Thoughts on Diversity & Trinity

Here's a link to a short video (quality not so good) and audio (just fine) that Brian Baker, Dean of Cathedral in Sacramento, sent along:
http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00594  Worth a visit.

SERMON, April 26, 2009 4 Easter

Luke 24:36b-48 Perhaps you know people who doubt the resurrection or flat out disbelieve it. They think of Jesus as a teacher, a moral model perhaps—but the resurrection is just too much. Then, there are lots of people who spiritualize the resurrection or think of it as a metaphor, and maybe it is. Many of us I think have come to believe that the resurrection message is essentially a spiritual one—about the spiritual gift of new life after death. But if you spend any amount of time with the gospel accounts of the resurrection, it’s hard to get around the physicality of them. Their nagging insistence on the resurrection of the body... “Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I myself.” “Touch me and see.” I have flesh and bones. “He showed them his hands and his feet.” “Is there anything to eat?” “He took it and ate it in their presence.” Touching, seeing, flesh and bones, hands and feet, eating fish. This is about the body—the body of Jesus, different, but nonetheless a body. It’s about Jesus’ body and our bodies.

And it’s no wonder that people today, including some of us on any given day, have their doubts about the resurrection. The disciples themselves are filled with joy AND disbelieving and still wondering as he ate that fish taco. This is beyond comprehension really. And even when some of them in the room had already encountered the risen Jesus, and others had been told all the details of these encounters, when he stood among them they were startled and quite simply terrified. Overjoyed, in deed, but disbelieving and wondering.

And it makes you wonder doesn’t it? The resurrection. We look around us, see what we see in this world of ours: wars and violence, greed and graft, the good dying young, the bad reaping rewards, misunderstanding, miscommunication, poverty and disease, business as usual. . . where’s the resurrection to be found? Our imaginations are so influenced by the images we see, by the stories our culture teaches us, by our post-modern scientific worldview. The dead are dead, and while modern medicine may keep the nearly dead alive for a long time, the truly dead do not get up and walk around. We know that.

And, when you read these gospel accounts you can’t help but wonder—they don’t all agree from one gospel to the next; they tell different stories or the same story differently. We can hardly help but think of people in Jesus’ day as knowing less than we know—as somehow being a bit more primitive, shall we say—a bit more open to non-scientific understandings—naïve perhaps. Or maybe we think they wanted Jesus to be alive so much that they simply imagined the resurrection. Maybe they told these stories to keep his memory alive in the community—to preserve the community through a fantasy. Maybe these stories are about the spiritual truth that for the disciples, Jesus lived on after his death: they encountered him spiritually as you and I might today. Vividly, personally, vibrantly alive—but not in the same way you and I are here today. Maybe the point of these stories is simply to tell us that in God’s world death does not have the final answer. In God’s world there is a letting go, a dying, a relinquishing, and then there is new life. Always new life.

Maybe these accounts are about all of the above. But they are so fleshy, so embodied: the wounds, the invitation to touch, the sharing of a meal, very incarnational—filled with carne—the meat of life, the meat and bones of it. Surely one truth we can affirm from these stories is that in God’s world our bodies are important. This is nothing new really: it’s central to our faith. Jesus’ birth and life affirm that God is with us in the materiality of life. In the body, in the things, in the created order. In fact Jesus echoes the goodness of creation we first heard about in the Genesis account. “It was good. it was very good.” Creation was good in itself, and creation was the place where God has come to dwell. Jesus’ body hallows all of life. We Christians are known to have the most materialistic of all religions. Sometimes that’s said in a derogatory manner, but really it is a compliment I think. The place to look for God is in the here and now, in our bodies, in the reality of created things. Incarnation—God taking on bodily flesh—is all about the goodness of the body. So, Jesus resurrected is resurrected in his body. This great gift of grace—the grace of new life—the triumph of new life after death—happens in his body. Just as the birth is birth in a body, so too is the resurrection birth in a body. The human body is not left to the side in this story at the heart of our faith.

Our culture has such a love hate relationship with the body. At least it seems so to me. Lots of emphasis on the body—in making it fit our stereotypes of how a body should look and perform—diet, dress, exercise, deoderant, toothpaste, Viagra, who knows what else. But bodies that don’t fit the expectations are denigrated, ridiculed: just consider Susan Boyle, the woman in England who sang so beautifully in the talent contest. At first she was ridiculed for her age, her body, and her clothing—she was deemed unacceptable—until she surprised everyone with her magnificent voice. On a flight home from Seattle this week a very large woman took the middle seat next to me, and as she tried to squeeze herself into the tiny space, people all around were smiling those smiles—not of joy and affection, but of quiet derision. Not all bodies are acceptable. Old bodies and dying bodies are shut away, put in homes, death comes to so many in sterile, often distant settings—where not so many eyes can see them.

But under the radar I have been privileged to see people of faith cherishing the bodies of their dying ones, surrounding them with love, with physical acts of deep caring: the cup of water, the linens changed, the bedpan emptied, the feet rubbed. And after death, I have seen how a body can be caressed, washed, anointed, treasured as the place of life. This is real. Life and death in bodies.

And, the resurrection affirms new life after death in a body—in bodies. Whatever this mystery means for us, surely it means that our bodies --whatever the shape they are in—are the places where new life, where the deepest most important transformations occur. How else do you meet the divine, know the mystery of God’s grace, except in your body? Where else have you known the shock and surprise of new life in your own life? Where else have you known that you simply must let go and die in order to receive the gift of the new thing God is doing?

I say all this knowing in my own self how hard it is to hold on to. How easy it is to let my own tiny imagination be the guidepost of what new life might look like. I know how often my grasp of possibilities is controlled by my fears rather than my hopes. How often in the midst of joy, I can feel the unsettling doubts. Feel the tenuousness of life and of joy itself. How I can doubt that anything good can come out of my cousin who is an alcoholic, that dead beat dad who hasn’t paid his child support, the nation torn apart by war, the leaders mired in graft, my list goes on and on. Can there be new life for our world today? New life for us as individuals and community? Even in the midst of our Easter joy, perhaps you too have your doubts and your wonderings. So here’s the deal: Jesus tells the disciples who are filled with those same emotions and thoughts: joy, fear, disbelief, belief, wondering, doubting… he tells them that they are the witnesses. They are the ones who have seen and known the truth of the resurrection in the body of Jesus, and in their own selves too. For of course you and I know that one of the “proofs” of the resurrection is the disciples’ own changed lives. They too had died, let go of so much: not only Jesus, but their hopes and dreams, their expectations, along with their way of life. But what they witnessed in the resurrection—whether spiritual, physical, emotional, psychic, intellectual, mythic, fantastic, whatever! changed them forever.

We too are witnesses. In the midst of the very real realities inside of us. In our bodies. In some measure we have known the truth of the resurrection—its power at work in our own lives. We have caught glimpses of it, savored it, dared to trust it. We are witnesses of the resurrection. And of its promise to us and to our world, that in this very world, God’s world, the grace of new life, the possibility of transformation is always at work. Forget the probable, this possibility is way beyond that. Way beyond. It’s enough to fill you with joy, and with doubt and wondering and maybe even fear. None of that matters. This is God’s work, and you are witnesses. Give yourself to your calling.

“Peace be with you.”

SERMON, February 15, 2009

2 Kings 5:1-15; MK 1:40-45

Years ago when I lived in San Diego and I did quite a bit of hospital visiting. I visited people in almost all the hospitals in the city. One day I had occasion to spend sometime in the emergency room at University Hospital. It was filled with all kinds of people—people who were waiting, waiting, waiting. While there were people of all classes there that day, most were poor. At that time that was the hospital that took care of most of the people who had no insurance. I was struck by the fact that almost everyone there waited with patience. The waiting room was packed, the TV was blaring, some folks were reading, but most were just sitting, waiting. I imagine they didn’t have high expectations of speedy service—they just sat there.

The same day I also visited a patient at Scripps Hospital I think it was—at any rate it was new and very nice. Beautifully appointed you might say. This was the hospital in those days where the people went who had great insurance or who didn’t need insurance. As I passed the welcome center I overheard a woman complaining loudly that things were not the way she expected, wanted or deserved. She had the understanding that when her husband came in for his surgery she would be able to be with him the whole time up to the moment of his surgery. And yet she had been asked to leave while he was being prepped for surgery. She was irate and she had no problem letting everyone know. This was a definitely a person entitled to the best. Only the best. And she knew it. These were two different worlds—these two hospitals. Two different worlds.

This wonderful story from the second book of Kings brings these two worlds together—and reminds of the ways of God in those worlds, and in our world for that matter. The story begins in the world of Scripps Hospital where the wealthy and well-insured can be found. It begins with a man of power, a military hero. He’s from Aram--Syria which already lets us know he’s in a position of power compared to Israel. Syria was sworn enemy of Israel and definitely a great power to be reckoned with. Naaman wasn’t just any general, but a victorious one who had special favor with his king. There was only one problem: he had leprosy. This was a big problem, because leprosy would not only cause him physical suffering, but it would result in Naaman’s being isolated and left on the outskirts of his own society. We can only imagine his grief and perhaps frantic effort to find someone who could heal him. Money and connections were no problem: this is a man in the center of power, with plenty of financial resources. The problem was to find someone at Scripps who could actually heal a leper.

