Sermon September 3, 2006

Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm45:1-2,7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 “Lift up your hearts” the celebrant at Eucharist invites the people. They stand. “We lift them to the Lord.” …One of the ritual actions of our Sunday worship that echoes Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel reading. He reminds the Pharisees and us that it’s not so much what comes into a person’s body as what is within in the human heart that is important. For Jews of Jesus’ day and for Mark’s community the heart was not the source of mushy valentiney kind of emotion—but was the moral center of a person. Your moral ground is your heart. When we stand, lifting our hearts to the Lord we are making a statement. Mark depicts the opponents of Jesus’ as kind of caricatures. Mark’s Pharisees have declared themselves the authorities when it comes to interpreting the law and telling others how to follow it. They criticize Jesus and his disciples for not following the law and for eating food from the market with hands that had not been washed. Gentle Jesus meek and mild, he is NOT. He lashes out at them and quotes Isaiah accusing them of following the letter of the law but in their hearts being far from God. He calls them hypocrites a word that referred to actors on a stage who assume an identity that is not their own and who act to gain the approval of the audience. This is strong stuff—and hypocrites is a word we Christians hear about ourselves a lot. At least if you talk to non-church goers that’s how we are so often criticized—as hypocrites. Pretending to be something we are not. Jesus directs his critic’s attention away from their external actions to an examination of their own interior selves. To their hearts—to their evil intentions. Those he says are what really defile a person, not the failure to carry out some ritual act. Now of course you and I belong to a tradition that puts a lot of emphasis on ritual—we are among the most ritualistic of Christians. We come here week in and week out and pretty much do the same things every Sunday. We stand, we sit, we kneel, we sing, we pray, we give thanks, we bow, we scrape, we, some of us, genuflect, we, some of us, make the sign of the cross, the priest washes his or her hands before celebrating communion, we pass the peace, we lift up the cup and the bread toward the roof (where we are sure heaven is), and then toward the people, we eat the wafer and drink the wine, we clean the dishes and put the leftovers away very carefully, we go out the door into the world. All ritual. Do we do these things to earn God’s favor? or what? What is the relationship between these ritual actions and our hearts? Is it possible to come here every Sunday, do these things, and leave this place and commit fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride and folly? You bet! Are we a people who can get all up tight like these caricature Pharisees did about the letter of the Law and doing things the way we’ve always done it? You bet! Some of you may remember what it was like to revise our prayerbook, or move the altar out from the wall, or have the priest face the congregation during the Eucharist, not to mention women priests. . . . Or, just consider moving these pews to a new configuration, consider a jazz mass at 8 o’clock (AM), consider extemporaneous prayer, consider the acolyte draping the lavabo towel (the what??) over his left arm instead of his right arm, consider acolytes in flip flops. AAAAAAKKKK! What’s essential? Is there only one way to express reverence? Would we rather focus on these matters than the state of our hearts? Your heart? My heart? You bet! As usual, Jesus has a point. Think for a moment about ritual. How it expresses our hearts deepest convictions, how it helps to form our hearts, how it sustains us and bores us, and reminds us, in ways we hardly notice, that there is a God who is stable and loving, and there is a divine order. It’s like teaching your child manners. So what’s the big deal if the little boy eats with his mouth open, macaroni spilling out—or so what if the family never eats a meal together. Or why care if the little girl forgets to say thank you. If she forgets often enough she may forget she has anything to be thankful about. She may begin to think instead that she is deserving—she may develop a sense of privilege. She may. At our best, our ritual actions spring from the posture of our hearts. Toward one another and toward God. Hence we bow sometimes, kneel sometimes, stand sometimes, praise sometimes, bewail our manifold sins sometimes, ask for forgiveness from God and each other, the priest washes her hands symbolically reminding us perhaps of our baptism, perhaps of the fact that no matter how much of a hypocrite the priest is, when she celebrates communion she’s been washed and the people receiving the communion can count on God to do the washing and to be present no matter the state of the priest’s heart (or which arm the lavabo towel is on). The Law—obedience to the Torah—was and is not about hygiene and it is not about earning favor with God. It is about offering a witness to this world of ours—this tired and often chaotic world of ours—that there is a loving God who is dependable. There is order. Ritual action is about defining who you are and to whom your allegiance is. At our best our rituals help form our hearts into the hearts they were born to be. Our rituals and the very ritual of our coming together every week to turn intentionally to God to say thank you-- these help change us from hypocrites to persons of integrity. As the letter of James points out “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above coming down from the Father of lights”—who never changes. That loving abundance is the gift first given—opening our hearts to receive it is a key to becoming Jesus-people, folks who cannot NOT respond in love to God and to our neighbors. I read the other day that Albert Schweitzer, turned away from his highly accomplished career as a philosopher, musician and theologian to become a doctor in heart of Africa in the early years of the 20th century.* He wrote: ”For years I have been giving of myself in words,” but now, he wanted to walk the talk and live a more authentic life. Or, as he put it, “My life is my argument.” . . . .”be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves,” as James puts it. And the truth is that we long to grow up into Christ so that our words and actions, our hearts and our rituals, may be congruent—authentic and real. We aren’t there yet, we’re all hypocrites “playing a role that isn’t entirely ours yet.” Some of us perhaps come here to persuade God that we are worthy. To earn heavenly credits. And, yes, it’s possible to do the rituals, speak the words, eat the bread and drink the wine and forget why we do them. An autopsy might find our hearts shrunken and our arteries clogged. A police report or our own family members might find our that actions speak louder than our words. But we come here because we’ve been invited to the feast given by the God of abundance. We come here indeed to lift up our hearts. And, we come to subject ourselves to the ritual acts, trusting that saying thank you, praising God, passing the peace, asking for forgiveness, eating the bread and drinking the wine will indeed soften our hearts and unclutch our hands and gentle our spirits. And, in the world outside we practice other ritual actions: we practice loving and serving, caring for widows and orphans, forgiving our friends and enemies, standing with the poor and working for justice and healing. We do so NOT to earn our salvation or God’s approval. We do so in response to God’s abundant love, and as we do so, we open ourselves to the flow of God’s transforming grace until we too can say, ”My life is my argument.” * Stephen Bauman, Simple Truths: On Values, Civility, and Our Common Good, Abingdon Press: Nashville,TN,2006, p. 83

Sermon 8.27.06

John 6:56-69; Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Ephesians 6:10-20; Psalm 34:15-22 “Do you also wish to go away?” Jesus asks his closest friends, “Do you also wish to go away?” away—that is—from me? I’ve often wondered about his tone of voice right there. The emotion that might have been in it. Was he curious? A little angry? Feeling misunderstood? Afraid even? I knew a woman once who spent much of her time making it difficult for others to be friends with her. Making it hard to be in relationship with her. By the time she was about my age, she hardly had anyone in her life that she could call a friend. She’d rejected, criticized, mocked, ignored, hurt, almost everyone who came close—even her own children found they couldn’t be around her. On her death bed she told the hospice nurse that everyone had gone away. She was abandoned. “Do you want to go away too?” she asked. The question hung there in the air. After a bit, the nurse assured her that no, she would not abandon her. But later she confided in me that actually she did—she did want to go away—because this woman was so demanding, so critical, so impossible to care for. She was searching for ways to care for this woman without resenting her—to care for her with love. The fear of abandonment runs deep in most of us—almost everyone of us has felt abandoned at some point. It starts early-- in elementary school when the little girl we thought was our best friend suddenly abandoned us for another more exciting child. And, some of us were abandoned in significant ways by our parents—ignored when we needed help, left to fend for ourselves in the face of danger. Others have known the feelings of abandonment that come with the death of a parent or sibling, or with divorce. One of my closest friends was abandoned by her husband who left her and their two little boys when she was 7 months pregnant. She could hardly leave her house for almost two years she was so wounded and at loss. Maybe there was some hint in Jesus’ voice of foreboding—some knowledge that at the end of his life his friends would leave—leave him alone to face death. Maybe there was some fear—some grief in that voice. But, I suspect there was compassion as well. Jesus’ words are spirit and life—but they are hard to understand—hard to accept—hard to trust—hard even to imagine. That was true then—and I venture to say its true now. Today. Right here. ”Whoever eats me will live because of me.” “The one who eats this bread will live forever—not like the bread your ancestors ate—and then they died.” And if that isn’t enough, how about, “what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” Or, ”no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Is there a choice or not here? What does live forever mean in the here and now? These are difficult sayings, and it would be preposterous for me to tell you that I fully understand them. But, I have heard Jesus asking me that question, “Pat, do you also wish to go away?” Like my hospice nurse friend I have to admit that there have been times in my life when the answer was yes. Because there have been times in my life when the darkness seemed too dark to be penetrated by God. There was a time when I stood beside a mother whose son had just been brain damaged unto death in a skate board accident. I thought about going away—being somewhere else. I wondered for just a moment if Jesus were there or if we had been abandoned and left to our own devices—that mother and I. “Do you also wish to go away?” How about the times when I catch myself lying—to avoid the truth. How about the times when I refuse to look the man on the corner in the eye. I don’t want to see the face of poverty. How about the times I read the headlines and lapse into fear. I eat the bread of anxiety. Then there are the moments when I let the depth of the ecological crisis into my mind and heart and I want to run away from the truth and live in some delusion. How about those times when I consider the life changes my faith might require of me—or the ones that might be forced upon me—and wonder if I can trust that letting go might actually bring new life. “Do you also wish to go away?” Sometimes I answer yes because I fear that I cannot (or rather will not have the courage) to choose Jesus’ way. Sometimes I get so satiated on the bread of anxiety that fills our televisions, newspapers, radio waves, airports and neighborhoods—sometimes I am so stuffed with that bread that I can’t make room for the Jesus bread. Sometimes, to be honest, I begin to move away because I am not sure I can trust that the bread of Jesus will actually feed when I need it most. “Lord, to whom can we go?” says Peter. “You have the words of eternal life and we have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Believe here for Peter means give yourself to—means give your heart to. Peter says he and his friends—have given their hearts to him and that’s all there is to it. There is no one else to go to. Of course, many of us have probably tried some others—we’ve gone to others in your search for life—for the divine. Maybe we’ve tried drugs, or alcohol, or success, or possessions—or maybe we’ve tried to escape to a fantasy world. Perhaps you’ve tried other faiths, and you may have found solace or prayer practices or ways of understanding the world there that have enriched your life. I know more than one faithful Buddhist Episcopalian. ...But for some reason you are here. Here today in this church. Hoping against hope maybe that here in this someone Jesus you’ll find who and what you are looking for. The hardest thing about Jesus is that the God he proclaims—the Father that he was so in tune with—the divinity that flowed through him is outrageous. Is unthinkable. Is not what we expected. Is so inverted—so paradoxical—so unlikely—that we can’t take it in. Not just the words we can’t quite grasp—but the actions—the life of Jesus. God in the flesh. Incarnate. One of us. Among us. Not the rescuer on the white horse. Not the distant clock maker leaving his clocks to run themselves down and occasionally winding one up. God’s power seemingly weak in human flesh. Vulnerable. Love in its vulnerability risking pain. Standing up before the earthly powers that be—the violence of his day—and waiting in love. Living, breathing, crying, laughing, suffering, abandoned by his friends, ridiculed—you name it. Ascending to the place he came from on a cross. Jesus is --we dare to say in our clearest moments-- God with us. We have come here really because of the question, “Do you also wish to go away?” We’ve come to answer it. And no matter what shape we’ve come in, no matter the quality of our faith or our doubts, no matter how much bread of anxiety we’ve consumed this week—no matter. Our coming here is our answer. Instead of leaving we have come. And, we’ve come because somewhere, sometime in our lives we’ve asked that same question, “Do you also wish to go away?” We’ve asked it of God. We’ve come to believe that in Jesus we know God’s own answer. In Jesus we know we are never alone—never abandoned—never left to our own devices. Standing with the mother and me—in the wounds of the abandoned wife—in the man standing on the corner and with me, my eyes averted. And by the granting of the Father, “the grace of God” we can keep on drawing near—keep on seeking—keep on searching here in this place and in every place we find ourselves—keep on opening ourselves to the depths and heights of the love of God that is at work in us-- setting us free to live as God’s own outrageous, unlikely, unthinkable—really—people. Christians.

