God's choice

Christmas 2011
Isaiah 9: 2-7; Ps 96; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1-20


We stood in the middle of the street and watched the fire consume the house.

My wife Diane and I spent our first four years together in Pilsen, a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Pilsen folks were old working-class Polish turned to working-class Latino with a small sprinkling of white-Anglo idealists. We had been happy there—Diane had grown up 25 blocks away and I was comfortable with Spanish-speaking folks. The down-to-earth sense of community and cultural richness was delightful and the challenges seemed capable of being handled.

One of the challenges was street gangs. Each block was divided up into the “turf” of its respective gangs. Reports of violence and occasional gunshots in the night were frequent. Non-combatants were almost never targeted—in fact the major danger was that frequently gunshots went wild and would go through the window of a house.

When our son was born, suddenly things did not feel like they could be handled anymore.

Earlier that year our street’s gang provoked a war with the 21st Street guys. Our kids were really kids, high school aged. The 21st Street guys were hard cases, experienced criminals in their 20’s. By late May when our son was born, they had already killed three of our street’s kids.

Two weeks later, in order to drive home the point of their dominance, the 21st Street guys torched a house across the street from our building. The flames rose high in the night, stopping trains on the elevated tracks above it.

A number of us stood in the street watching. The light from the flames played across the face of my wife and across the blanketed form of our three-week old son wrapped sleeping in her arms. I stood looking at them and vowed silently, “I’ve got to get them out of here.”

It was a natural response, understandable and responsible. It was the instinct of every parent whose very being twitches in response to a threat posed to their children.

But God made a different choice with his Son.

Isaiah wonders at it. Isaiah marvels at the strangeness of the God who chooses a radically different response to the flame and smoke of a world in crisis. The Judea of Isaiah’s time was locked in fear and betrayal, struggling under the yoke of powerful nations like the Assyrians, divided and dispirited and tasting despair. There was no one to turn to on earth, there was no hope in sight. The Kingdom of Judah seemed about to fail.

People fled. Folks seeking life and freedom and security for their children scattered to other lands. Any parent would.

But God made a different choice with his Son. He chose that moment to move into the neighborhood.

“For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.”

God made a different choice with his Son. Into this time and place of tension and terror, the promised Deliverer is born. Because God made a different choice, we can make different choices too—choices for freedom not fear, choices for unity not division, choices for hope not despair.

At Christmas, we remember how God really moved into the neighborhood.

“The Christmas story” has a lot more to do with Pilsen’s gangs and fires and poverty than pretty Sunday pageants. The census that put Mary and Joseph on the road to Bethlehem was a demonstration of Roman power and Roman greed. A census was all about gathering taxes from people who could barely afford to live as it was. Like the poor of every land, the Holy Family huddled together with other poor folk with whom they shared blood and history.

God could have chosen to be born in a place of power and influence. God could have picked a more peaceful time. But God chose to move into that neighborhood. God made a different choice with his Son.

There, in the space where guests and animals would be gathered out of the cold, the true Son of God was born. The great Emperor, whose official titles were “Savior of the World” and “Son of the Gods” and “Peace-Maker”, did not know and did not hear. His great generals and noble courtiers did not know and did not hear. Nothing happened that night in the great palace in Rome. The shepherds in the fields heard the good news, not of Caesar’s messengers boasting of Caesar’s most recent battle, but from angels from the true Court speaking of the true Peace-maker. The poor shepherds make up this new Savior’s court as they speak with one another as equals and come, the new community already forming, to the place which was Nowhere and now is the only Somewhere that there is.

For God made a different choice with his Son. Into the teeming furnace of the world, into a world of power and cruelty and greed and violence, God chooses to come with his Son. There is no fleeing to a garden of paradise, no refuge seeking security and peace. The choice of God is to move into a neighborhood filled with tension and fear and threat and the damage done by the powerful and the cold-hearted rich. On this street of broken longing hearts that have forgotten how to hope or to believe, God chooses to come with his Son.

That is why we gather tonight. That is why we sing our Glorias and our Noels and our praises in the night. That is why our hearts are lit even if we struggle with doubt and uncertainty and despair. “For the grace of God has appeared…” There are many sensible choices to be made in the world. But God made a different choice with his Son. When we turn our eyes to right or left, when we gaze into the silence of our hearts or outward into the face of those in need or in pain, there we see him. We see the hope that is unconquered, the hope born when God made a different choice with his Son.

Mary-eyes

4 Advent B 2011
2 Samuel 7:1-11,16; Psalm 89:1-4,19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38


“Perhaps she saw with different eyes”

In the rear of the church nave, bathed with unfamiliar December sunlight, members of the Walsingham Cell sat speaking about the role Our Lady the God-bearer plays in their lives. The conversation had turned to this amazing moment in Mary’s story and in the Gospel of Luke, when the Archangel Gabriel suddenly appeared before this young teenaged woman with news that would shake the world.

Gabriel the great messenger of the all-powerful God was a figure of awe and fear. One of our familiar hymns speaks of him having “eyes of flame.” Whenever he appears the first thing he says is “Do not be afraid”, because terror was a common reaction to the mighty archangel’s appearance. The Qur’an speaks of Gabriel and describes him as huge.

But, suggested one of the women gathered yesterday in the quiet sunny church, “Perhaps Mary saw him with different eyes.”

Perhaps, in the solitude of that moment, when a young unknown Hebrew woman was standing in the company of that unspeakable being, perhaps she saw with different eyes, and invites us to do the same. Perhaps in that wondrous conversation, the Old Law with its codes and its sacrifices and its fear before the God of Angel-Armies ceased to be a religion of unspeakable awe and became a Way of unspeakable mercy. Perhaps the towering archangel with eyes of flame, surrounded by the throbbing murmur of cherubs and the deep darkness where God himself is hidden, became a figure of tenderness and beauty, someone that Mary found easy to trust.

And the fate of the cosmos waited upon the trust and the whispered “Yes” of a young woman. And the very presence of God on earth dimmed in the Holy of Holies in the great Temple in Jerusalem to the south, and flared invisible but bright in the body and soul of this ordinary, amazing young woman.

And so today we are to look about us with different eyes.

A teacher of mine once said that God went to a lot of trouble to empty himself fully into our flesh and our history, to truly be God-with-us. Ever since then religious people have said “Thanks but no thanks” and have tried to put God back into the temple and into high heaven where he belongs. The old faith, faith before the angel’s words and Mary’s yes, has its beauty and resonance but it was a static faith where God is predictable and our response is predictable. Perform the right rituals, behave the right way, and all will be well.

But Mary shows us how we will see with different eyes in the strange new world of the Gospel. In this new world, the poor are blessed, the mighty shall be taken down from their thrones, and what the world despised is shown to be the sacred path of God. This God will gather, not in temples made by hands, but where God’s people gather for prayer and for fellowship and to welcome the outcast and to cry out for justice and mercy. Do not look to the Holy of Holies, for the Almighty has left the building. Look to the margins, to the out-of-the-way places, to humble and broken hearts. See with different eyes, with Mary-eyes, with Gospel eyes.

Look around with different eyes, and see the newness and the glory of God.

Third Sunday of Advent, Year B

Guest homily by Malcolm Heath

 

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Psalm 126 or Canticle 3 or Canticle 15
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

I don’t know if you know this, but I came through those very doors for the first time about 5 years ago.  I think it was 5 years ago last Sunday, in fact.

I don’t honestly recall what led me through, only that I needed to come to church.  That sort of thing happened to me every year at Advent.  That year, 5 years ago, I listened, and as it turned out, I stayed. 

Why?  Because I was looking for something when I came in there.  I think at the time I would have called it solace, perhaps.  Or a connection with my past, since I had grown up in an Episcopal church.  There may have been other reasons too.

But the reason why I stayed, and why I still stay, is because I hear in the words of our Lection a radically different way to look at the world.  

I find it interesting that amid all that wonderful imagery if restoration and healing in Isaiah today, of celebration for fortunes and joy returned, the Prophet proclaims that this, too, is “the day of vengeance of our God”.

Can it be possible that the day of vengeance he speaks of is the very same day that the captives will be given liberty, that the oppressed will hear good news, and the

broken hearted will be healed?    

Can it be that they are one in the same thing?  That God’s Vengeance is actually the healing of the world?

That is a crazy, upside down way to look at things. 

The psalm says that when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, “we were like those who dream”.  It can seem crazy, amid all the darkness and suffering around us and in our own lives, to believe, or even hope, that some day things will be better.  It’s a crazy dream. 

