Sister-Priest Sermon Blog

Epiphany 3, Year B, Sun Jan 22, 2012

2012-01-23T11:12:00.000-08:00

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14; 1 Cor 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

I’m sorry to say that the story of Jonah is not about the whale. I used to think it was all about the whale. In Sunday school, I remember drawing a picture of the whale, with Jonah’s legs sticking out of the whale’s mouth, and that’s all I remembered about the story. That may not have been all that I was taught, but it’s all that I retained. But, after all, it’s not about the whale. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t even a whale in the story – that was an incorrect translation. What the story says is that God “provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah….”

Today’s lesson from the Book of Jonah starts out with: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time…” God had already called Jonah once, and told him to go to Ninevah to preach repentance. And Jonah was having no part of that plan. He didn’t want to go all the way to Ninevah, the capital of Assyria, in present-day Iraq, and he didn’t want them to repent from their sins. The Assyrians were the enemy! Let them perish, as they deserved!

Ninevah was to the East, so Jonah fled as far as he could in the opposite direction. He went to Joppa, on the Mediterranean coast, and got on a boat sailing West. But God caused a great storm, and the sailors were terrified. They wondered who among themselves or the passengers was causing this calamity. Then Jonah admitted that he was fleeing from God’s call. He told them that all would be well if they threw him into the sea. At first they tried to row the boat to safety, but it became stormier still.

So they threw Jonah into the sea, and the ship was saved. Then God “provided a large fish swallow up Jonah”. Jonah prayed for rescue “from the belly of the fish”, and God spoke to the fish, who “spewed Jonah out on the dry land.” Now our story picks up from today’s lesson: as Jonah was sprawled on the beach, gasping for breath, God spoke to him a second time with the same message. This time Jonah decided enough was enough, and he trudged off to Ninevah.

Jonah was about a third of the way into the city, stumbling along with seaweed still in his hair and clothes, looking a bit the worse for wear. He called out and prophesied that in forty days, Ninevah would be turned over. He didn’t use a word that meant demolished, destroyed, disaster or calamity. He used a milder word like turning a glass upside down.

And then an amazing thing happened! Immediately, the people of Ninevah repented! The king ordered everyone to put on sackcloth and sit in ashes. Everyone from the king and nobles to the poorest people and even the animals began a fast and cried out to God to relent and to save them.

We might wonder how the people could even hear Jonah, in the midst of the traffic and shouting and general noise of a big city? It’s as if someone stood on a street corner in Times Square, and called out “Repent for the world is about to end!” (Lots of people have done that, and no one pays any attention.) Jonah had just preached the most effective sermon ever! And the people believed that his words were from God.

How do we know God’s call? It usually is something surprising that couldn’t come out of our own heads, and often it’s something we don’t think we can do – or even particularly want to do. It may be something entirely new. It is always something for the greater good, in the long run, from a wide perspective. Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah, he didn’t think he could preach to the Assyrians. He didn’t even want the people of Ninevah to be saved, yet this was God’s plan, for the greater good. And God’s call is persistent, and God’s help is assured.

God’s call to the first Christians was to complete transformation of life. Paul wrote to the Corinthians to cancel life as they all had known it. He wrote, “The present form of this world is passing away.” They thought this meant that Christ would come in glory the next day or even the following week, but it didn’t turn out quite as they expected. The transformation was more subtle, and is still unfolding.

Last week, the Church celebrated the feast days of a series of early martyrs, including Fabian (a bishop of Rome), Agnes (a young martyr of Rome), the Confession of Peter (who was also martyred). This past Tuesday, Church also celebrated Anthony of Egypt, who was among the first monks, and although he died a natural death in old age, he lived his very long life as one dead to the world. This past week we also remembered and celebrated Martin Luther King Jr., a modern person also called to personal transformation, and to prophesy for the greater good, and who ultimately gave his life.

We are also called to transformation in Christ and to trust in God’s call to us. I hope we won’t be called to an experience like drowning in the belly of a whale and I certainly hope that we won’t be called to martyrdom. But following Christ is not always easy or comfortable. We will sometimes be nudged and coaxed and lured by God outside of our immediate comfort zone, and into seeing and experiencing something new.

Now, just to balance things out, I am going to tell a story about a whale. In 2005, in the Pacific Ocean off San Francisco, there was a humpback whale who was entangled in crab trap lines. The lines were 240 feet long, with heavy weights every 60 feet, and at least 12 crab traps, each weighing 90 pounds. The lines were so tight that they were digging into the whale’s blubber. The weight of the weights and traps were pulling the whale underwater, and she was struggling to reach the surface to breathe.

Four divers responded immediately and spent an hour carefully cutting the ropes away from the whale. It was a highly dangerous operation since one flip of her tail could have killed them. The diver who cut the rope in the whale’s mouth said her eyes were following him the entire time. When the whale had been cut free of the lines, she began to swim in circles, and she swam up to each diver and nudged them. One of the divers said later that it felt like she was affectionately thanking them. One of the divers said he felt changed forever by this experience. (SF Chronicle, 2005)

It was a highly risky operation, and the first of its kind to be successful. The divers risked their lives for one of God’s creatures, and they were blessed by her response. We also are called, each in a different way, to give of ourselves for others and for the common good. God may call us a little or a lot outside of our usual experience, and we may only be able to go forward with trust in God’s help.

As we begin our study of the Gospel of Mark, we’ll find that his favorite word is “immediately”. With God’s grace, may we respond “readily” and “immediately”, like the disciples and like many Christians throughout the ages, to hear and discern and to act in following God’s call. The present form of this world is still passing away – from enmity into community, from violence into peacefulness, from self-interest to compassion – in each individual act of self-giving, however small it may seem, in the Name of Christ.

Epiphany 2, Year B, Sun Jan 15, 2012

2012-01-21T07:44:00.001-08:00

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Cor 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

Well, here we are, the Sunday morning after the first visit by Bishop Waldo to All Saints Beech Island. It was truly a great day in the life of our congregation as we welcomed six new members and reaffirmed three, and our beautiful new altar was blessed. I’m also glad that the service last Sunday included a “Celebration of New Ministry” rather than an “Installation”, which traditionally has been the name of the service at which a new priest was officially welcomed in a congregation. Not to be disrespectful, but that has always reminded me of installing some kind of hardware, like a faucet, which is fixed and locked in place, and can be turned on and off as needed.

“Celebration of New Ministry” sounds much more collaborative and more open to all kinds of moving of the Spirit and new possibilities. “New Ministry” also suggests that our spiritual life isn’t installed and fixed in place, here in the church, but is expansive enough to suggest movement into a new life together and a new connection to the life and spirit of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, and even of the universal Church.

On the day itself, I think I felt a little like a deer in the headlights. Now, a week later I’m reminded of an inspirational poster, which showed a lovely, sweet photograph of a very young kitten. The kitten was lifting one paw, and beginning to take a very tentative step forward. The caption read: “This is the first step in the rest of your life”.

And so, here we are, on the first Sunday of the rest of our spiritual lives together as a church family. The readings appointed for today all have something to do with discerning a call by God, and each can tell us something about moving forward in this new step.

The first reading, from the 1st Book of Samuel, is a delightful story of the young boy, Samuel, and his elderly mentor, Eli. We can assume that the boy Samuel was like many children who think up all kinds of excuses for staying awake just a little longer: I need a drink of water; please tell me one more story; there’s an octopus under my bed. If you have ever lived with a young child – or been a young child – you know how it goes. No wonder it took Eli some time to realize that something unusual was going on.

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Eli himself may never have had a spiritual experience of God, but he perceived that God just might be calling the boy, and he was generous in guiding Samuel to go back and listen. Samuel did listen, and God didn’t start him off with something easy. God gave him the difficult message that his mentor wasn’t properly supervising his sons, and that Eli’s family would not continue to be priests in the house of the Lord. God may call, not the one we expect, but someone we least expect.

What God calls us to do may be a thing that we never expected to do, and never expected that we could do, except with God’s help.

In the reading from the Gospel of John, we hear Nathanael say, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” As many others of his time, he had specific ideas about who the Messiah would be, what he would look like, where he would come from, what he would do and say. Yet here is this person, from the insignificant village of Nazareth, of all places, and Phillip says this person must be the Messiah.

God may call someone we least expect, in a way we least expect, from a place we least expect. The only way to know is to “come and see”.

Now, what about Paul? In this passage from 1st Corinthians he seems to be all wound up, as Paul often is, about sin and misbehavior of one sort or another. His point is that Christians should set themselves apart and hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior than the pagan peoples among whom they live. In this there is the good news that all people could be temples for the Holy Spirit, since they were all created and loved into being by God. All may be worthy to receive a wake-up call from God to turn their hearts and lives and to listen for God’s call.

So, God may even be calling us, here in Beech Island, to hear and believe that we too are worthy, we too may be temples of the Holy Spirit, and we too have within us and among our members all that we need to fulfill our calling. It does seem to me that our calling, here at All Saints, is not to do more ministry or get busy with more work. But I do believe that we have a special calling -- into spiritual friendship.

This past week the Church celebrated a saint named Aelred, who lived in the 12th century and who became the abbot of a monastery. He is best known for a book he wrote entitled, “Spiritual Friendship”. He wrote that spiritual friendship should be sought both for its own sake and as a way to deepen a connection and love of God. Spiritual friendship, he wrote, “is a stage bordering upon that perfection which consists in the love and knowledge of God.”

He wrote that spiritual friendship can only develop among those who acknowledge that they are equals before God, and he added that while there can be love without friendship, there cannot be friendship without love. Aelred concluded that in mature spiritual friendship it is possible to forget oneself for the sake of the other.

I believe that here at All Saints, we are “all saints” and all temples of the Holy Spirit, and that we are called into developing and nurturing further the spiritual friendship that is already among us. I believe that God is calling us by a gentle nudging, encouraging, luring us into gentle compassion for one another, in Christ’s name.

Spiritual friendship can carry us forward in all that we do in ministering to one another, serving our community, and striving to fulfill our baptismal covenant. Last Sunday, in renewing our baptismal vows, we all promised to turn towards Jesus as our Savior, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

We may not be able to fulfill these vows perfectly, but even if we think ourselves unlikely and unworthy, still we have at one time been washed in the waters of baptism and sealed through the Holy Spirit as Christ’s own forever. And God, who has searched us out and known us so thoroughly, in all our imperfections and shortcomings, still sent God Jesus to live among us in his full humanity, to show us the way of love, and to give his life that we might live and love in his Name.

And this is a way of life that is so good and rich, that we might well invite others to “come and see”.

Holy Name, Year B, Sun Jan 1, 2012

2012-01-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21

What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot. The old nursery rhyme, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”, may be a psychologically healthy sentiment, but name-calling can hurt. Names can also suggest authority, prestige, responsibility, and many positive traits or hopes for a newborn child.

The name “Jesus” was given to Mary’s child by the angel at the Annunciation, and it is pronounced “Jeshua” in Hebrew. “Jeshua” means “the one who saves”. For Jesus, it meant that he was “born to set the people free”, and not only born but even named as the one who would “save”. Growing up with the name “Savior” might have been a very heavy burden to carry such a name, for anyone else except the Son of God.

In recent weeks we’ve been talking about another heavy name: the title of “bishop”. As we anticipate the visitation of Bishop Andrew next week, I think we all have some feelings of awe and anticipation and even nervousness about “The Bishop” being here. I imagine the name “bishop” isn’t born easily for those who carry it, either.

There is a part of the ordination service for a bishop, which is included by tradition, but is not recorded in the Book of Common Prayer. Some of us witnessed this prelude to the service when Bishop Andrew was ordained. Before the service started, he stood outside the cathedral with the doors locked, not yet wearing all the episcopal regalia, but only a simple white alb.

He knocked loudly on the locked door of the cathedral, and proclaimed that he was the bishop-elect of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, so “let me in”, or words to that effect. But they didn’t open the door. Then he knocked a second time, and said something like, “I am a priest of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, so let me enter”. Again, they did not open the door. Then he said, “I am Andrew, a child of God”, and then the doors were opened, and the service could begin.

He entered into this new responsibility and ministry while carrying not only the new name of “The Right Reverend Lord Bishop”, but also well reminded that he could only bear that new name as “Andrew, child of God”.

This past week, on Tuesday, the Church celebrated the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, who was also called: “the disciple whom Jesus loved” or the “Beloved Disciple”. I had always assumed that Jesus loved him because he was such a sweet and gentle young man. When I painted an icon of “The Beloved Disciple”, I showed John as a very young man, perhaps even in his late teens, with his head resting on Jesus, and Jesus as a father figure to him.

What was it like, I wonder, to be called “the disciple whom Jesus loved”? That name might have been tinged with jealousy, because Jesus seemed to love John the best.

But we also hear that Jesus gave the name “sons of thunder” to John and his brother James. This implies that maybe they were not such quiet, sweet, gentle boys after all! Maybe they were loud, impetuous, and rambunctious. Maybe they were the kind of brothers who get into enough trouble by themselves, but feed off each other and get into even more trouble when they are together. Maybe Jesus had James and John with him on special occasions, such as the Transfiguration, not because they were the most honored, but to keep an eye on them! In another day and age, might Jesus have called them “double trouble”.

Perhaps, when John was called “the one whom Jesus loved”, it wasn’t because he was the most handsome, sweet, loveable disciple. It could be that John, the “son of thunder”, was driving everyone nuts, and in spite of this, Jesus loved him anyway. Perhaps it was in amazement, rather than envy, that they called him “the one whom Jesus loved”!

John grew up in Jesus’s love and acceptance, and perhaps Jesus saw in him the potential to put all that thunderous energy into becoming an evangelist, poet, and mystic. Perhaps John gradually outgrew his exasperating and impetuous behavior. Perhaps he finally grew into adulthood when Jesus was dying on the cross, and Jesus entrusted him with the care of his aging mother

According to tradition, John did not die a martyr, like the other disciples, and over the years he would have witnessed the persecutions, martyrdoms, and growth of church. Perhaps he was one of very few to have been close associates of Jesus to live into old age and to see the establishment and spread of the Church. We believe that he lived to write the Gospel of John, and the letters of John, and the Book of Revelation may well have been inspired by his visions.

Since he was a mystic, I don’t think John would mind if we speculate even a bit further about how the names “son of thunder” and “beloved disciple” affected him. As he grew into old age, perhaps John the obstreperous, became a sweet and gentle old man, after all, because, through Jesus, he knew the power of God’s unconditional love.

I imagine him as a gentle old man, with a long white beard, wrapped in robe even on a warm day. When people would come to see him, they would listen in hushed silence as he told of Jesus in metaphor and poetic images. At the end of their visit, the people might ask for his final words of advice to the churches. And John would say, in a slow, husky, shaky voice, with just a little echo of the old thunder: “Little children, love one another.”

The name “son of thunder” had been given in love, and John knew that he was loved undeservedly and unconditionally. He knew that he was beloved among all the children of God, and so that thunder was transformed into a passion for faith in Jesus Christ.

We also bear a special name, along with our baptismal names and our family names. We all bear the name of “Christian, a name which we can live into over time, and perhaps only partly and imperfectly ever achieve.

God is not yet finished with any of us; like John, we also are works in progress. The finishing and polishing comes during the course of a lifetime, and comes through receiving the name of “Christian”, over and over, and through pondering and treasuring this name in our hearts. May we always bear this name in faithfulness and humility, knowing that whatever other names we bear, we also are children of God and loved beyond measure.

St. John Evangelist, Wed Dec 28, 2011 (transferred)

2011-12-28T15:57:00.001-08:00

Preached at the Convent of Saint Helena, Augusta GA
Exodus 33:18-23; Psalm 92; 1 John 1:1-9; John 21:19b-24

We know of St. John as the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. I always assumed that Jesus loved him because he was such a sweet and gentle young man. I painted the icon of “The Beloved Disciple”, I showed John as a very young man, perhaps even in his late teens, and Jesus as a father figure to him.

If John was called “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, was there a subtle jealousy and envy, because Jesus seemed to love him the best? Was he the favorite disciple; the golden haired boy?

But then, this is a complicated picture: why then would Jesus have given him and James a name like “sons of thunder”? This implies that James and John were not sweet and gentle, but rather loud, impetuous, maybe even troublemakers. Were they the kind of brothers who got into enough mischief by themselves, but when they were together feed off each other and became even more naughty? In another era, might Jesus have given them the name “Double Trouble”? Did Jesus invite James and John to go with him at certain times, not because they were especially honored, but rather to keep an eye on them?

This presents a much different picture: when John was called “the one whom Jesus loved”, perhaps it wasn’t because he was the most handsome, sweet, loveable disciple.

So we might speculate that John was a “son of thunder”, loud and boisterous, with lofty ambitions and with a pushy mother, and still Jesus loved him. Maybe this was said with more amazement than envy!

John grew up in Jesus’s love and we can speculate further that Jesus saw in him the potential to put all that thunderous energy into his writing as an evangelist, poet, mystic. Perhaps he gradually outgrew his exasperating and impetuous behavior. Perhaps he grew into adulthood as Jesus was dying on the cross, and Jesus trusted him with the care of his aging mother

According to tradition, John grew up and grew old, and over the years he would have witnessed the persecutions, martyrdoms, and growth of church. Perhaps he was one of very few to have been close associates of Jesus to live into old age and to live to see the establishment and spread of the early church. Perhaps he did write or dictated the Gospel of John, and the letters, and perhaps the Book of Revelation was based on his visions.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus said that John might “remain until I come”. Perhaps he didn’t mean that John would not die at all, but rather that he would not die an early martyr’s death. Rather, perhaps he meant that John would live to see Jesus come again in the establishment of the church.

Since he was a mystic, I don’t think John would mind if we speculate even a bit further. As he grew into old age, perhaps John the obstreperous, became a sweet and gentle old man, after all, because he knew the power of God’s unconditional love.

I imagine him as an old, gentle man, with a long white beard, wrapped in robe even on a warm day. When people would come to see him, he would tell of Jesus, not through precise chronological detail, but in captivating words, in metaphor and poetic images.

At the end of their visit, the people might ask for final words of advice to the churches. And John would say, in a slow, husky, shaky voice: “Little children, love one another.”

All speculation aside, we can be sure that the one who had known the love, and kindness, and attention, and nurture of the living Jesus, and had known the light of his presence, was able to hand down to the next generation the core message of Christian life to others: just “love one another”.

St. John knew personally of this love, and therefore he knew that in Jesus the divine came into the world because “God so loved the world…”

In the words of the Rabbi Hillel, after that, all the rest is commentary.

Christmas Eve, Sat Dec 24, 2011

2011-12-25T07:42:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14, 15-20

When I was growing up, there was a painting that hung over the sofa in our living room. The same painting hung there as long as I can remember, and as fine art goes it really wasn’t anything so special. As I remember it, there was an open field to the right, and there were trees to the left, in the foreground. It looked as though the viewer was standing on a path, which meandered off through the trees. The path eventually disappeared beyond the trees and over the top of a hill.

The viewer couldn’t see where the path had come from, and what had gone before, but one might suppose it was much like the present view of trees and open countryside. The present view was lovely and peaceful, but there was a slight touch of color on the tips of the leaves, suggesting the passage of time and the coming autumn. Where the road disappeared, there was no way to know where it would go or what would be on the other side of the hill.

The road behind the viewer was a memory, not in direct view. It might also have been lovely and peaceful, or it might have been a difficult passage, or maybe some of both. But it is behind the viewer, and we leave it as a memory, which has formed who we travelers are, but does not necessarily define our future. If we choose, we can pause to savor the loveliness of the present moment, even as the turning leaves suggest that we are being drawn forward along the path. In the world of this painting, as we go along the path, we might expect more of what we already see.

For many generations, the ancient Hebrew people had anticipated the coming of a Messiah, who would follow in the line of David and restore his kingdom. They knew of great kings in their history: King David, King Solomon, and the kings of Judah and Israel. In their present world, they knew the oppression of the Roman occupation, and they dreamed of the return of the David’s kingdom. They expected more of what they knew, but God was about to do a new thing.

When the Messiah was born, he was not of royal birth, although he was of the ancestry of the house of David. Mary and Joseph were very ordinary folk, from an unremarkable place. If not for Jesus, we would probably never know of the village of Nazareth. And the shepherds, well – they were even less than ordinary.

We can imagine another hillside, long ago. It was likely a cold evening on that ordinary hillside outside of Bethlehem, where shepherds were settling in for the night. They were grubby, rough characters, living on the fringes of the town. They knew they would never be part of “polite” society, or even marginally acceptable. They just were who they were, and they went about their business of minding sheep. The day had been much like any other: they had tended the sheep, chased away a stray dog. They were having a bite to eat by the fire, rubbing their hands to keep warm.

Suddenly, there was a great light in the sky and they saw a vision of angels. They heard the announcement that the Messiah had been born. If they hurried, they could see for themselves. It was as if a sound and light show, with fireworks, had appeared in the sky over Bethlehem, just for the benefit of this one little scraggly group of shepherds. They were the only ones who could hear and see it.

We can imagine that they rubbed their eyes and scratched their heads. They asked one another, “Hey, Mordecai, did you hear that?” “What was that? Were those angels?” “Could this be true?” “Naw, can’t be. Why would angels appear to the likes of us?” It would be hard to imagine a more startling, extraordinary message. It would be hard to imagine less likely recipients. Eventually one of them said, “Well, let’s go. It could be true. Let’s go and see.”

The shepherds, Mary, and Joseph were all ordinary people. It was an ordinary time, just like any other time. It happened that it was during the governorship of Quirinius of Syria, whoever he was. It happened that Mary and Joseph were required to travel to Bethlehem. It happened that there was no accommodation except at a stable.

It seemed to be ordinary time, involving ordinary folk, doing ordinary things. Jesus even looked like an ordinary newborn baby, with straw in his hair and his little body and legs bound with swaddling cloths, as was the custom. Even with the announcement of the angel to Mary and the extraordinary circumstances of her pregnancy, Mary and Joseph still had ordinary expectations: that Jesus would grow up with the responsibilities of the eldest son, and become a carpenter, and raise a family. They expected more of what they knew, but God was doing an extraordinary thing.

God was determined to break into ordinary time, through ordinary people, in an ordinary place. The Messiah was entirely of and given for the ordinary people, born at an ordinary time, born in a humble stable. It was both an ordinary moment, and also it was a sacred moment of God’s choosing. In that moment, the holy broke through into ordinary time, to do something entirely new, not limited by any human expectation.

The angel said to Mary, and to Joseph, and to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid.” Don’t be afraid of angel hosts of heaven. Don’t be afraid of this message. Don’t be afraid to believe in a miracle greater than anything you can imagine. We can be sure that they were afraid and astonished and bewildered, and yet they all said, “Yes”. Joseph took her as his wife. Mary bore the Christ child. The shepherds decided that all this just might possibly really be true, and they got up and “went with haste”.

Do we expect only what we already know? God says to us also, do not be afraid. Do not be limited by your past experience, and do not be limited by your expectations. Even, expect miracles! Even expect the sacred to break into our ordinary time and experience, here and now, tonight. Be open to the possibility that God comes to ordinary people, like us, here and now, with love beyond our understanding.

The invitation is open to us all, to receive the Christ child, and to welcome him just as we are, just where we are in our lives, with whatever we are carrying in memory, and with whatever joys and burdens we bear today, and with whatever expectations and plans and hopes and dreams (and even fears) we may have for the future.

On this sacred night, God comes to us in human form, with human words – and with divine love. God comes with a message of joy and peace, and of salvation, without reservation and without condition – for us here tonight, and for all people. As we celebrate the Christ’s Mass, we also are given the invitation to get up and come to Bethlehem to witness the miracle of God gracious love, the coming of Emmanuel, God to be with us now and always.

Advent 4, Year B, Sun Dec 18, 2011

2011-12-25T07:41:00.001-08:00

2 Sam 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

Mary could have said, “What?” or “Who, me?” Mary could have said, “Who are you kidding?” She might have wondered if the angel was just a bad dream. She might have asked God for a sign, to prove that the angel was real and that this was indeed a message from God. Mary could have said, “No way.”

But instead, she believed it could be true that God was calling her, and she asked, “How can this be?” The angel answered in words of mystery and spiritual power, and told of another miracle: Elizabeth her cousin would bear a child in her old age. Mary could still have said, “No” or “Let me take some time to think about this…” Instead, she simply said “Yes, here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

God calls each one of us, to follow Christ, and to have faith that we will be led and nourished and comforted and held by the Spirit of God, especially when things get rough. God has called each one of us here at All Saints Episcopal Church to believe in miracles and to magnify the Lord our God.

A year or so ago, it seemed that God was calling us all to something new, something challenging. I agreed to accept your call to become the priest-in-charge, but only with your commitment of help and support. I knew that I couldn’t do it without your full participation in the worship and ministry and service of this mission church. You have done this every step of the way.

Today we can indeed celebrate and rejoice at so much accomplishment during the past year, and I believe that the Spirit of God called us together, to work and help one another, to build up the kingdom of God in this place and to support one another in our life in Christ.

Today we are holding our annual meeting, and I’d like to think that we are enfolding our business meeting together with our worship. I will preach a little shorter time than usual, and the “business” part of the meeting will take place following the recessional hymn. After the meeting is over, then I will say the blessing and dismissal.

We are a small church, and there are many, many benefits to this. We know one another well; when we gather, it’s easy to tell who’s away, and we can reach out and express our concern; we can help and support one another.

My concern is that we could also get burned out. I’d like to caution us all (myself included) that in the coming year we be gentle with ourselves and with each other. We can’t do everything in the same way as it might be done in a large church, with many people and full-time clergy. We do need to practice patience and kindness when a decision takes time or when something isn’t finished right away. All will be well; all will be accomplished in good time.

We will need to be careful and discerning about the projects that we take on, and we need to set priorities for our efforts, and celebrate together when we do complete a project. Our mutual ministry plan and our strategic plan will help us with this. We have also started to draft a new mission statement, based on a discussion some of us had after service one Sunday. I hope all will prayerfully consider the main points that emerged from this first discussion, so that we can write a new statement of purpose that is specific to us, and memorable, and that truly reflects God’s call to us now and into the future.

After the angel had departed, Mary might have had second thoughts. She might have wondered, “Yikes. What was I thinking?” Instead, she stayed true to her promise to the angel, and remained steadfast to her assent to God’s will. She not only obeyed, but in her song she proclaimed the greatness of God, and “magnified” the Lord with great joy.

Mary said “Yes”, not knowing what she was getting into and not knowing how it would all turn out. There was a great deal that the angel left out, and I think she knew that the angel wasn’t telling her everything. And still she said, “Yes”. And still she trusted in God. She trusted in God’s calling to her, and she trusted that God would be with her always, and she trusted that God’s will was ultimately for the nurture, healing, and salvation of all people.

May we also say “Yes” to the calling that God presents to us, here at All Saints Episcopal Church, to build mature disciples, through our worship, through our welcome and friendship with one another, and through our service, so that in this place Christ will find a mansion prepared for the Spirit of God to be among us always.

Advent 3, Year B, Sun Dec 11, 2011

2011-12-12T10:31:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thess 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist quotes from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah a passage, which reads as follows:
“A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together…’” (Isaiah 40:3-5a)

I’ve never been to the southwest of the United States, but I imagine the highways there are built over rough terrain and through deserted places that are empty and wild and without inhabitants for miles and miles. Still, this is the United States, where cell phones work most everywhere, and where there will eventually be another traveler passing through, and where eventually there will be a rest stop and gas station and (hopefully) a diner with a fabulous selection of home made pies.

Every Advent, we hear one version or another of this passage about the “highway in the desert”, and this brings to my mind an experience during my trip to Afghanistan in 2004. We were planning to visit the site of a new school that was under construction in Wardak province, which is to the south west of Kabul. It was to be a day trip because an extended stay might have brought undesirable attention to the presence of foreigners.

Early in the morning we drove out of Kabul and into the desert. Most of my life I have lived in the northeast of the United States, where the wild spaces are usually heavily forested, and most roads go through inhabited areas. In Afghanistan the land is barren, the result of deforestation and drought. There are no signs of inhabitants, no wayside stores, nothing. There is a kind of wildness and raw beauty in such places, as well as sadness that this land, which was once fertile, is now empty of most vegetation.

We drove on a long straight road, with mountain ranges on either side. This was the Kabul-Kandahar road, which had been rebuilt by the U.S. Army. It was the perfect example of a straight and smooth “highway in the desert”. We travelled along this road for about half an hour, making good time and chatting about all that we were seeing and what we expected to find when we reached the school. Then we turned right onto one of the local roads. At least, it was sort of a road. You could just about tell where the road was, as it had probably been traveled for generations by animals, people, and occasionally by vehicles. But it wasn’t paved at all, just rocks and dirt that were only slightly less rough than the surrounding terrain.

We bounced and pitched and rolled our way at about 3-5 miles an hour for the next several hours. Occasionally we got stuck, wheels spun, and eventually we got rolling again. Along the way we saw mountains, valleys, fields – even a few fields under cultivation and groves of fruit trees. We saw a village nestled in a valley. The houses were built from the surrounding clay, the same color as the dirt, and seemed to rise from the ground by some natural process.

At one point we passed a man on a donkey. He was going in the same direction as we were, and even slower. It occurred to me that travel between each of these villages was probably an all-day trip, each way.

“Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” These words may bring up images of major earth moving equipment to us; to ancient people, they meant the impossible. To make uneven ground level and rough places into a plain simply couldn’t be done in a human lifetime with available labor and with shovels and pickaxes and human hands.

A highway in the desert could only be built through the power of God. So also, today, we pray for God to stir up God’s own power “and with great might come among us”. So also, today, we face obstacles and steep mountain ranges and valleys, which we cannot level on our own. But we can expect the miracle of Christ with us to fill our hearts with his presence, and do more for us than we can possibly imagine.

It’s just that it’s easy to forget this. It’s a natural tendency to think that we do have to fix and heal and build highways for ourselves. When I was little, I used to try to put things together right out of the box, and my father would tease me, and say, “When all else fails, read the instructions.” Well, it’s a natural tendency to try to do everything for ourselves, and when all else fails – then pray to God.

Two weeks ago, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I figured we would be a cozy little group here at All Saints, so I used the sermon that day to test out a new proposal for our church family, for this new church year. I’m proposing that we all make a commitment to some kind of daily prayer. I would guess that every one of us already has some practice of personal prayer. It may be “Thank you, God, for this beautiful day”, or “God help me” while sitting in the dentist’s chair, or “Please, God, help this person get well.”

What I’m suggesting is that we each find a time of day that can be protected from interruption, and a place that is quiet and peaceful and prayerful. Then, we might say prayers from the Book of Common Prayer that are appointed for “Families and Individuals”, or one of the Daily Offices. This could be combined with Bible reading or other spiritual reading. I would not propose to you something I haven’t done myself; I did say the four Daily Offices before I entered the convent, while working a full-time job.

It is best to start with something simple, and build from there. We can be flexible. For each person the experience may be different, and it may take some experiment to see what works. We will talk and discuss this more in the coming weeks, remembering that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he gave them specific words to say. The words of the Lord’s prayer remind us that what we need each day is simple – and God will provide, protect, and guide.

As we prepare for the coming of the Christ child, during the season of Advent, we can hold in our hearts the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances”. (I Thess 5:16) We can take that message to heart here, today, in Beech Island, and each day of our lives. We can let go of trying to construct highways, and let go, and let God. The good news is that God is in charge, and it is God’s will for blessing and loving-kindness and grace to be granted for all people. Therefore, let us “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus” for us all.

Advent 1, Year B, Sun Nov 27, 2011

2011-11-27T13:59:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

In the 1st Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote: “In every way you have been enriched in [Christ]… so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 1:7) The Corinthians have been enriched by Christ over what they were in the past; they currently are not lacking in any spiritual gift; they are waiting and anticipating “the revealing” of Christ.

In this one, short phrase, St. Paul has laid out their impoverished spiritual past; their spiritual present which is full of the love of God in Christ; their spiritual future which will be fulfillment in the second coming of Christ. The spiritual life of all Christians might be summed up in reconciling with the past, living in Christ in the present, and anticipating the glory that is to come in the future. The problem is that most of us seldom manage to hold past, present, and future in balance.

As we begin a new Church year, this is an excellent time to do a little spiritual house cleaning. In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to start, unabashedly, to encourage us all in some specific Bible study and prayer practice as a parish family. In the early centuries of the Church, beginning in the 4th century, some Christians set themselves apart as monks and nuns, and it became customary to think of them as “experts” in prayer. The clergy also were considered “experts”, and everyone else sort of rode on their spiritual coattails. More recently, Morning Prayer has been the Sunday default, when there is no priest available. Today, in the Book of Common Prayer, we have the resources to put the practice of daily prayer, according to the traditions of the Church, back into the life of all Episcopalians.

A daily practice of prayer, in a specific form, is the best way I know of to hold the present moment in all its richness. The words of the BCP move us through a range of connections to God: thankfulness, worship and adoration, petition, sadness and forgiveness, joy in life and all creation. There are times that the words of prayer are not what I want to hear, but still draw my attention to something I’ve been missing. Other times the words are exactly what touches my soul and draws me closer to God. And then there are other times when I just don’t feel like doing it at all, and believe it or not those are often the times when my prayer becomes the most rich, and I get the most out of just doing it anyway.

When the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray”, he gave them the words of the Lord’s Prayer, and those words are at the core of each of the Daily Offices: giving us the present need for the simple necessities of life in each day; forgiveness for the past; guidance for the future.

Sometimes, when I am away from my community, that’s all I say – and I feel that I have connected with the source of my faith. Before I joined OSH, there were quite a few years when I said all four Offices even while working a regular job. Sometimes all I had time for was the Lord’s Prayer while walking from one meeting to another.

I have friends who pray the Daily Offices as they ride the bus or subway to work in New York. One of my friends lives in NJ, and while riding the train into Manhattan she began to notice two other people who seemed to be very much absorbed in what they were reading, every morning. It turned out that the three of them were Episcopalian, Jewish, and Roman Catholic, all saying their daily prayers as they commuted to work.

At the convent, the bells calling us to chapel keep interrupting our day. It’s supposed to be that way, and in the old days, it happened seven times a day! Now we only go to chapel to pray four times a day, and it’s still an interruption – and a very welcome one that keeps reminding me to turn my thoughts back to God, and to the present, and to gratitude for my life, my community, for all of you, for my family and friends, and for all creation. The bells remind me to “pray always”, for everything. If we think about what we do each week, each one of us most likely already has some practice of prayer, whether it’s in any sense formal or not. What I’m suggesting is that we make it an intention and commitment, as a parish, to pray some form of the prayers offered in our own tradition, each day.

Taking on something new isn’t always easy. It usually works best to start with one thing, take it slow and sit with that one thing for a while, with lots of support, and an opportunity for sharing the experience. I’d like to suggest that we here at ASEC give it a try. It may be quite different for each one of us; we can be flexible, and see what works best. Above all, we need to start simply and start small, one thing at a time.

What are you already doing for daily prayer? What is a time of day for you that you have a few quiet moments? What is easy and what is difficult. What is it like when you just don’t feel like it but do it anyway? What adjustments seem helpful for you? What changes for you over time?

To start, it would make sense to pick one time of day that might work best for you. Early morning? Midday? Evening? Where would be a comfortable, prayerful place? Once you’ve picked a time and a place, then what to do? There is a form for each of the four Offices in the BCP for “Individuals and Families”, and there are photocopies at the back of the church if you don’t have a BCP of your own. I’ve also included a copy of Compline, which is the last Office of the day, and which we have said together at the conclusion of our weekday evening programs during Lent. Another possibility would be to start by simply saying the Lord’s Prayer, every day at the same time of day.

If you would like to say one of the full Offices, the simplest two are Noonday and Compline. Instructions for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are in the BCP, and in coming weeks I’ll be offering some instruction on how these Offices may be observed.
There is something very profound about an individual practice of prayer, by a set form, as a consistent, on-going practice. At first there are the details to work out, but eventually it becomes as natural and essential as breathing.

Although it seems that we are mostly reading or saying words, it becomes a time of listening and waiting for God’s presence to be more and more infused into all the time of our lives. Praying these prayers every day also puts us in a sound and balanced perspective on our past, present, and future. The past can be cherished where it was good and forgiven where not so good; the present can be held in attentive awareness; the future can be placed (again and again) in God’s most capable hands.

Jesus said to the disciples that they could clearly see the signs of the change of seasons. Then he assured them that the signs would be unmistakable when he comes again, and even more obvious than the change of seasons, if only we are attentive to see. Our life in God, right now, in the present moment, contains everything that we need: every spiritual gift, every blessing, every joy, every sorrow, and every grace from God to carry us in that moment. Keep awake. Be present to the glory of God that is with us right now, right here, and will be with us always.

Christ the King, Year A, Sun Nov 20, 2011

2011-11-27T13:55:00.000-08:00

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

This past week the Bishop of Georgia, Scott Benhase, sent out one of his occasional email messages, and in this one he wrote about Steve Jobs, the recently deceased founder of Apple. Bishop Benhase noted the phenomenal success of Apple, and he observed a distinct difference in the way that Apple presents new products.

Most companies give us the “what” and the “how” of a new product. This is new software (what); it is used for word processing (how to use it); then eventually they get around to “why” we need this new product: you can use it to write letters more easily. Apple on the other hand, starts their advertisements with the “why”. The marketing for the I-Pad starts: “This product will change your life. You need one of these.” Then, they go on to explain what the I-Pad is and how to use it.

In our readings assigned for today, we hear the “who” and “how” of Jesus: he is both King and “the good shepherd”. First, in Psalm 100, we hear that we are God’s people, and the sheep of his pasture. In the reading from Ezekiel, we hear that God “will be the shepherd of [his] sheep”. This shepherd will seek out those who are lost and will gather up strays and heal the wounded. Then, we have the second image of Jesus, as the presider at the Last Judgment. He is compared to a king who will judge the peoples, especially by their service to those in need.

Jesus is both a shepherd (fully human) and heavenly king and judge (fully divine). As he was fully human, Jesus experienced the full range of human joy and sorrow, of temptation, of emotion. By being fully divine, Jesus makes possible our transformation in the Spirit to live most fully in the image of God, as God created us to be. By being fully human and fully divine, Christ can be the perfect judge: complete in justice and complete in mercy.

That’s the “who” and “how”. But, why does this matter? I don’t think the answer is to avoid becoming a goat, that is to say to avoid the eternal punishment, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC there is a sarcophagus with a frieze carved on the front. It’s from the early years of Christianity, and it shows Christ seated in glory in the center. On either side of him there are two lines of animals facing in towards him: sheep on one side and goats on the other. The sheep are leaning towards Jesus, with their little necks stretched out and one hoof raised, in expectation of his invitation.

On the other side, are the goats. They are leaning back, with their hooves firmly planted in the ground, resisting the call to come to Jesus. We can presume that the person who commissioned this sarcophagus was hoping to be among the sheep.

I think that most of us are really part sheep and part goat. Sometimes, we are leaning towards Jesus to receive his words and to follow him. Sometimes we are holding back, and resisting what God is calling us to do. God calls each one of us is to be perfect in love and service, and for most of us it’s impossible to do this fully and without fault.

The needs are so great, and our efforts are limited by what we can possibly do; sometimes it isn’t even clear what is the best and most helpful thing to do. There are hungry, homeless, sick, bereaved; there are many with overwhelming challenges in their lives. As individuals and as a parish we can’t serve everyone. Sometimes helping in the moment isn’t solving the larger problem. In our food pantry, it would be great if we could feed all the hungry in Beech Island. We can’t handle that, so we are starting with a specific group, of a size that we can handle.

Even Jesus didn’t cure everyone who was sick during his lifetime. He did address the needs that were right in front of him. He did ask, “What do you want?” He did have compassion for those who came to him. In today’s lesson, Jesus says, “If you do this to ONE, you did it to me.” In each way and at each time that we do express love and caring for another, we are also serving Christ, who knew human suffering from personal experience, and who also knows and is ready to bestow the divine grace on all who turn to him, all who follow him, all who do what they can to serve him and others in his Name.

Today we celebrate the last Sunday of the Church year, usually called Christ the King. This feast day celebration wraps up all that has happened in the Church year, to give us the “why”. Why does this matter for us here at All Saints Episcopal Church? Why might we want to grow? Why might we want our church to have a secure long term future?

In the coming weeks, we will be starting to develop a long-term plan for All Saints Church. We need to start with our mission statement, and all else will follow from that. It needs to be concise, memorable, and specific to our church. It needs to answer the probing and challenging “why” questions. As it happens, the “why” question was one of the central issues raised by Bishop Waldo at the recent diocesan convention.

Why is the future of All Saints Church important to us who are here today, and to the Church in Upper South Carolina, and to the people of Beech Island and neighboring areas? I think that the more clearly we can answer these “why” questions, the more faithfully and fully we will be able to discern and fulfill God’s call to us, and to thrive as a parish.

I’m not going to answer the “why” question for All Saints right now, although I have some ideas. That is for all of us to develop together in the coming weeks. What is important first of all is why grow in discipleship in Christ?

As we move into fuller and more mature discipleship, we will learn of Jesus in his full humanity: he knows our suffering, our joys, our struggles, our falling down and our successes. And we will learn of Christ’s full divinity: in addition to knowing us completely, he also forgives, loves, sustains, and redeems. Whatever heavy burdens we bear, we can give them up to God.

We are all called, every one of us, to know Jesus in his full humanity, as well as to know the divine mystery of his full being in God. We are called into relationship with him, as we pray and worship and study and practice our faith, and as we serve others. In so doing, we may see the love and grace of God reflected, even unexpectedly, in another human face.

And this will change our lives.

Pentecost 22, proper 28, Year A, Sun Nov 13, 2011

2011-11-13T17:29:00.001-08:00

Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

The collect assigned for today is one of my favorites, especially the reminder that when we read scripture we don’t just do it in one way or at one time. We can “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Holy Scripture, so that by chewing and pondering and puzzling and struggling and taking the words into ourselves and carrying them with us into our lives, we become thoroughly and drippingly saturated with the Word of God. However, it’s not always clear what it is exactly that we are supposed to be learning and absorbing. At first glance, this parable doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t seem to be at all in line with what we usually hear Jesus say.

Just for fun, I’d like to translate it into a modern setting. Once upon a time there was a wealthy businessman. He went to visit one of his estates, and when he was ready to leave, he asked his staff to manage some funds for him. To his cook he allocated $5 million, to his housekeeper $2 million, and to his gardener $1 million. Then he went on his way, and they had no idea when he would return.

The cook had a cousin, Bill, who was a day-trader, so he passed the money along to Bill who traded it, and got lucky, and doubled the money, so now the cook had $10 million. The housekeeper took the $2 million and went to Los Vegas, and he got lucky on the slot machines and doubled his money.

The gardener didn’t have a cousin in investments and didn’t like the idea of gambling. Actually, he didn’t know much at all about investing and he was quite nervous about being entrusted with so much money. He was a bit miffed at the businessman anyway because he had been critical of his work in the garden. So the gardener didn’t even put the money in a 0.001% interest bearing account. Instead, he stored it in a safe deposit box.

When the businessman returned to his estate, he was pleased to find that the cook and the housekeeper had doubled the funds he had entrusted to them, but he was greatly disappointed in the gardener, and he fired him from his staff, to the accompaniment of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and presumably cries of “It’s not fair!!”

Does this sound like a story that Jesus would tell? Jesus, who said, “Give up all you own and follow me?” Who told another parable about the farmer who built bigger and bigger barns for his produce only to be called to his final reward before he could enjoy any of it? Jesus, who said, “You cannot serve God and wealth”??

Actually, one could argue that the gardener and the third servant were more prudent with the money than the other two, who could have lost everything with their risky schemes. Burying money and valuables in the ground was the usual and prudent practice in the ancient world – so those listening to Jesus’ parable would have expected the master to praise the third servant, and were most likely astonished that praise was given to the other two.

Clearly, something else is going on here. A “talent” in ancient times is estimated to be the wages that a day laborer would have earned in 15 years. This amount of money is so incredibly large that we can assume that Jesus isn’t really talking about cash. In the story, Jesus even refers to the equivalent of millions of dollars as “a few things”.

One of the differences between this parable and others that Jesus tells about money is that here Jesus is clear that these servants are stewards, not owners. It’s not their own money that they are managing. Even after the first two make a 100% return on the investment and they are put “in charge of many things”, they still remain servants and stewards.

Here’s another retelling of the story. Once upon a time, God granted talent in music to a little girl. She loved to sing, and she practiced diligently and studied music. She overcame her initial fear of performance by singing in an empty auditorium filled with her stuffed animals. The more she practiced and the more she performed before a live audience, the more her skill and talent grew.

There was also a boy who had a gift in mathematics. He studied and got a graduate degree, and decided to teach rather than work in an accounting firm. He earned less by teaching, but he loved it, and he learned more and more about how to explain mathematical principles and how to share his gift to others.

Once upon another time, God granted talent in languages to a young man. He became a missionary in a far-off land, and began to study the language of the people. He realized that there was no published grammar of that language, so he began to write a comprehensive grammar. He worked on this grammar for many years, but he never finished it and he never learned to speak the language. When the church officials questioned him about this, eventually it came out that he was unable to overcome his fear of making a mistake, and so he was not able to minister to the people. Eventually, he was called home. (By the way, this is a true story.)

So what if the singer went flat during a performance? And what if the missionary had, after all, made a mistake in pronunciation? It might well have endeared him to his flock!

There was a priest who used to serve a Chinese congregation in New York, and she learned to say, “the body of Christ”. There are nine tones in Cantonese, and when she was slightly off on the tone, she ended up saying, “the garlic of Christ”. What mattered was that she was trying!

Not only was the money that Jesus described ridiculously large, but also the return. Not even day-traders or slot machine players can expect to make a net gain of 100%. The story is fantastic to illustrate the point that it’s not really God’s audit of the balance sheet that is important, but how greatly we trust, how well we love, how completely we use and give away our talents. What if the first two stewards had lost rather than earned money? The point may well be that that couldn’t happen to their God-given talents, which are always given in exuberant abundance and are always a renewable and expanding resource.

Here is a rewording of the conclusion of this parable: from those who have no trust, and hide God’s gifts in fear, even the talents that they have will fade from disuse, like pearls stored in a safe deposit box. But to all those who have trust in God, more will be given and they will receive an abundance of grace. With trust in God there will always be enough, and as counterintuitive as this is – the more we are generous, the more abundance we will receive. What matters, in the Kingdom of God, is being “trustworthy” of stewardship: trusting in God’s infinite compassion, and thriving in the warmth of God’s generosity and grace and trust in us.

All Saints Sunday, Year A, Sun Nov 6, 2011

2011-11-09T13:15:00.001-08:00

Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

In the Episcopal Church we remember, or commemorate, certain special people on assigned days during the church year. Some of these people are the traditional saints of the universal Church, such as Saint Francis, and some are specific to the Episcopal Church or Anglican Communion. There are many new names that have been added to our calendar in recent years, and some of these are people most of us have never heard of.

I thought it might be good and worthy to start a new tradition at All Saints, and to feature one of these new people on All Saints Sunday, and even from time to time during the year. Many of them have fascinating stories: some had very special talents for ministry, and others were more or less ordinary people who found themselves in a unique situation for ministry and service to the Church.

This year I’d like to tell you the story of a very special “saint” of the Anglican Communion. The Holy Spirit blows where God wills, and this is amply demonstrated by the very unlikely story of the first woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion. The Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi was born in Hong Kong in 1907. In spite of the tradition in China to show preference to sons, her father named her “Much Beloved Daughter”. Tim-Oi was drawn to the church while she was a student, and she took the baptismal name of Florence, in honor of Florence Nightingale.

In 1931 she attended a service for the deaconal ordination of an English woman at the cathedral in Hong Kong. In his homily, the bishop asked if there might be a Chinese woman who also felt called to give herself to service in the church? Tim-Oi says that she immediately knelt down and prayed to God for guidance, and this was the beginning of her discernment of vocation. When she announced her decision to study theology to her family, one of her sisters said, “Are you going to be a Bible woman?!” Still, her family supported her desire to study for service in the church.

WW II started while she was at theological school. She led a group of students in assisting bombing victims, and she narrowly escaped becoming a casualty herself. After graduation, she began her ministry at a parish in Kowloon and then another in Macao. Because of the Japanese occupation, the priests in Hong Kong were unable to travel to Macao to celebrate the Eucharist, so Tim-Oi began to function as their priest, with the full knowledge of the bishop of Hong Kong, Ronald Hall. Tim-Oi didn’t know that Bishop Hall had already been in conversation with other clergy about the ordination of women, and that they had reached the conclusion that some bishop would need to be the first to do it. He became aware of Li Tim-Oi’s ministry, and decided that she should be ordained to the priesthood, since she was in effect already serving as a priest.

On January 25, 1944, Florence Li Tim-Oi was ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Church. Bishop Hall said later that this ordination was only confirming what the Holy Spirit had already ordained. She served her parish for several years, and there is a wonderful photo of her, a lovely young woman in an alb and stole, surrounded by her vestry, who were half women and half men. By the end of the World War II, her ordination to the priesthood had come to the attention of the See of Canterbury, and Bishop Hall was challenged either to resign as a bishop or for Tim-Oi to renounce her Orders. As a result, she did resign her license as a priest, to protect Bishop Hall, but she never renounced her Holy Orders. She continued to serve a congregation near Vietnam, where she started a large maternity home and a school, which is still operating today.

When the Communists came to power in China in 1949, all the clergy were sent for re-education. The pressure to give up her faith became so great that at one point Tim-Oi considered suicide. Then, she says, the Holy Spirit spoke to her and said, “What are you thinking? You are a priest!” Many years later she was asked how she kept her faith during this time, and her answer was: “I just went up the mountain to pray. Nobody knew.” She was assigned to a farm, where her responsibility was feeding chickens. Later she was sent to work in a factory, and in 1974 she was allowed to retire. In 1979, the churches in China reopened, and Tim-Oi resumed her ministry. In 1981 she immigrated to Canada, where, to her great joy, she was licensed as a priest. She served at the Cathedral in Toronto until her death on February 26, 1992.

This is just the outline of her story. Her story comes to life in a film called “Return to Hepu” which chronicles a visit she made to China after she had settled in Canada. In one scene in the film, we see her visiting a leper colony where she had served so many years before. In this scene, she is recognized by a number of the patients who are all gathered to greet and honor her. We see her as a friend greeting old friends; we see her as an honored guest; we also see her as a priest who is nurturing and gathering her flock. In another scene, we see her singing a hymn with a small group of people who had been members of her parish. One man begins to cry quietly as he remembers the time when the churches were closed and they were not permitted to practice their faith.

The ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi to the sacred priesthood is of the greatest importance because her ordination helps to give us the image of full and complete humanity that is a true reflection of the image of Christ. As a result, we may come a bit closer to understanding the full and complete and universal offering of the salvation of God. Her ordination was of great importance but also, in another sense, it was of humble importance. She was the first woman priest, and she was also just a faithful servant of God, constant in her faith, giving service to her people and to God. Tim-Oi spoke of herself in humble words: “I am just an earthen vessel with God’s treasure inside me”. She may have seen herself as a humble, earthen vessel, but it seems she was exactly the right person, at the right time to be a model of Christ’s priesthood, in China, and for all times and for all people.

The Rev. Li Tim-Oi is just one of many “saints” of the Church, and one of the multitudes of the children of God. In the book “Holy Women Holy Men”, which lists all the saints and commemorations of the Episcopal Church, the introduction reads as follows: “The Church is ‘the communion of Saints’, that is, a people made holy through their mutual participation in the mystery of Christ. The communion exists through history, continues in the present, and endures beyond the grave and gate of death into heaven, for God is not a God of the dead but of the living, and those still on their earthly pilgrimage continue to have fellowship with those whose work is done.” (HWHM, 742)

As we here at All Saints Episcopal Church are striving in our own little corner of God’s vineyard, we are also journeying in companionship with a continuous multitude of others who have gone before and will come after. They too had and will have their struggles and triumphs, in their own time. We are all saints, and we are all blessed with gifts of the spirit and gifts for service, given to us that we may share and offer of our selves to one another, and for the building up of God’s kingdom here on earth.

Pentecost 20, proper 26, Year A, Sun Oct 30, 2011

2011-11-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

Joshua 3:7-17; Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12

There is a story of a spiritual teacher who was approached by the mother of a young child. The mother asked the teacher to tell her child that it would be better not to eat sweets. The teacher told the mother that he would talk with the child in three weeks time. So the mother and the child went away, and they came back three weeks later. Then the teacher advised the child that it would be better not to eat sweets. The mother asked the teacher privately why he had asked them to go away and wait and then come back three weeks later. The teacher replied that before he could tell the child not to eat sweets, first he needed to stop eating sweets himself.

Jesus said to the crowds, “Practice what you preach” (Matt 23:3). Don’t just talk the talk, but also walk the walk. St. Francis said it too: “Preach always; if necessary, use words.”

At the Upper South Carolina Diocesan convention (held week before last), there was one question which was posed and that has remained on my mind: “What is a mature disciple?” We came up with some qualities that a mature disciple might have: a mature disciple would read the Bible and be prayerful and be faithful in following Christ. It seems to me also that a “mature disciple” would not seek acclaim or recognition for themselves, but only the glory of God. A “mature disciple” would be one who preaches and teaches first and foremost with their actions and their way of life, and occasionally, as necessary, with words.

I’d like to tell you two stories about walking the walk and about discipleship. The first is the story of Oseola McCarty, who was born in 1908 and lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She attended school through the sixth grade, but left school to care for her aunt who needed home care. She never went back to school, but became a washerwoman, like her grandmother, and continued this work until she retired because of arthritis in 1994, at the age of 86.

As a small child she was taught to save money, and as a young person she opened a bank account at First Mississippi National Bank. Over the years she opened several other bank accounts, including one at Trustmark National Bank. She lived frugally and simply. She never owned a car and walked everywhere she went, including a one-mile walk to the grocery store. She did ride with friends to church. She never subscribed to a newspaper and watched a black and white TV. In 1947, her uncle gave her the house in which she lived in until her death in 1999. Eventually bank personnel noticed that her savings were accumulating. They began to assist her in planning for the future and became unofficial guardians for her. At one point some bank officials and friends did convince her to buy small air conditioners for her house and to install cable TV.

The bank officials and a lawyer helped her decide how she would set up a trust using dimes. They gave her 10 dimes, and asked her to whom she would like each dime to go. She set aside one dime for her church, one dime for each of three relatives, and she decided to give the remaining six dimes to the University of Southern Mississippi. The terms of her will specified that these funds should be used for student scholarships, especially for students of African-American descent. She wanted others to have opportunities that she never had.

In 1995, the story of her bequest became public, and it was estimated that the amount the University of Southern Mississippi would receive at her death would be $150,000. She received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including one from Harvard University, the Presidential Citizens Medal, and the Avicenna Medal for educational commitment from the United Nations.

The second story is of a person of considerable financial means. Leonard Abess studied at the Wharton School of business, and started his career in the print shop of City National Bank of FL, which had been co-founded by his father. In 1984, at age 35, Abess became one of the youngest bank chairmen in the US. He built up the bank from $400 million in assets to $2.75 billion.

In 2006, he donated $5 million to establish the Abess Center for Ecosystems Science and Policy at the University of Miami, as well as funding other environment research organizations. Then in November 2008, Abess sold his share of a banking group, and from the proceeds of the sale gave $60 million to the 399 current staff and 72 former employees. If we do the math, that is $127,388 per person. He didn’t tell anyone about these gifts, but eventually the press heard of it. When he was interviewed, he said, “I knew some of these people since I was seven years old. It didn’t feel right getting the money myself.” He was honored in President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on February 24, 2009.

Abess gave out of wealth; McCarty gave out of her poverty. Both are examples of quiet, selfless dedication to serving and making the world a better place. Both are servant leaders, following a model most perfectly demonstrated by Jesus.

Joshua was seen by the Israelites as the leader designated by God to follow in the role of Moses because he replicated the miracle at the Red Sea. It was an outward sign to confirm the blessing of God. The Pharisees also wanted outward signs of their spiritual status. They wanted to be seen as leaders by wearing prayer shawls with long fringes and broadly visible phylacteries (little boxes containing verses from the Torah). Rather than seeking “the place of honor at banquets and the best seats”, and rather than seeking the name of “rabbi” or “teacher” or “father”, the true disciple of Jesus gives of his or her gifts quietly and without thought of reward.

Over the next few weeks we will be hearing from each other about our own stewardship practices here at All Saints Episcopal Church. When we hear “stewardship season”, we may immediately think of being asked to give money, and the stories I’ve told today are about giving money. But stewardship doesn’t start with money, although pledging our financial support for the coming year may be an outcome. Stewardship is primarily a spiritual practice, which includes giving thanks to God for all God’s gifts, followed by giving back of ourselves in many ways: in time and talent and prayers and service as well as in finances.

Stewardship means truly caring about one another, and about our community of faith. Stewardship means giving of our selves out of whatever situation of God’s abundance we find ourselves. Stewardship is one of the primary callings of a Christian, because it helps us focus on our own lack of personal ownership, our own lack of control over our lives and others, and our own lack of power within ourselves, since our power and strength and all that we “own” are from God.

In the coming weeks, I invite us all to pray and think about how we might give thanks for God’s abundance and how we might share these riches with others. As we think about helping each other to grow into mature discipleship, we are called above all else to put our full trust in God’s abundance and love. Giving is an ultimate act of trust that what we give will return to us transformed into gifts of the heart and spirit that will be more abundant and more nourishing and sustaining than we can possibly imagine.

Pentecost 19, proper 25, Year A, Sun Oct 23, 2011

2011-10-23T13:38:00.001-07:00

Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46

As the Israelites entered the plains of Moab, Moses climbed the mountains opposite Jericho, and from there he could see the promised land. From the top of the mountain, God said to Moses, now you can see the land, but you will not cross the Jordan River and you will not go there yourself.

We can just imagine the gentle sadness of that moment, when Moses saw the long-awaited goal but knew that he would not live to walk on that land himself. The next generation of Israelites would cross over and live in the land. And the mantle of leadership would pass from Moses to Joshua son of Nun.

In the Gospel reading for today, we are also on the cusp of transition in the life of Jesus and his disciples. The reading ends with Jesus trumping the Pharisees, yet again, and after this they did not “dare to ask him any more questions.” (Matt 22:46) The discussion and debate are over, the questions ended, and the authorities decided from this time on that he was just too dangerous. This was the beginning of his journey to the cross.

