the caffeinated priest's sermons

Maundy Thursday

2010-04-02T22:52:00.000-05:00

Jesus tells us, by his very form, a lot about God. About what God loves, about what matters to God. Jesus came to earth as flesh and blood, God embodied in human form. God loves us in these fragile and funny bodies. Skin and hair and blood and bone. God loves this strange and fleshy form enough to enter one, to become one, to live in one and to die in one. And on this night, this last night when God's most beloved embodiment, Jesus, gathers with his friends, they come together one last meal, one last time to eat and drink, to tell stories and be together as friends, as family, as human incarnation. It is a night filled with first things and last things. And it is a night filled with movement. Jesus spends less time teaching with words than he does with actions.

Some of these actions are uncomfortable. Jesus washes his disciples feet. We repeat that action. Not a re-enactment, but a re-membering, moving in God's time, not our own. We make these actions with the disciples, that we, like them, may learn, that we, like them, may do. This is Jesus teaching us how to live, how to be this community he's loved and fostered, how to care for one another, how to do this thing that we will come to call Church. And this is the uncomfortable work we do as Church: we wash each others' feet, we let our own feet be washed. We wash the feet of the world. We stoop down and get dirty and wet.

And when all the feet are washed, Jesus will offer another action, another way to be the embodied people of God, the embodiment of Jesus in the world. We gather around a table, all together, eye to eye, and Jesus will eat the Passover meal with the disciples, with us. The lamb of Passover, taking new shape before our eyes. Jesus invites the disciples, Jesus invites us, to do this new thing, this feast, this, the Supper of the Lamb. No longer a traditional Passover, Jesus changes it and teaches them, teaches us to do, to remember, to become the community that will take this meal and use it to transform the world. Do this, he says, and remember. Remember who I am, remember who you are, remember who we are. Do this, Jesus bids us, do this, not believe this, not profess this, but do this and in doing it you will remember me.

Tonight is a night of action. Tonight is a night of embodiment. Tonight is a night of recognizing our frail and beautiful human form and living into all of our discomfort around it. Tonight is a night about being in our skin. Blessed are we who are called to the Supper, this first and last Supper of the Lamb.Come. Be washed. Come. Be fed. Come. Be the body of Christ, the Church. Come, be human. Be flesh and blood. Be uncomfortable or be surprised. Be the embodiment. Be the incarnational people of God's Church. We need this action, we need this nourishment so that we can begin to bear what is yet to come.

As we move through the actions of this night--washing feet, breaking bread, stripping the altar bare, waiting and watching in the garden with Jesus, I close with a hymn from the Acts of John, an apocryphal testament. It is a hymn that Jesus, when the meal is finished, sings to the disciples:

Glory be to you, Father.
Glory be to you, Word.
Glory be to you, Grace.
Glory be to your glory. Amen.

I would be saved, and I would save.
I would be loosed and I would loose.
I would be wounded, and I would wound.
I would be born and I would bear.
I would eat and I would be eaten.
I would hear and I would be heard.
Grace dances and I would pipe. Dance you all.
I would mourn. Lament you all.
All whose nature is to dance, do dance.
The one does not dance, does not know what comes to pass.
I would flee and I would stay.
I would adorn and I would be adorned.
I would be united and I would unite.
A house I have not and I have houses.
A lamp am I to you that beholds me.
A mirror am I to you that perceives me.
A door am I to you that knocks at me.
A way am I to you, a wayfarer.

Thus, my beloved, having danced with us, the Lord went forth.

Lent 5 Year C

2010-04-02T22:51:00.001-05:00

Judas was one of the last to join with Jesus and the disciples, I imagine. Not like Peter and Andrew who met up with Jesus and quickly put down their nets to fish for people. Or Matthew, sitting in his tax booth, waiting to collect taxes, who at Jesus' invitation simply gets up and follows. No, Judas is lumped in at the end. And I imagine that he was one of the last to sign on. Judas was an insurgent, a revolutionist. He joined Jesus in the hopes of revolution, in the hopes of change, in the hopes of overthrowing the government. What Jesus was offering, of course, was revolutionary, it was, it is, revolution. But not in the way that Judas was expecting. Love those who persecute you. If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek. As unconventional, as revolutionary as these teachings were and are, I suspect they were quite different from the revolution and revolt Judas had in mind.

Yet Judas continues with Jesus and the disciples. He doesn't leave. Perhaps he had grown used to the teachings. Maybe he liked watching the miracles. Perhaps he thought he'd persuade Jesus to act in new ways if he just stuck it out long enough. Whatever it was he had in mind, it wasn't the scene we enter today. Off they go to Mary, Martha and Lazarus' house. No doubt Martha had been working at the stove all day long. The disciples were hungry and entered the house, rich with smells of cooking lamb and baking bread. They eat and laugh and wine flows and no one seems terribly worried or to notice that Mary has disappeared for a bit. And then that new smell begins to waft through the house, that different smell, the stinging, sharp scent of earth and woods, the fragrance of oil mixed with incense, the spice that can not be separated from the scent of death, that smell begins carry through the house. At once Judas wonders where the smell comes from. And he enters the living area only to discover Mary, disgraceful Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, letting down her hair, a gesture of intimacy, something an honorable woman would never do. And then she begins to pour oil, the lavish expensive oil, the oil of burial all over Jesus' feet. This act is intimate and tender and extravagant.

Most of us hear Mary's act and are drawn to her compassionate action, her seeming knowledge of what is about to happen, her love, poured out abundantly onto Jesus, not anointing his head as a king, but washing his feet with the prodigal use of the expensive oil, the oil reserved for the dead and dying. Judas feels no such compassion, but rather is angered, watching, imagining that his revolution is dying, that it is not meeting its mission, that the revolution he hoped for is in fact a failure. Angered by money, wasted, poured out on feet, money for the poor, money he could have kept for his own gain--the money, the waste, the loss, the failure--this is what Judas sees. This was not the revolution he signed up for. Mary sees something else. Mary sees the revolution, the true revolution, and she understands what Judas seems to miss--that the revolution is about to take a turn, that the revolution is about to move to a whole new level. But getting there--well that's going to take some work and some pain. Revolution is never easy.

And then there is Jesus himself. Jesus, who is acting a little different than usual. Jesus is not giving the "sell all that you have and give it to the poor" speech or his words of "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." No, this time Jesus is telling Judas to leave Mary alone, let her be, let her, just this once, be extravagant with this oil because "you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me." It is strange to hear Jesus, the champion of Social and Economic Justice for the poor, Jesus who throughout the Gospels speaks of the need to minister to the poor, it is strange to hear him allowing this expense. Yet here, in this time and space, Jesus knows that there is more to this scene than the money that this oil is worth. Because what is happening here is the foretelling of what is to come. What's happening here is that Mary is delivering a message, Mary is acting as the prophet, Mary is moving forward the revolution.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

So Mary rubbed his feet with perfume so precious that its sale might have fed a poor family for a year... There will be nothing economical about this man's death, just as there has been nothing economical about his life. In him, the extravagance of God's love is made flesh. In him, the excessiveness of God's mercy is made manifest.

This bottle will not be held back to be kept and admired. This precious substance will not be saved. It will be opened, offered and used, at great price. It will be raised up and poured out for the life of the world, emptied to the last drop. Before that happens, Jesus will gather his friends together one last time. At another banquet, around another supper table, with most of the same people present, Jesus will strip, tie a towel around his waist, and wash his disciples' feet. Then he will give them a new commandment: Love one another, as I have loved you.

This is the revolution. We are steps away from Holy Week, the walk to Jerusalem is about to begin, the cross can be seen just over the horizon. The revolution, the one that Judas anticipated but decided fell short, the one that Mary foresaw and welcomed, the one the Jesus incarnated and the one that the Resurrected Christ handed on to us when he said: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations... And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. That revolution continues to move, to turn, to be. How will we respond to the revolution? Will we follow Mary's prodigal example, pouring out all that we have on the feet of the one who comes to us a stranger and friend? Will we pick up the mantle of Social and Economic Justice, and seek to work towards ending poverty and hunger? Will we look for those places that long for reconciliation and seek to peace and healing and wholeness?

The revolution is here: the revolution that began when an angel flew down to earth and asked a different Mary if she was willing to bear God in her belly, the revolution that became known when the Word made Flesh entered this world, stars brightly shining, in a grotto in Bethlehem, and that revolution which moved, taking itself out to the world when a carpenter's son set out with his motley crew of friends--fishermen and prostitutes and tax collectors and revolutionists--all who saw the chance for something better, the chance of hope--this is the revolution. Will we be part of it? Will we sit, with Mary, as the oil of burial is poured out, lavished on the feet of Emmanuel, God with Us. Will we walk with Jesus, following God's revolution to the cross? Will we carry the revolution out of these doors, out into this world? Because this is the revolution. And the revolution now belongs not only to Jesus and Mary and the disciples--the revolution now belongs to us. And the world waits, longs, hopes for us, to carry, to bring, to be that revolution, the where we love one another, like Jesus, his feet anointed for burial, loves us.

Prodigal

2010-04-02T22:49:00.003-05:00

The story of the prodigal son is one of the most well known Bible stories. A son decides to head out and see the world, asks his dad if he can receive his inheritance early, his father agrees, and off he goes, out into the world to live his life. He spends wildly, with reckless abandon and without thought to consequences. And before he realizes it, he has spent all of his father's generous gift. Hungry and desperate, he walks back home, rehearsing all the way exactly what he will say. He returns, prepared speech in mind, but before he returns to the house, his old father runs out and meets him. Before the son can offer his apology, his father embraces him and welcomes him home, not with scolding and questions, but with a rich food and expensive wines and a party.

Of course, his big brother is not so happy about all of this. His father's generosity is troubling. It's flat out not fair. It is a scandal. His brother has wasted half of the inheritance, he has worked hard and been faithful and loyal and his father is welcoming his brother back as if he had done something worthy of welcome, worthy of a party, worthy of praise.

It's easy to read this story with our 21st century eyes and and overlook some of the overwhelmingly strange an counter-cultural pieces in it. I mean, in 2010, it's not a big deal for a young son to ask his dad for some money as he sets out into the world. But Jesus tells this story to first century Palestinians. We live in such an individuated culture, it's hard to imagine the contrast, but understanding to whom Jesus is speaking to makes a difference in this story. In all likelihood, Jesus is speaking to a bunch of farmers who spend their days working the land. Community is incredibly important. Community is at the heart of life. If you need help building your barn, your neighbors come out and participate. If a family throws a party, the neighbors, the community not only attend, but they bring wine and food to help share in the joy. Community is practical as well as social, and a family's standing in community was important not only for social success, but for livelihood. Also different in the first century Palestinian culture was the expectation of family. In Jesus' time, it wasn't as simple as reaching adulthood and moving out into the world. Families expanded and houses would get bigger and bigger, building up and out. The family estate was important for maintaining the life and health of the family. In other words, sons didn't run away from home, sons stayed home and worked the farm and built up the family.

All this matters because this story is not just about a reckless son, it's about a family in crisis and the lengths the father will go to reconcile it. The son leaves, albeit with the father's blessing, but he sets out to see the world and you ban bet your bottom dollar that the neighborhood was busy talking about it, wondering what sin he had committed, negotiating about who would get the auctioned off land. The young son, by his leaving, by his taking from the household, the young son, no doubt, brought shame to the family. The older brother is understandably perplexed and angry at the father's generous welcome on the younger son's return. The father loves not only the young son, but also the older son, through his anger and frustration, stopping at nothing until his family is reconciled, until the family is whole.

All of this leads me to think that this is a story that is really not so much about either of the sons. It's a story about the father. When I think of the word "prodigal," I tend to associate it with this story. It's hard for me to hear prodigal and not think of one who has wandered away, one who has been lost, one who has been separated and has finally come home. But that's not entirely correct. The word prodigal actually means: lavish or extravagant. Marion Webster describes it as "characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure," or " yielding abundantly." So while I understand that the son is wasteful, that prodigal can apply to him, I can't help but wonder if perhaps Prodigal applies not only to the son and his wasteful use of his father's gift, but also to the father himself. Perhaps this story could be renamed the Prodigal Father. Because what the father does is both profuse and in some ways, wasteful. He gives without worry or fret about how the household will survive. He gives to the point that it seems foolish. He gives to the point of being scandalous.

This story, of course, is not a literal story. It's a parable. It's a story that Jesus tells his followers, tells us, to explain the strange and unlikely ways of God. And this story is, of course, about Grace. It's about the scandal of Grace, that gift that is given, without cost, without merit, Grace comes to us, is poured out upon us, undeserved and unyielding, a gift from God. Fredrick Buechner writes that grace is "something you can never get but only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about...A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Loving somebody is grace...The crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertation that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do....[Buechner continues] The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch: Like any other gift, the gift of grace can only your only if you'll reach out and take it."

The gift of grace is scandalous. Likewise, the story of the Prodigal, as seen through human eyes, is scandalous. In a world that loves justice over mercy, in our culture that believes in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and values the American Dream, that if we work and follow the rules closely enough, we will be rewarded, the father's generosity and forgiveness is challenging. Jesus teaches of a outrageous love that will not stop seeking until the broken are made whole, until the separated are reconciled, until the lost are found. In this season of Lent, as we move closer and closer to the cross, the story of a Father's irrational and prodigal love appears, to remind us of why it is that we are making this journey at in the first place, to teach us about the scandalous gift of grace that infiltrates our world, into our lives. The scandal of Grace is ever present. It waits for us, reaches for us and there is nothing we can do or say to earn it. It is a gift freely given, that gift that flows out to us, pours down on us, if we but realize it's there for us to dance in. An irrational, scandalous, prodigal gift, ours to claim.

Proper 9B

2009-07-05T23:01:00.001-05:00

Where is home? For you? What do you call home? My physical address is here in Lakeview, but if you ask me where home is, I’ll tell you it’s Athens, GA, home of the Georgia Bulldawgs, REM and The Tree that Owns Itself. Press me further and I’ll tell you that I grew up on Milledge Terrace, in a white stucco house with a red roof and a ginko tree that served as a jungle gym and climbing post. And that when I most miss my home I pull out my stock pot and make a huge batch of vegetarian collard greens that are so good they’ll make you want to slap your mama. Because although I’m from the South, I was raised by vegetarian borderline hippies and rarely, if ever, do we flavor vegetables with meat. Yes, that’s home—where football is religion and music is grows from our red clay soil and the only thing hotter than sitting in the summer sun is walking barefoot on the pavement. That’s where I come from, that’s what shaped and formed me and started me on the journey.

Who we are and where we’re from is part of understanding how we view the world and how the world views us. Like the crowds who notice Jesus today. Having been traveling around the country with his followers, he heads back home. And the crowd, the hometown crowd, knows the local boy that’s stopping by. And they expect him to come home and say hi to mom and maybe introduce them to his new wife. And instead he comes home and starts preaching and teaching. And they wonder about him. They are annoyed by him. They question his motives and his abilities—hey! Isn’t that Mary and Joe’s boy? Who does he think he is? He’s no prophet—he’s just a carpenter’s son. You know he is—he’s the son of that crazy Mary, always claiming to have visits from angels—she’s a little wacky, if you ask me. They were offended by him. And we don’t know exactly why—the classic line of Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house does little to explain why they were offended when he was busy healing sick.

Except maybe it is our own inability to look for new life coming from something we’ve known for a while. We humans don’t really expect that people can change, that something new can come from something so familiar. Jesus learns this tendency of human behavior and responds to it. We see this throughout the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus takes the traditional understanding of learning and location and turns it upside down. The sea, which can be a place of chaos and destruction, becomes a place of learning. Jesus calmed the sea and the disciples began to learn of who Jesus was and of his power. Likewise, the typical place of learning, the synagogue or the temple, becomes a place of denial and rejection—a place where Jesus can not teach and will instead be questioned and accused.

In all of this, the community that surrounds Jesus and who Jesus chooses to walk with is incredibly important. The fixed community, the one that worships weekly and calls the temple home—they are static and somewhat stuck, they aren’t able to see who Jesus is because to their closed eyes and ears, he’s just the hometown boy coming and making a fuss. They are unable to hear the good news, only able to discern Jesus as a threat to their comfortable way of life. In sharp contrast, the disciples follow, a growing, moving and exciting community. They are constantly on the move, never standing still, always seeking new people to welcome into their midst, new people for whom to shine the Gospel light.

Jesus comes home. And his hometown rejects him. So Jesus leaves—shakes the dust off his feet and moves, taking his moving, growing, changing community out into the world. Teaching them some simple and incredibly hard things: go with nothing. Because you don’t need that much. A pair of shoes, a coat—just these basics and the amazing Good News. That’s all you need. That’s what is home now.

So what does that mean for us? I think some of it goes back to the question of home: where’s home for you? What defines home for you? For me, I’ll always be a Southern Girl who loves the word y’all and magnolia trees in bloom. But while that’s where I’m from, and in some ways will always be home, the Gospel requires me, requires us to expand our understanding of home, to include a certain portability and a willingness to be defined, to be known not by our physical homes but by our spiritual homes, defined not from where we come from but defined by where we’re going.

And where it is that we’re going—I don’t know what it will ultimately look like, but I do know that the places where Jesus calls us, challenges to step in to our world today will require us to step outside of the comfort what we think we know. The founders of this land, whose birthday we celebrate this weekend knew something about this. Stepping out, away from the known, shaking dust off their feet as they moved away from what had always felt like home, they created a new home in an unknown world. Our task today is no different—to continue to find those place where the Gospel needs and longs to be heard and to proclaim with boldness the Good News of God’s redeeming and steadfast love.

I believe we are up to the task. As I speak, thousands of Episcopalians, are descending on Anaheim California to vision and speak and vote and dream about the future of the Episcopal Church. Let us hold them in constant prayer as they meet over the next two weeks. And here, closer to home, in God’s church right here at XXX, let us be constant and vigilant in our continued discernment about the mission and ministry of this place, ever dreaming, ever looking forward for ways to shine the light of the Gospel to this neighborhood. Mailed to houses this week and available in the back of the Church are letters, written on behalf of the vestry by the Senior & Junior warden and myself, about a new phase of discernment for St. Peter’s, as we begin the process of discerning whether I will be called to be rector of St. Peter’s and, more importantly, where we are as a parish, and where we want to go, how we want this Church to be Christ’s representative in Lakeview. Your voice is so important in this discussion and I encourage you to be part of it.

Where is home? Who is home? How are we defined by what we call home? Bishop Porter Taylor offers this: “Home is not a place. Home is not a building. Home is not even a family or a group of people. Home is a vision of wholeness. Being home is knowing that you belong and that you are connected to the One who is your home. Home is finally tasting the kingdom of God—a kingdom where, as Isaiah dreams ‘the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap like deer and there are streams in the desert.’ Home is where God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. That’s what we long for—the realm of God—the realm of peace and justice and mercy.”
(Porter Taylor. From Anger to Zion. Page 67)

So let us keep walking, stepping one foot in front of the other, until we find home, until we make a home, a place, a dwelling where Jesus can stop and teach and let the dust settle on his feet. And we, with joyful hearts, can sit and learn. And then go forth, into the world, and proclaim it.

Proper 8B, Pride Sunday

2009-07-03T23:10:00.000-05:00

Who touched me? Jesus asks.

Touch is one of the most basic needs human beings have. I learned that first hand in my jobs before becoming a priest. Touch has been at the heart and center of so much of what I’ve done. As a child abuse investigator, my days often revolved around listening for the thin line between good touch and bad touch. And then I entered a world that was quite literally all about touch as a massage therapist.

Touch is one of the most basic things humans do. It’s the start of relationship. Stop and think: when is the last time you were touched? Did someone shake your hand this morning? Did you hug or kiss someone you love? Perhaps you bumped into someone on the El getting here to church. Did your hand accidentally graze that barista at Caribou when she handed you your latte? And what was your reaction to that touch? Did you shirk your hand away? Did you linger in a hug for an extra moment? Was it awkward or was it comfortable?

How we touch, if we touch, the acceptability of touch is, like so much in our ever evolving world, is changing. As we find ourselves fragmented from our bodies—more an more attached to our phones and our computers, connecting and communicating by text message and Facebook status updates—there is an illusion that we are touching, that we are connecting. But we’re not. Not in any physical way. I fear that at some level we are separating ourselves from our bodies—trying to separate head and heart, mind and body. And I fear that we move further and further away from understanding the primal need and power of touch; we move further and further away from listening to each other’s cues and needs, so that touch becomes something almost dangerous. And yet, this is nothing new. Touch and power—these are issues that have been with us for such a long time.
Today’s Gospel highlights, in two very different ways, the power and transformation of touch.

