17th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 20B

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20B September 20, 2015 This past Wednesday night, as I was leaving church with the kids, I realized that I was very low on gas. I made a mental note to stop at Kroger on the way home, and then I realized over half way down Hoy Road that I had completely zoned out and forgotten to stop. (It had been a long day!). So I ran the kids home and drove back to Kroger (around 7:30 pm). When I got to Kroger, all the pumps had people at them, and there were more people waiting. I got more and more frustrated as I watched people maneuver and cut in front of others to get to the open pumps, and so finally, I went to one of the pumps on the back of the lot and pulled up behind a woman to wait until she was done. As I waited with my window rolled down to enjoy the beautiful night, I watched this woman be completely engrossed in her cell phone as she pumped her gas. The truck in front of her left, and she was still pumping, but I couldn’t get around her car to get to the open pump. So I waited. Finally, the woman’s gas was finished, and she slowly close up her gas tank, never taking her eyes off her phone screen. I waited a couple of more minutes as she stood there looking at her phone and she realized that she had to push the button if she wanted a receipt. (“Please, don’t want a receipt,” I said to myself, but alas it was not to be.) She continued to be consumed with what was on her phone as her receipt printed, and she slowly pulled it and made her way into her car, maneuvering herself into the driver’s seat while not taking her eyes off her phone. (At last, I thought, I will get my gas and get home to eat supper and put my children to bed! I put my car into drive with eager anticipation.) But it was still not to be. The woman turned on her car, and sat there looking at her phone. At this point, my curiosity about this woman and her obsession with her phone had turned into acute irritation. But what to do? I didn’t want to be rude (because I had just talked at church about how I try not to drive like a jerk because I have a St. Columb’s sticker on my van), but this woman had been obliviously blocking two pumps for a while now, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. So I hung my head out my open window and yelled nicely, “Would you please pull your car forward?” I got nothing except curious and startled glances from the people at the other pumps. (Who is this crazy woman in the van trying to talk to other people at the gas pump?!) So finally, I just couldn’t stand it any longer, and I did it. I honked my horn. And what do you think happened? The woman jumped-startled when I honked, and then she put her phone down so that she could have both hands free to make rude gestures at me with in her rear view mirror. Then, FINALLY, she drove off. Well, I was livid! How dare she make rude gestures at me when she had been so self-absorbed that she had been blocking not just one but two pumps while a bunch of other people waited?! I pulled down the row to the first open pump and the gas attendant was walking over to empty the trash can. I said to her, full of my righteous anger, “did you see that woman blocking two pumps while she was on her phone?!” and the gas attendant said to me tiredly with her bag full of trash, “Honey, they all be like that. Every day.” And Jesus said to the disciples as they were arguing over who is the greatest, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” As I stood there in my collar and pumped my gas, I thought about the gas attendant, what she said, what her life must be like having to deal with that level of self-absorption day in and day out. And I realized that, even though she didn’t mean it this way, when she said “They all be like that. Every day.” Her “they” also meant me. And I knew, in that woman I had encountered Jesus, and I was simultaneously chastened and hopeful that I could be better. Because that’s really what is at the heart of the disciples’ argument in today’s gospel. Jesus has, for the second out of three times in Mark, taken himself and his disciples away from the crowds so that he can tell them about his impending death and try to help prepare them for when he’s gone. But they just can’t get it. We see they are so confused and afraid that they cannot even formulate questions for him about what he is trying to teach him. So they try to fill that void of confusion and fear by arguing over who is greatest. Instead of the self-sacrifice and service and courage that Jesus is trying to teach them about, they become fearful, close-minded, and self-absorbed. So Jesus sits down with them (which is the posture that Rabbis would take when teaching), and he tells them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And then he brings in a child, the lowest of the low in that society, and tells them this is what they must be: vulnerable, powerless, and dependent. I’ve been reading Brene’ Brown’s new book Rising Strong. Brown is a sociologist who is also an Episcopalian, and she has interviewed thousands of people about the human condition and their own life experiences. She studies the concepts of shame and failure, and she has determined that vulnerability is the key characteristic that fosters and nourishes whole-hearted living and human relationships. In her new book that I am reading, Brown writes about the importance of examining our own failures and asking important questions to help us learn from them and also to recast and reclaim those stories for ourselves. Which led me to ask some questions about my encounter at the Kroger gas pumps the other night. Why did I get so angry at the woman on her phone? (Because her self-absorption suggested that she thought her time was more valuable and important than mine.) What could I have done differently so that I would have felt like that encounter was a failure and to not be one of the “theys” in the gas attendant’s life? (Maybe I could have gotten out of my car and gone and knocked on her window and kindly and politely asked her to move instead of honking?) I read a blog post from the spiritual writer Parker Palmer this week, and he quoted a passage from Rainier Maria Rilke (Reiner Maria Reelkay) — from Letters to a Young Poet, that has caught my attention and made me think about the kind of questions that I ask. "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer." We are so like the disciples; when we are afraid or angry or confused, we don’t ask the right questions. We spend our time arguing about the wrong things, things rooted in our insecurity and self-absorption. But Jesus teaches us that the way of discipleship is the way of the cross. It is a way of courage, self-sacrifice, and service. So then let us be courageous. Let us we pay attention to what is really going on in our hearts. Let us try to live generously with ourselves and one another, and let us try to ask the better questions.