We can be certain that the disciples didn’t see it coming. The Israelites could see Moses getting older and older, but they may not have wanted to see the inevitable change in their leadership, or at least they didn’t know when it would happen. It is human nature to resist change at least to some degree.

Yet all organizations do change, with or without a change in leadership. There is a life cycle for organizations that moves through a period of decline before there can be a rebirth. Sometimes a seed must fall to the earth and die before it can bring forth new fruit. The seed itself is the core, that which needs to be identified, cherished, and preserved. It is the central mission and the most precious heritage, which helps a group stay together, stay focused, and make the transition to the next stage of life.

As Jesus neared the end of his ministry, he gave final teachings that would become the core of the Christian faith. While it was customary for Jewish teachers to summarize their teachings in easy-to-remember formulas, the core teaching of Jesus was unique to him. As far as we know, he was the only one to put together the two parts of the “golden rule” in exactly the way that he did.

He drew the golden rule from two separate writings in the Hebrew scripture. First, he recited from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” His audience might also have known the verses which follow: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:6-9).

Then Jesus drew the second part of the golden rule from Leviticus: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord” (Lev 19:18). In Leviticus, the neighbor is among “your people”; for Jesus, the neighbor was anyone, including also the foreigner and stranger.

The core teaching became: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor in the context of loving God. These are two equal commandments, of equal importance and inseparable. For Jesus, they were the foundation for all the rest of the Jewish Law and prophecy. For Christians, they are our calling, and an impossible yet perpetual challenge, that will always lead us to Christ.

When we love God, we are also leaning towards loving all of creation, including our neighbor. And when a “neighbor” is thirsty, or hungry, or suffering – we all take part in some way in that suffering. There is no compromise: our “neighbor” is any other human being; loving our “neighbor” may require all the effort of learning and listening and trying to walk in another’s shoes. Then, we can begin to learn how to love the farther neighbor, the stranger neighbor, the less loveable neighbor, even the outright hostile neighbor. When we strive to love another, any other, with all our hearts and mind and strength, then inevitably we are learning to love God.

Before the end of his earthly life, Jesus amended the golden rule, to stretch the standard of love even farther. Not only are we to love our far-away neighbor as ourselves, but also we are to love with the self-giving love of Christ. His final commandment was: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34b).

This is the core of Christian faith and life. This is the center, which always holds and always can carry us through any life challenges or change. This is the standard beyond our humble abilities, and yet it is possible in Christ.

The annual convention of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina met yesterday, and it is apparent that among us we have many different ideas and convictions. What was stressed at the convention, however, was our common ground in Christ, and the discussion focused mostly on core areas of ministry.

I can say honestly that I am very pleased to be here in USC during this time, and for the leadership of Bishop Waldo. The differences that we have will stretch us, challenge us to look deeply in our hearts and ponder our faith, and, God willing, will draw us back to the core principle of Christian faith. Above all else, we are called to love God and one another as love of self, and even as Christ loved us. We are called to love with all our hearts, and souls, and minds.

We may well not be able, always, to do this perfectly. But whenever we come together to pray together, serve together, and to share the Eucharistic feast together, we come welcome Christ to dwell in us and we in him. We are all accepted into life in him and drawn together into his kingdom. Whatever in the world attempts to pull us apart or to dampen the spirit of faith, we have a source for renewal of commitment to faith in Christ -- and to one another.

As we come together to share in the body and blood of Christ, we can no longer be hungry or thirsty, or alone, or separate. We come to meet and to receive the one who lived and died as one of us and for us, the one who loved us first with all His heart and soul and mind and strength. Then we become truly one in the love of neighbor and truly one in the love of God.

Pentecost 18, proper 24, Year A, Sun Oct 16, 2011

2011-10-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

In today’s reading from Exodus, we have a supreme example of the steadfast love and patience of God. Anyone else would certainly have given up on Moses long ago, but God persists in supporting him. God is quite clear in saying, “I will continue to support you and my presence will go with you.” But this just doesn’t register with Moses, and Moses says to God, “If your presence is not with us, then let’s forget the whole thing.” God says again, “Read my lips: I’m going with you. I’ll do everything you ask. You have favor in my sight. I know you by name.” (Yes, God might say to God’s self, I know this guy only too well.)

But Moses won’t let up. Although he has been conversing with God for days and weeks on the mountain, and God has given him signs and every assurance, still Moses asks for more confirmation of God’s support, and he asks to see God’s face. That’s where the line is drawn. God said to Moses, I’ll do anything else you ask, but “you cannot see my face”.

In today’s Gospel reading there yet is another reference to seeing a face – the face of the emperor. The Pharisees are out to trip up Jesus yet again, and they start with an ingratiating introduction: “Oh, teacher, you are so sincere and truthful in your teaching, and you are always impartial in your approach.” Then they slip in a zinger: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” If Jesus says “Yes, pay the tax”, he would be acknowledging the authority of the Romans, and especially the emperor, who claimed to be divine. If he says, “No, don’t pay the tax”, he’ll be in trouble with the Roman authorities.

Rather than fall into the trap, Jesus asked them to look at a denarius, which was a Roman coin and which was the amount of tax that each adult living under Roman rule was required to pay. Jesus held up the coin for all in the crowd to see. On the denarius, was the face of the emperor Tiberius and an inscription (in Latin): “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest”.

Jesus’ question is usually translated: “Whose face is on this coin?” or “Whose image is on this coin?” It’s a bit strange to me that I have never seen the Greek word used in an English translation of this verse. The Greek word used in this passage for “face” or “image” is one that we all know well. It is a word with rich connotations, especially for us today. Using the Greek word, the phrase would read, “Whose icon is on this coin?”

At the time that this passage was written, the word “icon” was not yet used for paintings of saints in the orthodox tradition, nor in the even more recent usage of “icon” as a paradigm of virtue or of an enduring symbol. In Jesus’ time it simply meant the reproduction of a human face in paint or sculpture or relief.

An “icon” was exactly what was prohibited of the Jewish people for their worship. The God of Moses had told them explicitly that they could not see the face of God and they were not to worship any created image representing God. The image of the so-called divine emperor on the coin was in every way an affront to Jewish sensibilities. The coin was not only a coin of the Roman occupation; the image of the emperor on the coin implied the power of the emperor, to command loyalty and worship, as well as payment of the tax.

Jesus made a clear distinction between the emperor’s coin and what belongs to God. Jesus told the crowd, and the Pharisees, to give back to the emperor what was already his. He then told them to give to God “the things that are God’s.”

We do know what things are God’s: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it; the world and all who dwell therein.” (Psalm 24:1) All of the earth, sea, sky, and all creatures are created by God and belong to God. All of our skill, all our time of life, all that we are, all that is ours – really belongs to God, and is given into our safe keeping and for our use and joy, from God.

We know this well, but how well do we remember and how do we apportion our time, gifts, talent, wealth? Recently I learned about a type of budgeting called “abundance budgeting”. It is based on the theory that all our wealth and resources belong to God, and there is a always abundance with God. The budget process starts with a decision on how much to give to each category: for a church budget that might include maintenance, administration, salaries, music, outreach. A decision could be made first on the percentage that would go to each category, and after that the funds would be apportioned.

Recently I got a traffic ticket. I changed lanes where I shouldn’t have (and I still think it wasn’t really my fault because the sign isn’t clear). Paying the ticket from my stipend was painful, but the emperor must be paid. The hardest part is in fully rendering that payment, and letting the money and the whole situation go. The hardest part is to remember that all this has nothing whatsoever to do with the life of the spirit, and has nothing whatsoever to do with rendering to God what is God’s.

When things get complicated and when we get muddled in the complexities and messiness of life, and when the demands of the emperor seem overwhelming, we can try to remember that we are only returning to the emperor what is his own. We are giving back what has been imprinted with the icon of a false idol.

In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote: “You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia… [and] in every place your faith in God has become known” (1 Thess 1:7-8). They became examples to each other of living in Christ, and found that in each other they could see the divine face.

We are God’s own, created in the image of God, and imprinted with the icon of the living God. Even when we fall away, fall into sin, forget ourselves and who we are – each person is still God’s own beloved, and each person is redeemed in Christ. We do, after all, see the face of God in Jesus, and through him we can see the divine in each other and in all creation.

Pentecost 17, proper 23, Year A, Sun Oct 9, 2011

2011-10-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

That poor guy without a wedding garment! I’ve never had a really good fashion sense, and this story reminds me of all the times I’ve shown up at some event, either over or under-dressed. What embarrassment – should one pretend that jeans are the latest in evening wear? Or that a silk dress is what you always wear to a picnic?

It seems that the point of the parable is not that this person was so poor that he didn’t have a wedding garment (that’s just not Jesus’ style), or that the wedding garment rental place was closed, or that the person didn’t know what was expected. Of course people know that they are expected to present themselves appropriately for a king’s banquet.

To make this possible, some believe that in ancient times there were wedding robes made available for guests at the door. If the guests didn’t have something appropriate of their own, or if they were attending at the last minute, they could put on the wedding robe as they entered. So it was a conscious choice of this guest to ignore the offered robe.

As usual, Jesus is telling this parable to challenge the Temple authorities, and is warning them that if they do not accept the invitation, others will be invited instead. And, even if they do show up for the party, getting in the door is no guarantee that they will be able to stay.

Now, I’m no fan of the images of outer darkness and gnashing teeth. Most of us have plenty to gnash teeth about in ordinary daily life, without the possibility of more of the same in the life everlasting. But what I do find compelling about this parable is the open invitation to everyone. The king’s servants are sent out to wander the streets and highways, and to invite to the banquet absolutely everybody they meet.

Today we also open our weekly celebration and banquet to the beautiful, loving creatures who are our friends and companions. It’s a very special occasion to welcome them in person and in photos and in our hearts to this sacred space. It’s a day to celebrate them and to give thanks to God for the delight and companionship which we share with them. It’s also a day to remember our companion animals who have passed on.

Many years ago I had a cat named Penny, who was a very special cat. She was a rescue cat, and when she came to me she was a skinny mess. She never got over her fear of going hungry, and she could hear a can opener through three closed doors. One day when I came home from work, she was sitting on top of the table by the front door. When I came into the house, she sat back on her haunches, and put out her arms as if to say, “my person, please pick me up!”

Today we celebrate these special animals and give thanks that they are or have been in our lives, and even like members of our families. We learn of love and devotion from them that is its own kind of holiness and purity of spirit. There is a kind of direct honesty about animals – they simply are themselves.

We celebrate our animals and all creation following in the tradition of St. Francis, who had a special connection and love of the natural world. With great joy, he celebrated all creatures of the earth, even the less lovable animals. There is a story about St. Francis and a wolf. This wolf was lingering outside the gates of the village of Gubbio, ready to feast on livestock or any person who ventured out alone.

The villagers were terrified, so Francis decided he would go and reason with the wolf, and although many tried to dissuade him, he made the sign of the cross, and set out to find the wolf. When the wolf saw Francis coming towards him, he rushed toward Francis with his mouth open and fangs bared, but Francis made the sign of the cross as the wolf approached and asked the wolf to stop his attacks in the name of God. Then the wolf came forward meekly and lay down at Francis’ feet.

Francis called him “Brother Wolf,” and told him that he had done wrong to kill. Francis promised that the wolf would be forgiven if he would mend his ways, and never again attack any human or animal. In return Francis promised that the villagers would feed the wolf every day and he would never be hungry again. The wolf expressed his agreement by putting his paw in Francis’ hand. The pact was sealed. Then they walked together into the village, the wolf tagging along meekly at Francis’ side. The new arrangement worked; the villagers continued to feed the wolf, and he was never destructive again. Even this scruffy, ferocious wolf was seen by Francis as one of God’s precious creatures.

All are invited to the wedding feast, and along with the invitation, all are called to see, to honor, and to respect that an invitation to God’s banquet is an invitation into holy space. We could imagine that every Sunday we have an invitation to a royal wedding in Westminster abbey or a state dinner at the White House. But this invitation is to God’s banquet, so we don’t need to wear fascinator hats, or a tux, or anything fancy. We can come as we are.

The difference is that at this banquet, we will not stay as we are. At the door of the church, we are offered a wedding garment that is a robe of forgiveness and a covering of grace. We are invited to bring all that is burdensome and all that is weighing us down, and at this banquet the weight will be shared, lifted up, and offered into God’s hands. We are invited to this banquet of abundant joy and love in Christ’s name. We are invited to transformation in Christ.

We are invited to put aside what is not holy – as the ancient Hebrews put aside the golden earrings made into a golden idol. We are then invited to wear this sacred garment of transformation as we go into the world, so that we may see the holy in everyone we meet, in the beauty of creation, and even in the midst of all the messiness of life.

The invitation to God’s banquet is not only an invitation to church on Sunday and into consecrated space; it is not only an invitation to prepare for eternal life. It is also an invitation into joy all the days of our lives and into the sacred space that is all of God’s creation. Let us rejoice and give thanks for all that is true, and honorable, and just, and pure, and pleasing, and commendable, and excellent, and worthy of praise – which we receive through the God of peace, who created all life, and who redeems all, and whose love abides with us forever.

Pentecost 16, proper 22, Year A, Sun Oct 2, 2011

2011-10-05T12:24:00.001-07:00

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

In ancient times, the Hebrew people sang psalms which spoke of the perfection of God’s Law. Today’s psalm reads:
The law of the LORD is perfect and revives the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure and gives wisdom to the innocent. The statutes of the LORD are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear and gives light to the eyes.

Another psalmist sang, “O how I love your Law, it is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). It’s hard to imagine “loving” laws and thinking about law all the time (unless one is a very dedicated law student or practitioner). However, I think perhaps what the psalmists meant was that the Law of YHWH was a gift to the people of Israel, to guide them in what God wanted of them, and to gather the people to faithfulness to their own God, YHWH, as opposed to all the many gods of other peoples.

The ten commandments were the core of the Law, and were founded on basic principles of justice and right living, which are commonly found in ancient law codes. But more significantly, these commandments were centered on the worship of this one, particular God, the God of Israel. And this God was not to be worshipped through any idol or image or statue or any thing created by human hands – however beautiful or precious. Only God should be worshipped. Even the Name of God was so holy that it must not be misused, and should not even be spoken aloud.

The ten commandments, and the 613 other dos and don’ts that followed to make up the Jewish Law, were impossible to follow perfectly. Even Paul, claiming that he was perfect before the Law, found in Christ that he could not be perfect in every way that was pleasing to God. The psalmist was touching on this when he wrote,
Who can tell how often [I] offend? Cleanse me from my secret faults. Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense.

Paul had it all as a Jew and as a Pharisee. He had a good life; he had complete confidence in his faith and tradition; he had the support and acclaim of his peers and teachers. He called himself not only “righteousness under the law” but even “blameless”. Yet – in his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ, he realized that all that he had been was “rubbish” and “loss”, and that he had no “righteousness of his own” after all. Complete righteousness, he wrote, comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul had had a powerful conversion experience, literally knocked to the ground and blinded by the force of a vision. He continued to live into the implications of this experience by leaving his former life and convictions entirely, giving up everything that he had valued and eventually even his life, for Christ. What Paul had formerly rejected, became for him the chief cornerstone. And he admitted, in today’s passage, that his transformation in Christ was still not complete. “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own”.

If I had to choose one verse of all of scripture that is the most important for me, I think it would be Paul’s statement: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection”. How can we know Christ? For some of us there may be a sudden experience, as there was for Paul and as there was, for example, for John Wesley who founded the Methodist Church. As Wesley listened to scripture at a church on Aldersgate Street, he spoke of a moment when his “heart was strangely warmed” and through this new experience he began to understand the power of God’s love and salvation through Jesus Christ.

Some weeks ago, several of us had a conversation after church about why we go to church, and whether we can’t just be good people. Every week I try to answer that question – so that you and I will be here and be in community for each other, with the conscious intention of growing in faith and in knowing Jesus Christ. We are here – and I am here – to keep learning how to do this and to keep affirming our experiences of Christ.

I haven’t yet told you how I really came to know Jesus, but today’s the day. From childhood, I always loved to go to church, I said my prayers, I thought I was a faithful Christian. Then there was a period of time when I left church because of a hurtful experience with a particular priest, and instead I went jogging on Sunday mornings and started to explore my own spiritual journey and occasionally visited a wide range of houses of worship.

Eventually, I came back to the Episcopal Church, but kind of tentatively. Then one day my doctor found something worrisome. I was sent for tests, and more tests, and as this went on, the doctors faces started getting longer and more serious. They started to recommend invasive procedures and yet more tests. Although no one said so explicitly, I suddenly realized they thought I had cancer.

We’ve all heard the expression: live each day and each week and each month as if it were your last on earth. It’s not real – until it’s real. Suddenly this possibility was very real, and the next day I went to a weekday healing service. Only a few minutes into the service, well before the actual healing prayers and anointing, I had an experience of God. I’m not sure I can fully describe this experience, but I’ll try. I felt the presence of Christ all around me as if I had been immersed in the love of God. This love was so powerful, so all-encompassing and so freely offered, that I felt entirely supported and safe.

I had gone to the service with the intention to pray to be physically healed. But in that moment, it was entirely unimportant whether I lived out a longer life or not. Later I found out that I did not have cancer and that everything was working fine. But my soul was changed forever. From that moment I began to understand for the first time that God’s love for us in Christ is a gift of complete surrender and complete dedication, given without qualification, without condition, without limit. How we respond and live into this gift is the work of a life-time of prayer in our hearts and in community, and in service to others.

How we come to know Christ and the power of his resurrection may be different for each one of us. Some may be blessed with a one-time moment of grace; others may come to know Christ gradually in the day-to-day workings and ups and downs of life. Or a bit of both. What matters is that we hold and honor the precious gift of grace – which assures us that we are cherished beyond measure and loved beyond anything we can imagine. And once received – we are charged to give it away, in generosity and joy, by showing forth in the world all that we receive in spirit.

Pentecost 15, proper 21, Year A, Sun Sept 25, 2011

2011-09-25T14:13:00.001-07:00

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

Some of us may be old enough to remember a TV show of the 1950s and 60s called “This is Your Life”. An unsuspecting person was lured to the TV studio, and was surprised to learn that he or she would be the central figure of that show. Then people from their past would be brought on stage, one at a time.

I’m just back from visiting my son on Block Island, RI, and time in New York City. Every time I go up north, I try to cram in as many visits as I can with old friends and visits to favorite places. On this trip, my son and I ran into the parents of old friends of his. In NY, I visited with friends from my library days, and some from church connections, and some who remind me of my days of living overseas, and still others whom I have known since kindergarten. (Yes, really.) I can visit favorite places: my most favorite tree on the NJ Transit line to Morristown NJ; my favorite Indian restaurants (there are many); my favorite paintings at the museum.

Now that I’m living so far away, these visits are like a condensed version of “This is Your Life”. Each time I go back, it’s like a kaleidoscope of memories and experiences. If I haven’t seen someone for a while, they may have changed, dyed their hair, retired or changed jobs. I am often filled with thankfulness that these people are still in my life even though we don’t see each other in person very often. In some cases, when we get together again, it’s like no time at all has intervened.

On the other hand, sometimes I am suddenly struck by sadness and regret. There are some relationships which have not stayed close, and I realize that I could have done more to keep the relationship going. A librarian moved to a nursing home, and I haven’t kept in touch. A classmate since kindergarten has dropped out of my life. Another relationship grew distant, perhaps because of some misunderstanding, and I haven’t followed up to try to clear the air.

Jesus talks about two sons, one who says “Sure, Dad, I’ll go work in the fields,” but then he doesn’t do it; the other says “No, I don’t think so, not today”, but then he does go to work. Jesus is making the point that the chief priests and elders talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. The tax collectors and prostitutes, however, did believe in John the Baptist, they repented. The parable gives us a simple message: don’t just say you’ll do it, but put your body where your mouth is. As so often with the parables, there is a complex underlying reality to be explored as well. We are not one or the other, but we are both sons: we sometimes follow through with what we say we will do (or believe we ought to do), and sometimes not.

One who almost always talked the talk and walked the walk was Saint Francis. His life and ministry was based on complete consistency of his faith and his way of life. He read in the scriptures that Christ was completely poor, and so he believed that he and his brothers should also live in complete poverty. They were not to keep or even touch money. If any money came to them, they were to give it all away before sundown. They were not to own anything. Once a brother asked for a book of his own, and Francis said no, then he would want another and another.

Once the friars made a reference to the room where Francis was sleeping as “Francis’ cell”. After that he never stayed in that room again. His love of all creatures and determined poverty led him to the decision to eat no meat, yet once in his later years he did eat some chicken. Then he felt remorse, and pledged never to do so again. Towards the end of his life, the friars began to build a large church, and Francis despaired that they would begin to become attached to buildings, ease of life, and owning property.

Francis was as consistent as he could be in following Christ, and he made his decisions about how to live based on the life of Christ as he read in the scriptures. He walked the walk as much as he could. He is supposed to have said, “Preach always, use words when necessary”. His life was a sermon on following Christ as completely as possible, at least according to the way he felt called to do so. It was a hard life, and I wonder if sometimes even Francis had a hard time being “Francis”.

The ancient Hebrew people had the opportunity to flee from Egypt and be freed from their bondage, but once out of Egypt, freedom wasn’t so great after all. It was a hard life wandering in the desert. After the first flush of success, they ran into difficulties: hunger, thirst, long days traveling, and they began to remember fondly the “fleshpots” of Egypt. They were ready to give up their freedom rather than to persist in the hardship that would eventually, a generation later, bring them to the land of promise.

In the early Church, there was an ideal of what community in Christ should be like. St. Paul describes the ideal, in which the people are “all of one mind”, always loving one another selflessly, sharing their possessions, taking care of the poor and needy, and without one higher in status than another. Of course, it wasn’t really quite like that. We hear some of the reality of the early churches in his letters to the Corinthians, where the people were arguing and fussing with one another.

The Israelites said they wanted freedom, and the early Christians said they wanted to follow Christ. The actual follow-through was not so easy. We also pledge in our baptismal vows to turn away from evil and sin, to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, and to respect the dignity of every human being. We promise all this and much more. Above all, we promise to follow Jesus Christ.

The essence of who Jesus was is described in an ancient hymn which St. Paul quoted in the Philippians passage which we heard today. The Philippians hymn begins with these lines: “Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself….” This is the essence of who Jesus was. He was God, yet emptied himself of the divine privilege to become also fully human, and to experience the life of humankind, even giving himself up to death.

This is the essence of Christ, the one who emptied himself, whom we are called to follow, in our words and in all that we do. We can never quite do it all, completely and perfectly, and there will always be ways in which we fall short. And, there is a delicate balance in learning how to love ourselves (as well as our neighbors), and yet also empty ourselves of self-absorption.

We are not all called to be St. Francis, but we are called follow Christ, in the specific way that God calls each one of us, and there may be plenty of challenges along the way. With God’s help, we can do this and not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk. With God’s help, we can preach always, in the actions of our lives, and use words as necessary. With God’s help, we may become empty of self and full with the love and blessings of God.

Pentecost 13, proper 19, Year A, Sun Sept 11, 2011

2011-09-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Jesus said to forgive not just seven times, but seventy-seven times. At least seventy-seven times. Perhaps he just meant a very large number of times. There may be occasions to forgive the same person for different offenses, many times over. There may even be the need to renew continually, over and over again, our own resolve to forgive for just one event. Perhaps Jesus meant that forgiving never really ends.

Ten years ago, I was in New York. The horror of 9/11 has been well reported, as well as the heroism of the firemen and police and many others who responded on that day. We have heard a lot less about how it was in New York City in the days and weeks immediately after. In that huge, impersonal, jaded city, there was an outpouring of mutual support, kindness, and generosity. Among many other examples, two guys from New Jersey packed a truck full of bottled water, drove into the city, and brought them to St. Paul’s Chapel, next to Ground Zero. They just did this on their own. Like so many people, they wanted to do whatever they could.

I went by subway to St. Paul’s Chapel everyday for several weeks in my religious habit. In the subway station, the attendants waved me through the turnstile without paying a fare. One day I went into a convenience store, and another customer insisted on paying for me. I could hardly walk down a street, but people would stop me to tell their story, to pray, to cry. One woman told me that the last conversation she had with her father were angry words, and now she couldn’t say she was sorry. I listened; she cried, and then I suggested that she write a letter to her father, and say everything she would like to tell him. I suggested that if she would hold her words in prayer, he would hear.

There was a feeling in the air, in New York City, unlike anything I had ever felt before. People would look at each other; people were gentle with each other. Crime plummeted. Acts of kindness were evident everywhere. Before 9/11, I had been a member of a little group called: the Episcopal-Muslim Relations Committee of the Diocese of NY. We tried to get churches to invite us to come and talk about Islam, but no one was interested, not even at my own parish! Then, after 9/11, we were booked solid, to standing-room-only audiences because so many were puzzled, afraid, concerned, and wanted to learn more about Islam.

I became very concerned about the plight of Afghan women. I do speak Farsi, and one of the main languages of Afghanistan is Dari – which is closely related to Farsi. In 2003, I was sponsored by the Diocese of NY to go on a women’s delegation to Afghanistan. Since I had lived in Iran for many years, I expected Afghanistan to be quite similar. The culture is similar in some ways, but I was not prepared for the extreme poverty that we saw. I was astonished to learn of the depth of suffering that most of the women have endured, in the wars since the Russian invasion in 1979, and yet many of them are so strong and determined, and even resilient.

We visited a women’s center sponsored by Women for Women International. This is a program that is designed especially to help women who have lost their husbands and livelihood because of war. They register about 20 women at a time, and these women stay together in the program for a year. They start with rights-awareness training. The women tell their stories, and are astonished and encouraged to hear that others have suffered similar experiences. One of the women showed us a drawing her child had made, of a woman being beaten by a Talib.

We were able to sit in on one of these group meetings. We learned that these women had themselves reached the decision that they wanted to learn to read and write. So they stopped the rest of the lesson for that day so that each woman could learn to write her name. In addition to the rights awareness and literacy training, each woman also learns a craft so that at the end of the program she would be able to support herself. I asked the woman sitting next to me what craft she was learning, and she drew herself up to her full height, and answered, “We are just as good as our brothers, and I want to learn everything!”

We visited a school for teenage girls who had never been to school before, since under the Taliban it was prohibited for girls to study. We were there the first week that the school was open, and we saw 14 and 15-year-olds learning the alphabet. There was one blackboard in the room, but no chairs or desks or books. All the students were sitting on the floor facing the teacher. I asked the girls what they wanted for their school, and they all said, in unison, “Computer!”

I went to Afghanistan twice, in 2003 and 2004. As I prepared for the second trip, a number of my friends and colleagues wanted to make donations that I could give to projects there. At the end of the trip, I asked our guide to take me to the orphanage in Kabul. We talked with the director, and asked him what was most needed. It was not a good idea to give cash; instead we planned that we would find out what was needed and then go to buy it in the bazaar.

We came up with a shopping list: antibiotics, a new water pump, and a few such things. Then the director had an idea: they could all use new shoes. So we agreed to meet the next day in the bazaar. A teacher from the orphanage met us with a list of the numbers of boys and girls and their ages. We went from stall to stall bargaining, and ended up buying something like 800 pairs of shoes, to be delivered the following day.

The next day, the shoes were delivered, and all the children lined up by age. We had piles of shoes, and they came up in groups to be fitted. Not one child said, I want that color or this style. Some even started to walk away with shoes on their feet that didn’t fit! As all this was happening, I realized that this might have been one of the few times in their lives that they were given clothing that was new, bought specially for them.

9/11 is much more than just one landmark day in the history of our country. Along with all the suffering there is opportunity for new awareness, new relationships, new efforts and commitment to a peaceful future. Along with all the pain, there is the challenge to work towards forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. Forgiveness is not the same as condoning. Forgiveness is not the same as a verdict of “not guilty” – although God is the ultimate judge. And, forgiveness does not mean that that anger is wrong. Anger and hatred and fear are fully human emotions, and sometimes may be well justified.

But, if we hold onto and nurture anger and hatred and fear, and allow them to settle in the heart, and if we let them turn into desire for revenge, and if we celebrate the achievement of revenge – then these emotions are toxic to the soul. It is like taking poison, and expecting the other person to feel the results.

Jesus always raised the bar above what is easy or even seems possible, and yet, with God’s help, we are called to follow in the path of forgiveness and gentleness and peace. This is not easy, but it is also the way of the Incarnate One through whom there may be transformation of life, from anger to generosity, from fear to courage, and even from hatred to prayers for peace and goodwill.

Pentecost 12, proper 18, Year A, Sun Sept 4, 2011

2011-09-10T06:48:00.001-07:00

Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

At the convent, we now have several sisters who are becoming increasingly hard of hearing. They are in various stages of using, not using, or being frustrated with a wide range of hearing devices. When we have our group meetings, they are sometimes not able to hear what’s going on and they inevitably feel left out and frustrated. One time, in the midst of a long discussion, one of these sisters asked, quite sweetly and wistfully, “Do I need to know what you’re talking about?”

In today’s reading from the Book of Exodus, we might say that the Egyptians experience the ultimate “left out” situation. They didn’t get the memo. They didn’t know anything about putting a smear of lamb’s blood on the door frame to avert the angel of death. As a result, they woke up to find that their first-born children (and even first-born livestock) were dead. This was more than they could bear, and Pharaoh finally decided to let the Israelite people go.

