SERMON, February 24, 2008

Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42 “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

I once visited Egypt with some friends. The highlight of the trip for me was when we went to the Sinai and spent some time on the desert. A friend and I rode camels across the desert in the middle of the day, and we hiked with a guide through an incredibly beautiful white canyon. It was stark, very stark—almost no vegetation as far as we could see. When we came out of the canyon suddenly there before us was the lush green of an oasis. Now, all my life I’ve seen pictures of oases in deserts: green palm trees in the midst of barrenness. But this was far more than I had imagined. This I could see with my own eyes, and feel in my own body. The shock of the lushness of the area around the pool of water-the well- is hard to describe. Of course, it would not be something you would notice here in the middle of the rainy season when our hills are green. But in that place filled with dark bare mountains, sand beneath our feet for miles and miles, and no vegetation—the palm trees and other greenery were incredibly beautiful. And, a sign of hope: because the green meant one thing for sure: water.

Moses’ people cry out for water as they stagger across the desert. They feel like they can’t go on. They remember with bitterness the relative comfort of their years of slavery in Egypt. Looking back they wonder why on earth they ever thought it was a good idea to leave. They quarrel and complain.

From our perspective with the rains still falling, it’s easy perhaps to distance ourselves from these people with their complaints. But if you have ever been hungry, or really thirsty—or maybe you’ve been sick—not yourself—you know how easy it is to complain, and to quarrel, and to find fault, and to begin to blame. . . It’s hard to be your best self when you are in need of the basics. The people cry out, “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

One of my commentaries translates this as, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?”(1) “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” and I suppose this is, really, a cry that echoes deeply within each of us. We, like the Israelites, are a people of faith, and yet when the going gets hard—when the losses we suffer seem unbearable, when we cannot find rhyme or reason for what befalls us, when the pain is great and our own resources seem inadequate, we, too, cry out, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Even in times of my own comfort I ask this question. I pick up the paper, or listen to the news on the radio, or hear stories of violence and desperation in my own community. I wonder, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?”

And, these stories make me think about water today. About the places where it’s flooding, and the places where there isn’t enough water; places where wars are being fought over water. I think of the polluted waters—creeks, rivers, oceans. The single greatest determiner of health in the world—is not medical science, not hospitals, not immunizations, none of those things: it is clean drinking water. Clean water to drink is something we all need. We are one in that need.

“Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Jesus comes to Jacob’s well in need of clean water to drink. Jesus in need. That is where this wonderful story begins. His need takes him to the well at mid-day where he asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. What follows is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the gospels: longer by far than any conversation with his family, with his followers, or with those who challenge him and test him. It gives you pause to think about Jesus in need—that Jesus might come to us in need. But that’s where it begins. “I thirst,” he says, as he will say again later.

She is shocked by his request because she knows enough to know that he is Jewish and that he will break the law if he even sips from her bucket. Their conversation goes on though—and moves from his need to her need. “Sir, give me this water.” They are there at the well united in their common need.

And, then he asks her to bring her husband, and surprisingly I think, she blurts out her truth: she has no husband. He does not judge. He does not withdraw. In fact, he seems to draw closer as he reveals that he knows that, and a lot more. She has no husband, and has had a whole line of husbands, and is now living with someone who is not her husband. Perhaps this is why she is even at the well at mid-day—a time when no other women would be there to draw water—it being too hot and too late for that. Perhaps her story, known by all in her village causes her to come when she would not encounter others at the well. We don’t know.

But her truth—her willingness to share her truth—his acceptance of her in the truth of who she is—leads to his own sharing of his truth. For this is the first time in John’s gospel that Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah. He tells his own truth to a woman, a foreigner, one with a checkered past and present. His need and her need, her truth and his truth. In the broad daylight they stand revealed for who they are: it is a holy moment. Whoever the Messiah is, he is one before whom she knows the truth of herself and the truth that she is respected, and dare I say, loved.

The truth shall set you free—and indeed it does. The woman is really the first evangelist. For she leaves her jug and runs back into town proclaiming that she has met someone who knows everything about her. Can he really be the Messiah? she wonders to them. They, perhaps knowing much of her truth themselves, come charging out to see this phenomenon! In the end they recognize Jesus as Savior, not for what she has said, but because of what they have seen and heard from themselves. Jesus stays with them then for several days.

Such a story this one. About the boundaryless love of God. About the radical inclusivity of the good news—that asserts God’s presence with us—no matter what. No longer contained on one mountain or another, in one building or another, God is among us to be worshiped in Spirit and in truth. Spirit: the breath of God, the wind of God, the very breath we take in and out that inspirits our bodies. The word once meant “hope” as well—to despair is to have lost spirit. Wherever there is spirit wherever there is truth we know that the Eternal One is among us.

You and I know how this works—this kind of encounter. We have known how when we dare to risk telling of our need we can meet one another in mutuality. When we dare to speak our truth, we know our common humanity. We are brought together by spirit and truth. The Eternal One is present in the meeting.

I have experienced this time and again in my own life—and seen it in the lives of others. Particularly when they are on the edges of life—like the poor thirsty Israelites—when people know their fragility they can sometimes be freed from their pretenses of ordinary living to speak their need and their truth and to know God’s presence.

Once when riding a bus in Wales I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two matrons (folks who look a good deal like me) who sat right behind me. They’d been shopping and chatted for a while about shopping—it’s pleasures and burdens. Very light conversation it was. But, then we passed a mortuary, and after a pause, one of the women began to talk about how her niece, a beautiful young woman in her thirties, had recently died of cancer. She talked just a bit about how awful that was. The other woman confessed to her friend that her own son had died suddenly several years back. He was 37 and had an aneurism. They’d given his organs to unknown others, which was something of a comfort. But, nothing really assuaged her grief. He’d been so healthy one day and dead the next. There was a silence. There was breath—spirit—there was truth—where there had been distance, there was relationship. The Eternal One was in our midst right there on that little bus.

Our thirst is deep: we long to be fully known and fully loved. “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Oh, yes. In spirit and in truth. The encounter can begin in need --when we dare to speak with one another—of our need and of our truth. When we risk listening deeply to one another—no matter our differences. When we dare to breathe in and out the precious breath of God and let the spirit take us where it will: the boundaryless love of God will set us free and make us new. Always. (1) The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised Edition, W. Gunther Plaut & David E. S. Stein, editors, Union for Reform Judaism, New York:2005.

SERMON, February 3, 2008

The Transfiguration

Matthew 17:1-9

Some years ago a woman came into my office and in the course of our conversation——she told me in a hushed voice about a mystical experience she had had sometime past. It had happened in the ordinary course of a day—and had caught her by surprise. She had been bathed in the shattering light of Christ, and knew in her body that she was deeply loved. In a way that she had never known before. She had not spoken of this to anyone for several years, but had pondered it. The experience had worked on her though; it had changed her, she lived more and more deeply into its truth. It set her free. As a priest I have been privileged to hear more of these stories than you might think. Our culture does not support the sharing of these kinds of experiences ones not easily explained by science, technology, psychology. We are raised to analyze and dissect, to doubt. Sometimes a person analyzes their own experience to death. Sometimes they dismiss their experience and try to live their lives as though they never had it. They turn their backs on mystical encounter.On the other hand, perhaps you’ve heard people running on and on about unusual spiritual experiences they’ve had. They have a dream, or a vision and they rush right out to tell the world. They testify to whomever they encounter. They talk and talk and talk about it. And perhaps they squelch the power of the experience by blathering about it before they’ve had a chance to ponder—to let it work its way in their lives. They have a good story to tell, but their lives go on unchanged by their experience.

There are choices to be made in the face of mystery. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells this friends to be quiet about their vision of his transfiguration. They are not to speak of the vision. . . until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Hush. Do not speak. This is too much to be described in words—or preserved in dwellings—there is no container for this—and you won’t begin to live into it until later—after the death and resurrection. Hush.

Even today I hesitate to speak about this. Over two thousand years later, after the crucifixion, and after the Son of Man was raised, it is a mystery. This glimpse of the great truth of God in Christ that came to these men cannot really be contained by any words—certainly not words of mine. The word overshadowed—“the cloud overshadowed them” is only used one other time in Scripture: when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that the power of the Most High will overshadow her and she will conceive the child, Jesus. In our post-modern world, it’s hard not to dismiss these stories as mere tales—so foreign are they to our ears. And yet there they are: challenging us to enter and let ourselves imagine what they might have to say to us about God and God’s ways, about us and our lives.

What comes next in both stories are the words, “Be not afraid.” Perhaps we need to hear them as well. For both stories invite us to open our own selves, our own lives, as hosts to the holy one— they dare us to let ourselves be transformed—to become part of God’s work of transformation in the world.

