A Community of Prayer tills God's Garden of Love 9.30.12

This Thursday is the second anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. Last Tuesday, I had my regularly scheduled check up at Roswell—scans and meeting with my oncologist. I received excellent news, as there is no sign of new disease, thanks be to God. I tell you this because a) I’m pretty excited and b) I learned more about the power of prayer the past two years than 50+ years of being a faithful Christian, 3 years of  seminary and four years as priest.
Prayer is incredibly powerful. Does it, as James says, heal the sick? Well combined with the work of my team at Roswell, your prayers certainly helped me heal. Because through your prayers I was strengthened and emboldened to do what needed to be done and endure what needed to be endured.
But this sermon isn’t about me.
It’s about us. It’s about our communities---separate and jointly---and what we can do, together, for one another.
It’s about the power of prayer. It’s about the power of community; it’s about the power of God that spreads among us, between us and through us. It’s about what we can do on behalf of God, as a community of faith, as a community of prayer.
In our reading from Numbers, the Israelites are whining, Moses is complaining and God is exasperated. The Israelites are tired of wandering and the lure of the Promised Land has lost it’s luster while the tribulations of captivity in Egypt doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Besides that, they’re really sick and tired of manna, longing for some meat, fish, onions and garlic. They’re fed up. And Moses is overwhelmed saying: “I can’t bear this people on my own. They’re too heavy for me.”
They’re too heavy for me, God. Gimme a hand. But, instead of taking the burden on God’s own Divine shoulders, God asks Moses to bring in 70 elders of the community upon whom God will place the power of prophecy. In other words, God delegates.
God realizes that what makes this whole faith thing work well is community. Especially, a community of faith that’s committed to each other and God through acts of kindness, acts of charity, acts of love.
I think, in our own communities of faith, we can forget this responsibility to and for one another. As members of the Church of the Ascension, as members of the Church of the Good Shepherd, as members of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, as members of the Episcopal Church herself, as members of the Anglican Communion, as members of the one holy catholic and apostolic faith we have responsibilities, we have duties, we have promises to make and promises to keep. First and foremost, of course, is to love our God with all our heart all our mind and all our soul, the second is like unto it: to love your neighbor as yourself.
To give to our neighbors that which we long for ourselves…
What do you long for? What do you dream for? What do you, in the deep recesses of your soul, desire? Because what I know is that when we dig deep, when we get real honest with ourselves and with our God, those material things we want—better finances, a new job, a new car an iPhone 5…..are not the things we really desire. What we desire is so much more intangible—what we desire is heartfelt. Desire fuels longing and for most every person, what we long for is love—unconditional always available, no strings attached love.
Love. The source of all Love is, of course, God. But as God taught Moses in our first reading this morning, God is not interested in being the singular source of Love for everyone. Now hear me clearly---God Loves each and everyone of us utterly. Fully. Without exception…. but what God is teaching us is that God’s Love grows, strengthens expands and intensifies when it is shared. When the singular source of all Love, God, inspires, encourages, enables and emboldens each and every one of God’s children to be a conduit of that Love . To be God’s instrument of Love to all whom we encounter.
It’s a fairly simple formula: we, as humans, desire community, and as recipients of God’s love we desire a community where this Love is understood, accepted, celebrated and sanctified. Within our communities of faith, this Love of God, this Love from God this Love that IS GOD is nurtured and shared and, through this sharing, it is   Strengthened.
Obviously, God’s love in and of itself is strong. But what we learn, when we are active members of the Body of Christ is that this Love becomes stronger, this Love becomes more vibrant, this Love becomes MORE when it is embraced, cherished and shared.
God tells us:
 Feeling my Love? Share it.
Longing for my Love? Receive it from another.
Can’t feel it? Can’t find it? Trust that someone else is carrying it for you, that someone else is holding it until such a time as you can receive; until such a time you can feel it until such a time you can carry it.
