Tell, Hear, Remember Maundy Thursday 2013

This sermon was first  given at St Paul’s Cathedral on April 9, 2009

+20 years ago as my father lay dying my extended family and I gathered round his hospital bed telling stories of the past-- funny stories about George: our dad, grandfather, husband and friend. Although his dying was breaking our hearts, the memories, the stories were very funny and we spent his final moments on this earth, laughing.
His final journey had been arduous and for the last three weeks of his life he was in the hospital, slowly descending into the grips of death. It was during those weeks and most especially those final days and hours that we had the opportunity to bear witness to Dad’s journey.  During those final days we waited and watched with him. Many times there were no words, it was simply our presence that gave him the strength he needed to die.   The memory of that waiting and watching with Dad will always be with me and sharing those memories as a family strengthens us, those memories make us who we are. Remembering that time is important because  remembering the past helps us navigate the present. Walking with Dad and remembering that walk, is a big part of who I am today. Remembering forms us into who we are now.
Jesus took these two points—the “walking with” now and the “remembering” later and made them the focus of that Thursday evening supper during the first Holy Week. “wait with me. Be with me as I move toward the inevitable. And then, when it is over, remember it all, remember me.” Jesus needed his friends to wait with him, to watch with him, to walk this final walk toward death with him.
The week had such a promising start--the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, but then over the next few days the triumph changed to despair as one by one the supporters fell away, denying him, deserting him, turning on him.
Tonight [today] we meet Jesus halfway through this week, when all the questioning, the fear, the denial and the betrayal has been put in motion. ..the disciples are arguing, debating and gossiping…no one seems to be paying attention. It’s a Seder, the ancient Jewish meal remembering Jewish people’s liberation from slavery, a story each of the disciples knew, a story integral to their Jewish identity. It’s possible this telling of the Passover story had become rote for them, they were just going through the ritual motions. But Jesus needed them to pay attention because on this night, as he had done so many times in the past, Jesus would take something utterly familiar, and make it altogether different.
Jesus knew that remembering was a key component of community building and he knew that the community of the burgeoning primitive church was going to need strength, a strength built on the telling of stories, built on the remembering of what came before.
Every one of us has stories that have been handed down to us by parents and grandparents. Whatever the specifics we tell and re-tell these tales because they contribute to our identity, they make us who we are.
Jesus, on this night so long ago, didn’t want his friends to forget his story. Not because he was some kind of egomaniac but because he knew the value of telling a story. Just as the story telling at my father’s bedside forged our family and friends into a stronger bond, Jesus wanted his friends to wait with him, to watch with him and then when he was gone, to tell the story, to remember and to be strengthened by the story enough to keep it going. He wants the same for us--for the work Jesus started is not yet finished and we as inheritors of the faith must carry it on. We must ingest these stories of Jesus. And to carry on the work we must claim the stories as our own, not only by telling them but by living them.
That’s why we have the Eucharist every week, because not only do we need to say it and hear it, we need to be it. So we take, we eat and we remember.
In a few minutes after sharing in the Eucharist one last time, we’ll strip the altar, while lamenting the betrayal, loss and despair of these three days. We’ll strip ourselves bare to feel the pain and loss of Jesus’ death. We do this not because we need to be punished, not because we need to hurt. We do this so we can remember. So we’ll remember not just with words, not just with thoughts, but with actions. For when we strip our sacred space of all that is familiar, when we enter into the darkness of this long night, waiting watching and weeping with Christ, we remember. And through our remembering we are strengthened. Each time we take and eat we are remembering the story and with each remembrance we gain strength. The strength needed to continue to do the work God has given us to do.        Amen.

