Finding God in the Quiet

***Note: this sermon was more experiential than most, making the translation to just words, difficult.

We live in such a loud world. To “unplug” ourselves takes a lot of work---turning off the ringers of our phones, disabling our email, texts and tweets. Shutting off the tv and the radio, the iPod and the ear buds. It is becoming more and more rare to sit in silence.
 But silence, resting in the quiet murmur of creation, is so important.
For it is in this rest, in this quiet, in this silence that we can connect with the Holy, with the Divine.
Jesus knew this:
“The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. He said to them, “come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.”
Jesus was teaching the apostles “self-care.” He knew that they wouldn’t be any good to anyone if they didn’t take care of themselves, if they didn’t spend time alone, in the solitude of quiet. Because, as Jesus knew from his own study of scripture and as countless mystics and teachers have discovered since the time of Jesus: we meet God in the silence.
Consider your daily life, how much silence to you have? How can, how do we meet God if we have so darn much background noise?
In that spirit, I invite you to spend a few minutes with me, exploring quiet and engaging silence:
I will ring this singing bowl, wait a few seconds, read some sacred text, wait about a minute in silence while the words settle into our ears, and our hearts and minds settle into a space of quiet.
I’ll then repeat this process several more times. Sit back and receive whatever the quiet of these next few minutes brings you:

RING BOWL

“For You alone my soul waits in silence; my hope is from the Beloved…
In Silence rests my freedom and my guidance;
for You are the Heart of my heart,
You speak to me in the silence. ” (Psalm 62 paraphrase, Nan Merrill)

[45 seconds]

RING BOWL

11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord. The Lord is passing by.” A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord. But the Lord wasn’t in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord wasn’t in the fire. After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet. (1 Kings 19:11-12 CEB)

[45 seconds]

RING BOWL

22 Right then, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead to the other side of the lake while he dismissed the crowds. 23 When he sent them away, he went up onto a mountain by himself to pray. Evening came and he was alone. (Mark 14:22-23, CEB)

[45 seconds]

RING BOWL

Let God do God’s work within you. Say a loud no to This World and a quiet Yes to God.  (The Message paraphrase of James 4:8]

[45 seconds]

RING BOWL

O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP Prayer 59)
RING BELL

Silence can be frightening, for in silence the truth cries out. But it is only in silence, it is only in quiet, it is only in rest that we can hear the still small voice of the  abundant Love we know as God.
May you find a place for quiet this coming week. And may God find you there, waiting.


Amen.

