7 Pentecost

July 27, 2014

Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52

+ Occasionally, we need to step outside our usual Sunday morning routines. Occasionally, we need to step back and take a good look around. I do this for you on occasion when I say, “Let’s take a trip back in time.” Because we are today. We’re going back in time. We’re gonna take the time machine back.

Are your ready? We’re not going back to a time I really want to visit. We’re not going back to quiet, staid 1950s.

 No, we’re going back to a much more tumultuous time.  We’re going back 40 years. We’re going back to 1974.  July 29, 1974.  In 1974, July 29 was a Monday.

The top news in the country on Monday, July 29, was that the House Judiciary Committee voted a second time in its recommends to impeach President Richard Nixon. A  third and final vote on July 30, would actually cement the impeachment process for President Nixon in the Watergate cover-up. On August 9, of course, he would resign in disgrace.

On July 29, 1974 the Great Mama Cass Elliott of the Mamas and Papas would die of a heart attack in her hotel room in London.

The number one song in the country on that day was “Annie’s Song”  John Denver.

The top TV shows at this time were “All in the Family” and “Hawaii 5-0.”

Here, at St. Stephen’s, on the day before, Sunday, July 28, some of you here this morning were probably here that morning. Fr. Sandy Walsch was the priest and the Episcopal Church was in the midst of experimenting with new liturgy.  The 1928 Book of Common Prayer was slowly being phased out. On that Sunday morning, I believe St. Stephen’ was using the so-called Zebra Book, which had been introduced the previous year.  Most people who came to services that morning probably had no idea that on the next day, the Episcopal Church would be shaken to its very core.

On Monday, July 29, 1974 in the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, 11 women, Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeannette Piccard (from Minnesota), Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Swanson and Nancy Wittig—were ordained priests in the Episcopal Church, the first women to be ordained  as such. They were so-called “Philadelphia 11.”

Now why, you might ask, would this be so controversial? Well, although it was not necessarily against church laws at that time, there were also no laws allowing such a thing.  As a result their ordination was termed “irregular.”  Of course, in 1976, at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis, the same one at which the current Prayer Book was approved, women were approved for ordination to the priesthood.  But because these 11 were irregularly ordained, they were left out in the cold, so to speak.

Now depending on where you stood on that hot Monday in 1974, this ordination was either a blessing or a curse upon the Episcopal Church. And while many rejoiced, some lamenting and raged. The Church splintered. Many people left in droves.  And for those who lived through the debate, they heard those who people who opposed this move speak from their anger, and most importantly from their fear.

An example: the following summer, in June, 1975, Bishop Iveson Noland, the bishop of Louisiana, was killed along with about 100 people in a plane crash at New York’s JFK airport during a thunderstorm. He was headed to special meeting of bishops to discuss the issue of women’s ordination. After the crash, one bishop was heard to say that they blamed Bishop Noland’s death directly on those Philadelphia 11, because if they had not done what they did, Bishop Nolan would not have been on that flight that day.

While some people who opposed the ordination of women saw the “irregular” ordination of these 11 women as (using imagery from last week’s Gospel)  some kind of  bad seed sown in the field, the real bad seed sown came actually from the fear and anger of those how opposed this ordination, in my opinion.  I think it’s appropriate on this Sunday before the 40^th anniversary of the ordination the first women in the Episcopal Church, we get the Gospel reading he do.

In our Gospel, we heard the Kingdom being compared to several things: mustard, yeast, treasure, pearls and fish.  The gist of these parables is that something small can make a difference. Something small can actually be worth much.

As I pondered this these last few days, I realized that Jesus really is right on this. When we do a it of good—like planting a bitty mustard seed—a lot of good can com forth. But, as I preached last week, we also realize that a little bit of bad can also do much bad. For us, we a little bit of bad comes in many forms.

Fear is a great example. A little bit of fear can grow into something out of control.  Fear of the future.  Fear of change.  These can be crippling.  We sow the small seeds of fear that grow into larger ugly plants of fear 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 small seeds of fear  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 certainly not joy in finding a treasure, as we hear in today’s Gospel. As scribes of the Kingdom, we bring what is new and what is old out of the treasury.  Yes, we need to have a healthy respect for our history and our past.  We can never forget where we have come from and what has been done in the past. We can bring forth the treasures of our past.  But when we let fear reign, when we let it run roughshod through our lives, we see a situation happen very much like it happened forty years ago.

