It is well with my soul

Uptown Gallery reading

I will be reading tonight at the Uptown Gallery in Fargo (74 Broadway) at the North Dakota Humanities Council Social/Friendraiser.  Mark Vinz will also be reading. 5:00 to 7:30 pm (the reading begins about 5:30). Join us for what will no doubt prove to be a fun night of poetry, art,  food and drink.

9 Pentecost

July 26, 2015

2 Kings 4.42-44; John 6.1-21

+ Now, as most of you know, it’s very rare—very, very rare—that I ever preach on sin. I don’t do it very often—and when I do, I usually do it during Lent. Because I have to.

But today, I’m going to preach a little bit on a sin. I know I shouldn’t. It’s a baptism Sunday, after all. But, don’t worry; it’s not going to be one of THOSE sermons about sin.

I’m going to preach about a little known sin—a sin we don’t think about often.  I’m going to preach about gluttony. Gluttony is a good sin to examine occasionally. It’s a nice safe, sin, compared to some of the other sins.  After all we, in our society, don’t think about gluttony as a sin.

Why would we? We, after all, love to eat. We HAVE to eat, after all.  There’s no getting around that fact.

But gluttony is more than just about eating.  It is about eating to excess.  It is about eating—or drinking—to the point in which we are no longer fulfilled.  Gluttony is eating without thinking about eating.  It is about eating to fill the psychological and spiritual voids we feel within us rather than for sustenance.

Sometimes we eat not because we’re hungry. We eat because we feel empty spiritually, psychologically, emotionally. And food does a pretty good job of filling that emptiness—at least for a short period of time.  Most of us eat not when we’re hungry, but simply out of habit. Yes, we find that when have missed our habitual time to eat, our stomachs start to grumble and we find ourselves thinking inordinately about food, but that isn’t hunger necessarily.

In fact, few, if any, of us know what real hunger is.  Few of us have actually ever starved.  And that’s a good thing.  I am happy about that fact.

The point I’m making, however, is that most of us simply eat because we are scheduled to eat at certain times. It’s sort of wired into us. But we very rarely eat just because we’re hungry.  And we often eat more than we really need to.

Eating feels good. Eating makes us feel sustained and comforted.  And in those moments in our lives when we might need to feel sustained and comforted, food is a great replacement.  I’ve learned, that most of us probably could survive very well and very healthily from less food than we actually consume.

The spiritual perspective I’ve gained from this different way of thinking about food has been even more enlightening. To be honest, I had never given much thought to the fact that eating is a spiritual act.  For me, the best way to look at spiritual eating is in the light of that one event that holds us together here at St. Stephen’s, that sustains us and that, in many ways, defines us.  I am, of course, speaking of the Holy Eucharist—Holy Communion.

You have heard me say it many times before and you will hear me say it many times again, no doubt, but I am very firm believer in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, in the bread and wine.   I truly believe that Jesus is present in a very real and potent way in this Bread we eat and in this Wine we drink.  Like any good Anglican, I am uncomfortable pinpointing exactly how this happens; I simply say that I believe it and that my belief sustains me.

With this view of the Eucharist in mind, it does cast a new light on our view of spiritual eating. Just as I said that we often eat food each day without thinking much about why we are eating, so too I think we often come to this table without much thought of what we are partaking of here at this altar.  I have found, in my own spiritual life, that preparing for this meal we share is very helpful.  It helps to remind me of the beauty and importance of this event we share.

One of the ways I find very helpful in preparing is that I fast before Holy Communion.  Fasting is a good thing to do on occasion, yes, even outside of Lent.  And there is a long tradition in the Church of fasting before receiving Communion.   Sometimes, especially before the Wednesday night Eucharist we celebrate at St. Stephen’s, we can’t fast all day before our 6:00 Mass, but in those instances, it’s usually not too hard to fast at least one hour beforehand.  Even that one hour of fasting—of making sure that I don’t eat anything and don’t drink anything but water, really does help put us in mind of the importance of the Eucharist we share and the food we eat in general.

For me, on Sundays, my fast begins the night before.  I simply don’t eat anything after midnight the night before.  For some of us, this wouldn’t be a wise thing to do, especially if you have health issues. You can’t fast if you have diabetes or some other issue.  But still I think even keeping to a simplified fast of eating just a bit less in the morning before coming to the Eucharist is helpful for most.

If nothing else, these fasts are great, intentional ways of making us more spiritually mindful of what we doing here at the altar ad fo the food we eat in our lives.   And it also gives us a very real way of being aware of those millions of people in the world who, at this moment, truly are starving, who are not able to eat, and for whom, fasting would be an extraordinary luxury.

