Here is the link for the meditation I read at our Blue Christmas service. It was written by my friend and seminary classmate the Rev. Dr. Jackie Cameron.
http://episcopalcredo.org/wellness/wellness-advent/advent-2-health/?month=12&year=2011&categoryID=&relatedID=
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
4th Sunday of Advent Year B
4th Sunday of Advent
December 18, 2011
The other night, as I was putting my 3 year old son to bed, Jack and I were talking about angels. Early on in the conversation, Jack says to me, “Me no like angels. Me scared of angels.” You’re scared of angels? I asked. And just as the words, “But why?” where coming out of my mouth, I realized something. The kid was on to something. Angels are scary! In just about all the stories in scripture about angels, what is the one of the first thing the angel says? “Do not be afraid!”
The word angel (angelos) means messenger. Angels always show up with an invitation from God; a warning that God is about to shake things up, and God invites that particular person to be a part of God’s new beginning.
In her book The Glorious Impossible, Madeleine L’Engle retells the story of the life of Jesus through her own words and the illustrations of the medieval artist Giotto. On the page about the Annunciation, she writes,
An angel came to Mary. A fourteen year old girl was visited by an angel, an archangel. In Scripture, whenever an angel appears to anyone, the angel’s first words usually are, “FEAR NOT!”—which gives us an idea of what angels must have looked like.
So the Archangel Gabriel, who visited Mary, greeted her with great courtesy, and then said, “FEAR NOT!”
And then he told her that she was going to have a baby, a remarkable baby who would be called eh son of the Highest.
Mary was already engaged to Joseph. The wedding would be soon. This was strange and startling news indeed. Mary, fourteen years old, looked the angel in the face, asking, with incredible courage, “But how can this be?”
And the angels told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. and the Holy Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the son of God.”
What an amazing, what an impossible message the angel brought to a young girl! But Mary looked at the angle and said, “Be it unto me according to your word.”
And so the life of Jesus began as it would end, with the impossible. When he was a grown man he would say to his disciples, “For human beings it is impossible. For God nothing is impossible.”
Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are what bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips… i
When angels show up, it is always with an invitation to participate in the Glorious Impossible. God could easily do it without us, but God doesn’t. Augustine once said, “Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.”
Today we celebrate that God is inviting us all to participate in the Glorious Impossible: The miracle of God with us. Do not be afraid.
i. L’Engle, Madeleine. The Glorious Impossible. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1990, 1.
December 18, 2011
The other night, as I was putting my 3 year old son to bed, Jack and I were talking about angels. Early on in the conversation, Jack says to me, “Me no like angels. Me scared of angels.” You’re scared of angels? I asked. And just as the words, “But why?” where coming out of my mouth, I realized something. The kid was on to something. Angels are scary! In just about all the stories in scripture about angels, what is the one of the first thing the angel says? “Do not be afraid!”
The word angel (angelos) means messenger. Angels always show up with an invitation from God; a warning that God is about to shake things up, and God invites that particular person to be a part of God’s new beginning.
In her book The Glorious Impossible, Madeleine L’Engle retells the story of the life of Jesus through her own words and the illustrations of the medieval artist Giotto. On the page about the Annunciation, she writes,
An angel came to Mary. A fourteen year old girl was visited by an angel, an archangel. In Scripture, whenever an angel appears to anyone, the angel’s first words usually are, “FEAR NOT!”—which gives us an idea of what angels must have looked like.
So the Archangel Gabriel, who visited Mary, greeted her with great courtesy, and then said, “FEAR NOT!”
And then he told her that she was going to have a baby, a remarkable baby who would be called eh son of the Highest.
Mary was already engaged to Joseph. The wedding would be soon. This was strange and startling news indeed. Mary, fourteen years old, looked the angel in the face, asking, with incredible courage, “But how can this be?”
And the angels told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. and the Holy Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the son of God.”
What an amazing, what an impossible message the angel brought to a young girl! But Mary looked at the angle and said, “Be it unto me according to your word.”
And so the life of Jesus began as it would end, with the impossible. When he was a grown man he would say to his disciples, “For human beings it is impossible. For God nothing is impossible.”
Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are what bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips… i
When angels show up, it is always with an invitation to participate in the Glorious Impossible. God could easily do it without us, but God doesn’t. Augustine once said, “Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.”
Today we celebrate that God is inviting us all to participate in the Glorious Impossible: The miracle of God with us. Do not be afraid.
i. L’Engle, Madeleine. The Glorious Impossible. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1990, 1.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Advent 3B sermon
Advent 3B
December 11, 2011
In his book about Paul, the British theologian and bishop NT Wright reminisces about his ordination over 30 years ago. In the many cards and notes of encouragement that he received, Wright remembers one card in particular. On the front was the Greek phrase: “The One who calls you is faithful.”i It is the heart of the good news; the crux of our hope. No matter what happens to you, no matter what choices you make:
The One who calls you is faithful.
Our readings for today bear witness to the dream of God. In the gospel of John, we see John the Baptist, whose call is to be a witness, to testify to the light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome. John the Baptist bears witness that the dream of God is coming into fulfillment and will be made incarnate in the person of Jesus.
The One who calls you is faithful.
In the reading from Isaiah, we fast forward from our reading last week which spoke words of promise and comfort to a people who had been in exile for decades. This week, we see the fulfillment of the promise: the restoration of God’s people back in Israel. The people who have been in exile have returned home and they are beginning to rebuild their lives and their land. Psalm 126 says that it is a like a dream-come-true. These people have dreamed for so long of returning home, and finally God has accomplished their home-coming. In the reading for Isaiah, we see the dream of God, the restoration of Zion, the Lord’s city, and what that will look like: the broken-hearted will be bound up, the captives and the prisoners will know release, the city will know the Jubilee year as well as seeing the Lord’s vengeance. The mourners will be comforted. And they will all be called oaks of righteousness.
For the one who calls you is faithful.
