Advent 1 - 12/1/2013

(Guest homily by Malcolm Heath)

This is the first Sunday of Advent, and I found myself wondering, as this day approached, what this season of the church means.

The other seasons of the church, I feel like I have a pretty good idea what they’re about.  Easter is of course pretty clear.  Pentecost, perhaps less so, but I still have some idea. 

But I found that when I thought about Advent, I came up with very little. 

When I was a child, we used to celebrate Advent in my home.  We had candles, and a wreath, and a little book of readings, and each Sunday we’d light a new candle, and do a little service, and as I recall, this was somehow combined in my mind with opening the panels of an Advent calendar.  I have since learned that some of these have a little treat for each day.  The calendars of my youth didn’t – just a little picture for each day.

What I got out of this was mainly that Christmas was coming.  Of course, in a child’s mind, this wasn’t connected to the idea of God becoming Man, the Incarnation, the Word becoming Flesh.  Instead, it was a simple countdown to a big meal, and presents. 

I don’t think my conception of Advent has really moved much past that in the intervening years.

This year, however, has been a bit different for me.  My wife and I have gotten all of our shopping done already.  I don’t have any really major things to accomplish before the big day.  I have the time to think about it, which is a pretty amazing situation, and very unusual. 

I’ve got a lot of time to just do nothing.

But then, as I thought more, it occurred to me that the idea of waiting is central to Advent. 

But why have this season of waiting?  And what is it that we are waiting for?  People talk about “preparation” which makes it seem like we should be doing something, like we should be dusting and vacuuming, that we should be putting out trays of food in preparation for the arrival of an important guest.   But I don’t think that’s it. 

What I think this season is for is to realize something really simple.  It’s making space for the realization that there’s something missing, and that we don’t, and can’t, know what we’re waiting for.

It’s easy to ignore the things in our lives that aren’t actually there.  We have lots to do, more immediate needs to deal with, and even when we have all that we need in terms of necessities, we can still find plenty to do to avoid thinking about things we’re lacking.  So, it’s actually kind of difficult to have the time, and space, much less the motivation, to really sit down and ask ourselves what we’re missing.

So this Advent-tide, let me ask you all a question.  What’s missing in your lives?  What do you lack in your heart?  Do you have that feeling like there may be something that you can’t quite put your finger on?  Something that despite perhaps having all you might need or require, and having a high degree of confidence that if only you could figure out what this certain something is, you could possibly find it, or make it, or buy it at a mall, that nevertheless, you know that you won’t be able to find it there?  That it’s beyond your abilities somehow?

Because it’s that feeling that I think Advent is about.  That need.

Without that need, I think, Jesus is just another prophet.  A wise man with some interesting things to say.  And those have been a dime a dozen over the millennia, and that’s hardly worth writing home about.

Without that need, that understanding of lack in our hearts, Jesus is just a man, and he’s just another poor kid who was born out of wedlock to poor parents, a very long time ago.

Without that need, that understanding that this is not something we can do for ourselves…there really isn’t any place for him to come.  Nowhere to lay his head.  No room at the inn.

Now, I’m not sure if this is what Advent is.  But it seems to me like it might have something to do with it. 

How's the house look?

Proper 27 C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp27_RCL.html


“How does this house look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?”

Two Vestry members recently walked around the church building with a parish member who has taken a keen interest in the condition of our property. They noticed things that we who walk in and out for an hour or two on Sunday learn to ignore—disrepair, disheveled grounds. The west face of the church, the side we never see but the neighbors do, is peeling paint from back to front.

I do not think I have ever preached about the church building before, but our first reading is about a building and what it means. Haggai the prophet preached during the time when the people of Israel had returned from exile and were trying to rebuild their lives in and around Jerusalem. It was hard, discouraging work: so much needed to be done, and they had so little energy and funds to do so. Re-building the Temple itself started then stopped—other projects seemed so much more important.

Take a look, says Haggai. Does anyone remember what it was?

As Rector of an older congregation I tend to be allergic to “good old days” stories—nostalgia tends to surround memory with a golden glow. Sometimes “good old days” stories are told with a kind of bitterness by people who are upset because life changes and they themselves have changed and aged. But this month we remember the dead and their witness. We unearthed a scrapbook of past generations of church-people living and worshiping and serving right here, each generation with their hopes and their struggles and their sense of mission.

We’re here now. We are here, doing our best to live out what we believe Christ calls us and empowers us to do. We are a different congregation from those who photos are in the scrapbook in the hall. They in turn were different from the generation that they succeeded in this place.

It’s up to us to answer those hard questions that the prophet poses: “How does this house look to you?”

Church buildings do not exist for their own sake. They exist for the sake of the Gospel and the people of God. We have a distinct mission here that has evolved over recent years. We have a special gift and call to reach out to the poor. We have a special gift and call to break down barriers of culture and race, most specifically through our growing Hispanic congregation and who we are now because of their presence. We have a special gift of welcome and openness to our neighbors. We are strengthened and sustained in this mission through ancient Catholic and Episcopal faith and practice, lived through lives of prayer and shared Word and Sacrament.

God is so good to us. We have a reason to be here.

The building is where we gather, where we welcome, where we celebrate and serve. It is the visible symbol of our presence in this neighborhood, our mission.

I think this season leading to our Consecration Sunday asks us vital questions. We’ve lived faithfully through many changes and challenges. It is our time to claim our life here in faith, to celebrate it and give thanks, and to re-build and renew whatever in our lives and yes, in the property and building given to us in trust, calls for renewal and new life.

We’re not poor, and we’re not small. Hear the prophet’s words to us:

“Take courage, work, for I am with you”

“My spirit abides among us; do not fear”

“Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth… The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the LORD of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the LORD of hosts.”

Consecration Sunday!

Consecration Sunday Is Coming!

Congregations that approach financial stewardship from a biblical perspective do not view the money Christians give to their church merely as a way to pay its bills. Rather, such congregations see financial contributions as a way to help people grow spiritually in their relationship with God by supporting their church’s mission and ministry with a percentage of their incomes.

Saints Peter and Paul’s Vestry has selected the New Consecration Sunday Stewardship Program as a way to teach the biblical and spiritual principles of generous giving in our stewardship education emphasis this year.

New Consecration Sunday is based on the biblical philosophy of the need of the giver to give for his or her own spiritual development, rather than on the need of the church to receive. Instead of treating people like members of a social club who should pay dues, we will treat people like followers of Jesus Christ who want to give unselfishly as an act of discipleship. New Consecration Sunday encourages people toward proportionate and systematic giving in response to the question, “What percentage of my income is God calling me to give?”

During morning worship on Consecration Sunday, we are asking our attendees and members to make their financial commitments to our church’s missionary, benevolent, and educational ministries in this community and around the world.

Every attendee and member who completes an Estimate of Giving Card does so voluntarily by attending morning worship on Consecration Sunday. We urge people to attend who feel strongly opposed to completing a card. The procedure is done in such a way that no one feels personal embarrassment if he or she chooses not to fill out a card.

We will do no home solicitation to ask people to complete cards. During morning worship our guest leader will conduct a brief period of instruction and inspiration, climaxed by members making their commitments as a confidential act of worship.

We will encourage participation in Consecration Sunday events through the Consecration Sunday team and Vestry members. Since we will make no follow-up visits to ask people to complete their cards, we will make every effort to inform, inspire, and commit everyone to attend Consecration Sunday worship.

Thanks in advance for your enthusiastic participation in Consecration Sunday events.


Jamie Marks Fr. Kurt Neilson+
Consecration Sunday Chairperson Rector

fierce mercy

Proper 18 C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp18_RCL.html


A young monk sought out one of the old Abbas, the elder monks of the desert. The young monk began to speak to the Abba about very profound spiritual matters, highly advanced notions of prayer. The old Abba listened patiently for a time. Finally, when the young man had paused for a moment, the elder remarked “You have not yet made your way to the shore. You have not yet made yourself a boat. You have not yet crossed the sea. You have not yet climbed out of your boat onto the shore on the other side of the sea. And yet you wish to speak to me about the streets of the city that lies on the other side of that sea.”

I empathize with that young monk as I am confronted with today’s readings. Today we are faced with just how profound a commitment it is to follow Jesus. We are faced with the severity of the Gospel, and with the richness of the mercy of God all at once.

Today it is Jesus who provides the most severe note. I do not know of any newcomer committee who would print his teaching on their brochure or on the homepage of the website! “Unless you hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and yes even life itself, you cannot be my disciple.” Many preachers will take this text and in essence try to tame it, to say that Jesus did not really mean what he said, that there is some inner or symbolic meaning at work here.

When the Gospels were composed, this text was meant quite literally. One of my biblical professors told us that the four Gospels are “handbooks for martyrs.” I agree. The Gospels were composed in communities who were struggling to be faithful amidst stress and pressure and persecution. In those early decades, followers of Jesus were being cast out of synagogues. This made them very vulnerable, because in the Roman Empire Jewish folk enjoyed a certain amount of protection and privilege. If these followers of the Way were not Jews and also did not acknowledge neither the divine Emperor nor the official state worship, they could be tried, pressured to submit to the Empire’s worship, fined, imprisoned, or even killed. As fear and anxiety built and people were betrayed by friends and family, as they were hauled off or forced into hiding, many wavered and renounced Jesus for the sake of their own and their family’s safety. These communities reflected and prayed on what they were to do and what was God’s will for them. So they remembered their Master, who also was betrayed and tried and went to his cross. These are the Gospels we have today.

