Benediction Online

2012-01-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

Baptism, and the Holy Spirit

Today is the first Sunday of Epiphany, the season when we remember God’s self-revelation in the Biblical narrative and look for her revelation in our own lives. Today’s Gospel reading is of Jesus’ baptism and God’s declaration that Jesus is indeed God’s son. But the Church has placed this gospel within the context of two other readings: the movement of the wind or Spirit of God at Creation, and an experience of baptism in the early church – an occasion when the baptized was also publicly blessed by the Holy Spirit. So our focus today is on the work of the Holy Spirit as we seek to deepen our understanding of God’s self-revelation in Jesus’ baptism and by extension, the revelation of God in our own baptism.

Pentecostal and charismatic Christians point to passages like the second reading to argue that every believer should have two experiences of baptism; one with water and another with the Holy Spirit. The Baptism of the Spirit is a spiritual experience which results in spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, prophecy, gifts of knowledge and so on. During the late 60s through to the mid-70s there was a big resurgence of charismatic experience in the Episcopal Church which seems to have started in Van Nuys!

I often wonder why God does not seem to work in the same way with everyone at all times; why are we not all baptized in the Spirit and speaking in tongues?

I honestly don’t know the answer. I do know that if you read through the book of Acts there isn’t a clear pattern. Some people spoke in tongues before they were baptized, others after, and some not at all. I also know that God works in many different ways. So rather than dwelling on the spiritual experience known as Baptism in the Spirit, I want to spend our time this morning thinking briefly about the difference between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus and then use that understanding to think about the role of the Holy Spirit and baptism in our own lives.

At the time of Jesus and John it was believed that the coming of the Messiah would be preceded by widespread repentance, so John’s baptism was a sign of the coming of the Messiah, also understood as the coming of the Kingdom of God. To be baptized by John was a sign that you repented of your sins in preparation for what was to come. In Jesus the new revelation of God, the new kingdom was manifest.

So to be baptized in the baptism of Jesus is not preparation, it’s the real thing - full initiation into the kingdom of God. It not only takes away sin but restores us to the fullness of life we were meant to have. Cyril who was a 5^th century Patriarch of Alexandria thought that through his incarnation, Christ honored the flesh of all bodies and became the new tree of life. He said,

“If because of the tree of food they were thus cast out of Paradise, shall not believers now because of the Tree of Jesus, much more easily enter into Paradise?... Adam by the Tree fell; you by the Tree are brought to Paradise.”

Baptism grafts us into the Tree of Jesus.

Here’s a different analogy, this time from Gregory of Nyssa who lived a century earlier;

“Because our nature is mixed with the divine nature, our nature is made divine…. In the baptism of Jesus all of us, putting off our sins like some poor and patched garment, are clothed in the holy and most fair garment of regeneration.”[1]

So Cyril saw baptism as grafting us into the Tree of Jesus and Gregory saw it as making our human nature divine as we shed our sin and are made new people in Christ.

In Romans 6, Paul says

“Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Rom 6:3,4)

We too may live a new life. This, I think, is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Let’s go back to that image from the Creation story.

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

When the earth was just a formless void, the Holy Spirit – the wind of God – swept over the waters and God spoke the creative word. Words are carried on breath. God’s creativity is carried by the breath of God, the wind, the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit sweeps over the face of the waters of baptism making us new. As a result of our baptism we are changed. The trajectory of our lives is changed forever. But it is the breath of God blowing in and through and around us which brings that change from being a nice idea hidden deep under the layers of human stubbornness into tangible reality.

It is the Holy Spirit who grafts us as branches into the Jesus Tree; it is the Holy Spirit who clothes us in the garments of regeneration; it is the Holy Spirit who raises us with Christ into the dawn of resurrection life.

In our baptism we are sealed as Christ’s own for ever. But this is not just a sacrament which shows our relationship with Christ, we are baptized in the Name of the Trinity – Creator, Word and Holy Spirit. It is a sacrament that brings us into new relationship with every member of the Trinity. It translates us into the Kingdom of God.

Making that a reality in our everyday lives is the work of a lifetime. We are already in the kingdom of God. Jesus told the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say “Here it is” or “there it is” because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk17:21). We are in the kingdom and the kingdom is in us. Our task is to let it out.

Our task is to live every moment as if that is true. Our task is to manifest the kingdom of God here on earth, in our homes, in our work places, in our friendships and our families. Our task is to invite others into the kingdom with us.

We don’t have to do it alone. That’s the role of the Holy Spirit; to work with us and through us to bring the kingdom of heaven into full manifestation.

I suggest that you adopt a simple spiritual practice. Whenever you wash your face or take a shower, remember your baptism. Remember that you are sealed as Christ’s one for ever, that you are part of the manifestation of God’s kingdom. And ask once again for God to transform you into the Christ-like being you were made to be. Just a simple prayer, “Come Lord Christ” or “Make me new” prayed intentionally whenever you wash or shower will make an amazing difference.

For the Holy Spirit is waiting on tiptoe for us to come into our own.

[1] Brock and Parker, Saving Paradise, p.133

2012-01-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

Baruch Hashem - Blessed be the Name

I expect some of you were surprised by our opening hymn this morning – you probably came to church this morning expecting to sing carols. But today is the day that we, the Church, celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name. The Feast of the Holy Name; at first glance this seems a little obscure. Why celebrate a name?

Today’s gospel reading records the baby of Bethlehem being circumcised, as all Jewish boys, and given his name, Jesus. The New Testament reading from Philippians told us more about his Name. In a hymn from the early church we heard:

"Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. "

When the angel Gabriel spoke to Mary about her coming child he said, “You are to give him the name Jesus.” (Lk. 1:31) And to Joseph he said “Mary will give birth to a son and you will call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)

Jesus means “The Lord Saves."

For the ancients, names were very powerful. They represented the person and his or her attributes. So the Name of Jesus is in itself powerful and venerable. I think it may be a little like the American flag. When we take the pledge of allegiance we aren’t committing ourselves to a flag but to what it represents. But we honor the flag precisely because of what it represents. Even if we don’t stand to attention, we take notice when it is raised or lowered; and we use it to give military honors to those who die having served in the military.

For many years there were laws against “flag desecration” which were nixed by a 1989 Supreme Court decision in favor of free speech. Similarly, the third of the Ten Commandments says, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God” (Ex 20:7). This is not about swearing in the sense of using bad words but in the sense of undervaluing the most sacred and precious thing there is. The Name of God is so sacred in Judaism that often Jews will call God HaShem which means “The Name”.

When we say a familiar name it brings with it a sense of the person. Just think about these names:

Mother Teresa

St. Francis

Gandhi

Martin Luther King Jr.

Hitler

Hitler has a totally different feel than the others doesn’t it? Because the name brings to mind the nature, character and spirit of the person it represents. A name has more power than just a label.

As today is the first day of the New Year, it is a good time to ponder what kind of name we each have and what kind of name we would like to have. When someone says your name, what comes to their mind about your nature, character and spirit? What do you want your name to mean? What are you doing to build those characteristics?

When someone says “St. Benedict’s” what does it say about us as a community?

Every time we gather together to worship or to serve we gather in the name of Jesus who said “Where two or three come together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20). I think Jesus was speaking as much about intention as about physical togetherness – whenever we gather our thoughts and intentions together in Jesus’ name, God is in the midst of us.

That is what gives us the hope that we can have a good name. We do not have to do it alone. We do not have to transform our hearts and lives on our own without help and assistance. God is with us. That’s another name given to Jesus – Emmanuel – God with us. Whatever the challenges you are facing today, the fears, the hopes, the anxieties as well as the joys, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Proverbs 18:10 says “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” God’s abundant love is available to us – it is as close as the Name.

In Acts the apostle Peter says, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) Of course it would be superstitious to imagine that we are saved simply by saying “Jesus” – yet when we intentionally call upon the name of Jesus, it is truly powerful, because we are actually calling upon the nature, character and person of God.

Because it is so powerful, many Episcopalians choose to briefly bow their heads whenever the name Jesus appears in the liturgy. Because it is so powerful, and because Jesus told us to pray in his name, we often end our prayers “in the name of Jesus”.

Baruch HaShem; Blessed be the Name.

In a little while we will pray together, “Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name”; Let us pray it in a different way today, remembering that a name is not just a label and the Name of God is holy and powerful.

In ending I want to return to the question of what our names represent. When someone says my name, what does it communicate about my nature, character and spirit? Here’s a poem that encapsulates my hope:

School Prayer

Diane Ackerman

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

2011-12-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

Salvator Mundi

The National Gallery in London has just unveiled a newly discovered painting. In 1958 Sothebys sold it for less than $100, and a few years ago it turned up in this country in an estate sale. Then it was a dull and dark painting of little merit, thought to be a poor copy of a missing painting by Leonardo de Vinci which scholars knew had once hung in the court of Charles 1. It took years of painstaking restoration to remove the layers of grime and added paint in order to reveal the original, a beautiful de Vinci painting – Salvator Mundi – the Savior of the World.

I suspect that for many of us, the Christmas story is like that painting. We know about it but we have put it away at the back of our minds to be pulled out once a year. It is covered by years of neglect, it has been painted over and changed into a minor thing of little beauty or importance except commercial hype. We have lost sight of the possibility that under the over-familiarity and the Hallmark glitz there is something of great worth.

We are cynical about the gospel narrative – scholars tell us that there is no independent account of the census which sent Joseph and the very pregnant Mary to Bethlehem. How likely is it, we ask, that she was a virgin? How likely is it that shepherds saw angels and went rushing to the town to find a baby in a stable? In our skepticism we lose sight of what is important – it’s not the details of the story but the meaning underneath.

The brief reading we heard from the letter of Titus sums up what is important in six words. “The grace of God has appeared”. The grace of God is always present, has always been present throughout eternity but now, in Jesus Christ, it has appeared. Jesus is God’s grace given physical, human form.

That is why we are here tonight. We know instinctively that somewhere underneath it all is something that we need, something that we long for, the knowledge of God’s grace and God’s salvation.

I love the word grace. It carries a number of meanings – it suggests beauty or elegance; it is pleasing or attractive; it can mean love and kindness or a favor bestowed by a superior; and finally it means mercy, clemency or pardon. God’s grace. God’s grace is found in Emmanuel – God-with-us. This is the astonishing news of Christmas which is always new because we so quickly forget – God is with us. God is elegantly and lovingly with us, holding out his hands to help us, always ready to welcome us into the mutual relationship with the divine which is the one thing that makes life fulfilling.

Let us briefly consider what it might mean to say that Jesus is the embodiment of God’s grace. In his earthly life we are told that Jesus healed, he cast out demons, he taught people to love and forgive, he transformed lives and then, betrayed by his friends he died an excruciatingly painful death only to be resurrected a few days later. What does this tell us about God’s grace?

It tells us that the grace of God-with-us brings healing, freedom from the things which enslave us and transformed lives as we learn to love and to forgive. It tells us that God-with-us has experienced the pain and difficulty of being human and living in a physical body and that whenever we are betrayed and let down by our friends, whenever we are hurting and in pain, that God is especially present. It also tells us that death is not the end. So we can take risks and experiment because life goes on, life always triumphs.

In the busyness of everyday living, of the innumerable activities that make up our lives it is easy to forget God’s grace and to think that it is all up to us. But God’s grace is always available. It is never forced on us. Like any Christmas gift we have to receive it and open it. We all get many opportunities in our lives to turn towards God and ask for God’s grace. Each time we turn God down it becomes harder for us to open and receive her gift. But tonight, tonight is one of those special times when the curtain between the seen and the unseen is very thin. Tonight is an opportunity. Tonight God’s grace is offered to you.

The painting which was hidden under the centuries of grime and amateurish over-painting was the Salvator Mundi – the Savior of the World. In this icon Jesus has his right hand raised in blessing while in his left he holds a crystal globe. The Salvator Mundi is not holding a symbol of the individual soul, but a symbol of the planet. At this time of planetary crisis, when climate change is threatening life as we have known it, it is good to remember that God’s grace and salvation are not just for us as individuals.

God’s grace is available for the whole planet as we go through this tumultuous time. Sometimes people ask me why God allows suffering to happen. For God to intervene without our invitation would be to remove the gifts of freewill and creativity which he has given us. God does not do the work for us - she does it with us. God-with-us, Emmanuel.

So the big question is: are you willing to accept God’s gift of grace and to work in co-creation with him to transform yourself and the planet? Are you willing to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of restoration, co-operating with God in clearing away all the blocks that prevent you from being a clear channel for God’s grace to flow through you into the world bringing healing and transformation? Are you willing to take your part in bringing God’s grace to our troubled planet?

Are you willing to be part of the great work of bringing the true face of Salvator Mundi to the world?

2011-12-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

Make Straight The Way of the Lord

Canticle 15
John 1:6-8, 19-28

I have been pondering the role of John the Baptizer as the voice crying in the wilderness. I’ve always thought of his living literally in the wilderness, but perhaps the wilderness can also be understood as the state of people’s hearts. They had wondered such a long way from the path of God that they could no longer hear and respond to God’s voice.

Perhaps if John had not prepared the people for Jesus by his own message of repentance and baptism, Jesus’ ministry would have been much more difficult. John’s message and John’s witness changed the way people thought about the world so that they were ready to hear Jesus. Have you noticed how the Occupy movement has helped to change the national conversation from focusing on debt to a focus on the gap between the top 1% and the rest of us? John’s message started people thinking about repentance and change, and prepared the way for Jesus.

Advent is the season of preparation, the season to consciously focus on the work we need to do to be ready for the second coming; to prepare for Christ to become more fully the center of our lives. God does not exist to do our bidding. Although we know that we are at our most vibrant and alive when we are Spirit filled and Christ centered, we cannot demand that the Spirit fill us or insist that Christ be reborn in our hearts. God is radically free. We know that He always hears our prayers and answers the longing of our hearts but we cannot control how and when She acts.

What we can do is prepare the space. We can start to live as if it were true. What difference would it make if your life more radically Christ-centered? How would you behave differently if your life were more Spirit-filled? Start to live like that.

What do you need to clear out of your mental attic or sort out in your psychic basement? Where is there a lack of integrity or a withholding of love? Where do you lack the confidence in God’s love to step into the person you know yourself to be?

So often we hold back. We allow ourselves to be too small. Whether it’s because of laziness or lack of confidence, we don’t step into our place as the daughter or son of God. It is time now for us to start living as if we really are God’s children. It’s time for us to occupy the space that God has prepared for us. In one of those wonderful paradoxes that fill our spiritual lives, God has already prepared the space for us to occupy even as we are preparing ourselves to open a greater space for God to occupy.

This is not a one way relationship. When we pray, God does not have to jump to do what we say. Neither does God tell us what to do without allowing us to make our own choices. Amazingly enough, our relationship with God is the relationship of one free being with another, and it is a relationship of love. So in her immense and indescribable love for you God is already preparing the place for you to step into as you decide to prepare your life for God to step into.

It’s fortunate that God is not a genie in a bottle who appears to do our bidding, because we often do not know what it best for us. The three wishes that we think will bring happiness often lead instead to greater misery as we focus on ourselves in isolation from Spirit and in isolation from each other. God’s will for us is not something to be feared – why would God ask us to do anything that is against our basic nature or against our flourishing? God’s will is always generous and spacious even when it is the opposite of what the people around us tell us to do.

As we step into the space of God’s generosity we find increasing connection and spaciousness as we loose our tight grip on trying to make things better for ourselves and allow ourselves to experience the Body of Christ – the people of God gathering to worship and serve God in a way which none of us can do as individuals.

So this is the season not only for preparing gifts but also for giving to God the things that stop us being generous and spacious. The places that we hold tight and secret. It’s time to let go of the anger you have cherished against your father; it’s time to let go of the pride which stops you asking for help; it’s time to ask God to gracefully remove all the things in your life which prevent you from being the vibrant, generous Christ-like child of God you were created to be. As you seek to make straight the way of the Lord in your heart, you will find that angels are working with you, you will find that Jesus himself is there, you will feel the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing newness and hope through the windows that you unshutter.

John was not the light, he came to bring witness to the light. We are not the light but Christ living in us and working through us is the light. It is our task to continue everyday to occupy that space. It is our task every day to work together with the Holy Spirit to change the attitudes and habits that prevent us from fully allowing the light to shine. It is also our task to witness to the light – to help others to see the hand of God at work in the world, and to bring hope.

Wherever we look there are people and situations in need of hope. Our hope is in God who will work in, and through, and round us to bring new life to all who seek Her.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.

2011-11-27T06:43:00.000-08:00

Are we ready?

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Well we’ve got Thanksgiving out of the way and the folk on my street are getting their Christmas lights out, it’s the beginning of Advent when we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ child, and we come to church only to be hit with a gospel reading – the so-called Good News – all about cataclysm.

Jesus said to his disciples, "In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

We have this reading today because Advent is not just the season of preparation for Christmas, but also the season when we specifically remember that scripture talks about a coming time when Christ will return. And the big question is, will we be ready?

According to Hopi and Mayan teachings 2012 will be a turning point for the planet. We have seen many end time predictions come and go, and Jesus is quite clear that we will not know when the second coming will happen. But we can be quite clear that life as we have known it on this planet is over. There are already too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The climate has changed and will continue to change. Some places will become hotter, others colder. Some places will become drier, others wetter. Animals will migrate, some will become extinct. Large numbers of people will migrate trying to find a way to survive, and many will die.

It’s not a pretty picture. And it seems that as a nation we are paralyzed and unable to make decisions or do anything positive to reduce the impact of the changes that are already happening.

So the question of whether we are ready for cataclysm is no longer just for preachers. It is real and here for each one of us. We are all facing disaster, whether the personal disasters that come with living – ill health, the death of loved ones, bankruptcy, destitution; the gradual stripping away of old age as we can do less and less of the things that gave us joy and supported our identity; or the natural disasters of a changing planet – earthquake, flood, drought, fire, storm. We are all facing cataclysm. Are we ready?

This is a good time of year to consider whether you have water, canned goods, flashlights and all the things they tell you we should have on hand in case of disaster. But the question for us as people of faith is a deeper one. How prepared are we spiritually for things to go wrong?

It’s pretty easy when things are going well to give thanks and praise God. In fact, many of us tend to think that when things are going well it’s a sign of God’s blessing. But when things are not going well we think that somehow we cosmically screwed up, or God is mad at us, or God has forgotten us. Yet life is full of good times and bad times, even without climate change. God’s love for us does not change. The story of Job is a constant reminder that bad things happen to good people and God still loves us.

Spiritual preparation means letting go of our attachment to things going well. If we are only okay with ourselves and God when it’s a sunny day and life is easy, then we will not have the strength of faith and character we need when disaster comes. The way to let go of this attachment is to deepen our faith in God, deepen our relationship with the divine however we understand her, and to practice serenity and giving thanks.

Our readings speak of being alert and waiting for Christ’s coming and for God’s revealing of God’s Self. In our baptismal vows we declared that we turn to Christ. Being alert is a daily, a minute by minute turning to Christ. This is not just something we reserve for Sundays or for times when we worship together, this kind of turning to Christ is a life work, a daily discipline.

The contemporary mystic Andrew Harvey talks of the importance of preparing for the coming cataclysm even though we have no idea what it will be. Harvey suggests that we will be able to be midwives of the new, that we can be part of God’s new work. We know that out of disaster God always brings resurrection. That is the basic mystery of our faith. Resurrection follows crucifixion. New life follows death. God is doing a new work in our midst even as we stand here. Even as the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, God is preparing resurrection. We can be part of that new work even if we do not survive to see it some to fruition.

We can be part of that new work in two ways. Firstly, by deepening our spiritual practice, and secondly by refusing to become paralyzed. Find something, anything, that you can be passionate about that touches the need of the world, and do it. Frederick Buechner famously described this as the place “Where our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet”. But we can get paralyzed trying to find that place. We can get paralyzed thinking that nothing we do will have an impact. But everything we do has an impact.

Today you may feel no passion, there may be no cause which calls to you, no campaign that you want to take up. In that case, ask God what you should do and then trust that he is guiding you as you find something, anything, that uses your energy to bring good to the world. Work in the Abundance Shop, walk dogs at Animal Services, volunteer at the Prado Day Center, write letters to the President, read books to shut-ins, re-invent your life so that you create no greenhouse gases. As Nike said, Just do it.

And give thanks. In all things, give thanks. When you look at your unpaid bills, give thanks, when you look at a flower, give thanks, when your joints ache, give thanks, when the sun rises, give thanks. This is a sure way to deepen your walk with God. In every circumstance, however good it seems, however bad it seems, give thanks to God “who will also strengthen us to the end, so that we may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful.”

Thanks be to God!

2011-10-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Loving God

Matthew 22:34-46

You’ve heard me say it before – our faith is not primarily about right belief, nor is it about right action, though both are important and both have their place. Our faith is primarily about right relationship, and in this morning’s gospel we have it from the lips of the master himself,

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The whole of the faith tradition, the law and the prophets can be summed up in these two commandments – both commandments to love, to be in right relationship.

But often when people tell me, it’s all about being loving, I shudder. Because this isn’t about sentiment. It isn’t about warm fuzzy feelings. The kind of love that Jesus is talking about is not easy, it doesn’t necessarily feel nice and it isn’t always pleasant. It isn’t about smiling at people in the supermarket or helping an old lady cross the street. This is the kind of love that gets us into trouble. The kind of love that leaves Jesus strung out on a cross. An inconvenient love.

Sometimes people want to make Christianity all about being good to other people and they forget the first commandment, to love God. So this morning let’s just try to reflect on what it might mean to love the Lord our God.

There are preachers who argue that to say our faith is primarily about a relationship with God is misguided if not downright foolish. How, they say, can we have a relationship with Ultimate Being, with spirit who blows this way and that and no-one knows where it is coming from or where it is going?

From their perspective, by over-emphasizing relationship we run two risks.

The first is that we domesticate God – we imagine her as a kind of human – someone rather like us – we get into thinking what a friend we have in Jesus and soon we’re pals with the All-Compassionate, which reduces the awesome God who hung the heavens to the status of an invisible friend. The other risk is that we imagine that each of us will experience relationship with God in the same way and if mine doesn’t look like yours then one of us must be wrong, or inferior, or better. Which can lead to someone thinking that somehow they’re doing something wrong because they don’t have that “joy joy joy joy down in their heart” all the time.

Just recently we’ve learned that Mother Theresa didn’t experience a warm loving close relationship with God for much of her ministry – she experienced the silence and apparent absence of God – all she had to go on was her faith. This is true of other saints too. So it may be that those of us who have good warm or exalted feelings of God’s presence are the absolute beginners and those of us who keep wondering if God really exists are actually much further along the spiritual path!

If you’re having warm feelings about God it’s fairly easy to think about loving God with “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” But if you’re not, if your experience is closer to Mother Theresa’s then how do you know that you are loving God? What does it mean to love the ineffable?

Now you might say, you know that you love God when you love other people but I think it is possible to love another human and not love God. Love is a multi-faceted thing. Some love is a selfish, clinging unhealthy love, but it’s still love. I don’t think that loving which is dependent and demanding and focused on getting our needs met is the kind of love that Jesus is talking about. Nor is the superficial love which is generally friendly but doesn’t cost anything.

If we are followers of Jesus and believe that he gives us the ultimate example of how to be fully human, and we are learning to love in the way that he loved, it’s going to be costly. It’s going to require an effort. It’s going to mean letting go your own desires and reining in your reactions so that you can be truly present and open to the other person and the situation.

Which may be how we show that we love God.

So this morning let’s ponder these three questions:

How do we imagine God?

How do we know that we love God?

How do we show that we love God?

…

2011-10-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

The Wedding Robe

Matthew 22:1-14

Did any of you hear Prairie Home Companion yesterday?

If you did you will know that in the News from Lake Woebegone, Pastor Liz was worrying about her sermon for today because the gospel reading was, in Garrison Keillor’s words, such a “cranky bit of Scripture”.

It certainly is. And it highlights one of the difficulties of reading Scripture on your own without the benefit of a faith community. If we take this on face value we end up with a judgmental and vindictive God who picks on people for not wearing the right clothes. Since that’s not the God we know, we need to put this in a context which can help us understand it differently.