Isaiah is not just speaking about the work of individuals. He is talking about systemic change and transformation-- what happens when all people participate in the dream of God! What happens when all people of faith offer their lives, through hundreds of small acts of faithfulness, to the fulfillment of God’s dream, to the restoration of God’s city.
In one of the earliest Christian writings that we have, Paul is writing to the Thessalonians and offering them comfort and reassurance, explaining to them how to live in the meantime, as they wait for Jesus’s return. Again, in Paul’s writing we see a small slice of the dream of God for Christian community. How both individuals and the church are called to be: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”
Are we giving ourselves over to the dream of God or are we waiting on God to fulfill our own individual dreams? Are we willing to accept the transformation that comes with God’s dream or are we expecting God to yield to us, to fix everything the way we want it and us remain unchanged? How are you being called to let go of your own dream, so that you can give yourself over to the dream of God, the dream of the one who is calling us and who is truly faithful? What might that look like?
In her memoir called Mighty Be Our Powers (2011), the Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee (Pronounced: Leemah Bowee) describes how one night she became a participant in God’s dream while sleeping on her office floor: "I didn't know where I was. Everything was dark. I couldn't see a face, but I heard a voice, and it was talking to me — commanding me: 'Gather the women to pray for peace!' At 5 A.M. she woke up shaking, feeling like she had heard the voice of God.
Peace was a distant dream for Liberians after fourteen years of savage civil war (1989–2003). By some estimates, ten percent of the population had been slaughtered. Twenty-five percent had fled the country. Starvation, systematic rape, torture, mutilation and Charles Taylor's cocaine-crazed child soldiers had traumatized the nation. Schools and hospitals closed. Rats and dogs ate the unburied dead who littered the streets. There was no water, electricity or phone service.
Later that morning Gbowee related her dream to the women at her Lutheran church. Sister Esther Musah, an evangelist, led them in prayer: "Dear God, thank you for sending us this vision. Give us your blessing, Lord, and offer us Your protection and guidance in helping us to understand what it means." What it meant was the start of the Liberian women's peace movement that ended the civil war.
About twenty Lutheran women began to gather every Tuesday at noon to pray. Sometimes they fasted. They invited other Christian churches. At one meeting, a woman named Asatu spoke up: "I'm the only Muslim here, and we want to join this peace movement." "Praise the Lord!" shouted the Christian women. And so Muslim and Christian women formed an alliance. They shared their horror stories. Training sessions and workshops followed. They passed out brochures and marched to city hall. Three days a week for six months they visited the mosques, the markets, and the churches of Monrovia: "Liberian women, awake for peace!"
In the end, the women forced Charles Taylor to peace talks in Ghana, and then in Ghana they barricaded the do-nothing men in their plenary hall until they signed peace accords. After the 2003 accords, they were instrumental in disarming the country, registering voters, and electing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the first woman head of state in Africa.
When people ask “who were these women?” Gbowee says, "I will say they are ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters." They sowed bitter tears. They went out weeping. And through hundreds of small acts of faithfulness, they courageously participated in God’s dream of peace, joy, and laughter for their beloved country.ii
The one who calls you is faithful.
How are you being called, how are we being called to bear witness with our very lives to the one who is calling us and who is truly faithful? You do not have to be a Nobel-prize winning peace activist to participate in the dream of God. But you do have to relinquish a part of yourself, your desire for control, your plan or dream for the way that things are going to turn out. And to participate in the dream of God. It starts right here, right now, in hundreds of small acts of faithfulness.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes “…In the early Church people were attracted to it not so much by the preaching, but by the fact that they saw Christians as a community, living a new life as if what God had done was important, and had made a difference. They saw a community of those who, whether poor or rich, male or female, free or slave, young or old—all quite unbelievable loved and cared for each other. It was the lifestyle of the Christians that was witnessing.”iii
The one who calls you is faithful! What small acts of faithfulness might you offer to participate in the dream of God in your life, in this time, and in this place?
i. Wright, NT. Paul For Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians. London: SPCK, 2002, p 133.
ii. This story is originally found on the website of Daniel Clendin: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20111205JJ.shtml
iii. Tutu, Desmond. Crying in the Wilderness. Ed. John Webster. London: Mowbray, 1990, pp 6-7
December 11, 2011
In his book about Paul, the British theologian and bishop NT Wright reminisces about his ordination over 30 years ago. In the many cards and notes of encouragement that he received, Wright remembers one card in particular. On the front was the Greek phrase: “The One who calls you is faithful.”i It is the heart of the good news; the crux of our hope. No matter what happens to you, no matter what choices you make:
The One who calls you is faithful.
Our readings for today bear witness to the dream of God. In the gospel of John, we see John the Baptist, whose call is to be a witness, to testify to the light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome. John the Baptist bears witness that the dream of God is coming into fulfillment and will be made incarnate in the person of Jesus.
The One who calls you is faithful.
In the reading from Isaiah, we fast forward from our reading last week which spoke words of promise and comfort to a people who had been in exile for decades. This week, we see the fulfillment of the promise: the restoration of God’s people back in Israel. The people who have been in exile have returned home and they are beginning to rebuild their lives and their land. Psalm 126 says that it is a like a dream-come-true. These people have dreamed for so long of returning home, and finally God has accomplished their home-coming. In the reading for Isaiah, we see the dream of God, the restoration of Zion, the Lord’s city, and what that will look like: the broken-hearted will be bound up, the captives and the prisoners will know release, the city will know the Jubilee year as well as seeing the Lord’s vengeance. The mourners will be comforted. And they will all be called oaks of righteousness.
For the one who calls you is faithful.
Isaiah is not just speaking about the work of individuals. He is talking about systemic change and transformation-- what happens when all people participate in the dream of God! What happens when all people of faith offer their lives, through hundreds of small acts of faithfulness, to the fulfillment of God’s dream, to the restoration of God’s city.
