4 Pentecost Proper 8

Some ask the question, have you found Jesus? Often my flippant answer to this question is I didn’t know Jesus was lost. I think Jesus finds us. That’s not to say we can’t go looking, but it is to say that not matter how hard we try to hide, God still loves us so very much that Jesus comes looking. And I also think that we get found in the oddest of times and places. In times and places that we just don’t expect.

I think we also tend to believe in a very limited God. We believe in this God, who only knows us when we’re in church, which goes hand in hand with believing in a God we can hide from. I believe in God, who seeks us out, who loves us so very much as to come to be with us, to stand by our side, to hold our hand, to carry us when we need help. This passage from the gospel of Mark is one of the stories that convince me of this. This is a story about opportunity and interruption. See, you can’t plan how you will be found; you can’t put a date in your blackberry and say to yourself, I’ll meet Jesus for lunch today. This is a story about where God finds you.

This story begins and ends with Jairus, a very important person, who asked Jesus to come to his house to heal his daughter. But it is also about the in between story, the story that interrupted Jesus. Jesus was on his way to Jairus’ house, I imagine he was fairly focused on getting there in short order, because the girl was dying. As Jesus made his way through the crowd, a woman reached out to touch the fabric of his prayer shawl so that she would be healed. Jesus, we know, was a good Jew; therefore he would be wearing his prayer shawl. A Jewish mans prayer shawl has fringes. In Malachi, there is a story that all good Jews would know, that even the fringes of the Messiah’s prayer shawl had healing power. So as this woman interrupted Jesus’ mission to Jairus’ house by reaching out and touching his fringes to be healed, she did it in confidence and faith that Jesus is the Messiah, and capable of healing.

There’s a fabric store in Austin Texas, where we lived when we were at seminary, called the Silk Road, and I would go there just to touch the fabric. It was in a wonderful old house, and there were stacks and racks of silks, and cottons, and linens, and I would wander around and feel the fabric. Fabrics that are smooth and rough, brightly colored and earth tones. I’ve sewed since my mother taught me how as a young girl, and for a while I even worked for an interior designer and I made beautiful window coverings and upholstered head boards and valances out of amazing fabrics. My journeys to the Silk Road were all about finding balance and healing. In the midst of the academic and intellectual world of seminary, I would go to the Silk Road to touch and feel, to be reminded who I am, where I came from, I would stop thinking for a while, and experience the moment of beauty in the fabric. I tell you this story of the Silk Road today because I think the story from Mark is about how God finds us in some very unusual and odd places, God finds us in interruptions. We get bothered by interruptions, but God finds opportunity in interruptions.

Jesus' willingness to resist the electric expectancy of the crowd and to complete the restoration of a faithful woman paints him as a person who sees opportunity in interruption. This passage encourages us to consider a theology of interruptions, to understand that God is neither bound to nor limited by human allocations of value and priority. Opportunity in interruption. That’s what my trips to the Silk Road were about, interruption of what I thought I had to do, in order to be healed, to be restored, to come back to myself.

Usually we experience interruption as an inconvenience. Interruption is being derailed, thrown off course. And yet, considering this theology of interruption brings us to a place where we can find ourselves, where we can be restored, where we can be balanced once again. A theology of interruption is to see and feel how Jesus finds us and makes us whole. A theology of interruption is to see and feel God’s grace. A theology of interruption shows us that we are not in control. God is present in the interruptions. God brings healing and restoration in the interruptions. God comes close in the interruptions.

We work so hard and spend so much time making plans and being focused on the outcome of whatever important thing we must accomplish, even when it is saving lives, we miss the opportunities for balance, for healing, for wholeness. We miss the opportunities to touch what is holy.

As I looked briefly at this morning’s paper, and saw the pictures of those who have lost jobs in this recession, I am reminded of the less pleasant interruptions. Losing one’s job, losing one’s health, these interruptions in our well planned lives are painful and difficult. But I am convinced that it is in these interruptions that we may be found. Because it is only in death that there is resurrection, it is only in losing our lives that we are created new. Touch the fringe of Jesus’ garment, feel the power that there is in Jesus. Go in Peace.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.

