Priest & Poet

4 Epiphany

2012-01-29T05:03:00.001-08:00

January 29, 2012

Psalm 111; Mark 1.21-28

+ Well, you know I had to do it. You know that on this Sunday—this Sunday on which we have our Annual Meeting—I had to do a bit of what I do well. I am a good cheerleading. There’s just no getting around it. There are just so many great things going on around us here. And we should be thankful. There is much to be thankful for on our Annual Meeting Sunday.

It is one of those glorious moments for us here at St. Stephen’s when we realize that following Jesus means following him to a moment in which it all just sort of comes together. When being a follower of Jesus is like being part of a well-oiled machine.

Any of us who have been in the Church for any period of time knows that these are rare moments. The Church very rarely feels like a well-oiled machine. But when it does—let me tell you, it’s pretty sweet.

Most of us who here this morning have come from other congregations or denominations that, for whatever reasons, have not been functioning well. There is a reason why we have found St. Stephen’s and like it. We have seen dysfunction in our past. We have seen what it’s like to not be following Jesus as we should. We have felt frustration and disappointment.

But…I think we need to clear. Those moments of frustration and disappointment and, yes, even dysfunction—they too are important to growth. Those moments too are important as we follow Jesus wherever he might lead us. To be a follower of Jesus means we follow him wherever he goes. And sometimes the places he leads us are not always pleasant places to be.

In the beginning of our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus in a place, at first, in which he is being marveled at. People are amazed by his teaching. It is, certainly a high point for those followers of Jesus. It is a moment in which the decision they made to follow him has been, in some very real way, validated.

And then, in the midst of that adulation, those followers find themselves confronting evil. There, in the middle of all that praise, comes a person possessed by an evil spirit. It was, no doubt, an unpleasant moment. Can you just imagine? Just when things seem to be going well, there’s a crazy, possessed person in their midst.

For us we have been confronted with things like this as well. Well, maybe not crazy, possessed people. Dear God! But we do know a few things about evil. For all the grand and glorious things we see on occasion as followers of Jesus, we are also reminded that there is still injustice and oppression and sexism and homophobia and a multitude of other really horrible things going around us in the world and in our society.

We see evil. We know evil. We are confronted with evil on a regular basis, and especially in those moments in which we really don’t want to confront evil. But, what Jesus’ encounter with the evil spirit shows, however—and, again, as we all know here—is that evil is not quite what we thought it was.

Yes, evil has much power in this world. But it does not have ultimate power. Evil does not—nor does it ever—win in the end. History has shown this again and again. And, in following Jesus, when we confront evil and injustice and oppression and discrimination, we know full well that these things will all one day be cast out. They all will be quieted. And goodness will triumph ultimately in the end. We know this as followers of Jesus. We know this because we know that’s what it means to follow Jesus.

Here at St. Stephen’s there have been ebbs and flows. There have been good times, and there have been bad times in our history. And there will continue to be ebbs and flows, and good times and bad times. It’s just the way life is.

But what we realize now, in this wonderful moment, is that when God’s blessings flow and we can feel that Presence of ultimate goodness at work in our lives, we like those people who witnesses Jesus casting out the evil spirit, are amazed. We wonder and we marvel at what is happening. And hopefully, like those first followers, we are motivated. We are motivated to continue following Jesus, as parishioners of St. Stephen’s, wherever he leads us. We are motivated to continue to stand up and speak out against evil when we are confronted with it.

That is what we have always done here at St. Stephen’s and that is what we will continue to do. We do this, because that is what followers of Jesus do. As we look back over the fifty-plus years of ministry at St. Stephen’s, we see that many wonderful things have been brought to fruition here.

A few weeks, we had a visitor who shared with me how amazed she was that this seemingly small congregation in north Fargo has produced some major ministries that are still felt in our wider community. Stepping up to the plate and doing important things as followers of Jesus is what we have always done here and continue to do. And as we all know, in both good and evil, there are consequences to all of our actions. When we do something, whether it be good or wrong, there will be a consequence. When we do good and step up the plate and defend people, the good consequences of those good actions have far-ranging effects, so far ranging in fact that we might never even fully realize what they do. And in those moments, we are often amazed.

Yesterday, on Facebook, I saw a wonderful cartoon. It shows a person, kneeling, with his hands folded in prayer, before Jesus. But Jesus is surrounded by people. One is in a wheelchair. One is bandaged. One is on crutches. Some have soiled clothing it looks like. The caption of the cartoon is a quote from the person praying: “Why is it that whenever I ask Jesus into my life, he always brings his friends?”

Well, we know full well here at St. Stephen’s that’s exactly what it means to ask Jesus into our lives. We know that when we decide to follow, he going to bring his friends with him. His friends who are naked and oppressed and marginalized. And when we follow Jesus, he isn’t always going to lead us through sun-lit fields full of easy pathways.

When we follow Jesus, he leads us, again and again, to his friends. He leads us again and again down paths in which we told to help people who we might not normally notice or deal with and make their lives better. We are called again and again to feed the hungry and heal the sick and to try, in whatever we can, to make other’s lives in some way better. And, as we journey through our Church year toward Lent, we know that following Jesus means following him on the Way of the Cross, a path that goes through a place of darkness and violence and through a moment in which is seems that evil triumphs and goodness loses.

Of course, we know better. We know good always wins. That is what we are celebrating this morning. The fact that, yes, we have been through those dark moments. We have been through those lean years. We have been through moments when it seems as though Jesus was leading us through desert wastes and arid lands.

But this morning, in this moment, he is leading through a verdant land. And as we follow, we are seeing amazing things. And it is good.

So, let us rejoice and be thankful on this Sunday of our Annual Meeting. Let us be thankful for all that we have been given in this past year. And let us look with joy into a future of unlimited possibilities.

“You have shown your people the power of your works,” we prayed in our psalm for today.

We have seen the power of God’s work in our midst. And on this morning we can truly say that is wonderful and glorious. What more can we do on this beautiful Sunday, but rejoice?

2 Epiphany

2012-01-15T05:22:00.001-08:00

January 15, 2012

1 Samuel 3.1-20; John 1.43-51

+ I can be, shall we say, a bit of a jerk sometimes—especially to my fellow clergy. They need to have someone be jerks to them occasionally.

This past weekend I met with my good friend, the Reverend Ann Anderson. Ann, as some of you may know, is an Episcopal priest at Gethsemane Cathedral here in Fargo. Although I wasn’t feeling well this week because of duodenal ulcer that has been wreaking a bit of havoc with me, I went out with Ann because occasionally we just need to talk and vent a bit. At some point in the conversation we had on Friday night, I announced, quite loudly, trying to prove a point I was making and trying to predict the future about a certain issue:

“I am the prophet in your midst…”

To which Ann looked at me very incredulously and just dramatically rolled her eyes and then said something I can't repeat in church. As she should have.

Trust me, I am no prophet. I was never called to be a prophet, nor would I want to be.

But…I will say this: I have been called. No, not three times, like the prophet Samuel. But just once. And when it happened, I was just a boy, just like Samuel. I was thirteen years old. I was Lutheran. And I was walking in, of all places, a cemetery. Some of you have heard this story before, but it’s one that is so much a part of who I am and where I’ve come from that I will probably tell the story again and again until my dying day.

That day I didn’t hear a voice, like Samuel. And I don’t think I ever audibly said, “Here I am!” But the fact was, that day, I knew God wanted me to be a priest.

Often in our lives, we have those moments. They’re brackets in our lives. Or joints. Our life was going along one way and then BAM! something happens and our lives are following a completely direction than we intended. Sometimes, more often than not, it’s a relationship with someone that does it to most of us. For me, it was the priesthood. There were moments in the years that followed in which I found myself questioning my calling.

A few years later I received another just as valid, just as legitimate calling—to be a poet. And for many years I felt conflicted. Should I be a poet and a teacher of poetry? Or should I be a priest? I hadn’t yet realized that it was essentially a dual-vocation.

But there were moments when, after deciding on setting my nose to the grindstone to be a priest, when I was envious of fellow poets and poetry teachers. While they gained tenure, published, won awards, cultivated their writing careers, kept up on with the latest trends in that insular world of poetry, I was in ensconced in the equally insular world of the priesthood.

As I pursued my goal of the priesthood, I was paid very little as I worked in one thankless minor church job after another. I had one set back after another. I went to seminary. I studied theology at three different schools. And ten years ago next month, I was diagnosed with cancer. There were feasts, there were fasts, there were famines. But at no point, even in those moments when I reached what I felt were spiritual and personal “rock bottom” moments, did I ever doubt that calling in my life.

I was truly able to say to God in those dark, cold moments, “Here I am. Do with me what you must. I am trusting you to get me through.”

I preserved. I kept on keeping on, as the old saying went. And I kept on looking.

In today’s Gospel, we find Philip saying to Nathaniel, “Come and see.”

And we find Jesus telling Nathaniel, “You will see greater things than these.”

For all those low points in my life, there were just as many and more high points. There were miracles, the recovery from illness, the saints—true, living saints—that I have met—and still continue to meet—and walked beside, I too have seen great things. And although I have not seen heaven literally opened or angels literally “ascending and descending,” I have seen the veil between this world and heaven lifted many times—oftentimes here at this altar at the Eucharist. And I have seen angels ascending and descending in the guise of fellow travelers along the way.

Like Nathaniel, who would have a series of low points in his own life (legend says he would die a particularly horrible martyrs death of being flayed alive, forced to walk, skinless in the desert, before being headed), through it all, he kept looking. And in looking, he saw. This is what it means to be a disciple—a follower of Jesus.

Despite the setbacks, the illnesses, despite the people who are out to trip you up, there are also the rewards—the high points that are better than any other high points.

Now, I am telling you the story of my priesthood, here. But for all of us, it’s the same when we talk about being Christians. Being a Christian means being a follower of Jesus—being a minister of Christ And being a disciple is a difficult thing at times. No one, when we became Christians, promised us sparkling, light-filled moments and rose gardens every step of the way. Actually, when we became Christians, we became Christians—all of us—in the shadow of the Cross. When we were baptized, we were marked with the Cross. That was a quaint, sweet little sentiment. It meant we were baptized into following Jesus wherever he left in his life and ours—the good times and the bad. And as a result, we have faced our lives as followers of Jesus Christ squarely and honestly.

This is no cult we belong to, that promises us that if we do this and that we will be freed from pain and suffering. As followers of Jesus, we know that, Yes, bad things are going to happen to us. There will be illness, there will be setbacks, there will be broken relationships and conflicts with others, there will be loss and there will be death. And we know that there will be many, many people out there who want to trip us up and who want us to fail. Following Jesus means being able, in those dark moments, to look and to see. When surrounded by darkness, we can see light. When stuck in the mire and muck of this life, we can still look up and see those angels descending and ascending on the Son of Man, the One we have chosen to follow.

As I look back over these past many, many years, I realize they have been the most productive and fruitful years of my life. More than anything, as I look back over these last years, I find God weaving in and out of my life. As I look back, I find God, speaking to me, much as God spoke to Samuel in today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures.

God, whether I was listening or not, was calling me again and again by name. God is calling each of us by our name. God is calling to us again and again. Our answer is a simple one. It simply involves, getting up, looking and seeing, and saying to God,

“Here I am.”

Here I am.

And when do that, we will find that, like Samuel, God is with us. And—in that glorious moment—we will know: God will not allow one of our words to fall useless to the ground.

Baptism of Our Lord

2012-01-08T05:32:00.001-08:00

January 8, 2012

Genesis 1.1-5; Mark 1.4-1

+ There are few things that I love more than when people start talking about all the great things happening here at St. Stephen’s. And let me tell you, they have been talking. Just this past week I was asked by some—from another churches:

“So…what’s the secret of the current success at St. Stephen’s?”

I’m usually pretty baffled by that question. It seems to assume there’s some great, well-thought-out plan. The fact is, there isn’t any grand, well-thought-out plan. At least, not on my part.

But, I think it’s a good question, and it’s good for us to think about it. It’s good for us to ponder it and to delve deeply and honestly into the why we are doing so well here. I think I personally am not able to articulate what’s happening.

But, this past week, I came across a wonderful quote by one of the best spiritual writers out there right now, the Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, who, I would say, does a pretty good job of articulating what’s going on. Taylor writes:

“When I hear people talk about what is wrong with organized religion, or why their mainline churches are failing, I hear about bad music, inept clergy, mean congregations, and preoccupation with institutional maintenance. I almost never hear about the intellectualization of faith, which strikes me as a far greater danger than anything else on the list. In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster than most of us can digest--when many of us have at least two email addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number--the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those who intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.”

More God. I think she nails it on the head with that.

I have found from many of our new members, this is one of this things (along with our open acceptance and our strong peace-and-social justice stance) that they love about St. Stephen's— a strong sense of spirituality backed up by action, in other words (i.e. rather than talking about worship of God and ministry, we are worshipping and doing ministry): We do that very well here.

And we also realize that we are all searchers after God here. In other words, what’s happening here is more than just social. We are more than just a social-justice organization. Any of us can find social-justice organizations out there, and they probably do social-justice better than we can any day.

And we are more than a church that intellectualizes out search for God. We don’t just sit around talking about God and pondering God.

We, at St. Stephen’s, put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. Rather than just talking about God, we actually worship here. We worship here in the liturgy—in our encounter with Christ in our Eucharist—and we encounter God in the music we sing. We, more talking about worship, actually worship here. God is real to us because we truly experience God here.

And we more than just talk about social justice here. We actually do it. But we do it not because it’s the popular thing to do or because we are pressured by society of the Church. We do it because it stems from that real Presence of God we experience here. We do it because our relationship with God compels us to go out and do ministry.

In other words, what we do here is we, by our worship, by our ministry, by what we do, by what we have been conditioned to do to some extent by our very baptisms, is help God in bringing God into the our midst. We are further the Kingdom of God. We—on this first Sunday of Epiphany—are in fact helping that epiphany of Christ in our midst.

This past Wednesday we commemorated the Feast of the Epiphany, which occurred on Friday. Epiphany is a beautiful feast, though I think it’s a bit anti-climactic, following Christmas. At our Wednesday night Mass, I shared some thoughts from Fr. John-Julian, an Episcopal priest and a member of the Order of Julian of Norwich in Wisconsin. He started out, in his talk, by reminding us that this word, Epiphany, comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, which means, “manifestation” or “showing forth”. He then went on to explain that the Epiphany commemorates four manifestations of Christ in his life:

1) The adoration of Shepherds at the manger in Bethlehem, which we commemorated essentially on Christmas Eve

2) The Visit of the Magi or the Three Kings, which is very much the traditional understanding of what Epiphany is.

3) Jesus baptism by John the Baptists in the River Jordan, which we commemorate this morning.

And 4) Jesus’ first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

In today’s Gospel reading, we find what Fr. John-Julian and many other Christian thinkers call a Theophany. Theophany means “A manifestation of God”, but today we see it in a very profound way. We actually find the very Trinity—Father, Son and holy Spirit—being revealed—the Father, in the voice that proclaims, “You are…my Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” the Son in the flesh of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the dove that descends upon Jesus.

It is an incredible event—in the lives of those first followers and in our lives as Christians as well. Here the standard is set. In this moment, it has all come together. In this moment, it is all very clear how this process is happening. Here the breakthrough has happened.

For us it’s important because we too are still experiencing the benefits of that event. From now on, this is essentially what was spoken to each of us at our own baptisms:

“You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

For most of us, we have no doubt taken for granted our baptisms, much as we have taken for granted water itself.

Yes, I know: I preach a lot about baptism. And I don’t just mean that I preach a lot about how much I like doing baptisms. I preach often about how important each of our baptisms are to us because they are important. In a sense what happened at Jesus’ baptism happened at our baptisms as well. And when we realize that, we also realize that Baptism is THE defining moment in our lives as Christians.

Whether we remember the event or not, it was the moment when our lives changed. It was the moment we became new. It was, truly, our second birth.

I am so happy that we do something as simple as commemorate our baptisms here at St. Stephen’s. I asked early last year for many of you to search out the dates of your baptisms. And you did. And we remember those dates in our prayers here in the Eucharist each Sunday. I like to encourage people to find out the date of their baptism.

Of course, as you know, I always look for a reason to celebrate, but baptism anniversaries are truly great opportunities to celebrate.

I often reference my best friend from high school, Greg. As you know, he is a die-hard atheist. Well, I did manage to find out the date of his baptism—July 16—and, much to his chagrin, the poor man receives a baptism anniversary card on his baptism anniversary. Whether or not he appreciates it is not really the most important thing. The important thing is that, even despite his atheism, which I actually respect and, in a very real way, understand, he still belongs to Christ. He was marked by Christ in his baptism for all eternity. And nothing he—or anyone else can do—can change that.

That’s why I think Baptism is so very radical. In our current Prayer Book this bond is probably best defined. After the Baptism, when the priest traces a cross on the newly baptized person’s forehead, she or he says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.”

This is essential to our belief of what happens at baptism. In baptism, we are all marked as Christ’s own. For ever. It is a bond that can never be broken. We can try to break it as we please. We can struggle under that bond. We can squirm and resist it. We can try to escape it. But the simple fact is this: we can’t. For ever is for ever.

No matter how much we may turn our backs on Christ, Christ never turns his back on us. No matter how much we try to turn away from Christ, to deny Christ, to pick Christ apart and make Christ something other than who he is, Christ never turns his back on us. Christ never denies us.

What Baptism shows us, more than anything else, is that we always belong to Christ. It is shows us that Christ will never deny us or turn away from us. It shows us that, no matter what we might do, we will always be Christ’s. Always. For ever.

In this way, Baptism is truly the great equalizer. In those waters, we are all bathed—no matter who we are and what we are. We all emerge from those waters on the same ground—as equals. And, as equals, we are not expected to just sit around, hugging ourselves and basking in the glow of the confidence that we are Christ’s own possession. As equals, made equal in the waters of baptism, we are then compelled to go out into the world and treat each others as equals.

And that’s what we do well here at St. Stephen’s. For us, Baptism is not some quaint dedication ceremony. It is the event that still provokes us and compels us to go out into the world and make a difference in it. Our baptism doesn’t set us apart as a special people above everyone else. It forces us out into the world to be a part of the world and, by doing so, to transform the world.

So, in those waters of baptism, something incredible happened for us. We went into those waters one person, and emerged from those waters as something else completely. It was an incredible moment in our lives, just as it was in the life of Jesus, who led the way and showed us that Baptism was an incredible outpouring of God’s love and light into our lives.

So, with this knowledge of how important it is, let us each take the time to meditate and think about our own baptisms and the implications this incredible event had and still has in our lives. When you enter this church, and when you leave it, pay attention to the baptismal font in the narthex and the blessed water in it. Touch that water, bless yourselves with it, and when you do, remember you do so as a reminder of that wonderful event in your life which marked you forever as Christ’s very own. And let that water be a reminder to you that you are called to go now from this church and from this Eucharist we have shared in, to love.

To love, full and completely. To realize that we are equally loved by God—no matter who we are or what we are.

And as we go from here, let us listen for those words—those beautiful, lulling words—that is spoken to each of us, with love and acceptance:

“You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

The Holy Name

2012-01-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

January 1, 2012

Numbers 6.22-27, Psalm 8, Galatians 4.4-7 and Luke 2.15-21

+ Those Episcopalians like myself who identify themselves as “Anglo-Catholics” are, let’s face it, a strange lot. We do some strange things—or at least that’s what I’ve been told by others—both Episcopalian and non-Episcopalians.

On Friday night I did a wedding at Gethsemane Cathedral here in Fargo and afterward, at the reception dinner, a young man—a Lutheran—who seated at my table said to me: “So, I noticed you kept nodding during the service. What’s that all about?”

At first I had to think about it. I was nodding during the service? And then it hit me. Oh, I was nodding at the name of Jesus.

I said, “Well, some Episcopalians nod every time the name of Jesus is mentioned. I’m one of those. It’s a simple way of paying homage to the Name of Jesus.”

This young man sat back and pondered this for a while and then said, “I like that, but I don’t know if that’s gonna go over too well at the Lutheran Church in Milnor.”

Maybe not.

But, for me, it is important to do this simple act because it keeps me on my spiritual It keeps aware that this name of Jesus that we are celebrating today on this Sunday of the Holy Name is special. It is different. We do pay a little more special attention to Jesus’ name when it is mentioned.

This particular day of the Holy Name of Jesus, used to go by another name in the Episcopal and Lutherhan Church. It was once known as the feast of the Circumsicion of Our Lord. We have kept the feast, but we’ve changed the name, probably for good reason.

On the eighth day following Jesus’ birth, he, like all Jewish males born in his time, was brought to the Temple, circumcised and named. This name, Jesus or Joshua, Yeshua in Hebrew, was a common name in his day.

There are two differing translation of the name: One is “God with us.” The other is “God saves,” or more specifically “God saves us from our sins.”

Today is an important feast on one hand because what it shows us is that we do truly have an intimate relationship with God. God is no longer a nameless, distant deity. God has a name—or rather the God who came to us in Jesus has a name.

We all know how important names are. Our own names are important to us. They define us. We have been trained to respond when we hear our name called. We, in effect, are our names. Our names and our selves are bound inexorably together. Our name is truly who we are.

The same can be said of God. In the Old Testament God reveals the Divine Name as Yahweh. Yahweh is such a sacred and holy word to the Jews that it can not even be repeated. In a sense, the name Yahweh becomes so intertwined with Who God is that is becomes, for the Jews, almost like God. It is the Name God revealed to Aaron.

God said, “they shall put my name—Yahweh—on them and I will bless them.”

The message here to all of us is that to have a truly meaningful relationship with anyone—to truly know them—we need to know them by their name. So, too, is this same idea used when we think about our own relationship with God and, in turn, God’s relationship with us. God knows us by name and we know God by name.

This is important. God is not simply some distant Being we vaguely comprehend. God is close. God is closer than we can even imagine. God knows us and we know God. We know each other by name. This is why the name of Jesus is important to us. That is why we give the Name a certain level of respect. That is why I, and other Anglo-Catholics, do that little nod every time his name is mentioned.

Like the Name that was revealed to Aaron, so has the Name of our God been revealed to us. And like the name Yahweh to the Jews, the Name of Jesus is holy and sacred to us Christians.

We have all seen the IHS symbol in churches. Not many people know what IHS stands for. Some people think they are initials for “In his service” But they are not initials. They are the first three letters of the name of Jesus in Greek. They are the letters Iota, Eta and Sigma. Whenever we see the HIS symbol, we are to be reminded of the Holy Name of Jesus.

There was an old belief that the IHS devotion was started by a 14th century Franciscan priest, St. Bernadine of Siena. For St. Bernadine and for those who followed Bernadine’s devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, nothing was more holy and more sacred than the Holy Name of Jesus.

Certainly even for us, the Name is a vital and important part of what we believe as Christians. The collect for the Feast of the Holy Name today recalls that the name of Jesus is the “sign of our salvation.” I don’t see that as a sweet, overly sentimental notion. I see it as a very important part of who we are as Christians. I also don’t see that nodding at the name of Jesus as an overly pious action.

I see it as a sign of respect for Jesus at a time when his Name is widely abused and misused. We’ve all done it. We’ve all sworn, using the Name in a disrespectful way. We have not given the rightful respect to God’s name in our lives, even when we know full well that a name is more than just a name.

A Name is, in a sense, one’s essence. Certainly in Jesus’ case, it is. Jesus is “God with us.” Jesus is “God saving us.” By this very name we have a special relationship with this God who has come among us We belong to this God whose name we know.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that God belongs to us. Rather, God is with us. All of us. God, in Jesus, has come to all of us. God in Jesus knows each of us by name. Certainly those of us who are Christian know this in a unique way.

When we were baptized, we, like Jesus eight days after his birth, were named. At our baptism, were signed as Christ’s own forever. We were claimed by God by name. By Baptism, our own names became holy names. By Baptism, God came to know us by name and because of that, our names are sanctified. We bear in us our own holy name before God.

So today—this day we celebrate not only God’s holy name but our own as well—and in the days to come, take to heart the fact that God’s name is holy and sacred. Be mindful of the words you use and be mindful of that name of Jesus in your life. But also be mindful of your own holy name. When you hear your own name, remember that it is the name God knows you by and, as a result, it is truly holy. In sense our own names can be translated as “God with us.” When we hear our names, let us hear “God saves us.”

And let us be reminded that God knows us better than anyone else—even our own selves. Claim the holiness of your name and know that God in Jesus is calling you to your own fullness of life by name.

Christmas Day

2011-12-25T04:59:00.001-08:00

December 25, 2012

Isaiah 52.7-10; John 1.1-14

+ I don’t know about you, but do you notice how this morning seems just a bit different? It feels just a bit more holy than usual, more joyful, more…glorious. I think that is what Christmas Day is all about. This sense of it all being just…a bit more holy and complete.

Yesterday, my dear friend, the poet, Marjorie Buettner shared this poem by the great Trappist monk and poet, Thomas Merton:

Make ready
for the Christ
whose smile,
like lightning
sets free
the Song
of everlasting
glory
that now sleeps
in your paper
flesh like
Dynamite.

For some reason, I have been clinging to that poem since yesterday. It has rung in my mind again and again.

Make ready
for the Christ
whose smile,
like lightning
sets free
the Song
of everlasting
glory…

For me, that captures perfectly this strange feeling I have experiencing this morning I was sharing last night at Christmas Eve Mass about how I LOVE a Christmas Day mass. I haven’t done one in several years and I have never done one here at St. Stephen’s.

But I love the Christmas Day mass in the same way I love the Christmas Eve service. Today, things do seem just a bit different. Things seem a little more beautiful.

And now—this morning— Christmas is here. This morning, we celebrate the Light. And we celebrate the Word. We celebrate the Light that has come to us in our collective and personal darkness. We celebrate the Light that has come to us in our despair and our fear, in our sadness and in our frustration.

And we celebrate this Word that has been spoken to us—this Word of hope. This Word that God is among us.

We celebrate this “Christ
whose smile,
like lightning
sets free
the Song
of everlasting
glory

And as we experience Light and Word and Song—as we experience God in our midst—it does, no doubt seem most of us are feeling two emotions—the two emotions Christmas is all about—hope and joy.

Hope--in our belief that what has come to us—Christ—God made flesh—is here among us

And Joy—at the realization of that reality.

As we come forward this morning to meet with joy and hope this mystery that we remember and commemorate and make ours today, we too should find ourselves feeling these emotions at our very core. This hope and joy we are experiencing this morning comes up from our very centers. We will never fully understand how or why Jesus—God made flesh—has come to us as this little child in a stable in the Middle East, as this glorious Light, as this Word, but it has happened and, because it happened, we are a different people.

Our lives are different because of what happened that evening. This baby has taken away, by his very life and eventual death, everything we feared and dreaded. When we look at it from that perspective, suddenly we find our emotions heightened. We find that our joy is a joy like few other joys we’ve had. We find that our hope is more tangible—more real—than anything we have ever hoped in before. And that is what we are celebrating this morning.

Our true hope and true joy is not in brightly colored lights and a pile of presents until a decorated tree. Our true hope and joy is not found in the malls or the stores. Our true hope and joy does not come to us with things that will, a week from now, be a fading memory.

Our hope and joy is in that Baby who, as he comes to us, causes us to leap up with joy at his very presence. Our hope and joy is in that almighty and incredible God who would come to us, not on some celestial cloud with a sword in his hand and armies of angels flying about him. Our hope and joy is in a God who comes to us in this innocent child, born to a humble teenager in a dusty third world land. Our hope and joy is in a God who comes with a face like our face and flesh like our flesh—a God who is born, like we are born—of a human mother—and who dies like we all must die. Our hope and joy is in a God who comes and accepts us and loves us for who we are and what we are—a God who understands what it means to live this sometimes frightening uncertain life we live. But who, by that very birth, makes all births unique and holy and who, by that death, takes away the fear of death for all of us. Our hope and joy is in a God who smiles at us and when this God does, we find music being set free within us.

This is the real reason why we are joyful and hopeful on this beautiful morning. This is why we are feeling within us a strange sense of longing and fulfillment. This is why we are rushing toward our Savior who has come to visit us in what we once thought was our barrenness, our Savior who has, as we heard today in our reading from Isaiah, “bared his holy arm.”

Let the hope we feel this morning as Jesus our Savior draws close to us stay with us now and always. Let the joy we feel this morning as Jesus our Friend comes to us in love be the motivating force in how we live our lives throughout this coming year.

Jesus is here. He is in our midst this morning, as he always is. We hear his voice speaking to us in the scriptures And we feel him and sense him the bread and wine of the Eucharist that we are about the share on this altar. He is here as the Light that shines in the darkness of our lives. And he is here in the Word which he speaks to us.

But we are also more aware of him because of what we celebrating this morning. He is here in the form of an innocent, defenseless child. He is here as one of us, with a face like our face and flesh like our flesh. In him, God has visited us and is present with us. And we, in turn, are able to carry Jesus within us and share this incredible Presence with others by our very lives. Jesus is so near this morning that our very bodies and souls are rejoicing.

So, let us greet him this morning with all that we have within us. Let us greet him with songs. Let us greet him with thanksgiving. Let us greet him with all that you have within you. And let us all welcome him into the shelter of our hearts. And when we do, we will realize that “all the ends of the world shall see the salvation of our God.”

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T11:17:00.001-08:00

December 24, 2011

Luke 2.1-20

+ I am almost embarrassed to say this. For those of you who know me, I am a consummate rebel. If everyone else likes something, I don’t (even if I really do). All of my life I have done this. I have said to myself: “I am not going to conform to what the world expects.”

And, for the most part, I can say that I have been fairly successful in doing just that in my life. And let me tell you: life is not easy for the consummate rebel.

Certainly, that’s how I’ve been about Christmas in the past. While everyone else runs around with Christmas cheer brimming over, and happy smiles on their faces, there’s me, grumpy and dour, forcing myself to buy Christmas presents at the very last minute.

But…I must be getting older or something. It hasn’t been that way this year. I almost hate to admit this, but I actually really enjoyed the secular Christmas season this year.

I have forced myself out of my rebellious state of mind and have just gone with it all. I forced myself to give one party after another at the rectory. I decorated. I bought presents. I served cider and egg nog and Christmas cookies. And, I also almost hate to admit this as well: but I made Christmas tree ornaments today.

This past week, our Senior Gin Templeton told me about Sputnik Christmas Ornaments from the late 1950s I was fascinated by it and, dare I say, obsessed for a while about these Sputnik Christmas ornaments from the 1950s. And of course, any of you who have been to the rectory and seen how I have decorated it in a very retro late 1950s/early 1960s style, I LOVE all that retro/ atomic/1950s kitsch. So, there I was today, sticking toothpicks into Styrofoam balls and painting them metallic gray.

But for me, the real joy of this season is not found in any of that. Despite all my previous curmudgeonly behavior regarding Christmas, I have always loved the theological and spiritual aspects of Christmas. And, by far, my greatest pleasure during Advent and Christmas is being in church. Ok. I’m a priest. What do you expect? Of course, I’m going to love being in church.

And the best time to be in church is always Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning.

One of life’s pleasures for me has always been Christmas Eve. And more specifically a Christmas Eve Mass. Some of my most pleasant memories are of this night and the liturgies I’ve attended over the years.

Another of life’s small pleasures is Christmas morning. I especially enjoy going to church on Christmas morning. The world seems to pristine, so new.

And one of my greatest pleasures as a priest, is to celebrate the Eucharist with you on this evening that is, in its purest sense, holy. And tomorrow morning, because it’s Sunday, I am looking forward to celebrating the Eucharist again here on Christmas morning.

The Christmas we celebrate here tonight, in this church, is a Christmas of real joy. I think we are all feeling it this evening. Something is just different on Christmas Eve. We can’t quite pin it down. We can’t quite define it. But we know it’s different tonight. We are feeling joy tonight.

But it is a joy of great seriousness as well. It is a joy that humbles us and quiets us. It is a joy filled with a Light that makes all the glittery, splashy images around us pale in comparison.

The Christmas we celebrate here tonight is not a frivolous one. It is not a light, airy Christmas. Yes, it has a baby. ‘ Yes, it has shepherds Yes, it has angels and a bright shining star. But these are not bubblegum images.

A birth of a baby in that time and in that place was a scary and uncertain event. They did not have the medical treatment we have now. hepherds were actually seen as kind of rowdy, roughnecks. Angels were not chubby little cherubs rolling about in mad abandon in some cloud-filled other-place. They were terrifying creatures—messengers of a God of Might and Wonder. And stars were often seen as omens—as something that could either bring great hope or great terror to the world. Often signs like stars in the sky were seen as omens of war and disaster.

But for us, it is not so. The event we celebrate tonight is THE event in which God breaks through to us. And whenever God beaks through, it is not some gentle nudge. It is an event that jars us, provokes us and, ultimately, changes us.

The prophet Isaiah shares in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures this evening:

“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them a light has shined.”

For people walking in deep darkness, that glaring Light that breaks through into their lives is not the most pleasant thing in the world. It is blinding and painful. And what it exposes, sometimes, is sobering. Some of us who live in the dark do not want what to be exposed because we are so used to the dark.

Last Sunday, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we prayed together:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself

Tonight, this whole evening is about him coming to us and making his home in us. Now, a home, as we all know, is the heart of our lives. It is where we find our sustenance. It is a place we find our comfort. Without a home, we are aimless. So, to be a home—a mansion at that—for Jesus means that he doesn’t just come for a visit.

We’re not just hosting him tonight for a Christmas party. It means, he comes to stay—to live with us. In us. That is what Jesus does during this Christmas season. He comes to us and stays with us. He dwells with us and in us. And we become the dwelling places of Christ to those around us.

That is what we are commemorating tonight. We are commemorating a “break through” from God—an experience with God that leaves us different people than we were before that encounter. What we experience is a Christmas that promises us something tangible. It promises us, and delivers, a real joy. The joy we feel tonight, the joy we feel at this Child’s birth, as the appearance of these angels, of that bright star, of that Light that breaks through into the darkness of our lives, at the fact that this Child comes to us and finds his home in us is a joy that promises us something. It is a teaser, as well, of what awaits us. It is a glimpse into the life we will have one day. It is a perfect joy that promises a perfect life.

But just because it is a joyful event, does not mean that it isn’t a serious event. What we celebrate is serious. It is an event that causes us to rise up in a joyful happiness, while, at the same time, driving us to our knees in humble adoration. It is an event that should cause us not just to return home to our brightly wrapped presents, but it should also send us out into the world to make it, in some small way, a reflection of this life-changing joy that has come into our lives. It should drive to be a true dwelling of Christ.

Tonight is one of those moments in which true joy and gladness have come upon us. God has broken through to us. Christ has come to us and is dwelling within each of us, no matter who we might be.

So, let us cling to this moment. Let make ourselves a true dwelling place for Christ so that others may know, through us, that love, that joy, that all-embracing acceptance that Christ shows us. Let us remember that Christ dwells in us always. We are his home. He will not be leaving us when we take the Christmas tree down and put away the decorations. And let this joy you feel tonight at that realization be the strength that holds us up when we need to be held.

Tonight, God has touched us. God has grasped our hands. Our hands have been laid on God’s heart. This feeling we are feeling right now is the true joy that descends upon us when we realize God has come to us in our collective darkness as a Light that will never darken.

