Holy Trinity bless the work that you do.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work not be wearisome, but release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May dawn find you awake and alert and approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.
And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be with you in each moment of your days, and among you always. Amen.
a traditional blessing found at care2.com and adapted
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Love
Easter 5C
The Guinness Book of World Records lists the shortest sermon ever preached. The Rev. John Albrecht, an Episcopal priest from Michigan, stepped into his pulpit, paused, made eye contact with the entire congregation, said, “Love!” and sat down. It was reported that certain members of Albrecht’s church said it was the best sermon they ever heard him preach.
Hopefully my lack of such extreme brevity will be made up for in being slightly more comprehensive. For while the call to love is simple, simply loving is not.
Learning to love takes insight, commitment, courage, and daring. In The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck says simply that it is work. It doesn’t come easy, because it means laying yourself out for someone else. In a very real way, love is our salvation because it is the way we leave off spinning around ourselves as the focus of our known universe, and begin to live with God at the center.
Perhaps this is why Love is the cornerstone of Jesus’ teaching. The message of the gospel today is short and sweet. Jesus had almost no time left with his disciples before he would be arrested and put to death. While they were eating their last meal together, he tried once more to make them understand. “I have only one thing to sum it all up so listen carefully.” He had said it in many ways and words before, but now at the end Jesus underlines it, puts in italics, announces it in Bold clear letters, “You are my followers if you love one another.”
According to the Apostle Paul, Love is the greatest gift out of all the special gifts that the Holy Spirit has for us. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul gave us the best advice possible. “Make Love your aim,” he said. Reach for that and the rest will fall into place.
And yet we toss the word “love” about in casual conversation as if it had no spiritual significance whatsoever. It’s certainly overused. I just LOVE those shoes! Don’t you just LOVE the way she sings!
As rich and expressive as the English language is, the ancient Greeks were better equipped than we are to talk about love. We have only one word. They had three.
Anybody remember what they are?
There’s Eros. It means to us much the same thing that it meant to the Greeks – love rooted in desire and passion. The Bible affirms God’s creation of human sexuality, and Eros, in its best form, is the human body celebrating the wonder of God’s creative power. Eros is a scintillating and powerful kind of love that grabs hold of us and makes life sparkle. The flashing flames of Eros can begin to lift us up out of ourselves, so that we notice that there are other beings in the world. It make us want to brush our teeth and comb our hair and take dancing lessons and get involved. But ultimately, eros is a self-serving, self-seeking kind of love. It might get us up in the morning, but it won’t take us through to the end of the day.
The second Greek word for love is filios. You might recognize the word from remembering our East Coast friends in Philadelphia – the “City of Brotherly Love.” Filial love is the kind of love that binds brother to brother, sister to sister, friend to friend. Maybe you are lucky enough to still know your best friend from 5th grade or from college. The truth is that while many relationships begin with attraction based in eros, filial love must take root for love to last a lifetime. Filial love grows, over a lifetime, into a sheltering tree that sustains families and friends.
Next Sunday is Mother’s Day. A celebration of filial love. Filial love is why parents work long hours to provide for their children. It is why they will stay up until all hours of the morning, waiting for the sound of the car tires in the driveway and their teenager’s footsteps coming up the steps – the same person they’ve already spent hours up at night with as an infant.
Filial love is truly where we begin to learn to lay ourselves out for another. To go beyond what we think we are capable of. To go beyond what is reasonable. Filial love is where we begin to learn something of what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading today. Filial love is where we begin to learn about letting go. About opening our hands and not clinging. About dying, even in the littlest ways. In giving more than we get.
The truth is, Love and Justice go together. But loving is not a just experience. If we expect to get back what we give, that is a business not a love relationship. Love is basically unjust. Not only can we never even come close to evening things out with God – we can’t really ever come even with our parents, our teachers, and really, truth be told, even our spouses.
Here’s Billy Collin’s wisdom on the basic inequality of filial love.
The Lanyard
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
- Billy Collins
Filial love – love between parent and child, between siblings, between friends – this is how we begin to understand God. But filial love still has an edge of self-interest in it. I am bound to my child partly because I see something of me in her. I am bound to my brother partly because we share the same blood. I am bound to my friend partly because friendship makes my life sweeter.
The third Greek word for love – agape – is love that is purely unconditional. There is no self-interest involved. It is the love that God gives – complete and without any conditions. God, our great Lover, makes the sun to shine on all of us, good and bad, and causes the rain to fall regardless of our conduct.
It is very difficult to really and truly receive this kind of love. A love that we cannot do anything to earn. A love that we cannot do anything to ruin. A love that knows absolutely every quirk, every flaw, every defect, every dream and hope and desire – absolutely everything about us and LOVES US. Passionately. Without end. Without condition.
God loves you and me. Whether we know it or not. Whether we accept it or not. Whether we ever truly relax into the utter blissfulness of it or not. But, if you have ever let your guard down enough so that the God who is Love has come pouring into your soul – you know why St. Paul was blinded; why people have been known to fall down laughing, why another name for Christian is “fool” for Christ. It doesn’t sound very Episcopalian does it? In fact, it really doesn’t sound very middle class American at all. But there it is. The better reason possible to kick your shoes off and say Amen!
It is foolishness. The most profound treasure in creation – God’s love and the peace that flows from that love – is available for everyone, free for the receiving.
We know about agape love because Jesus lived it and Paul described it in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. It is patient and kind, not jealous, conceited, proud, ill-mannered, selfish or irritable. It does not hold a grudge. It rejoices in the truth. It is a love that never gives up. It is not a grasping kind of love – but a love that desires the very best for the other – the kind of love that gives way for the other to grow and change and become fully who God intended for them to be. Children who receive this kind of love are blessed. Partners who give and receive this kind of love are blessed.
When Agape love gets ignited in your soul, it is not limited to your family and friendship circle. It looks outward towards the needs of creation and the world. It compels you to put your time and talents and resources towards making the world a better place. This love invites you to grow up in Christ. It invites you to commit yourself to a Christian community that rejoices with others and that works for the coming of God’s kingdom of justice and peace on earth.
Because we are loved unconditionally by God, because we are filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for us to grow in love and peace with God and with one another. It is possible for us to reach out beyond ourselves in concern and service to the world. It is possible to do the thing that Jesus commands: "Love one another as I have loved you."
The Guinness Book of World Records lists the shortest sermon ever preached. The Rev. John Albrecht, an Episcopal priest from Michigan, stepped into his pulpit, paused, made eye contact with the entire congregation, said, “Love!” and sat down. It was reported that certain members of Albrecht’s church said it was the best sermon they ever heard him preach.
Hopefully my lack of such extreme brevity will be made up for in being slightly more comprehensive. For while the call to love is simple, simply loving is not.
Learning to love takes insight, commitment, courage, and daring. In The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck says simply that it is work. It doesn’t come easy, because it means laying yourself out for someone else. In a very real way, love is our salvation because it is the way we leave off spinning around ourselves as the focus of our known universe, and begin to live with God at the center.
Perhaps this is why Love is the cornerstone of Jesus’ teaching. The message of the gospel today is short and sweet. Jesus had almost no time left with his disciples before he would be arrested and put to death. While they were eating their last meal together, he tried once more to make them understand. “I have only one thing to sum it all up so listen carefully.” He had said it in many ways and words before, but now at the end Jesus underlines it, puts in italics, announces it in Bold clear letters, “You are my followers if you love one another.”
According to the Apostle Paul, Love is the greatest gift out of all the special gifts that the Holy Spirit has for us. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul gave us the best advice possible. “Make Love your aim,” he said. Reach for that and the rest will fall into place.
And yet we toss the word “love” about in casual conversation as if it had no spiritual significance whatsoever. It’s certainly overused. I just LOVE those shoes! Don’t you just LOVE the way she sings!
As rich and expressive as the English language is, the ancient Greeks were better equipped than we are to talk about love. We have only one word. They had three.
Anybody remember what they are?
There’s Eros. It means to us much the same thing that it meant to the Greeks – love rooted in desire and passion. The Bible affirms God’s creation of human sexuality, and Eros, in its best form, is the human body celebrating the wonder of God’s creative power. Eros is a scintillating and powerful kind of love that grabs hold of us and makes life sparkle. The flashing flames of Eros can begin to lift us up out of ourselves, so that we notice that there are other beings in the world. It make us want to brush our teeth and comb our hair and take dancing lessons and get involved. But ultimately, eros is a self-serving, self-seeking kind of love. It might get us up in the morning, but it won’t take us through to the end of the day.
The second Greek word for love is filios. You might recognize the word from remembering our East Coast friends in Philadelphia – the “City of Brotherly Love.” Filial love is the kind of love that binds brother to brother, sister to sister, friend to friend. Maybe you are lucky enough to still know your best friend from 5th grade or from college. The truth is that while many relationships begin with attraction based in eros, filial love must take root for love to last a lifetime. Filial love grows, over a lifetime, into a sheltering tree that sustains families and friends.
Next Sunday is Mother’s Day. A celebration of filial love. Filial love is why parents work long hours to provide for their children. It is why they will stay up until all hours of the morning, waiting for the sound of the car tires in the driveway and their teenager’s footsteps coming up the steps – the same person they’ve already spent hours up at night with as an infant.
Filial love is truly where we begin to learn to lay ourselves out for another. To go beyond what we think we are capable of. To go beyond what is reasonable. Filial love is where we begin to learn something of what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading today. Filial love is where we begin to learn about letting go. About opening our hands and not clinging. About dying, even in the littlest ways. In giving more than we get.
The truth is, Love and Justice go together. But loving is not a just experience. If we expect to get back what we give, that is a business not a love relationship. Love is basically unjust. Not only can we never even come close to evening things out with God – we can’t really ever come even with our parents, our teachers, and really, truth be told, even our spouses.
Here’s Billy Collin’s wisdom on the basic inequality of filial love.
The Lanyard
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
- Billy Collins
Filial love – love between parent and child, between siblings, between friends – this is how we begin to understand God. But filial love still has an edge of self-interest in it. I am bound to my child partly because I see something of me in her. I am bound to my brother partly because we share the same blood. I am bound to my friend partly because friendship makes my life sweeter.
The third Greek word for love – agape – is love that is purely unconditional. There is no self-interest involved. It is the love that God gives – complete and without any conditions. God, our great Lover, makes the sun to shine on all of us, good and bad, and causes the rain to fall regardless of our conduct.
It is very difficult to really and truly receive this kind of love. A love that we cannot do anything to earn. A love that we cannot do anything to ruin. A love that knows absolutely every quirk, every flaw, every defect, every dream and hope and desire – absolutely everything about us and LOVES US. Passionately. Without end. Without condition.
God loves you and me. Whether we know it or not. Whether we accept it or not. Whether we ever truly relax into the utter blissfulness of it or not. But, if you have ever let your guard down enough so that the God who is Love has come pouring into your soul – you know why St. Paul was blinded; why people have been known to fall down laughing, why another name for Christian is “fool” for Christ. It doesn’t sound very Episcopalian does it? In fact, it really doesn’t sound very middle class American at all. But there it is. The better reason possible to kick your shoes off and say Amen!
It is foolishness. The most profound treasure in creation – God’s love and the peace that flows from that love – is available for everyone, free for the receiving.
We know about agape love because Jesus lived it and Paul described it in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. It is patient and kind, not jealous, conceited, proud, ill-mannered, selfish or irritable. It does not hold a grudge. It rejoices in the truth. It is a love that never gives up. It is not a grasping kind of love – but a love that desires the very best for the other – the kind of love that gives way for the other to grow and change and become fully who God intended for them to be. Children who receive this kind of love are blessed. Partners who give and receive this kind of love are blessed.
When Agape love gets ignited in your soul, it is not limited to your family and friendship circle. It looks outward towards the needs of creation and the world. It compels you to put your time and talents and resources towards making the world a better place. This love invites you to grow up in Christ. It invites you to commit yourself to a Christian community that rejoices with others and that works for the coming of God’s kingdom of justice and peace on earth.
Because we are loved unconditionally by God, because we are filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for us to grow in love and peace with God and with one another. It is possible for us to reach out beyond ourselves in concern and service to the world. It is possible to do the thing that Jesus commands: "Love one another as I have loved you."
Thursday, April 08, 2010
With the eyes of your heart
I was at a dinner party this week – Good Friday evening to be exact – and someone said, “So what do the Christians believe about Easter? What is Easter?” And the person who’d invited me said, “Does anyone really believe that somebody was actually raised from the dead? I mean, raised back to life again from their grave?” I leaned forward, put my hand up and said, “I do!” Everyone else sat back in amusement. A sweet disbelief.
One person took up the challenge and said, “well look – it’s a huge metaphor – and this is what the metaphor is: The Roman Empire crushed anyone who got in their way, and this guy was a nobody, a ghetto kid like me, and he was in their way – and so they crushed him, like they did a whole lot of people. But his message wouldn’t go away. It’s a metaphor for liberation and for brotherhood and for the people who won’t be crushed no matter how much power is brought to bear on them. It’s a metaphor for the power of love and life and grace that will always find a way to go on no matter how evil the powers are that are brought to bear down on the poor and dispossessed. “
Well, he said something like that. It was good. He was good. He said this in a booming preacher like voice. But then someone else said, “but is that really what the Christians believe?”
Personally, I would have to say – yes and no. Yes, at one level, as a metaphor that was fairly accurate. And this metaphor of Resurrection does provide sustenance for many people who are suffering under repression.
And No – because it didn’t really get to the nub of the thing.
When the women went to the cemetery, they went in grief to tend to the mangled, tortured body of their beloved. That’s why you go to cemeteries. To tend to the dead. To put flowers on the grave. You definitely are not thinking that their tomb is going to be empty. Can you imagine their utter horror and shock? I saw one artistic rendering of the scene that had the women’s hair standing on end as they raced away. I mean one thing you can be certain of – dead people stay dead.
I have been through the death of four friends this Lent. Several of you have lost mothers and fathers. A dear friend of mine recently lost her two closest friends. Grief comes in waves, and about six to eight weeks from the death it usually becomes pretty intense. Why? Because the reality that they are really and truly gone, that they are dead, hits hard. They are not coming back. That’s the order of things, and it is a cruel order, but it is reliable.
But this morning, and every Sunday morning, is the Feast of the Resurrection – this awesome, incredible, unique among all religions – claim – that the Body of Jesus was not in the grave, but Risen. Restored to Life by the same Power that created something out of nothing when He said, “Let there be Light.” And there was Light. This same Power now said “Let there be Life.” And there was Life – and no power on heaven or on earth could contradict or intervene. Let there be Life and there is Life. Death and the grave are vanquished.
Of course there are other religions that have gods who die and rise – but they are mythological, not actual walking around people. What do the Christians believe? I don’t know about you – but this Christian believes that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that whatever happened at that tomb, however that happened, the women who went there found empty grave clothes, those bindings that were wrapped around dead bodies. And they couldn’t believe it. In fact, neither could the disciples. In our reading from last night, when the women went racing back, the men thought it was – in our English translation – an idle tale. In Greek it is lalein….like lalalala … wild talk …mad talk…or in colloquial English….bull…..
And then…. Jesus began to appear to them. In this morning’s gospel, he appears to Mary, who is utterly heartbroken and while the other’s run away, she cannot bear to leave the graveyard. She does not recognize him – because we are not talking about a resuscitated body, but Resurrection, a Body of glory that is from another dimension.
In his 2nd letter to the church at Corinth, Paul described it this way: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.”
Clearly, Jesus’ resurrected body got hungry - remember how he asked for food, and how he cooked breakfast over a small fire at the beach…but he could also pass through walls - remember how the disciples were in a closed and locked room out of fear of the authorities, and then suddenly, he was in their midst? But he was not easy to recognize. There is a lot of drama involved in all of these stories about who is this man? A gardener? A fisherman? A ghost? A traveler? The real drama of the Resurrection lies in learning to see, learning to recognize Jesus.
Jesus’ final teachings – his post-Resurrection teachings have to do with how to have Easter eyes. And it was different experience for each one of his disciples. Mary was sunk in her grief. So stuck on the physical plane that she could not see him. Once he spoke her name, she did see him and she wanted desperately to cling to him. But he said, “Do not Cling.” “You can go further into love” – Jesus was saying. You can love beyond boundaries, beyond barriers, beyond the physical, and this is the life I am calling you into.
There will be other appearances throughout this extended Eastertide. Some will see Jesus and others will not. Remember the two on the road to Emmaus – walking and talking in hushed whispers about the events that led up to the dashing of all of their hopes against the hard wood of torture and death…and Jesus himself appeared and began walking with them. But even when he opened the scriptures to them, they did not recognize him. Only when they invited him to stay with them, and he took bread and blessed it and broke it…were their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And then, of course, they left their dinner cold and rushed back to Jerusalem: “The Lord lives. We have seen him.” And they said to one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us as he explained all the scriptures to us?”
So what prevented them from seeing him in the first place? They were stuck in their story, stuck in the past, stuck in their grief and their nostalgia – so they could not see what was right in front of them - staring them right in the face. They could only see him when they came fully into the present moment, and received Christ’s bread and blessing.
And not only did they see – but they saw how to see. Just like Mary – it was through the eyes of their heart – through the attunement of their heart – it was their heart that burned within them that recognized Jesus and it was also their heart that bound them to the risen Lord forever.
My friends around the dinner table will probably never be convinced. And I did not try to convince them. Because Seeing Jesus, Hearing Jesus, knowing the truth that He is Risen - is not a teaching kind of truth. It is experiential.
The truth is, the heart tuned to Jesus is like a compass. It gives direction and it tells you where to look in order to behold the glory of the Lord. You can have your heart tuned so that it burns within you in recognition of our Lord. How? Through loving him and through service to one another and to the world that he so dearly loves.
