Jubilee Sunday: Making people Uncomfortable, Infuriated and Annoyed, since 2011! Proper 17, Yr B 4:30 pm August 30 2015

+This Gospel cracks me up. I mean really, sexual sins, thefts, murders, adultery, greed, evil actions, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, insults, arrogance, and foolishness…how can you NOT LOVE that? Of course what Jesus is saying is pretty clear---it doesn’t matter how you worship. It matters that you worship.
It doesn’t matter how you love, it matters that you love.
The only thing that matters is that whatever you do and however you do it must honor God, creation, your neighbor and yourself. That’s what matters. How you get there? Jesus isn’t that concerned.
But how we get there, how we do this worshipping God thing does matter to us, just as it mattered to the temple authorities of Jesus’ day.

Traditions, rules and regulations are good things…they provide a certain comfort that allows us to get lost within the worship experience. Yes, traditions, rules and regulations are good things….until they’re not….when we begin to worship the rules and the traditions instead of the thing these rules and traditions were designed to protect, we get into trouble.
Most radical fundamentalism stems from the worshipping of how things are done instead of the why and the who.
You know, when we first began this Ascension style Eucharist at 4:30 pm on Sundays we upset a lot of temple authorities.
There were members of Ascension who just couldn’t stand the idea of a late afternoon Sunday service .
There were (and still are) people across the diocese who thought our efforts to make our prayers and readings radically inclusive by, with the exception of Jesus’ words ,refer to God with gender neutral language, were tacky at best and heretical at worst.
There were others, within the congregation and outside who thought a liturgy with primarily uplifting and unique piano music, without EVER using the 1982 Hymnal was simply WRONG.
Then there was one famous case where a former member screamed at me because he couldn’t believe I thought that having a liturgy that maintained a deliberate and passionate focus on the sacrament of Holy Communion could possibly attract people. (That one really ticked me off…)
There were others who thought inviting dogs into our service, hosting a pet food pantry and pet memorial services was beyond wrong. Truly, I think some thought/think it evil.
And there were those, maybe even some people sitting here who thought two parishes sharing one priest and deacon wouldn’t work.
And, finally, those who couldn’t even fathom how two independent parishes could share not only one priest and one deacon but one building.
And yet. Here we are.
The Church of the Ascension at Good Shepherd and the Church of the Good Shepherd: making people uncomfortable, infuriated and annoyed, since 2011!
Jesus must be proud!
Actually, I’m serious. Jesus liked nothing more than upsetting the status quo, challenging the expectations of his time and pushing people right out of their comfort zones. He accomplishes all of that in this afternoon’s Gospel.
Oh yeah, the temple authorities are annoyed and infuriated. And you know why they are so annoyed and infuriated? Because what Jesus was teaching, what Jesus was proclaiming and most offensive of all what Jesus was LIVING, made them mighty uncomfortable.
We’re all uncomfortable when the familiar appears to be usurped by the unfamiliar, when the usual is overturned for the unusual, when the way things have always been done, doesn’t get done that way anymore. It’s difficult to adjust to the different, but that’s no reason not to try.
Jesus knew something that so many people in his day, and so many people TODAY, forget:
Some times our rules, our regulations, our laws, our traditions get in the way of the very thing they were designed to protect.
When the second amendment was written by our forebears, it’s fair to say none of them could envision how the NRA has manipulated a constitutional right into the arming of lunatics leading to such horrors as Sandy Hook and  Mother Emmanuel AME Church.
When the founders of Good Shepherd and Ascension built their buildings without providing wheel chair access, they didn’t do this because they hated people who use wheelchairs, they did it because any idea of universal access was foreign to them.
When our Holy Scripture talks about men raping boys (which is where the verses from Leviticus so often used to say that God condemns same-sex attraction comes from) they had no idea their words would be used to disenfranchise an entire group of God loving people.
What I, and hope many of you, have learned since embarking on this covenant journey between the two parishes is this---offering three distinct ways of praising God, three distinct ways of being nourished to do Christ’s work in the world, is life giving (and sometimes frustrating, annoying and difficult)….and it all makes Jesus smile…because the one thing Jesus clearly detested was failing to see the forest for the trees, for getting so caught up in the letter of the law that people forgot the spirit.
Pushing the limits----testing the boundaries, trying to access the holy in new, hopefully interesting and inspiring ways is telling the temple authorities of our day that doing something in a different way isn’t bad, that changing, evolving and growing isn’t demeaning where we’ve been, it’s honoring it, learning from it, and moving on to the next thing God has in store for us.
What the temple authorities couldn’t (wouldn’t do) is clear: they wouldn’t lift their heads and look around and see that the world about them had changed and that maybe, just maybe, their traditions needed to as well.
I guess what I’m trying to say to you, this collection of newcomers and old-timers, of 8:30 am’ers, 10:30 am’ers and 4:30 pm’ers is this: The only way we’re going to succeed in being the instruments of God’s love in this world, the only way we’re going to truly be disciples of Jesus is to remember that God’s not finished with us yet. We have new boundaries to push, old traditions to challenge and honor, new ways to make ourselves and all those whom we encounter uncomfortable. Why? Because if not us…who?

