4th Sunday in Lent--Year C

4th Sunday in Lent—Year C March 10, 2013 There is a restlessness in my soul. Sometimes I try to fill it by busy--ness. Sometimes I try to fill it by mindless pursuits. Sometimes I try to fill it with accomplishments, perfectionism, food or drink, shallow, soulless books, or other things. There is a restlessness in my soul, a kind of lost-ness. I see it in you too, this restlessness in your souls. I see how you try to fill it with various and sundry things—with some of the things that I use to try to fill my soul and with other things: exercise, always thinking about or planning the next big thing, a kind of literal transience—moving from place to place physically, spiritually, and in relationships. I see this restlessness in dissatisfaction and complaints, in the ways that you drink too much or use too much prescription medication (or other kinds of drugs); I see it in your anger and in your hopelessness and in your depression. I know this restlessness that drives you, for I feel it too. I see this restlessness in the journey of the Prodigal Son in Jesus’s famous parable, and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t why it is so well known, so well beloved—because it gives a face to our restlessness. It is this restlessness that causes the younger son to leave his comfortable home and go searching to fill his restlessness. It is this restlessness that motivates him to make bad choices, to squander his money, and it is this restlessness that leads him to what the AA community calls “his rock bottom,” sharing the food and dwelling place of the pigs he has been hired to care for. And the intriguing thing about this parable is that it is in that one moment, when he realizes that he is truly lost, when he realizes exactly where his restlessness has brought him, it is in that moment that Jesus tells us that “he came to himself.” In a famous quote that speaks across the centuries, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” It is what Paul is talking about in 2nd Corinthians when he writes, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation…We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” It is what the children of Israel experience in our reading from Joshua today as they are nearing the end of their 40 years of wandering, restlessness, exile, and homelessness. And they stop, just outside the promised land, to keep Passover as God has taught them, before they return home. It is what is meant by this meditation from SSJE brother Curtis Almquist titled Desire. “God is our desire, behind our desire, before our desire, beyond our desire. God is using this potent, sometimes gnawing gift of desire—which springs from God’s own heart—to lead us, like with bread crumbs, to a door which we might not have otherwise chosen or even recognized in this life. Instead, that door is home.” (Curtis Almquist’s meditation for 3/7/13) “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” So what is one way to still our restlessness, to find our home and our rest in God? It is in and through worship. In the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lenten book for this year, titled Abiding by Ben Quash, Quash writes about how we are caught between this paradox of our call to abide in God and the inherent nature of being in exile that comes with following Christ. He writes about how the younger son in this week’s parable “came to himself” and returned home from his self-imposed exile, and he says that the same thing can happen to us in worship. The younger son heard the call of his father’s home across the miles, and so can we. He writes, “Worship is the response of our whole being to the call of God; it is a repeated ‘turning towards home, running towards the embrace of God’s welcoming arms.” For us Episcopalians, our liturgy makes it very clear that worship is about offering our hearts to God. Every week, I say to you, “Lift up your hearts!” And you say back to me, “We lift them up [un]to the Lord!” We gather here week after week after week because our restlessness drives us away from God toward other things; we gather here because, as the old hymn puts it, we are “prone to wander”; we gather here because we deliberately choose to be in exile, and so week after week, we need to deliberately return to God, in and through worship, again and again and again. We come here week after week so that we may “come to ourselves” and heed the call of the loving parent to return home. This week, just as I was sitting down to write this sermon, I ran across a lovely little song that gets right to the heart of our restless wandering and our return home to God that we are invited to join the Prodigal Son in. The song is called “Home to You,” and it is by a group called The Peasall Sisters. Here are the first verse and the chorus. “I’ve been travelin’ this road for miles/trying to get to where you are/and though you’re tellin’ me the way to go; but I just can’t hear you over my heart. Give me grace to make it through the night. Give me faith so I can see the light. Give me strength so I can make it home…to you, home to you, home to you.”i. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” So I say to you, “Lift up your hearts!” “We lift them up [un]to the Lord!” i. Here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KIF7xMBgBc&sns=fb

