7 Epiphany year A

7 Epiphany Year A
February 19, 2017

    Every time I read the lessons for this week, I found myself getting stuck at the Collect of the Day…”O Lord, you have taught us that without love, whatever we do is worth nothing….”  If I had to sum up all that I know about prayer, about Jesus, about worship… and if I only had one word to do it with, I think my word would be love…

    And today, scripture gives us a look into what the life lived in God’s love looks like.  Now, I have to say, that reading Leviticus is not an easy proposition… but… it is something that everyone should do at least once; it will help make some sense out of Jesus’ actions… but along with that, it is important for us as Christians to know the law, and to know how it has been lived out in the lives of God’s people.

    It’s easy for us to think “We have Jesus, we don’t need the law”.  Well… it’s not that simple, really.  Jesus himself says that he has come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.  For us, what is important to understand about that, is that Jesus embodies the law; by that, I mean that Jesus has become the law in his very person…

    We all know those people who are living examples of something wonderful; people who by their very lives and nature bring to mind concepts that are bigger than themselves; icons, if you will; and there may be different icons for each of us; when I think about rock and roll music, my first thoughts are about the band U2… for others it’s the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; but we all have those symbols in our lives, icons that point to something bigger.

    Jesus is so much more than just an icon or a symbol… Jesus is the law in his life and in his body… He lives his life not just in accordance with the law, but does even what the law cannot do for us;  he shows us how to live the law in every aspect of our being…
   
    Whenever I hear a scripture passage begin… “You have heard that it was said”…. And continue, “But I say to you….” I get a little tense, because I know that Jesus is about to issue a serious challenge.  He is well aware of what the law says, and well aware of what we all find to be acceptable behavior… While loving our neighbor isn’t always easy, we know that it is something we are “supposed to do”.  Well… Jesus wants us to go an infinite number of steps further… that’s what happens when love becomes incarnate; that’s what it means to have love be the absolute driving force in our lives… it demands that we do things that go beyond what is expected.  When love becomes incarnate, when love takes on a human body, and God and humanity collide in that same body… things are likely to get pretty crazy… what’s acceptable by human standards, is not always acceptable by God’s standards… love means so much more than it does on a Valentine’s day card, as wonderful as that is… love, for those of us who are followers of Jesus, becomes a difficult thing; it becomes something that transcends our emotions and becomes something that we, like Jesus live out in our bodies and our spirits.  You and I are called to internalize, to embody God’s holy law so that everything we do is informed by the law… living the law is so much different than just adhering to the law… Like Jesus, we are to take the law into our being and act intentionally, not just in ways that society deems as proper, but in ways that God deems as proper.  That means that the law has infused us… all of us, so that our bodies, minds and spirits are one with the law…
    Love, seems to be, the way that Jesus embodies the law, and calls us to do likewise.  Love, is not simply about our emotions; it is about how we act even when it’s hard to do so.  Giving your cloak when you have already given your coat is hard to do...We may never get to be perfect as God is perfect…. Only God has that distinction, but our life’s work is to journey toward the goal; to go the extra mile, to love those who hate us, to not harbor evil thoughts about others… it’s difficult work;  It’s necessary work for the kingdom of God to spread.
   
    I received a package from amazon yesterday, and they apparently have been using some Valentine’s day themed boxes.  On the box it said, “Three words to describe love” with three lines I suppose that were for me to write three words that describe love.  Since I was in sermon mode, I said to myself, well, there are three words that we as Christians have to describe love… They are, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Love and law really aren’t different in the kingdom.  The law was given to us to help us know what God wanted from us… Jesus came in part, to give us a living example of what it meant to truly become the law, to have love be the driving factor for all our actions, and the Holy Spirit, also a gift of Love, helps us to live into the embodiment of the law that we have been called to.  The goal is to have others recognize the law embodied in us as love… a love that is often hard to live into; who wants to love those who persecute them?  But Jesus prayed even for them as he hung on the cross… ‘Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing….”  It’s the ultimate icon of love, and it shows us just how far reaching the law is.

    It is good for us to remember that the law is there for us to guide our actions; it’s also important to remember that Jesus himself, embodied the law and gave it a new and difficult interpretation.  I hope that each of us will figure out how to embody the law in our own lives.  Who do we need to love today?  How will be become icons of God’s holy law?

6 Epiphany 17 - Community

6 Epiphany Year A
February 12, 2017

What made you decide to come to this church?  To the Episcopal Church? To St. David’s?  Was it as simple as it was the closest church to where you live?  Was it because it was the church your family went to?  Was it because you knew something about the Episcopal Church and wanted to check out how Episcopalians practiced Christianity?

