God's a lousy farmer

Proper 10 Year A

July 16, 2017

6th Sunday after Pentecost

    As most of you know, I am not much of a gardener.  I really don’t enjoy playing in the dirt, but I do admire people who do.  My dad, loved to garden.  He would spend hours outside tending to his tomato patch making sure that everything was just right.  What I did enjoy, was going with him to the garden center to get his supplies.  He always made sure that he had everything he needed to ensure a good tomato crop; and, he also was willing to share  his crop with our neighbors.

    I was in conversation this week with a friend of mine, who since his retirement has taken up cattle farming.  He lives in a farming community in New York State.  There are several small farms in the area and it sounds to me like there might be different kinds of farms, so that the community can have much of what it might need to feed local families by the cooperation of the local farmers.

    The story of the sower from today’s gospel is one we have certainly heard before, and I am certain that I have said on more than one occasion that God is a lousy farmer, at least by typical farming standards.  It seems to me that according to the story, seed is plentiful, and it is scattered rather haphazardly all over the place.  No one, who desires a decent crop would scatter seed that way; certainly when my dad was growing plants from seed, he would’ve never have just thrown the seed everywhere… plants that don’t grow and produce don’t do anyone any good, do they?  And, it just creates a huge mess, and more work…

    But here’s the thing; it seems to me, that God doesn’t much care.  As I was looking at our lesson from Isaiah, and as I was driving around town this week, I had a thought… sometimes haphazard seed scattering is really quite lovely.  I was thinking about wildflowers and even some flowering weeds…. Now, the gardeners in the group, don’t yell at me; but I can remember the absolute joy of several small children near and dear to my heart, in picking dandelion flowers, and when the cool fuzzy seed puffs sprouted, how they enjoyed blowing them away… anyone who has ever received the gift of a dandelion bouquet knows just how special they are to the child picking them; and I love wild flowers; the colors, the crazy places they grow, how pretty they can make even a junk yard look. There’s a lot to be said for seeds that just kind of land where they will, and where the wind blows them.  Maybe God has the right idea…

    If we think about the spiritual life in terms of the parable of the sower, don’t you think it feels like that sometimes?  Sometimes we hear the Word of God and it motivates us for a while, and maybe it’s only temporary, or maybe something really strikes us, and so like the somewhat more careful gardener, we try to do what we think needs to happen so that scripture might take root in us in a deeper way, in a way that leads to us being more responsive to the world around us.  Having “ears to hear” for us is not simply about hearing, but about doing… when we truly hear the Word of God, when we truly listen to the life and ministry of Jesus, we aren’t merely hearing with our ears, but we are hearing with our hearts and minds and we are doing… we cannot possibly be considered disciples of Jesus without being moved to action when our lives intersect with his; and, as disciples, we also become sowers… but maybe the way that we become sowers is a bit different; for us I think it’s often a matter of someone seeing Jesus in us that helps to sow seeds in them; at least I hope so; but I also think that maybe we need to scatter the seeds that God gives us a little more haphazardly; God provides all the necessary care… prayer, worship, relationship, sacrament… all of those things help the seeds of God’s Word to not only take root in us, but to help us tend to the spiritual gardens that God has given us to take care of… and honestly, it’s none of our business to really know what kind of seeds we are given; maybe it’s tomatoes… but maybe it’s wildflowers… whatever soil is in another’s hearts to receive the seeds, isn’t our business… and lest we think that dandelions are a disappointment, I shall remind you that guinea pigs love dandelions… and, I had neighbor who used to harvest dandelion greens from her yard and ours because she knew we didn’t use weedkiller.  Dandelion salad can be pretty tasty…

    All that to say, some days our spiritual lives produce amazing things, and sometimes it seems like it’s just weeds but I find that God can use all of it.  No one is at the top of their spiritual game all the time, and I think that even the wildflowers of our hearts are beautiful and can bring joy to us, to God and to others… and in those relationships, fed by God’s love and the prayers of the holy Spirit welling up inside us, even dandelions can be useful and grow into other and perhaps more useful things…

    I hope we will all spend some time feeding the gardens of our souls, listening with the ears of our hearts to God’s Word and to God’s voice… I pray that we will let God’s extravagant, careless even whimsical farming transform us into something that blooms and brings spiritual joy and nutrition to ourselves and to those we meet along the path.