Remember his final words with Peter? “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,“ Peter replied, "I love you.” In Greek there are several words for Love – and two of them are used in this passage. Peter used the word philios for I love you. Philios is a personal and attractive kind of love. Jesus used agape. Agape is love that is self-giving, that wells up and flows outwards towards the needs of others. “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord.” “Then feed my sheep.” This is how to see the Resurrected Lord with the eyes of your heart. This is how his presence will always be known to you.
The Lord is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
Resources:
Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus
Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death
One person took up the challenge and said, “well look – it’s a huge metaphor – and this is what the metaphor is: The Roman Empire crushed anyone who got in their way, and this guy was a nobody, a ghetto kid like me, and he was in their way – and so they crushed him, like they did a whole lot of people. But his message wouldn’t go away. It’s a metaphor for liberation and for brotherhood and for the people who won’t be crushed no matter how much power is brought to bear on them. It’s a metaphor for the power of love and life and grace that will always find a way to go on no matter how evil the powers are that are brought to bear down on the poor and dispossessed. “
Well, he said something like that. It was good. He was good. He said this in a booming preacher like voice. But then someone else said, “but is that really what the Christians believe?”
Personally, I would have to say – yes and no. Yes, at one level, as a metaphor that was fairly accurate. And this metaphor of Resurrection does provide sustenance for many people who are suffering under repression.
And No – because it didn’t really get to the nub of the thing.
When the women went to the cemetery, they went in grief to tend to the mangled, tortured body of their beloved. That’s why you go to cemeteries. To tend to the dead. To put flowers on the grave. You definitely are not thinking that their tomb is going to be empty. Can you imagine their utter horror and shock? I saw one artistic rendering of the scene that had the women’s hair standing on end as they raced away. I mean one thing you can be certain of – dead people stay dead.
I have been through the death of four friends this Lent. Several of you have lost mothers and fathers. A dear friend of mine recently lost her two closest friends. Grief comes in waves, and about six to eight weeks from the death it usually becomes pretty intense. Why? Because the reality that they are really and truly gone, that they are dead, hits hard. They are not coming back. That’s the order of things, and it is a cruel order, but it is reliable.
But this morning, and every Sunday morning, is the Feast of the Resurrection – this awesome, incredible, unique among all religions – claim – that the Body of Jesus was not in the grave, but Risen. Restored to Life by the same Power that created something out of nothing when He said, “Let there be Light.” And there was Light. This same Power now said “Let there be Life.” And there was Life – and no power on heaven or on earth could contradict or intervene. Let there be Life and there is Life. Death and the grave are vanquished.
Of course there are other religions that have gods who die and rise – but they are mythological, not actual walking around people. What do the Christians believe? I don’t know about you – but this Christian believes that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that whatever happened at that tomb, however that happened, the women who went there found empty grave clothes, those bindings that were wrapped around dead bodies. And they couldn’t believe it. In fact, neither could the disciples. In our reading from last night, when the women went racing back, the men thought it was – in our English translation – an idle tale. In Greek it is lalein….like lalalala … wild talk …mad talk…or in colloquial English….bull…..
And then…. Jesus began to appear to them. In this morning’s gospel, he appears to Mary, who is utterly heartbroken and while the other’s run away, she cannot bear to leave the graveyard. She does not recognize him – because we are not talking about a resuscitated body, but Resurrection, a Body of glory that is from another dimension.
In his 2nd letter to the church at Corinth, Paul described it this way: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.”
Clearly, Jesus’ resurrected body got hungry - remember how he asked for food, and how he cooked breakfast over a small fire at the beach…but he could also pass through walls - remember how the disciples were in a closed and locked room out of fear of the authorities, and then suddenly, he was in their midst? But he was not easy to recognize. There is a lot of drama involved in all of these stories about who is this man? A gardener? A fisherman? A ghost? A traveler? The real drama of the Resurrection lies in learning to see, learning to recognize Jesus.
Jesus’ final teachings – his post-Resurrection teachings have to do with how to have Easter eyes. And it was different experience for each one of his disciples. Mary was sunk in her grief. So stuck on the physical plane that she could not see him. Once he spoke her name, she did see him and she wanted desperately to cling to him. But he said, “Do not Cling.” “You can go further into love” – Jesus was saying. You can love beyond boundaries, beyond barriers, beyond the physical, and this is the life I am calling you into.
There will be other appearances throughout this extended Eastertide. Some will see Jesus and others will not. Remember the two on the road to Emmaus – walking and talking in hushed whispers about the events that led up to the dashing of all of their hopes against the hard wood of torture and death…and Jesus himself appeared and began walking with them. But even when he opened the scriptures to them, they did not recognize him. Only when they invited him to stay with them, and he took bread and blessed it and broke it…were their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And then, of course, they left their dinner cold and rushed back to Jerusalem: “The Lord lives. We have seen him.” And they said to one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us as he explained all the scriptures to us?”
So what prevented them from seeing him in the first place? They were stuck in their story, stuck in the past, stuck in their grief and their nostalgia – so they could not see what was right in front of them - staring them right in the face. They could only see him when they came fully into the present moment, and received Christ’s bread and blessing.
And not only did they see – but they saw how to see. Just like Mary – it was through the eyes of their heart – through the attunement of their heart – it was their heart that burned within them that recognized Jesus and it was also their heart that bound them to the risen Lord forever.
My friends around the dinner table will probably never be convinced. And I did not try to convince them. Because Seeing Jesus, Hearing Jesus, knowing the truth that He is Risen - is not a teaching kind of truth. It is experiential.
The truth is, the heart tuned to Jesus is like a compass. It gives direction and it tells you where to look in order to behold the glory of the Lord. You can have your heart tuned so that it burns within you in recognition of our Lord. How? Through loving him and through service to one another and to the world that he so dearly loves.
Remember his final words with Peter? “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,“ Peter replied, "I love you.” In Greek there are several words for Love – and two of them are used in this passage. Peter used the word philios for I love you. Philios is a personal and attractive kind of love. Jesus used agape. Agape is love that is self-giving, that wells up and flows outwards towards the needs of others. “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord.” “Then feed my sheep.” This is how to see the Resurrected Lord with the eyes of your heart. This is how his presence will always be known to you.
The Lord is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
Resources:
Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus
Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death
Friday, April 02, 2010
Good Friday
After friends and nurses cared for him for months, and kept vigil for days, AIDS took it’s final toll on Dave. I had been taking communion to him for a long time. One time I happened to come when a group of close friends had gathered in his home. We had a party – a last supper, as it turned out. Gathering around the couch in the living room where Dave spent his time, we feasted on the scriptures and on the bread and wine and on each other’s company. The prayers were intensely personal. Dave was dying. The small mission church that these folks had devoted many hours to, was struggling with its future. I was wondering where my priesthood was leading, where God was calling me.
There were many blessings that night. I anointed Dave and those gathered around all laid hands on him, deeply blessing and loving him as a truly gathered Christian community can do. The group laid hands on me, blessing me with prayers and longings for the full blossoming of my ministry. We held hands and prayed for the little mission in the heart of the gay and poor community along the Russian River.
A few days later, Dave died. His two sons asked if I would stay with the body until the mortuary arrived. I said yes – but had no idea that it would take so long for the van to get there. I sat for hours in the room with Dave’s body growing cold. Accompanying his complete leave taking of this world, of his thin ravaged body, his running sores, his inability to swallow, his existential loneliness.
Before he died though, the midst of this very real suffering, Dave had found a way to live as fully as he possibly could. He had found the way of the Cross. Because of Jesus and Jesus’ death and ultimate resurrection, hope continued to burn in Dave to the very end. It was this hope that allowed him to laugh at the ever increasing indignities of the process of dying. It was this hope that gave him the courage and fortitude to reconcile with his sons. It was this hope that gave his eyes their light, when all else was breaking down.
Anyone who has been through the valley of the shadow of death, knows that hope is the one thing that is essential. Faith can come and go. Even love. But without hope, we become the walking dead. Hope is hardy – like grass pushing up through cement, it’s green blades finding even the tiniest of cracks to reach through to the light . Hope is hardy – like children playing tag in the rudest and meanest of impoverished conditions. Hope is hardy. It is not easily extinguished. It finds a way to take wing and fly even when the wings are broken and the night is bitterly cold.
But I think on this day, in the heart of Jesus’ mother and in the hearts of John and the few women who were strong enough to stay until the bitter end, I think hope died.
Jesus was taken dead and cold from the cross and laid in a tomb, with no answer forthcoming from the God of Love that he proclaimed and clung to – no answer – no comforting word – no dove descending – no whisper in the ear. Through the hours that he hung on the cross, a most intensely gruesome torturous way to die – Jesus continued to love, continued to pour himself out in love, for his friends, for his mother, for those who had nailed him there and who were busy dividing up his robe and sandals and prayer shawl. He continued to call upon and cling to his Father, his Abba, the very light of his life, the love of his love. But now - there was no answer, no relief, no assurance that anything he had done or was doing had any meaning, had any purpose, or would come to any good, no word that there even was a God who heard him and knew him, much less loved him. The hope and love and light of his mother’s life was now broken and dead and cold in her arms.
What do we do when hope dies? When our dreams are shattered? When love flickers and fades and the ground we stand on is turned completely upside down and there is no solid ground left? When we are suddenly and completely turned out of the cozy world we thought we lived in – maybe by death of a husband or wife or child, or death of a marriage, or death of purpose, or death of a future we had counted on. What do we do when all of our hopes and dreams are laid out cold and heavy in our arms?
Mary turned to Joseph of Arimethea, a friend of her son’s. She and the other women leaned on each other, held each other upright as they made their feet move in the direction of someone’s home where they would sit without food or fire huddled together and too struck down to even weep. What did these few friends of Jesus do when hope died and God no longer spoke to them? They sat together. They held each other.
I don’t know whether they prayed. I don’t know whether they called upon God who, for all they could see, had abandoned their beloved Jesus and abandoned them. Perhaps, possibly, they were able, through sheer force of will and profound love, to follow Jesus even into this abandoned place. Perhaps, possibly, like Jesus, they did continue to call upon this silent absent God. Continued to call, even when there was no answer. Perhaps, possibly, the life that was Jesus’ life, did still beat somewhere in their grieving hearts, unknown and unrecognized. Perhaps, possibly, the little tiny seed bud of hope was not thoroughly extinguished, but lay dormant and deep, still and silent, waiting.
We know, of course, that Easter comes. That there is a tomorrow and another tomorrow, and that God has the final word – that Love lives. That there is no darkness, no despair, no abandonment, no place of terror and absence, that God is not – that God – by pouring out of everything he had, to the utmost of his earthly capacity, there is no darkness that Christ does not light with his presence. Because he held nothing back, he is able to accompany you into any hopelessness, any despair.
What do you do when hope dies? When the Light of the World, when the light of your world, is extinguished? Do what Dave did. Do what Jesus' friends did. Flee to the Cross of Christ. Because at the Cross, at the foot of the Cross, you will find paradise itself. You will find community and communion. You will find the very Presence of the One who loves you to the end and beyond.
There were many blessings that night. I anointed Dave and those gathered around all laid hands on him, deeply blessing and loving him as a truly gathered Christian community can do. The group laid hands on me, blessing me with prayers and longings for the full blossoming of my ministry. We held hands and prayed for the little mission in the heart of the gay and poor community along the Russian River.
A few days later, Dave died. His two sons asked if I would stay with the body until the mortuary arrived. I said yes – but had no idea that it would take so long for the van to get there. I sat for hours in the room with Dave’s body growing cold. Accompanying his complete leave taking of this world, of his thin ravaged body, his running sores, his inability to swallow, his existential loneliness.
Before he died though, the midst of this very real suffering, Dave had found a way to live as fully as he possibly could. He had found the way of the Cross. Because of Jesus and Jesus’ death and ultimate resurrection, hope continued to burn in Dave to the very end. It was this hope that allowed him to laugh at the ever increasing indignities of the process of dying. It was this hope that gave him the courage and fortitude to reconcile with his sons. It was this hope that gave his eyes their light, when all else was breaking down.
Anyone who has been through the valley of the shadow of death, knows that hope is the one thing that is essential. Faith can come and go. Even love. But without hope, we become the walking dead. Hope is hardy – like grass pushing up through cement, it’s green blades finding even the tiniest of cracks to reach through to the light . Hope is hardy – like children playing tag in the rudest and meanest of impoverished conditions. Hope is hardy. It is not easily extinguished. It finds a way to take wing and fly even when the wings are broken and the night is bitterly cold.
But I think on this day, in the heart of Jesus’ mother and in the hearts of John and the few women who were strong enough to stay until the bitter end, I think hope died.
Jesus was taken dead and cold from the cross and laid in a tomb, with no answer forthcoming from the God of Love that he proclaimed and clung to – no answer – no comforting word – no dove descending – no whisper in the ear. Through the hours that he hung on the cross, a most intensely gruesome torturous way to die – Jesus continued to love, continued to pour himself out in love, for his friends, for his mother, for those who had nailed him there and who were busy dividing up his robe and sandals and prayer shawl. He continued to call upon and cling to his Father, his Abba, the very light of his life, the love of his love. But now - there was no answer, no relief, no assurance that anything he had done or was doing had any meaning, had any purpose, or would come to any good, no word that there even was a God who heard him and knew him, much less loved him. The hope and love and light of his mother’s life was now broken and dead and cold in her arms.
What do we do when hope dies? When our dreams are shattered? When love flickers and fades and the ground we stand on is turned completely upside down and there is no solid ground left? When we are suddenly and completely turned out of the cozy world we thought we lived in – maybe by death of a husband or wife or child, or death of a marriage, or death of purpose, or death of a future we had counted on. What do we do when all of our hopes and dreams are laid out cold and heavy in our arms?
Mary turned to Joseph of Arimethea, a friend of her son’s. She and the other women leaned on each other, held each other upright as they made their feet move in the direction of someone’s home where they would sit without food or fire huddled together and too struck down to even weep. What did these few friends of Jesus do when hope died and God no longer spoke to them? They sat together. They held each other.
I don’t know whether they prayed. I don’t know whether they called upon God who, for all they could see, had abandoned their beloved Jesus and abandoned them. Perhaps, possibly, they were able, through sheer force of will and profound love, to follow Jesus even into this abandoned place. Perhaps, possibly, like Jesus, they did continue to call upon this silent absent God. Continued to call, even when there was no answer. Perhaps, possibly, the life that was Jesus’ life, did still beat somewhere in their grieving hearts, unknown and unrecognized. Perhaps, possibly, the little tiny seed bud of hope was not thoroughly extinguished, but lay dormant and deep, still and silent, waiting.
We know, of course, that Easter comes. That there is a tomorrow and another tomorrow, and that God has the final word – that Love lives. That there is no darkness, no despair, no abandonment, no place of terror and absence, that God is not – that God – by pouring out of everything he had, to the utmost of his earthly capacity, there is no darkness that Christ does not light with his presence. Because he held nothing back, he is able to accompany you into any hopelessness, any despair.
What do you do when hope dies? When the Light of the World, when the light of your world, is extinguished? Do what Dave did. Do what Jesus' friends did. Flee to the Cross of Christ. Because at the Cross, at the foot of the Cross, you will find paradise itself. You will find community and communion. You will find the very Presence of the One who loves you to the end and beyond.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Monday Holy Week
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth
will declare your praise.
For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt-offering,
you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God
is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God,
you will not despise.
Psalm 51: 15 - 17
Whenever you
stand praying,
forgive,
if you have anything
against anyone;
so that your Father in heaven
may also forgive
you
your trespasses.
Mark 11: 25
and my mouth
will declare your praise.
For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt-offering,
you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God
is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God,
you will not despise.
Psalm 51: 15 - 17
Whenever you
stand praying,
forgive,
if you have anything
against anyone;
so that your Father in heaven
may also forgive
you
your trespasses.
Mark 11: 25
Friday, March 26, 2010
Glory be to You
Glory be to You,
who laid your Cross as a bridge over death,
that souls might pass over it
from the dwelling of the dead to the dwelling of life!
-Ephraem the Syrian (ca306-373)
who laid your Cross as a bridge over death,
that souls might pass over it
from the dwelling of the dead to the dwelling of life!
-Ephraem the Syrian (ca306-373)
Friday, March 12, 2010
Hymn
XXII
1. Wondrous sight for men and angels!
Wonders, wonders without end!
He who made, preserves, sustains us,
He our Ruler and our Friend,
Here lies cradled in the manger,
Finds no resting-place on earth,
Yet the shining hosts of glory
Throng to worship at his birth.
2. When thick cloud lies over Sinai,
And the trumpet’s note rings high,
In Christ the Word I’ll pass the barrier,
Climb, and feast, nor fear to die;
For in him all fullness dwelleth,
Fullness to restore our loss;
He stood forth and made atonement
Through his offering on the cross.
3. He between a pair of robbers
Hung, our Making-good to be;
He gave power to nerve and muscle
When they nailed him to the tree;
He, his Father’s law exalting,
Paid our debt and quenched our flame;
Righteousness, in fiery splendour,
Freely pardons in his name.
4. See, my soul, where our Peace-maker,
King of kings, was lowly laid,
He, creation’s life and movement,
Of the grave a tenant made,
Yet on souls fresh life bestowing;
Angels view it with amaze;
God in flesh with us adoring;
Heaven’s full chorus shouts his praise.
5. Thanks for ever, thanks ten thousand,
While I’ve breath, all thanks and praise
To the God who all his wonders
For my worship here displays,
In my nature tried and tempted
Like the meanest of our race,
Man – a weak and helpless infant,
God – of matchless power and grace.
6. Gone this body of corruption,
’Mid the fiery hosts on high,
Gazing deep into the wonders
Wrought of old on Calvary,
God, the Invisible, beholding,
Him who lives, yet once was slain,
Clasped in close eternal union
And communion I’ll remain.