    When I became an Episcopalian, I was looking for community.  I was clear across the country from where I grew up; where I grew up, people went to the Catholic parish that was in their part of the neighborhood; for other denominations, there was usually only one parish for a large geographic area.  When I had more freedom to decide where I wanted to go to Church, I decided to check out the Episcopal church because it had much of what I was used to and loved about the church of my childhood, with some different expressions of how they lived that out… imperfectly, yes… but I longed for a community that put into practice what it believed to  be the gospel of Christ.  I wanted to be part of something that was bigger than itself; somewhere that my own gifts to the community would be discerned and utilized for the good of others.  I wanted to be loved and accepted; I didn’t want to live my life in isolation, where I had to depend on my own strengths to get me through; I wanted to be held accountable to a group of people who were in turn accountable to the community for what we did when we were together as well as when we were apart; mostly, I wanted to learn about Jesus and deepen my relationship with him.

    Community matters.  When we go to a church, believe there is a difference between going and truly belonging. The Episcopal church has all sorts of letters and things that formally acknowledge one’s membership, but it’s not the same as belonging.  Belonging, means we have a vested interest in what happens within the community…. It means that we care about other members… it means, that I will be vulnerable enough with you to allow you to have an effect on me…

    There is a lot in our readings today that speaks about how communities are to behave.  Paul spent much of his life and ministry traveling from one community to another, helping them to grow in faith in Jesus…

    The church in Corinth seems to be all about status rather than about the gospel, and Paul in no uncertain terms is done.   He lovingly but firmly tells them that it doesn’t matter who baptized them; that there is no status in a community where Jesus is at the center; they are there, no matter who they are, to do the work of the Kingdom; each of them are servants, equal to each other, working together for a common mission and purpose.    Concerns of the Kingdom are what should be driving them; not their personal ideas of fame or status.

    Jesus has his own things to say about community as well, and they are hard words to hear.  I have come to be grateful for Jesus’ sometimes harsh way of putting things… I can be more than a bit stubborn and don’t always hear things that are subtle… Jesus is not subtle here at all; we all know things like murder and adultery are against the commandments and can destroy communities and families; but Jesus makes an even harsher claim, that even our angry or lust filled thoughts can destroy a community just as much as blatant actions… and if we think about that, we know there is truth in it; we know when we are angry with another that it has an affect on how we act; it throws the whole working of the community off; others can begin to tell that something is “off”... even subtle behaviors can become overblown, sides are taken, and suddenly a community of loving support and hard kingdom work becomes stuck in it’s own frail humanity, and it’s ability to be the church is severely compromised….

    Let’s face it; the church is about people… buildings are nice… they can and are often necessary… but really, what makes us church is the relationships that we have with each other; those relationships are one of the ways that we get to know God… and the church, is different than what we encounter in the world.  What we see playing out in so many other aspects of our lives, is that it’s the individual that matters most… that we can do all that we need for ourselves… that individual pride and accomplishment is to be valued above all else.

    We know differently.  One of the things that we learn when we hear about Jesus’ dealings with people is that no one person is above another… community, the church, is made up of imperfect people, all of whom are trying to love their God as best as they can, and we all know that we don’t get it right some of the time… but in a community that is trying to live by Jesus’ commandments to love God and love our neighbor, sometimes we get to experience grace… sometimes, we get to help others, and sometimes, it’s me or it’s you that is vulnerable and needs the community to pray and act on our behalf… no one is above the other… no one is forgotten….

    Church is… and should be a corrective and a haven against what we are experiencing in other parts of our lives.  When I found the church… I found a place where people loved each other despite themselves some days;  I found a place where the things that separated us in the workplace didn’t have a chance to gain a foothold… I found a place where I met Jesus in the faces of others… and where I learned how to work for the kingdom rather than the empire…

Beloved, there is so much that would have us be pulled in ways that just don’t build up Christ’s church…. And I’m not talking about simple politeness here; some polite people are the worst community killers there are out there… you and I have been called to something different.  We have been called to live in radical truthfulness where we know that all of us are equal in God’s sight… and we are all equally fragile and broken too…  but as we say about our beloved St. David’s, we are small, but we are mighty… we are mighty when we act together as a community that is held together by remembering it is Jesus who is the center and reason for all that we do.  It’s not about us; it’s about him…  what we do and what we say matters; it has consequences on the health of the church… and it’s good for us to take stock of that every now and then to make sure we are acting in ways that are healthy and loving, rather than self serving…

    What made you come here?  Are those reasons still true today?  My prayer for us, is that we can together be the reason another comes, and the reason why we all stay.
   