The faith revealed to infants

Proper 9 Year A

5th Sunday after Pentecost

July 9, 2017

    Last week, I told you about the emerging theme from my time with other Third Order Franciscans.  We went back to basics, remembering that Br. Francis’ vision was that the Friars minor, (and all Franciscans, regardless of which order they were in) were to simply live the Gospel.  Francis himself, as he turned religious life upside down, gave up a life of status and relative wealth to live the simplest life possible.  Denying himself possessions helped him to focus on relationships and on people.  He was known to say, that if we had possessions, we would have a reason to defend them.  Being someone who desired radical peace, it made sense to him that the simplest life possible would keep him from being distracted from his true purpose, which was to “simply live the gospel”.

    It seems to me, that simply living the gospel means that we have to be paying attention to relationships.  I can remember when my daughter was in grade school, and there was a collection going on for Hurricane Katrina victims.  She emptied her beloved piggy bank and all of it’s treasures that she had saved up into a ziplock bag and said she was bringing it to school for the collection and asked if we wanted to help too.  She was in the first grade, and I remember how determined she was to help…. Years later, when tornadoes hit Shawnee and Moore and other areas, a friend of ours was collecting some toys that a family with young children had lost… Rachel read the request and proceeded to go tearing through boxes in our basement.  She emerged a few minutes later with several stuffed care bears and some other things that were on the list and let the person know we had those items.  I remember her saying how she hoped that having some of their toys replaced would help the children feel less afraid…

    Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”  Simply living the gospel isn’t always easy, but all of us, not matter who we are, are capable of doing it… children, I think are especially good at it because they pay attention to relationships.  They aren’t as distracted as adults are by responsibilities, the need to make a living, etc.  Adulthood, for many of us was a trap… we were told we would granted more freedoms, but really, wasn’t it much simpler when our biggest responsibility was how large to make the sand castle?

    I think to live the gospel life, sometimes we all need to return to the basics.  We need to remember who Jesus is… we need to remember that he is the center of our lives and the one whom we follow.  That relationship is the most important relationship that any of us are in; and it is our relationship with Jesus that helps us to live into our other relationships as well.  The yoke of Christ which may not always seem easy, is light because it is simple.  St. Francis knew this, and his life, while difficult in so many ways, was joyous because he knew that simplicity made it far easier for him to follow Jesus.  When he came upon the Lepers, who previously had been a source of disgust for him, he realized that they were also loved by God and that as a result, should be loved and cared for by him…

    Maybe that sounds extreme to us… and perhaps it is, but it is what we are to do as disciples.  The joy my child showed in giving away her money and some toys to others was a beautiful thing to witness… and she never got to see the response on the other side, but it didn’t matter.  It was the right thing to do, especially because she had so much in comparison to those who had lost everything.  Francis became poor, not to glamourize poverty, but because by being poor he could be free and he could be generous with what he was given by others.  He  didn’t have to live with the complications of ownership or greed; poverty allowed him to see the poorest of the poor as children of God; his own poverty allowed him to give everything to others… it allowed him to be closer to God who gave up everything to become human in Jesus…  I think it’s fair to say, that Francis believed that the more people had, the cloudier their perceptions of God and the world God loved were…

    The Gospel life was revealed to infants, to those who were not rich and worldly, so that the simplicity of the Gospel life could be readily seen… all through Jesus’ ministry, it seems that there is a tension between simplicity and wealth; and Jesus is constantly calling on those around him to see more clearly what God is asking of them; and we know, that sometimes those who see the clearest are those who are blind, until they encounter Jesus and allow their lives to be changed.

