Sermon for the 12th Sunday After Pentecost

Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18, Ephesians 6:10-20, John 6:56-69

Yes… it’s one more week of the sixth chapter of John and the bread of heaven, these discourses that have interrupted the Gospel of Mark in the Lectionary for the last five weeks in which Jesus continues to try to tell his followers a vital truth about who he is and what they, as his followers, must do to have this ephemeral concept of “eternal life.” If you can remember back at the end of last month, we began with the story of the feeding of the five thousand. This miracle that so impressed the crowd that they wanted to take Jesus by force and make him their king. We began with a crowd of over five thousand, following this Jesus, not even giving him time to step away and pray or refresh himself in solitude, and today we hear that his message has become so difficult and offensive that even his disciples are turning away.

As we know, John’s Gospel is the one that is laden with deep and mystical meaning. More than in the other Gospels, language is important in John. Words do not simply mean what they mean, and simple concepts like bread and life are deep with spiritual and theological importance. This bread that Jesus talks about is bread for the body on one level, and on another it reminds John’s hearers of the manna that God provided their ancestors in the wilderness. But it is ever so much more than that, Jesus tells them. This bread is himself, his very life; and those who eat it "will live forever." But they weren’t getting it, and some two thousand years later, we are still wrestling with it!

“You are what you eat.” Or “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are” as Anthelme Brillat-Savarin originally wrote it in Meditations of Transcendent Gastronomy. He might have been saying tell me what it is that you take into yourself, what it is that you surround yourself with, what is it you immerse yourself in, what it is it you identify yourself most intimately with and I will know who you are.

Jesus says to his followers, “I am willing to be given to you, to be completely sacrificed for you in love, because I know who I am and that this self-giving is part of my very essence. And those who allow me to feed them, to take me into them completely will have the life that is true, that is real, that does not end. And…they will become more and more like me, more identified with me.”

“This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” Indeed. This is not the first time the disciples have struggled to understand Jesus. Nor of course will it be the last. The scholars wrangle over whether or not it is the language of the eating of flesh and drinking of blood that offended Jesus’ Jewish hearers, or if it was simply the response to the rest of the message that they were reacting to. Becoming like Jesus. This Jesus who ate with outcasts, insisted on justice and compassion….upset the status quo. Whatever the reason, John tells us, many of his disciples fell away at that point. Apparently it was just getting too hard to follow this strange rabbi. He was asking too much. And in a kind of heart stopping moment, Jesus asks the twelve, “So what about you, are you leaving me too?” And Peter, good everyperson Peter, whom as we know doesn’t always get it right or do it well, in this case has the answer we all want to hear right then, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” We can almost hear the echo resounding down the ages from Joshua choosing “for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Throughout time it is always God who has been faithful, who has remained in relationship, in covenant with God’s people. God’s beloved have always been given a choice, and they have not always chosen to serve God. For though we too know, like Joshua’s people, God has been faithful to us, and perhaps we can think without too much trouble, at least on a good day, of the ways that God has brought us up out of slavery, of our own signs of God at work in our lives, of the ways we have been protected along the way, we also might feel with the disciples that following Jesus is just too much at times, and we, too might want to turn back and no longer go with him.

But still he keeps coming back to us. “I really am the only one who has what you need for life.” Peter knew…. and our hearts know….to whom else can we go really? This Jesus who breaks into human history as the Incarnate manifestation of God….to show us literally who God is…..this living bread….the Holy One of God who willingly sacrifices himself for us…we who are God’s beloved ones, simply so we can abide in God and God in us….what an amazing promise of covenantal relationship…. And then of course…. calls on us to respond.

Because of course there is that other part of the both/and of the Incarnation….Jesus, the bread of heaven comes to feed us God and sustain us….but for what? Perhaps this was the thing that really made Jesus’ followers turn away…. the message of radical hospitality, inclusivity and love that does not count the cost… this Gospel that led to Jesus “ascending” to death on a cross before resurrection could ever be possible.

At times we may feel as Paul did, that we “struggle against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” and that we need to “put on the whole armor of God” on to help us deal with whatever we encounter as we live this countercultural message of the Gospel. While we may not face life and death choices, we are all asked in ways both large and small to take stands for truth and righteousness, and to proclaim the gospel of peace. Through our baptismal vows we promise to proclaim by word and example the Good, News of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

You are what you eat. It is all of this that we commemorate and celebrate in our Eucharist. The great both/and. Jesus, bread of heaven feeding us the perfect gift of God that will not fail…but also our knowledge that this is bread for a journey, …that we have placed on us by virtue of our baptism a call to use the nourishment we are given to do as Jesus did to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth….to act in turn as Jesus did, even if it calls us out of our comfort zones, even it calls us to sacrifice. We cannot feed others if we ourselves are not nourished. Do we allow Jesus to feed us? In the Word and in Spirit, in community and in the Eucharist? Are we open to receive? Can we, like Peter answer Jesus, with open hearts, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

Today's Sermon---Good News Even Here!

Sermon for Pentecost 6B Proper 10
Amos 7:7-15, Mark 6:14-29

I'm on a preaching run for about four to six weeks, depending on fast my colleague heals from her surgery. This is always a challenge of time-management with the day job and life in general, so I try to be proactive and work on my sermons ahead as I have the time. When I saw this Sunday's lectionary a couple weeks ago I literally said, "God, you have GOT to be kidding!" I thought about avoiding the whole thing by going with one of the OT readings or the Epistle, but I got to thinking that Mark is judicious what he includes, so you know, there's just got to be some Good News in there somewhere! So I set myself the task of finding it and this is what ensued. It preached pretty well this morning at my place, and I will be giving it another go in a little while at the nursing home.

A “perplexed” king, a seductive dancing girl and a beheaded prophet. What on earth does any of this have to do with Jesus? Well here it is before us in the Gospel of Mark, and we know that Mark’s purpose was to tell us of “the good news* of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. How on earth does this work, we might wonder? Jesus does not even show up in this Gospel, let alone do any of the things he is usually about in Mark. So, what’s the point?

I have to admit, when I saw that this reading was the one assigned in the lectionary for this Sunday, my first reaction was less than enthusiastic. And I had to ask that question, too. Why on earth tell this story then or now? What could possibly be the good news here?

Let’s start with the big picture. John, as we know was a prophet. Just like Amos, whom we heard from in the Old Testament reading this morning. Prophets. The scriptures are full of them. In addition to Amos, we have Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Nahum, Jonah, and Ezekiel. And of course there were the women …Sarah Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, Esther and many many more. Prophets. Those who told the truth about God. Because that is what a prophet does. Whether he or she does it willingly and fearlessly or only after great prodding and with some reluctance…the prophet is called to stand and tell the truth that “God is here and wants you to join in relationship with God to bring about God’s kingdom.” The prophets appear when something has gone amiss in relationships. When injustice and opression are front and center, when hatred, not love are ruling…a prophet’s voice is heard crying out. And it is inevitably and always a call to conversion, a call to repentance, a call to acting like the kingdom of God is at hand right here and now.

Because that was John’s message…he said it at the very beginning when he burst out of the wilderness…”Repent for the kingdom of God is near.” And people were apparently stirred up by this wild and wooly man. This prophet John was not a mainstream kind of guy. He lived in the wilderness. He did not dress well or act refined. He was out there at the edge and he preached a rather unsettling message. And yet something about him and what he had to say drew people, at least some people, in. We hear in the Gospel that “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

The kingdom of God is near. Imagine a world where the radical love of God is the dominating force…a world where we would wage peace instead of war, where we would strive for generosity not acquisition, where justice and mercy would be common, and tolerance and concern for others would be an everyday thing. It would be a world in which it would be safe enough for all to be vulnerable, safe enough for all to live and love freely as God loves. God’s kingdom, the world we are created for in God’s great dream for God’s beloved ones. God’s kingdom is near….we need only repent. This very same message of God’s kingdom being near is not only John’s message but it is the one that Jesus preached and lived, and it is the same message that Jesus instructed his followers to proclaim. This is the good news and at least one of the reasons why this particular story appears in the middle of Mark’s Gospel.

Not everyone of course was happy with John’s message. The end to John’s life reads like something off the tabloid news. Herod had broken up his brother Phillip's marriage in order to take Herodias as his wife. John had confronted Herod with his message of repentance and the nearness of God’s kingdom, and talked to Herod about the problems with his marriage to Herodias, which upset her greatly. In order to placate Herodias, Herod had John arrested. This, despite the fact that we are told that Herod personally felt John to be a righteous and holy man, and even enjoyed listening to his “perplexing” message. At Herod’s birthday party, the evening’s entertainment was provided by the daughter of Herodias and Phillip, also named Herodias. She so enchanted Herod that he told her that she could have anything she wanted. She consulted her mother, who told her to ask for John’s head. Herod seemingly does not want to grant the request, but does not have the strength of will to refuse and look foolish in front of his guests, who had heard him make his promise to give her anything she asked. So poor “grieved” Herod does as she asks. And John, prophet of repentence and teller of truth bout the nearness of God’s kingdom, is killed.

