A Different Kind of King

Some of you know that in a few short weeks I am going to be a great aunt. My nephew David and his girlfriend are expecting a baby—a little boy named Oliver.
Perhaps it’s the impending arrival of Oliver, or maybe all the younger children in the parish, but some of those old favorite Disney films are playing in my head. Most notably, The Lion King. It was just a few weeks ago that I quoted the theme song from the Lion King: The Circle of Life. Today I give you Simba’s Song:
“I Just Can’t Wait to be King.” You remember that song---Simba has just been told by his dad, Mufassa, that one day he, Simba would be King. Thrilled by this news, Simba bounds into his evil Uncle, Scar, full of excitement:
[Simba:] I'm gonna be a mighty king! So enemies beware!
[Scar:] Well, I've never seen a king of beasts
With quite so little hair
Scar is a bit incredulous as he looks at this little boy, working on his roar, waiting for his kingdom to come. Scar just can’t imagine him as King.
But Simba? Simba can:
“No one saying be there
No one saying stop that
No one saying see here
Free to run around all day
Free to do it all my way!
Oh, I just can't wait to be king!”
Simba has no problem proclaiming himself as the future King nor does he have any problems imagining just what it means to be King. For lil’ Simba being King means not getting pushed around and doing whatever he wants.
I Just Can’t Wait to be King is a conversation between a King wanna be and his doubtful Uncle.
Today’s Gospel is a conversation between a reluctant King and an even more reluctant, and confused and exasperated Governor—Pontius Pilate.
Today’s Gospel happens on the first Good Friday. Jesus has spent the night in prison and Pilate is torn. He knows this Jesus is a bit odd, but no threat to the empire. On the other hand he’s stirred up a lot of passion in folks. The governor’s job was to keep the Empire’s massive machine of power running smoothly. Offshoot rebellions were to be squelched.
It seemed that the passion around this man Jesus was brewing into a rebellion so it needed his attention. Now Pilate was a man with some integrity-- he wasn’t going to sentence Jesus to death without good reason…so what we hear today is Pilate trying to find “cause.” If one were to claim they were King that would be “cause,” because there was only one King: the Emperor.
But, what makes a King (or a Queen, or an Emperor, or a Pharaoh) after all?
To hear Simba tell it, a King is The Boss. If you look it up, besides being the male monarch of an independent state, King is defined as a person or thing considered to be the best, the most important. In other words, Being King is pretty darn good….if your goal is to be the best, the big cheese, the most powerful.
The problem, of course is that most Big Cheeses, most very powerful people are, at their core, afraid.
Afraid that they’ll lose their power. It seems like those who are in charge, those who hold a lot of power—kings and their ilk---spend a whole lot of time protecting their claim to the throne.
So for anyone to call Jesus King is a big problem. Poor Pilate, he knows that if Tiberius, the emperor, found out there was King wanna be down in Jerusalem, he would FLIP OUT. Pilate had to nip this in the bud.
But there’s a problem. This Jesus won’t say he’s King. He won’t say he wants to dethrone the ruler of the land. He simply doesn’t  give Pilate much to work with. You can’t even say Jesus was a reluctant King. Jesus was, simply put a totally different kind of King.
And therein lies the heart of this Christ the King Sunday. Christ is a totally different kind of King.
The rule of this God in the flesh is something unlike anything else we have ever known. If we forget that, if we look at Christ the King through the lens of this world---then we’ve  missed the boat. Understanding just what Christ as King means is, in a way, our final exam of the church year.
What do we hear, week in and week out? What do I preach week in and week out? What is the fundamental message of our faith?
That what we think we know we need to turn….inside out and upside down.
The reign of Christ as King is all about power. But not the power of Emperors, or Pharaoh or Queens, or Presidents or Prime Ministers.
The Reign of Christ as King is the power given to the downtrodden, the rejected, the sidelined and the outcast.
The Reign of Christ as King  is the power we hold in our hearts when we proclaim that we will respect the dignity of every creature of God, no exceptions.
The Reign of Christ as King is all about giving power to the disenfranchised. The Reign of Christ as King is about distributing power equitably and fairly.
The reign of Christ as King is about a world where everyone, even poor little Mary’s boy from Galilee can take the Power of this world and turn it on it’s ear.
Simba couldn’t wait to be King. And neither can Christ. The difference though is that Simba became king in the old fashioned way, after the death of his father.
The only way Christ can take that throne, the only way Christ can be King of Kings and Lord of Lords is when all of us, each and everyone of us, gives up our focus on the power of this world and turn ourselves over to the power of the next.
Amen.