It’s a crazy dream that can only be sustained with a lot of hard work.  The epistle says that we are to “test everything” and “always rejoice”.  Things eventually will be different. 

  

To me, that combination of practice and attitude, of questioning and always looking for the crazy dream, is what we’re called to do today.  We rejoice in the coming of the Lord, but we also know that it means that everything will be different, everything will be crazy and upside down.   The gospel hints at the fear that the powerful in Jesus’ time must have felt when this crazy man John, down by the river, started preaching that everything would be different soon. 

Because, let’s face it, no matter what your age, no matter how much money you have, no matter how much you don’t like where your life is right now…Change is scary.  Change is frightening. 

And God is promising change.

I didn’t realize that he was promising me change, when I walked through those doors. I didn’t know what I was getting into.  I suspect that Mary didn’t know what she was getting into either, when she said her great Yes to the angel that appeared to her.   A poor woman, nearly rejected by her bethrothed, pregnant with a child that wasn’t his,  and facing a hard life with no respite.  And yet, somehow, she took a risk, and said that she believed in change, in God’s vision of a future where things would be different – although she couldn’t imagine how. 

So, I rejoice today.  I rejoice, though, in the same spirit of wonderment and I think, fear, that Mary rejoiced with.  That crazy jump though to God’s world, where the hungry can be fed, and the heartbroken, healed.

Renewal--public conversation!

(note--on November 17 a group of parishioners, including some Vestry members, met with Canon Neysa Ellgren to talk about dreams and challenges of a renewed Saints Peter and Paul. Below are Neysa's notes from that conversation)


NOTES FROM OUR DIALOG ON RENEWAL
with Neysa Ellgren
11/17/2011


Who we are today:

Our identity includes our past and our present, with all the memories and stories, people and places, joys and sorrows, blessings and difficulties of our common life. All informs who we are now.

Some of the things included in our identity:

• Great people
• We were very fast growing in the 1980’s – with lots of kids and colorful spaces
• We are a small church
• The shape of our liturgy
• Things get started here
• Celtic renewal
• Strong outreach
• Interdenominational
• Spiritual
• Loving and welcoming
• Became a part of things right away and now have been here 56 years
• There are fewer kids here now but lots of babies
• We are welcoming to children with special needs
• Great rector and great preacher
• Modified Anglo-catholic worship style
• Musical tradition of men and boys choirs
• Music – includes chant
• Choir thin at the moment
• Great LEV relationship
• Wednesday worship is important to me
• Spiritual depth here
• It can be hard to come and enter in here
• Pastoral care is shared
• People are worn out right now
• It is difficult when core members die
• There are young people here
• There are fewer pledges now
• We have a deficit budget
• Less volunteers and those we do have are stretched thin
• We have a Spanish language service
• We are a Believe Outloud congregation
In his address at diocesan convention this year, Bishop Michael talked about the three areas most important for congregational renewal sited by Margaret Wheatly. They are identity, communication and relationship. We have talked about our identity. How about the other two?

Communication

• Can be frustrating
• Our website: we have one but it is amateurish (this was before new site was posted!)
• It can be hard to grab on to what we need to know
• Not enough verbal communication


Relationships

• Are prime in everything
• Retired clergy are part of things here and are interested in change


The culture is changing rapidly around us. Our communities are changing and our congregations reflect that. Fewer people formally join our churches. We have fewer resources at the moment – both financial and human. And yet – people are very spiritually hungry. They find spiritual identity in eclectic and inter-faith ways. Where is the Spirit of God moving us as a community right now? Where do we find spiritual nurture within this community? What is God inspiring us to be and do now for the people of God? We can count on God beside us.
Where now does God call us to follow, invest, trust and renew?

Small group Talking, Dreaming, Visioning results:

• Be homey - be who we are
• Rahab’s Sisters connections – we are all the same with the same worries, joys and etc.
• Ministry Booklet so all know what we do and how to get involved
• One of our young adults will be leading our vestry retreat using mission and ministry model from World Vision
• Increase our finances creatively
• Reserves
• Church windows computer program
• We do family stuff – be together – intergenerational
• Family-child-youth outreach: giving tree, playgroups, school supplies, food, goosehollow
• Alternative worship
• Children and youth worship
• Small groups
• Attention to space – Redo Jenkins Hall to make it beautiful and comfy
• The congregation as a stable place in the chaos of change in the world
• A thurible – prayers ascending – sweet perfume in the midst of stench
• Boiler ministry – keeping heat and warmth – boiler is fragile right now
• Bigger, Louder, Prouder
• Joyful spiritual connection – choir first
• Pubs can be spiritual places – evangelism to where people ARE
• Outside – air and light
• Joyful noise – sit up front
• Attention to the babies
• Spiritual activities, labyrinth

urgent invitation

1 Advent B 2011
Isaiah 64: 1-9; Ps 80; 1 Cor 1: 3-9; Mark 13: 24-37


My Uncle John had a good hard fastball and a wicked curve.

John played sandlot ball back when adult men played sandlot ball and the level of play was good, very good. One day he came home from a practice and told his mom, my grandmother, “A man wants me to come with him and practice baseball, see if I can play for money.”

“What!” his mother cried. “Quit your good job at the shoe factory and go play a kids’ game! I’ll hear none of it!”

The man that had approached my Uncle John was a scout for the Yankees, and he’d asked John down to spring training in Florida. Funny the doors that open in our lives, the ones we walk through and the ones we choose not to. That was the late ‘20’s, and John had a chance to play on the same team as Babe Ruth.

Today we’re given a rare invitation too—to play in the kingdom of God, to join with the saints, to use the gifts planted in each of us to plunge into the mystery of Christ.

Advent is this invitation, and no Advent is like another. This Advent comes to us in a season of anxiety and scarcity, of cries for justice and equality, of disillusionment and uncertainty. After all the shouting and posturing, after all the broken dreams, we need this Advent. We feel our need, our hunger, and our arms stretch out for the renewing and healing power of God. “I am so done with the year 2011” said one man recently to me. Aren’t we done with living in the anxiety and smallness that the world presses upon us?

Advent comes like rain on the dry ground, like a cool breeze on a breathless hot day. And the time is now, the time is ripe for the taking. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” says the prophet. “We all fade like a leaf…” So many plans have been put into action, so many ideas have been tried out. Why not turn instead to the God who is always new, whose energy and Spirit can bring newness from what seems old and dried-out. “We are the clay, and you are the potter.” I used to like watching our ceramics teacher re-claim dried clay, clay so dry that it cracks if you try to use it and crumbles into dust in your hands. He would patiently knead it and work water into it inch by inch, tenderly massaging it until it was all moistened and could be returned into the live clay bucket. God can do the same to us, no matter how worn and dried and cracked we may be feeling.

We are that clay, and more. We “have been enriched by him, in speech and knowledge…we are not lacking in any spiritual gift” says our patron Saint Paul. If this Advent we are feeling impoverished and disabled as Christians, as a congregation, hear the Apostle’s words and take hope. We have everything we need, a mad rich trove of gifts and the animating Spirit of Jesus Christ to bring us to new and vibrant life. We speak about renewing our congregation. Renewal starts today. We embrace the fresh Spirit of God and this Advent invitation to plunge once more into the best adventure, the journey of the Gospel.

That is, if we choose the path offered us today.

My Uncle John to his dying day wondered what life would have been like if he’d gone to training camp with Babe Ruth and the rest of the Yankee line-up that Spring. For John, the invitation came once.

We are more blessed than Uncle John in that the invitation has come around again. But we must not presume on the graciousness of God and assume we can always jump on this bus. The invitation is urgent. Our own bodies and souls and a thirsty exhausted world cannot be kept waiting. Christ is not to be kept waiting. Take this Advent invitation to plunge once more into the heart of Gospel faith and of walking a Gospel path. God forbid that, like Uncle John, we wonder what it would have been like if we’d taken the invitation of God.

Gathered and freed

Christ the King 2011
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Ps 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46


I am not wild about kings. Investing too much power in one broken human being feels dangerous to me. I am way too Irish, too filled with my ancestors’ tales of being abused by people who acted “in the name of the King.”

So this feast of Christ the King fills me with questions. How it is a good thing that we end the liturgical year calling Jesus our king?

Some years ago I learned of one island community in Ireland that helped me with the idea of kings. This island is a tourist destination. When the ferry comes in, there is an older man dressed in work clothes waiting on the dock to greet you. He smiles and takes your hand, asks your name, welcomes you to the island. He will often carry your bags.

