Meditation Wednesday in Advent 1.... Feast of St. Andrew

Wednesday in 1 Advent/Feast of St. Andrew, apostle and martyr

Look upon him and be radiant,
and let not your faces be ashamed.... psalm 34:5, Morning prayer

As I sit and read morning prayer, I am struck by two things today... first, that our lives are meant to be lived as praise to God... think about that for a minute. If I believed that my life was in itself a living prayer of praise and thanksgiving to Jesus, to the God of love, what might I change about my life? Which brings me to my second thought for today from today's psalm... I should not be ashamed to face my loving creator... I am created in the image of Love, of Goodness... society has given me all sorts of images that don't align with who I truly am; when I buy into those images, I become ashamed, full of self doubt and at the extreme, self loathing. Today there is no shame; not that there aren't things that need some tuning up, but I am created in the image of Love... so are you... today may we all live as prayers of praise and thanksgiving to Jesus.

Tuesday Advent 1

Tuesday 1 Advent

It's transformation Tuesday! At least that's what Facebook tells me. All kinds of pictures and posts of how people's lives have changed. Some have gotten healthier, some have larger (or smaller !) families. But you know what? We almost never talk about how our lives are transformed by Jesus. Scripture is FULL of stories of people whose lives are completely different because of the contact they have had with Jesus.... Zacchaeus, one of my favorite characters, completely changes how he lives and how he interacts with the world around him, helping the poor and repaying those whom he has cheated; all because Jesus wanted to have dinner at his house. I know that I am sober today because of meeting Jesus... and my whole life is different as a result. What's your Transformation Tuesday story?

Meditation for Monday in 1 Advent

Monday Advent 1:

"Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. "  Isaiah chapter 1

Well.... if there was any doubt about what God is asking of us, our readings from morning prayer have answered that question.  Again and again scripture says it is what we do for the sake of others that matters to God.  I found it interesting that being made clean, at least in my reading today, is equated with ministry with and for others.  For me it brings images of baptism and the covenant that we are brought into by water and the Spirit... what  will each of do today to be made clean?

First Sunday of Advent year A 2016

1 Advent Year A
November 27 2016

    And so beloved… we begin another church year… the themes of this season should be familiar… hope, waiting, love, light, worship, peace, just to name a few.  I love this season most of all.  The music, the colors, the readings…. Perhaps most of all, I am moved by the journey from darkness into light…  with light, there hope … and we wait for the coming of a Holy child, as well as the second coming of the one who was crucified, Jesus….  It’s an in between time, which admittedly, can feel a bit unsettling.  Our biblical lessons will take us to all sorts of places where we will talk about the end of times… it’s not particularly gentle, and it’s not really comforting in a lot of ways…

    But it is hopeful.  Because as followers of Jesus we know who it is we are waiting for, we know that he has promised to be with us to the end of the age; we know who we are waiting for; we know that we have nothing to fear…

    Perhaps the challenges that we feel in this season are even more keenly felt when we look at the world we live in.  As I was reading our lessons for this morning, I was struck this year by the passage from Isaiah, speaking about God and about God’s people, “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

    What a beautiful image,  one that is filled with such life giving hope… what would it mean for us to beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks?  Well, most of us don’t use swords or spears… and most of us aren’t farmers that plow or take care us crops… so it might be that these images are a bit lost on us.  In this day of social media and instantly given information, none of us are unaware of the war that goes on daily; although I think we are all guilty of not truly seeing it…

    So what might the swords and spears be in our own lives?  The tricky thing about Advent is that we are reminded, as we are in our opening prayers today, that we are not to stand by idle and just wait for things to happen… yes, we are waiting for God to act, but God is also expecting us to act; we are the instruments that God has chosen to cast away the works of darkness; with God’s abundant grace upon us, WE are the instrument of peace and of hope to others; even now, it is our swords and spears that must be remade into peaceful tools that help further the kingdom…   In our gospel reading, Jesus warns that no one knows the hour that the Lord is coming, but it is time to keep vigilant, time to watch, and oddly enough a time to do…