The GREAT Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. A once a year holiday in the secular world. Too bad for them.
Once a year?….pshaw….
We have Thanksgiving every single week…and not just any ol’ordinary Thanksgiving, it’s a GREAT Thanksgiving. Go ahead, take a look on page 5 of the bulletin. The Great Thanksgiving is the communion portion of our service---when we, a holy people share holy food.
Each and every week we gather around the dining table of our Lord to offer thanks for all that we have and all that we are. Everything. Our blessings and our burdens. Our hopes and our fears. Our happiness and our worries.
The Great Thanksgiving of our Lord doesn’t seek only the good. The Great Thanksgiving of our Lord requests---longs for---everything we have. And all that we are.
We are called each and every week to place it all –our joys and our triumphs, our sorrows and our losses---on this altar. And by giving it all to God we are doing exactly what Jesus is saying in this evening’s Gospel: we are turning it over to God. The whole kit and caboodle. Doing that is an act of true and thorough and full thankfulness.
In a few moments we’ll recite A Litany of Thanksgiving. A Litany where we offer thanks for the good as well as the challenges of life.
I encourage you to pray this litany fervently, honestly and whole-heartedly.
Because God wants it all—every last bit of it. So please, PLEASE give it all to God. Even those things too difficult to express, those things to painful to utter—offer them to God. For when we give them to God—only when we give them to God can we, like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, live in true and full faith.
In your pews are note cards. If you care to write down specific blessings or burdens go ahead. After I sit down I’ll give you a few moments. You may place them in the offering plate to be blessed as part of our Great Thanksgiving where they’ll serve as a physical reminder that God wants it all, every single thing.
So whether you write your blessings and burdens down or you silently pray them during the Litany or you hold them in your heart for another day know that our Great Feast of Thanksgiving: the Holy Eucharist will be here every single week and this—this altar? It’s always ready to accept your gifts. +

