Faith in Progress

Nightwatch

2012-02-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, we took a group of middle and high schoolers from St. Aidan's to New York City. It was a quick trip - left Friday at noon and returned Saturday at 9 p.m. But full of adventure. We arrived in time for dinner and ate at a pizza place across from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I'm not sure if it was really the best pizza in the world, or if I was just starving and thrilled to have arrived safely.

After dinner, we checked into the Cathedral for its Nightwatch program, which is basically a lock-in. There were about 80 youth from Connecticut, NY, Maryland, and Virginia, some Episcopal and some not. They started us out with some ice-breakers. (This is our group watching the Cowboys, Ninjas, Bears tournament -- lock rock, paper, scissors but more of a full-body experience.)

They had a great band of young and very talented musicians that led music for worship. We started with a singing downstairs in the gym, where we would later spend the night.

(These girls in front are not from our group. Being good Episcopalians, our youth never found themselves in the front row of anything.)

They led us into the Cathedral with no light up there except candles and blasted us with the organ. After hearing a pretty incredible organ demonstration (including an impromtu riff on Twinkle Twinkle and the Pink Panther theme), they put out a labyrinth and for about an hour our group rotated through it with meditative music in the background. Most of our youth (maybe even all of them) hadn't walked a labyrinth before. We have one at St. Aidan's, and I love it, but there's definitely a different feel when surrounded by a Cathedral in candlelight.

There was some free time after that, with lots of basketball playing in the gym below. At about midnight, we gathered back up in the Cathedral for a midnight candlelight Eucharist. I was the only Episcopal clergy there so got to celebrate, so now I can say I've celebrated communion at a Cathedral.

Lights went out in the gym at 1:30 a.m. and we slept pretty soundly until 7 a.m. Breakfast, clean-up, and then a tour of the cathedral, which looked very different by day, with sunlight pouring through all those stained glass windowns.

(Can't remember who this was, but the kids were entranced with his bald marble head.)

We met the resident peacocks (not pictured), packed up our stuff, and headed out into the city.

We took a bus to Rockefeller Plaza so we could see the sights along the way, including Central Park. We had some serious 30 Rock fans in the group.

We walked to Times Square (where we apparently just missed a flash mob) to people watch and of course make an obligatory visit to the M&M store. Then by subway to Ground Zero where we walked through St. James Chapel to see memorabilia from that time and saw the new buildings going up. I was filled with emotion in the Chapel and it was odd to think that the youth with us were just babies in 2001. But how completely that experience has changed the world for them.

A great trip and a fabulous bunch of youth!

Jonah ... the Rest of the Story

2012-01-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

Epiphany 3, Year B
January 22, 2012

In seminary, one of my good friends was always complaining about how the lectionary didn’t include enough of the great Old Testament stories. I hate to admit it, but I always thought it was much ado about nothing until I started preaching and thus really started paying attention.

We go through pretty much all of the Gospels in our 3 year cycle, and get plenty of time with the Epistles, but other than the Psalms we only get one Old Testament reading each week. Only one-in-three of our major readings are from the part of the Bible that is 3 times longer than the New Testament. So I guess it’s not surprising that our coverage of the Old Testament is reduced to snippets and sound bites. But today’s example, from the book of Jonah, is especially egregious.

The miniscule portion of Jonah that we get today is not enough to bother with. It makes both Jonah and God seem like boring and one-dimensional characters, when in reality they are anything but. God is patient and forgiving and has a sense of humor. Jonah is whiny and inept and self-righteous and utterly human. And so in the spirit of completeness and in-depth biblical education, I bring you this morning a dramatic reading of Jonah. (Don’t worry - it’s a short book!)

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying,
God: Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.
But instead Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him,
Captain: What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.
The sailors said to one another,
Sailor: Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.
So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him,

Sailor: Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?

Jonah: I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him,
Sailor: What is this that you have done!
For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so. Then they said to him,

Captain: What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?
For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. Jonah said to them,
Jonah: Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord,
Sailor & Captain: Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.
So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying,
Jonah: I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?' The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!
Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying,
God: Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.
So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out,
Jonah: Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh:
King: By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands! Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said,
Jonah: O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!
God: Is it right for you to be angry?
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said,
Jonah: It is better for me to die than to live!
God: Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?
Jonah: Yes, angry enough to die!
God: You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?
The (Expanded) Word of the Lord! Thanks be to God!

And so with our deepened and improved understanding of Jonah, I now leave you with a few questions:

God had to ask Jonah more than once to go to Ninevah. Is there anywhere in your life where God been repeating a message or trying to get your attention?

Jonah not only didn’t listen to God, he turned and ran the other direction. Is there a time when you turned away from the path God wanted to you take?

From the belly of the fish, Jonah had an entirely different perspective on his life. Is there a time when you have been as low as you could imagine and were able to see your life differently?

Jonah was bitter when he saw God’s graciousness toward the people of Ninevah. Have you ever felt like someone did not deserve forgiveness?
What do you think would come next for Jonah following this story? What might come next for us, all of whom can probably identify some piece of ourselves in Jonah?

Amen.

Responding like the Shepherds

2011-12-31T10:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve, 2011
Luke 2:1-20

This is an odd time of year. There is such an intense build up to Christmas – the stores marketing all the things we need to buy in order to prove our love to people, the pressure from our families to spend more time with them or from our kids to get them this or that, the barrage of holiday gatherings and events. Sometimes it feels like the world is screaming for our attention from so many directions that it’s easy to miss the miracle that we celebrate tonight.

I found myself more frustrated by the world’s hijacking of Christmas than usual this year. The newspaper has been my particular area of anguish lately. First it was the Macy’s ads that caught my eye – the ones telling us to “Believe” – but as far as I can tell, even Macy’s isn’t sure what we should believe in beyond spending money. Then the Bloomingdales’ full-page ads that assault us with their “Nifty Gifty” ideas, none of which cost less than $50. But it isn’t just the ads and the buying frenzy that give me heartburn. In the Kids’ Post this week there was an article summarizing the many holidays that are celebrated this time of year, including an Indian holiday called Diwali, Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, Christmas and Kwanzaa (in that order). What bothered me wasn’t the inclusion of these other winter holidays, or even their seeming priority, but the way the Post characterized Christmas. I quote: “This important holiday in Christianity is now a major commercial holiday, too, with gifts and shopping and lots of Christmas lights. About 1,700 years ago, the Christian church chose to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25, which at the time was the date of the winter solstice. As those celebrations were focused on light, the tradition carried over to Christmas.” The birth of Jesus is mentioned in passing but only after gifts and shopping. And while Hanukkah rated a mention of the miracle of the oil lamps, in the Christmas blurb there is no shout-out to the miracle of Jesus’ birth or to the incarnation of God in that baby. It’s just a birthday celebration for Jesus with lots of shopping involved. Fabulous.

It’s a hard time of year to be still enough to let the Christmas story wash over us. To sink into the mystery and let it speak to us, wherever we find ourselves. And so tonight I offer you the Christmas gift of a journey with the shepherds. Let’s join them as they hear the glorious story of Christmas. And even better, maybe we can join in their response and turn the world’s celebration of Christmas upside down.

“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

So here are the shepherds, out in the fields, minding their own business. Shepherds in Jesus’ time, as you might imagine, were dirty and smelly and poor. They were nobodies with nothing jobs, living outside polite society. When we meet them they aren’t up to much. Just trying hard to stay awake and protect their ovine charges from wolves and whatever other nasty things might come after them in the darkness.

Now imagine yourself out in the “fields” of your life, wherever that might be. Imagine yourself with whatever or whomever the “sheep” in your life are, the things or people that you spend your time with. Just like the shepherds, that’s where our stories so often begin. We are doing whatever it is we do; sometimes life is going along well and sometimes it is messy.

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”

Wherever your “fields” and whatever your “sheep,” can you imagine just being in the midst of your normal, mundane life, and suddenly something like this happens? The shepherds weren’t just surprised or confused or a little anxious about the appearance of the holy messenger before them – they were terrified, petrified, or as Linus puts it so beautifully in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, they were “sore afraid.” Who among us would judge them for that? It would be a pretty shocking thing to have an angel appear before you unexpectedly. There’s no hint that the shepherds were particularly religious people or that they were seeking a God experience. And yet God jolts unexpectedly into their unassuming and anonymous lives, and sometimes into ours, and unsettles everything.

“But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid.” (Angels are always saying that, it seems, always reassuring people that they aren’t out of their minds.) And then the angel continued: “For see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’”

God surrounds the shepherds them right where they are, smack dab in the mud and the muck. Ours isn’t a God-up-there, but a God-with-us. Suddenly these shepherds who must have felt so discounted by the religious people and practices of their time are literally surrounded by God, filled with God, shining with God’s glory. Just like for the shepherds, however less than ideal our circumstances may be, however far from home we find ourselves, however little our lives reflect the Christmas cards we send, our God comes among us right where we are.

“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.”

These shepherds may not have been included in the ranks of the proper religious people; they may not have been able to recite scripture or have been familiar with any of the prophecies surrounding Jesus’ birth. But they immediately recognized the messengers as being from God. And they didn’t stop there, content with their spiritual encounter. They recognized the message as something requiring action from them. They didn’t sit and wonder endlessly about what the angels’ visit meant, or diddle and waffle about what to do next. They sensed God calling them and so they moved - and with haste, no less. Presumably they left behind the sheep in those fields as they ran toward Bethlehem, sensing somehow that what they were about to witness was worth more than their livelihood. We hear this story so often that it sounds more romantic and clean to us than it must have felt to the participants in the story. This baby with nowhere but a manger to lay its head, this seemingly ordinary and common child, was somehow the Savior of the world. I wonder if there are times and places where God might be coming among us and we don’t realize it? Or maybe we even sense it but we’re afraid to act?

“When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

The shepherds knew immediately that the story of their encounter with God was news was worth spreading. But what unlikely evangelists these shepherds were! These rough, worn, exhausted nobodies were the first to hear, the first to see, the first to tell of the birth of God-with-us. Over and over again, God surprises us by choosing the lowest of the low to spread the good news. The world around us may focus on the influential, the good-looking, and the wealthy. But not God. God jumps into the thick of humanity and emerges from the very bottom of the heap.

“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”

It’s interesting to imagine those shepherds heading straight back to their sheep, back to their grueling jobs and sleepless nights, back to their lives of being looked down upon by the rest of the world. In a way, nothing has changed – God didn’t lift them out of their messy lives into lives of contentment and ease. And yet somehow everything changed for them. They are filled with a whole new sense of purpose and joy; so completely brimming over that they can’t keep to themselves all they’ve experienced. The change for the shepherds, and very often for us, isn’t in where we find ourselves or in what is happening around us but in ourselves.

Tonight we finally encounter the mystery we have been preparing for throughout Advent. Wherever we are, in whatever particular field we may be living right now, the good news and mystery of Christmas is that God has come among us – thoroughly and finally and forever. Christmas isn’t just a birthday party for Jesus; it isn’t just the marking of an event in history. Tonight we remember what has already been accomplished by God in Jesus and the promise of its completion. An entirely new creation was born on Christmas Day. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it, the crater between God and humankind has been bridged. Whatever our fears may be, no matter how ordinary or how unlovable we may think we are, God includes us in His embrace; we are part of the Christmas mystery. Amen.

The Mystery is All Around You

2011-12-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

December 11, 2011
Advent 3, Year B
Isaiah 61:1-3

I know I mention the stories from our Godly Play Sunday School a lot in my sermons, but it really has been a great treasure trove of theology for me. Maybe it’s like that book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, where Robert Fulghum shows how kindergarten laid the foundation for everything that is essential for us as adults (sharing, working well with others, cleaning up our own mess, being patient, and my personal favorite “being aware of wonder”). Sometimes the simple but well told stories, and the quiet beautiful metaphors are just what I need to think about something that I feel like I already know in a new way.

So I’m going to share with you my newest favorite piece of theology from Godly Play by showing you something that the kids do each week of Advent.

During Advent, we are getting ready to enter the mystery of Christmas by lighting candles. Each week, we have a chance to become part of the story. The first candle is for the prophets. They tell us to “Stop. Watch. Pay attention. Something incredible is going to happen in Bethlehem.” The second candle is for the Holy Family – pregnant Mary and Joseph. We are going with them on their journey to Bethlehem. The third candle is for the shepherds. We are with them when they are frightened by that great light in the sky and hear the angels sing their tidings of good news. The fourth candle will be for the wise magi. Along with them, we will begin to follow that wild star in the sky as we make our way to see the mystery for ourselves. Each week, the light grows as we come just a little closer to Christmas, when finally we reach Bethlehem and meet the child who is the mystery we’ve been preparing ourselves for. And so each week, we stop and we enjoy the light.

But then comes the best part. (For me, anyway.) We end the story by “changing the light.” At first, you see, the light is all in one place. But then we can see the light change to be in every place. If you’re sitting up front, you can see the smoke swirling in circles, getting thinner and thinner, spreading out to fill up the whole room. Now you can’t see it anymore, but the light isn’t gone – it’s just changed. This room, the whole world, is full of the light of the prophets, the Holy family, the shepherds and the magi. Anywhere you go, you can come close to the light. No matter where you are, that mystery is all around you.

The mystery is all around you.
Maybe Advent is really a time to be more attentive to what has actually been there all along.

I’ve been reading Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle and just came to the part where she is talking about how artists in the moment of creation are actually in tune with that great mystery which lies underneath our comings and goings and busy-ness. She quotes George Eliot, who wrote: “If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

L’Engle thinks that children naturally seem to understand this better, and I think she’s right. We adults get so wrapped up in our to-do lists, so worried about doing things correctly, that we have trouble letting go enough to really listen and look for what is all around us.

Of course it isn’t just the children or the artists who are capable of this, and yet they can help us remember how to do it. Recently I’ve been taking my youngest daughter, Maya, to Art at the Center for a “young explorers” class. Kathryn Coneway, who owns and runs the studio, sets up balls of clay on the tables with things like popsicle sticks or thread spools for the kids to experiment with. And the long art tables are set with invitingly blank sheets of paper along with brushes and paint. (I get more excited that the kids when she hands around the sparkly silver paint that makes our creations shine.) And there are light tables with brilliant colored plexiglass to build and stack with. The class isn’t for me, supposedly, and yet it has become my happy place. I follow Maya around as she guides me from place to place, poking and prodding the clay, sweeping swirls of color onto the page, stacking up rainbows of plexiglass. She has no agenda, no expected result, nothing to prove to anyone. She is absolutely in the moment. And so am I. On Thursday mornings from 9:30 until 10:30, I am gradually rediscovering and reclaiming the creativity I rejoiced in before lines and rules and order started to prevail. At least for that one hour a week, I have a glimpse into the mystery that we are walking towards, or maybe running headlong towards, this Advent.

And during that hour, I feel like I can understand just a little better what Paul means when he tells the Thessalonians (and us) this morning to “rejoice always” and “pray without ceasing.” We tend to think of prayer as being about what we do in church or maybe silent meditation by candlelight, and that is prayer, of course; but this “pray without ceasing” business is much broader and more all-encompassing than that. There was a French monk named Brother Lawrence who wrote about how he found God’s presence even when he was surrounded by noise and clatter washing pots and pans in the monastery kitchen. Nothing is too mundane for God. I was in a Bible study once with a woman who shared how her early morning routine of grinding and making coffee was where she most reliably felt God’s presence. She said it was as if during those moments she was offering up her day to God and God was blessing whatever might lie ahead. I think it would be hard for us to find anything that couldn’t be turned into a place where we encounter the mystery of God if we slow down and make room for it.

And so, in this third week of Advent, as our pink candle assures us that we have turned the corner towards Christmas, I challenge you (and myself) to stop and pay attention. Not just to the incredible thing that is about to happen in Bethlehem, but to the seemingly un-incredible things that are happening all around you. Watch for the grass growing. Listen to the squirrel’s heart beating. Know yourself to be in the presence of the mystery that was, as is, and is to come.

Amen.

Countdown to the New Year!

2011-11-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

November 20, 2011

Christ the King Sunday
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46

Today is the last Sunday of the season after Pentecost. It’s called either “Christ the King Sunday” or its more PC version “Reign of Christ Sunday.” Advent starts next Sunday, and with it the beginning of a new Church year. So maybe we can think of our celebration brunch later this morning as a sort of New Year’s Eve party for the parish.

I always feel surprised and a bit overwhelmed on December 31 as I think about New Years’ resolutions, so I think it is very kind of the Church to give us an entire week to get ready for the beginning of the new liturgical year. I sometimes get ready for a new year in three parts – past, present and future. I look back at where I was when the year began and think about all that has happened -- what has gone well or maybe not so well. And I think about who I am now and what is important to me. And then I think about what I would like to add or change in the coming year – who I would like to become. That three part format seems to be well-suited for us as we stand on the eve of Advent and the new church year as well.

I don’t know how many of you read the Virginia Episcopalian magazine that comes from the Diocese. This month there were short articles by both Bishop Johnston and Canon Susan Goff that both spoke about Advent using the concepts of past, present and future. Susan wrote about Advent as being a time for us to “wait in three tenses” (past tense, present tense and future tense). And Bishop Johnston wrote that during Advent we prepare to meet Christ in three ways – Christ who came and dwelt among us as the Word made flesh, Christ who comes to us daily in our lives of discipleship, and Christ who will come again in glory.

That past, present, and future can all be so beautifully wrapped together is something of a mystery to me. Which is perfect, because my favorite definition of Advent is from Godly Play, where we talk about Advent as “the time to get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas.”

This definition actually led to a brief moment of theological panic when I read Bishop Johnston’s article, because in it he warns that Advent is about much more than “getting ready for Christmas.” Egads! Have we been leading our young people astray?

But after my initial moment of worry, I realized that “getting ready to enter the mystery” of Christmas is very different than just “getting ready for Christmas.” The last thing we need is more time to get ready for Christmas. We as a society spend way too long getting ramped up for that. When my family was in Disneyworld two weeks ago, they’d already decorated the place for Christmas and began shutting down the parks early so that they could charge a different group of people to enter in the evenings for the magic of Mickey’s Special Christmas Party. Shortly after our return, my kids unfurled a giant roll of white banner paper and began writing their Christmas lists. And I haven’t ventured inside a Mall recently, but my guess is that they’ve already gone there too. There’s a lot of getting ready, but my guess is there’s not a lot of mystery-entering going on. That takes stopping and breathing and focusing to do.

This morning, and this coming week, is a little time to stop and smell the mystery. A time to think about how we want to spend the upcoming season of Advent. How we might go about opening ourselves to the mystery that we’ll wait for in three tenses.

Our readings this morning give us a lot to chew on, with plenty of mystery and past, present, and future all on display that might help as we get ready to get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas as Advent begins next Sunday.

The Past. In our readings this morning we get prophecies and proclamations about Christ who is the King over God’s people. They’ve started changing the name of this Sunday from Christ the King to the Reign of Christ largely because of the many negative connotations that go with the word “king” for so many of us. And yet in a way I wish they wouldn’t change it because that word makes so abundantly clear what a different sort of kingship’s Jesus embodies. He showed his power in humility, his chosen-ness in welcoming the unloved and unlovable, his strength in the way he gave himself to others. Maybe this Advent can be a time for us to contemplate what it means to have a God that shed everything to come among us in such a strange and simple way, modeling what true love and real power really look like.

The Present. Our Gospel reading opens our eyes to Jesus present smack dab in the messiness of human life, even (and especially) including the hungry the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and those in prison. We encounter Jesus, and have an opportunity to minister to Jesus, in the people around us. Maybe this Advent can be a time for us to purposefully slow down and learn to live and love more fully.

The Future. Ezekiel’s vision of what might be is one of the most beautiful in the Bible. God promises to search for and find the sheep that have strayed or been scattered, to bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. And then God will set up a shepherd for the people who will guide them and feed them with good pasture. Jesus is this shepherd, and the sheepfold is gathered only in part, healed only in part. This vision has begun but it is so far from complete. Maybe this Advent we can think about what role we’ll play in bringing about this holy sheepfold. How might we help search for, heal and strengthen our fellow sheep.

As we say in Godly Play when we talk about the Church year, for every beginning there is an end, and for every end there is a beginning. We get these images of Christ the King just before we begin again with the Christ child, God Immanuel. And so the circle continues.

We have another week to get ready to get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas. And Bishop Johnston is right. The time ahead of us isn’t just for waiting or getting ready. It’s for rethinking, reimagining, and reengaging in all the many places where we might encounter that mystery.

So here's to a blessed New Year’s Eve week!

Not to prejudice anyone against Paul, but...

2011-10-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

October 30, 2011
20 Pentecost (Proper 26), Year A
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
I looked back and saw that today will be only the third time in my five years of preaching that I’ve preached from the Epistle reading (the reading that comes between the Old Testament and the Gospel readings). I’m generally much more attracted to the stories and characters that we find in the Old Testament and Gospel stories, so that’s part of the reason. But it also has a lot to do with Paul, who we have to thank (or blame, depending on your perspective) for so many of our Epistle readings. I find him wordy and preachy. Plus there are all those offensive pieces, like the bit about how women should submit to their husbands, and how women shouldn’t teach or speak or wear pearls or braid their hair in church. (When I was in seminary, I had great fun foiling Paul by braiding my hair and wearing pearls to read that lesson during morning chapel.)

Our reading this morning from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians doesn’t sit well with me either. The first lines are far and beyond the worst passive aggression any mother ever used. “We labored and toiled night and day because we didn’t want to burden any of you….” But at least the creators of the lectionary had the good sense to cut it off before the verse that comes right after this piece, where Paul writes about God’s wrath for the Jews, who killed Jesus and the prophets.

Sometimes I have trouble hearing God’s word in Paul’s writing because I get stuck in all those parts that I find offensive. And yet, even I cannot dispute how much Paul did to spread the Gospel. How completely he devoted himself to God. And how many truly wonderful and inspirational nuggets come out of his letters. Like that love bit you hear at most weddings. Sometimes we have to separate the wheat and the chaff, I guess.

But all that really just proves the point of the one line in here that I really do like. Paul writes: “When you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.”

It’s a long and wordy sentence badly in need of a good editor, of course. But it breaks down into what I think are 3 great pieces.

First, the word of God comes to us through other people – through human words and action. Very rarely is our experience like that of Moses where we meet God on the mountaintop and hear God’s words face to face. Every once in a while we might be lucky enough to feel like God is speaking to us directly, but the vast majority of our encounters with God come through other people. Through other people who are flawed and imperfect, just like us, but who can be the hands and feet and mouth of God nonetheless. There might be people that rub me the wrong way but that doesn’t stop them from being children of God capable of spreading the Word of God. Just like there might be pieces of the Bible that I’m not a big fan of, but that doesn’t stop the Bible as a whole from being the Word of God.

My list of the people who have formed me, knowingly or unknowingly, is a long one – yours probably is, too. Some of mine are family members, like my grandmother who worked so hard to instill faith in us, and my dad who modeled it, and my children who every once in a while startle me with their insights. Some have been friends, like Margaret in college who was so filled with joy, and Glenn and Curt in law school who challenged me to really think about what I believe in order to disagree with them more convincingly, and so many of you here that I’ve learned from over the years. And some are total strangers. People that I see acting more kindly that I’d ever be able to in a certain situation, people showing integrity in the most horrific situations, people who don’t even know that anyone is paying attention.

So the Word of God often comes through human word or example … and then we receive it. That’s the second great insight I hear in Paul’s long and complicated sentence. We don’t earn the Word of God. We don’t somehow achieve it. It’s a gift that we receive.

When I was in seminary, Archbishop Desmond Tutu came to speak. If you’ve never seen him, he’s a wonderful speaker. He’s a fairly small man, but has a huge presence. He speaks with his hands, so lots of big gestures. And he exudes joy – his whole face is a smile. Anyway, Archbishop Tutu talked about his image of God holding all of us as something precious and fragile in the palm of his hands. We exist, he said, only because God is blowing God’s breath into our being. Without that breath of God, we would disintegrate into the nothingness, into oblivion. But God’s breath is continually saying to us, “I love you. Your being is gift. I breathe into you and hold you as something precious.”

Of course, like any good gift, it gets better with use. The gift gets better and reaches further the more we open our minds and hearts and hands to take it in and let it start working on us. Which leads to the third piece I like from this bit from Paul -- God’s Word is at work in us too. It isn’t just the gung ho, sometimes over-the-top, saintly kind of people that have God working in them. When we are open to receiving the Word, God becomes part of our reality and enables us to join in bringing the reign of God into being too.

I find that comforting as a preacher. You may not like my sermon examples, you might think my sermons are too wordy or too sentimental or just plain boring, but God can still work through them to get to you. And I find it comforting as a pastor when I’m with people that are sick or in pain. I might not find just the right words to say, my prayers might not be terribly elegant. But God is somehow there in those words and in those prayers and in my very presence. I find it comforting as a parent, too. I might not always be the most patient or the most creative or have the best answers, but God can still work through me to give my children a glimpse of what God’s love is like. I think it works like that in everything we do, everywhere we are and no matter who we’re with. We hear and receive the Word of God and then we become part of its source so that it continues flowing through us into everything we do.

So thank you, Paul, for helping me see beyond you to God working in and through you. Helping me to find our God who becomes known not in the abstract but on the ground, in the midst of our messy, complicated and imperfect lives. Amen.

Returning from Shrine Mont

2011-10-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

The clergy retreat at Shrine Mont was wonderful -- the Diocese of Virginia is so kind to take us away from the world for a few days.

The weather was perfect until it was time to leave anyway, and it seemed to be peak season for fall leaf-looking. There's nothing like driving by cows munching green grass by streams surrounded by mountains covered with orange and yellow leaves to help you realize you are leaving the busy-ness of normal life behind.

It was great reconnecting with colleages and having a few days where I had no real responsibilities. And even better to have a handful of hours specifically set aside to get reconnected to God.

As I walked the beautiful labyrinth at Shrine Mont, I was confronted with how much I'm currently prisoner of my packed schedule and penchant for multi-tasking. I made it to the center decently well, noticing the fallen leaves on the dirt paths between the rocks that make up the guiding lines of the labyrinth. I reflected for a while on how the death of the leaves yield such amazing things - not just the colors but that beautiful smell of autumn. I thought about the footprints in front of me, reminders of other people seeking God before, behind and all around me. But the hard truth came after I'd reached the center and stood quiet for a while. My first thought on heading back out was to walk over the dividing lines of the labyrinth and move on to my next spiritual undertaking. I realized how absurd that was and steeled myself to slowly walk back out. It was a rude awakening to how often I try to fit God into certain little boxes rather than making time and space for God to act in some new and unexpected way.

When I got home on Wednesday, I immediately realized the cost of my retreat. My baby had missed her nap and was fussy, my son was coming down with a cold and was fussy, my daughter couldn't find her homework, the house was a mess, the laundry pile was ridiculous and the refridgerator empty. And that wonderful peace and feeling of well-being that I'd found at Shrine Mont was gone before I'd even unpacked. But it's good to be home, nonetheless. Snuggling with my children, sharing with my husband, and re-energized for life in the parish. And just a little more conscious that I am a beloved child of God. And that is priceless.

Headed to Shrine Mont!

2011-10-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the clergy of the Diocese of Virginia head to Shrine Mont for our annual clergy retreat. We get there Monday afternoon and stay until noon on Wednesday. It is such a gift - a time that I would never be able to take for myself without feeling terribly guilty even though I know how absolutely necessary it is for my job (and much more for my soul). It's always a big hassle getting ready - finding childcare for all those extra hours, writing detailed lists of which child to schlep where when, trying to think in advance of what will need to happen. But as soon as I'm there all that floats away so quickly. (The subsidized massages the Diocese sets up for us doesn't hurt!)

I'll report back after Wednesday....

In God we trust. Well, sort of...

2011-10-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

October 16, 2011
Pentecost 18, Proper 24, Year A
Exodus 33:12-23; Matthew 22:15-22

Jesus watches me when I work.

I should probably explain that a little. I have an icon of Jesus near my desk that is written with a technique that many icon writers use so that it feels as if the eyes of the subject are following you. Some days, I look over and Jesus seems calm and understanding. Some days he seems sad. Some days hopeful. And so as I was thinking about our Gospel for this morning, I looked up and saw what I could imagine might have been the look on Jesus’ face when he was confronted with the Pharisees in our story this morning. Knowing, amused, and maybe a little sad.

There’s no question that the Pharisees in our Gospel story are snakes in the grass, plotting to entrap Jesus so that he will be taken away by the authorities and no longer be such a thorn in their side. The intentions behind their question for Jesus are not pure and holy, to say the least. And yet their question for Jesus was actually a really good one.

The Pharisees wanted Jesus to tell them whether it was lawful for them to pay taxes to the Emperor. In those days, Palestine was a colony of the Roman Empire. Jews were forced to pay taxes to support the oppressive army and government that occupied their country. It was a situation not unlike the U.S. in pre-revolutionary war times when we fought against taxation without representation. Except their opposition to the tax was religious as well because the coins that they had to use to pay the taxes were stamped with the image of the emperor Tiberius Caesar along with an inscription ascribing divinity to him. They believed that holding and using these coins was a violation of the first and second commandments (“you shall have no other Gods before me” and “you shall not make for yourself an idol”). And so the Pharisees wanted to hear what Jesus had to say – should they or should they not use these blasphemous coins to pay money to an oppressive regime?

Underlying their question, though, is an issue that we’ve all faced – an issue that most of us face repeatedly, in fact. It’s about much more than money – it’s also about our time and our mind and our heart. How do you balance your obligations? How do you deal with things that seem to be in conflict? How do you organize your priorities?

Jesus gave the Pharisees an answer that, like most of Jesus’ answers, amazed some of his listeners and stymied others and probably angered others. An answer that, like most of Jesus’ answers, has been inspiring and confusing readers and hearers of the Word ever since. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

This passage tends to be used to argue that there are two realms of life that can be kept parallel and distinct – God and church and “spiritual matters” are on this side, and everything else is over here. That’s how I’ve always heard it in the past – as a tidy answer about how to compartmentalize pieces of our lives – how to achieve a proper balance. And yet, look where God generally winds up once this kind of “balancing” is done.

Which part of your money belongs to God? All of it? Or whatever is left once you’ve gotten what your family needs and paid your taxes? Or whatever is left once you’ve gotten that new electronic toy or that new car or that next vacation? Or maybe no money at all, depending on the week.

What part of your time belongs to God? All of it? Or a chunk each day, or maybe all day Sunday? Or just Sunday at church time? Or just the Sunday mornings when your kids don’t have lacrosse, or when the weather isn’t so nice you just can’t stand to be inside, or when you haven’t been out late the night before? Or maybe no time at all, depending on the week.

Which part of your mind belongs to God? All of it? Or whatever isn’t exhausted on work and other pursuits? Maybe that bit of consciousness that’s left over at the end of the day when you’re bone-tired and fall into bed with a quick prayer? Or maybe God gets no thought at all, depending on the week.

What part of your heart belongs to God? All of it? Or enough to be loving to your family and friends with a bit of kindness left for someone on the street? Or maybe just enough for your family and friends when everything is going well and you are in a good mood? Or maybe there’s no love at all, depending on the week.

Starting with the idea of balancing doesn’t seem to work very well for God. Or for us, really, in our journey of faith. It tends to leave us feeling fragmented and guilty, feeling like we are burdened by responsibilities and expectations but not doing anything well. And so, the more I read and study and think and pray about Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees, the more convinced I am that he’s actually saying something else entirely.

I think the key to what Jesus really means might come in one little word that we don’t even get in our translation this morning. This morning we heard Jesus ask the Pharisees to show him a coin and ask them “Whose head is this?” But a better word than head would be image. Give to God the things that bear God’s image. And the Greek word here is actually “eikon”, which is where we got our word for icons.

I think in saying this, Jesus is actually exposing the absurdity of our attempt to divide reality into God’s area and anything else. Because we are all images of God. Caesar might be able to stamp his picture on things, but it isn’t the coins but the people who bear the divine image. We are imperfect, obviously, but we are living images of God nonetheless. As it says in Genesis 1, we are created “in the image and likeness” of God.

So it’s not just a piece of what we have and what we are that belongs to God, but every bit of it. All that we have been, are, and hope to be belongs to God and is a gift from God to us.

God isn’t something to be kept in some kind of balance with all the other demands on our lives – as if some portion of our money, time, mind and heart belongs to God and the rest is ours to mete out. It’s all God’s.

And I realize that might sound a little overwhelming, but it’s actually a great gift. We belong to God -- not as chattel, but as children. We are liberated from that anxiety and burden; we are freed from that impossible attempt to divide our lives between God and whatever Caesar appears to be in control at the moment. There is only one rightful claim upon our lives and it is from the One who is both our source and our destination.

So if everything we have and are is God’s, and our loyalty is entirely to God, how does that change the way we live? Again, I think we get a glimpse in that same word “image” or “icon” that I mentioned before.

