Pentecost: I become what I receive

Pentecost 2018

    (Singing)  I become what I receive…. I become what I receive…(Alana Levandoski)

    I posted this beautiful chant on facebook about 2 weeks ago and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head or my heart since.  I find myself singing it throughout the day… it has become a daily prayer, a type of praying without ceasing. The artist, is a woman by the name of Alana Levandoski, a Canadian mom of three, who I believe, is also Anglican.  

    Anyway, this simple chant seems incredibly relevant to me as we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost.  Today is the last day of the great 50 days of Easter, that begins with the miraculous resurrection of Jesus, and ends with Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit.  We are all familiar with the wonderful story from the Book of Acts, where flames dance on the heads of the apostles, and people are spoken to in their own languages; it is a wonderfully chaotic time that begins the apostles ministry to the ends of the earth; the are given the Holy Spirit to allow them to preach the gospel of Jesus an to bring good news of the kingdom of God.

    I am particularly moved this year by the words of Jesus in John’s gospel this morning.  “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”  I have mentioned before that I love how John’s gospel makes it clear that God the Father, Jesus and now the Holy Spirit, form such a community of holiness and love that they share equally in this world that they have created out of love. The Holy Spirit is given to humanity to help them to live into the reality of the kingdom of God…The Holy Spirit is God's very love, overflowing and given to us.

    So… what do we think about that?  What do we think of when we hear the words from our Baptism service, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever”?  Do we feel God calling us to life in the kingdom? Or have we let other things get in the way so that we have become deaf to God’s call? Have our lives as baptized people become so routine that we have forgotten just how radical it is?  Have we forgotten just how powerful the love of God is?

    Let us remember that God so loved the world, that he entered into human history in Jesus so that God could be close to us.  Let us remember that in that life, God’s nature and human nature were joined together making us children of the living God forever.  Let us remember that there is nothing routine about the life that Jesus led. He lived his life so close to God the Father, that there were many who couldn’t handle how his life reminded how far they had fallen from God’s ideal that the killed him.  Let us remember that while his body laid in the tomb, Jesus descended to the dead, breaking open the gates of hell so that no one would spend eternity separated from the love presence of God ever again. Let us remember, that Jesus has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit that lives in us, and prays in us, and helps us to make our prayers into actions of love and justice for all God’s people.  Let us remember, that we, you and I are heirs of the kingdom, and because the Holy Spirit lives in us, that WE are to become God’s truth, God’s love and God’s peace; we are to continue the work that Jesus began… let. us. remember...

    Beloved, the world needs the Spirit of Truth that we have been given.   The work of justice and peace and love is not even close to finished. There are children out there who believe that killing other children solves problems; there are children in our own neighborhood who will go to bed hungry tonight; world powers are itching for more war while war rages in other places for years and years; there are people so desperate to escape the evil that has invaded their homeland, that they are willing to risk death to get to somewhere that might give their children a chance to live without fear; political discourse has become so filled with hatred that does nothing but further hurt the least of these…  This is the world that God loves… imperfect, broken but loved. This is the world that God has given to us, as God once gave it to Jesus, and God has given us the Holy Spirit to give us the power to love and to act in God’s world. We must become what we receive; each Sunday we gather to receive the body and blood of Christ within our very bodies, reminding us, that we are temples of God’s Holy Spirit, and Jesus’ hands and feet in the world… as Paul tells us this morning, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; we are not alone in this work of the kingdom. Let us remember that we have a community of hope that keeps us all accountable, and we have Jesus’ Holy Spirit praying in us and through us… this day, may that Spirit lead us to have our prayers become actions that will help us to bring the kingdom of God here, this day, and may it be good news… Come Holy Spirit and be our guide… help us to be the temples that you have created us to be… Help us to become the love that we receive.

    (Sing) I become what I receive...

Trinity Sunday 2018

Trinity Sunday 2018

    Today the Church celebrates the great mystery of the Trinity, which I always thought was kind of redundant in a way… isn’t every Sunday Trinity Sunday?

    Earlier this week, the minister provincial of my order asked us to fill in this sentence:  We are an order because… Most of us included being a community somewhere in our answer. In the lives that we all live as Christians, having a community of love and support around us is incredibly important to our wellbeing and to the life of the whole community.  WHen I was in the navy in boot camp, our mantra was “Teamwork is the key to success”. We knew that our lives could depend on another at any time, and we did not serve alone. It is the same for us. We cannot live this life that we have been baptized into without a community.  We need others to hold us accountable… we need others to love and be loved by… we were created to be together, and it is in being together that we mirror God’s life. In the great mystery of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we see, perhaps imperfectly the life of God which is lived in God’s community of the Trinity.  Three persons, one God is impossible for us to truly grasp… it is a math problem with no solution; and it is also hard to realize sometimes that God’s time isn’t linear… all persons of the Trinity have always been.., and they have always all been involved in God’s actions. What is said of the Father, is said of the Son and of the Spirit… God so loved the world, that God gave all things life, and loved us so much that we too are adopted into the life that is God’s life lived in community….