It took the Church years to recover not from the new thing—the ordination of women--but from the old thing—the fear and anger that followed those ordinations.  Here we are, forty years down the road, and the ordination women is not even a remote issue for most of anymore. And if it is an issue for anyone, I’m sorry to say: the Church has been made richer and better for the presence of women priests among us.

The Holy Spirit moved. And how do we know the Holy Spirit moves? We know the work of the Holy Spirit, by the Spirit’s fruits. And those fruits are bountiful in our Church because of women priests.

 But when we resist the Spirit, when we resist the movement of God in the Church, we find ourselves trapped—in fear, in bitterness, in anger. We can never be stuck in that past.  And, despite our little trip on the time machine travel earlier in our sermon, we really can’t step back in time.

 Yes, we can bring forth the best of the old.  But, 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 we hinder the Kingdom.  It prevents the harvest from happening.  It prevents growth from happening.  It makes the church not 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.  Like the mustard seed, 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.

 Rooting our endeavors in Christ is a sure guarantee that what is planted will flourish.  Because rooting our endeavors in Christ means we are rooting 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 endeavors 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.

 So, let us help the Kingdom flourish!  To be righteous does not mean being good and sweet and nice all the time.  To 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 small seeds.  And in those instances when we fail, we must allow the mustard seed of the Kingdom to flourish.  And when we do strive to do good and to further the kingdom of God, then will we being doing what Jesus commands us to do.

 The Kingdom will flourish and we can take some joy in knowing that we helped, working with God, to make it flourish.  And, in that wonderful, holy moment, we will know the fruits of our efforts.  And we—like the kingdom of which we are citizens—will also truly flourish!

 

6 Pentecost

July 20, 2014

Matthew 13.24-30;36-43

 

+ As you probably know, I can’t share what people confess to me. I’m bound by this wonderful thing called a seal of confession.  It’s a very good thing.

But, someone—a parishioner—recently confessed something to me recently that truly shocked me. And I am going to share it with you. Don’t worry. I’m not a horrible priest standing before you. I asked this parishioner if I could share this shocking confession with all of you.

This parishioner, for some bizarre reason I will never understand, confessed me to me that she---sigh—did not “get” my poetry. Did not “get” my poetry! She actually said, “It’s so Zen!” Is Zen a bad thing? If wonder what she’ll think of my short stories when they are published later this year.

Ok, yes, it might be a bit esoteric, shall we say?  But, if this parishioner thinks I’m being esoteric, I wonder what she thinks of Jesus’s parables.  Let’s talk about esoteric.  Because, in our Gospel readings at this time of the year, we’re getting a good many parables.  Oh no, you’re probably thinking to yourself.  The parables of Jesus!

Some of us really enjoy the parables.  I enjoy the parables!  But, let’s face it, most people feel a certain level of frustration when they come across them. After all, we, as a society, aren’t comfortable with such things.  Yes, we love our typical stories.  We love to hear a good story that really captures our imagination—a story we can retell to others.  

But, for the most part, we like them for purely entertainment reasons.  We like stories that are straightforward.  A story with a beginning, a middle and an end.  We don’t want to think too deeply about these stories.  We want something simple and clear.

“Why couldn’t Jesus just tell us what he was thinking?” we might think. “Why did he have to tell us these difficult riddles that don’t have anything to do with us?” Of course, even by saying that we  miss the point completely.  The fact is, when we start talking about God and God’s work among us, we are dealing with issues that are never simple or clear.  To put it bluntly, there is no simple and clear way to convey the truth of the Gospel.

That is why Jesus spoke in Parables. The word parable comes from the word “parabola,” which can be defined as “comparison” or “reflection.”  “Relationship” is probably the better definition of the word. When we look at Jesus’ parables with that definition—reflection, comparison, relationship—they start to make even more sense to us.

These stories Jesus told then—and which we hear now—are all about comparison.  For example, the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom is difficult for us to wrap our minds around—are we talking about heaven, some otherworldly place? or are we talking about the kingdom of God in our midst? The parables help explain it all in a way those first hearers could understand. Jesus spoke in parables simply because the people he was speaking to would not have understood any type deep theological explanations.

