John Muir and Hudson Stuck

Preached at the 5:45 service.

Feast of Muir and Stuck
Luke 8:22-25

Happy Earth Day!

Today we honor John Muir
and Hudson Stuck, environmentalists.
One became a natural theologian;
the other an Episcopal priest.
Both sought adventure in wild places;
both fell in love with God’s creation in the mountains.

Muir was born in Scotland in 1838.
At age 11, he emigrated with his family
to a farm in Wisconsin.
His father was strictly religious.
One factor in their emigration
was to get away from the Church of Scotland;
it was too liberal for the elder Mr. Muir.
John and his brothers and sisters
were made to read the Bible daily in childhood.
He memorized most of the scriptures.

He took classes in geology and botany
at the University of Wisconsin,
but never graduated.
He went to Canada in 1864,
possibly to avoid the Civil War draft,
and returned to the US in 1866.
Muir worked as an industrial engineer in Indianapolis,
until an accident changed the course of his life.
A tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye.
He was confined to a dark room for six weeks,
not knowing whether he would see again.
When he did, he saw the world,
and his purpose, as if for the first time.
Muir wrote of this resurrection experience,

“This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”

From that point on,
he determined to follow his own dream
of exploration and study of plants.

In September 1867,
Muir walked 1,000 miles from Indiana to Florida.
He had no specific itinerary,
except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way [he] could find."
After contracting malaria on the Gulf Coast,
he abandoned his plans to go to South America.
He set out for California instead.

Muir landed in San Francisco.
He visited Yosemite for a week,
and fell in love with it.
The mountains opened up a sacramental awareness in him.
He wrote,

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite... The grandest of all special temples of Nature.”

When he returned,
he built a cabin over a stream,
so he could listen to the water.
He lived there for years.

Muir threw himself into the preservation of Yosemite Valley,
and fought for it to become a national park.
In 1903, Teddy Roosevelt accompanied him on a visit to Yosemite.
On the way there,
Muir told the president
about state mismanagement of the valley
and exploitation of the valley's resources.
Even before they arrived,
he was able to convince Roosevelt
that the best way to protect the valley
was through federal control.

Muir shed the restrictive practices of his father’s faith,
but his awareness of the love of God
grew to include all of nature.
He developed a core belief that "wild is superior."
He came to believe that God was always active
in the creation of life
and thereby kept the natural order of the world.
In Travels in Alaska, he wrote,

“Every particle of rock or water or air has God by its side leading it the way it should go; the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness; in God's wildness is the hope of the world.”

During his lifetime John Muir published
over 300 articles and 12 books.
(He hated writing, but he made himself do it.)
He co-founded the Sierra Club,
which helped establish a number of national parks after he died,
and today has over 1.3 million members.
Muir has been called the “patron saint of the American wilderness”
and its "archetypal free spirit."

Hudson Stuck was a priest and environmentalist.
He was born in London in 1863,
and educated at King’s College.
In 1885, he tossed a coin:
heads for Australia; tails for Texas.
It came up tails,
and he went to work as a cowboy and a schoolteacher
before entering seminary at Sewanee in 1889.
He was ordained in 1892,
and after four years
became dean of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas.
There, he became a social reformer.

His sermons and newspaper articles
raised every conceivable issue
from lynching and gun control
to the need for recreational areas.
He founded a night school for millworkers,
a home for poor women,
and St. Matthew's Children’s Home.
Stuck was instrumental in having
one of Texas’ first child labor laws passed, in 1903.

He was happy in Dallas, but restless,
and he moved to Alaska in 1904.
As the archdeacon of the Yukon and the Arctic
he administered 250,000 square miles in the interior of Alaska.
Traveling by dogsled in winter and boat in summer,
Stuck ministered to miners and loggers,
and defended the rights of Native Alaskans.
In 1913, he organized and led
the first successful complete ascent of Mount McKinley.
He died of bronchial pneumonia at Fort Yukon, Alaska,
in 1920.

The gospel connections were hard for me to find,
at first reading.
It’s a lovely story:
Jesus is in a boat with his disciples;
a storm comes up and they get scared,
and he calms the storm for them.
But it would be easy to make the wrong interpretation.
This isn’t about controlling the weather.
It isn’t about being the boss of nature.
And it’s not saying that natural disasters won’t happen if you have faith.

What does Jesus have in common
with these two mountaineers?
What are all three of them doing?

Jesus is in a boat with his disciples.
A storm blows in.
The boat fills with water,
even as he sleeps through it.
The disciples panic, and they wake him up.
He speaks to the wind and the waves,
and the storm dissipates.

John Muir fell in love with nature.
He fought to get Yosemite Valley federally protected.
He lost the battle for Hetch Hetchy,
and grief over that nearly broke him.
He used the power of the written word
to communicate this love for the natural world.
And once you share in this love for creation,
you share in the work to protect it.

Hudson Stuck was a social reformer before he ever climbed a mountain.
He advocated for millworkers, women, and children
before moving to Alaska
and doing the same for the Inuit people.

They are all advocating.
They’re using the powers that they have,
to speak up for people and places
who can’t speak up for themselves.

“Storm, be still.”
“Mr. President, protect this valley.”
“State of Texas, stop exploiting your children.”

They are all working in love, for love.
This is God’s call to us.

Today is Earth Day. What can we do right now?

Recycle. Create less trash to begin with:
consider the amount of packaging when you buy things.
Join or start a community garden. Feed your own neighborhood.
Give what you don’t use, to a food bank.
Eat local food.
Reduce the amount of fuel consumed
in getting your vegetables to your table.
Take shorter showers. Save water.
Turn out the lights when you leave a room.
Walk, ride your bike or take public transit instead of driving.

Get involved with TREE,
Trinity Respecting Earth and Environment.
I asked Tina to tell me more about them,
because I really didn’t know.
She sent me last year’s annual report.
They got recycling going here.
They applied for and got a bike rack from the city.
They took environmental field trips.
They sold stainless steel water bottles and solar cookers,
like at last Sunday’s Earth Day fair.

TREE meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month,
at 6:30 pm in the upstairs conference room.
Go see what you can do for the earth.

I will close with a piece from John Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierra:

When we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell,
and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals
as friendly fellow-mountaineers.
Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman,
becomes more and more visible
the farther and higher we go;
for the mountains are fountains—
beginning places,
however related to sources beyond mortal ken.

Amen.

Lent V

John 12:1-8
Lent 5

“You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

WHAT?!

Could Jesus have said anything more jarring?
Our community gives a lot to the Safe Ground movement.
I help coordinate Trinity’s response to their needs. 
I know some of these people whose portraits look out at us. 
And I know that every other time Jesus spoke of poor people,
it was to bless them
and to love them.

And I know how willingly this community responds. 
I’m here on shelter nights. 
I know how gladly people give of themselves,
their time, their energy.

Jesus’ words here feel like a slap. 
They go against everything else he ever said. 
They fly in the face of his tradition. 
No self-respecting Hebrew prophet would ever say anything like that. 
And Jesus knew it.

That’s because money isn’t the point. 
Look at the rest of this scene.

We’re in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. 
Mary, the contemplative. 
The one who would rather sit at Jesus’ feet,
and take him in with her eyes and her heart,
than do anything else in the world. 
Martha, always responsible
for making the household run smoothly.
Always busy, bustling around.

Lazarus.  Brother to Mary and Martha. 
Friend to Jesus,
like a brother to him as well. 
Lazarus, whose death made Jesus weep,
and whom he had raised from the dead
sometime shortly before. 
The author of John writes
that the raising of Lazarus had caused the Temple authorities
to conspire to kill Jesus. 
Jesus knew he was in danger;
he “no longer walked about openly.” 
Mary and Martha and Lazarus knew it too.
The air was electric with danger,
heavy with the smell of impending death.

Lazarus was at the table. 
But it’s hard for me to imagine that he ate. 
He had been dead. 
And he walked the earth again.
Don't bother asking, how does that happen? 
It doesn’t.  But it did. 
I picture him doing what I imagine I would do...
just staring. 
Having to be pulled out of himself,
when the others laughed at some mundane joke. 
Unable to walk in both worlds at once. 
Still stumbling sometimes,
as if his legs and feet were still bound. 
Trailing rags behind him,
in his mind if not his body. 
When I was detoxing from chemotherapy,
I would break out into cold sweats.
No one else could smell it on me,
but I could.
Lazarus could still smell the sickness
that killed him.
He could still smell the sourness of death.

Mary is the quiet sister. 
The one who understands without being taught. 
Who always infuriates Martha,
because she leaves Martha all the work. 
Mary gets it right, again.