    There will always be tension for us between living the Gospel and living as society would ask us to live; that tension between God’s kingdom and the empire of national wealth and pride that constantly surrounds us.  And believe me, God loves this world… creation, at least as Francis understood scripture, is good… very good.  And humanity is the most beautiful and beloved of God’s creatures… And that means all of humanity; the lepers, the poor, those displaced by hurricanes and tornadoes… and it means that you and I have to pay attention to relationships above our own fears for our comfort… sometimes we just have to let Jesus take the burden and we have to take the risk that it will all be ok… and not just ok, but that we might actually become better people because we dared to love and we dared to live the gospel life…

    In the time of Francis, lepers wore bells so that people could hear them coming and get out of the way… can you imagine how lonely an existence that must have been?  What about the poor, unshaven guy on the corner with the old dog, both of whom are needing some food?  What about the Muslim woman who is wearing a hijab at the grocery store who is afraid to ask someone for help because of how her family has been treated in the past?

    There are modern day lepers for us?  Who are those people we are afraid to engage with because they challenge our feelings of security?  Today, we aren’t called to overthink our commitment to Jesus… like children we are called to be in relationship and to give what we have, extravagantly and with joy; we are called to see the poverty whether it is spiritual, physical, financial, and alleviate it as best we can, even if it’s only for one person… and certainly for more if we can.  God gave up everything for us so that he could be as close to us as possible, allowing us to become part of God’s very life.  Today, we are asked to throw off all of the attitudes that we hide behind in the name of pride and self importance, and take on the vision of children so that we might see more clearly the people that God loves, and see who our own modern day lepers are, and embrace them with love and joy.

A cup of cold water...

Proper 8 Year A

July 2, 2017

It’s good to see you all today!  I had an amazing time in Cincinnati with other Franciscans.  We stayed in what was once a convent for the Sisters of Divine Providence; it was a beautiful place; and as is usually the case at these sorts of gatherings, the worship and the fellowship between members of the community is life giving.  I was finally able to meet some members of my community that I have corresponded with by email or facebook in person; what a wonderful gift!   The staff at the facility we were staying in were so kind and wonderful to us.  I watched staff members help older community members or those who had mobility issues; at every meal they were there to help, always smiling, always asking what ways they could make us more comfortable… it helped make little inconveniences like slow elevators and the occasional cold shower even littler.   I could tell by everything they did, that they considered their work at St. Anne’s a ministry of hospitality and they were very good at it.  It was also a joy to watch members of my community from all over the Americas be together.

    One of the themes that emerged from our time together, was something that St. Francis said about the Friars with whom he lived and worked;  he said that the rule of the Friars Minor, was to simply live the Gospel.

    It sounds so incredibly easy at first listen, doesn’t it ?  In this long church season, we will hear stories from Matthew’s gospel about the ministry of Jesus… As we already know, these stories will challenge us to figure out how to “simply live the Gospel.”

    In today’s gospel Jesus speaks about giving a cup of cold water to one of these little ones… it’s hard for me not to read that gospel and not remember a very moving scene from the movie, “Schindler’s List”.  If you have never seen this movie, or even if it’s been a long time, please see it.  Oskar Schindler is a member of the Nazi party and a businessman who hopes to make his fortune in Poland as WW2 is underway.  He has hired a Jewish accountant and many other Jews from the Krakow ghetto to work in his factory, because the labor was cheap.  While walking through one of the concentration camps, he sees a little Jewish girl in a red coat, and later on recognizes her coat and her body on the top of a pile of corpses that are being moved through the camp.  He is changed… and he begins a journey that will take him places I am certain he didn’t want to go.  The scene in the movie that has always reminded me of today’s gospel, is a scene where Schindler is talking to one of the SS soldiers on a train platform.  The train that is there is filled with Jewish people, men, women and children who are literally stuffed into the train cars, unable to sit, unable to rest, hot, tired, and I am certain extremely thirsty.  They are being transported to somewhere else, probably to their deaths.  Schindler, complete with his Nazi Party pin on his lapel, grabs a hose, and sprays water into the train cars, and if I remember right, it’s under the pretense of making the occupants uncomfortable… but his real plan was to make them cool and give them something to drink,,, and we see people opening their mouths to catch the water as it pours down from the top of the cars; people are crying in gratitude for this small kindness shown to them by this German man…

