Going off script with God July 28, 2013 Proper 12

I remember, soon after I was ordained, my mother asking me to offer grace before a family dinner. I was in town because a very close family friend was seriously ill and none of us thought he would live through the night. So I commenced to offer a  standard food blessing, with a petition for Richard tacked onto the end. My mother, being a fairly rigid person said "Amen," as soon as I ended the familiar "grace" portion of the prayer... She was used to a specific formula for saying grace and darn it how dare I mess with it! My mom was astounded that I would " go off script" while praying.
The disciples ask Jesus: teach us how to pray. John the Baptist did for his followers, do it for us, give us the formula write us a script.
Everyone wants the inside track on the right way, the fool proof correct way to pray.
As if there is a wrong way to pray.
This is Jesus' point at the end of today's Gospel--- knock---Whatever you do knock! That is, PRAY, people. Whatever, however, wherever, whenever....God wants to engage us in a conversation. God wants to hear from us.
And this is what personal prayer is: a conversation with God. Whenever we speak to God, God listens.
God may not respond as we expect ( or wish or sometimes demand ) but God does listen and God does communicate back to us through the work of the Holy Spirit.
But what the disciples were asking, and what many people ask me is just what is the magic formula...the exact right way to pray?
I understand the question. People assume that God is like us. Like my mother--That God has a very distinct and proscribed way of doing things. That God is of the "my way or the highway" club.
God isn't.
However, because the disciples are an earnest bunch, Jesus offers them a formula for prayer. An outline of what a prayer could --NOT SHOULD-- look and sound like. Enter, The Lord's Prayer. Now it's  important to realize that although the prayer is known the world over- it's one of  the first prayers children learn, it's one most all of us have memorized -- it is not the be all and end all of prayers. It's simply an example, a prototype for a general kind of all encompassing prayer. It isn't magic, it's just handy.
I always tell people who are just beginning the ordination process tat when doing nursing home visitations to always always use the Lord's Prayer because when ministering to Alzheimer's patients it's amazing that, long after the faces of loved ones disappear into that unidentified line of strangers, they can still recite the Lord's Prayer. Word for word.
So while it is not the talisman of our faith, it is iconic.
But we needn't pray as the Lord's Prayer is structured, nor must we pray like others pray. We must pray as we feel compelled to pray.
However that looks and however that sounds.
Author and Christian seeker Anne Lamott says that all prayer falls into three categories:
Thanks
Help
Wow.
THANKS
 thanks for giving me life
Thanks for giving me love.
Thanks for healing my hurts , my illness, my loss, my sadness
Thanks for getting me through that sticky wicket.
THANKS. Thanks thanks


HELP
Help me I'm lost
Help me I'm scared
Help me I'm hurt
Help me I'm over whelmed
Help me
Help me
Help me
WOW
wow what An amazing sunset
Wow what an incredible baby
Wow that's some kind of Love
Wow this is some kind of life
Wow. You amaze me God--you totally and completely amaze me.
WOW WOW WOW.
I tend to agree with Annie. This is all God needs.
The basics.
Thanks….Help…..Wow
You know that verbal shorthand you can do with your best friend? Your spouse? Your sibling? How what you really mean, what you really need doesn't need to be spelled on in 12 pt font, double spaced with complete sentences and clearly defined paragraphs?
That's what God wants to have with us. A close and loving relationship that at times, needs few if any, words.
This is the point of that odd little parable in the middle of today's Gospel about the noisy neighbor and the grouchy homeowner. Many people mistakenly assume that God is the grouchy homeowner,  that we must whine and cajole to get God's attention. No what Jesus is telling us is that if one, out of a sense of cultural duty or just plain fatigue , responds to the pleas of another how much more will God respond to us, for God doesn't respond out of a sense of duty or expectation, God responds out of LOVE.
Embrace that Love
engage that Love.
Reciprocate with love of your own and enter into a conversation with God
Ask and receive
Search and you will find
Knock and the door will be opened
Go off script, blaze your own path and in your own words and through your own heart find a way to tell God thanks, to ask God for Help and to offer God Wow. Amen.

