Going off script with God July 28, 2013 Proper 12

I remember, soon after I was ordained, my mother asking me to offer grace before a family dinner. I was in town because a very close family friend was seriously ill and none of us thought he would live through the night. So I commenced to offer a  standard food blessing, with a petition for Richard tacked onto the end. My mother, being a fairly rigid person said "Amen," as soon as I ended the familiar "grace" portion of the prayer... She was used to a specific formula for saying grace and darn it how dare I mess with it! My mom was astounded that I would " go off script" while praying.
The disciples ask Jesus: teach us how to pray. John the Baptist did for his followers, do it for us, give us the formula write us a script.
Everyone wants the inside track on the right way, the fool proof correct way to pray.
As if there is a wrong way to pray.
This is Jesus' point at the end of today's Gospel--- knock---Whatever you do knock! That is, PRAY, people. Whatever, however, wherever, whenever....God wants to engage us in a conversation. God wants to hear from us.
And this is what personal prayer is: a conversation with God. Whenever we speak to God, God listens.
God may not respond as we expect ( or wish or sometimes demand ) but God does listen and God does communicate back to us through the work of the Holy Spirit.
But what the disciples were asking, and what many people ask me is just what is the magic formula...the exact right way to pray?
I understand the question. People assume that God is like us. Like my mother--That God has a very distinct and proscribed way of doing things. That God is of the "my way or the highway" club.
God isn't.
However, because the disciples are an earnest bunch, Jesus offers them a formula for prayer. An outline of what a prayer could --NOT SHOULD-- look and sound like. Enter, The Lord's Prayer. Now it's  important to realize that although the prayer is known the world over- it's one of  the first prayers children learn, it's one most all of us have memorized -- it is not the be all and end all of prayers. It's simply an example, a prototype for a general kind of all encompassing prayer. It isn't magic, it's just handy.
I always tell people who are just beginning the ordination process tat when doing nursing home visitations to always always use the Lord's Prayer because when ministering to Alzheimer's patients it's amazing that, long after the faces of loved ones disappear into that unidentified line of strangers, they can still recite the Lord's Prayer. Word for word.
So while it is not the talisman of our faith, it is iconic.
But we needn't pray as the Lord's Prayer is structured, nor must we pray like others pray. We must pray as we feel compelled to pray.
However that looks and however that sounds.
Author and Christian seeker Anne Lamott says that all prayer falls into three categories:
Thanks
Help
Wow.
THANKS
 thanks for giving me life
Thanks for giving me love.
Thanks for healing my hurts , my illness, my loss, my sadness
Thanks for getting me through that sticky wicket.
THANKS. Thanks thanks


HELP
Help me I'm lost
Help me I'm scared
Help me I'm hurt
Help me I'm over whelmed
Help me
Help me
Help me
WOW
wow what An amazing sunset
Wow what an incredible baby
Wow that's some kind of Love
Wow this is some kind of life
Wow. You amaze me God--you totally and completely amaze me.
WOW WOW WOW.
I tend to agree with Annie. This is all God needs.
The basics.
Thanks….Help…..Wow
You know that verbal shorthand you can do with your best friend? Your spouse? Your sibling? How what you really mean, what you really need doesn't need to be spelled on in 12 pt font, double spaced with complete sentences and clearly defined paragraphs?
That's what God wants to have with us. A close and loving relationship that at times, needs few if any, words.
This is the point of that odd little parable in the middle of today's Gospel about the noisy neighbor and the grouchy homeowner. Many people mistakenly assume that God is the grouchy homeowner,  that we must whine and cajole to get God's attention. No what Jesus is telling us is that if one, out of a sense of cultural duty or just plain fatigue , responds to the pleas of another how much more will God respond to us, for God doesn't respond out of a sense of duty or expectation, God responds out of LOVE.
Embrace that Love
engage that Love.
Reciprocate with love of your own and enter into a conversation with God
Ask and receive
Search and you will find
Knock and the door will be opened
Go off script, blaze your own path and in your own words and through your own heart find a way to tell God thanks, to ask God for Help and to offer God Wow. Amen.

