By saying no to claiming the dubious tax exemption we retain a greater sense of honor and contribute to the public welfare. The other side of freedom, we come to recognize, is responsibility, being able to say "no" that we can enjoy a greater "yes."

These "no's" are also the natural consequences of living outside of God's order. We witness those consequences everyday. You know this as well. In the search for connection and relationship and fulfilling loneliness, people turn to sexual promiscuity. In the search for relieving pain, people turn to alcohol and drugs. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Our burdens weigh us down, they keep us in bondage, they prevent us from living this life fully human and fully alive. Cast off that burden. What is it for you? Perfection? Achievement? Money? Anger? Resentment? Revenge? Cast off that burden and say yes to the freedom that Jesus offers.

But this brings us back to where we began today. Saying yes to Jesus frees us from bondage and from our burdens, and it is good, but it is not safe. "They say, he has a demon, the Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!" Saying yes to Jesus makes us friends of tax collectors and sinners, saying yes to Jesus makes us friends of many whom are marginalized and outcast. Saying yes to Jesus means that we stand for mercy, compassion, forgiveness, not necessarily attributes that are valued these days. Saying yes to Jesus means that we struggle with our own imperfections, and like Paul, we admit when we are wrong. Saying yes to Jesus is good, but it is not safe.

2nd Sunday after Pentecost Yr A

2011-06-25T16:57:00.000-06:00

I often wonder how the story about God and Jesus would be different if women had the opportunity to tell it. The story of Abraham and Isaac might go something like this had Sarah told the story.

In the privacy of their bedroom, Sarah and her husband were exchanging words. Sarah said, "God told you what! God told you to take Isaac up on the mountain and make him the sacrifice!
No way, God would never say that. It's God who gave Isaac to us when we were already too old to have children. And even if God did say it, you'll do it over my dead body!"

Abraham, because he was so pigheaded and stubborn, took Isaac against his wife's better judgment, loaded him up with wood for the fire, and led him up the mountain. Sarah followed secretly. While Abraham built the altar and laid the wood on it, Sarah hid in the bushes. She was so angry with God and with her pigheaded husband for listening to whoever told him to do this. She waited for the moment she would jump out of the bushes to prevent this from happening. But then she saw a ram not far from her, caught in the thicket by its horns. She got near enough to it so she could wave a stick in it's face and it thrashed and made enough noise that Abraham turned and looked, and realized he could use the ram for his sacrifice. Silently and separately, Abraham and Sarah heaved a sigh of relief, and whispered to themselves, "The Lord does provide."

Either way, the story is about God, not about Abraham or Sarah or Isaac. The story is about God providing for the people God loves so very much, and that Abraham and Sarah were faithful to that love.

And remember, when the tellers of the stories about Jesus tell the stories, they assume that the hearers, the original hearers as well as us, know the Hebrew Scriptures very very well. They assume that we know about the God of creation, who blesses the creation, who loves the creation, and who provides for the creation. So, it stands to reason, that when we hear the stories about Jesus, we already know that the nature of God is to love and provide for the creation.

So in Matthew’s gospel today we hear Jesus say to the disciples as part of their sending out instructions, “Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God's messenger. Accepting someone's help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I've called you into, but don't be overwhelmed by it. It's best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won't lose out on a thing."

Matthew’s gospel and the story of Abraham and Sarah remind me of one of those email stories that gets forwarded. I’m going to tell you this one today, because it makes me think, well that could never happen, at the same time as I think well of course it could never happen if I never think about the smallest act of giving or receiving.

The story goes like this. A young man had been to Tuesday night Bible Study. They had talked about how God loves and provides. The young man couldn't help but wonder, "Does God still provide, like God provided for Abraham and Sarah and Isaac?"

It was about ten o'clock when the young man started driving home. Sitting in his car, he just began to pray, "God. I will do my best to serve your wishes." As he drove down the main street of his town, he had the strangest thought, to stop and buy a gallon of milk. He shook his head and said out loud, "God is that you?" He didn't get a reply and started on toward home.

But again, the thought was there, "Buy a gallon of milk." The young man thought about how he'd heard that not all those spoken to recognized God's quiet voice inside of one's mind. Then he said, "Okay, God, in case that is you, I will buy the milk." It didn't seem like too hard a request to fulfill. He could always use the milk himself if nothing else. So he stopped and purchased the gallon of milk and started off toward home.

As he passed Seventh Street, he again felt the urge, "Turn down that street." "This is crazy," he thought and drove on past the intersection. Again, he felt that he should turn down Seventh Street. At the next intersection, he turned back and headed down Seventh. Half jokingly, he said out loud, "Okay, God, I will."

He drove several blocks, when suddenly, he felt like he should stop. He pulled over to the curb and looked around. He was in a semi-commercial area of town. It wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst of neighborhoods either. The businesses were closed and most of the houses looked dark like the people were already in bed. Again, he sensed something, "Go and give the milk to the people in the house across the street." The young man looked at the house. It was dark and it looked like the people were either gone or they were already asleep.

He started to open the door and then sat back in the car seat. "God, this is insane. Those people are asleep and if I wake them up, they are going to be mad and I will look stupid." Again, he felt like he should go and give the milk. Finally, he opened the car door, "Okay God, if this is you, I will go to the door and I will give them the milk. If you want me to look like a crazy person, okay. I want to do as you wish. I guess that will count for something, but if they don't answer right away, I'm outta here."

He walked across the street and rang the bell. He could hear some noise inside. A man's voice yelled out, "Who is it? What do you want?" Then the door opened before the young man could get away. The man was standing there in his jeans and t-shirt. "What is it?"

The young man thrust out the gallon of milk. "Here, I brought this to you," he said nervously. The man took the milk and rushed down a hallway. Then from down the hall came a woman carrying the milk toward the kitchen. The man was following her holding a baby. The baby was crying. The man had tears streaming down his face.

The man began speaking and half crying, "We were just praying. We had some big bills this month and we ran out of money. We didn't have any milk for our baby. I was just praying and asking God to show me how to get some milk." His wife in the kitchen yelled out, "I asked Him to send an Angel with some milk. Are you an Angel?"

In response to hearing this, the young man reached into his wallet and pulled out all the money he had on him and put in the man's hand. He turned and walked back toward his car. He knew that God still answers prayers and that God loves and provides.

Now there are all sorts of theological holes in this story, and all sorts of reasons why this could never happen. The biggest reason it could never happen is because we don’t often let ourselves give a cool cup of water when it is needed, or even harder, to receive the help that we need. But the point is that God loves us, God gives us all we need, and we find ourselves in places all the time where we can be God’s hands and God’s heart.

There have been about 1500 young Episcopalians gathered in St. Paul for the last week at the Episcopal Youth Event. The theme of EYE this year has been all about mission. They built a Habitat for Humanity House, our kids served a meal at First Nations Kitchen in Minneapolis. I've been watching the tweets and I've been seeing such excitement about being Episcopalians, and about the work that many young people are being called to do. I'm also seeing that that looks very different
from what those of us who have been around church block a few times are used to.

We need to act on God’s love for us; we need to not be afraid of the dark, or of the stranger. Instead we need to act boldly as agents of God’s new creation. We need to bring to all we meet the hope of new life, the hope that life always springs out of death. We need to receive that hope from others,
as they remind us that we are God’s beloved, the delight of God’s life. As they remind us that Love wins.

Matthew’s gospel today tells us that whether we give or receive, and even whether we believe or not,
God loves and God provides, and we will be transformed by the work of service that we do. We will be changed by the people whose paths we cross, and we will show forth God’s love alive and well in the world.

The Day of Pentecost Yr A

2011-06-11T19:38:00.001-06:00

We tell each other stories all the time. We tell stories that are funny and that are sad, we tell stories to entertain and to inform. Some of our stories are great and some are pathetic. By telling our stories we come to understand ourselves better, and we come to know each other better. And although some can tell a mighty fine story, none of our stories are as good as the one we share together. That is the story that Love wins. And that story goes like this. God, who is love, who is creator of all that is seen and unseen, who promised to be in relationship with creation, who became human, who lived and loved and suffered and died, who rose from the dead and gives you and me the gift of new life and the spirit, that God, loves us absolutely and abundantly. And God wants us to love God back by loving each other, by loving ourselves even when we believe we are unlovable, and by loving those who seem outside the possibility of our love.

This is a story that is in process. It is a story that began with the dawning of time and will continue until the fulfillment of all time. It is a story that lives deep within our hearts and our minds. It is the story that gives you and me our identity, it tells us who we are and to whom we are related. Your story, my story, our story, belong within the story that Love wins. It is a story in which we are brought out of fear into confidence. It is a story that brings us from old creation to new creation. We move from a self-centered story to God-centered story. It is the story that transforms us. It is indeed the greatest story ever told.

The Day of Pentecost is an important event in this story. The setting of the story is The Festival of Weeks, a joyous celebration of the spring harvest. Jewish people from all over Israel and many foreign lands came to Jerusalem. Peter and the rest of the disciples were at the Temple bright and early. The day was probably very still, since Jerusalem summers are not windy. The huge crowd at the Temple by 8 or 9 a.m. expected nothing unusual. But . . . suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting! Then divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. As the story is told, this event happened on the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Jesus, therefore we have Pentecost, meaning the fiftieth day.

The Holy Spirit is God's gift of presence, and that gift of presence happened, is happening, and will continue to happen. The Holy Spirit is God's gift of assurance, that God is with us and always will be with us. The Holy Spirit is God's gift of wisdom, of knowledge, of faith, of healing, of discernment, God's gift of the Holy Spirit is wide and broad and diverse. As the story is told, the Holy Spirit can be seen and heard.

It is said that Pentecost is the birth of the church. It is a new chapter in this sacred story of which we are a part. Today we observe Pentecost as all of that, we observe Pentecost as we give thanks for God's gift of spirit, in and through and among us, we give thanks for God's gift of the church, which is one way we express our relationship with God, and God expresses relationship with us. I think the challenge of Pentecost is to not let it get caught in a one day observance and to not make it about individual gifts. The Holy Spirit is clearly about the story we share together.

The challenge of Pentecost is to let it, along with incarnation, resurrection, and ascension, narrate our life, change our life, transform our life. The challenge is to find ourselves in the story of God's abundant and amazing love for all people at all times and in all places.

How does God's love, God's life, God's spirit include each and every one of us? If indeed Love wins, and I believe with all my heart, my soul, and my life, that it does, how does that transform my story, and your story? Abbi Van Vliet has wondered out loud with me what it would be like if we, all of us here at St. Andrew's would tell our stories about what we believe. I think we would be transformed, I think we are being transformed. What is your story that brings you here today, to this place of spirit, of love, of bread and wine, of communion, of brokeness and of healing and forgiveness? What is your story that brings you to faith and to doubt? Your story is part of the story that Love wins, your story is part of the story of Pentecost, your story is part of the story of the church, in all it's glory and with all it's warts. What is your story? It is part of God's story.

You see, all of it is about God's story that has the power to change our lives, and is changing our lives. God's story of Love, and life and suffering and pain and joy, and wandering in the wilderness erecting idols, tearing down those idols and loving one another and loving God back in the midst of our very imperfect lives, that is all happening here now, through the power of the spirit.

And now I am going to tell some of your stories, even though they are not my stories to tell.

You are a young married couple, this chapter of your life is just beginning to be told, you know God's love in your lives, and you want to be able to express that with each other and especially with the new lives you have brought into this world. You come to this place, because you see joy on the faces of those who love God back, and you want to be a part of that.

You are in the middle of your life, your story is already well into the middle chapters, you have raised your children, sent them out into the world loved and cared for, and you are excited and anxious to discover what all of that means for you. You come here, because here you know that there are people who love God back.

You find yourself single in the middle of your life, your story too is in the middle chapters, but nothing like the way you thought it would go when you were in the early chapters. You continue to search for meaning, you continue to find your way among the missteps and mistakes you have made. You know that you must return to others the kind of help you received along the way. You come to this place, searching for something, and what you find here is people who love God back.

You are seeing the fulfillment of your life, the end chapters are being written. You look back to the early chapters with love and longing, you look to the middle chapters with nostalgia, you live in the loneliness of life without your partner, you wonder where the time went. You give of your time and your talent as a volunteer at the hospital, or building houses, or through the schools. You come to this place for comfort, belonging, stability, and what you find here is people who love God back.

This is Pentecost, this is church, this is Holy Spirit, people who love God back.

7 Easter Yr A

2011-06-04T20:21:00.001-06:00

I have a very fond memory of teaching at Ascension School in North Minneapolis, on the Feast of the Ascension, which is 40 days after Easter, and usually fell near the last Thursday of the school year. We celebrated the Ascension just this past Thursday. We would spend the whole day playing games inside and outside, concluding the day with mass, and then releasing piles of red balloons. It was a glorious day for everyone, and although it was a day free from the rigors of school, we pointed the children to the glory of God seen and experienced in play and in one another. It was an opportunity to look through the ordinary to see the extraordinary.

Looking through the ordinary to the extraordinary, to the glory of God, is what an icon is. An icon is a picture, image, or representation through which we may gain a glimpse of the holy, the glory of God. However, icon is used is popular parlance in ways that defy this traditional meaning of the word. Sports figures are called icons, I remember Princess Diana being called an icon, and the word is thrown around in the world of advertising quite a bit. Ronald McDonald, The Green Giant, Betty Crocker, The Energizer Bunny, Aunt Jemima, Tony the Tiger, and my favorite, The Pillsbury Doughboy are all icons in the advertising world. Although they may be memorable, even cute and fun, I'm not convinced they are that through which we may see a glimpse of the holy. However, I suppose that depends on your take on the holy.

The story of the ascension, this story we have before us today, help us to glimpse the glory of God, like icons help us to glimpse the holy. And these stories bring the Incarnation full circle. God gave up all power and came into this world in the flesh, as one of us, fully human. That is the incarnation. That is God with us. Jesus lived, and loved, as you and I live and love. Jesus died, as you and I die, however the circumstances of Jesus’ death are certainly different than the circumstances of our deaths, most of us are not put to death because of the way we live our lives. The stories we have heard this Eastertide are stories that attest to the resurrection of Jesus, the absolutely new life that God accomplished and continues to accomplish in Jesus. This story of the ascension tells us that Jesus returned to God to glorify God, and so that we may know God, and in knowing God, we may have eternal life, life right here and right now that is absolutely new and different and life with God that is new and different than the life that we experience now.

This is the reality of what God did, and continues to do in Jesus. God came to us to be known, and to know God transforms us and introduces us to a different quality of living. It is this that our gospel in John shows us today.

In a wonderful little book called Plan B, Further thoughts on faith, by Anne Lamott is a series of essays, reflections really, on faith and family and politics. There is one essay in it called holding on, in which Anne tells the story about insisting that her teenage son attend church with her. She writes, “why do I make him go? Because I want him to… We live in bewildering, drastic times, and a little spiritual guidance never killed anyone. I want him to see the people who love me when I felt most unlovable… I want him to see their faces…” She continues, “there are worse things for kids than to have to spend time with people who love God. Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don’t get to meet some of the people who love God back. Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.”

God came to us to be known, and to know God transforms us. See, God loves us whether or not we love God back. God adores us whether or not we care. But God wants us to know about that, God wants us to know how much we are loved, so God came to show us, that we may be transformed by that love. How do we know God? How are we transformed? How is God glorified? By learning to love back.

In the midst of our own disappointments, we are transformed by loving back. In the midst of our own pain, we are transformed by loving back. In the midst of our own stubbornness, we are transformed by loving back. When we hurt others, we are transformed by loving back. When we overuse, when we overconsume, we are transformed by loving back.

When it feels like we are defeated, when it feels like we have nothing left, God continues to love us, and we are transformed by loving back. When it feels like no one likes us, when it feels like we don’t fit in, when it feels like everyone else is going a different direction, God continues to love us, and we are transformed by loving back.

When we love God back, we witness to the fact that it isn’t about any one of us anyway. It’s about God, and it is about God’s relationship with us, and our relationship with one another. That’s the point that Anne Lamott makes in her essay about making her son go to church, she wants him to be a part of a group of people who love God back, who show that in their worship, in their music, in their Sunday school, and in the way they treat each other and in the way they treat people who are not members of their church. In how they feed the hungry, how they clothe the naked, how they put the last first, and the first last.

Loving God back is not necessarily about any one of us individually, although we can love God back as individuals. Loving God back is really a community endeavor. The God who loves and adores each and every one of us is a very personal God, we know that because God came to be one of us. But our response to God is not private, it is communal and therefore public. Contributing money to feeding the hungry is very important, and yet when we work together to eliminate poverty we are able to transform our lives together. Giving our second and third jackets to Coats for Kids is very important, and yet working together protect the most vulnerable among us will transform our lives and the system we live within.

The gospel of John not only is about this circle of incarnation, life, death and resurrection, and ascension, it is also about unity. Jesus’ desire is that we may be one as Jesus and God are one. Living a life in Christ is not an individual endeavor. Responding to God’s amazing love for us is not an individual endeavor. It is a community project, in it we are one body, and by it we are made one body. Unity is not the same as agreement, unity is about the body of Christ. As people of the body of Christ, we come from diverse backgrounds we come from different places, we arrive together with a whole different plate from which to eat, and, we are transformed into a living breathing organism that takes care of the least of these, that works for justice, that works for peace.

We are transformed into a living breathing organism that is greater than any one of us by ourselves, and capable of living out God’s love for this world. God came to be one of us to show us the way, Jesus lived and died, rose into new life and joined his father to show us the way. Jesus left with us a gift …. Ah but that’s next week.

God loves and adores you, Thanks be to God. Amen

6 Easter Yr A

2011-05-28T16:21:00.001-06:00

Each one of us lives in a web of relationship. We are mothers, daughters, siblings, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, friend. In each of these relationships there is a degree of intimacy, isolation, and alienation. I want you to imagine today your most intimate relationships. The relationships in which you are free to be fully who God created you to be. These are the relationships in which when apart, the beloved is on your mind and in your heart, and when together, you may sit in companionable silence. This relationship may be your spouse, or maybe a child, or maybe a parent, or even a friend. This kind of relationship is a glimpse of what the gospel writer John tries to show us when he uses the verb abide. John writes, "you know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you." "And then, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." The verb abide describes the mutual indwelling of God, Jesus, and the disciple whom he loves. This evokes a particular Johannine sense of divine presence and companionship. What John shows us is a picture of intimacy, and that picture sits next to a picture of transcendence on our mantel, and together give us a glimpse of the totality of the love that God has for us.

Before the cloud, before google docs, before apps, before the internet, even before every household had books, before every one in a civilized society could read, was art. In frescos on church walls, in stained glass, on massive ceilings, were the stories of our faith. The artwork showed us who we are and to whom we are related. In those days, there was a painting of Mary, nursing her son Jesus. In fact, there were many depictions of Mary nursing her son Jesus. This is an intimate view of mother and child, of savior of the world and the one who bore him. So intimate indeed, that it is very very rare for us in this time and place to even see it. As women's bodies were objectified, these intimate depictions showing the nourishment and nurturing that Jesus received at his mother's bosom were removed. In it's place was the violent image of the cross. But it is the nourishing and nurturing image that John's gospel evokes for us, the intimate incarnated image in which we are in the father and the father is in us. It is this image of wholeness, not of brokenness, the image of interdependence, not isolation, the image of healing not of fragmentation, that abides in John's gospel.

The gospel passage we read today is a piece of John that follows after Jesus telling the disciples about the new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. And that when they do so, everyone will know that they are Jesus' disciples. And that follows after the last supper of John's gospel, and at that last supper, Jesus washes the disciples feet. Jesus' disciples, you and me, take Jesus into our bodies. Jesus' disciples, you and me, have our feet washed and wash other's feet. Jesus indeed abides in us, if that's not intimate, I don't know what is.

All of this conversation in John's gospel takes place at the table in the upper room on the night of Jesus' betrayal. So in the context of a meal, in the context of foot washing, is this intimacy that is nourishing and nurturing. The intimacy of abiding is enlivening and sustaining. It calls us to be fully present. It calls us to be fully in the "here" not somewhere else, not "there", not in the future, not in the past, not somewhere else, but right here. In fact, God can't bear to be without us, not one second, God tells us that our "here" is all right here, the way is less about where you are going, than what you are being. Jesus says I'm right here, Jesus says I am the resurrection AND the life, I AM the way. Right here right now, and yet the disciples will abandon the here because here is so very difficult. They and we have become so good at "there" and not very good at "here". They and we arrive at the "Heavenly Holiday Inn" without ever having really made the journey.