    It’s an incredibly moving scene.  It is a moment in the life of a man who was definitely changed by the circumstances around him and I imagine he was also changed by his own Christian faith which recognizes that all people are created in the image and likeness of God.  Toward the end of the movie, as the War ended, Schindler has lost most if not all of his wealth by using it to bribe various Nazi’s so that he could save the 1,200 Jewish workers in his factory… the workers in Schindler’s factory decide to give him a gift.  It is a ring, and on the inside of the ring is engraved a saying from the Talmud,  a collection of Rabbinic writings;  The engraving says, “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”.  Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.  

    Every person matters to God and when one of us is suffering we all suffer… When one of us delights, we all delight, because we are all connected through God and through creation.  Every person matters equally regardless of who they are.  God created humanity because life is perhaps the greatest gift that can be given by a God who loves the whole world…  and if God loves the whole world, than we as God’s beloved must also love the whole world… not just the parts we like.  Giving some water to one who thirsts is a life saving act; we cannot live without water, and Jesus even refers to himself in various gospels as living water, water that will never leave us thirsty… you and I might have to settle for plain old water… but if you and I are to simply live the Gospel, then we are to do what Jesus does.  

    There are many who thirst among us; those who literally thirst for water, and those who thirst for justice and basic human needs.  To simply live the Gospel means that we who have water must share it; we who have social status must help those who do not… you and I are in the business of saving lives, even if it is one life at a time; “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”.   What water do we have to share with others?  Who is Jesus asking us to save?  I pray for each of us, that we won’t need the sign of a dead child in a red coat to change our lives, but that coming to this place, hearing the gospel and taking the body and blood of Jesus into ourselves will help us to see those in our midst who are desperate for a drink, for a word of hope, for a meal or some kindness.  Even if all we can do is help one person, it’s one person who has seen Jesus today, for “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”.

Trinity Sunday 2017

Trinity Sunday 2017A

June 11, 2017

    Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity, a feast that has driven many a seminarian and new priest to their knees in hopes that they won’t draw the short straw and have to preach it; and I admit to a bit of fear myself; preparing sermons on the Trinity have often been used as jokes among friends as a test to see if the preacher was orthodox or not, sometimes with those listening to the sermon counting the number of times the preacher wandered into a heretical territory…

    The good or the bad news, depending on one’s perspective is that I am fairly awful at both math and history; so, all the language that has been used over the centuries to describe the Trinity, doesn’t really tie me up in knots as it sometimes does others.  Honestly, when I start reading things about three persons and one nature, I get a bit of a headache… Trying to explain any of that for me, kind of misses the point, at least for modern congregations.  It just doesn’t really help me get through my day.

    What strikes me as I read these readings, is relationship… Paul’s blessing at the end of his letter to the Corinthian church is simple and yet very powerful.  “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  Grace, love, communion… what do you think about when you hear those three words…. Grace, love, communion… Certainly, I think about God… particularly, I think about Jesus, but let’s get a little more abstract for a minute… as I reflect on those three things, it occurs to me that those are three things that we all really need; we all need grace… that wonderful gift from God that helps us know we are loved and forgiven even when we really mess up; we all need and desire love in our life, to be appreciated for who we are; and of course, we need communion, we need to be in relationship to God and each other.  God created us to be in relationship… and for me, perhaps that is the key… the great mystery of the Trinity is at least, in part, about relationship…

    It seem to me that it isn’t really possible to have grace, love and communion in a vacuum.  No one can live into those ideals without others… as people created by a God of love, our every desire is to be in relationship with others.  God created out of love because love leads us into relationship with God, and I’d like to think that perhaps God desired to be in relationship with us as well.  God lives in community in God’s very being in the Trinity and has thrown open wide God’s very life for you and I to participate in that holy community built on grace, love and communion…