It seems that both Matthew and Luke drew from a written source which is not longer in existence. Scholars think this because they both include parables and sayings of Jesus which are remarkably similar but do not appear in Mark or John. But in this case there’s quite a difference in the way Matthew tells the story from Luke’s version. It seems that Matthew rewrote it to make it into an allegory of salvation history – a way of telling what he sees as the central movements of God’s actions and plans for all of human history.

Since it’s an allegory and not a parable, we don’t need to bother too much about whether the details of the thing make sense the way they do with regular parables. So, for example, we don’t need to worry about how the king keeps dinner warm while he makes war against the first set of invited guests, destroys their city, and then has the banquet in that same city on pretty much the same day. That sort of thing is no problem in an allegory.

In this allegory, the first guests stand for Israel. The first two sets of slaves who issue the invitation represent the prophets of the old covenant, which is why some of them are beaten up and killed, hardly the usual way of declining an invitation. The city that is destroyed represents Jerusalem. If you detect some similarities between this story and last week’s story about the vineyard workers who killed the messengers sent by the owner, you are on the right track.

In the second part of the allegory, the slaves who are sent into the main streets to invite just anybody are the apostles, the followers of Jesus after the resurrection, who brought the church together. And the church, Matthew knew all too well, was filled with both good and bad, righteous and unrighteous, deserving and undeserving. After all, “everyone” means everyone: good, bad, and indifferent. The second crowd is very different from the first group, just as the church was very different from the leaders of Israel.

Matthew is expressing the early Christian belief that, in spite of the words of the prophets and of John the Baptist, Israel, especially Israel’s leaders, had repeatedly ignored God’s invitation to his great messianic banquet for his son Jesus. So they are rejected, and the church is formed by the apostles. Remember, the apostles are represented in this allegory by the slaves who are sent to everybody else, to the lower classes, to women, to the gentiles, to the ones who had been ignored. And the apostles are told not to judge, but to invite.

Not to judge but to invite. I’m going to linger here for a moment because in Luke’s version this is pretty much where the story ends (Lk. 14:16-24). Jesus adds that none of those originally invited will have a taste of the banquet – why? Not because they are bad but because they refused the invitation.

The image of a heavenly banquet is an important image in the Old Testament when the Lady Wisdom invites all who wish to come to her house to eat and drink wisdom. It is also important in our liturgy. We think of our Eucharistic meal as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a foretaste of the time when we will gather with all the saints and feast together in God’s house.

Our task is like that of the apostles – to invite, not to judge. I know I often judge whether it’s the “right time” to mention God or St. Benedict’s in my conversation. Sometimes people are receptive and sometimes they are not. It is not my place to judge whether they are someone who would fit in here or someone who seems receptive to God. It is my place to invite. Having said that, there can be risks involved, as these poor servants found when they gave the invitations to the original guests and had their throats slit in thanks. So it is I think, important that we are prayerful in our interactions with friends, neighbors and strangers. Prayerful so that we can hear when it is the best time to speak and the best time to refrain from speaking.

But make no doubt about it, it is our job to invite and not to judge the person or the outcome.

Ok, so what about the poor guy who isn’t dressed properly? Pastor Liz of the Lutheran church in Lake Woebegone concludes “Well sometimes life’s a bitch.” That’s certainly true and I imagine most of us have had experiences where we feel like we stick out like a sore thumb, because we misread the situation in some way.

But that’s not where Matthew is going.

Ever since being a child I’ve wondered where all these people kept their wedding garments. I have tried to imagine the beggar getting up from the dusty roadside, saying “Wow, a wedding” and rushing to some shower and locker room where all the poor of the city keep their wedding garments.

Better minds than mine have struggled with similar questions. Scholars have spent a lot of time guessing what the reference to a “wedding robe” or a “wedding garment” meant back then. Since nobody really knows what a “wedding robe” means, the guesses have included everything from ordinary clean clothes to a robe everybody supposedly had hanging in their house if they would only take a second to pick it up, to the white garments often given to newly baptized Christians.

Some interpreters even say the problem is the man’s silence, not his clothes. Still others like to talk about an inner state or condition. Some say the wedding robe is a metaphor for a “garment of good works.” Saint Augustine said that the wedding robe was “love that springs from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith.”

Another theory is that the wedding garment was a robe that the host gave to the guests as they arrived that the guests put on over whatever else they were wearing.

But remember, what is happening here is not supposed to be a precise example of Palestinian social customs. Concern for accurate detail has gone out the window. This is a story about the final judgment!

Perhaps what Matthew is saying is that the church is full of people at different stages of spiritual growth, and that we can’t impose our own ideas of what is true and good on anyone else. Just like God does not impose on us. We still have free will. Here at St Benedict’s we have name tags to help those of us (like me) who have sudden senior moments not to embarrass ourselves, and also to help us learn each others names quickly. But we don’t insist that everyone wear them.

You don’t have to conform. You don’t have to wear the wedding robe. God invites everyone and it is up to each one of us how far to accept the invitation. There may be people sitting here this morning who are really here because they like the company and the coffee is so good. That’s just as OK as the people who are sitting here because they hear God’s calling and are saying yes to growing more and more Christ-like despite the cost. We do not get to judge one another.

I know there are people sitting here this morning who wonder why they’re really here. Who feel a bit like the guy without the wedding robe. So perhaps the message of this parable to them is that’s ok. You are a free being just as God is Free Being and you can decide. However there are consequences to your life decision.

Just as there are consequences for all of us. Have you accepted the invitation but neglected to take on the “garment of good works” or the “love that springs from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith”? In every moment there is an opportunity to change your mind and get a clean, new, shiny wedding robe.

Let’s do that today.

With thanks to the Rev. James Liggett and Sermons that Work:

http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/sermons_that_work_129784_ENG_HTM.htm.

2011-10-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Blind Spots

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80: 7-14

Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

It’s a fascinating fact that all of us have a blind spot in our eyes; a place where the optic nerve passes through the retina so there are no cells which can perceive light. Our brains fill in the blank for us with information from around the blind spot and information from the other eye so we are totally unaware of it.

The religious people of Jesus’ time seem to have had some significant blind spots in their thinking. And Jesus brings this up again and again. He challenges their sense of entitlement. Apparently they had become so caught up in the politics, intrigue and theological correctness of their religious practice that they had lost sight of the central fact – that it was all about God and not about them.

The vineyard workers in the parable probably did a great job; introduced new varietals, scoped out new markets, designed new labels, put in a tasting room with a great view and really got that winery on the map. But they started to think that it was their vineyard. They felt that they had done all the work, they had made all the changes and got a great profit rolling in, so they should keep it all. They thought it was all about them.

When this happens in a faith community, it leads to ego battles and territorial behavior – the altar guild gets upset because the priest doesn’t fold the corporal properly; the tellers complain that the ushers are not filling in their paperwork just right; the ladies of the kitchen practically bar the door in case someone leaves crumbs on the counter. Before you know it there are negative emails flying around and general unpleasantness and talking behind people’s backs. We’ve all been there. These things happen when we forget that it’s about God and start thinking that it’s about our comfort; when we forget that the purpose of a faith community is to love, worship and serve God.

The other stumbling block in a faith community is that we get caught up in what’s right. Someone has a deep experience of one aspect of God or the gospel and becomes a champion for that particular theme. Someone else feels that the language of the Creed is so outdated we should never use it. Another one objects to the words of the Confession. Soon we have battles of the holy. We get caught up in matters of holiness or matters of doctrine, and we forget that these are all human issues. As the Buddhists might say, they are not the moon, just the finger pointing to the moon.

Theology and doctrine have their place, just as order in the church community has its place, but they are not what is ultimately important. Ultimately what is important is loving, worshipping and serving God.

The fruits we are called to grow are justice and compassion. Justice and compassion grow when we are focused on living in co-creation with God, in alignment with divine will. Working for justice and compassion take us out of our own comfort zones. We get to work at three different levels:

First we work on ourselves to cultivate within us forgiveness and compassion. Some of us are currently using the teaching of the Buddhist writer, Pema Chodron to help with this. Then we serve others with compassion through the way we live our lives and specific activities like the Abundance Shop, People’s Kitchen, and the Hunger Walk. And thirdly we use the community and political processes available to us to work for a more just and compassionate world through actively supporting organizations like Central Coast Clergy and Laity for Justice and Bread for the World, and by taking the initiative to write letters and got to meetings about issues that concern us.

We humans have been given the awesome task of being stewards of this world. We haven’t done the best job of it. We’re like vineyard workers who didn’t know how to run a vineyard, and let the grapes grow wild and sour. But it is up to us to do all that we can do now so that our children and grandchildren will have as good a life as possible.

Looking at the beauty here it is difficult to imagine that the planet is facing environmental catastrophe. But it is. Justice and compassion demand that we take immediate action to radically reduce the carbon fuels that we use every day, and to do everything we can to persuade our leaders, locally and nationally, to start taking the strong action that is necessary. Environmental action is not a nice add-on after you’ve done everything else you want to do, it is the immediate imperative.

To be busy making our own vineyard beautiful and productive without ever looking over the wall to see that because of climate change, our neighbors are dying of starvation in Africa and dying of flooding in Asia, is to think that it’s all about us and to forget that it is all about God.

In the middle of talking about vineyards, Jesus suddenly says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”. I have been pondering this quotation over the last few days. The builders rejected a stone because they did not see the beauty in it, nor its usefulness. But God did. God made it the cornerstone – the block on which all else rested. We can assume that Jesus is speaking of himself here.

But it is typical of the reign of God, that it is based on something which humans reject. It’s easy to see that the Pharisees rejected Jesus and his teaching, not realizing that he was the cornerstone of the new heavens and the new earth. But who do we reject?

I can qickly see the error of other people’s ways. In December 2008 the Pope made clear that he rejects transgender people when he said that saving rainforests was certainly important but so was saving humanity from the blurring of the genders. I know that people who blur gender lines are a vital and celebrated part of God’s reign. Similarly gay and lesbian people have an important place in God’s reign, yet there are still too many churches, certainly the majority in this town, where gay people have to change to be accepted.

I can easily see these things. But I too have a blind spot. Who are the people that I don’t see? Who are the people that we don’t see? California has 172,000 people literally out of sight in prisons, 268,000 suffering from schizophrenia and 480,000 people living quietly with Alzheimer’s… What if the reign of God is not being built on the churches with their busy programs and services but on prisoners, schizophrenics and the victims of Alzheimers?

I wonder whether the cornerstone of the reign of God is actually our ability to accept those whom we reject? I wonder whether every time we make the inner transformation to see, forgive, embrace and celebrate someone whom we previously couldn’t see, whom we rejected or hated, we are building the reign of God, on the cornerstone of forgiveness, justice and compassion.

I wonder…

2011-09-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

A Free God

Matthew 20:1-16

In a pivotal scene in the movie Then She Found Me, Holly Hunt plays a devout Jewish woman about to have a medical procedure. Her mother, played by Bette Midler, suggests she prepares by praying. Holly Hunt’s character refuses. Eventually she admits that she feels let down by God. She had thought God was loving and good, but how can he be when he has allowed her to get ill? Bette Midler’s character responds, “What if God is… difficult… awful… complicated?”

And that is my question to you this morning. What if God is difficult, awful, complicated?

When I was living in Scotland my dear friend from Virginia told me about the wonderful birthday cake her mother made her every year. I decided to secretly get the recipe and surprise her with her favorite cake. So I called her mother in Alexandria who seemed oddly elusive and said she’d see if she could find the recipe. A week or two later I received a parcel in the mail. It was a packet of Betty Crocker cake mix.

There are some real advantages to using a cake mix. It takes all the guess work out of it – instead of beating the sugar and butter until soft – how soft? Or adding a spoonful or two of flour, just enough to stop the mixture curdling – how much is just enough? Instead of all that uncertainty - you just add eggs and oil and pop it in the oven and it comes out the same every time. It’s easy – good results are pretty much guaranteed.

Many people want God to be like a cake mix. They want God to be sweet, simple, uncomplicated and the same every time. They want a tame God who shows up on cue to solve their problems and help them out of their difficulties. They expect that if God exists he will answer their prayers and keep them out of harm’s way. If that doesn’t happen then either God can’t exist or if he does, he doesn’t care. How, someone asked me recently, can I trust God when he doesn’t answer my prayers?

God’s primary purpose is not to answer our prayers. Our primary purpose is to relate to God in friendship, love and worship. We are only truly fulfilled when we are living in relationship to God however we understand her. But our gospel reading today suggests that God may be a lot more difficult, awful and complicated than we would like to think. Relating to God is much less predictable than baking a cake from a cake mix.

Jesus is telling a story about some very disgruntled field workers. They started work early in the morning and agreed a fair wage with the owner of the vineyard. But at the end of the day they saw others who had worked only a few hours getting paid as much as they were expecting, and they were excited. Obviously the boss was in a generous mood – and they would get paid handsomely. But when it was their turn they were paid only what had been originally agreed. They were angry. Where was the fairness in that?

This is clearly not a parable about equitable pay for fieldworkers. Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven and how it is different from the ways we normally think and behave.

Assuming that the landowner is in some way representative of God, the fact that the landowner can spend his money the way he chooses tells us something important about God. God is difficult…awful… complicated… and free. That means that we cannot control God. We cannot take her out of a box, add the oil of prayer and the eggs of love and get the same result every time. Because it isn’t about us.

That may be the most difficult thing for us to really understand.

Yes God loves the world, and that means you and me, so much that she sent her only beloved Son, part of herself, to die on the cross so that we might know God. But it’s not all about us. It’s all about God. In the beginning was God. The one who is I AM Who I AM.

God is free to do whatever God wants. God created the universe and is continuing to create the universe and if God chooses to do that through DNA or through a creative word or in some totally different way, that’s up to God. God longs to be in relationship with us but it’s not a relationship where we ask for something and God gives it, again and again and again. That’s not a relationship between two free beings, that’s spiritual consumerism. God has already given us the ultimate gift in Jesus.

Now it’s up to us. It’s up to us to dedicate our lives to loving, serving and worshipping a God over whom we have no control. A God who is difficult, awful, complicated and free. A God who can reward people as she sees fit, not according to human systems or ideas of fairness.

None of this lets us off the hook, because it’s not about a relationship of equals. God is free to do whatever God chooses and God may choose to allow Godself to be limited in order to respect our free will. But just because we have free will does not mean that we can forget about ethical holy living. It does not mean that we can forget about loving God.

In fact, it makes everything a bit more demanding and a bit more exciting. Relating to God is not like using a cake mix, it’s more like following a recipe from scratch. A recipe that you haven’t cooked before which has slightly imprecise directions – a ‘dab’ of butter, a ‘rounded’ spoon of sugar, then beat until it coats the back of the spoon – that kind of recipe. You have to give up the need to get it right. You have to surrender to the process and trust that it’ll come out alright and if it doesn’t it’ll still be alright.

That’s the kind of relationship that God calls us into. A deep relationship is one of submission, of saying God’s will not mine, but not one of passivity. We do not get to sit back and say whatever happens is up to God, God expects us to be actively engaged in working for the reign of God. God expects us to be actively engaged in our spiritual work.

Just as God is actively engaged in our lives and the life of this planet. But it isn’t a simple cake in a box, God’s activity is not a panacea which takes away suffering and difficulty. God’s love holds us and supports us but doesn’t mean we avoid pain and suffering. It’s all much more difficult… awful… and complicated than that.

2011-09-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

9-11

Exodus 14:19-31
Exodus 15:1b-11,20-21

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

Our task this morning is to take the readings from sacred scripture and place them side by side with the memories and feelings and understandings we have about 9-11 and how it has changed our world; to create a dialog between the words and experience of our ancient ancestors as they sought to describe their experience of life with God, and the experience of our contemporary world. In so doing we invite the Holy Spirit to inform our thoughts, transform our heart and renew our lives.

Our readings start with the Hebrew people escaping from bondage in Egypt. This is a wonderful story and one which encapsulates a keynote of our understating about God. God delivers us from slavery and sets us free. That’s an underlying promise which continues to give us hope. Regardless of the difficulties we get into, whether we find ourselves trapped by unemployment, addictions, habits or life circumstances, God is faithful. God is with us in bondage and God will set us free!

The fate of the Egyptians in this story is however, troubling. When we are released from the things which bind us we want to be rid of them so it’s not a bit surprising that the Hebrews rejoiced in the demise of their enemies. But how do we handle a God who apparently wreaked revenge on those Egyptian soldiers who had survived the plagues, by killing the entire army and their long-suffering horses? Personally I am relieved that so far no independent historical record has been found that supports this story as it is passed down to us. Although Egyptian records exist back to 3900 years ago they do not mention a slave uprising nor the Egyptian army being drowned. The only similar account is the expulsion of the Hyksos about 1550 BCE which the Egyptians recorded as a great victory.

When we try to put the story into a historical context like this, it seems to tell us more about the Hebrew people and their understanding of God than it does about God’s way of dealing with their enemies. We do not have to imagine a vengeful God but rather a God who brings us out of Egypt and sets us free. A God who leads us by night as well as by day. A God who hears our lamentations and shares in our celebrations.

The New Testament reading concludes our series from the letter to the Romans. Paul has turned his attention to community life and the importance of honoring one another and accepting each other’s beliefs without judgment. Then he says, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”

Taken out of context this could be the manifesto of a fundamentalist suicide bomber, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord”. But that’s taking it out of context. Paul is actually talking about living entirely for Christ so that the decisions we make about our diet, the way we care for our bodies and our homes and our loved ones, the religious festivals we honor and those we don’t, all these decisions are to be placed in the context of living for Christ. If you are vegetarian be vegetarian in order to honor Christ, if you eat meat, eat meat in a way that honors Christ. Our lives are no longer our own; they are God’s. Which means that we are responsible to God for how we live and the actions we take.

I am not totally a pacifist. I am the product of my country and family and I believe the war against Hitler was a necessary one even though it meant more people suffered pain, loss and death. However there has not been a war since which seems to me to have been fully justified. As followers of Jesus our calling is to bring life and hope. So the way we live and the decision we make must point towards life and towards wholeness.

We will never know how much the motivation of those who plotted and carried out the 9-11 attacks sprang from their faith and how much it came from political ambition tied up with religion. We can see only too often in our own country how politicians can exploit religious fervor and how preachers can exploit social issues to their own ends.

Love of God and love of country must lead us as Christians to that which promotes life; that which promotes human and planetary flourishing. Because God is creating a world and God sees that it is good and it is our task to co-create that good.

And so to the Gospel reading. That challenging passage about forgiveness. How it makes us squirm. We don’t want to let go of the “strands we hold of other’s guilt.” We continue to justify ourselves. “Yes I forgive her for spilling the communion wine but she should realize that…” “Of course I forgive her, I just wish she would be more careful…” That is holding on, forgiveness is letting go.

When a tragedy happens, large or small, we struggle to make sense of it. We want to blame someone for it, it’s a way of trying to make sure it won’t happen again. If we can just understand how it happened, who was at fault, then we can prevent it. To forgive is to let go of trying to apportion blame. It is to accept that what happened happened and to move on with life. Jesus once said to a potential follower “let the dead bury the dead”. Let the past be past.

So today we remember the horror of that morning ten years ago when the twin towers fell. We remember those who died and join in the grief of their families. We remember those who contracted serious illnesses from inhaling the debris. We remember those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of our country’s response.

We remember.

But let us try to remember with God’s eyes. As well as the tragedy, the horror, the anger and the loss let us see the heroism. The people who worked selflessly to bring relief, to find those who could be found, to clear up the remains of those who were lost. We remember the firefighters who kept going into the buildings even as others were running for their lives.

That is our calling. To be those who bring life and hope. Those who come with gentleness of heart, but firm resolve and great courage to bring hope and life, to nurture flourishing, to foster peace.

I finish with a few lines from W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland,

We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

2011-09-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

Love your neighbor as yourself

Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20

What do you do for a living? Are you forgiving? Giving shelter? Cris Williamson

There is no way that we can read the whole of the Bible in church on Sunday mornings over three years. Sometimes it’s almost as interesting to see what we don’t hear as what we do. Although we have been following Paul’s Letter to the Romans since June our readings have skipped quite a lot. The two verses immediately before today’s reading tell us that we shouldn’t cheat on our taxes. Now I wonder why we leave that out?

Understanding the context helps us understand the beginning of this passage. According to Paul we should pay our taxes and owe nothing to the government or anyone else except love. Then our only debt is to wholeheartedly love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And of course we know from Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan that our neighbor is anyone in need.

Which makes loving our neighbor very difficult. In Jesus’ day there were just 150 million people on the entire planet – that is half the current population of the United States. Today 1 billion 150 million people live in India alone. So Jesus’ disciples had far fewer neighbors than we do, and lacking rapid communication, they had no way to know about people in need outside the Mediterranean which reduced the scope even further. Today we know about far more people in need than we can possibly help.

So what do we do?

I think the temptation is to harden our hearts and do nothing. The pain of the world is overwhelming and we feel that we need to guard ourselves against it. But that is exactly what Jesus did not do. We are told that when he planned to take a retreat and five thousand or more women, men and children followed him, he had compassion on them. When Jesus was hanging in agony on the cross he saw his mother’s tremendous grief and instructed his favorite disciple to care for her. Jesus did not turn away from grief and suffering but stayed present to it.

I would much rather not know that people are starving in Somalia. I would prefer not to think about a one year old called Mason who was killed in a tragic accident this week. But I do know about them and since we are all connected, however much I try to close down, I am affected by their suffering.

So part of our spiritual calling is to learn how to stay present and open our hearts to the suffering of our neighbors without being overwhelmed by it. As we seek to become more Christ-like we will not only be astonished at the beauty of the world and the joy of living, the glory of God in humanity, art and nature, but we will look with God’s eyes of compassion and God’s breaking heart on the pain; the pain of humanity, the pain of the planet.

Earlier in this same letter, Paul made the astonishing statement. “The creation waits in eager expectation for the daughters and sons of God to be revealed… in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:19,21-22)

We are the daughters and sons of the living God and as we realize our own heritage, as we come closer and closer to God, as we are transformed into the likeness of Christ, so the terrible pain of the world will be lifted. It is time for us to wake up. As Paul says, “you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” Our heritage in Christ Jesus is waiting for us. What are we waiting for?

The pain of our neighbors makes us want to close down. We want to change the channel, find something else to think about. But when we close down to the pain we also close down to our hope. Our hope is in Christ Jesus.

There is a strange reciprocity between our ability to love others and our ability to hope and to be truly free ourselves. One version of the Lord’s Prayer as it is translated from the Aramaic says, “Loose the cords of the mistakes that bind us, as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.” As we forgive and set others free so we find ourselves being freed. As we love our neighbor so we find ourselves truly loved.

We often hear the axiom “You can’t love others until you learn to love yourself”. The gospel turns that on its head. It is in loving others, because God first loved us; it is in giving ourself to others, because God gave himself for us; that we deepen our experience of God’s love.

Some of us have not experienced the human love that we needed as small children to be able to feel loved deep down inside. We live with a feeling of deprivation which makes it difficult to truly give to others because we’re constantly thinking, “What about me?” When this is the case, the second part of the great commandment to love your neighbor “as yourself” becomes important. Loving yourself means having compassion on your broken places, the hurt feelings, the tendency to over-react and to take things personally. Loving yourself means having compassion on yourself when you just want to tell everyone to get lost and leave you alone, or when you take on too much or when you just feel downright grumpy for no reason.

Loving yourself means opening up to receiving God’s love, knowing that it’s not just for others but is truly ours.

When we forgive others we release them from their debts to us. When we forgive ourselves we release ourselves from the cords that bind us. I think that’s one way to understand Jesus’ statement “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” God’s incredible unconditional love and forgiveness are available to everyone but we have to want them. We have to allow ourselves to be forgiven and to let go of the ideas, memories and resentments that bind us.

The more we forgive ourselves the more we can open up to others and forgive them. But the converse is also true, the more we forgive others, the more we can forgive ourselves.

Before I close I want to reflect for a moment on the main part of the Gospel reading about what to do if another member of the church sins against you. (Not that that ever happens around here, but just in case.) When we play the game, what did Jesus really say? This gets a definite thumbs down. Why? Because there was no church when Jesus was alive. If his disciples had a disagreement they took it to Jesus. There was no organizational structure within which this scenario could have taken place. Perhaps it was a conflict resolution model which worked so well they thought Jesus must have created it, or perhaps it was a model that they thought people SHOULD use so they tried to give it authority by putting words into Jesus’ mouth.

