A Community of Prayer tills God's Garden of Love 9.30.12

This Thursday is the second anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. Last Tuesday, I had my regularly scheduled check up at Roswell—scans and meeting with my oncologist. I received excellent news, as there is no sign of new disease, thanks be to God. I tell you this because a) I’m pretty excited and b) I learned more about the power of prayer the past two years than 50+ years of being a faithful Christian, 3 years of  seminary and four years as priest.
Prayer is incredibly powerful. Does it, as James says, heal the sick? Well combined with the work of my team at Roswell, your prayers certainly helped me heal. Because through your prayers I was strengthened and emboldened to do what needed to be done and endure what needed to be endured.
But this sermon isn’t about me.
It’s about us. It’s about our communities---separate and jointly---and what we can do, together, for one another.
It’s about the power of prayer. It’s about the power of community; it’s about the power of God that spreads among us, between us and through us. It’s about what we can do on behalf of God, as a community of faith, as a community of prayer.
In our reading from Numbers, the Israelites are whining, Moses is complaining and God is exasperated. The Israelites are tired of wandering and the lure of the Promised Land has lost it’s luster while the tribulations of captivity in Egypt doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Besides that, they’re really sick and tired of manna, longing for some meat, fish, onions and garlic. They’re fed up. And Moses is overwhelmed saying: “I can’t bear this people on my own. They’re too heavy for me.”
They’re too heavy for me, God. Gimme a hand. But, instead of taking the burden on God’s own Divine shoulders, God asks Moses to bring in 70 elders of the community upon whom God will place the power of prophecy. In other words, God delegates.
God realizes that what makes this whole faith thing work well is community. Especially, a community of faith that’s committed to each other and God through acts of kindness, acts of charity, acts of love.
I think, in our own communities of faith, we can forget this responsibility to and for one another. As members of the Church of the Ascension, as members of the Church of the Good Shepherd, as members of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, as members of the Episcopal Church herself, as members of the Anglican Communion, as members of the one holy catholic and apostolic faith we have responsibilities, we have duties, we have promises to make and promises to keep. First and foremost, of course, is to love our God with all our heart all our mind and all our soul, the second is like unto it: to love your neighbor as yourself.
To give to our neighbors that which we long for ourselves…
What do you long for? What do you dream for? What do you, in the deep recesses of your soul, desire? Because what I know is that when we dig deep, when we get real honest with ourselves and with our God, those material things we want—better finances, a new job, a new car an iPhone 5…..are not the things we really desire. What we desire is so much more intangible—what we desire is heartfelt. Desire fuels longing and for most every person, what we long for is love—unconditional always available, no strings attached love.
Love. The source of all Love is, of course, God. But as God taught Moses in our first reading this morning, God is not interested in being the singular source of Love for everyone. Now hear me clearly---God Loves each and everyone of us utterly. Fully. Without exception…. but what God is teaching us is that God’s Love grows, strengthens expands and intensifies when it is shared. When the singular source of all Love, God, inspires, encourages, enables and emboldens each and every one of God’s children to be a conduit of that Love . To be God’s instrument of Love to all whom we encounter.
It’s a fairly simple formula: we, as humans, desire community, and as recipients of God’s love we desire a community where this Love is understood, accepted, celebrated and sanctified. Within our communities of faith, this Love of God, this Love from God this Love that IS GOD is nurtured and shared and, through this sharing, it is   Strengthened.
Obviously, God’s love in and of itself is strong. But what we learn, when we are active members of the Body of Christ is that this Love becomes stronger, this Love becomes more vibrant, this Love becomes MORE when it is embraced, cherished and shared.
God tells us:
 Feeling my Love? Share it.
Longing for my Love? Receive it from another.
Can’t feel it? Can’t find it? Trust that someone else is carrying it for you, that someone else is holding it until such a time as you can receive; until such a time you can feel it until such a time you can carry it.
God’s Love needs community to reach it’s full potential.
God’s Love needs us.
And so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, communities of faith with grand traditions alone and with new traditions forming through our covenant, what do we do? How do we strengthen God’s Love?
Feed the hungry? Sure, that’s always a good idea.