3 Pentecost Yr B

During the time in which the story in 1 Samuel first was told, Israel is constantly at war with the Philistines. Ancient warfare was highly ritualized. In Homer’s Iliad, we read how battles were conducted in ancient times in the epic story of the siege of Troy, about 1200 BC. We see that each side would send out its great champion who would fight on behalf of his people. Often the battle would end with that, because whichever champion won the other side would be so demoralized it would retreat. At this time, the Philistines have a champion who is described as well, huge, Goliath. And the problem is that the Jewish forces have no champion at all. The Jewish troops are stationed on the one side of the Elah Valley, south of Jerusalem, a place that you can still visit today in Israel, and the Philistines are on the other. Goliath is marching out in front of the Philistine lines, shouting curses at the Jews and challenging someone to come and fight him. Choose yourself a man and let him come down to me shouts Goliath. If he can fight me and kill me, we will be slaves to you; if I defeat him and kill him, you will be slaves to us and serve us. The mortified Israelite army has to listen to this, because no one is willing to take on Goliath. One day, David, who is still a shepherd and not a soldier, shows up on the battlefield bringing food for his brothers and he’s shocked by what he sees. Outraged at Goliath’s blasphemous insulting of the God of Israel, David volunteers to fight Goliath, though he has a hard time convincing everybody to let him go out into the field. Finally, he convinces King Saul with his steadfast faith in God.

Why do we love the stories of the underdog so much? Well at least I do. We’ve watched Rudy so many times we can recite the lines, and I cry every time Rudy gets put into the game. Mighty Ducks, the first one, is another favorite, I sit on the edge of my seat until the end of the game, even though I’ve seen them win a bazillion times. The Rookie, Star Wars, Chariots of Fire, Remember the Titans, Field of Dreams, and the list goes on. And there are many where the underdog doesn’t win in the end. Little Big League, Tin Cup, Any Given Sunday. The reason I bring all this up is that I wonder at the question, which comes first, our passion for rooting for the little guy, or the story of David and the story of Jesus? I think it is a fascinating question.

I remember my first New Testament professor telling us that all history is written from the perspective of the winners. History published in history books is written from the perspective of the winners. The losers don’t write history, and their story is rarely told in history books. Western civilization loves its winners and are often assigned near divine status, or, at the least, God is on the winner’s side status.

And yet we have before us this story of David in which the underdog becomes the champion. And we have this story of Jesus, in which those who are low are raised up, those who are on the margins are brought to the center, those who have no power are empowered, and lowly fisher folk become disciples.

I wonder if it is human nature to be on the side of the winner. Is it part of our DNA? The biological story may support that. We know the story of the survival of the strongest. We know that the human drive is to procreate, to survive and to thrive. In the animal kingdom the weakest and the smallest don’t last long. But Jesus shows us that in God’s kingdom in dying we are alive, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

God’s kingdom is very different from human’s kingdom. In God’s kingdom, the underdog becomes the champion. In God’s kingdom, fisher folk become disciples and bring the Good News to all nations, to all people, to the ends of the earth. In God’s kingdom, God has faith in the people, and the people respond with faith the size of a mustard seed in God. In God’s kingdom, faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to grow and accomplish great things. In God’s kingdom, not only does the underdog win, not only does the lowest get lifted up, but even what is dead has new life. Even faltering faith of the disciples can become awe.

The Good News is that God’s kingdom has begun. Jesus’ life, and love, suffering and death, and resurrection began God’s kingdom. In God’s time God’s kingdom will be fulfilled. In the meantime, you and I can be active participants in God’s kingdom. We can respond to God’s love, we can respond to God’s faith in us. We can be on the side of the underdog. We can be with the lowly disciples in the boat.