This fierce reality, the life and death immediacy of following Jesus, often feels far removed from us today.

When I was in my twenties, I lived under fear and threat while working as a missionary with base Christian communities in the Philippines. Our work training local lay leaders and helping raise up communities who reflected on the Gospels and the realities of their lives was labeled “subversive” by the government. We were often shadowed by the military and informed on by spies. I had friends who disappeared or who went into hiding. When I was about to return to the States, some of my local friends said to me, “We’ll pray for you, returning to the belly of the beast. It is a luxury living a Gospel life here, where choices are clear and where there is real risk in following Jesus. Back where it is easy—that will be harder for your soul.”

They were quite right. Here it was possible to live a risk-free Christian life, or at least one that is lived comfortably. It is possible to profess the name of Jesus and have that profession of faith not interfere much with life lived in the comfortable and prosperous developed world. I wonder if some of the indifference of the surrounding culture to the Gospel lies not so much in a rejection of it, but rather people do not see evidence that it much matters if one practices Christianity or not. Why bother with a little inconvenience in the Sunday schedule if there is little evidence in churchpeople’s lives that this is a commitment that matters?

I am painting with broad brushstrokes here. I know that there are many of us who quietly observe a costly faith. Since our own empire does not find enough offense in us to persecute us, the demands of the Gospel become more interior, a personal way of transformation, a cost paid that is not easily visible. But today our Lord is gracious in reminding us that the journey with him is costly. Following Jesus is not to be taken lightly or half-heartedly. Over and over again in my life I bump up against these stark demands, and I am called to account, again and again.

But with these demands there is help, and there is mercy.

Fierce old Jeremiah lends a note of hope as he watches the potter at his wheel. Perhaps you’ve seen a potter at work in real-life. It is delightful to watch a pot begin to rise from the spinning wheel, only to have the potter bring it back down to a lump of wet clay and begin again. There is infinite possibility in the clay, and there is always the capacity to begin again.

On our own strength, following Jesus is impossible. Perhaps that is why we tend to gloss over fierce texts like that of today. But with God this journey is possible. And always we begin again.

Another old desert abba said, “When you pray, just say this: ‘As you will, and as you know, have mercy on me O Lord.’ And when the fight get fierce, say ‘Lord, help’.” Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy—the ancient cry of prayer that is a matter of life and death. God is rich in mercy—the Greek word for mercy refers to olive oil, poured out richly on us. Mercy enfolds and surrounds us and bears us up. All we need do is ask.

As I write this, a next-door neighbor is walking the 500 km road to Santiago. It is a long, hard road, and on her ‘blog she writes that she has already run into some difficulty and injury. She is 70 years old.

It is funny that we worry about empty space in our church pews, but the hard Road to Santiago is thronged with people. Perhaps we need to make it clear that our journey here is challenging and difficult too.

Leaving the building

(Note: this is a synopsis of a homily delivered for our Sunday observance of "Mary the God-Bearer", "St. Mary the Virgin" on the Episcopal calendar. I've added reflections based on our exploration of outreach ministries at Saints Peter and Paul--kn+)

A colleague of mine, a respected rector of a vital urban parish, once told me that he tries to spend at least twice as much time each week in coffee shops and brewpubs than he does in the church office. "If I am in the office too much" he opined, "I have the wrong conversations."

Well, he is very quotable on this and, I think, very right. These "wrong conversations" may not be "bad conversations" per se. But they are predictable conversations, about bulletins and church calendars and attendance and building maintenance and church programs and a great deal of things that have absolutely no meaning to anyone once one puts a foot over the threshold of the doorway. Frankly, I think those things I listed increasingly have little meaning for many of the folks who come inside the doorway as well!

The other day I was speaking with a parish member, in a coffee shop, about life and values and God and spiritual seeking. A woman I did not know walked past us, saw the book I had brought with me, and said "Richard Rohr! I have to talk with you some time!" Another customer, a young woman in a sleeveless top, walked past with her cup. I saw that she had a beautiful, full-color Our Lady of Guadalupe tattooed on her upper arm. It was August 15, the actual day of Our Lady's feast.

I smiled at seeing the beautiful tattoo and thought, "There she is. She's right where she should be." Like my colleague, Our Lady wants to have the right sort of conversations, and is outside of the walls of church office and sanctuary where her people are.

That is the outrageous character of the Gospel. God has left the building.

Most of us love temples. It is human instinct to build a temple, to provide a beautiful place for meditation and for prayer and for gathering groups of people to perform sacred acts. Temples establish mailing addresses for God, or at least we hope they do. Every major culture builds and has built temples, whether we call them cathedrals or mosques or synagogues or stupas. They are wonderful to visit and often invite prayer and reflection.

But the God of the Bible has left the building!

Remember David, the great king of the Hebrew Scriptures? He too wanted to built a temple, feeling guilty that he had a nice wooden house while the Ark of God was still under the old tent that was carried by the people of Israel while they wandered in the desert. The prophet comes to David after a dream and says, "Thus says God: I did not ask you to build me a temple. I traveled with my people in the wilderness." The God of the Bible is a pilgrim God, and the best and most intimate time with this God was when they traveled with God in the desert. On the road, in exile, homeless, learning in humility how different a God this was and how different they were called to be. The whole business of a temple was a very mixed experience for Israel, and prophets criticized the temple and predicted its destruction as much or more than the temple was praised.

And when the pilgrim God wished to break free of culture and time and ethnic loyalty, what happened?

This pilgrim God chose a young woman, anonymous and unmarried and away from the power and privilege of Jerusalem. On the day that everything changed, the Temple in Jerusalem was conducting business as usual, sacrifices and sung Psalms and incense and offerings and all. The Temple and its priests and singers and those attending were ignorant of the fact that God had left the building. God was up north, in a small town, where a mighty archangel spoke kindly and politely to a young woman and respectfully waited for her answer. For she was free to say yes or no.

The young woman, Miriam, said "Here am I, the servant of the Lord: let it be."

And God took up a new home, in the body of that young woman. Mary became the new Temple, which is why old litanies call her things like "tower of ivory, mystical tabernacle". God took a chosen place on the margins, in frail flesh, with people forgotten and pushed aside and silenced. God had left the building. Years later, when the God-made-flesh died on the cross, the Gospels speak of the curtain in the Temple veiling the Holy of Holies being torn in two. Out, out, no longer in a temple made of stone, but wild and out in the world. Look to where people are in exile and on the edge. Look to the margins, the forgotten places. There the divine wind blows and there the God-made-flesh will be found, making Nowheres into Somewheres and Nobodies into really Somebodies and leaving the powerful and the self-righteous standing silent with wide-open mouths amidst their offerings and their rites.

We all love a temple. We, meaning church-folk, usually love our churches. It is good for the praying community to have a home, a place to gather to celebrate and to pray. It is good to have a roof for our ministries, especially for those that benefit someone other than ourselves. But we must always be on our guard to have the right conversations, and to regard our buildings and other possessions in the right way, the way of the Gospel. The Gospel is a message for those who have not heard it, the divine energy pushing us past our inward-looking preoccupations and self-involvement and into a world where God has chosen to dwell, among people whom God has loved so much that he became one of them and is within them still. The right conversation for church-folk goes something like this: how do we seek and serve the Christ who walks past our doors, whom we encounter in work and errands and in our streets? It is one of the greatest irony of the organized Christian project that a church can be where we hold the least amount of conversations about the Gospel. So often we talk about other things, and at great length.

Last night as I write this, the Senor Warden and I accompanied a young couple, with us for the past year, as they walked the streets of Montavilla with an attitude of curiosity and of prayer. They are helping lead us into exploring anew some basic Gospel questions: Who is our neighbor? Where did we see you, Lord? Our steps took us down Stark Street, where a lone homeless woman welcomed us into her space of sidewalk that she shares with a lone white dove who keeps careful watch on her. Then up north, eventually to Montaville Park, where under trees we found small gatherings of homeless already worried about the ending of summer and the coming of the rains. Out of the church building with its lovely silence and lingering smell of incense and flickering candles, out among those who have not croseed our thesholds but whom Christ loves dear and lives among to this day. It can feel oddly vulnerable to be out and about in the streets and the lots, away from the protection of role and title. But it is one place to have the right conversations, like "Where is God when you are out on the street? How can we approach these people with respect? What is the Good News for them?"

I did not see another colorful tattoo, but I did not need to. The God of the Gospel has left the building and journeys with the people. It is still the Octave of Our Lady's feast and, unseen but powerful, she was already walking among those vulnerable and poor, those among whom the pilgrim God loves to travel.

Climb

Sermon: Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 34:29-35 • Psalm 99 • 2 Peter 1:13-21 • Luke 9:28-36

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

It is such a joy to be back in this place after a year away. The last time I stood in this pulpit, I had come to church from an empty apartment, all packed up to move to Boston for divinity school. It’s been a great adventure for my wife, Heather, and for me, but it sure feels good to be home.

