Here is a sampling of sermons preached by The Reverend Philip W. Dougharty, Rector of St. John's-Grace Episcopal Church.

I am deeply moved each year when I get to this Sunday to find that the Altar Guild has dedicated the altar flowers to an observance of the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. It took so long to get to the point of ordination that I can never forget the date Feb. 10, 2001. In fact, I always pause just a bit to reflect on why I went to the trouble, and try to evaluate whether or not I am still living into the commitments that brought me to that point. It is most gratifying to have you do some of that reflection along with me. I continue to remind myself, when it is easy to get distracted by day to day details, that to simply keep the church going without consideration to what we are about would be a real waste of my life as a priest. We are confronted with issues of finances, growth, outreach, program, Christian education and many other factors that contribute to the life of the community that it might be tempting to simply make those things our reason for being and forget that we are first and foremost followers of Jesus on a journey into relationship and connection with some deep source that we have come to call "God."

I love the picture that is portrayed in both the Jeremiah text and the Psalm – famous Psalm 1 – that describes those in such a close relationship with God as being as a tree planted by the source of water and nourishment. When you fly across my home state, New Mexico, from north to south you always know where the Rio Grande is because it is the green strip that cuts through the desert below. While the deserts on both sides of the riverbanks have their indigenous scrub brushes and cactuses the green trees grow on the banks of the river. And, not coincidentally, the place that the trees grow near the river is also where humans settled for much the same reasons – to be near deep sources of nutrition and life, along with transportation and communication. The trees have discovered through natural processes that they cannot survive in the middle of the desert and sometimes we make the same discovery.

There are so many temptations in preparing a sermon on these texts to rely on well worn platitudes that suggest that somehow we turn our brains off and throw our lives on the altar of God’s Will – sure that it will produce miserable but righteous lives. "Just trust in God and reject worldly desires and passions," or, as in the first part of the Jeremiah text, "Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals…." I wish that it had been worded, "Cursed are those who trust merely in mortals!" This concept is often cultivated by religious leaders because it helps to retain a sort of power over people, their behavior, and their thoughts. "Don’t get too uppity because you will be going directly against the will of God if you use your own abilities too much."

The normal reading of today’s Gospel passage does not help, does it? "Blessed are you who are poor…Woe to you who are rich; blessed are you who weep…woe to you who are laughing." Well, frankly, I would enjoy being a little richer, and I doubt that it would result in spiritual poverty for my life. In fact, I’m convinced that I could do some really great things with a bit more wealth! Likewise, I refuse to live a life of "righteous remorse" rather than one of joy and laughter in hopes of some later reward, or in fear of hexing my life for sometime down the road. It is easy to set up either-or situations for our lives on the journey with God: choose God and reject everything else or, vice versa, choose the beauty and joy of this life at the risk of losing eternal salvation. Is that really what Jesus taught? No, I rather think that Jesus was not prescribing as much as he was describing what life is like for human beings. The fact is that we all enjoy times of grace and abundance and we all suffer times of devastation and loss. None of these have to do with how good or bad we have been: they are products of the human condition. Living means gain and living means loss. I somehow think that these texts are not about the experiences of abundance or scarcity, but about our response to them as a result of our proximity to the source of nourishment and life.

I really tried to resist bringing Anna Nicole Smith into this because I don’t want it perceived that I am using her as a negative example for any specific reason. For those of you who may have been living in a cave since Thursday, Anna Nicole Smith died at the age of 39. The New York Times described her as a person who was most famous for being famous, which is a pretty good description. She was a one-time stripper/model/actress who became famous for marrying an extremely wealthy man four times her age and then battling for his estate after his death. She had a mercifully short-lived television series that portrayed her as clueless and unattractive, in short, a joke. Most recently the soap opera of her life was focused on the death of her twenty year old son, Daniel, for whom her very public grief was shown to an embarrassing extent on tabloid television. My point in mentioning Anna Nicole Smith and her death is this: her life was an intense example – a microcosm - of life as we all live it. Here was a Child of God caught up in the voracious celebrity machine. She experienced wealth and fame far beyond what most people will ever imagine, while fighting bankruptcy battles in court. She was a highly desired commodity who found that the most private battles that she had to fight were not only broadcast, but analyzed and repeated over and over on videotape on a daily basis. While it is easy – and for many Christians, natural and right – to hold her up as an example of dissolute living and its rightful consequences, I would rather simply suggest that she was planted too far from the source of nourishment and life. She found herself, as Jeremiah put it, "in parched places of the wilderness, in a (highly populated) uninhabited salt land."

Face it: we all make terrible decisions as we move along this journey. If we were to decide that the success or failure of the journey was based on how well we personally "ran the race" we would all be in big trouble. What we can hope to do is to plant ourselves as near the source as we can – and continue to live with gusto the life that has been given us, confident in the hope that God’s Will for us is Life – and that Life in abundance.

I know that I am not a great preacher. I am even embarrassed to say that I have very little actual training in preaching – a fluke of my seminary education. My dearest wish as a preacher and as a pastor is to articulate how profoundly I feel God’s call to us as God’s People in this place. This is how I see two great preaching opportunities in today’s readings.

You know that I don’t always believe the Bible is literally true, that it needs to be interpreted in light of our ability to live into myth and metaphor, and so I don’t think, as some commentators might, that the newly returned refugees to Jerusalem wept necessarily out of a deep sense of regret or repentance over their apostasy as revealed by the reading of the law. Rather, I think that these folks, living between the times of deliverance and fulfillment of a promise, wept because they were deeply moved by the unearthing of something deep within themselves that called them to a new understanding of themselves and their role in their world. In a nutshell, that is what I think that great preaching would do: to call out something from the depths of our existence that propels us into the promise of the future.

These folks in the reading from Nehemiah were early returnees from exile, commissioned to rebuild the temple, a project that turned out to be disappointing when they recalled the glory of the previous temple. They were economically challenged, leadership challenged, challenged in every way – full of despair over the future of their rag-tag little nation. Something, though, demanded their attention to the reading of these traditional Scriptures. For six hours, the narrative tells us, they stood literally, "with their ears pointed toward the book," like my amaryllis leaves point toward the sun. They automatically rose to their feet to hear what the Word would be for them, and they wept. What great preaching that must have been!

The Gospel of Luke gives us a similar picture of Jesus’ return to his hometown synagogue. He was initially a returning "homeboy" with great promise. The text says, "a report about him spread through all the surrounding country," and "[he] was praised by everyone." After his reading of the prophet Isaiah Luke says, "the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him." Were the eyes fixed out of admiration, curiosity as to what he would say, or suspicion of him? After all, this text is followed by some confusion, Luke saying, "All spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words…," while others said, "Is not this Joseph’s son?" as if to say, "What does he know – he is just one of us!" The point is that Jesus evoked in them an engagement with what he had to say. And what he had to say bordered on blasphemy: "I have been appointed to bring good news to the poor, to release captives, and to restore sight to the blind." This message would never be a welcome one in most churches, occupied as we often are with numerical growth or financial survival, or in the halls of congress, in the corporate boardrooms where the bottom line is profit or control of resources or even control of population. But it was great preaching indeed; even changing the lives of those who changed the world.

The message of the Millennium Development Goals has been hard to hear in the halls of power where, quite frankly, the alleviation of extreme poverty, the empowerment of women, even the basic education of the world’s population presents a threat to the control of all of those people as enjoyed by the world’s most powerful governments and corporations. Those in power don’t want us to know that there is enough to go around. They want to convince us that we will lose if we are persuaded to try sharing a little of what we have to provide for the sheer survival of millions around the globe.

So Jesus steps to the podium in our day to read the same passage: "The Spirit of God is upon me, because I have been anointed to bring good news to the poor. The Spirit sends me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of Jubilee," - a year in which the earth’s resources are redistributed so that everyone has enough. This is no "commie-pinko" plot to destroy American Capitalism. This is an invitation to participate in the arrival of God’s Kingdom – a society where the poor sit down with the rich, the disabled with the gifted, and the prisoner with the captor because we are all Children of God, created in God’s image. And in my case it only costs $331 per year – or .7% of my income - to help empower some of these changes to come about through the UN-sponsored initiative to alleviate extreme poverty and illiteracy by the year 2015.

This brings me to a point I touched on last week – one that Paul expands from his message to us in last week’s description of Christ’s Body. We are not alone in our efforts to bring about God’s Kingdom; we are parts of an organism in which everyone plays a part, large or small, but all integral to the whole. This passage is really hilarious to me, and I always enjoy hearing it read, or reading it silently myself. But it rejects two false conclusions that we might make regarding our participation or non-participation in the process of Kingdom-making. The first objection we might make is that because we cannot make what we or someone else might consider the most important contribution, our particular contribution is less important, and should not be made. Do you hear this in the little complaint that the foot makes, "I’m not a hand, so I’m not part of the body." The point is that if the foot does not fully embrace its "footness," insisting that unless it gets to be a hand it will not play, its own particular uniqueness will be lost.

The second false conclusion we may be tempted to make is that because someone else finds their fulfillment in a way that is different from ours, they must not be on the same mission as we are. Paul has the eye saying to the hand, "I don’t need you" and likewise the head to the feet, "You aren’t like me, so get out of this body." In fact, Paul goes so far as to say, "the parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable, and those that we think are less honorable we protect as though they are more honorable." The fact is that if we refuse to function using our own specific gifts, allowing others to function using their specific gifts, then the healing Body of Christ, moving through the world with its message of hope and power, is further crippled in its efforts to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed."

So if I were a great preacher this would be my goal: to speak the Word of God to our hearts that would make us weep, that would delve deep into our hearts to quicken a new hope that the Kingdom of God is truly within reach, and that we actually have a hope of bringing it to a reality in our own time and place.

The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people. BCP, p. 423

The text from Isaiah is an interesting partner to the miracle narrative in the gospel passage where water is turned into wine. I hope that I can make a coherent connection between the two. Isaiah holds out the hope of restoration as he says, "You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…." What follows is a description of a woman who is not desolate because she has someone on whom she can depend to support and adore her.

Isaiah is comparing Israel to that woman married to her God who will protect her and rejoice in her in what seems to be a sort of patronizing fashion. It is certainly not the 21^st century image of marriage that we understand. With a few exceptions we have been convinced that the concept of "trophy wives" is an outdated one. Likewise, our concept of a relationship with a god that dotes on us in such a patriarchal way probably needs to be set aside in favor of a new model: one of an equal partnership, a unit that works because each member of the partnership brings active and valuable gifts to the marriage – gifts that perhaps the other does not possess or is unable to exercise.

Rules governing the marriage relationship in the Bible are pretty well prescribed, as you can imagine. Briefly stated, the woman had no rights, and only existed as a possession of the man. I can hear the hackles being raised even as I speak. Because the woman in the relationship had no integral position in the marriage the wedding was a celebration more of the man’s conquest – along with the hope of his wife’s bearing many children, primarily males. This is the picture that Isaiah gives us – not his fault; he is speaking out of his own context. The picture that he gives is one of joy at becoming the "apple of the eye" of the beloved. When we read these texts we see what was valued by a culture: safety, protection, being looked on with favor. I have noted, to the shock of some who hear, that the only time in the Bible, (that I have been able to find), where two people stand before one another and before God and profess their love for one another in a relationship of equality, swearing their allegiance to one another beyond death is the exchange between David and Jonathan. The idea of marriage as we know it is simply not to be found.