If the Transfiguration on the mountaintop is a glimpse of the radical love of God—the truth of who Jesus is and in some sense who we are meant to become. If it is about the glory of God, which in the Hebrew understanding is not just some Hollywoodish bright light startling us in the darkened theater, but is the weight, the enormity, the massiveness of God—then Jesus’ friends are in the right position when they fall to the ground. This IS too much. But then Jesus touches his friends lying on the ground in their fear. God-with-us reaches out and touches them and tells them to get up. “Get up and do not be afraid.” This experience is not an end in itself. The love you have known here is a love that must go down the mountain. It is a downward spiraling love, a suffering love. “Listen to him.” Listen to him when he says he will suffer and die and be raised from the dead. “Listen to him.” when he says to hold your tongue and let the truth work in you transforming you—making you new. “Listen to him.” when he tells you to get up and take who you are now and journey with him down the mountain. “Listen to him.” when he takes love to the people who haven’t known love, to the places where love hasn’t been. Listen to his words. Listen to his life. Listening is at the heart of love. Isn’t it? Jesus lived a listening life. Asking people what they wanted, what they needed. Listening to the words and lives of those around him. The voice from the cloud reminds us of our calling to listen. Be present to. Open to. To God and to each other. I read a little story(1) about a young man who had a mountaintop experience and then went down the mountain and learned to listen. He’d had a conversion experience—had fallen in love with Jesus you might say. In his early 20’s a white college student. He went to a big gathering of students to hear the evangelist Tony Campolo speak. After an hour or so of singing gospel songs, Tony preached the good news for nearly an hour. The crowd was on fire—and on fire to share the gospel. Tony invited them all to ride in buses to the central city where they could share their faith, “Tell about Jesus.” They piled into the buses filled with love and enthusiasm. But, as the bus came into the central city and its darkness, the poverty, the bleakness of the place touched them, a quiet came over the group. When the buses stopped and the young people were let off to tell the world about Jesus, this young man despaired. He was scared and he didn’t know what to do. Finally he timidly went into a building, up the dank hall and knocked on a door. “Who’s there, and what do you want?” “I’m here to tell you about Jesus.” The door opened and an enraged woman, cigarette hanging on her lips, stood there, a naked baby in her arms, and she cursed him and told him to get out and never come back. He ran down the hallway and out the door—shattered. After awhile he noticed a little corner store with shuttered windows. He went in and thought to himself about what he had seen. He bought a box of diapers and a pack of cigarettes. He crewed up his courage and went back into the tenement. Knocked on the door. When the voice demanded to know what he wanted, he said nothing. The door opened, and he handed his gifts to the woman. In surprise, she stood aside and told him to come in. He sat on a chair. He diapered the baby. He listened. And, finally when she asked him why he’d come, he told her about Jesus. She asked him to pray for her and her child. He did. “Get up and do not be afraid.” There is so much to fear in life these days—we are barraged by messages of fear. Told we must live in fear. Whatever the Transfiguration is about—it is about the glimpse of God’s unbearable love and grace come among us. It is about Jesus, God-with-us, beside us reaching out to touch us. It’s about love that seeks to go where love is a stranger—seeks to stand with those who are hurting—is present when the unspeakable happens. Years ago I knew a mother whose son in his early 30s was dying an excruciating death from AIDS. His doctor had refused him morphine, saying that he might become addicted. So every night as he cried out in pain from his bed, she would go into his room, climb into his bed and cradle him through the night. She did that until he died—holding him as she had when he was a baby. You and I may not have seen the transfiguration of Christ, but each of us has caught a glimpse of God’s persevering love. It is more than a good story to tell. Sometimes there is really nothing that can be said about it, but the truth is that we have been touched by it. We are called to let the truth of God’s unbearable grace work in us transforming us so that we too, participate in this redeeming work of love. “Get up and do not be afraid.” (1) William Willimon, The Intrusive Word, 1994: Eerdmans, pps 74-77.

SERMON, January 13, 2008

The Epiphany Matthew 2:1-12 Perhaps you have learned in your own life how dislocation can lead to revelation. The disrupting of your ordinary patterns, routines, even your ordinary ways of thinking can be a good thing. That turning inside-out of what has always seemed to be “the way things are” can be a moment of great insight and learning. When things are unsettled, when we’ve become what my grandmother used to call discombobulated—then is when we suddenly have eyes to see. This is why you may hear people who have had cancer say that in some ways they are thankful for their cancer. This is why when I recently met with some homeless women they told me that they had learned so much from being homeless. They were thankful for what had been revealed to them by their homelessness.

The Bible is full of stories of how God is revealed when ordinary patterns are disrupted. I think of the great stories like the one where David—the least and last of the sons is the chosen one—only this kind of story can assure us that in God’s eyes people aren’t valued as they are in human eyes; Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son and his prodigal father—only when our expectations are overthrown can we begin to grasp the incomprehensible enormity of God’s forgiveness and love; Jacob, the liar and cheat becoming Israel after wrestling with the angel—how else could we begin to comprehend that none of us, no matter how imperfect, is exempt from God’s call.

This little story in Matthew’s gospel—greatly embellished with its missing details filled out in church tradition and hymnody—is one of the great stories illustrating how disruption can lead to life-changing revelation. Wise men (Matthew doesn’t say how many) come from the East, having seen a star—the star of the child born King of the Jews. Foreigners—that’s for sure. Men who paid attention to the stars, and followed one seeking a child-King. Their journey took them way out of their ordinary routines. Whatever those were. These folks let their eyes lead them into newness. Let their eyes take them to the Other.

The word Epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning manifestation, appearing, showing. It is used in the Bible to refer to the manifestation of God’s face—in the story of the wise men it is used to describe the appearing of the star—and we understand it to be also and maybe most importantly about the manifestation of God in Jesus. This is a story about looking—about seeing. About seeing the star, and about seeing Jesus—and recognizing each for what they were. I love the fact that the wise men paid attention to the stars—they noticed the star. They somehow had their eyes fixed on the heavens—and on the stars. Every Epiphany we get this reminder of God as creator of heaven and earth—and of the oneness of creation. The discoveries and theories of cosmologists of our day play so beautifully with this story. For this story in which men from another place—strangers—come to the child King following a star is certainly a story that reminds us of the boundarylessness of God and it is a story of our oneness with each other.

The universe as we know it today is “one” in ways we’d never imagined before. You and I are made of the same stuff as the stars—we have cells in our bodies that are like living fossils of the quantum dust from which the stars arose.

And, this universe does not operate as Newton thought it did (and as I was schooled to believe)—it is not made up of discrete parts—but instead scientists have learned that the universe is more like what Barbara Brown Taylor calls a luminous web—there are no individual parts apart from their relationship.(1) Every interaction brings changes to the whole. There is nothing so small that it doesn’t matter! And, in the subatomic world of particles: once two particles have interacted with each other they remain related regardless of how far they may roam from one another. Think of that.

Why bring science into this discussion at all? We live in an exciting time for the sciences of the universe. I love a little dialogue between the Biblical story and contemporary science. Many scientists would not approve—nor, I guess, would some faith leaders—viewing science and religion as two separate universes. But, cosmology studies the origins of the universe and attempts to explain how we came into being. The stories of the Bible are told and re-told to remind us who we are and where we’ve come from. You and I know who we are because of stories like this one about the wise men. The stories point to truth that we can’t really find the words to describe. Words can’t really hold the realities of new science either. This story is about how some men looked. They looked and allowed their lives to be disrupted so that they might learn something new—might find revelation. They weren’t like me in that they didn’t wait for their lives to be ripped apart by illness or loss or catastrophe—they chose disruption—as a spiritual path. They journeyed out to find the Other—the One unknown to them. They crossed boundaries and distances to get there. They were vulnerable. You don’t journey into the unknown without being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is one way that we open ourselves to revelation.

They looked up and saw a star and to their eyes it was the star of the child-King. They left home and followed it. When it came to rest over the place where the child was, they were overwhelmed with joy! Just think of it! Joy. What can we say about joy? How fragile and wonderful it is? How it may come after some accomplishment on our part, but when it does we know that what has been accomplished is not solely our own doing? How it leaves us humble—aware you might say--of our creatureliness? How it cracks us wide-open and leaves us vulnerable like children? How it makes us one with others and with God? Think of joy in your own life. Consider joy …..

If the wise men were like us at all perhaps their joy was like ours. Their joy overflowed into the giving of gifts. They looked upon him and saw a child-King. Their very looking gave him the gift of the news of who he was. Their gaze perhaps told Mary something she was still wondering about. Perhaps as the baby struggled to focus his eyes, his gaze told them the good news of who they were. . . . Their journey into the Other-- into disruption gave them eyes to see something they’d perhaps never imagined. They were humbled. They paid homage—they showed great respect for this infant—and there was joy.