Big Faith Turns the World Upside Down November 18, 2012

In the days of Jesus the Temple in Jerusalem was the most magnificent structure anyone had ever seen. Some of the stones were 40 ft long…. JUST ONE STONE. Most of the western wall, plus some of the northern wall, from a later incarnation of the temple, still exists today. Even these remnants, small in comparison to what the disciples are marveling at in today’s Gospel, are pretty impressive. When I touched the Western Wall last January I was moved to tears. It is an amazing and formidable place. To the fishermen, tentmakers and stonemasons from rural Galilee the site must have been equally incredible. But it wasn’t just the site that blew them away, it was Jesus’ outlandish claim that it would be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. It just plain ludicrous.
And ludicrous is exactly what Jesus was going for. Along with awesome, incredible, amazing and unbelievable.
Welcome to pre-Advent, my friends. Years ago, Advent had six weeks, just like Lent, so these two Sundays before the official start to Advent have much the same feel as our Advent readings: lots of apocalyptic, end world imagery, lots of violence, lots of chaos. You see, Advent is all about a beginning emerging out of an end, it’s all about a new creation, it’s all about turning what we know inside out and upside down. Advent is about readying us for the coming of a savior, of The Savior. Advent is about welcoming a new creation.
Now I’ve never given birth but I sure do know an awful lot of people who have and I think I am right in saying that giving birth isn’t pretty. Birthing involves ebbs and flows of pain, fear, hope and peace. Giving birth hurts. And once birth happens, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do. Oh and then there’s that whole utter world changing aspect to bringing a brand new human being, a human being you are responsible for, into the world.
All this apocalyptic literature, the readings from Hebrews, the readings from the 13th chapter of Mark’s Gospel are tools used by the writers of our sacred texts to give us some sense of what the Coming of Jesus meant to the world of 1st century Palestine and what it means to us today.  The coming of Jesus then and the coming of Jesus now is mind-blowing, overwhelming and little bit scary. Because the coming of Jesus blows everything else to bits.
Thanks be to God.
You see what the coming of Jesus blows to bits is the business as usual of this world:
Hatred. Fear. Intolerance. Hopelessness.
What the Coming of Jesus brings to us is a clean slate, a fresh start, a beginning to the creation of a world where Love replaces Hate, Courage replaces Fear, Tolerance, Intolerance, Hope replaces Hopelessness.
But getting there? Getting there is just like childbirth---painful scary messy and at times, overwhelming.
Preparing for the messiah is not for the faint of heart.
It requires perseverance, fortitude, grit, spunk and persistence. It also requires faith. Big Faith.
The kind of Big Faith found in Mary, the mother of Jesus, the kind of Big Faith found in Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, the kind of Big Faith found in Sarah, the kind of Big Faith found in Hannah.
The Big Faith of the matriarchs I just mentioned isn’t big in the usual sense. It isn’t loud, it isn’t flashy, it isn’t all that apparent to the casual observer. What makes their faith Big is the breadth and the depth of it. You see these women really got it. They understood that professing one’s faith means nothing if the faith isn’t lived. They understood that shouting their faith from the rooftops meant nothing if deep within their homes, deep within their souls they weren’t living it.
Hannah had that type of faith. Her life wasn’t easy…. each and every time her husband made the obligatory animal sacrifice at the temple she was subject to the disdain and the disgust of his other wife---the one he didn’t love so much, but the one who was fertile. If you’ve ever wanted—desperately wanted---to have a child and were unable too you know the anguish, the deep in your gut anguish of not being able to do so. That was the anguish of Hannah.
When confronted with such a burden, such anguish you have two choices: bitterness or grace.
Hannah displayed some bitterness early on in today’s reading but she seemed to have turned that around fairly quickly when she decided, once and for all, to turn the whole mess over to God. It is a show of great grace, it is an example of  Big Faith when Hannah, assumed to be a drunkard by Eli, stands up for herself—and her faith—by telling Eli that what he assumed was drunkeness was, in reality fervent and faithful praying. Hannah, in the same vein as the Woman with the Hemorrhage and the Woman at the Well---very familiar stories we heard earlier this year in Mark’s Gospel--- teaches the judgmental male in the story a thing or two.
That’s actually what makes faith Big. Faith is Big when those who witness it are changed by it. Eli was changed by Hannah’s faith, Jesus was changed by the faith of the woman at the well, the woman with the hemorrhage and the woman who birthed him, to name a few.
So welcome to this season of pre-Advent, the season of expectation, the season of apocalypse, the season when Big Faith comes to us in the unexpected person of a peasant baby who turns everything, from that magnificent temple to you and me, upside down and inside out.
Amen.

From the musical The Lion King we hear: 

“From the day we arrive on the planet

And blinking, step into the sun

There's more to see than can ever be seen

More to do than can ever be done

There's far too much to take in here

More to find than can ever be found

But the sun rolling high

Through the sapphire sky

Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life

And it moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the Circle

The Circle of Life” 

(Elton John and Tim Rice)

This past week had three of the most under-appreciated days in the church year: All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day—three days when the veil between this life and the next, between the living and the dead is lifted just a bit. Three days when we laugh in the face of death, when we remember those who have gone before, when we celebrate the legacy they have left behind. I think these days are underappreciated because we all struggle with death… we fear it, we do everything in our power to prevent it…..but ….this is always a losing proposition. We lose this battle because death is universal and death is inevitable. People are born, people live and people die. 

But this circle of life, the reality of life and death, is not something to be feared, it is something to be celebrated. Celebrated because death has been defeated….once and for all... through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Jesus looked death in the eye and death blinked. 