Sermon, August 6, 2006

John 6.24-35; Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 “What is it?” manna—that’s what the word manna means: “What is it?” The people of God were sustained in the wilderness by what is it. Manna that food provided by God that is to be collected only enough for one day—it can’t be saved for the next day. Can’t be flash-frozen. Can’t be salted away. Can’t be packed in barns. Can only be collected for the day. Give us this day our daily bread. What is it? The people haven’t been out of Egypt and slavery that long really. But freedom they’ve discovered has it’s own set of fears. Fear has distorted their memories. They yearn for the fleshpots of Egypt while they criticize their leaders. Fleshpots. I love that word. No, it isn’t beer bellies. And, no it isn’t about strip joints. It’s about pots of meat to eat. In their hunger and their fear the Israelites remember the meat and the bread they ate in Egypt. Their fear distorts their memory. All they can remember is the good old days (of slavery and forced labor). Maybe in your own life you’ve known this way that fear works. To distort the memory.. God hears their murmurings and complaints and sends them quail (fleshpots) and manna (bread). Today we think that manna was probably bug juice—something contemporary Bedouins still collect on a daily basis—flakes of carbs and sugars left by plant lice that feed on the tamarisk tree in the desert. Whatever it was—bug juice or some other kind of bread, the people don’t recognize it as bread. It wasn’t like any loaf or piece of bread they’d ever seen: not like pita even, or doughnuts, or multigrain. . . . I asked for bread. What is this? . . . Their vulnerability has been matched by God’s generosity—but they haven’t a clue—because manna doesn’t meet their expectations. Fear does that, doesn’t it? It not only distorts your memory, but it limits your expectations of what’s coming. It shrinks your imagination—at least of the good. That’s been my experience. How many times have I prayed for deliverance, and then not recognized it when it came to me? How many times have I prayed for help and not liked who brought it? How many times have I prayed sure that I knew just what I needed (brioche)—only to find in retrospect that what I wanted would have been death? There is a level at which we simply must read this story as a story about hunger for food—real food—food for bodies. You need sustenance for your body if you are going to cross the desert. You need: Water. Quail. Manna. When we hear this story and we can’t help but think about the millions of people starving to death in our world today. Not back sometime in the distant past. But today. I’ve read that ¼ of humankind is living in abject poverty this Sunday. That’s about 1.3 billion people. 33,000 children starve to death every single day. What is it? What about them? The truth is that there is enough food to feed all the bodies on the earth right now. The food is here. But we humans who have enough to eat haven’t been willing, or able, or imaginative, or courageous enough to get it to those who need it. And, of course, as I say those words I can hear your mind—coming up with all the disastrous long-term consequences of such distributions, preparing your remarks to deliver to me as you leave this place this morning—to remind me of the political and economic realities of our world—or perhaps you are merely shrugging the shoulders of your mind and saying, “not me, I couldn’t make that happen. I’m not responsible” But, you and I know one other thing: God’s generosity calls us to feed the hungry. But to read this story as only a story about bread—literal, physical bread: brioche, sour dough, or muffin—is to do it an injustice. That’s made perfectly clear in Jesus’ interactions with the seekers who come to him asking for bread—just after he’s fed the 5,000. They keep talking about bread and manna, and he keeps pushing them deeper, or higher, or wider, or more fantastically, or more truthily. It’s a travesty really to only read Scripture literally. Those who do so expect they are going to find the truth—but at least in today’s Gospel story, it’s clear that the physical, literal level of these feedings yields only a hint of God’s truth to be revealed. Jesus keeps pointing to something else. What is it? What is it that we seek? Physical hunger is real. That’s the truth—but everyone, whether they are starving for food, or so overfed that they are stuffed---everyone hungers. Hungers for meaning, hungers to be called to their best selves, hungers for relationship, hungers for new life, hungers for God. “Don’t work for food that perishes,” says Jesus, “work for the food that endures for eternal life.” The food that sustains the fullness of life. Just recently I heard a real-life story about a young man I know. When I last saw him he was pursuing the American dream—wife, child, house, bigger house, bigger house, money, more money, most money. Necessary things, desired things, things beyond your wildest desires. Then there was a divorce, a trip to a foreign land, visits to temples, with monks, tears, dark nights, letting goes, finding himself—his art, long ago left behind. His generosity—not practiced for a long time. Tuning his eyes to see the manna along his path—like nothing he’d ever seen before. Tiny. Nothing he’d looked for or imagined. He’s been born again. There is creativity and joy. Relationship with his child. Peace. Connection with the divine. What is it? He thought he’d lost it all. Family, possessions, job, reputation, whatever. Manna came to him in loss. in vulnerability. In sharing. In giving up the hoarding, the grasping, and storing, the plotting and planning. In emptiness. Bug juice. What seems like loss can contain a gift. God works that way sometimes. You and I know that. “Sir, give us this bread always.” God love them. God love us—we who seek. We who think we know what we need. Give us this bread. Always. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. The bread we seek is always being offered by the God who loves us. But, when it is offered, our question is, “What is it?” Because we’d imagined it the way we imagined it. Not the way it comes. We’re used to taking care of ourselves, providing our own bread. Storing it up, protecting it. Keeping it for a rainy day. There are those who are starving for bread and meat—literally. We are related to them. Most of us here have more than we need. Maybe just maybe. The manna that is coming our way today, in this place and time is the manna of the small, the beneath us, the manna that requires our letting go. The manna that invites us to slowdown. To collect for only one day. To depend on God in new ways. Acknowledge our vulnerability, live into our dependence on God and our interdependence—our most desperate hunger for connection. As I drove my car through town the other day, I looked at all the other cars at the intersection. Each one had one person in it-- individuals isolated in their cars—all of us heading to our own private destinations. I thought about how Jesus told the seekers, “I am the bread. Believe in the one that God has sent. Believe in me.” To believe is not some act of the mind. To believe in or into Jesus as John puts it is to commit to, to be in solidarity with Jesus. Words like loyalty, abiding, love, being faithful to—those are words that describe believing in Jesus What is it? We hardly recognize it any more--this bread that invites us into relationship. . . . Give us this day our daily bread. This bread that invites us to the table to be fed—and calls us and enables us to go out into the world to share. Just today. Every day.