    But we don’t just spin our wheels doing things that mean nothing; Lord knows there is plenty of that going on… Culture and Empire would have us believe that happiness is available in a shopping mall or in a political platform.  We know that joy cannot be bought; Judas Iscariot tried and it ended in the death of his teacher and friend, and in his own desperate life ending act; Joy, is not merely a feeling, but the knowledge that Jesus is with us no matter what is going on around us; and that is what we come to know as we journey along in Advent, that we wait for Emmanuel, God with us… the Holy one who taught us that culture and Empire aren’t going to bring us closer to God, but that relationship with our neighbor would bring us closer to God… so Joy, something that culture and Empire like the claim as a feeling they produce in people, is not theirs to claim.  It is ours to claim, and it will keep us going when culture and Empire disappoint us…

    So back to swords and spears… what swords and spears are there in our lives that need to be reimagined into tools of God’s Kingdom?  Maybe some of our own attitudes about our neighbor could be turned around and used for good… perhaps the energy we spend on protecting ourselves from those who we think are “out there” could be used to actually help those who are near; perhaps, we all need to look at the money the Empire uses to fuel the war machine and try to spend more on feeding and clothing people; perhaps we need to look at how we feel about refugees and immigrants and quit trying to build walls and borders to keep people out, both in our country and our neighborhoods, and rather share our resources so that others may experience safety and security… war, the kinds of war that we are experiencing and in some cases even waging on others, is not simply a problem of politics, but it is also a problem of the individual’s heart… we cannot make all of this war waging around us go away with the check of a box… there is work to do beloved, hard, soul searching work that requires us to change something about who we are and how we engage God’s world.  The works of darkness are everywhere… and guess what else?  We have participated in them in some way… every one of us.  We have watched war happen, both in big ways and small… we have turned our hearts and our eyes away from the death dealing that has gone on in our names, in our neighborhood and in our world.  But we don’t have to turn our heads or our hearts any longer…. God’s grace can give us what we need to cast away the works of darkness so that we might be bearers of hope and light.  Bend the swords and spears of your heart; spend you money in ways that help those who need your help; may we feed our neighbors rather that fight against them… may we always support the cause of peace rather than war… may we always be bearers of kingdom light and hope to others… let’s get to work, beloved.  There is much work to do as we wait for Jesus….

Christ the King, Year C 2016

Last Sunday of Pentecost

November 19, 2016

Christ the King, Year C

    I remember a morning in seminary where I was saying morning prayer at my kitchen table… psalm 46 was the psalm that morning, and when I got to verse 11, “Be still then and know that I am God”, I couldn’t go any further.  I stopped and sat there for several minutes and wasn’t able to continue the prayers that morning.  You know it’s a big deal when I am speechless.  I am pretty sure that God had a very direct message for me that day, and that God was fairly unconcerned about my plans for the morning or the rest of the day.  The message was pretty straightforward… Be STILL then and KNOW that I am GOD…

    I don’t know about you, but speaking for myself, it’s a lesson that I need to hear, probably every day, maybe even several times a day. There is so much that swirls around my head, the busyness of life that gets in the way of everything that keeps me centered… I can get caught in the place where I think I am in control, that I am I am charge of what’s going on; it’s not a good place for me to be.  Anxiety is a very difficult emotion that grows and invades everything else around me so that I can’t see or feel anything else…

    Being still is a good message for us as we move towards Advent… Today, the Sunday we call Christ the King, is a time when we are reminded that we are members of the Kingdom of God; all of the insanity of the empire that tries to knock us off of our kingdom legs just really isn’t as important as we might believe… we are Kingdom people,  we are the “Jesus Movement” as our Presiding Bishop says and that, is where our loyalty and our energies ought to be…

    And just in case we missed it, our gospel lesson is a painful reminder of who our King really is, and what it means to be Kingdom people.   In exactly the opposite of the self centeredness of the rise of the Empire, we are painfully brought back to the place where our true King reigns from… not from a throne or a place of political strength, but a place of death and weakness.  How can God let it end like this?? What kind of King gets nailed to a cross and calls it victory?