15th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 18B

15th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 18B September 6, 2015 I ran across an article this week about the government of Iceland’s response to the Syrian refugee crises—not stuff I usually encounter or read about. This article (on slate.com) was saying that the government of Iceland, which has a population of only about 315,000, said they could help in the crises by offering to take 50 Syrian refugees. The article pointed out that “as far as offers of help go, it didn’t come off as particularly heartfelt or overwhelming.” But then, a local, Icelandic author started a Facebook page named “Syria is Calling” where everyday Icelanders stepped up to try to fill the humanitarian need. Over 12,000 people weighed in, calling on their government to do more, and many of those who wrote, offered both their homes and their financial support. The comments in the article were profound, many people offering to open their homes to Syrians in need, especially children, offering from their skills as teachers, cooks, and just basic knowledge of how to get around in their community. Many others offered their financial resources, offering to buy plane tickets for the Syrians to travel to Iceland. I got kind of teary reading all these comments of people humbly offering their talents and time and money and the sanctuary of their own homes to help strangers in need half a world away! But then, the more I thought about it, it made me more and more uncomfortable. I don’t think I could offer that, to open my home, even though I have more than enough room, to a stranger from half a world away. And the time that they were offering, too, it was terrifying! I don’t have that much time to give away to someone else. I feel like I scarcely have enough for myself and my family. And then I started wondering, in my discomfort, if that is who I am called to be, the kind of thing that I am called to do as a follower of Jesus Christ… I was still thinking about all of that, as I started reflecting on the gospel reading for this week, and talk about uncomfortable… I’ll just go ahead and tell you, Jesus calling that woman (and her sick child, by association) a “dog” really makes me uncomfortable. I mean it’s one thing if we do something like that, but really, we expect more from Jesus! And come to think of it, I really don’t care for the Jesus of Mark’s gospel. Every time I read through that whole gospel, I am struck by how harsh Mark’s Jesus is, how he has little sympathy or patience for just about everybody except the sick people he heals. But I think that’s a key part of Mark’s Jesus and Mark’s gospel. The Jesus that Mark gives us is laser-focused on his mission, and he has little patience with those who can’t get with that program, including his own disciples. Which brings us back to the gospel reading. Jesus has just experienced a taxing encounter with the Scribes and the Pharisees. He is basically “hiding out” trying to get a little rest and recharging, and he doesn’t want anyone to know that he is there. But this woman finds him, and she is not a part of Jesus’s mission. She is a Gentile, and Jesus is very clear that his mission is to the Jews. And I am intrigued by how the woman responds to him, both courageously and humbly, and through her response, Jesus appears to experience a transformation in his understanding of his mission, to include people who aren’t Jews. We are doing two different things here today that relate to this. First, we are celebrating Labor Day and our stewardship of our time, and our work, our energy and our leisure, by bringing forward a symbol of all of that to offer to God by laying it on (or at the foot of) God’s altar. We do this today to be thankful for all that God has given us and to help us to remember, both today and out in the world in our everyday lives, that all that we are and all that we have belongs to God, and that God entrusts that, our time, our energy, our creativity to our care to oversee and use for God’s purposes. That’s really our own, individual missions in the world; (remembering that mission essentially means being sent out). To take what God has given us and to use it in our lives and in the world to bring about God’s purpose which is the reconciliation of all people to God. The second thing that we are doing here today is to begin a parish-wide conversation on mission: what is God’s mission for us here at St. Columb’s? How is God calling us out beyond our four walls as individuals and as a people to offer our gifts and God’s good news through the person of Jesus Christ to others? One of the things that I have learned in my 11 years of ordained ministry (that I didn’t really learn in seminary) is that it is mine and the church’s essential work to nourish and equip each one of you to be apostles of Jesus Christ in your own particular situations. We do that through worship together, through fellowship, through food, through formation. We do that in a variety of ways, but it is important for us always to remember in those things that we are each being formed and supported to be apostles in our own lives; apostles in the world. That is the mission of all the baptized. So over the coming weeks, you will notice three boards in the narthex and in the parish hall with three different questions on them. I will also be visiting most of the small groups in the parish and hearing your answers to those questions, because I think they are essential to uncover how we understand our mission as the people of God and what we need to do to better equip you for that mission. Be thinking about the questions. They are 1. Tell me about a time when you experienced a sense of community at St. Columb’s. 2. Tell me about a time when St. Columb’s was at its best representing Christ. What made that possible? 3. An apostle is someone who is sent forth. What about your experience at St. Columb’s has prepared you to be an apostle in the world today? (What do you feel might be lacking?) As you think about your answers to these questions, do not forget the symbol of what you are laying on the altar today; for that is a representation of the gifts that you bring to God, to this church, and to the world, and can, will and should be an essential part of your mission in the world. Last night, one of my seminary classmates had shared a pastoral letter from his bishop, The Bishop of Long Island, about the Syrian Crises and the Presiding Bishop’s call to recognize today and to remember that we are called to participate in "Confession, Repentance, and Commitment to End Racism.” I was struck by some of the words the bishop of Long Island wrote in this letter regarding the mission of the church, and so I will share those with you in closing: “If we are horrified by the sight of refugee children drowning in an attempt to find freedom, if we are concerned enough to take racial reconciliation seriously as a church body, then let us undertake some tangible effort to alleviate the suffering of God's people at our gates. Let us fight the good fight to build bridges for the strangers in our midst, not walls. Let us put our resources and time and energy into addressing the obligation from the Gospel of Jesus Christ to care for people, all people, and particularly those in the most profound need.”