The first word of hope in the story comes from an unlikely source: a young woman, not named at all—and Israelite who was a servant to Naaman’s wife. Not just any servant, she’d been captured in the war and taken as booty. Young, female, captive—no one really that you would notice. But she has a memory—that’s of critical importance and she dares to speak out. Imagine that! Her memory gives her hope—she has hope for the man who captured her. What an amazing thing. “If only,” she says. . . if only… that’s a key phrase in the story I think. Because it’s the phrase that brings with it the unimaginable possibility. “If only my lord were with the prophet in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.”

The word of hope, of impossible possibility, from the least powerful person—the most alien, the most un-noteworthy of persons: the young woman slave. And it’s hard to imagine this word of hope. It’s like telling some big wig from Washington DC that he’ll be cured by a shaman in the Amazon basin somewhere.I don’t know: and I don’t mean to put anyone down from the Amazon basin—but I’m trying to get at the shocking nature of this possibility from Naaman’s point of view. The fact that he listens at all gives us some indication of how desperate he was. How hopeless he had become perhaps with conventional medicine in his own country.

He goes to the King—to whom else would he turn? He’s a man of power, he turns to power. And, to whom does the King go? Another King of course—the king of Israel. The powerful ruler of Samaria. This is so business as usual—this series of transactions. The powerful deal with the powerful. And they take money and gifts because this is bound to cost something, right? It’s about an economic transaction.

The King of Israel most likely judges this whole thing to be a trick. Some new way the King of Syria has devised to do him in. Asked him to do something he knows he can’t do—to have an excuse to march in and take over his land. Something like that—that’s how kings’ think. What a great line though, ”Am I God?” he cries out, “to give life or death?” Of course if truth be known—most kings know that they can give death for sure. They specialize in that kind of power. death-dealing. But healing a leper?The King knows he’s out of his league. No wonder he tears his clothes to shreds. He’s very anxious this guy.

Enter our hero: Elisha. From the wings I might add. From the edges, the outskirts. Not from Walter Reed Medical Center-- this one. He’s way out there somewhere—like maybe Monte Rio or some such place. He affirms the King in his wisdom, and chastises him from destroying his clothes. “Send him to me,” he says, “so he will know there is a prophet in Israel.”

And Naaman pulls up in Monte Rio with all his chariots and his loads of money and gifts, and Elisha doesn’t even go to the door to see him. He just sends Naaman his instructions via a clerk perhaps. “Go wash 7 times in the Jordan.” Anyone who has ever seen the Jordan will tell you it’s hard to imagine immersing yourself in it. It’s not that big or deep; it’s kind of a nothing river, from what I’ve heard. Naaman is a man whose afraid, he’s desperate, but he’s also got his expectations, and his pride. He’s got his sense of entitlement—which has already no doubt been a bit eroded just in the journey to this nowhere place and being sent on further into nothingness by a second rate king. This drives him nuts. He’s like the woman at Scripps hospital. He objects. “Do you know who I am?” he’s thinking.

Once again the word of hope comes from an unexpected source. His servants. He’s in a rage, but they dare to approach him and remind him that if the prophet had asked something challenging of him, he would have done it. This is easy—try it.

Just imagine this. The big name general in a rage, his medals no doubt flapping in the breezes as he swings around and heads toward the Jordan. Try to picture him, stripping down to his skivvies, and going under the water not once or twice but seven times. Obedient, humiliated, powerless to heal himself, taking suggestions from servants and slaves: he rises up from the water and his flesh is restored like that of a young boy! In the Hebrew you can’t help but notice that in his healing he’s become just like the young girl. He’s a young boy. He is clean. He is ready to be restored to his community. He shouts out, perhaps to his own surprise: ”Now I know there is no God on all the earth except in Israel.”

Like all the healing stories in the gospels, this one too points beyond itself to God. Always to God.

Whatever else this great story is about, it’s about the way that faith is tied up with a stripping bare—with a humbling. With a loss of pride. With the coming up against the limits of our own capacity to take care of everything. Naaman finally knows that he cannot heal himself. He cannot even dictate the terms of his healing. He becomes maybe like a child even before he rises up from the waters of the Jordan. He does what he is told. Stripped of his power, his sense of entitlement, his desserts: he is opened to the radical healing power of God. And that power is not in the control of the powers-that-be. It is not something that can be bought and sold. Elisha refused all his offers of payment. It is not even necessarily found in the center of things. Rather it comes from the edges.

And thanks be to those who remember, like the young woman. Who remember the ways of God. Who carry the gospel you might say and dare to proclaim it. Who know that God’s mercy is even for the enemy—her captor. “If only.” May she remind us all of our own call to remember, remember and speak the “if onlys” so longed for in our day.

We are the people of the God of “if only”—the impossible possibility, found so often in the unlikeliest of places. Surprising. Boundaryless. Ridiculous even. The God of new life when all the entitlement and all the efforts of the powers-that-be come to nothing. When our efforts to make it happen our way come to their end there is always the God whose power is all about healing and restoration and hope. Always.

SERMON, February 8, 2009

Isaiah 41:21-31; I Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

I live in a co-housing community. We are a group of people, adults, children, and teens in 29 households who live in condominiums built around a central courtyard. We make all our decisions as a community by consensus—which sometimes takes a very long time. And we’re committed to trying to live together in ways that support one another and that offer us opportunities to work together, share stuff (like tools and chores) and in general build healthy relationships with one another. We share some meals together every week and usually once a year we have a weekend long workshop with a focus that is designed to improve our skills for living together. Just a few weeks ago I participated in one of those trainings—this one was a version of a program run by the Alternatives to Violence Project in prisons around the country. It consisted of all kinds of experiences that helped us think about how we communicate with one another. In one of the exercises we met in twosomes, and one partner talked about something in their own life that represented a cutting edge—something that was challenging my usual ways of living, something that had me wondering or even uncomfortable—something new that was stirring in my life—something I wouldn’t ordinarily talk about with others. The other person’s main job was simple: listen. Just listen. Just be present, pay attention, focus on the person talking and listen. You could ask questions to clarify, you could seek deeper understanding, but there was to be no advice given, no solutions offered. The job was to listen. To give our time to one another—our devoted attention you might say.

It was a challenge to talk with someone I didn’t know very well at all about something unsettled in my own life. To share that honestly required vulnerability that is not typically offered to folks we don’t know. To be listened to though was an enormous gift—as I struggled even to find the words to describe my cutting edge—I was listened to. I was honored with the gift of another’s attention.

In another exercise we were paired face to face with another person and while the leader read a meditation about the infinite worth of the person in front of me (and all people)—the infinite worth of each of us as human persons, we were asked just to look at the face of the other person who sat in front of us. We gave our full attention to the other person simply with our eyes. Minutes passed.

These experiences which ran so counter to our multi-tasking culture—to our hurried everyday living—to our inattention—our tendencies to interrupt one another, to solve everything, to give advice—were reminders to me about relationship, and what it means to be in relationship.

I thought about them as I pondered today’s gospel story and the snippet of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Jesus has exorcised the demons from the man in the synagogue, reached out to lift Simon’s mother-in-law up from her fever, and healed the many who came to the door as evening fell on the first full day of his ministry. He gets up before dawn the next morning to have some time to pray, but Simon and his friends hunt him down and urge him to come back and get on with the work—“Everyone is searching for you!” they say. Everyone in Capernaum that is. The word is out about this man who astounds the crowds with his integrity and authority, who challenges the powers that be by restoring the sick to community. The people want to find him. The word translated as hunt here is a strong rather aggressive word—It implies that Simon is out to get Jesus back on track.

But in effect, Jesus says, ”No.” Let’s go out to the other towns so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do. I haven’t come to establish a healing center here in your home town. We’re not meant to be staying put—I’m called out to others beyond home, beyond synagogue, beyond the boundaries of comfort—I’m meant to proclaim the good news of God’s gracious reign to others.

This little text and the one we heard last week are filled with hints of the grace and the struggle to come. Jesus lifts Simon’s mother-in-law up, just as he himself will be lifted up on the cross, and lifted up to new life in the resurrection. The demons who recognize him are silenced, but we sense they will return. Jesus goes out in the dark to a deserted place—reminiscent of the wilderness to which he was driven just after his baptism. Simon and his friends think they know what’s right, but clearly Jesus has other ideas—this will be a continuing theme in their lives—as it so often is in ours. Just when we think we get it, we find out we haven’t quite. Just when we think we can put a boundary—a zone of comfort around the gospel—we learn that the good news is boundaryless—we are always being called out to a new horizon or perhaps to a deeper place or to people with whom we differ.

And Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians talks about how he is constrained to preach the gospel. Like Jesus, he can’t seem to help himself—the joy of the good news is just too much—it demands a sharing. And maybe you have known this joy yourself and felt a compulsion to share it. The joy of knowing that you are loved, that God’s grace is at work in your life, a healing, longed for but unexpected has come, someone isolated and rejected has been restored to the family, forgiveness has transformed your life. . . any of these can be joys that demand sharing. And, in fact, joy is one of those gifts that just seems to demand sharing. Even joys like winning the lottery, getting an A on the exam, finding a new job, paying off your car loan… it’s hard to keep good news to yourself. Sharing it just seems to be a part of it.

Paul says that he has to share the news about God’s gracious reign, God’s love, God’s creative energy at work in life, God’s invitation in Jesus to the fullness of life. He has to share it with all kinds of people—not just those in the circle of faith. Although he has been set free by the gospel, he exercises restraint. He chooses to meet people where they are—he chooses to honor them and their truth. The Good News itself forms him into a person who does this.