The Traveler July 14 2013

+At 10:52 pm on Monday February 18 I received the following email from Jesse’s great grandmother Laurel:
Dear Cathy, Jesse Stephen  was born at 9:22 P.M.   8 pds.  9 oz.   21 in.   Mother & baby doing fine. [signed]  Very Happy great grandmother better known as Gigi.
I cherish that email. First because Nancy and I used to share stories of our mothers and their repeated befuddlement with email. We both marveled that even amidst their frustration, our mothers still persevered in communicating over the information superhighway. Secondly, I cherish it because not even two weeks later, Laurel was gone.
Now, if Laurel were still alive, she’d be sitting right over there, beaming with utter joy at this blessed event. Of course even though they aren’t physically here, we know that both Laurel and Ralph are smiling down on us as we baptized another Cammarata (fourth generation!) into this fold.
When I pulled up Laurel’s birth announcement email earlier this week, I began to wonder what kind of email Laurel would send Jesse today, if the information superhighway reached heaven.

Dear Jesse,
Gigi here. You are such a handsome little boy. I wish I could be there to hold you, but know that my spirit is with you today, as it will be forever.
I looked up the Gospel reading for this Sunday and was pleased to find it was the story of the Good Samaritan—it’s a story you’ll hear again and again as you grow-up.
We all strive to be the Good Samaritan and I certainly expect—and hope and pray—that more often than not you’ll be just that: a Good Samaritan. But the truth is this story isn’t so much about being the Samaritan as it is about accepting that throughout life, at different times, you’ll be each of these characters.
When you’ve grown up there’ll be times when you get so busy that you’ll pass by folks in need, you’ll put off visiting your aging parents, you may even miss your own daughter’s soccer game. In other words, there will be times you are the Priest from this story. Respected as a community leader, yet too absorbed in your tasks to remember your responsibilities as a Christian.  It’s not bad, it’s just a fact of life. We get busy, we get distracted and we forget.
There will also be times, as you grow and become an adult, a husband and a father, that you will be the Levite…that you’ll sense needs in your community but fear will keep you from getting involved. After all, stepping into another’s issues, another’s needs, another’s troubles can be messy, unpredictable and downright scary.
It happens. Trust me, Jesse…there will be times you’re too distracted or too scared to be a Good Samaritan.
And there will be other times..many times I hope…that you’ll be the Good Samaritan. That you’ll see your neighbor, you’ll feel compassion and you’ll get involved and do mercy; you’ll reach out, loving your neighbor, as you too have been loved.
As you too have been loved.
You see, more than being the Priest, more than being the Levite, more even than being the Good Samaritan, the most important character in this story is the Traveler. The one robbed and beaten and left half dead along the side of the road.
Jesse, there will be lots of times that you’ll need help, that you’ll feel lonely. Or scared. Or hurt. It’s part of life. We need each other. That’s the point of the story---we all need each other. We are each other’s neighbor, we are each other’s keeper, we are each other’s Good Samaritan.
When you get baptized in a few moments everyone here will say: We receive you into the household of God.
The household. This is the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and the lesson of being baptized into a community of faith—we’re in this together. Today everyone here is pledging to care for you, to support you, to love you, to cry with you, to laugh with you. Everyone in attendance will watch you grow and be ready to step in whenever and wherever and however you may need help. It’s one the greatest things about being a member of a church, and one of the things I love about Good Shepherd. But today isn’t just about Jesse and the Church of the Good Shepherd. Today is about the household of God where everyone is our neighbor. We must look out for everyone—not just here in Parkside, not just in your neighborhood in Snyder, not just in western new york…not just your friends and family.
Everyone. Everywhere is your neighbor. So yes, this means when they need help you need to help them but, and this is the point so many of us forget: everyone, everywhere is there for you too. Because no matter how much we hope and pray you’ll always be the Good Samaritan, there will be times when you’re the traveler and you’ll be in need, you’ll be in trouble, you’ll be afraid. And when that happens, because you are a member of the household of God—a vast and all encompassing community of Love---there will be a Good Samaritan reaching out to you. A Good Samaritan who will help you in thought, word and deed.
For that’s what we do in this household of God. We help each other, no exceptions.
That’s the wonder of baptism, Jesse, and it’s the wonder of God’s Love given to us in Jesus Christ and experienced through all those who love you: from this day and forevermore: you are never ever alone. And for that I am very grateful.
Love,
Gigi.
Amen.