11th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 14B

11th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 14B August 9, 2015 One of my friends shared an article from the New York Times Sunday book review this week that captured my attention. The article is titled Walker Percy’s Theory of Hurricanes, and it is written by Walter Isaacson. Issacson opens the article by saying, “Walker Percy had a theory about hurricanes. ‘Though science taught that good environments were better than bad environments, it appeared to him that the opposite was the case,’ he wrote of Will Barrett, the semi-autobiographical title character of his second novel, The Last Gentleman. ‘Take hurricanes, for example, certainly a bad environment if ever there was one. It was his impression that not just he but other people felt better in hurricanes’.” Isaacson writes about how Will Barrett, after making these observations, goes on to recall a date that he had with a girl named Midge. “Driving through Connecticut, they are caught in a Northeastern hurricane and seek shelter at a diner. When the wind breaks a window, they help the counter attendant board it up. ‘Midge and the counterman,’ Percy writes, ‘were very happy. The hurricane blew away the sad, noxious particles which befoul the sorrowful old Eastern sky and Midge no longer felt obliged to keep her face stiff. They were able to talk. It was best of all when the hurricane’s eye came with its so-called ominous stillness. It was not ominous. Everything was yellow and still and charged up with value’.” Isaacson continues, “Percy’s diagnosis was that when we are mired in the everydayness of ordinary life, we are susceptible to what he called ‘the malaise,’ a free floating despair associated with the feeling that you’re not a part of the world or connected to the people in it.” Isaacson is positing that all of Percy’s heroes deal with this malaise of being mired in the everydayness of ordinary life and that each one of them wrestles with going on the search for something more—the search that “anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”i Isaacson goes on in the article to talk about how Percy sees in hurricanes the opportunity to shake normal, everyday people up out of the malaise, putting them in circumstances that break them out of their ordinary lives and give them the opportunities to be heroes or saints. And we get that, don’t we? Part of our focus today is the beginning of another school year and the beginning of a new program year in the life of the church. On the first day of school, we all pick out a special outfit. We buy new backpacks and school supplies. We start fresh and new, and we have the opportunity to be someone different, at least for that first day. And in the church, we have a chance, also, to start out new and fresh, to create new offerings, new rhythms, new patterns. Then there’s our gospel reading for today, in which Jesus says to the crowds who are following him, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The first thing that you need to keep in mind is that this is our third out of 5 Sundays in this lectionary year when Jesus or the gospel reading itself talk about bread. By the end of this sequence all of us, preachers and people, will be most ready to go on the Adkins diet. The second thing that you need to realize about today’s gospel reading is that this particular crowd that Jesus is talking to isn’t buying it. “Now, wait just a minute, they say. We know this guy. He’s Jesus, son of Joseph whose father and mother we know! Who does this ordinary, everyday one of us guy think that he is saying that he is the bread that has come down from heaven?!” And we get that too, don’t we? While we are busy longing for some super-extraordinary circumstances, something to shake us up out of our malaise, give us a fresh start and a new rhythm, Jesus is telling us that he is that, but that he is also ordinary and humble. And he tells us how God calls to us, speaks to us out of the ordinary and humble aspects of our lives (the regular old wheat bread that we make the sandwiches for school lunch out of; the loads of laundry to be folded; the papers and the homework to be done and checked) just as much as God calls to us in the extraordinary times(the hurricanes and the vacations at the beach and the first days of school and the new program year). And maybe that’s why we need to hear about how Jesus is “the bread of life” Sunday after Sunday for five weeks in a row. Because we want to see God in the grandiose, and God is often there. But God is always there in the everyday, in the ordinary, calling to us to see and to know and to recognize God in that humility. “This is the claim Jesus makes in today’s gospel reading, the claim which offended the crowd who followed him then, the claim which still offends any who take it seriously today. For where we expect God to come in might, God comes in weakness; where we look for God to come in power, God comes in vulnerability; and when we seek God in justice and righteousness – which is, after all, what we all expect from a God – we find God (or rather are found by God!) in forgiveness and mercy.”ii i. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/books/review/walker-percys-theory-of-hurricanes.html?smid=fb-share&_r=3 ii. http://www.davidlose.net/2015/08/pentecost-11-b/

