Already Wondering - the 2nd Sunday of Easter

Many of you believe whole-heartedly in prayer, as I do. There are also some here this morning who have given up on it after praying for months and years for the sake of a loved one, to no apparent effect. Either way, I want you to know that you're in the right place.

Some of you believe in physical resurrection, as I do, others of you believe in only a spiritual resurrection, but there may be some here this morning who do not believe in an after-life at all. Whatever you believe, I want you to know that you're in the right place.

The truth is, we are uncomfortable with doubt, but when we pretend it doesn’t exist, and when we hide it from each other, we lose out – we lose our ability to be real and we lose our ability to be a healing presence in the world. We don't gain anything by pretending total confidence. As Voltaire said in the 18th century, “doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd."

Truthfully, total confidence is not what faith is about. Faith is not so much about believing a certain set of propositions – a list that we can check off – virgin birth, yes. Star in the sky, yes. Walk on water, yes. I happen to believe these things mostly because I find them beautiful – but I know lots of very faithful Christians who don’t believe them at all. A checklist of beliefs is not what make us who we are.

Honest relationship is what makes us a people alive in God’s Spirit.

When we say the Nicene Creed together - to outsiders and maybe to you - it may sound like a set of propositions. You may, in fact, believe every one of these things but that is not the important thing about the Creed. The essential reason this is in our liturgy, week after week, is that it puts us in relationship - in communion - with people around the world now and across time – and we value this relationship above all else. Credere – what we translate as "I believe" - is much more about our heart – it’s about where we put our trust and the weight of our being. Our religion is not so much about believing certain things as it is about what St. Peter calls "a living hope" – a living relationship with the Lord of Life and with each other. Like all relationships, it takes being present and available when we feel close to God and when we do not, when we are in love with God and when we are not, when we totally believe – and when we do not.

One of the books I keep on my shelf for the title as much as for the content – is called “May I Hate God?” and the Catholic author’s answer is "yes – hating is as much a part of relationship as is loving." When we are deeply disappointed or hurt or feeling abandoned, our love can temporarily turn to hate – but if we continue in relationship, it does not harden there, or remain in that state. It’s only when we refuse to engage, when we don't care, when we refuse to reveal the true state of our heart that we can get stuck and gradually find our love grown cold and our inner life increasingly dead.

The author of this slim little book points to the Psalms as one place among many in the Bible where people reveal the true state of their doubts about God’s loving intentions, their experiences of his abandonment, their laments and their sorrows and yes, even their angers, at their experiences of God’s absence and neglect. And lo and behold, those psalms almost always turn somewhere in the middle or towards the end into praise – because the very act of honesty, the very act of authentic revelation of what is really happening with your heart gives the Holy Spirit room to act and sufficient space to provide refreshment.

In Jesus’ resurrected body, his essential qualities remained. His kindness and compassion were entirely intact. He breathed peace and forgiveness and completely allowed for the very human need to touch and to see for themselves – in other words, through betrayal and abandonment and death and loss, Jesus continued in relationship. And his friends did as well - through their own fears and disappointments and disillusionments, they continued to meet with each other, and to be available for Jesus to come and find them. And out of the gift of that relationship, the gift of that commitment, new life was born, the Holy Spirit was breathed into them, and they were sent out to preach peace and to practice forgiveness.

Do you need to forgive God for not keeping you or your loved ones entirely safe and protected, or for not saving us from ourselves in this oh so broken world? Do you need to forgive your children for not being who you wanted them to be? Do you need to forgive yourself for not being honest with yourself, for not siding with yourself, for anything at all? We are a people whose gift to the world is relationship, peace and forgiveness. And that starts in here, at home, with those around us, and spreads out from there.

I invite you to place your hands on your heart, breathe in the Holy Spirit, and breathe out, saying “Peace be with you.”

Then turn to your neighbor, breathe the Spirit and say “Peace be with you.”

And when you receive the Host, you may want to offer your peace to God and breathe in his holy breath of peace to you.

