Sometimes Everything Has to Fall Apart Nov 13 2011

+Sometimes there’s pain and suffering before we get to joy.
And sometimes, everything has to fall apart to open up space for the new.
Chaos often precedes order. Things tend to get really messy before the new is established. While most of the time Incremental change works best, other times bringing about change requires something more dramatic, more sweeping, more all-encompassing. And such dramatic change can feel frightening and uncomfortable, it can seem thoughtless, even violent.
Remember our October Storm, the Columbus Day weekend 2006 snowfall that destroyed thousands of trees and left many of us without electricity for over a week? It seemed as if this storm was a disaster and that we’d never recover.
But, speaking from my own experience as a homeowner on Woodward Ave. at the time, the impact has been intense…but a disaster? Not at all.
The hundred year old magnolia tree in our front yard was one of the first to fall that night…but within two years of nature’s violent and seemingly capricious pruning that tree bloomed more fully and brilliantly than it had in a generation.
The trees that weathered the storm are healthier, more vibrant, more full of life. Yes, we lost a lot of old familiar trees, but through nature’s pruning, the new landscape is stronger, richer, fuller.
Sometimes there’s pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before a new order can be born
Of course we could have, in a measured fashion, pruned the trees, but no one would make the dramatic cuts needed to bring forth such incredible new life. The storm did what we wouldn’t do. Opening ourselves up to the threshing of the old in order to make room for the new, is something most of us won’t do without kicking and screaming. After all, the old, even if it’s weakening, even if it’s stagnant, even if it no longer works very well, is still more familiar, more comfortable than opening up to the unknown unfamiliar new thing.

Sometimes there is pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new can be born.
None of us likes today’s readings—a violent God banishing people to eternal damnation, a God of vengeance, a God of judgment. A God who is willing to rip apart the old in an effort to usher in the new.
In Zephaniah, the prophet is sharing a particularly vivid description of the Day of the Lord—the apocalypse.
Zephaniah was writing to the people of Judah soon after their last great king had died—Josiah. Their future uncertain, the glory days seemingly past; he was writing to people who were  looking backward, toward what was, and slowly realizing what will not be again. On the one hand the old order was destroyed. On the other, a new order was being formed, something incredible. The people had a choice—look back or move forward. What Zephaniah in our first lesson, Paul in our second and Jesus in our third tell us is this :
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new order can be born.
The Jews of the early first century, CE believed that the coming of messiah would be preceded by a lot of pain and suffering, a time when the good would be separated from the evil---when the worthy would be taken up into the arms of the holy leaving the rest behind to sure and certain destruction.
Jesus doesn’t shy away from this imagery…he just turns it around a little bit.
Well a lot bit.
You see Jesus did come to separate the sheep and the goats and the wheat and the chaff. But not to condemn one to eternal damnation and the other to paradise. Jesus’ separation is between those who “get it” and those who don’t followed by  a clear and precise road map for those who wish to move from the “I don’t get it,” to the “I do.”
The Parable of the Talents—our Gospel reading today-- provides just such a map.  The story tells us about money—a lot of money—and how each slave manages his masters’ fortune. But, of course, the meaning of the parable has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with riches. You see the bottom line to Jesus’ message here is—live life, take what you have been given and do good---don’t live in fear of what might happen, live in hope of what will happen. For life happens, stuff happens, some good and some bad, some thrilling and some terrifying but, if we live our life embracing all of our unique, varied and “especially for us” talents, if we use them to further the march of creation, then we’ll be ready for whatever comes next.
Think about it. If I had run out the evening of the October storm and shaken the snow off of the leaves the magnolia tree wouldn’t have snapped.
And it wouldn’t have grown back with such a vengeance. It wouldn’t be so healthy. If I had played it safe, the tree would have survived, endured, existed.
But I would have denied it the opportunity to regroup, to shed some of its old and tired bark, and embark on growing anew. Of being born again.
Jesus came to earth as an October storm: he came to shake up the old order and bring in a new. He, as he stretched out the loving arms of his holy embrace on the hard wood of the cross, loaded all the destruction, all the vengeance and violence, all the crying and gnashing of teeth upon his beaten body and, with the wail which tears through us all on Good Friday, caused everything to fall apart, once and for all, so that, on that first Easter morning, he could walk out of that tomb presenting us with something all together new.
A God of vengeance and violence is part of our biblical heritage…but it is only part of the story…the full story—the rest of the story-- includes a young man from Galilee who took all of the violence, all of the vengeance we can muster and defeated it. For every one. Forever. The itinerant preacher from Nazareth takes our fear, our doubt, our love of order and hatred for uncertainty and rips it to shreds, leaving us with the space to allow something all together new to germinate. Leaving us open to being Born anew. Again and again and again.
Sometimes there is pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new can be Born.
And sometimes we need to let the snow fall, the branches crack and the old fade away. For you never know what will grow in its place. +