Deacon Pete's Palm Sunday Sermon

We began today’s service with the Blessing of the Palms.  We heard the story of Jesus sending his disciples into the village to find a donkey and telling him to say to the owners “the Lord needs it”.  Jesus knows that he is heading toward his death; he knows the crowd will cheer for him, proclaim him King and generally make a ruckus so loud that the authorities cannot and will not ignore His presence.   He also knows that in the next few days he will disappoint, anger and arouse not only the” powers-that-be’ but his own followers.  Jesus knows that his disciples do not understand who he really is and why he has really come, although as Luke says  “they praise God in loud voices for the miracles they had seen”, they have no idea that Jesus came to invite us to work and suffer and struggle along with God until God’s kingdom comes here on earth; no idea that the reign of God will be subversive, will turn everything and everyone upside down, no idea that instead of power seeking and power wielding God’s kingdom functions on the fuel of self-giving, inclusion and justice-making.   Judas will become so disillusioned that he decides betraying Jesus is his only option and Peter will become so frightened that he will deny his Lord.
The Passion readings take us through the events we now call Holy Week.  We hear of Jesus’ Last Supper, of his time of agony in the garden, his arrest, trial (and crucifixion).  Isn’t it curious that we get all of these really hard readings right after the story of the Palm Sunday celebration?  Why can’t we have today to just acknowledge the joy and energy of that raucous parade?  Why do we have to encumber today with the dark and dismal reminders of how God’s Son was rejected, betrayed, despised and killed?   Can’t all that wait until later in the week, until Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday?  Why today in the midst of a parade do  we have to think of what it means to have Jesus gone from this world?
You know that I work in a school.  And because of that, even though I don't teach, I sometimes have to sit in on teacher training in-services.  Many years ago I learned the term "front-loading".  It means that in order to teach a really important lesson, to help students grasp a really difficult concept, it helps to give them the end point first.  When students know where they're going to end up, when they have some frame of reference, some context, to put new learning into, they are more likely to be successful learners.  And I think that's part of the reason we get the passion readings today, in advance of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.  What happens on Easter is so incredible, so unbelievable, so miraculous that  we need to hear the Holy Week readings twice to prepare us for the  new thing God that does next, the resurrection of Christ..
We are experiencing two huge celebrations, Palm Sunday and Easter, and they do not stand alone.  They are book ends to a week of misery, loneliness, loss, emptiness and existential sadness.  Each day of this week is reflected in our readings today.  We move from the triumph of Palm Sunday, to a day honoring service, Maundy Thursday, then Good Friday, a day of suffering and sacrifice, onto a day of waiting, Holy Saturday.  I invite you to join in, to participate in these services, to experience the pain so that you can experience the complete joy of Easter Sunday, to truly receive, deep in your bones, deep in your heart the triumph of the resurrection.
On the face of it, Palm Sunday is a bust.  When the shouting stops, when the palms lie dusty and dirty and trampled into the ground, nothing much has changed.  Jesus refuses to be the kind of king or messiah that Jerusalem wanted.  Even his closest followers are disappointed.  Rome is still in charge, Jerusalem is still an occupied land, those who collaborate with the power that is Rome are still favored.
Those are the facts.  And yet, there is far more to this raucous rally of the parade of palms than meets the eye.  It is more complex and darker than we could have thought.  Is Jesus the man we have hoped for?  He has performed so many outrageous and unbelievable miracles, yet today he appears riding into town on a small, unbroken donkey.  Not exactly the picture of a messiah or king that we expect.  Is it time to back down, to retreat from following this itinerant preacher?  Will we continue to associate with this paradoxical  man?  Should we make up with the ruling powers, apologize to the Romans and temple authorities for disturbing the status quo?  Can Jesus solve all of our problems, can He save our world?  Can he save us?  We have a decision to make.  Can we, will we follow this man?  Will we be with him on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday?  Will we experience with him the pain, the loneliness, the betrayal and the agony?  That is what Holy Week is all about.  It's a time for us to examine Jesus in the scriptures, in the events of the last week of his life, to decide for ourselves who this Jesus really is.  Is he a messiah, a savior, a Christ?  When Easter comes will we be ready?  Will we be in a place emotionally and spiritually to truly celebrate Easter?  Will we be able to embrace the incredible, the unbelievable, miraculous new thing that God does on Calvary?  Will we do the work,  the prayer and reflection, that is necessary for  Easter to be transformative?  Pray that God will give us the strength, the determination and the grace to do so.  Amen.