    You and I, as disciples who are members of the kingdom of God, also invite others to participate in God’s life as well.  As the church, we baptize in the name of the Trinity, bringing the newly baptized into the community of the church, so that they may always know that they too are God’s beloved and our brothers and sisters in the kingdom… it is perhaps one of the most important ministries that we share in, together with celebrating the Eucharist together.  All of our ministry and work as the church is born from those two great sacraments.  It is there that we are invited to participate with God in the work of the kingdom, and also where we discover whose image we are made in.

    Can we truly understand the Trinity?  Can we really understand who God is?  It seems to me that the moment we think we understand, we should perhaps realize that we can’t.  But honestly, anything worth loving is worth spending our entire life learning about, and trying to understand.  All the definitions in the world will never help us understand what or who the Trinity is, as much as being in relationship with God will.   So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.  Experience and relationship are important… and as those who are created in God’s image, the image of grace, love and communion, it is also our calling to bring those kingdom values to others, who may have forgotten in whose image they are created.

    So now that we have experienced the hope of Easter and the comfort of the gift of the Holy Spirit, it’s time to get to work.  Nothing can stop us.  Jesus is with us every step of the way, even to the end of the age.

Jesus prays for us: Easter 7 year A

7 Easter Year A

May 28, 2017

    “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”  

    These are beautiful words of Jesus in his prayer for his disciples as he faces his own death at the hands of the empire.  It’s a prayer that is filled with love for the disciples; but there is something else too; Jesus says that he disciples, his followers, which includes you and I, are one; we are one with each other, and we are  one with God the Father, and God the Son in Jesus…

    I spoke last week about our prayer as the Holy Spirit praying within us… that when we pray, when we truly give ourselves over to prayer, it is the Spirit working within each of us to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth… and now today, we have Jesus praying for us… what does it mean for each of us to have Jesus praying for us?  This is the great shepherd who knows each of us by name, who now brings us into the Father’s presence and love through his prayers…

    It’s a wonderful though as we have just celebrated the Feast of the Ascension in the church, which our reading from Acts makes reference to.   The miracle of Jesus’ ascension, at least for me, is that a human body with a human nature, is brought into the presence of God and is now seated with God at God’s right hand… and for us, that is good news.  It opens life after our death in a new way; Easter morning and now the ascension are God’s gift to say that death shall not, cannot have the last word in our lives.  The kingdom of God, as it is in heaven, has been established and is waiting for us…  and that is good news.

    But the kingdom is not just about the kingdom as it is in heaven… there is that part of the prayer, “ON EARTH as it is in heaven”... and that, I think is where today’s gospel comes in.   

    Jesus is praying for his disciples because he knows what is coming; he knows the fear that they will go through as they watch him go to his death; he knows that they will need courage and hope… fortunately, they don’t have all that long to wait; while I am sure it was the longest three days some of them had lived through, knowing that God’s truth and hope rolled away the stone, and knowing that Jesus had conquered death, had to be an incredible thing for them to witness.  

    And now, even though we are separated from Jesus’ words by many years, the words of Jesus’ prayer is still his prayer for us… he prays for us to be one with him and the Father… and also, that we might be one with each other, as he and the Father are one…

    Unity, the kind of unity that Jesus is talking about is so much more than having a group of people who get along.  Getting along is ok, as far as it goes, but it can sometimes require that the relationship is based on lies.  Oppressed people “get along with” their oppressors as long as they don’t cause trouble; that’s not relationship, that’s abusive.  People who work together can often “get along” because they share a common task or goal; once the time clock is punched, the relationship is over until the next work day…

    The unity that Jesus is speaking of is based on God’s love.  It’s a unity that really has no conditions; it’s a unity that exists simply because one is loved by God; just as Jesus loves and is loved by God the Father, so too, are we loved by each person of the Trinity.  It’s a relationship that is closer than any other relationship that we have because it is based in God’s love; and because Jesus ascended into heaven bodily, all that it means to be human is now closer to God than we can even imagine…