He becomes as a Jew to Jews, as one under the law to those who let the law be their guide, to the weak, he is weak. . . he has become all things to all people for the sake of the gospel, so that he may share its blessings. So, those who don’t even know about the law he meets in their ignorance of the law, those who live their lives subject to the letter of the law, he meets in their lawfulness. He meets them where they are.

Now, perhaps because Paul uses the word win more than once in this passage, I’ve heard people say that the whole thing reminds them of certain politicians and how they act when they are running for office. They talk with a Texas accent in Texas, like Harvard grads in the East, and they promise no taxes to the rich and wealth to the poor. It’s about pretending to be something you aren’t. “All things to all people,” a devious plot just to get elected.

But there is another way to understand what Paul is saying. Because in the deepest sense Paul is not tricking people, not just pretending he is something he isn’t to make people comfortable. He listens to them and shares with them in ways they can understand. To do this he must get to know their reality first. Their truth. And, only then does he share the good news. But, of course, the fact is that merely by entering their truth, listening deeply, honoring their reality he has already proclaimed the good news of God’s love for each person. The good news of God come among us in solidarity with us. He has already shared the good news, indeed. He has shared the most precious truth of his life by turning to his neighbors in love and respect before he ever opens his mouth.

The little exercises I did with my co-housing community were a taste of this kind of kingdom living really. They weren’t couched as such, but they were. To listen deeply to another person as they struggle to share their story. To honor one another with our full attention. To look in love at another human being for more than a few seconds—these are gospel gifts. This is proclaiming the good news of God’s gracious reign come among us. This is a share in the ministry of Jesus himself. For our deepest understanding of Jesus is as the One who has come among us as one of us—to share our flesh—to listen—to attend—to stand with—to touch—to lift up—to heal—to restore where there is brokenness. All of this begins with meeting us where we are. All of us—those here this evening, those outside, in neighboring towns, those who are under the law, those who’ve never heard of the law, the strong, the weak—all.

To remember who Jesus is, is to know God, and to know who we are. And, it is joy -- a joy that simply has to be shared. The sharing of our joy begins not with words, but with being fully present to each other, and, as Jesus reminded his friends, to those outside this place. That is the Good News for all people.

SERMON, JANUARY 18, 2009

1 Samuel 3:1-10; Psalm 139; John 1:43-51

I wonder if you know any skeptics. My world seems to be full of them—especially I know a lot of people who are skeptical about Christianity and organized religion. They have their doubts about the claims that Christians make for Jesus; or maybe they aren’t sure there is a God at all. Actually when it comes to the institution of the church they don’t have doubts—they flat out reject it.

And God knows if you are a thinking person you have to have your own set of doubts—your own skepticism about the church as institution. It isn’t hard to come up with a litany of reasons to stay away from it. Just consider the history. Just consider our current state of disagreements and disaffections. We live in a time when the underside of institutions—churchly and otherwise—has been exposed—and the unquestioned loyalties of the 1950s are long gone. We live in an age of institutional skepticism.

Just this week I got a long email from a young man I haven’t seen in years. He is my godson, now in his in early forties. He has just returned to church after many years of absence. He told me that the hardest part of worship is saying the creed. He just doesn’t believe it all. He has his doubts about it. Maybe he even knows some of the not too pretty history of political machinations that lie behind its adoption. Maybe. In any case he can’t get his brain around it all—he doesn’t really give what I would call intellectual assent to all the affirmations of the creed.

He isn’t the only one. Our churches are filled with people who find the creed to be a strange, foreign document. They aren’t sure they believe every line of it—or think that whatever it meant originally is not how they personally would interpret the words. They have their doubts. Some are skeptical. I would say that this is the case in most congregations—at least it has been so in those I’ve served.

Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian minister and wonderful writer once said this about doubt: “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (1)

Samuel and Nathanael have their doubts in our stories this morning. Samuel, the boy given to the priest Eli by his mother, and dedicated to serve in the temple, hears the voice of God calling him by name. But even though he is where he is (the temple) and even though he’s been serving God day and night, he doesn’t recognize the voice he hears. He is caught off-guard by the voice of God in the place where we might expect that voice. The God he has been serving he just doesn’t know. His wonderings send him to Eli to see if he is the one calling. After all that makes the most sense, doesn’t it? Finally, Eli, blind as he is, realizes what is going on and tells Samuel to listen.

Nathanael’s doubts spring from his assumptions. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks. He’s made his judgments about that little nothing place and its people. He judges Jesus, without knowing him. He judges him on the basis of his judgments about where he comes from. This kind of thinking is rampant in our own day—we know about this, don’t we. Judging folks on the basis of where they come from—on their origins. The whole gospel of John really is an inquiry into this very question. People who reject Jesus are those who judge him on his appearances, on what they know of his origins. They reject him because he has no stature in the religious world—he’s a nobody from no where acting like he’s a somebody from somewhere. The truth is that the folks doing the judging don’t know half the story. Jesus’ origins are not what they think, and they’ve forgotten that God is one known for picking the surprising, no-account person for God’s work.

The thing about Nathanael’s skepticism is that it moves him to investigate—to inquire. The invitation from Philip is simple and direct: ”Come and see.” And rather than draw back, go the other way, Nathanael decides to go and see for himself. This is where Fred Buechner’s words about doubt hit home: the ants in the pants that keep you awake and moving. I know some skeptics who ignore that discomfort—who think by drawing back—by simple rejection they are honoring their skepticism. They get stuck. It’s easy to do.

I’ve done it myself. Made judgments about people based on their look, their origins, their language—whatever. Then I draw back and my skepticism, my judgments remain in place. Unexamined really. I’m stuck. It’s the daring to draw near that can open me to new life. It’s the acceptance of the invitation, ”Come and see,” that can lead to new insight. I think of many years ago when for the first time I entered a prison to visit a man there—a man I didn’t know. His mother had invited me to go and see him. My judgments and fears filled me almost to my eyeballs. But by the time I’d finished my visit, I knew that I shared a lot in common with the man I’d visited. Oh, we had our differences, but we had much in common. I’d found some much needed humility, as well as new life and relationship where I’d expected none. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? You’d be surprised.

Our passages this morning have much to tell us about God and God’s call: in both stories there are doubts, wonderings, skepticism; in both someone else helps the person understand who is calling—someone else invites the person to “come and see” to “come and listen.” You and I live in a time when just about everybody has a cell phone or a blue tooth in their ear. I get calls from robots who speak my name. We’re overwhelmed by calls—how to distinguish among the voices? How to keep from getting immune to all? It certainly helps to be in community—to ask our spiritual friends and elders for their input—to worship together, sing and pray together, attune our ears, open our hearts to God and God’s ways. All of these help.

But the most important part of the story of Nathanael is that Jesus calls him in his skepticism, in his judgment, and invites him into relationship. We tend to think that Nathanael became a follower of Jesus because of what he saw in Jesus. And this may be so. But we can also attend to what Jesus saw in Nathanael. How Jesus first saw Nathanael. First saw and first loved him—doubts and all.

Psalm 139 sings of how God has known us since before we were made, knit us together in our mother’s womb, it says. This isn’t about predestination. This is a song of love responding to the deepest truth of all that we are known and loved by God first. Our response of love is just that: a response. Nathanael saw Jesus as the Son of God because Jesus had seen Nathanael and loved him first. This is what we most deeply desire and long for—to be fully known and loved. It is also perhaps the scariest of our desires. We so often draw back in fear that being fully known we will NOT be loved. But that is NOT how divine love works.

The Creed, the hymns, the prayer, the words of our communion service are all kind of fumbling efforts on our part to express that incredible love that God has for us. None of those words do it justice. None of our words can capture this mystery. The Gospel of John is filled with these words about Jesus: son of God, Lamb of God, King of Israel—on and on they spill out. These may be words that make our brains spin, words we cannot give our intellectual assent to. Words we doubt, we wonder about.

But faith really is not just about intellectual assent—its about who we give our hearts to. With whom will we throw in our lot? With whom do we want to relate? Being in the company of? Travel with? Nathanael lets his doubt lead him to come and see. He thinks he’s seen the fullness of who Jesus is in Jesus’ knowing him from an impossible distance. Jesus tells him he ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This love will transfigure both of them. And us, as well. _______________ (1) Buechner, Frederick, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper & Row, 1973.

SERMON, January 4, 2009 THE EPIPHANY

Today we are celebrating the Epiphany: The season of the revealing of Christ to the whole world. We’re a couple of days early, but the season begins with the arrival of the 3 Kings. Here in church these Kings have been journeying all these past weeks to make it to their destination. You can see them there now. And maybe that’s been the case in your homes as well—if you have a crèche. Often people set up their family crèches with all the figures right from the start. Some families though wait to bring out the Kings until now. In most families whatever the timing, we take out the figures—so well known—and arrange them, and use that time to re-tell the story. And if you have or had children in the family often they play with the figures, move them around and re-tell the story. Many years ago, in a home of someone very well known to me the crèche would be set-up and as the days went by strange and sometimes shocking additions were made. Oh, the holy family was still there, and the shepherds and the magi—but there might be Batman suddenly in the midst of it all—or Spidey—once even Darth Vader. I’ve heard that My Little Pony can appear alongside the sheep. In some homes maybe Barbie & Ken show up—or Kung Fu panda. You never know who might show up at the crèche. It's very disturbing really. Spoils the symmetry of the arrangement. Adds an unsettling quality to the story.

In truth the way Matthew tells the story the magi themselves were as unsettling as the arrival of Darth Vader or Barbie. We tend to forget that I think. The birth itself and the folks who visit have become so much a part of the pageantry of the season (the bathrobes, the Burger King crowns, the capes, the empty boxes elegantly wrapped) that we’re more likely to find them cute than to be shocked by them. We’ve domesticated the story.

