Proper 28 Yr C Consider this: This is How we are to Live

Happy Advent~ what? You mena Advent doesn’t begin for two more weeks? Funny, you’d think Christmas was already upon us, judging by all the Christmas ads flooding the airwaves, the Christmas décor up in the stores etc etc.
But, they may be on to something. Not Christmas in November, but Advent in November.
Did you know that in the ancient church Advent had six Sundays? According to the ancient church calendar, today would be the first Sunday of Advent. Regardless of when it actually begins, a common theme in Advent, the end of time, is introduced today.    


The prophet Malachai warns us: the day is coming, all non-believers will be destroyed: burned, trampled, left without root or branch. Jesus picks up on this happy theme—the temple will topple, plagues famines and wars will spread across the earth. Everything will fall apart and anyone, anyone who is a follower of Jesus will be arrested, persecuted and interrogated. It’s gonna be BAD!
But don’t worry, you’ll be ok. Everything around you will be in ruins but you? Us? The followers of the way? We’ll be great.
As long as we persevere in doing the right thing, living the right way and working hard. As Paul tells us in today’s Epistle: Brothers and sisters DO NOT be weary of doing what’s right.
Even though people will hate us for it, try to kill us for it, imprison us for it.
Why is it that every year, just as we get a little snow and there's a chill in the air, as we’re preparing for Thanksgiving, Christmas lists are being written and holiday parties are being planned, why do we get these violent readings about destruction, death and despair?
Well it’s a little complicated. You see the birth of Jesus—God coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ-- takes the familiar and makes it strange, takes the unfamiliar and makes it comfortable, takes the impossible and makes it possible. It makes the outrageous acceptable and the outcast become  "a-listers."
Jesus changes everything.
In other words, the world as we know it and the world as Christ envisions it can’t peaceably co-exist.
The world as we know it  has to blow up to make room for the world of Jesus.
This is where the reality of Jesus collides with the fantasy of “Christmas music 24 hours a day 7 days a week beginning in mid-October.”
This is where the reality of a God who loves us so much BUT understood us so little that God needed to come and live among us, as one of us, collides with ho ho ho’s and fa la la las
Advent and all it sets into motion (namely Christmas) blows the fantasy of Christmas right out of the egg nog.
Advent is shocking, disruptive and uncomfortable.
Why? Because Advent gets us ready for Christmas. It prepares us for the arrival of God in the flesh and that, the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, is the single most chaotic, life changing, limit busting event of all time.
And it’s why I need to start talking about it now, 2 weeks before it begins.
Consider this your Advent preparation sermon!!
Consider this your warning, your clarion call, a voice crying out in the wilderness.
Consider this:
We must be willing to let go of everything in order to make room for Christ.
We must be willing to let go of everything in order to accept Jesus into our lives.
We must be willing to let go of everything to embrace the new way of living that this Jesus of Nazareth ushers in.
Today, on this second to last Sunday of the church year, we must remember one thing:
The arrival of Jesus may be heralded by a silent night humming the hymns of angels heard on high, but living the life Jesus has taught us to live requires guts. It isn’t easy. It isn’t neat and it isn’t always pretty.
Living the life of a Christian, living the way of Jesus requires much and the four weeks of Advent sure don’t afford us much time to get ready.
The majority of our church year is all about getting to know God and God getting to know us. The four weeks of Advent, and these two pre- Advent weeks are all about us getting ready for this encounter--the encounter that God has with us and we have with God-- preparing ourselves for the altogether new.
So...how are we to ready ourselves?
By blowing everything to bits.
And that, my friends is why we have these readings….because everything we know, everything familiar and comfortable will be, if we truly and fully enter into a new life with Christ, turned inside out and upside down.
Think about our readings from this summer and fall:
--the parables of Jesus that take the usual boundaries of society and tear them apart.
This is how we are to live our lives.
--Think about Jesus’ incessant encounters with the outcasts, the unclean, the unwanted and the forgotten.
This is how we are to live our lives.
--Think about Jesus’ intolerance for those who put the so-called rules of religion ahead of the common sense adage to love your neighbor as yourself.
This is how we are to live OUR lives.
-Think about the incorrigible Jesus who, to quote a Jim Croce song lyric of the 1970’s: pulled on superman’s cape and spit into the wind.
This is how we are to live our Lives.
Our lives with Christ, our lives in Christ.
Think about who Jesus really was:
a peasant who most of his contemporaries thought was a lunatic.
An itinerant preacher who was a constant source of annoyance to the Roman Empire.
A failed revolutionary in the eyes of many;
a revolutionary who did not topple the Empire, a revolutionary who did not usher in a Jewish state in the land of Israel, a failed revolutionary who was executed in a brutal and demeaning manner saved for the most hated of criminals.
This is the One we are to follow, this is the One we are to emulate. This is the One we are to invite fully and completely and totally into our hearts.
So yes, getting ready for the Christ event, otherwise known as Christmas, requires some preparation.
It requires some guts.
And it requires a whole lot of faith.
So welcome to the end of the church year. Welcome to Pre-Advent.
And Say good-bye to hearing about Jesus in this world and begin preparations to BE Jesus in this world prepare to be Jesus in this world.
Amen.