    So, what does it mean for us to be prayed for by Jesus?   I think it means that everything that you and I are is brought before God; I think that maybe when the Spirit prays in us, that it might be a response to having Jesus pray for us… that somehow our prayers and Jesus’ prayers somehow come together to form prayers that create more wholeness…

    If Jesus prays for us, if unity is what Jesus prays for, then we all have some work to do, don’t we?  The unity that Jesus prays for means that no matter what we think or believe, we are all one in Jesus; the petty fights that engage in, the arguments, and perhaps even the hatred and fear that we might engage in are things that we put in the way of the unity that Jesus desires for us, and for all of humanity.  Our unity as people is grounded in God’s love for us and in Jesus’ life as one of us… that’s it.  We don’t have to agree about much of anything, except that we are each loved by God; and if we are loved by God, that should mean something to each of us;  it should mean something about ourselves and about every human being that we come in contact with… Every. Single. One.   Oppression, prejudice, hatred, even the petty anger and annoyance that we have with others really has no place in our relationships especially when we realize that everyone we meet is the object of Jesus’ prayers… Just think about that… everyone we meet is loved and prayed for by Jesus - that alone gives them and us an infinite about of worth and beauty…

    Unity, the kind of unity that Jesus prays for, is a goal of the kingdom here on earth; we know there are plenty of places where it doesn’t exist; I encourage all of us here today to search those darker places in our hearts to work on ridding ourselves of the attitudes that keep us from true kingdom unity with each other… and I would ask us  to remember who it is who prays FOR us… and whose prayers live within us…  we all desire closeness and unity… it’s what we were created for.  Perhaps we can live as kingdom people who are working to bring the kingdom here on earth, so that we might be one, as Jesus and the Father are one...

Prayer and the Spirit - Daughter's Installation

6 Easter Year A

May 21, 2017

Instillation of the Daughters of the King Chapter

    In today’s gospel reading, we hear again, Jesus trying to leave the disciples with comforting words.  He knows what lies before him, and he likely knows what lies ahead for the disciples as well; he knows about the betrayals to come, the fear that shall almost tear the community apart; he knows that they will need each other to get to Easter morning when God’s truth shall be revealed… he probably also knows that they will likely forget everything he is telling them, at least until Easter morning…

    Jesus promises that even when he leaves, the disciples will not be left without comfort and guidance.  The Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, of God’s truth shall be with them forever… God’s own Spirit, who is intimately connected to the Father and to Jesus, will also be intimately connected to the disciples, guiding them and assuring them of the power, the love, and the guidance of the Holy Trinity…  But again, I am sure as Jesus spoke these words, the disciples were probably confused and afraid.  Eventually, it would become clearer… but for now, all they have are Jesus’ words and their incomplete faith.

    I remember when I was in seminary, a professor of mine said something that has stayed with me all this time… there are many things I have forgotten from those days, but this I have remembered.  He said, that when we pray, it is the Holy Spirit praying in us…  I don’t remember if he was quoting Romans chapter 8 or not, which says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness… but I remember being incredibly moved by the knowledge that my prayers were joined with the Spirit’s prayers… that somehow the Spirit was intimately connected to me… just as the Spirit is intimately connected to Jesus and the Father… and that is was through the power of the Spirit that my prayers were conceived and given on behalf of those for whom I prayed…

    That’s pretty powerful stuff don’t you think?  In our baptism, the Spirit becomes one with each of us, and we become adopted children of the living God… loved and cherished for all eternity… members of the kingdom of God here on earth, sent out into the world to continue the work of Jesus in world.  And we know that sometimes the work is scary stuff.  We know that the world which God loves is not always the most open and loving place… we know that sometimes we are told that our faith in Jesus has no place in the workings of the world, that it’s silly, a fairy tale… and that’s on the good days.  Sometimes what we hear and what some of our brothers and sisters go through because of the Gospel are much worse than ridicule.    May ridicule be the worst of it for us…

