Proper 8 c June 26, 2022 (St Luke's Jamestown)

 No time to waste... we have 525,600 moments....

    
Remember the broadway show Rent? There was a live tv production of it a few years back.
The iconic chorus from one song reads five hundred twenty -five thousand six hundred minutes—how do you measure, measure a year.
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnight cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes how do you measure a year in the life?
    In today’s gospel Jesus says: spend those minutes living…don’t wait for the right time—you know how we do—as soon as we get out of debt, as soon as the kids are grown, as soon as I get this next raise, as soon as things get better. Time’s too precious, life to unpredicatable for us to wait to do what it is we’re called to do.         
As if we needed any reminders the events of the past 6 weeks—the massacres in Buffalo, Uvalde and Birmingham—have made it clear: we don’t know how many of those minutes we have left.
We have this moment, this time, this day, this hour, this minute, to spread the singular message of Jesus, the core of all things sacred and holy and good:
Love.
    As Jesus turns to face his fate, as the darkness of this world descends upon him, one hateful comment, one violent act, one intolerant judgment at a time, Jesus knows that we only have so many moments and that every moment-needs to lead with, be infused by and end with a lingering taste of Love. Because it’s by loving—really loving——that creation  will reach its fullness.
    James and John are incensed that the Samaritans weren’t rolling out the red carpet for Jesus . Now this was ridiculous—-who welcomes—-sincerely welcomes— a person who’s telling you that what you believe must be turned upside down and inside out in order for you to live a true and authentic, a Holy and Blessed—Life?
Nobody, right?
The lesson Jesus wants to teach, the message he’ll be teaching for the next ten chapters of Luke is that to be his disciple, to Follow Him, to be a Christian, requires more than walking alongside Him. It means picking up our own crosses and truly following him.
Sounds daunting doesn’t it?
It is. Living in Love isn’t easy because the world is so frightened of it. Things haven’t changed. Living a life of God loves everyone, everywhere, no exceptions is incredibly threatening to people. Remember last week when, after Jesus healed the man with the demons the townfolk begged Jesus to LEAVE? Unconditional love is scary.
To love unconditionally means that we really need to be like Jesus—we need to love everyone, even, especially, those who hate us.
Years ago I was running in a breast cancer 5k run. It was the same day as the Pride parade in Buffalo. It was a glorious Sunday afternoon and I had attended church at the Cathedral that morning. As I was running a woman with a bull-horn screamed at me: “Jesus hates faggots.” I stopped and possessed by someone other than myself, I replied, “I was just talking to Jesus and he told me he loves everybody. Including you.”
Then I kept running. At that moment, something inside me changed. I no longer hid who I was (the irony that I wasn’t even running in a Pride event wasn’t lost on me) I knew that no matter what hate was spewed at me for being a lesbian, or a woman, or a liberal, or a Chicago Cubs fan the only faith-filled response was love.
That hasn’t been easy. But at that moment, some 15 or 20 years ago, I knew the truth—-the moments of my life would not be hijacked by hate. I’ve fallen off track at times over the years but this reading from Luke, harsh as it sounds, is my north-star—-I will not linger in what was, I will not linger with the perpetrators of darkness, I will continue to move with the light. I don’t want my life measured by how many arguments I have won, I want my life to be measured by how many people felt loved after an encounter with me. Even those—especially those—-who don’t love me back. That’s my wish for all of us because, to paraphrase Jesus; “don’t linger, there’s work to do and time is wasting. Let’s go!”

Proper 7c June 19, 2022

Get up!! Pentecost 2C Proper 7

+Elijah’s toast. He’s done. He dared to disagree with Jezebel and neither she nor King Ahab were amused. You see, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel were worshippers of Baal, a pagan God and Elijah was a folower of Yahweh, whom we know as God.It didn’t go well and Elijah’s running for his life. He knew there was nowhere to hide, he knew eventually the King’s guards would find him and that would be that. So, exhausted and disgusted with himself Elijah collapses under the broom tree—begging death to overtake him.
But God had other plans.
A divine messenger awakens 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 him, saying, “Get up!”
“Eat something, you have a difficult road ahead of you.” Get up!
Elijah got up, ate, drank, and refreshed by that food, carried on.
Because God had other plans.