God’s Love needs community to reach it’s full potential.
God’s Love needs us.
And so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, communities of faith with grand traditions alone and with new traditions forming through our covenant, what do we do? How do we strengthen God’s Love?
Feed the hungry? Sure, that’s always a good idea.
Clothe the naked? You betcha.
Stand against injustice and respect the dignity of every single human being? Absolutely.
But….before you do any of those noble and necessary things, before we embark on our collective work toward these goals we must first and foremost:
Pray for each other.
What I began to learn so clearly two years ago and what I believe is fundamental to the health of every community of faith is: Prayer. Intentional prayer for one another is vital, it’s life giving and it’s the work of God.
Last week I asked Good Shepherd’s vestry to pray for each and every member of our parish. I sent out parish lists with a formula for how the list could be split up so that every member is prayed for by each vestry-person every single week.
I encourage all of us to take up a similar practice, because a community of prayer is a community that is tilling the garden of God’s love.
 Beginning next week, you’ll notice names of parish families in the bulletin. I ask that you take your bulletins home and pray for those listed there. The names will change each week and then once we are through the parish list we will begin again.
Let us pray
'Gracious God today I pray for our two communities of faith, linked through your love in Covenant. Guide, protect and nourish us, as we share Your Love with each other through our prayers, offered in Jesus’ name. Amen.’

Amen.

A Faith of Many Questions and One Answer 9.23.12

When I was studying for my counseling degree I took a class on Rational Emotive Therapy---the theory behind this therapy goes something like this: sometimes, when beset by fear and anxiety we’re being irrational. In our minds we may blow the perceived “risks” of a certain behavior way out of proportion.
The instructor had us do an exercise to learn more about this theory. We were to identify something we found scary and then  deliberately go out and do it. Now we weren’t supposed to do anything actually dangerous---like walking a tightrope or getting into a cage with a hungry tiger---just regular everyday things that caused irrational fear. What I chose to deal with was my fear of appearing incompetent so my assignment was to pull into a self-serve gas station, get out and ask another customer to show me how to pump the gas. To publicly admit that I didn’t understand a basic every day task, made me really uncomfortable. In my mind, it made me look incompetent.
It made me feel vulnerable.
Asking questions puts us in a vulnerable position because to ask a question is admitting that we don’t know something.  That we need help. Any animal, human beings included, avoid vulnerability. It’s perceived as a weakness—a weakness that can be used by an adversary. In the animal kingdom, vulnerability is a death sentence! For humans, it may not mean death, but it sure can make us nervous.
We live in a “knowing” culture. Knowledge is The Thing. We know A LOT and we’re learning more and more all the time. The genome project is mapping DNA allowing researchers to discover the gene mutations that cause various and sundry types of cancers, Parkinson disease, MS, diabetes etc.
Our life events are shared and re-shared over social media in real time. We know what we know and what we don’t know, immediately and publicly.
 “Knowing” is power, not knowing is weakness and admitting we don’t know is risky, counter-cultural and to many folks, unthinkable.
“Jesus was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”
They did not understand and they were afraid to ask him. They were confused.
You see, Christianity is confusing, it can sound   irrational. It really makes no logical sense:
a young boy from a rather unremarkable family grows up and is discovered to be the Messiah—the Son of God, the author of our salvation. A regular guy, from a regular town: The Son of God. And not only is he the Son of God he goes around TELLING people this. He’s also feeding thousands out of nothing, curing the sick, raising the dead and generally blowing everyone’s mind. Freaking them out. Scaring them.
Scaring them because who he was, what he was doing and what he was predicting would happen  didn’t make any sense..
It’s as difficult to understand now as it was then.
Jesus is spending this part of Mark’s gospel preparing his disciples for what is to come. He’s readying them for the final trip to Jerusalem, his arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. He’s preparing them for what we often proclaim without really thinking about: he is going to die and then through his rising to life again, destroy death forever, giving each and every one of us the same promise: our bodily death doesn’t end life, it changes it. We are, by virtue of our baptism, assured of everlasting life.