All Saints' 2013 Saints and Miracles: The Rule not the Exception

+Back in the 1990’s there was this great off Broadway play called "Late Night Catechism."
Set as an adult catechism class “Sister” is filling in for Father Murphy, who doesn’t want to miss his poker night. The play is structured around a list of saints the Vatican is reviewing…are they or aren’t they saints? –She reads the biography of each and then asks the question: "Saint or Not a Saint?” It’s a hilarious play and I urge you to see it if you can.
So, just what defines a saint? Not surprisingly, for Anglicans,  the definition is far more broad than the definition in the Roman Catholic faith. In Rome, a saint is canonized after a number of miracles have been attributed to the person.
Which then begs a follow-up question:
What constitutes a miracle?
Are there hard and fast rules defining what’s a miracle and what’s not?  Who gets to decide?
What’s a miracle, who’s a saint?
How do we know?



Maybe it’s like the late Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter’s definition of pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it?”
Maybe we know the miracles of life when we see them.
Maybe we know the saints of this world when we see them.
What are the miracles in your life?
Who are the saints you know?
Have you heard about Jesse Lewis?
Jesse was six years old when killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December. While the rest of his classmates huddled in a corner, holding hands, Jesse stayed with his teacher on the other side of the room. The shooter’s gun jammed just after he shot and killed the teacher. While the gun was being reloaded, Jesse yelled: “Run!” to his classmates. And they did. They got out. And then the gunman killed Jesse. Jesse’s last act on earth  as a six year old was to save his classmate’s lives.
That’s a saint.
For quite awhile this summer we were praying for my friend Richard. Richard went into heart failure 14

years ago. For the past four years he has been kept alive by a portable ventricular assist device, otherwise known as a VAD, that he carried around with him in a bag.  This summer the VAD began to fail. There wasn’t enough heart function left for him to be outfitted with a new VAD. Time was running out. He needed a new heart.
On September 23, 2013 Richard received that new heart and this coming Saturday he will walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding.
That’s a miracle.
We don’t know much of anything about the donor.
What we do know is that his loved ones were brave enough, on the absolute worst day of their lives, to give the gift of life to 10 other people through organ donation.
The donor's family? Saints.
What makes a saint?
Well the heroic stories of Jesse and Richard’s donor certainly paint one picture of saints.
But are saints only those who give their lives for another?

Can’t we all, as the hymn goes, aim to be a saint, too?
Absolutely.
The how to guide is right there in today’s Gospel.
The reading from Luke is a portion of the Sermon on the Plain (Luke’s version of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount). In this, probably the most famous and familiar of Jesus’ sermons, Jesus lays out the ingredients of a saint when he recites the Beatitudes.
It’s pretty clear. We're blessed when we do the right thing.
It’s as simple as that.
So, just what IS the right thing?
Well, to take a page out of Justice Potter’s book:
I think we know it when we see it, think it or live it.
Jesse Lewis lived and died it.
The donor family knew it and lived it.
Esther’s grandson Javon knows it. Did you hear about him?
A couple of Sunday’s ago, Javon was sitting in his apartment on Main Street when he heard a horrific crash and ran outside to see the remnants of a car accident. One car was on fire with the elderly driver

trapped inside. Some bystanders were trying to open the door but it wouldn’t budge. Javon and an off duty Buffalo Police Officer sprang into action, extracting the victim from the BURNING car. Why'd he do it? Javon said because it was the right thing to do, that he didn't think, the natural instinct to help another just took over.
He’s right. The instinct to help our neighbor was knitted into our souls by God. The problem is, and here's the closest you'll ever hear me speak of original sin, something happened along the way and what we were created to be--- loving beings in complete harmony with this world and with God--- got derailed.
It became the exception rather than the rule.
And that's where saints come in.
The saints I've mentioned give us a glimpse into the human condition as God intended.
The saints I’ve mentioned lived, and in some cases died, following the directives outlined in the sermon on the plain.
You see, the saints lead us to where God wants us to go. This is why we celebrate them…they are beacons

leading us to live a life of blessing rather than a life of woe.
So who is a saint?
Are saints simply doctors, queens, shepherdesses on the green?
Are they only soldiers, priests and victims of fierce wild beasts?
Or are they simply folk just like you and me…folk striving to live as God intended, following the lead of those who’ve come before,  helping us all to be one too?
Who blesses you?
What blesses you?
Who are your saints?
What are your miracles?
They’ve lived not only in ages past, there are hundreds of thousands still, the world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will. You can meet them in Sandy Hook School, or in a hospital, or on Main Street, or in church, or at home, or at work or at play, for the saints of God are simply folks who know the


right thing and do the right thing, God helping them along the way.
 I don’t know about you, but I aim to be one too.