speak a word

the wild, healing God

2012-02-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

6TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, Year B 12 February 2012 Ss. Peter & Paul, 10:00 a.m.

God our healer, Teach us to proclaim your goodness; give us grace to bring your balm where life is shattered. Give us courage to speak hope in forbidding places, to sing your praise in alien lands, to touch the sick and grieve with those who sorrow. Embrace us with your favor our whole life long that we may see your joy rising with the morning sun and give thanks to you for ever, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The leper in today’s Gospel had been infected with a disease that could have lasted for decades, and only ended – mercifully – at death. It was marked by unsightly ulcers and corrosive white scales that eventuated in the rotting away of flesh, beginning with the nose, toes, and fingers. Leprosy rendered the afflicted person ceremonially unclean – not to mention contagious – and so the disease caused the sufferer ostracism and quarantine as well, a kind of social disfigurement. Maybe that is why the word “healed” is never used in the New Testament in regard to the disease, but rather the expression being “made clean.” And the cleansing must be certified and authenticated by the priests as outlined in Jewish Law - see Leviticus.

Celsus, the pagan philosopher of the 2nd century who attacked Christianity for its doctrines of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, remarked in his Discourses: “Christianity attracts the sick, the fools, and the sinners.” No decent, upstanding “god” would have anything to do with lepers, he maintained – except Jesus.
Jesus held an unwavering conviction that disease was not necessary to God’s good creation. It was not an established part of the Divine Plan. And it had nothing to do with Divine retribution. God was a Lover – not a monster or a fiend who would inflict a child with leukemia or a mother with a brain tumor.
As the very agent of Creation himself, Jesus invokes and directs the power of connecting life itself to heal human existence. Expressing the will of the Father everywhere he went, Jesus never met a disease he did not cure. Disease, according to Jesus, was an “enemy” of God to be defeated, a sign of the fissure - the crack - in creation that God desired to be redeemed. When he looks on the leper, Jesus was “moved with compassion,” more accurately translated from the Greek, “his guts (bowels) were churning.”

There was once a farmer with a sick wife, who asked a monk from a local monastery to say a series of prayers to alleviate her condition. The monk began to pray aloud fervently in the man’s presence, but he asked God to cure all those who were ill.
“Just a moment,” said the farmer. “I asked you to pray for my wife, and there you are praying for everyone who’s ill.”
“I’m praying for her too,” the monk answered.
“Yes, but you’re praying for everyone,” her husband protested. “It might end up helping my neighbor, who’s also ill, and I don’t like him.”
“You understand nothing about healing,” said the monk sadly. “By praying for everyone, I am adding my prayers to those of the millions of people who are also praying for their sick. Added together, those voices rise up to reach God and benefit everyone. With selfish restrictions [like yours] they lose their strength and go nowhere.”
Here the leper received this heavenly power of life made new – concentrated in the touch of Jesus. Once “cleansed,” he defied the stern order of Jesus to keep quiet about the healing. Again, the Greek: Jesus made “snorts of indignation” at this point in the story.
The healed leper went on to broadcast the good news – if not verbally, then through the display of his glistening new skin. You can’t blame him. Conventional wisdom of the day regarded the healing of a leper to be as likely as the dead being raised. He was a walking miracle, and he knew it.
But at some point he would go on, like the rest of us, to die from something else – if not a disease, then old age. After all, almost everybody dies. You would hope that the healing that Jesus performed on the leper that day penetrated down deeper than the skin – that it went all the way into his soul, for healing from within.
Fred Craddock has said that healing or forgiveness or grace or love are not strategies of God to force changes in us, either by being withheld or by being given on condition. When we hear the story of the high-ranking soldier, Naaman, in today’s Old Testament reading, who had to “jump through hoops” – jump in the pool seven times – before he could be healed, we might think that this was a sort of “strategy” conjured up by Elisha the prophet. (It is not!) Jesus creates no “hoops” for the leprous man, but cures him straightaway. If anyone is in doubt about how God works in situations like this,
just ask any father who has made the dreadful error of saying to a child, “If you make good grades, Daddy will love you,” or, no less damaging, “Since Daddy loves you, you must make good grades.” Grades may improve a bit, but who cares? Something of far greater value has been severely wounded, even killed.
Michael King wrote of “Naaman and the Wild God of Israel” [in Spirituality Today, Spring, 1986]:
“We like a tame God, a God we can easily and comfortably believe in, worship and explain. We like a God we can hold warmly to our bosoms when we feel the need, a teddy bear of a God who can be cuddled when the night at bedtime seems too dark (and there are times, certainly, when God tenderly fills just that longing), but who can be, most of the rest of the time, properly ignored. We like a predictable God, a God who will act like we think he should act.
“But is he like that, or is he a God who, just when we think we have squeezed him, like a genie, into a bottle from which he will emerge only upon our command, lets out a great roar and shatters the bottle into sharp shreds? ...

“Our God is not a tame God. We can grasp at him through our theologies of peace, hope, liberation, grace, or personal salvation through Christ. But we always know him only in part, always he rises fiercely and wildly above us just when we think we have him pinned down.
“He is not a butterfly to be chased and stuck to a board and admired. He is, finally, as we see in Jesus, a God of joy and love, but he is a God also whose ways remain partly mysterious and unknowable, and before whom we do well to bow with fear and trembling as he touches and moves our lives in ways our bottles of theology and doctrine are too small and fragile to contain.”
Through these stories of healing the Gospel according to Mark, we are invited to enter into the “impossible,” to view our “wild” God in action in the person of Jesus himself.
What do we see, when Christians gather, when we pray for each other’s healing, when we see “miracles” in the lives of everyday people whom we call by their first names?
Geddes MacGregor in The Rhythm of God tells of a priest who, when asked, “How many people were at the celebration of the Eucharist last Wednesday morning?” replied,
“There were three old ladies, the janitor, several thousand archangels, a large number of seraphim, and several million of the saints of God.”

[H. King Oehmig: Synthesis, 2/12/2012; Ched Meyers: “Say to this Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship; Fred Craddock: Proclamation 2: Series B, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1981, p. 44]

Preached by Phil Ayers+, Feb 12, 2012

Fresh and new

2012-02-07T11:56:00.001-08:00

Candlemas 2012
Malachi 3: 1-4; Ps 84; Hebrews 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40

(Note: Jack Eberlein, young son of Lydia and Steve, was Baptized at the 10 AM Candlemas liturgy. Jack was a very attentive listener, only occasionally offering a coo or gurgle in response)

Today, Jack, everything is made fresh and new.

You’re being baptized today. Earlier today your mom and dad brought you to this place complete with an altar and with the sound of sacred songs and of prayers, the smell of incense.

Your mom and dad and sister Zoe waited a long time for you and knew that, when you came, all their lives would have a new beginning. They expected that. They also knew that there were surprises coming, that no one really knows how your story will turn out.

We heard another story about babies and surprises just a few minutes ago, Jack.

We heard about a mom and a dad who brought their baby son to a place where there was an altar, where sacred songs were sung and prayers were said and the smell of incense filled the air. They were happy. They knew their lives had changed forever. They knew that their baby’s life would be full of surprises, and that no one really knew how the story would end.

That other fresh young baby boy was also the Son of God sent into the world. God was doing something surprising and new by coming into a world where moms and dads bring babies into the world and do not know the surprises that await them. Was God feeling the same joy, the same sense of anticipation, the same sense of fresh newness?

Because there would be nothing but surprises from then on. Because nothing would be the same.

Jack, we’re making a much bigger fuss over you today than most people made over that other baby. That other place with the altar and the songs and the incense was a big and busy place, and lots of people came and went every day. We’re all paying lots of attention to you. That other baby only had two people, Simeon and Anna, old enough to be his grandpa and grandma, paying him attention and calling to other people to come take a look. “Come see the baby who will change everything!” they said. Some people paid attention, others were too busy.

Because God was doing a new, fresh thing, so fresh and new that almost no one expected it and no one knew how the story would end. The old man told the baby’s Mom that her baby would shake things up for everyone, that everyone would begin to notice poor people and that rich and powerful people would not be able to pretend that only their lives mattered. He told the baby’s mom that sad things would happen too.

But Jack, today we are happy because God tells us that new things are happening even now and that all of us, no matter how old and how tired and how discouraged we may feel, all of us can be fresh and new and that God brings each of us in to meet him just like you were brought in today, Jack, and just like that other baby was brought in by his mom and dad. Your mom and dad gave you a name already. That other baby was named Jesus after his mom and dad talked it over and they remembered a name that came to them in a dream. “Jesus” means “God puts me in an open place.”

In just a few minutes you will be baptized, Jack, and Jesus will put you in that fresh, open space forever. Jesus is that open space, and all of us will remember our own Baptisms and will thank God that we have also been put in an open space. Our hearts are made pure and clean, not by trying real hard to be good on our own but because Jesus makes them clean. We come into God’s temple not on our own, but carried in God’s loving arms. We stand here amazed and happy that in this old dusty world God is showing us bright and new life.

Thank you, Jack, for being baptized today, today when we are brought into the Temple along with Jesus, that other little boy. Thank you for reminding us that God makes us all fresh and clean and young, by water and the Holy Spirit, on the day when we remember the fresh and pure and surprising new life that God shares.

The listening life

2012-01-31T14:54:00.001-08:00

Annual Meeting homily 2012
Deuteronomy 18:15-20  Psalm 111 , 1 Corinthians 8:1-13,  Mark 1:21-28

Listen to God. That is a clear and simple message from today’s readings.

The Christian life is a listening life. God is always speaking. The challenge is to listen.

The people of Israel wandering in the desert knew all about that challenge. For them, listening to God was not a sweet private spiritual experience. The voice of God shook them to the roots of their souls. "If I hear the voice of the LORD my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die." Wandering in the desert teaches us how profound is the voice of God. When the boring comfort of routine and the deadening sense of expectation is lifted away, then we hear clearly that voice which loves and which saves and which gives the Holy to us and asks that we give ourselves in return. Our job is to listen to the ways that God speaks.

To truly listen, we must be ready to respond.

The Christian life is a listening life. This has been true from the beginning.

Adam and Eve listened to the footsteps of God in the garden. They hid because they could not face the truth of their own lives.

Abram listened to the voice of God that called him from his homeland to a place he had never seen.

Moses listened to the voice of God calling him out of his exile to risk and danger with a captive people.

Jesus listened to the voice of God that said to him “You are my beloved Son.” Even Jesus was so shaken that he ran to the desert himself, where he could listen more deeply and be transformed and prepared more profoundly.

God is still speaking. The line of listeners has not been broken. The Christian life is still a listening life. What shall we hear when we listen today?

Moses may not walk among us anymore. But it was Moses himself who said, “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” That same Spirit which moved Moses and freed a whole nation is poured out upon us. That same Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead and which came upon the disciples at Pentecost is poured out upon us.

God is speaking. Our life is a listening life. How shall we listen?

A listening life is a challenging life. We must name the noise outside of us, and the noise inside of us. We live in a world which bombards with information and images, and which wants to tell us how to feel and what to buy and how to think and feel.

This noise is easier to deal with than the noise within us. We all have it—noise of boredom and tedium, noise of fear or despair, noise of anger or pride. Each of us has our own re-mix, our personal play-list of inner noise that also tries to tell us how to feel, how to think, what to buy and to value.

But God is still speaking. How shall we listen?

We place ourselves in the presence of God through prayer, through a re-kindling of hope and faith, through asking God for the gift of the Spirit and the gift of listening. We place ourselves in the presence of the Word and in the life of the sacraments, through sharing Communion and in common prayer. We take that life of prayer into our daily lives in a way that works for us.

And we listen, with humility and respect and gratitude, to one another. We listen today, as we gather today to speak aloud our life here that we share at Saints Peter and Paul. We listen, in that spirit of respect and humility that Saint Paul himself spoke about as our way of life with one another.

God is still speaking. Our life is a listening life. Are we ready to listen?

Bad news, good news

2012-01-22T16:54:00.000-08:00

3 Epiphany B 2012
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Ps 62; 1 Cor 7: 29-31; Mark 1: 14-20

I have bad news: we are all called by God.

Jonah could tell you all about that bad news. The short masterpiece that is the book of Jonah says that Jonah heard the call of God and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. The last place he wanted to go was Nineveh, an enemy city full of people with bad intentions. The last thing he wanted to do was walk alone in Nineveh and tell people that God was really unhappy with them.

Jonah took off in the opposite direction. You may know the rest of the story. A storm rocks the ship, the crew learns that God has picked Jonah, they throw Jonah overboard, the big fish swallows Jonah and warfs him up right back onto the road to Nineveh, the last place he wanted to go.

I’ve decided that Jonah is one of my patron saints. Some may think that a clergyman has the “call from God” thing all figured out. I don’t. A call from God is not as simple as choosing a religious career and going to school and having the bishop lay hands on you and adopting the lifestyle of a priest, week in and week out.

One can do all that and never really wrap oneself around a call from God. God’s call is urgent, God’s call comes in the midst of our ordinary lives. God’s call tells us that nothing is ordinary and that life is not the way we assumed it is and will be. God’s call asks us to do something unusual, to break from the ordinary, and it takes us beyond our comfort zone. What we do when we respond may be something very ordinary-looking, something that gets no attention or fame, like a life of deeper prayer or beginning a humble kind of service to one other person in need. Or it may be extraordinary, like helping lead a whole congregation into new life or witnessing to God’s justice in the public eye.

I am still struggling with how to respond to my ongoing call from God. I’ve done my share of running, running like Jonah even though I appear to stay in one place. I’ve been swallowed by my share of big fish and warfed right back where I did not want to go. Now I am struggling with a sense of call to lead renewal both right here at Saints Peter and Paul and also within the Diocese. Like Jonah, I sometimes find myself wishing that God would keep quiet and let me have a comfortable and predictable life.

But God is still speaking, and God is still calling.

I have good news: we are all called by God.

Every Christian soul is a called person. In our Baptism the voice of God says to each of us “You are my beloved”, not once only but every day. And God calls us like Jonah, like Simon and Andrew and James and John today.

Calls from God are not for the elites, for the spiritually sophisticated, for the religious professionals. Calls come to the ordinary; in fact, in the Gospel Jesus calls very unlikely people. We know nothing about Jonah’s life before his call. We do know something about the four men called today—fishermen, very ordinary hard-working practical day-to-day, check-to-check working guys. They can’t afford to miss a day of work, their duty is to their families. One novel about Jesus says that old Zebedee never forgave Jesus for taking his two sons away and was Jesus’ lifelong enemy.

But they got up and went—Mark says “immediately.” Some do.

Some do respond immediately. Some of us are more like Jonah—I know I am. Some ignore the urge, the unquiet, the itch, the deep longing, for as long as they can. But the call of God never stops. And the good news of the Kingdom is urgent.

I have bad news—we are called by God. We are called beyond our comfort, beyond what we thought was predictable about our lives. I have good news—we are called by God. We are loved with a love that we will never exhaust. We are known more deeply than we know ourselves. And when we set our feet and our hearts on the road in answer to our call, God will do wonders in us and through us that we cannot now understand.

Renewal, Eli-style!

2012-01-15T17:49:00.001-08:00

2 Epiphany B 2012
1 Sam 3: 1-10; Ps 139; 1 Cor 6: 12-20; John 1: 43-51

“The Word of the Lord was rare in those days.” When is the last time you heard the Word of the Lord? Not just the written word of the Bible, but the living word of the Lord?

Does that sound like a strange question? Does that sound like an uncomfortably “religious” question, what some folks today might refer to as “woo-woo”? God speaking? Our hearing?

We need to deal with that question right out front today, because the readings place it right in front of our eyes.

“The Word of the Lord was rare in those days” says the story of God speaking to Samuel. That sentence chases away any fantasies we may have that “back in the day” people had greater spiritual experiences than we do now, or that people were more “primitive” and imagined more spiritual things than we do, oh we ever-so-sophisticated people. “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days”—in stillness it is easier to hear the still voice of God. Other things, louder things were drowning it out.

In Samuel’s time it was chaotic politics, corruption and abuse of power, exploitation of the poor and helpless, and uncertainty and fear that spoke loudly and drowned out other sounds. Now we can’t relate to any of that, can we? Confusion and abuse outside combines with fear and anger inside to create a perfect storm of noise. God does not shout, nor grab us by the shoulder and shake.

Old Eli, with his years catching up to him and his broken heart and his bad conscience over his sons shaking down the poor at the temple, slept his exhausted despairing sleep. But there was one set of new fresh ears and one open wondering heart that was alert to the still speech of God.

Young Samuel does not recognize the still voice in the night for who it is. He still does need old Eli, old burned-out and exhausted and despairing Eli. Eli still has his part to play. His ears may be closed, his “golden days” may be long ago, but he can still mentor a new young servant of God. “Go and lie down…say ‘speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

That’s OUR story today. That is the Bible’s tale of how a tired community can hear the voice of God and of how its members can help one another to hear and to renew a community’s life.

Is it our story? Is it the story of Saints Peter and Paul?

We are a community of Christian folk with a track record rich with faith and with service and with life lived with one another. That record, that tradition and those memories, are a gift and yet they can become a burden. They can make us feel like we have lost something in these late years. Where do we begin? Where is our new life? Some of us who have been here long can relate to Eli, who has seen it all and who lays down each night filled with his weariness and his worry for the present and the future.

But that is not our whole story. Some of us are Samuel, with quick and fresh ears and hearts filled with wonder. Some of us look about and see new life, new growth, such richness now and such promise for the future. Some of us are attuned to the fresh, renewing voice of God speaking.

Some of us are Eli and Samuel both, at the same time. Some of us live in a confusing place where weariness and fresh hope are mixed up, side by side.

So how do we let God speak here at Saints Peter and Paul?

We shall live with one another gently and respectfully, with love. Old Eli and young Samuel were sharing life simply in the temple of Shiloh, taking care of the sacred space while waiting for God to speak. We make a home together here. We have such a gift in one another—walking a Christian path is not a solo act, not a private journey.

We shall cherish one another’s gifts. Samuel’s gifts were alert sharp ears and an open, hopeful heart to hear the fresh voice of God. Let’s love those among us with those ears and hearts, and let’s love and welcome the Samuel within us who is still alert and hope-filled even when we are tired.

Eli’s gifts were long and faithful service and readiness to accept that the Lord might speak through the new and the young. Eli could have sent Samuel back to bed telling him, “Don’t bother me, I’ve tried to hear God speaking that way and he doesn’t do it, you’re new and don’t know how things really are. YOU’LL find out!” But Eli did not do that. Instead Eli shared his own experience, helping Samuel to sharpen his ears and to hear clearly God’s speech, even when what God had to say was not comfortable for Eli.

And that is how God renewed his people then. Shall we let God renew us now?

Eli and Samuel are among us here. At times they are both within each of us. Treasure the hard-won experience and faithfulness of Eli, of the Elis among us. Welcome the freshness and eagerness of Samuel, of the Samuels among us and the Samuel within each of us.

And then? And then we shall welcome one another to new and renewed life, here in God’s beloved community of Saints Peter and Paul. We have lived thus far with Eli and Samuel—the Gospel today shows us how to do that welcoming. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” “Come and see.”

Can God renew us? Can anything good come out of an aging church in a challenging age? “Come and see”

Academy for Formation and Mission liturgy schedule

2012-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

(note--this is posted for the benefit of the Academy for Formation and Mission, who share their worship life and roles with one another--kurt n+)

Worship Schedule
Academy for Formation and Mission
Winter/Spring 2012

Friday January 6:

Compline
Officiant: Marlene M.

Saturday January 7:

Morning Prayer: Ps 103, Mark 1: 4-11

Officiant: Joshua

Lector: Pam

Preacher: Nick Page

Holy Eucharist (1 Epiphany): Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Mark 1:4-11

MC: Diane Higgins

Presider: Kurt N+

Deacon: Maureen Hagen

Preacher: Marlene

Lector: Coleen Howard

Acolyte: Cynthia

Intercessor: Becky

Friday, January 20:

Compline
Officiant: ______________________________

Saturday January 21

Morning Prayer: Ps 55, 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31

Officiant: Becky

Lector: Cathleen

Preacher: David

Holy Eucharist (3 Epiphany): 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Matthew 18:1-6; Psalm 116:1-8

MC: Marlene

Presider: ______________________________

Deacon: ______________________________

Preacher: Diane Higgins

Lector: Brad Toebben

Acolyte: Joshua Kingsley

Intercessor: ______________________________

Friday, February 3

Compline
Officiant: Coleen

Saturday, February 4
Morning Prayer: Pss 87, 90; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Officiant: Marlene

Lector: Joshua Kingsley

Preacher: ________________________

Holy Eucharist (5 Epiphany): 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c 1; Mark 1:29-39

MC: ________________________

Presider: ________________________

Deacon: ________________________

Preacher: ________________________

Lector: ________________________

Acolyte: ________________________

Intercessor: Nick Page

Friday February 17

Compline
Officiant: Brad Toebben

Saturday February 18

Morning Prayer: Pss 107: 33-43, 108: 1-6 (7-13); 2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Officiant: ________________________

Lector: Marlene

Preacher: ________________________

Holy Eucharist (Last Epiphany): 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Psalm 50:1-6; Mark 9:2-9

MC: Nick Page

Presider: _________________________

Deacon: _________________________

Preacher: Brad Toebben

Lector: _________________________

Acolyte: _________________________

Intercessor: _________________________

Friday March 2

Compline
Officiant: _________________________

Saturday March 3

Morning Prayer (Ps 55, Romans 4:13-25)

Officiant: Nick Page

Lector: _________________________

Preacher: _________________________

Holy Eucharist (2 Lent): Romans 4:13-25, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Mark 8:31-38

MC: _________________________

Presider: _________________________

Deacon: _________________________

Preacher: _________________________

Lector: Marlene

Acolyte: Nick Page

Intercessor: _________________________

Friday March 16

Compline
Officiant: __________________________

Saturday March 17 Morning Prayer (Patrick)
(Ps 87, 90; Ephesians 2:1-10)

Officiant: Joshua Kingsley

Lector: Becky

Preacher: Coleen

Holy Eucharist (4 Lent): Ephesians 2:1-10; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22;  John 3:14-21

MC: ___________________________

Presider: ___________________________

Deacon: _____________________________

Preacher: _____________________________

Lector: _____________________________

Acolyte: Marlene

Intercessor: _____________________________

Friday March 30

Compline
Officiant: _____________________________

Saturday March 31 (John Donne)

Morning Prayer (Pss 137: 1-6 (7-9), 144; Philippians 2:5-11)

Officiant: ______________________________

Lector: ______________________________

Preacher: ______________________________

Philippians 2:5-11; John 5:19-24 Psalm 27:5-11 or Psalm 16:5-11

MC: Joshua Kingsley

Presider: ______________________________

Deacon: ______________________________

Preacher: ______________________________

Lector: ______________________________

Acolyte: ______________________________

Intercessor: Marlene

God's choice

2011-12-25T20:17:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But God made a different choice with his Son.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mary-eyes

2011-12-18T16:41:00.001-08:00

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

“Perhaps she saw with different eyes”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Third Sunday of Advent, Year B

2011-12-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

Guest homily by Malcolm Heath

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

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

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

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

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

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

I find it interesting that amid all that wonderful imageryif restoration and healing in Isaiah today, of celebration for fortunes and joyreturned, the Prophet proclaims that this, too, is “the day of vengeance of ourGod”.

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

broken hearted will be healed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And God is promising change.

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

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

Renewal--public conversation!

2011-12-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

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

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

Who we are today:

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

Some of the things included in our identity:

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

Communication

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

Relationships

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

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

Small group Talking, Dreaming, Visioning results:

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

urgent invitation

2011-11-27T19:49:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gathered and freed

2011-11-20T17:10:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

from adult formation conversation: creeds and faith

2011-11-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Children of God first...

2011-11-10T07:49:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

That’s my problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saints of God later, children of God first.

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

Homily delivered by Cat Healy for All Saints Sunday

What's your role?

2011-11-06T16:30:00.001-08:00

All Saints 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

So then, “what is our role?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following Moses: stewardship

2011-10-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

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

Preached by Sean Wall, seminarian, Sunday October 16 2001

A letter to the elders

2011-10-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

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

Academy homily October 23, 2011
Joshua Kingsley

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

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

Dear Grandma, grandpa, mom, and dad,

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

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

fear and trembling

2011-09-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All we have

2011-09-18T17:08:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

“What does that mean?” Liz persisted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are my hopes for this year…

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

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

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

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

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

Forgive

2011-09-11T17:59:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does a church commemorate such a day?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ our Passover

2011-09-04T22:01:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shaped by the Name

2011-08-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. cf Michael Casey OCSO in Strangers To The City

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

Where God happens*

2011-08-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

Proper 15 A 2011

God happens when forgiveness is given and received.

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

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

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

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

And God happens when old boundaries are crossed.

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

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

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

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

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

Anglo-Catholic?

2011-08-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

From time to time the parish has wondered, asserted, discussed, and argued about "What exactly IS Anglo-Catholic?" Here's one from a Bishop Weston from 1923, who says what makes most sense to me on the matter:

"...If you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum... Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet"

The MAX stop--cherries and blessings given and received

2011-07-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

Just this AM Junior Warden Elaine Hogg and I hung out from 7-8 AM at the 82nd Avenue/Halsey Tri-Met train platform, offering cherries and coffee and St. Christopher's Day blessings to any who wished.

I wish I could say that I came up with this great idea on my own, but this was the brainchild of Mother Jennifer Creswell of St. Luke's Gresham. Jennifer has a flair and courage both for "liturgical evangelism", taking the charge of her priesthood vows "to bless" by public presence and blessing out and about in the world. Several small groups of Episcopal clergy and laity promised to keep vigil at Tri-Met stops throughout the city on this, the traditional Western feast of St. Christopher patron of travelers. I felt a special urgency to be present on the 82nd Avenue stop as by reputation it is one of the more crime-prone train stops in town.

I found this experience deeply, sacredly unsettling. For all my talk about evangelism and learning how to "go forth", I am actually quite shy of that, afraid of intruding on people, and averse to potential hostility. To avoid potential hassles by transit cops I made sure I had an actual ticket in my possession.

Elaine met me on the platform, our other companions being prevented from participating by illness. I had bought one of those Starbucks coffee cartons complete with cream and cups, and Elaine brought fresh cherries. Elaine said we should begin by invoking blessing on ourselves, on the Tri-Met travelers, and on the operators, as well as on ourselves. And so we did. Something changed in that moment, a sense of purpose and rightness, a feeling of being centered and of standing on a place which God has set aside, holy.

Elaine was great, our pro-active person, walking about with cherries and, when it felt right, saying simply why we were present, "Happy Saint Christopher's Day!" I stood by the coffee and the sign "Free coffee, free blessings for those who wish them, no obligation or back-talk!" Several people drifted over and spoke. Those who did were, judging by their dress and appearance, those who had known some pain or some poverty. People of color were more receptive by and large than non-colored folks, often saying first "God bless you!" before any such words came from our mouths.