So I return to the all time best underdog movie, Rudy. For those of you who don’t know the story, Rudy grew up in a steel mill town where most people ended up working, but Rudy wanted to play football at Notre Dame instead. There were only a couple of problems. His grades were a little low, his athletic skills were poor, and he was only half the size of the other players. But he had the drive and the spirit of 5 people and has set his sights upon joining the team. He spent two years at St. Mary’s working on his grades and working his way through school. When he finally got into Notre Dame as a junior, he walked on to the team and served on the ‘scout’ team as pretty much a tackling dummy. By the time he was a senior, he had endeared himself to the really good football players, and they really wanted him to be officially recognized as a member of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and that would only happen if he participated in at least one play. Rudy’s teammates had already experienced his heart, and his steadfast faith, and insisted to the coach that Rudy suit up. So in the waning moments of the last game of Rudy’s senior year, the team and then the fans chanted Rudy, Rudy, coach put him in and Rudy ran a couple of plays. It wasn’t about winning at all, it was about a little guy who responded to life in big ways and with gusto. it was about faith, it was about being fully engaged in relationship with God and with others.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.

2 Pentecost Proper 6 Yr B

What makes this story that we are hearing a life forming story? What makes this story an epic? What makes this story worth paying attention to? For one, it’s a pretty good story. It has love and passion, it has violence and death, it has good guys and bad guys, it has a giant and a weakling. What’s more, it has truth, it reveals to us the patterns of our lives, the patterns of history, the patterns of the universe.

We catch up with the story today as Samuel the prophet realizes that Saul and his descendents will not continue to rule Israel, and Samuel goes looking for another candidate. Guided by God, he goes to Bethlehem and Jesse’s family to find someone. I am reminded somewhat of the story of Cinderella, after the ball, after Cinderella runs from the palace and looses her shoe, when the prince sends his emissary out into the kingdom to find the one the shoe fits. He gets to the house of the evil stepmother, and she shows what she believes to be the best of her girls. The two stepsisters. The emissary tries the shoe on the girls, and we all know it doesn’t fit either of them. He asks if there is anyone else. According to the evil stepmother there is not. She does not even begin to see any value or worth in Cinderella, the lowest of the low in her eyes. Eventually Cinderella shows up, after being detained in her room, in the Disney version the mice get her out, and when the shoe finally is placed on her foot, well we all know the end of that story. Happily ever after and all that. I suppose that’s where the similarities end.

David is the youngest son, the smallest, the weakest, he’s out tending the sheep, and we all know about shepherds, that position was reserved for the ones who couldn’t do anything else. As soon as David appears, Samuel knows he is the one. Despite the fact that physically he isn’t much to look at, he is the strong leader that Israel needs. So Samuel anoints him, pours the oil right over his head. David, the youngest, the weakest, the smallest, is to become Israel’s champion, but we’ll save that story for next week.

I think what makes this story so great is that the one who is chosen is David. When we read the whole story we realize that any one of us can identify with David. If we don’t hear the story for ourselves, we make the mistake of just knowing that David was a shepherd and then a King. We don’t really hear the parts that show us that David, the shepherd, the champion and the King, is a sinner, a repenter, a servant, a human just like you and me.

This story of David is a part of the greater story we call the metanarrative, and we see the truth of God in the pattern that is revealed in creation. This story shows us that this is the One God, creator of the universe, creator of all that is seen and unseen, God above all gods. Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. This is the God that brought the Israelites out of slavery into freedom; this is the God that stayed with the people in Exile. This is the One God who anointed Kings over Israel and Judea even knowing that wasn’t such a good idea. This is the One God who reunited the two kingdoms into one and placed this King David on the throne, knowing that David was not a perfect man. This is the One God who creates and who blesses. This is the One God who has faith in creation and who stands fast when creation turns away and who calls creation back into relationship even as they wander in the wilderness. This is the One God who chooses as the champion the littlest, the weakest, the least perfect.