The Gospel of Me is no match for the Gospel of Us Pentecost 7 July 7, 2013

The theologian Rene Girard's book on theology of non-violence is entitled: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning. It's a fitting title since Love, the essence of non-violence is the perfect antidote to hate and intolerance, the essence of violence.
Nothing makes the harbingers of hate more nervous than communities of Love. Communities like the 70 in today's Gospel and communities like this one.
This past Sunday, the New York Times published an op/ed piece entitled The Gospel of Me. It was a fairly heady piece about the decrease in attendance at mainline Judeao- Christian Houses of Worship and the increase of home grown spirituality that, instead of revolving around a deity of some distance, revolves around one’s own inner being. This inner being is best engaged, apparently, when


we embrace our “authentic self.” Whatever that is. ;-)
The upshot of the commentary was this: the Gospel of Me, the spirituality of the authentic self, is in the end,  lonely--leaving people empty.
     This shouldn't be news to us, people who gather weekly, in community, to be filled, fed and fortified.
Filled with the Spirit,
Fed by the Eucharist
And fortified through fellowship to go out into the world, doing the work of Christ.
A lot of people view this Gospel of Me movement as cutting edge, the latest thing, completely different.
 Ha, I’ve got news for them. Each and every week we gather to engage in one of the most spirit-filled, subversive and cutting edge encounters known to humankind. It was

counter-cultural 2000 years ago and is counter cultural now.
It really is. Going out into the world loving one another as we've been loved is not culturally NORMAL.
That's because our American culture is of this world. And this world is ruled by a me- first ethic.
Our life in the church is not of this world, it is not of humanity. It is of the greater world, it's of the Divine.
The world of me is fleeting.
The world of God is enduring.
So when we gather to celebrate the world of Love, the world of God we drive the Gospel of Me-ers, nuts.





Our collective love makes what the gospel calls Satan and we call evil-fall from it's throne of intolerant hate fueled violence with a deafening thud of defeat.
You see,  hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when we live as God intended--- out of and back into Love.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when teachers gather terrified children in their arms to show them love in the face of evil and horror in Newtown Connecticut.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when the entire city of Boston refuses to be held hostage by the violent acts of a few and rises from the ashes of terror in a glorious stance of Boston Strong, Boston Love.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when 19 firefighters rush into harm’s way and are killed doing what they loved: protecting


innocent people from nature’s wrath in Prescott, AZ.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance each and every time we gather to share in the Love of God as given to us through Jesus Christ. It falls from its throne when we laugh together, when we cry together, when we sing together, when we pray together.
This living in Love is the work of the church, it's the work of our faith and it makes a lot of people really
uncomfortable. This Love thing is anti intolerant, it's anti hate and it's anti-me.
Which is what makes it so dangerous.
It's why Jesus sent his advance team out two by two.
 As Jesus prepared for this final walk toward Jerusalem, he was setting, as Pete referenced last week, his retirement plan into motion. And


that retirement plan is the Church---you and me…loving each other and everyone else we encounter.
Back in the time of Jesus being the Church wasn’t easy --our liturgical calendar is chock full of martyrs, early followers of Christ who were killed simply because of their faith. And it’s not too easy now, what with the way the fundamentalists have hijacked the word Christian and in response to such public expressions of hate, many people,  like those who make up the Gospel of Me, simply turn their backs, giving up on the whole of Christianity because of the intolerance of a few.
Jesus is right--being the church, being followers of God through Christ, loving others, isn’t easy.
It's why we gather every week here: For strength in numbers!!


And it's why the Gospel of Me simply doesn't work. The faith of One instead of the Faith in the One, isn't sustainable, because we aren’t built for One. We're built for many. We aren’t designed to be sole practitioners of life, we're designed to share and to learn, to collaborate and to partner. We, this community of faith, this diocese, this national church, this worldwide communion need one another to do the work we have been given to do. the work of loving our neighbor as we have been loved.
It’s the Gospel of Us: established by Christ and nurtured by the millions of Christians who've come since, this Gospel of Love, this Gospel of Inclusion, this Gospel of Us is their legacy...and our children's future.
   




 Much like we reflect and offer thanks to the founders of our faith, on this Independence Day weekend it makes sense to pause and to thank
the founders of our country, people of great faith who determined to create one nation, indivisible, under God. A nation formed under the fundamental precept that all people are created equal, that all people are to be
treated justly, that every person be granted  the same chance as the next guy.
We-- the church and this country---don't always get it right.
But we--the church and this country--- always try.
Because as long as we try, as long as we do our best to live lives of love and justice, the Gospel of Me will be supplanted by the Gospel of Us as Satan falls from the throne of hate and


intolerance, landing with that thud into the arms of Love and acceptance.