3rd Sunday in Lent--Year C

Third Sunday in Lent—Year C March 3, 2013 It has been a challenging time in the life of our church. We seem to have been beset by tragedy, disaster, and death in the lives of so many who are connected with our parish. Many of us feel helpless in the face of so much sadness and suffering, and the words of the collect seem to hold especially true this week: “God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves…” In our gospel reading for today, Jesus and his followers are talking about two horrific events that have just happened, probably in Jerusalem: the murder of Galileans by Pilot, possibly while they were in the temple making their sacrifice and the death of 18 people when the tower of Siloam fell on them. Jesus uses this conversation about these two current events to talk about the nature of sin and punishment and especially about the nature of God. And in order to realize just how radical what he is saying is, we need to understand the prevalent religious thought of the time on the issues of sin and suffering. One commentator writes, “That suffering is a punishment for sin is a biblical common place. Deteronomic theology, which had gained wide currency by Jesus’ day, asserted that obedience to the Torah brought blessings, but disobedience brought a curse. Here Jesus clearly rejects that view. A person’s righteousness or lack of it has nothing to do with any evil that may befall that person.” (Feasting on the Word, Exegetical Perspective by Leslie Hoppe p 95). That is a radical idea for Jesus’s time, and for a certain extent, our own time too: “A person’s righteousness or lack of it has nothing to do with any evil that may befall that person.” In the gospel lesson for today, Jesus is saying, “That’s just not how God is.” The other piece of this that I think is especially pertinent to us today can be found our contemporary popular saying which I hear many, many people say whenever they are trying to make sense of suffering in their lives or in the lives of others. They say, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Friends, Jesus is telling us in this gospel today, that also just isn’t how God works. Please, take this moment, right here and right now, to erase that sentence from your brain. Do not ever say that to someone else; and please, for the love of God, do not say it to yourself either. Now, don’t get me wrong. I get why we say this. We see or experience suffering, and we think that there has got to be a reason for it. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “We would rather have a punishing God than an absent or capricious God.” But Jesus shows us that none of those are accurate understandings of God. Strangely enough, in preparing for this sermon today, I used the wrong Old Testament reading—Isaiah 55:1-9, but that reading has much to offer. That Isaiah reading is God speaking to God’s people after they are about to give up home in captivity in Babylon, and God says to God’s people: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” So what do we do? How do we make sense of and survive suffering, if we cannot lay it at the fault of the one who is suffering or lay it on God? Jesus tells us to repent; to turn away from ourselves and to turn back to God. Isaiah says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” And Jesus promises that God is always near. Three different meditations or readings that I read this week, spoke to me on this issue, and so I share them with you. First: Place. “Presume that God’s revelation is happening all along the way, not just in “sacred” moments but in every moment, every day. Practice attentiveness. Saint Columba said, ‘God is everywhere in his immensity, and everywhere close at hand’”(Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist). Second, Richard Rohr wrote, “If God is Trinity and Jesus is the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe. God is not someone to be afraid of, but is the Ground of Being and on our side.” Third, the call of the Christian in repentance is to actively work to abide in God. Repentance isn’t so much about us; it’s about God. In the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book 2013 titled Abiding, the author, Ben Quash, writes, “The true ground of our personal identity is our covenant relationship with God, in which we are not an instrument of God’s will, and God cannot be an instrument of ours; in which a focus on ‘will’ is relativized by ‘trust in a genuinely eccentric ground’ of the reality and value of who we are. This center is beyond ourselves (it is ‘eccentric’), because it is in God. But that is more easily said than learnt, and for as long as history lasts, we will continue at some level to live ‘in Adam’. The Pelagian response to sin…may argue that greater moral effort can remedy the problem, but this is to keep the human will center stage and resist the eccentricity in which human creatures find their real value. Orthodox Christian teaching argues instead that human good works are only ever responses to a prior grace, and are learnt in the context of a radical dependence on such grace” (Chapter 4). Jesus is the face of God, the one who suffers for us and the one who suffers with us. Through his example and presence with us, he teaches us that repentance means turning away from our own will and our own desires, and returning to God. He also teaches us that understanding why bad things happen is less important (and even sometimes irrelevant) than using that moment as an opportunity to return to God and to trust that God’s grace continues to be freely offered. So next time, when you are experiencing suffering—your own or that of someone you love—instead of trying to make sense of it by saying, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” keep that moment in silence and say a prayer for yourself or the other, that you may be recalled to the never-failing Grace of God which is revealed in Jesus to be trust-worthy, loving, and ever present. No matter what.