The Traveler July 14 2013

+At 10:52 pm on Monday February 18 I received the following email from Jesse’s great grandmother Laurel:
Dear Cathy, Jesse Stephen  was born at 9:22 P.M.   8 pds.  9 oz.   21 in.   Mother & baby doing fine. [signed]  Very Happy great grandmother better known as Gigi.
I cherish that email. First because Nancy and I used to share stories of our mothers and their repeated befuddlement with email. We both marveled that even amidst their frustration, our mothers still persevered in communicating over the information superhighway. Secondly, I cherish it because not even two weeks later, Laurel was gone.
Now, if Laurel were still alive, she’d be sitting right over there, beaming with utter joy at this blessed event. Of course even though they aren’t physically here, we know that both Laurel and Ralph are smiling down on us as we baptized another Cammarata (fourth generation!) into this fold.
When I pulled up Laurel’s birth announcement email earlier this week, I began to wonder what kind of email Laurel would send Jesse today, if the information superhighway reached heaven.

Dear Jesse,
Gigi here. You are such a handsome little boy. I wish I could be there to hold you, but know that my spirit is with you today, as it will be forever.
I looked up the Gospel reading for this Sunday and was pleased to find it was the story of the Good Samaritan—it’s a story you’ll hear again and again as you grow-up.
We all strive to be the Good Samaritan and I certainly expect—and hope and pray—that more often than not you’ll be just that: a Good Samaritan. But the truth is this story isn’t so much about being the Samaritan as it is about accepting that throughout life, at different times, you’ll be each of these characters.
When you’ve grown up there’ll be times when you get so busy that you’ll pass by folks in need, you’ll put off visiting your aging parents, you may even miss your own daughter’s soccer game. In other words, there will be times you are the Priest from this story. Respected as a community leader, yet too absorbed in your tasks to remember your responsibilities as a Christian.  It’s not bad, it’s just a fact of life. We get busy, we get distracted and we forget.
There will also be times, as you grow and become an adult, a husband and a father, that you will be the Levite…that you’ll sense needs in your community but fear will keep you from getting involved. After all, stepping into another’s issues, another’s needs, another’s troubles can be messy, unpredictable and downright scary.
It happens. Trust me, Jesse…there will be times you’re too distracted or too scared to be a Good Samaritan.
And there will be other times..many times I hope…that you’ll be the Good Samaritan. That you’ll see your neighbor, you’ll feel compassion and you’ll get involved and do mercy; you’ll reach out, loving your neighbor, as you too have been loved.
As you too have been loved.
You see, more than being the Priest, more than being the Levite, more even than being the Good Samaritan, the most important character in this story is the Traveler. The one robbed and beaten and left half dead along the side of the road.
Jesse, there will be lots of times that you’ll need help, that you’ll feel lonely. Or scared. Or hurt. It’s part of life. We need each other. That’s the point of the story---we all need each other. We are each other’s neighbor, we are each other’s keeper, we are each other’s Good Samaritan.
When you get baptized in a few moments everyone here will say: We receive you into the household of God.
The household. This is the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and the lesson of being baptized into a community of faith—we’re in this together. Today everyone here is pledging to care for you, to support you, to love you, to cry with you, to laugh with you. Everyone in attendance will watch you grow and be ready to step in whenever and wherever and however you may need help. It’s one the greatest things about being a member of a church, and one of the things I love about Good Shepherd. But today isn’t just about Jesse and the Church of the Good Shepherd. Today is about the household of God where everyone is our neighbor. We must look out for everyone—not just here in Parkside, not just in your neighborhood in Snyder, not just in western new york…not just your friends and family.
Everyone. Everywhere is your neighbor. So yes, this means when they need help you need to help them but, and this is the point so many of us forget: everyone, everywhere is there for you too. Because no matter how much we hope and pray you’ll always be the Good Samaritan, there will be times when you’re the traveler and you’ll be in need, you’ll be in trouble, you’ll be afraid. And when that happens, because you are a member of the household of God—a vast and all encompassing community of Love---there will be a Good Samaritan reaching out to you. A Good Samaritan who will help you in thought, word and deed.
For that’s what we do in this household of God. We help each other, no exceptions.
That’s the wonder of baptism, Jesse, and it’s the wonder of God’s Love given to us in Jesus Christ and experienced through all those who love you: from this day and forevermore: you are never ever alone. And for that I am very grateful.
Love,
Gigi.
Amen.