Jesus continued to preach this message and to live it out in his own life and death. Repenting. Turning our hearts and our lives another way. The only way that God’s kingdom can come is to turn our lives to another way of being…not to the world’s way but to God’s. Entrance into God’s kingdom requires a choice to believe that in Jesus, God’s kingdom on earth indeed is near. And, more importantly as followers of Jesus we are the ones charged with carrying the prophetic message about that kingdom. The choice to do this of course is a challenging counter-cultural one. It flies in the face of much that the world says is important. Sometimes the message is perplexing. Sometimes it requires that we make hard choices and take risks, taking the chance that others will reject the message and even shoot (or behead) the messenger.
John’s listeners were encouraged to take action – “repent” is a verb. In its most literal sense repentance involves turning ourselves from one course to another, stopping, changing direction, setting off in a new way. And being a follower of Jesus may sometimes require that of us. As one writer pointed out, the earliest and most radical Christian form of confession was simple. “Jesus is Lord.” Not money or power or possessions are our lords and masters. Not righteousness, or winning, or being the best and brightest. Not getting it right, or being in control or triumphing over. In the kingdom of God, Jesus is Lord. This Jesus who gave us one commandment -- to love one another as God loves us. John urged his listeners to prove their spiritual intentions by concrete deeds. Perhaps repenting, then, is not the only verb required. Love, too is demonstrated in action, turning our lives more and more to resemble this Jesus whose disciples we are by virtue of our baptismal covenant. As another prophet, Micah tells us, to “Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

John’s prophetic call was to repent, to make our crooked ways straight, to flatten the hills and to make space for the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth. May it be so. Amen.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Through Holy Week we gather as a community to remember through liturgy and ritual the last hours of Jesus life. On this night in particular we recall the last night he spent together with his friends. Depending on the lectionary, we hear either the story of the first Eucharist or the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples as we did this year.

Jesus and his disciples are gathered at supper. They are tired, dirty, carrying with them all the stuff of the day….literally. When people gathered for a meal, the typical custom was for someone to wash the feet of those gathered. It was a practical thing, it made gathering for dinner much more pleasant. Most often it was a slave who did this, sometimes a peer, but never the rabbi, the teacher. But Jesus takes it upon himself to wash their feet. No one else was doing this necessary act….so during supper Jesus does this act of servanthood, this act of love.

Having loved his own…he loved them to the end….he did indeed….and I think not simply in terms of loving them to the end of his life….but to the end….to the greatest extent they could be loved…..unconditionally. He loved them when he called them as disciples and they dropped everything and came. He loved them when they had faith and seemed to actually get what he was about. He also loved them when they were completely faithless and seemed to lack the most basic understanding of his message even after being with him day by day for three years. He loved them even when he knew that one of them would betray him.

Love. What passes for love for us so often is really a complex stew of so many other things! Want, greed and unmet need. The demands of our undifferentiated egos, the cries of our wounded inner children. The strident calls of the culture that tells us that our needs must be met and that “all we need is love” and that surely it can be purchased in some shiny packaged form of whatever they are hawking at the moment.

We are not talking about “love as a feeling” as we often think about it, but rather love as an action. Writer and theologian CS Lewis talks about this as “gift love.” He says that this is love born of fullness. The goal of gift love is to enrich and enhance the beloved. Gift love, Lewis says, is like a bountiful, artesian well that just overflows, arcing out to bless all it touches. Lewis says that God's love is gift love. And then he says, "We humans are made in the image of such everlasting and unconditional love."

Theologian the Rev. Dr. Brooks Ramsey has said the point of the incarnation was that “God became like us so we could become like God.” In our becoming more Godlike we are called to a love that becomes a particular kind of transformative act that changes and shapes us more and more into the kinds of persons who can love as God loves, who can indeed follow the commandment that Jesus gave his friends that night. Of course this isn’t easy. It means that we must stoop to serve and wash the feet of those who hurt or frustrate or betray us. It means we must continue to act in love and to serve in love. It means that we have to do the countercultural things, the difficult things….the things that require us to remember who and whose we are. John says that Jesus got up during supper to wash the feet of the disciples becasuse he knew that he had come from God and was going to God. Jesus sense of who and whose he was was clear and strong. His sense of his identity and of his mission was sure. Remember Ash Wednesday when we reflected on the idea that the "dust" that we are is the same as that of all the matter of the created universe, the same as that of the supernovas and the stars, the glaciers and the canyons, the earth and the air... and that really it is all really part of God? What I said that Ash Wednesday night was that as I marked the cross on each forehead, it seemed as if what I was really saying was "Remember that you are of God, and to God you will return." Jesus Knows with an unwavering certainly as C said on Sunday morning, that he is of God and it is to God he will return. And while he is still on earth for this short time with his friends, he wants to give this them last message, this last commandment so that there will be no mistake that they indeed are his friends, his followers…..Love one another in this way….as I love you….in this way. We are loved in this way. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that we too could know who we are, beloved of God, the God who loves us beyond belief who longs to grace us and transform us with His love into such lovers. In the ACTION of such loving we change…..become the gift lovers.

Lewis' depiction of gift love really is the foundation of the way Jesus loved. And the great good news for us is not only that we are loved by God, but also that this is our deepest identity as well. If we were not capable of this we would not have been created for it! Theologian Karl Barth once said, "Jesus is the name of our species, in relation to whom we are still subhuman but, nonetheless, called ultimately to become." Jesus would not have given us this new commandment if it had not been possible for us to accomplish it.

While we do not do a traditional foot washing service, the symbols of that act are here before you as a reminder of Jesus’ willingness to do whatever was needed in love, and his command to us to do the same. Over the next three days we will see just how far he was willing to take his love for us. We will see the gift of his willingness to undergo the loss of his earthly life by painful and humiliating crucifixion in order to defeat death for our redemption, giving us his ongoing gift of himself in the presence of his spirit among us forever. And we remember not just the end of his life, but the whole arc of it, as we hear again that final commandment “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Sermon for Lent 3B 2009

Exodus 20:1-17, John 2:13-22

From Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday here at St. J's there are twelve services in which the Scriptures are read. This doesn’t include Wednesday night GBD and the LifeCycles Bible Study groups which add six more bringing us to eighteen. This is a lot of grappling with scriptures whose main focus is preparing the people of God to participate in the experience of the crucifixion of Jesus. The Old Testament readings in Lent focus on Israel’s salvation history
We were reminded over the last two weeks of God’s promise to Noah to never again destroy the earth and God’s people, and then last week, we heard about God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah to bring about that which seemed impossible to them and make them the parents of many nations. And indeed, God was and through all time continues to be faithful to these promises. This week we hear another Old Testament reading in which God makes a covenant with a particular people. In the covenant God made with Israel through Moses ,the Ten Commandments, are God’s instrument for forming this people their unique relationship with Yahweh.
The Gospel readings over the last few weeks have been from Mark, telling us the story of Jesus life and ministry to help us understand more about who this incarnate redeemer was who chose to undertake this crucifixion journey. We see him calling disciples, healing, teaching, even transfigured. But always Mark makes sure that we know that we are focused on the fact that this is Jesus, the Son of God, and at least since the Transfiguration, the one who is heading for the cross.
Today, at first glance, it seems we make a shift. Both of the stories we heard in the Old and New Testament readings are familiar to us. We have heard them in church and Sunday school since childhood. We have seen the pictures depicting these events, maybe we have even seen the movie of the Ten Commandments. And we may have reactions to these stories as well. Or to their contents. The Ten Commandments. Laws. Rules. The “Thou Shalt Nots.” More things to feel bad about that we do not measure up to. And this Jesus who is making whips and getting angry and creating havoc in the temple precincts. Well, he just makes us more than a little uncomfortable. I mean, where did our gentle Jesus meek and mild go, anyway? Frankly this might be some of the stuff we’d all just as soon ignore.
And yet….if we are willing to take that deeper look, there is much here that is worth the discomfort. Those commandments for instance. I don’t know about you, but in my religious upbringing, the notion that they were about relationship was not something that was up there on the radar screen. But in reality that is exactly what the commandments are about. Theologian Larry Gillick says that while the commandments can be heard as have-tos and should-dos, they can also be heard as forms of seeing and respecting God’s presence in all of life’s relationships.
The “sinfulness” of things, the breaking of commandments really is about the breaking of relationship. That first one about having idols and false gods, for example…..We know that it is easy for us to get off track, out of right relationship, with God, with others, with the better part ourselves. We can lose sight of what is important. Work, money, success, stuff, anything can become all encompassing to us….can become….gods. We become so focused on “the one thing” anything….that we lose sight of what’s truly important. And when this happens, well, things fall apart. We have only to look around at the current state of things in our economy for a little evidence of that. And honoring the Sabbath…well, maybe that is about slowing down long enough to remember that everything is holy, and we need time to catch up, not on our work, but on how God is at work among us. Sometimes we try so hard to do it ourselves, forgetting that we really are not in control, can’t do it alone. Perhaps keeping Sabbath better would help us remember that we really are not God after all, we really are not in charge, and don’t have to do it all.
In a relational view, breaking the commandments is saying loud and clear that I value what you have more than I value you and will go to whatever lengths to take it from you, whether it is your property, your spouse, your reputation or your life. There is no honoring here for one another as a beloved one of God. There is little justice, little goodness, little right relationship. So it seems that maybe rather than a set of constricting laws designed as something to should and ought us into submission, the commandments really are invitations to fullness of life in relationship with God and with each other.
Jesus as an observant Jew of his time would have been well-schooled in the “ten laws.” He would have understood them in depth as he understood the Hebrew Scriptures. He would have understood about the covenanted relationship and the faithfulness between God and God’s people and the importance of not letting anything stand in the way of that. And if he saw something that did stand in the way of that relationship happening, especially in sacred space, it may well have been enough to arouse the kind of anger we see in him in today’s Gospel. Jesus would not have been angry because the sacrificial animals were there for purchase, or because the money-changers were there changing coins from all over the realm into the temple currency. That business was necessary for the temple to be a place for the people from all over to come and make sacrifices in worship. Certainly it was easier to travel and purchase your animals in the temple courts than to bring them with you across the country. Possibly, as some scholars suggest, it had become a corrupt and exploitative economic system that made sacrifice increasingly impossible for the poorest of worshipers, and made access to God dependent on economic circumstances. Everything Jesus was about would have been offended by this. In his mind, no obstacles could be put in the way of being able to access God’s grace and compassion. No limits can be put on the way to God’s forgiveness. If the temple itself is the limit, then even it must be destroyed.
Unlike in the other three Synoptic Gospels where this scene happens much later, in John’s version Jesus comes on the scene early in his ministry. He is still an unknown quantity, fresh from his first miracle. The disciples are still trying to figure out who he is, what he is about. And in this moment he is about change and liberation, about allowing access to God and eliminating whatever might be interfering with access to that relationship, whatever form that interference might take.
So, too in our own temple precincts, we find our own chaos and rabble, our moneychangers and our dove sellers, and Lent is a good time to reflect, to ponder, and to cleanse….what kind of interference do we have going on that limits our access to God? What is it that we need to be purified of during these days of Lent? Perhaps a relational review of those commandments would not be a bad place to start.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Once again we gather as a community of God’s beloved people to begin the journey of Lent. To make the shift from one season of our church lives to the next. I think sometimes about what a blessing it is to be in a liturgical church, to have this rhythm to help us remember the great breadth and depth of all of who God is in our lives and who we are to God. Tonight our service has a focus on penitence and the receiving of Ashes. It gives us the opportunity to remember by word and symbol the fragile and brief nature of this earthly life. To reflect on how precious it and we are before God. And to remember how God holds us in that life...and that we can indeed trust God to do that.