So let us, like those shepherds, leave here this evening, with joy in our hearts, with Christ dwelling within us, And let us, like them, “glorify and praise God” for all that we have heard and seen…

3 Advent

2011-12-11T04:54:00.001-08:00

Gaudete Sunday

December 11, 2011

Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11;1 Thes. 5.16-24

+ Some of you might remember November 28, 1966. Well, it was on that evening, at the posh Plaza Hotel in New York City, that author Truman Capote hosted the legendary (and infamous) masked black and white ball, which has been called “the party of the century.” Capote hosted this party to celebrate the end of many several, hard years working on his biggest and most popular book, In Cold Blood. Well, not that I can ever compare myself to Truman Capote, but in these past two weeks I have hosted two parties, and before this season is over, I will have hosted three more.

There’s a reason I am doing this year. As most of you know, this past year was a horrible year for me, following my father’ death. And the last thing in the world I wanted to do last year was go to a party much less host one. Also, as you’ve heard me say many times, I am not actually not a big fan of the modern, secular Christmas season.

In fact, I really don’t like it at all. If I wasn’t priest and a Christian, I would be a true curmudgeonly Scrooge. But this year I decided to break out of the mourning hold. I thought I would overcome my frustration with the season and just go with it for a while. So, parties, parties, parties.

What I’ve discovered is that I have felt myself truly emerge from that mourning cocoon to a large extent. And one of the added pluses for me is hearing people say to me, “I love your parties! You are so hospitable. You really do go all out for your guests.” And I guess do. And I love doing it. Because doing it makes me happy.

And so I can say, on this Third Sunday in Advent, that I am feeling a sense of joy that I certainly was not feeling last year. Joy at being able to emerge fromt hat awful dark cloud of mourning and sadness and to celebrate the future. And I think it is especially appropriate today.

Today is Gaudete Sunday. Traditionally, on Gaudete Sunday, we light the pink candle on the Advent wreath. This pink candle is a sign to us that the shift has happened. Now there are more candles lit than are unlit on the wreath. The light has won out and the darkness, we are realizing, is not an eternal darkens.

Gaudete means “rejoice” and that’s exactly what we should be doing on this Sunday. We should rejoice in the light that is winning out. We should rejoice in the fact that darkness has no lasting power over us.

This Sunday sets a tone different than the one we’ve had so-far in Advent. We find that word—rejoice—ringing out throughout our scriptural readings today. It is the theme of the day. It is the emotion that permeates everything we hear in the Liturgy of the Word on this Sunday.

In our reading from the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah, we hear

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;

In our Epistle, we find even Paul—who seems a bit, shall we say, dour at times— rejoicing. “Rejoice always,” he writes to the church at Thessalonika

This emotion of joy is something we oftentimes take for granted. Let’s face it, joy doesn’t happen often enough in our lives. It is a rare occurrence for the most part. And maybe it should be. It is certainly not something we want to take for granted. When joy comes to us, we want to let it flow through us. We want it to guide us and overwhelm us. But we often don’t think about how essential joy is to us. Joy is essential to all of us as Christians. It is one of those marks that make us who we are as Christians.

But, as we all know, there are moments. There are moments when we cannot muster joy. No matter how many parties we might plan or host or go to, no matter how much we try to break the hold the hard, difficult things of life have placed on us, it is hard sometimes to feel joy. Cultivating joy in the midst of overwhelming sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression can seems overwhelming and impossible. That’s why joy really is a discipline.

When things like sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression descend upon—and they descend upon us all—we need, in those moments, to realize that joy might not be with us in that moment, but joy always returns. We need to search deep within us for that joy that we have as Christians. And when we search for it, we can find it.

That joy often comes when we put our pains into perspective. That joy comes when we recognize that these dark moments that happen in our lives are not eternal. They will not last forever.

That, I think, is where we sometimes fail. When we are in the midst of those negative emotions in our lives, we often feel as though they will never end. We often feel as though we will always be lonely, we always be sad, we will always mourn.

When my father died, I had a sinking realization very soon afterward, that life would never be the same again—and I despaired over that. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like from that time on. But, with time, I saw that life might be changed but it is not destroyed.

As Christians, we can’t allow ourselves to be boxed in by despair. As Christians, we are forced, again and again, to look at the larger picture. We are forced to see that joy is always there, just beyond our grasp, awaiting us.

Joy is there when we realize that in the midst of our darkness, there is always light just beyond our reach. And when it comes back into our lives, it truly is wonderful… It’s not always something one is able to identify in a person. Joy doesn’t mean walking around smiling all the time. It doesn’t mean that we have force ourselves to be happy at all times in the face of every bad thing. If we do that, we become nothing more than a programmed robot or a trained puppy.

True joy come bubbling up from within us. It is a true grace—it is a gift we are given that we simply don’t ask for. It comes from a deep place and it permeates our whole being, no matter what else is going on in our lives or in the world around us. It is a joy that comes from deep within our very essence—from that place of our true selves.

Advent is, essentially, a penitential season. It is a time for us to recognize that we are slugging through the muck of our lives—a muck we are at least, in part, responsible for. But Advent is also a time for us to be able to rejoice even in the midst of that muck. It is a time for us realize that we will not be in that muck for ever. The muck doesn’t win out. The joy we carry deep within us wins out.

So, as we gather together this morning, and as we leave here this morning, let us remember the joy we feel at seeing this pink candle lit. We have made it this far. The tide has shifted. The light is winning out. The dawn is about to break upon our long dark night.

As you ponder this, as you meditate on this, as you take this with you in your hearts, pay special attention to the emotion this causes within you. Embrace that welling up of joy from deep within. And let it proclaim on your lips the words you, along the prophet Isaiah, long to say:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;

2 Advent

2011-12-04T05:01:00.001-08:00

Baptism of Madisyn de la Garza

December 4, 2011

Isaiah 40.1-11; Mark 1.1-8

+ I realized the other day that, although I have referenced many films and movies in my years here at St. Stephen’s, I have never mentioned one film in particular, The Rapture.

The Rapture is a strange, independent film I saw in the early 1990s. The film tells the story of Sharon, a young Los Angeles telephone operator. She is played by Mimi Rogers, the ex-wife of Tom Cruise. Now Sharon lives a somewhat immoral disolute life. She’s involved with a man who is involved in various sundry acts. However, while at work one day, she comes into contact with a group of people who tell her that they believe, through a ahsraed dream, the Rapture is imminent—the Rapture being the return of Christ.

Although she scoffs initially, she eventually comes to accept this belief herself and actually a born-again Christian. She begins a new, very pious lifestyle, eventually marrying a man named Randy (who is played by David Dukovny, in his pre- X-Files days) and together they have a daughter. However, her husband Randy is shot and killed by a dsiguntled ex-employee, and a result, she begins to question the goodness of God. Somehow, she becomes convinved that she must wait in the desert for the coming of the Rapture, but shile there she loses patience. At her daughter's urging, she decides to hasten her and her daughter's ascendance to heaven, so she kills her daughter, but finds that she is unable to take her own life because she’s afraid she'll be condemned for committing suicide. She turns against God and becomes angry at God, resufing to believe that God is anyway good for not retutning, for allowing her to kill her own daughter, for not doing what she believes God should be doing. She confesses to what she had done to a police officer who had been watching her and she is arrested and imprisoned.

Up to this point, it seems like the film is about wacky born-again cultist whose beliefs eventually lead to murder. However, at this point, something major happens. The Rapture does in fact take place. While Sharon is sitting in her prison cell, awaiting trial, a loud trumpet blows that is heard all over the world, signaling the start of the Rapture. We see it all. The bars falling off the jail door, the four horsemen of the apocolypse, people just heading toward the trumpet calls. Finally, Sharon herself disappears and is taken to a weird, kind of purgatory-like place, just within sight of heaven. Even here, within sight of heaven, she still refuses to renounce her anger at God for what she perceives to be God’s cruelty. Her young daughter (whom she murdered) appears to her and begs her to accept God back into her heart.

“Just say you love God,” the girl beg, so she can join her husband and daughter in Heaven.

But Sharon cannot.

“You know what this means?” the girl asks, as the light fades and the darkness encourches on Sharon.

And Sharon, fully aware of what she is doing, says, “Yes” as she is swallowed up in darkness.

(Sorry that I gave away the ending of the movie). Make sure you go out and rent this happy little film for this holiday season.

But the film actually haunted me in many ways, because it was one of those films that actually addresses in a straightforward way what we talk about in this Season of the Advent. The coming of the Lord. For us, we too are awaiting Christ’s presence in our lives. We longing for Christ to come to us. We know it will happen. We may realize it might not happen necessarily (for us anyway) in some final Rapture, but, in one way or the other, it will happen, as in the day on which we die.

But, as you hear me say, again and again here at St. Stephen’s, Christ’s coming among us, that we celebrate especially during the Christmas season, happens for us in a very intimate way every time we gather here. We experience, in a very unique and wonderful way, the Presence of Christ whenever we gather together at this altar and share these common and very simple and vital gifts of bread and wine.

No matter what you believe about how Jesus is present to us in the Eucharist, he is present. He does come to us and is present with us here. He does come to us here and we do feel him present—in the bread, in the wine, in our scripture readings, in the presence of those who gather with us and who kneel beside us at the rail.

Now, as you know, I make no secret of my belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I truly believe that Jesus is present here in a unique and beautiful way in the bread and the wine we share with each other. I also believe that Jesus is uniquely present even in the reserved sacrament we place here in the ambry.

There is a reason we keep the sanctuary light lit before the aumbry. It reminds us that Jesus is present here in a special way. I love driving past St. Stephen’s at night and seeing the deep red glow of the sanctuary light shining through the windows. It is a very visible and meaningful reminder to me that Jesus is present here in a very real way.

I’m not a big stickler on explaining how Jesus is present in the bread and wine. All I know for certain is that each Sunday, when we gather here, we witness a mystery. We, together, participate in something that we might not understand and we might not fully appreciate. But it is, as we all realize, important and wonderful and beautiful.

In what we do here at the altar, we experience Jesus. We see Jesus, we feel Jesus, we taste Jesus. In a sense, what we do here is fulfillment of what the prophet Isaiah foresaw:

“He will feed his flock like a shepherds;
he with gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.”

So, in a very real way, the anxious waiting we are doing during this season of Advent is like the anxious waiting we should do when coming to this altar. It’s all about anticipation. It is all about our deepest hopes and desires being realized. And they are realized—in Christ. And because they are realized in Christ, we find them realized whenever we encounter Christ.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find John the Baptist appearing the wilderness. He, of course, is the person the prophet Isaiah speaks of in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures.

“Prepare the way of the Lord,” both Isaiah proclaims.

“Make his paths straight.”

To a large extent, that is what we are called to do in this Advent season and throughout all our lives in Christ. We are called to prepare the way of the Lord. We are called to prepare. We do this by living our lives with a certain integrity. We do this by being aware that God is always present with us, always loving us, always accepting us. And we do this by realizing that, at any moment, we will be called to live out that life of love and acceptance to others. We realize that, in our lives as followers of Jesus, we have been transformed.

By the very fact that we were baptized, we have been transformed. When we rose out of those waters—and in a few moments when Madisyn is baptized and rises out of those waters—we were transformed and born anew.

Whenever we meet Christ, we emerge transformed. We are not the same people were before our baptisms and, each week when we encounter Jesus in the Eucharist and in each other, we realize that we are not the same people we were before Communion. We are a people challenged to then go out and share our Baptismal lives and this Communion with others in whatever way we can. What we are longing for in this season is not something vague and distant.

It is not something so mysterious that we can’t fathom it. Rather, what we long for is, truly, fulfillment. It is the fulfillment of all that seems to be missing in us. It is the fulfillment of our anxieties and our frustrations and our depressions and our hopelessness.

In the Eucharist, in this bread and wine, in this aumbry, in this unique and real Presence of Jesus that we experience here, we find truly that God’s glory is not out there somewhere—in some distant heaven.

Rather, God in Jesus, has come to us and remains among us in a very real and tangible way. In this Eucharist and in our lives as followers of Jesus, God’s glory truly does dwell with us. In God’s Presence among us, we realize, if we truly open ourselves to this experience, that our frustrations, our depressions, all of our spiritual and psychological pains have been healed and our longings have been realized. We don’t need to look anywhere else than right here.

Yes, there might be a Rapture one day. Yes, there that Day might be amazing and powerful with trumpets sounding and cars falling from jail cells. And yes, even when it happens, there will be people saying that they cannot heed the invitation to join in that glorious day. But for us, as followers of Jesus, for us reborn in the waters of the baptism and prepared in a special way for the coming of Christ into our midst, whatever might happen on that day will only be a fulfillment of what we have bee doing along, here at this altar.

What we do here then at the altar is important. It is vital to our understanding of ourselves as Christians. It is a wonderful and glorious mystery that we shouldn’t try to pin down and analyze too deeply. We should rather accept it and delight in it and let it fill us and fulfill us.

In these days of Advent, as we prepare to remember Jesus’ first coming among us, our time at the altar should take on special meaning and precedence for us.We should give true and deep thanks for the opportunity to have Jesus come to us in such a unique and wonderful way. And as we come to the altar, with our joy bubbling up from within us, with our anxieties and fears and depressions soothed by the healing balm of this bread and wine, of the healing Presence of our God, we too are able to proclaim, the prophet Isaiah, with honesty and truth,

The glory of the Lord has truly been revealed to us…Here is our God!

1 Advent

2011-11-27T05:16:00.001-08:00

November 27, 2011

1 Corinthians 1.3-9; Mark 13.24-37

+ For some reason, I want to say this morning; Happy New Year. I know that sounds crazy and strange on this last Sunday in November. But, for us, it is New Year. A whole new liturgical year begins today. We are now—on this first Sunday of Advent—in what is called Year B in the liturgical cycle. There are three years in the liturgical cycle—Year A, Year B, Year C. And through those three years we explore various scriptures and themes in our Sunday liturgies.

For us Christians, it’s kind of nice to have our own New Year. It’s nice to have a time to begin anew in a more quiet and contemplative way. It is nice to have a new beginning in a prayerful way.

And, as we begin this season of Advent, we find that it does feel like the beginning of something. Something has changed. There’s been a turning. And I’m not just saying this because the Christmas decorations are up and we hear Christmas carols in restaurants and stores.

We are—on this First Sunday in Advent—looking to the future and to all it holds for us. I think one of the things we as Christians know is that something awaits us. Now, we might not know for certain what that “something” is. We can’t articulate it. We can’t define it. We can’t quantify it.

But we know “something” good and glorious and beautiful awaits us. Call it a kind of spiritual instinct. Call it the goal toward which we are all working. It lies there ahead of it in the foggy darkness of our future.

This time of Advent is the time in which we wait for that glorious “something.” It is the time in which are watching for that wonderful “something.”

In our Gospel reading for today, we find the rallying cry of Advent—the word that captures perfectly what we should be doing during this season. It’s just a simple phrase, and we it in two different ways:

“Keep alert.”

“Keep awake.”

Jesus says it just those two ways in our reading from Mark: It seems simple enough.

“Keep alert” and “keep awake.”

But is it simple? Our job as Christians is sometimes no more than this. It is simply a matter of staying awake, of being attentive or being alert. Our lives as Christians are sometimes simply responses to being spiritually alert. For those of us who are tired, who are worn down by life, who spiritually or emotionally fatigued, our sluggishness sometimes manifests itself in our spiritual life and in our relationship with others. When we become impatient in our watching, we sometimes forget what it is we are watching for. We sometimes, in fatigue, fail to see.

For us, that “something” that we are waiting for, that we keeping alert for, is none other than that glorious day of Christ, that we hear St. Paul talk about in his epistle this morning. That glorious day of Jesus comes when, in our attentiveness, we see the rays of the light breaking through to us in our tiredness and in our fatigue. It breaks us through to us in various ways. We, who are in this sometimes foggy present moment, peering forward, sometimes have this moments of wonderful spiritual clarity. Those moments are true moments of being alert—of being spiritually awake. Sometimes we have it right here, in church, when we gather together.

I have shared with each of you at times when those moments sometimes come to me. They sometimes come to me here at this altar. One of the most common ways they happen for me is when I have broken that break and we are singing the Agnus Dei—the Lamb of God. As we sing, and I have had moments in which I look down at that broken Bread and that chalice, I realize: yes, this IS the Lamb of God. This is Jesus. This is the spiritual goal of my life. This IS the Day of Our Lord Jesus. Jesus has truly come to us this day. This is what it means to be awake.

Certainly, in a very real sense, today—this First Sunday of Advent— is a precursor of that one glorious day of the Lord Jesus that St. Paul talks about. But the rays of that glorious future day also break through to us now when, in our attentiveness, we recognize Jesus in here at the altar and in those we serve as Christians. Those rays of the Day of Christ break through when we can see Jesus in all those we meet and serve. In this beautiful Sarum blue Advent season, we are reminded that the day of Christ is truly about dawn upon us. The rays of the bright sun-lit dawn are already starting to lighten the darkness of our lives. We realize, in this moment, that, despite all that has happened, despite the disappointments, despite the losses, despite the pain each of us has had to bear, the ray of Christ’s Light breaks through to us in that darkness and somehow, makes it all better.

But this is doesn’t happen in an instant. Oftentimes that light is a gradual dawning in our lives. Oftentimes, it happens gradually so we can adjust to it, so it doesn’t blind us. Sometimes, our awakening is in stages, as though waking from a deep, slumbering sleep.

Our job as Christians is somewhat basic. I’m not saying it’s easy. But I am saying that it is basic. Our job, as Christians, especially in this Advent time, is to be alert. To be awake. Spiritually and emotionally. And, in being alert, we must see clearly. We cannot, when that Day of Christ dawns, be found sleeping.

Rather, when that Day of our Lord Jesus dawns, we should greet it joyfully, with bright eyes and a clear mind. We should run toward that dawn as we never have before in our lives. We should let the joy within us—the joy we have hid, we have tried to kill—the joy we have not allowed ourselves to feel—come pouring forth on that glorious day. And in that moment, all those miserable things we have been dealt—all that loss, all that failure, all that unfairness—will dissipate like a bad dream on awakening.

“Keep alert,” Jesus says to us.

“Keep awake.”

It’s almost time. Keep awake because that “something” you have been longing for all your spiritual life is about to happen. It is about to break through into your life. And it is going to be glorious.

Christ the King Sunday

2011-11-20T04:54:00.001-08:00

Transgender Remembrance Day/Stewardship Sunday
November 20, 2011

Matthew 25.31-46

+ The other day I was doing something very uncharacteristic of me: I was complaining. I actually don’t complain much, but I did this week. I complained about the fact that we have been having a series of what I call “theme Sundays” recently here at St. Stephen’s. Last week we had United Thank Officering Sunday. A few weeks ago we had New Member Sunday. And a few weeks before that we had Jubilee Sunday. It seems like every Sunday, we are commemorating something else. Why can’t we just have a nice, quiet, regular Sunday again?

Well, this week I complained because we have a triple theme. It is, first and foremost, Christ the King Sunday—or as the more inclusively minded might call it—the Reign of Christ Sunday. I preached last year about how the Reign of Christ just doesn’t carry the same weight as Christ the King. So I’m sticking with Christ the King Sunday. We also have Stewardship Sunday today. We will gather today after the service for our Stewardship Sunday dinner, where the members of our church will receive their Pledge Cards and their Time and Talent Cards. And we have Transgender Remembrance Day, which is also very important and I also will discuss in a moment.

And just when I complain about the fact that it is another theme, I realize: “no, it really isn’t.” Each of these is important in its own right and they tie very well into what every Sunday is about. Christ the King, Stewardship and Transgender Remembrance are all about our faith journey as followers of Jesus. And we, as the Church need do need to commemorate each of them.

First, Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday in that very long, green season of Pentecost. Today, for the Church, it is New Year’s Eve. The old church year of Sundays ends today. The new church year begins next Sunday, on the First Sunday of Advent. So, what seems like an ending today is renewed next week, with the coming of Advent, in that revived sense of longing and expectation that we experience in Advent.

Second, it is Stewardship Sunday. Stewardship, for us, as Episcopalians, means more than that popular Pledge Sunday. It is more than just discussing how people should give money to the Church. OK. Yes, we all should give to the Church. We should tithe—we should give our ten percent. But, more importantly, we must give of ourselves. We must give back to the Church by doing ministry, by contributing of the time we have been given and the different and varying talents each of us has been blessed with. And on this Stewardship Sunday, we hear from Jesus a sermon that makes us frown, no doubt.

Today, we hear Jesus tell us that story of the sheep and the goats. Now, I actually love this parable—not because of its threat of punishment (which everyone gets hung up on), not because of its judgment. I love this story because there is something beautiful and subtle going on just beneath the surface, if you take the moment to notice. And that subtle aspect of this story is this:

If you notice, the reward is given not to people who work for the reward. The reward is not given to people who help the least of their brethren because they know they will gain the reward. The reward is granted to those who help the least of their brethren simply because the least need help. The reward is for those who have no regard or idea that a reward awaits them for doing such a thing. The least of our brethren are the ones who are hungry, who are thirsty, who are naked, who are sick and who are in prison.

I think this ties in beautifully to our own ideas of stewardship. Why do we give, we must ask ourselves? Why do we give our ten percent.? And why do we give of our time and talent? Do we give because we think we’re going to get a reward for our giving? Or do we give because by giving we know it goes for a greater reward than anything we ourselves could get?

Finally, we realize that Jesus, in our Gospel reading today, speaks to us profoundly on this Transgender Remembrance Day. Transgender Remembrance Day is always celebrated on November 20, which is is a day to memorialize those who have been killed as a result of what is called “transphobia” or the “hatred or fear of transgender and gender non-conforming people.”

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1998 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender graphic designer, columnist, and activist, to memorialize the murder of Rita Hester, a transgender African American woman who was murdered in Allston, MA on November 28, 1998. For us at St. Stephen’s this is important because we, in our dedication to Stewardship, know that be good Stewards, to be good followers of Jesus, we need to be good neighbors. And to be good neighbors is to be compassionate and loving and accepting, in just the same way our God is compassionate and loving and accepting. It means that when we see people in need or suffering, we are moved to our very core. When we see people abused and neglected and marginalized and, like Rita Hester and the hundreds of other transgender people, murdered, we must step forward and do what we can to stop it and prevent it.

In our Gospel reading today, we find that the Kingdom of God is prepared for those who have been good stewards. It is prepared for those who have been mindful of what has been given to them and have been mindful of those around them in need. For us, we need to realize that the Kingdom is prepared for us as well. It is prepared for us who have sought to be good stewards without any thought of reward. It is prepared for us who have simply done what we are called to do as followers of Jesus.

For us, in our own society, we find that these same terms found in Jesus’ parable have a wider definition. Hungry for us doesn’t just mean hungry for food. It means hungry for love, for healing, for wholeness.

Thirsty doesn’t just mean for water. Thirsty for us means thirsty for fairness or justice or peace.

Naked doesn’t just mean without clothing. It means, for us, to be stripped to our core, to be laid bare spiritually and emotionally and materially.

To be sick, doesn’t necessarily mean to be sick with a disease in our bodies. It is means to be sick in our hearts and in our relationships with others.

And we all know that the prisons of our lives sometimes don’t necessarily have walls or bars on the doors. The prisons of our lives are sometimes our fears, our prejudices, our very selves And Transgender people definitely know what prisons are. They understand that personal prisons take on deeper meaning.

To not go out and help those who need help is to be arrogant, to be selfish, to be headstrong. To not do so is to turn our backs on following where Jesus leads us. Because Jesus leads us into that place wherein we must love and love fully and give and give freely—of ourselves and of what we have been given.

This past week, there was a wonderful article in the Boston University publication, Today. The article deals with BU’s new Episcopal chaplain, Fr. Cameron Partridge. Fr. Cameron is a transgender person and he talks freely in this article about what that means as a human being, as an Episcopalian, as a priest and as a Christian. I have made copies of the article, so please take them after the service today. Fr. Cameron is quoted as saying:

“It feels like, in the Episcopal Church, there’s more a sense of resolve to just be who we are…a sense of all people being welcomed and able to become the people God created them to become…”

I like that because that is definitely what we have been striving to do here at St. Stephen’s. We practice our radical hospitality to everyone who comes through our doors. And, I think, we accept everyone who comes through those doors fully. Here, we not only welcome people, but I think we allow people to be the people God created them to be. And whoever that might, we know they are beautiful, because God finds them and all of us, beautiful. Fr. Cameron goes on to say,

“My hope is that people just sort of respond to one another and to me as just human beings.”

Again, that brings us back to Jesus’ parable. The meaning of this story is this: If you do these things—if you feed the hungry, if you give drink to the thirsty, if you welcome the stranger, if you clothe the naked, if you visit the sick and imprisoned—if you simply “respond to one another as just human beings”—if you do these things without thought of reward, but do them simply because you, as a Christian, are called to do them, the reward is yours.

As Christians, we should haven’t to think about doing any of those things. They should be like second nature to us. We should be doing them naturally, instinctively. For those of us who are hungry or thirsty, who feel like strangers, who are naked, sick and imprisoned—and at times, we have been in those situations—we find Christ in those rays of hope that break through into our lives.

It is very similar to the hope we are clinging to in this moment as we enter Advent—that time in which the light of Christ is seen breaking into the encroaching darkness of our existence. And we—in those moments when we feed the hungry, when we give drink to the thirsty, when we welcome the stranger, when we clothe the naked, when we visit the sick and imprisoned—in those moments, we become that light in the darkness, that hope in someone else’s life. We embody Christ when we become the conduits of hope.

So, as we celebrate the end of this liturgical year and set our expectant eyes on the season of Advent, let us not just be filled with hope. Let us be a true reflection of Christ’s hope to this world. Let us be the living embodiment of that hope to those who need hope. And in doing so, we too will hear those words of assurance to us: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for….”

All Saints Sunday

2011-11-06T04:48:00.001-08:00

November 6, 2011

1 John 3.1-3

+ In case you might have noticed it, today is a special Sunday. All Sundays are special. But today is even a bit more special, if you haven’t noticed. Out in the Narthex, we have the All Saints altar. We have the photos and mementoes and the Book of Remembrance, with the names written in it of all our departed loved ones. In here, we have the white paraments on the altar, and of course I’m all decked out in white as well. And we are celebrating even a bit more than we usually do. Which, as you all know, I LOVE to do. I love to celebrate. I will look for any little opportunity to celebrate.

Well, today we have plenty to celebrate.

First, we are celebrating the saints. We are celebrating all those saints that we know of, like the Virgin Mary and our own St. Stephen. We celebrate those saints because they are held up to us as examples of how to live this sometimes difficult life we live as Christians. And it is hard to be a Christian sometimes. It is hard, as we all know, to follow Jesus, and to do what Jesus tells us to do—to love. It is hard to be, as John says in our first reading for today, the children of God, as Jesus himself is a Child of God. The saints have showed this fact to us. They have showed us how to be these very children of God. We are also celebrating the saints we have personally known.

We are celebrating the saints we have known who have come into our own lives—those people who have taught us about God and shown us that love does win out, again and again. The saints in our own lives are those who have done it, who have shown us that we can be successful in following Jesus, even if they weren’t always successful at time sin their own lives. My favorite saints—both those celebrated by the larger church and those I have known in my own personal life—are the ones who were not, by any means, perfect, who failed, who messed up occasionally. I like them because I’m like them. I too have messed up. I too have failed. I too have failed in following Jesus and loving others. But what those saints show us is that it’s all right. When we fail, we just get up again, brush ourselves off and keep going. And what they show us more than anything else is that when we fail to love, we need to live even more and somehow, it is made right.

The other part of this morning that we are celebrating is the future saints in our midst. The future saints? Who could those possibly be? We are the future saints. Today, we are welcoming four new members into our midst. Together, with them, we will strive to follow Jesus, to love God and each other and to serve those we encounter. And these four will be future saints. That’s how we should look at them. And ourselves.

And we are celebrating another future saint, Braxton Haugen, who is being baptized today. As we gather in a few moments around the font and celebrate the Sacrament of New Birth, we realize that what we are celebrating at that moment is the birth of yet another future saint in our midst. I’m sure there will be moments in his life when these words will haunt Whitney and Barney. There will no doubt be moments when Braxton might not seem like much a saint. But, again, that’s the ways saints sometimes work. Saints often are hidden from us. Saints often are the ones we least expect to be saints.

And that, is truly, why we celebrate the saints. That is why we celebrate the saints with the different commemorations we have of them at our Wednesday night Eucharists throughout the year. And that is why we celebrate them especially on Sundays like today.

We celebrate the saints because they lead the way for us. They show us how to live this sometimes difficult life as Christians. They show us in their successes and they show us in their failures. And we celebrate the saints as well because we too are the saints. We are the future saints, who will one day be gathered around the altar of the Lamb, where we will partake of that glory without end.

This past Wednesday, at our All Souls Requiem Mass here at St. Stephen’s, I mentioned sometimes I mention in many of the sermons I preach at funerals. I mention that “veil” that separates us from those who have gone on before us. I mentioned that that veil is actually a very thin one, even though it often seems like a very thick curtain at times. But there are moments when that veil is sort of lifted and we can see that very little actually separates us from those saints who have gone on.

This morning, we are actually able to see that veil lifted. We will see it lifted in a few short moments when we baptize Braxton into the fellowship of all the saints. And we will see it again lifted when we gather at the altar to celebrate the Eucharist.

Both of these acts are not isolated acts we do, here in St. Stephen’s Church in north Fargo on a cold, wet morning in November of 2011. Every time we do them, we do them with every Christian on this earth who also celebrate them. And when we celebrate the Eucharist, all we are doing is joining, for this limited time, the worship that is going on in heaven for all eternity.

So, let us—the future saints of God—truly celebrate today. Let us celebrate the saints who have gone on and who are still with us in various ways. Let us celebrate the saints who are joining us here at St. Stephen’s as fellow members and fellow ministers and fellow followers of Jesus. And let us celebrate our newest saint-to-be, Braxton Haugen, as he is washed in the waters of life, as he is sealed by the Holy Spirit and he is marked as Christ’s own…forever.

And, so, I will now asked the parents and godparents of Braxton to bring him forward…

20 Pentecost

2011-10-30T05:17:00.001-07:00

October 30, 2011

Matthew 23.1-12

+ A few weeks ago, right here, in St. Stephen’s, one of our Moravian guests stopped me and said, very nicely: “You know, I will never call you Father.”

“Okay,” I said.

He then proceeded to quote our Gospel reading this morning.

“And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.”

I then proceeded to tell him what I tell everyone who has a problem with this issue: “It doesn’t matter to me what I am called.”

And it really doesn’t. I’ve never really insisted on anyone calling me “Father.” I use more out of convenience than anything any thing else. After all, I—and all of us as Episcopalians—do come from a tradition in which the male priest can be called Father—and, in more modern times, the female priest as “Mother”. Some people find either title uncomfortable, for various and very understandable reasons. And I hope that if they do find it uncomfortable, they don’t use it.

The sad fact is, there aren’t a whole lot of equally acceptable titles for clergy out there. “Pastor” just doesn’t cut it with me—at least not here where every Protestant clergy person is “Pastor.” Also, Pastor is not a traditionally Episcopal title.

And Reverend is grammatically wrong. We don’t call a priest “Reverend Jamie” anymore than we call a judge, “Honorable Janet.”.

Of course, those are, for the most part, my issues and I can’t control what people will call me or not call me. Nor do I even want to. And I will remind people who have issues with calling priests “Father” or Mother” that it is their issue as well.

Recently, I followed a long drawn-out discussion on this issue on the House of Bishop/House of Deputies listerserv. The discussion got almost “shrill” at some point, and I ended up just not reading any more posts. This doesn’t come as a surprise, I’m sure, to anyone here who knows me, but I have a problem when people “command” me that I should do something. One of the reasons I am actually quite frustrated over the issue is that I have known those clergy who have abandoned their titles and demand from people that they be called by their first name. What I have seen often in these cases is that those same people who reject what they see as signs of authority, defeat their own cause. They actually, by their rejection, attempt to exercise control over their congregation by essentially dictating how they should be perceived.

As my colleague, Fr. Jared Cramer, summarizes it:

"No, I'm not hierarchical! Stop seeing me that way, I command you!"

Of course, that’s not true of every clergyperson who uses their first name. But many of the clergy that I have known personally who essentially demand it certainly seem, in my experience, to have definite authority issues. Some clergy who demand that people call them by their first name do so as an exercise of power that is at least as bad as what they claim to oppose.

Yes, I understand, as I said, that some people perceive the title of Father as some kind of male hierarchical issue. But many of those of those same people have an even bigger issue calling a woman priest “Mother.” And don’t even get me started if the reasons for not using those titles are based on some kind of anti-Catholic bias. That definitely does not cut it with me.

And as I have said a million times, none of this is really much of an issue for me. Call me Jamie, call me “Father Jamie,” call me whatever makes you comfortable.

But, I get very tired and very impatient when we spin our wheels on things like this, when we could be using our energy on much more important things like loving God and loving others and doing the ministry each of us has been called to do.

Still, if someone, like that Moravian has an issue calling me “Father,” I understand. But I do have an issue when people use the scripture we heard in today’s gospel as their basis for not callings someone “Father.” Is Jesus really telling us we should call no one “Father” other than God? Of course not. He would not have a problem with us calling our own fathers “Father,” Nor would he have a problem with us calling our Jewish clergy “Rabbi.” Or any of us who are teachers, ‘teachers or instructors.

We should not approach what Jesus is saying from that literalist point of view. He is telling people not to call hypocrites like the Pharisees “Father,” nor should we call anyone by such a term we should be reserving for God. The Pharisees were fond of placing burdens on people that were intolerable. Jesus, on the other hand, offers something much easier. He offers the yoke that is easy and the burden which is light.

Pharisees longed for things like titles, and the respect and the honor that went with them. For them, these issues of titles were a BIG deal. They would have loved to have spun their wheels, and wasted their energies debating such issues. Titles, after all, were a way for them to manipulate people and to coerce them. And titles puffed them up with pride.

We have all known people outside the church who are attached to their titles. We have known people who define themselves by the letters behind their names, or the titles like “doctor” in front of their names. Jesus, by his very example, shows us what a true servant leader is. He shows the example of what teachers, rabbis, priests and ministers and fathers and mothers should be.

A literalist view of not calling anyone father or teacher or rabbi would be ridiculous. To say that Scripture prohibits the use of “father” or “teacher” is a very selective view of scripture. It’s a way to cut and paste scripture and to manipulate it for our own means. It is a way to be more concerned about the letter of the law, than the spirit of the law. And to do so would cause us to have to ignore all those other references in scripture in which the terms “Father” or “teacher” are used in a positive way.

Even Paul refers to himself as "father" in his first letter to the Corinthians. Jesus refers to Nicodemus as a teacher of the Jews in John 3. John 8:37-39 and Luke 16:24-25 both have Abraham referred to as father, and this use is not condemned by Jesus. In his letter to the Romans [4:16-18] Paul mentions Abraham as the spiritual father of us all.

So the term "father" is clearly not a problem for Jesus or for his closest followers. The problem, as I have said, is when "father" replaces God. ”Father” becomes an issue when we give the authority to that hypocritical religious leader we call “father” who claims the authority that belongs to only God. And here is where there is some validity to the condemnation Jesus makes in today’s Gospel. If a priest misuses a title like “Father” so they can act or think in a superior way, if they use such a title to manipulate their role (and let me tell you, I have known those priests as well), then I would say that, in such a case, they come under Jesus’ condemnation here.