Hew our hearts, sow with tears and make room for Easter Lent V Yr C

For me today’s Gospel is intensely vibrant. I imagine the colors of the robes, the dark pigment of the fruits and nuts and the deep hue of the wine. I can almost SMELL the scent of the nard and I can even feel Mary’s hair as it wipes the feet of Jesus. How did that NOT tickle?
The sights and sounds and smells of this story resonate deeply…
I can’t hear it without being transported back to my time in Jerusalem, I can see the rolling hills outside of town just over which is Bethany that place of respite for Jesus, his home away from home, and I can imagine how often Jesus trekked from Mary, Martha and Lazurus’ home down into Jerusalem.
My hope is that it can become an equally colorful, fragrant and alive Gospel for you, too, because this Gospel sets the scene for Holy Week and if we allow ourselves to truly enter it, we’ll be ready for the journey of next week, a journey of contrasts, a journey of boundary breaking, a journey away from the old  and into the altogether new life of resurrection.
This story is familiar, some version of Jesus being anointed by a woman appears in each of the four Gospels so it’s with great confidence we say this event, in one form or another, happened and it was as striking then as it is now. Each Gospel puts it’s own spin on it but the version we heard today—from John’s Gospel, gives us the most details. Instead of being anointed by some unnamed woman (who in Luke’s version is a renowned woman of sin, a prostitute) he’s anointed by Mary of Bethany. Because the perfume is so expensive, there’s been some thought that the Mary in this story may be Mary Magdalene since she was wealthy (that’s her connection with the story—her wealth, not the prostitute part. There is no evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute). Could Mary Magdalene have provided the perfume, could Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala be one in the same? Probably not, most likely this is a conflation of two stories but regardless, a woman named Mary anointed Jesus because she knew that Jesus’ life was in danger and that death was imminent.
The scene is a study in contrasts:
The party was to celebrate the raising of Lazarus. Mary and Martha wanted to show their gratitude to Jesus and so the party was on. But what Mary and Jesus both knew, deep in their bones, was that the miracle performed on Lazarus was a turning point.
If you remember, Jesus was out in the hill country teaching and preaching when word arrived that Lazarus was ill. Jesus seemed to take his time returning and of course by the time he got there, Lazarus was dead and Jesus performed his most personal miracle. And in doing so, Jesus sets Holy Week into action. You see, the Temple authorities were watching him; they were hoping to catch Jesus in some egregious act, so illegal that they could arrest him and put an end to his ministry. Knowing they were after him Jesus took his teaching out into the country where he wouldn’t be harassed. He knew that returning to the vicinity of Jerusalem (and remember Bethany is just on the other side of the hills surrounding Jerusalem, about a 2 mile walk) would give his enemies just what they needed.
In other words, by bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus has assured his own death.
As my old friends “Two Bubbas and a Bible” put it:
Mary [and Jesus both know], even if the others don't, that by coming here to this place, at this time, and working this miracle, he has sealed his fate, he has signed his own execution order. In giving Lazarus life he has assured his own death.  Mary pours out both her gratitude and her grief when she pours the perfume on Jesus' feet.”
In the anointing Mary pours out more than ridiculously expensive perfume, she pours out gratitude at what happened and her grief at what will happen.
This is the juxtaposition of Holy Week my friends, heart-singing joy leading to heart-wrenching grief leading us back to joy.
In Holy Week we go from the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to the weeping on Calvary’s hill, to the awesomeness of the empty tomb.
But to be able to receive the new life Easter brings, we must take this walk. And to take this walk? We need to be ready.
Today we, along with Mary and Jesus need to prepare ourselves for the inevitability of Holy Week. Today we buckle up and set our sites firmly on Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives the Garden at Gethsemane, Calvary’s hill and a fresh-hewn tomb.
This week before the holiest of all weeks, we begin to prepare for the absence of Jesus, for it is only in that absence that the presence of our resurrected Lord can take hold. The absence of the old leads us to the presence of the new.
In the words of the psalmist: we sow in tears, so we can reap in joy.
The sowing that leads to the reaping is tough. Boundaries get broken all over the place.
Mary broke the boundary of financial responsibility by spending a YEAR’s WAGES on this perfume, she broke the boundary of propriety by touching a man to whom she was not related, and Jesus broke it right back by accepting her touch.
Judas breaks the boundary of trust, Peter breaks the boundary of loyalty, the Jews in colluding with the Romans break the boundaries of political alliances, Pilate wrestles with breaking the boundary of duty and finally, after all this breaking, after all this sowing with sadness, anger and dismay, Jesus breaks the ultimate boundary, the last boundary: Jesus defeats death.
As we delve into the second to last week of Lent we must prepare for our own boundary breaking.
We must break the boundary between our rational mind and our spiritual journey…for to truly walk the walk of Christ, we must walk the walk of Holy week, allowing our hearts to break and our tears to fall. For it is in the absence of Jesus that a new life in Christ emerges. It is in the rupture of that break that the sprout of new life grows.
So get ready, party your hearts out, anoint your loved ones and prepare for the ride of your life.