Last Sunday I talked about thin places and mountain top moments. How sometimes we have those experiences in which we know that we have come face to face with the living God and have, for a moment caught God’s vision. Last Ash Wednesday God graced me with one of those moments during this service. What came from that moment on the mountain has stayed with me through Lent and Easter and beyond and I’d like to pass it on to you tonight.

Last year, I had the privilege of being the one to "impose" the ashes upon those coming forward as the prayer book says. When I got home that night, I had to go look up the word impose to see if there was something I was missing, but all the definitions had the same sense of the word that I am familiar with, that of bringing something on someone with force or at the very least authority, pushing it at them. Because that certainly was not what I had I felt. I had felt instead that I was giving each of them a splendid gift. The Sunday before, our mentor, Father T had led us in a comptempletive prayer workshop, and one of the things we had reflected on was that essentially the "dust" that we are is the stuff of the universe, the same matter as supernovas and stars, glaciers and canyons, that the very ground we stand on and the air that we breathe... is the stuff, could it be....of God? This came back to me that night, and as I marked that small cross of ash on each forehead, I felt as if what I was truly saying to each person was, "Remember that you are of God, and to God you will return."

We are dust. We are God’s. How ever we look at it, our lives are not our own, nor are they endless. We are all part of a connected and intertwining community with God at the center. Everything we are, everything we have, belongs to the One who created us and loves us beyond measure. The One who has desired to be in relationship with us through all time and has kept faithful covenant with us forever. The One who became flesh in order to be among us, to be us in order to both show us God and how to be human.

It is when we forget and lose sight of this essential truth and fall out of right relationship that we sin. It is then that we are in need of forgiveness. It is then that we must repent and turn to a new way of being with God, with others and with ourselves. It is then that we must remember again who we really are – stuff of earth, yes, but chosen and beloved by God, covenanted through all time, graced beyond measure, redeemed and saved by a love so vast that we cannot conceive it.

Lent provides us with a time to step away, to quiet and to center ourselves, to remember who and whose we are. And a time, too, to eliminate some of the distractions that keep us from remembering the essential truth that, at points along the way we have sinned, we have missed the mark and have failed, in our relationships with God, with others and with ourselves, and do need to repent, be forgiven and be redeemed by God’s unfathomable redeeming love. The spiritual disciplines of alms and prayer and fasting that the Gospel speaks of offer us a way to focus on the One who created us and loves us and calls us back into that right relationship. By taking time in prayer for stillness to listen and really hear and respond to the quiet voice of Spirit within us and by drawing away from the “stuff” of life in all its forms that surrounds and smothers our senses, perhaps we can get a better sense again of who we are as we stand before our God. Perhaps if we can fast from the overload of all that surrounds us we can once again remember our vulnerability as human beings, the brevity of our lives, and how truly intertwined we are with one another, as well as with this fragile planet that God has given us stewardship of. The giving of alms might call us to gratitude for God’s gifts in our own lives, as well as providing us with a time to repent in a meaningful way of how we often fail to notice the true needs of those around us.

As we leave this place tonight, each of us will have a cross of ash to carry with us into the night as a reminder of our vulnerable humanity, but also our connection to the one who created, loves and calls us, to life, and when we fall, to new life again. “Remember, my beloved ones, you are God’s and to God you will return.”

Sermon for Christmas 1B 2008

John1:1-18

What we hear today in John’s Gospel is the other telling of the Christmas story. Not the one we heard read at our Christmas services that forms the basis of our traditions and rituals. Not the one that is so familiar to many of us, at least in its original King James form, that many of us can recite it by heart from Sunday school days. That one is such an important story to us, a formative story. It talks about all those events of the birth of our Lord Jesus in such a human way, and it reminds us that Jesus came among us as a tiny and vulnerable human baby in the most humble way, and that he came because Mary said yes to God’s request, and because Joseph was willing to be part of her life.

But John has some different things to tell us in his version of the Christmas story. John goes all the way back to the beginning because he wants to remind us just exactly who it is we are talking about here in this Christmas story….”in the beginning was the Word…or the Logos…the creating, revealing, acting, mind of God….way before the stable or the shepherds, way before Mary and the angel, even long before Isaiah first foretold it. In the beginning, because even then God so loved the world, the Incarnation had already begun.

John says in his Christmas story, the Word – who was with God from the beginning – The Word who is God became flesh and lived among us, or in another translation, pitched his tent among us…sounding perhaps like he is planning to stay. And he says, “From his fullness we have received grace upon grace.” Gifts. Unasked for. Undeserved. Just simply given for the love of it. And John has more to tell us in his Christmas story. “No one,” he says, “has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known.” And this of course is one of the wondrous gifts of the Incarnation – in Jesus we see God, and in coming to know Jesus and living a life of discipleship in loving relationship with him, we as mere humans can become more like who God is. It is the great both/and of the Incarnation. In Jesus we see who God is, and we can be as he gives us the power to become, as John says, children of God. We can become more like Jesus, and in becoming more like, in acting more like Jesus, we can show the world that wondrous light of God’s amazing love for us.

He is the light, the one who has come – the one that has been shining in the darkness for over 2000 years and has not been overcome. We know that we live in a world that is in desperate need of light. As followers of Jesus we are called to be the light bearers, the witnesses that God does have this overwhelming love and commitment to God’s people, that God is faithful and has been in covenant and relationship with us throughout all time. Oh, not in a happily-ever-after, nothing bad is ever going to happen kind of way, because that would not be real life. But in never- abandoning presence, in the gift of God who comes – Emmanuel God with us in Jesus – the God who became us and lived among us as one of us and knew our pain and sorrow and suffering and fears. We are called to let the world know that. We are called to let the world know that God does not abandon us but is with us in the darkness. And we are called to be God’s light in those dark places. This of course challenges us, it means that we must have the courage to go to into those dark places, to take on some of the pain and suffering that is there, to be the light there, to be Christ, to be grace, to be gift. This is not an easy task. It is not something that we may be naturally inclined towards. It may frighten us to think about engaging with the poor or the sick, the angry or the oppressed. It may not thrill us to think about forgiving our enemies, or turning the other cheek, or continuing to give and not count the cost. But we know that this is where the light is needed the most, that this is where we are called to witness to God’s unceasing love for God’s people. And when we do find the courage to do these things, in return we find we grow in our own relationship to God. A friend of mine who lost her twenty-four year old son earlier this year explains it this way: “To the extent to which we welcome and participate in the life of Christ, so we will enter into the weight of suffering that pervades our world. And perhaps the reverse is true as well: to the extent that we absorb that suffering, so we will encounter the astounding love of our Creator that makes God's donation of self to us possible, a gift offered in our own form, as one of us, through one of us. "

This is the life which will be the light of all people, but it is up to each of us. In this world we are the ones called to be the hands and feet and voice of Jesus. We are the ones who testify that the light is still shining and even though the darkness is all around us, it cannot overcome it, because this is God’s story, the Christmas story, and even after all these years, it is still being told every day. Amen.