Clothe the naked? You betcha.
Stand against injustice and respect the dignity of every single human being? Absolutely.
But….before you do any of those noble and necessary things, before we embark on our collective work toward these goals we must first and foremost:
Pray for each other.
What I began to learn so clearly two years ago and what I believe is fundamental to the health of every community of faith is: Prayer. Intentional prayer for one another is vital, it’s life giving and it’s the work of God.
Last week I asked Good Shepherd’s vestry to pray for each and every member of our parish. I sent out parish lists with a formula for how the list could be split up so that every member is prayed for by each vestry-person every single week.
I encourage all of us to take up a similar practice, because a community of prayer is a community that is tilling the garden of God’s love.
 Beginning next week, you’ll notice names of parish families in the bulletin. I ask that you take your bulletins home and pray for those listed there. The names will change each week and then once we are through the parish list we will begin again.
Let us pray
'Gracious God today I pray for our two communities of faith, linked through your love in Covenant. Guide, protect and nourish us, as we share Your Love with each other through our prayers, offered in Jesus’ name. Amen.’

Amen.

A Faith of Many Questions and One Answer 9.23.12

When I was studying for my counseling degree I took a class on Rational Emotive Therapy---the theory behind this therapy goes something like this: sometimes, when beset by fear and anxiety we’re being irrational. In our minds we may blow the perceived “risks” of a certain behavior way out of proportion.
The instructor had us do an exercise to learn more about this theory. We were to identify something we found scary and then  deliberately go out and do it. Now we weren’t supposed to do anything actually dangerous---like walking a tightrope or getting into a cage with a hungry tiger---just regular everyday things that caused irrational fear. What I chose to deal with was my fear of appearing incompetent so my assignment was to pull into a self-serve gas station, get out and ask another customer to show me how to pump the gas. To publicly admit that I didn’t understand a basic every day task, made me really uncomfortable. In my mind, it made me look incompetent.
It made me feel vulnerable.
Asking questions puts us in a vulnerable position because to ask a question is admitting that we don’t know something.  That we need help. Any animal, human beings included, avoid vulnerability. It’s perceived as a weakness—a weakness that can be used by an adversary. In the animal kingdom, vulnerability is a death sentence! For humans, it may not mean death, but it sure can make us nervous.
We live in a “knowing” culture. Knowledge is The Thing. We know A LOT and we’re learning more and more all the time. The genome project is mapping DNA allowing researchers to discover the gene mutations that cause various and sundry types of cancers, Parkinson disease, MS, diabetes etc.
Our life events are shared and re-shared over social media in real time. We know what we know and what we don’t know, immediately and publicly.
 “Knowing” is power, not knowing is weakness and admitting we don’t know is risky, counter-cultural and to many folks, unthinkable.
“Jesus was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”
They did not understand and they were afraid to ask him. They were confused.
You see, Christianity is confusing, it can sound   irrational. It really makes no logical sense:
a young boy from a rather unremarkable family grows up and is discovered to be the Messiah—the Son of God, the author of our salvation. A regular guy, from a regular town: The Son of God. And not only is he the Son of God he goes around TELLING people this. He’s also feeding thousands out of nothing, curing the sick, raising the dead and generally blowing everyone’s mind. Freaking them out. Scaring them.
Scaring them because who he was, what he was doing and what he was predicting would happen  didn’t make any sense..
It’s as difficult to understand now as it was then.
Jesus is spending this part of Mark’s gospel preparing his disciples for what is to come. He’s readying them for the final trip to Jerusalem, his arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. He’s preparing them for what we often proclaim without really thinking about: he is going to die and then through his rising to life again, destroy death forever, giving each and every one of us the same promise: our bodily death doesn’t end life, it changes it. We are, by virtue of our baptism, assured of everlasting life.
We can forgive the disciples their confusion, their mis-understanding and disbelief.
What Jesus is saying still sounds ridiculous irrational and impossible.
Yet here we are, believers in this very thing.
Do we understand it? No.
Do we have to understand it to believe it? No.
As a matter of fact understanding has nothing to do with it.