The first words spoken by any human in Matthew’s gospel are these: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” They’re spoken by the most outside of outsiders—extreme Gentiles—you might say: magi. And the words are spoken in the center of power: Jerusalem. And you’d kind of expect these foreigners—non-believers—pagans to go where the power is—where else would you go to find a king but there? As our passage from Isaiah reminds us the riches and camels will come from afar to Jerusalem—a Jerusalem restored and prosperous.

And we know the rest of the story goes—really there is hardly any reason to read it on a Sunday morning—. Herod is afraid—he doesn’t react nicely to the news that there is another king in HIS kingdom. He calls in his advisors—and asks them to refresh his memory: Just where was the Messiah to be born? Perhaps with some fear and trepidation they glom on to a text from Micah (not the one from Isaiah we just heard). In the Micah passage they recall that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem—the least of the least—just nine miles from Jerusalem but it might as well have been a thousand miles away—to compare them Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Kind of like maybe Washington DC and Graton—something like that.

In any case Herod sends the magi on their way to Bethlehem and asks them to report back on their findings. And off they go these outrageously different foreigners—off they go to find the newborn king in Bethlehem. And there indeed he is. They leave their outrageously fine gifts, fall down on their knees in homage. They go home by another route—deciding that discretion would be the better part of valor when it came to reporting back to Herod. And that’s it. How sweet it is.

The month of January is named after Janus—the Roman god of the gates, who looked both backwards and forwards. It’s a month when we tend to do that too. We think back to the past year and forward in anticipation to the new year. In church communities of course we look back to the stories of Christmas and Epiphany—to the stories of Jesus’ birth and life and from those stories we imagine our future. But, in the throes of Christmas gatherings, gift giving, pageants, and carols I have a tendency to skip over parts of the story that are essential. I forget how bizarre it is that the first words spoken in the Matthew’s gospel are words of the magi: very weird foreigners. And, I forget how the magi have to leave Jerusalem and go to Graton to find the Christ child. I forget how Matthew’s story is all about how there is no room for this new king in “The Way Things Are.” The powers that be don’t like the idea of God-with-us in Bethlehem. I forget that the story is one of how God works in the midst of no room to create a space for the light. How God’s grace refuses to be shut out—no matter what.

So from the beginning of Matthew’s gospel we learn that this Jesus is part of something bigger. Something God is doing that begins with transgression of boundaries and continues always breaking down barriers and opening up to the stranger, the outsider, the least, the lost, and the unimaginable. Always this catches me off-guard—even though this behavior of God’s runs clear throughout Scripture—beginning to end. The magi—these unknown astrologers, experts in the occult, interpreters of dreams—from the East (good grief maybe even from Iran) ignorant of the Law, foreigners in the extreme—these magi manage to act on what knowledge or intuition they do have to seek and find and pay homage to Jesus. An infant. They are the first to acknowledge Jesus as king. How amazing is that?

Matthew writes with words used in his day and Jesus’ day to describe the respect paid to the Roman emperor. He uses them about this baby. The way he uses the words you can’t help but wonder at the contrast between the two rulers. The emperor and his kinglets, and Jesus and his followers. It starts you thinking already this early. It starts you thinking.

And the first question the magi ask is where? where? is the child born king of the Jews? The where is important. It makes a difference. Because the promise of the birth in Bethlehem is all connected to the promise of a king who will care about the people—the folk, the people of the land, the little people. It’s the little promise of a ruler who will turn rulership upside down. Come out of nowhere to care for the forgotten. That’s who’s born in Bethlehem. There’s no room for this kind of king in Rome or Jerusalem. No possible role for such a one who is just not compatible with the ways of the state, the ways of power, the ways of the economy. The fact that Jesus is born in Graton is of critical importance.

And finally the great good news of this story is all about how God acts to deliver even when the sign in the window says NO DELIVERIES ACCEPTED. God brings light into the darkness, into the shutness, the rejection. God slithers into Bethlehem when the powers that be are gathered in Jerusalem making their plans and strategizing—when they are gathering their armies, their wealth, and their power to ensure their own success. The powers that be no matter where they are—are all about control and doing it on their own.

Lest you think this kind of thing has nothing to do with us: I can only say that I am often with them in that. I too, seek control and spend lots of energy doing life on my own—as though it all depends on me. I often keep a tight lid on my own heart—I look at the world around me and let disillusionment close me up and shut me down. I am enmeshed in the systems of “The Way Things Are”: in myself, my family, my community, the world. I tend to look for God in all the wrong places. It’s hard to let go and open yourself; it’s hard to turn away from Jerusalem.

The folks who turn to Bethlehem turn to a different promise—a smaller one perhaps—one that runs under the radar. God with us. The magi remind us to expect to find Batman and Barbie in the crèche—to listen deeply to the truth they have to offer—to dare to journey to the edges to seek the One who comes. The powers that be will do their best to destroy the light—but to no avail. There is no containing the grace of God; it will cross every boundary you set, defeat every rejection. There is no stopping that grace. It will slither into Graton—no matter what. Go there, you will see for yourself.

SERMON, December 28, 2008

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 148; Luke 2:22-40

Sometime ago, in November I think it was, I was driving into San Francisco at 5:30 in the morning. It was dark. When I left Santa Rosa as far as I could tell it was very dark. I drove over the Golden Gate and took the very first right turn after the bridge and followed my nose along the road that runs along the coast. It was still dark, but when I came down the hill along the coast suddenly the sky was filled by the soft light of the moon—an absolutely enormous moon—a harvest moon. A moon so full that it took my breath away. It was going down over the ocean, and you could just make out the waves in the pale light of this enormous moon. People were stopping their cars all along the beach there. Young people were leaping out with their cell phones to take pictures. Others simply sat and took it all in. It was a holy time—an occasion of praise—of heaven and nature singing. Then the sun finally began to bring its pinkish light to the city, and the moon gradually shrank and faded out of sight. Many of us sat in our cars in silence as the light spread over us. A holy time.

When I got to my meeting later at the Mercy Center in Burlingame—a meeting which really was not about the sun or the moon, I couldn’t help telling everyone about how nature had sung its praises to God that morning. I felt my spirit lifted. I couldn’t keep it to myself. And it turned out one other person there had also been awake and in awe of the beauty of the moment.

Our Psalm this morning is full of praise. Psalm 148 is one of those psalms near the end of the collection, and it just can’t contain it’s praise of God. “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise God from the heights!” By the time it is over, everyone and everything joins in the chorus: from the angels and heavenly hosts, the sun and moon, the shining stars, the waters above the earth, the earth itself, the sea monsters, fire and hail, snow and frost, even the stormy wind, mountains, hills, all the cedars and other trees. The wild animals and cattle, creeping things and flying birds. Even kings and princes and all peoples, old and young, praise God.

Perhaps you too have known the heavens and nature to sing God’s praises. Maybe in the flight of the blue heron, the running of a dog, the leaping of the deer, the slithering of a snake. Perhaps in the beauty of the sunset over the ocean, or it’s rise in the mountains. Perhaps you have heard the praises sung by the wind that blows across the lake, or the warmth of the summer sun on your back. Watching the hawks along the coast I have often thought of their nearly silent chorus of praise as they circle and swoop over the hills and water.

The praises you and I offer are just a part of this larger chorus of praise. Sometimes we forget this I think. Perhaps our current ecological woes stem in part from our forgetfulness about this. This link we have with the rest of God’s creation.

Both Isaiah and Luke are filled with praise too—on this Sunday after Christmas—the time after: when the presents have all been unwrapped, the company on their way home, the lights beginning to dim, and in some homes the trees already coming down. It’s a time of darkness isn’t it? Not long after the winter solstice. You know Christmas—the birth of Christ—wasn’t celebrated in the early church. And when the church did fix a date to the birth—it was fixed in the mid-winter darkness. A time when nature helps us understand the impact of light coming into our darkness. The customs we have of decorating a tree, bringing in garlands, are about bringing nature indoors. Connecting ourselves to the praise perhaps of the trees. At just that time of year when darkness seems to most take over, our tradition celebrates the in-breaking of the light. Small, tiny you might say, but light nevertheless, light that is not overcome by the darkness.

In the face of darkness we proclaim God’s act of love. In the face of darkness Isaiah rejoiced in the Lord God who promises always to bring new life, to clothe us in salvation, and cover us with righteousness. The Lord God says Isaiah will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations. The prophet himself cannot keep silent. Kind of like me that early morning in November. The work and the promises of God are just too much to keep silent about. We simply burst into praise.

On Christmas Eve I filled in as celebrant at the pageant service at my old parish Incarnation in Santa Rosa. It was my first time back after over a year, and what a wonderful way to return—to the singing of Christmas carols, and to the children acting out the well-known story as only they do. Those Christmas carols are all songs of praise. They bring us together as almost nothing else can do. They are part of the fabric of our community. When we go caroling we reach out to those who cannot be with us, and bring them back through song.

Praise is not about buttering up God you know. It’s not about stroking God’s ego. It isn’t about making God feel good about God wonderful self. Nor is it about laying the groundwork for a request that will be made next. Think about it. Praise is a way for us to testify to who God is and what God has done. It’s a way to respond to the gift of grace. It’s a way to express our awe, our amazement, at times our almost stupefied wonder. It’s a way to say who God is and who we are. It acknowledges that it’s God’s world, not our world, not my world. I’m not in charge. It flows out of our thanksgiving. It’s about relationship for sure—ours with God and God’s with us. But it’s not that God needs our praise—its that God’s self, God’s actions, God’s promises, God’s creative energy at work—these simply cause praise to spring up! And, not just from us, remember, but from all the created world. Praise maybe is one of the deepest expressions of who we are. When we give praise we open ourselves to God. We claim the truth of who God is.