What about this story is so powerful? What about this story is about redemption? We find the pattern repeated in the gospel of Mark. Here we have a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. It’s not size, or the power that we have that is important. It is not what we have or what we achieve that is important. It’s not being the biggest or the best that is important. It is the transformation, it is the shepherd transformed to the king, it is the mustard seed transformed to the greatest of all shrubs so as to provide shade so that all the birds of the air can make nests. And the gospel of Mark shows us that this transformation is what the kingdom of God is like. The kingdom of God is not about perfection, but about transformation. The kingdom of God in not about being right, or being powerful, or being strong, or even having enough faith, the kingdom of God is about the transformation of a thing that looks like it can’t possibly be worthwhile, into a new thing that is able to give life, is able to provide a place for the birds of the air to make their nests.

So we are to be like David, in the fullness of our humanity, God has faith in us. And God’s faith in us is transforming. We are to be like the mustard seed, the very seed that looks like it can’t bear any fruit at all, but becomes that which gives life to all that take refuge. And there’s one more thing in this Mark passage that we need to pay attention to. The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. This little kingdom of God parable shows us that God’s work is our transformation; our work is to respond to God. This is not to say that we do nothing, it is to say that transformation is up to God, and we are to be in a position to hear, to listen, to worship, to glorify, to be changed, to be molded. And then transformation results in our response, just like planting seeds in the ground bears fruit. The fruit we bear is our response to how God changes us. The fruit we bear is a part of the new creation, the kingdom of God.

So we have these stories before us today that are all about littleness and mystery. They are about God, not really about us at all. They show us that God is faithful, they show us that God is up to something and we are simply called to participate in what God is doing in the world. That is why we find flashes of brilliant hope and the promise of a greater day to come. They may only be flashes, but they are powerful epiphanies nevertheless. Here and there, in longed-for reconciliation within families and among friends, in healing from illness and grief, in the decisions by a community that places its most vulnerable members at the top of its agenda rather than at the bottom, in sharing and celebration and the release of grudges, in acts of great and unexpected generosity, in the end of war and the seeking of peace, in the breaking of bread and the nourishment of our souls and our bodies, in giving voice to the voiceless and lifting up the hopes of those in despair, we see the mysterious ways of God.

It may begin, or seem to persist, in smallness, in little steps and small hopes, but the path, Jesus says, leads to greatness, a greatness we cannot see or even imagine today. God can see it, and God can imagine it, and most of all, God intends it. The tiny little seed grows into the greatest of all, the mustard tree, strong and great enough to offer shelter and goodness and the stuff of life for those who need to find a home. (Thank you to Weekly Seeds, i-ucc.org)

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.

Trinity Sunday Yr B

This passage from the Gospel of John is probably one of the most familiar passages in the bible. Who hasn’t seen posters at football games with John 3:16? What happens with things so familiar is that we accept what they are and forget to ask what does that really mean, my favorite question.

This is one of my favorite stories about why. The family was gathered for Easter dinner. The youngest newly married daughter was preparing her first family dinner. As she was about to put the large ham in the oven to begin baking, her mother stopped her and said "You have to cut three inches off the ham before you bake it." Puzzled, the daughter asked her mother why? "Because that's the way my mother taught me to do it," said the mother. Still puzzled, the daughter went to find her grandmother. "Nana," she asked, "Mom says you have to cut 3 inches off of the ham before putting it in the oven to bake. Why?" "Well, that's how my mother taught me to do it, and it's the way I've always done it," replied the grandmother. Well, the daughter's husband had heard all of this and he wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery. He went into the living room where the family was gathered around great grandmother. "Nona," he asked, "Grandma says you taught her to cut 3 inches off of the ham before putting it in the over. I'm puzzled. Why is that necessary?" "Well, dear, when I was a new bride, just starting out, I baked my first ham for Easter dinner. The ham was 18 inches long. The largest roasting pan I had was 15 inches long, so I had to cut three inches off of the ham to make it fit the pan." And so it goes, from generation to generation, until someone asks "Why?"

So Nicodemus asks the question for us, “Why,” more specifically, Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” Nicodemus was a man of the Pharisee sect; he was a prominent leader of the Jews. And yet, late in the cover of night, he went to Jesus to find out the truth. How can these things be, he asked. How can you be the Son of Man Jesus? How can you turn water into wine? How can you say we must be born again, we are born only once. How can these things be?

