How abiding with God helps us survive being pruned Easter 5B April 29, 2018 Trinity Hamburg

+I struggled with this week’s sermon... that is until I realized that I didn’t need to quote a bunch of theologians to preach on abiding love and being pruned by God.

I’ve lived it. 

The story of abiding in God and the necessity of being in community is the message of today’s readings. And it’s what has saved my life. 

         As many of you know, my wife Pete died six months ago. We’d only been married a little less than 5 years and only together for 7. We thought we had 20/30 years to be together. We laughed at how long it took for us to find each other. We had plans, we had hopes, we had dreams. We thought we’d get old together. 

But cancer took it all from us. For just about a year we walked the walk familiar to so many of us…treatments, surgeries, new treatments, more surgeries…we just kept waiting for her to get better. Once she was better we would do this, we’d do that, we’d get on with our lives. 

But that’s not how it worked out. Suddenly and surprisingly she died. In some ways it felt as if we had just begun to fight, in other ways it seemed all we’d been doing was battling illness. 

I felt as if my legs had been cut off from under me. My heart was in a million pieces, I was wracked with grief, exhausted, terrified, angry, lonely, lost. I couldn’t pray, at times I couldn’t breathe. But, I carried on. Our son needed me, our nieces and nephews needed me, our animals needed me, my job needed me. Somehow, someway I’ve gotten out of bed every single day. I’ve done barn chores, cleared snow and ice, then more snow and more ice. I’ve dealt with broken fences, frozen doors and relentless exhaustion. I’ve learned what to do when you find a fox in the barn or a skunk on your deck, or a dog lost in the woods. 

I’ve learned how to be alone… by realizing that I’m not. 

I’ve asked for help, I’ve reached out, I’ve accepted others reaching in. 

I’m healing…by feeling the pain, by asking for help, by sharing my grief, by abiding in others and letting others abide in me. Including and especially God. 

     Jesus says abide in me as I abide in my father. 

Endure with me as I endure you.

Hold into me while I hold onto you

Love me while I love you. 

      Abiding, my friends, is to take up residence with one another’s sorrows and joys and all that’s in between. Abiding is holding fast to another when your own branch has been cut out from under you. 

Abiding is being there when the pruning feels too severe, when the growth is too painful and when the living is just too hard.

Abiding is being strong for others who are feeling weak. And vice versa.

Abiding is being a community. Abiding is taking the example of God being within Jesus, bearing all things that Jesus bore and doing it.

Here. 

Now. 

With one another. 

Abiding is being the face of God to each other. 

Abiding is what gets me up every single morning. Abiding is what is allowing me to prune the vines of my own life. To know what to hold onto and what to let go of. 

Abiding is what you’ve done in this community for the past 20 months. 

Abiding is what you need to do as you go forward in your search for a new priest. 

Abiding is what helps us survive being pruned. 

I was pruned when Pete died. 

You’ve been pruned through all the losses and betrayals and disappointments of these past months. 

But here we are. Upright. Breathing and ready to keep on living. 

How? Why? Because God abides in us and we abide in God. Because God cries with us, rails with us, comforts us and challenges us. Because God is in us and we are in God.

 You don’t look like you did before this pruning, you don’t think like you did. You don’t like all that’s happened, you may wonder about what will be, but together you have abided in love, light and hope, even when the days were dark, the love painful and the hope fleeting. 

       This is life…we have great joys and we have great sorrows…and in between we have regular old life. The lesson of our readings is that pruning happens and that pruning, no matter how painful, no matter how much we pray it didn’t happen, does lead to growth, to change, to new life. The  journey is arduous, the path not always straight, the way often confusing but, as long as we hold onto the love of God and the love of community, as long as we abide in one another and in God through Jesus Christ, we’ll survive the challenges, we’ll survive the loss, the anger, the sadness and the worry. 

Why? Because, as John says in today’s epistle: God is Love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Come what may. 

So…

Keep abiding.

Keep loving.

Keep moving. 

For God is with us in the pruning, in the growth, and in the abiding. Always and Forever. Amen. 