All Saints Sunday Nov. 6 2011

In our church calendar, this past week could easily be labeled: the week of death. Besides Holy Week, no week in the church year is more death-loaded than this one. But, because we are a Resurrection people, death isn’t the end and a week of death focus is not morbid.
I’ll always remember the moment my father died. After 9 months of fight, he just couldn’t battle lung cancer anymore. We knew that it was The Day, for he had requested the morphine drip and the doctors said, once the morphine began he would fall into a coma and then slip away. Having never seen anyone in a coma before, I was shocked to discover that it’s not a passive state. Periodically he would moan, move around and, scariest of all, open his eyes… but behind those eyes, there was barely a hint of Dad….On the one hand, there he was. But, on the other hand, there he wasn’t.
Finally around 4 in the afternoon, he died. It was then that the creeping vacancy I’d noticed earlier was complete. Just moments after his death there was no semblance of “Dad” left.  One moment I looked upon my father and the next, an empty shell—just an abandoned container of failing muscles and skin…Dad wasn’t there, he was GONE.
Dad’s soul had taken flight, his earthly fight complete. As we read in the Book of Revelation:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no
longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain;
 the first things have passed away."
Dad’s first life, the temporal one was over, his second, life eternal continued… he was off to take his place with the saints.

I have shared these remembrances of Dad’s death with many of you before, and I’m sure I will again…for his death, the experience I had of it---has formed me and my theology of death, my theology of the saints, for the almost two decades since it occurred.
For at that moment I realized---not intellectually, not even religiously, but spiritually and temporally, in my soul and in my bones---I realized that who we are is far beyond what we see, or what we hear, or what we smell or what we touch. We are what’s inside—our soul—and that soul is encased in our bodies at birth and removed from our bodies at death. Our bodies are containers, they’re not us.
Ok, so this is a basic Christian belief and one you probably all thought I should have learned LONG ago—but knowing something and knowing something are vastly different.
On April 18, 1993 I learned that lesson.
A lesson which is at the crux of our theology of the saints.
Death is a fact of life-- it’s a universal experience. …and it fascinates, terrifies and befuddles most of us.
We spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out just what the after-life is all about---it’s one of the reasons the book Heaven is Real is so popular---we want proof, we like proof--because even though we proclaim it, we don’t really know it—we can’t really know if Heaven is Real.  We just have to believe it. That’s what faith is all about.
And that makes an awful lot of us uncomfortable.
This past week was our officially sponsored Church search for an  understanding of life, death and the after-life—the Tridduum of All Saints—All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day and All Soul’s Day.
These three days give us three distinct glimpses into life eternal. Of life after death:
Halloween-- derived from an ancient Celtic observance of a time when the veil between this world and the next is thinned---lifted even---giving us a glimpse of the other side. This practice allowed the living to help the dead complete their journey from this life to the next—by protecting them from evil spirits so they could safely arrive into the embrace of the Holy.
All Saints Day--- a day to relish in the glory of the Saints, thanking them for what they’ve given us.  It is so important to our faith we celebrate it twice—on the actual day, November 1 and on the first Sunday after Nov 1—today. I wear my gold, we pull out as many stops as we can—for we want the saints to know, we appreciate them, we love them, we rely on them.
The third and final day is All Souls—the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed---a day focused on all who have died in the past year. A day we allow ourselves to remember those who have died. To miss them, to long for them.
The All Saints trifecta helps us to honor that Great Cloud of Witnesses, the great cloud of souls who have left us in one way, yet return to us in another.
Our uniquely Anglican theology says that this Great Cloud of Witnesses—the saints of God---is made up of all sorts and manner of people:
Saints of the Church Universal----Mary, Joseph, Peter, Paul
Saints of the Church specific---Elam Jewett, Darwin Martin, the Northrups, Ruth Noller, The Barry’s, John Mears, Fred Tripi
And Saints of our own families---my dad, my grandparents…
People who no longer physically walk among us, but who nonetheless inspire us, encourage us, berate us, and nudge us.
IS Heaven Real? Are the saints really surrounding us, right now?
Well let’s get real quiet. Listen….Listen intently.
Do you hear them? Can you feel them?…they’re right here…our parents, our grandparents, our sons and daughters, our friends and neighbors our patriarchs and matriarchs, the saints of the church universal, the saints of this parish specific, the saints of our towns, our families….
The saints of God, that Great Cloud of Souls are witnesses—witnesses to our lives, witnesses to our hopes, our dreams, our longings. Partners in our searching, helpers in our times of need. They are the Holy Spirit’s foot soldiers here on earth. Right now, we’re surrounded, surrounded by this great cloud of souls: Folks who long for us, miss us and pray for us. Just as we do them.
So Happy Death Week, Happy Eternal Life Week, Happy Day of All Saints--may we continue to be encouraged and sustained by that great cloud of souls---folks like you and me who have done and continue to do extraordinary things for us, Saints to Be. Amen.