It's Going to be Ok, Just Keep Going Proper 16 Aug 23, 2015

+Do you remember John’s sermon from last Sunday? It was fabulous. I heard it three times, and I got a lump in my throat every time John wound up the story about when he was hit by a car and his father, Don Harris, said, “John, it’s gonna to be ok. Your mama and I are here.”
That’s a father who, no matter what, was going to protect his son. It was a wonderful thing to say.
And it was also, in some respects, a lie. Because at that point, John’s father didn’t know that “everything was going to be ok.” John had severe head trauma. He wasn’t necessarily going to be ok.
But, if John will forgive me for climbing into his father’s head for a moment, that’s not what Don meant. He meant that no matter what happened— brain damage, years of therapy, or even death--- regardless of what happened, ---JOHN---was going to be ok, because he was loved. LOVED. Beyond all measure.
And that kind of love? That kind of commitment? That kind of unfailing support?
It brings me to tears, and lights a fire in my belly and a yearning in my soul.
Presiding Bishop Elect Michael Curry knows a little something about bringing people to tears and lighting fires in their belly. He did just that in a sermon he gave last week. In it, he referenced that great abolitionist and “conductor” on the underground railroad, Harriet Tubman. Tubman had one, non-negotiable, requirement for people embarking on the dangerous, arduous and long journey to freedom--—she would insist that, no matter what, they’d  keep going.
That when the dogs took off after them, they’d keep going.
That when the mobs came after them, they’d keep going.
That when the hate, horror and terror came they’d Keep GOING.
She was adamant---“if you aren’t willing to keep going—NO MATTER WHAT—don’t even begin.
Don’t start the journey if you’re not willing to do what it takes to finish it because although it will, eventually, indeed, be ok, getting there may not be...
Harriet didn’t say this out of some misguided litmus test for the true believer, she said it out of the knowledge that the journey to freedom wasn’t something done alone.
John Harris didn’t recover on his own, but with the love of family, the skill of doctors and the perseverance to keep going, no matter what.
Not every slave made it to freedom, and not every abolitionist lived to see the steady dismantling of the Jim Crow south, but every step they took was part of the ongoing journey toward a just and equal world.
The journey’s too long and the arc of history too wide for one person, or one group of people to do it alone.
Jonathan Daniels knew this.
For those of you who don’t know, Jonathan Daniels was a seminarian from New England, studying at Harvard who’d heard and heeded MLK’s call that freedom for all would only be achieved when the privileged of our country-- and you couldn’t get more privileged than a straight white seminarian from Harvard-- got involved. So Jonathan Daniels went to Alabama and, following the example of Jesus, laid down his life for a friend. On that hot August night in 1965, Jonathan took a shot gun blast intended for 17 year old, African American Ruby Sales. This young white man laid down his life for his friend. His young, female, black friend.
There’s a powerful lesson in Don Harris’ words to his son, in Harriet Tubman’s admonition to her “passengers,” and in Jonathan Daniels’ actions in the Jim Crow south of 1965.
It’s the same lesson we hear, week after week in the Gospel: Loving God, following the Christian way isn’t an easy, pleasant, or comfortable journey, BUT by virtue of our baptism we’re on this journey. And, if we’re doing it right, it’s not safe, comfortable or easy.
Jesus asks, “does my message offend you? If so, go ahead and leave.” Folks,  Jesus has been telling us for weeks now, you must eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, for through that act you will have eternal life. I know that there are more than a few of us who would like his words to be a little less graphic. Because, in truth, that imagery does feel a little offensive and a lot uncomfortable.
And you know what?
Good.
You see, being a Christian means that if we’re doing it right, if we’re doing it like Jonathan Daniels, Harriet Tubman, MLK, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Michael Curry, Gene Robinson, The Philadelphia 11 and scores and scores of others, people aren’t going to like us. But by doing what our forebears have done, by risking our own comfort, our own security, sometimes even our own safety and our very life, we make the road straighter, the way smoother, the promised land more attainable for those who come after us.
The Bread of Life, Jesus Christ, offers us the nourishment and the strength to do this work but we, we must do it.
Not just talk about the work. Not just pray about the work. Not just nod when we hear about the work.
We must do the work
If you come to church and leave without feeling uneasy, uncomfortable and maybe even a little mad, then, frankly, I’m not doing my job too well.
If you come to church and commit to all that we believe and then go out into the world and don’t do some things that are difficult and worrisome and scary and risky then you aren’t doing your job very well.
The lesson of Don Harris, of Harriet Tubman, of Jonathan Daniels and of Jesus Christ himself is this--
Christianity is offensive.
It upsets the status quo.
It refuses to back down.
We have our marching orders, but frankly I don’t know that we take these orders as ours. Christianity is no spectator sport. It’s fine to admire the heroes of our faith like Jonathan Daniels, Harriet Tubman and John’s dad Don, but admiration never defeated darkness.
Admiration never defeated hate; admiration never fed the hungry or clothed the naked.
We’re on a journey, folks. Are you willing to keep going? Are you willing to make this work, the work of justice, a priority?
Are you willing to be unpopular, uncomfortable and despised?
If so, climb aboard, for everything is going to be ok, as long as we just keep going. Amen.