The Gospel shows us two different people interrupting Jesus. The first is Jairus, a leader. That he is a leader is remarkable simply because in coming to Jesus, Jairus acknowledges Jesus’ power, his authority, publicly. Jairus recognizes the power of Jesus’ touch—trusting that his touch can heal, can reach to something beyond death. And as Jesus moves with Jairus to heal the little girl, someone once again interrupts Jesus, only this time privately. A woman, an unclean, poverty stricken, untouchable woman, reaches out and touches the hem of Jesus’ Garment. She reaches out and touches God. Utterly powerless and vulnerable, she stands as the opposite of all that Jairus is. This matters for a number of reasons—but the one I want to point out right now is that it matters because Jesus is in relationship with them both. The powerful and the powerless, the privileged and the impoverished, the clean and the unclean, the touchable and the untouchable. Jesus is in relationship with both—but he stops first for the one who is vulnerable and powerless. He stops first for the one who lives in the margins, the one considered an outcast by society. And God made human flesh allows himself to be touched.

We are told that the woman was afraid. Scripture says: “But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth.” Buddist author and teacher Pema Chodron writes: “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." The woman moved closer to the truth although she feared, she reached out for what she recognized as truth. She touched it and instantly it changed her.

If there’s any doubt, any wonder, any question about who this man is, about what this man is—it is revealed today. God is made Flesh, the Word becomes human—this is about incarnation. This is not a God who is far away or aloof. This is about a God who deigns to become one of us, so that he can touch and be touched as human, so that he can be in human relationship. This is a God who comes to eat and dance and laugh and live and move and die as one of us. This is God who delights in the world around him. This is God in human flesh, who, with a touch can heal, who being touched can be drained of power and restore the world all at the same time.

The Rev. Rowena Francis writes: The woman touched the hem of Jesus’ garment – such a simple step and was healed. We only need to reach out to Christ, to surrender in faith to God’s love for us, in order to discover life and healing. But we find that so hard. Instead we rely on ourselves. We are independent. We hold our arms stiffly by our sides. But if we stretch out our hand and touch then we can feel the power for life flowing into us from Christ. This is all we need to do to find life; recognize that of ourselves and without God, we are as nothing, as good as dead. Then to simply reach out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment and so encounter God who is the life force that is love which encompasses all.

Who touched me? Jesus asked.

One of the things that happened on that day when the woman reached out to touch Jesus, was that she realized she couldn’t do it alone. She needed Jesus to make her whole, to restore her. It was that contact—human with God racing through his veins—that contact, that human touch—moved her out of her isolation. But it was the contact, not with God, but with the human part of Jesus that restored her to the world of the living. Humans are made, are shaped, are formed not in isolation but in relationship to other people.

Today we celebrate an un-official Feast day—today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the uprising at Stonewall, the 40th annual Pride parade. Today we celebrate—in a myriad of ways—the beauty and love found in God’s creation and the hope that life will not be lived in isolation. On the steps of this church, we will hand out cups and bottles of water, an ancient and honored way of following the Biblical mandate to offer hospitality to friend and stranger alike. And in the parade that celebrates the continued movement away from marginalizing members of society, we will add our voice, and our feet, marching in the hopes that we may stand as a reminder that Jesus touched and was touched by not only the powerful, not only the privileged but especially by those who have been outcast, who have been pushed to the sides, by the vulnerable and by those who have been silenced. May we, with all that we do and all that we are, stand as living reminders that all, rich and poor, sick and well, whole and broken, afraid and unafraid, loved and unloved—all are welcome in this place, all are welcome in the Holy Church of God.

Hail Mary Full of Grace, Help Me find a Parking place.

2009-06-21T14:45:00.000-05:00

Hail Mary, full of Grace. Help me find a parking place.
Hold onto that thought…I’ll get back to it. In the meantime, a quick story.

June 2004. My carry-on bag filled with 3 trashy novels, a box of Triscuits, a Book of Common Prayer, this Bible, my passport and I made our way onto British Airways flight number 2172, the first leg of a 17 hour flight from New York to Tel Aviv. I tucked myself in, slightly annoyed by the guy in the seat next to me’s taking the armrest as his own before we even left the ground. Headphones in, cell phone off, and with great anticipation, I made the sign of the cross, my standard take off and landing superstition and off we went. It was about an hour into the flight when the smell of the dinner began to waft through the plane. I know airplane food isn’t famous for its gourmet quality, but I was hungry and it smelled so good. I was imaging that there would be some kind of crusty bread and a good smear of butter to cover it, when the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please return your seats to their upright and locked position, stow your tray tables, turn off all electrical devices and prepare for landing.”

Huh. Well now that is unexpected. Did the 8 hours to London go by that fast? was my first, very irrational thought. I turned to the man I had been previously annoyed with and said “what?” He looked at me and said “I don’t know.” Waiting for assurance, for some comfort, the loud speaker voice returned again, this time in the voice of the stewardess. “Ladies and Gentlemen, as the captain has said, we are preparing for landing. Please make sure your carry on luggage is stowed. We will be landing in 10 minutes.” 10 minutes. 10 minutes? We’re only a little over an hour in flight. Something must be wrong. I turned to my neighbor and begin to ask him questions that he had no way of answering: “What’s happening? Why are we landing? Are we over the ocean? Are we going to crash? Are we going to die?”

I wasn’t alone in my questioning. The noise on that plane moved to a crescendo , a swell, a noise that was unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Panic, confusion, fear all rumbling together, lifting, carrying, crying out into a cacophony. It lasted about 4 minutes, rising then lowering a bit, only to return louder than it had started. And then, like the eye of a storm enters and creates a false sense of calm, quiet swept in. If the noise had been disconcerting, the quiet was worse. I looked around. A rosary pulled out and clutched by the Roman Catholic little old lady two seats over. Closed eyes and rocking body by the man two rows down. Intense stares out the window, to the seat back a head, to the ceiling by people all around. A prayer whispered. The name of a loved one brushing softly across the lips, because it may be the last time. I watched for a moment and then found myself lost in my own conversation with God. Let it be quick. Let it be pain free. Help my mom not be sad. Jesus wake up and calm the storm that is this plane! They were the longest 5 minutes of my life. A quiet, a still, that was the center of a storm.

As quickly as it began it was over. A perfect landing in Bangor Maine, where 20 fire trucks and 15 ambulances, lights and sirens blazing, greeted us on the tarmac. Later we would learn there had been a fire in the cock pit that happily occurred before we were over the ocean.

There are these moments of storm—these places where we find ourselves unsure, terrified, afraid, uncertain. Sometimes they are big moments, truly life threatening moments like a plane on fire or a boat being rocked on a sea. Other times they are less physically dramatic, but profound storms nonetheless—a sick parent or child, a lost job, a dying pet, a marriage in distress, cancer. The truth is these less visible storms, the ones we often keep hidden—these can be the most frightening of all. The world rages on and we find ourselves wondering who we are, who is with us and how we are to survive. To say there is nothing to fear is a lie. There’s plenty to fear in this world. But the promise that Jesus makes is that he’s in the boat with us. It may seem like he’s asleep, yet the story tells us that as yet as soon as the disciples call to him, as soon as they wake him, Jesus calms the storm.

But here’s the rub: just because Jesus is awake, and even with Jesus in the boat, there’s still the reality of our fear. Even in the calm, the disciples are afraid: “The wind ceased and there was a dead calm. And he said to them ‘why are you still afraid?’” Which leads me back to what I opened with: Hail Mary, full of Grace. Help me find a parking place.

It's a prayer I use at least once a day in this city. I will be the first to say that it’s a silly little ritual I have when looking for a parking spot. I do not believe that God has desire to micromanage our lives to the extent that the creator of the universe wants to have a say in where I park my car. I do not believe that if I am good and pleasing, a parking space will open up and if my intentions are less than ideal, not spot will appear. In fact, some of the best parking spots I’ve ever landed have come on days when I’ve exhibited some really poor and frankly un-Christian behavior. As much as I might like it, I’m not convinced that God answers that kind of micro-managing prayer directly.

It's why I don't pray "please make the cancer go away" or "please make my let me win the lottery (okay, I do occasionally pray that one)." It’s just my opinion, but I'm not convinced God works like that. Take a look at what happens between God and Job in the first lesson today. Job, the personification of a good and faithful follower, finds his life destroyed: his crops have been ruined, his children killed and his body has been covered in sores. He cries out God in frustration and God replies: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? " God goes on to remind Job of the vastness of creation--the limits, the measures, the boundaries of all that God has created. God’s answer, at first pass, comes along as harsh, almost like God is saying: "it's a bit more complicated than your individual speck of drama. I've got a whole creation to look out for." The frustration with the story of Job is that God never really answers Job’s question. Author Barbara Brown Taylor writes:
“Job’s question was about justice. God’s answer is about omnipotence, and as far as I know, that is the only answer human beings have ever gotten about why things happen the way they do. God only knows. And none of us is God.”

Which leaves us where? Comfortless? Helpless? Alone? No. In all of this we are more than abandoned children. The Good News is that God answers. The Good News is that God moves into the boat, Jesus sets out with us in the storming sea, the raging lake that storms and finds the places of calm and brings us to them. It may not always look like the waters are being calmed, yet the promise remains that Jesus is with us in the storm. A friend of Bishop Gene Robinson said to him once "Sometimes God calms the storm and sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms the child."

I trust, call it childlike, call it foolish, but I trust, that God is with us. That God is here. Living, breathing and moving in our lives, a very real presence, even if we, like Job, find ourselves in the midst of trial or if we, like the disciples, find ourselves in the middle of a raging storm. Living the Christian life, professing the Christian faith doesn’t mean that the trials of this world will come to an end. In fact, if we look at the history of the most faithful of Jesus’ followers, it shows us just the opposite. The promise is that Jesus is in the boat with us. That Jesus, that God, come to us and calm the storm.

I’d like to close with a quote from one of my favorite theologians and writers, Frederick Buechner. May this be our prayer:

Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and whatever we do in whatever time we have left, wherever we go, may we in whatever way we can call on him as the fishermen did in their boat to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us, each one, our way. May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we're done, so that even in their midst we may find peace...we may find Christ.

Palm Sunday, Year B (Mark)

2009-04-05T15:52:00.001-05:00

the caffeinated priest
Palm Sunday, Year B
April 5, 2008

Today is a strange day—the cover of your bulletin proclaims it, as does the Book of Common Prayer, The Sunday of the Passion, colon, Palm Sunday. I don’t want to call it that. I want to keep it simple, forget the passion and make it only Palm Sunday. I’ve even toyed with doing that, with eliminating the Passion Gospel we just proclaimed and keeping our focus straight forwardly on the liturgy of the Palms, of the Triumphal entry, of Jesus riding into the city in majesty, with honor and glory, with us, waving our branches of palm along the way. The world, for this moment, filled with anticipation and energy, eager as this man, this one who enters the city comes forth and we recognize him for who he is…the Messiah, the King, the one who has come to bring hope, to bring life, the one who has come to bring something new. Did you see the crowd? Kids climbing trees to break of branches of palm, tossing them down, filling the streets, handing them to strangers walking by, so that his way will be lined in the way of royals, so that everyone can wave him in. Hope and anticipation stands before us and we cheer him, as we cry for him, to him: Hosanna in the Highest!

This is what I want to focus on—our hope, our anticipation, our love of this man, this Messiah as he enters our city, enters our midst. I want to pay attention to the stories that surround the triumphal entry…Jesus’ teachings, the stories of his miracles, of demons being cast out. I want to tell you the story of Jesus blessing the little children. I want to relive the stories of healing, of impossibility becoming possible right before our eyes, as he walks by. I want to watch the crowd, I want to be in the crowd, that welcomes, that cheers, that honors, that recognizes God made Flesh in our midst. Yes, I want to stay in the world that cries Hosanna in the Highest!

Can we skip past Judas’ kiss? Can we fast forward through the arrest, taking him away like a bandit? Can we turn away as Peter betrays? How do we escape the crowd that cries Crucify! Crucify! And can I, can we turn our backs, close our eyes as the Savior of the world hangs nailed to a tree?

Here’s the rub: The core, the nature of this day is its duel nature, a mirror that reflects the duel nature of humanity. How quickly we move from Hosanna to Crucify. Our palm branches haven’t even been put away and our we find ourselves in a very different crowd, following a different parade, into a very different space. Hope turned to anger, faith turned to disbelief, Messiah turned to criminal. The parade that was one of hope has become a mob seeks to destroy. And we stand in the midst of both. It is the nature of today, it is the strange nature of humanity—broken and hopeful, seeking and rejecting.

So here we are. The beginning of Holy Week, once more unto the breach. It is a week that is filled with paradox: love and sorrow, pain and healing, despair and hope. It is a week that dares us to risk becoming vulnerable, a week that dares us to risk to love. In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis writes: "To love is to become vulnerable, to risk suffering. If you want to make sure your heart is not broken, you must give your heart to no one, to nothing. Then, it will not be broken. Indeed it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." Holy Week is, in part, about vulnerability and heartache and sorrow because at its core it is about the risk of love. This time is about love that is so powerful that it can reach beyond our wildest dreams, beyond time and space, beyond death itself. Love that comes to us, love that does not, will not leave us. Love that is so heavy, so full, so overflowing that to really feel it, to truly accept it, breaks us a little and, miraculously heals us at the same time.

And so it is here, in this strange space, in the duel nature of this day, as we cry Hosanna, Hosanna! Crucify! Crucify! it is even here, or maybe especially here, that God comes to us. God seeks us, God reaches out for us, to love us in strange, profound, risky and transformative new ways. God’s love, God’s boundless, limitless, unchangeable, earth-shaking love, can not, will not stop. Not even in human betrayal, not even in the death of God’s son.

Lent 4B

2009-03-23T23:23:00.002-05:00

the caffeinated priest
Lent 4B
March 22, 2009
Chicago

How quickly they forget. How quickly they forget that God has brought them out of slavery and captivity into something better. Here the Israelites are wandering around the wilderness, trying to get to the promised land, and its not going as quickly or as comfortably as they had imagined. My favorite line in their complaining, probably because it sounds so much like me in my constant complaining when I was in seminary: we detest this miserable food. Yes, the picture this morning is of a people complaining and whining while wandering through the wilderness.

And before it begins to sound too much like I’m going to condemn them, let me say that I feel for them, I understand where they are. God has promised them a land flowing with milk and honey and here they are in an in between place, without the comforts of home, wandering. So I understand, and perhaps you can as well, the desire and perhaps even the need to murmur, to complain, to rebel. But in their discontent, they forget. They forget who they are, they forget where they have come from and they forget how it is that they have come to be a free people. They forget and they go too far.
It’s one thing to rail against Moses, their leader. It’s quite another to begin speaking out against God. And they do so with consequence. God sends snakes. Poisonous snakes. Poisonous snakes that bite and kill. And the people find themselves very afraid. And suddenly, with the appearance of death and snakes, the people come to their senses. With the shock of death, their eyes are opened and they realize what they have done, the sin they have committed, and they repent. They beg Moses to intercede on their behalf and what happens is nothing short of strange. Moses prays for the people and God answers with this: "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live."

God answers them by having them stare upon the very thing that scares them the most, God has them stare at death. The snake, lifted high, is a frightening image, a deathly image and yet when they stare death in the face, they live. The Hebrew word used for poisonous serpent is seraph, as in seraphim, one of the orders of angels. Or singularly, the seraph is usually thought of as a 6 winged angel, which appears multiple times in Scripture. God’s messengers are almost always unusual. This one is no exception. God’s messenger, the seraph, that had been the cause of death, becomes the way of life, if the people will but face their fears, lift up their eyes and be brave enough to stare upon it. Out of what looks like an instrument of death comes the way of life.

Jesus references this story and then retells it, making it about what it is that he’s come to do, telling Nicodemus that he, Jesus, will be lifted up on the cross. God’s messenger, no longer a serpent or an angel, God’s messenger comes this time in the form of a human, this time in the form of God’s own Son, comes to be lifted up, to save the people from death, and this time to go one step further—this not only avoiding death, but this time to bestow eternal life. But it comes with cost. Looking up at the cross is not easy. Gazing upon the one who willingly goes to be whipped and spit upon, the one who willingly endures nails driven into his flesh, the one who willingly bears the agony and shame of this death—gazing upon this, walking with him as he goes to this, standing at the foot of this—none of it is easy, none of it is without cost. Yet it is what we are called to, it is what we are invited to—to walk, to journey, to gaze upon the new messenger who comes not with poisonous serpents but with a message of love and a willingness to be lifted up so that death is no longer the answer, but eternal life.

The text that follows has been used and sometimes misused for a long time. It begins with the famous John 3:16. If you’ve ever been to any sporting event, someone somewhere has held up a sign that references this text: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. This verse and the verses that follow do call us to the hard work of discipleship, of being intentional in our following of Jesus. But because of who John was, the most mystical writer of the Gospel writers, John’s words must be read with intentionality. John writes: Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. It is easy to use this text to condemn those who do not believe as we believe. But I wonder if that is what it’s really calling us to. I think John describes a dualism of human nature. We are always both believing and not believing. For belief is more than a simple “sure I buy into that.” Belief, in John’s world, is an action, described in this passage as coming into the light. Belief is active, it’s on-going. It’s not a one time decision, it’s a living, moving thing. We are both believing and not believing.

In the Gospel of Mark, there is the story of a man who comes to Jesus asking him to cure his son who is sick with an evil spirit. Jesus tells him that all things can be done for the one who believes, to which the man cries out: ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ Is that not all of us? I know it’s me. My belief, my faith, my desire is there—I want to believe, I want to follow, I want to be faithful. And I try. And sometimes I get there. And other times, I find myself wandering in the wilderness, complaining about the food, wondering if God is listening at all. And so we are both—we believe and we don’t believe, we try and we don’t try, we follow faithfully and we forget to follow at all.

The journey to the cross is well on its way. In no short time we will find ourselves triumphantly crying “Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest!” and before the hour ends, yelling “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Lord I believe, help my unbelief. I want to believe. I want to be faithful. I want to walk all the way to the cross and not be afraid to look up, not be afraid of the very real truth that the only way to Easter morning, to the resurrection, the only way to new, changed, transformed life, is by looking up, not at a poisonous serpent, but at God, hanging crucified on a tree. For by gazing on the very thing that looks like death, if we are but able to bear it, we begin to see, we begin to know true life, life that is born out of love, life that changes us, life that is eternal.

Lent 3B

2009-03-15T15:27:00.002-05:00

There’s a Holiday Inn located somewhere deep in the South. I’ll withhold the name of the city to protect the innocent. Once the desk crew has checked you in and given you your key, and you make your way to your room, open the door, put your stuff down—that’s when you’ll notice it. It’s a small little sign, positioned on the sink, right next to the big stack of extra towels. The sign simply reads: remember the 8th Commandment. Which, if you’ve done your homework on the 10 Commandments, may leave you wondering just what it is that the hotel is asking you not to do. For the Commandments are numbered differently in different traditions. So it may be that the hotel is politely asking you to remember the 8th Commandment as the traditional Protestant numbering goes—thou shall not steal this lovely stack of towels. Or, it could be, that they’re referring to the Catholic and sometimes Lutheran numbering and politely asking you, to please, avoid committing adultery in this room.

The 10 commandments, at least for me, bring up a whole bunch of images. Charlton Heston holding them is one that comes to mind. Another is yard signs all over the south, urging the politicians of this land to allow the 10 Commandments to be displayed in a Courthouse in Alabama. The 10 Commandments, or as Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor calls them, the 10 Teachings, have become the unfortunate object of misunderstanding. They have come to represent in popular culture all that we can not do, all that we are limited by, and for some, they have come to represent a form of slavery imposed by the church. But this is not why they were given and not what they are. These teachings, these commandments, which we are told were handed to Moses on stone tablets at Sinai, were give to a people who had been in captivity, a people who were returning from the burden of slavery and exile. At this point in the Exodus story, the people have returned from their exile and God gives these commandments, these teachings as a gift to them, to the community. I think we tend to dismiss the first part of the Decalogue, we tend to hear the first “important” thing beginning with the commands: you shall have no other Gods before me. But that’s not how it starts. It starts with God’s pronouncement of Grace and Freedom: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. In other words, I am with you and I bring you to freedom God’s promise that we are not meant to live in captivity, that we are not meant to be in bondage and exile.