We can forgive the disciples their confusion, their mis-understanding and disbelief.
What Jesus is saying still sounds ridiculous irrational and impossible.
Yet here we are, believers in this very thing.
Do we understand it? No.
Do we have to understand it to believe it? No.
As a matter of fact understanding has nothing to do with it.
I stand before you today, your priest, your rector, your, as Marje Torrell calls me, spiritual leader and guide to say, I don’t understand it, I can’t explain it.
Yet, each and every day I awake in sure and certain trust that what God has given us through Jesus the Christ is The Way The Truth and The Life.
Each and everyday as I live out my life as priest I proudly, loudly and clearly proclaim,
 “I believe.” I believe in the unbelievable. I believe in the incomprehensible. I believe in the irrational. I believe in God. I believe God came to live among us Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus  was nailed to a cross and died. I believe he lay among the dead for two days and on the third day I believe he rose from that grave, exited that tomb and walked among us again.
I believe he ascended to heaven where, as part of the Holy and Undivided Trinity he walks among us still. I believe all of this without knowing how. But unlike my irrational belief that asking for help at the gas station would be too awful to bear, our faith encourages our questions, our faith allows for our confusion.
Our faith expects our disbelief.
What our faith doesn’t tolerate so well though is failing to admit our questions, our confusion, our doubt.  This is why Jesus asks us to have faith like a child. A child freely and openly asks the tough questions---why do people die? Why do we get sad? Why is the sky blue? Why why why why?
The author of our faith always wants us to ask why….. why is there pain and suffering in the world, why is my heart broken, why is my child ill----
My prayer for us today is that we’ll approach our faith with the same innocence as the children in our midst.
For it is only through the absolute open and honest vulnerability of a child that we can fully live our faith. Because when we start considering our faith from a rational adult 21st century Culture of Knowing stance, we lose the ability to simply and plainly Believe.
Our faith isn’t a faith of no questions, it is a faith of one answer. And that one answer is God. Through God all things are possible. With God all things are doable. From God all blessings flow.  Amen.

Old Dogs and Saviors Can Learn New Tricks Proper 18, Yr B

I love dogs. But I sure don’t want to be called one. Really, who would? Is there a way to make Jesus’ rebuke to the Gentile woman in today’s Gospel acceptable, palatable…ok?
Not really. Jesus was tired, he was cranky, he was confused and, quite possibly he was, in this case, prejudiced.
In other words, he was human.
When we encounter Jesus this morning he’s coming off the extensive debate with the Pharisees over cleanliness practices we heard last Sunday.  Yep, he’d JUST said that all the worry about cleanliness and purity meant nothing if you were intolerant, prejudiced and separatist.
Clearly exhausted, worn out and irritable Jesus retreats to the north, way past Nazareth, bordering on Gentile territory. He was a long way from home and, he hoped, a long way from the throngs of people needing this, demanding that, judging this and chastising that. He was looking for a break.
So perhaps he can be excused for being cranky, perhaps we can forgive his lack of couth. But to look this devout and desperate woman in the eyes---although you know what?  He probably didn’t look at her, for he was so disgusted and annoyed I doubt he gave her more than a sideways glance.—but, regardless, to say to this woman “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs," can only be considered crass, rude and hurtful.
Seemingly un-phased, the Syro-Phonecian woman (a fancy word for saying she wasn’t Jewish and she wasn’t from Judea or Galilee)  doesn’t back down and calmly, yet firmly, makes her case. She calls Jesus out and he listens. And he learns.
While Jesus was “caught with his compassion down,” this woman was caught with her theology way way up, responding to Jesus’ rebuke by saying, “Sir even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” In other words, she says, God has promised God’s Love to all, to everyone, no exceptions. It’s the message you’ve been preaching, Lord; it just isn’t the message you seem to be hearing. And, she goes on to say, I don’t need much, because even a crumb JUST a CRUMB of this Divine Love will be enough. It’s that potent.