Our new home on the East Coast, we share with a housemate. She is clean, quiet, mellow, with only one flaw: She loves to start big, serious conversations right as I’m trying to go to bed.

I’m walking to the bathroom, holding my toothbrush: “Catherine, I picked up more dish soap. And how do you know if you’re on the right career path?”

I’m getting a glass of water at 1:00 AM: “Catherine, I’m out of town this weekend. And how do you know when it’s time to have kids?”

And every time, I rub my bleary eyes and say the same thing: “I don’t know, but I think when the time comes, the answer will present itself.”

The Transfiguration answers the question the apostles must have been asking: How do we know if all this is true?

How do we know if you’re really God? How do we know if it was worth giving up everything we had to follow you?

I know I asked that question last summer. I believe in God: I do. And I want to follow Jesus: I do. And even though my faith in the church has taken some serious hits over the years, my faith in Christ has stayed strong.

But still, I wondered: How do I know if quitting my job and uprooting my family and leaving my friends and putting my cats on an airplane – horrible – is worth the risk?

The Feast of the Transfiguration is the answer presenting itself.

Peter and James and John were the lucky ones. They got to see Jesus transfigured: his face shining, and his clothes dazzling white. They heard the voice of God from the cloud, telling them all their greatest hopes and fears were true.

And they saw Moses and Elijah and they saw Christ in his glory and you better believe that after that they were never the same.

And that is what I want in my life of faith.

I want it so badly that sometimes I skip right over the prologue.

They had that transcendent experience on a mountaintop.

But to get there, they had to climb a mountain.

And here in the land of glaciers and mountaintops, we know that is no easy thing.

If you’ve ever climbed a mountain, you know: No matter how badly you want to reach the top, the climb only feels good for the first ten minutes. After that, your throat burns and your legs ache. You feel like you can’t get enough air. You look at the dark clouds rolling in above you and long for the safety of level ground.

And this is what it looks like to climb toward transfiguration.

If we want to see God in our own lives, if, like Moses, we want our own faces to shine, we have to start climbing that mountain.

And each one of us will have a different path, but nobody gets an easy way up. Part of the journey comes in those late-night moments of asking:

How do I know that this is worth the effort?
How do I know that God hears my prayers?
How do I know that God is even real?

And these are normal. And these are real. And these are part of the climb.

The author Patrick Califia tells us, “The true worth of our character is not determined by whether we have the ability to experience transcendent moments of insight or union with divinity. Rather, it is determined by whether we can remember the things that we are told during those moments and live them out during the long stretches of ordinary time when we are cut off from such inspiration.”

But we know the mountaintop is there, even in the moments when we can’t see it. We know that if we wait and we watch and we pray, if we commit ourselves to the climb, the answer will present itself.
And so we remember the Transfiguration, right in the middle of this long stretch of ordinary time.

This is my prayer for all of us: That we are brave enough to ask the hard questions, knowing the answers will come; that we remember the mountaintop, even in the middle of the climb.

Amen.

by Cat Healy Canapary 8/11/13

Of donkeys and Orders: at Sean Wall's ordination

Sean Wall’s ordination
July 6, 2013
Jeremiah 1: 4-9; Ps 119: 33-40; 2 Cor 4: 1-6; Luke 22: 24-27


The story is told that Abba Isaac, one of the early Desert Fathers, was chosen by his fellow-monks to be ordained a priest. Hearing of this, Isaac fled. His fellow-monks pursued him, stopping to rest by a farmer’s field. While they rested, their donkey wandered into the field and stood still where Isaac happened to be hiding. The monks, retrieving the donkey, found Isaac and tackled him, and began to tie him up to lead him back to be ordained. But Isaac sighed and said, “No need for the ropes. Clearly this is the will of God.”

Now that’s a call and discernment process!

There are a number of stories like Abba Isaac’s, where far from seeking ordination the early monks and other early Christians dreaded it and avoided it, even to the point of being held down while the bishop imposed hands.

In those days there was one clear call, the call of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit given in Baptism. Those were still the great days of baptismal catechesis, and the ancient power and dignity of baptism had not yet faded. Women and men fled to the desert so they could live that all-consuming, all-absorbing call to radical simplicity and poverty of spirit and humility and immersion in the mystery of the Christ that is the baptismal call of us all. Ordination was seen as presenting real problems, possible distractions from that one love of the one Lord, real temptations to pride and vanity and ambition cloaked as ministry.

Well, green and well-watered Lake Oswego is not the Egyptian desert, but as we gather here Christ gathers with us, and with Christ come all his friends, Abba Isaac among them. Old Isaac’s tale invites us to recall the one Baptismal call that we all share, the one Lord who gathers us, the one Love above all loves without whom nothing we do or say has life and light. Only in the light of Christ who calls us all can we understand ordaining Sean today.

It is that one Lord who gathers us. It is his Body, that wonderful and sacred mystery as the Collect says, that shines with his presence. It is the sacrament of the gathered assembly, the glorious and broken and comical and sinful and maddening and beautiful Body of Christ on earth, who calls us all into fellowship and who calls some of the baptized to Orders. Sean, you are to be ordered today as a deacon preliminary to, with God’s help, being ordered a priest according to our present practice. Holy Orders are just that, the church’s orders to be a specific presence that the Body needs, ordered to do certain tasks that the Body requires to grow and nourish our common life in Christ.

I can tell you with complete confidence, with the authority of my own existential experience, that what you are being ordered to do and be is humanly impossible. A transitional deacon on the path to priesthood is apprenticed to gather the Body in Christ’s name. You are apprenticed to unfailingly point not to yourself but to Christ, just as Saint Paul did when he said “We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” You are to allow Christ to love and heal and speak hope in you and through you. You will be expected, on both regularly scheduled occasions as well as at barbecues and bus stops and brewpubs and hospital waiting rooms, to speak words that are not your words alone, but Christ’s words enfleshed in your words. You are to lead the Body of Christ to grow in mission and service in an age and a culture wherein the Gospel and Jesus himself are in disrepute, are out of fashion, are looked upon with indifference that quickly turns to suspicion.

The doors are open if you want to make a break for it. Ushers, please stand ready!

But know this: if this task and this life seems daunting, then you are in good company. Jeremiah’s call makes that clear. There is never a comfortable time to be a servant of God. Jeremiah’s “yes” to God’s call meant a life of tension and conflict. He names before God his sense of inability and his lack of preparation. I wonder if he passed all his GOE’s? But call is call because it is unexpected and unlikely, and any of us who are called rarely feel equal to the task. But with call comes a promise, God’s promise to be strength and rest and Word and voice, for Jeremiah and for all who hear and respond and for you.

We prayed a portion of Psalm 119, a Psalm that Celtic monks used to repeat daily from memory. They did this to renew their commitment to listen to and respond to God’s Word, to be people of the living Word. That is a wise idea—to be soaked daily in the living Word, in Scripture, in prayer, in the living Word made flesh in the Eucharist, in the living Word heard by listening deeply and carefully to God’s speech in the world.

And the Christ who speaks today in the Gospel says to us and to you over and over: Serve. Be in the world as a servant. Do not fear, because the Master came to serve. Let him serve through your service.

That simple call to serve is the most life-giving, unfashionable, deeply needed, and counter-cultural word you can proclaim with your mouth and with your fingers on a keyboard and, above all, by your actions and your stance in the world. So surrender to it. I know you have sought to.

And you do not come to this day alone.

Your wonderful family has supported you and challenged you and healed you and stretched you and make sure that you keep it real and that you keep your feet on the ground. That’s their job and I’ll bet they are good at it. Love them and treasure them for that gift among many. If they are like my family, they have already put up with a lot.

Value this community who raised you up. Value the years spent in a plane cockpit where I suspect this day seemed as remote as the horizon-line. Value the simple servanthood you have exercised feeding the poor at Brigid’s Breakfast. Your studies, your friendships, those who have challenged you, all those with whom you have served to this date—all are part of the journey and all are here today with you in this ending which is a beginning, this beginning that marks an ending.

The wondrous, maddening, dying and rising Body that we call Church is in a period of extraordinary change. Much has grown old. Much has reached the end of its course. And although there is much talk of leadership these days, the need for the ordained to lead, the paradox is that any skills or knowledge we may learn or deploy will not change the fact that most of what is happening in the Church and the world is utterly, utterly beyond our control.

Some may consider this a disaster. Me, I think it is an opportunity—to remember who we most truly and deeply are. Before his death, Henri Nouwen said, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.” We are being given a terrible, wondrous grace in this age: all is falling away except Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake. This is actually a wondrous gift of God.

So my brother Sean, in the name of this gathering I ask you to do what you know you are called to do. Do it as a life, one day at a time, with the help of God.

Answer the call of God in Christ. “Call” is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your call will come daily, hourly. Keep your ears cleaned out and open, your attention alert, your eyes sharp. Your call to serve will be renewed each time the phone rings, each time the doorbell rings, each time an e-mail pops up on the server, each time someone tugs on your sleeve, each time someone springs into your mind unbidden.

Immerse yourself daily in the mystery of Christ. Do this by soaking in prayer, by marinating yourself in Scripture, by asking for grace and help over and over again. Never let this soaking be something that gets done if you have time for it, because you won’t. Do it as if your life depends on it. It does.