Jesus used the images they would have known.  He met the people where they were, and accepted for who they were. He didn’t try to change them. He didn’t force them to adopt something they couldn’t comprehend.  He just met them where they were and spoke to them in ways they would understand.

When he talked that day of a mustard seed, for example, and what it grows into, when he talks of yeast being mixed into dough, when he speaks of a treasure hidden in a field or of a merchant looking for fine pearls, those people understood these images.  They could actually wrap their minds around the fact that something as massive as a bush of mustard can come from such a small seed.  They understood that something as simple as a small amount of yeast worked into dough will make something large and substantial. Yes, they could say, even with the smallest amount of faith in our lives, glorious thing can happen.  That is the message they were able to take away from Jesus that day.

So, these parables worked for those people who were listening to Jesus, but—we need to ask ourselves—does it work for us, here and now? Does this comparison of the kingdom of heaven being like to someone sowing good seed in a field  seed make sense to us?  Do we fully appreciate these images?

First of all, we need to establish what is the kingdom of God?  Is it that place that is awaiting us in the next world?  Is it heaven?  Is it the place we will go to when we die?  Or is it something right here, right now.

Certainly, Jesus believed it was something we could actually experience here and now.  Or, at least, we experience a glimpse of it here and now.  Over and over again, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God can be found within each of us.  We carry inside us the capability to bring God’s kingdom into being.  We do it through what we do and what we say.  We do it planting good seed, as we hear n today’s Gospel.  We can bring the kingdom about when we strive to do good, to act justly, to bring God into the world in some small way.  The kingdom of God is here—alive and present among us—when we love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Yes, the good seed represents our faith, but it also represents in some way, those small actions we make to further the Kingdom.  Those little things we do in our lives will make all the difference.   Even the smallest action on our part can bring forth the kingdom of God in our lives and in the lives of those we know.

But those small actions—those little seeds that we sow in our lives—can also bring about not only God’s kingdom but the exact opposite of God’s Kingdom.  Our smallest bad actions, can destroy the kingdom in our midst and drive us further away from God and each other. See, bad seeds.

I think we all have experienced what bad seeds do to people and to the Church.  When we act arrogantly or presumptuously, when we act in a conceited manner, or even when we intend to be helpful and end up riding roughshod over others also trying to do good, we show bad seeds.  What grows from a small seed like this is a flowering tree of hurt and despair and anger and bitterness.  So, it is true.

Those seeds we sow do make a huge difference in the world.  We get to make the choice.  We can sow seeds of goodness and graciousness—seeds of the Gospel.  We can sow the seeds of God’s kingdom.  Or we can sow the seeds of discontent.  We can, through our actions, sow the weeds and thistles that will kill off the harvest.

We forget about how important the small things in life are—and more importantly we forget how important the small things in life are to God.  God does take notice of the small things. We have often heard the term “the devil is in the details.”  But I can’t help but believe that it is truly God who is in the details.  God works just as mightily through the small things of life as through the large.

And in that way WE become the good seeds, that Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel.  We may not seem like much. But when we do good, we do much good, and when we do bad, we do much bad.  This is what Jesus is telling us in the parable of the good and bad seeds.

So let us take notice of the small things.  It is there we will find our faith—it is there we will find God. And when we do, we will truly shine like the sun in the kingdom of our God.   It is in those small places that God’s kingdom flourishes in our lives.

So, let us be mindful of those smallest seeds we sow in our lives.  Let us remind ourselves that sometimes what we produce can either be a wonderful and glorious tree or a painful, hurtful weed.  Let us sow God’s love from the smallest ounce of faith.  Let us further the kingdom of God’s love in whatever seemingly small way we can. And then let it flower and flourish and become a great treasure in our life before God.

Sylvia Plath in North Dakota

On Thursday, July 16, 1959, poets Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) and Ted Hughes (1930-1998) passed through Fargo on their cross-country trip. They left Cornucopia, Wisconsin early that morning, eventually taking, no doubt, Highway 10 through Detroit Lakes, etc., passing through Moorhead and Fargo late that afternoon and finally camping out in a grove of trees near the school in a tiny town “just west of Jamestown,” most likely the town of Eldridge. 