The word Advocate in John means the Spirit, and it is in this place of being fully present that the Spirit finds us. As we pay attention in the here, in the present, and not so much to what the reward is at the end, whenever that end is, last week, next year, or the undetermined future, we are are thrust into the intimacy of relationship. We look the others who are here with us on this journey in the eye, we sit with them in these pews, we stand next to them in the grocery line, we see them sleeping under bridges, we serve them dinner at the Mission, we visit them in the hospital, we disagree with them at the dinner table and across our fences. And in them, like in every one of us, abides Jesus, God, Spirit. Being here, means acknowledging that truth, and for many that is so very hard.

What's so hard about being fully and completely here? What's so hard about the journey? It's the difference between entering into what is right in front of you, the immediacy and the intimacy of the incarnation, which is sometimes mighty scary, or keeping that incarnation cradled in the manger, never growing, never changing, never challenging, never imagining, never redeeming. It's the difference between worshipping Jesus in the beauty and the wonder of church, and looking into the eyes of the people you meet and serving Jesus right here. Maybe it's the difference between talking about all the different ways to pray and actually sitting in the quiet and centering yourself and listening to the still small voice. Maybe it's the difference between talking about feeding people, clothing people, and loving people, and actually doing it. Here, not there. Here, not then.

I am actually not sure what it looks like to live in the here, not there, because it is a challenge for me as well. I am distracted by what's next, what's new, what's down the road. I think that's partly why I love to read science fiction, it's often all about what may be, albeit a judgement on what is. I have had to be very intentional about sitting still and listening, I have been much more comfortable on the move, fidgeting when asked to sit for long periods, getting up and pacing when I have to listen to long lectures, much longer than this however.

But, being in the here, being in this intimate and incarnational relationship with Jesus, God, Spirit, is transformative. At the clergy retreat I attended in Arizona a couple of weeks back, one of the fellows talked about "making camp." I realized that is just what I must do, what we must do. Making camp is about being fully present, it is about being here, not there, it is about seeing exactly what and who surrounds us, it is about giving thanks for that and not lamenting where we aren't or what we don't have, and when we make camp, God knows where we are, and we are transformed. Making camp is about gathering around the campfire, or the dinner table, roasting marshmallows, breaking bread together, sitting in companionable silence, making room for the Spirit to abide in us. And as the Spirit abides in us, we are transformed, we look more and more like God's image, we treat others and serve others with mercy and compassion.

2 Easter Yr A

2011-04-30T12:34:00.000-06:00

We have told the ancient stories of our faith, we have lit the new fire of Easter, we have baptized, we have proclaimed the Alleluias! and we, the remnant, the faithful ones come here today in confidence that the Christian life is more than the high of resurrection. We come here today in expectation that there is more to the story, that God’s glory is not just at the mountaintop, but God's glory is encountered along the way as well. Now is the reality of the Christian journey, now is the time we live in fear and in hope. To borrow another journey metaphor, now is when the rubber meets the road. If indeed we are people of story, which I do believe we are, how are we resurrected and how are we agents of resurrection? How then is the Easter story being written into our lives? We are now invited to live a whole new life, what is that story about?

Jesus takes all of the guilt, the shame, blame, anxiety, all of the pain and suffering, all of the isolation and alienation onto himself. Our new life begins with the sure and certain truth that we are loved. That in spite of whatever has gone horribly wrong deep in our hearts and has spread to every corner of the world, in spite of our missing the mark, in spite of our failures, rebellion, and hard hearts, in spite of what's been done to us or what we've done, God has made peace with us. As Jesus said, "It is finished."

This is the work that Jesus does on the cross, and in the resurrection, new life begins. So Thomas, the twin, reflects all our humanity, all of that doubt, all of that need for clarity and certainty. Thomas needs to see, to feel, to touch, Thomas just can't take his friends' word for it. Thomas' story is our story too, at least Thomas' story is much like my story. Jesus comes and stands among them. Jesus says, see me, feel me, touch me, this is real. All of these wounds are your wounds, they are the wounds of humanity, they are the wounds perpetrated by all the lying, the apathy, the greed, the mistrust. We heard that story during our amazing worship of Holy Week and Easter, beginning with the disturbing music of the Service of Darkness, as we passed by the unusual passion story of Good Friday, and as we traced the ancient stories of our faith during the Easter Vigil. The reality is that Jesus takes all of that out with him, and leaves us with new life, hope, grace, peace.

Imagine Jesus' friends huddled in that locked room that day, they were afraid. Fear prevents people from seeing. Fear moves us to grasp for the secure rather than reach for the real. And what is real in this story? Jesus' presence is real. Jesus' wounds are real. Jesus' peace is real. And Jesus leaves us with the real presence of the Spirit. Do not be afraid, we heard at the incarnation and at the resurrection, be filled with the spirit. The spirit that teaches us about forgiveness.

How is this Easter story being written into your life? This story that teaches us about what is real. This story that shows us that what looks like loss and failure to the world is counted as victory in the kingdom. This story that we do not need to live in fear, this story in which love wins.

You see, this Easter story, being written into each of our lives is the real story. Through Thomas each of us gets to see, to feel, to touch what is real, and what is real is the amazing love that God has for each and every one of us, and for all of us together. Sometimes we succumb to the lie that this life is about getting as much as we want, or doing as we please, without any thought on the effect that has on those around us, or even on the living, moving, breathing earth upon which we live. No, reality is that we are all connected, we are all related. Reality is that what I do, what you do, affects the web that surrounds us. That is where the rubber meets the road. That is where we are agents of resurrection. That is where the Easter story continues to be written.

What God does in the resurrection matters. And it matters because of Thomas, we do indeed encounter Jesus at every turn. You show forth the reality that Love wins. You show forth the reality that death does not have the final word. What you do matters to the world and to the kingdom. What you do, what we do has an effect on the world about us, what we do has an effect on the people around us. Like Thomas, we see, feel, touch the pain and suffering of Jesus in our midst. We see our brothers and sisters suffering as the result of natural disasters, tornados and tsunamis. We witness the pain and suffering in our community as the result of poverty. We accompany our friends as they sit with family in hospital and in homes and await death and await healing. We are accompanied by friends who sit in vigil with us. We may be afraid, but instead of being immobilized by that fear, we proclaim by word and example that Jesus is in our midst and that Love wins, that new life is possible now. That's the story we write. That's the story that's true.

Love wins. God brings wholeness and healing to all of creation, including Thomas, and you, and me. God re-members us. God puts us back together. God reconciles us. God restores us. Even when it looks like and feels like everything is falling apart, even when it looks like and feels like failure. Peace be with you is what Jesus says to those gathered in that room. Peace be with you, you are now reconciled, you have new life.

The story we write is the story that says yes to God. Because, when we say yes to God, when we open ourselves to Jesus' living, giving action the cross, we enter into a way of life. God is the source, the strength, the example, and the assurance that the story of death and rebirth, new life, is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires. Loose your life to find it.

Let your life, let your Easter story show the world that Love wins. Each time you put your finger into the wound of another, be the agent of resurrection, be the bringing of hope, of new life. Each time you see the pain in the world, be the the one who responds with mercy, compassion, and love. Each time you hear words of derision, words that bully and hurt, speak instead words of mercy, of compassion and of love. Each time you encounter fear, fear of death, fear of change, fear of the other, fear of not having enough, remember that Love wins over fear every time.

Easter Vigil/Easter

2011-04-23T15:23:00.000-06:00

This is the night, when you brought our forebears, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land. This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life. This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave, we heard Christie sing. We rehearsed the stories of our faith, the stories of God’s activity in the life of God’s people, the story of reconciliation, restoration, resurrection, in the midst of wandering, whining, and wailing. Bones that join together and wind and spirit to give them new life. Water that cleanses, water that hydrates, water that is poured over us.

On this night, death does not have the final word. We have kept vigil, we have listened to litanies and prayers, we have sat in the silence and wept, we have been to the cross with Jesus, we have recognized our complicity in the whole mess, we have held one another’s hand, we have wondered whether we are worth all this pain and trouble, we have told the stories of who we are and whose we are, and we, like the women who go to the tomb to see Jesus, are afraid.

At the two pivotal times of the church year, Incarnation and Resurrection, the angel says, “Do not be afraid.” "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised!” Indeed this is good news, received with fear and great joy. What are we to do with this Good News, that death does not have the final word? The women go and tell the others. Come and see, go and tell. This is not a secret to keep, it is Good News to tell, God has raised Jesus to new life, and God will raise you to new life too. It is transforming news.

On this night, we are surprised by joy, we are surprised by hope, Love wins. God acts decisively on behalf of all creation, on behalf of the Peters, and the Judas’, the Roman soldiers and the apathetic bystanders, the Mary’s and the Martha’s, you and me. And we must go and tell. Every story we tell points us to God who loves creation so very much, that God is willing to take extreme measures to show us that Love wins, that death does not triumph.

Come and see, go and tell. We see Jesus. Jesus who was born into this world, our world, born in a barn, to parents of questionable status. Jesus, who taught in the temple when he was twelve. Jesus who ate with tax collectors and sinners, hung around with women and children. Jesus who fed the hungry, five thousand at a time. Jesus, who spoke with the woman at the well, who healed the blind man, who raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. Jesus, who restored the marginalized people to status, who literally gave new life where there was no life at all. Come and see.

Incarnation shows us that God comes into our time and walks this road with us. Jesus’ life, and love, pain and sorrow, death and resurrection, show us that it is not God’s purpose to remove sadness, loneliness, pain and sorrow from the world, but to show us a new way to live. Resurrection shows us that God actively works in human history because God never gives up on the creation God loves so very much.

This Easter story, this story that Love wins, that death does not triumph, changes the world and must therefore change us. Do not be afraid the angel says. I think the angel tells us not to be afraid, because we are so afraid of change, and this will change you. God is doing something new through Jesus, and God wants us to be a part of it. God adds a twist to the old stories with Easter. With Jesus, God says there is no more business as usual. God’s kingdom, that begins with Easter, which begins with resurrection, is not like the world. Love wins, hate, greed, envy, oppression, lies and apathy, have no place in this new kingdom. The first will be last, the last will be first.

Jesus calls disciples, the ones who followed him while he walked this journey on earth, and you and me, Jesus’ disciples today, to teach us who we are, to teach us about being citizens of the new kingdom. We are to be growing in generosity, forgiveness, honesty, courage, truth telling, and responsibility, this is a change from the ways of the world, do not be afraid.

And on this most holy night, we renew our promise to grow into the full stature of Christ, as we stand with Rex and Amy, and Cadence’s godparents, as they make these promises as well. Our baptismal promises that help us to grow in generosity, forgiveness, honesty, courage, truth telling, and responsibility. We enter the waters of baptism; we die with Jesus and are brought out of death to new life with Jesus.

Love wins. All of creation is joined to God. Go and tell. Do not be afraid.
Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Good Friday

2011-04-22T14:47:00.001-06:00

What is good about Good Friday? I’ve heard people ask this question, I’ve asked it myself, but I’ve never really seriously thought about it. What is good about Good Friday? I think what is good about Good Friday is that it shows us something about holy dying.

In our fast paced, gotta have it now, there’s an app for that, high tech lives, the worst possible thing to happen is death, or sickness. Our language reflects that. We fight and battle with cancer, we overcome disability, we rarely speak of death as a part of life, we rarely speak of sickness as the opportunity for life in a new way. Good Friday shows us that death is dying to that which is killing us, resurrection only and always happens after death.
Good Friday shows us that something must die before the green and growing thing can take root and bear new life. Good Friday shows us that forgiveness is about pruning that which is dead anyway, so that God can effect in us the new life that God promises.

Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane is Lord, not my will but yours be done. Giving up our will is not a bad thing. In our culture that is all about you, all about what you want and when you want it, obedience is a bad word. But it is being who God wants us to be that is a good thing, and that requires that we die to whatever it is that is killing us.

Good Friday shows us holy dying, it is not easy, but it is a part of life. You see, the truth is that being human means being born to die. Again, none of us gets out of here alive. Jesus’ life, and suffering and death on a Roman cross not only show us how to do it, but Jesus, on the Roman cross, takes our place.

On this night we remember all this. We enter into the story of the passion. We hear the story in the voices of those who were with Jesus that terrible night. We do so not to be macabre, not to glorify Jesus’ death or any other death, we do it so that we may be healed, we may be reconciled, that we may have the absolutely new and abundant life that God offers in the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The people who populate this story, and the events of this passion, the betrayal, the lies, the apathy, the bad luck, allow each of us to enter the story. You and I are these people, we are people who have betrayed and been betrayed, we are people who have lied and who have been lied to, we are people who have shown apathy, and we are people who experience just darn bad luck. We are people who have experienced sadness and pain, we are people who feel isolated and alienated at times. We are human beings who live in the muck and mess of this life. What we do together this evening, and the foot washing and holy communion of last evening, even the joyous resurrection we will celebrate together tomorrow evening, doesn’t take away the reality of the muck and mess in which we live. We carry these burdens, they are part of who we are.

So what does happen when we walk the way of the cross with Jesus, when we enter into the events of this holy week and this holy day? Why do we all show up all these evenings to walk the way of the cross with Jesus? We grow toward Holy Dying and transformation happens. I surely hope we are changed by our encounter with the people on the way, the people in the stories, and by the amazing love that God has for us that we know because God is willing to be one of us. Because only a God who is willing to be one of us, a God who has such faith in us, is a God in which I can place my love, my loyalty, my attention.

You see, what Jesus does at this moment is to let evil wreak its fury upon him; he negates its power and takes it out of the world with him. Jesus takes on all of our betrayal, all of our lies, our apathy, all of our pain, sadness, loneliness and isolation, and Jesus defeats it, not by resisting it with the sort of violence that was visited upon him, but by absorbing it and removing it through the power of love. On the cross, Jesus ultimately collects all of the violence of this world, takes it and holds it so that the stream of hate and hurt will flow no farther. Jesus takes in all of our pain and our suffering, all of our betrayal and lies; all of our isolation and sadness, and Jesus contains it. Jesus’ life and death says to our world, it all stops here. It all stops with me. It is indeed, Good Friday.

And Jesus’ dying on the cross looks to the world like failure. Jesus suffered, Jesus died. But Jesus did not fail. Jesus redefined death and life. Death does not have the final word; death does not have the victory. The Word of God has the final word.

What Jesus did on the cross was to make it possible for us to have new life, a life that our words cannot begin to describe, a life that our minds cannot begin to imagine. What Jesus did and does is to make it possible for us to be transformed.

Winning and losing have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; love and forgiveness are gifts. Success and failure have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; sharing and walking together are gifts. Isolation and alienation have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; relationship and connection are gifts.

Jesus does not take away pain and sorrow and isolation. The reality that you and I know, is that to be human is to feel, to feel pain, to feel joy, to feel isolation, to feel intimacy. And, being human means being born to die, and only a God who is willing to share that can actually help us face our own mortality and that of those we love.

Death is real and grief hurts and sometimes we just have to sit in the silence and cry and wait. That is what this Good Friday is about. We have some experience in this. It is very like when we sit with our loved ones in hospital, as the result of illness or accident, waiting, quite unsure of what to do or what to think, silence and sadness and tears, are our only activity. Holy Dying.

Too many Christians want to go straight from the garden of Gethsemane to the garden of the empty tomb without going by way of the hill of crucifixion and the stone-cold body. It seems too painful to sit in silence, waiting and grieving. And yet nothing of the reality of Christ’s victory over evil on the cross, or our faith in the resurrection to come soon, must be allowed to shield us from the awful brute fact that Jesus died.

And yet, as we sit in the silence to cry and to wait, we sit with this company. The disciples sat together in the silence to cry and to wait. Our only comfort right now resides with one another, with these relationships to each other and to God. Hold one another, grieve with one another, and remember, give one another the gift of hope. The cross does become the place where transformation and holy dying is possible.

Holy Communion and Foot Washing

2011-04-21T14:11:00.001-06:00

On this night we remember and we are re-membered. We remember that God is in relationship with all of creation, and with us, God’s creatures. We remember our faith story, the one we share with all of humanity, as well as the one that is ours alone. Our faith story tells us what we know to be true, that there is a God that cares about us, acts in our lives, engages us and empowers us with purpose and feeds us with the only food that will not only sustain us but give us life, without which, we die.

The Exodus conveys those ideas on the grandest scale, reminding us that God is more than just an impersonal Creator of the Universe, the One who set the world in motion but has no interest in Creation. We believe in a God that cares about creation and creatures and offers us a destiny and a purpose. Religious stories are used in the same way we use words, to communicate ideas. We pass on ideas from generation to generation and in doing so, connect ourselves to the values of those who came before us and those who will follow us.

On this evening, most clearly of all the church year, we remember that we are part of a story. It is the story of Jesus' life, and in particular his Passion, his crucifixion and glorious resurrection, re-enacted in our lives during the events of the week. But we also remember that we as Christians exist in fellowship with Christ and with one another. In holy imagination, we sit around a single table and receive nourishment from Jesus himself. We look into one another's faces and see joy and pain, worry and anticipation. And together we tell the story that unites us, beyond all our differences of faith and practice: we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

On this Holy night, we remember who we are and where we came from. On this Holy night, we are re-membered, as well. We are a broken people, and in this re-membering we are put back together, we are remade, we become the body of Christ. “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Something real happens, something that is more real than anything that our culture may offer us in the way of happiness. We are fed and we are put back together. We come to this table and no matter what, no matter where we come from, no matter what we’ve done, no matter how lonely we may be, no matter what we have or don’t have, we are fed. We are fed with this bread and this wine which is in a very real way the body and blood of Jesus. Jesus’ body is broken so that we may be made whole and so that we may feed others.

Some of you yet remember the time when Morning Prayer was the primary activity of church on Sunday mornings. It wasn’t until 1972, just a mere 29 years ago that we began having communion together every Sunday, and sometimes even more often than that. Communion provides us with a life-sustaining ritual, a regular meeting around the word and person of Christ that can become the daily bread of our lives and our communities. A community sustains itself not primarily through novelty, titillation, and high emotion but through rhythm and routine, through simple, predictable, ritual processes. A wise family will all eat together at least once each day even if it is a very hard thing to do. They will all be together even if it isn’t exciting, even if real feelings aren’t shared, even if some can’t use their mobile devices, and even if some are protesting that it isn’t worthwhile. We will do this because, if we don’t, we will soon fall apart as a family. To stay together we need regular, straight-forward, predictable, daily rituals. We need the manna of daily presence to each other. Otherwise we’ll die.

It is this rhythm and routine that creates in us as individuals and as a community the notion that we are fed so that we may feed others. Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” This is what the body of Christ does. The foot washing we do tonight recalls the first communion as well. We just read from the gospel of John that during supper, Jesus got up from the table, took off his robe, tied a towel around himself, and washed his friends feet.

You see, washing one another’s feet is really what Holy Communion is about. Jesus’ foot washing is a radical activity. Foot washing was a common practice when guests arrived for a meal, it was an action usually performed by slaves or low-status servants. It was an onerous and demeaning task because it meant washing off human and animal waste.
No matter how well a person bathed, sandals and feet inevitably became smelly and dirty in the process of walking to a meal at another’s house. And then, particularly here in John, to wash another’s feet is to wash away their actions, foot washing is a parting gesture performed by Jesus and urged upon the disciples, they and we must forgive one another as Jesus first forgives, they and we must love one another as Jesus first loves, they and we must feed one another as Jesus feeds us.

The gospel from John tonight concludes with the words, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus speaks of discipleship in this distinctive way in John, having love for one another. We have heard the stories of the Old Testament all through Lent, the great stories of promise and covenant and restoration. What is radically different about this new covenant, this new commandment in the gospel of John, is this aspect of discipleship, love one another.

Jesus, teacher, rabbi, friend, knows that the end is near. In this part of John’s gospel we have event after event of Jesus trying to impart all of his teaching to the disciples, story after story that shows Jesus’ friends what discipleship looks like. Discipleship looks like love and forgiveness, and in the context of 1st century Mediterranean culture, love and forgiveness are radical. It is honor and power that has been valued, Jesus shows something else entirely.