The Prodigal Family in Us All. Lent 4C

The Prodigal Son, The Forgiving Father, The Indignant Son who stayed. This oh so familiar reading from today’s Gospel is all about reconciliation and restoration. It’s about the dance every family does to make room for all her members. It’s about the dance God does to make room for all of us, God’s children.
Reconciliation: it’s what we do to make things right, to be restored to peace of mind and solace of spirit. But the journey to reconciliation and restoration is not quick, it’s not easy and it’s not without pain--reconciliation isn’t always what we want to do, but it’s always what we need to do. For we need to be in harmony with one another, because to be blunt, we are all in this together. Think about it, how often can you say that a decision you make affects you and only you? Rarely, if ever. Most everything we do impacts another, so everything we do is subject to the opinions of others.
The Pharisees had a lot of opinions about the conduct of others. It was their disgust and dismay at Jesus’ choice of community that led to Jesus’ sharing of several parables—the Parable of the Lost Coin, the Parable of the Lost Sheep and finally, the Parable of the Prodigal—or lost—Son.
Now I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear this I cast it with actors from my own life…assigning people the roles I feel they have earned through their behavior. In other words, just like the Pharisees, I judge people I love, put them in the role I have assigned them and then proceed to feel all righteous and holy. But the thing is parables are a lot like dreams. We are every character within them. At one time or another we’ve been the dad, the older son and the younger. The older son gets our sympathy because he’s the one who did what was culturally appropriate and acceptable, staying home to work the family homestead. [Remember this was an agrarian society, families worked together to keep the farm running. Farm work wasn’t easy and you needed all hands on deck to make it work.] In Jesus’ day, sons helped their father and then when Dad died the sons were given equal shares of the property. Ideally they would keep the shares intact and work the land together, passing it on to their children. An agrarian culture is one of the most interdependent cultures known to humankind. I need you and you need me, we are all in this together. So when the son forever known as the prodigal gets a bit of wanderlust and asks for his share of the land now—well it was akin to saying, “Dad I can’t wait for you to die, gimme what I have coming.” Cashing in on the family homestead, dividing the land your family has farmed for GENERATIONS? It was disgraceful, it was wrong and it was hurtful. Just about the time in the story when we’re ready to stone the younger son all his grand plans fall apart. He realizes that he needs help, that he needs his family. The youngest son sitting amidst the pig slop of his life has an “aha” moment.
The prodigal, this son of so much ambition, this son who didn’t need anybody, is broken. The hubris is gone, all that’s left is humility. All that’s left is honesty, all that’s left is the promise, the hope, the longing that his father, among all the anger and bitterness the son assumes is waiting for him, will see fit to hire him as a common laborer. As he turns toward home he expects jeers, insults, taunts and anger. But instead he’s greeted with hugs, tears and shouts of thanksgiving. He’s seated at the head of the table and toasted as an honored guest.  The father is grateful beyond all measure. But the older son, the good and loyal one so many of us relate to? He’s not so excited, he’s not so forgiving, he’s not so grateful. Who can blame him? After all he stayed and did the right thing, but now this nare-do well, this pain in the butt younger brother gets a feast, a ring and his father’s undying love? Yes. Is it fair? No. Is it comfortable? No. Does it make sense? Well, viewed through the lens of our outrageously gracious God, I think so.
You see reconciliation is the backbone of love. We must be able and willing to reconcile our differences, to forgive our hurts and to move on if we are to truly live a life of love. Love doesn’t mean never hurting each other, love means hurting one another and then making it right. God does this all the time. God forgives us again and again and again because we hurt God again and again and again. But God chooses to define our relationship with God not thorugh the mistakes we’ve made and the hurts we’ve caused but through the lessons we’ve learned and the corrections we’ve made.
The trick is being humble enough, honest enough and brave enough to admit our mistakes, learn from them and move on. It’s the stuff of Lent my friends---taking an inventory and making adjustments.
The three major players in today’s Gospel, the hurt but always ready to forgive parent, the stalwart, angry older brother and the lost younger son represent each and every one of us at various times in our lives:  sometimes we’re the one whose been hurt, other times we’re the one who is angry and still other times we are the one who is lost. Regardless of which role we’re playing today, regardless of whose journey resonates with us the most, we will, at one time or another find ourselves, hurt, angry or lost and in need of reconciliation. But the good news is that each and every time we admit our mistakes, each and every time we learn from them and move on, each and every time we make things right our loving and gracious God, just like the loving and gracious parent in today’s parable, looks around and says to all in ear shot, “look she once was lost and now she’s found.” And for that we can all say,
Amen!

