Forgiveness is a Two Way Street Proper 20 September 18, 2016 Trinity, Hamburg

+At the end of the announcements each week the priest says an offertory sentence, words taken directly from scripture, to ready us for making and receiving offerings at the altar. We bring forward the collection plates, the bread and the wine and then we receive the gift of grace through the body and blood of Christ at the altar. I usually say “Walk in Love as Christ Loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.” There are several others, including: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, then come offer your gift.”
The point of this sentence is that if we’re holding a grudge, if we have unfinished business, if we haven’t forgiven a misunderstanding, a debt, or a disagreement, then we aren’t ready to make an offering to God or to receive the abundant grace of God offered to us through the Eucharist.
God wants us free and clear when we come to this altar. That’s why we do a confession of sin just before we come with the gifts. It prepares us, it wipes the slate clean---it frees us.
Today’s Gospel-- the Parable of the Dishonest Manager-- is a story about the forgiving of debts. Not just monetary debts, but all debts---all the scores we keep—who’s slighted whom, who owes whom an apology…we have a laundry list of things done to us, and things we’ve done to others ---which must be cleared from our hearts and souls before we can fully receive God’s love as offered to us through the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Today’s parable has a lot of conniving and dishonesty in it. And it’s easy to get lost, trying to figure out who’s the villain, and who’s the hero.
To review—there’s an absentee landlord, who has a resident manager to handle the day to day affairs of his business---which includes taking advantage of the farm workers---paying them an unlivable wage, charging them huge rents and then gouging them at the company owned store….
….In summary: the landowner was cheating the peasants, the manager was cheating the landowner and the peasants by taking a little off the top for himself. When the manager’s caught by the landowner the manager turns to the peasants and by cheating the landowner even more, makes the peasants happy.
Luke wraps up this parable talking about faithfulness, dishonest wealth and true riches.
It sounds like Jesus is condemning wealth.
But to just assume that and move on is to miss what Luke has been saying to us all summer----that all the riches of this world will never ever take the place of the riches God bestows upon us….for the grace of God is what makes all things possible –even our wealth. And to be able to fully receive God into our hearts we must be free of resentment, regret, burden.
For Luke, forgiveness is the name of the game. Luke tells us again and again that God’s always ready to forgive. Abundantly, extravagantly outlandishly. That God, regardless of what we’ve done, is completely willing---anxious, actually---to forgive us.
Now, while forgiveness is always available we must ask for it, we must long for it, we must seek it…forgiveness is not some free giveaway, it’s an abundant gift given to those who are ready to receive it, who’ve repented, have amended their lives and want to be washed in the forgiveness of God to start their life anew.
But, and here’s where this week’s parable becomes clearer, forgiveness is not just something we receive …it’s also something we give….Jesus makes it very clear in the Lord’s Prayer---forgive us our trespasses, our sins, our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed—sinned—against us.
Jesus is telling us, with this convoluted story of landowners, managers and peasants, that we must forgive others—their mistakes, their faults, their debts---in order to be forgiven ourselves.
Our forgiveness of others is to have the same character as God’s forgiveness of us---as God’s love for us: it’s to be abundant, extravagant and outlandish. It must be overflowing, it must be constant. With this parable we’re told that we must forgive… that only in forgiving others can we truly accept the forgiveness God has for us. The forgiveness of God is so intense, so absolute, that we have to make room for it.
To do that, we must empty ourselves---of our resentments, our anger, our bitterness, our disdain and our petty scorekeeping. We are to-- simply and completely--- forgive people. Everyone. Not just those who have, in our eyes, earned it ...but everyone.

