Here's an article from today's Fargo Forum in which I was interviewed by April Knudson about the first Mother's Day without Mom.

7 Easter / The Litany for Women in our lives

The Sunday after the Ascension

May 13, 2018

John 17.6-19

+ I know it seems strange to say this on this beautiful May morning—on Mother’s Day, but you all know we are still in the Easter season, right? I know. Easter, way back on April 1, seems like ages ago already. But for another week, we are still in the Easter season, still saying out Alleluias, still lighting the Paschal candle at every Mass.

I don’t know if I can say we’re still basking in the glow of the fire lit at our Easter Vigil.  But, it does definitely seem like there is a winding down.  A winding down of the Easter season.

Certainly this week, in our scripture readings, we see this slow movement away from the Easter season toward Pentecost, which is next week.   For the last several weeks, we have been basking in the afterglow of the resurrected Jesus. In our Gospel readings, this resurrected Jesus has walked with us, has talked with us, has eaten with us and has led the way for us.  

Last Wednesday night at Mass, we celebrated the Eve of the Feast of the Ascension.  In that Mass we commemorated the ascension of Jesus.  Now, he has been taken up. And with that we find a transformation of sorts happening.  With his ascension, our perception of Jesus has changed.  No longer is he just a wise sage, the misunderstood rebel, the religious renegade that he seemed to be when he walked around, performing miracles and upsetting the religious and political powers that be.

He is now something much more.  He is more than just a regular prophet.  He is the Prophet extraordinaire.  He is more than just a king—a despotic monarch of some sort like Caesar or Herod.  He is truly the Messiah.  At his ascension, we find that he is, in a sense, anointed, crowned and ordained.  And he now sits at the right hand of God.

At his ascension, we find that what we are gazing at is something we could not comprehend before.  He has reminded us that God has taken a step toward us.  He has showed us that God loves us and cares for us. He has reminded us that God speaks to us not from a pillar of cloud or fire, not on some shroud-covered mountain, not in visions. But God is with us and speaks in us. We are now empowered to be God’s prophets.   

The puzzle pieces are falling into place.  What seemed so confusing and unreal is starting to come together. God truly does love us and know us.

And next week, one more puzzle piece falls into place. Next week, we will celebrate God’s Spirit descending upon and staying with us.

For the moment, we are in this plateau, caught in between those two events—Ascension and Pentecost—trying to make sense of what has happened and trying to prepare ourselves for what is about to happen.  But things are about to really change.  We are caught between Jesus’ ascent into heaven and the Spirit’s descent to us.  This week, smack dab in the middle of the twelve days between the Ascension and Pentecost, we find ourselves examining the impact of this event of God in our lives.

And God has made an impact in our lives.  We, those of us who are fortunate enough to experience the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, at least liturgically, in our Sunday readings and in our liturgy, find ourselves constantly confronted with the meaning of these events from God.  We are faced with the reality of them and what we should do to make sense of them.

I’m not certain there is a way we can make sense of the Ascension, but I can say this: if we only see the ascension as some kind of mystical event and don’t see it as a mirror for ourselves, we’ve missed the point.  The commission that the ascended Jesus gave to the apostles, is still very much our commission as well.  We must love—fully and completely.  

Because in loving, we are living.

In loving, we are living fully and completely.

In loving, we are bringing the ascended Christ to others.

And we must go out and live out this commission in the world.

When we do that, the ascended Christ is very much still acting in the world.

When we think about what those first followers went through in a fairly short period of time—Jesus’ betrayal and murder, his resurrection and his ascension—we realize it was a life altering experience.  Their lives—their faith, their whole sense of being—was changed forever.  They would never be who they were again.

We also have had life-altering experiences in our own lives.  Oftentimes, when those experiences happen to us, we find ourselves reeling from them.  We find ourselves simply moving through the life-altering events with bated breath. Only later, when everything has settled down, do we have the opportunity to examine what had just happened to us.  And it is then that we realize the enormity of these changes in our lives.

(And yes, I’m preaching to myself here, as well, of course)

For those first followers of Jesus, it seems like they didn’t have much of a change to ponder their life-altering experiences. As soon as one life-altering experience happened, another one came along. Just when they had experienced Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, they encountered this outpouring of God’s Spirit in their lives.

The waters, it seemed, were kept perpetually stirred.  Nothing was allowed to settle.

That is what our ministry is often like. One day, very early in my career, I came to that realization myself.  Ministry is perpetually on-going.  There is never an ending to it.  It’s always something.  One week brings another set of opportunities, set-backs, trip-ups, tediums, frustrations, joys, celebrations.

Ministry truly is a never-ending roller-coaster ride of emotions and feelings. There are moments when it all seems to be useless and pointless.  There are moments when one is, quite simply, frightened.  There are moments when one feels so overwhelmed by the fact that one is simply not qualified to be doing the work. These are things those first followers of Jesus no doubt struggled with.  