The Gospel of Me is no match for the Gospel of Us Pentecost 7 July 7, 2013

The theologian Rene Girard's book on theology of non-violence is entitled: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning. It's a fitting title since Love, the essence of non-violence is the perfect antidote to hate and intolerance, the essence of violence.
Nothing makes the harbingers of hate more nervous than communities of Love. Communities like the 70 in today's Gospel and communities like this one.
This past Sunday, the New York Times published an op/ed piece entitled The Gospel of Me. It was a fairly heady piece about the decrease in attendance at mainline Judeao- Christian Houses of Worship and the increase of home grown spirituality that, instead of revolving around a deity of some distance, revolves around one’s own inner being. This inner being is best engaged, apparently, when


we embrace our “authentic self.” Whatever that is. ;-)
The upshot of the commentary was this: the Gospel of Me, the spirituality of the authentic self, is in the end,  lonely--leaving people empty.
     This shouldn't be news to us, people who gather weekly, in community, to be filled, fed and fortified.
Filled with the Spirit,
Fed by the Eucharist
And fortified through fellowship to go out into the world, doing the work of Christ.
A lot of people view this Gospel of Me movement as cutting edge, the latest thing, completely different.
 Ha, I’ve got news for them. Each and every week we gather to engage in one of the most spirit-filled, subversive and cutting edge encounters known to humankind. It was

counter-cultural 2000 years ago and is counter cultural now.
It really is. Going out into the world loving one another as we've been loved is not culturally NORMAL.
That's because our American culture is of this world. And this world is ruled by a me- first ethic.
Our life in the church is not of this world, it is not of humanity. It is of the greater world, it's of the Divine.
The world of me is fleeting.
The world of God is enduring.
So when we gather to celebrate the world of Love, the world of God we drive the Gospel of Me-ers, nuts.





Our collective love makes what the gospel calls Satan and we call evil-fall from it's throne of intolerant hate fueled violence with a deafening thud of defeat.
You see,  hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when we live as God intended--- out of and back into Love.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when teachers gather terrified children in their arms to show them love in the face of evil and horror in Newtown Connecticut.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when the entire city of Boston refuses to be held hostage by the violent acts of a few and rises from the ashes of terror in a glorious stance of Boston Strong, Boston Love.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance when 19 firefighters rush into harm’s way and are killed doing what they loved: protecting


innocent people from nature’s wrath in Prescott, AZ.
   Hatred falls from its throne of intolerance each and every time we gather to share in the Love of God as given to us through Jesus Christ. It falls from its throne when we laugh together, when we cry together, when we sing together, when we pray together.
This living in Love is the work of the church, it's the work of our faith and it makes a lot of people really
uncomfortable. This Love thing is anti intolerant, it's anti hate and it's anti-me.
Which is what makes it so dangerous.
It's why Jesus sent his advance team out two by two.
 As Jesus prepared for this final walk toward Jerusalem, he was setting, as Pete referenced last week, his retirement plan into motion. And


that retirement plan is the Church---you and me…loving each other and everyone else we encounter.
Back in the time of Jesus being the Church wasn’t easy --our liturgical calendar is chock full of martyrs, early followers of Christ who were killed simply because of their faith. And it’s not too easy now, what with the way the fundamentalists have hijacked the word Christian and in response to such public expressions of hate, many people,  like those who make up the Gospel of Me, simply turn their backs, giving up on the whole of Christianity because of the intolerance of a few.
Jesus is right--being the church, being followers of God through Christ, loving others, isn’t easy.
It's why we gather every week here: For strength in numbers!!