Mary knows how to respond
to God in her living room. 
She kneels on the floor,
breaks the jar of perfume,
and pours it over Jesus’ feet. 
Just like that. 
She moves without speaking. 
She’s silent, slow, purposeful. 
She does not ask permission. 
She doesn’t explain herself in words. 
She doesn’t need to. 
Jesus understands what Mary is doing. 
He translates for the others: 
“She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”

This household knows the smell of death. 
Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. 
Martha had begged Jesus not to roll away the stone.
She knew the smell would overpower them.
Jesus yelled in the face of death,
and Lazarus walked out alive.

The jar of perfume that Mary broke
held about a pound of scented oil.
That's at least a couple of good double-handfuls.
She doesn't anoint his head,
like you would do for a king
or somebody important.
She anoints his feet.
While Jesus is still living,
Mary prepares his body for burial.

She held Jesus' feet,
and she poured the oil over them.
The scent—somewhere between mint and ginseng—
exploded into the house.
The oil ran over Jesus' toes, down his ankles,
all over Mary's sleeves,
and onto the floor.
The house smelled like burial spices,
like grief, and like love,
for a long time.
Mary rubs the oil into Jesus' skin.
She wipes him dry, with her hair.

Judas sets up the point that Jesus is making.
He asks a perfectly legitimate question,
“Why was this money not given to the poor?”
Really, it was not a small amount.
Three hundred denarii would feed a family for a year.

Jesus doesn't say, don't take care of the poor.
He says only, not right now.
He says, Mary knows what you're not seeing.
Let her care for me.
He knows the law full well, and he honors God in his response.
He's quoting Deuteronomy 15:11.
The full text of the verse he alludes to is this:

“Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, Open your heart to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

He's saying, While I am here in front of you, love me.
Focus first on the love that drives you,
that gives you life,
that is the reason for everything you do.
When I am gone,
you will be able to love me
by loving the poor, the homeless, and the needy.

Love extravagantly. 
Love with all you are.
The poor you always have with you—
their faces are here with us, on these walls. 
We have sheltered Carol and Barbara. 
I’ve heard stories of some of the others. 
Love these people whose portraits you see. 

Family Promise starts tonight. 
Go see if there are still times you can sign up. 
Cook dinner for our guests. 
Play games with the kids. 
Help them with their homework. 
Stay the night.

Jesus doesn't literally knock on our door
and sit at our dinner table.
We cannot serve him directly in the way that Mary did. 
But we can do what he commanded us to do. 
We can love one another, as God has loved us.
The presence of Christ lives in everyone. 
Love the people who show you to yourself. 

We have enough love. 
God has broken that jar, over us,
and given us each jars to break.
It's running over us right now,
in our hair, soaked in our skin,
dripping onto the floor.
Like Mary, pour it out without counting the cost.
Give it away. 

John Roberts, Priest

Deuteronomy 31:30–32:4, 6b-12a
John 7:37-41a

Today we honor the memory of John Roberts.
Who was he? What is his story?

John Roberts was an adventurous soul.
He was born on a farm in Wales in 1853.
He was educated at a college that was affiliated with Oxford,
and left Wales for the Bahamas in 1878.
He was ordained to the priesthood there.

Roberts was chaplain of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Nassau,
and he also worked in leper colonies.

After two years in the Bahamas, Roberts sailed to the US.
He asked the bishop of Wyoming and Colorado for
missionary work in his most difficult field.
Bishop James Spalding gave it to him,
at the Wind River Indian Reservation
in the mountains of Wyoming.

In February, 1883,
Roberts literally hitched a ride
from Colorado to Wyoming
on a jury-rigged mail wagon,
in a blizzard.

He served two tribes on the reservation:
the Eastern Shoshone people and the Arapaho.
He set about learning all he could about both tribes’ customs and beliefs,
believing that he could be more effective
if he knew and respected the people he wanted to minister to.
He also learned the Arapaho and Shoshone languages.
He eventually translated the gospel.

Roberts often said that his goal
was to help the Native Americans to be self supporting.
With this in mind,
he established two schools for Native children.
He earned the trust of the tribal leadership
and was often involved in their negotiations
with federal agents.
He dealt fairly with the people.
In turn, they called this white, European priest, “Elder Brother.”

A friend remarked this morning,
how odd it seemed to commemorate a man
for treating people fairly.
She was right.
But I’m struck by someone crossing the ocean
to purposely, consciously, and repeatedly
share God’s love and justice
with a forgotten and shoved-aside people.

Roberts lived into his call
as a priest of the high mountains,
the forgotten people,
the dry and desolate places.

We entered Lent with the image of Jesus in the wilderness.
He went there to fast, pray,
and be as transparent as he could to the will of God
speaking louder and louder,
to him and through him.

John Roberts went to the wilderness to seek and serve Christ in all people.

The compelling image running through both the Old Testament reading
and the Gospel for tonight
is the picture of water in the desert.

Moses prays,
“May my teaching drop like the rain,
my speech condense like the dew;
like gentle rain on grass,
like showers on new growth.
For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
ascribe greatness to our God!”

He’s saying, My people, you are so thirsty.
Let my words transform and heal you.
God is your water. God is your rock.
There are no others.
There is no one else who can sustain you.

Jesus calls to the people,
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

God is your water.
The water of life flows within you,
and out from you,
and all around you.
Hear my words, and let them heal you.
Drink deeply.
Soothe your thirst.
Let the river flow from you,
for other thirsty people.

What is wilderness?
I think of the canoe camping trips in the Cascade Mountains
that I took as a kid in Girl Scouts.
Cold glacial rivers, high volcanic peaks.
Tying our food up in a tree, away from bears.
No people,
other than our own pack of sunburned teen-agers,
and the college students who supposedly
were responsible for us.
You might think of Yosemite,
or wherever else you go when you want to get away.

We go to the wilderness because it is beautiful.
We go, to get out of the city.
We go because it’s fun.

Jesus went to the wilderness to uncover himself.
John Roberts went there to serve disenfranchised people,
in Christ’s name.
Jesus became water in the desert.
John Roberts brought that water,
as respect, love, and justice for God’s children
that humankind wanted to forget.

The wilderness that Roberts crossed an ocean to find,
is never really out of our vision.
We may not literally go to a reservation.
We don’t have to.
But neither do you have to find it
among the homeless people in Friendship Park,
or in our own Great Hall on a night
when we are hosting Safe Ground.
(Though if you feel called to this ministry,
please come.)
The wilderness is everywhere that people are
forgotten, hurting, lonely, or afraid.
We all react more strongly than we should,
to a perceived attack that wasn’t.
We all sometimes want things to be different than they are.
There are wild places in each of us,
living next to the places that are healed and whole and strong.

When you go to the wilderness,
bring with you love and compassion.
Take with you the truth
that every human being is beloved of God.
Carry with you the water of life.

Lent I

Luke 4:1-13

Who are you?
Do you know who you are?
You know your name.
You could tell me what you do all day.
Do you know why you’re in church today?
Do you know what you are doing on this earth?

The iconic image of Lent
is Jesus fasting and being tempted in the desert.
Our own forty days mimic this passage.
What is it about?
Why did Jesus need to go there?
Why do we?

Here’s the set-up:
We have Luke’s version of the Christmas story,
and everything that surrounds the birth of Jesus.
The writer pulls out all the special effects;
Jesus is not just any newborn baby.
Before he is born, the angel calls him king.
A few years later,
he goes to Jerusalem with his parents,
gets separated from them,
and when they finally find him,
he’s in the Temple debating with the rabbis.
He’s twelve.
Mary and Joseph ask him why he ran off like that.
He answers like a perfect adolescent:
“Duh! Where did you think I’d be?”
He knows, already, where he’s going.

The boy grows up.
Jesus is baptized, and the sky breaks open.
A dove descends upon him,
and the voice of God speaks.
“You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

We hear who he is.
Then we hear who he comes from.
The genealogy traces his ancestors paternally through Joseph,
Joseph’s father and grandfather,
all the way back to Adam,
created by God from the earth itself.

The story pivots where we heard today’s Gospel.
Jesus is tempted in the wilderness.
Jesus overcomes the adversary.
Only after that, does he start his ministry.

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.”

We’re not dealing with circumstances of birth anymore.
We’re beyond the foretold infant king,
the gifted child.
We’re not talking about what might potentially be.
This is the adult Jesus,
fully knowing that now is the time to embrace his destiny.
Fully prepared to test himself,
to listen to the voice that spoke to him in the river,
and to make himself ready for the life he’s being called to.

I grew up in the Northwest.
I grew up with seaweed tangled in my toes,
and mountains rising strong all around me.
I know the temperate rainforest.
I’ve never even been to the desert.
And I’ve been camping and hiking since I was a kid—
but I’ve never been in the wilderness alone
for longer than a day.
I can barely imagine what that must have been like.