    The Advocate that the Father gave to the disciples is the same Spirit that he gives to us… we are the inheritors of that same Advocate that will help and guide us just as it helped and guided them; we are part of that same kingdom of God, that shall continue to love Jesus and keep his commandments to love God and love our neighbor, so that the kingdom of God might be known here on earth in this time an place…

    One of the ways that we do that is to pray.  Today, we shall bless and institute a new chapter of the Daughter’s of the King, here in the diocese of Oklahoma.  I am so pleased and excited for this time in the life of St. David’s, and for the life of this chapter to begin.   Daughters of the King, is a lay religious order for women throughout the Anglican communion.  Because it is a religious order, it means that those who take vows today, take vows to pray, to serve and to evangelise, which are all done to reflect God’s love throughout the world.   By virtue of our baptism, we are all called to pray, to serve and to evangelise… today, these women take these vows to say that with God’s help, and with the help of St. David’s, they are making these vows a priority in their lives, so that others may know Jesus through them… They are taking vows to pray very intentionally every day; they are taking vows to intentionally serve not just the people of St. David’s, but to help our parish serve those whom God has put in our lives; they are taking vows to live their lives according to the Gospel of Christ, so that others might know where their joy and light comes from.  I want to say, that as a person who lives by a rule of life, it isn’t always easy and there will be many days when your rule will escape you, and quite possibly make you feel sad or angry… do not be discouraged… a rule of life should always be challenging enough that we are always struggling a little; and it should be easy enough that we don’t get discouraged often… if anyone in the parish ever wants to craft a rule of life for themselves, I highly recommend it… come see me and we will talk about it!

    I am so very honored to walk with this group of women, as well as the women who completed the study and decided that this was not the right time for them to take vows.Discernment is an important spiritual  gift within the church,no matter where it might lead us.

    What I want to say to everyone today, not just the soon to be members of the Daughters, is that prayer is one of the most important things that you and I do… it allows us to know that God’s Holy Spirit is working in us, to help us and to guide us; prayer helps us to know how much we are loved by God, whose children we are; prayer helps us to know more about who Jesus is, and what he has asked us to do… it helps us to know how much we need and depend on God, and how much we need and depend upon each other… it helps us to know and to love the world that God loved enough to become one of us…  and so, since this chapter of the Daughter’s of the King is to be known as the Chapter of St. Clare, which as a Franciscan, makes my heart glad, I want to leave you with a short quote from St. Clare;  but first I want to remind you that Clare of Assisi, your patron, was a strong, some might say stubborn woman, who loved Jesus, and took on a life of poverty in order to live closer to Jesus.  She was no spiritual lightweight; she went toe to toe with her family, and with the Pope, and went on to be one of the spiritual leaders of the Franciscan way of life.  Here is what she said:  “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become”.  Let’s listen to that again, “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become”.   If we love Jesus, if we love the Advocate that the Father has sent, we will indeed become more like Jesus, and more like the Spirit.  If we love Jesus, then our prayers will rise within us, being strengthened by the Holy Spirit.  May all of us this day, as we are fed by the body and blood of Christ, grow in love for Jesus… may his Holy Spirit guide our steps, and may our prayers be joined to Jesus’ prayers in the work of the Spirit who dwells in each of us.

How do we use our stones?

5 Easter Year A

May 14, 2017

    As I was reading through the readings this week, I was struck by the images of stones and of dwelling places, that run through all of our readings.  Kind of difficult to pull them all together, at least it is for me… Certainly, the gospel for today is one that is often read at funerals in the Episcopal church.  It speaks of a comforting image of being joined with Jesus; it would have been something that the disciples would have needed to hear because where this reading takes place is right before Jesus is taken away to be crucified.  He tells them to not let their hearts be troubled… to believe in God and in him… that somehow, some way, things will work out… the disciples of course have no way of knowing that … and we know that they become quite troubled and quite afraid in the days to follow and with good reason…

    Anyway, I had a thought about the readings…  what does it mean for each of us to believe in Jesus?   Right after he tells the disciples not to be troubled, he asks them to believe in God and to believe in him… if we were to take the images of building, of safety, of refuge, of foundational stones… would belief in Jesus be one of those things for our spiritual life?  Peter seems to make the comparison in our Epistle today,  “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner”, and “A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.”  