Several years ago I heard former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preach a wonderful sermon on the gospel story of  Jairus’ daughter. Remember the story? Jairus comes to Jesus, begging him to heal his daughter. Jesus dilly dailies and when he finally reaches the girl, everyone says she is dead. Jesus clears the room, takes the girl’s hand and says, “Talitha Cum” which means, Little Girl, Arise, but which Bishop Katharine translated as “Get Up, Girl!”
This girl was as good as dead, but God?
God had other plans.
Through messengers, prophets, apostles, the Holy and Undivided Trinity calls to us all the time, telling us to
“Get up girl, get up boy, get up man, get up woman, get up church, get up world, there’s work to do!”
And my friends WE’RE  just the people to do it.
God has plans for us:
Get up, man!
That’s what the Holy Spirit is saying to——
Get up, woman!
That’s what God is saying to —-
Get up, prophet!
That’s what the messenger was saying to Elijah, “your work’s not yet done.”
And that is the message God gives us as we embark on the long green growing season known as ordinary time. We are no longer waiting for a birth in the manger,  no longer marching through the days of trial in Lent, no longer waiting for the tomb to be empty….no, we are now in the time known as ordinary—not because it’s boring, but because it’s a time for the steady drumbeat of doing the work we’ve been given to do—-picking up the mantle of God, inspired and enflamed by the Holy Spirit to continue the work Jesus did. The work he left for us, the work he gave to us. The work of getting up and being the light of love to the whole world. The work of saying no to injustice, the work of saying no to hate, the work of saying no to inequality. The work of saying yes— all are welcome, of saying yes to respecting the dignity of every single human being, of saying yes to the work of Love.
My friends, the arc of justice may bend somewhat slowly, the road may seem long, the journey tough, but those impediments are no excuse, for God is saying loud and clear: “GET UP, I need you---yes YOU---to do this work and to do it now.”
So, as  we enter into the fullness of summer, as the days stay long and the nights are cooled by a soft summer breeze may we never ever forget that giving up may always be an option for us, but that God in God’s persistent, loving and yes at times annoying fashion will always pull us out of ourselves, shake us up and move us toward doing exactly what it is we need to do.
Get up folks, the world needs us…right here and right now.
Amen.
 

Trinity Sunday June 12 2022

 My favorite Far Side comic depicts a figure looking an awful lot like Albert Einstein standing in front of a blackboard. Three headings sit atop three columns on the board, marked Step One, Step Two and Step Three. Under Steps 1 and 3 are numbers and mathematical symbols, suggesting some type of formula. Step 2 has no such numbers, no symbols, no formula. Instead it reads, “And then a miracle happens.”
Sometimes, even in science, we just don’t know how we get from Step One to Step Three, we just know that we do.
Such are the attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit….one is tempted to give all the theological explanations and then just say, well then a miracle happens: Step 1 We Believe in God. Step Three we believe in a Blessed and Undivided Trinity. Step 2, a miracle happens which makes three into one, and one into three.
Some things can’t be explained as much as they can be experienced.
    In our reading from the Book of Proverbs Wisdom is a “being”—-Lady Wisdom is a title often given to the star of much of the Book of Proverbs. In today’s reading we hear that Wisdom was with God at creation…and she was. It is this same “Lady Wisdom” who over the generations, morphed into the Holy Spirit of the New Testament, as we hear Jesus discuss in our reading from John (it’s also interesting how the ancient writings about Lady Wisdom were clear in the gender identity and how bt the time we got to the 3rd and 4th centuries Lady Wisdom had become a male Holy Spirit (but I digress). Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples that he must return to his Father, with whom he has existed since the beginning of time.
Bottom line, our Christian doctrine is clear—-God comes to us in three persons—a creator, whom we generally refer to as God or as “Father,” a Redeemer whom we refer to as the Son, Jesus, and our Sustainer, Holy Wisdom or the Holy Spirit whose existence we commemorated last Sunday. We believe in a Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe in One God. One God who has three forms emanating from the same whole.
    Almost all expository attempts at describing the Trinity fall short because at its heart, the essence of the Trinity is relationship. And describing the essence of a relationship almost always fails.  God, in God’s three fold nature, is relationship.
    Retired Lutheran Pastor Richard Lischer shared this interpretation of the Trinity he discovered while contemplating a stained glass window depiction of the Trinity: “The fairly typical Trinitarian design of three interconnecting triangles reminded me of an aerial photograph taken of our small farming community.  Besides the straight and orderly rows of crops in the fields, another distinct pattern emerged: well-worn paths criss-crossing from one farmhouse to another. These paths, worn into the ground by generations of neighbors visiting and helping out in times of need, linked the town, they knit the community together.” Lischer’s description of the interconnectedness represented in those paths explains my experience of the Trinity.
God grooves paths in our lives, coming to us at different times and in different forms to address a variety of needs.
God, in three persons, Blessed Trinity, reaches out to us as a strong parental type when we feel small and childlike. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a forgiving friend in times of loneliness and confusion. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a sustaining force of inexplicable peace when we are bereft and lost, angry and bitter, hopeless and helpless. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity, longs to be a palpable presence in our lives, so God in God’s infinite wisdom, walks a number of paths to reach us.
Hopefully we are doing the same as we reach out to others. I envision a well-grooved path leading from our driveway to the Blessing Box where people, down on their luck walk up to the box and receive a true gift of the Holy Spirit—our love and our care. We groove a path from our driveway to the box and our neighbors groove another path from the box to their homes. The same is true of the Thrift Store—people make a path to donate, people make a path to receive. A relationship grooved not only in the sidewalk but in the hearts of those in need.

Step One: God Loves Us.
Step Three: God Wants to be With Us
Step Two: Through the miracle and mystery of God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity, God’s Love is always with us. Amen.