I rather see not only the marriage relationship but the relationship of God to God’s People, as suggested by our marriage ceremony, in the manner described by Paul in the letter to the church at Corinth: "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." We are not only member of one another, but members of the cosmos, the Creation from which we came, each uniquely gifted and charged with contributing our part to the working of the whole. This is true in a marriage. It is the reason that we can no longer dream in terms of the "absolute, perfect mate;" we find a mate with which our gifts and characteristics have the potential to form a whole – and then work like crazy to make it happen.

This is the picture of God’s People, "all activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses." We choose the particular community that in some way calls us to fit ourselves into the plan of God that is being revealed in a particular place. We are then invited to use OUR gifts to perform OUR functions, (no one has to be responsible for everything!), and work like crazy to make it happen. There is no room in the New Testament picture of the church for anyone to be in the role of either the patron or the patronized! Each works equally to contribute to the whole. (Parenthetically, sometimes in both the case of the marriage and of the community of faith it doesn’t work. Do we throw up our hands and quit when that happens? No, we move on into the deeper journey as we continue to make choices and decisions that help us to better move into the life of grace and fulfillment.)

Now to the wedding at Cana; it is no accident, I think, that John uses a wedding to introduce the ministry of Jesus. Obviously Jesus had performed some kind of miracles previous to this. Otherwise, why would his mother insist that he take this matter into hand? We don’t know much about the wedding itself, or the persons who were being married. The Gospel says that Jesus’ mother was there, and that Jesus and his disciples had actually been invited. I have a lot of questions about this story: why the lack of preparation that led to a shortage of wine? Did the bridegroom and the sommelier actually try to find out where that great wine came from? Was Jesus just playing games, being mischievous with his gifts? But here is the question that really caps them all: why did he make as much as 180 gallons?! That must have been a big party! And the wine steward indicates that most of the guests are already wasted anyway! Why would Jesus waste a perfectly good miracle on people who were in no condition to appreciate it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I hope I have caused you to wonder about some of these things that we take for granted in Scripture. What I sense from this story is this: Jesus was willing to be extravagant with his gifts – even wasteful! He provided enough wine for the wedding party to bathe in – and most never even knew that it happened. John does not report that the Cana Times reported a generous outpouring of unexplained wine at a local wedding. We are not told that everyone at the party turned their attention to following Jesus as a result of his obvious abilities. I think one clue can be found in Jesus’ description of his own ministry about halfway through the Gospel of John. I paraphrase it to say, "Look, I didn’t come to teach you to be penurious or to load you down with more religion. I didn’t come to take advantage of you or hurt you. I came that you would find out what life in its abundance is really about."

That is what the equal relationship is about – abundant life. Whether it is a marriage relationship or a community of faith, seeking to be faithful is about extravagance of spirit, abundance of generosity. How have we lost that in the Church of Jesus Christ? Even more importantly, how do we recover it? Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher in the 19^th century articulated the problem so graphically: "Christ turned water into wine, but the church has succeeded in doing something even more difficult: it has turned wine into water." In all of our lives may we seek the laughter, the joy, the extravagance and generosity of turning the mundane into the extraordinary instead of the other way around.

On January 9, 1927, 80 years ago this coming Tuesday, the congregation of St. John’s Church met for the first time in this building, what was then known as the "new church." Services were conducted by Bishop Charles Henry Brent, a saint of the church whom we celebrate on March 27, and by the rector of St. John’s, The Rev. Dr. Walter Russell Lord. The realization of this building had taken much more than the actual two years of construction; initial plans for building had begun as early as Dr. Lord’s arrival in 1908. But life happens; small things like the first Great War and reluctance over encumbering the congregation with a mortgage caused the parish to settle for expansions of what is now our parish hall building to be accomplished first. In Dr. Lord’s words, "if we had built earlier, our building in beauty would have been far short of what we have now." For the frustration of delay, they were – as are we – grateful for the eventual outcome.

Among the first words spoken from this pulpit on January 9, 1927 were these: "This fabric of stone and mortar, please God, is the outward and visible sign of the invisible St. John’s." He continues, "The invisible is the fellowship of cooperation, loyalty, friendship, faith, and love for God and man." I assume that he meant to include women, too. He concludes, "That this church may fulfill its responsibilities and that the inward spiritual fabric may be no less real and noble than the outward, is today the prayer, hope and purpose of its true friends." Do you recognize his describing the building as a sacrament? I would suggest that we here today, 80 years later, in new ways that fit new times, commit our life together to making this place a sacramental springboard to fulfilling responsibility and to inward spiritual fabric.

I don’t think that it is actually true that we are located on a hill here on Colonial Circle. I know that during this time of year you can drive on Richmond and, looking in the rear-view mirror, see the towers of the 1^st Presbyterian Church on Symphony Circle and the Richardson Complex on Forest Avenue at the same time. Somehow, though, I always imagine us as a sort of vortex for the area between those two points – radiating out into the neighborhoods and commercial areas, setting us on a kind of metaphorical hill. Certainly when I drive toward the church from any direction I am struck by the bell tower and the architecture so appropriately set on this corner.

What I am suggesting, in a roundabout way, is that we have been given a gift in this building that should allow us to be, if you will, a beacon, a lighthouse – dare I say it? – a star to lead people to new relationships with God and the Church. It has already worked: you are here for whatever reasons that have brought you. I am here through recognition that this is a place where my gifts can be magnified through this community to introduce or reintroduce people to the God of abundance and love, of compassion and justice. This is what the astrologers followed to the manger: a star of hope.

I have a sense that the St. John’s congregation in 1927 was not nearly as interested in some of the aspects of the Gospel as we are here today. It can be heard in some of the language I read, "fellowship of cooperation, loyalty," and so forth – all worthy goals, descriptive of us, but falling short of the images that define life under this beacon in 2007. We live in a changing neighborhood with conflicting cultures living next door to one another, in a city that has lost a great deal of the wealth that made this edifice a reality, (parenthetically, built for about $150,000). What are the outward and visible signs of the "inward and spiritual grace" that this building reflects for us in this day? Each one here will answer that differently depending on how you see the community and your place in it. Next week I will try to denote some of the manifestations of grace as I see them during our congregational meeting, and I invite you to share your thoughts with me as I prepare. You may be recognizing God’s work among us in ways that are escaping me.

These signs and symbols are evidence of ferment among us serve to remind of why we are here. The bumper sticker says, "Wise men still seek him," and we are here to serve as the "star at its rising" to lead them to new questions, deeper experience of God, broader vistas of God’s hope for God’s creation with us as faithful stewards.

Finally, let me remind you, as I always do when this Ephesians text is read, that Paul, (or whoever wrote it), describes his purpose in life in these terms: "this grace was given to me…to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to all of creation. This is an understanding of the plan of God that even the builders of this lovely building may not have understood; it is in the creative tension of the new and the old, the novel and the comfortable, the mundane and the sublime, the inward looking and the out reaching, the planning and the waiting for spontaneity that the Glory of God will be seen – and I want us to be the "star at its rising" to lead the way.

As you know, this particular text has become, for me, the absolute essence of the Christian faith, and why I remain a Christian. One of my favorite questions to ask the Bible 101 group on Thursday mornings is, "Is this YHWH, the God of the Old Testament, the God that you believe in?" They generally answer in the affirmative, and with good, well-thought-out answers. But I can only affirm YHWH for myself in light of the very text that I read.

I cannot believe in a God that commands that entire nations be wiped out in order to make room for "His People." Nor can I agree with the same philosophy as it is pursued today in the land of Palestine. I cannot believe in a God that punishes people for mistakes that they make, and I can’t even believe in a God that will wipe out my enemies if I am good. I have a sense that any God that welcomes me will also welcome people with whom I disagree or with whom I am at odds. I cannot believe in a God that uses other nations to whip his People into shape, as is described in the Old Testament. I cannot believe in a God who demands exclusion of anyone who is different from the accepted norm, such as homosexuals. I cannot believe in a God that advocates slavery or inequality for any race or gender, as YHWH seems to do very often in his instructions to the Children of Israel.

Here is what I can believe in: at the moment of creation, God had an Idea that brought creation into existence. And, as our Eucharistic Prayer C says, "From the primal elements God brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason and skill. God made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against Him…." And as a result, "we turned against one another." The history of the human race is God’s attempts to recreate the Idea that first produced his ideal creation, until, as John says, "The Idea became flesh, and pitched his tent right here among us." Only then was it possible for us to understand what God was up to all the time, and "we have seen his glory, full of Grace and Truth."

You would expect me, wouldn’t you, to stop as I read that over and over and wonder, "What does he mean by ‘grace and truth’?" Taking to my trusty internet dictionary, (bookmarked near the top, as you can imagine), I find that "grace" is from "gratia" or "pleasing." And "truth" has had a long journey from its origins that mean, "loyal or honest." I hope that from these two words one of several jumps to your mind as a result of our being together for some time: I would prefer that a word like "Wholeness" would occur to you right away, or perhaps "Integrity." A pleasant loyalty or a gracious honesty brings to mind a saint – not one who is a moral bookkeeper, or a pedantic do-gooder, but one who lives a life in gratitude for the life he or she has been given, radiating the good news of Life to the world in which they live. "And we beheld his glory – full of grace and truth."

But the birth of the Idea is only the beginning of the revelation of that grace and truth. We will spend the next several months following this Idea as it develops in "real time and space," as it faces resistance from friend and foe alike, as well-meaning friends try to shape the Idea to fit their own expectations, instead of looking to see what the Idea really is. This is a journey of hope and of tragedy. The Idea has become flesh, dwelling among us, and we have only begun to see its glory – full of grace and truth.

I suppose that every preacher is faced with the dilemma of what to say on Christmas Eve that will in some new way reveal what God has revealed to humankind in the person of Jesus – the one we call Christ, the Anointed One. In so many ways the story and the event that we celebrate has been domesticated – even taken over by commercial interests of every sort, from toys to clothes, to food and finance. Corporations are making it easy and convenient to spend money, even offering gift cards so that they get the money ahead of having to deliver the goods purchased.

What I have found in the past several years is that Christmas takes on a completely different feel without young children constantly around and under foot. Christmas is really about children for some reason; the anticipation, the sense of wonder, our own desire to recapture the fun and wonder of a more innocent time in our own lives. We all have stories to tell of Christmases past, of feelings, smells, sounds and sights. They are woven into our DNA almost – we are, to a certain extent, those memories of Christmases past. In short, it is hard for a preacher to present anything new. Let me try, though, with the help of an unlikely source, the text we have heard from the letter of Paul to Titus.

At first glance it sounds like typical old boring Paul saying a lot about nothing. Using the language of his own legal back ground he sounds like some old-fashioned camp counselor to young people, talking about "renouncing impiety and worldly passions," living lives that are "self-controlled, upright, and godly." It is the stuff that drives young people away from the church when it is presented in a way that minimizes the passion and enthusiasm that youth brings to life, and tries to force that enthusiasm into an unnatural and unhealthy legalism that kills rather than creates Life. There is so much baggage around words like "impiety" or even "piety," "upright," "godly." They are words that make us want to run the other way because of the connotations that have been given to them.