You hear echoes of this in the way praise works in our families, at the workplace, all through our daily lives. Real praise, praise that springs up, when we let ourselves utter it—that kind of praise is a gift. It opens us to the other person. To praise someone for who they are, for their kindness, or their accomplishment, for their listening, for their being opens the ways between us. If accepted it opens the other to become more deeply who they can be, and it opens us in the same way. Some of us were raised in families where there was little or no praise. We are uncomfortable giving it and accepting it—letting it sink into our hearts. We have to fight off the early training we got about needing to earn everything—including God’s love. In church as we sing and worship together we practice the art of praise. But perhaps some of you were raised in a families filled with praise and thanksgiving. If so you know in your bones what a gift it is to be reminded that you are worthy—you are a child of God—no matter what. And, if you are a person who praises others easily you know how offering praise opens you to the beauty—the pure gift of others. Praise brings us together.

Simeon and Anna praise God too—for the birth of Jesus. And Simeon’s song of praise is really a song announcing his death. A song of praise at death. Again that darkness and light interwoven. The light shining on the death and through it. His praise of God and God’s actions now releasing him to death. Not that strange really is it? Perhaps you have known someone who died just after Christmas. Who seemed to hang on to life until Christmas and then let go. I’ve seen that more than once in my years of ministry. And Christmastime is often a time of absences-felt. Empty places at the table, loved ones dead, no longer with us. The season can be one of grief and loneliness as well as joy and companionship. That’s how it is.

The people of God devote themselves to praise in just this season of darkness. And we do so in many ways. Singing the carols that tell the story. Christmas pageants, worship, prayers, cards sent, phone calls made, gifts given and received, connections renewed. Letting goes and deaths even: all encompassed in the grace of God come among us in the flesh. To recognize that our praises join together with the praises of all of God’s creation in heaven and on earth is a great gift—it opens us to God, and to each other, including the creatures and the sun and moon and stars. Look for those praises and let your own praises ring out this season. There are still eight more days of Christmas to give praise to God. It’s a spiritual practice vital to our lives all the days of the year.

SERMON, December 7, 2008 2 Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15; Mark 1:1-8

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

The opening words of the Gospel of Mark—the Gospel we’ll be reading on most Sundays this year.

Just when and where did it begin, this Good News? . . . in creation? with the prophets, like Isaiah whom Mark quotes? with John the Baptist? Mary? Jesus? When and where did the Good News really begin?

And, where and when did it begin for you? Who prepared the way for you to receive the Good News? Your parents, a grandparent, the folks in the church of your childhood, your spouse who brought you to church, a catastrophic event that drew you into worship somewhere? Where did it begin for you—the Good News of Jesus Christ?

It was a shocking first line really to the people of Mark’s day. “good news”—the words used to announce the birth of an emperor to be in the Roman Empire; Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the long-awaited one coming in power; Son of God: the words on Roman coins, the claim made by Roman emperors. Just what could this mean?

Even more deeply we notice our surprise that the good news comes first with a call to repentance. Where’s the good news in that? And it’s on the lips of a man who looks and acts like an OT prophet, Elijah most likely, and he’s in the wilderness. The good news comes to the wilderness—that place outside the bounds—to people who are sinners—outside the bounds. What might this mean?

Strange isn’t it how the good news begins with a hearkening back? A remembering. Mark begins by looking back—finding in the old stories the framework for understanding—for beginning to grasp the potential of the new thing—the good news. John the Baptist is like Elijah—he’s doing the work Isaiah described—and he’s reminding us of Malachi another of those old prophets.

We do this—hearken back—remember. It’s natural. How many of you had thoughts of John Kennedy as you watched Barak Obama’s acceptance speech and saw the rapt young faces? How many of you remember Dallas when you saw the bulletproof panels in front of him? Who thinks of the Depression these days, with the loss of jobs data reported out? Remembering the past offers a framework for the new.

Remembering: one of the most precious of the practices of Advent. It’s where the spiritual season calls us to begin. Remembering is essential to keeping a holy advent. It is much of what we do here on a Sunday morning. I’m not talking about nostalgia—so prevalent in our society—remembering the fictitious good old days or the imagined 2 parent-2 child-one dog-one cat nuclear family. No, the remembering we are called to is honest remembering.

Isaiah reminds us that God’s judgment and mercy are intertwined. That’s the kind of remembering that makes me uncomfortable. I’d rather focus only on the mercy. He also reminds me how God’s word is active, moving, creating new beginnings. Has been and will be. In Mark’s gospel too, we remember that the good news begins with repentance. That serious stocktaking of self and community. Not a comfortable beginning. But so essential. How can we re-enter the Isaiah passage without letting ourselves wonder how it is that I today find myself in exile, much as the people Isaiah spoke to. How in my life do I find myself in exile, removed from God and God’s ways? How have I chosen to exile myself? How do we do that everyday as a people, as individuals, as families, as communities? In what ways do I live my days forgetting God? Lapsing into behaving as though I am in charge of my life, independent, able to do it on my own? Spending money and energy on things that bring so little life? How do I live forgetting God’s care for the widow and orphan, the poor and the alien? How do I refuse the love that is offered me? How am I in exile?

John’s invitation to a baptism of repentance is one I need to hear—if I can bring myself to do so. When I dare to sit with the truth of my own chosen exile I need to remember God’s forgiveness and the promise of new life. I need to remember these old stories that assure me that I need not stay trapped in my old ways. Here is your God! says the prophet—bringing new life, feeding, gathering, carrying, leading, forgiving.

Waiting is a second Advent practice. And what could be more foreign to America? What could be more countercultural than waiting? Like the people in exile comforted by Isaiah’s words assuring them of the activity and promise of God, the trustworthiness of God’s word, which stands forever—no matter what, we wait. We wait in the not-yetness of the promise.

Like the folks to whom 2nd Peter’s letter speaks—those who have wondered out loud about the promised return of the Lord—so anticipated by early Christians. Why hasn’t he returned yet? Why is the world still in such a mess? Why the delay? Like them, we wait. We wonder. We echo their doubts. Look at the world in which we find ourselves: the wars, the greed, the economic collapse, the horrific abuses of power we see, the bickering and self-interest of our leaders, the list goes on and on—and it can get pretty personal, when we dare to look within ourselves, at our own families, our workplaces, our own relationships that don’t always exhibit what we might call the fruits of the Spirit. It’s a sorry state of affairs. Why, we wonder, is the world seemingly unchanged? When will God show up?

Guess what? What seems like God’s tardiness is really God’s mercy. Imagine that! 2nd Peter says, God is just giving us time to repent. We who are so enmeshed in the way things are—in the systems of bankruptcy—economic and spiritual—we whose ears are stopped and eyes so often blinded—we’re being given time to turn toward God. We’re being given time to begin while we wait, to live into the promises right in the here and now.

Is it worth waiting for? This Good News. What exactly are we waiting for? Isaiah puts it simply: we wait for God to act. Not in some human solution or effort—we humans can’t be depended on as God can. That’s just how it is. It doesn’t all depend on us—isn’t that a relief? God comes toward us in power and in gentleness and mercy. The authoer of 2nd Peter puts it this way: we await new heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home. Such poetry! New heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home. Imagine what that might look like, if you can.

And so it is, that we wait in the not yetness of the promise. In Advent we remember the old stories—the context—so that we can be grasped by them and opened to the new thing God is doing in our day. So it is that in the midst of Afghanistan, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the market’s virulent swings, the lost job, lost home, lost sense of direction, lost soul: we wait. It’s our spiritual practice.

We wait. We remember. We hope. Hope is at the heart of Advent. We wait in hope. Trusting the promises, entrusting ourselves to the truth of these ancient stories and to the Word of God active still today—coming to us, transforming us in the Eucharist, in the hymn, in the community, in the world outside this place, but deeply, most deeply in the remembered stories.

They are counter-cultural, telling us to look for God in the small, the unexpected, away from the centers of power, calling us to open ourselves by beginning with ourselves in repentance and turning. We Americans are known throughout the world as a practical people; hopeful, yes and confident, yes. But our hope and confidence tends largely to be placed in our own selves—our ability to get the job done. At the heart of our faith stories is the message that we need not trust our own selves. This will not be new heavens and a new earth of my own making. This is God’s promise and God’s work. Our work is to remember, wait and hope.

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God. Where is that beginning, and when? To think about the beginning, let us consider the end. Mark’s gospel ends with the angel talking to the women at the grave and telling them to return to Galilee where it all began—to tell the Good News. Seemingly they are overcome with awe and run away. We are left not knowing what they do.

So, the question for us is perhaps not where or when the beginning, but how is the beginning in us? in you and me. How do we respond-- open ourselves to the Good News? How might it begin in us today? In what sense perhaps are we living lives that prepare the way?

As we remember, wait, and hope, may the Good News begin in us.

