Thank You God, for Cancer

****The Communications officer for The Episcopal Church, Neva Rae Fox asked me to write a personal remembrance about my experience with cancer and my faith. Using a homily I delivered on Thanksgiving Eve, 2010 as a template, this is the essay I wrote, which was published in the Huffington Post (Religion page) on 4 October 2012.

I am an Episcopal priest serving two congregations in Buffalo, New York. Two years ago this Thursday, October 4, 2010, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

My prayer, as I was listening to the doctor say the words, “invasive, lobular carcinoma,” came suddenly and clearly: “Gracious God be with me through this journey, allow me to walk it with dignity and grace. And help me to be grateful, whatever may be.”

Thanks be to God, that prayer was answered—and then some.
As I awoke in the recovery room at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo I was so overwhelmed, so overcome with gratitude that the only prayer I could utter through the tears was “thank you.”

Thank you.

Thank you for the presence of a world class cancer institute in my backyard.

Thank you for the newly arrived surgeon, who full of smarts and compassion, full of determination and grace, removed the cancer from me and painstakingly poked and prodded until she was sure—absolutely, positively sure—that all of the cancer was gone. That anything that looked or felt suspicious was removed. That the margins were checked, double checked and triple checked. That lymph nodes were felt and if not absolutely normal in texture and appearance, were also removed.

Thank you, God, for the community of family and friends huddled in that waiting room who sat for hours, praying, laughing, crying and worrying. Hoping for the best, fearing the worst and believing. Believing that whatever the outcome, they, through the grace of God, would help me get through it all.

Thank you God for the two communities of faith I serve —people who prayed me through that day, who prayed in the days leading up to it and all the days that followed. A community of love that walked with me in good times and in bad, who rejoiced with every victory and lamented every set back. A community whose trust in the peace of God, truly surpasses all understanding.

Thank you God for faith. For the indescribable, ever present belief that whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure comes from the love of God, poured out for us through Jesus Christ. (Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians).

Thank you, God, for cancer.

Yes, thank you for cancer.

Because of cancer I learned lessons I didn’t know I needed to learn. Because of cancer I discovered a depth of love, faith and gratitude I never knew existed. Because of cancer, I learned that bad news is best handled when infused with the Good News. The Good News of Faith, the Good News of Love, the Good News of Gratitude.

There are thousands upon thousands of people who are diagnosed with breast cancer each and every year. Not all the outcomes are as good as mine. People die, people suffer, people mourn. Children grow up without mothers, spouses grow old alone, friends are left with holes in their hearts.

Cancer is not for sissies, cancer is not fun, cancer stinks. But, through the grace of God and the power of prayer and the faith of a community, cancer made me a better priest, a better pastor, a better person.

On October 18, 2012, I, along with two sister priest and a deacon, all of us breast cancer survivors, will lead an open service of Healing, Hope, Gratitude and Remembrance for all those affected by Breast Cancer. The service will take place at the Diocese of Western New York Ministry Center. People of all faiths or no faith are invited. We will sing, we will shout “hallelujah,” we will lament. For Breast Cancer, though it has personally given me much, has taken way too much from far too many.

Breast Cancer is treatable, and early detection is the key. In my family alone five have been diagnosed early enough to be treated quickly and in some cases, aggressively. It has worked. So ladies, get those mammograms, do self-exam and, if you hear the news I heard two years ago, may you, through the power of pray and the fellowship of community, be filled with gratitude and health, all the days of your life.

--The Rev. Catherine B. Dempesy
The Rev. Catherine B. Dempesy has been an Episcopal priest for four years. Currently she serves as the rector of two historic parishes in the city of Buffalo: The Church of the Good Shepherd in the Parkside neighborhood and the Church of the Ascension in the Allentown neighborhood. Prior to her work as priest, Cathy worked as a licensed clinical professional counselor in the state of Illinois, specializing in community mental and addiction services for women and their children. Cathy and her partner, The Rev. Deacon Lucinda “Pete” Cornell, live with their three dogs, two goats and two donkeys in the city and in rural Niagara County, north of Buffalo.