Sermon Preached by John Harris Proper 15B August 16, 2015

I’d like to start today with a bit of story. It may seem off base, but bear with me a minute.

When I was 21, I was hit by a car. It wasn’t just a little tap; I was pretty severely injured. The ambulance came and rushed me to a hospital. At some point in this process, someone contacted my parents. They lived about 60 miles away at the time. My father, a slow driver at the best of times, covered the distance in 30 minutes flat. While was my mother was in the waiting room going through the admissions paperwork, my father went looking for me. In talking to people afterward, I found out he pushed his way through multiple sets of closed doors, wedged past a series of doctors and nurses, then burst into my part of the emergency room. When he got there, he said quickly, before the staff dragged him back to the waiting room, “John, it’s going to be ok. Your mama and I are here.”

I think that our gospel passage, and actually the whole of the Eucharist, have some similarities to this story. Listen to this verse: “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” On my initial read, that verse felt very accusatory. When I first looked at it, my mental picture had Jesus calling out people for their lack of life. You could reword the verse, under this initial view, and Jesus might as well have said, how dare you be so lifeless. But something about that reading felt off.

I think a better reading goes something like this. Jesus is looking at a group of people, soon after he has miraculously fed them. And these people he was talking to remained full of confusion. The feeding took care of a single, short-term issue, an important issue of course, but not a lasting one. After fixing this for them, Jesus saw that they remained confused and lost. What Jesus wanted to do above all, was to give these people a source of hope and comfort going forward, hope and comfort for when their bellies were no longer full of miracle food. He wanted to give them lasting food to fuel them for the rest of their lives. And so, to bring back in the first part of the verse I quoted before, He offered his very self to fill them. Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Then you will be full of life.