He hadn’t eaten in a long, long time.
His body was weak and exhausted.
His mind was open for all kinds of visions.
It was hotter than fire during the day,
and freezing cold at night.
Insects crawled.
Birds screeched.
The wind howled, day and night.
Sometimes, that howl carried the voice of God.
Was it comforting, or terrifying?

This is what you do,
if you have the time to dedicate to it
and you want to be close to the Divine.
You go someplace alone.
You strip yourself down to nothing but the essentials.
You fast, you pray,
and you confront your own demons.
Even if it’s dawning on you,
that you are the incarnate Son of God.

Lent has been a season for fasting
since at least the second century.
It was increased from two or three days to 40
by the Council of Nicaea in the year 325.
We’ve been doing this for a long, long time.
In some places,
people fasted from all animal products excepting fish.
Others ate only one meal a day.
Roman Catholics still abstain from meat
on the Fridays of Lent, excepting fish.
Eastern Orthodox Christians still follow a vegan diet
throughout the season.
No animal products at all.

The early Christians connected the Lenten fast
with preparations for baptism.
They fasted, prayed, and studied the mysteries
that they would be allowed to enter into at the Easter vigil.
Penitents, those who were already baptized
but had committed some type of major sin
and been temporarily cut off from the sacraments,
fasted with them.
They also would be welcomed home at Easter.

We don’t have set rules for Lenten observance.
You might choose to give up something;
chocolate or alcohol or Facebook,
whatever it is that gets in the way
of your relationship with God.
You might choose to deepen that relationship intentionally
with a new practice:
journaling, walking, a new form of prayer.
I was on chemotherapy for a year;
I’ve recovered, but my body is not yet strong.
I’m doing physical things:
riding my bike for the first time in ages,
and doing lots of mindful breathing.
For me, it’s about claiming the Resurrection
in a body that was damaged to save itself.
Being grateful for life, and health.

The point is not deprivation for its own sake.
The point is to do what Jesus did,
in our own ways—
to dedicate ourselves to hearing and obeying
the voice of God in each of our lives.
This is the time to re-commit ourselves
to walking as closely with God
as our hearts and minds and bodies ever can.
This is the season to discipline ourselves,
to open our souls to the work of the Spirit.
This is the time to remember who we are
as Christians and as humans.
This is the time to build a shelter in the desert,
to watch and pray as the days grow longer,
to remember the sacrifice that came before the feast.

Choose your own disciplines.
What you do doesn’t matter—
it matters what you do through them.
Try new ones out, as you’re going.
Do what you need to do,
to reconnect with the purpose that God gives you.
Don’t go through this alone.
Share your practices,
so we can pray for each other.
We have to make it through Holy Week,
before we can get to Easter.
We will have the joy of the Resurrection.
We only walked into the desert last Wednesday.
Forty days is a long time.

Can you hear what God is whispering to you?
Do you feel the wind, on your skin?

Epiphany I -- The Baptism of Jesus

I preached today at the 12:45 service.

Isaiah 43:1-7
Luke 3:15-17; 21-22

There is so much I could say about baptism.
This ancient ritual is at the center
of who we are as Christians.
This water and oil,
and these ancient words,
have sustained our communities for two thousand years.
There are so many layers of meaning here.

I could give a history lesson.
I could tell you how the rite of baptism
has evolved in the church and before it.
I could talk to you about ancient Jewish ritual baths,
and of how the church picked up on the idea of initiation
in Jesus’ own baptism.
I could point out that we know absolutely nothing
about the adult Jesus before he was baptized in the river Jordan—
and every story the church tells
about the ministry of Jesus
comes after that dove descended on him.
How baptism obviously prepared him,
in some way,
for everything he did and taught and became.

I could tell you about the early Church—
the catechumenate periods that lasted three years
before you were allowed to be present for Communion.
I could tell you about the conversation on Facebook
that began when I said that baptism didn’t make me want to talk;
I only wanted to be.
How friends of mine wrote about existential faith,
living into revelation,
being loved because God is love.

I could tell you about the time
I fell out of a kayak into Lake Michigan,
held on to the boat in fear for my life--
really thought I was going to die if I let go--
and really understood that nature,
and God,
are bigger than me.

See? There’s just so much meaning here.
So much to explore about what we do,
and who we are.
But one thing caught my attention.
It got under my skin all week.
Did you feel uneasy too?

Isaiah writes this:

When you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.

It’s comforting, right? Reassuring.
God’s presence is stronger than any suffering.
We have nothing to fear, ever.
You hear him say, “Stay calm. I am with you.”
It’s going to be okay.

And here’s John the Baptist:

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Yikes. Doesn’t that just scare you silly?
I want to go hide under my bed.
Wake me when the Apocalypse is over.
I don’t want to be burned up.
What could the Good News possibly be?

I confess that I don’t really get our friend John.
I know a lot of people who camp by the river, in Sacramento.
Sometimes they have dinner here.
They’ll be sleeping in our Great Hall, tomorrow and Tuesday.
They all have wilder hair than I do.
They wash their clothes when they can.
Some of them know the Bible inside out,
and sometimes they preach to me.
But I think of them as my friends.
None of them have ever yelled at me;
much less threatened me with holy fire.
John is just a little too out there.
He sounds unstable.
He’s not someone I think I could talk to.

But maybe I haven’t been paying attention.
There’s another way to hear the Baptist’s words.

Wheat is healthy, and life-giving.
Wheat is the foundation of bread.
Bread that the Israelites baked in a hurry,
and carried out of Egypt, ahead of Pharaoh.
Bread that fed the five thousand.
Bread that Jesus broke for his disciples.
Bread that has been broken for us
at this altar
for two thousand years;
bread that we will eat again in a few minutes.
Bread that feeds our bodies, and our souls.

Wheat gives strength to a body,
and to a community.
Chaff is the protective covering over each individual grain.

Not a defective piece.
Not some part of you that isn’t good enough.
Chaff is a shield.
It’s a shell that the grain grows,
to keep itself safe from predators.
But you don’t need to protect yourself
from the love of God that wraps around you.

Paul writes in the letter to the Romans,
“Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This is the power of the love of God.
This is the force of God’s longing for us.
We are loved from the moment we are thought of.
We are wanted. We are treasured.
God is love.
We are God’s beloved.
There is nothing we can do, ever,
that will put us outside of God’s love.
Baptism is our acceptance of that love,
for ourselves and for our children.
Baptism is a public confession of our faith
in the God who became human.
Who lived with us, and died, and rose again for us.
Baptism is when we say, Yes, back.
Yes, you are our God.
Yes, we are your people.
Yes, we will be your body.
Yes.

One of my seminary textbooks says
that baptism is not an insurance policy for salvation—
it’s a commitment to a radically counter-cultural life.*
We promise to love, in the face of everything.
We say that we will live the life
of love, service, and justice
that God calls us to—
and we will do it, with God’s help.
It’s a commitment we need to be reminded of again,
and again,
and so we make it each time we welcome a new Christian.

Our prayer book says that the rite of baptism is indissoluble.
It’s not about being perfect.
You are still you,
when you come out of that water.
You still have the same good and bad habits.
You still make mistakes.
You do beautiful things—
and you still make harmful choices.
You belong to God.
You will always be loved.

This is what happens when we baptize someone.
We pray for them,
and make promises to support them.
We affirm our faith in the God who created us,
redeemed us,
and loves us still.
We thank God for the gift of water,
and for being present with us
through all our people’s memory.
We tell the story of our creation and redemption,
through the symbol of water.
We pour this holy water over them
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We anoint them with holy oil.
And we mark them as Christ’s own for ever.

This is who you are.
And you will never be otherwise.
Baptism is a scary thing to do.
It’s a spiritual cliff-jumping.
A life given to God is not necessarily predictable.
Your faith can take you to places that you never thought you’d go,
sometimes to places you don’t want to go.
Baptism is also the most loving thing you can do for someone.
They are, as you are, as I am,
Christ’s own. For ever.

We will each of us walk through fire.
I had a health scare
that brought me face-to-face with the limiations of my own body,
even as it showed me, in screaming color,
the limitlessness of God’s healing power,
whether or not I was cured. (And I have been.)
Many people I know are facing financial crises.
You can still be hurt.
You will still be afraid.
But you are loved beyond all human understanding.
There is nothing you can do,
to be outside of that love.
And you do not need to try to protect yourself
from the God who created you,
and knows you,
and loves you.
All of those protective shells will be burned away.
They’re not bad.
We just don’t need them.

God says to us,

You are my beloved Child. In you I am well pleased.

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.

This is the gift in every baptism.
This is what belonging means.
We are loved beyond all our imagining.
God is with us,
and in us,
and for us.
And all that’s required of us,
through the promises we make in the Baptismal Covenant,
is to love God,
and love one another.