My point is that we are not tied to this because Jesus said it. But the principle of going to the person who offended you rather than talking to other people is an important one. If I do something that bugs you please come and tell me, rather than complaining to two other people. Just as important if someone tells you that I annoyed them, ask them to come and talk to me and don’t pass the news on. This is one way that we love each other in community, by not feeding gossip and disagreement, and by always thinking the best of one another.

It seems on first reading as though the “sinner” who doesn’t admit his fault and make amends will be cast out of the church, treated like an outsider. But how did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors? He talked with them, he healed them, he had dinner with them. There are times when, for our own healing, we need to set firm boundaries and end relationships for a time. But as we mature as Christians, as we become more and more healed, the less we need those outer boundaries, the more we can like Jesus have compassion and indeed genuinely enjoy people who we once would have shunned.

Spiritual teacher Marilyn Williamson describes complaining to God about someone she didn’t like only to hear God say. “Really? I rather like him.”

As the sons and daughters of God it is our hope and our heritage to explore the amazing love of God and the forgiveness that is unconditionally available. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is not a chore but a joy as we discover the depth and breadth of God’s love for us.

2011-07-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Today you get to choose which sermon you want to hear - just like on CNN when you can text in your vote for a news story. Your choices:

How then shall we Pray? (Romans 8:26,27)

The Elect and the Rest (Romans 8:29,30)

God's Love in a Partisan World (Romans 8: 31-39)

How Then Shall We Pray? The Spirit and Us

If, like me, you’ve ever wished you knew how to pray you can take heart from Paul’s words this morning. Even he said, “We do not know how to pray as we ought.” His choice of words, or at least the way they translate into English, unfortunately suggests that there is some correct way to pray. There really isn’t, or at least, there’s no one-size-fits-all prayer with the possible exception of the Lord’s Prayer.

Every family has different ways of greeting each other and most have words or catch phrases which have come to mean something within the family but are lost on the uninitiated. In the same way, each one has a unique relationship with God, with ways of connecting some of which are tried and discarded, others that become tried and tested over a lifetime, or in the case of our liturgies, over many lifetimes.

The Good News, for those of us who struggle with prayer, is that the very Spirit is interceding for us with sighs too deep for words. But wait a minute… isn’t this is a curious idea; that God is praying to God for us? There’s a similar idea a couple of verses later, but now it is Christ Jesus at the right hand of God praying for us. Why would God need to pray for us?

If prayer is letting God know our needs then it’s pointless since God already knows them. If prayer is asking or persuading God to do something then why would God pray to Godself for us? So what is prayer?

I think the answer may be found in our understanding of the relationship of the Trinity. If we think of God being three persons united in a relationship which is filled with joy, worship, praise, love, communication, constantly in motion – a bit like our own blood stream – then perhaps that life flow can be thought of as prayer. Perhaps prayer is the creative flow of God, so when we pray, we are connecting in to the life of the Spirit in a co-creative way. So our prayer is not asking that God do something but actually participating in the doing of it.

We know that our physical world is composed of energy. We also know that human thought can influence energy. Is it then so surprising that human prayer can be creative? God has given us free will so that we can choose to be in loving relationship with the Godhead – we can choose to be part of that amazing energy of loving worship and joy which is God – and we can choose to participate in the creativity which is God.

It won’t always be easy. There is so much pain in our world, such pain that it makes even the Spirit groan. When we connect with the deep prayer life of God, we will be connecting not just with the joy of the Godhead but also with the pain, the groaning in childbirth, of creation. But that is no reason to hold back. Because we were made to be Christlike beings, as Paul says, we are “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family”, because of that – the spiritual life is deeply satisfying.

There’s a line in the movie “Chariots of Fire” which has become one of the familiar catchphrases in my household. The Scottish runner Eric Liddell is explaining to his sister that running is not against their strict Puritan faith. He says, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.”

God made us spiritual beings, and when we pray, when we join with the Trinity in creative inner work, we feel God’s pleasure.

The Elect… and the Rest

In April of this year there was a lot of media attention for Pastor Rob Bell of the Mars Hill mega-church in Michigan when he published Love Wins – a book which suggested that there is no hell and we all end reconciled with God or “saved”. Generally called “universal salvation” this understanding of the Christian gospel is not particularly new but it flies in the face of Reformation ideas, especially those of Calvin whose influence on Protestant thinking is still very powerful.

Calvin taught predestination, which put very simply, is the idea that God has already determined who shall be saved and who shall be damned. In this way of thinking, those whom God has chosen to save are the elect – the ones he has elected to be justified and glorified. In the visions of Revelation, there are 144,000 people in gowns of white who were purchased by God. This has led some groups, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, to think that in the whole of human history only 144,000 people are elect and will be part of the New Heaven. God decided who those would be at the beginning of time.

This idea of predestination is one way of interpreting verses 29 and 30 of the reading from Romans 8, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

There are of course other ways to read it. Psalm 139 says “For you yourself created my innermost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” God knew all of us from our very beginnings. “Those whom he foreknew” can therefore be interpreted all of humanity. If that’s how you read it then you have to tend towards the universal salvation idea because “those whom he foreknew’ – all of humanity – “he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” So all of us are destined from the very beginning to become the Christ-like beings we were created to be.

We all want to be special. We want to be singled out for special loving attention and it’s nice to think that God has told us Episcopalians the real story and the Catholics or the Nazarenes or the Methodists only have it partly right! During times of persecution and great difficulty it is particularly helpful for people to feel that they are special and have been singled out by God. The idea of predestination can be quite seductive. It also provides an explanation for why some perfectly nice people just don’t experience a need for God – they, poor souls, are simply not among the elect.

If we believe in a loving God who sent his only Son that whosoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life, then it becomes difficult to imagine that same God looking at all of us as we are conceived and saying, Paul –yes, Jane, no I don’t think so, Mary – yes, Sam – yes, Judas definitely not… We usually don’t treat our own children that way – why would we imagine that God does?

I do think that we have different callings and some of us are called to the spiritual life in a deeper and more profound way than others. But that in no way makes us better. It gives us greater responsibility because we are entrusted with the furtherance of God’s reign. We are called to be the light of the world so that others may also know and find God’s abundant and unconditional love.

It is the knowledge of God which gives us abundant and eternal life. If we are made in God’s image then we are free beings with the ability to make our own decisions – right or wrong. When we form a relationship with the divine it is a mutual relationship of two free beings – we are free to choose God who in God’s freedom has chosen to create us and invite us not relationship with Godself. That is so awesome. But it does not make us morally superior to others, because Jesus washed his disciples’ feet.

So our calling leads us always to service of others, however menial and however unnoticed. That is the calling of the beloved people of God.

God is on Our Side – God’s Love in a Partisan World

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” are comforting words for anyone who is experiencing adversity, but they also have a dark side because they imply that God is not “for” all beings. I can imagine that all those who are grieving loved ones killed in Norway’s massacre are feeling right now as though God is not on their side. The actual motivation of the killer is not completely clear, and may never be, but it is chilling that he is described as a fundamental Christian. You don’t need me to remind you how many people have been slaughtered over the centuries in the name of Christ.

I am not a complete pacifist. Watching the movie The King’s Speech reminded me again of the resolve and determination of the British people that Hitler should be stopped. I know a little of how that was for my own family, and am almost certain that had I been there, I would have felt that God was calling us to take action. I do think that we have to stand up against evil and injustice wherever we see it. But that does not mean that God loves Hitler any less than me.

We live in a time of tremendous polarization; a time when the people we elected to govern think it’s more important to try to unseat their political opponent than to find solutions to the country’s problems. At a time when the whole planet is facing extraordinary threat from human activity, our leaders are paralyzed by the need to keep fighting each other. This is exacerbated by mass media which loves to emphasize difference and controversy – people getting along together doesn’t sell, we’re not as gripped by stories of cooperation as we are by stories of conflict. Moreover, now we get to choose our news sources, we less often hear opinions which seriously challenge our own.

So we slip into bad habits. Quite unconsciously we find ourselves taking sides. We decry other people’s opinions and assume that because we differ politically or religiously we cannot have conversations and enjoy one another’s company. We have a tendency to think that the beliefs we hold are God-given and anyone who doesn’t see it the same way is just plain wrong. And then we put them down or dismiss them.

I don’t think that’s the model that Jesus gave us. He certainly wasn’t a wimp. He stood up for what he believed even against great opposition. (Of course he had the tremendous advantage of being God and therefore being right 100% of the time!) But even though he was executed for his beliefs and his opposition to the way religion was being practiced, he never cursed his opponents. He never told his disciples to shun anyone. He never suggested that some people were more valuable in God’s eyes than others. In fact he went as far as to tell us to love and pray for our enemies.

How would it be if we developed a spiritual practice of praying for those we oppose, those we think are stupid or wrong? Right now it would be a really good spiritual practice for me to pray for Michele Bachmann and her husband. In my little mind, they have come to stand for everything that I find repulsive about self-righteous, white heterosexual evangelical Christians. But I don’t even know them. I have never sat down with them and talked with them about their ideas and beliefs. I have created them into a stereotype of people I dislike and oppose. And partly that’s because they scare me. It scares me that people with such obvious prejudices against people like me think that they can run this country. I am sure it would scare them if I ran for office and they thought that someone with such obvious prejudices against them might get elected. We are coming from fear.

We are coming from fear.

There is no reason to be afraid because there is nothing, nothing that can separate us from God’s love. And there is nothing, nothing that can separate Michele and Marcus Bachmann from the love of God.

We need to pray for our enemies and those we dislike and distrust because holding on to our fear and our prejudice stops us from fully experiencing that incredible love of God. We also need to pray for discernment so that we can standup for the values of the kindom of God, so that we can fight evil where it raises its head, but still know that everyone, everyone is loved by God.

God loves all of us, no exceptions.

2011-07-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

The Glory of God is the Human Being Fully Alive

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Today is one of the very few opportunities we have during the three year cycle of our lectionary to read from the Song of Songs, a wonderful book of love poetry situated at the very heart of our sacred writings. Over the centuries there have been two major ideas about this book of poetry – firstly that it allegorically portrays the love between God and God’s beloved who is Israel, the Church or the soul depending on the interpreter’s perspective, and secondly that it is what it seems to be, an extended love poem expressing the intimacy and delight of heterosexual love.

In the Jewish tradition it is considered a very sacred book – Rabbi Aqiba in the second century argued that “all the world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the writings are holy, but Song of Songs is the holy of holies.” It is now especially associated with Passover. Passover is the feast of God’s great love shown in delivering the Hebrews out of Egypt and in that context the Song of Songs is a song of praise for God’s love. It is also an important text in the mystical system of Qabala, as it brings together the masculine and feminine, and is seen as a description of the creation of the world, the passage of Shabbat, the covenant with Israel, and the coming of the Messianic age.

I don’t think Christians today really know what to do with it. As I said, it hardly ever shows up in the Sunday readings, and today it was one of a couple of choices. I suspect that if we did a poll of Episcopal Churches, we would find that most have chosen to read Psalm 45 instead. Yet in the past it was highly regarded; Bernard of Clairvaux wrote eighty-six sermons based on the Song of Songs, and the sixteenth century reformers, particularly Luther and Calvin, preached on it frequently.

Their approach was that this book provides an allegorical picture of the relationship of the Church to Christ, drawing on the idea found in the New Testament that Christ is the bridegroom and we, the Church, are his bride. Today I want to focus instead on what it might mean to us that at the very center of our sacred writings we have a highly sensuous erotic poem.

I want to suggest to you that eros, erotic connection, is at the very heart of our relationship with God as well as with each other. We tend to think of eros as being limited to sexual love but the Greek god Eros embodied not only the force of love but also the creative urge of ever-flowing nature, the firstborn Light for the coming into being and ordering of all things in the cosmos. John’s Gospel, of course, places Jesus as that first-born Light when it says, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world,” and also as the creative force, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

It’s as though John is taking the Greek idea of Eros and applying it to Christ. When we think of Christ in that way, it is not so outrageous to make the connection between eros and Christ’s abundant life which is like never-ending spring inside us. The life force which we express sexually and in our most passionate encounters with life is on the same continuum with the passionate love of the Trinity which brought all of Creation into being, incarnated as a human and suffered the torture of the cross only to rebound with total love, forgiveness and resurrection life.

It’s like musical notes. There are several different notes, all of which we call C. They are different, because they are at different pitches, but they are all recognizably the same. The eros which is the creative juice of the Trinity is like a high C and the eros which is our creative juice is like a lower C… they are both recognizably the same and yet they are different.

The first reading this morning was the account of the servant who was sent back to the homeland to find a wife for Abraham’s son, Isaac. This marriage looks very different from what we expect today. It was arranged by a servant acting for their parents, they did not have any legal ceremony, they did not have a blessing by a priest… as far as we can tell, Rebekah moved in with Isaac’s mother into the women’s tent, they had sex together and that was it. Surprisingly for the time they seem to have been monogamous – unlike Abraham and Sarah or Isaac’s son Jacob.

Together they created a marriage within which the creative force of eros could be cultivated and expressed. For many of us who are married today, or living in covenanted relationship, our marriage becomes the primary place where we express the loving, creative force that we call eros. It is also the primary place where we experience sanctification – the daily living close with another person calls out not just the best in us but the worse in us too, to be blessed and transformed as we become more and more Christ-like.

As a sidebar, I am delighted that the state of New York this week voted for same-gender marriage. There is no legal reason that makes sense to me why gay and lesbian people should not marry. There is certainly no religious reason within Christianity which would deny the possibility of expressing eros and experiencing the cleansing fire of sanctification within marriage to lesbian and gay people. I look forward to the time when once again California encourages all those who wish, to make this kind of commitment to life.

But many of us are not living in intimate relationship with one other person. In fact 43% of all Americans over 18 are single – in other words they have never married or are divorced or widowed.[1] Eros is just as important for single people. It is at the heart of who we are, humans made in the image of an erotic God. We may express it in our relationship with the divine, we may express it in our work, in our relationship with our cats, in our poetry, in the joy we experience when we fix a broken engine, or play a great round of golf… there are a myriad ways that we experience that great connecting, creative energy. We express it in our relationships and in our worship, we experience it in our minds and our souls and our bodies.

God created the world of matter and bodies and God saw that it was good. All our sacraments involve our bodies – we baptize with water, we anoint with oil, we eat the brad and wine - because it is through our bodies that we experience the world. It is through our bodies that we express that powerful creative force we call eros.

So it makes sense that at the very center of the Bible should be an erotic poem. Because eros is at the very center of our life with God and each other. Last Tuesday was the feast of Irenaeus, the second-century bishop who said “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” That is the power of eros – to bring the human being fully alive and to glorify God.

[1] America's Families and Living Arrangements survey of 2009

2011-06-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

The Advantage You Get is Sanctification

Romans 6:12-23

When I was a teenager and my sister had gone to college I finally had a room to myself. I had the typical adolescent sleep disturbance that meant I stayed awake most of the night and slept until noon. In my room was a big old radio. So I lay in bed into the early hours listening to pirate radio stations broadcasting rock music from ships anchored far enough off the coast to be outside the area covered by the BBC’s monopoly of radio. Even more than I liked the music, I liked the idea that I was engaging in subversive activity – music broadcast to me in contradiction of the broadcasting law. Then when I seriously got religion I listened to TransWorldRadio broadcasting the gospel from Monte Carlo. I loved the fact that by simply turning the dial I could hear people talking in different languages, and I could get forbidden music from the ships at sea, or radio evangelists serving up an inerrant and infallible Bible all night long.

In today’s excerpt from Paul’s great Letter to the Romans, he writes, “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.”

Being freed from sin is just the beginning of what it means to be Christian. Paul tells us that we are what we obey – and the Greek word can also mean listen to or hearken to – so when he talks about being freed from sin, we can perhaps think about it as changing what we listen to - being able to change the radio station in our head. No longer do we have to listen to the station which broadcasts ways of thinking and living that lead to the withering of our souls, the hatred of other people, and the destruction of our environment. We are free to turn it off. That is the first step. When we become Christians, when we open up to the power of God in our lives, we are given a radio dial and we can choose to listen to, hearken and obey not just the old station but the new one too.

Being freed from sin means that the dial on our internal radio is no longer stuck on one station, so we can change it; we can choose to listen not to the voice of sin but to the voice of righteousness – we can choose not to listen to the voice of the culture of death but to the voice coming from outside the norm.

“Now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.” Being enslaved to God is not an appealing idea for most of us, used as we are to the idea that freedom is worth fighting for. But I think we can stay with the image of the radio – slaves listen to and obey the voice of their owner – we listen to and obey the voice of God’s Spirit. The difference is that God does not take away our free will – we can choose to keep turning the dial and seeing what else is out there. So our obedience to God is obedience that is freely given. Just as God’s gift of life abundant is freely given to us, so we in turn give back our loving obedience, our attentiveness, our surrender to Spirit.

The advantage we get? Sanctification.

Sanctification is the process by which we become the Christ-like beings that we were created to be. It isn’t just for saints or professional religious – monks, nuns and clergy – it is a normal part of growing up as Christians. As we mature in the Christian life so we stop fiddling with the dial and choose to tune in to God. Instead of our own ideas, we want to know what God’s are. Instead of deciding what to do with our day on our own, we want to ask God to direct our thoughts, our words and our actions. Why? Because we have found that it is so much more satisfying, so much more fulfilling. Living each day with God, developing a deeper and deeper more intimate relationship with the divine, is the most satisfying and life-enhancing thing we can do.

And in the process of listening to Spirit we are sanctified, made holy, made into the Christ-like beings we were created to be. But unlike lying in bed listening to the radio, this is not a passive process. We are called to be co-creators with God and to be active participants in our own sanctification. We are called not just to hear God’s word but to put it into practice. Otherwise the radio becomes just background noise that may be playing but we don’t really notice it. Sometimes Jill and I will be at the gym or out for lunch and she’ll say, “do you remember this song?” and I have to listen really hard to even hear that music is playing in the background. That’s the danger of being people who regularly go to church and hear God’s word – if we don’t put it into practice it can just become so much background noise that we aren’t paying attention to while we go about our lives pretty much ignoring God.

Some of us are reading “Practicing Peace in a Time of War” by Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodron. This is a slim volume, if you read it in one sitting it probably wouldn’t take more than 90 minutes. But the point of reading it is not to have an intellectual understanding of the ideas she presents, but to try to put those into practice in your life. Now that is much harder as she challenges us to sit with the discomfort that usually leads to aggression, to become familiar with our desire to correct other people’s ideas or to snarl at the driver who cuts us off, and to let the feeling be without feeding it with our thoughts. This little book is part of my personal process of sanctification right now as I attempt to practice letting things be as they are, including my feelings about them, without immediately needing to make myself more comfortable. God is using Pema Chodron to help me learn new habits of becoming more Christlike. But it doesn’t just do to read the book once through and think I understand it.

Understanding is not sanctification. It doesn’t matter how much you study and how much you grapple with complex notions of who God is and the nature of creation - if you aren’t turning everything over to God, if you are hearing but not obeying, you aren’t getting anywhere. You are not living the life that God intends for you.

Paul says, “Now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.” By the end he doesn’t mean what you get at the end of your earthly life or the prize you get at the end of the race. The Greek word is telos which is an important concept in Christian thought but one not easily translated into English. It means “fulfilling what was intended”. So the telos of a chair is to be sat on. A chair that is in a shed rotting is not reaching its telos. Our telos is to become Christ-like beings in unity with God. That is eternal life.

And that is the gift of God. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is the free gift of God. But it is not enough for us to receive it – it is not enough for us to find that we can listen to a different radio station, a different message, one which has hope and life. That is just the first step. Then comes the long slow process of welcoming God, becoming obedient to her voice and turning our lives over to her service moment by moment, day after day. And as we do so we will find that this is a joyful thing, it is filled with hope and new life because it is our telos. It is what we were created for.

And the new life which wells up in us is not ours to hoard but is a gift for all of the cosmos. That is the wonder of co-creating with Spirit.

2011-06-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

Made in the Image of the Loving, Creating Trinity

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

A story is told about St. Augustine, one of the great theologians of the church, One day Augustine was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity. He came upon a boy who was digging a hole in the sand. The boy was pouring water from the sea into the hole.

When St. Augustine asked him what he was doing, the lad explained,

“I’m going to pour the ocean into this hole.”

“That’s impossible,” St. Augustine declared. “The whole ocean won’t fit in a hole.”

The child replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity into your tiny little brain.”

Then the boy vanished, leaving St. Augustine to wonder if he had been talking to an angel.

Just as a single celled organism would have difficulty understanding the complexities of our multi-celled bodies which we take quite for granted, so the Christian church has come to know God as more complex than we can fully understand; three persons coexisting as one God.

If we look at contemporary Christianity we can see that there is a tendency for us to forget the Trinity and to concentrate instead on just one person. The Pentecostal and charismatic churches focus on the Holy Spirit, many Evangelical churches focus on Jesus while others focus on the almighty Father God, who is usually angry and demanding. It is much easier for us simple minded humans to have a God who is The Holy One or The Spirit than to allow ourselves to live with the discomfort of the uncertainty and the not-knowingness of the Trinity, three in one and one in three.

The essential and underlying nature of the Trinity reflected in all our readings today is Love. The creation of the world grows out of God’s creative love. Theologian Mark McIntosh has described creation as the pillow-talk of the Trinity. The pillow-talk of the Trinity. Just as humans who are drawn together in loving and committed relationship want to create together, to make something, often a home and then a family, so too the loving and committed relationship of the Tri-unity is, by its very nature, creative. It is almost impossible for the Trinity not to be creating.

The way the ancients imaged the creation of the world, they seem to have thought that God created it over a period of time, and that then it was done – finished. With the assistance of scientific understandings of continuing evolution, we have a different picture. We see the Trinity in constant creative mode, but with a partner. That partner is humanity.

We too are creative, just like the Godhead, and we are constantly creating, not only by our decisions and actions but also by our thoughts, intentions and prayers. Unfortunately, unlike the Trinity, we do not always create from love.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to choose to create from love, not fear, not hate, but love. We are made in the image of God with the capacity to be deeply loving and entirely creative, but there is a flaw in our make up, the flaw that we call sin. This flaw leads us to be self-obsessed, and to interpret our world from an ego-centric “what’s in it for me?” viewpoint. It leads us to feel that we have to protect ourselves all the time and so we assume that others are out to get us and often attack before we are ourselves attacked. Each one of us is astonishingly creative. Instead of using our creative powers in the most loving way, choosing to forgive and to connect, we use them to create defense systems and to imagine the ways we could be hurt.

We have an astonishing opportunity to work in loving co-creation with God to bring God’s reign on earth. That is our calling as the Church. We can do that at several different levels. To name but a few, we can co-create lovingly with our thoughts, we can co-create lovingly with our relationships, and we can co-create lovingly with our actions.

We can co-create through our thoughts. The way we think colors everything we do and say. If we think that we are more intelligent or more gifted than other people that will affect the way we act. If we think that the world is a hard and unforgiving place we will interpret everything as being difficult. Whenever we allow ourselves to dwell on unloving critical or aggressive thoughts towards another person or group, we are failing to take the opportunity to create love.

I am not saying that we should not use our abilities to discern what is happening. If someone is coming towards me pointing a knife at me, it is important to use all my God-given faculties to understand that person’s intent. But we all know that not everyone pointing a knife is malicious – that person could have paused in the middle of slicing bread to make an important conversational point and is just using the knife to gesticulate. We need to use our minds to discern what is happening, but when we are cultivating and providing room for thoughts which are aggressive in any way we are creating not love but aggression. That includes thoughts about ourselves.

Prayer is a particular kind of thought. I think that when we pray we are consciously joining with God in creating the universe. I don’t understand how it works any more than I understand how my thyroid works, but I think that prayer somehow provides energy for God to work. It provides an invitation. God respects our free will and does not push in where she is not wanted, so prayer opens the door, provides the invitation and says “come on in and sit right down” with me, with us, with my friend who needs your touch, and with the one I just can’t forgive.