9th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 12B

9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 12B July 26, 2015 When I first read the first two readings for today, my first thought was “Ick! Let’s see what the other two readings look like!” I mean, as far as opening lines go, the reading from 2 Samuel is pretty good: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.” It has the makings of an epic story. But then as the story unfolds, we see the beginning of the fall of one of Israel’s great heroes. David sees Bathsheba when she is bathing and he must have her. They commit adultery while her husband Uriah is off at battle, and she becomes pregnant. David tries to cover it up, but for whatever reason, Uriah doesn’t go along with the plan, and in the end of our passage for today, we see David set in motion the process to have Uriah killed in battle in a betrayal by the rest of the forces. Then we’ve got that little ray of sunshine that is the psalm for today--Psalm 14. My especially favorite line is verse 4 which says, “everyone has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad/there is no one who does good; no, not one.” Ick! But I have learned that most times when I have such a visceral response to scripture, it is because God is calling me to wrestle with something that I’d otherwise try to get out of dealing with. So here’s how I wrestled with these scriptures this week. First, I went back to our communion song from last week—Lennard Cohen’s melancholy and haunting song “Hallelujah”. It starts off by talking about David and recounting a bit of our story for today, and then it continues on to talk about how there are many different types of Hallelujahs even while it talks about the hardships of love. One of the central verses of the song goes “There’s a blaze of light in every word/it doesn’t matter what you heard/ the holy, or the broken Hallelujah.” Essentially, love will break our hearts. In an article in Rolling Stone, Cohen is quoted as saying, “The only moment that you can live comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you say, ‘Look, I don’t understand a …thing at all—Hallelujah! That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.” I don’t like to engage with this story of David because I don’t like to witness the fall of a hero. (It’s part of why I’m hesitant to read Harper Lee’s new book—because I’ve heard that in it we see the fall of Atticus Finch as a civil rights hero and a moral compass to his family.) But this discomfort is important to face, I think, because each of us is the hero of our own stories, our own lives. And when we refuse to acknowledge the times that others fall in grace, then we aren’t able to recognize and admit those times about ourselves as well. A couple of weeks ago, I read an article by one of my heroes, Parker Palmer, that I was reminded of in the midst of my struggle with these readings this week. Palmer speaks about this because it is the struggle of all of us, really. He refers to it as the search for wholeness in many of his writings. In this particular article, he quotes Florida Scott-Maxwell in her book The Measure of my Days: “You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done…you are fierce with reality.” And then Palmer writes about wholeness in this way: “…There are no short-cuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’ If we can’t embrace the whole of who we are—embrace it with transformative love—we’ll imprison the creative energies hidden in our own shadows and flee from the world’s complex mix of shadow and light.” i Palmer writes about the need for us to be willing to move through the discomfort of honest self-examination toward the grace of compassionate self-acceptance. And as we do this work for ourselves, then I think we are more open to embracing the whole of the other as well. Medieval mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg writes about this saying, “From suffering I have learned this: that whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless she embraces the very same love which wounded her.”ii Betrayal only happens because love and trust existed in the first place, and her medicine is to embrace the love that wounded us. That’s hard work, but certainly more effective in our quest for wholeness than being in denial or burying our anger, bitterness and disappointment. So how do we do this? How do we do this work of honest self-examination? How do we do this work of embracing the love that wounded us? Parker Palmer suggests that we pay attention to that which we are afraid of and to move toward it that rather than away from it. He also suggests that we spend more time in nature, paying special attention to the mess that is in nature and the place it has in the world; that will make us more accepting of the mess of our own lives. He concludes, “Wholeness is the goal, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. The sooner we understand this, the better. It’s a truth that can set us free to live well, to love well and, in the end, to die well.” What kind of mess might God be calling you to wrestle with in your life this week? As you reflect on this, I’ll close with the final verse from Cohen’s song, one that he sang but that is not often known by others who cover it. Because really, in the end, it's the only true song we can sing. I did my best, it wasn’t much/ I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch/ I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you./ And even though/ It all went wrong/ I’ll stand before the Lord of Song/ With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah… iii i. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/fierce-with-reality-living-and-loving-well-to-the-end/7729 ii. Fox, Matthew. Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations. New World Library: Novato, , 2011, p 61. iii. Cohen, Leonard. Hallelujah

