Proper 10a God's Water July 16, 2023

 The prophet Isaiah writes:
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,”
I wrote in my weekly note to you, that I am fascinated (not surprised, yet still fascinated) by the power of God-given water.
The rain we’ve had, bursts of heavy and powerful downpours which feels all at once refreshing—ridding of the air of pollutants and humidity— and torrential —heavy, hard, powerful— And then, once the rain stops and the sun emerges there’s a brightness to the blooms, a vibrancy to the green of the leaves and grasses that I forgot existed. I dutifully water my pots of petunias, impatiens and decorative grasses and feel happy with how they look and how their beauty brings me joy….but then water from the sky falls and I’m blown away—-every single time—-by just how lush, vibrant and brilliant the blooms and grasses become with just ten minutes of that God-water. Days of hauling the hose, giving the water of the tap, keeps the plants alive and allows them a modicum of growth. But a few bursts of rain? I find the difference staggering. Thursday when I left home at 9 am to drive out here, my lawn was just beginning to need a mow—just a touch up really. I came home from Batavia that evening? The grass was over my ankles.
How does that happen?
To paraphrase the psalmist:
“God’s water visits the earth and waters it abundantly;
making it very plenteous; *
Because the river of God is full of water.”
The river of God is full of water, making the earth very plenteous.
How does the River of God make us plenteous?
Are we so busy watering ourselves with this “to do” list and that, are we so busy watering those around us with emails and text messages,is the world about us so busy watering us with broadcast news and social media messages of division and despair, of the us and the thems, of the outcast and the in crowd that we forget to let God’s word, God’s hope and God’s love water us to overflowing? Filling us with peace, saturating us with hope and sprouting us with joy?
God’s water is what we need to make this world make sense—- and God’s love is what others need from us…we bloom with the refreshment of God’s love and then we do our darnedest to shower others with at same love.
    Also on Thursday a woman who was stranded in Batavia after taking a 72 hour bus ride from Phoenix to be with a family member as they died, came here asking for help.It’s time for her to return but the help she was promised to get her back to Arizona fell through. She told me her story of recovery from heroin addiction, several months in prison, being released and finding a job, love and hope. She wasn't asking for handout she was asking for a leg up.
Between my discretionary fund and the generosity and love of our Thrift Store volunteers she now has enough money to eat, clothes to wear and a suitcase to take family memorabilia back to her daughter and husband. And above all else, she has joy, faith and the knowledge that there is a church in WNY that believes in second chances, that believes God loves everyone as much on their very worst day as on their very best. A community of faith that watered her with what she needed: hope. Love. And another chance. I think we gave that to her. I think we watered her with the most precious of all things: love.
And to that, all I can say is thank you and Amen.

Proper 9a July 9, 2023

In the Collect of the Day for today we read, in part: “Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart.”

Devoted with our whole heart.

This rolls off the tongue pretty easily—“of course we’re devoted to God, of course we’ve given our whole heart to God. Eazy Peazy, right?” But, how many times have we become distracted from our devotion, taking the reins back from God, figuring, in moments of great hubris, that we can “do it ourselves;” or other moments when we think bringing something to God is a bother, thinking we need to save the Big Kahuna for Big Kahuna issues; and then those times when we simply forget about God. Forget about turning things over, forget about trusting. Forget. And you know what? When we forget God we’ re also forgetting ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I forget myself a lot and by forgetting myself, I forget God.

Let me explain….we’re of God, God is in us and we’re in God. It’s the miracle of Creation that we’re part of all life because God created it and we are part of God.

So when the author of the Collect writes for us to be devoted to God with our whole heart, the author is saying two things: first, when we’re distracted from God our devotion, our attention wavers. But the second, more subtle part is that since we are in God and God is in us, when we aren’t good to ourselves, when we engage in self-loathing talk, when we fail to take time to exercise or eat right, when we do everything for everyone else but fail to do at least one thing a day for ourselves, we’re abusing God, too.

         Which brings us to our Gospel reading.

The reading is all about Jesus telling his followers (this is fairly early in his ministry so the disciples are really unsure what they have gotten into, assuming that Jesus was just John 2.0… but learning quickly that Jesus was altogether something new.) In an attempt to further instruct them and also maybe to relieve his own frustration Jesus engages in a bit of “what in the world do you people want from us” debate with the crowd.

He then begins to talk to our Creator God, his Abba, thanking God for giving him his disciples who he describes as being just infants in learning the Way of God….and then, at the end of this section of the Gospel, Jesus utters words of comfort and a charge to his disciples then and to us now:

“Come to me—you who are worried and burdened, lay it all upon me and let me give you rest.”

Jesus is saying—-you can’t do it all, you have to share it with me, you have to take time to rest in the Love that is me, rest in the certitude that is me, rest in the never-ending peace that is me. For doing that is devotion.

When we fail to rest in Christ, we fail to honor God, when we fail to turn our burdens over to Christ, we fail in our devotion to God.

     As we settle into these summer months, I encourage us to increase our devotion to God by turning our burdens over to The Christ, the one who says, “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”

Come to me.