Sermon, July 2, 2006

Mark5:21-43; Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24 I got a call from a chaplain not long ago to go visit a woman who is under the care of hospice—a woman who is dying. I went and took communion with me. After communion, I offered to pray for her and asked her if she had any special requests. I waited in the silence, holding her frail hand in mine. She asked me to pray for a friend, who is ill, and for her daughter. That was a holy moment that moment. From the lips of a woman near the end of her own life came prayer requests for others—that their lives might be blessed by God. Our little reading from Wisdom this morning affirms that God created all things that they might exist—have life. It sings the praises of the generative forces—of creativity and tells us that God takes no delight in the death of the living. And, in our gospel reading we come face to face with Jesus the healer, whose energy for healing can be tapped from behind and even by one who is sick unto death. This generative force in Jesus—a sign of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom is in evidence throughout Mark’s Gospel. Jesus goes about his ministry healing all kinds of people—of all kinds of disease. Today’s story interrupted by another story is all about healing and faith. The faith of the woman who reaches out to touch Jesus’ cloak—and the faith of Jairus the leader of the synagogue, whose daughter is ill. Both of them fall down at Jesus feet—they are made one in that. In their need, in their desire for healing, in their turning to Jesus they are united. It gives you a picture really of one way in which we are made one in Christ—this image of the two people—so different, one a leader, highly respected the other a woman who has suffered much and lost all her resources in her frantic search for healing. No matter their differences—in their need for healing they are made one—at the feet of Jesus. In their humility we see their unity. Perhaps you have experienced this kind of unity with others in an emergency room—a place in our society where those in urgent need come together in their hope for healing. In an emergency room you find yourself sitting next to others who may be very different from you. But all are there in their common humanity and need. Not all are healed—not all have their diseases cured. You and I know that. Life is fragile and people get sick and die. And the power of medicine—whether Western or Eastern or any other kind seems to go only so far. And when we look out on our world today if we’re honest I think we’d have to say that there are days when we’re not so sure that God’s power for healing, that generative energy for life—is at work. There are moments when we consider our world and we have to wonder: and its not just the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, in Palestine, the Sudan or Colombia, or the condition of the environment. . . it comes closer to home than that—when we consider the divisions and sickness in our own lives—our country, our cities, our families, even in our Episcopal church these days—so much in the news. If healing is about wholeness and unity then you have to wonder—you have to wonder. Like the folks who laughed at Jesus when he said that the girl was not dead, just sleeping—we have to laugh. Who is he kidding? We mourners—we know death when we see it. We know death. Whether it’s the death of the little girl or the living death of the woman who had bled for 12 years—we know about death. You and I. We know its ways—and we can see it clearly. We know what it’s like to be the bringers of the sad news: “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” How often have you seen death, identified death, and given up hope? Have there been times when all seemed lost? In your own life—in the life of a loved one? Some things just seem intractable and we aren’t at all sure that there is any power on earth that can change them. Most of us have known such times. Known losses that make us wonder if we can go on.. “Why trouble the teacher any more?” These stories about Jesus and the woman and the little girl—one sick for twelve years, the other born just as the woman’s illness began—are not just stories about healings. Surely they are reminders to us about the deepest of all truths—the one the Wisdom passage hints at. They are stories about Jesus—about his suffering, death, and resurrection. Biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine says that “Women’s bodies in this story provide a model for the body of Christ.” Their suffering is a model for Christ’s suffering, their healing a model for his resurrection. Like Jesus’ own death, the little girl dies surrounded by commotion and mockery. And at her healing the people are “overcome with amazement.” The word in Greek is ekstasis—the word used only one other time in Mark’s Gospel—at the end --when the women at the tomb are told that Jesus has risen from the dead. And if the stories provide a model for the body of Christ surely they are a model for us as the body of Christ. Here’s where the rubber hits the road. Here on a Sunday morning when we come together in our need to fall at the feet of Jesus—you might say if you were an evangelical. Here on a Sunday morning when we come to kneel at the communion rail to be fed—here we are made one in Christ. And here week in a week out we travel the path on the border between life and death—breath and stillness. Here we bring our deathliness to the source of life—praying, hoping against hope that the generative energy of God will heal us—make us whole and give us a new beginning. This meal first celebrated when Jesus was at the very edge of his own life—facing into the certainty of death—is the meal we turn to for life. It is grounded not only in his dying, but in his rising. That is the ground of our being. The ground of our hope. That dying and that rising. And perhaps you and I find ourselves here because we in some sense—in some part of ourselves—are like the little girl. We are dying or have died. Our losses have overwhelmed us. The breath has been knocked out of us—our hopes have been dashed. We wouldn’t think to bother the teacher, really. In our hearts we might laugh at the notion that life could come out of death. Yet, here we are: you and I. Maybe it’s just habit that brings us, or maybe it’s our longing. Our longing to hear those words, “Talitha cumi.” “Little girl get up!” Czelaw Milosz, the Nobel prize poet once wrote a poem after attending mass on this very day in the liturgical year. A reading this Sunday from the Book of Wisdom About how God has not made death And does not rejoice in the annihilation of the living. A reading from the Gospel according to Mark About a little girl to whom He said: Talitha cumi! This is for me. To make me rise from the dead And repeat the hope of those who lived before me. Like the woman I visited who is dying—you and I live at the edge of life and yet we live into hope—that precious life-giving hope of resurrection. This is who we are. AMEN

Sermon, July 16, 2006

[I invite you to stand in the silence this morning and greet the person to your right and to your left by bowing, with your hands together like this in front of your chest—your heart. Greet one another acknowledging the divine in each of us. Take your time. Now greet others who are around you this way…] 2 Samuel 6:1-5; Mark 6:14-29 When was the last time you danced with all your might? Or, whirled with all your might? When did you let go and let your body express your joy in dance? In our society dancers tend to be young people—and dance isn’t always an expression of joy—if you’ve ever been near a mosh pit, you’ll know what I mean. At my younger son’s wedding a few months back we joined in circle and folk dancing after the meal. It was late and the dancing was short, but there is nothing like that feeling of your whole body moving to the beat of the music, and the interaction with others as you take hands and dance your joy. I was on retreat last week learning and practicing healing prayer and meditation—and we began every morning by moving our bodies and dancing together. Not in couples—in community. We even danced to Stevie Wonder one morning. We spent a lot of time during the week in quiet, meditating—so it was especially good to be able to pray every morning with our bodies moving. David dances with wild abandon—whirling with all his might as the Ark—the symbol of God’s presence in the midst of the people—is brought back from the Philistines to a united community—to the City of David. He expresses his joy, and no doubt the joy of the people, by dancing. There are songs and lyres, and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. Just imagine that! As if that weren’t enough, there was loud shouting and the sound of the trumpet! And David was leaping and dancing. [This clearly was not Episcopal worship!] Although David’s wife Michal might represent the thinking of some higher Anglican-types—she despised him in her heart—and later complained of his unseemly behavior.] Dancing is considered a normal expression of joy and praise to God in Hebrew Scriptures. And in Jewish custom and in the early church—in fact in the church throughout the Middle Ages dancing—circle dances, processional dances—was a part of worship. Of liturgy. Clergy and laity alike danced. The people of God danced. They didn’t just pray with their minds, and their words—they prayed with their bodies—by dancing. I suppose the remnants of this kind of worship can be found in our stately processions, and in the bowing and kneeling and other bodily gestures we make—with great Anglican restraint. What happened to dancing? Did you notice that at our Big Event—our parish party last year—not many people danced—many more watched from a safe distance than danced. Why are so many of us embarrassed to dance—find the notion of dancing in church to be so foreign—so something I could maybe watch—but not do. I can’t dance. “Liturgical dance when its done professionally,” we say, “is fine—once in awhile. But—don’t involve me—not me.” How was that this morning when you greeted one another with a bow? Honoring the divine within them? How is that different from just nodding to them? How is that different from nodding at them, or smiling, or saying perhaps, “God bless”? What happened to dancing? . . . Oh, yes, Herod and his wife and their daughter. Oh, yes, them. Feminine wiles—suggestive dancing—Salome (or Herodias perhaps). Manipulation—trickery—death. Gruesome death—laid at the feet of dancing. That must be it. Dancing is dangerous because when women dance it pleases men—and then you know what happens next. . . dum de dum dum. As time passed and clergy became the doers and the laity the watchers in the liturgy—and as the effort to control grew—then dance had to go. And its dangers were tied to stories like this one—an abject lesson if there ever was one. About the dangers of dance. And of girls and of women. Poor Herod. Poor poor Herod. This is not a story about dancing. It is a story about power and its abuse—or it’s a story about the cost of telling the truth to power—or it’s a story of how the ghosts of the past can rise up to undo you—or maybe it’s a story about how the powers that be may blow out a candle but never manage to put out God’s fire. And, of course, it’s a story about Jesus—and about who he is. It’s the longest single story in Mark’s gospel and it comes just after Jesus sends his disciples out to preach and heal, and just before they come back to report on their successes. John’s already dead at this point—but word of Jesus is spreading and that brings John back to life, you might say. People are asking, just who this Jesus is—is he a prophet? Is he Elijah? Where does his power come from? Herod who has killed John thinks John must have come back to life. He apparently can’t bear to think that there could be two such powerful folks roaming his territory. And Mark tells us that Herod actually liked to listen to John—but he threw him in jail because he’d dared to speak the truth. John told him and his wife Herodias—who happened to be divorced from his half-brother Philip—that their marriage wasn’t lawful—not under Jewish law. No doubt this was something most folks had figured out for themselves. But probably not many spoke the words out loud—not to Herod’s face. Herodias, the wife, sees how this truth-telling could be damaging to Herod’s honor—not to mention her own. It’s a sick little story this one—and it’s about the powers that be—for those gathered for the birthday celebration are the court nobles, the army officers and the leading Galileans—the inner circle of power (you know, government officials, military and business leaders—those types. It’s a shameless story about how living a lie catches up with you—and how the decision-making in this circle of power results in the death of one already silenced, just so that the face of the King can be saved. Imagine being one of those in attendance. Imagine yourself sitting through this debacle. What would you be thinking when Herod makes his ridiculous offer to the girl—who may have been around 10 or 12—Imagine what you think when she comes back. When he orders the guard to execute John. When he returns with the head on a platter. When it is given to the girl. Just imagine. What it is like to watch this tragedy unfold. Do you suppose anyone dares to speak? Does anyone dare to make a joke? Applaud? Is anyone sick to their stomach? Who turns away and pretends it isn’t happening? So many morals to the story. Find the silent party-goer in yourself watching quietly as the powers that be save face through killing. Find the Herod in myself more concerned about what people think of me than anything else. Find the Herodias in yourself still a child but thrilling to the power given you for the moment. Find the wife in you—trapped in the consequences of living a lie—so afraid of the truth spoken out loud—that you lash out to silence it. Find the John in you punished for speaking the truth, powerless before the powers-that-be. And then of course, there is the Holy One. Find the Holy One in you. For this little story is a part of a much larger and much deeper story. Mark reminds us of the cost of following Jesus—by reminding us of the cost paid by the one who came before him. Jesus and his followers will not have an easy time of it when it comes to speaking the truth to power. There is a cost to exposing the truth. To living lives that provide evidence of God’s resurrecting power at work. This story is a prologue to the story of Jesus’ death and Jesus’ resurrection. Death never is the final word. God’s new order comes—and no King can change that. Herod uses his power to protect himself from the truth. He doesn’t really have a clue about who he is dealing with. He’s been attracted to John—but he hasn’t come close enough to let his message work its transformation. The Ark—that presence of God in the midst of the people. Who is this Jesus? For us, he is the Ark. His life, death, and resurrection full of God’s Godness in our midst. Mostly people didn’t notice. Or they are intrigued, but keep their distance. They didn’t dance. They don’t whirl. Years ago I watched the New Year’s dances at Taos Pueblo just before dawn with the temperature just about 0—the boys and men danced—dressed kind of like David in his linen ephod—hardly clothed at all. We who watched wore long underwear, parkas, and wool pants, and stomped our heavy boots just to keep our feet from freezing. The dancers just had moccasins and some were bare footed. They whirled with all their might—and in their ecstasy they praised the Holy One and gave thanks for the gift of life. It’s one thing to watch --and another to dance. To dance is to know the resurrection in our bodies. To find the Holy One in you is to dance. Dance then wherever you may be.