In one of the earliest Christian writings that we have, Paul is writing to the Thessalonians and offering them comfort and reassurance, explaining to them how to live in the meantime, as they wait for Jesus’s return. Again, in Paul’s writing we see a small slice of the dream of God for Christian community. How both individuals and the church are called to be: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”
Are we giving ourselves over to the dream of God or are we waiting on God to fulfill our own individual dreams? Are we willing to accept the transformation that comes with God’s dream or are we expecting God to yield to us, to fix everything the way we want it and us remain unchanged? How are you being called to let go of your own dream, so that you can give yourself over to the dream of God, the dream of the one who is calling us and who is truly faithful? What might that look like?
In her memoir called Mighty Be Our Powers (2011), the Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee (Pronounced: Leemah Bowee) describes how one night she became a participant in God’s dream while sleeping on her office floor: "I didn't know where I was. Everything was dark. I couldn't see a face, but I heard a voice, and it was talking to me — commanding me: 'Gather the women to pray for peace!' At 5 A.M. she woke up shaking, feeling like she had heard the voice of God.
Peace was a distant dream for Liberians after fourteen years of savage civil war (1989–2003). By some estimates, ten percent of the population had been slaughtered. Twenty-five percent had fled the country. Starvation, systematic rape, torture, mutilation and Charles Taylor's cocaine-crazed child soldiers had traumatized the nation. Schools and hospitals closed. Rats and dogs ate the unburied dead who littered the streets. There was no water, electricity or phone service.
Later that morning Gbowee related her dream to the women at her Lutheran church. Sister Esther Musah, an evangelist, led them in prayer: "Dear God, thank you for sending us this vision. Give us your blessing, Lord, and offer us Your protection and guidance in helping us to understand what it means." What it meant was the start of the Liberian women's peace movement that ended the civil war.
About twenty Lutheran women began to gather every Tuesday at noon to pray. Sometimes they fasted. They invited other Christian churches. At one meeting, a woman named Asatu spoke up: "I'm the only Muslim here, and we want to join this peace movement." "Praise the Lord!" shouted the Christian women. And so Muslim and Christian women formed an alliance. They shared their horror stories. Training sessions and workshops followed. They passed out brochures and marched to city hall. Three days a week for six months they visited the mosques, the markets, and the churches of Monrovia: "Liberian women, awake for peace!"
In the end, the women forced Charles Taylor to peace talks in Ghana, and then in Ghana they barricaded the do-nothing men in their plenary hall until they signed peace accords. After the 2003 accords, they were instrumental in disarming the country, registering voters, and electing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the first woman head of state in Africa.
When people ask “who were these women?” Gbowee says, "I will say they are ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters." They sowed bitter tears. They went out weeping. And through hundreds of small acts of faithfulness, they courageously participated in God’s dream of peace, joy, and laughter for their beloved country.ii
The one who calls you is faithful.
How are you being called, how are we being called to bear witness with our very lives to the one who is calling us and who is truly faithful? You do not have to be a Nobel-prize winning peace activist to participate in the dream of God. But you do have to relinquish a part of yourself, your desire for control, your plan or dream for the way that things are going to turn out. And to participate in the dream of God. It starts right here, right now, in hundreds of small acts of faithfulness.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes “…In the early Church people were attracted to it not so much by the preaching, but by the fact that they saw Christians as a community, living a new life as if what God had done was important, and had made a difference. They saw a community of those who, whether poor or rich, male or female, free or slave, young or old—all quite unbelievable loved and cared for each other. It was the lifestyle of the Christians that was witnessing.”iii
The one who calls you is faithful! What small acts of faithfulness might you offer to participate in the dream of God in your life, in this time, and in this place?
i. Wright, NT. Paul For Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians. London: SPCK, 2002, p 133.
ii. This story is originally found on the website of Daniel Clendin: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20111205JJ.shtml
iii. Tutu, Desmond. Crying in the Wilderness. Ed. John Webster. London: Mowbray, 1990, pp 6-7
Sunday, December 4, 2011
2nd Sunday of Advent Year B
2nd Sunday of Advent
December 3, 2011
The Old Testament reading and the gospel reading for today, the 2nd Sunday of Advent, were both written for people who were dwelling in the wilderness of disappointment and frustrated expectations. In Isaiah, the prophet is writing to a people who have witnessed the destruction of their homes, their faith, their government, their very lives. And they have been living in this wilderness of disappointment, in captivity for decades.
Mark’s gospel is also written to a people who are dwelling in the wilderness of disappointment. Over and over again, the writer of Mark’s gospel is emphasizing that following the way of Jesus is difficult; that more often than not, we just don’t get it; that discipleship includes embracing suffering and death as our Lord embraced them. The writer of Mark is writing to try to deal with the apparent failure of Jesus’s message.
Into this wilderness come the springs of hope in the words of 2nd Isaiah and strangely enough, in the call of repentance of the rough figure John the Baptist. Both are reminding us that God longs to be reconciled with us. Both invite us to examine our inner landscapes, to see how God might be calling us to allow God to re-shape and rearrange our lives and our souls that we might be made less empty and more sated, less wounded and more whole, less self-centered and more godly.
In Mark’s gospel, the writer refers frequently to “the way.” Here it is written of the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord …” The heart of Mark’s gospel is all about following Jesus on ‘the way’; it’s all about discipleship. And all throughout the gospel, Mark is showing us what it means to follow Jesus, to follow the Way—that it is truly a difficult path. Mark is trying to suggest that Jesus properly understands and accepts death and that he suffers and dies willingly, and so for Mark, that is what it means to follow Christ. That is the Way.
In our gospel for today, I am struck how John the Baptist suddenly appears in the wilderness. It’s not necessarily his home, where he lives, but it is where he shows up to deliver his message. And his message is to prepare the way and to follow it. He preaches about God’s ultimate purpose, the purpose that is captured so beautifully in the love song that is Isaiah 40. God’s purpose is forgiveness and reconciliation. Repentance or turning and confession are the call of John the Baptist. They are the tools that God uses in the wilderness to reshape our spiritual landscapes. Some of us are so reluctant to do this work, to embrace John’s call to repentance and confession. But this is the way that we must accept the death of ourselves in order to have the peace and the comfort that God so freely offers.