Sermon for Advent 3B 2008

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Canticle 15 (Luke 1:46-55). John 1:6-8, 19-28

Advent always moves too quickly. It seems that we just begin to get into the rhythm of this season of waiting and expectancy and it is almost over. Even if the world did not place so many demands on our time during this season, I think Advent could still fly by…there is so much to think about, so much to consider, so much to imagine.
Advent reminds us again of who God is and who we are. Advent calls for a special kind of vision…it asks is to stretch and think big, to see ourselves with God’s eyes for a moment. God’s vision of course is always so much bigger than ours, filled with so many more possibilities for transformation than ours could ever be. God’s vision never reflects the world as it is, but as it could be or already is…in God’s time.
In this morning’s Scripture we hear clear voices of people who caught this vision, at least for a moment….who at their own point in time allowed God to move through them, and became co-creators with God in that vision of God’s kingdom. Isaiah says:
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In these beautiful words, a promise is made that hope lives on in the midst of despair, that even in a time when all seems lost, God still has a vision that good news and justice will come forth and that it will come from those who had been the least, the powerless and the oppressed. This is a theme we hear echoed again in the Canticle of Mary. Mary, the young girl who not only says “yes” to her own personal transformation in being the God-bearer, but, at least as she is portrayed here, echoes some of the themes of Isaiah
“He has shown the strength of his arm, * he has scattered the proud in their conceit.He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly.He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty.”
She too seems to have caught God’s vision for God’s kingdom, and gave testimony that God is about turning things upside down. Indeed the child she carried who would be the Incarnate one would be a strange King. Born in a stable, killed on a cross. And his life would serve as an example of this vision of the countercultural life of the justice of God’s kingdom. Forgive your enemies , exclude no-one, turn the other cheek, become poor, love one another.
And John the Baptizer. Clearly John was a person who got it. He knew who God was, who he was and what he was to do. He witnesses that it is the time of the Messiah, the long awaited one who was to come. The one who would be the light that the darkness could not overcome
As I hear these readings I can’t help but notice not only the message but these messengers. Each of these people is making a response with their whole selves and beings to a call from God, bearing witness with their very selves. When I preached earlier about Isaiah, one of the commentaries had made the remark that Isaiah was likely suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder from all he had witnessed in the horrifying destruction and chaos of his time. And yet he was able to speak forth God’s message of hope for reversal and for justice. And Mary – Mary who knew full well what her “yes” could mean in a time when the fate of a woman who became pregnant without a husband could be death by stoning. And yet her question to the angel was simply, “How can this be?” and her canticle sings praise to a God of justice and mercy whose concern is for those who are least and in need. And John – his challenge was resisting those who would give him the power and the glory that rightfully belonged to Jesus. In knowing who Jesus was, he was able to find a place of certainty in himself that enabled him to resoundingly tell the world who he was not.
Each of them….hearing a call from God and responding with their lives. Are we so different? Isn’t this in some way what each of us is asked to do every day? Oh, perhaps not in such dramatic ways, but this really is our vocation – to simply know who God is, to know who God has called us to be and to say yes.
We are celebrating an anniversary here at St. James this weekend. Along with the joys of the season and the excitement of our Lessons and Carols service tonight, this weekend is the third anniversary of the commissioning of the Total Ministry team and of Marilyn and Coleen’s ordinations. (I followed along in getting ordained a bit later) This was a wonderful “saying yes,” not only for those of us on the team, but for this entire parish community…a yes to risk, a yes to a new way of being church together, a yes to our future. And as someone in the congregation said to me about a year or so ago…it does seem to be working out. One of the wonderful things about Total Ministry is that it reminds us that ministering to each other really does belong to all of us as baptized members of the body of Christ. Whether “officially” on the team or not, what we all know about this place is that there is no-one here who is not active in ministry in some way, whether in this church community or in the wider world. We are all vocational beings who say yes to God’s call to be co-creators of God’s kingdom, whether we name it as such or not. God has anointed all of us to bring the good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim liberty to the captives. We live in a world that needs that good news of justice and comfort every bit as much now as it did in the day of Isaiah. God has asked all of us to be the God-bearers, to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with all of the good things God has promised us in God’s infinite love and mercy. God asks all of us to be witnesses. To give testimony to the light, to be the voices that cry out in our own wilderness. And we do say “yes.”
I said at the beginning of this sermon that Advent is a time when we remember who we are and who God is. We remember most especially who the Incarnate one is for whom we wait….the one who is the great both/and…who shows us who God is and who we can be…the one whose story is told in our creed and to whom we make our promises in our baptismal vows. In a few moments we will renew those baptismal promises together as a way of remembering both the gift of the One who breaks into history and the gifts that we are to this broken world as we respond to God’s call to co-create with God this new kingdom to come. As you pray the words of renewal, listen for God’s call deepening. He comes. Prepare the way.

Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 18:21-35

On October 2, 2006 a man entered a schoolhouse in Nickel Mines Pennsylvania and killed five young Amish girls and seriously wounded five others. Like all of the others acts of senseless violence in our country, this made headlines. The response of the Amish community of Nickel Mines soon became just as newsworthy. They were extending forgiveness to the shooter! Within hours of the shooting, community members went to the killer’s family members and offered statements of forgiveness and condolence for their loss. Members of the Amish community came to the gunman’s funeral, and perhaps most amazingly of all, they voted as a community that his family should share in a fund that was set up to aid the victims. Some of them even contributed personally to this fund. This Amish forgiveness is so striking to the outside world that it has drawn the attention of theologians and sociologists. The Amish are being asked over and over on what it is they base this “extraordinary” forgiving. And what they repeatedly say is two things…the Lord’s prayer and Matthew 18:21-35.

Jesus is teaching the disciples about how to be community. That hard task of being God’s kingdom here on earth. In our Gospel last week we heard about what we are to do when our brother or sister “trespasses” against us….to go to them, at first alone, with the intent of bringing them back, and how it is always about bringing them back. And that even when we take witnesses with us, or bring in the community, it is always about love and justice and always about recapturing the lost ones. It’s that larger vision that God has for reconciling to God and to one another. That countercultural vision that is challenging for us as humans. Today’s Gospel simply continues the lesson. Peter, in all his glorious humanity may have thought he was going to the head of the class on this one when he asked Jesus, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" a symbolic number that signified enough or completion. But Jesus, as always, taking it to an even greater vision, the kingdom vision, to God’s vision, says, “No, that’s not quite enough Peter…” In God’s kingdom even our usual understanding of what is enough is not enough.

In God’s kingdom vision, we must do the kind of forgiving that does not count at all… a kind of forgiving that is extravagant. The parable tells us that the slave owed the king “ten thousand talents” a huge amount which was more than the national debt of the Roman Empire at the time. It was so large that even if he were “to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions” there would still be no hope he could pay it back. When the king took mercy on him and released him from the debt completely, he was practicing the kind of forgiveness that Jesus was talking about. But then what happens? The forgiven slave turns around and does not forgive the relatively small debt another slave owes him, an equivalent of about four months’ wages for manual labor, and has him thrown into debtor’s prison. Hearing of this behavior, the king is outraged that this man to whom he has shown great mercy and forgiveness has not extended forgiveness in kind. He says to him “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” and throws him into prison “until he would pay his entire debt” – which, of course, can never happen! Here was a vision of the Kingdom. The king forgave abundantly without keeping count of the cost. Forgiveness, Jesus may have been saying, like God forgives. But then the slave withheld forgiveness, and found himself imprisoned, Here is God’s kingdom where there is forgiveness and mercy, but also judgment and justice.

Forgiveness. Clearly it is held before us as a standard of living a life as followers of Jesus. But what does it really mean? Can we do it? How do we do it? Do we have to be Amish? As you might imagine, this is an issue that comes up frequently for the people I encounter in the other part of my life. Many of the people I see in my clinical practice have been deeply wounded by the acts of others, and they struggle with this question of forgiveness. Sometimes we have conversations about what it does mean to forgive, and in those conversations we talk about what forgiveness is and what it is not, and sometimes that turns out to be a useful thing. So I thought maybe spending a few minutes thinking through that together here this morning might be helpful for us as well as we try to find ways of being faithful followers of Jesus.