As it turns out he legally is the king of this island, head of the most ancient clan. He is entitled to the title “his majesty.” He figures the best way a king can spend his time is by welcoming guests and making them feel at home. That’s the kind of king I’d gladly bow my head to.

But we are fascinated with kings nonetheless. Right now, in chaotic times filled with uncertainty and anxiety, we may find ourselves longing for someone who knows how to put things right and who has the power to do so. On this Christ the King Sunday, these are my questions: Is there hope for us? Can we as a congregation, as a city, as a nation and a world, be gathered in a positive, life-giving community?

When we first gathered we prayed that Jesus would “restore all things.” In that prayer we named that we were “divided and enslaved by sin”, and long to be “freed and gathered” by Jesus as king.

If Jesus is the kind of king who can truly restore, if he is the kind of king who cares that I along with the rest of humanity is divided and enslaved, if he can gather us and set us free, then this is the kind of king I can get behind.

I acknowledge that my own life is divided and enslaved, by fear and anger and pride. I acknowledge that my life is impacted by powerful forces that instill fear and a sense of scarcity. I can see those forces wreaking havoc in the world, especially on poorest and most vulnerable.

The world is a loud and frightened place. It feels like everywhere there are anxiety, anger and fear, blame and a litany of problems. People the world over are rising in turmoil, seeking freedom from oppression or from poverty or from hopelessness. There is an overriding sense that there is something deeply wrong, but no one can quite grasp the key to turn that will make it right. Even in our own midst, in our own church, this sense of restlessness and being off-center affects us all. And so many of us are struggling with that sense of anxiety and insecurity, be it employment or finance or health or just trying to walk upright in shaky times.

We have truly been scattered, like the sheep in the first reading. Someone needs to look for us and gather us. Christ Jesus is doing just that, right now, right here, in our midst. The powerful and the self-sufficient will no longer have their own way. There is a new rule, and a new way to live with one another—a way that is humble and respectful, a way that places an abundant God at the center of our lives.

And we are called and empowered to live this new way, right here and now.

The king who gathers us is generous. He gives us his own life and his own spirit. We are royal, even though we may not feel that way! We are not our anxiety, our scarcity, or our despair. Instead Paul tells us we can live “with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” We are the saints, we are those empowered to live the life of the king.

Today we are called to gather and to live freely as sisters and brothers of the king.

This king does not force. He invites, but he also empowers. He calls us to a new way of being and living, but humbly awaits our response.

I wish to be gathered and freed to live the king’s life, here in this community of Saints Peter and Paul. Here is where it is possible for me to be that free, gathered person—together with sisters and brothers, set free from fear and from anxiety and from scarcity, freed from hiding out in my tiny anxious individual little life, freed to live my deepest desire, my deepest passion. That passion is to know and explore the depths of the heart of king Jesus, and to be transformed into a royal citizen of his realm where the king lives in the poor and those most in need.

That’s why we are invited to make our commitments today, to pledge our proportional support of this community. We do this to be free of anxiety and scarcity and the rule of power and of fear. We do this to love and honor and explore this strange, non-violent, non-coercive, always-generous king, a king who has no crown, no limousine, no security force, no castle, no home except in our hearts and in the faces of the poor. This gentlest and kindest of kings only wants to welcome us and to share his realm. We give, we pledge, we commit, we touch hands upon his altar because we want to be with him, with his gathered people, and with those forgotten people whom he loves. We want to be freed and gathered with him in our midst. That’s really what a scattered, angry, anxious world longs for most deeply.

from adult formation conversation: creeds and faith

Adult Formation---“I believe/we believe…”


When have we had news so good that we ourselves could not keep it to ourselves?

Jesus did not preach “doctrine” or a creed as we understand it today. The content of Jesus’ teaching was the Reign/Kingdom of God, which was presented in images and metaphors, open images mostly without interpretation.

When have we been so full of Kingdom-news that we could not wait to share it? Have we ever? If not, then would we like to? Do we long to?

“Credo” in Latin, translated “I believe”, is not a matter of intellectual agreement to an array of ideas and concepts so much as it means “I give my heart.” To who or what do we give our heart?

Cf Marcus Borg in The Heart Of Christianity: forms of faith…
• “Assensus”, “assent”, agreement to a set of ideas or concepts often arrayed against others. Rose to prominence in Protestant Reformation and in scientific era where faith-claimed were seen as embattled. Perhaps not the most significant, not that to which people “give their hearts”…
• “Fiducia”, “trust”, like the experience of floating; “letting go” into the divine arms
• “Fidelitas”, “fidelity”, faithfulness, loyalty, allegiance, how you act in integrity, a way of life
• “Visio”, “vision”, a way of seeing the world, the cosmos, the self—as indifferent and even hostile, or as graced and loved and reconciled. The latter leads to a sense of liberation, compassion

Borg makes case for a “deep and humble and therefore imprecise” approach to assensus affirming the reality of God, the centrality of Jesus, and the centrality of the Bible, linking “assensus” with “visio”, a sense of a universe which is graced and inhabited and ruled by love.

Why Creeds, if not reflected in the proclamation of Jesus? Tribal or family narrative, encapsulation of our core story, sketching the parameters within which we find out if we will give our hearts?

Creed as inclusive: “deep and humble and therefore imprecise”?

Creed as exclusive, the “door-check”? Or rather, the “beautiful truth…” Older paradigm “Believe, behave, belong” gives way in many places to “belong, behave, believe”, especially in contemporary “emerging” communities. The hospitality of God is foremost today in our practice and thereby in our theology. Welcome comes first!

Children of God first...

Some people love it, and some people hate it, but we know we can count on hearing it every November. It’s that very precious, very Victorian litany of the saints: “One was a doctor, and one was a priest, and one was killed by a fierce wild beast …”

If you’re familar with this hymn, you know that there’s not any reason, no, not the least, why you shouldn’t be one too.

This is all well and good, but as for me, I can think of literally thousands of reasons why I shouldn’t be a saint. Mine is not a deficit of faith, or courage, or humility. Every morning, I wake up feeling hopeful: I greet the new day with gratitude and rejoicing, I feed my cats and pretend I am St. Francis, I say Morning Prayer and feel, truly, like one of the saints of God. All is right with the world.

Then I leave my house. And I have to deal with the other saints of God.

That’s my problem.

This is the great paradox of sainthood: We can’t get there alone. We know that we glorify God by doing His work in the world, by feeding each other, sheltering each other, comforting each other, forgiving each other. Yet if you are at all like me, other people are what drive you right off the fast track to glory. If you’ve left your own house lately, you know that the peacemakers are blocking traffic on your way to work. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness won’t stop hassling you with clipboards. When you get home, you have voicemail messages from the meek and the mourners and the poor in spirit, who always seem to need you when you’re most exhausted. And the pure in heart just make you feel bad about yourself.

I would say that I only feel this way in my worst moments, but if this is true, I have a lot of worst moments.

And this, of course, is where we fall back on grace.

Because nobody is a saint of God all the time. Because nobody always feels patient and brave and true, no matter what that song may say. Because no matter how boundless your devotion to Christ, and how deep your reserves of compassion, there will come those moments where you reach the end of your fuse. You find yourself raising your voice or saying those words or doing that thing that you swore you had done for the last time.

When this happens, you can beat up on yourself for not being saintly enough.

Or you can take a deep breath and say to yourself these words from John’s letter: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

We can be saints of God later. We are children of God first.

If we can believe that John was writing this letter to us, for us, we can listen when he calls us beloved. “We are God’s children now,” he says; but “what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: When he is revealed, we will be like him.”

All Saints’ Day is a chance for us to suspend our disbelief and trust that when Christ is revealed, in the world and in our hearts, we will all be like him. We, too, will be robed in white; and we will worship before the throne of God; and we will be guided to springs of the water of life.

And if we do find a way to offer this generosity to ourselves, to believe that we have some hope of sainthood even when we feel exhausted and small, it becomes somehow easier to extend that hope to others. Once we ease up on our own unsaintly souls, we are free to notice tiny moments of goodness in everyone else. The punks and the peacemakers and the poor in spirit. Our impossible bosses and our demanding families. Also that guy who drives 45 in the passing lane, and the woman who always seems to be in front of you in the Fred Meyer checkout line, trying to buy a Snickers bar with a personal check.

Saints of God later, children of God first.

On this All Saints’ Day, may we find it within ourselves to make one more brave attempt at virtuous and godly living -- and to accept that, by the great miracle of our birthright, there is a kernel of sainthood in us all.


Homily delivered by Cat Healy for All Saints Sunday

What's your role?