SERMON, November 16, 2008

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

Certainly there is enough fear to go around these days without coming to church to hear these judgmental passages from Scripture. I mean we’re wallowing in it—fear, that is.. Every day the news seems more bleak: how stressed we are becoming worrying about whether the job we once thought secure, or the retirement income we thought we could depend on, will be there. Consumers have stopped consuming, stores are closing, companies are asking for bailouts, economies around the world are suffering, the poor around the world are receiving less aid. Our newly elected president faces an unprecedented array of difficult challenges: two wars, economic collapse, frayed international relationships, threats of terrorist attack, nuclear armaments in the hands of unfriendly nations. Good grief, it’s enough to make a person want to curl up in a ball, check out, hide whatever savings you have under the mattress, and stop reading the paper, or watching the news.

And so we have come to church to worship God, hear the good news, and maybe just maybe find some solace. Instead we hear Zephaniah telling us to “Be silent before the Lord because God is about to search us out with lamps lit—for the purpose not of consolation, but of punishment. Woe to those who are complacent in their dregs. (leaning back in their chairs, sipping their Napa Valley wine) and woe to those who say in their hearts, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm. . .” (These are those who look around at their world and find no evidence of God anywhere—their hope, whatever hope they have, is not placed on God.) The images of unrelenting judgment are vivid, neither silver nor gold will be able to save us… God is more than annoyed, and no one will be left standing after the fire of God’s passion. Prophetic oracles of judgment are like this: designed to get our attention and perhaps our repentance.

Paul too describes the visitation of God like a thief in the night. The day of the Lord—judgment day will bring sudden destruction to those who say, “there is peace and security.” It will a time of pain and there will be no escape. And, as if all this weren’t enough, we hear in Matthew’s gospel (that means good news, lest you forget) the scary story of the three slaves who are given huge amounts of money on trust from the landowner Two invest the money and give the master the money plus a profit They are welcomed into joy. The third, poor man, understands the master to be harsh, reaping where he has not sown and gathering where he did not plant (a typical absentee landlord perhaps). In his fear he hides the money given him. His is a self-fulfilling prophecy: he is judged for his own judgment of the master and he’s thrown into outer darkness.

There you have it: the good news for this Sunday. Hard texts. It is hard to hear about judgment in times like these.

I confess to you that I don’t know much about the end-time judgment—or how it will be when Christ returns. We have a multiplicity of biblical texts that describe what those days will be like. There are quite a number of people of faith who focus their lives on that moment. There are countless books interpreting Scripture to tell us just when and how this will happen, and just who will be left behind. I am not, as they say, ”into" that.

What I am into is considering what these scary texts have to say to me and to us in the here and now. How do these texts of judgment speak to us? How do they speak to us with their multiple images, and their vivid metaphors? How do we listen to them when they don’t always agree? When I hear about the man punished it seems for burying the talent, I think of another parable Jesus tells about the man who finds the treasure in the field and buries it until he can earn enough money to buy the field. Burying treasure in and of itself does not seem to be a bad thing. When I hear the words of Zephaniah I am forced to ask myself some rather personal questions about my own faith—about my own understandings of God. I notice in the midst of all of those horrific images of distress and destruction that God is upset because the people (could I be one of them?) have broken their relationship with God; they have not expected anything of God—neither good nor bad—they have lived their day to day lives as though God were not involved—not an actor. They seem to have trusted more in silver and gold as salvation than in God. If I can avoid writing off the whole thing because the images of distress are so great and so repugnant to me—then really, I have to confess there are some things to consider. Do I live my days in expectation of God? God’s presence? God’s action? God’s call? Do I align myself with God’s grace at work in the world? What kind of a life of faith am I really living?

And, as hard as it is to figure out what the meanings of Jesus’ parable might be—and I get stymied here not only by the seemingly harsh judgment against the man who buried the treasure (after all interest earned or collected in not something admired in Jewish tradition) but also by the fact that the absentee landlord system operative in Jesus’ day was one that had its share of harsh masters who took what they did not plant. When these thoughts come to me, and I can just dismiss the whole thing. Ignore it.

But in truth there is one line that gets to me: the line about fear. The man’s fear of the master led him to bury the treasure. He operated his life on the basis of fear. And that’s something I do know about. How fear can paralyze. Can keep me from trusting, much less risking. Oh, sometimes fear might make me lash out in anger and frustration—might lead to my judging and blaming others for the situation I’m in. That’s possible. But fear can also just lead me to stop in my tracks. Be incapable of decision. Incapable of seeing. When I’m afraid I become so self-focused that if Jesus himself walked up to me I’d probably miss him. Fear makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and bury my few remaining savings under the mattress.

St Paul has something to say to us here. He tells us that we are beloved. The beloved of God. We are children of the light and the day—‘God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christ died for us he says, whether we are awake or asleep. Think of that. Whether we are alert to the movement of God in our lives or have dozed off—perhaps overcome by fear for a time. God’s purpose is that we would live with Jesus. Be in relationship—withness is what God is all about. Oh, yes, there is judgment. There are those times even before the end times, when that judgment seems to come upon us like a thief in the night. We find ourselves exposed for who we truly are when we least expect it. in the ordinary course of living. Someone says something, asks a questions, we are challenged from out of the blue, and we see how fear has affected us, I notice that I’ve stopped looking for God in my days, I’ve forgotten who I am and who God is. I don’t remember that I am beloved—and that you are too.

It matters deeply how we see God—who we understand God to be—who the God is that we entrust our hearts to. I love this morning’s collect when we pray to “read, mark, and inwardly digest Scripture” because scripture is not that easy to digest. The Bible is a complex book—filled with strange and contradictory stories and different kinds of writings. Zephaniah in just a few chapters after this morning’s reading talks about God’s mercy and saving action. “Sing aloud O Daughter of Zion! . . . I will bring you home.” To live in fear of a vengeful God will result in a half-lived life or even less. Think of how you are when you do things because of fear. Think of how you get tight and clutch and judge and reject and get self-focused. Is that the kind of life to which we are called? Paul tells us we will be judged, but that the days and times of judgment come to us already secure in the truth that we are the beloved of God. Paul trusts the God he knows in Jesus Christ. God who seeks withness. We are made for that with God and with one another. That is what is perhaps revealed most deeply in the judgment. How are we living into the truth of who God is and who we are?

Paul encourages us to keep on encouraging one another: healing, up lifting, strengthening each other with the truth of who we are. I close with a story of how encouragement came to a friend of mine recently.

She is a white woman married to an African American man—she is the mother of two beautiful mixed race children. Watching the gathering at Grant Park as Barak Obama gave his acceptance speech, she was shocked to find herself weeping. Her tears were tears of gratitude and relief—Her shock was that for the first time ever she believed that there was no ceiling that could keep her children down—judge them as “lesser than.” She hadn’t even realized that she’d been carrying this burden: the burden of assuming that her children would always be judged on the basis of their skin—not “on the content of their character”—as Martin Luther King once said. She, who knows as a mother knows, the preciousness, the character and gifts of her children-- for a moment caught a glimpse of a world in which those children would be valued like any others.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t about Barak Obama. This is a story about how in the midst of everyday life we can face judgment and be opened to the truth of who God is and who we are. Judgment and encouragement can come at once. It is about how we can learn to entrust ourselves to love instead of fear. Love that simply values each of us for being who we are—no matter our character or our gifts. We come here on a Sunday to present ourselves once again to that love—that truth that longs to set us free.

SERMON, October 12, 2008

Isaiah 25:1-9; Philippians 4:1-9; MT 22:1-14

Here we are. And, I’m wondering if any of you have come this morning worried? If you have fears and concerns that you’ve brought with you? Concerns about your retirement—whether you are retired or only dreaming of it—concerned about your job or perhaps your children’s jobs—their economic security. Concerned that we are heading for a depression. These are worries that have occupied me in the last few days. So, here we are in church. Longing for good news, seeking comfort, strength, and above all hope.

Isaiah sings to us of the almost incredible banquet that the Lord will make for all peoples—that feast of rich food, well-aged wines. God will destroy the shroud cast over all peoples. Imagine that. Surely this is a time when we are coming to know that shroud and how it covers us all. God will swallow up death forever and wipe away all tears. These incredible images and promises are almost more than we can take in—the shroud being so dense, our tears so near the surface. And to the people who first heard these words from Isaiah they must have seemed even more remote—most scholars think this a piece of writing from the time of exile when there was no temple on Mount Zion, and the devastation of society so deep. These would have been hungry people, people filled with loss and suffering.

Don’t you feel the tension when you hear these images? The tension between the promises of God and the realities we see around us in the world? Our current images of devastation, the tears of those who weep in the face of violence and loss around the world, the shroud of mourning that covers our own nation as we listen to the unfolding economic news. It’s hard to give ourselves over to the promises of plenty and harmony and enough for everyone, when the evidence so clearly points to scarcity, division, and deprivation. The images and promise of God’s banquet are hard to hold on to in times like these.

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians comes to a crescendo of peace and joy. “Rejoice in the Lord, always” he says, do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Another passage filled with joy and promise. These are big words Paul uses here: rejoice, gentleness, peace of God, true, honorable, if there is any excellence, anything worthy of praise, think on these things. It’s an embarrassment of riches you might say, coming our way just as we contemplate loss of riches. God is too much. Too much for Paul to express in words. Too much for us to imagine. Too much.