One of the things we know is that forgiveness is a choice. Someone always can choose to forgive or not. Often when we have been wronged by someone what we hold onto most tightly is our resentment about the wrong that was done towards us, usually toward the person who committed the offense. In forgiveness, we freely choose to give up the right to carry that resentment. And we do so in essence as a gift to the offender who may or may not have done anything to deserve that gift. In forgiveness we make a choice to replace resentment toward the one who has harmed us with compassion. This does not mean that we change our minds about the act. We recognize that as the victim of an offense we have a moral right to anger, but we choose to release the anger—in essence as a pure gift to someone who may be completely undeserving, and indeed who may be completely unaware of the gift. But we choose to release them from a debt that they could never repay anyway. Just because we can….and not count the cost.

Forgiveness is not about the event. We do not say the offense did not happen, or that it was not serious if indeed this was case. We do not pretend we were not hurt by the act. We do not condone or excuse the behavior that was done. We still take it seriously. We still uphold its wrongness, its unfairness. We do not condone it or excuse the behavior. We do not forget it or sweep it under the rug. All of this does not preclude forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not the same as pardon. Pardon implies repentance on the part of the wrongdoer. Forgiveness is only about the forgiver. In forgiveness the wrongdoer is not absolved of consequences for his or her behavior. Justice takes it course if that is to be the case. That does not preclude forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. That is about restoring a relationship which might involve developing trust or communication between the person who was hurt and the one who offended. This may never be possible or even desirable. It does not preclude forgiveness.
Forgiveness is decisional as well as emotional. Decisional or intentional forgiveness is a commitment to control our behavior not to act in revenge or avoidance towards someone who has hurt us even if our emotions have not yet caught up to the point where we feel less unforgiving. Emotional forgiveness often is a much longer process than decisional forgiveness. The two of course can be related. The decision to forgive and the commitment to act in a forgiving way does not magically make emotions change, but it certainly may make it more likely that the emotional transformation will happen.

Why forgive? Is it indeed about “forgive or you won't be forgiven?” This is not the way the God I know operates. The parable tells the story. The people I know who are having the hardest time with forgiveness, the ones who are holding on to the biggest resentments are often in a great deal of pain. Like the forgiven slave, the illusion of control given by holding on to their resentments locks them in the prison of their own creation. Freedom was granted him and his to pass on. The example was there before him but he could not make the choice for forgiveness, and it was his own inability to make that choice that imprisoned him. God’s kingdom is one of mercy and love, but also of justice. Forgiveness is granted in great measure, we are asked to pass it on as it has been given to us.

And fortunately, as with all of these hard things we are asked to do as followers of Jesus, we are not alone with this one either. We have the Incarnate One as God with us, both to show us who God is and to show us how the Kingdom here on earth can be lived out and who we can be what we are truly capable of at our best and most authentic. We have Jesus’ ongoing spirit alive with us, in Word and Sacrament and in community to strengthen us for the task, to remind us who and whose we are. May we forgive as we are forgiven and be forgiven as we forgive. Amen.

Contributions from Amish Grace by D. Kraybill, S. Nolt, D. Weaver-Zercher

Sermon for August 24, 2008

Romans 12:1-8. Matthew 16:13-20

It all begins with a couple of questions that day out in Cesarea Phillipi. On their continuing adventures together, Jesus and the disciples had taken a little journey and Jesus asked two questions. The first of the two is for many reasons a safer question. “Who” he asks them, “do the people say I am?” It’s easy to answer that kind of question. It really doesn’t require that we put ourselves into the equation. We can do a “he says/she says, we can give intellectual answers, we can speculate and say “well maybe.” We can play it safe. But the next question. Oh, the next question he asked! That one was much harder. That one was direct. “You,” he said. Who do you say that I am?” Now that question is a lot stickier. That one requires a commitment. You have to put yourself on the line, make a statement, a commitment, a testimony. And Peter did. He stepped right up. And he got it right. “You are the Messiah, the son of the Living God.”

The Messiah. The one who was to come, the long anticipated king of the house of David. And the Son of God, the living incarnation of God present on earth. Jesus is Lord. Peter gets it. He says it. Jesus confirms it. And in response he gives Peter a new name as a sign that he has been changed by recognizing who Jesus truly is and he gives him a task and a mission of leadership. Recognizing who Jesus was transformed Peter in that moment. Although we know that it did not make him perfect, as we see if we read just a little further in this Gospel. “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ 23But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Peter gets it, he confesses it, and then he loses sight of it again. He stepped out there and walked on that water for a moment and then, down he went into the water. Fortunately, as we remember from last weeks Gospel, he had the good sense and humility to call out to Jesus and be saved!

In our continuing adventures together with Jesus, he takes us places. And we are presented with that very question that was asked of Peter. “You. Who do you say that I am?” And how we answer it matters, too. Who is this Jesus who came among us in the Incarnation? Fully God. Fully Man. The One who came to show us who God is…in love, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness. And also the one who came to show us who we can be. The suffering servant who came to be broken open for us. The one who died and rose again so that death would lose it’s power. Our Lord and Savior. And the one who comes to us and desires the relationship, asks the question, wants the commitment, “Who do you say that I am?”

Like Peter this is not a once and for all question. We do not have our great moment of confession of faith and stay in that place of transformation forever. I know I for one would like it much better if that were true. In some ways I would feel much more confident as priest and preacher if I could have a sense of myself as always being one of Jesus’ rocks. But even in this week I found myself busy and distracted by many things, and not as focused on “the one thing” as I would like to be.

“Who do you say that I am?” As Christians we answer this question in many ways. With our baptismal vows, made and renewed, with our faith statements, and with our lives….presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which, as it says in Romans, is indeed our spiritual worship. Everything we do, every place we go we are members of this body, with opportunities to use the gifts given to us by God. Does this mean we are called on to sacrifice our lives for Christ? Well hopefully not through death. Though some have been called to martyrdom over the centuries for the sake of the Gospel, it is more likely that the way we are called to sacrifice our lives is by giving up some of our comfort, whether material or emotional, as following Jesus has a tendency to take us from our safe places into new and risky territory.
I had someone in this community ask me not too long ago if St. James would ever offer sanctuary to a refugee if the need arose. I said while I could not speak for this community, that based on my experience with you all, I believed that there was a chance we would. That would certainly take us out of our comfort zone, it would be a living sacrifice. But in my heart I do believe that for the sake of the Gospel, if we were called, we could rise to that challenge as a community.

“Who do you say that I am?” How we see Jesus matters. Clearly the world still wonders about this carpenter from Nazareth. He still makes the cover of magazines regularly and movies are still getting made about him. At the Festival of Homeletics this year, Dr. Tom Long preached a sermon in which he talked about Jesus’ two main identities as “Messiah” and “son of God.” He emphasized the need to have both sides of the picture and not simply knowing it but “getting” it. Like Peter, we get it, we lose it and we get it again. We have to practice. To do it over and over. To confess and re-confess the truth of it…Messiah, son of God, until it sinks into our bones and our cells and we breathe it with our very bodies. And we have to keep trying to live it every day. Because that is a practice too. We get up on that rock and fall off and need to get on again, sometimes thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought….and sometimes not thinking near high enough! Loving God, loving ourselves and loving one another to the best of our ability. Seeking to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.

So we go on reminding ourselves who and Whose we are….discerning what is the will of the God who loves us beyond belief and who sent his only son…the one who asks you today– “Who do you say that I am?”

Sermon for August 17, 2008

Bishop Whipple Mission
Matthew 15: 10-20, 21-28

One of my preaching mentors always said that preaching the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ had to involve just that. It had to be news and it had to be good. Well I have to say that sometimes this is a whole lot easier than others, and this Gospel is not one of the easier ones. Jesus presents us with a challenge today. As someone said, if this were the only contact I ever had with this person Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to know him better. It’s true; he does not come off very well in this encounter with the Canaanite woman. Seeing the usually loving and compassionate Jesus respond in a manner that is so out of character is disconcerting. And what to make of it all has been puzzling Biblical scholars as well as the rest of us for a very long time. And, as is usually the case, there have been a number of ways Jesus’ behavior in this Gospel encounter has been interpreted and explained. One approach holds that first of all the interchange really was not as bad as it sounds to our modern Western ears. Rather than insults, it is said the dialogue could be interpreted as a kind of witty exchange with the woman and Jesus each giving as good as they got. As one commentator puts it: “It is good peasant humor, not theological debate.” It’s also pointed out that the word for dog that was used in the Greek is the word for domesticated dog, or even puppy, not the kind the runs wild. As if that perhaps makes it better, somehow.

Another take on this is that Matthew was using this story as a teaching tool to talk about issues that were occurring in the Christian community of his own time, and that his hearers would have clearly understood this. This argument says it was never Matthew’s intent to talk about Jesus’ character in the story, but to show how it was God’s plan for the Gentiles (the “dogs”) fit into the church’s mission. Dog was a common Jewish term for Gentiles who, like dogs, were not seen as distinguishing between clean and unclean food. This explanation links this half of the Gospel with what precedes it in the discussion of clean and unclean. By using a woman and a Canaanite (a “double outsider”) in the dialogue with Jesus, Matthew was showing that God’s plan was wider than simply saving the Jewish chosen people, Jesus is the savior of all. This view of things sort of lets Jesus off the hook and says it doesn’t matter how he behaved, if he called the woman a dog or not, because Matthew was just using the story as a sort of teaching tool anyway.