Love isn't just a noun. It's a verb October 22 2011

+Growing up, my family didn’t say “I love you.” It wasn’t that my family was cold... I knew I was loved…but we were the poster-child for WASPs—White Anglo Saxon Protestants.  In our Irish family, talking was very popular, but talking about feelings? Not so much. Our family, more than anything, avoided being vulnerable…and talking about love made my family of origin far too vulnerable for our WASP sensibilities.

But love is a whole lot more complicated than just saying it. In Greek there are a number of words to describe the various and sundry things our English word LOVE describes. Love, as expressed by Jesus, is “agape” literally translated as: a Feast of Love.  Perhaps instead of calling our service “Holy Eucharist” we should call it a Love Feast, for that is exactly what we’re doing, we’re Feasting on Love. Once fed in this manner we are strengthened to go out into the world, seeking and serving Christ in all others.

It’s good we’re strengthened, for when we commit to living out the message of Christ in the world—being his hands and feet, his eyes and ears, and his mouth—we are making a significant, difficult and lifetime commitment. A promise to live according to the Greatest Commandment, the greatest two, actually, upon which hangs everything else: Loving God with all our might and loving our neighbors just as God loves us.

In the Jewish tradition there are roughly 613 commandments, (go ahead and count they are listed in Deuteronomy and Leviticus) and it was out of those 613 the Pharisee in today’s Gospel asked the question: which of these is the greatest?

Now of course, this was a trick. For by asking Jesus to name the greatest, they are backing him into a corner of blasphemy—for to place any of those commandments above another was to violate the very law the commandments outlined. However, Jesus, in his way, outsmarted them, for he didn’t “diss” the other laws, he just said that the rest of them flow out of the two he mentions. In shorthand Jesus is saying Love God because by loving God—by actually trying to give God back a modicum of what God gives us--- we will be filled with such an abundance of Love that loving our neighbor—loving everyone, no exceptions—will come more naturally.

         In other words, You gotta give it. You’ve gotta do it. Love isn’t just a noun. It’s also a verb. As one commentator notes:

Biblical love is not passive and it is not strictly emotional. In the Old Testament, there are references to many kinds of love, but the love referred to here by Jesus is… far from passive. It is the active response of the faithful person to the love of God...To love God with all one's heart, and soul, and mind, is to choose to respond to [God’s love]. Feelings and emotions do not enter into the equation.[1]

My parents would love this quote---especially the part about feelings and emotions------but of course, we aren’t talking about the love we have for our parents, our children, our spouses or partners. We’re talking about God’s love for us and our love for God. The love from which all other love flows. What today’s Gospel commands us to do is to allow the Love we experience when we are fed at this table to nourish us in the ways of Agape---in the ways of a Love Feast. And, when we’re nourished at this feast, we can’t help ourselves, we must share this love with others, by acting out of Love, in Love and through Love. Clayton Schmit, a seminary professor puts it this way:

This means that, to those with whom we are intimate, to those we do not know, to those who may be dirty or repugnant, and even to those who harm us, we can act according to the law of love. We can be merciful and gracious. To love the neighbor as ourselves is to make a conscious choice and act upon it.  …

When we love God's people, we are always, and at the same time loving God.[2]

You see, as UCC minister Kate Huey says:

[The] primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that [the Greatest Commandment] demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment" [3]

Commitment means giving of ourselves, it means giving this place (GS, ASC) your time, your talent and your treasure. It means increasing your pledge or pledging for the first time---not because I ask you to, or our stewardship speakers ask you too, but because your love for God is so great you feel compelled to return that love to God…..

And, we return that Love by taking what we’ve been given—for all things come from God------and give it back.

