Lent 2 Fredonia Our Name Changing God Feb 25 2018

+Abraham laughs.
God gets a little needy.
Paul hits the nail on the head.
And Jesus loses it a bit.
Yes, we're in Lent, where all pretense is stripped away and we get down and dirty with this thing called faith.
Lent is when we're reminded just why God had to come and be among us in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ…
..Lent is when we're reminded that our relationship with God has been, more often than not, pretty rocky and that together we, humanity and God, have had our ups and downs…
..Lent's when we're reminded of just how difficult it is for God to understand us, God's beloved; and how difficult it is for us to understand God.
Things gets all stripped down in Lent because this stuff can be confusing and we don't have much time---40 days give or take---to make sense of God's love for us and our love for God before we dive headlong into the crux of our faith, those heart wrenching, faith challenging three days.
It's in Lent when we wrestle with our limitations while learning to accept God's limitlessness.
Lent is when we get clear that while we may see through a glass dimly, God sees all that has been all that is and all that will be.
Lent is when we get real clear about who God is, The Divine, and who we are, the Not Divine.
Lent is when we practice living fully into who we are rather than who we are not.
Scary? Sure.
Exciting? Yes.
Surprising? Always.
Lent's not easy, but when has being a Christian ever been easy? What we learn from our readings today, what we learn from the beautiful struggle of our individual wilderness experiences is this: standing up for those who have no standing, demanding dignity for all, protecting our children, our elderly, our downcast isn't easy, pretty or fun.
But we don't tackle any of this alone because, as promised to Abraham in the book of Genesis and as promised in the birth of Jesus himself, God never stops reaching out to us, reaching out for us. God never leaves.
We have a great example of this in today's first reading from Genesis. This reading is famous for being the one where God renames Abram and Sarai, Abraham and Sarah, making them the parents of a multitude of nations rather than just parents of one…but the first name change, the first change of focus, the first new identity isn't theirs….it's God's. You see, up until now in Genesis God's name has been The Most High God (El Elyon) or the God who sees me (El Roi), here in chapter 17 is the first time God refers to God's self as El Shaddai, the All Sufficient, All Encompassing One. Today, God, Abram and Sarai all get new names,
New identities.
It's seems clear here---God is making something all together new and God has begun with God's very self.
Now embracing a new identity, whether it's a name change, a life change or a faith change, can be pretty unsettling. So God, in God's All Sufficient and All Encompassing manner paves the way by going first. God tells Abraham, "yes I am leading you into a new identity, I am leading you into the all together new, but I'm going first, just follow me." God then proceeds to tell Abraham that he and Sarah will have many descendants that God will make fertile and lively that which had been infertile and dying---
Of course Abraham has no idea what God's talking about---our translation says that Abraham falls on his face which, at first blush, suggests that he assumed a posture of adoration and worship but in truth, the Hebrew word used here suggests less adoration and more incredulity, less worship and more shock. Less falling down in joy and wonder and more tripping over his own feet while saying, "you're gonna what?????"
And, in a scene of beautiful longing, El Shaddai, the All Encompassing All Sufficient One, doesn't smite Abraham for disbelief, doesn't move on to to someone else. No God persists. Imploring, maybe even begging, Abraham to believe. "Yes, Abraham, I'm talking to you, YOU and Sarah are the ones through which I am going to do this marvelous thing. I want, I need I long for YOU to do this with me."
Here it is in black and white: God reaches out to us, God longs for us, God, even in God's all encompassing, all sufficient divinity, does not, can not, will not walk this path alone. God needs, God wants, God longs for us, the descendants of Father Abraham and Mother Sarah, to walk alongside.
This is where the rest of today's readings come in…. Paul, in Romans, goes on and on about the Law vs. Faith, what he's working out, what he's realizing is, to coin a phrase from another of Paul's letters:
there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman…every one, all of us, any of us, each of us, are invited to journey with the Almighty, All Encompassing All Sufficient Love that is God.
This is why Jesus loses it with Peter…Peter can't bear the thought that Jesus would have to endure what Jesus will endure. He cannot fathom it, so he denies that it is true.
What Jesus is saying to us, through Peter, is this:
Yes I have great trials ahead-we all have great trials that we endure, we all have great crosses to bear, we all are constantly and relentlessly pulled toward the darkness of Not God but through the promise of the Almighty One, El Shaddai, we can walk through the dark and barren valleys of life because we are never ever alone. Jesus is telling Peter and us just what God was telling Abraham, just what Paul figured out in his letter to the church in Rome: we are in this together. We are invited we are all wanted, we are all needed. The path won't always be smooth, the way not always easy, but together, walking with the God who created us, the God who redeems us and the God who sustains us we will make it. So, welcome to Lent, welcome to faith, welcome to the all-encompassing, all sufficient Love that leads the way. Amen.