Then there are the commentators who ask us to look away from Jesus and his behavior, and put our eyes on the woman and her faith. They say it is her faith that is the important thing in the story. Her persistence in the face of first being ignored, then insulted, that we should note. That she did not return insult with insult but with faith and the continued expectation of mercy. And that in the end, this was the turning point in the story. Her faith was the thing that made the difference. The point is that we should be like her and just persist in faith no matter what the obstacles.

Then there is another take on the whole thing that offers yet another possibility. It is this one that seems to me to meet the standard that my preaching mentor held up of this being the story that is news and that is good. A kind of a both/and. This is, as one of our summer seminary professors told us, what the Incarnation was all about. Jesus broke into history to in order that we might know both who God is and who we can be. Jesus as the Incarnate One was fully God, yet fully man. It’s pretty hard to get our heads around this. We have a tendency to lean towards that one side it seems. Jesus…fully God, perfect, compassionate, all knowing. We see him as a sort of already finished being. Not someone who could be a product of his times and subject to human prejudices or stereotypes of any kind. Not someone who could be changed by an encounter with another human. But being fully human implies that Jesus could change, could be changed by his encounters, by his relationships. In his encounter with this woman Jesus did finally see her…he saw beyond the label, the stereotype, and entered in that moment into real relationship with her. He opened his heart in true compassion. He allowed himself to be changed. And because he entered deeply into that relationship…. there could be transformation, there could be healing. Outsiders could come into the circle, and even the dogs could be called to share in the meal. All because of Jesus’ great capacity for love grounded in his sure and certain knowledge of who he was as God’s beloved son. For Matthew’s listeners this meant that the Gentiles would no longer be outsiders, that God had a bigger vision and was doing a new thing among them. Some of them were willing to sign on and draw the circle wider. That was their good news. What is ours?

Certainly in our own lives there are no lack of examples of insiders and outsiders. Whether we are talking about the church or anyplace else. I know when I was growing up, I was quite sure that God was Irish Catholic. I still remember the first time I visited someone’s house that I knew was “Protestant.” I don’t know what denomination. I’m not sure at the time I knew there were denominations. There were just “us” and “them.” I was probably about eleven or twelve and I was invited to her birthday party. It created quite a moral dilemma for me to even go as “we” generally did not associate with “them.” Now while I never would have done something as crass as call her a dog to her face, I certainly in my little girl Catholic mind was pretty sure that she was due the scraps as far as what God was passing out was concerned. I was, after all, the insider on the fast track to Heaven and she was not. Looking back it all seems very silly, and more than a little sad. But as adults how many ways do we make those distinctions in our lives about who is “in” and who is “out?” Race, nationality, economic status, sexual preference, immigration status, religion, gender, age….some of those seem kind of obvious, or maybe not, depending on how we think about things. Or is it just the people who don’t think like we do, those people who irritate us, annoy us and get on our last nerve? Or are they the people who frighten us, threaten us, the ones that we fear. The ones we call our enemies. Are they the dogs in our lives? The ones we want to fence out, keep away under the table, and make outsiders? Jesus says we must feed them, too, see them, bring them into relationship, and allow them to change us, to move us to compassion. In God’s kingdom, there are no outsiders. All are welcome, all are to be loved. The message, as we hear it over and over is clear, “." As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you… love one another as I have loved you. (John 15: 9, 12) This is indeed the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That God is Love and that God so loved the world that God sent God’s only son Jesus Christ as the Incarnate one to indeed show us who God is and who we can be. It is the good news. It is also the hard work and the challenge. Thanks be to God that we have the Spirit of God manifested to us in Word and Eucharist and community to sustain us in our efforts.

Sermon for August 10, 2008

Matthew 14:22-33

In the Gospel we heard today we have one of those stories we have all heard many times in our lives. It’s one of those stories that we may think we know well and know the meaning of. Oh we might say, that is the story of Peter who dared to step out of the boat in the middle of the great dark water in the midst of the night watch because he sees his Lord and Savior coming across the waves, and he had enough faith when Jesus said “Come” to take those steps on the water toward Jesus. It’s a story we might say, about having a lot of faith in God. Or we might say it’s the story of Peter who doubted and sank in the waves and only was saved from drowning by God’s grace. Peter, who started out strong in his faith, but allowed himself to become frightened and to doubt, and begins to sink, and if not for Jesus would have drowned right then and there. We might say, it’s one of those stories that tells us that we must always keep our eyes on God and not let the world frighten us, because it’s all going to come out all right. Or we might say it’s about Peter who had the faith to take that first step out of the boat to begin with, but ultimately earned the gentle reprimand of Jesus for being of “little faith” for not being able to continue his walk all the way across the water to meet Jesus. It means we must always strive to make our faith stronger because we can never have enough. So it's a story teaches us we should work harder to develop our faith in God. Or it's the story of Peter who has sense enough to ask for God to save him as he sinks instead of being too proud and hardheaded to allow Jesus to help him so that he just goes ahead and perishes in the waves. In this case the story tells us we should be humble and rely on God to save us. But as we tell each of these version of the Peter story, we must get out of the boat and at least try to walk on the water.

What we tend to forget is that in this story, there were also some other characters. There were a group of other disciples with Jesus that day. Just before this story happened Jesus had fed the five thousand, and just before that, he had received word that his beloved friend John the Baptist had been murdered and he had not even had time to grieve. he had been trying to get up into the hills to have some time to himself when those crowds had followed him. He is finally going now into the mountains to get some time alone to pray. We can imagine that perhaps he was hoping that it would be a simple trip across the sea for his friends in the boat while he was away from them. But we are told the winds came up and waves were high and the boat was far from the land. We can imagine that not only Peter, but everyine in that boat is not having a good time at this point. First a storm and now, this apparition. They see someone walking across the water. They see Jesus coming towards them, but they do not recognize that it is him, they think he is a ghost! We don’t know what the others in the boat did right away… but we assume that despite their fear they must have kept rowing. Rowing and perhaps bailing, because that is usually what it takes to keep afloat when the seas are stormy.

Peter speaks up, Peter gets up, steps out, and takes those actions we know so well. And that was wonderful. We can tell great stories and get great teachings about our faith lives from what Peter did. But there might be something for us too in the actions of the other disciples. When Jesus spoke and said to them, Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid,” perhaps at least some of them heard that message and were comforted. Perhaps they already got the notion that it was Jesus and he was walking out to the whole boatload of them.Perhaps in that very moment they believed and did not need to be shown further proof. Perhaps their worship began in that very second. And maybe they were even offering comfort there in the boat to one another as they rowed on in the tumultuous waves, as they watched their friend Peter get out of the boat “What IS he doing!” they might have thought! First to see him walk on the water, then fall into the water about to drown in the stormy seas…they might have been experiencing their own turbulent emotions. Perhaps they were saying, “No, I can’t watch!” like we do when someone we love is doing something we think is foolhardy or dangerous. Perhaps they were praying like mad for God to save Peter and when Jesus reached for him that was what confirmed for them that he was the Messiah! Or perhaps they secretly wished that they too had stepped from the boat with him. Or perhaps though they knew that just like Peter was the one called to step out of the boat, they were called to stay and row.

It’s like that, isn’t it? Some of us are called to be like Peter. The ones who do the big thing, the brazen thing. The thing that might get noticed and commented on. Whether it’s to say, “well he or she is a person of great faith,” or “they are a fool for God,” or “they had better water that mustard seed a little more”…they are our Peters. And we need Peters. We need the folks who get out of the boat, the ones who risk drowning for the sake of the Gospel. But we also need those who stay and row and bail. The ones who faithfully day by day live in community with one another, bearing one another’s burdens. The ones who pray for each other. The ones who try to live out the Great Commandment to love one another as God loves us, to manifest the fruits of the Spirit with one another, being patient and kind, peacemaking and forgiving, gentle and faithful. This too takes faith. Faith not in an idea or a concept but faith in the person of Jesus. Because having faith in Jesus means we are willing to follow him, to live lives based on his life, this Incarnate One, fully human, fully Divine who manifests to us who God is and who we can be.

So whether you are led to get out of the boat and walk on the water or whether you are led to stay and row, know that Jesus walks toward you with hands outstretched saying, “Come to me.”

Sermon for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost

Romans 8:26-39 Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
I still remember the first time I heard that particular piece of scripture. It may not have been the first time it was read in my presence, but it was the first time I HEARD it. I was at a retreat and it was the text that the retreat master was using for that session. And the reason that I remember it was because of my reaction to those words, which was, I have to say, NOT positive. Because what went immediately through my mind were a whole lot of examples of things that I thought were certainly not working for good for some people I knew at that time whom I believed certainly did love the Lord. There was my friend whose dad was dying of cancer. There was my classmate whose family had lost their house and everything in it to a fire the year before. There was the girl in the class ahead of me whose beautiful and talented older sister had been killed by a drunk driver. How, I thought, could any of those things possibly work together for any kind of good! There were no happy endings here! But fortunately on that retreat day, as on many days since, through God’s amazing grace I have been helped to understand that our relationship with God is not about happy endings, it is not about only good things happening in a pretty world. That is not ever what anyone is ever promised. That would not be realistic. It would be a cheat. There is so much more to the story of our relationship with God than that. It is so much richer and deeper and greater. But it’s a struggle for us as humans to understand the love of God, and apparently it always has been. Jesus tried to explain it to the disciples. That is some of what we have going on in Matthew with the parables we hear today.