One lost-looking man about my age with a briefcase gratefully took our directions for the correct train downtown, said he was on business from the Pittsburgh area. I told him I had gone to school at a tiny Roman Catholic seminary up Route 8 from Pittsburgh, whereupon his face registered shock and disbelief. "St. Fidelis--I went there too." We stood and stared at one another--St. Fidelis had maybe 45 students at its height in those days, before it closed. Some might call this coincidence, but I find I dare not.

Elaine and I would stand and speak between each wash of the commuting tide presaged by train arrival or a bus disgorging its preoccupied load of commuters above us on the overpass. We spoke of how, as the hour wore on, people seemed more tense and more preoccupied, less amenable to being approached even with cherries proffered by a gentle woman with a delightful Scottish accent. We spoke of how we can bless, with the name of Jesus, those passing by on train and those in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-84 next to the tracks without anyone conscious of that fact. In writing afterwards, I find myself thinking that it is somehow crucial that such anonymous blessing be something of value, something that makes a difference in ways I cannot put into words.

When we were done, we were done. We left and, with the 2/3 full coffee carton and the remaining cherries, went to the courtyard of JOIN and left the remaining spoils of St. Christopher in the courtyard which would soon be filled with poor folks waiting to get inside.

What does it mean to "take one's faith out into the world"? We all do this daily just by dint of being the Body of Christ in family and workplace. But to speak words of blessing, owning up to being intentional friends and servants of the Blessed One, that is something else again, at least to me. For one brief hour, it was an experience of vulnerability--needing a companion that we might go "two by two", needing prayer and assurance of the divine presence, needing the receptivity and kindness of those whom we approached, needing the assurance of divine presence and blessing. I suspect that it is this sort of presence and vulnerability that will be part and parcel of ministry in this and any church in the future, and those who are already so engaged have a head start! But we have a chance to offer the best of what our particular take on the Gospel gives to us--a generous, blessing-conscious, vulnerable faith, learning from the ground up what it is to take blessing and to receive blessing in a God-inhabited world.

Feed my lambs

2011-06-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

June 26th 2011, St. Peter and St. Paul, observed

Ezekiel 34:11-16
Psalm 87
2 Timothy 4:1-8
John 21:15-19

He was less than four feet tall but his voice echoed through the halls of the church, swear words becoming a sailor –big anger issuing forth from that small mouth. This tirade was followed closely by a small chair that his strong, little arms had tossed across the room. Big pain overwhelming the small heart in a young boy who was having to make sense of a father gone, of a cousin shot, a mother frantic. A small boy making sense of race, of discrimination, of loss when Elmo and Big Bird should have been the focus of his attention. This was Giovanni, and for one summer he was the sheep God placed in my path.

I spent the summer after my sophomore year of college living with eight companions in a small house in NE Portland, spending all our working hours at Maranatha Church providing “camps” for children in the neighborhood. And Giovanni: hungry, angry, afraid and five years old joined my small group the first day - dumping my bubbles, breaking my sidewalk chalk, and opening a door for me to learn more about Grace then I could ever imagine.

Peter do you love me? Tend my lambs. Peter do you love me? Feed my sheep. Peter do you love me? Follow me.

We know the rest of the story. We know the Peter who made a life of tending and feeding sheep, who followed Jesus in seeking the lost, binding up the injured, strengthening the weak, and followed Jesus into persecution and death on a cross. We know a Peter who seems bigger than life, who has churches named after him…

But this Peter in today’s story – he is not so different than you and me. He has messed up, a lot. He is enthusiastic, but impulsive. He is pious but overstated. He desperately loves Jesus but finds his heart ruled more by fear than love. And he has just denied even knowing Jesus, let alone being a committed disciple. It is to this very human character that Jesus appears – that Jesus meets, right where his heart is. See in Greek the story goes something like this, “Peter do you agape me – do you love me unconditionally”
“Jesus I philio you – I love you like a brother”. “Peter do you agape me?” “Jesus, I philio you.” So Jesus meets Peter where his heart is. “Peter, do you love me like a brother?” “Yes Jesus, you know that I do.”

Peter isn’t the mountain of faith here. He is not bigger than life – he is like us, trying to love God the best he can – and Jesus meets him right where he is: and calls him to great works.

In the same way Jesus meets you and I, in our own very human, imperfect hearts. Do you love me - do you strive to love me? Tend my lambs. Feed my sheep. Follow me.

But Jesus, we say, I don’t know how to tend sheep! Guess what! Peter was a fisherman – he didn’t really know either! This is a call that takes us away from what is comfortable, from what seems natural and asks us to follow to the place in the world where there are those who are lost, who are afraid, who are broken and weak and find the Good Shepherd working great works through our very human hands, our awkward words, our stumbling feet.

Today like Peter we are called to tend the lambs, feed the sheep and follow the God of grace into unexpected places. We are, each of us, challenged to intentionally seek the lost. We are challenged to put ourselves in the way of the broken of this world and offer help. And together we are challenged to find ways as a church to love the weak. This is not a side note, a nice addition to the life of faith! NO! This is Jesus’ great call to his people, TO US. Feed my sheep!!

But just as we are all Peter today, we are also sheep. In each heart here there is a place of loss. Places that are broken and weak. Places desperately in need of the good shepherd. We want to be fed. To each person seeking, each person hungry today I offer you this: If you will follow Christ into the sea of lost and broken hearts in the world you will experience grace in ways that you never imagined. You will be fed. You will be fed. That is just one thing I learned from Giovanni.

I believe that Giovanni had never set foot in a church before that summer. He knew a little about love from his gentle but frightened mother and he knew a lot about a world that hurts and takes away, but Giovanni didn’t know anything about a shepherd who cradles his small body in his arms and binds up every wound. I never saw Giovanni again after that summer. I do not know if he ever set foot in a church again. But that summer I know God gathered him up and spoke love.

Giovanni didn’t leave our camp ready to apply for sainthood, but something about being with a bunch of neighborhood and college kids each day, present to him in his anger or in his joys did cause a shift. He smiled more. He swore less. He asked for help more…I remember one evening he and his brother walked up to our house (we lived right across the street from the church) “Ms. Tracy you got any food, ‘cause what my mamma made for dinner was nasty!”. I do believe that if nothing else, Giovanni left that camp convinced that there was a God who loved him, no matter what.

Giovanni had a loud voice for angry swear words. He also had a powerful voice to sing. And in the midst of song all of his anger melted away. His non-compliant, ornery mannerisms morphed into an intense focus. And hands that had thrown chairs, broken toys, and punched with fists, instead were lifted high. “JESUS LOVES ME THIS I KNOW”. And then in another verse, looking around at the other kids, looking right at me: “JESUS LOVES YOU THIS I KNOW”. Yes Giovanni, yes he does. In all our brokenness the good shepherd does indeed love us more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Amen.

Deacon Tracy LeBlanc

The E-word

2011-06-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

May 29, 2011
Acts 17:22-31
Easter 6
SS Peter & Paul E.C.

Please pray with me. Dear Lord, be good to us; the sea is so wide and our boat is so small. Amen.

Pleased to be here. You know, I got a little surprised when I sat down to write this sermon. I have not preached very often outside the congregation I serve, and it struck me, as I was writing, that I guess I’m normally in conversation—in my head, at least—with God and with my congregation when I write a sermon. I think the very cool thing about that is that preaching happens in the context of relationship. When I preach, I’m not an “expert” telling you what you need to know about the Bible. When I preach, I really think of it as a conversation. So I felt a little disabled, writing this sermon, because you and I are not in relationship—yet. I hope that will change. It’s starting to change today. I guess what I want to say is, I pray that this conversation, starting with a sermon, will develop. But I don’t know you very well yet. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I say things that you’ve maybe heard too much about already, or that don’t fit with your view of the world. I trust you’ll let me know J

Now that I’ve done my disclaimer, I’ll tell you that I’m going to talk about evangelism today. Yeah. I know. That can be a touchy topic. Possibly not smart of me, on our first Sunday together. I can only say God made me do it. This is the sermon that God and I came up with, and I can only trust that God knows more about you all than I do, and I can hope that it’s good news for you this week.

The gospel this Sunday is wonderful. I love the poetic way John’s Jesus describes the dynamic relationship between God, Jesus, and the Christian. It’s dynamic—always moving. Love flowing back and forth and around. But the reading that caught my attention this week was Acts 17. Because it speaks to me of some of the same things Diana Butler Bass talked about a couple of weeks ago at our Diocesan clergy conference. In Acts 17, Paul has been traveling around the Roman Empire, teaching about Jesus to all sorts of audiences. And Paul is nothing if not zealous. A priest I used to work with said that our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses. (I think he’s right, by the way.) And I think this was true of Paul. He zealously persecuted Christians, and then, after his conversion, he was just as zealous in promoting Christianity. It’s his personality: passionate, a little self-righteous, and with the stubbornness of a mule. So Paul is in Athens. And—I love this—he knows his audience (such a great skill) and he crafts his message for the audience he’s speaking to. He starts out by affirming the Athenians. He says, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” This is good! The Athenians know that Paul understands them because he has been with them, taking note of what they do and how they do it. He tells them that, in his walks through their city, he’s noticed temples, and among them is an altar “to an unknown God.” Again, Paul affirms them. He says, my friends, you are right to hold God in awe, and to leave space for that which you don’t know or can’t comprehend. Then he tells them, this unknown God, this God that you already acknowledge, is here among you, and I can tell you about this God. This God is, in fact, as close as your own hearts.

A couple of weeks ago I was with Father Kurt and Tracy and most of the other clergy in the Diocese at our annual clergy conference. Diana Butler Bass came to be with us and speak to us, and she was talking about the research she’s doing for a new book on spirituality and religion. When she started talking in those terms, religion and spirituality, my little ears perked up. Because that’s familiar language to people living in this part of the country. In fact, Diana told us that here in the Pacific Northwest we are already living the future of Christianity in America. In the sense that we’ve already lived with the decline in church attendance for about 50 years and we’ve already started to re-think church so we can see what rises from the ashes of what the Church used to be. I grew up in the Northwest, so none of this was news to me. But when I visit my clergy friends in places like Virginia and North Carolina, I see what she’s talking about. In those places, church is still pretty central in most people’s lives. Churches aren’t doing things much differently than they were 50 years ago because, for the most part, those models are still working. Diana told us that people in the South look at the statistics about 40-45% of people attending church weekly, and they think the statistics must be lying. Because in those places, it seems like 95% of people must be in church on a Sunday. Or at least they say they are. Whereas people in the Northwest think the statistic is a lie because here it seems like maybe 5% of people go to church every week. Right? Diana is excited about what she sees happening in the NW. This is the land of “I’m spiritual but not religious.” And while—I admit it—I can be pessimistic about what this means for the church, it actually gives Diana Butler Bass hope. I joined a facebook group once that’s called “I’m religious but not spiritual.” It was sort of a knee jerk backlash against what I saw as wishy washy, zero-commitment, watered down way of expressing spirituality. Which is funny, because the whole concept of spirituality is very precious to me. What is spirituality? That which feeds our spirits? And isn’t this one of the main purposes of religious faith? I’m drawn to the spirituality section of the bookstore. I love prayer. When I hear people’s stories, I’m attuned to the work of the Spirit in them, and to the ways people’s experiences affect their spirit. I am spiritual! I’m spiritual and religious because how could I possibly separate the two? Diana’s hope is that churches—which can tend pretty heavily toward the religious (which is, the institutional, structural, committee-oriented business)—can start to incorporate more of the spiritual—which is, the transcendent, awe-filled, beauty of transformation, and start to meet the needs of people who express faith in spirituality but not in religion. The Church really is already in the business of spirituality, but it can often be bogged down in the religious. Diana’s interest is where the two—religion and spirituality—collide.

And here’s where I come back to Paul in Acts 17. He’s talking to the Athenians. He wants to share the Good News of this guy, Jesus, with them, and he knows how to speak their language. That makes me wonder: what is the language of spiritual-but-not-religious people? That is, what is the language that our friends, colleagues, family members, fellow preschool parents—who are spiritual seekers—will resonate with? It seems to me the NW is full of people who are looking for that ultimate spiritual experience, for enlightenment, for rest. They may go into churches looking for real, live God…but too often they find real, live institutions.

Now, I want to make a little side note here. I don’t think evangelism is a dirty word. I think evangelism is what we are called to do as Christians. But I think there are different ways of being evangelists—that is, people who are, who live the good news. I have personally been burned—as possibly some of you have—by the kind of evangelism that assumes someone has the corner on God, and I don’t, and they need to give it to me so I can be saved. I don’t assume that everyone is looking for religious faith. I don’t believe everyone should be a Christian. What I do see in the world, especially here in the NW, is that plenty of people are searching for more. People are calling themselves spiritual because they want to engage their spirits. And I also see that, for many people, Christianity is their ancestral faith. Christianity is somewhere back in their consciousness—maybe a few generations back in their DNA. It is something they still claim—if pressed to declare a religion, but not something they identify as an important or relevant part of their life. I’m going to be a little bold and go as far as to say that I believe there are a lot of people out there who are open to the Church…but who don’t experience the Church as open to them.

I have conversations all the time that go something like this. Someone says to me: “oh, you’re a Christian?” “yeah” “you know, I would love to have the community/the ritual/the fill-in-the-blank of the Church, I just can’t get over the…virgin birth/the politics/the rules/the fill-in-the-blank.” So, my question, thinking about Paul and his brilliant ability to speak to the Athenians’ need in language they understand is, how can we speak to our community’s need for a deeper spiritual life and belonging in community in language that makes sense to them? I remember, with sadness, a painful learning experience that nearly ruined a friendship. A dear friend of mine, in high school, was going through a hard time. This particular friend had been almost hostile to Christianity, I think because of a bad experience her dad had had in a church. Well, I said to my friend in her pain, “you need Jesus.” Wow. I had a lot of repair work to do after that. Thanks be to God, we are still close friends, and I can tell her about the work I do loving and caring for people in church and she tells me about her work loving and caring for people in a hospital as a nurse. On the other hand, I’ve found that in relationships characterized by love and respect, people get really curious about my faith and start asking questions. And maybe that is the language of evangelism today: listening. Not talking to people about our faith, but asking about theirs. Asking what they believe and why. And not approaching strangers because we think we have something they need, but doing mutual sharing in relationship with people we know and love. That’s where Jesus got his start, isn’t it? Amen.

The Rev. Jennifer Creswell, rector St. Luke's Gresham

Who's a stone?

2011-05-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 22nd, 2011

Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

First off, it’s lovely to see everyone here. Being scheduled to
preach the day after the rapture is predicted to happen isn’t exactly
the prime slot.

When I was preparing for today, I found I was trying to unify a lot of
different things, in a likely misguided attempt to make sense of
scripture. There’s quite a lot going on in today’s lection. Ways,
truth, life, houses, stones, milk.

In some ways, in trying to make sense of all that, I was attempting to
do the exact same thing as Harold Camping has been trying to do –
understand scripture, and understand what we, as Christians, are
supposed to do.

And that’s hard work. For 500 years now, we, as individual believers,
have had the opportunity and the responsibility to try to understand
the scriptures. For another 1200 years before that, the learned
clerics of our faith tried to understand them on our behalf. And
we’re connected to another couple of millennia of disputation and
argument of the rabbis and sages of the Jewish tradition.

So perhaps it not surprising that we haven’t figured it out yet, at
least not to the point of exact dates.

Part of the problem, of course, is that scripture speaks of things
that aren’t so easy to understand. Scripture’s natural language is
symbolism, metaphor, parable. And I was wondering why that is. It
seems like it would be a lot easier if scripture was clearer. If it
just said things straight.

And, I think that’s what some folks really, really want. They want it
so much that they make these texts into something that at least seems
straightforward. Simple. Direct.

I sympathize with them, I really do. That would make things a lot easier.

But I have to think that perhaps the authors of the scriptures could
have been a bit clearer if they had wanted to. And apparently, they
did not want to be. And usually, when that sort of choice is made,
it’s because there isn’t any other way to say it.

Which means, I think, that it’s not the words that we should be so
concerned with. It’s what the words point to.

Stones can be a lot of things. Today, we find them at least 4 ways.
They can be a rock, a shield, a wall for defense. They can be weapons,
instruments of murder. They can be something to trip over, an
obstacle.

And they can be something that is chosen to build with, a component of
a whole.

And in that later sense, Jesus is described as a living stone, the
first of many, and we are told we should be stones too.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit confused. I’m supposed
to be a stone?

I think that the Gospel message maybe sheds some light on this.
Jesus’ disciples are confused too. “How can we know where you’re
going?” asks Thomas. Jesus responds not with a path, or with
directions, but by saying “you have to know ME, and if you know ME,
you’ll know the Father”

Philip says “OK great! Show us the father!”

Somehow I’m imagining Jesus shaking his head. Could it be any harder
to explain? Could these disciples be any more blind?

So, we’re left with his response: “Believe in me. And if you can’t
do that, believe in what I’ve done.”

And I think that’s the trick. Scripture alone, is difficult to
understand. Understanding requires not only study, but living.
Understanding requires not only words, but action.

And ultimately, we don’t believe in scripture. We believe in a man.
We believe in each other, and in the actions we take. By doing so,
and I believe ONLY by doing so, can we find the way, together. It
will be hard. We're going to get it wrong, a lot. But it's the
process, the taking of one stone, and placing it on another, that will
eventually get us where the words are pointing.

by Malcolm Heath

A gate in the fence

2011-05-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

My heart is still very full from the amazing Sunday we shared with so many here in the small corner of God's realm which is Saints Peter and Paul.

Bishop Michael made his first Sunday visit to us. As we have done for some time, we planned a bi-lingual Mass gathering all of us together at 11 AM.

15 Latino youth, 3 English-speaking youth and two adults were presented for Confirmation, one adult to re-affirm her faith. Families and friends turned out in droves to share this moment with the person they treasure. The church teemed with happy people, kids everywhere, a palpable sense of Spirit and of sheer life.

All we did back in 2007 was make a sandwich board saying that at 12 Noon on Sunday we would offer Mass in Spanish, then we showed up week after week, clergy and lay leadership. These lay leaders worked at developing a music ministry. We had small groups of acolytes who came and went as the years spooled out. Members of the slowly-gathering congregation also assumed roles in the service, and with time initiated projects of their own.

We are given bright moments of "harvest", not that people are plants but the only image that occurs to me when seeing a filled church is that living image of abundance and of gift. "Paul plants, Apollos waters, but God gives the increase."

+Michael's homily spoke of fences and gates--how life here is filled with fences, some helpful, others harmful as the separate people from opportunity and inclusion and access to full life. Jesus, on the other hand, is the gate in the fence.

Bishop Michael was quietly determined to pronounce each lovely name correctly. As each youth and adult came forward and shyly bowed their heads, he gently lifted their faces and, without exception, each smiled into his eyes. +Michael anoints when he Confirms, so as at Baptism "You are marked as Christ's own forever."

Lots of photo-ops, and +Michael stood while family after family took their photos with him. One father, whom I remember when celebrating his daughter's Quinceanera, took my arm and placed me in one of the photos. Turning, he looked over his shoulder and said in Spanish, "Thank you; thank you for holding open a gate. No fences, only the Gate."

I said "You're welcome" for something that was not my doing. When fences are opened it is the work of God. When a gate is found, Christ is there. No fences in the reign of God; only the Gate.

Good enough for peace

2011-05-04T18:27:00.001-07:00

2ND SUNDAY OF EASTER – Year A
May 1, 2011
Ss. Peter & Paul
+++++
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, two Methodist divines, wrote a book that took the ecumenical community by storm a few years back. Its title is Resident aliens. Hauerwas said that there was a good deal of “atheism” in much of our church life. Too many of our churches, they thought, were a-theistic: that is, they kept cranking along, offering ceramics classes for older adults, yoga classes for busy homemakers, trips to Disney World for youth so that God really didn’t matter. They were successful at being an uplifting moral improvement society for the youth, or a place for retirees to hang out during the week, but they had failed at “being church.”
If you want to see the church stripped of our sacred trappings, our pretenses peeled away, then look here in this 20th chapter of John—a pitiful huddle of timid souls hanging on to one another behind our locked doors. Without he presence, the presence which makes our human gatherings the church of God, this is about all we are.

2
And the good news is that it was to this church, which was hardly church, that the living, risen Christ came, saying “Peace be with you” (John 20:19). Into this busy, buzzing void, there was a voice, a presence, a peace not of our devising.
The Risen Christ comes and he says, “Peace be with you,” showing them his pierced hands and his feet. He says again (in case we failed to get the point) “Peace be with you,” telling them that he is sending them out into the world. Then he breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, bestowing upon them the awesome power to forgive sins.
It is what is said at The Peace at Mass. Laurel Dykstra says that she says this before the Peace:
When Jesus appeared to his disciples, they were hiding upstairs in a locked room—the friends who knew him best, who had betrayed him, who had pretended they didn’t know him, who had run away when he was dying, who hid when he was arrested, who were frightened and ashamed. He appeared among them and greeted them. He didn’t say, “What happened?” “Where were you?” “You screwed up.” He greeted them, saying, “Peace.”
3
No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done or think you’ve done, whoever you have betrayed or let down, no matter how far you have gone from God, from Jesus, Jesus doesn’t say to you, “:Where were you? You screwed up.” Jesus greets you, saying, “Peace.”
The first time I used these words, a tiny woman who is addicted to heroin and an occasional prostitute whispered, “That was the first time in so many years that I felt like I was good enough to be part of this.” Over and over again, people shyly approach and let me know that I must keep saying this.
Whatever it is that churches are saying, what poor people and people who are marginalized hear from us is: “You are not good enough, you are not welcome, the food bank entrance is around back.”
“Peace be with you. You are not accused, you are invited.”
Church is a gift of a God who refuses to leave us be. He comes to us. His presence makes this Church. To the Church that had nothing, Christ gives everything. Spirit. Mission. Forgiveness.

4
We are Church, not because of the building we have here, not because of any program we have here, nor the preaching, nor the teaching, nor the care with which we do the liturgy, nor the sensitive and loving pastoral care rendered by our Rector and our Deacon, nor all our various activities. We are Church because to us, even to us, Christ has come and given us his gifts of Spirit, mission, and forgiveness, commissioning us to gife them to the whole world in his name.
That’s why we’re called Church.
William Willimon, now a United Methodist Bishop, tells of us first church in rural Georgia. He was fresh out of his seminary, eager to be a good pastor. He was in graduate school at the time, commuting out to the hinterland on weekends. Most Sunday mornings at dawn, it was a tough trip out there from Atlanta. He used to say, “This trip only takes 30 minutes, but takes us back 30 centuries.” It was a long way from Atlanta to Suwanee, Georgia.
On Willimon’s first visit, he found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there, he was told, by the local sheriff. “The sheriff, why?” he asked.
5
“Well, things got out of hand at the board meeting last month, folks started ripping up carpet, dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It got bad. The Sheriff come out here and put that there lock on the door until our new preacher could come and settle things down.”
That rather typified Willimon’s time at that church. He would drive out there each Sunday, praying for a miraculous snowstorm in October which would save him from another Sunday at that so-called “church.”
He spent a year there that lasted a lifetime. He tried everything. He worked, he planned, he taught, he pled, but the response was always disappointing. The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the board meeting were more than he could take. It was touch and he was glad to be leaving them behind.
“You call yourself a Church!” he muttered as his tires kicked gravel up in the parking lot on his last Sunday among them.

6
A couple of years later, while visiting at Emory University in Atlanta, Willimon ran into a young man who told him that he was now serving that church. Willimon’s heart went out to him. Such a dear young man, and only 23!
“They still remember you out there,” the young man said.
“Yeah,” Willimon said glumly, “I remember them too.”
“Remarkable bunch of people,” the young cleric said.
“Remarkable,” Willimon replied.
“Their ministry to the community has been a wonder,” the younger minister continued. “That little church is now supporting, in one way or another, more than a dozen of the troubled families around the church. The free day care center is going great. Not too many interracial congregations like them in North Georgia.”
Willimon could hardly believe what he was hearing. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know. One Sunday, things just sort of came together. It wasn’t anything in particular. It’s just that, when the service was done,
7
and we were on our way out, we knew that Jesus loved us and had plans for us. Things fairly much took off after that.”
Willimon says that he thinks he knows what happened. He thinks that church got intruded upon. He thinks someone greater than he knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit, mission and forgiveness. And now, they are called “church.”
Church isn’t my hard work, your earnest effort, our long-range planning or heavy-duty giving. Church is a gift, a visitation, an intrusion of the Living Christ, standing among us and showing us his hands and his side, and saying “Peace be with you!” and bidding us to find power in Him.
[original homily given by W.W. at Duke Chapel, April 7, 1997 and used in his Pulpit Resource, April-June, 1999; I used it April 11, 1999 at Ascension Parish, Portland. Again the sermon was in Synthesis for April 3, 2005, and was used at Christ Church, Southgate, on that Sunday, with some additional notes about Pope John Paul II’s death the day before. The Laurel Dykstra story is in Synthesis for May 1,2011.]

Phil Ayers+

Suddenly

2011-05-02T10:22:00.001-07:00

Easter 2011
Gen 1:1-2:1; Exodus 14: 10-21, 15: 1-2; Zeph 3: 14-20; Rom 6: 3-11; Matthew 28: 1-10

“Suddenly Jesus met them.”
What brings us together tonight is a God beyond our words and images who does something surprising in Jesus. No symbol or idea is up to it. The ongoing event, the dawning reality of resurrection and risen life, is always new, beyond our imagination, and a surprise when it breaks upon our minds and souls.
Tonight we read the long text of creation from Genesis. The text is so familiar it threatens to lull us to sleep with its rhythm likes waves on the sand. “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth…” We miss how surprising, how new, is this poetic account of the astounding ongoing dynamism of creation. Science is completely in accord with the poetry of Genesis, as science describes a process of breathtaking complexity and elegant diversity that is completely unlikely. Creation is always fresh and new and astounding.
Surprising too is the tale of a God who cared enough for the freedom of a ragged bunch of Hebrew slaves that he went to war with the powers of the greatest empire of the ancient world. The world was full of slaves and masters and is so today. Why intervene, why care, why risk freeing this group of rude people and asking them to live in a new way, in justice and gratitude? Surprise from God, surprise when people follow through with justice and gratitude!
Surprising too it is when that same God, who has been cheated on and rejected time and time again, still cares and still reaches out to a fickle people who constantly try to return to slavery, serving new masters or acting like the masters who abused them. I will remember, I will act, I will not forget, I will free you and bring you back to the land, I will give you another shot, says this God, the God of surprise.
Dead to that old life, dead to slavery, dead to an endless round of desire and frustration and abuse and regret, that is our life in Christ says Paul. Dead to that old life with its endless slaveries, alive to God with Jesus who sprung from the tomb like a new plant springs from a buried forgotten seed.
And the Gospel tale is a tale of complete surprise.
Thos who looked for the body of Jesus expected to find nothing find Jesus just where they left him, dead in a hole in the rock. Instead they find nothing, an empty tomb. The tomb is exactly where Jesus is not. He has left the building. No one actually sees the resurrection, no one is there, and Jesus is not waiting for them on his slab. His appearances are a surprise. And he never says, “Now let’s go back to Jerusalem and have a little talk with Pilate and Herod and the high priest, pick things up where we left off.” No, instead there is a new mission, and new direction, and Jesus goes to meet them in that new future.
One priest said recently, “(Resurrection)is not a message of tolerating misery or of having less death…The way of resurrection requires death, not just a winter of dormancy. Resurrection requires a radical surrender or letting go of that which is not working…Rather than let go of our understanding and see things the way God sees them we struggle to get God to bless our understanding…What we need is resurrection not reincarnation and that requires that we as a people have courage to let our old ways die rather than getting our way.”