All Saints 2011


On 39th Street heading south, each weekday as I drive my youngest to high school, I see a well-decorated house. The decorations have nothing to do with Halloween or any other seasonal holiday. This man has his house tricked out in solidarity with the Occupy movement. Along with the other challenging statements is a pair of hand-painted signs. They ask, “What is your role?”

I am haunted by this question ever since the signs appeared before Halloween. I am one person who has been moved and drawn by the Occupy movement, and as the Portland Occupiers have continued their vigil I still ask myself “What is my role?” Other clergy and church-people have expressed their support. To be neutral, to not choose, is to take a role. It is inevitable.

The question “What is your role?” haunts me today, on our Feast of All Saints.

Today we celebrate the great company of Christ, those whose names are famous and those who are known only to us, and those whose names are known to God alone. Today we feel their presence, crowding around us whether or not our eyes see the pews and aisles filled. We see the images of those who look upon us each time we gather here—Peter and Paul, Mary the mother of Jesus in several different manifestations, John the Beloved who stands with Mary beside Jesus’ cross, Brigid and Columba elsewhere in the building. They have run their race and they have kept the faith. They ask us, “What is your role?”

Our local saints are here too, those whose names come to us when we tell tales of the “old days” whether the old days are 50 years ago, or five, or even one. Some of their names were read aloud, the hall has other images on our altar of the dead. Our high altar is filled with the ashes of many of them. They were not perfect and probably none of them will have a statue or an ikon made for them. But among us they have run their race, and here where they prayed and served and laughed and cried and sometimes fought but hopefully reconciled they too ask us, “What is your role?”

Is All Saints a day only to honor others? Or is it a day when we sing, with the old hymn, “And I want to be one too!”

So then, “what is our role?”

A saint is not someone who is perfect, who doesn’t make mistakes. A saint is someone who says “yes” to God, and then tries to live like they mean that “yes.” Remember last week the two definitions of “hypocrite”? One of course is someone who does other than they say. But I remember the second one today—a hypocrite is someone who is undecided.

Sometimes all of us are hypocrites. But a saint acknowledges that and tries to be more, with God’s help.

Here in this community of saints, this gathering under the protection of Saints Peter and Paul, we are in the season of harvest and stewardship. We have the great gift of the company of all the saints who help us ask ourselves, “What is our role?” We only thrive as a community if we do our best, with God’s help, to say “yes” to God, to decide for Christ, to embrace our role as the church here and now and give ourselves to the life we share.

This involves every aspect of our lives. Stewardship heals us in Christ, because stewardship brings together the separates pieces of our lives in an act of gift and joy. Our minds, our hearts, our hands, and yes our money, that which we earn by our work—all is healed and brought together by our “yes” of faith, our belonging to that community of saints.

We all have room to grow in Christ. Inserted in bulletins today is a simple chart showing estimates of percentages of income and giving. The word “tithe” means ten percent, and is still regarded as a standard of Christian giving. For many of us it is still a goal. But it is a good goal, one that people who do tithe say sets their faith free in surprising ways. Accept this card as a gift from the saints today, many of whom lived by this standard or exceeded it.

The saints of God both set a high bar and accompany us as we journey on into Christ. They encourage us, surround us with their prayers and protection, but above all else ask us that challenging, loving question: “What is your role?” I speak to you, the living saints of Saints Peter and Paul: what is our role? What is our role in this season, which teaches us how to live our whole life? And how will we say or sing of the saints of God: “And I want to be one too.”

Following Moses: stewardship

Let us pray - May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
As my wife, Melissa, and I were drifting off to sleep recently and talking about this sermon, we were interrupted when my laptop computer cried out “congratulations, you’re a winner”. Alas, the disembodied voice was not from the Oregon Lottery Commission, so you are still going to get a stewardship sermon. But, if we ignore the disturbing thought of some guy hanging out in my computer, in the dark of night, declaring us victors in some unknown competition, the message was actually quite appropriate for today’s scripture readings.
Since late August, The lectionary has been working through the Book of Exodus. We have heard about the birth of Moses, the burning bush, the institution of Passover and the parting of the Red Sea, allowing Israel to escape the bondage of Egypt. Unfortunately, rather than claiming their victory over slavery, the Israelites simply started to complain and misbehave. God responded to their complaints of hunger with manna from heaven, and to their complaints of thirst with water from a rock, and yet, the people would not be satisfied. So, when Moses was on Mount Sinai with God for forty days, the “chosen people” created an idol in the form of a golden calf, and then celebrated their new god by having an orgy.
Moses was angry when he returned. I can imagine what he might have said once he got his hands on Aaron: I leave for a few weeks and you lose your minds? How many commandments did you break? You shall have no other gods before me- check, you shall not make for yourself an idol- check, you shall not commit adultery – check, you shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife - check; that’s four, and I’m just getting started. We have been terrible stewards of God’s faithfulness; do you know how hard I am going to have to work to fix this?
And work hard Moses did. In last week’s reading, he convinced God not to destroy the entire nation of Israel, and in today’s reading he is still debating with God about punishing the rabble by withholding divine presence and assigning an angel to escort the Israelites to the Promised Land instead of God. God ultimately relented and agreed to continue on with Israel. Moses was so moved by God’s kindness that he asked to see God’s full glory, to which God replied “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” Instead, the hand of God shielded and protected Moses, allowing him to see only God’s back – it was the most that Moses, or anyone, could have hoped for at time. Moses had won God’s favor and, in spite, of their whining, complaining and misbehavior, the Israelites by extension had won too.
But the world’s greatest victory came in the form of the incarnate Jesus, in whom the face of God was made visible to the whole world. And, through the Holy Spirit, the face of God is with us everywhere today. Look around you right now; the faces you see staring back at you are the face of God. So are the faces on the bus, the faces in the grocery store, the face of the young woman ensnared by human trafficking and the face of the hungry woman on the corner – all reflect the face of God in our midst.
In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote, “you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia”. Would Paul write the same thing about us? Are we an example to Montavilla and the other neighborhoods in which we live? We here at Saints Peter and Paul have a tradition of answering God’s call, but are we doing everything that we can to be the face of God in a cold and hard world? Occasionally, we get tired and frustrated, bored and disinterested. In our times of greatest distress and disappointment it becomes hard to remember that we live lives of abundance, it’s hard because in this world where a looming sense of scarcity clouds our perception of God’s true abundance, it can be difficult to see the path forward; a path that should bring us into closer communion with Christ. And so, this stewardship season, let’s make a first pledge that involves no money. Rather, let us pledge to spend more one on one time with God. Find a spiritual discipline that works for you, try the Daily Office, or Forward Day by Day, read the upcoming Sunday’s weekly lectionary, perhaps a short prayer in the shower is more your speed. What we do specifically, is not as important as our willingness to open a dialogue with God through prayer and Bible Study. Now, hold-on before you peg me as some wild-eyed fundamentalist, I have not forgotten that I am an Episcopalian and that we are not exactly known for our Bible literacy or deep spirituality. But if we truly want to embrace and reflect God’s love to the world it will pay to consider what Bishop Michael recently shared with me when I complained about not having adequate time for prayer and Bible study. He wrote that “life does get away from us at times! That is what spiritual discipline is about – bringing us back to what is essential and important instead of what seems pressing.” The Bishop is a wise man. In my experience, when I successfully carve out time for prayer every day, I am much better prepared to deal with the rigors of life. Unfortunately, I know firsthand that such discipline can be allusive, but pledging to do better is a great first step.
Next, we should pledge to follow in the steps of the Thessalonians as we strive to be an example to all believers and to start intentionally spreading God’s love in the world. Again, I know who we are as Episcopalians and I am not talking about taking to the streets with Bibles in hand, but I am reminded of the 1960’s song, “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love”. Regardless of what you think of the song, the title sets a high bar for our behavior as Christians. When we see the faces of God in midst, on the bus, at the grocery store, walking the street or sitting on the corner, our job is to be loving and kind; flash the occasional smile to a stranger, say please and thank you to the gas station attendant, make eye contact with the homeless woman and say hello. Without openly evangelizing a single soul, the world will know that we are Christians by our love – it’s cheesy but true.
So far, I have asked us to make two pledges that have not cost you a penny, but now I ask you to give prayerful consideration to our support of this place, to ensure that this source of hope at the corner of 82nd and Pine remains a healthy and vibrant reflection of Christ’s love in the world. Rahab’s Sisters and Brigit’s Table, the dental van and coffee hour do not happen without the contributions of time, talent and treasure from this congregation. For those who feel called, you can help feed the hungry on Saturday morning, support women in crisis on Friday night or help out with the dental van one afternoon a month. Maybe you feel called to serve as an acolyte or a sub-deacon. Each of these things, and many more, are critical pieces of the ministry of this fine parish, everyone’s volunteer contribution is most welcome here. Of course, your treasure is critical as well and I ask you to spend some committed time in prayer as you consider the words of our offertory: all things come of thee, and of thy own have we give thee.
I am asking much of us this fall, to pledge our time to prayer, our love to our neighbors and our time, talent and treasure to Saints Peter and Paul. Moses proved to be a reliable steward of God’s faithfulness and so was rewarded with a glimpse of God’s passing image. We have been similarly rewarded through the incarnation of Christ and we have won the privilege of seeing God’s face everywhere we look. It is our job to build on the rich history and compassion of this parish, so that when God brings home the faithful with a cry from the dark saying congratulations, you are a winner, we will know that we have followed Moses as reliable stewards of God’s faithfulness.
Amen