We create lovingly when we nurture strong, loving and healthy relationships and let go of ones which pull us back. Sometimes God calls us to move away from old relationships which no longer help us to create lovingly. God also calls us to stay in relationship with people who are annoying, even destructive, so that through our prayer and our love the Holy Spirit may reach them and they too may be transformed. And in the amazing divine economy where nothing is ever meaningless, nothing is ever lost or wasted, whether we lovingly release a relationship, or lovingly stay, we are transformed to become more Christ-like. We are transformed as we choose to be loving and not to play host to the negative stories our minds feed us.

We create through our loving actions. “Become the change you want to see” has become almost a cliché, but in many ways it is true. If we want a loving world, we get to create a loving world by the way we live and the things we do. We help to create a loving world when we do even the most mundane things, like cleaning the church, lovingly and without complaining even in our minds. We help to create a loving world when we go out of our way to help someone else without making a story about how wonderful we are to help, or what a martyr we are to have to do this. We help to create a loving world when we stand up for justice in a way which is clear and calm, not dismissive or hateful towards those with whom we disagree.

God is love. The Trinity is somehow composed of three people who are also one. They live together in a constant state of loving creativity and have chosen to include humanity in that relationship. This is an astonishing privilege and an enormous opportunity as well as a responsibility. Humanity is composed of millions of people who are individuals but also somehow one. The way we respond to the opportunity God gives us is important.

What then shall we do?

Let us commit ourselves to loving creation. Let us commit ourselves to work unstintingly towards thinking only loving, forgiving thoughts, and to always seek to do the most loving thing in every situation.

2011-06-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

Think BIG

Acts 2:1-21
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 20:19-23

How many of you were here when we had an occasional worship service on the land before we had the church building? And how many of you were in this building before we had windows? Even if you weren’t here back then, if you have ever tried to get out of your car on a windy afternoon or had the door of the meeting room slam as the wind roared around the side of the building, you’ll know that this is a very windy valley. That’s why we have put up an enclosure for our trash and recycle bins, so that the wind won’t blow them down and send their contents into our neighbor’s fields.

So I want you just for a moment to imagine that we opened all the windows on a windy day and the wind gusted through here.

That is perhaps a little of what the disciples experienced that first Pentecost. Their experience was an extraordinary presence of the Holy Spirit which is described as being like the sound of a mighty wind – so it didn’t actually blow their service sheets into the next field – and like flames of fire which rested on their heads. It must have been an amazing experience.

Recently Donna and I taught a Hollister class which we called “Listening to the Spirit”. We focused on ways that we can hear God and deepen our being with God through scripture. Most of those were quiet, contemplative practices. We didn’t even mention wind and flames of fire!

After the great prophet Elijah had challenged the priests of Baal to a contest and Yahweh had sent fire from heaven to light his own altar, he had a crisis of faith and took himself off to a remote cave, he heard the word of Yahweh tell him,

‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹²and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him… (I Kings 19: 11-13)

God was not in the wind or the fire but in the silence that came afterward. And so we tend to expect God to come in silence. But the Holy Spirit of Pentecost not only came with the sound of wind and the sight of flame, she filled the disciples so that they all became like Elijah when he challenged the prophets of Baal. They had been gathered for prayer but now they were out on the streets, speaking the praise of God and telling the Good News of our reconciliation with the divine, not just in Aramaic, not just in Hebrew or Greek, but in many, many languages.

And the next few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles tell us how they went about teaching and performing miracles just like Jesus had done. Because they had been filled with the Holy Spirit.

I wonder… I wonder if we are limiting God’s Holy Spirit by only looking for her in the quiet still places. What if God’s Spirit is equally present in the storms that rage inside us and between us? What if God’s Spirit really wants us to go out into the streets over-flowing with excitement, and knowing that that’s a possibility, we avoid anything that might make that happen? What if the Holy Spirit is longing to do a new work of transformation, a powerful demonstration of God’s Love, in our midst and we are preventing her by our limited thinking?

As the mystic Mother Julian reminds us, God is always courteous and does not force himself upon us. It is our job to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit. It is our job to notice the places where we constrict and tighten, the places where we don’t fully trust God, and to open ourselves. Jesus appearing to the disciples, breathed on them. He got up close and personal and they felt his breath on their faces and he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." If you tighten around your grievances and your anger they will stay, but if you forgive you will be free. If you constrict your notions of God, God will stay small for you.

So let’s think BIG! How big is your God? What limits do you place on him? Perhaps you think that God never speaks to people like you, or that God stopped speaking when the last word was written in the New Testament, or that all the miracle stories are wishful, mythical thinking, or that God only answers prayers which are within the limits of human ability because she always works through humans. Perhaps you think that God is only out there somewhere, looking at this planet from a distance, or that God is only within us, guiding us through our thoughts, or that God is only in the beauty of Creation and the Sunday morning prayers, not in the chaos of your work life.

I challenge you this morning to let go of your limited thinking and to think BIG. Think wind and flame. Instead of the gentle dove we tend to associate with the Holy Spirit, think of the wild goose of Celtic Christianity.

The Holy Spirit works in many different ways and brings many different gifts. We may not all have the gift of healing but let us pray that some of us will. We may not all have words of wisdom or knowledge or faith, but let us expect and hope for some of us to have these gifts. St. Benedict’s does not have the same gifts as the Baptist church or the Methodist church down the street, we have our own unique gifts as the Holy Spirit gives to each one as he chooses.

But what if we are not fully receiving those gifts because we are not fully open, because our limited thinking is getting in the way of God’s gift? Every American child knows that on your birthday you get presents. And every child is ready for those to be really BIG and every child knows that you have to unwrap your gift before you can play with it.

So on this birthday of the church let us think BIG. Let us open ourselves individually and a faith community to the possibility that God’s Spirit is not just in the still small voice, but is also in the wind and fire.

2011-06-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

Jesus Ascended - So What?

Acts 1:6-14

This morning we are remembering Jesus’ Ascension. This event, when Jesus levitated and disappeared into a cloud, is described at the end of Luke’s gospel and again at the beginning of Acts, the passage we heard this morning. Both books were written by the same person but he starts Acts as a separate scroll or volume – it’s not like he just ran out of room on one scroll and had to start a new one – because Acts starts with a preamble explaining its purpose. Neither Matthew nor John’s gospels mention what happened to Jesus. Mark just says, “Jesus was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.”

So two of the gospel writes don’t mention it, one mentions it in passing, but Luke mentions it twice – once at the end of his account of Jesus’ ministry and then again at the beginning of his account of the early church’s ministry. Obviously Luke thought it was important, not just as the end of Jesus’ story, but also as the very beginning of the church’s story.

How important do you think it is?

Do you think the Ascension

(a) is a made-up story

(b) really happened

(d) something else altogether

If it did happen on some level what difference does it make to you?

Whereas Matthew and Mark both end with Jesus telling his disciples to go and preach the gospel to all people and all creation, Luke is setting things up for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This is a theme in John as well – last week we heard Jesus saying that he would not leave the disciples as orphans but would ask God to send them an Advocate.

There is a connection in Luke and John’s minds about Jesus’ being lifted up, glorified, ascended, and the Holy Spirit coming powerfully upon the disciples. The Holy Spirit has been around for ever - this is not a new manifestation of God, but it is a new experience of the relationship between God and humanity. We tend to take for granted the idea that God is within us, but for the disciples and for humanity this was a radically new idea.

It was one of those shifts that completely changes the way you see things. No longer was God solely an external Being like other humans, but God was to become internal, as close as their own spirits. As we shall see next week, this experience of God was not the still, quiet voice which we often seek in prayer and contemplation, this experience of the Spirit was wild and expansive and led to the disciples being able to perform miracles, speak in other languages, discern spirits, preach powerfully – all the things that Jesus had done.

So why the ascension? If Jesus just disappeared what would he have done with his body?

In Jerusalem, the Chapel of the Ascension is a Christian and Muslim holy site believed to mark the place where Jesus ascended into heaven. In the small round church/mosque is a stone. On this stone is an indentation which is claimed to have been made by Jesus’ feet as he ascended. I know that stretches the imagination a little, but it emphasizes the physical nature of Jesus’ ascended body. One of the characteristics of being human is that we have bodies, and it is through our bodies that we negotiate our way through our physical world. Certainly our bodies are not all that we are, but the interaction of body and spirit is what makes us the people we become. That’s why our sacraments all have a physical element – because God touches us not just through our minds but through our bodies.

So Jesus’ body is an important aspect of his humanness. If he had returned to God as a disembodied spirit he would no longer be fully human. The fact that he ascended as a fully-embodied human means that humanity is now part of the Godhead.

The difficulty with bodies is that they have to be somewhere, so when we talk like this it sounds like there is a place where God is and now there’s embodied Jesus with God the Creator and the Holy Spirit. I expect that’s the way that the early church thought of it, which is why Mark talks about Jesus being on the right hand of God. We think of God as being outside the space/time continuum so she is nowhere and everywhere because there really is no there there. Jesus ascended in his resurrection body which we know was different from ours because he could move through time and space, suddenly appearing here or there. So we don’t have to stretch our incredulity to think that Jesus is now sitting on a cloud somewhere.

Jesus ascended because the dominant paradigm of the day suggested that God lived in the heavens. The god-man left the limiting dimensions of time and space in a way that enabled his followers to know that humanity was now fully with God, that just as in the incarnation God became fully human, so in the ascension human becomes fully God.

This new relationship goes both ways. After a suitable period to integrate what just happened, a time when the disciples devoted themselves to prayer and praise – almost a spiritual retreat to prepare themselves for a new initiation – after a suitable period, God enters humanity in a brand new way.

But that’s a story for another time…

What difference does it make to you?

2011-05-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

The Unknown God

Acts 17:22-31
John 14:15-21

In 2006 British biologist Richard Dawkins published a best-seller called “The God Delusion” in which he argues that there is no scientific evidence for a personal God who is interested in us. He acknowledged that religion does seem to “fill a gap” by giving comfort and consolation to those who need it, though in his view atheism can do a much better job!

Liberal theologians have long argued that the existence of religion in every culture suggests that humans have a need to worship – and that their need for a god implies that there is a God. In other words, the same gap that Dawkins identifies as a need for comfort and consolation, they see as a need for divine presence. Paul seems to be taking this approach in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. He is in Greece, in the city of Athens, in the Areopagus which in ancient times was a council of the elders of the city, but by Paul’s time was a forum for discussion of religion and morals. It was the place for new religious and philosophical teachings to be discussed and evaluated.

So Paul, having taught in the synagogue and the marketplace, was invited to speak in the Areopagus, and there he starts by telling the Greek leaders that they are clearly very religious because they have so many objects of worship – even an altar to an unknown God. And he uses that to tell them about the God who has made Godself known. The God who created the world and made humans so that they would seek God and perhaps even find her because she is very close, “In God we live and move and have our being”.

We live in a society where God is unknown to many people. We are here this morning either because we have found a relationship with a living God or because we hope that we might discover that relationship and in it find a deeper meaning to our lives, in that relationship find the abundant life that Jesus promised. There are hundreds and thousands of people living here in this county who long to find that relationship. Some of them, like Dawkins, don’t believe it’s possible, others aren’t sure and some are intentionally seeking. Hundreds and thousands of people looking for God.

Jesus revealed God to us. In him, the human and the divine meet and are expressed in on person, so as we study his ways and listen to his teachings and ponder them in our hearts, making them part of ourselves, so we too touch God. In the Gospel reading Jesus assures his disciples that even though he will no longer be with them they will not be alone because the Holy Spirit, the advocate, will be with them. The Holy Spirit continues to be with us today. It is the Holy Spirit who works in our hearts and minds to continue to reveal God to us. So God still speaks today.

Jesus goes on to say “because I live, you also will live.” The abundant life which people long for, the abundant life which we experience to a greater or lesser extent comes directly from Jesus’ resurrection life. Which is in no way separated from the life of the Godhead in which Paul said, “we live and move and have our being”. So we are privileged to share in Jesus’ life through our baptism and through the practice of daily abiding with and in him.

In the last few weeks some of us have been meeting on Thursday mornings to explore some of the practices which can help us to abide in God every day. It requires intention, it requires some time but each one of us can find a way to experience Jesus’ life flowing more and more abundantly even as we deal with the tensions and sufferings of our lives. We tend to think that when things are going well we are abiding in God but that when things are out of sync or our bodies become uncomfortable, that God has removed herself, or that we aren’t doing something right.

That is very far from true. The challenge of the spiritual warrior is to use those times of discomfort as opportunities to become more Christ-like. In his times of suffering, Jesus was able to be peaceful and serene. In our times of suffering we tend to become anxious or angry or depressed. By softening around our negative feelings and cultivating an attitude of clear sighted compassion towards ourselves and others, we begin to become more Christ-like and more in touch with the Holy Spirit and the resurrection life that flows in us.

Still talking about the Holy Spirit’s presence after his ascension, Jesus told the disciples, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

So loving God is not just a warm feeling in our hearts, though sometimes we get that and it’s wonderful. Loving God is keeping Jesus’ commandments – which are essentially to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. In some ways it’s easier to love God than to love either ourselves or our neighbors, because God is not always in our face, being annoying! But this is not an either or situation but a both /and.

Our spiritual journeys are not just about abiding in God. That abiding is played out in the relationships we have everyday with our family, our parents, our children and other people’s children, our friends, people in the community, our pets, those who grow our food, those who supply our oil, those we love and those we hate, those whose politics we support, and those who disagree with us. If we say we love God but have hate-filled or even somewhat judgmental relationships with those around us, we are missing the point.

If you want God to reveal Godself to you then your spiritual practice will include service to other people, the practice of manifesting God’s love in the world. If you are obsessing about yourself, and focused on your own needs then there is little room in you for God to enter. Some of us are unable to serve in physical ways and we have the example of those in contemplative monastic orders who help us to realize that service can happen without much physical activity. Praying for the people we see on the news is service, calling a friend who is having a difficult time is service, writing a letter to a politician about an issue of justice is service. What is important is the attitude of mind. An attitude which puts God at the center not ourselves.

There are hundreds and thousands of people who are searching for the God who seems to be unknown. We have the tremendous privilege of being given glimpses of that God and we have a path to manifest God’s life in ours. As the Body of Christ we are also, amazingly enough, called to show Christ’s resurrection life to the world. We are called to be God with flesh on. It is astonishing to me that God calls the Church, with all our problems and inadequacies, to be the place where he is known in his incarnation. It is our job, our job, to make the unknown God known, to show God’s love and God’s compassion to ourselves and to our families and to all those with whom we are connected which is basically everyone and everything on the planet and beyond.

It is a huge but exciting calling. Our mission is to help the world know that God is not a delusion, God is a very present reality, not just an invention to provide consolation and comfort. As we seek healing for ourselves today let us also seek healing for all those whose relationship with God seems to be broken.

Amen.

2011-05-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve been wracking my brains for a contemporary image for the shepherd and his flock, and I can’t find one. I thought coach and sports team but the coaches I’ve seen on TV seem more aggressive and in-your-face than the archetypal shepherd. Perhaps teacher with class of kindergarten children might be a better image. Sheep are wayward creatures, just like small children can be – liable to run off in different directions at any moment. Kindergartners are as dependent upon their teacher to provide a safe environment as sheep are on their shepherd. Little kids also learn their teachers’ voices and habits very quickly, used as they are to watching adults.

But, perhaps fortunately, kindergarten teachers don’t spend 24 hours a day with their charges in the way that Mediterranean shepherds did. And I think that most of us would rather think of ourselves as Jesus’ sheep than his kindergarteners!!

I am quite sure that when Jesus used this imagery he had the 23^rd psalm in his mind. The good shepherd was already an archetypal image for his followers – a mixture of the reality of local agriculture and the words of the psalmist. So implicit in his description are the familiar and beloved words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he leads me beside green pastures…” There is also an important passage in the prophet Ezekiel concerning the good shepherd. Ezekiel was writing at the time when the people of Israel were being exiled from their homeland – many taken to Babylon but others scattered across the world. Ezekiel likens them to sheep being scattered and lost on the hillsides and then God says, “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep.” (Ezek. 34:1-16)

So Jesus is also claiming the well-known prophecy. The Jews of his time were still expecting God to make good on his promise expressed through Ezekiel, so here Jesus is not only calling on well-known imagery but also claiming that he is the fulfillment of an important prophecy.

The image of the good shepherd is also very familiar to us. It is a story that can be shared meaningfully with children and which has inspired many a stained glass window. There’s even a San Luis Obispo dog training business called “the Good Shepherd”!

In ancient times a sheepfold was an enclosure made of stones or brambles or some combination of the two. After a day grazing on the hillsides, the shepherd would call each sheep by name into the fold and then lie down across the entrance, using his body as a gate. So Jesus is also using this imagery to talk about laying down his life, dying for the sake of his sheep, of those of us who have responded to the call to follow him and for those who have not yet come into the flock.

As we read it from our twenty-first century American perspective, his focus is on the sheep as individuals. Because he calls them by name we think of this as the ultimate picture of Jesus as our friend and protector. And it is a wonderful image of that. It is amazing to realize that in the billions of people who have lived, are alive today and will be born tomorrow and the next day, we are individually known and beloved by God. You are special. You are special not just to yourself and your friends and relatives, you are special to God. No-one else will ever be like you and no-one else will ever have the unique relationship you have with God. At the same time, you are no more special than anyone else because we are all members of Jesus flock and there is no hierarchy of specialness within the flock.

His listeners, who lived in a society where family and tribe were considered more important than individuals, would have imagined the Good Shepherd relating primarily to the flock but also knowing and caring for individuals. As Episcopalians one of our special gifts is our particular understanding of being part of the flock, not just individualists. Yes we may wander off and Jesus may have to come and find us from time to time, but we know that we do not and cannot come to God alone.

Anthony the Great, one of the earliest and most influential teachers among the Desert Fathers taught, “Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.” Let me repeat that: “Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.”

We come to God as people-in-community. We do not come to Jesus in isolation because we are social people, we are embedded in relationship. Take us out of relationship, put us in solitary confinement and we gradually wither and die. We are flock animals, whether we like it or not. So when we approach God we come together and we come together not just with those who we can see around us, but with people who are not physically present. Those we are connected with through ties of love or hatred, family and friendship, and of community of all sorts.

When we come to God we come as people embedded in a flock. I think that is what Anthony the Great meant. I don’t imagine that when he said, “If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ,” he was suggesting the desert fathers went door to door attempting to convert their neighbors – I think he was talking about how we can help or hinder each other’s relationships with the flock and with the Shepherd, whether we do that knowingly or unknowingly.

When we hold things against one another we are hindering each other from coming to God. When we hold judgments against another person because of their size or their small intellect or their lack of common sense or whatever it is we think that they lack, or because of something they said or didn’t say, or did or didn’t do – we are getting in the way of our own relationship with God. When we look around the communion circle and think, “I do wish Pauline wouldn’t wear that dress, it really doesn’t suit her” we may not be causing Pauline to stumble but we are preventing ourselves from coming to God with a humble and thankful heart.

Yet even subtle criticism can communicate. We are sensitive to each other. And none of us is any better or any worse than any other one. When we imagine that somehow we are more special, more evolved, more intelligent, more creative, more gifted, and that somehow that makes us stand out, we are completely missing the point. In fact, we are sinning.

Sheep all look pretty much alike. You can tell one sheep from another but they are much more like one another than they are individual. Jesus will go off and find the missing sheep but his relationship is with the flock for whom he lays down his body. His relationship is with the church and it is as the church that we come together to worship because together we can experience God in a much deeper and richer way than when we worship alone. Together we can hear the shepherd’s voice speaking much more clearly and more frequently than in those precious moments alone. Together we can be the Body of Christ in the world far more effectively than we can as individuals.

So I want to end by reading you once again the description of the ideal life of the very early church. This is an ideal but it is one which we may consider as an archetype of how Christians can live together and come together to God. Perhaps it is the kind of communal life that Anthony the Great was envisioning when he said, “Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.”

So, from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2:

Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

2011-04-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

He is Risen!

Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4 Matthew 28:1-10

Each day all over the world some people’s lives are irrevocably changed. It may be because of an accident or an argument, a diagnosis or a disaster or perhaps something joyful, a job offer, a birth, a new love. For the disciples, Easter morning changed their lives more than they could imagine possible. They probably thought that living with Jesus, they had gotten used to surprise and sudden change but this was the biggest yet.

They had seen Jesus’ broken, bruised and bloody body put in the tomb. They knew that Jesus was really dead; dead dead. That was as real and solid to his disciples as any experience they had ever had. And now the tomb was empty. The angel said he was alive. The two Marys were amazed. Everything they thought was solid suddenly changed to liquid. Even death was no longer as definite as it seemed.

From this point on, the rest of the New Testament, the rest of the history of the church, is an attempt to understand what this means. Christianity is not a neatly worked out system where everything fits nicely together – it is the attempt of ordinary people to make sense of a life-changing and bizarre event.

The stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty. Jesus got out. Somehow, somewhen, Jesus resurrected in a new body which could move through stone but could still eat breakfast. Amazing, weird.

What does it mean to you?

I doubt that any of us can remember a time when we didn’t know the story - Jesus died on a cross and was raised from the dead. It’s hardly life changing when you’ve known it for ever. We don’t have the startling and astonishing experience of the earthquake and the angel and then meeting Jesus on the road and grabbing his feet…

So is it even important?

It is important because it is an integral part of God’s Plan conceived in the creative and all-loving dance of the Trinity. We only get glimpses of this plan in which God created a universe, an ever-expanding, ever-changing cosmos of an infinite number of planets, stars, black holes and other celestial beings whose names I don’t know and probably cannot pronounce. And then on one small planet God created humanity. God made humans with the potential to wander away from God, and as she knew we would, we do.

In order to continue her creative process and bring this project into reconciliation with herself, God sent her Son, who is one with the Creator God, to become human, to die, to rise again to…to… to what? Why did Jesus the Christ die and rise again?

The writers of the New Testament describe their experiences in several different ways – the principal themes are freedom from sin, forgiveness of sins, salvation, peace, and new life. So let’s take a brief look at each one.

Physicists tell us that the world is not solid. It just seems like it is. In fact the whole of creation is made of infinitesimal particles moving very fast so that the blur of their activity creates matter that appears to be solid.

Perhaps through Jesus’ death and resurrection he showed us that evil isn’t solid either, that sin isn’t as powerful as we thought. If it were solid, if it were truly powerful, Jesus would still be trapped in Sheol, his body cold in the tomb. In our baptism we have mysteriously died with Christ and been raised again into a world where evil, sin and addiction only have the power we give them. Because Jesus’ resurrection shows that they are not solid.

Because they are not solid we can have freedom from sin – Jesus gives us the power to change, to become godly. It almost certainly won’t happen overnight and it may take the interventions of modern medicine and the faith community to help us let go of old patterns and destructive behaviors. But we no longer need to feel trapped by this powerful negativity, because Jesus has shown that it is hollow and weak.

Sometimes we define sin as separation from God but there is nowhere we can go where we are truly away from God. The psalmist says, “If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.”[1] So sin is not separation from God as much as that which stops us experiencing oneness with the divine. Sin is what makes us question whether we are truly loveable, sin is what makes us feel guilty and ashamed at a gut level. Sin is everything we do and think which is less than godly. From the earliest days in the Garden of Eden, our willfulness and our longing to explore and to know have got in the way of a simple, innocent relationship with God. We are not infants sitting innocently and trustingly on her lap… we are people of wisdom and creativity and sometimes of anger and hatred.

Jesus’ life, death and resurrection assures us that God doesn’t even see all the things that we think get in between us. God became human… God moved towards us and has now fully experienced what it is to be human and mortal and to feel separated from the very source of life. God has open arms, waiting for us to come and be reconciled, to come back to God in a mature adult relationship of two free beings. God is waiting for us to soften our hearts and forgive ourselves and others and accept his free gift of loving mutual relationship.

Perhaps that’s a good description of salvation or redemption. It’s what brings us back into loving mutual relationship with the divine. It’s what brings us back into the relationship with God that we were created to have – a relationship like that of the Trinity with one another, a dance of free spirits bound to each other by love, joy, thanksgiving and mutual obedience and submission.