The language our translation uses is the “Kingdom of God.” I don’t know about you, but this term, the Kingdom of God, makes me think about the hereafter. Maybe it’s just my upbringing, but it distances it, and makes it even harder for me to think about as something I’m to be engaging with in the here and now. So I played with the language a little bit. What if instead of the Kingdom of God, we call it the way of God or even the love of God instead as we look at some of the parables and see where it takes us?

The way of God is like a mustard seed. Hmmm. Mustard seeds. What the folks in Jesus’ time knew about them that we don’t is that they really didn’t grow trees but big kind of bushy things. And that they went kind of rampant. They got sort of wild. In fact if you planted one in your field you could never be sure just how it was going to grow or where. And the mustard seed is very prolific. It germinates very easily, and once it takes root is very hard to get rid of. It might just take over. You could lose control of it once it begins to grow.

And yeast. If you will recall, in those time unleavened bread is the preferred kind, at least for religious ritual. Yeast or leavening was considered a common thing, even dirty, as it came from letting bread rot until it molded. It is suggested that it is even a metaphor for moral corruption. So Jesus’ listeners may well have been shocked to hear this comparison to God, but it certainly got their attention. The woman (and we know what their status was) “mixed in” the leaven with the flour. And yet we know that no matter what, when mixed into the flour and turned loose, whether it is acceptable or not, yeast will do what yeast will do, when mixed with the flour it will cause the bread to rise and there is no stopping it!

The treasure in the field, which someone found and then hid again. Why? Because it was not his field. It was common in those days for people to hide things by burying them simply because there were few other place to hide them, and the law said whoever owned the field owned what was buried in it. This lucky guy stumbles upon someone else’s treasure, and buys the field in order to have it. Somhow the treasure grasped and possessed him and his only concern in life became getting that treasure no matter what it might cost him. Like the merchant with the pearl in the next parable there was something so great about the treasure that it was worth risking all he had for it.

So what is it Jesus was trying to say here? How is it that the way of God, the love of is like these things? The mustard seed….Something that germinates easily, a small, small thing that once planted takes hold and grows and flourishes. And as it grows it becomes something big and powerful. Big enough to make a resting place. But never something that is entirely predictable, or in our control. In God’s way, expect the unexpected. God is always doing a new thing.
The leavening yeast…the way of God? Jesus seems to be saying that in God’s way, something we reject or turn away from as right, acceptable or good still has the power to transform. Perhaps the message here is, in God’s way, we must look beyond the surface of things because things are not as we see them but as God, who has a bigger picture, does.

And the treasure in the field and the pearl? Both of the men in the parable were overwhelmed by their desire to possess these treasures to the point that the cost no longer mattered, and they would do whatever it took to have what they wanted. Both of them gave everything they had to get the prize. Jesus says imagine being so possessed by God that you would do this, because this is how God is for you. Remember, “for God so loved the world……”

So we have a picture painted by Jesus in parables of a prolific, tenacious, transforming and loving God. One who makes old things new, breaks rules and colors outside the lines. One who has a bigger picture than our little human minds could ever conceive, and who we are forever striving to capture in some way that we can make sense of.

Which leads us back to Romans. “What then are we to say about these things?” These things that happen…my girlfriend’s dad who did die of cancer, and the fire and the sister who was killed and all those other sad and painful things that happen in all of our lives? What we are to say, I think, is what Paul says in the rest of what he writes in Romans, and what Jesus said in the parables in today’s Gospel. “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?.... Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The way of God, this mysterious, transformative, sometimes overwhelming relationship with this prolific, tenacious, transforming and loving God who makes old things new, breaks rules and colors outside the lines and who has this big picture that is way bigger than we can grasp with our limited human vision. This God who “so loved the world” that He was willing to become one of us. This God is not a gumball-machine God who responds to requests like Santa Claus giving out happily ever afters. This is not what Paul had in mind. I get that now. It wasn’t ever about that. It’s not about what happens when, or what happens if. It’s about what happens now, in every single minute of God-with-us in the Kingdom that is here, God in the midst. God who grows great from small, transforms one thing into another, turns peoples lives upside down, even in the middle of what sometimes seem impossible circumstances. Our task, as Solomon in his wisdom knew, was to discern. To look for the signs of God at work in our lives and others, to carry on the conversation with God and do as much listening as we do talking to come to know how the stories of our lives are working together towards God’s dream of good for us.

Sermon for July 6, 2008 L’s Baptism

Romans 8:14-17, John 3:1-6

Well it is clear that something special is happening here today. We have the font up in front, we have special bulletins, we have experienced something different with our music. We are celebrating! Today we are baptizing L and baptism is always a cause for celebration. Most often in our church of course, we baptize babies, tiny little ones whose moms and dads bring them to us for baptism because it is part of the parents’ faith tradition to do so. And that is a wonderful thing. Because baptism is the sacrament that carries the lineage of the faith. It makes us one with Christ, and as it says in the Baptismal liturgy, “marks us as Christ’s own forever.” But it also makes us part of the family of Christ, makes us part of the body, of the community of believers. It gives us our directives as what it means to be followers of Jesus, too, in the promises we make as part of the baptismal covenant. So it’s a wonderful thing when parents want this for their child.

But when a full-grown adult person steps forward and asks to be baptized as L did – that to me is quite a wonderful and amazing thing. Something that might make us stop and think for a moment, might make us ask, why? Why would this person who has been going along unbaptized up until this point makes this decision, and why now?
So I asked L this question. And he had what I thought was a very good answer. He said, “Because I want to follow Jesus.” As we talked more about what that meant he talked about wanting a new way of being, a new life, in a sense being born again.

As we looked at the readings we could choose from for today, the Gospel from John we heard this morning seemed very fitting to both L and I. When I initially met L he was in a very dark place. But in that dark place he had already encountered Jesus. He, like Nicodemus had belief and faith, and a desire to know more about God. Like Nicodemus, he was, and is, searching for answers to some very big questions about the truth of God and the ways God would have us live our lives. Nicodemus had a sense that Jesus was someone who could give him some answers. L has a sense that belonging to this faith community will help him continue to grow in his own faith journey. That by making this commitment to a faith tradition, he becomes part of something larger than himself, a community of believers who will both sustain him in his own faith and who he will give to in turn. That to follow this Jesus, he needs to know him better, and that this is a safe and good place in which to do that, that this is a place where we study and learn and practice the ways that Jesus taught us to live and can support him in doing that, too.

Because baptism is a two-way street. In baptism we say that we are “born-again” of water and the Spirit. What does that mean? To be born of the water of course references the cleansing of our sins and imperfections in the baptismal waters. It reminds us that we truly do begin anew, putting on a new person in Christ, making a new beginning from today forward. What does it mean to born of the Spirit? It means to have the peace and love of Jesus living inside in us. It is having the Spirit of Jesus taking up residence in us and living within us. It means we can be strengthened to do the things that alone we could not do, to face the things we could not face, because we are doing them not on our own strength alone, but on the strength of that indwelling Spirit of God.

But it also means that expectations are placed on us. At baptism we make a covenant. As we are “born-again of water and spirit” we are given some directives and make some promises as Christians…these are “to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, to seek and serve all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves and striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being.” L has promised this today as he commits himself to Christ. And we have promised to help him and to help each other do this as we renewed these promises. It’s a tall order, isn’t it? But the good news, as it says in Romans, is that we have received the Holy Spirit and by this power we call God “Abba,” Father. This God is closer to us than our very breath and loves us more than we could ever imagine. As L will be in a few moments, we are all baptized by water and Spirit, marked as Christ’s own forever, beloved and called. May we all, like L, follow Jesus.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 21:8-21
Matthew 10:24-39

I think that God has a sense of humor. You know June has five Sundays, and it also started on a Sunday. Well somehow this managed to confuse me into thinking that my Sunday to preach and celebrate next would be the 29th. So as usual, a couple of weeks ago, I started some preliminary sermon preparation. The Old Testament reading for next Sunday happens to be the story of Abraham and Isaac, and that is the one that really captured me. I’ve really been thinking about it a lot, imagining what it was like for them, what each of them was thinking…I even developed a little theory about how much faith Abraham might have had that God was not really going to ask him to sacrifice his son but that He was going to provide….but….I guess I’d better not preach that sermon this morning….because much to my surprise, on Wednesday, I suddenly discovered that the fourth Sunday of the month was this Sunday!

And when I did look at the readings for this week, I have to say that I did not jump for joy. In the Old Testament, it’s the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Last week we had Sarah laughing with joy that nothing was too wonderful for the Lord, that she was going to bear a child late in her life, so late in fact that all thought of that had long been given up. But now, some fifteen years later, we are hearing the other side of that story. Ishmael and Hager being turned out into the desert with only bread and a skin of water by Abraham and Sarah because they are concerned about the birthright of their son Isaac. Hard to think this of our patriarch and matriarch, isn’t it?