So if the Good News is a little too much for us, we can turn to the gospel passage! We need to remember the context: Jesus continues his conversation with his opponents, who seek to discredit him. These are folks who think they have all the truth, they are the religious establishment types, who know about God and what God wants. They also know that they are the ones who have got it made—religiously speaking—they do what is right and believe they will enter the kingdom. So Jesus tells this kind of good news—bad news parable. Where God is compared to a King who invited folks to his son’s wedding. This would have been a big deal no matter the size of the kingdom really. The people invited aren’t interested in coming to the party. This is shocking really: in Jesus’ and Matthew’s time the King would have suffered almost unimaginable shame from these rejections. But, he doesn’t respond in anger. He further shames himself really by sending out his servants once again to urge folks to attend, pointing out all the arrangements he’s made, the table is set with the finest linen, the candles ready to be lit, the food rich and plenteous—what a feast. It reminds us of Isaiah’s image of God’s feast. This time while some ignored the invitation, others mistreated his servants, and killed them. Now the king is enraged. His disappointment and rage result from this mistreatment of his servants. You could say that the anger of the King is not the opposite of his love, but because of his love. At any rate he destroys the murderers and burns their city to the ground.

But the party will go on. The King is determined. So he sends other servants out to the edges of the land to bring in whoever they find, good and bad: “Invite everyone you find,” he says. The hall is filled with guests, both good and bad. Well, this would be a nice ending. But no, it isn’t over yet. The King sees the fellow without his wedding robe, and as the guy stammers and stutters, has him thrown out of the party, to the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth—Jesus would have to add that. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Maybe that’s where we are these days in the outer darkness…

Much scholarly energy has been devoted to this parable. Many understand it as a critique of the self-righteous critics of Jesus—who imagine themselves at the banquet, only to hear themselves described as those who kill the servants of God and get killed themselves. Maybe the burnt to a crisp city is Jerusalem crushed after the rebellion in 70 CE. And maybe the little piece about the man without his wedding robe is a warning to church members, to those who did decide to follow Jesus, that they shouldn’t consider themselves self-righteously. No more so than the others—those who rejected the invitation.

The story is one of comfort and discomfort. If you are like me you are comforted to know that God is intent on having the party, and that it is a great feast, and that the good and the bad are invited. Not so comforting is the fact that the invitation list starts with a small group, and only later is extended to include everyone. Not so comforting is the King’s violent response to the violence inflicted on his servants. And not so comforting is the King’s tossing out of the ill dressed man. Weeping and gnashing of teeth—not comforting at all. It’s disorienting really.

Jesus’ parables are that. Disorienting. And some of them like this one remind us of the otherness of God. The shamelessness of God who aims to party no matter what—aims to feed and celebrate and commit joy with humanity no matter what. The freedom of God to invite whom God invites—no criteria here that we can rely on. God’s freedom is unnerving to us because it leaves us with no easy assurances that things will work out as we want. The invitation to the party is freely given. Pure grace you might say. But clearly we need to accept the invitation—open ourselves to it, let go of whatever might keep us distracted. I have to make room in my life to say yes to the invitation. Saying no is death. That much I can understand. I don’t imagine really God killing me, but I do imagine the death that is mine when I refuse the invitation. I have known that death in my life. When I have chosen to go my own way, do my own thing, make things happen my own way. I have tasted then of death. The ashes perhaps of the city of my life.

The wedding robe? What is it. In the early church the robe was understood to be the baptismal robe. That garment of white put on each newly baptized person as they came up naked out of the water. The water of baptism where they had given themselves over to the transformative love of God. Drowned with Jesus and raised up with him to new life. The robe is a sign of our willingness to live into our baptisms, to remember who I am at my deepest self: marked as Christ’s own forever. Made for an ever deepening relationship with God. Open to an almost constant transformation by grace. Vulnerable to God.

It’s not enough to be at the party. You and I know about this. How we can physically show up, but not be there in our hearts and minds. Not give ourselves over to the party—to the joy. I’ve seen people refuse to be open to joy because they are filled with judgment, or resentment, or just a pure unwillingness to be vulnerable. To join in the party is to be vulnerable—to open yourself to food and drink that you didn’t provide. To let yourself feel joy is a risk—it’s related I think to love. The teenagers dressed in black at the outskirts of the family gathering, the grandparent who won’t speak to his grandchild because she’s failed to meet his expectations, the sister whose jealousy won’t permit her to rejoice at her brother’s success.

Fear and worry can keep us from donning our baptismal robes. So fill us up that there is no room for God’s grace to move. Our faith is that in these days of uncertainty, in this time of concern, God is present. The invitation goes out. Whatever the times, life is a gift that brings us God’s invitation to a deeper relationship. We may in fact be in for hard times, times that may strip us of the non-essentials, make clear to us what we’ve lost track of. We may be in for times that will be painful, times that will challenge us; the days ahead may be days in which we are set free in new ways. Our hope may waver, the images of the banquet seem remote. What clothes will we put on every morning? . . . If we reach for our baptismal robes and dare to let go of fear, we’ll find that God’s life within us is deepening. This is our calling. It seems clear that in the days ahead, things will not be the same—but one thing is the same—God and God’s love for us. God’s invitation to us.

Whatever else you may think about the apostle Paul, he was clearly a man so deeply in touch with God that no matter the circumstance he could say, “The Lord is near.” Indeed, he gives us advice for our time: “Keep on doing the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” May we always remember who we are—no matter what.

SERMON, September 28, 2008

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Philippians 2:1-13; MT 21:23-32

Ezekiel quotes a well-known proverb of his day, “The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” We who live in or near wine country can perhaps most vividly understand it—can almost feel the skin of the sour grapes on our teeth. It is a saying that reflects a truth we all know—in fact these days, perhaps, we are peculiarly aware of how the sins of the parents are indeed visited on the generations that follow—to the third and fourth generations as it says in the book of Exodus. We have only to think about the cost of the war in Iraq or the coming bailout of financial institutions to realize that our children and their children and maybe even their children will be paying. We also know that we as communities pay the costs of decisions made by those who went before us—in cities, there are poor land use decisions made a generation ago that we now confront the costs of, in churches, people are often faced with cleaning up messes left behind by those who have long since moved on, and in families, sometimes we find young parents determined to raise their children differently than they were raised—occasionally they discover that their attempts to parent against the grain of their own parents results in different but equally disastrous consequences! “The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Indeed.

Ezekiel speaks on God’s behalf to people who find themselves suffering in exile. They bring out this proverb to explain their situation—and to support their inaction. God has brought judgment on them for the sins of their parents—they are suffering now for the sins of those who went before them. It is clear. “Woe are we!” they say. And there they sit in their misery. Trapped in God’s unjust punishment of the innocent. There is nothing we can do. It is beyond us. We’re caught in something way beyond our capacities to change. It’s not right. it’s unfair, but there it is. Or, rather here it is.

Here it is. Oh, yes. When I look at the world around me I feel a lot like those Israelites sent into exile in Babylonia. I feel like I’m caught up in the machinations of giant forces, and the results of choices made by others for the past umpty ump years are now beginning to come clear. And, it isn’t good news. Without mentioning the environment, the oil crisis, the degradation of our planet—without going into that, we’re in a mess. If you listened to the presidential debates Friday night you couldn’t help but notice. Both candidates talked about the mess we’re in—both criticized the ones who have gone before them. The sins of the parents are being visited on the children.

It can leave you with a sense of helplessness. Really. And it can leave you wanting to blame. Blame the president, blame the congress, blame the SUV-owners, blame the terrorists, blame, blame, blame. If you are like me you fall into that place pretty easily. “The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

When I’m in that place of suffering—suffering that clearly has been brought on by others, mostly by those who have gone before me—I kind of wallow in my powerlessness. I suffer from what the early monastics called acedia, which according to Webster’s is “the deadly sin of sloth,” or “spiritual torpor and apathy.” I’ve been reading a book by Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me. I commend it to you. Norris is the author of some other books worth reading: Dakota and The Cloister Walk, to name a couple. Acedia is a condition of not caring. It’s the “whatever” syndrome so prevalent in our culture. Often it is accompanied by the feeling of being overwhelmed, shutting down, and then just not caring. “Whatever!” Norris’ book is a very personal one, describing her marriage, the illness and death of her husband, and her struggle not to let acedia rule her life. In it she also traces some of the history of the condition which is similar to, but not the same as clinical depression. She considers how our own lives have been impacted by our consumer economy, that markets “the good life” as acquisition of material things, and how in insidious ways it has eroded our spirits. She quotes Thomas Merton who in the 1960s said that in a society focused on and “organized for profit and marketing. . . there’s no real freedom. You’re free to choose gimmicks, your brand of TV, your make of a new car. But you are not free not to have a car.” That was Merton in the 60s.

In our world today it is easy to end up caring + about our own perceived needs. Anything else is too much. Even going to the store to shop for an item can be overwhelming—there are so many apparent choices, one can be left incapable of decision. I had that experience not long ago trying to buy a printer for my computer.

Acedia, Norris says, is the primary characteristic of our time. John Buchanan contends that sloth is “not living up to the full potential of our humanity, playing it safe, investing nothing, being cautious, prudent, digging a hole and burying [our treasure].” We know what Jesus had to say about that.

I’ve discovered that retirement can be a particularly acedia-filled state. It can become so self-focused, “I can do what I feel like doing today,” (nothing?). I’m too old, too tired, too angry or despondent, too confused to do anything, take any risk that God might be calling me to. My condition is not unlike that of the Israelites who were mired in their suffering and blaming and unwilling to do anything—convinced that there was nothing to be done. Ezekiel rails at me and them. He tells me that blaming my body, or an unjust God and the generations before me—or the President, or the city council, or Exxon is not what God desires—is not in fact how God’s spirit works in the world. “As I live,” says God. God is a living God, dynamic and at work in the world today, right now, as it is. Mess or no mess, in the midst of suffering, and even acedia. And, here’s the deal. God cares.