That desire of Jesus to be with his people at all times and for all time feels a little like my dad in the story I told at the beginning. Jesus is constantly bursting through doors, shoving past any person trying to hold him back, to reach out to the broken body on the literal or metaphorical hospital bed. He is constantly saying, “I am here. You are not alone.”

Maybe why this matters might be self-evident. Nonetheless, I’d like to flesh it out just a bit more.  Do you remember the end of our reading from Proverbs: “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight." We are able to walk in the way of insight, to lay aside immaturity, in part because we recognize that we are not by ourselves when we make decisions. Each choice we make, whether to show love or hate, to promote ignorance or knowledge, to encourage or discourage, is a choice that we make together with God. God is right there with us the whole time.

I’d like to illustrate with another story. Fannie Lou Hamer was a leader in the civil rights movement in Mississippi from the 1950’s through the 1970’s One of her goals was the integration of the Democratic Party. At the 1964 Democratic Presidential Convention, she showed up leading a delegation from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an integrated delegation unlike the lily-white regular delegation from the Mississippi Democratic Party. In trying to figure out what to do with her, President Lyndon Johnson, who was known to dismiss her as “That illiterate woman”, sent out his Vice Presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, to talk to her. After going back and forth for some time, Humphrey, who had been a champion of integration in his own right, asked her in exasperation, what do you want? Hamer replied, “the beginning of a New Kingdom right here on Earth.” Then she said she would pray to Jesus for Humphrey, and they went their separate ways. Four years later, Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic nominee for president, and the Democratic Party convention required, at his urging, that all convention delegations had to be integrated.

Now Ms. Hamer, despite her many virtues, was not an Episcopalian. Despite that, she lived her life boldly with this basic recognition that God was with her in all that she did. And this gave her the courage to challenge the injustices of her society. As Episcopalians, we use the language of ritual and sacrament to help us to remember the same lesson.

The Eucharist is one way that we know God is with us. The language of today’s gospel passage should be familiar, because we use it regularly during the Eucharist. The sacrament of the bread and wine is how we eat and drink of Jesus today. It is a physical, tangible way to experience the truth that Jesus was Emmanuel, a word that literally means “God with us.”

To be clear, the Eucharist means more than this. But this is a part of the meaning of the sacrament. So my prayer for all of us is that we go forth into the world as people who have been fed with food that lets us know we are not alone. God is here with us. And because of that, we can have courage to face the injustices of society today. Amen.

Get Up! God has Plans. Aug 9, 2015

Jane was finished. The pain too much, the efforts to relieve it too much, the hate she had for her very being, toooo much. So, she drove partway across the bridge and stopped. With a deep breath and a resolve she hadn’t been able to muster for years, she got out of the car, climbed over the guardrail and looked down, prepared to jump.
But, as is so often the case, God had other plans.
There was a hesitation—not really doubt, not even fear, Jane couldn’t explain it, but something caused her to pause and in that moment, a soft voice said, “it’s not hopeless. Please don’t jump.” And, as she turned to face the speaker of those words, a gentle giant of a man wrapped his mammoth arms around Jane and lifted her to safety. Jane says it was a Holy Spirit moment….Joe, the truck driver who saved her life, agrees. “I’m not one to get involved–I figure folks deserve privacy. I don’t know what came over me-- It had to have been a higher power. I did the rescuing, but it wasn’t me, someone/something else took control.
Yes, God had other plans.
Elijah’s toast. He’s done. He dared to disagree with King Ahab’s wife, Jezebel and neither she nor the king were amused. Elijah was literally running for his life. He knew that there was nowhere to hide, he knew that eventually he would tire out and the King’s guards would find him and that would be that. So, Elijah, exhausted and berating himself for his lack of faith, collapses under the broom tree—a desert shrub---and begs for death to overtake him.
But God had other plans.
While sleeping, a messenger taps Elijah and says, “Get up! Eat something!”
Elijah opened his eyes and saw bread and water right by his head. He ate and drank, and then went back to sleep.
A second time the messenger awakens Elijah, saying, “Get up!”
“Eat something, because you have a difficult road ahead of you.”
Elijah got up, ate and drank, and refreshed by that food for forty days and nights, Elijah carried on.
Because God had other plans.
At General Convention in Salt Lake City last month, our Presiding Bishop Katharine preached a fabulous sermon on the gospel story where the woman who was bold enough to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe is healed of her hemorrhage and where Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter , pulling her off her deathbed with the wonderful admonition “Talitha Cum”…translated as Get Up Girl!
This woman and this girl were as good as dead, but God? God had other plans.
God, through messengers, prophets, apostles, the Messiah and the Holy Spirit, calls to us all the time, telling us to “Get Up, wash our face and get something to eat, there’s work to do and God needs us…yep you and me specifically, to do this. Get up girl, get up boy, get up man get up woman, get up church, get up world, there is work to do and WE are just the people to do it.