Now, some of you may be thinking, all I have to give God is heartache, bills, poor health, and unhappiness. You know what? That’s OK, give it to God. Let God have it. If you don’t feel you have any bounty at all, if you feel as if God hasn’t given you anything good, then give all the bad back to God. For God can take it. God will take it. God wants to take it. You see, that’s what this Agape, this God Love is all about-----God loves us so much that God wants all of us---our heart, our mind, our soul, our anger, our fear, our sadness….and our abundance, our joy and our bounty. God wants it all.

We fail to live into the Love commandments when we stop giving it all to God. As long as we hold onto what we have—good bad and ugly--- as long as we refuse to give any of it up--- God is left out of our lives. And God, above all else wants to be part of our lives. That’s why God took on skin and bone, heartache and pain in the person of Jesus---because God wants the whole of the human experience.

Maybe that’s the best way to understand this God Love, this Agape----God so loves us, God even wants us on our worst days.

Love isn’t just a noun, it’s also a verb.

Biblical Love isn’t just a feeling….it’s an action. Love isn’t a sentiment as much as it is a commitment. Feeling Love is one thing, doing Love is something altogether different.

---

[1] Clayton Schmit Arthur DeKruyter/Christ Church Oak Brook Associate Professor of Preaching Fuller Theological Seminary Pasadena, CA www.workingpreacher.com accessed 10.21.11

[2] ibid

[3]Kathryn Matthews Huey, http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/october-23-2011.html

Sometimes You Have Squeeze the Word 10.2.11

[1] This sermon has been significantly influenced by two contributors to the Text This Week (textweek.org) commentary website: David Lose from workingpreacher.org and “Two Bubbas and a Bible” from lectionarylab.blogspot.com Thanks to them for their always thought-provoking commentary.

+Sometimes you have to squeeze a scripture reading until the gospel leaks out . This remark, attributed to Martin Luther, certainly fits with today’s reading from Matthew. At this stage of our church year, we hear lots of parables, many difficult to read, to hear and to preach! We’re heading into the home stretch of the lectionary and in our readings the rest of the way, Jesus’ time is running short and his patience with BOTH his followers and his detractors is running thin.
The parable uses today’s Isaiah reading—known in ancient Israel as The Song of the Vineyard-- as a jumping off point. In it God is the landowner and we, God’s beloved, are the vines---God tends to us and we, in response, produce delicious, pleasing fruit. But then the parable shifts, with Jesus reporting that the vines don’t produce as God had hoped. Instead of good and pleasing fruit, the vines—we—produce wild grapes, untamed, unsuitable for making good wine. God looks the situation over and says, “Well, I did the best I could. I’ve done all I can. I can’t pour good money after bad. I’m going to abandon the whole thing and find someplace else where I can be more productive.”
God abandoning God’s people? God giving up on…..us? Where’s the Good News in that?
Like Luther said, sometimes we have to squeeze our scripture to get the gospel—the good news—out.
Remember, all scripture, while divinely inspired, was written at a specific time and focused on a specific audience. The context of our scripture readings is important.
Matthew was writing in a time of great turmoil. The Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed and the Jews needed to re-invent themselves. How could they move forward without the unifying symbol of their Temple? Of THE temple . Furthermore, he and his followers believed the Jesus sect was and should remain  a part of Judaism while many other followers of Jesus   were breaking away from Judaism altogether. Put all of this under the shadow of the looming, ever dangerous Roman Empire and you had a period of time---roughly 80 BCE-- when the world Matthew knew was disappearing before his very eyes.
It could be easy, in such a situation, to feel abandoned by God, to feel forgotten. So, it’s understandable that the Jesus Matthew portrays is angry at the Temple Leaders, frustrated with the status quo and easily ticked off with the seemingly increasing ignorance of his followers. Matthew was cranky and hence, so was the Jesus of his Gospel.
In today’s parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus begins with a version of the familiar Isaiah vineyard story but, around verse 33, he changes direction and tone. The landowner—God (remember this parable is an allegory, each and every character, landowner, tenants, servants…is representative of someone else)—has trusted the vineyard—God’s creation---to tenants— to us. When it comes time to check out the progress of the vineyard, the owner sends servants/messengers-- the prophets—to check on things. …to collect rent—to see what they –what we--have done with the vineyard—with the creation given over to their to our care.  
Of course then the tenants, --us--do an astoundingly cruel and stupid thing: they—we-- beat one of the servants and kill the other.
Yet the owner—God-- being either amazingly tolerant or intensely stupid, sends more servants who get beaten and killed. So then the owner, thinking for sure this will convince the tenants to do the right thing---sends his son….
And sure enough, the tenants beat and kill the son.
Jesus then stops telling the story, looks at his hearers and asks them to finish it.
What should the owner do with those tenants who killed his messengers, who killed his son? “Simple,” the people say,  “he’d come with an army and kill the bad tenants and give the vineyard to good tenants.”
Right you are, Jesus says. “And the Kingdom of God, the true vineyard of the Lord, will be taken away from you!” oops. I bet they didn’t see THAT coming.
Remember, parables are tricky, they say a lot and each time we hear them, we’ll hear more, or at least we’ll hear different, because who we were when we last heard this story, isn’t who we are today.
This is where we have to squeeze the words a bit, so we can release the message of Good News.
The true vineyard of God will be taken from us? We’ll be abandoned? We’ll be rejected?
Well yes. And no.
You see the true vineyard---living as the beloved children of God we are, accepting that God is always with us, always providing for us, always ready to help us---is something we abandon, something we let go of, something we reject.
When we forget that all we have is from God, when we try to finagle a way to horde it, sure that if we aren’t clever it will be taken from us; breaks us….we lose our way, we literally fall apart:
As The Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton  says:
The Word of God is a powerful stone, it pounds on our hearts, shatters our ego and self-serving pride; leaving us to pick up the pieces and make something altogether new…
As Jesus says in verse 44 “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces . . .”