Here are photos of the school in Eldridge (from the Ghosts of North Dakota website). 

That night they watched “thunderstorms along [the] skyline: lightning illuminated columns of clouds.” The next day they passed through Bismarck and camped the next night in Medora.

 

In Fargo, they no doubt took “Front Street” (now Main Avenue) all the way out through West Fargo, where they hopped the very recently completed Interstate-94 to head west.

 

On that day in July, my grandmother, who lived just a block south of Front Street, turned fifty. My mother, who lived in south Fargo, was pregnant with my brother, Jason. My father, who lived in Casselton at the time (a town SP and TH would’ve passed on their way west), was in the last few, unhappy months of his first marriage (they would divorce early in 1960).

 

Plath was the first real poet I "got" when I was a teenager (her poem "The Moon and the Yew Tree" was the first poem I ever "got"--I've included it here too) and I still have a special place in my affection for her. Plus, I’m a hopeless poetry nerd who finds things like this endlessly fascinating.

 

The Moon and the Yew Tree

 

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary 
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. 
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God 
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility 
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place. 
Separated from my house by a row of headstones. 
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, 
White as a knuckle and terribly upset. 
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet 
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. 
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky -- 
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection 
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape. 
The eyes lift after it and find the moon. 
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. 
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. 
How I would like to believe in tenderness - 
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, 
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering 
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars 
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue, 
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, 
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. 
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. 
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

3 Pentecost

June 29, 2014

Jeremiah 28.5-9; Matthew 10. 40-42

+ Yesterday, of course, we celebrated the Requiem Mass for Wally Mayer. The church was packed for the occasion. Afterward, I was hearing several people—first-timers to St. Stephen’s—who were talking about our church. In addition to their comments about the beautiful liturgy and music were here, they talked about how impressed they were with how well received they were. They were not just greeted. They were treated and welcomed like special guests.  And, as we always do here at St. Stephen’s, we made sure they were included. Included for who they were and not for what they were.

 They were included and welcomed because each person who comes through that door, as we all know,  is important.  And it shows. One of our mottos here at St. Stephen’s, of course, is from the Rule of St. Benedict.

 We welcome every person here as though they are Christ.

 And they are treated with that respect.  

 In a sense, that is not much different than what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel reading.

 “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s award,” Jesus tells us.

 As we ponder these words of Jesus, we might find ourselves wondering if we would even be able to recognize a prophet much less welcome one.  Prophets seem to us like strange beings we found in the Hebrew Scriptures—wild men, with wild beards and wild talk—but certainly we don’t have prophets now in our day and age.  And even if we did, would we even believe anything they say?  If someone stands up among us and says, “God is speaking to me. And God says, the sky will fall on us this afternoon,” we would sigh and shrug our shoulders and say, “what a nut!”

 Actually, I think I have served as prophet. I remember saying to our own dear Michelle Gelinske, “Michelle, I am the prophet in your midst, you will one day find the right person.” Prophecy fulfilled!

 But, still, so, what is a prophet?  It’s an important question to ask because to receive a prophet’s reward, we should know what a prophet is.  The simple, somewhat “official,” answer to the question is this:  The prophet is a “divinely inspired preacher.” [1]

 OK. That’s nice.  But, it doesn’t really answer the question.  After all, I hope all preachers who stand up and preach here in church are at least a little bit “divinely inspired.”

 The fact is, most of us, when we think of a prophet, no doubt think of them as some sort soothsayer or a fortune teller.  When we think of a prophet we think of people who can see into the future and tell us what is going to happen.  And sometimes, it seems, they did.  Sometimes, God granted them visions of what is going to happen.

But the prophet is not a fortune teller or a soothsayer.  Being a prophet is more like seeing things the rest of us can’t.  They have intuition, a perception, granted to them by God, and they are able to see what the rest of us can’t, because God has allowed them to see it for the good of the rest of us.

The Hebrew word for prophet actually means “one who is inspired by God.” [2]  They are humans, like us, who have been touched in a special way by God.  God works in the prophet and through the prophet.  The prophet becomes the conduit through which God works.  The prophet is the messenger.  They were people who had a special relationship with God and with whom God had a special relationship.