It is a good and right thing to do for us to wash one another’s feet, but it cannot be just symbolic action. It needs to be sacramental, it needs to be an outward sign of an inward reality, it needs to be the way we live our lives in the church and in the world. The hard part about love and forgiveness, the hard thing about discipleship, is that the world we live in does not necessarily reward love and forgiveness. Just look at what happened to Jesus.

On this night, we are fed, we are nourished, we are re-membered as the body of Christ, because Jesus body is broken, so that we may be made whole. The activity of this night, the journey of this week not only helps us to remember, but makes real what we do all year long. On this night, we are fed, we feed each other, we wash each other’s feet, we remember who we are.

5 Lent Yr A 2011

2011-04-09T15:52:00.001-06:00

I think of Mary and Martha as good friends of mine. Mary and Martha are women who cook and clean and maybe even listen to good stories, and they are women who are committed to Jesus. I think the reason they seem like good friends of mine is that we do the same things, it seems like we share the same interests and concerns. Martha is concerned about the perfume that Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet, she wonders if that wasn’t a bit extravagant. Martha also is concerned that Mary tends to act more like a disciple of Jesus, than the single girl that she is. Martha seems practical that way, Mary a bit more excessive, a bit overgenerous. Sometimes I wish I were a bit more like my friend Mary, and a bit less like my friend Martha.

So the sadness that Martha and Mary have experienced at the death of their brother Lazarus, seems passionate and powerful. Especially since they called on their friend Jesus to come and heal their brother, and Jesus didn’t come. He didn’t come when their brother lay dying, and he didn’t come to his funeral, Jesus broke my number one rule, always go to the funeral. Finally, four days after Lazarus has been laid in the tomb, Jesus comes.

Martha runs out to him in the depths of her grief and anger, screaming and hollering, maybe even pounding Jesus’ chest, “why weren’t you here earlier? You could have done something about this, now Lazarus lies rotting in that tomb. Why, did he have to die? Why didn’t you come? Why…”

These may be questions we all ask at the death of a friend, at the death of a loved one. The sorrow and grief of our friends becomes our sorrow and grief too. This story of Mary and Martha shows us that being faithful to Jesus is in no way a guarantee against pain and tragedy. There is no one on earth whose righteousness, wisdom, hard work, or good planning will preserve her from seeing the depths that Martha sees. Good people become widows and orphans. It’s a fact, and no less of a fact for Jesus’ coming.

But there is something else. We can cry to God from the depths, as we hear in the psalm. There is no depth, no loss, no tragedy, no disease or death, nothing on heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place the world or anyone in it beyond God’s redemption. Good people become widows and orphans, good people are killed in accidents, good people die from disease, and good people die at a young age. But God defends the widow and the orphan, and will not leave those God loves bereft.

God will not leave us filled with a sense of loss, God will not leave us. You see, that’s what was, is, and will be accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God loves us, God loves all creation. And God, master of the universe, creator of all that is seen and unseen, gave up all power and came into this world as one of us, just like you and me. Jesus. God in our midst. And Jesus stood with our friends Mary and Martha, and wept at the death of his friend, Lazarus. Jesus didn’t take the pain away from our friends, but Jesus stood side by side, right in the very midst of them, and felt the pain and the sorrow along with them. This is a God in whom I can place my faith, my trust, just like my friends Martha and Mary did.

And this is the place we find ourselves today, the last Sunday before Jesus’ journey takes him to Jerusalem, the city in which he will be put to death for his radical ideas of love and inclusion. We find ourselves in this place of sadness, loss, pain and sorrow. A place of isolation, and of alienation. It is a place where we will spend much of our time until the day of resurrection.

When we are in a place of sadness, of loneliness, or a place of alienation it seems as if it will never come to a conclusion, the isolation, the sadness, the loneliness, will never end. But that is what our heart desires, conclusion, and reconciliation. Being once again brought back into the web of relationship in which the yearning of our heart is fulfilled; a place of solace and of strength, a place of pardon and renewal.

You may be in that place of loneliness and alienation right now. Some of you may be isolated in your relationships, some of you may be experiencing broken relationships. Some of you may feel alienated from the people around you, people at school or at work.

Good and true relationships are so very hard in this world where perceived perfection can be accomplished through surgery, implants, and pills. Good and true relationships are so very hard in this world when recreational sex is splayed all over our TV sets and pop culture magazines.

Our cries to God do not go unheard. It is into this mess that Jesus comes. This is the very place where Jesus comes to show us that we were created in God’s image and are wonderfully made. It is into this place of loneliness and alienation that Jesus comes and says you are not alone, you are never alone, I am with you, and I am here in those who surround you to show you the way.

This story of reconciliation, of restoration and new life is an ancient story that reaches as far back as the prophet Ezekiel, and it reaches as far forward as God can imagine. From Ezekiel we hear from the Lord, “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people: and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live. “

And this story doesn’t end there. This story goes on. Jesus calls Lazarus out of his tomb, against the better judgment of our friends Mary and Martha, who know full well that after four days in the tomb this will not be pleasant.

John the gospel writer always points us to God, and this story is no different. It is for the glory of God that Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb. It is to show Mary and Martha, you and I, all who were gathered there that day, and all who hear this story over the millennia, that it is through God that creation has new life, that creation is brought back into right relationship with its creator. It is through God that we no longer live in isolation, we no longer are alienated from God and from one another, death does not separate us from God or from one another.

And yet, after we have become convinced that all is lost, when we are ready to concede to death, Jesus demonstrates that there is no loss, no death, no tragedy, no depth, no power in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place a person, a situation, or a world beyond God’s redemption, and beyond the reach of infinite love and abundant life.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.

4 Lent Yr A

2011-04-02T11:39:00.000-06:00

“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; all else be nought to me, save that thou art – thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.” I have been wondering mightily what it means to really see, what true vision really is. And as I wonder, I recall the words from the movie Avatar. You may remember them. As our characters, Jake Sully and Neytiri, journey together on the planet Pandora, Neytiri says to Jake Sully, “I see you.” Neytiri teaches Jake Sully the ways of her culture, her language, her natural world, she shows him the mystery of life on Pandora, he walks beside her learning the ways of the people there, and somewhere, sometime on that journey, Jake Sully says to Neytiri, “I see you.” I see you, what does it mean to see? For these characters it means so much more than what is absorbed through the open eyes. It means that the heart and the soul, the body and the mind are engaged in knowing, listening, being, and suffering. It is a journey of seeing, a journey of knowing. In this story, the scales do not fall from the eyes in one instant, as they did for Paul on the Damascus Road. In this story, it is the relationship that affects the seeing.

What does it mean to really see? “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; all else be nought to me, save that thou art – thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.” “I see you,” the people of Pandora say to their beloved, this hymn sings of a similar seeing. Seeing, vision, takes all of our senses and our sensibilities, seeing engages our entire being, and seeing presumes relationship, it presumes walking together.

As I have pondered this question, I also think of Kathy Davis, who is blind. When Kathy wants to see something, she takes it in her hands, she touches it, and turns it, she puts her fingers in the holes, she feels the sharp edges, she asks about its color. What does it really mean to see?

In the story of seeing we have before us today, having one’s eyes open does not presume seeing. In this story there are many characters, there is the man whose eyes Jesus opens. Jesus made mud and opened his eyes. When some of the Pharisees questioned him, his response is that Jesus is a prophet. And yet the Samaritan woman at the well has already named Jesus the Messiah, many Samaritans from that city believed in him because they saw the woman’s passion and joy at her discovery that the man at the well is the Messiah. Jesus has healed the official’s son, the man by the Sheep Gate who could not enter the pool took his mat up and walked, Jesus feeds five thousand people, he walks across the water, and yet this man whose eyes were opened calls Jesus a prophet. It is only later, after being questioned, after the dawning of who Jesus must be, does the man really begin to see who Jesus really is.

The man’s parents and the neighbors could not see that it was Jesus in their midst. And the Pharisees could see nothing at all, except the sin of the parents, and the sin of healing on the Sabbath. What does it really mean to see?

There is a clue in the reading from Samuel. The story we hear today is the middle of a longer story about the Lord choosing a king for Israel, the Lord does not really want a king for Israel, but the Israelites insist. So the Lord looks over each of these candidates for kingship, and each of them is rejected. Eventually, the one chosen is David, and we all know David does not turn out perfectly. But in the middle of the story today, we hear “for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. “

Is that what it means to really see? Surely that would be the meaning of the words “I see you,” as Jake Sully says them to Neytiri. Surely that would be the prayer in the words of our hymn today, be what I see Lord, be my best thought day and night, in my waking and my sleeping. What if we look upon one another with open eyes from the heart, would that change us? What if we look upon one another with eyes that forgive, would that transform our lives? What if we look upon one another with eyes of compassion, would we live more kindly, more gently? And, what if we truly believe that God looks upon us with love, forgiveness, and compassion, would we be transformed?

It is indeed the journey with Jesus and with one another that creates in us the gift of seeing. The blind man’s eyes indeed were opened, but it took some time before he was able to really see, before he was able to see who it was who gave him sight, before he was able to say “I was blind, now I see.” You see, this is fundamentally a story about grace. These stories before us today, all of them, the ancient stories from the Old Testament, the stories from the time of Jesus, and the very new stories that are told today, these are stories about grace. These are stories that reveal the truth of God in our midst. They are stories that reveal the truth of pain and suffering, of death and resurrection. They are stories that reveal the truth of disappointment and loss, and the new life that always results. They are stories that reveal the truth of communion and of community.

Together we walk the road, we make this journey together. We can’t do it alone. We can’t bear the pain and suffering alone, and we don’t want to bear the joy by ourselves. To see one another with eyes of the heart, to look upon one another with forgiveness and compassion, is to acknowledge our shared humanity; it is to recognize Jesus in our midst.

This season of Lent is a gift of opportunity. Lent gives us another chance to see, to see God in our midst, to see the gift of forgiveness and grace, to see one another as we journey together on this road of faith, to see one another on this road of compassion and mercy. Lent helps us to have clearer vision; it gives us a longer view.

And as we see more clearly, we realize that forgiveness and compassion are made manifest in who we are and what we do. What does it mean to really see? It means that our hearts are open to each other, especially those with whom we disagree. It means that we respond to God’s amazing grace by really seeing those who we are so unlike. It means that we approach God’s creation with our eyes, our hearts, our souls, wide open. And when we do that, we are able to see the need that is in our church and our community. The needs that you and I are able to address. We can feed people, we can clothe people, we can have hope and be the hope for others.

And as we do that, we reach out to each other, we hold hands, because most definitely we will step in the mess and the muck. We will step in the holes; we will trip over the obstacles. This Christian journey is a journey we take together, because together, we see more clearly.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.

2 Lent Yr A

2011-03-19T11:33:00.000-06:00

What is this being Christian really about? Why do we bother, every Sunday, every Wednesday, coming here, to this place to worship a God we cannot see. It would be so much easier to be out with the others, drinking good coffee at Starbucks, or some other coffee establishment, reading our newspaper, eating a wonderful confection for breakfast. Or sleeping in late, or reading a good book, or hanging out with kids and partner after a long and grueling week. And yet we are here. I don’t think it’s because I compel you to be here, I have thought about preaching hell and damnation if you don’t come, hoping to increase our numbers, but I don’t, I can’t. I can’t honestly do that, because I don’t think it’s right or true. Coming here on Sunday mornings, being together, participating in good music, prayers, bread and wine, body and blood, is not about hell and damnation, it’s not about life after death, it’s all about life in the here and now. It is about the eternal life that Jesus talks about with Nicodemus in our story this morning.

Eternal life is not about heaven. Remember on the Last Sunday before Lent, a couple of weeks ago, I said something about kairos and chronos. I talked about time and measuring time and the experience of time. We live in chronological time, we are conceived, we are born in to the world, we grow, we age, and we die. The story we hear from the gospel of John today seems to, and all the other stories as well seem to show a time that is not chronos. The stories in the bible speak about God’s time, they show us kairos, not chronos. The word eternal in today’s gospel doesn’t mean forever. It isn’t a uniform measurement of time like days and years marching endlessly into some unknown or even known future. That’s a category or concept that we really don’t even find in the bible. Eternal as in whoever believes in him may have eternal life, doesn’t mean the literal passing of time, it means transcending time, or kairos, it means belonging to another realm or reign altogether. It means belonging to God’s realm. That is where heaven comes in. When Jesus talked about heaven, he was talking about our present, eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and in whatever is to come. Heaven for Jesus wasn’t just someday; it was and is a present reality. Jesus blurs the lines, inviting Nicodemus, and us, into the merging of heaven and earth, the future and the present, here and now.
That is how you can be born again, because eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life lived now in connection to God. Eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and even survive death.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Why do we come here each Sunday morning to sing songs of praise, to worship, to encounter God’s word, to be with each other, to be fed by God’s body and blood? Because new life in Christ demands it. Because the response to God’s amazing creation, God’s amazing love and grace is to give thanks, because the response to God’s amazing gift of life and love is to raise up in prayer and song, and to fall on our knees in awe. And because it’s not about any one of us individually, it’s about us together.

Some Christians have co-opted this language of being born again and have made it into a one time and exclusive deal. If you say a particular set of words you have access to some sort of life after death that means you will spend eternity in heaven, as opposed to hell. That really doesn’t seem to be what Jesus talks about or is concerned about however. Jesus seems to be much more interested in the here and now, and the new life that is available to everyone, but especially people who are suffering, in pain, and on the margins. Jesus gave his life for this new life; Jesus walked a road of pain and suffering, for what? So that some people could have comfort in an afterlife, and so that most people who don’t have access will spend life after death in a place called hell?

God’s amazing and abundant love is available to all, that’s what Jesus’ life, suffering, death and resurrection makes real. There is no exclusivity to it; all of scripture shows us that. That’s why I come here, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Not because it’s an exclusive club, but because together we give thanks for this amazing gift, because together we recognize our need for forgiveness so that we can realize fully the love that God has for us, and because together we are fed and nourished so that we may feed and nourish others.

We are born again. In the midst of the pain and tragedy of this life, and we have observed and experienced some of the most horrific pain and tragedy recently, Jesus walks with us. In the midst of the pain and suffering of our lives, Jesus walks with us. Jesus doesn’t take that pain and suffering away, often we wish he would, Jesus carries the burden with us. The work that Jesus does in life and death, and resurrection, is to absorb all that pain and suffering, violence and hatred, and defeat it with the power of God’s amazing and abundant love.

You and I have access to that new life, to that amazing love, right here and right now. We are born again and again and again. It’s not about a one-time deal; it’s not one moment in time. It’s a process and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt. We keep coming to church and we keep being fed and nourished because this journey is messy and unclear. We glimpse the new life that is right in front of it at one moment, and then we miss it, again we miss the mark, we loose the trail, we wander in the wilderness, and we come back to be fed and nourished and find our way again.

And as we are fed and nourished, we go out and feed and nourish others. And in the end, and in the beginning, and in the middle, that is what Christian discipleship is about, that is what this journey is about. It is about responding to the amazing love that God has for each and every one of us and for all of us, it is about the new life, the eternal life, the life of here and now, that is available to all of us. In the messiness of our lives, in the good and bad choices we make, in the pain and tragedy of human action and in the pain and tragedy of natural disaster, God’s amazing and abundant love is available to Abraham who lived in a land that worshiped gods who were not the One God, it is available to Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, it is available to the Samaritan woman at the well, it is available to the man born blind, it is available to Lazarus and Martha and Mary, all outsiders, all people on the margins, all who never said the words, I accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior. And this same amazing and abundant love is available to you, and to me and to all of us.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.

1 Lent Yr A

2011-03-12T09:27:00.001-07:00

We enter the season of Lent with this story that takes place just after Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan, and just before Jesus calls his disciples and begins teaching on the hillside. I have said before to you that I think this story is much more about seduction than it is temptation, and I’ll tell you why. I’m reminded of Edmund, in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the books in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Edmund is the third child in a family of four children. He is overshadowed by his older brother Peter, and Edmund suffers from a lack of confidence that contributes to a rather unfortunate series of decisions. When the children enter the land of Narnia through the wardrobe, they encounter eternal winter, brought on by the despicable Queen. The Queen approaches Edmund and tempts him with the sugary concoction, Turkish delight, and some warm and wonderful hot cocoa as well. Thus begins Edmund’s turn toward the despicable Queen, and away from the Lion Aslan, his brother and sisters, and all that represents.

You see, without an exception, temptation looks and feels delicious. It is part of our very humanity to seek out that which we believe is positive, pleasurable, and good. We always embark on the road to perdition with the belief that it is in fact a good. That is the nature of seduction. It begins with a beautiful face, it begins with a ripe red apple, it begins with mouth watering tastiness, it begins with the promise of relief, escape, pleasure, it begins in wonder and amazement, but it does not end well. And yet, often we are powerless to know it or to see it.

The great seducer in our gospel today shows Jesus three wonderful and amazing things. First, stones that may become bread. It may be hard to imagine yourself as Jesus, or not, but try for a moment. You are concerned about poverty and starvation all over the known world. Your instructions to those who follow you are to feed the hungry; over and over you ask your friends and followers to feed the hungry. And here you are presented with a solution to world hunger. Command these stones to become bread. That’s it, that’s all it takes. There are enough stones in the world if they all became bread there would be no child going to bed hungry at night. Who wouldn’t say yes? Feeding people is good, isn’t it?

Second, ultimate safety. If you were unable to be hurt, would you not be able to continue to relieve world hunger forever and for always? If you were unable to be hurt, would you not be able to love everyone all the time? If you are unable to be hurt, would you not have to go to the cross to die? Sounds like a good, doesn’t it?

Third, authority. Everyone and everything answering to you. With ultimate authority, everyone would follow your rules and your rules are good rules. Love your neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. The world would be perfect if you were in charge.

What’s so wrong with this scene? Nothing at all. Nothing at all. That is the nature of seduction. It looks so good. It tastes so good. It feels so good. It must be right. We are human after all. What makes this story so powerful is that we have been there. Each and every one of us has been there; we may even be there yet today. This is about Jesus, and it is about each of us. You see, it isn’t black and white, right or wrong, it isn’t obvious or clear, and don’t let anyone seduce you into thinking that it is. This journey of life is full of choices, which is God’s gift to us, choice, and a pile of love to go with it. Even Jesus had the choice, the choice to follow the seducer, the choice to give in to the pain and suffering of his journey, the choice to walk away from the cross.

So what does this journey look like? We are on a journey together, you and me and all the others. All the best heroes have their posse’s with them. Edmund had his brother and sisters and all the animals of Narnia, Luke had Han Solo, Lea, Chewbacca, and the Holy Trinity of Obi-wan, Anakin, and Yoda, Harry has Hermione and Ron and the whole Weasly family, Woody has Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Rex and Hamm, you get the picture. We take this journey together; together we share the strength, the wisdom, the courage to make choices, good or bad, right or wrong.

Us humans live daily, maybe even moment-by-moment in the reality of this seduction. It is being fully human after all, what is so amazing is the love that God has for us and the forgiveness that God is willing to heap upon us time, after time, after time. We miss the mark, and Jesus stands with us, surrounded by our company of friends, loved ones, supporters, and Jesus puts his arms around our shoulders, straightens us out, gives us strength and courage, and shows us how to hit the mark dead center. And, while the enemy arrow comes right at him, Jesus also says, let me step into your place and take the arrow for you.

In our lifetimes, we don’t ever feel the absence of seduction and temptation. We are however forgiven. That is where we begin this journey of lent, in the place of examination and forgiveness. We have this opportunity to turn to God, to examine ourselves, to ask again for forgiveness, to look upon our mortality and fall on our knees and ask for the help we need, because we cannot do it on our own. We cannot walk this journey without the one who created us, the one who walks with us, and one another. To believe we can is to succumb to the seduction of vanity, self-absorption, egotism, and selfishness.

On Ash Wednesday I invited you to think about that which you would fast from this lent. It is not about giving up something you love, but it is about abstaining from that which gets in the way of your relationship with God and with one another. What seduces you into believing that you can walk this journey on your own? What seduces you into believing that you are right and others are wrong? What seduces you into believing that you are immortal, that whatever you eat or drink or smoke won’t harm your mortal body? What seduces you into believing that you are the center of your life and others lives? What is it that you will abstain from this lent?

I invite you to journey together; I invite you to a holy lent, The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.