And it's why the Gospel of Me simply doesn't work. The faith of One instead of the Faith in the One, isn't sustainable, because we aren’t built for One. We're built for many. We aren’t designed to be sole practitioners of life, we're designed to share and to learn, to collaborate and to partner. We, this community of faith, this diocese, this national church, this worldwide communion need one another to do the work we have been given to do. the work of loving our neighbor as we have been loved.
It’s the Gospel of Us: established by Christ and nurtured by the millions of Christians who've come since, this Gospel of Love, this Gospel of Inclusion, this Gospel of Us is their legacy...and our children's future.
   




 Much like we reflect and offer thanks to the founders of our faith, on this Independence Day weekend it makes sense to pause and to thank
the founders of our country, people of great faith who determined to create one nation, indivisible, under God. A nation formed under the fundamental precept that all people are created equal, that all people are to be
treated justly, that every person be granted  the same chance as the next guy.
We-- the church and this country---don't always get it right.
But we--the church and this country--- always try.
Because as long as we try, as long as we do our best to live lives of love and justice, the Gospel of Me will be supplanted by the Gospel of Us as Satan falls from the throne of hate and


intolerance, landing with that thud into the arms of Love and acceptance.

God calls, do w e answer? 6.23.13

God sounds really angry in today’s reading from Isaiah. Ticked off to the max about those ungrateful Israelites, recently freed from Exile and now absolutely ignoring—turning a deaf ear-- to God’s reaching out. It’s a sad reading actually, for in it we hear God God! imploring—begging the Israelites to pay attention, to turn back toward the Divine. God cries out “HERE I AM!” And what do the Israelites do? They ignore God. And what does God do? God gets angry. Really really angry. It’s one of the most vulnerable protrayals of God in Hebrew Scritpure.
When I was a practicing psychotherapist clients would come to me with “anger issues.” They wanted me, as their counselor to help them get rid of that anger. They’d become frustrated—angry even---when I told them that anger is a secondary emotion, that to get rid of it we must dig below the surface, where the anger is and get to the real issue, the primary emotion. More often than not the anger was masking some other feeling, something that would make the person much more vulnerable like sadness or fear.
 That’s why we use anger—to go on the offensive, to cover up our vulnerability. To protect ourselves.
We  all do it. Even God.
There is no more vulnerable position in the whole world than telling someone that you love them. God is telling us all the time: I love you. I love You I love you. And when we ignore that love? When we ignore God? Well, I think God gets very frustrated, very hurt and, in turn very angry.
All God wanted was for the Israelites to respond, to remember that their freedom, that their very life began and ended in the arms of God. But they didn’t listen, they didn’t hear, they didn’t respond.
Do we?
Do we hear God’s pleas? Do we listen to God’s calls to us?
Do we reach out and meet God halfway?
Remember, God isn’t some isolated Creator who sits atop a throne dictating the ins and outs of life. God is all about relationship. God is a spinning and spiraling source of light and life out of which—from which—all life is emitted. But it doesn’t end there—it isn’t all about God giving to us, it’s also about us giving to God. That swirling spinning source of light and life gives life but is also fueled by, enhanced by, fed by the love and the light we give back. God really wants us to respond. God really wants us to interact, God really wants us as part of the Divine dance of creation.
And when we don’t respond, when we fall silent, God grieves, God laments, God gets sad. And sometimes, God gets angry.
Because God, to paraphrase Sally Field at the Oscars, God really really likes us. And God wants to spend time with us.
So God takes any opportunity—every opportunity-- to reach out to us and then? Well then God waits. God waits for us to receive God, to accept God, to be in relationship with God.
Often those of us who look, on the outside, to be God’s chosen folk—people to whom life has been very good, people who have been abundantly blessed----people like you and me----are the ones who neglect our relationship with God the most. It’s not that we forget God, it’s not that we deny God, we just kind of take God for granted.
And when we take God for granted we’re not listening, we don’t hear God’s calls to us.
We became so numb to God that God had to come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to a.) get some understanding of the human condition from inside the human condition and b.) shake us up by breaking every boundary and busting through every limit. From the healing of the sick, to the embracing of children, to the respect for women, to the touching the untouchables and all the way into and then out of the tomb, God in the person of Jesus Christ came to upset the status quo and shake the foundations of life to it’s very core. Last week this boundary breaking and limit busting involved a sinful woman, two weeks ago, a Roman Soldier and this week, the Gerasane Demonic.
This man with a Legion of evil spirits, demons—nowadays we’d call it schizophrenia or psychotic mania---is so sick, so crazy, so possessed that he lives among the dead in the cemetery. The townspeople avoid him and fear him for no chains seem able to hold him. He is so horrified by himself that he begs, BEGS Jesus to release him from his torture. He has nothing to lose so he goes directly to God and reaches out his hands saying, embrace me, Lord. Release me Lord, help me Lord. He reaches out and he is healed. He asks and he receives. He is open to the Love of God, he listened, he heard and he received. Once again, the work of Jesus isn’t in the mainstream but on the outskirts the fringes of society. Once again, Jesus teaches us, the in crowd through the faith of those on the outside, looking in.
So what are we to take from these readings? —that God has feelings too and that God’s love is reserved especially for those who are the most ill, the most needy among us?
No. I think what we’re to take from today’s readings is much more basic. I think the primary message in today’s readings is that God’s Love is for everyone. It’s what Paul says in his letter to the church in Galatia: there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer man or woman, there is no longer Pharisee or Gentile, no longer Gay or straight, no longer mentally stable and mentally ill, no longer, black or white, no longer rich or poor, no longer Christian or Muslim, no longer us and them. There is only God’s beloved. You, me, us, them. Beloved by God. Forever. No matter what.
So, the take home message from today’s readings is this: God is always calling out to us, God is always reaching for us. May we, in turn hear God’s calls, may we accept God’s touch, may we receive God’s Love. Amen.