Ann Griffiths (d. 1805)
1. Wondrous sight for men and angels!
Wonders, wonders without end!
He who made, preserves, sustains us,
He our Ruler and our Friend,
Here lies cradled in the manger,
Finds no resting-place on earth,
Yet the shining hosts of glory
Throng to worship at his birth.
2. When thick cloud lies over Sinai,
And the trumpet’s note rings high,
In Christ the Word I’ll pass the barrier,
Climb, and feast, nor fear to die;
For in him all fullness dwelleth,
Fullness to restore our loss;
He stood forth and made atonement
Through his offering on the cross.
3. He between a pair of robbers
Hung, our Making-good to be;
He gave power to nerve and muscle
When they nailed him to the tree;
He, his Father’s law exalting,
Paid our debt and quenched our flame;
Righteousness, in fiery splendour,
Freely pardons in his name.
4. See, my soul, where our Peace-maker,
King of kings, was lowly laid,
He, creation’s life and movement,
Of the grave a tenant made,
Yet on souls fresh life bestowing;
Angels view it with amaze;
God in flesh with us adoring;
Heaven’s full chorus shouts his praise.
5. Thanks for ever, thanks ten thousand,
While I’ve breath, all thanks and praise
To the God who all his wonders
For my worship here displays,
In my nature tried and tempted
Like the meanest of our race,
Man – a weak and helpless infant,
God – of matchless power and grace.
6. Gone this body of corruption,
’Mid the fiery hosts on high,
Gazing deep into the wonders
Wrought of old on Calvary,
God, the Invisible, beholding,
Him who lives, yet once was slain,
Clasped in close eternal union
And communion I’ll remain.
Ann Griffiths (d. 1805)
Monday, March 08, 2010
Humility
Lent 3C
Exodus 3: 1 - 5; Luke 13: 1 - 9
You know the story of Job? How he was a fabulously wealthy man with seven sons and three daughters and beautiful homes and a prominent place in society and known by all for his righteousness and Godliness – and then, he began losing it all. First his homes burned down, then his children were all killed, his wife died, and last of all, his health was destroyed. Covered in boils and sick unto death, he sat in the ashes of his former life and wept. He didn’t not curse God. He didn’t blame himself. He simply sat and wept, demanding that Godanswer his cry – “Why? Why? Why?”
His friends gathered from far and near, some to gawk, some to comfort– but most all of them, whatever their response, was to find blame. Who was to blame for this tragedy? Their consensus? Job. This was God’s punishment for some terrible wrong that Job had done – Job should search his heart, search his conscience to find what he had done, and confess it. Job did search his heart and conscience, and he could find anything that he had done – certainly nothing that would warrant this kind of tragedy. But he did want an answer. He wanted the God whom he had served his whole life to answer his one burning question – “Why?”
And God eventually did answer. A booming answer – “Where you there when I established the heavens and the deeps? Where you there when I fixed the stars in the sky and the whales in the oceans? Where you there when I brought something out of nothing and set into motion the entire universe?” And Job, deeply humbled, simply worshipped – saying “before I had only heard, but now I know, now I know, that you are God. “
Why am I telling you the story of Job this morning, when none of our readings mention Job? Because it is a true story – and we are still living this story. And the people surrounding Jesus were living that story. “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” The people had asked Jesus. And now they say – “these worshippers who went to the temple, and were arrested and killed by Pilate’s soldiers, right there in the temple, sacrificed like animals, they must have done something terribly wrong – to be punished by God like this. Jesus ups the ante – well, and what about the innocents in Jerusalem who happened to be in the way when the Tower of Siloam fell? They must have been great and terrible sinners also, do you think?
Pat Robertson is famous for the amazing things he says. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, it was because the people of New Orleans were sinners of the first order. When the country was brought to it’s knees in grief over 9/11, people like Pat Robertson said that this was God’s punishment on a country who had embraced feminism and equal rights for everyone. Now it is Haiti’s turn to be punished for selling it’s soul to the devil in return for freedom from French colonists. These are egregious modern examples of the same kind of thinking that Job’s friends had. There are New Age examples as well – you are sick because you are thinking wrong thoughts – which is another way of saying you have sinned and are now being punished.
Jesus cut through all of this with a simple “no. That’s not the way it is.” He didn’t get caught up in the blame game and the finger pointing and any abstract talk about God. Instead he turned to the people he was with and was quite straightforward with them. If the one suffering was present, such as the blind man, he healed him. If the sufferers were not present, as in the gospel today, he attempted to bring the people who were there into the same experience that Job had. In truth, the same experience that Moses had when he turned aside to see the burning bush. It’s an experience of Metanoia – actually being in God’s presence, and the deep humility and tears of worship that follow from real experience.
In the gospel this morning, Jesus tried to impress upon the people around him, the urgency of the truth that when God is passing by –it is time to bow down – now – because it will not always happen. He told the story of the fig tree that had already had Three years, and still God is merciful. But you cannot take this for granted. And you cannot assume entitlement, you cannot assume that you are entitled to grace. That is the ego’s way, but it is not God’s way.
At another time, he put it a different way. He said “Unless you become as a child, you will not see the Kingdom of God”….remember? A child is dependent and knows, deeply knows, that she is not in charge and that there is very little actually, that she can control. Of course, children try – and they often try very hard to be in charge, but that is only to manage their fear and the anxiety of being vulnerable and frail. When the parent is strong and obviously in charge, a child relaxes and feels safe and happy because she knows that she is protected and that someone who can actually manage things is in charge. Of course, we adults know that we can’t always manage things, and that there are so many aspects of life that we are not in charge of. Hence, our need to give our lives over and to trust, what our 12 Step friends call, a Higher Power – whom we know as the Lord - the One who actually is, wholly and completely, trustworthy and adequate. But as long as we are trying to fix blame for things that go wrong, and as long as we are beating our selves up in an attempt to re-establish control, we will miss the actual and real grace of God, the burning bushes that are all around us.
Jesus did not want his listeners to miss it. He doesn’t want you and me to miss it. And so he pointed to the one thing that is urgently needed – the one thing that Job found – the one thing that Moses did – and that is repentance. The “take your shoes off because you are on holy ground” kind of true repentance – Metanoia. This kind of repentance is about getting down from the pedestal of your ego, and planting yourself firmly on the ground – “you are made of dust and to dust you shall return.” It is about embracing Reality and that almost always requires a complete change of heart. A change of mind. A change of orientation, away from trying to beef yourself up to manage what is essentially unmaneagable – Life – and instead, bowing down in worship before God.
In the story of the fig tree, we tend to focus on the figs – whether there is fruit or not. But it’s the manure that’s magic. That wonderous substance that all farmers know about. The people around Jesus were focused on grand theories about God and who God protected and who God punished. But Jesus , completely in the here and now, pointed to manure. How like him! He “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and becoming obedient even unto death on a cross..(Phil. 2: 6-8)
St. Augustine said that manure is a symbol of humility. It is a lowly substance, something we don’t talk about much, but it can bring life into a place of no life. It can work a kind of alchemy, a mysterious transformation from what is basically "manure" into what is basically gold. And isn’t there plenty of room in this world for a lot of that kind of transformation!
If you are suffering, try to leave off blame. “Why did God do this?” “How have I sinned?” It does not help, and it leads you down a path that takes you further and further from Reality. Further and further from any encounter with the God who is the I AM.
If you are not suffering right now, Jesus invites you to join with those who do suffer, whether they are in Haiti or sitting next to you. He invites you into metanoia. To come down off of whatever pedestal your ego has persuaded you to climb, and let the deep humility of Christ – the One who could command wind and waves, but who went, of his own free will, to the cross, in order to not swerve or run away from the path of deepest love and loyalty – let this humility enter into your blood and bones, into your mind and heart– and create new life and new possibilities in you.
And the Glory of God which is the Humility of God which is the Love of God will sustain you, and will produce good fruit, in this life and in the next.
Exodus 3: 1 - 5; Luke 13: 1 - 9
You know the story of Job? How he was a fabulously wealthy man with seven sons and three daughters and beautiful homes and a prominent place in society and known by all for his righteousness and Godliness – and then, he began losing it all. First his homes burned down, then his children were all killed, his wife died, and last of all, his health was destroyed. Covered in boils and sick unto death, he sat in the ashes of his former life and wept. He didn’t not curse God. He didn’t blame himself. He simply sat and wept, demanding that Godanswer his cry – “Why? Why? Why?”
His friends gathered from far and near, some to gawk, some to comfort– but most all of them, whatever their response, was to find blame. Who was to blame for this tragedy? Their consensus? Job. This was God’s punishment for some terrible wrong that Job had done – Job should search his heart, search his conscience to find what he had done, and confess it. Job did search his heart and conscience, and he could find anything that he had done – certainly nothing that would warrant this kind of tragedy. But he did want an answer. He wanted the God whom he had served his whole life to answer his one burning question – “Why?”
And God eventually did answer. A booming answer – “Where you there when I established the heavens and the deeps? Where you there when I fixed the stars in the sky and the whales in the oceans? Where you there when I brought something out of nothing and set into motion the entire universe?” And Job, deeply humbled, simply worshipped – saying “before I had only heard, but now I know, now I know, that you are God. “
Why am I telling you the story of Job this morning, when none of our readings mention Job? Because it is a true story – and we are still living this story. And the people surrounding Jesus were living that story. “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” The people had asked Jesus. And now they say – “these worshippers who went to the temple, and were arrested and killed by Pilate’s soldiers, right there in the temple, sacrificed like animals, they must have done something terribly wrong – to be punished by God like this. Jesus ups the ante – well, and what about the innocents in Jerusalem who happened to be in the way when the Tower of Siloam fell? They must have been great and terrible sinners also, do you think?
Pat Robertson is famous for the amazing things he says. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, it was because the people of New Orleans were sinners of the first order. When the country was brought to it’s knees in grief over 9/11, people like Pat Robertson said that this was God’s punishment on a country who had embraced feminism and equal rights for everyone. Now it is Haiti’s turn to be punished for selling it’s soul to the devil in return for freedom from French colonists. These are egregious modern examples of the same kind of thinking that Job’s friends had. There are New Age examples as well – you are sick because you are thinking wrong thoughts – which is another way of saying you have sinned and are now being punished.
Jesus cut through all of this with a simple “no. That’s not the way it is.” He didn’t get caught up in the blame game and the finger pointing and any abstract talk about God. Instead he turned to the people he was with and was quite straightforward with them. If the one suffering was present, such as the blind man, he healed him. If the sufferers were not present, as in the gospel today, he attempted to bring the people who were there into the same experience that Job had. In truth, the same experience that Moses had when he turned aside to see the burning bush. It’s an experience of Metanoia – actually being in God’s presence, and the deep humility and tears of worship that follow from real experience.
In the gospel this morning, Jesus tried to impress upon the people around him, the urgency of the truth that when God is passing by –it is time to bow down – now – because it will not always happen. He told the story of the fig tree that had already had Three years, and still God is merciful. But you cannot take this for granted. And you cannot assume entitlement, you cannot assume that you are entitled to grace. That is the ego’s way, but it is not God’s way.
At another time, he put it a different way. He said “Unless you become as a child, you will not see the Kingdom of God”….remember? A child is dependent and knows, deeply knows, that she is not in charge and that there is very little actually, that she can control. Of course, children try – and they often try very hard to be in charge, but that is only to manage their fear and the anxiety of being vulnerable and frail. When the parent is strong and obviously in charge, a child relaxes and feels safe and happy because she knows that she is protected and that someone who can actually manage things is in charge. Of course, we adults know that we can’t always manage things, and that there are so many aspects of life that we are not in charge of. Hence, our need to give our lives over and to trust, what our 12 Step friends call, a Higher Power – whom we know as the Lord - the One who actually is, wholly and completely, trustworthy and adequate. But as long as we are trying to fix blame for things that go wrong, and as long as we are beating our selves up in an attempt to re-establish control, we will miss the actual and real grace of God, the burning bushes that are all around us.
Jesus did not want his listeners to miss it. He doesn’t want you and me to miss it. And so he pointed to the one thing that is urgently needed – the one thing that Job found – the one thing that Moses did – and that is repentance. The “take your shoes off because you are on holy ground” kind of true repentance – Metanoia. This kind of repentance is about getting down from the pedestal of your ego, and planting yourself firmly on the ground – “you are made of dust and to dust you shall return.” It is about embracing Reality and that almost always requires a complete change of heart. A change of mind. A change of orientation, away from trying to beef yourself up to manage what is essentially unmaneagable – Life – and instead, bowing down in worship before God.
In the story of the fig tree, we tend to focus on the figs – whether there is fruit or not. But it’s the manure that’s magic. That wonderous substance that all farmers know about. The people around Jesus were focused on grand theories about God and who God protected and who God punished. But Jesus , completely in the here and now, pointed to manure. How like him! He “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and becoming obedient even unto death on a cross..(Phil. 2: 6-8)
St. Augustine said that manure is a symbol of humility. It is a lowly substance, something we don’t talk about much, but it can bring life into a place of no life. It can work a kind of alchemy, a mysterious transformation from what is basically "manure" into what is basically gold. And isn’t there plenty of room in this world for a lot of that kind of transformation!
If you are suffering, try to leave off blame. “Why did God do this?” “How have I sinned?” It does not help, and it leads you down a path that takes you further and further from Reality. Further and further from any encounter with the God who is the I AM.
If you are not suffering right now, Jesus invites you to join with those who do suffer, whether they are in Haiti or sitting next to you. He invites you into metanoia. To come down off of whatever pedestal your ego has persuaded you to climb, and let the deep humility of Christ – the One who could command wind and waves, but who went, of his own free will, to the cross, in order to not swerve or run away from the path of deepest love and loyalty – let this humility enter into your blood and bones, into your mind and heart– and create new life and new possibilities in you.
And the Glory of God which is the Humility of God which is the Love of God will sustain you, and will produce good fruit, in this life and in the next.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Mark 4: 35 - 41
Asleep in the stern
his breathing slow and steady
his warm breath curling
around my head like a halo -
his arm heavy around me - I lace
my fingers in his.
When they awake us,
shivering fear splashing cold water -
but his heart beat so calm, so strong, is still
at my back - and so I hear the
compassion in his eyes.
"Peace. Be still."
And we are all then, wrapped
around in his breath. His heart.
His power.
And know awe.
his breathing slow and steady
his warm breath curling
around my head like a halo -
his arm heavy around me - I lace
my fingers in his.
When they awake us,
shivering fear splashing cold water -
but his heart beat so calm, so strong, is still
at my back - and so I hear the
compassion in his eyes.
"Peace. Be still."
And we are all then, wrapped
around in his breath. His heart.
His power.
And know awe.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
St. David of Wales
Thanks to the Deacon of Good Shepherd, The Rev. Cynthia Montague, for remembering and blessing the anniversary of my ordination, the Feast Day of St. David of Wales.
Maggie Ross, Anglican Solitary in residence at The Bishop's Ranch, wrote this Collect and Poem for this St. David's Feast Day. It was written for the group that gathers for daily morning prayer at the Bishop's Ranch chapel. Her blog is Voice in the Wilderness.
David of Wales
Lord of Peace, your servant David walked the edge of the world, conscious of its dangers and deceits. May we, like him turn from possessions and preferment to the humble service of your life-giving Word. Grant us thirst for the water of life and hunger for the bread of angels; salt us with the sting and savor of eternal truth, and bring us to the courts of joy, for your Love's sake. Amen.
A Canticle for St David of Wales
Wild was the storm — the day of his birth,
Narrow the strait — a perilous place
the wrack of the world — and the song of the sea.
Simplicity his coracle, — his rudder, humility;
wings of angels — fanned his sails.
"Small acts" — he said
"swing the compass — towards peace."
His purified heart — now sings forever;
eternity's haven — his radiant home.
Maggie Ross, Anglican Solitary in residence at The Bishop's Ranch, wrote this Collect and Poem for this St. David's Feast Day. It was written for the group that gathers for daily morning prayer at the Bishop's Ranch chapel. Her blog is Voice in the Wilderness.
David of Wales
Lord of Peace, your servant David walked the edge of the world, conscious of its dangers and deceits. May we, like him turn from possessions and preferment to the humble service of your life-giving Word. Grant us thirst for the water of life and hunger for the bread of angels; salt us with the sting and savor of eternal truth, and bring us to the courts of joy, for your Love's sake. Amen.
A Canticle for St David of Wales
Wild was the storm — the day of his birth,
Narrow the strait — a perilous place
the wrack of the world — and the song of the sea.
Simplicity his coracle, — his rudder, humility;
wings of angels — fanned his sails.
"Small acts" — he said
"swing the compass — towards peace."
His purified heart — now sings forever;
eternity's haven — his radiant home.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Workouts
Genesis 15: 1 - 18; Psalm 27; Luke 13: 31 - 35
Do you remember a real high in your faith walk? Maybe it was time when you were having a hard time in your life but you felt completely at peace in God? When you trusted that, however things turned out, everything was going to be ok because you knew in your heart that God had things under control?
Do you remember a time when you didn’t feel this way?
I’ve had a lot of difficult times in my life, and sometimes I had inner peace, and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I trusted God and sometimes I didn’t. And that’s the truth about the faith journey. We don’t always have the same high level of trust in our Lord and Savior. There are times of great intimacy and we want them to never end. We want to always feel like our faith is fresh and new and front and center, but these times don’t usually last forever. When we have them, it is because of grace. And likewise, when we feel distant from God, or we wonder if God has forgotten us, or we can’t seem to find any real enjoyment in prayer and church, believe it or not, those are times of grace as well. It’s at those times, that our faith muscles and our hope muscles can be developed and strengthened. It’s a bit like a really good work out. I checked with Dorian, one of our high school football players – and he verified that it’s true: A good workout causes small tears in your muscles, so that when they heal, they are stronger.