Our scriptures give us some interesting perspectives on eating as well.  In today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Elisha feeding the people.  We hear this wonderful passage, “He set it before them, they ate and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.” It’s a deceptively simple passage from scripture.

In our Gospel reading, we find almost the same event.  Jesus—in a sense the new Elisha—is feeding miraculously the multitude.  For us, these stories resonate in what we do here at the altar.  

What we partake of here at this altar is essentially the same event.  Here Jesus feeds us as well.  Here there is a miracle.  Here, we find Jesus—the new Elisha—in our midst, feeding us.  And we eat.  And there is some left over.

The miracle, however, isn’t that there is some left over.  The miracle for us is that in this meal we share, we are sustained. We our strengthened. We are upheld.  We are fed in ways regular food does not feed us.

This beautifully basic act—of eating and drinking—is so vital to us as humans and as Christians.  But being sustained spiritually in such a way is beyond beautiful or basic.  It is miraculous.  And as with any miracle, we find ourselves oftentimes either humbled or blind to its impact in our lives.

This simple act is not just a simple act.  It is an act of coming forward, of eating and drinking, and then of turning around and going out into the world to feed others.  To feed others on what we have learned by this Food that sustains us.  Of serving others by example.  Of being that living Bread of Jesus to others.

The Eucharist not simply a private devotion between us and Jesus.  Yes, it is a wonderfully intimate experience.  But it is more than that.  The Eucharist is what we do together.  And the Eucharist is something that doesn’t simply end when we get back to our pews or leave the Church building.  

The Eucharist is what we carry with us throughout our day-to-day lives as Christians.  The Eucharist is being empowered to be agents of the incarnation.  We are empowered by this Eucharist to be the Body of Christ to others.  And that is where this whole act of the Eucharist comes together.  It’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

When we see it from that perspective, we realize that this really is a miracle in our lives—just as miraculous as what Elisa did and certainly as miraculous as what Jesus did in our Gospel reading for today.

So, let us be aware of this beauty that comes so miraculously to us each time we gather together here at this altar.  Let us embody the Christ we encounter here in this Bread and Wine.  Let us, by being fed so miraculously, be the Body of Christ to others.  Let us feed those who need to be fed.  Let us sustain those who need to be sustained.  And let us be mindful of the fact that this food of which we partake has the capabilities to feed more people and to change more lives than we can even begin to imagine.

8 Pentecost

July 19, 2015

Jeremiah 23.1-6; Psalm 23; Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

+ We’re going to see how closely you paid attention to the scripture readings this morning. Don’t you just love it when your priest starts out the sermon like this? OK, so without looking at your bulletin: if there was a theme to our scripture reading what would it be? And there is, most definitely, a theme.

Shepherding is the theme.

Today we are getting our share of Shepherd imagery in the Liturgy of the Word.  In the reading from the Hebrew Bible, we get Jeremiah giving a warning to the shepherds who destroy and scatter, and on the other, a promise of shepherds who will truly shepherd, without fear or dismay.

In our psalm, we have the old standard, Psalm 23, that has consoled us and upheld us through countless funerals and other difficult times in our lives.

Finally, we have our Gospel reading, in which Jesus has compassion on the people who were like sheep without a shepherd.

Certainly shepherds are one of the most prevalent occupations throughout scripture.  And because we hear about them so often, I think we often take the occupation for granted.  We don’t always fully take into account the meaning shepherds had for the writers of these books or even for ourselves. Shepherds have been there from almost the beginning.

The first shepherd is, of course, Adam and Eve’s son, Abel.  And throughout scripture, the shepherd has been held up as an example—both good and bad.  Certainly the reason shepherds were used as examples as they were was because it was a profession most people of that time and in that place would have understood.  People would have understood the importance of the shepherd in sustaining the flock, in caring for the flock and leading and helping the flock.  And when it came time for a King among the Hebrew people, the ideal was always as a kind of shepherd. In fact, the first truly God-anointed King was not the arrogant and jealous Saul, but the humble shepherd David.  And always a good king was always referred to as a shepherd of the people.  Even God was referred to the Shepherd of Israel.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus again uses the image of a shepherd because he knows that his hearers will understand this important image.  He refers to himself as the Good Shepherd and he commends his followers to be good shepherds to those they serve.  So, shepherding is not something taken lightly in scripture.

But, shepherds in our day don’t mean what they did in those days.  Most of us have probably never even met a shepherd and, to be honest, I am not even certain there are shepherds anymore in this industrialized age of electric tagging of animals and night-vision monitoring.  So, how does the image of the shepherd have meaning for us—citified people that we are? For us, we find that  Jesus shares his presence with us here in our liturgy—in how we worship—as a shepherd would share with his flock.