The Dance Card of the Holy and Undivided Trinity July 8, 2012

As you know, I’m a big fan of Jesus, the man, fully human.. Of course I love his divinity too, but what really gets me excited---day in and day out---is Jesus’ humanity. The fact that Jesus experienced all aspects of the human condition----joy despair, laughter and anger, love and loss, success and failure makes our human condition understandable to our loving Creator God. There’s nothing NOTHING we feel, experience, fret about or rave about that Jesus doesn’t understand. He gets what it’s like to be human because Jesus was fully and completely human. He isn’t just Lord, Jesus is also one of us. It is astounding, overwhelming and, frankly, pretty cool. I love the humanity of God in the flesh: Jesus Christ.
Somehow Jesus being fully human makes his divinity less intimidating to me. It makes his divinity more accessible to me. Jesus is like the perfect conduit…..humanity gets a glimpse of divinity thorough Jesus the Man and the Divine gets a glimpse of the Human through Jesus the Christ. Jesus as human and divine gives a substance to the dance between God and God’s creation which was set in motion at the beginning of time.
No where is this humanity more present than in today’s Gospel when Jesus goes home. We all know that it can be really difficult to go home again. Whenever I return to Chicago the priest at the church I grew up in, the church where my mother and one of my sisters still worship---invites me to celebrate or preach.  It is very gracious of her but whenever I do it, invariably one of the older members of the parish will come up to me afterwards and remark,  “Well I just can’t get over you standing up there like a priest, I mean it was just yesterday that you were in my Sunday school class, that you and your sisters were sitting so wetly in the front pew ….. I just couldn’t believe it was really you up there…after all, I think of you as just a kid.” Try preaching to a congregation full of people who will always see you as George and Elaine’s youngest, Anne, Elizabeth and Sue’s baby sister. Trust me, it isn’t easy! But it’s ok, because I will never be the rector of that church, I’ll never be those people’s priest. For I know that to them, I will always be a Dempesy girl first and foremost.
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, is flying pretty high. It’s early in his ministry and he has started to create quite the stir. People are talking about him, following him----just last week we heard about the woman so desperate to be healed that she clamored to touch the hem of Jesus robe, hoping to get some of his healing mojo to work on her. Yes, as Jesus winds his way up through the Galilee hill country to his childhood home of Nazareth he is flying high, wildly successful after just a few short months of public ministry.
Now maybe we aren’t supposed to think of Jesus in this way, but I have to believe he was looking forward to his return home…to see old friends and family, to eat some home cooking, to relax in the comfort of all the old familiar things…and since he’s been so successful there’s that old “hometown boy makes it big” thing to look forward too. Deep within Jesus’ humanity I have to think there was a part of him really looking forward to his mother, his aunts’ his brothers’ and his sisters’ approval---and maybe even their envy. We may never know what exactly he was expecting, but clearly that’s not what he got. For as soon as he arrived, Jesus realized that his  healing powers—his inspirational and life changing preaching….impressed no one in Nanzareth. As one commentator puts it: Up until now, Jesus' version of “Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show and Tent Revival” had been a roaring success. But once he arrives home, nothing worked right!
First, as soon as Jesus arrives we read that they "took offense at him." Can’t you just hear them…”what’s up with Jesus…a few months down in the big city on his own and he gets all caught up in this preaching and teaching thing…a little too big for his britches, don’t you think?”
Then, we learn ”he could do no deed of power there.” That somehow their resentment toward him, their reluctance to accept that he may, just possibly, be something special resulted in his inability to be the Jesus he was elsewhere in Judea.
Which leads to one of the most human portraits of Jesus in the gospels when Mark writes that Jesus "was amazed at their unbelief." He just couldn't believe that their lack of belief was a) so strong and b) so detrimental to what he saw as his job, his calling, his ministry. He was stunned, left with his mouth hanging open. Jesus learned a hard lesson; that there was a limit to his power; it was limited by the people's willingness to receive it.
 What Jesus, the Divine learned when he went home again was that the power of his divinity was wholly dependent on the willingness of his human family and friends to accept it.
No matter what incredible gifts Jesus possessed they were rendered useless in the absence of that acceptance.
Jesus had so much he wanted to show his family and friends, so much that he had learned, so much that he had accomplished. But they weren’t interested in who he had become, for they were stuck in who he had been. And until the folks back home were ready to receive him as the Christ, he would remain, Mary and Joseph’s kind of odd eldest child.
You see, Divinity isn’t meaningful if it isn’t experienced. And it can’t be experienced if it isn’t noticed.
It’s the quintessential lesson our faith: we are partners with God, we are companions of Jesus, we are the instruments of the Holy Spirit.
We are in this together.
As I have mentioned before, the Holy and Undivided Trinity is often depicted as a swirling dance of the three in one, one in three. But, if we really take the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ seriously, if we completely accept that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine then that dance of three needs a fourth.
Us.
The work of God, the ministry of Jesus Christ, the grace of the Holy Spirit is dependent upon our willingness to receive it, our ability to accept it and our longing for it.
The dance card of our Creating, Redeeming and Sustaining God is waiting to be filled, by you and by me.
Amen.