A Failed Saint, A Sarcastic Seeker Whose Thirst Has Been Quenched. Lent 3 Yr C 2013

O God, you are my God, my soul thirsts for you…(Psalm 63)
+My name is Cathy and I am a failed saint and a sarcastic but always honest seeker of God’s grace.
In other words, I am just like everyone else.
Several of us are participating in the One Diocese, One Book program promoted by our Bishop. During Lent Bishop Bill suggested that we read and discuss, as a group, Jana Riess’ book Flunking Sainthood. The book has sparked spirited discussion and this past Thursday Dr. Riess spent the day with the clergy of the diocese leading us in several meditations which led to fruitful periods of prayer, reflection and debate. On Thursday evening she offered the diocese as a whole a program about Flunking Sainthood and her efforts at maintaining a Holy Sabbath.
The premise of Flunking Sainthood is pretty simple, God’s grace and our receiving of it, comes in many different forms and our job, as people who long for that grace, is to find the method of reception that best works for us. Not what works best for your neighbor, not what works best for your priest or your Bishop, or your spouse, or your parents…what works best for YOU.
Because while we are all very similar, we are also quite different.
We’re similar in that, since the beginning of time humans have been seeking, searching, longing to engage with, be touched by The Divine. We search for meaning; we long for protection, we hope for the Grace of a supreme being to pour over us and all those whom we love.
But we’re also different, so vastly and wonderfully different in how we search, in how we long and in how we hope. The Divine—God—is experienced in a vast array of ways because God—The Divine—will do anything ANYTHING to reach us in a most personal and intimate way.
Where humanity runs into trouble is forgetting that God reaches out to us in these different and specific ways--that what you find sacred I may find silly and what I find sacred you may find absurd. We really want our way to be THE way and we spend a lot of energy trying to PROVE that “their” way is the wrong way. Because if their way is the wrong way then we have a better chance of “proving” that our way is the right way. It’s all very competitive. And exhausting. And frustrating.
 And for God? Well for God it must be quite exasperating.
Speaking of exasperating—listen to the folks in today’s Gospel. “Jesus, did you hear what Pilate did? Jeeeeeeesus did you hear…what did those Galileans do to bring on that horror? How bad was their sin, how much did they mess up? C’mon Jesus, SPILL---how BAD WERE THEY?” They want Jesus to tell them that they’re better, that what they’re doing is right, that they’re not flunking sainthood, that they’re, instead excelling at sainthood.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t do that at all. In fact Jesus gets pretty blunt with them. He puts them in their place…and in turn, of course, he puts us in our place too.
Jesus tells us ---it isn’t the sinning that gets you into trouble, it’s what you do about the sinning that gets you into trouble. Sinning—making a mistake, moving us farther away from God—is unfortunate. None of us really want to do it but we all do…not because we are bad, but because mistakes are simply a part of the human condition…. we all sin. This is what Jesus is saying----you who are without sin, cast the first stone---he’s saying: ”listen folks, YOU ALL ARE SINNERS. Get over yourselves. Instead of being so concerned with your neighbor’s mistakes, why don’t you spend some time with your own mistakes—come to terms with them, accept that they’ve been made and set out to learn from them, straighten up and fly right…Repent, and move on.
 In other words, Jesus is telling us to engage in some reflection and some amendment of life. To take stock of all that we have done and left undone and make a decision to learn from our mistakes, get up and try again. To, like that fig tree, loosen up our soil and try this fruit bearing thing one more time.