And we all struggle with these doubts in our own lives.  Yet we, like them, are sustained. We, like them, are upheld.  We, like them, are supported by the God who welcomed the ascended Jesus, whose work we are doing in this world.  In those moments when our works seems useless, when it seems like we have done no good work, the God who brought Jesus back still triumphs.

Our job, in this time between Jesus’ departure from us and the return of the Holy Spirit to us, is simply one of letting God do what God needs to do in this interim.  We need to let the Holy Spirit work in us and through us.  We need to let the God who brought Jesus to heaven be the end result of our work.  When it seems that we have failed, we need to realize that, above us, the Ascension is happening.  

All we have to do is look up. All we have to do is stop gazing at our dirty, callused, over-worked hands—all we have to do is turn from our self-centeredness—and look up.  And there we will see the triumph.  And as we do, we will realize that we are not failures. There is no failure with a God who calls to ascend.  

Jesus has ascended.  And we have—or will—ascend with him as well.  He prays in today’s Gospel that we

“may have [his] joy made complete in [ourselves].”

That joy comes when we let the Holy Spirit be reflected in we do in this world.

So, let this Spirit of joy be made complete in you.  Let the Spirit of joy live in you and through you and be reflected to others by you.  When we do, we will be, as Jesus promises us,

“sanctified in truth.”

We will be sanctified in the truth of knowing and living out our lives in the light of ascension.  We will be sanctified by the fact that we have looked up and seen the truth happening above us in beauty and light and joy .

I would like to close my sermon today, on this Mother’s Day, with a prayer for all the women of our faith and our lives. I have freely adapted this “Litany of Women” from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals]

A Litany to Honor Women

Let us pray

We walk in the company of the women who have gone before, Mothers of the faith both named and unnamed testifying with ferocity and faith to God's Spirit of Wisdom and Healing.

They are the judges, the prophets, the martyrs, poets, artists, healers, lovers and Saints who are near to us in the shadow of awareness, in the crevices of memory, in the landscape of our dreams.

We today walk in the company of Deborah,
who judged the Israelites with authority and strength.

We walk in the company of Esther,
who used her position as Queen to ensure the welfare of her people.

We walk in the company of whose names have been lost and silenced,
who kept and cradled the wisdom of God.

We walk in the company of the woman with the flow of blood,
who audaciously sought her healing and release.

We walk in the company of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who said “yes” to God, who carried within her God’s Word, who  cradled in her arms the broken body of her Son.

We walk in the company of Mary Magdalene,
who wept at the empty tomb until the risen Christ appeared.

We walk in the company of Phoebe,
who led an early church in the empire of Rome.

We walk in the company of Perpetua of Carthage,
whose witness in the third century led to her martyrdom.

We walk in the company of Julian of Norwich,
who wed imagination and theology proclaiming "all shall be well."

We walk in the company of the women of St. Stephen’s, past and present and future, both named and unnamed, who have stood up, spoken out and ministered boldly in the Name of the One who called them.

We walk in the company of Joyce, who endured, who persisted, who stood tall against disappointment and adversity, and who ended her journey on this earth with strength and dignity, comforted and welcomed by her God.

We walk in the company of you Mothers of the faith, who teach us to resist evil with boldness, to lead with wisdom, to heal and to love God and others by both word and action.

Amen.

100 Days

Today is the 100th day since my mother died. Here is a poem marking the occasion:

Rogation 2018

Thank you to Janie Breth for this photo of today's Rogation procession/blessing

6 Easter

Rogation Sunday

May 6, 2018

1 John 5.1-6; John 15.6-17

+ Yesterday, I did something that was very difficult for me: I buried my mother’s ashes. For any of you have went through such a thing—a delayed burial, months after a loved one has died, you know the weirdness of such an event. There’s kind of a delayed reaction.  What I was surprised by was the intensity of my emotions. There was a weird finality to it.

And seeing that little deep square hole dug in the ground felt just like an equally

deep wound right inside me. Just when you think you might be moving on, when you think the harshest days are behind you, here is a new wave of really awful, fresh emotions.

Luckily, for those of us who cling to our faith, these are not moments of despair.  These are not moments of feeling completely abandoned by God and our loved ones. They are just moments of loss.

I will say that my alleluia this morning, and actually throughout this whole season of Easter, has maybe not been as joyful as I would like.

I recently came across a quote I wrote in a notebook from a book I read several years ago called The Holy or the Broken by Allan Light.  The book is about Leonard Cohen’s very famous song “Hallelujah,” one of those truly enigmatic, amazing songs that one just cannot escape in our culture right now. The quote from the book came from the Reverend Sandy Scott, a Presbyterian pastor from Saskatchewan. She says,

“There are days, I am sure, when you and I and even great King David could only muster a cold and lonely Hallelujah. It may be that the cold and lonley Hallelujah is a turning point that marks our salvation, because we know only God can save us from some of the situations we find ourselves in. The cold and lonely Hallelujah is a surrender to the mystery and backhanded glory of God.”

