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.”