In our Old Testament and Gospel readings for today, we find much emphasis placed upon changing landscapes, the wilderness, and upon preparing the way of the Lord. These familiar words from Isaiah, about how God is going to dramatically shake up, rearrange and reshape the landscape, are words of great comfort and restoration for the original hearers—those who have been suffering in the wilderness of captivity and slavery for decades. It is said that the job of the prophets is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
I know there are many of you sitting out there this morning who are also suffering in your own wilderness and exile, deeply longing for a great, dramatic shake-up, for a great change in the landscape. There may be others of you who are relatively comfortable, for whom these words of dramatic rearranging of the landscape are quite threatening. Now just wait a minute! I built my house on that hill! I do not want it to be brought down into a valley! Whether we like it or not, life and God periodically rearrange the landscapes of our lives and our spirits.
Whether you are one of those who are already pretty comfortable, or one of those in desperate need of comfort, we are all invited on this Second Sunday of Advent to ponder and to participate in the surveying of our interior landscapes.
Another preacher writes about this endeavor saying: “During Advent, we go with John into the wilderness to prepare the way to welcome Christ into our hearts and lives anew at Christmas. We have the opportunity to explore the inner geography of our lives for areas of dead wood, thorns or tangled knots. Twisted relationships, the dead wood of old hurts or habits, the confusion that sometimes comes when we feel we can’t see the wood for the trees—all these are wilderness areas, and they need to be cleared away before growth and new life is possible. Or perhaps there are desert patches—arid, dry areas where nothing can grow or blossom, parts of us which have almost withered away from not being used or tended or tested—some tenderness, some care, some talent, some forgiveness, some humor—that need the water of life to bring them bursting into flower.” (Kathy Galloway, Getting Personal: Sermons and Meditations SPCK, London, 1995, pp89-90)
What are the wilderness areas in your soul these days? Do you harbor the dead wood of old hurts and habits? Do you cultivate the thorns of disappointment or betrayal? What part of your soul has fallen into the dessert and so longs for water and nurture and nourishment? Do you have valleys of disappointment or half-hearted commitment that God is seeking to fill? How might God be calling you to rearrange the landscape of your heart and your soul to prepare the way for Jesus? What part of your life is God longing to reshape, to give you comfort and nourishment, if you will but allow it? Where are you being called to repent and to receive God’s forgiveness?
I read an Advent devotion this week by Richard Rohr in which he writes, “When people say piously, ‘Thy kingdom come’ out of one side of their mouth, they need to say ‘My kingdom go!’ out of the other side” (Rohr, Richard. Preparing for Christmas…Daily Meditations for Advent. St. Anthony Messenger: Cincinnati, 2008, p13). I invite you to think about that today as your pray the Lord’s prayer and all through the week. And ask yourself, “What wilderness part of me must die to make room for the new creation waiting to be born?”
December 3, 2011
The Old Testament reading and the gospel reading for today, the 2nd Sunday of Advent, were both written for people who were dwelling in the wilderness of disappointment and frustrated expectations. In Isaiah, the prophet is writing to a people who have witnessed the destruction of their homes, their faith, their government, their very lives. And they have been living in this wilderness of disappointment, in captivity for decades.
Mark’s gospel is also written to a people who are dwelling in the wilderness of disappointment. Over and over again, the writer of Mark’s gospel is emphasizing that following the way of Jesus is difficult; that more often than not, we just don’t get it; that discipleship includes embracing suffering and death as our Lord embraced them. The writer of Mark is writing to try to deal with the apparent failure of Jesus’s message.
Into this wilderness come the springs of hope in the words of 2nd Isaiah and strangely enough, in the call of repentance of the rough figure John the Baptist. Both are reminding us that God longs to be reconciled with us. Both invite us to examine our inner landscapes, to see how God might be calling us to allow God to re-shape and rearrange our lives and our souls that we might be made less empty and more sated, less wounded and more whole, less self-centered and more godly.
In Mark’s gospel, the writer refers frequently to “the way.” Here it is written of the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord …” The heart of Mark’s gospel is all about following Jesus on ‘the way’; it’s all about discipleship. And all throughout the gospel, Mark is showing us what it means to follow Jesus, to follow the Way—that it is truly a difficult path. Mark is trying to suggest that Jesus properly understands and accepts death and that he suffers and dies willingly, and so for Mark, that is what it means to follow Christ. That is the Way.
In our gospel for today, I am struck how John the Baptist suddenly appears in the wilderness. It’s not necessarily his home, where he lives, but it is where he shows up to deliver his message. And his message is to prepare the way and to follow it. He preaches about God’s ultimate purpose, the purpose that is captured so beautifully in the love song that is Isaiah 40. God’s purpose is forgiveness and reconciliation. Repentance or turning and confession are the call of John the Baptist. They are the tools that God uses in the wilderness to reshape our spiritual landscapes. Some of us are so reluctant to do this work, to embrace John’s call to repentance and confession. But this is the way that we must accept the death of ourselves in order to have the peace and the comfort that God so freely offers.
In our Old Testament and Gospel readings for today, we find much emphasis placed upon changing landscapes, the wilderness, and upon preparing the way of the Lord. These familiar words from Isaiah, about how God is going to dramatically shake up, rearrange and reshape the landscape, are words of great comfort and restoration for the original hearers—those who have been suffering in the wilderness of captivity and slavery for decades. It is said that the job of the prophets is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
I know there are many of you sitting out there this morning who are also suffering in your own wilderness and exile, deeply longing for a great, dramatic shake-up, for a great change in the landscape. There may be others of you who are relatively comfortable, for whom these words of dramatic rearranging of the landscape are quite threatening. Now just wait a minute! I built my house on that hill! I do not want it to be brought down into a valley! Whether we like it or not, life and God periodically rearrange the landscapes of our lives and our spirits.