But –and here’s the Good News— in that very brokenness is the opportunity for new life. You see, the Word of God not only breaks us, it also heals us. Once we have come face to face with the honest truth about ourselves—that we are the one’s who reject God, not the other way around—only then are we able to receive, to accept and to hold onto the good news about God and God’s undying love for us in Christ.
When we really squeeze the Word as found in scripture we discover this Gospel truth: God doesn’t reject, God doesn’t abandon, God doesn’t run away.
We do. God just waits, patiently and lovingly until we realize that the only fruit worth bearing, the only vine worth tending is the one that keeps us firmly rooted in and connected to our landowner: God.

Amen.

Joy Brightens Despair, Gratitude Defeats Resentment and Faith Elbows out Fear. 18 Sept 2011 Yr A

Jonah was a bit of a whiner, wasn’t he? He was sent to Ninevah to turn them away from their “evil” ways. Then, when the people do change their tune, leading God to “spare” them, Jonah is furious. In our section of scripture this morning it’s difficult to fully understand just what Jonah is ticked off about, but suffice it to say that Jonah begrudges God giving God’s grace to the people, without, in Jonah’s mind, giving HIM an equal measure of that grace. He’s envious. He’s ungrateful. He’s a bit of a brat.
God responds, “well Jonah, it’s my grace to give and I choose to give it extravagantly. You can be angry about Ninevah, you can be angry about the withered bush…but neither of those things are your concern….it’s my creation, my choice.”
That’s the thing about God’s Grace. It’s given according to Divine Rationale, Divine Choice, Divine Decision. And the fact that God’s Rationale, Choice and Decision doesn’t make a lot of sense to us from our limited human perspective---is why Jesus gave us the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.
  It’s tough to be a day laborer . With no regular employment –the workers stand in the town square hoping that some landowner would hire them for the day (This still happens today with the migrant workers up in Niagara County.) Trouble is, there were more laborers than labor. So while some folks—the healthy looking and lucky-- were chosen to work all day. The unlucky or unhealthy were passed over. But in today’s Gospel, everyone’s lucky. Over the course of the day they’re all hired, some for a 12 hour shift, some for just an hour---yet EVERYONE is promised and receives a fair wage -- nothing more, nothing less -- just as they were promised. Those who worked more hours than the others were angry. It just doesn't seem fair. But as the landowner reminds them it is fair – they’re being paid just what was promised... It’s not their concern –It’s his choice to pay the later workers a full day’s wage, after all it’s his money, it’s his treasure. The landowner’s generosity isn’t based on time worked. His generosity is based on his abundance and his willingness to give extravagantly out of that abundance----sound familiar? But, still, even though it’s the Landowner’s prerogative, just like it’s God’s, the laborers who worked the longest—get cranky. It isn’t fair!!!! Perhaps the laborers have been talking with Jonah!
So why all the crankiness at the generosity of the landowner, the generosity of God? At the good fortune of others? Because deep within in our human nature lies a fear of scarcity---a fear that there won’t be enough. That if our neighbor has more, then we’re destined to have less… there isn’t enough for everyone. When we lack trust in God, when we fail to believe what Jesus has told us—time and time again!—we become insecure, a little whiny and definitely cranky-- assessing our lives not through the abundance we’ve been given by God but instead by what we feel we still lack. Cain and Abel, the freed yet still sojourning Israelites, the disciples arguing over who is the greatest--- we tend to look at life from a sense of what we could have, should have and don’t have instead of what we do have, through the grace of God. It’s joy vs. despair, faith vs. fear. Gratitude vs. resentment.
The gloom of despair overshadows the brightness of joy. Gratitude cannot co-exist with resentment. Faith has a difficult time elbowing out fear.
Gratitude begets joy and abundance, while fear begets resentment and scarcity.
Soon we’ll begin our Stewardship campaign—a time when we ask for all of us to consider what this parish means to us and how much we’re willing to give to keep our mission going.
Is our economy in tough shape? You bet. Is it easy, is it fair to ask people to increase their pledge during these tough times? Well, if we ask from a stance of fear, probably not. But, if we ask, if we answer from a stance of gratitude--when we answer out of our joy, and our faith then it is Absolutely fair. For what is fair is realizing that all that we have, no matter how sparse it may seem in comparison to others, is God’s bounty, graciously and abundantly GIVEN to us out of our Creator’s love for us. Our job, both as the people doing the asking and as the people doing the responding, is to focus on the gratitude of what is, not on the despair of what has been, what might be or what could be.
Last week the Bishop preached about new life emerging from the dust of death.  About joy coming out of sorrow, about the abundance of hope promised by God through the gift which is Jesus of Nazareth. He mentioned that the imagery of Psalm 30 was a great comfort to him during those dark days post 9/11. When I reflected on the psalm I realized how much it speaks to me when I consider the choices presented during a stewardship drive—I wonder if it spoke to Jonah as he considered the events in Ninevah or to the laborers w hen they considered the landowner’s generosity in the vineyard:
“O Lord be my helper, turn my wailing into dancing….my heart sings to you without ceasing, O Lord My God I will give you thanks forever.”