Resources: The Rev. Buzz Stevens, Ministry Matters, 2010, for the beginning thoughts.
Garrison Keillor, Thinking Weaselish Thoughts at Eastertide, Salon.com, 2008
Voltaire, 1694 - 1778
Pierre Wolfe, May I Hate God, Paulist Press, 1978

Get in the Boat!

Good morning? Are you ready? Well, get in the boat! Cause we’re going to the other side!

It might be that you’re ready for a rest – it took a lot of work to make this transition – and you did it beautifully! The Transition Team deserves a round of applause. And I personally, want to open my arms wide, and say it loud – you are awesome! I have felt cared for since my first contact with you, and especially since you called me to come be your priest. The Transition team was never intrusive – but always thoughtful, sincerely wanting to know how they could help out. Thank you!

It might be that you’re ready for a rest – it took a lot of work to keep the parish active, up and running, vibrant and alive, without a full time priest. Or, I don’t know, maybe it made it easier! I know Wendy and Cynthia did magnificent work of keeping you spiritually fed throughout this time – I also know that a lot of you stepped mightily up to the plate – and learned to run the ship. And this will stand us all in good stead as we head out into new waters. At my interview, one of the reasons I knew I wanted to come here – was that on the Sunday following the interview, you were going to hold an eco-faith fair. A major undertaking and outreach, all under your own direction! I’m climbing on board with experienced sailors, and I love it!

You might be ready for a rest – the economy is still in the doldrums. Stocks are still bouncing around. Layoffs are happening at an alarming rate - while kids still need shoes and after school lessons, and there are bills and mortgages to pay.

The disciples must have been ready for a rest! Doing crowd control while Jesus taught and healed – they had been on their feet, literally on their feet, outside, day after day - they must have been ready for a rest.

But towards evening, Jesus said, “we’re going to the other side.” So into the boats they went, experienced sailors and tax collectors, who probably weren’t all that much help on the water – off they all went, just as the sun was setting. A flotilla of boats – crossing the sea at dusk.

Why? Why did Jesus get the disciples to cross the sea? Right! To get to the other side.

What was on the other side? Gentiles. People who had not yet heard the Word spoken by God in Jesus.

People who had not yet experienced the full and radical inclusiveness of God’s embrace.

People who had not yet felt the full force of the word of healing and new creation spoken by God through Jesus.

In other words, people that Jesus cared about.

Are you in the boat? Ready to push off and start our own crossing to the other side?

Because the truth is, the Word cannot be contained in a small and cozy space. The Word in us is nurtured here. The Word in us is fed here. The Word is heard here – heard in a way that grows us up, that transforms us, that changes us – and that Word that we hear pushes us to go beyond ourselves.

That Word commands us to expand the reach of our handshake of peace to those who have yet to know peace – and usually precisely at the moment when we think we’re ready for a rest! When we think, “ok the work is done, now we can sit back and rest a bit,” Jesus comes along and invites us to another adventure.

Ah – what adventures Jesus invites. At least some of those disciples no doubt could read the warning signs – storm on the way. But they were also sufficiently in awe of Jesus that if he said go, that’s what they did.

The truth is, the Gospel of Mark was written to a community that was in very troubled waters – storms of violence were raging between the Jewish people and the Romans. The enormous and beautiful Jerusalem temple – the center point of the Jewish religion and culture and state - had just been utterly destroyed because of the war. Relations between temple Jews and these fledgling Jewish Christians had grown rancorous and troubling. There were persecutions. Jesus had not returned, the way they had thought would happen. The tiny ship of the church was in danger of being swamped and overturned and the personal lives of this community to whom Mark writes were in trouble.

"Lord, don’t you care that we are perishing?" The question must have risen often in their minds. And if you’re anything like me, you know that you have uttered that question more than once as well – when the inevitable storms of life just about had you swamped - "Where are you? Don’t you care, Lord?" In our time, we face the potential environmental collapse of very frightening proportions. "Where are you God? We are perishing!"

Jesus slept peacefully on the pillow someone had thoughtfully provided – a first century Transition Team perhaps!??!

Sleep, of course, is another word for death. The dear crucified Lord, asleep in the nave of the ship. You sit in the nave of the church! That’s the architectural and liturgical term for the body of the church - where you are. That’s where Jesus is. In the nave. And this is a resurrection story. Because the crucified Jesus wakes up – rises up – and speaks his powerful word of calm. He rebukes the forces of destruction and death and chaos. He restores their confidence. .

