Diving into Dangerous Truths - Pentecost 13B

In the summer of 1959, when I was 13 years old, I practiced diving almost religiously at the L-shaped pool at the back of the small tennis club three blocks from where my parents lived in Sacramento, California. It was a great summer! Looking back, all that practice, that discipline, may have had to do with making sense, making peace, with the body that was growing too fast, in ways that surprised me; trying to master and make peace with that growing mystery. Part of it also might have been learning to be a teenaged pack animal – most of my friends at the tennis club that summer were doing the same thing. But at any rate, alongside of some tennis, a good part of my days were spent practicing a swan dive, a jackknife, and a cannonball (which I was quite proud of). I decided against trying a cutaway dive when a friend's attempt ended up with knocking out four front teeth on the diving board. Instead I worked to master, in increasing order of difficulty; the half gainer, the backflip, and the full forward somersault.

Learning the half gainer wasn't too hard after I reconciled myself to the fact that I would often land painfully flat on my back, leaving a large red mark, until I got to the point where my feet finally hit the water first. I used my height to make the backflip work; flailing in a way that, if not elegant, was effective in turning me over in the middle of the air and generally completing a full backwards somersault. But the forward somersault was a different matter. I couldn't just jump forward and let the momentum of the dive carry me over: instead, I had to jump and rise as if I were going into a jackknife, then tuck my arms and head into a ball and propel myself quickly enough so that I could turn over in time to meet the water fingers first. It was not easy at all.

And I kept coming back to this memory, this teenage liturgy from over 50 years ago, when I was reading and rereading John's Gospel for this morning. What is Jesus trying to tell us in this reading? What is the center, what was the destination, why is it such a difficult teaching, how do we dive into the living water here?

But John's Gospel constantly points to this hard-to-grasp possibility, that Jesus points to as an actuality, that the very word of God - there from the beginning, creating, ordering, redeeming the universe  - has come to dwell with us, literally pitching his tent with us, in the middle of human being. And that we are called to incorporate him into our being by partaking of him, by eating his very flesh and blood.

This teaching was not easy at all for his disciples, or for any Jews of the time. Cannibalism was forbidden, and for someone to be touched by human blood was to be defiled, and here was Jesus calling his friends and followers to, literally, drink his blood, to gnaw on his very flesh.

These tough teachings are typical of John’s Gospel. In many ways this conversations resonates with an earlier one with Nicodemus in Chapter three; “Unless a man be born again he cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven” When Nicodemus protests at physical impossibility, Jesus points to a spiritual reality where the "wind blows where it blows" and where the spirit comes where it will, where God's will will be done. And that confounds Nicodemus, “how can these things happen?.” And I think it confounds us as well.

So while we’re chewing on this improbable possibility, no less than Nicodemus wondering about being born again, Jesus goes on beyond us. “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that were spoken to you are spirit and life.”

But what if learning to take in the substance and spirit of Jesus's life, the body and blood of his teaching, is a little like the way I learned to tuck my body into a very small place in order to turnover : this momentary conversion, so that I could move quickly in the middle of the air and complete that difficult dive; ending up as I would with a regular jackknife, but with this wonderful revolution in the middle.

There was a song popular in the middle 1950s that began, “Pretend you're happy when you are blue, it isn’t very hard to do, and you will find happiness without an end whenever you pretend.”

Sacraments are not like this: the water of baptism, the rings at a wedding, laying on of hands at confirmation or ordination, the oils of healing or unction, the very bread and wine we gather ‘round today, have nothing of pretense or magic about them. But they are actions which open us to be aware of the reality of life and death and resurrection in Christ's world. They are occasions, times when we move carefully and take heed, where we take in the possibility that all life is holy because God is here and he has pitched his tent in our very midst and has come to be our friend.

In the late 1960s, some 10 years after my disciplined diving summer, I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, the American Anglicans. The poet Philip Larkin says we come to church to “take ourselves more seriously” and there was a bit of that. But there was also a great hope opening in me, responding to a half heard, half hoped-for call, that the universe might mean more, might be leading me in love, in a way that I could not quite believe, but could almost reach out and touch, and wanted to dive into; and three passes of water on my forehead began that journey

Jesus says we must be born again of water and the Spirit. Jesus says we must incorporate his body and blood into our lives, Jesus says we are called to be his friends: and that is what we are here for; to act that out here, so that we can live that out everywhere.

Going back to the diving board: what I learned there was something about discipline and dedication, a willingness to learn, a growing sense of commitment to seeing it through, to moving towards the right action, so that I could  take a jump, turn around in time and come home at the last. In that way the forward somersault was a kind of sacramental preparation for the waters of life.

It is a bit of a dangerous opportunity,like those sacramental moments: the refreshing water, the bread and wine, the hands on the head, the rings shared, the blessings given, the journey begun. And we can be forgiven for sometimes forgetting that these moments of refreshment and renewal all point outward to remind us of our larger life, our deeper ministry in the world.