“Suddenly Jesus met them.” How new a life do you want? How much do you wish resurrection, the new life of God, and not just re-incarnation, fixing the life you already have? How much surprise from the surprising God are you ready to embrace?

New Life

2011-04-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

5 Lent A 2011
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ps 130; Rom 8: 6-11; John 11: 1-45

I could not even find his room.

A few blocks north of here, an old nursing home has been transformed. Baptist Manor was closed a few years ago. I visited there frequently to see Lee and Florence Haile, a gentle childless couple. Lee was a kindly man, a retired high school teacher. He stayed on at Baptist Manor after Florence died, moving over to the wing where they cared for very infirm residents where he died as well.

Baptist Manor is now Milepost 5, a community of artists who live and create in a space designed for them. The grand opening of Milepost 5 is this weekend, complete with display galleries of residents’ work.

Diane and I went yesterday. We had a great afternoon chatting up artists and seeing their work. Baptist Manor had been a run-down and very inadequate place for seniors although the staff was kind, and it was good to see the old place had new life.

I wanted to show Diane Lee Haile’s old room where he ended his days. Entering that wing, we discovered that the renovation had been radical and complete—they had gutted the building down to the foundation and the studs and nothing else was left. I stood in the place where I guessed Lee’s room might have been. There in that wide, industrial-chic hallway, I was filled with sadness. A man I had known and liked and cared for had lived his last days there, and there was nothing to show that he had ever existed.

“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

For years I assumed that “setting the mind on the flesh” had something to do with sex, an old-fashioned Roman Catholic instinct. But I hear that word very differently today. Standing in that empty hallway, I realized that what the flesh wants is endless life on its own terms. The flesh, the body wants to go on and on just like it is, no change, no age, no illness. Egyptians built elaborate tombs and filled them with stuff to assure that life for the dead would just continue with very little change. Sometimes in churches we act in similar ways when it is time to change something that is associated with a deceased member—“Agnes worked for days to decorate that room, back in 1959.” These kinds of instincts are understandable—I have them increasingly as the years go on—but they have nothing to do with what God promises.

Paul says “set your minds on the Spirit.” Ezekiel’s dry bones have new life and promise when the living Breath of God is spoken over them. And when Martha in the Gospel speaks aloud her pious belief about death, in words that would sound familiar today, “I know that my brother will rise again, in the resurrection on the last day”, Jesus responds with something radically different. We have gotten used to his words since they are repeated so often, but they are still shocking. Life is not promised in the future, or in some spiritual place far from our own. Instead, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Here, and Now.

We have no permanent home in this life—we are caretakers and blessed tenants. We have no permanent home in our bodies as we now know them, although we care for and honor them as gifts of God. To walk a Christian path is to entrust ourselves to the astounding manifestation of God in the One whom God has sent. Our life is a life lived bathed in the Fountain of Life, abundant life, Life streaming from the eyes and the hands and the words and the wounds and the heart of the One who is life itself.

Standing in that hallway, I remembered how old Lee loved to receive Communion, the sacrament of the Crucified and Risen Lord. Suddenly, I smiled. In that moment I thought that Milepost 5 is a far better remembrance of Lee that a desolate empty room: new and astounding life, rising from the barely-recognizable husk of the former life. That new life points to the ever-new Life in whose presence we all live. There is where we can find Lee. There we can find all those quiet lives that have vanished from before our eyes. There we find our own true selves, in the presence of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life.

Ask for it

2011-03-27T17:58:00.001-07:00

3 Lent A 2011
Exodus 17: 1-7; Ps 95; Rom 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42

Funny how we can get so close to the water, but never drink.

The Tibetan Buddhist religion honors pilgrimage. There are many sacred sites in Tibet—shrines and holy mountains and ancient monasteries. There is a constant flow of pilgrims to these sites.

Once a pilgrim arrives at a sacred place there are certain rituals to perform, certain prayers to recite. Climb these steps while saying this prayer, for example, or spin this prayer wheel several times, or kneel by the tomb of this saint. I’ve experienced a similar rhythm of customs and prayers at many Catholic sacred site.

One photo of Tibetan pilgrims that I saw in a magazine haunts me to this day. At one monastery, pilgrims were lined up to pass crouched down under a long wooden table. On the table was piled ancient sacred manuscripts. The caption said the pilgrims believe that if they pass under the table, the wisdom contained in the manuscripts above them will descend through the table and bless those underneath.

My first reaction was “Ack! Take those books and preserve them, and then how about reading them?” But then I reflected that iI do something like this in my own life. On my nightstand a small stack of books usually rests, and all too often they lie there undisturbed or only cracked occasionally. On my office shelves are other books that I have bought with excitement, but never read. Maybe I secretly believe the wisdom contained within will silently pass through the air and reach me on my bed or at my desk!

And looking deeper, how often do I live my days caught up in my tiny anxieties and private to-do list, oblivious to the presence of God at all times? How often do I kneel in prayer and find my mind elsewhere? How often do I take Communion in my mouth, the taste of the bread and wine on my tongue, and fight a wandering mind and am not struck in quiet awe at the gift of the living Christ who has come to me again?

"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well are meant for each of us. The amazing woman who stays and matches words with the Jewish stranger gives us a great gift—her willingness to explore more deeply Jesus’ mystery invites us to do the same. Her average day’s weary chores becomes so much more. She dares to answer the strange traveler who breaks social convention by even speaking to her. And so an ordinary day of life in a small Samaritan village is transformed.

It is transformed because the woman asked the right things. “How is it that you ask me for a drink?” “Where do you get that living water?” And finally, “Sir, give me that water, so I may never be thirsty again.”

The woman receives an answer from Jesus each time, and so much more. She is so transformed that she must go and tell the story.

Faith and tradition says that we meet Jesus every day. By faith Jesus lives in the depths of our souls. Jesus is visible in the face of the poor and those in need. Jesus hears prayer. The living Word of Christ is read and proclaimed each Sunday. The living Jesus comes to us in the Sacraments.

What do we ask of him? Do we ask anything?

Do we ask for the strength and help to cope with our lives? We ask well. Do we ask that he help those whom we love, and all those in need? We ask well.

Or do we ask for living water? Do we ask to taste his living presence? Do we ask to plunge ever deeper into the mystery of his very soul? Do we ask to know him as he is, to see his face?

If we ask these things, we ask very well. And Jesus will answer. He waits by the well for each of us, hoping we will ask for living water.

Go

2011-03-20T20:47:00.001-07:00

2 Lent A 2011
Genesis 12: 1-4a; Ps 121; Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17

The only sadness in life is to refuse the journey.

On a recent retreat, our Bishop spoke of his two pilgrimages to Santiago. The ancient pilgrim road, which crosses all of northern Spain, has been revived. We hung on the Bishop’s words as he spoke of the long walk, because the traditional way to make the pilgrimage is to walk. Walking the Road to Santiago takes weeks.

There are many temptations on that strange road. One of the greatest temptations is to simply give up, to stop walking. One feels like one has come to the end of one’s own strength. One wonders if the long journey even means anything.

But those who give up miss that final climb to the top of Mount Joy. They miss the sight of the spires of the great gothic Cathedral of Santiago rising from the mist. They miss the final walk into the medieval city, touching the foot of the statue of Saint James, walking in deep silence past his tomb, standing on the floor of the Cathedral as the huge thurible, taller than an adult, swings from chains over one’s head as the pilgrims shout with joy. They miss the rest of their lives knowing that they have walked the Road, knowing that they were faith-filled enough or crazy enough to drop everything and simply walk a road worn smooth by centuries of pilgrim feet.

They miss the God who is the God of journeys.

The God of the Bible is the God of journeys. Just ask Abram. Abram the Father of faith was simply a man who listened to the voice of God and chose to get up and go. Abram had no idea where the road would take him, only that the God of journeys had made a promise. If Abram had known that his family would be torn by strife, that he would face enemies, that he would be granted terrifying visions, that God would change his name and his wife’s name, that the promise of God would take years to come to fulfillment—would he have gone? Would he have had the nerve to set his foot on the road?

But he did set out. He decided to trust not in what was familiar and settled, but to trust in a promise. When I wrote the notes for this sermon, my finger slipped and I typed “tryst” rather than trust. I think my fingers were smarter than my brain. Abram decided to live by tryst, that ancient word for an agreement to go out and meet one’s beloved. Abram’s journey was a walk into the heart of a loving God.

Nicodemus walked out into the night to keep another tryst.

What drove him out, I wonder, into the night to meet the strange, new, young rabbi? What restlessness, what dissatisfaction with his old life, what curiosity or anxiety about the new teaching from the new prophet? Perhaps Nocodemus himself did not know. But he did walk out, only to keep a tryst and more. Strange images of uncontrollable wind, of adults being born a second time, of a bizarre ancient image of a metal snake raised on a pole and of a Man who would also be raised up just “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” A walk into the night became another tryst, a journey into the heart of Christ, the Christ sent by God. Nicodemus’ journey had only begun.

When we listen to Christ’s call, when we walk out in trust, when we keep the tryst, we are never the same again. We are called from what is familiar to a new life, a new journey, to meet the God we thought we knew as if for the first time.

I used to hear our Collect today, speaking of “all who have gone astray from your ways”, as those who wander off from the safe and stable teachings of God. I think that those who have gone astray are those who refuse the journey, who sit down or lay down by the path, who go back to the safe-seeming privacy of their homes and their predictable lives. To truly believe is to trust, to trust is to walk out of the familiar to keep a tryst with a God of journeys. That God calls us to the road, away from what seems safe, into new life and the new paths we each are called to explore, that we together as a church are called to explore.

The only sadness in life is to refuse the journey.

Rickety

2011-03-14T11:26:00.001-07:00

1 Lent A 2011
Gen 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Ps 32; Rom 5: 12-19; Mt 4: 1-11

How do we feel about being “rickety”?

In the 19th century a few dedicated people revived monastic life in the Church of England. One of the first Orders had a rough beginning—only three or four men to start, no money, lots of suspicion in a country and a church where monks had been suppressed centuries before. One or two members of the original group left.

After several hard years, things picked up for these monks. They attracted a couple of wealthy patrons, and moved into a nice building. Public attention became more positive. They attracted more new members.

It did not last. One of the patrons died and the other decided to do other things with his money. Several of the new candidates did not stay. The monks were back to being broke with only a few members sticking it out.

One of these, very discouraged, complained to another: “We’re back to where we started! Things feel all rickety again!”

After a moment, the other monk replied, “The day things stop being rickety is the day we stop depending on God.”

The truth is, thing are always “rickety”, insecure, unstable, liable to change at any moment. We ourselves are “rickety”—fragile, with weak and changeable wills and uncertain faith. At different life-stages we change—we acquire new health concerns, our relationships change or end, even the state of our souls change. Faith that was once warm goes cold. Things we felt to be sure feel less certain, or completely uncertain.

This week we were given stark reminders that our life on this planet is rickety. A technologically advanced nation is brought to a standstill by an earthquake that even they did not expect. Thousands of miles away, the waves wrecked docks and boats and swept the unwary out to sea. As of Friday Noon, the Vicar of St. Timothy’s Church Brookings was at sea with his father, having chosen like experienced sailors to ride the tsunami surge in open water.

But the rickety nature of our lives calls forth what is deepest in us, and faces us with choice. The Oregonian printed a photo of a Japanese soldier tenderly carrying an old man on his back through flood waters. The article said that an American aircraft carrier is steaming to Japan’s coast to offer aid. There are still those among us here who remember a time when gentle Japanese soldiers and American ships coming to help Japan would be inconceivable. But we are called away from anger and fear and the ways of war to the ways of peace, once we acknowledge our common human “ricketyness” and our dependence on one anther in this lovely, uncertain, rickety life we share.

The Gospel says that Jesus the Son of God completely shared our rickety life.

Jesus’ own baptism was an experience of wonder and assurance and light. But Jesus does not go from this moment of wonder into a successful career as professional Messiah. He goes into the desert, away from fame and assurance and light. In the desert, life is stripped to its basics. In the desert, you realize that you are small and not strong at all. In the desert, you are not in control. Wild animals call the desert home. Spirits are there. The devil is there. And God is there, although God can be as strange and unpredictable as the wild animals.

That desert, that disorienting place where we are small and rickety and not in control—that is the place where the baptized Jesus must face what is real.

“Temptations” are not urges to be naughty. Temptations are tests—to uncover what is in our hearts, to reveal what is true about our humanity. Tests—to reveal what is true about the world and about God. Tests—the kind of tests where, one way or the other, we emerge changed. That change is unpredictable.

The proctor of the test is the devil, whose name in Hebrew means “the accuser”, the one who knows our weaknesses and uncovers our doubts and fears, our anger and our greed.

“Command these stones to turn into bread”—gratify yourself, be self-sufficient, feed yourself independently of God or farmers or bakers or anyone else.

“Throw yourself down”—be exceptional, unique, entitled to care and supernatural tricks over and above any other human being who walks this earth.

“All these I will give you…” be greater, be in control of others, be master of your own fate. But the devil trips himself up here—he adds “worship me.” For as Bob Dylan said, you gotta serve someone.

Jesus refuses—refuses a self-sufficient life, refuses an exceptional life entitled to more care than any other person, refuses a dominating life controlling others and his own fate. He brings God into the equation—we live through God’s constant living speech, we are entrusted to God’s care, all true power belongs to God and we are entrusted with the humble care of one another.

Jesus chose a rickety life.

Rickety means that we entrust ourselves to God. Rickety means that we know we cannot and do not have to manage our lives alone. Rickety means that God is at the center, and we rely on God for all things. Rickety means that we are free to live a loved and vulnerable human life, dependent on one another, dependent on the earth and its creatures, dependent on God the source of all that is good.

Rickety is the only true strength.

Different

2011-02-26T18:57:00.001-08:00

7 Epiphany A 2011
(Lev. 19: 1-2, 9-18; Ps. 119: 33-40; 1 Cor. 3: 10-11, 16-23; Mat. 5: 38-48)

In the desert, a young monk went to visit one of the elders. He told the old man, “My brother has harmed me and I want to get him back.”

The old man said, “You must banish this thought from your mind.”

The young man replied, “I can’t do that.”

The old man said, “Then you must not act on this thought.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then, you must move far away so you cannot do anything to harm your brother.”

“I can’t do that either.”

The old man stood up and called to one of his companions, “Make some soup for this brother, for he is very weak. As for me, all I can do is pray for you.”

When I remember this story, I ask myself, “Where am I in this array of choices?” I myself am sensitive and prone to anger, and when offended I often dwell on thoughts of revenge.

Today we hear that we are to be holy. Holy means different, set apart. A holy life is different in significant ways from others. Holiness is not primarily a feeling of inner peace or spiritual contentment, as pleasant as those feelings may be. Sometimes these feelings can be deceptive and can hide the truth of our lives from ourselves. Biblical holiness is concrete and real.

Holiness is as real as how much of your harvest you take for yourself, and how much you leave for others. The book of Leviticus is all about how Israel is to be and act holy, like a different kind of people. We hear about how to be generous in gathering the harvest—leave the edges of the field and what is left by the first gathering for the poor and for strangers. Don’t steal, don’t defraud, don’t violate fair labor practices, don’t gossip, don’t take revenge. These may seem easy, but there are many ways we can participate in these injustices—that’s why we use the Confession that adds “the evil done on our behalf.” God is proposing a tough, self-critical way of life.

And Jesus takes this life even further. Some have called Christianity “the great untried idea”, and today Jesus’ teaching is a example of this. “Love your enemy” “Do not resist an evil-doer” Most of us are loving and affectionate towards those who love us back. Jesus is talking about difficult love, thankless love, counter-cultural love. But if we Christians have one world-transforming truth to bring to the table, it is this. Love your enemies, do not resist an evil-doer.

It is impossible. But it can be done.

It is impossible because, if we are honest, we admit the angry and vengeful thoughts of our hearts, and we admit the limits of our love.

It can be done, and we have seen some imperfect examples of non-vengeful and risky love. Ghandi’s non-violent protests, the peaceful American civil rights protests, Bishop Tutu’s “truth and reconciliation” process in South Africa, even some of the non-violent protests recently in Cairo—they are glimpses of the fact that there are ways to live and act that do not surrender to the rage and revenge that fills our hearts. Perhaps we have seen smaller, less famous examples of living by this new way, a way that transforms rage into love and hope.

It is impossible, but do not despair. We may be like the angry young monk in the desert tale, but we can change. If we choose, and if we ask for Christ’s strength, then Christ will change us.

If we become a community that lives in this daring way, then the Gospel will look like it matters. Our larger culture does not hate God or the Gospel. Our larger culture simply does not believe that there is anything different about we church people, that we do not really live in this new, difficult, and outrageously loving way.

May we be a changed people of outrageous Gospel love.

.“Mission Impossible”, some hard teachings from Matthew

2011-02-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

On Matthew’s nameless mountain, Jesus the new Moses speaks the demands of the new Law, and it is harsh reading (Mt 5: 21-37).

If you are angry, you will be judged. If you look with lust, you are just as much an adulterer as if you were coming out of a cheap motel room looking guilty. Except for cases of “unchastity”, divorce is the same as adultery too. And oh, did I mention tearing out your sinful eye, cutting off the hand with which you sin?

What do we do with these texts? Take them literally? A few people in the early church did, so bishops issued decrees that self-mutilation was not approved. Be “selectively literal”? Even if we are not going to cut off hands or pluck out eyeballs, who passes a day without getting angry or “looking with lust” if only for a moment? Anyone? Really? Or do we dismiss these texts as representing a Jesus that we want no part of? If we walk a path of dismissing texts and teachings that make us uncomfortable, the result is a cozy and fuzzy belief-set conforming to our own wants and hopes. In effect, we have committed idolatry; we have placed our own desires on an altar and swung a bit of inoffensive incense over it.

Well, my favorite Biblical commentator was Abba Joseph of the early Desert, who when asked the meaning of a Biblical text replied, “I know not.” But here is what I do know:

These texts do not allow any of us to remain in our own “comfort zone.” They do not allow any of us to be complaisant in any sense of self-justification. We are all revealed as falling short, tending towards self-delusion, prone to failing the high standard over and over again.

And when we come to the end of our self-justification, the end of our personal delusions, then end of our complaisance—then we stand as we are, human and ordinary, limited and in need, before God. And in that moment we begin to know who God is and who we are, and God can begin to really do something for us, in us, and through us.

Annual Address 2011: going out

2011-02-03T08:37:00.000-08:00

In this past Advent, we have seen a great Light. At Christmas, we received that Light among us, taken flesh in Jesus. At Epiphany, that light broke forth as a gift to the world. Now, in Epiphanitide, we are the Light. As the seasonal blessing at the end of Mass says, “May Christ the true Light be manifest in you, that your lives may be a light to the world.”

In last week’s Gospel we heard how Saints Peter and Paul is called to hear God’s call and to go, to go into the world and not wait for the world to come to us. This gift and this call was given to people who had nothing and who lived on the edges of power and of influence. The God and Father of Jesus likes the edge, and God likes calling simple and unlikely people at the edge to speak healing to the broken and to speak in challenge to those at the center of power and of wealth. This speech may be in words, or in actions, or simply by a witness of life.

And today? Today Jesus gathers us around and tells us that if we are poor in spirit, grieving, simple-hearted, thirsting for justice, that we are happy and we are blessed. That’s good news for us, dear friends in God. If we are feeling at the end of our string, if we are troubled by thoughts of poverty or need, if we think we are too tired and too broke to do anything, then good news! Our own co-patron Saint Paul’s words to the Corinthians are addressed to us as well: “Not many of you were wise, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth.” But we’re the special kin of the prophets and the saints, and we are ready for God to do great things among us and through us.

I am glad that we have heard this call and this promise already, and live it in many ways.

This past Fall we were blessed with a creative and energetic stewardship consultant, Jaimie Sanders. Jaimie offered her talents and her energy to us and together with a hard-working committee conducted a very positive Fall process we called “Loaves and Fishes.” We did not breathe a word of poverty or scarcity the whole time, and dared to believe that we are blessed and rich in God. The campaign did turn out a measurable increase in pledges. But more than that, we used the campaign to turn our language around, even the language that some of us secretly say to ourselves even while we try to keep a brave face.

Jaimie offered her talents so generously because, as she said, “I believe in what you are doing here.” Her study of where Saints Peter and Paul spends its resources, financial and property and human, revealed that 30% of our resources go towards outreach to the larger community. That feels to me like a decent New Testament sense of what a community of the Gospel should look like.

I think our primary task this year is to embrace and live into our call as a community charged and empowered to “Go!” and to welcome as gifts the people and the opportunities and the change that will result.

We have been changed. The threads which have woven into our DNA—that Catholic sense of being at service to the poor, the Celtic Christian story of a joyful and passionate search for God, and most lately the Spanish Misa—have all brought new members and new energy and even a new language and culture among us. We learn so much. We are enriched in so many ways. As many Episcopal parishes in this Diocese seek to re-invent and to renew themselves, we are asked “how did you do it?”, especially in regard to nurturing a Spanish-speaking community in our midst.

My own life as priest and rector continues to grow and to be challenged in so many ways. No downward coast to retirement for me! There are always struggles and frustrations built into the life of a parish priest, but all in all I love my life and I rejoice in the opportunities given to me to not simply care for but to grow the church. Especially, the growth of the Misa community and my work as chaplain of the Academy for Formation and Mission enriches my own life and sense of ministry. I am very grateful for my life and call, and I thank God and thank all of you.

As we live into a deeper sense of call and of mission here at Saints Peter and Paul, I believe that these are our challenges:

We need to each broaden our sense of the mission and life of the overall parish and give thanks. Last week’s text from Paul about factions in the Corinthian community could be paraphrased for us—“I am an 8 o’clocker”, “I always go to 10”, “I’m here for the music”, “I’m here for the Celtic emphasis”, “I’m here for the Misa”. We each have our special reason to be drawn to this community, and I am grateful for any note we strike that has appeal to any given person. But how can we acquire a deeper sense of the whole—give thanks for it, delight in it, value each person as well as each experience available at this surprisingly diverse community?

I think that for the sake of the Gospel as well as for our own health we need to seek ways to be more involved in the neighborhood. This will call for some extra effort on my part, but I cannot do this alone. I welcome ideas and energy to make this a reality.

With all of our energy, we need a way to look at our financial life that is at the same time faith-filled and grateful yet realistic. We may be seeing some fundamental changes in this Diocese in terms of how congregations like ourselves view sustainability and their relationship to other parishes. I am not suggesting that combining parishes is anywhere in the near or far future—that really does not work that well and one community usually comes out on the losing end. I think our own location is priceless for mission and for witness and the Diocese would be saying a loud “no” to God by suggesting it be abandoned. But I have been meeting with a small group of eastside clergy in order to imagine how we can live and work together in ways that respect the integrity of our communities yet not endlessly duplicate programs and mission in each location.

We need to draw more people into active leadership, and to deepen a sense of willingness to serve in traditional leadership roles as well as do new projects. It is harder and harder to attract people to Vestry and other such roles.

We began a great adventure with the successful founding of our Spanish-speaking community, or rather the Spanish-speaking and worshipping portion of our parish. It is still a work in progress. Ways to share leadership, share stewardship, and just share life with one another are all clear goals for us and for the future.

Our own common life has seen great comings and goings. We welcomed a number of newcomers: in the English-speaking community, we welcomed Joe Bender, Michelle Power, William Gustafson and Craig Miller whom we “missioned out” for a time to support the continuing congregation at St. Matthew’s, Paul Peavy and Mark Taylor, Jacob and Tiffany and Aylah Arnold, and Brian Oldham and Dale Walker. We said goodbye to beloved long-time member George Monsauret, who with spouse Lydia are among the 1940’s generation of continuing members. In the Spanish-speaking community there is a dizzying sense of growth and of staying, so much so that I am not proud of the fact that I am not able to provide a reliable list of those whom have come and have stayed with us since last Annual Meeting. But that community has predictable names and faces and has developed the ministries of acolyte and lector and chalice-bearer and sacristy assistant, as well as gathering to help care for the grounds and to clean the church.

Our life here is so rich. Our call has never been clearer. Our opportunities have never been so abundant. Our reasons to give thanks have never been more abundant. Thanks to all of you who help make this a community that listens to God, that acts on what we hear, and that cares for one another as we pray and seek and serve and go to the new people and places where God calls us to be.

New Law, new Law-giver

2011-01-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

In the Torah, in the book we call Exodus, Moses climbs the sacred mountain alone. The journey has been hard, and the people have been tested along the way. After a long wait, Moses receives from God’s own hand the basic law of conduct that we call the Ten Commandments. As Moses ascends, he knows by God’s own words that the people waiting have already been unfaithful, and the coming of the Commandments among them as they hold festival will cause pain and division and even death.

In Matthew’s tale of the New Law (3: 1-12), Jesus the new Moses also ascends a mountain. But the differences reveal the newness of the reality he brings.

It is the “crowds”, the poor, the outcasts, those living on the fringe, who gather around Jesus, and not the wilderness-proven children of Israel. The place that Jesus chooses to speak is just a place, some nameless hill in the wilderness, a place like many others, ordinary. Jesus is not heroically alone like Moses—his disciples “gather around.” Jesus does not seek a stone on which to carve his words—his lips themselves, and the ears of those who hear, are the “living stones” of the new revelation. Unlike God on Sinai, Jesus does not claim reverence for himself. It is the broken people gathered before him that are the focus of his words. And the word that begins each “saying” is “blessed.” The Greek word may also be translated “happy.”

And who are happy? The new Law turns upside-down our assumptions of who is happy, who is blessed. The poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn—they are happy. Those who long for healing and justice and a new earth—the peacemakers, the merciful—they are blessed in their longing. And those who are not only blessed, but who will rejoice and be glad, are those who are hammered and hunted and beaten down by the powerful, by the Herods and the High Priests and the Caesars of that and every world. Those who are so oppressed are the kinsfolk of the prophets, of the ancient saints.

Where are these people today? How do we stand in relation to them? Where are their cries, their sorrows, their longings heard? What “wild hope” within ourselves lies hidden, covered over by discouragement and by the dreary sameness of life-as-it-is. What is kindled to hope within us by this outrageous game-plan of the Kingdom of Heaven and its unlikely King?

Go

2011-01-25T09:59:00.001-08:00

3 Epiphany A 2011
Isaiah 9:1-4 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 Matthew 4:12-23 Psalm 27:1, 5-13

“If you hear rumors about this church’s future, do not pay attention to them! Check them out with the Vestry or clergy first!”

This quote was found by an Episcopal priest as she cleaned out the drawers of an old desk at her church. The words, reeking of anxiety, were printed on a bulletin of that church circa 1993.