7th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 10B

7th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 10B July 12, 2015 So here’s something you might not yet know about me. I love the show Game of Thrones. My husband and I watch it (although we haven’t yet finished the current season, so no spoilers, please!). I’ve read all the books that George R.R. Martin has managed to write. I think it’s really a great story, and I enjoy following the trials and tribulations of all the characters. (Although if you haven’t watched it before, I feel I should warn you that the show has lots of violence and also lots of nudity, so consider yourselves warned!) The thing that David and I have talked about most in Game of Thrones is the fact that in that world of the kingdom of Westeros, power is the chief motivator. And any character that acts out of other motivations such as mercy or kindness or just basic humanity often ends up having bad things happen to them. It’s become a bit of a joke for us now, as we watch it. If a character does something that is notably merciful, then we say to each other, “well, that one’s going to die!” and oftentimes, it happens. Early on in the series, maybe the first book and season, one of the main characters says to another, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” That sums up that kingdom and that story well, I think. Our gospel reading for today is the story of another kingdom. It is the kingdom of Herod. And our story from Mark’s gospel today is a strange little interlude, a flashback from Herod about the story of John the Baptist’s beheading that is stuck right smack dab in the middle this chapter of Mark. Our story for today is strange because, a) we don’t see Jesus at all and b) when you look at the whole chapter 6 of Mark, this story is stuck in a weird place. Mark has stuck this story of the beheading of John the Baptist in between Jesus’s sending out of the 12 (that we heard last week—where they are sent out vulnerably with nothing except the companionship of one other disciple) and when they all come back together and are reunited, going away to a deserted place for rest and renewal where the crowds find them, and then Jesus feeds them (which is actually left out of our lectionary reading for next week). So it’s a really weird placement of an especially gruesome and grisly story that even gives Game of Thrones a run for their money. In it we see that King Herod has thrown himself a birthday party. His stepdaughter Herodias is dancing at this party and her dancing has so pleased Herod and his guests that he offers to give her anything she asks for. Step-daughter Herodias goes off to ask her mother (who is also named Herodias) what she should ask for, and her mother, who has an ax to grind against John the Baptist who has chastised Herod for marrying her (his brother’s wife), tells daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. When daughter Herodias goes to Herod in front of all his guests and makes her request, the story tells us that “the king was deeply grieved” because he had liked and respected John, but he does what she asks “out of regard for his oaths and his guests”. When we look at how this story is situated in the middle of the sending out and returning of the disciples, it begins to make a little more sense why Mark put it there. Because when we look at it in context, we can see that Mark is telling the tale of two different kingdoms. One is the kingdom of Herod, where people manipulate others for power and position (and maybe even fun), where Herod throws his own birthday banquet that ends with the beheading of a man of God, where Herod refuses to do what his heart tells him is right because of how it would make him look weak. The other is the Kingdom of God, where God’s followers are sent out in weakness so that they may rely on the power of God, where people are healed and demons are cast out, where Jesus throws a banquet of mercy when the crowd has followed him and the disciples to a deserted place. And the contrast between these two kingdoms in Mark’s gospel leaves us with some questions. Which kingdom do you want to live in? Which kingdom will you help create? Which kingdom do you give your allegiance to? Of course we all know the “right answer” the “Sunday School” answer. We should want to live in and help create and give our allegiance to God’s kingdom. But think for a minute about the world that we live in, where competition and productivity is valued above most things, where power and success are held up as the highest good and vulnerability and weakness are frowned upon. In some ways, our world is more like Herod’s kingdom or even the kingdom of Westeros (although with a lot less nudity). Those who show mercy or kindness or compassion or who speak up against injustice often come out the worse for wear, even dead. Just look at what we did to Jesus! I want you to take a moment and imagine the kingdom of God, a kingdom in which there are no winners or losers—all are beloved children of God. And go back and think about those three questions I asked you again: Which kingdom do you want to live in? Which kingdom will you help create? Which kingdom do you give your allegiance to? A few weeks ago, I also preached about the Kingdom of God, and I encouraged you to look for ways that the Kingdom of God might be creeping up in your life and your world. I invited you to post of send me the photos with the #kingdomofgod. I remind you of that and invite you to add this dimension to it. Look for ways in your life and your world that this kingdom of God which is made up of compassion and mercy and vulnerability and speaking love and truth to injustice is cropping up in our world of power and competition and success. And pay attention to that. Nurture it where you can. And share those stories with me and others in this place. Thanks to David Lose for the idea of tying in Game of Thrones with this week’s gospel reading!