Each and every baptism is a recreation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Our baptisms defeat death. Our baptisms give us eternal life. 

A baptism offers us a glimpse into that very circle of life so emblematically etched in our brains by the song written by Tim Rice and Elton John and so memorably heard in the Lion King. In baptism we are put on that winding path that takes us through despair and hope, through faith and love until we rest in the arms of our God, taking our place among that great cloud of witnesses that populate the heavenly banquet, a seat at which each and every one of us is guaranteed.

This week at Good Shepherd we took our own journey through this Circle of Life. We had a funeral and this morning, three baptisms. It was fitting that we bade farewell to Norma McIntosh on All Souls’ Day and it’s fitting that this All Saints’ Sunday morning we baptize (d) LJ, Riley and Caylee…because the path around the Circle of Life is made up of death and birth, beginnings and endings, alpha and omega.

Any community---our families, our neighborhoods, our churches, our world----is part of this great circle. Things begin, things end. New people come into these communities, old people depart. 

All Saint’s Sunday is a day to remember and this year especially, a day to look ahead. All Saints day is a day when the open veil between this world and the next allows us to consider where we’ve been and where we are headed. 

The Great Cloud of Witnesses—the saints in heaven---represent where we’ve been. 

Pause for a moment. Take a good look around this place. The windows, the woodwork. Look at the altar—think of all the hundreds, the thousands of times the Eucharist has been celebrated atop this gorgeous table, think of all the caskets, all the urns that have been honored right here. Look at this font---how many people have had the waters of baptism poured over them—babies and children young adults and older adults alike. This place is full of history, full of memories, full of the people who built it into what it is today. [For use at Ascension:This place has both glory and struggle in its past, and we have struggle and glimpses of glory in our present. Our forebears know what it is to struggle, to dream, to hope and to worry]

On a day like this we are to honor those people, honor each and every one of these Holy Witnesses …people who have entrusted this place to us. 

To all of Us. 

It’s quite the responsibility. Just how are we to honor them? By doing what we’re doing: by baptizing new members, by welcoming the stranger, by reaching out to the needy, by loving one another. When we do that: when we love one another like Christ loves us, then we are building something---we are building a community of saints, earthly saints, folks just like you and me who love this place, love one another and long to give this church—its people, its purpose, its past, its present and its future the very best that we can.

So as we [For use at Ascension and 8 am: renew our baptismal promises remember all those who’ve been washed in the waters of our fonts, remember all those whose final journey was taken from this space, remember all those who have come before, HONOR all those who will come after as we say, Welcome, welcome to our circle, our glorious, wondrous circle of life] baptize Caylee, Riely and LJ into this, our community of earthly saints, we say; welcome, welcome to our circle, our glorious, wondrous circle of life. 

Thank You God, for Cancer

****The Communications officer for The Episcopal Church, Neva Rae Fox asked me to write a personal remembrance about my experience with cancer and my faith. Using a homily I delivered on Thanksgiving Eve, 2010 as a template, this is the essay I wrote, which was published in the Huffington Post (Religion page) on 4 October 2012.

I am an Episcopal priest serving two congregations in Buffalo, New York. Two years ago this Thursday, October 4, 2010, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

My prayer, as I was listening to the doctor say the words, “invasive, lobular carcinoma,” came suddenly and clearly: “Gracious God be with me through this journey, allow me to walk it with dignity and grace. And help me to be grateful, whatever may be.”

Thanks be to God, that prayer was answered—and then some.
As I awoke in the recovery room at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo I was so overwhelmed, so overcome with gratitude that the only prayer I could utter through the tears was “thank you.”

Thank you.

Thank you for the presence of a world class cancer institute in my backyard.

Thank you for the newly arrived surgeon, who full of smarts and compassion, full of determination and grace, removed the cancer from me and painstakingly poked and prodded until she was sure—absolutely, positively sure—that all of the cancer was gone. That anything that looked or felt suspicious was removed. That the margins were checked, double checked and triple checked. That lymph nodes were felt and if not absolutely normal in texture and appearance, were also removed.