God is not interested in visiting the sins of the parents on the children. God is not even interested in keeping score of all the sins you may have committed in the past. All the bad choices you made, all the times you ignored what you knew God wanted of you. No, God is about you and your choosing today. ”Repent then, turn away from all your transgressions.” Stop gazing at your forbearers and all their sins and omissions. Take a look at your own self, and know this. “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,” says the Lord God. “Turn then, and live.”

It’s about turning to God, and living into God. Living into the fullness of who you were created to be. No matter your age. No matter your history. No matter the history of your people, or your community. No matter the mess we find ourselves in. Turn then, and live.

Jesus echoes the same sentiment, doesn’t he? He holds up the son who said no, and then changed his mind and did what his Father asked of him. He holds up the tax collectors and prostitutes who recognized that John was of God and repented and turned to God. He admonishes the powers that be to open their hearts and minds to God and God’s prophets—stop clutching their positions of power, stop protecting the status quo.

When the Pharisees and elders ask Jesus about his authority—they are seeking to disparage it. They imagine he will tell them who his teacher has been—and that whoever that is, their own authority will be greater. The question they ask is perhaps, ”Who do you listen to, Jesus?” Jesus responds by asking them about how they have acted in response to one they have listened to—John. How have they acted in response. It is easy to sing the hymns, pray the prayers, say the words that we think God wants of us. But, to let God move us to action—to let our lives preach the gospel --that is another matter. I’m better at talking the talk than walking the walk—that’s the truth. The first son in the parable walked the walked, but didn’t talk the talk. The second son talked, but didn’t walk. Jesus is perhaps the third son—the one who talked the talk and walked the walk. He invites us to the same. And promises us the Spirit to move within us and make us into gospel people.

You and I are made for community—for relationship. It is NOT all about me. It isn’t. The God who came among us humbling himself to us, drained himself, poured himself out for us—simply out of love and longing for us. As Paul puts it, remember that “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Acedia is real—how to be set free from it? It’s not about turning inward in self-focus, or turning in blame toward others, but it is about turning. “”Turn then and live, says Yahweh. “Change your minds and believe,” says Jesus. Give your hearts to the God who cares that you live. It’s an everyday practice, this turning. It’s about nurturing the grace that’s been given us. It’s prayer, and worship, it’s doing the dishes, talking to the neighbor, it’s about doing what love asks of us, it’s speaking up when something is wrong, it’s living into your freedom to be God’s people. Every day there are new possibilities, new beginnings offered, new opportunities to reach out beyond ourselves –in doing so we will find that we have become more deeply who we are called to be—and more anchored to the One who loves us and invites us always into new life. _____________________ Kathleen Norris, Acedia and me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life, Riverhead Books: 2008.

SERMON, September 21, 2008

Exodus 16:2-15; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

I used to drive out River Road past Guerneville early Sunday mornings to lead worship at St. Andrew’s Mission in Monte Rio. Along the road there is one place where day laborers hang out in front of a convenience store waiting for work. Early in the morning there were always a good number of workers there—by mid-day when I’d be returning there were fewer. The ones who were still there after all those hours of waiting usually looked pretty dejected. I can’t help thinking about them when I hear this parable from Matthew’s gospel. The landowner coming at 5 o’clock and asking the workers there, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” “Because no one has hired us.”

It’s been kind of fashionable to depict these last hired laborers as lazy, good for nothing types who maybe didn’t get out of bed until 3 or so, because they were maybe hung over, and then they finally staggered down to the square with the bright idea that now was the time to find work. But in reality it isn’t really that simple—that the good get hired early and the bad late. Sometimes that can be the case, but often hiring of this kind of worker is more about the power of the employer—the employer’s choosing—than anything else. The poor, those out of work, the unemployed, and certainly the undocumented are at the mercy really of the employers of this world.

I’m struck by this employer—by his persistent efforts to hire workers—to give them the work they are seeking. He begins early in the morning, but he comes back at noon, and then at 3 and then at 5. He never gives up looking for people who want work and giving them work. Giving them purpose in life you might say. It isn’t rational of course, but the parable isn’t really about business practices or even economics as we know it—it’s a story about what the kingdom of heaven—God’s realm—is like. Jesus says God’s realm is like this kind of landowner who goes out to hire everyone who is seeking work.

You and I have probably never stood on the corner hoping against hope that an employer who would actually pay a decent wage and treat us fairly and with respect—would come along and choose us. I can still remember as a child on the playground waiting anxiously to see when and if I’d be chosen for the team. Maybe that experience still echoes in you as well—that waiting to be chosen feeling. As an adult, I’ve applied for work and been turned down, ignored even; I gone through interview processes where the emphasis is always on the needs of the employer. On my qualifications to meet the needs of the employer. Logical. Maybe you’ve had those experiences as well. No one really asks how much you want or need the job, what difference meaningful work might make in your life, what difference it might make to have a sense of purpose or fulfillment in my life. No.

God’s realm is a very different place than our economic system. And in God’s realm there isn’t the worry about if you’ll be chosen. If you show up and want work, you’ll be hired. There’s a place for each of us. That’s different. So indiscriminate of God. No standards really.

And that’s the problem with God and God’s realm. We know this parable and most of us here today don’t much like it. We hear it and who do we identify with? The last hired or the first hired? In my year’s of preaching I’ve found that mostly we identify with the first hired—the “good” guys—the up early, out to the square, ready to work, lunch already packed, work boots on, workers. The ones who know that to get what you deserve you have to deserve what you get. You get paid for what you put into your work. The early bird catches the worm… we all know that. We in fact most of us imagine ourselves to be just that bird. The early one. So we’re outraged at the injustice of the landowner who pays everybody the same. No matter how long they worked they call got paid the same. “IT ISN’T FAIR.” Most of us have been saying that since early childhood as we have come up against the unfairness and inequities of life that are so real. The tragedies that happen to good people, the best woman being passed over for promotion, the man who has given thirty years to the company being laid off just weeks before his retirement. The greedy loan companies and their executives being bailed out of financial disaster. It isn’t fair. And when we rail against the injustices of life, it makes us want a God who is just, who is fair. We want a sovereign who isn’t like most of life as we know it. We want divine fairness. Equity. We want the righteous to earn salvation.

At least that is when we identify ourselves as the righteous. That’s what we want if we are the righteous. The early laborers. We want our just desserts. And we’ll complain if we don’t get them.

Like the Israelites in the desert. We’ll complain to God. This isn’t right. And if we don’t have others to compare ourselves to we’ll compare ourselves to how we once were—or how we remember the good old days. “When we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread.” Remember those good old days, we had plenty to eat. Forget the slavery and the oppression. God, why have you brought us here to kill us from hunger??? It isn’t fair.

I love the fact that when God answers the complaints of the people by showering them with food, their response is, ”What is it?” What is it. The Hebrew for that question is man-hu which is where our word manna comes from. What is it? Perhaps wonder, but certainly doubt—a lack of trust. God who heard their first moanings in slavery in Egypt, and led them thru the sea, and across the desert, and provided water from the rock, now feeds them—and they don’t know what it is. God feeds them with food they are to collect each day for six days, and collect double on the sixth day, so they can rest on the Sabbath. STOP. Sabbath means stop. They can stop working, collecting their food, and maybe even stop complaining for a day. And while stopped maybe just maybe they’ll remember God the giver. All that they have received from God. Maybe just maybe they’ll stop comparing, stop asking for fairness and rejoice in abundance. Maybe the Sabbath stop will bring them to their senses that way. Maybe.

So here we are—and think about our day today—the financial markets going nuts, the financial system a mess, talk of recession, depression, bail outs that our grandchildren’s children may yet have a chance to pay for… and deep down I suspect we want to cry out, ”It isn’t fair!” And, of course, it isn’t.

The good news is that God isn’t either. Fair that is. God’s realm isn’t about equity and fairness. It isn’t about earning and deserving. And, that I suspect is the hardest part for us to accept about God’s realm. The hardest news and the best news ever. It’s the best news ever when you and I find ourselves at the end of the line. The last picked for the kickball team, and the last workers standing there more out of habit than anything—hardly any hope left that we’ll be chosen. That’s when the incredible lengths God goes to—God’s amazing persistence seeking us out to choose us—that’s when God’s lack of standards and unending generosity is incredible good news. A fair God really isn’t what we want when we take a Sabbath. When we stop to think about it: A fair God won’t help me when I came late to the square because I had to get my kids to school first, or take care of my mother who is ill, or stop to help my neighbor in crisis. A fair God won’t be enough to help me when I just plain haven’t been chosen. Haven’t measured up to the standards for hiring.

I’ve heard original sin defined as the sin of comparison. And whther that’s true of not, you can see how comparison in this story results in envy. You and I know about envy—tight, pernicious, eats you up inside envy. Makes you forget that what you have is gift. Envy keeps you so tight you can give thanks. Can’t remember that you have anything to be thankful for. Envy keeps your diminished eyes on the other person and off the envelope full of cash you have in your hand. Like the Israelites who forgot all that God had given them—had their eyes on their past memories so much that when food came they said, ”What is it?”

God’s realm is like getting chosen for the baseball team when you can’t even catch a ball. It’s like getting picked for the debate team when you can hardly mumble your name in front of an audience. It’s like being paid like Bill Gates for greeting customers at WalMart. It’s like staggering into the bathroom at 5 am,looking in the mirror and seeing someone precious and beautiful who is beloved by God—no matter what. It’s like abundance and generosity and inclusion beyond our wildest imagination. It isn’t fair. It just isn’t. Thank God for that.