I didn’t grow up seeing icons around, so never really thought about them until somewhat recently. When my sister went from being Episcopalian to eastern Orthodox, her priest became somewhat of a family friend and I used to pepper him with all of my (what turned out to be) priest-to-be questions. One thing that I asked him about was icons. I’d visited an Orthodox service and seen the congregation genuflecting in front of icons and kissing them. It went against my more Protestant sensibilities until Father Ray taught me about veneration of icons. The icon is venerated not because of the picture itself but because of the spiritual reality it portrays. Somehow the praise and veneration shown to the icon passes over to the archetype itself. Years later I took a class on prayer at seminary, one part involved praying with icons. I learned a tiny bit about how icons can be for us windows to God, a way of seeing the Word incarnate in a new way. Icons are still not really part of my regular religious practice, and yet I love them and feel comforted by having them around me.

Each of us not only bear the image of God, and therefore belong to God, but in some way we are also living icons to God. We retain our identify as children of God and become windows into the Kingdom of God in everything we do – at work, at home, at school, in our neighborhoods and anywhere else we find ourselves. And it isn’t only that we become icons for others; they also ought to be icons for us. Everyone we encounter is also made in God’s image. Maybe knowing that can make us less inclined to separate ourselves from each other and more inclined to see God in each other. Just as Father Ray taught me that when someone venerates an icon, their love and worship is really flowing to God, when we love another person, maybe we can think of that as passing on to God as well.

Jesus generally doesn’t give us exact boundaries or black and white answers. But he gives us overriding principles like the one we get this morning. Give to God the things that are God’s. The next time you pull out a bill or coin from your wallet, look closely at the claim on it: “In God we trust.” How well do we show that with our lives?

Amen.

Entering the Wardrobe

2011-09-25T04:25:00.000-07:00

15 Pentecost, Proper 21, Year A
September 25, 2011
(Exodus 17:1-7, Matthew 21:23-32)

Can you imagine someone running into St. Aidan’s right now yelling insults about our worship and our faithfulness and trashing the place? Well, that’s pretty much where the story begins in our Gospel reading for this morning. It’s Monday of Holy Week. Just yesterday, Jesus stole a donkey to ride into Jerusalem in a parade of palm branches. When he got to the city, he headed straight for the Temple, the center of Jewish religious life, and started knocking over the tables of the money changers and chasing out the merchants. He called the Temple a “den of robbers.” Unsurprisingly, this did not win him many friends among the chief priests and proper religious people. This was an incredibly busy and important (not to mention profitable) time in the Temple – almost Passover! And there was Jesus, interrupting their work, turning their temple into chaos, insulting them.

And then Jesus had the nerve to come back the next morning, which is where we find ourselves in our story today. Here he is back in the Temple not 24 hours after this show of disrespect and wild behavior. And so the chief priests and the elders corner him immediately. They are not about to give Jesus free reign in their Temple again. And so they ask him, “Who do you think you are, doing these things?” (my translation) (Their authority, after all, had been given to them by God in the time of Moses and passed down for generations. They are the ones with rightful authority over the Temple and over the religious life and faith of the people. Who is this mentally unhinged upstart?)

And so Jesus responds to their question by asking them a couple questions of his own. First about where they think John the Baptist received his authority, and then about which of the two sons in his parable was doing their father’s will. Jesus is always doing that, answering questions with questions, confronting us with ourselves in his parables. Conversations with Jesus always seem a little bit dangerous. Nothing is ever simple or straightforward. You never know what you’re going to get, but it’s almost certainly something that can transform you if you let it. Something that can give you a whole new way of seeing the world and yourself, if you’re open to it.

Open, of course, was exactly what the chief priests and elders that Jesus confronted on this particular day were not. They were stubborn and angry and determined not to change. And willing to do just about anything to protect their status quo, to keep the current order intact. And so Jesus identifies them with the Yes man in his parable – the son who says the right thing, but doesn’t follow through. These religious leaders are saying the “right” things, believing the “right” things, but they aren’t living the way God wants them to live. They think they are, certainly, but they’ve gotten so attached to their own ideas about what God wants that they can’t see past that. They are so determined to keep God in the box they’ve created (the beautiful, gilt, jewel-adorned box) that they can’t recognize God acting right in front of them in the form of John the Baptist or Jesus.

And it’s easy to judge them because we already know the rest of the story. And because we can distance ourselves from their Temple that needed reforming and their convictions that were so misplaced and their world that needed turning upside down.

But this isn’t meant to be a parable against Judaism, although unfortunately, like other parts of the Gospel, it has been used that way. And it isn’t meant to be a parable just against that little band of people living in that little piece of time.

This is a parable that speaks to those of us – which surely must be most of us – who think of ourselves as being faithfully obedient to God but in practice are often deaf and blind to God’s activity in the world. Sometimes we forget that God isn’t something that happened long ago in old stories but something that is living and active and unfinished. What are we missing the way the religious leaders were that Jesus confronts in this story?

And this is a parable for those of us who mistake our own convictions for God’s voice. In our vestry meetings and in our new prayer and listening group that meets on Tuesdays we’ve made a practice of reading a set of listening guidelines. The one that has engendered the most discussion and difficulty is probably the one that says: “Hold your desires and opinions – even your convictions – lightly.” We are attached to our convictions – proud of them, even. Loosening our desperate grasp on them to make way for the possibility of something different is scary stuff.

And finally, this is a parable for those of us who are more comfortable in the safety of our certainty than in the unknowing of the new thing that God is offering us. We’ve wrapped Jesus up in the safe and benign box we’ve created for him (and very thoughtfully packaged, of course!). And to let him out means – who knows what will happen? Who knows what kind of transformation might begin?

I’m in the middle of something that’s been giving me a fresh experience of God lately. My family has been reading the Narnia series aloud together. I’m loving sharing these wonderful stories with my children, loving the memories that come back when I reach a familiar passage, loving the chance to read the entire series, which I’ve never done before. I took a class in college about C.S. Lewis and a few of his Christian fiction-writing contemporaries and studied the Christian metaphors in some of these books. And so I can’t read them without seeing that there, and can’t read it to my children without talking about it. (Hopefully I’m not ruining the story for them by destroying its subtlety!)

But the experience has been more challenging than I expected. We’ve just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I’m realizing how pale and one-dimensional my vision of Jesus looks compared to the vivid and complex portrayal of Aslan. And how limp and unadventurous my faith is compared to that of those four children.

Sometimes to see and be near Aslan is frightening and terrible. When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy first meet Aslan, they catch a glimpse of his golden mane and his great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes and they find they can’t look at him and go all trembly. And when Aslan opens his mouth to roar, his face becomes so terrible that they did not dare to look at it.

And at times, being with Aslan is intimate and beautiful. At one point, he invites the girls to lay their hands on his mane – “something they would never have dared to do without his permission, but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him.”

Sometimes, to be with Aslan is playful and joyous. After he rises from the dead, Aslan and the girls have a fabulous game of chase: “It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”

At other times to be with Aslan is mournful and painful. When he is heading resolutely to meet his death, “he looked somehow different from the Aslan they knew. His tail and his head hung low and he walked slowly as if he were very, very tired.”

Aslan is unpredictable and complex and wonderful and terrible all at the same time. As C.S. Lewis reminds us through his narrator, “People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.” A very helpful reminder in our journeys of faith.

Another piece of Narnia that is making me rethink my experience of God is the way Aslan is present, and absent, in times and ways that the characters don’t expect. Sometimes Aslan steps in to save or reassure a character, and sometimes he holds off so that they can grow in some way. Like when he tells the other creatures to stay back so that Peter can fight the witch’s wolf on his own. Mr. Beaver even warns the children at the end of book, Aslan “will be coming and going. One day you’ll see him and another you won’t…. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

The Jesus in our gospel this morning isn’t a tame lion. And neither is the Jesus who is acting in our world, seeking us to live out our faith and not just claim it. It’s a giant, life-sized adventure that’s ours for the taking. What’s waiting for us just inside the wardrobe?

Ten Years Later - Time for Option B

2011-09-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

September 11, 2011 Pentecost 13, Proper 19, Year A
Matthew 18:21-35

Where were you on September 11?

It’s one of those days that people of a certain age will always remember where we were when we first heard, and there aren’t too many of those.

Holden and I were on our honeymoon and had spent the day exploring Rhodes, Greece. We had returned to the cruise ship before it was set to sail. I was lying on the bed in our room, thinking about taking a nap, when Holden, who had been doing a load of laundry, came rushing in with the news of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV in time to watch in horror as the second plane hit. Then to hear about the Pentagon, concern over possible explosions on the National Mall and at the State Department, and another hijacked plane that was unaccounted for, and finally the awful sight of those towers falling. We spent the rest of the afternoon glued to CNN along with the rest of America, trying to figure out what had happened and feeling like the world that we knew was disappearing before our eyes.

And it was, in a way. A recent poll in the Post said that 9 out of 10 Americans think that 9/11 changed the country in a lasting way. The loss of life was unimaginable and unforgettable. And we all know how much has shifted because of that day. Increased security procedures at the airport. Concrete bunkers outside the monuments. A new and disturbing (and hopefully now ended) government policy on torture. Long-lasting and devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There was a lot that we saw that day, and in the days and years following that was beautiful too and that helped to restore our faith in humankind. The bravery of the first responders, people reaching out to strangers, increased conversation across religious and political lines.

But 10 years later, so much of what remains in our collective memory is the horror, the fear, the anger. I’m not sure how we can ever return to where we were. Everything we thought we knew about living in this world – our way of life, our optimism, our sense of power and security – fell along with the towers that day. We were left feeling more vulnerable, less in control of the present and more worried about the future.

And in many ways, it seems like things have been cascading ever since. Our financial and housing markets crashing, an international recession, a broader gulf between rich and poor than ever before, ugly partisan rancor, environmental degredation, famine and unrest in so many places in the world.

Holden jokes about his long term strategy involving a gun and $10,000 in gold stored in the basement.

But I can only hope, in the kind of hope that can find its footing only in something as sure as God’s eternal promise for us and not so much in anything that I can touch or point to, that hunkering down in fear and anxiety isn’t the best we can do.

We can’t go back and change anything that’s come before, and so I see two possibilities for where we go from here. They’re the same two possibilities that seem to exist whenever we’ve been deeply hurt by someone else.

Option A is to hope for a repeat of our Old Testament story from this morning. To wait for the angel of death that protected the people of Israel in their escape from slavery in Egypt and clogged the chariot wheels of Pharoah’s army in the mud of the sea so that they were all drowned even as they were trying to flee. To have the single-minded goal of seeking vengeance on our enemies. To guard ourselves and those we love as completely as possible, never mind the collateral damage inflicted (not just on our enemy but also on us and those we love and anyone else that happens to be standing nearby).

But look where that got the Israelites. Do you think they were ever able to drown out the wailing and lament of their blameless Egyptian neighbors when their first born sons were lost to the final plague? Could they ever erase the image of the countless Egyptian soldiers flailing in the waters after they’d crossed over in safety?

There’s an old Hasidic Jewish story about this passage. It describes the angels rejoicing over the deliverance of Israel at the sea: playing their harps, singing, dancing. “Wait,” said one of them. “Look, the Creator of the Universe is sitting there weeping!” They asked God, “Why are you weeping when Israel has been delivered by your power?” And the Creator of the Universe responded, “I am weeping for the dead Egyptians washed up on the shore – somebody’s sons, somebody’s husbands, somebody’s fathers.” I was reminded of that story when I read a quote in yesterday’s paper from Desmond Tutu, who was asked about the spiritual impact of September 11. Archbishop Tutu said that “[w]e failed the biggest test posed by the 9/11 outrage: In our anger and dismay, we failed to recognize our common humanity…. When we looked at the terrorists, we did not see ourselves.”

It is not enough to be in the right, to be sure that we have been wronged. At the end of the day, even the ultimately victorious Israelites were so full of doubt and distrust after all of their experiences that they rebelled against God and never made it to the Promised Land. Only a couple of the Israelites who lived as slaves in Egypt and made that exodus journey ever saw the Promised Land.

I think we’ve spent much of the past ten years mired in Option A and much of it has probably caused the Maker of our Universe to weep. And it seems to have brought us to just about the same place it brought the Israelites that were part of our story this morning. Full of visions and sounds that we can’t erase from our memories – the rows of faces that appear in the Post’s Faces of the Fallen, the visions of amputees in rehab at Walter Reed, distrust of our neighbors who look different than we do, continued fears and worry about the safety of our loved ones. We may or may not be physically safer now than then – it depends who you talk to. But we as a Nation do not seem to be healed, to be whole, to be at peace with ourselves. We are a long way from the Promised Land.

Which leaves us with Option B, which is a whole lot harder, but still gives me much more hope. Option B is to strive for what Jesus advises in our Gospel from Matthew for this morning. Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive and throws up 7 as a possibility. Which, if you think about, seems like a pretty generous number. There are probably not many people outside our immediate families and very closest friends that most of us would continue in relationship with if we needed to forgive them so frequently. But Jesus shocks Peter by throws out his own number that is exponentially bigger. 77 times (or 70 times 7, depending on your translation). This number is so big that it might as well be infinite.

This forgiveness that Jesus is talking about isn’t an isolated act but an ongoing activity. Jesus knows that we humans, most of us anyway, are not terribly good at forgiveness. That we don’t always mean it when we ask for it or bestow it, and we don’t always want it even when it’s ours for the asking, or the granting. And so Jesus raises the stakes to 70x7 because he knows that, for us, once isn’t usually enough. We have to keep forgiving, keep trying to let go, keep looking for better solutions, for redemption and love. And eventually, over time – like prayer or love or service to others – when we do it often enough it has the power to transform us. Jesus turns forgiveness into a spiritual practice. And it’s a practice that is both modeled and enabled by our own experience of forgiveness by God. The bizarre parable this morning shows how closely tethered these two things are, or are intended to be. As we pray during communion “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

That said, to be clear, I think it’s important to point out a few things that forgiveness is not, taken straight from last week’s reading that came just before the piece we get this morning from Matthew.

First, forgiveness is not denying or forgetting a harm done to us. Forgiveness is possible only when we acknowledge the negative impact of another person’s actions on our life. It is all about truth-telling. Last week we heard Jesus lay out a communal system for dealing with a wrongdoer, and it started with facing the person and naming the wrong, as incredibly difficult as that often is.

Second, forgiveness doesn’t mean that the person who harmed us isn’t accountable. Forgiveness is not an excuse or a permission for unjust behavior. Last week Jesus talked about how to go about seeking repentance from a wrongdoer.

And third, forgiveness doesn’t mean throwing precaution to the wind. It doesn’t mean inviting known terrorists to the White House without a metal detector or returning home to an abusive spouse or letting a bully pummel you. Last week, Jesus talked about having a system of community support for someone who is wronged, and we see that also in this morning’s parable of the servants, where the community steps in with the Master to prevent injustice to their fellow servant.

Forgiveness is all about what happens inside of us. It’s that first moment when we make the conscious choice to trade in our pride and sense of power for the chance to live again. And then it’s those next seven times, when we choose to let go of the resentment and pain that draws pleasure from our life. And the next seven, releasing the other from our desire for revenge. And so on and so on, until finally we find that we’ve broken the power of the wound to hold us trapped.

Today, the tenth anniversary of September 11, seems like a pretty good time to pick Option B and begin the spiritual practice of forgiveness. In just a minute, we’ll pray for those who were killed and injured on September 11. We’ll pray for the people who have been fighting in wars ever since. And we’ll pray also for our enemies and for a world of understanding and peace. And maybe it’s a good time to start thinking about the places in our lives where we need to heed Jesus’ call to the practice of forgiveness. Amen.

80s Music to the Rescue

2011-08-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 9, Proper 15
August 14, 2011
Matthew 15:10-28

Who here remembers the Mr. Mister song called “Kyrie eleison”? I was in 8th grade when it came out. Apparently the band member who wrote the words was inspired by singing the Kyrie in his Episcopal Church as a kid: "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison." It means: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. It probably sounded a lot like the one we sang at the start of our service this morning.

As a cradle Episcopalian, I was one of the few in my peer group who had any clue that the words to the #1 Billboard song meant “Lord, have mercy.” I distinctly remember giggling when instead of singing “Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel” my friends belted out “Carry a laser down the road that I must travel….” I always felt like I had a secret insight on the song – like it had a deeper message that was just for me.

The chorus especially spoke to my teenage angst, I think:

Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel
Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night
Kyrie eleison where I’m going will you follow?
Kyrie eleison on a highway in the light.

The song played at our 8th grade Farewell Dance and I remember sort of praying along with the song, along with a little plug for God to direct the cute boy across the room my way. It didn’t work. And yet, even still, every once in a while when I find myself incredibly frustrated, or at a loss over what to do, or filled with worry, I find myself repeating those words as a sort of mantra: “Kyrie eleison… Lord have mercy…”

Maybe that’s why I’m so angry at Jesus this morning. So offended by his treatment of this poor Canaanite woman who comes to him shouting “Have mercy on me, Lord!” Kyrie eleison! Her daughter is being tormented by a demon, she says. But does Jesus take this desperate mother into his arms? Does he turn to her with care and concern? No! Jesus starts by completely ignoring her. Then when his disciples urge him to send her away because she’s making such a nuisance of herself, Jesus tells them that she is outside his circle of concern because he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But despite the complete lack of sympathy from anyone in Jesus’ circle, still the anxious woman kneels in front of him and begs him again “Lord, have mercy! Kyrie eleison!” Now Jesus doesn’t just ignore her, he downright insults her by comparing her to a dog who doesn’t deserve the children’s food.

It’s hard to know what to do with this portrait of Jesus because it seems so incredibly counter to the Jesus that I profess. My Jesus is all about hanging out with and helping the people that no one else even looks twice at. My Jesus talks to and touches the people that the rest of us turn our heads from when they walk near us on the street. My Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ and his own disciples’ assumptions of purity and righteousness and worthiness.

That’s the Jesus I long for in this story. I want him to hear this poor woman’s cries and immediately reach out to her and her daughter. I want immediate love and concern and healing for these women.

And I’m not alone in my discomfort with the picture of Jesus in this story. Oodles of scholars and commentators have taken a swing at explaining away Jesus’ bad behavior. Maybe Jesus was really putting on a show for his disciples so they’d see how ugly their behavior was. Maybe Jesus was testing this woman’s faith. Maybe this was a friendlier conversation that it seems – the Greek word for “dog” in this passage really means “pet dog” so the insult wasn’t so terrible afterall. The Jesus Seminar folks just discount the conversation completely, and argue that it is a later addition written in reaction to early followers who sought to narrow the scope of their mission.

And yet, if Jesus had behaved exactly as I would wish and expect and healed the Canaanite woman’s daughter immediately, my reaction might be the same as it sometimes is in those other stories where someone is the lucky recipient of a miracle. “Well, that’s nice, but what about [the people starving in Africa/the people struggling with cancer/the people who have lost their loved ones too soon]? Where are the miracles for them? For us? For me?

And so while a part of me would like to soften this story and explain away Jesus’ harsh-seeming treatment of this woman so that I don’t have to deal with my discomfort, I think we’d miss something that way. The Canaanite woman had to struggle with Jesus in this passage and so do we.

Maybe we are more like this woman than we realize. Maybe this story actually hits pretty close to home. Chances are, none of us have perfectly neat and completely satisfying experiences of God. Chances are that we have all experienced times when God didn’t come through for us as we hoped. When there seemed to be no answer to our own desperate pleas. When our “kyrie eleisons” echoed without response through the darkness of the night.

So what do we do then? What does faith look like when God has disappointed or abandoned us? How do we engage with God when our deepest hopes are shattered?

There’s no one way, of course. But I love this passage because it’s a rebuke to the well-meaning people who would tell you in your darkest hour that whatever you’re experiencing is God’s will and you should just accept it. The Canaanite woman is about as far from demure as possible. She is like Job questioning God about the horrible and unfair circumstances that have befallen him, she’s like Jacob wrestling with that stranger by the river. This woman does not give up.

She shouts so long and so loud that the disciples are at their wits’ end. She demands attention – demands access to God – and won’t leave until she’s satisfied. Even when she receives an answer, she refuses to accept it. She disagrees, she argues. She knows she needs mercy and she knows that her God is merciful. And so she keeps pushing until her theological vision of God – a God who is compassionate and inclusive – is realized. She knows Jesus, as it turns out, better than he knows himself. That’s when the Jesus I expect shows up – the one who so lovingly tells her: “Great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.”

For whatever reason, this woman has to struggle with Jesus before she can move on to what is next for her. And so we have to struggle with this messy, offensive passage before we move past it. And sometimes, just like Job, and Jacob, and this Canaanite woman, we have to struggle with our own experiences of God’s distance, or silence, or seeming cruelty before we can move on to seeing God’s mercy and grace. Sometimes we have to travel through a lot of darkness before we reach the other side.

And so, in the immortal refrain of Mr. Mister, “Kyrie eleison down the road that you must travel. Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night.” Amen.

Dreams and Rock Shrines

2011-07-17T07:01:00.000-07:00

July 17, 2010
Pentecost 5, Proper 11, Year A
Genesis 28:10-19a – Jacob’s Ladder

It might be because I am not the best sleeper, but I have very vivid dreams. Most of them are anxiety dreams, unfortunately. At least every few nights I dash out of bed thinking one of the kids is in danger and I need to save them – last night Maya was about to fall down the stairs. Once I had this horrible dream that Holden was cheating on me and I woke up incredibly angry with him and couldn’t shake the feeling for hours. Often the dreams are just silly and make no sense – like the kind where you dream about one person but you somehow know it was really someone else. Every once in a while, though, my dreams are gifts from God. I feel a little uncomfortable saying that out loud, frankly, but I absolutely believe it.

And so I appreciate Jacob’s experience that we read about this morning.

Granted, Jacob is not the most sympathetic character. Many of the great forerunners of our faith were not. Last week we heard about how when his brother Esau was hungry, Jacob turned that into an opportunity to trick Esau out of his birthright. Then he connived with his mother Rebekah to pretend to be Esau so that he could steal Esau’s blessing, too. Jacob had to flee quickly before his rightly furious brother killed him.

Our story this morning finds Jacob in an very vulnerable place. He is afraid and defeated; exhausted and utterly alone. He is a fugitive, far from home in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a rock to lay his head on. He is without any real hope of ever returning home, given the wrath of his brother. The present looks hopeless and the future looks bleak.

And yet his story isn’t over. Not even close. His long road to recovery and redemption begins this very night. Jacob in no way deserves this incredible dream of his, but he desperately needs it. And what’s more, he believes it.

Dreams were serious business back in Jacob’s day. God appeared in dreams in a fairly regular basis throughout the Bible and people took it seriously. But this one from our reading this morning, Jacob’s dream about a ladder from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending and God making promises to Jacob, this dream is one of the best known dreams of them all.

Of course, now days we’re much more likely to attribute dreams to our own subconscious than to a message from God. Out of curiosity, I searched the internet to see what dream interpreters would make of this image of a ladder. Apparently, ladders are fraught with subconscious meaning. They symbolize aspiration – attempts to achieve wholeness or success. Ladders suggest that a person will be successful after struggle or obstacles; that the person will be able to rise above a certain situation. All that certainly seems to apply to Jacob. He has spent the better part of his life striving for his father’s approval and blessing, fighting against his brother from the womb for a primary place in the family. And as we’ll hear in the next few weeks, he will ultimately be successful and rise above his current circumstances.

But for Jacob, this dream is much more than his subconscious reassuring him that he will get out of this mess he’s made for himself. This dream is the beginning of his relationship with God. The beginning of his realization that he is included in the covenant God has made with his father and grandfather. Two verses after today’s reading he lays claim to what until now had just been his parents’ God. After waking from his dream, Jacob proclaims, “The LORD will be my God.” (Or at least, Jacob proclaims that the Lord will be his God IF God really follows through on all these wonderful promises and brings him home safely to his father’s house. He is still Jacob with all his flaws, after all. Bargaining and preconditions are part of his very nature.)

God’s part, though, is completely unconditional. There is no judgment for Jacob’s treatment of his brother and father. God is fully committed to Jacob despite everything. “I will give you…, I am with you…, I will keep you…, I will not leave you…,” God promises.

Jacob’s dream marks his first (but certainly not his last) encounter with God. Jacob wasn’t looking for God – he was just running from who he was and what he’d done and looking for safety. And yet, whether or not Jacob was in search of God, God was clearly in search of him.

This dream also marks Jacob’s first (but again, not his last) realization that God can come bursting on the scene even in a random, middle-of-nowhere place. “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” Jacob exclaims.

In his dream, Jacob got a glimpse of what is always there and what is always true. And so when he woke up, he took the stone on which he’d been lying when he had this remarkable dream and he made it into a shrine. He called the place Bethel – the house of God.

I love this story about Jacob because I’ve had my own dream about God, also in what seemed to be an unlikely place. I had been studying abroad in London during college, visiting the requisite pubs, flirting with boys with great accents, exploring the cities of Europe. And before coming home I decided to visit my sister who was working in Moscow.

I’d studied Russian for a full two years in college, but found that I couldn’t communicate even slightly with anyone. I found Moscow to be very bleak, full of grey buildings and poverty. I was acutely aware both of how incredibly lucky I was to be a well-off American and of how obvious a target I was to people that wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was a well-off American. More than one drunk man followed me and muttered what I could only imagine were obscenities and I had no idea who or how to ask for help. I wasn’t sleeping well because I was sharing my sister’s squeaky, too-small bed. It started snowing (in July!) and I was cold and exhausted and had lost all the confidence I’d gained from my time studying abroad.

And then I had my dream. I was an artist and created this amazingly, painfully beautiful sculpture. It was white and yet full of color, incredibly detailed and yet so simple. Somehow I knew in my dream that what I’d created was a vision of God and that God was enabling me to create it and watching approvingly, lovingly.

I woke up next to my sister in the middle of the night on this rickety, Murphy bed in an apartment in one of the faceless buildings in the middle of this exhausting bleak city. And I felt the most incredible joy. I woke up knowing that God had visited me in that dream somehow and that I had gotten a glimpse of what had been there all along. The Lord was in that place – and I did not know it.

And afterwards, for a while anyway, I was conscious of God all around me. Suddenly everywhere I turned offered amazing examples of God’s creation. Suddenly every person I met was a fellow traveler on the journey that I hadn’t even realized I was on. All because of that dream. I didn’t deserve it. But I needed it. And I definitely believed it.

More often than not, that time feels so far away that it hurts. Sometimes my longing to re-experience all that is stronger than my memory of it. But still, that moment remains a sacred piece of my journey. I wrote a poem afterwards to try to capture it:

The Dream

One night I was an artist
Talented and perceptive
Using solely white brilliance
All colors combined
Creating an all-encompassing symbol

Insignificant from a distance
Thicknesses of white
But intricate upon inspection
Sculpted edges and crevices
Deep with meaning

With morning came color
A new radiance seeped through
Distorting yet illuminating
Enriching with meaning
Larger than myself

I see now that my poem is my attempt, like Jacob, to create my own version of a rock shrine to remember that moment and set it apart. It is something that helps me point to a particular place and time and call it Bethel – the house of God.

But of course, that is what every place is. As Jacob discovered, God doesn’t need a church or a saint or prayerful meditation or good intentions or any kind of welcome to make a holy intrusion into our lives. The world around us shimmers with the possibility of being confronted with the shock of God’s presence. Big and small, seen and unseen, these rock shrines surround us on every side. Bethel is not somewhere, but everywhere. And those promises from God to Jacob echo for all of us from every stone and tree and cloud and creature: ““I will give you…, I am with you…, I will keep you…, I will not leave you…”

Surely the LORD is in this place. In every place. Lord, help us to know it! Amen.

The Sower in Action

2011-07-11T04:07:00.000-07:00

July 10, 2011
4 Pentecost, Proper 10
Matthew 13: 1 - 9, 18 – 23

I considered reading just the first part of the Gospel and not the ending because I think the ending throws us off track. The ending of the reading, with its ostensible explanation of Jesus’ parable of the Sower, seems to fly in the face of everything Jesus was about. He so often spoke in parables because he wanted his listeners to really take in and think about what he was saying. Jesus rarely made things easy for his listeners. He wanted them to get inside the stories he told, maybe even to be shocked by them, but to come away with lots of questions and keep pondering them for their lifetimes. But instead, the early church couldn’t resist throwing an answer in there. Most commentators agree that this interpretation of the parable that takes up the second half of our reading this morning is a later addition. It’s an explanation of the parable that suited the Church in the time and place where it found itself. And it’s certainly one possible interpretation of the parable; but it’s not the interpretation of the parable. That just isn’t how parables work. Parables are meant to be open and layered and deep and changing.

Every time we read the parable with the explanation attached, it shortcuts our imagination. It’s like doing your homework with the answer key open – only the answer key is skewed, or at least incomplete. And if all you do is read the question and skip to the answer and assume it’s right, you never really get to the heart of the question.

So let’s try this parable again. Pretend you didn’t hear that so-called explanation that we just read. But this time, instead of just listening, we’ll experience the parable.

(This is when the kids from the congregation came up to help - I wish I had pictures - they were great!)

Once there was a sower, someone who scatters seeds. (blow bubbles) The sower went out and scattered seeds.

Some seeds fell alongside the path and the birds of the air came and ate them up. (kids tried to pop bubbles with stuffed bird toys)

Other seeds fell on rocky ground (kids put out stones), where they didn’t have much soil. (kids act out the seed's movements) The seeds sprung up quickly, but when the seeds tried to put their little roots down among the stones, they could not push their way into the ground. So when the sun rose, they were scorched and withered away.

(Kids put out sticks, then act out the seed's movements) Other seeds fell among thorns. The seeds began to grow but then the thorns grew up and choked them.

Other seeds fell on good soil. (Kids act out) The seeds were able to push their little roots down into the good soil and they grew and grew. When they were all grown and ripe for the harvest, they were gathered up. (Group hug)

And the harvest was thirty, sixty, one hundred bushels of grain.

(Then the adults were brought in with some Godly Play style wondering. I've tried to summarize what I remember from the answers. Great stuff!)

I wonder who could the Sower really be?

(A few answers from the congregation:
-God? If so, scattering seed with great abandon! Abundance, generosity, persistence. Eventually produces bountiful growth.
-How wasteful this would have seemed in Jesus’ day!
-Jesus? Investing so much in those who don’t look very promising to the outside world. Tax collectors, sinners, stubborn disciples
-Us? Called to be as abundant and generous as God – shout the good news to all who would hear it and share our love with everyone

I wonder what the Sower used for seed?

-Jesus
-Word of God, Bible, even this parable
-Love
-Maybe not a one time thing, but constant and everywhere – surrounded by seeds all the time and some we notice and take in and others pass us by
-Seed as small, mysterious, working below the surface – not showy and obvious

I wonder what are all the different places where the seed falls?

-Different types of people as the different possible soils; soil’s different ways of responding to the seeds as our different receptivity to God
-Our goal is to become the good soil and bear fruit – through prayer, works of love, discerning and listening for God
-Each of us as entire Path - We each experience each of these types of soil. (Together or over life time.) God keeps trying to reach each of us until it finally gets through – persistence of God!
-God’s working in the world over time? Abundant harvest is God’s vision for the world that will take root and flourish in due time
-Soil can’t change itself, but Sower keeps on scattering seed anyway – maybe something will get in there!

I wonder what the birds are?

-In the parable words, the birds seem bad, but in this story for Godly Play, the birds come in a gold box and are the same birds used in the parable of the mustard seed that grows so large that the birds of the air come and make their nest in it.
-Maybe birds as the people of the world that may not be the expected ones to take in the seeds but might help to expand God’s reach even further (often they carry seeds in their own way and end up planting them elsewhere)
-Or birds as bad - the things that come and steal away the seeds before you even get a chance

I wonder what the rocks are?

-Things in our path making it difficult for the seed to grow in us
-Pain and trouble, oppression.
-Things that wear us down and weary us.

I wonder what the thorns are?

-Things growing in us that might seem innocent but can grow strong and choke the seed
-Riches, success, busy-ness, bad influences, fear,
-Systemic evils in the world

I wonder what the good earth is?

-Carefully prepared with prayer, love, discernment and therefore receptive?
-If prepared, by whom? Not by the soil – by the Sower!
-Or just lucky?

I wonder what the harvest could really be?

-Beyond what anyone ever expected – incredibly abundant harvest
-Like the squash that Don Heinrichs is giving away – enough for everyone to end up with, even those like us who ignored our pitiful little gardens and don’t deserve them
-The Kingdom of God
-Christians

The Comfortable (or Not-So Comfortable) Words

2011-07-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

July 3, 2011
Pentecost 3, Proper 9, Year A
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

(I ended up not doing my sermon from the pulpit, so it wasn't exactly this, but close enough. With some quiet for reflection after the questions.)

Our Gospel reading for this morning includes the passage commonly known, in the Episcopal Church, anyway, as the “comfortable words.” “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

These are beloved words, and they are comfortable words. So reassuring. Such an open invitation. They are words for all of us who have experienced weariness (running from morning ‘til night, striving, schlepping, organizing). They are words for all of us who carry heavy burdens (care of a loved one, painful memories, sickness, fears, heartbreak, yearnings). These are words that promise that Jesus knows what we are undergoing, knows that we need help, knows that we cannot do it alone. And they are words that promise us that Jesus has something to offer us that will give us rest and peace and lighten our load.

So why is it so hard for us to take him up on his offer?