I stand before you today, your priest, your rector, your, as Marje Torrell calls me, spiritual leader and guide to say, I don’t understand it, I can’t explain it.
Yet, each and every day I awake in sure and certain trust that what God has given us through Jesus the Christ is The Way The Truth and The Life.
Each and everyday as I live out my life as priest I proudly, loudly and clearly proclaim,
 “I believe.” I believe in the unbelievable. I believe in the incomprehensible. I believe in the irrational. I believe in God. I believe God came to live among us Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus  was nailed to a cross and died. I believe he lay among the dead for two days and on the third day I believe he rose from that grave, exited that tomb and walked among us again.
I believe he ascended to heaven where, as part of the Holy and Undivided Trinity he walks among us still. I believe all of this without knowing how. But unlike my irrational belief that asking for help at the gas station would be too awful to bear, our faith encourages our questions, our faith allows for our confusion.
Our faith expects our disbelief.
What our faith doesn’t tolerate so well though is failing to admit our questions, our confusion, our doubt.  This is why Jesus asks us to have faith like a child. A child freely and openly asks the tough questions---why do people die? Why do we get sad? Why is the sky blue? Why why why why?
The author of our faith always wants us to ask why….. why is there pain and suffering in the world, why is my heart broken, why is my child ill----
My prayer for us today is that we’ll approach our faith with the same innocence as the children in our midst.
For it is only through the absolute open and honest vulnerability of a child that we can fully live our faith. Because when we start considering our faith from a rational adult 21st century Culture of Knowing stance, we lose the ability to simply and plainly Believe.
Our faith isn’t a faith of no questions, it is a faith of one answer. And that one answer is God. Through God all things are possible. With God all things are doable. From God all blessings flow.  Amen.

Old Dogs and Saviors Can Learn New Tricks Proper 18, Yr B

I love dogs. But I sure don’t want to be called one. Really, who would? Is there a way to make Jesus’ rebuke to the Gentile woman in today’s Gospel acceptable, palatable…ok?
Not really. Jesus was tired, he was cranky, he was confused and, quite possibly he was, in this case, prejudiced.
In other words, he was human.
When we encounter Jesus this morning he’s coming off the extensive debate with the Pharisees over cleanliness practices we heard last Sunday.  Yep, he’d JUST said that all the worry about cleanliness and purity meant nothing if you were intolerant, prejudiced and separatist.
Clearly exhausted, worn out and irritable Jesus retreats to the north, way past Nazareth, bordering on Gentile territory. He was a long way from home and, he hoped, a long way from the throngs of people needing this, demanding that, judging this and chastising that. He was looking for a break.
So perhaps he can be excused for being cranky, perhaps we can forgive his lack of couth. But to look this devout and desperate woman in the eyes---although you know what?  He probably didn’t look at her, for he was so disgusted and annoyed I doubt he gave her more than a sideways glance.—but, regardless, to say to this woman “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs," can only be considered crass, rude and hurtful.
Seemingly un-phased, the Syro-Phonecian woman (a fancy word for saying she wasn’t Jewish and she wasn’t from Judea or Galilee)  doesn’t back down and calmly, yet firmly, makes her case. She calls Jesus out and he listens. And he learns.
While Jesus was “caught with his compassion down,” this woman was caught with her theology way way up, responding to Jesus’ rebuke by saying, “Sir even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” In other words, she says, God has promised God’s Love to all, to everyone, no exceptions. It’s the message you’ve been preaching, Lord; it just isn’t the message you seem to be hearing. And, she goes on to say, I don’t need much, because even a crumb JUST a CRUMB of this Divine Love will be enough. It’s that potent.
This woman, an outcast, a foreigner, is unclean and impure, according to the traditional Jewish faith of Jesus. But, and this is the point Jesus had just made with the Pharisees--this woman is also a God-loving, God-respecting person of faith. A beloved, adored, faithful, child of God.
She’s also a teacher. A very good teacher. And one from whom Jesus learns a vital lesson.