There’s an ancient prayer which talks of God “whose service is perfect freedom”, “whose service is perfect freedom”. As Americans we’re very attached to the idea of freedom. Although we can’t always define exactly what we mean, I am sure that most of us would not consider serving someone else “perfect freedom”. Yet we are made to live in service of God and each other and in that service we find the perfect freedom which is salvation because that is the life of the Trinity to which we are called and invited.

When we live in relationship with God there is a quality of peace which starts to permeate our lives. This is not a superficial feel-good peace. Jesus’ life was hardly peaceful – he found it difficult to get away from the crowds of people wanting his attention, he was constantly harassed by the religious authorities and finally he was betrayed, tortured and killed. Not an example of a quiet peaceful life. So the peace of God which passes understanding is something different.

It is the peace that comes from knowing that nothing, nothing can separate us from the amazing, extravagant love of God. As the apostle Paul said, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And perhaps that is the secret of the new life which is in Christ. The incredible, unconditional love of God keeps us safe. Not from hardship or pain but from the fear that these things are all there is. When we know that the safety net is in position, we can fling ourselves with abandon from one trapeze to the next, trusting that even if we miss, all will be well.

Trusting in our ever-deepening relationship with the great triune God whose very nature is love, allows us to live life to the full. And that is what God wants for us. For each one of us God wants us to live the life we were created to have, abundant life in relationship with her. It will be different for each one of us – for some God is a tangible presence, for others more a longing and a burning desire, but however God manifests in our lives, she brings life and hope.

As the second century French bishop Ireneas said, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive”. The apostle Peter who preached forgiveness of sins in our first reading was not the bumbling fisherman but a new human being fully alive and empowered by God’s Spirit. The Jesus that the two Marys met that fateful morning was a human being fully alive in a resurrection body.

The fact that Jesus is alive gives us hope and new life so that we too can be the glory of God.

The Lord is Risen!

[1] Ps 139:8

2011-04-23T17:26:00.001-07:00

Easter Vigil

This is the night of the great mystery. The great not-knowing. This is the night when Jesus the Christ mysteriously resurrected; the night when his broken, bruised and bloody body changed into a new resurrection body and he left the tomb totally changed and yet the same; the night when the human relationship with evil and death changed forever. We cannot know what happened or indeed fully understand what that really means for us and for the universe.

Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition, has written a number of books, all of which challenge us to be comfortable with not-knowing. In a similar way contemporary physics reminds us that the universe is not what it seems. It’s not solid. Creation is very definitely here and yet at the same time it is not here. Perhaps it is created by the breath of God in a much more literal way than we have imagined possible. We don’t know. All that seems to be solid is changing even before our eyes. We have changed even in the time since I started this sermon. In a world where nothing is solid, nothing is stable, it behooves us to be comfortable with not-knowing.

There are of course, significant differences in the way that Pema Chodron, as a Tibetan Buddhist, understands the universe, from the way that we as Christians might conceive it. But in the book I am currently reading and pondering, she suggests that evil is no more solid than anything else. So I have been wondering whether that is a way to understand the great gift of this night.

There is nothing more lifeless than a corpse… I am often amazed at how small a person’s body looks after the life has gone out of it. Jesus was really dead; dead dead. That was as real and solid to his disciples as any experience they had ever had. And then he was alive. The tomb was empty. The disciples came and they were amazed. Everything they thought was solid suddenly changed to liquid. Even death was no longer as definite as it seemed.

Tonight we have reminded ourselves of the salvation story of the People of God. We heard the great stories of the ancient tradition which Jesus came to fulfill. And then we had the joy of baptizing Vandria and Gio, and recommitting ourselves to our baptismal vows. In baptism we make the salvation story our own.

The Holy Spirit brings us through the waters of baptism into a new life in Christ. Baptism symbolizes an inner migration from the realities of our old life into the realities of life in the reign of God. In the New Testament reading, Paul points out that when we are physically dead we can no longer sin. Through our baptism we become as dead – we die and are resurrected with Jesus so that we are no longer enslaved by sin.

It sounds good but it’s difficult to unpack that and have it make a whole lot of sense. It’s a mystery. It isn’t solid.

Perhaps through Jesus’ death and resurrection he showed us that evil isn’t solid, that sin isn’t as powerful as we thought. When we are caught in an addiction it seems that it would be next to impossible to change. We make all kinds of excuses to ourselves – “I really need a drink”, “I deserve to have another pair of shoes”, “everyone has to eat”… but the reality is that the addiction seems the most real and powerful thing in our lives. Often it is the central point around which we organize everything else in our lives. On this most holy of nights Jesus showed that the power of addiction is hollow. It isn’t solid. It shifts and changes as we look at it, so we are no longer bound by it.

Now when we are challenged by forces of evil, when our addictive patterns, our negative behaviors threaten to overtake us we can remember that we are baptized. We have passed through the waters with the people of Israel, we have mysteriously died with Christ and been raised again into a world where evil, sin and addiction only have the power we give them. Because Jesus’ resurrection shows that they are not solid.

We have baptized Vandria and Gio with a little water. A little water which is taken from the water that refreshes all living beings on this planet. Just like air, water is constantly recycling, so that water that the Israelites came through in their great migration from slavery into freedom, the water that floated Noah’s ark, the water that John used to baptize Jesus, is all present and represented in this little sprinkling of Los Osos water.

Just as all water is interconnected, so are all beings interconnected. In Romans Paul tells us that the whole creation is groaning as if in childbirth waiting for humanity to be redeemed. As each one of us is baptized and live into our baptismal covenant, in some small way we are contributing not just to our own salvation but to that of all beings. So tonight Vandria and Gio have contributed to God’s Plan for the redemption of the whole creation and in our eucharist we celebrate a foretaste of the day when all beings will come together in reconciliation with God and with each other.

Tonight we are taking part in the great cosmic drama, the plan of God, conceived in the creative and all-loving dance of the Trinity. We only get glimpses of this plan in which God created a universe, an ever-expanding, ever-changing cosmos of an infinite number of planets, stars, black holes and other celestial beings. And then God created humanity to be in a special relationship to the Godhead and to the rest of creation. Just as through Jesus we come to God, so through us the universe is brought to God in a new relationship, one which is like the relationship the Trinity has with one another – a relationship of love, joy, creative mutual submission and obedience.

We humans play a vital role in bringing the whole of created matter into reconciliation with God – bringing it to its perfection.

We only get glimpses of this plan and the glimpses we get are so limited and so brief that we can’t hold on to them as real, solid facts. Yet the vision is amazing and glorious; deeper and more vibrant than the most brilliant sunset, broader and more thrilling than the most breath-taking view or the most overwhelming special effects.

We want things to be solid. When the disciples had the first glimpse of the resurrected Jesus they grabbed his feet. They wanted to hold on. We too want to hold on. We make stories based on the glimpses we have received and we call them Truth and we fight others who don’t share our glimpses of reality. But all the ideas we have are mere shadows of the reality which is the Godhead and the plan to bring Creation into full union with the Trinity.

As we allow ourselves to explore not-knowing, as we allow ourselves to live with the uncertainties and the doubts as well as the vision and the hope there are some things we can hold on to. We can hold on to God’s unconditional and extravagant love for us. This is not just a general non-personal love for humanity, but a love for each one of us personally.

God finds you infinitely loveable. Just as you are. You are God’s beloved.

And in our baptism we are joined in some mysterious way with Christ dead, buried and resurrected. So the other thing we can hold on to is our baptism. When things are bad, look in the mirror, splash some water on your face and remind yourself that you are sealed as Christ’s own for ever. Sealed as Christ’s own for ever.

We are the people of God and the future is ours.

As St Paul said in his letter to the Romans, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2011-04-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Resurrection and the Life

The Rev. Donna Ross

These past few months our world has suffered through many tragedies.

Do you realize that it was only six months ago that those Chilean miners were trapped for 70 days?

Remember how long they waited in the dark before anyone knew they were alive?

Remember how they waited while a tunnel was drilled, half a mile down into the earth?

Remember how they were lifted back to life in a specially-made capsule? Before the capsule began lifting them up from the total darkness of the mine, each miner was given sunglasses to protect him from the brightness of the daylight. And, as the capsule reached the surface, a worker yelled out the miner’s name: “Esteban!” or “Claudio!” or “Carlos!” When the miner heard his name and answered, the crowd – miners, their families, community leaders – chanted his name aloud and applauded, encouraging him to come out of the darkness back to the light, from death back to life.

I cannot imagine living in the darkness for all that time, knowing all the time that I was slowly dying. And I cannot hearing my name called from above, as the surface light began to penetrate the 70th day of my life in darkness. With what fierce determination I would call back, “Yes, here I am! It is me! I am alive!”
The raising of Lazarus
Do you think that’s what it was like for Lazarus and his family, for Lazarus and his village?
He had been in his tomb for four days, and no one ever expected to see him alive again.
Yet Jesus came to his tomb and shouted his name: “Lazarus, come out!” And, hearing Jesus call his name, Lazarus came out of the tomb, trailing his bandages, staggering into the daylight.
Was this the greatest of Jesus’ miracles?
While the other gospels give us many stories of healings and miracles, John’s Gospel gives us only a few. And in John’s Gospel these events are not presented as supernatural miracles, God’s overturning the laws of nature. Instead, John calls them signs – they are signs of the power of God’s life in Jesus.
A sign is something that points us to something we need – something that, without the sign, we might not see. And Lazarus’ return to the daylight, his return to life, is a sign that points us to something we need to see.
A sign is “a finger pointing to the moon”
What does John’s Gospel mean when it speaks of signs? Marcus Borg writes, “Buddhists often speak of the teaching of the Buddha as ‘a finger pointing to the moon.’ The metaphor helps guard against the mistake of thinking that being a Buddhist means believing in Buddhist teaching – that is, believing in the finger. As the metaphor implies, one is to see (and pay attention to) that to which the finger points.
“To apply the metaphor to the Bible, the Bible is like a finger pointing to the moon. Christians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that being a Christian is about believing in the finger rather than seeing the Christian life as a relationship to that which the finger points.” (Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time)
The meaning of life
In this story, the raising of Lazarus is the finger – and that finger points to the meaning of life.
Like the miners in Chile, Lazarus was brought back into the daylight, given back to his family and his community, given fresh air to breathe and hot food to eat – and a life to live again.
But just like the Chilean miners, almost all of whom struggle with daily life six months after their rescue, Lazarus had to live his very ordinary life again – life with all its sweetness, yes, but also life with all its difficulties. And ultimately, just like the Chilean miners, in the natural course of things Lazarus would truly die and be buried. The new physical life he was given was every bit as provisional as the life each one of us here lives.
Remember what the story tells us: Jesus and some of his disciples were in the Jordan Valley, far away from Bethany when they received a message from Martha and Mary: “Lazarus is very ill.”
After two days Jesus decided to go to Bethany, only two miles from Jerusalem – the city where already the authorities are looking for him. Bethany is close to danger, but Jesus chooses to go anyway – even though he knows that Lazarus has already died.
As he approached the village, he meets Martha – who, in her forthright way declares, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”
(Have you ever thought that Martha gives us an example of how we can talk to God – plainly, with all our feelings, saying exactly what we think?)
Now listen to the rest of their conversation:

Jesus said to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
And Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and I am the life.”
(Have you thought of what it would be like, to live your life with Jesus, to walk the roads of your life with his Spirit, to live in daily relationship with a God who cares, a God who comforts, a God who guides?)
Here’s the moon this story points to: The life Jesus is talking about is not just resurrection life. That is, the life God wants to give us is not just life in heaven after we die. The life Jesus is talking about is life right now: we don’t have to wait to die before we can live our life with God.
Life with God NOW – what gifts does that give us?
So much to say! But right now, I’d like to point to two of those gifts:
God’s presence: God is always with us, God is always loving us, God is always keeping us alive in the Spirit.
And God’s courage: If we have united ourselves with Christ – his life, his death, his continuing presence – we have already died, so we might as well really live!
Here’s how St. Patrick understood the meaning of the daily presence of the Spirit of God, with him and around him and in him and before him:

I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead,
God's eye to watch, God's might to stay, God's ear to hearken to my need;
the wisdom of my God to teach, God's hand to guide, God's shield to ward;
the word of God to give me speech, God's heavenly host to be my guard. (Hymn 370, v. 5)

As we walk together through the remaining days of Lent, we are preparing for the Easter feast, and – this Lent especially – we are preparing for the Easter Vigil, when two members of our community will be baptized into the Life of Christ. After their baptisms, we will pray:
Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Sonmay live in the power of his resurrection…
What does it mean to live in the power of Jesus' resurrection - and in the power of Jesus' life? Again, we can sing with Patrick:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. (Hymn 370, v. 6)

2011-03-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

Trusting God

Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 121

The last two Sunday’s had the theme of Transfiguration and Temptation; today we add Trust. The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you….So Abram went.” And that is how the story begins, the great journey of humanity following the calling and promptings of God’s Spirit. Abraham trusted God with his life.

Paul picks up this theme in the second reading. Abraham was not blessed by God because he kept the law but because he believed. It was his trust in an unseen God which led to his becoming the ancestor of trillions of people, and the spiritual ancestor of even more.

Like Paul, Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were a leading Jewish group who interpreted the Torah in a more inclusive way than the Sadducees who were very literalist. The Pharisees spent much of their time reinterpreting the old laws in the light of contemporary experience and tradition. We might say that they were the Episcopalians of their time! The problem, from Jesus’ perspective, was that they had a tendency to be so busy defining what good Jews should do, that they lost sight of what it was all really about. They lost sight of God in the busy-ness of defining godliness. Just like we can lose sight of God in the busy-ness of being an active faith community.

Naturally they were appalled by Jesus who seemed to pay no attention to the niceties of the law. Nicodemus came to him by night because he didn’t want his colleagues to know. He couldn’t afford to be associated with the scofflaw Jesus, but he wanted answers. And Jesus said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." The original Greek also means “being born again”.

So the most important thing this busy, law-abiding religious leader needed to hear was that no-one can see the reign of God without being born again from above. How we are to understand this statement depends on how we understand the reign of God. I have come to think of the reign of God as the unseen realm which permeates the universe and the seen world but is quite different from the way we usually see and think.

In the reign of God we trust that all things are being worked out for good and for the redemption not just of humanity but of the whole universe. In the reign of God we play our part in bringing about that redemption by working with the Holy Spirit to bring the qualities of the reign of God into our hearts and lives.

This is the work of a lifetime. It means letting go of the human inclinations to criticize, to judge, to hold grudges and nurse anger; it means instead nurturing forgiveness, humility and gentleness – working to become more Christ-like in our thoughts and interactions. It means serving Christ in all persons and in fact in all beings. It means living out our baptismal vows.

As Christians we live with a foot in both realms. We don’t turn our backs on any part of the world because God made it and it is good. We cooperate with God in the redemption of the planet by working in whatever circumstances we find ourselves to bring gospel values into manifestation. At the same time we know that the reality we see around us and the reality we see on television and the internet are not all there is. God’s reign is the realm which will eventually become the whole of reality. God’s reign of gentleness, love and light is the one which is eternal.

In order to experience and live in God’s reign, Jesus says we have to be born again from above. This is a gift of God, this is grace, not something we can do. But we can seek to be born again – we can ask for the gift.

I imagine that in this room there are some of us who know we are twice-born, some who aren’t sure and some who have not yet received God’s gift. For a moment I want to address those who aren’t sure.

The gift of second birth is given by God in God’s own time, but also in answer to prayer. If you have asked to be reborn, you can trust that your prayer is answered; but just as a newborn baby’s eyes do not focus at first, so too our initial perception of God’s realm is very misty and vague. It takes effort to focus your spiritual eyes and it takes effort to keep them focused.

This is the effort that we call spiritual practice. Through prayer, spiritual reading and worship, we begin to perceive the outlines of God’s reign appearing in the fog of the physical world. As we continue on the spiritual path and return to it whenever we wander off in our own ideas and confusions, so we see clearer and clearer. We never lose the need to trust but it becomes a stronger muscle with exercise.

All of you who are parents and grandparents and even those of us who are aunts, uncles and godparents, have seen the innocence and openness of a new-born, a young child who has not yet learned the ways of the world, who has not yet become cynical, manipulative or judgmental. That is what it is like to be born again – to see everything with new eyes – the innocent and trusting eyes of a child. So perhaps very few of us can truly claim to be twice-born – perhaps we are all in the birth canal.

But most of us can see the outlines of the reign of God. We can believe that astonishing statement, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God loved the world, and by this it means the whole cosmos, God loved the expanding universe so much that she gave her own life to enable it to come into communion with the divine. God loved the world that much, and still does.

Even in the devastation that is Japan today, even in the horror of military attacks on Libya, we can trust that God loves the world, every part of it. Seeing the reign of God with the eyes of the twice-born allows us to trust that there is a reason why God allows disasters to happen. It allows us to trust that in the midst of enormous, uncountable suffering, God is present. It allows us to trust that the universe is unfolding perfectly and that God is bringing about resurrection and redemption in every moment.

Abraham trusted God and packed up his family and moved into an unknown and uncertain future. Paul trusted the God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist,” enough to go to Rome to certain martyrdom. We can trust that the reign of God permeates all the things of this world and that God’s love for us, and the people of Japan and the people of Libya, is eternal and faithful.

My prayer of reach of us is that we are reborn with eyes to see the reign of God and trust in his grace so that we may know the peace which passes understanding and share that peace with the world.

Amen.

2011-03-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

Staying in the Heart of Compassion

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19 Matthew 4:1-11

What a terrible week for the people of Japan. The images of destruction and distress have been overwhelming at times…

Yet another natural disaster… it seems that we live in a time when tragedies occur with horrific frequency; disasters like this one or the Haiti earthquake which effect whole communities at once, and quieter personal disasters which suddenly cut individuals and families from their moorings.

We are much better off than the people of northeastern Japan. Yet we too have much to contend with. The proposed state budget is threatening to withdraw help from those who need it the most. I imagine we will be seeing far more calls for help from those who are struggling to keep a roof over their head or to pay the electricity or even to eat. It’s difficult to keep watching what’s happening in our world and in the lives of our friends without either becoming so used to disaster that we no longer remember the tremendous pain and suffering involved, or turning away because we can no longer stand the pain.

Today’s readings start with the story of Adam and Eve becoming conscious; becoming conscious of themselves as sexual beings and as separate from God – a separation which is symbolized by their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This is the ancient people’s way of explaining why there is pain and suffering in the world – because the first humans made a big mistake - they gave in to the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit - and so were separated from the source of all goodness – the Creator God. As a result the whole of creation became warped and out of sync.

The second reading comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans which is probably the most complete statement of his theology. He argues that sin came into the world through one man’s disobedience and that the remedy came through one man, Jesus’s obedience.

We are reconciled with God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However this does not mean that we are magically free from suffering, whether as a result of natural disaster, our own mortality, or human agency. There is a strand of thinking in the Old Testament which suggests that if we love and obey God we will prosper. Many modern day Americans have appropriated this to mean that if we love and obey God we will have disaster-free and prosperous lives. I think the apostle Paul would be shocked at the very notion of prosperity theology – he personally lived through many disasters before he was ultimately martyred.

The gospel reading shows us Jesus struggling with the very human experience of temptation. He was tempted to use his divine powers to take short cuts – to stop his hunger, to become famous through a publicity stunt, and to be very powerful.

Perhaps the temptation to take short cuts is a basic human trait. Adam and Eve apparently wanted to take a short cut to consciousness and knowledge by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We want to take short cuts to make the pain go away, whether through pretending it isn’t real or by thinking about something else.

Jesus didn’t do either of those things. Jesus saw the pain he would experience as a result of being obedient, but he went ahead anyway. We are told that as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane he sweated blood. Jesus knew the pain of the world and he carried it in himself. Yet when the soldiers came he wouldn’t take the easy way out and fight them or simply remove himself from the situation. He walked into the pain of feeling separate from God; the deep pain of humanity.

Jesus lived with his eyes open and his heart full of compassion. As his Body we too are called to live with our eyes open and our hearts full of compassion. Yet the temptation is to close our eyes, to turn away, to say “I just can’t do anything about it”. There’s even a new term to describe how numbed we can come to others’ pain; “compassion fatigue”. Compassion fatigue is when we no longer respond to disaster with compassion and open hearts but just turn away. Compassion fatigue is when the problems seem so vast, so overwhelming that we say “I can’t do anything about it” and we change the channel and watch a sitcom instead.

Loren Eiseley told a story that goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that he was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what you are doing?"

The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

We can’t respond to every situation as fully as we would like. Yet compassion and our baptismal vows require that we do respond to the needs of the world in some concrete way. We can give money, sometimes we can give practical help, we can always pray. We can also work through the political process to bring changes which will benefit those who are most in need.

What is important is that we do not give in to the temptation to turn away. Even when we have nothing else left to give, we can still bear quiet, gentle and generous witness to another’s pain. We can still bring that pain to God in prayer, taking our place alongside the Christ who is interceding for the world.

Each time we look at pain with compassion, each time we donate money to Nets for Life, each time we write a letter to a Member of Congress, each time we pray for those in need, each time we pick up the phone to call a lonely person, we are helping one starfish back to the ocean.

So as we watch the unfolding drama of the tsunami, as we watch the struggle in Libya and the daily tragedies of our world, let us join Christ, the heart of compassion, in holding each person, each situation, gently in our hearts, bringing them before the throne of God and asking how we can help. As we come to the eucharist this morning, let us bring not only our own need but of the needs of the whole planet, especially of the people of Japan.

2011-03-09T10:19:00.000-08:00

The Heart of Compassion

Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103:8-14

Welcome to our spiritual fitness program!

For the next forty days we will have the opportunity to tone our spiritual muscles, both as individuals and as a parish.

We often think about Lent as a time when we give something up, when we make some kind of sacrifice. Sacrifice in Christianity, as in Judaism, means the offering of life. Its greatest example is Jesus’ offering for us on the cross. The central way we commemorate this is in our offering of the Eucharist, a corporate offering of the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord.

In baptism, each of us is joined to the Body of Christ, the royal priesthood who offer the sacrifice, the life-offering of the Savior. We make this offering through Jesus for the world, in all its reality: for the homeless, refugees, those starving to death, those terrified by war and civil war, and even the rich living hopeless lives of denial and indulgence. In short, in the Eucharist, we get involved with the reality of life as it is.

Lent is not just a time for self-reflection and deeper spiritual discipline, traditionally symbolized by fasting and abstinence; it is also a time for flexing the spiritual muscle of compassion. Compassion is at the core of the spiritual life. As we grow in compassion we let go of the self-absorption that paralyses us. As we turn our eyes away from ourselves in compassionate service to others so we live the Eucharistic life of Christ.

That is why the Episcopal Church keeps Lent as a special time of focus on the needs of the world. Our daily reflections are provided by the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund which provides a practical way that we can help those in need, by supporting the ministry of Anglican churches and others who work to bring practical assistance in the name of Christ. Our Thursday evening soup supper discussions will focus on the larger picture of the planet and ecological awareness.

Compassion breaks us open as we begin to see the world through God’s eyes. And so it leads us to long for a deeper simplicity which will generate a broader generosity. This is not just an exercise for Lent but a call to a renewal of life; life lived as the compassionate children of God, life lived in the Eucharistic practice of offering our lives in the service of the world.

The gospel today reminds us that the smudge of ashes on our foreheads may either be a boast, or it may be a sign to us and to others that this Lent will be about more than giving up chocolate; it will be a time when God’s redeeming work transforms each one of us and our church community.

So may it be.

2011-03-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

Why Not Become Entirely Fire?

Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

Today we come to the last Sunday of a long season of Epiphany and we end it as we began – with three men worshiping God revealed in Jesus. We started with three magi who had traveled long distances to find a baby born in an obscure place, and we end it with three fishermen worshiping their friend and master on a holy mountain.

Jesus is transfigured – he has become so one with God that this manifests itself physically and his whole body radiates light. The light who has come into the world is shining so strongly that it can be seen not just with the eyes of faith but with the physical eyes. And with him are Moses and Elijah – the representatives of the law and the prophets – which Jesus has come to fulfill. In this brief mountaintop experience, Jesus is revealed as the Christ, the one who has been expected, the human embodiment of God.

Transfiguration is also the fulfillment of our calling as the Body of Christ and as individual Christ-filled beings. We are called to embody God. Rainer Maria Rilke has a poem in his collection Love Poems to God in which he imagines the new human soul receiving its final instructions before incarnating: God says,

You, sent out beyond your recall, Go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.