You and I live in a world of reason and science. We live in a world where we spend much time and energy on finding the explanation, testing the hypothesis, repeating the experiment to see if we can get the same results many many times. This is a fine world; it’s a world of question and answer, a world of fact and proof. But side by side with the world of reason and science is the world of narrative, the world of story. Who you are today has everything to do with how you were formed, and who formed you. It has everything to do with the people in your life, and it has everything to do with how you learned to respond to the challenges that were set before you. This is where truth lives. The world of science and reason and the world of narrative are not mutually exclusive worlds, they address different questions though.

Nicodemus asked the question how does this happen, he wants a proof and evidence, and Jesus answered with the truth of relationship, Jesus answered with the truth of the story. Jesus referred Nicodemus, the learned Jew, to the story he would know so well, the story that is part of the very fiber of his being, the story of Moses and the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Jesus essentially says to Nicodemus, remember who and whose you are, you are a child of God, you are constituted by the truth of wandering in the wilderness, just like Moses, just like the people that followed Moses. And what happened to them? They were slaves brought out of Egypt into the Promised Land. They were in bondage and they were freed. Jesus says to Nicodemus you can be free too, free from the bondage that holds you to death. You can have new life and freedom that comes with the truth of God who came into this world, God who loved the world so much that God gave God’s Son, the one and only Son, so that no one needs to be destroyed, by believing in him, anyone can have whole and lasting life. God came into the world to put the world right again. God who came into this world so that something absolutely new could happen.

Nicodemus had to come out of the cover of darkness and into the light to ask his question. Nicodemus was astounded to learn that what is offered is not the same ol same ol. What is offered is not the reason and explanation of the law, but the new creation, the new life, that comes in the person of Jesus Christ. The answer Nicodemus gets is about the new life that is offered through Jesus, it is about love, and love is not reasonable. This story shows that the new life, the new creation that is available through Jesus Christ is nothing like anything anyone ever knew or experienced previously.

The story used to illustrate this amazing love that God has for God’s beloved is the story of birth. Nicodemus asks is it like entering a second time into the mother’s womb, and Jesus’ answer is that it is not, it is being born of the spirit. This story expands the possibility of how and when new birth and the power of the spirit work, rather than limiting the power of the spirit to one way or one time. You do not now where the spirit comes from or where the spirit goes, but the spirit is always about birth, the spirit is always about new creation, the spirit is always about the new life that God affects in our world.

There is no same ol same ol. There is no business as usual. God is about something absolutely new in our world. And that something new is not reasonable and explainable. That something new is about the love that God is and has for us, the beloved. We are marked and chosen, we are the delight of God’s life. We have just come out of a time of wilderness wandering, we have just celebrated the inauguration of the new creation, we in fact are living in God’s kingdom. But we continue to act as if we live in the darkness. The question before us is how do we come out of the cover of darkness and live fully and completely in the light of God’s amazing and abundant love for us? Somehow we need to be open to the possibility of the spirit, the possibility of trinity, the possibility that it is in this relationship of father son and Holy Spirit that we are made one, we are whole, we are healed.

This life we have chosen, or which has been chosen for us, is so very counter-cultural. We are seduced by the comforts and conveniences of this world, with its HDTV, espresso machines, wifi, iphones, googling, facebooking, and texting. We are seduced by the ease of our lives, we have warm houses with stoves and refrigerators and toilets. There’s nothing wrong with all this, but I do think it seduces us into forgetting who and whose we are. We must remember, gathering together, hearing the stories, eating the bread, drinking the wine, helps us remember, helps us to stay in the light, to keep our eyes and ears open to God’s amazing love for us, for each and every one of us, and therefore to our response to God’s amazing love for us. Not only is God’s love available to you, it is available to everyone. Not only does God come into this world for you, God comes into this world for all of us together. Our response to God’s amazing and abundant love is to share it, not to posses it or to hoard it.