Thank you, God, for the community of family and friends huddled in that waiting room who sat for hours, praying, laughing, crying and worrying. Hoping for the best, fearing the worst and believing. Believing that whatever the outcome, they, through the grace of God, would help me get through it all.

Thank you God for the two communities of faith I serve —people who prayed me through that day, who prayed in the days leading up to it and all the days that followed. A community of love that walked with me in good times and in bad, who rejoiced with every victory and lamented every set back. A community whose trust in the peace of God, truly surpasses all understanding.

Thank you God for faith. For the indescribable, ever present belief that whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure comes from the love of God, poured out for us through Jesus Christ. (Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians).

Thank you, God, for cancer.

Yes, thank you for cancer.

Because of cancer I learned lessons I didn’t know I needed to learn. Because of cancer I discovered a depth of love, faith and gratitude I never knew existed. Because of cancer, I learned that bad news is best handled when infused with the Good News. The Good News of Faith, the Good News of Love, the Good News of Gratitude.

There are thousands upon thousands of people who are diagnosed with breast cancer each and every year. Not all the outcomes are as good as mine. People die, people suffer, people mourn. Children grow up without mothers, spouses grow old alone, friends are left with holes in their hearts.

Cancer is not for sissies, cancer is not fun, cancer stinks. But, through the grace of God and the power of prayer and the faith of a community, cancer made me a better priest, a better pastor, a better person.

On October 18, 2012, I, along with two sister priest and a deacon, all of us breast cancer survivors, will lead an open service of Healing, Hope, Gratitude and Remembrance for all those affected by Breast Cancer. The service will take place at the Diocese of Western New York Ministry Center. People of all faiths or no faith are invited. We will sing, we will shout “hallelujah,” we will lament. For Breast Cancer, though it has personally given me much, has taken way too much from far too many.

Breast Cancer is treatable, and early detection is the key. In my family alone five have been diagnosed early enough to be treated quickly and in some cases, aggressively. It has worked. So ladies, get those mammograms, do self-exam and, if you hear the news I heard two years ago, may you, through the power of pray and the fellowship of community, be filled with gratitude and health, all the days of your life.

--The Rev. Catherine B. Dempesy
The Rev. Catherine B. Dempesy has been an Episcopal priest for four years. Currently she serves as the rector of two historic parishes in the city of Buffalo: The Church of the Good Shepherd in the Parkside neighborhood and the Church of the Ascension in the Allentown neighborhood. Prior to her work as priest, Cathy worked as a licensed clinical professional counselor in the state of Illinois, specializing in community mental and addiction services for women and their children. Cathy and her partner, The Rev. Deacon Lucinda “Pete” Cornell, live with their three dogs, two goats and two donkeys in the city and in rural Niagara County, north of Buffalo.

Open those hands, unclench those teeth and let Me in. 14 October 2012, Yr B

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This is the punch line to Jesus’ parable for today but instead of it being a referendum on being wealthy, I think it’ a referendum on our open-ness, our willingness to accept God into our lives 100%.
Most of us receive communion like this: [open hands] and like this [tip chalice to mouth]. Have you ever tried to receive communion like this? [clench fists] [clench mouth]
I think it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for us to receive the gifts of God through clenched teeth, clenched hands and clenched hearts.
To receive the Gifts of God, freely given for us, we must be open, we must be receptive, we must be willing.
Willing to let go of everything: our fear, our worry, our doubt and, as Jesus told the young man in today’s Gospel, our possessions.
Everything. We must let go of everything in order to fully and completely receive God. Because without open-ness and willingness, the Gifts of God will fall to the floor, discarded, unused, unappreciated.
When the young man heard this, indeed when Peter and the rest of the disciples heard this from Jesus they were very very sad. [Our translation this morning says they were shocked, but a more accurate translation is sad, very sad].
It’s easy to think that they’re sad because it means they have to give up the stuff they like—kind of like when folks give up chocolate for Lent—but I don’t think that’s it at all. I think they’re shocked, they’re sad because they realized, deep down, that no matter how much they said they loved Jesus, no matter how much they insisted that they had turned their lives over to the care of God, they really hadn’t.