The 10 teachings follow, not as a form of punishment or restriction, but as the promise of how we can live together joyfully, fully and safely. The set forth a model of community and serve as an image of what it is that God hopes for us. The “you shalls” and the “you shall nots” are not given to us necessarily as individuals, but given to the community. Perhaps a better translation would be “we shall have no other gods” and “we shall remember the Sabbath day” and “we shall not murder.” What would it mean, in this economic crisis if we said, as a faith community “we shall not covet.” What might it mean to people working in sweatshops if we understood the communal nature of the 10 Teachings and said “we shall not steal.” Theologian and teacher Walter Brueggemann suggests that “These commandments might not be taken as a series of rules but as a proclamation in God’s own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community of liberated slaves.” Do they call us to an ethical life? Sure. But hopefully it’s a joyful response to the promise that we are beloved of God, that we are cared for by God and that we are set free in God. And God’s love, God’s promise is not conditional on our faithfulness or obedience. So to disobey the 10 commandments does not earn us the promise of God’s wrath, but rather it takes us to a place our own making, our own returning ourselves to slavery and isolation and death, by wandering away from the life God has offered us.

Contrasted with the story of the Ten Teachings is the story of Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple. This story makes me uncomfortable. It’s angry Jesus. It’s Jesus knocking things over. He’s moving around with a homemade whip for criminy’s sake! It’s an image we don’t see a lot. I mean, the Franklin Mint makes plates that have Jesus holding baby sheep and lambs, and plates that have little children sitting on Jesus’ lap. But I have yet to see a plate commemorating Jesus taking a whip and driving people out of the temple and flipping the tables over. This is not tame Jesus, this is not safe Jesus. This is angry Jesus. And yet…what is happening here is the beginning of so much that is new. This is all happening in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in John’s Gospel. Jesus has called the disciples and has performed the first miracle, turning water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana and now he comes to cleanse the temple. Jesus is so angry because the corruption is keeping us from our ultimate freedom which is true and right relationship with God our Creator.

Some scholars tell us that this act, this decision to call out the corruption, to tear apart the sacred space, is the act that leads to Jesus’ arrest and ultimately to his crucifixion. This is all part of what he’s come to do: to help us return to God. To take the focus off of greed and corruption, which had taken over the temple and put the focus back on the true temple, which is being changed even as Jesus commits this act—the new temple, his body. The new temple, the one that will be hung from a tree and whipped and spit upon. Jesus comes and calls into question what it is that we see, that we understand to be sacred, to be truth, to be of God. And while his anger may be frightening, and may even lead to his death, Jesus brings righteous anger into the old temple, that we may begin to see the new temple, the new covenant, the new promise that moves into the world.

And so we, once again, find ourselves living with paradox—what, at first glance looks like a list made to enslave us to rules and regimen is actually a promise of our belovedness, a sign of our freedom. And what, at the surface seems to be anger and destruction, instead points to new life, and ultimately points us to the cross, the ultimate paradox of power masquerading as weakness, of life being born out of death.

I’d like to end this sermon by asking you to pray with me. And good Episcopalian that I am, I’m not going to pray off the cuff, but rather ask you to turn to page 350 in your red prayer book. I want to close today with where we began. The Decalogue, the 10 Commandments, the 10 Teachings. May we hear them and begin know that we are wholly and fully beloved of God and in the temple of Christ may we be set free to become who we were made to be.

Epiphany 6B

2009-02-15T17:06:00.001-06:00

Epiphany 6B
February 15, 2009

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’

The beginning of Jesus’ story, as Mark tells it, is full of healings, of demons and of revelations about who Jesus is. As Jesus travels throughout the land, it becomes increasingly clear that this healer is not yet ready for the world to know his identity and what he has come to do. Yet the world continues to reveal him: through demons who recognize him and pronounce him as the Holy One of God, and by those who he’s healed who are so overwhelmed by what has happened to them that they can not contain their excitement and joy.

The image presented in today’s Gospel is that of a leper, coming forward with such hope and expectation, and Jesus is moved with pity, reaches out and touches the man, healing him. It is a generous move on Jesus’ part. Being seen with, let alone touching, a leper was, in those days, and still is, in parts of the world, dangerous. He could have walked by or said no. It would have been the safer, saner thing to do. Lepers were required, as they walked the streets, to shout “unclean, unclean” so that all would know to steer clear and avoid them. Not only was the disease a physical one, it was a stigmatic one as well. Being clean was required to enter life in community, to go to places like the synagogue. And Jesus, aside from calling attention to himself, was putting himself at risk. Because coming in contact with one who is unclean, makes you unclean as well.

We are told that Jesus was moved with pity. It’s a deep pity, the Greek word shares its root with the notion of churning bowels, a compassion deep into the gut. A modern translation might be “Jesus was sick to his stomach when he saw the man’s illness.” A deep pity. Some translators tell us it was that Jesus was not moved with pity, but was moved with anger. A particularly poor translation says that Jesus “felt sorry for him.” Whatever Jesus felt, he stopped. He stopped and touched and healed the man. And in this act, we learn so much about who Jesus is, WHAT he is and just what he has come to do. While on the surface it looks as if he’s come to heal and preach, if we scratch a little deeper we begin to see that he has come to be more. Pastor Paul J. Nuechterlein writes:

In Jesus Christ the emotions that make necessary the purging through the sacrificial institutions -- anger, blood-lust for vengeance -- are transformed into the emotion that underlies serving in the Culture of God, namely, compassion. The "impulsive passions" behind the making of sacrificial victims are transformed into a compassionate reviving of victims.

In other words, Jesus, whether moved by righteous anger or pity, has come to change the world and its understanding of who God is—offering a God of Compassion, a God of healing, a God of Love. The generosity of God, as manifesting in Jesus, reaches out and transforms those places of hurt, illness, brokenness and shame.

My friends, the past months have been rough. The economy is a frightening reality that shows no signs of revival anytime soon. Many people, including people here in this congregation have lost jobs or are at risk for job loss. Retirement seems further and further away for many. And we find ourselves living in a culture that fears scarcity, unable to recognize the abundance of all that God has entrusted to us. Not since the Great Depression has our country experienced anything like this and it’s frightening.

I’ve heard that the mantra in Washington these days is: never miss the opportunity to make use of a crisis. Which actually has a lot of implications for us here too. Here is a chance for us to not only fully live into our faith, but to begin to explore the depths of that faith, to stretch out our hands in pity, in compassion, in love. It is the most basic of what we are called to—to minister to our neighbors, to make use of the gifts God has given us, to be compassionate stewards of our own bounty to reach out to those who need us.

Moved by pity, deep, feel-it-in-your-gut, pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the one who others thought could not be touched, could not be reached, could not be healed. Our work, to be the hands and hearts of Christ in the world, is ever before us. The rewards, the gifts that come from using our hands and hearts for the good of God’s creation cannot be numbered. For in reaching out to God’s creation, we begin stretch across, to move and find not only ourselves as healers, but as ones being healed, being made whole ourselves. And so let us begin to recognize the riches which God has entrusted to us and let us become good stewards of them. And whether we are moved by pity or anger or love, let us begin to stretch out our hands to heal and restore this broken and beautiful world. And then let us watch as God continues to be revealed, made clearer, moment by moment, person by person, before our eyes.

Epiphany 4B

2009-02-01T08:51:00.001-06:00

Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.

The crowds have moved through the temple all day. The word on the street is that he is coming, the one who had been friends with John the Baptist. Rumors abound that he might show up here and teach. People came early to get good spots, so they could hear him clearly. So many gathered here, the pious and the faithful, the lapsed and the doubting, the curious and injured, and, of course, the freaks. The ones who wander around, talking to themselves, openly staring, gaping at the normal people as they walk by. I am one of these. And although no one says it out loud, it is uncomfortable to be this close to us, the ones who acted so strangely. We are, after all, so unpredictable.

He comes in and teaches. It is unlike anything this temple has ever heard. It’s hard to explain just why—history will record it as his authority, that he speaks with as one who truly knows, not just as a scribe. But the truth is that it is far more than that. Because something about him is just different—odd, almost, not like the others. He speaks and there is something that rings, in the deepest part of your soul, as truth. It frightens me, although I do not say it, not yet. I listen. And I move, closer and closer, until I can see his face, which is soft, with kindness in his eyes. But he is not gentle. He is fierce and he speaks with passion and urgency. And I want to listen, I want to blend in with the crowd. Yet the closer I come to him, the closer I get, the more urgency I feel, the more I am unable to keep silent. I see him. I really see him. And I know who he is, what he is. And then I realize—his friends, his disciples—they do not recognize him. None of them. They are amazed by his teachings, sitting at his feet, enjoying his words like a good story. But they do not see the fullness of who he is. Blissfully ignorant that the world is transforming before their eyes. They do not know. But I do. We do.

I step closer. And again, closer. And I feel my body shake and I can not contain the voice anymore. And I spit out the words: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. I see that my words displease him. He is not ready; it is not time for them to know who he is. Yet we have forced it upon him.

He looks at me. He looks through me. And I feel my body split in two and I can not see for the blinding pain of being split apart. “Be silent, and come out of him!” he says. It is the first time anyone has seen me for as long as I can remember. In an instant the pain is gone, because he has seen and known me, known that I am still in here, known that there is more to me than the one who took up residence inside so long ago. I can’t hear much, although I know something must be happening around me. I don’t really care because someone has seen me. Someone knows. He is trying to set me free.

I don’t remember what happened next. They tell me that my body shook and seized and that I cried out strange utterances. When I awoke, it was gone. That part of me that had invaded and taken hold and refused to let go—it was gone. And for the first time that I can remember, I am me. Just me.

It is a strange and terrible and wonderful thing to be touched by the hand of God. I know now that’s what it was. I know, even if those who follow him don’t. It’s not simple or clean or easy even, because as astonishing as it is to be free of the demon, my life has changed and I am still trying to figure out what that means for me and who I am now that my eyes have been opened. I follow him, keeping my distance, because I know his secret and it seems it’s not quite time for the rest of the world to know.

But here’s what I continue to wonder about: why do the demons see what the humans miss? And just who do his disciples think that he is. They are with him all the time. Surely they can see the power that branches out from his very being. All can see that Jesus heals, he casts out demons, he does miracle after miracle, but his followers—they do not yet fully comprehend who it is that walks with them. Perhaps I see only because of what the demon showed me, perhaps I know what I know because I saw through its eyes. Humans have a remarkable ability to miss God in their midst. Maybe it is because it’s too frightening to be loved so fully, perhaps it is because it is too vulnerable to be known so completely. The demons see God because their survival depends on it. They need to see him, so that they can hide. Yet we humans, we seem to be blind. God walks in our midst and we miss him, we make excuses, we rule out the miracles in favor of common sense, we find ways to deny the unbounded love that radiates from the core of his being. We see God right in front of us and we don’t recognize him for who he is.

These days I walk and sometimes others walk with me. Slowly there’s a small band of us—those who have had the demons cast out, those who know who he really is. We are often quiet while we walk. Yet I am grateful for their company. And I am aware that when he healed me, the healer left part of himself with me, embedded, etched on me. I recognize his touch in the others. I think they recognize it in me as well. Encounters with God change you, you know. They leave you searching, looking for others who have seen Him too, others who have been changed by him as well. I must confess, I’m waiting for his friends, his disciples to notice, for them to finally fully recognize him. It will happen. Of that, I’m sure. It’s just a matter of time.

It’s a funny thing I’ve noticed about the human race: whether we know it or not, we find ourselves meeting the Divine, but as soon as we see God, as soon as we recognize God in our lives, in our midst, we look for a way to discount it, to rationalize it, and eventually write it off as a dream or fantasy or fiction. We humans are quirky. We tend to think if it didn’t happen in a literal, physical way, it didn’t happen at all. Or that if we can’t rationalize it and make it make sense, then it wasn’t real. But that’s not so. I’ve been following, I’ve been watching enough to know that when Jesus shows up, nothing is as expected. And so I walk on, a little more boldly each day, following, often at a distance, but following, nonetheless the teacher, the one who I now know is the Messiah, the Holy One of God.

Advent 4B

2008-12-21T17:44:00.000-06:00

the caffeinated priest
Advent 4B
December 21, 2008

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Annunciation pictures, images this week, images of the the moment where Gabriel comes in and announces to Mary, asks Mary, if she’ll do this strange and marvelous deed. There’s the classic, medieval images, ones that show a royal court of angels bowing before a queen-like Mary. There’s a more modern one that shows a kind and gentle Gabriel, kneeling before Mary, gazing up at her with adoration, an image that allows us to enter into the scene, to be part of it. And then there’s an image that haunts me. Mary, almost backed into a corner, dressed entirely in white, a teenage girl cowering in fear, eyes down cast, back to the wall on a corner of her bed as Gabriel hands her a single stem of flowers. All images of this one girl, barely old enough to conceive, yet radically different in their rendering of Mary’s response to the angel.

I wonder what she was doing when the angel came to her. Lord knows that there are enough wells in the Galilee that mark the spot of the annunciation that it could be she was drawing water at the well. Perhaps she was studying or doing homework. If the annunciation were to happen today, perhaps Gabriel would find her updating her status on Facebook or writing on her blog about what an utterly boring day it had been or texting her BFF about the boy she likes. Whatever she was or is doing, it is met with interruption. The interruption of interruptions. The angel comes to her, unexpected, unbidden, perhaps unwanted and gives her the strangest of greetings. The text doesn’t tell us she’s scared, simply that she is perplexed. How can this be, she asks. I think we often assume she wonders “how can this be” since I’m a virgin, i.e. I haven’t done the things one needs to do to become pregnant. But perhaps that’s not what she meant at all. Perhaps she was saying: okay. So how is this going to work? I’m a virgin, an unmarried woman, I’m not ALLOWED to be pregnant. It’s a sin punishable by death. So here, you want me to carry God’s child in my belly, you want me to be the mother of God, the most important of all the tasks you could ask anyone to take on—and this is how you plan to do it—you, some nutty angel and God come up with this zany plan: a pregnant virgin. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Whatever is said, whatever the dialogue between Mary and the angel, whatever the interior conversation between God and Mary—it works. She agrees to this interruption of her life. Mary agrees—let it be with me, according to your word.

And so at the heart of it is Mary. Mary is different. The ages and lore tell us it was because of her purity, and maybe it was. But I suspect it was more than that. I think it was her willingness to be interrupted, to make room for the irrational, the pardon the pun, inconceivable. We don’t know what her full response was—whether she was scared or angry or overjoyed. Let it be with me, according to your word—consent enough for the Holy Spirit to overshadow her, to change everything. Maybe part of what makes her so different, so noteworthy, so revered is her willingness to venture into the—I want to say unknown—but maybe for her it wasn’t unknown. Maybe she knew what the road would look like, the odd looks, the visits from strangers, the flight into Egypt, the life as a refuge. Maybe she knew that this angel’s greeting meant more than just an unlikely birth, that it meant the paradoxical life of watching a child grow, of swaddling him in cloth, of playing with him on the shores of the Galilee, of loving the way his laugh sounds, all the while knowing that a sword will pierce not only his side, but her own side as well, that ultimately his life will mean the journey to his death, the cross, where she will stand in its shadow and weep and watch, knowing that this too, was part of what the angel came to say.

Maybe this is why we stop, if only for a moment, in the hustle and bustle of this season and ponder not only what Mary did, but who Mary is. Because the nature of who she is allowed her to do something truly amazing. She allowed herself to be interrupted by God. She allowed the Spirit to move into her body, to take over in ways that would cause both the joy and the pain of bearing God into flesh. Defying reason, defying custom, defying safety, defying limitations, Mary takes on God. Mary allows God to become fully and completely part of her being. Mary makes room where there was none. Author and theologian Madeline L’Engle puts it this way:

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.

In this irrational and pregnant season, where Love Incarnate makes its way, once again into our lives, into our hearts, may we, like Mary, allow ourselves to be disturbed, disquieted and delighted by God’s interruptions, that we, like Mary, may make room for the Child.

Advent 3B

2008-12-21T17:42:00.001-06:00

the caffeinated priest
Advent 3B
December 14, 2008

There’s a commercial that runs this time of year. I’ve noticed it for at least three years now. In it, a beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde haired woman in her mid to late 20s sits on a train, moving through the snow covered territory, which reminds me of the Hudson Valley in New York state. As the train pulls into the station, her eyes light up and her brilliant white teeth break beam through her perfectly polished lips as her face erupts in a grand smile. As the train comes to a stop, cherub like children run along side the train, the cause, no doubt, of her smile, waving to her and running, until, the scene culminates with them running into her arms as Christmas music plays in the background and we are reminded of the power that Crest whitening strips can have on our holiday.

The commercial used to make me cry. It evokes, in me, such longing, and such a reminder of those things unfulfilled in my life. The woman, as presented in this 30-second film, seems to have everything: the family, the idyllic back drops for the season, the teeth. I can remember when I first moved to Chicago from New York, from knowing a whole community of people to knowing almost no one, I would watch this commercial and wonder how I had failed so miserably—failed to create this life that was being projected as what I was supposed to want, what I was supposed to have. Of course, it wasn’t just that commercial. There were and are others as well—reminders of what I don’t have—the big, clean house, the perfectly decorated living room, the 2.5 children, the prefect turkey, the family that never fights—reminders of all the ways I come up short.

And now? Now life is different...people I love are all around me. Chicago feels like home most of the time. And yet I see that commercial and while I don't cry, I find myself still feeling like I've come up short, like I've not done what is supposed to be done, longing, especially this time of year, for things I don’t have, feeling more than ever, the losses in my life. I can’t help but think that I’m not alone in my Advent longings, in the often-irrational wishings that seem to occur this time of year. The secular world, the media tells us one thing and the Christian world tell us another. And while it’s a nice idea to be firmly rooted in one camp, the reality is that often we find ourselves in both.

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

The spirit of the Yahweh is upon me
Because Yahweh has anointed me;
He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
To bind up the brokenhearted….
To provide for those who mourn in Zion
To give them a garland instead of ashes
The oil of gladness instead of mourning

This passage was written in a time of great joy, written to a people who had been living in exile who have been brought home again. It was written to a people looking for something new, an advent of change, a new world opening to them. Today we hear prophecy of Isaiah as it continues to be fulfilled as Christ comes to us, changing the world, binding up our hurts and wounds, giving us new reason to rejoice.

This third Sunday of Advent is known as "Gaudete Sunday.” Its name comes from the Latin Gaudete in Domino semper which roughly translates "rejoice in the Lord always." These were the opening of the Antiphon the Latin Mass on the Third Sunday of Advent. As an option, the celebrant of the Mass could wear rose-colored vestments, an unusual color especially during Advent, to symbolize joy. In the Advent Wreath, the third candle is rose-colored for this reason. And I get to wear special clothes for this day. And we are reminded, in the midst of this dark and rainy season to rejoice.

And so we live in the paradox…rejoicing while sometimes feeling the very present absence in our world. For those who have lost a spouse or a partner, a parent or a child-- for those who are alone, for those who live one life in public, but struggle with loneliness, depression or sorrows in private—this time of year can highlight all the more the feelings of isolation or aloneness. For those who have pretty amazing and wonderful lives, yet still long for that unnamable something... The list of things to do grows bigger and the time grows smaller. It’s hard to remember what it is we’re called to, who it is we prepare for, standing in the in-between world of earth and the world of God.

The challenge of living in Advent--the challenge of living the Christian faith--is living with a foot in both worlds--the world of media, the world of the secular, the world of the day in day out…and at the same time, living in the world that is that of the Christian life--the world that already is and the world that is not yet, looking for the coming, looking for the things, the places where the veil grows thin and the world is transformed not by the power of Crest whiting strips but by the power of a God loved this creation so much that he deigned to step into in the form of flesh and blood and walk the journey with us. And so we wait. We wait in hope, we wait with our longings, we wait with our broken places and we wait with our joys. We wait with all that we are—those places of hope and those places of loss. And we make ready, as best we can, trusting that God can, that God will make complete those empty places, our hearts of longing…if we but make room, if we make ready for the One who comes, who unknown and unrecognized, stands in the midst of us , the one who reconciles and heals, the one who, ready or not, comes to us, transforms us and takes the broken pieces and makes us whole.

Advent 2B

2008-12-07T15:33:00.002-06:00

Say what you will about the Gospel of Mark, the beginning is an attention grabber, perhaps as much as for what it leaves out as what it contains. We begin abruptly—not with a genealogy or a story of Jesus’ mother and her unlikely pregnancy, but with the voice of John the Baptist. John cries out to prepare—not with cradles or lullabies or angels but with confession of sin and baptism.