Ash Wednesday 2013

Ash Wednesday 2013 It’s an interesting effect of this time of year that people often like to post what they are giving up for Lent of Facebook. Some of my friends have posted that they are giving up chocolate, sweet tea and soft drinks, and even Facebook itself for Lent. Which got me to thinking about, not so much this concept of giving something up for Lent, but the larger issue of what undergirds that. The question of Why do we fast? But to answer that question, first we must look at what fasting is, exactly. In the Episcopal church calendar, we have two designated fast days: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. People fast for a variety of reasons in our day and age: to be closer to God, weight loss, detoxification. Fasting is a common practice that we see throughout scripture, and it was believed to be a humbling act of commitment or repentance that was intensified when combined with prayer (Feasting on the Word p3). Fasting can range anywhere from not eating at all from sunup to sundown to severely restricting food intake. But it is the willingful abstaining from food, drink, or both for a period of time. So why do people fast? The BCP says, in our service today, that we are preparing to “observe with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection” by observing a season of penitence and fasting. We fast to be restored and reconciled in our relationship with God. We fast to remember the good news of Jesus’s absolution and pardon as set forth in the gospels. We fast to renew our repentance and our faith. And we fast to prepare us for the glorious celebration of Easter. But there are some things that we need to remember in this season of fasting. First, there is nothing that we can do that can draw us nearer to God; there is no way, through any actions of our own, that we can earn our forgiveness or our salvation. Both are already freely given to us. God cannot love us any more than God already does. God cannot forgive us any more than God already does. Second, our readings for today make it very clear the importance of the connection between our inner works and our outer works. The reading from Isaiah today, which is from the 2nd part of Isaiah that was written to the children of Israel who are growing weary and tattered in their exile from their homeland, says that we fast because we “delight to draw near to God,” but God reminds God’s people, through the words of the prophet that God is not happy with fasting when it does not accompany transformed behavior. Isaiah reminds them and us that God’s preferred fast is to “loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke…to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house, when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from the breach…” Through Isaiah, God calls God’s people to the kind of fast that would lead them to be “repairers of the breach.”Isaiah is reminding them, and us, that fasting is never an end unto itself nor a substitute for righteous living. Fasting and righteous living should always be interconnected. Finally, I think that this quote from the New Testament professor Pheme Perkins, gets to the heart of why we fast during Lent. She writes, “The penitential season [of Lent] is not a lapse into ‘holiness boot camp’ as though human beings make themselves righteous before God. Lent asks us to open our hearts to the grace of God.” (Feasting on the Word p15) Lent asks us to open our hearts to the grace of God. The grace of God…..Our prayer books defines grace as being “God’s favor toward us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.” This year, perhaps instead of asking yourself what you are going to give up or take on for Lent, I would encourage you to think about it slightly differently. Ask yourself, “How is God calling me to open my heart to God’s favor toward me that is unearned and underserved? How is God calling me to open my heart to God’s forgiveness of my sins? How is God calling me to open my heart and my mind to God’s enlightenment? How is God calling me to open my heart to be stirred and my will to be strengthened? How is God calling me to open my heart to God’s grace in this Lenten season that I might be fully prepared for the joy of Easter?