The text tells us that they left for their own country by another road. The wise men realized the fragility of the child—and the true intent of Herod, who was threatened by any hint of rivals to his power. [Herod is a man who killed his own sons when he considered them a threat.] So the story is not only about Jesus manifested to all—even to foreigners—but it is about the threat that he presents to the powers that be—who are far more interested in keeping control over their borders and their people—no matter the cost than in opening their eyes to the revelation of the boundarylessness of God.

It is no surprise really that the wise men took a new route home. They were not the same men—they had encountered the One whom they sought, and they would never be the same again. They went home all right. But they were not the same. What they had seen—who they had seen—gave them a different perspective—different lenses through which to see the world. Like particles—they would never dance alone again. No matter how far the distance they were in a relationship now that would keep on transforming them.

Such a story. About journeying, yes, but more perhaps about what I would call the dance of life. About relationship and how it changes us and binds us and makes us new. About willingness to risk and be vulnerable—about choosing to cross boundaries in expectation of finding. About daring to encounter the One deemed other.

One example of how the spirit of this story is echoing in our own day is that of the 138 Muslim Imams from all over the world who last Fall sent a letter to the Pope and other Christian leaders, “A Common Word between Us and You.” It recalled the foundational principles of both religions: Love of One God and love of neighbor and called for followers of both faiths to find common ground and not just polite ecumenical dialogue between certain religious leaders. Over 300 Christian leaders in this country including our own bishop, took out a full page ad in the NYT responding and pledging to work for relations that will reshape the 2 communities to genuinely reflect our common love for God and for one another. Such transformation will require openness, risk-taking and a willingness to look on one another as God looks on us. The wise men are about looking—not just to the heavens that remind us of our oneness with each other and the cosmos itself—but also about looking at one another—seeking the One who comes in our daily lives. Gazing at one another in ways that affirm how precious each one is. About opening our eyes to see the world in a different way—not as separated, different and frightening—but as caught in a luminous web—as one. You and I are not much different chemically from a star, a rock, or a lizard. We were created out of the same dust to be in relationship with one another and with God—made to celebrate our oneness—to look on one another with love and humility—and to know the joy of revelation.

(1) Taylor, Barbara Brown, The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion, Cowley:2000.

SERMON, January 6, 2008

Jesus' Baptism Matthew 3:13-17 I spent some time this week looking at the way artists have depicted the Jesus’ baptism. There are many artistic renderings of that event. Many of them seem to put me as the viewer off at some distance from the scene—removed—and often there is a little herd of angels fluttering about. But one image I saw on the web really struck home. It from the baptismal tapestry that hangs in the Cathedral of All Angels in Los Angeles. By John Nava, the tapestry hangs by the baptismal font which is large and through which water is always flowing. It’s the kind of font that allows for “big deal” baptisms by immersion. The tapestry is over 47 feet high and 7 feet wide. The central images are just Jesus and John in the water. As you look at them, your perspective is of a person standing there with them. No angels in sight. No halos. John standing in the water, pouring water over Jesus’ head. Jesus with his back to us, with just a cloth around his mid-drift, mostly naked and exposed, kneeling—on his haunches really bowed over in submission to John. The water pouring down. A mystery, really, of grace. Jesus the beloved child of God bent in submission before John.

Apparently in the early church people had a hard time understanding why Jesus was baptized. Jesus, the man without sin, had gone to John who preached and offered a baptism of repentance from sin. A “cleansing—start-over” baptism. Why would Jesus need such a baptism? Matthew tells us that John knew he was unworthy to baptize Jesus—it should have been the other way around. He protests. But, Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” God’s work is going to be done in this.

Righteouesness, baptism, and submission . . . In Jesus’ day and in the Hebrew Scriptures a righteous person was one who lived and worked to upbuild the community—to care for the poor and needy. One who contributed to the health of the community. One who lived in relationship with God and with others. Ps 112 says of the righteous that “Their hearts are firm, secure in the Lord.” That security is what impels them to righteous living—to generosity in serving the least and the lost. It is important to know who you are.

You can’t help noticing in this story of submission—the mostly naked Jesus bowing low before John to receive the waters of baptism—you can’t help thinking a bit about the infant Jesus in the manger. Fragile and vulnerable. The paradox of the presence of the divine in the small and humble—the unnoticed. Nava’s figure of Jesus whose face we cannot see is a reminder perhaps of the unnoticed presence of God in life—in our lives. And, surely there is a hint of other submissions yet to come. I think of Jesus kneeling to wash his friends’ feet. That time he served them on his knees—this time he is being served. And, the final submission when he gives himself over to the powers that be who will choose to baptize him with death. These early stories of birth, epiphany, and baptism do more than hint at the cost—the threat—to the vulnerable One among us.

In a way, Jesus’ baptism—and ours—are like any person who looks love in the eyes and gives him or herself over to it. You may have experienced this in your own life. It can come in a glance, a moment of shared silence, the touch of a hand. It can be the love of a partner, a spouse, a child, a parent—it can catch you off guard--suddenly you know you are loved. And, you give yourself over to that love.

God is the initiator—God the first actor—God loves first—and we submit to that love. There is something very special about an adult baptism—when a mature person comes to be baptized—making their own choice to believe—to join the community of faith. An infant has no choice in the matter. But there is an important truth in infant baptism: God loves us even before we choose to give ourselves over to that love.

Jesus comes up out of the water and sees the Spirit and hears the voice of God, “This is my Son, my child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” He knows who he is—“his heart is firm, secure in the Lord.” We echo this moment in our own baptismal services when we anoint the newly baptized and proclaim them as “marked a Christ’s own forever.” In a sense, we brand them on the forehead with their true identity. The beloved of God—no matter what.

This is powerful stuff. And it has to be really, because if fulfilling righteousness is achieved through submission—we need to be infused with God’s spirit and love to be able to do that. The implications of the simple birth in the manger and the baptism as an adult seem to be more than we can bear really. That God is among us in the vulnerable, the unseen, the unnoticed, and the undefended. That God in Jesus gave himself over to us—gave himself over to the waters of baptism and plunged himself into the depths of what it is to be human. That is so hard to fathom. Harder yet is the call you and I have to follow him on that path. The path of righteousness. The path NOT of earning but of giving way—giving ourselves over to.

How do we live into our baptisms? How do we open ourselves to transformation through submission? There could be nothing further from the American Way than submission. Well, I guess if you come from certain evangelical traditions and are a wife or a child you would be admonished to submit—but by and large we are a proud people who rarely see any benefit at all in submission. To submit is to admit that you are not in control—not in charge. There is someone or something larger than you at work. There is something more important than my wishes and desires. This is the anti-thesis of our culture’s way of living, where we are raised to control our own destinies—to do our own thing.

But of course anyone who has ever loved or been loved knows that receiving and giving love require opening and giving way. This is risky business. To love another is to put yourself at great risk—for love can be rejected. Jesus filled with God’s love came among us to love us. He did so by giving himself over to us. There is no other way.

Baptism affirms that we are God’s --precious in God’s sight. Letting our hearts be firm and secure in the Lord is how we dare to live into the new life we were made for. In my own life I find I cannot give way to another—cannot even really listen to another—be present to another—when I have lost touch with who I am. And, of course, knowing who I am helps me to know who the other person is too. A beloved child of God. No matter what. Then and only then am I able to submit to another—to find what new life may come from that encounter.

It’s a mystery how this works out, isn’t it? I think of all the Eucharistic visitors and friendly visitors I’ve worked with who give up their personal agendas for a bit to submit themselves to the realities of another person—a person in a hospital, alone at home, or in a nursing home. Time and time again, they return from their visits to say, “I always receive far more than I give.” That’s how it is when we submit—when we present ourselves to the other to receive. It is always a risk—but it is the way of love—it is the way to transformation. There is dying and there is resurrection. “See, new things I now declare before they spring forth,” says the Lord. Amen. Amen.

SERMON September 2, 2007

Jeremiah 2:4-13, Psalm 81; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

I've been in Wales for the last month, and one of the privileges of my stay in Wales was traveling by public transportation. I had no car, so I relied on buses and occasionally the train—and I walked. My life slowed down so much that I could enjoy waiting for the bus—just being. Letting go of the freedom to go when and exactly where I wanted to I enjoyed a different kind of liberty and an opportunity to be present.

I had my experiences waiting for buses and trains. One train I waited for never did show up. But the best waiting story I heard there was from my friend Lynell. One very cold and rainy day she was waiting for a bus in a little Welsh town—and wasn’t really sure if she was at the right place. There was a woman standing there—in her eighties—most of her teeth missing, the ones she still had were chattering—it was cold and very windy. Lynell said to her, “Are you waiting for bus #23?” “Ahh, no, luv, . . . Me, I’m waitin’ for global warmin’.”