The freeing of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt has become the quintessential, symbolic story of liberation. It is no longer about the people who were, or are today, citizens of Egypt. It might just as well have been the Ammonites, or the Moabites, or any other ancient people. The “Egyptians” in this story have become symbolic of whatever holds us back, and whatever separates us from true freedom, and whatever keeps us enslaved in old, unhelpful patterns and behaviors and beliefs.

One of the most powerful experiences of liberation has come to many in the struggle against addiction. I have a number of close friends who have become sober, and who have not only stopped drinking but who have also been freed from the control that alcohol had over their lives. Becoming sober has meant reconciling with the past and moving into new patterns of relationship, with God’s help, in the present.

For the members of the early Church, the new ways of being in community were also liberating. They were no longer bound by the many details of the Law of Moses and were no longer required to worship in a specific place through the mediation of the Temple authorities. The commandment to love their neighbor was a movement into the freedom to be brothers and sisters in Christ with all others, of whatever position in society and whatever race or nationality. With it, came the responsibility to give and ask for forgiveness.

Not always easy to do. From the beginning, there was an ideal of Christian community, and then there was the reality of getting along with one another. In today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, we have a little snippet of a procedure manual for dealing with interpersonal conflict within the community. Start with a one-on-one conversation – that’s always good advice. Jesus says, “point out the fault when the two of you are alone”. Who knows, there could even be two sides to the story, and this will give both a chance to talk and to listen to one another.

If the conflict remains, after this conversation between just two, Jesus advises to bring “two or three witnesses” for the next intervention. Also a good idea. If the problem begins to escalate, it’s good to have witnesses, rather than just “he said”, “she said”. If one side, or both sides, are still refusing to listen and they dig in their heels, then the next step would be to “tell it to the church”, and bring the issue in front of everyone in the community.

Ouch. Most anyone, we might think, would try to avoid such public discussion of whatever the problem might be. This mini-procedure manual goes on to say: “If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”. As the “Egyptians” were left out in the cold, so also the “offender” within the Church is to be put outside of the community.

Ouch again. In principle, any separation hurts; in practice, it may be a necessary step, but not the end of the story. We are not perfect; the Church is not perfect, but only made up of all its human members. Where there is controversy, there may be error and even sinfulness. Also, in the 12-step programs, there are limits, and there are times for tough love.

However, we can be sure that when a community gathers, prayerfully and intentionally, in Christ’s name, and when there is attentive and open-minded listening to one another, we may be able to hear and understand the movement of the Spirit of God. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

Unless we live in a bubble, fallings out will happen. Sometimes at the convent! Often in the church. Maybe even here at All Saints. Perhaps in our families and with friends. We can follow the policy and procedure manual of Matthew, and try to speak directly to one another. We can widen the number of people involved, if that is appropriate. We need above all to listen to one another – notice that the person who is to be put out is the one who “refuses to listen”. What we cannot reconcile, we can turn over to the care of God and trust in God for resolution.

Jesus never avoided controversy. And he never avoided the tax collectors or sinners, or eventually even the Gentiles. Rather, these were the very ones he sought out and dined with and taught and healed. These were the ones he most wanted to gather into the kingdom of God. The ones put out of the church, the ones who are to be to the church as “tax collectors and Gentiles”, are exactly the people Jesus said he came to serve.

Jesus himself was the ultimate outsider. He stood up against the most powerful empire of his day and against all the Temple authorities. To the end of his earthly life, he was consistent in his attention to the needs of the poor, the sick, women, children, lepers, and any others who were “enslaved” by their situation. He didn’t impose his teachings or healings, but always asked “What do you want me to do for you?” He noticed, and he listened.

Many years ago, when I was working at a medical library, they held a reception in the library for the chairman of the department of medicine at his retirement. He was presented with a rare book, and the most important people at the hospital were invited. I was just a little reference librarian, so in the presence of all these dignitaries I was standing by myself to one side. The doctor who was being honored noticed that I was standing alone; he left the others and came over, took me by the arm, and led me into the center of the group. I was so touched that he would even notice, let alone do anything about including me. It was a truly Christ-like gesture.

Jesus was the ultimate outsider and as such I think he especially understood what it was like for others to be abandoned, alone, and enslaved. In his death and resurrection, the blood of the lamb becomes power to free, and to heal, and to reconcile, in his love. What we are not able to heal, by ourselves, we can turn over to God and trust that in God’s own time, there will be a resolution that is in accord with the great love and mercy and compassion and ultimate freedom that is of God.

Pentecost 11, proper 17, Year A, Sun Aug 28, 2011

2011-09-10T06:47:00.001-07:00

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

If we were to try to summarize the core questions of the Bible, they might be as follows. The Hebrew scriptures ask: Who is God? The New Testament asks: Who is Jesus?

First, who is God? In ancient times, people believed in many gods, and each nation or tribe had their own principal god, who was presumed would be on their side if given appropriate honor and sacrifices. These gods were prayed to for healing, success, victory in war, a good harvest, or for whatever else people wanted. So we hear about Baal of the Canaanites and Dagon of the Philistines and others.

Then there were also particular family gods – and we have a little glimpse of this when Jacob’s wife, Rachel, stole the household gods as she left her father’s house, and, so that her father Laban wouldn’t find out, she “sat on them”. Presumably these were little statues, and we can suppose that family members worshipped and prayed to these household gods, and they believed that these gods would bring good fortune, but it was still also ok to sit on them!

The passage that we heard today from the Book of Exodus marks the beginning of a profound change in the understanding of who God is. This is not a god who lives in a little statue, or a god to sit on, or to fool around with. This God is truly awesome, and makes himself known in burning flames of fire. “Come no closer”, God says to Moses, and “remove the sandals from your feet” because this God is too holy to approach or to look at, and even the ground near the divine presence has become sacred.

One of the first questions that Moses asks is basically, “Which god are you?” For Moses, “the god of our ancestors” isn’t precise enough – he needs a name to identify this god among all the others, and also he needs to know which god to call upon for help. This God is even too holy for a simple name. This is the one and only God, the Creator of all that is, and God’s name can only be described as: “I AM who I AM.”

Over time, the Israelites came to realize that God is not in a statue. God is not in an ordinary name that can be pronounced. God is awesome, and holy, and all-powerful, and also merciful and abounding in steadfast love. God is all this and more, beyond any human imagination. God simply is all being and all existence.

In Jewish worship, the name of God, written with the four letters YHWH, is never pronounced, but sometimes “Adonai” is said aloud instead, and sometimes “The Name”, or ha shem in Hebrew. Even the letters of “I am who I am” are never decorated, so that the beauty and honor and worship will be reserved for God alone.

The next question is: Who is Jesus? Last Sunday, Jesus asked this directly of the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter, true to form, jumped right in to say “You are the Messiah!” In this week’s lesson, Jesus is trying to explain that being the Messiah means that he will suffer, and be killed, and after three days he will be raised from the dead. But Peter was nonplussed. He cried, “God forbid! This must never happen!” He did not yet understand that the Messiah must not be an ordinary world ruler, limited to a kingdom in time and space, but instead the Savior must be for all people and must be the one who rules without limits of time or space or any human limitations.

Who is God? Who is Jesus? Why does this matter to us? In the total sweep of the Bible, we learn that God is the one all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good. Yet we also are aware, from the stories in the Bible as well as in our own world, that evil exists. How we deal with evil is addressed, as well as it can be, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Who is Jesus? He was perfectly sinless, yet the worst evil was brought upon him. In the face of misfortune, bad luck, tragedy, or any kind of evil – we don’t need to blame anyone’s sinfulness. We don’t need to ask “What did I do to deserve this?” We don’t need to ask why God is “punishing” anyone.

Some years ago when there was a major hurricane in Central America, and several clergy were interviewed on local radio. Most of them said something to the effect that God is punishing us for our sins. Then they interviewed the local Anglican bishop, who said simply, “It’s October and there are hurricanes”. Then he went on to describe the relief efforts sponsored by Episcopal Relief and Development. Jesus said approximately the same thing, in referring to the tower in Siloam which fell and killed 18 people. Jesus said, “Do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:4b)

Evil isn’t the “fault” of those afflicted. The enslavement of the Israelites wasn’t their fault or punishment by God for anything they had done, rather God tried to send Moses to gain their freedom. It’s hard to imagine a less likely candidate for this role: he was a fugitive, he was probably conflicted about whether he was really one of the Hebrews or an Egyptian, he was a poor speaker and perhaps even an introvert and slow thinker. In the passages following today’s reading, Moses tried every which way to get out of this mission. When all of his arguments have failed, Moses finally wailed, “O my Lord, please send someone else!” Jesus also, somewhat more eloquently, said the same thing: “May this cup pass from me.”

Who is Jesus? He is perfect sinlessness, and also perfect love. Not even Jesus could overcome the evil of his day with physical might or force or any reciprocal power. He overcame evil in complete surrender of his life, in the goodness of love. And this has the most profound meaning for us. It means that evil cannot be destroyed by more evil, or anger, or retribution.

It is a risk and a challenge to follow Jesus. He gave us commandments to feed the poor, to bless those who curse, to live at peace with all, and even to love our enemies and to pray for them. Two weeks from today will be Sunday, September 11th, 2011, which will be exactly 10 years after what we simply call 9/11. I’ve been asked to speak on a panel at ASU the Thursday evening before, and I’ve been asked to present a “spiritual” response. I don’t know yet what I will say, but I expect that the opening statement will be the most difficult 5 minute presentation I’ve ever made. Whatever I do decide to say will surely be based on Paul’s conviction that we can only “overcome evil with good”.

Who is God? God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-goodness. Who is Jesus? He is love, strength in weakness, power in surrender. What does this mean for us? A challenge to be transformed into holy people of God, generous, forgiving, courageous, and trusting in the eternal presence of God to hold us up and be with us always, even in the most difficult challenges of our lives, and to lead us in faithfulness and in the way of peace.

Pentecost 10, proper 16, Year A, Sun Aug 21, 2011

2011-08-21T17:19:00.001-07:00

Exodus 1:8—2:10; Psalm 124; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

Yesterday at the convent we held the funeral service for our sister Mary Michael. During the preceding week, I happened to be talking with my sister Carol Andrew, and she was pondering the choice of lessons for the service. The standard lessons suggested in the Book of Common Prayer are wonderful, such as “In my Father’s house there are many mansions… and I go to prepare a place for you…” (John 14:2), but somehow they didn’t quite fit for our sister.

Sr. Mary Michael was a pioneer in her time: one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood, as far as we know the first nun to be ordained, the first woman to preach at Westminster Abby, the first woman to be nominated for bishop. She was a passionate defender of leadership roles for women in the church and for the use of inclusive language in the liturgy. She even had a t-shirt that said, “God is not a boy’s name.” She was feisty and determined, funny and faithful, and all around a multi-faceted person.

The BCP funeral service is unsurpassed in describing the passage from earthly life to life eternal and in its gentle compassion for those who mourn. We decided to let the prayers in the BCP carry us theologically, and to choose readings that were really appropriate for our sister MM. We chose verses from the Book of Judges about Deborah, who was a judge in Israel. We chose the opening passage from 2 Timothy which reads, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you…” (2 Tim 1:5) MM was indeed a spiritual mother to many. Finally, for the Gospel, we chose selections from John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well, who goes to tell her people that she thinks she just possibly has met the Messiah.

We who lived with MM, some for decades, knew and admired her public ministry and we enjoyed her friendship in private. And because we live together, we see each other in our fuzzy bedroom slippers, and when we’re tired and cranky, and we knew MM’s faults and fears and foibles as well. Carol Andrew had a special challenge in preaching the sermon at her funeral, because people were present from so many different parts of MM’s life: her brother and nephew, her sisters, her psychotherapy clients, her friends, her colleagues, and people whom she had met just recently at the nursing home and at the church she attended during her final months.

I was her health care proxy, and so spent quite a lot of time with her in the final weeks, and now (of course) I can think of so many things that I wish I had asked her and so many prayers I wish we had prayed together and so many things I might have said to comfort her. Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And who was my sister MM? It is so very difficult to sum up a whole person and a whole well-lived life. Even we who knew her best still did not know the secrets of her heart, that are known only to God.

Moses surely grew up wondering who he was, and who people said he was. Although born of a Hebrew family, he grew up in the household of the Pharaoh. Was he Egyptian or Hebrew? Highborn or low? As a young man, he killed an Egyptian who was striking a Hebrew laborer, and then Moses fled from Egypt. In exile, God called him (as we will hear next week) to go to Pharaoh and to tell Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go. Moses saw himself as an exile, a poor speaker, not a leader, and he was probably still conflicted about his allegiance either to the Hebrews or the Egyptians. God on the other hand saw Moses as the one who would free the chosen people and lead them to the promised land.

Jesus said, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” It was considered impolite to speak directly of oneself, in formal discourse, so Jesus refers to himself as “Son of Man”, meaning perhaps, “the human one”. If we were to pin point the most important question in all of the Gospels, it is this one: who is Jesus? Not an easy question, because he is teacher, healer, friend, companion, and spiritual guide, and by the end of the Gospels the reader knows that he is ever so much more than all of these.

Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples answered, “John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets”. Yes, that’s what the crowds are saying. Then Jesus gets personal – “But who do you say that I am?” There may be a slight wistfulness in this question. The others, the crowds just see the miracles and hear marvelous parables, but the disciples are his chosen companions. It really matters to Jesus what they think. While the other disciples look to their right and to the left, and scratch the ground with their toes, they can trust Simon to jump right in: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” While Jesus earlier called himself “Son of Man”, here Peter is calling him “the Son of the living God”. And he is both, human and divine; altogether he is the Messiah.

When Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” he was concerned not only about how well the disciples had learned that he was the Messiah. He was also concerned that they understood what that meant: that the Messiah was not a powerful king, of an earthly realm, but the one who would love them and give all that he had to bring them to faith in God’s eternal love and salvation. Don’t tell anyone this, he warned them, it’s not time yet for all to hear. Then Jesus told Simon who he is and gave him the new name of “Peter”, the “rock”. To us it seems a dubious appellation for someone so impetuous! Yet Peter will become the rock on which the Church will be built.

Moses had not a clue that he possessed such gifts of leadership. Peter was the least likely choice to be the foundation rock of anything. There are gifts that God has given each one of us, that may be surprising, and are special and precious. The gifts that Paul lists are all gifts for building up the Church, gifts that can only be exercised as gifts to a group of people. One cannot be a teacher, a prophet, an encourager, a giver, or a leader by oneself. Even those who only can contribute a cheerful face are essential to the wellbeing of a community of faith.

Who do people say that we are? And, who do we think that we are? In the Letter to the Romans, Paul has some sound advice about this: do not “think of yourself more highly than you ought to think”, and we might add also not to think ourselves more lowly than we ought. Use “sober judgment”, Paul suggests, and think of yourselves “according to the measure of faith [and gifts] that God has assigned”. (Romans 12:3)

God has given us each special gifts, but who we are is not in our gifts alone. We may have many achievements and titles and awards and success – or maybe modest ones – and these things (or their lack) do not define who we are. We have family and places of origin, but these are not the complete story of who we are. Jesus was sometimes called “Son of Man” or “Son of God”, and at the core of who we are is the certainty that each and every one of us is a child of God, eternally and completely beloved and cherished by God. Who we are, and who Jesus was, is not in what we have done, but how well we have received God’s love, and then how completely and freely we have given it away.

Pentecost 9, proper 15, Year A, Sun Aug 14, 2011

2011-08-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28

In our recent Gospel readings, we have heard examples of Jesus’ extraordinary endurance and compassion. After days of teaching and healing and walking from town to town, Jesus and his companions finally sought a place of quiet and rest, only to find that the crowds had followed them and were still eager to learn and be healed. Jesus didn’t send them away, but he had compassion and cared for them, and provided a meal for thousands from just a few loaves of bread.

Yet today, we hear this story of sudden rejection and rudeness. A Canaanite woman, a non-Jew, came to Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter. She is forward and determined, as only a mother can be! Jesus usually goes out of his way to challenge social and religious customs, yet this time he is downright rude in his rejection of her. (And how ironic that this story follows directly after Jesus’ teaching that it’s what comes out of the mouth that defiles!) When the Canaanite woman said, “Lord help me”, Jesus answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” For Jews, dogs were unclean and lived on the fringes of town, not as pets. To take food from a child and give (or “throw”) it to dogs was unthinkable. Jesus seems to imply that his healing would be wasted on her daughter.

Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus had sent the disciples out to proclaim the good news, and he told them specifically to “go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matt 10:5b-6) That’s his rationale in this passage too. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then, we may wonder, what is he doing in the district of Tyre and Sidon? He has traveled into Gentile territory, and (surprise!) he meets up with a Gentile woman, and (perhaps really surprising) she has faith in his healing powers. Or maybe she’s just desperate, the way only a mother can be. She is quick witted as well. She retorts, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” (Matt 15:27) She outwits Jesus, perhaps the only person to do so!

An enormous amount of scholarly ink (and sermon ink) has been spilled trying to explain how Jesus, meek and mild, could be so rude. Some say that it’s not really rude, because they are in Gentile-land, and these are just nice little lap dogs. I think that’s nonsense, because coming from the mouth of a Jew, it’s an insult any way you look at it. Did Jesus know that her faith was so great, and he was just testing her? Although Jesus tested many, both followers and opponents, as far as we know he never tested anyone else, who was asking for his blessing, with such direct rudeness.

We know for sure that the disciples in the earliest years of the Church did change their minds about ministry to Gentiles. From the account in the Acts of the Apostles, we eavesdrop on the debate that was held in Jerusalem to decide whether Gentiles could be included in the church. The deciding moment came when Peter told the story of a vision sending him to the home of a Gentile family, to tell them of the good news of Jesus. Then he went to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and preached to them, baptized them, and they received the Holy Spirit. (Acts 10:1-11:18)

There must have been a moment in Jesus’ ministry when he realized that his mission was not only to challenge the restrictive and narrow mind-set of the Pharisees, and to set a course for all Jews to receive the blessing and Spirit of God. At some point, his vision of God’s generosity and salvation shifted to include all peoples of the earth. This may have been an “ah, ha” moment for Jesus. For Joseph, there was also a moment, after teasing and testing his brothers and withholding his identity from them, when he finally broke down and told them that he was their long-lost brother, whom they had sold into slavery. By then he was a powerful man in Egypt, and had managed to put aside grain during the years of plenty so that people would not go hungry in the years of famine. By then, he saw a purpose and a divine plan in what had happened to him, and he took this opportunity to invite his family to move to Egypt.

For the Canaanite woman and for the brothers of Joseph, there were moments of fear and anxiety that their petitions and prayers would be rejected. They were charting a new course, but God was with them. Here at All Saints Beech Island, we are starting to discern directions for our ministry plan, and at the same time we are seizing a new opportunity for mission in starting a food pantry. New directions in ministry do have risks, we likely will have setbacks and much to learn. We go forward, with God’s help.

We are in line with some new thinking about how to do Church. There is a movement, called “missional” church, which has become popular in recent years. The argument is persuasive: doing Church is not just Sunday morning worship, but is in our mission and service that we do all week long. This movement is not just for Episcopalians; it encompasses all branches and flavors of Christianity.

In his book, Missional Renaissance, Reggie McNeal describes a church which voted not to spend $50 million on a new church building, but instead to use the funds for outreach projects in their community. McNeal writes, “the missional renaissance is changing the way the people of God think about God and the world, about what God is up to in the world and what part the people of God play in it. We are learning to see things differently, and once we adjust our way of seeing, we will never be able to look at these things the way we used to.” (McNeal, p. 1, 2). McNeal bases his new vision on the Renaissance in Europe in the 15th century.

I would like also to see this contemporary movement in the light of a church trend of the mid-19th century called the Oxford Movement. At that time, there were church leaders who were passionately involved in service and mission, but also balanced their outreach efforts with renewed attention to prayer and worship. They saw “the beauty of holiness” as a balance and salve to the ugly poverty in industrial England. The worship in their churches was infused with beautiful music, colorful vestments, candles, spiritual images, and devout liturgy. As we discern new directions for All Saints, and as we may transition to new ways of seeing how to do Church, especially how to do small Church, I hope that we will strive to balance both attentive, prayerful, thoughtful, beautiful liturgy with a commitment to mission.

We have a new addition to our parish: a walking path has been laid between the church and the parish hall. The hard work has been done by Michael and his employee Larry. Now we all need to do our part in building this path – by walking between these buildings. This path may be for us a symbol of the essential connection between our worship and our service to the Beech Island community and beyond. We are blessed by this new contribution to our property; we are blessed by the gifts and calling of God, which are irrevocable, and which will inspire us and give us God’s blessing to continue our worship and our service in Christ’s name.

Pentecost 8, proper 14, Year A, Sun Aug 7, 2011

2011-08-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

In the spring of 2008, we sisters who were living at the convent in Augusta decided that we would have a “sister recreation day”. Now, such events can be a mixed bag, but that time it really was a winner. We decided to pack all of us into cars and drive to Atlanta to see the Atlanta Aquarium.

We saw one tank with two beluga whales who are of amazing size and who had such intelligent expressions. They seemed to hover and dance in front of the glass, and to enjoy looking at us as much as we enjoyed looking at them. If they were on land, I’m sure they would be like – well – beached whales, but in the water they were ever so graceful and lovely to watch.

Then there is another huge tank, and I believe they said it was the largest fish tank in the world. We could walk along a tunnel built through this tank, and we could look at fish swimming alongside and over our heads. It’s something else to be eye to eye with a shark, and to feel as though we were actually walking in the ocean.

We have learned, and continue to learn, so much about underwater life. However, for ancient peoples the sea was a great mystery. Most people could not swim, not even fishermen, and they knew little about what was under the water except what they could catch or what washed up on shore. The sea was a great unknown, and it was dangerous. Storms were only barely predictable and shipwrecks were fairly common, even on the relatively small Sea of Galilee.

In the creation story at the beginning of the book of Genesis, the vast sea is the image given for the raw material that God had on hand before the creation. At the beginning, there was void and emptiness and chaos that preceded the ordering of land and sea and heavens. God created land, sky, moon, stars, sun, and all the creatures of the earth, and yet the sea, for the ancient peoples, remained a symbol for all that which was still not under control.

In today’s Gospel story, Jesus walks on the mysterious, chaotic sea. He had sent the disciples away in a boat so that he could (finally!) get some quiet time to himself. By evening, out on the Sea of Galilee, a storm arose and the disciples were afraid for their safety, and the wind was blowing against them so they could not reach the shore. Then towards morning, they saw Jesus walking towards them on the water.

In modern times, we have adopted the expression “walk on water” for someone who can accomplish amazing things or even seems to be super-human. If we say we think someone “walks on water”, it usually means either that we have put them on a pedestal or perhaps that they think a bit too much of themselves. For ancient peoples, however, the story of Jesus walking on water signified his divine power. Only a divine being could subdue the forces of chaos under his feet. Only the power of God could quell a storm and bring calm and safety.

So then, why would Peter want to walk on water? I don’t think he was trying to exert divine power, or to show himself off to the others. From what we know of Peter, he wasn’t a deep thinker, but rather one who would just say or do whatever popped into his head in the moment. And his instinct was to want control over that which was dark, unknown, messy, chaotic.

We also want control and order in our lives. We often want and try to control that which is not ours to fix or to change. Beyond taking normal good care of ourselves, we can’t control our health. When a loved one is in trouble, we can’t always control what they do or save them from the consequences. When a sudden disaster strikes or misfortune arrives, we are not necessarily responsible, or able to control what’s happening, or to fix the outcome.

One of the most difficult things in the world is when a parent decides it’s time to let a child make his or her own choices – for better or worse. I think I spent most of my son’s late adolescence and young adulthood saying the serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I think that Peter began to sink into the water, not because he didn’t believe in himself enough, but because he didn’t turn over to God what was beyond his control. He wanted to walk on water himself, rather than letting God in Christ be the one to put chaos and darkness under his feet. When he started to sink, into darkness and danger, Jesus reached out his hand to catch him.

Joseph thought he had been abandoned to darkness and death, and then to exile and slavery. He had been betrayed by his brothers, and at the time all this was happening, he surely felt abandoned by God as well as by his brothers. Yet, God was with him throughout, and God had a plan. (Stay tuned for next week’s installment to hear the conclusion of the story!)

Some weeks ago someone among us asked me a great question: why come to church? Can we be good people without attending Sunday services? Of, course we can, for perhaps about 5 minutes, but we can’t sustain good intentions without God’s help. Today we have another reason to come to church: bad things happen, even to good people, even when we’ve done everything we ought to do, even when we love God and our neighbors.

Bad and scary and terrible things still happen, and we are not in control, and we may feel like we are sinking. We come to church to be reminded it’s ok not to be in control, and that we are not alone. When we’ve done all we can, and things still go haywire, there is Jesus saying, “Come, do not be afraid”. There is Jesus reaching out a hand to catch us just as we are sinking. The hand of Jesus may come in kind words of a friend, in a prayer, in a passage of scripture, in a song. The hand of Jesus may be a while in coming to us, and may be there long before we realize that it is extended patiently waiting for us to clasp and hold, and to trust. The hand of Jesus is as near as the words on our lips and the faith in our hearts.

In the reading we heard today, when Jesus approached the disciples in the boat, he said, “Take heart. It is I. Don’t be afraid.” But in the original Greek, Jesus says, “Have courage; I am; don’t be afraid.” Because Jesus is, we need not be afraid. We come together each week in church to remember and celebrate that Jesus is alive and present in our midst, and ready to pull us into the boat and to save us from the power of darkness. He is present to teach us to trust, not in ourselves, but in God’s great gentleness and loving kindness and mercy.

Pentecost 7, proper 13, Year A, Sun July 31, 2011

2011-07-31T16:46:00.001-07:00

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7, 16; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

In the chapel at the General Theological Seminary in New York City there is a remarkable stained glass window which shows Jacob wrestling with the angel. Jacob has his back to the viewer, and he is clearly struggling with all his might. His feet are firmly planted on the ground, and the muscles in his legs are straining mightily. The posture of his arms and back show how hard he is working. We can almost hear the grunts and groans.

The angel, on the other hand, has his arms around Jacob, in what looks, not like a wrestler’s hold, but much more like a gentle embrace. Unlike Jacob’s feet which are firmly planted on the ground, the angel’s feet are hovering just above the ground with his toes barely touching the earth. We can see the angel’s face, just behind Jacob’s head, and there is no straining or effort, but rather an expression of gentleness and compassion and even sadness that Jacob has to struggle so hard and so long.

The angel is not there to hurt Jacob or to make things more difficult for him, but rather he seems to be there to hold him as he received the wound on his hip, and to nurture him through the transition to a new name “Israel”, and to give him God’s blessing. The angel said, “You have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”

God promised Abraham that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky; Jacob will fulfill that promise in being the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. His children’s descendants will be the “Israelites” to whom will belong, as Paul says: “the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises…[and] the patriarchs…” As Christians, Jacob is our ancestor as well, through Jesus, the Messiah.

It’s not a small task or minor legacy that Jacob is being asked to bear. For all that we can see, he was enterprising, ambitious, crafty, even underhanded, and otherwise quite ordinary. Yet he was blessed by the messenger of God. He would live into his new name, “Israel”, probably derived from Hebrew words meaning: “he has striven with God”.

What is Jacob really struggling against? Surely not the angel, who is holding and encircling him with arms of love. He may be struggling, as most of us do, against anguish, against worry, against fear, against pain and despair. He may be struggling against the Adversary to all good, kindness, lightness of heart, and against the Adversary to all that builds up the spirit of faith, hope, and love. “Israel”, is not struggling against God or against God’s angel, but against evil, in the presence of God, with the help of God, and he is strengthened by God in the process.

The angel carries and encourages Israel through this challenge, and Israel prevails. Jesus also mentors the disciples – and in today’s lesson it is a challenge of stamina! “You give them something to eat,” he says. The disciples have been following Jesus, perhaps for several days, into the wilderness, and finally caught up with him, only to find that there are crowds of people who have followed him there too. The disciples were exhausted, but they watch while Jesus showed undiminished compassion for the people, and he taught them and healed them.

By evening, the disciples were ready to drop in their tracks. They were not just hungry, but famished, and realized that the crowds were hungry too. They couldn’t wait for all these people to be gone so they could have their supper and finally get some rest. “Send them away!!” That seemed the only reasonable thing to do; enough is enough.

But Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.” They were exhausted in spirit and in body; they had nothing left to give, but they did manage to find five loaves and two fish. (Which they thought was going to be their supper!) Now, surely Jesus would send them away; according to Middle Eastern tradition of hospitality, the host must provide generously. It would be shameful to give people just crumbs.

But, nothing doing. Jesus organized everyone into groups; he blessed the food and broke the bread, and then he gave the food to the disciples to give to the people. When they finished distribution of the food and they had all eaten, they gathered up twelve baskets of broken pieces of bread and fish. It was more than they had started with.

We may wonder: how did he do it? Did his peaceful presence and spiritual energy encourage people to share the food they had brought with them? Did he miraculously turn the baskets into cornucopias that kept producing more and more as the basket was emptied? Was it an allegorical story, of the abundance of God’s love, but not literally true that Jesus was able to feed thousands of people from a few loaves? There was no video camera present; no eyewitness news team. We will never know for sure what happened. We do know that this event was extraordinarily important to the disciples and the members of the early church. A version of this story appears no less than six times in the Gospels, and in all four Gospel books.

