23 Pentecost Yr C Proper 28 Nov 13 2022

23 Pentecost Yr C Proper 28 Nov 13 2022

Malachi 4:1-2a, Psalm 98, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19

 

So, it was a fabulous trip to the Holy Land, so much to process and so much to say about it, so many photos! So many sites to see. One of the things we heard over and over again was from a historical and archeological perspective. What you see are Roman ruins, with churches built by the Byzantines over the ruins, those altered into mosques, changed back to churches. All with, tradition suggests that this is the spot where ….. the cross was, or maybe it was over there, or this is the spot where Jesus’ body was laid, or where Mary and Elizabeth met, or where Mary gave birth, or where the Samaritan woman met Jesus at the well, none of that can be known for sure. 

 

But, does it change anything? You see, what I really experienced was incarnation, the reality of Jesus, for me, is not in the place where Jesus is, or Mary, or Elizabeth, the place is Holy, the place is amazing, and I am so thankful to have gotten to go to this place. The place where Jesus is, is in the people. 

 

The people who I was traveling with. Danielle, the young parole officer whose faith in ex-offenders gives me hope. Clara, the 80 year old retired teacher who reminded me of the everready bunny, Rebecca, my roommate who recently had a knee replacement and who was bound and determined to keep on going. Tom, who is so generous, who didn’t know a stranger and whose baby died in infancy and whose wife died a few years ago. Billie Jo, Megan, Sarah, Natalie, Elise, all young, brave, fierce, pastors negotiating being women in a world where people continue to prioritize men. 

 

The people who made this such a rich experience, our bus driver Mahood, who cheerfully drove us to every site to see, and who had to leave us a couple days before the end because his wife was in the hospital. Lama, who spoke so passionately about the archeology and history, and who got us into every site and guarded our place in the line. Rena, who is a dean at an Arts and Music university in Bethlehem and who believes higher education is the key to peace. And our guide, the Rev Dr Karoline Lewis, who keeps our focus on the women who accompanied Jesus on the way. 

 

And the people of Palestine, and the people of Israel. Within the walls of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, there continues to be one to two deaths every day of Palestinians who stand up for their right to live there. People live in a walled city, through which they cannot pass freely. 

 

Although the sites are amazing, being in the Holy Land for me was not about the buildings or the sites, but about the real presence of Jesus in the people, because it is people who follow Jesus, not buildings, not even sacred sites. And that, I believe, is what Luke is showing us today. 

 

Just as following Jesus and being church is not about the building. We may be unabashedly proud of our building, but we know that church is something else. Church is God's work in the world, church is people who profess God's love for them and for all, church is body and bread, blood and wine, church is forgiveness and reconciliation, church is people who agree and disagree with each other, church is messy and beautiful. Church is all of the above.

 

And it is these things that we hear about in Luke and in Isaiah today. Luke writes, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." 

 

We need to remember that this good news was told after the events of Jesus' life and death. The events are already known to the author, they tell of what happened, not of what will happen. The temple in Jerusalem which was the place where God lived, was destroyed. Not one stone was left upon another. So in the story, the people are asking Jesus, what does this mean? What does it mean to not have a place for God to live? What does it mean to not have a place in which to worship God? The destruction of the temple was life changing for the Jews, but in this story Jesus is reassuring them that all will be well, do not be afraid. 

 

We live in that place as well. Here is our church building, and we love it and take care of it and it is beautiful. Humans do this over and over. We erect a beautiful building, and eventually it is the building that becomes important, and we become afraid of losing it. And our focus shifts from doing the work of reconciliation and healing that God calls us to, to keeping the institution alive, we become afraid of dieing.

 

But God calls us to live, God calls us to love, God calls us as agents of resurrection. The new heavens and the new earth are being created right now, and we are agents of that new creation. We have a part to play. Our job is to bring the love that wins to the world so that the world will know God's love and be transformed. As we do that, the world turns, the world turns toward love and away from hate, the world turns toward wholeness and away from fracture and fragment.