In fact, Paul is, in a sort of back door way, inviting us back into the sense of wonderment that we miss so much from our childhood. The roots of "impiety" or its opposite, "piety" are found in terms that mean "wonder, reverence, awe, or devotion." What Paul really wants us to do is to recover a sense that, indeed, we are not the center of the universe, that it is possible to be deeply moved by something outside of ourselves. To paraphrase what he has said, we are invited to "throw off the numbing effect of adulthood, of overwhelming responsibility, and to recapture a sense of the Goodness and Majesty of Creation and the Creator."

"Worldly passions" in this context really has to do not with wanting to have sex, but with embracing ambitions and goals that have short-term benefits rather than going for the real gusto: Life with real passion, doing what we are made to do, in the words of Joseph Campbell, "following your bliss." Having "following our bliss" as our guiding star we are free to live lives that are reconciled to God and Creation, reflecting – even radiating – the Wholeness that becomes ours when all of the fragments of our lives come together. It allows us to reject the fragmentation in ourselves and in others that kills life and numbs our capacity for true Wonder. That is how Paul finishes that sentence: "[that we] live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ."

When you hear it that way you realize that this is the message you hear from me almost every time I speak to you: reconciliation with God does not mean taking on some artificial "goodness" that rejects our natural passions and love of Life; it means discovering who we really are as Children of Creation, made in the image of God and commissioned to reflect to the world what real Passion and Life are all about.

We are really in the place of the shepherds tonight as we occupy our places of responsibility: doing the job, paying the bills, minding the store, doing the right thing, living life one step at a time, wishing for something more. May we be confronted by an angel who breaks through all of that and once again informs us of Good News in the form of a child, come to bring us back home where we belong in the land of awe and wonder – angels singing, along with us, Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace. And don’t let the season pass without getting the chance to watch at least one child as they stand before the gleaming tree or as they anticipate the unexpected, or as they bring a whole new energy to cookie baking, or as they wake up long before you want them to, or as they squeal, or as they…. You are witnessing what God want for us all: the real joy of Life.

I think that many of today’s preachers have taken lessons from John the Baptizer. They think that it is good news to proclaim judgment and destruction. The subtext of their messages seems to imply that the good news happens when you come around to their point of view. Of course, for many it seems as though the path can be made smoother if you send money. I have really had a hard time hearing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the judgmental tirades of many of today’s Christian leaders.

For many of our Christian communities Advent is a season of repentance, of denial of self in favor of self flagellation of some kind – a sort of mini-Lent; thus the purple vestments and hangings. If you have listened to me much you know that I see Advent as a time of hopeful anticipation, of expectation of what God is about to do among God’s People. As a result we have changed our liturgical color for this season to a blue that anticipates the dawn. We gaze into the approach of the Light of Lights, looking to the Word which was from the beginning to guide us into the ways of Truth. Does this sound like an emphasis on repentance? Must we spend our time of preparation on soul-searching and sorrow for how terrible we are?

I would rather see us observing Advent as individual candles, pitting ourselves against the darkness that pervades the world we know in the form of blind consumerism, of the objectification of humans by huge corporations for the purpose of our giving them our resources. I would rather see us stand up as lights against the forces that deny that our planet is in danger of implosion as a result of industrial waste and global warming. I would like to see our repentance be one of sharing our single little lights with a few of God’s children in Africa or other parts of the planet, where darkness can be alleviated through opportunities for literacy, business opportunities to feed families, cures for diseases that devastate entire cultures.

We should not approach Advent as a time of self-denial; rather we lay claim to ourselves as God’s own image, lights in the darkness. "Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!" God says through the prophet, Zephaniah. "The Lord your God is in your midst… he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival."

The good news really is there in John’s message for those who ask: If you have two coats, share one, don’t collect more than is due, don’t extort money, but be grateful for the abundance you are given." The problem is that if we fall into fear that there will not be enough we become oppressors of those who stand in the way of our acquiring more and more, instead of being grateful and sharing what we have. There really is enough for all. The repentance that God requires is that we commit ourselves to helping make sure that the "leveling" between heaven and earth, (spoken of last week), applies to all of God’s children.

Advent: the season of expectation – not expectation in the sense of anxiety, but of anticipation. That is the real difference. If we are looking for the return of Christ it is in joyous anticipation of what is to come in God’s reign of justice and mercy as we participate as God’s children in turning the world right side up.

God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that God’s People may walk safely in the glory of God. Baruch 5:1-9

The most memorable things happen on mountaintops. Just think of the times in the Bible when transforming or pivotal events happen on top of mountains: Moses receives the Law which begins the process of forming a People and Moses later views the promised land from the top of Mount Nebo. Countless references in the lives of the prophets Elijah and Elisha testify to God’s communication with humans on mountains. Jesus, in his ministry, teaches on mountains, takes his disciples to mountaintops to reveal his place in their worldviews – in fact is even crucified on a mountaintop. It would be an interesting speculation to suggest that the Tempter’s offer to Jesus that he could own the whole world was a "mountaintop" experience for him!

In our own experiences mountains play a large part in our spiritual journeys. How often we speak of "mountaintop experiences," whether or not they actually take place on mountains. Churches look for mountain property for youth camps in order to provide such an experience. Mountain climbing is regarded as an enviable activity, and those who are successful are thought of as heroic.

In fact, mountains serve as symbols of some of the "thin places" between heaven and earth. Mountains are what we would call archetypes of the experience of earth meeting heaven – certainly that would be true of the stories in the Bible; Moses’ receiving of the Law was certainly such an experience, as was the disciples’ experience with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. And we, too, think of our own "mountaintop experiences" as times when we both see and feel beyond our normal, "earthly" capabilities – times when God seems particularly near – when earth and heaven seem to be very close together.

What, then, is the significance of the text from Baruch and the quotation from Isaiah found in today’s Gospel lesson? They both speak of mountains and hills being brought low and valleys being raised up. They promise a kind of "leveling of things – perhaps an indication that the distance between heaven and earth may be attainable without all that mountain-climbing. If the archetype suggests that we must climb to reach communication with God, and God’s promise is that the mountains will come down, then we should no longer have that "going back down into the valley" syndrome that always follows mystical occurrences in our lives. But look at the other half of the equation: not only do the mountains come down, but the valleys are elevated to an equal level. Humanity in its "valleys" is invited to a level playing field with divinity.

This is the promise of Advent: God comes down to humanity to show what it is that he was trying to tell for all those generations through the Law and the Prophets. And in doing so, humanity is raised to its rightful position as co-creator, as true image of the divine.

The story is told of a man who, though a very good man, had no use for religion or any of that "Jesus" stuff that his family believed in. On Christmas Eve one year he sent his family off to services as was their custom, and he settled in for a comfortable evening by the fire to await their return. The night was cold and snowy, and the temperature was dropping even more when he saw, out in the yard, a flock of birds standing around in the snow. "What dumb birds," he thought. "Don’t they know that they will freeze in this temperature?"

Being a good person, and not wanting the birds to freeze to death he bundled up and went outside to try to shoo them into the garage where, at least, there was no snow, and they might escape the freezing cold. As you might imagine the birds flew in every direction trying to escape his waving arms – every direction except the one he was indicating, of course. He was increasingly frustrated with his inability to communicate that he was trying to help, not hurt them, when a thought finally occurred to him: "If only I were a bird, then I could fly into the garage and they would follow…." Then the bell at the church rang to proclaim the birth of Jesus.

I keep saying that Advent is a time of anticipation, of expectation of what we are not quite sure. It is a movement from darkness to glimmers of dawn somewhere in the distance. Perhaps as we gaze into the tiny gleam of the distant light we also hear the (perhaps disquieting?) sound of mountains crumbling and feel the ground beneath us begin to move. Spread the news – the great leveling has begun.

"All the hazards of life are elements out of which we can fashion whatever we like." Novalis

This Gospel passage contains a very odd contradiction. Did you catch it? The very last part of it says this: "When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs." In other words, when you see the end coming, know that it is the beginning of the beginning – the beginning of contractions; something new is being born!

We live in a time of devastation, of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the famines in Africa – many of them caused by human negligence and abuse. Tsunamis are being reported more and more often, war is rampant over a large part of the planet, with humans fighting over land, idealisms, power. In addition, we experience loss and – even worse – change in our lives, threatening our sense of comfort, of stability – sometimes threatening our own existence. When we hear of catastrophes like the tornados in North Carolina this past week we ask ourselves, did these folks know what was headed their way? And if not, how can we protect ourselves from some unseen crisis right around the corner? The answer is: we cannot protect ourselves. Change and challenge happen to everyone. One of the things we talk about in the ministry of healing is that we are, after all, still subject to the process of nature – that process of birth, maturation, change, death – and, we believe, resurrection to something greater.

We get to rehearse this process all the time in this life. Our journeys begin in one direction, move along smoothly or with various obstacles, reach a point of focus, end, and often lead us into some realm of beauty, bliss, challenge, or interest that we never imagined. It would be an interesting exercise for each of us to make a timeline of our lives so far, noting the date we were born and marking the important events in our lives that we consider turning points. What happens at those times that we think we have reached the end of the road? It is, as Novalis notes, those hazards out of which we fashion the rest of our lives. It is the co-creative role that we share with God, making completely new and unique futures of the "stuff" of the present and the past.

An example: I think that I have told you before about reaching a point in my journey toward ordination when it was clear that I was at a dead end. I had sold my house in Albuquerque, (which I loved!), moved to New York City, spent three years of my 40’s in classes and field experiences, put myself $25,000 in debt, only to be told that I could not be ordained in the denomination that I claimed as mine. I literally stood in front of my bookcases, filled with texts, books of inspiration and class notes, and yelled at God, "Why the hell have you brought me here? I thought you told me this is what you wanted me to do!" The answer was not immediate – there were many months of plodding along wondering if I should invest my life in the television industry where I was working, if I should just pack up and go back to New Mexico where my daughter was waiting for my return, whether I should move to another part of the country where the church would be more friendly to folks like me. Never in my wildest dreams did I suspect that, unknown to him, Bishop Spong was waiting in his office for me to show up and offer myself to the Episcopal priesthood. And even after a long journey into that process, I wondered where, after all, I would end up. You see, the hazards of the journey were fitting themselves together to "birth" a new journey no one could have predicted.

Even now, having been here almost five years, I sometimes sit on the edge of my seat; I want to be the first to see where God is leading us next!

This is the process of creation. Creation is birthed out of the chaos of nothingness, according to Genesis 1. It is the Spirit of God that breathes into the chaos, if we permit and recognize it, to bring life and meaning out of what seems to us to be destruction and ruin.

Again today we witness the process of Creation from the beginning. Adults and youth are coming to this church and saying, "I am ready to start a new chapter in my life; please join with me as God gives birth to something new in my life." And so, when we get to the part of the Service of Baptism where I say, "Let us greet the newly baptized," we will joyfully remember God’s work in our own journeys – the easy and the difficult – as we respond, "We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood!"