A prophet’s life, on the surface, at very first glance, seems wonderful.  Why wouldn’t it?  The prophet doesn’t have to deal with the same issues we do in our faith in God.  They aren’t concerned with issues of doubt like we are.  They can never, in their lives, ever wonder if God truly exists.  Because they have seen God.  They have heard God speaking to them.  And, with the true prophet, they know without a doubt that God exists because when God speaks to them, what God says happens.

Now, the fact is: we have been referring to prophets as “them” up to this point. We have the idea that prophets lived way back then—in those days before Jesus.  But, prophets didn’t just stop existing when Jesus came.  God didn’t stop talking to us through prophets when Jesus came on the scene.

Yes, Jesus was the fulfillment of their prophecies.  Yes, he was what they saw coming when no one else could see. But, now, with the prophecies fulfilled, with Jesus having come to us, we find the calling of prophet expanded.  We find we have all been called to be prophets to some extent.  We are being called, like those earlier prophets, to keep our hearts and minds open to God.  

But more so, we, like them, are called to bring about something that only those who look ahead can see. For us, at St. Stephen’s, we do that all the time. We do that when we welcome others who might feel ostracized or marginalized. We do that when we welcome all people, and let them know that the God we worship here is a God of love and acceptance, a God who loves each of us fully and completely, no matter who or what we are.  When we do that, God works in us and speak through us to others.

As followers of Jesus the Prophet, we have been allowed to glimpse, like prophets, the future.  The Church of the future is not a church of oppression. The Church of the future is not for only those who are “in” The Church of the future is a place in which people will not be allowed to look down their noses at others, to judge others, to oppress others, to shun others.  The Church of the future is a radical place of love and acceptance. It is place in which all are not only welcomed in the door. It is place in which, once inside that door, they will find a home, with others, under the sheltering Love of God.

See, we are prophets. We have looked into the future, and we have seen what the Church will be. And now, in this moment, we are working hard to make that vision, that prophecy,  a reality.  We know that doing so we will all go through heartache and pain and exhaustion.

There are those people out there who do not want this Church of the future to be a reality.  They like the Church of the Past and the Church of the present. They like a church that keeps everything status quo—in which things don’t get riled up.

The Church we are striving to be is a threat to churches like that.  And because it is, they’re not going to like us. They will oppose us. They will try to stop us.  They are frightened by us and the Church of the future that we are showing them—a wild, eclectic, eccentric Church full of wild, eclectic eccentric love and acceptance.

But that’s alright. As long as we love—as long as we love God and love others radically—we’re going to be all right. We’ve seen the future, and it is good.   God has spoken to us and what God said to us will happen. Like the prophets, we have been inspired by God.  Like the prophets, we have been granted an intuition that others don’t seem to have.

As followers of Jesus, loving radically as we do, we see life differently than others.  When others despair or lose hope, we can see through those horrible things to the glory God has promised us.

Today, of course, we are celebrating this love Michelle and Matt have for each other. Both Matt and Michelle know full well that to get to this point in their lives together, they had go through some dark times.  But they have come through it, and here they are today, celebrating this love. Without a vision of their future, it could all have been despair.  But they didn’t despair, and because they didn’t, here they are.

Our job as prophets, having seen these glimpses into what awaits us, is to live this knowledge out in our lives.  Our job is to prophesy this glorious future by living our Christian lives of radical love fully and completely.  Our vocation—our calling from God—as prophets is to love God and to love one another, and by doing so, we get to show others a glimpse of the glory that awaits all of us.  Our vocation as prophets to live out the words of Jeremiah that we heard in our Old Testament reading today:

We are called to prophesy peace, because when we do, our prophecy of peace will come true and when it does, “it will be known the Lord has truly sent” us.

Our prophecies aren’t just prophecies of words. Rather we are being called as prophets to proclaim, by our actions and our words of love, that God does really loves us and, because God does, we must love each other and ourselves.

Much of the prophecies, in the Hebrew Scriptures, were prophecies of doom.  Our prophecy is a prophecy of love and joy and life and acceptance of others that never ends.  Our prophecy is that prophecy of peace that Jeremiah imagines as the fulfillment of all prophecies.