 

It's messy though, it's not this or that, one or the other, black or white, good or bad. Just like it's not only about heaven or hell at the end of time. It's about living fully and completely as God's new creation right here, today. And that is not clear or certain. God reveals Godself on the path we are on, and it is our job to pay attention, and to help the one who is walking next to us, to give them our coat if they need it, to share our food. We will fall down, every one of us. Whether it's because we turn our ankle, wear ourselves out, or goof around too much, we will fall down. It is those who accompany us on the journey, our church, who help raise us up again, and show us the way forward. How we are with one another on the road matters. How we respond to the challenge and joy of the journey matters. That we share the challenge and joy of the journey matters.

 

So we find ourselves today, after an exhausting couple of years, feeling like the stones keep tumbling down. So much of what we thought about our world and our church seems to have changed, maybe even ended, and it's hard to find the hope in our future together. All of us together must imagine a new way. We must imagine the ways we can be God's word of mercy, compassion, charity, and justice in our world. God's word matters, our words matter. 

 

The Good News is that we are followers of Jesus. When we were listening to Rena Khoury, a dean at the university for Palestinian students, we heard a story of pain and oppression. We asked her what she thought we could do about that when we got home. She said work for justice. Take the right action, have courage, be bold. You and I have all we need, stand up for those who don't. We are the church, not this building, not even the holy sites. Give your love, your forgiveness, your mercy, your compassion. Use your words wisely. Speak love into the world, speak forgiveness into the world. Speak on the behalf of those whose voices are silenced through fear and intimidation and violence. And don't go it alone, we are the church. We are all on this rock together, and none of us get off of it alive.

 

God is at work with us. God is already about healing and reconciliation that changes the world. Jesus is really present with us, in and through each other. We are living the reality of the new heavens and the new earth. We are living the reality that God loves us and all of creation so much, God walks with us in this life making us new, transforming our sadness into joy, our pain into hope, our death into life.  Amen.

Feast of Pentecost Yr B May 20 2018

Feast of Pentecost Yr B May 20 2018 Audio

Thomas Edison once said after a fire destroyed his laboratory, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew." Three weeks after the fire, Edison delivered his first phonograph. For us, Pentecost is that fire. Pentecost is that destroyer that is new life. I'm reminded of the controlled burns that often happened in the Black Hills, every once in a while one turned into a wildfire. A controlled burn is an illusion. After a burn, natural or human made, new life is springs up all over the place. The fire of Holy Spirit cannot be controlled. The fire of Holy Spirit cannot be predicted. The fire of Holy Spirit brings growth that cannot be imagined. 

And when the Holy Spirit shows us, nothing can be contained, not even the words that fall from the mouth. These readings before us today point us to Holy Spirit. They point us to the church, the people, not buildings and not institutions, but followers of Jesus. Followers of Jesus, who know that in their lives, Love wins. 

Indeed, today I think Pentecost is about breaking out of the framework, and being about God's reconciling mission in the world. Pentecost is about being a follower of Jesus and doing it together, with other people on the way. And for us, it is about doing it in this peculiar and particular way as Episcopalians at Trinity.

So we celebrate this Feast of the Pentecost as the birth of the church. And in the spirit of the amazing message our Presiding Bishop delivered yesterday at the royal wedding, “the day the fire came down,” I offer to you, my top ten list of the church. Here you are.

Number 1 Church is where there is always something to eat, and everyone gets fed. We know our risen lord in the breaking of the bread, we know our risen lord in the sharing of a meal, we know our risen lord in the hearts and the faces of those we feed as well as in the feeding. Something mystical and amazing happens when we are made Jesus' body through the sharing of a meal. We are made whole, we are put back together, we are joined with God and with one another.

Number 2 Our liturgy, what we do when we are gathered together, makes sense of our lives. Because many of us live hectic and full lives, we make room for silence. Because we need a language for worship of that which is not us, we pray with words and symbol, we pray with music and song, we pray in order and in chaos. Because when the pain gets too hard to bear, we have a place to put it here, in this place. And when the joy and gratitude bubble over, there are others to catch it and share it.

Number 3 No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you. That one is not really mine, it's from Robin Williams, who was an Episcopalian. We engage in the very important skill of theological reflection. We engage the world, and we consider it through the lens of scripture, tradition, and reason. We read scripture together, we learn about its context, we talk about it, we even argue about it, and we make up our own minds as to how we live its claim on our lives. You don't have to check your mind at the door. And no matter what, we gather around the table and eat together anyway.