Sermon June 25, 2006

Mark: 4:35-41 I’m struck by all the silences in this little story from Mark’s gospel. I imagine Jesus and his friends at dusk—that time when the sun is setting, and there’s that mixture of dwindling light and dawning darkness. He’s told them to take the boat across the Lake. They’re heading to the other side—the place of the Gentiles—outsiders—a place of discomfort. They’re tired too—it’s been a long day—and so I imagine them setting out with a good deal of silence among them. And, Jesus even falls asleep—maybe just then you could have heard his sleepy breathing in the silence of the dusk. An in-between time and an in-between place. Years ago when I was still a teen-ager, I spent a couple of summers up on Lake Huron visiting a friend and working as a maid in the resort on an island. Every week we took a break from our chores to participate in a sailboat race. The only race I can remember was really exciting. The 3 of us who usually raced together were often late to the race—this time was no exception, we jumped in the sailboat, got it ready kind of on the way to the starting line. We made excellent time too I might add—for the wind was nice and strong. At the starting line I noticed that all the other boats had four or five people in them—one even had six. This was unusual but I didn’t think much about it. At the sound of the starting gun we were off—and I mean off—our sailboat flew across the lake—and we were a busy threesome, As the wind picked up we had to put our bodies more and more over the side just to keep the boat from tipping over. We were definitely winning this race—far ahead of all the other boats—they were weighed down with the extra crew members. We were holding on for dear life, our bodies so far out over the side of the boat that I thought I was holding on with my toes. I glanced back at our skipper—and noticed her face was very white—underneath that summer tan! I was beginning to think I knew why the other boats had more people in them. We flew up to the buoy where we were to turn. “Ready about” the captain screamed, and then “coming about…” the boom flew from one side to the other, and then just as we moved to the other side of the boat. . .the mast cracked—it broke into two pieces and the sail enveloped us in white. No one was injured. After we crawled out from under the sail, we simply watched as the other boats sailed past us. After the race a friend came to retrieve us, he towed us in--past all the other boats. I think of this race when I hear this strange story from Mark. I think of how impossible it is to believe that anyone could actually sleep through a storm on a lake. I think of how I would have been screaming at whoever was in the back asleep—screaming at him to wake up and do his part. H-e-e-e-l-p! Don’t you care? Don’t you care about us? We’re drowning. And you know when we come to that moment in the story. When Jesus’ friends so filled with fear cry out to him, “Don’t you care?” A second silence falls—the silence before the storm is stilled. This one is a silence in the midst of the uproar—the winds howling all around them. Jesus asleep. In their fear they cry out the question that all of us—faithful and faithless cry out when things are tough and God seems absent. Like the three teenagers in their ignorance maybe the disciples with their experience have sailed their boat out onto the lake sure of their skills. There is one thing they know and that is how to sail a boat. But this storm that comes up suddenly it seems, challenges their skill. They try everything they know how to do—and the waters are in the boat now. And one thing sailors know is that the lake doesn’t care. When the winds and waters rise the lake doesn’t care. So maybe this is a place you’ve been in—or maybe you are there right now. And maybe like the friends of Jesus you’ve dared to utter that question, “Do you care?” “Where are you?” and there is silence. . . . In our story, Jesus rises and speaks from his own silence—to quiet the winds. “Peace,” he says, and there is peace. And another silence I imagine. What sailors call a dead calm, perhaps. No sound. No movement. Stillness. . . . Jesus himself seems amazed at their fear and what he calls their lack of faith. Their lack of trust. The way they forgot their center maybe—in their fear and reliance on their experience and training—they forgot who they really were and that he was with them. This may be the crux of it all. The way we forget who we are and who God is—we forget that no matter how absent God seems or how fearful we get—we are not alone in the boat. The waters are dangerous. Not all trips will end happily—there is the real possibility of death. And when we’re up against that kind of moment we so often turn to our own devices—until they don’t seem to be enough. I sympathize with the disciples. I’ve been there—done that—more than once. My parents raised me to be self-reliant. And there are times when there is so little evidence that God is in the boat at all. This issue for Mark wasn’t so much that Jesus calmed the storm and the waters. Waters were considered mostly to be the realm of evil and anyone who could control them would be a powerful person indeed. For Mark though, the moment of truth comes after the calming, when the friends of Jesus ask the final question, “Who are you?” “Who is this?” Who is the man who acts in ways no one would expect. He’s just a carpenter you know—he’s acting way beyond his place. We don’t know where to put him. Mark’s whole gospel focuses on this constant question, “Who is this?” And in the boat, the awed disciples I rather imagine ask their question, and then fall into silence. . . . Who is this? Mark’s readers probably would have known. Only God could calm the waters. But the story ends with the question. And the silence. . . . This is how it is for us. We are ones who ask the question—live into that question. Others have never asked, or gave up asking long ago. But we come here week in and week out pondering the question—living into it. Oh, there is a level at which we know the answer—you and I know who this is—at least something of who this is. And we know that we have been called into the boat with Jesus to go to the other side—where folks are different, where we are challenged as Paul puts it to open our hearts wide. The journey itself can be challenging—even the folks in the boat with us challenge us to open our hearts wide. Sometimes we live as though we’ve forgotten the answer to the question. We get fearful. We rely on our own devices. We hate it that death and danger are real. We keep trying to turn the boat around and go back—go back to the shore, to the comfort of the known—but somehow in our faithfulness and our faithlessness, we keep on. And we are never alone. The One who is with us, who from the calm in his own heart can calm the storm—is the One who bears his own scars of the journey. God-with-us. The scars are important—but they aren’t the last word. Whatever this story is about—most surely it is about this journey across the lake—the journey of the church (after all you are sitting in the nave right now—the boat—just look up at those rafters and their shape. And, yes, you are sitting in the boat upside down—which may give you pause ). It’s about the journey of our own denomination to the Other Side. Its about the journey of our own little lives. Yours and mine. Our calling to venture out into the waters toward the Other Side. Maybe you can discern the movement of God in your own life today calling you to leave the comfort of what you know and to journey into the unknown. This is the journey of faith: this living into the questions. In it we are transformed and set free.

VACATION

Hey, I'm on vacation and I'm three sermons behind in posting. What can I say,except I'm sorry--for not posting sooner--not for the vacation. I'll be back in a week and get at least up to date before I'm off again for some continuing ed and more vacation. Thanks for your understanding, Pat