None of us can earn forgiveness, we can only desire it…and we only desire it, we only want it, when we realize, when we admit that we’ve made a mistake.
The manager had no right to forgive half the debts of those debtors. But neither did the landowner have the right to pay those debtors an unlivable wage.
There’s no villain in this story and there’s no hero …and that’s the point.
In this parable, everyone was making mistakes...everyone needed forgiveness…just like real life. We all make mistakes, we all need forgiveness.
 Jesus is saying, don’t wait for someone to ask for forgiveness, just grant it…because it’s not our job to keep score, it’s not our job to decide who gets forgiven what, when and how, our job is to free ourselves enough to receive the fullness of God’s love.
You see, by granting forgiveness, we lighten our own load of bitterness and resentment which frees up space deep within us, space which will be filled at the altar as we present ourselves-- forgiven, healed and ready to be fed by the grace and truth of God, who forgives all our debts.
Always.
+

Lost and Found Proper 19 Yr C September 11, 2016 St John’s Grace

+Episcopal priest and author Rick Morley says:
Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
Nobody. No one does this. No one would ever do that. It’s insanity. If you lose 1% of your holdings, you don’t risk the other 99% to get it back. By leaving the 99, you risk them roaming off, being stolen, or being killed and eaten by a wolf.
No one leaves the 99.
Or what woman upon losing a coin, lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches until she finds it? And then calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’
Nobody. No one does this.
You don’t call friends and neighbors together for a celebration only to spend more money feeding and entertaining them. I mean why bother looking for the coin at all, if you’re just going to blow more money?
It’s insanity. Nobody does this.
Except Jesus.
Jesus does this. Jesus leaves the 99 to search for the lost. Jesus sweeps the house and then throws a party when the lost are found. It’s totally and thoroughly insane.
And it’s the Gospel message.
It’s the Good News of Christ that when a soul is lost, when we’re lost, that soul, is missed, longed for, and not only worth the search party, but worth the celebration-party when the soul is brought back into the fold.
Our God is the God of the lost, the God who celebrates when the lost are found .
     At one time or another we've all been lost---literally and figuratively.…we all, now and again, find ourselves tangled in the bramble unable to get free and desperately looking for rescue.
The good news is that the rescue plan is already in place: Jesus Christ. The moment Jesus began to walk this earth, the moment Jesus defeated death through his own death and resurrection, the rescue plan was activated.
We’re never a hopeless case. We’re never lost forever, because God is always, ALWAYS looking for us.
Who goes searching for the one out of a hundred? Who goes searching for the one out of a thousand? Who goes searching for the one out of a trillion? Who goes searching for you and for me, no matter how far afield we’ve flown?
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Jesus the rabble rouser, Jesus the teller of obscure parables, stories that expose a truth we didn’t even know existed, that’s who. Jesus: the one who will always find us no matter what.
Now a sensible sermon based solely on the readings for today would continue to address all the varied ways we get lost, all the ways we hide from God, the ways we thwart God’s reaching out to us. But today is the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And for those of us who lived through those attacks we can’t let this day go by without acknowledgement. If we don’t remember then we are causing all 2,996 people killed and the more than 6,000 people injured to be the lost sheep, caught in the bramble, forgotten, dismissed, ignored. We can’t do that, we shouldn’t do it.
For as those buildings collapsed into smoldering piles of fiery dust , as that plane crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside and as the Pentagon burned, hundreds of people, just like the shepherd, just like the woman with the coin, refused to turn their backs, refused to give up on the lost.
If this was a regular Sunday and not the 15th anniversary of 9/11 a preacher would talk about how this Gospel is about sin and forgiveness. That this Gospel tells us that no one is “too far gone” to be saved through God’s amazing grace. But this isn’t any regular Sunday. Because 15 years ago begged the question---where in the world was God as those nearly three thousand people died and those 6k+ were injured? What did those people do to deserve such a fate? And I get that. Why do bad things happen to good people? Frankly I don’t know, that’s my first question when I come face to face with God--- but what I do know is that God was there, in Manhattan, in Shanksville PA and in Washington DC on 9/11/2001. God was in every single first responder who ran toward, who ran into rather than away from. God was with those first responders who wouldn’t get off the smoldering pile until they were absolutely positively sure that there was no one, no one left behind. Where was God then, where is God now? God is in the darkest corners. God is in the most horrific scenes, God is in the most broken of hearts. God is there, God is here. Through you, through me, through every single human being who seeks Christ in  everyone, everywhere, no exceptions, God is there.
And that, my friends is the good news extracted from that darkest of dies. Who seeks the one who is lost and in danger, leaving behind the 99 who are safe and sound? God does.
Today is a sad day in our history, a painful day. But it is also a Gospel day. Because on that day, as the world wept, so did God. As the heroes of 9/11 ran into instead of away from horror, God was with them, as the search for survivors which would turn out to be futile carried on day after day, God was with them. Who searches for the one lost sheep out of a hundred? God does.
Who searches for the one lost coin and then spends three times as much money celebrating finding the coin? God does.