But then the disciples are filled with an even greater fear than before! At least they understood the storm. It might kill them – but it is within their comprehension.

But the power of this man – whom even death cannot hold - This shakes them to their very core. Who is this asleep and then rising in our very midst. Who is this in the nave of our ship, the church? Who is this who rebukes all forces bent on destruction, and they obey. Who is this who can cast out the demons of fear and cowardice and restlessness and restore order and calm and peace and joy and patience and courage under hardship and tribulation and disaster? Who is this quietly asleep on his pillow, in their midst?

It is Jesus, of course. With us this very day.

Jesus heard his terrified friends, got up, reprimanded the wind and said to the waves, “Peace! Be still!” And the Bible tells us the wind died down and peace came. His friends cried to him and he listened, and he moved and spoke to the storm and said, “Be still.”

Can the same thing happen inside of you and me? Like the storm, can our hearts also hear and be calmed, and somehow rest in his peace? I’ve seen it happen. I’ve known men and women in the darkest moments of their lives, whose families were in peril, whose children were being sucked down some dark hole, or folks who experienced devastating financial loss, but who in the middle of the crisis were heard to say, “God is carrying me. I can’t explain it. I know it sounds crazy, but I have peace!”

A friend of mine is now in her second bout of breast cancer. In the midst of painful and debilitating treatments that may or may not stem the tide of this cancer, she radiates beauty and peace. Why? She says it is entirely due to the prayers of the church. She is not a normally non-anxious person, I can verify this! But she testifies that God is present in some new kind of way with her – so that she faces these treatments and her possible death with a kind of peace that she had not thought possible.

Jesus is able to calm the storms in your life. And whether the storms abate or not, he is able to give you peace and courage and confidence in scary times.

Jesus is able to take the helm of the boat of Good Shepherd, and steer it safely to the other side. He is able to inspire us with the words and the actions that relay the message of his peace and power to those who need that peace and power.

As we offer the handshake of peace to each other this morning, let us pray that we, in some small way, this week, can cross over whatever troubled waters someone else might be in – job loss, family troubles, sickness, general malaise - to offer them God’s peace and God’s power.

Let us pray.

Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and whatever we do in whatever time we have left, wherever we go, may we in whatever way we can call on him as the fishermen did in their boat to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us, each one, our way. May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we're done, so that even in their midst we may find peace...we may find Christ. Amen.

* Prayer from Frederick Buechner

Anxiety Reduction Plan by St. Paul

In skimming through my archived sermons, one title leaped out at me: "God’s Anxiety Reduction Plan." Well – after a week of white knuckle Class V White Water Rapids with the stock market – I looked that one up! It was a reflection I had started awhile ago, based in work by William Loader, a Lutheran pastor, on this particular passage from Philippians. While I had prepared it for Advent, because of the phrase, “The Lord is near.” It seemed so appropriate to our times, that I opened it, and reflected some more on this most beautiful passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

“Rejoice in the Lord. Always. Again, I will say: Rejoice.” Paul is not being Pollyanna. He knows what it is to be in dire straits – to be in real need. He knows hunger and he knows plenty. He knows what it is to have very little – and to not know what is coming next –whether it is going to be storm wrecks or smooth sailing. The cause for rejoicing? The Lord is near. Remember what Jesus said? My peace I give you. I am with you always. Till death parts you from this earth, and I take you into your heavenly home. My peace I give to you.

The Lord is near, as close as your heartbeat. Relax. Rejoice.

And then Paul tells you his secret – he offers a specific set of instructions – which is good, because if you’re anything like me – you have an issue with worry.

But Paul just says: “Don’t. Don’t do it. Don’t Worry.” About anything! Let’s try it. I’ll say a worry – and you respond with Paul’s injunction: “Do not worry about anything.” And then, we’ll pass it around. Any one call out a worry – and we’ll all respond for you.

“I’m worried about the elections.”

“I’m anxious about the economy.”

“I’m worried about aging”

“I’m worried about whether or not I’m going to have a job.”