This woman, an outcast, a foreigner, is unclean and impure, according to the traditional Jewish faith of Jesus. But, and this is the point Jesus had just made with the Pharisees--this woman is also a God-loving, God-respecting person of faith. A beloved, adored, faithful, child of God.
She’s also a teacher. A very good teacher. And one from whom Jesus learns a vital lesson.
You see Jesus was learning as he went along. The full goal of his mission---of the job he had been given to do----wasn’t clear to him at first. Some would say, and I would agree, that Jesus wasn’t clear about the full breadth of his mission, of his call, until that long and lonely night in the Garden on the Thursday of Holy Week. So when he retreats to the border of the familiar by traveling into Gentile territory, into the unknown, he was still figuring out just who he was and what he was supposed to do. A lot of what he learned didn’t come from ancient scrolls or from other rabbis’. You see, Jesus learned by doing, by living and by listening. Jesus wasn’t able to lay out the steps and stops of his three-year mission at the outset, he needed to grow into his ministry, grow into his role, grow into his tasks.
Just like us. When you turned 21 did you know everything you needed to know to be an adult? For those of you who are parents, did you know everything about child rearing the day your child was born?
Did I know all there was to know about being priest on my ordination day?
No way.
We’re always learning, always growing, always making mistakes, learning from them and moving on.
As long as we’re alive, we’re growing. As long as we’re alive, we’re changing. That’s a fact of the human condition—we’re always changing, we’re always growing, we’re always learning.
Whether we admit it or not.
 We all know people who decide on how things out to be and refuse to move from that spot. We all know people who take their opinion and make it the Gospel truth for their life, refusing to budge, refusing to listen to reason, refusing to admit that what was once true for them, may no longer be. We all know people who spend an inordinate amount of energy REFUSING to budge, REFUSING to grow, REFUSING to learn.
These are unhappy, unfulfilled and bitter people. They are people who, although they technically are still alive, stopped “living” a long time ago.
That’s what makes this Gospel reading, for all its jarring language, gorgeous. For in it we see our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, open himself up to growth, we see Jesus the teacher being taught by the “other”, the mother who needed to get help for her daughter. Did she wake up that day determined to have a theological sparring match with the hottest preacher around? I doubt it. More likely this woman woke up that day, looked at her tormented daughter and realized she was out of options. She had done everything she could do in her own power to bring her daughter relief. She had gone to the doctors and the religious leaders of her town. She had taken the advice of her elders, she had prayed to her God for help. And on this day, the day she spars with Jesus, this woman had thrown all caution to the wind because her little girl needed help and she was bound and determined to get her the help. No matter what. Like any parent, she wasn’t going to be ignored, and she certainly wasn’t going to let an insult or two get in the way of her undying, unfailing, unending love for her daughter.
Her insistence, perseverance and wisdom convicted our Lord. She convicted him with his own words and his own teachings.  She showed him, she reminded him, she taught him, that God’s love is so overwhelming, so extravagant, so endless that even a crumb of this Love, even a morsel of this Grace, even a mustard seed of faith, will give sight to the blind, sound to the deaf and a lesson to a Savior.  Amen.

The Horse of Faith Must Lead the Cart of Rules

+It may surprise you to know that as a child I was terribly shy, had school phobia and was basically afraid of my own shadow. It was a tough way to grow up and although you may not believe it, anxiety remains something I live with day in and day out. The difference is, I have developed coping strategies, which help me manage the symptoms. One of those strategies is learning what the lay of the land is before I embark on something new. As a young professional looking for work, I would drive to the site of an interview the day before so I could scope out the route, look at the parking lot and get a sense of how long it would take me to get to the interview and how to get into the building etc.