We can wail or we can dance. We can be miserable or we can be joyful.  Our choice is whether we want to fan the flames of hope or douse that fire of hope with fear. As Bishop Bill said, we can look down into the pit of despair or up into the heavens with praise.***yesterday I walked in the Bosom Buddies Fundraising Walk for Roswell Park’s Breast Cancer Resource Center. As I was given my Pink Survivor’s T-Shirt, I burst into tears: tears of gratitude, tears of faith, tears of joy. For I know that my choice, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer was to wail or to dance. Because of my faith community, because of our faith community, I was able to dance. Because of the love and support I received from the parishioners at Good Shepherd and the trust I have placed in God [I hardly ever, snatch it back. ;-)] my gaze is turned toward the heavens, shouting praise….***
Our stewardship campaigns at both Good Shepherd and Ascension will be about the hope that rises out of the dust, the faith which defeats fear and the gratitude that beats back resentment.
Our hearts can sing to God without ceasing, I think they should sing to God without ceasing, I think they will sing to God without ceasing, because God’s love showers us without ceasing.
Joy, faith and gratitude will beget more joy, more faith and more gratitude. We have made a huge leap of faith and it is paying off…our attendance is higher than it’s been in a long time, there’s a spirit of togetherness and love which is palpable to all those around us. Our Bishop has challenged us to live out our faith in new and bold ways, trusting us to joyously journey into this new covenant--  singing our hearts out and stepping ahead in faith,  trusting that God’s unequaled and divinely fair abundance leads the way. So let the journey continue- my heart is singing, my faith is dancing and my joy knows no bounds.
 Amen.

Sermon from 9.11.2011

Our lectionary, the readings assigned for each Sunday are on a three year cycle. What this means is that there’s no way the Lectionary designers chose today’s readings specifically for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. However, they are perfect for today, instructing us in the ways of tolerance, forgiveness, compassion and mercy---attributes which were and are easily lost when struck to the core as we were on Sept 11, 2001. So, instead of a sermon this morning, I give you those words from  Scripture and the words of San Diego psychotherapist A. B. Curtiss, who’s poem The Little Chapel That Stood pays homage to the Episcopal Chapel of St. Paul’s which stood in the shadow of the Twin Towers, and unscathed thanks to the towering branches of a Sycamore Tree, offered the rescue workers solace and hope during those heartbreaking days. And, hope is just what faith—be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu etc. promises. Thanks be to God.