Preached by Sean Wall, seminarian, Sunday October 16 2001

A letter to the elders

Note: this is a homily preached by Academy student Joshua Kingsley both to the student body and to St. Stephen's Episcopal Church--good stuff for conversation between the generations...kn


Academy homily October 23, 2011
Joshua Kingsley


Has anyone been following the Republican field of presidential contenders lately? Regardless of one’s political leanings, it is entertaining theater to follow what is happening with this group of 8 ambitious people trying to obtain the highest office in the land. Sometimes I imagine Jesus being covered by a 24 hr news media trying to fill their time. I wonder if Jesus would be kind of like Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, who has repeatedly declined to run for president... so much so that politico.com recently posted a 5:00 montage of all the times he has told the press he will not run. I can see the reports now of reporters asking Jesus, “Are you going to be the King of the Jews?” and Jesus saying no and the pundits talking about how Jess had “left the door open”. I wonder if Jesus would appear on Hard Ball or Meet the Press; Fox News or MSNBC? It would appear that “gotcha journalism” was alive and well in Jesus’ day. “Is it lawful to pay taxes”? This question might be asked by a tea party member or one of those 99%. It is so easy to put everything into two opposing categories, isn’t it? And it’s funny how those two categories aren’t really ever that far apart in the end. Jesus is quite genius in handling his detractors, maybe Sarah Palin could take notes. Jesus doesn’t have talking points, He has no handlers, He isn’t on anyone’s payroll and is not accountable to any voting block or demographic. Because of this, Jesus is able to smash the boxes given to him the “the world”. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s...genius! What would it sound like if we uttered this idea today? Render unto George Washington what is George Washington’s? Render unto my work place what belongs to my work place. Render unto my family what belongs to my family. Render unto St. Stephen’s what belongs to St. Stephens. Render unto future generations what belongs to us.

I am 28 years old and I tend to work in three areas dominated by people much older than myself: Classical music, education, and the church. These are three institutions that are being shaken to their core by changes in the world. Now, people don’t often as me for my opinion as often as they tell m what should think. I have often thought about writing a letter to baby-boomers, the generation that includes my grandparents and parents. Keep in mind, generational boxes are about as useful as any other artificial categories, but here’s what it would say.

Dear Grandma, grandpa, mom, and dad,

How are things? I hope all is well. Things are going okay with my friends and me. Work is a little hard to find, but friends are easy. I have been thinking about some of the things I have read about you guys, and some of thing things I have experienced.
I was reading the other day that you are the first generation that grew up with TV. That’s kinda cool. It reminds me of being the first generation growing up with the internet. Did your parents feel the same way about TV that you do about the internet, computers, and smart phones? I have also read that your generation is the healthiest and most prosperous generation that has ever lived, generally expecting the world to get better. I feel like I should say thanks. Thanks for the great music, thanks for expanding the helping expand civil rights for all of us. We owe you a lot.
It has been interesting growing up with you. Most of my friends and I grew up in broken homes, that wasn’t too fun but I know sometimes things happen. We also see a world with a rapidly deteriorating ecology and a wrecked economy, a lot of this done by baby boomers. I have read that you grew up in a world dominated by two super-powers, American being one. I am living now in a world where I am a global minority, where I now compete with people from China, India, Europe, and Brazil for jobs that once only belonged to you. While so much in this world is better because of you, there is a lot that is scaring me. So many of the things I grew up with are not working: Church and government to name a few. I’m not in charge, but it seems like the discussions and arguments taking place have no relevance on the world I experience. People keep fighting battles from 30 years ago while my world is crumbling.
I have a favor to ask. You see, many of these changes that are happening in the world whether we like it or not. I don’t want to grow up in a world where these institutions don’t exist. I think they can be saved, but to do so we must recognize they won’t ever be the same again. We must render to the past what is the pasts’. Please help us to guide the world into the future. Thanks for everything,

We are entering a period in “the church” called stewardship season. Many of you probably got a letter this weekend asking you to support the ministry at St. Stephen’s through time, talent, and treasure; over the next month, you will be hearing about ways to support St. Stephen’s from the members of St. Stephens. Stewardship, like the rest of the church, is changing. We are moving from the annual fundraising system to a year round support system that will be a two-way street between the church and her parishioners. In addition to the usual letter and phone call that so many of us remember, you will also be invited to a social function from someone on the stewardship committee. This won’t be a pitch, but an honest-to-goodness construction of the friendship and family that ties us together through the Holy Spirit. This will be a time for us to bond and share our lives together, to connect in a little “us” time. St. Stephens asks for your stewardship, it’s only fair that St. Stephens provides some stewardship as well.
I can’t lie, many of you know that the budget of St. Stephens isn’t pretty and Mic can fill you in on all the details. The short version is that the average monthly pledge is $125 currently and to make our budget we’ll need that to be $170 to maintain our current level of operation. No games, no pleading, that’s the cold, simple math.
We can render to Ceaser what is Ceasar’s. To do so, we must render to God what is God’s. What that is, is something only we can answer on an individual level. From my generation to yours, from me to you: please don’t bail out yet. Please help us see the future and get there.

fear and trembling

Proper 21 A 2011
Exodus 17: 1-7; Canticle 13; Phil 2: 1-13; Mt 21: 23-32


So the season turns, the days are now shorter than the nights. We feel the change—the equinox and its transition is bred into our very bones. I always feel a sense of sadness, a kind of middle-aged “emo” actually, combined with a tinge of buried dread. Have I prepared for this winter—the winter of actual cold as well as the winter of my soul?

This is the beginning of the harvest, when of old the work that was done in Spring and Summer is revealed as having been abundant, adequate, or thin. Churches customarily do their stewardship drives right now, to ask the question of the harvest of our spiritual lives in Christ? Did we sow thinly, keeping back seed, hedging our bets? Or did we sow abundantly, casting our care on God and taking a generous chance on Christ and on our life together in Christ’s Body?

From ancient days the church has put this time of year in the keeping of the archangel Michael and of the other angels. In our calendar they all share one single day, which is fine since Thomas Aquinas said they could all share the head of a pin if they wanted. Michael guards the equinox, the slow disappearance of the sun, and guards the harvest with his strong direct gaze and, sometimes, his scales in which he is charged with weighing souls in the balance. Michael is fair but Michael is known to be kind, and so might place a compassionate finger on one side of the scale if we’re found to be a bit light on the merit-side of things.

It is in light of this searching time, this time of reckoning and accountability, that Paul’s words strike at my heart:

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling…”

The questions are questions posed to each of us. The answers will look different for each of us, because the Kingdom of God is not a realm of robots. But there will be a contour and shape to our lives that we will hold in common, if we are struggling to live together in a way that reflects the Gospel.

The shape of that life is reflected in the readings today.

The people of Israel were thirsty in the desert. There’s really no surprise there. Just as in a church that struggles with a sense of need, conflict arose, people grumbled and complained, and they even turned on their leader, in this case Moses. The choice made by Moses makes all the difference. He does not turn around on the people and fight back with the same words. Moses turns instead to God. He dares to place his complaints at the feet of the One who has been with them. God instructs Moses to strike the rock, and water flows out. Many years later, the New Testament will tell us “And the rock was Christ.”

When we work out our salvation together amidst a sense of scarcity, we all, leaders and people, are to turn to God and place our needs at God’s feet. This may not be remembered as our finest moment as it was not for Israel, but it is a moment when we remember again that God is our redeemer.