Wedding Homily Liz and Mike Sept 9, 2016

Weddings are great---everyone is happy, the couple looks great, we have a great party to look forward to---weddings are glorious occasions.
But what the wedding sets into motion—a marriage--- isn’t all sweetness and light. A marriage as Mother Ellen proclaimed a few moments ago, should not be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, because frankly marriage, like any relationship, takes work. But, as our reading from Ecclesiastes so poignantly points out---it’s worth it.
The reading offers this advice for you as you begin your marriage: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.”
This statement is made right after the author extols the desolation of a miserly couple who toil in isolation---far removed from any human community. The point the author is making is clear---solitary toil is pointless compared to toil and life together in community.
God has built us to live in community, to be in relationship. We can do so much more, we can be so much more, when engaged in relationships, in community. Not just marriage, but all kinds of relationships, all kinds of connections. It’s when we’re relating that the fullness of God is expressed.
Even the very fullness of God is expressed in and through relationship.
One God, three persons.
One God, three varied ways of reaching out to us.
One God, three expressions of that Divine Being: The parental Creator of all God, the fully human, fully divine Jesus Christ God and God the Holy Spirit, that which energizes us in our communities, in our relationships to do good, to be faithful and to further the kingdom here on earth.
God’s all about relationships and community. And marriage is just that—a relationship, a community. Individually you’ve each brought communities to this relationship. The communities of Liz, the communities of Mike. Together, you’ve created additional communities, the communities of LizAndMike.
The point is, God created us to be together because we are stronger together---
Of course there are many ways to be in relationship---they’re as varied as the personalities here today, but the important thing is to find how you –how each of us---is fulfilled.
What relationship, what community makes your heart sing?
What relationship, what community brings you closer to the Holy?
With whom is it that you most often see the face of God?
It’s a quest for us all.
At this time and in this place your quest pauses here to acknowledge THIS relationship, THIS community of LizAndMike. A time to pause and celebrate the sanctification of this relationship, of the community---the family---you are and that which you’ll become.
For God loves when we find others to be with, to love and to nurture.
Liz and Mike, today we sanctify what has become.
Today we celebrate what will be.
And today we thank our Creator God that our very beings find their fulfillment in each other.
May God bless you this day, may God bless you every day and may those who witness your love, your community, your commitment to each other be strengthened in their own relationships and their own communities. And above all, as Paul writes: clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Amen.

Proper 18 Yr C Sept 4, 2016 Labor On, You Are God’s Creation

 +I love Labor Day weekend. Not because it’s a weekend of cookouts and relaxing. Not because it’s the last hurrah before the routine of the September through June world takes root. No I love Labor Day because it serves as a reminder to me that God sanctifies our daily work, our labor. Do you know that we have several prayers in our prayer book devoted to our Labor? ( pg. 259 and 261 in the BCP) They reflect two things—the importance of fair Labor practices, that every worker’s dignity is respected, and the sanctification of our work—that God has given us the ability and the expectation that we will work, that we will labor. The prayers, [as well as the Hymn Come Labor On,] tells us that there’s work to do and that, when we work hard with dignity and integrity, God is pleased.