Wake up, feel the wind on your face, hear the wind blowing across the prairie, it carries the Spirit on it. Stay awake; see the reality of God with us, of Jesus Christ in the other, of new life abounding and abundant. This is where the transformation happens. This is where we become who we are called to be. This relationship forms and shapes us into the persons that God calls us to be, persons of vast love and charity, persons for whom God’s new creation and love hold hope and joy and freedom.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God: Come let us adore him. Amen.

Willie's Graduation Talk

From then until now has been quite the journey. I feel accomplished and thankful. But, mom keeps on reminding me that the pomp and circumstance music are not actually for me, nor my class, its all about her. That is true for all ceremonies, but especially graduation. The pictures taken as I walk across the stage are not for me, but for the walls and desks of my family. Moms need the ceremony to put a cap on the top of high school and have something to aid in the reminiscing for the coming years. But for the graduates it is different. It is the end to one step and just the beginning of a huge leap. Graduates have experiences in school and out to reminisce about.

Coming from Minnesota to Texas, back to Minnesota, I had huge doubts about South Dakota. It’s definitely different here. The whole place has a different feel. I was here previously, but that was just camping. Living somewhere and just visiting sheds different light on the way we perceive the environment we find ourselves in. The hills and ridges definitely put Rapid City into a different category than everywhere else. But all in all I have grown to love it here now, mostly because of the people and particularly the people here at St. Andrew’s. I want everyone to know that I greatly appreciate everything that the people here have done for me. From Obie taking me out for the day, Spew at our youth lock-ins, memories have been made and you have helped shape me into the person I am today. As I leave for college in the fall I will take St. Andrew’s with me and will never forget the people here. Don’t worry mom and dad, and everybody else I guess, I will come back to visit. Honestly, I want to thank everyone who has been a part of my life, you have formed me into the graduate I am today and I will always carry something of everybody with me.

Feast of Pentecost

On Thursday night I watched some of the finals of the national spelling bee. I always feel like a geek when I watch that, but I am fascinated by the focus those young people have on hearing the words to spell. They were able to spell based on pronunciation, based on etymology and language, but it all came down to their ability to convert what they heard into letters in our particular English alphabet. I am most impressed when those words don’t even come from the English language.

Hearing well and listening well is so very important for us. I am always mindful of my diction and delivery when I am speaking in public. It is very important to me that my words are heard clearly, if people can clearly hear what I say, I’m most of the way there to people understanding what I say.

This Feast of Pentecost that we celebrate is the occasion at which the story tells us that the Holy Spirit came from Heaven like the rush of a violent wind and tongues like fire appeared among them. In John’s gospel we learn that Jesus has asked the father to give the Advocate to be with us forever. An advocate is one who speaks on behalf of another. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, is the one who speaks on our behalf and speaks on God’s behalf to us, in a language we are able to understand.

Language, words and sounds crafted into ideas that may be shared between and among humans, is the way we concieve of our God, it is the way we imagine the world and the universe around us. Language is amazing; it is how we know we are human. We use the language of poetry and metaphor to try to experience reality, the language of prose to describe our reality, technical language to teach our reality to others. It is why we describe God as author; God has spoken the Word and has authored our lives and our salvation. In acknowledging the wonder of language, we must also acknowledge how woefully inadequate language is to communicate with God. We try so hard to use the proper words, we try so hard to use symbol and sign, but we fail miserably in our attempt.

It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to communicate with God and to hear one another. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to hear one another in the language of our land, in the language of our life, in the language of our heart. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to hear one another at all, and to hear God at all.

At the first Pentecost, when each heard the other speaking in their native language, those gathered were amazed and astonished. They were amazed and astonished by the presence of the Spirit. I am amazed and astonished by the presence of the Holy Spirit today.

How do we know the presence of the Holy Spirit? How do we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit? Why are we so frightened by that when it happens?

I believe we know the presence of the Holy Spirit and we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit when we really hear one another, when we really hear God, not just with our minds and our intellect, but when we hear with our hearts, when we hear with our spirits, and when we speak with our hearts and our spirits. I think that is frightening for many because it is so intimate, it is so real, and it is so truthful. Often, the truth is hard and scary to hear.