We do know that Jesus put a challenge to the disciples, as the angel put a challenge to Jacob. It would have been easier for Jacob, and the disciples, to say: we can’t do this, it’s too hard, let’s just give up and go to sleep. Instead, they strive, along with God, to serve and to give and to become whom God called them to be: leaders and fathers of a people and of the Church, and the ones called to feed the flock: “You give them something to eat.”

Speaking of which, we have some good news about giving something to eat: we have a plan to open a food pantry for the families of Redcliffe School, and this past week after much striving, we were able to contact the school officials and the project is now “a go.” Hopefully, we can provide supplementary food to a few families this fall.

Like Jacob and the disciples, we are called also, out of what is comfortable and easy and familiar, to strive with God’s help to do something new, and in the process ourselves to become something new. Moving into something new is always a stretch and an adjustment. For Jacob, becoming “Israel” was not just a new name, but a new identity and new state of being, as he was to become the father of a nation. The disciples grew to realize that they were not going to be able to remain in comfort and self-interest, but that they were called into becoming servant leaders and nurturers for the emerging church.

Jacob became “Israel”, who saw “God face to face, and yet [his] life was preserved”. The disciples became the first to see God in Christ, and their lives were not just preserved, but also sanctified and transformed and they were saved in Christ Jesus, and they were to become the Body of Christ in the Church. We also are invited into newness and holiness of life, in Christ’s name, to see God’s presence, surrounding us and sustaining us, and giving us the grace and strength to serve others, all the days of our lives.

Pentecost 6, proper 12, Year A, Sun July 24, 2011

2011-07-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Today we have yet another installment in the Genesis saga about the ancient Hebrew patriarchs. In earlier readings we learned that Jacob was an opportunist and highly ambitious, and he cheated his older brother out of his inheritance. After that, it was a good time to get out of town, so Jacob went to find a wife among his kinfolk in Ur. There, he was staying with his relative, Laban, who turned out to be just as sneaky and underhanded as Jacob.

Jacob asked for the hand of Laban’s daughter Rachel in marriage, but when Jacob woke up on the morning after his wedding – surprise! He found that he had married Leah instead of Rachel.

Well, things don’t always turn out the way we expect. For example, the kingdom of heaven – what do we expect it to be? What we find may be full of surprises!

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells parables about the kingdom of heaven, which are all about surprises. He says that the kingdom of heaven is “like” a strange assortment of things, and not what we might expect to describe something as magnificent and all-encompassing and eternal as the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus said: the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed; like yeast; like a treasure hidden in a field; like a merchant in search of fine pearls; like a net thrown into the sea. Other than the treasure and the pearl, this seems to be a random list of almost anything. Yet each one of these things tells us something significant about the kingdom of heaven.

The mustard seed is very small (perhaps not the smallest seed), yet it can grow into a large tree (perhaps not the largest tree). The kingdom of heaven is a miracle, taking what is small and insignificant to our eyes, and making of it something beautiful, powerful, impressive, lasting. It may not be the smallest seed in the world, or the tallest possible tree, but in the abundance of the kingdom of heaven, all seeds start small, and all bushes and trees grow into their own magnificence, in their own way.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. In ancient times, yeast was a symbol of corruption – as when Jesus referred to “the yeast of the Pharisees”? Yet mixed with flour, let to stand, kneaded, and baked, it is the essential leavening to produce bread that feeds and nourishes. We have to be patient for the bread to rise, it takes kneading and warmth, and it works best in the dark, unobserved. And this woman isn’t making delicate little biscuits – three measures may be something like 50 pounds of flour! This is a production-line bakery, ready to feed a hundred or more. In the kingdom of heaven, even a small amount of something that is normally undesirable can be used as a catalyst to transform an enormous amount of flour into bread that will nourish and sustain life.

The kingdom of heaven is like hidden treasure. It is not obvious to the naked eye. It is not easy to find. It is rare, and it is precious. It is worth giving up everything else to hold and call it ones own.

The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. Not the fine pearl itself, but it is the merchant who searches. The kingdom of heaven isn’t only something to possess after all, but it is also the one who tirelessly searches and strives, and who recognizes the most precious thing when he finds it.

The kingdom of heaven is like a net. This net catches everything, salmon and blue fish, catfish and flat fish, tires and tin cans and old boots. Anyone and everyone may be caught up and taken into the kingdom of heaven, and the sorting is only done by God, at the last day.

So in summary, we have these “random pious thoughts” about what the kingdom of heaven may be like:
• A miracle, in which the most insignificant thing can grow into full magnificence
• Even a tiny amount of something undesirable can become a catalyst to produce something essential for life
• A hidden treasure for which it is worth giving up all else
• A search for one pearl of great price
• An all-inclusive net, into which all are gathered

The kingdom of heaven defies simple description. It encompasses the transformation of the small and undesirable into something beautiful, and strong, and essential. It is hidden, yet of greatest value; it is worth giving up all else to search and find, to recognize and possess. The kingdom of heaven is all about surprise, and it is all about inclusion. All are gathered into the net, and none are excluded, including even those we might think or want or imagine to be outside of the kingdom of heaven. What we see as undesirable, God sees as possibility, and can transform into what is not only worth saving, but even what is lovely and essential.

After tossing out these pithy yet complex parables, Jesus asked the crowds, “Have you understood all this?” Amazingly, they answered, “Yes.” It is a custom in the Middle East (today, as well as in ancient times) to try always to “save face”, one’s own “face” as well as someone else’s. They may be saying “yes” in respect to Jesus, as their renown teacher and healer. They may want him to think that he is such a superb teacher that of course they understand; they may want to look good, and hope that he will believe that they understand.

They may even think that they do understand. Jesus didn’t challenge them at this point. And I think that perhaps his point about the kingdom of heaven is that we can’t really, fully, completely understand what it is.

Have you understood all this? The answer can be “yes”, as we honestly admit surprise and puzzlement, because that may be just the point. Yes, we understand that the kingdom of heaven is like a seed, yeast, a pearl and a treasure, a net, and ever so much more. It is like all these, and also extends beyond our imagination, into unlimited possibility for our lives and for this world, as well as into the life eternal.

The kingdom of heaven may be full of surprises, but what is sure is that it will be a gift of grace beyond measure, given to us through God’s infinite patience and love and mercy. We can be absolutely certain that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth,” nor any of the heavy burdens and suffering in our world or our lives, “nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Pentecost 5, proper 11, Year A, Sun July 17, 2011

2011-07-17T12:10:00.001-07:00

Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Today we heard the next installment in the story of the Hebrew patriarchs. Jacob is on a journey back to his ancestral homeland, to find a wife. Jacob’s father encouraged him to go, and it’s not a bad time to get out of town, anyway, because Esau is furious with him after he stole his inheritance.

On the way, Jacob stopped for the night and had a dream. The message in this dream is very much like the message which God gave to Abraham, that his descendants would be multitudinous, in this case like the “dust of the earth”. Jacob also saw a ladder reaching up into heaven, on which angels were ascending and descending. Apparently, these angels didn’t have wings, but were coming and going with messages from God by way of this ladder.

This appears after all not to be about “climbing Jacob’s ladder”, but in the midst of a journey into the unknown, Jacob received a vision and God’s blessing. He was sleeping on holy ground, and when he woke up he called the place “house of God” or “Beth-el”: “beth” meaning house or place, and “el” meaning God. Even though he has behaved reprehensively toward his brother, he is still the one chosen by God to see a vision of God’s messengers and to be the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

God blessed Jacob, even though he has sinned. This blessing, the promise of descendants as numerous and widespread as the dust of the earth, is about the closest the ancient Hebrews could imagine to a promise of eternal life. They did not have a concept of heaven and hell, but saw God’s favor in having wealth, health, and especially in having many descendants.

Jesus, however, does give us a picture of hell as a “furnace of fire” and he describes the desperation, the “weeping and gnashing of teeth”, of the sinners who are expelled from the kingdom of God. Now, if I had a choice in the matter, I would leave out passages such as this one from our Sunday readings. You will have guessed by now that I really prefer to ponder the mercy and forgiveness and love of God, rather than eternal punishment of those condemned to hell. But, it’s not my choice. And in wrestling with such a passage as this, we may, after all, learn something important.

In this parable, the farmer allows the weeds to continue to grow alongside the good wheat. At the harvest, the weeds will be collected first, to be burned, but the good wheat will be gathered into the barn. The laborers want to get those weeds out as soon as possible, and not let them interfere with the growth of the wheat. But the farmer argues that there is a danger that the good wheat will be pulled up along with the weeds, so it’s best to let all grow together, and to separate them at the harvest.

We often would like to clean out weeds that appear in our lives, especially in the form of the inconvenient, uncomfortable, annoying behavior, of someone else. As I talk with the newest sisters at the Order of Saint Helena, it’s common for some of them to come to me and complain about what some other sister is doing. They will say, “Can you imagine what she did? Isn’t that awful? Make her stop doing that.” And I will nod sagely, and say something like, “Hmm, what do you think it is that is bothering you about what she’s doing?” Judgment about what she’s doing belongs to God.

The old expression “mind your own business” can be a somewhat rude way of turning people away, but it can also be a reminder to ourselves that what other people do is their business, and how we choose to respond is our business. And still, judgment belongs to God.

Another way to consider how to respond (to what she’s doing) would be to ask the questions: Is it true? Is it beneficial? Am I the right one to say this? Is this the right time to say it? Most often, by the time I’ve thought through all four of these steps, the opportunity to speak unhelpfully has past, and I’ve let someone be themselves. I’ve also had a few minutes to let go of my own critical thoughts, and let judgment belong to God.

Jesus said, “Let [the wheat and the weeds] grow together”. The word “let” that is used here also means to pardon or to forgive sins. (Matt 26:28; Luke 1:77, 24:27) And Jesus doesn’t say specifically to “forgive” only the weeds, but he says to “forgive” both of them, both wheat and weeds. The weeds are not inherently wicked. After all, what is a weed? We name some plants as “undesirable”, yet they are just plants, like any other. They may be growing somewhere that’s inconvenient for us or they aren’t useful to us.

In the parable, Jesus says that it is the “devil”, or the “adversary”, who spreads the weeds, and it is “all causes of sin” as well as the “evildoers” who are to be condemned, and “collected out of his kingdom”. Sin and evil are real; God’s purpose is to root out the underlying causes of sin and evil, and to purge them from the kingdom of God.

The wheat and the weeds are left to grow together, and may even be difficult to distinguish, to our inexpert eyes. And after all, we may at times be one or the other. I wonder if we aren’t most often like hybrid plants – somewhere in between the two. We may be good, but not perfect wheat; we may be quite a bit less than good, but not totally and forever and always a weed.

Someone gave me a holy card, which I carried for years, and then gave away to someone else. He kept it in his pocket until it was frayed, and then later he showed me that he had had it laminated. It summarizes for me the transition from weed to wheat: “O Lord, forgive what I have been; bless what I am; create whom I shall be”.

I have been especially and intensely aware this past week of the presence of God, and of the complications in trying to do the good and right thing. One of our OSH sisters has been critically ill, and with her brother and advice from the doctors, we made the decision yesterday that she will have no further aggressive treatment. It is what she asked for in the past, and this is what the doctors advise, and I still feel that we could do more; we could keep her alive, at least for a while, but for what quality of life? In how much discomfort? Even though the choice seems clear and all are in agreement, still the decision weighs heavily, and I wonder whether this choice is good.

In the psalm appointed for today, we get a sense of the hovering and even intrusive presence of God, searching us out, and knowing us in sitting down and rising up. Not only our deeds, but even our deepest thoughts are discerned by God. “Where can I flee from your presence?” the psalmist wonders. In such close and intimate knowing, there is no hiding of our good or faults, so the psalmist finally surrenders and opens himself entirely: “search me out; try me; know my restless thoughts”.

God knows our inmost desires and thoughts: the good and the weedy. We pray for God’s guidance that we may walk always “in the way that is everlasting”. We may not always see that way clearly, but we can hope for the good and we can deeply desire to do what is right. And that hope and that desire in themselves may be the most pleasing to God.

Pentecost 4, proper 10, Year A, Sun July 10, 2011

2011-07-14T17:01:00.001-07:00

Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Last Sunday we heard the story of how Abraham found a wife for his son, Isaac, and how Rebecca was brought from the far eastern land of the Chaldeans to become his wife. Today we hear the beginning of the story of Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac and Rebecca. Jacob turns out to be the crafty, opportunistic, ambitious younger son.

Today’s story is a strange one. If Esau was so hungry, why couldn’t he ask his mother or someone else for a meal? Even if he was extremely hungry, selling his birthright as the eldest son was a serious matter, and the story sounds highly unlikely. It may be, rather, a symbolic story of the rivalries and shifting relationships among the tribes and peoples who were descended from Jacob (the nation of Israel) and Esau (the father of Edom). Since the story is written by the people of Israel, Jacob must become superior to his older brother!

Jacob doesn’t come over as an especially nice person, in this or in subsequent stories about him. In general, the patriarchs and key figures in the Hebrew scriptures are usually not polished up and presented as paragons of virtue and honesty, but as real people with faults and sins and foibles, and yet all are attempting each in their own way to be faithful to God. And what is most important is that God is faithful to them.

God is faithful in loving and reaching out to all people, but we receive the word of God in such very different ways, as illustrated in today’s parable. Jesus said, “A sower went out to sow.” The sower in this parable may be God, or Jesus himself, or even the words of the scriptures. The seeds may be the Word of God, the teachings of Jesus, or the Spirit of God. Perhaps the seeds are, in some sense, also the people of God themselves, who are put into very different circumstances in which to try to grow and thrive. What is clear is that God is abundant in spreading love and blessing and Spirit.

Yet we know that not everyone receives God’s word and the message of God’s love. There are many possible reasons. The message may be snatched away, like a bird carrying off a seed. Sometimes the scriptures themselves may be difficult to hear and understand. At other times, the message may fall on rocky soil and have no chance to take root or the message may wither among thorns, which Jesus describes as the “cares of the world”. We may be too busy and too distracted to listen and to hear and to understand.

I think there is always potential for the word to be heard and received. The bird that carries away a seed, may drop it later in a better spot. The rocky soil may receive rain, and the rain may wash the seed into a crack where it will be able to grow. The thorns may die away to allow other plants to grow. The seed may lie fallow, and look dead, only to grow and thrive at another time.

The word may be received at any time, even when the conditions look unpromising, and even when we don’t know it. A chaplain once told me that he once went to visit a patient who was in a coma. She seemed to be completely comatose and was unable to hear or respond, but he went to visit her anyway, every day. He spoke her name, told her what day it was, what the weather was like, who won the baseball game the day before (even though he wasn’t sure she would care about that), what was going on in the news, and anything else he could think of to say. He always said a prayer. After about 10 days, he was delighted to see that she had recovered consciousness. And he was astonished to learn that she remembered all of his visits. She repeated what he had said, and she even remembered who had won the baseball games. She said that his visits always told her that another day had gone by. And she had prayed along with his prayers.

Nothing given in the Spirit of God is wasted. Sometimes there are fallow periods, of rest and even of emptiness, loneliness, and separation, in which desire for the Spirit of God may grow into a restlessness and longing. In the fallow period, there is time and space for the ground to be made ready.

In the past few years, I’ve tried to learn how to grow vegetables and herbs, and I’m in awe of how the seeds grow and plants flourish. The seeds don’t grow on their own; all of us who do gardening know that they need the right conditions and soil, plenty of water, sun, nutrients. To grow in faith and Spirit, we also need to be ready; we need to hear just the right words at the right time; we need both encouragement and challenge; we need nurture and practice; we need spiritual companions. We need, also, to have a way to live out our faith, in ministry and service and in the to and fro and ups and downs of daily life.

Here at All Saints, as we go forward with our Mutual Ministry planning, we can ask a crucial underlying question: how will each choice for our ministry help us to receive the Word of God and nourish our community of faith and our discipleship in Christ? I hope that when we gather to discern our first priorities for ministry, we will ask these questions.

There is a cycle of life in growing a garden: preparing the soil with compost and fertilizer; planting the seeds; watering and nourishing the plants; picking the crops; saving seeds; and starting over again.

So also with discipleship in Christ: the fertile soil is prepared in many ways, perhaps in as many different ways as there are Christians. Some receive Christ as children or young adults and never doubt; others go through time away and return when the soul truly longs for solace or answers. Once we are ready to hear and receive, we need nurture and teaching of spiritual companions. When the fruit of the Spirit is ripe, it is time to give it away, according to the abundance of the harvest.

We have the opportunity to start a new ministry here at All Saints: a small food pantry for the most needy families of children at Redcliffe School, during the summer and vacations, when the children are not receiving meals at school. This may be one way in which we can give away, in abundance of Spirit.

When the sower goes out to sow, he doesn’t seem to care where the seed falls and he doesn’t just plant a few chosen seeds carefully. Word of God is given in inexhaustible abundance, and in the exuberance of God’s generosity. Where the seeds do fall on good soil, the yield appears to be astounding. And that is true of the Word of God, which is abundant and persistent and always available when we are ready to hear. The Spirit of God dwells in us all, and the Word of God is searching to reach and connect with the Spirit within, and to set that Spirit free to grow and thrive, to lead us to love and serve our neighbors, and to grow in Christ’s love.

Pentecost 3, proper 9, Year A, Sun July 3, 2011

2011-07-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:11-18; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Abraham decided that it was time to find a wife for his son, Isaac. They were living in Canaan, among foreign peoples, and he wanted Isaac to have a wife from their own tribe. The best way to do this, Abraham decided, was to send a trusted servant all the way back, from where they were living, in Canaan, which is present day Israel, to their ancestral home, in the ancient city of Ur, which is in present day Iraq. It was a long and treacherous journey, and a heavy responsibility for the servant. Getting there safely and back would be difficult enough, but what if he didn’t find a suitable wife? What if he found a perfect wife, and she didn’t want to return with him? What if Isaac didn’t like her, or what if she didn’t like him?

When he arrived in Ur, the servant prayed to God to give him a sign. He could have asked for something random and without significance, such as: may the right girl be wearing a red dress, or may she carry her water jar on her left shoulder instead of her right. Instead, he prayed that Isaac’s bride-to-be would say to him: “Drink, and I will draw water for your camels also”. The servant did not pray for a random sign, but instead he prayed to be shown a young woman who was hospitable and generous, and who was ready to engage in conversation and warmly welcome a traveler.

Then Rebekah appeared immediately, and fulfilled the sign by saying those exact words. She and her brother brought him to their home. After the servant was received and welcomed by Rebekah’s family, he told his purpose and that Rebekah had fulfilled the prayer and sign that she was the one indicated by God to be Isaac’s wife. There is the further positive sign that Rebekah’s family was related to Abraham.

After they had all heard the story, and gifts had been given, and all were agreed, there was one final step. Rebekah needed to give her consent. They called her and said, “Will you go with this man?” This is not a small thing they were asking of her. The journey would be long; she had probably never been far at all from home and her family; she had only just met this man; she didn’t know anything about Isaac or his family, except that they were relatives.

We can imagine that she had a sleepless night, perhaps talking with her mother and sisters, perhaps tossing and turning and imagining what could be wonderful and what could go wrong. Uppermost on her mind would be the certainty that if she says yes, she would most likely never see her family again.

In the morning they called her, and this was the critical moment. “Will you go with this man?” We can be sure that there was a whirlwind of emotions and questions in her heart, but Rebekah answered simply, “I will.” And so off she went, with her family’s blessing and with her women servants, into an unknown future.

Well, almost unknown. Rebekah and her family and Abraham’s servant took reasonable care. They based their decisions on sure signs that God’s blessing and grace was with them. Rebekah’s family knew that she would be going to their own kin; Abraham’s servant knew that she was a kind and hospitable young woman. She gave her consent, and then, they went off on the journey, with faith and courage and hope, but knowing that her life would be changed forever.

Here at All Saints Church, in the coming weeks, we will be doing discernment for our future ministry. We may choose to deepen ministries that we are already doing – and if so we will already have a sense of what our goals might be and what we can expect based on our past experience. We may also choose to launch into some new directions and into areas where we have never gone before. We will need to take some careful time about all this, and make prayerful choices. We may not all agree completely, but, God willing, we will reach a consensus with which all of us can be comfortable.

There is a particular reason why we need to proceed prayerfully and thoughtfully in our discernment. When I was a librarian, I had the wonderful job of selecting books. (It was great fun to look through the lists, and buy books with someone else’s money!) One of the basic principles of selecting books for a library is that it’s much easier to buy books for a large library – you can just buy everything that looks good, and in the pile there are sure to be some books that will be important and useful for readers. However, if it’s a tiny library, with a very small budget, it’s much, much harder. Then, the librarian needs to select only the best, most appropriate things.

So also here at All Saints. We are small in numbers, even if we are very large in spirit and in heart. Our resources are limited. And so we need to be extra careful in our discernment of ministry, and what we choose to do first. We can’t do everything all at once, as a large parish might be able to do.

We do have an opportunity for something very new. Last week a few of us met with a representative of the Golden Harvest food bank and a PTO member from Redcliffe Elementary School. Some of the children at Redcliffe are on a free lunch program at school, but they go hungry during the holidays and during the summer. The possibility arose that we might be able to provide supplemental food to the families of these children, perhaps starting with just 20 families, once a week until school starts in the fall.

This proposal was discussed with the vestry at our last meeting. We were concerned that we didn’t have enough space, enough volunteers, and we didn’t know how much it would cost. At our meeting last week, all these concerns were addressed. We could start very small, and the cost to us would be minimal. There are a number of parents who want to volunteer. There are people with trucks to pick up the food. Our space turned out to be much larger than many other food pantries. Is it a sign, that this possible, new ministry has presented itself just as we are starting our mutual ministry discernment? Is it a sign, that all the pieces seem to be ready to fall into place?

This discernment needs to be a process for the whole parish community. We could decide no – this is too much for us to handle. We could decide to go ahead on a limited basis to see how it works and to learn whether this is a good ministry for All Saints. This is for us to discern together.

Rebekah went courageously into the unknown, but she didn’t go alone. She went with the blessing of her family and she traveled with her women servants. She went after careful thought and prayer, and she went with God. Even though following Jesus may be truly challenging, difficult, life-changing, we don’t go alone. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, that in our ministry and service, our yoke is easy and our burden is light because it is shared among us and with our neighbors, and God willing, we will always journey in the light of God’s grace.

Pentecost 2, proper 8, Year A, Sun June 26, 2011

2011-06-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matt 10:40-42

There are many stories in the Hebrew scriptures that puzzle us and may even be abhorrent to us when we hear them today. Why would God “test” Abraham, and tell him to kill Isaac? Not only was Isaac his only son whom he deeply loved, but also Isaac was the heir, born to Sarah in her old age. Isaac embodied the promise of God that the descendents of Abraham and Sarah would be as numerous as the stars of the sky.

Why, then, would God ask of Abraham such a terrible, horrible thing? Why end the life of the one person who would be able to assure the future of the Hebrew people and fulfill the prophesy? Abraham had settled in the land of Canaan, and there the ancient Hebrew people came in contact with the Canaanites, who worshipped a god named Baal and who performed child sacrifice. Abraham and those with him worshipped their own God, YHWH, who had never required them to do this. Yet, ancient peoples were highly superstitious, and when the Hebrews saw that the Canaanites performed child sacrifice and then had a good harvest or success in battle, they wondered whether they ought to do the same, and then maybe YHWH would favor them too and they too would prosper.

This story begins with the affirmation that God wanted to “test” Abraham. And Abraham is faithful to God’s command, right up to the last moment. There are dramatic paintings of Abraham with a raised arm, his hand holding the knife, and Isaac struggling against the ropes that bind him. The angel of God flies forward to grasp Abraham’s upraised arm at the last moment, to stop the awful deed.

The clear message is this: God did not want Abraham to sacrifice his son. For the Hebrew people at the time of Abraham, and for generations to come, this story stood as a clear statement of the will of their God. God did not want Abraham to sacrifice his son, and so also the Hebrew people were commanded by YHWH not to do such a thing.

So much for that aspect of the story. But I do think there is another point to this story, more relevant and helpful to us today. In the whole story of the life of Abraham, there is one theme that is repeated over and over. Abraham was righteous and he trusted in God. When his father, Terah, was called by God to go to the land of Canaan, Terah stopped when they were about two thirds of the way, in Heran, and the family settled there.

God then called Abraham, and Abraham did complete the journey and he settled in Canaan as God had commanded his father. (Gen 11:31; Gen 12:1-7) When God told Abraham that he would be the father of a son by Sarah, and that his descendants would be like the stars of the sky, Abraham believed, and God “reckoned it to him as righteousness”. (Gen 15:6) In the story of the sacrifice of Isaac Abraham also discerned God’s will and was ready to be obedient and trusting in God, whatever God asked of him.

We also are called to careful discernment of God’s will for us and to faithfulness to that call. And wouldn’t it be nice to have clear skywriting that would tell us exactly what is God’s will? Or the foresight to know exactly what would be the best choice in each situation?

One of my biggest life choices was to decide whether to listen (or not) to a persistent call to ordination. I had felt called to something in the church – I wasn’t sure what – when I was in college, but although I had talked with my priest and other church people, there didn’t seem to be anything open to me back then. Many years later, after women’s ordination had been affirmed by the Episcopal Church, the call came to me again. By then I was middle-aged and well along in a career, and I thought, “God, you’ve got to be kidding.” “You can’t possibly mean me.” The strangest part of it all was that I had been not particularly happy in my work, until then. I had started teaching library science at Pratt Institute, and was really enjoying it.

So I had a real sit-down talk with God. “Why me and why now?” The more I tried to forget about it, ignore it, suppress it – the nagging feeling just wouldn’t go away. Finally, I had another sit-down conversation and asked God, “Ok, God, what if I say no”? The strange thing is, the answer came back immediately. “That’s ok. You can say no. But I’m still going to keep on calling you, and I’ll be with you whatever you decide.” It really was my choice. And so I said “yes”.

It felt like jumping off a cliff, with no rope, no hand-holds, into a cloud of complete unknowing. I had no idea what the ordination process would be like (and would probably have run screaming in the other direction if I had). I had no idea what it would be like for a middle-aged woman to go to seminary. Would it be mostly young men? And women? Could my feeble middle-aged brain handle the study? Would I be adequate to the spiritual formation? Would I be able to be a good pastor and preacher?

God called Abraham to do a most difficult thing, which made no sense, and which must have greatly grieved his heart. God’s initial command acknowledges that Isaac is his only son, whom he loves. God knows that Abraham will not be asked to finish the deed, but Abraham does not know this. Even so, he trusts in God completely, and is ready to go forward anyway.

Sometimes I think that when we feel called to something extraordinary, or hear a surprising response to prayer, that may well be a sign that it is an authentic message from God. And, an authentic call from God will lead to a beneficial result, for ourselves and others, and ultimately to feelings of acceptance, serenity, peace, and confidence in God’s word.

The first commandment to Abraham doesn’t meet the test; the command to stop and to save Isaac’s life certainly does. I think God calls us all to make our choices based on careful and prayerful discernment, and then we just go ahead and choose – based on the best of our abilities and what we know at the time. Whatever we do choose, then God calls us to faithfulness and service within that choice – and God will be with us.

Isaac wonders, innocently: “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” The answer is that God will provide a lamb. As it turns out, it’s not just a little baby lamb, but a large ram caught by its horns. What God provides is not the minimum, but an affirmation of an abundance of love.

God will not always take away the struggle and difficulties of our lives. What God does provide is a loving, watching, attentive presence to each one of us along the way, as we sometimes blunder and sometimes do take up the call to something we never thought we could or would do. We may discover that God’s will is after all the same as our own deepest desire for good and for holiness, for ourselves and for others. And along the way, as God is attentive to us, so we also may be present to one another and welcome one another in Christ’s name, into the mystery of God’s abundance and grace.

Trinity, Year A, Sun June 19, 2011

2011-06-25T08:09:00.001-07:00

Genesis 1:1—2:4a; Psalm 8 or Canticle 13; 2 Cor 13:11-13; Matt 28:16-20

Last Wednesday evening, around 9:00 pm there was quite a storm in Augusta, and lights went out at the convent. Apparently we have several circuits, so some of the electricity was on and some was off: one fridge and one freezer still worked, one bedroom but not the rooms on either side. In my office, the desk lamp worked but not the overhead light. The chapel was out but the sacristy was on. We called Georgia Power, and went to bed fully expecting the lights to come on again sometime on Thursday. We were told 1:30 pm, then 3:30 pm, but Thursday night we again went to bed by candle and flashlight. We were told maybe Friday night or Saturday….

While the electricity was off, I found that I wanted to shift to the natural rhythms of the daylight and night. It was getting dark around 8:30, and quite dark by 9:00. It felt like time to sleep. It still seemed like night at 6:00 am when I usually get up. A natural rhythm would mean sleeping when it gets dark and getting up in the light – more like 9 or 10 hours of sleep a night!

We tucked all the food that we could into the one working refrigerator and the freezer, and put everything else in coolers, hoping for the best. Then at mealtime, we dug in to try to find where things had gone. From time to time, someone would reach for a switch, flick it to the "on" position, and then realize that of course it wouldn’t work. There was one moment of relief in all this, when we discovered that the coffeepot was on!

Then, on Friday morning, a crew from Alabama showed up, found their way into our woods, eventually located the downed wire, and finally our lights went back on and we thanked them profusely.