Ok- do we get the idea? There is NOTHING we are to worry about. But, if you’re anything like me – telling me not to do something, will almost guarantee I’m going to do it!

But Paul goes on with more instructions – about HOW to actually not worry… “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

In everything. Paul is emphatic in this passage – using words we were taught in our composition classes to NEVER use! Words, like Always, Everything, Never! But Paul doesn’t shy away. Always rejoice. In EVERYTHING, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God. In everything that comes your way – turn first to God who can do something about your circumstance. In absolutely everything, first use: Prayer – conscious contact with God.

Second use: Supplication – turn specific difficulties over to God, and

Third, use Thanksgiving – rest in assurance that God is taking care of the situation. And is able to bring about divine intent for your life.

Does that mean everything just becomes hunky dory and works out exactly how you want it to? No, of course not. Paul followed this anxiety reduction plan daily – and he still knew hunger and jail and betrayal and eventually the death sentence, just like Jesus did, and just like countless Christians do still today. In November, I am going to be traveling to the West Bank and meeting dozens of faithful Palestinian Christians – people who cannot travel ten miles away to get medical care in Jerusalem, but must bear the cost of traveling to Jordan just to get medical care. Earlier this year I was in Quito, working with Christian children who do not have enough food to eat. So – no – emphatically no – God’s anxiety reduction plan does not meat that everything just becomes magically ok. But I do know that these children were among the most loving and happy of children. I have heard the same about the Palestinian Christians. And Paul tells us himself, in this passage, that he has found that working this plan produces contentment and the assurance that he can do all things because it is God himself that is near and is strengthening him.

He, along with many who follow him, have come to the know the promise that is connected to this plan – namely when a worry or anxiety comes, instead of worrying we pray with an attitude of gratitude for God's intervention in our situation and then:

"...the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Specifically this translates to: Peace: The result of knowing that God has promised to be in charge of the situation, whatever it is.

You have a guard standing outside your heart and mind – the Peace of God – stands guard, watching over you, protecting you from worry and anxiety, so that your mind and soul can roam freely among those things which are beautiful, and just, pure, and pleasing.

Practice God’s anxiety reduction plan daily – hourly if need be –

Rejoice. Because regardless of whether you emotionally feel it or not - the Lord is as near as your heartbeat.

Pray – get in touch with God.

Petition – let God know your needs. Your anxieties. Your problems.

Give thanks – rest in assurance that God cares for you.

And peace, guaranteed, will be yours.

Philippians 4:1-13

4Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. ²I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. ³Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. ⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ⁸Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

¹⁰I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. ¹¹Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. ¹²I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. ¹³I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Heavenly Peace

2nd Sunday of Easter.

There is treasure in our pews! The real treasure of course is you. But the other treasure I’m referring to the prayer book. It’s true that for those of us who did not grow up in the Episcopal church, using this book in worship can be awkward and cumbersome. For those of you cradle Episcopalians, using this book in worship is second nature. But you have also lived through the battles that have been fought over this book – what prayers to include, what the shape of the liturgies will be, what theological orientation will shine through the brightest.

But beyond the consternation of change, and beyond the awkwardness of trying to balance the prayer book, the hymnal, and the bulletin, this book provides language for prayer that is as poetic as it is precise. This morning’s collect for the Second Sunday of Easter is a wonderful example:

We began with an address to the “Almighty and Everlasting God.” And so, in those few words, we proclaimed that the God to whom Jesus gave his whole self without any reservation is the Eternal One over whom the forces of death and destruction and despair cannot prevail. When Jesus carried the wounds of the entire world and all the fury evil could muster – and God raised him up to life again, it left an indelible mark upon this world: Love is the ultimate Reality. Love Reigns.

And so we began “Almighty and Everlasting God”, our own shorthand affirmation that as we give our lives, our time, our property, our resources into God’s keeping, when we follow the demands of Love, we are fully supported in the arms of real and lasting Power.