John just headed off to the New Jersey shore where each summer he serves as the priest for a Church up there for 3 weeks in exchange for use of its rectory. Before he leaves, we usually look through the readings for the coming weeks and think about sermon possibilities together. When we read this morning’s Gospel reading, John said, “That last bit used to be part of the service every week in the 1928 prayer book.” The 1928 prayer book was before my time of conscious church going, so I had no independent knowledge and wanted to hear more. “When was it used?” I asked. “I think it was right before the confession,” he said. “Ooh, I like that,” I said. That placement of those comfortable words seemed very helpful to me. An invitation to lay down all our burdens, to place before God all the things we do, or do not do, that separate us from God. Confession as a gift from our gentle and loving God.

So John dug up his old 1928 prayer book to show me. Only he didn’t find those comfortable words quite where he remembered them. Instead, the Confession came first. We were called to “acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed”, and then the priest said the Absolution, and only then would the priest say, “Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him. Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”

In that context, the words don’t feel so comfortable to me. Instead, they feel very conditional. If and only if we have “truly and earnestly repented our sins,” if and only if we “are in love and charity with our neighbors,” if and only if we “intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways,” if and only if we have confessed our manifold sins and wickedness and been absolved – then and only then would we receive the benefit of these comfortable words. We had to earn the comfort. Confession was a gauntlet to pass through in order to receive rest rather than something that could help to relieve our burdens and weariness. The Church took words intended to give rest to our souls and made them conditional not upon our weariness but upon our worthiness.

It seems ironic, but it also seems very human. Most of us tend to have trouble laying down our burdens; we have trouble letting go of the things that weigh on us; and we have trouble accepting help.

And so I ask you to think about what is making you weary right now? What are your burdens?

When I start working on a sermon, I try to tart with a sort of lectio divina meditation –to slowly and prayerfully work through the words of whatever passage I’m using. As often happens when I’m praying, I couldn’t even get into a place of prayerful meditation because of all the thoughts and worries and distractions whizzing through my brain. But what hit me at that moment was that all that stuff that wouldn’t stop floating through my head when I tried to settle into God’s presence were the very burdens Jesus was asking me to hand over to him. My to-do list. My fear of having missed things that should be on my to-do list. My feeling that I wasn’t doing enough, or that I wasn’t doing what I was doing well enough. My memories of recent bouts of impatience with my children. My worries about things going on with my family. My guilt about the people with needs that I’m missing in this parish. My concerns about the people and situations on my prayer list that only seems to be getting longer. These were very the anxieties and concerns that Jesus was talking about – they weren’t just making me weary, they were actually keeping me from God.

I began to wonder what was keeping me from handing them over. What keeps us from taking Jesus up on this offer to come to him with all of these things that weigh us down?

I came up with a few possibilities. On one end of the spectrum, I think we often assume that some of our worries are so piddly that God doesn’t have time for them. God has a lot on God’s plate, after all. On the other end, I think sometimes we don’t feel like we deserve the offer Jesus makes; we are broken and flawed and we’ve brought a lot of these problems on ourselves. Then there are all the things we think we can handle ourselves (here we are this weekend celebrating our independence, afterall! A pretty high calling for us Americans.). I suspect we’ve also got our share of things we’ve grown so attached to that they are hard to lay down – maybe we’ve gotten used to the busy-ness and the climbing and the feeling that we are useful and needed and important. Or maybe we’re just scared, unsure of what we’ll have left if we manage to let go of all of this; what will required of us then?

Whatever the reason, it’s probably part of the weariness and burden too. And part of what we need to give up and hand over. So how do we do it? How do we take Jesus up on his invitation?

I think I can answer the negative more easily. I know how not to take Jesus up on his invitation. Not by doing all the right things, by fulfilling some check-list, like the 1928 prayer book seemed to apply. Not by following some set of intricate rules, as the Pharisees promoted and Jesus fought against.

It’s possible that the answer is different for all of us. But for what it’s worth, I’ll share what I did. I wrote down all those things I mentioned earlier that were buzzing through my head. I came up with an exhaustive list of the things that were exhausting me and the anxieties I was carrying. And I’ve turned it into my prayer list. I ask God to be with me in each one of them. I ask for God’s grace and forgiveness and creative spirit to be part of each one of them. I ask for God to help me either let go of them if needed or show me how to take them on with a new spirit.

Would you believe that it is working? As a practical matter, it may not have changed anything on my list, but I no longer feel so overwhelmed or alone. I feel like I can see some of the situations in my life more clearly, through a lens of love and forgiveness. I find myself in small situations remembering to live more fully in the present, to give thanks for what comes my way. I find myself feeling less as if I need to prove myself and more able to accept what I am able to give and forgive myself when I fall short (and also more able to begin offering the same gift of acceptance and forgiveness to those around me). I find I can breathe more easily and that my shoulders aren’t so tense. In those challenging moments, I am more likely to remember to take deep breaths and call on God. I am discovering a new sense of freedom (as compared to that independence I talked about earlier!).

What might that rest that Jesus talks about look like in your life?

Rest doesn’t mean we do nothing and give up all responsibility. It isn’t idleness or an easy life Jesus promises but rest for our souls. Realistically, the truth is that most of the things that burdened us will still be there – we’ll still have work to do, but maybe it will somehow be less onerous, less isolating, less frustrating.

Each one of us is included in Jesus’ offer. The only requirement for receiving Jesus’ rest is that we are weary. The only requirement for picking up Jesus’ light burden is having a burden we want to set down. The only requirement for taking on Jesus’ easy yoke is having a yoke we want to remove.

And so I invite you to listen once again to those beautiful, comfortable words, this time in the modern Message translation: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Amen.

Now it's your turn!

2011-06-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our plans to change things up a bit at St. Aidan's. For the last three weeks, we've spent the first half of the service, The Liturgy of the Word, in a modified "choir" style seating, with rows of chairs facing each other and a big aisle in the middle.

Then the entire congregation came up to the Altar and stood around it for the entire Liturgy of the Table.

As with any change, there were a few logistical difficulties, especially for the first part of the service. It was hard to know where exactly to process, where John and I should sit to officiate, where readers should stand since we had no ambo, where to keep the Gospel book. But, for me at least, there were also some wonderful high points. I loved reading the psalm responsively and hearing the voices echo back and forth. I loved when the kids were part of my sermon on Pentecost and it felt like we were gathered in around them.

I loved our youth service on Trinity Sunday with the 4th-8th graders passing the microphone in the center. It felt like we were gathered together more closely; like we were more of a community, learning together and experiencing this new thing together. Maybe even making more room for the Holy Spirit to act amongst us by getting out of our comfort zones. One thing about the seating arrangement particularly struck me: For me, the strangest part was having half the congregation seated behind me. I wasn't able to see everyone, which is the normal experience of the congregation but not of the officiant who traditionally sits up front and can see everyone spread in front of them.

There were some logistical difficulties with our new configuration for the Liturgy of the Table as well. It took some explaining each week: If you don't want to stand, there are seats for you over here... If you don't want to receive communion, please come up anyway and you can receive a blessing... Once you have received communion, please just step back and allow another group to come forward... We'll stay up here for the rest of the service, so please bring your bulletin so you'll have the words for the final hymn... There was sometimes a tiny bit of confusion about who had received communion and how to make sure everyone has been included, although surprisingly little, I thought. We heard a few complaints from folks for whom it is difficult to stand for a long period of time, so just having available seats nearby didn't seem to help meet those concerns. I also wondered if newcomers that would rather remain anonymous felt overwhelmed. But overall, I loved the vibe from this half of the service. There we all were, gathered like a family (sometimes rowdy and jostling, but family!) around a table.

To me, it felt like we were all praying the Eucharistic prayer together rather than most of the group listening while the celebrant prayed. The kids tended to gather in the front and seemed much more engaged and interested than usual. And for me it felt like the music during communion (we used Taize chants that required no learning) was a prayer that supported us as we received the bread and wine.

In the liturgy of the church, as with any community endeavor, there are always kinks to work out. But overall, I have really enjoyed these past few weeks. Certainly all that we've learned from this experience will be helpful in some future season if we decide to try this or some other formation again.

We'll be going back to normal this coming Sunday, with the chairs back where they were and communion once again served to small groups who come up by turn rather than as a group. We'd be very interested to hear how both of these experiences felt for those of you who were able to worship with at St. Aidan's during this time. How did it feel to face others in the congregation as you worshiped? How did it feel to have such a distinction between the two halves of the service? Did your experience change how you think about church or how you felt God working during the service? Did you feel uncomfortable? Challenged? United? How did the experience feel after being part of it for 3 weeks? And, as a practical matter, what glitches did you notice that you'd want us to think through if we were to go back to one of these experiences in a future season?

Lastly, thank you for your flexibility. This is an amazing and unusual congregation in that it is so willing to try new things. You make being a priest among you so much more interesting!

Blowing in the Wind

2011-06-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

June 12, 2011
Pentecost
St. Aidan's Episcopal Church

(The kids were a big help with this sermon, as you can see. They helped "blow" the breath of God, build the Tower of Babel, and acted as disciples. Anyone familiar with Godly Play will see a lot of crossover. Thanks, Jerome Berryman!)

In the beginning, the very first chapter of the Bible tells us, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. But the Holy Spirit was there. A wind from God swept over the face of the waters and God began to create.

The Holy Spirit was there for the creation of humankind, too. The second chapter of Genesis shows God forming the first human from the dust and breathing into its nostrils the breath of life and what was once dust becomes a living being.

All things, including humankind, were declared “good” and we lived in relationship with our Creator. But it wasn’t long before we begin making our way toward division and death. There’s the forbidden fruit, Cain and Abel, the flood….

And then one day, the people decided to build a great tower. Everyone working on the tower spoke the same language and worked together. At first, they were trying to come close to God.

But as the tower grew taller and taller, they began to talk in different ways. They forgot why they were building it. They grew so proud of themselves that they began to think that they were greater builders than God. Each group thought it was better than any of the others. A huge noise replaced their talking. It made no sense. Everyone was babbling , and no one could understand anyone else. Soon the tower fell down, so it was called the Tower of Babel. The language and the people of the earth were shattered and broke apart.

Thousands of years passed. Then Jesus died on the cross, but somehow he was still with the people around him. They kept seeing him – in the garden by the empty tomb, on the road to Emmaus, by the sea as they fished, and in the breaking of bread as he ate with them….

And then one day something amazing happened. The disciples were in
Jerusalem all gathered in one room.

Suddenly there was a sound like a mighty wind rushing to be with them. It was the Holy Spirit. They became so full of power that they seemed to be on fire. They were so excited that people wondered what was going on. In Jerusalem there were people from many different countries who spoke many different languages. And yet they could all understand the disciples speaking. Everyone could see that the disciples had come close to God – and God had come close to them – in a new way. It no longer mattered that they spoke different languages.

The disciples went out into all the world to tell their stories about Jesus. And ever since, Pentecost has been celebrated to remember that day.

We call it the birthday of the church because it is when the stories started to spread and the followers of Jesus started to grow. But maybe it’s even more of a graduation kind of celebration. The disciples received their authentic voices and stepped out into the world. They probably felt a mix of fear and excitement as they started spreading the story. And the circle continued to ripple out and the Holy Spirit continued to move and empower and embolden.

And now, whatever happened to those first disciples has been handed off to us. We are part of this wild and magnificent story of power and reversal, too. The Holy Spirit is still bringing life out of death, hope out of despair, community out of brokenness, understanding out of discord. And it’s our turn to be filled with it -- to find our voices and move into the world to love and serve God and our neighbor in bold and creative and life-giving ways. To keep adding to the story!

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.

Preparing to Enter the Mystery of Pentecost...

2011-06-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

You probably know the biblical story of the first Pentecost from Acts 2: The disciples were all together and "a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind" and "tongues of fire" rested on each one of them and they "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues" and were heard and understood by people from "every nation under heaven." Each year in the Church we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost on the 50th day after Easter, and the season continues for months after.

Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church because it is the time when the disciples received the Holy Spirit, and when the mission and expansion of the Good News to people of every nation began in earnest. The movement that had until then been associated with the incarnate person of Jesus broadened, and Jesus' divine life spread to fill the Church. The disciples and new believers began to understand God in a new way, living in them and working through them.

This year, there are interesting (temporary) changes afoot at St. Aidan's Church that we hope will help us to celebrate the season of Pentecost more fully.

For about a month, rather than having rows of chairs facing the Altar, we will have several rows along each side of the church facing each other. We will be able to see each others' faces and hear each others' words. We hope this change will be a reminder that we are worshipping together as the people of God rather than as individual believers and will help to highlight the sense that we are in this together, building relationships grounded in God.

Along with the new seating arrangement for the congregation, we will leave significant space by the altar to allow for movement by the entire congregation up around the altar for the Eucharistic Prayer. (Seats will be available up front for those for whom standing is difficult.) We do this already at our 8:30 a.m. service, and it has created a feeling of real community and fellowship. We do this in part at our 10:30 service, when a group of people stay at the altar until all are finished receiving bread and wine; this will enlarge the group to include the entire congregation. Gathering around the altar together is a physical manifestation of how we constitute the Body of Christ; each of us is important, but it is when we are together around a common Table that something new is formed. We hope these changes will give us the sort of tangible experience of Pentecost that the original disciples had that wild day in Jerusalem.

The truth is, the people of God can gather anywhere and everywhere to worship and God is there no matter where we sit or stand. And yet, just like our liturgy and our prayer can't help but shape our believing, the way we gather and move also shapes us. Pentecost is a wonderful and theologically rich occasion to be shaped differently for a time. In Pentecost, God comes among us in a drastically new way; what a great time to begin to think anew what Church is and what God calls us to be together!

Adding to the Story

2011-05-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

Easter 6
John 14:15-21
May 29, 2011

A few weeks ago, my kids were thinking ahead to future holidays and Memorial Day came up. Sophie asked what it was all about. And so I said something vague about how it is a time to remember people who had died. Dylan, our wanna-be rock star, got excited. “You mean, like Nirvana?” (thinking of Curt Cobain). “Uh… not quite like that,” I said. “He wasn’t really someone to remember as a role model, was he?” And I segue-wayed into a discussion about how drugs are bad and can kill you. Sophie wasn’t impressed with that topic of conversation and got back to Memorial Day. “So who are we supposed to remember? People like your mom? Or like Jesus?” Holden stepped in to set the record straight about this weekend’s national holiday. “Memorial Day is a time when we remember peoplevwho have died in wars,” he said.

When he said it, my head went straight to World Wars I and II and Vietnam. Long past wars that affected different generations than my own. I hope that I will not offend anyone here when I admit that the subject matter of Memorial Day felt so removed to me that I hadn’t ever thought about the day as much more than a chance to have a picnic or a bar-b-cue and get an extra day off school or work.

It was only when I thought longer about it that it occurred to me that every day new names are being added to the far-too-long list of people included in the subject matter of Memorial Day. I started wondering about the intended parameters of the day. Is it simply a time to think about the past? A time to remember in gratefulness the incredible service of those people that have fought and died for our country?

Or should it be more than that, too? Should Memorial Day also be a time to make meaning in the present? A time to think about the qualities we admire in the soldiers that have died in wars and hopefully replicate them – things like bravery, selflessness, dedication, and conviction? A time to think about how deep and lasting is this ultimate sacrifice that so many have made and to remind ourselves to take seriously when and how and why we put people into harms’ way? A time to recognize that the same folks that are overseas right now fighting might be among those that we remember on Memorial Days in the future?

It got me thinking about how (and why) we remember things. And about how we make present meaning out of things that have happened in the past.

Which seems particularly relevant to what we do together in this place. Every week we come here and read scripture – pieces of a sacred story written thousands of years ago by people that lived in a completely different time and place and culture than our own. Sometimes we love the stories we hear and can joyfully and agreeably proclaim “The Word of the Lord! Thanks be to God!” And sometimes we can only roll our eyes and clench our teeth and ask “The Word of the Lord? Thanks be to God?” Sometimes the stories comfort us and sometimes they challenge us. And sometimes they might seem completely irrelevant. But no matter what, they are the Word of God – and a chance to encounter the living Word that comes among us and breathes through us. They aren’t written for some long-dead audience and used as a history lesson. They are written for US. Written so that we might believe, so that we might be inspired, so that we might learn to Live.

It’s the same with Communion. Every week our Eucharistic prayer walks us through the history of God’s relationship with people, and Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Sometimes the words seem far away and repetitive, and the bread and wine just seem like bread and wine. And sometimes we are able to offer ourselves to God and to know that the bread and wine are somehow more than what they appear. But no matter what, the bread and wine are spiritual food that are meant to strengthen and empower us to love and serve God and our neighbor.

There is so much history, so much past, about what we do in this place. But if we leave it there, if we relegate it to something that existed only back then, we’d be in our Memorial Day as bar-b-que mode. We’d be missing the point.

There was a well-known priest in this Diocese named Churchill Gibson that used to talk about the very important difference between nostalgia and what he called “holy remembering.” Nostalgia freezes us in the past, thinking and re-thinking what has already been. But holy remembering makes what was past part of our present. Holy remembering lets us see and hear and know the seeing, hearing, knowing and living God right here and now.

For example, when we say, in this Easter season, “Alleluia! The Lord is Risen!”, we don’t just mean that the Lord just risen back on that first Easter morning. The Lord is risen right now, today! That’s what makes it worthy of that triumphant Alleluia!

And in John’s Gospel this morning, we get a glimpse of what makes holy remembering possible. Jesus promises the disciples that even though he won’t be with them in the same way anymore, he will still abide with them forever as the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. All they have to do is love.

Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? But it’s misleading. Because that love that Jesus commands them to embrace isn’t some abstract philosophical concept or even a feeling of spiritual certainty. It is the same active reality that Jesus revealed in his life. Love is feeding the hungry, touching lepers, healing the sick, treating outcasts as worthy, protesting against anything that devalues another person. Not an easy undertaking at all. But definitely worthwhile. Because Jesus promised that when the disciples did these things, when they loved as Jesus loved, the Holy Spirit would abide with them and be revealed to the world. And that promise wasn’t just for Jesus’ disciples back in the 1st century; it’s for his disciples right now in the 21st century too. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will be in and among all those who love as he loved.

I think one reason I am so enchanted with our Godly Play stories with the younger kids is that the promise that we are included in the story is so often made explicit. The children are invited into the old, old stories as they wonder. “I wonder where you are in this story? What part of the story is about you?” “I wonder if you have ever come close to something like this?” But it isn’t just the kids that need to hear that they are part of the story. I need to hear that, too! Don’t we all need that promise that the story is about us, too? We aren’t just recipients or inheritors of our religious faith – we are also smack dab in the middle of it. And we are ancestors in faith to the people who come after us. Ours is a living faith, because ours is a living God.

There’s a piece of the Godly Play room that we haven’t introduced yet, but I look forward to adding it next year. The lesson is called “The Part That Hasn’t Been Written Yet.” There isn’t actually a story that goes with it. There is just a blank book, a beautiful special blank book, that is left out on a stand with pens and markers nearby. And if a child asks about the book, the adults simply say something like, “This is the part that hasn’t been written yet. We’ve heard so many stories about the journey of the people of God and how they came close to God and God came close to them. What will you write in the book? How will you add to the story of God and God’s people?”

How will you add to the story of God and God’s people? Amen.

Hearing What the Spirit is Saying to Our People...

2011-05-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

In my sermon on Sunday, I handed out paper and pens to the congregation and asked them to write down their answers to two questions. I've assembled the answers and they are not only interesting, but hopefully the beginning of a fruitful conversation.

First, how might our reading from Acts 2 about the early Church's joyful worship, fellowship, prayer and sharing inspire you to think differently about how you live out your own faith? Is there something that you could do differently to live out more fully our baptismal promises?

The Answers:Do good, pray, work, hope

Participate more in the activities and learning opportunities of the Church. Get here more often during the week.
I can first turn to members of the community to share who we are and work toward what we can be. Then – harder – reach outside the closer, easy-to-reach circle to talk about these things.
Need to stop my own concerns from being the center of my focus.
Be more aware of the goodness of my life.
Be more generous with my time and my treasures. Listen more.
To spend time daily trying to live the teachings that we hear each week in church.
Engage outside of church – decompartmentalize.
Be more generous to those in need.
Remember daily the reality of what God has already done for me.
I will stop worrying about things that are out of my hands. I will give my worries up to God.
God before all others.
Smile at strangers more easily.
Don’t compartmentalize my faith to Sundays only.
Smile … for the journeys are winding roads with the same destination.
Good will (of other people) is earned by good will. Am I kind to all regardless of who/what they are?
I will be nicer to strangers and all people I pass by each day.
To be less selfish, to focus more on people, not myself. To be more grateful for everything given to me, to have a more joyful heart.
The spirit of God comes into us in every way we think, live and pray.
Life is better when one does something to help others.
Be kind.
Be patient and understanding.
Resolve to act more in peace with all.
Feed those who are without.
Forgive the perceived failings of those around me without acting as if I even noticed them in the first place.
Pray.
Contemplate.
Share more of what I have with those in need.
Live in peace.
Sharing meals with friends.
Reach out more to those in need that are not people with much in common.
Love one another. Help those who are in need; all are our brothers.
Reflection before action.
Being less selfish and more giving.
Be open for the unexpected. Listen deeply.
To make other people no do other stuff.
To be more sensitive to the needs of others. To enjoy the world around me.
Cultivate a generosity of spirit that resides within.
Be more involved with others.
I could be more generous with my time and $ on behalf of others.
Listen to my heart and follow what God is calling me to do.
Trust in God to spend time on what is important – value the benefit of waking with a joyful heart. Make loving the focus of my day and joy the purpose.
Regarding the congregation of St. Aidan’s like family.
Be more thankful for God’s many blessings. Being still and listening to God.
Give and sell away surplus stuff. Fill my home with joy – a glad and generous heart.
Find a mate who is a believer.
Focus less on possessions and clothes.
Say “thank you” for all gifts given to me.
Continue Bible study classes followed by discussion of how to live life as a Christian.
Give some of my tax money to the church & help with Godly Play here.
Forgive as I am forgiven. Learn empathy and not just sympathy.
Sharing more joy and gladness and generosity each day.

And second, how might St. Aidan's better live out this picture from Acts? How can this community better support you in your Christian journey?

The Answers:
Worship, pray, give help, hope, money, time.

Continue to provide occasions for fellowship and learning.
So much that’s new is happening. I think we’re on the way to good things. If the church can continue to hear all voices and strive to open different kinds of doors to meet needs, that will keep us headed in the right direction.
Fewer interactive sermons. :-)
Continue to provide outreach activities to the community at large.
Provide opportunities for community outreach and support.
Continue to make accessible for all levels of faith and ages.
Continue to provide opportunities to help others and facilitate mobilization of the community.
Small group communities meeting regularly to build and support spiritual growth.
Spread the Word to all.
Hold at St. Aidan’s monthly community get-togethers bringing gifts.
Goodwill is often more easily achieved in a Christian community than in the secular world without; working with other community members, we can practice/discover how to love all.
To provide service opportunities. To inspire a joyful heart, a grateful attitude through services, through offering a community.
The fellowship from being in worship reminds us that God is present. His love comes through in the worship and community.
Coming to church each Sunday inspires me to do good works all week if I can. Today, I’ll help with the Crop Walk.
Continue to welcome all.
Continue and improvide “sharing gatherings” of all types – worship, fellowship, outreach.
Serving to make this place a good and safe home to all.
St. Aidan’s could sponsor children whose families can’t afford good pre-school experiences by giving scholarships and providing transportation.
Encourage stillness.
Provide more ways for us to give and serve others.
Increase the monthly dinner groups. Lunch meetings in DC during the week?
Share more the love of God with those outside the common community.
Reach out more into the surrounding community; more events/dinners for everyone.
Let people know that you don’t have to sing as much.
To preach the Gospel.
St. Aidan’s is already doing that.
St. Aidan’s might reaffirm and extend its generosity to the wider community of which we are a part.
St. Aidan’s can help by continuing to provide outreach programs.
St. Aidan’s can continue to make this an engaging place for children.
St. Aidan’s can better support its congregation by treating individual members like family – not letting them slip away, coming and going at will.
Offer a less traditional/more contemporary service on Sunday.
Have a yard sale where people can sell extra stuff and donate a % or buy a table to raise $ for st. Aidan’s and help people with extra stuff.
Emphasize communion. Call others to join us. Do more outreach.
We need to be more tolerant of other people.
Do more community things… like the 1.5 mile walk for the poor.
I think the church and clergy are not lacking – rather it is me.
Find ways to bring more seeking souls into our church.
Continue to comingle our talents & warmth with each other and the world. Do even more!

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people!

Are we living God's Dream?

2011-05-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Easter 4, Year A
May 15, 2011
Acts 2:42-47

If you were wondering, these colorful papers stretching above us are the Alleluia butterflies that each child in the Day School colored for chapel on Ash Wednesday. They disappeared for Lent and then emerged from the empty tomb at Easter. They have now spread their wings to fly, just as the stories about Jesus and the joy at his risen life began to spread after Easter.

I was worried that you all might feel left out of the fun, and so each of you should have received a piece of paper and a pen when you came in. In a few minutes, I’m going to ask you two questions. If you would consider sharing your answers anonymously, I invite you to put your piece of paper in the offering plate when it goes around later and the papers will be part of what comes up to the altar as our offering to God. But we’ll get to that part in a few minutes.

First, let’s think a little bit about our reading from Acts for this morning. We hear that the fledgling band of early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” And, not only that, but they shared all things in common. “[T]hey would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” These couple lines show how radically the Easter message affected the lives of the early believers.

It’s hard to know exactly what all that might look like in practice, but in my mind, I picture the early Christians were telling and re-telling their stories about Jesus, sharing their collective memories of his wisdom and his parables. Not just at worship, but in their homes and in their conversations. I imagine them opening themselves to God in prayer. Not just with their heads, but with their whole hearts. I imagine their meals, including their remembrance of the last supper in their worship, as being full of celebration and joy. I picture them nurturing each other, listening to and caring deeply for one another, making efforts to include new people in worship, extending hospitality to everyone. And then that “sharing all things in common bit” – wow! That is almost more than I can get my imagination around.

The reading says that their devotion and the way they lived in harmony so impressed the people around them that every day they grew in number. Their faith changed the way they lived in such dramatic ways that everyone around them could see it.

Last night my kids and I happened to read this very story in Desmond Tutu’s children’s bible and it was about as beautiful a picture as any I could concoct: "They were filled with joy and love for one another, and love for God. They became one big, happy family sharing everything together, just like God had always dreamed it could be."

That’s pretty impressive and a hard act to follow. And yet following it is what we promise to do in our baptismal covenant. Verbatim, in fact. Question: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” Answer: “I will, with God’s help.” The “sharing all things in common and giving to anyone that has need” part isn’t quite as explicit in the baptismal covenant, but those also seem to be pretty well covered in our promises to proclaim the good news in “word and example”, to “love our neighbor as ourself”, and to “strive for dignity and peace among all people.” These aren’t idle or empty words. They are our promises – our solemn vows to God of how we will be. (With God’s help, of course. Thank God for that!) They are essentially the definition of how to be a Christian. Our faith is supposed to dramatically change the way we live.

It is all pretty daunting, when you think about it. But don’t feel too bad if you, like me, are not feeling quite up to snuff. We know from other parts of the book of Acts that the perfect harmony we hear about this morning didn’t last long. And there is even some debate about whether the Church described in our reading this morning was actually the early Church or just the ideal to which it aspired.

The week before last we had our spring clergy retreat and one of the retreat leaders introduced an interesting kind of Bible study that he called “mirroring.” In mirroring, you read a text and try to intuit what the community to whom the words were addressed might have actually looked like, with the understanding that the community may have been the mirror-image of the words themselves. As a sort of comical example, he explained that if a text said “Don’t jump on the bed!” it was likely written for a group that is jumping on the bed. The text we used at the retreat was from 1 Corinthians, where Paul is teaching the people about spiritual gifts and telling them that the Church should be unified like the parts of a body and that love is the most important thing. Using mirroring, we talked about how the community Paul was addressing probably was not using their spiritual gifts or appreciating and including the gifts of others and was probably not living in love. And then, using what we’d discussed, we tried to discern what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us in our own context.

I thought about this mirroring technique when I read today’s passage. Using mirroring, it seems like the people being addressed by the writer of Acts probably weren’t devoting themselves terribly well to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Maybe they only worshipped and prayed and thought about the Bible while at church, then went back to their “regular” life and didn’t think about all that stuff at all. Maybe they weren’t particularly joyful in their meals or the other time they spent together. Maybe they weren’t sharing what they had but considered it their own hard-earned stuff. In other words, maybe the original audience of Acts was a whole lot closer to us living in our modern and secular times than we realize!

Maybe the words from Acts that we read this morning were intended to inspire the early Church that had already grown careless and less-than-energetic in their faith. And maybe these words are just as needed to inspire us to truly become Easter people – people who devote so ourselves to scripture, fellowship, worship and prayer that our lives are radically changed. And maybe these words are just as needed to encourage us to truly become an Easter Church – a place where the deepest human longings for God and for community are satisfied and where all live together in abundance and harmony.

So with that in mind, let’s read our passage again:

"They 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."

And so I ask you, from this reading, what might the Holy Spirit be saying to you? This is where that paper and pen come in. We’ll sit in silence for a minute, and I invite you to write down how the words of Acts might be inspiring you to think differently about how you live out your own faith. Is there one thing, maybe, that you could do differently to live out more fully those promises in the baptismal covenant? Something you could be doing to live more fully into the dream of God?

(silence)

And of course, it is the early church we hear about in Acts, not just individuals acting upon their individual spirituality. That’s true for us here today, too. We gather in this place as a community in order to support each other and to be supported in our lives in Christ. So, turn over your paper to write down your answer to this next question. How can this church better live out this reading from Acts? How can St. Aidan’s -- this community of believers and this institution and clergy – better support you in whatever it is that you wrote down on the other side of the paper? We’ll take another minute in silence for you to write that down.

(silence)

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. Hopefully it’s just the beginning of the conversation!

Having trouble getting to Easter...

2011-04-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

Easter 2011
St. Aidan’s Church
John 20:1-18

I’ve decided that preaching on Easter Sunday is tricky business. Especially in a congregation like St. Aidan's, which in its very mission statement claims its identity as “a place that strives to welcome people wherever they are on their faith journey.” The church this morning is full of people at different places along their faith journeys, including many who might describe themselves as having more questions than faith.

And yet here we are this morning confronted with the most mind-bogglingly impossible part of the Bible. Today we proclaim with loud voices and exclamation points the things that are the hardest to believe, the things for which we have absolutely no scientific proof. All we have are the sometimes conflicting accounts written decades after their occurrence and the heart-felt experiences of generations of believers.

And to tell you the truth, I’ve spent most of this past week flummoxed by the prospect of this sermon. I couldn’t seem to get myself out of Lent, and especially out of Holy Week, enough to prepare an Easter sermon. I couldn’t think ahead to Easter as we entered Jerusalem with Jesus, waving palm branches. I couldn’t skip to the end of the story while Jesus showed us how to remember him in the bread and the wine, and how to love one another by washing their our feet. I couldn’t get my head around resurrection as we watched with horror as the soldiers came to take Jesus away. And I certainly couldn’t get to the happily-ever-after as we hid our eyes while he suffered and died. My heart and head just wouldn’t go there.

And then yesterday morning I read again our Gospel story for this morning and realized the perfect preaching model was right there in front of me the entire time in the form of Mary Magdalene, who also had a hard time getting to Easter.

Mary came to Jesus’ tomb while it was still dark that first Easter morning expecting nothing at all. She hadn’t put the pieces together yet, hadn’t even begun to understand what Jesus meant when he cried out “It is accomplished!” from the cross. She came weeping, overcome with her grief. Mary couldn’t recognize the risen Jesus right in front of her because she was so sure she knew he was just a dead body in the tomb. And even when the risen Jesus called her name and she finally recognized him, she still saw him in the risen-Lazarus kind of way. Alive again, but just humanly alive. A huge relief, but not a new creation. All Mary cared about at that point was holding on to Jesus so tightly that he couldn’t get away from her again. She wanted to walk with him again, listen to his stories, sit at his feet. She couldn’t yet grasp that this wasn’t just her old friend back from the grave. He wasn’t going to just return to his former way of life. And then something changed for Mary. She let her mind be boggled and she finally understood that what she was seeing was humanity perfected… what she was hearing was new life beckoning her… what she was touching was nothing less than God.

I think Mary Magdalene in our story this morning is what faith looks like over time.

You begin wherever you are. Sometimes you might begin weeping and mourning like Mary, and sometimes you might be bored or anxious or scared or overwhelmed or not paying attention at all.

Perhaps you notice or experience something that strikes you as notable but you aren’t sure why. For Mary it was the empty tomb, but for us it might be something in nature or in another person or in a poem you read.

Whatever it is, it starts you on a search, although often you have no idea what it is you are longing for. Mary went looking for a body, but her real yearning went much deeper than that.

And then you encounter God along the way, though more often than not in some form or fashion that you don’t at first recognize, like Mary with the figure that she thought was the gardener.

Then something happens to make God real to you – somehow you hear God calling your name, perhaps not as concretely as Mary did, but in some way you know that the God of the universe is right there with YOU.

Sometimes even then, even when you recognize God in front of you, you still cling tightly, as Mary did, to what you expected from God and have trouble letting go.