Sermon Trinity Sunday 6.1.2006

I went to see Al Gore’s movie this week: An Inconvenient Truth. It’s about global warming. And I urge you to see it, no matter your feelings about Al Gore, no matter your political persuasion. It presents the facts about the state of our world today and the impact of our living on the world. The truth it presents is not only inconvenient—especially to us living in this country—but it is a hard truth in many ways. But it is not a movie that leaves you hopeless. Not at all. It left me thinking not only about my own life—and lifestyle—but about the Trinity. Just imagine that. Today is Trinity Sunday—the one time a year when we focus on a doctrine --a teaching of the church about God—the nature of the God we worship. As you might guess from our lessons this morning, the word Trinity does not appear in Scripture. Here we have lessons that range from Isaiah’s encounter with God (and those magnificent six-winged seraphim singing the song we now call “Sanctus”), to Paul’s reflection on the movement of the Spirit in our lives, to that wonderful and mysterious conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus that ends in one of the most quoted lines from Scripture. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, Beloved, Lover, Love, God Beyond, Among, Within, or as one contemporary writer describes it: Source, Wellspring, and Living Water. This is a mystery—not a puzzle to be solved. At least that is how I think about God. No words are adequate to describe God. All of our efforts merely point toward—represent—hint at the Holy One—and today I want to focus not on thinking about God so much as on the question of what difference does the Trinity make in our daily living. How’s that for a question? How is your life different everyday because of the Trinity? Whoa. You and I come here week in and week out to worship God, to hear the stories that shape our lives, we pray together, praise together, and leave this place hopefully a little more connected, a little more transformed, a little more equipped to live out our lives as people of faith in the world outside. This morning we will baptize a baby, Cameron—we will pray together that Cameron will grow up into the stature of Christ. The truth is our prayer is that not only Cameron but that we ourselves will grow up into Christ. Grow up into the fullness of who we were created to be. And that’s really where the Trinity comes in. In that growing up we are called to. Our prayer is that by God’s grace we will be taken up into the divine life and fulfill the destiny we were created for. The Trinity is not something we Christians just think, the Trinity is something we live into. Whatever the Trinity is about—this triune God—it is about how three are one and one is three. This is a paradox—but one we know something of. The Trinity is about relationship—it is about a complex web of mutuality and activity. It is about participation in one another’s lives. It is about radical equality. It is creativity, on-going creativity. We tend to get caught up in thinking about God in static terms. And I must confess the words in our liturgy don’t help us to break out of this thinking. The Father (the first), he’s up here at the top, the Son, the Child (the second), he’s next right about here, and the Spirit (the third), . . . he or she or it maybe is right here, hovering in the lower realms. We put them in a hierarchical order that never changes. We forget perhaps the movement we know in our own lives between parent and child. We forget that you can’t be a parent without a child. Any parent here no matter ow authoritarian knows the truth. The child gives way to the parent yes, but, the parent also gives way to the child. There is nothing static, nothing is fixed in concrete. You can’t be the beloved without a lover or without love. And love isn’t love without a lover or a beloved. You can’t be a lover without love or a beloved. There is mutuality here, and interconnectedness. Particularity, yes, but the trinity and we are woven into a web of life. What we say about God is that God is community. God is relationship. God is mutuality, energy, creativity, give and take, --movement, of relationship. The otherness of the three—their particularity as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier—is not cause for division or violence, but is cause for what we could call polyphony—that’s a musical term—and the musicians among us might correct me here—but I believe that polyphony is when simultaneously more than one note is sounded. That’s a good word for the trinity—polyphony. Difference that makes music—not war. This means something. This means something in our lives. In our daily living. God who is polyphonous community calls us to live in community—to recognize that who we are is not just isolated individuals—looking out for number one—as our culture tells us. I am a particular person, yes, but I am who I am most truly in my relationships—with you, with my family, with others, with this world—its features and creatures—and with God. You are you, there is no doubt about it—but you are who you are in relationship. Your difference from me is not a cause for me to judge you or reject you or even pick up a stone and fling it at you. Quite the opposite. The way of the Triune God calls me to recognize myself in others, and others in myself. We live our lives in a web of interconnection. That’s why I left the film about global warming thinking about the Trinity. How the Triune God—God’s threeness and oneness calls me to remember that I am related—I participate in the life of this planet. And it in me. I am one with the people of New Orleans, those in Myanmar, the people of Iraq and Sudan and Guantanamo. I am even one with the polar bears. The polar bears. We are connected. A couple of weeks ago I ran into an old friend who is a deacon in our church—in another diocese. She told me she was doing premarital counseling with a young couple who were to be married by her parish priest. The couple wanted to light a Unity Candle at their wedding, but the priest refused to let them do that. If you’ve never seen a unity candle lighting, it’s where the couple take two candles representing themselves and light one candle representing their new life together (the two shall become one) and then they blow out the two candles. Some priests don’t like this symbology. It implies that the two individuals disappear into oneness—(and of course it isn’t in the prayer book—so we Anglicans are almost positive that God doesn’t like it.) My friend asked me to come up with some reasons why the priest should go along with their request. The truth was that the couple only wanted to do it because their parents had done so. Ahh, tradition! I think perhaps the best thing to do would have been to let them light the candle, but keep the other candles lit, and preach about it! The oneness and the threeness. The ways in which we are constituted by those we are in contact with—especially with those we are most intimate with. The ways in which we participate in each other’s lives and the ways in which the music is made richer by our playing different notes at the same time. Last week on my day off I picked up my granddaughter Sawyer at school and we had a meal together. I’ve spent time with her once a week for just about all of her 6+ years. We call these days her Mamaw days. (The day her other local grandmother picks her up is her Mimi Day.) She told me over burritos in that way that children do, that love is something that lasts even when a person dies. I nodded. She explained that when I die she’ll still know I love her. And then when she dies, she will find me in heaven, and we’ll resume having our Mamaw days! Now I have to confess I don’t know exactly what heaven is like. But I do know that at 6, Sawyer like many—maybe most—children her age--has a piece of triune truth. Relationship is at the heart of God. . . I’ve learned much of what I know about love from loved ones who have died. I have watched them let go of everything—jobs, possessions, dreams, control, hobbies—the last thing to let go of is love—relationship. We need to pay attention to this. Whatever heaven is—who we are when we get there is who we have come to be in relationship—and whatever heaven is—it is community with the One in Three and Three in One. The Trinity makes a difference in our lives—our everyday lives. Holy, holy, holy God. Source, wellspring, living water, God beyond, among us and within. Amen. 1 My pondering for this sermon was informed and enriched by David S. Cunningham, These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. I commend the book to you.

SERMON 5.21.06

The Episcopal Church is in the news these days—as we prepare for our General Convention next month suddenly the media is taking an interest—in the possible split that could happen in our church. A split precipitated by the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop three years ago. The shock produced by the General Convention’s approval of a gay man as Bishop was an echo I think of our story from Acts this morning when the Spirit of God shows up in a totally scandalous way—at least to the Jewish followers of Jesus who had come with Peter to visit Cornelius—a Gentile. The Spirit falls on the Gentiles just as it had on Pentecost to the friends of Jesus. “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” I can only imagine the silence that filled the room. Silence in the face of the unrestrained activity of the Spirit—clear even to the ones who least expected it. And that question of course has continued to reverberate through the history of the church. “Can we withhold the water of baptism?” “Can we draw a circle around God’s wild activity that seemingly seeks always to draw us out to meet the other?” Dare we? Institutions like churches seem to thrive on trying to do just that: contain and demarcate. And you and I aren’t so bad at that either if we are honest. We’re always noticing and judging who is in and who is out. This isn’t Pentecost yet, you know. We’re still in the season of Easter—the time when we celebrate especially the gift of new life—the resurrecting power of God at work. So, we hear this little bit of a great story about the early church –and about the wild and senseless love of God—the Spirit of God—that crosses surprising boundaries—[And, I’ve heard a rumor—it’s just a rumor mind you, that the Spirit can even scale very tall and very long fences !]—wherever it moves, it brings people together.—people that by rights shouldn’t be together. You know what I mean. Gays and straights, progressives and conservatives, American and African Christians, men and women, grandparents and teens, fundamentalists and new agers, you and your son-in-law! Funny isn’t it. The juxtaposition of the story from Acts and the portion of John’s gospel we read. One about the boundaryless activity of the Holy Spirit—the other about abiding-- a small group of friends who are told to abide. To abide means to remain. To stay put. To be at home. You are my friends. Abide in my love. Last weekend I was away at my son Chris’ wedding. Chris is a Quaker and the wedding was a Quaker wedding. No need for a priest or officiant. The couple sat in a circle surrounded by their community, family & friends gathered in circles around them. Then they got up and said their vows, exchanged rings, and signed their marriage certificate. The blessing of the marriage came as they sat down and we all entered into silence. During the silence some people stood and spoke—as the Spirit directed them. At the end, we shook hands with one another. Jesus calls his disciples friends. No longer servants, he says, I call you friends. The Society of Friends is who Quakers are. A society of friends. In weddings at our church, there is always a point when the officiant asks the congregation “Will you do all in your power to uphold these two persons?” And people say, “We will” promising to support the marriage. Chris and Carin vowed to love one another and be faithful to one another as long as they both should live. And in the marriage certificate which was read aloud, the San Francisco Meeting of the Society of Friends agreed to take their marriage under its care. The community took the marriage of Christopher and Carin under their care. Not the individuals. The community. It makes you think.. John V. Taylor wrote a book about the Holy Spirit. He called it the Go-Between God. The God of connection. The God fluttering between Chris and Carin as they made their promises to one another. The God hovering over the circle of Friends gathered there. The God falling upon Cornelius just as the Spirit had fallen on Jesus’ friends at Pentecost. God bringing Jews and Gentiles together. The Go Between God. The God calling us out of our zones of comfort and connecting us always to the other. It all begins though in the abiding. in the abiding—remaining—staying put in God’s love. The love of friends—or of husband and wife—or of partners—the love of Christians flows out of that deepest of truths. God’s love for each of us. Abiding in that is what sets us free to love each other—sets us free to be friends. John’s Gospel pays a lot of attention to God’s incredible attachment to us—to humanity. God’s bondedness to us you might call it. Love is not about a feeling or emotion. Affection even does not seem central to John’s understanding of love. Central to love is attachment. Abiding in. God in Jesus. Jesus in God. and Jesus and God in us. The Go-Between God perhaps the bonding agent. When I’m abiding in God’s love—life is very different than when I lose track of it. A lot of the spiritual journey I think is really about learning ways to keep ourselves open to that ultimate truth. We are loved. Before anything. We are loved. No earning it. We are loved. No deserving it. We are loved. No manipulating it. We are loved. Just abiding. Being present. Breathing in and breathing out. I heard an interview on the radio a few days ago with a man who had grown up in North Carolina. At an early age he’d been taken by the State from his mother, because she, a white woman, was living with an African American man. He was torn from his mother’s arms and put in foster care. He had a tough time of it. He got into fights, was always running away to visit his mother. Finally he was taken 200 miles away and put in a Boy’s Farm. There he finally got his life together—finished high school and became a leader. He told the interviewer that what made the difference for him was that unlike many of the other boys at the Farm, he knew he was loved. He said, “A day didn’t pass when I didn’t know I was loved.” His mother—absent all those years in the flesh—had given him the gift of love. It was his bedrock. The place where he abided. He was attached and he knew it. He was under the care of his mother even though she wasn’t there. Abiding means letting go of the distractions. Forgetting to be self-preoccupied. Turning our attention away from all the bad news. All the fears we have. This little boy who grew to be a man had a lot to be fearful of. I read somewhere that the opposite of joy isn’t sadness—it’s anxiety. And Jesus reminds us in today’s reading that his goal is joy. Joy whatever it is-- is pure gift—and I think it brings together both the abiding—the staying put—and the Go-Betweening—the moving toward. Joy comes from a place of deep vulnerability to the fact of God’s love. Joy isn’t happiness—it isn’t something you can make happen or clutch either. It is maybe like music. It touches you in your body and opens you in surprising ways. It is transcendent. It’s deep knowing of your connectedness to others and to God. Think about your own experiences of joy. . . . Deep realization of oneness—ecstasy is perhaps an overdose of the Go-Between God. It takes you out of yourself. Henri Nouwen says it is always a movement toward a shared life. “It leads us to a place where new life is discovered among us.” Perhaps that’s why our lectionary puts a little Pentecost in our Easter season this morning. You are I, like our Quaker friends, are called to be friends. To be friends of Jesus and of one another. God’s love for us is what brings us here on a Sunday, and it is what centers us. It also is what calls us out into the unknown. God’s great attachment to us is what allows us to be free—to take one another under our care—God’s great attachment allows the Spirit to carry us to places we never dreamed we’d be—to celebrate our oneness with the most surprising folks.