Kind of like waiting for God. I mean there you are—you have no control really. You are at the mercy of the one you wait for. And, you aren’t entirely sure if the One you wait for is real. And you’ve heard that however it comes, it will take you places, change your life; it may warm you up, which on a cold day may seem like a good thing, but it may be more than you can bear. Global warmin’ that is. Or maybe …God?

Maybe you’ve picked up the latest edition of Time magazine.⁽¹⁾ It’s got a cover story about Mother Teresa and the new book of her letters to her spiritual directors that’s just been published: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Her letters reveal that for almost all of her life—some fifty years—after she began her ministry to the poor and dying in Calcutta—she lived without sensing the presence of God. Beneath her public persona—and the person known to even her Sisters of Charity—was a person often in pain and anguish really because of the absence of Jesus—the One who had appeared to her in visions and so vividly in prayer during her early years. At one point she wrote, “Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love—and now become as the most hated one—the one—You have thrown away as unwanted—unloved. I call, I cling, I want—there is no One to answer—no One to whom I can cling—no, No One. –Alone. . . Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness and darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no faith…”

Time describes Mother Teresa’s work among the poor and her public statements about the love of Jesus being everywhere: “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.” with what was her private experience of nothing—of the absence of God. The article quotes critics of religion have been quick to claim that Teresa lived a lie—she realized her faith was just fabrication, but that she lacked the courage to say so publicly. Others have already begun to psycho-analyze her.

Whatever we might make of Mother Teresa’s mental and emotional life, in her lengthy and painful living with the absence of God—even in her praying and in the Eucharist—she stands in the long line of faithful Christian experience. that, in a sense, echoes Christ’s cry from the cross “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Just as Jesus accomplished his work he felt that utter aloneness—that awful solitariness. That moment of agony which perhaps called into question all that he’d understood to be God’s call to him. So, too, this 50-year season of solitariness came upon Teresa once she began her ministry to the dying in Calcutta. Teresa who had longed more than anything to know Christ’s passion perhaps came to know it in the way she’d least imagined. The woman who committed her life to living among the poor experienced the painful isolation of poverty even in her interior life.

Last month I was reminded that early Celtic Christianity in Wales, Ireland and Scotland had deep connections to the early Christian desert fathers and mothers of Africa and the Middle East. That seems surprising, but Celtic saints shared with them that same going out into the wilderness to seek God, that willingness to let the Spirit lead you to the edges of life where all your normal strengths and protections are stripped away. Their geographic landscapes differed, but in many ways their interior landscapes were the same. The God present in all things, in every aspect of life. God to be found at the thin places, where the boundaries between heaven and earth were permeable—wells, and mountaintops, and ocean beaches, rocky places—God in the end was unfathomable.

The God we wait for, the God we seek is not like us—as Job discovered, and countless others before and since have realized. There is a strange paradox here, summed up by Andrew Harvey when he says of desert pilgrimage, “We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us.” “We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us.”

I take that to mean that when you go backpacking to the top of the mountain, or sit by the crashing waves on the rocks at the beach, or dare to walk into the desert wasteland what you discover is that these places are not there for you. They ignore you. When we get ahold of that, then comes silence, and a letting go of our self—of our accomplishments, our self-focus, our self-importance, our desire to have a feel good spiritual experience, our need for self-fulfillment. God is other and the landscape can remind us of that.

So can life itself. Waiting with a loved one who is dying can teach you that. I have known that in my own life. There is something here that is beyond my control—beyond me. It ignores my desires, my plans, my needs. It simply is. Poverty, death, the crises of loss we experience can bring us to that place where we are saved by the things that ignore us.

It is really a gift to us: this learning of Mother Teresa’s yearning for God’s presence, her longing, her doubts about the existence even of God—all the while she was carrying out her ministry for Christ. Who among us hasn’t wondered, hasn’t doubted, hasn’t been ready to give up, or hasn’t actually given up—given up this faith—this quest for relationship with the One who is experienced so often as absence. I think of the disciples in their little boat, Jesus sleeping on the pillow in the back when the winds are rising and water begins to pour in. Teresa of Avila lying in a river after her cart overturned on her way to do God’s work, telling God that from the way he treats his friends it’s no wonder he has so few of them. John of the Cross and his dark night of the soul. The list goes on and on. It includes many lesser saints—people like me and many of you.

It’s even more complicated than that. Juxtapose Teresa’s writings with this morning’s snippet from Jeremiah: Here, God cries out in longing: The people have forsaken the One who brought them out of oppression, through the desert and the land of drought and deep darkness and into a plentiful land. There in that land of plenty the people no longer show up at the bus stop—they have forsaken their God—the fountain of living water, and they have dug out for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water. God cannot seem to believe it. There is pain here, pathos here. The One who longs for relationship with the people has been ignored, rejected. “Be appalled o heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate.” says the Holy One.

“I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?” says Mother Teresa. A Christian steeped in the practices of our faith, one who longs for relationship has been ignored; she feels rejected, utterly desolate.

Jeremiah reminds us that God’s longing for us is as deep as our own for God. We forget that at our peril.

The bedrock of our faith is God’s love and grace— God’s promise “I will never leave you or forsake you.” The evidence often seems dim—paradox and uncertainty are hard to live into. Some people of faith do experience moments of mystical unity with God, but those are rare. The truth is that all of us are invited into relationship with one who may attract us more by absence than presence—more by mystery than concrete evidence—more by hints than direct contact. There is an ebb and flow.

For a brief period in her 50 years of longing, Jesus did come to Mother Teresa as she waited. And later, when the darkness returned, she finally came to embrace the darkness—to find in her longing itself a sign of God’s hidden presence. In this perhaps she has given us a greater gift even than her Nobel Peace prize-winning charity. Love involves more than good feelings. It is always risky business. It is beyond words. There are long waits at the bus stop. God’s grace will carry us to love’s greatest depths and heights—and its absences and presences. My friends, that is the great good news.

(1) Time Magazine, International edition, Vol 170, No 9, 2007

SERMON July 15, 2007

Luke 10:38-42 and words about our prayers for the dead

Jesus told them a parable: One morning early in Santa Rosa near a church on Mendocino Avenue, a man was lying to the side of the sidewalk. He had blood on his face, and he looked half-dead. A woman came along on her way to church for the early morning service. She was a member of the altar guild, and when she saw the man lying by the side of the walkway, she was afraid. She took a step back, and quickly went the other way to get into the church from the other entrance. She said a little prayer for the man as she went. Not long after another person came rushing up toward the gate near where the man still lay, This fellow had a clergy collar on, and he was glancing at his watch and muttering under his breath, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.” He didn’t even see the man, until he almost tripped over him. He glanced down quickly and realized that if he stopped the Mass would not be offered on time. So he thought perhaps he’d come back later. And he went on into the church. Sometime later another man came along, he too was dressed in black, and kept looking at the time on his cell phone. He didn’t have a collar around his neck, but there were some tattoos showing. He’d come to the courtyard by the church in hopes of making a sale, a deal—but the person he was expecting hadn’t been at the curb as he’d supposed. He looked down and saw the man, and went over and bent down and said, “Hey, buddy, you all right?” The man didn’t answer. So he wiped the blood off his face with his shirttail and saw that his wounds were pretty severe. He lifted his head and gave him a few sips of water, he tried to pick the man up, but realized he couldn’t support him alone. He took out his cell phone and called his friend who was waiting in a car just down the block. When he came they picked the man up, put him n the backseat and drove him to Sutter (it was still open at that time). The man in black got out and told the nurse to bring a stretcher. When the ER staff had finally come, the man and his friend drove away.

Wha-a-t? you say. It could never happen. No way. The Good Drug dealer?

You’ve gotta be kidding.

And, I am playing with the story a bit here. And please know that I just picked this person, this caricature of a drug dealer to try and bring the story out of its humdrum I heard this one a million times-ness. If you’re a person who has dealt drugs maybe you know the stigma attached to the way of life—at least in some circles. I wanted to invite you to experience a bit of the shock, disbelief and surprise that Jesus’ listeners felt when they heard his version of the story. The mercy shown to the half-dead man was mercy every good Jew would have expected to give—that it was shown by a Samaritan was almost incomprehensible. Samaritans were considered less than by Jews of Jesus’ day——outsiders, despised even. The last group you’d go to for help. The last person you’d imagine showing mercy.

I love Jesus’ parables. They are so open-ended and they invite us to enter in so many ways. With whom do you identify in the story? The altar guild member—have you ever been too afraid to get involved? I have.

The priest—have you ever been too preoccupied with your own stuff to even notice? Too busy to have time for another? I have.