So whether you are enjoying the great grace of God’s consoling presence, or whether you are in the desert and do not feel God’s presence – know that, either way, you are journeying towards the heart of God. If you’ve ever walked a labyrinth, you will have had a physical experience of this. In most labyrinths, the path takes you towards the center, and then far from the center, and in the final round, just before you enter the center, the path takes you the furthest away yet, all the way out to the perimeter….and around, and then in to the center. So however close you are, or far away you are, you are, in actuality, not lost, but getting ever closer to the center, the heart of God.
I have not read Mother Teresa’s book, but apparently this was her experience. Much of her life took place in interior spiritual desert, without any felt sense of God’s presence. And yet, look at her life! She lived and served and loved the poor in utter faith and abandonment to God. That is walking the path of faith.
Abram is known as the icon of faith. He was a prosperous man, a wealthy man, an old man - when God asked him to pull up stakes and leave for unknown places. And he did! He gathered up his family and as much of his wealth as he could take - and followed. He and God regularly talked and enjoyed great closeness. “The word of the Lord came to Abram: Do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield and your reward shall be very great….” And yet, he walked mostly in darkness – not knowing where God was taking him, or why.
In the reading this morning, he finally argued: “OK, I’ve followed you. I’ve done everything you asked. But I don’t get it. You promised an heir. And I don’t have an heir, other than my slave. And I’m getting ready to die. So, God, what’s going on?”
And in return, God gave him an astronomy lesson! “Look at the stars….that’s going to be the number of your offspring.” It’s a promise that is so over the top - it’s of such abundance that it is overwhelming.
But Abram had asked to know… and now, instead of keeping him in the dark – God revealed more to him. In the portions of the reading that have been left out, verses 12 – 17, God revealed to Abram what would happen with this offspring, probably far more than Abram wanted to know. It was knowledge that would leave him wounded for the rest of his life….
“12As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. 13Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation;”
Be careful what you ask for! As a German child, Corrie ten Boom’s parents took in Jews and hid them during the holocaust. They were eventually arrested and sent to Buchenwald. Out of her entire family, only Corrie came out alive. When they were boarding the train that would take them to Buchenwald, Corrie asked her father why God would allow something like this to happen. They were good people and had done only good on God’s behalf. Corrie wrote later that her father set down the very heavy suitcase that he was carrying, and told her to pick it up. Corrie, being a young girl, could not lift it. That, her father said, is like the knowledge that God has and that we do not. There are things that are simply too heavy, too much for us to bear, and so God carries them. Our job is simply is to continue walking alongside of him and trust.
Sometimes God lets us in on the big picture – as he did Abram – and sometimes he doesn’t - as in most of the time. And like Corrie’s wise father told her, and as the Psalmist verifies, and as countless people of faith throughout the centuries have tested out, our job is to wait patiently and trust.
Of course, that does not rule out some complaining and arguing! When you are close to someone, do you always just take their word for it? Of course not. You ask, as Abram did. You plead, as the psalmist does. “Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call, have mercy on me and answer me. You speak in my heart and say, seek my face. Your face, Lord will I seek. Just don’t hide your face from me!.”
The truth is, we all set out on this journey of faith with the greatest of intentions – to know Christ, to make more room for God, to be an excellent parent, to love more deeply and less conditionally - but as we travel along, those intentions can get bruised and forgotten under the pressures of life. That happened with the Psalmist - in the beginning, he had passionate confidence in the Lord, great intention to trust no matter what, and then, in the space of one verse, it is obvious that he ran into trouble. That he lost his way, and couldn't really find God and had trouble with his original intention to "just trust." What did he do? Well, what he didn't do, is despair. He turned and asked for help. “Show me your way, O Lord. Deliver me.” He acted his way - he talked his way – he prayed his way - into faith and trust. Only this time without the bravado and gung ho confidence that he had had at first. By the end of the psalm, he spoke with greater simplicity and greater wisdom. “O tarry and wait the Lord’s pleasure. Be strong, and he shall comfort your heart. Wait patiently for the Lord.”
This morning, if you are in a place in your journey where it is easy for you to trust and you feel God’s presence close by – say "thank you, thank you, thank you." But, if, this morning, you are in a place in your journey, where it is not so easy to trust, where you are more like Abram and questioning, and like the psalmist and pleading, “where is your face, O God?”…. Say "thank you" and add, "Help me!" As your faith muscles and your hope muscles are being torn, these same muscles are also being made stronger. And believe me, the best course, the safest course to follow when this is happening, is to trust, and wait patiently even - especially at the times when it is hardest to do – and God will comfort you and God will bring you into the land of the living.
Do you remember a real high in your faith walk? Maybe it was time when you were having a hard time in your life but you felt completely at peace in God? When you trusted that, however things turned out, everything was going to be ok because you knew in your heart that God had things under control?
Do you remember a time when you didn’t feel this way?
I’ve had a lot of difficult times in my life, and sometimes I had inner peace, and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I trusted God and sometimes I didn’t. And that’s the truth about the faith journey. We don’t always have the same high level of trust in our Lord and Savior. There are times of great intimacy and we want them to never end. We want to always feel like our faith is fresh and new and front and center, but these times don’t usually last forever. When we have them, it is because of grace. And likewise, when we feel distant from God, or we wonder if God has forgotten us, or we can’t seem to find any real enjoyment in prayer and church, believe it or not, those are times of grace as well. It’s at those times, that our faith muscles and our hope muscles can be developed and strengthened. It’s a bit like a really good work out. I checked with Dorian, one of our high school football players – and he verified that it’s true: A good workout causes small tears in your muscles, so that when they heal, they are stronger.
So whether you are enjoying the great grace of God’s consoling presence, or whether you are in the desert and do not feel God’s presence – know that, either way, you are journeying towards the heart of God. If you’ve ever walked a labyrinth, you will have had a physical experience of this. In most labyrinths, the path takes you towards the center, and then far from the center, and in the final round, just before you enter the center, the path takes you the furthest away yet, all the way out to the perimeter….and around, and then in to the center. So however close you are, or far away you are, you are, in actuality, not lost, but getting ever closer to the center, the heart of God.
I have not read Mother Teresa’s book, but apparently this was her experience. Much of her life took place in interior spiritual desert, without any felt sense of God’s presence. And yet, look at her life! She lived and served and loved the poor in utter faith and abandonment to God. That is walking the path of faith.
Abram is known as the icon of faith. He was a prosperous man, a wealthy man, an old man - when God asked him to pull up stakes and leave for unknown places. And he did! He gathered up his family and as much of his wealth as he could take - and followed. He and God regularly talked and enjoyed great closeness. “The word of the Lord came to Abram: Do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield and your reward shall be very great….” And yet, he walked mostly in darkness – not knowing where God was taking him, or why.
In the reading this morning, he finally argued: “OK, I’ve followed you. I’ve done everything you asked. But I don’t get it. You promised an heir. And I don’t have an heir, other than my slave. And I’m getting ready to die. So, God, what’s going on?”
And in return, God gave him an astronomy lesson! “Look at the stars….that’s going to be the number of your offspring.” It’s a promise that is so over the top - it’s of such abundance that it is overwhelming.
But Abram had asked to know… and now, instead of keeping him in the dark – God revealed more to him. In the portions of the reading that have been left out, verses 12 – 17, God revealed to Abram what would happen with this offspring, probably far more than Abram wanted to know. It was knowledge that would leave him wounded for the rest of his life….
“12As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. 13Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation;”
Be careful what you ask for! As a German child, Corrie ten Boom’s parents took in Jews and hid them during the holocaust. They were eventually arrested and sent to Buchenwald. Out of her entire family, only Corrie came out alive. When they were boarding the train that would take them to Buchenwald, Corrie asked her father why God would allow something like this to happen. They were good people and had done only good on God’s behalf. Corrie wrote later that her father set down the very heavy suitcase that he was carrying, and told her to pick it up. Corrie, being a young girl, could not lift it. That, her father said, is like the knowledge that God has and that we do not. There are things that are simply too heavy, too much for us to bear, and so God carries them. Our job is simply is to continue walking alongside of him and trust.
Sometimes God lets us in on the big picture – as he did Abram – and sometimes he doesn’t - as in most of the time. And like Corrie’s wise father told her, and as the Psalmist verifies, and as countless people of faith throughout the centuries have tested out, our job is to wait patiently and trust.
Of course, that does not rule out some complaining and arguing! When you are close to someone, do you always just take their word for it? Of course not. You ask, as Abram did. You plead, as the psalmist does. “Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call, have mercy on me and answer me. You speak in my heart and say, seek my face. Your face, Lord will I seek. Just don’t hide your face from me!.”
The truth is, we all set out on this journey of faith with the greatest of intentions – to know Christ, to make more room for God, to be an excellent parent, to love more deeply and less conditionally - but as we travel along, those intentions can get bruised and forgotten under the pressures of life. That happened with the Psalmist - in the beginning, he had passionate confidence in the Lord, great intention to trust no matter what, and then, in the space of one verse, it is obvious that he ran into trouble. That he lost his way, and couldn't really find God and had trouble with his original intention to "just trust." What did he do? Well, what he didn't do, is despair. He turned and asked for help. “Show me your way, O Lord. Deliver me.” He acted his way - he talked his way – he prayed his way - into faith and trust. Only this time without the bravado and gung ho confidence that he had had at first. By the end of the psalm, he spoke with greater simplicity and greater wisdom. “O tarry and wait the Lord’s pleasure. Be strong, and he shall comfort your heart. Wait patiently for the Lord.”
This morning, if you are in a place in your journey where it is easy for you to trust and you feel God’s presence close by – say "thank you, thank you, thank you." But, if, this morning, you are in a place in your journey, where it is not so easy to trust, where you are more like Abram and questioning, and like the psalmist and pleading, “where is your face, O God?”…. Say "thank you" and add, "Help me!" As your faith muscles and your hope muscles are being torn, these same muscles are also being made stronger. And believe me, the best course, the safest course to follow when this is happening, is to trust, and wait patiently even - especially at the times when it is hardest to do – and God will comfort you and God will bring you into the land of the living.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Before you were born, I knew you
“Before you were born, I knew you.” Jeremiah spoke truly. Let these words settle into you because they are trustworthy.
Before you were born, God knew you. You were held in God and then God spoke you into being. But you did not depart from God; just as the words I am speaking now go into your heart, but that does not make them ever leave my heart.
And now that God spoke you into this existence, you are here, in these body clothes, with your own particular personality and you’re your own particular experiences, and your own particular questions and responsibilities and needs and wants – and it is as true as ever before. Now that you are born, God knows you – intimately – just as surely as God knew you before you were born. And when you die, when God breathes into you for the last time and then withdraws his breath for the last time, you will return into God’s knowing and you will wake up fully and completely known and loved. Loved as you have been from before, loved as you are now, and loved, as you will be when your stay here is over.
You are never separated or apart from God. And the truly blessed and merciful thing is, you don’t have to wait to die to know this! To know God’s embrace. To know God’s gifting you and commissioning you and sending you out to translate God’s love into your own friendships and family and responsibilities and pleasures.
This was Jeremiah’s experience. This was Paul’s experience as well. though he came to it differently. Because before Paul ever knew God’s grace, he knew God through the commandments, through the law, and he thought he was commissioned and sent by God. He thought God wanted him to keep the faithful safe from harmful influences. And in Paul’s case, the harmful influences were the Christians – who, for Paul, were heretics. He presided over their being driven out of the synagogues and in some cases stoned and killed.
Convinced in his heart that this was God’s will and way, he was literally knocked off his horse, blinded by light, and deeply questioned by the God whom he thought he served. His sincerity saved him. His sincere desire to love and serve God enabled him to immediately recognize God’s touch. It was a touch that permanently altered his consciousness and changed his life.
So instead of persecuting the heretics, he became one! The earliest Christian writings we have are Paul’s letters to the churches that he himself founded. Chapter 13 of the 1st letter to the church at Corinth is probably the best known of all of Paul’s letters. Some sorority chapters read it at every meeting. It is read at almost every wedding. It is beloved by Christians and non-Christians. Why? Because it springs from the same fountain as the opening to the chapter read this morning from Jeremiah. “Before you were born, I knew you. I formed you in your mother’s womb. You are mine. “ And you are beloved. This is your birthright. It is your inheritance. It is your wealth. And it is pure sweet gift. It is Love Mercy that sustains you at every moment, whether you are currently blind to God’s grace or whether you have begun to see through the glass though still darkly.
Paul invites you to put on Love’s clothing – so that you will be more easily recognized for who you really are. – a beloved child of God, and a friend of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul tells us to put on the clothes of patience and kindness. He encourages us to wear the warmth of endurance and hope and rejoicing in God’s truth.
Just before this, In the 12th chapter of this letter, he named a whole variety of spiritual gifts – gifts that are given by God to build up the whole body – and now he says – as wonderful as these gifts are – gifts of preaching and teaching and healing and administration – as wonderful and good as these gifts are, they are nothing, they are worthless, without Love. Without the continual awareness and thanksgiving that they arise from God and are given solely for the purpose of letting more Love loose in the world.
We are called, commissioned and sent out, each and every one of us, to serve the world God loves so dearly, and to do so undergirded in every moment by Love. We rely on Love. We trust Love. We hope in Love. And Paul insists that this is not something we do. It is something we receive and that flows through us.
I don’t know about any of the working of this congregation at Corinth – except what is contained in Paul’s two letters to them. But from that little bit, it is striking to me how similar they seem to have been to us in our own day and age. They were proud people. They were, for the most part, educated people. They followed Christ, but they retained the cultural norms of their time. When they gathered for the Eucharist, they copied the patterns of every Greek dinner – the wealthy ate in the dining room, with copious amounts of food and wine, and the poor stood waiting in the outer rooms, eating little or nothing at all. They boasted of their spiritual insights and wisdom – and Paul writes to them with some testiness. This isn’t it – he says. You are a new community. You are a community gathered now in Christ – and at the root and heart of your being – your own individual being, but not just that – at the root and heart of your being as church – is this sweet mercy of unending, unearned, sustaining Love that knows you fully.
Once you have grounded yourself in that, all the other decisions about your communal life, and your individual lives will sort itself out. You won’t always agree, Paul says, but in kindness and patience, and by giving up what we would call “black and white thinking” you can make room for difference, and you can discover the enormous energy of the Holy Spirit guiding you into greater and greater faith, and hope and love.
Called, commissioned and sent out – Jeremiah experienced this. Paul and the church in Corinth experienced this. Jesus experienced this. After his baptism, Jesus fasted. He prayed and he lived in solitude for a good length of time. He let himself be fully and completely pulled into God’s orbit. It took time to incorporate this profound awareness that he was God’s heart walking around in human form.
Then, filled with the power of the Spirit, he followed God out of the desert and into the lives of ordinary men and women. He followed God right back to his home town. What harder and more difficult place could there be to claim the fullness of who you really are. To come out of the closet – because of course, each in our own way – we have to do this. Thanks to our gay brothers and sisters for the terminology – but they do not own this experience. It is true of each of us as we shed more and more of our accumulated defenses and coping mechanisms and let the God self within become the self that our partners and our children and our colleagues and our community can see and taste and touch and know. Not easy sometimes. But Jesus led the way close to the beginning of his public life.
And truth be told, he didn’t get a really great reception. Still, he was spoke truth as deeply as he knew how – and entirely in Love. He wasn’t touting himself – though by that point, it was impossible to separate himself from the God who formed, called, commissioned and sent him. Impossible to say where the Word ended and he began. Impossible to untangle the Divine and the Human. And so, Jesus sat in the synagogue among his brothers and sisters, his aunts and uncles, his fellows, and spoke the truth in love.
And eventually, some of those who wanted to throw him off a cliff that day, became followers and fellows and friends in this with God life that he imparted and for which he died and to which he was raised. Praise be to the one God almighty and merciful and everlasting.
“Before you were formed,” God says, “I knew you. I formed you in your mother’s womb. You are mine. And do not say – you are only…..Alice. You are only….a pianist. You are only….an attorney. You are only…..Joe. You are only…..a boy. Do not say this. Because I touch you. I gift you. I commission you. I send you. I uphold you. And I am with you now and forever more.” Amen.
Before you were born, God knew you. You were held in God and then God spoke you into being. But you did not depart from God; just as the words I am speaking now go into your heart, but that does not make them ever leave my heart.
And now that God spoke you into this existence, you are here, in these body clothes, with your own particular personality and you’re your own particular experiences, and your own particular questions and responsibilities and needs and wants – and it is as true as ever before. Now that you are born, God knows you – intimately – just as surely as God knew you before you were born. And when you die, when God breathes into you for the last time and then withdraws his breath for the last time, you will return into God’s knowing and you will wake up fully and completely known and loved. Loved as you have been from before, loved as you are now, and loved, as you will be when your stay here is over.
You are never separated or apart from God. And the truly blessed and merciful thing is, you don’t have to wait to die to know this! To know God’s embrace. To know God’s gifting you and commissioning you and sending you out to translate God’s love into your own friendships and family and responsibilities and pleasures.
This was Jeremiah’s experience. This was Paul’s experience as well. though he came to it differently. Because before Paul ever knew God’s grace, he knew God through the commandments, through the law, and he thought he was commissioned and sent by God. He thought God wanted him to keep the faithful safe from harmful influences. And in Paul’s case, the harmful influences were the Christians – who, for Paul, were heretics. He presided over their being driven out of the synagogues and in some cases stoned and killed.
Convinced in his heart that this was God’s will and way, he was literally knocked off his horse, blinded by light, and deeply questioned by the God whom he thought he served. His sincerity saved him. His sincere desire to love and serve God enabled him to immediately recognize God’s touch. It was a touch that permanently altered his consciousness and changed his life.