But hanging on to the God we have known can keep us from the God who knows us better than we know ourselves. And so at some point, you finally begin to have faith that this God that you have encountered is big and wonderful enough to trust and try to follow.

At each point in our Gospel story this morning, Mary moves closer to the Risen Jesus. She moves from misunderstanding to understanding, from grief to hope. She does in one morning what we’ll do (some of us over and over again) throughout our lifetimes. We are all on some section of that journey.

But there’s one more piece for Mary in our story this morning. She didn’t stop there, with her own personal awakening. We wouldn’t have her story today if she hadn’t shared it with others. Mary Magdalene was actually the first Easter morning preacher. She didn’t go to seminary or have an on-line library of scholarly articles to consult. She didn’t have a week to tinker and agonize over what she’d say, either. Her audience wasn’t one that had probably heard the story year after year, like you all have. And yet she preached a sermon to the disciples that was so effective that it was recorded verbatim in the best-selling book of all time. “I have seen the Lord,” she announced. And then she shared with them her experience of encountering Jesus. Simple, but effective.

And so, in the great tradition of our forebearer, Mary of Magdela, I tell you in no uncertain terms: I have seen the Lord.

Just this week, in fact.

I spent several days early this week with one of my best friends from college whose father died. When I first talked to her, she said people kept telling her that her dad was "in a better place" and although she'd always believed that before, now that she was in the midst of it, she was having trouble believing it. She wanted to be able to go back in time and get to do some of it again. Or better yet, to wake up from this like from a bad dream.

When I got there, my friend and her sister and their mother were there, along with their families. They were carrying on pretty well, accomplishing all the details that go with death – funeral planning and notifying people. One morning they asked me to lead a prayer service, just for their family, and so I put together some readings and prayers and they brought some things that had been important to her dad. They shared stories and jokes, moved between crying and laughing, held hands for the Lord's Prayer, and did a whole lot of embracing.

I was honored to be with them. Humbled to be the only non-family member at such an intimate gathering. I felt like I was witnessing Mary Magdalene at the garden tomb realizing that the figure before her was the risen Lord. It was truly an Easter moment.

Mary Magdalene had trouble getting to Easter. And once she finally got there, she realized Easter wasn’t the happily-ever-after dramatic conclusion to the story, but a new beginning.

My friend’s family experienced the same thing. Like Mary Magdalene, they pushed through the cobwebs and hurt of their own Good Friday and emerged on the other side. It wasn’t the happy ending they would have chosen if the story were entirely theirs to write, but it was a chance for a new beginning. Theirs was a hard-fought and a well-deserved Alleluia.

And so is ours.

Our God encounters us this morning smack dab in the midst of the impossible. Which is just as it should be. It were easy to believe – if it were all bunnies and chicks and chocolate and springtime like the marketing geniuses promise, it wouldn’t be big enough to reveal our God. What we proclaim this morning – Alleluia! The Lord is Risen! – is nothing short of impossible. It is too huge to be encompassed by certainty – too breath-taking to be found only within the realm of our imaginations and common sense. Only a story so open to doubt and wonder could be so worthy of faith.

This morning we may be on a journey that has only just begun, or we may be far along the path. But no matter where we are, this morning we have an opportunity to run to the empty tomb and see for ourselves. After that, who knows?

All we can do is add our own story of encounter to the heartfelt experiences of the generations of believers that have come before and those that will follow. And so I say to you this morning, I have seen the risen Lord! Alleluia! How about you? Amen.

Jesus and The Nobody

2011-03-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Lent 3, Year A

March 27, 2011
John 4:5-42

(Begin in silence.)

Those of you who were here last weekend may have noticed that John and I and the vestry were not here. We were away on a vestry retreat from early Saturday morning until mid-Sunday afternoon. It was, I hope I can speak for all of us when I saw this, an incredible experience and something that I think you will see influencing this place in our future together.

A handful of folks from St. Aidan’s, including Lisa Richard, our senior warden, had recently received training in discernment from the Diocese. Lisa found the training meaningful and so suggested to John that she bring it to the vestry during our retreat. As I did just now, we began in silence, and that silence was repeated throughout the weekend. (At first, it probably felt uncomfortable for many. But by the end it was old hat.) And then we spent quite a while talking through, and buying into, a series of “listening guidelines.” The guidelines were things like: “Listen to others with your entire self.” “Do not formulate what you want to say while someone else is speaking.” “Speak for yourself only.” “Hold your desires and opinions - even your convictions - lightly.” Ideas that are both incredibly simple in theory and incredibly difficult to practice. As we worked through them together, they helped us to learn (or at least to begin to practice) how to really listen to each other, how to speak from what is deep within us, and how to find God in the spaces in between.

I think our weekend experience was not unlike what happened in our Gospel story this morning.

I imagine that Jesus and the woman at the well must have begun in silence. There is Jesus, exhausted by his journey and sitting close to the well, maybe under the shade of a nearby tree. His eyes are heavy, his breathing deep and slow, his mind (it was Jesus, afterall) probably fairly peaceful and prayerful. I imagine him watching this woman approaching. Water jug empty, but still a burden in her arms, weighing her down as she struggles with her long skirts, kicking up dust with her sandals, sweating under the hot, noonday sun. She gets closer and sees this stranger near the well. She has made this much effort to get to the well, she is too tired to turn around now. She averts her eyes, but not before quickly taking in the clothing that distinguishes him as foreign to Samaria. She goes about her business, attaching her bucket to the rope and lowering it down, the whole time uncomfortably aware of this unknown man’s gaze upon her.

And then, very suddenly and unexpectedly it seems to her, he breaks the silence by requesting a drink. And then the two begin a conversation that is the longest recorded conversation that Jesus has with anyone.

Our Gospel reading for this morning was a long one, but that wasn’t the main reason why I wanted to present it in a more dramatic fashion than usual. I asked a few folks to help with the Gospel because I wanted us to be able to hear the voices of Jesus and the woman at the well. There is an incredible back and forth between the two. We learn more about this woman and her relationship with Jesus than we do about most of the disciples!

But one thing we never learn is her name. She is a nobody, worth nothing, for so many reasons.

First, she’s a woman. That’s enough in itself to marginalize her in first-century, patriarchal culture. Jesus had no business being alone with her, much less talking to her. As we heard in our reading, when his disciples returned, “[t]hey were astonished that he was speaking to a woman.”

Second, she is a Samaritan, and therefore an outcast in Jewish society. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, and although the Samaritans and the Jews were distant cousins, there was no end to the political and religious tensions between them. Samaritans were seen as ritually impure by the Jews. Again, as we heard in our reading, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans” – a very polite way of putting it.

Third, this woman had been “married” five times. (Not quite Elizabeth Taylor’s incredible collection, but a stunning number in those days.) Many commentators assume she was a prostitute, and that’s certainly possible. Or perhaps her husbands had died or left her – there is no way of knowing. All that we know is that she is viewed as shameful and immoral by the people around her.

And so, while the rest of the women in town will make their trek to the well in the cool of the morning or evening, this Samaritan woman of questionable morals, this anonymous nobody, comes to draw her water in the heat of the day. Avoiding gossip, perhaps, or so ostracized by her fellow townspeople that even the most basic necessity of life has become another way in which she is separated and broken.

Under Jewish law, she falls into the category of “unclean” -- outside the realm of God’s interest or humankind’s acceptance. Any Jewish religious leader with sense or self-interest would have avoided her like the plague.

But of course, we wouldn’t be gathered here this morning if Jesus were just “any Jewish religious leader.”

Jesus doesn’t just come near this woman. He doesn’t just break propriety by drinking water from her ladle. He bothers to know her. He talks to her and listens to her and responds to her questions. He continues to go deeper with her even when she repeatedly misunderstands him and sees only the surface of who he is and what he has to offer. And then he goes even further than that. He reveals his true self to her: “I am he,” the Christ. A confession that not even the disciples have yet been privileged to hear. And he offers her living water – water that will quench her deep and spiritual thirst forever.

I imagine that possibly for the first time in her life, this nobody of a woman felt like she mattered. I imagine that for the first time, she felt like someone had really listened to her. For the first time, she had been able to share what was on her heart, to speak about God and her deep yearning for a life different than the one she was living. We are told that the woman was so affected by her encounter with Jesus that she left her hard-earned water jug behind and ran back to the city to share her news with everyone: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

I think many of us left the vestry retreat feeling that way. Feeling known. Feeling like we had been able to speak about deep things. Feeling like we had been heard down to our cores. Feeling like we had connected in profound ways. Feeling like because we had made space for God, we had been able to sense God in our midst.

It was astounding to everyone around Jesus then that he would want to be with this nobody at the well. And from the way she reacted, I think it was just as astounding to the Samaritan woman herself. Frankly, when we allow ourselves to really believe it, sometimes it’s just as astounding now that God would want to be with any of us, with all of our imperfections and unrighteousness and (you fill in the blank).

All of us in our own ways are making our trek to the well in the heat of the day. All of us in our own ways have been broken to pieces. All of us in our own ways are unworthy. All of us in our own ways have failed to understand what Jesus has to offer us.

And that is right where Jesus finds us.

Next week in Godly Play with the kids I’ll be telling the part of our Lenten story about Jesus’ work in the world. As the story puts it: “His work was to come close to people, especially people no one wanted to come close to.”

No miracles were necessary for the woman at the well. She didn’t need to be healed or to have her sight restored or to be raised from the dead. (Not physically, anyway.) She needed to be seen, to be heard, to be loved. And that is what Jesus’ work was then and still is today. To see, to hear, to love. Even us. Especially us.

“Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did,” the woman tells everyone. But what she really meant was what she didn’t say: “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did… and loved me anyway.” Amen.

Observing Lent

2011-03-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

For some reason this Lent feels different to me than in years past.

I think the tone for me was set this year by our Ash Wednesday Kids' Service, which is so joyful and inspiring for me. We start by burning last year's palms and sing songs and tell stories and talk about Lent with Baptism as the backdrop. Lent as a time to think about how to live out those baptismal promises; the ashes as a reminder of the cross etched on our foreheads with oil during our baptism - a reminder that we are children of God.

And then last week I went to the Seminary for a Lenten Quiet Day, led by VTS Professor Kathleen Staudt using the writings of Evelyn Underhill. One of the readings that really stuck with me was from Underhill's book The Spiritual Life. Writing about the Lord's prayer, she said: "To say day by day 'Thy Kingdom Come'—if these tremendous words really stand for a conviction and desire—does not mean “I quite hope that some day the Kingdom of God will be established, and peace and goodwill prevail. But at present I don’t see how it is to be managed or what I can do about it.” On the contrary, it means, or should mean, 'Here am I! Send me!'—active, costly collaboration with the Spirit in whom we believe." Which led me to start thinking about how I can spend the season of Lent (and beyond) opening myself up to being "sent."

My kids, especially my oldest, are interested in Lent this year as well, so we've been thinking of ways to observe Lent together.
Here are some ideas that we've come up with -- I'd love to hear ideas that others have that work with kids:
Talk about why people give up things or take on new things during the season of Lent. Think about what you might give up or take on, either as a family or individually. Children might give up desserts or TV or a certain toy (even for one day a week). You might take on reading a Bible story before bed, or praying together as a family, or trying to do something extra kind to someone every day.

Think about how your family might be able to serve people in the community. Sign up to provide a meal at a local shelter or make a donation of food. Make colorful cards for shut-ins or people who don’t receive many visitors at a local senior center.

Share a “poverty meal” of one or two basic foods once a week (beans and rice, or soup and bread, for example). Talk about people who have even less to eat all year round. Give the amount of money you save by having these meals to a community food bank.

Create a Lenten centerpiece that helps you count down to Easter. One idea is to take a bare branch and tape a homemade leaf each day of Lent. Each day brings us a little closer to the “living” branch at Easter, when you could attach paper blossoms or butterflies to the tree.

Ask each family member to be responsible for a prayer before meals for one week of Lent. (My kids have been making up songs and playing instruments for some very interesting new graces!)

Look for signs of new life. Take your children out and look for buds, new leaves, bugs and worms. Each week, you’ll see the world waking up more and more after its winter sleep.

May this season be a time of blessing for you!

We are the Pancake!

2011-03-06T17:06:00.000-08:00

Last Epiphany, Year A

Transfiguration Sunday
March 6, 2011

This morning is all about transfiguration. I haven’t preached on this Sunday before and so I hadn’t realized that apparently the last Sunday of Epiphany is always all about transfiguration. Every year on the Sunday before Lent begins you get either this Old Testament reading about Moses meeting God on the mountaintop or a reading about Elijah ascending into heaven on his chariot of fire. And you also get some version of our Gospel reading about Jesus on the mountaintop. All of these stories involve people meeting God and being changed in appearance – being transfigured by their experience. Or at least, that was always what I thought they were about.

When I was in seminary, I got to be up on that mountain with Jesus and see the transfiguration for myself. Well, sort of. In seminary, each student is placed in a small group for weekly worship and fellowship. The groups take turns leading worship and my turn happened to fall just before Transfiguration Sunday. I had been exploring different types of prayer in one of my classes and was particularly enamored with a method developed by St. Ignatius – a sort of prayer of imagination, where you try to put yourself into the Bible scene. To smell and hear and see what is going on behind the words on the page, perhaps to become one of the characters or an onlooker, and to feel what they might have felt, to be part of the movement and the conversation. I thought our Gospel story for this morning about Jesus’ transfiguration would be a great one for this kind of imaginative prayer, and so I led my small group in meditation using this reading. After it was over, we shared our experience, and several of us talked about how it felt to be inside this story. To see the bright cloud around Jesus and his dazzling clothes. To watch the change in Jesus.

So remembering this experience as I prepared for my sermon, I naturally thought immediately about … pancakes. Pancakes have been on my mind with the countdown to Tuesday’s Pancake Supper. Two more days until I get to watch those chocolate chips melting on my hot pancakes! Two more days until I get to eat the salty-sweet perfection of sausage that has found its way into the syrup. Ummm…!

I’m a big fan of breakfast food. I love the way simple ingredients (like pancake mix and milk) can become something so glorious and satisfying when paired with syrup and whipped cream. For me, pancakes go hand-in-hand with warm and fuzzy memories of my childhood. They enliven my family gatherings, they bring us together and make us laugh. I realize pancakes may not be everyone’s path to inner peace, but surely there is something else you can substitute here – something else that becomes more than just whatever it is. Something that changes from what is seemingly ordinary into something that is extraordinary.

There’s something holy about that kind of transformation.

And so that’s what I planned to preach about this morning, because it’s all over our readings for this morning, right? Something seemingly ordinary being changed into something extraordinary.

During Moses’ mountaintop experience from our Old Testament reading, Moses is no longer the reluctant and sometimes grouchy leader of the exiled Israelites but is now very clearly God’s Chosen Prophet and Lawgiver.

And during Jesus’ mountaintop experience from our Gospel reading, Jesus is no longer just a wise and challenging human leader but the divine Son of God.

Except that, sometime about Friday afternoon as I was working on my sermon, I began to think maybe I had it all wrong. What my small group in seminary experienced wasn’t the change in Jesus, but how it felt to witness Jesus in that moment. Jesus hadn’t actually changed in this encounter at all – he was divine all along; he was the beloved Son of God all along. To him, this gathering on the mountaintop was just a chat with his dear old dad. What really changed in this story was the disciples. The way they saw Jesus and the way they now understood themselves and their mission. They got a little glimpse of what had actually been there all along.

And the same thing with Moses. He’d been talking to God for ages before this moment. He’d heard God talking in the burning bush, been getting directions from him daily, practically, as he led the people out of slavery. This wasn’t a change for Moses as much as it was for the people traveling with him who at that moment perhaps finally realized that Moses wasn’t a nagging rule-giver but an example of what it might mean to live into their covenant with their relational God. They too got a little glimpse of what had actually been there all along.

I had a sort of epiphany (very handy here on the last Sunday of Epiphany) that these stories aren’t about the transfiguration of Moses and Jesus. Not really. These stories are about the transfiguration of us and our vision of God.

We are the pancakes. We are the ones living our ordinary ingredient lives when suddenly we have a glimpse of the ultimate glory – whipped cream, syrup, chocolate chips. This is what we were made for! We are part of this! This is what changes everything. This is what it means to be truly alive!

Our readings for this morning show us moments when the eyes of the people of God were opened and they began to see in new ways, to live in new ways. It’s interesting to watch what happens to Peter, James and John in the span of just a few minutes during their mountaintop experience. So many reactions. First, surprise. They see Jesus’ shining face and glowing clothes and they are stunned. Next, an attempt to control or humanize the situation. “Lord, let us build you all houses!” Then they hear God’s voice speaking about Jesus and truly understand for the first time the relationship between God and Jesus. And the very thought of a God so close and personal fills them with fear. But then God incarnate touches them and tells them not to fear. And they rise, shaky but renewed and ready for the work ahead. It is time to take their transfigured selves back down the mountain, back into the world.

But moments of transfiguration aren’t just something that happened “back then.” They are out here for us to experience as well.

Every Sunday right here in this place we have opportunities to look beyond what we think is real into something even more Real – opportunities to get a glimpse into the reality of God. We shake hands with friends and strangers – regular people - during the Peace but we are actually all part of the movement of the Body of Christ. We eat regular bread and drink regular wine at this table but it is actually Christ among and within us.

[And on this particular Sunday we will watch as baby George gets doused with what may seem like regular water but is actually the water of creation, the water of the flood, the water that parted for the Israelites, the water of Jesus’ own baptism. George may seem like a regular baby boy but he will soon be marked indelibly as Christ’s own forever.]

But it isn’t only in the sacred that we are exposed to God’s Reality; in my experience, God is just as likely to use ordinary moments to transfigure us. These transfiguring moments are all around us if we’re paying attention. I’ve used this sermon as an excuse to ask friends and family and, as far as I can tell, we’ve all had them. (I highly recommend this as a conversation starter, by the way.) One friend shared how her relationship with her dad changed when he got very sick and they were able to forgive each other for things that had been holding them apart. My dad told me of the impact of a few instances when he got startlingly clear answers to prayer. Holden mentioned how having children (and especially so many children!) has changed the way he sees the world. My daughter Sophia talked about how her little sister Maya’s birth “made everything better.” (My son Dylan, who is very into music, talked about how great it must have been when we went from tapes to CDs, but it’s possible that he didn’t really understand the question.) God is in all these moments – inviting us to be transfigured by our glimpses of God’s Reality.

My guess is that when the disciples went back down that mountain with Jesus, their faces were shining too. They’d had a transfiguring experience – they’d discovered a whole new way of looking at Jesus, at God, at themselves. A whole new way of living in the world.

May the season of Lent help us all to be open to our own transfiguring experiences, in the seemingly holy spaces and the seemingly mundane. To be open to visions of God that will make our faces glow. In pancakes and beyond. Amen.

My Daughter's Baptism

2011-02-23T09:32:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday I had the great joy of baptizing my daughter into the Church.

As a priest, one of my favorite things to do is baptize people. It is wonderful no matter what -- whether they are sweet babies wearing their long gowns, or nervous children who aren't entirely comfortable in front of the crowd, or adults who are really stepping out on a limb and making a life change. I love the hopeful parents and the support of their friends and family. I love the prayers we say just for that person, thinking about their future with God. I love hearing the water splashing during the prayers over the water. The reminder of all the ways water has played an important role in our history as people of God, from creation to the escape from Egypt to Jesus' baptism and now to this baptism right here and now. But my very favorite part is the line that goes with the anointing with oil - "You are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever."

And this past Sunday, my daughter Maya was at the center of all that, wearing her beautiful long gown that her Poppop and Grammy found for her. My husband and I were the hopeful parents, surrounded by our supportive family and friends. It was Maya's future with God that we were praying for. It was her soft little forehead that got splashed with water. And it was her forehead smeared with a cross of oil. I got to say those words that I love so much, participating in marking my beloved third child as Christ's own forever. It doesn't get any better than this!

Choose Life -- or a Cosmic Time Out?

2011-02-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

Epiphany 6, Year A

February 13, 2011
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
The other day my son was frustrated about something and hauled out and hit my daughter. This was not a first offense, and so all of us know the well-established consequence for this kind of action. I grabbed Dylan’s hand and told him he was heading to Time Out. As usual, he resisted physically, but this time he also said, “I’m in charge of me and I say no time out!” As I carried him to time out, I told him that in a way he is right – he is in charge of the choices that he makes. But once he makes his choices, he has to deal with the consequences. And the consequence of hitting your sister is a time out.

To me, as a parent, it seems so simple – so black and white. Good behavior is rewarded, bad behavior is punished. The choice between the two seems so obvious that sometimes it bewilders me that he makes the choices he makes. Who was it that defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results?

But then I remind myself that Dylan is still in the process of linking actions and consequences. And he’s still in the process of figuring out how to control his body and his emotions, how to think ahead, how to make good decisions in both big and small things.

And from our Old Testament reading for this morning from Deuteronomy, it seems like maybe that’s where all of us find ourselves, at least part of the time.

The entire book of Deuteronomy is sort of Moses’ Last Will and Testament – his farewell address. He is standing on the Plains of Moab imparting his final words of wisdom to the Israelites. It is the eve of their settlement in the Promised Land and with just a couple exceptions for good behavior, almost everyone that made the long journey with him from Egypt has died. They are almost close enough to touch the Promised Land. And Moses pauses to look back, to retell their shared history of slavery, battles, wins and losses. He is a witness to the vast multitude of ways God has continued to be faithful to them along their long trek -- often despite their own unfaithfulness to God and each other.

Moses is speaking to a generation who didn’t witness the events at Mt. Sinai where Moses, long beard streaming a la Charlton Heston, met God and received the 10 Commandments. And so Moses reminds them (often in excruciating detail) of the code of behavior God has given them. Deuteronomy actually means “second law.” This is a second presentation of the law to a new audience. Underlying his oratory, though, is the beautiful story of the covenant the people’s forefathers and mothers made with God. The covenant that God would be their God and they would be God’s people. They would worship and love only one God, and they would act in justice and love towards each other and towards those on the periphery. This covenant bound God and the people in a unique relationship and was the backbone of the community and the underlying purpose for all of the seemingly mundane rules.

And then the entire book of Deuteronomy culminates in our passage this morning where Moses is exhorting, encouraging -- begging! -- the Israelites to continue in this covenant relationship with God – to ratify it for themselves. The new generation isn’t obliged in some distant way by their parents’ old covenant. They are invited to be partners themselves with God. This is the climax of the whole book – it’s covenantal decision time for the people of Israel!

And I find, at least, that it’s impossible to read or hear this story and just sit and observe. Moses’ account of the history of God and God’s people, the history of faithfulness by God and frequent unfaithfulness by the people, the history of the commandments and codes, this account isn’t a just an invitation to a strange and foreign group of people, long dead. This is an invitation to us to become the newest generation of the People of God. There’s no response given in the book of Deuteronomy and I’m certain that’s an intentional literary device meant to help us feel included; we too are being called to commit to the covenant.

And so Moses lays before the people standing with him on the Plains of Moab, and the people gathered here at St. Aidan’s this morning, this choice: Life and prosperity, or death and adversity.

Well, that seems like a pretty black and white choice, doesn’t it? Death or life? Prosperity or adversity? One is obviously the right answer and one is obviously the wrong answer. Just like it seems like it should be so obvious with my son, Don’t hit your sister. I’ll take Life and Prosperity, please, and then I’ll go about my day.

But it isn’t that easy, is it? Every once in a great while we might be faced with a decision with such obvious moral clarity that causes everything else to fall neatly into place, but not terribly often, I’d wager. Usually life is much more complicated. Right and wrong is not always so clear and sometimes it’s the little decisions (or sometimes, things you do or don’t do that you don’t even realize are decisions) that end up causing the most trouble. And a lot of the time, even when you have made a great decision initially – something like marrying your spouse or having a child or getting baptized or supporting someone in a crisis – it’s the continual every day tiny little decisions that are really reaffirmations of that first decision that end up mattering even more. Before you know it, you are choosing death and adversity, and that was certainly not your intention.

That’s what kept happening for the folks in the Old Testament. They’d get all excited about God and agree to be God’s people one day and then a few months would pass and the next thing they know they’re busy with their sheep or their temple-building and they aren’t thinking about God so much. They’re spending so much time worrying about their concubines or how much olives will sell for at market that they don’t have time to worry about all those commandments. And before long they find themselves prostrate on the ground in front of a golden calf and drunk on sacrificial wine and they aren’t entirely sure how they got there.

We’ve all been there. Whether it’s hitting your sister or letting distance grow in your marriage or not spending enough time with your child or not living up to your baptismal vows or losing touch with a friend who needs you. There are so many ways to forsake that Choice between Life and Death. There are so many ways to give ourselves to what doesn’t matter.

Thankfully, Moses is no fool. He’s been with the People of God long enough to know that even if they were to make the right decision in that moment, they’d stray from the path soon enough. And so the words he uses don’t ask for a one-time decision from the people standing on the Plains of Moab, or from us. Instead, Moses talks about “pathways” - our choice is made over the course of our entire life. Moses didn’t get an immediate response from the people because their response occurs over their lifetimes. Choosing Life is a lifelong process. And as Moses knew then, and we know now, sometimes one only learns how to choose life in the midst of struggle and death. Moses knew that there would be times when the people would turn away from God. In the very next chapter after our reading from this morning Moses says (from the translation called The Message): “I know that after I die you’re going to make a mess of things.” He’d seen it happen enough to realize the inevitability. (And so have we, haven’t we?) But Moses also knew that God would still be faithful when they returned. He’d seen that happen enough to realize its inevitability, too. The offer remained open – the choice of life always remains an option, despite our betrayals, big and little, and no matter how dire things seem.

And so, Moses begs us, Live! Again from The Message translation: Walk in God’s ways “so that you will live, really live, live exuberantly…!” God doesn’t want to constrict us so that we are only dutifully and fearfully obeying laws. God wants to free us to love wholeheartedly, to live with a passion for justice and mercy. God wants us to yearn for relationship with God and each other in every part of our lives.

So how do we choose life? In preparing for my adult ed this morning about Jesus’ parable of the Pearl of Great Price, I found what seemed to me at least to be the perfect instructions. Frederick Buechner’s The Magnificent Defeat describes how to be a saint, which I think maybe is the same thing:

To be a saint is to be human because we were created to be human. To be a saint is to live with courage and self-restraint…. To be a saint is to live not with the hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it; but it is to live with the hands stretched out both to give and to receive with gladness. To be a saint is to work and weep for the broken and suffering of the world, but it is also to be strangely light of heart in the knowledge that there is something greater than the world that mends and renews. Maybe more than anything else, to be a saint is to know joy. Not happiness that comes and goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark and terrible the night. To be a saint is to be a little out of one’s mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.

“See,” Moses says to us, “I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…. Choose life!

More than a bumper sticker?

2011-01-31T05:27:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2011
4 Epiphany
Micah 6:1-8

The latest person to really inspire me is Kristen Kane-Osorto, the Lutheran Volunteer Corps member who coordinated our recent mission trip with the high school youth group to D.C. Kristen was great – a real model of someone who practices what she preaches. If she had a car, she’d have the bumper sticker “Pray for peace, work for justice.” But she walks and takes public transportation. She lives in a group house with other Volunteer Corps members and they share chores and eat together on a shoestring budget. Kristen is spiritual in a deep and thoughtful and very relational way. She is fully committed to the needs of others – currently working against the systemic causes of poverty and homelessness, and before this working to help victims of domestic violence. She doesn’t need the bumper sticker.

Kristen led us through exercises that helped us consider the privileges that we weren’t even aware of – books in our houses, college-educated parents, safe communities, loving families. The privileges that provide a safety net that makes it far less likely that we will ever end up experiencing poverty or homelessness ourselves. And she provided us with opportunities to be in relationship with homeless people – to talk with them, laugh with them, learn from them, and see that they are not “other” afterall.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, during experiences like this there is some “aha” moment, when some piece of the learning finally hits you in some real way. My moment on this particular trip is embarrassing, but I’m going to share it with you anyway.

Part of our weekend included an Outreach Run, where each of us brought items to distribute to homeless people that we met in the D.C. streets. Things like soap and toothbrushes and snacks and water and -- the biggest hit -- socks. We’d organized all these supplies in my stash of reusable grocery bags. Big sturdy bags that I’ve collected over the years from the Book Festival in D.C. and various street fairs where they’re given away. Holden loves to call me the bag lady when I go out grocery shopping with my wad of them. They are so much better for holding things than the flimsy plastic bags that grocery stores give away.

As we handed things out in McPherson Square and the bags got lighter, it turned out that the bags themselves were a big attraction. For homeless people that have to carry around so much with them all the time, a sturdy bag that won’t break and dump their belongings is more precious than gold. Plus, in D.C. they no longer give plastic bags away for free. And so the people we were passing stuff out to began asking for the bags. And the kids holding the bags very kindly and generously started giving them away. And my first impulse, I am ashamed to admit, was to stop them: “Oh, no,” I thought, “not my grocery bags!” Thankfully, my better angels eventually prevailed and I managed to grit my teeth and stop myself from grabbing the bags away.

The irony struck me quickly – probably Jesus wouldn’t be too impressed with my self-righteous environmentalism as a reason not to give my beloved reusable bags. “If someone asks for your coat, give him your shirt too” came to mind. I came face-to-face with the limits of my generosity – with the selfishness that was lying not terribly far beneath my surface. And it was a shocking and sort of horrifying realization.

Slapping the bumper sticker on the back of the car is not the same as walking the walk. Go figure.

Enter Micah, from our Old Testament reading this morning. Micah was a prophet in the 8th Century B.C. Unlike the biggies like Isaiah and Jeremiah, you may not have heard of Micah. And his book is hard to find. It’s one of those teeny ones that are easy to flip past. Only 8 pages, but a pretty good read. It comes right after Jonah, if you go looking for it.

Micah was from a small village in Israel during a time when Israel was undergoing something of a revival. The temple was crowded, the military was expanding, the rich were getting richer.

But Israel was arrogant and uncaring. The religious leaders made a public show of how religious they were with loud lip service to God. Their religion was about worshipping correctly and staying away from those that didn’t. The King at the time, King Hezekiah, had imposed martial law in the land and was using the little people almost as slave power to build up fortifications and military power. The country’s main goal was to stay on top. The powerful political rulers collected debilitating taxes and took bribes from anyone and everyone. The powerful landlords seized fields and homes from lowly landowners. The poor got poorer. And all in the name of God.

They probably had some pithy religious bumper stickers on their chariots as they drove right on past the injustice all around them. Reusable grocery bags clinched tightly in their fists.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but to me it all sounds uncomfortably familiar. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and our goal as a country is to stay on top. Everything is seen as a zero-sum game. I think the State of the Union address the other night was indicative. The theme of the speech was about “winning the future” – about how we need to beat out the rest of the world in innovating, educating and building. I think that is what’s called American exceptionalism, and it’s something both political parties trip over each other to promote. King Hezekiah would have approved heartily.
And so Micah goes on the attack and no one is spared. Not the king, not the official state prophets, not the priests. And not us either, no matter how exceptional. No one is spared from Micah’s anger and his accusations.

For the lawyers in the congregation, myself included, you will be interested to hear that Micah did this in the form of a lawsuit. Not exactly the kind you are likely to see in your practice, however. Micah brings a divine lawsuit for breach of covenant.

The covenant is the one between God and God’s chosen people, the people chosen by God to be in relationship and to shine as a light to the rest of the world. In this covenant relationship, God promised to love them and care for them and make them His people. And in return they too promised certain responsibilities. They would be faithful and obedient to God and relate to other people in love and community. The covenant was not just a spiritual agreement, but had ramifications for every realm of life – economic, military, social and political. The covenant was not a one-time thing, but was intended to work through and be renewed by each generation. The stories of God’s generosity and saving grace were to be told and retold, not so that the people would be stuck in the past, but so that the stories would be absorbed and become part of the people’s on-going life together.

If they (or we, for that matter) were fully living into this covenant’s model of relationship, we would have the Kingdom of God here on earth, rather than a bumper sticker about the Kingdom of God. We would have peace and unity and enough for all instead of prophetic warnings and injustice and poverty and war.

And so, the Prophet Micah brings his law suit on behalf of a deeply disappointed Yahweh. “Hear what the Lord says …. The Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel.” Instead of witnesses or judges, Micah calls on the mountains, the hills, the foundations of the earth, to hear his controversy. Micah stirs up the people’s memory to the saving acts of God. The religious and political leaders have forgotten God’s generosity and are about as far as possible from God’s hopes for them

Rather than understanding, Israel’s response digs it even deeper into the ditch it has dug for itself. Israel offers to increase its cultic offerings to God. How about some year old calves, God? Or maybe thousands of rams? 10,000 rivers of oil? Or perhaps, the ultimate in offerings, the sacrifice of the first born child? Israel has completely missed the point, thinking God is calling it to be more “religious” (in the worst sense of the word). They are ready to offer whatever it takes to satisfy God and then check God off their to-do list.

But God spurns their excessive sacrifice and meaningless piety. God wants nothing less than what the covenant requires – total human transformation. That means not just turning a spotlight on so that they look bright and shiny, but being so full of light that everyone is welcomed into the warmth. And so Micah gives the beautiful summary of the covenant that is the Old Testament precursor to Jesus’ summary of the Law about loving God and neighbor: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

It would make a fabulous bumper sticker. But living up to it – phew – that’s another matter entirely.