If the only prayer you say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice. Meister Eckhardt

One of the great things that we do liturgically is a gesture that happens during the sacrament of baptism. It is the pouring of the water into the basin while giving thanks to God for the gift of water – even reciting some of the mighty acts of God in which water played a part: "through it you led the people of Israel out of their bondage…, in it your Son Jesus received baptism." That act of pouring water is very sensual, causes us to think of movement, energy, vitality. For a while I had a small fountain in my office, and people were always commenting on what a peaceful atmosphere it gave. Either that or it made them want to go to the bathroom.

The reading from Philippians is actually an ancient hymn text thought to have been sung by the early Christians. In it Jesus is described as having "poured himself out," taking the form of a slave. That is the meaning of the phrase, "emptied himself." In the Greek it is kenosis, or "pouring out." It is such a sensual picture of, not only giving oneself, but the active giving in a specific way – not just, "Here, take it," but a deliberate move of grace and gratitude. It is the way we give to someone when we are saying "Thank you," when we are giving attention to something important. We sometimes say something like, "Boy, she really poured herself into that project," signifying that the commitment made to the project was made deliberately, totally, and, perhaps, even lovingly.

In today’s Gospel we meet a woman who sacrifices in this same deliberate and loving way. We are given the picture of the powerful scribes who make their religious ritual an opportunity for social jockeying, showing off their clothes, playing games at dinners to gain attention and honor for themselves – even as they create long prayers that keep them in the spotlight for longer periods of time. There is that little aside that they, "devour widow’s houses."

The point is that, while all of the attention is going to those with "stuff" to show off, this woman is lovingly pouring herself into the offering that she presents, though it is monetarily much less than the others. It would be wrong to portray her as making some legalistic sacrifice; she is pouring herself into this offering.

Rob Petersen mentioned in this month’s newsletter that Bible verse that reads, "The Lord loves a cheerful giver," taking issue with it and suggesting that God loves even a grudging giver, a miserly giver – or even a non-giver. I think that it has become clear to us that God’s love and offer of abundance is extended to all of his creation. I think that Rob really hits it on the head, though, when he concludes, "Perhaps it might have been better said that a cheerful giver reflects God’s love or God’s love shines through a cheerful giver." It is the picture of this woman who pours herself into her gift, sacrificing – making sacred – everything that she has. Surely she would be exempt from making a temple offering, don’t you think, since she has nothing, is a woman without support, trying to make it on her own. Her gift, though, is not a requirement; it is a sign of gratitude, a sacrament, if you will. Her "attitude of gratitude" is what defines her – not her clothes, social status, or power position. What defines her in Jesus’ eyes is her gratitude. She has a realistic and blessed perspective of who she is in connection with the God of Creation. It really makes the people in power look shallow and artificial – even mean – doesn’t it?

This is not really meant to be a pre-stewardship sermon – though, if it works that way I will not complain. But I hope that it is obvious how closely our connection to Creation and to God is linked to our ability to be grateful. At its best, our attempts to speak to financial stewardship and support for the church and its ministries is tied up in calling us to a greater sense of gratitude and an expression of it in tangible, financial ways, rather than by giving some guilt trip, manipulation, or simply appealing to our ability to pay the bills. We would like to think of our financial pledging as a way of pouring ourselves into what we believe in, cherish, and, yes, even love. It is the call to pour ourselves into some project that reflects God’s love through the Millennium Development Goals - out of gratitude not only for what we have, but also for what we experience as God’s children.

Being the sometimes forward thinker that I am, I have already written my column for the December newsletter. It grew out of a quotation that I came across from Howard Thurman, a great theologian, educator, civil rights leader. It says, "Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." That is the story of this woman. She has found something to pour herself into. We certainly hope that you find a way to pour yourself into the support of this church in financial ways, but we are more anxious that you find your passion – find what makes you come alive, and go do it. Our neighborhood will find irresistible a group of people who, through their gratitude, have found how to pour themselves into the things that make them come alive.

As far back as the early 3^rd century after Jesus’ life there have been recorded observances – mostly celebrations – of the lives and deaths of martyrs, those who died while proclaiming their faith. I don’t say "defending the faith" because we believe that the Faith in not in need of defending; it alone stands on its own merits, and does not need a lawyer or a schoolyard bully to protect it or defend it. Nevertheless, it has been important to celebrate the lives of those who have lived exemplary lives and passed on to what we believe is a richer, fuller existence somewhere in the cosmos that we call Heaven. Somehow we have the sense that they continue to be part of our lives here on earth, and people speak of conversing with or being influenced by those who have gone before.

This text from the Wisdom of Solomon seems an apt text for All Saints: "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seem to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace." On the surface this is a comfort to those of us who have lost loved ones, who want to be assured that they are in better hands for having passed from this life to another. I would like to make a case for the possibility that the writer could just as easily be talking about those who still live on this earth – that, in fact, we can dwell in the hand of God where no torment will ever touch. I don’t mean that we never experience sorrow, loss, or hardship, but that the confidence that "though in the sight of others, [we] are punished, [our] hope is full of immortality." This goes against the grain of much that passes for modern day Christianity. Some today would say that if we seem to be punished it must be because we have done something terrible; that God intends only happiness and prosperity for God’s Children, that the souls of the "living righteous" are free from any ambiguity or concern, and anything that departs from that is untrue to God’s will for "the souls of the righteous."

If we take seriously this possibility - that we are presently in the hand of God - and that our present lives, though seemingly difficult, are, in fact, full of immortality, then a kind of erasing can occur between what we call the living and the dead. We can see that we are one Creation with those who dwell in the invisible realm beyond the world that our limited sight can apprehend. This is the real meaning of resurrection – that new life can be realized out of death even on this planet. We must believe this or the little deaths that we experience on a regular basis will overwhelm us and we will not be able to function! You know the kinds of death I am talking about: the death of a career, of a relationship, deaths of dreams, of plans carefully laid for a comfortable retirement, dreams for our children or grandchildren. The list goes on. You know the kinds of deaths that appear as though we have ceased to exist, that nothing good can come of them, that we are at the end of the rope, so to speak.

It is at this point that we claim – by faith – the promise that the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and, though torment is all around, it will not be able to touch us. Today’s Gospel passage is a great parable of Jesus regarding resurrection. Never thought of this story as a parable? A parable sets up a comparison of two sets of situations. In this story Jesus, who, as everyone knows, has the power to heal his friend who is ill. For some reason, however, Jesus has chosen to delay his visit, resulting in his friend’s death. Imagine the anger, the grief this caused his family and friends surrounding him. "if you had been here my brother would not have died." Death pervades the atmosphere; imagine - and you may not have to imagine - an atmosphere of death. You may have been there, may know how it feels, how it tastes, how it smells. Jesus does not even hide his own grief. He knows what it tastes and smells like. But in his own grief he is connected to Resurrection. While everyone else is preoccupied with the nastiness of the situation, the hopelessness, Jesus is tuned in to Resurrection.

The words from Revelation are not the words of the future: they are a present day reality! "Behold! The home of God is among mortals! He will dwell with them (does dwell with them!) as their God; they will be (are!) his peoples, and God himself will be (is!) with them; he continually wipes every tear from their eyes." Death no longer exists, as a final threat. While mourning and crying and pain have not quite passed from the scene, we have a new perspective of death that leads to resurrection. Along with Lazarus we come out our graves of disappointment and fear to hear Jesus say of us, "Unbind them and let them go!" Let them go to live full lives without fear, without a need for certainties on the all to often uncertain journey, with full confidence that, when all is said and done, "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God."

That is really the point, isn’t it? We spend so much of our time trying to decide what is right or wrong or even what is better or worse that we forget that what we really want is what will last in a world where everything seems to be disposable. I have given up on purchasing small appliances that can be repaired or for which replacement parts can be found. It is most often less expensive to throw something away and buy new than to try to fix something. It is a time of disposable – just about everythings! Our best friends change sometimes from week to week, relationships last only as long as they work without much inconvenience. How do we find what is really lasting?

This is not a new problem. In today’s Gospel passage Jesus addresses just this situation. The dilemma faced by the disciples is, "Who will get to be the boss when Jesus establishes his kingdom?" Or, in other words, who will have the power? The pursuit of power is perhaps the most insidious and dangerous temptation humans have faced through the ages. If I don’t have power over someone else they may gain power over me. The other "biggies," money and sex, boil down to this one power issue. If I can "have" someone sexually then I will wield a kind of control over them. If I have enough money then I can have control not only of my own destiny but others as well. In fact, even if I don’t have sexual or financial control I may be able to fake it if I am associated in some way with those who do. And so we flatter those that we perceive have the power, do what we can to identify with them, and take advantage of what ever benefit it may bring us. We rarely think to "cozy up" to the homeless or unattractive. What benefit would that bring us?

So the disciples are caught bickering over who will be greatest. Who will be chosen? Who will win the election? Jesus’ response seems to be unrelated to the issue at hand; sure kids are cute and innocent, but what does that have to do with who gets the good stuff? The connection is that Jesus did not choose the child for its cuteness to prove how someone will be kind to innocence or out of some sentimental reflection of an idyllic childhood. Jesus, in the context of his time, was reflecting, rather, on the disposability of children, the vulnerability of these little liabilities that took up space and food without producing anything in return. There was none of the "ideal childhood" sensibility that many children in our country enjoy. They were often lucky to reach adulthood – they were simply disposable. Do you see the scandal of Jesus’ lesson to the disciples? "You guys are worried about some position of power that you would probably have to continue to fight for, to manipulate other people for, to be worried about keeping. Look here, what really lasts is how you treat the most vulnerable – the disposable." He said this while taking a child in his arms – actually paying attention to one of those little urchins! This is the call of Jesus to us today. He would have us be less flattering to those in temporal power in order to support those who can give help us to cultivate something more permanent: character, justice, true self-determination for the most vulnerable.

The passage from Wisdom describes how the ungodly will use their power to "insult and torture" the righteous person simply because they are called to account for their actions and attitudes – not by anything the righteous says, but simply for what he or she is. The passage ends, though, with these words: "their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of holiness (wholeness), nor discerned the prize for blameless souls." That is what the disciples missed: they had their eyes on power that was passing away without knowing the secret purposes of God that could be revealed to them in the person of a helpless, vulnerable child.

James really hits the nail on the head though as he speaks of the fractured nature of the human condition: "Where do those conflicts and disputes come from? They come from the internal war being waged inside of you! You want something and can’t have it so you conspire to get it at any cost. You don’t get what you want because you are looking for the wrong things – the things that will not last."

Boy, this sermon is a downer! You shouldn’t do this and you shouldn’t do that – where is the Good News? What is the Gospel for us in these readings? I think that, over time, we have discovered the good news about those little "good for nothings" known as children: they do reflect for us the essence of goodness – of God-ness. We have learned how to look into their eyes and be graced by the simple wisdom that they have to offer. We rejoice in every new word, phrase, gesture that they make. We have found how they enrich our lives. Children around the world do not always have the luxury of being doted on as we do our own. Children are still among the most at-risk humans on the planet, as the research for the Millennium Development Goals tells us. But in our neighborhood and culture children have it pretty good. It is the single mother scraping to make a living that we do not honor for her lasting value, the laborer or the part time worker without health insurance that we do not flatter or consider, the difficult or socially challenged that we would rather not engage in conversation. Will our culture advance, as we have in the area of our children, to the point that we, as the Baptismal Covenant says, "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving all of our neighbors as ourselves," and that we "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?"