This experience reminded me of how much our lives are patterned around the new and artificial conveniences that electricity provides. Our getting up and sleeping is no longer patterned on daylight. Our food is processed, stored, frozen, rather than gathered or harvested as we need it. We don’t light a fire to cook, but instead we toast, broil, bake, or zap in a microwave.

Today our lights are back on and we are celebrating Trinity Sunday. The blackout forced us to experience light and energy in their most natural and original forms. So also this feast day invites us to look to the original experience that the disciples had of the manifestations of God in their lives.

The disciples of Jesus were Jews and were well steeped in their scripture and traditions. They knew the creation story that we heard today from the Book of Genesis. They knew God as the Creator, who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth.

Out of solitude and magnificent oneness, God’s energy exploded outward in a gesture of ultimate love and desire into a vast creative force. God presided over the nothingness, to bring boundaries and order and beauty into being. God created life, in great diversity, to live exuberantly and joyfully. God created so as not to be alone, but to be in relationship with God’s own creation.

The ancient Jews knew this one, great, creator God as YHWH, the Name that was to holy to pronounce out loud, and who called himself: “I am who I am”. This God was too holy to see and to terrible to approach, and yet was also infinitely and perpetually merciful and forgiving and loving.

As they waited for a great Messiah king, who had been promised by the prophets, they met Jesus. They witnessed his healing miracles and heard his teaching; they witnessed his death and resurrection. They came to recognize Jesus as the Christ and as the Son of God. Then, fifty days after the resurrection, they experienced the gift of the Holy Spirit, which was clearly a gift from God. They began to realize that the Holy Spirit was the Spirit of God and of Life, and would be with them always, as Jesus has promised.

It may be a surprise to realize that the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not named as “Trinity” in the Bible. The lessons that we heard today are the closest expression. In 2 Corinthians, Saint Paul signs off his letter by naming the three ways that he and the other disciples have experienced God: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” (2 Cor 13:13) It’s really more like an invocation and a blessing than an explanation of how God is three and one.

In the Gospel of Matthew, in the second to last verse of the Gospel, we hear the commandment of Jesus to the disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….” (Matt 28:19b) And according to this commandment, Christian baptism continues to include this invocation of the Trinity. It still doesn’t explain why or how or what this means.

In the great ecumenical councils of the fourth century (Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381), the Nicene Creed and the doctrine of the Trinity were agreed upon. Throughout the centuries, the Nicene Creed has continued to be the core statement of Christian faith. We still read together the words of the Nicene Creed each Sunday: we believe in one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This statement of faith was settled, and the wording was officially approved. Now began the more personal and spiritual puzzlement of what all this really means. Our human language is stretched to the limits to explain this. We might say some of the following: God is one substance but three “persons”. God is one, but self-differentiated. God reveals the divine in three modes, yet remains one unity through all time and to eternity.

The Trinity is mystery, and when we ponder God we are standing on holy ground, as Moses did at the burning bush, not understanding completely, but in astonishment at the complexity, richness, and sanctity of God.

When the lights went out, we entered into a more natural, more ancient, and more directly experiential and interdependent way of being. When we experience God as Father-Creator, as Son, and as Holy Spirit, we are experiencing God as eternally flowing and connected community, as the original disciples did. We are made in the image of this communal God, and so we are also called to connection and loving relationship with one another and with the divine.

We may also experience God, as the disciples did – as three in one – as we are led by the Spirit, washed by the self-sacrificing love of Jesus, and blessed by the glories of God’s creation. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all, forevermore.

Easter 7, Year A, Sun June 5, 2011

2011-06-05T16:59:00.001-07:00

Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11

This past Thursday was our annual Ascension Day celebration at the Convent of Saint Helena, with Holy Eucharist and buffet lunch. Bishop Andrew was our celebrant and preacher, and I think a good time was had by all. If you weren’t able to be with us this year, I hope you’ll think about it another year (or come visit us anytime!)

We hold this celebration every year to commemorate the dedication of our chapel to the Ascension. When I first learned about this dedication, I thought I’d like to paint an icon of the Ascension for our chapel. So, I looked up the traditional form of the icon for the Ascension, which is based on today’s scripture reading from the Acts of the Apostles:

As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

So, the traditional icon of the Ascension shows several people, standing in a little group, and looking upwards, and sometimes the two angels are shown standing off to the side. Jesus is ascending into heaven, and all that is visible of him are two little feet, up at the top of the icon. I don’t think that image would work for us. Knowing my sisters, such an icon would be more conducive to hilarity rather than devotion!

Nonetheless, we do get a sense that during the first Eastertide the disciples experienced a whip-lash of events. Within a few weeks, they witnessed Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and then just when all things seemed possible, he was arrested, tried, and subjected to a horrible death. They believed that he was gone and all was lost. And then they experienced the astonishment and giddy joy of the resurrection appearances during the following weeks. These appearances continued for a while, but then stopped.

He had been taken up into heaven, and they were left, standing around, looking at each other and up at the heavens and down at the earth. He was gone, again, and they were left alone, again, and they found themselves in grief and puzzlement, abandoned and “comfortless” once more.

A very long time ago, I went through a period in my life when I also felt abandoned by God, and specifically by the Church. I was going through several very difficult life transitions, all at the same time. While all that was happening, I began to have the feeling that the priest at my church was avoiding speaking to me when I went through the receiving line at the door after service. Then one Sunday, he seemed to hesitate before giving me Communion. At least that was what I perceived. Now having served at the altar myself, I wonder whether he was just fumbling to pick up one wafer without dropping the rest, or something like that.

Nevertheless, I felt rejected, by him, and by association, I felt rejected by God. I was feeling very hurt and lonely in those days, and couldn’t bring myself to go and talk to him about it, and unfortunately, after I stopped going to church, he didn’t call me either. I’m not sure what I would have said or he would have said, but it might have cleared the air.

Unfortunately, I was seeing all of the Church and all of the Christian faith in this one priest, this one fallible human person. Just when I most needed help and reassurance, I felt God had abandoned me. And my perceptions were entirely human and fallible, too. Nonetheless, I stopped going to church, and for a time would usually go jogging or hiking on Sunday mornings. I tried to tell myself that I was worshipping in my own way by communing with nature and reaching out to find my own personal spiritual path.

The problem with this was that I still felt very lonely and hurt. My spiritual life had lost the richness and challenge and companionship that a community of faith can have to offer. I had no liturgy to express my own life transitions or the cycle of the Christian year. I had no scripture or tradition to inform my worship. I had no one else with me on the journey to support me or to challenge me or to lead me into deeper relationship with God.

When I began to think about going back to Church, I had a lot of doubts and questions, and was still carrying a lot of hurt. I began to attend on the periphery: going to an early service but not talking with anyone; singing in the choir, but not going to coffee hour; volunteering during the week, but not making a commitment on Sundays. It took a while to gain trust that I would not be hurt in that way again. Eventually I learned that what any one human person might do was separate from the hospitality and welcome of the whole of the Body of Christ.

It didn’t take long before I realized that God had not turned away from me, but that by leaving the Church I had turned away from God. I still had a lot of questions and a lot of healing to do, but I was hungry for all that I had denied myself in my time away. It was in that time of abstinence from Church that I began to realize how rich, and how essential, the experience of a community of faith could be.

The disciples also experienced the acute loss of Jesus’ presence, at the crucifixion and again following the Ascension. They experienced the sharp and immediate grief after his death, and then a recurrence of mourning when the resurrection appearances stopped and they were, once again, left lonely, still grieving, and comfortless. In today’s collect, the word “comfortless” is used – not in the sense of soft and easy comfort, but rather in the original sense of “com” meaning “with” and “fort” meaning strength. And so they were left comfortless: without strength or power.

As depicted in the icon of the Ascension, the disciples were standing and puzzling and looking up to heaven. They were directionless and without purpose. Out of their own time of in-between grief and spiritual puzzlement, they learned to hunger for a source of spiritual power and began to yearn for some way to share their experience of the Risen Christ. They were longing for a way to become the people of God’s new creation.

Even when we think we are alone, God, who loved us and all creation into being, is still patiently yearning for us. We may learn this most fully through Christian community, which is the Church, a spiritual home, where we are welcome to pray and wonder, challenge and respond, study and question, and grow in spirit. In all our ponderings and wanderings, may we and all those who come to us, experience the blessing of God. Where there are questions, may there grow a foundation of certainty in God’s all encompassing, all knowing, and all redeeming love.

Easter 6, Year A, Sun May 29, 2011

2011-05-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

There was once a Greek scholar, who was so fluent in ancient Greek that he could just sit and read from the Bible and ancient texts. While traveling on a train, he took up the Gospel of John, and read it straight through, just to see what the experience would be like. His comment at the end was, “this is another world”.

The letters of Paul and other Epistles give us a view of the early Christian thought and their lives and travels and difficulties, and a view of the first attempts to evangelize and bring others to believe in Christ. Here and there we get a glimpse of their early attempts to explain and understand what they experienced in the resurrection of Christ. The other three Gospels give us the “good news” of Jesus Christ in narrative and in parables and in the acts of Jesus. The passion narratives in particular are powerful and riveting.

But the New Testament would be greatly impoverished without the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is poetry. This Gospel is always challenging, and frequently reveals itself only gradually, with persistence and prayerful attention. It is truly a book that requires us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” its words and still their full meaning may be elusive.

Jesus says: “I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Huh? To be honest, if we read this literally, it makes no sense. A key is in a box, or a box is in a key, not both. The Gospel of John reminds me of the etchings of M. C. Escher. Escher’s etchings include a hand which is holding a pencil and drawing another hand, and the second hand is drawing the first. You may have seen his drawings that look like a pattern covering the page: if you look one way, you see fish, and if you look at the space around the fish you see birds.

There is another complex and detailed Escher drawing of a staircase, in a closed square, which goes up and up, and joins a flight of stairs which is going down. It’s impossible, but the flights of stairs connect. In yet another drawing, of the interior of a house, one person is walking up a staircase, and above him another person is walking on the underside of the same staircase. It’s impossible, and we puzzle over these images, yet register them as real.

“I am in the Father, and you in me and I in you”. It is visually impossible, yet spiritually true. John gives us wonder and mystery, which are beyond our ordinary life experience, yet also provide us a way of shifting us over from old patterns of thought into ways of being in new life in Christ.

John gives us a poetic vision of Jesus in his earthly life, yet at the same time Jesus is also knowing of and being in the resurrection life. In John, Jesus is very much with the disciples, yet he also knows that in a little while he will no longer be with them. He is in the action of the story, yet also above and beyond it.

The ancient people of Jesus’ time, and to some extent we also, today, live on the fringes of understanding of what our true spiritual nature could be. We still may fall back into the ancient understanding of God as a source of punishment for bad behavior and reward for good. We may lose the sense of God’s nourishing and intimate presence with us and all creation.

Our lessons today lead us through this shift in human understanding. The psalm gives us the classical view of transactions with God: I will give you the proper sacrifices, O God, and I expect that you won’t reject my prayer and won’t withhold your love from me. I will do good, and you will do good for me.

Paul encountered the old thought patterns, as well, when he saw the “altar to an unknown god” in Athens. There were so many ancient Greek gods, that the Athenians built an altar to “an unknown god,” just in case they might have overlooked a god or two, and just to be sure that god wouldn’t get upset – and wreak havoc.

Paul went on to say that the Christians worship the one God, the Creator and God of all the universe, infinite and yet so close that “in him we live and move and have our being”. He tried to move the Athenians to the new consciousness of God who is not worshiped through idols, who is not going to get upset if some aspect or name of God is overlooked, but rather there is one God of all the universe, who is in Christ.

In 1 Peter we have a new, early Christian interpretation of “do good and all will go well for you”. He says, “if you suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed”. Even if you are good, you may still suffer, but be of good cheer because, he says, you are suffering for Christ. There certainly is redemptive suffering, but still this argument is not totally convincing, and not a comprehensive view of what our new life in Christ is all about.

The Gospel of John takes us to a new level. At first hearing, today’s reading may seem to be random pious thoughts, but I think there is a very intentional pattern in this passage. It seems to me that Jesus brings us to the summation of the other readings.

The bookends of this passage from John are “agape”, the spiritual love of God and Christ, modeling for us the possibility of profound human love for God and for each other. The passage begins, “If you love me…” and concludes, “…those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

These bookends of “agape” both point inward, towards keeping the commandments of Christ. The passage starts: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The passage concludes, “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.” Love points inward towards keeping the new commandments: to love God with all heart, soul, mind, strength; to love our neighbor as ourselves; and the new commandment, to love as Christ loved.

At the center of the passage is the Spirit of truth, the Advocate, who will be sent to be with us, so that we will not be “orphaned”. In Christ, we have a new anchor and new promise, of life in the Spirit and life in God, resting securely in the enfolding arms of “agape” and spiritual love, to be lived out through the new commandments, and which are centered on the Holy Spirit. This promise is sure, that we are not left desolate and alone, because Christ is in God, Christ is in us, and we are in him.

Easter 5, Year A, Sun May 22, 2011

2011-05-25T10:50:00.001-07:00

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

This past Friday, I read in the news that some people believe that that the rapture would occur on Saturday. The article said that this date was based on a calculation of exactly 7,000 years from Noah’s flood, and it’s believed (by some) that the five months following the rapture will be a time of war and disasters, followed by the actual end of the world this coming October. They believe that some will be “saved” in the rapture and others will be “left behind”.

I don’t believe that a rapture or the end of the world are predictable on certain dates, as Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark: “Heaven and earth will pass away… but about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mark 13:31-32) I think the passage we heard today from the Gospel of John also gives us a different – and much more comforting – perspective on the end of time, and our ultimate destination. This passage is often read at funerals, especially the first verses, because they give us the firm assurance that there is a resting place prepared for each and every one of us, and that we will be taken home to God.

Thomas is puzzled, however, by the words of Jesus. He says: “How can we know the way?” I remember once getting lost while driving in a rural area at night, in the days long before GPS, or Google maps, or cell phones. To this day I can still feel the fear of being completely lost in the dark, with no where to stop, no one to ask directions. I think I can hear a touch of deep sadness in Thomas’ voice, and his fear of being left alone, without hope of finding his way.

Philip takes another tack. “If you show us the Father”, he says, “and we will be satisfied”. Philip asked to see God, even as Jesus was standing right in front of him! And Jesus reassured both Philip and Thomas that he was and is and will be forever “the way, and the truth, and the life”. What they sought and longed for was right there, with them, all along.

We learn to know God by knowing Jesus, who lived a human life with all of our human sorrows and joys, and yet was also divine. As we learn to know him and accept his presence in our lives, we also will know the way, and the truth, and the life. In him, we have seen God.

The problem is that our minds and our hearts forget this. We easily get distracted. We are accustomed to being entertained, and to move directly from one activity to another. We stay busy. We seldom have moments of quiet, in which we can let go of our troubled hearts, and be still, and give God a chance to let His presence be known.

Last week I was in Racine WI with the other leaders of the Episcopal religious orders. We had a great time, and it was delightful to meet old and new friends, and to be reminded of how much our communities are both alike and different. One of the superiors of a semi-enclosed order, told me that they had been given a GPS. After thinking about this a bit, I realized that it seemed a bit incongruous that a semi-enclosed Order to be given a device that helps one travel around, but there you are. She said that they hadn’t actually used it as a navigation tool, but they were having fun in the convent, listening to the different voices it can produce!

Our communities are definitely different in the ways in which we live out our religious vows, but in some important ways we are also very much the same. We all strive to live peacefully, in intentional community, with simplicity, under life vows, and with prayer at the center of our lives. In addition, the Benedictines take a specific vow of stability, which means that they vow to remain members of the same monastery for the rest of their lives. The vow of stability isn’t taken, explicitly, by all of the religious communities, but I think it is a key part of the monastic tradition, and even in living the Christian life. It is definitely contrary to our cultural norms, which may lead us to expect and depend on being entertained, on variety, on fulfillment from external sources, on running around.

Jesus presents the simplicity of one path to the one dwelling place that is our true home. It is the place where we can find peace and security, in the simple everyday following of a life of prayer and thoughtfulness. For the monastics, it is based on specific routine and discipline. For those of us who are mostly or entirely outside of the monastery, it means taking the practice of prayer and stability with us.

I think we can read this passage from the Gospel of John on two levels, both as a promise to each of us that we have an ultimate destination in God, and also as a promise of a dwelling place that is at the divine core within each one of us, here, in this life. It is a place we already know, but need to be reminded of. It is our true dwelling in which there is peacefulness, serenity, and holiness of life in this world, and by seeking it, we prepare to be drawn to God in the life to come.

Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled”. Easier said than done! There is much to trouble us in the world and in our lives, but Jesus follows up with yet another promise: that whatever we ask in his name, he will do it. The key point here is – what would be worthy to ask in Jesus’ name?

One of my fond memories of my father in his later years is that every time I went to visit my family, he would always meet me in the same place in the train station in New Haven. I always knew he would be there, at the top of the escalator, wearing the same baseball cap, waiting with a hug and a question about my trip. He was always there, always faithful, always well ahead of time.

But even my father was fallible; he might have forgotten, or gotten the wrong day or time, been delayed on the road, gotten sick at the last minute. Even the early martyrs of the Church, like Stephen, were faithful to their calling, but they also were human – and I imagine that some shrank from the ordeal at the last moment.

But God’s faithfulness to us surpasses any human standard. In Christ, we are given a stable rock and cornerstone of ultimate security, which can lead us to the Way of compassion, gentleness, peace, forgiveness, self-giving love; the Truth encompassing all the fullness of God and of each creature in its most authentic way of being; the Life of grace in the Spirit. The way of Christ is the way of faith and trust in the promise that we are beloved beyond measure. We might ask, in Christ’s name, to believe this with all our hearts.

Even in the midst of the chaos and complexities of the world around us, the dwelling place prepared for each of us is a place where the door is always open, where the light is always on, and the one who knows and loves us best is waiting with all patience to receive us home.

Easter Day, Year A, Sunday Apr 24, 2011

2011-04-26T06:47:00.001-07:00

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

Some years ago, I was invited to lead Sunday services at St. Clements Church in New York. It’s a unique church, located in a theatre. During the weekdays and evenings, theatrical performances are held there, but on Sunday morning the theatre becomes a church. The stage becomes the sanctuary, and whatever stage set is in place becomes the backdrop. The seats are arranged in graduated auditorium-style. Since this church is also a theatre and located near the theatre district, there are many actors, dancers, musicians, and singers in the congregation.

We began the service with a rousing processional hymn. The servers and I processed down the side isle, and onto the stage. At the end of the hymn, I said the opening prayers, and then we began the Gloria. And it was indeed a glorious Gloria. The organist pulled out all the stops, and everyone was singing at top voice. I could clearly hear some well-trained voices, singing in parts.

The effect was, well, simply glorious. As the last chord was played on the organ, and the voices faded, there was a still moment when the music was ended but the vibrations still lingered. I took a deep breath and prepared to read the collect for the day. Just in that moment of silence, a little boy about 5 years old, jumped up on his seat, threw his arms in the air, and shouted at the top of his voice, “Hurray!”

I doubt he really knew why all the big people were making such joyful music. And yet, his “Hurray!” was a simple and complete expression of Easter joy.

On that first Easter morning, Mary couldn’t really have known what she was proclaiming, either. And who was she, anyway, to be the first to see the risen Christ and the first to be sent to tell the others?

The story of that first Easter begins in darkness, and Mary certainly was familiar with darkness. She had had “seven demons”, perhaps some kind of mental illness, and may well have been an outcast, and shunned by her family and neighbors.

I wish we knew the story of how Jesus cast out her demons, but from other similar stories we can be sure that when Jesus met her, he had compassion for her, and he saw her as a person worthy of attention and love. He healed her and accepted her as his disciple. He changed her life, and of course she loved him. She saw that he changed the lives of others too: the blind could see, the deaf could hear, the lame could walk, the lowly were lifted up by his loving attention, the proud were undone and humbled by his teachings.

But then all had gone horribly wrong, Jesus was dead, and there was only darkness. All that was left to do was the work of women: to bring spices to the tomb, to anoint the body, to pray, and to mourn.

That early morning, it was still dark, and Mary’s soul was heavy. When she saw that the stone was removed from the tomb, she was dismayed, and even more deeply grieved – if that could be possible. Now she couldn’t even give him the final gift of anointing.

“Whom are you looking for?” the angels asked her. Of course, she is looking for a dead body. And then a man in the garden asks, “Whom are you looking for?”

Mary lingered at the side of the tomb, and the risen Christ chose her, yet again. Now the one who had been shunned would be honored and sent as the first to proclaim the Good News. “Go to my brothers and say to them ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary accepted this new role, and if she was afraid or nervous, the Gospel of John doesn’t say so. Maybe she didn’t even stop to think about it. She hurried to announce the impossible, the incredible, the astonishing news. She doesn’t try to explain or develop a theology of resurrection or an advanced Christology, or ecclesiology, or any other kind of –ology. She doesn’t even speak of resurrection.

She simply says, “I have seen the Lord!”

Indeed, the experiences of the risen Christ that we hear in the Bible are mostly very personal, profoundly moving – and very simple. There are no explanations; the experiences just are. They experienced something beyond any human understanding, and yet so powerful that they felt compelled to keep on telling each other what had happened to them.

As the members of the community continued to retell their experiences of the risen Christ, the living Christ remained in their midst, and they were transformed into a community of faith. They began to live as the Body of Christ in the world, and in so doing they witnessed to the world of the power of the resurrection.

Later, they began to try to explain what all this meant. Paul attempts to explain the spiritual truth in the great mystery of the resurrection: “You have been raised with Christ…. You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God…. You also will be revealed with him in glory”. I wonder, when he wrote these words, if even he was completely sure what that meant.

And yet Christians everywhere do believe that the power of God in Christ has overcome the darkness of death and can do infinitely more than we can possibly imagine to heal us and our fragile world. We believe in the free gift of new life in Christ, in this world and in the age to come.

And here we are, gathered in this church, this morning. There are many reasons for being here: some of us are new or long-time members of this church, some occasional visitors, or first time visitors, or maybe someone said to you, “Come on, we’re going to church” and so here you are. You are all welcome. And here, today, there may be something each one of us is looking for.

I invite you to come back and be with us in the coming weeks to hear what happens next, as the story unfolds, as the power of the risen Christ moves from individual experience, to belief, to the building of a community of faith, and in completion of the circle, back to the strengthening of the faith and service of the individual believers. As we follow this story, we may begin to find what we also are looking for.

The risen Christ didn’t appear as anyone expected, some didn’t even recognize him at first. But he did call Mary by name. He calls us, also, by name. Somehow, God called us all to be here today, in whatever state and time in our lives. My prayer is that each one of us here, today, may experience of the power of God’s love, and feel Christ’s healing presence among us.

Mary was chosen and sent, and all that she needed to say was: “I have seen the Lord”. We, also, are called to linger and to experience the risen Christ, and then we will be sent as well to tell this Good News, in words and in our lives. And so, the real sermon of Easter is not in my words, but is alive in our midst, in our community, in our world, and continues to unfold all around us.

The tomb could not hold him, and the Good News of God’s love could not be held back. Jesus is free, and now his love is accessible to all. Alleluia! Christ is risen! Hurray!

Good Friday, Year A, Friday Apr 22, 2011

2011-04-22T16:58:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 52:13—53:12; Psalm 22; Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1—19:42

Some years ago, I went to a Roman Catholic monastery for a workshop, and arrived the afternoon before the program was to start. I learned that there would be a Taizé service that evening, and decided I’d like to go.

The monastery “chapel” turned out to be a huge church (even larger than our cathedral in Columbia SC!) and there were hundreds of people present for the service. Taizé music is a style of chanting that is simple and repetitive, but becomes quite powerful when there are many people chanting the same simple lines, over and over.

During the service, as the chanting continued, a very large crucifix was laid on the floor in front of the altar. We were invited to come forward and place a hand on the cross, and pray. At first I thought I’d just sit and watch, but then I was drawn to join the very long line of people who were going up to pray at the cross.

As I reached the front of the line, I saw that the cross was large enough for about 10 people to kneel around it at the same time, with their hands on the cross. Some stopped for just a moment and then went back to their seats, but there was no hurry, most stayed for a while to pray: some with peaceful faces, some with anguish, some openly crying.

It seemed to me that all of these hundreds of people were bringing very personal, and sometimes even heavy burdens to the cross. As I watched and then took my turn, it seemed to me that the cross was able to honor and to receive and to hold all of these prayers. And there was always room for more. The cross had infinite capacity to take in everything, however heavy or terrible or painful.

There was no promise that the pain would be erased, or that all would be instantly made well, or that the prayers would be fulfilled exactly as asked. Still, I felt peace and I was confident that my prayers and all of these prayers were being heard, clearly, respectfully, lovingly.

Today, we will have a time of silence to pray and to be in the presence of the cross. I invite you to give over your prayers and intentions to God, and to surrender them as seems best to you to God’s loving care.

It was in the power of God to turn this ancient instrument of suffering and death into a sign of hope. May we also see the cross as a sign of God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ, his complete offering of himself for our salvation. May it continue to give us strength to persevere, and may it be for us always a comfort in time of trouble, our path into God’s new creation, and the way of life and peace.

Maundy Thursday, Year A, Thurs Apr 21, 2011

2011-04-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Cor 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”

Throughout his ministry, Jesus taught through extraordinary stories and parables. These stories are brilliant and memorable for their situations and characters, and for the challenges they present.

But the disciples still didn’t get it. They didn’t understand who he was, and they didn’t understand that he would give his life for them and for the life of the world. Finally, the time is running short. On the last evening, Jesus no longer tells stories, but he gives them a direct demonstration and some specific things to do “in memory of him.”

In ancient times, people mostly walked wherever they were going. They wore open sandals, and the roads were dusty. When they arrived at someone’s home, a door mat was not sufficient to clean off dirty shoes and feet, so there was a custom of having a basin of water for guests to wash their tired, aching, dusty feet. In some homes, there might also be a servant with a towel to assist.

In ancient Middle Easter society, the social ranks and customs of honor were deeply embedded. Yet Jesus, their leader and teacher, shatters all convention by taking off his robe, wrapping a towel around his waist, and preparing to wash the disciples feet. Peter is horrified! This wasn’t just like a servant serving dinner; it’s intimate and personal. Jesus might just as well have offered to give them a body massage or cut their toenails.

Trust Peter to go all out, one way or another. “No way,” he said, “you’re not going to wash my feet!” But Jesus says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” You will not be a part of me, have a place with me, or have a portion from me. Then Peter, still perhaps not really understanding, goes all out the other way, “Ok, then wash all of me!”

What Peter doesn’t understand, yet, is that it’s not really about washing the dust off his feet, or his hands, or his head. He doesn’t need a bath. He needs to let Jesus serve him. He needs to learn the “new commandment”.

Maundy Thursday is named for the “new commandment”, in Latin mandatum novum. It’s not like the ten commandments, which told the people of Israel what NOT to do. Jesus has already given the disciples the summary of the law, to love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. This new commandment from Jesus adds yet another dimension.

We are not only to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, but we are to love as God loves. We are to love each other selflessly and unconditionally. We are to receive and give service beyond price and beyond reward.

One time when I was serving as a volunteer chaplain, there was one patient I still remember whose room had a pungent odor. And I had overheard her being unpleasant, even nasty and rude to the hospital staff. I realized after a while, that I had not gone into her room when I was on that floor, and I’m sorry to say that I tended to make excuses to myself – it was time for lunch, I was in a hurry to go to another floor, it was time to leave for the day. One day I heard other chaplains also say that they avoided going to see her, so I took a good, long, hard look at the situation.

I tried to think of her as someone’s daughter. Perhaps she was also someone’s friend, a sister, a cousin, a wife. She was a person with a life, relationships, and she was above all a child of God. I tried to imagine her as Jesus would see her, and would love her.

So, the next time I was on that floor, I went to her room first. I did try to engage her in conversation, and she did answer but clearly indicated that she wasn’t interested in talking or engaging with me. She complained and asked me to call the nurse. Then she turned her back.

At least I had tried. I had made an offer, and I wonder now whether at least my intention made a difference to her, even though she wasn’t able to respond positively. I don’t know for sure. In any case, my attempt to engage her and my thoughts and prayers for her were a free gift, with hope, but without specific expectations.

Jesus calls us to love as he loved and to serve as he served. He chose and loved and served all the disciples, even Judas. Even Judas received a foot-washing. Even Judas received the Body and Blood of Jesus at the Last Supper. We are called to serve and to love, even those whom it is most difficult to serve and to love.

But first, before we can even attempt to do this, Jesus requires the disciples, and us, to receive his gift of loving service. We accept this gift by letting someone wash our feet. We accept this gift each time we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, and in so doing we take Jesus into ourselves, “that he may dwell in us and we in him.”

This is our food for the journey, that when we go forth in the name of Christ it is not on empty, but that we may be filled with the spirit of generosity and peace, and so that we may attempt to offer love to one another, as Christ loved us:

“Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

Lent 5, Year A, Sun Apr 10, 2011

2011-04-10T13:17:00.001-07:00

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, we hear of a valley full of very dry bones, with no life left in them. These bones are all that remains of the people of Israel, who are living in exile, separated from their own land, and separated from the place where they can truly worship God: the Temple in Jerusalem. And then God gives direction to Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and to breathe life into the bones, to show that God will bring back to life what has been left for dead.