Call and Response: Sprouting God’s Dream for Us. Proper 6 Yr B June 17, 2012

The Parable of the Mustard Seed gives most of us a really warm and fuzzy feeling inside. We feel good knowing that even if our faith is TEENY, it’s enough.
“Phew”…..no heavy lifting, our puny faith will carry the day. But, while it’s true that even the smallest morsel of faith can lead to incredible things, the point of this parable is easily lost on a non-farming culture. You see, the mustard plant, in the ancient world, was viewed as an invasive, out of control, undesirable WEED. (this perspective gained from David Lose’s column at working preacher.org accessed June 14, 2012)  Those itsy bitsy seeds would blow everywhere, infiltrating carefully tilled fields and spreading the mustard plant all over, upsetting the carefully laid out plans of the farmer. Nothing warm and fuzzy there.
In other words, Jesus’ parable, to the ears of his followers in the 1st century did EXACTLY what a parable is supposed to do: make us think of things in a totally new strange and uncomfortable way. This is why Jesus used parables so often—because the truth of living a faithful life, the truth of working to bring the Kingdom of God to fruition here on earth is risky, uncomfortable and upsetting. As Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan tells us,
The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control…   (The Historical Jesus, pp. 278-279 as accessed through workingpreacher.org on 6.14.12)
The kingdom Jesus proclaims isn’t something we can control—it is something that, once sprouted in a community, takes over, upsets and transforms.  It isn’t, as pastor David Lose tells us, something we should want if we’re even slightly satisfied with the way things are. Because the kingdom of Jesus will change EVERYTHING, not just those things we happen to find distasteful and unwanted. The kingdom Jesus speaks of comes to upset the very fabric of this world, the very kingdoms that rule our daily lives. The kingdoms of a “me first” existence. The kingdoms of big business getting bigger on the backs of the underprivileged and the poor. The kingdoms of a city where a high school graduation rate of 53% is something to celebrate. Kingdoms where royalty is made up of supermodels, athletes and reality t.v. stars instead of teachers, parents and prophets.
The good news is that I know most all of us here today are NOT SATISFIED with the way things are, that we can imagine something more than the ruling kingdoms of this world, that we can imagine a world where the humble are exalted, the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, the illiterate read, the unemployed work , the fearful are encouraged, the lonely embraced and the lost are found.
I know that we’re a people of hope and a people of action who understand that the mustard seed faith Jesus speaks of has its roots in hope. I also know that this hope isn’t just pie in the sky platitudes for us. I know that the hope found in faith prods and pokes us into taking action. Because once that seed sprouts and those roots take hold our faith, just like the mustard plant, spreads, infiltrates, meanders and edges in. Once our faith sprouts, once the roots of our faith take hold, this faith of ours stops being a noun and starts being a verb.
Which is just what God intends. Just like a planted seed needs sunlight and water to take hold and grow, God takes initiative, plants the seed, but it is our response which helps those Divine Dreams come to life here on earth. And once those dreams are realized, new dreams sprout and grow, and spread. It just keeps going! God has a vision and through God’s call and our response, amazing things happen: a shepherd boy is chosen as king, a mustard seed grows into an immense plant, and a small child from Nazareth grows into the Christ. (Bruce Epperly, Text this Week for Proper6 Yr B)


God’s dreams and our response vary. For God is not “ a homogenous force, evenly distributing inspiration and revelation across the universe.” (Epperly ibid)  Sometimes the seed of faith sprouts into something fierce and intrusive, propelling us into loud and brash acts of faith much like the mustard seed blooms into an uninvited weed spreading all over, taking on a life of it’s own. We’ve seen that with the civil rights actions of the 1960’s-- the race riots, the anti war demonstrations and the uprising at Stonewall. More recently we saw it in Egypt and in Libya and currently it seems to be brewing in Syria. But more often, the seed of faith, planted in us by God through Jesus Christ, sprouts in quieter, more subtle ways…..the point is there’s no telling how and when and where the sprouting will happen. The important thing is that we remain open to it. Because, when we’re open to it, receptive to it, Grace happens. God’s vision for the world is realized through this grace and it, like the mustard seed shows up in all sorts of  places, growing and spreading and at times upsetting the status quo. Grace is when possibilities appear to emerge from nowhere and we, in response, make something happen.
(Epperly ibid).
God calls and we respond…that’s what it’s all about.
People are hungry? We’ll establish a food pantry.
Kids don’t read because they have no books of their own? We give them a book.
Pets can’t be kept because their people can’t afford to feed them? We give them pet food.
A lost soul wanders in among us looking for solace and hope? We great them with a smile, a pat on the back and an invitation to come back anytime.
A small gesture can sprout hope and then the roots become established and amazing, unexpected, uncontrollable things  happen. For the Kingdom of God is amazing, it’s unexpected and it’s uncontrollable, upsetting the best laid plans of you and me. Thanks be to God.