Love the church. I do not mean love the culture of an institution. That is changing under our very feet. I do not mean love the church as it might be, because that is a dream shaped by our own hopes and fears. Do not love the church you think you remember, because that is nostalgia often shaped by rejection of the present. Love the wonderful and sacred, comical and tragic, delightful and heroic, faltering and cowardly, and very real collection of pilgrims that we are and that Jesus loves right here and now.

Seek the servant Lord over and over again. Ask him humbly to serve in and through you.

And know that there will be days when you want to do nothing but cut and run. Believe me on that. But don’t worry—God will have Abba Isaac’s donkey all ready to look for you!

The right questions

Saints Peter and Paul 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/HolyDays/PetPaul.html


On Iona, that sacred island of Saint Columba off the coast of Scotland, I had a few moments to myself before the pilgrim group gathered. I walked to the site of Saint Columba’s cell and presented myself in spirit to the old Abbot. A question formed itself in my mind, something to the effect of “How can I make my life work out?” After a silence, I clearly felt Saint Columba tell me “You are asking the wrong question.”

I am still working on what he meant by the “right question.”

We prayed at the beginning of our gathering: “Grant that your Church”, instructed by the teaching and example of Peter and Paul, “and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord…”

To be the people of Saints Peter and Paul is to be a people who stand together on the one foundation, Jesus Christ. There is no other source of unity that will stand the test of time. One well-loved member told me, before I left, that they hoped I would find Iona and Ireland unchanged. Instead I found them very changed indeed. Even old monuments were more worn by time. If the very stones of ancient Iona change, then know that time will change us if nothing else will. In my brief 18 years here I have seen three different congregations and I think a fourth is emerging in front of our eyes. Life, time, culture, and people coming and going will all change us. And that change will be felt by some as loss and diminishment unless we are clear that our unity is based in Christ.

And if our unity is based in Christ, Christ Jesus will do marvelous things among us and with us. I promise.

We are a very diverse congregation in many ways. We have continuing members, some of whom welcome our present reality and others who look more to our past. We have newer members who have joined us for differing reasons: for depth of worship and spirituality in Episcopal and Catholic and Celtic tones, for the outreach we sustain to the poor and broken, for our community life and the fact that we are present in this complex neighborhood. We have a whole congregation of people who speak Spanish as well as English, who bring different insights but who are also deeply Catholic, who share our love for Mary mother of the Lord and who in the end are much more like us than they are different from us. Together we are Saints Peter and Paul, here and now. We are the church that is real and here and that Jesus loves, not the church we wish we had or the church we think we remember.

Only Christ can provide the mysterious unity that we need.

Are we asking the right questions? Maybe the old Saint’s challenging remark was meant for us all, because I did have our church on my heart that day as well. There are many wrong questions for a church to ask. Here are some examples:

How can I keep my church from changing? Or,
How can I change my church? (Both are flip-sides of the same coin)
Does this church meet my needs?
How can we fix our budget?
Am I comfortable with all my fellow-members?

There are others...

Here are some examples of the right questions:
How can we follow Christ more deeply?
How can we care for one another more authentically?
How can we serve our neighbors?
How can we welcome all who come to us?

There are others...

Seeking the right questions will make the right answers emerge in time. It is a messy, unresolved life, but it is a life illumined by the presence of the living Christ. Like Saints Peter and Paul themselves, we do not need to have all the answers. Here is a modern poem about St. Peter, in all his glorious incomplete humanity…

Impulsive master of misunderstanding
You comfort me with all your big mistakes;
Jumping the ship before you make the landing,
Placing the bet before you know the stakes.
I love the way you step out without knowing,
The way you sometimes speak before you think,
The way your broken faith is always growing,
The way he holds you even when you sink.
Born to a world that always tried to shame you,
Your shaky ego vulnerable to shame,
I love the way that Jesus chose to name you,
Before you knew how to deserve that name.
And in the end your Saviour let you prove
That each denial is undone by love. (Malcolm Guite)

The plunge

Trinity Sunday 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CTrinity_RCL.html


Every morning that I drop my spouse off at her teaching job in the West Hills, I get back on the Hawthorne Bridge going east. At the top of the on-ramp, there is a “primo” corner for a panhandler that is always empty.

Up until last Fall it was always occupied. There sat Kirk Reeves, the “trumpet man”, clad in a white suit and Mickey Mouse hat. He played his trumpet and opened and closed a colorful collapsing plastic toy globe, or worked a hand puppet. Kirk inhabited that corner with whimsy and his own personal magic, and the day was only complete when you caught sight of him. Without words or a sign, Kirk called out with his simple, enchanting presence to all of us who were filled with our busy, distracted lives. No matter where your thoughts or attention were as you endured yet another commute, Kirk invited you ceaselessly into another reality, one of joy and surprise and pathos and sadness and compassion as well.

Tragically, Kirk ended his life last November. But for those of us who were touched by him, that eloquent empty corner still calls us and reminds us of joy and magic and of a human being whose life and struggle was lived in our midst.

“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
"To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.”

Like a gentle clown at the crossroads, the divine Lady Wisdom, she whom the Church identifies with the divine Son of the Trinity, also calls to the depths of our souls. Come near, listen, and live.

Today is Trinity Sunday, the most dreaded day of the preaching year. I cut my teeth on four consecutive Trinity Sundays during the four years of my curacy in St. Louis. Bob Skinner, the rector, would grin maliciously and growl, “You’re up, Neilson.” Bob had no wish, as he said, to “preach on a doctrine.” That very word “doctrine” sets off alarm bells for people, as if something dry and abstract said with the weight of some distant authority is about to be expounded. So today is analogy-day, and somewhere someone is probably trotting out the old Saint Patrick legend about the shamrock—three leaves, one plant—or other images taken from here or there.

All of these attempts do just what we do not want to waste time on—making God the Three into some intellectual puzzle that we trot out once a year. In the end, any “explanation” is so inadequate that it flirts with heresy. The deeper the mystery, the more we impoverish it with our explanations. The simple truth is that God the One in Three is a revealed mystery, a profound reality that we cannot ever get to the bottom of with our very limited minds. The one God is Three persons. At the depth of God is dynamic relationship. The stillness of God is found in the depth of endless love given and received, endless knowledge shared and returned.

We are in that reality, encompassed by it, blessed and created and re-created by it. The simple image that comes to me is that of a diver plunging with confidence into a pool from a high board. The best way to get the Trinity is not to think, but to plunge.

But whatever attempt we make to plunge, to enter the mystery as close to us as water is to a fish, cannot come close to the Trinity’s ceaseless attempt to plunge into us.

Holy Lady Wisdom calls out ceaselessly to us, as gentle and as vulnerable as Kirk Reeves on his on-ramp street corner. “Come, come with me, I who was present always at the heart of God.” The eternal Word of God is not just “with God” as the Gospel of John says, but is “toward God”, ceaselessly moving in love and desire to the heart of the Father. The power and passion of that movement is God the Spirit. This Spirit is given to us, poured out in us, given not as a measured dose but completely, in generosity and trust. A contemporary writer points out that one of the Greek roots of the word we translate as “God” is “to leap.”* God the Father longs for the Son, breathes forth the Spirit, the Son ever longs for the Father and moves deeper into the Father’s heart. And God longs for us, leaps powerfully over any obstacle that we imagine prevents us from seeing and experiencing God. God makes the leap, and yet does not overpower, does not coerce. God the Three, in whom we swim and soak, yet calls out to us in love and longing and sadness and humor and joy and delight all at once. Come, come be inflamed, come join my life. Come hear my voice, and take my hand, and plunge into my depths.

Come take the plunge today. If your feet feel heavy, let the Spirit bounce the diving board for you. Come hear the voice that calls out, with sadness and joy, unnoticed on the street corner as we pass by with our forgettable errands. Come plunge into the depths of life beyond life, delight beyond delight.


*Clement, Olivier The Roots Of Christian Mysticism (2nd edition). Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2013, p. 32.

Divine scattering

(Note: this text is a precis of two homilies, one given bi-lingually in an abbreviated form, on Pentecost Sunday 2013)


Pentecost 2013
(text: Genesis 11)

Here’s a quote: “Nun la tuta tero estis uno lingvo kaj uno parolmaneiro. Kaj dum ili migris el oriento, ili trovis valon en la lando SXinar kaj tie eklogis.”

Can you translate it? As Gandalf said in The Lord Of The Rings, “there are few who can.”

It is Esperanto. Esperanto was the creation of a very bright and well-intentioned scholar in the 19th Century. He wanted to create a world-wide, neutral second language for diplomacy, trade, and understanding.

It simply did not work. At least, not so far. At best, according to Wikipedia, 2,000,000 people speak Esperanto or have studied it to any degree. It’s more a hobby language and a special-usage tool.

Paul Ricouer, 20th Century Christian philosopher, said “We do not create language. Language creates us.” And, I would add, language re-creates us as we engage with one another, with our experience and with our classic texts, in search of meaning. We are our language; we are shaped by speech.

The Esperanto quote is the first two verses of our Genesis reading: “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.” It is the famed “Tower of Babel” tale. For years I thought that this brief fragment was nothing more than a parable of why there are so many languages in the world. I now think it is much more. It is a vital and core tale of Pentecost itself—what is speech? and how is God’s freedom is embodied in speech?