If, however, the term is used for someone who is a caring and compassionate elder and father to the people in their care, I don't think that would have been an issue for Jesus.

The point of all of us this, is course, essentially, what we were talking about when Jesus was using the Roman coin for a illustration. Render to God, what is God’s. Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But don’t mix the two up. Don’t call someone Father if by Father you are giving them the authority reserved only to God.

For us, the matter is essentially one that will not cause most of us to lose sleep. Most of us get this. We understand this. We understand that what is God’s is God’s. Few of us, I seriously doubt, would give to any human being the honor meant for God. And if any priest came along demanding to be called “Father” or “Mother” out of puffed up arrogance, let me tell you, they would be put down to size pretty quickly here at St. Stephen’s. We know all the distinction in all of this.

Our Gospel reading for today really is about equality. Those who think of themselves as better will be humbled. And those who think they are not worth anything, will be lifted up and cared for. This is how the God’s Kingdom works. And this is what we, who are following Jesus, are striving to make happen. We are striving for the equality. We are striving to put people on the same level.

So, let us do just that. Let us, in our following of Jesus, strive for that equal ground of the Kingdom in our day. Let us love each other, fully. And let us look at each other as equals, as ministers working together, side by side and shoulder to shoulder.

This is what it means to follow Jesus. And this is what it means to serve each other in Jesus’ name.

As for me, I am Jamie. To some I am Father Jamie. To some I am just Jamie. I am a priest. I am a Christian. And I am a minister, just like every single one of us here this morning, striving, sometimes failing, but always trying. None of us better. None of us less. All of us equal, serving each other and God in whatever God has called us.

19 Pentecost

2011-10-23T05:18:00.001-07:00

October 23, 2011

Matthew 22.34-46

+ Occasionally, we who preach realize that we are putting ourselves out there sometimes We are exposing ourselves for the whole world when we get up here to preach and share. And for those of us who preach regularly, we not only expose ourselves emotionally, but we also run the risk of repeating ourselves regularly. Or, maybe worse than all, we run the risk of the preaching the same thing over and over again, only in slightly different ways.

Now, luckily, being at a Total Ministry congregation like St. Stephen’s, I get a little pressure taken off me occasionally. With Sandy preaching once a month, I find that even if I am preaching the same thing, she comes in with a different voice and a different way of preaching and expounding. And although I think we believe pretty much the same things in regard to our Christian faith and how we share that as Christians, she has her own unique way of expressing that. And I am thankful for that fact. I know that we all here at St. Stephen’s.

Still, the fact remains. When I preach, I am not very complex. I have no fancy theological agenda behind any of my preaching. My message is very consistent—for better or for worse. And my message is this, in case you’ve been totally asleep during my sermons over the past three years and might have missed it: The theme of every sermon is: love. Again and again, it’s love.

Now, I once was scolded a bit—this was at another congregation, mind you—for preaching too much about love.

“You always preach about love,” this parishioner told me.

I paused, nodded and then simply replied, “Just like Our Lord.” Which, let me tell you, she didn’t appreciate hearing.

But the fact remains that this is essentially all Jesus preached about as well. The gist of everything Jesus said or did was based solidly in what we hear him summarize in this morning’s Gospel. Every sermon and parable he preached, was based on what we heard today. Every miracle, and even that final act on the cross, was based solidly on what we heard this morning.

In today’s Gospel he is clear. Which commandment is the greatest? he is asked. And he replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love you neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

He can’t get any clearer, as far as I’m concerned. And it is these two commands, both of which are solidly and unashamedly based in love, that he again and again professes.

Last week in my sermon, I mentioned the fact that Jesus, like all good, pious Jewish men, was required to the pray the Shema every day. The Shema is the prayer all Jewish men were required to pray each day on waking. The Shema is the first Commandment:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

Every day of his adult life, Jesus prayed this prayer. It was the basis of his entire spiritual life. And this commandment, along with the commandment to love others, is the basis for his entire teaching. When he says, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” we can also add the Gospel. The Gospel, along with the law and the prophets, is based on these commandments. And so is our entire faith as Christians. I don’t think I can get any clearer on this.

I hear so often from Christians—not a whole lot of Episcopalians, but other Christians—that their faith as Christian is based solely on accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. I have no problem with that. in actuality. Our Baptismal promises in the Book of Common Prayer are based on accepting Jesus as our Savior as well. In the Baptismal promises asked of a person about to be baptized (or their parents and godparents if they are too young) is that all-important question: “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?” And, of course, we do.

But, for Jesus, the real heart of the matter is not in such professions of faith. He never commands us to make such statements for salvation. What he does command us to do again and again, to love. To love God. And to love one another. And when we fail to love, we fail to be Christians. Any time we fail in these two commandments, we fail to be Christians. We turn away from following Jesus and we turn away from all that it means to be a Christian. I think the organized Church sometimes misses this fact. And we, as Christians, sometimes miss this fact as well.

We sometimes think: maybe this is too simple. Love God, love others. It’s too simple. Well, first of all: it is not. It is not easy to love God. It is not easy to love Someone who is, for the most part, invisible to us. And it is not easy to love others. I don’t need to tell anyone here this morning that is sometimes very hard to love others. So, it is not too simple.

But we still want something more occasionally. And when we do, we find ourselves making confessional statements, like putting a statement such as accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior as the be-all and end-all of our faith. By the way, it is not the be-all and end-all of our faith. And nowhere does he command us to accept him as our personal Lord and Savior, though I hope we all do strive personally to do so.

We also fall into the trap of depending on things like dogma, or the Law, or Canons (or Church Laws), or any of the other rules that define it all for us specifically. The fact is, all of those things, confessional statements, dogmas, church laws or any of those complicated rules, are pointless if they are not based on these two laws of loving God and loving others. If anyone wants to know what Christians believe and who we are, these two Laws are it. They define us. They guide and direct us. And when we fail to do them, they convict us and they judge us.

So, yes, I know I am guilty of preaching the same thing all the time. But I do unashamedly. I do so proudly. I do so without any sense of remorse. Because all I am doing when I preach about loving God and loving others, is what Jesus did. I am following Jesus when I preach those laws and I strive to live those laws in my life, as a priest, helping others to do that as well.

So, let us love unashamedly. Let us love without limit. Let us love radically. Let the love that guides us and directs and, yes judges us and convicts us, be the one motivating factor in our lives. Let it be the foundation and basis of each ministry we are called to do. Let love—that radical, all-encompassing, all-accepting love—be what drives us. And let us—each of us—be known to everyone by our love.

Thanksgiving for Episcopal-Moravian Full Communion

2011-10-20T06:07:00.001-07:00

A Celebration of Holy Eucharist in Thanksgiving for Full Communion between the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church

Thursday, October 20, 2011

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church

Fargo

John 17.6a,15-23

+ I feel real joy tonight, on our last evening of celebrating Full Communion between the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church. These last five weeks have truly been joyful. I think all of us who have participated have found ourselves pondering the differences between our particular congregations and our denominations.

And there are differences. I think we’ve kind of joked among ourselves about those differences. I still remember with a bit humor the look on those Moravians’ faces the night of our Episcopal Class here at St. Stephen’s and how shocked all of you were by how outspoken us Episcopalians can be. That’s just who we are.

And I know that we Episcopalians were very impressed by the Love Feast last week, in which, right in the middle of the worship service, we paused to eat together.

But differences make us unique and the differences between us, I think, only show for us that diversity that we get to celebrate. What I have especially enjoyed is celebrating what we have in common. And what we have in common is a deep, almost driving longing to serve God and to serve others. Each of us do that in the worship we do, and in the service and the minsisrties we give to others. We do this as followers of Jesus.

And it is Jesus who really makes us one. In Jesus we find those differences between us blurred. And in Jesus we find those similarities between us highlighted.

In our Gospel reading for tonight, we hear Jesus pray,

“The glory you have given me I have given to them, so that they may be one…”

Tonight, and over these past few weeks, we are celebrating that glory that has been given to us. We are rejoicing in that oneness that comes to followers of Jesus who strive to love God and love others. In Christ, we are one. And that, ultimately, when all has been said and done, is all that matters.

Of course, the celebration doesn’t need to end here, tonight. This, hopefully, opens the door for future opportunities of shared ministry and shared celebration. My hope tonight is that we WILL be one, as Christ calls to be. We will be one in our service to others and in our service to God. And that we will be one in striving for those goals of making known to others that incredible love of God.

So, as we go from here, let us go with smiles on our faces. Let us go with joy in our hearts. And let us go with the knowledge that we, together, are doing what Jesus called us to do. As we heard Jesus say in our Gospel reading tonight, we pray that we may “become truly one, so that the world may know that [God] has sent Christ and that [God] loves us as [God] loves [Christ].”

18 Pentecost

2011-10-16T05:00:00.001-07:00

October 16, 2011

Matthew 22.15-22

+ I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find myself living a dual life. I guess it’s easy for me to do. On one hand, I have this life as a priest. People see me wearing my collar and they know, for good or bad, that I’m one of THEM. I am one of those PRIESTS. They might not even know fully what a priest is. But they know it’s someone…vaguely religious. And living like that can be exhausting sometimes. It’s sort of like living in a fishbowl. People watch you a little more closely when you’re a priest. These priests can be kind of mysterious to people. And some priests I know really like to perpetuate that image.

As I said, it can be a bit exhausting. Because there are certain expectations that come with such an image—expectations I am not always able to live up to. I think some people who see that the person wearing the collar is “religious” should also be “pious.” And I’m not always pious. I don’t need to tell anyone here.

But there are other times, when the collar comes off, that the “pressure” to be “religious” and pious are not there. It’s easy to fall into that dual life.

When the collar’s on, I’m the priest. When it’s off, I’m not. Gladly, it doesn’t really work that way. Yes, I know priests who really do live their lives like that. They turn their priesthood on and off like a switch.

But for me, I’m always a priest. With and without collar I am always a priest. Yes, even when I’m at Monte’s on HoDo or any other place.

And, more importantly, I am always a Christian. I never get to turn that on and off. But…there are sometimes moments when I wish could. There are moments—sometimes—when I wish I could just be a secular person who didn’t have to weigh everything I do by the standards of being a progressive inclusive Anglo-Catholic Episcopal priest.

Sometimes I envy those people who can do that, who can just live life without having to think about the spiritual and religious and moral consequences of their actions. Or to use the terms from our Gospel reading today, it’s refreshing sometimes to simply render the things that are God’s to God and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

In our Gospel reading we find Jesus being confronted by the Herodians and the Pharisees, both whom are enemies of each other, but for this brief moment, they are ganging up on Jesus. They begin with a compliment of course. Yes, that’s the way to begin. They know: a compliment will truly throw off the person you are about to trap.

But Jesus is too smart for them of course. He turns their question back on them, without ever directly addressing them. Jesus turns to the crowd and asks about the coin. He asks about a coin he, if you notice, does not carry. Nor does he ever touch it. As we know, roman coins were ritually unclean in the Jewish culture. The emperor Caesar was viewed as a god, and that made them unclean to good, pious Jews.

Using the coin as his reference, he lets them have it.

Give to God’s what is God’s, he says.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Simple enough.

It seems he is making a clear distinction between the religious and the secular to some extent. He seems to making that distinction between God and government. But…not really.

The real point he is making here can be found when we put it all in perspective. Jesus and every good, loyal Jewish male there on that day was required to pray a prayer every day. Jesus no doubt prayed that prayer that morning, as did every devout Jewish male (and no doubt many Jewish females) that day. The prayer is a simple prayer. It’s called the Shema

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

The Shema is, of course, the summary of the Law. But it is a summary of all belief for a Jew. It essentially renders to God, what is God’s. But if you listen closely to what the Shema says, you realize: Jesus’ statement really isn’t an either/or statement. He’s simply saying that once what is God’s is rendered to God, there is nothing else. There are no other options for those of us who are God’s. For those who love God with all their heart, all their soul and all their might, there is nothing else. Rendering anything to Caesar’s is simply not an option.

For us, it is a matter of realizing we don’t have the option of turning our Christianity on and off. We are always followers of Jesus, in everything we do. Everything we do and say begins and ends in following Jesus. We don’t have the option of being a Christian when it suits us and being secular when it doesn’t. We are a follower of Jesus all the time—in everything we do and every aspect of our lives. And it is important to remind ourselves of this.

There was a very wonderful article I read in this past Summer’s issue of Cowley magazine, put out by the brothers of the Episcopal religious Order of the Society of St. John the Evangelists in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Reverend Whitney Zimmerman wrote in an article in that magazine entitled, “A rule for Eucharistic Living”:

“Eucharistic living involves all aspects of our work, hospitality, community and worship. It is the central act of our lives, beginning, of course, with the actual meal [of the Eucharist].”

I like that very much. Eucharistic living then, as laid out in the Rule of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, is, in a sense, living out the Eucharist we celebrate here on Sunday in everything we do. It means we carry this Eucharist with us long after we have walked away from this altar. It means that, in being fed, we too then go out and share and feed.

Or as Whitney Zimmerman summarizes in her article: “So that I may live the bread and the wine I drink.”

Being a follower of Jesus means that we live the Bread of Jesus and the wine of his blood.

Today, of course, we celebrate Jubilee Sunday. Jubilee Sunday is that Sunday in which we stand up and essentially say, “We are followers of Jesus, committed to Eucharistic living. We must stand up and say no to the forces of injustice and unfairness in the world. Because that it is what it means to be a follower of Jesus.”

At this moment, there are many people who are standing up and essentially saying those same things, with the so-called Occupy protests going on.

This way of protests we are hearing about sweeping this country right now is one, maybe more secular way, of saying the same thing essentially. They are standing up and saying no the forces of injustice and unfairness in our country.

We as Christians do the same things, though for us, our motivating factor is that voice and Spirit of Jesus who stirs us, prompts us and convicts us to stand up against the forces of injustice.

Rendering the things that are God’s to God is not easy. It is easier to render the things to Caesar that are Caesar’s. It is easy to let the establishment stay established. It is easy to be chameleons to some extent, to change ourselves to suit whatever situation may arise so that we can quietly fade into the background, or so we can hold on, for a moment, to the control we have worked to maintain.

But for us, who follow Jesus, doing so is a sell-out. It truly is a turning away from Jesus and all he stands for. It is , essentially, a way in which we turn our Christianity on and off like a switch to suit our own personal needs. It is hard to be a Christian in every aspect of our lives. It hard to love God in all things. It is hard to love our neighbors in all things. It is hard, very often to love even ourselves in all things. But that is what it means to render to God the things that are God’s. It means giving to God all that is God’s. And we belong to God. We are the conduits of that all-loving, all-accepting God. We are the bearers of that radical, all-powerful love of God.

So let us truly render to God what is God’s. Let us live out our lives eucharistically. Let us live fully the Bread we eat at this altar, sharing what we are nourished on here with everyone. Let us fully share this wine we drink here at this altar, quenching the thirst of all those we encounter in our lives. And with Christ dwelling within us in this way, let us be that radical Presence of love and acceptance to all those we encounter.

Fr. Jamie a guest at tonight's Thology Pub at Usher's in Moorhead

2011-10-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

Monday, October 10 · 7:30pm - 9:00pm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Location Usher's House
700 1st Ave N
Moorhead, MN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Created By the Project F-M
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More Info Hope you can join us tonight for our first conversation of our Guru series. Our conversationalist will be Father Jamie, Priest at St Stephen's Episcopal Church. He'll speak for a few minutes on "Why I go to church? (or maybe, "Why not go to church?"). We'll throw the conversation open to all, of course, and see where it goes from there.

Come hungry, if you like, and order off of Usher's pub fare menu provided exclusively for Theology Pub. Free appetizers also provided.

Enjoy drinks and conversation?
Spiritual but not religious?
Open to questions of being, belief, and belonging?

Then you'll probably LOVE...Theology Pub!

+ + +

The Project F-M and friends gather bi-weekly at Usher’s House (downstairs @ the Hunt Club) for scintillating conversation and delicious beverages.

http://theprojectfm.org/

Thank you from Fr. Jamie

2011-10-03T09:55:00.001-07:00

Thank you to everyone who participated in the wonderful surprise celebration of the anniversary of my third year as priest at St. Stephen’s. I was especially moved by many well-wishes I received. It was a wonderful day yesterday.

These past three years have been an incredible time in my life. I am grateful every day to God for being at St. Stephen’s and for being in ministry with people who are so open to God’s calling and direction.

Thank you again for three wonderful years. My hope is that there will be many more productive years ahead.

- peace,
Fr. Jamie+

16 Pentecost

2011-10-02T04:56:00.001-07:00

October 2, 2011

Matthew 21.33-46

+ This past Thursday, we hosted the Moravians here as part of our four-part celebration of Full Communion between the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church. It was a fun night. Certainly it was no different than any other such evening we have had here at St. Stephen’s.

But it was certainly an eye-opening evening for me personally, as well. We had some very interesting “conversation” and many interchanges going on as part of the so-called “class” following our meal.

What was most interesting to me, however, was the reaction from the Moravians. Sometimes when one stands up here, one can sense reactions. In this case, I actually saw reactions on people’s faces. And some of those poor Moravians were definitely shocked by the fact that we Episcopalians definitely are not shy in sharing our opinions.

It’s sometimes very interesting to see ourselves through other’s eyes. And, in our case, it’s very helpful in our efforts at evangelism. It’s helpful for us to ask ourselves hard questions about ourselves and to take good hard look at what people see and hear when they visit us for the first time.

As I talked with several of the Moravians after the service and later had drinks with others, I made a comment several times.

I said, “Well, let’s just say that we Episcopalians are certainly very zealous in our opinions on occasion.”

Now to be fair, being zealous, of course, is not a bad thing by any means. It’s good to be challenged occasionally (respectfully, of course). It keeps us on our toes. And it humbles us (as long as it humiliate us).

Well, this morning we definitely have one of those parables that challenges us, that keeps us on our toes. It may even make us a bit angry and that definitely forces us to look more closely at ourselves. Let’s face it, it’s a violent story we hear Jesus tells us today. These bad tenants are so devious they are willing to kill to get what they want. And in the end, their violence is turned back upon them. It’s not a warm, fuzzy story that we can take with us and hold close to our hearts. The Church over the years has certainly struggled with this parable because it can be so challenging.

At face value, the story can probably be pretty easily interpreted in this way: The Vineyard owner of course symbolic of God. The Vineyard owner’s son of Jesus. The Vineyard is symbolic of the Kingdom. And the workers in the vineyard who kill the son are symbolic of the religious leaders who will kill Jesus. From this view, we can see the story as a prediction of Jesus’ murder. But there is another interpretation of this story that isn’t so neat and clean and finely put-together. It is in fact an uncomfortable interpretation of this parable. As we hear it, we do find ourselves shaken a bit. It isn’t a story that we want to emulate. I HOPE none of us want to emulate it.

But again, Jesus DOES twist this story around for us. The ones we no doubt find ourselves relating to are not the Vineyard owner or the Vineyard owner’s son, but, in fact, the vineyard workers. We relate to them not because we have murderous intentions in our heart. Not because we inherently bad. But because we sometimes can be just as resolute. We can sometimes be just that zealous. We sometimes will stop at nothing to get what we want. We are sometimes so full of zeal for something that we might occasionally ride roughshod over others. And when we do so, we find that we are not bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst.

Zeal can be a good thing. We should be full of zeal for God and God’s Kingdom. We too should stop at nothing to gain the Kingdom of God. But zeal taken too far undoes the good we hoped to bring about.

The most frightening aspect of our Gospel story is the fact that Jesus tells us that the kingdom can be taken away from us. It can be given to others. Our zeal for the kingdom has a lot to do with what we gain and what we lose. Our zeal to make this kingdom a reality in our world is what makes the changes in this world.

At the same time, zeal can be a very slippery slope. It can also make us zealots. It can make us fanatics. And this world is too full of fanatics. This world is too full of people who have taken their religion so seriously that they have actually lost touch with it.

This story we hear Jesus today tell us teaches us a lesson about taking our zeal too far. If we become violent in our zeal, we need to expect violence in return. And certainly this is probably the most difficult part of this parable for most of us. For those of us who consider ourselves peace-loving, nonviolent Christians, we cringe when we hear stories of violence in the scriptures. But violence like the kind we hear in today’s parable, or anywhere else in scriptures should not just be thrown out because we find it uncomfortable. It should not be discarded as useless just because we are made uncomfortable by it.

As I have said, again and again, it is not just about any ONE of us, as individuals. It is about us as a whole.

If we look at the kind of violence we find in the Scriptures and use it metaphorically, it could actually be quite useful for us. If we take some of those stories metaphorically, they actually speak to us on a deeper level. If we take the parable of the vineyard workers and apply it honestly to ourselves, we find it does speak to us in a very hard way.

Our zeal for the kingdom of God should drive us. It should move and motivate us. We should be empowered to bring the Kingdom into our midst. But it should not make us into the bad vineyard workers. It should not make into the chief priests and Pharisees who knew, full well, that they were the bad vineyard workers.

A story like this helps us to keep our zeal centered perfectly on God, and not on all the little nitpicky, peripheral stuff. A story like this prevents us. hopefully, from becoming mindless zealots. What does it allow and commend is passion. What it does tell us is that we should be excited for the Kingdom.

True zeal makes us uncomfortable, yes. It makes us restless, It frustrates us. True zeal also energizes us and makes us want to work until we catch a glimpse of that Kingdom in our midst. This is what Jesus is telling us again and again. He is telling us in these parables that make us uncomfortable that the Kingdom of God isn’t just some sweet, cloud-filled place in the next world. He is telling is, very clearly, that is it not just about any ONE of us. It is not about our own personal agendas.

The Kingdom of God is right here, in our midst. And the foundation of that kingdom, the gateway of that Kingdom, the conduit of that Kingdom is always love. Love of God, love of neighbor, healthy love of self. This is what Jesus preached. That is the path Jesus is leading us on. This is the path we walk as we follow after him. And it is a path on which we should be overjoyed to be walking.

So, let us follow this path of Jesus with true and holy zeal. Let us set out to do the work we have to do as workers in the vineyard with love in our heart and love in our actions. And as we do, we will echo the words we heard in today’s Gospel:

“This is what the Lord’s doing; it is amazing in our eyes.”

15 Pentecost

2011-09-25T05:01:00.001-07:00

September 25, 2011

Ezekiel 18.1-4;25-32; Matthew 21.23-32

+ I will admit. My interests are viewed by some people as a bit morbid, shall we say. I am one of those rare people who actually enjoy things like cemeteries. Now, I need to be clear. I like cemeteries not because I’m morbid. I like cemeteries because I have always been a history buff and there is no better place to find some great stories.

Recently I read a book put out by the Red River Genealogical Society about the Cass County Cemeteries. Now what few of us know is that, just a few blocks north of this church, there are two cemeteries. Unless you actually get out of your car and walk into the actual cemetery you wouldn’t even know they’re there. But if you do, you’ll see a large boulder.

In one cemetery the boulder is inscribed COUNTY CEMETERY #1. The one is located at the end of Elm Street. Where the road forks, one to the Country Club and the other to the former Trollwood, right there, on the left fork toward Trollwood, is the cemetery. You’ve probably driven by it countless times and never had a clue.

County Cemetery #2 is located on the other side of the old Trollwood, just within sight of where the old main stage stood. Back along the bend in the Red River, there is a stretch of grass and another boulder. This one says COUNTY CEMETERY #2.

A third County Cemetery was located on north Broadway. In 1984, those graves were moved to Springvale Cemetery, over by Holy Cross Cemetery, near the airport, because they were falling into the Red River through erosion.

For the most part, many of the graves in Springvale are marked. But in the first two cemeteries, there are no markers at all. No individual gravestones mark the graves of the people buried in the first two cemeteries. In fact, if you walked into them, you would have to force your mind to even accept the fact that it is a cemetery. But there are hundreds of people buried in those graveyards.

These are the forgotten. These were Fargo’s hidden shame. Beginning 1899 and going through the 1940s, this where the prostitutes, the gamblers, the robbers were buried. This is also where all the unwanted babies were buried. There are lots of stories of unwanted babies being fished out of the Re River. This is where the bodies of those unnamed babies were buried.

And when one walks in those pauper cemeteries, one must remind themselves of those words we hear from Jesus this morning in our Gospel reading.

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you.”

There, in those cemeteries, lie the true inheritors of the Kingdom of God. Last week in my sermon I quoted the great Reginald Fuller, who said:

“[This] is what God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”

That—and those words of Jesus we heard in this morning’s Gospel reading—are shocking statements for most of us. And it should be. It should shock us and shake us to our core. It’s a huge statement for him to make.

But I think, like many of his statements, it has lost the full weight of its meaning for us, in this day and age. Partly it does because, we can grasp the understanding about prostitutes—after all, prostitutes are still looked down upon by our society in our day. After all, we do still view prostitutes with contempt. They are another segment of our society that we tend to forget about it. But we really should give them concern. And I don’t meant from a judgmental point of view. I mean, we should give them our compassion. We should be praying for them often. Because we often hear the horrible stories of what people have to deal with on the streets. The stories of what drove them to the streets are horrendous enough. But the stories of what keeps them on the streets are just as bad. And the dangers they face—day and night—are more mind-boggling than anything we can even imagine in our safe, comfortable lives.

Truly prostitutes throughout history have been the real exploited ones. They are the ones who have lived on the fringes of society. They are the ones who have lived in the shadows of our respectable societies. They have lived dangerous, secret lives. And much of what they’ve had to go through in their lives is known only to God. They need our prayers. They need our compassion. They don’t need our exploitation. They don’t need our judgment.

As uncomfortable as it is for us to confront them and think about them, that is exactly what Jesus is telling us we must do. Because by going there in our thoughts, in our prayers, in our ministries, we are going where Jesus went. We are coming alongside people who need our thoughts, our prayers, our ministries. And rather than using them, rather than continuing the exploitation they have lived with their lives, we see them as God sees them. We see them as children of God, as fellow humans on this haphazard, uncertain journey we are all on together. And, more importantly, we see in them ourselves.

There, but for the grace of God go us. Had we been born in different circumstances, had life gone wrong for us in certain areas, and who are we to say we wouldn’t have been there? Or who we are to say we wouldn’t be the exploiters?

So, we understand what Jesus is saying about prostitutes. But tax collectors? Why all this talk about tax collectors not getting into the kingdom of heaven. No doubt, few of us like the prospect of tax collectors. Few of us are overjoyed at the thought of taxes or anyone having to collect them. But certainly they are very rarely if ever classed along side prostitutes in our day, unless under some scandalous circumstances.

But for people in Jesus’ day, for moral, good Jews, tax collectors were seen as traitors. And they were religiously unclean according to the Law because they handled the money of the Romans, which had the image of the emperor on them, who was, in very real sense, worshipped as a pagan God. So we can understand why tax collectors and prostitutes are viewed with such contempt in Jesus’ day.

The point of this morning’s Gospel is this: the Kingdom of God is not what we think it is. It is not made up of just people like us. It’s not going to be like going to the country club or Monte’s or the HoDo (two of my favorite places) or any of those other places we like to go to feel good. It is not even going to be like the Episcopal Church.

It is going to be made up people who maybe never go to church, who may never have gone to church. It is going to be made up of people we would never imagine stepping foot inside a country club or a fine restaurant. It will be made up of those people we don’t notice. It will be made up of those people who are invisible to us.

It will be made up of the people we don’t give a second thought to.

In our society today we have our own tax collectors. They are the AIDS patient, the Alzheimer’s patient, the cancer patient, the mentally ill. They are the welfare cases. They are the homeless. They are alcoholics and the drug addicts and the drug dealers. They are the depressed among us, they are the lost among us, they are the ones who are trapped in their own sadness and their own loneliness. They are the gang leaders, they are the rebels. They are the transgendered. They are the cross dressers. They are the radical Christian, the radical Muslim, the radical Jew. They are the ones we call pagan, or non-believer or atheist. They are the ones we, good Christians that we are, have worked all our lives not to be.

This is what the Kingdom of heaven is going to be like. And when we, in our arrogance, in our self-righteousness, think that we have all the answers, when we think because we do this and do that, that somehow heaven is our inheritance, that is when Jesus stands up to us and says to us, “Don’t be so quick to think you have it all figured it out.” It is then that he shakes his finger at us and reminds us that the inheritors of heaven are not us at all, but those people we have passed on the way to church on Sunday morning.

They are the people who look up at us from their marginalized place in this society. They are the ones who peek out at us from the curtains of their isolation and their loneliness. They are the ones who, in their quiet agony, watch as we drive out of sight from them. They are they inheritors of the kingdom of God and if we think they are not, then we are not listening to what Jesus is saying to us. We are plugging our ears and closing our minds and we are turning our backs on the Gospel.

When we think about those county cemeteries just a few blocks north of here, we need to realize that had Jesus lived in Fargo, had he lived 1900 years later and had died the disgraceful death he died, that is where he would’ve ended up. He would have ended up in an unmarked grave in a back field, on the very physical fringes of our city.

In fact, we can say that he is there. He is wherever the inheritors of his kingdom are. Those cemeteries for me are potent reminders of who inherits. They are potent reminders to me of who receives true glory in the end.

It is not just the ones lying in Riverside Cemetery under polished granite and marble gravestones. It is not just the ones lying in graves covered with well-tended grass, decorated with flowers and mementos, like my own father is. It is not just the ones whose ashes lie in the columbariums and memorial gardens of our churches.

It is also these—the forgotten ones, the ones whom only God knows. They are the ones that, had life turned out just a bit different for us, would be us.

Of course, we too are the inheritors of the Kingdom, especially when we love fully and completely. We too are the inheritors when we follow those words of Jesus and strive to live out and do what he commands. We too are the inheritors when we open our eyes and our minds and our hearts to those around us, whom no one else sees or loves.

So, let us also be inheritors of the Kingdom of God. Let us love fully and completely as Jesus commands. Let us love our God. Let us love all those people who come into our lives. Let us look around at those people who share this world with us. And let us never cast a blind eye on anyone.

Let us do as God speaks to us this morning through the prophet Ezekiel: Let us “turn, then, and live.”

14 Pentecost

2011-09-18T05:19:00.001-07:00

September 18, 2011

Matthew 20. 1-16

+ Every morning, when I pray Morning Prayer, I pray this petition: I pray for all “who are jealous of me, and all for whom I am jealous.”

I think that has to be one of the most presumptuous prayers one can ever pray. Because, recently I was thinking about this petition. And I was trying to think of one person I could name who I could even think was jealous of me. And I couldn’t think of one person. I’m just not one of those people about whom anyone is jealous I think.

But the second part of that petition is a bit more accurate. There ARE people I am jealous of. I am jealous of people whoa re more successful than me, who are happier in their professional and personal lives than me. There are people out there whose lives just seem to go along swimmingly, without any seeming effort, while I seem to struggle every so often.

Jealousy is one of those natural feelings we have. And I think my jealousy, at least at this point in my life, tends to deal with a sense of unfairness. I feel jealous when I realize how unfair it is that someone else has something I don’t . Yes, I know: it’s a very selfish, self-centered thing to do. But I do find myself fuming over the unfairness of life sometimes.

Or to put it in the context of our Gospel reading today, I feel like one of the workers who has been working from the beginning of the work day. The parable Jesus tells us this morning is, of course, not just a story about vineyard workers. The story really, for us anyway, is all about that sense of unfairness. If you’re anything like me, when you hear today’s Gospel—and you’re honest with yourself—you probably thought: “I agree with the workers who have been working all day: It just isn’t fair that these workers hired later should get the same wages.”

It’s not fair that the worker who only works a few hours makes the same wages as one who has worked all day. Few of us, in our own jobs, would stand for it. We too would whine and complain. But the fact is, as we all know by this time, life is not fair. Each of here this morning has been dealt raw deals in our lives at one point or another. We have all known what it’s like to not get the fair deal. We all have felt a sense of jealousy and unfairness over the raw deals of this life.

But, as much as we complain about it, as much as make a big deal of it, we are going to find unfairness in this life. Of course, our personal lives are one thing. But for me, as I hope for most of us, this morning, we can do something about this sense of unfairness in the Church. What we find in today’s parable is exactly what many of us have had to deal with in the Church.

The story of the parable is that everyone—no matter how long they’ve been laboring—gets an equal share. And in Jesus’ ministry, that’s exactly what happens as well. As one of my personal theological heroes, the great Reginald Fuller, once said of this parable: “[This] is what God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”

The marginalized, the maligned, the social outcast—all of them are granted an equal share. To me, it sounds like the ministry we are all called to do as followers of Jesus.

To be a follower of Jesus is strive to make sure that everyone gets a fair deal, even when we ourselves not be getting the fair deal. It means striving to make sure that all of us on this side of the “veil” get an equal share of the Kingdom of God. That is what we do as followers of Jesus and that is what we need to strive to continue to do.

But…it’s more than just striving for an equal share for others. It also means not doing some things as well. It means not lamenting the unfairness of what an equal share means for us. It means not letting jealousy win out. Because jealousy is a horribly corrosive emotion. It eats and eats away at us until it makes us bitter and angry. And jealousy is simply not something followers of Jesus should be harboring in their hearts. Because jealousy can also lead us into a place in which we are not striving for the Kingdom.

Those of us who are followers of Jesus are striving, always, again and again, to do the “right thing.” But when we do, and when we realize that others are not and yet they are still reaping the rewards, we no doubt are going to feel a bit jealous. We, although few of us would admit it, are often, let’s face it, the “righteous” ones. We follows the rules, we strive to live our lives as good Christians. We fast, we say our prayers faithfully, we tithe, we do what we are supposed to do as good Christians. Striving for the equal share for people, means not allowing ourselves to get frustrated over the fact that those people who do not do those things—especially those people whom we think don’t follow the rules at all, those people who aren’t “righteous” by our standards—also receive an equal share. It means not crying to ourselves, “It’s not fair.”

Because when we do those things, we must ask ourselves a very important question: why do we do what we do as Christians? Do we do what we do so we can call ourselves “righteous?” Do we do what we do as Christians because we believe we’re going to get some reward in the next life? Do we do what do because we think God is in heaven keeping track of all our good deeds like some celestial Santa Claus? Do we do what do simply because we think we will get something in return? Or do we do what we do because doing so makes this world a better place?

This is the real key to Jesus’ message to us. Constantly, Jesus is pushing us and challenging us to be a conduit. He is trying to convince us that being a Christian means being a conduit for the Kingdom of God.

In us, the Kingdom breaks through. Without us, it simply will not.

We do what we do as Christians because whatever we do is a way in which the barriers that separate us here from God and God’s world is lifted for a brief moment when we do what Jesus tells us to do. When we live out the Law of loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves, the “veil” is lifted and when it is lifted, the Kingdom comes flooding into our lives. It does not matter in the least how long we labor in allowing this divine flood to happen. The amount of time we put into it doesn’t matter in the least to God, because God’s time is not our time. Rather, we simply must do what we are called to do when we are called to do it.

Jesus came to bring an equal share to a world that is often a horribly unfair place. And his command to us is that we must strive to bring an equal share to this unequal world. And that is what we’re doing as followers of Jesus. As we follow Jesus, we do so knowing that we are striving to bring about an equal share in a world that is often unfair. We do so, knowing that we are sometimes swimming against the tide. We do so, feeling at times, as though we’re set up to fail. We do so feeling, at times, overwhelmed with jealousy. And just when we think the unfairness of this world has won out—in that moment, the Kingdom of God always breaks through to us. And in that moment, we are the ones who are able to be the conduit through which the Kingdom of God comes.