Sin Means We're Not God--Phew! Pentecost 4 June 16, 2013

+I am a sinner. A big ol’ sinner. I miss the mark all the time. Sometime I don’t even try to do the right thing. Sometimes I know what the right thing is and I simply don’t do it. Maybe because the right thing to do, the Godly thing to do is more difficult and I simply don’t have the energy to tackle the more correct, the better yet more difficult path. Other times I really think I’m doing what’s right, what’s of God, only to realize later that I’ve made a mistake, I’ve missed the mark, I’ve moved farther away from God. Yes, in  various and sundry ways, I’m a sinner.
I don’t tell you this because I decided to make today’s sermon a confession, I tell you this because sin is one of those words that’s been hijacked by the fundamentalists of the world. It’s not a bad word—it’s a good word—a word that accurately describes a good deal of the human condition.
Sin doesn’t mean we’re bad.
Sin means we’re human.
Jesus was human in all ways EXCEPT he was without sin.
Sin means we’re not God.
PHEW, cause that’s one job I do not want!
Our readings today talk a lot about sin.
In the Second Book of Samuel we enter the story of King David about halfway through. David, being greatly blessed by God, has replaced the old evil Saul as King and David’s appetites, as is very common with people elevated to positions of great power, continue to grow and expand. Kind David sees what he wants and he takes it, no matter the cost. He saw Uriah’s beautiful wife Bathsheba and decided he wanted her. So, after getting her pregnant, David sees to it that Uriah meets an untimely death and Bathsheba is suddenly part of David’s household. I know this sounds like a bad soap opera but really it’s sacred scripture!
Now, obviously, David’s behavior is sinful—he committed adultery and he had another man killed…no two ways around it. Most of us haven’t sinned to the extent of David, but we’ve all sinned, we’ve all blown it many times, that’s for sure. But as with so much of life, it’s not so much the mistakes which define us it’s what we do about the mistakes that makes us who we are.
David, in the annals of Judea-Christian history, is a well beloved and respected man….Jesus himself is described as being “of the House of David” in the