Number 4 People love one another. That is an action, not necessarily a feeling. We treat each other, and all those who come looking for acceptance, with dignity and respect. And when we don't, we ask for forgiveness and are granted it. This is a vision of the kingdom. In God's kingdom, all are loved, all are cared for, all are forgiven. In the church, we fall short but we arc toward that vision.

Number 5 Children are always welcome, old people too, and gay people and straight people for that matter, and ordinary people, and extraordinary people. God loves everyone, no exceptions, and church, this church in particular, lives that out. Again, not perfectly, there are times when we forget who we are, we forget that our number one priority is to welcome all as Christ welcomes all. 

Number 6 There are some important times in people's lives that we pay attention to: birth and baptism, marriage, death, and even the times in between, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, times of sickness and suffering, times of joy and celebration, comings and goings. We pay attention to these times because it is often at these times the time and distance between us and God, us and the others in our lives, thins. It is these times when we lift our hearts and our voices to give God praise, to ask for strength and courage, to turn to one another for support, not because we have to, but because it is what our humanity calls us to. We talk to God and with one another in the words that come into our hearts and our minds, and when we cannot find the words to say what needs to be said, we turn to our Prayer Book. We turn to the words that have been said and prayed through the years, the decades, and the centuries. There we can place our joy and our sorrow, and know that we are held in the awesome presence of our Creator God, our Father and Mother God, our loving God. 

Number 7 We show up consistently, we listen, we tell the truth, and we try, hard as we might, to let go of the outcome. This one is the foundation of all ministry. We show up. That's a tough one these days. There is so much that demands our attention. There are many, many things we could be doing besides coming here to do this each Sunday morning. But we know that it's not about having the time to come, none of us really have any time, instead, it's about knowing that to be whole people, we need to stop for a few moments, stop and listen to God and to one another. We show up. 

We listen, we listen to God's word, to one another, sometimes you even listen to me, I try to listen to you. We listen in the silence of this space, we listen in the cacophony of the marketplace, we listen to the music of the spheres and the music we make together. We listen.

We tell the truth. How hard is that? The truth that God loves you no matter what. The truth that God came and comes into this created world to walk with us on the way. The truth that there is pain and suffering and sometimes life just sucks, but we are not alone. The truth that in Jesus' life and suffering and death on the cross, Love wins. The truth that nothing belongs to us anyway, the truth that we are stewards of God's creation, stewards of our children, stewards of this beautiful building, and we live in gratitude for all of it.  

We let go of the outcome. See number eight.

Number 8 We recognize that God is God and we are not. We are not the center of the universe, we are not the hub of the wheel, we are not the most important of God's creation. We are interdependent, we are one part of a mighty creation, we are not in control.  We let go of the outcome.

Number 9 We recognize that we are transformed by God's amazing and abundant love in Jesus Christ. The relationship that God has with us changes us, the relationship we have with others changes us. We begin to look more and more like people of mercy and compassion, we begin to look more and more like people who feed each other, who feed the hungry. We begin to look more and more like people who miss the mark, ask for forgiveness, and are loved regardless.

Number 10 We go out into the world as followers of Jesus, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit the imprisoned, see number 9. We embody mercy and compassion, we listen to God's call in our lives, we seek to get on board with what God is already blessing. We recognize that God is the greatest healing and integrating force in an increasingly fragmented world. We understand that it is our call to be the peace makers, the light bearers, the agents of healing and reconciliation in the world.

Because in the end, church is not this building, or any building, Church is the fire that burns in our hearts, church is the love of Jesus that puts us together as a body. So, on this Feast of Pentecost, I ask some questions about the future of the church. How do we keep ever burning, ever reforming, ever emerging? How do we find a way to speak in a language people can understand? How do we stay nimble, that is, how do we respond to the global nature of the world in which we live, and how do we respond to the ever more instant communication that people have in their hands and at their disposal? How do we help people to see that true freedom is in relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Spirit, and with others? 

Because in the beginning, and in the middle, and at the end, it is love after all. Amen. 