In the wilderness John the Baptist cries out “Prepare the Way.” John in his desert gear of camel hair and his diet of honey and locust. He’s dirty and smelly and probably missing a tooth or two. This is the great herald who calls us to repent, to prepare for the one who is coming. This strange man, one of the many unlikely members of the holy family of messengers, who comes to preach the Good News.

The stories of our faith are filled with characters—unexpected, non-traditional heroes and heroines who hear this strange call from God and go out into the world proclaiming it. John comes by it naturally enough. His father, Zachariah, made mute by his unwillingness to believe the angel who brought the good news that John was to be born; his mother Elizabeth, too old to bear a child, yet bestowed this miracle; his auntie** Mary, too virgin, too unwed to be pregnant. These people, these stories—we know them now as almost routine, as, if not fact, as part of our expected story of how things came to be. And yet these stories were not then and are not now expected or tame. These people, these simple folks, people not unlike you and me, who sought to live into the strange and sometimes fearful wilderness of God’s call. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by this simplicity. That we gather, that we worship, that we know ourselves, know who we are as a people, around these stories of faith, the stories of everyday people who simply were prepared to see God acting in the world. It gives me great hope that there is room for me, for us, in this story, the story that continues to unfold.

And so, having been born of unlikely circumstance, John makes his way into the wilderness, scruffy and dirty, crying out prepare the way. The call to repentance, the call to right life, to amendment of life, is ever before us. Prophets have handed down the call to repent from almost the beginning of time. Fredrick Buechner writes that to repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry,” than to the future and saying, “Wow!” And isn’t this the crux who we are called to be as Christians? Isn’t this season all about coming to our senses, about being awake? The season of Advent is a time to take a step back, to prepare to be wowed by the eagerness of the God to enter into our world, into our lives. And to truly repent, to honestly stop and take the time to examine the world around us, to examine our hearts, to be still and know that God is still God, that God is still working and moving in our world and in our hands and hearts.

Prepare the way, John cries, echoing the prophet Isaiah. Prepare the way, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Lift up the valleys, make the mountains low and the uneven places level. Make the rough places plain. Prepare to see the glory of the Lord, prepare to see it revealed. John cries out not to ancient memories, not to rocks and stones, but he cries out to us, today. Prepare the way for something is coming, prepare the way for things are about to change, your vision, your understanding, your sight is about to be made clear.

God continues to be born to us, through us, in us. God continues to seek to find places where Love Incarnate can make a dwelling. Prepare the way, be ready, John cries, not because God comes to damn or to destroy, but because God comes to change and transform, to open and celebrate. God comes to be born, to be made human, to be made one of us, that we might see God within ourselves, that we might recognize the face of God within our brothers and sisters.

How will we make ready?

In conversations this past week with some of my peers, one of them said “I’d really rather prepare my house with Christmas decorations than prepare my heart for Advent.” I was struck by this statement. How, in the midst of all that happens in the reality of this world, are we to prepare, are we to make ready, are we to truly prepare of Advent? Everything feels busy, ramped up, more to do, less time in which to do it. And yet the voice in the wilderness cries out to prepare, to watch as the world is about to be transformed. The voice in the wilderness call us to make room.

How will we make ready?

The ways to prepare our hearts are as many as we are. For some of us, it will come in silence and prayer, of being still and knowing that God is present. For others it will come in using our hands, preparing food for those who have no food, using our hands to lessen the hurts of the world, for yet others will be the chance to read and listen to poetry, to hear music, to watch and wait for the places of unexpected splendor, places where God insects this world with holiness and beauty.

How will we make ready?

However we, however, you, however I make ready, the call is before us, the voice in the wilderness goes up to prepare the way, to prepare our hearts for what is coming. And something is coming. Something new, something familiar, something transformative, something wild. Prepare the way, the Baptist cries. May we be awake and ready to see Love, incarnate, moving, transforming Love, as it begins, once again, to make its flight.

**yes, i am aware that mary is not actually john's aunt--she's a kinswoman. i get it. it's used here as a term of endearment.

advent 1, year B

2008-11-30T13:46:00.001-06:00

the caffeinated priest

Advent 1, Year B

December 1, 2008

Some of my earliest childhood memories involve my parents reading to me. Both my mother and my father had a background in theatre and television, so it was less like a rote reading and more like a dramatic production presented bedside. To this day I love to have stories told and read to me. When I was 6 years old, we moved from picture books to a new series, one that had 7 books in total—books that were read in chapters, over time, a bit of the story unfolding each night. We were reading C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, starting with the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Long before they were a tame Disney movie, these characters and actions played out in the world of my imagination. I suspect it did for a few of you as well.

The story revolves around 2 brothers and 2 sisters living in the country, far away from their parents in a time of war. Through the enchantment of a wardrobe and the wonder of their youth, they discover a magical land, called Narnia, where animals talk and witches make it feel like Chicago in January—except all year long. And in Narnia they have adventures, wrestle with issues of good and evil, right and wrong. While on their adventure, one of the brothers, Edmund, finds himself trapped by the evil White Witch, who makes sure that it is always winter and never spring and goes about turning to stone anyone who she dislikes. The children seek to rescue Edmund as well as end the reign of darkness and they are led to Aslan, who the animals murmur in the forest, is on the move—Aslan is on the move. Aslan is the only one who can defeat the White Witch. Aslan is the only one who can bring light into the dark winter world. On Aslan rests the hope of all who dwell in this dominion.

But here’s the thing: Aslan is no tame creature. No Aslan is the fiercest animal in the kingdom—a wild, unpredictable lion. Author C.S. Lewis describes Aslan this way:

But as for Aslan himself…the children didn’t know what to do or say when they saw him. People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face, they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly. [1]

Welcome to the new year, welcome to Advent. The season of longing, of hope and of expectation. Welcome to the wilderness. It is all too easy to want to tame this time, tame these Scripture texts—to look only to the oversimplified tableau—the gentle baby in his mothers arms. But what we read today is not safe or tame.

Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down[2], the prophet laments. Isaiah, writes for a people who are longing to see God, longing to be restored, longing to be made right, to be whole again, to recognize the presence of God in their midst. It has been a long time—generations—since they felt God in their midst—the God who delivered them with mighty acts out of Egypt. They are looking for signs, for earthquakes or fires or burning bushes and they are hearing silence, they are seeing hidden-ness. They are living in exile, waiting in hope and in fear, for what is to come and what is to become of them. They cry to God: you are the Father; we are the clay, the work of your hand[3]. Use us, come to us, we are your people. And the absence is felt. No easy resolution is given.

And while Isaiah is full of wonderings about God’s presence, fear of abandonment and cries of lament, Mark’s Gospel does little to comfort us. Jesus is talking about the end of days, about apocalypse—the sun darkened and moon will not give light and the stars will begin to fall. It’s easy to dismiss these prophecies, these words of Jesus. Certainly we now know that Mark was expecting this to happen within a lifetime. 2000 years later and we can see that as prophecy, it didn’t happen, at least not the way the first followers of Jesus expected. Yet what if these words were not given as prophecy but as promise, promise of what we are seeing. Promise of how we are seeing.

But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert….keep awake[4]. Keep awake because the world is changing. Keep awake because earthly things don’t last forever. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the promises of Jesus will not. Keep awake. The way you see things is about to change. Look at the world around us: the economy, Darfur, the attacks in Mumbai, the stampede at Wal-Mart, wars and famine, homelessness and isolation—we could make lists for days. Keep Awake. Not because these things are going to end. Lament, heartache, loss—all of these have long been part of the human story they. And long will be. Jesus himself was no stranger to sorrow. Keep awake because the way you see is about to change. The heavens will open and God will come down and nothing—nothing—will ever be the same again. The world, as we know it, will be turned upside down, topsy turvey on it’s head. But you will know only, only, if we keep awake, so that we may see it.

So what are we to do? These texts are uncomfortable and messy—not tied up neatly with platitudes and easy answers. These texts, this season, calls us to sit in the strange and unknown wilderness, trusting that the light will come, that the darkness will not stay dark and that someone, crying forth, will lead us through this strange place. But we must watch for it, we must embrace it even—this different advent space, these challenging advent texts. And we must keep awake. For the one who will come is many things, but he not tame and expects to find us awake.

C.S. Lewis wrote about Advent waiting I think, in the form of Mr. Beaver, talking to Narnia’s heroine, Lucy. She looks for Aslan, unable to find him and worries. And Mr. Bever says to her:

One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down—and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.[5]

We are wise to remember that Advent is not, the Bible is not, Jesus is not tame. None of it is tame. We live in the world of the wild. As much as we wish to domesticate it, to pretty it up into catch phrases and sound bites, to simplify it into forwarded emails with rainbows and hearts—this is not tame. It is wild and wonderful and terrible and good all at once. And we, we are a part of it. We are invited into that world—a world where the heavens are torn apart and God deigns to come down, down to us, a people waiting, a people expecting, a people of hope. Don’t miss it. Keep awake!

[2] Isaiah 64:1

[3] Isaiah 64:8

[4] Mark 13: 32, 37

Proper 18A

2008-09-07T13:21:00.001-05:00

the caffeinated priest

proper 18A

september 7, 2008

It’s funny to think about how different our world was just 7 short years ago. Back then you could wear your shoes and carry your Diet Coke as you walked through airport security. Back then Orange was just a colour, not a level of warning. Back then the thought of flying an airplane into a building was just as foreign to most of us as the notion of a plague killing first-borns. It’s funny how time changes things—our understanding of who we are and whose we are and what it is we are doing in this world.

This week marks the 7th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The numbers, today, are as devastating and heartbreaking as they were all those years ago: 2,974 people died in the slaughter, including 343 firefighters and 60 police officers. 24 people are still reported as missing. The event changed us—changed our perception of who we are as a nation, certainly, who we are in the world and perhaps who we are as Christians.

I must admit that I have struggled with the Scripture this week. Beginning with the Exodus passage, one that is at once familiar and foreign to me. The passage picks up after Moses, having been raised in Pharaoh’s household, has experienced God in the form of a burning bush, has stood barefoot on holy ground and has been called by God into the hard work of being a prophet, a leader, one who is called to set the captives free. Plague upon plague has visited the Egyptians, all ways of saying, “let the captives free.” And plague after plague has found Pharaoh’s heart hardened and unwilling to listen to Moses as he delivers God’s word.

And so God speaks to Moses and Aaron. It is instruction. It is a new beginning. Directions are given for how to prepare the lamb, the unblemished lamb. And the blood of the lamb becomes the marking by God will know to Passover the household, to spare its recipients from death. And so the plague comes. And death comes to the first borns who do not have the blood of the lamb on their doors. I am, I must admit, jumping ahead a bit to next week’s Scripture, but if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to move the story a little further out. The death of the first borns, including Pharaoh’s first born, is the plague that changes Pharaoh’s mind. At least for a moment. For a brief time Pharaoh sets the captives free, he lets them go. And the Israelites head out. And then rage overtakes the Pharaoh and he sends his troops out to retrieve his slaves, to pay them back for the sorrow, for the pain, for the hurt he feels. Except it doesn’t work. For God had one more surprise in mind. As the Israelites pass through the Red Sea, it is as dry land for them. But not so for the Egyptians. As soon as the Egyptians enter the seabed, the water returns, covering them, drowning them, so that they are no more. And I wonder…as the Israelites sang songs of rejoicing, sang songs of liberation, did God mourn those first borns and those drowned in the Red Sea?

I, like many of you, have read and wondered and struggled with the difference we see in the God of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures, and the God we come to know in Christ Jesus. I have no quick or easy answers for you on how we are to understand the change. For me, I understand it best as a journey, a walk, and a pilgrimage of learning, of growing, of us and of God—learning what it is to be in relationship with each other. And we move, from a place of plagues and deaths of children into a new world, where a young woman says yes to the strange request of an angel, yes, I will bear God in my womb, yes, I will allow God to work through me, to make God flesh and blood, to make God one of us. Into our world a baby is born and grows and sees joy and beauty, sees injustice and oppression, sees humanity in its splendor and its ugliness and knows that this is what he was sent for. And this man, this teacher, this rabbi, knowing the Hebrew Scriptures, seeking them as solace, as teacher, as Word of God, this man journeys with his friends, his followers. It is here, at this point in the pilgrimage that we encounter Jesus’ teaching today. And what Jesus is teaching, while not as glamorous as some of the miracles, or as scandalous as healing on the Sabbath, what Jesus teaches today is foundational for Christian life. Jesus is teaching us about how to be in conflict with each other and how to reconcile. Here Jesus recognizes that conflict is part of human life—simply put—when we chose to be in relationship with each other, conflict will happen. Central to all of it is the call to be community to each other and to learn to reconcile with each other. It may sound simple, but any one of us who has ever been in conflict knows that it’s very easy to get caught up in being right, being in power, of winning. But here Jesus teaches us a different way. We are charged to listen to each other, to speak the truth in love, and if, after all of our attempts, still the offender refuses to listen, Jesus tells us to let them be to us as a Gentile and a tax collector. Of course, before we think that means that we can write off those who disagree with us, it’s helpful to remember that Jesus frequently dined with tax collectors. The invitation is to continue to welcome even those who frustrate us into community, into relationship.

And so, 7 years after that horrific day in our land, we read a strange blend of Scripture—the story of the Passover juxtaposed with Jesus teaching about reconciliation. We encounter these lessons in the midst of a heated and important election year. We meet these lessons in the midst of our own lives—filled with all the messiness that human lives are filled with. The world remains as broken today as it ever has been. We live in a world that continues to seek to repay violence with violence. Violence is still being done in the name of God. We continue to see violence playing out at international, national and the local levels. And we are all culpable. We do violence to one another with actions and words if not with plagues and airplanes. We carry within us the capabilities to do harm or to do good.

What Jesus offers is the only true way forward. We are called, now more than ever, to hold one another accountable, speak out, to say what is wrong, to confess and seek forgiveness and above all, to do it with love. And if it doesn’t work, we are told treat each other as Jesus treated the tax collectors—to invite others to eat with us, to walk with us, to be a companion on the journey. In essence, we are told to redouble our efforts, to love our enemies. We don’t get there overnight. We get there slowly, steadily, beginning with ourselves, beginning by practicing with the small, the little, the seemingly insignificant things. The internal conflicts, the conflicts with our neighbor, our coworker, our spouse. We begin by listening. We begin by following the example of those who have done this longer than we have, better than we have. We begin by looking to Christ. Jesus shows a more life-giving path, even when it involves a cross. For what, at first glance looks like failure or surrender gives way to something much greater, something that leaves room for life, something that leaves room for God. And there, in that space, where God is welcome, where God is offered a home, there a true reconciliation can happen, there we can begin to offer hope to this beautiful and broken world.

**I am greatly in debt to my pal Mandy, without whom the end of this sermon would not be. Many of these words are hers--she is pretty darn tooting good at helping me get to the point I'm trying to make when I'm floundering in the dark. Thanks ABB. You rock.

17A (short! preached at the 8 AM service)

2008-09-04T14:07:00.000-05:00

the caffeinated priest

August 31, 2008

Proper 17A

“Get behind me Satan!” How common is that phrase? Maybe I’m just a church geek, but I throw it around whenever anybody offers me chocolate and I’m on a diet. Of course, I say it as a joke before I eat the cupcake, but Jesus certainly does not. His command to Peter is a stern one and it feels harsh, a slap. Here is Peter trying to save Jesus’ life, and what is he handed in return but a rebuke. But while it’s easy to hear and read what Jesus is saying as a dismissal, it actually is not. Jesus is simply reinforcing that he’s here to do work, work he was sent to do, the mission he knows that he must complete. Get behind me, he says to Peter. Not go away, not leave me alone, but get behind me. Stay with me, stay close, but let me lead.

Good teacher that he is, Jesus knows that he will not be with the students, the disciples forever. Get behind me, learn from me. Get behind me while I am here. Get behind me because here comes the lesson: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

As we celebrate this Labor Day weekend, it’s important to remember Jesus’ command to get behind him. We all Labor. Many have laid down their life in the work of labor. There is the labor we do to earn our living: some of us labor in office buildings, some in hospitals, some in churches, others on Tennis Courts and others at home. But then there is the labour, the work, the calling that Jesus offers us, where the true meaning of what our Labor finds us—it’s about call and it’s about following. It’s about denial of self and looking to the cross, not only on Sunday mornings, but as a way of life, a centering of our lives. True callings, true labor is deeply satisfying and also deeply challenging. Fredrick Buechner, writes about labor and calling, using the word vocation. He writes that vocation “means the work a person is called to do by God. There are all different kind s of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is trying to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego or Self-Interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you most need to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the changes are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. “

The hard work, the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet, is that place of call, of vocation. All of us have a vocation, all of us have a calling. All of us, who are baptized into the life of Christ, are called to live into our vocation, to labor into the work of God, to stand, not in front of Jesus, not as a stumbling block to others, but behind Jesus, close by and behind, following the cross every step of the way. It is not easy labor, but it the work that God gives, us, work that denies self and follows the cross, labor that transforms not only us, but the world into the Kingdom of God. Amen.

The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin

2008-09-04T14:06:00.001-05:00

the caffeinated priest

The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin

August 17, 2008

My soul magnifies the Lord, my soul makes bigger the Lord, my soul increases the Lord, my soul is lost in wonder of the Lord. So beings Mary’s song, the Magnificat. Mary, a young girl, maybe 14, unmarried, a perfect target to be stoned to death. And yet, fearless, with haste, she picks up her feet and she begins to walk. She sets out from her house in Nazareth and climbs into the Judean hill country south of Jerusalem. The journey would be a challenge for anyone to make, let alone a pregnant girl who shouldn’t be. And yet Mary moves, joyfully, hopefully, expectantly up those hills to meet her kinswoman Elizabeth. The two of them meet, bellies touching, their holy children connected not only by bloodlines, but by the very unlikely nature of their existence—Elizabeth too old to conceive and Mary too young, too unmarried, too virgin. Yet here they are. Taboo, in danger and boldly rejoicing.

Mary’s song, the Magnificat, resounds through the hills, the promise of something new coming, something strange and wonderful and unlike anything else. Mary’s song cries out that the ways of the world are destined to change, that the world is birthing something new, someplace where the lowly are lifted high, the hungry are fed and mercy is overflowing.

I wonder what Mary thought. When the angel first appeared to her. Had the angel knocked, door after door, girl after girl saying “are you kidding me? No way am I doing that!” and slammed the door in his face. Did the angel think it would never work, only finally rest after Mary replies “I will.” I wonder what Mary thought when the morning sickness set in and when she told her parents, when she told Joseph. What strength did she draw from? What secrets did she know? And what inspired her to set out, that day, to put on her tennis shoes and begin the journey, the long, uphill walk to see the other one—the other one who was in a state a strange as she.

Find an icon of Mary today and you will always see the same thing—a hand pointing to Jesus, holding Jesus but at the same time offering him to us. Icon writers paint her that way because it is what Mary does. She points the way, she offers him to us. As she holds the baby Jesus, she points to him, as she always has. She points the way on a hilltop with her cousin Elizabeth, crying out that her soul magnifies the Lord. She points the way as she helps him grow in wisdom and stature, mothering him while recognizing what it is that he is here to do. She holds him as she weeps at the foot of the cross, yet offers him to us all the same.

Mary’s act, Mary’s willingness to say yes, to be magnify the Lord, to literally make God bigger, to find herself lost in the Lord, changes everything. No longer is God one who only speaks in dreams, through prophets and from the clouds. God becomes human, God moves relationship onto a wholly other and new plane. No longer able to be contained, through Mary, God moves into the world of us—of dirty, messy, living, breathing, skin, flesh and bone. God moves out of the ethereal into the corporal.

And none of it can be done without relationship. There is no way for Love to become Incarnate to enter the world without human assistance. There is no way for the Word to be made Flesh without Mary’s willing yes. Without Mary to say yes, without Mary to point the way to something greater, bigger than herself, without Mary to recognize that the world is changing, utterly, profoundly becoming something new, again, recreating itself once more in the form of the Word becoming Flesh What happened in the Incarnation, what happened in those 9 months that a pregnant Mary tromped through the Hill Country is that God was entering the world in a new way, a way never done before, a way that had never, quite literally, ever been conceived before. God was becoming flesh, becoming one of us, and the only way to truly be human was to be born of a human, to be born of one who was willing to say yes. One who was willing to Magnify the Lord, to increase the Lord, to find herself lost in the Lord.