Whether you are one of those who are already pretty comfortable, or one of those in desperate need of comfort, we are all invited on this Second Sunday of Advent to ponder and to participate in the surveying of our interior landscapes.
Another preacher writes about this endeavor saying: “During Advent, we go with John into the wilderness to prepare the way to welcome Christ into our hearts and lives anew at Christmas. We have the opportunity to explore the inner geography of our lives for areas of dead wood, thorns or tangled knots. Twisted relationships, the dead wood of old hurts or habits, the confusion that sometimes comes when we feel we can’t see the wood for the trees—all these are wilderness areas, and they need to be cleared away before growth and new life is possible. Or perhaps there are desert patches—arid, dry areas where nothing can grow or blossom, parts of us which have almost withered away from not being used or tended or tested—some tenderness, some care, some talent, some forgiveness, some humor—that need the water of life to bring them bursting into flower.” (Kathy Galloway, Getting Personal: Sermons and Meditations SPCK, London, 1995, pp89-90)
What are the wilderness areas in your soul these days? Do you harbor the dead wood of old hurts and habits? Do you cultivate the thorns of disappointment or betrayal? What part of your soul has fallen into the dessert and so longs for water and nurture and nourishment? Do you have valleys of disappointment or half-hearted commitment that God is seeking to fill? How might God be calling you to rearrange the landscape of your heart and your soul to prepare the way for Jesus? What part of your life is God longing to reshape, to give you comfort and nourishment, if you will but allow it? Where are you being called to repent and to receive God’s forgiveness?
I read an Advent devotion this week by Richard Rohr in which he writes, “When people say piously, ‘Thy kingdom come’ out of one side of their mouth, they need to say ‘My kingdom go!’ out of the other side” (Rohr, Richard. Preparing for Christmas…Daily Meditations for Advent. St. Anthony Messenger: Cincinnati, 2008, p13). I invite you to think about that today as your pray the Lord’s prayer and all through the week. And ask yourself, “What wilderness part of me must die to make room for the new creation waiting to be born?”
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Last Sunday after Pentecost--Christ the King Sunday
Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King)Proper 29A
November 20, 2011
Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, the day upon which we contemplate the reign of Christ, and much of our readings and music today depict our lord as Christ the King.
We Americans have a love/hate relationship with royalty that goes back to our very beginnings; we covet our independence from monarchs, even as we keep an eye upon what those glamorous royals in other parts of the world are up to.
Kingship is an ambiguous image for us. My friend Sylvia Czarnetsky tells the story of how she planned a children’s Sunday school in her church once on Christ the King Sunday and the craft for the lesson was that all the children and the grown up helpers got to make their own crowns (made out of Burger King crowns and lots of glitter); and then they all got to wear them around during the Sunday school hour. She says that experience taught her one of the core tenants of kingship that every child seems to know: that is that if a person is king, he (or she) gets to boss everyone else around!
We get a completely different image of kingship in our gospel reading for today. In today’s gospel from Matthew, we get the only depiction of the Last Judgment in the New Testament. It comes at the end of a series of exhortations and parables through which Jesus is teaching his followers about right behavior, right action until he comes again.
In today’s parable, Jesus tells us about the coming of the Son of Man. He says that on that day, all nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And the question that will determine which people are sheep and which people are goats will basically be the question, “What have you done for me lately?” The blessed, or the sheep, will be the ones who have, by feeding, clothing, sharing with and befriending the less fortunate, in fact have been serving the Son of Man. The goats will be the ones who haven’t done this.
So, I have three questions for you today. Now, I’m going to do something a little unorthodox and ask you to actually raise your hands. Who here has ever in your life done what Jesus has asked of us in the beginning of the passage and fed a hungry person, clothed a naked person or visited a person in prison? You have! That’s wonderful! You are the sheep. Now, who here has, even once in your life, walked past a hungry person, failed to clothe a naked person, or not visited someone in prison? Well, that’s too bad. You’re all goats. How many of you raised your hand both times? You know what that means? It means that we are a bunch of good goats.
That little exercise is from a book called Good Goats: Healing our Image of God. And in it, the authors explain more about this concept of what it means to be a good goat. “All of us who have felt alienated, unloved, overwhelmed by shame or helplessly caught in an addiction know what it’s like to be in hell. And all of us who have been welcomed home, who have seen our goodness reflected in the affirming eyes of another or who have been loved into recovery know what it’s like to be in heaven. We all have wheat and weeds within us, sheep and goats. The kingdom of God is within us, and we’re all good goats.”i
What Jesus is teaching his disciples and us in the passage, is that salvation is not something that we can achieve if we work hard enough. Salvation is, like the love of God, something that steals upon us. It is something that we discover, often in the places where we least expect it. Salvation is what we find in those moments when we can manage to glimpse the face of God in the face of the other. Jesus’s kingship is an invitation to us to live more fully into the best of our own humanity. We may not be able to end hunger, to visit all who are sick, to include every stranger. But when we open our hearts to the King’s compassion, then we can look at least one or two of the suffering in the eyes and see them as God sees them: beautiful and lovely and worthy of love. We may not be able to change the world, but we can offer comfort and solace to those who are trampled down by life, in whatever small ways we can, along the way.
So although we’d all like to live more fully into a kingship in which we are the boss and we get to boss everyone around and run the world according to our own way (because face it, we know we could do it…), we follow a king of a different sort. We follow a king who is not too proud or too lofty to dwell with people in their worst moments. We follow a king who does not flinch from touching people right where they are sickest, most broken. We follow a king who dwells in the darkest of places, in the hearts of all of us who are poor, sick, stranger, imprisoned, and naked. We follow a king who invites us to see his face in the face of the other and to find our salvation and the Kingdom of God there.
i. Linn, Dennis, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn. Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God. Paulist: Mahwah, 1994, p49.
November 20, 2011
Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, the day upon which we contemplate the reign of Christ, and much of our readings and music today depict our lord as Christ the King.