nativity narratives….so just how did such a screw up of a king, such a sinner of somewhat epic proportions…get to be so honored and loved? How did David become a paragon of a Godly man?
He repented. After Nathan, toward the end of today’s reading, points out the error of his ways, David  gets it, he admits his mistakes, he confesses his sin and God, we’re told, puts away his sin. David approached God in repentance and humility and God forgave him.
[sidebar: while David’s sin is put away we do get these unfortunate last couple of lines in this reading where David is told that as punishment for his sins, the baby he and Bathsheba conceived will be killed—these lines are clearly the additions of later editors who were making  a whole other point about the evil of the monarchy, It’s not germane to our focus this morning, but I didn’t want to ignore it—my understanding of God is the God who, when David repents, puts away, that is, forgives him his sin. The God of my understanding does not kill innocent children because of the mistakes made by that child’s parents. It just doesn’t jibe. And so we take these last lines with a GIGANCTIC grain of salt.]

The important message from Samuel is that David becomes aware of his mistakes and makes amends, makes restitution, he repents, and in the eyes of God he returns to a position of grace.
It’s actually quite remarkable—our God is so loving and so engaged with us that, regardless of our mistakes, regardless of our sins, if we own them, take responsibility for them and ask God to forgive us we are forgiven. We’re healed. Our lives are renewed. It absolutely stunning.
And really hard to accept.
Which brings us to today’s Gospel. That Pharisee just couldn’t deal with the “woman of notorious sin” bathing Jesus in her tears and oil, could he? Her sins were so numerous this man of great position and honor couldn’t fathom how or why Jesus would give her a second look let alone allow her to touch him! Confident of his position of disgust,  he confronts Jesus and, as always, Jesus turns the tables on him and within a few verses this man of high cultural and political standing is put firmly in his place. Jesus tells him what I believe we all need to hear---

the sin isn’t the issue, the repentance is.
So many people I know won’t set foot in a church because they’re afraid of hearing how “bad” they’ve been ---they assume that because we actually utter the word sin, because we actually confess our sins we’re all about blaming and accusing, that we’re all about seeing the speck in our neighbor’s eye, ignoring the log in our own. These people view us all—the church---like a whole community of Pharisees. How I wish I could convince them that instead of a church full of Pharisees we’re a church full of “notorious sinners.”
That what separates us from other people isn’t our lack of sin, what separates us from  other people is our abundance of repentance.
It’s the beauty of our faith: we make mistakes, and when we humbly acknowledge them, God forgives.
Sin is part of the human condition and forgiveness? Forgiveness is part of the Divine condition. We will make mistakes, we will miss the mark, we will sin. And when we do, God is ready to put away our sin and send us on our way: forgiven, healed and renewed.
Amen. +

Jesus’ Ministry is not a Spectator Sport Proper 5, Yr C June 9, 2013

The concept of this sermon is heavily extracted from “The Lectionary Lab” for Proper 5, Yr C . Direct Quotations are marked by brackets.(http://lectionarylab.blogspot.com)