Mary, the God bearer, shows us still today what it is for us to become the bearers of God , to embrace the unknown, to give fully of self, to point the way of Christ to the world. Her model, her witness still speaks today. Mary shows us the reality of the Word becoming flesh and our challenge help the Word continue in Flesh. It is our work, by nature of our common humanity, to be like Mary—to point the way to Christ to the world. The Love of God is made human, is made flesh and blood and bone and we have the joy of participating in that still. Our human relationships, I think, are perhaps the greatest way we point to the Love of God that Mary showed—when we love each other—our spouse or partner, our friends and our strangers—the God of Love is magnified, is made bigger in this world.

My soul magnifies the Lord, delights Mary. My soul is lost in the wonder of the Lord. May we, like Mary, pointing the way to the Christ, find ourselves lost in the wonder of the Lord.

Transfiguration (and my 1 year anniversary)

2008-09-04T14:03:00.001-05:00

the caffeinated priest

transfiguration of our lord, 2008

I have a confession to make. There are times, when I am preparing to preach, when I stand just outside of this pulpit and the gospel is being read or chanted…and I’m not really listening. I’m not listening to the words, anyway. It’s not that the words aren’t important—they certainly are. They are words ones that I have spent all week with—reading, re-reading, sometimes committing to memory, often exploring and examining Greek translations. So please, don’t mishear me—the Gospel is important and it should be heard, and you should, by all means, pay attention! But, I confess that I do sometimes miss parts of it. Because I am, sometimes, staring out at you. I stand with you, just outside this pulpit and as your eyes and attention are all gazed and fixed where they should be, I find my eyes looking out at you, the people of St. Peter's.

I wonder if you know what you look like. Do you know that more of you sit on the pulpit side? Do you know that some of you dress up in traditional Sunday best and others of you wear river sandals and shorts? Very few of you wear hats (save last Sunday). Some of you faithfully attend the 8:00 AM service, which is quiet and small. Some of you hop back and forth between the 8:00 and 10:00, sometimes wanting music, other times wanting something a little more still. Some of you are young, so that when you come to the altar rail, you give me an excuse to bend my knees and squat down so that we can see eye to eye. And there are some of you who are much older, who find it harder and harder to kneel at the rail, and so we stand together, meeting each other just where we are. Some of you sing quite loudly. And when I walk in and out of church, I look forward to hotspots where a booming sound will come forth as I walk past your voice. Others of you think you’re not very good at singing. Most of you who think this are wrong—most of you have beautiful voices, even if you don’t project them loudly in song. Some of you smile while I’m preaching. Some of you read your bulletins. Some of you close your eyes.

Do you know what you look like, people of St. Peter’s? Some of you have been walking in and out of these doors longer than I’ve been alive. Some of you have left the church, disheartened by church politics, or from a crisis of faith, yet, for some reason, you have made your way back, and so you sit, quietly, and discern what to make of all this. Others of you have transitioned from other traditions or you’re new to town, or you never really meant to leave the church but college and early years of work left you little time until recently. Some of you have been told that because of who you are, there is no place for you in the Christian Church and yet you have made your way here, seeking a different truth, one that tells you that without you here, the Church is not whole. Some of you attend mass everyday, rain or shine. Some of you come through the bright red doors when your ailments are making it hard for you to walk or to speak, but you come anyway, one foot in front of the other, because you long for something deeper, something you find here. Some of you come sparatically, and for the record, that’s okay, finding time when you can in the hectic life that is the world of 2008. And some of you are trying it on for size, putting a toe in the waters, seeing if maybe, just maybe, there might be something for you here.

Do you know what you look like, people of St. Peter’s?

Yes, I confess it, there are times when I simply can not pay attention because I am so busy watching you. But then again, I can’t help but notice that when I look out, when I watch, with absolute delight the people that gather in this place, I see the Gospel right in front of me. I see the love of God in the people before me, I see the life-changing, world transforming work of the people of God right before my eyes. Do you know what you look like, people of St. Peter’s?

I can see you pretty well from here. You are as diverse as you are beautiful. You are filled with life and energy and hope. In the midst of struggles throughout the wider church, you are a place of refuge, of safety, of sanctuary. You, who hand out bottles of water to thirsty people on Pride Sunday, you who gather and read poetry to a neighborhood that longs to be spiritually fed, you who knit shawls and blankets to comfort those who are sick or afraid, you who faithfully say your prayers, you who welcome the stranger, you who provide mosquito nets for strangers in Africa, you who care for this building, keeping it a place of beauty where all may worship God, you who bring jars of peanut butter and jelly to feed the neighbor you’ve never met. This is who you are, people of St. Peter’s.

One year ago, on the Feast Day of the Transfiguration, I climbed into this pulpit for the first time—scared doesn’t even begin to cover what I was feeling. I looked out at you and didn’t know who you were or who we, together might become. A year later and the view is much more familiar, a year later and this pulpit, this space, your faces, they feel like home. And we are beginning to have some sense of where we’re going together. This year has been for me, in many ways, a mountain top experience. Like our patron St. Peter, I confess I’d love to stay on top of the mountain, safe in the comfort that is this place. But, people of St. Peter’s we have work to do. And you, we, have too many gifts to keep to ourselves, we have too much to offer to keep all safe on the mountain top.

The world is waiting…eagerly, hopefully, expectantly waiting…to be fed physically, to be fed spiritually. The world is waiting to learn, to know, to see that there is something more, that there is something richer, deeper waiting for them. The world is waiting to see the Transfigured glory of Christ and the world will see and know the transfigured glory most clearly through you—through your witness, through your prayer, through your hands. Let us get up and not be afraid. Let us be the ones who show Christ’s glory to the yearning watching world.

13A

2008-08-03T14:36:00.001-05:00

The Caffeinated Priest
Proper 13A
3 August, 2008

A few days ago, I received an email from my friend Wendy. It read as follows:

Economy Gotcha Down? Bored? Ditched? Hungry?

I'm hosting a Kinda Spur-of-the-Moment, From-Your-Kitchen Potluck THIS FRIDAY
7 o'clock to whenever I kick you out or you leave on your own volition.

The only rule is that you prepare a dish big enough to serve at least four people, and that dish must be made from whatever you've got in your kitchen right now. If that means we get a lot of Chunky Soup and Instant Mashed Potatoes, well...alright!

Leftovers welcome.

RSVP. And bring friends.
Hope you can make it. It could be a gathering of 4 or 34. All are welcome.

Wendy lives in Atlanta, and what with me being here in Chicago, I knew I couldn’t go. But I found myself in a bit of a panic nonetheless. I mean, as much as I would love to attend the potluck, I was sure that there was nothing that remotely fit the bill of servable food in my apartment. I was just back from vacation and hadn’t been to the grocery story. I filed the email in my list of un-doable things and went about my business. Later that night, when I got home, still without a trip to the grocery, I found myself thinking about Wendy’s email again. And so I ventured into my kitchen, just out of curiosity, and began to rummage through my cupboards. When I really began to look, I realized that I had the fixins for black beans and rice, for turkey burgers, turkey shepherd’s pie and some pre-made heat and eat frozen entrée from Trader Joe’s that would’ve served 6.

Jesus said to the disciples, "give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." And he said, "Bring them here to me."
Bring me your nothing, Jesus says. Bring me your nothing and I’ll make something out of it.

The miracle of the loaves and the fishes, often called the feeding of the 5000, is one of the most famous of Jesus’ miracles. It’s really quite inaccurate to call it the feeding of the 5000, for if you read the text, there were far more than 5000 people present. The text reads: And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. So if each of the 5000 men brought his wife and their children—we can approximate 2 children per couple—than we’re looking at at least 20000 people. And I can’t help but wonder if the 20,000 people isn’t a bit of a miracle in and of itself. 20,000 people hungering, for what? For food? For something more? 20,000 people who so believed in the healing, saving powers of this man that they followed him, hoping to touch the hem of his garment, hoping to simply reach out to his hand. 20,000 people, give or take, sensing that this teacher was more than just a gifted rabbi, 20,000 people sensing that in Jesus there was something more, something worth following for, something worth being hungry for. It seems to me that even without the fish and the loaves, this would be a miracle.

Of course, there were fishes and loaves. 2 fish and 5 loaves. And without worrying, without fear that it wouldn’t work, that there wouldn’t be enough, Jesus gets to work. And all ate and were filled, we are told. There were even leftovers, which makes this Southern girl proud. After all, half the fun of having a dinner party in noshing on the leftovers the next day. The thing of it is, we’re never really told HOW Jesus does it, not really. We’re not privy to the magic of the multiplication. Does he wave his hands over the baskets? Does he pray to God and BOOM! more appears? What is it that Jesus did? What is it that Jesus fed the crowd that had them leaving full and satisfied? All were really told is that he does what he’ll do again on the night before he is handed over to death: he takes the bread & (this time) fish, blesses them, breaks the bread and shares them. Take, bless, break and share. It’s a pretty familiar recipe and one that we still use today. Take, bless, break and share and all will eat and be satisfied.

One of my favorite movies is a British Film called Millions. In it, young Damien is playing in his fort by the railroad, when a huge, bulging bag full of money is thrown from the train and falls onto his fort. Damien, a boy who sometimes sees things others don’t, namely saints, believes this bag of money to be a miracle from God and he begins to set out finding ways to give the money away to people who are in need. In one scene, struggling to do what is right with the money, Damien is visited by St. Peter, who tells his version of the Gospel story:

One day I was with you-know-who Jesus. And he went up to the mountains and thousands of people followed him. The police said 5000. 5000!

Damien interjects: Everybody knows this story. Loaves and fishes.

St. Peter: continues: See, I knew you’d say that. That’s what everybody says….Anyway, this kid come up to us—about your size. He comes up with these loaves and fishes, sardines, and Jesus blesses them and passes the plate around. Now the first person he passes it to passes it on. He doesn’t take anything. He just passes it on. Do you know why? Because he had a piece of lamb hidden in his pocket. And as he’s passing the fish, he takes a bit of meat out and pretends he’s taken it off the plate. Do you see what I’m saying? And the next person—exactly the same story. Ever single …one of them has their own food and everyone of them is keeping it quiet looking out for number one.

But as that plate went round with the sardines on it, they all got their food out and started to share. And then that plate went all the way round and back to Jesus and it’s still go the fish and the loaves on it. I think Jesus was a bit taken aback. He says “What happened?” And I just said “Miracle.” And at first I thought I’d fooled him. But now I see [St. Peter says] it was a miracle, one of his best.

Bring me your nothing, Jesus says. Bring me your nothing and I’ll make something out of it.

So what was the miracle that day? That all were fed? That 2 fish and five loaves, through the mercy of God were transformed into food abundant enough for 20,000? That they recognized God in their midst? That they shared? Or that we were given a new recipe: take, bless, break, share? What is the miracle for us today?

The world continues to hunger, both physically and spiritually. I think one of the miracles in this story today is that we have the bread to feed the world in both its physical and spiritual need. We simply have to learn that we have enough. It may be hidden in the back of our cupboards, and we may find ourselves sharing with someone we barely know. Yet the Gospel promises that all were fed and satisfied. And the Gospel is never wrong. Take, bless, break, share.

Bring me your nothing, Jesus says. Bring me your nothing and I’ll make something out of it. May we go and do likewise.

10A

2008-07-27T16:59:00.001-05:00

The Caffeinated Priest
10A
July 13, 2008

This month we began a new program at the church—Wilde Theology Tuesdays. The idea behind it is simple enough—meet at a local pub, have a drink, dinner if you like, and talk about life, theology or whatever’s on your mind. When I advertised this, I thought we might get 5 people gathering. I have been both surprised and delighted that for the past 2 weeks we’ve had around 22 people present each time. And this is all very good. Except that it makes it challenging to have just one conversation. Rather, there are many people discussing different things at different ends of the very long table. So, ever the extravert, I flitter around the room, chatting with folks, steeling French fries off their plates and catching up on life. To meet my own requirement of offering some theological discussion, I bring Xerox copies of the Gospel lesson for the day and throw out some question for folks to discuss at their end of the table, if they so choose. This week I asked two questions about Matthew’s Gospel: First, who is the sower? Second: Who are the seeds? And I loved the answers I got—they were rich and full of many different ideas and interpretations. So I thought I’d share a few of these ideas with you.

Some folks said that the Sower was Jesus and that the seed was the Word of God or the Good News that he had come to proclaim. Jesus walks about casting the word out to folks and some hear it and some don’t.

Other suggested that the Sower was Jesus and that we are the seeds—the seeds are the disciples sent out to grow the Kingdom of God. Some are heard, others are not, some are welcomed, and others are not.

A third interpretation is that we—you and I—are the Sowers and the seeds are the Word of God, the Good News, and not only that, but the things we do, the actions we take when we tell others about Jesus, these are also seeds. That when you or I, for example, feed the poor, or pray with someone, or offer water to drink, that we are the Sower and these actions are our seeds going forth into the world.

So which interpretation is correct? Well, scholars tell us that a major theme in the parables in the Gospel of Matthew is the acceptance or rejection of Jesus’ word. So clearly all these ideas are on the right path. But I think it’s hard to nail down “right and wrong” in parables. The word parable itself, when translated from the Semitic languages means story or riddle. This is supposed to be something that we think about, to wrestle with over coffee or a beer, something that is designed to challenge us, something we strive to figure out. Jesus doesn’t explain the parables to everyone. Instead, he invites us to explore our interior lives and discover what they mean for us.

So with that exploration in mind, I invite you to consider with me a couple of other questions about the parable:

First, how are we like the soil?
I think it’s human nature to want to seek black and white, right and wrong, good and bad answers for things. And it could be argued that the rocks and the thorns are bad, the people who reject Jesus, and that we are being called to be the good soil that Jesus talks about. But I wonder, if in the course of human experience, if we aren’t all of the soil. At times we are like the rocky ground, filled with joy but without root, and easily falling away when trouble comes our way. At other times we are like the thorns, consumed with our own worries, anxieties, desires for wealth, for worldly things. And sometimes, we are in that good place, the place where our spiritual lives connect with our 9-5, daily grind lives, and we’re good soil, we hear the word and we understand it and we grow. If you are anything like me, you can see parts yourself in all three kinds of soil.

Which leads me to the next question I’ve been thinking about:
Which of the seed is wasted?
It’s easy to read this and see the obvious—the seed that went on the good soil grew and the rest was wasted. But perhaps not. The seed that is cast on the ground that isn’t used becomes food for the birds, or it become mulch and helps new plants to grow. It may not be in the way we expected the seed to grow, the seed to be used, but I think that even the seeds sown on rocky ground or thorns has purpose and contributes to life. Which might help explain my final question or wondering:

What does it mean to have the Sower throw seeds with such crazy abundance, without thought to where it lands?

At the end of the day, this is the question that I return to again and again. Why does the Sower throw the seeds with such little thought, without concern for which soil they may fall onto? However you interpret the parable of the sower and the seeds—whether you think the Sower is Jesus or us—the generosity of the Sower is the underlying lesson, at least for me, in this story. The Sower defies logic and common sense, the Sower throws without worrying about where the wind will cause these seeds to land, the Sower sows without dwelling on the quality of the soil. The sower throws the seed without thought to what will be lost, only with the hopes of what will return, trusting that plenty will return. From a logical, business model perspective, this makes for a very foolish farmer, a silly sower. And isn’t that just what the transformative love of God can make us do: be silly sowers, foolish, reckless farmers, who throw out the good news of Jesus Christ wherever we can, not worrying about what will return to us. It is what Jesus did. It is what he taught the disciples to do. And it is what we are called to do as well—to share the crazy abundance that is the Kingdom of God, to make it known however we can.

I’m always amazed at those little packages of Burpee seeds that live in the greenhouse section of the hardware store. I pick up packages of petunias or basil or rosemary and wonder how it is that a dry little seed in a paper envelope can travel, can grow, can become from this tiny speck of seed, a full, fragrant, life giving plant. The miracle, at least to my eyes, is that the seed is bursting with opportunity, waiting to be born, but it needs the elements to change it, to give it the space to grow, to flower, to become what it was created to be. May we sow the Word of God, both in our own hearts and in the world, so that all may know the life giving love of God, and see a glimpse of God’s Kingdom bursting forth right here on earth, flowering with crazy, crazy abundance.

PRIDE 2008 sermon

2008-07-27T16:57:00.001-05:00

The Caffeinated Priest
Proper 8A
June 29, 2008
Pride Sunday

The word “water” appears in our Holy Scripture 719 times. Water appears in the beginning, when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, and a wind sent from the Creator began to sweep God’s breath over the face of the waters. Later the three angels, often thought to be the Trinity, appear to Sarah and Abraham, to tell them that Sarah will conceive and bear a child in her old age. Yet before any of that happens, Abraham brings the strangers water to drink, and offers them a place to rest. When Abraham and Sarah cast Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness, off to certain death, it is God who offers water, to Hagar—water that not only refreshes, but water the ultimately saves the life of her and her child. And when Pharaoh’s daughter pulls a baby in a basket out of the reeds, she names him Moses, meaning “I drew him from the water.” Jesus worked with water too. The very first miracle, happening at Cana, when Jesus took water and turned it into rich, extravagant wine. And the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Bible? It happens at a well, with a Samaritan woman, an outsider and an outcast. Jesus asks her for water. And as they talk, Jesus tells her about a more thirst quenching water than well water—Jesus tells her about living water. At the end of his life, Jesus teaches what true discipleship, what true servant hood is, by taking water and washing dirty feet. And finally, after three hours on the cross, when it is finished, when the Word made flesh is hanging lifeless on a from the tree, a soldier’s sword pierces frail flesh and from his side and along with blood, water comes rushing out.

So it should come as no surprise to us that Jesus uses water to teach us about what welcome and hospitality are all about. Jesus says: "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me….whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." Water is our biblical heritage—offering it to those who are thirsty is in our DNA—it makes up so much of Christian story.

A confession—I actually did a little jig around the office when I saw the texts for this week. I mean, could there be any more perfect text to appear on the weekend of Pride, on the weekend when St. Peter’s traditionally hands out bottles of water to parade goers? Imagine my delight in reading this passage and knowing that we, as a community, will move out into the world and do the very thing, the very act Jesus is talking about. It’s the perfect image of church. We will hand out around 700 bottles of water—almost as many bottles of water as there are mentions of water in the Bible—to people who are tired and thirsty. And in doing this we say a lot about who we are and who is welcome in this place. In this act, we say that we are a people of Scripture, people of the Word, who follow Christ’s commandments. In this act, we say what matters—the welcome of friend and the welcome of stranger. And while I anticipate this afternoon will be full of fun and great people watching, I think it’s important to remember that this is not a random act. This is not just some nice gesture. This is living into God’s call to us. To offer drink to the thirsty and to welcome those who are too often rejected by the world.

Right now a group called GAFCON, which stands for Global Anglican Future Conference, is meeting to talk about who is welcome and who is not in the Anglican Communion. Suffice it to say; I do not think any members of GAFCON are participating in the Pride parade where they are. Next month the Episcopal and Anglican Bishops around the world will gather for the Lambeth Conference. Once every ten years Lambeth happens. There has been and will be lots in the news. Gene Robinson, the openly gay and partnered Bishop of New Hampshire is not welcome. And many bishops will not recognize our own Presiding Bishop because of her gender. And bishops will meet and pray and talk and fight about who can draw water from the well and who cannot. And so I think today, especially today, it matters that we are handing out bottles of water to people. I think today, we, in some small way, we say “yes” to hearing the Gospel and truly living into our Biblical heritage. We say “yes” to welcoming all in the name of Jesus.

