Easter 5 Yr C What's Love Got to Do With It? Everything

+In 1984 Tina Turner had a blockbuster hit song called “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Now she wasn’t speaking about today’s readings, but the tag line sure fits. For what does Love have to do with it?
Everything.
Absolutely Everything.
In today’s Gospel Jesus has just finished washing the feet of his friends following the Last Supper. The disciples’ heads are spinning, their hearts are racing, their worry, doubt and fear is building. Jesus’ return  to Jerusalem is coming to a head…His message of love and peace is about to collide with the world’s message of fear turned to anger and hate.
Instead of plotting his escape, instead of assuring his followers that he has a plan to overthrow the Romans and establish his reign on earth, instead of getting ready for the fight, Jesus drops to his knees, lovingly washing the feet of his friends and giving us a new commandment to Love One Another.
What’s Love got to do with it?
Everything.
In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles Peter blows everyone’s minds by eating with people who are not Jewish. Now remember, in the Jewish faith then (and still with the orthodox and Hasidic Jews of today) non-Jews—gentiles, goyim—are considered unclean. The daily ritual of an observant Jew includes extensive purification rites, ritualistic washing before meals.
But, all the washing in the world can’t purify someone who eats with the “other.” But before the temple authorities in Jerusalem could get organized for a stoning of Peter, he explains why he ate with Gentiles---because God told him too. Because God said, “I’ve begun an altogether new thing here, it’s all about Love. It begins in Love, it abides in Love, it ends in Love.”
What’s Love got to with it?
Everything.
Our reading from the Book of Revelation is familiar; it’s very often read at funerals. The reading is full of promise, a comfort for those who are experiencing great loss and sadness. The promise? The promise is this: God came to dwell among us and remains with us through the Holy Spirit. God dwells among us to wipe every tear from our eyes; in other words God is with us in every single thing. God is with us in our suffering and our doubt as well as our celebrations and our hope. God cries with us and laughs with us, God is with us, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for better of for worse.
What’s love got to do with it?
Everything.
The spiritual teacher, lecturer and author Marianne Williamson remarked: the way of the miracle worker is to see all human behavior as one of two things: either love or a call for love. If you believe, as we profess in Christianity, that God is Love, this comment fits in nicely with today’s readings and our faith in general: the actions of humanity are either expressions of God’s Love or pleas for God’s Love. Think about how profound this simple statement is: all our behavior is either loving or in some way a request for, a demand for, a plea.  For Love.
We see examples of this all over the place.
Like in the profound story of the Man in the Cowboy Hat. You probably heard it:
Carlos Arredondo was at the Boston Marathon finish line handing out American flags. When the bombs went off he ran…not to safety as most of us would instinctually do, but, much like the 12 volunteer first responders in West Texas who lost their lives fighting the massive inferno at the fertilizer plant, Carlos ran toward the carnage.
As he knelt comforting a young woman who was injured he saw Jeff Bauman who had lost both his legs in the blast and was bleeding profusely and, I might add, fatally. That is until Carlos and several other rescuers wheeled him to safety. Jeff never would have survived the transport to the ambulance, let alone the hospital if Carlos hadn’t pinched his femoral artery, stopping the fatal flow of blood.
There are people like that. People who see danger and run smack dab into the middle of it. Why?
Love.
That’s why.
What’s Love got to do with it?
Everything.
Last Sunday hundreds of people gathered in Delaware Park for a run, a run of solidarity with those in Boston. Did they run for the exercise? Did they run for the companionship, did they run for the fun of it? Sure. But they also ran for the Love of it.
What’s Love got to do with it?
Everything.
Perhaps you heard this story as well:
Cameron Lyle, a University of New Hampshire track and field athlete who has given up the rest of his collegiate athletic career to help someone else. A stranger. You see Cameron is registered on the national bone marrow registry and a few weeks ago, he was notified that he was a perfect and
rare match for a 28-year-old with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, an aggressive often fatal cancer.
When asked if he thought about all he was giving up for this perfect stranger, Cameron admitted that yes, he did think about it. But, as Cameron said, the stranger, the ill man? Well he’s DYING.
What’s Love got to do with it?
Everything.
Yes there is evil in this world, darkness fueled by fear that is manifested as hate. There is intolerance, there is horror and there is tragedy. But for every intolerant comment, for every experience of horror, for every tragedy that befalls us individually and corporately there is Love.
How do we respond to heinous acts that, as Marianne Williamson posits, are calls for love?  We respond with Love. We respond in Love, we respond as Love.
From Newtown to Columbine, from West Texas to the lower 9th ward, from Fallujah to Baghdad, from North Korea to Syria, from Gaza to Nazareth, from Buffalo to Boston, love has EVERYTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Amen.