So instead of persecuting the heretics, he became one! The earliest Christian writings we have are Paul’s letters to the churches that he himself founded. Chapter 13 of the 1st letter to the church at Corinth is probably the best known of all of Paul’s letters. Some sorority chapters read it at every meeting. It is read at almost every wedding. It is beloved by Christians and non-Christians. Why? Because it springs from the same fountain as the opening to the chapter read this morning from Jeremiah. “Before you were born, I knew you. I formed you in your mother’s womb. You are mine. “ And you are beloved. This is your birthright. It is your inheritance. It is your wealth. And it is pure sweet gift. It is Love Mercy that sustains you at every moment, whether you are currently blind to God’s grace or whether you have begun to see through the glass though still darkly.
Paul invites you to put on Love’s clothing – so that you will be more easily recognized for who you really are. – a beloved child of God, and a friend of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul tells us to put on the clothes of patience and kindness. He encourages us to wear the warmth of endurance and hope and rejoicing in God’s truth.
Just before this, In the 12th chapter of this letter, he named a whole variety of spiritual gifts – gifts that are given by God to build up the whole body – and now he says – as wonderful as these gifts are – gifts of preaching and teaching and healing and administration – as wonderful and good as these gifts are, they are nothing, they are worthless, without Love. Without the continual awareness and thanksgiving that they arise from God and are given solely for the purpose of letting more Love loose in the world.
We are called, commissioned and sent out, each and every one of us, to serve the world God loves so dearly, and to do so undergirded in every moment by Love. We rely on Love. We trust Love. We hope in Love. And Paul insists that this is not something we do. It is something we receive and that flows through us.
I don’t know about any of the working of this congregation at Corinth – except what is contained in Paul’s two letters to them. But from that little bit, it is striking to me how similar they seem to have been to us in our own day and age. They were proud people. They were, for the most part, educated people. They followed Christ, but they retained the cultural norms of their time. When they gathered for the Eucharist, they copied the patterns of every Greek dinner – the wealthy ate in the dining room, with copious amounts of food and wine, and the poor stood waiting in the outer rooms, eating little or nothing at all. They boasted of their spiritual insights and wisdom – and Paul writes to them with some testiness. This isn’t it – he says. You are a new community. You are a community gathered now in Christ – and at the root and heart of your being – your own individual being, but not just that – at the root and heart of your being as church – is this sweet mercy of unending, unearned, sustaining Love that knows you fully.
Once you have grounded yourself in that, all the other decisions about your communal life, and your individual lives will sort itself out. You won’t always agree, Paul says, but in kindness and patience, and by giving up what we would call “black and white thinking” you can make room for difference, and you can discover the enormous energy of the Holy Spirit guiding you into greater and greater faith, and hope and love.
Called, commissioned and sent out – Jeremiah experienced this. Paul and the church in Corinth experienced this. Jesus experienced this. After his baptism, Jesus fasted. He prayed and he lived in solitude for a good length of time. He let himself be fully and completely pulled into God’s orbit. It took time to incorporate this profound awareness that he was God’s heart walking around in human form.
Then, filled with the power of the Spirit, he followed God out of the desert and into the lives of ordinary men and women. He followed God right back to his home town. What harder and more difficult place could there be to claim the fullness of who you really are. To come out of the closet – because of course, each in our own way – we have to do this. Thanks to our gay brothers and sisters for the terminology – but they do not own this experience. It is true of each of us as we shed more and more of our accumulated defenses and coping mechanisms and let the God self within become the self that our partners and our children and our colleagues and our community can see and taste and touch and know. Not easy sometimes. But Jesus led the way close to the beginning of his public life.
And truth be told, he didn’t get a really great reception. Still, he was spoke truth as deeply as he knew how – and entirely in Love. He wasn’t touting himself – though by that point, it was impossible to separate himself from the God who formed, called, commissioned and sent him. Impossible to say where the Word ended and he began. Impossible to untangle the Divine and the Human. And so, Jesus sat in the synagogue among his brothers and sisters, his aunts and uncles, his fellows, and spoke the truth in love.
And eventually, some of those who wanted to throw him off a cliff that day, became followers and fellows and friends in this with God life that he imparted and for which he died and to which he was raised. Praise be to the one God almighty and merciful and everlasting.
“Before you were formed,” God says, “I knew you. I formed you in your mother’s womb. You are mine. And do not say – you are only…..Alice. You are only….a pianist. You are only….an attorney. You are only…..Joe. You are only…..a boy. Do not say this. Because I touch you. I gift you. I commission you. I send you. I uphold you. And I am with you now and forever more.” Amen.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Journeys Near and Far
Many Thanks on behalf of Episcopal Relief and Development for Haiti. Between the Bake Sale, the Sunday Offering, and Discretionary Funds, the parish sent $1,800 this past week. Many parishioners have also donated directly to ERD. The need is growing and I invite you to continue in generosity.
Epiphany began with the Magi journeying across long distances, seeking the Wisdom Child Jesus. This week, your spiritual leaders are also journeying in search of wisdom, new ideas, and refreshment.
Desi Brown, Youth Leader is at the National Episcopal Christian Educators Conference in Menlo Park. Free from household and work responsibilities for three days, please pray that this learning retreat is a time of deep refreshment, networking and learning for her.
Deacon Cynthia Montague is at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco learning about music that makes community. The parish will benefit from this, as will the residents of the Monterey County Jail, where she spends her weekdays in ministry.
And I am attending a five day retreat called Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate, at the Center for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The focus is on critical phases of our journeys of spiritual awakening.
Other journeys are happening closer to home! Seventeen people gathered last Sunday at 9 AM in the Parish Hall to practice Qi Gong under the capable and wonderful leadership of Dr. Michael Luder, Brooke Fiske and Antonia Fiske. You are welcome to try this out and see how it enhances your Sunday morning worship.
And Yvonne Crane and her artist friend Kat Ogletree are busy planning for the Women’s Retreat to be held in March at Mission San Antonio. The Men’s Retreat will be held the following month, led by Deacon Don Fusilier.
Jesus regularly took time away to contemplate, pray and re-group. Please pray for your leaders as they do likewise!
Epiphany began with the Magi journeying across long distances, seeking the Wisdom Child Jesus. This week, your spiritual leaders are also journeying in search of wisdom, new ideas, and refreshment.
Desi Brown, Youth Leader is at the National Episcopal Christian Educators Conference in Menlo Park. Free from household and work responsibilities for three days, please pray that this learning retreat is a time of deep refreshment, networking and learning for her.
Deacon Cynthia Montague is at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco learning about music that makes community. The parish will benefit from this, as will the residents of the Monterey County Jail, where she spends her weekdays in ministry.
And I am attending a five day retreat called Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate, at the Center for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The focus is on critical phases of our journeys of spiritual awakening.
Other journeys are happening closer to home! Seventeen people gathered last Sunday at 9 AM in the Parish Hall to practice Qi Gong under the capable and wonderful leadership of Dr. Michael Luder, Brooke Fiske and Antonia Fiske. You are welcome to try this out and see how it enhances your Sunday morning worship.
And Yvonne Crane and her artist friend Kat Ogletree are busy planning for the Women’s Retreat to be held in March at Mission San Antonio. The Men’s Retreat will be held the following month, led by Deacon Don Fusilier.
Jesus regularly took time away to contemplate, pray and re-group. Please pray for your leaders as they do likewise!
Journeys Near and Far
Many Thanks on behalf of Episcopal Relief and Development for Haiti. Between the Bake Sale, the Sunday Offering, and Discretionary Funds, the parish sent $1,800 this past week. Many parishioners have also donated directly to ERD. The need is growing and I invite you to continue in generosity.
Epiphany began with the Magi journeying across long distances, seeking the Wisdom Child Jesus. This week, your spiritual leaders are also journeying in search of wisdom, new ideas, and refreshment.
Desi Brown, Youth Leader is at the National Episcopal Christian Educators Conference in Menlo Park. Free from household and work responsibilities for three days, please pray that this learning retreat is a time of deep refreshment, networking and learning for her.
Deacon Cynthia Montague is at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco learning about music that makes community. The parish will benefit from this, as will the residents of the Monterey County Jail, where she spends her weekdays in ministry.
And I am attending a five day retreat called Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate, at the Center for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The focus is on critical phases of our journeys of spiritual awakening.
Other journeys are happening closer to home! Seventeen people gathered last Sunday at 9 AM in the Parish Hall to practice Qi Gong under the capable and wonderful leadership of Dr. Michael Luder, Brooke Fiske and Antonia Fiske. You are welcome to try this out and see how it enhances your Sunday morning worship.
And Yvonne Crane and her artist friend Kat Ogletree are busy planning for the Women’s Retreat to be held in March at Mission San Antonio. The Men’s Retreat will be held the following month, led by Deacon Don Fusilier.
Jesus regularly took time away to contemplate, pray and re-group. Please pray for your leaders as they do likewise!
Epiphany began with the Magi journeying across long distances, seeking the Wisdom Child Jesus. This week, your spiritual leaders are also journeying in search of wisdom, new ideas, and refreshment.
Desi Brown, Youth Leader is at the National Episcopal Christian Educators Conference in Menlo Park. Free from household and work responsibilities for three days, please pray that this learning retreat is a time of deep refreshment, networking and learning for her.
Deacon Cynthia Montague is at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco learning about music that makes community. The parish will benefit from this, as will the residents of the Monterey County Jail, where she spends her weekdays in ministry.
And I am attending a five day retreat called Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate, at the Center for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The focus is on critical phases of our journeys of spiritual awakening.
Other journeys are happening closer to home! Seventeen people gathered last Sunday at 9 AM in the Parish Hall to practice Qi Gong under the capable and wonderful leadership of Dr. Michael Luder, Brooke Fiske and Antonia Fiske. You are welcome to try this out and see how it enhances your Sunday morning worship.
And Yvonne Crane and her artist friend Kat Ogletree are busy planning for the Women’s Retreat to be held in March at Mission San Antonio. The Men’s Retreat will be held the following month, led by Deacon Don Fusilier.
Jesus regularly took time away to contemplate, pray and re-group. Please pray for your leaders as they do likewise!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Our DNA
Our hearts and minds are overflowing with sorrow over the unspeakable calamity for the Haitian people. The earthquake this past week – este terramoto – brought down buildings –cathedrals, the Episcopal bishop’s home, and thousands upon thousands of apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, homes. People in Port Au Prince report that the smell of death permeates their hair, their clothing, their nostrils – and that no amount of washing takes it away. Water, even just water for drinking, is in terribly terribly short supply. You know all of this. You’ve seen it on the news. You’re read it on the internet.
And it affects the way we hear the readings this morning. What on another morning, we would hear as a gospel reading of joy and festivity – the celebration of a wedding – sounds different this morning – as we mourn for the lost, the dead, and the dying in the streets of Haiti. This morning, when I hear the gospel, I don’t think of celebration, I think of contrast. The contrast of happiness with sadness. The contrast of celebration with mourning. And, in the context of this week’s news, I hear the question of timing.
“It is not yet my time”, Jesus said. And because of the reports streaming in of the difficulty in getting aid into the single airport, and then from the airport to the people in need – we know that timing is everything. Anguish grows as time passes. Rescue becomes less and less a possibility, until it becomes not possible. Chaos erupts as time passes.
“It is not yet my hour,” Jesus told his mother. Jesus was right of course – it wasn’t his hour. Because "His hour" is an allusion that points towards the cross, the resurrection and the ascension. But Mary, confident as the Mother, and confident in the power and compassion of her Son, told the servants, Do as he tells you. And she was right also. It was the time, because there was need. And so, she, as Mother, pointed out the need – and the rightness of responding now, in the present, whether it accorded with God’s timing or not.
The miracle of the gospel reading is not about alcohol. There were prodigious amounts of it for sure, but the real miracle is about a deeply gracious and enormously abundant response to need. The wedding and the party were synonymous. The new couple would have no social standing, no future, without being able to provide hospitality for their friends and neighbors. This wasn’t a crisis of a party run dry, it was a crisis of connection and community. Mary realized this and turned to the person who could do something about it. Jesus heard her request, understood the need, and did something about it.
I love that Jesus’ first miracle – one of his most famous – is done so quietly, so anonymously – only the servants knew about it – and it was done in a relatively private setting. So many miracles are like this aren’t they. People responding to need in ways that don’t ever hit the headlines, that aren’t ever recorded – but just done, quietly, simply and effectively. I am privileged to be privy to more and more stories about how this happens all the time among the lives of the saints gathered here this morning. People quietly, without fanfare, going about the business of hearing about a need and figuring out the best response to it. Sometimes that means bringing in the whole community. Sometimes it means only a few knowing about it. But however it happens, the Body of Christ is built for action. It’s a built in characteristic of the Body of Christ that need among believers or need in the world that God loves so dearly triggers a response by the Christian community. I heard one of these stories yesterday from a parent.
One of our young parishioners told her friend at school that he needed to sit down and listen to her because she needed to tell him something very serious – she said that there were buildings that fell down and people who were dying. Then she said, but my church is going to bake cookies and sell them and we are going to send the money to help those people. You should come to church and buy those cookies. She told her teacher too that she should come to church. When the teacher replied that she didn’t go to church, our young Christian told her that that was ok – but that this Sunday she should come to church and buy cookies so that the people who needed help could get help.
We respond because we are fashioned and formed by a God who responds. It was need that brought God down out of the heavens and into earthly existence in the person of Jesus Christ. God’s splangthna – bowels – were moved in compassion by our plight and he became human and dwelt among us.
It is need that brings God to bend down to earth. Need that moves God to compassion - to entering into this earthly life of earthquakes and buildings falling down and poverty beyond understanding. It is need that moves the Body of Christ, however broken we are, however disjointed and dysfunctional the church, the dear Body of Christ may be – need brings forth response.
But let’s be honest. Some of us – not all of us – but some of us – wonder about this compassionate God – wonder what kind of God would allow the enormity of this kind of suffering. The poorest people in the Western Hemisphere – already buried under crushing poverty, and debt, now buried under cement blocks and slabs. We see the bodies bulldozed into mass graves, and some of us, like Job, raise our voices – Where are you God? Where is your compassion? It is deeply disquieting to our spirits to see these images, to hear these voices calling for help that has not gotten there in time.
Job’s friends gathered around him with their answers – their platitudes, their proverbs, their ready answers. But God did not. When God came to Job in the whirlwind, he did not provide an answer. Instead, he provided himself. God entered into relationship with Job. He took Job and his questions and laments seriously. And when Job came to know God, not only through his mind, but intimately, in his gut, in his bones – in Real Presence, he responded in the only way that he could - with worship. By bowing down in worship. By letting the energy of that relationship move through him and bring him to life again. Bring him back to life again.
Like Job, we are not apt to get an intellectually satisfying answer to our questions about justice and suffering and why or how God could or would allow things like this Haiti earthquake to happen. But when we feel deeply, when we don’t distance ourselves from our suffering brothers and sisters, when we respond in the only ways that are really open to us – through prayer and by sending money – we are likely to find ourselves shoulder to shoulder with God, in relationship. We are likely to find the energy of relationship with the Divine moving through us, breathing life into tragedy.
At heart, this is what the Incarnation is about. It is what the Right Time is about - God entering fully and our receiving him fully into the bricks and mortar of our lives. The Right Time – the Time of the Incarnation is the Time of God entering into and our receiving him into the calamity of crumbling cement and the reality of our human and very broken systems of government and aid and hands held out with whatever small cups of water we’ve managed to find and offer.
The Right Time of the Incarnation is the Now time of small brilliant miracles of hope and connection and comfort and mercy.
So – this is a place, the community of this church is a place – where we can be honest. Honest with our questions about God. Honest about our needs and the needs of the world.
And it is a place that gets that the DNA of who we are as the Body of Christ - is a Body that responds to need, in real Time.
And it affects the way we hear the readings this morning. What on another morning, we would hear as a gospel reading of joy and festivity – the celebration of a wedding – sounds different this morning – as we mourn for the lost, the dead, and the dying in the streets of Haiti. This morning, when I hear the gospel, I don’t think of celebration, I think of contrast. The contrast of happiness with sadness. The contrast of celebration with mourning. And, in the context of this week’s news, I hear the question of timing.
“It is not yet my time”, Jesus said. And because of the reports streaming in of the difficulty in getting aid into the single airport, and then from the airport to the people in need – we know that timing is everything. Anguish grows as time passes. Rescue becomes less and less a possibility, until it becomes not possible. Chaos erupts as time passes.
“It is not yet my hour,” Jesus told his mother. Jesus was right of course – it wasn’t his hour. Because "His hour" is an allusion that points towards the cross, the resurrection and the ascension. But Mary, confident as the Mother, and confident in the power and compassion of her Son, told the servants, Do as he tells you. And she was right also. It was the time, because there was need. And so, she, as Mother, pointed out the need – and the rightness of responding now, in the present, whether it accorded with God’s timing or not.
The miracle of the gospel reading is not about alcohol. There were prodigious amounts of it for sure, but the real miracle is about a deeply gracious and enormously abundant response to need. The wedding and the party were synonymous. The new couple would have no social standing, no future, without being able to provide hospitality for their friends and neighbors. This wasn’t a crisis of a party run dry, it was a crisis of connection and community. Mary realized this and turned to the person who could do something about it. Jesus heard her request, understood the need, and did something about it.
I love that Jesus’ first miracle – one of his most famous – is done so quietly, so anonymously – only the servants knew about it – and it was done in a relatively private setting. So many miracles are like this aren’t they. People responding to need in ways that don’t ever hit the headlines, that aren’t ever recorded – but just done, quietly, simply and effectively. I am privileged to be privy to more and more stories about how this happens all the time among the lives of the saints gathered here this morning. People quietly, without fanfare, going about the business of hearing about a need and figuring out the best response to it. Sometimes that means bringing in the whole community. Sometimes it means only a few knowing about it. But however it happens, the Body of Christ is built for action. It’s a built in characteristic of the Body of Christ that need among believers or need in the world that God loves so dearly triggers a response by the Christian community. I heard one of these stories yesterday from a parent.