I will, with God’s help.


*Charles P. Price and Louis Weil, Liturgy for Living, rev. ed. (Harrisburg PA: Morehouse, 2000), 69.

"I am the bread of life."

All Saints Chapel, CDSP
John 6:35-40

SUPPLIES:
Bowl of bread dough
Baggies
Extra flour
Copies of recipe

Instructions: Tear off some bread dough—let yourself be generous—pass the bowl to the next person. Play with it while we’re talking. Follow dough with box of baggies, for take-home.
***

If you’ve ever been hungry, you will understand.
If you’ve ever made dinner for the people you love,
you will understand.
If you’ve ever kneaded bread,
and baked it, and eaten it,
you will understand.
Our bodies know this stuff.
Our ancestors knew it.
We have always known how to feed each other.

I’m going to give you the recipe,
for what you’re holding in your hands.
Don’t worry about remembering;
there are copies in the back if you want one.

1 package active dry yeast
1 ¼ cups warm water (about 110 degrees).
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
5 to 5 ½ cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water.
You want it comfortable on the inside of your wrist;
not too tepid, not hot enough to burn you.
Yeast is alive.
You need to wake it up, not kill it.

Stir in the salt, sugar, oil, and two eggs.
Gradually add about 4 cups of the flour,
until your dough is stiff enough to work with.
Shake some flour onto the counter,
or a breadboard.
Turn the dough out onto it.
Flour your hands.

And then you start kneading.

I have no clear memory of learning this motion.
And it’s not like baking was an everyday thing, when I was little.
I remember doing it a few times, occasionally.
Knowing the kid I was, probably reluctantly.
But when I started baking on my own, years later,
my body remembered it.

Place the heels of your hands against the dough.
In the beginning, there is no resistance.
You’re working with a blob.
Push it away from you.

Give it a quarter turn,
in whatever direction comes naturally.
Fold it over your thumb.
Move your thumb out of the way.
Place your hands on the dough,
and push it away from you.

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

Add flour as you need to.
The dough will start to push back against you.
This is good.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat flour.
What you’re doing, is working little knots of protein into strands.
This is what gives the dough the elasticity it needs to rise,
and the texture when you bake it.

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

After awhile, the turning and folding becomes one motion.
You find your rhythm.
Even if it’s your first time,
you won’t have to be taught how to do this.
You already learned it, from your ancestors.
It’s already encoded in the way you move your muscles.
Your body knows.
Let your sense of touch, teach you.

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

Are your hands sticky?
There’s more flour in the back.
Feel free to get up and grab some.

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

“This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Push. Turn. Fold. Push. Turn. Fold.

When your shoulders feel like they’ve had a good workout,
and the dough has taken in about all the flour that it will,
stop kneading.
The recipe I gave you says, 5 to 20 minutes.
That’s how variable, and intuitive, this is.
The yeast and flour interact with the liquids,
and with your sense of what feels right.
You have to love it into being.
It doesn’t just emerge on its own.

Put the dough back in a bowl,
cover it,
and leave it in a warm place.
Either in the oven, turned off, with a bowl of warm water,
on a heating pad,
in a sunny spot.
Do something else for an hour and a half.
Go write a paper. Take a walk.
The yeast will release carbon dioxide,
against the strands of gluten.
The dough will rise.

I always wonder,
if God had the same reaction that I do,
the first time God made life.
“Wow—would you look at that? It grew!”

It’s always a surprise,
and it means that everything is happening as it should be.

A side note:
I live in the dorm, on the third floor.
Our refrigerators are stuffed.
So when I prepared this dough,
last night,
I wrapped it in plastic
and left it on about six square inches of shelf.
I’d never left dough overnight before;
what did I know?
When I got up this morning,
it had burst the bonds of injustice,
and was spilling all over everything.

Now I understand why scripture writers,
and community organizers,
use the metaphor of leavening.
Yeast is alive.
This stuff doesn’t even need heat.
It will breathe, and the bread will grow.
It’s faster, if you do it like they tell you.
But it happens, nonetheless.

You let it rise, then you punch it down.
Feel it exhale, against your fist.
Work the extra air out.
Braid it, or shape it the way you want it.
And then—I love this—you let it rise again.
There is Easter, even here.

To finish off this loaf,
wash it with egg yolk,
and dust it with poppy seeds.
And then you bake it. 350 degrees.
A full-size loaf takes about half an hour in the oven.

A friend lent me a book,
two years ago,
shortly before she graduated and moved back to Portland.
I never gave it back to her.
I’ll be able to, now.

The book is Sleeping with Bread.
It looks like a children’s book,
and it’s about that comforting.
It’s about the Ignatian exercise called the examen.
The book is an expansion on settings
and forms and communities you could use this practice in.
At the heart of it, are two questions:

For what moment today am I most grateful?
For what moment today am I least grateful?

It’s about living into the awareness of gratitude.
About learning to be true to yourself.
About listening to the voice of God within you,
through the activities that give you life.

The title comes from a story
about children evacuated from the bombing raids during World War II.
The kids were living in refugee camps.
They’d lost everything:
homes, families, all of the anchors that make any of us feel safe.
They were scared.
They couldn’t sleep at night.

Someone got the idea,
of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime.
It actually helped them sleep.
They could remember,
“I had food today. I will have food tomorrow.”

Yeast. Sugar. Flour. Oil. Water.
Joy. Sadness. Fear. Love. Relief.

These are the ingredients that God bakes bread with.

If you’ve made it before, you might have realized,
that what you’re holding is challah.
Bread of festivity.
It’s at the center of the Jewish weekly ritual of Shabbat.
You begin with the ordinary: flour, yeast, eggs, water.
Lift them to the sacred:
love of community, love of family and friends, love of God.

I did this for a couple of reasons:
I don’t bake for sustenance.
I bake for fun.
I do it because it gets me into my body,
in a way that feels strong.
I’m not aware of fatigue, when I do this.
I’m feeling life interact beneath my hands.

It’s miraculous.
And it’s the most ordinary craft in the world.

I also love the way this dough feels.
It’s smooth, and silky.
Almost like skin.

This is what I did over Spring Break,
when I was preparing to think about this sermon.
I baked it on a Friday,
in my best friend’s kitchen.
She is ancestrally Jewish,
and a practicing Christian.
We ate challah and goat cheese all weekend.
We made our own ritual.

We’re about to do something with the same deep roots
in community, food, and love.
The Eucharistic bread we use in chapel,
always comes from one of us.
We bake it, according to the sacristy’s recipe.
If it doesn’t get done, the sacristans panic—
they know, as only they can,
that the Body of Christ is everyone,
and we all have work to do.
Lizette’s not kidding when she tells you,
show up for your rota assignments.
It takes all of us, to make this happen.

We remember the ancient words of Jesus:
eat this bread, drink this cup.
Remember me, and I will be with you.

The bread is blessed, and broken, before us—
the way it has been offered for two thousand years.
It is given to us.
We hold out our hands, and we receive.

We eat this bread, which gives us life.
The body of Christ, broken for all of us.
The bread of resurrection.

There is enough for everyone.
Come and eat.

The risen Christ is with us.

John 20:19-31
Open Cathedral, San Francisco

I speak to you as a child of God.

I speak to you as a cancer survivor. I was diagnosed last April with a stage II melanoma. That means that I had the scariest form of skin cancer you can have—but we caught it, before it invaded my body. It will be a year, next Saturday, since I got that phone call from my doctor. I had surgery, which may have cured me. Chemotherapy makes me exhausted, and sick, and gives me almost constant headaches. I’ll finish that on June 26.

I tell you this so that you will know, I have come close to death. I know a lot about fear. I know about pain. I know about sickness. And I have the best prognosis possible. I also have an amazingly supportive community. I know a lot about hope. I know a lot about love. I know what my body, and my God, have taught me about living a resurrected life.

Thomas didn’t have what I have. He didn’t have what we have. He didn’t have a community that comes together every week, that sings and prays and tells the stories, that eats the bread and drinks the cup, and that remembers and celebrates the risen Christ. He was huddled with his community of friends, in a locked room in a locked house, barricaded against danger from outside. The other disciples had seen Jesus. And they were still just as frightened as Thomas was. They were in that locked room, together. They didn’t know that the story ends in hope, in resurrection, in victory over fear and sin and death, for ever. They were living it, for the first time.

The last time Thomas saw Jesus, Thomas was rubbing the sleep from his own eyes as he watched Jesus being dragged away by Roman guards. Jesus was on his way to face trial for inciting a riot amongst the Jews, by turning over the tables in the temple. Thus, for committing crimes against the Roman state. This kind of journey never ended well. The penalty was a slow, brutal, bloody, painful death.