We Americans have a love/hate relationship with royalty that goes back to our very beginnings; we covet our independence from monarchs, even as we keep an eye upon what those glamorous royals in other parts of the world are up to.
Kingship is an ambiguous image for us. My friend Sylvia Czarnetsky tells the story of how she planned a children’s Sunday school in her church once on Christ the King Sunday and the craft for the lesson was that all the children and the grown up helpers got to make their own crowns (made out of Burger King crowns and lots of glitter); and then they all got to wear them around during the Sunday school hour. She says that experience taught her one of the core tenants of kingship that every child seems to know: that is that if a person is king, he (or she) gets to boss everyone else around!
We get a completely different image of kingship in our gospel reading for today. In today’s gospel from Matthew, we get the only depiction of the Last Judgment in the New Testament. It comes at the end of a series of exhortations and parables through which Jesus is teaching his followers about right behavior, right action until he comes again.
In today’s parable, Jesus tells us about the coming of the Son of Man. He says that on that day, all nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And the question that will determine which people are sheep and which people are goats will basically be the question, “What have you done for me lately?” The blessed, or the sheep, will be the ones who have, by feeding, clothing, sharing with and befriending the less fortunate, in fact have been serving the Son of Man. The goats will be the ones who haven’t done this.
So, I have three questions for you today. Now, I’m going to do something a little unorthodox and ask you to actually raise your hands. Who here has ever in your life done what Jesus has asked of us in the beginning of the passage and fed a hungry person, clothed a naked person or visited a person in prison? You have! That’s wonderful! You are the sheep. Now, who here has, even once in your life, walked past a hungry person, failed to clothe a naked person, or not visited someone in prison? Well, that’s too bad. You’re all goats. How many of you raised your hand both times? You know what that means? It means that we are a bunch of good goats.
That little exercise is from a book called Good Goats: Healing our Image of God. And in it, the authors explain more about this concept of what it means to be a good goat. “All of us who have felt alienated, unloved, overwhelmed by shame or helplessly caught in an addiction know what it’s like to be in hell. And all of us who have been welcomed home, who have seen our goodness reflected in the affirming eyes of another or who have been loved into recovery know what it’s like to be in heaven. We all have wheat and weeds within us, sheep and goats. The kingdom of God is within us, and we’re all good goats.”i
What Jesus is teaching his disciples and us in the passage, is that salvation is not something that we can achieve if we work hard enough. Salvation is, like the love of God, something that steals upon us. It is something that we discover, often in the places where we least expect it. Salvation is what we find in those moments when we can manage to glimpse the face of God in the face of the other. Jesus’s kingship is an invitation to us to live more fully into the best of our own humanity. We may not be able to end hunger, to visit all who are sick, to include every stranger. But when we open our hearts to the King’s compassion, then we can look at least one or two of the suffering in the eyes and see them as God sees them: beautiful and lovely and worthy of love. We may not be able to change the world, but we can offer comfort and solace to those who are trampled down by life, in whatever small ways we can, along the way.
So although we’d all like to live more fully into a kingship in which we are the boss and we get to boss everyone around and run the world according to our own way (because face it, we know we could do it…), we follow a king of a different sort. We follow a king who is not too proud or too lofty to dwell with people in their worst moments. We follow a king who does not flinch from touching people right where they are sickest, most broken. We follow a king who dwells in the darkest of places, in the hearts of all of us who are poor, sick, stranger, imprisoned, and naked. We follow a king who invites us to see his face in the face of the other and to find our salvation and the Kingdom of God there.
i. Linn, Dennis, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn. Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God. Paulist: Mahwah, 1994, p49.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
22nd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 28A
22nd Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 28A
November 13, 2011
This past week, I learned something that has disturbed me greatly. A behavioral psychologist in Jackson was sharing with a group of clergy that she had been doing research among people of faith as we approached the vote on the controversial personhood initiative. She said that her research group had gathered significant data that showed that many people of faith were afraid of what would happen to them if they voted no. The data showed that the people of faith believed that God would be watching them when they entered the poll booth, watching to see how they voted, and they feared divine retribution if they voted no. People of faith actually told this behavioral psychologist that they believed that if they voted no on ballot initiative 26 then God was going to get them.
At first I was incredulous. And then I was somewhat scornful. None of these people could possibly be Episcopalians, because surely our theology is much more sophisticated than that! And then I felt so very terribly sorry for those people, for whom that is their faith, those whom have chosen to live their lives in that kind of fear of God.
And then I read the gospel for today. In today’s parable, Jesus tells of a man who is preparing to go on a journey, and he entrusts to three of his slaves an enormous amount of his money. Two of the slaves take the money and use it to make more money, so when the master returns, they give him his money back and then some. The third slave takes the money the master gives him and he takes a shovel and digs a hole in the ground to bury the money and keep it safe until the master returns. But when he returns that money to the master and confesses his fear to him, the master severely chastises him and has him cast into the outer darkness.
We make a mistake if we read this parable to be about God and the nature of God’s kingdom. This parable is, instead, about us and about all the people of God. The chief problem of the third slave, especially in contrast to the other two slaves, is the failure of his imagination. It is the chief failure of all people of faith, this failure of imagination. We can see it all throughout the story of God and God’s people: God invites peoples’ trust; God invites peoples’ best hopes, their best dreams, and our imaginations fail us. We cannot get over thinking that God is just as small as we are. We cannot imagine God to be any bigger, better, different than ourselves. And in that way, we fail, again and again and again.
Think about the stories of our faith, how the Israelites turned away from God over and over again because their imaginations failed them, their trust failed them. Think about the Pharisees, the Scribes, even the disciples. How they could not see the glory of God who was right in front of them because of the failure of their imaginations. We see this failure of imagination at work in the faithful community at Thessolonika, to whom Paul is writing to invite them to expand their imaginations, to not be discouraged, to remember their hope. He writes to capture their imaginations once again with the real hope “that God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”
If we are truthful, we see this failure of imagination at work in our own world, in our own church, in our own lives. Truly we are not so different from those people who thought that God was going to get them if they voted a certain way. We all share in this failure of imagination regarding the goodness and the abundance of God.