The drug dealer?—have you ever reached out in mercy to another when it made no sense to do so?

Or how about the man lying half-dead on the side?—have you ever been hurt, wounded, exhausted, helpless to help yourself? Have you ever been vulnerable in your weakness? Maybe even unable to protect yourself?

The way Jesus told the story made it hard for folks in his day to identify with anyone but the victim really. His listeners knew they were called to show mercy to the stranger. They probably expected the Levite and the priest (the woman and the priest) to have compassion on the man, and maybe they would have judged them—but perhaps they would have understood their motives. If they were like me they might have anticipated being like the third man, the one who helped. It’s so easy to fall into feeling self-righteous, isn’t it? I’d do better than those two! But imagining myself as a Samaritan—or a drug dealer is more than I can handle. So, maybe the one I would most identify with is the man on the side of the road.

From whom will I accept help? Could I accept it from such a despised person? What if I had no choice? the parable asks these questions of me. (they make me uncomfortable).

A good friend of mine once told me about a time he offered to help someone in distress—but because of who he was his offer was rejected. Jerry was a very large (like over 300 lbs) man—an African American man. One night after hours at the university he came down a corridor and a young woman was trying to get her key out of the lock in her office. He came down the hall toward her and said, “Can I help?” She leapt back against the wall and screamed, “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. If you come any nearer I’ll have you arrested.” He drew back in fear, and quickly left the building. Perhaps God had come to her Jerry, but she declined the offer.

That’s how St Augustine read this parable. You and me, that’s us by the side of the road. And, he said God is coming to us in this shocking way—help from the least expected source. God coming in surprise.

I think when Jesus first told this story he was about giving his listeners a taste of the kingdom of God. The shocking way it comes—crossing all boundaries, all our neat arrangements. That feeling of disjuncture—that’s a God feeling. The mercy of God drawing near to us when we’re most in need—how our weakness opens us to the surprising gift of mercy from someone we’d never consider speaking to really. Never consider.

The Good Samaritan or drug dealer as the case may be is disturbing because he breaks up our neat constructions. The ways we categorize people. Deep down we know, you and I, that those categories never hold up. Life is just NOT that neat and tidy: it isn’t good vs bad, the decent and the evil, the worthy and the unworthy. But we live so much of our lives pretending that our judgments are truth. From God’s perspective these are pretty much baloney. Oh, there is evil and there is good, there is righteousness and there is sin. But each of us is a mixture—and we are God’s own.

Maybe the Good Samaritan is a plumb line. God has dropped him into our midst, and like the words of Amos the prophet—the land cannot bear it. We can hardly bear it. God is love all right. No doubt about it. But love is sometimes hard to take—especially from people we’ve judged incapable of love—or not worthy to love me. Samaritans, drug dealers, you name them… Maybe the plumb line of the Good Samaritan is about measuring our willingness to be open to receiving love from the one we despise. Can we let God be God? God can and does come to us in the most surprising ways.

That’s the hard news and the Good News. God comes to us. Very Good News indeed.

I wanted to say a few words about our prayers for the dead in Iraq. Some in our congregation wonder about our motives, wonder if we are making some “political” statement, and others wonder why we are not praying for all of those who have given their lives for our country.

I should have spoken to you earlier about this reading of the names.

The reading of the names was my idea. It came to me after I read about the young men from our County who have died in Iraq. It came to me after a young man I prepared for confirmation when he was 12 was sent back for his third tour of duty. It came to me because I believe that our faith is worth nothing if it isn’t for our lives today. I thought, “this is the world in which we are living today—right now. This is part of our truth and we should dare to speak of it.”

We should have a chance to grieve. War is costly.

And I thought about all the dead in this war. Christ tells us to pray for our enemies. I’m not very faithful about that and I mostly don’t know their names. But I think a lot about the thousands of civilians, men women and children dying and living in fear. I don’t know their names either.

But these names of our American dead I do know, and so I thought to say them out loud here in this place. To pray for them so that we might respect their lives and grieve their loss, and let their names stand for those whose names we do not know.

By saying their names I never thought to dismiss or denigrate other soldiers—those who have gone before—or for that matter any of the others—the countless others we might name here on a Sunday.

The ones lying by the side of the road—here in our own cities and in countless other places. The people too afraid to reach out—the ones too preoccupied to notice—too filled with their own agendas—the ones who are our enemies—the ones we see as other. I never thought to name them all—but to let these names remind of the others. Let these names turn our thoughts to a reality that is painful.

My intent was never to make a “political” statement. I have my political opinions as do you. But this naming was for me more about a faith statement about the value of life. And it is a grief statement about the reality of life.

After all these years of reading the gospels and preaching them, I stand here and tell you honestly that Jesus’ way is the way of the Good Samaritan. It is the way less traveled—the way of love that overturns our divisions and categories, our “us and thems,” is cuts across the deep divides and seeks to offer mercy in surprising and shocking ways. It is demanding and it is life—the fullness of life. Part of the grief I feel when I read the names is grief at my own refusals to choose that path—it’s over our own refusals to choose Christ’s path. The hope I have rests in God—who I know and trust to be at work on the road and along the sides of the road.

You may use the reading of the names for prayers that seem best to you. And, I will be here after the service if you wish to speak to me about this.

Semon June 17, 2007

1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a, Psalm 51:1-8, Galatians 2:15-21, Luke 7:36-8:3

“Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks his host. “Do you see this woman?”

I spoke with my daughter-in-law, last week—she and my son and their 18 month-old daughter had returned from a ten-day sojourn with a Christian Peacemaker Team along our border with Mexico. You may remember the Christian Peacemakers—they are an ecumenical group that works in war-torn areas of the world. A CPT volunteer Tom Fox was killed last year in Iraq. This was a delegation closer to home—and it was more of an informative venture than anything else. The thing that most deeply affected Carin was her meeting a mother who had been caught crossing the border in the middle of the Arizona desert. She’d traveled with a group including her children—and one of her little ones had been separated from her when the Border Patrol came upon them. She didn’t know if he was still out on the desert, if he’d been picked up, or if he’d stayed with his grandmother and made it to safety. She was beside herself with fear and grief.

“Do you see this woman?” “Do you see this woman?”

And, of course, we could ask this question about so many people, real people who are part of the "issue" of "immigration". The men and women who live along the border and find their land being trespassed across day in and out, a border patrol agent, wondering if the people he is trying to stop are armed drug smugglers or unarmed men and women seeking work, an employer searching for field workers, a couple staying at a motel and leaving a tip for the woman who cleans the room, a US citizen who is looking for work and doesn’t want to work for the wages being offered to roofers. Do you see this man? “Do you see this woman?”

Jesus’ host sees the woman as a sinner. And he judges Jesus—he thinks that if Jesus really were a prophet he would know that this woman at his feet is a sinner. “Do you see this woman?” Simon sees her as one word: sinner. And, he sees his guest as a man who doesn’t have the sensitivities of a prophet—the ESP perhaps. He judges Jesus to be a less-than prophet. Because if he knew this woman for the sinner she is, he wouldn’t let her touch him.

“Do you see this woman?” When the story is read, whom do you see? A 30 year-old sexy type? A woman of the streets? A jezebel? (her!) Do you imagine this story as a sensual, sexualized tale? A woman of the streets invading the propriety of Pharisee’s dining room, letting her hair down, sashaying toward Jesus, washing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. Oh, my!

Of course maybe she was 65 with gray hair and a bit of a belly. Maybe she was a middle-aged mother, whose 16 year old had driven her to this place; maybe she was someone who’d embezzled money. . . Who knows? The text doesn’t give us these details. What we do know is that she came into the room and that she was weeping, that she cried on Jesus feet, and let down her hair and wiped his feet, she kissed his feet and then she anointed them with oil.

“Do you see this woman?” Much has been made about her letting her hair down. Women in Jesus’ culture usually wore their hair long, but up. They did however let it down in public when they were grieving—the widow we heard about last week—the widow of Nain most probably had her hair down as she walked along in her son’s burial procession. Women also let their hair down in the Roman culture that Luke lived in when they went to give thanks at a temple of a goddess, or when they went in supplication. It was a sign perhaps of their unadorned offering of themselves. Women in the early church were baptized with their hair down. People at the dinner that night would have certainly wondered about the woman—why was she weeping? Why show her grief like this? What kind of supplication might she have been making? Or was her action one of devotion? Unbound hair on a weeping woman would have been associated with grief, or with supplication, or perhaps with gratitude.