Paul referred to this experience at Massah and Meribah because the early Church was not a community of sweetness and light, but one of squabbles and struggles. The stakes were higher than ours today—they were under direct threat from forces bigger than themselves, and they were trying to live a brand-new set of teachings. There was a lot of petty politics, what we would today call “drama”, and simple human meanness. In light of this Paul says, “Have the same mind in you as was in Christ…he did not grasp at divine identity, but he emptied himself like a cup turned upside down…he took the form of a slave…” We work out our salvation when we look on one another with humility and gratitude and love, and let the humble Christ reach out and serve one another, laying aside our need to be right and our need to be obeyed.

Jesus too knew the reality of living together, how people can posture and squabble and boast and play politics and walk away and even betray. Trying to forge a community in the midst of tensions between the old religious establishment, the “cradle Episcopalians” as it were, and the new rough-edged people joining his movement, he tells the take of two sons. One has the right words, “O yes sir, off I go!” but does nothing. The other says flatly, “Not me!” but goes off and does the work asked of him in the end. Who is doing the will of the Lord? Better a rough-edged blunt refusal, followed by a quiet serving, than a pious “Amen” with no intention of actually going to the trouble of living out those hard Gospel demands. Today we might say that “the eco-hipsters and agnostic activists are getting into the Kingdom ahead of the church-people.” We work out our salvation when, no matter what we do or do not say with our mouths, or how we dress or what kind of music we like, we do what people reflecting the Gospel do.

This time of year reflects the harvest of the earth and of our lives. The great archangel gazes upon the truth of how we have lived. It is a merciful thing that we are re-reminded of what the harvest of our lives is meant to show if we take on ourselves the name of Christ. Turn in confidence to God, put aside petty ambition, serve humbly as Christ served, walk our talk or else don’t even talk the talk—that’s the contour of lives where we are working out our salvation with fear and trembling. There’s room for lots of variety within those contours, but the end is a life we live together, where people can hear and see an echo and reflection of the life and teaching of our Master.

All we have

Holy Cross/”Capacity Crowd” Sunday 2011
Isaiah 45:21-25; 
Psalm 98:1-4; 
Gal 6: 14-18; John 12:31-36a


Years ago in Chicago, Diane and I hung out with a large network of renegade Mennonites and recovering evangelicals. Since I was somewhere in the process of becoming an ex-Roman Catholic, we fit in well. We’d meet in bars and other places and talk faith and God and doubt and life. Once one of our friends named Liz asked me, “Why do you stick with the Christian thing, anyway? What’s so compelling about Christianity?”

I thought hard and, after a long silence, replied “Because I think that the crucified Christ is at the heart of the world and at the heart of all reality.”

“What does that mean?” Liz persisted.

I think I stammered, and I must not have said anything memorable since I cannot remember what I said.

I do not think I can explain myself any better today. But I would still answer Liz’s question the same way. I believe that at the heart of the world, at the heart of all reality, is the crucified Christ.

Today’s feast is a six-month warm-up for Holy Week. But it is not like Good Friday with darkness and grief. Holy Cross Day is a shout of joy born from the heart of God. Today we remember our spiritual hungers and our questions of mind and soul. Today we re-kindle our wonder as we gaze upon the One whose arms are flung wide on the hard wood of the cross. There may not be many answers available today. But there is a re-kindling of passion in the soul, and there is aching, aching gratitude. Today we know that we are known, we are loved, that God has reached across the divide of sin and sorrow and pain and emptiness with one extravagant, passionate gesture. Jesus Christ is with us and for us, now and completely and always. All our seeking, all our searching, all our longing, all our sorrows and emptiness as well as our joy and our peace are found in this one figure, the one who, “when lifted up, draws all people to himself.” We look up from our modern desert to the One on the Cross for healing, for meaning, for hope, for peace, for new life.

And we do not just look up. We pray that “we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him.”

That’s what catches me. I am not interested in proving a doctrine or an idea about God or Jesus. I am not interested in putting my questions or even my doubts to sleep with easy answers. I am interested in exploring how God’s astounding action in Jesus points out a way of life and meaning and transformation. I am interested in living this astounding, ancient, but always brand-new vision with others who have also been drawn and fascinated and set on fire.

If we wish to embrace Jesus, then we need to follow Jesus. If we wish to know Jesus, then we must discover and live what Jesus taught and loved. If we wish to be transformed, then we must travel with the ragged band of pilgrims who have been called and fascinated and healed and set on fire. That’s what a church is—those who have been marked and claimed by the Crucified One who lives.

The Holy Cross and the Crucified One sets their seal on us as we start another season of serving and seeking.

Just as I did not have any explanations beyond the crucified Christ years ago, I do not have many explanations or many detailed plans for us today. I used to approach this time of year with an invisible clipboard in hand, ready to map out the year’s cruise activities. Instead, I have Jesus Christ and him crucified. I trust him to open our ears and our hearts and to kindle hope.

We have every reason to be confident and hopeful. Look around and see the fellow-pilgrims that Jesus has called together. We are God’s gifts to one another, to comfort and to challenge one another.

We are a community which has been blessed with rich traditions of faith, be they Anglo-Catholic or Celtic or Hispanic or just plain ol’ Episcopal with our different backgrounds added. There is richness and gift in all of these traditions. What matters is to be together in faith before the Crucified Jesus and to listen for his voice. He is enough, and he will tell us what we need to do and to be.

Here are my hopes for this year…

First, I hope that we join in prayer that God in Jesus will speak to us and to renew us in the way that he wills. I hope that we gather in prayer, whether privately or in community, and ask God to work the divine will and joy in us.

I hope that we seek ways to grow in the practices that help us follow Jesus. I hope we find ways that make sense for us in our changing world and our demanding, time-challenged lives to do that. The conversation this Tuesday evening at Tamara’s is part of exploring that. I hope that we can be a congregation that teaches and supports people in the practices that make following Jesus real.

I hope that we gather more. I understand that we all consider ourselves time-poor, that work and family make fierce demands on us. I understand that we face many challenges, be they health or finance or other concerns. I also understand that our surrounding culture is not sympathetic with Sunday as a day to practice regular worship. Life in “Portlandia” tells us that our individual lives are private projects and that weekends are precious personal time. It is counter-cultural to regularly gather with others for weekly worship—your friends may describe you as “really into church.” But it is needful to simply gather in order to live a strong and supple Christian life. After ten years of martial arts, I understand Sunday gathering as spiritual exercise class. When one goes to exercise class rarely or not at all, one’s practice gets awkward and one is always starting from the beginning. And like a martial arts class, the class is better if there are more students gathered for mutual support and to challenge us to be the best we can be. We are stronger when we are together.

I hope we learn again how blessed our lives are and how everything we are and have are pure gift and how, if we give gladly and joyously, we are set free and come that much closer to the One who gave us his very self. “All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” We shall sing and say this all through this Fall, ancient words, words first spoken by King David when faced with building a temple and a kingdom. We are building a life, a rich life in Christ.

In an age when everything is changing for organized church, when we are faced with so many challenges, when the struggles of the church are matched by the struggles of our own lives and those of our neighbors, I have few answers. I only offer what the feast and the Scripture give us today. We have the Crucified One who lives with us and for us, and who is at the heart of all that is.

Forgive

September 11, 2011
Gen 50: 15-21; Ps 114; Rom 14: 1-12; Mt 18: 21-35


The energy behind the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks took me by surprise.

Like most churches, we responded to the attacks with special services, welcoming those who sought a church for comfort in those days. We even held a one-year anniversary concert, and if memory serves we did something on the second anniversary. It was pretty plain by then that people were done, that attention had been fixed with a sense of dread and great controversy on the war that seemed to march on us whether we raised our voices in protest or not. In the years since 9/11 so much has happened that has felt out of our control—war and occupation in two nations, increasingly bitter partisan politics with little co-operation between the sides, deepening economic fear and suffering for more and more people.

Remembrance is important, the stories of the famous and the ordinary who lived, and those who died, need to be told. They need to be given their names. But in addition to sorrow and grief and remembrance are deeper, darker truths. I find people speaking with a sense of loss about the “innocence” of life before 9/11. For some, the ‘90’s are remembered as a sort of innocent golden age, when money flowed freely and we were unafraid and the most interesting thing happening was the clumsy sexual escapade of a president and an intern. We do love tales of a lost paradise—those with longer memories, or whose lives here or overseas did not reflect this nostalgic vision, do not think there was much innocence or safety to be lost.