3 Epiphany Yr B Jan 21 2018

3 Epiphany Yr B Jan 21 2018 Audio

We have been hearing stories for the last couple of weeks, stories that remind us that God loves us, that we are the delight of God's life. Stories of baptism, God claims us, and we are marked as God's own forever. God calls us, God shows up with us and for us. God calls us wonderfully and fearfully made. 

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 soaring 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. Hardly 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 change forever. 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. That is what it looks like to repent.

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 belief 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 that 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 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.

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Frederick Buechner. 

26 Pentecost Yr C Proper 28 Nov 13 2016

26 Pentecost Yr C Proper 28 Nov 13 2016 Audio

You all know what a beautiful church Trinity is, it's beauty helps us to connect to the ancient and to the future. Here we see, and hear, and feel all that has come before us. We are present to what is right before us, and we can celebrate what is to become.

But you all know as well as I do that church is not about the building. We may be unabashedly proud of our building, but we know at the same time that church is something else. Church is God's work in the world, church is people who profess God's love for them and for all, church is body and bread, blood and wine, church is forgiveness and reconciliation, church is people who agree and disagree with each other, church is messy and beautiful. Church is all of the above.

And it is these things that we hear about in Luke and in Isaiah today. Luke writes, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." And from Isaiah, "For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth, the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind." Church without a building. Who are we then?

We need to remember that this good news was told after the events of Jesus' life and death. The events are already known to the author, they tell of what happened, not of what will happen. The temple in Jerusalem which was the place where God lived, was destroyed. Not one stone was left upon another. So in the story, the people are asking Jesus, what does this mean? What does it mean to not have a place for God to live? What does it mean to not have a place in which to worship God? The destruction of the temple was life changing for the Jews, but in this story Jesus is reassuring them that all will be well, do not be afraid. As it is written in Isaiah, which Jesus knows well, something new is happening, and it is happening in the person of Jesus.

We live in that place as well. Here is our church building, and we love it and take care of it and it is beautiful. Humans do this over and over. We erect a beautiful building, and eventually it is the building that becomes important, and we become afraid of losing it. And our focus shifts from doing the work of reconciliation and healing that God calls us to, to keeping the institution alive, we become afraid of dieing.

But God calls us to live, God calls us to love, God calls us as agents of resurrection. The new heavens and the new earth are being created right now, and we are agents of that new creation. We have a part to play. Our job is to bring the love that wins to the world so that the world will know God's love and be transformed. As we do that, the world turns, the world turns toward love and away from hate, the world turns toward wholeness and away from fracture and fragment.

It's messy though, it's not this or that, one or the other, black or white, good or bad. Just like it's not only about heaven or hell at the end of time. It's about living fully and completely as God's new creation right here, today. And that is not clear or certain. God reveals Godself on the path we are on, and it is our job to pay attention, and to help the one who is walking next to us, to give them our coat if they need it, to share our food. We will fall down, every one of us. Whether it's because we turn our ankle, wear ourselves out, or goof around too much, we will fall down. It is those who accompany us on the journey, our church, who help raise us up again, and show us the way forward. How we are with one another on the road matters. How we respond to the challenge and joy of the journey matters. That we share the challenge and joy of the journey matters.

So we find ourselves today, after a very tumultuous week, half of us are feeling the exultation of a win, and half of us are feeling like the stones just came a tumbling down, like our world has ended, and it's hard to find the hope in our future together. All of us together must imagine a new way. We must imagine the ways we can be God's word of mercy, compassion, charity, and justice in our world. God's word matters, our words matter. It is unacceptable that in our country today, people are afraid of their neighbors, it is unacceptable that horrible and hurtful words are hurled as weapons of destruction. It is unacceptable that children are afraid they will be sent away.

Just in case you hear me advocating a particular political position, I must disabuse you of that. I am advocating the Good News. I am advocating for the Jesus Movement. I am saying, we are followers of Jesus. Love someone who doesn't deserve it. Take the right action, have courage, be bold. You and I have all we need, stand up for those who don't. We are the church, not this building. Give your love, your forgiveness, your mercy, your compassion. Use your words wisely. Speak love into the world, speak forgiveness into the world. Speak on the behalf of those whose voices are silenced through fear and intimidation and violence. And don't go it alone, we are the church. We are all on this rock together, and none of us get off of it alive.