The disciples knew what crucifixion was. They didn’t have to see it, to know that Jesus was dead. They knew exactly what had happened to him.

He was dead. Dead people don’t come back. He was dead, and wrapped in sheets, and buried underneath the rock. They knew they'd never see him again.

So who was this, suddenly standing in their living room? The doors were locked. He did not have a key. He was not invited. He walked right through the wall.

What would you say, if someone that you know has died, appeared in front of you and said, “Hi! How ya doin’?”

You’d freak out. You’d be terrified. The world would not make sense anymore. This absolutely could not be happening. And yet, it was.

Thomas had said, “I will not know him, unless I see the marks of the nails in his wrists, and put my hand where the spear pierced his side. “

Jesus turned to Thomas and said, “Put your finger here.” Touch the scars that the nails left in my flesh. Feel my pulse, beating. Know that I died, and that I live again. Here I am, standing in front of you.

And that’s when Thomas recognized him. Not by the miracle of walking through the wall, and appearing out of nowhere in front of them. By the scars that suffering and pain and death left on his body. By the evidence, on his skin and between his bones, that Christ had indeed died, and that death could not hold him.

His wounds did not go away. Nothing was erased, covered over, or forgotten. The marks on his skin, told his story better than any special effects or white light or flashy music could have. We know who he is, because we can see where he has been.

Where do we recognize Jesus, today? Where do we see Jesus, on the streets of San Francisco? Look around you for a minute. Look into the faces of the people standing next to you. Each one of us has a story. Each one of us has struggled. Each of us has suffered. We have all been afraid. Some of us have lost jobs, or apartments, or health care. Some of us have lost friends, or family members, people we love very much. We have all lived through grief.

The risen Christ walked through the wall of that house in Jerusalem. He walks today, through the wall of our own fear. When we care for one another, Christ is with us. When we bear each other’s burdens, Christ is with us. When we support one another, to make choices that lead to sobriety and health, Christ is with us. When we offer shelter to a friend who needs it, Christ is with us. When we listen to each other, Christ is with us. When we feed one another, Christ is with us. At night when we are sleeping, Christ is with us. We are never, ever alone. Christ has been, where we are going. The body of Christ knows the worst that humanity can do. And we are loved, and loved, and loved some more.

Christ is with us in our terrible times. Christ is with us, in our triumphs. Christ is with us, in our love and in our joy and in our hope.

And we will all die. But death is not the end of the story. The story ends, in the presence of the risen Christ with each of us, and all of us. The story ends, in our own redemption from sin, and fear, and death. The story ends, in the absolute and unchanging, unbreakable, unconditional, eternal love of God.

We are about to tell the story again, of the last supper that Jesus ate with his disciples. We will remember the words of Jesus, “Eat this bread. Drink this cup. Remember me, and I will be with you.”

Come to the table, and eat. Christ is risen. Christ is here. Christ is with us, always. Christ touches each of our wounds. And Christ will raise us up.

Amen.

The salt of the earth

Our wireless is wonky. My laptop crashed. And I preached this morning. Here it is.
***

All Saints' Chapel, CDSP
Matthew 5:13-18

“You are the salt of the earth.”
I grew up hearing that expression.
I remember my mom and my grandma saying
that this or that person was the salt of the earth.
I knew it was a vaguely good thing to be,
but I got stuck on the literal language.
I never quite got what it meant.

I went looking, and I found these references:

--an online Catholic social justice magazine
--a movie made in 1954 about a miners' strike,
for which the writers, director, and producers were all blacklisted
--a song from a Rolling Stones album
--a documentary about Palestinian Christians, made in 2004.

And, of course, the biblical reference.
I found information about the way salt was used
in the ancient Middle East,
both as a purifier and a preservative.
I thought about how salt is both a necessary and an everyday thing.
Touch your finger to your tongue.
Taste your tears.

Our bodies carry the same salinity as the ocean.
That is how basic salt is,
to the life of the planet
and to us.

The expression, when it refers to people,
can mean a few different things.
Salt of the earth is the finest kind of human being:
strong, dedicated, honest, hard-working, committed to justice.
Someone who uses their capabilities to make the world better.
It can refer to a humble and unpretentious person.
Or my favorite, and I confess I got it from Wikipedia:
Any person of interesting character, usually of the lower class.

Today we celebrate the feast day of Pope Leo I,
also known as Leo the Great.
The last definition I just read, does not apply to him.

We don't know much about Leo before he became Pope.
He was born about the year 400.
One tradition says he was born in Tuscany.

We do know that the Western Roman Empire was a mess.
It was beset by invasions.
The economic and political system was totally inefficient.
Still, Leo managed to grow up and get a good education.
He was ordained deacon,
and was responsible for looking after Church possessions,
managing the grain dole,
and for generally administering finances.

Again, this is not an ordinary person.
He did well enough to be unanimously elected Pope in the year 440.
He is known for his work to consolidate the Western church
under his own authority as the Bishop of Rome.
In Africa, Spain, and Gaul, he limited the powers of one bishop,
confirmed the rights of another,
and selected candidates for holy orders.

He also negotiated with Attila
when the Huns were about to sack Rome.
He persuaded them to withdraw from Italy.
His negotiations with the Vandals were less successful,
but he did manage to save the lives of the people of Rome.

Leo was a writer.
We have 143 letters and 96 sermons written by him.
They cover many doctrinal points, and the entire church year.
His work was all about purifying the church, doctrinally,
and preserving it against attackers.
He was a clearly powerful person,
both spiritually and temporally—
though I'm not sure I'd call him a diplomat.
He was smart, strong, capable,
and forceful enough to consolidate power under himself,
and to save his people on at least one occasion.

Leo is best known to us for his influence
at the Council of Chalcedon.
The council was called in the year 451, to deal with the heresy
that after the Incarnation there was only one nature in Christ,
and that nature was not consubstantial with us.

Leo's answer was a letter to the patriarch of Constantinople.
It became incorporated into the Council's definition of the faith.
I'm going to read you his core assertion.
Forgive me; it's a little long:

For not only is God believed to be both Almighty and the Father, but the Son is shown to be co-eternal with Him, differing in nothing from the Father because He is God from God, Almighty from Almighty, and being born from the Eternal one is co-eternal with Him; not later in point of time, not lower in power, not unlike in glory, not divided in essence: but at the same time the only begotten of the eternal Father was born eternal of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.

Without detriment therefore to the properties of either nature and substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt belonging to our condition inviolable nature was united with possible nature, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and not die with the other. Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours.

Okay. I can't stand here and pretend
that it was easy for me to understand what I just read.
How about you?
Is it easy for you to relate to someone
who uses that kind of language?
Can you wrap your mind around that sentence structure,
let alone the vocabulary?
To me, it may as well have been in the original Latin.

I used to be quick like that.
Like Leo, I have lived by words.
I read for fun,
and I still attempt to write for sanity.
Now, words just circle around me.
I make occasional grabs at them as they float by.

We call it chemo-brain.
Most of you know that I was diagnosed last spring
with a Stage II melanoma.
It's potentially a very serious skin cancer.
We caught it before it spread.
I had surgery which may well have cured me.
But the secondary treatment is a year of interferon therapy,
to kill anything that may have been left
and to keep it from coming back.
I started with a month's worth of IV infusions over the summer,
and I inject myself three times a week now.
I'll be done at the end of June.
I'll get my body and my brain back then.
The worst side effect is fatigue.
I’ve been so exhausted for so long,
that I don’t have the concentration to comprehend what I read.
I look fine,
and I hear that many times a day.
But I feel run down and beaten up,
and I usually have a headache.
I don't have the endurance it takes to study like I used to.

If I didn’t already know Leo's point:
that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine,
because that is what redemption requires,
I wouldn't even try to understand him.
I need the reality of God shown to me in less intellectual ways.
I need my Incarnation a little more obvious.
Right now, I need my God with skin on.

You are the salt of the earth.
You are the finest kind of human being.
You are utterly common.

I'm doing my field ed at the San Francisco Night Ministry.
The daytime component of that is what we call Open Cathedral.
We do Eucharist outside,
in downtown San Francisco,
every Sunday afternoon at 2.
It's specifically intended to be church
where people who live on the street can feel welcome.
Anyone can come. (That includes all of you.)
And anything can happen.

If you're on Muni or BART, you get off at the Civic Center station.
Walk through the farmer's market, go behind the fountain,
and you'll find us.
We don't always start on time.

So that's where I was, a week and a day ago.
The service had started.
It was a cool, damp, sunny, busy downtown Sunday afternoon.
The last couple of times,
I've been in charge of welcoming people as they wander by,
looking curious.
You don't often see people doing church outside.
I looked out and saw a man walking toward us.
I don't know how old he was;
I'd guess about 50 but I'm often wrong.
Living outside can age you pretty quickly.
His clothes were rumpled.
He was shorter than I am.
At first glance, he looked like he'd had a difficult life.