Sermon 5.07.06

Scripture can be a hard thing… A parishioner told me that she’d invited some of her friends to our Easter Vigil this year. You know our jazz Vigil. These were some folks who had left the church years ago but decided to give the jazz Vigil a try—. She told me that they had left the service [even before the homily] because they were so put off by the lessons we read—perhaps I’m thinking, it was the story of Moses leading the people out of slavery through the Red Sea—the one that describes the drowning of the Egyptian army that was pursuing them. The image of God drowning the pursuing army was too much to take. Scripture can be hard. Scripture passages can be too much and that’s a fact—to be really honest—some of the time I haven’t a clue what is meant by certain words [ I try not to preach on those texts]—other times I think I catch a glimpse of meaning, but mostly I’m shrouded in mystery—and sometimes the words of Scripture are downright disturbing. Other times the words themselves when understood in context make sense, but they’ve been taken out of context and used in horrific ways. This morning’s little reading from the Book of Acts is a continuation of the story of the healing that we heard a few weeks back, when John and Peter healed the man who couldn’t walk. The healing has landed them in jail—such an affront is the power of healing to the powers that be. And in the context of poor—uneducated fishermen standing before the rulers elders and scribes—Peter tells them that the healing happened in the name of Jesus “whom you crucified.” And he goes on to say that Jesus is the true cornerstone—the stone that holds the whole structure up—but that they were the ones who rejected him. When you think of these words—perhaps you hear them as judgment—maybe they were spoken in grief—we can’t really tell from the text—but however they were spoken they have been part of scripture used throughout the years to justify anti-Semitism. To justify terrible acts of oppression, degradation and murder. In the text these are words spoken from the powerless to the powerful. They are a statement of fact from the lips of a nobody directed toward the religious and political authorities. The same could be said of the Biblical account of the exodus. It’s the story of the powerless being pursued by the powerful—and it’s a story of their rescue from their perspective. Knowing this doesn’t change the words of the stories themselves—but it should definitely affect our use of those words. And as if this weren’t enough Peter in his little speech before the authorities sums it all up by telling them that there is salvation in no one else but Jesus. No one. “You guys really blew it! You rejected the One who is the source of salvation.” So there! Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, uses that word salvation throughout his writing to talk about human deliverance from all sorts of evil: physical, spiritual, emotional, moral—and its always about restoration to wholeness. The healing of the man who couldn’t walk is a sign of that wonderful “Jesus” power at work in the world. Now like other words from Scripture these words have been used to batter non-Christians—I take them though to be an affirmation by Peter of the source of his own transformation. I can only imagine his real surprise that power that he had known in Jesus, was now present and at work in his own life. This is Peter the betrayer—Peter the Rock yes, but Peter the one who waffled at the moment of truth. And, now, when he might have expected all to be lost—here he is a channel of that healing grace to another. Here he is standing up—grounded in this relationship with Christ—so grounded that he can speak to the authorities and tell them the truth. The standing up truth. It’s a wonderful image of the great paradox of Christly power—that exhibits itself in the ordinary—the powerless—to challenge society’s powerful. Easter is about transformation and hope. Both are grounded in Christ. In that intimate relationship with Jesus that is described in the first letter of John as Christ’s abiding in us. In the Gospel passage that relationship is described with the metaphor of the Good Shepherd who knows his own and whose own know him. I read somewhere that indeed this is how good shepherds work. They do know their own sheep and their own sheep know them. When several shepherds and flocks gather at a watering hole, when it comes time for one to go, the shepherd starts to move away, whistles maybe, trills, maybe and his sheep follow him. The sheep may be all mixed up together at the water, but when they hear that voice they move toward the shepherd. It’s like recognizing your mother’s voice or your spouse’s or your child’s across a crowded room. Our goal in the journey is to come to know Christ’s voice just that well. So that when we hear it, our ears perk up and we are ready to follow. This week I was at a training for EFM Education for Ministry—a four-year Christian education program for adults who want to dive seriously into scripture, church history and theology in order that they can better carry out their own ministries. A large part of the EFM program is based in what they call theological reflection—which is a way of thinking together about scripture, or simple events from our own lives. At one point my small group was using a painting as the spur to this group reflection—it was a painting of Jesus and the rich young man—very similar to our window here behind the organ. If you have never noticed this window, do stop by and take a look at it. Matt and I sit over there and see it every Sunday. The painting was very similar only it had a couple of additional people in it—poor people over to the side where Jesus hands are pointing. We began our reflection on the painting by just describing what we saw—the colors, the light, the expressions, the love that seemed to fill Jesus eyes as he looked at the rich young man, the hands and so forth. Then we were asked to consider the people in the painting, and which one we most identified with. One person identified with Jesus, because he always found himself trying to get his rich friends to give to the poor, another identified with a poor man at the edge of the picture, and finally, one woman confessed to feeling like the rich young man. She talked about how hard it is to let go of her stuff, and how hard it is to know when she’s given away enough, when she hasn’t given enough away, and what is the spiritual importance of giving things away. As we shared our own sense of dis-ease with Jesus’ call to give up all our possessions, our deep struggle to live into our connection with the poor—a man in the group paused the conversation and asked us to listen. He told us about an experience that had happened to him almost thirty years earlier. As a young man just out of college he’d traveled to a foreign country and there he saw poverty as he’d never seen it before. He kept averting his eyes and turning away from it—focusing on other things—the scenery, the night life of the places he visited. But one afternoon as he left a train station a mother holding an infant swaddled in rags came to him with an empty baby bottle in her hand, she held it out to him, and then as he was about to turn away from her, she took hold of her shirt and exposed her breast to him so that he could see she had no milk for her baby… He began to weep, remembering the time… There was complete silence. Sometimes we hear Jesus’ voice so clearly that it cuts through our hearts. . . . At other times it is muffled, or we try to ignore it. Sometimes other voices are calling and we don’t hear Jesus. There are times when I don’t recognize his voice at all. Here in this place—in this community we come together because we long to hear that voice. We come to tune our ears, to be fed and energized for the journey; we come seeking the One who calls us by name. One thing we know: no matter what the voice calls us to, the eyes of the one who calls us are filled with love. Always with love. Amen.

MAY 1 IMMIGRATION MARCH-SANTA ROSA

So, today I preached the gospel without words for a few hours. I left church and walked over to the little park behind the Hyatt and joined in the “Day without Immigrants” march. I thought for awhile that perhaps I was near the middle of the march, but actually as I learned later I was very much toward the front—there were thousands of people there. I walked alongside young men and women, couples, families, mothers and dads pushing strollers, grandparents—I walked with people who work in the vineyards, clean hotel rooms, cook and serve meals, do landscaping and construction work, and the whole gamut of other jobs in our community. I walked alongside a man about my age who limped the whole way—so determined was he to be a part of this march that I had trouble sometimes keeping up with him. A grandmother with her gray hair beautifully braided, dressed in a white embroidered dress, walked along with a grandchild on each hand. There were teen-aged boys with droopy pants, teen-aged couples walking hand-in-hand. There were young parents with children sleeping in strollers, and a young mother with an umbrella who shared her shade with me for a bit. I talked with another young mother at the park who had had surgery on her knee and couldn’t march, but brought other members of her family and sent them on ahead; she told me she would meet them at Julliard Park. She thanked me for being there. Just as we rounded the corner to come alongside the movie theater on Santa Rosa Blvd a man came up to me from behind and put his arm around me, “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but thank you for being here.” “This is important. It is important for me to be here”, I said. And, it was important for me. A privilege really to walk on this march—to take my body for awhile and put it alongside the bodies of so many who are an integral part of our community and who so often are invisible. It was energizing to feel the spirit, determination, and hope that was present. I was reminded of the Christ who is always present in the borderlands and who calls us out of fear to the truth of our dignity. Later as we came into the park the man who had spoken his words of thanks came back and offered me a bottle of water—deeply appreciated. I had forgotten about the sun! To my mind we don’t need another Wall along the border. Walls we have plenty of. And the notion of sending all undocumented workers back home is laughable—just imagine the buses needed—or perhaps we’re thinking of another Cherokee Trail of Tears—this time from all across the country to our southern borders. Whatever our policy turns out to be it should be based on realities, and should honor the real contributions of immigrants and their families. And perhaps we would do well to remember that once—not that long ago—these Southwest lands “belonged” to the Spanish Empire. As one of the little hand-made signs said, “What do you mean illegal, pilgrim?” Jesus is the One who was adept at border crossings of all kinds—bringing people together, calling them into the truth of their oneness. I ponder that about him. PS/ I have only words to use in reflecting on “preaching without words”… I believe it was St Francis who admonished us to “preach the gospel and if necessary use words.”