You can go home again...to God. Pentecost 2, Proper 5 Yr B June 10, 2012

I consider myself a native Chicagoan but I’m also a proud Buffalonian. I’ve lived here for 11 years and have no trouble referring to Buffalo as “home.” (even though the lake remains on the wrong side!) Yet, until about 3 or 4 years ago, I was decidedly still an “outsider.” We Western New Yorkers are very protective of our region-- we don’t let just anyone in….even after 7 or 8 years….
It’s that way lots of places----no matter how much you fall in love with a city, a town, a village--for a period of time you’re considered an outsider. A similar thing can happen when we go home again, to our hometown.
I grew up in a small village outside of Chicago. We lived right in the center of town and were so connected with the community that when my oldest sister was married she and my brother in law stopped at the local grocery store between the wedding and the reception to say hi…. the owners of the grocery store were like a part of our family. Our extended family that included neighbors, our church and the local merchants!
But, now that I haven’t lived there for many years, I don’t really fit in. There’s a whole new generation (well a couple of generations since I lived there) of people who are integral members of this small community. Unless there’s a real old timer around, when I walk into the hardware store (sadly the grocery store and the drug store are long gone) people look at me with that “you’re not from around here are you? “ stare.  It doesn’t take too long away before you move from being an insider to being on the outs.
Jesus had such an experience when he returned to Nazareth after what was a whirlwind first few months of ministry. He had gained quite a following and was saying and doing things that, frankly, a good kid from Nazareth, the child of Joseph and Mary wasn’t supposed to do. Back home folks barely recognized this charismatic leader who was ticking off the temple authorities and the scribes left and right. As if that wasn’t disturbing enough he was also performing exorcisms. Exorcisms! And then, probably most shocking of all, he denies his own family—his mother, his brothers and his sisters.
Jesus had left home and came back acting at best like a jerk and at worst, like a possessed lunatic. It’s a tough scene to watch, a difficult Gospel reading to hear.  (and, by the way, one many preachers choose to ignore, focusing instead on the reading from Samuel about the people longing for a King or the Corinthians reading about the Spirit)
But before we freak out, let’s dig a little deeper and remember that what Jesus seems to say is not always what Jesus means.
When he appears to reject his family what Jesus is really doing is proclaiming that there’s something greater than family something greater than all the human structures we’ve erected to order our world….something greater than society, something greater than government, something even greater than the love we have for our mother, our father, our sisters, our brothers, our wives, husbands,  partners and children. He’s speaking, of course, of the Source of all Love: God. Before we were the child of our parents, before we were the spouse of our partner, before we were the parent of our children we belonged to God. Jesus is saying, all of these structures—be they family as mentioned in the Gospel or governmental as mentioned in Samuel, they mean nothing if before these things, we don’t acknowledge, we don’t remember and we don’t proclaim ourselves beloved children of God.