When I was traveling to Israel earlier this year I poured over the website of the places we would be visiting, to get an idea of what it would be like. I don’t like surprises; I like to know what I’m getting into. It’s one of the reasons I like rules so much. I may not follow them all the time, but I like to know what the rules are before plunging in. Knowing what the expectations are—knowing what is acceptable and what is not---is a coping strategy I utilize to manage my chronic anxiety. It works and my life got a lot easier once I figured this out.
That’s what rules, expectations, guidelines do for us…. they help us to manage our behavior so that nothing gets out of hand. My checking out the lay of the land before I go to an unfamiliar place is a functional coping mechanism but, if I needed to go to the place sixteen times before feeling comfortable then this coping mechanism would go from functional to dysfunctional. It’s a matter of degrees.
So when the Pharisees in today’s Gospel get upset over the cleanliness practices of the disciples they are putting the cart of guidelines ahead of the horse of living. As Jesus says, if what comes out of your mouths is vile, than what goes into it doesn’t really matter. If your “coping mechanism” your “rule” your “guidelines” get in the way of being a compassionate, loving, responsible, caring person, then really what is the point?
Which brings us to our reading from the Epistle of James. A very short book, and one many people think should never have made it into the Bible in the first place, the excerpt from today is brilliant: “22 Obey God’s message! Don’t fool yourselves by just listening to it.” James is really onto something here---don’t just spew commandment after commandment, rule after rule, rather allow these guidelines to lead you into living a good, a Godly life.
According to James all we do that is good---the big stuff like helping the poor and the needy, standing up against injustice and caring for  our environment, to the small stuff like holding the door open for someone-- comes from God.
Think about this: when you’re driving to work or to school and wave a car into the lane ahead of you; when you help a classmate or a co-worker with a problem, when you lend your Wegman’s or Tops card to the person in front of you in line; when you thoughtfully choose the candidate to vote for based on what they say they will do for the needy of our community---every single good thing you do comes directly from God, directly from, as James’ puts it: above.
We are all as I’ve said before, INSTRUMENTS of God’s Love, of God’s Grace, of God’s Goodness. All of us. In all we do. All the time. Wherever we find ourselves— work, school, volunteering, recreating, socializing, God is at work, through us.
In all we do, God is there, USING us to further God’s purpose: to bring the entire world --all 7 billion of us-- within God’s Loving and enduring embrace. This is James’ message. Specifically he tells us behaviors to avoid: not listening, being quick to lose our temper and  lavishing in sordidness and behaviors to embrace, to cultivate:  
-- be quick to listen, slow to speak, and eager to care for those most vulnerable.
 The good news about James’ message is this---all of these things are within our reach. What parent doesn't want to be slower to anger with his or her children? What friend doesn't want to be a better listener? Aren't all of us in a position to offer help and support to those in need? James encourages us not just to think the faith, but to do it.”(David Lose) To allow the cart of guidelines to help, not hinder the horse of faithful living.
James is reminding us that our faith isn’t something to be exercised once a week on Sunday, within these walls but is, instead, something to be lived 24/7.
Which makes this such a good reading for Labor Day weekend. Because of faith is at work in all we do, including our labor. As theologian David Lose states: Sunday is not the pinnacle of the Christian week, it’s intended to serve and support our Christian lives the rest of the week–Monday through Saturday. On Sundays we’re refreshed and renewed through the Word of God, the Food of God, the forgiveness of God and the Fellowship of God. Then, once refreshed and renewed, we’re called, commissioned, and sent back into the world to work with God for the health of the people God has put all around us.” (David Lose)
God gives us work to do, tasks both large and small, so our Labor Day message, our everyday message is this:  go out into the world, seeking and serving God in all whom we encounter. We must Labor On, doing this work that is divinely inspired, God Driven and Holy. For only then will we hear our Creator sing, “Faithful servants, well done.” (“Come Labor On, Hymnal 1982)+