Yep, God has plans for us:
Get up, woman.
That’s what the Holy Spirit was saying to Jane as she climbed over that guardrail.
Get up, man.
That’s what God was saying to Joe, the truck driver who prided himself on not getting involved but who got involved and pulled Jane from the edge.
Get up, prophet!
That’s what the messenger was saying to Elijah, “your work is not yet done.”
And yes, by the way, the road will be long, the journey tough, but GET UP, for I need you---yes YOU---to do this work and to do it now.
It’s a good message and it’s one we’d all be wise to heed.
Get up girl. Oh you’re hungry? No worries, “I am the bread of life.”
Get up boy. Oh, you’re thirsty? No problem, those who come to me, fully and completely, will never ever be thirsty.
Get up woman. What, you’re scared? You don’t know how to do it? It’s ok, I do. Follow Me.
Get up man. What’s that, you’re too tired? You’ve tried everything and nothing works? Well, get up ---through me you’ll find your way and. I need you… there’s work to be done.
Throughout this month of August we read from John’s gospel and in particular, what’s known as the Bread of Life Discourse. In these 50 + verses Jesus repeatedly tells us that he’s all the nourishment we need. That the strength we find sapped from our very being; that the hope we find elusive at best and utterly absent at best isn’t gone, it hasn’t run out, it hasn’t been removed.
 It’s still there.
It’s always there.
Jesus is telling us in these gospels, Elijah is showing us in the reading from Kings that hope and strength aren’t things we create, or earn, or acquire. They’re gifts, given to us by and through the unending, outrageous, abundant love of God.
It can’t be said enough. God loves us beyond all measure.
But God’s love of us doesn’t mean that the road won’t be long, bumpy, scary and full of detours.
It will be. It is!

And that’s just what Jesus is trying to get across to us in these endless verses about being the Bread of Life.
Life isn’t easy. We’re faced with challenges all the time. Scary things.
Difficult things.
Heartbreaking things.
There are times when we want to give up.
There are times when we, just like Elijah, want to set ourselves down under a broom tree and fall asleep, hoping to never wake up.
There are those of us who, like Jane, have contemplated ending it all by our own hand.
There are those of us who’ve lost the ones we love because they became overwhelmed, heartbroken and at the end of their rope.
Life is most definitely NOT EASY.
But, as we say in the invitation to communion at Ascension and as I think Jesus is telling us through the Bread of life verses and the messenger told Elijah and the Presiding Bishop told us in the sermon:
Come to this altar, we have a holy meal to share.
Come, those of you who have much faith and those who feel you have none.
Come, those of you who have tried to follow Jesus, but believe you’ve failed.
This is the feast of Jesus our Lord;
holy food for holy people.
So get up girl, boy, woman and man….come and be fed, God has plans for us.