Do Justice. Doing justice means extending the compassion and mercy we’ve received from God to all people. Critiquing our own actions that might produce injustice and daring to disrupt the systems and powers themselves, if need be. Doing justice means learning to see that every person matters and becoming a voice for people who have none.

Love kindness. God has faithfully loved us throughout history and Micah calls us to respond by sharing that same deep and steadfast love with others. This isn’t about being warm and fuzzy, but about living in community in such a way that we are marked as God’s people in relationship.

And walk humbly with your God. Micah calls us to walk with integrity and reverence. To rid ourselves of our continual need to be the best, to win, to consume. To look and listen for God, our companion on our journey of life. To see the world through God’s eyes and act in the world as God’s hands. And to allow our heart to be broken by the things that break the heart of God.

Therein lies our covenant with God. These aren’t romantic ideals or abstract concepts. They are hard work.

But the great news, both for Israel, the defendant in Micah’s divine lawsuit, and for us, the unnamed co-defendants, is that the judgment God bestows upon the people is not an angry undoing of relationship, but a new beginning. We are still invited into covenant with our God who is faithful to us no matter what. We are part of the on-going story.

Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. How will you make these words more than a bumper sticker in your life?

Snow days...

2011-01-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

My kids have lucked out this week. Monday they were off for MLK Day, Wednesdsay for the expected storm (that only began after school would have ended), today for snow, they've already called tomorrow for anticipated snow, and they have next Monday and Tuesday off for teacher work days. If only one could predict these things and plan a vacation. It wasn't quite how we expected to spend the week, but I'm enjoying the extra down time. Rather than schlepping kids, we're hanging out together. Plenty of time for great art projects (votive candleholders made with baby food jars covered with tissue paper and glue, we built a boat from a kit that really floats in the tub), writing stories (a definite future classic called Mr. Hotdog will, I'm sure, find it's way onto best seller lists), watching movies while eating popcorn, using the video camera to make our own "commercials" (for running shoes and bubble bath) and of course, playing in the snow. My favorite bit so far was taking food-coloring-dyed water and dripping it over the snow to create our "rainbow house." I don't have my sermon written for Sunday, but I'll take the trade off.

The Hard Question

2011-01-16T06:48:00.000-08:00

January 16, 2011
2 Epiphany
John 1:29-42
When I was in law school and getting ready to look for summer internships, our career services folks gave a little seminar about how to interviewing. They talked about strategies for dealing with a question you weren’t sure how to answer. My favorite suggestion, and one that I found to be fairly helpful, was that we could try answering a different question and see if we couldn’t steer the conversation away from the original question. Children do this all the time (my children anyway!) – if they don’t understand the question, don’t like the question, or are afraid of the consequences of their answer – they just move on to a different subject. “Have you done your homework?” “Mom, how do clouds stay in the sky?” Is that what Jesus’ first two disciples are up to this morning?

Jesus sees them walking behind them and he asks them, “What are you looking for?” They answer with a seeming nonsequitor, “Where are you staying?”

But we should go easy on them. It’s a hard question Jesus asks. “What are you looking for?”

And so I ask you: What are you looking for?

I ask you, because I don’t know how to answer it myself. It seems to change all the time, depending on our stage in life and the context in which we ask it. As children we might be looking for stability, guidance, entertainment. We get older and we might look for more adventure, for companionship, for approval of our peers. At work I might look for inspiration, for challenge, for satisfaction. At home, as a mother of young children, sometimes all I’m looking for is to get through the day with my patience and sense of humor still intact. It’s a hard question to really get to the heart of.

Maybe the question is so profound, so deep that it’s unanswerable. We have a vague sense of what we are seeking at best, but we see in a mirror dimly and all that. How can we know what we don’t know, after all? All of our answers are just scratching the surface. Even when we find what we think we are seeking, it only fills the gap for a while. We have trouble getting to the real heart of the matter. Sometimes all we have is a sense that we’ll know it when we see it.

Which is right where those two disciples are when they deflect Jesus’ question this morning. What are they looking for? All they can think to say in response is “where are you staying?” They have a sense that they need something; that there is something they are looking for but they can’t quite put their finger on it. And they sense, they hope, that maybe Jesus has something to do with whatever it is. That maybe if they can just learn more about him, spend a little time with him, they’ll have more of a clue about how to answer his question.

So Jesus’ response to their nonsequitor is incredibly reassuring. Much better than the interviewers that I tried this evasive technique out on. Jesus doesn’t chide them for avoiding his question. He doesn’t start spouting off about what they should be looking for. He doesn’t send them away until they figure it out on their own. He issues them this beautiful invitation to come and see. And he invites us along too. Follow along, learn to trust me a little bit at a time, and discover the answer as you go. Amen.

Sympathizing with Mary

2011-01-03T08:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2, Year A
January 2, 2010
Luke 2:41-52

There are some dates that tend to make us stop and think about years past. Days when it’s almost impossible just to live in the moment. Birthdays, anniversaries of significant events, and, of course, holidays. This Christmas, as always, I find myself doing a lot of reflection on Christmases past.

There was the year that I spent the week of Christmas in Oregon with my grandparents and it snowed so beautifully and I stayed with a handful of cousins in the attic room that provided as much mystery and adventure as the wardrobe to Narnia. But that experience can never happen again because my grandparents are gone now, and my cousins are grown and scattered, and the house has been sold to some other family that is probably celebrating Christmas in some other way entirely.

And there was the year that my cousin died and mom was gone to Arizona to be with her sister and celebrating Christmas didn’t feel right at all.

And there were the many years that it was just my immediate family opening presents in our cozy robes, my sister and I wearing Santa hats and distributing presents, then spending hours lying in front of the fireplace playing our new games and watching the colors spark when we fed it wrapping paper. But my mom is gone now and my sister lives halfway around the globe and my fireplace is a gas one and the floor is too hard for lying on.

Even though each Christmas is unique (no matter how many traditions you might carry over), each Christmas also contains all the Christmases past.

But each Christmas also brings, for me, anyway, a bittersweet reflection on the Christmases in my future. Before we know it, our kids will be teenagers and we’ll be lucky if they still want to spend time with us. And then someday they’ll head out on their own for good and celebrate Christmas with their own families.

It makes me want to hang on to certain moments in time and not let go.

So each Christmas not only contains all of the Christmases before it, but it also contains all the Christmases to come. Once a year, it seems like, we’re in what I imagine God’s time must be like, where everything is somehow all wrapped up together.

This experience of Christmas makes me sympathetic to the plight of Mary and Joseph in our Gospel story this morning.

We’ve been hearing pieces of the Christmas story for weeks now. In Gospel readings and our Christmas Eve pageant enactment we’ve witnessed so many marvelous bits about the birth of this holy child, Jesus. Both Mary and Joseph have received separate visits by an angel who told them about the holy child Mary would soon bear. The shepherds have been visited and serenaded by angels and made their pilgrimage to see the baby. And Mary “treasured” it all and “pondered it in her heart.” Mary and Joseph have been visited by the wise magi who follow a brilliant star to pay their baby homage as the King of the Jews. And we didn’t get it in church, but there’s another piece that comes before the story we get this morning. It’s a beautiful bit, where Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem eight days after his birth to present him to the Lord. While they’re there, they run into a righteous old man named Simeon who declares to Mary and Joseph that their child is the “salvation which God has prepared.” They also are greeted by a prophet named Anna who praises God for this child who will redeem Jerusalem.

Suffice it to say, Mary and Joseph would seem to have a lot of reason to think there is something very different and special about their son Jesus. And yet in our reading this morning it’s like they’ve forgotten all of that and they just think Jesus is the average teenager. When they find him in the temple with the teachers they are “astonished” by his understanding. When Jesus says that it made perfect sense that he would be in his “Father’s house,” they do not understand what he means.

It’s odd. After everything they have seen and heard, after angels’ visits and testimonies by shepherds, magi, and prophets, why are Mary and Joseph so surprised by Jesus feeling so at home in the temple? Why are they so astounded by his calling God his “Father”? How can all that they’ve experienced have slipped their minds? How can they not have thought ahead about what their sweet little baby might become someday? About what this baby might require of them and of the world?

Or maybe it makes perfect sense. Just like each year at Christmas I expect that it will be all goodness and light and the kids will want to revel in the beauty of it and not just tear through the presents. Just like each year I am surprised by how sharply the smells and noises remind me of the people that aren’t with me to celebrate. Just like each year I am left just a little bit sad that I have one less Christmas ahead of me. Each year it surprises me anew that every Christmas contains all of the Christmases before and all the Christmases to come.

So maybe it makes perfect sense that Mary wants to hang on to Jesus in his sweet little crèche scene, innocent and safe and mute and unchallenging. And maybe it makes perfect sense that she wants to forget about all of the foreboding predictions about him. That she wants to ignore the folks that tried to claim Jesus as belonging to the whole world and not just to her. But she can’t hold him back from all that comes after any more than I can perfectly recreate a Christmas past or stop the intrusions of Christmases future.

Just like my own little baby, the little baby in the manger is going to grow up and become a teenager, then an adult. But Mary’s fears for her baby’s future have got to contain much more than the average parent’s worry about puberty and peer pressure. Even at this early stage, Mary’s unconscious must have had a sense of the sacrifice that Jesus would make.

And so Jesus asks Mary a question. Or at least, he directs it at Mary, who is trying with all her might to hold onto her sweet baby and keep him safe (and what parent can’t relate to that?). But it’s also a question for us gathered together here this morning who are trying to hold on to the smells and laughter and beauty of Christmas just a little bit longer before our ordinary responsibilities come back to claim us. Those of us who want to wall off Christmas so that it contains only the safe and comfortable.

"Why were you searching for me?" Jesus asks. Why are you so surprised by me, given what you’ve heard and seen and known about me? Why are you still expecting me to be understandable and domesticated? As Madeleine L’Engle writes that “an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol.” That kind of a God we expect, the kind we could predict or even fathom, would be no God at all.

And not to skip ahead too far, but Jesus’ teenaged question for Mary in the temple sounds a lot like the question the women looking for Jesus at the tomb after his crucifixion get from the angels: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Do you not know? Do you not understand? Were you not paying attention to everything Jesus did and said and all that came before?

From our story this morning, it’s obvious that even Mary and Joseph, the closest people to Jesus at that moment, didn’t really understand (or maybe didn’t want to understand) who he was. Or what he would become. Or what would be required of him. And of them. The disciples were in the same boat a couple decades later, fighting against Jesus’ predictions of his own death, struggling against this foreign concept of a suffering servant Messiah. Not getting that what Jesus had to offer went beyond his lifetime. Beyond their lifetimes.

And here we are, still struggling with the same questions. Who was Jesus? Who is Jesus? What does it mean for God to come among us in this way? Why did he have to die? What does his resurrection mean? What does he require from me? There’s a lot about our encounters with God that might be easier to forget.

And yet, every year’s Christmas contains and reminds us of that very first Christmas. And so we get the comfortable beautiful part. The one where Jesus sleeps, for a moment in time, peacefully under the watchful gaze of his parents surrounded by all of his enthralled admirers. But we also get the part that is harder and more complicated. Again, from Madeleine L’Engle, “that tiny, helpless baby whose birth we honor contained the Power behind the universe, helpless, at the mercy of its own creation.” The baby Jesus isn’t just something sweet for us to remember from year to year at Christmas time but already contains everything. All of the Christmases that have been and all of the Christmases that will ever be. And all of the Good Fridays and the Easters and the other days, even the ones that seem utterly ordinary.

And just as I can’t keep my own children as they are now but have to give them the space and the freedom to become whoever they will be, even if it means that they won’t always be with me on Christmas, we also have to let Jesus out of the cradle so that God can show us what love really is. Love that is so great that God limited God’s unlimitedness, God took on the flesh of mortality, accepted all the pain and grief of humanity, submitted to betrayal and death and failure. Which turned out, finally, not to be death and failure after all.

No Christmas will ever be the same from year to year, and yet, they are all wrapped up together in this incredible mystery of love. It is God’s gift to us on this 9th day of Christmas and on every day before and after throughout the year.

Jesus' Wrapping Paper

2010-12-28T06:02:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day (Year A)
December 25, 2010
Luke 2:1-14

Opening presents on Christmas morning when I was a girl was always a slow and wondrous thing. They were opened one at a time, each of us taking turns, with lots of hugs and appreciation in between. When it was my dad’s turn he would hold up the gift, turn it around, shake it and feel it and try to guess what it was. He was really good at it – it was very hard to surprise him. He would have done really well at our recent moms’ group Christmas gathering.

It was a White Elephant party, or some people call it a Yankee gift exchange. Where each person wraps up some wacky item that has been taking up space in their house and they get piled together. (These should be the kind of gifts about which my father would jokingly exclaim: “Ahh…. Just what I always knew I never needed!”) Then everyone draws a number and in order you can either pick a new unwrapped gift and open it, or you can choose to steal something that someone else has already opened. It was so interesting to see which presents were chosen first. Most popular were the elegantly wrapped presents with shiny packaging and fluffy bows. And the biggest presents. And the one that came with more than one package.

But of course, the very nature of this kind of gift exchange is that what you see is usually not at all what you get. A couple years ago, I picked the huge, bizarrely shaped, package. And it ended up being a plastic urinal that little boys can use as they learn how to potty. A friend shared a story of going to a gift exchange where they didn’t unwrap the presents but instead could steal each other’s wrapped packages. The most popular present was a huge, beautifully wrapped box that ended up being empty. And the least stolen was a small box wrapped in newspaper that ended up being a valuable gift card.

What a great psychology experiment! Clearly our expectations for what is inside have everything to do with what we see on the outside.

And we don’t just do that with presents. As a non-wine connoisseur, I tend to pick wine from the grocery store by which labels I like the best. Contrary to the old adage, I often pick books by their covers. And of course, we do it with people all the time. We make judgments about people, consciously or not, by how they look or dress, what they do for a living or the car they drive.

And we do the same thing with God.

Before Jesus was born, many religious people were waiting for a messiah. But they expected someone very different than Jesus. They expected a powerful political ruler, a traditional king with armies and fancy robes. But of course, it was just the opposite. Everything about his birth story was scandalous and unexpected. Jesus’s parents were wandering and homeless. Jesus was born in a dirty animal stall in a small town outside the important city. The angels who announced his birth appeared to the poor and lowly shepherds at the bottom of the social ladder.

And Jesus’ life was that way as well – just the opposite of what people expected from their Messiah. Dining with sinners, befriending prostitutes, challenging the religious authorities, calling his followers to leave their comfort zones and follow him.

A strange gift in strange wrapping, indeed.

Even now, our tendency is to want to cover up the simple, rough package and the uncomfortable gift inside with something inoffensive and fluffy and light. To turn the shocking birth story, and our shocking Messiah, into something sweet and quaint. We sing Away in a Manger about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. The cattle lowing but no crying he makes. We forget that the animals would have been smelly, the hay scratchy, the stable cold and exposed to the elements. You’d better believe that baby would be crying!

And we make it sound so easy for the other players in the story as well. Mary and Joseph adoring their new baby in wonder, the shepherds following the angels’ singing to Bethlehem, the magi adventurously following the star. But what must it have really been like? My baby is new enough that I can say quite frankly that I do not envy Mary, recovering from labor and childbirth with no clean water, no mattress, no friends or family to help. Or Joseph, having to deliver this baby himself, to try to comfort his very young and inexperienced wife. The shepherds minding their own business out in the fields when suddenly they are interrupted by who-knows-what in the sky scaring the you-know-what out of them. The magi confused and exhausted from their long, dusty journey.

We try to forget that Jesus wasn’t just God wearing human skin, but was fully human. He cried, he struggled against temptation, he got hungry and cold, he worked hard to maintain his connection with God. I think sometimes we hope that if we package Jesus just right, we can turn him into something sweet and innocent and cuddly and comfortable. All ensconced with a big bow. A package that emphasizes peace and love and lets us slip the rest under the bed with all the other unwanted gifts. Something that would let us have the poinsettias and the candlelight and the music without the rough, sandpaper-like challenge that Jesus presents to the way we live and love. We’d get him all wrapped up just the way we want him and then leave him that way, safely adorning our mantle (or our altar).

But that’s exactly what Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise magi didn’t find in the manger on that first Christmas Day. Thank goodness. Instead, God chose the most unlikely packaging for the best (and least expected) gift yet. Right in the midst of the uncomfortable, the imperfect, the frightening, God arrived. Just like God always does. Emmanuel – God With Us. Right in the midst of our humanity.

This baby born in a manger bursts out of the package we try to keep him in and blows away our expectations for God. Ours isn’t a God-Up-There-Somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives, or an other-worldly God who just watches us with disinterest. Ours is a God-With-Us who comes in the midst of everything we’ve got – the beautiful and the ugly, the proud and the embarrassing, the righteous and the unrighteous.

So go ahead, open it up. It’s just what you never knew you always needed.

An Advent Challenge

2010-12-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

Advent 2, Year A
December 5, 2010

Advent is about waiting, and preparing ourselves. And so I love this morning’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah with its reassuring promises:

The wolf shall live with the lamb…. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together…. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp…. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Now that is a promise worth waiting for this Advent season. I picture my children cuddling with Aslan from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What a sweet Christmas card photo that would be!

And on a day like today I really wish we had one of those pull down screens so that I could project onto the wall a painting of Isaiah’s vision by a Quaker artist and minister from the 19th century named Edward Hicks. It’s got to be out there somewhere on Christmas cards.

Hicks painted what he called “the peaceable kingdom” more than 60 times, but probably his most famous painting shows all the animals hanging out together, predator and prey, with a happy child safely among them. In the background there’s a delegation of Quaker settlers having a peaceful conversation with some Native Americans.

It sure beats the portrait of John the Baptist that we get this morning in our Gospel. He makes me uncomfortable with his camel hair clothes and his locust diet. But it’s his words that shake me up the most. All this talk about repenting and about the ax lying at the root of the trees ready to cut down and incinerate anything that isn’t bearing fruit.

Please! Here I am, relaxing into the image of the predator lying down in peace with its prey, relaxing into the beauty of Christmas with my hot chocolate, Christmas carols on the radio, and twinkling lights all around, when out pops the prickly reality of John the Baptist. It’s like the old Seinfeld shows where Kramer suddenly bursts into Jerry’s apartment with his wild hair and clothes and you just know something truly bizarre is about to come out of his mouth. John the Baptist crashes our solemn worship; he crashes the pleasure of the season; he crashes the hopefulness of our Isaiah vision.

I’d rather just stick to the lion and the lamb thing, thank you very much.

Of course, the problem with Isaiah is that the promise seems so unlikely. You might say that the promise doesn’t show a lot of promise. I look around and see wars and injustice and poverty and broken dreams. If this shoot that comes out from the stump of Jesse, this righteous counselor, is supposed to prefigure Jesus, as the Church likes to point out during Advent, then where exactly is this holy mountain where there is no pain or destruction? Why aren’t all the predators and prey (animal and human) hanging out in unity? I'm not letting my sweet baby play with an asp anytime soon, I can promise you that.

Hicks had the same dissatisfaction, it turns out. He looked around even his own community of Quakers and saw schism and too much attention paid to worldly desires. And his paintings began to show his increasing frustration with the world around him. They started out hopeful and idealistic, but as the years went by, the predators in his drawings weren’t looking quite as peaceful, the prey weren’t looking quite as safe. The teeth got pointier and the claws sharper and the youth perhaps a bit less cherubic. He was ready for a little John the Baptist action; ready for that winnowing fork to start clearing the threshing floor and separating the wheat from the chaff.

And as much as I hate to interrupt my peaceful pre-Christmas reverie, I’m starting to think that maybe we need John the Baptist to shake us up as well. Maybe we’re getting just a little too smug and self-satisfied, a little too lazy in our faith. Maybe John is right; maybe it’s going to take more than just waiting passively for the Peaceable Kingdom to appear magically before us.

I’ve been reading a new book by Kenda Creasy Dean who is the professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her book is called Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church. It is based on the results of a national study of the religious faith of youth done from 2003-05. And I’m sorry to report that it indicts us as a Church, indicts me as an ordained person, indicts all of us as parents, grandparents, mentors and baptismal witnesses of the young people around us.

The good news from the study is that three out of four American teens claim to be Christian and most are affiliated with a religious organization. The bad news is that their faith is lackadaisical at best. Few of them think it matters at all for their daily life; and few of them are able to articulate much at all about their faith that would distinguish it from any other religion. In fact, rather than Christianity, the majority of teens are apparently practicing what the study calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

The guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism are:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants us to be good, nice and fair to each other.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about myself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

In other words, Be nice, Feel good, and Leave God in the Background.

And the really bad news, the part that indicts all of us, is the finding that they’re getting this belief system from us. The study found that the vast majority of teens mirror their parents’ religious faith, with other relatives, mentors and ministers being influential predictors as well. So while it is presumably not our intention, the message we are giving our children is apparently that our religion is not much more than a do-good, feel-good spirituality. And that it doesn’t have anything at all to do with the radical love of Jesus or his challenging call for us to follow him into the world.

So maybe we could all use a little shaking up after all. Maybe we do need John “preparing the way of the Lord,” as uncomfortable as it makes us. Maybe we do need him with his forceful call to repentance and his shaggy, smelly camel’s fur and his gross diet to get us thinking about what to do next.

So here’s my suggestion for us as we prepare ourselves this Advent season: Let’s think of ways to share our faith with our kids, and each other. Let’s look for opportunities to tell them what we believe and why we think it’s important. Let’s share with them what this church community means to us. Let’s make sure they see us reading the Bibles, praying for the things that are worrying us and the things that we’re thankful for. Let’s make sure they see us caring for people that we don’t even know with as much compassion as we do for them. And let’s make sure they know we’re doing it because we’re trying to love God and our neighbors in the radical and all-encompassing way that Jesus shows us.

And -- thank you John the Baptist -- let’s examine ourselves this Advent season -- pruning some of the branches in our lives, and looking for ways to encourage new growth. All in the hopes of preparing ourselves to be a dwelling place for Christ this Christmas and beyond. Amen.

Walking the Fine Line...

2010-12-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

Last night we had a gathering at the Church - dinner and the St. Nicholas story. It was my bright idea, so it was up to me to tell the story.

I have a complicated relationship with Santa Claus. I think kids get too focused on Santa and Jesus goes out the window. Plus, there's so much about Santa that seems like really terrible God theology. (Like, he's always watching from afar and sees what you're doing wrong or right and deciding how to reward you based on that. But he's not someone you're actually in relationship with. Ugh.) In my house, I talk about Jesus and murmur vaguely if asked about Santa. Last week, my 4 year old asked, "So is Santa real and the Grinch pretend?" Me: "Uh, I wonder... what do you think?" (Thank you, Godly Play, for the wonderful resource of "wondering questions" as a valid way to deal with difficult questions from children!)

Anyway, I intended to use the Godly Play story of St. Nicholas, because it is generally a great resource for ways to tell faith stories to children. But I wasn't so sure about some of the details. First of all, it talks about Nicholas dying. Which of course is true and necessary, but I had a feeling the parents might have my head if I told their little darlings that St. Nick died, oh, 1600 years ago. But I also found some of the story disturbing. It talks about how even after St. Nick died, the presents kept coming - I guess leaving open the possibility that either the presents still magically came from St. Nick (now living at the North Pole) or that they came from other people who caught on to what he was up to. I ended up cutting out that part.

But I ended up combining Godly Play with my own story-telling to walk (hopefully) that fine line between reaffirming the true meaning of Christmas by remembering St. Nicholas and dashing childhood hopes and dreams:

(Materials, a la Godly Play: construction paper Bishop's hat, wrapped present, Christ child, purple fabric for nderlay)

On Sunday, we started the season of the church year called Advent. What do you see in the Church that lets you know it's Advent? (Purple - the color of kings, but Jesus was a different kind of King; Wreath - with the light slowly growing as we approach Christmas because Jesus, the light of the world, is coming)

Advent is the time when we get ready to come close to the mystery of Christmas. And so tonight, I’m sharing with you the church’s story of St. Nicholas.

There once was a little boy who loved Jesus and wanted to be as much like Jesus as he could. Every Christmas he loved hearing the story of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem, and of Jesus being born in the manger. He loved hearing about the angels appearing to the shepherds and the wise magi following the star to bring presents to the baby Jesus. And every Christmas, he wished that he could give the Christ Child a gift too. But of course Jesus had lived long before Nicholas was born so he couldn’t really do that.

Nicholas’ family had a lot of money, so he had all the clothes to wear that he needed. He had all the food to eat that he could want. And he had so many toys to play with. He began to look around him and see that a lot of kids didn’t have much money at all. Some of them didn't have enough clothes to wear or food to eat. Some of them didn't have any toys at all. Nicholas began to wonder if maybe the Christ Child was living in every child.

Well, Nicholas grew up and became a priest. And people knew he was a holy person and they made him their Bishop. The place where he was a Bishop was in Myra, a city in the south of a country we now call Turkey.

Because Nicholas was the priest, and then the Bishop, of Myra, he knew the people and knew what they needed. He knew that some of the people were too poor to be able to buy food or toys for their children. And then he had an idea. He would give gifts to them.

But Nicholas was shy. So when he began to give gifts to children on Christmas Eve he did it in secret so that no one would know. Sometimes the gifts came down the chimney. Sometimes they were left by the door. Sometimes they were dropped through an open window. Nicholas would tiptoe away in the night, leaving the gifts to be enjoyed in the morning.
And so the Church remembers Nicholas during Advent because of these wonderful gifts that he gave for God. And because he saw the Christ Child in every child.

I wonder what part of the Nicholas story you like best?
I wonder which part of the story you think is the most important?
I wonder what part is about you, or where you might be in the story?
I wonder if we could leave any part out and still have all the story we need?

Radical Hospitality

2010-11-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

For several days this week I met up with four seminary friends for a reunion/retreat in Lexington, Virginia. We stayed at a house that one of the women had visited before to help lead a spiritual retreat in the past. I'm not sure why, but I'd expected a run down farm house - something adequate and decent with Shrine Mont like facilities. (No offense, Shrine Mont.) Instead, it was one of the most amazing and comfortable places I've ever stayed. Abundant rooms, beautifully furnished with beds and pillows more comfortable than mine at home. A three-story tower with 360 degree views of mountains and farms. A huge modern kitchen with every accoutrement I could imagine. A living room with enough chairs and couches for all of us to sprawl out on centered around a huge hearth for cozy fires on the rainy days. And a gas outdoor fire and another fire pit on top of a hill for the nicer days. A porch with a bunch of swinging chairs. A labyrinth etched into the wild grass with natural stones. And everywhere you turned in the house were reminders that God is present. Stained glass windows of Bible stories, crosses, icons, Bibles. One of our favorite pieces was a bowl and pitcher adorning the downstairs bathroom that served as a reminder of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. I learned that the couple that owns the house uses it sometimes as a meeting place for their own large family. But that when they are not using it, which I think is much of the time, they open it up to people for spiritual retreats. They don't charge for the use of the incredible space, only asking that people make a donation to one of the religious aid groups that they sponsor. At first I couldn't get over how they could feel comfortable letting us -- perfect strangers -- stay alone in their homes. But then it made me start evaluating how well I live up to the Christian call to radical hospitality, which this family has so clearly made a priority.

Still waiting...

2010-11-15T05:44:00.000-08:00

November 14, 2010

25 Pentecost, Proper 28 (Year C)
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church
Isaiah 65:17-25
Our first reading this morning is one of my favorites. I love this vision of the new heavens and new earth that God is going to create. It was written 2500 years ago, and it’s still, to me anyway, just as wonderful a promise as it must have been then. Still a tangible picture of how things ought to be. No more weeping; long healthy lives, homes and fruitful work all around; a closer relationship with God; peace. I can’t think of anything I could add to make the list more ideal. But the problem with beautiful visions like this is that by their very nature they make you long for them to be fulfilled. And they make you wonder what’s taking so long. And they might even lead you to start doubting the faithfulness of the promisor.

I’ve been thinking about God’s promises a lot recently in conjunction with our Godly Play stories for the Sunday School kids. I’ve been sharing a shortened version with our Day School every Wednesday morning in Chapel. A few weeks ago I told them the story of the Great Family. Where God tells Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and start anew. And so, trusting God, they take a long and dangerous journey through the desert to make their home in Hebron. They learn along the way that God is not just here or there – All of God was everywhere. And they receive the promise from God that they will have a great family with members as many as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the desert. And sure enough, they go on to have their child of laughter, Isaac. And Isaac and Rebecca have children and those children have children. And this goes on for thousands and thousands of years until your grandmothers and grandfathers had children. Then your mothers and fathers had children. And now YOU are part of that great family which has become as many as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the desert. That’s my favorite line. I love the reminder that we are all included in that hope, that beautiful promise.

And I was content to leave Abraham and Sarah safe in Hebron. God’s promise to them was being fulfilled. A beautiful story. So much to learn from.

But then, the very next week, comes the story of the Exodus. Which probably would have been fine and not awakened my flurry of theological wrestling except for the way the story began:

The People of God were living in a place where the rains did not come. The crops had no water, so they could not grow. There was no grain to grind to make bread. Everyone was hungry. The children cried in their sleep. So their mothers and fathers decided to go to a new land where there was food. They had to go even if it was across the desert.

And then they start their journey to Egypt, which, many decades later, ends in the Exodus story.

So, wait, let me get this right: Just last week, the people of God had reached this wonderful new place, become recipients of a great new promise. And now - pow! - this week the rains aren’t coming and they’re starving and crying?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I realize there’s a lot of time in between these two stories. Although given what happens in between, that’s small comfort. Those years are interspersed with the sacrifice story of Abraham and Isaac, the sibling rivalry gone viral of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau, the fake death and selling into slavery of Joseph by his brothers. And a multitude of other calamities. Of course they mostly end up okay, with Abraham getting a last-minute reprieve from killing his son, Jacob and Esau eventually reconciling, and Joseph’s enslavement being used as a catalyst for the Egyptians to hoard their food to prepare for the famine, thus saving Joseph’s own family from starvation.

And that’s true with the Exodus story, too. There’s a good ending, with Miriam leading the dancing after Moses and the people pass through the Sea onto dry land, safe from Pharoah’s army. But even here, for the Hebrews, the good ending is, once again, temporary. As we know, after this story we get the people worshipping the golden calf, and the people continuing to wander around in the desert for another generation. And then even when they do eventually reach their God-given destination there are continuous wars and bad kings and faithlessness galore.

So sure, there are a lot of stories of delivery by God – God hears their cries, forgives their disloyalty, provides for them eventually. But it never lasts. They are always having to look ahead, trying to trust against all odds that the promise will come true for them. Or at least for their descendants.

Why can’t God make things just a little bit easier for these supposed chosen people? What good are all the promises if so much turmoil and despair is involved? When will these poor people finally reach the promised land and get to stay there and relax?

Of course, the Old Testament characters aren’t the only ones who looked forward to a promise; they aren’t the only ones who hoped for the fulfillment of a beautiful vision. We see it throughout the New Testament too. From Jesus’ disciples and followers who thought they’d see him return in their lifetimes. And we’ve seen people waiting ever since. The enslaved blacks in America used to take comfort in the story of Moses and the exodus, as they waited for their freedom, their promised land. And here we are this morning, still waiting, reading these verses depicting God’s promise of a New Jerusalem that we still don’t see.

And so I wonder for the poor Old Testament characters, when will the promise stick? But I also wonder it for us, living here in this world today. When will the glorious vision from Isaiah be achieved? I wonder it for orphaned children living in refugee camps in Africa. I wonder it for the victims of the earthquake and flood in Haiti. I wonder it for the 80% of the world struggling to stay alive on 20% of the world’s resources. I wonder it for the children in Fairfax County when I hear about the 50% achievement gap between wealthy and economically disadvantaged kids on the SOLs. And I wonder it for people diagnosed with dementia or cancer and for their loved ones watching and waiting and suffering alongside them.

When will the beautiful vision from Isaiah finally stick?

In this morning’s reading we hear five promises from God, all of which are fairly radical, and any one of which would rock the world:

The absence of sorrow
Long and healthy lives for all
Housing, food, and sustainable employment for all
A profoundly intimate relationship with God
Peace and security

We aren’t talking about good fortune to a person here or a family there. This is good news for all people. What’s more, unlike the apocalyptic promises that we get in other parts of the Bible, these aren’t promises that come only after everything is destroyed. This isn’t creation out of nothing, but the universe transformed and whole. This is what God intends for all things and all relationships. Right here on earth.

And I need this vision. As jaded as I sometimes am, I need to hear these promises. Even though they are 2500 years old and still unfulfilled, I need to hear them over and over. Because even though I often get overwhelmed when I look around and see how far we have to go, even though sometimes I can get bogged down in pointing out all the ways God’s people have been let down, each time I hear these promises, I get that same longing, that same desire, for God to take this world and turn it upside down.

And those are the moments when God can enter in and use me. Inspire me, inspire all of us, to take this vision and make it not just some far-off whimsical hope for the future but a stubborn and unyielding possibility for the present. To put it in the context of this stewardship season, I believe we are each called to use our time and talent and treasure in whatever ways we can to actively participate in this new creation that Isaiah prophesies. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in his final speech before his assassination, “It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta” and, I’ll add, the new Alexandria, the new D.C.