The theologian James Allison writes about the success of the imagination of the first two slaves in this parable. He writes, “The key feature of this parable is that it is the imagination of the servants as to what their master is like which is the determining factor of their conscience and thus the wellspring of their activity. The first two servants…trusted that their master was the sort of daring fellow who would do rash and crazy things for which there was no script, would dare, would experiment, would risk losing things and so would end up multiplying things greatly. In other words, they perceived their master’s regard for them as one of liking them enough to be daring them and encouraging them to be adventurous, and so, imagining and trusting that abundance would multiply, they indeed multiplied abundance.”i
Again and again, Jesus invites us to step beyond our fear; to allow ourselves to be inspired by hope; to leave behind the limits of our own imaginations; to give our hearts to God’s abundance; and to stake our lives on this radical abundance that is so far beyond anything our own imaginations can provide. If only we could do this, if only we could give our hearts and our imaginations to God’s abundance, what a different world we would dwell in! How different our own lives would be!
Here are the readings for today: http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp28_RCL.html
i Allison, James. On Being Liked. London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2003, p 109.
November 13, 2011
This past week, I learned something that has disturbed me greatly. A behavioral psychologist in Jackson was sharing with a group of clergy that she had been doing research among people of faith as we approached the vote on the controversial personhood initiative. She said that her research group had gathered significant data that showed that many people of faith were afraid of what would happen to them if they voted no. The data showed that the people of faith believed that God would be watching them when they entered the poll booth, watching to see how they voted, and they feared divine retribution if they voted no. People of faith actually told this behavioral psychologist that they believed that if they voted no on ballot initiative 26 then God was going to get them.
At first I was incredulous. And then I was somewhat scornful. None of these people could possibly be Episcopalians, because surely our theology is much more sophisticated than that! And then I felt so very terribly sorry for those people, for whom that is their faith, those whom have chosen to live their lives in that kind of fear of God.
And then I read the gospel for today. In today’s parable, Jesus tells of a man who is preparing to go on a journey, and he entrusts to three of his slaves an enormous amount of his money. Two of the slaves take the money and use it to make more money, so when the master returns, they give him his money back and then some. The third slave takes the money the master gives him and he takes a shovel and digs a hole in the ground to bury the money and keep it safe until the master returns. But when he returns that money to the master and confesses his fear to him, the master severely chastises him and has him cast into the outer darkness.
We make a mistake if we read this parable to be about God and the nature of God’s kingdom. This parable is, instead, about us and about all the people of God. The chief problem of the third slave, especially in contrast to the other two slaves, is the failure of his imagination. It is the chief failure of all people of faith, this failure of imagination. We can see it all throughout the story of God and God’s people: God invites peoples’ trust; God invites peoples’ best hopes, their best dreams, and our imaginations fail us. We cannot get over thinking that God is just as small as we are. We cannot imagine God to be any bigger, better, different than ourselves. And in that way, we fail, again and again and again.
Think about the stories of our faith, how the Israelites turned away from God over and over again because their imaginations failed them, their trust failed them. Think about the Pharisees, the Scribes, even the disciples. How they could not see the glory of God who was right in front of them because of the failure of their imaginations. We see this failure of imagination at work in the faithful community at Thessolonika, to whom Paul is writing to invite them to expand their imaginations, to not be discouraged, to remember their hope. He writes to capture their imaginations once again with the real hope “that God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”
If we are truthful, we see this failure of imagination at work in our own world, in our own church, in our own lives. Truly we are not so different from those people who thought that God was going to get them if they voted a certain way. We all share in this failure of imagination regarding the goodness and the abundance of God.
The theologian James Allison writes about the success of the imagination of the first two slaves in this parable. He writes, “The key feature of this parable is that it is the imagination of the servants as to what their master is like which is the determining factor of their conscience and thus the wellspring of their activity. The first two servants…trusted that their master was the sort of daring fellow who would do rash and crazy things for which there was no script, would dare, would experiment, would risk losing things and so would end up multiplying things greatly. In other words, they perceived their master’s regard for them as one of liking them enough to be daring them and encouraging them to be adventurous, and so, imagining and trusting that abundance would multiply, they indeed multiplied abundance.”i
Again and again, Jesus invites us to step beyond our fear; to allow ourselves to be inspired by hope; to leave behind the limits of our own imaginations; to give our hearts to God’s abundance; and to stake our lives on this radical abundance that is so far beyond anything our own imaginations can provide. If only we could do this, if only we could give our hearts and our imaginations to God’s abundance, what a different world we would dwell in! How different our own lives would be!
Here are the readings for today: http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp28_RCL.html
i Allison, James. On Being Liked. London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2003, p 109.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
A letter to those being baptized on the Sunday after All Saints
Sunday after All Saint’s Day
November 6, 2011
Dear Avery and Gabe,
Today is a very special day. It is the day when we are gathered to baptize you both and to begin the life-long process for you of walking the way of faithfulness to God through following the path of Jesus Christ. It is the day when we gather together to promise to support you in your life of faith, even as we renew and reaffirm our own baptismal promises. It is the day when we remember all of the saints who have come before us, those who have walked this way with us, and even those who will come after us.
In the gospel reading for today (on this day of your baptism) we see Jesus giving his first sermon, and he is telling his disciples, the crowds and us two very important things in this sermon. Jesus is, first and foremost, telling us about the nature of God, and he is telling us how to follow him on the path of faithfulness to God.
In this sermon, Jesus is telling us that God’s kingdom is based on the values of God and not on the values of this world. God values mercy, humility, kindness, peace, righteousness. God values the weak, the powerless, the little children; all those who most often get trampled by the powerful. And to be faithful to God and the values of God’s kingdom, then we must give our hearts to things which would seem to profit us little: mercy, mourning, peace, and meekness.