Deacon Pete's Sermon for 4th Sunday of Easter 21 April 2013

I don’t preach all that often, just once a month, and this is the second time in 5 months that I’ve had to rethink where my Sunday sermon would go, adjust what I thought I would say.  The first time was after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and now as a response to this week’s events in Boston.  It says a lot about our world that twice in 5 months most preachers have had to throw out their sermon drafts in order to address our reactions to violence, evil and darkness.  

I was going to talk about dirty, smelly sheep.  I was thinking about what a great image we are given for Jesus in today’s readings, but claiming the Good Shepherd image for Jesus implies that we are the sheep.  And sheep, although they certainly have their uses, are not all that cool.  I’m sure you all have one or two wool sweaters and that you’ve experienced, as I have, the “lint magnet” qualities of wool.  Sheep are balls of walking wool, Velcro in motion.  Whatever they lie down in sticks to them, grass, twigs and other matter we won’t mention in polite company.  Hence, the dirty and smelly part.  Sheep are also slow to learn, unpredictable, stubborn, restless, dependent and all too likely to stray and get lost.  Making connections between us and sheep is easy and unflattering; I know I have had all too many moments in life when I have functioned as a two legged sheep, moments I wish I could take back.  

Sheep are also easily frightened, they will huddle together, baahing and baahing, bewailing their circumstances if you will, unable to see a way out of whatever situation they find themselves in.   And certainly, we can clearly identify with those feelings of paralysis, hopelessness, and fear, especially this week.

What do we say in the face of the violence that so often has accompanied April, frequently the month of Eastertide?  April is not unfamiliar with violence; it is the month when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the month that 32 students were killed at Virginia Tech, the month of the Branch Dravidian siege at Waco, the month of the Oklahoma City bombing, the month of the Columbine High School shooting.  

The 23rd psalm and the Revelation reading both treat death in a defiant manner, urging us to be fearless in the valley of the shadow of death and telling us God will wipe away the tears of those who have gone through the great ordeal. It is the verses from Acts though, that I think give us information on how to live in violent times as people to whom Easter matters, how to live with evil and darkness as people of the resurrection.  

The widows of Joppa were stricken by the death of Dorcas.  She is the only woman in the bible who is called a disciple, her good works and acts of charity must have been legendary for Luke to so name her.  She was devoted to the widows, women who without her would have had nothing.  Remember, in that culture, a woman without a man was practically invisible.  She had no property, no income, no standing.  

First, the community takes care of Dorcas' body.  They are so devastated by her death that they call for  Peter.  Then the widows gather, weeping and telling her story.  it would be easy at this point to focus on the resurrection of Dorcas.  To link her goodness with her coming back to life.  To somehow see her resurrection as a reward for her discipleship.   But, surely there were others who did similar work, others who had committed their whole lives to being disciples.  But, Peter did not bring her back to life as a reward, nor did he bring her back so that she could continue doing good works.  Dorcas, or Tabitha as Peter called her, was raised so that those present could see that nothing, not even death, could stop the work of His disciples.  She was not raised because the community needed her, but because the community needed the resurrection, they needed resurrection hope.  Resurrection hope says that nothing can stop the work of Jesus, not even death.  And this my, friends, is the hope that the we as the church are called to live out and the hope we are called to be.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that April is a month of such great tragedies, the anniversary month of such monumental losses, such overwhelming violence, the month when so much evil has appeared.  Eastertide is a time of great light, and great light attracts great darkness.  We even have a prayer in our service of compline that  asks our Lord Christ to shield the joyous, a corporate awareness that great good can attract great evil.    

We can choose to look at great evil, at all the heartbreaking damage we do to one another and to our earth and we can choose to have no hope.  We can point fingers and lay blame, bemoan the presence of terror and fear and death in our lives. We can huddle together like sheep, baahing and baahing as we feel lost and alone. We can focus on the dirty, smelly nature of our sheepiness. We can perseverate on our all too human fallenness, our tendencies to be stubborn, dependent, and slow to learn.  We can dwell on our feelings of having strayed or of being left behind.  Or, we can remember Tabitha and the hope we are called to live in to.  We can express in works of compassion and caring the hope of the resurrection.  We can claim the promise that we will hunger and thirst no more, the sun will not strike us nor the scorching heat.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will wipe away every tear from our eyes and we will dwell in the house of The Lord forever.    Amen.