The backhanded glory of God. That, in a nutshell, sums up exactly what so many of us have known as we journey through grief and loss and pain.  

And for me, one of the things I have been clinging to this week is working on the sermon for today.  Because, as you all know, our scriptures this morning deal with one of my two favorite preaching subjects.

OK.  Most of you have hearing my sermons for a long time now.  You know I am a pretty simple preacher.  I have about two subjects I pretty consistently preach about. And those two preaching subjects are?

That’s right.

Love and baptism.

And in our scripture readings for today, we get both.  (I’ll spare you baptism today in this sermon)

You know, for all my preaching about love, you’d think I was some kind of hippie or something.  Yes, I love to preach about love.

Today, we get a double dose of love in our scriptures today.  

Jesus, in our Gospel reading, is telling us yet again to love.  He tells us:

“Abide in my love.”

A beautiful phrase!

And St. John, in his epistle, reminds us of that commandment to love God and to love each other. Now, as you hear me preach again and again, this love is what being a Christian is all about.

It is not about commandments and following the letter of the law.  It is not about being nice and sweet all the time.  It is not about being “right” all the time.  It is certainly not about being morally superior!

It is about following Jesus—and following Jesus means loving fully and completely.  And following Jesus means obeying him and doing what he did. And what did he do, what did he preach?   He preached:

Love God.

Love each other.

Yes, I know.  It actually does sound kind of…hippie-like.  It sounds fluffy.

But the love Jesus is speaking of is not a sappy, fluffy love.  Love, for Jesus—and for us who follow Jesus—is a radical thing.  To love radically means to love everyone—even those people who are difficult to love.  To love those people we don’t want to love—to love the people who have hurt us or abused us or wronged us in any way—is the most difficult thing we can do.  If we can do it all. And sometimes we can’t.

But we can’t get around the fact that this is the commandment from Jesus. We must love.

For me—maybe I’m just simple.  Maybe I’m just a simple priest, up here in North Dakota.  I am at this incredible congregation that, on first appearances, might seem like some quirky little congregation. But underneath it all, it is this strange, powerful spiritual powerhouse of a congregation. And it is a congregation that embodies solidly this command of Jesus to

“Abide in my love.”

Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not in a classic sense. But certainly in its attempt to do what we are called to do.

Call me simple but abiding in Jesus’ love leaves no room for homophobia or racism or sexism or any other kind of discrimination.  You can’t abide in love and live with hatred and anger.  It just can’t be done.

When Jesus says “Abide in my love” it really a challenge to us as the Church. And, as you hear me say, again and again, the Church IS changing.  And it should!

The Church of the future, whether we like it or not, has to shed those old ways of abiding in anger and fear and hatred.  The Church of the future needs to constantly strive to abide in Jesus love.  If it does not, it will become an antique.  It will become an outmoded, hate-filled cesspool.  And if it does, then that’s the way will be.

Now, for me, I won’t stop following Jesus.  Because if that’s the place the Church becomes, I know it is not the place Jesus is leading me to.  And hopefully none of the rest of us either.

And if that’s what the Church becomes, it will, in fact, stop being the Church. If the Church becomes a place of hatred or anger, I doubt many of us would remain members of that church.

This is why the Church must change.  This is why the Church must be a place of love and compassion and radical acceptance and inclusion.  Because the alternative is too frightening for me.

This coming Thursday, we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus.  On that day, he was physically taken up from us.  But what he has left us with is this reality of us—his followers—being the physical Body of Jesus in this world.

We can only be that physical Body of Jesus when we abide in his love.  When we love fully and radically.  There’s no getting around that.  There’s no rationalizing that away.  We can argue about this.  We can quote scriptures and biblical and ecclesiastical precedence all we want.

But abiding in love is abiding in love.

And abiding in love means loving—fully and completely and without judgment.

To be Jesus’ presence in the world means loving fully and completely and radically.

Call that hippie-like.  Call that heresy or a simplistic understanding of what Jesus is saying or part of the so-called “liberal agenda.”  I call it abiding it in Jesus’ love, which knows no bounds, which knows no limits.

So, today, and this week, abide in this love.

Let us celebrate God by living out God’s command to love.  As we remember and rejoice in the Ascension, let our hearts, full of love, ascend with Jesus to God’s side. Let us move from the backhanded glory of God, to the full and wonderful glory of God.  Let them soar upward in joy at the fact that Jesus is still with us.  And we when we love—when we love each other and God—Jesus’ spirit will remain with us and be embodied in us.

Alleluia!