In Genesis, people are “scattered” by God throughout the world. Scattering means variety, diversity, change according to journeys and challenges and the life one lives in common with others.

But the divine scattering stopped in that valley, with one language and one building project.

I cannot read this text and imagine a harmonious and co-operative effort to build some Middle Eastern ziggurat. Building projects in the ancient world were for the most part slave-projects, forced and brutal. One language is needed by masters and slaves, in order to tell the slaves who they are and what they are to do.

One language. Throughout history efforts to enforce one language is the prerogative of empire, of conquerors. After Alexander the Great’s conquests, the language was Greek. When the Romans held sway, Latin spread, as an “official” language in the West for law and scholarship and proclamation and religion. In colonial times it was French, and to this day French appears next to English in our passports. English functions as a universal second language today, a blunt tribute to American economic and military power and the all-pervasive impact of American popular culture, God help us. In time, perhaps it will be Mandarin.

Dominant cultures conduct “monologues”, one-sided speech in their own language that everyone is supposed to listen to and obey. The languages of non-dominant culture people are demeaned or ignored or actively suppressed. “Why can’t they just learn English?” “It’s better for them; it will equip them to function in ‘society.’”

Monolingual societies are almost always oppressive. So are monolingual churches. Years ago Jessie Jackson remarked that Sunday morning is “the most segregated hour in America.” He’s still right.

Monolingual societies are not a good idea according to Genesis 11. They result in labor for dubious ends that use up people. They involve one voice dominating the conversation.

It is the divine wisdom and the divine mischief that undoes the tower-building machine with one creative stroke. “Come, let us go down and confuse their language...” And with that, the pointless tower-project was abandoned, the overseers could no longer be understood by the workers (read “slaves”), and the divine scattering could continue.

Pentecost does not undo either the variety of languages or the divine scattering. Here we do not re-erect the Tower of Babel. Here we gather by divine gift. We bring the results of our divine scattering, the rich diversity of our lives and our experience. And we bring our languages, the delight and insight and savor of each tongue as rich as the smell of tamales con salsa verde or Aunt Imelda’s kielbasa and sauerkraut. Remember than on the day of Pentecost, in the Acts reading we did not hear, each person present heard God’s works proclaimed in their own language.

What speech shall shape us? A monologue? Or the scattered diversity?

Saints Peter and Paul is not Babel. The divine mischief and the divine mercy instead has brought us together in a Pentecost. We have two distinct languages represented among the membership (although many dialects), and two distinct cultural groups (although many cultures among each). There is really no such thing as “Latino culture”; there are Latino cultures plural. And there is really no such thing as “white culture”; there is great variety. It’s when things get homogenous and monolingual that there is trouble. The gift of Pentecost is to be gathered, not to attempt a monologue and unanimity, but in our very diversity. Here God is praised, in the very beautiful and mischievous diversity of languages and cultures. Here we share one bread, one cup, united not by monologue or imposition but by a free Lord who is praised by all, each in the language that they speak and understand.

Why we are

We are people gathered together by our common hunger to know, to serve, and to delight in Christ.

We experience the God revealed in Jesus Christ as mystery, fascination, challenge, and joy. Spiritual hunger has been awakened in us in many ways, understood differently by each of us. At Saints Peter and Paul we have been welcomed by other searchers and welcomed by the God who kindles our hunger. Here questions are honored, searching is supported, a desire to serve is affirmed, and opportunities to serve are given. In our diversity of backgrounds, cultures, viewpoints, and even languages, we glimpse the rich diversity and endless fascination of God.

Together we find support, common warmth when alone we would cool to ashes, healing when we are wounded, challenge when we are complacent, invitation to grow when we are stagnant.

When we gather, our time together is shaped by the wisdom and richness of classical Christian worship rooted in the customs and viewpoint of the ancient Church. We hold these treasures in common with other congregations worshipping according to the usages of The Episcopal Church.

Each gathering is in itself a miracle, since in our culture little support is given to committed Christian life lived in common.

We begin our weekly time in a stance of listening. We believe God may speak through the words of the Bible read aloud, through the words spoken by a preacher, and by the silence in which God's "still, small voice" may move any of us, alone or together.

We end this time by a response of faith, couched in ancient words, and by prayers for the world and for ourselves. For we believe God calls in this way, among others, to participate in the healing of the world.

Shaped by God's speech, as a body we give thanks in a common action we call "Eucharist." We believe Christ joins us to himself in a great act of thanksgiving to God. In this we share in the unconditional love God has for creation and for us expressed perfectly for God's love for the beloved, Christ Jesus. We share in his life through blessed bread and wine. We call this experience a "sacrament", tangible things like bread and wine and one another's presence making real the unutterable love of God.

From this we are sent out to be "God's hands and heart in the world." It matter that we gather, for us and for those whom we are sent to know and to serve.

You are welcome to explore your own questions and longings with us. You may find, with time, that you wish to stay longer.

Learning freedom

7 Easter C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEaster7_RCL.html


What does it take to be free?

Our Acts reading is a story of liberation. The anonymous slave-girl who follows Paul and his companions around suffers from several slaveries at once. Legally she was someone’s slave. She was also enslaved by the magical practices of that time. Ancient Middle Eastern magic worked like this: you knew that on your own you were powerless. So through offering yourself, or through secret magical rites and incantations, you asked or persuaded or forced a spirit or angel or demon or even a god to do what you wanted. I think our slave girl had been offered to a spirit, literally in Greek a “python”, in order for her owners to make money. Think of this as spiritual prostitution. Her slavery was legal, financial, and spiritual.

But the Way of Jesus is a way of freedom. In an instant she was cast loose of spiritual and financial slavery at least.

I wonder what life was like for that slave afterwards? It is hard to be free. It is scary. You don’t know the rules, or you have trouble dealing with the fact that there are no rules that tell you who you are and what you can expect. The three young women in Cleveland, released from 10 years of hideous captivity and abuse, are in seclusion right now. Moving from slavery to freedom can be painful and jarring.

As Christians, we move from slavery to freedom all the time. At least, we should, if we are truly people of the Holy Spirit. “But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” says Saint Paul. A young student for the priesthood who just finished his Greek studies excitedly shared with me how learning to read a little New Testament Greek really opened his eyes. “In Bible Greek, there really is no linear past or future as we understand it” he said. “There are cases that indicate action that is completed, or action that is ongoing. Everything is part of a dynamic, unfolding kind of Now where more is constantly coming to light.”

Well, we’re not all Greek students, but we are Christians of the New Testament, and it is good to think about what the young student said. We are in that part of Eastertide season where we remember that Christ ascended into glory. That is why the Paschal candle is gone, and the awareness of empty space in the chancel is a reminder of that physical absence of Jesus. There is empty space that is not simply loss but is creative emptiness and anticipation. We are in the nine-day period of prayer before the feast of Pentecost. These days are not simply memorials, pious habits that we observe dutifully year after year. The coming of the Spirit of Jesus is a dynamic, ongoing reality. Pentecost is still unfolding in our lives, in our congregation, in the wider church, and in the world. We are literally “in Pentecost.” "Pentecost" is a better verb than it is a noun: we are "Pentecosting." So what do we do?

We honor the creative empty space in our lives. As we live, we accumulate a lot of clutter. We begin to think and act as if we cannot exist without all the things, or the ideas, or the habits that make up who we think we are. Consider the accumulation of our own lives: what has built up, in terms of things or actions or attitudes that we simply cannot release? The same applies to our congregation: we are clearing out our physical space, amidst some wincing on the part of members who have memories attached to this or that, as a sign of clearing out our minds and souls. Freedom is hard. The slave-girl had to adjust to a new life. Can we adjust to a lighter, more agile Saints Peter and Paul, where our conversations center on the Now of God and Christ and the Gospel and the dynamic future opening before us? Can we leave aside any thoughts of defeat or frustration or disappointment, or any rose-tinted nostalgia of a past that in our memory seems so wondrous?

What does it take to be free?

The Collect asks that we not be left “comfortless”. That word has become fuzzy in modern English. “Comfort” means “with strength.” With strength may Spirit come, and make us the free daughters and sons of God.

It matters—not just us, but for the world. For all creation waits with eager longing for the freedom of the children of God.

When we gather...

Here is a draft intended as a response to some questions and conversations arising from our Lenten conversations and beyond. My concern has been to place into simple yet not dumbed-down words things that a newcomer might ask, or want to know in order to feel more a part of our worship life...

Above all, know that you are welcome as you are. Please feel at ease. Our worship is shaped by long tradition and an ancient wisdom, and so might look and feel different that other settings you may have experienced. Ancient Christian sources describe spiritual practice as "exercise"--think of our gathering as a new exercise routine that will take time to learn! Like other forms of exercise, the benefits will show in time.

We believe that when we gather, God is present, and our gathering itself is sacred, an experience of God's presence on earth.

Our worship space is designed to speak this truth. Notice what you see-images, architecture, sounds and even the smell of incense and candle-wax. All these are simply meant to call to mind the sacred nature of our gathering and of the conversation with God taking place.

Both music and silence may convey the mystery of God. We honor both.