Open those hands, unclench those teeth and let Me in. 14 October 2012, Yr B

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This is the punch line to Jesus’ parable for today but instead of it being a referendum on being wealthy, I think it’ a referendum on our open-ness, our willingness to accept God into our lives 100%.
Most of us receive communion like this: [open hands] and like this [tip chalice to mouth]. Have you ever tried to receive communion like this? [clench fists] [clench mouth]
I think it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for us to receive the gifts of God through clenched teeth, clenched hands and clenched hearts.
To receive the Gifts of God, freely given for us, we must be open, we must be receptive, we must be willing.
Willing to let go of everything: our fear, our worry, our doubt and, as Jesus told the young man in today’s Gospel, our possessions.
Everything. We must let go of everything in order to fully and completely receive God. Because without open-ness and willingness, the Gifts of God will fall to the floor, discarded, unused, unappreciated.
When the young man heard this, indeed when Peter and the rest of the disciples heard this from Jesus they were very very sad. [Our translation this morning says they were shocked, but a more accurate translation is sad, very sad].
It’s easy to think that they’re sad because it means they have to give up the stuff they like—kind of like when folks give up chocolate for Lent—but I don’t think that’s it at all. I think they’re shocked, they’re sad because they realized, deep down, that no matter how much they said they loved Jesus, no matter how much they insisted that they had turned their lives over to the care of God, they really hadn’t.




Because to completely turn our life over to God, to completely believe all that Jesus is saying, to be willing to live as God wants us to live, we must discard all that stands in our way.
When Jesus tells the young man to sell everything, give money to the poor and then follow him he isn’t telling him to become destitute, he isn’t telling him that having stuff---even being wealthy is BAD, he’s telling him to get rid of all the stuff that weighs him down, all the stuff that gets in the way. Jesus is saying, open those hands, unclench those teeth and let me in.
Jesus is telling the young man and his disciples and us that what stands in the way of us inheriting the kingdom of God, are our attachments. To make his point Jesus references the material attachments the young man had---his stuff—but if you read more carefully, if you consider the text more fully what Jesus is suggesting isn’t a pauper’s existence, not a life of scarcity but a life of richness, a life of abundance, a life of blessing.
A life where we remember all our blessings flow from God. A life where, before all else, we thank God and we trust God.
We thank God for all that we have and we trust God to help us through the worry and the doubt and the clenched hands and teeth of life in our world, a world with an uncertain economy, a world with lots of debt, a world where fear is splashed on the front pages each and every day. You see it these things--the worries, stuff that awakens us in the middle of the night, the things that cause our teeth to clench and our hands to wring—these things blot out all the blessings we know are ours: all those we love, our church, our faith, our God.
Which is precisely Jesus’ point. Those things that close us up and shut us down; those things that distract us, those things that color all that we do: the worries of our lives---these are the things that keep us from entering into the fullness of God’s Love.
It’s what I’ve been preaching for weeks now, it’s what has been weighing on my heart even longer: when our fear takes center stage, we block out God. When our worry takes center stage, we block out God, when our fretting takes center stage we block out God.
I say it again and again and again: God’s love is abundant, it is expansive, it is never ending and it is available to us, all of us, all the time, no matter what.
But…hear what I’m saying, it’s available to us. Available. We can have these endless, boundless, overflowing blessings, if we AVAIL OURSELVES OF IT.
To avail ourselves of it, to receive the gifts of God, requires our willingness and our openness…. but when we live in a constant state of fear, of scarcity, of worry, we cannot receive the gifts, we aren’t availing ourselves of the gifts, we are blocking the blessings.
And when we block the blessings it’ll be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle then for us to rest in the abundance of God.
Jesus gave us this parable for the same reasons he gives us all the parables: to turn our thinking inside out and upside down. To make us question everything, to make us confused, to make us dizzy to cause us to lose our way.
Because our way is, more often than not, the way of this world. And the way of this world leads us to a place of worry, a place of scarcity, a place of loss. God’s way, the way that seems so illogical, the Way that at times seems so impossible, the Way that, frankly, at times seems down right irresponsible is the Only Way.
This week marks the beginning of our stewardship campaign: Praise God from Whom All Blessings flow.
This year you won’t see any thermometers, you won’t hear us speak about how many pledging units we need or how much we need you to pledge. This year we are focusing on how we---as a community of faith and as individuals have been richly blessed by God and we will acknowledge that all that we have, all that we are is because of God—for everything EVERYTHING comes from God.
This year is, simply, a blessings drive. This year we trust that, as a community, we’ll act  as Jesus has taught us: we’ll detach from worry, detach from doubt, detach from sadness. This year we’ll open our hands, unclench our teeth and praise God, from whom all our blessings flow.
Amen.