+A friend posted a cartoon on Facebook this week:
On top was a banner reading: As a disciple it wasn’t easy to sneak away from Jesus for a day of golf.
Below that was a drawing of the disciple saying to Jesus. “can’t join you today, boss, I’ve got a cold.” Jesus, looking sufficiently disgusted replies, “You’re healed.”
Jesus, as a few middle-schoolers I know so aptly stated,  had some “MAD healing powers” and in today’s Gospel he performs the ultimate healing by reviving a corpse.
Two of today’s readings deal with returns from the dead. Outrageous, unbelievable, fantastic stories of people being brought back to life through the power of God. Both stories also have a widow, an only son and an act of utter compassion by a prophet, a “person of God.”
As I mentioned in my Thursday email blast, I’ve struggled with what seems to be the randomness with which Jesus offers healing. Whenever one of these stories comes up in the lectionary I wonder how these seemingly arbitrary healings affect those of us who’ve lost loved ones to disease. Why are some healed and not others?
And then it hit me--on just about every occasion, [Jesus is attracted to the person in need of help and in spite of all cultural norms, reaches out for them. It’s as if he can’t help himself. As one commentator puts it:
Throughout his ministry, opportunities for healings came to Jesus, but he didn’t go looking for them. Every time he worked a miracle it happened because of those three little words: “he had compassion.”
Time after time in the Gospels, Jesus’ compassion and love spills over and he breaks all sorts of rules and does a miracle for someone in need.]
But again, why only some? Why not all?
Well, if we reflect on the beginning of Jesus’ ministry there’s a clue:
[After his Baptism, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. One of his struggles was to resist the temptation to use his powers to fix the world’s physical problems; represented by turning stone into bread to feed the world.
There in the wilderness, Jesus realized that fixing every human hurt was not his mission; indeed that miracle working and signs and wonders would be a diversion from his primary calling; which was to proclaim the Kingdom of God.] So, he purposely held in his power, restrained himself so that we, his followers, wouldn’t just stand on the sidelines but jump in and being moved to compassion like he was, get involved and make a difference in the world. He doesn’t want us to look at him as some kind of magic maker, he wants us to look at him as a difference maker. And then he wants us learn from him and follow in his footsteps. For Jesus, I think, his ministry wasn’t about how many people he could help as much as it was about how many people he could change.
[This is why he often told people, after he’d healed them, “all right now don’t TELL ANYONE I did this, ok?” Scholars call this the Messianic Secret]…that somehow Jesus thought he could keep his identity as the Messiah from going viral. You see Jesus did not want people following him for what they could get out of it, for the supposed material benefits of being “Jesus people,” instead, Jesus really wanted people to get excited about giving their life to God, about being committed to peace and love and justice.
Jesus wants us to take charge and bring peace to this earth by following his lead, by living a life of love and light and hope. Jesus was afraid that miracle-working and faith-healing would get in the way of us realizing that the way to bring the Kingdom of God to this world will be accomplished by God through US, not by God alone. For that is God’s purpose in living among us as one of us, isn’t it? That we partner with God, that we act as God’s hands and feet, eyes and ears right here on earth.
To do this, we must believe, we must have faith. Yet, sadly, the world is full of people who don’t accept or believe that God is love, that God is forgiving, that God is merciful, that God is kind.  Too many people in this world believe instead that God is eager to punish us.
In today’s reading about Elijah, the woman assumes he’s been sent by God to punish her: “What’s gone wrong between us, man of God? Have you come to me to call attention to my sin and kill my son?”
And in the Gospel, after Jesus has performed his miracle the crowd’s immediate response is to be afraid -- the text says “Fear seized all of them . . .”
[We live in a world full of fear. People are afraid of terrorism,] of losing their jobs, of illness, of hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, building collapses and a rotting infrastructure. We’re afraid. Very afraid.
And in the midst of this all, there are people who are afraid of God, people who believe that God is indifferent to the human plight, people who believe there is no God to help us.

[In this bog of sadness, sorrow and unbelief we’re called to be like Jesus and break the world’s rules and sometimes our own in order to shatter this cycle of fear and violence with words and deeds of compassion and healing.] For when we do that, instead of watching the mad healing powers of this man of God, this man who is God from the sidelines, we get into the game, and become Christ’s body in this world. The ministry of Jesus, the ministry which is the legacy Jesus has left for us is not nor shall it ever be, a spectator sport. +