God is at work with us. God is already about healing and reconciliation that changes the world. We are living the reality of the new heavens and the new earth. We are living the reality that God loves us and all of creation so much, God walks with us in this life making us new, transforming our sadness into joy, our pain into hope, our death into life.  Amen.

Pentecost, Yr B, May 24 2015

Pentecost Audio 5.24.2015
Thomas Edison once said after a fire destroyed his laboratory, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew." Three weeks after the fire, Edison delivered his first phonograph. For us, Pentecost is that fire. Pentecost is that destroyer that is new life. I'm reminded of the recent controlled burn that turned into a wildfire. A controlled burn is an illusion. The reports are that new life is springing up all over the place, where just a short time ago the fires raged. The fire of Holy Spirit cannot be controlled. The fire of Holy Spirit cannot be predicted. The fire of Holy Spirit brings growth that cannot be imagined. 

The Hebrew people had an idea of the new life that comes from destruction. The Ezekiel story also points us to that. God gathers up the dry bones and breathes the spirit into them, and Israel lives again. But new life cannot be controlled, and it cannot be contained, it is a wildfire and goes where it will. 

These readings before us today point us to Holy Spirit. They point us to people, not buildings and not institutions, but followers of Jesus. Followers of Jesus, who know that in their lives, Love wins. 

Indeed, today I think Pentecost is about breaking out of the framework, and being about God's reconciling mission in the world. Pentecost is about being a follower of Jesus and doing it together, with other people on the way. And for us, it is about doing it in this peculiar and particular way as Episcopalians at St. Andrew's. 

Some of you remember I came  up with a "top ten" for doing church a few years back, and seeing that David Letterman has retired, I thought I'd reprise my "top ten" list in his honor, and in honor of Pentecost, and change, and transformation.

These are not in any particular order.

Number 1 Church is where there is always something to eat, and everyone gets fed. We know our risen lord in the breaking of the bread, we know our risen lord in the sharing of a meal, we know our risen lord in the hearts and the faces of those we feed as well as in the feeding. Something mystical and amazing happens when we are made Jesus' body through the sharing of a meal. We are made whole, we are put back together, and like those dry bones in Ezekiel we are joined with God and with one another.

Number 2 Our liturgy, what we do when we are gathered together, makes sense of our lives. Because many of us live hectic and full lives, we make room for silence. Because we need a language for worship of that which is not us, we pray with words and symbol, we pray with music and song, we pray in order and in chaos. Because when the pain gets too hard to bear, we have a place to put it here, in this place. And when the joy and gratitude bubble over, there are others to catch it and share it.

Number 3 No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you. That one is not really mine, it's from Robin Williams, who was an Episcopalian. We engage in the very important skill of theological reflection. We engage the world, and we consider it through the lens of scripture, tradition, and reason. We read scripture together, we learn about its context, we talk about it, we even argue about it, and we make up our own minds as to how we live its call in our lives. You don't have to check your mind at the door. And no matter what, we gather around the table and eat together anyway.

Number 4 People love one another. That is an action, not necessarily a feeling. We treat each other, and all those who come looking for acceptance, with dignity and respect. And when we don't, we ask for forgiveness and are granted it. This is a vision of the kingdom. In God's kingdom, all are loved, all are cared for, all are forgiven. In church, we fall short but that continues to be the vision.

Number 5 Children are always welcome, old people too, and gay people and straight people for that matter, and ordinary people, and extraordinary people. God loves everyone, no exceptions, and church, this church in particular, lives that out. Again, not perfectly, there are times when we forget who we are, we forget that our number one priority is to welcome all as Christ welcomes all. 

Number 6 There are some important times in people's lives that we pay attention to: birth and baptism, marriage, death, and even the times in between, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, times of sickness and suffering, times of joy and celebration, (graduation) comings and goings. We pay attention to these times because it is often at these times the time and distance between us and God, us and the others in our lives, thins. It is these times when we lift our hearts and our voices to give God praise, to ask for strength and courage, to turn to one another for support, not because we have to, but because it is what our humanity calls us to. We talk to God and with one another in the words that come into our hearts and our minds, and when we cannot find the words to say what needs to be said, we turn to our Prayer Book. We turn to the words that have been said and prayed through the years, the decades, and the centuries. There we can place our joy and our sorrow, and know that we are held in the awesome presence of our Creator God, our Father and Mother God, our loving God. 