HOMILY AT THE EASTER VIGIL

So, I begin this evening with a confession. Sometimes when I have occasion to do premarital counseling with a couple who have come seeking an officiant at their wedding, I ask them to tell me why they love each other. Isn’t that ridiculous? They tell me of course various things they love about their chosen one—I love his sense of humor, I love the way she cares for others—I love her smile—I love the way he loves me. Whatever! But no one yet has told me why they love the other person. The really important things in life are not that easy to explain. Really. Who can explain the whys of love. Who can even explain how you know that love is love? In our Tuesday morning study group we have just finished reading a book by Desmond Tutu called, God has a Dream. This is a book that affirms that our world is not just a world where Jesus died, but it is a world where Jesus lives. It’s about the resurrection power of God at work. . . Our next study is of a book by Elaine Pagels called Beyond Belief. Cute huh? The juxtaposition of these two books summarizes the challenge and wonder of this night of all nights when we gather to celebrate the resurrection. God’s Dream. . .Beyond Belief. If seeing is believing then its no wonder the resurrection is so often dis-believed. We have no details. It happened at night. No police report. No eye witness accounts. No video footage. Celsus an outside observer of Christianity long ago pointed out that everybody saw Jesus die, but “only a crazed woman and a few fanatics” saw him risen from the dead. And there are many today who can only agree. They might think Jesus a noble sort of fellow—a man of high ethics, a wisdom teacher—but they have to draw the line at resurrection—that is clearly beyond belief. Whatever this story of the risen Jesus is about, it is about these women going to see the tomb where they expect in a reasonable sort of way to find death. Instead, they find themselves at the thin edge—that liminal place between this world and the other. Their eyes so attuned to seeing the expected—the utterly believable--are shocked open to catching a glimpse of the world beyond belief. The world that Desmond Tutu would say is the very real world of God’s dream. People get “hung up” on these resurrection stories. I think perhaps because they apply reasonable expectations and rational thinking to them. They are seeking proof of the resurrection. They want proof of the world beyond belief. Even in the earliest days of Christianity the followers of Christ moved around in this arena of the liminal seeing and believing different things. That’s one of Pagels points in her book. The folks who beheld Jesus saw differently. Their eyes tuned so well to the believable found the going more challenging when dealing with the unbelievable. Some saw Jesus as God incarnate, some followed him as a faithful Jew, some saw him as new humanity, some as the messiah, Some took his words at face value, others tripped over them into more ethereal spaces. There was room in these early days for varieties of understandings. And then of course in the 4th century church leaders saw fit to try and define belief—and draw lines around the real Jesus. They did so in a way that left out a lot of folks who considered themselves followers of Jesus. Battles and even wars have been fought over these understandings. And even today there are a good number of Christians who tell me that they are secret heretics. They have their doubts about certain aspects of the faith as it has been defined. (Even some priests fall into this category of Christian) Generally they feel like they need to keep those to themselves even though the consequences are probably no longer life-threatening. And then there are those followers of Christ who as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it have beheld Jesus and found their own eyesight so richly tuned that they can see glory everywhere they look—they find the divine not only at the ocean or on the mountaintops, but in a sweat lodge, or a mosque, or at the feet of Thich Nhat Hanh. I’ve met more than one Episcopalian who claims to be a Unitarian, Buddhist, Episcopalian. Whatever truth there is in the resurrection, it is NOT to be found in any set of rational beliefs or explanations. We can’t prove the resurrection. We can’t. But we can live into it. We can participate in Christ’s risen life. The resurrection can be found in the lives of the faithful—whether heretics or not—who live in a world in which Christ not only died, but in which he lives. This is a broken world, you and I know that only too well. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord”—“Oh, oh, yes,” we say. That we have seen. That we witness every day. But, the great good news of this night is that brokenness and death even when it is just what we are expecting and looking for—brokenness and death do not have the final word. God’s dream of resurrection life is not some fantasy—rather it is alive and well, and in our midst. The divine energy is at work in us and among us and out there too. The church is the community that lives the dream—however imperfectly, however hesitatingly. We do it as we eat the meal, as we share the love, as we reach out to others, cross unbearable boundaries, speak words of truth not always welcomed, stand firm with the powerless, look at the world with the eyes of the heart. We do it as we support one another in our explorations of the thin edges of life where things are porous and godness pours thru. At our best we gather as we have this night to let our memories, candles, colors, stories, songs, music, laughter, and dance carry us to the dream beyond belief. It’s like trying to explain why you are in love with someone. There is nothing more real. Nothing more important. Nothing more difficult to describe or explain. Nothing more impossible to prove. “Were you there when God raised him from the dead?” “Oh, oh, yes”. Sometimes, it causes me to tremble. tremble. tremble.

A GUIDED MEDITATION: THE PASSION OF MARK

A MEDITATION: MARK’S PASSION NARRATIVE There is a lot of silence in this story. Silence here in the church. In our hearts perhaps. And in the story itself. Some of you may remember the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel. They sang a song,”The Sound of Silence” maybe you remember it. To me this story is all about the sound of silence. And the other sounds as well—the ones that interrupted the silence. Close your eyes now. Sit back and let yourself hear the sounds: . . . of Jesus throwing himself on the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane. . . . of the disciples sleeping. Could they hear the sound of the crowd approaching with their clubs and swords? What did that sound like? Were Judas’ words spoken out loud or whispered? And, if you were standing near Jesus, could you hear the sound of that kiss? Did the slave cry out when his ear was cut off? And what was the sound of the false testimony given against Jesus? Did it ring hollow in your ears? What is the sound of taunting and spitting? Did Jesus cry out when he was beaten? And what about the sounds of Peter’s denials? Do they reverberate in your soul and mix there with your own denials? Peter curses. The cock crows. There are the long pauses after each of Pilate’s questions. The accusations fly. Jesus is silent. Can you actually hear Pilate’s amazement? How does stirring the crowd sound? Does it start like murmuring… how does it build? And the shouting of the crowd? Does it echo thru the streets? How far away can you hear it? Would you recognize the sound of flogging? What is the tone of mockery? Does Simon of Cyrene demur, or does he just silently pick up the cross and follow? The sounds of the crucifixion. . . .The derision. The taunting of the men crucified beside him, what in God’s name would that sound like? Jesus crying out those words from Psalm 22,”My God my God why have your forsaken me? Silence. The sour wine scooped up in the sponge on the stick. Can you hear its dripping? The loud cry. The final breath. Silence. These are the sounds of our own world. We know these sound--many of them. We hardly dare let ourselves hear them. Hardly dare let them into our hearts. Hardly do we dare to let them penetrate. Our ears are mostly covered or tuned to other frequencies. The sound of silence--The silence not really so much about God’s absence as God’s presence. God’s withness to the depths of life. The silence of one taking a breath just when you do. There is silence. The curtain of the temple torn in two. Can you hear the ripping? The rending. Silence. Torn apart. Opened up. God no longer hidden. The Holy of holies no longer sheltered and apart. No longer only for the high priest to enter. God among us. Torn apart. Ripped open. Silence. “Truly this man was God’s son.”