    As I read this, I started thinking about faith, about what we say we believe as followers of Jesus… and not just what we say, but what Christians say they believe… and I have to say, that as I thought about all of that, I found myself getting a bit troubled myself….

    Let me tell you a little bit of a story.  Many of you have heard me tell the story of my beloved home parish of St. David’s San Diego… it is the parish that sent me to seminary.  Long before I went to seminary, as I have also told many of you, our building was destroyed by an arsonist’s fire.  We were incredibly blessed to have as our interim priest at the time, a dear friend and mentor, named Jack Whitehouse.  Jack is now in the nearer presence of his God, probably causing a bit of stir with some other friends of mine, and I hope, that when my time comes, I will find what room Jack is hanging out in in the dwelling place prepared for us so we can talk some more, but anyway, Jack was a pretty incredible preacher; and I always knew that Jack believed in Jesus; there was never any doubt in my mind…

    I will never forget a particular image of Jack preaching; I don’t remember what the readings were; I don’t remember what season of the church year is was… What I remember though, is Jack picking up his black leather bible, and saying, “We don’t worship a book!  We worship a man, who is also God… we worship Jesus Christ!”  He went on to say that no matter how wonderful our Book was, that worshipping Jesus was much harder… because more was required of us...we had to think, we had to act, and we had to love…

It was a powerful sermon for me, and even now I can see and hear Jack.  The cornerstone of our faith, the foundation of our lives, the refuge for our battered souls is Jesus… a living, breathing person who desires a relationship with us, a relationship of love; a relationship that compels us to act in the kingdom of God as disciples… our Book is an amazing, beautiful book…. And we find in it’s pages all sorts of holiness that helps us to know God, to know Jesus… and I would also say, that the more we read scripture, the more it speaks to us, the more we learn…. It is a living book; by that I mean that if we let it, it will always be new and always helping to point toward God…

But out Book is not God.  When I look around at how “faith” is practiced by many these days, it seems to me that the foundation is a little bit misplaced… if I can take the images of stones a little further, I would say that many people use the Bible as their refuge, forgetting that it points to God… and it can lead them to a faith that can be rigid and unforgiving… Look what happened to Stephen in our reading from Acts; he treated his attackers with love and forgiveness; and they used stones to kill him, rather than using stones for a life giving purpose.  That’s what can happen when we forget that our faith in God is lived out in a growing and changing relationship; God became man in Jesus as an act of love; I cannot think of anything more loving than being in relationship with another; our attachment to things, whether it’s our money or our bible can become idolatrous. It can cause us to harm others because we put our idolatry before the relationships that are before us; our idolatry can cause us to be more concerned with rules that with people.  Relationship is far more difficult, don’t you think?  Relationship asks, even demands things of us; it asks us to move beyond ourselves into places that sometimes seem dangerous; relationship asks us to risk ourselves in order to gain everything… relationship asks us to be open to where the Holy Spirit is leading us, rather than getting bogged down in rules that don’t seem to care about relationship.

Jesus knew that night that he was going to face the worst that the Empire had to offer.  He knew that those who were in power were afraid even though they had all sorts of power… but as Easter people, we know that even in the face of incredible evil, love always wins.  God so loved the world… that God risked everything to be in relationship with us in the life of Jesus; Jesus who is the living stone, chosen and precious, who is the foundation of all that we are and all that we believe.

We worship a living person, who is both God and man; that relationship challenges us to act in the world as he did, bringing new life, healing and new relationships, some of which we may not really want, so that God’s kingdom might be known here and now....  What stones are we using for our foundation? To whom or to what will we profess our faith this day?