And we have plenty of Christian heroes and heroines who have proven this. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa are two well-known people who stepped off the tried and true paths of security into God’s security and brought healing and courage into situations of danger and despair. But there are many Christians who have done so quietly, and their courage and conviction remain unknown. A Japanese woman whom my husband met many years ago, told him the story of going with her mother every Sunday morning to the perimeter of the camp where they were interred during WWII. She vividly remembers standing with her mother at the barbed wire fence, with guns bearing down on them. Every Sunday, her mother sang with joy: “This is my Father’s World, O let me ne’er forget. That though the wrong seems of’t so strong, God is the Ruler yet.” So, we too, on this 2^nd Sunday of Easter, affirm that the God of Jesus Christ is Almighty and Everlasting. (Do I hear an Amen?)

The morning collect continues: “who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation.”

The Paschal mystery is actually a scandal – it is the scandal that God allied God’s Almighty and Everlasting self with the poorest of the poor and died a criminal’s death, a defeated nobody in an occupied land – and continued to offer forgiveness and peace. Truth be told, this is as scandalous now as it was then. We inure ourselves to the reality of Jesus’ defeat and death and defeat through many repetitions of churchy phrases. We pretty it up with jeweled crosses. Regardless of what you thought about Mel Gibson’s film, the Passion of the Christ brought into modern consciousness again, the brutality of Rome’s occupation and executions, the nature of sacrifice, and the gratuitous violence which Jesus suffered. The Son of God suffered gratuitous violence similar to what the world’s poor suffer daily – torture, hunger, thirst, drawn guns and swords, loneliness and loss. So this is the Paschal mystery …. Christ emptied out on the cross in identification with wounded humanity. But that is not the whole of the mystery. The whole of the mystery is Easter: Christ raised up to glorious life, Christ drawing us in as full partners in this resurrection life.

Jesus drew the first disciples into resurrection life – into this new covenant of reconciliation. Three days after his crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples were scared out of their minds. Just having witnessed the bloody execution of their leader, they were crouched behind locked doors, quietly trying to fade into the woodwork. They were deeply shamed by the depth of their fear, deeply shamed that they had abandoned Jesus when he needed them most. They were still mired in jealousy and rivalry. There had always been rivalry between them: who was closest to Jesus, who would sit at his right hand, who would follow him to death. It is easy to imagine that the rivalry had turned to who was grieving the most. Who felt the worst. Who would be the leader now….

But after the resurrection, Jesus immediately headed back to this same sorry cowering group that had betrayed him, run away, given in, maybe come to blows with one another. He didn’t go find another group that might be easier to work with. A little more “spiritual”. A little less cantankerous. He didn’t even head back to this group to let them have it. To call them on the carpet with a lecture. He never said: “Don’t you get it yet. All this time with me. All my teaching. All my attention. And what is this with the locked doors, and especially what is it with not believing Mary Magdalene – who’s seen me, who’s talked with me, who’s told you the good news!”. I can easily imagine him getting fairly worked up in frustration with them. Can’t you?

Instead, he greeted them saying “Peace be with you.” He wasn’t ashamed to call them his friends. He hadn’t given up on them. From the other side of their betrayal and cowardice, he offered them peace.

And it wasn’t a mushy kind of peace. It wasn’t the cocktail party “hi, how are you,” kind of peace. This was the Peace that passes all understanding. This was the Peace that in St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor. 13: 7)

This Peace made reconciliation among the disciples and Jesus and us possible - because it rested on the work of the cross and the resurrection. It did not rest on the disciple’s attempts to deny or forget or retaliate for those places and peoples and times where they had been wounded, or where they had inflicted harm. Reconciliation still rests on the work of the cross and the resurrection. It does not depend on our attempts to forget or retaliate for times where we have been wounded or deny where we have inflicted harm.

“Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is the Peace that God offers to you and to me and to the world. It is the Peace that the Resurrection makes possible. The Peace of God’s forgiveness. God’s friendship. God’s faithfulness to us. God’s renewal of all things.

As we are renewed and reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may we be granted the grace to “show forth in our lives, what we profess by our faith."” (2^nd Sunday Easter Collect) By the outstretched wounded hands of Jesus, we are offered the peace that passes all understanding. And we are commissioned to go out and offer this same peace to others.

The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

And the people say: And also with you.

Amen.