And like the prophets who saw God face to face, we too will see God face to face. This morning, as we gather here together, we carry within us, the holy Presence of God.  And when we look at each other and see each other and love each other, we are gazing into very Presence of God in our midst.

So, as we leave here today, let us take with us our prophetic knowledge and love.  Let us prophesy our love of God and of each other in all that we do and say.  And doing so, we will be the prophets of God.  We will be the ones through whom God continues to speak to the world.  And we will be the ones through whom God’s all-encompassing love will be shown to this world.

The Requiem Eucharist for Wallace Mayer

The Requiem Eucharist for
Wallace Mayer
March 24, 1923-June 24, 2014
June 28, 2014
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

+ I am very honored to be here, to help commemorate and give thanks for the life of  Wally Mayer and to commend this wonderful man to God. I got to know both Wally and Gerene over the last several years, when I officiated at weddings and baptisms for the family.  They were a wonderful couple and Wally always carried himself with a sense of dignity and inner strength.  I was always impressed by that and by him.  I genuinely liked him and it’s obvious many of us this morning felt the same way about him.

Now, saying all of that,  I suspect that if Wally were here this afternoon, he would not want me to be up here making him out to be some kind of saint.  But I can say that I am very happy to have known Wally and to have walked with him just a little while anyway.  And I have no doubt that Wally is with us here this morning.  I am of the firm 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 actually a very thin division.

I’m also very happy the family chose to include the Eucharist as a part of this service this afternoon. There’s a great statement from The Anglican Service Book that I always like quote anytime we have a Funeral Eucharist:

 “A [funeral Eucharist] a testament of triumph and hope, for those of us who remain know that we also journey toward the same eternal home…In the Holy Eucharist, which transcends all time and space, we are closest to our faithful departed loved ones, joining our prayers and praises to theirs. We pray for them, as we believe that they pray for us, so that all may be strengthened in their lives of service.”

 So, yes, right now, I think we can feel that that separation between us here and those who have passed on is, in this moment, a very thin one.  And because of that belief, I take a certain comfort in the fact Wally is close to us this afternoon.   He is here, in our midst, celebrating his life with us.

 And we should truly celebrate his life. It was a good life.  It was a life full of meaning and purpose.  And, although it is no doubt hard to face the fact that we are distanced from him, we can take some consolation in the fact that although Wally has shed this so-called “mortal coil,” he has now entered into that loving presence of God.

 There is a great image we find in the book of Revelation.  We find in the book of Revelation Jesus saying to us,

 “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

 As difficult as it is in this moment, as difficult as it is to say goodbye to Wally, we are able to find strength in these words. We are able to cling to the fact that, although life is unpredictable, life is beyond our control, it is not beyond Christ’s control.  Christ knew us and loved us at our beginning and will know and love us at our end.

As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”

As we mourn this ending, we also take great comfort in the fact that we are also celebrating a new beginning for Wally today.  This is what we believe as Christians. This is what we believe as Episcopalians.

What I love about being an Episcopalian is that sometimes we can’t clearly define what it is we believe.  Nor should we.  We can’t pin it down and examine it too closely.  When we do, we find it loses its meaning. 

But when I am asked, “what do Episcopalians believe?” I say, “we believe what we pray.”

We’re not big on dogma and rules.  We’re not caught up in the letter of the law or preaching a literal interpretation of the Bible.  But we are big on liturgy.  Our Book of Common Prayer in many ways defines what we believe.

And so when I’m asked “What do Episcopalians believe about life after death?” I say, “look at our Book of Common Prayer.”

Look at what it says.  And that is what we believe.  

Later in this service, we will all pray the same words together.  As we commend Wally to Christ’s loving and merciful arms, we will pray,

Give rest, O Christ, to your servant with your saints,

where sorrow and pain are no more,
neither sighing, but life eternal.

It is easy for us to say those words without really thinking about them. But those are not light words. Those are words that take on deeper meaning for us now than maybe at any other time. For Wally, in this ending, he has a new beginning—a new and wonderful beginning that awaits all of us as well.  Where Wally is right now—in those caring and able hands of Christ—there is no sorrow or pain. There is no sighing.  But there is life eternal.