Ash Wednesday 2011

2011-03-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Almighty, forgiving God, help me to accept your healing love today and to practice forgiveness in my daily walk with you and others. In this, the church’s holy spring, we ask you, O God, to renew us. With a gentle breath, blow from our lives the dust of sin, and make us your people again. Lift us from guilt, and shame, and regret, to repair all we’ve broken, and give us the gift of repentance. With the lengthening days, stretch our hearts, too, to be ready for your risen life; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Just as Advent is the beginning of the New Year, Ash Wednesday and Lent are the beginning of our new life. I think we have a deep desire to start over, to begin again, to turn to God and take a deep, refreshing breath of new life, and to say, here I am Lord, I have heard you calling in the night.

This is our opportunity. This is our call. We present ourselves to God, just as we are, confident in the promise of starting over. Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent are an opportunity. An opportunity to put all our attention toward the Gospel call to love as Christ loves. Ash Wednesday and Lent are an opportunity to examine ourselves and find where we miss the mark of that love. Ash Wednesday particularly is an opportunity to come to our senses, to be reminded of who and whose we are, to start over, to loosen our heart’s grip on the things that separate us from the love of God and our sisters and brothers. Ash Wednesday is an opportunity to do that which is described in our gospel reading, to give alms, to pray, and to fast.

Today we are marked again with the cross of Christ. We were marked as Christ’s own forever with oil at baptism; today that same cross is traced with ashes. These ashes remind us of who we are, and whose we are. These ashes remind us that we came from dust and to dust we will return. These ashes remind us that God is God, and we are not. These ashes remind us that we are chosen and marked by God’s love, delight of God’s life,

The ashes of this day mark us as human, and offer us another chance to be reminded that we are called to fast from that which gets in our way of relationships, relationship with God, with those we love, and with those we encounter each day. I invite you to think about that which you may fast from,
what gets in the way of relationship for you? Do you need to slow down? Do you need to abstain from electronic media, facebook, internet, television, your phone? Do you need to make a commitment to consume less, food, drink, goods, clothing? Do you need to pay closer attention to something or someone?

Lent is also a penitential time, a time to forgive and be forgiven. God loves us with an abundant love, love that seeks nothing, love that does not exclude. The Greeks had a word for the forgiving kind of love, agape; it means a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other or to be thanked by that other. This isn’t an easy love. If we can follow it, it will mean that we will never exclude. Not the old, the ill, the dying. Not the people who have hurt us, or who have done us wrong. Or the people to whom we have done wrong.

Jesus set the standard for forgiveness. What does Jesus' teaching on forgiveness require of us, and how can we begin to practice this kind of love and forgiveness toward others?

How have you felt, for at least a fragment of a second, the forgiveness of God?

When you approach forgiveness with this kind of love in mind, you put yourself in a position to be healed, When you are able to forgive, you begin to be healed.

I invite you to ponder the kind of love God has for you, I invite you to approach the kind of forgiveness that does not want or need or manipulate. I invite you to be marked with ashes, and begin the journey of love and forgiving. A journey that begins with ashes, that includes sadness, silence, and suffering. A journey that passes through some dark and scary places. A journey that moves through ashes once again, but includes the eventual joy of new birth, new life, new creation, resurrection.

Today I ask you to write. What it is is up to you. But it may be something about what you need to fast from, it may be something you wish to do during lent, it may be something that you need to be forgiven for, it may be something or someone that you need to forgive. Whatever it is, it’s between you and God.

Mystery of Goodness, by whose gaze we are called into being and held in life: teach us the secrecy of prayer which seeks no reward; the generosity of love which forgets itself; the gift of a treasure uncountable and unconsumed; through Jesus Christ, the Son of the Wilderness. Amen.

Last Epiphany Yr A, The Transfiguration

2011-03-05T19:51:00.001-07:00

This story of the transfiguration is always the last story we read as we approach Lent. We are presented with the mighty characters of the past, in the present of the story, and in the present of our own time. Moses and Elijah. Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. Moses, who led the people out of Israel, and walked with them through the wilderness constantly encouraging them, constantly pointing them toward God, especially when they got whiny and impatient. Forty years they spent in that wilderness, a whole new generation of Israelites was born before they got close to the land that was promised. Moses guided them the whole way, Moses saw God, but Moses didn’t live to see the fulfillment of that journey, Moses saw the promised land, but died before they got there.

Elijah was a prophet in the Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Ahab, the 9th century before Jesus lived, according to the Book of Kings. Elijah defended the worship of Yahweh over that of the more popular Baal, he raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and ascended into heaven in a whirlwind, either accompanied by a chariot and horses of flame or riding in it, depending on what you’re reading. In the Book of Malachi, Elijah's return is prophesied "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord," making him a harbinger of the Messiah.

The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus in this story shows us something about God. We creatures, we humans, count time chronologically. Many of you went to the musical Rent over the last couple days. That is a story that questions the measure of time, and even the quality of time with the lyrics of Seasons of Love. “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?” These lyrics, while suggesting the continuum of life, carry some angst for something more than tick-tock time. What we have in the story of the Transfiguration, is a story of God breaking into our time, it is a story that shows us time out of time. It is a story that calls us to bear witness to God’s inbreaking Kingdom. The song asks how do you measure a year in the life, the transfiguration story asks us what difference does it make?

This transfiguration story takes place in God’s time, not our time; it is a story of kairos, not chronos. Madeleine L’engle suggests that kairos, God’s time, can sometimes enter, penetrate, and break through chronos: the child at play, the painter at an easel, the person at prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out for the newborn; like the story we have before us today, with Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all in one time.

God breaks into our time, we have captured here a moment of Gods time, to show us something amazing. In Star Wars, we see Obi-wan, Anakin Skywalker and Yoda; past characters all showing up in the present, to say something important to Luke Skywalker. In the story before us today, Moses, Elijah and Jesus all show up to say something important. What is it? What difference does it make? And how do we bear witness to it?

This is my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased! The very same words heard at Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, the very same words spoken just before Jesus is led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, the story we will hear next week, the first Sunday of Lent. God is trying to get our attention here, and God is doing it by breaking into time. Peter and James and John see something extraordinary, something that is not bound by time, and they hear something extraordinary, Listen to him! Listen to him!

Something extraordinary is happening here, God is breaking into time, and it changes us, it transfigures and transforms us. It may even change the world. It is that extraordinary experience that we must bear witness to. There is no staying on that mountain, Peter and James and John went back down the mountain, utterly changed. We too, accompany them down the mountain, and bear witness to God’s extraordinary shining.

God shows forth God’s glory, God shows that life with God is without limits. It is like the Eucharistic moment, it may be comfortable and calm, it may be nourishing and refreshing, it may be inspiring and illuminating. We really want to stay, but we can’t stay in it, and we can’t repeat it. But it changes us. It gives us the ability to persevere, and from it we are sent out into the world to do the work we are given to do, we bear witness to God’s presence. We are sent out into the world to bring peace and to show forth God’s reconciliation and healing to a broken and fragmented world.

The glory that is shone forth in this story of transfiguration is a touchstone. We may return to it, but we can’t control it, it is out of our time. We come to worship and sing God’s praises; we come to find stability in an unstable world. We come to hear the story of our faith that has not changed over time. And yet God’s word and our worship are not comfortable, they are not static. God’s word and our worship are growing and changing, becoming the creation that God has intended for it.

When we bear witness to the transfiguration it may cause us fear, as it caused Peter and James and John to fear. Because we are called to go down the mountain and confront the comfortable and disrupt the status quo. We are to bear witness to the love of neighbor that Jesus demands. We are to bear witness to the arrest and torture of the one who is the Good News, and we are to bear witness to the inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth with Jesus Christ God’s son.

As God breaks into our time, transfiguration promises to accompany us into our ordinary lives. We carry the extraordinary into the ordinariness of our work and our school and our play. It becomes the spirit that inspires and creates us; it becomes the life that gives us life. It is that which is in the eyes and souls of those whose paths we cross, it is in the respect and dignity with which we treat everyone we meet.

We bear witness to the transfiguration when we are about God’s mission. God’s mission of healing and reconciliation. God’s mission of putting fractured souls back together in this broken and fragmented world. God’s mission of loving and serving your neighbor.

The Lord has shone forth his glory: Come let us adore him.

8 Epiphany Yr A

2011-02-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

We have been hearing the Sermon on the Mount now for a few weeks. Jesus has been teaching about the Kingdom of God. Jesus has been telling his listeners what that kingdom looks like. Blessed are you, for you are a child of God. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Your relationships shall have dignity, your words have power, you need to live with each other with honesty and integrity. You shall love your neighbor. This is kingdom life. Today Jesus tells his listeners, and us, not to be anxious about earthly things. God takes care of the birds and the flowers of the field, and so God will take care of us too.

However, telling people in this day and age not to be anxious about anything is like telling people not to breathe anymore. It's almost ridiculous. What would we do with ourselves if we didn't have to worry? As a culture, we're anxious about everything. And, if we aren't, we have 24-hour news and color coded threat levels to help us along. We have instant reports of unrest in the world, and of earthquakes and devastation. We live in fear; fear of not having enough, fear of those who are different from us; fear of the other.

But, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount tells us that one of the prime values of the Kingdom of God is that we not be anxious, because God takes care of us all and, if we are in God's hands, what do we really have to worry about? So how do we live as Kingdom people, how do we follow Jesus in a culture of fear, in a culture where anxiety is sold on the evening news?

The whole Sermon on the Mount is a text that we need to seriously absorb into our lives. And, at times that absorption will be incredibly difficult, because it's values are so contrary to the values our world typically lives day-to-day. Blessed are you, for you are a child of God. God takes care of the birds and the flowers of the field, and so God will take care of us too. As my friend Larry posted on his facebook, if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.

The difficulty for us is living in this assurance; the difficulty for us is living as citizens of the Kingdom in the midst of the conflicting messages, in the midst of the anxiety that is perpetuated everywhere we look. We are people who seem to be mightily afraid. However, anxiety is not unique to us in this particular age. Anxiety and fear have been recorded in history since history has been recorded. Anxiety is part of the sacred story of our people; anxiety is part of the story of each one of us. In Isaiah today, we are assured that God will not forget us, people may forget, but God does not forget, don’t worry about that.

Fear motivates us in strange ways. It is fear that helps us to protect our children from danger; it is fear that causes some of us to step into danger. We often fear that which we cannot change, and then ironically, we fear change. And fear causes us to hold on tight to what we have, whatever it is we have. Wealth, luxury, housing, one another. We are afraid of what tomorrow might bring. We hold on so tight to those we love; we can’t let them go to live their own lives.

This is what Jesus addresses in this part of the teaching. We hold on so tight to our money and possessions, what we consider our wealth, we can’t see beyond any of it to the abundance that God has for us, to the love that God pours upon us.

But fear only holds us hostage; it keeps us in bondage. What are you afraid of? What causes you to be anxious? The dark or the light? Having enough or having too much? Death or life? Growth and change, or the status quo? What is it that holds you hostage; that keeps you in bondage? What is it that gets in the way of your relationship with God? That’s what this passage is about. It’s about slavery to that which is not God. It is about the freedom that God offers.

It is about the priority of God’s gift of love, God’s gift of new life, God’s gift of mercy and compassion. Because Jesus was born into this world, because God came to be one of us, we are free to live fully and completely as a beloved child of God. We must remember, especially when we read a passage like this, which seems rather glib, that in the struggle, in the muck and the dirt, in the pain and suffering that is life, this God we trust in walks with us, by our side. That’s what incarnation is about. Only a God who is willing to be in this life with us, is a God in whom I can place my trust.

What does that mean to you and to me? It means we are free to be the people that God loves. It means that we live in the midst of God’s abundant love for us, even when we don’t feel that love all the time. It means that we live in the midst of abundance, not of scarcity. It means that we no longer have to spend our lives searching for whatever it is that will fulfill us, because God has already given us all that we need, God has given us new life. No longer do we need to look for love in all the wrong places, in money, in work, in power, in our 15 minutes of fame, because God’s love for us is enough.

It is so hard to trust in God’s abundant, extreme love for us, to not be anxious. But that is exactly what we are asked to do. In trusting in that abundant, extreme love, we are free. Not trusting in that abundant, extreme love, we remain in bondage; we remain afraid to really live.

The freedom of God’s love is freedom from being attached to status and honor and power. It is being freed from the slavery of making money just because we can, and spending money, just because we can. It is being free to make and spend and give our hard earned money as a steward of the gift of life and the gift of hard work.

The freedom of God’s love is freedom from being consumed by the worry about the value others assign to each of us. Value is not based on what we can produce, or on what we look like, or on what we consume, or on what we eat, or what we wear, or on how we sing, or dance, or our athletic ability. Value is based on being God’s creation, God’s beloved.

Strive first for the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Be free to be a steward of that abundance.

The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.

7 Epiphany Yr A

2011-02-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

We continue reading in Matthew the Sermon on the Mount. The setting is really much more like a hillside, with people gathered to hear the rabbi teach. Jesus is teaching about God’s inbreaking Kingdom, Jesus is teaching about what life as a citizen of God’s kingdom looks like.

There is a story that is part of NPR’s Story Corps, and it’s been floating around a bit lately. It’s about Julio Diaz, who stepped off the New York City subway platform after work one night; he was simply planning to walk over to his favorite local diner for a meal. But when a teenage boy approached him with a knife blade gleaming in his fist, Diaz, a 31-year-old social worker, knew the evening was about to take a more dramatic turn. The young man demanded Diaz’s wallet, and Diaz passed it over without objection. But just as his mugger turned to walk away, Diaz called after him: “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something.” The mugger turned around, surprised. “If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The teenager looked at Diaz in disbelief, and asked why he would do such a thing. Diaz replied, “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money.” He told the young man that he’d just been heading out for dinner, and that he would be happy for some company. The young mugger decided to take Diaz up on his offer, and they headed into Diaz’s favorite local haunt together. As they were sitting at the table, the manager, the dishwashers, and the waiters all stopped over to say hello to Diaz, and the young man was amazed at his popularity. “You’re even nice to the dishwasher,” he exclaimed.

“Haven’t you been taught that you should be nice to everybody?” Diaz asked him. “Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teenager replied. Thanks to Diaz, he was beginning to see that kindness wasn’t such a strange phenomenon, after all. When the bill came, Diaz told the teen that he’d have to get the check. After all, he still had Diaz’s wallet.

But the teenager slid the wallet back across the table without a moment’s thought, and Diaz treated him to dinner. Diaz also gave the would-be mugger a $20 bill to take with him –in exchange for the young man’s knife. “I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right,” Diaz said. “It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

The collection of scripture we have before us begs the question, what does the kingdom of God breaking into human existence look like? I think this story wonderfully illustrates what the kingdom of God looks like. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. In the kingdom of God Jesus says, there is not a set of laws, there is not a rulebook. Children of God, citizens of the kingdom are called to love and to serve. Citizens of the kingdom are called to respond with mercy and compassion, healing and reconciliation in all times and all places. Matthew interprets the verses from Leviticus as kingdom life as well. You shall leave some grapes in your vineyard for the poor and the sojourner, the immigrant. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Kingdom life is different than worldly life, and kingdom life is not easy or even clear. There is not a time when we are relieved of kingdom life, and that is the very hard part. Kingdom life starts now, not some later date, and not after death. Jesus says, you have heard it said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. And then Jesus goes on to say, “for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” You see, we are all in the same boat here. We are all accountable to these standards. Not one of us gets off easy, just because we have money, power, popularity, or fame.

But the reality in which we live is that God’s inbreaking kingdom is happening right now, but we do live in this in between time, this time before the fulfillment of all time. So we are called to live in this now and not yet reality, we are called to life a kingdom life in this world as God affects healing and reconciliation.

So how does this picture of kingdom life form and inform us in this day? Most assuredly kingdom life calls us to walk to a different drummer. Kingdom life calls us to love, not to hate. Kingdom life calls us to treat everyone with mercy and compassion, not disdain and derision. Kingdom life calls us to respond to those who speak and act badly with concern and kindness.

In this world where those who speak the loudest get listened to, how do you use your voice for peaceful change? In this world where spending is about special interest and personal programs, how do we stand for moral budget making? In this world where justice is confused with revenge, how do we turn the other cheek, how do we speak about healing and reconciliation? In a world where forgiveness is unacceptable because punishment is the only acceptable outcome, how do we drop to our knees and approach our creator with humility?

You see, this sermon on the hillside is about us. We are the blessed, and we are those who mourn. We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and we are the ones who loose our saltiness, and we are the ones who put our lights under a basket. We are the ones who come to the altar to bring our gifts, and the ones who need to leave our gifts at the altar to reconcile with our brothers and our sisters. We are the ones who turn the other cheek, and the ones who deliver the first blow. We live at one and the same time as citizens of the kingdom and as those who miss the mark. This is the reality of our lives, we are not perfect, perfection only comes as we live our lives enveloped in the love, the mercy, the compassion, of our God. We may not be perfect in ourselves, but we are not off the hook either.

The truth is that Jesus walks this road with us, to show us the way. The truth is that on our own, we tend to mistreat, to miss the mark. But we are children of God, and we are citizens of the kingdom, we are the peacemakers. We are called to avoid the violence and hatred that has crept into our social and political discourse these days. We are called to offer others a chance to escape the cycle of violence and hate that is so prevalent in our society. Our mission is God’s mission, healing and reconciliation, mercy and compassion because we are citizens of God’s kingdom.

The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.

5 Epiphany Yr A

2011-02-05T12:29:00.001-07:00

What we hear today in the gospel of Matthew is truly exciting. And it is a continuation of the blessings that we heard last week. Matthew shows us and tells us what it means to be the blessed child of God. Blessed are you, you are called and named salt of the earth and light of the world. Being salt of the earth and light of the world is part of the blessing. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Your value is already stated. As a disciple of Christ, you can’t help but be salt and light. You have no choice in the matter, Jesus says, this is who you are. You can’t help but make things livelier and shed light on the matter. So what do we do with that? How do we respond to that? What does it mean to be the salt and the light for the sake of God’s mission of healing and reconciliation in the world?

You are blessed, you are salt, you are light. This is who and how God has created. It is the truth, nothing can change that. Being salt and light means that something happens when we, Jesus’ disciples, go into the world for the sake of God’s mission. And yet, so much of the time we spend believing something else. What does the world say we are? Irrelevant, ignorant, hypocritical. Too old, too young, worthless, useless. But God says we are blessed, God says we are salt and we are light. No matter what we do, and we do try hard, we can’t shake our saltiness or lose our light. It’s what God has made us to be. We need to listen to what God names us, not what the world names us. We need to know what is already true, and in knowing that, we can put it to the best possible use, being salt and light for the purpose of God’s mission of healing and reconciliation in the world.

Recently we wanted peanuts, in the shell. So we bought a huge bag of them, and got them home and opened them up and realized that they were unsalted. How disappointing. Salt enhances and adds flavor to so many foods. We are the salt of the earth, how do we flavor the world? How may we be the salt of society, preserving, reconciling, adding taste, giving meaning where there is no meaning, giving hope where there is no hope?

Nelson Mandela said in his 1994 inaugural speech. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” We are the light of the world, how do you enlighten the places and people you encounter?

There are two really important things we need to hear from Matthew this morning. First is that we are salt and light, we are children of God, we are named blessed, we don’t do anything to get that designation, it just is. Secondly, as we fully inhabit that truth about ourselves, when we bring our saltiness, our light, and our blessedness into all of the parts of our life, into our work and our school and our play, we are the agents of God’s mission that we are called to be, agents of God’s healing and reconciliation, agents of mercy and compassion. Now, as much as and maybe even more than ever, we need to be salt and light.

That said, I want to tell you a little about the meeting I was at in Charlotte North Carolina this past week. I am on the Council for Life-long Christian Formation, formerly known as the Episcopal Council on Christian Education. We changed our name to more closely say that we believe that discipleship is a lifelong endeavor, there is never a time when we are done. The Council for Life-long Christian Formation is a council of advice, support, and implementation connected to the person who holds the job for Life-long Christian formation at our Church Center, and the team of four people who make up Life-long Christian formation, Youth Ministry, Young Adult Ministry, and Camping Ministries. I tell you all this because it is always important for us to remember that we at St. Andrew’s are connected to the greater church, nationally, provincially, in our diocese, in our deanery, and locally as well. Very briefly, our diocese is a geographical grouping of Episcopal churches that happens to be all of South Dakota. Our province is a geographical grouping of Episcopal dioceses that happen to be all states as well, MN, IA, ND, SD, NE, MT, WY, and CO. I say happen to be, because that is not the case for all dioceses or provinces. Our deanery is a geographical grouping of Episcopal churches here in the Black Hills, and we meet as such once or twice a year, which is to say that we are all connected, and related in various ways.