Now we speak of fear. “Terrorism’s next move” announces today’s headlines. And we live with unease about what happened next, what we thought and what we did. An upsurge of racism and prejudice against anyone Middle Eastern or Islamic in our midst, rage and the deep need to see someone else suffer because we had suffered, we had lost, we were now afraid. Somewhere in our home we have a photo magazine feature published shortly after the attacks. The pictures are beautiful, terrifying or horrifying or heart-breaking or inspiring images of the dead or the heroic living or the impossible images of jet liners flying into the buildings that were colossal symbols of power and invulnerability. But after all the moving, powerful photos, the last page is for me the most memorable. It depicts two jet fighters flying in close formation, silvery and deadly. The caption below says simply, “Vengeance.”

The composers of the book were more right than they knew. I think a great deal of what we struggle to come to terms with is what happened in the days and weeks and months and years after that iconic day in September. Lands were bombed and invaded, blood was spilled on both sides. Much of that blood was innocent, families and children like our own who were trying to live until the flash of the missile or the gun. I do not stand here ready to open arguments about whether Afghanistan should have been invaded, whether Iraq should have been invaded and occupied, let alone the morality of the “robust interrogation tactics” practiced on those captured.

What matters today is all of that happened. The post-9/11 world in which we live is one of greater unease and fear, greater uncertainty, the knowledge that in this world there are those who will strike at us and call it just. And the post-9/11 world is one in which we know ourselves to be capable of rage and vengeance and the willingness to deal out pain and death in return.

How does a church commemorate such a day?

We bring all this truth to the feet of Jesus and listen for what Jesus has to say.

Today’s Gospel is a playful but stern tale of the power of forgiveness—God’s forgiveness and humanity’s capacity to withhold forgiveness. One man owes an impossible sum—10,000 talents meant this guy was a corporate raider, a Ponzi scheme-level thief. He asks for impossible mercy, and an impossibly merciful lord gives it to him. A fellow-servant owes the equivalent of a few month’s working-class wages, nothing compared to that first staggering debt. The first servant does what the law allows—has him thrown into jail.

The law may allow this, a sense of justice may allow this, but this is not a story of law and justice. This is a story of impossible mercy and forgiveness, and how astoundingly short we fall of the lord’s kindness. “So it will happen to you, unless you forgive from the heart.” We the church gather around to listen to Jesus, and this is what Jesus says—forgive, even the colossal kind of debt. Who knows—perhaps the one you forgive feels we owe the same sort of debt ourselves.

The Gospel is stern today. It is the Old Testament that holds out hope.

Joseph could have revenged himself on his brothers who abused him and sold him as a slave. Once their father was dead, there was really nothing to stand in his way. But the greatest miracle of the book of Genesis, with its floods and creation and fires from heaven, is in this moment. Joseph, with all the power of Egypt at his command, chooses another path. “Am I in the place of God?” Forgiveness and a new future opens for everyone in that room, fear and grudges are put aside, and the chain of events that will lead one day to the birth of the Savior is set in motion.

“Am I in the place of God?” Justice and the knowledge of the right thing to do in fearful, confusing times are not in our hands. The fear and rage of this age may be around us, and it is in us. But freedom in Christ is possible and offered to us today. Each of us are debtors to God’s mercy. We are not in the place of God. But we are given the Godly power and command to put an end to the fearful, rage-filled ways of this world. “Forgive” is the one word that churches can and must bring to the table today.

A wise man said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”*



*Paul Boese, as quoted by Rob Voyle in “Appreciative Inquiry Newsletter”

Christ our Passover

Proper 19 A 2011
Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


Sunday after Sunday, right before receiving Communion, we recite “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” We probably do not pay a lot of attention to the words, as we go into Episcopalian automatic pilot. At this deeply sacred moment in our liturgy, why do we remember the Passover?

A full answer to that would easily make up a graduate course and probably a lifetime of reflection. Rivers of ink have been spilled on this deep truth, both in the Bible itself and also in century upon century of commentary. But today we hear the story, the moment of the feast itself that we remember.

We have heard the story before. It is a tale filled with real danger. Slaves under brutal captors dream a wild and impossible dream—freedom. A people divided and broken as abused people become are told to gather as one. And they are made one—by the merciful yet dreadful judgment of a mysterious God who comes out of their deep past to make himself shockingly present and inescapably contemporary. The divine judgment is being uncorked against the complacency and prosperity and self-sufficiency of a great empire, an empire that trusts its gods to make the river rise and fall and to keep the harvest flowing and business humming and everyone in their proper place. The divine judgment will upset business as usual to its very core. The face of the divine Wisdom, says a later commentator, will smile gently upon the enslaved and the forgotten yet turn with a warrior’s snarl upon the powerful.

So do this, you who trust in the divine mercy. Gather as a people. Prepare this feast which has no fancy trimming, no elaborate appetizers or dessert. Keep your coat on and your knapsacks by your chairs. If your neighbor does not have one of these special, sacred lambs, these gentle animals which are suddenly charged with a sense of the Holy, then share. You are moving from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom. In one meal you will remember your need for the divine mercy and how deep that mercy is. In the symbols of roasted lamb eaten whole, in bitter herbs and in bread baked quickly without yeast, really tortillas cooked up on an open stove, you will remember the slavery and the yearning and the cost paid by an innocent animal and the cost paid by a God who breaks the divine heart in setting us free. You will realize how lucky, how blessed you are to eat this meal. You will realize you are a people together on a desert journey, a people traveling from darkness to light, a people whole and together wholly dependent on the mercy of God.

And so Saint Paul taught us, centuries later, to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” Christ is the lamb. The church is the gathered people. There is slavery outside of us and slavery within us. Hear the summons, gather under the merciful eye of God, eat this simple hasty meal. And when you do, become one people and become the spotless lamb, the Lamb of God. Walk the journey from darkness to light.

The Old Testament tells us the story. The New Testament tells us how to live the story. We hear how to be this people for whom Christ is our Passover.

Jesus in the Gospel speaks very plainly and practically about how to deal with conflict in the community, conflict in the church. One commentator tells how this text might read today with responses that are all too familiar. “If your brother sins against you, then…” Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt, but never forget it and wait for a chance to get them back. Go home and complain to your family and friends and gossip about that other person for days weeks. Send them a nasty e-mail venting all your anger and cc/ the rector. De-friend them on Facebook. Or start to withdraw from the church, maybe even leave the church and look for another church where the members never sin against one another.

That’s a pretty common strategy “out there”, and all too often we act a lot more like “out there” than as citizens of the Kingdom. Through the years I have come close to despair at the difficulty we church-people have in living together and working things out in the light of the Gospel. Because the Way of Jesus, the way of the Passover, is a different way, a way from the slavery of resentment and retaliation to a new place of healing and freedom. According to Jesus, it is very practical. “Go talk to them alone”—respect their privacy and give them a chance for reconciliation. “Take one or two others”—again a chance to heal the wound in a discreet way. “Go to the church”—because the division of two members is a division for us all. We have been called to freedom by God’s mercy together; this is not a solo journey. “Treat them as a tax collector…” and the story does not end there. A wise old priest once reminded me, “Remember what we do with tax collectors and sinners? We search them out and forgive them.” For the promise of Jesus at the end of the tale is solemn and not given only for our comfort, but also for our challenge. “Where two or three are gathered, there am I in your midst.” The merciful yet awesome God of the Passover is among us—it is up to us to choose to be the gathered people of God, waiting for the divine mercy, saved by the blood of the innocent victim, or people who belong to slavery and to power. We can stay in the darkness of the weary dynamics of slavery and oppression, including slavery to our selves, or we can learn to walk free.

This is what we choose when we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.”

Shaped by the Name

Proper 17 A 2011
Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28


He was just another homeless guy, the latest to be hanging around the church.

When we rang the bell for Wednesday Noon Mass, he would show up, the only neighbor to be called in. He would sit in the nave and simply listen to the service.

This day, after Mass, he wandered into the church hall. I found him standing there. I said, “Sorry dude, the preschool is in session, you can’t be here now.”

He looked at me. “My name’s not ‘dude’.”

He was right. His name was not “dude.” He had a name. Knowing it and using it meant respect, meant seeing him as a person, meant I was invited and obligated to acknowledge his history and his life and his unique being on this planet. Telling someone your name, especially in this suspicious age where we even fear identity theft, is an act of trust. Your name and your heart are one.

In the strange world of the Bible, that’s how names work, and more.

A God who has been silent for generations suddenly breaks into the life of a fugitive. Moses has run from Egypt after committing murder. He had found a home and some security and peace, marrying a Bedouin woman and joining his wife’s family. But God busts into Moses’ little slice of heaven. In one moment, in the space of this single meeting, God reveals the divine heart and the divine Name.