Some of those serving in worship wear special clothes determined by tradition. This is meant to convey the fact that what we all do together is "holy", meaning set aside for a special purpose. Colors used change according to the season of the year, seasons that reflect on various aspects of the mystery of Jesus Christ.

You will notice that the members present change their body postures at various times. We pray with our bodies as well as with our understanding, our voices, and our emotions. Generally, we SIT to listen when we believe God may speak, we STAND when we express respectful attention or during some forms of prayer. Some choose to KNEEL for certain prayers. When crossing in front of the altar, it is our custom to BOW or to GENUFLECT ("bend the knee") in an ancient gesture of respect. We make the SIGN OF THE CROSS at various moments (when blessing is pronounced, when the Trinity is mentioned, and other times), touching the forehead, heart, left shoulder, then right. When the Gospel is about to be read we make small crosses on our foreheads, lips, and heart.

Our worship is a drama in three acts:

a) Listening to God-- we believe that the living Word of God may speak to us through the hearing of the written words of the Bible and of the preacher's sermon.

b) Responding to the God who speaks--by professing our faith, by prayer for the world and church and ourselves as one body, culminating in the Peace

c) Communing with God--giving the great "Thanks" and receiving Communion, the tangible sign and symbol of Christ knitting himself to us in the blessed bread and wine. From here we are sent out to be Christ's hands and heart in the world, serving in his name.

Please know that we welcome all questions, we engage all reflections, and we hope your time with us will be food for your ongoing journey.

At the House of Shame

6 Easter C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEaster6_RCL.html

In the Old Testament, God cares for those on the margins.

The old Law commanded us to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger and the foreigner, for those on the margins. Workers in the fields were commanded to not completely strip their fields at the harvest, to leave the margins of their fields untouched so those who were “on the margins”—the poor, the strangers—could come and gather grain.

In the Gospel, Jesus does more than care for those on the margins. He goes to the margins, and makes the margins the new center.

The pool at Beth-Zatha was a place for people on the margins. The name Beth-zatha can mean either “house of mercy” or “house of shame.” Both applied—think of a soup kitchen or a shelter: it is a merciful idea and it is needed by desperate people, but you may not want one on your street and you probably don’t want to be seen eating there. The pool was even a sketchy place religiously—some scholars think it was dedicated not to the God of Israel, but to Asclepius, the Greek god of healing.

On the holy Sabbath, Jesus goes to the sketchy House of Shame.

He picks some guy, some chronically ill guy, a regular. He asks him a powerful question: “Do you want to be made well?” Two miracles happen. One is Jesus’ command: “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.” The other is that the man obeyed, choosing to believe that there really could be a different life besides lying on a mat at the House of Shame.

He stands, he walks. And it was a Sabbath.

A lot of sacred rules were broken that day. If Jesus wanted to be thought well of, he should not even have been seen at the ol’ House of Shame. It was sketchy and half-pagan. Why be there if you are trying to make a positive impression on the influential and the pious? And the Sabbath? The abandoned are still the abandoned on the other six days of the week. Why not plan these things at a decent place and on an acceptable day so you are not breaking some of the most fundamental laws of the tradition? Why?

Because Jesus goes to the margins. Jesus makes the margins the new center. The margins are where the Gospel happens.

If we wish to follow Jesus, then we too will go in heart and mind and body to the margins. We here at SPP have been on a journey these several years learning how to reach out to those on the margins, to welcome them here, to remember that it is on the margins that the Gospel happens. Today, most people who come to us, even those who appear prosperous and independent, feel that they are in some way “on the margins.”

When we follow Jesus to the margins, we recognize that we too are marginal people, that we are as much “on the edge”, broken and in need as are they. Christian faith arises when we acknowledge a deep need. Ancient tradition spoke of the poor as blessed because they cannot escape the evidence of their utter dependence on God. We on the other hand are tempted to act and feel as if we are self-sufficient and not in need. On the margins we realize what Jesus meant when he said “Blessed are you poor…”

It is a gift to walk with Jesus on the margins. The risen Jesus, the source of all life, reveals that the margins are actually the center. Those broken and lying at the House of Shame are revealed as blessed. What happened that day at the House of Shame was holier than all the Psalms and all the incense and all the prayers offered across town at the Temple. Today, we stand with Jesus at that strange pool named the House of Mercy and the House of Shame. We blink in the sunlight, surprised and humbled and shaken to our souls as he turns his gaze to us in turn and asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

Peter's dream

5 Easter C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEaster5_RCL.html


When I was younger, if I were asked to name the miracles of the New Testament, I would have come up with a list like this:
The resurrection of Jesus
The raising of Lazarus
The multiplication of the loaves and fishes
The healing of lepers
Giving sight to the blind

There are more, of course. You could name more.

Now I am older. I have walked many streets. I have found there heartbreaking good as well as terrifying pain, loneliness, and rage. I have also walked the streets of my own heart, and there I have met the same loneliness, rage, and pain.

Ask me now to name the miracles of the New Testament, and I will come up with a different list:
The conversion of Saul, from a deadly religious zealot to a servant of Christ
The unity of the Christian assembly
The forgiveness of Jesus given from the cross

There are more, of course. You could name more. One is told to us today:
The inclusion of the Gentiles

This Sunday good old Peter, old flip-flop undecided Peter, tells us in fear and trembling why he is no longer a good predictable religious man like his momma taught him. This was not a safe or an easy journey. The early Jesus-movement was not only a Jewish movement, it was a Jewish movement very preoccupied with who was in and who was out. That is a very natural human instinct. In fact it is a natural function of religion per se. Scholars of religion in general say that the purpose of religion is to make sense of overwhelming chaotic reality, to mediate the enormous powers surrounding us. Most religions are instinctively conservative—they try to keep everything stitched together so things do not get too crazy. This is especially important when the times are dangerous or out-of-control. One piece of stitching things together is making it clear how one belongs to the faith-community, so we know who is in and who is out.

When communities are frightened or threatened, they get even stricter and more harsh about who is in and who is out. With the Temple destroyed and everyone scattered, the Judaism of the time was very threatened and very frightened. The Jesus-believers were simply among them, trying to stay together, trying to make sure they were still among those who were “in.”

Then, an unlikely miracle occurred to an unlikely man. Peter had a dream, a disgusting and disturbing dream, where he is told to eat snakes and jackals and buzzards and swine. Peter is even more grossed-out than we would be—it is not only nasty meat, but the Bible said it is unclean and God forbids it. Three times the heavenly picnic-cloth is held in front of Peter, and three times the voice scolds him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Then Peter wakes up, probably nauseated and confused, only to hear someone knocking at the door.

It’s Gentiles. Goyim. Outsiders. Pig-eaters. Statue-worshippers. Enemies. Peter still needs one more nudge from God, this time not in a dream—go with them, and make no distinction between them and you. Walk with them, speak with them, eat with them.

We have trouble today imagining how this threw Peter’s world upside-down. We have to try and imagine what his culture and assumptions were saying to him, what he was feeling—fear, disgust, confusion. Who was God, what was truth, how can I go against the literal meaning of the Bible, who will we be if we are with these people, if they are with us, if they are us? And even if I accept this, what if someone sees me with them? What will the rest of the believers say and do to me if I tell them how I have changed my mind and heart?

But there were two miracles that day. One was this transformation in Peter. The other was, when the other believers heard Peter stammering out in fear and trembling his unbelievable story, they paused in silence, then rejoiced saying "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." God makes no distinction between the outsiders and us.

And this is how a strange little Jewish sect changed. The Jesus-movement would have remained a forgotten historical footnote for archaeologists, a half-hour show on The History Channel. Instead it became a community that grew and that lives today and that still remembers this strange, upsetting, healing dream. Good thing for us: looking around, I see no one, myself included, who had a Jewish mom. We're here because of Peter's dream.

The Christian community lives Peter’s dream over and over. When Celtic missionaries overcame their hatred of the invading Saxons and began to make monastic communities with them, Peter’s dream came alive. When Bartolome de Las Casas and other voices began to speak against slavery of both Africans and Native Americans, Peter’s dream came alive. When women gained voice and leadership in both church and culture, Peter’s dream came alive. When amidst fear of losing members and pledges we had a change of heart and mind over lesbian and gay and bisexual and transgendered folks, already our own members, Peter’s dream came alive. When this parish first reached out to Spanish-speaking neighbors and began to learn how to welcome them and form community with them, Peter’s dream came alive. When we look up on any given Sunday and see among us the stranger, the homeless, the one different, the one whom our instinct says is not-us, and God nudges us to reach out, to welcome, to acknowledge the Christ in them, then Peter’s dream comes alive.

We are most the church when we let God nudge us from comfort to the discomfort of welcoming the other—the stranger, the previously unclean according to our assumptions, the outsider, and learn how to walk and eat and live with them. Each time this happens, we move from being a sect, a private gathering, and become the Church all over again. This is how the Church first came alive. This is how the Church comes alive today.

A place we do not know

Easter Vigil 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEasVigil_RCL.html

Most people I know are more familiar with Good Friday than Easter. I am too.

Good Friday is where our very human lives, just as they are, meet the pain and unfairness of the world. Good Friday is the tears at loss and death. Good Friday is the deep sigh we draw when, once again, humanity lives up to our darkest and most pessimistic expectations. Good Friday is when the doctor comes in the consultation room with our test results and closes the door before pulling a chair close to ours. Good Friday is our parents aging, the innocent suffering, the homeless poor going on being homeless and mentally ill and living right where they are.