At this time of new beginning, even here at the grave, we—who are left behind—can make our song of alleluia. Because we know that Wally and all our loved ones have been received into Christ’s arms of mercy, into Christ’s “blessed rest of everlasting peace.”

This is what we cling to on a day like today. This is where we find our strength.  This what gets us through this temporary—and I do stress that it is temporary—this temporary separation from Wally.  We know that—despite the pain and the frustration, despite the sorrow we all feel—somehow, in the end, Christ is with us and Christ is with Wally and that makes all the difference.  We know that in Christ, what seems like an ending, is actually a wonderful and new beginning.  For Wally, sorrow and pain are no more.

In our reading from Revelation we hear Christ’s promise that all our tears will one be wiped away for good. For Wally, his tears have been wiped away. Wally, in this holy moment, has gained life eternal. And that is what awaits us as well.

We might not be able to say “Alleluia” with any real enthusiasm today.  But we can find a glimmer of light in the darkness of this day. It is a glorious Light we find here.  Even if it is just a glimmer, it is a bright and wonderful Light.  And in that light is Christ, and in that light Christ is holding Wally firmly to himself.  And for that we can rejoice. For that, we can say today, in all joy, Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.  

2 Pentecost

June 22, 2014

Matthew 10.24-39

+ So, if I was going to ask you, what is your greatest fear? What would you answer? I think most of us would not have to think long about the answer to that question. For me, there are maybe two or three things that are my greatest fear. Now, with that answer in mind, what honestly, do you think would be the worst thing that could happen if that fear of yours became a reality?

Maybe I should ask, has one of your greatest fears ever become a reality? For me, I would say, yes.  I know that awful feeling of suddenly realizing that something I feared more than anything else became real.  It is a horrific feeling. But, weirdly, after a period of time, there is also a sense of relief. This thing I feared so much for so long, is no longer a fear. I’ve dealt with us—I didn’t have a choice. And now, it’s gone.

In a sense, that fear is possibly what Jesus is hinting at in our Gospel reading. Well, there’s a lot going on in our Gospel reading for today. There are layers and layers in our Gospel reading. And some really fairly unpleasant things.  But essentially it is about our fear of doing the work of God—doing the ministry of Christ—and, about taking up our cross.

Essentially, probably our greatest cross to bear is our fear.  Our fear of the unknown. Our fear of the future. Our fear of all those things we can’t control in our lives.

Let’s take a moment his morning to actually think about the symbol of our fears—the Cross.  Look at how deceptively simple it is.  It’s simply two pieces, bound together.  For someone who knows nothing about Christianity, for someone who knows nothing about the story, it’s a symbol they might not think much about.

And yet the Cross is more than just another symbol in our lives.  Most of us have never even given a second though to how the Cross came to be.  We no doubt think that it just simply was there when the Romans gave it to Jesus as he began his journey to Calvary.

But there is a wonderful story about it, that I’d like to share with you. This story can be found in a wonderful sermon by a saint that whose feast day we  celebrated about a week ago, St. Anthony of Padua.  St. Anthony was a priest of the Franciscan Order, the order founded St. Francis of Assisi.  In his sermon, he spoke on how the Cross was present in scripture from the very beginning of Creation.  According to St. Anthony, in his colorful sermon illustration, the Cross originated not with Jesus’ death, but it can actually be traced much earlier—to, of all people, Adam, the first human.

The story goes that when Adam became ill with his final sickness, his son Seth went looking out for medicine to heal him.  As he approached the Garden of Eden, the place from which Adam and his wife Eve were earlier cast out, Seth saw the Angel who guarded the Gate to Eden.  Seth begged the Angel to help him find medicine for his father.  The Angel broke off a branch from the Tree of Life, from which Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit.  As the Angel handed the branch to Seth, he said, “Your father will be healed when this branch bears fruit.”

Seth returned only to find that Adam had died and was buried.  Seth then buried the branch in Adam’s grave.  The branch grew into a giant tree.

Later, St. Anthony tells, this same tree was seen by the Queen of Sheba in Solomon’s house of wood, which we find in I Kings 7.2.  The Queen had a vision of the origin of the tree and of how on it one day a great man was going to die. She was unable to tell the King of her vision and instead wrote him a letter when she returned to her home, telling Solomon that she had seen in her vision a man hanging on the tree who would bring the downfall of Israel.  Solomon, in fear, buried the tree in what would become the Bethesda Pool.