One of our young parishioners told her friend at school that he needed to sit down and listen to her because she needed to tell him something very serious – she said that there were buildings that fell down and people who were dying. Then she said, but my church is going to bake cookies and sell them and we are going to send the money to help those people. You should come to church and buy those cookies. She told her teacher too that she should come to church. When the teacher replied that she didn’t go to church, our young Christian told her that that was ok – but that this Sunday she should come to church and buy cookies so that the people who needed help could get help.
We respond because we are fashioned and formed by a God who responds. It was need that brought God down out of the heavens and into earthly existence in the person of Jesus Christ. God’s splangthna – bowels – were moved in compassion by our plight and he became human and dwelt among us.
It is need that brings God to bend down to earth. Need that moves God to compassion - to entering into this earthly life of earthquakes and buildings falling down and poverty beyond understanding. It is need that moves the Body of Christ, however broken we are, however disjointed and dysfunctional the church, the dear Body of Christ may be – need brings forth response.
But let’s be honest. Some of us – not all of us – but some of us – wonder about this compassionate God – wonder what kind of God would allow the enormity of this kind of suffering. The poorest people in the Western Hemisphere – already buried under crushing poverty, and debt, now buried under cement blocks and slabs. We see the bodies bulldozed into mass graves, and some of us, like Job, raise our voices – Where are you God? Where is your compassion? It is deeply disquieting to our spirits to see these images, to hear these voices calling for help that has not gotten there in time.
Job’s friends gathered around him with their answers – their platitudes, their proverbs, their ready answers. But God did not. When God came to Job in the whirlwind, he did not provide an answer. Instead, he provided himself. God entered into relationship with Job. He took Job and his questions and laments seriously. And when Job came to know God, not only through his mind, but intimately, in his gut, in his bones – in Real Presence, he responded in the only way that he could - with worship. By bowing down in worship. By letting the energy of that relationship move through him and bring him to life again. Bring him back to life again.
Like Job, we are not apt to get an intellectually satisfying answer to our questions about justice and suffering and why or how God could or would allow things like this Haiti earthquake to happen. But when we feel deeply, when we don’t distance ourselves from our suffering brothers and sisters, when we respond in the only ways that are really open to us – through prayer and by sending money – we are likely to find ourselves shoulder to shoulder with God, in relationship. We are likely to find the energy of relationship with the Divine moving through us, breathing life into tragedy.
At heart, this is what the Incarnation is about. It is what the Right Time is about - God entering fully and our receiving him fully into the bricks and mortar of our lives. The Right Time – the Time of the Incarnation is the Time of God entering into and our receiving him into the calamity of crumbling cement and the reality of our human and very broken systems of government and aid and hands held out with whatever small cups of water we’ve managed to find and offer.
The Right Time of the Incarnation is the Now time of small brilliant miracles of hope and connection and comfort and mercy.
So – this is a place, the community of this church is a place – where we can be honest. Honest with our questions about God. Honest about our needs and the needs of the world.
And it is a place that gets that the DNA of who we are as the Body of Christ - is a Body that responds to need, in real Time.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Mary's God
The Rev. Linda Campbell
Advent IV, Year C, 2009
Have you noticed the children before church, after church, come into the side chapel and light a candle? Maybe you have lit a candle and offered up your concerns and loved ones to God. For those of you fortunate to have been raised with a theology of the Mother of God – perhaps you sneak in a prayer said through the intercessions of His Mother, Mary.
Mary’s God is a comforting God, one who is available to us as Parent and Savior, Mother to all the peoples and creatures of the world. Mary’s God’s embraces without measure and without condition. Mary’s God drips with milk that nurtures us and helps us to grow healthy and strong in faith. This God longs for us to suckle and cuddle and lay our heads down, in rest and utter contentment. And at some level, don’t we all long to do just that? To truly become a child of God.
I know that when I get knotted up with worries and fears and what if’s and if only’s and how come’s, the knots melt away when I light a candle, say a prayer, and crawl up into God’s wide, warm lap. And after awhile, I’m ready to be a grown up again – a grown up that doesn’t take myself or anyone else too seriously. A grown up that knows it is good to also be a child of Mary’s God.
The church I first served was a historic building, built from redwood in the late 1800’s, with a magnificent pipe organ, and a deep sanctuary for the choir and the altar. Among the artwork was a beautiful painting of Mary and Jesus – hidden away in one of the small alcoves. Those of us who served at the altar would talk about how beautiful it was, and we wondered where that lovely painting might go so that it would be more accessible to everyone. But in the end, we decided that the painting should stay where it is – because another truth of Mary’s gospel is that God is often hidden, and found in unexpected, small, out of the way places. Found in places where no one thinks to look and in places that are not available to everyone. Places in our lives perhaps of disappointment and sorrow. Places of tragedy and even curse. Places where we come face to face with what a mess we are, private places where we cannot bear a great deal of public scrutiny. Places of fragile new beginnings. Places of hopes and dreams that are not yet ready for the harsh sunlight of details and facts and figures and rational logic.
Mary’s God is wide and warm and completely available and also hidden and small and unexpectedly last and least. We meet this wide, warm God in Bethlehem, a small out of the way place of complete ordinariness.
The truth is that our advent journey towards the manger of Bethlehem;
towards the infant born under the cold night air;
towards the peasant woman giving birth to her first born child, far from home;
our journey towards the unspeakable mystery of Christmas,
is a journey towards those places where the
great, vast richness of the Creator,
enters into the cramped small places of our lives, of our world -
without reservation, without hesitation,
without hanging on to a scrap of dignity.
Our journey towards this revelation of Almighty God, under the improbable cover of a vulnerable naked refugee infant, is a journey to the places where the last and the least are born. Where they live and die. To the people and places who do not occupy any place in history or in the news. People and places that are insignificant. It is a journey towards those places in our own hearts where our carefully and tightly woven veils of plans and protective defenses fall from our faces and we must acknowledge that we, too, are insignificant and bloodied with the afterbirth of purpose gone astray.
But these are not places where we really like to go, is it.
The truth is, we long to meet God in places like Herod’s palace.
Places where we are secure in ourselves. Where we have got our
best foot forward. Where we can point to pretty pictures
and classic statues and carefully cultivated gardens. Where there is
beautiful background music and where we are confident that we would
hear God say to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful with a little. Now, I shall put you in charge of much.”
Despite our acknowledgement and bewailing of our manifold sins and transgressions, we most want to meet God in the palaces of our making. And if we can’t do that, then it might be ok to hike over to the manger, greet God, and then high tail it back to our places of security and order and predictability.
But Mary stops us. Our Mother rather forcefully puts her hand out, grabs us, and tells us to wash our ears, and don’t forget the backs of our necks, and forget going home to our palaces that are due to fall any minute anyway.
“My soul magnifies the Lord”, she says as we squirm. “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Jesus had a fiery mother. A mother who knew whom to say yes to, and whom to worship. She did not worship safety or popular acclaim or social status. If she did, she would never have found herself in the awkward and dangerous position of being pregnant and traveling by foot, alone, to take refuge with her older cousin, Elizabeth. If she worshipped her own future, she would never have said yes to God. But she did worship and love God above all else, above all other considerations. And so she, the first Christian, the Mother of the Church, calls us out of our worship of security and predictability and into worship of her God. The God that comes to lowly places, to places of humility and emptiness, to bus stops and soup kitchens and in the middle of the night. The God that asks us to lay down our whole lives “in a small, chilly manger warmed only by the hearts of the lowly and know with perfect joy that we are home.” (Sojourners)
From early childhood, we are mostly trained to go towards the spotlight – and to work hard for all the benefits the spotlight brings. But the good news according to Jesus’ Mother, Mary, is that the world’s spotlight is neither here nor there. If wealth and fame and power and visibility fall on you, so be it. Rejoice. Use your resources with humility and joy and confidence, for the sake of God’s good news. But if obscurity and emptiness and lowliness is yours, so be it. Rejoice. Say, along with Mary, an unknown girl; and along with Jesus, a stranger born among the last and the least, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God.” (Hebrews 10:7) “Let it be with me, according to your Word.” (Luke 1: 38b)
And whether we serve our Lord in the spotlight or in obscurity, let us join our hearts and minds and hands in prayer:
“Come, little Word, there’s a weary world awaitin’
Come, little Word, with your eyes open wide.
Come, little Word, the welcome table is ready.
Now, little Word, would be a good time.
O come, Lord Jesus, come.” (Sojourners)
Amen.
Quotations from: “Sojourners Advent Bulletin”, 2003
Advent IV, Year C, 2009
Have you noticed the children before church, after church, come into the side chapel and light a candle? Maybe you have lit a candle and offered up your concerns and loved ones to God. For those of you fortunate to have been raised with a theology of the Mother of God – perhaps you sneak in a prayer said through the intercessions of His Mother, Mary.
Mary’s God is a comforting God, one who is available to us as Parent and Savior, Mother to all the peoples and creatures of the world. Mary’s God’s embraces without measure and without condition. Mary’s God drips with milk that nurtures us and helps us to grow healthy and strong in faith. This God longs for us to suckle and cuddle and lay our heads down, in rest and utter contentment. And at some level, don’t we all long to do just that? To truly become a child of God.
I know that when I get knotted up with worries and fears and what if’s and if only’s and how come’s, the knots melt away when I light a candle, say a prayer, and crawl up into God’s wide, warm lap. And after awhile, I’m ready to be a grown up again – a grown up that doesn’t take myself or anyone else too seriously. A grown up that knows it is good to also be a child of Mary’s God.
The church I first served was a historic building, built from redwood in the late 1800’s, with a magnificent pipe organ, and a deep sanctuary for the choir and the altar. Among the artwork was a beautiful painting of Mary and Jesus – hidden away in one of the small alcoves. Those of us who served at the altar would talk about how beautiful it was, and we wondered where that lovely painting might go so that it would be more accessible to everyone. But in the end, we decided that the painting should stay where it is – because another truth of Mary’s gospel is that God is often hidden, and found in unexpected, small, out of the way places. Found in places where no one thinks to look and in places that are not available to everyone. Places in our lives perhaps of disappointment and sorrow. Places of tragedy and even curse. Places where we come face to face with what a mess we are, private places where we cannot bear a great deal of public scrutiny. Places of fragile new beginnings. Places of hopes and dreams that are not yet ready for the harsh sunlight of details and facts and figures and rational logic.
Mary’s God is wide and warm and completely available and also hidden and small and unexpectedly last and least. We meet this wide, warm God in Bethlehem, a small out of the way place of complete ordinariness.
The truth is that our advent journey towards the manger of Bethlehem;
towards the infant born under the cold night air;
towards the peasant woman giving birth to her first born child, far from home;
our journey towards the unspeakable mystery of Christmas,
is a journey towards those places where the
great, vast richness of the Creator,
enters into the cramped small places of our lives, of our world -
without reservation, without hesitation,
without hanging on to a scrap of dignity.
Our journey towards this revelation of Almighty God, under the improbable cover of a vulnerable naked refugee infant, is a journey to the places where the last and the least are born. Where they live and die. To the people and places who do not occupy any place in history or in the news. People and places that are insignificant. It is a journey towards those places in our own hearts where our carefully and tightly woven veils of plans and protective defenses fall from our faces and we must acknowledge that we, too, are insignificant and bloodied with the afterbirth of purpose gone astray.
But these are not places where we really like to go, is it.
The truth is, we long to meet God in places like Herod’s palace.
Places where we are secure in ourselves. Where we have got our
best foot forward. Where we can point to pretty pictures
and classic statues and carefully cultivated gardens. Where there is
beautiful background music and where we are confident that we would
hear God say to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful with a little. Now, I shall put you in charge of much.”
Despite our acknowledgement and bewailing of our manifold sins and transgressions, we most want to meet God in the palaces of our making. And if we can’t do that, then it might be ok to hike over to the manger, greet God, and then high tail it back to our places of security and order and predictability.
But Mary stops us. Our Mother rather forcefully puts her hand out, grabs us, and tells us to wash our ears, and don’t forget the backs of our necks, and forget going home to our palaces that are due to fall any minute anyway.
“My soul magnifies the Lord”, she says as we squirm. “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Jesus had a fiery mother. A mother who knew whom to say yes to, and whom to worship. She did not worship safety or popular acclaim or social status. If she did, she would never have found herself in the awkward and dangerous position of being pregnant and traveling by foot, alone, to take refuge with her older cousin, Elizabeth. If she worshipped her own future, she would never have said yes to God. But she did worship and love God above all else, above all other considerations. And so she, the first Christian, the Mother of the Church, calls us out of our worship of security and predictability and into worship of her God. The God that comes to lowly places, to places of humility and emptiness, to bus stops and soup kitchens and in the middle of the night. The God that asks us to lay down our whole lives “in a small, chilly manger warmed only by the hearts of the lowly and know with perfect joy that we are home.” (Sojourners)
From early childhood, we are mostly trained to go towards the spotlight – and to work hard for all the benefits the spotlight brings. But the good news according to Jesus’ Mother, Mary, is that the world’s spotlight is neither here nor there. If wealth and fame and power and visibility fall on you, so be it. Rejoice. Use your resources with humility and joy and confidence, for the sake of God’s good news. But if obscurity and emptiness and lowliness is yours, so be it. Rejoice. Say, along with Mary, an unknown girl; and along with Jesus, a stranger born among the last and the least, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God.” (Hebrews 10:7) “Let it be with me, according to your Word.” (Luke 1: 38b)
And whether we serve our Lord in the spotlight or in obscurity, let us join our hearts and minds and hands in prayer:
“Come, little Word, there’s a weary world awaitin’
Come, little Word, with your eyes open wide.
Come, little Word, the welcome table is ready.
Now, little Word, would be a good time.
O come, Lord Jesus, come.” (Sojourners)
Amen.
Quotations from: “Sojourners Advent Bulletin”, 2003
Friday, November 13, 2009
"All In"
You know, it takes awhile to feel as if you have moved in. It can take many years, actually.
But along the way, there are occasions that you know you’ve turned a corner – and that you are more at home.
Friday night’s Attitude of Gratitude Parish Dinner was another corner turned for me. What a fantastic night. Talk about an attitude of service – of servant ministry – our Stewardship Ministry Team is awesome, standing on the shoulders of the previous Stewardship Ministry Team. At some point during the evening, I looked around at the full room, tables filled with smiles and conversation and a thick joy filled me. Here we are. We’re in this together. There was a whole room full of people who have discovered the joy of living wholeheartedly – of leaping in with all they’ve got – whether it’s smiling in welcome, handing out plates, pouring coffee, cleaning up – it’s all offered. The two copper coins of self deposited into God’s treasury – available for whatever God decides to do with the gift. I sat at the table with Ida and Florence – neither of whom could hear much of anything – given the acoustics in the parish hall. But there they were, continuing to offer themselves to their fellow Christians, their fellow parishioners.
I want to talk about this sense of being “all in.” I don’t really play poker – I have tried, but I need to keep looking at the “cheat sheet.” And I would never be able to master a poker face – but I like that poker term, “all in.” As in, here’s all my chips, all I’ve got to play with, and I’m going to put it all down – win or lose.
The widow, of course, was all in. Her last two chips, all she had – pushed to the center of the table. All in.
The same with Jesus. He had steadily made his way towards Jerusalem, knowing what awaited him there. In the next few weeks after the incident we read about this morning, he was arrested and crucified. He spent these last few weeks the same way he spent all the rest of his weeks – teaching and healing. Now having come to Jerusalem, he taught in the temple. At the pinnacle place of interlocking state and religious power. And just because he was in mortal danger, he didn’t back away from his challenge to a structure that lived on the backs of the poor. No – Jesus was all in. No halfway measures. No wiffle waffling. No backing out. Steady – confident – and 100% - his whole life given completely for those people at that time in that place. He didn’t hold anything back so as to wait for a more opportune time to get his message across, or for a more teachable moment, or for a more insightful group who might understand what he was teaching – what the point of his sacrifice was. He wagered the whole of his life, on this bet that the goodness of God would have the final say, and that this God could be trusted absolutely.
The same with God. In the person of Jesus, God entered into creation – not only as Creator, but as Savior. As the Eucharistic Prayer puts it, "He became one with us, sharing our human nature, living and dying as one of us". Or as one of the most ancient hymns of the church, found in the letter to the Philippians puts it: “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God; but emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”
Through Jesus, God did not depend upon the abundance of his power, his knowledge, his omnipotence and omniscience. God threw his lot in with creation, with humanity, with this bent and broken world – and through the Holy Spirit, He continues to throws his lot in with the poverty of our condition, with the worthless coins of our condition, and not only befriends us here, but works with us to salvages the mess we have made of things, and to redeem us.
The truly miraculous thing is – the widow, Jesus, God – put all their chips in – not into a perfect system, on behalf of perfect people – but into a broken system on behalf of broken people! To a system that was, and is, corrupt. Jesus pointed to the corrupt system of the powerful and privileged Temple/State system that sustained itself by taking advantage of the poor, by “devouring widow’s homes.” He pointed to the deadly combination of power and hypocrisy that displayed itself as false piety. And yet.... he taught there and he pointed to the faithfulness of the widow who gave all she had.
In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul pointed to the agape love that God showed towards us through Jesus – “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” This love and faithfulness is a priori – it is grace – and it does not depend upon our goodness, or worthiness, or responsiveness.
God does notice however when we respond – He notices the small quick motions of the faithful ones, the little ones, the ones who make their offerings in faithful trust and gratitude. Who jump in to this "With God" life – not knowing exactly where it will lead them, but sensing that it they are getting themselves in with some really great company!