This is wonderfully illustrated by the tradition of the Hapsburg dynasty in Austria ---Remember the Hapsburgs? For more than 600 years they ruled much of Europe. In 1916 Emperor Franz-Josef I of Austria, a member of the Hapsburg line,  died. A procession of dignitaries and elegantly dressed royal mourners escorted the coffin, which was draped in black and gold silk. A military band played somber funeral music as the torch-lit procession made its way down winding narrow stairs into the catacombs beneath the Capuchin Monastery in Vienna
At the bottom of the stairs were great iron doors leading to the Hapsburg family crypt. Behind the door was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Vienna.
The Commanding officer rapped on the door and cried out. “Open!”
The Archbishop replied, “Who goes there?”
“We bear the remains of his Imperial and Apostolic Majesty, Franz-Josef I, by the grace of God Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Defender of the Faith, Prince of Bohemia-Moravia, Grand-Duke of Lombardy . . . .” And so it went, through the entire list of his 37 titles.
“We know him not, “ the Cardinal said, “Who goes there?”
The officer spoke again, using the informal title, “We bear the remains of Emperor Franz-Josef I of the Hapsburg line.”
“We know him not,” the cardinal said again. “Who goes there?”
This time the officer replied, “We bear the body of Franz-Josef, our brother, a sinner like all of us.” At that the doors swung open and Franz-Josef was welcomed home.(story taken from The Lectionary Lab: http:lectionarylab.blogspot.com)  
We move around a lot in our world—I read someplace that the average American will move 12 times in their lifetime. Roots are hard to maintain in such a transient culture. Each time we move, we establish new friendships, we lay down new roots….but at the end of the day… whether our relationship with the family we grew up with, the family we married into or the family we raised ourselves is still solid and familiar, we need, we long for, roots that attach us wherever it is we find ourselves. And what Jesus offers us in today’s Gospel, and what the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna so boldly demands of royalty and peasantry alike, is a connection, a family tree, a hometown we can always count on, a place we’ll always be welcomed, a place we always belong. You see, the good news in today’s readings is that as long as we maintain that primary relationship with our loving Creator God as experienced through the Holy and Undivided Trinity, we are never ever alone. For this is the family from which all other families spring.  As long as we keep that relationship vital and healthy, then we’ll always be on the inside, we’ll always be a “part of.” Because, “whoever else [we] may be, whatever other relationships [we] may have, there is one title and one relationship that can never be taken away from [us]; [we] are always [children] of God, born out of the waters of baptism and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever. “
Amen.