Jesus says: "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me….whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” Of course, the real water, the real good stuff, is not what comes in the bottles. It’s what’s offered behind the big red doors here at 621 W. Belmont. The real water, the good stuff, the living water, comes when we encounter Jesus in our lives, at the well, in washing feet, in baptism and at the table where we feast every week. Yet I think there is a connection between Jesus and the bottled water. I grew up in the 70s, going to potluck, picnic, Mass on the Grass Eucharist’s where the guitar toting priest would lead us in a rousing chorus of “and they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” They will know we are Christians by our love. Perhaps today they will know what it means when we say we are Christians by our offering of water. Or perhaps they will know they are loved. Perhaps, if they are lucky, perhaps if we are lucky, perhaps if God has his hand in it, perhaps, random, party-going passersby, will open a simple bottle of water and taste the refreshment of love incarnate, of living water, of the Gospel right here, dancing in our midst.

easter sunday

2008-03-23T09:25:00.001-05:00

Easter Sunday
March 23, 2008
the caffeinated priest+

I wonder what she expected to find when she went there. Was she going to sit and pray? Did a glimmer of hope work its way into her heart, the thought that maybe, just maybe, all that he said was true, that he would rise to life again? I don’t know why she went. But I can imagine the stunned disbelief of finding the grave disturbed—desecrated, destroyed. It would be a horrible feeling, a shock to the system to see that stone, which had been so carefully sealed, rolled away. So she runs to the others—someone to join her in her grief and disbelief, someone to help make it right. She finds Simon Peter and the other disciple; tradition tells us that it was John, and together they run with her, they too lost in the disbelief that this nightmare could be any worse. Mary Magdalene is too horror stuck, or perhaps too much in shock, to enter inside the tomb and so she stands in the garden and weeps. Meanwhile John and Peter enter the tomb and there are the linen wrappings, the ones that were so lovingly placed on his body, but they are rolled up and put to the side. And in that moment John sees and believes. He is the first, in this Gospel account, to fully grasp the majesty of what has happened—Jesus has done what he said he was going to do—Jesus Christ is Risen—Jesus has broken the bonds of death, has risen from the dead and John, although he does not yet understand that the Scripture said this had to happen, he becomes the first to understand, to know that Jesus Christ is risen. Sight unseen, without evidence of a body or an encounter—John knows that Jesus live. John believes and he and Peter leave the tomb to return to the land of the living.

I don’t know why John and Peter don’t explain the miracle to Mary Magdalene. Perhaps they don’t see her. Perhaps John is so awestruck by the emptiness of the tomb that he and Peter walk home in a daze. For whatever reason, they leave the garden and they return to their homes, leaving Mary weeping in the garden.

When it is empty, when all have gone away, she muscles all her courage and peeks into the tomb. And there she sees angels sitting where the body of Jesus had been. And she cries to them: they have taken the body of my Lord and I don’t know where it is!! Help me! And a voice of a stranger speaks to her and asks: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? ” Mary does not recognize him. I don’t know if it’s because she is so consumed in her grief that she cannot see him clearly or if it is because in the glory of the resurrection, in the miracle, the transformation that has occurred over the three days, that Jesus himself has changed. Perhaps it is because Jesus himself reveals himself to us slowly, in pieces, letting us take in what we can manage, what we can understand. Perhaps to recognize him fully would be too much for us just now, and so we get glimpses. Whatever the reason, Mary does not see Jesus for who he is, at least not at first. She mistakes him for the gardener and begs him to tell her where they have put Jesus so that she can take him away. And it is in that moment—that intersection of sorrow and disbelief and heartache, as she feels her heart begin to crumble under the weight of its agony, he speaks her name. He speaks her name. It is, in the speaking of her name that she recognizes him. It is in the speaking of her name that all becomes clear. And I believe it is still true today—it is when the risen Lord speaks our name, calls to us in our sorrow and heartache, it is there, at that broken intersection that we may fully recognize him. Jesus reveals himself to us slowly, in ways that we can understand, so that we may fully see and know, deeply in our beings, the glory of his resurrection and the new life that it offers not only him, but that it offers us as well.

Mary, now overjoyed and filled with new life herself, grasps onto him, holding him close, so dearly the one whom she loves above all others. And he says to her Do not hold onto me. Instead, go and tell. Go and share this good news. And Mary does. I have to say, if it was me in that garden, I’m not so sure I’d be able to let him go. And yet, that really is the entire point, isn’t it? It is in giving up what we can not keep that we gain what we can not lose. In letting Jesus go—both to Calvary and again in the garden—Mary sets him free to do his work and he sets her free to do her work—to teach and preach the good news, to set the captives free, to be the Gospel, to be the hands of Christ working in the world. And in doing all these things, Mary is given, we are given, new life, new hope, new love, new life.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia! The Lord is Risen!! May we, like Mary Magdalene, always be willing to give up what we can not keep so that we may gain what we can not lose.

good friday

2008-03-23T09:23:00.001-05:00

Good Friday
March 21, 2008
the caffeinated priest+

Heartache, disbelief and sorrow. Gut wrenching sorrow. And pain and emptiness. All of it, knotted into the mess that is me. I feel it in my stomach, I see it in my shaking hands. The world will never be right again, will it? I stare at you, up there, dead on the cross, and I feel….I don’t have words for what I feel. There are no words for this, are there? Is there a word to describe the darkness, or the torture that you felt, that I now feel? Stunned, surely. Sick and numb, all the same time. And dare I say it, abandoned. I know I’m not supposed to say it, I’m probably not even supposed to feel it, but I it’s the truth. I feel abandoned, Lord. You have left me, you have left us. Up there, alone on your cross, I see you and I am deeply grieved, and yet I am angry too. You have left us. You have left us alone. Where are you, God? You could’ve stopped this. Pilate asked “so you are a king?” You could’ve said “no” but instead you say “for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” The truth? What truth? That you are dead…hanging lifeless from a tree. What will become of you, of us? And why have we wasted our time? Why have I wasted my time, following you…your teachings, your miracles….what good are they? What good are the wonders without the one who makes the wonders happen? You could have stopped this. You had so many opportunities, there is so much you could’ve done differently. But no. You did not. And now you hang there, lifeless, dead, blood and water dripping from your pierced side. And here I am, lost at the foot of your cross.

They are picking me up, telling me I must leave. Your cross must come down. It is the day of Preparation, and they do not want to look at you any longer. “Woman,” they yell, “move away from him.” But I can not. You may have abandoned me, but I will not leave you, Lord.

Joseph is coming. He takes your dead body. I am remembering only a short time ago, when you stood at the tomb of Lazarus and yelled “come out!” and he did. From the dead he rose and came out of his tomb because you called to him. I shake you, I call to you, but you do not move. “Jesus, come out” I yell. They stare at me and I do not care. It worked for Lazarus, maybe it will work for you. I yell it again and again and they drag me away, muttering about my demons and possession.

We go to the tomb. Your mother is there. She is stoic, as if she knew it was coming all along. She whispers, barely audible, “it is not right for a mother to outlive her child.” Nicodemus comes to the tomb, bringing the spices, and the smell reminds me of how real this is. Flesh and bone and blood and God, all meet in you. And now, sweet Lord, where are you? For your flesh and bones are here, but the rest? I wipe your stained face, hands and feet, the blood now crusted and dried, evidence that you once were human, proof that your heart did once beat. But now? Where have you gone? Why are you hidden? All that I remember, was it real, wasn’t it? Or was it all a dream? Or worse, a joke? Were you just a madman, and I a madwoman for following you? They said I was mad before. I was lost and through you I was found. The blind, now they see, surely that was real. The wine at Cana. The healing of the lepers, the lost who found themselves in you...all these things, they were real, weren’t they? And you raised Lazarus. From the dead, back to life and yet…here you are. Dead. All those miracles and you couldn’t save yourself?

Someone is speaking the words of the prophet. The familiar words: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” They are saying the prophet was writing about you. I would like to believe that, yet I do not feel healed by your wounds. I feel sorrow, I feel broken—empty to my core. I do not feel healed. I want to believe. But in this darkness, I do not know how.

I am trying to understand, yet the stillness, the stillness frightens me to my core. Where are you? Light of my world, light of the world, where have you gone? How am I to do it? How am I to navigate this dark rude land of grief without you to shine the light for me? All your teachings—were they all about this…this moment where life and death have intersected?

I want to believe. I want to believe that there is good, that there is something left of you beyond this body. Your face which held such light, radiated goodness…I long to know where that light, where that goodness is now. But all I can see is the darkness. All I know is my own grief and my own guilt.

We have finished covering you in the spices and wrapping you in the linen. This can’t be real, it must be a nightmare. Something has gone terribly wrong. It was only a short time ago that we were feasting, dancing and celebrating. And now…now we are leaving you here, alone in this dark cave. I do not want to leave you, for you taught me, made me laugh, gave me hope, you gave me life, —you changed me. And so I try to remember all that you gave me, gave us. You taught of light and life. You said “I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.” And you knew that today would come, didn’t you? You knew that you would be betrayed and put to death. If I have any hope, it is in this: that you know what I can not know, what we can not know.

So what choice do I have, do we have? I will leave the tomb, leave your body, watch as they seal you inside this place. And I will go and tell, teach and preach about the kingdom that you promise will come. I will look for light in the darkness. I will try to light the way for others to see the truth you showed to me. I will trust that you will fulfill your promise, no matter how absurd it may seem right now. I will watch for you…that part of you that lives beyond your dead body, beyond this cold tomb…I will watch and pray. You have always told me truth. And so I wait…and so we wait.

maundy thursday

2008-03-20T23:07:00.001-05:00

Maundy Thursday
March 20, 2007
the caffeinated priest+

Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you , you have no share with me.”

Feet are funny things. Small but powerful. Capable of carrying a very heavy load. Anatomically fully of tiny little bones and sinews and connective tissue, all working together to create this strange thing called the foot. Mine are kinda ugly. Others are notoriously smelly. Some are flat. Some are beautifully groomed. They keep us moving forward, they help us balance. We need them to get from place to place. Feet are funny things.

Feet actually are mentioned a fair amount in the Bible. The prophet Isaiah writes: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of peace.” Jesus told the disciples that if they were not welcomed when they went spreading the Good News, to shake the dust off their feet and move forward Also within the Gospels is the story of the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume, and wipes the feet with her hair.

Feet are prominent in tonight’s Gospel story as well. Jesus takes off his outer robe, a vulnerability in the simplicity, the nakedness of his dress, and he girds himself with a towel. Then he pours water into a basin begins to wash the disciples feet. Think about all the miles those feet have walked—the calluses, the dirt under the nails, all the unmentionable things these feet have stepped in—it is these dirty, smelly, worn feet that Jesus takes tenderly into his hands, those same hands that will all too soon have nails in them, and with these hands he begins to wash their feet. Jesus knew what was coming next for him and I imagine he was sad and scared—not only because of his own suffering, but because he loves them. The disciples, the women, the followers who have traveled with him—he loves them. And he knows, all too well that he his about to leave them. This act of washing their feet is not random—it is one more moment of teaching them, one more moment of teaching us, showing them and showing us, what he has been trying to teach and show them all along.

It is our patron, Peter, who stubbornly questions this act. Peter knows that it is the servant, not the master, who does the lowest of the low jobs, who touches and washes the dirty feet. And so Peter boldly says “You will never wash my feet.” And Jesus challenges Peter—if you do not let me wash you, Peter, you do not know who I am, you have no share in me. And Peter’s eyes are opened. He understands this final teaching that Jesus offers—the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Heaven, is about this very thing—it is about the lowly being lifted up, about the master serving the slave, it is about the intimacy and awkwardness of being truly known by the one who loves us and Peter, at last understanding, cries, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” It is a different way of looking, of seeing the world, and Peter, at long last understands. With the washing of feet, the order, the way of the world is different—all that has been known is now different.

Tonight, those of you who have been here on previous Maundy Thursdays, tonight you will notice something else that is different. In years past the freestanding altar has been moved out and the last Eucharist before Easter was celebrated at the high altar. Tonight the freestanding altar remains and it is where we will make that last Eucharist. To celebrate the Eucharist at the high altar would mean having my back to you and tonight, of all nights, I simply can not turn my back to you, my brothers and sisters, my fellow disciples, as we make the last supper. Tonight is a night about intimacy, about being known. Tonight we move from merely being the crowd watching Jesus, to becoming his inner circle, the ones closest to him. We will have our feet washed and make Eucharist and then we will wait with him in the garden before he goes to his suffering and passion. And because of that, the freestanding altar remains here. When the stripping comes, you will see it in its wholeness, like the one it represents, laid bare. As Jesus lays himself bare, so too is the altar--it particle board top, its less than beautiful legs, with all the trappings taken away. It, like Jesus, like the one it represents, takes off its outer robe and vulnerably makes itself know.

Jesus’ words are given to us tonight. Unless I wash you , you have no share with me.”
How seriously will we take them? Are we willing to move out of our comfort zone, into the space that this story, that this liturgy calls us to go? This night is about to become dangerous and uncomfortable. We are called to be vulnerable so that we might truly live into the Gospel command to love one another as Jesus has loved us. The act of having our feet washed is intentionally uncomfortable, because it makes us vulnerable. But if you are willing to take that risk, to risk being vulnerable, naked, known, then you may reap the rewards of moving deeper into relationship with Christ and with those around you. If you will take that risk, that leap of faith, I invite you on this most holy night to come and have your feet washed. Come and have your feet washed, sit at supper for awhile, wait and watch as Jesus waits in the garden, knowing that the betrayer is at hand. Wait and see, wait and watch, wait and be known.

2008-03-16T16:05:00.001-05:00

Palm Sunday, Year A
March 16, 2008
the caffeinated priest+

I cannot say I did not hear 
That sound so haunting hollow –
 I heard, I heard, I heard it clear... 
I was afraid to follow.[1]

The work of discipleship, of following Jesus isn’t easy. If we seek proof of that, we need look no further than to our patron, Peter. Peter—the rock on whom Jesus builds this church. And yet, how quickly he runs, how quickly he denies. How is it that he turns so fast? He promises the man he calls Lord and Messiah that he will die with him before he denies him. And yet, before the cock crows he cries “I do not know the man!” And who is it that he’s speaking to when he denies Jesus? It is a servant girl—not a big, powerful political leader, but a small, politically inconsequential girl. How little it takes to shake the foundation of this our church. It is always easier and a lot safer to deny the Messiah than to follow. Judas does it. Peter does it. If we’re honest, in our lesser moments, we do it too. And even here, there is Good News, even on this day. Peter’s denial shows us something about Jesus, it points us, like so many things have this Lent, to see who Jesus truly is. Peter’s very denial highlights the generosity of the one who hangs on the tree. For while Peter may betray Jesus, and while we, the crowd, may cry “crucify him! Crucify him!” Jesus does not betray us. Instead, Jesus shows us what a true Messiah is. “He saved others; he cannot save himself” taunt the religious leaders. And it is true. The true Messiah saves others—he does not save himself. The false messiahs bring themselves down from the tree, avoid the pain, the agony and the shame, but he true messiah is willingly nailed to the tree and does not save himself. The true messiah hands himself over without a fight, saying “put away your sword.” In John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say it another way: ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The Good Shepherd, the true Messiah, takes every risk, even the risk of death to save his flock, to save his disciples.

The Good News is that even from the cross, Jesus continues to redeem us, even while hanging from the tree, the Messiah does his work. Peter, despite his denial of Jesus, Peter will go on to become the rock on whom this church is founded and to be the one whom Jesus charges to “feed my sheep.”

Today we stand as Peter did, at once clinging to Jesus, crying “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you” and at the same time shouting “I do not know the man!” It is the paradox and the challenge of being a disciple. We are human and therefore full of flaws. We try to be faithful, to walk the path the Messiah sets before us—sometimes it works, and sometimes we find ourselves floundering in the courtyard like Peter, denying the one we love so much. It is the paradox and challenge of discipleship—trying to be faithful, trying to follow, yet filled with fear and filled with humanity. Theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book The Cost of Discipleship writes: The call to discipleship… means both death and life… [It] sets the Christian in the middle of the daily arena against sin and the devil. Every day he encounters new temptations, and every day he must suffer anew for Jesus Christ’s sake. The wounds and scars he receives in the fray are living tokens of this participation in the cross of his Lord.

We are called to walk the way of the cross. We will not always do it well or gracefully. We will stumble and fall and pick ourselves up and start over. And that’s okay. We are not called to be perfect nor are we are not called to be the Messiah. We are called to the risky, unexpected and transformative life of discipleship. On days like today, the cost is powerfully and painful present. And the only way to Easter is through this graveyard. And the call remains clear—follow me, even to the cross, follow me.

[1] Shel Silverstein “The One Who Stayed Behind”

Lent 5 Year A

2008-03-10T16:43:00.001-05:00

Lent 5, Year A
March 9, 2008
the caffeinated priest+

Out of the depths have I called to you O Lord;
Lord hear my voice;
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.

My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

Out of the depths Mary and Martha call to Jesus, crying “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Out of the depths Jesus weeps and then cries “Lazarus, come out!” Out of our own depths we wait and watch for what is about to unfold in this story, so close to Jerusalem, yet not quite there yet. No, it’s not Easter yet. It’s close, close as Jerusalem is to Lazarus’ tomb, but we have to walk through the graveyard before we get there. Some of us can’t take it—too much pressure, too much stress, so we’ll skip Palm Sunday, Holy Week and jump straight to Easter morning. And some of us will walk the journey from the Golden Gates of Jerusalem, crying “Hosanna in the Highest!” to the Last Supper, to the betrayal, watching in the garden and the agony of the cross. We’ll walk through the graveyard that waits for us, stepping lightly, avoiding the tombstones, ignoring the names written on them, making our way through as quickly as we can. No body likes death. And today we get a taste of it, a preview of what is and what is not to come.

The story of Lazarus is a challenging text. The purpose is clearly stated: “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And so, while this story IS about Mary, Martha and Lazarus, it is also about something bigger—it is about pointing us to the Savior, it is doing what Jesus has been doing these past few weeks—it is showing us exactly who and what he is.

Jesus’ humanity comes front and center in this story. At first, he comes across as almost casual—simply moving along, knowing Lazarus is sick and not really caring, almost as if he is waiting for him to die. Certainly that is how it seems to Mary and Martha, who both chastise or question him with their greeting of “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.” So is this callous Jesus? No. This is Jesus who has work to do, who has a plan to accomplish.

He arrives in Bethany. I wonder what he expected—I realize the text says that he knew Lazarus was dead, but I can’t help but wonder—did he really believe that? Perhaps he just expected to find a really sick Lazarus whom he would heal. Or maybe he really did know that Lazarus was going to die. Yet when he arrives in Bethany, he is so surprised and overwhelmed. And when he realizes the entirety of what is happening, he is sad and angry—and he begins to weep.

Jesus says: “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” I wonder if part of what is happening through Lazarus’ illness and death that we experience the full revelation of Jesus’ humanity. Jesus is not a robot, void of emotion. Nor is he a cocky miracle worker who so self-assured that he knows that he can do anything, even reverse the power of death. He is a human. Full of fear, full of sorrow, full of unknowing. And so when he discovers the depth of what has happened, when he feels the anger of Mary, when he realizes that he is too late to heal the sick, the sick is already dead, he weeps, he lets his humanity come to the forefront.
And here and now he can do that. Here and now he can feel and live into his sorrow, his grief, his fear. Later, in the garden in Gethsemane, he will think about it, asking God to take the cup away, yet even as he asks, he will know, deep in his being, that he has work to do and his humanity, his anxiety and fear, will take a backseat to following the will of his Father. But here and now, here and now he is able to live into his human desires, his human yearnings to ease the heartbreak of two sisters, to alleviate his own angst and hurt.

This story is about Jesus’ humanity, the fully man part of being fully God and fully man, it is a story to show us the fullness of who he is. This is not any miracle man—this is someone who raises people from the dead. This is someone who can break the power of death—four day old, rank, decaying, smelly death. “I am the resurrection and the life” Jesus says to Martha. Not I will be, not I’m going to be, but I am. I am the resurrection and the life—right here, right now. This is who he is.

One other thing—and it’s no small thing, at least for me. We learn something else about Jesus in this story. We learn that he can take it. He can handle the anger and hurt that Mary and Martha throw his way. They have been with him from the beginning of his ministry and they are, no doubt, two incredibly important people in his life. And they are angry, furious with him. If you had been here Lord, none of this would’ve happened. You’ve messed up. They are angry and they waste no breath in telling him. I think it is important that we know and fully understand that we have a God who can handle all that we throw at him—our hurt, our anger, our disbelief. God does not shy away from us or curse us for being the humans he created us to be. Rather, God hears our cries—and embraces us and joins us where we are—joyful or broken, rejoicing or crying—God comes to us. We have a God who can resurrect us from the dead, from our depression, from our grief, from our pain and from our fears. Out of the depths have I called to you O Lord the psalmist writes. It is into the depths, into our darkness and muck that Jesus comes to us. God, Jesus puts an end to our death, resurrects us, if you will, not by circumnavigating us and our darkness, not by avoiding it, but by working through it, bringing life in the midst of sorrow and grief, offering love in the midst of loss, opening places of hope in the middle of darkness and despair. Jesus resurrects us from the big and the little places of death, showing us that the only way to Easter morning is by traveling through Good Friday. There is no avoiding the graveyard. Death is part of new life. We see that, in one form, today with Lazarus. In the coming weeks we will learn it in a very different way.