And so, along with Abraham and Sarah who looked at the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the desert and trusted. Along with the slaves in Egypt and the slaves in America who sang of their exodus far in advance of freedom. Along with Martin Luther King and everyone else who has ever dreamed a dream or seen a vision, when we join in Isaiah’s song of a new Jerusalem we claim it for ourselves. We aren’t denying how far we have left to go; we are protesting and struggling against everything that tries to hold us back. We are holding up another possibility for the whole world to see -- a future filled with God, with space for every person. And we are actually becoming part of its fulfillment – taking on our role as the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Amen.

Where is your hiding place?

2010-11-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

23 Pentecost, Proper 26 (Year C)
October 31, 2010
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church
[I'm afraid something will be lost in the print version, since you won't get to see me run and climb my makeshift tree in the middle of the sermon, but here goes...]
You’ve heard of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 4 stages of cancer, the 5 stages of grief. Well, today in Luke’s Gospel we get the 5 stages of Being Loved by God, courtesy of Zacchaeus.

Stage 1 – We are who we are
We aren’t given too many details about Zacchaeus, but it’s enough. Enough to know quite a bit about him, and even more about what everyone must have thought about him. He’s exceedingly rich, which from the Gospel of Luke seems almost enough in itself for him to be doomed. Remember a few weeks ago when we we’ve heard Jesus’ story about the rich man in the fires of hell who wanted Lazarus to come give him a drink of water? Things do not usually go well for the rich in Luke’s Gospel. Plus, Zacchaeus is also a chief tax collector. In those days, tax collectors would purchase the right to collect taxes for the Roman Empire and then make a profit by charging people above what they actually owed. So they not only colluded with the Roman oppressors but they also took advantage of the Jewish people. So tax collectors were despised by fellow Jews and shunned as outcasts.

Zacchaeus, in other words, is not a paragon of virtue or spirituality. He is who he is, just like the rest of us.

Stage 2 – We observe from our hiding place
Like I said, Zacchaeus was not a paragon of virtue or spirituality, but he did have some interest in this Jesus character. He had heard enough snippets about the strange stories and promises that he wanted to observe the shaggy preacher for himself. He was too short to see anything from the back of the crowd, and he wasn’t about to risk getting up front and mixing with the crowd around Jesus. And so he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a tree along the route where Jesus would pass.
His plan was only to observe. He’d bring his popcorn and enjoy the show. He was pretty proud of himself for coming up with a hiding place that was a nice safe distance away yet still had a view.

Truth be told, I’d wager that most of us find ourselves in a similar place a lot of the time. We have a longing that we can’t even name to see this God that we hear so much about, but we aren’t so sure we’re ready to come face to face.

Stage 3 – Jesus finds us
Well, Zacchaeus might have planned to stay hidden in the foliage and watch from afar, but Jesus doesn’t let him get away with that. No sirree. Jesus sticks his head up there in the leaves and makes eye contact. He calls Zacchaeus by name, and invites himself over for dinner. Ms. Manners wouldn’t approve one bit. “I must stay at your house today,” says Jesus. And the Greek word for “must” is the one Luke uses throughout the Gospel to give the sense of divine necessity. This is no idle coincidental encounter we’re witnessing. You get the sense that Jesus knew exactly what Zacchaeus was up to and planned his route to go by that sycamore tree accordingly. And he doesn’t condition his invitation on anything. He wants to dine with Zacchaeus, warts and all.

Jesus finds us in our hiding places. He calls out to us and invites us down, just as we are. And from a human perspective, it’s just as much a scandal now as it was for the crowd witnessing Jesus welcoming the scoundrel Zacchaeus then. But even when we’re out-in-the-open – exposed , Jesus still doesn’t see us the way the world sees us. Or, sometimes even more of a relief, Jesus doesn’t see us the way we see ourselves.

Stage 4 – We realize we are found
I bet Zaccheaus was shocked to be seen up there in that tree. Shocked to be addressed personally by Jesus -- to be accepted and called by Jesus. For Zacchaeus this was the moment of truth. Would he stay up in that tree, hidden and safe? Plenty of people do. And it would have been pretty easy. In fact, it would have been a lot less risky than pushing aside the branches hiding him from view and allowing Jesus to throw his life into a tailspin.

Stage 5 – Our life changes
When Zacchaeus heard Jesus talking to him, he practically fell out of the tree with enthusiasm. And when Zacchaeus jumped down from his hiding place, his whole perspective changed. He was no longer able to watch from his distant perch. He was no longer anonymous. He was right there on the ground with Jesus. And he no sooner hit the ground than he turned his life around. He gave half of his possessions to the poor and repaid four times what he had been defrauding the people around him. And he did it all joyfully! There was something about his encounter with Jesus that changed the way Zacchaeus saw the world. The way he saw himself and the people around him. He could no longer just return to his old patterns and habits. Jesus didn’t just come into Zacchaeus’ home – he came into his heart.

So Jesus is coming to town! You can climb a tree and watch what he is up to. But beware! When you least expect it, he’ll stop beneath your tree and invite you down. And then anything might happen….

FInding God in the Choir Loft

2010-10-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I went to St. Alban's in Annandale for one of the Listening Sessions that the Diocese of Virginia has been having to let people share their thoughts about the blessing of same-sex relationships. I thought there might be a couple dozen people there and figured they'd probably be the most strident voices from both sides of the issue. But I was pleasantly surprised. First, by the turnout. There were hundreds of people there. A lot of priests and a lot of lay people and they seemed to come from all over this part of the Diocese - churches big and small. But second, and more importantly, by the tone of the gathering. We started and ended in prayer, which always helps. And then we broke up into smaller groups (mine was up in the choir loft) to discuss 3 given questions using the Indaba listening process. Indaba is a Zulu word for the process of decision making by consensus and I'd only heard about it but hadn't seen it in action. After each question, there was a period of silence and then each person in the group had the opportunity to share our thoughts about the question for two minutes. (Our personal thoughts -- using "I" statements.) We were asked not to share the questions, since there are still a few more listening sessions left and part of the process involves hearing and thinking about the questions together. But suffice it to say that they weren't what many of us expected. And that was a very good thing, because right from the start we were all forced to walk a little bit away from our entrenchments and look into our heart to hear what God might be saying to each of us, and to our larger community. It isn't a quick way to get things done, certainly, but I think our small group, at least, was surprised by how close we felt to a consensus by the end of the process.

Bumpy Pumpkins and Creative Theologies

2010-10-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote about my plan to put some of the decorated pumpkins from the St. Aidan’s Oktoberfest as decorations around the altar this past Sunday. got nothing but positive comments from the congregation. Our wild bumpy pumpkin and the smaller decorated varieties got their fifteen minutes of fame and are now back at home on our porch where they belong.

But the experience led me to thinking about the many ways in which secular and sacred intersect. The more I think about it, the less I think anything can be truly secular. But Halloween is an interesting test.
I love this holiday, always have. My friends and I trick-or-treated until people started giving us dirty looks. And now I love that having kids legitimates my dressing up and going door-to-door again on Halloween. I think pretending and wearing costumes is good and healthy for kids’ imaginations, plus trick-or-treating is one of the rare opportunities to actually connect in person with our neighbors. But I’m never quite sure how to explain some of it to my kids. Scary ghosts, vampires, skeletons – what exactly is so fun about all of this stuff?

I was talking to another mother and she helped me out a bit, at least as far as pumpkins go. She told me that when she carves pumpkins with her kids, she uses the pumpkins as an illustration of how we are made “new creations” by our faith in Jesus Christ. Just as we reach into those pumpkins and clear out the seeds and the goop, God clears away our sins and fears and offers us a clean start. And just as those pumpkins radiate the warm glow of the candles inside, the light of Christ flows into our hearts and shines through us. I can use that.

Pagan pumpkins?

2010-10-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

So we're once again nearing another holiday with some dubious pagan connections.

Halloween is just around the corner, along with all the trappings. Kids dressed up in all their finery (my three have chosen to be a rock star, an alien and a cow this year - an interesting combination). Pumpkins with their fiery orange glow. Way too much candy too easily accessible (I told my husband if he opened the package I'd be in trouble, and sure enough...). Spooky spiders and masks decorating the stores.

At St. Aidan's this weekend, we'll be celebrating our annual Oktoberfest which will include not only an oom pah band, bratwurst and good beer, but also Halloween-inspired crafts and pumpkin decorating. It's that last bit that has led me into a little trouble. I signed up for altar flowers this Sunday planning to bring a bunch of those decorated pumpkins. They'll be dunked in glue and then peppered with feathers, puff balls, and all the glitter a kid could hope for. My mistake was in announcing my plan ahead of time. John, my rector, who revels in giving me a hard time anyway, wasn't so impressed with this idea. He accused me (I think/hope somewhat jokingly) of bringing pagan accoutrements into church.

But I have sympathy for this poor innocent produce that has come to be associated with the spookier bits of Halloween. It is one of God's good creations, afterall. So I hope instead of offending anyone's sensibilities, the decorated pumpkins will instead be a sign of the connection between our church and the world, a sign of God's loving creation of all of the life that fills our world, and a sign of God is in and through and around and about every piece of our lives.

I'll let you know how it goes on Sunday....

Superhero Faith!

2010-10-07T06:45:00.001-07:00

Proper 22, Pentecost 19

October 3, 2010
Luke 17:5-10

One of my guilty weekend pleasures is reading Date Lab in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine. Each week, Date Lab reports about two people who have been set up by the paper on a blind date. There is always a brief bio about the two people, based on their answers to questions asked in their applications for Date Lab. One question that often appears is what superpower they would pick if they could. No one has ever mentioned it in Date Lab, but I think this morning’s Gospel story includes the superpower my husband might choose if he could. The power to miraculously transplant trees.

Jesus tells his disciples that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could uproot mulberry trees. He says something similar in Matthew’s Gospel, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” It’s one of the many passages in the Bible that tend to make us feel like failures. We must not have enough faith because we can’t uproot mulberry trees or move mountains. We can’t pray well enough to heal the sick or protect our loved ones from danger. We can’t trust enough to rid ourselves of anxiety. Plenty of things are impossible for us.

When my mom was sick, I did a lot of praying. I prayed for God to be with her, to be with me and our family. I prayed for her to make it through surgery and chemo. I prayed for her to get better, to be with us one more Mother’s Day, one more Christmas. But there were also a lot of times along the way where I felt too sad or worried or angry to pray. And I know this doesn’t sound particularly rational, but after she died, I felt like maybe it was partly my fault. I felt like if only I’d prayed enough or prayed for the right thing she might have lived. If only my faith had been stronger.

And it doesn’t sound so far off from what the disciples felt. Sure they look faithful to us, having left their homes and families to follow Jesus. They’ve been subject to ridicule and persecution, wondering where their next meal will come from and where they will sleep that night. And yet, here they are begging Jesus to increase their faith. In the Gospel of Matthew we hear them kicking themselves when they aren’t able to cure the sick and cast out demons. Clearly they too feel like they are lacking. They too feel like they are inadequate. And who can blame them? They must feel like the perennial Clark Kents to Jesus’ Superman.

And at first glance, Jesus’ answer to the disciples is not terribly reassuring to any of us. “C’mon people, if you’d just have the teensiest bit of faith, you’d be able to do great things!” Does he really need to make them feel – to make me feel – even worse?

But maybe I’m just projecting onto Jesus that shame and guilt-inducing tone when he speaks these words to his disciples. What if instead, Jesus speaks these words in a voice of encouragement and love. “With faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you!”

In The Message translation of the Bible, when the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, he answers: “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, you could say to this tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.”

Read this way, it sounds like a promise – a vision – for the disciples and for us. God doesn’t want us to feel inadequate in our faith. God wants us to know that the presence of faith – in any form, any size, any strength – is enough when the giver of that faith is as big and powerful and loving as God is. Even a teeny, tiny bit of faith can uproot trees and move mountains! The disciples already have what is required. And so do we.

In the first week of Sunday school, the younger kids heard a Godly Play story about the church year. I used a pared down version for the Day School at our Wednesday chapel and the kids were surprisingly riveted. The words are beautiful, I think, and captivating. The story talks about the 3 great times of the Church year (Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) and the times for getting ready to come close to the mystery of those times (Advent, Lent, and the season of Easter), and the “great, green, growing Sundays” that make up the rest of the year. And some of the last words of the story are: “It is all here. Everything we need.”

Can we trust God to believe that with regard to our faith too? That God has already given us everything we need?

Of course, any self-respecting superhero can’t just sit back and revel in their superpower. They have to use their cloak of invisibility or their x-ray vision or their spidey sense to vanquish evildoers and save the world. So also, we cannot just rest in the knowledge of our mulberry tree and mountain-moving superpower. Instead, we’ve got a role to play with our mustard seed sized faith.

Daria Bergin-Hill sent me a link to a great episode of Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith on NPR where Krista is talking to Rabbi and writer Sandy Sasso about the spirituality of parenting. Sandy says that our faith – our soul – is a lot like our muscles. “If you don’t exercise your muscles, they atrophy. If you don’t exercise your soul, it atrophies too.”

Maybe Jesus is telling us that rather than working at (and worrying about) increasing the size of our faith, or being rid of all our doubts, or being able to answer the impossible questions of life, we should take whatever little seed of faith resides inside of us and run with it. God calls us to be active participants in the work of miraculous transplantation.

Of course, it probably won’t be easy and it usually won’t happen overnight. And the results from acting on our faith may not be exactly what we expect. In fact, at least in my experience, we are almost certain not to get the result we expect.

With my mom, there was no miraculous healing. But my family learned how to communicate with one another – how to share our fears and our sorrows. We finally understood that we could make mistakes and say the things that are hard to say and our relationships would still be intact. We experienced miracles very different from the one I’d hoped for. The miracle of joyful time together. The miracle of seeing grace in pain, and beauty in death. The miracle of learning that even the fragility of life somehow points to God. The miracle of being able to empathize more fully with other people in pain.

God has given us all the faith we need to take the ordinary, the mundane, the things that block our path and cast us in shadow, and uproot them to make way for something new and wonderful. It is nothing less than absolute transformation Jesus is promising us. If we can just stretch ourselves, we just might reach an entirely different reality.

So, where is the mulberry bush in your life waiting to be uprooted and transplanted by your new-found super power?

We are drumming in the name of God...

2010-09-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

In seminary, there was a group of folks that would bring drums to campus and sit and play when the weather was nice. Before long, they were generally surrounded by a big crowd of impressed on-lookers. I don't know about the rest of the people watching, but I always assumed that drumming was something that only very hip, talented, coordinated types of people could do well.

But then, at the St. Aidan's campout this past weekend, we brought in a woman to lead us in a drum circle. She started us out easy -- tapping our toes, snapping, clapping. Then moved us on to easy rhythm instruments -- sticks, shakers, cow bells. But then we finally got to delve into the dozens of beautiful drums we'd been eyeing. Tall and short, metal and wood, natural and painted. We each got to pick one and she taught us how to make a beat with the flesh of our hand and a tone with our fingers. She taught us how to stay on the beat, how to riff our own rhythms within the beat, how to listen to our neighbors, how to get louder and softer. It was a great reminder that God is in our movement, our dance, our laughter, our noise, our enjoyment. I loved looking around the circle and seeing how much everyone was enjoying themselves. The kids were having a ball -- getting to bang on drums to their hearts content! But the adults were just as happy -- smiling, laughing, caught in the moment, getting over our preconceived notions of ourselves.

Maybe we're all hipper and talented and more coordinated than we'd realized!

Stewarding Unrighteousness

2010-09-20T13:14:00.001-07:00

Pentecost 17, Proper 20
Luke 16:1-13
September 19, 2010

Last Sunday I headed to Shadowlands with nine high schoolers from the youth group to play Lasertag. I put on the heavy pack, picked up my phaser and joined the group in the dark warehouse. I started lurking around corners and up into the walkways overhead, seeking someone to aim at. Sometimes I’d feel the vibration that meant I’d been hit. But every once in a while, I got to be the aggressor instead. And I have to say, it was pretty exhilarating, even if almost everyone I shot was either a parishioner or a little kid at a birthday party. “Good shot” my screen would announce.

At the end, we came out into the lobby to wait for our scores. (I came in 18th the first round, but then developed a shrewd and defensive strategy for the second round and came in 8th place.) As I came out of the dark room and re-entered reality, the oddness of our activity hit me. Here we were, a church group, pretending to shoot each other. And, as if reading my mind, just then one of the teens said, “What exactly does this have to do with church?” “Uh….”

The truth was, we just wanted to start the year with an activity that the group enjoys and had been asking to do. But there was, undeniably, a bit of a disconnect between what we were doing and what we aim to be about.

The same seems to be true for our Gospel story this morning. This parable is known as the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, although in our translation this morning they use the word manager instead of steward. We’re presented with a manager who is accused of squandering his rich employer’s property and then once he’s caught he starts reducing the debts people owe his master in order to make friends for himself. And at the end, oddly, he is commended by his master and held up as a role model by Jesus.

And then, to make matters worse, the reading continues with all these strange little one-liner conclusions that don’t seem to have much to do with the story at all and maybe even seem contradictory:

“The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much and if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”

And then the famous kicker, “You cannot serve both God and wealth…”

At first glance, it’s like the writer of Luke sat down at his desk with his big pile of Jesus sayings and added one after another to the parable just to make sure he got them in somewhere. Or maybe he was just as baffled as I am by Jesus’ parable and so was trying to make some sense of it by connecting it with something more defensible. One commentator suggested that these three little conclusions should be understood not as being part of the parable but as three different ways in which the early Church moralized the parable.

And that helps some, but I’m still not sure what to make of the parable itself. Still not sure what to make of the uncomfortable disconnect between that manager’s tricky and self-serving actions and what we are meant to do and be as Christians.

As your preacher this morning, I’d like to point out that this parable is acknowledged by most commentators as being the most difficult to understand of all of Jesus’ parables. There is disagreement about almost every piece of it. When the master accuses his manager of squandering his property, what does he mean? And is this accusation true or untrue? When the manager forgives a portion of the amount owed by his master’s debtors, is he acting righteously (perhaps reducing the price by cutting his own commission) or is he committing fraud? Is it Jesus or the master in the story who commends the dishonest manager? And if the manager is really dishonest, why is he being commended by anyone?

The traditional understanding of the parable has been that it is a lesson about financial stewardship. That just as this dishonest manager acted shrewdly with the material possessions in his control to prepare for his future after he was fired, we should be equally shrewd in the use of our material possessions in light of the coming of the kingdom. And that may very well be the right and best explanation. And I’m all for lessons about how we should use whatever wealth we have for good -- it’s all God’s anyway and we can all use constant reminders of that. But I’m not so wild about extending the selfish calculus involved in this story to our quest for the Kingdom of God. The idea that our motivation for doing good is to curry favor with God rather than being a natural (if difficult) by-product of loving God and neighbor.

And so I was fascinated to discover in my research that there is an alternate way of translating the phrase “dishonest steward” that raises all kinds of new and interesting possibilities for this story. Literally, the phrase can mean “the steward of unrighteousness.” From this story, we can’t tell if the manager was squandering his master’s property or if he was being falsely accused. But either way, what if he is being commended not for being dishonest and tricky and self-serving, but for meeting head-on the unrighteousness in his life and working to redeem it?

That is something, I think, we can all relate to and need to hear. We all encounter unrighteousness in our lives in some form or fashion. Sometimes, it may be the natural effect of something we’ve done or not done, but often we also encounter brokenness and injustice that are not our doing. And while we often hear about being stewards of the good things that come our way – through our thankfulness and our generosity – what do we do with the not-so-good things that come our way? Or the downright awful? Maybe this parable is reminding us that we are called to be stewards of all of that, too.

One of my kids had an experience with some bullying at school recently and so we got a book to read called Bullies Never Win. It’s about a little girl who is being continuously picked on by another little girl. The mean girl calls her names and makes her feel bad about herself. Makes fun of her lunchbox until she refuses to bring it to school. Accuses her unfairly of cheating at kickball until she quits playing. Eventually, thank goodness, the little girl learns to stand up for herself and the story ends well. But it made me start thinking about how tricky this all-too-common situation is. You don’t want your child to stop liking what they like, to stop being who they are. You want them to learn to stand up for themselves, and yet you don’t want them to just counter and become one of the mean kids themselves. How can you help them to take this experience and turn it around without letting it own them? How can they use it to increase their empathy for others rather than being hardened by it? In other words, how can they become a steward of this unrighteousness?

The manager’s ability in our parable to take his losing situation and turn it around is a model for all of us. His entire world was the verge of falling apart (whether by his own fault or not) – he was going to lose his job, his reputation be left destitute and alone. But he didn’t become paralyzed or resigned or turn ruthless or start blaming other people. He was shrewd, he was imaginative, and he took risks. And he managed to take his impossible situation and redeem it. He brought relief to over-burdened debtors and he salvaged his own reputation. He became a steward of the unrighteousness in his life.

And we can do the same with all the disconnected pieces of our lives. Whether it’s something small, like using mock-shooting games to form relationships in youth group. Or something bigger, like shifting sorrow into compassion; using a failure to make a connection with someone; turning conflict into understanding; or mobilizing anger into momentum. With God, anything is possible. Amen!

The Labyrinth of Faith

2010-08-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

11 Pentecost, Proper 14
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
August 15, 2010

(The congregation got involved in this sermon, which made for a great conversation!)

Near the end of our parish retreat last weekend, my daughter and I walked the outdoor labyrinth at Shrine Mont. They’ve built it out of rough rocks into this beautiful clearing in the woods. It’s not entirely dissimilar from our labyrinth here, but bigger, so it takes longer to walk. And because it’s built with rocks rather than tape, the path feels much more structured. Somehow, it seems more like cheating to veer off the path. I was watching Sophie’s face as she walked and wondering what she was thinking when sometimes the path seemed to be taking her further and further from the center. But she was smiling as she walked and seemed to trust that she’d get there eventually.

It made me think about faith.

Our reading from Hebrews this morning is all about faith. But “faith” is a tricky word. It means different things to different people. For many Christians, faith is equated with either a conversion experience or agreement with a certain system of beliefs. Thomas Aquinas defined faith as “the act of the intellect when it assents to divine truth.” Faith has become a term of self-definition.

But for others, and from what I’ve read, this tack lies closer to the Jewish idea of faith, faith is not primarily an intellectual act but an attitude. It’s closer to fidelity – a sort of steadfastness and trust that allows us to look beyond ourselves. And this sounds like it might be where the writer of Hebrews is going as he talks about faith in terms of a race, as supplying courage or endurance.

I would love to hear from some of you all - How do you think of Faith?

It wasn’t just Sophie and I on that labyrinth at Shrine Mont. The Andersons were also on the path with us, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind. And Jo-Ann Muir was on a bench nearby and then started walking it herself. And I was struck by how nice it felt to walk the labyrinth with these other people, vaguely aware of their shadows on the ground next to me, or them stepping aside ever so gently to let me pass. I liked having companions on the journey. All walking towards the same goal, even when we weren’t always headed in the same direction or going at the same pace.

In Jewish tradition, there is a sense that faith resides in the community, not only in the individual. Our faith is part and parcel of our inclusion in the community of the People of God. Which, I think, is why the writer of Hebrews hopes that looking to the history of God’s people might help us on our journey of faith. Looking at how God has been acting throughout the ages – promising, leading, being in the midst of the people.

“By faith the people passed through the Red Sea,” “by faith the walls of Jericho fell”, “through faith” kingdoms were conquered and the mouths of lions shut. But the list in Hebrews doesn’t include only extraordinary heroes who get the job done with amazing results. It also includes people that seem to have nothing to show for their faith at all. People who endure awful things like being tortured, or stoned to death, or sawn in two. The Message translation of the Bible describes these people as “making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.”

For the writer of Hebrews, faith comes in the context of a larger story of promise. A promise that at any given moment might seem elusive, but is present anyway in the form of hope. We are reaching for what cannot yet be fully grasped. And so we can look to this cloud of witnesses for inspiration.

Your turn again - Who are your pioneers or paragons of faith?

All along it has helped God’s people to know that they were not alone. We follow in the footsteps of people who had no idea what the future held but chose to trust God anyway. People who were able to hope for joy even when their hearts were breaking.

And so now, as the book of Hebrews puts it, it’s our turn to run the race. But rest assured that we aren’t in it alone. We run along with Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Daniel, Mary Magdalene and Peter, and also all those folks ahead or behind or sometimes right next to us on the labyrinth of life.

Amen.

A Weekend Away - St. Aidan's Parish Retreat

2010-08-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

Join us for next year's St. Aidan's parish retreat, August 2011!

Sunday morning service at the Shrine

As someone commented, "It's like being in Mayberry!"

Candlelight service across the pond

Hay ride (sans hay!)

Swimming in nearby Lake Laura

Kids enjoying each other

Hanging out on the porch

Kids' Drama Program with Heather Sanderson

Eating at Shrine Mont

The Gospel According to Silly Bandz

2010-08-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

August 1, 2010
Pentecost 10, Proper 13, Year C
Luke 12:13-21; Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23

Raise your hand if you know what these are? How many of you have them? Anybody wearing them right now? Well, for those of you who don’t know, these are Silly Bandz. (That’s bandz with a “z”, mind you.) These rubber-band-like plastic bracelets come in all kinds of shapes – animals, princesses, dinosaurs, flowers, food - even letters. You can stretch them out, but they always, rather disturbingly, return back to their shape. And they seem to be everywhere.

One day I was in Bed Bath and Beyond with my kids and Sophie noticed a huge bin of silly bands near the register. She really wanted some. She said that almost all the kids in her class had them. They would wear a bunch of them and trade them during recess. We’d recently started her on an allowance and so I told her she could use her own money to buy some if she wanted to. So she proudly came home with a pack of 24 princess-themed Silly Bandz (for $2.99 plus tax). Of course, as soon as her little brother saw how excited she was about them, he wanted to have some too. At first, even though she had dozens, she refused to give him even one and he began to cry. But then, under some parental duress, she agreed to sell him one-third of them. (Who says the market economy isn’t alive and well?) They put them all on their arms, they organized them by color, they counted and recounted and traded them. And then they began to talk about how they could get more.

All this excitement and turmoil inspired me to try talking to the kids about fads. I told them how often people start doing something because other people are doing it, or wanting something because other people have it. Sometimes whatever it is is pretty silly and makes no sense, but people do it anyway because everyone else is doing it. I shared the very odd fad from my early high school years of pulling up your socks over the bottom of your jeans. It was something, I am embarrassed to admit, that I did because other people did it even though, objectively speaking, it was not a good look. And, thankfully, that fad didn’t last long.

Right now, kids want more and more Silly Bandz, and want them to be ever new and different. New shapes, new colors; the things get wilder and wackier as time goes on. They started out just plain bright colors and now they come in tie-dye, glow in the dark, sparkly, scented, and some even change colors in the sun. And people just can’t seem to get enough of them. As far as I can tell, part of the goal of Silly Bandz is just to amass as many as you can. Until, of course, they become so prevalent that they are no longer cool. There was an article in the Metro section of the newspaper not long ago about Silly Bandz. The last sentence was a quote by a very wise fourth grader: “Once you have all the cool silly bands, once you have 300 silly bands, people are going to say, ‘That’s not popular anymore.’”

Wikopedia defines a fad as “any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period.” Part and parcel of being a fad is being fleeting in nature. That will certainly be the fate for Silly Bands.

Which brings me (I swear!) to the connection with our readings this morning.

We are bombarded today with reminders our how fleeting we are and how, with regard to possessions and wealth, ultimately, you can’t take it with you.

All is vanity, complains our Old Testament reading from Ecclesiastes. The word “vanity” is translated from a word in Hebrew (which I will not attempt to pronounce) which means “puff of wind, vapor, a breath” – in other words, something that is quickly passing away. Just about everything you can think of is included in the vanity category in the book of Ecclesiastes. Accomplishments, work, wealth, wisdom, strength, possessions – even life itself. Nothing is certain in life, other than death. It is better to be dead than living, says the author of Ecclesiastes, and better still to have never been born. All the things that we think matter are like chasing after the wind. We can never be satisfied that we have enough of any of these things. And then, no matter how much of whatever it is we amass, it will be left for those who come after anyway.

Then there’s our Psalm, which reminds us that we will all die and no amount of money can change that.

And in Luke Jesus tells his parable about the foolish farmer making plans to build bigger barns to store up his excess wheat the night before he dies.

All is vanity. Like chasing after the wind.

Of course, our entire economy is based on our wanting things we don’t really need. We are bombarded with ads that promise us that this new thing will make us happy, attractive, and fulfilled. But of course, just like Silly Bandz and all other fads, just like money and whatever other Stuff we are compelled to amass, none of this can really add meaning to our lives.

It seems like every year or so a new scientific study comes out affirming what the writer of Ecclesiastes knew intuitively: wealth (or whatever other material thing we are collecting) does not equal happiness. Once a certain minimum standard of living is in place so that someone is not hungry, diseased and oppressed, there is a sort of happiness setpoint. Once that minimum standard of caloric intake and physical security is reached, further increases do not increase happiness in the long run.

So, in the immortal words of Alfie, what’s it all about? If meaning and well-being cannot be found in our stuff, where can we find it?

Luke tells us that it’s about being “rich toward God” rather than storing up treasures for ourselves. A contemporary Bible translation called The Message says we need to “fill our barn with God” rather than with Self.

So, here are a handful of possibilities for how we fill our barn with God, based on what I’ve learned both from the Silly Bandz phenomenon and from the Foolish Farmer.

• First, give thanks. When you find yourself in the desirable position of filling up your arms with Silly Bandz, remember that nothing that is yours is really yours. The foolish farmer forgot that all that he had came from God and all that he had was God’s. He forgot to give thanks for his abundance.

• Second, get by with less. Do you really need 24 silly bands? Much less 300? The foolish farmer could have just stored what would have fit in his existing barn and lived a fine life. But instead, he wanted more and more. There is a saying that money is like ocean water – the more you drink, the thirstier you get.

• Third, share what you have. If you have more silly bands than you can use, please share them with your little brother who doesn’t have any. How many widows and orphans could the foolish farmer have provided for, just with his excess? On our end, I’ve read economic experts that say that if everyone in the developed world gave $1 a week to the developing world, we could rid the world of hunger.

• Fourth, trust in God. If you don’t have any Silly Bandz, trust that you will get them if you ever really need them. Or, since the concepts of “need” and “Silly Bandz” are inherently unrelated, just relax and know that the fad will pass. The foolish farmer was so insistent on being self-reliant, rather than relying on God, that he hoarded himself to death. There is nothing wrong with saving for a rainy day. The problem is when you lose focus and start hoarding for a tsunami.

• Fifth, look outward. Stop counting your silly bands and think about something else. The foolish farmer couldn’t see beyond himself – “my grain” “my goods” “my soul” – relaxing, eating, drinking, being merry. But the most fulfilled people are the ones engaged in something beyond themselves.

• Sixth, concentrate on what lasts. I guarantee that Silly Bandz will not last forever. Either they’ll get stretched out and broken, they’ll be stolen by your little brother, or they’ll become uncool before you know it. The foolish farmer was focused solely on achieving material success, but as soon as he achieved it his life was over. Stuff is finite -- the person with the most toys does not win in the end.

• Seventh, free yourself. Those Silly Bandz are just weighing you down, my friends. The foolish farmer’s possessions began to own him, just like everything we have owns a little piece of us, leaving us just that much less free than we were before.

• And finally, connect to God. Although many people would tell you otherwise, life with God is not synonymous with the American ideals of prosperity and success. Silly Bandz won’t fulfill you any more than a massive silo full of wheat in your back yard. Only God can do that. Amen.

On the Eve of a Funeral

2010-07-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm officiating a sermon for someone I've never met. It is for a 97 year old woman who was a life-long Episcopalian but had moved from her home town in the last few years so her son (Roman Catholic) went looking for an Episcopal priest to do her funeral. It is a strange, but beautiful, position to be in. I get to see pictures of this stranger, who is my unknown sister in faith. I get to hear stories about her life -- her adventures, her sorrows, her quirks. And I get to be with her family in this time that is so poignant for them as they remember and love and celebrate her. For some sacraments I find that knowing the person really matters. In marriage ceremony, I feel more joyous the more I know the couple and know something about their love and support for one another. In baptism, I feel much more confident when I know that we as a congregation really and truly will be able to do all in our power to support this person in their life of faith because we really and truly have a relationship with them. Even in the Eucharist I find it incredibly meaningful and humbling to give bread to someone when I know a little bit about their life story. But for a funeral, I can say and pray the beautiful words of the Episcopal liturgy and without knowing the person a bit, feel perfectly assured that they are true. This person is the Lord's possession, a sheep of God's own fold. Light perpetual shines upon her. She now rests where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting. Alleluia!

Martha meets Mary

2010-07-18T07:06:00.000-07:00

July 18, 2010
Pentecost 8, Proper 11
Luke 10:38-42

Part of my process before going to seminary involved answering a bunch of essay questions for the Diocese. One of the questions asked which biblical character I most identified with. I cheated and used two – the two sisters we read about this morning – Mary and Martha. I must admit that my answer was partly a calculated one. I didn’t want to pick anyone too righteous or too unrighteous, just in case that might set off red flags. But it was mostly a real answer. I have strong Martha tendencies, but in my heart I’d like to be Mary.