Exile is one type of death, and there are many others: loss of a friend, a job, a home, addiction, as well as actual death. Each kind involves a special sort of loss and grief. In his book, A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis wrote about his own experience of mourning after the death of his wife. Here are some excepts from the beginning of this book:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me….

There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life…. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace….

Meanwhile, where is God?... The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?

Mary and Martha might have expressed similar emotions. They experienced the increasing illness of their brother, and started to fear that he might die. In great anxiety, they sent a message to Jesus saying, “He whom you love is ill.” They didn’t say outright: “Please come, right now!” but it seems that was their intent. They hoped that he might come right away, and that he might cure Lazarus.

But surprisingly, Jesus just stayed where he was, and Lazarus did die. Only then did Jesus tell the disciples that Lazarus was dead, and that he intended to go to Bethany. When Jesus finally arrived, both sisters said to him, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Ouch. Even people in the crowd muttered to each other, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Ouch, again.

And Jesus does weep, at the death of his friend and at seeing the sorrow of the sisters. Then Jesus asked the people to roll back the stone. He called to Lazarus to “come out!” He asked the people to “unbind him, and let him go.” After being dead in the tomb for four days, Lazarus is brought back to life. A miracle to top all miracles, for sure. This is the last miracle that Jesus performs in the Gospel of John, and it’s definitely the most compelling.

That still doesn’t explain why Jesus would wait so long, for two whole days, before coming to Bethany. He still could have gotten their attention by coming sooner, and curing Lazarus just before he died.

And why does God often seem most absent just when we most need clear evidence of the divine presence? Why do we so often wait for God to answer our prayers? We want God to hurry up and do something. And that’s what the sisters want from Jesus too. And it rarely happens the way we want. It may not have been what Jesus really wanted either. Jesus wept, at the loss of his friend, and perhaps also because he knew that there would continue to be grief and sorrow and suffering.

Why then, does Jesus wait? Why does God wait?

Jesus says that he will resuscitate Lazarus, so that the people in the crowd, “may believe that [God] has sent [him]”. But this is not just a demonstration project; a final flashy miracle so that they may believe.

I think there’s more to it than that. The people would have been impressed by a simple cure, as Lazarus was at the point of death, so why let everyone go through all the suffering of his death, and let everyone grieve so much? I don’t believe God lets us suffer to make a point.

There may not be a definitive answer to why Jesus waited to come to Lazarus, and why God waits to answer our prayers. It may be a life-time project to understand this completely. In the meantime, the collect for today asks that “among the swift and varied changes of the world, [may] our heart surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.”

When a friend of mine died, 20 years ago this month, I was angry. I cried, and I pounded the wall of my room. But the anger didn’t help, nor did the crying or the pounding. What helped me the most was going to church, and praying, and giving my sorrow over to God.

It was not when I called God most fervently that God came, but God did answer when I let go of my urgent demand for God to show up, right now, and instead let the time of waiting just be a time of waiting, and surrendered to God all that was heavy on my soul. Then there was a space for the Holy Spirit to fill my heart with peace and quiet confidence in God’s healing power.

The overriding message that we hear in the Gospels is not that God will keep us from all suffering, or deliver us the minute something bad happens, but that we are called to faithfulness and trust in a God who has walked in our shoes; who has wept with our grieving; who has suffered on the cross. Our God has compassion for all suffering. And God’s deepest desire is that we return again and again to the source of all creative power and all comfort, by giving over to God what we cannot possibly bear alone.

This is not the end of the story. The most essential part of the sacred story is just beginning. The raising of Lazarus is just a prelude to the main story of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. As he was raised from the dead, so we are invited to join in the new creation and new life in Christ. Next week…. The story continues……

Lent 4, Year A, Sun Apr 3, 2011

2011-04-04T16:54:00.001-07:00

1 Sam 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

In today’s reading, we hear that the eyes of the man born blind were healed and that he also came to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. While the blind one came to see spiritual truth, the sighted people were blind to what was happening. They focused their gaze on an infraction of the law: Jesus did work on the Sabbath! But they missed the miracle of anointing, and blessing, and healing. In this story, we glide back and forth between seeing and not-seeing; between physical and spiritual insight and blindness.

The story even becomes somewhat comical, when the onlookers speak about the formerly blind man in his presence. “It’s him, the blind beggar.” “No, it’s someone like him.” “No, I really do think it’s him.” All the while he keeps protesting, “Hello, it’s me! I am the one who was blind! I was blind, and now I see!”

Both David and the man-born-blind are surprise candidates for anointing. David is the least likely among the sons of Jesse to be honored in any way: he is the youngest and he is a lowly shepherd. Again, we have a somewhat comical scene, in which each son of Jesse passes before Samuel, and each time Samuel sees an impressively handsome young man, and just as he raises his hand to anoint the next King of Israel, God speaks to Samuel, and says, “No, not this one; no, not this one either,… for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Finally, David appears, hot and ruddy and smelling of pasture and sheep, and yet Samuel anoints him. The man-born-blind is also anointed, with spittle and mud. This may sound uggy to us, but saliva does have healing qualities, and even animals will lick a wound to promote healing. In ancient times, spittle and mud were sometimes used to make a healing plaster. To the ancient people hearing this story, the action of Jesus would have been considered to be an anointing of the man’s eyes, with the mud rather than with oil, which was expensive and probably not immediately available.

Jesus saw in the man-born-blind, not a sinner, but an opportunity for grace to work through him, and for the glory of God to be revealed. Samuel, through God’s revelation, saw the potential for a young shepherd boy to become a king.

One of the best ways to begin to understand God is through analogy. When we know the best of human love, we can get a small sense of God’s faithfulness and dedication. When we suddenly see a special gift in another person, we may have a glimpse of how God sees and knows each person, as the special, and gifted, and beloved person that God created him or her to be.

God sees, not as mortals see, but God “looks on the heart”. Some years ago I was serving at a parish in NYC, and we had a high school attached to that parish. It was a special school for students who had not succeeded in any other schools. One day I attended a presentation for these students by a man who was a TV weatherman.

Why a TV weatherman? It turned out that he also had had difficulties learning and succeeding in school. He disliked school so much, that he used to study the weather reports to see if possibly there might be a snow day or other storm, and if possibly school might be cancelled!

Over the years, he found that his interest in the weather and his outgoing personality translated into a successful career on TV. After he told his own story, he spoke directly to the hearts of these students, and he told them that each one of them had a special gift, something that no one else has. Each one of them was unique. Each one of them could be successful in their lives. Each one of them could try to find out what their interests and potential and gifts could be.

These young people were normally rowdy and noisy, and had short attention spans, but that afternoon there was absolute silence and complete attention in that room. They were hearing, some of them perhaps for the first time, that not only did someone know what their experiences of school were like, but they were hearing a real story of someone who had overcome similar difficulties, and who believed that they could do it too.

God sees each one of us deeply and completely. Last week we heard the story of the Samaritan woman, whose past life is laid out before her by Jesus, and still he offered her the gift of grace in “living water”. Today’s story also tells of God’s deep knowing and insight into the human heart, recognizing what is special and unique, and what is possible: the shepherd boy David to become king; the man-born-blind to recognize the Messiah.

The seeing of God might be somewhat like the seeing of an artist. Where most of us see a jumble of leaves and trees, an artist will see patterns, color, shapes, balance, dark tones and light. Some years ago, my son introduced me to the work of an artist named Andrew Goldsworthy, who creates sculptures, of sorts, out of completely natural materials in their natural environment.

He makes tall pillars of stones at the beach, and photographs them as the tide comes and goes; sometimes they remain standing, sometimes they fall over, making new shapes and designs. He makes arrangements of bright yellow leaves on a rock in the middle of a stream. He makes sculptures of ice, and photographs them as they melt in the morning sun – forming new shapes and patterns of light.

My son and I went to see one of his works in upstate New York. It was a stone wall, which is a very common thing in that region since there are so many stones left behind by glaciers. This wall, however, doesn’t separate one piece of land from another, but rather it wanders in and out of the trees and even into a pond and out the other side. It just is – shape and color and texture, rather than serving any purpose.

The artist sees more than the outward surface of things. The artist sees the essence and potential; the artist sees and through skill, creates a visual experience for us all to see and experience in a different way.

The light of Christ has come into the world, so that we may also --- sometimes, partially, even dimly --- see as God sees, and believe in the power of the healing Spirit, to guide us and anoint us, and prepare us to see the goodness in the world around us, and to see and to receive the divine spirit that dwells within each one of us.

Lent 3, Year A, Sun Mar 27, 2011

2011-03-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

When I lived in New York, we often made jokes about people from New Jersey. One of the most frequent jibes had to do with “Jersey drivers”, who we New Yorkers supposed to be the worst on the roads. When I moved, briefly, to New Jersey, people kidded me about needing a passport and whether I really wanted my nice new car to have “Jersey” plates.

It was all in good fun, and I suppose people from New Jersey made jokes about New Yorkers. For the ancient Jews, the close by, but not quite “us” people were the Samaritans. However, it wasn’t just joking. They were quite serious in separating themselves, in ritual and in social interaction, from those other people. The Jews even avoided travel through Samaritan territory, even though it was the closest route between Galilee and Jerusalem.

The Samaritans at the time of Jesus were Jews who had married with the local population. They worshiped on Mount Gerizim, not in Jerusalem. Their scriptures, the Samaritan Torah, were not the same as the Torah of the Jews. The Samaritans were, to the Jews of Jesus’ time, a people who had strayed from the true practice and worship of YHWH, and as we heard today in the Gospel of John, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans”. (John 4:9b)

In the heat of the day, at “about noon”, a woman has come to draw water at the town well in Sychar, in Samaria, and she is surprised to see a Jewish man sitting at the well. She is astonished that he asks her for a drink. He should not share a drinking cup with her; he shouldn’t even be speaking with her.

We also find out, in the course of their conversation, that she is probably not the most highly respected person in town. She may even be coming to the well during the heat of the day to avoid the looks and the gossip. She may well be the least reputable person Jesus encounters in all the Gospels.

And yet, Jesus has the longest conversation with her that we have on record in the Gospels. She is a despised Samaritan and a woman and a social outcast, and yet Jesus offers her “living water”. Living water is flowing, clear, sweet. It is the water of rivers and streams that is not still and stagnant, but always moving, always fresh, always renewed. The woman understands this as an offer of fresh drinking water, but Jesus is offering her the gift of spiritual water from the Holy Spirit. He is offering to her the grace of God, which will fill her to overflowing like an eternal spring.

Jesus knows all about this woman, and still he offers her the gift of grace. She begins to understand that this gift is more than just a new source of water, but that Jesus is speaking “of heavenly things”. Without a word, she drops her bucket and goes to call the people to come to meet Jesus. She is the least likely evangelist, and yet she speaks from her heart of her encounter. She is already overflowing with hope.

If she had proclaimed belief, they might have dismissed her, but instead she offers an intriguing possibility, that he might be the Messiah. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” And they were intrigued. Why would he speak with her of all people? Who is this stranger? At their invitation, Jesus stayed with the Samaritans for two days, (more shocking still!) and they heard for themselves, and they came to believe that Jesus is the Savior.

Each Sunday, we begin our service with the Collect for Purity: “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid…” It’s a beautiful prayer and also a somewhat scary to acknowledge that God knows us so intimately.

I think that many of us are brought up to believe that on some level we need to be good in order to be loved. From the Santa Claus song, “You better watch out, better not cry, better not pout.…” to a subtle (or even not so subtle) message in some families, that love and acceptance are directly linked to good and acceptable behavior.

God help us, if all that was in our hearts, all our desires, all our secrets were known. Yet this is just what happens to the Samaritan woman. Jesus makes it clear that he knows who she is and what she has done, but he speaks with her anyway, and offers her an unbelievable gift. At first she understands the gift as assistance in her labors, clear drinking water that she won’t have to fetch and carry in the hot noonday sun.

Moments later, she comes to understand that the gift is far deeper, far more precious. He is offering her the gift of grace. He knows her, and yet he offers her the love of God. She is a sinner, a Samaritan, a woman, and yet she will worship God fully, not in any specific place and not through the Temple authorities, but directly from her heart, “in spirit and truth”.

The Messiah is not only coming, but is here, right now, speaking with her. And what she does not yet know is that Jesus the Christ will give his life for her.

At our convent we have a little garden with an artificial pond. This pond has been the source of a lot of discussion and maintenance costs over the years, and at present it is just sitting there, with the pump broken. The water is maintained, sort of, with water plants, but still it is stagnant and a bit green. There are goldfish in the pond, who are surviving, just barely. I feel a bit sorry for them, because they are often at the surface gulping air.

“Living water” is not stagnant, as the water of a closed pond, but flowing, clear, pure, life-giving, no need to gulp for air. The “water” that Jesus offers is the gift of grace that is constantly renewed, life-giving, nourishing. It is offered to us all, whoever we are, even though, to God, our hearts are open, all our desires are known, none of our secrets are hidden.

Saint Paul wrote that “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God made us, formed us, God knows all our faults and foibles and sins, and still loves us completely and unconditionally and forever. God offers to each of us the gift of grace in the “living water” to overflowing from our hearts, to be witness in the world to the peace and love of God in Christ.

Lent 2, Year A, Sun Mar 20, 2011

2011-03-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

Many years ago I was serving as an acolyte on Easter morning. This was a “high” church, so we had all the incense, bells, vestments, complicated liturgy, and fabulous music. At one point during the service I looked out over the congregation and saw a woman come quietly into the church. The service was well along, so there were no ushers at the door, and she came in quietly, without anyone approaching her, and she stood tentatively and secretly at the back of the church.

Unlike those who attend church once or twice a year, she was in yet another category – of those who long and yearn, but don’t quite even get to a service or even know where to go or how to start. She was hovering on the edge of curiosity, almost ready but not quite to tip over from curiosity and to fall into a spiritual journey.

She was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, and her body was mostly hidden behind a pillar, but I could see her face clearly. As she watched, her eyes got really big. I imagined that I saw a hunger, a yearning for some connection and understanding. It felt to me that she was searching for God, but not yet ready to come into the church. She was not yet ready to be seen. She was not quite ready to open herself and take the risk of connection, commitment, and to being changed in the Spirit.

I wanted to rush over and invite her to come in, but of course that was more likely to scare her away completely! I left it up to God. I pray that one day she did enter, and that she found a spiritual home and community.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a teacher of the law and leader in the synagogue. He was fully established in his religious tradition, but something about Jesus was intriguing to him. Like the woman peeking around the pillar, he came to see Jesus “by night”, in secret, tentatively and hesitantly, and yet with more than just with curiosity.

How to start the conversation? Well, he took that route of flattery. “You must be from God , because of the signs that you do”. Jesus could have answered something like, “Well, yes, ahem, glad you noticed. The miracle business seems to have been going rather well lately.”

But Jesus seems not to be answering him at all, and the discussion that follows seems to be a classic case of parallel communication: Nicodemus talking on a concrete and literal level, and Jesus speaking of spiritual truth.

Nicodemus: “You much be a teacher from God. What great miracles!”

Jesus: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”.

Nicodemus: “Huh? How can anyone be born a second time?”

Jesus: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit”

Nicodemus: doesn’t say anything; looks dumbstruck.

Jesus: “Don’t be astonished. The Spirit blows where it chooses, but you don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going. Just like those who are born of Spirit.”

Nicodemus: “Huh? How can these things be?”

Nicodemus is being polite, but he might as well have said, “What on earth are you talking about?” What on earth indeed, for Nicodemus is talking from a concrete, rational, earthly perspective. Jesus is speaking of heavenly things, and is alluding to the sacrament of baptism: the second birth, through the water of baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit, bringing new life and transformation in Christ. Not something we can analyze in a concrete and literal way, but only experience as a transition in faith and in an outward and visible sign of the gift of inward and spiritual grace.

For many of us, it’s much easier to understand the concrete, the literal, the scientific rather than the more abstract and spiritual. Nicodemus has not made that leap, not yet, but I imagine that he was more intrigued than ever. Jesus chides him: are you a teacher and yet don’t understand?

Then, he does give Nicodemus something concrete to hold onto: the staff of Moses. Jesus tells him that just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent on a staff, to give faith and courage to the people of Israel, so also the Son of Man (Jesus himself) will be lifted up; a standard for people to see, to follow, to lead them to faith. Look, yourself, Nicodemus, and believe. This is the path to eternal life, to the kingdom of heaven, to God.

Jesus concludes with one of the most well-known and often quoted and beautiful passages in the New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We don’t as frequently hear the next verse, but fortunately and very appropriately it is included in this season of Lent: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The gift of Christ to the world is a gift, not of condemnation, but of the utmost love and desire of God that all be opened in heart and in the Spirit, and that all may be led to our true eternal home in God. Nicodemus begins the conversation by talking about the signs and miracles. Jesus affirms, indirectly, that these are not what he should be paying attention to. The signs and miracles are an outpouring and overflowing of grace, but not the main point. If anything, they could be a distraction.

The real point, that Jesus doesn’t want Nicodemus to miss, is the path of salvation through Jesus. By accepting the Spirit of God in baptism, and by entering into the mystery of faith, Nicodemus will someday believe and become a disciple of Jesus, no longer following tentatively and hesitantly, secretly, by night.

In the story of Abraham, in an earlier passage, we can read that his father, Terah, was called by God to leave the land of his ancestors and journey to Canaan. Terah, however, only went about 1/3 of the way. God then called his son, Abram, to finish the journey, and Abram heard the word of the Lord, and Abram followed God’s call, and “Abram went” to the land that God showed him. In those days, travel was slow, difficult, dangerous, and he had no idea where he was going, but he had faith. As he went, he might well have been reciting the psalm, “My help comes from the Lord; he shall preserve me from all evil.”

When we enter into the life of the Spirit, we also enter a journey that we can’t completely map out from the beginning. Who knows where the Spirit will lead? We can only enter in faith and confidence that the love of God is beyond all reason, beyond all deserving, and beyond all knowing. And along the way, we can gain here and there a glimpse and glimmer of God’s faithfulness to us through knowing the love of Christ.

Epiphany Last, Year A, Sun Mar 6, 2011

2011-03-06T17:00:00.000-08:00

Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2 or 99; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matt 17:1-9

When Sr. ES and I went to the Holy Land, we noticed that the walking that we did was unusually tiring. And we didn’t walk to all the holy places, of course, there was always a bus that took the group to the vicinity of the site, and then we walked from the bus and we walked around the site, and then we got back on the bus. And still we found it tiring.

One of our side trips was to the Masada, a very high hill or cliff, where there are archeological ruins and an amazing view of the surrounding landscape. Some of our group decided to walk up, after careful consideration and a lot of conversation with our guides, and with assurances that they were carrying adequate drinking water. The rest of us rode up, and waved to the walkers as we passed. At the top, there was a lot more walking in the hot sun (and this was in November!) I was one of the brave (or foolish) souls who decided to walk down, and even that was quite strenuous.

Matthew tells us that Jesus “led [Peter and James and his brother John] up a high mountain….” Even though people walked a lot in ancient times, this verse skims over what must have been a very strenuous excursion. Climbing a “high mountain” with Jesus was surely hard work, and we can imagine that Peter, James and John wondered where he was taking them and why they were walking up and up. Yet Jesus kept leading them, with purpose and resolve, to the very top.

By the time they reached the top, we can imagine they only wanted to sit and rest, and to look at the view. Perhaps they thought Jesus would talk with them, or they might have some quiet prayer time together.

Then suddenly, when they had barely sat down to rest, Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” In just a few words, Matthew describes the awe-inspiring presence of the divine, radiating from Jesus like the heat of the sun and the whiteness of perfection.

Good old Peter, bless his heart, was never short of something spontaneous to say. In the moment, he started speaking, saying anything at all that came to his mind, and what came out was the idea of making three little booths or huts, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, as if it could be possible to box in the glory of God, and keep it contained, and hold onto a vision of the divine. Then, they not only saw a vision but they also heard a voice from the cloud about them, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

The moment of glory is over before they know it, and they feel Jesus’ touch, and hear his words, “do not be afraid”. Once again, the disciples see Jesus, their familiar teacher, just as he always was, alone, by himself. In the second letter of Peter, there a reference to this event, long after it occurred: “We had been eyewitnesses of his majesty…. We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16b, 18)

I imagine that in addition to all the teaching and healings that Jesus performed, and even with Peter’s acclamation that he is the Christ, Jesus felt the necessity to show them a preview of sorts. It seems that he wanted to confirm what Peter had said – he was not only a great and compassionate rabbi, and not only a healer. He was sent from God, the Son of God. And once the disciples come to know and believe this, their lives will be changed forever.

My first icon teacher is a priest, and once a long time ago he was celebrating the Eucharist at a church which still had the altar against the wall. As he was praying the Eucharistic prayer, he saw the wall behind the altar disappear and he could see behind the wall into holy space. He saw a vision of many angels behind the altar, and the experience seemed to him to last a long, long time. When he came back to himself, he finished the service, but afterwards apologized for the long interruption. No one had noticed that any time had passed at all! After this he felt that he was called to start painting icons, which are considered to be windows into holy space. He has persisted at this calling for about 40 years and I believe in his 80s is still painting today.

We all can hope, someday, perhaps just once in a lifetime, to have a profound experience of the Holy, perhaps a knock-your-socks-off kind of mystical experience. Whether or not that happens, we are all susceptible to being touched by the holiness that is present in everyday life, in ordinary people and daily events. In the fullness and beauty of holiness, there is a sense of peace and serenity and security. There is usually a sense of well-being, which lingers and which sustains us onto a new path of life.

Just as with Peter, and James, and John, the presence of God can take us completely unawares. In the moment, they hardly knew what was happening. It was only afterwards that it began to sink in, and they began to process what had happened, and to believe in Jesus as the Christ.

There is a poem called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens, which is in thirteen short verses. One verse reads:

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

Sometimes after hearing an extraordinary musical performance, as the final chord has faded away, there is the moment after, when the sound has faded into silence but the experience still lingers. Perhaps for the disciples, it was only just after seeing Christ in majesty that they were able to sense the power of the divine presence, and begin to understand.

I think there is a good reason why we are assigned the story of the Transfiguration just before we enter the season of Lent. This story tells us where we are going. As we move through the weeks of Lent, we can still try to remember the “just after” moment, like an echo of the future, and of what is awaiting us on Easter morning.

To begin to know God’s love, even dimly, gives us a seed of hope from which to make choices, build relationships, and lead our lives as truly Christ-centered people. When we are touched by God’s love and grace, and when we begin to understand even dimly how profound and beautiful that love is, we may also begin to learn to love as God loves and to be transformed ourselves into God’s holy people.

Epiphany 8, Year A, Sun Feb 27, 2011

2011-02-27T17:02:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 49:8-16a; Psalm 131; 1 Cor 4:1-5; Matt 6:24-34

Jesus said: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt 6:34) Just don’t worry. Yeah, right. And Jesus only mentions money, food, and clothing.

It seems to me that in the modern world we are trained from an early age to worry about just about everything: grades in school, winning at sports, being popular, getting into college. As we get older, we are still in a worry-thick environment: getting a job, keeping a job, where to live, the mortgage, paying bills, whom to marry, how to get along once we are married, more bills to pay, health issues, family issues…. We all have our own top ten list of favorite worries (or maybe more than ten).

And that’s only the personal list. When we listen to the evening news, we hear of even more things to worry about, on the local, national, international, global levels. We might even worry about asteroids in outer space. And still Jesus says, “Don’t worry”. So much easier said than done.

For the past several weeks we have been working our way through the magnificent and eternally challenging Sermon on the Mount. Now, looking back on these passages, we can notice that Jesus doesn’t start by saying “Don’t worry”. He starts somewhere else entirely. He starts by introducing his disciples to a completely new world.

I was once in workshop which the leader started by showing us a large map. We knew it was a map because it had large expanses of blue, for water, and irregularly shaped brown and green areas for the land. It looked, at first, like it might be a fantasy land from a science fiction story. There was a large, roundish island that was placed top and center, with two large pointy continents on either side, looking like big ears pointing upwards. On the bottom half of the map there was one large land mass on the left and a smaller one on the right.

After staring at this map for a while, some of us in the workshop started to sense something vaguely familiar, but the more we started to recognize the map, the more we began to feel off balance, dizzy, unsettled. Some of us started to tilt our heads to see the map upside down, and we slowly realized that this was, indeed, a map of the Earth, with Africa and South America pointing upwards on either side, and Australia top and center. The Northern hemisphere was at the bottom, and the Southern hemisphere was at the top. It was a map of the world, from an Australian point of view!

Jesus might as well have been showing his listeners an Australian map of their world. They also felt off-balance, a bit dizzy, unsettled. As well they might be, with everything they had assumed about God and the way things worked turned upside down. The poor are blessed, mourners are comforted, the meek will inherit the earth – not the rich, the rulers, the religious authorities. Jesus started the sermon by pronouncing blessing all who turn their power over to God and who put their trust in God.

Then, he sets the highest possible standard for holiness, beyond what any human being can possibly attain or sustain: don’t even think about sin, don’t be angry, love your enemies. Strive for this way of living and being, he says, and you will be starting on the pathway to becoming complete and whole, even as God is complete and whole.

Only then, after this, does Jesus say, “Don’t worry” about wealth and the things of this world.

First, recall that all power belongs to God. Second, strive for holiness of life. Finally, don’t worry, don’t spin your wheels and don’t take on yourself responsibility for results that really belong to God.

On March 9^th, we will observe Ash Wednesday and begin the special 40 days of the season of Lent, in preparation for the joy and celebration of Easter. It is a season set aside in the church calendar for special attention to prayer; for some, a time for abstinence; for some, a time for self-examination and repentance; for others, a time for a general spiritual tune-up.

In church, we remind ourselves of the observance of Lent by using purple as the liturgical color; we will have little or no decoration on the altar; we will sing Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy) instead of a more joyous Gloria. Some of our hymns will be in a minor key. And we don’t say or sing “Alleluia” (praise God) until Easter Sunday.

It can be helpful to think ahead of time about how each of us might observe the days of Lent. Some choose to give up a certain food (like popcorn or chocolate) during Lent. Some people fast one day a week. Some may abstain from TV or movies. This isn’t just to deprive ourselves of something we like, but an ongoing reminder to turn our thoughts to God.

Rather than giving up something, it might be a time to take on a new practice of prayer or spiritual reading or self-care and stewardship. It might even be a time to take on a practice of not-worrying, which doesn’t mean not caring. We might care deeply about all the things that I mentioned before, both personal and in the world, but we might make special intention to remember that we can’t fix them all. Let go, and let God.

When the earthquake hit Haiti, many of us wanted to do something immediately and the images were front and center on the news and in our minds. But there was little most of us could do: we could pray, we could send funds. The message was clearly stated from the beginning: don’t send food or clothes; don’t come to Haiti unless you are a medical professional or have technical skills. We can’t help by worrying; we can help by caring. The rest is in God’s hands.

During Lent, we are encouraging each other to do our own turning upside down of priorities. What is, after all, really the most important person, activity, effort in our lives? What do we really care most about? We might be surprised what comes to the surface.

Since God is really in charge, we can relax after all, and strive to live holy lives with confidence in God’s grace. Then after all, we can let go of worry about the things not under our control, since the final results are really in God’s loving, compassionate, and most capable hands.

Epiphany 7, Year A, Sun Feb 20, 2011

2011-02-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Cor 3:10-11, 16-23; Matt 5:38-48

Another lifetime ago, I was a medical center librarian. Most of the doctors at the hospital were courteous and easy to work with, but every once in a while a doctor would come to the library and get angry at the circulation desk clerks. I would tell the clerks that it’s not about you; it’s about what happened in the operating room, what happened in a medical conference, what happened somewhere else. I advised them not to react, but to answer calmly, and say something like: “Yes, I’ll take care of it; Is there anything else I can do for you today? I have to get back to work now.”

If that didn’t work, they were instructed to call the reference librarian. If the doctor was still angry and carrying on, the librarian would say, “I think you need to speak with Dr. Poisson.” (Me.) The “Doctor” title came in handy sometimes, and that usually did the trick.

One day a doctor was being especially outrageous, and neither the clerk nor the reference librarian could calm him down. Unfortunately I was out of the library, so the reference librarian went to the workroom and called Nestor. Nestor was also a young circulation desk clerk, but Nestor was big and strong. Actually, Nestor was a teddy bear, but the doctor didn’t need to know that.

Nestor came out to the circulation desk, and immediately saw what was happening. He pulled himself up to his full 6 foot whatever; he may have cracked a knuckle or two, and he crossed his arms and stood behind the by now quivering and quaking little circulation clerk. He just looked at the doctor, as if to say, “Don’t mess with us.” The doctor left the library.

I wish that I could be a complete pacifist. I wish that all conflict could be resolved in peaceful, loving ways. I wish that gentle words and a gentle presence could be enough to stop any aggression. It sounds as though that’s what Jesus is saying, and the expression “turn the other cheek” has come to mean: give in, give up, don’t resist, don’t respond, and even to mean take any abuse that comes your way.

In ancient times, it was customary to retaliate and then retaliate back, in an eternal cycle. If I knocked over someone’s fence, they could steal a goat from me, and then I would steal two sheep from them, and then they would bop me over the head, and eventually some really nasty stuff would happen, and the feud could go on for generations. In the mists of time it might even be forgotten that it all started with a broken fence.