A Well-Done Lent Lent 1B Trinity, Fredonia

Rend Your Heart: [A Lent] Blessing
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart's walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you
to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole. (Jan Richardson)
My friends, Lent is not a time for dreariness, and wretchedness. Lent's a time for tearing open our hearts, reaching deep into our souls and laying all that weighs us down in front of our Creator. It's a time to get honest with ourselves--really honest---and to shed light on those things that linger deep within us, things that cause us shame, things that disgust us, things that sadden us, things that embarrass us.
Lent is time for freeing up space and time for God to enter in; some of us do this by removing (giving up) something for Lent, some of us do this by adding a practice (reading the Daily Office, or some other devotional). It doesn't matter how we do it, it matters that we are intentional about doing it.
Why...why do this? Why take this time to "change things up?" Well, because we, in our very human "human-ness" get distracted, we get absorbed in the things of this world, forgetting the things of God.
       Our reading from Genesis comes toward the end of the Noah story, when God supposedly got so angry with humanity's behavior that God destroyed all the people of the earth, except for Noah and his immediate family. There are all sorts of theological debates we can have about whether God is a vengeful God, suffice it to say I don't think our God is a vengeful God. But I do think our God is often a sad and grieving God. Is God saddened and grieved when we turn away from God? Yes, I believe God grieves deeply at our insistence on doing things our way instead of God's. I think God is horribly grieved when we hurt one another. And I think God is especially grieved when we hurt ourselves.
I know that God weeps each and every time our children are killed in acts of senseless violence yet we seem incapable of doing anything about it.
     Why do we rend our hearts and souls open before God during Lent? Not because God likes to see us suffer (no God NEVER wants us to suffer), not because it's good to deny ourselves simply for the sake of causing ourselves misery. No, we rend our hearts and souls open to God during Lent as a cleansing act to free us, to lighten us, to open ourselves up enough to fully receive the new life presented to us on Easter morning.
In the ancient church, Lent was a time for those who desired baptism to study and pray as a way to ready themselves for receiving new life in Christ through baptism. [this morning at 10:30 we have a baptism and with that act little xxxx will never need another baptism...because we only get baptized once, but Lent allows us time to prepare to be born again at that empty tomb. Lent is a time to free up space within us to receive the glory, the wonder and the awesomeness of resurrection life. The more room we open up the more Glory has room to roam within our hearts and souls.
This is why we do the tough work of Lent- not because we are bad, but because God is so incredibly good. And all God wants is for us to make room within ourselves to receive this Goodness.
You see, my friends, this is why Lent is great, because a well-done Lent allows for an incredible Easter. A well done Lent guarantees us a depth and breadth of joy on Easter morn beyond anything we've ever experienced.
A well-done Lent opens us to a Love that is stronger and a Peace that is greater than we can ever ask or imagine.
A well-done Lent opens us up to the fullness of God. And the fullness of God? Well that is all that God has ever wanted for us, the fullness of Love itself. The fullness of Peace itself.
A well-done Lent leaves us empty of resentments, empty of guilt, empty of shame and empty of despair.
A well-done Lent leaves us empty enough to be filled---absolutely FILLED---with resurrection light, resurrection love and resurrection life.
     So, as we're invited to the observance of a Holy Lent, remember that Lent is not something to endure, it's something to participate in--fully and completely--not because God is forcing us, but because we are sick and tired of hiding, denying, and shunning the darker parts of us. Through the observance of a Holy Lent we take all that weighs us down, those things we've stuffed into the recesses of our hearts, and lay it all down.
The observance of a Holy Lent requires that we dig deep.
To do this we must Rend our Hearts as described by Jan Richardson's poem, to do this we must empty ourselves so that we can be filled.
May God bless our rending, our emptying and then our receiving and filling. Amen

I then read this prayer for the events in Parkland, FL:
Good and Gracious God: we are at a loss.
We don't know how our children keep getting killed at school while we seem incapable of making this madness stop.
We ask for your blessing upon those who have died , for those who have been left behind to mourn an unimaginable loss;
we ask your urging to prod us out of helplessness and into action, out of hopelessness and into faith, out of fear and into courage.
We pray that we, together with our elected officials will find a way out of partisanship and into unity, out of blame and into responsibility.
We pray all this through the one who emptied himself of everything in order to save us all, Jesus Christ our Lord, who together with the Holy Spirit lives and reigns with you, now and forever.
Amen.
(C Dempesy-Sims, 2018)

Life doesn't happen on the mountaintop it happens in the valleys. St Peter's Niagara Falls Last Epiphany Year B, Feb. 11, 2018