The Little Chapel that Stood, by A. B. Curtiss
Around the Chapel of Old St. Paul
Blow the dancing leaves of the coming Fall.
In the morning breeze they leap and fly
Beneath the towers that scrape the sky.
George Washington’s family worshiped here;
Alexander Hamilton’s grave lies near.
Since Seventeen Hundred and Sixty Six
Has stood this house of God and bricks.
Solid and steadfast as time whirled around it,
Unchanged since horse and carriage found it.
A solace to presidents help to the poor. No one was ever turned from its door.
An immigrant’s refuge, a sojourner’s peace
Where hope is born and sorrows cease.
As the centuries passed, and the city grew dense, Its buildings grew higher and wider, immense.
And tallest and grandest, the city’s great pride. The New York Twin Towers rose up by its side.
The stress of power, the rush of people
Found comfort and rest beneath its steeple.
But doom, doom was coming all the time;
Doom, doom to a city fair and fine;
Doom doom was in the planes that climbed;
Doom doom, and then the sirens whined.
Two planes hi-jacked by a terrorist crew
Struck the twin towers: no warning no clue!
Who thought it could happen, or knew what to do?
Firemen came and New York’s Men in Blue.
Through the flying glass and smoke and din,
Thousands rushed out, as these brave men rushed in!
On the stairwell to safety there was no stranger. Each helped the other flee from the danger.
And some who climbed down remember, clear-cut, the faces of firemen climbing up!
And then, oh unthinkable thought!
They fell.
One tower, the other, they fell, fell, fell.
They fell with a rush and they fell with a roar.
The sky was blank where they’d been before.
And more was lost than who can say;
It was our hearts came down that day.
Through the clouds of black no one could see
How far [had] spread this calamity? The giants around it had come to a fall, but not the Chapel of Old St. Paul.
It was something of wonder, a symbol of grace, the steeple still there, not a brick out of place.
Some say [that] giant sycamore tree[’s] wood had saved the Little Chapel that Stood.
The old chandeliers that they’d packed away, through two world wars, they did not sway.
Then the crystals reflected a busy scene when the doors opened up to the [rescuing teams]
There were firemen’s shoes on the old iron fence, where they’d earlier hung them in haste, quick and tense
As they pulled on their boots and raced to the Towers,
Climbing melting steel [in]to flaming showers.
Oh what gallant men did we lose
Who never came back to get their shoes.
Ground Zero smoldered, dark and grim. Our hearts stood still, then we pitched in.
Helpers brought shovels, and pails and pans.
If they had nothing else they dug with their hands
To clear the mountain of crumpled steel
From a nightmare that was all too real…
Rescuers worked through the night and the day.
In the chapel they’d pause, then go on their way.
A hot cup of coffee, something to eat
Here the firemen, welders, policemen would meet.
All would come to rest from their labor
Volunteer, doctor, brother, neighbor.
We raised up the flag from the dust and the pain.
Freedom that’s lost must be won once again.
Each one of us is a link in that chain, to do something grand, or do something plain.
First we take heart, then we take aim, our littlest good deed is never in vain.
Working together is how we got through it.
Little by little we learned how to do it.
It’s nice to be big and its nice to be tall.
But sometimes being little doesn’t mean being small.
Just like the Chapel of Old St. Paul.
Hear the bells of freedom and what they say. Terror may come but it will not stay.
It will shake our world but we will not sway.
It will block the path but we’ll find our way…


Amen.

 The Little Chapel That Stood, A.B. Curtiss, Old Castle Publishing, Escondido, CA, 2003.

The Rockiness of our Faith doesn't Phase God

+The Rev’d Dr. Delmer Chilton, a Lutheran pastor and author refers to the Peter of today’s Gospel as Rocky, stating:

Why [did] Jesus decide to give Simon-Bar-Jona the nickname Rocky... that’s what the name Peter means…. It comes from “petra” Latin for rock or stone…Most of the time people who are nicknamed Rocky are stalwart, unmovable, straight-ahead, no-nonsense kind of guys, like Rocky Balboa. Somehow the name Rocky doesn’t seem to fit Simon son of Jona. For this Rocky, this Peter, was, to [be blunt], not very dependable… hot one minute, cold the next:

I’ll walk on water, Lord. Then Oops, help, I’m drowning!

I’ll never let them take you Lord, give me that Sword. Then Jesus? Never heard of him.

Lord, I’ll stand by you forever. Then Well, Jesus is dead, I’m going fishing.

Was Jesus making fun of Simon by calling him Peter?

Was Jesus joking when he said that on this rock of questioning, unstable, doubting and undependable faith I will build my church?

Why would Jesus choose someone so flawed, someone so irritable, undependable, doubting, questioning, fearful and full of angst as Simon Peter? Someone so……….