Jesus accepts her actions—and he interprets them—as love. He tells his little parable to Simon, he holds her up as a model of hospitality—and then he sums it all up by telling Simon that her sins, which were many, were forgiven—hence her great love. Her act of love flowed from her acceptance of God’s forgiveness. Living as a forgiven person she lived as a loving person. There is a connection. Maybe it’s related to our prayer when we pray Jesus’ own prayer—forgive us our sins as we forgive others. Maybe there is some kind of channel in us that channels love and forgiveness—and when we accept the fact that we are forgiven we open up the channel inside and are able to forgive others. And maybe our faltering efforts to forgive others open the channel inside so that we accept more and more of God’s forgiveness. I don’t know—but clearly there is no earning it. It just is. Free gift freely given—and the woman --her tears and her let down hair tell us that she knew how much she needed forgiveness. She turned to Jesus and opened herself to him. Maybe you’ve had occasion in your own life to want to do the same. . .

Simon seems to have been unaware that he might have needed forgiveness. He is locked in judgment and really unable to see the woman as anything but a sinner—and God knows we know that place, don’t we?— Mexican, Black, white trash, ex-con, druggie, jock, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat, fundamentalist, liberal, conservativegay, straight, right, wrong, ….. on and on, the labels go. Our lives are filled with labels. We go through life categorizing people and we judge groups of people, forgetting the question Jesus asks: “Do you see this woman?”

Do you dare allow your guard down to enter her truth? Do you dare to blur your straight lined convictions? See the person behind the label?— Do you dare to acknowledge God’s incredible amazing forgiveness at work in even the most ridiculous—the most hopeless of persons?

A few weeks ago I was privileged to participate in a restorative justice training—it was sponsored by the Insight Prison Project that works in San Quentin, (a place filled with people we rarely see at all—rarely think about) and by the Bay Area Women Against Rape an organization that works with women who are the victims of rape and with perpetrators. Both organizations run groups in prisons. The offenders in their programs are men who have committed violent crimes—in these groups, they spend weeks and weeks speaking the truth about their crimes, the truth about what led up to their choices to commit those crimes, the truth about their need to forgive others and to forgive themselves, and about the consequences of their crimes on the survivors of those crimes. All this is to prepare these men to meet face-to-face with a panel of victims/survivors of violent crimes.

These survivors go into a prison and tell their stories—they tell how violent crime entered and affected their lives—they give the details of their experiences—their losses, their grief, their fear, their struggle to go on with life, their depression and anger, the effect on their children. . . It is powerful stuff. They let down their hair, they grieve. They weep- maybe. For the offenders—this may be the first time they have faced the truth of what actions like the ones they took themselves cost the survivors. It is hard to describe what happens in that room.

But it is not over yet. The next time they meet, the offenders tell their stories. They describe their actions, tell why they made the choices they made, tell about their families of origin, their pain and grief, They take responsibility for their crimes. Sometimes they tell about how they wish they could be forgiven—how they wish they could forgive themselves. They are like the woman—they let down their hair and weep –the men grieve the enormity of their sins and for the truth of their longing to be forgiven.

“Do you see this woman?” this man? Do you see these human persons we label survivors? Do you see these human persons we label offenders? “Do you?”

These are people who have dared to cross one of the most indelible boundaries in our society to dive deeply below the surface of our categories. They have done the hard and risky work of letting their hair down—they have wept and wailed. They know their need for love and for forgiveness—they know that—whether they are able to give it or receive it yet or not. They know that their capacity to love is somehow tied up with their capacity to accept forgiveness and give it. They understand that. And, so do we.

We followers of Christ are called to accept the forgiveness so freely given. We are called to live into forgiveness—to be transformed by it. We are meant to be loving persons, to find the courage to see the woman. To see one another. To see those we have judged to be “other,” to remember those in prison, and those still struggling to survive. This is who we are. Forgiveness is the great gift—it is ours to accept and live into. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon June 10, 2007

I Kings 17:17-24, Luke 7:11-17

This week I officiated at two burials here—each of a young man who died too early . . Earlier this week when I went into his office to tell Fr. Matt that a parishioner had learned that cancer had returned, he threw his body back in his chair and groaned. We are a people challenged to live with cancer more and more every day. . . . In the middle of the week, a woman in our community talked with me about a her neighbors, both very elderly, one with Alzheimer’s—the other trying to take care of him, and beginning to be physically unable to do so—what to do that would be helpful? . . . Then, on Friday, as has become my custom, I spent time on the computer downloading the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq during the past week. Young men, and sometimes women, in their late teens, twenties and thirties—dead. I pray as I go with that list, and I think of the unnamed who have died by violence there and elsewhere—even those on the streets of our cities. Death is all about us—and within us. I stand with the grieving widow. I weep.

In this morning’s gospel Jesus comes up on a burial procession. And, when I hear of his raising the young man from the dead I can’t help but wish that he’d been here to raise those two young men whose lives we celebrated here. And all the dead in Iraq. I can’t help but wonder if that power of bringing life from death is still with us. I can’t help longing for death to be undone—here right now, in this place at this time. I get stuck there. In my grief about the state of our world and in my longing for new life. This is a faithful place tobe.

Because this story is about God’s power for new life turning up in just that moment of grief and longing--in the most surprising places—and it’s about the compassion of God. I suspect Luke tells the story more to tell us about Jesus’ compassion than about anything else. And it gives us a taste of what is to come in Jesus’ own living and dying and rising to new life, too.

The widow is weeping. Tears of grief, no doubt for her son—his life seemingly cut short—weeping for all the things he never would get to do—weeping for the person he would never have a chance to become—and truth be told she was probably weeping for herself as well. For as a widow with no son, she finds herself in desperate circumstance—no source of support. Her future is bleak. She grieves her losses. She protests.

And Jesus, had compassion for her. He felt her pain deep inside himself. In his guts, really—to the depths of his heart. The word for compassion has its roots in the word “womb.” Inside he feels her pain. And that feeling of compassion drives him to act—to bring new life. And he does this you’ll see with no direct request from her really, no sign of faith on her part. I take comfort in this. He kind of just inserts himself into the scene—tells her “do not keep on weeping. And he crosses a purity boundary by reaching out to touch the bier—telling the young man to rise—(and then, our text harkens back to the story of Elijah)—Jesus gives the son to his mother.

Elijah too had crossed boundaries. Just before this morning’s portion of the story, he’d gone to this foreign widow for food. God had told him to do this, and he went—and the widow having only a handful of meal for herself and her son had shared that with him—and that handful of meal had fed them all for weeks and weeks. A strange little story, stretching our understanding of who our neighbor is—a foreigner who turns out to be the channel of God's provision. And, then later, we read how Elijah’s own compassion moves him to act—he prays to God from the same feelings the widow expresses in her grief—and then he gives her dead son back to her alive. It’s when he does that that she tells him she finally knows he is a man of God—his words match his actions. The word of new life—the word of the Lord in his mouth is the word of truth.

The thing about compassion is that it brings us together. It’s that simple. You can’t have compassion for someone without drawing close to them. Think about it. Compassion opens our hearts to another—it carries us across the boundaries that separate us. It involves us in knowing another—knowing the other. When I am compassionate I stand with. I am present to. My insides are touched. I am no longer detached, analytical, remote. The other person is real. I listen. I receive. You know about this in your own life.

I’ve been carried by compassion into many wonderful relationships. Last year on the retreat for the women of the living room—those of us providing leadership spent hours really at meals listening, sharing, getting to know—our hearts were opened to one another—all of us women, telling our stories, sharing our truth, knowing our compassion for one another. There was new life where there had been none before.

Last Sunday a woman greeted me at the door at the end of the service with tears in her eyes. She told me she weeps every time we read the names of the dead in Iraq. One of the reasons we read the names of the dead soldiers in Iraq is so that we might open our hearts to them—to the reality of all the dead in Iraq—and else where. Perhaps your compassion for them and for their families began when young men from our county began dying there. Maybe from that start, you’ve found your heart gradually opening more and more to the truth of the cost of this war—to the cost of war period. If you are my age, you have perhaps lost loved ones to other wars in our history. Wars cost lives and lives matter. It is right to grieve.

The widow’s grief is so very important. It’s a powerful statement that something is wrong. Things are not as they should be. And crying and being heard are at the heart of our faith. God heard the cry of the people in slavery in Egypt. Their hearts were breaking and so was God’s. Sometimes we are called to stand with the one who cries and accept the gift of their tears—which may be the only gift they have to give. And, what a gift it is. For the gift of new life flows through the tears—the weeping is a protest—death should not have the final say. Our lives so burdened with the fear of death—the threat of death—are meant for more. Our tears open us to receive the gift of new life.

The powers that be prefer that we not have compassion. Prefer that we are detached from the pain of life. Prefer that we live only in young beautiful, usually thin, bodies. Prefer that we live as voyeurs—watching others lives—but not getting involved. Prefer that we are numb to reality. Think of how numb we have become. “Business as usual” prefers that we avoid the reality of death but that we remember always the threat of death—that we live our lives out under a kind of cloud of fear. You know about this—threat of terrorism, threat of gang violence, threat of child predators, threats, threats, threats…. all involving people who are other—different from us.