This is not a partial experience of God but a complete make-over, in which we become so filled with the Holy Spirit that God’s light shines clearly through us. My favorite story form the Desert Fathers and Mothers is when the young brother goes to his elder and says, “Brother, I have sat in my cell and said my prayers and done everything I was told to do. What else is there?” And the older brother holds up his hands, and as he does so, flames spring from the top of every finger, and he says, “Why not become entirely fire?”

Why not become entirely fire?

What is stopping us from becoming so full of God that we become entirely fire, that we are transformed and even transfigured?

Moses went up Mount Sinai to meet with God. It didn’t happen immediately – he waited for six days. I imagine during that time he was praying and meditation, not tapping his foot and feeling impatient that God wasn’t showing up on time. He and Joshua watched, waited and prayed and then God called to him out of the cloud and he was there forty days and forty nights. When he came back down the mountain he was a changed man. We are told that after meeting with God, Moses’ face would glow so brightly that he had to wear a veil.

We are about to enter the forty days of Lent, our annual time of intentional waiting upon God. Will we come out of it transformed? Will we embody God in a new way? Will God’s light shine through us, the people of St Benedict’s, so that we become entirely fire?

That depends on God’s grace, and our willingness. Are we willing to fully embody God? Are we willing to truly live out our baptismal promise, to entrust ourselves entirely to the living God and become entirely fire?

It also takes work. Not that by our work we can earn the riches of God’s blessing, but because we are not created to be passive but to be active creative agents in God’s work. We are called to be co-creators with God. As we work for the coming of God’s kingdom, as we co-operate with Spirit, so we are transformed by God’s power working in us.

Prayer is the most important part of our work because it is in prayer that we are changed and it is through the power of our prayer that God is empowered to act. In the delicate dance between our freedom and God’s freedom, it is prayer which creates and deepens the space through which the Spirit works in our world. We can never force God to do anything, there is nothing automatic about prayer, but when we pray we invite God to enter and act in our lives. God never forces Godself upon us.

Joan Chittister writes:

Prayer…becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter’s fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God’s presence becomes palpable to us. Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek.[1]

That is the kind of prayer which will transform us into the Christ-like beings that we were created to be; prayer which becomes a furnace that burns away all that is not holy, all that gets in the way of us truly embodying God.

When Jesus was transfigured it was not just his face that shone with the Light, but his whole body. There is no split between our souls and our bodies – when we embody God we do so with our full humanity, body and soul. The way we care for our physical bodies, however strong, however weak they may be, when dedicated to God is also a form of prayer.

For many of us that is where we will first feel the effects of the smelter’s fire as we are challenged to let go of the habits of a lifetime, challenged to become as healthy as we can be. What that looks like will vary for each one of us. It’s not about worshipping the body beautiful but about loving God’s creation and doing the work we need to do to be able to fully embody the divine.

Forty days is enough time to change the neuro-pathways that keep us stuck in old habits. Forty days is enough time to learn new behavior. Forty days of intentional prayer and focus will draw us closer to God. Who knows, we may even be transformed, perhaps transfigured.

Why not become entirely fire?

[1] Joan Chittister, The Rule of St Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21^st Century, p. 131

2011-01-30T06:56:00.000-08:00

Living the Holy Life

Micah 6:1-8
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12
Psalm 15

There is a BBC radio program, Desert Island Discs, which is so popular that it’s been running since 1942. Each week a celebrity is asked to choose eight records which they would want to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island. They are also asked to identify a book and a luxury. (When I was growing up it was two books and no luxury was mentioned!) Almost invariably the celebrity would choose either the Bible or Shakespeare, and often both. If I were asked to choose eight Bible passages that I would want to have on a desert island I think this morning’s readings would be close to the top of my list.

Together they go to the heart of discipleship. They talk of what it means to live a holy life and as such they provide a place where the Christian faith meets other faith traditions. Not in the field of theology, but in compassionate living in relationship with God and all beings.

In the first reading, the eighth century prophet Micah, writing at the same time as Isaiah, sums up the ancient covenant between God and God’s people. It is written like a conversation: God reminds the people of all that he has done for them and calls them back into covenant relationship. The people respond with a note of sarcasm - what can they do which will be adequate for such a demanding God – perhaps they should bring thousands of rams, thousands of rivers of oil - perhaps God wants them to sacrifice their first born sons or even their own bodies – would that be enough? And in response comes that amazing prophetic statement, which has resonated through the millennia,

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

The second reading was taken from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, one of his earliest letters. The Gospel we preach doesn’t make sense to the world in which we live. It didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t make sense now. Paul writes, “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified”. I wonder how we might add to that list, “Jews demand signs, Greeks desire wisdom and Americans lust after power”, or “Jews demand signs, Greeks desire wisdom and Americans yearn for security”. However we complete the sentence, Christ crucified does not seem to meet the need. Paul goes on “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world…”

In the topsy-turvy world of the Gospel weakness is strength, walking humbly is power, the God-man shamed and crucified is our security. It doesn’t make sense.

If it made sense it would be easy. Living a holy life would be simple. But instead it is a quest which has called to the heart of humanity for thousands of years. The desire for holy living has sent humans to live in isolation in the desert or on the topes of poles; to live in communities or as hermits; to take to the road with vows of poverty, depending on others kindness; to seek wise teachers and spend hours in meditation, fasting and prayer; and in our own time to read books and attend workshops.

Some of us are using Joan Chittister’s commentary on the Rule of Benedict to deepen our spiritual understanding and increase our ability to live holy lives. She tells a teaching story:

“What action shall I do to attain God?” the disciple asked the elder.

“If you wish to attain God,” the elder said, “there are two things you must know. The first is that all efforts to attain God are of no avail.”

“And the second?” the disciple insisted.

“The second is that you must act as if you did not know the first,” the elder said.[1]

This is the paradox. Closeness to God is a gift not the result of our efforts. Yet we must still seek it. We are called to live a holy life but by the very nature of who we are that alludes us. Yet the very quest is in itself important. As we seek to “do justice and love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God” so the God we love and serve will draw closer to us, and we will become more nearly the Christ-like beings we are called to be.

Although there is a long tradition of going away to monasteries and other places of retreat, the holy life is one which is to be lived wherever we are. Unlike some other traditions, Christianity calls us to live a holy life exactly where we are and in exactly the circumstances God has given us. This is the message of the Gospel reading. Jesus was not talking to monks or priests or holy men, Jesus was talking to the common people as he gave this amazing sermon, often called the Beatitudes.

Gandhi and Mother Teresa are famous examples of people who seem to have lived the beatitudes, but there are many more who are quietly living humble lives; people who recognize that true power comes from defenselessness not from pre-emptive strikes; people who have no need to push themselves forward because they know that they have committed themselves to God’s service and God will use them wherever God wills.

Last Saturday I was in England for the 80^th birthday celebration of my spiritual father and mentor. At the end of his birthday Eucharist he invited us to say a prayer together. It is the Methodist covenant prayer based on one which John Wesley wrote. I found it quite stunning in its level of commitment and surrender. We often get the impression that if we seek God good things will happen to us and so when we have times of pain and difficulty we wonder if perhaps God is ignoring us. This prayer makes it quite clear that a life of service to God may mean suffering and may mean being apparently useless.

I will read it to you now, and I have included it in your service leaflet. You may feel ready to pray it, you may not. It is not a prayer to be taken lightly.

I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you,
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you,
or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing:
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.

[1] Joan Chittister, The Rule of St Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21^st Century, Crossroads 2010, p21,22

2011-01-18T14:10:00.000-08:00

“Come and See” John 1:29-42 *
The Rev. Donna Ross
* to see this Gospel passage, scroll down to the end of the sermon
With every sermon, there are different directions a preacher might choose to go. (The members of St. Benedict’s know this better than most congregations, because you regularly hear four preachers, each with his or her point of view.) But even with a single preacher, sermons can go in different directions – just like a congregation’s thoughts during the reading of the lessons. (What direction did your mind go when you heard this Gospel?)
And since John’s Gospel is the product of memories, the result of long years of reflection, it has an abundance of splendid themes woven together. So today my first question is: Which of John’s themes should I follow? Which direction should we go?
Thinking about Sin and Salvation: In this reading, John the Baptist says Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. (John 1:34) So we might begin a sermon by asking these questions: What is sin? Why is there sin? Why is there evil in this world? How can we escape sin? Asking these questions would be fruitful, but the questions would lead us to “thinking about” Jesus – that is, theologizing – rather than meeting Jesus face to face. And it’s clear that John the writer, in this first chapter, wants us to meet Jesus.
Thinking about the Church: In this reading, Jesus meets his first disciples, and he changes Simon’s name to “Peter.” (1:42) So we might begin a sermon by asking these questions: Is John the writer saying that the Church, the organization of Jesus’ followers, is already being established at the beginning of the story? This direction, too, might be fruitful – but it would lead us to “thinking about” the Church, its structure and authority, rather than Jesus himself, the Person the Church says is at its center.
Thinking about the Spirit: In this reading, John the Baptist sees the Spirit descending upon Jesus, and he says Jesus is the One who will baptize with the Spirit. (1:32-33) So we might begin a sermon by asking these questions: What is the Spirit? How does the Spirit do its work? How does the Spirit come to us, to me? The hymns we’re singing this morning, with their emphasis on the Spirit, may help us ponder these questions about the Spirit. But I’m thinking that before we meet the Spirit, we need to meet Jesus himself.
Thinking about Jesus the person: In this reading, Jesus invites two men to spend the afternoon with him, to get to know him. So one way to begin this sermon is to decide: Let’s try to meet Jesus for ourselves – try to see him, try to get to know him. Shall we respond to Jesus’ invitation to these men as if it were inviting us – “Come and see”? I think that’s what John, the Gospel writer, wants us to do. John shows us how Jesus’ first disciples came to “see” Jesus – and I’m convinced John wants us to follow them. After all, here are Jesus’ first words in this gospel: “What are you looking for? …Come and see.” (1:38,39)
Learning to see
But seeing is more complicated than it sounds, because there are many levels of seeing – in life, of course, but especially in the original Greek of John’s Gospel.
In the Greek, there is a word for plain, simple seeing with our physical eyes.
There is another Greek word for looking with concentration, as we try to learn more about what we are seeing.

There is a third Greek word for seeing with comprehension, for perceiving the inside qualities of an object or person.

And in the Greek there is a word for seeing with insight, seeing the inner and spiritual reality of whatever – or whomever – is before us. This is seeing with spiritual insight, seeing with the heart. That means not looking at something (or someone) as an object, but finding a way to participate in it, to build a relationship with it, a way to touch its inner truth.
At which level do you want to “see” Jesus?
Do you want to see what the man was like – would you like a snapshot of the historical Jesus? (Actually, I would love this. But we have no photographs, no definitive history approved by modern scholarship – all we have is hazy memories contained in old, old scriptures.)
Do you want to see Jesus at a more detailed level – to remember what he said, to see where he walked and taught, to know what he did? (His first disciples got to see on this level, and some of them wrote down what he said and did. Those disciples have left us pictures of Jesus at the detailed level, but the problem is that Matthew saw him slightly differently from Mark, and Luke and John had their own versions of what he said and did. And I haven’t even mentioned the Gospel of Thomas, or Mary Magdalene and the other gospels! So how will we know what he really said, what he really meant?)
Do you want to see Jesus at an even deeper level – to really understand what his teaching meant, what his actions demonstrated, what he believed about life and love and God? (But we know how much his first disciples, even as they spent time with him, struggled to understand him and his message. So how do we go about it.)
Or do you want to see him with spiritual insight – not only to “see” him, but to “know” him? And here is a mystery: at its deepest point, “seeing” always becomes “knowing.” Deep seeing always moves beneath the surface, beneath the skin of an object or a person, into that place where we can make a connection, grow into relationship.
Barbara
In my parish in Ohio, there is a blind woman whose name is Barbara. Barbara worked at Oberlin College, and every morning – in sun, rain or snow – Barbara walked the six blocks from her house to her office, striding along with her cane. Barbara and her husband Bob often came to our home for dinner. Bob was an English professor, extremely intelligent, a little absent-minded. The two of them would walk the streets to our house, Barbara with her cane in one hand and her other hand on Bob’s arm. I can’t tell you the number of times that Bob, ambling along in his absent-minded way, would pass by our driveway – only to be brought up short by Barbara, who knew exactly where she was.
But it wasn’t just the physical landscape that Barbara was able to negotiate. She was the same way at church – in her prayers in worship, in meetings, in Bible studies, in discussions. Although she couldn’t “see” the outsides of people, she always “saw” their insides. Perhaps because she couldn’t see your skin, she had to listen carefully to know who you were and what you thought. Perhaps because as a blind child she had to learn to be courageous, she was always willing to share her own thoughts and ideas and impressions. And because Barbara was like this, groups of people would become enlivened by the conversations she shared.
Indeed, there were times when I would be in a group along with Barbara and I would begin to think that everyone there was blind. And by that I don’t mean that I saw the people as physically blind, but I began to see them as deeply insightful, just like Barbara. She had that effect on all of us. Barbara is a person who “sees” with spiritual insight – because she has the confidence, the courage, to be open: about herself, about what she thinks and believes, about what she sees in you.
Has there been someone in your life - a friend, a loved one, a teacher – whom you came to know when suddenly or slowly you saw deeply into their inner self, came to “know” them and form a bond with them?
Whenever we move from seeing the outside appearance to the inner core, that encounter brings us to the spiritual heart of a person – and it touches our own inner heart as well.
And so Jesus says to us, “Come and see.”
In the gospel passage Jesus is saying, “Come and see me.” Come and listen to me, come and talk with me, come and spend time with me, so you can know me intimately – so you and I can form a bond, a connection that will never die.
As John’s Gospel continues, the writer will tell us that this relationship with Jesus, this intimate knowing, this living connection, becomes possible because of the divine energy in Jesus – and because his Spirit’s energy lives on in those who have met him. This is the mysterious energy that Christians, down through the ages, have struggled to describe, to put into words. This mysterious energy cannot be fully understood by thinking, even at the deepest level; it is an energy that only comes out of an encounter with a living Spirit.
Recognition energy
In “The Wisdom Jesus” Cynthia Bourgeault writes, The key ingredient I’ve been talking about is really recognition energy. It’s the capacity to ground-truth a spiritual experience in your own being. The gospels are built on it – and so was the early church – as the powerful liberation energy of the Christ event spills over and travels forward, moving from recognition to recognition.
Reading “The Wisdom Jesus,” I realized that in my friendship with Barbara there was arecognition energy that sparked between us. In a much deeper way, in my following of Jesus there has been a recognition energy that began long ago, but continues to reverberate in the depths of my inner being.
Cynthia Bourgeault also writes, In the gospels, all the people who encountered Jesus only by hearsay, by what somebody else believed about him, but what they’d been told, by what they hoped to get out of him: all those people left. They still leave today. The ones that remained – and still remain – are the ones who have met him in the moment, in the instantaneous, mutual recognition of hearts and in the ultimate energy that is always pouring forth from this encounter….
I have no other words this morning except to repeat what Jesus has already said: Come and see.
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* John 1:29-39
John saw [simple seeing – in the Greek, blepo] Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Look,[look, see with perception – ide] here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, `After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know [know, understand, perceive - heidein] him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed [made known, revealed - phanerothe] to Israel." And John testified, "I saw [contemplated, observed a sign – theasthai] the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know [see with understanding - hedein] him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, `He on whom you see [see the outward appearance - hideis] the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I myself have seen [see with understanding - horan] and have testified that this is the Son of God." The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched [fix one’s gaze, look with insight - emblepein] Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look [look, see with perception – ide], here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw [observe, notice, contemplate – theasthai] them following, he said to them, "What are you looking [searching for – zetein] for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come andsee [see with understanding - heidein]." They came and saw [know, understand – heidein] where he was staying and they remained with him that day.

2011-01-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

Remember Who You Are

Matthew 3:13-17

I was baptized when I was four weeks old. Not because I was sickly, but because it was Mothering Sunday and the vicar wanted a Mothering Sunday christening.

“Christening” comes from an Old English word, and was first used in the 13^th century to mean “make Christian” or baptize. A few hundred years later it came to mean simply “to name” and so you can talk about “christening” a ship when it is first launched. Although we still sometimes call infant baptism “christening”, since the early 1970s the Church has come to view it very differently.

The 1970s were a time of great change in society and in the churches. New thinking coming from Vatican II and from the study of early Christian writings which had been discovered at the end of the 19th century led to a reassessment of sacramental theology and liturgy. Within the Episcopal Church, the 1979 Prayer Book, the one we use now, was the result. In some ways it is quite different from its predecessors.

One of the big changes was the rediscovery of the importance and centrality of baptism. Instead of a happy family event to acknowledge a new child, it was re-positioned as the rite of initiation into the Christian faith. As this morning’s gospel reading shows, baptism is important. It is important enough for Jesus to have seen it as “fulfilling all righteousness”. Even though Jesus was without sin he still entered into the rite of initiation and allowed John the Baptizer to baptize him.

In baptism we make the story of God’s people our own. The people of Israel were in slavery in a strange land, but then they were liberated and led through the waters of the Red Sea to freedom. This is the foundational faith story. We hear it again in the story of Jesus the Christ. Humanity was floundering in the bondage of sin, lost in separation from God, but God in Jesus liberated us and brought new life.

In baptism we make this narrative our own. We place ourselves into the story of God’s people as we come through the waters of baptism like the Hebrews came out of Egypt through the Red Sea and later through the Jordan into the Promised Land. Jesus died and was raised into resurrection life. As we too pass through the waters we die with Christ and are raised again as new people, as integral members of Christ’s Body. We claim for ourselves the cosmos-changing work of Christ which restores us to right relationship with God.

In baptism we show our commitment to living a new life, a life in community, a life of service, a Christ-like life and we are sealed as Christ’s own for ever.

Sealed as Christ’s own for ever. This is central to our identity. It is our baptism that proclaims us Christ’s own. When Jesus was baptized, his identity as the Son of God was revealed by the descending dove of the Holy Spirit. Our identity as the children of God is revealed by our baptism.

That is why we have the font at the entrance to the church, as a visual reminder that God’s grace manifests in baptism and that who we are is defined by our having been initiated into the Body of Christ.

This isn’t some magical ritual. Baptism is not something that happens to us and transforms us without our conscious participation - it is a sacrament in which we are active participants. Many of you, like me, were baptized as infants and can remember nothing about it. It was our parents and our godparents who took the life-giving leap of faith on our behalf, and took the responsibility to help us grow up to understand that we are sealed as Christ’s own for ever, members of the household of faith.

Too often we fail the children who we have brought for baptism and instead of growing up in the glorious knowledge of their initiation, they grow up with little understanding of the possibilities, love and fulfillment available to them in Christ.

And what of us? Of you and me? Do we understand the possibilities, love and fulfillment available to us in Christ? Do we understand what it means to be sealed as Christ’s own for ever? As a result of our baptism we can claim God’s words, “This is my daughter, my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” You are God’s beloved. You are God’s daughter, God’s son in whom She is well pleased.

We have the possibility of a loving and trusting relationship with the all-Compassionate God. God is always there. When we stumble and fall, God’s love is still freely available to us. When we are in pain, God’s love is there to help sustain us. That is the reality of our lives as the children of God. But we often forget how amazing it is. We often forget that we are baptized.

That is why from time to time we sprinkle each other with holy water. That is why the water is available in the font for you to dip your fingers in and remind yourself – in baptism we have died and been raised with Christ. We are the beloved sons and daughters of the living God. We are the Body of Christ, we have been sealed as Christ’s own for ever.

Remember who you are!

2010-12-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

Living a Significant Life

Matthew 1:18-25

Joseph tends to disappear into the background of the Christmas story. We hear a lot about Mary, but little about the man who accepted Jesus as his son and brought him up. It must have been a very unpleasant shock to learn that Mary was pregnant. It’s not easy today to discover that your fiancé is carrying someone else’s child. Back then it would have been even harder. You simply did not marry a woman who was not a virgin.

Joseph was a good Jewish man. It was not simply a matter of personal scruples but of the law. Under the law, women found to have engaged in premarital intercourse could be executed. For him to expose Mary would have been to disgrace her to the point where she could have lost her life, but to allow it to seem that the child was his was to expose both of them to disgrace. He wanted to do the right thing by her and so Joseph decided to break off the engagement quietly.

But then he had the dream.

The dream that change the course of his life forever. An angel told him not to be afraid because the child was the Holy Spirit’s. And Joseph believed it. That took some faith.

Believing it in the dream took faith, but to wake up and to act on it took even greater faith. He exposed himself to ridicule and to a loss of face which was as devastating in that culture as bankruptcy can be in this. All because God spoke to him through a dream.

How does God speak to you? Does she come to you through your dreams? Or do you hear his quiet promptings in times of meditation or prayer? Or do God’s insights come to you through reading or through other people? Or are you aware of the presence of Spirit as we gather together in worship at the Eucharist?

The United Church of Christ recently had a publicity campaign with the slogan, “God is Still Speaking”. God is still speaking. And God wants to be speaking to you. But she is always courteous and does not push her way in where she’s not wanted. Do you want to hear God’s voice?

I wonder what would have happened if Joseph had woken up and decided that that was just a dream and that he had better get up and see to quietly breaking off his betrothal with Mary. I wonder if God would have sent him an angel in broad daylight or whether God would have stepped quietly back to allow Joseph to do what he wanted. Freewill is an amazing privilege – God never forces us to do anything. If Joseph had refused to marry Mary we would have a very different Christmas story, but the Messiah would still have been born, God would still have incarnated. Our God can always bring resurrection but when we get on board with God’s Plan A things generally work out better for everyone concerned.

There is a basic tension between what our little ego selves want to do and what the Spirit of God wants us to do. The little ego imagines what’s good for number one and it imagines that there isn’t enough to go round. So it’s always trying to prove how important we are. I imagine that Joseph’s little ego wanted to tell Mary what he thought of her for getting herself into this situation and bringing dishonor on the family. I imagine that he wanted to put as much distance between himself and this situation as possible and tell all his friends that she had deceived him. I imagine that his little ego was looking for all the ways he could blame this situation on someone else – Mary , God, the angel, the Romans, anyone.

As it was, Joseph was a man of faith who was willing to be obedient to the call of Spirit. Instead of listening to the panicking, angry voice of his little ego, he listened to Spirit. According to Matthew’s story, Joseph protected the child from Herod and found them all a home in Nazareth but we hear nothing else about him. Later in Chapter 13 we hear Jesus described as a carpenter or the son of a carpenter, depending on the translation so we can assume that that was Joseph’s trade. But there’s nothing else.

Nothing except that he had the faith to follow the Spirit and accept Mary as his wife, even when his little ego was screaming don’t have anything to do with her. Nothing except that he protected the child Jesus so that he could grow into the God-man whose ministry was vital for the unfolding of Gods plan.

I often talk to people who are disappointed with their lives. One of the exciting things about living in this country at this time is that we have so many opportunities. People aspire to great things. And so, at the end of their lives, many people are disappointed that they did not complete everything they wished. They may have a raised a happy family but they can’t see that because they didn’t get a college degree. They may have surmounted enormous difficulties to become a healthy, happy person but they look back and remember that they didn’t get a job in the State Department. Like George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life they feel insignificant, as though their lives have meant nothing.

Joseph seems insignificant, but how might our Christmas story be different if he had made different choices.

What can be more important than having the faith to follow Spirit and the courage to protect the spiritual life, the Christ life, growing inside us so that it can grow and flourish and become a blessing to the world?

When we, like Joseph, are willing to take the risk to follow the Spirit of God rather than our ego-based desires and demands, our lives are never insignificant. It’s not too late to have a significant life.

2010-12-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

The Big Picture

Isaiah 35:1-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Canticle 15

As most of you know, I don’t get to pick the readings we have each week and neither do any of the other clergy. We have a three year cycle which is set by the church, and which we share with most other mainline protestant churches and to a large extent with the Roman Catholic Church. Which means that all over the world people are hearing the same readings today. It also means that sometimes they aren’t quite what you would expect. Because this year we are hearing from the Gospel of Matthew we don’t have the familiar advent stories. We don’t hear about Zechariah being struck dumb, or the angel Gabriel coming to Mary, or about Mary going to stay with her cousin Elizabeth.