Go to him my friends: in exhaustion and in energy; in worry and in hope; in burden and in trust.  Be with God in Devoted Rest, for it will do your heart, and God’s, a world of good. Amen

Proper 8a July 2, 2023

 It is tough being a Christian. Last week Steven Metcalfe shared with you the dire situation of mainline Christian denominations in this country—the institutional church is no longer relevant to a majority of the population in the United States. What we do here on a Sunday has become irrelevant to more people than not.
Sobering isn’t it?
Of course we’re doing all sorts of things to address the collapse of the institutional church—we’re reaching out more and more, letting the outcasts of the wider community know that God loves them, no exceptions, and that we will meet them where they are, and do all that we can to help them EXPERIENCE that unconditional love with every interaction. We’ve fully engaged in the Genesee Regional Initiative, offering a way to make the sacraments available in the smaller churches of our region, knowing that to close those churches won’t mean more people for us on a Sunday, it will mean losing more people from the Episcopal Church as a whole.
Now, all this decline is depressing for sure, but it is also an opportunity, an opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus in different ways. More like how the early church became “the church.”
We’re doing it right here—even though the weather outside is frightful we were ready to be outside this morning---bringing our celebration of Holy Eucharist—our weekly gathering to praise God and share God’s love with one another—- out into public view. The early church had to do this because people were very afraid of what was going on in these home churches, behind closed doors, so the early home churches flung open their doors and windows to let the whole world know that what they were doing was open and available to all. That’s what we are doing here—letting folks know we are not a secret club!
We have our blessing box and our Thrift Store where, like the early disciples Lydia, Phoebe and Dorcas, we make sure the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed. We don’t preach to those who use the Blessing Box, we welcome them. We don’t ridicule the Thrift Store customers for being poor, we welcome them, and when they don’t have enough money to purchase something, we give them a gift certificate or one of us throws in the extra money because it isn’t about making money, it’s about serving others.
We did it when a group of us attended the Gay Pride kick-off at Frist Presbyterian Church on June 1. Designed for the youth of Batavia, we engaged in conversation with young people who, by their own report, feel that the Church and God hate them. By eating ice cream with them we showed them we and God love them.
We are engaged with the Balanovych family, selling Halayna’s pierogis for her and raising money through bake sales to aid relief efforts for the Ukrainian people displaced and terrified by the invasion of Russia in their sovereign land.
On Juneteenth Several of you stood by the grave of Addy, who may have been the enslaved servant of a former rector of this very parish, making public amends for the horrors of slavery.
    All of this work is discipleship work, it’s being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. It is not easy work, it can uncomfortable, painful and scary work. We may be reviled for it, we may anger one another by doing it, we may anger others. But we keep doing the work. Why? Because sharing the good news of Christ behind the closed doors of our building has never been the point and in the current climate in this day and age, it’s not engaging more people into the Way of God as given to us by Jesus. But doing the work of the prophets, being a disciple of Christ? That does. And it will. It is the life-bread of our faith.     So, in a few minutes, when I am honored to feed you with the bread of life, may you be strengthened to feed others in all that you do, wherever you are, however you can do it for as long as you can do it.
Because if we don’t do the work of being Jesus in this world, who will? Amen.
 
 

Trinity Sunday 2023nYr A

 Who is God talking to?
Have you ever noticed that in this version of the Creation story, when it comes time for the creation of humanity, God says, “Let us create humankind in OUR image.” Our image? Who the heck is God talking to? After all, it was from God—the Creator of all Things— that all other things, all matter of all things, came into being.
So…Who is God talking to?
That right there is an excellent endorsement of the Holy and Undivided Trinity: One God. Who was God talking to? Godself…as depicted for us as The Trinity.
Biblical scholars will tell you that the authors of Genesis were, in this verse, including a series of minor gods that were “helpers” of the Big Kahuna, others say the reference is to pagan gods, referenced to give this God— The God— Our God—more credibility with the intended audience.
But since I’m no scholar, I feel free to consider the most obvious answer to just who God is talking to: The rest of the interconnected,always in existence, never separate parts of the Trinty—
the incarnated God, the part of God that will take on the form of a first century Palestinian man some millennia later;
and the Sustaining God—the part of God that, as the Holy Spirit, enflames and inspires us, igniting brighter and brighter within and among community.
    I love it that when this incredible, description-defying source of all Love and Light created the final piece of creation—humanity— our God looked at how God’s very self is manifested—Creator, Son and Holy Spirit all swirling about in constant motion, always one and yet also with individual chracteristics and personalities—- and said, “I want this for them, I want me/us in them, and so I will make them in our/“my” image.
But still, image?
What is the image of the Three in One God at the time of Cretion?  I mean, God sure wasn’t taking selfies.
How can we be created in the image of one who has never been seen?
But maybe…maybe the God of Genesis isn’t speaking of skin and bones…maybe God is speaking of our souls. If our souls are made in the image of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit—Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer the Holy and Undivided Trinity: One God— then our souls are of God. Our souls are God.
Our souls are God.
Let that simmer for a bit.
    Perhaps, as I’ve preached on previous Trinity Sundays, our souls, our very beings are at their best, at their pinnacle when we, like the Godhead in whose image we are created, are in relationship with one another, when we connect with each other in good times and in bad, when we don’t move ahead without making sure we are bringing others along with us. When we don’t live in silos built of our fear and jealousy but live in the expansive Love that is the Trinity: three beings working in collaboration with each other, neither member trying to dominate but all trying to collaborate for when we live in communion we’re existing in and of God’s image.
Without a true and honest connection with one another, a connection that doesn’t exist on “if you get somethng, then I lose something,” how can we live into the image God creeated us to live into?  
Who is God talking to who? God in three persons, Blessed Trinity is talking to you and to me.
Always and forever.
Amen.