The tree grew so that, by the time of Jesus, the tree grew up over the water.  It was this pool, that we find in John chapter 5.  In John we find the pool called Bethesda surrounded by five colonnades.  One of these colonnades was believed to be the Tree.  In John we find that interesting story about the Angel who would come down to disturb the water of the Bethesda Pool.  The first person to enter the water after the disturbance would be healed. It was here, on the day that Jesus was going to be crucified, that the Romans looked for a tree on which to crucify him.

And it was there that they found this tree.  They cut it down and made it into the Cross, which Jesus carried to Golgotha.

And Golgotha, as some people know, was believed to be the place where Adam and Eve were buried. In some representations of the Crucifixion, you will often see a skull at the base of the Cross—Golgotha being the place of the skull.  That skull has always traditionally been believed to be the skull of Adam.

So, the Cross had made a full circular journey back to where it began.  The tree that grew out of the grave of Adam, again was set into place on the grave of Adam and, finally, then and there, it bore its fruit.  It bore Jesus.  And the prophecy of the Angel of Eden was fulfilled.  Finally the tree bore fruit.  And when it did, Adam was restored.  Humanity was restored.  When that tree bore fruit, we found our new Adam—Jesus.

Now, the story is good for us if for no other reason in that it helps us to look at the Cross as a very major part of our salvation. Jesus knew full well what the cross was all about, even before he was nailed to it.

In our Gospel reading, he says,  “anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

These are words we do not want to hear from Jesus.  Taking up our Cross is frightening after all. The Cross, as much as it defines, as much as it is symbol of our faith, it is also an instrument of torture and death.  To take up a cross means to take up a burden—that thing we maybe fear the most in our lives.  To take it up—to face our greatest fear—is torturous.  It hurts.

When we think of that last journey Jesus took to the place of Adam’s skull, carrying that heavy tree on which he is going to be murdered, it must’ve been more horrible than we can even begin to imagine.  But the fact is, what Jesus is saying to us is: carry your cross now.  Carry it with dignity and inner strength.  But carry it without fear.

Twice in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus commands us, “Do not be afraid.”

“Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid of what the world can throw at you.  Do not be afraid of what can be done to the body and the flesh.  Taking our cross and bearing it bravely is a sure and certain way of not fearing.  If we take the crosses we’ve been given to bear and embrace them, rather than running away from them, we find that fear has no control over us.

The Cross destroys fear.  The Cross shatters fear into a million pieces.  And when we do fear, we know we have a place to go to for shelter.  When fear encroaches on our lives—when fear comes riding roughshod through our lives—all we have to do is face it head-on.   And there, we will find our fears destroyed.

As St. Anthony said: "Extending his arms on the cross like wings, Christ embraces all who come to him sheltering them in his wounds.”

Because of the Cross, we are taken care of.  There is no reason to fear. I know that sounds complacent. But there is no reason to fear. There is no reason to fear because we are not in control. God is in control.

“Even the hairs of your head are counted” by the God who loves us and cares for us. This God knows us intimately. So intimately than this God even knows how many hairs are on our head.

Why should we not be afraid? Because each of us is valuable. We are valuable to God, who loves us.  When we stop fearing whatever crosses we must bear in our lives, the cross will stop being something terrible.  Like that cross on which Jesus died, it will be a ugly thing will be turned into a symbol of strength and joy and unending eternal life.  Through it, we know, we must pass to find true and unending life. Through the Cross, we must pass to find ourselves, once and for all time, face-to-face with our God.

So, I invite you: take notice of the crosses around you. As you drive along, notice the crosses on the churches you pass.  Notice the crosses that surround you.  When you see the Cross, remember what it means to you.  Look to it for what it is: a triumph over every single fear in our lives. When we see the crosses in our lives, we can look at it and realize it is destroying the fear in our own lives.  Let us bear those crosses of our lives patiently and, most importantly, without fear.

We are loved by our God. Each of us is precious to our God.  Knowing that, rejoicing in that, how can we ever fear again?