He stopped just outside our circle.
I walked around, and said hi,
softly as I didn't want to scare him.

He wore a hospital bracelet,
and he dragged a suitcase on wheels behind him.
In his other hand, he held a basket of grapes from the farmers' market.
Just like this one.
And without speaking, he held it out to me.

[hand basket of grapes to lector]

The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

I responded as one of the nine lepers.
I took a grape, and ate it.
And I didn't realize that he had just given me the Eucharist,
until he had walked away
and it was too late to thank him.

But I give thanks for him now.
I don’t know his story.
I don't know his name.
Clearly he’d just been sprung from an overnight hospital stay—
but I don’t know where or why.
I don’t know if anybody visited him.
I don’t know where he was going,
or what awaited him there.

I give thanks for him, and for Leo,
for saints both in history and walking on the street.
I give thanks for those who did the intellectual work
of hacking out the relationships
between who God is and who we are.
I give thanks for people who can articulate their faith
in ways that I can't.
(If I ever could.)
And I give thanks for those who speak with open hands,
and a basket of grapes.
Who would never show up in a well-dressed church,
but whose response to grace is to share what they have.
Who may never speak a word about what they believe,
but who simply and quietly live it out.

Palm Sunday sermon

I'm taking an advanced preaching class, which I love; I preached this there, last Tuesday. It seemed fitting to post it now.

Matthew 21:1-11


We all know what’s coming.
Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem.
We are galloping full-tilt toward Holy Week.
Today’s gospel is a pivotal piece of a much bigger story.

Jesus and the disciples
are making the final journey to Jerusalem.
Jesus knows what is waiting for him there.
He has told the disciples what will happen,
three times in the last four chapters.
Just before this, he has told them,

“See, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over
to the chief priests and scribes,
and they will condemn him to death;
then they will hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and flogged and crucified;
and on the third day he will be raised.”

That’s the next week, in a nutshell.
We can talk until the cows come home,
about how much of that prophecy
is retroactive faith or belief or knowledge,
and what exactly might have come from Jesus’ mouth.
As a literary device,
it’s very blunt foreshadowing.
It’s enough for us to understand
that things have been heating up for awhile,
and they’re just about to boil over.
They’re all watching and waiting,
on high alert, every muscle tensed.
What’s about to happen is a lot more than street theater.

Jesus sends two disciples ahead.
He tells them,
“Go to the next town, and bring these two particular animals back to me.
If anyone questions you, say, ‘The Lord needs them.’”
The disciples don’t question him.
They don’t ask why.
They don’t say, “Um, excuse me, just how are you orchestrating this?”
They take for granted that he knows what he’s doing.
They just go, and do what he asked them.
Of course the donkey and colt are there.
They bring the animals back,
cover them so that Jesus will be comfortable,
and help him climb onto them.
The crowds celebrate, waving palms and shouting,

Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our God!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!

“Hosanna” literally means, “save us.”
They know.
Their king is riding on a donkey, not a Roman war-horse.
This will be a reign of peace, of love, of righteousness.
This is the man who fed them,
with five loaves and three fish.
They trust him to care for them, to remember them,
to give them true justice.

These crowds are shouting, We deny all power to occupation.
We will never again be subject to the authority of Rome.

I’ll be honest—I’ve never known what to do with this gospel.
Holy Week gives me spiritual whiplash.
King Jesus is not the Jesus I’m used to.
This is not the man who healed the leper,
and the blind men,
and told them not to tell.
He’s not being humble.
He’s not hiding anything.
He seems to have finally said,
to all those multitudes he’d been feeding,
“Do it. You think of me as king.
You look to me to be your messiah.
I am. Go ahead and say so.”

Together they proclaim, at the gates of the holy city,
the Kindom of God has come.

Jesus claims Jerusalem,
with the crowds, for the crowds.
If the holy city is theirs,
it no longer belongs to the established,
recognized power structure.
Read on: the first thing he does, inside the city,
is drive the money-changers from the Temple.
The house of God is no place for price gouging.
It belongs to those who worship the One
who created them, sustains them, and loves them.
God desires mercy—
not sacrifice of the weak for the sake of the strong.

Who are the crowds?
I can only read this through a liberation lens.
The story depicts the inception of the reign of the living God.
Who is it, who would seek God’s justice?
These are the people
who have put their hope in Jesus, all along.
These are the poor, and the poor in spirit.
The trampled, the exhausted, the lost.
These are the ones who mourn,
who seek the comfort of a strong and loving God.
These are the meek, and the merciful.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
from the very bottom of the social pyramid.
The peacemakers, and the persecuted.
These are the blessed ones.
This is the power base, in the Kindom of Heaven—
the ones whose power is spiritual,
not financial, not political.
The ones who live by mercy, justice, and love.
The ones Jesus healed, and fed, are the ones for whom he came.
These are the ones who this day, finally, risk their lives to call him King.

Hosanna! Save us!

We sing the Sanctus all the time,
thinking about pronouns, or whether or not to cross ourselves.

This is a full-throated cry for liberation.

It’s no wonder the authorities weren’t pleased.

This ruckus in the streets
punctured the Pax Romana.
Rome enforced “peace” by military means.
There were soldiers in the streets of Jerusalem.
Religious authorities were caught between their faithful,
and the occupying government.
Social unrest could cost them more than their jobs.
A parody of an imperial procession,
by a raggle-taggle bunch of poor people waving palms
and their leader on a donkey,
would be taken as a direct threat
and dealt with, coldly
and efficiently.

We know that it will be.

The entrance into Jerusalem,
the procession into Holy Week,
is a transitional time.
We’re out of the desert.
We’re done with the pastoral imagery,
the gentle healings,
the sweet children’s stories.
This is a liminal time.
Jesus continues to teach, inside the holy city.
But the lessons become edgier:
the wicked tenant, the unfaithful servant.
He openly denounces the Scribes and Pharisees.
He preaches apocalyptic:
be prepared, in belief and action,
for the coming of the Reign of God.
Soon, the authorities have him arrested.
We know what happens next.

The man who spoke in parables,
acted as a parable.
The Kindom of Heaven is where
the broken are healed,
the hungry are fed,
and the king enters not riding a war-horse,
but on a donkey, a symbol of humility and peace.
The donkey bears the king,
and the king bears the people.

Blessed be the One who comes in the name of our God.
Hosanna in the highest.

Sermon: Advent II, Year A

I preached at St. Aidan's this morning.

Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12


When Tommy asked me to preach during Advent,
he said to me,
“You’re good at the feminine perspective.”

Uh, yeah. This is not Mary week.
We’ll hear her story two weeks from now.
I’m not going to talk about the sweet, strong,
courageous girl
with God growing inside of her.
I get to tell you about the Baptist.
The wild man in the wilderness,
one of God’s bad kids,
preparing the way of the Kindom.

The word Advent is Latin;
it means “coming.”
The coming of the Christ child;
the coming of the Reign of God.

It is a time to examine ourselves,
our world
and the way we live in it.
It is a time to be still and quiet,
to ponder the meaning of Christ living with us,
to true ourselves
to the vision that God has for our world
and for us.
It is a time for deep and patient listening.

There are all kinds of ways to do that.
When I found myself needing an Advent practice,
far away from my computer,
I asked some friends for suggestions.
They told me everything from Ignatian exercises
to bubble baths.
Stillness is the key.
We need to be quiet to listen.

Sometimes the voice of God in this season
is as soft as that young girl’s whispered, “Yes.”
This morning, it’s a shout,
a throaty yell clothed in animal skin,
eating locusts and wild honey,
soaked through and dripping with the water of eternal life.

“Repent! For the kingdom of heaven has come near!”

Did I startle you?
I meant to.
The message startles me.

Repent?
Turn around?
Choose a different path?
Stop doing what I’m doing?

But I thought I was all right.
I pray,
I’m involved in my church,
I have a socially responsible job
(or I’m an interminable graduate student),
I have great relationships.
I recycle.
I live a good life.

“Yes,” John says,
But clean your house.
Clear your heart.
Be mindful. Be ready.
The Kindom is coming.

Just how near is this Kindom?
It’s as near as the man standing next to you,
who’s going to get baptized at the end of this chapter.
It’s as near as the hope in all of our hearts
for love, justice, wholeness, and redemption.

John continues.
“You brood of vipers!”

That’s what he’s calling the religious establishment.
Pharisees were the ancestors to the rabbis.
They observed the law, and interpreted it.
Sadducees advocated for the written, Mosaic law only.
Some of them were quite wealthy.
All of them were comfortable, enough, financially,
though they felt the pressures of living under occupation.
Both groups were religious lawyers.
They made their living from talking about faith.