I mentioned in passing last Sunday a movie you should see, called "The Girl in the Café." It is a wonderful love story told in the context of a man involved in a G8 conference in which the MDGs are in the mix of priorities. His love interest is a mysterious woman who confides in him her defense of a child that was being abused. "Was it your child?" he asks, and her response resonates through the world where children and all vulnerable persons lack power: "Does it matter whose child it was?" Real, lasting power for the Christian comes not from influence, but from defending those who cannot defend themselves.

This pivotal event in the ministry of Jesus and the development of his disciples is often singled out for us, as Christians, to answer the same question, "Who do you say that I am?" One of the commentators that I read this week suggested that the first part of this "test" for the disciples, "Who do people say that I am?," suggests a sort of "gossip theology;" it is often much easier to talk about God, or what others say about God, than it is to make a personal claim to who God is. In this case Peter gives the correct answer, but is completely wrong! His proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah seems, at first blush, to be exactly the right answer, but his immediate display that his understanding of who the Messiah is reveals that he doesn’t have a clue. His definition of Jesus is bound – as are our own – by his own context and expectations for what Jesus will deliver to him.

Another commentator, one who has a better sense of the mentality of the times says that, in fact, Jesus was not asking about himself personally, as it was not part of the thinking of the time to think of one’s individuality, but, rather, of one’s place in a group or community. In other words, Jesus was asking, "Who are we?" "How does what we are doing fit into the larger culture?" "What are we doing that will leave lasting effect on our surroundings?" I might ask you in this way: "Who do you think that we are?" What is it about this community that keeps you involved, interested – that keeps you coming back? What are your hopes for this community that will create a lasting effect on our neighborhood and culture? We say that we are here because we are drawn by some devotion to God through Jesus that we call Christ, but what, actually, does that mean? We will all answer those questions out of our own contexts and bound by our own expectations – many having to do with what we want to happen for ourselves. In answering we, like Peter, will be correct and dreadfully flawed all in one breath. The fact is that our journey with Jesus is just that – a journey – an education, a learning experience that demands that we continually reevaluate and redefine what we are wanting, expecting and demanding.

In slips Wisdom. Wisdom is the "reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, an image of his goodness," in the words of today’s Wisdom passage. To tell you the truth I had never read this passage before, and was very surprised that this theology of the reflection of God’s goodness existed. It is this picture of the mirror image of God’s image that has shaped my own sense of who we are – made in the image of God, but broken, fragmented, as I have said, like a broken mirror. Wisdom, the passage says, is "the spotless mirror of the working of God" – not the flawed, fragmented version that we seek to heal as we pray each week. It is Wisdom that we seek to make us Whole. And this passage promises that, "in every generation, she passes into holy (wholly) souls, and makes them friends of God." Wisdom has the potential of bringing our contexts, our expectations, and our demands into sharp focus as to what the working of God is – and our place in it.

What does it mean to live "in Wisdom?" I think that it means taking the time and effort to try to think, move and live through the mind of God rather than what might come naturally to us. We all know, and probably remember, times in which we have made decisions or said something on impulse, only to be sorry later. We wish that we had taken a little more time to sort out the potential consequences of our actions or words. This is not to say that Wisdom does not lead us to say difficult words or make difficult decisions. In fact, our impulse might often be to assuage or to avoid difficulty or confrontation when the hard thing is the best thing. The point is that our immediate reactions, words, actions are often products of our context, our needs, or our demands without the aid of Wisdom’s perspective.

I hardly need to mention today’s passage from James. It is so self-revealing and self-illustrating that it preaches itself. The fact that the tongue is the smallest of members with the most power for good and ill is almost self-evident, though I am always surprised by some who have no sense of the need for its control – or at least a nod to Wisdom before it gets used. This text from James is powerful and entertaining as well, so you may want to revisit it on your own later.

So, who is it that people say that we are? I think the days of our being known as the "church with the gay rector" are over. When I am out and about the diocese it seems as though we are known as the "healing" church. Perhaps we are beginning to be known as the church with a heart for the West Side of Buffalo through our activities with the STAR program, Westside Diversity Coalition, the Grant-Ferry Initiative, the Massachusetts Avenue Project, Pastor Aristote and the Messianic Missionary Church, the Elmwood Festival, our Food Fair, our hospitality to recovery groups, our increasing involvement in Journey’s End and our attachment to refugees like Salvator. I like the possibility that we might be known for those things. I like the phrase that we have been using to describe who we are, "An Inclusive Community of Faith and Compassion." I want to hear that being said about us a lot. Who do people say that we are?

Secondly, who do you say that we are? Like the disciples who stayed with Jesus because, as they said, "to whom shall we go? This is where we find the words of Life!" I hope that you stay here because you are finding the words of Life, of healing, of challenge to make a difference in a broken and fragmented world. I hope that your context is constantly challenged to new vistas of what Jesus as the Messiah means for you.

One last observation: if you do find those kinds of healings and challenges that make you a part of this community, it is a sure bet that you know someone else who is looking for the same thing. We are evangelists for something every day: for our cars, the latest movie, our favorite peanut butter or "Dancing with the Stars." What is it that keeps us from suggesting to our colleagues on a daily basis that we know a place where they can find the Words of Life? I urge you to mention it to one person this week and offer them a ride to church with you next Sunday.

Proper 17B, September 3, 2006

I had a choice of Old Testament texts today. The one "not traveled" was from Deuteronomy, which was several paragraphs saying, "obey the commandments that I am giving you." This passage would have been a great complement to the Gospel passage about obeying religious tradition, had that been a message I believed in or felt like God has for us. Instead I chose a poem from the Canticle that does nothing but celebrate romantic love between two young people. I hope that I can make clear why I made that choice.

Jesus’ condemnation of religious tradition still rings through the ages. There are still religious leaders who want to control not only what you think, but what you do about what you believe. Ritual hand-washing was not part of the original commandments given to help shape this Israelite nation; it was a result of interpretation of the Law, a sort of twisting of the Law to suit the needs of those in religious power – and certainly not a sign of particular devotion to God or a wish to be more totally dedicated to a life of Wholeness. We can hear in Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ criticism something like, "You know, it doesn’t matter nearly as much what you put into your mouth as it does what comes out of your heart." So much of the church is still tied up in what you do and how you do it – and with whom you do it – that the Church, the instrument of the Gospel, the Good News, is rendered impotent and irrelevant – no longer Good News. While change is the only constant we have, it is still true that people are attracted to authenticity rather than orthopraxy, or doing what is perceived by those in power to be the right thing. Jesus’ ministry struck a chord with those who were disempowered by the demands of those religious leaders who, out of their authority, sought to control their behavior and, in doing so, their beliefs.

Last Wednesday’s Gospel passage, (Matt. 23: 27-32), parallels today’s in an encounter in which Jesus compares the Pharisees with "whitewashed tombs which, on the outside, look beautiful, but inside they are filled with the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth." They are what even today’s world knows as a hypocrite, a stage actor, or someone who pretends to be what they are not. The fact is that while an artificial life can be made to look like a model home – or a whitewashed tomb – an authentic life is much messier. Don’t you know this in your own experience? We love to look at the pictures in magazines of model homes, but we always come away saying, "But that would never suit my family or my lifestyle. That beautiful setting wouldn’t last ten minutes with my crew." Authenticity is messy.

Authenticity in our lives is messy. There are very rare, if any, occasions when everything is in place in our lives, and we can stand back and say, "There, that’s just how I envisioned it." Most of the time we are hiding the dirty laundry, trying to get the place picked up and ready for another onslaught or upheaval. According to the passage from James, the test of true religion does not have to do with "getting it right - washing hands or saying the right prayers, or projecting a "Christian image," - but it consists of caring for orphans and widows, and retaining a sense of God’s priorities. "Keeping one unstained by the world," in our culture might mean resisting the culture of consumerism and exploitation – where a person’s worth is measured by their buying power. Or it might mean resisting a mentality that says that "might must be right," otherwise it would not be might. Maybe it means resisting the feeling that we are who we are by our own accomplishment – so those who have not made it to our level can simply go to Hell.

I would suggest one other way in which we can resist becoming whitewashed tombs: that is to fall in love again. Nothing is more authentic than the helplessness we feel when we are engulfed by passions beyond our control. Religious traditions and strictures gain power any time we forget what we really love. After all the attention given to the Ten Commandments Jesus says, "The really important thing is this: love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength – with your whole self," (you know I love that word, Whole), "and, at the same time, love your neighbor and love yourself." The entire commandment is wrapped up not in our ability to follow the rules, but in our ability to love authentically. It will be this ability to love that will make this church a powerful force for change in our personal relationships and in this neighborhood. It is this ability to love that helps us, as we said last week, to "take on" the suffering of people in other parts of the country as they undergo tragedy. It is this ability to love that will awaken our hearts to the devastation on most of this planet as people live in abject poverty, children die of starvation and disease caused by drinking water, and children are abducted and forced to be soldiers in turf wars around the world.

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past and the rain is over and gone." In a late 18^th century commentary, Matthew Henry suggested that the Song of Songs, or Canticle, was a picture of Christ and the Church. We still use that language in our wedding ceremony. I do think that the Canticle is about falling in love – in finding an object of desire that has the ability to transport us out of our own mundane rule-keeping and give us new life. Frankly, if I cannot discover something of the "newly in love" feeling, of eroticism, of fun and excitement in being together in the Church, I have more important things to do. I pray for the winter of expectations, of "shoulds" and "oughts" to be over, for the rains of other peoples’ disapproval, of inauthentic religiosity, to be over and gone for us all.

I probably don’t have to remind many of you that the state of being in love is, like a life of authenticity, a messy business. There are unruly emotions, charting new courses, accommodating another person’s ways, plodding on, one step at a time, toward what we hope will be a marriage of the two – the two becoming one, as we say. So I invite you to embrace this messy religious life – a life of authenticity and of falling in love once more with what brought you here to begin with!

We Will Stand With You, August 27, 2006

I am very uneasy about preaching from this Gospel text today. I am only too aware that to preach it to this congregation is very different than if I were to have to preach it to St. Paul’s Church in New Orleans on this anniversary observance of Hurricane Katrina. Here, where we are relatively secure in our lives and our situations, we run the risk of saying, "Ho, hum. Sure, don’t be worried about what to eat or drink or clothes. We get it." In New Orleans, where, one year after massive devastation, life is nowhere near normal, I might face a violent protest just for reading such scandalous words. "What do you mean, "Don’t worry?" Don’t you know that my family has been scattered for a year, that we have no home, that the insurance refused to cover our loss, that we are still living in this makeshift thing that the government provided after many months, that we have no way of making a living, that our businesses are gone, our employers have moved out and may never return, that we literally do not know what fresh hell tomorrow will bring? What do you mean, "Don’t worry?"