    Certainly not a King of the Empire.  Only God would let the story end like that… but we know it doesn’t end there.  The story looks to many to be one of defeat; all the name calling, all the verbal assaults, being put to death… only the true Kind would go to those dark places so that you and I would never have to go to them alone; only God’s Kingdom would have two thieves seated on each side of the King; only Jesus would bring comfort to the two criminals when his own suffering was so intense.   What kind of King would let it end this way?  A King who desired peace and justice; a King who believed that his Kingdom belonged to children, women, the lame and the outcast; only the kind of King who would break down the walls of division and hate could let it end this way.   Can you imagine what his followers thought all this time?  Fear and shock come to mind for sure.  Fear that it had all gone wrong, that all they believed in and fought for, and gave their lives for was somehow misguided…

    Be still then, and know that I am God.  Even in the midst of the confusion and hate of the Empire, even in the darkness of the crucifixion, God is God.  That’s seems like the great joke of the universe, doesn’t it?  But Easter people know that this is no joke.  Easter people know that the horror of the cross is no really the end of the story; the story continues beyond the death of Jesus to the giving of the Holy Spirit to the disciples… and the story is still continuing for us.  As Easter people, as Pentecost people, as Kingdom people, we know the story continues with us; we know that we must sometimes Be Still and know then that God is God; and when we have those moments of clarity, we then must act; sometimes we need to be still in order to know how we must act; we have to have time in prayer to build our relationship to Jesus so that when he tells us to go forth into the world, we will actually hear him… but we must be still.  We have to make room for Him in our day, in our minds and in our hearts.  We have to stop thinking that we know what it means to be disciples and listen to what Jesus is trying to tell us.  The stories we hear in scripture aren’t just stories; the are one of the many ways we come to know who God in Jesus is; we learn the ways that God has broken into the world and broken it open so that the Kingdom might be revealed; we hear those stories so that we might know something about who WE are and how our stories connect to each other's stories. We learn that criminals are welcomed into paradise; that walls are torn down, that the sick are healed, the hungry are fed.  We learn about the love of God that is so incredible and endless that we begin to see that NO ONE is excluded from its embrace… those are the lessons we receive from our King.  We will turn another corner soon; we will enter a time of quiet and of listening.  Are we ready to still our minds and hearts? Are we ready to listen?  Are we ready to be still and know then that God is God?  If we are not, I wonder if we are ready to let go of the values of the empire that stand in our way?  It’s not always comforting to think that God is in charge;  it’s a very human thing to think that we know what’s best for us; as many of my friends in AA would tell you, that’s the kind of thinking that got us all into trouble to begin with; sometimes to become the people God has created us to be, we must learn to let go of what works in the empire and let God be God… Jesus is King of the Kingdom; he is the one who challenged Empire at every opportunity, bringing dignity and God’s love to those who the Empire left on the margins.  As disciples we too must act as Jesus acted.  As we begin to enter the holy quiet of Advent, I pray that we take the time to be still and know that God alone is God, and that we will be quiet enough to listen to what he is asking of us.  Be still then… and get ready to act.  The King has come. I pray we will be ready to follow.

A sermon after an election

This is a sermon preached by me, Sunday November 13, 2016.

Proper 28 Year C 16

November 13, 2016

Pentecost 26

An interesting gospel lesson for this morning… as we get closer to Advent, we begin to look at themes about end times… Luke’s gospel was written in about 85 A.D, fifteen or so years after the destruction of the temple that we are hearing about in today’s lesson… The words of Jesus in our lesson are meant to help the audience they were written for overcome their grief about the destruction of the temple and help them to move beyond buildings and structures.



I think I have told the story of the church that I was ordained from, but I will tell the short version because it seems important to do so…. Our lovely little church, also St. David’s, where we worshipped, where many were baptized and married from, was burned to the ground by as arsonist… the Sunday after the fire, we worshipped together in the parish hall where we would worship for many years later with our altar on wheels… anyway, a friend of mine sang a song that she wrote for the offertory…. A song about the pain of having a brother who suffered from schizophrenia… a brother who often chose to live on the streets because he was afraid of the systems that were in place to hopefully protect him… As we gathered that day, it was clear to us that church buildings weren’t the reason we came together. We came together as a church community to love and to worship God and to support and care for one another. When our new rector was in place, long before we were able to build a new building, she said over and over again, “We don’t go to church, we are the church”....