Be Like Jesus. Be Like Pat. Do It Well, Do it Now. Do it Always. Easter 4 Yr B April 22, 2018 St John’s Grace, Buffalo, NY

+I had a sermon written for today. It was theologically sound, somewhat interesting and challenging. But then I went to Pat Devine’s funeral and I realized that to truly teach you about the Parable of the Good Shepherd, I just needed to tell you about Pat.
    Pat was my nephew John’s speech therapist throughout High School. John has severe physical disabilities. He is confined to a wheelchair, cannot speak with a voice and is fed through a feeding tube. He has every reason in the world to feel sorry for himself. But he never, ever does. He can’t because he’s too busy loving others. He is one of the fiercest Christians I know. He doesn’t just proclaim his faith on Sundays he lives it every single day. I always tell people, John is the best person I know. He became this way because of people like Pat Devine who never ever treated him with anything less than respect, and dignity. Who never ever gave him anything but hope and light and love.
As I contemplated Pat’s impending death these past few weeks (she had brain cancer and we knew how it would end) I couldn’t shake the thought that Pat, like John, wasn’t just a Christian who proclaimed, she was a Christian who lived. She didn’t just talk, she walked.
On Friday, as I sat at her funeral mass back home in Clarendon Hills Illinois, it hit me:
The story of Pat and John is the story of the Good Shepherd.

A Good Shepherd never gives up.
A Good Shepherd doesn’t rest until all of her sheep are safe.
A Good Shepherd won’t stop until all who need to be encircled in her fold of love have been found.
     That’s the story of who Pat Devine was. And it is the story of who God calls us to be. As the priest said during his funeral homily, it is disrespectful to Pat to just shake our heads and say, “the world needs more people like Pat.”
What we need to do, what we must do, is pick up the mantel of Christ and be the Good Shepherd here and now.

Just like Pat.

Pat taught special ed kids. She taught speech to kids who couldn’t talk.
Now that may seem impossible, right? To teach speech to kids who are non-verbal due to physical handicap.
But you know what, it wasn’t impossible to someone who believed that all things are possible through Christ, someone like Pat.
What Pat taught was expression. What Pat taught my nephew John was that if he had a thought or an opinion or a desire, that he could communicate it. And she taught him that he should communicate it. Because she knew that he had stuff to say. She respected him, she offered him dignity and she strove, in all she did, for justice...not only for john, not only for the hundreds and hundreds of other students she taught in her career but for everyone she encountered.
Pat Devine was a Good Shepherd because Pat wouldn’t rest, she didn’t rest until all of her students knew that what they had to say—-even if they couldn’t say it the regular way with voice and words—was worthwhile, important and needed in this world.
     Pat Devine helped make my nephew John who he is today: a 39 year old man with a body that has failed him, but with a mind as sharp as a tack and a soul as broad and open and welcoming as any God has created.
     Pat Devine was someone who took what Jesus said and not only lived it, she shared it.
     Pat Devine was someone who took what Jesus said and not only proclaimed it, but became it.
     Pat Devine didn’t shake her head when she saw severely disabled children and think, “poor kids.” She got down and dirty with them and showed them just who they were—-beloved children of God worthy of dignity, justice and love....
    Why did I need to share with you the story of Pat Devine? Because our faith means absolutely nothing if we don’t embody it in all we do. Because if we don’t embody it in all we do, we will be nothing more than the hired hand who, at the first sign of trouble, abandons his sheep and runs away.
    When we embody our faith, as Pat did, as my nephew John does, people feel worthy, people feel seen, people feel heard, people feel loved.
     And when that happens?
When that happens, wars end.
Hate dissolves.
The hungry are fed.
The naked are clothed, the broken-hearted are healed and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, reigns here on earth.
     Why do we need the parable of the Good Shepherd? Why did I need to tell you about Pat Devine and my nephew John?
     Because in our world, right here and right now, we need to do as they have done.
We need to love:
Fiercely. Boldly. Broadly and Fully.
My dear friends—
Be like Jesus.
Be Like Pat.
Do it well. Do it now. Do it always.
Amen.