Churches develop diseases when they become preoccupied and fearful about their own survival. Soon, “just staying open” becomes a primary goal, and the only goal. That’s not attractive, and that’s not a New Testament concept of church life.

According to the New Testament, a healthy church does not place surviving and “keeping the doors open” as a value and a goal. That’s God’s business. No, the church’s business is to hear the Word of God, and to GO—to proclaim, to heal and teach, to be among the people that are God’s concern. Remember the words of William Temple, one of the great Archbishops of Canterbury: “The church is the only organization that exists for the sake of those who are not yet members.”

So the primary business of a church is not to take care of its own life for its own sake, but to GO—to hear the Good News and to allow Jesus to send us, empowered in his name. That’s what we prayed for in today’s Collect.

Isn’t it strange how soon we forget this? And isn’t it ironic—thinking about survival as a primary value is, for a church, the one best way to start on the road to extinction.

Saints Peter and Paul exists to hear God’s call and to GO, to proclaim the power and the promise and the wonder of God. We do not exist for the primary purpose of perpetuating a particular worship style or musical tradition or architecture or attitude. All those are simply the particular flavors, the distinct accent to our speech, which in many cases have changed over time. They are not the heart of the matter.

If we are feeling too stressed and stretched and challenged to even think about reaching out to proclaim the Gospel, then we need to hear today’s Gospel text again.

Jesus flees the power of Herod, which stretched out into his life once more by jailing his cousin John the Baptist. He withdraws into the fringe lands of Palestine, the mixed and marginal region which was Galilee. But there on the edge, there on the fringe, the teaching and the healing takes place. And there Jesus calls very marginal people—fishermen, probably illiterate, rough-edged people used to endless work and not much hope for change. These marginal men, seasonal workers, will be the great voices of the power of the kingdom of God. Never lose a sense of how unlikely and ridiculous and hopeless this was. But here the power of God broke forth, from these broken and marginal people. They understood the Good News.

Saints Peter and Paul is perched on the margins of Montavilla and of Portland. Broken people walk back and forth before our doors, and sometimes they come in. Here among us, the power of God strains to break forth in seeming hopelessness and among an unlikely people.

That power is already breaking forth. Hungry people are fed on Saturdays, the broken and marginal women of the streets are welcomed at Rahab’s Sisters. Even broken teeth are fixed monthly. And all this happens as we welcome and nurture and care for one another on Sundays. Three years ago we did go out and proclaim, just by making a banner and a homemade signboard that spoke a different language than the one we formerly used exclusively on Sunday. That was all the reaching out we needed to do to begin nurturing a whole new community among us, who bring life and culture and energy to this changing community of ours.

Let’s keep listening to the call of God, and when we hear it then let’s go! How do we go? That is a question worthy of a church. That is a more Gospel-based question than “how can we survive?”

Changing everything

2011-01-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

Baptism of the Lord A 2011
(Isaiah 42: 1-9; Ps 29; Acts 10: 34-43; Mt 3: 13-17)

Light, peace, and love can live in the midst of darkness.

Our Coptic Christian brothers and sisters are in the midst of their festival time. The ancient church of Egypt, for centuries one of the largest and most influential churches, observes the old ways and January 7 is their Christmas. The Egyptian Coptic Christians are used to suffering. After Islamic forces conquered Egypt, the Copts have tried to live alongside Islam. Christians are still 10% of Egypt’s population, but radical Islam has subjected them to increasing violence and pressure. This past New Year’s Eve, a suicide bombing outside of an Egyptian church killed 20 and wounded over 100.

The Copts have every reason to feel bitterness and even despair. Many have fled Egypt. But as a community of Copts here on the SE Side celebrated their Feast of the Nativity, sadness gave way to peace and joy. After the 5-hour Christmas liturgy, one man whose family still lives in Egypt remarked simply, “My God is love. He brings peace and love.”

Light, peace, and love can shine forth from the darkness. That is the great lesson of this feast of the Epiphany.

Today is part of that ancient, beautiful Epiphany cycle. Today we remember one of the many Great Revealing stories of Christ, his Baptism as an adult at the hands of John the Baptist. Today’s feast takes the wonder and joy of God Incarnate, God-as-one-of-us, and puts that wonder on the road. The road is the journey of our own lives and of our own Baptisms. Today we feel again the tickle of renewing water on our heads. Today, no matter what darkness or what struggle we carry, no matter how deeply the shadows have penetrated our hearts and covered our eyes, light and life and wonder burst forth. We stand with John and with Jesus and with the crowds and the sun sparkles off the water, dazzling our eyes, driving away the darkness.

We are surprised by Jesus along with John. Even though we have faith, even though we have walked the ways of the Gospel with differing levels of success, still we are startled to find out how concrete are the promises of God. There standing before us in the flesh is the one promised, God with a name and a face, Jesus the Christ. Like John, we do not know what to say. Jesus is patient and guides us into the simple words and actions that are asked of us. It is John’s hand, said an early preacher, which is sanctified by touching the head bowed before him to be baptized. It is the river which is made holy by the one who walks into it, the river and all creation. It is our lives that are made holy by the One who shares water and light with us today.

And with Jesus we enter the waters of new life, and we are filled with unspeakable joy. We see through his eyes when the heavens open, our hearts lift as the Spirit-Dove circles down to touch his head and ours, we hear with his ears as those words of unspeakable joy are spoken. “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.”

The ancient church, Matthew’s church, told this tale so that every baptized member of the community would re-live their own baptisms with their Lord. When we approach in faith, and the water is poured, the Spirit descends, and we each hear the words of unspeakable joy, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.” This can change everything.

A few years ago a seven year-old boy was baptized and was handed a candle lit from the Paschal candle. His eyes grew wide with wonder as he cried out, “I know that light! I know that light!”

We know that light. We hear that voice. We are swept away again with the news that light can overcome darkness and fear, and that our lives can be a light to the world in Christ. The wise young Coptic man spoke the essence of Epiphany, “Our God is love. He brings peace and love.” From him, that is no cheap and sentimental thought. It is hard-won faith in the face of centuries of persecution. The Christ-light, and the Christ-light shining forth from our lives, is what is real and what is true in a world that often prefers to love its own shadows.

So really, what DO you seek?

2011-01-12T11:23:00.001-08:00

A RESPITE IN JOHN'S GARDEN

Alexander Shaia, the Maronite lay scholar of the four Gospels, describe the Gospel of John as a "garden of joy." He points out that John intersperses Sunday reading of the other three Gospels with insights into the beauty of the story being told in them.

This Sunday we have John's version of the "Baptism of Jesus." It is told, not as an "eyewitness" of the event, but as John's testimony. It is John, not Jesus, who speaks of the experience of Spirit's descent "like a dove." And John goes on to reflect on the meaning of the event, its impact on John and John's own sense of his call, the mystery of God in his life: "I myself did not know him...I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God."

Testimony and seeing is at stake here. What have you seen of the astounding purposes of God? And how have you "given testimony"? That word tends to be jargon in our religious culture--I think of Bart Simpson singing "testify!" as he conducts a lucrative revival ministry under a sheet-tent in the Simpson's back yard. But we testify when our actions and words try to reflect with integrity what we most deeply believe, what we think is most deeply real. How do our lives "testify"?

Seeing and testimony is still at stake in the next dreamlike sequence. John points to Jesus and uses that potent image: "Lamb of God." John loses two disciples who leave him to follow the new rabbi. Then one of the shortest and most powerful conversations in the Bible follows: "What are you looking for?" "Where do you stay?" "Come and see"

When we hear these words, we are invited to not be content with mere words, even the words of the Bible. It is we who are addressed, we who are asked, "What are you looking for?", and we fumble for the best answer to the most profound question we shall ever be posed. One of the rock band U-2's most powerful songs has the chorus "And I still haven't found what I'm looking for." What do WE seek? What do we answer? And are we willing to "come and see", or was just asking the question all that we can handle at the moment?

To paraphrase an old movie catchphrase: can we in fact "handle the truth"?

Matthew's third Great Appearance--the sanctified sanctifying at the Jordan

2011-01-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

The rich feast of Epiphany was of old the Great Feast of the Christmastide cycle. Only after centuries did the day chosen in the West as the actual “feast of the Nativity”, “Christ’s Mass” (“Christmas”) overtake Epiphany in importance. In the Eastern Orthodox churches and in many Latin-influenced cultures, Epiphany is still the Great Feast, the feast for rich liturgies and for feasts and for gift-giving to the children.

On this feast, not only the familiar story of the “Magi”, the mystic pilgrims and wizards from the East following their star was re-told, but also the other great Biblical stories of the manifestation of Christ’s glory. The birth of the Lord at Bethlehem, the visit of the Magi from Matthew, the accounts of the Baptism of Jesus as an adult at the Jordan River, and even the tale from John of changing water into wine at a wedding feast were all read and preached. This was a Baptismal time, when adult candidates for Baptism linked their own Baptism with that of their Lord’s.

We remember this ancient and powerful time of the “Great Appearing”, the Epiphany, by observing the Baptism of the Lord today, part of this ancient and mighty cycle. Matthew tells this story as a surprise ending to his description of the powerful ministry of John the Baptizer, the “last Old Testament prophet” who proclaims the coming of one who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Mt 3: 11) John himself seems shocked that Jesus, whom he seems to recognize even before the actual baptism, is submitting to John’s ministry. Jesus insists “to fulfill all righteousness.” Then, the wonder of the vision which it suggests only Jesus sees—heavens open, Spirit as a dove, the Voice which says “this is my son, the Beloved, listen to him.”

The Promise and the Promised One comes as a surprise even for the devout. Expectations are overturned: it is the baptized who sanctifies the hand which baptizes and the water as well, it is the recipient who is to be listened to, it is the humble one who is proclaimed “beloved.”

In this season, how ready are we to have our expectations overturned? How can we be John, who is willing to change and to be changed when faced with the New? And do we too hear the Voice echoing our own Baptism—“This is my Beloved.” How does that change everything?

First Sunday After Christmas

2011-01-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

(by Malcolm Heath - Guest Preacher)

As we were preparing for Christmas, my wife turned on the radio, briefly. It was what we call “Christmas Eve Eve” at our house, and we were busy trying to get as much cooking done as we could, so that we could relax on the holiday.

It was the usual Thursday afternoon sort of show on NPR – no special programming was on, and so it was the regularly scheduled litany of woe and despair that constitutes our news reporting, admittedly with a bit more depth and insight than one might find on cable TV.

My wife quickly turned it off. She said something along the lines of “that’s not very Christmas-ey” and I agreed. News of war, of children being harmed, of deadly weather and delayed justice do not, as a rule, a good Christmas backdrop make.

And yet, I found myself thinking, is this not precisely why Christmas took place at all?

We’re Episcopalians, and so we know our Incarnational theology well. We hold that particular take on the Gospel dear, and think about it deeply. And here we are, just after the very thing has taken place – God, Incarnate, in a manger born. Are we thinking about it now?

Lancelot Andrewes spoke of this, saying:

"He is not only God for us, or God with us, but God one of us.”

Why is that so powerful? Some sort of intervention is obviously needed. All that stuff on the radio shows us that. Our hearts show us that too, as we grieve, or fear, or rage or despair.

But why on such a personal level? Couldn’t have God simply come down, two-thousand years ago, or even earlier, and fixed things? Even in the history of his chosen people, the children of Abraham, where he does intervene, his children never quite seem to get it. They get it with their heads, but maybe not with their hearts.

Bet better than you are, says God. Be righteous. Brave and strong, and compassionate. Love justice. Help the widow and the orphan. Treat others fairly.

We don’t believe him, that we’re capable of such a thing. I suppose we can’t be blamed too much for that. We’re weak, and the world is scary and dangerous. Who could blame us if we sought to merely protect ourselves, and our loved ones? That we might struggle to “get our share” before someone stronger or meaner takes it from us?

It all makes a terrible kind of sense.

But God says, “Don’t believe it. You’re better than that. I know you are.” And so, since we’re such terrible listeners, He becomes one of us, so he can tell us to our face. One on one. “You’re better than this, don’t let anyone tell you different. Here, let me show you how.”

Not only God for us, or God with us, but God one of us.

As it turns out, studies have shown of late that God had the right idea. It turns out that if you show someone one person who needs help, almost everyone will give to help that person. If it’s more than one, even if it’s just two, the number of people willing to help drops dramatically. Once you get into the 3 to 4 person range, the number is dramatically down, into the single digits of percentage points.

One on one is the way to go, it seems.

And so, if we are, in fact, believers in an Incarnate God, a God so loving that He would become something as screwed up and dangerous as we are, something as blind and incapable as we are, in order to show us that we can be better, then, what do we need to do ourselves, as we live out that incarnational belief in the world?

I think we know. And I think that it will be one to one, seeing the incarnate Christ in the face we look into next, and the one after that, and the one after that.

God one of us.

You were a child of mine

2010-12-23T08:39:00.000-08:00

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Year A
December 19, 2010
Ss. Peter & Paul, 10:00 a.m. Mass

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God with us,
borne by Mary’s flesh
beyond all convention:
give us the faith of Joseph
to see the Spirit’s work
where the world sees only shame;
to listen to the promise
and waken to the cry
of life renewed and love reborn;
through Jesus Christ, the one who is to come
Amen.

(Steven Shakespeare: Prayers for an Inclusive Church)

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I have always loved this Sunday, the Fourth of Advent. It speaks of announcement; in another year on this day, we hear the story of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she will conceive and bear a Son. In yet another year, we have the story of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth and the two pregnant mothers compare notes. And, it’s always a joy on March 25 each year to celebrate the Annunciation to Mary again, often providing us with a joyful respite in the austerity of Lent.

But on this Sunday, in Liturgical Year “A”, the “Year of Matthew” (so called because the gospel that bears his name is used throughout much of the year), the prominent character in the narrative is Joseph. Poor old - we think; probably he was in his thirties and considerably older than Mary, who could well have been about 14 or so – poor old Joseph! Here he is, engaged to Mary, and finds she’s pregnant . . . and not by him. In the “old dispensation,” we heard that he “would divorce her quietly,” and move on with his life. But he doesn’t. He “took her as his wife . . .That child is from the Holy Spirit . . . you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Sam Portaro has written:
Joseph was not a sophisticated man, else he would not have put up with [what he had to put up with]. He was humble and maybe even a little simple, the kind of man who has a soft heart, the kind described as “the salt of the earth.” He was probably a carpenter of sufficient competency to make a living at it, but there is no evidence that he was in any way exceptional—except that he was the kind of man who could take a pregnant, teenaged wife and a troublesome, temperamental boy and make a life with them. He was that remarkable person who could shrug off the gossip and the complaints, [and] take them in stride….

2
And think, too, about Joseph and the role that dreams play in the narrative: in a dream, Joseph has announced to him: go ahead and take Mary as your wife, despite the sure shame that would come your way; in a dream, he is told to take his wife and his son and flee to Egypt because jealous and cruel Herod wants to destroy the child; in a dream, Joseph is told that it is safe to go home to Nazareth, now that Herod’s dead. We could say, “Joseph, the Dreamer,” as though he was somewhat wifty and ungrounded. Ah, but he’s not – I would beg to differ with that sort of assessment of Joseph.

Yesterday, I went up to the Grotto. Maybe you’ve been there to visit, pray, hear good music at Christmas time, walk their new labyrinth, or walk the Stations of the Cross. Well, in 1997, as a tourist in Portland, I was given a free token for the elevator to get me up to the second level. I remember being aghast at that – to me – dreadful, “embalmed Mary and Child” and was ready to descend on the elevator immediately! But I continued my tour of the area and ran across the most remarkable thing: “Stations of Joseph.”[“Garden of Joseph”?] There are about six of them, and I saw them again yesterday; they are carved in marble, and are set up to be a Rosary devotion. Each station has a “sorrowful” part and a “joyful” part. E.g., the “sorrowful” part at one station is “Joseph is confused about the birth,” and its opposite, or “joyful” part, is “Joseph is joyful at the Birth of Jesus.”

I spent some time pondering these carvings, and thinking about Joseph and asking God to help me just “be” with Joseph for awhile, and not just to get through a homily that still was unwritten, but to find something that might enlighten and delight my hearers – and me.

I remembered a hymn by Brian Wren, “You were a child of mine.” It’s called “Joseph’s Carol”:
You were a child of mine.
I watched you born, and wept
with joy to see your sticky head.
I held you in my arms.
I watched you, awe-struck, as you slept.
I love you, Son of God:
you were a child of mine.

You were a boy of mine.
You wallowed in the sand.
You copied me at work, and played
with hammer, wood and nails.
You talked to me, and held my hand.
I love you, Son of God:
you were a boy of mine.

You were a youth of mine.
Quite suddenly you grew.
You sought and questioned wiser men.
I felt you breaking free.
I raged, admired – and feared for you.
I love you, Son of God:
3 you were a youth of mine.

Last Thursday, the 16th of December, was the 40th anniversary of my ordination as a Priest in the Church. So much has changed since then. I was a young, cocky cleric and an anti-war member of Episcopal Peace Fellowship. There I was, stuck in a small town in southeastern Kansas, where I really didn’t want to be. But that night I felt the weight of Apostolic hands that were pressed upon my head by the Bishop and all the priests present to make me a priest.

I indulged overly much in “priestcraft”. That’s a buzz- word meaning all the details about how to conduct yourself as a priest, right down to how to hold your hands at Mass, how to hear a confession, how to anoint the sick and dying, what to wear, etc. It’s a much healthier scene today. More broadly speaking, it’s tougher to be a priest in today’s world; then, there were still some discounts for clergy. I could buy gasoline for 35 cents a gallon, rather than the full price of 38 cents! Things are more honest now.

Spiritually speaking, I’m better grounded now than I was then. And now we affirm our Baptismal Covenant in a big way, and understand our ordinations to be a part of the Ministry of All the Baptized. We renew that Covenant every time we celebrate a Baptism here. The “Priest-as-Entrepreneur” is now the order of the day.

I feel the time has come to “re-invent” myself! I’m still going to be very much a priest, but I’m going to “re-retire” and “go on sabbatical” for a season. This is done with the advice of my spiritual director and Bishop Michael, and the consent of our rector Kurt, along with encouragement from Bishop Ladehoff, my wife, and family and friends. I’m going to go to church with LaVera and not take on any supply work or service with diocesan groups for about six months. Surely, I have some “churchly” commitments to honor during that space of time, but the emphasis will be upon finding anew in the Mystical Body of Christ what it is to be a priest in his seventieth year.

Bishop Michael said to me recently, “Do things in your retirement that bring you joy.” Dear friends, being at the altar and in a pulpit in this place brings me much joy, but, like Joseph, who had to contend with the culture in which he lived, and to be “just Joseph,” I am going to take a big risk and be “just Phillip.” I want to do it without the trappings, accoutrements and subculture of “priestcraft.” In the words of the opening prayer I used today, I desire, with Joseph, to “see the Spirit’s work where the world sees only shame; to listen to the promise and waken to the cry of life renewed and love reborn.” You will understand, I hope and pray, that I’m not leaving or “checking-out.” You may not see me often, but know I pray for you all and love you very much. I hope you’ll pray for me and for LaVera, who has shared this often rough journey for over 45 years.

These past four and half years have been wonderful for us at Ss. Peter & Paul: the worship style, music, and community life all suit us to a “tee.” We love helping with Brigid’s Breakfast on Saturdays and being in a congregation that takes God seriously, and laughs and weeps together through thick and thin. We are blessed with Fr. Kurt’s wisdom, pastoral sensitivity, and vision. And…is there another parish in the Episcopal Church that has a “parish defibrillator”? I only wish I could easily put our history into words, in the form of a book! I can’t promise a parish history, but please know that it’s still on a “back burner,” if only in my “Joseph-dreams”!

I’d better close this before I get maudlin and sound like I’m preaching at my own funeral! Here’s the conclusion of Brian Wren’s hymn about Joseph:
4
You were a son of mine,
full-grown, my hope and pride.
You went your puzzling way, a man
so ready, fine and young:
life broke in me the day you died.
I love you, Son of God:
you were a son of mine.

You are the Lord of all—
My child, my man, my son.
You loved and gave yourself for me.
Now I belong to you—
New worlds are born, new life begun.
I love you, Son of God:
You are the Lord of all.

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[Excerpt from Sam Portaro’s Brightest and Best: A Companion to Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Cowley Press, 1995; Brian Wren hymn from Faith Looking Forward, Hope Publishing Co., 1972]

Homily by Phil Ayers+

Matthew's Tale: the strange birth of the Messiah

2010-12-16T07:42:00.000-08:00

When we think of the Biblical account of Christmas, we love the stories so much that we collapse them together. Of the four Gospels, only two, Matthew and Luke, make any mention at all of the birth of the Messiah. Luke’s tale has much of the imagery that forms innumerable manger scenes and Church School pageants: animals including the patient donkey that carried Mary on her tiring journey, shepherds from the fields, and angels who announce the holy birth and sing “Gloria” in the winter night. Mary figures strongly in the story, and has voice, especially in the wondrous song called by tradition “Magnificat.”

Matthew tells a different tale.

If Luke is Mary’s story, Matthew is Joseph’s. Joseph, named for Joseph the dreamer of dreams, the loved younger son of the Biblical patriarch Jacob, also dreams that he is to do amazing things that challenge him to the depths of his soul. An angel comes to him, not to sing “Gloria”, but to tell Joseph to accept and marry his fiancé Mary who is already “with child by the Holy Spirit.” The angel names the child Jesus, actually in Hebrew “Ye’Shua”, “Joshua”, the same name as the Biblical hero who led Israel from the desert into the Promised Land. But just as Joshua himself had many battles to fight in the new land, Joseph must contend with a cruel and powerful king. Herod is known today as a deeply clever and politically successful ruler, builder of some of the most magnificent structures that archaeologists are still uncovering. He was also a notably cruel and, later in life, paranoid king who dealt ruthlessly and violently with threats to his power, even from members of his own family.

The angel sends the new Joseph into exile in Egypt with the new Joshua, the new liberator of the people. He may have been honored by Gentile scholars and magicians, the “Magi” of Christmas tales, but the Magi took a detour out of fear of savage Herod and the new Joshua must flee also.

Gospels are not told as “biographies of Jesus” according to how we understand such works. Gospels are how living churches, living communities, told the story of Jesus in a way that gave them faith and strength and hope for their own journeys. In this tale of Matthew, then, we are asked many questions and given much strength. When have we been asked to do something outrageous in response to God? How have we been asked to revise or even reverse our sense of the “way things are” as was Joseph? What are the threats to our living a life of faith and of hope? When have we “gone into exile”? And how and when are we called to return? If these questions speak to us on any level, know that the Christ, the anointed one, came into the world and walked in these ways. He knows our path, even when it lies hidden from us.

physical therapy

2010-12-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

3 Advent A 2010
(Isaiah 35: 1-10; Canticle 15; James 5: 7-10; Matthew 11: 2-11)

“Welcome to my torture chamber!”

My second violent rear-ending totaling yet another car left me with lower back pain and a feeling of vulnerability. I had received my black belt just a month before and felt better about my health and strength than I had since I was a kid. Now I felt weakened and frail, and I wanted that feeling of strength and independence back.

Bill the physical therapist was a man about my age, but spare and fit and energetic and utterly honest. He smiled as I scanned the large room, filled with equipment. Some of the gear looked like fitness-center type stuff, weight machines and all. Some looked more complex and just scary, like post-modern Spanish Inquisition machinery designed to tear a confession out of people’s lips.

Still smiling, Bill said, “Whatta ya think? People come to physical therapy thinking that they are going to get deep-tissue massage and lots of hugs. Most of the time they are with me they complain and swear at me. But they leave with their lives back. If you want to be healed, you will work and push yourself. Because to heal damaged tissue, you have to strengthen the muscles and tissue around the damaged place. In order to get better, you have to get stronger.”

Today, I did not hang a sign on the church that says, “Welcome to Fr. Kurt’s torture chamber”, although some Sundays people may think that to themselves. But I take a lesson from my old therapist and say that today, Rose Sunday, “Be joyful!” Sunday, is a day when we come for healing and learn that, if we wish to be healed, we must take on strength. We must enter the physical therapy-chamber of God.

Isaiah’s glad song is all about taking on strength. He is very specific: “Strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees!” The promise of God is near, so now is not the time to collapse and sit by the side of the road! Even if we are beaten down, by life or by pain or by discouragement or by doubt, now is the time to take on strength. Our God is strong, so ask for his strength. Our God is strong, so ask and ask to be the person of strength that God made us to be. There is good news today—if we feel at the end of our strength, we can call on God for divine strength. In fact, we can be demanding about it! Did you notice that we told God to get stirred up when we began the Mass today? Get moving, God, get up and get busy! We are empowered by God to ask that boldly. But if we do, know that we ask God to get stirred up so we can get stirred up. In the world of the Gospel, No beggar is left by the side of the road.

And that is what Jesus tells John. John asks that heartbreaking question right before his execution that is on the lips of every honest seeker: Are you the one we are waiting for, or do we wait for someone else? Jesus’ answer is not a theological statement, but an invitation for John to look at how God’s power has been stirred up. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” God is on the move, things are changing, and you John? Even from your prison cell, are you on the move too?

We talk of the two comings of Jesus—once long ago, humble and born in a stable; once again, in power and glory. The monk Bernard in the Middle Ages said that there is a third coming—Jesus comes every day. And he comes to give us strength for the journey. “Keep God’s word…let it enter into your very being… Feed on goodness, and your soul will delight in its richness. Remember to eat your bread, or your heart will wither away. Fill your soul with richness and strength…The Son with the Father will come to you.”

So, welcome to the Advent physical therapy gym. It’s not a bedroom and it is not a couch. If we wish to be healed, if we still believe in the promises of God and the divine goodness, then be ready to work out. Be ready to seek strength. I always felt wide awake after those therapy sessions, as if every fibre of my body were tingling and alert. That’s what a good workout will do for you. That is also a good description of an Advent state of soul.

called out...

2010-12-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

"In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.' This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
`Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.'"

"Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

"But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

"'I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.'" (Matthew 3: 1-12)

Matthew's community of Antioch, notes Alexander Shaia, were a disparate Jewish collective traumatized by the sacking of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple, God's holy dwelling-place. As people in crisis, they vacillated between despair and seeking for hope and meaning in these events, for a reason to go on, for a way to understand the incomprehensible. Some elements of the community advocated a renewed and vigorous Torah-centered faith not dependent on the Temple and its sacrifices, rigorous in its observance and very clear about who was in the community and who was out. This is a very human response to crisis and disaster and we see this reflected in many strict literalist or "fundamentalist" movements today.

Others, whom Shaia dubs "Messianists", were Jewish followers of the charismatic lay teacher from Galilee, believing him to be God's anointed. They not only struggled to make sense of the loss of the Temple, which they also held sacred, but were still making sense of their Master's horrible execution by the Romans.