By reading today’s Gospel at face value only, one might presume that God is in the judging and punishing business. But I think, as we delve a little deeper it becomes clear that God is, instead, in the witnessing and urging business.
God is always present, God sees what we do, God knows our intent, God witnesses the result. When we miss the mark, when we move away from instead of toward God, God has one hope—that we realize our misstep and, in the words of the church, Repent.
Repenting is simply realizing a mistake. Repenting is admitting that mistake. Repenting is learning from that mistake and moving on. Our mistakes will define us only when we wallow in them, when we are paralyzed by them.
 Our mistakes won’t define us as long as we learn from them and move on.
So back to this idea of Flunking Sainthood again, in the book the author, in her effort to find the perfect spiritual practice to bring her closer to God, the perfect practice to make her an excellent Christian,
makes a ton of mistakes. And for a good portion of the book she allows those mistakes to define her…but in the end…she realizes that the mistakes aren’t the end of the journey, they are simply part of the journey.
The journey is what matters. All of us are on a journey that begins and ends in God.
Each of our readings this morning reflects this journey we’re on. This journey of longing, deep in our souls, for God. A yearning expressed by both the psalmist and the prophet Isaiah as a “thirst for God.” A thirst for God that at times causes us to feel so parched we fear never having that thirst quenched. But, as even Paul reminds us in his somewhat harsh letter to the church in Corinth, God is faithful. God will never let us die of that thirst, for God is always with us on this journey, offering the refreshing, life-giving cup of eternal salvation. All we need to do is take it, in whatever way works for us. And drink.
Amen.

Wrestling with God

+Now you all don’t hear me talk much about sin. Sin is one of those church words that’s been so hijacked, been so misinterpreted that it’s hard to use in conversation without being misunderstood. But today I’m diving in. After all, it’s the first Sunday in Lent, what better time to talk about sin?
Last Sunday night I had a long wrestling match with sin. I had insomnia. I tossed and turned all night, worrying about something. My brain just wouldn’t stop---it just kept running the problem over and over in my head…finally around 4 am, exhausted and no closer to a solution than I had been at 11 pm it hit me----I wasn’t giving God any room . I wasn’t turning the problem over to God…and the only explanation for this, the only explanation for holding onto this problem throughout the long sleepless night was this: I didn’t trust God to handle it. I really thought that I had to come up with the solution myself, that somehow it wasn’t worth God’s time and concern….that God couldn’t be bothered.
In other words, I failed to trust God. I failed to let God in. I SHUT GOD OUT. And right there, in those three little words is a perfect definition of sin: shutting out God.
Remember, sin means missing the mark, sin means we’ve allowed ourselves to be ruled by fear, sin suggests we’ve forgotten about God. You see sin isn’t just some laundry list of misdeeds that we need to atone for before being in God’s favor. We are ALWAYS in God’s favor, we’re always God’s beloved. But when we close the door on our relationship with God, when we shut God out, we are harming ourselves. And us being hurt? That’s what hurts God.  Closing the door on our relationship with God hurts us so in turn, God is hurt. That’s sin.
So, the heart of our Lenten journey is to do whatever we can to LET GOD IN. To let God into the whole of our lives, completely thoroughly. It’s about entering into an active and trusting relationship with God.