Last Sunday after the Epiphany--Year C

Last Sunday after the Epiphany—Year C February 10, 2013 Once upon a time, on a treacherous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a little hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew. Some of the new members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they redecorated it beautifully and furnished it as a sort of club. Fewer and fewer of the members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work. The mission of lifesaving was still given lip-service, but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the lifesaving activities personally. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, some had skin of a different color, some spoke a strange language, and the beautiful new club was considerably messed up. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside. At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal pattern of the club. But some members insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the life of all various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. So they did. As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another lifesaving station was founded. If you visit the seacoast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but now most of the people drown! (The Parable of The Lifesaving Station taken from Personal Evangelism 101, by Brent Hunter) In case you haven’t figured it out, this is a parable about the church. Not just our church, mind you, but the capital C church going all the way back to the disciples. We see this inclination in the gospel story for today. Peter, and James and John are invited to go up the mountain with Jesus where he is transfigured before them, and they see him talking with Moses and Elijah. The glory of God is reveled to them. And they want to stay there, revel in it, dwell in the place where they have had such a profound encounter with and revelation of the glory and goodness of God shining forth from the incarnate person of Jesus. But they don’t get to stay there. Jesus leads them down the mountain, where they find a huge mess waiting for them. The disciples who were left behind have failed miserably in trying to heal a sick boy. It has been a very demoralizing and public humiliation for them. And then they, or the crowd, or maybe just all of us in general get fussed at by Jesus. So where is the good news in all this? These two stories together remind us that “the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot ever be separated.” It may seem to us to be easier and more cheerful work to build up this place where we have encountered God, this place where we feel safe and loved and fed. But the call of the church is mission; it is being sent out (that’s what mission means, to be sent out) to save those who are drowning when we can, and at the very least to stand with people in their suffering. There is a famous painting by the Renaissance artist Raphael that depicts this scene from our gospel reading today, and I think, speaks to this mission of the church and the followers of Jesus. In it, Jesus is being transfigured up on the mountain, high up in the air with Moses and Elijah on either side and with James, and John, and Peter, just below them. But the painting also depicts, at the bottom, the scene down the mountain: a chaotic crowd of people, the disciples who have been left behind and are trying and failing miserably to heal the boy. And do you know what several of those disciples are doing in the midst of all that fracas? They are pointing up the mountain to Jesus where God’s glory is revealed. My brothers and sisters, today let us remember, even as some of the hopelessness and the suffering of the world may be nibbling at the edges of our own frayed souls, let us remember that we are called to be those disciples at the bottom of the mountain, out in the world, trying to save a few lives by pointing to Jesus. One of the questions that was posed to us at Diocesan Council last weekend, that got me thinking on all of this and sparked a spirited conversation among our deputation is this: “in practical terms, what would it take for our parish to become more focused on mission than maintenance?” (repeat it) It’s a question we will continue to think about and talk about in the days to come, and I invite you to spend some time reflecting on it, and then share your thoughts with me or a member of the Vestry. But in the meantime, let us remember that the call of the followers of Jesus, the call of the church, our mission, even when we are helpless in the face of suffering, and especially when we are helpless in the face of suffering, the mission of the church is to be sent out into the world to point to Jesus.