 +On this Transfiguration Sunday, this first Sunday before Lent, we look ahead, we glance behind and we take stock of our own faith journeys-
have we been transformed, have we been transfigured?
     Episcopal priest Adam Thomas  says that the Transfiguration isn't so much about the change in Jesus' appearance, or about the arrival of Moses and Elijah, or even about the proclamation of God from the cloud. …instead, says Thomas, the Transfiguration is about how a glimpse of the Holy, an experience of the Divine, transformed the disciples, and how it can-how it must-- transform us.
 There's no doubt that exposure to the Holy, the Divine, casts a physical change- Moses' skin shone when he encountered God, Jesus' face and clothes glisten in this morning's gospel account of the Transfiguration-but the real change, the everlasting change, is what happens internally, when one experiences the Divine.
What really matters is how that experience changes us, how we carry it in our day-to-day lives.
       According to Biblical scholar Fred Craddock, mountain top experiences are fine and dandy, but where the rubber really meets the road is what happens when we come down off the mountain, when we enter the valley where the light has faded, the sheen dulled, and the dirt and grime of daily life predominates.
 Craddock and Thomas are on to something here…Christianity isn't about mountaintops, it's about valleys.  Because if it was about mountaintops then
Jesus wouldn't have been born in a barn to peasant parents from a backwater town. If it was about mountaintops Jesus wouldn't have been executed like a common criminal, hung on a tree, mocked and spat upon. If it was about mountaintops Jesus' followers wouldn't have been a rag-tag band of disciples who fell asleep at a drop of a hat, doubted at the slightest turn, or denied their teacher in times of greatest need.
 No, this faith of ours is the faith of the valley. This faith of ours gets lived out in the ordinary of our day-to-day lives, because Christianity is less about fancy and more about simple.
              But simple doesn't mean less Holy.
Even down here in the valley, sacred things happen all the time. The Holy can-the Holy does-- pop up everywhere.
The sacred isn't necessarily glamorous and the Holy needn't come in some transfigured glory. Usually, God's right here, walking with us through the valley of regular life.
    But, who can blame Peter (or the rest of us) for wanting to freeze that moment of glory upon the mountain, to linger in the wisdom and wonder of Elijah, Moses, Jesus and God?
That's far more appealing than going back to daily life.
But Peter forgets that such an overwhelming experience of the Holy isn't the transformative thing-no the Technicolor wow of an experience of the sacred, of the Holy is simply the fuel for change. Blockbuster encounters with the Holy serve as the nourishment needed to follow God's directive that we listen to God's beloved Son-and use the Good News of his life and ministry to transform this world.
Peter sees the Transfiguration but fails to feel the transformation.
     Everyone has experienced this in one form or another---we have some powerful experience-a moment when we feel truly touched by God and we swear, we swear that this is it, we'll change our ways, we'll never forget, we'll turn over a new leaf…but it doesn't last. It doesn't last because the high of that moment cannot be sustained.
It cannot be sustained because life doesn't happen on the mountaintop it happens in the valleys.
      In the Holy Land there are two sites considered most probable as locations for the Transfiguration. At one of these sites, Mt.Tabor, a gorgeous church has been built. The day I visited was very sunny and the view from atop the mountain was as stunning. I didn't want to leave! I lingered, taking lots of pictures, trying to freeze the mountaintop moment- I wanted to stay there forever! In this way, I guess I was a lot like Peter. But soon I had to go and suddenly our tour group was back in reality. Jesus, James, John and Peter do the same thing.
Jesus' reality, his valley, is on full display, in the few lines following today's Gospel excerpt we hear about infighting among Jesus' followers, clamoring  among people desperate for Jesus' healing touch and temple authorities out for His blood.
     It's here, at this point of the Gospel, that the true meaning of transformation becomes clear.
For all the bright shiny white garments, all the glorious sun splashed mountaintop views, all the unremitting wonder of God's voice booming from the heavens doesn't heal our world.
All the experiences of the Holy, all the sacred feelings, all the Transfigurations doesn't bring God's kingdom to earth.
What heals this world, what brings the Holy right here, right now, are people. People like you and me who've listened to God's Son, and try our best to live as we've been taught:
Finding the sacred in the mundane,  finding the holy in the ordinary and being transformed by the routine.
For our faith is not the faith of royalty, it's the faith of peasants.
Ours isn't the faith of the powerful, it's the faith of the weak and ours isn't the faith of the mountaintop it's the faith of the valley.
Today, as we dedicate the kitchen renovations that will transform the lives of the Carolyn's House residents, and many many others, the Gospel challenges us live into the fullness of what the incarnation:
We are to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, we are to climb upon His cross and we are to lay alongside him in his tomb.
 Today we climb off the mountaintop of the nativity and and walk down into the valley of real life ---- not a walk of despair and hopelessness but a walk of transformed faith and transfigured hope rejoicing that we, along with with God's Son, and along with all who are served by and through you in Christ's name are Chosen and Beloved by God. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Amen