So – here we are – right in the middle of Stewardship Season. Actually – here at Good Shepherd, we are clear that all seasons are stewardship seasons. I love that our wall decoration at the dinner were the signs that Linda Kodet made out of recyclable materials – Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We are jumping in more and more into our identity as Stewards, believing more and more that it is the primary identity given to us human beings. That from Genesis on, we are to be stewards of creation - the animal kingdoms, the trees and water and air and earth. Good stewards of family relationships – of being all in with the ones to whom we’ve promised ourselves to. Good stewards of our time and our bodies and our resources.
At the heart of good stewardship of course is the knowing that none of it is “ours.” It is all Gift. Pure Gift. We are responsible and accountable for the short time that we are here on this earth. And the Good News is that there is One to whom all that we enjoy belongs – and He is here, with us, watching, helping, guiding. He is both the source of all that we have, and the end to whom all will return - and in between, he asks that we take good care of each other, of his world, and of his church.
In the fall season – we talk about the aspect of stewardship that has to do with money. It’s the season when we acknowledge the basic truth that the mission of the church depends upon each of us throwing out lot in with each other and with God– that when God gives us the desire to expand our ministries with teens and children, to have a gardener for three hours every other week, to expand our ministries of outreach, and to adequately maintain this sacred trust of property, and to use the land for the benefit of the community and to pay our clergy and our bookkeeper and our sexton and our secretary – it requires offering back through the church a portion of what God has given us.
What proportion? That is between you and God. The Episcopal Church standard is 10%. Some of us aren’t there yet, but by raising our offerings by an additional 1% each year, we’re on our way. Some of us know the joy of tithing and go beyond. The truth is that God takes whatever we offer and is able to ignite from our sparks of faith, a blaze that will ultimately consume our hearts and fill us with love and joy, peace and contentment.
Let us pray.
"O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us,
And keep us in all grace, and guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all harm in this world and the next."
(2nd verse Now Thank We All Our God)
But along the way, there are occasions that you know you’ve turned a corner – and that you are more at home.
Friday night’s Attitude of Gratitude Parish Dinner was another corner turned for me. What a fantastic night. Talk about an attitude of service – of servant ministry – our Stewardship Ministry Team is awesome, standing on the shoulders of the previous Stewardship Ministry Team. At some point during the evening, I looked around at the full room, tables filled with smiles and conversation and a thick joy filled me. Here we are. We’re in this together. There was a whole room full of people who have discovered the joy of living wholeheartedly – of leaping in with all they’ve got – whether it’s smiling in welcome, handing out plates, pouring coffee, cleaning up – it’s all offered. The two copper coins of self deposited into God’s treasury – available for whatever God decides to do with the gift. I sat at the table with Ida and Florence – neither of whom could hear much of anything – given the acoustics in the parish hall. But there they were, continuing to offer themselves to their fellow Christians, their fellow parishioners.
I want to talk about this sense of being “all in.” I don’t really play poker – I have tried, but I need to keep looking at the “cheat sheet.” And I would never be able to master a poker face – but I like that poker term, “all in.” As in, here’s all my chips, all I’ve got to play with, and I’m going to put it all down – win or lose.
The widow, of course, was all in. Her last two chips, all she had – pushed to the center of the table. All in.
The same with Jesus. He had steadily made his way towards Jerusalem, knowing what awaited him there. In the next few weeks after the incident we read about this morning, he was arrested and crucified. He spent these last few weeks the same way he spent all the rest of his weeks – teaching and healing. Now having come to Jerusalem, he taught in the temple. At the pinnacle place of interlocking state and religious power. And just because he was in mortal danger, he didn’t back away from his challenge to a structure that lived on the backs of the poor. No – Jesus was all in. No halfway measures. No wiffle waffling. No backing out. Steady – confident – and 100% - his whole life given completely for those people at that time in that place. He didn’t hold anything back so as to wait for a more opportune time to get his message across, or for a more teachable moment, or for a more insightful group who might understand what he was teaching – what the point of his sacrifice was. He wagered the whole of his life, on this bet that the goodness of God would have the final say, and that this God could be trusted absolutely.
The same with God. In the person of Jesus, God entered into creation – not only as Creator, but as Savior. As the Eucharistic Prayer puts it, "He became one with us, sharing our human nature, living and dying as one of us". Or as one of the most ancient hymns of the church, found in the letter to the Philippians puts it: “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God; but emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”
Through Jesus, God did not depend upon the abundance of his power, his knowledge, his omnipotence and omniscience. God threw his lot in with creation, with humanity, with this bent and broken world – and through the Holy Spirit, He continues to throws his lot in with the poverty of our condition, with the worthless coins of our condition, and not only befriends us here, but works with us to salvages the mess we have made of things, and to redeem us.
The truly miraculous thing is – the widow, Jesus, God – put all their chips in – not into a perfect system, on behalf of perfect people – but into a broken system on behalf of broken people! To a system that was, and is, corrupt. Jesus pointed to the corrupt system of the powerful and privileged Temple/State system that sustained itself by taking advantage of the poor, by “devouring widow’s homes.” He pointed to the deadly combination of power and hypocrisy that displayed itself as false piety. And yet.... he taught there and he pointed to the faithfulness of the widow who gave all she had.
In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul pointed to the agape love that God showed towards us through Jesus – “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” This love and faithfulness is a priori – it is grace – and it does not depend upon our goodness, or worthiness, or responsiveness.
God does notice however when we respond – He notices the small quick motions of the faithful ones, the little ones, the ones who make their offerings in faithful trust and gratitude. Who jump in to this "With God" life – not knowing exactly where it will lead them, but sensing that it they are getting themselves in with some really great company!
So – here we are – right in the middle of Stewardship Season. Actually – here at Good Shepherd, we are clear that all seasons are stewardship seasons. I love that our wall decoration at the dinner were the signs that Linda Kodet made out of recyclable materials – Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We are jumping in more and more into our identity as Stewards, believing more and more that it is the primary identity given to us human beings. That from Genesis on, we are to be stewards of creation - the animal kingdoms, the trees and water and air and earth. Good stewards of family relationships – of being all in with the ones to whom we’ve promised ourselves to. Good stewards of our time and our bodies and our resources.
At the heart of good stewardship of course is the knowing that none of it is “ours.” It is all Gift. Pure Gift. We are responsible and accountable for the short time that we are here on this earth. And the Good News is that there is One to whom all that we enjoy belongs – and He is here, with us, watching, helping, guiding. He is both the source of all that we have, and the end to whom all will return - and in between, he asks that we take good care of each other, of his world, and of his church.
In the fall season – we talk about the aspect of stewardship that has to do with money. It’s the season when we acknowledge the basic truth that the mission of the church depends upon each of us throwing out lot in with each other and with God– that when God gives us the desire to expand our ministries with teens and children, to have a gardener for three hours every other week, to expand our ministries of outreach, and to adequately maintain this sacred trust of property, and to use the land for the benefit of the community and to pay our clergy and our bookkeeper and our sexton and our secretary – it requires offering back through the church a portion of what God has given us.
What proportion? That is between you and God. The Episcopal Church standard is 10%. Some of us aren’t there yet, but by raising our offerings by an additional 1% each year, we’re on our way. Some of us know the joy of tithing and go beyond. The truth is that God takes whatever we offer and is able to ignite from our sparks of faith, a blaze that will ultimately consume our hearts and fill us with love and joy, peace and contentment.
Let us pray.
"O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us,
And keep us in all grace, and guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all harm in this world and the next."
(2nd verse Now Thank We All Our God)
"I Sing a Song"
All Saints, 2009
As some of you know, I grew up in the Methodist church, traveled with Quakers during college and my young adult years, and finally, came home to the Episcopal Church. Before the Episcopal Church though, there were no saint stories. No Virgin Mary, apart from Christmas. No Feast Days or Fast Days. No liturgical calendar. All of this came with my conversion into the Episcopal Church – and I found it utterly delightful – but not quite sure what to do with it. I had suddenly inherited this whole family that seemed strange and unfamiliar and truth be told – in whom I was not really interested.
When I became the lay Associate for Youth and Family at the first Episcopal church I served – Church of the Incarnation, in Santa Rosa - my office was located in a room called “Venerable Bede.” All the other rooms and offices were called by saints names as well. The Nursery was St. Lucia, the choir room was St. Cecilia, the 4th/5th grade classroom was St. Agnes. You get the picture. I remember thinking, with my still overly Protestant brain, why not just name the rooms by what they are: Choir Room. Nursery. Classroom. Associate’s Office.
On All Saints Day, we sang “I sing a song of the saints of God” and the children paraded down the church aisle in costumes of various saints. October Sundays were spent constructing the costumes – presumably learning about whichever saint they were costuming as.
I found it odd, if not slightly heretical.
Still, I was attracted to what all these saints seemed to point to - a life that went on under the surface / a deeper sort of Christianity than I had been exposed to, and had only dreamed existed.
I began to read about the saints – and it was clear that most of them were somewhat odd people, misfits even in their time, but utterly converted, body, mind and soul, with a love of God so significant that they embodied the kind of hunger and thirst that Jesus talked about – but hunger and thirst for what? It differed. Some thirsted for justice. Some for divine union. Some for peace. Some for education and relief of suffering. Some for the conversion and salvation of souls. Whatever form it took for each of them, the underlying reality was the same – a passionate love for God that had united with God’s passionate love for them.
In other words, saints drink from the wellspring of Life and know that we are made from God and for God. We are created by God from our Genesis, and we return to God at our End. And here – in the middle – we adopt an attitude of gratitude, and surrender ourselves in as much trust as possible – to the Divine Spirit that enlivens each one of us.
Gratitude, surrender and trust. At it’s simplest – that’s what it means to be a saint. To give thanks for everything – and to surrender everything, trusting God. The Saints usually have no idea where this gratitude, surrender and trust is going to take them – all they know is that as they surrender their entire being – their possessions, their will, their understanding, their memory, their future, their time, their resources – as they do this, miracles unfold and Life in all it’s abundance begins to take root and grow and to bear fruit.
So, what form did this take for the Venerable Bede – whose office I occupied? It turns out that he was an English monk and scholar in the early 700’s. He lived in the monastery from the age of 7, and was quite clearly brilliant. His best-known work is his History of the English Church and People, a classic that has frequently been translated and is available in Penguin Paperbacks. It gives a history of Britain up to 729, speaking of the Celtic peoples who were converted to Christianity during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon pagans in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their subsequent conversion by Celtic missionaries from the north and west, and Roman missionaries from the south and east. His work is our chief source for the history of the British Isles during this period. Long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he was aware that the earth is a sphere, and he wrote that the solar year is not exactly 365 and a quarter days long, so that the Julian calendar (one leap year every four years) requires some adjusting if the months are not to get out of step with the seasons. For Venerable Bede, gratitude, surrender and trust meant using the gift of his brilliance to spend copious quantities of time and thought and ink separating fact from fiction and hearsay as he wrote history and advanced the cause of what would later become known as science.
For Agnes, for whom the 4th and 5th grade classroom was named, it took the form of martyrdom. Agnes died at Rome around 304 in the persecution of Diocletian: the last and fiercest of the persecutions of Christianity by the Roman emperors. She is said to have been only twelve or thirteen years old – and her young age shocked many Romans into demanding that the persecutions stop. Her fearless attitude caused others to say that “If this religion can enable a twelve-year-old girl to meet death without fear, it is worth checking out.” I think making her the sponsor of a classroom of ten and eleven year olds has the potential to give children courage in standing up for what they believe and resist peer pressure to participate in bullying or sexual activity or drugs….which yes, do affect kids at a very young age. For Agnes, gratitude, surrender and trust, meant calm conviction in the reality of the resurrection – a calmness and conviction that is possible for even the young folk among us.
I want to tell you a third story about saints. This one is not from the 300’s or the 700’s. It’s from 1970’s to now. I heard this story first in 2002 when I met a Ugandan Bishop who wore a large pectoral cross and spoke English with a heavy African accent. The cross he wore was given to him by the Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum, before he was martyred by Idi Amin’s government in 1977. There had been many persecutions by Amin towards Christians, and Luwum had personally gone time and again to secure the release of prisoners. In the end, he secured the release of many Anglican bishops and took their place with his own person. Before he was put into the Land Rover which took him away, he handed the cross to the Bishop that I met. I’m sorry that I cannot remember his name – but I will never forget the cross he wore. Janani Luwum’s feast day is February 16th.
At Convention, I met a priest of this Diocese, Jerry Drino, who works with the Sudanese, and has been instrumental in the process of putting the Martyrs of Sudan onto the most recent Episcopal calendar of saints. Here is what the next publication of our Lesser Feasts and Fasts will say about the saints of Sudan.
"The Christian bishops, chiefs, commanders, clergy and people of Sudan declared, on May 16, 1983, that they would not abandon God as God had revealed himself to them under threat of Shariah Law imposed by the fundamentalist Islamic government in Khartoum. Until a peace treaty was signed on January 9, 2005, the Episcopal Church of the Province of the Sudan suffered from persecution and devastation through twenty-two years of civil war. Two and a half million people were killed, half of whom were members of this church. Many clergy and lay leaders were singled out because of their religious leadership in their communities. No buildings, including churches and schools, are left standing in an area the size of Alaska. Four million people are internally displaced, and a million are scattered around Africa and beyond in the Sudanese Diaspora. Twenty-two of the twenty-four dioceses exist in exile in Uganda or Kenya, and the majority of the clergy are unpaid. Only 5% of the population of Southern Sudan was Christian in 1983. Today over 85% of that region of six million is now mostly Episcopalian or Roman Catholic. A faith rooted deeply in the mercy of God has renewed their spirits through out the years of strife and sorrow."
I am stilled by this kind of witness. And I look around at my own life, and wonder how it is that I continue to have trouble surrendering and trusting God. Why it is that I continue under the illusion that my life and my possessions are actually my own - when it is obvious that everything I have, every breath I take, every dollar in my account, every child that sits around my table – is mine on loan and in reality, belongs to God. The truth is, we begin and end in God. And in the middle here? We are called to trust.
Let us join with all the company of heaven, the saints, martyrs and apostles, the witnesses in ages past in and in our age right now – in relaxing our grip, in opening our hands, in surrender and trust – so that the miracles that are always associated with Abundant Life can happen now in our own lives, in our own church, in our own hearts.
As some of you know, I grew up in the Methodist church, traveled with Quakers during college and my young adult years, and finally, came home to the Episcopal Church. Before the Episcopal Church though, there were no saint stories. No Virgin Mary, apart from Christmas. No Feast Days or Fast Days. No liturgical calendar. All of this came with my conversion into the Episcopal Church – and I found it utterly delightful – but not quite sure what to do with it. I had suddenly inherited this whole family that seemed strange and unfamiliar and truth be told – in whom I was not really interested.
When I became the lay Associate for Youth and Family at the first Episcopal church I served – Church of the Incarnation, in Santa Rosa - my office was located in a room called “Venerable Bede.” All the other rooms and offices were called by saints names as well. The Nursery was St. Lucia, the choir room was St. Cecilia, the 4th/5th grade classroom was St. Agnes. You get the picture. I remember thinking, with my still overly Protestant brain, why not just name the rooms by what they are: Choir Room. Nursery. Classroom. Associate’s Office.
On All Saints Day, we sang “I sing a song of the saints of God” and the children paraded down the church aisle in costumes of various saints. October Sundays were spent constructing the costumes – presumably learning about whichever saint they were costuming as.
I found it odd, if not slightly heretical.
Still, I was attracted to what all these saints seemed to point to - a life that went on under the surface / a deeper sort of Christianity than I had been exposed to, and had only dreamed existed.
I began to read about the saints – and it was clear that most of them were somewhat odd people, misfits even in their time, but utterly converted, body, mind and soul, with a love of God so significant that they embodied the kind of hunger and thirst that Jesus talked about – but hunger and thirst for what? It differed. Some thirsted for justice. Some for divine union. Some for peace. Some for education and relief of suffering. Some for the conversion and salvation of souls. Whatever form it took for each of them, the underlying reality was the same – a passionate love for God that had united with God’s passionate love for them.
In other words, saints drink from the wellspring of Life and know that we are made from God and for God. We are created by God from our Genesis, and we return to God at our End. And here – in the middle – we adopt an attitude of gratitude, and surrender ourselves in as much trust as possible – to the Divine Spirit that enlivens each one of us.
Gratitude, surrender and trust. At it’s simplest – that’s what it means to be a saint. To give thanks for everything – and to surrender everything, trusting God. The Saints usually have no idea where this gratitude, surrender and trust is going to take them – all they know is that as they surrender their entire being – their possessions, their will, their understanding, their memory, their future, their time, their resources – as they do this, miracles unfold and Life in all it’s abundance begins to take root and grow and to bear fruit.
So, what form did this take for the Venerable Bede – whose office I occupied? It turns out that he was an English monk and scholar in the early 700’s. He lived in the monastery from the age of 7, and was quite clearly brilliant. His best-known work is his History of the English Church and People, a classic that has frequently been translated and is available in Penguin Paperbacks. It gives a history of Britain up to 729, speaking of the Celtic peoples who were converted to Christianity during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon pagans in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their subsequent conversion by Celtic missionaries from the north and west, and Roman missionaries from the south and east. His work is our chief source for the history of the British Isles during this period. Long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he was aware that the earth is a sphere, and he wrote that the solar year is not exactly 365 and a quarter days long, so that the Julian calendar (one leap year every four years) requires some adjusting if the months are not to get out of step with the seasons. For Venerable Bede, gratitude, surrender and trust meant using the gift of his brilliance to spend copious quantities of time and thought and ink separating fact from fiction and hearsay as he wrote history and advanced the cause of what would later become known as science.