Instead of hearing stories about humans this Advent we hear about what God is doing. Today’s readings have a theme of astonishing hope and joy:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

We hear it first from Isaiah, then it’s picked up in the Magnificat, Mary’s hymn of praise and finally Jesus claims it as his own in the gospel reading.

Our lives are dominated by the activities of humans. We are each part of a web of human relationships of family, church and community. We are also part of a national and international community which is brought to us minute by minute on radio, television and internet. We see the human story all the time. The trick to being people of faith is being able to change the perspective and to see what God is doing.

John the Baptist, imprisoned for criticizing Herod, wanted to know what God was doing. Was Jesus the one he had been prophesying about or not?

Sometimes it’s easy for us to see what God is doing. Sometimes our lives seem to be full of signs of hope and we awake each morning with joy. At other times we are like John stuck in prisons of pain or discomfort, of loneliness and loss. Then it’s more difficult to see God’s hand.

It’s easy to get caught up in the political issues and the economic problems which fill our airwaves. It’s easy to despair about ever getting a job, to fear that social security will go bankrupt, or that the sewer will cost more than we can afford. These are real concerns, just as our own personal issues are real, but they’re only one way of looking at the picture.

As the Body of Christ one of our most important ministries in the world is to hold the other perspective. God is working. God is drawing all beings to God’s self. God’s extravagant and unconditional love is available to all.

Strengthen the weak hands,

and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are of a fearful heart,

"Be strong, do not fear!

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you."

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

Whatever the situation we can be sure that God is present and that, if invited, God will come in a new way and bring healing and new life.

People create ways of thinking and looking at things which limit our perceptions. We can’t think about things differently because we see them in a particular way. For those on the political left it’s fairly easy to see that tea partiers have a perception which is limited by their framework. It’s perhaps less easy to see that liberals also have perceptions which are limited by their framework.

Advent calls us to look outside the box. Advent calls us to see afresh that God is working in our world, that God is bringing new hope, and to be part of that. Whenever we succumb to seeing the world just as a human drama then we reduce the hope that’s available. Whenever we see not just the drama but God working in and through and beneath and above it, then our bifocal vision helps to bring new hope. By cultivating inner serenity, hope and joy based on our sure knowledge that God is working we can be a force for positive change in our world.

I have pondered all week the image that Donna left us with in her sermon last week. A field of alfalfa stalks burned leaving just black stubble, but in the blackness, shoots of green already visible along the irrigation channels. We are the irrigation channels for our world.

It may seem that our holding a vision of God’s salvation will make no impact on the problems which beset the planet, but we can be a beacon of light shining in the darkness. We can be the stream of living water which brings green even in the blackest of burned fields.

Even when the human drama leads us to despair, God is still working God’s purpose out. Our job is to ask how we can participate in God’s work and to cultivate serene, hopeful and joyful hearts. I’m going to close by asking Tica to sing us the first two verses of Hymn 534 which reminds us that the message of Advent is that God is coming, and God’s work will be done.

2010-11-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

Saints of God have Bifocal Vision

Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

As saints of God we get to live in two dimensions at once. Many of us have difficulty with this bifocal vision, and some of us get stuck in one dimension or the other. Getting stuck in life in the visible world leads to a pragmatic and ethically focused Christianity. On the other hand, getting stuck in the inner world leads either to disregarding the needs of the planet and its people or developing a dreaminess which is no earthly use. Today’s readings from the New Testament put the two dimensions side by side.

The writer to the Ephesians gives us a picture of our inheritance as the people of God. He says that we are marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit as a pledge of our inheritance. We are reminded of this at every baptism, when the priest anoints the newly baptized with the sign of the cross and says “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.”

“Marked as Christ’s own for ever”. That is not something that can be seen with our outer vision, only with our inner sight, but it is reality for those who have responded to God’s call and have turned towards God with their full intention. The writer of Ephesians says

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, 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, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power

“A Spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God”. We are all coming to know the mystery who is God. There is no point at which anyone can say “I know God completely, there’s nothing left for me to learn”. In that lifelong process we are assisted by the Holy Spirit who can enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we may know the hope, the inheritance and the power of God’s calling. I say ‘can’ because we get to participate in that process.

Our inner vision is not always clear. Just as human babies are born unable to focus their eyes, so inner sight takes time and sometimes effort to develop. It is cleared and brought into focus to the extent that we want it to be, and are willing to work towards greater understanding. Most of us have emotional and physical pain which acts like a cataract making it difficult to see. It weighs us down and tends to keep us focusing our attention on ourselves and our pain rather than on God.

As saints of God we have obtained an inheritance so that we “might live for the praise of his glory”. As our inner sight is cleared so we focus less and less on ourselves and more and more on God, living to glorify God with our hearts full of praise to the Trinity. Conversely the more we live to glorify God with our hearts full of praise, the more our inner sight is cleared.

Whatever is getting in the way of your inner vision, the Holy Spirit can and will clear it gracefully out of the way if you ask and bring your own will and intention into cooperating with Spirit. But it will be in God’s time, not yours. The process of coming to see and to know the inner kindom of God can be slow, and it can have sudden steps of insight and moments of blessing.

But until then, until you can see, until the eyes of your heart are enlightened so that you can know the inner truth that we call being “Marked as Christ’s own for ever”, you can believe it. Sometimes we have to take things on trust until we live into them and they become things that we know in our hearts. There’s an old hymn “Standing on the promises of God”. Even if you cannot yet “know what is the hope to which he has called you,” you can choose to trust in what you do not yet know and do not yet understand. You can stand on the promise of God that you are marked as Christ’s own forever and have an inheritance with the saints, even when it doesn’t seem very likely at all.

So that’s a quick reflection on the inner world, the kindom of God where the saints live in constant praise before the throne of God and all things are under Christ’s dominion. It’s the world we enter when we join in the eucharist, the great thanksgiving, and sing with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, “Holy, holy, holy”.

What of the outer world? How do the saints of God live in the world we see with our eyes? This is where the gospel reading comes in. We are familiar with the Beatitudes which are taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel. This passage comes from Luke where Jesus gives a similar sermon, known as the Sermon on the Plain.

The big difference between the two passages is the Woe section here – “Woe to you who are rich.” Now that should give us pause. Even those of us who have to get some of our food from local food pantries or ask friends for loans to pay the rent, are richer than the majority of the people in the world. Did Jesus really mean that? “Woe to the rich?” Aren’t I taking it just a tad too literally?

I think he meant it on several levels. And yes I do think he meant it literally – it goes along with his statement about the difficulty of a rich man entering the kingdom of God. Being rich gets in our way because we become attached to our things and to preserving them. Just the sheer maintenance of “stuff” takes time and energy. Donna shared with us a few weeks ago that wealthy people give less than poorer people. And being saints of God is all about giving, giving ourselves and our lives to God, giving ourselves to serve the Christ in all beings.

“Woe to those who are rich” can also mean “Woe to those who consider themselves rich”. Remember the parable about the wealthy farmer who had such an abundant crop that he built storage barns to put it in and felt self-satisfied and safe? Then he died. Jesus didn’t tell that parable to suggest that we shouldn’t be pleased and grateful for abundance when it comes, but to point out we are not the source of our abundance. Believing we can do it alone is an illusion. When we look at our lives and we feel pleased and satisfied, that is the time to remember this little slogan, “Woe to the rich”. When we are full up with how rich we are then there is no room for God.

The other trap is to think that we don’t have enough, when in fact we do. Since material things don’t satisfy, it’s easy for rich people to keep accumulating, or to hang on to things they no longer need. When you can have pretty much whatever you want, it’s easy to think that having things is what brings joy, hope and peace.

But the saints of God know differently. The saints of God can have the courage to live counter-culturally – to live simply so that others can simply live – because we have bifocal vision. We know that our riches are in Christ. We know that we are marked as Christ’s own for ever – nothing can take that away – so we can take risks with our lives and our money and our things.

At some point in their lives, the saints of God realize that all we have is given to us not just for our delight but also to advance the work of God’s kindom. We don’t have to hold on in fear - we can risk being seen to be poor or crazy or simpleminded. Because we know that we have an inheritance in Christ.

2010-10-31T07:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, God, Yes

Luke 19:1-10

It must have given Zacchaeus a terrible shock. He had climbed a tree to get a better look at this famous preacher and healer when suddenly the man stops underneath him, looks up, and says "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." Not only was Jesus planning to go to his house, but he knew his name.

Zacchaeus was obviously a better housekeeper than me, or more likely he had a wife, because he didn’t immediately start worrying about whether his home was clean and tidy enough for Jesus. He was immediately ready to welcome him. Then when Jesus came, his life was transformed. He changed his behavior radically – this would be like Bernie Madoff paying back everyone he cheated– not just what he owed them but even more.

Most of us are not like Bernie Madoff. We are not, in the words of the prayer book, notorious sinners. We are very ordinary and mundane sinners with unexceptional sins.

I wonder what difference it would make if on your way out of church this morning you found Jesus waiting for you and he said, “Hurry up, for I must stay at your house today.”? Would you be pleased? Would you welcome him? Or would you immediately think of a dozen different reasons why today is not convenient?

I would certainly worry about the state of my house. It is rarely pristine. But if Jesus knew Zaccheaus’ name, he probably knew where he lived and what his house was like. If he showed up and announced that he was coming home with me, I think I could assume that he knew what he was in for, piles of paper, cat fur, screeching cockatoo and all.

God comes to us in many different ways. I wonder how often we jump up and rush to welcome her, and how often we think that this really isn’t the time, that we have to get ready first, that there must be some sort of mistake. When you get the inkling that God is speaking to you, when you catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of your eye or catch the scent of her perfume, do you say “YES”. Yes God, come? Whatever it is you have in mind, however unprepared I feel, yes God yes?

What would it mean for you to say unreservedly, YES to God?

I read an article the other day which said that we don’t have to ask all the time what is God’s will for me. The author said that we just have to learn to discern between good and bad and then make the best decisions we can. God gave us brains and trusts us to get on with using them. To some extent I agree with him. I don’t think there is usually only one right decision, only one right person to marry, one right job to get, one right doctor to consult. If there were only one right decision then we would not have free will.

However my understanding of our faith tradition is that God is always inviting us into closer relationship. It is God’s joy to be working with us, to have us on board as co-creators. I often ask my close friends what they want to do – to find out when they want to get together, whether they want to play golf, see a movie, go to a play. Because unless I know what they want and they know what I want then we can’t agree how to further our friendship.

When we are serious about following Christ, about serving and worshipping God, then we are going to be serious about asking God to show us what to do and what to say each moment of every day. And sometimes we’ll hear clearly, other times we’ll just trust that since we prayed God will be guiding us and other times God will say, it doesn’t matter, you choose.

We don’t need to be anxious about doing God’s will, after all, if God wants the very best for each one of us then how can her will be something that would not be for our very best?

And yet we are. We wonder how we can know what God wants for us. And then there are times when we really don’t want to know, or we don’t want to be bothered today. There are times when if Jesus is standing on the veranda at coffee hour we just don’t notice. Don’t bother me now I’ve got things to do. Don’t bother me now, my back hurts so bad I can hardly stand. Don’t bother me now, I need to rest.

If Jesus shows up today as you’re leaving church and announces that he’s coming home with you, will you say “Yes”, “Yes, God, yes?”

There may be reservations in your mind. What if he asks me to sell everything I own? What if he tells me to make amends to everyone I’ve hurt? Or there may just be a general “I don’t think so”.

Our resistance to God gets in the way of our healing. It prevents us from being able to fully receive God’s gifts. Only when we are fully open to receiving all that God has for us, and to living the life that she calls us to, can we live as we were made to. But God is able and willing to remove our resistance and to bring us healing so that we can participate fully in his resurrection life. God’s incredible and extravagant love is available to transform us. But as Mother Julian said Christ is courteous and never forces himself into our lives. We have to be willing.

Willingness is not so difficult. We can be willing to want to invite Jesus home. God will honor our willingness to welcome him into every area of our lives, not just the public well-kept ones.

So this morning as we pray for healing for ourselves and others, let us pray that God will gracefully remove from us the things that get in the way and prevent us being able to say with joy “Yes God Yes. Come home with me today and stay for ever as my honored guest”.

2010-10-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

God's Faithfulness

Lamentations 1:1-6 Lamentations 3:19-262

Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

God’s providence touches every part of our lives and so we sometimes find ourselves contemplating God’s touch in two quite different areas.Today we have an interesting study in contrasts. We are celebrating St Francis day by honoring our companion animals but our readings are considering something quite different – the role of faith in our lives, and the readings started with a real downer.

The Book of Lamentations in Hebrew scripture is a series of five lengthy poems of inexpressible sadness, raw pain, and deep sorrow. The poets put into words our ancestors’ experience of living through enormous public and personal suffering as the city of Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 B.C.E.. For our ancestors, that city was the focus of hopes and dreams, the sign of God’s presence, the promise of God’s fidelity to them; its hills, its Temple, its walls and gates all spoke to travelers and residents alike of what they treasured. And now it was gone, and they wept.

We have all had times when the focus of our hopes and dreams has been taken away; through the loss of a spouse, the loss of a job, the failure to pass on exam, the onset of ill-health. And we have wept.

It often takes us a while to reach that place of faith:

this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,

"therefore I will hope in him."

In today’s gospel reading Jesus’ disciples were obviously wondering about faith. They were beginning to understand that following Jesus was not going to be all feel-good preaching, miracles and praise. It was going to take an unusual faith, because being disciples of Jesus for many people, then and today, means facing persecution and suffering. For those of us blessed to live without fear of persecution, it still means being willing to face your own shadow side, being willing to acknowledge your own pain and that of the world around you with compassion and without turning away.

As we look at the planet today there are many reasons for lamentation. Flooding, landslides, oil leaks, hurricane and earthquake, war which never seems to end, suicide bombing and hatred-mongering, melting ice packs and climate change. It is easy for us to get compassion overload and to turn away with a sigh. It is easy for us to become paralyzed and do nothing.

Faith gives us the ability to get up every morning and face the pain. Faith also enables us to work for change. Many of the great leaders and reformers have been people of faith. People who believed that God was doing a new work and that they were part of it. Even a very small amount of faith, Jesus reminds us, can be enough to make huge changes.

We use the word “faith” in a number of different ways. I’m not talking about believing in a particular world view or a particular cosmological system. I’m talking about the kind of faith the writer of Lamentations found:

this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,

"therefore I will hope in him."

This is faith based in a relationship. It is faith based in a knowledge of the character of God. I think it is analogous to the faith that our dogs and cats and birds place in us. We provide for them and they are dependent on us. I don’t think that my dog Sam ever worries about whether there will be breakfast. He knows that it will be provided. He doesn’t like it when I put stuff in his ears, he doesn’t much like it when I go out without him, but I think he knows and trusts that I am faithful and will take care of him.

This is the kind of faith that provides us with hope and joy even when everything around seems black. It is never too early to start cultivating this kind of relationship with God. If you wait until disaster hits then you’re scrabbling around hoping that the whole faith thing is real and that God really cares about you. Now is the time to experiment with developing a deep and trusting knowledge of the divine. It takes time. When Sam came to us from Woods he was grieving. His former human had died after ten years of companionship and his life had been turned upside down. It took time for him to develop a new relationship of trust with us. It takes time to develop faith in God.

There’s another kind of faith. That is listening for God’s voice and then doing what it says. Sam has never quite developed the art of doing what I say! And now he’s so deaf he rarely even hears my voice! We can be deaf to God’s voice or we can cultivate the ability to hear and to listen. Then faith is having the guts to do what we hear. This kind of faith is asking every day, “God, show me what I should do today, where I should go and to whom I should speak, and give me the words.” Then following the inklings. At first it may be difficult to distinguish God’s voice but it comes with practice and through the daily discipline of asking and of giving your life and will to God.

These days Sam always sticks pretty close to my side but when he was a little younger he liked to take his own route along the beach, often veering a hundred or more yards away from us. When he returned, occasionally he would be so pre-occupied with his own thoughts that he would tag along behind two complete strangers for several minutes before suddenly realizing that he had made a terrible mistake! Sometimes we do get off track, we think it’s God but it’s actually the voice of our own little ego. That’s OK, it’s all part of the learning process. It’s what confession is for. You look up, realize that it’s not God you’re following and head back in the right direction again.

As you watch the disasters of the world unfold it is appropriate to lament. But for people of faith it does not end with lamentation. It moves to hope and faith and trust.

this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,

"therefore I will hope in him."

Yet this is not a selfish personal peace but one which is to be shared. The gospel calls us to action. We are here to serve God not just to feel good.

As the gospel tells us we don’t need to be heroes but to serve faithfully. Our side of the covenant of faith is to serve God each and every day so that we each come to play our rightful role in the redemption of this planet.

2010-09-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

The parable of the dishonest manager.

Amos 8:4-7
Luke 16:1-13

At first glance it’s difficult to know what this parable is about. Instead of being furious that the manager has written off a lot of his receivables, the owner commends him. And astonishingly Jesus seems to approve of him too.

Jesus had a knack for telling memorable stories, and sometimes we forget that they are not allegories, where everything in the story represents something or someone else, but parables. Parables are teaching stories intended to make us see things differently. So we don’t need to try to understand the owner as God or the manager as us or the Pharisees or whoever. Instead let’s listen to the story with as open minds as we can muster.

A manager has been caught cooking the books and is given notice. He doesn’t want to become a manual laborer and begging is beneath him, so he decides to make himself very popular with those who owe money to the business. He calls the customers and gives them hefty discounts so that they will be obliged to him and will support him when he’s unemployed. And when he finds out, his boss approves.

It may help if we look at the context for this story in Luke’s gospel. Just before this Jesus has told three stories about forgiveness. First the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to look for one, then the woman who scours her house looking for one lost coin, and finally the prodigal son. It seems as though Luke is focusing on the question of forgiveness – who gets forgiven? And how much?

The prodigal son gets forgiven even though he has acted outrageously – having squandered his inheritance on wine, women and song he comes crawling back home. And his father welcomes him and isn’t even angry.

That’s a story about God’s grace – God’s incredible willingness to take us back and to give us the gifts of the kindom regardless of what we’ve done or how we’ve behaved. Perhaps this parable is too. The manager gives huge discounts. That’s certainly a picture of God’s grace. We can never earn enough to pay for God’s approval, but we don’t have to – it’s given to us at a huge discount, in fact for free! The manager could expect to get into even worse trouble than he is already, but his boss seems to treat his behavior as an example of savvy business practice, so the manager gets off scot free – that’s surely a picture of grace.

It’s all quite startling. No-one gets what we would expect. Which is the whole point of the gospel. We can let go of the fear and the shame that we carry, because God’s way of doing things is startlingly different. We don’t need to be afraid because, as the New Testament reading mentioned, God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”. Everyone.

What difference does it make to us to know that we are forgiven, that we are free? Jesus commends the actions of the dishonest manager – if he can think outside the box and come up with a way to save his skin, how much more can we be creative knowing that we are safe? What risks might we take in following Christ, knowing that ultimately all is well?

After the parable, Luke’s gospel segues into a conversation about money and stewardship. If we do not have to keep grasping and grabbing for ourselves; if we do not have to think about number 1 all the time because God’s already doing that; what difference does it make in how we live?

It means that we can risk being faithful to God even when that means going against the way everyone else thinks. It means that we can risk following gospel values of gentleness, cooperation, forgivingness instead of feeling that we have to compete and push others out of the way. We no longer have to keep tally of who owes us what and who we owe… we can risk living in grace, giving freely and recklessly because we are the children of God and that’s what God’s like.

We tend to confuse God and Santa. Santa is the one who keeps a list and checks it twice. Santa is the one who checks whether you’ve been naughty or nice. God doesn’t keep a list, God knows that we’re human and we sin. It’s part of the package. And through the work of Jesus Christ, God allows us to write off our debts and step back into full fellowship with the divine.

Living in communion with God, aligning our will with hers, is going to make a difference in our lives. Jesus says you can’t serve God and wealth; the prophet Amos who we heard from in the first reading underscores that – if you’re walking with God then you’re not cheating on other people in order to get ahead. But walking with God goes much further than that. If you are walking with God then you don’t need to be afraid of other people attacking you, which means you don’t have to attack them first.

Most of us have inner critics. We are always criticizing ourselves and we’re always criticizing other people. We’re always mentally attacking them. We don’t have to do that any more. In fact as children of the all-compassionate God we get to learn how to stop criticizing. That’s what forgiveness means. That’s what the radical grace that takes our bills and writes them off, calls us to do. To stop criticizing. To stop holding grudges. To stop tallying up what someone else has done or said. To stop tallying up what we have done or said.

This inner bookkeeping has to go. It isn’t Christ-like.

It’s not easy to let go of our negative thoughts about other people. For some of us it’s even harder to let go of our negative thoughts about ourselves. But the two tend to go together.

So here’s a way to start. Think of someone you find particularly annoying. Whoever comes to mind. Most of us won’t have to think very hard!

Make it a daily practice to pray for that person asking that God may make them the grace-filled Christ like being they were made to be. Whenever you find yourself criticizing them or remembering things they have done, ask God to forgive you and help you forgive them. Instead of thinking the angry, critical, negative thoughts remind yourself that they are as precious to God as you are. Whenever you come in touch with them, ask God to help you to see Christ in them.

This isn’t easy, this is mature discipleship. Letting others go free of our criticism and hidden anger challenges the way we have been conditioned to live. Allowing ourselves to fully experience God’s love for us, and allowing ourselves to realize the forgiveness that is ours in Jesus is mature discipleship.

Trusting in God’s radical and abundant grace so that we can become, like God, recklessly giving in every area of our lives, trusting that we will be held in grace, this is mature discipleship. We are the managers of all that God has given us. It is not ours, it is held on trust. Our job is to manage it without fear as beloved Children of a reckless and all-compassionate God.

2010-09-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Following Jesus is not for sissies.

Jeremiah 18:1-11
Philemon 1-21 Luke 14:25-33

Today’s gospel reading is the same one that we have on St Benedict’s day and so it seems to have special significance for us, as the people of St Benedict’s. I find it humorous that Jesus paints a picture of someone who sets out to build a tower, (we might say a church) and doesn’t get his math right in advance so he doesn’t have enough cash to finish it. I imagine that building was rather simpler in his day so that one could be confident in advance how much a project would cost. Even with the relatively small kitchen and bathroom project we’re in the middle of, we’ve had some surprises and have had to ask y’all to dig a little deeper.

But it’s not actually a gospel about building projects. It’s a gospel about discipleship. Jesus was the big celebrity of his day. Wherever he went people followed, curious to see him, eager to hear what he might say and to comment on his actions. A lot of those folk thought it would be cool to be his disciples, so today Jesus is warning that it just isn’t that easy. Our old friend, Lois Felmlee, used to repeat frequently “Getting old isn’t for sissies.” Jesus’ message today can be summed up as “Following Jesus isn’t for sissies”.

Being a disciple is not about going to church to hear an uplifting sermon, sing some great hymns, have a good time with friends and come away feeling warmed. Those things are good and when they happen we praise God. But that’s not what it’s really about.

The reading from Jeremiah has the powerful image of God as the potter. Those of you who have ever taken a pottery class know that clay gets slapped around. You can’t just pick it up and make it into something beautiful, however skilled you are. You have to pummel the clay until it’s soft and malleable then as you work it there are often false starts especially if you’re working on a wheel, so again and again you bash it into a lump and start again until you have the perfect bowl or whatever you’re making. But that’s not the end – you have to let it dry out, glaze it and then fire it in a very hot oven.

Being clay isn’t for sissies. Jeremiah is to tell the people of Israel that God will treat them like his clay. If the church is God’s clay perhaps the upheaval we are going through today with conflict, decline and uncertainty is one of those breaking down times before the new pot starts to be made. If you and I are God’s clay… well, what can I say? Being clay isn’t for sissies.

The second reading was from the rather odd little letter to Philemon. This was probably included in the New Testament because it is a letter from Paul, but unusually it’s a letter to one individual, Philemon. Philemon owned slaves and one of them had run away. Normally that he would receive a severe punishment if he were caught, but Onesimus had connected with Paul and had become a son to him. So this letter is to ask Philemon to accept him back as a brother and in love, not in anger and punishment.