We know Good Friday. We know what to do, we know how to manage unmanageable pain. We know our place.

Tonight we come to a place that we have not known before.

The women who came to the tomb knew who they were and what they have come to do. They have seen the violent death of their teacher and friend and, although they were heart-broken, they were probably not surprised. Like women in all poor places, those places now optimistically called “the developing world”, these women knew abuse, sorrow, and loss. In traditional cultures men die violently and children die young. In such cultures women absorb abuse and have their loved ones torn from them and it is they who have to bind up wounds, feed everyone who is left, and arrange the dead decently for burial. This they know.

They knew where they had left Jesus. They expected to find him right where they left him. Their only worry was “who will roll away the stone?”

From there on, things got interesting. And the women found that none of their reasons for coming to the tomb made any sense any more. It is strange how an utter and complete surprise, a surprise that reverses everything you thought you knew about your life and the lives of others and your world and your reality—how that is terrifying, even if the news really is good. Even animals in the woods will circle suspiciously around unexpected food, suspecting a trap.

An empty tomb. A missing Jesus. Young men who seems to know what is going on. “He is not here.”

I think anyone in their right mind would be confused, or afraid, or run away terrified.

And that is the experience of resurrection according to the Gospel. That shock, that amazement, that feeling of blundering through a doorway into a large and unexpected room filled with light.

No Easter is just another Easter. Each proclamation calls forth new shock, new surprise, new amazement and awe. And so now, what do we do? What is it to be Easter people?

Thomas Merton said, “The risen life is not easy…It is also a dying life.” We walked through Lent admitting once more that we need to learn to walk with the Master. This past week we walked with him to Jerusalem, to the lonely garden, to Calvary. And now, where do we go?

Easter faith is embodied in those word, “He is not here…He has gone before you.”

Merton thought that many Christians hold a faith not of the living and risen Christ but of the dead Christ, the object of a cult, treating Christ as a “holy thing, a theological relic.” We know where we left Jesus, said Merton, and our only anxiety is how to roll away the stone so we can get to where we last left him. We do the same when we make our religion and our customs and our ideas something to hold on to with a death-grip. This grip does not allow the Spirit to say new things to us, to lead us in new directions, to animate us to new mission, to open our minds to new insights even when those insights are startling and strange. We know how to rustle the dry bones of Ezekiel. We do not know what to do when Christ puts new flesh on those bones and fills them with life.

Easter-faith is the faith of a people on the move, a pilgrim people. An Easter person is committed to allowing Christ to set him or her free, to dissolve any chains holding us to oppression or sadness or despair, to lead us into new and surprising life. An Easter church is a community that asks “Where is Christ leading us now?” and dares to listen for Christ to answer. And once we hear the answer, then we get up and move. “He has gone before you…”

Tonight allow wonder and awe to break into sadness and gloom. Tonight allow the astounding news to dispel sadness and despair. Tonight allow the strangeness of Easter news and Easter hope and Easter joy to break open the closed places of our hearts. We do not need any more practice handling the expected sadness and struggle of our lives. We need our prison-houses broken into, our weary expectations shattered, our darkness dispelled. We need to have every gloom and shadow whirl away like dingy startled pigeons.

Mad mercy

4 Advent C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Lent/CLent4_RCL.html


After a rainstorm and some flooding, a man walked along a riverbank to see the damage done. Rounding a bend in the river, he came upon an old man who had waded out chest-deep into the current. The old man was reaching out over and over to try and rescue a scorpion that was stranded on some snagged branches in the stream. Over and over the old man reached out his hand, and each time he did the half-drowned scorpion stung him. Watching this for a few moments, seeing the old man’s hand and arm turning blue from the venom, the man finally shouted, “Why do you keep trying? Leave that ungrateful insect alone!”

The old man turned and answered, “Don’t blame the scorpion. It is in its nature to sting. It is also in my nature to keep trying to save it.”

It is the mad nature of the merciful God that astounds us today.

We have heard today’s parable over and over. The story has many names. The most famous is “the prodigal son”, making the younger son, the party-boy, the center of the tale. He would love that. Others call it the parable of the loving father, whose parenting style is not exactly tough-love. Others call it the “resentful older son”, who often disappears in his younger brother’s shadow as, once again, the trouble child gets all the attention.

All these titles are possible. Here’s one more: the parable of the mad mercy of God.

All three of the characters are as helpless as the scorpion and the old man before their own natures. And all three are overwhelmed by the mad mercy of God.

One question to ask is, “Where am I in this story?”

Odds are that we have been the younger son at some moment in our lives. We have found ourselves far from home, or distanced from those who love us, or waking up in the middle of a mess that we ourselves have created. We “come to ourselves” as it were, come to terms with the mess we have made, and pluck up the courage to come back to where we hope we are still welcome. On the way, we rehearse the story we’ll tell anyone who will ask where we have been.

Or we have been the father, who might today be called co-dependent. We have been wounded and left behind, we have felt loss and grief and anger, but when we see the one or ones we still love, we are overwhelmed and we cast aside our resentment and our pain. Churches can be the father when we welcome someone back who has left us. We rush out, again and again, simply relieved that the one we love is still here and we can still be with them.

Or we have been the resentful older son. We have done the right thing as well as we could manage. We have shown up again and again. We have made countless meals, we have been there for partners and children and aged parents and siblings with whom we will never get along, we have dragged ourselves to work over and over on days when we wanted to be anywhere else. This is the son especially familiar to us who are faithful church-people: we’ve paid our pledges, we’ve shown up over and over, we’ve done the heavy lifting and kept things going year after year, only to see attention go to new people and new things. Where’s the justice, what’s my return?

All three characters are true to their natures. All three are caught up in the plot of this parable, which is the mad mercy of God.

The younger son does not even get to stammer out his excuses. He is caught up in the wild chaos of love beyond reason, love undeserved and unearned. I imagine him lying on his bed that night, wondering just what had happened and whether he could live with the abundant mercy he had been shown. What will life be like the morning after?

The father is left with the discomfort and the unresolvedness of his love poured out, the question of what happens the next day unanswered, and the irony that love shown one son kindles resentment in another.

The elder son is left with an array of questions and choices. Was his long faithfulness actually faithfulness to the real story, the story of the mad mercy of God? Did he ever really understand what kind of home in which he had lived all those years? Can he live with this new reality, or this new insight, that love is not earned, that his familiar home is a place of radical welcome and of care for the outcast, that quietly he too had found his own invisible pigpen built not of wasting money on wild parties but of his own assumptions about his father and his entitlement and of the limits of the mercy of love?

The plot of our own story is the mad mercy of God. This mercy is not a warm fuzzy feeling or mere personal assurance. To live the mad mercy of God is a daily discipline and a deliberate act of imagination. On this 4th Sunday in Lent, we are invited to recognize our world, as if for the first time, as the world of the God who is merciful beyond measure, whose nature is mercy. We are caught up in that mad mercy and asked how this will re-shape our lives, sharpen our sight, and change our church and our world.

Just as in debt as my own kids

(I was honored to give this testimony before a State Subcommittee on "Tuition Equity" for under-documented youth. Good start to Lent--kn+)

I am Kurt Neilson, Episcopal priest and Rector or pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Parish on Portland’s East Side. For six years this coming October we have offered a Sunday Mass in Spanish, and that community has grown to nearly equal in size the English-speaking portion of our congregation. I wish to speak to you from these years of experience working for and with Latino congregants of widely varied immigration status.

An essential part of our work involves us with high-school aged young women preparing for their Quinceaneras, a popular celebration of “coming of age.” In addition to a church service usually followed by a dance, we meet with the young women and their families for “platicas” or conversations helping all involved to make this moment one of meaning and maturation.

You need to know how astounding these young women are. Some are standouts at their high schools, 4.0 students involved in community service and student government and sports. Some are average kids, decent-enough grades with parents who care enough to guide them and involve themselves in their kids’ lives. Most are somewhere in between, hard-working students who keep themselves on the straight road amidst many temptations with parents who work nights and work several jobs and who consider themselves lucky to have the kind of back-straining, foot-aching work that you may have done when you were just getting started but now do no more.

In the church service, these parents stand up shyly and say in Spanish how proud they are of their daughter, how their daughter gives light to their lives, and how they hope and pray that their daughter stays to their path with whatever good example they themselves have had the energy and presence of mind to set for her. The young woman promises the same, with the help of God.

All these young women hope and pray for is a chance to continue to study, to grow, so they too can work hard and care for their aging parents and encourage their brothers and sisters and have a career where they can serve. It is an old story really—is it sentimental to call this the “American dream”, the vision that hard work and basic values shape the lives of each new group of people in this nation of immigrants? In the end, these are Americans. Over and over, immigrants have prayed for and waited for and struggled for their chance to simply participate. Mine did, and the Irish of turn-of-the-century New York bore the marks of this struggle. Your ancestors did too, unless your blood is truly Native American.

Tuition equity is no handout. These young women and young men too only want to be as in debt to Sallie Mae as my kids are. They expect nothing free.