The church, as my rector and mentor said, is not about buildings… it’s about people, it’s about coming together as a community to worship and to support each other…



Institutions, like buildings, do not always stand the test of time or of need and desire. I am sure that today there are a variety of thoughts about this week’s election… but here’s the thing; no matter how it turned out, there would be people who would be unhappy, and perhaps even afraid for a variety of reasons. And even the candidate who won is beginning to repeal some of his promises that led to his victory.
I don’t want to talk about candidates or platforms or parties. I don’t care who you voted for and I don’t want to really talk about it. Those of us who voted did so for our own reasons… However… like I said to the group who gathered with me on Tuesday to share Christ’s body and blood together, and to pray together, no matter who we voted for, no matter what political party we claim… it’s all on support of the empire. None of us is innocent of the crimes of the empire. Drones are still going to kill innocent children in Afghanistan… homeless people will still be on the streets… Jesus warns us over and over again that Empire and Kingdom are not the same thing…Even the temple was involved with the Roman empire which is why Jesus kept getting into so much trouble with the religious leaders of his time.
You and I live in the Empire. No way around it. And for good or ill, sometimes we have to depend on the Empire. As the mother of a disabled child, I have to tell you, that is not a pleasant or reassuring thought because the Empire only has one interest… promoting it’s own well being…
You and I don’t go to church; we are the church; we are a community of believers who through the covenant of baptism are called to be bearers of the kingdom for all people. No matter what institutions are in place, much like the physical temple, or my church in San Diego, those structures will never be the answers that the people of God need, and they will never produce the answers that people desperately need. You and I are the feet and hands of Jesus in the world; you and I have taken sacred vows to respect the dignity of every human being… we are the church, not just gathered here in this building, but we are the church acting in the world, in the middle of the empire. Our allegiance is not to a flag; or a political party; or to a country… As great as the United States is, God is not a force for us to manipulate to our use; God bless America means nothing if God is not also blessing Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Mexico. Being the church, being bearers of the Kingdom means that we are part of something much bigger than the media or any politician would have us believe. And make no mistake beloved; the Empire is not being kind right now to those who are least of these. When we participate in the values of the Empire, the least of these suffer. When we participate in the values of the Empire… we participate in systems of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia… it is the very nature of Empire.
But we are called to something else. We are called to be disciples of Jesus whose whole ministry was based on love; love of God and love of neighbor… not just the neighbor who looks like us, but especially the neighbor who is afraid… the neighbor who is different… Buildings and institutions will come and go… but love endures, love is forever… and being disciples of the God of love, the God who IS love, means that we act. The love of Jesus isn’t just a thing we feel… it’s a thing we do. Let’s remember that Jesus washed the feet of the disciple who betrayed him… the disciple who placed Empire above Kingdom… because love is difficult. It asks us to go places we might not really want to go. It asks us to go beyond what we think is right, and reach further… and Jesus warns his disciples, including us, that it’s hard and that we might even die as a result of loving another…
We don’t go to church…. We are the church… inside this building and more importantly in the world we engage. People are afraid… they are afraid because of what they see and what they have been told… our response as the church is not to say, “get over it, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” So long as there is an Empire beloved, there will be things to fear, no matter who you are. We must all search our hearts and ask forgiveness for our own participation in the values of the Empire that cause fear and answer those values with love… love that gives everything for God’s children…
This is our time to shine, church. This is our time to show what it means to be a disciple. This is the time for “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It won’t be easy, but it is the work we have promised to do. Leave the institutions behind. They will fall, and they will fail. This day and every day, may we love God… love our neighbors… if we pray and worship and open ourselves to the Spirit within us… we will be given what we need. Rise up church… be bearers of the kingdom… be hope, be light… be the love of God… do not simply go to church… be the church.