For Agnes, for whom the 4th and 5th grade classroom was named, it took the form of martyrdom. Agnes died at Rome around 304 in the persecution of Diocletian: the last and fiercest of the persecutions of Christianity by the Roman emperors. She is said to have been only twelve or thirteen years old – and her young age shocked many Romans into demanding that the persecutions stop. Her fearless attitude caused others to say that “If this religion can enable a twelve-year-old girl to meet death without fear, it is worth checking out.” I think making her the sponsor of a classroom of ten and eleven year olds has the potential to give children courage in standing up for what they believe and resist peer pressure to participate in bullying or sexual activity or drugs….which yes, do affect kids at a very young age. For Agnes, gratitude, surrender and trust, meant calm conviction in the reality of the resurrection – a calmness and conviction that is possible for even the young folk among us.
I want to tell you a third story about saints. This one is not from the 300’s or the 700’s. It’s from 1970’s to now. I heard this story first in 2002 when I met a Ugandan Bishop who wore a large pectoral cross and spoke English with a heavy African accent. The cross he wore was given to him by the Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum, before he was martyred by Idi Amin’s government in 1977. There had been many persecutions by Amin towards Christians, and Luwum had personally gone time and again to secure the release of prisoners. In the end, he secured the release of many Anglican bishops and took their place with his own person. Before he was put into the Land Rover which took him away, he handed the cross to the Bishop that I met. I’m sorry that I cannot remember his name – but I will never forget the cross he wore. Janani Luwum’s feast day is February 16th.
At Convention, I met a priest of this Diocese, Jerry Drino, who works with the Sudanese, and has been instrumental in the process of putting the Martyrs of Sudan onto the most recent Episcopal calendar of saints. Here is what the next publication of our Lesser Feasts and Fasts will say about the saints of Sudan.
"The Christian bishops, chiefs, commanders, clergy and people of Sudan declared, on May 16, 1983, that they would not abandon God as God had revealed himself to them under threat of Shariah Law imposed by the fundamentalist Islamic government in Khartoum. Until a peace treaty was signed on January 9, 2005, the Episcopal Church of the Province of the Sudan suffered from persecution and devastation through twenty-two years of civil war. Two and a half million people were killed, half of whom were members of this church. Many clergy and lay leaders were singled out because of their religious leadership in their communities. No buildings, including churches and schools, are left standing in an area the size of Alaska. Four million people are internally displaced, and a million are scattered around Africa and beyond in the Sudanese Diaspora. Twenty-two of the twenty-four dioceses exist in exile in Uganda or Kenya, and the majority of the clergy are unpaid. Only 5% of the population of Southern Sudan was Christian in 1983. Today over 85% of that region of six million is now mostly Episcopalian or Roman Catholic. A faith rooted deeply in the mercy of God has renewed their spirits through out the years of strife and sorrow."
I am stilled by this kind of witness. And I look around at my own life, and wonder how it is that I continue to have trouble surrendering and trusting God. Why it is that I continue under the illusion that my life and my possessions are actually my own - when it is obvious that everything I have, every breath I take, every dollar in my account, every child that sits around my table – is mine on loan and in reality, belongs to God. The truth is, we begin and end in God. And in the middle here? We are called to trust.
Let us join with all the company of heaven, the saints, martyrs and apostles, the witnesses in ages past in and in our age right now – in relaxing our grip, in opening our hands, in surrender and trust – so that the miracles that are always associated with Abundant Life can happen now in our own lives, in our own church, in our own hearts.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Next Day
Hebrews 4: 12 - 16; Mark 10: 17 - 31
Remember Groundhog Day? Bill Murray plays Phil, a self centered tv anchorman, who is sent to the small town of Punxsutawney, to film a news piece on Groundhog Day. While he is there, he falls into a time warp that traps him into repeating the same day over and over. The same waiter dropping the same tray of plates at exactly the same time. The same boy falling out of a tree. The same ladies getting a flat tire. The same insurance salesman. Every morning he wakes up to the same music on the radio.
Once he figures out that there are no consequences to anything he does, he tries increasing his self centeredness into meanness - trips the old lady that bugs him; walks in front of cars; barks at a man who annoys him. But after awhile, being mean ceases to amuse him, and he grows increasingly horrified at being doomed to repeat the same day - over and over.
So, he does the opposite. He discovers the happiness of being good. Of going out of his way to help other people and make other people feel good. The goodness of following the Golden Rule; the 10 commandments. Sure enough - he's happier. But
he's still trapped. Same day. Over and over.
Until..….. he begins to love - without regard to self - without regard to appropriating / taking / for his very own / anyone or anything. Phil, the self-centered anchorman, becomes Phil, the golden rule guy, becomes Phil, the one who loves - without regard to whether or not he will be rewarded, without regard to whether or not his own dream will come true.
And then - lo and behold - he's free. The next day begins. The clock flips over to February 3rd! Love that does not have self at it's center - is the key to Phil's freedom.
Something of the same thing is going on for the rich man who comes to Jesus. This man has already discovered the happiness of the commandments. He isn't one of the people who've been tormenting and trying to trap Jesus with trick questions. This is a man who lives what St. Teresa of Avila called a "well ordered life." He is a good Jew. He follows the commandments. He does what is expected of him. He's nice to elderly ladies and to children. He tithes. He honors his parents.
But something is missing. He longs for something he can't quite put his finger on … but something more. Something greater. for freedom maybe - for the adventure of the next day. Of the day after. He is looking for the doorway into whatever it is the comes next after you've got the "being good" part down pat.
Forgive me for overlaying modern themes on this old Gospel story - but I wonder if perhaps this wealthy man was either young or middle aged . Because those are the times in our lives when we are most familiar with our hungers for the next step - for something more. For young people just graduating from high school or college - this hunger often reveals itself as a quest - perhaps a pilgrimage to a far distant land, where all the familiar support systems are absent and the traveling young person needs to dig deep within themselves to find inner resources they didn't know they had. For some questers, they find a new relationship with God. The familiar God of parents and culture now becomes the God with whom they have their own relationship.
We are also familiar with this hunger for the next step - for the next day - that arises often in middle age. When the familiar no longer satisfies and there is a gnawing need to enter life from a very different angle.
Maybe this wealthy man was young or middle aged - but in any event, he runs to Jesus and falls on his knees and asks him a big question - what Fred Craddock calls - one of those ultimate questions. And Jesus honored him by giving a big answer. A small answer would have been insulting.
So Jesus gave him a simple answer that was big enough to go straight to the very heart of the matter, straight to the next step on this man's journey towards the Divine. This answer that Jesus gave - wasn't complex or nuanced or obscure - it didn't need academic theologians to decipher it. Though many have given it their best shot.
This particular gospel reading has been the subject of hundreds of commentaries - mostly designed to soften it or explain it away. I'm sure, through the years, you've heard all the methods for blunting the simple sharpness of this reading. The main two being:
1. Jesus said this to this particular man - because this man had an issue around wealth. No one, not Jesus and not Mark, meant it as applicable to the rest of us.
2. What it really means is not that wealth is the problem, but that trusting in wealth is the problem.
It's simplicity of course, did not make it easy to swallow or to follow - and it's not any easier today. In our weekly gospel readings, we are advancing into the truly rigorous part of Jesus' teaching - as Jesus walks towards certain crucifixion in Jerusalem, his words are aimed directly at reaching through the walls we put up around our hearts.
But before he said anything, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." Saw right into him. Knew him.
Maybe you're like me and this is what you want most - to be seen all the way through, known completely, loved without measure. This was the kind of love with which Jesus looked at this man. But this kind of love has consequences. The truth is, the loving gaze of Jesus penetrates to the heart. Because he is the Living Word that the letter to the Hebrews speaks of - the living and active Word of God whose gaze can pierce, like a scalpel, and dissect bone from marrow. He is the one whose winnowing fork separates wheat from chaff. His love sees clearly and speaks truthfully.
And the words follow. Twelve step language has become part of our vocabulary - and so using 12 step language, we could say that Jesus performed an intervention with this man, with the kind of love that steps with boldness between the addict and the addiction. It is the kind of love that speaks clearly and truthfully about the things that bind him, that keep him from true joy. First things first, as theologian Kathleen Grieb says. Change this one thing - and everything will change.
"You lack one thing," Jesus tells him. "Go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." This is the story that converted Francis of Assisi. Remember the story from last week? Francis went from the church to the public square, and completely disrobed. He took these words exactly to heart, and followed Jesus into an entirely different life path.
We are clearly in another world here - what I am talking about is non-rational. Don't even try to make this make sense in a logical, linear sort of way. This is a camel through the eye of a needle kind of talk. And the only way to enter into it is through the heart. The imagination. The soul. The Spirit.
So what might it mean for you and for me?
I don't have an answer - but what I can say is this - discipleship begins when the one thing that enslaves us is released, and it's claims upon you are dissolved. On that day, you begin to walk differently in the world. That day may have already happened for you - and it may not have. It may have happened over and over again. But at some point, if you continue in the path of Jesus, you'll come to a crossroads -
and this gospel story is here to help you across.
What else helps you across?
The story - and the community. Jesus does not intend for us to be solitary and lonely. He promises fields and family and houses to those who follow - not in a prosperity gospel sort of way, but in the real way of those who've crossed the crossroad and entered into Jesus' inner circle. There are mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters there. And while it's not hunky dory all the time in God's household, there is the splendiferous light of Love shining underneath and around and through - all the time - whether you personally can see it or not.
What else helps you across? There's the story and the community and the Spirit. When Jesus invites the man to follow - his invitation itself confers the power to do so. Mission Impossible is God's daily agenda! We are not left to ourselves in this matter. Ultimately, as Deacon Cynthia so wisely said at the 8 AM service, "it is simply a matter of surrender." Surrendering to the beauty and power of God's Spirit. In this surrendered state, you really can let go over everything you "own" and find yourself blessed beyond belief with abundance and joy. It's true. And I cannot describe exactly why or how it is true. But I can verify that it is so.
We don't know what happened after the man turned away sadly. He very well might have thought about it and figured out that joy really did lie in the direction Jesus pointed him to. But whatever happened with him - the closer question is what will happen with you?
You may be, after all, in this wealthy man's position. Hungry for the next step in your pilgrimage into God. Maybe you've sat on various committees of the church, you've pledged significantly for years, you've assiduously followed ethical business practices, you live a well ordered life - and that's all good, and you don't intend to give it up - but you're ready for the next step in the pilgrimage to God. You long for whatever it is that comes next. And so - Jesus invites you too into the day after - the next day - the day of freedom.
Resources:
Christian Century, A. Katherine Grieb, October 2009
Fred Craddock
Teresa de Avila, Interior Castles
Kai Harris, "Quests, Communities and Stewards", to be published in Broadcast, newsletter for Young Adults and College Students.
Remember Groundhog Day? Bill Murray plays Phil, a self centered tv anchorman, who is sent to the small town of Punxsutawney, to film a news piece on Groundhog Day. While he is there, he falls into a time warp that traps him into repeating the same day over and over. The same waiter dropping the same tray of plates at exactly the same time. The same boy falling out of a tree. The same ladies getting a flat tire. The same insurance salesman. Every morning he wakes up to the same music on the radio.
Once he figures out that there are no consequences to anything he does, he tries increasing his self centeredness into meanness - trips the old lady that bugs him; walks in front of cars; barks at a man who annoys him. But after awhile, being mean ceases to amuse him, and he grows increasingly horrified at being doomed to repeat the same day - over and over.
So, he does the opposite. He discovers the happiness of being good. Of going out of his way to help other people and make other people feel good. The goodness of following the Golden Rule; the 10 commandments. Sure enough - he's happier. But
he's still trapped. Same day. Over and over.
Until..….. he begins to love - without regard to self - without regard to appropriating / taking / for his very own / anyone or anything. Phil, the self-centered anchorman, becomes Phil, the golden rule guy, becomes Phil, the one who loves - without regard to whether or not he will be rewarded, without regard to whether or not his own dream will come true.
And then - lo and behold - he's free. The next day begins. The clock flips over to February 3rd! Love that does not have self at it's center - is the key to Phil's freedom.
Something of the same thing is going on for the rich man who comes to Jesus. This man has already discovered the happiness of the commandments. He isn't one of the people who've been tormenting and trying to trap Jesus with trick questions. This is a man who lives what St. Teresa of Avila called a "well ordered life." He is a good Jew. He follows the commandments. He does what is expected of him. He's nice to elderly ladies and to children. He tithes. He honors his parents.
But something is missing. He longs for something he can't quite put his finger on … but something more. Something greater. for freedom maybe - for the adventure of the next day. Of the day after. He is looking for the doorway into whatever it is the comes next after you've got the "being good" part down pat.
Forgive me for overlaying modern themes on this old Gospel story - but I wonder if perhaps this wealthy man was either young or middle aged . Because those are the times in our lives when we are most familiar with our hungers for the next step - for something more. For young people just graduating from high school or college - this hunger often reveals itself as a quest - perhaps a pilgrimage to a far distant land, where all the familiar support systems are absent and the traveling young person needs to dig deep within themselves to find inner resources they didn't know they had. For some questers, they find a new relationship with God. The familiar God of parents and culture now becomes the God with whom they have their own relationship.
We are also familiar with this hunger for the next step - for the next day - that arises often in middle age. When the familiar no longer satisfies and there is a gnawing need to enter life from a very different angle.
Maybe this wealthy man was young or middle aged - but in any event, he runs to Jesus and falls on his knees and asks him a big question - what Fred Craddock calls - one of those ultimate questions. And Jesus honored him by giving a big answer. A small answer would have been insulting.
So Jesus gave him a simple answer that was big enough to go straight to the very heart of the matter, straight to the next step on this man's journey towards the Divine. This answer that Jesus gave - wasn't complex or nuanced or obscure - it didn't need academic theologians to decipher it. Though many have given it their best shot.
This particular gospel reading has been the subject of hundreds of commentaries - mostly designed to soften it or explain it away. I'm sure, through the years, you've heard all the methods for blunting the simple sharpness of this reading. The main two being:
1. Jesus said this to this particular man - because this man had an issue around wealth. No one, not Jesus and not Mark, meant it as applicable to the rest of us.
2. What it really means is not that wealth is the problem, but that trusting in wealth is the problem.
It's simplicity of course, did not make it easy to swallow or to follow - and it's not any easier today. In our weekly gospel readings, we are advancing into the truly rigorous part of Jesus' teaching - as Jesus walks towards certain crucifixion in Jerusalem, his words are aimed directly at reaching through the walls we put up around our hearts.
But before he said anything, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." Saw right into him. Knew him.
Maybe you're like me and this is what you want most - to be seen all the way through, known completely, loved without measure. This was the kind of love with which Jesus looked at this man. But this kind of love has consequences. The truth is, the loving gaze of Jesus penetrates to the heart. Because he is the Living Word that the letter to the Hebrews speaks of - the living and active Word of God whose gaze can pierce, like a scalpel, and dissect bone from marrow. He is the one whose winnowing fork separates wheat from chaff. His love sees clearly and speaks truthfully.
And the words follow. Twelve step language has become part of our vocabulary - and so using 12 step language, we could say that Jesus performed an intervention with this man, with the kind of love that steps with boldness between the addict and the addiction. It is the kind of love that speaks clearly and truthfully about the things that bind him, that keep him from true joy. First things first, as theologian Kathleen Grieb says. Change this one thing - and everything will change.
"You lack one thing," Jesus tells him. "Go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." This is the story that converted Francis of Assisi. Remember the story from last week? Francis went from the church to the public square, and completely disrobed. He took these words exactly to heart, and followed Jesus into an entirely different life path.
We are clearly in another world here - what I am talking about is non-rational. Don't even try to make this make sense in a logical, linear sort of way. This is a camel through the eye of a needle kind of talk. And the only way to enter into it is through the heart. The imagination. The soul. The Spirit.
So what might it mean for you and for me?
I don't have an answer - but what I can say is this - discipleship begins when the one thing that enslaves us is released, and it's claims upon you are dissolved. On that day, you begin to walk differently in the world. That day may have already happened for you - and it may not have. It may have happened over and over again. But at some point, if you continue in the path of Jesus, you'll come to a crossroads -
and this gospel story is here to help you across.
What else helps you across?
The story - and the community. Jesus does not intend for us to be solitary and lonely. He promises fields and family and houses to those who follow - not in a prosperity gospel sort of way, but in the real way of those who've crossed the crossroad and entered into Jesus' inner circle. There are mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters there. And while it's not hunky dory all the time in God's household, there is the splendiferous light of Love shining underneath and around and through - all the time - whether you personally can see it or not.
What else helps you across? There's the story and the community and the Spirit. When Jesus invites the man to follow - his invitation itself confers the power to do so. Mission Impossible is God's daily agenda! We are not left to ourselves in this matter. Ultimately, as Deacon Cynthia so wisely said at the 8 AM service, "it is simply a matter of surrender." Surrendering to the beauty and power of God's Spirit. In this surrendered state, you really can let go over everything you "own" and find yourself blessed beyond belief with abundance and joy. It's true. And I cannot describe exactly why or how it is true. But I can verify that it is so.
We don't know what happened after the man turned away sadly. He very well might have thought about it and figured out that joy really did lie in the direction Jesus pointed him to. But whatever happened with him - the closer question is what will happen with you?
You may be, after all, in this wealthy man's position. Hungry for the next step in your pilgrimage into God. Maybe you've sat on various committees of the church, you've pledged significantly for years, you've assiduously followed ethical business practices, you live a well ordered life - and that's all good, and you don't intend to give it up - but you're ready for the next step in the pilgrimage to God. You long for whatever it is that comes next. And so - Jesus invites you too into the day after - the next day - the day of freedom.
Resources:
Christian Century, A. Katherine Grieb, October 2009
Fred Craddock
Teresa de Avila, Interior Castles
Kai Harris, "Quests, Communities and Stewards", to be published in Broadcast, newsletter for Young Adults and College Students.
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