The divine heart burns with determination to liberate the Hebrew people from slavery. The divine Name is the promise and the seal that God wishes nothing but liberation for the people. God trusts the divine Name to Moses, in an act of trust and vulnerability. “I AM”—the name resounds with majesty and awe down to this moment when we speak it here. When God gave the divine Name to Moses and through Moses to Israel, God was entrusting his heart to them and to us. From this moment on, to speak the divine Name meant that Moses and the people had access to the heart of God. Speaking the Name made real and active the promise of God to liberate them from bondage. Speaking the Name sealed them with the sacred Name, stamped it on their own hearts and souls. Speaking the name bonded them to God, and began the work of changing them into a people shaped by the heart of God.

The Psalm says, “Glory in his holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.” Try tracking the moments when the Bible mentions the Name of God. When we do this, the power and meaning of the Bible begins to open in a new way.

We are people of the Name of God. As Christians we are the heirs of this rich tradition of Moses and of Israel. We believe that the heart of God has been revealed to us, the God of liberation has made himself known to us, in the name of Jesus Christ.

This summer I read a recently-written book on the “Jesus Prayer.”(1) The Jesus Prayer is a rich spiritual practice highly developed in the Eastern Orthodox world. In its essence the practice consists of the repetition of the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” or some version of these words. The Prayer, centering on the sacred Name of Jesus, is meant to work itself into one’s daily life so that, with time, one repeats the Prayer in tune with one’s breath or even one’s heartbeat. It is a highly developed path of Christian prayer that I cannot do any justice to in a single mention in a sermon, but the practice of the Jesus Prayer relies on the power of the name of Jesus, the divine Name by which God has revealed and entrusted the divine Heart to us. If we truly and sincerely make “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” a prayer that we breathe in and out, that we inhabit daily, then we accept into our lives the very presence of the living God and all the promises of God.

And be warned—this presence will not only give joy and comfort and peace. The divine Presence will change us into people shaped by the very heart of God.

Saint Paul trusts says in simple words what it looks like to be people shaped by the heart of God: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers…” There is a lifestyle being named here, a transformed life shaped to the contours of the divine heart. Jesus in the Gospel is even more blunt: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

A contemporary writer said that Christianity is not a path of self-fulfillment, but rather a path of self-transcendence. (2) Many folk come seeking a church because they are wounded in some area of their souls or their history or even their bodies. It is good that we come before the healing God with our wounds and needs. When we do, we find depths of healing and compassion beyond our wildest dreams. But that is not all. We find ourselves invited, seduced really, into the very heart of God, by the free gift of the Name of God, the Name of Jesus Christ. And when we walk freely into the heart of God, we are changed, we are transformed into people shaped by the heart of God, shaped by who and what God loves and about which God is passionate.

As I speak Saints Peter and Paul is struggling to discern what God wants us to do in terms of outreach to the poor. Our weekly hospitality, Brigid’s Table, is at a crossroads—volunteers and money both have run thin. The easy thing would be to say simply that times have changed, our lives are demanding, and we simply cannot do this anymore—it’s all we can do to get ourselves to Sunday Mass a couple of times a month.

Times have changed and our lives are demanding. I am not sure what in fact we are called to do. But I do know that if we call ourselves a church that loves the name of Jesus, then we need to ask ourselves how are we called and empowered to be a people shaped by the heart of God. Since here we identify strongly with the Anglo-Catholic stream of Episcopal tradition, here’s an Anglo-Catholic voice from the early 20th Century:

“You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have…your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges…and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet" (3)

These words speak of what it means to be a people who love the holy Name of Jesus. These words speak of one essential dimension of what it means to be shaped by the very Name and heart of God.


1. Frederica Matthews-Green The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer That Tunes The Heart To God

2. cf Michael Casey OCSO in Strangers To The City

3. Concluding address by Bishop Frank Weston, Anglo-Catholic Congress 1923

Where God happens*

Proper 15 A 2011


God happens when forgiveness is given and received.

Genesis, the great first book of the Bible, concludes with the tale of Joseph and his brothers. It’s a story of family dysfunction, pride and jealousy. If you remember back to your Sunday School lessons, Joseph is his father’s favorite, and Dad even gives him that fancy coat that even got a Broadway musical named after it, “Technicolor Dreamcoat” and all that. Joseph’s brothers have about all the Joseph they can stand, so they trap him, sell him as a slave, and fake his death back home. But Joseph does OK as a slave, going from prison to a position of power and wealth in Egypt. That’s when the brothers show up, hungry and needy and begging food because of a drought and famine. They don’t recognize the powerful Egyptian official, perfumed and dressed in fine fabric and gold with his hair tricked-out Egyptian style as their brother.

If Joseph had taken this opportunity to work some revenge on the bros, nothing heinous, just a little roughing up, God himself would have called it just. He does throw one of his brothers in the clink for awhile, but hey, he’s only human. If Joseph had at least yelled at them, vented his feelings as our psychologized age would put it, Oprah would have sat and held his hand and affirmed him, and Jerry Springer would have egged him on. Instead, Joseph puts down any rage and pain and bitterness he still has and simply cries and asks about Dad. Genesis is a book full of miracles and spectacle, but the greatest miracle in that book is this moment of sheer grace and forgiveness. Something new is possible because of Joseph’s moment of reckless forgiveness. It is the moment, as one writer puts it, where God happens, where grace and forgiveness and new life and a story worth telling breaks into the world.

The Bible and Christian tradition speak constantly of forgiveness, but it is the least-practiced Christian principle in my opinion. Perhaps it is forgiveness that Ghandi had in mind when he famously said that he liked Jesus, but he had never met a Christian, one who put Jesus’ teachings into actual practice. Our surrounding world usually does not practice forgiveness. More often what we see is grievance and revenge. Just a few days ago the news claimed, with a certain sense of relish and the rightness of things, that the military had “taken out” the Taliban members responsible for shooting down the helicopter with 30 personnel on board. As I read that grim P.S. to a sad war story, I wondered if we were meant to feel somehow good about “taking out” those people, as if things had been put back in their proper order. I for one did not feel anything of the sort. Even within the wall of the church, forgiveness is often sadly absent. Instead of whole-hearted forgiveness, I have seen grudges, quiet resentments, and disguised anger simmer between people all too often. What will sometimes happen is that someone will drift away from the parish, often thinking words like “hypocrites” to themselves, rather that offer and receive forgiveness with someone who has angered or slighted them.

It’s not about being a doormat, letting people off the hook for their words or actions. It’s about acknowledging their actions and our own, and letting God make a new beginning. Where there is no forgiveness, we are all kept in the same prison, and God cannot happen, God cannot make hope and new life.

And God happens when old boundaries are crossed.

Today’s Gospel tale is a startling one, because it puts not only the disciples but Jesus himself in a unflattering light. The mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God has begun, full of outrageous hope and energy. But just when things are building up, something or someone happens that faces the disciples and Jesus himself with long-held prejudices. A foreigner, a Canaanite woman, cries out to Jesus, “son of David”, for mercy for her daughter. It’s embarrassing and irritating both—doesn’t she get it? This is Israel’s salvation, this is the Lord and heir of David who is restoring the ancient kingdom of Judah and Israel. No foreigners allowed, especially this woman.

But she will have none of it. She brushes past the hostility of the disciples and of Jesus’ inclination to simply pass her by and comes close. Jesus still attempts to deflect her with a proverb about dogs, not very flattering. But she meets that head-on and bandies words with him. We will never in this life penetrate the inner life of Jesus the Christ, but it seems like something changes in that moment not only for the woman but also for Jesus himself. “Great is your faith!”, and from Jesus there is no higher praise. And God happens, in that awkward moment where Gospel mission and racial and gender prejudice all had raised their heads. A child is healed.

God happens in our world in these ordinary yet astounding moments, when hate and resentment and prejudice are put aside and hands reach across great divides, when forgiveness or at least the possibility of forgiveness is grasped. We put aside the cold comfort of revenge or grievance or the cruelty of keeping someone or a whole people in a box of our making—“she’s always like that”, “what do you expect from THOSE people?”—and instead reach out in honesty and hope. And that is where God happens, where the Gospel finally makes sense, where all those lovely words like “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” become more than comforting traditional words and come to world-changing life.

The ancient hermit Antony the Great, who spent decades in solitude, once startled people who came to ask him the way to salvation. He said, “My life is with my brother.” Like Antony, our lives are with our sisters and brothers, within the walls of this church, and beyond to the world. It is in that unromantic and messy arena of resentment, grievance, and the possibility of forgiveness that the Gospel becomes real. It is in that human arena that God happens.


*phrase not mine, regrettably, but taken from the book by ++Rowan Williams of the same title