4th Sunday after Pentectost-Proper 7B

Proper 7B June 21, 2015 Our country has been reeling this week since a gunman opened fire on a bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. I have seen outbursts of horror, outrage, anger, and fear, as we all seek to find some sort of meaning in such a senseless tragedy and as we as a society yearn for a meaningful conversation on how we might prevent such acts of violence and hatred in the future. One of the gifts of our tradition, I have found, is our lectionary—a systematic process for reading most of the major portions of Bible in a three year period. We are fortunate to have the lectionary because it provides us with a way to have conversations with scripture and our lives and our world that aren’t subject to the whim of the preacher. Our gospel today is not one I would have chosen to give us good news in the light off the Charleston shooting, but in spending some time with it, I believe it has a great deal to offer us in that way. It is a passage that confronts fear, and fear is what is at the heart of such hatred, such tragedy. So I’ll begin our conversation with the gospel today by asking you to think about this question: Do you think the disciples are more afraid before Jesus’ stilling of the storm or after? Think about it for a minute. The gospel clearly indicates that they are terrified during the storm. They are so terrified that they wake the sleeping Jesus with a frantic question: “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And Jesus wakes up and calms the storm, and then he says to the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Notice what Jesus does not say here. He does not say, “Do not be afraid,” even though that is a prevalent refrain all throughout scripture, especially when people are encountering God or God’s messengers. In this instance, Jesus is not rebuking the disciples because they are afraid. He knows that there is much in this life to be afraid of: isolation, pain, illness, meaninglessness, rejection, losing one’s job, money problems, failure, illness, natural disasters, senseless acts of hate, and death. “Have you still no faith?” he asks them, because in and through faith we learn and hold fast to the reality that while there is much for us to fear, those things do not have the last word. God is mightier than any of those, even death, and God’s promise through the person of Jesus is that even when we do endure the fearsome things, God does not abandon us to them. God is with us, and God’s power is such that God can redeem even the most horrible, fearsome acts. That’s the disciples fear before the calming of the storm. But what about the question I asked you, “Do you think the disciples are more afraid before Jesus’ stilling of the storm or after?” Did any of you think that they might be more afraid after? Why? What would the disciples have to be afraid of after Jesus’s calming of the storm? I read a book several years ago that I was just reminded of recently. It’s the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. In the beginning of this book, the main character and narrator, Reuben Land, tells of the apparent miracle by which his father saved his life when he had just been born. He reflects on how often we tend to domesticate miracles, using the word to describe all manner of things that merit our attention and appreciation but that are not, finally, truly miraculous. He then goes on to press that distinction: “Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time” (Peace Like a River, 3). Then comes the part that is especially pertinent to us today, both in light of our gospel reading and in light of the shootings at Emmanuel. “Quoting his sister, Reuben says, ‘People fear miracles because they fear being changed.’ Which is the source, I think, of this other kind of fear that stands somewhere between a holy awe and mighty terror: the fear of being changed. And make no mistake, Jesus is asking the disciples to change. In this very moment he is drawing them from the familiar territory of Capernaum to the strange and foreign land of the Garasenes. And he is moving them from being fishermen to disciples. And he is preparing them to welcome a kingdom so very different from the one they’d either expected or wanted” (David Lose at www.davidlost.net) When the disciples experience the miracle of Jesus’s calming the storm, they are confronted with a choice. The rest of Reuben’s quotation gets to the heart of this: “People fear miracles because they fear being changed,” he says, and then continues, “though ignoring them will change you also.” The disciples are offered the choice of allowing themselves to be transformed by this new encounter with Jesus, or they can refuse. But they cannot stay the same either way. So, what do you think is the miracle that confronts us in this moment, as individuals? As a congregation? As a society who has witnessed horrible acts of hatred and un-comprehendingly generous forgiveness from some of the families of the victims? How is God encountering you and calling you to the other side of the lake, to change, to a new and different imagination about what it means to be a people of faith in our particular community and circumstances?

3rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 6B

3rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 6B June 14, 2015 And Jesus also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” We’ve all heard it---the Sunday school lesson where someone brings in a mustard seed and shows us just how small it is and tells us about how our faith is like that—if we have just a little bit of faith then God will take it and use it and transform it into something so much greater: “a new creation,” is what Paul calls it. And I’m not disputing that. But what if…this parable isn’t so much about us and our faith but is about the Kingdom of God, as Jesus suggests. What does that even mean? What might that look like? And how might we participate in a mustard-seed-like Kingdom of God? Y’all remember that sermon I preached about kudzu not too long ago? Well, did you know that the mustard plant was practically the kudzu of Jesus’s time? It was essentially a weed, although it was a weed with a nice smell to it that sometimes could be used as a spice or medicinally. But really it was a crazy-growing weed like our kudzu. Wild mustard is incredibly hard to control, somewhat pesky and even a little bit dangerous, because once it takes root, it can take over an entire planting area. That’s why mustard was very seldom found in a garden in Jesus’s time but was more often found growing wild and overtaking the side of an open hill or abandoned field. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God…? It is like a crazy growing plant that no one would willing plant in their garden, which takes over, supplants, and preempts previous gardening agendas…” Here’s what Biblical scholar John Dominick Crossan has to say about this: “The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three of four feet, or even higher. It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom of God was like: not like the mighty Cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [more] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses—if you could control it.” (The Historical Jesus pp 278-279) It’s a little bit hard to hear this isn’t it, because we just know it’s going to shake us up too. The Kingdom of God is abundant and verdant; it is wild and uncontrollable; it is unexpected and it is rampant. It is a message of hope that we are invited to share this day and beyond. In the next few months, we are going to be talking about mission. About the mission of St. Columb’s. About the mission of every baptized member here. And this is a great place to start—with this image of the Kingdom of God. Because part of our mission is to participate in this wild, abundant, rampant Kingdom of God that is already at work and growing lusciously all around us. But the first thing we have to do is to pay attention to it. So, I have a challenge for you for this summer. I want you to seek out, to look for those little places in your world where you see the Kingdom of God infiltrating, taking over, bringing hope and abundance. I want you to look for those places where you sense that God is at work, even though it might not be particularly obvious or particularly grand. And I want you to take pictures of it and post them. Post them on our Facebook page with the (hashtag) #kingdomofgod. Email them to the church office so we can post them on our website. Print them out; share them with people and tell the stories of the Kingdom of God that you are encountering. We’ll do this over the whole summer, and then in August, we’ll collect them and display them all together in one place to kick-off our conversations about mission. I challenge you this week and beyond to look for, even anticipate the Kingdom of God in your world. Pay attention to it, seek it out, and pray about how God is calling you to be an active participant in aiding its unexpected growth. (Inspired by David Lose’s reflection “Mission Possible” June 10, 2012 at www.workingpreacher.org)