And I am reminded by the presence of Laurie Leous and her daughter, Valerie, in our community that there are many who have lost everything including their sense of "place," as they have been completely uprooted from psychic and geographical locations. How will they begin again?

The challenge for me today, I think is to link up those two sentiments – those two groups of people – and see what God has to say for us all, though you will be the only ones to hear it. The simple resolution is to call upon you all to express sympathy for those that are suffering – to respond empathetically to persons in distress. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? I began, as I often do, to explore this idea of sympathy – of empathy – to see what it might really mean for us if we choose to do it. In fact, the Greek root of both of those words, "sympathy" and "empathy" is "pathos" or, literally, "suffering;" and the prefixes "sym" and "em" mean "with" or "together." So to sympathize or empathize really means "to suffer together with." In fact, the prefix "em" goes one step further and suggests that we "enter into" the suffering of another, to step into their shoes, to not only feel what they might feel, but to enter into their experience so that the suffering is diffused, cut in half, that we "take on" the suffering of another.

Does this sound familiar to you from a theological standpoint? We are told that Jesus "took on" our sins - that "Christ died for you." Jesus, in effect, is said to have felt the greatest sympathy for the human race by taking on its brokenness and suffering. Is this what we are being asked to do for our neighbors on the Gulf Coast? I don’t suppose that we can imagine coming to worship in a place that is totally devastated, where not only the pews are rotten and broken, but that the lovely altar and hangings are moldy and destroyed, our lovely pulpit destroyed, and our organ totaled. It makes our little flood a few weeks ago seem tame by comparison.

We will take a special offering in a little while that will help to alleviate their suffering to a certain extent - that will help them to restore the material things that are useful or that give them comfort or familiarity in their worship. I wonder, though, if giving out of our abundance will truly provide for us and for them a sense of our "taking on," of "stepping inside" their suffering. I am not sure how to do that, but I am reminded by Matthew Fox that our time of Confession following our prayers is not only a time to speak those "things we have done and left undone," but is a time to actually grieve over the brokenness of Creation, to embrace loss and to take on suffering. Perhaps today as we are called by Deacon Cecily to confession, we can actually step into the shoes of those who have lost everything – perhaps even those shoes. Somehow we use the idea that the healing team uses as we pray with you for healing: to make ourselves a funnel for the Holy Spirit to move through our lives to diffuse the suffering, to cut the suffering in half for those who are carrying the entire burden of loss. Perhaps we use some of our confession to visualize a person or a family that is facing an uncertain future – or a certain catastrophic future – asking God to enter into their experience and bring about, as the reading from Isaiah suggests, "new heavens and a new earth…former things not being remembered or coming to mind," a place where, "no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress." We can call upon God to restore a place where, "they shall not build for another to inhabit, nor plant for another to eat – where like the days of a tree shall God’s people be," not exploited by ruthless contractors, indifferent and arrogant government officials, empty promises and dead-end hopes.

God calls us into sympathy with our human family. We are "one Body, one Spirit in Christ." How can we respond to the needs of those on the other side of the continent? Our monetary offering is a beginning, and God’s Spirit will accompany those gifts. But how do we offer ourselves to those in need? There is a question that God will answer in our own hearts and our corporate heart as the Body of Christ.

I got an email from Kim Smith last week which I have asked permission to quote: "I have been asked if I do not see the end of days at hand with the dire state of affairs around the world. All I can say is that I have had my end of days on several occasions, and in the aftermath I have always found God and new life. If your faith is founded in hope and love, I say you will meet those days with celebration. If it is founded in suspicion and fear…well you might want to renovate and old bomb shelter." He continues, "One of you receiving this once told me that if you have the Peace of God within you, it matters not if the world around you is at peace." That person to whom Kim refers is Salvator. We don’t know from one day to the next if Salvator is alive in his war-torn Borundi, desperately scraping to provide for his young, struggling family, but we do know the Peace of God through his life and witness.

"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the field…your heavenly father feeds them. Consider the lilies of the field…even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these." And to the people of St. Paul’s and others with them: We will stand with you.

Proper 15B, August 20, 2006

Each week when I begin preparing to preach I am reminded of a book title I once saw, "Trembling at the Edge of a Text." It is always true that I am intimidated by the prospect of approaching Scripture texts and coming before you to share what I think is "God’s Word" for the day. However, today’s texts, particularly the Gospel, have been more vivid than most.

Baptist always use this verse from Ephesians to promote a lifestyle called "tee-totalling," or total abstinence from consuming alcoholic beverages, but they rarely move to the second part of the verse that, in effect, says, "If you want to really get high, try guzzling the life of God in huge quantities." I want to suggest today that we have three texts that invite us into what I might call an "alternative gluttony," a voracious appetite for the Life of God.

Beginning with the passage from Proverbs, it is Wisdom, the female counterpart of the male "YHWH," a female God, if you will, who invites those of us who are simple, ignorant in any way, slow to catch on, to eat of her bread, to drink of her wine – a meal that produces not a bloated stomach or a hangover the next day, but Life, a "growing up" into a life of insight. There are overtones of sacrifice in this passage, the setting of a table, the slaughter of animals and ritual mixing of concoctions to drink. If you remember from a few weeks ago, the root of the word "sacrifice" is simply to make sacred. We are invited to a feast in which what we consume makes our lives sacred, infuses our lives with the Life of God. So it is with Wisdom’s feast. She invites us to the sacrificial feast of meaning and richness of life.

The Gospel for today is much more graphic in its depiction of this same invitation. "Eat my flesh and drink my blood," says Jesus, "so that you can participate in the Life of God." We have become so comfortable with this language that this type of cannibalism has become commonplace language for us. We hear it every week, and rarely does anyone rush out of the room in disgust or sick to their stomach at the prospect of eating the flesh of a human being or drinking their blood, though, when we think about it, that seems to be the appropriate response. Not only does this text demand that that kind of consumption be done, but that it be done gleefully, with abandon – almost greedily.

This particular text is not found in the context of the Holy Eucharist as others are. In fact, John’s Gospel does not even give us an account of the Last Supper as is found in the synoptic gospels. Rather, in this account, Jesus is using outlandish, overly-exaggerated, counter-cultural language to make a powerful point. For the Jew the consumption of blood – even in cooked meat – was prohibited because it was what was sacrificed to YHWH. Blood, more than anything, was seen as the vehicle of Life Force. Blood is where Life resides and the way that it is transported through the body. We still speak in terms of "life blood." Likewise the fatty part of the meat – the part designated by this term "flesh" – was also the part that was burned up in the sacrifice. Both were considered sacred because of their connection to Life Force – that to consume these elements was to, as it were, steal Life from God. The actual Hebrew word for murder translates as "to steal blood," or to rob someone of Life Force. It is in this idea that the scandal of Jesus’ teaching is revealed: "take this Life Force of mine – I give it to you – and consume it voraciously, as though you were starving. Only in doing so will you receive true meat and true drink." So, taken out of the context of this familiar ritual that we enact on a very regular basis, the consumption of the very Life Force of God through Jesus is a serious matter indeed. Without it, as Jesus suggests, all we are consuming is artificial life support.

How does this translate into our everyday life? The writer to the Ephesians suggests that how we live is crucial. "Be careful how you live," he says, "not as unwise people, but as wise, making the most of time." Sounds like Wisdom’s invitation to dinner, doesn’t it? I have struggled with the phrase, "because the days are evil." Some commentators suggest that this means something like, "it is particularly important that you make the most of time in days like this when the world is most in need of real meaning." Did he listen to the news this past week? For a document that is 1900 years old, it seems very contemporary. I think it can mean that the world really needs people who have been deeply transformed by what they have consumed, the Life of God. But I also think that the word "evil" might be substituted with the word, "precious." Live as people who are wise, making the most of time, because time is precious. It is what we expect to last forever and never does. Life is precious. Be careful what you eat. Make sure that what you are consuming is providing the Life Force of God.

Now back to the opening statement regarding not getting drunk on wine? Many of us in our culture have come to know in stark reality that to depend on wine for a really good time is an empty promise. Out of control it wrecks families and lives, relationships and careers. Fortunately, in the past 50 years, groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have allowed people to address this addiction, and the addiction to many things that cannot be consumed in large quantities without severe consequences. There is, however, one thing which we can consume for Life! It is the reason that most of you continue to meet here week after week, year after year. It is the Life of God – the flesh and blood that makes our lives sacred – that keeps us coming back for more. We are a sacramental people. We believe in those outward and visible symbols of inward and spiritual graces. We do come to devour with fervor those symbols of God’s Life. So do not count on mere physical food and drink for life. God provided manna for the Israelites in the desert, says the letter to the Ephesians, and they eventually died. But the one who eats this bread – this flesh and blood – will live forever.

The Transfiguration, August 6, 2006

Most recently our texts have taken us to explore our "mudness," our very human natures, as they relate to God and God’s plan for Humanity. Transfiguration Sunday, on the other hand, gives a glimpse into Glory; our texts relate supernatural events, (in the most basic sense of the word, "exceeding natural"), as happening to a human individual and affecting another group of people. In fact, the individual in question is not just any individual, but, rather, a member of the group – a leader of the group. These events convey what it might be like if the Glory of God were to be realized in Humanity at any particular place and time. The problem with them for us is that we see these two events as stuck in a particular place and time – miracles for us to look at, wonder at and believe in, but unrelated to our own experiences.

Moses’ encounter with God causes his face to literally shine forth with rays of light so that he must keep his face veiled except when he is speaking to the Israelites on behalf of God. Likewise, Jesus’ face is "changed" and his clothes become "dazzling white" causing all kinds of confusion among the three disciples who are with him. Don’t we wish that God would speak to us so deliberately, so dramatically, and so precisely? Our life in God would be so much easier if we had a definite word – commandments to disseminate and live by, or conversations with Holy Men of long ago. There are a few people who claim to have had such experiences, and I do not doubt them – but why not me? I seem to plod along wondering whether the directions I take, or in which I try to lead, are really the most productive or even the right ones. There was such a distinctive, definitive quality about the Giving of the Law (capitals) or the discussion Jesus had with Moses and Elijah. Does God not speak so clearly any more? Are we left to our own devices to know what God’s plan for our community is? Wouldn’t it be easier if He just illuminated His plan to your rector and it would be obvious by some sign like glowing skin or, better yet, a dazzling wardrobe? Instead, the rector, the wardens, and the vestry struggle along on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to try to discern the direction God wants us to take as a community. And there is never agreement among us as to what that might be. And we try to recognize in one another the possibility that God may be leading and speaking through us. It would be so much easier if God would just take us to a mountaintop and make it clear.

(Parenthetically, there is an opportunity for us to do something like that next month, as we have reserved space for 40 people to spend two nights at Stella Niagara living with an instrument called the Enneagram – discerning spiritual gifts and how they relate to who and what we are as a community. We have not attempted a congregation-wide retreat on this scale since I have been here, and I feel it would be very valuable and empowering. I encourage you to go and be part of this expression of St. John’s Grace’s life together.)