You see Jesus was learning as he went along. The full goal of his mission---of the job he had been given to do----wasn’t clear to him at first. Some would say, and I would agree, that Jesus wasn’t clear about the full breadth of his mission, of his call, until that long and lonely night in the Garden on the Thursday of Holy Week. So when he retreats to the border of the familiar by traveling into Gentile territory, into the unknown, he was still figuring out just who he was and what he was supposed to do. A lot of what he learned didn’t come from ancient scrolls or from other rabbis’. You see, Jesus learned by doing, by living and by listening. Jesus wasn’t able to lay out the steps and stops of his three-year mission at the outset, he needed to grow into his ministry, grow into his role, grow into his tasks.
Just like us. When you turned 21 did you know everything you needed to know to be an adult? For those of you who are parents, did you know everything about child rearing the day your child was born?
Did I know all there was to know about being priest on my ordination day?
No way.
We’re always learning, always growing, always making mistakes, learning from them and moving on.
As long as we’re alive, we’re growing. As long as we’re alive, we’re changing. That’s a fact of the human condition—we’re always changing, we’re always growing, we’re always learning.
Whether we admit it or not.
 We all know people who decide on how things out to be and refuse to move from that spot. We all know people who take their opinion and make it the Gospel truth for their life, refusing to budge, refusing to listen to reason, refusing to admit that what was once true for them, may no longer be. We all know people who spend an inordinate amount of energy REFUSING to budge, REFUSING to grow, REFUSING to learn.
These are unhappy, unfulfilled and bitter people. They are people who, although they technically are still alive, stopped “living” a long time ago.
That’s what makes this Gospel reading, for all its jarring language, gorgeous. For in it we see our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, open himself up to growth, we see Jesus the teacher being taught by the “other”, the mother who needed to get help for her daughter. Did she wake up that day determined to have a theological sparring match with the hottest preacher around? I doubt it. More likely this woman woke up that day, looked at her tormented daughter and realized she was out of options. She had done everything she could do in her own power to bring her daughter relief. She had gone to the doctors and the religious leaders of her town. She had taken the advice of her elders, she had prayed to her God for help. And on this day, the day she spars with Jesus, this woman had thrown all caution to the wind because her little girl needed help and she was bound and determined to get her the help. No matter what. Like any parent, she wasn’t going to be ignored, and she certainly wasn’t going to let an insult or two get in the way of her undying, unfailing, unending love for her daughter.
Her insistence, perseverance and wisdom convicted our Lord. She convicted him with his own words and his own teachings.  She showed him, she reminded him, she taught him, that God’s love is so overwhelming, so extravagant, so endless that even a crumb of this Love, even a morsel of this Grace, even a mustard seed of faith, will give sight to the blind, sound to the deaf and a lesson to a Savior.  Amen.

The Horse of Faith Must Lead the Cart of Rules

+It may surprise you to know that as a child I was terribly shy, had school phobia and was basically afraid of my own shadow. It was a tough way to grow up and although you may not believe it, anxiety remains something I live with day in and day out. The difference is, I have developed coping strategies, which help me manage the symptoms. One of those strategies is learning what the lay of the land is before I embark on something new. As a young professional looking for work, I would drive to the site of an interview the day before so I could scope out the route, look at the parking lot and get a sense of how long it would take me to get to the interview and how to get into the building etc.
When I was traveling to Israel earlier this year I poured over the website of the places we would be visiting, to get an idea of what it would be like. I don’t like surprises; I like to know what I’m getting into. It’s one of the reasons I like rules so much. I may not follow them all the time, but I like to know what the rules are before plunging in. Knowing what the expectations are—knowing what is acceptable and what is not---is a coping strategy I utilize to manage my chronic anxiety. It works and my life got a lot easier once I figured this out.
That’s what rules, expectations, guidelines do for us…. they help us to manage our behavior so that nothing gets out of hand. My checking out the lay of the land before I go to an unfamiliar place is a functional coping mechanism but, if I needed to go to the place sixteen times before feeling comfortable then this coping mechanism would go from functional to dysfunctional. It’s a matter of degrees.