Epiphany 3C sermon

Annual Parish meeting homily/Rector’s report January 27, 2013 This year, I want to try something a little different in terms of my homily at the Eucharist for the annual parish meeting and my rector’s report. The purpose of the homily is to preach the good news, the gospel, in connection with the readings assigned by our lectionary. It is to help people connect the good news of the scriptures and stories with the good news of their lives. And as I sat down to do this for this Sunday, I could not think of any better way to do this than to combine my rector’s report for our annual parish meeting with the homily, because it is all, truly, good news incarnate in the individuals and various members in the life of this church, what we call the body of Christ. The apostle Paul has an interesting image of the church in the portion of Corinthians that we read this morning. He talks about how we are like a body, each member having different functions and gifts, but how we are all interrelated and necessary for the body to work. Through baptism, we recognize our belonging in the body of Christ, and that is such good news, because we all so deeply long to belong. But an important part of that belonging isn’t just sitting in the pew during worship. Belonging, as we see in our baptismal covenant, means working actively as a part of the body to fulfill Jesus’s own mission. As another writer put it, “As far as 1st Corinthians is concerned, there is no such thing as belonging without participating. That [annuls] the nature of the body. A body does not work when one part checks out for a few years; not only will its function be unfulfilled, but the rest of the body will be thrown out of balance. Belonging is not a one-sided affair. We are given the gift of belonging at baptism, but we are also signing up for the responsibility of functioning as part of the body of Christ.”i Another way of putting it is that in our belonging, we are not called to believe a certain set of beliefs. In our belonging, we are called primarily to live like Christ. In our passage from Luke’s gospel this morning, we see Jesus, newly baptized and tempted in the wilderness, return to his home town of Nazareth, where he reads the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he publicly announces his mission or purpose: “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” If we, as the church, are truly the body of Christ, then that must be our mission to. I recently read an article about the struggles of the church in this post-modern, post-Christian world. Because let’s face it, both the church universal, and our unique, individual church here have our problems, our struggles. But the writers of this article wrote about how we are called, in this challenging time which they called “the dark night of the church” to evaluate the gifts that we have been given and how we as the church might truly make a difference in this needy world. They write, “To put it somewhat differently, the purpose or end of the church is not something we choose or achieve. God gives us our purpose; it’s something we receive. It’s what we have been created for. In the dark night, we may discover or rediscover the end for which God has created the church. That means that our primary mission is to be the church: a community that worships the God of Jesus Christ in a culture that worships other gods.”ii This is good news! Because it is a call that we are living into and continue to grow into more deeply. This parish, this body of Christ, is very much being the church in this community. We are thriving and growing in all areas. Our average Sunday attendance has continued to increase. Listen to these numbers: in 2008, our average Sunday attendance was 125; 2009-139; 2010-131; 2011-148; 2012-150. After analyzing these numbers, I think that the jump is actually bigger between 2011 and this year than it looks (as opposed to the jump between 2010 and 2011) because of how Christmas eve fell and was counted as a Sunday service in 2011. Our programs are growing, and as you will see in Candace’s outreach report, we are making a tremendous difference in the lives of the needy people in our community. In addition to that, we collected an unprecedented amount of money and redistributed it through the parish discretionary account. In 2012, we collected and gave away $17,940.00 to people in need. A good portion of that money went to people in our own parish. This shows that there is great need in our parish and in our community, and that there is great eagerness in the members of this body of Christ to help people and to spread the good news and to be the church. Also, as you will hear from our treasurer, this is the first year since Katrina that we have ended the year with money in the bank, not having to borrow out of any of our savings. That has been thanks to your generosity, your belief in the work that we are doing together, and the hard work of our new fundraising committee. I don’t have the final numbers yet, but I believe that we will have an incredibly large class of people who will be baptized, confirmed, received, and reaffirmed when the Bishop comes later next month. We have so many visitors every Sunday, many of whom come back again and again and begin participating in the life of the church. I’ve often asked them how they came to St. Peter’s and why they stayed. Did you know that 3 out of 4 people who visit a church come because they are invited by someone they know? And that has been the case here as well. You are inviting people to church because you are excited about what we are doing here, and they stay because they are excited too. I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about this, and thinking about what we are doing as a church. First, I have realized that it is not really us; it is the Holy Spirit at work in this place. And that God is using our willingness to be a place where all are truly welcome for whom God has created them to be to bring new life in this church and in all of our lives. It hasn’t been easy; giving ourselves over to death and resurrection never is. But it is that which matters most in this life and how we find true meaning as people of faith and followers of Jesus Christ. I have said it before, but it is worth saying again in this particular moment. I believe that God continues to call us to be a resurrection community, a beacon of light and hope in our community. We are called by Jesus to live into his death and resurrection, to live as a church and as a people the truth that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead makes a difference in our lives and in our world because it proves the great lengths to which God is willing to go for us to truly belong to God. It proves that there is meaning to be found in giving our lives away. It proves, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. So it’s all good news. But we still have plenty of work left to do, plenty of work in being the church God calls us to be. My one goal for the parish this year: to support the systems and structures through which you can be connected to the body of Christ that is the church, encouraging you to use your gifts for the spreading of the good news through the work of this church and in your own life and callings. I believe that this is a critical moment in the life of the church. It is essential for our leadership to grow our structure to accommodate our growing numbers, so that each of you is invited and encouraged to use your gifts as a full member of the body of Christ and fully participate in the life of this place. Thank you for being committed enough to the life of this parish to be here this morning. Thank you for your support, your energy, your prayers. Every day, I wake up grateful for the opportunity to walk this way with you. You all continue to teach me about what it means to be a resurrection people, and my life and my faith are so much richer and fuller because of you. i.Feasting on the Word. Ed Bartlett and Brown Taylor. Homiletical Perspective by Raewynne J. Whiteley p. 281 ii.Christian Century Dec. 26, 2012. Dark night of the church. By L. Roger Owens and Anthony B. Robinson. P 29