Miracle and Mystery in the Three in One and One in Three

+Every Sunday, as the server brings the bowl over to me and I symbolically wash my hands, I utter a simple prayer: “Gracious God, cleanse me from all iniquity and make me worthy to enter Your mystery.” I use this prayer as a way to ready myself for what will happen at this altar because, truth be told, I have NO IDEA what happens at this altar. But not being able to explain it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Not fully understanding doesn’t mean nothing is happening. It just means that some things can’t be explained as much as they must be experienced.
A major— I am not sure I can explain it, but I know it is real, I know it means something to me, I just don’t understand it---concept in Christianity is the Trinity: The one in Three and Three in One.
The bottom line is, none of us fully understand it. We may well have some comprehension of it---we believe in One God who is present to us in three distinct, yet linked ways: God as Father/Mother/Creator, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit---but we can’t really understand it because to understand it means that we fully grasp it in all of it’s nuance. We can’t do that. Our comprehension of the Trinity requires a leap of faith, a leap into a mystery, and an acceptance that we won’t know what this really means until the last day. Until then, we’re grasping at straws whenever we try to come up with a hard and fast definition.
So in no way am I going to try and make the Holy and Undivided Trinity understandable to you, Understanding is a personal thing which comes to each of us in different ways and at different times. [a process so well exemplified in Nicodemus, the main character in today’s Gospel. Nicodemus appears several times in John’s Gospel, each time, gaining a bit more understanding, a little more insight into just who this Jesus is and how this Jesus is God. It was, for Nicodemus, a process.
It is for all of us a dynamic process, constantly changing, evolving, moving. As a matter of fact---the dynamic nature of learning, of understanding--is an excellent way to describe the Trinity.  For “dynamic” is a key piece of the interrelatedness between our Creator Father/Mother God our Redeeming Son God and our Sustaining Advocate Holy Spirit God---these three persons of the Trinity are in constant movement toward one another and towards us.
Now let’s get one thing clear, we have one God. Period. When we say, there are three persons in One God, what we mean is that there are three aspects, three distinct ways the Almighty is in relationship with us—the more authoritative, parental God who was and is the Creator of all things, the accessible fully human and fully divine God—the Son who felt all the same things we feel and was capable of all the same things as us and finally, the advocate, the Holy Spirit given to us on Pentecost; that unseen God who acts in and through other people in our lives and is that still small voice deep within us. But these three distinct characteristics of God are just that--- characteristics of a whole—they are not separate. They are “part of.”
Throughout the generations, people have fought over the Doctrine of the Trinity---I’ve mentioned before that St Nicholas was expelled from the Council of Nicea because he became so irate over the efforts to explain, in words, just what we mean by the Holy and Undivided Trinity, one God, that he actually punched another attendee. Others have made valiant efforts to explain the Trinity using visual aids:
St. Patrick used the three leaves of a Shamrock—each leaf is distinct but is not separate from the whole of the clover.
Icons show the Trinity as a swirling dance of interconnected parts—always attached, but each moving in it’s own way. Almost all expository attempts at describing the Trinity fall short because at its heart, the essence of the Trinity is relationship. And describing the essence of a relationship is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree…it just doesn’t work.
Think of your own relationships---the most precious ones you have—how would you describe them? Can you find the words? Could you diagram it? You could get close, but it would still be lacking.  That’s my point---to describe the Holy and Undivided Trinity just doesn’t do it justice, because it’s a relationship and relationships are hard to explain.
God is relationship.
Retired Lutheran Pastor Richard Lischer shared this interpretation of the Trinity he discovered while contemplating a stained glass window depiction of the Trinity: “The fairly typical Trinitarian design of three interconnecting triangles reminded me of an aerial photograph taken of our small farming community. Besides the straight and orderly rows of crops in the fields, another distinct pattern emerged: well-worn paths criss-crossing from one farmhouse to another. These paths, worn into the ground by generations of neighbors visiting and helping out in times of need, linked the town, they knit the community together.” Lischer’s description of the interconnectedness represented in those paths explains my experience of the Trinity.
God grooves paths in our lives, coming to us at different times and in different forms to address a variety of needs.
God, in three persons, Blessed Trinity, reaches out to us as a strong parental type when we feel small and childlike. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a forgiving friend in times of loneliness and confusion. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a sustaining force of inexplicable peace when we are bereft and lost, angry and bitter, hopeless and helpless. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity, longs to be a palpable presence in our lives, so God, in God’s infinite wisdom, walks a number of paths to reach us.
Although difficult to explain, the formula of the Trinity is simple
God Loves Us.
God Wants to be With Us
Through the miracle and mystery of God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity, God’s Love is always with us.
And that, although almost impossible to explain, is so utterly real.
Amen.