Shouting Alleluia in the Mundane of Daily Life April 14, 2013

Last week while we were taking a few days off post-Holy Week, Pete and I watched a slide show of our wedding. Now we’d seen it before, but last week in the peace and relaxation of time off, I really SAW it for the first time, really felt it. I saw it and allowed it to soak in. Somehow in the ordinariness, in the normality of daily life, sitting around on a Friday morning playing on the computer, I was able to notice the enormous beauty of that weekend. Suddenly, the pictures of my family all pitching in to get Ascension sparkling before the wedding, the pictures of both our families gathered at the rehearsal dinner, photos of the wedding itself and pictures taken at the reception made quite an impact: the weekend really was something special.
I think that’s how it works---at least for me---the resonance of an event doesn’t hit me until later...some time must pass before I NOTICE the extraordinary perched atop the ordinary of daily life. The same thing happened to me last Sunday as I baptized Oliver. I really thought I’d fall apart during the service, that the action of baptizing my great-nephew would cause me to lose my composure—but I went through the liturgy just fine, thank you very much. It was still really neat to do, but in the moment, I wasn’t emotional.
But, once I’d returned to Buffalo Tuesday night, Pete and I watched the DVD of the baptism. That’s when I cried. That’s when—back in the ordinary of daily life back in the routine, back in the regular--- the full impact of that very sacred event took hold. Only then was I was able to feel the awesomeness of being granted the privilege to anoint my own great-nephew as one of Christ’s own, forever.
There’s something about the routine—the mundane, the ordinary that puts us in a place of open-ness—open-ness to the work of God through the Spirit. I guess we need to be in the mundane routine of daily life for our guard to be dropped…. it’s in that opening that the Spirit can really do her work, it’s in that opening that the miraculous work of God, as given to us in the risen Christ, really gets down to business.
It’s seems that when we return to the routine, the amazing can really and truly take hold.
That’s what our readings on this third Sunday of Easter teach us. As many of you know, our Sunday Readings are on a three-year cycle. Year A B and C.   In Year A we hear the story of Jesus revealing his risen self to two disciples as they walk back to their “regular lives” on the road to Emmaus. In Year B we hear the end of the Emmaus story as Jesus appears to the apostles as they are huddled in hiding just after the resurrection. In the first story, Jesus is revealed to the men after he breaks bread with them—after sharing a meal with them. In Year B Jesus appears to the apostles on Easter Sunday evening. The apostles recognize Jesus right away, but they’re terrified…they only settle down after Jesus has some bread and fish with them. After they share a meal. We’re in year C so today we hear the story of Jesus’ breakfast BBQ for the disciples. It seems important to the evangelists, to the authors of the Gospels that we understand that the post-resurrection Jesus is encountered—and understood—in the context of regular daily life.
In other words, the appearances of Jesus, the recognition of the resurrection seems to take hold, to make sense, to be noticeable only after his friends have shaken off the shock of the crucifixion and are “moving on” with their lives.
When in the midst of the extraordinary—like the  shock of the resurrection, or while in the midst of joy and celebration like a wedding or a baptism, it’s difficult to make room for God. There’s just so much going on we are super-attuned to every last detail….and in our obsession, in our concentration, we can miss God’s nudges. You see, God understands that we expect to encounter the Holy in the big, in the dramatic, in the amazing. But God doesn’t work that way. God isn’t all that interested in seeing us only in our Sunday best. God is much more interested in our regular-ness than in our spectacular-ness. Now don’t get me wrong, God loves a great big party, like our wedding, or the simple wonder of new birth and a new life in Christ as portrayed in a baptism, but God does most of God’s work in the regular and in the routine. Like fishing off the coast, sitting in the family room on a vacation Friday morning, or in the sharing of a meal, in the breaking of the bread.
This is the lesson in today’s Gospel: make room in your daily life for God!
At our Thursday morning Eucharist this week we commemorated the Annunciation, that is the visit of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, announcing that she would be the mother of Jesus. In my homily I mentioned that the thing I so love about Mary is her regular-ness, her normal-ness, her being utterly ordinary, a young peasant girl who simply and profoundly says yes to an angel of the Lord who pays her a visit on an ordinary day while she is engaged in an ordinary task—doing laundry. What makes this event EXTRAORDINARY is Mary’s reception of God’s message. How often does God speak to us in the ordinary, in the routine, in the mundane? Are we receptive enough to receive God’s message? Are we aware enough to hear it? And are we brave enough to heed it?
Our Easter task, brothers and sisters, is to listen for God in the whispers of daily life.
Our Easter task is to hear God.
Our Easter Task is to see God.
Our Easter task is to be God ‘s hands and feet in the world. To follow Jesus. And to take care of Jesus’ lambs. Each and every day.
Our Easter message then, is this:
God speaks to us in the ordinary.
God speaks to us in the mundane.
God speaks to us.
May we all hear, see and be God in the world.  For when we do that, God joins our Easter song of Praise:   Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Amen!