Pleased with our work. All our work. Not just work we do specifically “for the church.” God sanctifies all human labor because work is part of the human condition--- God notices our work and God sanctifies it.
Of course, we all want to be acknowledged for the work we do, to be told that what we’ve labored at all day, all week, all career, is worthwhile and appreciated. But it usually isn’t God we turn to for that praise.
You see, when we’re focused on being acknowledged by our bosses, by the folks who sign our checks, by our friends and family; we forget that the acknowledgement that really matters, the honor that really counts, is that which we get from God.
And, remembering God in all we do is the message in today’s Gospel.

When Jesus tells us to hate mother, father, sister, brother he means, don’t lose our primary focus— remember God in all we do, not just in times of trouble, not just in times of joy-- but always and everywhere.
He knows how easy it is to get caught up in the here and now, to pay attention to the loudest voices around us, the voices of judgment and expectation put forth by our co workers, our bosses, our friends and our family.
Jesus is reminding us that what we do---that everything we do—is because of and for God.
As stated in the Book of Jeremiah, God, the great potter, has molded us from non-distinct balls of clay into the wonderful vessels we are today, complete with the unique attributes which make you, you and me, me. Each of us fulfills a different purpose within creation. Remember the old hymn, I Sing a Song of the Saints of God? It details how all of us are saints in the eyes of God, no matter what we do. We can be teachers or doctors, shepherds or queens, soldiers or priests, or even slain by a fierce wild beast…..but the point is we all have specific gifts bestowed upon us by our creator and our job is to go out into the world utilizing these gifts, as best we can.
Every job, even the wonderful job of being a priest and the Diocesan Canon has drudgery attached to it. There are things I need to do on a daily basis which don’t feel, at first blush, to be furthering God’s kingdom. I your jobs feel the same way. But, and here is the point, no matter how mundane, when we’re doing our work we are living into the life God created for us.


Because, we are God’s creation and all we do is of God.
When we get so caught up in just “getting through the day,” when our daily tasks become a burden, when we forget to see God at work even in the most tedious of tasks, we’re turning our back on God.
Jesus is saying, “don’t let anything stand in the way of your love of God. ….it doesn’t matter if you can’t see the glory in what you do every day. . .because God sees it, and God has sanctified it.”
The regular-ness of our daily lives, our jobs as clerks, teachers, farmers, construction workers, bankers, homemakers and retired people… is where we live out the fullness of our faith.

The regular-ness of our daily lives—our Monday through Saturday lives, is more sacred than our Sunday morning lives. For it’s in our daily lives that others are able to see God’s grace at work in our lives.
What we have to do, what our task is as put forth by Jesus, is to do our very best to seek and serve Christ in all people—even when our bosses, our co-workers, our classmates, all our companions along the way ----drive us nuts, make us mad, hurt our feelings and exasperate us.
That’s when we’re carrying the cross of Christ. Carrying our cross and following Jesus is not proselytizing it’s not preaching…it’s living our regular, ordinary day in and day out lives.
If we live our lives doing the best we can, seeking and serving Christ in all people---even in those people who drive us nuts---then we’re carrying the cross of Christ, we’re ---evangelizing. Because, by being who God molded us to be, we show others that God loves us all and sanctifies all that we do.
Next week, your new priest, Randi will be standing here. Together you will embark on a season of getting to know each other. A season of trying some new things, a season of perhaps doing some old things in new ways. It will be a time of adjustment and it will be a time for great celebration….as you embark on the next phase of life at St John’s [St Andrews] know that God is with you in all you do, loving you for who you are and who you are becoming, because you are God’s beloved masterpiece, formed to be exactly who it is you will become.

So go forth with my abundant love and unceasing prayers.  Labor on with Pastor Randi, remembering that all your work is beautiful in God’s sight. +