Out of the depths have I called to you O Lord;
Lord hear my voice;
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.

My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

Lent 3, Year A

2008-02-24T08:58:00.003-06:00

The Third Sunday of Lent
February 24, 2008
caffeinated priest+

She walks to the well. As usual, she’s the only one there. For most of the women, the daily trip to the well is like a trip to Intelligencia or Argo, a time for the women to gather in the morning and talk about their lives, draw water and return home. Yet this woman, in the heat of the day, comes alone. She is an outcast, scorned by the others in her village. She is not welcome when the others are there—it is easier to bear the heat and the sun than their scorn and ridicule. But by now she is used to doing this alone, used to being alone. She sees the figure resting at the well and she wonders who the stranger is, out in the heat of the mid-day. She moves forward, says nothing, and tries to keep her distance when he speaks. He speaks to her. And asks for the strangest thing—a drink from her bucket. She looks at him—there is no mistaking who he is, what he is. This is no Samaritan—this is a Jew. That he is speaking to her, much less his drinking from her jar, breaks so many Jewish laws and taboos and she knows this. So she asks him: “How can you ask me for a drink of water?” The man answers her in vague words about God and living water, so she questions him more: “where do you get this living water?” The man tells her that the living water quenches deep thirst, that those who drink of it will never be thirsty again. Curious, she asks this stranger to give her the living water.

Their conversation is strange and it’s never clear if they are talking to each other about the same thing. They banter back and forth about water and religion. She wonders why, this Jew, who by birth rite should despise and ignore her, as Jews were no friends to the Samaritans, why he is breaking so many laws to talk with her. She wonders why he notices her and why he’s willing, when no one else is, to listen to her. And then, just as she begins to have hope, to think that this man might have something to offer her, he gives her the command to go get her husband. It’s a strange subject change, abrupt and seems to come out of nowhere. Her heart drops a little bit because she knows that this will be the end of their conversation, there will be no living water for her. And now she must make a choice. Will she lie; say her husband is away on business or that her husband is dead? She takes a breath in. “I have no husband” she says. And with that tiny piece of self-revelation, the stranger begins to tell her about her own life. But this is not a mocking or a demeaning conversation. The man does not separate himself or shame her—rather, he moves closer to her, speaks more intimately—speaks as if he knows her, knows all about her. He reveals to her, the truth of who she is. And if she did not understand at first, now she does. Now the blinders have fallen away and she sees him for who he is: a prophet. Could he be…could he be the one of whom they have spoken? She says to him: “I know the Messiah is coming.” And the man, no longer a stranger, speaks, for the first time, to this woman, this out cast, the truth of who he is: “I am he, I am the Messiah.”

It is the first time he has said it to any living soul. In a quiet moment, while his disciples have gone out for pizza, left the work for a little break, it is only then that he moves himself to the well and waits for her, the improbable messenger. And it is to her, to the outcast of the outcasts, that he finally reveals himself, finally comes clean about who he is. Into this intimate tableau, the disciples return. They are shocked. Why on earth is he speaking to her? Speechless, they watch as she walks away, leaving behind the water jar, she no longer has need of it, for she has tasted living water. And this woman, the one who lives with a man to whom she is not married, the one who is scorned by the other women in the village, the one who has been silent for so long—this woman begins to speak, becoming a herald, a messenger of the Gospel.

She returns to town and goes bursting into long forbidden places. She doesn’t care. She’s seen something; she’s experienced something too good, too delicious to savor alone. The townspeople look at her with a mixture of awe and disgust as the woman, who usually knows her place, knocks on doors, and brazenly approaches people, crying, in raptured voice: “I think, just maybe, I met the Messiah.” Maybe they were curious, or maybe, just maybe, they figured anyone crazy enough to bang on their doors with that kind of news had to be on to something. Whatever it was, it enough. Enough for the Samaritans to talk to an outsider and ask him to stay for supper. Enough for them to realize, just as the woman did, that this is no ordinary man—this is the Messiah that has been so long promised—this is he, at table with us now.

The longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels is the one Jesus has with this outcast Samaritan woman. And the first place he says aloud who he is, is here, to this outsider. Neither of these facts are random. It is with great intention that Jesus reveals himself. And really isn’t it how we always meet the Messiah, isn’t it how we truly meet God? When we are brave enough or broken enough to finally say to Jesus: this is who I am, this is me, all of me, poured out before you—it is then that we experience all that Jesus is. Author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes: The Messiah is the one in whose presence you know who you really are--the good and bad of it, the all of it, the hope in it. The Messiah is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is--who crosses all boundaries, breaks all rules, drops all disguises--speaking to you like someone you have known all your life, bubbling up in your life like a well that needs no dipper, so that you go back to face people you thought you could never face again, speaking to them as boldly as he spoke to you. "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done."

We are roughly half way through our Lenten journey. The invitation is ever before us, to enter deeper into relationship, to risk everything so that we too might be truly known by the One who waits for us the well. Come, let us drink of the water.

The 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A 2008

2008-01-28T16:00:00.001-06:00

The 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany
January 27, 2008
Year A
caffeinated priest+

The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God.[1]

Today’s Gospel lesson is jam packed with action, movement and choices. Three incredibly important things happen in a quick succession. First, Jesus gets wind of John’s arrest. Immediately, he retreats. He moves out of the limelight, out of the eyes of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and goes to the Galilee. He goes to Capernaum and he begins to use John’s language—repent—the kingdom of heaven is near. And finally, he meets Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John and invites them to follow.

Jesus hearing that John has been arrested marks the beginning of a new phase of Jesus’ ministry. He has been baptized by John, tempted by the devil and has spent time in the wilderness. Now he begins his public ministry. The safety is gone. John, who had been the one with the reputation, John is no longer in the picture—not really. Now the focus becomes this new man, the new prophet and healer. With John’s arrest, Jesus becomes a hunted man. He takes on John’s mantle, urging people to repent, to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus moves to Capernaum, located in Zebulon and Napthali, the names of two Israelite tribes with land allocated in the Promised Land. Jesus has literally entered the Promised Land, the land that God has given, land that should be God’s kingdom, but instead suffers under the Roman occupation, heavy taxes, darkness and death. It is into this land, the Galilee of the Gentiles, that he enters and the words of the prophet Isaiah ring out:

[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.[2]

Jesus’ movement into the land brings not only a new prophet and a new ministry, but also a new hope, new light. I think that light must have been brilliant. Something about him must have simply radiated so brightly that those nearby could not help but be drawn to the light.

When Jesus meets the fishermen, that light must have shone: Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John are so profoundly moved by what they encounter that it seems they cannot help but respond. They drop their nets; they leave their father and the hit the road. They don’t think about it, they don’t have committee meetings to discuss it, they don’t take a vote—they just go. Immediately. When Jesus meets the fishermen, they have a choice: they can continue to fish, they can continue to do what they’ve been doing, or they can drop all that they have and follow. They make their choice and in doing so, there is, at some level, a death to self. Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John stop being fishermen, stop being sons, stop being all that they were to become what Jesus was calling them to be. They stop being who they were so that they can fully live into what it is that Jesus is calling them to become. And so, understandably, this passage makes many of us uncomfortable. There is a call to give up what we own and to move out into the world—to give up our homes, our families, our comforts, our nets—to follow the Christ. The same call that went out to Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John—that same call goes out to us to drop what we are doing and follow, to become disciples, to become fishers for people.

So how does one become a disciple? At the surface, like so many things that we encounter when we meet Jesus, it looks like simple: the fishermen are drawn to this man and they decided to follow Jesus. And it is true—they do decide to follow, yet while they and we may choose to drop our nets, while we may choose to follow, while we may choose to fish for people, we make this choice in the context and relationship of the call. Being a disciple is not an offer we make to God—Simon, Andrew, James and John didn’t say “hey Jesus, you look like you could use some followers--do you want us to come along with you?” Discipleship is not an offer we make to God—it is a response that we make because we have been chosen. Theologian and author Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way:

It is only the call of Jesus which make… a situation where faith is possible. … a situation where faith is possible can never be demonstrated from the human side. Discipleship is not an offer man makes to Christ. [3]

Discipleship is a response to the call Jesus offers us. You see, those simple fisher folk, Simon, Andrew, James and John, they had no ability to choose until God, until Jesus, chose them. Likewise, we have no ability to choose God until God chooses us. The beauty and the miracle is that God does choose us; God does call to us, asking us to put down our nets so that we can follow.

And if we decide to respond to this call, if we choose to say yes, to be disciples, it’s not easy. Discipleship is a funny thing. It’s not like choosing between cable providers or Ritz crackers verses Wheat Thins. It is not a random choice or one to be made lightly. Choosing to be a disciple is not another product we can buy and put on our shelf with our other choices. It is a choice that necessarily requires us not to make other choices. When we choose to be disciples, when we choose to follow the Christ, we are making a tough decision. We are choosing to put down our nets; we are choosing to leave behind that which we know, to step into the often dangerous unknown.

Every moment we live the choice is before us: are we going to fish or follow?

So why do it? Why would anyone choose to follow? To give up home and comfort and safety to follow this man? Moving in to the strange and wonderful world of Jesus takes on wild and strange adventures. It brings us into relationship, not only with Jesus, but with the powers and politicians of this world, with the broken and hungry, with the hated tax collectors, with our neighbors and with their families, with Gentiles and Sadducees and Pharisees. In short, when we enter into the world of discipleship, when we respond to the call, everyone we meet becomes our brother and our sister and none of us will ever be the same. We will be changed because we have entered into relationship with the One who issues the call and we will be in relationship with other disciples.

I think it’s important to remember that the work of discipleship, the work of being a Christian is not pretty or easy work. With all the cute forwarded emails we get and clichés that hang on plaques in Christian bookstores—it is easy to think that it’s a promise of instant riches and easy living. True Christianity, true discipleship calls us to something that is deeper, richer and much more real. True discipleship brings us into relationship with the Creator and with God’s creation. True discipleship brings us into the fullness of God and we begin to glimpse the Kingdom.

After communion today, we will sing one of my favorite hymns, “They Cast their nets.” There are two lines that always get me: the first one is “such happy simple fisher folk, before the Lord came down.”[4] For me, it is the perfect reminder of the choice that is before us. The call is set before us—how we respond is up to us. Would it be easier to forget the call, to remain simple, happy fisher folk? You bet. The path to discipleship is hard and comes at great cost. And just when I think, well maybe it would be better to keep on fishing, I hear the other line, the other line that always gets me—the one I opened with—the same one I close with—the reminder that yes, discipleship comes with cost, but the discipleship comes with great reward too. Discipleship, true discipleship, comes with expectation hope and joy. True discipleship comes with the promise of the beauty and fullness of the Kingdom of God:The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God. [5]

[1] They Cast Their Nets, page 661, Hymnal 1982. Words: William Alexander Percy.
[2] Isaiah Chapter 9
[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ, page 172.
[4] They Cast Their Nets, page 661, Hymnal 1982. Words: William Alexander Percy.
[5] They Cast Their Nets, page 661, Hymnal 1982. Words: William Alexander Percy.

The Confession of St. Peter

2008-01-20T19:39:00.001-06:00

The Confession of St. Peter
January 20, 2008
caffeinated priest+

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus and his disciples have been traveling, healing, preaching and teaching. Jesus is, whether he is prepared for it or not, starting to get a reputation. People are talking about him, word is getting out that there was someone new in town. A prophet, a teacher, a demon-exorcist, a healer. People are talking about him, demons are talking about him. And yet, he is not saying much, at least not yet. And here, near the springs of the Jordon River, here Jesus stops. He stops and he asks the disciples: who do people say that I am. They answer him—John the Baptist, a prophet, maybe Elijah. Jesus then asks, but you, who do you say that I am. Our translation that we heard today leaves out some of the emphatic nature of what Jesus was asking—directly to his friends and followers—who is it that YOU say that I am? You who know me, you who travel with me, who do you say that I am. The text simply reads “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” When I imagine it, Simon Peter was not exactly bold, but rather like a kid answering the teacher, hoping that he had the right answer. Simon Peter was many things—but he wasn’t the brightest among them. In fact, Peter has a long history of getting it wrong. But that comes later…for right now, he’s gotten it right. He’s stepped up, he’s said the words: you are the Messiah; you are the Song of the living God. And Jesus, like an overjoyed professor, praises his student: Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

I can hear the joy in Jesus’ words. Peter understands. Peter gets it—what all the teaching, all the miracles, all the healings have been pointing to—Peter finally sees. Or perhaps, it’s not about seeing, but about believing, believing in the midst of doubt and danger, having that glimmer of faith that says—this is it, He’s the one. The beauty of what Jesus says to Peter, is that Peter is wild fisherman. He’s not a theologian or a priest or a pious or particularly holy man—he’s a working man, with a wife and a daughter at home. And for some strange reason, when he met Jesus, everything changes. And he drops everything, and quits fishing for fish so that he can fish for !people.

This is who Jesus wants to build the church on—the rock, the foundation. A man who will, a few short verses later, urge him to avoid the cross, a man who will deny him three times—this is who Jesus wants to build the church on: a flawed human being, often filled with doubt, who is foolish and brave enough to have faith.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church

Yesterday, our own Nancy Meyer was ordained to the diaconate. In her ordination the Bishop charged her with the following words: You are to make Christ and his  redemptive love known, by your word and example, to those  among whom you live, and work, and worship. You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world. Nancy, in this new ministry, is charged with helping us live fully into our baptismal vows, reminding us to seek and serve all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. She is, in short, called to remind us of who we are—that we are built on Peter’s confession, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord and because of that, we are all bound to one another. Hungry and full, rich and poor, faithful and doubting—we are God’s creation, and when we, like Peter, see Jesus and proclaim him to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, we can not help but reach out to those around us.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church

Some of you will recall that during the season of Advent, there was a fire in the chapel, the advent wreath burned and left us with a smoky ceiling, a charred statue of St. Peter and a burned rug. One of my peers heard about the fire and put the word out to folks, and started what he called The St. Peter’s Tongues of Fire Advent Fund. This week we received a letter with a check enclosed. I’d like to read the letter to you:

Dear Friends:

Enclosed is a check for $450 as a small contribution to repairing the fire damage done to your church last Advent.

This money comes from 21 different donors from all over the Episcopal Church—East and West, conservative and liberal. It is a small token of this Church’s care for you and how Christ calls us to care for each other.

Please know that we hold you in our prayers and wish God’s continued grace in your life in 2008.

I am struck that strangers from around this church have given so freely to people they have never met—not because they needed to, or felt pressured to—but simply to be a reminder to us of who the Church is, simply to remind us what it means to be the Church, to remind us that we are part of what Jesus charged Peter to build. This gift, at least for me, is a powerful symbol of what it means to be the Church, to care for the stranger, to love without condition. We are many parts, one body, all connected.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church

What is it to be the Church, the Episcopal Church in America, the Episcopal Church in Lakeview? What does it mean for us to be here? Who do we serve and how do we, like Peter our Patron, how do we confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God? I think one of the ways that we do this is in our commitment to love, nurture and celebrate one another in our diversity. Loving, welcoming, and being with each other just as we are—that is no small thing and it is something to be celebrated. Another place I see us being the Church is in our relationship with agencies like the Lakeview Pantry and the Cathedral Shelter. These are concrete ways that we live into St. Peter’s confession and that we live into our own baptismal vows. There is also a delightful and growing sense of community here, forming in areas like the St. Peter’s Cultivators and the Wednesday Night Forum—these are but two of the ways that we begin to live into being the church, being the community, being the people of God who nurture, celebrate and love one another. These are a few—there are many more. And there is more work to be done. People of St. Peter’s, let us continue to be and to build the church. Let us boldly confess, not only with our words, but with our work in the world that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And in the days to come, as we follow Jesus the Christ, let us strive to be like our patron , St. Peter, a flawed fisherman, who foolishly and bravely put down his net to follow the Christ, to be the rock on whom Jesus continues builds this church.

Baptism of our Lord, Year A

2008-01-13T14:49:00.001-06:00

The Baptism of Our Lord
January 13, 2008
caffeinated priest+

This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Last week, we marked the Epiphany with Lessons and Carols. It was a glorious day, full of songs and stories, the telling and singing of our faith, the celebration of the journey of the magi, faithfully following the star, to find the baby in Bethlehem. It’s a wonderful story and it tells us a lot about who we are and WHAT we are as a Christian people—we are like the magi, the wise men (and women) who follow the light in the darkness, seeking the Christ.

We are at the beginning of the story. From the nativity to the Epiphany and now the Baptism of Christ, we are in the beginning: Like the star in the sky, the heavens are once again pointing us to the Messiah. Jesus’ baptism is the fruition of the epiphany; first the Magi understood who he was, now we all see and know who this is. And once more we are at a new beginning—the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. We encounter God in a new way—God speaks to us, the disciples, the followers and God speaks to his child, Jesus. God speaks clearly, boldly, saying this is my family, this is my child, my son, in whom I am well pleased. It echoes in our own baptism, the fulfillment of what began with the magi all those years ago. In baptism, we go once again to beginnings—beginning relationships, beginning journeys, beginnings of community, beginning ministries. Baptism leads us back to the beginning. Baptism leads us to something new.
God is doing something new. With the incarnation, God becoming human, God becoming Jesus, humanity changes its relationship and interaction with God. No longer is God an idea or a voice—God has become us, God has become flesh and bone. Something new is happening when God moves into our human world. Jesus jumps right in with us, into the cold and dirty water of the Jordon River, into our mess, into our muck. But it’s not just Jesus coming to us—it’s us coming to Jesus and chasing after him. And we find ourselves in new adventures, new relationships, with God, with our community and with ourselves. We are changed, spiritually, we are becoming something new.

God is doing something new. We are once again at the beginning of the story.

One of my all-time heroes is the late Henri Nouwen, a priest, psychologist and author. Nouwen, after almost two decades of teaching at Universities, left academia to share his life with mentally handicapped people at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. Nouwen understood the messiness of the human condition and the importance, as human beings, of rebirth, of marking our own new beginnings, and of creating a new understanding of who we are in relationship to the one who creates us. And while it is to the community of mentally handicapped people that he writes, there is universal wisdom and in truth his words. He writes:

[Many] hear a voice that keeps saying, "If you want to be loved, you had better prove that you are worth loving. You must show it."
But what I would like to say is that the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says, "You are the beloved and on you my favor rests."

You are the beloved and on you my favor rests.

Jesus heard that voice. He heard that voice when He came out of the Jordan River. I want you to hear that voice, too. It is a very important voice that says, "You are my beloved son; you are my beloved daughter. I love you with an everlasting love. I have molded you together in the depths of the earth. I have knitted you in your mother's womb. I've written your name in the palm of my hand and I hold you safe in the shade of my embrace. I hold you. You belong to Me and I belong to you. You are safe where I am. Don't be afraid. Trust that you are the beloved. That is who you truly are."

I want you to hear that voice. It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. I want you to gradually hear that voice. We both have to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that that voice speaks the truth, our truth. It tells us who we are. That is where the spiritual life starts -- by claiming the voice that calls us the beloved.

Nowen understands that what God is doing at Jesus’ baptism, and at our own baptism: God is calling us to something new, to the beginning of becoming who we have always been meant to be. The voice of God calls to us, his children, and tells us that we are his beloved. Comforting words, but sometimes the voice speaking them is hard to hear, the voice is often small and quiet. In the midst of our busy, hectic and often brutal world, a voice calls to us and speaks the truth: you are my beloved.

God speaks to us not only as individuals, but also as community. Or, perhaps, to put it another way—our job, as Christians, as wise men and women following the Christ, as ones looking on as John baptizes Jesus—our job as community, the Christian community, the St. Peter’s community, is to help each other hear that voice, to help each other recognize the beloved-ness of who we are. It sounds like an easy thing to do, but it is not. On days when I’m frustrated with myself, I get cut off in traffic, I forget to pay a bill, I say the wrong thing—on these days it is so easy to forget who I am—that I am beloved, that I am part of this new thing that God is doing. When I forget, you remind me. When you forget, I remind you. It is our work, our calling, it is who we are as a Christian community to remind each other of who we are, who God created us to be, and to be that voice that says you are the beloved.

It is a new year. We are in a new place, together and there is much to be done. It begins not with programming and vestry meetings and budget discussions—no. It begins with a star and some people who were foolish enough to drop what they were doing and follow it. It begins with a muddy river and the Messiah diving into it, being baptized, the heavens parting and the voice of God speaking “I am doing something new, I claim you, my beloved.” It begins with us—right here, right now—helping each other hear that voice, the voice that says you are my beloved, you are mine.