So, let us continue to do what we are doing as followers of Jesus. Let us strive to do even better. In every thing we do, let us attempt to lift that veil in our lives and by doing so, let us be the conduit through which the Kingdom of God will flood into this unfair world. And let us do together what Jesus is calling us to do in this world

Let us love—fully and completely. Let us love our God, let us love our selves and let us neighbors as ourselves. As we all know, it’s important to come here and share the Word and the Eucharist on Sundays. But we also know that what we share here motivates us to go out into the world and actually “do” our faith.

A quote you’ve heard me share more than once here, from the great Anglican bishop of Zanzibar, Frank Weston, is this:

“You have Christ in your tabernacles.”—we have Christ here, present in our Eucharist—“now go out and seek Him in the highways and the hedges...”

As followers of Jesus, we are full of hope—a hope given to us by a God who knows our future and who wants only good for us. Let us go forth with that hope and with a true sense of joy that we are doing what we can to make that future glorious.

2011-09-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

In loving memory of my father

Albert H. Parsley

(Jan. 17, 1934-Sept. 14, 2010)

“Not even death can part us—
it will instead bind us together in a glorious place,
in a coming-together that will never end.”
— Yehuda Amichai

13 Pentecost

2011-09-11T05:09:00.001-07:00

Dedication Sunday
September 11, 2011

Genesis 28.10-17; 1 Peter 2.1-5,9-11

+ One film I love watching again and again is the 1985 classic, Back to the Future. The story (for those you who might not know it) is about a young man, Marty McFly, played Michael J., Fox. In the film, he ends up driving a DeLorean, which has been modified by his scientist friend through nuclear fission and using plutonium (stolen from the Libyans) as fuel, which generates 1.21 giggawats of power into a device called a “flux capacitor.”

He goes from October 25, 1985, back to November 5, 1955, where he meets his future parents (whoa re high school students), and tons of chaos ensues.

Well, this morning, we too are going back to the future. No, we do not have a flux capacitor. We’re just going to use out imaginations, this morning.

We’re going to take a little trip back in time… No, were not going back to those awful events ten years ago on that awful date in 2001.

We’re going back to a bit more stable time—a more innocent time. Our trip is taking us back 55 years. It is Sunday morning, September 9, 1956. On this particular Sunday in 1956, it was truly a different American.

The number one song in the country that Sunday morning was “Don’t Be Cruel” by Elvis Presley. In fact, that very night Elvis would appear on the Ed Sullivan Show—“coast to coast with your favorite host.”

The number one book in the country that morning was Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.

1956 was an election year. The current president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would be going up against the Democratic hopeful, Adlai Stevenson, who would lose that November.

But on this morning, the congregation of St. Stephen’s was officially dedicated. According to the records, there were 51 people at that service. It we think hard enough, we can almost imagine how people looked in church that morning. The women in hats and skirt, the men in suits and ties.

And no doubt it felt like something was truly beginning. By the end of that year, there would be 51 communicates (39 of whom came from the Cathedral) and a total of 94 baptized members listed. By 1958, there were 144 baptized members and 45 families and by Jan. 1, 1960, there were a whopping 214 members with 60 families.

Over the years, those numbers just kept going up. Within ten years, in 1968, the membership received its number of 243 members.

Now, the story of St. Stephen’s is fascinating. In its 55 years, there have been ebbs and there have been flows. And throughout those 55 years this seemingly small congregation has been the first do many wonderful things.

The first woman Senior Warden in the Diocese.

The first woman priest to serve a congregation in the diocese.

The first congregation in the diocese to openly and unabashedly welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

The first to establish a chapter of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.

The first, just ten years ago, to have a labyrinth.

Of course, there were hard time too. I have heard with great sadness the stories of what is called the “Exodus out” in the 1980s. It is sad to look through the parish records and see those numbers drop and dribble away for various reason throughout the 1980s.

But, here are, back in our own day. Here we are on this glorious morning in September 0f 2011. Here we are, 55 years into our ministry to the Church and the world. And we have a lot of celebrate this morning.

If you’re anything like me, when things seem to be going well, there is a sense of disbelief. I often wonder: is this really happening? And then I do an awful thing. I started taking it for granted.

And I’ve had to catch myself a few times over these last few years so I do not fall into the trap of taking for granted what God has given us here at St. Stephen’s.

Just three years ago, our membership was 55 members, which had remained pretty steady for about ten years previously.

But this year, we can rejoice in the fact that, for the first time since 1984, our membership is now in the triple numbers. Our Average Sunday Attendance is only going up and remaining steady. I think we have only dipped below 30 people once or twice on Sunday this whole past summer (which is quite the feat for us).

But we are more than just any of those things. Wee are more than just membership numbers. We are more than just an Average Sunday Attendance. We are a congregation that makes a different.

Now, I know some people have an issue with my so-called “cheerleading: of St. Stephen’s. Yes, I have actually been scolded by people outside out congregation for bragging too much about St. Stephen’s.

But I take my job as cheerleader seriously. I have no problems with boasting about what God has done here. I have no qualms about boasting about what all of us are doing here at St. Stephen’s.

In our wonderful reading this morning from St. Peter, we find him saying,

“Once you were not a people,
but not you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.”

When we look around us this morning, as we celebrate 55 years of ebb and flow in our congregation, we realize that truly we are on the receiving end of a good amount of mercy. We realize that mercy from God has descended upon us in this moment. And it is a glorious thing.

And, as unbelievable as it might seem at times, we cannot take it for granted. We must use this opportunity we have been given. We realize that it is not enough o receive mercy. We must, in turn, give mercy.

Mercy, as we all know, is elusive. We can’t pin it down. But we know when it comes to us. And we know how to be merciful to others.

The way we properly and truly celebrate 55 years of St. Stephen’s ministry to the Church and the world is by giving thanks for the mercy wee have received and are receiving at this moment. And we turn around and share that mercy with others. That’s what we’ve been doing here at St. Stephen’s from that very beginning way back in 1956.

We, this morning, are being called to echo what St. Peter said to us in our reading this morning.

We, God’s own people, are being called to “proclaim
the mighty acts of [God] who called [us] out of
darkness into [that] marvelous light.”

We proclaim these mighty acts by our own acts. We proclaim God’s acts through mercy, through ministry, through service to others, through the worship we give here and the outreach we do from here.

I love being the cheerleader for St. Stephen’s. Because it’s so easy to do. God is doing wonderful things here through each of us. Each of us is the conduit through which God’s mercy and love is being manifested.

In our collect for this morning, we prayed to God that “all who seek you here [may] find you, and be filled with your joy and peace…”

That prayer is being answered in our very midst today. And although it may seem unbelievable at times, this is truly who God works in our midst. God works in our midst by allowing us to be that place in which God is found, a place in which joy and peace and mercy dwell.

So, let us continue to receive God’s mercy and, in turn, give God’s mercy to others. Let us be a place in which mercy dwells. Because when we do we will find ourselves, along with those who come to us, echoing the words of Jacob from our reading in the Hebrew Bible this morning,

“How awesome is this place! This is none
other than the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven.”

12 Pentecost

2011-09-04T21:20:00.001-07:00

Romans 13.8-14; Matthew 18. 15-20

+ A few nights ago I was having drinks with a friend of mine. I mentioned to my friend that I was planning on traveling to Rome this February. “How wonderful!” my friend said. “So…are you planning on trying ot get a private audience with the Pope?”

I laughed and said, “Uh…no. I actually I have no desire to see the Pope.”

My friend looked at me with shock and said, “You know despite all your Anglo-Catholic posturing, I think, deep down, you’re still a good Protestant.”

I was stunned—and I have to admit, a bit insulted by being called…a Protestant. But, like a good Protestant, I did protest.

“Yes,” I said, “I may be an Anglo-Catholic, but I am not an Anglo-Papalist.”

A few Sundays ago, as you may recall in our Gospel reading, we encountered a wonderful interchange between Jesus and Peter, in which Jesus said to Peter: “I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

In that reading, there were several different interpretations of what all this meant. One of the more popular beliefs was the Roman Catholic belief that Jesus was, in fact, founding the Church on Peter whom they claim to be the first Pope and giving to him and his successors the power to bind and loose. And for people who hold that view, such as many Roman Catholics and some Anglo-Papalists—and yes, there’s still a few out there, though most of them are on converting to the Roman Church—the Roman Church and the Pope have full authority to bind and loose.

Now I am quite clear in my view that I do not believe that view. And if that makes me…sigh…a Protestant, then so be it.

Because in today’s Gospel, we find that the power to bind and loose is not given just to Peter, but, if you notice, it is given to all Jesus’ followers, including us. After talking about how members of the Church who have disagreements with each other should resolve their differences, he goes on to say:

“Truly I tell you [and he is speaking to all his followers at this time] whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

He goes on to say: “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

This is very important to us. Because when Jesus gave that power to bind and loose to all his followers, he didn’t just give it those followers who were with him that day. He gave that power to all Christians, throughout all time. He gave that power to us, as well, here and now. And because there are, in fact, more than two or three gathered here this morning, Jesus truly is in the midst of us—his Church. We, being the Church, have that power to bind and loose and it is quite the power. Take a moment and just think about what it is Jesus is giving us authority to do. What we bind on earth, will be bound in heaven. And what we loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven. This is some incredible power. The Church has the power, in a very real sense, to control not only what is here on earth, but the control carries over into heaven.

Still, it’s confusing, this concept of binding and loosing. What is it Jesus is talking about when means binding and loosing? Probably the best way to try to understand it is to put it in the context of Jesus’s own time. For Jewish rabbis in Jesus’s time, "binding" the Law meant they were able to apply it to a particular situation. They “loosed” the Law when it was not able to be applied to situation. There were some situations that the Law was clear about, and they could not be loosed. But there were also grey areas in life where the Law wasn’t so clear and, as a result, the rabbis had to figure out if the Law could be applied to it. They made the decision about whether it was binding and loosing.

For us, this passage isn’t quite so clear. For us, “binding” and “loosing” don’t mean the same things as they did to Jesus’s followers. Still, we are able to grasp, in some way, what Jesus is getting at. The simple fact is this: what we do here on earth, really does make a difference with God.

And that, as Christians, as the Church, what we do has great power. Because when we gather together, Jesus is in our midst and what we do together becomes an act of Christ. We have been given the power to bind and loose—however we might understand those terms. And we can use (or mis-use) a power like this.

We could apply it any number of issues that are plaguing the Church right now. We could use it to condemn those who have differing views than us in the Church, or to give credit to our own positions, especially when it comes to issues of scriptural authority.

In this area, each of us walks a slippery slope. Scripture, as you’ve heard me say before, is always a double-edge sword. If we are going to use it cut, then we be better prepared to be cut by it. It will comes back on us and cut us eventually if we insist on using it in such a way. Oftentimes, we might find ourselves on the wrong side of what is bound and loosed. Oftentimes, we can get nitpicky about issues and where to stand on them. And in those cases, we have lost the real spirit of what it means to bind and loose.

But, there is one motivating factor behind all binding and loosing. And we find this motivating factor spoken to us in our reading from Romans today. There we find the summary of this same Law that binds or loosens. The summary of this Law is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. And here we find the truly binding experience of Christianity.

Our job as Christians is not to nit-pick about what should be bound and what should be loosened. Our job as Christians is to make sure that we love each other as we love ourselves. Love, after all, is the ultimate experience of binding. And Christian love, because Jesus has given us this power to loose and bind, has a power that few other loves have. The love we have as Christians is more than just a love for each other here on earth. This love that we love have is a love that binds itself even in heaven. And this is why we can’t allow anything else other than love in ourselves. That’s why we can not allow feelings like hatred into our lives.

Just as love is the ultimate binding experience, hatred is the ultimate loosing experience. And hatred for others, or for ourselves, loosens us and that loosening experience is also loosed in heaven. God does pay attention to what we feel and what we do. God does notice when we do not love—when we do not love others, or ourselves. And that is not God’s intent for us. God does not want us to feel anything other than love for others, and for ourselves. Because in loving each other, in loving ourselves, we are loving God, who is present in our midst—who is present with us and within us. And that perfect balance is what gives us a glimpse of the Kingdom of God in our midst.

The Kingdom of God, as elusive and vague as it might seem at times, is a place of balance. This much we do know. The Kingdom of God in our midst involves catching a glimpse of the balance that comes when we love each other and ourselves.

And we know that this kind of love is not just a love here on earth. It is a love that knows no boundaries. It is a love that crosses over to the other side—that crosses over into that other place in which we find God. Or rather, it isn’t a love that crosses over at all. It is instead a love that causes heaven to break through into our midst. It is a love that blurs whatever boundaries separate us from heaven. It is a love that causes heaven to exist, here, in our midst. And that is why we are called to love each other and ourselves.

And that is why, throughout scripture, we find a prohibition against things such as cursing. By cursing here, I don’t necessarily mean swearing or cussing. What is meant here is that we are told, again and again throughout scripture, that we should not curse anyone, because, as we’ve seen from our Gospel reading today, what we do matters. It matters here and it matters in heaven.

As a Christian, as someone with that power given to all of us by Jesus himself, if we curse someone, then that person is cursed. Our curse does fall on that person. And conversely, when people curse us, we too are cursed. We bear their curse. There is a reason why scripture is clear about this. There is a reason why we are told, again and again, not to curse, even when we’re angry. We should not allow curses into our lives, because curses are done out of anger and hatred, not out of love.

Our job as Christians is always, always, always to love. Love should always win out over cursing and hatred. If we love fully, as we are commanded to do by Jesus, we have no place for cursing and hatred.

So, because we, as Episcopalians, believe that Jesus founded the Church not just on the Rock of Peter, but on Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, and because we believe that the power to bind and loose was not only given to the Pope, but to all of us who are Christians, we need to take stock of the words that come out of our mouths.

We need to take stock of the emotions we carry within our hearts. We need to let love always win out. We need to know that if we bind we must bind in love and if we loose we must loose also in love. And by doing so, what we do in love on earth, will be done in heaven in love.

So love fully. Love others and love yourself as Jesus commands us to love. And if we do, we will find the words Jesus said to Peter in that Gospel reading a few weeks ago coming true in us as well. The gates of Hades will not prevail against us as Church. The gates of every ugly, evil thing in this world—things such as the power of the other’s curses—will have no power over us. Rather, with a love like that in us and emanating from us, the powers of darkness and evil will fall flat before us.

So, love fully. And let that love that is bound in you be bound in heaven and let that love loosed in you be loosed in heaven. And by doing so, you will be bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst.

The Celebration of the life of Lil Paul Brown

2011-09-01T20:08:00.001-07:00

Lil Paul Brown

(March 16, 1961-August 27, 2011)
Boulger Funeral Home
Fargo
September 1, 2011

+ As some of you might not know, I am Lynn’s cousin. She and I actually never really knew each other until about a year ago. Last summer I contacted her because I was writing a book of about the infamous June 20, 1957 tornado that struck Fargo. That tornado took the life of Lynn’s parents, Don and Betty Titgen

That day that we met I think Lynn was a little apprehensive about having this priest in his funny dog collar and his black clothes suddenly kind of showing up. I don’t know if she knew what to think of me. But as we talked that day we really bonded. I think she realized that I was anyone’s typical priest.

So, when I heard about Lil Paul’s death, I felt terrible for Lynn. Although I never got to know Lil Paul, I really think I would’ve liked him. And I think, even despite my funny clothes, he would’ve liked me too.

In these last few days, as I planned this service with the family, I really felt myself bond with not only the family, but also with Lil Paul. And bonding with him, doesn’t make doing this service any easier for me. In fact, it actually complicates doing it. I have found myself getting very emotional about this man I never even met. But that’s a good thing, I think. I am of the belief that what separates us who are alive and breathing here on earth from those who are now in the so-called “nearer presence of God” is a thin one. And because of that belief, I take a certain comfort in the fact Lil Paul is close to us today. I think most of us can feel that presence with us this afternoon. He is here, in our midst, with us, celebrating this wonderful life of his with us.

I have heard a lot about Lil Paul in these last few days. I heard about what a truly good guy he was. This was the guy who, literally, gave the shirt of his back to someone in need. Or who gave the last dollar in his pocket for someone who needed it. And this man was a man full of love. He loved having a good time. He loved planning parties. And every one of his neighbors is never going to forget those Christmas displays, and those Christmas Vacation/Griswold light displays that would blind anyone within a mile radius. He loved his family. He loved his step dad. And he was a man who deeply loved the one love of his life, Lynn.

I really wish I could tell Lynn and everyone else here this afternoon some easy explanation of why. Why did this happen? The fact is: I can’t. But I can tell you this. I do know that love is stronger than death.

Love IS stronger than even death. Probably the one person here this morning who can give us the example to go ahead is Lynn. Because, let me tell you, Lynn knows a few things about heartache in her life.

Last year, when I met with her to talk about this book about the 1957 tornado, despite her initial apprehension of me, she really opened up to me. I hope I’m not revealing too much here, Lynn. But, Lynn shared a wonderful story about her parents. Although her father, Don, died in that awful tornado, her mother actually lingered on for another two and a half years in a coma, from which she never regained consciousness.

During that time, Lynn said, her mother did something whenever anyone would enter the room. Her mother’s eyelids would flutter anytime anyone entered the room. Lynn told me that day I met with her: “I know this is stupid to say, but I really believe that all that time she was in the coma, she was waiting for my dad to come in that door.”

Finally, in January 1960, Betty, after all that fighting, died. And Lynn said, “I think, at that moment, he finally did come through that door.”

For me, that story is a perfect example that yes, love is stronger than death. Love, as all of us know, is not some sweet, gentle emotion. It is something that comes charging into our lives and knocks everything flat. Lil Paul would tell us all that this afternoon. It certainly did in his life. I heard, again and again, about Lil Paul changed when Lynn came into his life. That’s what loves does. It changes us. It makes us different than who were before.

As I said, I don’t have any easy answers. I can’t make all of this pain go away. But I can say this: In this moment, Lil Paul is a place where love has triumphed. Love, that emotion that knocks everything flat, has knocked flat even death.

In our gospel reading for today, we find Jesus talking about the mansions prepared for us in his father’s home. I love that idea of mansions. And I am fully convinced that God has provided a mansion for Lil Paul. No, Lil Paul probably didn’t think he deserved a mansion. But he’s not really in any place to protest it right now. He’s got a mansion, whether he likes it or not.

Can you imagine what that place must be like? Can you imagine the party that he is busy preparing, working hard to get ready for right now in this moment? Can you imagine the joy and the happiness he must feeling right at this moment in that place?

The consolation we can take away from today is that, all of the hard times in Lil Paul’s life are over for him. All of that has passed away for him and he is now fully and completely himself. He is whole. Of course that doesn’t make any of this any easier for those who are left behind. Whenever anyone we love dies, we are going to feel pain. That’s just a part of life. Lil Paul knew that. This pain that we are feeling today, this sense of loss—all of this temporary. All of it will pass away eventually. And knowing this gets us through. This is where we find our strength—in our faith that promises us an end to our sorrows, to our loss. It is a faith that can tell us with a startling reality that every tear we shed—and we all shed our share of tears in this life, as Lil Paul would tell us—every tear will one day be dried and every heartache will disappear like a bad dream upon awakening.

All those rain showers that seemed to plague Lil Paul whenever he would go out for a ride, are over for him. The clouds have broken for good, and from now on it’s just sunshine and blue skies.

It is in a moment like this that I am thankful for the bond I formed with Lil Paul because even now I can feel him here with me. He’s reminding me that there’s something wonderful and amazing awaiting all of us. There’s a party that’s waiting for us to come to. All we have to do is say “yes” to the invitation.

So this afternoon and in the days to come, let us all take consolation in that faith that Lil Paul is beyond the pains and sorrows of this life. He is, in this moment, happy in a way he never was before. And he is there, preparing a party for us. Let us be glad that one day that all of us will be there with him, sharing in that party and joining him in that place of music and light and happiness without end.

11 Pentecost

2011-08-28T04:57:00.001-07:00

August 28, 2011

Matthew 16.21-28

+ Every Wednesday here at St. Stephen’s, we celebrate, as you know, the Eucharist at 6:00 pm. Also in that service we usually commemorate a different saint. We use, sometimes, some of the very amusing anecdotes from Fr. John-Julian, an Episcopal who is a member of the Order of Julian of Norwich, an Episcopal monastic community. Oftentimes the stories he shares are quite, shall we say, fanciful?

A few weeks we were commemorating the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I was sharing some interesting stories about the Virgin Mary—some of them quite fanciful stories. At announcement later in the service, our own Joanne Droppers was sharing about the brat supper and made a comment about inviting people to help out with brats, especially those you never want to see again. It took by such surprise that I started laughing and said, “Joanne, that is the funniest thing I have heard tonight.”

Without missing a beat, our own Thom Marubbio piped up from the back and said, “Well, it wasn’t as funny as what we heard in the sermon.”

Which also made me laugh.

But, on Wednesday nights, in addition to the fantastical stories of saints, we also very often commemorate martyrs. And I always like to ask, when we commemorate martyrs, What do you think of when you think of a martyr? No doubt we think of brave, almost legendary saints from other times who went to their deaths valiantly. We think of those stained glass windows, sort of like the one we have here, above the organ, of people like our very own St. Stephen the first Martyr who, as the Book of Acts tells us, was stoned to death for praying to Jesus. We then think of overly dramatic paintings and drawings of early Christian martyrs bravely meeting the lions in stadiums as they sing hymns and gaze off longingly toward heaven. And those are all valid images of martyrs.

But that seems like some other time and place for most of us. Very few of us could imagine martyrs in this day and age. And even fewer of us could imagine ourselves dying as martyrs. But the fact is, martyrs are not all from some other legendary time in history. And they are not all from some distant land. In fact, we have had martyrs from our own area.

I recently re-read a book called China’s Christian Martyrs. . I was surprised to find an account of a young man named Wilhelm Vatne. Vatne was born in 1890 to Norwegian-American parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tonnes Vatne, in, of all places, Cooperstown, North Dakota. At an early age, Wilhelm became a very committed Christian. He graduated from school early and became a school teacher at the age of 18 (they could do that in those days).

On September 10, 1910, Wilhelm left Cooperstown and went to Sianfu, Shensi, China, where he taught the children of missionaries serving there. One hundred years ago, in 1911, there was a fury of anti-foreign and especially anti-Christian protest in China. On October 23, 1911, a mob rushed the school Vatne taught in. The mob killed all the missionaries in it, including Vatne. He was only 21 years old.

The story is pretty typical to who and what martyrs are. They are ordinary people who are called to give the ultimate sacrifice for their faith in Christ. Martyrs are truly a unique lot among us Christians.

In the early Church they were viewed as heroes, similar in many ways to sports stars or movie stars in our own day. The word martyr actually means “witness” and they really were true witnesses to Christ, witnessing to Christ by their very deaths, by the actual blood they shed for Christ. Martyrs also challenge the rest of us Christians, as well. They challenge us, by their deaths, to ask ourselves that very important question: would we, under similar circumstances, be willing to give up our lives for our Christian faith? Would we be willing to die for Christ? If, for some reason, we were forced to either give up our faith in Christ and live or profess our faith in the face of danger and certain death, would we? Or, just as importantly, would we be able to stand up to the forces in the world that are in such direct opposition to our Christian faith, even if standing up in such a way would mean death? Would we be able to take to heart the words of today’s Gospel, when Jesus says, “those who lose their life for my sake will gain it.”

It might be easier to answer if we are talking only about our own deaths. But would we be so ready if the deaths involved our children or other loved ones?

I think it’s occasionally a good thing to ask ourselves these questions, because the fact is, as we’ve seen with people like Wilhelm Vatne, martyrs are not just fabled personages from the far past.

There are martyrs even in our own day and age. We all know about the German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his stand against Hitler. Many of us can remember hearing about people like Archbishop Oscar Romero and Americans like Jean Donovan and the three American nuns who were brutally murdered with her in El Salvador in 1980.

Just a few months ago, several of us from St. Stephen’s went to see the wonderful film, Of Gods and Men, about the seven French Trappist monks who were kidnapped in March, 1996 in Algeria by extremist Muslims, who then preceded to behead each one of them.

And among Anglicans and Episcopalians we have lost some great modern people to martyrdom, people such as Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who in August of 1965, was shot and killed in Mississippi by a white shop owner for defending a young black girl during the darkest days of Integration.

Or Archbishop Junani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganada, who was brutally murdered by dictator Idi Amin in 1977 for standing up against oppression.

And some of us no doubt see martyrs even in someone who didn’t necessarily die for sake their faith, but simply died for being who they are, such as Matthew Shepeherd, a young, gay Episcopalian.

There are people dying for their faith, even right now, this morning. By one estimation, about 465 Christians are killed worldwide for their faith every few months. So, there are, no doubt, people dying for Christ and Christ’s message of love in our world even as we gather together this morning. There are people today in this world who are dying for Christ or are watching their loved ones die for Christ.

And suffering for Christ doesn’t just mean dying for Christ either. There are many people who are living with persecution and other forms of abuse for their faith. So, it is important to remember the martyrs of our faith. It is important to heed their witness to us.

Our Church has truly found its identity and spirit with those who, throughout two thousand years of Christianity, have suffered and died for their faith. There is a well-known motto of the Church:

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Hopefully, though, few of us here this morning are being called to die as martyrs. For us who are maybe not led to die for Christ, we still have our own burdens to bear. And that burden, of course, is the Cross.

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus saying to us:

“If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me.”

Picking up our cross might seem like a vague idea for us. What Jesus is saying to us is that, being a Christian, as wonderful as it is, isn’t a rose garden. Being a Christian means facing bravely the ugly things that life sometimes throws at us. I don’t think I have to tell anyone here what those ugly things in life are. Each of us has had to deal with our own personal forms of the world’s ugliness. As we look around at those who are with us this morning, most of us here this morning have carried our share of crosses in this life. Most of us have shouldered the difficult and ugly things of this life—whether it be illness, death, loss, despair, disappointment, frustration—you name it.

The fact is: these things are going to happen to us whether we are Christians or not. It’s simply our lot as human beings that life is going to be difficult at times. It is a simple fact of life that we are going to have feasts in this life, as well as famines. There will be gloriously wonderful days and horribly, nightmarish days. We, as human beings, cannot escape this fact. But, we, as Christians, are being told this morning by Jesus that we can not deal with those things like everyone else does. When the bad things of this life happen, our first reaction is often to run away from them. Our first reaction is numb our emotions, to curl up into a defensive ball and protect ourselves and our emotions.

But Jesus is telling us that, as Christians, what we must do in those moments is to embrace those things—to embrace the crosses of this life—to shoulder them and to continue on in our following of Jesus. By facing our crosses, by bearing them, by taking them and following Jesus, we was able to realize that what wins out in the end is Jesus, not the cross. What triumphs in the end is not any of the other ugly things this life throws at us.

Rather, what triumphs is the integrity and the strength we gain from being a Christian. What triumphs is Jesus’ promise that a life unending awaits us. What triumphs is Jesus’ triumph over death and the ugly things of this life. What we judge to be the way we think it should be is sometimes judged differently by God. We don’t see this world from the same perspective God does. And as a result, we are often disappointed.

Yes, our burdens are just another form of martyrdom—another albeit bloodless form of witnessing to Christ. And, like a martyr, in the midst of our toil, in the midst of shouldering our burden and plodding along toward Jesus, we are able to say, “Blessed be the name of God!”

That is what it means to be a martyr. That is what it means to deny one’s self, to take up one’s cross and to follow Jesus. That is what it means to find one’s life, even when everyone else in the world thinks you’ve lost your life.

So, let us take up whatever cross we’re bearing and carry it with strength and purpose. Let us take it up and follow Jesus. And, in doing so, we will gain for ourselves the glory of God that Jesus promises to those who do so.

10 Pentecost

2011-08-21T05:06:00.001-07:00

Matthew 16.13-20

+ Last Sunday, I shared with you a little confession about myself. I laid myself bare to some extent and admitted that I have a failing, which of course is my big mouth—the fact that I often say thing without thinking.

This week, I’m doing it again. I am again sharing a little secret myself form the pulpit. I must be a “confessional” state of mind lately or something. Now I know some of you are, at this moment, shifting uncomfortably in your pews as you wonder what else I could possibly confess to you. And let me tell you, pulpits are not the best places for confessions.

Well, what I’m going to confess is something most people can’t imagine hearing from a person dressed in a dog collar and the robes of the Church. But, the fact is (here’s my humble confession to you): I have always had … a love-hate relationship with the Church. By Church here, I mean Church with a capital “C”. I mean the organized Church. And “hate” might be a bit too harsh to describe what I feel. But the fact remains, I have had an emotional relationship with the Church that, at times, has been see-sawing at best. And I can tell you, most of us who are in any way active in the church, whether you are pastor or priest, or a lay person, there have been moments when every single one of us has been frustrated by the Church—capital C.

Probably most of us here would say we have felt the same way about the Church at times. There are days when we all groan when we see or hear other Christians get up and speak on behalf of the rest of us. There are days when we are embarrassed by what some Christians say or do on behalf of Christianity. There are days when we get frustrated when we hear clergy or other authorities pronounce decrees that, in no way, reflect our own particular views or beliefs. And there are times when we get downright mad at the hypocrisy, the homophobia, the misogyny, the ambivalence, the silence in the face of oppression and evil and war, the downright meanness we sometimes experience from the Church.

Most of us—idealistically, naively maybe—wonder to ourselves: wait a minute. The Church isn’t supposed to be like this. The Church is supposed to be a place of Love and Compassion. It is supposed to be a place where everyone is welcomed and loved. Knowing that and comparing the ideal view of the Church with its shortcomings only make us feel more helpless, listless, angry, and disgusted. And sometimes we might even find ourselves admiring those people who aren’t Christian, who aren’t a part of the Church or those Christians who have simply fled the Church.

I have talked many, many times about my best friend from high school (who is still my best friend) is a militant atheist. He has an almost angry ambivalence to the Church and the concept of God. He wasn’t always that way. When I first met him, his mother was a member of the First Assemblies of God. By the time I got to know him, he had long ago stopped attending church. He often used to tell me the story of how, when he was a young boy, his mother would drop him off at the church for Sunday School. He would then run right through the church, out the back door and run several blocks through fields back to his home. He says that it was on that run away from the church that he became an atheist.

What he was running away from is what many of us are tempted to run away from as well. What he was running away from was the close-mindedness, the fundamentalism, the—for him—scary Pentecostal displays of speaking in tongues, dancing in the aisles, waving hands in the air and literal interpretations of scripture. I think many of us have felt like that ourselves when it comes to Church. There have been times when we’ve all wanted to just run away from Church and everything we find here. And that’s all right.

I personally think that’s a somewhat healthy way of looking at the Church. Because we have to remind ourselves of one thing: What my friend was running away from and what we are tempted to run away from is not God, although my friend hasn’t quite come to the point yet in his own life. What we are running away from is a human-run, human-led organization. We are running away from a celestially planned treasure that has been run (and very often mis-run) throughout two thousand years of history by fallible human beings.

In today’s Gospel, we find this wonderful interchange between Jesus and Peter. Peter, when asked who he thinks Jesus is, replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” That’s a good answer. But, Jesus responds to this confession of faith with surprise. He responds by saying, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Of course, as you might know, Jesus is playing a little word game here with the words “Peter” and “rock.” In Jesus’ own language of Aramaic he would have said, “You are Kepha (Peter is also called Cephas at times in the Gospels) and on this kepha (or rock) I will build my church.” Now, depending on who you are, depending on your own personal spiritual leanings, this reading could take on many meanings. If you’re more Catholic minded—and especially if you’re more Roman Catholic minded—it certainly does seem that Jesus is establishing the Church on the Rock of Peter—and of course in that tradtion Peter at this moment becomes essentially the first Pope. For those who are more Protestant or Reformed minded—it could be said that the Church is being established not on Peter himself, but on the rock of Peter’s confession of faith.

Either way, Jesus is commending the Church to Peter and to his other followers. And this is important, especially when we examine who Peter is. Jesus commends his Church to one of the most impetuous, impulsive, stubborn, cowardly human beings he could find. Peter, as we all know, is not, on first glance, a wonderful example for us of what it means to be a follower of Christ. He is the one who walks on water and then loses heart, grows frightened and ends up sinking into that water. He’s the one who, when Jesus needs him the most, runs off and denies him not just once, not twice, but three times, and even then cannot bring himself to come near Jesus as he hangs dying on the cross.

But Peter is maybe a better example of what followers of Jesus truly are than we maybe care to admit. Yes, he is a weak, impetuous, cowardly, impulsive human. But who among us isn’t? Who among us isn’t finding someone very much like Peter staring back at us from our own mirrors? And the thing we always have to remember is that, for all the bad things the Church has been blamed for—and there are a lot of them—there are also so many wonderful and beautiful things about the Church that always, always, always outweigh the bad.

Obviously most everyone here this morning must feel that same way as well. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here this morning. Most of us are able to recognize that the Church is not perfect. And I think that, when Jesus commended his Church to people like Peter, he knew that, as long as we are here, struggling on this “side of the veil,” so to speak, it would never be perfect. But that, even despite its imperfection, we still struggle on.

I love the Church and I love the people who are in the Church with me, even the ones who drive me crazy. And I even love the ones with whom I do not agree. Why? Because that’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That is what it means to be the Church.

I am here in the Church because I really want to be in the Church. I am here because the Church is my home. It is my family. It is made up of my friends and Christ’s friends. I am here because I—imperfect, impetuous human being that I am—am part of the Church as well I am here because I love my fellow Christians, and I don’t just mean that I love Desmond Tutu and all those Christians who are easy to love. I am here because I love even those many outspoken Christians who bombard us on a regular basis with their rhetoric and views that fly in the face of everything many of us hold sacred and dear, even though they drive me crazy and frustrate me and sometimes make me want to leave the Church at times. I am here because I also love the hypocrites and the backbiters and gossipers. I love them because, let’s face it, sometimes we are those same people.

Sometimes we are the ones who drive people from the Church as well. And sometimes we ourselves drive our own selves away from Church. But as long as we’re here, as long as we believe in the renewal that comes again and again in recognizing and confessing our shortcomings and in professing and believing in and what it means to be a baptized Christian, then we know it’s not all a loss. As long as I know that I am struggling and working not to be the hypocrite or the backbiter or the gossiper, then it’s going to be all right.

As long as I struggle to not be the person who drives people from the Church, but works again and again in my life to be the person who welcomes everyone—no matter who they are and where they stand on the issues—into this Church, then I’m doing all right. Because the Church Jesus founded was a Church founded solidly on the rock of love. The Church’s foundation is the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God and the message to us as followers of this Son of the Living God, the Messiah—the bringer of freedom and peace—is that we must love God and love each other as we love ourselves.

But the Church that is firmly founded on the Messiah, the Son of the Living God and on the work of him to this world—when it founded deeply on that balanced love of God, of each other and of ourselves—then it truly becomes the Church Christ founded. If we are the Church truly built on a love like that then, without doubt, the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. And as long as I’m here, and you’re here, we are going to make the Church a better place. It will be a place where people like my atheist friend will be forced to reconsider his view of the Church. He will be forced, as he has been over the twenty some years he’s known me, to realize not all Christians are like the ones he ran away from as a boy and is continuing to run away from.