If we establish tuition equity, there are abundant reasons from the standpoint of justice or compassion or faith-tradition to do so. I say that, if for no other reason, let’s do this out of enlightened self-interest. The young women with whom I have worked are rich in gifts and ambition and a desire to serve. Today many of their parents are laborers. In the blink of an eye, they will be the obstetrician delivering your granddaughter’s baby. They will be the elementary school teacher helping that child learn to read. They will be the lawyer assisting in the execution of your estate. They will be the clergy administering Saints Peter and Paul when good ol’ Father Kurt is just a couple of stories that the old-timers tell. They will be seated here listening to testimony from others who also seek equality. Already they are all that and more in many places. They are strong, and they are here, and they are a gift. If we help them now, we can say that we have truly helped ourselves.

The Plan

Rector’s Address 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi3_RCL.html


“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works…”

Today’s readings are filled with the power given to us to proclaim Christ’s Good News. “Do not be grieved, for the LORD is your strength.” “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” So let’s celebrate the richness and the mission given us! This is not a day to remember old sorrows, but to delight in one another and in God and in our calling.

One year ago we began a year of renewal we called “kindling.” Kindling sets sparks to try and start a fire. We took a chance on God and one another—on God, that God was not done with Saints Peter and Paul and could bring new life among us; on one another, that we could have new conversations and move from quiet despair to new faith and new hope.

And the fire was kindled! There is a new spirit among us, there is a new electricity and a renewed sense of Christ’s presence on Sundays and at other times. We have paid close attention to reviving vital elements of our common life like fellowship and hospitality, music and worship. This has not been without effort and cost. The bishop gave us some funds to begin renewal. We used part to fund the new hospitality coordinator’s position. The rest we use to fund the Rev. Karen Ward’s time as “missioner.” We added significant funds from our own reserves to Karen’s honorarium. The results of this investment are reflected in the long list of “what we did” in your report. I think it was money well-spent. Others of us worked hard to accomplish all that as well.

We have welcomed newcomers this past year that have brought joy and enthusiasm and new energy to us. Among these are Kathy Fitzgerald and Brian Fitzgerald, Aaron and Anna-Lisa Miller, Aaron Kelly and Amber Stewart, Stephanya Portucalian, Brian and Kelly and Abigail and Luke Petersen, and Greg Eicher. We have welcomed a new Music Minister, Mak Kastelic, who has re-energized interest and engagement with our music and who has already helped us deepen and broaden it.

Growth is hard and real growth means change. A few long-term members have chosen to leave us in the last couple of years. I grieve for that, but I have learned that when new life emerges not everyone chooses to participate. I pray them peace and I thank them for all they have shared of themselves. We are still searching for new ways to carry out traditional leadership roles like Vestry and Treasurer while keeping things simple so that new energy can grow unimpeded. We need, by the way, to release faithful Alice from her long and wonderful tenure as Treasurer and welcome ways and energy to do that. Perennial issues like finances still follow us. But a good friend of mine asked me, “How are things going?” and hearing my response, he smiled and said, “So things are going great! You just have budget problems.”

The Spanish-speaking Misa community does nothing but grow, and we welcomed a Vestry member from that congregation. There is a sense of maturing at the Misa as they go about ordering their life. In two weeks some of the members are offering a tamale fund-raiser in order to help support the church.

These areas of growth in our shared life empower us to do what the Bible and today’s Collect ask us to do. We are not here for ourselves alone. We are here for the larger community and world. A new conversation has opened about outreach to the poor as well as “in-reach” to our own members especially the homebound. We organized ourselves to better welcome and care for the homeless and mentally ill who join us on Sundays. Meanwhile, we are taking responsibility to care for our own, especially our elderly.

Someone recently asked me, “What’s your plan?”

Well, my “plan” has been to stay open to the Spirit. This past year has held many surprises and we needed to be ready to trim our sails. But this is what I have heard and seen God doing among us, and so this is my “plan”:

We will keep exploring what “renewal” means for us. We learned this past year that no one has much energy for speaking abstractly about “renewal”, but a lot of energy came from doing concrete things. We’ll keep doing things that we feel are Spirit-led and we will reflect on the results. We will also stop doing things that do not involve proclaiming the Gospel or where energy is not present. The bishop told us recently, “Do less, but go deeper.”

We will follow through with our mission goal of re-establishing a Children’s Formation program, open to using our resources to hire a Children and youth Ministry Coordinator.*

We will deepen our involvement with the life and concerns of Montavilla. Contacts with the neighborhood and engaging common concerns puts flesh and bones on the Gospel’s call to love our neighbors.

We will deepen our knowledge and experience of Anglo-Catholic spirituality through learning a new way to talk about liturgy together. We shall begin doing this during Lent. The Celtic voice will be more active in worship as it is today, as the Celtic inspiration has attracted some fine new membership since we began exploring it. We will also choose carefully and plan carefully for the times when the two language groups among us meet for common worship.

We will develop music as outreach and hospitality. On April 20 we are hosting a concert of the Portland Chamber Group, which we will offer as a gift to our neighbors and as a way to raise money for outreach. This is a start to opening our lives and our building to sharing in music with the larger neighborhood.

We will put our building at the service of the Gospel and of our neighbors. Since the preschool’s closure we have an empty, quiet building most of the week. It is bad stewardship to spend resources maintaining buildings we only use for a few hours each week. They need to be busy. Partnerships with the neighborhood, or with service agencies, or as means to generate revenue, or all of the above needs to be accomplished by next Fall.

We will explore new ways of ministering and doing mission with several of the parishes of the East Side. The joint Shrove Tuesday will be only the beginning of seeking ways to develop a real shared life among our churches.

How are those for “plans”?

I am realistic about how parish priesthood is changing for those of us serving vibrant but financially challenged settings. I was a hospital chaplain even before I was an Episcopal priest, and I am returning to my older trade through an internship at Good Sam hospital. I am realistic about my need to supplement my household income with additional ministry outside the parish. Most of our neighbor churches are experiencing similar things. Life is nothing but change, and church is not where we take refuge from change. Church is where we entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in whom we can trust while we engage the inevitable “changes and chances of this mortal life” as a Collect says. Christ is in charge, and in the end we do well not by resisting what he is doing in the world and in our midst, but by surrendering in faith and trusting that Christ knows what he is about. After all, if the servants of Christ do not really trust in him, then who will?

*not included in submitted written text at Annual Meeting, but added verbally

from inside out

2 Epiphany C 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi2_RCL.html


God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

This is no new notion. It was old when Augustine said it in the 5th century. It was old when Isaiah said it so poetically, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married.” I wonder what those rough Hebrew peasants thought when they heard that God had married them and their land! Too Much Information? Or maybe not; maybe as they worked the land intimately, hands dirty, and watched the land blossom with crops, as they held newborn lambs wet and quivering in their hands, I think they understood the God who was intimately with them as they were with the land.

At the deepest core of our being, we find the living God.

Strangely enough, it can be easy for religious people to forget this. Maybe that is why so many people resort to that expression which has become a cliché, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” To folks who say that “religion” represents a set of dogmas and rules and a scary institution that demands obedience. A better response might be “I’m spiritual because I’m religious”, because worship and practice together with others allows me to be transformed by the living Christ who dwells at the core of our being.

The Christ-light of Epiphany does not shine on us from outside, like a spotlight showing up our human flaws and imperfections. The Christ-light shines from within us. To be in Christ is to be illumined from within. To follow Christ is to co-operate in our own illumination. Writer Frederica Matthews-Green says “one’s essential being is permeated and filled with the presence of God. It is something more than merely resembling Jesus, more than merely ‘following’. It is transformation.”

On Facebook a long conversation started with the question: what is Christian formation? How do we do it? The word awakens deep longing for many. I think that longing is rooted in a deep hunger—we wish illumination, we wish transformation, we want “being in Christ” to be a lived reality.

In our tradition, we need to show up to allow Christ to work. “Word and Sacraments” are named in the Collect. Basic formation is supposed to take place as we gather to hear the Word and break bread each Sunday. This Epiphany is a good time to re-name and re-claim that deep reality. This Sunday is a good day to ask ourselves, “What is it I am thirsting for?” If it is not illumination and transformation by Christ, then during these Sundays leading to Lent it may be good to reflect and pray on that.

An illumined life has great power.

One man who lived an illumined life was Martin Luther King. King was once asked how he was able to keep such a grueling schedule of meetings, conferences, writing his own speeches and sermons, and gathered with activists and protestors long into the night, all under great stress, absorbing criticism and hostility. King said, “Early each morning, one hour belongs to God. The rest of the day belongs to everyone else.” It is good to think of the simple Christian pastor at prayer at dawn, probably with his Bible in his hands, then standing up with a sigh and going about a difficult life that changed our world. That is an illumined life.

And it is our life. John tells us so with signs and symbols today. Those stone jars at John’s wedding party held only water. But look what they held when Jesus showed up and when people just did what Jesus told them. Wine, wine, rich and good, better than an Oregon Pinot Noir, poured out for people who thought they were already full.

What about the old stone jars and plain water of our own hearts?

Watch what Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament can do. And when our lives are filled with Christ’s new wine, see who will come and drink, see how the thirsty will gather. See how our illumined lives will be a gift to the world.