    We cannot love in a vacuum by ourselves…and love is difficult, but it is also life giving.  God knows both of those realities, especially because of the life the Son lived in Jesus. How difficult it must have been and still is to love those who betray him and misunderstand his message… and yet, he loves by pouring out the Spirit upon us so that we might love and understand just a little bit better.  Let’s face it, the story we have been been brought into makes no sense. Why would God, the creator of all that is, give up his Godliness to become human, only to be betrayed and killed by those whom he loved? And even when that went bad, continue to pour out Godself in the Holy Spirit, so that good news might still be preached and worked in the world?  It makes no sense to us because we are not God. Our love, our sense of peace and justice is rather finite. God’s very being is love… it has no beginning and no end… and because God loves, you and I are...Because God loves, you and I are… God has loved us all into existence… You and me, and the people we love most, and the people we hate and fear most too… All of life has been loved into existence because God so loved the world… And because God so loved the world, we are to love the world as well…as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said last week, Love is the way… help us oh holy and blessed Trinity to live in the way…

    I want to leave you today with a poem full of wonderful images.  Last week, I sang to you, a song by Alana Levandoski. Today, I leave you with a piece of poetry that is spoken in her song, The Christ hymn.  The poem is written by Joel McKerrow… and as I kept listening to it, it brought to mind images of the Trinity…. Images of creation, Jesus, and the overflowing of the love of God in the Spirit….

And this is he who takes all that he is and bestows it  freely
Gives meekly, takes infinite power and bows the knee
Have you ever seen God on the ground?
Palms pressed to the floor
Sweat dripping on the dirt
The cut and stretch of being human
A sacred shelter of presence
The fullness of he, creator of kingdoms and galaxies
Of principalities and every moment crafted through time
The divine placed wholly in human flesh
The infinite squashed down into finite
Like fitting 10,000 angels on the top of a pin
Like the entire ocean is poured into a pool
Like the wine is running over
Like It is bursting at the seams
The Christ, he was bursting at the seams

Laying our life down

6 Easter Year B
May 6, 2018

    I was scrolling through facebook earlier this week on a morning that I was avoiding doing other things… some days, that’s what facebook is best for; work avoidance...anyway, I started reading a truly beautiful story about a family that was expecting their second child.  They went in for a routine ultrasound, right at around 19-20 weeks. It was an ultrasound where they would be finding out the gender of their baby and get to see it’s face and measure it for due date possibilities. It’s a very special day in the life of a family. On that day, however, the couple found out that their precious child had a birth defect where the child’s spine would had not and would not close at the top; when that happens, significant portions of the brain do not develop, and the child, if it lives until it’s born, will die soon after birth.  Of course, this family was devastated to hear this news...There is no hope for a family who receives this diagnosis for their child. The couple took a few days to decide what they wanted to do; there aren’t many options; one is to continue to carry the pregnancy, and the other is to end it. The parents then did something that I think is really amazing. They asked, if their baby, who was a daughter, would be eligible to be an organ donor if she were carried to term. The hospital had not had this situation before and it took a few days to figure it all out, but, indeed, their daughter, whom they named Eva, could indeed be an organ donor.   This family was living new policies for infant organ donation as Eva’s birth approached. Make no mistake; these parents did not have any false notions that their daughter would live if they carried her to term; they were well aware that if she lived even a few minutes, it would be a miracle… they wanted to try and bring something good and life giving out the death of their daughter. A week or so before she was due to be born, the worst possible thing happened; Eva died before her birth, which meant her organs could no longer be donated. Her parents were devastated again. Eva was born by induction, and her parents were able to hold her and say their goodbyes.  Then their doctor came in and said that the foundation that deals with organ donations said that Evan could still have her eyes donated. And so, her parents agreed. And so, while it wasn’t at all the scenario they imagined at all, there was still something beautiful and life giving that happened as a result of this family’s sacrifice… someone, perhaps even a child, would have the gift of sight and would see with Eva’s eyes.
    It is both a sad and beautiful story.  What struck me about the story, was that even in the midst of intense grief, these parents were able to think about the needs of others.  And, I daresay, that it was at great personal cost. First, carrying a baby that was terminal that could die before it was born, put the mother at physical risk.  And then, there was the 17 or so weeks of being pregnant with a child that had no possibility of living. How does a parent respond to all of the questions as mom starts to look pregnant?  How do you say, there isn’t going to be a baby nursery, or any of the incredibly happy things that most of associate with having a new baby?

    “Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
    One of the reasons I love John’s gospel, is because of all of the talk of love, and of relationship between the Father, Jesus and us.  These words are just as true for us today as they were for the original disciples. Jesus levels the field by calling his disciples friends; and because of the love Jesus has for us, we too are his friends.  As any of us know, the language Jesus uses if overflowing with meaning; friendship for Jesus is not something that is defined by casual relationship; rather is is defined by deep love that sacrifices one’s own comfort for another.  Jesus’ sacrifice for his friends was of course the ultimate laying down of life; it cost him everything, and his death brought life to his friends. I think when most of us read this passage from John’s gospel we, or maybe I, might pass it over a bit because surely, Jesus isn’t calling me to make that kind of sacrifice for another.  Well friends, it could happen. We might very well find ourselves in a position where we might be asked to die for another. But there are plenty of lesser, but incredibly important ways that we might lay our lives down for another; we might find ourselves in places where we might be asked to do things that are incredibly difficult and painful in order that a friend might be brought to wholeness.  And while friends whom we know and care about are incredibly important in our lives, when we realize that all of those who have been created by God are our friends in a kingdom kind of way, laying our lives down for another becomes even more difficult and perhaps even more necessary. The reason that the story about Eva and her parents was so beautiful to me was because these parents wanted to turn their tragedy into something life giving to people that they didn’t even know.  Knowing what would be facing them over those weeks, their sacrifice and their gift was a gift beyond price; and that’s what it means to lay our lives down for another. Sometimes I think we get a little bit too comfortable with being a Christian, but we have to remember that we are not called to a life of comfort; we are called to a life of service to everyone around us, but especially to those we don’t know, who live on or near the margins of society, even if their is personal cost to us; it is only in laying down our lives, that we might save our lives, and abide fully with Jesus.

    What kind of sacrifices is Jesus asking of us today?  Will we respond with our lives, and without fear?