Grief and compassion undermine this deathly order of life. Grief protests that there is more to life than this—grief expresses God’s own broken heart. Compassion opens us to one another—joins us together in unlikely ways—frees us to cross boundaries and to enter the darkness together. Compassion energizes us to dare to risk the unknown—to make friends with the enemy—to live in the truth of our oneness. This happens in places like our own families, neighborhoods, communities, everywhere we find ourselves.

Jesus’ compassion led him to interrupt what was business as usual—just another man dead, just another woman left alone—to respond to the widow’s tears, reach out and touch the bier, proclaim the word of God—the word of life.

Jesus—God with us—God the compassionate one. Compassion is “to be with.” God’s compassion assures us that we are never alone. We may not know young men raised from the dead in quite this way, but we are a people who need not live in fear of death. It does not have the final word. The gift of new life is always with us—coming to us as we grieve the present reality, as we long for new life. Part of our calling as Christians is to grieve and weep—let our hearts be broken—so that we are made one with others and with God.

Jesus died for us—not I think so much to pay for our sins, but to take death into his own person. His compassion took him across even that boundary. God embraces the death that you and I must die and in so doing frees us from the realm of death. By standing with us Jesus enables us to stand with each other. No matter what. That is the great good news. It is the word of life.

**I am informed in my thinking by the work of Walter Brueggeman who has written about the importance of grief and of the numbness to which the prophets speak . I commend his writings to you.

MEDITATION GOOD FRIDAY April 6, 2007

“Now from midday there was darkness over the whole land until 3 in the afternoon.”

An echo perhaps of the 9^th of the plagues sent by God to free the Israelites from their Egyptian masters. In the Book of Exodus: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward heaven so that there my be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be felt.’ So, Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven and there was a dense darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another and for three days they could not move from where they were…”

Mired in dense darkness, unable to move. He hangs from the cross, unable to move from where he is. . . .The women stand at a distance daring to look up from time to time. Hardly breathing. Terrified. In shock. Unable to move from where they were. . . . The alcoholic sitting alone except for his drink—his loved ones no longer able or willing to stand by him. The addict seeing the police car, telling her children, ages 4 and 5, “Run, run and hide,” lest she lose them again to foster care. She too takes off running—flying down the alley. But, she is stuck. Stuck in darkness unable to move. . . . Warring nations, young soldiers sent time and again, young men and women taught to make of themselves a bomb for killing others. Threats. Reprisals. Nothing new. Mired in dense darkness, unable to move. It is midday and darkness covers the land.

The people could not see one another. The soldiers mocking, striking, spitting, hitting, ridiculing, punishing, stripping him bare. Men unable to see him for who he is. Even the two on crosses beside him. Reviling him. Deriding him. These people could not see one another. . . . Children in the school yard teasing, sarcastic, bullying, rejecting. Prison guards in Abu Grave, Guantanamo, men on horseback in Darfur. Two men knock one night at the door of a home in Baghdad, a father and young son answer. Islamic hospitality. They ask for water. While the father goes to get it, they raise their guns and shoot the child. They cannot see the boy for who he is. . . . I drive my car along the road, avert my eyes from the one who is poor, the beggar, the one who staggers in broad daylight and falls in a drunken heap. I cannot—will not—see. It is midday and darkness covers the land.

An echo perhaps of the prophet Amos who describes the day of judgment when God is tired of leaders who trample the needy and bring ruin to the poor, tired of those who practice deceit and care only for themselves. “The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day, says the Lord God. . . . On that day I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation.”

The Roman governors on behalf of their king, taxing, taking, grabbin, laying burdens on the poor. Their collaborators, local leaders selling out for their own gain, or perhaps just to keep the peace, not make waves. It’s so easy to be a collaborator. Together they react to the threat posed by this man who proclaims his allegiance to a different King. . . .The darkness of those who seek only after their own wealth and comfort—and can never grasp enough to satisfy. The emptiness after the acquisition of more possessions. Stuffed but empty. The darkness of failing to notice that my own comfort is built on the despair of others. The darkness of my own complicity in destructive systems. Caught as we are in the mire of consumerism—bigger wants, grander desires, our unwillingness to make choices to change. . . . The darkness of those who have known their own betrayal of their best selves. Later when the college student looked back on it, he was shocked really—he was so sure of his ethical convictions when he agreed to be a part of the university experiment—the peer pressure of the group, its culture. . . within a few hours he had become someone he hardly knew—using his power to abuse others, and taking delight in it.

The darkness of the earth in broad daylight. Jesus hangs on the cross—near death. The dense darkness of the mass graves in Poland, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Cherokee trail of tears from Tennessee to Oklahoma. . . . The darkness of death. A darkness well-known to those who have fought on battle fields, journeyed with loved ones, or lived on the streets.

The darkness of grief. Feasts turned into mourning. Songs into lamentations. The wailing of the women of Jerusalem. Peter’s tears. Grief a measure of the loss. . . . The darkness of the first night spent in the house alone after his death. The darkness of emptiness and of wandering aimlessly around touching objects that serve only as reminders of life that once was. The darkness of not knowing what may lie ahead.

“Now from midday there was darkness over the whole land until 3 in the afternoon.”

Jesus cries out, “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” And haven’t we too cried out? Time and again, as darkness has covered our world, our lives, even our very own our selves. As we have come to know the darkness within. Those occasions when we have dared to enter the darkness of our own selves—armed with a flashlight perhaps and filled with anxiety. That overwhelming sense of aloneness—of the absence of God. Our deadness of spirit. Our stuckness. Our wishing for rescue and finding none. “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”

Thank God for that cry. For almost more than anything it assures us that in spite of our sense of abandonment—in fact we are not alone. Jesus the dying man—soon to be dead man—is with us. In the darkness of being stuck. The darkness of complicity and betrayal. The darkness of grief and loss—of all the letting goes. Of blindness and of failure to love. In the darkness of death itself.

There is more to darkness than meets the eye. As the psalmist reminds us: “Darkness and light are both alike to God.” We are not alone.

SERMON MAUNDY THURSDAY April 5, 2007

Jesus gathers with his friends to share a meal against the backdrop of the Passover. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” we say, “therefore let us keep the feast.”

And so some words about sacrifice and Passover from a vegetarian—what better source? The Old Testament is filled with stories of sacrifices made to God. And in Jesus’ day the custom of making sacrificial offerings to the Holy One continued.

We who get our food in grocery stores, generally pre-packaged… we who live closely mostly to cats and dogs and perhaps a parakeet or two—none of which we generally consider eating—we tend perhaps to draw back in distaste at the very mention of such sacrifices. But for a people who lived on the land and knew that there was no eating or feasting without the killing of an animal—for a person who longed to solidify or celebrate or repair a relationship with God—the offering of the best—the first fruits of the land—food or animal made sense. Certainly as much sense as our offerings of money in the plate on a Sunday morning.

Marcus Borg reminds us that the sacrifice—the word comes from the Latin “to make something sacred”—the sacrifice typically was a gift or a meal. As a gift the animal or crop would be burned as an offering to God—to celebrate the blessings of God perhaps, or to express a person’s loyalty to God. The gift sacrifice is a recognition of God’s sovereignty and is made is gratitude.

The meal sacrifice is one in which the blood of an animal was poured over the altar as an offering to God and then the animal was returned to the family for a meal—a meal shared with God. The Passover sacrifice in the Exodus is such an offering. Only in this instance the blood was put on the doorposts of the house as a sign to the plague of death that was coming over Egypt to passover. The meal of lamb was to be eaten immediately with unleavened bread and bitter herbs and the people were to gird their loins, don their sandals and prepare for the journey.

Oh, the heavy-laden mystery of the Last Supper the meal we call the Eucharist… Jesus takes the bread and gives thanks for it, breaks it and gives it to his friends. After supper he takes the cup and tells them that it is full of his blood—the blood of the new covenant. As often as you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.

And oh the meals we remember when we hear these words. Meals of the past: The Passover meal—eaten hurriedly—strength for the journey. Manna in the wilderness. The many meals that Jesus shared with that motley crew of folks he seemed always to draw to the table—rich and poor, powerful and powerless, high-society, and the low, educated and not, sinners all perhaps, though not all aware of their condition. No one turned away—everyone invited. A Jesus meal. And, then oh, yes, the feeding of the five thousand, where he’d earlier taken bread, blessed and broken and given it to his friends to distribute to everyone who was hungry.