Epiphany 5B Calvary, Williamsville “Finding God in the Distraction”

Today I want to speak with you about distraction. My late wife , after we had been dating for a few months, said, somewhat incredulously, “you’ve never been dx’d with ADD.” She was fond of saying that I was the most stimulus bound person she’d ever met!
Every day I walk into my office at the Diocesan Ministry Center with the best laid plans and a beautifully structured To Do List. And then the Bishop needs me, a parish administrator calls with a question, a priest from a small parish needs advice and….there goes my plan and off in the distance I hear it: a divine giggle! We plan, God laughs.
Again. And Again. And Again.
       Of course, I’m not in the least bit unique. This happens to many of us. A lot. We have good intentions, exquisite plans, a stunning to do list.
                          And then, life happens.
      In today’s Gospel, “life happened” to Jesus.   Capernaum, was a pretty busy place with a lot of people in a not very large area.
We could call it the Buffalo of first century Galilee—you could get just about everywhere in 20 minutes! For reference, consider where we sit right now the synagogue, the Sea of Galilee was about 2 blocks down the road, and Peter and Andrew’s home was about as close to us here as Main Street.
Jesus has just wrapped up worship in the synagogue where he healed a man from demonic possession. He’s taking the short walk across the street to Simon Peter’s house for dinner and, hopefully, some downtime.
He must need it right? I mean, look at what’s happened so far in the first chapter of Mark---
Jesus has been baptized by John; thrust into the wilderness for forty days, thrust out of the wilderness and into his ministry due to John’s arrest and imprisonment; he’s called Andrew, Peter, John and James, and is establishing himself in his new “hometown” of Capernaum. All in 39 verses! Phew!
My guess is that as he strolled over to the house he was thinking---hoping, longing---that this crowd of people at the synagogue would go home and give him a chance to catch his breath….but….his plans, his hopes, his wishes, his desires, whatever it was he was planning on doing at Simon Peter’s house, doesn’t happen because Peter’s mother-in-law is sick---really sick.
So of course, Jesus heals her.
              [By the way, can we talk about that line in the Gospel, right after Jesus heals Peter’s m.in law: she immediately got up and began to serve them. This proves that the Gospel was written by a man, right?]
He does what needs to be done, regardless of his best laid plans. And then, before he can say “hey, what’s for dinner,” half of Capernaum is lining up to get healed by him. And, of course, Jesus goes ahead and heals them, accepting the change in plans and helping out. And then, the next day, after going to that deserted place to pray, Peter arrives, clearly annoyed that he had to waste all that time searching for Jesus, and pulls Jesus out of his very much needed solitude to attend to the throngs of people seeking him.
Can’t the guy catch a break?
But, Jesus doesn’t snap, doesn’t whine, doesn’t complain. He simply gets up and goes to where he’s being called to go.
This doesn’t mean that he wasn’t frustrated, or annoyed or mad, it means that he realized something we all can benefit from realizing:
While distractions may take us away from what we think we need to be doing, even what we want to be doing, they don’t take us away from God.
 As a matter of fact, God is there, smack dab in the middle of the distraction.
                   God is in the distraction.
Now, this doesn’t mean God’s not in our carefully laid out plans, what it does it mean is that God is also in the distractions, the change of plans, the interruptions.
I think for a lot of us, the distractions of life can feel like catastrophic derailments ….especially in our faith lives………”well I meant to pray every morning and every evening but this and that happened and I didn’t. I’m such a failure”
Or
“I signed up for a committee, a job, a role at church and then I forgot about it, or I was late, or I made a mistake while I was doing it, so I can’t show my face there again. I messed up, there’s no going back.”
What the readings this week tell us is this---none of that is true. It may feel accurate, it may seem true, but it’s not.
God doesn’t have a scorecard about who stays on task and who doesn’t. Jesus felt as if he needed rest, yesterday the people in need of healing kept coming. Sometimes the distraction leads us to exactly where we need to be!
God is in everything. God sees everything, God knows everything, God is truly in our going out and in our coming in. So God knows our intent, and God knows our desire.
There’s no limit to God’s wisdom….so please trust that God knows we aren’t distracted because we reject God, we get distracted because. …well because life happens. The life God created, gave to us and lives with us.
And as Jesus so brilliantly exhibits in today’s Gospel….if you intended to pray, if you intended to volunteer to help out at church, if you intended to finish your to do list, but things—life---got in the way? Give yourself a break. Because God? God’s right there with you, in the midst of all those distractions, detours and changes of plan.
Every single time. God
We plan, God laughs. And on we go. Amen.