And maybe because I identify with her, this story makes me feel sorry for Martha. Here she is, welcoming Jesus into her home, along with all his disciples. There’s no telling how many people we’re talking about here, because Jesus has all sorts of folks following him around. Those dusty feet trodding all over her clean carpets. Those loud voices taking over her house. And she’s doing her best to make all her visitors comfortable. Running herself ragged getting them all cold drinks after their long journeys and fixing food for their hungry stomachs. Sweating as she washes their feet and passes out bandaids for their blisters. She’s doing what was expected in that culture – showing hospitality – just like Abraham in our Old Testament reading from this morning.

Meanwhile, her sister Mary is doing a whole lot of nothing. She’s sitting like a lump at Jesus’ feet enjoying herself, leaving Martha to do twice the work. And so Martha asks Jesus to get Mary to help her provide for him and the disciples. It seems like a perfectly reasonable request from poor, overburdened Martha. So why is Jesus so hard on Martha? Why does he say that Mary, who simply sits and listens, has chosen the better part? As my kids would say, it just isn’t fair!

For almost two thousand years, many people have been interpreting this little vignette to mean that the contemplative life and life in the world are somehow in conflict. That being spiritual is better than being part of the world, even if what you’re doing in the world is something as valuable as providing hospitality to travelers or feeding the homeless. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant at all.

There was nothing wrong with what Martha was doing. Her activity, her work providing hospitality for Jesus and his followers, that was all good. Our reading talks about Martha’s “tasks” and that word – tasks – is translated from the Greek word diakonia. Its a word used in the New Testament to refer to both domestic service and Christian ministry. Our word deacon is derived from it. So it’s valid work Martha is doing. After all, loving God isn’t an abstract thing. It is active and physical. People like us who live and work and wrestle in the real world can be just as spiritual, just as close to God, as the monks hunkered down praying in their desert caves. Just like God came in the flesh of Jesus and got involved in the details of everyday life, we can find God in our everyday details too.

I think it’s like loving a child. You can’t just say you love them and feel love in your heart. You have to also be willing to wipe their nose and tie their sneakers and teach them to drive. These things aren't trivial worldly concerns. They are the from that love take. Faith is the same; it isn't all praying or learning about Jesus. It is also writing your congressperson and stocking the food pantry and teaching the Sunday school class and cleaning the altar linens. So, as far as Martha is concerned, showing hospitality means vacuuming the house and chopping the vegetables, however noncontemplative those tasks may seem.

I’d say that the problem wasn’t what Martha was doing, but how she was doing it. The problem wasn’t that she was busy but that she was distracted. She’d forgotten that the goal of her hospitality was to welcome Jesus and had turned it into a reason for anxiety.

Instead of cooking and serving Jesus with a warm heart and a smile on her face, Martha was muttering in the kitchen and clanging the pans around on purpose. She grumbled to herself until finally she exploded with frustration, not only at her sister Mary but at Jesus – her guest, her Lord. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me!”

The “better part” that Mary chose wasn’t the form of her devotion (sitting at Jesus' feet) it was her focus. Mary is focused solely on Jesus, while Martha is focused on herself, the injustice done to her, the overwhelming work in front of her. And so Jesus lovingly calls her to refocus. To remember that true hospitality isn’t about food, but about the people that eat the food. About truly welcoming them in the name of God.

Back to my discernment process: When I went before the Committee from the Diocese that interviews all the folks who want to be in the process towards priesthood, they asked me about my answer to that question about which biblical character I most identified with. They wanted to know about a time in my life when I had been Martha and Mary. And so I shared with them a moment of real understanding that had happened between the time that I’d written those essays and the time that I came before the committee. It was a day when my mom was really sick and it was obvious that she wouldn’t be around much longer. She couldn’t get around anymore and I had gone part-time at work and would head to Columbia to be with her and try to help Dad out in the afternoons and evenings. One day, I headed out from work and I stopped by Target to buy a pillow that I thought might make her more comfortable. And then I spent some time in the kitchen making this recipe that was a comfort food she used to make for us when we were kids that I thought maybe would tempt her to eat. And then I was cleaning a bit, and doing some laundry. And then I went into her room and asked if she needed anything. And she told me to lie down next to her. And I did. I just lay there next to her and talked and listened and loved her. And it occurred to me that although the things I’d been doing were helpful, a lot of it had been things to make myself busy so that I could avoid thinking about the worst. I’d been so worried and distracted by my many things that I’d forgotten what it was all for. The Martha in me had been neglecting the one thing – the better part.

I haven’t read it, but I saw a book title that says it all: Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy with God in the Busyness of Life. Mary and Martha don’t have to be in conflict – in this story we read today or in our own lives. Martha could have been both. And we can be both. In fact, we have to be both. We have to be like Martha, going about the tasks, the diakonia, of life. Can you imagine what would happen if we didn’t? The trick is to not get bogged down by them. To avoid doing them grudgingly, complainingly, trying to be noticed. Instead, when we do our tasks – even the most menial and miserable – with a loving focus, trying to become aware that God is with us in the moment, we can turn them into prayer; an offering to God. Benedictine Monk David Steindl-Rast describes prayer as “waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing.”

But we also have to be Mary, willing to turn aside from our tasks to sit at Jesus’ feet. Sometimes what we need most in our walk with God is to just sit and listen for Jesus, to simplify our lives in order to have more quality time with God. We are so often bombarded with responsibilities and requirements – doing for doings sake, rather than for God’s sake. Sometimes stopping everything and just paying attention to what is right in front of us is the way to go. My favorite line in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is when Shug says “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

The good news is, Martha does eventually end up noticing the color purple and stopping. If you were, like me, worried about poor Martha in this story, there’s a wonderful epilogue. In fact, her story is one of the few times in the Bible where we actually get “the rest of the story”. Sometime later, when Jesus comes to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead, Martha makes one of the strongest and most heartfelt confessions of faith in the whole Bible: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” She is no longer frantic and resentful but full of love for Jesus. She’s found her Mary heart in her Martha world. Amen.

Following

2010-06-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

5 Pentecost (Proper 8)
June 27, 2010
Luke 9:51-62

We have this great soft Bible that I used to bring to church for the kids before we got to this place with all the cool art supplies in the back. Just a handful of stories but all can be manipulated by little hands. The good Samaritan with Velcro bandaids you can put on his wounds. Fish that can snap off and be put into the disciples’ net. You can get Jonah in and out of the whale, put baby Moses in his basket, button Joseph’s pretty coat. And the story of Lot’s wife. She is a sort of popsicle stick – one side pretty and smiling and the other side unhappy and sort of sandy, like an emery board.

The kids had recently rediscovered this little bible and when they got to the page about Lot’s wife they clearly didn’t have a clue what it was all about. Dylan thought the story was about a person who turned into an angel. So I told them the story about Lot who lived in this city where the people were really awful – hurting each other and not loving God. And so the city was going to be destroyed, but because Lot was a good person God let him and his wife get away first. God warned them not to look back at the city as they ran away. But Lot’s wife looked back and instantly turned into a pillar of salt.

The kids, understandably, thought that was odd, to say the least, and wanted to know why. And so do I. I understand that she disobeyed God. Maybe she was too attached to her old home. Maybe she didn’t think it was such a bad place and had grown desensitized to the evil there. Maybe she was part of the evil to begin with and God was just doing Lot a favor by letting her leave with him. I’m sure God had reasons, but the story still seems pretty harsh. Turned into a pillar of salt just for turning back to look one last time at the place where you’ve spent your life? The place where all your friends and probably much of your family remain and are being destroyed? What is so horrible about looking back at all that?

The three potential disciples that met Jesus in this morning’s Gospel story from Luke aroused my sympathy just like poor Mrs. Lot. One was eager to follow Jesus: “I will follow you wherever you go!” he said. But Jesus offered nothing but discouragement. Then came the two that wanted to follow Jesus but just had a little something they needed to get done first. One needed to go home and bury his father – it’s hard to imagine a better reason for delay than that! And one wanted to go home and say farewell to his family first – also a reasonable request, one would think. I was impressed with all three in their willingness to leave their lives and follow him. But Jesus – not so much: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Ouch! Once again, looking back seems to be a big problem.

Since my only experience with farming is watching Holden’s dad take my kids for joy rides on his tractor, I investigated how plows worked back in Jesus’ day. The plow was, and is, something that would cut furrows through the soil to prepare it for the seeds that would be planted. In Jesus’ time, the plow would be attached to some kind of strong animal, like a mule or an ox. But the farmer was the one giving the direction to the plow. And it required his full concentration. If he turned his head to look back, it could mean disaster for the animal or the farmer, especially in such a rocky land.

So I take Jesus’ comment to mean that we have to keep our eyes on him rather than being focused on what lies behind, all the things that divert and enslave us. And, given his response this morning to those would be disciples, it sounds like we also need to be willing to drop absolutely everything right this second and head out into the world with nothing but the clothes on our back. But if that’s the standard, then who can ever be fit for the kingdom of God? How many people are there out there that will be able to go full steam ahead without ever looking back? How many people are there with never-failing faith – no doubts, no regrets, and no serious attachments whatsoever? No offense, Jesus, but I don’t think you’re going to find too many people that meet that bill.

Plus, how consistent is Jesus in what he requires from his would-be disciples? Since I was already thinking about this sermon last week, I was surprised to hear last Sunday’s story from Luke’s Gospel that comes shortly before this one. The one where Jesus healed the man with a legion of demons and the man was totally ready to follow Jesus right then and there (Luke says that he “begged” to be with Jesus), but Jesus sent him away, telling him to go home and declare how much God had done instead. Why is Jesus sending away the one who has no attachments and is desperate to follow him and guilt-tripping the ones that want to go home?

I decided to conduct a completely unscientific and not-terribly-academic survey of all the would-be-disciples in the Gospel of Luke and see what Jesus was up to.

It turns out that there are 29 people that Jesus explicitly instructs about what to do next with their lives.

Although they aren’t always ready to do what it takes, throughout the gospel Jesus only invites 9 people to literally leave their lives and join him on the road. This includes two of our friends from this morning, four of the disciples, the rich young man (whom Jesus tells to give everything to the poor and follow him), a blind beggar, and the criminal next to Jesus at his crucifixion (whom Jesus says will be with him that day in paradise). (That last one might be a bit of a stretch, but it seems to fit best into this category.) Obviously there are others who literally follow Jesus – the other 8 disciples, some women like Mary Magdalene, and others, but we don’t hear about how it came about.

The other 20 potential disciples Jesus meets along the way in the Gospel of Luke – and this is the vast majority of the people who encounter Jesus in this sort of one-on-one way –he sends back to where they’ve been all along. This includes people like Zacchaeus sitting in the tree and the lawyer who asks “who is my neighbor” and gets the Good Samaritan story as his answer. These are people that Jesus challenges to change the way they live. This number also includes people that Jesus heals and tells them to go show themselves to the priest. There are some Jesus tells to go and say nothing to anyone and others he tells to return home and tell everyone what God has done. And there are many he just tells to “go in peace.”

So clearly what it means to be a “follower” of Jesus must differ from person to person, which gives me a little more hope for the three people we read about this morning. We can’t tell from Luke’s Gospel what became of these three unnamed potential disciples. We don’t know if the first was deterred by hearing that he might have nowhere to lay his head. And we don’t know if the second and third decided to join Jesus or not. These three might have become some of Jesus’ most loyal believers, or they might have returned back to life as normal and never given Jesus a second thought. We don’t know. We’ll never know. And maybe that’s part of Luke’s intention in including these little unresolved vignettes. And in including the other 26 would or could-be followers of Jesus. Maybe somewhere, in one of their stories, lies our story.

What kind of call to follow have we heard? Some of us might be called to follow Jesus by literally getting on the road and leaving everything else behind. But the vast majority of us are probably called to follow Jesus by showing in our lives the effect of our encounter with him. Maybe by making hard changes to the way we live, maybe by sharing what Jesus means to us with others, maybe by working for peace and justice in our little patch of the world, and definitely by loving our neighbors as ourselves. I can’t tell you specifically what form your invitation to follow Jesus might take or exactly what it means for your life. But I can tell you one thing for sure - it is not an invitation to sit back content with who and what you are. At the very least, it’s a call to risk, to adventure, to new possibilities. And when we follow that call, we’ll see the kingdom of heaven opening up before our very eyes.

My Top 10 List for God

2010-06-15T07:03:00.000-07:00

Pentecost, Proper 6 (Year C)
Luke 7:36-8:3
June 13, 2010

In college, my good friend Glenn could concoct a Top 10 List for just about any occasion. The Top 10 Reasons Why Wake Forest Should Make It to the NCAA Tournament. The Top 10 Excuses for Not Turning in a Paper. The Top 10 Comments Overheard at Biscuitville. There was no subject too serious or too small to merit its own List and they were always smart and laugh-out-loud funny.

You spend enough time with someone like that and eventually you can’t resist trying your own hand at it. And so I wrote a few of my own Top 10 Lists. When Glenn got married I wrote The Top 10 Reasons for Glenn and Deb to Get Married. When they had their first child, I wrote The Top 10 Reasons Why Glenn and Deb Will Be Great Parents. The interesting thing about creating those lists was that even though the point was mostly to be funny, you really did end up getting to the heart of the matter. As I wrote my lists, they made me think about how funny Glenn was, about his enthusiasm for life. About Deb’s gentle strength and incredible kindness. About how the two of them balanced each other out. About how helpful their gifts would be in raising children.

I was reminded of those lists lately while reading a book called 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. It’s a novel about Cass Seltzer, an atheist college professor who teaches in the field of psychology of religion. He studies and writes about how the feelings of religious experience are also found in life at large, even the lives of the non-religious. He is therefore known as “the atheist with a soul.”

Cass has just published a book that has become an instant best seller about “religious illusion”. The book within the book really becomes famous for its Appendix (which is also included in the book itself) which lists (and refutes) 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. These 36 arguments are the classical religious arguments from people like Aquinas and Anselm. Things like The Cosmological Argument, The Argument from Answered Prayers, The Argument from Altruism. But the meat of the book is its 36 chapters that are pieces of Cass’s life, each of which is titled with an argument for the existence of God that comes from his own experience. Things like The Argument from Lucinda (his girlfriend), The Argument from Strange Laughter, The Argument from the New York Times.

What interests me most about the book is the dichotomy between the Appendix’s academic and philosophical arguments for God’s existence and the life-based experiences that argue for God’s existence. We find a similar dichotomy in our Gospel reading this morning.

Simon the Pharisee is like the Appendix. He knows his Torah and can explain what it means using the appropriate scholarly references. He knows the history of the people of God. He knows every rule about eating and cleanliness. He is well known at the Temple, and can recite every prayer. He can argue for God from his head. He reminds me of the Nicene Creed that we recite each Sunday.

The sinful woman is like those chapter titles. She can’t quote from the books of the Hebrew Bible. She is an outcast from the Temple, considered unclean by the proper religious folks. But she has experienced the forgiveness and love of God and knows Jesus is somehow wrapped up in that. Her argument for God comes from her heart. She reminds me of the Affirmation of Faith from the New Zealand prayer book that we’ll use today.

And just like the 36 chapter titles of experiential arguments for God’s existence were, for me, far more convincing than the 36 academic reasons included in the Appendix, so also is the sinful woman’s heart-based faith in God much more persuasive and appealing than Simon’s head-based approach.

And so, as I read the book, I found myself thinking about what the 36 chapters of my life’s experiences of God might be. But since that would require way too much patience on your part, I’ve condensed it to ten.

So here goes – My Top 10 Arguments for the Existence of God From My Own Life.

10. The argument from the underside of ferns.
I was picking flowers the other day and cut a frond from a fern to add to the arrangement. I looked at its underside, maybe for the first time, and saw that it was covered with these tiny, delicate little red seeds. Such a beautiful sight existing out of view, rarely seen or noticed because most of life happens above it.

9. The argument from a hug at a funeral.
At my mom’s funeral, my dad and sister and I were standing in the back of the church, welcoming people as they came in. I had cried a lot before mom died, but then afterwards I just felt numb and shocked. And then my friend Liz walked in with her husband. And she looked at me with such kindness and sorrow and put her arms around me, and finally I was able to cry again for all that I’d lost.

8. The argument from reconciliation.
I know it’s hard to believe, but when I was a teenager I got in trouble a lot. I was often grounded. And considering that I did well in school and didn’t do drugs or cause much trouble, to me it often felt pretty unjust. About a year ago my father and I were talking about those days. And he apologized and said that maybe he and mom were a little too hard on me. And even though as a parent myself I have experienced how hard it is to know how to discipline my kids, I realized how much I’d needed to hear that from my dad.

7. The argument from a vivid dream.
I was visiting my sister in Moscow after college and one night I had a dream that I was an artist creating an sculpture – it was intricate and brilliant and filled with light. It was incredibly beautiful, and somehow I knew it symbolized God. When I woke up I was so full of joy I almost couldn’t stand it. That feeling stuck with me for days, and even now I can feel a little piece of it when I look back.

6. The argument from a child’s observation.
Some of the greatest gifts I receive are pictures and cards from children. My children and yours. Recently I received a picture a young girl from St. Aidan’s had drawn while she was in the park of a beautiful tree. On the picture is written simply “God’s Peace.”

5. The argument from a walk not quite by myself.
In seminary I took a class on Imaginative Prayer where the professor would lead us into prayer through creative exercises. One day she slowly read us the story of Jesus meeting his friends on the road to Emmaus and then had us go out on our own walk around campus to meet Jesus. And in my prayerful walk I did meet Jesus. We walked side by side.

4. The Argument from a Growling Stomach.
A while back I was waiting – not terribly patiently – in a long line at Target. The kids were all with me and losing interest quickly. Dylan had discovered the candy aisle, Maya was hungry and the cashier was SO slow. Finally it was my turn. And then I heard the cashier’s tummy growl. It made both of us laugh, and I realized that this person in front of me, this person that I’d been inwardly frowning at, was a human being. A hungry human being who had been on her feet for hours dealing with people like me looking at her as an object there only to serve us.

3. The Argument From Baked Ziti.
Shortly after having Maya, the dinners started coming from you all. One night I was at my wit’s end – totally exhausted and dealing with a tantrum from one kid and crying from another – and one of you showed up at my door with a delicious dinner. And suddenly everything was okay. I hadn’t accomplished anything that day, but someone had stopped and taken care of me.

2. The Argument from Sophie, Dylan and Maya.
One day when Sophie was about six months old, I went in to pick her up after a nap and she gave me this beautiful smile and my heart just hurt. And it suddenly occurred to me that my own mother must have loved me just like this, and that all the things I hadn’t said to her and all the things I’d done and not apologized for didn’t matter one bit. And then, maybe for the first time, I understood the idea of God as parent, loving us in that same way.

And my number 1 Argument for the Existence of God from my own life…

[Drum roll, please!]

1. The Argument From My Incomplete List
The truth is, my Top 10 List barely touches the surface of my experiences of God in my life. When I stop to really think about it, there have been so many experiences of being grateful, surprised, challenged, forgiven or understood by God. Some are big, some are small. Most of them probably wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me as having anything to do with God. But, as the sinful woman showed us this morning as she kissed and caressed Jesus’ feet, what anyone else thinks about our experience of God doesn’t matter.

We each have our own arguments from our lives, although you may not realize it until you start thinking about it for yourself. They aren’t arguments from the Creed, they probably don’t match up with particular Church doctrine. But they are ours, and that’s exactly what makes them so compelling. Amen.

Returning to Church

2010-06-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

Unlike Barbara Brown Taylor, I am returning to church. Today was my first day back (at least officially) after maternity leave. Two wonderful kids gave me the most beautiful cards - one for me and one for Maya - that made me feel so welcome.

In some ways, not much has changed about St. Aidan's. The place looks the same and of course, being the Episcopal Church, the liturgy is just where I left it. But it some ways, things do seem different. There are some new faces -- people that have come to check out St. Aidan's while I've been gone and stuck around. I look forward to learning their names and getting to know them. And there are the people that I know well whose lives have changed since I've been gone. Maybe because a child is about to graduate from high school or because a parent has gotten ill. I look forward to being back among these people that I have come to know and love and finding out about their lives again.

Sometimes I hear people talk about how they prefer to conduct their spirituality outside of a religious institution. How they don't need a church to have God. And of course, that is absolutely true. God is there for each of us no matter where we look and being in a dedicated building with a cross and lighted candles isn't necessary to find God. And yet, having spent the majority of these last 12 weeks floating around different churches and even (gasp!) sometimes going to no church at all, I have a renewed sense of the importance of gathering to worship on a regular basis among a community that knows me. When we sing a hymn, I can pick out the voices of the people around me. When we say the Prayers of the People, I can think of the needs I know of the people gathered there and of the people missing. When we gather around the table for communion, I look at the faces (eyes closed, faces reverent, smiling, unsure, sad, worried - however they might come) and see the people that have become my family. At coffee hour, I connect with the people that have fed us and cared for us while we've been readjusting to life with our expanded numbers. It is good to be back!

Sermon for the Last Week of Easter

2010-05-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

(I began with three young volunteers playing keep-away with a ball)

This is my metaphor for this morning. A person feeling stuck in the middle, unable to quite get to the ball, moving one way, then the other, and feeling frustrated.

I’ve been living in that place lately. I have this new baby so I’ve been (theoretically at least) on maternity leave. It’s a strange place to be – sort of between worlds. I’m here, but not really here. And yet at home I feel that way too sometimes. It’s probably partly the sleep haze. And partly that I haven’t quite figured out this new little being. One day she’ll be perfectly content and sleep great, the next day it’s like some phantom is pinching her. And no matter what mood she’s in, getting anything else done or being much good for the other kids has been difficult. The logistics of 3 children are still a bit of a mystery to me. And so some days I feel like I’m stuck in this strange in-between. I can’t quite catch the ball.

That’s where we find ourselves this morning here at church too. Today is the last Sunday of Easter. We are smack dab between Ascension Day – when the visible Christ departed from the disciples – and the Day of Pentecost – when the disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit. For a brief time, the poor disciples are left with nothing. Memories of a ball, promises of a ball to come, but no ball in hand.

And we in the Church (with a capital C) are living in the in-between time in a larger, more cosmic sense as well. God came to dwell with us in the person of Jesus, bringing comfort and love and challenge. Raising Jesus from the dead, redeeming humanity, and reconciling us to God. And yet the Kingdom of God has not yet been established on earth. Everyday in the newspapers, on the streets, in our schools and workplaces – and in ourselves – we are surrounded by reminders of how incomplete is the beautiful vision of God.

This feeling of being stuck in between is reflected in our readings this morning. In Acts, a possessed slave girl and a Roman jailer recognize in Paul and Silas the presence of the Most High God while the others around them can only see that these Christians are disturbing the city. In Revelation, we hear John’s vision of Jesus promising that he is coming soon and all the people waiting and hoping. In our Gospel, we get the last few sentences of Jesus’ farewell speech to the disciples, where he prays that they (and those of us who follow) might be one in their love for one another, something that neither they nor we have been able to pull off.

The already-but-not-yet is a frustrating place to live.

Not so long ago, I had one particularly wearisome day when I tried to plan an adventure for the kids and it melted down into a disaster. Maya was fussy and inconsolable, and the other two weren’t listening, and I was impatient and no fun to be around. That evening I posted on Facebook that I was looking forward to Maya being old enough that we could all enjoy our outings together again. And someone commented on my post that I needed to enjoy this time with the baby because it won’t be long that her favorite place to be is in my arms.

It was a much needed reminder not to wish away the present. Not to spend so much time looking backwards or ahead that I miss the here and now. Great advice for me personally, and pretty good advice for us spiritually also.

So the question for us (in our personal in-between times and in our more spiritual and cosmic in-between times) is how exactly can we stop living in the past or wishing ourselves into the future and be fruitful in the moment?

And one answer, at least according to the book of Revelation, is surprisingly simple. And that’s from a book of the Bible that very very rarely can be described as surprisingly simple!

The seventh from last sentence of Revelation, right at the tail end of the whole Bible, says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes….” That’s the instruction for those of us waiting for the Alpha and the Omega. While we wait for the old order of things to pass away – while we wish for the fulfillment of the promise that there will one day be no more death or mourning or crying or pain – we should do laundry!

Really! I know it sounds strange but I actually think it might work!

In Revelation, we hear Jesus telling us he is coming soon; we hear the Spirit and the Bride inviting him to come, and we are urged to echo the invitation: “Let everyone who hears say ‘Come!’” But that call for Jesus to come is also our call to ministry, not an invitation for us to sit and watch and wait.

And so, in the meantime, we do laundry. Laundry, as all of us know too well, isn’t always terribly exciting (although it can be when Holden leaves wads of cash in his pockets). Laundry isn’t flashy. Unless you mix in your new fuscia shirt with your whites, it’s unlikely that anyone will even notice what you’ve been up to. And except for those of you with spectacularly well-trained families, you are unlikely to receive a lot of thanks for the laundry you do. But, nevertheless, laundry is necessary and good.

Rather than sky- or navel-gazing, Revelation’s laundry metaphor urges us to go about the everyday work of the faithful in a broken world – to become active participants in God’s work wherever we find ourselves and in whatever small ways are open to us.

There’s a Jewish theologian named Abraham Heschel who talked about the way humans live their lives as being our response to God. It isn’t about living perfectly or praying all the time but living in a manner that is “compatible with God’s presence.” Being able to recognize God breaking into the most ordinary of human circumstances and becoming God’s partner. Making the most of this time in-between.

But there are risks to this participation business. There’s a risk that we won’t see the opportunities that lie before us. There’s a risk that we might forget that the work we’re doing is for God and not for ourselves. There’s a risk that we might forget to share our burden and get overwhelmed by what we take on. There’s a risk that we won’t see any results from what we do and get discouraged.

And that’s why I think part of the trick is doing our laundry the right way.

In my house, there is a very serious philosophical divide when it comes to laundry. If Holden is doing it, he brings down every stitch of dirty or possibly dirty clothing in the house and dumps it all on the laundry room floor. And then he is focused the whole day on reducing this three foot sea of dirty clothes until it morphs into neat stacks, organized by person and item on the living room couch.

Now for me, that method is overwhelmingly depressing. All I can see is an impossible mountain of dirty clothes that taunts me each time I enter the room. I cannot bear it. Instead, I find it suits my sensibilities much better to take down just one load at a time. That way I can keep my eye on the prize. And I can be satisfied with doing one thing reasonably well, albeit a somewhat small thing, without it feeling like a crushing burden.

Which seems like a decent approach to our partnership with God as well. Stop worrying so much about that ball flying over our head just out of reach and make the most of what we’ve got right where we are. Rather than making ourselves miserable in the present with guilt and obligation and anxiety, rather than taking ourselves either too seriously or not seriously enough, we can start seeing everything we do – no matter how small – as part of the bigger picture of God’s work in the world. One day at a time, we can start living as we are meant to live, knowing that all that we are – every aspect of our lives – is being swept up into the beautiful vision of God.

What one load of laundry might be yours to start on today?

Earth Day

2010-04-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of bugs. If it's a ladybug or a cricket -- something that seems good and sympathetic and harmless - I might try to get it outside safely. But most insects do not meet with that kind of good will. And unfortunately, with the good weather has come an infestation of all kinds of creatures at our house. Most prevalent are ants, who seem to prove Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest. The more I kill, the tinier and faster the next generation seems to be. And there are the stink bugs, who are incredibly slow and stupid, but if I don't catch them just right in my wad of toilet paper make the worst smell. When my husband sees me hunting these bugs he starts to sing, "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all."

Last week it got even more exciting. My daughter Sophia had a friend over to play and the two of them were playing dress up in the basement. Suddenly they started screaming and stormed upstairs telling me they'd found a huge spider. I went down to investigate with a tissue to catch the spider but when I got there found a spider the side of my head. Well, maybe not quite that big, but big enough that until I saw the thing move I thought it was a toy spider and the kids were playing a prank on me. I couldn't bring myself to kill something that large (and potentially poisonous, I feared), so I trapped it under a bucket for my husband to deal with when he got home. (His worries about God's creatures evaporated quickly when confronted by the King Kong of spiders.)

A few minutes later they came up talking about the lizard they'd found. I thought that surely this time it really was a prank. No such luck:

Of course, a lizard is not a bug. It is bigger, it is cuter, I think. It does good things, like hopefully eating all the spiders in the basement. But it's funny how I would never even dream of harming the lizard. In fact, I went out of my way to insure that my three year old son would not poke at the poor thing with a golf club. (Boys!) Since today is Earth Day, I find myself wondering what it is that makes us have sympathy for some of God's creatures and not for others?

Returning home

2010-04-19T05:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I headed back to the church where I grew up, Christ Church in Columbia, Maryland, to preach as part of their 200 year anniversary. Here's my sermon...

April 18, 2010
Christ Church, Columbia, MD
John 21:1-19

I feel like I’m back home this morning. This is the church I grew up in. From the time I was a little girl until the time I headed off to college, this is where I came with my family pretty much every Sunday. Sometimes I’d try to get out of it, but mostly my parents insisted. So I was a Sunday school regular with the poor teachers who unwittingly volunteered to be with us. And then one of the core members of the youth group. As teens, we came from every high school around but most of us had been together so long in church we were a force to be reckoned with, although perhaps not a terribly spiritual bunch. I was a frequent acolyte, sitting up front worrying about whether I’d get up at the right time to do the ceremonial hand washing for the priest. I loved the moments when I felt like such a grown-up back in the sacristy getting into my red robe with Father Shields and the lay reader for the week. Even outside of church, the church was present. Frequently parishioners were over as part of foyer dinner and gourmet groups. I babysat for the next generation of kids from this place. I always felt like the other adults here cared about me. This church was home and the people here always felt like family.

Of course, back when I was here, there wasn’t this new building. We were still worshipping over there! That’s where I was an angel in the Christmas pageant year after year, standing on a chair in front of the altar. When I was old enough, I started sitting up in the balcony with my friends. We didn’t do a lot of paying attention in church, I have to admit. Instead, we did a lot of note-passing and whispering. I’m afraid to say there was even a little spitball throwing going on. And once I remember we accidentally dropped a prayer book over the edge. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Of course, now that I’m a priest, I find myself on the other side of all this. Now it’s me trying to craft sermons that will hold people’s attention, mindful of the kids (and adults) who are out there whispering and passing notes. Now it’s me trying to get kids to come regularly to Sunday School and wondering why their parents don’t make them come the way mine did. Now it’s me working with the youth group and trying to figure out how to get them to open up and take this faith thing on for themselves. Now it’s me giving sideways glances to the acolytes and nudging them when it’s time to get up and get the cross. Through it all, I’ve never stopped feeling like the Church is my extended family.

It’s wonderful coming back here. And all the changes since I left for college are beautiful. And I know they were necessary. The old church was busting at the seams, everything was getting worn and hard to take care of. But I’ve got to say, even so, I find the changes a little unnerving.

And I’m afraid that’s a universal human sentiment – we are generally more comfortable with the status quo. It’s easier to stick with what you know, what is familiar and normal. And today we learn that we are not alone – the disciples are right there with us in our longing for normalcy.

If you were in church last week, you may remember hearing the piece of the Gospel story from John that appeared just before this mornings reading. The risen Jesus appeared with the disciples in the locked room where they were cowering. He breathed the Holy Spirit on them and empowered them for their mission in the world. Doubting Thomas missed the action and so Jesus repeated the visit again and invited Thomas to touch and see his wounds from the cross so that he might believe. And then there was the sentence that seemed to wrap it all up: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

It sounded like the perfect ending point, didn’t it? The disciples finally understood. They’d received the Holy Spirit and were ready to head out into the world in triumph, spreading the word, carrying on Jesus’ message and ministry.

Except that they weren’t. Therein lies this morning’s Gospel story. Today we find seven of those disciples back where they started, in Galilee - hanging out by the Sea of Tiberias. Sitting on the dock of the bay… wasting time… It’s hard to know why there are only seven of them together at this point. We don’t hear about what the others are up to. Maybe we can be optimists and hope that they have taken their show on the road. Maybe at least those four are out sharing their stories about Jesus who died and lived again. Or, maybe the gang is already coming apart. Maybe Judas was just the first one to break away and the others are starting to go their different directions too.

Regardless, at least for these seven, it seems like maybe they still don’t get it. They aren’t out on the road teaching. They aren’t in the synogogues preaching. They aren’t healing the sick or helping the widows and orphans. They are out on the lake fishing. For most of them, this is as natural and familiar as reading the newspaper. Before they’d met Jesus, the majority of the disciples had been fisherfolk on this same sea. They’d spent their days in wooden boats, hauling up heavy nets (if they were lucky), the sun hot on their backs. And sure enough, it seems like almost as soon as Jesus turns his resurrected back, here they are again returning to their old lives. Back where they feel most comfortable. Most sure of themselves. Maybe back to the only thing they know how to do without Jesus. After the confusion and fear and uncertainty of the last few weeks, it was probably a huge relief to get back to their old routine. Back to the familiar, the status quo.

But, of course, Jesus interrupted their routine before with his invitation to follow him and here he comes to do it again. The seven disciples have been in the boat all night without any success. And I imagine they’re tired. Bone-weary tired. Smelling of algae and sweat and each other. And suddenly in the not-quite-dawn darkness a stranger calls out to them and tells them to throw their net out on the other side of the boat.