We need to be those kind of Christians. We need to be the Church from which no one wants to run away.

So, be the Church you want the Church to be—because that is the Church that Jesus founded. Be the Church that Christ commended to that imperfect human being, Peter. In those moments when you find yourself hating the Church, don’t let hate win out. Let love—that perfect, flawless love that Jesus preached and practiced—eventually win out.

We are the Church. We are the Church to those people in our lives. We are the Church to everyone we encounter. We are the reflection of the Church to the people we serve alongside. So be the Church, and if you are, you will find yourself in the midst of that wonderful vision Jesus imagined for his Church. And it will truly be an incredible place. It will truly be the Kingdom of God in our midst.

9 Petecost

2011-08-14T05:00:00.001-07:00

August 14, 2011

Matthew 15.10-28

+ Sometimes it’s a good things to hear from your priest how they sometimes fail. Yes, even us clergy are not perfect—as hard as I know it must be to imagine. Of course most of you here this morning know full well that I have my faults, my failings, my quirks, my eccentricities.

And it’s good to be aware of these things in our lives. In my case, my biggest foible, my biggest failing, is this: I have a big mouth. Now, I know this probably does not come as a big surprise to some of those of you who know me. For the rest of you, this is not what you probably want to hear from a priest. And, to be clear, when I say I have a big mouth, I don’t mean that I have ever violated any confidences, nor I have I ever broken the seal of confession. I am also not saying that I have professed atheism or any intentional heresy (I think we might some times be guilty of unintentional heresy). I hope I am not guilty of having spoken true evil from my mouth.

When I say that I have a big mouth, what I mean is that, when I look back over my life, I realize have said some dumb things in my life. And when I look back a little harder over my life, I realize that the really bad things that have happened to me, that I myself am truly responsible for, can all find their root in something I have said. Or missaid. I am one of those people who, on a regular basis, wishes that, as the words are coming out of my mouth, I could grasp them in the air and stuff them back in.

My grandmother used to always reprimand me about how my big mouth was going to get me in trouble. She would say to me: “Jamie, think before you speak.”

And there’s the real source of my problem. I sometimes just don’t think before I speak. As I said, I have said some dumb things in my life, I have said things that I greatly regret and that I wish I had never said, as we all have at one point or another. And in addition to the dumb things, or the hurtful things I may have said to people when I was angry, I have also been somewhat opinionated in what I have said. Again, I know this is a HUGE surprise to some of you. But, I am a bit outspoken about things.

Sadly I’ve also been insensitive sometimes. I have given unneeded and unwanted advice to people when that advice hasn’t been sought. So, when Jesus tells his followers—and us—in this morning in our Gospel reading—

“it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles”
these are words that hit home for me, and no doubt, for many of us.

We were all raised reciting that little verse:

Sticks and stone may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.

The reality of the matter is that words DO hurt. Words are sometimes much more painful and hurtful than sticks and stones. And when it comes to our relationship with God, the words we say carry much weight.

In today’s Gospel we find Jesus making very clear statements:

“…what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles. For out of the mouth comes evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person…”

Jesus is clear here about what makes one unclean. The words that come out of our mouth are really only the end result of what’s in our hearts. The words that come out of our mouths are really only little mirrors of what is dwelling within us. When we say dumb things, we harboring dumb things in our hearts. When we say hurtful, mean things, we are carrying hurt and meanness in our hearts. And what’s in our hearts truly does make all the difference. If our hearts are dark—if our hearts are over-run with negative things—then our words are going to reflect that. When we talk about something like “sin,” we find ourselves thinking instantly of the things we do. We think immediately of all those uncharitable, unsavory things we’ve done in our lives. And when we realize that sin, essentially, is anything we chose to do that separates us from God and from each other, it is always easy to instantly take stock of all the bad things we’ve done.

But the fact is, we can truly “sin” by what we say as well. The words that come out of our mouths can separate us from God and from each other because they are really coming from our hearts—from that place in which there should really only be love for God and for each other.

We have all known Christians who are quick to profess their faith with their mouths, but who certainly do not believe that faith in their hearts. And, I think, we have also known people who have kept quiet about their faith, who have not professed much with their mouths, but who have quietly been consistent in their faith. If we profess our faith with our mouths, but not in our hearts, we really are guilty to some extent.

There is a well-known saying that has been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel, use words only if necessary.” To be honest, that saying has been a breathe of fresh air in the Church.

I think we’re inundated in this world by people who are constantly preaching their faith with words. When we turn on the TV, we find televangelists and other church leaders going on and on about their faith and only later do we find out about their scandals and shortcomings and we realize that they certainly do not practice what they preach. We’ve also known our fair share of clergy and lay leaders who have done this as well. And probably few things drive us away faster from church than those self-righteous people who shake their fingers at us and spout their faith to us, but who, in turn, don’t show love, compassion and acceptance to others.

The name we encounter in the Gospels for those people who do not practice what they preach is “hypocrite.” And throughout the Gospels, we find that Jesus isn’t ever condemning the ones we think he would condemn. He doesn’t condemn the prostitute, the tax collector, any of those people who have been ostracized and condemned by society and the religious organizations of their times. The ones Jesus, over and over again, condemns, are the hypocrites—those supposedly religious people who are quick to speak their faith with words, who are quick to strut around and act religiously, but who do not hold any real faith in their hearts.

The Pharisees that Jesus is having trouble with in today’s Gospel, are not at all concerned about what is in their hearts. Their faith has nothing to do with their hearts. They are more concerned about the purification rites. They are more concerned about making sure that the food one eats is clean and pure—that it hasn’t been touched by those who are unclean. They are concerned that they are the clean ones and they are concerned that there is a separation from those that are unclean. They are more concerned with the words of the Law, rather than the heart of the Law. They are more concerned with the letter of the Law, rather than the spirit of the Law. We’ve all been guilty of such things in our own lives.

Let’s face it: it’s just easier to stick the letter of the Law.

It’s easy to follow the religious rules without bothering to think about why we are following them. It’s just so much easier to go through the motions without having to feel anything. Because to feel means to actually make one’s self vulnerable. To feel means one has to love—and, as we know, love is dangerous. Love makes us step out into uncomfortable areas and do uncomfortable things. But the message of Jesus is all about the fact that to be a follower of Jesus means not being a hypocrite. The message of Jesus is that to be a follower of Jesus means believing fully with one’s heart.

Baptisms are prime opportunities for us to take stock of our Christian faith. Whenever we baptize someone, we renew the vows that were made for us at our own baptisms and we are reminded of what it means to be a baptized Christian.

In the Baptismal Covenant we once again promise to try, “with God’s help,” to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” To “proclaim by word and example the Good News” is, in essence, to say that, as Christians we will strive not to be hypocrites. To proclaim the Good News, we need to do so by both word and example. It is to truly practice what we preach. It to preach the Gospel and to use words only when necessary.

Now that I have confessed to you the sin of my Big Mouth, I now can work on myself. I am now able to recognize that what sometimes what comes out of my mouth isn’t my mouth’s fault. It is only reflecting what I am holding in my heart. And it is a change of heart that I need to work on.

When I am a big mouth, when my mouth gets me in trouble, it is only giving voice to the darkness and the lack of love that I harbor sometimes in my heart. And that darkness means that I am not letting the Light of God shine through me.

So, let us take to heart what Jesus is saying to us in today’s Gospel. Let us take his words and plant them deeply in our hearts. Let the words of his mouth be the words of our mouth. Let the Word by our word. And let that word find its home, its source, its basis in our hearts.

When it does, our words will truly speak the Word that is in our hearts. Let us allow no darkness, no negativity to exist within our hearts. Let us not be hypocritical Pharisees to those around us.

But let us true followers of Jesus, with love burning within and overflowing us. As followers of Jesus, let love be the word that speaks to others. Let our hearts be the source of our faith in everything we do in faith. Let our hearts be so filled with love that nothing else can exist in it but love. Let us strive to live out our Baptismal Promises with God by proclaiming “by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” And if we do, we will find that Good News pouring forth from our mouth and bringing joy and gladness and love and full acceptance to others—and to ourselves.

7 Pentecost

2011-07-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

July 31, 2011

Matthew 14.13-21

+ Last weekend, as most of you know, I was in the Cities. On Friday night, I had supper with my good friend, Justin and his girlfriend, Johanna at her apartment in St. Paul. Now, I had never actually had one of Justin’s famous meals before. I had heard about his culinary abilities (which, I was told, were quite something), but I had no idea what I was in for.

Sure enough, Justin did not disappoint. The meal he served was something else. And that is an understatement. He served, that evening, an incredible poached salmon with braised leeks and red wine butter sauce (beurre rouge). He also served an au gratin with three different potatoes including purple potatoes. For dessert he served several different kinds of fresh berries with ice cream. It was like nothing else I had ever eaten before.

Now, I hate to tempt all of you with these food images, especially those of you who very loyally have been keeping your Eucharistic fast this morning. But it was one of those truly magical meals. I have found myself thinking about that meal often this week—sometimes at very inopportune moments. But what is great about such an experience is that meals like that truly do make us appreciative of special times. Such a meal isn’t just about the food we share. It is also about the friendship we have and the celebration of friendship that meal entails.

We encounter another one of those magical culinary experiences in our Gospel reading for this morning. Here also we have an incredible meal. We have a miracle involving food. But we realize that like any truly magical culinary experience that there is more involved here than just the sharing of food. There is something deeper, something more meaningful. What we find happening today is something very familiar to us who follow Jesus. This so-called feeding of the multitudes appears frequently in the Gospel readings. Six times, actually. You know, then, that it is an important event in the lives of those early followers of Jesus if they are going to write about it six times.

I probably will also preach and write about Justin’s meal six times.

For us, this feeding of the multitude also has much meaning. Yes, it is a great miracle in the life of Jesus. But it also has meaning in our lives as well. If you listen closely to what is happening in the reading you’ll notice that, in many ways, we reenact what happens in today’s Gospel in our own lives as Christians. If you look closely, Jesus doesn’t just perform some outstanding miracle just to “wow” the crowds. He also performs a very practical act. And, as often happens in the life of Jesus, the practical and the spiritual get bound up with each other.

In our reading we find Jesus saying of the bits of bread and fish, “Bring them here to me.” Then he proceeds to do four things. He takes the bread and fish, he blesses it, he breaks the bread and he gives it to them. He takes, blesses, breaks and gives. That’s important to remember.

When else do we hear and do these things? Well, at every Eucharist we celebrate together. Every time we gather at this altar, we take, we bless, we break and we give. Of course, we commemorate the Last Supper when we do these things, but certainly, in the early Church, those early followers of Jesus remembered all those moments when Jesus shared food with them as kinds of Eucharistic events, since essentially the same actions took place at each. They also saw these meals—these moments when Jesus fed people—as glimpses to what awaited us. And we do too.

You have heard me say many, many times that when I talk of the Kingdom of God, I imagine a meal. The Kingdom of God is truly a meal—a wonderfully meal with friends. The Kingdom is no doubt much like the meal my friend Justin made. It is a meal in which the finest foods are served, the best wines are uncorked and everyone—everyone, no matter who they are—is treated as an honored guest. And everyone IS invited. Of course, some don’t have to come, but everyone is invited to this meal. In a sense, that is the very reason I hold the Eucharist to be so important to my own personal and spiritual life. What we celebrate at this altar is a glimpse of what awaits us all. What we do here is a moment in which we get to see what the Kingdom of God is really like. But what all of this—the feeding of the multitude, the Eucharist, the Kingdom as a meal—shows us as well is the way forward to doing ministry.

How do we bring the Kingdom of God into our midst, as we are told to do as followers of Jesus? We do it by taking, blessing, breaking and giving. In our case, we do this with the ministry we have been given to do. We take what is given us to share. We bless it, by asking God’s blessing on it. We break it, because only by breaking it can we share it. And we give it. This is what each of us is called to do in our ministries, in our service to those around us.

The Eucharist is the basis—the ground work or the blueprints—on what we should be doing as followers of Jesus. Our ministries call us to feed those who are hungry. Yes, to feed the physically hungry, but also to feed the spiritually hungry, the emotionally hungry, the socially hungry, as well. We are called to take of our very selves, to bless ourselves, to break ourselves to share and to give of ourselves. Just as Jesus did.

It’s not easy. It’s not fun. In fact, oftentimes, it’s painful and tiring and exhausting. But this is what it means to follow Jesus. And when we do these things, the Kingdom comes forth in our midst.

Our job as Christian is to let people know this one simple fact—there is a meal awaiting us and everyone, EVERYONE, is invited. Our job as followers of Jesus is to do what Jesus does. We are to be the invitation to the meal. And we do this best by showing people what the meal will be like. We take, we bless, we break and we give of ourselves, freely and without limit or qualm. We give freely without prejudice or distinction.

Yes, I know—it is a radical thought to think of such things. But, so is feeding a multitude of people in abundance from just a bit of bread and two fish.

So, let us do as Jesus does. Let us embody that meal to which we are all invited. Let us take with us what we gain from the meal we share here at this altar. And let us, in turn, bless, break and give to all those around us in need. There is an incredible meal awaiting us. We are catching a glimpse of it here this morning. We who feed here this morning on what may appear to some to be little, will be filled. And those whom we feed in turn will also be filled.

"Give them something to eat,” Jesus is saying to us.

How can we not do just that?

5 Pentecost

2011-07-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

July 17, 2011

Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52

+ This past Friday I met with a wonderful young couple over whose wedding I will preside in September. We met at the HoDo, appropriately enough because they will be getting married on the rooftop there. We had a wonderful evening. I really enjoy meeting with wedding couples in such environments. The days of meeting with the priest in the priest’s office are, I think, starting to be a thing of the past. And I can tell you I get to know a couple much better over cocktails than sitting across from each other in my office. This will be my fifth wedding of the year. I was going to say that I still have three more after that—not a record by any sense of the word. Then, yesterday morning, I received a Facebook message about doing another wedding on the same day as this one in September, only later in the evening.

On Friday, in the midst of our conversation, as we got to know each other better, the future husband shared with me an interesting scenario in their family. His fourteen year son (from a previous relationship) has a nasty little habit of using the words “Gay” and “retarded” to describe things he hates. I think we all know situations like this. This couple suddenly got very passionate about this.

They said, “This is one of those things that drive us crazy. We have to jump on him immediately about how using those words is not only disrespectful, but downright slanderous.”

After a while, the boy got it. And now he doesn’t use those words anymore because he realizes that they are hurtful and disrepectful.

As we discussed this, I, of course, was thinking about our Gospel reading for this morning. And I realized that, in a very real sense, this is what means to sow good seed in the Kingdom. Now this parable we hear today in the Gospel is traditionally referred to as the Parable of Tares. T-a-r-e-s. We find this word “Tares” in the King James Version of the Bible. I personally like that word very much. This word is thought to mean darnel, which is a kind of ryegrass which actually looks very much like wheat does in its early stages of growth. To put it in a bit of perspective to Jesus’ own time, Roman law prohibited the sowing of darnel among the wheat of an enemy. To take it all a step further, we need to realize that sometimes planting darnel within an enemy’s wheat might actually be an issue of life or death. Less of a harvest, means less food. Less food means more illness, more death. So, this whole concept of planting weeds in an enemy’s wheat has much more meaning than we may initially thought when we heard this parable.

For us, it’s a bit different. For us, sowing weeds among wheat is something very different, especially when we look at Jesus’ explanaition of this parable. As I pondered this these last few days, I realized that for us, we sow darnel among wheat in very different ways. In the situation with that son of that young couple, we would sow tares, sow weeds, when we do not speak up when deragatory words are used. Yes, we know that standing up and saying “this is not right” is hard to do. Yes, it may cause us to be on the receiving end of ridicule and possibly even violence. But the fact remains that when we don’t stand up—when we are complascent—we are sowing tares. We are sowing weeds in the Kingdom. We are showing that we do not love our neighbor as ourselves and that we are not truly followers of Jesus, who would stand up and speak out against the injustices of such comments.

And we’ve all been guilty of complascency like this. We’ve all done it. We’ve all rolled our eyes and bit our tongues—or maybe even chuckled a bit—when someone has made a sexist or homophobic or racist joke or comment around us. And we have all tried to ignore when institutions like our very Church or our government on have denied certain rights to people in various ways.

And sometimes even we ourselves have been malicious. Sometimes we have endevoured to plant seeds that prevent growth. We sometimes don’t do it purposefully. But we do it.

When it comes to church, for example. We show weeds among the wheat when we are afraid. Fear is a great tare among the wheat. Fear of the future. Fear of change. These can be crippling. We sow the weeds when we are afraid that everything we once knew and found so comfortable is now being viewed as out-of-date or somewhat archaic.

One of the greatest “tares” we all experience in parish ministry is when people say things like: “We can’t do that. We have never done that before.” Saying things like that and being stuck in that mentality is a kind of sowing of weeds in the midst of the field. Yes, we need to have a healthy respect for our history and our past. We can never forget where we have came from and what has been done in the past.

As you know I occasionally love to do a traditional Rite I Mass on Wednesday nights, esepcially in the summer. It’s good for us to hear that traditional language. It might not be our “thing,” but it certainly puts into perspective where we have come from. It gives some of us a certain level of comfort. And I love doing it. I was trained in celebrating Mass with those traditional words and with those traditional actions. They have meaning and they have contributed in real and purposeful ways in what we do now in our current liturgy.

But we can never be stuck in that past. And we can’t step back in time. We cannot let what we’ve done in the past prevent us from doing the work that needs to be done now and in the future. When we get stuck, that is when the crop begins to die. It prevents the harvest from happening. It prevents growth from happening. It makes the church not into a vital, living place proclaiming God’s loving and living Presence, but it preserves it as a musty museum for our own personal comfort.

The flourishing of the kingdom can be frightening. It can be overwhelming. Because when the Kingdom flourishes, it flourishes beyond our control. We can’t control that flourishing. All we can do is plant the seeds and tend the growth as best we can.

Allowing the Kingdom to flourish also means that there also needs to be some pruning of the weeds. In the Rule of the Episcopal monastic order of the Society of St. John the Eveanglist, we find this wonderful statement in the chapter titled “The Spirit of Mission and Service”:

“Christ has promised that if we abide in him and consent to his skillful pruning, we shall bear fruit that abides. If the result of our labors are to last we need to root our endeavors in Christ and draw on our intimacy with him.”

Rooting our endeavors in Christ is a sure guarentee that what is planted will flourish. Because rooting our endeavors in Christ means we are rooted our endeavors in a living, vital Presence. We are rooting them in a wild Christ who knows no bounds, who knows no limits and who cannot be controlled by us. Rooting our endevors in Christ means that our job is simply to go with Christ and the growth that Christ brings about wherever and however that growth may happen. Even when that growth may seem to happening in the midst of weeds and thorns.

Last week, in my sermon on sowing seeds among thorns and weeds, I said that sometimes God even uses the thorns and weeds and that, even then, crops flourish. I believe the same happens even when tares have been planted by the enem—whoever that enemy may be. God sometimes is able to even to bring about a fruitfull harvest even when vindicitive tares have been planted in our midst. Sometimes when we encounter weeds maliciously planted in our midst, our frustration, our anger, our impatience drives us to not only root out those weeds, but to make sure another like it never happens again. And hopefully in those instances when we ourselves have planted weeeds that have stunted the Kingdom from growning, the recgonition of our actions sometimes causes us to stop and take notice of our actions and to change.

So, you with ears, listen! To be righteous does not mean being be good and sweet and nice all the time. The be righteous one simply needs to further the harvest of the Kingdom by doing what those of us who follow Jesus do. It means to plant the good seeds. And in those instances when we fail, we must allow the harvest to happen even when we have planted weeds among the good seeds.

And when we do strive to do good and to further the kingdom of God, then will we being doing what Jesus cooamnds us to do. The harvest will flourish and we can take some joy in knowing that we helped, working with God, to make it flourish. And, in that moment, we know the fruits of our efforts. And we—the righteous—we the ones who do the work of God in this world, who further the kingdom in our midst—we will shine like the sun in that kingdom of our God.

4 Pentecost

2011-07-10T04:55:00.001-07:00

July 10, 2011

Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23

+ I think I am going through one of those moments most people go through at my age. One of the signs that we are maturing as adults (and especially for those of us heading into middle age), happens when, one day, a strange feeling comes upon us when we least expect it. For some people, when this feeling rears its ugly head, it is a time to despair. Some people call it a mid-life crisis. Others just say it’s a restlessness that comes with age.

It is a feeling we fight, we try to avoid, we do anything in our power to get around. But sometimes, there’s no escaping it. This feeling I’m talking about is the feeling of frustration.

I’m not talking about the frustration one feels when its rains on a day you’ve planned some big outdoor event. I am talking about the frustration that comes on us when we realize that all those dreams, all those plans we had have simply come to naught. It’s the frustration we feel when we simply face the facts of our life and see our present life for what it really is. And when we compare that present life with what we imagined our life would be like at this point, we definitely find ourselves frustrated.

We ask ourselves: what happened to me? How did I end up becoming this person—this person who looks and acts just like what I disliked the most when I was younger.

Certainly most of us have felt this frustration in our jobs, or as parents. For those of us in ordained ministry, we deal with this all the time. When many people go into the ministry, they imagine all the good they’re going to do in their lives. They imagine all the people whose lives they are going to positively affect. They imagine all the souls they will save. They imagine all the parishes they will one day fill with believers and how they, single-handedly, will change the sometimes all-too-accurate reputation the Church has of being a close-minded, human-driven organization with all its faults.

To use the images from today’s Gospel, they imagine all the seeds they sow will be in good soil and will flourish a hundred times what was sown. They come out of seminary and rise up from having hands laid on them at their ordination with a starry-eyed idealism.

Now I don’t think I did have much starry-eyed idealism when I was ordained. I had already been through the ringer a couple of time by that time. But trust me, there are a lot of newly ordained clergy who do.

And then, they hit the five-year mark. For some clergy, the five-year mark is that mark when they realize the honeymoon’s over. They’ve, hopefully, been through the wringer once or twice by this time. Their wrists have been slapped, their egos have been deflated, their sermons critiqued to the point they are much more careful what they are going to say when they enter the pulpit. And, more importantly, they face reality.

By five years, one knows if the seed one has sown is producing a crop. And by five years, every clergy person knows that what they are producing is not anywhere near one hundred times what was sown. And it is then that frustration settles in.

Now, I say this as I approach the eight anniversary of my ordination to the diaconate on July 25. These eight years have been a strange rollercoaster ride for me. And as I approach this ordination anniversary, I find myself reflecting back to what my goals were in that hot summer of 2003 and what, if any of them, have been met. I reflect back on what I sowed in those early days of ministry.

Now, I am very fortunate and very grateful to God and to the people I have served with in those eight long years, that the crop hasn’t been too bad. There have been many successes. And I have had many more joyful moments as an ordained deacon and priest than I have had disappointments. You have heard me say it before and you will hear me say it again: I am very happy and thankful to be a priest. It truly is one of the greatest joys in my life.

Still, I’ve had plenty of set-backs and disappointments. Yes, I have stumbled and fallen and failed miserably. I have preached my share of clinker sermons. I have lost my professional cool with parishioners and other clergy and, yes, maybe a bishop or two. And I have failed people I have been called to serve—not purposely, but certainly I have fallen short of the expectations made of me by some people. I have done my share of very stupid things as a priest. And when I think about those things—those dumb things I have done in my ministry— then I face it. I find it right there, staring me in the face—frustration.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a glimpse of what this frustration is like. If you notice at the beginning of our Gospel reading, as Jesus sits in the boat from which he preaches sort of like from a pulpit, we are told that there is a large crowd coming forward to listen to him. To this large crowd, Jesus then proceeds to preach about seed that fails and seed that flourishes. And for this moment, it seems as though the seed of the Gospel as it comes from Jesus’ mouth is truly falling on the good soil. But when we look at it from the wider perspective of the story of Jesus, what we realize is that what he is preaching is, in fact, falling on rocky ground and among thorns.

Let’s face it: on the surface, from a completely objective viewpoint, Jesus’ ministry ultimately seems like a failure. He is surrounded by twelve men—people he himself chose—who just don’t get what he’s saying. These men will, eventually, turn away from him and abandon him when he needed them the most. One of them, will betray him in a particularly cruel way: one of them will betray him to people he knows will murder Jesus.

By the time Jesus is nailed to the cross, it’s as though everything Jesus said or did up to that point had been for nothing. Not one of the people Jesus helped, not one of the person he gave sight to, helped to walk, healed of illness, came forward to defend him. Not even one person he raised from the dead came forward to help him in his time of need.

And certainly, not one person from this large crowd of people that we encounter in today’s Gospel, comes forth to defend him, to vouch for him or even to comfort him as he is tortured and murdered. Everyone left him except his mother and a few of his female friends. And maybe his dear apostle John.

It would be even worse if even his mother has deserted him. Can you imagine, in that awful lonely moment, to look down and realize not even your mother—of all people—had stayed with you. So, it could have been worse.

Still, as far as his life of ministry was concerned, it seemed very much like a failure. It seems, in that moment, as though the seed he sowed had all been sown on rocky ground and among thorns. It seemed as though the seed he sowed had died. For any of us, frustration would be an understatement for what we would be feeling at that moment. And if this was the end of the story, if it ended there, on that cross, on that Friday afternoon, then it would be truly one of the greatest failures.

But this is one of the cunning, remarkable things about Christianity—one of the things that has baffled people for thousands of years. In the midst of this failure, in the midst of this frustration, God somehow works. In that place of broken dreams, of shattered ambitions, God somehow uses them and turns them toward good. Somehow, in a moment of abject loneliness, of excruciating physical pain, of an agonizing murder upon a cross, God somehow brings forth hope and joy and life unending. Ands what seems to be sown on rocky ground and among thorns does, in fact, flourish and produces a crop that we are still reaping this morning.

In my own life I have found strange moments when God has broken through my own failures, my own shortcomings to work, when God has taken the seed I thought I had sown on land unsuitable for growth and somehow made it grow. In those moments when I have failed, I have found that I learned a few lessons about myself.

First, my failures have taught me that I had to stop being selfish and self-centered. What God does in ministry has very little to do with me personally. Let me tell you, it’s a hard realization for me to make but it isn’t all about me all the time. It is always truly about God using even me in those situations.

Second, those failures taught me that, even in those moments in which I, myself, was, if in no one else’s eyes but my own, a failure, still, somehow, God works. God truly can use our flawed and fractured selves for good and turn our failures and our frustrations into something meaningful. What we can take away from our Gospel reading today is that our job is not always to worry about where or how we are sowing the seed. Our job is to simply do the sowing. And God will produce the crop.

What I have realized in these eight years of ordained ministry is that I simply need to let God do what God is going to do. Our job, as Christians, is simply to sow. And God will bring forth the yield. And when God does, then we will find crops flourishing even in rocky soil and amidst thorns.

So, all you who have ears, listen. We will all feel moments of frustration in this life, but for those of us who hope in God and who sow the seed of God’s Word in this world simply cannot allow frustration to triumph. Frustration and despair are the thorns and rocky soil of our lives. We must be the rich soil in which that seed flourishes. And when we do, the crops God brings forth in us and through us will truly be one hundred times more than what we sowed. Amen.

3 Pentecost

2011-07-03T05:14:00.001-07:00

July 3, 2011

Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30

+ Sometimes, I honestly feel sorry for you. You truly do have to suffer sometimes under my strange eccentricities, especially my strange appreciation of strange catholic beliefs and practices.

This past Wednesday, at Mass, we commemorated Sts Peter and Paul, but I also threw in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Feast of the Sacred Heart fell this past Friday. And because I have always held a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart, I couldn’t let the day go by without some kind of commemoration.

The fact is, we Episcopalians do not officially observe the feast of the Sacred Heart. But that, of course, has never prevented me from doing anything and this is one of those feasts that I just can’t let by without making some reference to it.

And although we seem to see this particular devotion to the Sacred Heart as only a Roman Catholic devotion, I beg to differ. I learned my devotion to the Sacred Heart not from any Roman Catholic, or even from an Episcopalian. I learned devotion to the Sacred Heart from my very Lutheran grandmother.

My Grandma Minnie had a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart. I don’t know if she ever called it the “Sacred Heart,” but her favorite representation of Jesus was always ones in which he was revealing his heart. In fact, the two representations I remember most clearly were a very cheap picture in a black plastic frame and a large statue of the Sacred Heart that she keep in the corner of her living room. She received that statue from a Hispanic Roman Catholic friend of her’s and it was one of her most prized possessions.

The other day, as my mother and I were cleaning the basement of my mother’s house, getting ready for her move, I found that statue in a large cardboard box. No, I will not set it up here in the church, but I am going to put it in a place of honor in the rectory.

For my grandmother, this devotion wasn’t some strange Catholic devotion. For her, it truly represented the love Jesus had for us and, although she wasn’t a big preacher, she made it clear that Jesus did truly love each of us.

I have to agree with her.

Why the Sacred Heart is important to me is not because it is some quaint catholic devotion. It is important to me because it is such a wonderful representation of that love Jesus has for each of us and all of us. That Sacred Heart is a beautiful symbol that Jesus loves fully and completely and wholly. Jesus loves in a way we strive to love, but cannot love. Our love has limits. Our love fails at times. But not Jesus’. His love is always without limits.

And that love knows no bounds. Jesus loves everyone fully and completely, no matter who or what they are. I say it all the time and I will always say it—Jesus love for us knows no bounds. He loves us fully and completely. And we see this most clearly in that devotion to the Sacred Heart.

But it’s not enough that we are simply the recipients of this love. The fact is: we are followers of Jesus. As followers of Jesus we are essentially called to imitate Jesus. And that means that our hearts should be like his Heart. Our hearts should be filled to the brim with a burning love. For everyone.

Everyone—no matter who they are—can be found within that Heart. No one is excluded from that place of burning love which is never extinguished.

When we see devotion to Christ’s loving heart in this way, we see that it IS very timely for our church at this point. We see that this reminder to love as Jesus loved is at the core of the Gospel and at the core of what it means to follow Jesus.

When we see the Sacred Heart we should see it as a mirror in which our own hearts are reflected. His heart is the ideal. It is the goal in our own love. We too should love just as like the Sacred Heart of Jesus loves.

This love is not an easy love. It truly is the yoke that Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel. When he says to us:

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke I easy, and my burden light.”

We truly find that he is setting the standard. Learn from him. He is gentle and humble in heart. In this love that he feels for each of us and in the love that we, in turn give to others, we will find rest for our souls.

So find refuge in this love. Let his love be the guide for your love. Let your heart be a reflection of that Sacred Heart of Jesus, which contains within it the vastness of Christ’s love for each of us.

2 Pentecost

2011-06-26T05:15:00.000-07:00

Corpus Christi Sunday
June 26, 2011

Matthew 10.40-42

+ This past Wednesday evening, at our Wednesday night Mass, we commemorated, very quietly anyway, the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi. Corpus Christ is of course Latin for the Body of Christ and it is a feast in which we celebrate the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, in the Bread and Wine of Holy Communion. And today is traditionally Corpus Christi Sunday. Of course the Episcopal Church doesn’t officially recognize this day, though Anglicans elsewhere do, as do Roman Catholics everywhere.

Traditionally on Corpus Christi, in Roman and High Church Anglo-Catholic parishes, the Host is placed in a monstrance—which is a tall, very ornate stand, with a little glass circular container in its center, in which the Host goes. The monstrance, with the Host in it, is then processed. It can processed through the church, or around the outside of the church or on the street outside the church.

You have often heard me mention the Episcopal church of St. Mary the Virgin—so called “Smoky Mary’s” because of all the incense they use—on Time’s Square in Manhattan. They process Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament right through Times Square on the feast of Corpus Christi amidst clouds and clouds of incense and bewildered onlookers.

We, however, did not nor will we do any of that, here at St. Stephen’s. Now considering that, on Wednesday, we had Thom Marubbio, Joanne Droppers, Gin Templeton and Betty Spur in the congregation, there seemed to be little chance of us actually processing Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament around the church. I don’t know who of them would have held baldachin (which is the fancy canopy that is carried by four acolytes) Though I’m sure we could’ve out on a good show for the college kids who live across the street on the corner. And I could’ve imagine maybe one or two of our Wednesday night congregants just sort of disappearing right before the procession started. I won’t say who…

Actually, such displays may be a bit too much, even for me… Still, I never shy away from my very solid belief that the Eucharist is the center of our lives as Christians. Even Lutherans believe that!

And with that in mind, it is good for us to be reminded about how and why the Eucharist is central to our lives. And it IS central to our spiritual lives and ministries here at St. Stephen’s. On our website you’ll find this wonderful kind of Mission Statement:

St. Stephen’s is a community called by Christ through the Holy Spirit

+ to live a life of common worship centered around grateful thanksgiving to God in the weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist

+ to be faithful stewards of the gifts and resources entrusted to us

+ to be bearers of God’s healing and reconciling love.

As ambassadors for Christ, we are dedicated to share the Good News of God in Christ through the Sacraments, Liturgy, , Word, Music and by attending to the needs of all people in the name of Jesus.

I really like that mission statement. I think it really says it all, as far as I’m concerned. To a large extend all of this—being bearers of God’s healing and reconciling love, being faithful stewards—all of it stems from our celebration of the Eucharist. Because everything we do is simply a reflection of that.

What do we do when we come to this table? We are feed. And what we are called to do after we have been fed? We are called then to feed others.

What does it mean that we have the Eucharist as the center of our ministries here at St. Stephen’s? It means that, for us to do ministry, for us to actually go out and do the work we have been called to do, we need to be fed.

We need to be fed physically, but we need to be fed spiritually too. If we are famished, we do not feel motivated to work. If we are empty and having nothing to sustain us, our lacking will show in our ministry. The fact is, God wants us to be fed. God wants us to be sustained. And I’m not just saying us, gathered here today. I am saying God wants ALL of us to be fed and sustained. Every last one of us. And, in the Eucharist, we experience true nourishment. It is a reminder to us that what we do when we come at this altar is not just for ourselves. It is not some quaint private archaic devotion we do here. It is a radical experience of God And it is the “shot in the arm,” so to speak, for us to turn around and share this love and nourishment we receive here with others. We, who leave here, carrying Christ within us, are then to share this Presence of Christ with others through our actions and our words.

There is a reason the bread of the Eucharist is called a Host. The bread truly does become the Host to Christ, who is present. I love that idea of the bread being the host of Christ. But what I love even more is that we, in turn, become hosts ourselves. But we too are host to Christ when we take Holy Communion. And being host, we are all called to be host to those around us.

In our Gospel reading for today we find Jesus saying to us,

“Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

In the Eucharist we find this incredible welcome. And nourished by the Eucharist, changed by the experience with God and with each other in this Eucharist, we are able to extend this welcome to all those we meet as well. The Eucharist empowers us and charges and, yes, challenges us to be hosts, to welcome everyone we meet as though they are Christ. It empowers us to give even a cup of cold water to the “little ones”—the least ones—in our midst. In the Eucharist we experience a hospitality like none we have never known before. It is a truly powerful experience. And you can tell it is a powerful experience because, some churches, for example, deny people from participating in the Eucharist simply because they don’t believe a certain way about it. Such thinking baffles my mind.