Faith is about relationship….it’s about our relationships with each other, it’s about our relationship to all those whom we encounter outside these doors, but above all else, it’s about the relationship we have with God and the relationship we allow God to have with us.
I’ve mentioned before my somewhat pedestrian interpretation of the German priest and author Karl Rahner’s theology. With apologies to Fr. Rahner it boils down to this:
Our life is on a continuum….every decision we make, every action moves us on this continuum. At one end is God at the other end is what some people might call the Devil, others might call darkness, still others call evil and what I call Not God.  What we do—all day, every day either moves us closer to or farther away, from God.
Are you moving toward God or away? Are your choices fueled by light and grace or by darkness and despair? Do you trust God? I mean really trust God?
Jesus in today’s Gospel trusted God. And man oh man did that tick off the forces of darkness, the evil one, the Not God in our world. Jesus and Satan have a wrestling match of their own. And guess who wins?
Remember, Jesus has just emerged from the baptismal waters of the Jordan, he’s just been anointed as God’s beloved, the chosen one, when he’s thrust into 40 days of blistering heat, endless hunger, heart wrenching loneliness and 40 nights of bitter cold, desperate sleeplessness, and terrifying visions. The Devil is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at our Lord but because Jesus refuses to shut God out, because Jesus trusts in God no matter what, the temptations of the darkness, the evil forces of this world, the pull of His humanity do not win. In today’s Gospel, light defeats dark, hope overwhelms despair, Love beats hate and the march of God’s goodness continues on its way.
Today’s Gospel gives us hope; hope that as we begin our Lenten journey, the steady drumbeat of the light of Christ given to us at Christmas and  Epiphany will fuel us.
And that’s good news because to really do up Lent right, we need that light. For it’s that light which we use to shine in all the dark corners of our lives. You know those parts of us that we hide from, those things we left undone, or those things we’ve done that we wish we could undo.
The work of Lent is opening up space for God to come in and help us with the spring cleaning of our souls. In Lent we change the rhythm of our lives not so we can say that we successfully avoided chocolate or red meat or swearing or smoking for these 40 days, no we change the rhythm of our lives so that God can slip in and show up in the most unexpected places.
And this is where it can get a little tricky… changing the rhythm of our lives makes us vulnerable. Anytime we make a change, anytime we enter uncharted waters, we are vulnerable. And when we’re vulnerable we have two choices: stay in fear and trepidation, holding on for dear life or move into trust and faith, letting Go and letting God.
In case you didn’t know already, this is way easier said than done.
At 4 am last Sunday—well Monday morning---I realized I wasn’t trusting God. But that doesn’t mean I fell into blissful sleep and awoke to a settled mind and a soothed soul. Nope my wrestling match continued….I knew that I wasn’t trusting God, but it still took another day or so before I was able to drop all my defenses and open my arms wide to let God in…..and that’s ok. You see that’s what Lent is all about, learning how to trust that God, in the end, is always the one we can turn too, that God is always the one who can feed our hungers like no one or no thing else.
So the sin of my Sunday a week ago is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to embrace, it was something to dive into because it is only in experiencing some dark nights of Not God that we can gain the courage and the trust to move fully and wholly into the bright days of Only God. +