The Nativity of our Lord

2007-12-24T21:19:00.000-06:00

Sarah Fisher+
The Nativity of our Lord, December 24, 2007

But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. In the name of Love Incarnate, Amen.

One of the most vivid memories I have is the singing of Silent Night at Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. At the end of the service, the lights would dim and we would sing, in the candle-lit church, the carol that always, for me, ushers in Christmas. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Every parish I have ever attended or served has sung this carol on Christmas Eve. Tonight is no exception—later in this service we will sing Silent Night. This famous carol, for so many, is the image of the Holy Family—Round Yon Virgin Mother & Child. What images come to you with this song? The sweet sleeping baby, the glowing mother and the proud step-father? Animals gathered round the manger, wise men traveling and shepherds walking step by step to Bethlehem? These are some of my images. I suspect yours may be similar.

But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. Mary treasures and ponders: The birth, the visitors, the animals, the gifts, the prophecies, the road this baby will someday is to walk—Mary ponders all these things in her heart. And as she ponders, she also is a brand new mother, learning how to hold him, to swaddle him in bands of cloth as he wiggles and squirms, as she worries that he’s too cold, that she’s wrapped that bands too tightly or perhaps not tightly enough, that the manger isn’t soft enough. Mary, the new mother, learning to care for her newborn baby, to keep him warm, to keep him safe, to make him comfortable, as comfortable as one can be in a barn full of animals.

Mary and Joseph welcome into the world this night a new baby. Not a quiet, non-crying, statue, but a live, wiggly, crying, needing-to-be fed baby. This is a contrast from the Christmas card image that so many of us, including me, tend to carry. Yet the fallacy we make with our angelic, perfectly still, non-crying baby tableau of the Holy Family, is, I think, that we miss the entire point of what is happening in that stable. Jesus is born. God deigns to become one of us. Jesus is born, fully God and fully human. As a human baby God comes to us—a human baby that cries and coos and is hungry. When we sing Silent Night, it’s not about the baby being quiet and angelic—it’s about the night around the baby, it’s about the silent gift, the mystery that is God, coming into the world, expected or unexpected, bidden or not bidden, God comes among us in the form of Jesus Christ. The miracle that occurs is not that the baby acts in a way that is different from other babies—the miracle is that the baby acts like every human baby and yet at the same time this baby is a king , this baby is a Saviour and the world is silent. There is no ticker-tape parade, no trombones marching down the street, no banners waving, no television coverage, no dinners or feasts in his honor—just a humble stable and a mother and a step-father and some animals doing what animals do. Just an Angel, astonishing a few shepherds working late in the fields, telling them to go—go walk to Bethlehem. God enters our world on a silent night, a night like tonight, where the world simply continues on—nothing extraordinary to the casual observer, nothing but a baby, born to a Virgin, in a barn, the dawn of redeeming grace.

On a simple, silent night, a fierce, wild and uncontainable love enters the world in the form of a baby…a small, helpless baby. A baby that brings love, salvation and hope to this broken world. The miracle, the good news, is that it happens. It happens whether we expect it or not. Even if we are not looking for it, Love Incarnate is looking for us, pleading to walk the road with us. It happens so silently, without pomp or circumstance, but humbly. God enters our world; God enters our broken world and brings with him the promise of light and hope in the midst of the still, dark night. Outside the winds howl, the sirens wail, the world continues to turn. And a baby is born, to Mary. A baby is born to us all. Hope, light, joy, passion, salvation and life—all are born this night.

Jimmy M. Funeral Sermon

2007-12-23T10:24:00.001-06:00

caffeinated priest+
December 21, 2007

On my first day at work here at St. XX, I ate dinner at Stella’s Diner. I was told “you’ve got to go to Stella’s, it’s the neighborhood place to eat.” So I went and I ate cabbage soup and I felt like I had come home. Something about Stella’s just fit with the neighborhood. A comfortable place to sit, to have a good meal and to talk about the day. While I never met Jimmy in person, I feel as if I have been the recipient not only of his hospitality, but also of his humor, from spending time with his family and from spending time at Stella’s. Anyone who has ever dined at Stella’s will know what I’m talking about: the feel at Stella’s is because of how he and Stella shaped the restaurant, making it much more than just a diner, making it a beloved neighborhood home. Jimmy was passionate about food, the restaurant and his family. And you can’t help but sense that passion when you walk into Stella’s.

Jesus says: I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. Being known, being in relationship, is part of what we are promised from God. It is part of the Christian heritage. God comes to us in the form of Jesus, fully man and fully God, to walk with us on this journey. It is this understanding, this promise that leads us into relationship with each other. We are to walk with each other, to share ourselves with each other, to be, for each other, images of God, bearers of God. My sense of Jimmy is that he did that fully. He did it in his cooking, he did it in his affectionate name-calling to his daughter and nieces, he did it with his family and he did it with the restaurant. Jimmy lived in relationship with other people. He laughed, he walked, he made interesting bread baskets, he clapped, he cooked. He was known and he knew people.

Being in relationship is messy. We have joy and anger, hopes and disappointments, and in times like this, we have sorrow from loss. We have real life when we dare to enter relationship with each other. We also meet God through our relationships. We meet God who comes to us in the form of the love of a spouse, the love of a parent, the love of an uncle, the love of a friend. Jesus says: I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

Jimmy formed, through his relationships, a life giving community, a place which feeds people, makes people feel cherished, welcomes the stranger, a place that sets no limits on who can come. What he formed is an image of the church at its very best. For those of us who are in Christian community and those of us who are not, this is something to celebrate and to strive for, as this is what we are all called to do. It is clear that Jimmy heard the shepherd’s call to be part of the fold, to know those around him, to bravely enter the messiness of human relationships. Some 30 years ago, a woman, new to the neighborhood, before the days of ATM machines, on a weekend when the banks were closed, found her car had been towed. Not knowing this woman well, Jimmy gives her three hundred dollars—think about that 300 dollars 30 years ago—Jimmy gives this to her and says “pay me back when you can.” That is faith and trust in the goodness of humanity, that is building community, that is welcoming the stranger and extending hospitality—that is an image of the kingdom of heaven, right here on earth, right here in Lakeview.

There is much to celebrate. The life Jimmy lead, the family he leaves behind, the legacy of his food and hospitality. And yet it is hard. Losing someone is hard. Losing someone at this time of year is, perhaps, even harder. The good news, is that Jimmy has entered the nearer presence of God. Jimmy, even now, is becoming more like God because he sees God face to face. I don’t know exactly what that looks like. Can you imagine Jimmy, up with the angels, trying on wings? I suspect that would be a sight. Yet that is what we are promised: all are welcome in the God’s kingdom. Much like entering Stella’s Diner, I suspect, there the promise of a seat waiting, some hot soup on the stove and a friendly face that waits for you. Angel wings? Maybe. But warmth and welcome—certainly. As you feel the pain that is so real, that makes your heart heavy as you realize he will no longer cook for you or laugh with you, hold onto the promise that you someday be reunited with him in the nearer presence of God. This is the good news, this is the promise for us all. The shepherd who knows us, who calls to us, bestows on us this promise that we are all part of his flock.

Advent II, Year A

2007-12-20T22:04:00.004-06:00

Advent 2 Year A
December 9, 2007
caffeinated priest+

There is a poem by Pastor Trina Zelle simply titled “John the Baptist.” It goes like this:

This strange child
of their old age
didn’t laugh much
small hands dry
as the sandy soil
in which he played
with single-minded
urgency he would
hug his old mother
and stare down
the shimmering road
over her shoulder.

The image of John staring down the road, over his mother’s shoulder is one that I find striking and real. John, I suspect, was never one to stay home. No, he was ready to hit the road as soon as he could. It was his calling, his destiny. On Friday night, the St. Peter’s Cultivators gathered and looked at images of the Madonna and Child and in so many of them, along with the infant or toddler image of Jesus, there was his cousin, John the Baptist. Images depict him, even then, wearing animals for clothing, carrying a staff, as if he, before he even was of an age to walk, was already preparing to embark on his journey, his calling to be the wild man in the wilderness, baptizing and calling people to repent and return to the Lord. John the Baptist is such as character, in his camel hair clothes, eating bugs and honey. John the baptizer, moving through the wilderness, promising that one is coming after him, one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. One whom he calls cousin. John the Baptist comes to us in the middle of Advent, bringing with him the call to repentance, the call to prepare the way of the Lord.

I often find myself thinking about old Elizabeth when I hear the tales of John the Baptist. What did she think of her boy wondering off into the great unknown? Was she an overprotective mother, fighting with him as he packed his bag the night before he left home? Or did she, like her relative Mary, know that this boy was destined for something great and so, despite her mother’s instinct, did she help him pack his things and make a lunch for him as he set off along the way? It must have been so hard, the waiting, the hoping, the praying for a child. And then she gives birth to this boy, this odd boy, who she loves and nurtures, knowing, at some level, that he was never hers to begin with, he always belonged to God. He was God’s agent, God’s messenger, God’s herald, calling people to a new way of seeing, a new way of living. “Prepare the way” he cries and at home, Elizabeth worries—what will become of this boy.

And then there is John, himself. What a strange and faithful boy he was. What must it have been like to be the one, so close to the Messiah, but not the one. To be so close to the one who is so special, but not have that same gift, that same connection. Was he jealous? Was he ever tempted to say “it’s me! I am he! I am the Messiah, the long anticipated one?” I suspect he was not. For John, if anything, knew who he was and what he was here for. John was to point the way, to lead the people, to lead us to the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Christ. John was to be the voice crying out in the wilderness. John was to be the baptizer.

John comes to us in the middle of Advent, bringing with him an Advent message. Advent is the season of preparation, of watching for God moving into the world, God becoming flesh and bone, God becoming human, becoming one of us. Advent is about watching for the incarnation. This is what John is showing us: the incarnation of God in the world about us. The late biblical scholar Reginald Fuller explains:

The incarnation, from the biblical perspective, is the whole “Christ-event,” the total coming of the Son of God in the flesh, which includes not only his nativity but also his whole ministry, his death, resurrection, and ascension.

In fact, most of the New Testament, aside from the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, can proclaim the Christ-event without speaking of the nativity at all. So when the Advent season prepares for the “advent” of Christ, this is not just his nativity but rather his total coming.

The nativity is merely one way of speaking of the advent of Christ, and not the central one at that. Hence, is wholly appropriate that John the Baptist should figure prominently in the Advent season as a herald of the Messiah’s coming.

The Messiah is coming and John is calling us to repentance. Repentance is a word that has a lot of baggage with it, at least for me. The image of a preacher thumping a Bible and yelling “repent sinner, repent” is not foreign to me. So when I find myself struggling with a concept or a word, I often go to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines repent as to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life, or to feel regret or contrition. A third definition of repent is: to change one's mind. Hmmm. Okay. I am intrigued. To change one’s mind. Repentance. Next I go to one of my all time favorite theologians, Fredrick Buechner, who always offers something new. This is how he defines repentance: To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry,” than to the future and saying, “Wow!”

I love this concept because it opens for me a true pathway not only to understanding repentance, but to opening myself to it. And it is a concept that makes perfect sense in the midst of Advent. As we journey to the manger, as we watch for God’s strange and fierce movement into this world, as we wait for God to once again be born, to become bone, we have active work to do. The watching, the waiting, the repentance—all ways of coming to our senses, of living in these bodies and walking through this world with our eyes wide open, waiting, watching for the Christ: The Christ who comes in a cradle, the Christ who lies dying in a nursing home, the Christ who works in the Finanacial District in the Loop, the Christ who begs for food on our door step, the Christ makes your coffee, the Christ who makes you angry, the Christ who makes you laugh, the Christ who is waiting to once again be born in you.

Soon the Messiah comes. The journey has begun and we, ready or not, are on the pilgrim way to the manger. John calls to us in our wilderness—calling to us and urging us to stop, to repent and to make ourselves, our hearts, our lives ready, to change our minds, to look up and say “Wow.”

Advent III, Year A

2007-12-20T22:04:00.003-06:00

Advent 3, Year A
caffeinated priest+

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us…in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This week has not been the week I was expecting. I was expecting something different. I was expecting angel chimes and snow and hot chocolate and soft twinkling lights, all guiding me towards the manger. I was not expecting what I got this week. I was not expecting to bury one of the matriarchs of the church this week. Although I knew Edna's health had been in decline, I did not expect this, not now, not in this time, not yet. I did not expect this. And I did not expect the news from the heating company that so many of the radiators needed repair or to be replaced. That sludge was built up in the system and that pipes need re-routing. I did not expect this. And I did not expect, when I came in to work on Thursday, to discover that an ember had worked its way into the greens of the Advent wreath, causing it to catch fire and burn in the middle of the night, the smell of soot and char still fresh in the chapel. I tried to tell myself “we were so lucky, nothing major has happened—the rug is ruined, the statue of St. Peter is a little charred and the ceiling has smoke stains—that is all—it is nothing compared to what could have been.” Yet despite all my attempts to tell myself otherwise, all I feel is upset and sad. It has not been the week I expected.

This third Sunday of Advent is known as "Gaudete Sunday". Its name comes from the Latin Gaudete in Domino semper which roughly translates "rejoice in the Lord always." These were the opening of the Antiphon the Latin Mass on the Third Sunday of Advent. As an option, the celebrant of the Mass could wear rose-colored vestments, an unusual color especially during Advent, to symbolize joy. In the Advent Wreath, the third candle is rose-colored for this reason. And I am wearing pink for this reason.

Sometimes people call this third Sunday in Advent “Mary Sunday.” This tradition doesn’t go back as far as Gaudete Sunday and is actually a misunderstanding of Gaudete Sunday. Yet “Mary Sunday” has come to be a tradition within itself and if you ask a good number of people why the third candle is pink, most will tell you “it stands for Mary.” I suspect some of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that in addition to the pink candle, Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is an optional reading for today. And so, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to ask you to join me in reading this optional text. If you’ll open your prayer books to page 119 of the Book of Common Prayer and read with me the Magnificat.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.
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.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers, *
to Abraham and his children for ever.

Glory to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: *
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.
`

I wonder what Mary expected. Think for a moment about the journey Mary takes to get to this point in her life where she sings this song: an ordinary girl, out doing her chores, she is visited by an angel named Gabriel and is told that she is going to give birth to a child—not any child—she will be the mother of God, the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will conceive and bear a son. And he will be the Savior. Mary, an unmarried young woman, a child really, receives this news. Joseph learns that she is pregnant and plans to dismiss her quietly. And so, unwed, with the man to whom she is betrothed about to end their engagement, this young girl walks. She walks to the hill land to see her cousin Elizabeth. That she makes it without being killed is in itself a miracle because they killed harlots in those days and that is what an unwed pregnant woman was—a harlot. Was this what Mary expected out of life? What had she expected—a calm life, marriage and then children, walking to the well, making dinner for her family, something normal, something other than this…this mess. Surely this could not be what Mary was expecting. And yet here, in the midst of the chaos of this situation, Mary stops. She stops, she rejoices and she sings a new song:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me

Mary embraces the unexpected, un-requested new life that God has given her. Mary embraces the mess, the ridicule, the cries of harlot and the threats of death. Giving up her own expectation, her own dreams, her own will so that she may do God’s will and so that she may become Theotokos, literally, "the bearer of God." Without or perhaps with thought to the pain that would come from this unexpected event, the pain that will follow as the child grows into a man, and walks his own road to Calvary. Mary gives new life, life that leads to the cross, life that leads again to new life. Wildly unexpected.

The virgin’s song, at least for me, cries out in the midst of this dark and unexpected season. In the middle of all that I wasn’t expecting, of all that I didn’t want, the virgin’s song resounds and reminds me, reminds us, that it is here, in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of sorrow, in the midst of soot and ashes, in the midst of all that we didn’t expect and don’t want, it is here that God comes to us. And we are once again on the journey with God, journeying with Mary, Theotokos, to the manger where we will encounter God, who, ready or not, is on the move. Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us we pray. Come in the ways we expect, in the ways we long for you, and come in the ways that surprise us and frighten us. Come so that we may be bearers of the Good News, bearers of the unexpected, and like Mary, bearers of God.

Advent I, Year A

2007-12-20T22:02:00.001-06:00

Advent I, Year A
caffeinated priest+

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility." The words from today’s collect, the collect for the first Sunday in Advent, are etched deeply into my bones. Hearing the words of this prayer, which is based on a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans, I find myself carried back to my childhood. I was never afraid of the dark so much as I found myself drawn to the light of candles, the flicker of flame, and the shadow dances they’d cast on the walls. My favorite Advent fixture, growing up, was the Angel chimes: brass angels dancing over four simple candles. The heat would cause the angels to move forward, almost like a dance, and they would ding a bell, making for chime sounds throughout the living room. I remember watching the light and shadow dances from these chimes in the darkened room while my parents moved about the house, making dinner, talking about their day. And I felt so safe, in this space, looking to the light, the steady, flickering glow that brought light to the dark winter room.

Today the candles that burn in my Advent wreath and angel chimes remind me that God is on the move. I see the candles and I am reminded of the light of Christ and the anticipation I feel as I begin the journey to the manger. The challenge, as a preacher, and I suspect as a hearer, is that the lessons appointed for today, the first Sunday of Advent, do not point us to the image of Mary rocking a new baby in her arms, but rather to the Second Coming. “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” Matthew tells us. And Paul commends to us that “now is the moment for you to wake from sleep.” Be awake, keep watch. The day of the Lord is near. God is on the move. We do not know the day or the time, but we must be ready, we must be looking.
Isaiah also gives us a dramatic image of the day of the Lord’s coming. Many people will flock to God’s mountain, carrying with them the weapons of war. The words and images Isaiah gives us are ones that we would be wise to heed this day. As the people climb God’s mountain, they reshape their weapons, turning “swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” That which was used for fighting becomes the instrument of growth and cultivation. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore,” the prophet says. Instead, they cry “come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
As a people living in the midst of war, these lessons seem especially powerful for me this Advent. In the midst of our warfare, we hear the psalmist’s words: “Peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers.” And mingled with Isaiah’s words, we can imagine what we could become, what we could be, if we turned our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. In this war-torn world, it is hard to imagine peace coming to be a reality; Advent invites us into a place of hope and expectation for what could and can be. Teacher and priest Ruth Meyers writes:
In the midst of the violence of this world, the beginning of Advent invites us to hope for a different world. As the days grow ever shorter, we light candles to remind us of the salvation given through Christ.
But it is not enough to light candles and carry on with our rituals. "Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light," we pray. As followers of Christ, we are to arm ourselves not with swords and spears, but with Christ, the light of the world.
Advent is a complex season. It is full of hope and expectation. It is rich with images of light in the midst of darkness. And it is a time we are called to repent and of to pay attention. God calls us to look at our own lives, our own world—full of swords and spears and transform them into instruments of growth, peace and transformation. Matthew and Paul tell us that we must be ready—we do not know when the time is coming. It is a time of watching and waiting into which we are invited to be active participants. Episcopal Church historian Don Armentrout writes:

Are we to be passive? No, very much the opposite. When Buddha asked a question similar to the one Jesus asked: “Who do people say that I am?” his disciples all
gave answers ... “Oh, you’re this, you’re that.” The Buddha replied, “I am awake.” To be awake is to be vigilant and active.

That is what Advent is all about: to be awake. As you journey to the manger throughout this season, keep alert. Remain aware of the presence of God in your life and in our world, open and receptive to the salvation that has been brought through the Incarnation of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so we begin the journey to the manger. The journey is every bit as real for us today as it was for Mary and Joseph all those years ago. It is the same journey and, paradoxically, it is a different journey. The journey is not merely about a pretty little baby sleeping in a manger—the journey is about meeting God, face to face, in flesh, in human form. The journey is about seeing the divine: fully human and fully God and walking with him on along the way. God’s promise of salvation for all of creation includes not only the birth of a baby, but also the promise of a God who continues to move fearlessly into our complicated world and into our messy lives. The Advent journey is about God, who is on the move. And the journey is also about watching, about keeping awake, about being moved out of our complacency into a place of new understanding, new thinking and new vision, where we may see our God, on the move. God is on the move, about to, once again, do something brilliant and strange, stirring and startling. God is on the move—on the mountains, in the valleys, on the streets and in the manger. God is on the move, so make ready for Love Incarnate, a love so fierce that it will cause the heavens to shake. Be awake. Keep watch. Be ready. God is on the move.