What we experience in the Eucharist is radical hospitality—the same kind of hospitality we practice here at St. Stephen’s again and again. At the Eucharist, each of us is welcomed for who we are. No one should be turned away from this altar and this meal. At this Eucharist, we are accepted for who we are. And, at this Eucharist, we are loved fully and completely just for who we are. And knowing this and experiencing this, we then can turn around and welcome others, accept others and fully and completely love others because we too have experienced all of this in this incredible meal.

I am amazed when I hear stories of people who have been turned away from Holy Communion. I get downright angry when I hear of people being denied the Eucharist because of something they did—whatever it might be. That is not what the Eucharist is about.

The Eucharist is a foretaste of what awaits us. The Eucharist is a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God is truly like—where all people are welcomed and received. The Eucharist is a peek into what awaits all of us. It is the ideal place.

As you often hear me say about the Kingdom of God—“It’s party and everyone’s invited.” We don’t have to go, but the invitation is always open. That is what Eucharist is. Our job as the hosts is to make sure that everyone knows they’re invited. Our job is to make that everyone knows they are welcomed and loved and accepted at that party. And we do it by who we are and what we are.

So, as you come forward this morning, come forward knowing that what we experience here is truly an amazing and radical experience with the Kingdom Jesus proclaims again and again. As you come forward this morning to this altar to receive Jesus’ Body and to drink his Blood, do so knowing that this radical welcoming of Jesus is also an invitation for you to welcome others just as radically.

“Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me,” Jesus says. “And whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Those are not just words spoken to us. They are spoken also to all those we encounter in our lives. As Brother Curtis Almquist of the Episcopal Society of St. John the Evangelist shared once in a sermon:

“We meet Jesus in our baptism [and, I would, add, in the Eucharist] where, we believe, Jesus comes to live in our hearts, to make his home in us, to abide with us. But this is also true for others. They, too, are a dwelling place for Jesus. We, individually and corporately, embody Jesus. Yes, Jesus lives in me, but Jesus also lives in you.”

Jesus lives in each of us. He is living his radical and amazing life and love through us. So, let us each be the host of that loving presence to those around us. And, with Jesus present in us, let us his speak his welcoming words of invitation to all those we encounter. All are invited. All are welcome. No one will be turned away.

Trinity

2011-06-19T05:08:00.000-07:00

June 19, 2011

Matthew 28.16-20

+ Most of you know that I am a pretty compassionate priest. I really do feel sorry for people and try to soothe people’s pains—at least as much as I am able to do. But one thing I have very little pity for is whiny preachers. And, let me tell you, I have never heard preacher’s whine more than they do when they have to preach on this Sunday—Trinity Sunday.

Last night on Facebook, I heard many of my clergy friends lamenting the fact that they were still struggling over their Trinity Sunday sermons.

“Boo hoo,” these preachers whine. “I have to preach on an obscure theological doctrine that has almost no scriptural basis.”

Boo hoo indeed!

I actually LOVE to preach about the Trinity. Now, I don’t claim to know anything more about the Trinity than any other preacher. I am no more profound than anyone else on trying to describe what the Trinity is or how it works. But I also don’t find it to be such a stumbling block. Yes, I know the word “Trinity” never appears in scripture. But I do enjoy exploring the different aspects of how the Trinity is made known to us. And…I very unashamedly believe that God does manifest God’s self in Trinitarian terms.

But that doesn’t mean I am not confused but it some times. And doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally doubt it all sometimes.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find that some worshipped Jesus when they saw him resurrected. And we find that “some doubted.” I think that is a normal reaction for those people, who were still struggling to understand who Jesus was, especially this resurrected Jesus. And the fact that we too doubt things like the Trinity is normal as well.It IS difficult to wrap our minds around such a thing. It’s complicated and it’s complex. And, speaking for myself, sometimes the more I think about it, the more complicated it seems to get. Especially when we try to think in the so-called correct (or orthodox) way about it all.

But the doubts, the complications and intricacies of the concept of the Trinity are all part of belief. Belief is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be something we struggle with and carry around with us. And doubt isn’t always a bad thing. We all doubt at times. Without doubt we would be nothing but mindless robots.

Still, I do find some headstrong Episcopalians among us. Of course, I am not headstrong in any way shape or form. I am very humble and complacent kind of guy. (I don’t know why you don’t believe that!!!!) I occasionally will encounter one of these headstrong Episcopalians, especially when it comes to the Creed.

“I have issues with the Creed,” I hear people say every so often. “I don’t believe some of it.”

I usually shrug when I hear that. Like those whiny preachers, I really sort of nod and smile politely. I certainly understand when people have issues with certain aspects of the Creed. Depending on the day, or the phase I am in in my life, I sometimes struggle with some aspects of the Creed myself.

But…the fact remains: it not my own personal Creed. If it were, it might be somewhat different. The Creed we stand up and profess every Sunday—a Creed that lays out belief in the Trinity very clearly—is not the private, personal creed of any one of us. It is OUR Creed. It is our collective Creed. It what WE believe, not necessarily what I personally believe. And while I may doubt and struggle with belief personally, together, we do find strength and purpose in professing a creed we, together, believe in. Sometimes that collective faith upholds us when we doubt or downright disbelieve.

Still, there are moments when the Trinity does confuse me and I am filled with doubts. I am one of those people who occasionally just wants something simple in my faith life. I just want to believe in God—the mystery of God, the fact that God is God and any complexity about God is more than I can fathom. I sometimes don’t want to solve the mystery of God. I don’t want God defined for me. I sometimes don’t want theology. I sometimes just want spirituality. I sometimes just want God.

But, as a Christian, I can’t get around the Trinity. And so I struggle on, just like the rest of us.

One of the best things that has helped me in my faith in God as Trinity is the famous icon of the Trinity, written (that’s the proper way to say an icon is painted or drawn) by the great Russian iconographer, Andrei Rubelev. You will see a version of Rublev’s icon on the cover of your bulletin this morning. I have placed a modernized, even clearer version of the icon on the votive stand in the narthex. After Mass today, I encourage you to go and take a look at it and see how truly beautiful it is. Many scholars consider Rublev's Trinity the most perfect of all Russian icons and perhaps the most perfect of all the icons ever painted.

One description of the icon goes like this: “Rublev's Trinity icon is considered to be void of any noticeable energy of earthly life, of corporeality of forms and external manifestations of love, equally absent from it is that cold soaring of the spirit, so remote from humans.

“The image determines the subtle struck balance between soul and spirit, the corporeal and the imponderable, endless and immortal sojourn in the heavens. When speaking of Rublev's work, different authors describe the Trinity's Angels as quiet, gentle, anxious, sorrowful, and the mood permeating the icon as detached, meditative, contemplative, intimate.”

The subject of this icon is the story in Genesis about the visit by three Angels to the Prophet Abraham and his wife Sarah. According to some theological interpretations, these three Angels represent the three Persons of the Trinity.

In the icon we can see that all the three Angels shown as equals to each other. In a sense, this icon is able to show in a very clear and straightforward way what all our weighty, intellectual theologies don’t. What I especially love about the image is that, in showing the three angels seated around the table, you’ll notice that there is one space at the table left open. That is the space for us. In a sense, we are, in this icon, being invited to the table with the Trinity. We are being invited to join into the work of the Trinity. And I think that is why this icon is so important to me.

Yes, I have my doubts. Yes, my rational, intellectual mind prevents me to understand fully what this Trinity could possibly be and, as a result, doubts creep in. But the icon does what nothing else can. It simply allows me to come to the table and BE with God as Trinity. It allows me to sit there with them and be one with them.
Last week, on the Feast of Pentecost, I shared some thoughts from Scot McKnight from his wonderful book One.Life, which I have read lately. Well, McKnight actually has a few thing to say about the Trinity as well in One.Life, that I’d like to share.

McKnight writes: “There are very few ideas that move me so deeply they create silence, and this may be because I think I’ve landed on one of the deep secrets of life. The one silencing idea is the Trinity, the Christian belief that God is One and Three, Three and One, at the same time, always and forever. My soul goes silent when I meander in thought to pre-creation, when all that existed was this Three-in-One God, and I ask this question: Before it all begin, before the stars and sun and sky and earth, before what Genesis 1 calls the…’formless void,” what was God doing?’”

The answer, according to McKnight is found in one Greek word, perichoresis, (which derive from the Greek words Peri or “Around” or “chorein” which means “contain).

McKnight defines perichoresis as the “interpenetrating and mutual indwelling of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Don’t worry if you don’t quite get it.

He goes on: “The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were in an endless dance of endless love and surging joy and delightful play as they enjoyed the depth of their love for One Another. They were doing this forever and are doing this now and will do this for eternity. At the core of life, in God’s own life, is this throbbing joy of mutual indwelling.”

I am really taken with this concept of perichrosis, especially with it being a kind of dance. And what I like most about this is the fact that we are being invited to be a part of this dance as well. We are being invited into this dance, much as we are being invited to sit at that table in Rublev’s icon. We are invited to join in this dance that has gone on form before time and will go on long after time has ceased.

This dance of the Trinity is what we do here. This table that we sit at is this table here—this altar. This dance we do with the Trinity is the ministries we are all called to do. We don’t need to rationalize everything out about our faith in God. We don’t need to sit around and make it a personal issue. It’s not all about me. Or you. Or any one of us.

No matter how much we might doubt the Trinity, the Trinity still exists. It still goes on, in its eternal dance. And no matter how much we might doubt in our rational minds, we are still being called to the dance. No matter how much we might doubt, we are still being called to sit down at the table.

So, let us do just that. Let us sit down at that table. Let us bring our doubts and uncertainties with us. And let us leave them there. Let us let God be God. And let us go out form this table to do the work each of us has been called to do.

Jesus today, in our Gospel reading, commands us to go and make disciples of all the nations. By doing so, we are joining in that dance of the Trinity. And by doing so, we know, despite our doubts, despite our uncertainties, that the Trinity will be with us always, even to the end of the age.

Dancing.

Pentecost

2011-06-12T05:01:00.000-07:00

June 12, 2011

Acts 2.1-21

+ It has become a Pentecost Day tradition for me to tell this story. Yes, I know you’ve heard it before, so don’t think too quickly that I am recycling an old sermon just because this story sounds familiar. I just love to tell the story.

Several years ago, in a Bible study, we were discussing the Holy Spirit. Now, as we all know, the Holy Spirit is not something most of us think about very often. The Holy Spirit is mysterious and ephemeral. Well, in this discussion, someone point-blank asked: “So, what is the Holy Spirit?”

The priest who was heading the discussion thought for a moment and then said, in all seriousness, “Well, when you think of the Holy Spirit, just think of Casper the Friendly Ghost.”

I was telling this story to my friend, Justin Schwartz this past week and also mentioned (and this is a complete aside mind you) that I once considered getting a tattoo. And one of the subjects I considered was Casper the Friendly Ghost. As a little boy, I loved Casper. The problem with me getting Casper as a tattoo was that with my Irish-pale skin, no one would be able to actually see Casper. He would just sort of look like a white scar against my white skin.

Anyway, I do have an issue with seeing the Holy Spirit as “something like Casper the Friendly Ghost.” And I don’t think I have shared with you before my vehement response to this priest and her analogy of Casper in describing the Holy Spirit.

Nothing that we read about in our reading from Acts today conveys an image of the Spirit looking anything like Casper. The Spirit that we find in today’s reading is not some nice sweet little ghost floating around and looking gentle and cute. The Spirit we encounter is truly a firestorm. The Spirit comes blasting in and flip-flops everything. Nothing is ever quite the same again in the lives of those followers of Jesus gathered in the Upper Room—or, we can say, in our own lives as Christians either.

And THAT is how the Spirit works.

I have been reading a wonderful book recently by Scot McKnight called One.Life. McKnight talks quite a bit about Pentecost and the Spirit of Christ that came upon those people. For McKnight, that event in the life of the Church and in our lives as followers of Jesus was one of the most radical events to happen. It was not some personal religious experience. It was not some individual spiritual experience that made everyone feel all warm and cuddly. What happened in that room was a swift kick. It was a kick from God to God’s people. The Spirit’s outpouring on t hose people was the motivation for them to get up and get out and do what they were called to do.

Now, we’ve all heard of this phenomenon of “speaking in tongues” that we are introduced to in the book of Acts. I find it amazing that in the more Pentecostal churches these speaking in tongues is viewed as a special gift that is almost always done INSIDE the church.

I remember seeing it for the first time in my Aunt Shirley’s First Assemblies of God Church. People would get up and speak in some strange language that no one understood and people would rejoice in it, but no one really seemed to know what was being said. It was celebrated because it was seen as a special gift from God granted to certain people.

But, what we find in the Book of Acts, when the gift of tongues comes upon those followers of Jesus, is not quite what the people in the Assemblies were doing. What happens to the first followers of Jesus is actually quite practical. It was more than some mystical, secret language of the Spirit. It was, instead, a sign from the Spirit. It was sign that what happened at the Tower of Babel, when the nations were confused by multiple languages, has been reversed. Now, empowered by the Spirit, the followers of Jesus were compelled to go out and preach this Kingdom of God to all people and that different languages would no longer be a barrier to them. The Spirit’s movement in their lives meant that all the barriers were knocked down. The Wind of that Spirit came in and destroyed every barrier in ministering and serving others.

For us, it’s similar. Maybe our barriers are not languages in the ministries each of us are called to do here and outside these walls. But the ministries we have been empowered by the Spirit of Christ to do in our lives truly should be breaking barriers as well. We are all called to ministries that break down barriers. Our ministries to proclaim by word and example the radical love of God and the Kingdom of God in our midst will break down barriers.

As McKnight writes in One.Life:

“…when Pentecost happens, the Spirit of God…
transforms human abilities
and Transcends human inabilities
so Transformed people can participate
In God’s Kingdom
In the here and now.”

In other words, no longer are we confined by inabilities. No longer are we held prisoner by what we are not able to do. Because the Spirit again and again breaks down those barriers—whatever they may be—and compels us to serve whenever and where we are.

McKnight also gives a wonderful description of what exactly this Kingdom or Reign of God is like. He writes:

“[The Kingdom is] Life lived with others, regardless of who they are
Life shaped by the teachings of Jesus through his apostles
Life experience by eating with one another.
Life swarmed by prayer.
Life carried away in awe of what God was [and I would add, IS] doing
Life shared economically and materially
Life welcomed by outsiders
Life expanded.
Life unleashed.”

This Spirit that we are celebrating today on this Pentecost Day is truly that Life unleashed. The Spirit is life at its best, life at its greatest potential. This Spirit is motivating all of us, like those first followers, as well. It is motivating us to get up and to move outside these walls and to proclaim justice and mercy and peace to those around us.

When the Spirit moves in our lives, we are not only recognize the injustices going on around us, but we are also motivated to stand up and to proclaim them wrong. When the Spirit moves in our lives, we not only are able to see the sufferings of those who are marginalized and oppressed and driven down, but we are empowered to get up and help them and strive to create a better place.

This is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to do ministry. This is what it means to live a life in which the Spirit moves and compels and drives us forward. This is what it means to follow Jesus.

McKnight in his book answers that all-important question of “What is a Christian?” with this wonderfully insightful answer:

“A Christian is one who follows Jesus by devoting his or her life to the kingdom of God, fired by Jesus’ own imagination, to a life of loving God and loving others, and to a society shaped by justice, especially for those who have been marginalized, to peace, and to a life devoted to acquiring wisdom in the context of a local church. This life can only be discovered by being empowered by God’s Spirit.”

This is what the Spirit does. It empowers us. When we think we are weak and hobbled by life, the Spirit comes in and gives us strength. When we think we are good enough to do ministry, to proclaim by example or word that love of God that we have been shown and can show others, the Spirit comes in and corrects. When we think we are too old or too young or not enough or too smart or limited by a lack of financial resources or physical limitations or mental illness or grief, the Spirit comes in and fills us once again with life.

The Spirit unleashes life within us so, through us, life can be unleashed. That is what ministry is. And it is incredible.

So, let us receive the Holy Spirit. Let that Spirit’s incredible, overwhelming life be unleashed through us. Let us, as McKnight tells us, devote our lives to the Kingdom of God…to a life of loving God and loving others, and to a society shaped by justice for all people, no matter who they are.

The Spirit knows no limits. Empowered by this same incredible, firestorm of a Spirit, neither do we. So, let us break down those limits in our lives and let us live a full and completely unleashed life to its very fullest. Only when we do that, will we truly be living a life in that Spirit of life.

"Jesus Christ the Apple Tree"

2011-06-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

I am all kinds of embarrassed: On Friday night my UCC friend, Justin Schwartz mentioned a hymn he played at his church called "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree."

I frowned when he said it and so I had him repeat the hymn title.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree? I had never heard it before.

"It's beautiful!" Justin said.

Well, sure enough, I checked it out the next day and discovered one of the most hauntingly beautiful hymns I have ever heard. But more than just a lovely hymn, the words are striking. Each one drives deeply home.

Even more interesting to me is that, as wonderfully British as it may sound, it was actually sung in the hill country of the American south. In that context, it almost sounds like a Sacred Harp Song.

Whatever the case, it is an incredible hymn:

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the applle tree

His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne'er can tell
His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
I missed of all but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest a while
I'm weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest a while
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Elizabeth Poston (October 24, 1905 - March 18, 1987)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FigrgO8EAYA

6 Easter

2011-05-29T06:23:00.001-07:00

Rogation Sunday
May 29, 2011

John 14.15-21

+ This past week I had lunch with a long-time friend of mine. She is a novelist—she’s published five fairly well-received novels—and she is also a Quaker. And in addition to that, she is also an avowed non-believer. Yes, you CAN be a non-believer and a Quaker, I guess.

Now I know you’re thinking: that priest has so many friends who are atheists and complete non-believers. And I do! Actually, I consider them a true blessing in my life. I don’t know what I would do without my non-believing friends. Because they do help keep things in a very perspective.

For example, at lunch this week, my friend was explaining how she was dealing with a bit of in-fighting at her Quaker meeting house. I actually thought it was somewhat humorous to hear about Quakers fighting among themselves—committed as they are to peace. With a very exasperated sigh, she said to me, “I have come to believe that organized religion really does contribute to a lot of the problems in the world.”

I couldn’t argue with her. I actually agree. And I believe most of us here this morning would agree as well. Organized religion—made up as it is by so many fallible, dysfunctional human beings—is bound to fail at times. But, then, so is any other human organization. And I truly believe that it’s actually politics that have consistently contributed to our human problems again and again throughout our history. And it doesn’t help when politics and religion combine.

The point, however, that she made was a valid one. We do fail miserably when we allow organized religion—as opposed to real spiritual living—to dominate.

In our Gospel reading for today we find Jesus explaining that although he is about to depart from his followers—this coming Thursday we celebrate the feast of Jesus’ Ascension to heaven—he will not leave them alone. They will be left with the Advocate—the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit. He prefaces all of this with those words that quickly get swallowed up by the comments on the Spirit, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

And just to remind everyone, that command is, of course, “to love.” To love God. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is what it means to be the Church. To love. To serve. To be Christ to those who need Christ. To be a Christ of love and compassion and acceptance. Without boundaries. Without discrimination. When we forget this, when we fail to do this, we become the religious organization my novelist friend despairs against.

Of course, following these commandments of Jesus is not easy. It is hard. And because it is hard, we find ways, again and again to remind us how to practice this radical love.

We are doing so this morning. Today is Rogation Sunday. Rogation comes the Latin word “Rogare” which means “to ask.” Traditionally, on this Sunday, we heard the Gospel in which Jesus said,

"Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give to you".

Today, with our current lectionary of scripture readings, we actually find him saying, “”I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate…” From a very simple perspective, the thing we are asking today, on this Rogation Sunday, is to keep those commandments of Jesus.

Now for some of us, this whole idea of Rogation Sunday and the procession that we will soon be making outside at the conclusion of our Eucharist this morning might seem a bit too much. The fact is, it is something that has been done for centuries in our Anglican Tradition.

In the 1630s one of my all-time heroes (you hear me quote him and reference him often), Anglican priest and poet, George Herbert, commended these rogation processions. He said that processions should be encouraged for four reasons:

1. A Blessing of God for the fruits of the field.

2. Justice in the preservation of boundaries of those fields and properties.

3. Charity in loving, walking and neighborly accompanying one another with reconciling of differences at the time if there be any.

4. Mercie, in relieving the poor by a liberal distribution of largesse, which at the time is or ought to be used.

Now for us, as good city folk, we aren’t as concerned about the agricultural aspects of the Rogation blessing, at least not here at St. Stephen’s. But even here, in the city, we are thankful for our natural world.

It has been a long, hard winter. And this spring has left much to be desired. We have battled blizzards, snow and another particularly horrendous flood. But we are now enjoying the spring. The earth, that seemed so dead, so unforgiving, so bleak, is now alive.

What we are doing today is thanking God for this renewal. And we are asking God’s blessings on this growth. Because we are Christ to those who need Christ, we are asking that the blessings and abundance that come forth from this earth are shared with those who would not normally receive those blessings.

It’s not just a coincidence that Rogation Sunday falls within the Easter season. We are still in the Easter season. We are still celebrating that victory of Jesus’ resurrection, of how life does always win out over death. We Christians do know a few things about rebirth and renewal because we celebrate those themes every time we gather together and remember Jesus’ resurrection.

For us, modern Episcopalians, Rogation might mean something slightly different than it did for George Herbert. For us, we are reminded in our Rogation celebration that we are stewards of this natural world and we need to continue to be good stewards. We can not squander this natural world we have. But we have to preserve and respect it. We are also reminded that there is an inter-connectedness to the world around us. What happens in this natural world affects us—and affects us deeply, as we who live here in this part of the country know quite well. It is also a time for us to be mindful, as we always should, of relief of the poor. There are people who are not benefiting from the fruits of this earth. There are people who starving, who drinking unclean water, who are suffering from poverty and neglect, who are prey to insects carrying disease, who are suffering from famine and drought.

And there are people who are suffering from the affects of nature gone wild. There are people, this morning, who are homeless following the tornados that have been striking across the country. And there are people who mourning this morning for the loss of people in those storms.

Today, we are mindful of those facts. As you can see, the rallying themes of this Rogation time are hope and justice. And as George Herbert reminds us there is always room for charity.

As we process out at the end of the Eucharist today, I ask that you remember Jesus’ call to us, to love him and to keep his commandment of love. It is more than just sweet, religious talk. It is a challenge and a true calling to live out this love in radical ways. As we process, as we walk together, let us pay attention to this world around us. Let us ponder the causes and the effects of what it means to be inter-related—to be dependent upon on each to some extent, as we are on this earth. We do need each other. And we do need each other’s love. We do need that radical love that Jesus commands us to have.

With that love, we will truly love our neighbors as ourselves. Our neighbors are more than just those people who live next door to us. Our neighbors are all of us, those we do in fact love and those we have difficulty loving. And our neighbors also include this earth and all the inhabitants of it.

That command of Jesus is to love—to respect—those with whom we live and share this place. Let this procession today truly be a "living walking" as George Herbert put it. But let our whole lives as Christians be also a “living walk,” a mindful walk, a walk in which we see the world around with eyes of love and respect and justice and care.

5 Easter

2011-05-22T05:05:00.003-07:00

May 22, 2011

Acts 7.55-60; John 14.1-14

+ As you were coming into church this morning I was trying to take account of who isn’t here this morning. I’m not taking attendance. I just wanted to see who was taken up in the Rapture that was predicted for yesterday.

I have to admit: these predictions of the “End Times” and conjecture about the end of the world did make me think a bit more than usual about “The End.” Now, I’m not certain about when or how the world will end. But I do know this—the world is going to end for each one of us one day. By that I mean, every one of us is going to die one day. I know that’s shocking for some of us, but it is a fact. But before we despair over such things, we should probably remind ourselves what our scriptures this morning said.

The Gospel we heard this morning is a familiar one for most of us. This is one of the Gospel readings recommended by the Book of Common Prayer for funerals. In fact, it is, by far, one of the most popular Gospel readings chosen for funerals. There’s little doubt why it is. It is wonderfully appropriate. The reason it is so popular is because it truly does give us a wonderful glimpse into what awaits us following our death.

This really is the BIG issue in our lives. We might not give it a lot of conscious thought, but no doubt most of us have pondered at some time in our lives, what awaits us following our death. The part we no doubt concentrate on in today’s Gospel are Jesus’ words “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

Traditionally, we have heard the word “mansions” used here, and I have never been shy in saying that I have always enjoyed the word “mansions.” I believe that these dwelling places awaiting us are truly the equivalent of mansions for us. I don’t believe that they’re actual mansion, mind you. I think Jesus is being very poetic in his description. But I think what he conveys is that God will provide something beautiful and wonderful for us.

And in our reading from Acts this morning, we get to catch an even clearer view of that beautiful and wonderful something that awaits us. In Acts we find our own dear, patron saint, St. Stephen, being dragged out by an angry mob and stoned to death. It’s certainly not pretty. But in the midst of that violence and anger, we find St. Stephen having a glorious vision. He looks up into heaven and is allowed a vision, in which he sees Jesus in the glory of God. And with his last words, he prays to Jesus,

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

This is the first recorded prayer to Jesus in the scriptures. And it is the most beautiful and most honest prayer St. Stephen could’ve prayed. So this, morning, in both our Gospel reading and our reading from Acts, we are confronted with glorious visions.

Now neither of them are as stupendous as the Rapture. But there is something wonderful in being able to look ahead and see what awaits us. It is wonderful to be able to see the joys and beauty of our place with God in heaven.

Still, knowing full well what awaits us, having been given glimpses into that glorious place that lies just beyond our vision, we still find ourselves digging in our heels when we have to face the fact of our own dying.

As you know, I teach a class called Suffering and Christian Healing at the University of Mary. One night, we were discussing the issue of dying. And I realized, as we talked, that there are a lot of books out there about the process of dying—there are books on what we will experience if we receive a terminal diagnosis, there are books on how to manage pain, there are books on facing psychologically and emotionally the process of dying. But there are few books that teach us actually about dying itself, from a spiritual point of view.

I remember once reading a book by the Roman Catholic saint, Alphonsus de Liguori, about how to die what he called a “happy death.” A happy death was not a death free of pain or suffering necessarily. A happy death was dying in the Presence of God. A happy death is a holy death.

This past week, we here at St. Stephen’s, had our first Film Night. It was arousing success, I have to say. We celebrated a very well attended Eucharist, then had a wonderful supper at Spicy Pie and then went to the film, Of Gods and Men, at the Fargo Theatre. This film was the perfect choice for our first film night. It was, to say the least, a powerful film—one that I still find myself pondering even this many days after.

The story is based on the actual event of the murder of seven Trappist monks n Algeria in May, 1996. In fact, yesterday was the fifteen anniversary of their murders. The final scene (I hope I don’t give too much away to any of you who go and see—and I do recommend you see it) shows the extremist Muslim guerrillas who kidnapped them from their monastery, leading the monks up the mountain through the snow, to the place where they would be murdered. On each face, we know the monks are fully aware of what awaits them. The film, in fact, deals with this issue. They each chose to stay in Algeria, in their monastery, serving those whom they were called to serve, knowing full-well that their staying in Algeria under those uncertain conditions might actually mean death.

In that final scene, there is no dialogue as they walk to the deaths. The camera captures close ups of each monk’s face before it closes with a long shot of the monks and their murderers disappearing into the snow. Each monk appears to be collected. Some are praying. Some are not. But each face is focused on what lies ahead. And although there is sadness, there is shock, there is fear, there is also certainty. There is also resolution. And there are no regrets on any one of those faces.

Certainly, from the perspective of those monks, this was truly a “happy death.” Again, I stress that a happy death does not mean a death without suffering and pain. It simply means a death in which one is collected and is centered on God’s Presence at that moment.

This kind of thinking might seem a bit strange to us non Roman Catholics. We just aren’t used to thinking about such a thing as a “happy death” or a “good death.” The whole idea seems like some kind of oxymoron. “Happy” and “death” just don’t go together in way of our thinking. But it is a good thing to think about occasionally.

Certainly there are few books to teach us non-Roman Catholics about how

to die a happy and holy death. As a priest, I can say that I have known many people who, when faced with their deaths, simply don’t know how to die and don’t know how to look at their dying as a way of moving into God’s presence. And even fewer know how to prepare themselves spiritually for dying.

In our Book of Common Prayer, we have a beautiful prayer that is prayed for someone near death. It can be found on page 462. There we find this prayer,

“Almighty God, look your servant, lying in great weakness, and comfort ‘this person’, with the promise of life everlasting, given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Comfort ‘this person’ with the promise of life everlasting”

This promise of eternal life, as we have seen in the Resurrection, should truly be a comfort to us, especially in those moments when we fear death. Thinking about our own deaths is isn’t necessarily morbid or unpleasant. It simply reminds us that we are mortal. We will all die one day.

But rather than despairing over that fact, we should use it as an opportunity to draw closer to God. We should use it as an opportunity to live a more holy life. And hopefully, living a more holy life, we can pray at that last moment—that holy moment—with true conviction, that wonderful prayer of St. Stephen, the first martyr:

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Although it’s probably not the most pleasant thought to have that we are going to die, I think it is important to think about occasionally. The reason we should think about it—and the reason we shouldn’t despair in thinking about it—is because, for a Christian, dying is not a horrible thought.

Dying is not a reason to fear. Because, by dying, we do come to life everlasting—life with end. And although we, at this moment, can’t imagine it as being a “happy” or “holy” moment, the fact is, it will be. It will be the holiest moment of our life and it will be the happiest moment of our life.

For Stephen, who died abused, in pain, bleeding from those sharp stones that fell upon him, it was a happy and holy moment when he looked up and saw Jesus waiting for him. He was happy because he knew he would soon be received by Jesus and it was holy because, at that moment, his faith was fulfilled. That place toward which we are headed—that place in God’s house—we will find our true home. Heaven—is truly our happy home, the place toward which we are wandering around, searching. And we will not find our rest until we rest there, and we will not be fully and completely happy until we are surrounded by the happiness there.

So, let us look forward to that place in which Jesus has prepared a place for us. It awaits us. It there, right at this moment, just beyond our vision. Let us look to it with joy and let us live in joy until we are there together. Amen.

4 Easter

2011-05-15T05:05:00.003-07:00

Good Shepherd Sunday
May 15, 2011

John 10.1-10

+ Twenty-seven years ago this month, I was called to the Priesthood. It wasn’t a dramatic event—I wasn’t blinded by a light. I didn’t hear any voices. Just one day when I was thirteen years old, I KNEW I wanted to be a priest. Now, when I tell people about that they think it was just a kind of smooth, clean transition. They think that this calling was there with me, all those years, through all that schooling, until the day I was finally ordained. The fact is, it wasn’t that smooth. In fact, for the better part of ten years—during all my twenties—I tried to avoid this calling. I ran from the calling. Yes, I worked in churches—four years in a United Methodist Church. Yes, I studied and prayed.

But I also struggled. And I resisted. But despite the fact that I did so, I found that the calling was more persistent than I initially thought. Toward the end of that struggle I came across a poem. It was a poem I knew well before then, but only toward the end of my decade-long struggle, did this poem really speak to me where I was.

The poem is a kind of classic. It’s called “The Hound of Heaven.” It was written by a drug-addicted, tortured young man that we would no doubt today call a slacker. Francis Thompson, who died in 1907, wrote the poem during one of those difficult times in his life. The poem begins like this:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'.

I won’t read the whole poem to you, but the gist of the poem is this: In it, a person is trying to avoid Christ. But Christ, like a hound, does not let the poet off. In fact, as much as the person tires to avoid Christ, Christ keeps on, doggedly chasing after him, on “strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,

It was when I read this poem with eyes wide open that I realized that this is how God sometimes works. God sometimes, like that Hound, does chase us. God does nip at us and chase us wherever we think we might go to avoid God. God is unrelenting in the chase, I came to realize. Certainly this was so in my life and in my calling to the priesthood.

Now, I shared this poem once not long after I made the connection in my own life and the person I shared it with was somewhat offended:

“Jesus, as a Hound—as a Dog!” she said.

For her, it was sacrilegious to make the comparison. And for some time I did avoid sharing the poem. Then, I read, not too long, this very interesting comment from the Anglican theologian John Stott.

“Is it appropriate…to liken God to a hound?” Stott asks. He then went on to say that R.M. Gautry concedes that “there are good hounds as well as bad hounds, and that especially admirable are collies, which range the Scottish Highlands in search of lost sheep.”

Stott further shares “the theme of searching sheepdogs (or, more accurately, of searching shepherds)” occurs often in scripture.

Today, of course, we experience one of those themes in our Gospel readings. Today is Good Shepherd Sunday—the Sunday in which we encounter this wonderful reading about Jesus being the Good Shepherd. Jesus describes himself in today’s Gospel as the Good Shepherd. This is probably one of the most perfect images Jesus could have used for the people listening to him. They would have understood what a good shepherd was and what a bad shepherd was. The good shepherd was the shepherd who actually cared for his flock. He looked out for them, he watched them. The Good Shepherd guided the flock and led the flock. He guided and led the flock to a place to eat.

This is an important aspect of the role of the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd didn’t feed the flock. Rather the good shepherd led the flock to the choicest green pastures and helped them to feed themselves. In this way, the Good Shepherd is more than just a coddling shepherd. He is not the co-dependent shepherd. The Good Shepherd doesn’t take each sheep individually, pick them up, and hand-feed the sheep. Rather, he guides and prods and leads the sheep to green pastures and allows them feed themselves. The Good Shepherd also protects the flock against the many dangers out there.

If we follow the Good Shepherd, if we allow ourselves to be led by him to the Gate, we find that incredible reward of green pastures awaiting us. And even if we don’t follow, if we stray, we will find him prodding us. We will find him nipping at us like the sheep hound.

But, with our eyes on the Shepherd, with Hound nipping at us from behind, we know that the bad things that happen to us will not destroy us, because the Shepherd is there, close by, watching out for us. We know that in those bad times—those times of darkness when predators close in, when storms rage—he will be there for us.

More importantly the Good Shepherd knows his flock. He knows each of the sheep. If one is lost, he knows it is lost and will not rest until it is brought back into the fold. He will go after that lost sheep, like the Hound. In our collect for today [from the Book of Common Prayer], there is this wonderful reference,

“Grant that when we hear his voice, we may know him who calls us each by name…’

This is the kind of relationship we have with Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We are know him because he knows us. He knows us and calls us each by our name. In Jesus, we don’t have some vague, distant God. We don’t have a God who lets us fend for ourselves. We instead have a God who leads us and guides us, a God who knows us each by name, a God who despairs over the loss of even one of the flock and goes after us, chasing us down.

John Stott, in talking of the poem “The Hound of Heaven,” writes.

"Francis Thompson was expressing what is true of every Christian…If we love Christ, it is because he loved us first. If we are Christians at all, it is not because we have decided for Christ, but because Christ has decided for us. It is because of the pursuit of ‘this tremendous lover.’”

We have a God who, in loving us, leads us and guides us and follows us from behind, then allows us to pass through him into a place wherein we will feast. This image of the Good Shepherd is more than some sweet, gentle image we apply to Jesus. As Christians, as followers of Jesus the Good Shepherd, we are also called to be good shepherds to those around us. All of us who are called to ministry—and we all, as Christians, are ministers and we have each been called, in our own ways—know that to be truly effective ministers we have to be good shepherds. We should be helping others toward the Gate, and through the Gate into that green pasture. We should be nudging an prodding each other along. And we should be concerned about those who have fallen away, who have been led astray. This is what it means to do ministry.