Number 7 We show up consistently, we listen, we tell the truth, and we try, hard as we might, to let go of the outcome. This one is the foundation of all ministry. We show up. That's a tough one these days. There is so much that demands our attention. There are many, many things we could be doing besides coming here to do this each Sunday morning. But we know that it's not about having the time to come, none of us really have any time, instead, it's about knowing that to be whole people, we need to stop for a few moments, stop and listen to God and to one another. We show up. 

We listen, we listen to God's word, to one another, sometimes you even listen to me, I try to listen to you. We listen in the silence of this space, we listen to the cacophony of the marketplace, we listen to the music of the spheres and the music we make together. We listen.

We tell the truth. How hard is that? The truth that God loves you no matter what. The truth that God came and comes into this created world to walk with us on the way. The truth that there is pain and suffering and sometimes life just sucks, but we are not alone. The truth that in Jesus' life and suffering and death on the cross, Love wins. The truth that nothing belongs to us anyway, the truth that we are stewards of God's creation, stewards of our children, stewards of this beautiful building, and we live in gratitude for all of it.    

We let go of the outcome. See number eight.

Number 8 We recognize that God is God and we are not. We are not the center of the universe, we are not the hub of the wheel, we are not the most important of God's creation. We are interdependent, we are one part of a mighty creation, we are not in control.  We let go of the outcome.

Number 9 We recognize that we are transformed by God's amazing and abundant love in Jesus Christ. The relationship that God has with us changes us, the relationship we have with others changes us. We begin to look more and more like people of mercy and compassion, we begin to look more and more like people who feed each other, who feed the hungry. We begin to look more and more like people who miss the mark, ask for forgiveness, and are loved regardless.

Number 10 We go out into the world as followers of Jesus, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit the imprisoned, see number 9. We embody mercy and compassion, we listen to God's call in our lives, we seek to get on board with what God is already blessing. We recognize that God is the greatest healing and integrating force in an increasingly fragmented world. We understand that it is our call to be the peace makers, the light bearers, the agents of healing and reconciliation in the world.

So there's my ten reasons for church, and for this church. On this Feast of Pentecost, I ask some questions about the future of the church. How do we keep ever burning, ever reforming, ever emerging? How do we find a way to speak in a language people can understand? How do we stay nimble, that is, how do we respond to the global nature of the world in which we live, and how do we respond to the ever more instant communication that people have in their hands and at their disposal? How do we help people to see that true freedom is in relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Spirit, and with others? 

I have ten answers, see above. Love wins. Amen. 

26 Sunday after Pentecost Yr C Proper 28 Nov 17 2013

I've given many tours to people who come to St. Andrew's. I'm proud of our building, so I show people around. Folks come for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they come looking for a church home, sometimes they are just curious, sometimes I'm just unabashedly Episcopalian, so I'll take a visitor by the hand and make them follow me around. People have one of two observations. Either they also think we have a warm and beautiful sanctuary and they tell me so, or they keep quiet and I know they prefer a more traditional structure.

But you all know as well as I do that church is not about the building. We may be unabashedly proud of our building, but we know at the same time that church is something else. Church is God's work in the world, church is people who profess God's love for them and for all, church is body and bread, blood and wine, church is forgiveness and reconciliation, church is people who agree and disagree with each other, church is messy and beautiful. Church is all of the above. 

And it is these things that we hear about in Luke and in Isaiah today. Luke writes, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." And from Isaiah, "For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth, the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind." Church without a building. Who are we then?

We need to remember that this good news was told after the events of Jesus' life and death. The events are already known to the author, they tell of what happened, not of what will happen. The temple in Jerusalem which was the place where God lived, was destroyed. Not one stone was left upon another. So in the story, the people are asking Jesus, what does this mean? What does it mean to not have a place for God to live and a place in which to worship God? The destruction of the temple was life changing for the Jews, but Jesus in this story, is reassuring them that all will be well, do not be afraid. As it is written in Isaiah, which Jesus knows well, something new is happening, and it is happening in the person of Jesus.