To all these people Matthew tells his story of the powerful, enigmatic figure of John the Baptizer, embodying in his person the charisma and shock of the old prophets of Judah and Israel with something utterly new, a new proclamation. He calls all to leave Jerusalem, to leave the well-known holy city with its Temple, to an unnamed place "in the wilderness." The unnamed and the unknown place becomes the place of change and encounter. All are called to this change--to what end? No one knows! But as one preacher said, perhaps the people hearing John looked back towards Jerusalem and, in a moment of sacred disorientation, wondered if the familiar holy city really was "the wilderness", and whether this nameless piece of wild country was the sacred dwelling of God!

It is the officially "holy people", the Pharisees and Sadducees, who hear John's harshest words.

What is disrupted for us in our lives, in our church, in our world? What has us disoriented, reeling? From what familiar and even "sacred" place are we being called forth? What "familiar holiness" is being spoken to harshly by the prophet's words? And, in the question placed in the mouths of John's hearers, what are we to do?

Pioneer Square

2010-12-01T19:08:00.001-08:00

The attempted Pioneer Square bombing

For me, the recent bombing attempt at Pioneer Square brushed closely by, like the brush of the feathers of a dark bird. My son and his girlfriend were there. Last year the whole family and I were there. I know some of you were too, or had family and friends who were at Pioneer Square, “Portland’s living room.”

I ask myself as I write how my reflections might be different had the attempt been successful, and if my son and his friend had been killed or injured. I do not know the answer to that question. Perhaps none of us do until we are tragically in that position. Nevertheless, as a follower of Jesus and a priest as well as a father and husband and citizen, I write as I feel the compelling need.

I am not immune to fear, and I am not immune to anger arising from fear. I have been proximate to enough violence and death to know how life can change or be erased in the blink of an eye. I have sat and sought for words with those who grieve, and more often have sat with them in silence.

And yet I say, with all of the conviction of my soul, that we are called and empowered not to allow our lives and our responses to be ruled by that anger and that fear. The teaching of the Christ whom I follow is clear—forgive, as you would be forgiven; love your enemies, do good to those who offend you, pray for those who persecute you. We make a grave mistake if we imagine that these clear teachings of Jesus were somehow easier and less complex in the 1st Century when he spoke them, or are only meant to apply to peaceful and simple times. They were never simple or easy, and they are meant to apply always.

We clergy often commit the sin of acting as if the teachings of our Lord are easy and palatable and intended for our comfort alone. In the name of maintaining numbers and contributors in our congregations we often gloss over the hard sayings of Jesus. We are not called to comfort and to a false “inner peace” that ignores the enormity of what is done in our world, done often in our name and on our behalf.

In the face of a potential act of mass violence, we cannot lapse uncritically into language like “the war on terror”, coined not by the Gospel but by a past political administration, in reflecting on how to respond with our faith and our integrity intact. Any easy alliance between the Gospel and militant zealous patriotism needs to be strongly examined in the light of our best values. Sadly, voices proclaiming their faith in the Prince of Peace have in the same breath advocated violence, religious intolerance, and revenge.

I am grateful beyond words that that bomb did not go off, that it was a contrived fake. My eyes sting with a father’s relieved tears as I write these words.

I am deeply grateful that there are those who pay the price to search out and to act on dangers to my family, my neighbors, and my people. I admit that, paraphrasing an English writer, that I sleep safely knowing that rough men and women are willing to deal out violence to those who would deal out violence to me. But I believe we must never excuse ourselves from the moral complexity and ambiguity of that fact. The price that is paid for our sense of security, borne by those whose lives and souls are endangered by that work as well as those who are the recipients of violence on our behalf, should trouble us and place before us the question of how to do we actually change such a brutal world.

I grieve for that 19 year old young man, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, whose life as he knew it is over. It is true that a confused, alienated young man is fully capable of making conscious choices and of harming a lot of people. But a 19 year old is a very young person, very impressionable, as I remember I was at 19. Fortunately I chose and embraced value-systems that were more humane and more responsible than did Mohamed. The spectacle of his arrest and trial is to me mostly about the problem of alienated immigrant youth, desperate and angry at being adrift in a culture not their own. People I know and respect work with Somali children and youth in Portland and can speak to the legacy of political violence, the memory of refugee camps, and the cultural alienation suffered by those children. In spite of any fear and anxiety we feel, we cannot begin to understand what those children carry within their minds and souls. As a nation of immigrants, save for those of Native blood who have been made to feel like aliens in their own land, we need to recall our own family stories and know some empathy.

I am glad that Mohamed will have his “day in court.” And I am glad the defense will call into question the procedure used in the development of the case against him. The best strength of our nation, that which makes us distinct in the world, is that we are concerned with the individual rights of all, that our law enforcement is not immune to scrutiny and accountability, and that all are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. These basic civil safeguards are often threatened in times of fear and anger. Sometimes officials and law enforcement have found the practice of accountability, public scrutiny, and legal defense awkward and frustrating in the pursuit of their goals. But this is the price of a participative democracy in which individual rights are protected. It is messy, complicated, and slow. But we compromise these rights and practices at risk of losing what is most worth defending about this nation. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is the second-worse system in the world—the only one worse is all the rest.

I grieve for the fact that, in the words of one frustrated Muslim citizen, one incident like this takes the five steps towards understanding laboriously taken forward and flings us ten steps back. We all should feel outrage and a sense of common threat by the arson committed in the Corvallis mosque. It is directed against any who publically witness to their faith. I am deeply moved by the response of the people of Corvallis and of faith-communities there to rally around the people of the mosque. I do think that leadership of the various Islamic communities (for there are many, distinguished by history and teachings and ethnic roots as are Christians) have an obligation to speak out clearly against violence and the distortion of their teachings represented by terrorism. But I also believe that we Christian folk have the same obligation, to speak out against the violence and coercion done in the name of our own faith, and we usually avoid it. Too often we turn a blind eye to language sprinkled with the name of Jesus and imagery from the Bible used to justify military action overseas as well as prejudice and violence against vulnerable people and groups and communities among us. There are too many planks in our own eyes for us to feel self-righteous about the splinter in the eye of another.

There is nothing easy about living in these times, even amidst the relative serenity and illusion of isolation that some of us enjoy here in Portland, Oregon. There is nothing easy about how our best and most fundamental values, both as citizens and, for those of us who profess faith, live side by side with the potential violence of our times. It is vital that we do not leap to any easy conclusion that makes it easy. Even had that bomb been real, these hard questions remain. How costly is the achievement of a sense of security if we lose what is most vital, most precious about our core values? Or in the words of one far more eloquent, “What does it profit you to gain the whole world, and yet lose yourself in the process?”

Your jacket

2010-12-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

1 Advent A 2010
(Isaiah 2: 1-5; Ps 122; Romans 13: 11-14; Matthew 24: 36-44)

Walking out of my martial arts class this past summer, sweaty from a hard workout, I turned as a young man shouted at me from a passing car. “What’s that?” I shouted back. He rolled the window down all the way and shouted again, “Wax on, wax off!”

In terms of what can be shouted from a car on 82nd Avenue, I appreciated this and walked away doing “wax on…” I liked the old Karate Kid movie with everyone’s favorite resident Asian sage, Mr. Miyagi. Not long ago I rented the re-make with Jackie Chan and Will Smith’s son. I liked it because it was different, placing the kid in China as a guest rather than in L.A. There was no “wax on, wax off.” Instead Jackie Chan taught basic martial arts in a different way.

“Put on your jacket! Take it off. Pick it up. Put it on. Now take it off. Pick it up.” And on and on and on, the kid endlessly taking that same jacket off, putting it on, stooping over and over until I felt my own back creak with the stoop and I thought the jacket would be worn to shreds.

Finally the endless gesture, seemingly so meaningless, makes the kid rebel. Jackie Chan then demonstrates how the seemingly meaningless ordinary gesture is actually the foundation for a powerful kung fu practice, the basis for defense and balance on which all else will be built. And, says Jackie, “everything is kung fu.”

The year has turned, and we are again in Advent. Have you been tempted to ask what is this purpose of endless repetition of readings, prayers, colors, and moods? Think of this: Put on your jacket, take it off, pick it up. This will teach us everything. And, I tell you, “Everything is Advent.”

“Cast away the works of darkness…”

The light wanes and grows short, this time of year. The fading light is a reminder that there is darkness in this world. I myself have become very aware of the heaviness of darkness, the weight of it, clinging to my body like an old, stained jacket. We each have such a jacket. Some of its stains have been imposed—the discouragement from struggle, from the cruelty and the seemingly random nature of the world and its pain. Some stains we have put on ourselves, from the anger and impatience and frustration and self-absorbedness of our lives. Paul does us the favor of listing some pretty general jacket-stains: “reveling and drunkenness”, “debauchery and licentiousness”, “quarreling and jealousy.” My personal jacket has stains like resentment, disgust, and apathy, the temptations of middle age. When we allow our lives to be shaped by these stains, that is sin. “Take off your jacket.” Because the good news is, we can. We are not our discouragement, our heaviness, our despair. In each of us there is a soul that stands with open arms awaiting our God.

“Put on the armor of light…”

We can live in a new and renewed way. We can place on ourselves a new jacket, a new way of being and seeing and feeling and praying and loving. The time is now. “Put your jacket on.” “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jackie says that “everything is kung fu,” but I say that everything is Advent. We live now in hope because he has come among us in humility, taking flesh and teaching and healing and dying and rising and filling all things. So what we do is full of meaning: our turning, our casting aside our personal and corporate works of darkness, our putting on the light of Christ. The vision of Isaiah, that all nations will come as pilgrims to Jerusalem, that swords will become plows, spears become pruning shears, tanks become farm tractors, warships become hospitals—that is the promise and the gift to those who follow Jesus.

This is how we are to live, this is what we shall do. Take off your jacket, pick it up, put it on. We shall be changed, we shall be transformed, in the casting aside of darkness and putting on Christ. The Light is promised to us, the Light is dawning in our midst. The time is now. Casting aside and putting on teaches us the deep lesson of this time.

That lesson is simple: Everything is Advent.

Matthew's mountain--climbing and changing

2010-11-27T16:34:00.000-08:00

Matthew 24:36-44
Jesus said to the disciples, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

Alexander Shaia in his work The Hidden Power Of The Gospels speaks of a central task, a question that each Gospel asks. This question was forged by the lived experience of each actual community whose struggles gave birth to a Gospel text. Shaia identifies the Jewish Christian community of Antioch, reeling from the destruction of the Temple and struggling to understand the newness brought by their puzzling Messiah, as the progenitors of the Gospel of Matthew, and identifies the burning question of Matthew as: How do we move through change?

This opening text of Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary brings us face to face with the image of change as presented by Matthew's Jesus immediately before his Passion. Sadly, this imagery has been cherry-picked and cobbled together into a lurid brand of selectively-literalistic apocalyptic literature and rhetoric that I say runs contrary to the Gospel's use of it. Popular contemporary Christian apocalyptic is used to hammer home the veracity of certain presentations of the Gospel, for the most part culturally and politically conservative presentations. The imagery of apocalyptic can be employed, as has many "fire and brimstone" teachings through the ages, to literally "scare the hell" out of people, to authenticate the voice of various forms of religious authority and assure obedience to it. An even less savory use is to give a sense of entitlement and assurance to those who have decided they are "the faithful", coupled with an edge of unpleasant satisfaction at the comeuppance given to the unbeliever. After all, what does one do if one is "Left Behind"?

But I do not think this text provides any of these doctrinal assurances or affirmation of entitlement. Jesus says something simpler: the ordinary is deceptive, for nothing is ordinary. The purposes of God are deeper than we can understand. There is unpredictability hard-wired into our ordinary-seeming lives. This is a deeply subversive message, both to our own understanding as well as to the voice of static religious or political authority. Jesus does not say that the good, the pious, the doctrinally or politically correct will be "taken"; only that there will be deep and unpredictable disruption of our lives and our relationships and of our understanding of "the ordinary." What to do, how to be in such a reality? Like a householder on guard--live as a Watcher. Watch! Wake up! Traditional angelology spoke of an order of angels called "Grigori", the "Watchers." Do like a Watcher, and watch! Wake up, look, learn!

A joy and a delight

2010-11-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

(sermon delivered by Cat Healy on 25 Pentecost, Year C, Nov 14 2010)

25 Pentecost 2010
Isaiah 65:17-25 – Psalm 98 – 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 – Luke 21:5-19
It strikes me that this week’s readings summarize every campaign ad we’ve seen on TV in the last several months. It’s the same in each election year: Half the candidates promise us new heavens and a new earth, and the other half tell us that anyone unwilling to work should not eat. A few brave ones do both. Beneath all the flag backdrops and political rhetoric, there are kernels of truth in there somewhere. That’s why campaign ads work; we’re all looking for something to believe in.
But Isaiah’s vision of the new earth is much more than a campaign ad. Here, we see God’s promise that the people of Israel, who have suffered so long, will not be destroyed. And more than that, they will be blessed beyond their imagining: “I will rejoice in Israel,” says the Lord; “I will delight in my people.” In every part of the new Jerusalem, God promises transformation. Infant mortality will disappear; no one will be homeless or hungry; even animals will have no need to harm each other.
However, there is another piece of this transformed creation. The ancient Israelites may have used different language for what we now call “social justice,” but they surely understood the concept. Isaiah’s new Jerusalem is about more than long lives and vegetarian lions. When the world is re-created, the workers who build will be able to inhabit their houses, and those who plant will enjoy the fruits of their labors. “They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.” This is not a faraway utopian vision, like the wolf lying down with the lamb. For this reason, it is much more challenging to us. Think about the world we live in now. The people who haul the lumber and lay the bricks of mansions will never inhabit them; workers spend hour after hour in the hot sun, picking produce they could never afford to buy. We know from the Hebrew prophets that this is not the world God wants. But these kinds of changes are not magic tricks that will be worked by God alone, with no effort from us, the people of the new earth. If we want to live in such a world, we have to do the work ourselves.
If you fast-forward to Thessalonians, you can watch a community of people trying to live out this mandate. The Christians of Thessalonica were mostly Gentiles; the Scriptures were brand-new to them, so they approached the Hebrew prophets as starry-eyed converts, seeing this vision of the world for the very first time. Though it’s hard to know for sure, you can imagine how carefully they made their chore charts, ensuring that everyone had an equal share of the labor and enjoyed an equal share of the fruits. They wanted to be just like their heroes, Paul and Timothy; just like Jesus and the Apostles; they wanted to make the new Jerusalem. In today’s reading, you can see how that went for them.
They are tired. They are cranky. They are in a bad mood.
Equal sharing of labor is hard. Equal sharing of the rewards is even harder. You don’t need to be an early Christian to know this; you only need to share a kitchen with someone. The Christians Paul is addressing here have a lot working against them. They’re getting picked on left and right by all the other people in Thessalonica, who view them as a cult; they converted as adults, they have no roots in Jewish tradition, and a lot of them are new even to monotheism; and in the midst of all this, they’re trying to revolutionize the labor economy as we know it. No wonder they’re burned out. And so they complain to Paul that their fellow Christians are “living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work.”
And so Paul writes back: Shut up and do your work! Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.
Not because he wants the Thessalonians to starve each other. Not because he is heartless.
But because everyone has to buy into the new Jerusalem, or it doesn’t stand a chance.
Had Paul gone into more detail here, he might have said: If even one of you sits back and hoards your wealth while another goes hungry, the vision falls apart. If even one of you takes a break from your labor in the fields and lets your brother or sister do their share of the work and yours too, allows them to suffer and struggle while you rest in the shade, the new heaven and the new earth are shot.
And this is where campaign ads always fail. They ignore the obvious: We can’t do it alone. If we treat our own good intentions as our only fuel, our only source of energy, we develop compassion fatigue and begin to come apart at the seams. If we try to build the new Jerusalem without God as its rock, we crumble.
In the same way, if we lose our sense of community – if we find ourselves unable to look past “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat” – we fall apart.
Isaiah resonates with us, though, because he tells us that we don’t have to do this hard work alone. As we work on building the Kingdom, as we make our chore charts, as we try to ensure that no one goes hungry and everyone gets a chance to reap what they sow – we are lifted up by one whose strength and patience are infinitely greater than ours. Whose powers of forgiveness are infinite, who, no matter how many times we turn away, is able to remake us as a joy and a delight.

Sycamore and the Trees of Life

2010-11-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

Today’s Sermon
Posted on October 31, 2010 by Carl McColman
Sermon for October 31, 2010, Sts. Peter & Paul Episcopal Church, Portland, OR

Text: So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. (Luke 19:4)

When I was a boy I loved to climb trees. We had two pine trees in our back yard, and one of them I could only climb up maybe five feet or so, but in the other, larger one I could get at least ten or twelve feet off the ground, which was pretty high for a ten year old kid! How fondly I remember my clothes and limbs covered with dust when I would finally descend from the branches. Even having to pull out the occasional splinter was worth the joy of bonding with that tree.

Climbing a tree always gave me a new perspective; I would climb it for fun, or I would do it to get away from it all, or even just to think through my homework. I suppose I was also trying to avoid doing my homework, but I never really thought about it in those terms!

In today’s Gospel, Zacchaeus the tax collector does precisely this: he climbs the Sycamore tree to get a new perspective on Christ. He’s not satisfied with the rumors and hearsay about Jesus. He wants to see for himself. But he’s not a very big guy, either physically or socially. No one is going to do any favors for Zach. So he takes matters in his own hands, and up the tree he goes. And once he does, — guess what? Not only does he see Jesus, but Jesus sees him. Jesus calls to him. And out of this encounter, Jesus comes to visit Zacchaeus’s home, and Zacchaeus is forever transformed. I think the Sycamore Tree is the unsung hero of the Zacchaeus tale. It has been relegated to the status of whimsy in a children’s song. But without that tree, the encounter between Jesus and the tax collector might never have happened.

Indeed, if we take a step back and look at the entire history of our faith, we will notice that trees appear again and again, always at some sort of pivotal moment in the story of our ongoing relationship with God.

We remember, of course, the two great trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. Keep in mind also that the Tree of Life reappears at the other end of the Bible, when Zion is transformed into the Heavenly or New Jerusalem, with none other than that great tree at its very center. And let us not forget the tree that was felled so that its wood could be used to build the cross — the “tree” on which Our Lord hung, as he suffered and died. For that matter remember that Jesus and Joseph were carpenters, which means that trees provided the raw material by which they earned their daily bread.

In fact, that’s true for many of us, even today. Trees give us the material by which we live and work. As an author, I am reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh, who in his books asks his readers to give thanks for the trees that died to make the paper on which his words are printed. Perhaps in our day of Kindles and other ebook readers, this is changing, but at least for the moment, so many of the words we read come to us on paper made from the wood of a tree.

When I think about the spirituality of trees, I also cannot help but think about the great wisdomkeepers of Ireland, Scotland and Wales: the Celts. Today, of course, is October 31, or Hallowe’en — but it is also Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of summer and indeed the end of the year. Samhain was a day for honoring the ancestors, and if we honor our Celtic ancestors, we remember that they had a particular devotion to trees. This is true not only of the pagan Celts, but even of the earliest Celtic Christians. For example, St. Brigit made her home in Kildare, a name that means “The Church of the Oak.” In Kildare archaeologists have discovered the foundation of a temple where nineteen sisters of Brigit tended an eternal flame. Just a short walk from this site are two holy wells which remain, to this day, sites of sacred pilgrimage for Christians and Pagans alike.

For the ancient Celts, what the sacred flame, the holy well, and the great tree all had in common was their function as portals, or doorways, between the worlds. Fire transforms, water flows, and trees reach high. Each of these, in their own way, signify the alchemy of the human spirit as it is transformed, flows into, and reaches for the very heart of God.

I would be remiss if I did not also tip my metaphorical hat to our Jewish brothers and sisters, and their great mystical tree: The Tree of Life within the Kabbalah. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is a symbol which represents the various stages of reality, or consciousness, that form a sort of creational continuum between the unspeakable splendor of God and the ordinary reality of human awareness. “Climbing the Kabbalistic Tree” is therefore a metaphor or a symbol for the transformations of human consciousness that take place as we seek to “put on the mind of Christ,” which is how Saint Paul describes the journey of inner transformation.

I would like to suggest a metaphor for us to explore this morning. I invite you to join with me in thinking about the great trees of the spiritual world — whether we are talking about the Jewish Tree of Life, the Celtic Oak Tree of Brigit, the World Tree, Yggdrasil of Norse Mythology, the Cross of Christ, or even the humble Sycamore Tree that Zacchaeus climbed: all these trees function as symbols of the human body itself. We stand, our feet planted on the ground and our hands and eyes reaching for the stars. We are creatures of clay animated with the Breath of God. So like these great trees, we stand between the worlds, the worlds of ordinary reality and the always-transforming splendor of our Triune God.

The philosopher Rudolf Eucken said that humanity “is the meeting point of various stages of reality.” In other words, we are, like the great trees of Celtic mythology, the link between the physical and the spiritual dimensions of the cosmos.

This, then, is why I commend to you the practice of Christian spirituality: of lectio divina, or meditative reading of the Bible; of meditation itself, thoughtful reflection on the great mysteries of our faith, and the summit of our spirituality, contemplation, the practice of allowing all thoughts and distractions to gently rise and fall within the greater silence that is our most natural ground of being. When we enter into meditation or contemplation, we are symbolically “climbing the tree” of our own minds and hearts, and in doing so, we reach a new perspective, a new vantage point, a new place where it is possible to encounter the Risen Lord — but, even more important, where Christ encounters us. And in this encounter, he asks to come into our lives, our homes, and leaves us forever transformed.

The great German mystic Meister Eckhart said: “The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.” This, then, is the heart of contemplation: I gaze at God, and God gazes at me. This is brought about because we climb the tree of contemplation, where, from a new and higher vantage point, this encounter with the Holy is made possible. And when we return from the height of our inner tree, we find that our lives have been changed forever. And out of this change, we are empowered to truly and lovingly serve others.

So on this Hallowe’en Day, I hope that each of us will take time to reflect on Zacchaeus and his sycamore tree. Give thanks for the trees in your life, whether living are dead. From paper to furniture to floors to cabinets, our lives are filled with the gift of trees. So consider this, and give thanks. But give particular thanks for the trees that are alive, the living, sentient beings that bless us with their fruit, and their shade, their roots that stabilize our soil, and most important of all, their oxygen. And finally, consider the sacred tree that you can find within the theater of your spiritual imagination, where you are invited to climb to a new vantage point where, like Zacchaeus, you may see, and encounter, and be encountered by, the One who can change your life with love with truth and goodness and beauty. For after all, it is in his name that we gather today, for the great feast in which he is both priest and victim. Amen.

(see Carl McColman's blog at www.anamchara.com )

The cry and the crier

2010-10-17T11:53:00.001-07:00

21ST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(Proper 24C, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
October 17, 2010
Ss. Peter & Paul – 10:00 a.m.
by Fr. Phil Ayers

God of the dispossessed,
you teach us to hunger for justice
even when the weak are shut out
and the powerful turn over in their beds:
in the heat of our anger
and the bitterness of our complaints,
give us the courage to protest,
the persistence to pray,
and the heart to love;
through Jesus Christ, the true judge.

(Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church)

+++++
A parable, such as we have before us in today’s Gospel – sometimes called “The Importunate Widow and the Unjust Judge” – is a pearl of wisdom set in a particular context by the evangelists, the gospel-writers, for pastoral purposes. That is, as I try to understand it, for purposes of strengthening the community of Christ. Thomas Keating says we have to remove the jewel from the context in order to get to the heart of the reality proposed by the parable, which shocks us into an experience of who we are and what motivates our conduct. The parables give insight that is not just knowledge, but the knowledge infused by love that Paul keeps referring to in his epistles.

2
Leaving out the context in which Luke places this precious gem, which makes of it an exhortation to pray always and not lose heart, the original meaning of the parable emerges stark and clear.
The outraged widow is not presented as virtuous or having just cause. She was, after all, a product of her time, in which widows got a bum deal: if any money was left by her husband, it went to her sons or to her brothers-in-law. She was, in effect, a charity case. The judge is obviously not impartial or objective. How can the kingdom of God be similar to anything in this rather scandalous situation? If the judge was a professional crook, it would not be so bad. But he is supposed to be a decent man who does justice to people. The fact is he is a wretched man!
We might remember that there were no juries in the time of Jesus so the role of a judge was doubly important. Judging meant adjudicating disputes, hearing complaints fairly, and maintaining harmonious relationships between people. A judge established and guarded shalom – peace, if you will – in the community.
In particular, the Law of Israel instructed the people – and certainly the judges in their midst – to show mercy to widows, orphans, and foreigners. After all, God had been merciful to the Hebrew people while they were in bondage; so they should especially reciprocate this graciousness to the powerless among them. The judge, of all people, would be charged with this responsibility of championing the rights of the dispossessed and the alienated.
3
By these standards, the judge in the parable comes across as completely unfit. He is a backslider - a slacker in keeping the Law. He has lost whatever compunction he had once to champion the poor.
But the widow keeps knocking!!!
We might translate this story into a contemporary scenario. Let us say that there is a judge who is supposed to decide a difficult insurance case. The plaintiff, a widow, who is destitute, sends him two or three letters a day, plus a couple of telegrams, makes innumerable phone calls, endless faxes, and has her friends calling in daily to recommend her cause and demand justice.
When he tries to leave his house or workplace, she accosts him. Regularly she sends him a bouquet of roses with the message, “I’m waiting.”
Finally the judge cannot stand her constant, annoying begging anymore and without considering the merits of the case, decides to give her all that she wants. (One commentator I consulted remarks that what is translated “wearing me out by her continually coming” could well be “so that she won’t give me a black eye”!)
Having concluded the parable, Jesus walks off down the street with his disciples.
With whom can the hearers identify in this parable? Nobody wants to see himself or herself as an unjust judge. Nobody wants to be the destitute widow. Whom can they identify with? That is the crux of the challenge.
4
Parables are mirrors in which we are invited to look at ourselves. We are the unjust judge. The widow represents the kingdom of God – grace that is constantly banging on our door, morning, noon, and night, pleading, “Do me justice.” Or more specifically, “How about spending some time in prayer? How about forgiving your enemy? How about seeking reconciliation with the members of your family? How about helping someone in need?”
So we can take note of the feelings that hinder our relationships, our efforts to forgive and not to judge. Where are they coming from? These are the things that the widow whom Fr. Keating calls “The divine widow” has in mind when she pleads, “Do me justice!” In other words, “Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate.”
The divine widow keeps pounding on the door of our hearts day after day as, like the unjust judge, we try to put her off. If modern forms of communication can be overwhelming, wait until you encounter how many ways of communicating God can come up with! God approaches us all day long, coming to meet us morning, noon, and night through people, events, and our own thoughts, feelings, memories, and reactions. We accept the kingdom finally, not because we are just or deserve it, but because at some point, like the unjust judge, we cannot stand the pestering of grace anymore and are forced to give in, saying, “Okay, take my life. I am in your hands.”
5
Here at Ss. Peter & Paul, we are invited to live into the thrust of that parable, responding to the persistence of many “divine widows” who won’t go away and constantly remind us of what we are to be about as Christians. They convey the holy and urgent grace of God by their persistence, and even annoyance, at times. We can totally ignore them or we can respond to their invitation in terms of sharing our abundance. (And I think we do have some here in our midst, but they are NOT pests!)
Our parish is a context in which we are put into many relationships with one another. Some we would rather not enter into, but we really must for our soul’s health and the health of the Body of Christ in this place and time. I’m not speaking mysteriously here: more concretely, Ss. Peter & Paul is a place in which I have witnessed an inkling of the Kingdom of God. And it has come about through the people who comprise this community: we spend a lot of our time in prayer, especially in the community’s prayer – the liturgy, the work of the people of God – richly celebrated week by week. We are invited and beckoned to cultivate our spiritual lives, not so that we will climb the ladder of perfection necessarily, but so that we will be equipped to reach out in love and concern for the poor, the needy (of all kinds!), the destitute, the lonely, the bereft, the seekers, the hurting and abused. We are called to forgive one another, called to reconcile divergence.