February 3, 2013 Epiphany 4 The Greatest Gift of All

+Couple’s preparing for marriage almost always choose today’s Epistle reading for their wedding. Invariably, they choose it because they think it so clearly expresses the love they have for each other, the love which, in their mind, will be the sole focus  of the wedding ceremony they’re planning. “Oh,” they exclaim, it’s PERFECT.” But then the cranky old priest informs them that this reading isn’t about their love for one another. That it doesn’t have anything to do with them directly, that St Paul didn’t think much of marriage anyway, so their love was not even on his radar as he penned these words to his flock in Corinth.
And therein lies a big problem. This reading has been given the full Hallmark make-over—and in the process it has been relegated to the “wedding reading,” so ubiquitous, that we fail to notice the profound and earth shattering message Paul was providing. You see what Paul is saying, in short, is that without God, nothing matters. Nothing.
 That promotion you just got at work? Without God? Big deal.
That wonderful partner you just promised to love and to cherish until you are parted by death? Without God? Nothing.
The healing you’ve received from that horrible illness? Without God in the picture?  Forget about it.
Paul is telling us that all those gifts we’ve been given, all the gifts of the spirit he’s been blathering about in the previous chapter are completely and utterly worthless—they mean absolutely NOTHING if they aren’t wrapped in, infused with, and born out of Love.
Not the love of mother to child, not the love of husband to wife, not the love of partner to partner, not the love of friend to friend, but the Love from which all these loves emanate. The Love from which all of Creation pours: God.
In his very Paul way (rambling harsh and at times convoluted) Paul is telling us that GOD IS LOVE.
God is THE LOVE that puts the warmth in the sun, the sparkle in your beloved’s eye, the giggle in a  child, the blue in the sky and the hope of the world. And without it, without this Love above all other loves? Well without it our gifts, no matter how vast, no matter how amazing, no matter how cherished, end up like so many discarded toys a few days after Christmas: a bunch of twisted plastic, crumpled tissue paper, broken boxes and torn ribbons, forgotten and tossed aside.
A couple of years ago I began my Christmas Eve sermon by remembering this exchange I had with my niece Alyssa when she was a little girl:
“What’s this?” “A present for you.” “For me?” “Yes, it’s for you.” “Why?” “ Because I love you very much.”
It was either Christmas or her birthday and I was giving Alyssa a gift. Presents were kind of new to her, and she didn’t quite get that this was just for her… to keep. Forever! She was delighted beyond belief with the gift. But it wasn’t the doll or the book or the toy, it wasn’t even the thrill of receiving a gift from another. No for that little girl it was (and I might say, still is for the almost 25 year old woman she has become) the love which led me to want to give her something. That’s what gave her such a thrill. Out of her appreciation of that love, out of her love for me came her unbridled innocent response of joy: “For me? Especially for me?”
You see, little Alyssa got it right all those years ago: the REAL gift isn’t the toy or the book, or the ability to prophesy, or to heal or to preach or to do altar guild, or host coffee hour or serve on vestry—the REAL gift, the ONLY gift is Love.
We can be the greatest at what we do—the best lawyer, the best writer, the best teacher, the best nurse, the best volunteer, the best mother, the best father, the best friend, the best partner, the best the best the best—but if we do these things for our own glory and not for God’s, if we do these things for our own gain solely and not for the good of the whole, if we do these things in a vacuum oblivious to our responsibility to the world around us, then these gifts, these skills, these talents are just a noisy clanging bell signifying absolutely nothing.
The astonishing thing about this reading, the thing lost on so many of us who have heard the reading ad nauseum at weddings is this:
The Love of which Paul speaks “bears all things. Believes all things. Hopes all things.”
It. Never. Ends. Everything else—everything else—will end. All our gifts—no matter how fabulous-- all that we are and all that we have will end. It will all decay and crumble. It will all be forgotten and lost. But, not love. Not this Love that is God. Not this Love that fueled the dawn of creation. Not this Love that welled up and came to live among us in the person of Jesus Christ.
This Love, the Love beyond all understanding, the Love beyond full comprehension, the Love we can only see through a glass dimly until the Last day—this is the Love that knits us, inextricably and forever, to God. AND, it is the Love that, inextricably and forever, knits us to one other. For it is in us and through us that the Love to end all Loves, the Love that is God takes shape as the Body of Christ in this world.
So unwrap your gifts, exclaim your joy and know that this Greatest Gift of All, the Love that is God, will never end, it will never wear out and it will never ever fail us. Thanks be to God! +