The great Anglican theologian Reginald Fuller said “Christ still performs the function of shepherding in the liturgy.”

I love that. And I think that’s very true.

In the first part of the liturgy—in the liturgy of the word in which we hear the scriptures—Jesus teaches the flock through his word, “which Mark emphasizes as an essential function of the shepherd.”

In the second half of the liturgy—the Eucharist, the celebration of partaking of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Bread and Wine—Jesus “prepares a banquet for the flock” (which reminds us what we find in our Psalm). To take this image one step further, the Shepherd not only feeds the flock bread and wine. In our case, with Jesus, he actually feeds us with himself.  He feeds us his own Body and his own Blood, knowing that anything else will not sustains us, will not keep us going for long.  The Good Shepherd cares just that much for us—that he feeds us with his very self—with his Body and with his Blood.

So, essentially Jesus is the host at this dazzling, amazing banquet that we celebrate here on Sundays.  And ultimately what happens in our Eucharistic liturgy is that we find Jesus the Shepherd feeding us and sustaining us so that we can go from here fed and sustain to feed and sustain others.  Here, in what we are partaking of, we are experiencing the Shepherd in a beautiful and wonderful way.  We are receiving all that the Shepherd promises, so that w can go out be shepherds ourselves to those who need us.  He sets the example for us.

What we do here on Sundays is not some insular, private, secret little ceremony done just for our own personal sake.  Yes, we are sustained personally here.  But it’s not all about just us.  What happens here in this banquet is an event that has the potential to bring about that very Kingdom of God in our midst.  It opens the world up so that the Kingdom can break through.

Fed, we feed.

Sustained, we sustain.

Served, we can then serve.

Dazzled by this incredible event in our lives, we then, bearing within us a bit of that dazzling presence, can dazzle others.

I am often very fond of telling people that the Eucharist is the one things that sustains me more than any other in my life.  People who do not particulate in this incredible event don’t understand. But for those of us who do partake, who do come every Sunday (and on Wednesdays, here at St. Stephen’s), know exactly what that means. When we are weak, when we are beaten down, when we are pursued by the wolves of our lives, we find sustenance here at the altar, in this dazzling Presence of Jesus.  When are wearied by the strain and exhaustion of our everyday worlds, we have the opportunity to come to the dazzling, over-the-top celebration of all our senses in the     liturgy that sustains each of us and delights our senses.  

And when we return to those worlds, we still have work to do. We too will have to leave the joy we find our worship and face all that we have to face in the world.  We have to go out face our jobs, our broken relationships, our ungrateful families, the prejudice and homophobia and sexism and racism and fundamentalism and violence of that seemingly at-times unpleasant world.

But we do so with this experience we have here within us.  We face the unshepherded world shepherded.

“I will raise up shepherds,” The Lord says in our reading from Jeremiah today. “and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.” That hope is what we carry with us as we go forward from here. We are the shepherds that are raised us. And we, and those we serve, shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any of us be missing because of our Great Shepherd. Amen.

7 Pentecost

July 12, 2015

Amos 7.7-15; Ephesians 1.3-14; Mark 6.14-29

+ When I was a kid, there was a term that we could use against one another that really got us at our core. I don’t know why this word did that to us. It’s a pretty innocent term.  But it did.

The word was—“chicken.”

If we wavered, if we lost heart, that word, “chicken” was hurled at us with force.

“Stop being so chicken!”

“Ah, Parsley chickened out!”

Even now, after all these years, I have to admit: the word still holds some weight. It can provoke me.

And this past week, I found myself chickening out a bit. The sermon I preached last week was one of those sermons I found kind of pressed the edges a bit. And actually, I was pretty subdued in what I said about the Episcopal Church approving marriage equality for all people, and the Diocese of North Dakota continuing to not allow it. I also preached about prophecy.

Still, I chickened out a little bit by holding off for a day or two in posting my sermon on my blog because I thought of all the ramifications that might come with such a  sermon.

So, after getting my wrists slapped a few times, I have to say: I have been cautious.

But then, I realized something: you know what?  Why chicken out? What the Episcopal Church has done is good. It has put its money where its mouth is. IT has not chickened out.  And I’m not going to either.

It is not the time to chicken out. For any of us to chicken out.  As I have preached again and again from this pulpit over the years, the Church is changing. It is changing.

Years ago many of us who were saying it. And for those of who were then, guess what? Prophecy.  And that prophecy is being fulfilled.

But as I mentioned last week and I will repeat this week, prophecy is not always a fun and enjoyable thing. Prophecy is not for chickens.

Look at our Gospel reading for today. Poor John the Baptist.  He paid the price for his prophecies. But he certainly did not chicken out. And many of us fear the ramifications of those who do not like the fact that the prophecies of change are coming true.