6 Now the parish invites us to consider how we will, with the gifts God has so richly bestowed upon us, support this community and its life and work and ministry. Last evening many of us were present for “Loaves and Fishes,” a terrific idea that the Vestry came up with; and we got a true taste of what it must have been like on that hillside long ago when loaves and fishes were miraculously multiplied and the fragments left over from the meal were filling many baskets. We all ate, and were satisfied! This isn’t your “normal” or “regular” fall stewardship “pitch.” I take this to mean something far deeper than the annual “Beg-a-Thon” we so often indulge in. (I certainly did that when I was an active parish rector.) Rather, it is an invitation, a call to live holier and deeper lives in Christ, to be truer than we’ve ever been before to the solemn Baptismal Covenant, part of which proclaims to love and serve Christ in every human being, loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Strength and abundance is ours, dear people of God at Ss. Peter & Paul. May we share it, giving gladly and willingly, not just to “keep doors open,” not just “to pay the bills,” not just to “stay afloat” – but to witness clearly to the love of God in Christ as we receive him into our bodies today and at every Mass we celebrate together.
[Ideas from Paula Franck, Thomas Keating and H. K. Oehmig in Synthesis 10/17/10]

The Nine and the One

2010-10-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Proper 23 C 2010
Jer 29: 1, 4-7; Ps 66: 1-11; 2 Tim 2: 8-15; Luke 17: 11-19

“The other nine—where are they?”

The table is set and the food is laid out. The invitations have been sent, some have RSVP’d, others have not. The hour for dinner arrives, and the host glances nervously out the front window. She thinks she hears a soft tap at the door, then realizes it was her hopeful imagination. What shall I do with all this food?

“The other nine—where are they?”

Anyone who has planned a party can recognize the wonder and the frustration in Jesus’ voice. Anyone who has planned church events can identify with Jesus’ question. The work party, the special liturgy, the stewardship event—yes, our lives are complicated, and even getting to Sunday Mass seems to take special effort even for the most committed. Chances are we can all identify with Jesus who wonders aloud at the small response to a healing received. Chances are we have also sometimes been among the absent “nine.”

It is not my intention to preach a “make you feel guilty if you don’t show up for things” sermon. But today’s Gospel does invite us into reflecting deeply about our response to Jesus’ voice and action in our lives. Like that day on the road, Jesus does amazing things for us—he heals, he calls, he sends, he gives new meaning and purpose, he even brings us back to life. Today we are among that mystical band of ten lepers who needed so much and asked for so much. At first there were ten. Then there was one, and nine. One was different in response. That one received much more.

Let’s not forget that all ten lepers did things the right way. They respectfully obeyed the taboos for lepers and kept some distance between themselves and Jesus. They acknowledged that Jesus could do something wondrous for them—“Jesus, Master, have mercy!” And Jesus responds and gives them what they ask. He sends the ten on a journey of obedience both to himself and to the Law of Moses—“Go and show yourselves to the priests.” They obey, they set out, and they are made clean.

There is nothing wrong with any of this. We never learn if the now-clean lepers complete their journey and show themselves obediently to the priests. According to the Law, only the priests can pronounce a leper clean so they can re-join the community. I imagine that most if not all of them fulfilled that journey, and ended up at the Temple, obeying Jesus and obeying the ancient Law.

But there was one who did things differently, one who actually disobeys the letter of the Law and even the letter of what Jesus said. He returns to the place where he was a leper and Jesus was his only hope for healing. He lays down in a lovely Middle Eastern bow—not at the Temple, not before the priest, but before the Jesus who is himself healing and hope.

And he was a Samaritan, a foreigner. Nine were made “clean”, nine obeyed the Word and customs—but only one soke his thanks aloud, only one was pronounced “well.”

Today our own church community is a mix of the long-time faithful, the new seekers, the casual fringe, and the involved well-wishers from “outside.” Sometimes it is these outsiders who make our events and our ministries work. When this happens, I sometimes think of this story of the ten lepers.

It is a wonderful thing to be a church which knows Jesus and which prays to him for healing and life. It is a wonderful thing to obey the word of Jesus and of our wise tradition. It really is good to be one of the “nine.”

But what would it be like to make the extra journey, to take a new leap, to be one with that grateful Samaritan? What would it be like to be a community which was also “made well”?

The Wolf of Gubbio

2010-10-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

(note-the tale I told as a homily on St. Francis Sunday was my rendering of "the Wolf of Gubbio", one of the oldest and richest of the legends of Saint Francis. Rather than re-do it myself as a text, here the Franciscans tell the tale themselves from FranciscanWiki, translated from the "Little Flowers of Saint Francis", an ancient collection of Francis tales--kn+)

From the Fioretti ("The Little Flowers of St. Francis")
Chapter 21.
How St. Francis Tamed the Very Fierce Wolf of Gubbio
At a time when St. Francis was staying in the town of Gubbio, something wonderful and worthy of lasting fame happened.
For there appeared in the territory of that city a fearfully large and fierce wolf which was so rabid with hunger that it devoured not only animals but even human beings. All the people in the town considered it such a great scourge and terror -- because it often came near the town -- that they took weapons with them when they went into the country, as if they were going to war. But even with their weapons, they were not able to escape the sharp teeth and raging hunger of the wolf when they were so unfortunate as to meet it. Consequently, everyone in the town was so terrified that hardly anyone dared go outside the city gate.
But God wished to bring the holiness of St. Francis to the attention of those people.
For while the Saint was there at that time, he had pity on the people and decided to go out and meet the wolf. But on hearing this the citizens said to him: "Look out, Brother Francis. Don't go outside the gate, because the wolf which has already devoured many people will certainly attack you and kill you!"
But St. Francis placed his hope in the Lord Jesus Christ who is master of all creatures. Protected not by a shield or a helmet, but arming himself with the Sign of the Cross, he bravely went out of the town with his companion, putting all his faith in the Lord who makes those who believe in Him walk without any injury on an asp and a basilisk and trample not merely on a wolf but even on a lion and a dragon. So with his very great faith St. Francis bravely went out to meet the wolf.
Some peasants accompanied him a little way, but soon they said to him: "We don't want to go any farther because that wolf is very fierce and we might get hurt."
When he heard them say this, St. Francis answered: "Just stay here. But I am going on to where the wolf lives."
Then, in the sight of many people who bad come out and climbed onto places to see this wonderful event, the fierce wolf came running with its mouth open toward St. Francis and his companion.
The Saint made the Sign of the Cross toward it. And the power of God, proceeding is much from himself as from his companion, checked the wolf and made it slow down and close its cruel mouth.
Then, calling to it, St. Francis said: "Come to me, Brother Wolf. In the name of Christ, I order you not to hurt me or anyone."
It is marvelous to relate that as soon as he had made the Sign of the Cross, the wolf closed its terrible jaws and stopped running, and as soon as he gave it that order, it lowered its head and lay down at the Saint's feet, as though it had become a lamb.
And St. Francis said to it as it lay in front of him: "Brother Wolf, you have done great harm in this region, and you have committed horrible crimes by destroying God's creatures without any mercy. You have been destroying not only irrational animals, but you even have the more detestable brazenness to kill and devour human beings made in the image of God. You therefore deserve to be put to death just like the worst robber and murderer. Consequently everyone is right in crying out against you and complaining, and this whole town is your enemy. But, Brother Wolf, I want to make peace between you and them, so that they will not be harmed by you any more, and after they have forgiven you all your past crimes, neither men nor dogs will pursue you any more."
The wolf showed by moving its body and tail and ears and by nodding its head that it willingly accepted what the Saint had said and would observe it.
So St. Francis spoke again: "Brother Wolf, since you are willing to make and keep this peace pact, I promise you that I will have the people of this town give you food every day as long as you live, so that you will never again suffer from hunger, for I know that whatever evil you have been doing was done because of the urge of hunger. But, my Brother Wolf, since I am obtaining such a favor for you, I want you to promise me that you will never hurt any animal or man. Will you promise me that?"
The wolf gave a clear sign, by nodding its head, that it promised to do what the Saint asked.
And St. Francis said: "Brother Wolf, I want you to give me a pledge so that I can confidently believe what you promise."
And as St. Francis held out his hand to receive the pledge, the wolf also raised its front paw and meekly and gently put it in St. Francis' hand as a sign that it was giving its pledge.
Then St. Francis said: "Brother Wolf, I order you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to come with me now, without fear, into the town to make this peace pact in the name of the Lord."
And the wolf immediately began to walk along beside St. Francis, just like a very gentle lamb. When the people saw this, they were greatly amazed, and the news spread quickly throughout the whole town, so that all of them, men as well as women, great and small, assembled on the market place, because St. Francis was there with the wolf.
So when a very large crowd had gathered, St. Francis gave them a wonderful sermon, saying among other things that such calamities were permitted by God because of their sins, and how the consuming fire of hell by which the damned have to be devoured for all eternity is much more dangerous than the raging of a wolf which can kill nothing but the body, and how much more they should fear to be plunged into hell, since one little animal could keep so great a crowd in such a state of terror and trembling.
"So, dear people," he said, "come back to the Lord, and do fitting penance, and God will free you from the wolf in this world and from the devouring fire of hell in the next world."
And having said that, he added: "Listen, dear people. Brother Wolf, who is standing here before you, has promised me and has given me a pledge that he will make peace with you and will never hurt you if you promise also to feed him every day. And I pledge myself as bondsman for Brother Wolf that he will faithfully keep this peace pact."
Then all the people who were assembled there promised in a loud voice to feed the wolf regularly.
And St. Francis said to the wolf before them all: "And you, Brother Wolf, do you promise to keep this pact, that is, not to hurt any animal or human being?"
The wolf knelt down and bowed its head, and by twisting its body and wagging its tail and ears it clearly showed to everyone that it would keep the pact as it had promised.
And St. Francis said: "Brother Wolf, just as you gave me a pledge of this when we were outside the city gate, I want you to give me a pledge here before all these people that you will keep the pact and will never betray me for having pledged myself as your bondsman."
Then in the presence of all the people the wolf raised its right paw and put it in St. Francis' hand as a pledge.
And the crowd was so filled with amazement and joy, out of devotion for the Saint as well as over the novelty of the miracle and over the peace pact between the wolf and the people, that they all shouted to the sky, praising and blessing the Lord Jesus Christ who had sent St. Francis to them, by whose merits they had been freed from such a fierce wolf and saved from such a terrible scourge and had recovered peace and quiet.
From that day, the wolf and the people kept the pact which St. Francis made. The wolf lived two years more, and it went from door to door for food. It hurt no one, and no one hurt it. The people fed it courteously. And it is a striking fact that not a single dog ever barked at it.
Then the wolf grew old and died. And the people were sorry, because whenever it went through the town, its peaceful kindness and patience reminded them of the virtues and the holiness of St. Francis.
Praised be Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The ditch

2010-09-26T15:15:00.001-07:00

Proper 21 C 2010
(Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31)

A young preacher told of a conversation she overheard outside of a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. One man told another, “Man, I’m just starting out in recovery, and each day is hard.” The second man he spoke to laughed and said, “Dude, I’ve been in recovery for years, and every day that same ditch is right there in front of me.”

That’s a 12-Step version of the ancient desert saying, “This is our life: we fall down, and we get back up again.”

That ditch and that harsh, no-nonsense wisdom is right in front of us today, and it is good that we are here to face it together. Jesus tells a haunting and rather dark parable. “Be nice to poor people” is the simplest meaning if we are looking for a moral. By all means, be nice to poor people. But the parables are never just morality tales—they are stories of the strange reality that is the Kingdom of God and how the Kingdom calls us over and over to change and transformation. And that is never easy.

A few years ago Phil Collins sang a haunting song, “It’s just another day for you and me in paradise...” as we walk by while the poor call out for help. It was just another day in paradise for the rich man in Jesus’ story, with the poor man waiting at his gates for a hand-out. The rich man is not a bad man. He’s just living his life as it is, where there are rich and poor and isn’t that too bad, but there’s a lot of poor and I am only one man, and what can I do?

The rich man has no name. The poor man has a name—Lazarus, which means roughly “God has helped.” This story is about to flip our world upside-down, since in our world the rich and famous have names and the poor have none.

The rich man dies and enters a harsh reality—it is no longer just another day in paradise for him. He who doled out scraps to Lazarus begs for Lazarus’ finger to moisten his mouth. Have you ever looked at the fingers of a poor homeless man? Those are the fingers that the rich man begs to be put between his lips.

The father of his nation says, “No my son, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed…” Who can cross over that?

That ditch is right there in front of us, and that chasm has been fixed. What can we do? How can we deal with the ditch, how can we cross the chasm opened by our blindness to the truth of God’s kingdom?

We can make a bid on a wild hope. Jeremiah was in jail while the Babylonians were beating down the gates, and what does he do? He swings a real estate deal with his cousin, right when property values were bottoming out and the Babylonians were just dying to depreciate values even more. Despair and flee? No, buy the land and seal the deal. Live and act in hope, and the God of hope will fulfill the promise—land, freedom, and new life. Ask people recovering from the hopeless hell of addiction about the wildness, the pure improbable faith of hope when they are locked in despair.

And we can fight the good fight.

One thing we learn in martial arts is to never give up, to never, ever stop fighting. Only the teacher calls the end of the match. Says Paul, Paul who no doubt saw wrestling and boxing matches in Tarsus and Corinth: “Fight the good fight of the faith...make the good confession...just as Christ Jesus made the good confession before Pontius Pilate.” Ours is a fighting life—never stop fighting, even if we are knocked down or see defeat before us.

Jesus ends his parable on a dark note. I believe he asks us these questions:

No matter how long we’ve been on a Gospel path, do we see that ditch before us, the chasm that is fixed if we take for granted the way things are, the way we ourselves are, the way we are living today?

Do we wish to bridge that chasm, to deal with that ditch?

Do we wish to live into a wild hope, the hope that we might live a different and transformed life, and that we might transform life for the poor of this world?

Do we believe that the fight is worth fighting, that it is worthwhile to get back up when we fall?

If we answer yes, if we even want the courage to be able to answer “yes”, then we’ve made Jeremiah’s crazy land deal, we’ve made Paul’s good confession. All that remains is to fight the fight—to live the upside-down values of the kingdom, where the poor have names and where we are to live and to be the abundant mercy of God.

And so we will fall down, and get up, together with one another and with the Spirit. Never stop fighting. Only the teacher calls the end of the match.

And only the Teacher gives us the promised glory when the match is finally over.

enough, and more than enough

2010-09-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

“Fill The Church” Sunday 2010
Isaiah 45: 21-25; Ps 98: 1-4; Phil 2: 5-11; Luke 9: 10-17

What drew us to this man?

Was it his beauty? It’s strange, but we cannot remember the details of his face. We could not take our eyes off of him some days. John was more handsome, Peter was louder and his presence filled a room. Magdalene was beautiful and the men perspired slightly when she was near. But our eyes were drawn to him, the rabbi, the master, only to him. Why?

Why did we listen to this man? He was not a professional teacher, he did not set out to found a school. He had not studied with great teachers or even with the Gentile philosophers. But his words—he spoke them with his whole body, with his life and actions, with his whole being—no difference between what he said and what he did and who he was. To hear him was like listening to a waterfall while bathing in the pool beneath it.

Why did we follow this man? If we knew where the road would lead when we first met him, we would have shuddered and run away. But when he called, we stood up and took first one step after him, then another. It was all those steps, on the dust and on the paving-stones, on the sand of beaches and through the growing grain, that strengthened us so today we can bend and lift our cross as he lifted his on that terrible day, all alone, while we hid and shivered and secretly thought how lucky we were that we did not share his pain. And we have been changed—now we think we are blessed because by the mercy of God we are allowed to walk his way, from pain to glory.

That day in the wilderness was just such a day of change.

The teacher was tired, and so were we. So many thronged around, holding up their empty hands, opening their famished mouths, baring their famished souls. He spoke and touched, healed and blessed, but he was just one man and all we could do was stand and try to help in small ways—bring him water for his dry throat, support a drooping man for him to heal.

We were drained and exhausted. And of course we were broke—always broke. Thomas was practical—“Tell people to go now, tell them to scatter so they can hit the villages for food before the merchants close their booths for the day.”

The teacher surprised us. “You give them something to eat.”

It was impossible, and we told him so. A couple of us had brought a loaf or two of bread, not very fresh, and a couple of dried fish, workingman’s lunch. That was all the food in sight.

The teacher held that food, that working-stiff food, so tenderly. He raised his eyes in that way he had which was not sticky-sweet but natural. In simple words, he thanked his Father, broke the bread, carefully handed the pieces to us.

Numb, we obeyed. Piece by piece, we handed fragments to the open hungry hands. Break, hand, break, hand. Often we were sure we held the next-to-last piece. Each time there was more, there was more. The people watched us, and even in their hunger they themselves began to break pieces from their own pieces, and passed them on.

At first there were murmurs, then a strange hush, as if everyone were holding their breath, waiting for the very last piece to be passed, waiting to see who would be fed, who would be hungry. And then the buzz—faint at first, then the more hopeful began to say that something strange, something wonderful was happening right here, right out here in the middle of nowhere. The buzz became a deep, resonant, satisfied roar. Even the people on the fringe of the crowd, those who were just curious and not very interested in the teacher’s words, even they were handed their share.

There is nothing as content as a group of people filled with good food.

Andrew started picking up the pieces. He always worried about things like that. He had to find twelve baskets to hold them all. Enough for today, and for tomorrow. Our ancestors in the desert, fed with the manna, did not eat any better.

And we were changed.

Never again would we worry that a gathering of the faithful was broke or poor. The master said that if even two gathered remembering just his name, he would be there. If he is there, if he is here, then there is always more than enough. All we need do is remember the story, give thanks, share what we have. All shall eat, and be satisfied. And we shall be changed.

This is out story, Saints Peter and Paul. This is our teacher who is here with us today. Here is the bread—the bread of the altar, and the bread which is our lives. Have you ever felt broke? Have you ever felt stretched thin? Have you ever felt that there is just not enough, that our lives and energy are just not enough, that we can’t keep our lives, our families, or our church going another day?

Well, we have followed the teacher. He is with us today. He takes the bread of the altar and the bread of our lives and the story happens again—give thanks, break, and give. When we do that, there is enough and more than enough. We need him, we need each other, and we need to tell this tale. Know this—when we tell this tale together, when we live this tale today, there is enough. There is more than enough. And we shall be changed.

following the heart

2010-09-12T14:34:00.001-07:00

Proper 19 C 2010
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Ps 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

There was a man in the Middle East who thought he knew his own heart as well as the heart of God.

The young man grew up in privilege. He received a good liberal education. Perhaps it was his loneliness and sense of alienation among sophisticated fellow-students which set his feet on a dark path. See, the young man was raised in a stern faith which believes in one God, in the purity of God’s faithful people, and in observing clear laws that God has set down. As the world grew more complex, as their young people were exposed to more and more temptations of the flesh and of ideas, the teachers and leaders of this faith grew more stern in their demands and more angry in their preaching. The nations of the West, they said, brought nothing but greed and conquest to their lands and pollution to their young people and to their faith. A few teachers even advocated violence, violence against the Western forces who occupied their land, violence against their own people who co-operated in any way with those Western forces and who did not live up to the stern demands of those teachers. Any who died in this holy war, said the teachers, were God’s martyrs, guaranteed a hero’s reward in the life to come.

The bright and idealistic young man drank in this harsh teaching like cold water on a hot day. His heart thrilled to the white-hot, single-minded commitment required of a warrior for God. He was finally drawn into violence. He helped his new friends kill a man, a man whose beliefs ran against the approved teaching of the young man’s group.

Inspired, and secretly thrilled at violence for religion’s sake, the young man set out with the blessing of his leadership to harass and arrest his own people whose faith fell short of his standards and haul them before religious courts.

And the young man would have lived and probably died for this harsh, utterly committed faith, sure of his own heart and of the heart of God. But the strangest thing happened. The One God in whom the young man believed with all his heart showed up. God knocked the young man down and told him he was wrong, wrong about his own heart and about the heart of God.

This story sounds strangely like the tale of a member of the Taliban, or Al-Qaeda. In a sense it is. The young man was not Muslim, he was Jewish. His given name was Saul. Today we call him Saint Paul.

Saul thought he knew his heart and the heart of God. Do not underestimate the depth of his fanaticism. Only the lack of technology limited its power. I myself need little effort to imagine unchanged Saul sitting in a cave on the Afghani border, watching the Twin Towers fall on CNN and nodding in approval.

One Desert Father said, “Of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart.” Now that’s really dark, and really counter-cultural—over and over again we are urged to “follow our hearts.” If you do not follow your heart, says popular wisdom, then you are allowing external authority to force you to be untrue to yourself.

Today the Scriptures suggest that we may not really know our own hearts. Our impulses and our most deeply cherished, unexamined beliefs are not necessarily our deepest truth. That poor fellow in Florida who was about to burn the Koran—he was following his heart and his most cherished beliefs. So are many misguided people, small or great. I am still on a journey to listen to my own true heart. Since our true heart is made to rest in God, it takes at least a lifetime to know ourselves even somewhat as God knows us. In the meanwhile, I face the fact that as often as I felt certitude, even a deep sense of passion about my ideals, all too often I have strayed into self-deception. “My people are foolish; they do not know me”, says God in Jeremiah. “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” says Paul. “But I received mercy…”

“But I received mercy…” This weekend, we remember the death and destruction worked by young men who were absolutely sure they were right, that God was guiding them, that they were willing to die for their faith and their truth. As we remember, let us humbly ask for the grace to make a better world, not by rushing to assert that our enemies are wrong and we are right. That path leads all too easily to our willingness to make others suffer and die for our rightness. The violence, the single-mindedness, the self-deception is in us, and it awaits us always if we think we always know our own hearts and the heart of God. Our hope is not in our own sense of rightness. Our hope is in the God who is willing to search for us even in our times of anger, fear, and violence. Like a shepherd so single-minded he will leave the other sheep to search, like the woman who quits even cooking food to search her house for one coin, the God who truly knows us will search us out from every crack and crevice we have rolled into chosen for ourselves. Just ask Saul—God searched hard for him and finally had to knock him down to get his attention. Our single-mindedness does not save. The God who searches our minds and looks beneath our illusions and fears—it is this God who saves.

trust and cost

2010-09-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

Proper 18 C 2010
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 13-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

Trust in God is hard for me.

That may sound like a surprising admission from a priest. But trust in God has been a lifelong, ongoing, and unfinished project for me.

I envy my youngest daughter’s trust who, when she was three, jumped down the basement steps into her mother’s arms. But then I remember that when I was three I fell down our basement steps while my own mother watched helplessly. I still have dreams that end with my tumbling down a set of stairs.

Today’s Collect asks God to give us the gift of trusting with all our hearts. For me, and I suspect for many of us, that trust is not a simple religious sentiment, but something that we wish we had but must admit that we often do not. That we struggle with trust is understandable—life gives many of us good reasons to struggle with trust.

But we want that sense of trust, we want our lives to be transformed by that trust. And we want that transformation in the face of what God calls us and empowers us to do.

Today it is Jesus himself who presents us with a sharp challenge to trust in God. Jesus turns to us and speaks challenging words, words that I even hesitate to explore in a pulpit for fear that they will drive some people away. Hating father and mother, hating children, carrying crosses, giving up all possessions—Jesus says clearly that admiring him is easy, but following him is hard. One contemporary writer says that Jesus has many fans, but few real followers. So Jesus gives some practical examples of “counting the cost”—make sure you know what you are getting into if you wish to be my follower.

After serving here as rector for 15 years, I have seen us move from being a church who defined ourselves in terms of how we do our liturgy to being a church who tries to live what our liturgy means. Instead of talking about “the right way to do things”, we began to speak of “what does the Gospel call us to do?” “Who is our neighbor and how do we welcome and serve them?” “How does Christ call us to renew our lives?” These questions are hard but they are open questions and they are the right questions, they are Gospel-based questions. Some of the results of engaging these questions are in our midst—renewed outreach to the poor, outreach to women in the sex trade, dental services to the poor, a growing Hispanic presence, an urge to deepen our lives of prayer and discipline, new members with new vision and new hopes. This journey has not been easy. My life was in some ways much easier in those years when I first arrived. Our life together was not as challenging. Sometimes I have wondered if I have asked too much of Saints Peter and Paul, and perhaps even of myself.

But then I hear Gospel texts like this one, and I feel again that strange urge—to learn again how to trust God and to live a Gospel that is not so much soothing as it is challenging. Even as the seasons of our lives change, and as one old rock ‘n roller sang we “find ourselves seeking shelter against the wind”, I find I still love the wind and I hope that we may always be a church that can ask and act on hard questions. I think that is our only hope as a congregation for the future: to fearlessly allow the Master’s words to move us, kindle us, and sometimes disturb us. Count the cost—yes indeed. Many people try out a Gospel path, but now as in the beginning of the Gospel adventure people do fall away when they count the cost. May we be among those who trust and stay.

It is the Old Testament that gives us a note of gentle hope.

Jeremiah goes down to the local potter’s workshop and watches the potter at the wheel. Have you ever seen a potter work? I am always amazed at how many times the pot seems to grow and take shape, only to be touched and collapsed by the potter and spin again from a shapeless lump of clay. I always wonder why one shape is suddenly acceptable to the potter, why she chooses that moment and that shape over all the others. But the potter knows. And the potter makes all the past shapes, curves, flaws, and false starts into part of the pattern. Nothing is wasted.

We can trust the divine Potter to have an artist’s way with us, to make all our stumbling attempts to be a follower of the Master part of the final lovely product. At least, we can long for that trust, and ask for it as a gift. And the gift of trust will be given.

It takes humility to admit that we have a long way to go, that our trust and our faith is small or weak. But that’s a good place to start. God isn’t very interested in finished products. The potter cannot work with a lump of stone or steel. When we pray each day, “Today I begin again to be a follower of you—what would you have me learn and do?”, we allow the divine Artist to make of each of us, and our life as a church, a lovely and surprising work of art.

And we learn to trust that even if we fail and fall, the Potter can make us new.

true religion

2010-09-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

Proper 17 C 2010
Sirach 10: 12-18; Ps 112 ; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16;
 Luke 14:1, 7-14

“…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.”

I remembered this quote from Rilke this week. Today we prayed my favorite Collect, one that is filled with questions. “Graft in our hearts the love of your Name”—how does God do that and what does it mean? “Increase in us true religion”—in an age full of voices claiming to know what “true religion” is, how can we ourselves know? After “nourish us with all goodness”, the prayer ends almost strangely with “bring forth in us the fruit of good works.”