And the Gospel? What are we to make of that? From paragraph to paragraph Jesus seems to keep changing….one moment comforting and soothing, as again we hear the refrain from earlier in this Gospel…”do not be afraid because you are great value to God….this God who watches the sparrows fall and counts the very hairs of your head.” And the next challenging, “I have come to bring not peace but a sword…. I have come to set a man against his father… a daughter against her mother….a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” It sounds like he could have been talking about theAbraham/Sarah/ Hagar household, doesn’t it? And the conclusion is more challenging still. So at this point, we might be asking, what is this all about, and even more, what does it have to say to us here this morning at St. James about our relationship with God and with the world and each other as followers of Jesus Christ.

Last week we left Sarah laughing in delighted wonder, and this time, apparently in belief that God was going to deliver on God’s promise to give her a son. Earlier in the story, after God promised Abraham offspring, they had been a little less than willing to wait on God’s promises and had taken matters into their own hands, and Sarah had set a plan for Abraham to father a child with her slave Hagar. Once Hagar was pregnant, Sarah became jealous of her and treated her to so badly that she ran away to the desert. While she was hiding in the desert, she had a visit from an angel, who told her she was to go back and submit to her mistress Sarah. We can imagine this was not terribly good news for this poor woman. But at the same time she was given a promise from God; the same promise incidentally that God had given Abraham. “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” Hagar was also told that her child should be given special name, Ishmael, which in Hebrew means "God hears” because God had heard her in her misery in the desert.

And now here we are fifteen years later, and the sight of Isaac playing with by now teenaged Ishmael once again stirs Sarah’s insecurities about birthrights. Again Abraham and Sarah drive Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert with only a skin of water. Wandering in the desert Hager believes that all hope is lost and she abandons Ishmael to die. But, once again, all is not lost, because we are told, “God hears.” The voice of the angel of God says to her those wonderful words “Do not be afraid.” And she is shown a well of water in the desert, and Ishmael drinks and he lives and prospers and “God is with him.”

God sees pregnant Hagar as she wanders in the desert running away from Sarah. God hears Ishmael in his distress as they run the second time. And this I think is the perfect segue into Matthew’s Gospel and why Jesus can say to his disciples “Have no fear of them, do not be afraid, you are of value, God is paying attention.”

Jesus, son of God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Come among to be God present among us in history as never before and also to teach us how to manifest God to one another. He knew of course that this was dangerous business. We humans don’t always get it right or do it well. I mean, even the patriarchs and the matriarchs were chasing people out into the desert ill-prepared and leaving God to save them. In Jesus’ time as well as ours the message of the kingdom is not necessarily a popular one. Following Jesus, really taking seriously his message of loving one another, turning the other cheek, practicing peace and forgiveness and nonviolence, then as now, is not necessarily a recipe for the easy life or something we are all very good at or do very gracefully. We know that sometimes it gets people ostracized, arrested, and even killed on a big scale. And on a small scale it gets us bumped and bruised and bent out of shape and gets our feelings and our hearts hurt on a regular basis. But if we are going to do these things, to have the courage of our convictions, and act as Jesus would have us act as his disciples we must have that sense we are of value before God, that God sees, God hears, that in some real and meaningful way, God is paying attention to each and every one of us.

Most of us will probably never be driven out into the desert with only a waterskin. And hopefully we will never face anything so dramatic as a threat to or safety or our lives for our faith. We need have no fear, for God sees and God hears. But God also, if Jesus is to be believed, has some expectations for us….”Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." Every single day provides opportunities to be fearless sparrows. May we fly.

Calling....the Sermon

Genesis 12:1-9; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Six years ago this weekend I was sitting in a cornfield in Wisconsin with a friend of mine. We were talking about the state of my impending student loans. I was bemoaning the fact that they were coming due in November and the payments would be huge and everlasting and I just did not know what I was going to do. Now she is a pretty direct person who doesn’t pull any punches and she said, “Well Kate, are you going to just let it creep up on you or are you going to take some action on this thing?” Now that is hardly God saying to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Or Jesus saying to Matthew,” Follow me.” But though I did not know it at the time, it was definitely a call from God. For that conversation led me to do some some research on the National Health Service, which in August had me interviewing for a job at WMHC, and in October, gathering my possessions and setting forth to land of Southwest Minnesota where I "pitched my tent" in M and at St.J’s, and journeying on by stages to this place where I stand before you today as priest and preacher. When Sue and I had that conversation in that cornfield, I would not have been able to say that I was being “called by God” to something, other than maybe feeling there was an answer to prayer about the crushing debt of the student loan burden. But there was a sense of it being a journey of faith. Because there is an earlier piece to the story, a little prequel, if you will. In January of that same year, on Epiphany Sunday, I had had a close encounter with the living God. Prior to that time I had been struggling. With church, with faith, with God. I had been questioning if there was a place for me in the Episcopal Church, in any church really. I had been doing all the things I thought were supposed to make me happy and successful and they didn’t seem to be working, and I was kind of at a crossroads. A friend had invited me to an Episcopal Church community where I truly felt a sense of God’s welcoming love. In that experience, I had a sense of myself being like one of the people in the Gospels that Jesus heals, those people that are taken from a place of emptiness to belonging from exclusion to inclusion, and thus are healed and transformed and even in some cases brought back to life. On that Epiphany Sunday I had written in my journal: I am having a premonition of Epiphany. If I go on this journey (to the center of Reality?)...something WILL happen. I am being pulled, drawn, yanked into this....it feels not in my control. I am struck that I have "done church," done spirituality, but I have not allowed myself to be convicted. I am again at that place where I closed the book so many years ago and being asked, being urged, invited, pulled, drawn....to open it, open me again. To be radical. To be fearless in my fear. This God is not the polite God that supports and gently nudges. This God wants more, wants me, wants all. This will require something of me, will change me in a way that I am not getting to be in charge of. This God wants conversion, wants to pull me through the tunnel of my resistance into the center of something that I have glimpsed, flirted with, but never allowed myself to be taken to, given to possessed by. This is new and scary business. And I want it as much as I don't!

So the following January, almost a year to the day from that Epiphany Sunday, when Father Ken asked to talk with me about this thing called Total Ministry, and inquired if I might be interested in being a part of the team providing pastoral care, there was a sense of “oh, so this is what God is up to here” and all of this moving and changing and turmoil in my life took on a whole new meaning. From the cornfield to that point, and every stage of the journey right up to now, it had been based on faith. Sometimes known and sometimes unknown. Sometimes I knew it was God I was saying yes to, and sometimes not. Sometimes I went as willingly as Abram and Matthew and sometimes it was kicking and screaming all the way. Because it is always into the unknown this faith journey. Abram was asked to leave everything….county and kindred and household. He was essentially asked to leave his very identity behind based on a promise. And he went. Matthew was a tax collector. Now while this was not a profession that held a lot of status, it could be a lucrative one. But when Jesus came along and said “Follow me,” we don’t have record of him asking a lot of detailed questions about where and why and for what. No. He “got up and followed him.” As always I am so struck by that. As Jesus calls his disciples, he beckons and they come. In connecting this with the Old Testament story, it appears that this is in a lineage with his father….in fine relational tradition….the Lord said “Go” and “so Abram went…” and this word who becomes flesh and dwells among us continues to call others into relationship and new ways of being. Jesus called Matthew and apparently Matthew called his friends to dinner….his not so-acceptable friends, at least according to the Pharisees. The ones at the edges, those who are empty or sick, who do not belong or are in need. Those who are sinners. The ones, it seems, that Jesus always finds, always chooses to be with, much to the dismay of the powers that be. The ones, he explains, that he actually came for. Not the well, the righteous, but the sick, the sinners, those who are in need. This was confusing to those who were expecting an earthly king who was going to continue the status quo and not this counter-cultural rabbi who persisted in giving them these messages that kept shaking up the system. In today’s Gospel, he quotes the prophet Hosea, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Again, we are not that far from the sermon on the mount and all of it’s disturbing “calls” to behave in ways that are antithetical to the culture and perhaps some of our inclinations. “The knowledge of God” seems to be about God’s love and steadfast covenant and God’s desire to be in relationship with God’s people. Jesus’ manifestation of that seems to be about calling us to actualize in radical ways this commandment to love one another as God has loved us….all the way back through Abraham and Sarai and even before that! God says to Abram “lek leka” “get going”….move off into the unknown. In answering this call there is always movement required, and it is often into the unknown. But it is because we know that we can trust that the God who calls us calls us for the good of God’s people and not for God’s own ends, we can do what we need to do move out of our comfort zones to “journey on in stages.”

It has been an amazing journey these last six years. If someone had told me that day in the cornfield that it really wasn’t about student loans, but a call from God I might have told them they were crazy. But what I know today is that this is the life that God had prepared for me, the place that God had for me to serve, it was simply waiting for me to say yes. And on the anniversary of that day, these six years later, I say, thanks be to God that I did. Amen.