So when the Pharisees in today’s Gospel get upset over the cleanliness practices of the disciples they are putting the cart of guidelines ahead of the horse of living. As Jesus says, if what comes out of your mouths is vile, than what goes into it doesn’t really matter. If your “coping mechanism” your “rule” your “guidelines” get in the way of being a compassionate, loving, responsible, caring person, then really what is the point?
Which brings us to our reading from the Epistle of James. A very short book, and one many people think should never have made it into the Bible in the first place, the excerpt from today is brilliant: “22 Obey God’s message! Don’t fool yourselves by just listening to it.” James is really onto something here---don’t just spew commandment after commandment, rule after rule, rather allow these guidelines to lead you into living a good, a Godly life.
According to James all we do that is good---the big stuff like helping the poor and the needy, standing up against injustice and caring for  our environment, to the small stuff like holding the door open for someone-- comes from God.
Think about this: when you’re driving to work or to school and wave a car into the lane ahead of you; when you help a classmate or a co-worker with a problem, when you lend your Wegman’s or Tops card to the person in front of you in line; when you thoughtfully choose the candidate to vote for based on what they say they will do for the needy of our community---every single good thing you do comes directly from God, directly from, as James’ puts it: above.
We are all as I’ve said before, INSTRUMENTS of God’s Love, of God’s Grace, of God’s Goodness. All of us. In all we do. All the time. Wherever we find ourselves— work, school, volunteering, recreating, socializing, God is at work, through us.
In all we do, God is there, USING us to further God’s purpose: to bring the entire world --all 7 billion of us-- within God’s Loving and enduring embrace. This is James’ message. Specifically he tells us behaviors to avoid: not listening, being quick to lose our temper and  lavishing in sordidness and behaviors to embrace, to cultivate:  
-- be quick to listen, slow to speak, and eager to care for those most vulnerable.
 The good news about James’ message is this---all of these things are within our reach. What parent doesn't want to be slower to anger with his or her children? What friend doesn't want to be a better listener? Aren't all of us in a position to offer help and support to those in need? James encourages us not just to think the faith, but to do it.”(David Lose) To allow the cart of guidelines to help, not hinder the horse of faithful living.
James is reminding us that our faith isn’t something to be exercised once a week on Sunday, within these walls but is, instead, something to be lived 24/7.
Which makes this such a good reading for Labor Day weekend. Because of faith is at work in all we do, including our labor. As theologian David Lose states: Sunday is not the pinnacle of the Christian week, it’s intended to serve and support our Christian lives the rest of the week–Monday through Saturday. On Sundays we’re refreshed and renewed through the Word of God, the Food of God, the forgiveness of God and the Fellowship of God. Then, once refreshed and renewed, we’re called, commissioned, and sent back into the world to work with God for the health of the people God has put all around us.” (David Lose)
God gives us work to do, tasks both large and small, so our Labor Day message, our everyday message is this:  go out into the world, seeking and serving God in all whom we encounter. We must Labor On, doing this work that is divinely inspired, God Driven and Holy. For only then will we hear our Creator sing, “Faithful servants, well done.” (“Come Labor On, Hymnal 1982)+

Ingest God's Love Aug 19,2012

This week my pals at the Lectionary Lab, affectionately known as “Two Bubbas and a Bible” shared the following story as told by Robert Coleman in his book Written in Blood:
“There was a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. For various reasons, the boy was the only donor whose blood could save his sister. The doctor asked, ‘Would you give your blood to Mary?’ The little boy’s lower lip began to tremble, then he took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes, for my sister.’
After the nurse inserted the needle into his arm, the little boy began to look very worried, then he crossed himself, finally he looked at the doctor and said, ‘When do I die?’”
Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13). The boy in this story had that love for his sister Mary. He was willing to die so she could live.
Ragaei (Rah-jhee) Abdelfattah (Ab-del-fatah), an Egyptian American, was on his second voluntary tour as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, a job that took him to eastern Afghanistan to partner with local officials and the State Department envoy for nation building—Greg Lodinsky’s brother, Jeff-- to establish schools and health clinics and to deliver electricity. On Wednesday, August 8, as Jeff, Ragaei and three NATO security officers were walking to a meeting, two suicide bombers detonated their vest bombs as they approached the peacekeeping party. Ragaei flung himself over Jeff, losing his own life, while saving his friend’s.
Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13).
The boy in the story was willing to do this.
Jeff’s friend in Afghanistan did do this.
Would we? Would you? Would I? I don’t know.
Would God? Did God? As my father was fond of saying, You bet, God did it in spades.
“For God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
This, my friends, is what Jesus is getting at in all this “Bread of Life” stuff we’ve been hearing the past few weeks.
God so loved the world that God came to us, in the flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Fully human yet also fully divine, God gave Godself to us wholly and completely, out of God’s abundant never-ending always-unfolding love FOR US.
God, in the person of Jesus Christ, died on that cross for us. But not because we were bad and not because we were hopeless, but because God wanted to show us, to prove to us, that believing in God defeats death, once and for all. That believing in Jesus, the Son of God, assures us of everlasting—never-ending life.
This late summer dip into the Gospel of John gives us a glimpse into the overarching theme of the fourth gospel: that through a series of signs and wonders, Jesus is shown to be God in the flesh. John uses a number of metaphors to show his readers that Jesus is, indeed, God:  Jesus the one true vine, Jesus the one true bread, Jesus the living water which, when we drink it, will never leave us thirsty. John’s Gospel uses story after story to help us identify just who this Jesus is and why this Jesus is food, indeed.
From the first miracle at Cana in Galilee, when Jesus turns water into wine, to the plea of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to “drink this living water, always,”(John 4:15) to the feeding of the five thousand, we are led to this place, to this penultimate lesson taught by Jesus and told to us by John: ‘I am the Bread of Life. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’
These are tough words to hear and a difficult concept to grasp, which is why John took so many verses to drive this point home. What John is saying, story after story, is that God’s love, as given to us in Jesus the Christ can’t be explained…it can’t be rationalized…it can’t be figured out without diving in full-bore, headfirst. God’s Love as given to us through Jesus, must be experienced. And it is experienced through the act of receiving communion, of coming, as a community, to this altar, to be fed the bread and wine that has been infused with God’s Love. Because when we receive this bread and this wine, when we take and eat, we become filled…filled with the very Love God gave to us in Jesus the man….a Love that then sends us out to be this Love in the World.
On this altar, week after week, we take these creatures of earth human hands have made—bread and wine---and through our communal prayer of hope, our corporate faith in the promise of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, they are turned into Divine Food.
 In the mysterious and holy ways of God the mundane is transformed into the magnificent, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary and our own flawed, doubting, questioning selves are turned into Disciples of Christ, Followers of God, Instruments of the Holy Spirit.
So, it’s up to us to come to this altar of God with hands outstretched, ready to be fed this Holy Food. Because, when we eat this Holy Food, when we ingest God’s love, we can be the people God asks us to be. Because by feeding on the Holy Food of Christ we are strengthened, emboldened and encouraged to lay down our life for another. Just like the boy in the story, just like Jeff’s friend and just like Jesus.
Amen.

Halting HALT through Holy Food

+The angel says to Elijah:
“Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” (1 Kings 19:5)
Everyone needs nourishment--strength for this journey we call life. A journey full of ups and downs, highs and lows. Sometimes we just muddle through, while other times we soar and still other times, so haggard by trouble and hopelessness we, just like Elijah in today’s reading from Kings, want to lie down and give up.
Elijah had been on a roll! He had defeated formidable pagan foes and had stood up to crazy old King Ahab’s wife Jezebel after she introduced the pagan ideals to the people in the first place. He had been doing excellent work, but as is the case with anyone who works long and hard at their job, perspective can be lost and suddenly a challenge that, before the stress of all the long hours took its toll, would have seemed difficult but doable feels overwhelming and impossible. Elijah was worn out, cranky and at a loss.
AA has a saying : HALT, H-A-L-T is a slogan that means:  never get too Hungry, too Angry, too Lonely or too Tired.  The wisdom behind this slogan is that when we get too hungry too angry too lonely or too tired we lose perspective, get run down and become vulnerable. Elijah’s HALT was working overtime… he was too hungry, too angry, too lonely and too tired. And so he plopped down under that broom tree and gave up.