And even after all they’ve been through together with Jesus – the traveling, the learning, the miracles, the denials, the commissioning. Even after several incredible meetings with the risen Jesus. Even then, they still don’t recognize Jesus right away. It’s only when they try to haul that net back in and realize the huge quantity of fish in it that they realize it is Jesus on the shore.

Somehow it makes me feel better that those seven disciples who had walked so closely with Jesus and knew him better than just about anyone didn’t know Jesus when they saw him. Somehow it helps to know that even these seven who had seen Jesus arrested and killed and then experienced the miracle of Jesus as risen forgot to look for Jesus.

Because that’s right where I am on all but the best of days. That’s where all of us are, I imagine. Mostly I get so busy and so stuck in my routine that I forget to look for Jesus present in my life in all the different forms he takes. Even though part of my job is assuring people every week that God is with them in the midst of their everyday life, I only rarely recognize it myself.

But the great news – for those seven disciples fishing that day long ago, and for us here today – the great news is that our resurrected Lord continues to appear long after Easter. Even when we are as deeply mired in our familiar ruts as we can possible get, there Jesus is, inviting us again and again to break bread with him and commissioning us to fish for people. Continuing to call us gently (or sometimes not so gently) out of our forgetfulness and lovingly embracing us when we finally realize he’s there on our shore.

Just as Easter turned Jesus’ death upside down and brought new life, for the disciples what seemed like a dead-end -- with them fishing on the same old sea -- has turned, once again, into a new beginning. And it can be true for us also. The miracle of Easter invites all of us to live our same old lives in wonderfully new ways. To discover Jesus calling to us from a bonfire on the beach just when we thought we were back to square one. Thanks be to God!

Our New Arrival

2010-03-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Our long-awaited new daughter, Maya, was born on March 5!

In the end, I may have been a little too patient. I waited to call in reinforcements to be with the other kids until it was almost too late and we barely made it to the hospital. Which meant the worst of labor was in the car (not recommended!) and there was no time for an epidural (ditto!). But all's well that ends well - at 2:15 a.m. Maya joined us. And Holden is just glad he didn't have to do the delivering. Big brother Dylan and big sister Sophie absolutely adore her, although they could do without the crying (who couldn't?).

I'll be on official maternity leave for a while which will hopefully be enough time to escape the sleepy haze that has descended upon me. We'll be in and out of St. Aidan's (with Holy Week and Easter coming, how could I stay away?) but are also looking forward to visiting some different churches along the way.

Becoming Lent

2010-02-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

Lent has begun and I thought I was ready for the change in seasons. Ready, first of all, for the great Children’s Ash Wednesday service that we do here at St. Aidan’s each year, one of my very favorite services. Ready for the change in vestments and Church décor. Ready also to have the extra push that I need to take my spirituality more seriously, to try to notice God acting in my life more intentionally. And ready, or so I would have predicted, to slow down.

Lent is derived from a word which means “slow” and even though it tends to be one of the busiest times in the Church life, even so most of it tends to feel like it’s passing in slow motion. Maybe it’s partly because of the weather – often grey – and because at least in my house there seems to be a break between the fall and spring activities. But this time around, I am increasingly aware of the “slowness” factor as it is related to patience. I’m not sure why I hadn’t seen it before, since Lent has always been a time of waiting that requires patience. From the Ash Wednesday service where we allow so much space and silence for repentance and then don’t receive absolution, to our waiting for the Alleluias to return, to the sort of dread that has already begun (for me at least) as we begin to read about Jesus’ last days and feel the impending doom of Good Friday.

It all fits nicely, if disconcertingly, with my being at the end of my pregnancy. I’m now officially past my due date and getting more and more uncomfortable each day. I’ve had bouts of false labor recently that I’d not experienced before with my other pregnancies that leave me having no idea when or what to expect next. This child is taking her sweet time coming out and I’ve grown exhausted of the well-meaning questions: “You’re still here? When are you going to let that baby out?” As someone who likes to be able to cross things off lists, to get things down and feel like I’m accomplishing something, this time has been frustrating because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point in starting things. I’m off the preaching and teaching rota, just in case. Can’t make plans with friends or start anything other than quick projects, just in case. Time feels slow, my body feels slow.

Maybe it’s time for me to accept my embodiment of Lent. To accept that I don’t have control of much around me, that there isn’t much I can do to push things along. (Which, when I stop to think about, is probably much more true than I realize all of the time, even though normally it is easier to buy into my own illusion of control.) Being at the end of my pregnancy is forcing me to find ways to make the waiting holy, rather than just frustrating. Maybe my Lenten practice isn’t giving up chocolate but learning patience.

Working outside our comfort zone...

2010-02-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

Sunday at church we had a special treat - the Sunday school kids led us in the most glorious Gloria ever. They had been practicing the song "Alleluia, Praise ye the Lord" for weeks. If you're unfamiliar with it, as I was, the kids divide up into two groups. Everyone starts sitting down. One group stands up and sings the "Alleluia" parts then sits back down, while the other group is responsible for singing "Praise ye the Lord" - also standing up and sitting back down. Before they started, one intrepid Sunday schooler taught the congregation how to get involved - each side would take a role, following the lead of the kids up front. It was fabulous - everyone got involved and we were all laughing and loving it.

I thought the kids looked great. All but my own 3 year old (who is a little stage shy at times anyway) seemed to really know what they were doing, and better yet, seemed to be having fun doing it. Only later did my daughter tell me that the kids had ended up on the wrong sides. For weeks, in their practices they'd been assigned to a certain phrase and then for the actual performance must have somehow ended up switching sides.

It was a lesson for me. Sometimes I feel like I should be perfect at something before I go out and do it. I want to know in advance that whatever I'm about to do will go as planned. But those kids on Sunday taught me that God can be just as glorified by flexibility and good humor as by perfect planning. That it's okay, and even necessary sometimes, to work "outside our gifts." Alleluia, praise ye the Lord!

Is Jesus passing through our midst? (4 Epiphany Sermon)

2010-02-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

Luke 4:21-30

“But passing through the midst of them he went away.”

At first glance, this last line from this morning’s Gospel seemed like a perfect metaphor for this season of Epiphany. Jesus passes through the midst of the crowd. Which is, in a way, what Epiphany is all about – God making God’s self known in our midst, our learning to recognize God all around us. The problem of course, which is so often the problem with pieces of scripture that at first seem very promising, is that that isn’t all. The context isn’t the greatest – the crowd that Jesus is passing through the midst of just happens to be an angry, unruly, blood-thirsty mob. And there’s the small problem of the few words tacked on to the end of the hopeful part about passing through their midst – after passing through, “he went away.” I’d much prefer Jesus to have passed through their midst and then have them realize their error; or maybe Jesus could pass through their midst and they finally understand exactly who it was that had been with them; or maybe Jesus could even pass through their midst and go away but just for a little bit and then come back to give them another chance. As a general matter, I’d like the keep the nice, reassuring bits and explain away the rest.

And this morning I’m in good company, because I think that’s precisely what the people of Nazareth wanted too.

At the 8:30 service last week, when John went to read the Gospel for the day, he accidentally started reading this morning’s Gospel. It was an understandable mistake because this week’s reading is a continuation from last week. The setting is the same – Jesus standing up in the synagogue in his hometown reading a piece of scripture from Isaiah. And the last line of last week’s Gospel is actually the first line of this week’s: “Jesus began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

But boy are these Gospel stories different. Last week seemed so hopeful. Jesus read the piece from Isaiah that was all about how he had come to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed. And everyone’s eyes were “fixed on him.” The hometown crowd seemed to realize their need for a Savior, and seemed open to recognizing Jesus as being that Savior.

And it starts out that way this week as well. At first, this same hometown crowd was amazed at Jesus’ announcement that Isaiah’s promise of restoration had been fulfilled in their lifetime. The Jews in Nazareth considered themselves among the downtrodden that the prophet Isaiah spoke about and they welcomed the news about God’s help coming for them. They were tired of Roman rule, limiting their possibilities, keeping them on edge, and taking away so much of their wealth. They were also tired of being looked down upon by the fancier, more purebred Jews in Judea. Nothing good was expected to come from Nazareth, or so the saying went. And so they perceived Jesus’ message of hope to be aimed right at them. They were more than ready for this promised restoration – ready for all the good news and privilege and prosperity they could get. And so at the first, they seemed proud of their homegrown Jesus – they spoke well of him and wondered at his gracious words.

But with lightening speed that rosy picture fades. This morning, as if from a Paul Harvey radio show, we get “the rest of the story.” The part where Jesus’ neighbors and friends from Nazareth are ready to shuck him off a cliff in their rage. It’s like the scene in The Lord of the Flies where the fairly innocent school kids turn into the angry mob that circles around Piggy chanting and ready to kill.

What changed so much since last week’s reading? What’s happened in that handful of inscrutable verses in between “all spoke well of him” and “all in the synagogue were filled with rage”?

At first everything Jesus was saying sounded good to the folks from Nazareth, but wait just a minute! They haven’t seen or benefited from any of the signs and wonders they’ve heard Jesus had been performing elsewhere. None of their lame had been made to walk, none of their blind had been made to see, none of their lepers had been cleansed. In other words, “What have you done for us lately, Jesus?”

And so Jesus reminds them about the Old Testament prophet Elijah who passed over Jewish widows in order to perform a miracle for a penniless Gentile. And the prophet Elisha who passed over Jewish lepers in order to heal a Gentile occupier. In other words, God’s promise wasn’t just for the Jews of Galilee, although they certainly needed it. Jesus was there to bring the healing and loving activity of God far outside the boundaries of the supposed “People of God.” God’s promise was, is, and always will be bigger and better and far more scandalous that what we might expect or even wish for – it’s a promise for everyone who finds themselves on the margins of humanity.

And that was an uncomfortable little add-on that the people of Nazareth weren’t prepared for. If God’s promise of recovery and good news wasn’t just for them, then that meant that something was required of them – something big and uncomfortable. They didn’t get to just sit back and hear the impressive words Jesus spoke and be the lucky recipients of all kinds of cool miracles. They had to open their hearts, extend their hospitality, spread their arms wide. They had to think differently, live differently, love differently.

And so Jesus’ hometown crowd got angry. Beyond angry – they were filled with rage at the idea that they might not be God’s intended “insiders.” And so they drove Jesus out of town and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. They were prepared to kill the messenger, and hoping also to kill the message -- or at least the piece of the message that said they weren’t its sole beneficiaries; the piece that required them to join in welcoming others into its fold.

It seems awfully extreme, but it also seems disturbingly familiar. We appreciate the message of God’s mercy but not so much the judgment bits. We crave the forgiveness part, but not so much the requirement that we forgive others or even ourselves. We are comforted and overjoyed by God’s love for us, but not so much the insistence that we have to share that love with others that we don’t find so loveable.

And our problem isn’t just about who the message of mercy, forgiveness and love is intended for. It’s a bigger, far more universal problem that we struggle with. We’d like to limit God more generally – to make God more palatable, easier, less invasive.

Someone named Wilbur Reese (no relation) wrote a poem about this human problem called “Three Dollars Worth of God”:

I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please.

This season of Epiphany seems like the perfect time to think about how we might be missing the opportunity of seeing Jesus passing through the midst of us because of our discomfort with the size and inclusivity and challenge of our God – because we’re more comfortable with just three dollars worth of God than what might come with the whole package. It’s the perfect time to pay attention so that we don’t become like that crowd at Nazareth who turned their backs on God in their midst and let him get away. Amen.

Sermon from Sunday, Isaiah 62:1-5

2010-01-19T10:07:00.000-08:00

I’m now about a month away from my due date for this next child, and one thing we’ve been starting to think about is a name for this little girl. Holden and I have this system. First I go through a book of names and underline the ones I like. Then a week or so later, I go through it again and circle the ones I still like. I write those down in a big list. Then every few days, I look through the list and cross out ones that no longer work for me. I get the list down to 20 or so names, with a handful of real favorites starred, and then pass it on to Holden.

With Sophia that process worked pretty well. I had narrowed down the list, picked Sophia and Isabella as my two favorites, knew I wanted Patricia as a middle name after my mom. And Holden liked the name Sophia so we were set. With Dylan, we used the same system, but it didn’t work quite as well. When I handed over my list of 20ish names to Holden he wasn’t wild about any of them. Even after the poor boy was born, we were still trying to decide. Holden started looking through golfing magazines for ideas, which was not a good sign. Finally we ended up with Dylan, which had been on my list of 20 or so, but I don’t think had been one of the starred names. And no middle name. By then we were burned out and happy to have gotten that far.

And now, here we are again, in the midst of this process again. Although this time we have some help. Dylan and Sophie decided to add their own lists alongside mine. Dylan has things like Poo Poo Pellet, Blueberry, Pig Girl, and Cupcake. Sophie’s choices are more reasonable, with several based on books she likes – Olivia, Emma, Penelope.

But there are so many factors that go into naming that the whole process becomes very daunting. There are certain names that just rub you the wrong way. Maybe because you used to know someone with that name. Maybe because you don’t like the hard consonant sound, who knows. Some I’m attracted to because of some connection. Davita because I loved the book Davita’s Harp. Maya because Maya Angelou taught at my college and inspired me. Helena because my grandmother’s name was Helen. I like funky, unusual names. Names that might set this little girl apart. I grew up as an Elizabeth among a multitude of other Elizabeths. And so I’m careful to go through the list of the most frequently used names for the past couple years so as to avoid them. Holden, on the other hand, wants something simple. He experienced growing up with two hard names – he never met another Holden in his life until he came to St. Aidan’s and met the Madisons. And Hoofnagle – need I say more? Plus our kids have this hyphenated last name that adds some extra difficulty. The first name can’t be too long or too complicated or too unrecognizable. It has to flow as nicely as possible. I love the name Della, but you just can’t name your daughter Della when her last name begins with Rees. Then there are the nicknames to avoid. You don’t want the name to rhyme with a curse word, or be too easy to turn into something derogatory. I also like looking at the meaning of the name. Sophia is another name for the Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Church. Elizabeth means Beloved of God.

Choosing a name for a child seems like such a big responsibility. This is the name that will follow them around forever. There are so many possibilities for this unknown child and you don’t want to limit any of them. Does this name sound like it could be a sweet baby, a little girl running around, will it fit her as she grows up, is it a name to grow old with? Could it be a respectable name for a businessperson/doctor/ teacher/astronaut…? Is it a friendly name, like it could be someone you’d want to meet for coffee and share your hopes and dreams with?

In our Old Testament reading from Isaiah this morning, we hear God renaming the people. The people have been liberated from captivity, and returned from exile. But all is still not right. Their identity has been stripped by war and hardship. Jerusalem is still in shambles, a ruined city. The people have broken dreams and crumbling faith. They are wondering if God is indifferent to their plight, whether God has forgotten all the promises made while they were in exile.

And so in this passage, the prophet Isaiah starts by making a lament to God. It is his protest, really. Demanding that God act to fulfill all of those promises and vindicate the people. “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch!”

And then the prophet moves on to words of hope and new beginnings. “The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.”

It isn’t at all unusual in the Bible to receive a new name, and it is always significant. Take Abram and Sarai who were old and childless before God made an everlasting covenant with them, promising that their descendents would be too numerous to count. And God renamed the pair Abraham (meaning ancestor of a multitude) and Sarah (meaning princess) as they became the Father and Mother of Nations. With their new names came an entirely new future.

And then there is Jacob (which meant heel grabber), the second twin who was always fighting to come out ahead of his brother Esau. After wrestling with an angel, he was renamed Israel (the one who strives with God). And this is his new beginning. As Jacob, he was a rogue and a scoundrel, cheating his brother, lying to his father, always on the brink of disaster. Now, as Israel, he is able to return home and be reunited with his family, sure of his covenant with God.

We can’t forget Jesus’ disciple Simon, who is often bungling and denying Jesus, but whom Jesus renames Peter (which means rock) after he identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And indeed, Peter goes on to be a rock of the new church after Jesus’ death. With his new name came incredible privilege and responsibility.

And of course there is Saul, the fervent persecutor of Christians who changes his name to Paul after he has his blinding revelation on the road to Damascus. He sheds his old identity along with his old name and becomes a leader and protector of the early church.

There is good and important news in all of these name changes. They represent a change in character or mission and, more importantly a change in relationship with God. The God-given essence of the person is revealed in the name change and their life takes on a whole new direction. When God names them, God also claims them, and opens incredible new possibilities for them.

A change in name was a powerful thing in biblical times, and it’s true now as well. Whether it is spouses taking on each other’s names or a child whose name changes upon adoption, a new name is more than just a word that identifies someone – it can be a statement of hope and relationship and promise.

It is the same in our reading from Isaiah. Although Israel at that moment considers herself to be abandoned and despised by God, she is given a new name which promises joy and union. Israel is promised that she “shall no more be termed Forsaken.” Instead, she “shall be called My Delight Is in Her.” And the land “shall no more be termed Desolate,” but instead will be called “Married.” The marriage imagery is a promise of restoration, a reminder of God’s steadfast and ardent love for the people, an assurance of the continuation of God’s promised covenant. God has turned toward the people with the delight and joy of a bridegroom for his bride.

Last week and this week we’ve had the great joy of getting to baptize little people. First the person to be baptized is presented by their family and sponsors by name. Very soon we’ll hear these folks up fromt say: “I present Perrin to receive the sacrament of baptism.” And then John will name her again as she is baptized: “Perrin,” he will say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Perrin will still be Perrin after the water and the oil. But she will also have a new name – Christian. She will have an expanded family, The Church. And she will have a new identity that represents her calling and God’s hopes and dreams for her. And each of us have our own God-given new identities as well. In our baptism, each of us is renamed as a child of God with our own promise of love and a future in Jesus.

And it isn’t just a one-time occurrence. None of us, including Perrin here, fit our new identities right away. Not any more than this baby of mine will fit her name right away; or Abraham or Sarah or Jacob or Peter or Paul or the people of Israel, for that matter. All of us are still growing into our name “Christian”, our identities as members of this great family of people striving to live up to the responsibilities we take on in our baptismal covenant. Thankfully, we grow into our new identity, knowing that the name we heard God giving Israel applies to us as well: God’s Delight Is in Us too. Thanks be to God!

Inflatable Jesus

2010-01-05T16:53:00.000-08:00

For years, I've been wanting to compete against the secular world of Christmas. When my husband starts talking to the kids about Santa, I try to pull it all together by talking about how Christmas is about Jesus and because Santa loves Jesus, he thus wants to share His love with others through gift-giving. "Frosty the Snowman" I counter with "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." And so on. I was flummoxed, however, when Holden came home one day with a giant inflatable Santa to put out on our porch. Refusing to put Santa out there would make me a giant Scrooge to say the least. But then, the solution arrived this year on Christmas Eve, when Holden presented me with this giant inflatable creche scene. Now Santa is on the porch, heading toward Jesus with present in hand, just like the magi. Which I guess means he can stay up for Epiphany.

January 3 Sermon

2010-01-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2
Matthew 2:1-12

I was reading through a recent Newsweek that had about a dozen interviews with, as the magazine described it, “people who matter on what matters most.” It included an interview with Bill Maher. I was surprised to see him lumped in with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger, David Petraeus and Harmid Karzai. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Maher’s propensity to offend, it wasn’t long before I was outraged. When asked his thoughts about God, Maher started talking about how although he only celebrates Christmas as a secular holiday, he thinks of it as a time to reassess. So far, so good – I’m all for reassessing. But then he went on to blurt out (and I won’t use quite his colorful language): “That’s the problem with faith. What it does is it kind of screws up your priorities. Your priorities shouldn’t be saving your own [behind], which is the focus of Christianity.”

Without any support or explanation, he reduced my faith to mere selfishness. For the sake of fairness, I tried to look at it from his perspective, to see what might possibly bring him to say such a thing. Of course, there are some Christians whose main concern is whether they’ve been saved; people who are absolutely confident that if you can’t say you’ve given your soul to Jesus then you are going hell. And undeniably there are some people, a portion of whom would call themselves Christians, that talk big about helping others but never get around to actually doing it. But for the most part, I’m pretty sure that Christianity as intended is actually the exact opposite of what Maher claims.

This morning’s Gospel is the perfect illustration. We get Herod – named King of the Jews by the Roman Emperor – in all of his awful glory. Herod was part of a family dynasty that had ruled Palestine for more than 150 years. He’d do anything to secure his rule, including taking money from the poor to curry favor with the Romans and even having threatening members of his family killed. When he hears from the traveling magi about this star that supposedly heralds the birth of a new king, his only thought is saving his own power and prestige. Any new king is a threat to Herod’s position and that of his heirs; plus, even having rumors spread about such a new king might bring Rome crashing down on Herod. And so he reacts violently, ordering the slaughter of every baby boy in Bethlehem and prompting the holy family’s flight to Egypt. If Bill Maher were right about Christianity, that our priorities are all about saving our own [behinds], then Herod from this morning’s story would be a great exemplar of the Christian faith.

But of course he is no such thing. Herod we abhor. It is the magi who are our models of faith this morning. Which is actually almost as surprising a choice as Herod would have been on a lot of levels.

First, it’s surprising that the magi were included in this story in the first place. They were from outside Jesus’ tradition entirely. They were not from the house of Israel; they would not have been seen as belonging among the chosen people. They were gentiles, foreigners. They seem to have been astrologers who studied the heavens for portents of significant events. Which was not considered a respected vocation by the Jewish people. These magi were not proper religious people, at least, not in the Jewish and early Christian sense. They were not from a tradition that promised a Messiah in the way the Jewish tradition did. In those days, the magi should never have shown up in the nativity scene. But they did, and that is exactly the point. We are all invited to this party – even those who have been traveling radically different paths.

Who are the gentiles and foreigners in our time? The people that we might tend to exclude or discount? The ones that we might assume aren’t worthy of faith?

The second surprising thing is the length to which these gentile foreigners were willing to go in their search for this new king. They undertook an arduous journey, traveling for weeks if not months along unknown rocky roads, encountering God knows what dangers along the way, with no idea where they were going and no real assurance that they would find anything at all when they got there.

A vivid description from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi”:

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.'

The magi were willing to be led into alien territory on their search for truth. What is the star we might be called to follow? How far are we willing to go on our journey?

The third surprising thing about the magi is their acceptance of what they find when they finally do reach their destination. We forget that almost certainly they didn’t find what they expected when they reached the stable under that bright star. Their journey took them initially to Jerusalem and Herod; they assumed, understandably, that any new king would be born to a King, in the seat of power. They brought gifts appropriate to just such a circumstance, wealth and riches to impress the prosperous and powerful. This child Jesus with his poverty and questionable birth was probably the last thing they expected. And yet, somehow these outsiders, along with just a few others, like the shepherds who would have been considered at the very bottom of the social and religious totem pole, recognized the coming of the Messiah in the baby Jesus. Somehow, just from nature, the magi are able to intuit what all the scholasticism of the chief priests and scribes could not comprehend. And, we are told, they were “overwhelmed with joy.” What they found at the end of their journey was so completely astonishing, and yet their reaction was joyous and sure. Somehow they understand that in this place, God entered.

The magi set out towards the unknown and ended up discovering a truth that transcended everything they knew. Like them, we can’t presume we know what God has planned, through whom God will act, or where or how God will appear in our lives. Are we as ready as the magi were to recognize Christ in the world in the most unlikely of places, to have our expectations upended?

The fourth surprising thing about the magi is their willingness to give of themselves to this baby Messiah. Once they somehow perceive who Jesus is, they earnestly kneel in the dust and muck of this barn in a backwater town and pay homage to this baby of questionable lineage. And they gratefully hand over the riches of gold, frankincense and myrrh that they have brought for the king for whom they have been searching. For more than a thousand years, religious people have been opining about what these gifts from the magi might symbolize: Perhaps gold represented kingship, frankincense divinity, and myrrh the early death Jesus would suffer. But the truth is, whatever they might be, all of our gifts are merely symbolic. We can’t do anything to return or match God’s gift of infinite generosity in giving God’s self to the world in that baby in the manger. But we, like the magi, can participate in God’s generosity by giving ourselves freely to God and others.

What do we give of ourselves to God? Are we willing to kneel in the muck for Jesus?

And that, I would argue, is the true center of the Christian faith. Phooey on you, Bill Maher.

Christmas Eve Sermon

2010-01-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

I preached for the late service on Christmas Eve, and since most of the crowd hadn't been to the earlier service with its Christmas Pageant, I decided to dress up like some of the players in the nativity story and think about how the experience might have felt from their perspective...

In the Jewish tradition, a new day does not begin with the rising of the sun, as we have come to understand it. Instead, a new day begins with the setting of the sun the day before. Even through the dark and silence of the night, the new day ripens and readies itself. It is already there, waiting to break full and perfect into the light. And that is exactly where we find ourselves tonight in the Nativity story.
***
(Dressed as Mary)
When that angel appeared, I felt such joy and assurance – somehow in the presence of that light and holiness I thought I was up to this, but after the angel was gone I kept wondering why God chose me for this. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to pick someone older, stronger, smarter, and holier to be the mother of the Son of God?
Then we had such a long journey, Joseph and I. A week of walking and bouncing on that poor donkey on those rocky, dusty roads while heavy with child. I was so ready to get to Bethlehem and find some nice warm inn where I could put my feet up and finally get some rest. But then – poor Joseph – we must have knocked on every door in Bethlehem. He said he’s never seen so many people in this place. Somehow he wrangled us this stable for shelter. I know it sounds strange, but somehow I don’t mind being here, outside the noise and movement. It’s not home, but at least it feels safe.

Once we got settled – as settled as we could, anyway, I started to get scared about giving birth. At home, I’d be surrounded by my mother, friends, a midwife, and my cousin Elizabeth who just had her baby. Here there’s only Joseph, who normally wouldn’t be part of it at all.

But it’s funny how all those details I was so worried about just slipped away when it was time for this beautiful boy to come. Joseph was wonderful - so gentle and loving. He must have so many questions about me and this child, but he hasn’t said a word. He is quiet and yet so strong. And this baby, my amazing little Jesus. He’s perfect, even wrapped in this rough cloth instead of the soft blankets I would have for him at home. I already love him so much, and yet somehow I feel like he isn’t mine to hold onto too tightly.

(Dressed as Joseph)
It felt so strange to return to this place after not having been here for decades. As we journeyed here I kept thinking about what I would say if I ran into someone I used to know – how would I explain this wife and this baby. Would I pretend like everything was normal, like he was my child? Or talk about that dream of mine that was so strange and confusing? That dream that I believed just enough to take Mary as my wife, but not enough to really trust her.
But now I understand. Being with this child somehow it’s obvious that he’s intended for great things. And Mary, my Mary, who I used to think was so young and fragile. Now I see how much strength she has. First our long journey and then the painful childbirth with only me to help her. I used to think by taking a wife I’d have someone to take care of me; now I just hope that somehow I can take care of her. That I can help her hold onto her wonder and her trust in the world. And that I can protect this child from the world’s grasp.

(Dressed as Innkeeper)
I’m not a bad person, really I’m not. Running this inn just keeps me so busy, I can’t even stop and think. It’s a hard life – cooking and cleaning all day and then after a few hours sleep waking up to do it all again. And add to that these soldiers with muddy boots who trounce in like they own the place with no intention of paying for their stay. But I can’t complain about the Emperor’s order that everyone be registered – this town has never been so bustling.
And now my wife keeps hassling me about that couple I sent away; she says she’s heard talk that the baby born to them might be the Messiah. That seems pretty unlikely to me. God wouldn’t choose such simple people to be parents to the Messiah. And besides, what else could I have done? The few free rooms I had, I needed to save for customers that could pay better. Plus, that woman looked like she might have her baby any moment. I couldn’t deal with that on top of everything else. Anyway, I’m sure they felt more comfortable out in that stable they found to stay in.

And yet, have you ever had one of those moments that you know as soon as it’s over you’ll regret for the rest of your life? I feel like sending that couple away might have been one of those moments. I feel like I might have missed something really important.

(Dressed as Shepherd)
It’s hard to believe that it was just a few hours ago when all this started. I started out just like I do every other night – cold and hungry and bored. Trying to keep my eyes open for something that might come and snatch away these sheep and make me lose my wages. And then I remember looking out into that deep sky and seeing it for the first time. Somehow the darkness was full of light, the emptiness was suddenly alive and moving, the silence was full of meaning. And I wasn’t the only one to feel it either. The message, the call to get on our feet and go down the hill into town. I didn’t understand what I thought I’d seen, wasn’t sure I believed it, and yet I ran, we all did – we couldn’t get to that stable fast enough. We couldn’t figure out why the angels would bring us such a wonderful message – good news, great joy!

I don’t think any of us expected what we saw; how could we have? I’d never put much stock in the Messiah thing – I always figured he’d be one of them – too fancy and important to bother with us, just like everyone else. But here he was, born in this stable that was as natural a place to be for me as out in the open air. I felt right at home – he’s like one of us.

(Dressed as Angel)
What a night! These humans have no idea how lucky they are to have the Holy of Holies come among them. They don’t have a clue that this is just the wonderful beginning – that it changes everything for them, forever. I have to admit, I still don’t really understand why the Blessed One is doing it, why the Lord of Lords is coming to such a low place. A few do seem to recognize him. But they only call attention to the throngs out there that can’t be bothered to put down their ale glasses and come to pay him homage. It’s funny how some people look right past us in that same way. They explain away the light and the glory and ignore our good news. And yet, the King of Kings says that’s exactly why He is here. That some day they will all see and understand and love.

(Dressed as Magi)
I still can’t explain why we are taking this journey. There is this star – brighter than any we’ve seen or heard of – there, look for yourselves. We’ve studied the predictions and knew this must be the light foretold by our ancestors. And I can’t explain it, but it just wasn’t enough to know the birth was coming. We weren’t fooling ourselves; we all knew we’d be in for a long expedition, but we wanted to behold the child for ourselves.

Somehow we all know that this birth is what all time will be measured against. Everything that happened before this child will always be before. And everything that happens afterwards will forever be after.
***
And where do they all go from here? Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper, the shepherds, the magi. They are now people living ordinary lives in light of the extraordinary news of the gospel. Mostly they go back to where they started, but hopefully they are forever changed.

Mary and Joseph will eventually end up back in Nazareth with this new baby. In time they will find a way to talk about everything that has happened to them. They will learn, humbly, how to be parents to this child that they don’t understand.

The innkeeper will go back to his busy life, trying to please harried guests and somehow keep the place running. Perhaps he’ll go on feeling guilty for not having offered more to this child, or maybe for the first time he’ll know himself to be forgiven and understood.

The shepherds will return to their fields, to their dirty, hard work of finding food and protecting their animals. What they have seen is everything, and yet back to the drudgery they must go, finding whatever way they can to make meaning from it.

The magi will finally reach the child and pay homage. Probably once they meet him the gifts they’ve brought will feel meaningless and foolish. Perhaps they will foresee the hardship and death ahead for Jesus. And then they will return to their homeland. What will they tell the people back in their land? Who will possibly believe that a child born so rudely could amount to anything?

Even the angels return to their former posts changed. Their hosannas have new fervor now. Their good news is even better than before.

We too, here tonight, are lucky enough to be living in the eternal now of God’s coming among us. The one who came in Jesus, in a way so unlike our other experiences, still comes to us. This is our Bethlehem – the place where we have brought the hopes and fears of all our years to lay in front of a manger. This Church is the stable where we can embrace the child in swaddling clothes, a place where we have come from far and wide to gaze upon this gift from God. Tonight God is making God’s home in our arms. Where will we go from here? Amen.

Advent Pageant

2009-12-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

One of the Day School classes agreed to play the parts for an Advent Pageant at chapel tomorrow. We'll have all the players -- Mary and Joseph, the magi, the shepherds with their sheep, and the angels -- but won't get to Jesus' birth. Everyone will be on their way, still waiting for the moment of birth. It's a funny place to be.
Last night the contemplative prayer group at St. Aidan's experimented with some Ignation prayer of the imagination. We read through Luke's nativity story and then inserted ourselves into the story. Someone became a shepherd complete with her border collie in awe of this baby who was so baby-ish (it is so hard to imagine the incarnation, with God becoming one of us, even at our most vulnerable). Someone became Mary feeling scared and alone (we often beatify Mary so quickly and forget how terrifying the birth experience must have been for her, so far from home and loved ones, so young). Someone became a shepherd that didn't necessarily believe the angels' pronouncement but joined the other shepherds to travel to Bethlehem (often that is how our faith life works - we come along on the ride with others longing for those moments when we can claim it as our own). Being 7 months pregnant myself, and assuming that Joseph probably would have made himself scarce for the birth as was the custom, and not being able to stand the idea of Mary going through this birth on her own in this unsterile, unfriendly environment, I became a midwife that Joseph found in Bethlehem to help Mary. I brought her blankets and the swaddling cloth she used to wrap baby Jesus. I marveled at her awe of him and also got this sense from her that while she loved him, she somehow knew he was not really hers to hold onto too tightly. I worried about the unclean shepherds coming to visit this new mother and child -- so unsanitary, so improper. But then when I saw their faces, somehow it seemed right.
We are all pieces of this Christmas story, but how rarely we recognize it.