So, on this day in which we celebrate the Shepherd who leads and guides, on this Sunday in which also commemorate the Hound of Heaven, who follows behind, prodding us and nudging us forward toward the gate, let us allow ourselves to be led. On this day that we look to the Shepherd who guides, let us be guided. Let us allow ourselves to be led by that Great Good Shepherd, who brings us to himself, to the very Gate. Let us listen for those “strong Feet that followed, followed after
… with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,”

And there, either led or prodded, let us go through the Gate, that goal of our spiritual lives, into that glorious place we have longed for all our existence. And when we are there, in that glorious place, let us rejoice in our God and in each other. Let us know that the joy we will experience there will be a joy that is never taken from us. Amen.

3 Easter

2011-05-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

New Member Sunday
May 8, 2011

Luke 24.13-35

+ These last couple of weeks I have mastered the art of playing the “host with the most.” Of course, I hosted my mother for about three weeks during the flood while she was a misplaced person. And I have also had couple of friends on mine stay at the rectory on their way through Fargo. People like it when I host them. I am, if I say so myself, a good host. I go out of my way for my guests and I try to make them as comfortable as possible when they stay with me.

This, of course, is simply because I am a good Benedictine. By that I mean, I, as an Oblate of St. Benedict, have learned well what it means to welcome people. In the Rule of St. Benedict, the rule that Benedictine monastics all around the world, for many , many centuries have followed, there is a wonderful chapter on greeting visitors to the monastery.

St. Benedict commands that “All should be received as Christ.”

Everyone who comes to the door of a Benedictine monastery or convent, should be welcomed and received as Christ for, St Benedict says, “he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25.35).”

Benedict goes on to say, “Proper honor must be shown to all…”

And to this day, Benedictines all over the world do just that when anyone comes to a monastery or convent. They are known for their hospitability.

And so are we, here at St. Stephen’s We, at St. Stephen’s, whether we are truly conscious of Benedict’s Rule, are also very good hosts. We do practice this radical hospitality.

One of the things I have heard again and again form people who visit us is how friendly and welcoming we are. And we ARE. Whether it’s on our website or here in person or in the many ministries we do, we welcome literally ANYONE through those doors, without judgment, without a second thought. And the secret to this radical hospitality is found in the belief that everyone who comes through that door is truly treated as Christ. Because, as we learn from our Gospel reading today, that Jesus does walk among us, even if we are unable to recognize him.

In today’s Gospel, we find this beautiful story of Cleopas and the other unnamed disciple encountering Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and the other disciple are, essentially, already in a strange time in their life in following Jesus. The long week of Jesus’ betrayal, torture and murder are behind them. The resurrection has happened, although, it’s clear from their words, they don’t quite comprehend what’s happened. Of course, who could? We still, two thousand years later, are grappling with the events of Jesus’ resurrection.

But as these two walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they are kept from recognizing their friend, the person they saw as the Messiah, until finally he breaks the bread with them. Only then—only when he breaks that bread open to share with them—do they recognize him.

It’s a wonderful story and one that has many, many layers of meaning for each of us individually, no doubt. But for us Episcopalians, for us who gather together every Sunday to break bread together, this story takes on special meaning. In a sense. we are the disciples in this reading. We are Cleopas and the unnamed disciple, walking on the road—walking, as they are, in that place on the other side of the cross. They are walking away from Jerusalem, where all these events happened—the betrayal, the torture the murder and the eventual resurrection of Jesus from the tomb—back to Emmaus, to their homes. Like them, we go around in our lives on the other side of the cross, trying to understand what it means to be followers of Jesus on this side of the cross.

What this story teaches us is that, even when we don’t recognize Jesus in our midst, we should always be cautious. He might not make himself known to us as he did to Cleopas and the other disciple. Rather, he might remain cloaked in that stranger who comes to us. And as a result, it’s just so much better to realize that everyone we encounter, everyone we greet, everyone we welcome, truly is Jesus disguised.

What an incredible world this would be if everyone could do this—if everyone could practice radical hospitality like this. What an amazing Christian Church we would have if we could do the same, if we could welcome every stranger—and every regular parishioner as well—as Christ. I think many Christians forget this.

I was recently at another church and I was shocked by how distant and cool people were there when I came through the door. Yes, I had someone give me a bulletin. But, no one really greeted me—even though I knew some of them. And even some other people I knew who were there—strangers to the people in that church—also shared with me how coolly they were greeted.

The fact is, we as Christians ARE called to this radical form of hospitality. By the very fact that we are baptized we are called to do this. In our Baptismal Covenant—that Covenant we have made with God through our baptism—we are called to serve Christ in each other. In our Book of Common Prayer, in the Baptismal Covenant on page 305, each time there is baptism in this church, we are asked,

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.”

To which, we respond, “I will, with God’s help.

Now, of course, that’s not easy. In fact, sometimes it’s downright impossible. Without God’s help, we can’t do it. Without God’s help, we first of all can’t even begin to recognize Christ in our midst. And without God’s help, we can’t seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. And, let’s face, it’s just easier to choose not to. It’s easy not to see Christ in those people who drive us crazy, who irritate us, who say things to us we don’t want to hear. It’s easy for us to see the devil in people, rather than Christ.

But for us who gather together every Sunday at this table—at this altar—we can’t use that excuse of being unable to recognize Jesus in our midst. In our liturgy, we find Jesus in a multitude of ways. Jesus speaks to us in the scripture readings we hear in the Liturgy of the Word. The voice we hear in these sacred words is truly Jesus’ voice, speaking to each of us in our own particular circumstances, and to all of us as whole. Jesus is present with us—in ALL of us—as we gather here. We—the assembly of the people—we, all of us together, are the presence of Jesus here as well. And when we break this bread at the altar, we find whatever spiritual blindness we come here with, lifted at that time. We see Christ truly present with us—in the brad and the wine and in one another.

Today, on this New Member Sunday, we are celebrating the fruits of radical hospitality. These people who are joining us today are here because they were greeted—each and every one of them—without judgment. Each one was greeted with true joy at the fact that they are here with us.

We have a lot of to celebrate today. It’s not a secret that not that too long ago, St. Stephen’s was viewed as a church that was somewhat stuck. People thought it could not grow—that there was no potential for it to grow. At our last Vestry meeting, I actually brought out the membership numbers over the years, culled from our parochial reports.

Our congregation was formed in 1956. The earliest parochial report I could find was 1961, when there 183 members at St. Stephen’s. The highest number of members was in 1968, when there was a whopping 243 members at this church. Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, those number dropped radically—for various reasons.

When I started here at St. Stephen’s in 2008, we had 55 members here. By the end of this year, we could have as many as 100 members here. The last time we had a membership in the triple digits was in 1979.

Now, I don’t want us to get all caught up in numbers. We’re not about numbers. But what we should be rejoicing about the ministry each of us is doing here at St. Stephens. We should be rejoicing at the sound of children in our church. We should be rejoicing that people feel as though they are welcomed here by all of us. We should be rejoicing that this congregation of St. Stephen’s that people once saw as having no real future, no real potential, has been a refuge for people—a place where people have been welcomed and accepted and loved simply for who they are. And all of us here are doing that ministry of radical hospitality to those people coming in our doors.

And that radical hospitality DOES make a difference. Greeting people as though Jesus were present in each person who comes through that door has incredible results—not in only in our collective life here at St. Stephen’s, but in the lives of each of those people coming among us.

We are showing them that, despite the occasionally somewhat ugly reputation the Church has at times—and sometimes deservedly so—we, as the Body of Christ in this world, can do much good as well. We can truly love. We can truly be accepting. We can truly see clearly that Jesus does still walk beside us. We can see that he is with us here as we listen to the scriptures and he is here with us that this table in the breaking of the bread.

So, today, as we celebrate our ministry here at St. Stephen’s, as celebrate and welcome our new members, let us all truly see Jesus present here. Let us hear his words in the scriptures we have just shared and in the scriptures we will read this week. Let us allow Jesus to speak to us with words that are familiar, with a voice that is familiar. Let us allow him to take away whatever spiritual blindness we might have so that we can truly and completely see him in those people who share our life with us. Let us allow him to take away that spiritual blindness that causes so much harm in the world so that we can fully experience him and show love and respect to everyone we come in contact with. And when we break this bread this morning, let our hearts sing, as it no doubt did for Cleopas and the other disciple,

“Be known to me, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of bread.”

And recognizing him here, as we come forward to be nourished in body and spirit by his Body, Blood and Spirit. may we also go out into the world, able to recognize Jesus as he walks alongside us on our journey.

We are living, in this moment, on the other of the cross. We are living here, with Jesus in our very midst. It is a glorious place to be.

2 Easter

2011-05-01T05:06:00.001-07:00

May 1, 2011

John 20.19-31

+ Some of you received an email from me last night asking your support. I asked your support to stand up and protest the increasingly rampant anti-Muslim sentiments going in our country, especially over these last several weeks, which have included the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran. I sent off the email with a petition that, since Jesus called us to love our neighbor as ourselves, we too, as Christians, need to stand up and say that it is not all right that people, calling themselves Christians and claiming to speak for us as Christians, are committing such acts.

I am shocked and amazed—not to mention appalled, as I said—when I hear such things. The fact is, faith in God is difficult. We all know how difficult it can be. We all struggle with it. We all struggle with doubt. We all struggle in our attempt to do right.

Which is why, I guess, it bugs me so much to hear about anti-Muslim sentiments. I am not, at any point, saying we need to accept Islam. But we do need to respect it, just as we respect any other religion that is not our own.

We should respect other religions because we should be able to recognize that they, just like us, are struggling as well. They, just like us, are dealing with issues of doubt and uncertainly and, the majority of these others religions, just like us, are striving to do right in the way they see right.

To be burning Korans and calling anyone who happens to be a Muslim a terrorist is appalling. And, it is un-Christian. This is not what Jesus called us to do. This is not what a follower of Jesus should be doing.

Whatever Muslims have done to Christians elsewhere—and yes, I am fully aware of what they have done—our job as Christians is not fight to deny them their rights as Americans. And I can tell you that is definitely not our job as followers of Jesus to be burning their sacred books, whether we believe in what those books say or not.

Our job, as Christians, as fellow seekers after God, is to love them. That’s all. That’s Jesus has ever told us to do. And that’s all we should be doing.

Yes, we struggle with these issues of belief in our lives. Let’s face it, we don’t get the opportunities that Thomas had in this morning’s Gospel.

Doubting Thomas, as we’ve come to know him, refused to believe that Jesus was resurrected until he had put his fingers in the wounds of Jesus. It wasn’t enough that Jesus actually appeared to him in the flesh—Jesus, was no ghost after all. He stood there in the flesh—wounds and all. Only when he had placed his finger in the wounds, would he believe.

In Rome, you can actually go and see what is believed to be Thomas’ incorrupt finger. This finger that touched Jesus in such a way is now supposedly perfectly preserved, in a glass case in the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. It’s interesting to see and it’s interesting to hear this story of Doubting Thomas.

But, the fact is, for the rest of us, we don’t get it so easy. Jesus is probably not going to appear before us—in the flesh. At least, not on this side of the Veil—not while we are still alive. And we are not going to have the opportunity to touch the wounds of Jesus.

Let’s face it, to believe without seeing, is not easy. It takes work and discipline. Look at us this morning. More likely than not, we can all think of at least one or two things we’d rather be doing this Sunday morning than being in church. We could sleep in. We could have a nice long breakfast with out families. We could be reading the newspaper. We could watch TV while lounging on the couch, or we could be sitting at the computer.

But instead, we made the choice to come to church. We made a choice to come here this morning, and worship a God we cannot see, not touch. A strong relationship to God takes work—just as any other relationship in our life takes work. It takes discipline. It takes concentrated effort.

And I am sure that our Muslim sisters and brothers—and yes, they are our brothers and sister, as fellow human beings and as children of the patriarch Abraham—would tell us as well, faith of God is hard. It does take discipline and it does take concentrated effort.

Being a believer in God does not just involve being nice on occasion and smiling. It means living one’s life fully and completely as a believer. And being a Christian is even more refined. As Christians we are committed to follow Jesus. And more than just that, we are also called essentially to be the Presence of Christ in this world. It means being a reflection of Christ’s love and goodness in the world. The key words here are “love” and “goodness.”

More often than not, especially in the theology classes I teach, I will be asked: So what does one have to do to be a Christian? And I always say: “Jesus said, Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” And the response to that is usually, “Well, that sounds easy enough.”

The fact is, it isn’t that easy. It isn’t easy at all. Loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves isn’t easy at all. Loving a God who is not visible—who is not standing before us, in flesh and blood, is not easy.

And I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone here this morning: loving our neighbors—those people who share our world with us—as ourselves, is not easy by any means.

At no point does out “neighbor” mean just our Christian neighbor. Our neighbor is everyone we share this life with . And to love these people is hard. It is REALLY hard. It takes constant work to love. It takes constant discipline to love as Jesus loved. It takes constant work to love ourselves—and most of us don’t love ourselves—and it takes constant work to love others.

But look at the benefits. Look at what our world would be like if we loved God, if we loved ourselves and loved others as ourselves. It was be ideal. It would truly be the Kingdom of God, here on earth. It would be exactly what Jesus told us it would be like.

But to do this—to bring this about—to love God, to love ourselves, to love each other, is hard work. Some would say it’s impossible work. Certainly, it seems overwhelming. It seems too much for us to even consider in times when the world seems out of control, when hatred and violence seem to reign supreme.

It is difficult to be the conduit of the Light and Presence—the love and goodness—of Christ when others are shouting in hatred in the same name of Jesus. It seems impossible when we realize that what we are asked to do is love and serve even those other Christians who are acting so un-Christian.

This morning, in Rome, Pope John Paul II was beatified, the final step—and a big one—before he is canonized and made a saint. A lot of more progressively minded people condemned Bl. John Paul the Great in his life—and sometimes for good reason. But despite his views on some areas, he did say this in regard to Islam:

"For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and to offer each other forgiveness.”

On a visit to Syria, he even kissed the Koran.

I think this is what we are called to do as the Presence of Christ in this world. Not necessarily kiss the Koran,. but to respect the worth and dignity of all people and their religions and to recognize in them that they too are strivers after God, they too are strugglers in their relationship with God and that the God we are all striving after is the same God who, for us, remains cloaked and invisible.

Now, for Thomas, he saw. He touched. It was all clear to him. But we don’t get that chance.

“Blessed are those who believe but don’t see,” Jesus says this morning.

We are those blessed ones. All of us. Christians. Muslims. Jews. And people who don’t fit into any of those religions but who are still seeking and striving after God. We are the ones Jesus is speaking of in this morning’s Gospel. Blessed are you all. You believe, but don’t see.

Seen or unseen, we know God is there. And our faith is not based on seeing God here. Because we have faith that one day, yes, we will see God. Because Jesus was resurrected, we too will die and be resurrected. We too will live a life of unending perfect sight in God’s presence. We will, on that glorious day, run to God and see God face to face. And in that moment, our faith will be fulfilled.

Blessed are we who believe but don’t see now. The Kingdom of Heaven is truly ours.

Easter Day

2011-04-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

April 24, 2011

+ Last night a few of us from St. Stephen’s were up late. We were at the Cathedral last night for the long but very meaningful Easter Vigil service that began at 9:00 pm. It’s a beautiful service. It starts out in the dark, with us gathered around the courtyard. A bonfire is lit in that dark. From that bonfire, the Bishop lights the paschal candle which is processed, much the same way ours was processed in this morning, into the dark church. Then all the lights come up—or rather gradually came up—and then, finally there was loud and glorious and victorious noise and bells for the Gloria.

But… for all the Vigil’s beauty, there is nothing for me like this—Easter Sunday morning, here at St. Stephen’s. There is nothing like gathering together here on this glorious morning, in all of this Easter glory.

I also preached last night at the Easter Vigil service. And in my sermon, I shared how, during this past week of Holy Week I have been very diligent in my spiritual discipline of reading a spiritually productive book. I actually read two books. One was Nora Gallagher’s wonderful book on the Eucharist, The Sacred Meal.

The other book I read was Love Wins by Rob Bell. , Rob Bell is one of those so-called Emergent Church writers that I have been reading compulsively over the last couple of years. This book of his, which was just published, has already created a big controversy in the wider Christian community.

In fact, Pastor Chad Holz, a United Methodist Pastor, was fired last month from his church in Henderson, North Carolina simply because he posted a comment on Facebook supporting Bell’s somewhat amazingly effective views in which he questions popular Christian belief about eternal hell and damnation.

Of course, it’s not a surprise to any of you here that I’ve been preaching for years what Bell has written about. The book is not controversial to me at all, nor do I think it would be for most of us here. We Episcopalians just don’t have these kind of issues.

And I can tell you that for me, here at St. Stephen’s, this is definitely not an issue. The last thing in the world you would get rid of me for at St. Stephen’s is preaching that everyone’s invited to Jesus’ party. That’s about all I ever preach about, after all. Everyone—no matter who we are or what we are—is invited by Jesus, without judgment, without reproach. And I truly believe, with all my heart, that we will all be together in that one place.

In fact, as I shared last night at the Cathedral, I think I probably WOULD get ousted from here and petitions made to the Bishop if I preached about people not being allowed in. And if I do start doing that, please do form a committee to fire me. But only IF I start doing that!

One of the insights Bell makes in this latest book is one that I think really speaks to us this morning, celebrating this wonderful and incredible service in which we too are being reminded of how truly great and unlimited that love of God for us is. Bell shares this insight:

“Eternal life doesn’t start when we die,” Bell writes. “it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death.”

I love that.

Resurrection is a kind reality that we, as Christians, are called to live into. And it’s not just something we believe happens after we die. We are called to live into that Resurrection NOW. Jesus calls us to live into that joy and that beautiful life NOW. The alleluias we sing this morning are not for some beautiful moment after we have breathed our last. Those alleluias are for now, as well as for later. Those alleluias, those joyful sounds we make, this Light we celebrate, is a Light that shines now—in this moment.

We are alive in Christ now. We have already died with Christ when we were baptized. And in those waters, we were raised with him, just as he is raised today and always. Easter and our whole lives as Christians is all about this fact. Our lives should be joyful because of this fact—this reality—that Jesus died and is risen and by doing so has destroyed our deaths. This is what it means to be a Christian.

Easter is about this radical new life. It is about living in another dimension that, to our rational minds, makes no sense. Even, sometimes, with us, it doesn’t make sense. It almost seems too good to be true. And that’s all right to have that kind of doubt.

It doesn’t make sense that we celebrating an event that seems so wonderful that it couldn’t possibly be true. It doesn’t make sense that this event that seems so super-human can bring such joy in our lives.

Today we are commemorating the fact that Jesus, who was tortured, was murdered, was buried in a tomb and is now…alive. Fully and completely alive. Alive in a real body. Alive in a body that only a day before was lying, broken and dead, in a tomb.

And…as if that wasn’t enough, we are also celebrating the fact that we truly believe we too are experiencing this too. Experiencing this—in the present tense. Yes, we too will one day die. But, THAT doesn’t matter. What matters is that that death is already defeated. We are already living, by our very lives, by our baptisms and our faith in Jesus, into the eternal, unending, glorious life that Jesus lives in this moment. Our bodies MAY be broken. Our bodies WILL die. But we will live because Jesus lives.

What we are celebrating this morning is reality. What we are celebrating this morning is that this resurrected life which we are witnessing in Jesus is really the only reality. And death is really only an illusion. We aren’t deceiving ourselves. We’re not a naïve people who think everything is just peachy keen and wonderful.

We know what darkness is. We know what death is. We know what suffering and pain are. For those of us who have losses in our lives, we know the depths of pain and despair we can all go to in our lives.

There were moments in this last year when I though I would never be able to rise up out of the dark, sometimes seemingly overwhelming waters of my father’s sudden death in September. Despite the fact that I had full faith in his on-going life in the hope of the Resurrection we are celebrating this morning, there were moments when I felt as far away from this Easter joy as one can get. The joy and Light of this morning seemed, at times, vague and distant to me. And I was not certain at times if I would ever be able to experience the joy and Light as I had in the past.

I can say in all honesty that this Easter has taken on a deeper meaning than I could possibly ever hope for it take on this year. With the death of my father, I have never been more aware of how thin that veil is between the other world and this world is as I have this morning. I have never been more aware of how this glorious Light of Christ truly can cut through the darkness of despair and sadness and renew us and fill us once again with joy.

It is this Light of Christ, that has come to us, this glorious morning, much as the Sun breaks into the darkness. What Easter reminds us, again and again, is that darkness is not eternal. It will not ultimately win out. Light will always win. This Light will always succeed. This Light will be eternal.

I am honest when I say that part of me wishes I could always live in this Easter Light. I wish I could always feel this joy that I feel this morning. But the fact is, this Light will lose its luster faster than I even want to admit. This joy will fade too.

But I do believe that whatever heaven is—and none of us knows for certain what it will be like—I have no doubt that it is very similar this the joy we feel this morning. I believe with all that is in me that it is very much like the experience of this Light that we are celebrating this morning—an unending Easter. And if that is what Heaven is, then it is a joy that will not die, and it is a Light that will not fade and grow dim.

And if that’s all I know of heaven, then that is enough for me.

The fact is, Easter doesn’t end when the sun sets today Easter is what we carry within us as Christians ALL the time. Easter is living out the Resurrection by our very presence. We are, each of us, carrying within us the Light of Christ we celebrate this morning and always. All the time. It is here, in our very souls, in our very bodies, in our very selves.

With that Light burning within us, being reflected in what we do and say, in the love we show to God and to each other, what more can we say on this glorious, glorious morning? What more can we say when God’s glorious, all-loving, resurrected realty breaks through to us in glorious light and transforms us;

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Easter Vigil

2011-04-23T06:10:00.001-07:00

April 23, 2011

Gethsemane Cathedral

+ This evening my best friend from high school, Greg, is in town. Greg is an avowed and militant atheist. He’s a wonderful person. He’s moral. He’s upright. He’s one of the most compassionate people I know. But he does have a little problem with this whole concept of God. And this whole, weird, strange world of the Church just baffles the poor man.

When I told him tonight at supper with his wife and daughters that I couldn’t spend time with him tonight by going to a movie because I was preaching at a 9:00 pm Easter Vigil service, he gave me a look like I was crazy. And I think even some Christians think it’s crazy that we’re gathered here together on this evening, walking about in the dark, starting bonfires, carrying around a big candle and lighting little candles.

But, for me, this is what it’s all about. Tonight—and tomorrow—is what being a Christian is all about. Easter—this glorious, victorious feast—is THE day for us. The highpoint of our lives as Christians is not, as some people think, Christmas.

Christmas is nice. Christmas can be a beautiful holiday. But Christmas can’t hold a candle to Easter—no pun intended.

Now, I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of Christmas. Some people think I am an absolute heathen when I say that I don’t particularly like Christmas. I don’t know. I never have. But I think many Christians seem to equate Christmas as being the high point of the Christian year. As holy of a season as Christmas may be, it is not the high-point of our lives as Christians.

This evening is. Easter is. This is the point from which everything happens. Everything revolves around this single event in the life of Jesus. His birth in Bethlehem only points to this moment.

This is THE moment.

Because this is the moment when everything changed. This is the moment when death was trampled upon and life—eternal, unending life—won out for good.

During this week of Holy Week I have been very diligent in my spiritual discipline of reading a spiritually productive book. The book I read was a wonderful book by Rob Bell, a very popular Christian writer. The book is Love Wins. Rob Bell, like most of the so-called Emergent writers that I have been reading compulsively over the last couple of years, is not your typical Christian writer. When he published this book just this past month, he actually created a big controversy in the wider Christian community.

In fact, Pastor Chad Holz, a United Methodist Pastor, was fired last month from his church in Henderson, North Carolina simply because he posted a comment on Facebook supporting Bell’s somewhat amazingly effective views in which he questions popular Christian belief about eternal hell and damnation.

Of course, I’ve been preaching what Bell has written about for years. The book not controversial to me at all, nor do I think it would be for most of us here. We Episcopalians just don’t have these kind of issues. And I can tell you that for me, at St. Stephen’s, this is not an issue. The last thing in the world they would fire me for at St. Stephen’s is preaching that everyone’s invited to Jesus’ party in heaven. In fact, I probably WOULD get fired if I preached about people not being allowed in to Jesus’ kingdom.

Now it’s easy for people who have never read the book to bash it and to put it down. Christians have a great reputation for condemning things they have never read or seen. Or experiencing personally, for that matter. The fact is, even if one doesn’t agree with Bell’s views of heaven and hell, he does have some really great insights into God’s amazing and all-accepting love for us.

One of the insights Bell makes in this latest book is one that I think really speaks to us tonight, celebrating this wonderful and incredible service in which e too are being reminded of how truly great and unlimited that love of God for us is. Bell shares this insight:

“Eternal life doesn’t start when we die,” Bell writes. “it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death.”

I love that.

Most of us, as Christians, think that life simply involves waiting around for this big moment to happen. Usually we think this big moment is going to happen after we die, when all of a sudden everything will be made right. This life—with all terrible failures and disappointments—will be done away with and we will be made into new creations. The fact is, what we are celebrating tonight is something that has already happened and continues to happen right now. Right here in our lives.

Resurrection is something we often really don’t think about as Christians. Oftentimes we have rationalized it away, or made it into some kind of symbol. But the fact is, as Christians, we truly DO believe that Jesus was resurrected. He was raised in his body. We profess that belief every time we say the Creed together. And in a few moments we will again profess that belief when we gather around the baptismal font and renew our baptismal vows.

This is not light, fairy tale thinking we are dealing with here. This is a kind reality that we, as Christians, are called to live into. And it’s not just something we believe happens after we die.

We are called to live into that Resurrection NOW. Jesus calls us to live into that joy and that beautiful life NOW. The alleluias we sing tonight are not for some beautiful moment after we have breathed our last. Those alleluias are for now, as well as for later. Those alleluias, those joyful sounds we make, this Light we celebrate, is a Light that shines now—in this moment.

We are alive in Christ now. We have already died with Christ when we were baptized. And in those waters, we were raised with him, just as he is raised today and always.

Easter and our whole lives as Christians is all about this fact. Our lives should be joyful because of this fact—this reality—that Jesus died and is risen and by doing so has destroyed our deaths. This is what it means to be a Christian. Easter is about this radical new life. It is about living in another dimension that, to our rational minds, makes no sense.

Outsiders, watching us this evening here in this light-filled cathedral, will no doubt think we are a bit crazy. If my friend Greg were here tonight we would think we are absolutely nuts. Here we are at 9:00 on a Saturday night, beginning a church service in the dark. We are lighting bonfires in a courtyard while dressed in funny white clothes. Here we are following around a big candle. Here we are celebrating light in the midst of darkness. Here we are being sprinkled with water. And when we start talking about what it is all these things symbolize, it doesn’t make our argument any more plausible.

What do these things symbolize? They symbolize the fact that a person who was both God and human, was betrayed, was tortured, was murdered, was buried in a tomb and is now…alive. Fully and completely alive. Alive in a real body. Alive in a body that only a day before was lying, broken and dead, in a tomb. And…as if that wasn’t enough, we are also celebrating the fact that we truly believe we too are experiencing this too.

Experiencing this. In the present tense.

Yes, we too will one day die. But, THAT doesn’t matter. What matters is that that death is already defeated. We are already living, by our very lives, by our baptisms and our faith in Jesus, into the eternal, unending, glorious life that Jesus lives in this moment. Our bodies MAY be broken. Our bodies WILL die. But we will live for eternity because Jesus already did.

Yes, people must think we are insane when we tell them these things. But, for us, this is not insane. This is not some strange, over-the-top mass religious hysteria we are deceiving ourselves with. What we are celebrating tonight is reality. What we are celebrating tonight is the fact that this resurrected life which we are witnessing in Jesus is the only reality. And that death is only an illusion.

We aren’t deceiving ourselves. We’re not a naïve people who think everything is just peachy keen and wonderful. We know what darkness is. We know what death is. We know what suffering and pain are. We just traveled through 40 days of self-denial. We have just emerged from a week of betrayal and torture and death. And darkness. Our journey with Jesus took us to that place. Jesus knew those things first-hand. And so do all us.

But what we do tonight and through all of our lives as followers of Jesus is live into the reality that that darkness is not the end of our story. Death is not the end. The Light of Christ is the ultimate end. And the Light of Christ is the new beginning.

Rob Bell writes: “When you’ve experience the resurrected Jesus…you can’t help but talk about him. You’ve tapped into the joy that fills the entire universe, and so naturally you want others to meet this God. This is a God worth telling people about.”

This is truly a God worth telling people about. This is an event truly worth telling people about—even if they think it is insane. This is a reality worth living out in our day-to-day lives. Easter doesn’t end when the sun rises tomorrow. Or when the sun goes down tomorrow night. Or when the Season of Easter ends in June.

Easter is what we carry within us as Christians ALL the time. Easter is living out the Resurrection by our very presence.

Nobody wants dour, sad, angry, bitter Christians. Trust me. There’s too many of them out there. Besides, there is no such thing as dour, sad, angry, bitter Christian. Not a true Christian anyway. A Christian is, as St. Augustine once said, an Alleluia from head to toe.

We are, each of us, carrying within us the Light of Christ we celebrate tonight. All the time. It is here, in our very souls, in our very bodies, in our very selves. With that Light burning within us, being reflected in what we do and say, in the love we show to God and to each other, what more can we say on this glorious night? What more can we say when God’s glorious, all-loving, resurrected realty breaks through to us in glorious light and transforms us;

Alleluia! is what we say. Alleluia Alleluia! Alleulia!

Holy Saturday

2011-04-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

+ Over the years, you’ve heard me share my deep appreciation for the Eastern Orthodox Church. I will admit that I have learned a lot about being a Christian from the Orthodox Church. And, from my appreciation, I have been able to see things through a new lens on Christianity as a whole—and with it, a deeper understanding of some basic beliefs.

One of these, of course, is what I often talk about on Holy Saturday—the traditional belief of the Harrowing of Hell. In the Narthex, you will find the very traditional icon of the Harrowing of Hell. In it you will see Jesus rising from the tomb. He is pulling, with one hand, an old man, and with the other hand, an old woman, from their respective tombs. Beneath them, you see the dark abyss, filled with skulls and bones. Above them, you will see the glory of God in bright gold.

As you have heard me say before, the old man, of course, represents Adam, the old woman, Eve. But there is an even more interesting aspect to this. It seems that, in the Orthodox Church, they never really portray the empty tomb, like we find in our Western churches.

In our Western Churches, there is a lot of talk about the empty tomb. On this Holy Saturday, there is a lot of attention paid to the empty tomb. But in the Eastern Church, the perspective is a bit different. On this day, their perspective is with Jesus as he descends to hell.

The harrowing of hell refers to the events that happened between yesterday, on Good Friday, with his death, and tomorrow, with the Resurrection. The early Church believed that, on this day, Jesus descended into hell and, while, there, rescued all the souls of the people who died before then, starting, of course, with Adam and Eve. And it’s not enough that we simply encounter a sweet-faced Jesus descending into hell and pulling dead people from tombs. The belief, in the Orthodox Church, isn’t that he gently descend into hell and wandered about. Their belief is that he came storming into hell, and that he actually broke down the doors of hell and brought those souls to heaven.

Now, before we think this is all some quaint exotic Eastern tradition, there are some scriptural references that might help us. For example in 1 Peter 3.18-20a we find this:

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey…

And in 1 Peter 4.6

For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.

And in Ephesians 4.8-10

Therefore it is said,
'When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.’

(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.)

Peter really seemed to believe in this descent into hell. In his sermons in Acts chapter 2.27, 31, we find him actually referencing it.

And certainly there’s no getting around the Apostle's Creed in which we specifically profess our belief that :

He descended into hell.

For the Orthodox, this belief in the harrowing of hell is actually the most prevalent part of the Easter celebration. While we may see the empty tomb as the ultimate victory of Christ over death, for the Orthodox, they see Jesus’ emptying of hell to be an even greater victory. For me, I like the fact that the harrowing hell really does help us fill in the blank of this day of Holy Saturday.

The empty tomb is a wonderful point of reference for us today, but, personally, I need more. I need this story of Jesus—a Jesus who will come to me even in the very depths of hell and will rescue me. And we’ve all been there. We’ve all been in our own hells.

It’s wonderful to know that no matter how far we might seem to have gone from Christ, Christ will come to us wherever we are and take us to himself.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan William, in his book, The Indwelling of Light, makes some interesting comments about the icon of Jesus with Adam and Eve. He writes,

"As his hand grasps the hands of Adam and Eve, Jesus goes back to embrace the first imaginable moment of rebellion and false direction in human life...we are reminded that he goes fully into the depths of human agony. He reaches back to and beyond where human memory begins: 'Adam and Eve' stand for wherever it is in the human story that fear and refusal of God began--not a moment we can date in ordinary history, any more than we can date in the history of each one of us where we began to forget God. But we are always dealing with the after-effects of that moment, both as a human race and as particular persons. The icon declares that wherever that lost moment is or was, Christ has been there, to implant the possibility, never destroyed, of another turning, another future..."

I know some people might have an issue with such a belief, but I truly do believe, and I very unapologetically believe, that not even hell can separate us from Christ’s love.

As Nora Gallagher writes in her book, The Sacred Meal:

“Christ is everywhere….No Hell is powerful enough to keep out the resurrection life. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Christ is everywhere, his life is not parceled out in scarcity, only there on a throne in heaven or only here among the good churchgoing people, but abundantly present everywhere, freely given, everywhere where things long to be whole and loving and struggle to be free.”

Even in hell, I believe, Christ is able to come to us and that his love for us can defeat whatever hold hell might have on any of us.

So, on this Holy Saturday in which we are experiencing this empty moment, this blank and heavy dark moment before the glorious Light of Easter, let us take consolation in the fact that no matter how dark it might be, no matter how bleak or empty it might feel, even here, Christ is present and he will grasp us by the hand and lift us up from this dark moment into the glorious Light of his love.

Good Friday

2011-04-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

April 22, 2011

Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4.14-16; 5;7-9; John 18.1-19.42

+ And now we are here. We have reached the lowest point in this long, dark week. Everything seems to have led to this moment. To this moment—this moment of the cross, the nails, the thorns. To this of blood and pain and death. To this moment of violence and utter destruction.

Throughout Lent I preached about we, the broken people finding our identity in the broken Body of Christ. Well, here it is. Here is the broken Body of Christ. Here it is, broken by the whips. Here it is, broken under the weight of the Cross. Here it is, broken by the thugs and the soldiers and those who turned away from him and betrayed him. Here it is, broken upon the cross on which it is nailed.

And here is our identity. We remember it every time we gather at the altar to celebrate the Eucharist. We remember it every time, in the Eucharist, the priest raised the broken Bread and shows it to us.

In this dark moment, our own brokenness seems more profound, more real. We can feel this brokenness now in a way we never have before. Our brokenness is shown back to us like the reflection in a dark mirror as we look upon that broken Body on the cross.

But, as horrendous as this moment is, as horrendous as this next 24 hours might seem, with that broken Body taken down from the cross and laid, broken, in the tomb, the next 24 hours after that will be as different from this moment as we can imagine. What seems like a bleak, black moment will be replaced by the blinding Light of the Resurrection. What seems like a moment of unrelenting despair will soon be replaced by an unleashing of unrestrained joy.