What happens next is a brilliant foreshadowing of our Gospel readings for this month, and a reminder about the importance of spiritual sustenance, about how important it is for us to provide our bodies, our minds and our souls with nourishment.
Exhausted, Elijah falls asleep under the tree, half expecting…hoping...praying… that he would die. That’s how out of sorts he was, Elijah couldn’t see any way out of his distress, so he prayed that God would let him die. But instead of letting him die, God encouraged Elijah to live.
Awakened by the rush of busy angels, or perhaps by the smell of baked goods Elijah is presented with a freshly baked cake and a refreshing jar of water. No doubt Elijah thought he was dreaming, for he just lays back down again until the angel returns, saying, “get up, eat and get going. There is work to do and we need you to be strong for your journey.” So he did. He ate and was strengthened to do the work he was given to do.
He ate and he was strengthened. That’s just what Jesus is telling us to do in the Bread of Life discourse which is our Gospel message for the month of August. Jesus is food indeed, a food that, when we receive it, when we partake of it, will never leave us hungry, will never leave us thirsty. Holy Food for Holy People.
Now this bread of life stuff can go any number of ways—we, as followers of Jesus, as Christians, can be viewed as cannibals (wait til you hear next week’s Gospel, the cannibalism imagery is really difficult to ignore then) or, on the other end, all of this can be viewed as simply a metaphor…nothing more than a fairytale of imagery used by Jesus to make the point that he was the real deal. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between: we aren’t cannibals, nor are we gullible saps falling for this itinerant preacher from Nazareth’s catchy marketing plan.
What we are---what we are called to be—are followers of this man named Jesus, believers in this Messiah the Christ, people who try our very best to live out the ideals handed down to us by teachers, by prophets and by the Son of God.
We are called to do the work of Elijah, to do the work of all the prophets, to do the work Jesus has given us to do.
And to do this work well, we need to nourishment. Nourishment of both body and soul.
The act of receiving communion nourishes us for this work. But our nourishment comes from more than this holy meal. It comes from fellowship, it comes from service, it comes from being a community of people offering refreshment, offering hope, offering a way of life that defeats hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness. A community that knocks the socks off of HALT.
The holy meal we gather to receive feeds us but without the community that surrounds this meal, there is no nourishment in the sacrament, there is no strength to be gathered from the prayers. This is why I am forbidden from celebrating the Eucharist alone. It means nothing if done in a vacuum, it means nothing if we try and do it alone.
Elijah had run off to be alone, and while by himself, while alone he lost his way. While alone, he lost his will. He needed to, as we heard last week, “get up and walk.” To walk until he got to the other side…to walk until he reached the source of all nourishment: God.  And he did…for forty days he walked until reaching Mt Horeb where God, in that wonderful scene from scripture, nourishes his soul in the absolute quiet that followed the strong wind, the earthquake and the fire. From there, his soul nourished by God, Elijah headed to Damascus where he established a new community of faith to be led by his protégé Elisha. Physically nourished by the angelic meal of fresh baked cakes and cool water, Elijah made his way to the site of his spiritual nourishment and from there he was able to be the prophet he was meant to be. He prophesied to others, making disciples, and creating community.
This is the formula Jesus wants us to follow. We get nourishment from him and from others here in this community, strengthening us to go out into the world, doing the work we’ve been given to do. So get up, eat and be strengthened, we have work to do. Amen.

Just Walk Proper 13 Aug 5 2012

Man, I thought I lived in a fishbowl…but I have the epitome of privacy compared to poor Jesus. This morning the folks he had just fed (in the feeding of the 5,000 from last week)—have gotten hungry again. So…. They start looking for Jesus. Realizing he’s gone, they climb into boats and cross the lake to find him. Now this isn’t some small pond, this is a Lake roughly the size of Chautauqua lake….yet they climb into row boats and cross the lake in search of that miracle food purveyor: Jesus of Nazareth.
People do amazing things when hungry.