I experience the presence of the Holy Spirit at times if deep connection of spirit and truth in corporate prayer. Sometimes that is in the beautiful language of our prayer book sometimes that is in the spontaneous language of people gathered lifting to God all that blesses us and all that concerns us. I experience the presence of the Spirit in music and song, in rushing wind and water, in quiet contemplation, and often in good conversation.

We count on the Spirit showing up when we gather together as Church. We bid the Spirits presence especially when as a church we need to be led, when we need to make decisions together. When we elected our bishop recently, we called on the Spirit to lead our deliberations, to guide us, to give us wisdom and to help us choose. Our Church meets in General Convention this summer. General Convention is 10 days in July in Anaheim. General Convention happens every three years; it is the time when the business of the church happens. It also is very much a family reunion. We will worship together, we will pray together, eat together, play together, as well as do the business of the church. Now it seems odd to some to talk about the presence of the Spirit in this session. But I believe that it is only the presence of the Spirit that makes it possible for us to even begin to do the business of the church. When we meet together we must listen to each other, not just to the words, but also to the heart and the spirit.

We come to General Convention from many physical locations; we come from the plains, the mountains, the desert. Not unlike those who gathered at that first Pentecost. We come to the gathering from many theological locations, some orthodox, some traditional, some progressive. We come to the gathering from various liturgical customs, some high church, meaning great emphasis on ceremony and ritual, some low church, and many in the places in between. However, none of this changes our common commitment to the centrality of Jesus Christ and the lordship of God our creator in our communal lives and in our personal lives. But it does demand that we call upon the Holy Spirit to be in our midst so that we may listen to one another with our hearts as well as our ears, so that we may be in the presence of God with the Holy Spirit as our advocate, as the one who speaks on our behalf.

I remember the last time we met in General Convention, Bishop Steven Charleston, bishop and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge Mass asked a question. He asked us what will be our witness in the world, what will be the language we use to speak God’s love and reconciliation to the world. I do believe that continues to be the question we must ask ourselves in General Convention, in the Diocese of South Dakota, and right here at St. Andrew’s. What is our witness? What do we represent in the world? Do we and how do we take the reconciling love of Jesus into the world? Is our witness the unconditional love of God through the grace of Jesus Christ, is it to hope, not fear, is our witness to mission, is our witness to reconciliation? What do we show the world as we gather together and as we are sent out into the world?

So I ask you to pray. Include our General convention in your prayers as you include the Diocese of South Dakota and as you include St. Andrew’s. Pray for the very same that happened at that first Pentecost. Pray that each hears the other in their own language, that each hears the other speak their own truth, that each hear the other speak about God’s deeds of power.

The Holy Spirit is moving in this place. The Holy Spirit points the way for us. The Holy Spirit calls us to be voices for God’s abundant and amazing love, and calls us to bring that reconciling love into the world.

Alleluia. The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.

7 Easter Yr B

The Gospel of John is an amazing story. It is a story whose purpose is stated in the 20th chapter, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” This story shows us these signs so that we may have life in Jesus. The passage we have before us today is a prayer at the time when Jesus knows that he will die. It begins in the first verse of chapter seventeen and continues to the end of the chapter, we have heard just a snippet of the prayer today. Jesus prays that his followers may know his father, Jesus prays for protection for his followers, and Jesus prays that they may know the truth, and that the world may know the father through them, his disciples. It is astounding.

If we believe that in the incarnation God comes into the world as one of us, to live, love, laugh, suffer and die as one of us; and if we believe that in the resurrection God inaugurates new creation, in effect beginning creation again; which is what the gospel of John shows us; and if we believe that because of incarnation and resurrection we are joined with Jesus in the new creation, then we, you and I are in the world as agents of this same new creation. And as agents of new creation, as agents carrying the amazing, abundant, and reconciling love of God made real in Jesus, to the world, we are open to attack. Jesus prays, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one… Sanctify them in the truth; your word is the truth.” Jesus is praying for us, for you and me. It is astounding.