Honor the Mothers of our Faith and our Lives with Love

+Our readings this Easter are clear: Love is the point. Loving God, Loving one another, Loving our Neighbor, Loving the stranger, Loving the outcast, Loving ourselves. Love is the key.  And as one commentator puts it:  Love isn’t easy. And clearly God knows this, why else would we get these messages of Love over and over and over again?
Our readings from the Gospel of John, all Easter, have been excerpted from Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse,” the final teaching series before his death. Clearly, at least from John’s perspective, these teachings of Jesus are the most important the fabric of our faith.
And the message? The message is clear: Love.
But, as I said, love can be very difficult. Nothing hurts as much as when something bad happens to one we love.
No loss is as painful as the loss of Love.
Once we start loving, we begin building up a huge amount of potential hurt. It’s the price of love.
Jesus knew this. He knew that the Love of His creator, of God was leading him to the cross. Jesus knew that it was love that would carry his followers through the dark days ahead. But he also knew that that same love, the same love God had for Jesus , that Jesus has for us, that those who love Jesus have for him,  is the same love that can cause the lover tremendous, unspeakable and intense pain.
Yes, Love hurts, love is hard, yet Love is the source of everything. Without Love we are NOTHING.
 To quote St Paul:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13)
So our readings this Eastertide focus on this love. And then we come upon Mother’s Day. Now how can, how do our readings these great fifty days connect to an observance originally designed as a radical day of protest against the horrors of war, but has morphed into a Hallmark guided day of “on demand” expressions of love attached to an almost impossible icon of motherhood designed by, I dare say, men.
But despite the modern consumerism and fantasy attached to the 21st century version of mother’s day, I think having this day fall within Eastertide and our incessant messages of Love as found in the scripture readings these 7 weeks makes sense. For that initial focus of the first mother’s day established by Julia Ward Howe  in the 19th century jives nicely with this idea of Love being hard, but  in the end so very worth it.
For the initial Mother’s Day was all about bringing women together –together  to stop the madness of war. Mother’s Day was about alternative conflict resolution, it was about Peace.
But over the years it has changed, evolved into what it is today: a day to honor our mothers with cards, candy flowers and brunch.
But, to coin an old phrase, just who are our mothers? For many people the woman who gave birth to them is not their mother, for others of us, not only is the woman who birthed us our mother, but so are older sisters, aunts, neighbors, friends. But, I think for all of us, one thing is certain: there have been women in our lives who have nurtured us, protected us, encouraged us, loved us. It is those women we honor today….for any woman who has taught us, any woman who has loved us, any woman who has PUT UP WITH US, is due honor.
If you look at some of writings about the history of Mother’s Day you’ll find great debate on the use of the apostrophe---should it be Mother’s Day, (apostrophe s)  or Mothers’ Day (s apostrophe). Is this a day about one woman who is viewed as a mother in one particular family unit, that would be the singular possessive, the apostrophe s,  or is it about all the mothers of our lives, of our world, the s apostrophe, the plural possessive?
And it is in this somewhat obscure debate that, I think, we get the connection between Mother’s Day and what Jesus is trying to get through to us.
You see, Love is  what allows us to do the unthinkable. Love is what keeps us going. Love for others, as most brilliantly exemplified in a mother’s love for her child is what spreads the Gospel, it’s what makes the Body of Christ tick. And being Loved, having those people in our own lives, those people who will stand behind us, no matter what, is what fuels us, strengthens us, inspires us to risk loving others. It’s the ultimate circle of life: We are given the very gift of our life out of the love of others and then, whether we are raised by a loving mother or whether we find that motherly love in others, we grow and mature through the nurturing of others. And then through this love and care of others we are then able to nurture and love still others. Whether it be our own children or children of other parents, we, by virtue of allowing love to seep into our hearts, become Loving People, and loving people when gathered together like us here become the flesh and blood representatives of the source of all Love, GOD in the world.
Jesus commands us to love one another, not because Jesus thinks without this commandment we won’t fall in love with our children, our spouse, our siblings, our friends. No Jesus commands us to love one another so that we’ll stay in love, so that we’ll allow Love to be the singular focus of our life---for when we let Love slip from the number one focus of our life then we as a civilization, as a people, as a church, as a family devolve into fear, bitterness, hate and loss. The original Mothers’ Day was designed to point out the absurdity of most war, the original mothers’ day was created to remind each and every one of us that nothing, nothing matters in this world if we do not have love.
So on this day to honor mothers I encourage us all to do what Jesus has commanded us to do: honor Love. +

We Abide in One Another

God is love and those who abide in Love, abide in God. Amen.