So do these opportunities never come our way? Is God’s Word set in concrete with no new revelation, no new visions or "aha" moments in which God’s Word for us is made new, refreshed, made clear? I have to say that I will be very disappointed if all we have to work with is a couple of events that happened several thousand years ago. The God that I committed to serve must speak today or "He" is useless to me. And, in fact, if that is true that God has spoken, never to speak again, then I made a huge mistake by turning my life upside down to become a priest – a leader of a group of people who profess a belief in a life-changing God. I am personally in need of one of those life-defining events that makes everything clear, that taps into the passion of the faith community and, frankly, makes my face shine. Are you?

There are several aspects to these events that seem to be common to the extraordinary experiences related on Transfiguration Sunday. The first is that they happened as a result of prayer. Prayer is a sort of strange term for Episcopalians because of our connection to the idea of Common Prayer – formulas that we share with other Christians throughout the world. I think it is safe to say that prayer in these events signifies a deep and abiding relationship and communication with God, not simply a litany in God’s ear as to what we want done for us and our friends. It is through a continuous relationship that God’s Presence shines through. We need to be people not only of the prayers that we share together in worship or in specific quiet times before sleep, but people who live in a constant communication with God – or as Paul says, "praying without ceasing," or remaining in a spirit of prayer.

Secondly, the people were not always aware of what was happening in their experience. Moses, for example, did not know that his face was shining until someone told him about it – and the disciples almost slept through the Transfiguration! Is it possible that we are near, within view of, or in the middle of a Defining Moment in our lives together as a community? How will we know, and how will we prevent our sleeping through and missing it?

The fact is that we do experience Glory at times. When we least expect it God breaks through our "mudness" and gives us a glimpse of something greater, transcendent, beyond our imaginations. What we have to remember is that it sometimes takes forty years in the wilderness, a lot of hunger and thirst, complaining – a few waterfalls from the rocks, lesser miracles. It always takes weeks, months – even years – of walking the dusty road with the teacher/healer Jesus, marveling in ordinary healings, as we do during Ordinary Time every year, to be able to experience the Glory.

It is well also to remember that these experiences represented the culmination – the highest point – of these particular journeys: Moses’ receiving the Law from God to form a new People and Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem. Don’t forget, it was Jesus’ death that he was talking about with Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop, not a naive grand scheme early on in his ministry. It was an expression of the bottom line meaning of his ministry – his death.

One last observation about moments of Glory: the last sentence of the Gospel indicates that the disciples did not speak of the experience in the days following. It is often true that moments of Glory reach so deeply into us that they cannot be expressed. There is no language to describe the event, and we would not want to express it if there were words to suffice.

While I long for a transfiguring moment, I pray that, as we trudge through the valley we will remain alert for those moments in which God’s Glory is given as food for the journey in small everyday ways.

Proper 12B, July 30, 2006

My friend Louie Crew paraphrases that verse to reflect the opposite truth: "perfect fear casts out love." It seems to be true that the things that we fear are the things that stand in the way of our being totally committed to something or someone, of our becoming totally who we are meant to be. Somehow we as humans have come to believe that we are worthy of punishment only, as John implies, and not love. For that reason we live in a sort of chronic fear, thinking that punishment is around every corner, rather than committing ourselves to the gracious love of the Creator God.

This dynamic is at work in today's Gospel lesson. When faced with the unknown - a figure walking toward them on the sea - they assume that it is a malevolent force rather than assuming that it is a saving force. We are programmed to expect the worst. I think that this goes directly against what we are taught about God in the Bible. Paul says to the Romans, "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry Abba! Daddy! it is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." Religion has taught us to be careful of offending God; the presumption is that God is essentially looking for reasons to punish. What do we think of a situation in which a child fears - even dreads - the arrival of a father because it means punishment or abuse? Paul says that we, as children of God, look forward to the appearance and presence of God because it means good things!

One of the commentaries that I looked at this week suggests that the Gospel speaks of Jesus walking on the sea - not the water - for a specific purpose: "to walk on the sea is to trample on a being that can engulf people with its waves, swallow them in its deep, and support all sorts of living beings." The writer continues, "Given the structure of boats in the period, people who traveled over or worked on the sea literally put their lives in the hands of the spirits or deity that revealed its moods in the varying movements of the sea, from stormy, to rough, to calm, and the like." This is the story of Elijah and Elisha as well. It was revealed that Elisha would be God's Holy Man, the successor to the great Holy Man of God, Elijah, because, just like Elijah, he had power to subdue the Jordan River, to make it part just as Moses had done at the Red Sea. In doing so they not only "parted water," as it were, but they actually had power over demonic forces. That is what signified that they were Holy Men. Jesus is in their tradition - a person with power over the Deep.

It is strange, but understandable, that the disciples had occasion to fear in this case: they had just experienced the feeding of the five thousand. Didn't they understand the power and generosity of God as shown in his ministry through Jesus? See the point is this: the disciples believed in the power of destruction that they faced on the sea, but could not trust the power of love as evidenced in the feeding of so many people. There is a cryptic allusion to this fact in the last sentence of the Gospel, "They were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened." The feeding of the five thousand which we read last week - that display of the abundance of Creation in which a little became much in the hands of the Lord of Creation, should have been a clue to the nature of the abundance of God, but they didn't get it.

The Gospel writer cannot help but rub in this notion: they saw Jesus as a savior from violence, but could not understand his basic generosity in providing for all. They wanted safety for themselves, but were hardened against a wider generosity. We are not so different. We most often see God's power as a personal safety provision, but do not understand God's interest in providing for all God's Children. This can be heard in a statement such as, "God takes care of His own." Are we not all, after all, God's own?

I cannot resist the opportunity to mention this great passage from the letter to the Ephesians. Paul, or probably a member of the "Pauline School of Theology" some time later, says, "I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called." What is that calling? It is the calling into adoption as Children of God. And how do we live into that calling? It is expressed in how we relate to one another as siblings: with humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another, not out of a sense of duty, but through love.

The second paragraph of today's reading, though, is crucial to our understanding of our roles as Children of God because it reveals the innate diversity that the family will exhibit when it works right. What it reveals is that every member of the body will be differently and richly gifted, functioning as each is called - not necessarily as others expect. A Child of God - a member of the Body of Christ - is responsible only to use his or her gifts in the operation of the body: "joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped - each part working properly - promoting the body's growth in building itself up in love," but also to respect and empower the gifts of others. Does it free you to know that you are not responsible for anyone else, or for the success of the whole, but only to make your contribution fit into the larger picture? When that happens there can be no fear of punishment. The greatest accomplishment will happen when we all recognize our own contribution, and that of others, joyfully and generously contributing to the whole body.

So we are back to where we started: "Perfect love casts out fear." If we are totally engaged and committed to this Body of Christ thing, then we do not fear failure because of our own weakness, nor do we fear the differences that others bring to the process. We are free to be fully and joyfully who we are without fear of punishment for being less than we are. May we continue to live into the abundance and total acceptance God intends for us. It is the experience of being human.

Proper 11B, July 23, 2006

"This is a deserted place and the hour is late." What dismal words! Particularly when they are followed by "send them away," do we hear a sense of despair in the disciples' voices. Can you imagine the thoughts that went through their minds when Jesus answered, "You give them something to eat?" They were exhausted and Jesus himself had recognized their need for a respite, inviting them away for a well-deserved rest on the other side of the lake. "What happened to our vacation," we might well hear them mumbling behind Jesus' back. "Isn't that just the way! There is just never a moment to ourselves! Why don't these people just go away and leave us alone?" My guess is that, like in my own experience with God, the disciples had a few choice words of their own to share.

Out of this frustration and exhaustion, though, comes one of the most profound examples that Jesus gives us concerning the abundance of Creation: the fact that there is enough! "Take inventory," says Jesus. "What do we have to work with?" In the organizing world this is known as an "assets-based" inventory. "Let's not worry about what we don't have for the moment," this line of thinking says, "let's figure out what we actually do have, and go from there." The inventory, as we all know, yielded five little pieces of bread and two fish; not a sit down feast with wine and dessert, but something to start with. It turned out to be not only enough, but too much! Did it change the world permanently? No, people are still hungry; Jesus said that the poor would always be with us. But it did change the world in that place at that moment. And the ripples of that event still echo down to us two thousand years later, urging us to take the plunge. Find out what you have and use it, the story says to us these many years late.

See the problem is that we focus on what we don't have: we are in a deserted place and the hour is late for many of us. We are exhausted by life, "wearied by the changes and chances of this life," as my loved prayer goes, and not willing to take on the problems of someone else. Why did they leave home without a lunch? Were they just too lazy or dumb to make adequate arrangements? After all, weren't they issued the same bootstraps as we were?

I submit that much of our reluctance to put ourselves out for others stems from this "us vs. them" thinking. If they only had the same common sense that we have, if only they were one of our group, if they had shared in the hard work that we have been doing.... Do you hear your own voice in those accusations? I certainly do.

The writer to the Church at Ephesus speaks today of the "us vs. them" mentality in that day. In this case the difference is race: Jews vs. Gentiles. Today the same arguments prevail. The Middle East is still fighting over who gets what land. What those parties - and we need to hear as well - is the words of this letter: "In Christ Jesus you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace...he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall." In providing for the masses to be fed Jesus broke down the dividing wall between the "ins" and the "outs," the "us-es" and the "thems." "There is enough for all," says Jesus' act of appeal to God to divide the assets available so that everyone is satisfied. According to the letter to the Ephesians, when the "us vs. them" problem is solved, "then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens together and members of the household of God...joined together and grow[ing] into a holy temple...a dwelling place for God."

The keys to these texts seem to be these: First, recognizing the "us-ness" of Creation. Jesus has become our peace and has broken down the dividing wall that keeps us thinking in terms of "us vs. them." Here are some "them" things for us to think about, taken from the material on the Millennium Development Goals: One billion people in the world live on less than $1 per day; more than one hundred million children are not in school; every three seconds a child under the age of five dies of malnutrition, bad water or lack of medical treatment. Not our problem? If we see Creation as an "Us" rather than an "us vs. them," it is our problem - our opportunity to join our living stones with those of others to build the holy temple, a dwelling place for God.

Secondly, we are invited to inventory our assets, not our scarcity. The basic question asked by the MDG campaign: "What can one person do?" If we take seriously a belief and a commitment to the theological proposition that there is enough for everyone, we can find a lot to do. A dollar goes a long way when applied with other dollars to feeding people around the world. Please take a brochure for the Millennium Development Goals and make your participation part of your prayer life. We can get involved in all of the academic or even destructive and divisive issues of the church or the political world or we can inventory our own assets and determine what we can actually do - and do it!

Finally, we return to Isaiah through whom God reminds us of the "big picture." Want to build a temple in which God can dwell? Here is the architectural requirement: "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the spirit of the contrite." Obviously the word humble comes from that same word we have encountered so often that simply means "creature of dirt," "mud-babies!" "Contrite" is from a word that means "to grind," or to regret. The transformation God requires for his temple to be built, for God to move in is that we recognize our "us-ness" with all of Creation, and to regret its brokenness enough to do something about it. Will we change the world permanently? Chances are that we will not, but we can change a particular circumstance in a particular time and place - and perhaps set into motion ripples that will be heard long after us. May it be so.