In ancient law codes, including the Law of Moses and the Law Code of Hammurabi, some limits were set on retaliation. Only one tooth for one tooth. If you knock out my tooth, I can knock out one tooth of yours, but not more than one, and that’s the end of it.

Jesus set a higher standard: he said, don’t retaliate at all, but make peace instead, be generous, be courteous. Do it – not with grumbling or resentment or anger – but do it with love. “Do not resist an evildoer.” “Love your enemy.” Jesus is saying this in a society that was bound by customs of courtesy and honor. If someone steals my sheep, I would have the right to retaliate, but instead I could go to the person’s tent, as a guest. When I appear on the doorstep, unarmed, as their guest, they would be honor-bound to receive me, and the dispute would be ended.

Today, “turn the other cheek” could be interpreted to mean, do not resist abuse. “Give your cloak as well as your coat” could leave you in the cold. “Go also the second mile” could mean taking unfair advantage. “Do not refuse anyone” could lead to bankruptcy.

It seems to me that there is nothing in the rest of the Gospels to suggest that Jesus believed or taught that his followers should let themselves be abused or helpless in the face of violence or oppression or abuse. He himself got angry; he threw out the money changers; he spoke out against the religious authorities; he defended and ministered to the poor and the outcast.

It seems to me that he is calling us to holiness of life, in the gentleness of God’s power. The peaceful reaction to aggression is done with full control, full intention, and with complete confidence in the Spirit of God to bring reconciliation. If only force were never necessary. If only. But this is not a perfect world, and we human beings are not perfect.

And yet, in today’s reading, Jesus tells us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. Now, while Jesus raises the bar to an impossibly high level, this sounds ridiculous. I don’t think Jesus expected his followers, or us, to be perfect in the sense of being with out any flaw. He knows very well that his disciples are bumbling, ordinary people, and that as human beings we cannot be perfect and without flaw. Even Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” There is a tradition of carpet weavers to put in one tiny, intentional mistake in the carpet, because only God is perfect. If we could be perfect, we would not have needed a Savior.

I’m going to go way out on a limb here, but I really believe that this is a mistranslation. The problem is that there is no one word in English, as rich as our language is, that describes this idea fully. In the Greek New Testament, the word that is used here is telios, which means “destination” or “end” or “goal” or “completion”, especially the completion of all things at the end of time. The word that Jesus would have used in Aramaic was tamim, which also means “complete” or “whole” or “finished”.

It sounds quite different to say “become completed and whole and perfected in the fullness of time, as your heavenly Father is already completed and whole and perfect.” Even these words don’t quite describe the full, final, resolution and wholeness that is in God. The wholeness of God includes complete compassion and forgiveness, and even love of the enemy and of the least loveable. The perfection that Jesus calls us to is the wholeness of a community of compassion, gentleness, generosity – and strength of Spirit.

We are not perfectly without flaw, and our world is not perfect. There are times for responding with force or calling a Nestor to back us up in the face of aggression. And still, Jesus calls us into holiness of life and to be transformed in the Spirit of Love. The more we move towards the final goal of perfection, the more we will be transformed into a people of love --- and the more our presence may transform others.

No matter how imperfect we are, there is nothing we can do to lose God’s love. It is always ours, always offered, always present – to heal and restore whatever has been broken in our lives or in our hearts.

Jesus does call us to find and nurture the peace within us which is the Spirit of God, and to align ourselves most closely with the loving peace of God.

Epiphany 6, Year A, Sun Feb 13, 2011

2011-02-13T17:04:00.000-08:00

Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20 (or Deut 30:15-20); Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Cor 3:1-9; Matt 5:21-37

In the Psalm appointed for today, we hear these verses: “Happy are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord…. Who never do any wrong, but always walk in [God’s] ways”. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, during the time they were wandering in the wilderness. Over the centuries, as Judaism evolved and as the Old Testament was compiled and canonized, 613 commandments were identified in the Old Testament to be observed as The Law. These included everything from the first commandment, to love God and to worship only God, to such commandments as keeping the Sabbath holy, not to eat certain food, not to covet what belongs to another, not to make or worship idols, and to establish six cities of refuge for those who have committed a crime by accident.

There were also commandments, which may sound trivial to us, such as: not to work with beasts of different species yoked together, not to wear garments of wool and linen mixed together, not to sow grain or herbs in a vineyard, not to consult with ghosts or wizards, and for men not to cut their hair or beards in certain ways.

The Law, as found in the Old Testament, required attention to details of worship, public and personal life, agriculture, and interactions with the sick and non-believers. The commandments contain much that supports a holy and moral life. If one could follow every detail of the 613 commandments, one would be considered “blameless” before the Law, as St. Paul considered himself. Those were the ones who “never do any wrong, but always walk in [God’s] ways”. Yet Jesus raises the bar even farther. He says: You have heard it said: ‘You shall not murder’. But Jesus adds: ‘Do not be angry; do not insult; do not say “you fool” ’. This sounds impossible. How can we never be angry? How can we not even think a sinful thought?

Those who have long experience with silent prayer or meditation speak of their efforts to calm and quiet the mind. Learning to sit still in silence, without moving, for extended periods of time requires not only physical strength, but also the control to keep the mind from wandering hither and thither.

A long time ago, a friend taught me some of the basics of contemplation using a prayer word, and for some time I practiced sitting still and using this prayer word for about 5 minutes at a time. I was pleased with myself and thought I was doing rather well, so one day when someone invited me to go to a silent meditation session, I accepted readily. The teacher gave us some instruction and then we settled in, sitting on the floor on meditation cushions. What I didn’t realize was that we were going to sit in silence, without moving, for 45 minutes.

After about ten minutes, my mind was going in circles and my knees hurt. After fifteen minutes, I was ready to jump up and run around the room. After twenty minutes, I was wondering what would be for supper, how much longer this would go on, and how could I possibly keep from embarrassing my friend. In desperation, what I finally did was to focus on each person in the room, one at a time, and pray for them individually. That kept my mind more or less occupied, but didn’t do much for my hurting knees. Finally, after every one of the 45 minutes had past, the leader rang a little bell, and said what a lovely, peaceful session it had been.

Later I found out that what I was experiencing is called the “monkey mind”: the natural tendency of our minds to want to fill in a void and silence with something, anything, no matter what. I also learned that it takes a great deal of practice to learn to sit in silent prayer. Now, many years later, I still have a “monkey mind” that jumps up and down to get my attention while I’m praying in silence.

I bring this up because what Jesus seems to be asking is really impossible for human beings. We can’t stop our monkey mind, and we can’t completely control and prevent thoughts that come to our minds, not entirely. We can’t get rid of any body part that might sin – we might not have too many body parts left.

Jesus is also condemning divorce and remarriage. I believe that sadly, tragically, a divorce may be indicated, rather than staying in a harmful marriage. Today it is permissible for divorced people to remarry in the Episcopal Church, recognizing that lives can be healed and restored in a new and consecrated relationship.

If we can’t attain such perfection as Jesus describes, why does he raise the bar so high? I don’t believe that his point is to discourage us that we can never make the grade or to dissuade us from even trying. I don’t believe he is automatically condemning almost all of us. What I do believe is that Jesus is encouraging us to stretch as far as we can towards living holy lives, under the New Covenant.

In our Gospel reading last week, Jesus said, “I have come not to abolish the Law but to fulfill”. Someone could follow every letter and stroke of the Law, and still have anger in their hearts. One could be perfect in the Law, but not live by the Spirit of God upon which the Law is founded. Throughout his ministry, Jesus made a point of putting aside the details of the Law – for example, in performing healing on the Sabbath – to show that compassion and kindness are far more important.

We may not be able to live perfectly by the new commandment that Jesus will give his disciples: love one another, just as I have loved you. We make choices every day, and we do the best we can at the time, and we often realize later on that a different choice might have been a better one. We usually can’t undo what is done. What we can do is to practice reconciliation, always admitting and asking forgiveness when we realize we have gone wrong. Perhaps most difficult of all, we can do the hard work of forgiving ourselves.

In a few weeks we will observe Ash Wednesday and begin the forty days of Lent that lead up to Easter. In the service on Ash Wednesday, I will read to you an invitation to the practice of a holy Lent, beginning with the words, “Dear People of God…”. This invitation describes the practice of Lent in the early church, when this time was set aside for penitence and fasting, and preparation for new converts for Baptism. It is an invitation to us, on that day, to begin the observance of a holy Lent, a time for intentional prayer, self-examination, and for some a time for intentional abstinence.

The invitation to the observance of a holy Lent is almost too good to keep for one season only. We could hear it as a perpetual invitation for us to learn to “hunger and thirst for righteousness”, to seek and nurture the good in our hearts, to practice in prayer and in our lives the holiness that is our calling in Christ. And after all, there is the comfort that whatever is not perfected in us, in this lifetime, may ultimately be redeemed in Christ.

Epiphany 5, Year A, Sun Feb 6, 2011

2011-02-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Cor 2:1-12, (13-16); Matt 5:13-20

Many years ago, when I was living in Iran, we went to visit friends who had a country house near the Caspian Sea. As we drove north, we left behind the bustle and traffic of Teheran and the arid land on the south side of the Alborz Mountains. We drove over the mountains into the damp and forested region between the mountains and the sea.

After we arrived, we went for a walk in the hills nearby. We saw the source of a fresh spring. We saw shepherds with a little flock of sheep. As we walked, there was no sound of traffic or people or machines --- or anything. It was the first time that I had ever experienced such complete quiet. The only sound that I heard was something like: “chiiiiick, chiiiick”. It was the sound of the sheep grazing across the meadow and pulling grass out of the ground.

At night, we went outside to see the stars. There were no other houses nearby, and there was no artificial or ambient light. I saw the night sky as I had never seen it before: a deep black and by contrast, the stars filled the sky with brilliance. There were bright ones and dimmer ones; large and tiny; some were stationery, some were moving ever so slowly across the night sky, and some were flashing meteors.

As modern people, we rarely experience such deep darkness. We can dispel the dark in an instant by pushing a button or flicking a switch. Our streets are lit with lamps, car headlights, neon signs. Our homes, offices, factories are all lit, sometimes even at night.

Ancient peoples, of course, had no electricity, and the only light they had at night was from lamps (such as this one). They filled the lamp with oil, lit the wick, and the lamp produced a warm but dim light. Lamps were a luxury, and so there were times when people had to make do in the dark. They knew fear of the darkness as well as the beauty of the night sky. They lived by a natural rhythm of the bright light of day and the deep darkness of night.

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus has just finished preaching the Sermon on the Mount. He has just knocked their socks off by his words of authority, which promise blessing to all people who put their trust in God. He has not only turned the world upside down and inside out, but next he turns to the crowd, and he empowers them for discipleship: “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world”.

We may think of the modern expression, “salt of the earth”, which may mean someone who is ordinary, but solid and dependable. We also know that salt in small quantities is essential to life and it has many other beneficial qualities, even though its grains are small and it is a common thing.

By calling the disciples “the salt of the earth”, Jesus may be implying that although they are ordinary, average people, even so they are the essential force that will carry the faith. As just a little grain of salt is essential to life for humans and many animals, so the disciples will carry the essential spark that will bring the Good News to the peoples of the earth.

He also says, “You are the light of the world”. Ancient peoples really knew the deep darkness of night, of caves, in stormy weather. They were grateful for any light source that could guide them and help them feel safe. A light “shining in the darkness” for the whole world was a most powerful and comforting image.

Gradually, we can imagine, on that lovely day on a hillside near Capernaum, it began to sink in. Not only is Jesus speaking with authority and promising that the blessing of God is open and available to all people, but he is also endowing even the little people with a mission to the world: to be like salt that is common, yes, but also sacred and essential to life. He is suggesting that they, themselves, will become power generators to give light to the entire world.

Who were they to be a light to the world? Or to be essential, life-giving salt? It may have felt like suddenly Jesus was asking them to carry all the heaviness and responsibility of the world’s suffering and grief.

It may have seemed that way, at first, to those people on the hillside: they were still living under the Law of Moses, and they assumed that they would have to bear this burden by their own strength. The Law of Moses was understood as a contract of behavior and reward between the people of Israel and their God, YHWH. Do good, and then God will bless you.

Jesus claims that the essence of the Law still stands. The Law is still based on the first commandment: love God with all your heart. The Law is not abolished or overridden, but it is fulfilled, clarified, completed in Jesus, who teaches us in his words, his miracles, and in his death and resurrection that God loves us first, with unbounded and eternal and complete self-giving love.

Following Jesus begins with acceptance that we are loved beyond measure. As we bask in that love, we can give attention to our own spirit, our worship God, care for our souls. We start with the prayerful and yet simple wisdom that in spite our weakness and troubles and fear of the dark, the comfort and blessing and strength that we need is always offered to us by God.

The Law of Moses said: do good, and then God will bless you. Jesus says, God loves you first, and when you receive and become full of this love you will overflow with the power of God, to bring light and life in Christ to all people.

In the night sky there are millions and millions of stars. I wish we could see them every night. It’s only in the deepest darkness, without any other interfering light, that we can really see the stars. When we know darkness, we then can recognize light – in the others around us, and even in ourselves. Such light comes not through our own power, but through unobstructed vision of God.

After all, it turns out that what Jesus is saying to the people on the hillside, and to us, is not an impossibly heavy burden. In living a holy and faithful life in Christ, as best we can, we ourselves become full of God’s blessing and beacons of hope and pointers towards the source of “abundant life”. We become like the stars on a clear night, without interference, shining and reflecting the glory of God.

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. May all who taste this salt and see this light come to know Christ, giving always the glory to God.

Epiphany 4, Year A, Sunday Jan 30, 2011

2011-01-30T17:07:00.000-08:00

Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Cor 1:18-31; Matt 5:1-12

The principal of my school (K through 12) was a Scottish lady named Jean Fair Mitchell. It seems that her favorite Bible reading was the “Beatitudes”, and we heard these verses from the Gospel of Matthew at almost every assembly meeting. What I heard, way back then, was that the poor and the unfortunate were suffering now, in this life, but they were blessed by God, and would receive their reward in heaven.

At least that’s what I understood at the time, and for the most part over the years that continued to be what I heard in these words of Jesus. The words became so familiar, and the interpretation so firmly imbedded, that that was just about all that I heard. The words of the Beatitudes had become to me as gentle, and soothing, and comfortable as a lullaby, but not especially uplifting. The idea that if we suffer in this life, there will be reward in heaven began, as I grew older, to seem to me to be a kind of suffering balance sheet – if you suffer in this life you will be compensated in heaven. At its worst, this could lead to justification for abuse, because the “reward is great in heaven”. (Matt 5:12)

There’s got to be more here than that. Suddenly, in mulling over this passage in my mind during this past week, I heard something completely different. (This may be very clear to everyone else, but it was breathtaking to me.) I guess this is the nature of divine revelation in scripture – the message is complete on God’s side, but never finished in us. With all our human limitations of understanding, and the limitations of human language, we can always continue to learn and to grow and to deepen our understanding of scripture.

Let’s go back, to the first century. In ancient times, there was the fixed idea of the divine-human relationship, that if you were good and obeyed the Commandments, you would be blessed with good health, great wealth, and a big family. The book of Proverbs is full of this view:

“In the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.” (Proverbs 15:6)

And in the Psalms:

“I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” (Psa 37:25b)

In today’s appointed Psalm:

“Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right,…. Whoever does these things shall never be overthrown.” (15:2, 7)

So let’s imagine that it’s a lovely, sunny day in 1^st century Capernaeum. The people are talking about a new rabbi who has come to town. He had been a disciple of John the Baptist, but now John is in prison, and Jesus has started to draw followers. They say to one another: “Let’s go hear him preach”. They expect to hear more of John’s message: “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near!” Maybe he’ll even get wound up and go after the Pharisees, like John used to do: “You brood of vipers!” And the crowd always loved it: “Yeah, go for it, get those puffed up Pharisees!” They are looking forward to a good show.

Instead, they are astounded at what they hear. Instead of calling for repentance, Jesus starts with the word: “Blessed”. In Hebrew, Berakah. The crowd knows who are blessed by God: the wealthy, the privileged, those with large families, the happy and contented, the ones with full bellies and large flocks of sheep and full granaries.

But then, Jesus knocked their socks off. They may have felt as dizzy as if they were standing on a high cliff. They may have felt as disoriented as a blindfolded person spun around and around.

Berakah. Blessed are the poor in spirit, not those who are happy and contented. Blessed are those who mourn, not those who have large and thriving families. Blessed are the meek, not the powerful and wealthy.

The poor people in the crowd identify immediately with these words: they know spiritual sadness, they have mourned great losses, they feel meek and powerless. The powerful and wealthy, who may be standing on the fringes of the crowd, are stunned, too, and they also recognize themselves in these words. They also have had times when they have felt spiritually poor, they have mourned the loss of a loved one, they too have known moments when they felt powerless, even if they didn’t want anyone else to know.

Poor or rich, mighty or lowly: all have known sadness in spirit, and Jesus says that when they acknowledge their spiritual emptiness, their sorrow, their powerlessness to God, they are blessed. In their surrender, they will know the kingdom of God; they will know the comfort and strength of God; they will become children of God.

Next, Jesus speaks of how to live in this upside down and inside out world: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The Jewish people relied on the Law of Moses to tell them what righteousness was – just follow the Law, and that’s all you need to do. If by chance there were any Romans or Gentiles listening on the hillside that day, they had the traditions of the classical philosophers, who had tried to define what happiness and goodness could be. They advocated the “practice” of a good life to learn what goodness is.

But Jesus says, righteousness is not ever finally achieved, but rather must always be sought, with passion and commitment, as if we were parched with thirst and ravenous with hunger. Blessed are you in searching and pursuing and striving always for righteousness, as if your very survival depended on it.

Next Jesus addresses those who live in the strength of their own power. Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. Those listeners who know their authority and power are stunned; after all, Jesus is telling them that their power is not their own, but is only on loan to them from God. They are responsible for how they use it. Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

Then the poor people also may realize that there are moments when they may have power: when someone owes them a debt, when they win a quarrel with a neighbor, when they have authority over someone. Jesus says to them all: be merciful, be pure in heart, make peace, for you will also receive mercy, you will see God, you will be called children of God.

Finally, Jesus gave them a glimpse of what is to come. Blessed are those who choose this path, and who will be reviled and even persecuted for the sake of following him. General suffering isn’t being glorified here, but only and very specifically suffering for the sake of the cross of Christ.

We can only imagine the stunned silence as the people listened and drank in these words on that sunny day on the mountainside near Capernaum. John the Baptist had preached that the kingdom of God had come near, but Jesus was speaking with authority, to tell them that the kingdom of God is here, now; the kingdom of God is for all people: rich or poor, powerful or lowly. The blessing of God is for all people who give over their own power to receive the salvation of God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus told them: the kingdom of God is yours.

Epiphany 3, Year A, Sunday Jan 23, 2011

2011-01-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 5-13; 1 Cor 1:10-18; Matt 4:12-23

My son, Fred, loves to fish. His fishing career started when he was very little, with a toy fishing game. There was a cardboard box with an underwater scene on the outside, a little stick with a string and a magnet, and little magnetic “fish” to catch inside the box. That was satisfying for about 10 minutes, and then he insisted that he wanted to go fishing “for real”. We were visiting my parents who lived near the Connecticut River but we didn’t have any fishing gear in the house. Undaunted by this minor detail, we borrowed a rowboat and took a stick, a piece of string, and tied an open safety pin to the end of the string. We found an unfortunate a worm to stick on the safety pin, and we rowed up and down the river dragging this improvised tackle in the water. All the time we were out on the river, Fred was ever hopeful. Every few minutes he would say, “Do you think we’ll catch something?” Alternating with: “I think I’m going to catch something soon!”

Well, guess what, no fish decided to cooperate with us that day, but his enthusiasm was undiminished. Over the years, he learned how to catch sunfish at summer camp and how to take the fish off the hook (thank you very much). As he grew older, he learned how to tie flies, and how to cast on rivers and into the surf. He learned how to read nautical charts and tide tables, and he took fishing trips with his grandfather. Once, when we went to a Natural History Museum, he went up and down the isles naming all the species of fish, without looking at the labels. He also learned how to clean and cook many different kinds of fish.

After he graduated from art school and had his first job, working on a sailing magazine, I visited him where he was living in Newport RI. One evening we drove to a spot on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was a beautiful, still evening, and as the sun went down, we sat looking out over the water.

Fred said, “Mom look at the water. See how the surface looks like its boiling? That means that there are little fish in a school just under the surface, and that means that there are big fish coming up underneath them, feeding on those little fish. So if we were to stand over there, and cast a line just beyond the “boiling” water, and reel it in just so, and use such-and-such a kind of bait, we could catch some of those big fish.”

Over the years, I haven’t learned much about fishing but I hope I have paid good attention to my most favorite fisherman. When it comes to fishing, Fred has nearly unlimited patience. If the fish are running at 4 am, he’s willing to get up at 3 am, to be there. He’s very resourceful and has worked hard to learn about different species of fish and how to catch them. He has learned from reading, from his own experience, from talking to experts. He’s even become adept in gaining the confidence of fishermen who are usually very reluctant to reveal the local fishing secrets. He has learned the importance of working together with others on fishing expeditions.

He’s always open and ready to learn more, and to share what he has learned.

Peter and Andrew and James and John probably came from a long line of fishermen who passed on the lore of fishing from generation to generation. They certainly considered themselves experts on catching fish in the Sea of Galilee. I expect that they, too, could read the surface of the water, and gauge the movements of the fish from the wind and weather, time of day, and seasons. They were highly skilled at their work. It was their livelihood and what they expected they would do for a living all the days of their lives.

Knowing my own favorite fisherman so well, I think I can understand well why Jesus chose fishermen to be among the first of his disciples. They were patient, hard-working, resourceful, good team players. They relied on their expertise to know when the opportunity would be right, and they were willing to be there at the right time. I can understand how they would make good disciples.

It’s harder to understand how it could be that these young fishermen would just drop their fishing nets on the spot, and leave their father, their families, and their livelihood, to follow Jesus. Jesus had barely returned from his forty days in the wilderness. He had just moved to Capernaum, John the Baptist had just been arrested, and Jesus had only started to preach. So far, his preaching sounded pretty much like the message of John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. He had not yet begun to draw large crowds or develop a reputation or to do many miracles, and yet they left everything on the spot to follow him.

They had no idea where they were going, and they could not have known what miracles they would see or teachings they would learn. They could not possibly have had the slightest idea where this journey would eventually lead them. There must have been something about Jesus’ calm and confident manner, the compelling gentleness of his words, and the loving attention that he gave them. Somehow, he reassured them that whatever happened and wherever they would go, his presence and his teaching would feed them and sustain them and lead them to God. Somehow, he gave them confidence that they had the skills, the abilities, the potential for the work that he was calling them to do.

Most important of all, he was the Christ and his call is unlike any other, without force, but powerfully compelling just the same. When he called them, the disciples did drop whatever they were doing to follow Jesus. As they followed him, his ministry began to develop. He was no longer parroting the words of John the Baptist, but began to come into his own power: preaching, healing and proclaiming the Good News. Even Jesus needed his followers, as they needed him, and he needed disciples with lots of different skills. He called fishermen, but he also called tax collectors, and people of other professions as well. They traveled together, prayed together, struggled together, even abandoned Jesus together, and eventually were transformed together in the presence of the risen Christ

Jesus calls us, too, with all our similarities and differences, with the skills and experiences that we have, and with all our faults and shortcomings. Like the followers of Jesus, those God may send us here in Beech Island may not all be exactly alike. They may be as different as scribes and tax collectors and fisherman, and tentmakers, and farmers, and who knows what else. There may be differences, but, God willing, there will not be quarrels and divisions among us.

Jesus invites us to throw open our hearts, in the wide open gesture of a fisherman throwing out a net. And, when a fisherman casts out a net or a line, it is a gesture of faith, because he’s not always sure quite what he will catch. We can trust in God to be with us as we work to sustain our parish family and to welcome others to follow Jesus. We can trust in God to give the growth; to sustain us in our faith and mission; and to give us the grace to accept and enfold and nurture each other and all who come to us in Christ’s name.

May we, like those early fishermen, recognize and acknowledge the skills each of us can bring to build up our church. May we also follow faithfully in the light of Christ, and to proclaim in word and deed to all we meet, the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Christmas eve, Year A, Friday Dec 24, 2010

2010-12-24T17:06:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20 (KJV)

It was a year ago in November that Sr. ES and I made our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was our first time to go there, and we knew that it might well be our only experience of these sacred places. We had planned the trip for nearly two years, and so there was plenty of time to hope and dream and build up our expectations. For me, there was a heighten anticipation of seeing the actual places where Jesus lived and walked, touch the stones that he touched, see the landscape that he saw.

In the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, there is chapel that has a silver star embedded in the floor on the spot where Jesus was born. Especially, I dreamed of touching this star, and perhaps I even thought that by being in this very place and touching this star, I might have a mystical understanding of the incarnation.

When we arrived at the Church of the Nativity, the line of people waiting to enter the chapel where Jesus was born was very, very long. So instead, our guides took us to see the cave where Jerome translated the Bible. After this, ES and I snuck back to the main church and got into the line.

We stood, and we stood, and we stood, and the line inched forward. Then someone offered to let us go in a side entrance. We quivered our lower lips and looked as sad and nun-like as we could, but the doorkeeper wouldn’t let us in. Finally, our tour guide found and fetched us, and we never did get inside the chapel to see the silver star. I was disappointed!

Next, we went to Shepherd’s Field, where, by tradition, the shepherds heard the song of angels and the announcement of the birth of the Messiah. There is a lovely circular chapel at the top of the hill, where sunlight pours in from skylights in the dome. There, we sang “Angels We Have Heard on High”, and then we had time to wander and pray and meditate in the garden. It was beautiful and peaceful, and from this hill, we could see the nearby hills, and countryside, and olive groves.

I wondered, how did they know that this was the hill where the shepherds were on that silent, holy night? Then I realized that it didn’t really matter at all; this place had become sanctified by prayer and intention and designation. This ordinary, gentle hill now holds the announcement of God’s blessing and compassion to the lowly shepherds and to all humanity. In this most ordinary place, we witnessed God’s intention to send the Blessed One to live among ordinary people, to die for us all, and to lead us to the way of peace.

As the pilgrimage continued, we did see other actual places where Jesus taught and healed, and I did touch the stone at the top of Calvary, where he died on the cross. The total experience was a collage of present and past and even more distant past. I didn’t touch the silver star, but as the pilgrimage continued I realized that after all it didn’t matter. Once I let go of my expectations for the most holy sites, I found the ordinary places and chance encounters to be even more surprising, peaceful, less crowded and cluttered, and sometimes even more spiritually fulfilling.

In the Holy Land, there are many “thin” places, where the sacred and secular touch each other, merge, and the holy shines through into our present time and space. My expectations melted away as I saw the layers and complexities of past and present: the Palestinian women, dressed in elaborately embroidered gowns, selling mountains of fresh herbs; the archeological museum with pre-historic artifacts; the young Israeli woman escorting a group of school children while carrying a rifle; the tanks we saw on the highway; the peaceful quiet of the Jordan River at sunset; two walls, one that separates and the wall where devout Jews come together to pray; the multitude of pilgrims; the vendors who seemed to have an uncanny ability to separate us from our money; the ancient churches and art; the Palestinian Christian woman who spoke of being forced from her home at a moment’s notice; the beauty of the landscape; and always – the ancient stones.

By the end of the trip, we treasured all these experiences, and places, and encounters, and I am still pondering them in my heart. We didn’t touch the silver star, but after all it didn’t matter. Perhaps it was even a blessing, because it might not have met my expectations: it might well have been too crowded, too noisy, too rushed, too elaborate.

Jesus didn’t meet anyone’s expectations, either. The ancient prophesies foretold the coming of a great Messiah, but the birth announcement was sent to lowly shepherds. Devout Jews expected a mighty ruler, but instead he was born in a stable. They expected a wealthy leader, but instead he was a carpenter’s son. They expected a king, but the one who came to them died on a cross of shame. He is the Son of God, yet he emptied himself and gave himself for us, not with power and might, but with gentleness, compassion, and complete self-giving love.

It’s an awe-filled mystery how this could be so; it’s an idea larger than the whole universe, that God could become a human baby and that this one human baby could be God. The divine, in this miracle, breaks through and shatters our expectations of the ordinary, to give us a glimpse of our poor human condition as the true image of God.

We didn’t touch the silver star, but we were touched instead by the vibrant and complex sacredness of all time and space. Christmas season is like that too, holding many layers of distant past traditions and of our own memories (both good and not so good), our expectations of what Christmas might be this year, and hopes for our future and what the coming of Christ will mean for our lives and for our faith and for our parish community.

As God became human, so we become whole and new and are redeemed through God in Christ. We are re-made perfect in God’s sight, as we were created to be. So let us celebrate with joy this gift of the Christ child. Let us celebrate the Christ’s Mass in prayer and with hope. Like Mary, let us ponder the mystery of salvation, and treasure in our hearts the promise to us of God’s ever-present love, in our hopes for the future as well as in the blessings that are ours, here and now.

Let us come together tonight, to the altar of God, as Christ taught us, to eat the bread of life and drink the cup of salvation, that He may dwell in us and we in him. May we continue to live in confidence and hope that Christ’s presence with us will bring a reign of peace and gentle love to heal our lives and our fragile, broken world. Let us welcome into our hearts the Christ Child, who came to us on that most holy night, and who is with us always.