Part of my job, as the Provincial representative to the Council on Life-long Christian formation, is to tell our particular story about the joys and the challenges of teaching discipleship and forming 21st century Episcopal Christians, and to listen to the stories that others have in their own contexts. One of the challenges we face in all areas is refigured budgets. Rather than looking at our budgets as bad news, I think we are presented with opportunity. The opportunity is that we can wiggle out of our cocoon and be more nimble. One opportunity is to use and share technology. For example, there are people working on an application for your phone that would not only locate an Episcopal church for you, but also provide the means to download the entire service so you have it right in the palm of your hand. Another example is meeting by webcam instead of in person, as you know it is much less expensive that way. But it’s not all about technology; I want to assure those of us who feel maybe technology is leaving them in the dust. We definitely have a mind toward older adult ministry, as we experience more and more baby boomers in our congregations.

This is all to show you the vital and exciting movement of our church as institution, and as body’s of people on the local level. We, as individuals in the Episcopal Church, and as one part of the universal and catholic church, are salt and light in the world. Another example is that our Presiding Bishop was just named to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

So today, and as we re-gather later for our Annual meeting, I leave you with the question again, how are you salt in the world? How are you light in the world? How do you participate in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation in the world?

The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.

3 Epiphany Yr A

2011-01-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

As our minds turn toward fishing this morning I recall a story that I must tell. Even during the off season, the Vikings and Packers are bitter rivals, just itching to compete. And with the Packers in the throes of post season play, the Vikings recall an episode from last year, the teams decided to have an ice fishing contest. They met at a lake up north — each ready to prove their superiority wasn’t limited to the gridiron. They scouted out the perfect spots and commenced to fish. By the end of the first day the Vikings had caught 50 fish. The Packers hadn’t caught any. No matter, the Packers said. They were just warming up. But on the second day, the Vikings caught 100 fish. The Packers didn’t catch any. What the heck? The next day, the Packers decided to send a spy to find out if the Vikings were cheating. The Vikings caught 150 fish that day. Packers? You guessed it — zip. When the spy returned to the Packers’ camp, they grilled him, sure the other team must be cheating. Were they? “You betcha they’re cheating,” the spy said. “They’re cutting holes in the ice!”

As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

As I consider this passage this time, I am struck by the differences in fishing, there is ice fishing, in which it is preferable to cut a hole in the ice so one may catch fish, there is fishing from a boat in a lake that is mostly liquid, there is fly fishing, in which one stands in the river or creek. Each of these kinds of fishing require a pole, and bait that is selected especially for the circumstances, considering things like the depth of water, the temperature of water, and the type of fish one is fishing for. So what strikes me in this fishin story, is that these people were not doing any of that. They were casting a net. They were gathering in the fish they caught, and those nets were not selective, everything that swam by, or floated by was caught.

Jesus spent much of his ministry in this area of Galilee, by this particular lake. Many of the stories that are told in the gospels are around these fisher people casting their fishing nets. I think this story has a lot to tell us about what the Kingdom of God looks like, I think the people who populate this story have a lot to tell us about what the Kingdom of God looks like.

The Kingdom of God looks very different from the Kingdom in which we live. You see, there’s the fisher’s themselves who follow Jesus, who fish for people. We are those fish. Recall the words of the song we sang as we gathered together this morning. “Here in this place, new light is streaming, now is the darkness vanished away, see, in this space, our fears and our dreamings, brought here to you in the light of this day. Gather us in the lost and forsaken gather us in the blind and the lame; call to us now, and we shall awaken we shall arise at the sound of our name. We are the young – our lives are a mystery, we are the old – who yearns for your face. We have been sung throughout all of history called to be light to the whole human race. Gather us in the rich and the haughty, gather us in the proud and the strong, give us a heart so meek and so lowly, give us the courage to enter the song.” We are the blind and the lame, we are the young and the old, we are the rich and the haughty, all of us in this net together. God has gathered us in. We are humanity, with all of our imperfections, our shortcomings, our fears and doubts. God has gathered us in. That’s the wonder of this net. God isn’t about catching perfect fish, God is about catching us just the way we are.

The kingdom of God right here and right now is open to everyone of us. We don’t have to be perfect before God loves us, God loves us first, no matter what, with all our scales. Then we respond to God’s love. It is our response to God’s love that transforms us. It is our response to God’s work in Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection that transforms us. And our response to God’s amazing and abundant love, the love that is no matter what, the love that gathers us in, the love that casts away the darkness, our response to that love is to follow, and in following Jesus we are transformed, and in the transformation we follow.

The song again, “Here we will take the wine and the water here we will take the bread of new birth, here you shall call your sons and your daughters, call us anew to be salt of the earth. Give us to drink the wine of compassion, give us to eat the bread that is you, nourish us well and teach us to fashion lives that are holy and hearts that are true.”

So the truth is that we are gathered in to the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. And what Jesus reveals is the truth of our humanity. It is a truth that you and I know well. It is the truth of creation and of blessing and turning away from God. We humans want to and try to be God. We humans want to believe that our happiness and satisfaction are ultimately important. We humans want to put our own needs before the needs of our companions on the way. It is the truth of turning back to God, of repentance and forgiveness. It is the truth of the wandering in the wilderness, the truth of suffering and death, the truth of restoration and resurrection. You see, the truth is Jesus accompanies us on this journey, Jesus isn’t apart from us. The truth is that all our longing, all our yearning, is fulfilled in Jesus. The truth is that our wandering in the wilderness, our exodus and exile are made new, we are transformed in the midst of our humanity, we are made new, we are created in God’s image.

It is the same truth that the prophet Isaiah writes about. The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined. Peter and Andrew, James and John knew what the prophet had said, Isaiah was on their minds and in their hearts. You and I know this truth as well. You and I know the reality of the darkness, the reality of the suffering and sadness that life brings our way. We know tragedy, we know sickness and death, we know that life does not always treat us well.

Peter and Andrew, James and John could see this, as you and I can see it. And they could see and feel that Jesus was the God revealer. Jesus did and does something different from all the other prophets. Jesus doesn’t promise relief from our burdens, Jesus doesn’t promise prosperity, Jesus doesn’t promise a life free from pain and suffering, Jesus doesn’t promise that our mortal bodies will not die. What Jesus promises is that he will be with us in the midst of the wilderness, in the midst of the exile. Jesus promises that he will accompany us on the way, and there we encounter the new life that is promised. We are not alone in the journey, we have one another, and in one another we encounter God.

We are those who are gathered in, and we are those who like Peter and Andrew, James and John, are transformed for the work of the Kingdom. This is the Good News that Peter and Andrew, James and John and the others, left their home and family and livelihood to proclaim the Good News. Peter and Andrew, James and John were not perfect, they were not the most likely candidates to follow Jesus and proclaim the good news. We’ve read the book, we know story, the disciples had a hard time with this good news. They often didn’t understand what Jesus was really about. They fell into the trap of thinking this way was about them and whether they would sit at the head of the table, they fell into the trap of thinking that this was about them and others had to be just like them in order to follow Jesus. They fell into the trap of thinking this was about them and that there was a right way and a wrong way to be a follower and others had to follow those rules.

The good news for Peter and Andrew, for James and John, for you and for me is that the Kingdom of God is near when we respond to God’s amazing and abundant love with compassion and mercy. The Kingdom of God is near when we are not seduced into believing that we are Godlike, when we do not believe that we are in control and have the power, because Jesus does not abandon us. Instead, Jesus guides us, teaches us, and even stands in for us as we turn toward God. We ask for forgiveness, we are forgiven and we are transformed. We are changed.

The good news for them and for us is that to be followers is to be transformed in the following. The good news for them and for us is that we don’t have to have it all together, we don’t have to have it all right, we don’t have to understand it all. In the following we are transformed. In the following new life can rise out of our suffering and pain. In the following we are made new creations.

The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.

2 Epiphany Yr A

2011-01-15T15:53:00.001-07:00

We hear this morning from Paul that God is faithful and we are called into the fellowship of Jesus. We hear in Isaiah that God is faithful and that we are chosen, it echoes what we heard last week from Matthew and Isaiah and what we heard in Jesus’ baptism and what we hear in our own baptism. And in John’s gospel, as two disciples ask Jesus where he is staying, we hear an invitation, Jesus responds to the disciples with Come and see. Come and see.

Imagine yourself as one of those people who hear or sees Jesus, imagine yourself following Jesus as he invites the two disciples to come and see. What did people expect, what do you expect, of this long awaited Messiah, this Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? Many people of Jesus’ time expected the Messiah to come in power and glory. As you followed Jesus would you expect to see a palace? At least a mansion or maybe a tastefully appointed home, at least a colorful tent with a cot to sleep on. But instead, there really is not much to see, Jesus doesn’t have a colorful tent and a caravan to show off, in fact he has nothing to show off. Come and see the stone for his pillow, come and see the dirt on which he lays. This is nothing like what was expected, and it is not about what we get when we respond to Jesus’ invitation and God’s faithfulness. This is not about what’s in our wallets, it is not about getting what we deserve, or living in prosperity. This is not about getting our needs met. Responding to the invitation to come and see is about relationship.

A relationship with Jesus, who is Emmanuel, God in our midst, Jesus is the one who walks with us, through the scary places, by the deep and dangerous water, by the peaceful and still water, to show us the way. For it is only a God who is willing to live this life with us, a God who is willing to give up all power to be like the powerless, who is a God in whom I can put my faith.

It is because Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, the God-Revealer, the Lamb of God that it is worth the cost to follow. Jesus invited Andrew and Simon to come and see, and they recognized him for who he is, Rabbi, teacher, God with us. And they followed. They gave up their lives as fishermen, and followed Jesus, it cost them everything, for this relationship, they were disciples. Immediately following this part of the story we heard this morning is the calling of Philip and Nathanael, who also recognized Jesus and followed.

Why do Andrew and Simon, Philip and Nathanael, give up everything to follow Jesus? Not because of who they are, but because of who Jesus is. It’s not about them, it’s not about us, it’s about Jesus. In the gospel of John, Jesus is God’s word spoken into human form, God’s word clothed in arms and legs, hands and feet, God’s word entering human history.

Jesus speaks the word and it happens: forgiveness and judgment, healing and illumination, mercy and grace, joy and love, freedom and resurrection. Everything broken and fallen, sinful and diseased, is called into salvation by God’s spoken word, by Jesus the God-Revealer.

Eugene Peterson, who wrote The Message, writes in his introduction to the gospel of John, Jesus doesn’t impose salvation as a solution, he narrates salvation into being through leisurely conversation, intimate personal relationships, compassionate responses, passionate prayer, and his suffering and death. You and I cannot casually walk away from words like that; we cannot walk away from Jesus without making some sort of response. The response that Andrew and Simon, Philip and Nathanael made was to follow. You and I have that same choice, to follow, or not to follow.

Tomorrow we celebrate the life of one of Jesus’ modern day followers, Martin Luther King Jr. Much has been said and much has been written about Martin Luther King Jr., and my purpose today is not to reiterate all of that, but to talk about discipleship as a response to who Jesus is, and Martin Luther King Jr. embodied that discipleship. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man, and a flawed man, much like many of us. But about himself what he wanted people to remember was that he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and loved and served humanity.

What is our response to Jesus, the God-Revealer? To feed the hungry? Clothe the naked? Love and serve humanity? Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew, Simon, Philip, Nathanael, and each one of you is a disciple. Today is a day about discipleship; today is a day about our response to Jesus, the God-Revealer. Last week we heard the words spoken to Jesus, spoken to each one of us, this is my child, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life. Today is about responding to these words.

Discipleship is simply our response to the awesome and amazing love that God reveals to us in the person of Jesus Christ. But discipleship is costly, as Andrew, Simon, Philip, Nathanael, Martin Luther King Jr., and all the others know dearly. Discipleship is costly. Our culture tends to not consider the cost of leaving behind something when we follow Jesus, instead it asks what do I get? And as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the prominent German theologian wrote in 1937, when the rise of the Nazi regime was underway in Germany, "costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." The cost of discipleship is being forgiven, it is being made whole, and being in relationship.

My hope for each one of us is to respond to God’s gracious Word, with mercy and compassion, to respond by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, serving humanity. You and I are called to be Jesus’ followers, to be Jesus’ disciples today as much as any day in history, and maybe more urgently than ever.

Come and see the One who loves you unconditionally, absolutely , and abundantly.

Alleluia. The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

1 Epiphany Yr A, Baptism of Our Lord

2011-01-07T13:03:00.001-07:00

Listen to Matthew from Eugene Peterson’s translation in The Message. Jesus then appeared, arriving at the Jordan River from Galilee. He wanted John to baptize him. John objected, "I'm the one who needs to be baptized, not you!" But Jesus insisted. "Do it. God's work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism." So John did it. The moment Jesus came up out of the baptismal waters, the skies opened up and he saw God's Spirit—it looked like a dove—descending and landing on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: "This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life."

In both the passage from Isaiah and the passage from Matthew we hear God’s voice proclaiming you are my chosen, delight of my life. Today, the day that we celebrate Jesus’ baptism, and the day that we celebrate baptism in our midst, we hear these amazing words from God, you are chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.

Some of us spend much of our lives working at pleasing others, especially our parents and our spouse, people we work for, and sometimes even people we don’t even know. Rather than being who we are, we are trying to be someone else. Someone more lovable, someone smarter, someone prettier, someone more athletic. This is reinforced by so much we see and hear today. You will be worth more if you are thinner, or if you change the look of your nose, or cheeks, or lips, or other places, or if you buy a smart phone, or if you buy skinny jeans, or if you ….. Or, we spend our lives on the other end of that spectrum. We think we should get what we deserve, we are entitled to a good life, nothing should get in our way of the big beautiful house, the fancy car, the perfect children. This is about human limitations, our human values. But God is not limited by our worthiness or our worthlessness. God is pleased, before anything else happens, God is pleased, and that is not dependant on anything we do or don’t do. Remember, following this passage in Matthew’s story is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. God’s pleasure is not even dependant on Jesus’ performance in the wilderness, God’s pleasure just is.

We are loved abundantly and extravagantly, we are chosen and marked by God’s love, we are the delight of God’s life. We enter into that with Jesus in the incarnation, in the death and in the resurrection. And that is what happens in baptism, because that’s what Jesus accomplishes on the cross and what God accomplishes in the resurrection. We are citizens, heirs, children of the Kingdom, and in this Kingdom we are loved, we are chosen, we are marked, we are the delight of God’s life. We don’t have to change the way we look, we don’t have to be someone we are not, we are priceless.

We are in the midst of celebrating God’s incarnation. I’ve thrown that word around quite a bit lately as if we all know exactly what it means. Incarnation is about God shining God’s clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations—and the darkness not comprehending it. Incarnation is God, the God of the universe, the God who created all things, the God who is seen and unseen, that God, taking on flesh, taking on skin, and bones, a brain, a heart. It is incarnation that gives me faith; it is resurrection that gives me hope. Jesus is what it looks like when the Word becomes flesh. Or, if you like, look at Jesus, in the flesh and learn to see the living God.

It is that incarnation, and it is death and resurrection that we enter into at Baptism. It is that incarnation, God in the flesh, the Word walking around on our dirt, which makes faith possible. I have faith because God has faith in me; why else would God have given up all power to come into this world as a human being. My baptism, your baptism, Collin’s baptism, acknowledges that reality, and baptism empowers us through the Holy Spirit, to be God’s new creation, to be the Light in the darkness, to be agents of healing and reconciliation in our fragmented and fragile world.

When we enter into this journey through the water with Jesus, we must go home by another way; we hear that from the wise men from the east. When we go home by another way, when we are baptized into the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, when we embark on this path together as pilgrims on the way, our lives begin to be transformed, and there are ways that our lives show forth God’s love and Jesus’ gift. We are people who continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. We are people who persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, we repent and return to the Lord. We are people who proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. We are people who seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. We are people who strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

That’s a tall order for us, and an even taller order for the newly baptized. But it’s the road we take. We take it, because we are marked and chosen, and we are the delight of God’s life. It is our response to God’s amazing, extravagant and abundant love, it is our response to God’s pleasure, and it is our ministry.

You also have a responsibility to raise this child, and all of our children, in this faith of incarnation, in this hope of resurrection. Each one of us has been marked as Christ’s own forever. Each of us has an indelible mark on our foreheads, the cross that was traced in oil at our baptism, the cross that is retraced in ashes each lent. The cross that is on our foreheads is much like a tattoo, it is permanent, it’s there for all time. It reminds us who we are and whose we are. It reminds us that we are loved. It reminds us that we are part of something that is wider, broader, deeper, than any one of us, can go. It reminds us that we must travel this other way, this road together.

Jesus’ baptism, Collin’s baptism, our baptism’s mean something. We don’t just dunk and forget. Baptism means that we are the delight of God’s life, that we are loved abundantly and absolutely, that we are chosen and marked, that we are on this road together, and that we are citizens of the Kingdom, the Kingdom that God is creating right here, right now. We have work to do, that is our ministry. Our work is about healing and reconciliation, our work is about mercy and compassion, our work is about making God known in all the dark and dangerous parts of our lives. Our work is about meeting Jesus in each and every person we encounter, our work is about seeing the indelible mark of Christ on the forehead of each and every person we meet.

Alleluia! Alleluia. The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him. Alleluia

The Epiphany Yr A

2011-01-01T20:51:00.001-07:00

The poet Isaiah envisions the light, a new light, come in a way that had not happened previously. The Lord’s light rising upon us. And we hear in the Gospel of Matthew that the wise men from the East observed the star in it’s rising and led them to the place where the child was. They bowed down before the child. The Light that shone forth for these wise men from the East is of God, it is the Light that overcomes darkness, it is the Light that will not be put out, it is the Light that we call upon now in this world’s hour of darkness.

We are called to bear that Light. You and I are called upon once again to be light shining in the darkness. The Light we are to bear is the Light that shines revealing the love of God made real in Jesus Christ. And this is the Love that bears all hurt, it is the Love that comes into the midst of pain, into the midst of isolation, into the midst of separation; all of which is really fear. Love pulls it together, this Love makes whole what is torn apart, this Love re-members people. All people, Love re-members all people, not just some people, but all people.

Paul’s letters tell us that the Love of God in Jesus Christ is for all people. Paul, a circumcised Jew, brings the Good News to Gentiles. Early in the first century, there were basically three groups of people. There were Jews who were circumcised and who followed Jewish law, there were God-fearers; people who found Jewish law attractive and followed it, but were not circumcised, and there was everyone else, those were the Gentiles. According to the Hebrew scriptures, only Jews were included in God’s plan of salvation; with the new revelation of God in Jesus Christ, humanity learned that all people are included, not just circumcised Jews. We learned that we cannot limit God because God’s love for the creation is limitless, boundless, abundant, extravagant, my words are inadequate to describe God’s love.

God was born into this world, the shepherds knew it, the angels knew it, the wise men knew it, and on some level, Herod knew it too. Herod wanted to get rid of this child so that the child would not be a threat to him. The wise men learned in a dream that after finding the child, they would need to go home by another way; if they returned the way they came, Herod would find the child.

I find it very significant that after having seen the true Light, after having witnessed the child who is God, the wise men went home by another way. They were changed; they could not go home the same way they came. The stakes were too high. They now were bearing the Light that they had encountered and everything for them and for the world was different.

I liken that reality for the wise men to our reality of baptism. Because in baptism you see, we journey to the water and we encounter the Light, we encounter God in Jesus Christ, we encounter the Holy Spirit, and when we do, we cannot be the same ever again. We throw in our lot with Jesus and are made new; we are a new creation. Remember that the waters of baptism are at the same time life giving and life taking. We are made new, and we enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Water is powerful. And, we can’t go home by the route we came by, we must go home by another way.

We get a glimpse of that other way in baptism, and in the words of the baptismal covenant. What happens in baptism is three things. First, we journey to the water. We come from wherever we are to the living water. Not unlike those wise men who journey from their home to the place where the new baby lays. Next, we in a sense are separated from our parents to be immersed in the water. These are dangerous waters. Personally, I find that separation holds fear for me. Separation from loved ones, from family, from God, I am afraid of all of that. But what happens next is the amazing part. After being immersed in the water, separated from family and parents, we are reintegrated into a greater whole. We now are members of the body of Christ. We are re-membered in the body of Christ.