We Episcopalians are more comfortable with questions than some other folks, and we take Rilke’s advice to “love the questions” more easily than some. We come each Sunday with our questions, questions about God, questions about meaning and sanity in an often-crazy world, and questions about ourselves—how am I to live? How do I deal with the changes in my life? What does this talk about God mean for me really?

“Loving the questions” can be an honest stance, but it can also be cheap grace. We can say “I love the questions”, and simply walk home unchanged and unchallenged, secure in not allowing a single question to move us. I fear that at this juncture of my own life. I want those questions—Who is God? Who am I? How am I to live?—to burn in me and take me somewhere new, where I can see God and the world and others and myself with fresh eyes.

The readings present us with this burning need.

Sirach says, “The beginning of pride is sin; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.” I don’t think that Sirach is saying that those who do not cling to approved-of ideas about God will be punished. I think that Sirach urges us to look beyond our own assumptions and know, once again, that we are all beginners in the way of the Spirit. We are created, made in wisdom, but we need the Creator’s ongoing presence and dynamic re-creation in order to fulfill our deepest nature. Daily we are tempted to feel and think and act as if we define ourselves, are self-sufficient. Sirach urges us to a larger life, a more creative imagination of who we are and who God is, and how we are to be.

The writer of Hebrews speaks of how we are to live if our hearts are rooted in our Maker. God the creator and re-creator is the fountain of life and all goodness, each moment overflowing with generosity and abundance. There are moments when our lives seem far from this divine generosity, but the wise heart returns to the deep wellspring of God’s own goodness. And when we do, we shall be changed, we shall live out this abundance in the way that Hebrews counsels us. Hospitality to the stranger, mutual love, honoring our partners, freedom from the love of money—all this flows from walking a dynamic path rooted in the divine wisdom, drinking from the cup of divine abundance.

And that path we walk is the path of freedom.

Once again Jesus finds himself a guest of the Pharisees. Jesus was sharp-eyed to see that the gathering was shaped by privilege and status. What Jesus proposes might seem like doormat spirituality—take the lowest seat. But Jesus’ advice is the path of wisdom. Be free of scrabbling for puny scraps of self-assurance and importance. Be free of that smallness of soul, do not play that game. God’s abundance will lift you if you trust and let your life be shaped by that trust, that overflowing goodness. If you play that fighting-for-status game, eventually the music will stop and someone will push you off the chair.

Welcome each day as the amazing gift of an abundant God. Express that abundance with open hands and hearts and minds. Choose freedom from the status-standards of the world.

That sounds like at least one of those questions. That sounds like “true religion” to me.

Fire

2010-08-25T07:34:00.001-07:00

Proper 16 C 2010
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17

My favorite Desert Fathers story, the tales of those hermit monks who would go to one another for advice, speaks of Abba Joseph going to visit Abba Lot. Abba Joseph asks Abba Lot, “Tell me what to do? I keep my daily rule of prayer, I work with my hands. I keep my fast, I keep silence and only speak when necessary. Is that all there is? Is there anything else I can do?” Abba Lot stands, and extends his hands with fingers outspread. Abba Joseph sees Abba Lot’s fingers each turn into a flame. Abba Lot asks, “Why not be totally turned into fire?”

I have told this tale often because it is very important to me. Like Abbot Joseph, through the years I have kept my own modest way of life, even if imperfectly. I am no desert hermit, but I live a fairly structured life of church duties and of family. This church is my chapel, my home is my monastery, my own body is my cell of solitude. I have found joy. But as the years spin out, I confront weariness and even boredom in the midst of worship and prayer. Is that all there is? Am I just going through the motions?

I feel Abba Lot asks me, “Why not be totally turned into fire?” God asks all of that in the Word today. As I wrote these words, I realized that my eyeglasses are out of date, that it is literally time to get my sight adjusted. If we find that boredom is corroding our souls, perhaps it is time to get our own sight adjusted.

In our culture, boredom is regarded as a symptom of an external problem. If we’re bored, we are not being given the right kind of entertainment, we are not being given the right sort of stimulation by our partner or our friends, we are not buying the right kind of entertainment. Sometimes people can give up relationships or jobs or churches out of boredom. Kathleen Norris in her book Acedia And Me speaks of boredom as a disease of the soul, a problem inside rather than outside. We despair of the richness of the divine life, of the meaning trembling beneath the surface of reality, and we flee from our fear that there might actually be no meaning and no divine Presence filling our lives. There’s nothing wrong with some entertainment, with some fun—every full life needs balance. But that restlessness of soul—isn’t the source of that within ourselves?

Because our God, says Hebrews, is a consuming fire. Because, says Jeremiah, we have been made and known in intimacy and wonder from the beginning of time, and have been given the very words of God. Because, says today’s Gospel, the mercy and love of God strains to be released in our midst, in spite of all the ways that we try to minimize God and make God small and controllable. Jesus healed in spite of narrow restrictions of religion and custom, overwhelming the woman who lived in pain and overwhelming those who were present with the wonder of God’s love.

For our God is a consuming fire. So, why not be totally changed into fire?

Years ago, an older couple attended here until one of the partners told the other, “But it’s the same thing every week!” Sunday Mass does follow a predictable pattern. Our worship is not designed to fix boredom by entertaining. Our worship confronts head-on the basic questions of our lives—who is God, who are we, and what does that mean? We place ourselves week by week in the presence of Christ because of who Jesus Christ is and because, as Hebrews says, we do not refuse his invitation. We keep this most basic rule of New Testament life—to gather together for worship—in order to keep our eyes properly focused. When our eyes see clearly, we see God’s overwhelming fiery love, our nature as beloved and in need. And we are asked Abba Lot’s most basic question:

“Why not be totally changed into fire?”

Gaga

2010-08-17T15:36:00.001-07:00

Mary the God-Bearer 2010
Isaiah 61:10-11  Galatians 4:4-7  Luke 1:46-55  Psalm 34:1-9

Lady Gaga is in town. The feature article in the newspaper had a picture of her in one of her trademark outlandish costumes. The caption read, “The Fame Monster.”

I actually have respect for that young woman whose real name very few people know, even people who consider themselves her fans. Lady Gaga has chosen to become rich and, above all, famous, and she has achieved those goals. To be fair, that news article title “The Fame Monster” was taken from a body of her own work in which she reflects on the reality of fame. Lady Gaga can sing, she can dance, she works very hard to give her fans what they want. Some of her songs touch people deeply. She puts a lot of effort into being Lady Gaga, and it shows.

But growing up Catholic on Long Island, there was another famous Lady whose image I saw everywhere.

That Lady we called by her given name, Mary. Pictures, statues, even those bathtub shrines that many homes sported in the front yards—she was everywhere. Miriam Bat Joachim as she was probably called was probably much darker and more Semitic-looking than the Caucasian faces gazing from walls or lawn shrines. But people tend to make Mary look like one of them, as much or more than they do Jesus.

No music videos, no MP3s, no concert tours, no paparazzi—why does Mary’s fame endure, far longer than Lady Gaga’s will?

Lady Gaga for the most part points to herself. Mary points to a deep and personal reality who speaks through her.

God does not speak from on high, commanding that we gaze up straining to see the divine presence. God speaks from among us, from within us, from the very ground beneath our feet and the very voices that we hear each day. In the Gospel, Mary is that ground.

Isaiah speaks of gardens and plants and new shoots—God lies beneath our feet and brings new life to birth right beneath us. A Catholic poet whom I knew in the Midwest wrote once of a “warm, moist, salty God.” That image jars us, until we gaze at Mary and remember that the eternal, creative, vibrant Word of God grew in a woman’s body and swam in amniotic fluid and tasted her milk as his first food. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” sang the Psalm. That taste was milky on the tiny divine lips and little trembling divine chin, just like on Rose or the newly-baptized twins or any other baby among us.

The one who bore God in her body through her openness, her “yes” to God, held him while he and she gazed on a wounded world.

Brutal occupation by Rome and violent insurgency tore the bodies of the people, while rigid religion and purity codes tore their souls and their community. Imagine what Mary and young Jesus saw walking by their own doorstep—Roman soldiers, pilgrims, beggars, rich merchants, revolutionary Zealots in disguise, Pharisees, lepers maybe, and just plain folk. Mary’s eyes guided her Son’s first steps amidst a world as violent and uncertain as our own. Every poor woman who gazes in pain and anguish from Pakistani floodwaters or Haitian rubble, from midnight emergency rooms and crime-ridden streets, gaze with Mary’s eyes. She is one with them, and so her ancient song-which-is-always-new, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”, is the song of hope for Israel and for all the world’s poor.

For God chooses the cause of the poor, and God came as one of the poor. So long as Mary sings “Magnificat, with tune surpassing sweet”, the powerful will know fear in their hearts, and the poor will lift up their eyes and know hope.

When we honor Mary, we honor the hope of the poor and know, with relief and joy, that we are God’s poor.

When we long for God, when we pray, when we look with love and wonder and grief on a beautiful, wounded world, we find Mary. She does not point to herself. She points to her Son, the life and hope of the world. Funny how real fame comes from not trying to be famous.

Rich

2010-08-03T14:33:00.001-07:00

Proper 13 C 2010
(Hosea 11: 1-11; Ps 107: 1-9, 43; Col 3: 1-11; Luke 12: 13-21)

I think of it as the Monday of the road-rage Grandma.

My kids and I were driving along 76th Street on a Monday in July. 76th is residential with speed bumps, and one can barely manage even the 25 mph speed limit.

In my rear-view mirror I saw a car and a face, way too close. By the tail-gating and the agitated, angry look on the driver’s face I knew that their staying behind me was not going to relieve me of harassment, so I pulled over and waved the car on. She passed be, she, because I could make out an aged face and grey hair. She raised one hand in a traditional gesture involving the deliberate use of one chosen finger. The car seemed to proclaim that the driver was a veteran of a former era in which “harmony and understanding, sympathy and love” was supposed to abound—it was an old Japanese make with peeling bumper stickers from the ‘60’s, including a quaint and hopeful “Impeach Nixon.”

We thought it was pretty funny really, as the poor dear never got far ahead of us on that speed-bumped road. My understanding side tried to reason that perhaps she had some good reason to be hurrying and harassing and flipping off people. People are angry and agitated today—the easygoing NW Portland driving style we found here in the 1990’s seems a relic of the past and the local roads feel a lot more like I remember Chicago and NY. It is an anxious age, and you probably do not need my recitation of stalled economy, bitter divisive politics, fouled Gulf beaches, and tense racial and immigration confrontations in Arizona to remember that.

But the question that troubles me about road-rage Grandma and other incidents since then is this—how much of this rage and anxiety are within me? I feel it too, I am not immune to any of it. If our graying refugee from the Age of Aquarius is participating in the pettiness and helpless rage of the era at her point in life, what hope is there for me? The life we profess and live here at Saints Peter and Paul, at any church, is supposed to make us look and act and be different than any of this sort of “spirit of the age.” What can we do?

I acknowledge at this season of my life that I feel my need for God more than ever. I feel the need for God’s cleansing the way I felt the need for a shower after tearing apart our aging kitchen and putting up drywall. At each stage I run into all over again my own rage, my own pettiness, my own disillusionment and temptation to surrender to what is around me, to drug myself with distractions so I do not listen to the wind blowing through the emptiness of my own heart.

“Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church…” That cleansing which we prayed for is not a quaint notion. It is an ongoing felt need, an experience of our own poverty and at the same time a cry of hope in the faithful mercy of God. There is a new chance for transformation, cleansing, and renewal, each and every day.

Hosea shouts this aloud. God’s voice in Hosea screams in pain and longing, pain for the people’s infidelity and yet longing for their companionship and their walking with God in simplicity and faith. Hosea married a woman who cheated on him time and time again, and it is his own cries of betrayal and rage yet longing and hope that echo through his words. God hopes in us, longs for us, will bring us back if we even take one step forward in God’s direction. God will do the rest.

For we are an Easter people. Today the breath of Easter blows through the church and our hearts as we hear one of the Easter Sunday texts. “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…” Our lives are hid with Christ in God. Because of this promise and this reality, we have infinite hope. There is room for abundant hope in that place where we are hid with Christ. There is no room for anger, envy, messed-up desire, and greed. Live each day in that place where we are hid with Christ, and we shall know hope and renewal, there in the heart of God.

But it takes wisdom. The wisdom of God is not the wisdom of the world.

Our man in today’s Gospel is wise in how a future is built according to the wisdom of the world. He has worked hard, he brought in a great harvest. Now it is time to be sensible, to protect what he has earned by “building bigger barns.” Once he has, he can kick back, not set the alarm in the morning, golf 9 holes on a Monday if he wants, do some touring with the wife.

God’s words land like a brick in this happy peaceful pond: “You fool.”

Why a fool? The poor guy is just taking care of his stock portfolio. Is it wrong to save and plan? I do, as much as our lifestyle has allowed. The parish tries to. No doubt many of us try to.

But a fool according to the Bible “says in his heart there is no God.” One can profess with one’s mouth belief in God and think thoughts of faith, but the heart is what determines what one really does and what one’s life really means. It is an open question for us today—how can we, in Jesus’ words, be “rich toward God”? As Christian folk, as a parish community?

Perhaps that question leads back to road-rage Grandma—how can our lives look and feel and be different in a world that is shot through with anger and anxiety and answers to questions we did not even know we had—how can I get more, look like more, own more, be more, get ahead of others, if even on 76th Street on a Monday?

Instead, here is one question only, “How can I be rich toward God”?

Greatest Miracle

2010-07-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

The greatest miracles in the New Testament, in my humble opinion, do not have to do with loaves and fishes, with healings and exorcisms, impressive though they may be. The greatest miracles are the changing of human hearts and firmly-held views. Nothing in this world is more difficult.

Today, we celebrate our parish patrons, Peter and Paul, and we remember that very miracle that is portrayed on the round medallion-style icon on our altar today: Peter and Paul embracing in love and respect. I am not sure if this ever literally happened. What I do know is that it is the most unlikely thing to have happened.

No two men from the ancient Middle East could have been more different. Peter, a working-class man from backwater Galilee, Jewish fisherman, most probably illiterate, portrayed as a waffling sort of man; Paul, an intellectual more like a university-type, intense and somewhat aristocratic and very learned, with strong opinions that he rarely changed, willing to do violence for his views before his life-transforming encounter with Jesus. Peter represented the Palestinian, inland Jewish community, who saw the message of Jesus as a Jewish message meant for observant Jews who would await his coming by keeping the Jewish Law more perfectly than the Pharisees; Paul represented the cosmopolitan view of the coastal cities of the Levant, who experienced the Good News as something more radical and more startling and the encompassing love of God as reaching out to a far larger, formerly alien and rejected Gentile world, Gentiles who would not be expected to become Jewish in order to embraced by the God of the Jews. Peter, quick to enthusiasm yet quick to waver; Paul, never changing his single-minded vision unless struck down and struck blind on the open road by nothing less than God.

They were once opponents. "I opposed Peter to his face" brags Paul in Galatians, when Peter tried to walk a cautious middle road between Gentiles and the older Jewish Christian believers.

But something changed, both in that meeting and in the vision they lived afterwards. Each gave a little, each opened their eyes to see the possibility that God was doing something important in the ministry and communities of the other. Each was willing to embrace, to put down something, in order to pick up something together. And in that messy, unresolved, humbling moment, something was born from the roots of a small, obscure messianic Jewish sect. The Church was born.

That's how the Church is always born: when we who have received a mission and a blessing see one another, and are willing to put something down that we may value, embrace, admit future possibilities that we may not fully understand, and walk together. That's how we grow. That's how this present parish of Saints Peter and Paul came to be. There were two churches--St. Peter's, St. Paul's. Each congregation put something aside, however unwillingly, and came to see in their embrace of one another and in their journey together the possibility of something new that they did not yet fully understand.

That is how the church is born.

And how are we called to give birth to the church today? How are we called to be most authentically that community of unlikely embrace, the church of Peter and of Paul? Who are we called upon to look upon, both within our midst and without, those whom we know and those whom we do not yet know? What are we called to put down that we may think precious? And how are we meant to walk with one another, and with others we do not yet imagine?

For that is how the church is born.

Columba

2010-07-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Columba, fiery Irish prince and Druid turned monk and priest, often ventured off his sacred island of Iona on restless missionary journeys. One of his most ambitious journeys was to the court of the Pictish King Brida, deep in what we now call the Scottish Highlands. It is told that on this journey, Columba was received as guest into King Brida's feasting-hall.

As Columba sat, honored as a guest according to ancient Celtic law, he saw seated on the King's right an immense man who was louder that anyone else in the feasting-hall. This immense man had an immense, booming voice, and he raised it in shouts and hoots of laughter and snatches of song as he raised on high a precious vessel, a crystal goblet from the distant and legendary land of Greece. Upon asking his neighbor, Columba learned that this man, large of body and large of presence, was Broisin, the King's personal and feared Druid--court poet, wizard, and the power behind the throne so potent that it was rumored that the king himself feared the hulking magician.

Behind that vast arrogant man, Columba saw a second silent figure hidden in the shadows. Columba peered and finally descried a teenaged girl, standing with head bowed behind Broisin. As she would dart forward with a look of terror to fill the huge man's goblet with mead when he gestured and swore, Columba knew that the girl was Broisin's slave. Columba noted the fear in her eyes, her ragged tunic, and a large bruise on her right cheek.

Columba found the courage and temerity to raise his voice and call out (for his voice was famously loud too), "Broisin, I have a guest-gift to ask of you."

The hall instantly hushed at the stranger-monk daring to ask the sacred guest-gift of the fearsome Druid. Broisin paused in his drinking long enough to glare beneath bushy brows at Columba. "And what is it you ask, little man?"

"Release your slave-girl."

Broisin stared while the gathering gasped at Columba's pure nerve, then hooted in contempt. Swinging the goblet to his lips, Brosin leered at the monk and asked, "Why? Do you wish to have her?"

"No, I just ask for her to be freed."

Broisin roared with mirth and contempt. Again swigging a great gulp of mead, he wiped his streaming lips and beard with the back of his free hand before shouting, "The guest-gift may be sacred, but you little man and your little strange God have no respect here. The curse of the crows to you and to your asking, and the girl stays mine."

Gasping now at this flagrant denial of the request made by a guest, the gathering stared now at Columba. Were he a warrior and a man of honor, the only answer to this insult would be to draw sword.

Columba stood slowly, locking eyes with Broisin. Turning to the king, he bowed his head respectfully, then with not another look at Broisin he spun on his heel and strode, robe and cloak flying, out of the hall, pursued by Broisin's scornful laughter. Columba's disciple Bathene hurrying along behind.

Bathene knew that Columba also had a temper, so he scurried after his abbot in silence until, almost two miles from the gates of King Brida's hall, Columba paused by the bank of a stream crossed by a narrow ford. Columba stooped and, to Bathene's puzzlement, began to dabble his hands in the water and pebbles at his feet.

Standing, Columba looked at his own palm and asked aloud, "Bathene, Broisin is a powerful man, is he not?"

Not knowing what his abbot was playing at, Bathene answered, "Yes, I suppose so, Father, very powerful."

"And powerful men only understand and respect power greater than their own, do they not?"

Still puzzled, Bathene answered, "Yes Father, I suppose that is true."

Columba then smiled a smile that was not altogether pleasant. He said, "Ah, but Bathene, do not forget that in the world of the Gospel it is the poor who are raised on high, and that it is through the weak of the world that God shames the strong."

Columba raised his hand and showed Bathene a small stone. "Do you see this stone, Bathene? Do you think it is large?"

"No Father, that is a rather small stone."

Columba tossed the stone in the air, and caught it with a flash and snap of his hand. "Small though it be, a big man will take great hurt from it. And now, Brother, it's your pardon I'm asking, for we have some walking to do." Columba turned and strode off, back towards Brida's hall, with Bathene again hurrying to keep pace.

Back at Brida's court, Broisin the Druid was louder than ever, bouyed by his humiliation of the stranger monk. At the moment that Columba tossed and caught the stone miles away, Broisin raised his precious goblet on high once more. Shouting, "It's to myself I drink!" he brought it to his lips.

Some say that as he did so, they saw a tiny glittering object drop from the rafters straight for the Druid's face. Other say not, but all agree that as Broisin tilted the goblet to drink his own health, the priceless cup shattered into a thousand glittering shards. They twinkled like stars as they fell to the rush-strewn dirt floor.

The crowd turned from the glass fragments in amazement to see a more amazing sight. For Broisin the Druid, that great fearsome man louder than loud, louder than a bull in heat, was silent, grasping his own throat with convulsive hands, face turning from his usual mead-soaked red to a deep purple. Gasping for very breath, the great man slowly collapsed to the floor where he curled like a tiny infant, heaving and wheezing to draw even one scant breath.

After their walk, Columba and Bathene found the gate of Brida's hall without guards as even they had gone to stand in the deep circle around the dying Druid. The crowd looked up as Columba and Bathene entered the hall and silently parted to allow Columba to stand beside the huge man curled upon the floor.

Columba stooped while Bathene drew near, to better hear what would be said. In a low but clear voice, Columba asked, "Broisin, do you long to breathe the clean free air again?"

Unable to answer, Broisin jerked his head back and forth to say yes.

"Then" said Columba, his voice the same volume but with a shake of rage, "let that poor child of God breathe the free air too, and be quick!"

Again, Broisin convulsively nodded his head in assent. As he did so, he coughed and retched and, with a wheeze and a whistle, drew the first shuddering free breath that he had enjoyed since his goblet had broken all to bits.

Servants helped the great man to his rubbery legs and half-helped, half-carried him from the mead-hall. One of the servant, stooping, saw among the glass fragments a strange object. Silently, he handed to King Brida what he had found. It was a small, white stone, smooth from lying along the bank of a river.

The former slave-girl went with Columba and Bathene back to Iona, where some say she became the superior of the community of women who had also formed on the island.

But what we do know is that this story has been told since the 7th century, and says some deep and timeless things to us today. For our age is an age of slavery, no less than that of Columba. It is an arrogant and forgetful people who call Columba's time the "dark ages", forgetting the deeper darkness of our own and often not knowing where to find the Light. Slavery is alive and well, whether on 82nd avenue outside our doors, among the silent hopeless poor and those on whose shoulders and backs the prosperity of a few are laid, and in the fearful dread of our own hearts. There are countless arrogant Broisins, who buy and sell the dignity and happiness and the very air of the poor and those without voice and the very voiceless, abused earth and its creatures. But remember today, remember Columba, remember the man and all those women and men who saw and see the many faces of slavery among us and the many disguises with which Broisin still strides and laughs among us today. To be a baptized servant of Christ is to not turn away. And to make no peace with slavery. Make no peace with slavery.

Lost

2010-06-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Proper 7 C 2010
I Kings 19: 1-15a; Ps 42, 43; Gal 3: 23-29; Luke 8: 26-39

How lost is lost?

Today we find Elijah hustling his way out of town. Jezebel swore she would do Elijah in, and our prophet is no noble martyr. He literally heads for the hills. Depressed and discouraged, he lays down, waking up to find just enough food to keep him going for the next step.

He crawls into a cave, feeling ready to die. But the God who first breathed into his heart is not done with his prophet and friend. Fire, earthquake, wind—all the terrifying chaos of creation blazed outside, as dangerous as the hate of a powerful and revengeful queen. “But the LORD was not in the earthquake…nor in the fire…nor in the wind…”

Elijah was lost, lost in his fear, lost in his helplessness, lost in his hopelessness, lost in a cave in the wilderness. He had lost, too, his sense of what God wanted of him and what God was doing in his life and in the life of his people. And then, after that storm washes over him, he hears a voice made of silence.

That still voice calls Elijah from depression and fear to living once again as a prophet, a prophet who now knows that the power of God can pick us up when we are lost and at the end of our rope. In that stillness Elijah hears he is not done, and God is not done.

Ever feel totally lost? Ever felt at the end of your rope, like there is nothing but anxiety and fear? The power and strength of God is greater than this. God finds us when we are lost, and God can speak in silence with power greater than the chaos.

There’s lost, and then there’s lost.

For anyone who has been really lost or loved someone who was really lost, today’s Gospel can make your skin crawl. A man lives in the cemetery, completely lost, lost outside and lost inside. It’s amazing what a strange cave one’s own head and heart can be when we are overwhelmed with darkness. This hopeless man is filled with a teeming horde of powerful spirits. When Jesus finds him, he answers Jesus’ question with an awesome image. “Legion”, he says, a legion is inside of me. A Roman legion was an unstoppable fighting force of at least 6,000 battle-hardened soldiers. When the legion shows up, it’s best to surrender. He lives in the tombs, the dead outside, the teeming legion inside—no one could be more lost.

But Jesus finds the lost. And Jesus brings hope and new life to the lost. Frankly, I’ve always felt sorry for the pigs as they are the new hosts for the mighty legion of possessing spirits. But the point is made clearly—the all-powerful legion that filled this man, who drove him to isolation and hopelessness and despair—they’re only fit company for pigs. In fact, even the pigs can’t stand them, and would rather jump off a cliff than host the filthy legion.

Everyone else had accepted the possessed man’s hopelessness. Maybe some people need to think that some other people are beyond hope so they can be ignored and we can go back to our well-ordered lives. The life-changing power of God in Jesus is too much for the locals. They “beg him to leave the district.”

Well, people who feel their lives are well-ordered tend to resist any upset to their lives, even an upset caused by God. But the lost and the fearful and those in need are more ready, more open to accept the saving power of the God who finds the lost and speaks in stillness.

How lost is lost? No lost is too lost for God. No hopelessness is beyond hope for God. No wound is beyond healing, no darkness too deep, no legion too strong for the God who comes in Jesus to find us, to heal, to drive away darkness, to bring new life.

“O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your lovingkindness.”

Need

2010-06-06T16:56:00.001-07:00

3 Pentecost/Proper 5 C 2010
1 Kings 17: 8-16; Ps 146; Gal 1: 11-24; Luke 7: 11-17

I had traveled all day on the top of a wooden diesel bus. Half the time I was seated on a live pig that a farmer had kindly offered me as a bench. The roads were dirt and dust, pitted with holes and studded with large rocks. When the bus finally stopped in the marketplace of that rural Filipino town and I climbed down the side, I was exhausted and filthy with sweat and dust and literally smelled like that poor shrieking pig.

I walked wearily into the church residence and found a Filipino community organizer seated on a bamboo chair. He greeted me, and I dropped my pack on the floor and rummaged about in it. Realizing with dismay the one thing I had forgotten to pack back in the city, I asked him, “Arthur, may I have some soap so I can scrub this dirt off, please?”

Arthur looked up slowly with an incredulous expression on his face. After a moment he said, “Yes I do, and yes you may. But you have to pardon me for saying that I do not expect a wealthy, self-sufficient American to have to ask me for something so simple as soap. Just now, as you asked me, you became much more real to me, not a powerful figure who would never need to ask anything of a rural Filipino.”

At the time, I did not want social reflection, just a bath. Arthur’s soap was a Godsend. I do not think being clean ever felt so good.