We live in that place as well. Here is our church building, and we love it and take care of it and it is beautiful. Humans do this over and over. We erect a beautiful building, and eventually it is the building that becomes important, and we become afraid of losing it. And our focus shifts from doing the work of reconciliation and healing that God calls us to, to keeping the institution alive, we become afraid of dieing.

But God calls us to live, God calls us to love, God calls us as agents of resurrection. The new heavens and the new earth are being created right now, and we are agents of that new creation. We have a part to play. Our job is to bring the love that wins to the world so that the world will know God's love and be transformed. As we do that, the world turns, the world turns toward love and away from hate, the world turns toward wholeness and away from fracture and fragment.

It's messy though, it's not this or that, one or the other, black or white, good or bad. Just like it's not only about heaven or hell at the end of time. It's about living fully and completely as God's new creation right here, today. And that is not clear or certain. God reveals Godself on the path we are on, and it is our job to pay attention, and to help the one who is walking next to us, to give them our coat if they need it, to share our food. We will fall down, every one of us. Whether it's because we turn our ankle, wear ourselves out, or goof around too much, we will fall down. It is those who accompany us on the journey, our church, who help raise us up again, and show us the way forward. How we are with one another on the road matters. How we respond to the challenge and joy of the journey matters. That we share the challenge and joy of the journey matters. 

God is at work with us. God is already about healing and reconciliation that changes the world. We respond to that work by giving of ourselves. We give our love, our forgiveness, our mercy and our compassion. When we are members of a church, we give of our treasure as well, because that is what we must do, not because of what we get out of it. Giving because of what we get out of it makes it a transaction, not a relationship. Our relationship with God, with one another, and with this church is not about the exchange of a commodity, it is not transactional. Giving, being a steward of God's creation and all of God's abundance, is who we are and what we do. Giving our love, our care, and some or even all of what we have is what we must do in response to God's amazing and abundant love for us. We don't give because we have to pay the heat, paying for the heat is good but it is not the reason. The reason is love, God's love for us and our love for others. 

Yesterday, Amber, David, Curtis, and I, helped by Tim, Kaitlyn and Kiara, with food provided by the Donhisers, and a financial donation from another wonderful family, had a group of eleven children at Sonshine Saturday. We listened to the story of Noah's Ark, and God's dream for us, we did some great crafts that helped us remember those stories, we worshipped God and had communion together, we sang songs and we even got to play the bells under Curtis' instruction, and we had lunch. Together, we did the work that God calls us to do, and we are changed in the doing.

We are living the reality of the new heavens and the new earth. We are living the reality that God loves us and all of creation so much, God walks with us in this life making us new, transforming our sadness into joy, our pain into hope, our death into life. Amen.

The Feast of Pentecost

We often talk about the Feast of Pentecost being the birth of the church. It's not about the birth of the church as we know it today, in our contemporary minds we often equate church with the church building, and church with institution. But these readings don't point us to buildings or institutions, they point us to people who are filled with the Holy Spirit. People who become followers of Jesus. People who know that in their lives, Love wins.

Indeed, today I think Pentecost is about breaking out of the framework, and being about God's reconciling mission in the world. Pentecost is about being a follower of Jesus and doing it together, with other people on the way. And for us, it is about doing it in this peculiar and particular way as Episcopalians at St. Andrew's. As I've been reflecting on church, and as I've been influenced by a few "top ten" lists I've seen floating around blogs, I've come up with my own "ten reasons to do church." They are actually in no particular order.

1 Church is where there is always something to eat, and everyone gets fed. We know our risen lord in the breaking of the bread, we know our risen lord in the sharing of a meal, we know our risen lord in the hearts and the faces of those we feed as well as in the feeding. Something mystical and amazing happens when we are made Jesus' body through the sharing of a meal. We are made whole, we are put back together, we are joined with God and with one another.

2 Our liturgy, what we do when we are gathered together, makes sense of our lives. Because many of us live hectic and full lives, we make room for silence. Because we need a language for worship of that which is not us, we pray with words and symbol, we pray with music and song, we pray in order and in chaos. Because when the pain gets too hard to bear, we have a place to put it here, in this place. And when the joy and gratitude bubble over, there are others to catch it and share it.