Belief without Action is a Clanging Cymbal, Signifying Nothing. Easter 2 Yr B April 8, 2018 St Peter’s NF

+My guess is the attendance this morning is a bit lower than it was last week, when people who aren’t normally here, show up—attending as a favor to their spouse, parents, grandparents…attending out of obligation and promise, rather than out of faith or desire.
It’s just the way it is. Church isn’t a priority for most people in our world. It’s frustrating for sure, but what we in the wider church and certainly you here at St Peter’s have learned is that people not coming through these doors isn’t their problem…it is ours.
Author Greg Boyle relates this story: “I read an article in a magazine where an American Baptist Church official lamented that ‘secular culture will always be hostile to Christianity, therefore our future is bleak. ’”
OK…in my opinion, there’s lots of things wrong with that statement, but the thing that really fries me is the official’s assumption that there’s nothing we can do about secular culture’s view of Christianity. He doesn’t ask what I feel is the necessary follow up question: why? Why do those “outside the church” find us “inside” the church irrelevant, unnecessary, and of no account?”
Author Diane Roth, writing in the Christian Century magazine , says that she doesn’t think that secular culture views Christianity as a whole with hostility but rather views inauthentic expressions of Christianity, with hostility. Faithless expressions of Christianity, shallow expressions of Christianity, talking the talk of Christianity without walking the walk----that’s what she thinks is so offensive to those outside our doors.
And I agree.
I don’t think the world rejects the basic tenets of Christianity, to love everyone everywhere no exceptions,  I think the world rejects us when we profess this faith but we don’t live it. When we love everyone, except them, everywhere, except those over there, always, except when it is too risky or too uncomfortable….
When they hear us talk about Jesus but they don’t see us living like Jesus.
     That’s really at the crux of the Thomas story.
We hear this gospel every year on the Second Sunday of Easter. It’s one of only a handful of readings we hear every year, so it clearly has a message the church really wants us to hear.
While Doubting Thomas is very familiar story to most of us, how well do we really know it? How much time do we spend considering what it has to teach us, here and now?
      Below the surface of “doubting Thomas” is a story of a man who was heartbroken, terrified and determined to experience the Risen Lord for himself. He just wouldn’t believe until he touched those wounds. He couldn’t believe until he experienced the Risen One.
Who can blame him?
Do you believe something lock and stock and barrel without experiencing it?
If someone says Just Pizza has the best pizza in western New York would you simply believe that report and proclaim, Just Pizza has the best pizza in WNY?   Or would you actually try it for yourself, taste it for yourself, experience it for yourself?
 Incredible things –be they miraculous and wonderful like resurrection or shocking and horrific like a sudden death---cannot be easily processed. We need to see it to believe it.
As many of you know, my wife Pete died 5 months ago. I wasn’t with her when she died and when I heard the news the only thing I could do was rush to get to her side, to see and to feel that she was really gone. Only then could I begin to grasp this new “reality.”
But, and this is where the story of Doubting Thomas gets a little complicated, Christianity demands more than just seeing and believing. Christianity demands that once we believe we don’t just sit back and relax comfortable with our own faith… we must act. We must do. We must talk and walk.
     Thomas needed to see the risen Lord, to experience him. And so does the world just outside these doors.
People need to see Jesus through us and our actions. In everything we do, everywhere, always. We can’t wait for people to walk through these doors and be impressed by our piety, we need to meet folks out there and have them be moved by our faith.
      This is the lesson Jesus is trying to teach Thomas in today’s Gospel. When Thomas sees Jesus and proclaims “My Lord and My God,” Jesus snaps at him a bit saying "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Jesus is continuing to teach. He’s reminding his followers... those in the upper room then and to you and me here and now.....that the work he began is now their work, it is now our work. It’s up to us to show this broken world that we feel their wounds, that we share in their pain, that we won’t stop, we won’t rest, we won’t waver until the hurts are healed, the lonely are visited, the afflicted are comforted and the hated are loved.
     Today’s Gospel teaches us that it is not enough to come to church and praise God’s name, it’s not enough to believe in Jesus, died buried and alive again. Today’s Gospel teaches us, it commands us that we walk the walk of Jesus, believing his message and living his message in all we do. Because when we do that, when we love others as we ourselves have been loved, when we enter into the wounded-ness of those around us, people will see us, they’ll experience us and then they will exclaim—"I have seen the Lord in your eyes, I have experienced the Lord in your deeds and I believe! Alleluia, Alleluia and Amen!