And we most assuredly go home by another way. We are not the same people as we were before entering those waters of baptism. And, we are not the same body of Christ we were before baptism. We are made a new person in baptism, and we are made a new community in baptism.

What is the alternative route by which we return home? It is a radical route. It takes us through green pastures, and dangerous waters, it is a route that is filled with wolves and sheep. This is a route that calls us through transformation to wholeness; it is a route on which the adventure is not about you, but about whom we are together, and how we are related to God. On this route home we are called to be Light bearers. We are called to be Love bearers. We are called to bring God’s Love to dark corners, to mountaintops, to raging waters.

We are called to bring God’s Love to a fragmented society, to a culture that seeks perfection rather than relationship, to a culture that communicates in status updates and tweets, rather than community. God’s Love, God’s Power, is the most powerful integrating force in creation. God’s Love moves us from brokenness, from fragmentation, to wholeness, to healing. You and I bear the scars of that brokenness, we bear the scars that fragments cut us with, and we bear the healing Love of God. It is that Love, that Light that we carry into the world. The work that we are equipped and empowered for is out there, bringing the Light into the world.

How do you bring God’s Love and God’s Light into the world? How do you bring God’s integration, God’s healing, and God’s reconciliation into your work, and your school, and your play. How do you talk about that with others?

This New Year may you bear Light, love, healing, and wholeness into all the places of your life.

Alleluia. The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

1st Sunday after Christmas Yr A

2010-12-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

From Isaiah we hear, I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God, for God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God has covered me with the robe of righteousness. And in Galatians the Good News is that we are children of God.

We read this same set of readings each Sunday after Christmas, and each time I am overwhelmed by the awesomeness of God and of our human inability to speak of that. These readings challenge our understanding of God, and yet I’m not convinced we even understand God’s nature in an intellectual or a cognitive way. I think we understand it in a much more organic way, a way that touches the very truth of our being, and the very core of our limitedness.

Our humanness is tied directly to language. We really are formed and shaped by language, however adequate or inadequate it is. How we understand God, our relationship with God, how we understand Jesus human and divine, how we understand the presence of the Holy Spirit, is often about the words that we employ to describe that experience, that relationship. For example, those who say they are atheists are not necessarily people who do not believe in God, rather they may be people who cannot assent to a particular way of describing God, because our language is just not adequate to describe the totality and the mystery of that relationship.

Throughout history people have tried desperately to describe God, we have tried desperately to describe the reality in which we live. Today, postmodern thought suggests that what is real is only what we put language too. In many ways I am a postmodern thinker, but in this case what I think is real is God and our relationship with God. What that means is that God exists whether or not we have the language to describe God, and therefore a relationship exists whether or not we have the language to describe it. The challenge is to find the words and the symbols and the actions to describe God’s relationship with us and our relationship with God.

The first chapter of the gospel of John, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God I hear as an absolutely beautiful and poetic song helping us to not only understand, but to feel and to see and to hear how we are related to God, and who Jesus is in that relationship. It is not coincidental that In the beginning is the Word invokes in us a notion of the spoken language, but language is so much more than the spoken word.

Every time I read these words from John I hear the language of music. Sometimes for me the language of music speaks more clearly than words. When I hear this passage from John, I am encircled, enveloped, swaddled, if you will, in the awesome and abundant love of our creator. When I hear these words I hear a symphony.

I hear the bass, the tuba, the tympani and the baritone, beating as the heart of creation. I hear the bass clarinets, and the bassoons, and the saxophones joining in the building of the harmonies. I hear the flutes and the clarinets with the melody of love and hope. And I hear the trumpets and the French horns with the blast of the proclamation that God has created the world and come into it as one of us. And I hear the sadness of the oboes, with the news that some do not choose to listen to and be transformed by the music.

Music is organic; as is the love of God. It is in the fiber of creation, the stones shout it out, the wind hums the word, the rain keeps the beat, the grace and truth of Christ is made real in the dance of the spheres.

In A Wind in the Door, the second book in a series of books by Madeleine L’engle, the first being A Wrinkle in Time, the author writes that for growth to happen there is a necessary death. The passage I quote this morning is a passage late in the book, when Meg O’Keefe, the main character, and her friend Calvin are really beginning to understand the interconnectedness of all things, and they are beginning to understand, birth, death, and resurrection. The reason I quote from this story and from this passage is that it hearkens to the first chapter of John. It goes like this. “We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians. The stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation. Calvin asked, ‘How can you sing with the stars?’ There was surprise at the question: it is the song. We sing it together. That is our joy. And our Being.”

The Light has come, is come, and will continue to come into the world. That is what Christmas attests too. Light overcomes darkness, darkness will not prevail. The Word is with us, the Word is in our midst, and the Word creates the song.

I am also aware that the first words of John, and the first words of Genesis, are very similar. In the beginning was the Word, In the beginning God created. This incarnation, God breaking into our world, God interrupting our lives, God in our midst, the Word made flesh, the song that sings light into the darkness, are words that attempt to describe God’s awesome activity.

Listen again to these words from the Gospel of John, from The Message. The Word was first, the Word present to God God present to the Word. The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one. Everything was created through him, nothing—not one thing! —came into being without him. What came into existence was Life, and the Life was light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness, the darkness couldn’t put it out.

Alleluia. To us a child is born: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-24T10:16:00.002-07:00

In the midst of the trees and the tinsel, the shopping and the wrapping, the baking and the giving, God breaks in. A baby, born in a barn, cold and vulnerable, to parents who have no discernible home, and of questionable status, is our God. A baby, born to show us what love looks like in the midst of the brokenness of our lives. God comes crashing into our world, sometimes painfully, sometimes dangerously. And God comes quietly, as a newborn baby. Ready or not, crashing or quietly, God comes. Madeleine L’engle, in her book Bright Evening Star, describes it like this. “Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy?”

Christmas comes and I am reminded of the Who’s in Whoville, from the Grinch story. No matter what the Grinch did, Christmas would come anyway. Because Christmas is not presents and trees and lights and cookies, Christmas is incarnation, and incarnation happens with or without the rest of it.

Imagine yourself living in the dark days of the oppressive rule of Rome. This census that caused Mary and Joseph and all the others to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem was about unjust taxation by Quirinius. The gospel writer Luke knows that Jesus was born in dark times. He knows about the dark times that followed as well—the famine in Judea, the war with Rome, the destruction of the Temple, strife within synagogues, the persecution and martyrdom.

And yet, still, tonight we celebrate the Good News. This is not a celebration of sentimentality and nostalgia. It is not a celebration of the power to get, or a contest about what’s in your wallet. It’s not a celebration about who is at the head of the table, who is able to give the most, the biggest, the best, gifts.

Jesus has come among us. The Light has come into the world; darkness has not, is not, and shall not prevail. God’s glory is revealed! All we need to do is to follow the signs. And what are the signs? A child, wrapped in ordinary cloth and lying in a manger. A peasant girl, narrowly spared from being stoned to death by her village after her husband-to-be found her to be pregnant with a child that wasn’t his. An overwhelmed father, doing his best to find shelter for his family on a night when they are homeless and friendless. A gathering of shepherds, among the lowest of laborers.

You see, the signs show us that the world doesn’t have to be made perfect before it is made new. You and I do not have to be perfect before we are made new. That’s what’s so amazing about God with us. God comes to us in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the darkness. God comes to be with us in the midst of our isolation and alienation, in the midst of the muck of the stable, and the pain of a Roman cross.

This is an extravagant love, an abundant love, poured out for each one of us as if each one of us was the only one in existence; poured out for all of us in unlimited supply. This abundant love is offered without reservation or regard for what you have and haven’t done, or how many Christmas cookies you make, or how many Christmas presents you give, or how many lights are on your house.

The prophets of the Old Testament testified to this love, in Isaiah we hear a statement of faith, trust, and gratitude for what the Lord has already done. Grounded in this certainty makes the next words of promise and future hope believable. While it appears that the powers of this world have a firm hold, God's power will have the final victory. In the midst of that which creates despair and darkness, God's light shines as that which is the fulfillment of all that we need and everything that we wish could be.

On Christmas Eve, when candles burn bright to witness to the God's light that shines in all of our darkness, we are reminded that this is not just a claim for tonight, or even because of Jesus, but points to the nature of who God is and always has been. When the candles are extinguished, the lights put away, and the decorations stored until next year, God is still God.

The love that God has for creation is beyond comprehension. That is why God came into our midst, to shed light on this love. You see, Jesus is more than a teacher who can help us understand the words in scripture. Jesus is the Word made flesh. We don’t have to figure it all out; we can experience it in relationship.

God with us, God in our midst, the light that has come into the world is the power and the hope of Christmas. And this isn’t just something that has happened, or that happens to us, we are not a passive observer. This is a relationship in which we participate. You and I are part of it; we are constituents, part of a community that is the body of Christ. The Word made flesh meets us in the Flesh. We are not acted upon by a “big guy up there.”

That’s what this is all about. God came to be with us, and God comes to be with us, and God will be with us, and therefore we are invited into a relationship with God and with one another. And we don’t have to be perfect in this relationship. In fact, it is into the midst of our brokenness that God comes.

One way we express this participation is when we gather together and the Word is present in our midst, and we are re-membered in the Body and Blood of Christ, just as we are doing right now.

Another way we participate in a relationship with God is to carry the light into the world. You see, God’s work is not contained inside a church. We participate in God’s work, and are nourished and fortified to do God’s work, but most of that work takes place out there, it takes place in your work and in your play, in your school. We are to be the light that illuminates God, we are to be the light that shines on people and shows them the way to God.

It’s a new life. It’s a new world. Right here, right now, we are invited to experience the Incarnation we celebrate in Christmas by living and loving as Christ’s body in the world. That’s the light we walk in, that shines all the more brightly in the darkness that cannot overcome it. That’s the hope that sustains us, the peace that keeps us centered amidst life’s turmoil, the joy that makes eternal and abundant life present in the here and now.

Alleluia. To us a child is born: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

4 Advent Yr A

2010-12-18T19:50:00.001-07:00

All four candles in our Advent wreaths are lit. The light is beginning to fill the void. As we find ourselves nearing ever so closely to Christmas, the anticipation grows; the waiting will come to fulfillment. The stories we have before us point to incarnation, they point to God-with-us, they encourage us to see the signs. The Christian journey is about recognizing God who comes to us. Observing a time of waiting and preparing culminating in the incarnation once each year causes us to remember God’s relationship with us, and we remember that relationship through the stories we tell, we remember that relationship through the things we do, we remember that relationship through the songs we sing. We remember those who populate the stories of faith, those who responded to God’s call to relationship, those who realized that God is indeed the author of the story.

Ahaz, a king, who according to the rabbis, persisted in his wickedness even in the face of all the trials to which he was subjected, would not repent. Worse than this, he threatened Israel's religion to its very foundation, in order to destroy all hope of regeneration. He closed the schools and houses of worship so that no instruction should be possible, and the Glory of God should abandon the land. It was for this reason that Isaiah had to teach in secret, though Ahaz always humbly submitted to the prophet's rebukes—his only redeeming feature. These years of kingship in a divided Israel demonstrate the failed solutions people throughout history have tried as a means to be in control, it was idol worship, not God worship. And in the midst of this idolatrous kingly reign Isaiah points the Hebrew people toward the sign that would show the people the extent that God would go to come to the people, to be in a new relationship with the people, to come in the flesh.

This sets up a contrast between Ahaz, a king who was concerned mostly with himself and his own power, and Joseph, a man who completely inhabits his part of this amazing story of the love that gives and does not possess, the love that empties so that the beloved may be filled. God has asked Joseph to name this child.

Joseph by rights should toss Mary out for the punishment that should befall her, death by stoning. According to Matthew’s telling, it seems that even before the angel came to Joseph, he already knew that Mary was pregnant, maybe she told him, maybe he just knew; we don’t hear anything about that. What we do hear is that Joseph considered his choices. 1st century customs about betrothals were quite clear. If you think the woman to whom you’re engaged is bearing someone else’s child both the woman and the man whose child it is get death by stoning.

Joseph is a righteous man, but he refuses to expose Mary to public disgrace to carry this out. So Joseph plans to divorce Mary quietly, this divorce is the measure that would have to be taken to nullify a betrothal. It’s the best option he can take to avoid claiming a child that wasn’t his. In the face of common law, tradition, all the cultural forces mounting against him, derision and judgment, Joseph chooses life, Joseph chooses incarnation,

When Joseph had resolved to do this, an angel appears to him too, and says the words angels are famous for in scripture, “Do not be afraid.” The child Mary is bearing is of the Holy Spirit, and when he is born, Joseph is to name the child, Joseph is to call him Jesus, which means, “Yahweh saves. The writer of Matthew very intentionally connects this story with the passage from the prophet Isaiah that says there will be a son and his name will be Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”

Joseph could not ignore God’s presence, Joseph could not ignore incarnation, neither can you and I, just like Joseph, we have a choice to make. This was a child who was born of Mary, a child who should not have been born at all, and of Joseph, who had he been so inclined, would have left Mary to public justice, stoning and all. This is a child whose birth, death, and resurrection attest to God’s creativity and power.

I am reminded of a scene that I love in the first Jurassic Park movie. I realize that Jurassic Park is an old movie now, but try and picture this with me. Shortly after arriving on the tropical island that is Jurassic park, the scientists tour the whole park, and then they sit down to dinner with Mr. Hammond the owner, and Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and scientist at the park. They are talking about the cloning that has been done to create the dinosaurs at the park, and that the safe guard to not having more dinosaurs out there is that they created them all female. At the table while they are eating this gourmet meal, Ian delivers a brilliant line. He says, “Life will not be contained! Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, ah, well, there it is.”

That is what has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen with Jesus and incarnation. God breaks into our world, God interrupts our lives. The life that God creates breaks free, it expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers, sometimes painfully and dangerously. It is the life in Mary’s womb, and in Elizabeth’s womb, that exists not because of biology and despite humanity’s tendency to end life, but because of God’s awesome, creative, power. It is the life to which Joseph joins Mary in saying yes. It is the life in which God pours out upon us unlimited love.

This is the Fourth Sunday of Advent. We are ever so close to that inbreaking. How do you prepare your heart and mind and body for the crashing in of God? How do you join with Mary and Joseph and say yes to this incarnation? The question at the mall, the question asked by the culture is Are you ready for Christmas? Well, are you ready for Christmas? This question is asked from the perspective of perceived expectations, not from the perspective of this inconceivable conception. What that question really means is do you have your decorating done, are your lights up, did you get your cookies baked, is your house clean and ready for the guests, do you have all your gifts purchased and wrapped?

But the real question is, are you ready for God’s crashing into our world, are you ready for God’s crashing into your life and into your heart? Are you ready to be transformed into the person God would have you be? Are you ready to say yes? Now those are hard questions.

I am ready for Christmas, and I am not yet ready for Christmas. I have experienced the inbreaking of God into my life and I know that God’s inbreaking continues in new and life changing ways. I know that God has broken into this particular church and the universal church; and at the very same time, I continue to wait and prepare for the cosmic coming of Christ, for all times and all places, and the church continues to wait and prepare, and we have no idea what that will look like. All we have is what we imagine.

But we do know what God’s inbreaking, God’s incarnation looks like today, right now. It looks like the clerk at the store, the one who really needs someone to say, “you’re doing a great job in the midst of this madness.” It looks like the guy in the car beside you, who needs a smile and a nod, not a raised finger. It looks like the mom and children who really could use something good to eat in these days, and a warm coat to wear. It looks like the family that works two and three jobs just to make it to the end of the month and still needs a little help from the food shelf. And it also looks like the executive who works 80 hours in a week, and long ago forgot that it’s not about the stuff that he can give to his family, it’s about the time he can spend with his family. Or it looks like the young person desperately trying to fit into a world that values contingency over commitment. Sometimes it looks like the sadness we feel when our loved one has died, and it is so very hard to remember that life will not be contained, life breaks free.

God’s inbreaking, God’s incarnation looks like when we gather together around this altar and are re-membered, we made into the body of Christ, it looks like when we invite others, sometimes people who don’t look like us or speak like us, to eat at this table with us. God’s incarnation looks like the gathered church in the diocese of South Dakota, people of all colors and shapes and sizes. God’s incarnation looks like the church gathered across the United States, people from every country, of many colors, and mostly who can agree on something, maybe. God’s incarnation looks like the love we share with one another; and it is made real when we say yes with Joseph and Mary.

For me, the experience of the inbreaking of God in my life and into the life of the church has everything to do with God being revealed in absolutely new ways, in ways I couldn’t have imagined, even in ways the church hadn’t imagined before. Because that is what and who Jesus is, God comes as a lowly child, not as the expected King. And like lan Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, that breaking forth of new life is sometimes painful, but is always creative.

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore him. Amen.

3 Advent Yr A

2010-12-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

Do you see what I see? Do you see what Jesus sees? Do you see what God sees? John seems to be expecting something that Jesus isn’t expecting. Last week we heard the first of the John the Baptist stories, in which John proclaims that Jesus is the one for whom we all prepare. This week we hear from John the Baptist again, not from the Jordan River, but from prison. John has been thrown into prison for sedition, for proclaiming a King who is not the Roman emperor. Even in prison John is interested in Jesus’ mission, so he sends one of the people who visit him to find out about how Jesus is carrying out his mission, and John is not pleased. You see, John spoke about a mighty one coming to baptize the righteous with the Holy Spirit and the wicked with fire to destroy them. Jesus talks about and does plenty of Holy Spirit things—that is what we read about in today’s gospel, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them—but Jesus doesn’t talk much about fire and destruction, like John thought he should.

John and the Jewish community are expecting the Messiah, the anointed one, the one who will come in power and glory to overthrow the Roman government and put Israel into power. This is not what happens. Even John questions Jesus identity, he asks, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

And Mary sings my soul magnifies the Lord, for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy. But God has not come as expected. God comes as a baby in a barn, God comes as child in a culture where children have no voice, God comes as a man who is lifted onto a cross to die.

It is not in power that God comes, but instead it is in healing and compassion. It is healing and compassion that point us toward the coming of the Christ. It is not in power that God comes, but instead it is in deeds of love and mercy.

John’s displeasure may be a result of finding out that he was wrong about the Messiah. The people’s expectation of the Messiah may be wrong as well. Jesus says to them, What did you expect? A King? Someone dressed in soft robes in royal palaces? Because that is in fact what the people expected, a King that would come in power to give them all a place at the head of the table. Jesus says and demonstrates that he is not the King they expected.

What we have is a huge chasm of unmet expectation in this story, and that unmet expectation in fact plays out throughout the gospels. God does not come to the people as King, as a powerful ruler. Instead, God comes into the midst of the people as a child, born in a barn, born to a lowly woman who is not even married yet to Joseph. God, who has all power, gave up all power to come into the midst of the people as one with no power. God, who would be King, instead is a child, who we tend to make into a King.

A world of unmet expectation. I think we know that world well. What you hope and dream about usually is nothing like what it is that actually happens to you. So much stress at holiday time is caused by perceived expectations, by the chasm between a sort of nostalgic view of what should happen and what you think should be accomplished, and what is real. What is real is usually unrecognizable compared to what is imagined.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. I think it is the very thing that helps us to remember that we were and are never in control anyway. We do this to people all the time. We expect them to behave in a particular way based on our own expectations of them. But we have no control over other people, and what they think, believe, or how they act. We, just like John, have no control over Jesus, who he was, who he is, and who he will be. The real Jesus that we read about in the bible, and whom we encounter in the bread and the wine, and who we experience in the other, is nothing like the Jesus some wish Jesus was.

The Jesus some wish Jesus was is the Jesus of power, the Jesus who seems more like a magician than a man. Jesus who judges who can be in relationship with him and who cannot. Jesus who said every word that is printed in red in their bibles. And who is the real Jesus, who is God in the flesh? The Jesus I read about in the bible heals the blind, and the lame, and the lepers. The deaf hear, the dead are raised. He eats with tax collectors and women; he spends his time with children. He says that the last shall be first, he says those in bondage will be freed; he says love God with everything you’ve got, and love your neighbor. Jesus who got so angry that he turned the tables in the temple, and broke everything in sight.