Deacon Pete's Sermon for Aug 2 2015

You’re not yourself when you’re hungry…I stole that line from the snickers commercials.  You’ve probably seen them, the most recent being a take off on the Brady Bunch.  Carol and Mike are sitting on the couch, a man walks in, carrying an ax, a kind of cross between a biker dude and a cave man.  He is whining about Greg tossing the football in his face and breaking his nose.  Carol and Mike recommend eating a Snickers and lo and behold, Marsha appears in place of the cave man biker dude.  You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.
Enter the Israelites.  They have been traveling for 6 weeks.   They are 6 weeks past the oasis of Elim with its fresh water and date trees.  They are 6 weeks into this journey and the promised land is no where in sight.  They are running low on supplies and the pillar of fire is only leading them to more sand.  The whole congregation is upset, full of doubts, and incredibly, they have forgotten the violence and unjustice of slavery in Egypt, they remember only that they were full of bread.  You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.
The Isaelites are not themselves.  They are not behaving as beloved children of God, chosen by God from all other nations to be God’s very own.  They see the desert as a barren, inhospitable place and have no sense that God is with them.  Moses and Aaron take the brunt of the people’s grumbling and dissatisfaction until God steps in.  They are all about to learn something. Unlike Aaron and Moses who are frustrated by their folks, God hears their concerns and responds.  God rains food from the skies and the people learn that God is indeed faithful and can be trusted.  God is using the manna to test them.  Are they faithful enough to gather only what they need for this day, are they trusting that tomorrow God will provide for that day?  Will the Israelites let the experience of God providing daily bread teach them that this is indeed a God who is faithful in relationship.  Will they let this experience teach them that God will feed them physically and more importantly that God will feed them spiritually.  Will this experience be a Snickers moment for them, one that will encourage and allow them to be themselves, God’s chosen people?
We aren’t ourselves when we’re hungry.  We also aren’t ourselves when we’ve eaten but haven’t digested or processed what we have been given to eat.  Our reading from Ephesians speaks of another type of food that God gives us, the nourishment of grace; ”each of us is given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” This grace is a food that is ours abundantly, is rained down upon us as the manna was rained down upon the Israelites.  Our task is to gather it, to claim it and then to use it to nourish ourselves.  We are then called to digest this grace, to process this grace and to share it with others. This grace is made manifest in all our works of ministry, in all the ways we build up the body of Christ.
Here in this diocese we have worked hard to feed children this summer.  At the Eaton Reading program children were provided with breakfast, lunch and frequent snacks for the last 5 weeks.  They were fed regularly and they were fed with joy and kindness.  They were given manna for their bodies.  They were also fed cognitively.  They spent the day in 6 learning stations, stations focused on the alphabet, reading, writing, and phonics.  They read and read and read.  The growth in their comfort and competence when reading was significant.  They were also fed physically and relationally. They played games inside and outside, games that were unfamiliar to many of them.  They visited a farm, had the zoo mobile come to them.  They went to the planetarium, the aquarium and the science museum.  Their horizons were expanded.  Much of the time they received one-on-one attention and individual care thanks to our adult and teen volunteers.  We aren’t ourselves when we’re hungry and we are not ourselves when we allow others to remain hungry for the grace that we have been given.   The Eaton Reading program was an experience for that provided an opportunity for grace to be shared.  It was a work of ministry freely given with no strings attached, with no plan for future returns to us.  Without praying a prayer or singing a hymn the children who attended and those who volunteered worked to build up the body of Christ.
Today’s Gospel occurs the day after Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fishes.  The crowd has been fed and they are pretty happy.  They have been fed, but they have not processed the food they have been given.  They want a sign from Jesus, they want manna raining from heaven.  Jesus responds that He is the Bread of Life and whoever comes to Him will never be hungry.  Jesus does not promise an endless feast of physical food but offers himself as spiritual food that will satisfy all of our needs; spiritual, physical, and relational.  In this offering of himself, Jesus is not feeding us as individuals. Jesus feeds us corporately, at this table.  We are fed and fueled by the same bread, the same faith. (Rev. David Sellery, The Jesus Diet, us6.campaign-archive2.com)
The Grace we receive here is free and it is a gift unlike any other.  It is a gift grounded in transformation, but not for our transformation only, it is also given to us for the transformation of others.  We are here to do God’s work in the world, to share the Bread of Life (ibid).  We are not ourselves when we are hungry.  We are not ourselves when we eat for ourselves alone.  It is only when we take the nourishment offered here, process it and spread it that we become ourselves.
Abundance is a river from God flowing through us to others.  It is only by feeding others that we will truly end our own hunger.  Amen.