That sounds like a lot of people I know, and respect, and love.
And it sounds like me.

Remember, these people had come to John for baptism.
They’re seeking the help he was offering.
They want to be cleansed from their sins.
John doesn’t care.
He’s not going to be polite about it.
He calls them right out.

He says to them, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
Your words, your wealth, your clothing mean nothing to me.
I don’t care what you talk about all day.
Humble yourselves.
Be people of God.
Do justice.
Love mercy.
Live your faith.

To all of us,
Don’t feel safe because you’re not a Pharisee, or a Sadducee.

“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

The Baptist’s words are for all of us.
It doesn’t matter where you come from,
or who your family is.
It doesn’t matter how you support yourself.
What language you speak,
what color is your skin.
It’s who you are, and how you live, that matters.
We are all children of God.

John calls us to prepare for the Kindom.
What is the Reign of God?
What is this wondrous, frightful vision?
John tells us to watch for it. Isaiah paints the picture.

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge
and the fear of the Lord.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea."

This is peace, my friends.
Righteousness is not piety,
and justice is not punishment.
This is life in the reign of God.
We are to live together, all of creation, in love.
The One who rules us is the Incarnation
of kindness, equity, fearlessness, and truth.

What can we do, in our community?
How can we respond to the Baptist’s call?

We can take one answer from Romans.

“Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

Be open. Be loving. Be inclusive of everyone.
Embrace one another’s joys, sorrows, thanksgivings, triumphs.
Worship together. Celebrate together.
Do what this community is already amazing at.
Do it mindfully. Do it more. Give extra energy to outreach.

How can we embrace both welcome, and justice?
Bishop Marc spoke to us a few weeks ago
about the Millennium Development Goals.
They are an initiative of the UN
that 189 nations signed onto seven years ago.
Signatories agree to give 0.7% of their GNP,
which sounds like absolutely nothing,
to end poverty in the world.
The number comes from the percentage
of the wealthy nations' Gross National Income
that development economists and world leaders agree
it will take to accomplish the MDGs by the target date of 2015.
The US has signed onto them in principle only;
this nation is not giving our share.

But the church is, and we all can help. The goals are these:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger .
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Create a global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.

We started a working group here, last month;
X and I are the contact people.
We had a meeting a few weeks ago,
and we talked about using green energy
to heat and light our building,
partnering with other parishes,
to do cooperative work with them,
and how to educate one another on these issues.
If you want to be involved with this,
come talk to her or me.
We welcome everybody’s participation.
The initiative may be financial,
but human time and energy are crucial to the work of God in the world.

We are beloved by God, always,
wherever we are, whomever we are.
We are human.
We cannot fully keep to the perfection that this gospel demands.
We trip, we stumble.
We fall all the time.
God knows.
Still, we are called always into wholeness.
This gospel doesn’t cut us any slack.
It shouts at us to get our acts together.
It also reminds us who we are, and whose we are.
We are the people of a just and gracious God.

I’m going to close with a poem that I found the other day.
It was written by George Ella Lyon.
It strikes me as a modern, and feminine and feminist,
rendition of the Baptist’s call.
It’s harsh, in places, but it’s tender, too.
And it expresses the hope God has in us.

God signs to us
we cannot read
She shouts
we take cover
She shrugs
and trains leave
the tracks

Our schedules! we moan
Our loved ones

God is fed up
All the oceans she gave us
All the fields
All the acres of steep seedful forests
And we did what
Invented the Great Chain
of Being and
the chain saw
Invented sin

God sees us now
gorging ourselves &
starving our neighbors
starving ourselves &
storing our grain
& She says

I’ve had it
you cast your trash
upon the waters—
it’s rolling in

You stuck your fine fine finger
into the mystery of life
to find death

& you did
you learned how to end
the world
in nothing flat

Now you come crying
to your mommy
Send us a miracle
Prove that you exist

Look at your hand, I say
Listen to your sacred heart
Do you have to haul the tide in
sweeten the berries on the vine

I set you down
a miracle among miracles
You want more
It’s your turn
You show me

You preach what you most need to hear.

I preached this morning in the CDSP chapel. It was a healing Eucharist; when I requested this spot, I was only aiming to get over the terror of preaching in that space. I had no idea of the week I would have, leading up to this.

One of my classmates asked me for a copy, later.

I am enormously grateful that I got to do it, that I'm working through this stuff, and that I'm doing it in a way that helps other people.
***

Matthew 9:2-8


Jesus heals the paralytic.
We know this story.
But we’re used to a noisier telling.
Matthew doesn’t give us the dramatic,
crash-bang-boom!
of the men breaking a hole in the roof,
letting their friend down onto the floor
in the crowd, in front of Jesus.
We don’t have any kind of big,
attention-grabbing scene here.
What we have are the words of Jesus,
first to the paralytic,
and then to the scribes,
who are only talking to themselves,
and then to the paralytic again.
We have a man lying on a bed.
His friends, or family members—it doesn’t specify—
carry him to the One they believe can heal him.

A paralytic is someone who physically cannot move,
on their own power.
They can’t stand, or walk,
maybe they can’t use their hands.
Before things like wheelchairs,
ramps, and Social Security,
if you couldn’t walk,
you were totally dependent on other people
to take care of you.
You simply couldn’t move through this world on your own.
There are people in the world now,
in that situation.

All of us here can move our fingers and toes.
Each of us has more power than that paralytic.
We can function in the world;
we can advocate for ourselves.
And yet, all of us get stuck, on something.
We have times when we are the paralytic.
We are the wounded.
We need forgiveness.
We come in search of healing.

Not all paralysis has primarily to do with the body.
Most of it does not.
Can you spend forever staring at your work,
or your life,
or your dorm room—
because you have no idea how to get it organized?
It’s October already,
and I haven’t seen my stapler since May.

Do you wind yourself so tightly around your anxiety,
that it makes you physically sick?
Have you done something,
or said something,
that you don’t know how to fix?

You are so not alone.
We all have been there.
We are here, because we have been there.

How did Jesus respond to the paralytic?
He did two things.
First, he said to him,
“Take heart, your sins are forgiven.”

That phrase, “take heart,”
sounds so very comforting.
“Chin up! God still loves you.”
And it’s true.

The Greek is also rendered, “have courage.”
Literally, they mean the same thing.
They are the same word.
Their connotations are different.

Courage is strength.
Courage is toughing it out,
when you’re terrified.
Courage is looking up at the rocky face of a mountain,
clipping on your ropes,
and climbing.
Courage leads to exhilaration.
It leads to confidence.
It leads to growth.

Why do you need to have courage,
if your sins are forgiven?
Why not just feel about a thousand pounds lighter,
and be happy about it?
Why not just go dancing through your day?

Because forgiveness un-sticks you.
Guilt is not yours to hold onto anymore.
Regret loses its death-grip on you,
your soul,
your mind,
your body.

Because there is no separation between those parts of you.
Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being
are dependent on one another.
The idea that there is a division between
your mind, soul, and body
is a modern, Western invention,
and it’s completely false.

Forgiveness makes you able to rise back into your life,
and so you do.
Back into relationship with God
and the people who love you.
Back into the dailiness you couldn’t focus on before.
Back, onto your calendar.

And getting back into the world,
when you’ve been only halfway present to it,
takes courage.
It takes re-commitment.
It takes being willing to risk making mistakes,
and needing forgiveness.
It takes giving your trust to God,
knowing that you are loved
and you will be forgiven,
again and again,
as often as you need it,
because you need it.
It takes wanting to rise up and walk,
healthy and well,
fully alive.

As Jesus told the paralytic,
“Stand up, take your bed and go home.”
And he stood up, stretched his new legs,
and walked away.

This story is not even primarily about physical healing.
That’s secondary.
The first thing that happens is forgiveness.
The scribes are only here to set up the argument.
Jesus heals the paralytic in order to show his ability—
and authority—
to forgive.
He heals him as a sign that the Kindom of God
was breaking in on the earth.
He heals him to show that separation wasn’t final,
that God wanted to be in relationship with us—
and would risk being human, to do it.

We don’t know what was in the paralytic’s past.
It was never meant to matter.
He was a human being in need.
Jesus forgave him,
and healed him to show that forgiveness was possible.

Why do we need to be forgiven?
Sin is all that alienates us from the wholeness of God.
Some of it is what we do—or don’t do;
some exists because we are human,
and we live in human systems, in the natural world.
In EOW, we confess
“the evil we have done,
the evil that enslaves us,
and the evil done on our behalf.”[1]

Charles Gusmer, in his book
And You Visited Me: Sacramental Ministry to the Sick and the Dying,
makes three basic assumptions
about the mystery of sacramental healing.[2]
The first is that “some relationship exists between sin and sickness.”
Sickness is not our fault,
and it is not any kind of a punishment.
Rather, “the whole human person suffers sickness
as a consequence of evil in the world.”
Viruses, bacteria, fragile bones simply are.
Brain chemistry is what it is.