Epiphany 1C

Epiphany 1C January 13, 2013 A letter to Andrew Rivera upon the occasion of his baptism. Dear Andrew, Today is the first Sunday after the Epiphany, the day upon which we celebrate and remember Jesus’s baptism by John. In Jesus’s baptism, he receives the Holy Spirit, and as he is praying, God speaks to him telling him, “You are my son the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Today is also the day of your baptism, a day which you have been counting down to with sweet expectation. It is the day upon which we recognize the fact that, since your creation, God has named you as God’s beloved son, and today you and your family and your godparents are accepting that. Today is the day that we the church make the promise to you that we will help you as you grow; we promise that we will walk with you on this way that we all follow, this way of following Jesus. We promise that we will help you learn about your own belovedness of God, and we promise that we will help you remember it during the times when you may forget. Because, Andrew, you may not know this yet, but life does have its hard places. We all go through times when we feel lost; we all go through times when we feel sad and lonely; we all go through times when we feel completely overwhelmed by the circumstances of our life; we all go through times when we feel utterly broken-hearted. And yet even in those times, you have the gift that God has given you, the gift that God has claimed you as God’s beloved son, who is precious in God’s sight. And you have the promise of God’s continued presence, no matter what. This promise is found in the words of the baptismal service, where you and God make promises to each other that you will be in this together. You promise to live your life giving it over to the way of life, death, and resurrection that Jesus lived. God promises that God will be with you, no matter what. This promise is also found in the words of the Old Testament lesson for today. Listen to it again. “Thus says the Lord…Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. ….Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…” A wise monk recently wrote it this way: “Jesus does not spare this world from suffering. With suffering there is the promise and the paradox that God Emmanuel is with us in it all, even to the end: unexplainable and yet undeniable.”i The heart of Jesus’s truth that he lived and died and was resurrected for and taught is that we are the beloved of God, individuals and a people who are deeply and intimately loved by God. And we are called out of that love to offer love to others. This love is not a feeling. It is an action. That means that sometimes when we cannot feel love, we can still do love. And in that, God’s love becomes made real in our own lives and in the world. Another wise man wrote it this way: “I think we know the love of God when we ourselves can ‘do love’ much more than when people tell us we are loveable (that just feels good!). We can always disbelieve the second, but the first is an unexplainable power from Beyond ourselves.”ii May you always remember and live these truths of your baptism. You are God’s beloved. You are precious in God’s sight, and God will never leave you, so you have absolutely nothing to fear. We most actively know God’s love when we are doing love unto others. May you always hear God’s words whispered in your heart: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. I have called you by name. You are mine.” i. SSJE Brother Give Us a Word. 1/10/13 Br. Curtis Almiquist http://ssje.org/ssje/2005/01/04/mighty-waves/?lt;br_/> ii. Rohr, Richard. Adapted from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction. Email meditation for 1/9/13.