Like us? Shouldn’t the foundation of the church, the foundation of God’s reign in this world be entrusted to someone more deserving, more capable, more reliable?

Apparently not.

You see, God rarely chooses the all put together and the likely. Consider Abraham and Sarah, the parents of our faith—an aged, childless pair who doubted, scoffed and laughed at God.

Then there’s Moses….an abandoned Levite child raised in Pharaoh’s household, chosen to lead his enslaved kindred out of slavery, into a land of milk and honey. But nothing went smoothly for Moses as , over the next forty years, he stumbled and stammered his way in and out of favor with the Israelites and God.

But God hung in there and Moses is held in high esteem by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Abraham, Sarah, Moses, along with countless other flawed and very human humans were all prophets. Apparently, in God’s eyes, one needn’t be perfect, one needn’t even be particularly capable, to be chose. God plucks prophets, redeemers and saints --even a messiah---out of the unlikely of places, unusual of circumstances. Who can forget the details of Jesus’ birth--a peasant girl and her stalwart partner Joseph struggling to find any place to lay their heads—ending up in a barn alongside donkeys, cows, sheep, hay and that crazy star.

So why not Simon Peter, a Galilean fisherman full of bravado and self-assurance one moment, cowering behind pillars of doubt, fear and denial the next?

Just like us.

Peter wasn’t Jesus’ favorite, or even the most devoted apostle. But Peter’s the one. Obviously Jesus saw something in Peter that he thought was perfect for the establishment of the community of the faithful-- the church. And although I don’t know that Jesus envisioned denominations, dioceses, parishes ,Church conventions, reformations and schisms (well he probably figured there’d be fights) when he mentioned “Church,” I do think the choice of Peter sheds light on the Church as an institution, it’s past, it’s present and it’s future.

You see, Peter was flawed; Jesus knew that, God knew that, we know it. But God was willing to let Peter make his mistakes and Jesus was willing to let Peter grow into his role, because they knew that a big part of learning, of growing, is making mistakes. We don’t learn without making mistakes. Mistakes are instructive and useful, as long as we review it, take corrective action and try again. Going through this process teaches us---as individuals and as communities of faith.

Admitting our mistakes and then trying again. That’s what living a faithful life is all about folks. Most Sundays we have corporate confession and absolution. We confess our sins and we are absolved, forgiven. All of us.

How can God forgive what I’ve done, you may ask. Or, how can my forgiveness be wrapped up in the forgiveness of that scoundrel a few rows over?

But, you see, forgiveness, God’s forgiveness of us is abundant, constant and without caveat. Our forgiveness by God is assured as long as we admit, that we’ve made a mistake and strive, with all our might, to learn from it. That’s reconciliation and repentance: an amendment of life. We don’t promise to never make another mistake, we simply promise to learn from those we do make and when we mess up, admit it, make it as right as we can and move on. It’s what we tell our children all the time. Admit your error, fix it and try to do better next time.

This is what the church as an institution: parish, diocese, national church, the Church universal---needs to do: reconciliation, repentance, amendment of life. The Church and churches make mistakes: some small, resulting in hurt feelings, others large, resulting in atrocities, but regardless of the magnitude, the church MUST admit its, our, mistakes. And then do better. So often the Church has not done this. We preach a God whose love knows no bounds, whose care for us is never compromised, yet we hide our mistakes, too proud or too ashamed to admit the error of our ways. When we, as a church, do this, we’re insulting God, we’re denying the lessons we’ve learned from all who’ve come before us.

Why was Peter chosen to be the cornerstone of our faith, the gatekeeper of salvation and the symbol of the Church as Institution? Because. ….

While Peter said:

I’ll walk on water, Lord.

Oops, help, I’m drowning!

We’ve said (and say)

We’ll serve the poor, just after we skim some off the top

And while Peter exclaimed:

I’ll never let them take you Lord, give me that Sword.

Jesus? Never heard of him.

We’ve proclaimed:

We’ll love everyone, no exceptions. Well, except for the Jews. And the Muslims.

And the women. And the Gays and the Lesbians, and the people with disabilities……

And when Peter exhorted:

Lord, I’ll stand by you forever.

Well, Jesus is dead, I’m going fishing.

We’ve said:

Yes, the church is greater than the sum of its parts but if you make that decision, I’m leaving.

God, chose Peter in spite of, maybe even because of , his flaws. God knew who Peter was, God knows who we are. But God also knows who we, through the help of the Holy Spirit, can be. Rocks and all.+