But as I read these texts for today, I remembered Arthur’s bar of soap and reflected that even God becomes real when we reach out in our need to one another. God’s generosity can break forth when we admit our need and our poverty and when we act as if God is generous. For God is generous, and we need one another, and when we reach out and live in this generous space God will not fail us.

When Elijah came to town in today’s Hebrew Scripture, he too was dirty, and he was starving. The great prophet was a hungry and hunted man. The person he approached was as poor and powerless as the ancient Near East could present—a destitute widow, trying to keep a child alive at a time and place where there were no safeguards and no rights for a woman who had lost her husband and his clan name. She knew all this—she was going out one last time to perform a last gesture from the normal life she had once known: build a fire, make a small cake with the last of their flour, and then hold her son and die together. But God whispered in the prophet’s heart, and something else happened that reversed the story.

Turn to one another in need—we have enough to help a hungry stranger. Live as if God is generous and there is hope. Live this hope together. And God’s generosity can break into the world. “And they ate for many days” says the story.

What else can happen if we shake off our dead sense of scarcity and hopelessness, reach out to one another and to strangers, and live as if God is generous?

The Gospel story also asks us that question. The story of Elijah and the widow forms the background of this tale, but the Gospel widow’s need is deeper and more hopeless—her son is already dead. But God’s generous power is deeper still—God in and through Jesus raises even the dead young man to life. What is there in us that seems hopeless may be raised to new life, what may be raised among us, by the power of a generous God?

But we need to ask—we need to ask God, we need to reach out to one another and to others, we need to be ready to act like citizens of a generous cosmos. For most of us, that takes a change of life and of heart.

This year’s Stewardship Campaign has already begun, and these texts come at a perfect time for us to hear and to welcome the word that God speaks in them. Saints Peter and Paul is a wealthy, abundant, and blessed community. We are not blessed in a way that can leave us living complacently as we are. We are all, priest and people, called to a change of mind and heart. Hear the Word of God read today, and let’s ask these questions:

As Elijah reached out to the widow in his need, to whom are we called to reach out in our need? Is it to one another first of all? Do we truly value the gift of one another, old friends as well as those brand-new among us? (It was told to me that a long-time member was recently asked to share a cup of coffee after Mass, and she was pleased as in all these years no one had personally invited her to just sit and share some coffee after Mass). We need one another, first of all, and in that glad need to welcome one another.

And we need to reach out beyond ourselves. We need Montavilla, we need the neighborhood. It is true that we have gifts to offer them. But they have many gifts to offer us, and we need to be a vital part of the neighborhood, to be good neighbors, in order to truly be “Your church here” as our bulletins say each week. Talk to Judy Bishop or to me about how we are trying to do that, and know that we need your help, the help of everyone here.

And we need to accept God’s generous gift and live as if that gift has already been given to us, for it has! Our consultant for this year looked at our statistics and said, “You are one of the larger churches in the Diocese,” and we are. I think we often act small and poor and think that way, and so it is no surprise that we start to feel poor, as poor as a famine in the Middle East.

Today God says: reach out to one another, admit your need, welcome the generosity of God that can come even from the poor, live like citizens of a generous cosmos. Years ago, doing all that got me a decent bath in the Philippines. What may God do for our whole community today?

rebuke and affirm

2010-05-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

7 Easter 2010
Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-22; John 17:20-26
A friend of mine who works in mental health told me about a client who came into her office one day. She had been seeing this client for over a year, but on that afternoon, she took one look at him and knew instantly that something was wrong: The look in his eyes was strangely vacant, and his voice didn’t sound like his own. It wasn’t just that this man had schizophrenia (although he did), or that he was addicted to heroin (although he was). Rather, she told me, she was convinced that this man was possessed by a demon.
She told me this entire story in the same tone of voice that I would use to describe a jam in the photocopier. I stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say. Like me, this friend is an Episcopalian, and I am not used to hearing Episcopalians use the language of demonic possession.
I asked her: “So what did you do?”
She shrugged and said: “I did what anyone else would do. I opened up my desk drawer, and I pulled out my Bible, and I rebuked it!”
I waited for more, but there was no more to the story. The evil spirit left her client, he sat down in a chair, and they got back to work on his addiction and schizophrenia.
Listening today to the lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, I was reminded of this story. The message is the same: Demonic beings do exist, no matter how much we try to deny their presence. But God is so much bigger that all it takes to cast them out of our lives is a little rebuke. No candle-lighting, no Latin chant – just a command from a “very much annoyed” servant of Christ. No matter how evil the spirit or how commanding its presence, it’s hard to compete with the one who is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
All this has me wondering about how evil spirits work today – if you’ll consent for a few moments to believe that they may really exist – and whether we can possibly expect them to manifest in the same way that they did in Biblical times. Surely, the slave girl in Philippi drew plenty of attention to herself, not to mention to Paul and Silas, as she stumbled through town shouting about slaves of the Most High God. We know that somebody was taking her seriously; the Scripture tells us that she “brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling.” But you have to wonder: If this same girl was wandering through downtown Portland, crying out about slaves and God and salvation, would anyone care?
Would anyone even notice?
Perhaps, then, the ways of separating people from God that worked two thousand years ago are less effective today. Now that our society has learned how to handle people who cause a scene in public places – we simply ignore them, or we call the police, who come swiftly to drag them away – can it be that these same spirits have gone underground? Much more quietly and privately, as befits a culture that fetishizes privacy, they claim a space in our souls and do everything they can to undermine God’s work in our lives.
Maybe they’ve tried to make their claim on all of us. Instead of spirits of divination, like the one that possessed the slave girl at Philippi, we might call them spirits of isolation – although sometimes they do a very good job of convincing us that they can predict the future, too.
They isolate us from God by saying: You are so unworthy.
They isolate us from our families by saying: Your marriage is never going to work out.
They isolate us from our spiritual selves, saying: Everyone else is beautiful, and you are ugly.
And most of all, they isolate us from hope. Surely, in your darkest moments, you’ve heard them say: Nothing is ever going to get better. Your life will always be this hard.
As Christians, we are blessed to know – at least with our rational minds – that none of these things are true. We know so well that, as today’s psalm tells us, “The Lord loves those who hate evil; he preserves the lives of his saints and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.” We have heard Jesus say to the Father, “The glory that you have given me, I have given my disciples, so that the world may know … that you have loved them even as you have loved me.” And we know that, no matter what our struggles or how pronounced our suffering, glorious things are in store for us: Jesus also speaks of his desire for us, the ones who have loved him, to see his glory and join him in heaven.
We are the followers and the disciples of Jesus. We have been loved by him, redeemed by him, and called to see his glory; we have been transformed through the waters of baptism; we are treasured by God. And we know, from the hope given us of eternal life and Jesus’s return to this world, that things are going to get better.
If we’re trying to understand demons, maybe the question we should be asking is what makes those things so hard for us to remember.
But there is hope here too, for Jesus gives a clear commission to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew: He says that part of their task will be to drive out demons, in the same breath he uses to tell them to heal the sick, raise the dead, and preach that the kingdom of heaven is near. Is it so crazy to think that as we carry on that work, we are called to drive demons out of each other?
I invite you to give this Gospel reading a little place in your heart as you leave church today and go back to your weekday world tomorrow. Keep an eye open for demons in your life and the lives of others around you, and miss no opportunity to cast them out – which is really to say, miss no opportunity to remind anyone that he or she is a beautiful, beloved, and ultimately treasured creation – a living symbol of our eternal hope in God and God’s enduring hope for us.

Homily by Cat Healy, parish clerk

Loved, anyway

2010-05-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

VI OF EASTER – Year C
May 9, 2010 - Parish of Ss. Peter & Paul
Fr. Phillip Ayers
+++++
We have been celebrating it, really, these past three weeks. I’m speaking of our observance of Earth Day two weeks ago, some hymns last Sunday that focused upon the theme of earthiness, planting and crops, and today, the REAL Rogation Sunday! I imagine that a lot of us here can recall “Rogation Sunday” wherein we might have “beaten the bounds,” by walking around the perimeter of the church, singing something like “O Jesus crowned with all renown,” or “We plough the fields and scatter.” One parish I served did that with horribly tacky wooden slats that were stuck in the churchyard, to which we walked in procession and prayed at each one. I don’t think that there’s any American Episcopal church left that still does that – maybe you know of one though? And, in England, the “parish” had a huge (to us) physical boundary, around which the faithful would walk and sing and pray.
But “Rogation” comes from rogare, a Latin word meaning “to ask.” We get “interrogation” from that root-word. Asking God’s blessing upon the new planting meant a great deal to farmers and those whose lives depended upon work in the soil and God’s times and seasons of rainfall and sunshine. Nowadays, our current Book of Common Prayer leaves this Sunday to the 6th Sunday of the Easter season, with some rich readings from Scripture to ponder, and provides three Collects “for use on the traditional days” – that is, this week – “or at other times.” So, we can “rogate” any time we wish!
The Collects are found on pp. 258-259 in the prayer book and are concerned with fruitful seasons – as of old – commerce and industry, and the stewardship of creation. I love the phrase in the last collect,
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“Make us always thankful for your loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your good gifts [O God].”
Oh, yes: today, in the secular calendar, it’s Mothers’ Day, dreamed up, I hear, by Hallmark cards. May’s a good time for mothers of all kinds, as “May” is short for “Mary,” and we know about her, don’t we?
Here’s a story about asking. About a century or two ago, the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave the Vatican. Naturally there was a big uproar form the Jewish community. The Pope made a deal. He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish community. If the Pope won, the Jews would have to leave. The Jews realized they had no choice. They chose a middle-aged man named Moishe to represent them. Moishe asked for an addition to the debate—to make it more interesting, neither side would be allowed to talk.
The Pope reluctantly agreed. The day of the great debate came. Moishe and the Pope sat opposite one another for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Moishe looked back at him and raised one finger. The Pope waved his fingers in a circle around his head. Moishe pointed at the ground where he sat. The Pope pulled out a wafer and a glass of wine. Moishe pulled out an apple.
The Pope stood up and said, “I give up. This man is too good. The Jews can stay.”
An hour later, the cardinals were all around the Pope, asking him what happened.

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The Pope said, “First, I held up three fingers, representing the Trinity. He held up one finger, to remind me there was still one God common to both our religions. Then I waved my fingers around to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground and showing that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us from our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything! What could I do?
Meanwhile, the Jewish community had crowded around Moishe.
“What happened?” they asked
“Well,” said Moishe, “first, he said to me that we had three days to get out. I told him that not one of us was leaving. Then he said the whole city would be cleared of Jews. I told him we were staying right here.”
“And then?” asked a woman.
“I don’t know,” said Moishe. “He took out his lunch and I took out mine!”
[Pause]
Today presents itself as one of those Sundays when a “step-sermon” might be good. Not simply to indulge you with “sound bites” but because the Gospel reading lends itself to a “how-to” answer. That is, the Christian community faces a question that has endured for two millennia since: “How can disciples have a personal relationship with Jesus when he has gone?”
John’s – the Fourth Gospel’s – Jesus provides two answers to this dilemma.

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The disciple can continue in a close personal relationship with the Risen Jesus by doing two things: by doing the works of Jesus (14:12-14), and by keeping his commandments (14:15-24).
What does it mean to do the works of Jesus? Walk on water? Multiply loaves? Change water into wine? Heal lepers and raise the dead? Get crucified? Maybe before trying to run the 100-yard dash with the Messiah, we should start out with some baby-steps in “doing the works of Jesus.”
Some teachings by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, compiled in a book by Lucinda Vardy called, A Simple Path, suggest a number of straightforward, yet profound, ways that the seeker can begin to have a close personal relationship with the unseen Christ.
Mother Teresa says to start out your day in silence. Find some silence every day, somewhere, even if it is just for a few minutes. In the silence, be still. Get quiet. Slow down. What follows might seem awkward and wasteful – since time is money – but keep at it. Just as Jesus sought out the silence of the desert to commune with his Abba God, so should we. No, you don’t need a Range Rover to do this. Save time and money: simply go into the “desert” of your “room,” your own quiet space. It is in the quietness of the heart that God speaks, Mother Teresa said, and so we must set aside that time for God alone to encounter us. She adds, “God is the friend of silence.”
Abba “who sees in secret” will reward you (Mt. 6:6), Jesus said; and the reward will be deepened prayer that comes out of the silence. Prayer is to the soul what blood is to the body, Mother Teresa taught. In other words, you cannot begin to do the works of Jesus – or keep his commandments – without prayer.

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Put simply, there is no Kingdom of God without God. Thus, starting in silence – really, a form of prayer itself--and moving into more formal prayer is like getting a spiritual transfusion every day. Through the Holy Spirit in prayer, the power and creativity of the New Creation courses through our veins, and we come alive.
Out of silence and prayer emerges faith. Faith here does not mean believing what you know isn’t so. Nor does it imply gullibility—a belief in things for which there is no evidence. Genuine faith never has – never will – mean that. As Paul Tillich said, “faith” means “being grasped by a power greater than we are, a power that shakes us and turns us and transforms us and heals us. Surrender to this power is faith.” Thus, faith is the gift of God, an awareness that builds and grows through prayer. When one takes on this attitude of surrender—this faith—all things are possible for the believer (Mt. 17:20).
Being grasped by faith imbues the believer with the most excellent gift of all: the gift of love. “We must be loved by God first,” Mother Teresa contended, “and only then can we give to others. … When you know how much God is in love with you, then you can only live your life, radiating that love.” Does this love mean going to the Third World to serve the poor? Perhaps. But Mother Teresa insisted that this Divine radiance first be directed toward those closest to you: at home, at work, in your own neighborhood and city. She knew how much easier it was to love people “far away” than to love them nearby. Lastly, she said, it isn’t so much what we do as it is the quality of love we put into doing it.
Peace through service ends her list. Mother Teresa quotes Gandhi, who said, “Act, but seek not the fruit of your action.” Service and peace come together when we let go of “results.”
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The book ends with the following quotation title ANYWAY, taken from a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children’s home in Calcutta. It sums up this detachment in service that leads to peace:
“People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. LOVE THEM ANYWAY. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. DO GOOD ANYWAY. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. SUCCEED ANYWAY. The good you will do will be forgotten tomorrow. DO GOOD ANYWAY. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. BE HONEST AND FRANK ANYWAY. What you spent your years building may be destroyed overnight. BUILD ANYWAY. People really need help but may attack you if you help them. HELP PEOPLE ANYWAY. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. GIVE THE WORLD THE BEST YOU’VE GOT ANYWAY.”
[from a sermon given at Trinity Church, Marshall, MI, May 17, 1998 by PWA]

Know God

2010-05-06T07:39:00.001-07:00

5 Easter 2010
(Acts 11: 1-18; Ps 148; Rev 21: 1-6; John 13: 31-35)

What does that mean as prayed today, to “truly know God”?

At my age, I am very careful about saying “I know that person, I know so-and-so.” The people that are closest to me constantly surprise me. My very spouse and kids are books in which I have only read the introduction and part of the first chapters. And others? The longer I serve here, the more surprised I am by people whom I thought I knew. Sometimes I am delighted by what I learn, sometimes I am frustrated, sometimes I am disappointed, and sometimes I am even frightened. So I rarely say that I know a person anymore. I don’t even know myself very well, especially after hitting mid-life!

If it is so hard to know a human person, how can we hope to say we truly know God?

It’s a good question to carry with us, as today we hear a tale of people who thought they knew God, or at least they thought they knew what God thought. The early Christian movement was very Jewish, and content with that. After all, the Master had said that he had not come to abolish the ancient Law, but to fulfill it. The Law made it clear who was in and who was out, and the uncircumcised, pork-eating, idol-worshipping Gentiles were definitely out. This was one of the earliest crises of the post-resurrection Church, as it ran head on into what they thought were the legitimate boundaries of their community, who was in, who was out, who was clean and acceptable, who was by nature and act unclean and unacceptable.

It took a divine vision to get through Peter’s head. A sheet full of everything that should nauseate a good Jew—pigs and snakes and probably prawns—drops from the sky. “Get up, Peter, slaughter, then eat!” There’s nothing abstract here—Peter is told to put aside all his prior knowledge and his revulsion and take something into his body. That’s one way to get to really know something—eat it! Peter answers loyally as he has been taught, as he has been taught to be faithful to God: “Not me!” But the shattering words are said three times, “What God has called clean, you are not to call profane.” When Peter awakes, the Gentile visitors are there to give Peter a chance to live his strange dream, the dream where God thinks differently than Peter had been taught and God is found where Peter did not think to look and God was calling Peter to get over a world of tradition and teaching and prejudice in order to see as God sees, to love whom God loves, to share life and even death with those whom Peter never imagined he would live and die with.

Peter’s colleagues’ amazement shouts through their words, “Then God has granted repentance EVEN to the Gentiles!” If God loves and accepts the Gentiles, what else may this God think and choose and do?

Do we want to know God? Then prepared to be surprised. Prepare to have our prior opinions tested. Prepare for dreams or visions that will lead us to welcome and accept those whom we never imagined us to welcome, to share life with, to live and die with. Because to know God is to look to who God looks, to love who God loves, to allow ourselves to be challenged to welcome wholly those who we never thought we’d welcome. We have been welcomed, so we are to welcome.

And in the Gospel, Jesus reveals the heart of God.

Jesus’ own heart is broken as his disciple and friend Judas leaves to betray him. We must never forget that the heart of God is revealed amidst broken promises and the bitterness of betrayal. It is broken hearts that reveal the love of God. And it is here, when the bond of friendship and love has been broken, that Jesus gives the “new commandment”—“love one another as I have loved you.”

Why is this new? The old Law said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love’s not new.

Maybe it is the second part, “as I have loved you.” It is the love of Jesus that makes this commandment new. We have been called, empowered, freed to love by the love of God in Jesus.

Or is it that we ourselves are transformed and made new when we love?

We do not know God with our ideas. We know God when we accept the amazing love of God. But it does not stop there. We know God as we allow the love of God to transform us to love as God loves. And today we are given a map of how the first Christians learned how to love:

By being open to surprise. To being willing to change what we thought we knew about God, about who we are and who are those whom we did not think we would ever have to love, to accept, to eat with, to live with.

A tiny Jewish sect was surprised and broken open and had their minds changed and began a journey into a new and unexpected life. We are the beneficiaries. We call that new community the church.

How may we be surprised, how may we be broken open, how may our minds be changed, and on what new journey may we set out?

That is how to live that new commandment. That is how we truly know God.

Do you love me?

2010-04-20T19:35:00.001-07:00

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year C
April 18, 2010 – Ss. Peter & Paul
Human beings are born questioners. The interrogative is the grammatical mood favored by the very young. Parents take great delight in their toddler’s first words and then the delight begins to wear thin as the floodgates of questions open up. One “Why?” leaders to another, with no end in sight. As speech develops, the questions become probing and specific, and the typical 4-year-old is an uninhibited and persistent master of interrogation:
Why does that man have only one arm? How does the baby get inside the mother’s tummy? Who was the first person ever? Will you die some day? What happens when you die?
Soon the child is socialized out of asking questions—at least questions that really matter. He/she becomes discreet and learns subtlety and indirection. At the same time, he/she learns to be cautious about answering questions:
(That is: will my answer guarantee a good grade and enable me to apss the course?” Or will I reveal my deficiencies? Will my answer lead to reward or punishment? Most threatening of all: Will I reveal myself?
Jesus asked questions, too. His first recorded words are a question to his anxious mother: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And his last anguished cry from the cross, he asks, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
He had the habit of asking direct, probing questions: Whom do you seek? What do you want? What do you want me to do for you?
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How many loaves have you? Who do people say that I am? Do you know what I [as I kneel to wash your feet] have done to you? Why are you sleeping? His questions always required an answer, and he was willing to wait for it. His questions are never trivial. They get at the truth. They force us to know ourselves. They press us to articulate what we truly want. Jesus asks questions that challenge, open up new vistas, and lead us to the next step.
In John’s account of the breakfast on the shore, Jesus asks his final question, the most important one of all. Calling Peter by name, he asks, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Not once, but three times. He asks it of Peter, who had protested, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” He asks it of Peter, who had cowered in the courtyard, denying everything. He asks it of Peter, whose treachery was more wounding than that of Judas because Peter—like most of us—embodied that unholy muddle of love and betrayal.
It is immensely satisfying to be able to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, to identify the villains and send them off to damnation. It is harder to live with the reality that, like Peter, we are unable to live up to our intentions. Like him, our love and commitment are genuine. It is easy to imagine his joy as he jumped into the sea, too impatient to wait for the heavily laden boat to travel the hundred yards to the shore where Jesus was waiting. Yet his joy must have been tinged with shame and guilt: how could he face the teacher whom he had denied? That’s something in Peter than I can identify with. Something in us—call it weakness, human fallenness or sin—leads us easily to betrayal, even when we are desperate to love.
Jesus’ question to Peter lies at the heart of their relationship. He asks it with love, but he is unrelenting. Each repetition inevitably and painfully recalls a denial of that relationship. Yet it is hardly an inquisition. It is rather a final, shared meal.
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How can we remember the Last Supper so vividly and enshrine it liturgically in this Eucharist, yet neglect the powerful message of the breakfast picnic? It is a homey scene, with Jesus presiding as cook and host. “[He] came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish.” And then, he institutes the Sacrament of the Second Chance:
“Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?”
John Dear has commented that in the original Greek of these questions and answers between Jesus and Peter Jesus invites Simon Peter not just to profess love, but agape, “unconditional, sacrificial, nonviolent love.” The question is: “Do you agape me?” Alas, Simon Peter’s answer, we also note in the Greek, falls short. “Yes, I philia you, Jesus,” he says. Philia is the Greek word for “limited love,” the love for relatives, friends, and neighbors, as opposed to agape, the “unlimited,” universal love of Christ. Simon Peter doesn’t quiet get it, so Jesus asks him again, and again. Alas Simon Peter never offers agape. He tries, and so can we.
But there is no question of Jesus’ love; there has been no breach or rupture in his love for the most fallible of his friends. Our experience of human forgiveness is most often flawed. Even the most generous of us finds it hard to forget, and we are tempted to hold on to a bit of self-righteousness, even as we declare that the broken relationship is restored. Similarly, it is hard to accept forgiveness, maybe even more difficult than to forgive. Shame lingers, even when restitution is made and guilt is wiped out.
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But at the breakfast on the shore, restoration is complete. Peter answers the questions and passes the test. But it is costly. Love is always costly; perhaps that is why we fear it and betray it. Peter is given work to do: he is to feed and tend Christ’s lambs and sheep. There is such balance and symmetry in this part of the reading: the question, the protestation of love, and the command to loving service—all repeated three times. It’s neat and satisfying to hear.
But the story doesn’t stop with warm thoughts about sheep and lambs. What follows is a reminder of the inevitability of loss that is a part of martyrdom, whether ours is the witness of those who face the wild beast or of those who simply go on putting one foot in front of the other. It is a reminder that at some point we will return to the helplessness and impotence of infancy: someone else will dress us and carry us where we do not wish to go. It is a reminder that freedom in Christ is ultimately powerless.
“Phillip, do you love me?” “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” Will I, like Peter, be able to follow?
[Help from Margaret Guenther, in Christian Century, April, 1995; John Dear in National Catholic Reporter, March 25, 2008, via Synthesis. Sermon, slightly altered, given at Trinity, Marshall, MI, April 26, 1998]

The Last Word: Easter Vigil 2010

2010-04-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

(Vigil reading from the RCL: Exodus, Baruch, Ezekiel “dry bones”; Romans, Luke’s “empty tomb”)

What has the last word in your life? When all is said and done, what is the one truth that matters most deeply? What is the one reality after which nothing more need be said?

Not long ago I sat with a group of clergy as they heard with shock that, according to studies, people aged 18-35 in this country get most of their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. You see, news in our culture used to be handled with solemnity. The dulcet tones of Walter Cronkite would end each evening broadcast with “And that’s the way it is”, and we believed it. The idea that a comedy show would be the way people get their news seemed deeply wrong to that gathering. And yet, I get it. Why not have some laughs, when the news seems to be a parade of the same old misery? Wars continue, words continue, homelessness and joblessness continue, partisan bickering while people go without health care or education, abuse scandals in churches—I wonder if old Walter ever cringed inside when he said “and that’s the way it is.” Is changeless bad news the last word? Is the same old mess the most basic truth of our world?

Or does something else have the last word? Tonight there is a different Las Word. Tonight we proclaim a message that is outrageous, that turns all those expectations upside-down.

So what is the basic truth of each of our lives? What really powers our lives? Is it fear? Is it frustration and anger? Is it hopelessness? Is it resignation and grim endurance? Is it grief and loss?

Our stories are our stories, and no one has the right to tell us to simply put aside our pain. But into our stories come this story, the great Story that in its telling transforms all our stories with light and fire and life!

That’s why we lit a fire this evening, and for a moment bathed in its light. It is a shadow of the Everlasting Fire that was lit on this night. The Everlasting Fire is not just a long-ago tale, but is Now, always Now. Do we even wish to imagine a world in which the Resurrection-light had not been lit?

That is why we told the story of the Hebrew children, the slaves who dared to believe that God heard their cries and saw their tears and went to war with a mighty empire for their sakes. “Be still!” said Moses. Not with weapons and budgets was this struggle fought, but with the passionate love of God. And so it was the Hebrew women sang, the women who had their newborn babies threatened by the great king of Egypt. They sang and danced as the cruel chariots and the brutal soldiers were thrown into the sea, and a Pharaoh saw that there was a power greater than his power and his throne.

That is why we told the story of the divine Wisdom, who speaks in a feminine voice, the neglected transforming life-giving voice and breath and spirit whom we can put aside or ignore, but who waits for us to seek her again so that we may find life.

That is why we told the story of those dry old bones baking in the sun. There is nothing so still as death. But in the hopeless stillness of death in the valley, there came by God’s Spirit new life, stirring the bones, making what was dead to live again.

And all these tales of new life and liberation and life-giving Wisdom take flesh in the cry, “Christ is risen!” The cruelty of an empire, the fear of those in power, the neglect of gentle Wisdom, the stillness of death—all come to focus in this terrible, wondrous story of the betrayal, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The powers of the world have done their worst. Threatened religious authority, brutal state power, betrayal by friends, pain and abandonment, death itself has done its worst. And from the stillness of death, from what should have been the end of the story of just another Messiah, has come this explosion of new life and new vision and new hope. Over 2000 Easters have come and gone, and we have not begun to tell the glory of it. “Christ is risen” may be proclaimed to the end of human time, and we will not reach the end of the wonder of it.

So what is the basic truth of your life? What truth penetrates every fibre of your being?

Once two Russian monks were walking together in the forest. Monks get discouraged, and these two were speaking quietly to each other about their troubles and their sorrows. Suddenly around the corner came a fellow-monk named Sergius. Sergius was walking two feet above the ground. “Don’t be discouraged, brothers!” called out Sergius. “Christ has risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, giving life to those in the tomb!”

How shall your own story be transformed by this, this outrageous Easter story?

A contemporary theologian, Richard Rohr, said, “The Gospel is an eternal promise from God that tomorrow will be different than today.”