Proper 9B, July 9, 2006

Samuel H. Miller: "O man, what is man? Full of dominion and power, tangled and tortured, with eyes wide open to wisdom and shame, born of the dust and marked with the sign, reaching beyond darkness for light, servant of the All High, tempted by truth and terror.

The term "man" in the beginning quotation is, of course, not a reference to gender, but is the word taken from the Hebrew adamah, or "dirt" as we know it. It is used to denote the temporal, limited nature of all humans. In a sense all of today's texts grow out of visions of God and God's purpose for and the nature of humanity. The passage from Ezekiel relates God's call to the prophet following an ecstatic vision, in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, of God's throne on wheels, guarded by angels, omnipresent and powerful. At the point of our entry into the scene God speaks to Ezekiel and immediately reminds him of his dual nature: "O mortal, stand up on your feet" - or, better, "Look here, you little mud baby, I have something to say to you!" And immediately following: "And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet." This is the challenge of humanity: we are made in God's image/born of the dust and marked with the sign of Cain, the murderer. We are made for greatness and weighed down by our "mudness." This is the dilemma of our lives: we can fly but we are rooted to earth.

Paul relates a similar ecstatic experience in which he is transported to a place that defies description by any human language and immediately follows that story by telling of the "thorn" that keeps him rooted in his everyday suffering and human experience. And what he has to say following that is the key to what I think today's texts have to say to us: "Three times I appealed...that it would leave me, but God said, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me....[For] whenever I am weak, then I am strong." The bottom line is this: our strength is not exhibited in our being brought to divine experience, ecstatic visions, or supernatural miracles; our strength is exhibited in God's Spirit being infused into our human experience, our sufferings, our foibles, insults, hardships and calamities. Then, as God says to Ezekiel, "Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."

In today's Gospel passage Jesus is rooted by his human nature and that of the folks who saw him grow up. "Oh, that's just Jesus from the neighborhood. Who does he think he is? He's no better than us! And if he is, why am I not more?" And the text poignantly says that he could not do more than just a few "simple" healings - not because he was no longer a healer, but because he was limited by the response of the people who knew him best. Even his divine nature was rooted in his humanity. We are reminded that it was less his healing power than it was the faith of those coming to him that enabled the healing. How often Jesus said not, "I have made you whole," or "I have healed you," as though it was something he was imposing on them, but, rather, "Your faith has made you whole." They were healed not because they were elevated to some divine experience of healing, but God's healing Spirit entered into their human experience, into their suffering.

The Psalm that best conveys this duality of human nature to me is the familiar Psalm 8. Again, realizing that the term "man" is used to mean "mud being" the King James version is quite powerful as it says, "When I consider the heavens, the works of thy fingers, What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man (child of mud) that thou visitest him. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honor." Eugene Peterson, in his modern paraphrase, puts it this way, "I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? Yet we've so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden's dawn light."

Do you suppose Jesus had God's words to Ezekiel in mind as he was rejected in his home town? "Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them?" According to the last sentence of the Gospel story he did not. It says, "...he was amazed at their unbelief." This story comes immediately out of last week's encounters with the woman who was healed of 12 years of disease and Jairus, whose daughter Jesus resurrected! Wasn't it apparent that this was a person of power, with a special relationship with God? How could these dumb local yokels be so blind to who he was?

We often are struck by the incapacity of other people to see the integrity of our actions or the wisdom of our contributions. God says to Ezekiel, though, "whether they hear or refuse to hear...." Even Jesus had to face the fact that not everyone was going to respond to his brand of Truth. He was amazed that such a response would happen. God's message to Ezekiel, to Jesus, to Paul, and, perhaps to us: Do it anyway. "Mud-child, do not be afraid of them," says God to Ezekiel, "and do not be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions; do not be afraid of their words, and do not be dismayed by their looks." To Paul God says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

So when we are discouraged by our "mud-ness," our inability to ride high on celestial visions all the time, when it seems as though we are all too rooted in our humanness and not spending enough time flying we, with Paul, affirm our humanness: "Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." Thanks be to God.

Proper 8B, July 2, 2006

I have always been uncomfortable with stewardship sermons. Even when we try to make them painless, funny, or entertaining they always seem to come off as manipulative or whiny. I have always wished that stewardship were something that came naturally so that it didn't have to be addressed. I suppose if that were true we would not be a human community. Some of the most painful issues we have to address revolve around the things that we "own."

It is really not my intention to preach a stewardship sermon. After all, it is not November, the only time that we venture into that territory. But I do think that these texts lead us into an investigation of what we might call the "mystery of generosity," a year-round discipline. As you know my perspective on the Bible is that it portrays God's Creation as abundant, gracious, hospitable - broken, and in need of healing. The sermons that I preach are designed to be invitations to enter with God into the process of healing the world - abundant in design and broken in practice. And a compulsion to ownership of anything is one of those areas of brokenness in need of healing.

From the larger, cosmic sense of Creation and its inherent wholeness there are some things that generosity is not: it is not, initially, a divinely-ordained mechanism by which you save money on your income taxes. It is neither a tool to make the donor feel good about themselves or a way of gaining power over the beneficiary. Real generosity is a conviction that there is enough to sustain Creation and a commitment to restoring the balance that requires - a leveling of sorts. Generosity is possible when one truly believes that there is enough to go around. True generosity does more than pass property from one person to another: it actually levels the playing field, breaking down barriers of inequality inherent in the concept of ownership. Classes of people develop over who owns more of Creation than others - and the true act of generosity is a statement that all are invited to participate in the abundance of God's bounty. It is a move by one person or group toward another that says, "I am confident that I have not only enough to survive myself, but extra to share."

Unfortunately we do not always have the confidence that we have enough. Our natural inclination is that we can never have enough. It is part of our human brokenness - not an "evil" in itself, but a brokenness that refuses to see ourselves as blessed. However you can understand how an obsession with possessions becomes an evil when it affects our relationship with the rest of humanity or of Creation. Comparisons with others and struggles with our own wants and perceived needs keep us from entering fully into the leveling dance of the Spirit.

Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians is a wonderful example: he says, "Look, with all of the resources that you have you should be a major part of this appeal for the Christians in Jerusalem. Why the Macedonians, (probably the Philippians), are begging to give and they are poverty-stricken! How much more you can do if you just realize and commit to the restoration of humanity in this way." The Deuteronomy passage grows out of interpretation of Hebrew Law. In ancient Israel the Law called for the complete forgiveness of debts every seven years. You can imagine that while someone might well loan to someone in the first year or two, when the possibility was great that they would be repaid. But in the sixth or seventh year, when the possibility is more that it will not be paid back, generosity finds fewer friends. The message from both of these passages is to give without hesitation or concern over whether you will be paid back. In the grand scheme of things that old invocation that we still use (at 8:30) still applies: "All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee - (or to any of your creatures)."

These lessons on generosity of money have really given me a lot to think about this week - I have struggled with them, particularly wondering how the "leveling" of Creation and generosity's part in the dance applied to the Gospel lesson for today, since no money exchange is involved in this story. In it Jesus is confronted by a leader of the local synagogue who pleads with Jesus on behalf of his young daughter who is ill, near death. We always focus on the healing miracles of Jesus in these stories, but in actuality the generosity exhibited in this story is shown by Jairus, the father! Can you imagine what this act of begging cost him? It would be as though the mayor of a city fell down in front of a wandering street evangelist to plead for equity for the most down and out, marginalized person in town. Women in Jesus' time were simple commodities and young girls were only valuable in terms of their marriagability - and still no more than cattle. It is particularly poignant for me, as the father of a daughter, to envision this man of power and influence begging from an itinerant preacher of questionable parentage for the sake of his daughter. He was seeking a leveling - seeking justice for one of the marginalized, the least of God's creatures, and risking his own status and reputation to do so. Who of us would be so generous as to risk those valuable "belongings?" He seemed to be throwing away his most prized "possessions" for the sake of leveling God's abundance of health.

I am sorry that the lectionary chose to leave out an interruption in this story - the encounter with the woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. If we can successfully domesticate, through our own cultural eyes, a father's love for his daughter, this incident is a little more readily seen as outrageous in the context of Jesus' time. Here is a woman, first of all, unclean for 12 years, (the 12 years of the little girl's life!), who should, by Jewish Law, be quarantined for uncleanness, who dares to defy all conventions, push her way through a crowd, and approach a man - even touching him! The outrage still doesn't translate into our culture, does it? We would have to put together our own scenario of cultural taboos that would really bring to life the generosity and the risk that Jesus took in this instance to bring about leveling - justice - for this outcast woman. These are stories of radical social upset! This is risk-taking generosity for the sake of giving to God's creatures at great cost to the giver.

As we gather this week as families to celebrate the gift given us of this nation and its offer of freedom it is appropriate that we remember that we are the world leaders in the area of generosity. Too often, though, we have used our generosity as a sort of hostage-taking device - a ploy to gain control over the beneficiaries of our "generosity with strings attached." The General Convention a couple of weeks ago reaffirmed its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals that have as their goal the elimination of abject poverty around the world within ten years. What better use could be made of government and private contributions than for the sharing of our love and commitment to freedom with the rest of the world? Certainly an investment in alleviating poverty is more generous than bombing nations and further impoverishing their people for the purpose of winning their freedom! I urge you to find out about the MDGs, the Millennium Development Goals, and see if this is a way for you to practice radical generosity.

The mystery of generosity is another mystery of transformation. It is a commitment to the concept that not only is there enough for us, but, through our help, there is enough for all. Our corporate culture, as someone recently said in my hearing, is geared so that even our education system's main function is to raise up consumers. We are owned by our own "possessions," whether they are tangible or intangible. What risks are we willing to take to "buy in" to God's plan for all Creation? Will our insecurities over possessions keep us from completely living into and embracing God's transforming power or will our attitudes toward what we own be transformed so that God's Kingdom is realized in our time and place?

Proper 7, Year B, June 25, 2006

One of my favorite prayers is found in the service for late evening known as Compline. The vestry closes each of their meetings with this service, and I almost always include this prayer: "Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord." This idea of change which upsets our equilibrium lies behind the episode we hear in today's gospel. The disciples are overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control - namely the wind and water that are overtaking the vessel in which they are engulfed.

In dream language "wind" signifies "change." The stronger the winds the more dramatic the forces behind the changes taking place. Likewise, "water" signifies depths out of view, emotional energy which drives us positively or negatively. Driving waves signify a struggle with erupting emotions that toss us about in our life, grabbing control out of our own hands and threatening to capsize us. Have you had dreams of wind or of water? If you do, give some thought to what emotional changes you are either facing orin the midst of.

So let's take a look at this event in the life of Jesus as though it is a dream of sorts. We find ourselves far enough away from land to risk loss of its security when unexpected turbulence begins to rock the boat. Winds of change threaten to throw us off our course, and the waves of strong emotion threaten to completely overwhelm. We are panicked! We cannot survive and we are completely out of control. If we take this dream image a bit farther we realize that there is one (probably sleeping somewhere below) who can calm our fears and the storm as well - like the disciples we may well think that o