Epiphany sermon

Feast of the Epiphany—Year C January 6, 2013 It is a rare occasion today that we get to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, one of seven major feasts in the life of the church—on an actual Sunday. Because it is a fixed day on the calendar, always falling on January 6th or 12 days after Christmas, Epiphany moves around the week. Epiphany, which literally means “manifestation,” is the day upon which we celebrate the visit of the Gentile wise men to pay homage to Jesus upon his birth, and it represents the inclusion of non-Jewish people into God’s kingdom. In some parts of the world, Epiphany is celebrated as a bigger holiday than Christmas, with gift giving being tied directly to the gift giving wise men from the East who are making their way to Bethlehem. Children leave shoes filled with hay outside their homes. The wise men take the hay for their camels and leave gifts behind in the shoes as thanks, as they continue on their way to Bethlehem. Another interesting item of note is to look closely at the gospel story which talks about the wise men. Note the wise men are found in Matthew’s gospel, while the traditional Christmas eve story of the shepherds and angels is found in Luke. In Matthew’s story, there is no mention of how many wise men there are; the number three has been assigned to them by tradition over the years due to the number of gifts listed in the story. Also, later writers gave the wise men names and attributed characteristics to them: Melchior is described as an old man with white hair and a long beard. Gaspar is young and beardless and ruddy complexioned, and Balthasar is black-skinned and heavily bearded. In the season of Epiphany, we celebrate the light of Christ as represented by the star that guides the wise men on their way. In Epiphany, we celebrate the guiding stars in our lives, and we remember and celebrate the lights by which we see God. It is not clear from the story if the shining of the star is steadfast on the wise men’s journey. In fact, it seems that they observed the star at its rising, and then travel to Jerusalem to learn more about the possible whereabouts of Jesus. While in Jerusalem, the Jewish council tell the wise men that Bethlehem is where they should look, according to the prophesies. And it seems that they rediscover the star once they are headed in the right direction to Bethlehem. Our journey to pay homage to Christ the King is always easier when we have companions on the way. There are times when the light of Christ shines brilliantly before us, clearly marking our path. There are other times when we must stop and seek assistance, ask for directions. But in the midst of this, on this day of light, we are invited to ask the Holy Spirit to help us reflect upon the question “by what light we have seen God most recently?”i You are invited to reflect upon the ordinary and the extraordinary ways that the light of Christ has been revealed to you on your way. We received a gift in the mail this week that was for me one of those pure gifts, one of those revelations of the light of Christ through companions on the way. I was sitting at my desk going through all the mail that accrued over my time away, and I opened a rather fat package that had a note and some fabric inside it. This is what I discovered. The note in the package reads, “Dear St. Peter’s by-the-Sea Episcopal church, At the Northeastern Minnesota Synod Middle school gathering in November, participants prayed for your congregation and members as you continue to recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac. Enclosed is a prayer banner to remind you that your brothers and sisters in Christ continue to hold you in prayer, thankful for your presence and witness of Christ’s love to those who are recovering. May God’s strength and compassion fill you as you continue to serve your community. In Christ, The Northeastern Minnesota Synod Lutheran Youth Organization Board.” And here is the banner, with lovely words of encouragement written on it by some of the same youth who worshiped with us this past summer. They are all simple messages: “God is with you.” “We are praying for you.” “Stay strong.” “Keep faith.” “We won’t forget.” And over and over again, “God loves you.” For me this was a brilliant beacon of the light of Christ, shining upon me this week, and a brilliant reminder of the many companions we have on this way as we seek to pay homage to Jesus the King. This week, I invite you to reflect upon the light by which you see God, and I invite you to give thanks for both the ordinary and the extraordinary ways that the light of Christ has been revealed to you on your way. i.This question was posed by Barbara Brown Taylor in her essay A Homiletic Perspective on Feasting on the Word for Epiphany Year C.