And what happened to this Jesus? He was rejected; he was rejected because the way he lived and taught was threatening to many, especially those in power. And he was murdered in the most brutal and lingering of ways. He took it all, and yet forgave those who dealt it out. When he came back afterward, he still didn’t come back as a King. He still didn’t come back like a magician, or a superhero, rising from each blow to deal out better than what he got to the one who gave it to him; he came back pretty much with the same attitude and behavior he exhibited before his crucifixion.

So what kind of Jesus are we expecting will be coming back at the climax of all things? Are we hoping that this next time, Jesus will finally come back as The Terminator, getting rid of all the people we don’t like? Maybe we look for Jesus to come back as the one who will finally bring prosperity to everyone, or peace to the world. Some may look for Jesus as the one who will destroy all those who don’t agree, or who believe wrongly. Or maybe the next time he’ll protect himself by shooting first.

If so, we’ll be just as disappointed, if not more so, than John the Baptizer was. The Jesus our hearts long for, the Jesus our lives as well as our lips confess is coming again to judge the living and the dead, the Jesus whom John’s followers were told about, is not the Jesus of superheroes.

The Jesus we wait for, the Jesus we long for is the one who humbly serves the poor, the outcast, and the sinner. He is the one who is willing to eat with Pharisees as well as tax collectors and women. And most of all, he is willing to die on a Roman cross rather than retaliate against those who treated him and his people brutally. That’s the only Christ there is. Jesus who accepts you and I exactly as we are, who loves us exactly as we are. Who gives us not what we deserve; but instead gives us love that has no conditions, love that is selfless, love that gives up all power for the good of the other.

There is no other Jesus. The Jesus we read about in the bible accepts, he does not condemn. Jesus forgives. Jesus frees people from a lifetime of bondage so that they, and we may live a life that is marked by love and generosity.

There is no evidence that Jesus, who will come again in glory at the end of time, will come as a ruler to hold power over creation. The story that we read in these gospels suggests that Jesus, who we wait for and prepare for, will come again to judge us against the standard he set: humble service to the poor, the outcast, the sinner; willingness to eat with those with whom we disagree and with those who are unlike us; and whether or not we spread the good news of God’s love in him. These are the markers of the people who follow Christ, and who wait for his return.

As the anticipation of Jesus comes to a climax, do as Jesus does, go out and serve the poor, the outcast, the sinner. Or maybe eat a meal with someone you can’t agree with. And we can say with all our heart, Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore him. Amen.

2 Advent Yr A

2010-12-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

We just prayed this morning when we lit the second candle on the Advent wreath, Gracious God, Grant that we may find peace as we prepare for our Lord’s birth. May divisions in ourselves and in our families be peacefully resolved. May there be peace in our cities and in the countries of our world. Help us to see the paths of peace in our lives, and then give to us courage to follow them. Lord, let us remember that you only are the giver of lasting peace and that you are always with us. We relit the first candle, the candle of hope, and lit the second candle, the candle of peace. On this the second Sunday of Advent, may we find peace and hope.

Isaiah shows us that the political situation of the people of Israel is in total disarray. Into this setting, however, just when things appear hopeless and the future looks very bleak, the prophet promises that God will send a leader who will rule with justice toward all, and with mercy toward the most vulnerable in society. The little ones, the defenseless ones, the innocent ones will be protected and cared for. Isaiah urges the people to remember who they are as the people of God, reminding them that their power, their life, comes from goodness, not from greed. In Matthew, the people that John the baptizer was with had stopped believing the Messiah would be coming. We live in a similar time of cynicism, we have stopped believing that there can be an end to war, that there can be an end to homelessness, that there can be an end to inequity and injustice. Mostly because we look to the wrong place for justice and peace. Only God will bring justice and righteousness, the world cannot do it. God’s mission in the world is healing and reconciliation, it is not justice as the world understands it. It is in God’s healing and reconciliation where real hope and real peace lay.

What is your greatest hope? What makes you get up in the morning, and move through your day, and, at times, struggle against discouragement, injustice, and despair? What are you moving toward, and what carries you toward it? We always need to remember that hope is not the same thing as a wish. We often make the mistake of using hope when we really mean wish. We wish for presents at Christmas, but hope is in the promise of new life. Wishes sometimes come true, hope is already true. God has already broken into our lives and our world to bring peace and reconciliation, to bring hope, and to show us what that looks like. Advent reminds us of this truth, Advent gives us an opportunity to listen, to stay awake, and to prepare ourselves and our community for the day that God will fulfill our hope.

The story in Isaiah shows us what hope looks like. A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Even when something looks dead, in God’s economy, new life is possible. That is hope. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. That is hope.

And that is what John proclaims in Matthew; this one who is coming is the one who begins the new peaceable kingdom. But the peace and the hope that Jesus brings is not a nostalgic romantic peace, it is not a wish. It is about turning away from the powers of the world and to live in hope. We have heard Eugene Peterson’s translation in The Message; repentance is about turning in your old life for a kingdom life. Peterson writes, Jesus will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. Jesus places everything true in its proper place before God, everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.

And Paul in Romans shows us what that kingdom life looks like. Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. Peace and hope are about welcoming everyone into this kingdom life. You are welcomed into this new life that God has for you, you don’t have to be perfect to be welcome, surely the Pharisees and the Sadducees were only perfect in their own minds and they were welcome in God’s kingdom. Welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed you. There are so many that aren’t hearing this from us Christians. So many people continue to live in hopelessness and despair because they are hearing and seeing that some Christians believe a certain way, behave in a certain way. But that is not what Paul says here. This welcome, this radical greeting, is the welcome offered to the one who does not look like myself, who is not a member of my "immediate" family. Perhaps this one dresses differently, celebrates different traditions, looks different, perhaps this one is even sick or without a home or in serious difficulty. Perhaps this one is the one with whom I vehemently disagree, Paul says all are welcome in Christ.

Paul is here pushing the boundaries of the community. Yes, Christ came to one particular place, was born into one particular race and a unique religious tradition, but it is precisely this particularity on God's part that allows God to be paradoxically present in all people, in all cultures, in all flesh. The incarnation is about the infinite becoming fully embodied in the finite and yet never restricted by that finite. Christ's coming into the world, into the house of David, is God's coming into all of humanity, for all humanity. This coming, the advent of Christ, can never be claimed as a privilege by one group. Rather, everyone is invited, those who are inside and those who are not. Hope abounds when we welcome everyone as Christ has welcomed you.

Last week I mentioned that here at St. Andrew’s we have shifted from using the liturgical color purple, which signifies penitence, to using blue instead. This passage from Romans illustrates that shift. The shift is from penitence to hope. When I am out walking just as day is dawning, the sky is an amazing blue. Blue is the hope of a new day, blue anticipates coming of new creation. And the vision of the coming kingdom is broad, wide, deep, and generous. The vision of the kingdom is peace and hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore him.
Amen.

Funeral homily for Bernice Holland Jones

2010-12-02T15:16:00.001-07:00

I am humbled and privileged to say these words as we gather to celebrate Bernice’s life. Although I am the one who has the privilege of speaking, many of us will tell similar stories of Bernice’s impact on our lives. She taught all of us, whether you are a St. Mary’s girl, whether you are a friend, she taught all of us. All of us know that in these last years, she wondered to herself and aloud at her purpose for continuing on this earth, she was somewhat impatient to get started on the next part. Today, I get to tell you what she taught me. I hope you will share with each other what she taught you.

I was called here to Rapid City to lead this congregation of St. Andrew’s. But it was Bernice who really taught me what it means to be priest. It is Bernice who blessed me. Each Wednesday Bernice would stand at these steps after taking the bread and the wine, and wait for prayers of healing. As I made the sign of the cross on her forward, and laid my hands on her head, I wondered what healing meant when you are 99 years old. I would say, Lord God, we ask for healing and for wholeness, and especially Lord for the power of your Holy Spirit, in whom we are made new creations, in whom we are born again, and by whom we are being made in your image. Each time I prayed these words, I saw Bernice’s beauty, I saw Bernice who I believe looks as much like God’s image as I can imagine. I would stand before Bernice and I would be blessed by her. Many believe it’s the other way around, that I bless them. But as Bernice stood before me, I was blessed by her, over and over again.

Bernice taught me about learning. There is always something new to be learned. Her attendance at Bible Study until quite recently attests to that, most would suggest that they’d been there done that got the tee shirt. But not Bernice, scripture always had something new to teach; each time we approach scripture there is something new for us to learn. I bet that’s why she was such a good teacher herself for so many years, I imagine she approached her students with the hope of learning something new, and that always results in transformation.

But I think what is most important to me and has formed me as a priest, is Bernice’s graciousness toward all people. It wasn’t just about kind words, Bernice had the ability to embrace people and encounter them as I think Jesus would have. At least she did with me. She and I didn’t see eye-to-eye, probably true with many of you as well, you see this isn’t about right and wrong, or agreeing and disagreeing, it‘s about seeing into someone’s soul and respecting the dignity of that creation. Bernice could do that, and that actually sounds a lot like living out our baptismal promises. Bernice helps me do that.

All of us have heard Bernice’s stories I hope. Stories of the Episcopal Church in South Dakota, stories of St. Mary’s girls, stories of Thunderhead Episcopal Camp, and of Camp Remington, Bernice was not just at these places, many of them wouldn’t be around if it hadn’t been for her and Emmitt. I to have been blessed by these stories.

So today we celebrate a life well lived. We celebrate the hope in the promise of new life that God gives and that is shown to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that death and resurrection that is so beautifully illustrated by the butterfly that Bernice loved so much.

One of the most difficult things I do as your priest is to accompany people on life’s journey to death. It is also one of the privileges of my work, because life’s journey to death is a sacred journey. God came into this world, into our midst, to show us that death does not have dominion, that the material demise of our bodies is not the ultimate story. The ultimate story is the story of resurrection.

This is the celebration of Bernice’s life, and it attests to the hope we have in the new life that is given by God through Jesus Christ. What God brings to us is change. Death is the penultimate change, resurrection is the ultimate change, and that is what we celebrate today. As we celebrate this life well lived, we are sad, and in the midst of the sadness, the good news remains. We hear scripture today full of good news. The good news is about the absolutely new life that God gives to us in Jesus.

Our hope rests in new creation. Our hope rests in the story that the work Jesus does on the cross matters. And what Jesus does on the cross is to collect all of the pain and suffering of this world, and take it and hold it so that the stream of pain or sadness or hurt will flow no farther. Jesus takes in all of our pain and our suffering and Jesus contains it. Jesus’ life and death says to our world, it all stops here. It all stops with me.

Jesus doesn’t take away pain and sorrow. You and I both know that reality. To be human is to feel, to feel pain, to feel joy, to feel fear, to feel intimacy. Being human means being born to die, and only a God who is willing to share that can actually help us face our own mortality and that of those we love. Only by facing death, our most primal fear, can we move ahead to embrace life with the great “nevertheless” that is God’s gracious word to a broken world.

Death is real and grief hurts and sometimes we just have to sit in the silence and cry and wait. What Jesus accomplishes is to let the pain and suffering wreak its fury upon him, to negate its power and take it out of the world with him. Jesus didn’t defeat pain and suffering by resisting it; but by absorbing it and removing it through the power of love.

And Jesus is the reason we rejoice today. It is this truth of what God in Jesus does in life, and on the cross, and in the resurrection that we celebrate Bernice’s life today. It is the truth that God lived and died as one of us, that connects us to each other, and gives us the strength and courage to love one another in our sadness and in our joy. God came to be with us, so that we may be new creations. God came to be with us, so that our pain and suffering, and joys and celebrations are made absolutely new.

Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

1 Advent Yr A

2010-11-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Life is short, stay awake, although this is the Caribou coffee tag line, it applies to our readings this morning as well. From Romans we read, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. And from Matthew, keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Advent is derived from a Latin word for “coming.” Advent is a time of preparation, expectation, anticipation, and waiting. It is not Christmas. Just want to make that clear. Christmas begins on December 25th. It seems waiting and anticipation are foreign concepts to many today. We wait in a line at the store and we get irritated. We wait at the stoplight and we wish there was not so much traffic. We wait for life to be born, and we wait for death. We, for the most part, are very bad at waiting. No wonder we jump right over Advent to Christmas, why wait when we can have it all today.

And yet, there is an urgency in our waiting. On this first day of the new year, this first Sunday of Advent, are some readings that ask us to stay awake and to wait in urgency for something that is new. We wait for the birth of the baby, we wait for the coming of the end, we wait for the coming of the cosmic Christ, we wait in expectation and anticipation of all that we believe fulfills humanity. Our waiting is urgent waiting, it is not wasted waiting. It is waiting for the reality that we know today, and the reality of the Kingdom that comes. It is waiting that does not negate the joy and happiness in which we live, it does not negate the sorrow and pain that we feel, but it is waiting that calls us to something new. And it is waiting that calls us to stay awake.

The cultural Christmas season has already begun, as we well know. There is this seduction to be busy, not that being busy is bad, but busyness tends to divert our attention from waiting for the gift that is being prepared for us. There are wonderful things to do at this time of year, but we cannot be seduced into believing that is all there is. That seduction pulls us away from staying awake, staying alert to the amazing gift of God’s love that we receive at Christmas.

What would we do differently if we knew exactly when Jesus would come? This is the way we need to live in Advent, because the truth is that Jesus comes and is coming, for all times and all places, into our lives and into our hearts, and we must be prepared. The only way to prepare is to stay awake and see the signs around us. Romans actually gives us some instructions about how to do that. We are to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

I think putting on the armor of light is about paying attention to the love that God gives us, and paying attention to the relationships in our lives. I think laying aside the works of darkness is to let go of all that draws us away from God’s love at this time of the year. There is so much that draws us away from God’s love, sale after sale after sale, these things are not bad, but we can’t let them be all there is. The real event is taking place in a hidden, yet powerful way. Lives are changed every day because of Jesus, people are healed from sin and death, eyes are opened to new realities, and we seldom hear about them because often we’re too distracted by the other stuff.

What meaning can Advent waiting have for us today? The best illustration I can think of is pregnancy. Nine months of waiting, or in my case 91/2 months of waiting, nothing can make it go faster, there is no way you want it to be over early, and nothing can change the absolute change that pregnancy brings to lives. A new life, being knit together in the darkness of the womb, a new life being created, absolutely and completely out of your control. But this kind of waiting is a profoundly creative act. It is in no way passive; indeed it is quite active as this new life grows. This is the waiting of Advent. It is to be joyfully and fully present to new growth. Advent becomes a way of being.

Advent is a time to put away the distractions. So maybe this is the time to put away our Blackberry’s and our iPhone’s for an hour or a day. Maybe it’s time to turn off for a while. This is a time to find some solitude. In fact, insist on it. This is a season to draw apart for a little while, to read scripture, to take ten minutes and breath slowly, letting the promise of God fill your lungs with fresh air. This is a time for staying awake to what really matters and letting go of some things that don’t. Advent offers some alternatives to all that doesn’t matter: an Advent wreath on the table, and its increasing shine as a new candle is lit each week; an Advent calendar to mark the days of waiting; a brief passage from scripture with the evening meal. These are anti-stress times when people’s souls get restored among those they love. Those who live alone can sit in front of a lighted candle and remember loved ones and friends who have surrounded them in the candlelight. Most of all, we can recall a God who loves us so much that we are offered a time to prepare, a time to wait, a time to remember that underneath all that seems to be crumbling is a firm foundation, and the One who is to come.

During Advent we will be singing a very unusual song, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. It is a poem from the 18th century, based actually on the Song of Songs. In this new year that Advent begins, this hymn offers to us a new way to hear Jesus, a new way to see Jesus, a new way to experience Jesus. We are called to rest awhile, to rest from all that seduces us away from Jesus Christ, the giver of life, Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Stay awake to the love that brings light into the dark. Stay awake to the love that forgives and heals. Stay awake to the love that brings us together, the love that feeds us. Stay awake to the love that brings us peace. Stay awake to the love that prepares us for new birth. Stay awake to the love that anticipates our homecoming.

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore him.
Amen.

Christ the King, Yr C

2010-11-20T15:45:00.001-07:00

Christ the King Sunday, the ultimate paradox. Christ the King, whose throne is the cross. One of the difficulties for me, and maybe for you, is this paradox. Kingship as we have learned through out history has been much more about tyranny than about justice and mercy. There are two places that I have learned most about the kingship of the cross, and both of course, are stories of metaphor. In, The Horse and His Boy, book 5 in the Narnia series, by C.S. Lewis, King Lune says to his newly found twin son Prince Cor, “For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

The other place is in a trilogy of stories called collectively The Song of Albion, by Stephen R Lawhead. This is a story about a young man who enters into an alternate world, a world of kings and queens, of quests and wars, an alternate world that is quite related to our own world, what happens in one affects the other. Our main character enters this alternate world through one of the thin places of Celtic mythology. Upon entering, he begins to live a new life with new hopes and dreams. Eventually it becomes clear that he is to be the king of this land. He becomes a king who understands his kingship as constituted by the people, he is only king as much as they are his people. He leads his army into the battles, he gives up his coat, his food, for those of his land that need it. Eventually he comes to the time when he must ultimately put his life down for his people, it brings him great sadness, but he does so out of mercy and compassion.

Is there a king that is recorded in the history books like these kings? As we all know, history books are about the winners, not the kings who gave their lives for their people. Those kings would be regarded as weak, noneffective, and are quickly forgotten.

Christ the King, whose throne is the cross. Jesus, the shepherd through whom we know God. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Jesus all things in heaven and on earth were created. In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Jesus God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.

One of the criminals who was hanged there with Jesus said to him “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” And it is as if Jesus thought to himself, “I am King of the Jews, but I can’t save myself because I am saving you.” Here is the paradox. This is kingship as presented by God through Jesus. It runs absolutely counter to Messiah as it had been conceived in those times, Messiah as those who waited were prepared for. Messiah, the one who would come with power to put under, put down, put away, all those who already were the oppressors.

Jesus, born in a barn, proclaimed as a King, as Mary’s song proclaims, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. We use Kingly language, like sovereign Lord; we use Kingly images, like Christ who sits on a throne, and yet we also tell the story of the baby born in a stable, to parents who had nothing, who grew to be a man who was thrown out of the temple and whose throne is a cross.

Jesus announced the kingdom of God was drawing near. But Jesus upended and undermined the whole concept of kingship. The world’s kingdoms are about power and prestige; Jesus is about mercy and compassion. The rulers of this world may be about coercion and violence; Jesus’ life was characterized by peace and reconciliation.

I think this paradox of Jesus as King, and Jesus as the one who eats with tax collectors and women, whose closest friends were of bunch of smelly fishermen, is the most difficult image for me to reconcile. I am much more comfortable with the Jesus who wears Birkenstocks and jeans and a tee shirt, than Jesus who wears a crown and a robe. Kings spent all of their time building up riches of gold, silver, and jewels, but Jesus owned nothing at all. Kings surround themselves with servants; Jesus chose to be a servant. But, today, we are asked to hold both images in tension, Christ the kings, whose throne is a cross, and in so doing we see a fuller picture.

Worldly kingship implies power; power over others, authority over people. But Jesus did not exercise this sort of power and authority. Jesus’ power and authority are shared, not possessed. Jesus’ power is not over people, but with and through people. Kingdom is the inbreaking of a new order, an order that doesn’t just drive out the old order, but that reorders all relationships. The criminal hanging on the cross next to Jesus recognized this power and authority, the power and authority to love absolutely, the power and authority to forgive. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Jesus, the one who comes to show us the way to God, Jesus, the one who is King of all creation, is at the very same time the one who lived life just like you and me, who loved his friends and family, who suffered and died, just like you and me. For what good is a God who sits back and watches, what good is a God who rules from afar, what good is a God that holds power over people. Jesus is the one who loves, the criminal who hangs next to him, the mother who cries below him, the friends who betray him.

Kingship for Jesus is giving himself totally and absolutely for the love of his people. It is this love that you and I must respond to. It is this love that is transforming love. It is this love that reconciles and redeems. It is this love that causes us to love ourselves, it is this love that causes us to love one another, it is this love that gives us hope. Jesus’ love changes us.