Because to completely turn our life over to God, to completely believe all that Jesus is saying, to be willing to live as God wants us to live, we must discard all that stands in our way.
When Jesus tells the young man to sell everything, give money to the poor and then follow him he isn’t telling him to become destitute, he isn’t telling him that having stuff---even being wealthy is BAD, he’s telling him to get rid of all the stuff that weighs him down, all the stuff that gets in the way. Jesus is saying, open those hands, unclench those teeth and let me in.
Jesus is telling the young man and his disciples and us that what stands in the way of us inheriting the kingdom of God, are our attachments. To make his point Jesus references the material attachments the young man had---his stuff—but if you read more carefully, if you consider the text more fully what Jesus is suggesting isn’t a pauper’s existence, not a life of scarcity but a life of richness, a life of abundance, a life of blessing.
A life where we remember all our blessings flow from God. A life where, before all else, we thank God and we trust God.
We thank God for all that we have and we trust God to help us through the worry and the doubt and the clenched hands and teeth of life in our world, a world with an uncertain economy, a world with lots of debt, a world where fear is splashed on the front pages each and every day. You see it these things--the worries, stuff that awakens us in the middle of the night, the things that cause our teeth to clench and our hands to wring—these things blot out all the blessings we know are ours: all those we love, our church, our faith, our God.
Which is precisely Jesus’ point. Those things that close us up and shut us down; those things that distract us, those things that color all that we do: the worries of our lives---these are the things that keep us from entering into the fullness of God’s Love.
It’s what I’ve been preaching for weeks now, it’s what has been weighing on my heart even longer: when our fear takes center stage, we block out God. When our worry takes center stage, we block out God, when our fretting takes center stage we block out God.
I say it again and again and again: God’s love is abundant, it is expansive, it is never ending and it is available to us, all of us, all the time, no matter what.
But…hear what I’m saying, it’s available to us. Available. We can have these endless, boundless, overflowing blessings, if we AVAIL OURSELVES OF IT.
To avail ourselves of it, to receive the gifts of God, requires our willingness and our openness…. but when we live in a constant state of fear, of scarcity, of worry, we cannot receive the gifts, we aren’t availing ourselves of the gifts, we are blocking the blessings.
And when we block the blessings it’ll be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle then for us to rest in the abundance of God.
Jesus gave us this parable for the same reasons he gives us all the parables: to turn our thinking inside out and upside down. To make us question everything, to make us confused, to make us dizzy to cause us to lose our way.
Because our way is, more often than not, the way of this world. And the way of this world leads us to a place of worry, a place of scarcity, a place of loss. God’s way, the way that seems so illogical, the Way that at times seems so impossible, the Way that, frankly, at times seems down right irresponsible is the Only Way.
This week marks the beginning of our stewardship campaign: Praise God from Whom All Blessings flow.
This year you won’t see any thermometers, you won’t hear us speak about how many pledging units we need or how much we need you to pledge. This year we are focusing on how we---as a community of faith and as individuals have been richly blessed by God and we will acknowledge that all that we have, all that we are is because of God—for everything EVERYTHING comes from God.
This year is, simply, a blessings drive. This year we trust that, as a community, we’ll act  as Jesus has taught us: we’ll detach from worry, detach from doubt, detach from sadness. This year we’ll open our hands, unclench our teeth and praise God, from whom all our blessings flow.
Amen.