Meals of the future. Those bounteous tables set for the people of God when the reign of God is exercised to its fullest. Those celebrations, like the wedding feast or the banquet for the prodigal son, that are a foretaste of that heavenly banquet where no one is turned away, and there is more than enough for everyone. Joy and Plenty. Justice and Mercy.

And meals for the present. Just as in the gathering of the family for the Passover meal—when everyone comes together not just to remember the past—but somehow mysteriously to be present to it. To be a slave, to put the blood on the doorposts, eat the meal, scurry to prepare for the journey to freedom. The past is made present in the meal. And for us at the Eucharist—this is not just some sweet or perhaps poignant remembrance of the past—Jesus with his friends just before his death. This is thanksgiving in the here and now. This is the offering of our thanks. This is the sacrificial offering of as one of our prayers puts it of “ourselves, our souls and bodies” to God. Here is the gift we have to bring. May we be made sacred. May this eating and drinking of the body and the blood, the bread and the wine transform us ever more deeply into your people.

We dare not come to this meal thinking of it as a simple remembrance. It is a meal for the journey. We dare not come to this time in Holy Week imagining only that Jesus’ sacrifice is some kind of substitutional offering for us and our sins. Jesus invites us instead to remember him. Remember him. Re-member him perhaps. Follow him, incarnate him, eat and drink him, be one with him.

The way Jesus took the bread and then the wine. The way he took them, blessed them and shared them. This is about his life. No doubt about it. Remember him. His taking up of life to the fullest, deepest, his giving thanks for it, his living his life as a gift, not to be grasped, but to honor the giver. His breaking—those letting goes, those relinquishings, those countless times he withheld using his power, his giving way to the place and need of another. His giving of himself—in his teaching, and healing, in his journeying with, in his daring to set his face toward Jerusalem, in his speaking the truth to power. Remember him. This is about his life and it is about our lives. Remember him.

This is about his death. No doubt about it. And it is about our own. Remember him. Follow me. Not I’m here to substitute for you. But follow me. On the path to transformation that comes from taking up your life, knowing that it is pure gift, entering the brokenness—knowing your limits, finding life in letting go, in dying to self and giving way. This is the path that calls us to die to the ways of our world—to the conventions of our day. It calls us in large ways and small to stand up to the powers that be whose ways are those of a different kind of death. “When Christ calls a man,” said Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.” Perhaps literally sometimes, as in Bonhoeffer’s case, but truthfully always—as we follow the descending path of growing up into the fullness of who we were created to be. Remember him. This is about his dying and our dying. Remember him.

And so, we come here to eat and drink. And to serve, reminded in this simple footwashing of Christ’s call to follow him as those who serve. As those who die by turning our eyes from self to another. From looking down at others, to gazing up at them.

We pause on the eve of the Friday we call Good. To reflect on our own living and dying. On our own following of Christ. We pause to share a meal—to keep the feast. The feast is both gift and meal. To keep the feast is to offer a sacrifice. To be fed for the journey. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” we say, “therefore let us keep the feast.” May it be so. Amen.

ASH WEDNESDAY --St. George's, New Orleans

Ash Wednesday 2007 Homily preached at St George’s Episcopal Church New Orleans, LA

Of course! it would rain. On the day we move from carnival and partying to these Ash Wednesday lessons—this focus on our sins and limits. Joel’s depiction of the end times ending—the day of darkness and gloom. I can only think that there is a part ofyou that feels like Lent is a return to business as usual in New Orleans—after the brief respite of Mardi Gras. This return to the place where hearts and garments both have been rent—torn apart. Here in New Orleans where just about everything has been torn apart… Yet it is the wisdom of the church year that we once again enter the season of Lent. Lent developed in the early church as the culminating season of preparation for the catechumens—those people who would join the community through baptism at the Easter Vigil. After three years of prayer and learning and ministry, these adults would be baptized and marked as Christ’s own forever—just as you and I have been. This was also a time when people who had committed what our prayer book calls “notorious sins” were reconciled to their community of faith—welcomed back—where a healing of broken relationships took place. Lent then was a time of preparation for new life—for a healing of relationships with one another and with God. This is heavy—important stuff. We begin the season with ashes: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. The ashes of our mortality—our fragility. The ashes that remind us that we will die. Underneath all our human accomplishments, our gifts, our ability to make things happen, our incredible capacity to persevere: we are mortal. We will die. There are limits. New Orleans is a City of Ashes. Its people know the truth of the ashes—know about fragility and brokenness—know about limits and death. Here in New Orleans we can wonder if there is a need for a season of Lent. The somber disciplines of Lent, the lamentations and contritions of Lent. Here in New Orleans it seems as though the exhaustion, frustration, grief and depression of a people, called to face insurmountable challenges and loss would perhaps be enough. 18 months of Lent would be enough. The Lenten disciplines of preparation: almsgiving, prayer and fasting might seem irrelevant in the face of the giving and giving up already going on—in the face of the deathliness already here. But, the ashes mean much more than just our mortality and our penitence—our dust to dust, ashes to ashes endings. The ashes strangely are about our beginning. The ashes are about our oneness, our unity, our common humanity. The ashes are about our creation—about God’s breathing God’s sacred breath into the dust of the earth to bring us into being. the ashes are about life where there was none—about God’s continuing creative spirit at work in the dust of our lives. The ashes on our foreheads are a powerful reminder to us of our untiy with each other and with all the rest of God’s creation. Scientists today remind us as they study the universe that the stars came into being out of what we might call quantum dust. And out of stardust or ash came what we call the primal elements. And out of those elements came the rocks—the dust of the earth. You and I are made of the same stuff. Dust seems to be all that God needs to make life. The ashes on our foreheads are signs then to us of our part in this intricate web of life filled with God’s energy in and beyond it. We are made for unity. Made for relationship with one another and with God and in some mystical way perhaps with all of creation. The dance of life is all about relationship and connection. What could be more important than to remember who we are and what we are made of? What could be more important than to give thanks for the sheer gift of life and for God’s grace—God’s mystical energy at work even now within us and between us and around us bringing us together and into new life? All that God needs it seems, is the dust. Susan took us Californians on a tour of some of the most devastated areas of the city, filling our eyes with the emptiness and our hearts with the brokenness. We stopped to visit her grandparent’s old home and looked into the gutted house—from the back door to the front: emptiness—only the studs left. All the possessions, all of the clutter of our lives, gone. Emptiness. What a Lenten image: that gutted house. Often the disciplines of Lent are meant to strip us bare of the clutter of our lives, trim us down, open us up, create space inside us so that there will be room for God’s creative energy to enter. Hence the giving up or giving away that often becomes trivialized or minimized. The almsgiving—giving of our wealth, perhaps our time, our attention, our presence—to others. Giving away, practice in letting go—unclenching our grip. Giving away—turning our attention to others, losing our self-focus and self-preoccupation. Prayer, turning to God. Matthew’s Jesus urging us to pray in secret—to turn to our inner self—to open our inner selves to relationship with God. To be emptied perhaps of our outer persona—the masks we wear—to be present to God in the truth of who we are—our dusty fragile selves. Fasting—abstaining from food that fills us up—stuffing us to the gills—leaving no room for newness. To fast is to create space—fast from food—feel in your body your hunger for God. Fast from television—from noise—from shopping—from complaining—fast from busyness—from worry. It’s all about disrupting our ordinary patterns that so often leave us numb. It’s about creating room inside us for God’s truth to enter in—or be perceived perhaps by us. Be noticed. Be attended to. To be empty—to be a gutted house is a dangerous thing. To be in that place of vulnerability—knowing my fragility, my longing for relationship—for community. This is a hard place to be—almost unbearable. So when I’m there—gutted out—knowing my fragility, my temptation is to fill up again, quickly. . . with whatever food, activity, emotions, hard work, escape. . .I can find. Perhaps this Lent, here in this place, the spiritual task or calling is not so much about emptying—that has already happened. But it is about turning in emptiness to receive the gift of new life. It’s not so much about focusing on my sins, my acts of sin, both individual and corporate, but it is about recognizing and giving thanks for God’s grace in my life that transforms and redeems me—that enters the emptiness and dust and makes us new. Rather than doing more—to cover the vast emptiness that is me, this may be the Lent to sit in silence and offer the frazzled, exhausted truth of myself to God. Experienced meditators often say that meditation is really about sitting in the truth of our scattered thoughts and returning time and again to God. It’s about the offering of ourselves to God. Sometimes in my morning meditation I have to do that a thousand times—my mind wanders so. It is the turning—the offering to God—that is transformative. Let the ashes remind us then: not only of our limits and mortality, not only of our sins and losses. . . but especially of God’s creative grace that brings new life where there is only dust. And in whose web of energizing breath we are made one. All it takes is dust. Amen

--Patricia Moore