5 Epiphany - Annie's story

5 Epiphany Year A
February 12, 2017

I have the privilege this past Thursday of hosting the monthly meeting of the Episcopal clergy in the region.   I really enjoy those meetings because it’s important for us to be together and to share in community.   It’s also great to hear the successes my colleagues are enjoying as well as sharing in our common frustrations.  While we were gathering and greeting each other, my friend Emily walked into our kitchen, and a few minutes later said, “Hey, Tracey, I know where this cross came from…”  She was referring to this crocheted cross which had been hanging outside the sacristy… “Oh yeah? Tell me about it” I said.  I admitted I knew nothing about the origins of the cross, and that I think it has been hanging on that hook the whole time I have been here.

    Emily told me that she had one just like it, as did the Deacon at St. Christopher’s.  Apparently, there are also a few at St. Mary’s Edmond.  There were crocheted by a woman named Annie.  She was a parishioner at St. Mary’s who was baptized there one Easter… Annie was mostly homeless and wandered around a bit, living with someone who was abusive to her and who sponged off of her meager Social Security.  She ended up in Midwest City for a while and gave our some of her crosses… she also sold other things she made to have extra money.  She went back to Edmond, and there was some work done to get her a real apartment.  As is often the case with folks like Annie, she ended up refusing, preferring her life on the streets.  I don’t know that anyone knows why… I also don’t know how one of her crosses made it here.  I assume she came here a few times somewhere in her journey to and from St. Mary’s.   She continued to be involved at St. Mary’s even when she was told that they couldn’t support her need for motel rooms.  Annie died suddenly while walking along in Edmond where lots of shopkeepers apparently knew her.  St. Mary’s claimed her body when no one else would and held a memorial service for her....

    Today we hear more of Jesus’ sermon on the mount… he tells his disciples that they are salt of the earth, the light of the world… What do you think of when you hear that someone is “salt of the earth”?  The people that Jesus was teaching that day would have been pretty simple people, fishermen and other folks who worked with their hands, people who probably lived difficult lives when the empire was around and making things difficult; but otherwise good, honest people who longed for a message of hope that would sustain them and those whom they loved…

Jesus certainly wanted to bring a message of hope to them… he also wanted them to BE a message of hope… they are salt… light… they are the ones who are to bring the light into a dark world…

And that is certainly our message too.  Discipleship is not about looking around at others and wondering who is going to do… discipleship is about doing, and doing joyfully.  Annie’s story in many ways is a tragic story and we can sit and talk all day long about her choices and wonder why she would refuse permanent, warm housing… But here’s the thing… it doesn’t matter… and it didn’t even matter when she was still alive.  Those were her choices which she made freely.  Her choices didn’t affect her discipleship.  She was a person who lived a hard life, harder than most of us will ever know for ourselves, at least I hope we never will… and yes… when we try to “help” someone into a better life, sometimes they make decisions that we wouldn’t make… but…

Annie loved the church… it was a place of love, acceptance and kindness. Probably something she didn’t get much of elsewhere.  And Annie, in her way, gave back.  She gave these crosses because it was something she could do to spread light… she knew how important the symbol was… she could crochet… so she used her talent and gifts to give back to the church and it’s people whom she cared about and who helped her to know Jesus… and in her doing so, I think she taught us about Jesus… her simple gifts were and are gifts of light.  I am pretty sure Annie knew the importance of the symbol of the cross as much as any of us do; and certainly, Annie was a broken and frail human being… but guess what… so are all of us; we are all broken in some way; we all have ways in which we make bad choices; none of us gets it right; and yet, even with all of that, Annie didn’t let it stop her from being light…

The sermon on the mount is serious business.  Matthew’s gospel assumes that Jesus is the messiah, the savior in whom the kingdom of God has been brought to earth… the kingdom is not some far of place of rewards when we die… certainly the kingdom’s fullness is only realized at the heavenly banquet… but… it starts here and now… and all of us who claim to be disciples have responsibilities to bring kingdom light into the world… no matter who we are, no matter how we are broken… we all must trust that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has given us what we need to be light and salt to the world.  None of us will do it quite the same; Annie’s gifts were hers.  She used them because she knew that’s what disciples did.  She took sacred vows at her Easter baptism to be a disciple, and in the simple act of crocheting a cross, I think she succeeded.

You are the light of the world… some days maybe it’s not a very bright light, but it is light nonetheless; it is the light of Christ that we have each been given in our baptism… it is the light that we are to use to help spread the kingdom of God.  And perhaps, when we join our dim light with another’s the light will get even brighter.

There is much tension around us these days… no matter who we are, we are disciples called to bring light into the world; not just to people who agree with us or who look like us, but to everyone we encounter.   That’s how light works.  Our challenge is to figure out what gifts, what light Jesus is asking us to use; and then without fear to act in love to use that light...What gifts are we hiding because we think we are too broken to use them?  May we be the light we are being called to be…. Even a small glow can transform the darkness.  May we be transformed this day so that we might help transform the world around us...