SERMON 4.2.06

Is your own death, your own fragility something you think about? Is it something you live with in the back of your mind maybe? Do you think about death now more than you did maybe 15 years ago? I ask this because I have realized that I do, and sometimes I think it’s only because I am 15 years older and clearly more likely according to Life Insurance projections to be prone to death. And, I’ve had cancer and once you’ve had cancer I think perhaps you are more likely to live with the sort of ever present reality of death—it sort of hangs around in the atmosphere. But of course I ask the question because in this morning’s gospel reading when the Greeks come to Philip and say, “We wish to see Jesus,” Philip takes Andrew and they tell Jesus. “Some Greeks say they want to see you.” And Jesus begins to talk about his death—and really I think you’d have to say he talks about our death too. Unless the grain of wheat dies it remains a single grain.. . and so forth. If you want to see Jesus I guess you’d better take a look at his death. Jesus’ death is his moment of glory. His moment of revealing God’s glory. We most of us think about glory in such earthly terms—we think of perhaps accomplishing some great thing. Winning the basketball championship. Having a building named after us—or a scholarship—or some notice given in recognition of what we’ve accomplished. Jesus reckons that his death will reveal the glory of God. And, as if that weren’t enough to start you reflecting on death—there’s that line from Hebrews that describes Jesus as learning obedience through what he suffered. I take obedience here to mean what it means in the Greek which is a heightening of the word to hear. Jesus learned to hear God through his suffering. Really hear. Now that’s not very American of him. I mean really. Jesus was an American wasn’t he? . . . Our culture is focused much more on pleasure than pain, on acquiring than letting go. It doesn’t seem right that Jesus drew closer to God through his suffering. We are folks who take aspirin and other drugs to get rid of pain—that’s who we are. Pain is something we try to avoid—even pretend doesn’t exist. And Jesus himself didn’t seem to seek it out—“His soul is troubled he says, and he wonders if he should ask to be saved from his suffering. As my 14 year old granddaughter might say, “Well, duuh!” But no, …no, it is for this reason that he has come to this hour, he says. This hour of death and glory. When God speaks to Jesus about the glory, the crowd around him hears God’s voice but thinks it is thunder—or some say it is an angel. Not everyone has their ears attuned to God’s frequency. But, Jesus who has learned to really hear through his suffering knows exactly what God has said, and says to the people, “When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself.” Lifted up we can only imagine on the cross. That’s when those Greeks and all the rest of us will really see him. See Jesus. I’ve been reading a book recently called Feed. Its about a future when every person has a little implanted chip in the brain that feeds in all the advertising and reality shows we’d ever imagine, and allows us to communicate with others like email only no computer is needed. I think of God in Jeremiah’s text implanting divine law and love in us maybe kind of like that feed—only in our hearts instead of our minds. And when I think of that I can only think of Jesus as the one who seems to have had that divine feed embedded deeply within his heart. And always on--its in connection—not to consumer culture but to divinity. To God within. And of course we Christians, we followers of Jesus we’d say that the thing about Jesus is that he shows us who we all are. All of us have that feed—that heart imprint—that chip of divinity within. That’s most deeply who we are. That’s what is proclaimed in our baptism. And, it’s not just you and me—it’s everyone. All people have that imprint within them. The feed. The problem is so often we aren’t even in touch with it. We don’t listen to the feed in our hearts. We listening to other messages—we’re residing in our brains. We’re reading historical documents, looking at old pictures, dreaming about the future, reading science fiction novels. We’re trying to get control of everything. Or maybe we’re trying to forget or pretend. We are not present to our hearts. We deny our own identity as God’s precious children. We’re afraid to be present to our hearts. We’re afraid perhaps to learn obedience through suffering. This isn’t about joining the Marines and suffering thru boot camp until you learn to obey orders. It’s about learning who we most deeply are and are called to be. Maybe Jesus learned how to hear God—how to really listen for God through his suffering, because in his suffering he was most deeply human. Most deeply vulnerable. Most deeply in need of connection to others and to God. Maybe in his suffering he knew his limits as a human person and could hear the beating of his heart as the divine rhythm within. And, I don‘t think this is just about his suffering on the cross. It’s about all his other suffering—the letting goes he did during his brief years of ministry. His grieving with the widows, his tears over Jerusalem, his frustration with his followers who never seemed to get it, his grief about his friend Lazarus, his exhaustion on those days of too much teaching and too many healings, his pain at seeing the poverty—the illness—the judgment—the rejection. And, his own experience of abandonment, and loss, of ridicule and betrayal. In all of this Jesus learned to listen for God. Just think of it—and think of your own life. Where have you heard God’s voice—where have you learned to listen for God? God within or God coming to you in another? Where in your own suffering have you learned how to tune your ears to the voice? The voice that matters more than any other. We are not called to seek suffering in some masochistic way—but to be open to God’s presence when it comes our way. To be willing to stand in solidarity with others as he does with us. Listen to your life. Listen to your limits. to your humanity. to your suffering. It is there often that your heart cracks open enough for you to recognize the divine law and love written there. To come to know your own preciousness to God. To know your own connections to others in whom God dwells. A few weeks ago in our parish a small group of women began a new ministry of prayer. Each week they collect prayer requests from a God Box in the Living Room. These are the requests and thanksgivings of women at the Living Room. They have dared to share their deepest dreams and hopes, their thanksgivings for blessings received with other women who have pledged to pray those prayers in faith. And what might happen here? Who can say the effects of such sharing and such prayer. But those who have dared to share their suffering and joy, and those who dare to open their hearts to one another will find their hearing attuned—their hearts opened to the truth of God within. It cannot be otherwise. It is the holiest of work. You and I are the Greeks who come here today with one desire, “We wish to see Jesus.” There is no place we cannot go, no person we cannot reach out to, no truth about ourselves we cannot face. Jesus in his weakness, his suffering, his humanity, is lifted up from earth and just then—at that moment when all is lost, he draws us all to God’s love, forgiveness, God’s gift of new life. ------- Feed is by M.T. Anderson, Candlewick Press, 2002.

SERMON 3.19.06

You can tell from our lessons that it is Lent. Those ten commandments— oooh, given by God for the people of the covenant. The people God has chosen. It is in the context of God’s faithfulness to them—that God gives them the commandments. And then there’s Jesus. Yesterday I was spending some time designing and printing tickets for us to sell to the Mozart Requiem here on Good Friday—just think of it--that’s what I was doing yesterday and I was wondering --if Jesus came here to Incarnation in the same mood as he was at the Temple—would I be the first one to be herded out with the whip cracking over my head? It gives you pause, you know. What was he up to anyhow? Gentle Jesus meek and mild. Jesus is a part of a long tradition of prophets and prophetic action. The Old Testament prophets did weird and dramatic things—they startled and scandalized people—to draw attention to God’s desires—God’s plans—God’s ideas—God’s power at work. Remember Elijah and his amazing contest against the prophets of Baal, or some of the acts of Jeremiah? This action of Jesus is one of those kinds of actions. Prophetic actions always are hopeful actions—they give expression to the hopes and yearnings of God and God’s people. Hope is seeing and proclaiming a different reading of reality than the “business as usual” reading. Now on behalf of the moneychangers (and ticket makers) I’d like to explain that the money being changed was the money needed to pay tithes and to purchase the animals needed to make the sacrifices in the Temple. The money had to be changed from Roman coins (with images of Caesar) to Jewish coins. Now the goal of all of this was to be in relationship with God—its important that you remember that. (The Mozart Requiem achieves the same thing). It is also true that the priests and rulers in the Temple made sure to make a big profit--off the poor especially--who didn’t have their own unblemished animals to sacrifice and had to buy them there. You can imagine how this worked—this system. And in truth the system had become a barrier to people’s relationship with God. It was a barrier and it was oppressive. And Jesus, whip in hand, and voice no doubt bellowing, is standing alongside the poor and oppressed—and acting out God’s dream by saying NO! STOP IT! He’s expressing the dream of God and the hope of the people that there should be no barriers between them. And, I suppose if Jesus were to pop in here sometime—say a Sunday morning—his concerns would be the same. What about us is a barrier to others in their search for God? Are we part of the oppression of others? Do we make it hard for poor people to get close to God here? … What about the tickets? The law and the prophets. God on the mountain. Jesus in the Temple. Each trying to bring the people closer to God. “Jews demand signs,” says Paul, “and Greeks want wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks.” When the people ask Jesus for a sign he tells them “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It is only after the resurrection that Jesus’ friends remember and understand. Jesus was speaking of himself. He was where God and humans came together. He was the place. God with us. The holy of holies, you might say. This sign was more than most folks could grasp. It still is a stumbling block for many and foolishness to others. That in this man Jesus we know God is with us. No more barriers. No more need for intermediaries. God with us in the flesh. And God’s power not thundering from the mountain top, but walking alongside, healing, teaching, praising, proclaiming the good news—praying, suffering, dying—. And then rising, Jesus God with us—no matter what—through highs and lows, ups and downs, joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, integration and devastation—God loves us. This is the Good News. And it flows from the same God who brought the people out of Egypt and bore them on eagle’s wings and brought them to God’s self. God’s very self. Desmond Tutu talks about the cross and how this bloody instrument of death has become the sign and symbol of good news—resurrection news for us. We can hardly comprehend what a scandal this it. Wearing a little electric chair on a silver chain around your neck or in your lapel might come close. But even that lacks the same public degradation and humiliation. The good news in it is of course that God has descended to those awful depths to be with us—and Jesus’ rising assures us of the resurrection power at work in our lives and in our world. This is all about relationship. The commandments, the Temple, the overturned tables, the cattle with the whip cracking above their heads… Jesus. Everything is grounded in God’s desire to be in relationship with us—with God’s creation. It’s about love and relationship. It’s about hope too: nothing could be further from the majority opinion about life in America than this. We can’t even find an anesthesiologist to go in an execution chamber because all of us know that is only about one thing: death. Who would guess that God has stooped to enter that place? That God might love the victims and the perpetrators is more than most people can take. What could be more foolish than that? As Paul put it: “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” This is indeed about the weakness of God who has dared to enter life to its depths. There is no place we can go where God is not. God’s faithful love has driven God to these extremes. And it is our experience of that love that transforms our lives. That cracks us open to transformation. It is relentless this love of God. It maybe starts with your learning that you are loved in your family of origin. Or, maybe you had a moment when suddenly you are washed in the light and love of God. Maybe in one of your darkest times a friend or partner stood with you—traveled with you. However it comes, when love comes what is does is it breaks you down. Love does that. It breaks you down and sets you free. Free to enter the darkness—your own and that of others. And it sends you out to others. Folks you wouldn’t have dreamed of—folks your own folks told you to be wary of. It sets you free to enter the darkest of places. One of my own personal prayers for God’s transforming freeing grace in the last months has been this. I took off the WEB the pictures of the four Christian Peacemakers who were captured last November. I have had those pictures by my table where I eat my meals. They are there with me morning, noon and night. I look at them (one of them Tom is dead now) and remember that the love of God binds them to me and me to them. I could have pictures of their captors too if they were available—those would be reminders. Or of some of our soldiers in Iraq, or of Iraqui civilians. Or I could use pictures of the people in Darfur, or maybe from some of the communities in Santa Rosa that I seldom visit. It wouldn’t matter. The truth is that God’s love encompasses us all. Whatever the barriers—this love of God will split them wide open. And there you’ll be. One last little story. A few weeks ago, I officiated at a memorial service here in this sanctuary. It was for a horse. A horse named Joe. We had a painting of Joe, his bridle, and the sharing of memories. We even had his ashes. It was a memorial service where we gave thanks for Joe’s life and grieved his loss. He belonged to one of the granddaughters of one of our faithful parishioners, a person you know well, most of you. This young woman in her late teens loved her horse dearly. She had survived a nearly fatal car accident not too long ago—and various surgeries. For awhile we weren’t sure she’d live or that she would walk. But, after long months of rehab, she was walking again and back at the stables, then her horse suddenly died one night. The people who came were her friends. Friends her age and older and younger friends. People who loved her and loved Joe too. People who had journeyed with her through the hard times. Some of them had gone to the abyss with her: I’d seen them at her bedside. They laughed and cried and gave thanks and said good-bye. This was a counter-cultural event. It celebrated God’s love that cannot tolerate barriers. God’s love that transforms and makes new. God’s love so tiny that it slithers in the cracks and crannies and down to the depths—God with us. Forgiving, Loving, Challenging, Transforming. God with us, foolishly and relentlessly, with us.