  “Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship” Boyle, Gregory Simon and Schuster, 2017

  Christian Century Magazine, “Living the Word,” March 7, 2018

The Women Went. They Saw. They Told. They Believed. Easter Sunday 2018 St Luke’s Attica

+Alleluia He Is Risen!
Alleluia He is Alive!
Alleluia the strife is o’er!
Alleluia, Easter has come again!
 “So what?” “So What” is the response of most people in the world. The mystery of the incarnation, the miracles of Jesus’ ministry, the laments of Lent, the emotional journey through Holy Week holds little or no meaning for a great portion of the world. Heck, relatively few Episcopalians attend Holy Week services. Most people prefer the new life of resurrection without going through the agony of Maundy Thursday, the despair of Good Friday and the emptiness of Holy Saturday.
 So, so what….what do these shouts of Alleluia REALLY mean? What does this account of events over 2000 years ago in a land half way across the globe mean for us, here, in 2018? In Attica NY?  At St. Luke’s Church?
Alleluia. What DOES it all mean?
 Well, to understand—I mean to really wrestle with this question--- we need to look back. Back to that breaking dawn 2000 years ago, on a hill just outside of town, when Mary Magdalene—so long misunderstood and misrepresented---screwed up her courage and went to finish the anointing she began three days before…for the very least she could do for this man she loved, this God she revered, this leader she followed, was to give him a proper burial.
 And so, through the lightening sky of the First Easter morn, she walks out of town and up Calvary’s hill to The Tomb.
 It was a foolish mission—after all, the tomb had been sealed—she’d watched Joseph of Arimathea roll the stone himself. But, Mary soldiered on, not because this made sense, but because she was compelled, driven, drawn to that tomb—against all common sense, against all reasonableness, against all propriety,
Mary went.
Mary saw.
Mary told.
And yes, Mary believed.
 THIS is what it all means. This is what we’re called to do. It’s in this—the emulating of Mary of Magdala—where we find the meaning of these alleluias, the meaning of this Easter Sunday come again:
The women believed. All the Mary’s did—you see in all of the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection one thing is clear: the men—Peter, James, John and countless others fled.
They left. They ran. They denied. They hid.
They even betrayed.
But the women—Mary, the mother, Mary of Magdala, Mary Clopas, Salome and others unnamed, stayed. From the foot of the cross to the mouth of the tomb, they stayed. They watched, they waited, they wondered.
They believed.
These women did what women have been doing for millennia: they did what needed to be done.
They did what needed to be done while the men argued, betrayed and denied.
The women? They took care of business.
Just as we should.
  You see, that’s the meaning for us, here in 2018, in Attica NY, in this church on this Easter morning:  we need to take care of business; the business of the empty tomb.
We need to follow the mandate Jesus gave us around the dinner table on that very first Holy Thursday—we are to do unto others as Jesus did unto us: we are to Love as we have been Loved.
 You see, the empty tomb isn’t about a miraculous resurrection.
The empty tomb is about going and telling, going and doing, going and being.
Jesus tells Mary—“don’t hold onto me: go and tell my brothers”—
Go and Tell. Go and Show. Go and Believe.
 So, my friends, I have news for you: Easter isn’t the end, it’s the beginning.
By virtue of Jesus’ death and resurrection, by virtue of our Lord’s mandate to love others as we’ve been loved, we must follow Mary’s example.
We must go and see.
We must believe and tell.
We must do what needs to be done:
Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted.
We must challenge the status quo, we must ask the tough questions, we must pursue righteousness in all things.
We must, above all else, demand dignity for every single human being , no exceptions.
Because when we do that, we’re loving as we’ve been—as we are---loved.
Because when we do that we’re going and seeing, we’re believing and telling—
 we are doing what must be done.
And that is our Easter task. It is our Christian task.
Alleluia.
The Lord is Risen , indeed.+

We change, God doesn’t. We forget, God remembers. We stray, God remains steady. . Easter Vigil with Baptism, 2018 Grace Lockport