Jesus tells us that way of discipleship that we begin at our baptism is the process of following this road to the Kingdom of God. And we are both already there in the moment of our baptism as well as traveling there until the day of our death.
As you each walk this road of faithfulness all the days of your lives, may you remember what Jesus is teaching on this first day of your life of faith:
You are on the right road when you are poor in spirit for only then can you truly possess the kingdom of heaven.
You are on the right road when you mourn, and you will be comforted.
You are on the right road when you are meek for you will inherit the earth.
You are on the right road when you hunger and thirst for righteousness for you will be filled.
You are on the right road when your heart is pure for then you are able to see the face of God.
You are on the right road when you make peace and God will claim you as God’s child as God does on this day.
You are on the right road when you are persecuted for upholding the values of the Kingdom of God and you will thus belong to that kingdom.
You are on the right road when people despise you and mistreat you for the good things for which you stand and in that, you share kinship with our Lord Jesus who has gone this way before you through death and into new life and resurrection.
There may be times in your life and in your faith, when you feel so lonely, so overwhelmed, so unfulfilled, you so long for something more and better and not so difficult that you do not know how you can bear to continue down this road. And on those days, I invite you to remember this day, when all the believers past, present, and future gather together to promise to uphold you on this way and who, from this day forward, shine the light of their lives and their faith ahead of you into the darkness toward Jesus who walks this road before all of us. You do not walk this road alone, but you walk with a whole host of companions, a great cloud of witnesses.
There will be times as you follow this way of faithfulness that you will be faced with impossible choices. There will be times on this way when parts of you will die. Sometimes they will be the sick, unhealthy parts of you that keep you from God: your pride, vainglory, and selfishness. But other times they will be your deepest hearts desires: your hopes, your dreams and your wishes for the future. In each of those deaths, God is present with you in your mourning, and God offers you new life, new hope on the way.
Finally, we gather together this day to celebrate. Because no matter what hardships we might face in this life and on this road of faithfulness, we know the end of the story. We live the end of the story. We baptize you this day into the end of the story: that no matter what happens, God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything, even death. On this day, we baptize you into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the way that we follow for faithfulness in God and to live into God’s kingdom; we seal you in the Holy Spirit and mark you as Christ’s own forever. And we celebrate with you, because from this day forward, no matter what happens in your life or what hardships you endure, you belong to God. And God’s love always wins. We promise to help you remember, and to walk this way with you. We promise to help you remember joy, to know peace and to hold fast to hope.
Your sister in Christ, Melanie+
November 6, 2011
Dear Avery and Gabe,
Today is a very special day. It is the day when we are gathered to baptize you both and to begin the life-long process for you of walking the way of faithfulness to God through following the path of Jesus Christ. It is the day when we gather together to promise to support you in your life of faith, even as we renew and reaffirm our own baptismal promises. It is the day when we remember all of the saints who have come before us, those who have walked this way with us, and even those who will come after us.
In the gospel reading for today (on this day of your baptism) we see Jesus giving his first sermon, and he is telling his disciples, the crowds and us two very important things in this sermon. Jesus is, first and foremost, telling us about the nature of God, and he is telling us how to follow him on the path of faithfulness to God.
In this sermon, Jesus is telling us that God’s kingdom is based on the values of God and not on the values of this world. God values mercy, humility, kindness, peace, righteousness. God values the weak, the powerless, the little children; all those who most often get trampled by the powerful. And to be faithful to God and the values of God’s kingdom, then we must give our hearts to things which would seem to profit us little: mercy, mourning, peace, and meekness.
Jesus tells us that way of discipleship that we begin at our baptism is the process of following this road to the Kingdom of God. And we are both already there in the moment of our baptism as well as traveling there until the day of our death.
As you each walk this road of faithfulness all the days of your lives, may you remember what Jesus is teaching on this first day of your life of faith:
You are on the right road when you are poor in spirit for only then can you truly possess the kingdom of heaven.
You are on the right road when you mourn, and you will be comforted.
You are on the right road when you are meek for you will inherit the earth.
You are on the right road when you hunger and thirst for righteousness for you will be filled.
You are on the right road when your heart is pure for then you are able to see the face of God.
You are on the right road when you make peace and God will claim you as God’s child as God does on this day.
You are on the right road when you are persecuted for upholding the values of the Kingdom of God and you will thus belong to that kingdom.
You are on the right road when people despise you and mistreat you for the good things for which you stand and in that, you share kinship with our Lord Jesus who has gone this way before you through death and into new life and resurrection.
There may be times in your life and in your faith, when you feel so lonely, so overwhelmed, so unfulfilled, you so long for something more and better and not so difficult that you do not know how you can bear to continue down this road. And on those days, I invite you to remember this day, when all the believers past, present, and future gather together to promise to uphold you on this way and who, from this day forward, shine the light of their lives and their faith ahead of you into the darkness toward Jesus who walks this road before all of us. You do not walk this road alone, but you walk with a whole host of companions, a great cloud of witnesses.
There will be times as you follow this way of faithfulness that you will be faced with impossible choices. There will be times on this way when parts of you will die. Sometimes they will be the sick, unhealthy parts of you that keep you from God: your pride, vainglory, and selfishness. But other times they will be your deepest hearts desires: your hopes, your dreams and your wishes for the future. In each of those deaths, God is present with you in your mourning, and God offers you new life, new hope on the way.
Finally, we gather together this day to celebrate. Because no matter what hardships we might face in this life and on this road of faithfulness, we know the end of the story. We live the end of the story. We baptize you this day into the end of the story: that no matter what happens, God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything, even death. On this day, we baptize you into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the way that we follow for faithfulness in God and to live into God’s kingdom; we seal you in the Holy Spirit and mark you as Christ’s own forever. And we celebrate with you, because from this day forward, no matter what happens in your life or what hardships you endure, you belong to God. And God’s love always wins. We promise to help you remember, and to walk this way with you. We promise to help you remember joy, to know peace and to hold fast to hope.
Your sister in Christ, Melanie+
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