Being Humbled by the Prayer of Humble Access--June 2, 2013

+This past week I was on a reading retreat-- an intentional time of rest, prayer and reflection fueled by my reading of two books—one by contemporary religious commentator Becky Garrison on mission-shaped ministries for the 21st century ( Garrison, Becky Ancient-Future Disciples: Meeting Jesus in Mission Shaped Ministries Seabury Books, 2011) and another, The Bible that basically talked about the same thing. Through my reading I was challenged to look at everything we do as The Church, questioning whether what we’re doing is life-giving or institutional-giving. Both books pushed my boundaries of the familiar and the regular because both books clearly state that to be Christ’s body in the world, as is our Christian challenge, we must be a living breathing, adapting organism of faith and hope and love.
How many of you are familiar with the Prayer of Humble Access? We recite it just before communion at the 8 am service. Those of you who grew up with the 1928 prayer book or in a Rite One parish, or in the RC church, know this prayer:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
This is one of those prayers, one of those icons of our institutional faith that people either love or loathe. I, myself, have spent little time with this prayer. When I first encountered it, I decided I didn’t like it and just moved on, never challenging my verdict and usually reciting it with a bit of disdain in my heart. That is, until I heard the foreshadowing of it in today’s Gospel, when the centurion says:
“Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

These words are the words of an outsider—a Roman soldier praying for another outsider—a slave—an amazing act of Love.
The boundary breaking in today’s readings is stunning!
In our reading from the Book of King’s Solomon stands on the steps of his newly completed temple, praying that all those drawn to this amazing edifice, familiar and stranger alike, will come to understand that the God this building is dedicated to is a God for all people. No exceptions. Read through a 21st century lens, these words drip with irony as, for most of its history, the temple in Jerusalem has been fought over by people trying to maintain their version of the institutional status quo, avoiding, at great cost, a move into the unfamiliar and the new.
 In both our reading from King’s and our reading from Luke we are reminded that the growth of the church-- that the spread of the Body of Christ in this world--is a journey into the unfamiliar and a trip down the road of unknowing.
Our Christian faith, if it’s going well, should be, at times,  uncomfortable. Because our faith, if it is to grow and to flourish, must accept the new, embrace the different and welcome the unfamiliar. If we stay in what’s familiar, if we go through the motions of our worship just as we always have, if we listen to the same old people saying the same old things and refuse to listen to the new, the different and the uncomfortable, then instead of being Christ’s body in this world we are just a lifeless corpse hanging on a cross.
So what does any of this have to do with the Prayer of Humble Access and my opinion of it? Lots.
Both of the books I read this week—Becky Garrison’s and God’s---are full of stories about what happens when we open ourselves up to the unfamiliar and the new.
So as I read today’s Gospel and heard the familiar prose of the Prayer of Humble Access I began to wrestle with my assumptions and my opinions. I looked for something new wrapped up in the old, I looked for something fresh out of the familiar. Through reading, thinking, praying and talking I realized that what I didn’t like about the prayer was the exact thing I needed to embrace about the prayer!
 I always heard this prayer as a hymn of self-loathing-- that we couldn’t receive communion until we were convinced that we were worthless worms and that it’s only through the mercy of God that we aren’t thrown into eternal damnation and hellfire.
Well guess what? While God never wants us to loathe ourselves—and of this I am absolutely positively sure--- we aren’t—and never can be—worthy of God’s grace and mercy. Although we can never earn it, we also can never ever lose it. We have two choices: forget and reject it or remember and embrace it. God isn’t the fickle one, we are.
We get so caught up in the institutional part of church we forget the Body of Christ part of the church---our readings this morning remind us that ours is an ever-changing faith: the way we worship God, the way we strive to be God in the Flesh on earth, is always evolving, changing and becoming something all together new. As Solomon prayed for on the temple steps, as Jesus recognized in the faith of the Centurion, as I discovered when I read the prayer of humble access with fresh eyes, being the body of Christ in the world requires that we embrace the different, accept the new and reach out to the stranger; because when we do our faith is enriched, our worship takes on new meaning and our God, the God who loves everyone always no exceptions? Well when we look at the familiar from a new perspective and when we welcome change instead of fearing it, that God shouts Alleluia and Amen!+