Sowing the Legacy of Francis, Reaping the Gifts of God October 7, 2012

Today we go off script for a week as we take a break from our reading of Mark’s gospel and pause to honor the life and legacy of St Francis. Most of us know Francis as the great lover of animals, the patron saint of pet blessings and gardens the world over, but there’s a lot more to Francis than just his love of plants and animals.
He was a real-live person of faith. He put his money where his mouth was. Or, in this case, he put his father’s money away and turned his back on wealth and privilege to live with the exiled and excluded of the world: the poor, the sick, the needy. His tremendous faith attracted many followers in 13th century Italy and soon an order of monks was established in his name, and not too long after that, an order of nuns was also formed, both following his rule of life. The Franciscan rule of life is pretty simple and is aptly summed up in the prayer attributed to Francis (although written by a follower several generations after his death-- if you care to follow along turn to pg 833 of the BCP):

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
It’s a powerful prayer that, I think, exemplifies the spirit of Francis and gives us all a roadmap for living faithful Christian lives.
You see we ARE God’s instruments on this earth. We’re stewards of God’s creation, caretakers, oversee-ers, nurturers of what God has entrusted to us. And as vigilant and loyal stewards we are called to be more than bystanders, more than spectators. We are called to be involved, we are called to get our hands dirty, we are called to leave creation in better shape than we found it, because that’s what good stewards do.
Francis was a great steward of creation and, by following the directives of this simple prayer, we can be too.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love.
There’s a lot of hate in our world—there’s the big hates: religious, social and cultural intolerance resulting in the killing of thousands upon thousands the world over: the murder of girls by the Taliban for wanting an education, a gay man in Uganda lynched for expressing his identity with honesty,  Christians killing Muslims, Jews killing Christians, Muslims killing Jews all in the name of God--there are big capital H hates in our world. We must pray for all that hate to stop, we must pray for the victims, we must pray for the perpetrators. But there are also lots of other more subtle hates going on. Some right in our back yard. There’s the ever-present issue of bullying, evident in our schools and on our playgrounds, but also playing out in work places and at the family dinner table. Anywhere someone uses their position of power to intimidate, threaten, demean or demoralize a person---child or adult---bullying is occurring.  It used to be said that bullies could be stopped if we ignored them. But as we’ve learned in the past year, since the death of Jamey Rodemeyer and the witness of so many others is that bullies need to be confronted by those of us sitting here today. We must identify and name the bullying, we must become more than bystanders we must be sowers of Love.
For where there is hatred, we must sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon;
we make mistakes. We hurt others. And others hurt us. When we’ve been hurt we must learn to forgive. Not forget, but forgive. Pardoning someone means we stop punishing them. It doesn’t remove the hurt, it doesn’t excuse the hurt, but it stops the cycle in it’s tracks. Our burden is lessened when we off load the piles of resentment we carry around. Where there is injury, sow pardon.
Where there is discord, union---have a relationship that needs mending? Try mending it…if it can’t be mended, if it’s too risky to mend it then move on….stop feeding the discord, stop opening the wound…..
where there is discord, sow union.
 Where there is doubt, faith;--we all have doubt. Anyone of faith has times of doubt…but, as I’ve mentioned before when you’re feeling faithful, carry the doubt of those feeling faithless. You see, by carrying the burden of doubt on your broad shoulders of faith, you’re giving that other person a chance to see faith in action. Seeing faith at work is the surest way of finding one’s way back to it.
Where there is doubt, sow faith.
Where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

Our job, as Christians is to shine the light of Christ wherever we go, to help those in the depths of despair know that there is a way forward, there is light at the end of the tunnel there is at least one person in the world who, through their own acts of prayer and service, cares that you are hurt, that you are mournful, that you are sad.
 Where there is darkness, sow the light of Christ.
 Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Folks, this prayer isn’t simply a suggestion, this prayer is more than a guide, this prayer is deeper than platitudes. This prayer is the Gospel message. This prayer is always the way to the Good news. This prayer is the heart and soul of our faith journey. These words are our marching orders. Let’s get busy sowing the legacy of Francis and reaping the gifts of God.   Amen.

[1] This idea was gleaned from the writings of Jaimie Marzullo, “Writings from the City Line,” firstcityline.wordpress: CALL TO ACTION: HIGHER STANDARDS AGAINST BULLYING. WHO CAN YOU SAVE?

September 30, 2012, 8:17 pm