+Tonight we baptize Westlynn.  I pray that she’ll grow up to be a true Episcopalian---someone who’s comfortable in the grey areas of life, someone who’ll accept that while she may not agree with everyone, everywhere, always, she’ll love everyone ,everywhere and always. And above all else I hope Westlynn asks A LOT of questions, just like a 9 year old Kaitlyn, who I met 13 years ago.
    Kaitlyn was in the 4th grade Sunday School class and one Lenten Sunday, as the class was discussing the events of Holy Week she asked me, “why? Why do we go through Holy Week every year? After all, she said, we know it all works out in the end!” Well she was correct, we do know how it ends and tonight we stand at the dramatic and glorious climax of the Holy Week Drama—an empty tomb, a risen Christ—but, as I told Kaitlyn---we must walk through the drama of Holy Week each and every year because although the story doesn’t change, we do.                                    
       We need the same old story to guide us in the new, varied and divergent paths our lives take. We change, God doesn’t. We forget, God remembers. We stray, God remains steady.
And so, we journey….from the triumphal march into Jerusalem, to the loneliness and despair of the garden, the bitter trial, the agony of the cross, the silence of death and finally, the joy of resurrection.
What a walk!
Tonight we heard the story of salvation. From the first glimmer of new light we heard how God has, always and forever, saved us from our darker selves. From the Red Sea to the dry bones, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from Gethsemane to Calvary, from life to death and life again, God reaches out to us and for us.
Through the miracle of Easter we’ve been given, in clear and certain terms, A New Life in Christ, just as Westlynn will receive in a few moments.
      Why do we do this every year? Why must we repeat the history of the past two thousand years, year in and year out? Because we get lost, we forget. Because throughout life we experience our own personal Holy Weeks, our own moments of doubt, despair, loneliness and fear.
When Westlynn asks the same questions as Kaitlyn I hope we all remember to tell her that her life will have ups and downs and that by remembering the lessons of Holy Week, she'll be better equipped to deal with the peaks and valleys of life.
        So, just what are these lessons of Holy Week?
What does the journey from Bethany to Jerusalem, from Caiphas' prison to the hill at Calvary, from denial to doubt, from cross to tomb, from the death of Jesus back to life again, teach us?
Palm Sunday: triumph has different meanings. I don’t think anyone really knew what to expect when Jesus marched into Jerusalem. No doubt many of the disciples thought that in Jerusalem, Jesus would topple the civic and religious structures of the day. I’m not sure any of them thought victory could come from the cross and the tomb.
We cannot expect that the victory of life will always look how we think it will. Sometimes victory comes swaddled in rags, born in a barn and killed like a common criminal.
Maundy Thursday. It’s important to take time for fellowship. Sit with family and friends—break bread together. The bonds formed over the dinner table are fierce and will hold, come what may. Sometimes, words aren’t needed. Sometimes those we love simply need us to sit with them, to bear witness to the pain they’re enduring. My friends, never underestimate the power of your presence.
Good Friday: There will be times when our beliefs will be challenged, when we'll be tempted to deny what we believe to be true and right because it’s not popular or it’s too risky to stand up for what we believe. Folks, stand up for what is right as best you can, and when you falter-- and we all falter-- remember that God stands at the ready, waiting for you—for all of us-- to come to the home of God, where forgiveness always reigns.
Holy Saturday. Where is God?
There are days when we feel utterly alone and bereft. Know that deep within that sadness, at the very bottom of the well of loneliness there’s a small, still voice weeping with us and for us, sharing in our pain. You may not feel it, but know that it’s there and that you can count on it. None of us is ever alone, no matter what.
Easter—the Resurrection— Just as quickly as we find ourselves in the depths of despair we’ll be relieved and released from the pain. Suddenly, it will be gone. The sadness will lift and joy will again reign.
    The journey of Holy Week, is the journey of our lives---we’ll have ups and downs. We'll have our share of Easter joys and Good Friday losses. But---and this is the most important lesson any of us can take from our Christian journey----and I hope Westlynn remembers it always:
Holy Week always ends in Easter, Darkness always gives way to light, and sin always loses out to grace and truth and love. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia ---The Lord is Risen Indeed!+