3 No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you. That one is not really mine, it's from Robin Williams, who is an Episcopalian. We engage in the very important skill of theological reflection. We engage the world, and we consider it through the lens of scripture, tradition, and reason. We read scripture together, we learn about its context, we talk about it, we even argue about it, and we make up our own minds as to how we live its call in our lives. You don't have to check your mind at the door. And no matter what we gather around the table and eat together anyway.

4 People love one another. That is an action, not necessarily a feeling. We treat each other, and all those who come looking for acceptance, with dignity and respect. And when we don't, we ask for forgiveness and are granted it. This is a vision of the kingdom. In God's kingdom, all are loved, all are cared for, all are forgiven. In church, we fall short but that continues to be the vision.

5 Children are always welcome, old people too, and gay people and straight people for that matter, and ordinary people, and extraordinary people. God loves everyone, no exceptions, and church, this church in particular, lives that out. Again, not perfectly, there are times when we forget who we are, we forget that our number one priority is to welcome all as Christ welcomes all.

6 There are some important times in people's lives that we pay attention to: birth and baptism, marriage, death, and even the times in between, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, times of sickness and suffering, times of joy and celebration, comings and goings. We pay attention to these times because it is often at these times the time and distance between us and God, us and the others in our lives, thins. It is these times when we lift our hearts and our voices to give God praise, to ask for strength and courage, to turn to one another for support, not because we have to, but because it is what our humanity calls us to. We talk to God and with one another in the words that come into our hearts and our minds, and when we cannot find the words to say what needs to be said, we turn to our Prayer Book. We turn to the words that have been said and prayed through the years, the decades, and the centuries. There we can place our joy and our sorrow, and know that we are held in the awesome presence of our Creator God, our Father and Mother God, our loving God.

7 We show up consistently, we listen, we tell the truth, and we try, hard as we might, to let go of the outcome. This one is the foundation of all ministry. We show up. That's a tough one these days. There is so much that demands our attention. There are many, many things we could be doing besides coming here to do this each Sunday morning. But we know that it's not about having the time to come, none of us really have any time, instead, it's about knowing that to be whole people, we need to stop for a few moments, stop and listen to God and to one another. We show up.

We listen, we listen to God's word, to one another, sometimes you even listen to me, I try to listen to you. We listen in the silence of this space, we listen to the cacophony of the marketplace, we listen to the music of the spheres and the music we make together. We listen.

We tell the truth. How hard is that? The truth that God loves you no matter what. The truth that God came and comes into this created world to walk with us on the way. The truth that there is pain and suffering and sometimes life just sucks, but we are not alone. The truth that in Jesus life, and suffering and death on the cross, Love wins. The truth that nothing belongs to us anyway, the truth that we are stewards of God's creation, stewards of our children, stewards of this beautiful building, and we live in gratitude for all of it.

We let go of the outcome. See number eight.

8 We recognize that God is God and we are not. We are not the center of the universe, we are not the hub of the wheel, we are not the most important of God's creation. We are interdependent, we are one part of a mighty creation, we are not in control. We let go of the outcome.

9 We recognize that we are transformed by God's amazing and abundant love in Jesus Christ. The relationship that God has with us changes us, the relationship we have with others changes us. We begin to look more and more like people of mercy and compassion, we begin to look more and more like people who feed each other, who feed the hungry. We begin to look more and more like people who miss the mark, ask for forgiveness, and are loved regardless.

10 We go out into the world as followers of Jesus, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit the imprisoned, see number 9. We embody mercy and compassion, we listen to God's call in our lives, we seek to get on board with what God is already blessing. We recognize that God is the greatest healing and integrating force in an increasingly fragmented world. We understand that it is our call to be the peace makers, the light bearers, the agents of healing and reconciliation in the world.

So there's my ten reasons for church, and for this church. On this Feast of Pentecost, I ask some questions about the future of the church. How do we keep ever reforming, ever emerging? How do we find a way to speak in a language people can understand? How do we stay nimble, that is, how do we respond to the global nature of the world in which we live, and how do we respond to the ever more instant communication that people have in their hands and at their disposal? How do we help people to see that true freedom is in relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Spirit, and with others?

I have ten answers, see above. Love wins. Amen.