We are changed through the realization that each one of us is loved completely and absolutely, just like that person on the cross next to Jesus, not for what we’ve done or not done, but for who we are. What kind of change happens in us for us to declare, Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom? It is the kind of change that causes each one of us to know that none of us is in this life alone, and none of us gets out of this life alive. It’s the kind of change that causes us to know that perfection is not the ticket, but love and forgiveness are. It is the kind of change that causes us to serve, like Jesus serves, the person next to us. Whether that person is next to us in our pew here in church, or that person is next to us in line at the grocery store, or that person is the one with whom you disagree most vehemently.

We are changed through the realization that when we fall short of the kind of love Jesus demonstrates for us, and we will fall short, that is part of being human, we are forgiven. Forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing. Forgiveness not just once, but time and time again. Not even just until we get it right, because it’s not about getting it right. Only trying to get it right just makes us into self-righteous snobs. It’s about responding to love in love, and when we don’t, we ask for forgiveness. It’s about responding with love to the encounters along our paths, and when we don’t, we ask for forgiveness.

We begin our Advent journey next week. We begin our preparations for the coming of Christ into our hearts, and into our lives, for all time and all places. We begin our waiting in hope at this place of the cross, and this place of paradox, at this place where kingdom comes, and where love and forgiveness prevail. We begin at the place of remembering, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. We begin at the place of forgiveness, today you will be with me in Paradise. We begin at the place of grace, for you are absolutely and abundantly loved.

Amen.

25 Pentecost Yr C

2010-11-13T17:14:00.003-07:00

I think the message from Isaiah and from Luke that we hear today is so exciting. From Isaiah we hear for I am about to create new heavens and a new earth, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. And in Luke we hear the promise of new life, the promise that whatever happens, whatever has happened, God is creating something new.

We must always remember that these stories are written in hindsight, the writers are looking back at events that have already happened, as is the case with all stories, true or not true. Even science fiction and fantasy, the kind of stories that I like so much, at the very least comment on events that have already happened, for the purpose of proposing what may be, especially if we don’t change our ways.

The writer of Luke is looking back at the destruction of the temple that has already happened, and seeing it through the lens of the promise of fulfillment by God through Jesus in those days and to come. The event that is being described is the destruction of the temple, the temple was the center of the community’s life. Imagine the story you would tell if this church was destroyed. You would remember where you were when you heard the news, you may remember what you were thinking, what you were doing, who you were with. The destruction of anything, especially a building that is central to your faith and your family is a watershed event. It completely redefines all that came before and all that will come after. Nothing is the same, the people are changed, the landscape is changed. This is the report of destruction in the gospel of Luke that we read this morning. The destruction that is reported is an event that was shared by all Jews. It was an event that would have led them to think the world as they knew it was ending. That event happened about 70 years after Christ, and it is being interpreted in Luke in light of the promise of new life. We make a mistake when we think that these are events that are yet to happen.

The gospel writer Luke, writing after these significant events have happened, is telling a story in which Jesus is the main character. And I think what Luke is trying to do is to reassure people of the hope Jesus brings,
he tells people not to panic, not to be afraid. He writes, “you will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish.” He is saying, yes, it looks and feels like the end must be coming, but don’t panic. Don’t panic in the face of human destruction. Don’t panic about wars and rumors of wars. Don’t panic when the sky itself shows troublesome portents. Don’t panic when Jesus demands that God and our brothers and sisters in Christ take priority over our biological family.

It is tempting to panic. It is tempting to be ruled by our fears. Especially when we hear so much fear. But we are not to be ruled by fears. Jesus is still with us, giving us words to bear witness to his healing and reconciling of the world to himself. We believe that work will be consummated, and God’s will accomplished on earth as it is in heaven. Endure the troubles that will pass; hold on to Jesus’ vision for us and for the world, and we’ll hold on to our souls, our integrity and our destiny. The rulers of this world put on a convincing show of power, but we who know Jesus know what real power is and what it is doing and can accomplish among us.

It is Jesus’ power and Jesus’ power alone, in a world of darkness and violence, in a world of fear that brings light and hope. The world of injustice and hatred has ended, is ending, and will end. Jesus has seen, is seeing, and will see to that. Don’t panic, be not afraid, for the Light has come into the world, and will not be defeated by darkness.

The Light claims our heart and our soul and our mind. At our baptism, we were united with Christ and marked as Christ’s own forever. Every time we come to this table for nourishment we leave fortified, strengthened, we leave with renewed energy. You and I are bearers of the Light. You and I are co-conspirators in God’s plan of bringing Light into a dark world. The challenge of today’s gospel is about not giving into fear and panic, it is about being a Light bearer.

How are you a Light bearer in this world? How do you bring the good news of God in Jesus Christ into the world in which you live?

At work, and at school, in your neighborhood, and even here, your church home, are you a reconciler? Do you bring peace? Are you an advocate for those who are most vulnerable? Do you treat others with dignity and justice, and do you challenge your coworkers and your classmates to treat one another and others with dignity and justice? Are you a good steward of the abundance of God’s creation? Do you welcome the stranger? Do you by your actions point people to hope? Do you treat children as Jesus treats children?

Light bearing in a dark world is a big job, and we all share that responsibility. God’s plan of reconciliation is a big job, and we all have a part to play in it. Fear has no hold on us, for the Light has come into the world.

May we echo with the angels and archangels, Holy, holy, holy is the God who is Love, who is now, who is then, who is forever. Amen.

All Saints Yr C

2010-11-06T18:56:00.001-06:00

The Beatitudes are very familiar to us, although, we may not be aware that there are two versions of them, this one from Luke, and the one in Matthew, they are very similar. I have trouble understanding the Beatitudes. It’s hard because the blessings don’t seem like blessings, being poor, hungry and weeping. The woes don’t seem much like woes, being rich, full and laughing. The problem is that they aren’t really clearly blessings and woes, what they are is much more about where we place our trust, in whom we place our trust and who and what we worship.

I think the Beatitudes in Luke are about what gets in the way of our trust in and worship of God. I think these Beatitudes are about idolatry, whether it’s blessing or trouble. I think the Beatitudes are about how the stuff in our lives clogs our lives and gets us stuck. When we concede to the seduction of the culture of greed, the culture of fame, the culture of consuming, we transfer our trust in God to trust in something other than God, and when we do that, we put idols before God. When we concede to the culture of self-absorption, and the culture of happiness, we put idols before God.

This is nothing new, the stories of idol worship go back as far as Genesis, when Adam and Eve transferred their trust in God to their own self-importance they were kicked out of the Garden. When the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, they transferred their trust in God to trusting themselves and they had nothing to eat. When the Hebrew people transferred their trust in God to the empty rituals of sacrificing animals their temple was destroyed.

Let’s take a look at these blessings and troubles one by one, and see if we can identify the idols, the stuff of our lives, that get us stuck and clogged up. The language we’re hearing is from Eugene Peterson’s translation in The Message.

You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all, God’s kingdom is there for the finding. Sure doesn’t seem like a blessing. We hear stories of people losing everything, in fire or in flood. You all have stories of people you know who have lost much due to fire or flood. When people lose home and possessions in fire or flood, when they are left with nothing, it is at that very time, when there is nothing between them and God, that their relationship with God may be at it’s strongest. So often it is what we perceive as loss that brings us to our knees, it is these times when our relationship with God is most pure.

You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry, then you’re ready for the messianic meal. You and I rarely go hungry, and if we do it is often because of poor planning rather than any real need for food. It is hard when we are so well fed to imagine coming to this table hungry, hungry for relationship, hungry for connection to God and to others. But each time we come to this table we are satisfied. And not merely with the meal of bread and wine, but with the meal that is Jesus, the meal that satisfies all of our longings, the meal that fulfills all of our hopes.

Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out. What it means is that truth is too close for comfort. When we become too smug and too sure of our rightness, we are sure to be cut down a notch. It is then that we can see the truth. It is in our humility that we can see God clearly. It is in our humility that we begin to be compassionate and know the truth of the other.

It’s trouble ahead if you’re satisfied with yourself, your self will not satisfy you for long. It’s not about you, it’s about God. You’ve got to keep the main thing, the main thing. It’s never about how great a Christian any of us is, how much we give or how much we serve. It’s not about how important you are, how big your house is, how great your grades are, how talented you are. It’s about God’s abundant love for you and for all of us together. Satisfaction comes from God.

And it’s trouble ahead if you think life’s all fun and games. There’s suffering to be met, and you’re going to meet it. There is no truer statement. The reality of our lives is suffering and pain, along with joy and celebration. You know this. Jesus didn’t live this life to take the suffering away, Jesus lived this live to accompany us in the midst of the suffering, to walk by our side, to be our guide, to suffer with us.

There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, popularity contests are not truth contests. Your task is to be true, not popular. That’s one we can all write down and post on our mirrors, or our desks, or someplace where we see it daily. Your task is to be true, not popular. Jesus shows us and teaches us the truth, the truth of our lives. And the truth is about trusting God to be God, Emmanuel, God with us, the One who created us, and is in our midst, the one to whom we sing Holy Holy Holy and who accompanies us through our joys and sorrows, the one who loves us no matter what, especially when we are feeling like there is nothing left to be loved, the one who we call Father and promises to be connected to us, when we feel isolated from everyone around us. The One who lived, suffered and died, and rose again to new life, so that we may be made new.

The Beatitudes call us away from idolatry, they call us to examine the stuff of our lives and to get unclogged. The Beatitudes call us away from idolatry and toward servanthood. And it is the Beatitudes that we hear on this All Saints Day. But remember, your task is to be true, not popular. Your task is to be faithful, not a saint. If we get caught up in being a saint, we are a long way from being a servant.

Today we baptize Isaiah, Isaac and Tiana. Today we reaffirm our own baptism promises. Isaiah, Isaac and Tiana, and all the rest of us, remember who you are this day, remember who came before you this day, and remember who comes after you, God was, is, and always will be. Every day, God is worthy to be praised.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

23 Pentecost Yr C

2010-10-30T18:05:00.000-06:00

Imagine, It was a day like many other days in Jericho.
Hot. The kind of hot where just standing makes you sweat.
Dry. The kind of dry where your throat feels two pieces of sandpaper.
Dusty. The kind of dusty that when the sweat drips off your brow
you get muddy rivers in the cracks of your face.

It was a day unlike many other days in Jericho. There was a murmur swelling into a roar about the prophet Jesus who was traveling through town on his way to Jerusalem. All the men were shuffling in the heat of the day into the village square, near the well, to catch a glimpse of Jesus. The women and children remained near the back of the growing crowd, and Zacchaeus tried to blend in with them.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector. Zacchaeus accepted the fact that people in his village shunned him. Zacchaeus himself thought he was doing only what his job asked of him. He called on the townspeople and collected the Roman tax, well, plus a little bit for himself and a little bit more for his employer. But Zacchaeus also gave half of all of that to the poor, and, if he did get caught cheating, he did what the Hebrew law asked of him, he paid back four times as much. In addition to his sleazy profession, he was also admittedly diminutive, short in stature as some might say. People seemed to look right through him, sometimes right over him; he often had the feeling that he was invisible.

But on this day, he decided to run ahead of the hot and sweaty crowd to the village square, and knowing that he could not see through their backs, he decided to find a better vantage point for viewing the commotion. There was a sycamore tree that gave some shade to the well, and Zacchaeus climbed into it. He made himself comfortable, and from there was able to observe the commotion quite well.

People gathered and buzzed about Jesus, the one who is coming. Zacchaeus had heard about this Jesus. They said he was a prophet, they said he was a teacher, a rabbi; they said he was a healer. He had just healed a blind man, he had healed lepers.
But they also said he was radical, that he once told a rich man that in order to follow him he would have to sell all that he owned and give his money to the poor. Imagine that, thought Zacchaeus, why would you even want to follow this guy, he surely didn’t have any power. And the story about that other tax collector, the one who asked for mercy, mercy for what? Doing his job, and making money?

Zacchaeus sat in the sycamore tree, pondering these stories that he’d been told about Jesus, when he heard someone yelling up at him. “Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, come down here, I’m coming over to your house to eat and stay awhile.” The others were calling out to Jesus, “Jesus, Jesus, come to my house to eat, but it was Zacchaeus that Jesus was talking to. Zacchaeus felt a thrill of excitement that this man whom everyone wanted to come to their house, had just invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ house. For a moment Zacchaeus worried about what his wife was going to do when he brought Jesus home with him, but decided this was about his good luck and his wife would understand.

Besides, Zacchaeus noticed that everyone else was indignant and annoyed that Jesus was coming to his house, and Zacchaeus liked the attention he received. They all were grumbling that Jesus had no business with this crook, but Zacchaeus had for so long listened to the condemning comments that the townspeople made toward him, and had so long been treated like scum, that he was overjoyed to have this man at his house.

In the middle of that crowd of people Jesus looked right up at Zacchaeus. At that moment, Zacchaeus felt as if Jesus knew exactly who he was. Zacchaeus had spent his life hiding from people. The only way he could do his work was to keep people at a distance, to steer clear of relationships with his neighbors. If he ever developed relationships with people, there’s no way he ever would have made any money, how do you extort money from people if you actually like them, and you let them like you?

Zacchaeus had spent his life being overlooked by people too. Alienation and isolation were the result of being looked at like he was less than a man. Most folks dismissed him before ever finding out about him. Who knew that he gave so much of his wealth away? Who knew that he took only his due, that he didn’t intend to cheat, and if he did, he paid it back fourfold. Who knew that he had a wife and kids? Who knew that he had been climbing trees his whole life. Who really knew Zacchaeus? Sometimes, he thought his wife didn’t even really know him. But the minute Jesus looked into his eyes, he knew, and Zacchaeus was changed. Zacchaeus was called away from himself, when Jesus calls you can’t stay in the same place.

Zacchaeus climbed like a monkey, and he quickly alighted on the ground under the tree, so as not to give this man any time to change his mind. Together they made their way to Zacchaeus’ home, through the crowd, with everyone looking at Zacchaeus with disbelief, how could Jesus even consider going to the home with that tax collector?

Upon entering Zacchaeus’ home, Zacchaeus, being the good Jew that he was, washed Jesus’ feet, and offered him something cool to drink and good to eat. Zacchaeus and Jesus talked, just like they’d been old friends, meeting again after a long time apart, (Zacchaeus had to chuckle, since he had no old friends) but not missing a beat.

It was almost as if Jesus had looked into his soul and knew him for his entire lifetime, and for who he was. A good man, a good Jew, but a man nonetheless, whose tendency toward sin pulled him hard and away from what he knew was right.

The meal they shared together that day was a meal he would not soon forget. After Jesus left, every time Zacchaeus came back to his table to eat, he remembered Jesus sitting there. He remembered what it was like to be known by Jesus, to be completely and absolutely himself, not puffing himself up like he usually did with others to try to pretend he was taller or bigger.

Every time Zacchaeus came back to that table he remembered what it was like to no longer feel alienated and isolated. Every time Zacchaeus came back to that table he remembered what it was like to have a friend like Jesus. Every time Zacchaeus came back to the table he remembered that salvation had come to his house, because he too was a son of Abraham. No longer was he lost, no longer was he afraid, no longer was he alone.

Amen.

22 Pentecost Yr C

2010-10-23T13:45:00.000-06:00

I have such a hard time with this Luke passage and others like it. It just feels to me like we’re caught between the rock and the hard place. If you humble yourself you will be exalted, if you exalt yourself you’ll be humbled. Well, I have news for Luke; it just doesn’t work that way in this world, and surely it isn’t that clear and easy.

You all know as well as I that in this world, those who exalt themselves get the rewards. They get paid the big money, they get all the attention, they get face time on the news. It doesn’t matter what their motivation is, whether it’s altruistic, beneficent, or whether it’s completely self-serving, or somewhere in between. Doesn’t matter. Those who look good, those who make a lot of money, those who have a particular skill that we value, or even a skill that we don’t value, make it into our headlines. Even those who call attention to themselves by not calling attention to themselves make it into the news. Even the ones who are so deserving, they do good work for their families or others; they are so humble that they get a home makeover, or showered with gifts and attention. How do you keep from feeling like you deserve it too, like you do good work and you should get the attention too. It just doesn’t seem fair.

This passage is a parable, and as we have learned, parables are like a treasure, a gift, but they have a lid that makes it hard to get inside. This parable from Luke not only has a lid that makes it hard to get inside, it also seems like one of those Chinese finger torture deals, the one you stick a finger in at either end, and when you try to get your fingers out again you can’t, it just pulls tighter.

This parable is like that. On your first pass at it, it seems simple. It seems like there’s a good way to be and a bad way to be. The Pharisee prays and is thankful that he is not like the others, the thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even the tax collector. He does what he’s supposed to do, he prays, he fasts and he tithes. But then we see the tax collector, who in the opinion of the Pharisee is an extortionist, a man who takes more than he should so that he can pocket some for himself before he turns the rest over to his boss. But it is the tax collector who is down on his knees asking for mercy.

But Pharisees are the men that Jesus is always chastising; it’s the Pharisees who Jesus calls on the carpet because they tend toward obeying the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. Tax collectors are the ones that Jesus invites to table fellowship, the ones that Jesus eats with while telling the Pharisees off.

With this one, the harder you pull, the tighter it gets. Who’s good and who’s bad in this story? Who’s right and who’s wrong? Who has the higher moral ground? Who should we be like? Who is really humble and who is not? The Pharisee or the tax collector? Us or them? Sometimes I think that lid is on mighty tight.

I think this story is about all of us, I think every one of us can find ourselves in it as we move away from an interpretation that paints an either/or picture. I think this is a story about spiritual pride, a sin that each and every one of us has committed and most likely will continue to commit.

Spiritual pride is among the most insidious of sins. Fight it successfully for a moment, and it’s tempting to start thinking or saying to yourself, “Hey-I’m being really humble! I’m way more humble than that guy over there. Maybe I should teach a class on humility at church.”

Or how about this. “I can’t stand those liberals, if you’re conservative, or I can’t stand those conservatives, if you’re liberal. They think they’re so much holier/better informed than everyone else. Well, that’s pride for you. If only they’d be like me, the world would be a much better place.”

So, it would be easy to say that we should all be humble and penitent like the tax collector, and less prideful like the Pharisee. But this turns into a game of competitive virtue. Point to the Pharisee and identify with the tax collector and talk about how much you hate those proud and hypocritical Pharisees; or point to the tax collector and identify with the Pharisees and talk about how much you hate those people who take advantage of the less fortunate. Either way, we identify with one side and hate the Other Side of whatever issue is hottest. You see, that Chinese finger torture just keeps getting tighter.

When we read Jesus’ parables, there is one way to know that we’re on the right track, if it doesn’t surprise, shock, and challenge us, we should probably begin again. The truth about this parable and all parables, being what they are, is that there is no cut and dried, black and white, easy or hard, interpretation of them.

And that is the way with Spiritual pride. As soon as we think that we are the humble one, in fact, the focus then is on us, not on the work of God. Spiritual pride is one of those sins that is “done or left undone.” When what we are doing becomes all about us, and no longer about the work that God calls us to; that is spiritual pride. It is a slippery slope, the example of the Chinese finger torture works as an example, because when we think we have it right; when we think we have it all figured out; is exactly the time to think again.

The truth is that we can’t avoid spiritual pride. It is our nature. But we can name it, call it what it is, ask forgiveness, and try again. This is the relationship that God calls us to. This is the transformation that is offered to us when we accept the gift of unconditional, amazing, and abundant love that God gives. The relationship Jesus has with us does not require perfection, it requires love and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, and it requires giving up being the center of attention.

Frederick Buechner, a prolific theologian, defines humility as thinking of yourself as neither better nor worse than you are. He says the one who is a person of humility is the person whose energy is so occupied with serving others, with exercising the kind of spiritual leadership that calls everyone they’re with into deeper maturity, with seeking God’s will and enjoying God’s fellowship, and with enjoying all of God’s good gifts that that person doesn’t have all that much left over to devote to assessing whether she or he is more or less virtuous than others.

Paul’s writing in second Timothy is at a time nearing the end of Paul’s life. Paul writes from prison, how can one be prideful from prison? I think Paul is the exemplar here of what is not spiritual pride. We attribute these famous words to Paul, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Paul’s example shows us that love and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, are not occasional virtues, love and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, are lifelong attitudes that create in us the ability to be humble, to be transformed by our encounter with Jesus and with others. The love and forgiveness that God shows us, that transforms us, is the very love and forgiveness that is a part of us every time we encounter those who challenge us, who disagree with us. It is love and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, which make us humble, not humility that makes us good.

Thanks be to God. Amen.