Sowing the Legacy of Francis, Reaping the Gifts of God October 7, 2012

Today we go off script for a week as we take a break from our reading of Mark’s gospel and pause to honor the life and legacy of St Francis. Most of us know Francis as the great lover of animals, the patron saint of pet blessings and gardens the world over, but there’s a lot more to Francis than just his love of plants and animals.
He was a real-live person of faith. He put his money where his mouth was. Or, in this case, he put his father’s money away and turned his back on wealth and privilege to live with the exiled and excluded of the world: the poor, the sick, the needy. His tremendous faith attracted many followers in 13th century Italy and soon an order of monks was established in his name, and not too long after that, an order of nuns was also formed, both following his rule of life. The Franciscan rule of life is pretty simple and is aptly summed up in the prayer attributed to Francis (although written by a follower several generations after his death-- if you care to follow along turn to pg 833 of the BCP):

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
It’s a powerful prayer that, I think, exemplifies the spirit of Francis and gives us all a roadmap for living faithful Christian lives.
You see we ARE God’s instruments on this earth. We’re stewards of God’s creation, caretakers, oversee-ers, nurturers of what God has entrusted to us. And as vigilant and loyal stewards we are called to be more than bystanders, more than spectators. We are called to be involved, we are called to get our hands dirty, we are called to leave creation in better shape than we found it, because that’s what good stewards do.
Francis was a great steward of creation and, by following the directives of this simple prayer, we can be too.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love.
There’s a lot of hate in our world—there’s the big hates: religious, social and cultural intolerance resulting in the killing of thousands upon thousands the world over: the murder of girls by the Taliban for wanting an education, a gay man in Uganda lynched for expressing his identity with honesty,  Christians killing Muslims, Jews killing Christians, Muslims killing Jews all in the name of God--there are big capital H hates in our world. We must pray for all that hate to stop, we must pray for the victims, we must pray for the perpetrators. But there are also lots of other more subtle hates going on. Some right in our back yard. There’s the ever-present issue of bullying, evident in our schools and on our playgrounds, but also playing out in work places and at the family dinner table. Anywhere someone uses their position of power to intimidate, threaten, demean or demoralize a person---child or adult---bullying is occurring.  It used to be said that bullies could be stopped if we ignored them. But as we’ve learned in the past year, since the death of Jamey Rodemeyer and the witness of so many others is that bullies need to be confronted by those of us sitting here today. We must identify and name the bullying, we must become more than bystanders we must be sowers of Love.
For where there is hatred, we must sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon;
we make mistakes. We hurt others. And others hurt us. When we’ve been hurt we must learn to forgive. Not forget, but forgive. Pardoning someone means we stop punishing them. It doesn’t remove the hurt, it doesn’t excuse the hurt, but it stops the cycle in it’s tracks. Our burden is lessened when we off load the piles of resentment we carry around. Where there is injury, sow pardon.
Where there is discord, union---have a relationship that needs mending? Try mending it…if it can’t be mended, if it’s too risky to mend it then move on….stop feeding the discord, stop opening the wound…..
where there is discord, sow union.
 Where there is doubt, faith;--we all have doubt. Anyone of faith has times of doubt…but, as I’ve mentioned before when you’re feeling faithful, carry the doubt of those feeling faithless. You see, by carrying the burden of doubt on your broad shoulders of faith, you’re giving that other person a chance to see faith in action. Seeing faith at work is the surest way of finding one’s way back to it.
Where there is doubt, sow faith.
Where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

Our job, as Christians is to shine the light of Christ wherever we go, to help those in the depths of despair know that there is a way forward, there is light at the end of the tunnel there is at least one person in the world who, through their own acts of prayer and service, cares that you are hurt, that you are mournful, that you are sad.
 Where there is darkness, sow the light of Christ.
 Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Folks, this prayer isn’t simply a suggestion, this prayer is more than a guide, this prayer is deeper than platitudes. This prayer is the Gospel message. This prayer is always the way to the Good news. This prayer is the heart and soul of our faith journey. These words are our marching orders. Let’s get busy sowing the legacy of Francis and reaping the gifts of God.   Amen.

[1] This idea was gleaned from the writings of Jaimie Marzullo, “Writings from the City Line,” firstcityline.wordpress: CALL TO ACTION: HIGHER STANDARDS AGAINST BULLYING. WHO CAN YOU SAVE?

September 30, 2012, 8:17 pm