This Good News is dangerous stuff. The promise that outcasts and sinners, single women and children, have an equal place in the kingdom as the mighty and powerful is a threat. The promise that God’s love, grace, and forgiveness are available to anyone is a threat to those who want to draw lines between people who are in and people who are out. Protect them, Jesus asks, protect them, they will be rejected and ridiculed on my behalf, protect them. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Your word is truth. Jesus is God’s Word, and Jesus is truth. Today I quote from Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell, a book I commend to your reading. Is the greatest truth about Adam and Eve and the fruit that it happened, or that it happens: This story, one of the first in the Bible, is true for us because it is our story. We have all taken the fruit. We have all crossed boundaries. We have all made decisions to do things our way and then looked back and said to ourselves, What was I thinking? The fruit looked so great to Adam and Eve for those brief moments, but the consequences were with them for the rest of their lives. Their story is our story. We see ourselves in them. The story is true for us because it happened and because it happens. It is an accurate description of how life is. The reason the stories in the Bible have resonated with so many people over the years is that they have seen themselves in these stories.

Another example: The Israelites leave the kingdom of Egypt where they are slaves, and God brings them out into freedom. It happens. Every day. For many of us, that is our story. We were in darkness and God brought us out. And we continue to identify areas of darkness in our lives, and God continues to bring us out. So the exodus is the Israelites’ story, but it is also our story. It happened then; it happens now. That is why the Bible is so powerful, and that is why the Bible is true. These ancient stories are our stories. They are alive and active and teaching us about our lives in our world today. We live in the metaphors. The story of David and Goliath for another example continues to speak to us because we know the David part of the story, we live it. The tomb is empty because we have met the risen Christ; we have experienced Jesus in a way that transcends space and time. And this gives us hope. We were in darkness and God brought us out into the light. The Word is living and active and it happens. Today.

The disciples were left to live in the world with this truth, and you and I live as disciples in the world today with this truth. We live in the world with the truth that we are new creations through our baptism, and as new creations we are agents of this truth. The Truth that is not black and white, the Truth that is not right or wrong, but the Truth that is living and active and happening.

The world is a messy and chaotic place. God has come and continues to come into this world to show us how to live with authenticity, with honor, with grace, God comes by our side in the midst of the messiness and the chaos not to remove us from the world but to show us how to live in it. The truth walks with us through the pain, the sadness, the suffering, and the joy and the glory. The truth shares our pain, sets us free, gives us hope. And it is this truth that we respond to creatively. We respond to the truth with joy in worship, we respond to the truth by being a blessing to everyone around us. We respond to the truth by getting busy with what God is doing in this world.

But the evil one seeps in, trying to twist us and turn us, seducing us into believing that somehow the truth is a set of words on a page, that the truth can be measured against a black and white set of standards, that the truth is contained, held close, or belongs to only a certain group of people. The evil one seeps in, trying to make us believe that what is real is what we have, or what we can acquire, or what we can own, or what we can possess. The evil one seeps in, trying to make us believe that death always wins. But we know differently, because we live the story.

Knowing differently however does not protect us. We often miss the mark. We often succumb to the seduction of certainty, where there are no questions, only clear answers. We often succumb to the seduction of rightness, where only those who agree with us can sit at our table. We often succumb to the seduction of greed, where having enough gets lost in having because I can. We often succumb to the seduction of self-importance, where it really is all about me and not about God. We often succumb to the seduction of entertainment, where mystery and quiet contemplation become boring.

Missing the mark is not irredeemable. The Truth that is living and active and happening, the truth that is God’s grace shown to us in Jesus, the truth calls us to turn around, to straighten our shoulders, to keep our eye on the target. The Truth stands by our side and says, you are wonderfully and fearfully made, you are the delight of my life. The Truth guides our arrow on the wind, and brings it swiftly and cleanly to its mark.

In the name of the Father who creates us, the son who walks by our side, and the spirit who guides our ways, Alleluia. The Lord is risen indeed: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.