This present despair will be turned completely around. This present darkness will be vanquished. This present pain will be replaced with a comfort that brings about peace. This present brokenness will be healed fully and completely, leaving not even a scar.

This is what today is about. This is what our journey in following Jesus brings to us.

All we need to do is go where the journey leads us and trust in the One who leads.

Maundy Thursday

2011-04-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

April 21, 2011

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Fargo

Exodus 12.1-14, 1 Corinthians 11.23-26; Psalm 22; John 13.1-17,31b-35

+ This Holy Week I have been surprisingly diligent in my spiritual practice. I have been very faithfully (and prayerfully) reading two books that have been especially meaningful and spiritually worthwhile. The first is Rob Bell’s very controversial book, Love Wins, a book that essentially shares some really wonderful and radical views of heaven and hell. In fact, a United Methodist pastor in Georgia was recently fired from his job for preaching about that book, though, to be honest, I didn’t find it very controversial at all.

The second book that I’ve been reading has been Nora Gallagher’s The Sacred Meal. This book is one of a series of books edited by Phyllis Tickle for the Thomas Nelson Publisher’s “Ancient Practices” series. This was the last book of the series that I had not read and I’m happy that I saved it for last. I actually am a big fan of Nora Gallagher, especially enjoying her book, Practicing Resurrection. Although I actually disagreed with her on some issues in The Sacred Meal, it’s a is a very wonderful and thought-provoking book.

In this book she deals quite honestly and, at times, quite beautifully, with the Holy Eucharist. For Gallagher, Holy Communion is THE radical and transformational event in our lives as Christians, right up there with Baptism. Gallagher, who is a Eucharistic Minister at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, sees the Holy Eucharist as a beautifully physical practice

“Communion,” she writes, “is all about the body. Every ancient practice is bodily, but this one is very, very much so. You have to move and open your mouth and hold out your hands. It is the one practice that is really about ingesting spirit, eating what call God but what may as well be called taking a bite out of infinity.”

This evening of Maundy Thursday, after all, is all about the physical. Tonight, we are experiencing physical signs of God’s presence. We are being anointed in absolution for our sins. We are coming forward to be fed with Body and Blood of Christ. In fact, these next few days are also about that merging between the physical and spiritual—about, truly, Incarnation.

This physical Body of Jesus will tomorrow be tortured and then will be nailed to the Cross. It will die and be laid in a dark tomb. On Saturday, it will be there, laid out, broken and destroyed. But on Sunday, that physical Body will rise out of that darkness. It will rise out of that destroyed state. It will come forth from that broken disgrace and will be fully and completely alive and present.

But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For now, we are here, in this moment. We are here on Maundy Thursday, experiencing the physical and spiritual life that we have been given. We are preparing ourselves to remember that Last Supper, as we do every Sunday. I think we often take for granted what we do at this altar each Sunday and every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. I know I do occasionally.

But what we celebrate together here is not something we should take for granted. What we celebrate here is truly an incredible and beautiful thing. It is more than just some memorial Jesus left us. It is more than just nice, quaint practice of the Church. It is an unveiling.

For a moment, the veil is lifted between this world and the next. For a moment, as we celebrate this very tangible gift of Jesus in our lives, we get to glimpse the other side of the veil. We get to see the larger worship that is going on throughout time and eternity. We gather here not only with each, but with all the Church—with those of us here, present in our bodies, and those who have gone before. In this one moment, as our liturgy reminds us, we are gathered with all the saints, and with all the angels and archangels, who now sing before God in this moment.

But it’s more than just a mystical experience as well. It also lifts the veil that exists right now, right here between each of us. And we do live in a veiled world. We live in a world in which we ignore each other, in which we really and truly don’t SEE each other. Here, at the Eucharist, that veil too is lifted.

As Gallagher writes:

“Communion is…a community activity. It’s unlike every other Christian practice in that sense. Communion is meant to be done together; it has to be done in community. You can pray alone and fast alone. You can even go on pilgrimage alone. But you can’t take Communion alone. More than any other practice, taking Communion forces us to be with others, to stand with them in a circle or kneel at the altar rail…We are forced to be with strangers and people we don’t like, persons of different colors and those with bad breath or breathing cheap alcohol…It forced ‘them’ to be with ‘us’ and us to be with them. Communion is, more than any other act, a humbling experience. We are struck with each other, at that altar, for at least a few moments.”

Tonight, we are all experiencing humbling experiences. Tonight, we, the followers of Jesus, are witnessing Jesus truly humble himself. He humbles himself in the washing of feet. And he humbles himself in his giving himself to us in the basic element of bread and wine. And he invites us, as well to enter into this humbling experience—this experience in which we need to encounter each other in this most basic of acts. He essentially invites us to enter into what Gallagher calls “the kingdom of the living bread.”

What we experience here with each other at this altar in Holy Communion is truly a bridge of sorts. We find that the divine is present to us in some thing we can touch and taste and in those gathered with us here. And more than just some spiritual practice we do, we do this not just with our spirits, but with our very bodies as well.

We do it with our very physical presence. And, in doing so, we realize that we are catching a glimpse of the resurrected state that we will so glorious celebrate in just a few days time on Sunday morning. What comes to us at this altar, is truly the manna come down from heaven. It is a reminder to us of the sacrifice of that Lamb of God, which we found prefigured in our reading from Exodus.

During this past season of Lent, on Wednesday nights at St. Stephen’s, either Pastor Mark or myself would raise the broken bread and say, “This is the Lamb of God. This is the one who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are we are invited to this supper.” This not just quaint language we use in the church. This not just poetic symbolism. This is the foundation of our belief.

What we celebrate at this altar is not just some archaic sacrament, left over from some forgotten chapter of history Maybe it is the outside world. If someone who has no idea what Communion was saw us tonight they would definitely be confused. Certainly the bit of bread we receive and the little taste of wine is not enough to sustain us. It is not going to quench our physical thirst or sure our growling stomachs. By outward standards what we do at this altar is frivolous.

As Gallagher writes: “Taking Communion…is a creative acts, and it makes no more ‘sense than writing a poem, or for that matter, reading one. It isn’t going to get you anywhere in the world; it’s not networking; it has no practical worth.”

And she is right. As Simone Weil once said, every creative act is a “folly of love.” Still, for us, who celebrate this mystery together, we do leave here filled. We do leave here spiritually fed. We do come away with a sense that Jesus is present and that he goes with us—each of us—all of us—from this altar and from this church, into the world.

So, let us come forward to this altar tonight, with each other. Let us come forward to this kingdom of the living bread. Let us also come forward on this night in which Jesus instituted this incredible sacrament in which he remains with us, on this night in which he humbled himself and invites us, as well, to humble ourselves. Let us humble ourselves and be fed. And let us go from here, humbled and fed, to feed others and to be the Presence of Christ to others.

Orchid

2011-04-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

by Jamie Parsley

(after the poem “The Rose” by Gabriela Mistral)

There is a treasure
deep within the bright pink heart of the orchid.
It is your heart
slowly unfolding
the way petals unfold.
What your heart gives out
lies scattered about.

It scatters,
the way songs scatter words
or as desire is scattered
when love like this happens.
And when we resist the orchid
and all it holds within it
that’s when we burn
in the fire that comes up
from deep within it.

Palm Sunday

2011-04-17T05:07:00.000-07:00

Palm Sunday

April 17, 2011

+ I was talking this past week with a friend about how this Holy Week is truly an emotional roller coaster. And today, we get the whole rollercoaster in our liturgy and in our two Gospel readings. Here we find a microcosm of the roller coaster ride of what is to come this week. What begins this morning as joyful ends with jeers.

The Jesus who enters Jerusalem is the Jesus who has done some incredible things in the past few weeks, at least in the very long Gospel readings we’ve been hearing. Three weeks ago, he turned the Samaritan woman’s life around. Two weeks ago, he gave sight to a man born blind. Last week, he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.

This day evens begin with us, his followers, singing our praises to Jesus, waving palm branches in victory. He is, at the beginning of this week, popular and accepted. For this moment, everyone seems to love him.

But then…within moments, a darkness falls. Something terrible and horrible goes wrong. What begin with rays of sunshine, ends in gathering dark storm clouds. Those joyful, exuberant shouts turn into cries of anger and accusation. Those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem have fled. They have simply disappeared from sight. And in their place an angry crowd shouts and demands the death of Jesus.

Even his followers, those who almost arrogantly proclaimed themselves followers of Jesus, have disappeared. Their arrogance has turned to embarrassment and shame. Even the Samaritan woman, whose life he turned around, the man born blind, and his friend Lazarus have disappeared and are nowhere in sight. Jesus, whom we encounter at the beginning of this liturgy this morning surrounded by crowds of cheering, joyful people, is by the end of it, alone, abandoned, deserted—shunned. Everyone he considered a friend—everyone he would have trusted—has left him. And in his aloneness, he knows how they feel about him. He knows that he is an embarrassment to them. He knows that, in their eyes, he is a failure.

Throughout this coming Holy Week, the emotional roller coaster ride will get more intense. On Maundy Thursday the celebratory meal of Passover will turn into a dark and lonely night of betrayal. Jesus will descend to his lowest point after he washes the feet of his disciples. Friday will be a day of more betrayal, of torture and of an agonizing violent death in the burning hot sun. Saturday will be a day of keeping watch at the grave that would, under normal circumstances, be quickly forgotten. Through our liturgies, we are able to walk with Jesus on this painful journey and to experience the emotional ups and downs of all that will happen.

And next Sunday, the roller coaster will again be at its most intense, its greatest moment. Next Sunday at this time, we will be rejoicing. Next Sunday, we will be rejoicing with all the choirs of angels and archangels who sing their unending hymns of praise to him. We will be rejoicing in the fact that all the humiliation experienced this week has turned to joy, all desertion has turned to rewarding and wonderful friendship, all sadness to gladness, and death—horrible, ugly death—will be turned to full, complete and unending joy.

So, as we journey through the dark half of our liturgy today, as we trek alongside Jesus during this Holy Week of betrayal, torture and death, let us keep our eyes focused on the Light that is about to dawn in the darkness of our lives. Let us move forward toward that Light. Even though there might be sadness on our faces now, let the joy in our hearts prompt us forward along the path we dread to take. And, next week at this time, when we gather here again, we will do basking in the Christ’s incredible Light—a Light that triumphs over the darkness of not only his death, but ours as well.

A celebration of the life of Shirley A. Carbno

2011-04-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

Shirley A. Carbno

(September 20, 1934- April 11, 2011)

Salvation Army Chapel
Fargo
Saturday, April 16, 2011

Jeremiah 29.11-14; Psalm 71:5-9, 14-24; Hebrews 6:9-12; Luke 12.4-7

+ On December 25, 1990, my aunt Shirley gave me a Bible. In it, she wrote,

“To my dear nephew Jamie

I pray that you have a happy and prosperous New Year!

Remember JESUS loves you and so do I

Aunt Shirley”

In so many ways, that captured who Shirley was in her faith and in her personality. She was a person who always put Jesus first. But it wasn’t enough that she put Jesus first. By putting Jesus first in her life, she also wanted Jesus to use her. She truly wanted and longed to be a vessel for God to use.

In a few moments, we will sing her favorite song—the song that summed up her life, “Lord, make me a vessel”. In that song, we will sing,

Use me, Lord, to do your will,
I want to be used in your perfect plan.
I want you to use my tounge
To spread your word to everyone I can.
Use my mind so I can think right,
Please use my heart so I can love everybody;
Lord, please make me a vessel,
I want to be a vessel for you.

Being a vessel, as she would quickly tell us, is not easy. It involves something this songs tells us that must have been very difficult for Shirley.

In the song we also hear

I surrender my life totally to thee,
So mold me and make me whatever you’d have me to be.

Being a vessel means surrendering. It involves absolute and completely surrender. And surrendering, sometimes, for Shirley was difficult. It’s difficult for any of us. But as she learned more, as she experienced God’s love and grace in her life, she realized something about being a vessel for the Lord: She realized that a vessel doesn’t have to be perfect. God no where expects us to be perfect vessels. Sometimes a vessel is cracked. Sometimes it is imperfect. Sometimes it is dirty and misshapened. But no matter how imperfect the vessel may be, God can still use it.

And I think, when Shirley fully realized that in her life, she was truly able to be the vessel God wanted her to be. She found a certain freedom in that. And that is a real message from her today. She is still teaching us. She is still with us showing us the way forward.

Her daughter-in-law Pam told me a great story the other day—one that perfectly sums up who Shirley was. Even as far advanced as her Alzheimer’s was in these last few years, there was a moment when Pam’s dog was there with Shirley. The dog, sensing that Shirley wasn’t well, snuggled up to her and looked at her closely and with very sad eyes.

At one point Shirley asked Pam,” Does that dog know that I’m not feeling well?”

“I think so,” said Pam.

Shirley, without a moment’s notice, even in that fog of Alzheimer’s, immediately laid hands on the dog and began praying for it. And in that prayer she prayed that God would use that dog as a vessel.

No matter how much that disease took away from Shirley, there were some things it could not take away. And one of those things that it did not take away was her strong spirit of prayer and her incredible faith.

In January, when we were not sure Shirley was going to be with us much longer, I went into the Emergency Room. I told Shirley that I was going to pray with her. Immediately she went into prayer mode. And, as I laid hands on her and anointed her and we prayed, I saw her lips moving and—I swear—she was speaking in tongues.

Even this past Sunday, when we all gathered together in her room in the nursing home in Enderlin to bless the marriage of 57 years she had with John, we prayed prayers at the time of death and, again, I anointed her. Even in her unconscious state, she seemed to physically reacted to the prayers that were being said for her and to the anointing.

This was truly the kind of person Shirley was. She was a Christian through and through. She was a true vessel of God’s love and light.

And she led a truly scripture-saturated life. Her daughter Cathy was telling me that there were scriptures everywhere in her house. Cathy opened up a cupboard, there were scriptures. Even opening up the medicine cabinet, there were scriptures taped to the door. In her Bible, as I went through it this week, I found a small card. On one said, it “Prophecy for Shirley” by someone named Sharon. On the other said, under the date January 2, 2003, was the scripture we just heard from Hebrews chapter 6, verse 10. I’ll repeat it:

“God is not unjust; He will not forget your work and the love you have shown Him and you have helped His people and continue to help them.”

When I read it, I sort of gasped, because that prophecy for Shirley has truly come to pass. God has not forgotten the work Shirley did, nor has God forgotten the love Shirley showed to God and to others. Truly, in Shirley’s life, she helped people and continued to help them. And, I would say, she continues, even now, to help. Whether, the help was to her parents, to her siblings, to her husband, to her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, or her foster children, or to her nieces and nephews or to the many, many friends she had over the years, Shirley was a source of love and acceptance.

It really is incredible. Today, we are truly celebrating the life of this incredible, wonderful woman. We are celebrating the life she lived and the life is now living with her God. Now, I can just imagine if she were here with us this afternoon (and she IS with us today—I have no doubt) she would have a problem with me going on too much like this about her. She was not comfortable with praise. Shirley was one of the first to admit that her life was not perfect and that she herself was not perfect. She, like all of us, failed at times.

As I was going through her Bible the other day, picking out scriptures for this service, I found several notes she wrote in the margins. These notes were for scriptures that were essentially speaking to her as she sought to forgive herself for the failings she perceived in her life. She knew fully that she was a fractured and often broken vessel of God.

But what we can celebrate today is that she is now whole. She is now complete. She is in that place she longed for and hoped in all her life. She is in a place of unending light, where she tastes “the blessedness of perfect rest,” where angels now surround her. She is in that place where her heart and soul now ring out in joy to the Lord, the living God and the God of those who live. She is in that place in which she now gazes upon her Savior face to face. And, because she is there, we have much to celebrate today.

But…we can’t end our celebration of her life without a life lesson from Shirley. She wouldn’t want us to go away from here without taking something meaningful with us. And, if she were here with us today—and, as I said, she IS here with us today—she would want everyone here to remember this.

You too are vessels. You too are called to be vessels of God in your life. And, like her, you don’t have to be perfect to be a vessel. You don’t have to be pristine and without flaw. You don’t have to have perfect faith, without any doubts. Even with whatever brokenness you have within you, even with whatever flaws and shortcomings you might have, you can be a full and completely useful vessel of God in your life. Even broken, even incomplete, even misshapened, God loves us fully and completely.

And so did Shirley.

There is a line in that song that we will sing in a few moments that must’ve really spoken to Shirley, because she really did live it out fully and completely in her life. The line in the song is:

Please use my heart so I can love everybody;

God really did use Shirley’s heart. I don’t think there was a person that Shirley didn’t love in at least some way. Even when we were not good, even when we failed, even when we messed up, Shirley, we all knew, still loved us, still cared for us, still welcomed us with open arms and with all the love she could muster in herself. And, let me tell you, that was a LOT of love. That heart of hers was overflowing all the time. I sometimes was amazed at how big that heart of hers was. And I truly believe it was that overflowing heart and all that love that she had that kept her going these past few months. She was full of love, even at the end. Even in the midst of that awful illness, she was overflowing with love.

Last Sunday, when we all gathered in her room with her, the love was so strong, was so real, you could’ve cut it with a knife. And now, that love, fully freed , fully surrendered, is what sustains us today and in the days to come. Because now there is no hindrance in her love for us. Where she is now, is a place of unending, perfect love.

Be a vessel of God’s love, she is saying to each of us today. Love each other. Love God. Be a vessel of love.

And that, Shirley would say to us today, is what God wants of you. In being a vessel, we are closest to Shirley. In being a vessel for God, we will feel Shirley closer to us than we have ever felt her before. When we surrender ourselves and let ourselves be what God wants us to be, we will hear her voice in our ears, encouraging us. If we listen closely, we can almost hear her saying it to us:

“JESUS loves you,” she is saying to us today and from now on, “and so do I.”

Shirley A. Carbno

2011-04-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Shirley A Carbno, 76, Fargo, passed away Monday, April 11, 2011 at Maryhill Manor, Enderlin, ND surrounded by her family.

Shirley Ann Olson was born September 20, 1934 in Fargo, ND to Theodore and Phoebe (Toftehagen) Olson. She graduated from Fargo Central High. She was united in marriage to John Carbno on April 10, 1954. They were lifelong residents of Fargo. Shirley worked various jobs through the years, her last job being a demo lady at Sam’s Club.

She attended worship at the Salvation Army. She was a member of the Red Hat Ladies. She was very involved with Aglow and Bible studies. Shirley and John were very special people, they opened their home and hearts to 57 foster children awaiting adoption.

She is survived by her husband, John H., Fargo; sons, Steven, Fargo, Michael (Pam), Enderlin; daughter, Cathy Jo (Kevin) Carbno, Fargo; sister, Joyce Parsley, West Fargo; 8 grandchildren; 9 great-grandchildren; several nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her parents and brother, Marvin.

CELEBRATION OF LIFE: 1:00 Saturday, April 16, 2011 at the Salvation Army Chapel, 304 Roberts Street, Fargo

BURIAL OF ASHES: Sunset Memorial Gardens, Fargo at a later date

Arrangements entrusted to Boulger Funeral Home. Online guestbook at www.boulgerfuneralhome.com.

Prayers for the soul of my aunt, Shirley Carbno

2011-04-11T13:43:00.001-07:00

Your prayers are requested for the soul of my aunt, Shirley Carbno, who died this afternoon (April 11, 2011) at the MaryHill Manor in Enderlin, ND.

She and my uncle, John, celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary yesterday in Enderlin. The whole family was there to celebrate and say goodbye. I had the special honor and priviledge of being able to pronounce a blessing on their marriage at that time and was also able to anoint her.

Your prayers are also requested for her husband John, their children, Steve, Cathy and Michael and their families; and her sister (my mother), Joyce.

The Burial Office will be later this week.

Rest eternal grant to her, O Lord;
and let light perpetual shine upon her.

5 Lent

2011-04-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2011

Ezekiel 37.1-14; John 11.1-45

+ This past week I went out to look at the flooding waters south of Fargo. I guess the flooding waters up here on the north side and out around my mother’s house weren’t enough for me. While doing so, I stopped at a beautiful church in a little town just south of Fargo called St. Benedict’s. St. Benedict’s is one of those beautiful, somewhat traditional, French churches. As I looked about the church, something off to the side caught my eye and I found myself doing a very dramatic double-take. There, on one wall, near a side altar, was a small glass-covered niche. Inside the niche was a human skull. A REAL human skull. It was the skull of one of the former priests of the parish, who died in December 1891. And there he is.

Now, I was inspired. I have revised my Will and I too would like my skull put in a glass niche right here in the wall at St. Stephen’s so you can always remember me and have me around.

Just kidding.

Still, it was a sobering experience, seeing that skull in that church. But that’s what we should have sometimes in church—sobering experiences. Experiences that make us stop and take notice. Certainly, our two readings today are sobering experiences that jar us and make us sit up and take notice.

The first, of course, is Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones. The second is the raising of Lazarus. Both are filled with images of the dead being raised. The story that probably speaks most deeply to us is the story of Lazarus. And this story takes on much deeper meaning when we examine it closely and place it within the context of its time. One of our first clues that the something is different in this story is that, when Jesus arrives at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, he is told that Lazarus has been dead four days.

This clue of “four days” is important. First of all, from simply a practical point, we can all imagine what condition Lazarus’s body would be in after four days. This body would not have been embalmed like we understand embalming today in the United States. There was no refrigeration, no sealed metal caskets, no reconstructive cosmetics for the body of Lazarus. In the heat of that country, his body would, by the fourth day, be well into the beginning stages of decomposition. There would be some major physical destruction occurring.

Second, according to Jewish understanding, when the soul left the body, a connection would still be maintained with that body for a period of three days.

Bar Kappara, a rabbi of the late second and early third century, wrote: "Until three days the soul keeps on returning to the grave, thinking that it will go back; but when it sees that the facial features have become disfigured [by decomposition], it departs and abandons it.”

In a Jewish document on mourning called the Semahot we find the following: “One may go out to the cemetery for three days to inspect the dead for a sign of life, without fear that this smacks of heathen practice. For it happened that a man was inspected after three days, and he went on to live twenty-five years; still another went on to have five children and died later.”

So, what we find here is that, according to Jewish thinking of this time, the belief was the soul might be reunited with the body up to three days, but after that, because the body would not be recognizable because of decomposition, any reuniting would be impossible. After those three days, the final separation from the body by the soul would have been complete. The soul would truly be gone. The body would truly be dead.

So, when Jesus came upon the tomb of Lazarus and tells them to roll the stone away, Martha says to him that there will be stench. He was truly dead—dead physically and dead from the perspective of his soul being truly separated from his body. So, when the tomb was opened for Jesus, he would be encountering what most of us would think was impossible. Jesus not only reunited Lazarus’ spirit with his body, he also healed the physical destruction done to Lazarus’s body by decomposition. It would have been truly amazing. And Jesus would truly have been proven to be more than just a magician, playing tricks on the people. He wasn’t simply awakening someone who appeared to be dead, someone who might have actually been in a deep coma. There was no doubt that Lazarus was truly dead and now, he was, once again alive.

Now, at first glance, both our Old Testament and Gospel readings seem, like that skull in St. Benedict’s Church, a bit morbid. These are things we don’t want to think about. But the fact is, we are rapidly heading toward Holy Week. Next week at this time, we will be celebrating the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. We will be hearing the joyful cries of the crowd as he rides forth. Within 11 days from now, we will hear those cries of joy turn into cries of jeering and accusation. And, within no time, we will be hearing cries of despair and mourning. We, as Christians who follow Jesus, will be hearing about betrayal, torture, murder and death as Jesus journeys away from us into the cold dark shadow of death. These images of death we encounter in today’s reading simply help nudge us in the direction of the events toward that which we are racing.

During Holy Week, we too will be faced with images we might find disturbing. Jesus will be betrayed and abandoned by his friends and loved ones. He will be tortured, mocked and whipped. He will be forced to carry the very instrument of his death to the place of his execution. And there he will be murdered in a very gruesome way. Following that death, he will be buried in a tomb, much the same way his friend Lazarus was. But unlike Lazarus, what happens to Jesus will take place within the three days belief at that time required for a soul to make a final break from his body.

And this brings us back to the story of Lazarus. We often make the mistake, when thinking about the story of Lazarus, to say that Lazarus was resurrected. The fact is, he was not resurrected.

In seminary, I had a professor who made very clear to us that Lazarus was not resurrected. The term he used to describe what happened to Lazarus was “resuscitation.” Lazarus was resuscitated. His soul was reunited with his healed body. But the fact was that Lazarus would eventually die again.

It is believed that, following the death of Jesus, Lazarus went to Cyprus, where he became a Bishop. In fact, one can visit two tombs of Lazarus. One can visit the empty tomb of Lazarus at Bethany, in modern Israel. And one can also visit his actual tomb in Cyprus in the Greek Orthodox Church of Agios Lazaros. There, under the altar, is the tomb which is inscribed, simply,

LAZARUS
FRIEND OF CHRIST

The tomb was actually opened in 1972 and human remains from the time of Christ were found buried there.

So, Lazarus truly did rise from the tomb in Bethany, but he was not resurrected there. He went on to live a life somewhat similar to the life he lived before. And eventually, he died again.

But Resurrection is, as we no doubt know, different. Resurrection is rising from death into a life that does not end. Resurrection is rising from all the things we encounter in our readings for today—dry bones, tombs, decomposition and death. Resurrection is rising from our own broken selves into a wholeness that will never be taken away from us. Resurrection is new bodies, a new understanding of everything, a new and unending life. Resurrection, when it happens, cannot be undone. It cannot be taken away. Resurrection destroys the hold of death.

And the first person to be resurrected was not Lazarus. The first person to be resurrected was, of course, Jesus. His resurrection is important not simply because he was the first. His resurrection is important because it, in a real sense, destroys death once and for all.

Yes, we will die. Yes, we will go down into the grave, into that place of bones and ashes. But, the resurrection of Jesus casts new light on the deaths we must die. The resurrection of Jesus shows us that we will rise from the destruction of our bodies—and our lives—into a life like the life of the resurrected Jesus. We will be raised into a life that never ends, a life in which “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life eternal,” as we celebrate in the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer.

Because Jesus died and then trampled death, he took away eternal death. Our bodies may die, but we will rise again with him into a new and awesome life.

So, as we move through these last days of Lent toward that long, painful week of Holy Week, we go forward knowing full well what await us on the other side of the Cross of Good Friday. We go forward knowing that the glorious dawn of Easter awaits us. And with it, the glory of resurrection and life everlasting awaits us as well.

So, let go forward. Let us move toward Holy Week, rejoicing with the crowd. And as the days darken and we grow weary with Jesus, let us keep focused on the Easter light that is just about to dawn on all of us.

4 Lent

2011-04-03T06:46:00.001-07:00

Lataere Sunday
April 3, 2011

Ephesians 5.8-14; John 9.1-14

+ I received my first pair of glasses when I was in the Third Grade. I hated them! I hated wearing glasses. They were awful! And during the 26 years I wore glasses, I became dependent upon each successive pair. In High School, I tried contacts and wore them, with much discomfort, for many years. Through it all, I learned to live with that sense of pseudo-blindness that existed always in my life as a nearsighted person. There was always the fear of what might happen on vacation if my glasses broke, or I lost a contact.

I’m not alone, of course. Many of us here wear glasses or contacts and we know what life would be like without them. We realized how dependent we are upon them.

I never fully appreciated it until I had LASIK surgery. It was amazing, as I was going through the surgery, when all of a sudden, sight—clear, crisp sight—came first to one eye and then the other. It was truly a miracle in my life. Before I heard of LASIK I never imagined there would be a time when I would be able to see without glasses or contacts. Although I was never completely blind, being nearsighted was difficult and life would have been impossible without my glasses or contacts.

I remember, in the days following surgery, when I could see—when I could actually go about without glasses and see—thinking to myself about our Gospel reading for this morning. It truly felt like a miracle.

In sense today—Lataere Sunday, which if the half-way mark of Lent—is a time for us to examine this whole sense of blindness. Not just physical blindness, but spiritual blindness, as well.

My theme for Lent this year, as you have all heard me say by now, has been brokenness, or more specifically, our brokenness in relation to the broken Body of Jesus in the Eucharist. In a sense, our brokenness and our blindness are similar. In our brokenness we become like blind people—or, at least, like nearsighted people. We grope about. We find ourselves dependent upon those things that we think give us come sense of clarity. But ultimately, nothing really seems to heal our nearsightedness. In fact our sight seems to get worse and worse as we age.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find a man blind from birth. The miracle Jesus performs for him is truly a BIG miracle. Can you imagine what it must’ve been like for this man? Here he is, born without sight, suddenly seeing. It must have been quite a shock. It would, no doubt, involve a complete reeducation of one’s whole self. By the time he reached the age he was—he was maybe in his twenties or thirties—he no doubt had an idea in his mind of what things may have looked like. And, with the return of his vision, he was, I’m certain, amazed at what things actually looked like. Even things we might take for granted, such as the faces of our mother and father or spouse, would have been new for this man.

So, the miracle Jesus performs is truly a far-ranging miracle. There’s also an interesting analytical post-script to our Gospel reading. The people we have encountered in our Gospel readings these past two weeks are nameless people. Last week, Jesus spoke to the nameless Samaritan woman at the well. The Eastern Orthodox Church has actually given her a name. In the Eastern Church, she commemorated as St. Photini (and no, I am not talking about a drink Episcopalians order at the country club).

This week, the blind man is also never mentioned by name. Just like St. Photini, he is never mentioned again in the Gospels and we have no idea what happened to him after his encounter with Jesus. But it is interesting to ask: What did happen to him after all these events? Obviously he went away a believer. But what then?

Well, the Orthodox Church yet again came up with an answer to that question. In the Eastern Church the Blind Man has a name and I commemorated as St. Celidonius the Blind Man. St. Celidonius, it is believed, did in fact go on to become a loyal disciple of Jesus. In fact, following Jesus’ death, it is believed he went away from Palestine with St. Lazarus—the same one whom Jesus raised from the dead—and another disciple, Maximin. The tradition states that they went first to the island of Cyprus and, later, without Lazarus, off to Gaul, which is now modern France, and there was possibly martyred for the faith.

Another interesting spin on this story also comes from the Eastern Church. St Basil the Great and other early Church Fathers believe that St. Celidonius was not only born blind, he was actually born without eyes. This, they say, is why Jesus takes clay and places them upon the empty sockets, essentially forming eyes for Celidonius. When Celidonius washes them in the waters of Siloam, the eyes of clay became real eyes with perfect sight. They also believe that, with these eyes, also came great spiritual sight, which helped him to be courageous in the face of persecution and hostile questioning both followign the miracvle and later before his martyrdom for Christ. The Eastern Church has a wonderful hymn, in which St. Celidonius sings to Jesus:

I come to You, O Christ,
Blind from birth in my spiritual eyes
And I call to You in repentance:
You are the most radiant light of those in darkness!

This hymn really, in a sense, is our hymn as well as we hear this Gospel reading this morning We all, in our brokenness, suffer from spiritual blindness at times. We suffer from a blindness that allows us to ignore God, to ignore each other and sometimes even to ignore ourselves.

Our spiritual blindness often causes us to ignore those in need around us and this blindness causes distance and isolation in our lives, making our brokenness even deeper and more pronounced. For some of us, our spiritual blindness is merely a spiritual near- or far-sightedness.

But today, on Lataere Sunday, as we head into the latter part of Lent, we find ourselves being relieved for a bit of the heavy sense of brokenness we have been dealing with throughout Lent so far. We see a bit of clarity in our vision.

Lataere Sunday, also know as Rose Sunday or Mothering Sunday or Refreshment Sunday—is a break in our Lenten grayness. Lataere means to be joyful. Today, even in Lent, we can be joyful. It is a time for us to realize that our brokenness is not an eternal brokenness. We realize today that no matter how broken or fractured we might seem, we can be made whole once again. No matter how blind or nearsighted we might be spiritually, our spiritual sight can be returned to us once again. And in doing so, we find ourselves almost chuckling over our brokenness, over our blindness. We, in a sense, find ourselves on this Lataere Sunday—this joyful Sunday in Lent—laughing at our brokenness.

There is a wonderful tradition for this Lataere Sunday. On this Sunday in Lent, there are wonderful cakes that are traditionally made and served. These are Simnel Cakes. I actually MADE a simnel cake for us this morning. It is downstairs, waiting for us at coffee hour. And I even followed the wonderful traditions that go along with making a simnel cakes for Lataere Sunday.

One tradition is for eleven marzipan balls to be placed on the top of the cake, representing the eleven true disciples. I didn’t use marzipan balls this morning. I used robin eggs. But you get the idea.

Also, there’s a wonderful Portuguese tradition regarding simnel cakes on Lataere Sunday. The Rev'd Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton shared this tradition on a listerv this past week and it really captured my imagination. In this particular tradition, simnel cakes are called "Bolos do riso" or "Laughter Cakes". I actually used this tradition this year in making simnel cakes including the secret ingredient to bolos do riso.

Dr. Kaeton writes: “…here's the special ingredient - the secret of ‘Laughter Cakes’. After every ingredient had been added and stirred, and before [my grandmother] poured the batter into the muffin tins or cake pans, she would gather us round the Very Large Mixing Bowl. And then, she would tell us not to worry. That Lent was a very sad time, but that soon, it would be Easter. Jesus would play a wonderful trick on Satan, and death would not kill him. And, because death could no longer kill Jesus, death could no longer kill us. Because of Jesus, we would know eternal life in heaven where we would all someday be, once again. She would tell us this and then say, ‘So, laugh, children. Laugh into the bowl. Laugh into the cake. Laugh at the Devil. He can't win. He can't ever win! Only Jesus can win. Only Jesus! Laugh! Laugh! Laugh!’ And, we would. Laugh. Loud. Right into the bowl. I swear people ten blocks away could hear us laugh. It was the best part of making - and eating - that cake.”

Yes, I did use the secret ingredient this morning in making simnel cakes for us. I, like Dr. Kaeton’s grandmother, laughed as I mixed the cake. But what I love best about the story she shares is that Lent is a time for us to sit up, shrug off the seriousness of the season, and laugh. And not just laugh for the sake for laughing. But actually laugh at the devil. Laugh at all that has caused us to be the broken people we are. Laugh at the ridiculousness of our own selfish, self-centered, egotistical lives. Laugh at what has separated us from us each other, from God and from ourselves. Laugh at our nearsightedness, and laugh at our broken, fractured selves.

I really don’t thinks there’s anything during Lent than to laugh. It really does have a special sound to it—this Lenten laughter. It echoes just a bit more profoundly. And with it this Lenten laughter, we find ourselves experiencing a bit of the joy that we will all be experiencing in a few weeks at Easter arts.

Lataere Sunday is a great to remind ourselves that, even in our brokenness, we will not be broken forever. We will be made whole. ike St. Celidonius, we too will be made whole. We too will see with clarity and vision. And like him, we too will see the darkness lifted from our lives and the dazzling light of Christ breaking through.

So, today, on this Lataere Sunday—on this joyful Sunday in Lent—let’s laugh at the devil. Let’s laugh at everything that chips away at us and break us down and cases us to be spiritually blind. And let us, today, do as Dr. Kaeton’s grandmother told those grandchildren.

“Laugh at the Devil,” she is telling us. “ He can't win. He can't ever win! Only Jesus can win. Only Jesus!”