Although Jesus isn’t surprised that they’ve come… he is a tad annoyed at their shortsightedness—happy to have their stomachs filled but completely oblivious to the real reason for His presence in their lives….just like we’re often oblivious to the real reason for Jesus’ presence in our lives. You see, Jesus didn’t come to fill our stomachs, Jesus came to fill our souls. But, and Jesus knew this,  it’s really difficult to pay attention to one’s soul if one’s stomach is growling. So, he filled their stomachs hoping—maybe even assuming---that once their stomachs were full, they’d realize just how empty their souls remained. But to do that, to realize how empty we may feel, is not so simple. There’s no definitive signal---like a growling stomach---to tell us we’re spiritually empty, that we need some spiritual nourishment. It takes awhile to figure it out.
And, apparently, it takes awhile to explain it as well.
In John’s gospel, Jesus spends four Sundays trying to get his followers, those then and us now, to distinguish between physical and spiritual hunger. It’s annoying as we hear, again, again, again and AGAIN that the manna from Exodus and the multiplication of loaves and fishes in the gospels is nothing…NOTHING compared to The Bread of Life...the bread that is Jesus.
And while in theory we may join with the folks from the gospel and say, “yes Jesus give us this spiritual bread forever,” it’s a lot more involved than just saying yes. We can’t just say it. We have to live it. We have to believe it. We have to accept it. We have to receive it.
You see, since time began we have been separated from God. And, as I say all the time, God has been, since time began, trying to bridge that gap, trying to reach us, trying to touch us.
And religion, according to philosopher Louis Dupre is how we reach out toward God. It’s how we try to bridge the gap from our end of this divide.
Remember Michelangelo’s depiction of Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? In it is the iconic image of Adam-- stretched out on the ground, dazed and confused, one arm, one hand, reaching out toward an old and slightly wild looking God, who’s also stretching out an arm, a hand, with one finger almost touching Adam’s. In between is a teeny space separating God from humanity. Separating us from God.
Dupre says that our entire life is lived in that tiny space between God’s finger and Adam’s hand. Trying to bridge that gap.
The problem is, we don’t know how. We try to be good and faithful Christians, but it doesn’t always work. It doesn’t work because we forget to do what Jesus told us to do---- believe and to trust in him.
 It doesn’t work because instead of letting go and trusting God, we hold on and try to do it on our own: “Just show us how to do it and we’ll do it ourselves, God. We really don’t need this Jesus fellow…just give us the magic formula and we’ll take care of things.”  That never works. It doesn’t work because it isn’t about us, it isn’t about our filled bellies, it isn’t about what we can do. It’s about what God does. And what God has done is given us Jesus.
Jesus says, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of God will GIVE you” And the people respond, “OK, so how do we learn to get this food ourselves?”
Jesus tries again. “This is the work OF GOD. (God’s work; not our work): That you believe in the one God sent. It’s a gift. God does the doing, the sending. We do the receiving. The accepting.
You see, Jesus is the one who fills up that tiny space between God’s finger and Adam’s hand. Jesus bridges that gap, so tiny in the painting, so vast in our lives. What we need to do is climb up on that bridge, walk across it and touch the outstretched hand of God.
It really is that simple: just walk.
Our own Kathy Boone has given me permission to share a dream she had last year. Nervous about walking across a very rickety bridge while vacationing in Central America, Kathy went to bed the night before this trek across the long and not very sturdy looking bridge, fairly certain she wouldn’t take the walk--that she would stay safely on this side of the divide. But then she had a dream. A dream in which she was standing in a long line of people, all of whom were waiting to cross that bridge. The line was stalled, no one was moving at all and it looked like nobody was going to cross the bridge that day when suddenly, a woman using a walker, a woman bearing a distinct resemblance to our own Marie Hubbard, raised her head and said, simply and firmly: Just walk. When Kathy awoke she realized, “Marie is telling me: go for it. Stop worrying and just do it. JUST WALK.”
That’s really it. The wisdom from one of our own beloved elders, the wisdom of God’s own Son, our Savior: Just walk. When hungry: spiritually, emotionally and thoroughly hungry we are to put one foot in front of the other, and walk across the bridge of faith, the bridge that is Jesus, crossing over into the outstretched arms of our God. +