His second assumption is that “God is on our side.”
God wants us to be healthy, whole, and well.

His third statement is this:
“The promised salvation in Jesus Christ encompasses the total person, for its goal is none other than the resurrection of all flesh…. Jesus has come to free us, to heal us from sin and evil and all its manifestations, so that we can grow to full stature as children of God.”

We don’t always get what we ask for,
when we ask for it,
how we ask for it.
I’m taking a class on the rites of the sick,
and I can’t tell you how it works.
I don’t know why some healings that we ask for happen instantly,
and others take patience, work, and time.

But I read that last statement as saying,
Christ is always moving us toward wholeness.
God is always raising us up.
When we come forward, in faith,
to ask for healing,
we are cooperating in one of the most
basic, intimate, and joyful works of God.

The effects may be screamingly obvious.
They may be imperceptible.
We ourselves may not see a difference,
when everyone around us is commenting on it.
In the act of asking for healing,
we are changed.

In closing, let me go back to the characters
in the original story.
We are all the paralytic.
We are all the wounded person, seeking healing,
on all the levels in which we are broken.
And we are all the paralytic’s friends,
carrying him,
supporting him,
taking him to the One who will heal him.
Sometimes we’re the scribes,
not sure what to make of any of this.

God has given this authority to human beings.
We all are wounded.
And we all are called to help one another heal.
So let us have the honesty with ourselves
to recognize and admit where we are broken.
And let us have the courage to ask for God’s healing
in the midst of our community.

We will be moving from the anointing
into the Eucharist,
the ultimate healing rite.

Let us listen for the voice of God within us,
and let us answer when God says to us,

“Take courage,
Your sins are forgiven you.
Rise. Take up your bed, and go home.”




[1] The Church Pension Fund, Enriching Our Worship 1 (New York: Church Publishing, Inc., 1998), 56.
[2] Charles W. Gusmer, And You Visited Me: Sacramental Ministry to the Sick and the Dying, Rev. Ed. (New York: Pueblo, 1984), 147-48.

Senior Sermon

I gave this yesterday in the CDSP chapel.


Feast of Edward Bouverie Pusey

Matthew 13:44-52



Have you ever lost your voice?

Have you ever had laryngitis?
A nasty cold?
A sore throat?

You know how frustrating it is,
when you can’t get the words out,
for a day, or two… a week.

But what about when it pains you not to speak?

Do you know what it’s like,
to be silenced?

Have you ever opened your mouth,
and the people you were speaking to
could not—
or would not—
hear you?

Have you ever been made to keep quiet,
when every cell in your body was shouting?

Have you ever told the truth… and paid for it?

Edward Bouverie Pusey was a founder of the Oxford Movement,
which was a revival movement in the 1830’s and 1840’s
in the Church of England,
centered at Oxford University.

Quoting from a biography,
“Fundamental to the movement
was “an appeal to the Fathers as interpreters of Scripture,
and a sacramentalism of nature and the world,
into which the sacraments of the Church fitted easily.”[1]
They pushed forward by reaching back,
and their ideals were high-church.
Today’s Anglo-Catholics have something of
the spirit of it.

Pusey was a good friend of John Henry Newman,
who became a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.
When Newman went to Rome,
leadership in the movement rested on Pusey’s shoulders.

He spent his entire academic life at Oxford.
He was a student there,
and then a professor of Hebrew.
He studied Arabic and Syriac,
as well as other languages.

Communication was his thing.

Lesser Feasts and Fasts says this about him:

“His most influential activity was his preaching—catholic in content, evangelical in his zeal for souls. But to many of his more influential contemporaries, it seemed dangerously innovative. A sermon preached before the University in 1843 on “The Holy Eucharist, A Comfort to the Penitent” was condemned without his being given an opportunity to defend it, and he himself was suspended from preaching for two years.”[2]

His sermon was condemned for sounding too Catholic;
for including passages such as this one:

“And so, where His Flesh is, there he is, and we receiving it, receive Him, and receiving Him are joined on to Him through His flesh to the Father, and He dwelling in us, dwell in Him, and with Him in God. ‘I,’ He saith, ‘in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.’ This is the perfection after which all the rational creation groans, this for which the Church, which hath the first fruits of the Spirit, groaneth within herself, yea this for which our Lord Himself tarrieth, that His yet imperfect members advancing onwards in Him, and the whole multitude of the Redeemed being gathered into the One Body, His whole Body should, in Him, be perfected in the Unity of the Father. And so is He also, as Man, truly the Mediator between God and Man, in that being as God, One with the Father, as man, one with us, we truly are in Him who is truly in the Father. He, by the truth of the Sacrament, dwelleth in us, in Whom, by nature all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth.”[3]

I wanted to let you hear him speak for himself.

Ironically, his whole point
in sharing his view about how the Eucharist unifies
humanity with God (and that goes on for 32 pages)
was to comfort sinners.
He thought he’d come down too harshly on penitents,
in earlier sermons,
and he wanted to give them hope.
He wanted them to know that God loved them,
and was with them.

To us, that would be almost a non-issue.
If you ask each of us what we believe about the Eucharist,
you’d get a range of answers.
We might be advised on what not to say on the GOE,
but we wouldn’t be condemned.

But for writing this about what happens when we receive Communion,
and for speaking it publicly,
the University of Oxford suspended Edward Pusey
from preaching for two years.

Think about it.
Oxford had been his home for something like 25 years.
More than half his life, in 1843.
He was chair of the Hebrew department.
A language scholar.
A communicator.
And, he was also a priest.
Preaching was a tremendous part of his life.
It would have been an inner compulsion.
A calling. Like we know.
And suddenly, he couldn’t do it at home,
in the place that had always embraced him.
He was cut off from participating in his community
in a way that was vital to him.

In our time and place,
there are other options.
We might think, “I’ll just go somewhere else.
Get a different job.
Preach to people who will be more receptive to me.”

No. He didn’t leave the university.
Even after his friend John Henry Newman went to Rome,
he didn’t leave the church.
He stayed an Anglican, and an Oxford professor,
because that was his life. That was his way of being faithful to the Gospel.

A man found a treasure hidden in a field.
He went and sold all that he had,
and bought that field.

Jesus is saying, the Kindom of God is worth
all that you have
and all that you have ever had
and all that you can imagine having.

This is the vision that Edward Pusey served.
He sacrificed his voice for two years,
and whatever additional advancement
the university would have given him,
had he not preached that sermon,
to serve the truth that God forgives and loves us all
and the Eucharist is how we experience that love.

Parables have multiple layers of meaning.
They are ways of telling the truth
by tugging at your soul
and making you hear something in a different way
for the first time.

Can you hear something else in the story of the buried treasure?
People don’t bury valuables in the ground anymore;
that’s what safety deposit boxes are for.
But in Jesus’ time and place,
it was common—
particularly under occupation.
If you wanted something to stay safe,
you buried it.
You might have to move, quickly,
and you couldn’t throw it in the trunk of your car
and pack it with you.
Then, if it was ever safe to come home,
you could dig it up.

A man buried his treasure in a field.
Another man found it,
and sold all that he had to buy it.

I can also hear Jesus saying,
“Don’t bury your treasure.”
Because it will be found.
And it will be given.
You are called,
and you can not help it.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.

The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great price.

The kingdom of heaven is like…
the most precious thing that any of us can imagine.
But the Reign of God is not an abstraction.
John Kater—
God bless him,
I’m pulling this directly out of my notes from his Ethics class last fall—
defines the Reign of God
as the way into understanding what Jesus is about.
It is shalom: deep peace,
true wholeness.
It happens when God’s will is done.

We help to create the conditions for the Kindom,
when we do the will of God.
Ministry is what we do to embody
and celebrate the Reign of God.

Ministry takes all kinds of forms.
Students,
faculty,
staff,
friends,
we are all doing ministry.
And we are all learning what that ministry will be
and what it will mean to the creation,
and the people,
whom we serve.

St. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel at all times.
When necessary, use words.”
We are all called to bear witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ.

So. Do not fear the consequences.
Take everything you know about the Reign of God,
and everything you’re learning.
Take courage.
Breathe deeply.

And speak the truth in love and joy!

Let us hear you.




[1] Cummings, Owen F. Eucharistic Doctors: A Theological History. (New York: Paulist, 2005), 241.
[2] LFF 2003, p. 372.
[3] “The Holy Eucharist A Comfort to the Penitent.” Bound in Pusey’s University Sermons. (Oxford: 1843), 14-15. (Each sermon has its own pagination.)