Several years ago, when I was in seminary, I made an amazing discovery: I had become my mother.
I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences of realizing you’ve become your mother, your father, an older sibling etc. I know I have. But in this particular instance I had become my mother.
You see, when I was a teenager my mother was in graduate school. Every Saturday she sat in the living room, on the couch, with the dogs at her feet. Classical music was playing on the Hi Fi (as it was known in those days). Books surrounded her as she read, highlighted, wrote and re-wrote. Periodically one of us would wander in with an “onlymomcananswer” question and she would look up, gazing over the top of her glasses, setting us straight. Back on that day of my: “I have become my mother revelation” I was in an easy chair, classical music playing on the iPod, a dog at my feet, books, paper and the computer surrounding me. A questioning housemate approached, I looked up, gazing over the top of my glasses and it was done: I was my mother.
It’s not just Mom, at times I find myself becoming my father, my sister, my grandmother. I act like them because I learned from them. They’ve guided me.
The Ethiopian Eunuch, in today’s reading from Acts, says to Philip, regarding his understanding of scripture: “How can I, unless someone guides me?” Exactly. We learn by watching others, listening to others, working with others. Our families, friends, mentors---they all GUIDE US. TEACH US. CORRECT US. HELP US.
Because they love us. Because they abide in us and we abide in them.
Abide.
It’s a big word in today’s readings. Abide:
To wait for
To endure without yielding
To bear patiently
Jesus says: Abide in me as I abide in you. In other words bear me patiently as I bear you patiently.
In today’s Epistle,  John says: “Beloved, since God loved us so much we ought to love one another…if we love one another God lives in us and [God’s] love is perfected in us.” (1John 4:11,13)
This is how it works:
By loving Jesus Christ within community, as we do here, we give God’s love a place to take root and grow. God’s love abides in us when we love one another. As new members join our community they learn about God’s love by witnessing our love for one another.
Abiding must have love as its foundation, that’s clear. To abide, to endure, one must have Love.
Back to mothers for a moment. Think how much mothers endure. First childbirth. Then colic. Then teething. Then the terrible two’s. Then those teenage years! Then the leaving home. Then the coming back home and not leaving fast enough…and on and on.
Abiding can be hard.  You mothers here---how often have you bit your tongue? Enduring in silence, offering a shoulder to cry on without saying: “I told you so.” Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, friends all do this enduring, this abiding, because they love us and want us to grow, to flourish, to be fabulous.
So does God.


Abiding takes endurance. God endures a lot with us: We deny, we forget, we ignore God.
But this abiding thing is a two way street. God endures us but we must endure God. C’mon, admit it, there are times when we really wonder what God is doing.  Disaster, famine, war. The death of a child, the tragic loss of love. Where’s God in that?
Theologian Walter Wink addressed this in an article he wrote almost 20 years ago for the Christian Century magazine entitled: “Abiding—Even Under the Knife.”  Using today’s Gospel as his text he takes the reader through years of his evolving interpretation of this story of God as the vine tender, Jesus as the vine, and us as the branches.  Wink chronicles his long history with this story, from the somewhat narcissistic “it’s all about me” interpretation of his youth to a more universal interpretation of his older years. In this latter interpretation Wink confronts the issue of pruning—you know, that part of the text that says if you don’t bear fruit you get pruned. Pruning is, in effect, clipping off dead or dying wood to promote new, vibrant growth. We do it to our plants. Our hair. We prune growing things so the growth will be fuller, richer: more lush. Walter Wink reminds us: we are growing things as well. As Christians we strive to grow more fully into the Body of Christ. For some of us (dare I say, most of us) that growth becomes stunted, stagnant and stale. And then, before we know it—before we know what is happening—here comes God, pruning shears in hand. Objectively (that is when it isn’t me God’s aiming at) we know this is a good thing. It’s good for the prunee. Healthy. You know, like lima beans and castor oil. Who knew that good could feel so bad? Growth experiences are like that. To abide with God requires an occasional pruning….
As Wink says, “How has the intrepid vine-dresser pruned you lately?” Are you grateful for it? If you are it probably happened a while ago. Because when the pruning is fresh we rarely feel gratitude. Fear, anger, bitterness and pain, yes, Gratitude? Not so much. Take a moment to think of those times you’ve been pruned. The times when it hurt a lot and you were scared.  Somehow you held on, somehow you endured. You stayed the course. Because you weren’t alone. You had company. You had parents and grandparents, mentors and guides, supervisors and co-workers, fellow parishioners, priests and deacons---you had guides, you had companions along the way and, above all else you had God, you had Jesus. For, as Jesus said, “as the Father loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.”
The turnaround time---the pain of pruning evolving into gratitude-- varies. The disciples needed to feel betrayal and bitterness and doubt before they could embrace the miracle of the Resurrection. It took some time. It took patience on the part of God, it takes endurance on the part of us, but if we wait long enough, if we allow ourselves to be guided by those who have gone before, if we settle into and abide in God’s love, we’ll find our path paved with gratitude, our future infused with hope, pruning shears and all.