What a lot to ask! What was Philemon to do? What would his friends think if he didn’t punish this runaway slave? What would it do for morale among his other slaves? If they saw there were no repercussions, perhaps they’d all start running away. But how could he go against the apostle’s wishes? Did his new faith really demand that he let his slave walk all over him and come back scot-free?

God often asks us to do things and to allow things that seem wrong to us. Our little egos have definite ideas of what’s fair and what isn’t. Our little egos have definite ideas of how the world should be, and they are willing to defend their ideas at all costs. Runaway slaves should be punished. Period. Our society has definite ideas of what the good life is and even in the face of evidence that we are destroying our planet, we go on defending our way of life. Slave owners are powerful, slaves need strong discipline. Period.

My friend Chuck said to me yesterday, “It takes courage to play the hand you’re dealt”. I think he’s right. Each one of us finds ourselves in situations which are only partially of our own making. They are the results of decisions we have made, but they are also just the way things turned out and the result of God pummeling the clay. Philemon didn’t expect that his new faith would create such a quandary. Onesimus never imagined he’d be going back to his old master. I never expected to be a priest in California.

Often there are things about “the hand we’re dealt” that we don’t like and we fight against them, we lament, we complain and even become bitter. Discipleship is picking up our cross and carrying it. Discipleship is accepting that what we have is what we have, what has happened is what has happened, and asking for God’s grace to live serenely and fully in God’s amazing love.

God’s love is able to transform us and the hand we’ve been dealt. When we give it to her. And that’s not easy for us humans because it takes humility. It takes asking every day, “Not my will but thine be done”.“Have thine own way Lord, have thine own way. Thou art the potter, I am the clay.”

The more we are able to turn things over to God, the more we will experience the joy of God’s abundant life welling up inside us bringing new hope. Jesus warns us - Discipleship is not for sissies. It is not an easy road, it has many unexpected twists and turns, but it is the road which brings us the greatest joy and the greatest life, because it is the road we were made to walk. We can depend on God’s overflowing love to hold us and comfort us even when we are being pummeled.

Often people tell me “I know this happened for a reason”. We want to make sense of our lives, and especially our losses and griefs, so we look for a reason. We need look no further. Thou art the potter, we are the clay.

Following Jesus is not for sissies.

2010-08-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

Walking Humbly

It’s a very un-American virtue. I think many of us misunderstand what it’s all about. Yet it is a virtue which is especially important in the Christian life and in today’s gospel, Jesus speaks directly to it. Our first lesson from the apocryphal book Sirach talked about one of the deadly sins. This is the virtue which is its opposite.

What am I talking about?

Humility.

Perhaps the whole of the spiritual life can be summed up in this verse from Malachi 6: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.

Let’s get rid of some misconceptions.

Humility is NOT being a door mat. Humility is not putting up with things that could be changed. Humility is not always worrying about imposing on other people. Humility is not thinking that everyone else is better than you. Humility is not wringing your hands and saying what a bad person you are.

Humility is knowing who you are and where you stand in the universe. Humility is being interested in others and asking them to talk before you talk about yourself. Humility is generously and carefully listening to other’s opinions even when they differ from your own. Humility is trusting that God will help you get where you need to be so you don’t have to push and manipulate to get to the top.

Humility is knowing that God’s amazing and compassionate love is available to everyone, and that God has no favorites. You and I are as important to God as Martin Luther King Jr. and as loved by God as Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.

So there’s no point in pushing yourself forward, it doesn’t achieve anything. And there’s no point in hanging back, hoping that someone will see your talent and call you forward. Because there’s no back or front or up and down. We are all equally valuable and equally important and equally beloved.

“Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” How do we walk humbly with God? This may be the most difficult thing for human beings to do. The Greeks told the story of Icarus who found a way to fly but became over-confident and proud, and flew too near the sun. His wings melted and he fell to the ground.

The ancient Hebrew people suggested that the reason we are separated from God is that the very earliest humans thought that they knew better than God and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And then when God came walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, they were ashamed and embarrassed and they hid from him.

Humans thinking they can do it alone. Humans thinking they have no need of God. Humans forgetting that God is the life in all beings. We can make robots and machines and mechanical birds but we cannot breathe life into anything. Life is the breath of God. Without God we are just an interesting collection of molecules.

Yet we forget that. Even if you agree with me now, there’s a good chance that by the end of this morning’s service we’ll be back thinking we get to do it all ourselves. It’s difficult for us to keep turning our lives and our wills over to God. “Not my will but thine be done”, as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

I think that is why Jesus is our example. Not because of the things he did. Not because of the things he said. But because of his relationship with his Abba Father. The gospels each give us a different picture of this foundational relationship, but they all show Jesus doing God’s will, living all the time with an awareness of the presence of the divine Creator. That is what we are called to do.

Right relationship with God is not the chatty relationship of friends or neighbors but a deep turning over of our lives to the divine. Daily aligning our wills with divine will. Every morning saying, “Show me what you would have me do, and be, today.” In every situation saying “Not my will but thine be done”.

Since God loves us unconditionally and extravagantly, God’s will is for our highest good. God’s will is for us to live full, rich and purposeful lives. So why wouldn’t we turn our wills over to God? Why wouldn’t we want what God wants?

…Because of sin, our notion that we can manage without God, that somehow our plans are better.

That, my friends, is pride.

True healing comes as we come into right relationship with God, as we pray “Not my will but Thine be done”. True healing comes as we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.

2010-08-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

God's Word is Fire

There’s an old adage that the task of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Jesus’ words this morning certainly fall into the latter category! They are not very comforting. Jesus was very frustrated with the people around him who just weren’t getting what he was talking about. By this time he knew that things were turning ugly and he was probably going to get killed – and maybe some of his disciples too – but everyone seemed to be complacent and speaking in platitudes. They did’t get the seriousness of the time.

It reminds me of the situation we are in today. We know that the climate is changing. We know that the vast flooding we are witnessed in Pakistan is just a foretaste of the disastrous flooding that is going to increasingly affect some areas of the world while others will experience just as devastating drought and famine. The Global Humanitarian Forum reported recently that climate change is already claiming 300,000 lives per year. We can see what’s coming but we’re not willing to do much about it, we want peaceful lives and here in Los Osos things are pretty much okay, so why worry?

I can imagine Jesus standing here and yelling, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Something to jog us out of our complacency, to wake us up and get us moving.

So far the United States has not been willing to take global warming seriously. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at significantly reducing climate-changing emissions, was ratified by 187 countries. The United States was not among them. In January of this year the Copenhagen conference on Climate Change ended without any significant international agreement. Here at home, legislation aimed at reducing climate change has been introduced and failed in almost every Congress since 1988.[1] Even though it is now considered to be one of the most serious security threats we know.

Global warming may be the most difficult problem our system of governance has ever faced. Our form of democracy is structured to provide benefits to the people who are able to actively participate in the system today. Those who are suffering now from the worst affects of climate change are not Americans and so are not represented. Those Americans who will suffer are in the future and so do not have a voice today. It will take people like you and me reading the signs of the times and grasping the seriousness of the occasion, to convince our elected officials to override the interests of the rich and powerful and enact policies that benefit political outsiders and future generations.

Jeremiah faced a similar situation in his time. His job was to prophecy the impending takeover of Jerusalem and the rest of Judah by the Babylonians, and to show the people of Judah that this was a result of their failing to keep their covenant with God. In his time, just like today, there were many preachers who preached sermons of comfort when it was time to preach sermons that afflicted. People then as now were wanting to hear a message of peace and comfort. They wanted to be soothed and leave feeling good. In our first reading this morning we heard about the false prophets who share their dreams. I can only imagine that these were dreams of comfort and prosperity.

What a contrast with God’s word which is like “fire and a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces.” It is time for God’s word to shatter the calm of our dreams. It is time for us to be lit with fire and passion to change the way we live and the way this nation lives. Ironically the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has overshadowed the climate change bill which was passed in the House of Representatives earlier in the year but never reached the Senate. We have to put pressure on Congress to act even though it is not an immediate issue. Just like health care, the changes we need to make are difficult because they mean change. They threaten some business interests even as they act to protect the life of our children and grandchildren. It is only when people like you and me all over the country start to make our voices heard louder than big business that changes will be made. We need to act before it is too late!

The comfort this morning comes in the New Testament reading. There the writer to the Hebrews reminds us of those who have gone before who were sustained by their faith. He mentions some of the great names of Jewish history as examples who can give us courage. We might think of more recent examples, William Wilberforce who led the British movement to abolish slavery, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther-King Jr., Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Sister Teresa, Brother Roger of Taize, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu. These are among the many in our own time who have gone ahead in faith, who have hoped for things not seen and have taken action. These are the ones whose examples spur us on because they kept moving forward in faith and in hope even when everything seemed hopeless.

There’s a prayer we use sometimes which goes, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” We are gathered together this morning to worship God and to seek God’s face together. We come together to the great meal in which God comes to us in the form of food so that we may be comforted, and we may be sustained. But it is not enough for our faith to motivate us to turn out on a Sunday morning when it would be easier to stay home. It is not enough for our faith to show us God present here in this holy place but not show us God present in the faces of our neighbors in Pakistan, the Sudan, Iran, San Luis Obispo.

As we come together to God this morning let us pray for ourselves and for one another that we may receive solace AND strength for the journey, that we may not only be pardoned but also renewed, set on fire with God’s passion. We live in a world that desperately needs to know the life-giving love of God not just transforming the lives and hearts of individuals but transforming the lives of our nation and the nations of the world. And as we leave here today, let us remember that we are being sent out to take God’s love to the world. And on Tuesday, let us all remember to vote.

[1] http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/opinion/25079947-47/climate-global-warming-economy-benefits.csp

2010-08-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

When is enough enough?

When the rich man in today’s parable found that he had enough to meet his needs he just built a bigger space to hold it all. It didn’t occur to him to give it away or even to sell it. Even though he had enough, he wanted more. Does that sound familiar?

Lots of people wanting more money helped create the recession - a situation in which everyone loses. It’s easy to point the finger at the very rich, especially when we are not. It’s easy to laugh at the rich fool who built bigger warehouses but then died before he could enjoy any of his stores. But we are the richest people on earth even if we’re not millionaires. Most of us could manage on less than we do. Most of us also have at least one area in our lives where we always want a little more, where we have difficulty seeing when we have enough. We are constantly exposed to advertising which is intended to make us want more. Our consumer society is geared towards making us greedy.

But as members of the household of God, we are called to be good stewards of all that we are given. That means knowing when we have enough, and being willing to give away what we don’t need. It means taking care of what we have and not amassing stuff just for the sake of it.

As good stewards we are called to live frugally and invest wisely so that we have plenty to share. The rich fool had enough for himself and plenty to share but he couldn’t see it. All he could think of was himself. He was rich in his own eyes but he wasn’t rich towards God.

Rich towards God. At this point in the sermon I could start talking about all the ways we can be spiritually rich. But I’m not going to do that because spirituality is not something separate from how we spend our money and how we deal with our things. I often talk about practical spirituality in terms of how we relate to one another, but this morning I want to stay with how we deal with money and possessions. The way we use what we have is our walk with God. It is not separate.

Sometimes a church member will join the vestry and find themselves surprised at how much time we spend talking about money and about ‘stuff’, including of course this building. I’ve had people tell me they thought it would be more “spiritual”. But there is no separation between our spiritual paths and the way we live our lives as householders. Money is spiritual. Stuff is spiritual.

We know that God likes stuff. God made it. The whole Creation story is about how God made everything that exists and made us creative so that we can come up with endless new ways to turn matter into stuff that we like. The story of the Incarnation is about how God came as Jesus into the physical world in a more intimate and complex way than ever before. So it’s not having stuff that’s wrong… we don’t have to turn our back on the material world in order to love God. In Genesis 1 God celebrates creation, every day he looks at what he has made and says “It is good, it is very good”. God wants us to look at what we have created, the lives we have made for ourselves and that we share with those around us and say “it is good”. The problem comes when like the rich fool we don’t know when to stop, we don’t know when enough is enough.

We have seen the terrible effects greed can have on our economic life. Over the last 25 years the gap between rich and poor in this country has increased dramatically. The median income for a CEO of a large company in 2009 was $6.6 million. That’s down from $8 million two years earlier. In comparison the median household income in San Luis Obispo was $60,000. The annual income of someone working full-time on minimum wage is $16,600. By paying workers the lowest wage they can get away with, CEOs increase the profits for their shareholders and get paid a princely sum to do so. That’s the way capitalism works.

Part of the cause of the recession is that gap between the poor and the rich. The rich have been getting richer. Instead of the people who do the work benefitting from the profits they create, those profits have gone to the managers and the owners of capital. That was exacerbated by the 2001 tax-cuts for the wealthiest people. So the rest of us borrowed on our credit cards and our home equity loans, sometimes just to stay afloat, sometimes because we didn’t know when enough was enough. If those profits had been shared more equitably then those at the bottom wouldn’t have needed to borrow so much. If they hadn’t wanted to borrow then banks wouldn’t have made sub-prime loans. Those who made sub-prime loans did so because they wanted to make more money.

So it’s not just a personal issue. The way you use the money and possessions that God has given you is not just a personal decision. It affects everything. The less you use for yourself, the more you have to give away so the more you can support God’s work in the world.

Becoming rich in God is what enables us to loosen our grip on stuff, to let go of the need to hold tightly on to all that we have in case there is not enough. Becoming rich in God happens as we turn to Christ in daily prayer and loving surrender. As our fears and anxieties are calmed and as we are filled by the love of God, we no longer need to sooth and fill ourselves with things. We no longer need to be seen to be successful and wealthy. We find that ‘enough’ comes much sooner.

The early church gave away or sold their possessions and held everything in common, and at different times in history other groups of Christians have felt called to do the same thing. Because Jesus lived with few possessions, we his followers are also called to live a simple life. We are called to live lightly on the earth, in a way that does not produce pollutants and carbons which affect the air we breathe and contribute to global warming.

We are called to live carefully and compassionately in a way that honors God and does not leave trash for the generations coming after us to clear away. We are called to live simply so that others may simply live.

This last week I spoke at a rally to protest State budget cuts in health and human services. Once again we are in a deadlock position with the State budget and the Governor is determined not to raise any revenues but rather to cut services and subsidies for those who are already the most vulnerable - services which have already been cut by $20million over the last four years. Once again this is letting the rich get richer at the expense of the poor and at the expense of the jobs of those who help the least able.

It’s a mindset that invades every one of us. We are afraid that if we give anything away we will not have enough for ourselves. So we amass more clothes than we need, more square footage than we need, bigger cars than we need - we forget that we have enough and we go on wanting more. We don’t think about the effects our greed may have on others. And when we can’t get more, we feel inadequate as though there’s something wrong with us, and that we are being left out. As our incomes shrink or our abilities fade due to ill-health or age, we get scared. What if there isn’t enough?

God’s economy does not obey the same rules as the world’s economy. In God’s economy what you give away is given back to you. In God’s economy, living frugally so that you can give generously leads to greater riches. Many people find the idea of tithing hard. They look at their income and imagine how difficult it would be with 10% less. What they don’t realize is that in God’s economy, what you give comes back to you. It doesn’t usually come back in the form of checks in the mail, but your wealth increases.

Wealth is not big storage units filled with stuff. Wealth is having enough and to share, being peaceful and content with loving relationships and a life-giving knowledge of God. My prayer for all of us is that as we find ways to live more simply, with less stuff, so our wealth will increase and our lives will be poured out as a blessing to others.

Amen.

2010-07-21T10:16:00.001-07:00

The Mystery of God - The Rev. Donna Ross

"The Trinity" by Andrei Rublev, c. 1425 A.D.

We have heard two marvelous stories this morning: Abraham and Sarah welcome three strangers to their tent under the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18:10); Mary and Martha welcome Jesus into their home in Bethany (Luke 10:38-48).

Even on first reading, we can hear the theme of hospitality that links these lessons: Abraham and Sarah, Martha and Mary all welcome their guests, all open their homes, all offer their hearts, to the Holy Other.

Going deeper into these stories, we are invited to look into the very nature of welcoming: Hospitality is not just good manners, nor just preparing a feast. True hospitality is to open oneself to others - even daring to become open to the Spirit's presence in the Other.

Going even deeper, we begin to find that hospitality is part of the infinite nature of God.

Mary and Martha, Sarah and Abraham - each has his or her own way to greet the stranger. Martha runs around her house, preparing a feast for Jesus; Mary sits at Jesus' feet with the other disciples, listening to what he has to say. Abraham sits under the oak of Mamre with the three strangers, asking questions, listening to their stories; Sarah hastily prepares the meal and then hides away in her tent.

What is true hospitality? Isn't it to prepare a space for others, to reach out with practical help, and also to sit and listen?

Each of us, I suppose has a "Mary" and a "Martha" within ourselves; each of us is probably inclined towards one style or the other, but each of us has the life-long task of being both Mary and Martha, doing practical things with our hands and voices, and at the same time listening with our minds and hearts.

I could end today's meditation right there each of us must find a way, like they did, to welcome God into our lives, into our hearts.

But I must go on with a question: How can we learn how to do that?

And that leads me to another question: How did the first disciples experience God? They all grew with the Jewish idea of God, the Holy One, the Almighty, the Creator - they had learned about God from their parents, from worship, and from Torah. Now, however, they also experienced the presence of God in a man, Jesus of Nazareth. And the presence of God in Jesus was not just the brief flashes of holiness that all of us experience at times in our encounters with others; in Jesus of Nazareth, they experienced the steady welcoming, the deeply embracing, the constant presence of God. How were they to understand this new experience of God's presence with them? And then, after the crucifixion, they experienced him again - not only the Risen Jesus, whom at first they could see and touch, but also the Spirit, unseen but with Jesus' personality, his guidance, his comfort, his welcoming embrace. How could they explain all these ways - this kaleidoscope of experiences - that brought them close to the presence of God?

Only very gradually did the idea of "Trinity" emerge - an idea which tried to put into words the Christian experience that God has come to us in more than one way. Only very gradually did the idea of "Trinity" become a doctrine of the church.

Karen Armstrongs newest book, The Case for God, examines the development of western rational thinking on the Trinity. While we may think the definition of "Trinity" ends in the Nicene Creed of the 4th and 5th centuries, western thinking about the experience of God has never ended. Western attempts to understand God rationally, western attempts to find the words that will nail it down, have never ceased.

But no matter how many words we use, Gods nature cant be rationally analyzed - no matter how many words we use, no matter how smart we are, we'll never completely understand God.

On the other hand, Eastern Orthodoxy has seen the Trinity as a mystery to be contemplated, rather than a doctrine to be explained and mastered -- and the icons of Eastern Orthodoxy can give us another way to contemplate the mystery which we call God.

The Dutch priest Henri Nouwen encountered God in Andrei Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity, which on the surface recalls the story of the three men who visited Abraham under the oaks of Mamre. But in this icon, Nouwen found what he came to call "the house of love where God resides.

Nouwen wrote of this experience in "Behold the Beauty of the Lord": During a hard period of my life in which verbal prayer had become nearly impossible and during which mental and emotional fatigue had made me the easy victim of feelings of despair and fear, a long and quiet presence to this icon became the beginning of my healing. As I sat for long hours in front of Rublev's Trinity, I noticed how gradually my gaze became a prayer. This silent prayer slowly made my inner restlessness melt away and lifted me up into the circle of love, a circle that could not be broken by the powers of the world. Even as I moved away from the icon and became involved in the many tasks of everyday life, I felt as if I did not have to leave the holy place I had found and could dwell there whatever I did or wherever I went. I knew that the house of love I had entered has no boundaries and embraces everyone who wants to dwell there. (p. 21)

Take a moment now, like Henri Nouwen, to gaze at Rublevs icon.

Notice that, unlike most icons, the angels are not looking at you; they are facing each other.

Notice, also, that even while the angels seem frozen in place, frozen in time - yet there is movement between them. There is a circle of energy which turns and turns, and if you sit before the icon for a while, that circle ultimately will draw you in, welcoming you into the circle of love.

And then above the angels, notice the little house, the tree, the mountain.

The house may represent Abraham's tent; but it also points to the House of Love. The tree may represent the cross of Christ; but it also points to the Tree of Life. The mountain may represent the Palestinian landscape; but it also points to the heights of insight.

And again, notice the table. This is the table of Eucharist, at which the angels sit to eat.

Look now at the open space on this side of the Table: there is a space there for you.

Through this icon, we are invited to enter the mystery of love:
the mystery of God's infinity;
the mystery of God in community;
the mystery of God in the Eucharist;
and Gods mysterious, continuing presence in human acts of hospitality

2010-06-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

Walking your Talk

Galatians 5:1, 13-25 Luke 9:51-62

I suggest you get a piece of paper. On one side is write Priorities and on the other Values.

I’d like you to take a few moments now to write down your Priorities as they come to mind – what do you prioritize in your life? What’s most important?

Now go to the other side and write down your values – what qualities do you think are most important?

When you compare your two lists I wonder whether you notice any discrepancies. Are the things that you are prioritizing in line with your values?

I think this is what Jesus had in mind in today’s gospel reading. On the face of it Jesus’ words are rather harsh, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." But if you are plowing by hand with oxen or another animal pulling the plow, you have to look forward to see what you are doing. Looking back defeats the purpose.

If your priorities in life are not in line with your values it’s the same thing. You say you’re doing one thing but all the time you’re being pulled in a different direction. It’s like the man who wanted to bury his father before he followed Jesus. I don’t for a moment think that Jesus expects us not to bury our parents, but the man is ambivalent. He wants to follow Jesus but later when it’s more convenient. If he really wanted to follow Jesus, he’d do it - like the disciples who immediately left their nets and followed Jesus.

How ambivalent are you? Where in your priorities and values did you put following Jesus, or loving God or serving God? I know there are hundreds of other things you could be doing rather than sitting here today, so the fact that you are here this morning suggests that you want to make God a priority in your life. But is there something getting in the way? Are you waiting until you grow up? Waiting until you retire? Waiting until your ship comes in? Have you decided to put God first but then gotten distracted, like the man who started to plow his field but started looking back at where he’d been rather than forward at what he was plowing?

It’s as though we start every day with a certain amount of energy. If we are caught up in the past, remembering how things used to be, held captive by loss we’ve experienced or prone to nostalgic remembering, then some of our energy is being spent in the past and isn’t available for today. In the same way, if we are caught up with worrying about the future or the things we have to do, then we are spending energy on the future and it isn’t available for today. Jesus challenges us to pull our energy away from the past and the future and to follow him today, here and now, with nostalgia and without anxiety.

The New Testament reading is all about the question of walking our talk - of making the way we do things match the values we say that we have. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the second great commandment, right after love God with all you’ve got. And Paul says, take it seriously – if you say you’re following Jesus but get into backbiting and gossip it’ll come back to bite you. You’ll find yourself caught up in it again. You’ll stop being free because you’ll get caught up in the gossip and bad mouthing.

In the gospel reading the brothers James and John had a bad case of forgetting to love their neighbor. When the Samaritan villagers failed to offer them hospitality, James and John wanted to destroy the village with fire! We live in a time when American society has become polarized. It is normal for people to demonize those who disagree with them. We divide the world into good guys who think like we do and bad guys who think like they do, and if we could we’d just get rid of them. This is not loving our neighbor. If you are a Democrat your neighbor is a Republican. If you are against the sewer your neighbor is for it. If you are gay, your neighbor is a homophobe. If you oppose oil drilling, your neighbor supports it. As disciples of Jesus we get to practice being Christ-like which means loving those we disagree with, not cursing them or calling down fire and brimstone on them.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” These are the values we are called to cultivate. Joy and peace are inner qualities, but the others are all practiced in relationship; Love, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is in relationships that we are most challenged. Are we following Christ? Are we developing patience, gentleness, self-control?

Being a disciple of Christ is hard work. It may not be for everybody. It’s not feeling good on Sunday mornings and trying to be a good person. It’s watching the plow and trying to get the row straight and even, and doing it over and over again even when it isn’t convenient and even when it’s not much fun.

Does what you do match what you say? Do the things you prioritize match what you say is important to you? Are you living your values in your life? And are your values the values of God?

What are the fruits of your life? Are they love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?