But for those who standing in the way of this overwhelming change, there’s no denying the fact. The change is happening.  And it needs to happen. It’s like an avalanche coming down the mountain.

Because this change shows that to be a follower of Jesus in this world means that we have to be looking ahead.  We have to be looking into the future.  A future in which all people in this church are treated equally and fairly.  We have to be visionaries.  And we have to be prophets.

We have to exploring new ways to be those followers of Jesus in this day and age. Being a follower of Jesus means being people of change.  Being a follower of Jesus means we are constantly looking for new ways to live out that radical following after Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus means that we are constantly looking for new ways to be radical in our acceptance of all people.

Because that is exactly what Jesus did.

What we see happening in our Church right now is a kind of fulfillment of what Paul talks about in his Epistle this morning to the Ephesians:

“With all wisdom and insight,” Paul writes, “[God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

Isn’t it amazing how that scripture speaks to us? And it’s true.  God has made known to us the mystery of this incredible will of God, to gather up all things in Christ, things here on this earth and things in heaven.

Later in on our reading today, Paul talks  about our inheritance as followers of Jesus and as Children of God.  This Gospel of our salvation is, for Paul, “the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people…” We, all of us—no matter who we are—are inheritors. And because we are, all of us, no matter who are, are Children of the same God.  As a children of that God, we are co-inheritors.

Now, again, that’s not new to us here at St. Stephen’s. We have been proclaiming this here at St. Stephen’s all along.  And it is good to know that the larger Church is proclaiming this and is working toward the goal of being that kind of a Church—being a fulfillment of that scripture.

Of course, not everyone agrees in the same way about what being inheritors of the Kingdom is.  But, that’s the way it is going to be sometime with prophets in our midst.  Sometimes the prophecies are heeded and proclaimed and sometimes they, sadly, are resisted.

Our job as followers of Jesus is not vilify those who think differently than we do.  Those who may oppose us and scold us and punish us for what we are doing are not our enemies. They are, after all, our fellow co-inheritors.  They’re just more jealous of their inheritance than some of the rest of us.

For me, I am have no problem sharing my inheritance with everyone.  And I think many of us this morning feel that way.  Our job is continue to do what we have always done—to joyfully love and accept everyone in love, even those with whom we differ.  Our job as followers of Jesus and inheritor’s of God’s Kingdom is to continue to welcome every person who comes to us as a loved and fully accepted Child of that same God.  Our job is to be radical in our love and acceptance of others, no matter who they are.  And our job as followers of Jesus is to see every person who comes to us as Jesus sees that person.

And Jesus sees those people—and all of us—as loved.  Loved fully and completely by God.

This is not easy to do.  It is not easy being a prophet—of proclaiming God’s Good News to others.  Sometimes we might even find ourselves tempted to resist this weighty calling of ours.

Certainly, in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures today, we find Amos resisting his call to be a prophet. He kind of chickens out.

Amos says, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people…”

I love that scripture. Because it is speaking to each and every one of us.  Here we are, in our jobs, in our day-to-day lives. We’re essentially “following the flock.”

And God is calling each of us to prophesy to God’s people.  To prophesy this radical love and acceptance.  To prophesy the fact that we when we love each other and accept each other, the Kingdom of God that each of us as children of God are inheritors of, will break through into our midst.

You have heard me say this again and again: I believe that an effective leader must first be an effective follower.  And as Christians, who are followers of Jesus, we also must, in turn, be leaders to each other and to others.  Each of us must be leaders and prophets to those we are called to serve.

We of course have a choice.  We can be despotic leaders who use and abuse and mistreat the power we have and the people we are called to serve.

Or we can be humble leaders as Jesus himself was a humble leader—a leader who realizes that to be an effective leader one must serve.

In those moments it’s helpful to have coping skills to get us through the journey—and to do so without disrespecting or hurting those we encounter on the journey.

So, let us cling to this prophetic ideal of leadership.  Let us be the prophet, the listener, the spiritual friend, the inheritor, the seeker, the includer, the loved child of God.  Let us be the visionary to see that change is truly happening.

Change is happening.  It’s happening right now. Right here. It is so close. Change is in the air.  Change for the better.  Change for a revitalized Church built on love and respect for God and for each other.  It is not the time to chicken out. It is not the time to bow to pressure.  It is not a time to compromise, or to rest on our laurels.  It is time to keep on working, to keep on standing up for who we are, to keep on being prophets, to keep on furthering the Kingdom of God in our midst.

Because, look! It’s so close. It’s right there, just within our grasp.  Despite all the work we still have to do, it’s almost too incredible to even imagine.

I almost can’t wait for it anymore…