But what we do here moves us in that direction, towards that revolution, for Christ has said he will be here, in his self-giving, in sharing his body and blood, substance and spirit, in imparting his purpose and passion, that we may be members of his body,; a body of belief, of action, of compassion, people brought together by the spirit in love to be love: to be a city on a Hill, to be the salt of the earth, to be the light of the world.  Amen.

Jesus want to know...

Here’s a question to start: Have you ever been to a gathering, a meeting, a party on your way to somewhere else and met someone who decided they really wanted to know you and you think, “this is going to take longer than I expected.”?

Perhaps Jesus is like this, particularly in John’s Gospel: here is a picture of the word of God, who has been here from the beginning pitching his tent  in the middle of our living room, somewhere between the TV, the couch, the door to the kitchen. It can be difficult.

But in each of the Gospels he tends to be demanding: it is no accident that the two words that occur most in the gospel of Mark are “immediately” and “astonished”: because things change when Jesus is around! Luke stretches us out by making inconvenient and important connections with people we might rather overlook; and Matthew weaves the story of this irregular Messiah, Saviour, God-with-us, using images and stories which seem as old as the creation.

And Jesus shows up in John’s Gospel and says, “I am the bread of life,” and sometimes we can be forgiven for thinking that actually we might  be satisfied by a drink, some dip, and maybe peanuts before we go on somewhere else, to the rest of our life; But this Jesus is still saying something like he is the center of everything. And how do we get around that?

Here’s a little one-liner; “No matter where you are, it is not always easy being here.” But we live in a culture that is increasingly well designed to make us want to be somewhere else, someone else, and fairly quickly at that.

Ann Wilson Sheaf writes that we are addicted to the 3 ifs: “what if”, “as if”, and “if only”: They’re a seductive trio that make almost everything a threat, or a promise or a vague possibility: but while we stand paralyzed at these wide crossroads Jesus comes and says: “You are light, a city, salt. Whose silence are you? Whose hopes are you? Who are you?" And Jesus comes to say that he is bread for the world, living water, wine for the banquet, a celebration that culminates in the present moment and lasts forever. 

And we face him in Scripture, through the tradition, in our churches, at our gatherings, in the friend and the stranger, in the surprising emergencies and opportunities of our lives, the places were we pause and pass on, where he surprises and threatens and renews us. And it isn't easy to get our heads around what a relationship with Jesus looks like, especially with the Gospel of John where he calls us to come and see, to look at him and ourselves like we've never seen anything before; as if this meeting might be more real than we ever could have asked or imagined.

Most of us are not used to meeting people like this, in this world where those three ‘if”s: “what if”, “as if”, “if only”, live. He can be a threat here, where that living death burns up in the face of his dying life, his vivid reality, his real hope

Some years ago I was the senior chaplain at RMIT University in Melbourne, and I will never forget a young student, single mother, daughter of immigrants, dealing with deep depression, sitting in my office and saying, “I go to the mall, and I look on the web, and I don't see anyone who looks like me, and I don't know what is wrong with me.”

What was wrong was her answer needed to be larger than question she was asking; what was wrong was that the mall and web couldn't allow the conversation that needed to take place so that she could remember, be reminded, be renewed, in who she was and where she came from and why all the traveling. 

But when Jesus meets us in the middle of our lives and tells us who he is and asks us who we are, then suddenly the whole world becomes present in a new way and we realize we have to become brand new people. And to get there from here we have to have faith in Jesus, we have to have a new choreography of belief and action; we have to learn to live and move and have our being in this new possibility of relationship and reality

Marcus Borg, in a book called “The Heart of Christianity,” breaks the word “faith” into four dimensions, images and actions which can build a body of belief, understanding and practice. He uses four Latin words to define what biblical, theological, critical, real faith, in Jesus might mean for us today.

The first is, “Accensus,” what we assent to: not just signing on the dotted line, but the formulations of faith, that delineate our desires and dedications, our values and priorities, our dilemma and our diagnosis. Anyone here remember the 4 spiritual laws? Four simple questions, four easy answers, sign on the dotted line and your place in heaven is assured. Maybe add the Nicene Creed or the 39 articles; they both can be valuable - though neither is a particularly good party piece. Better possibilities might be the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, the places where Jesus assures us we will meet him in the hungry, the lonely, the lame and the lost: or these wonderful one-liners in the Gospel of John where he calls us to participate in the presence, in the dance, of the spirit as we join him in returning to the Father. So, not just sign on that dotted line, but live into that long journey!

The second word for faith is “Fiducia” related to fiduciary, a place where we can find trust. About twenty five years ago I was teaching a class on meditation at our Cathedral in San Francisco and suddenly remembered sitting on my grandfather's lap as a young boy, resting back on his ample belly and feeling safe and held. The image of God as a fat old man doesn't work for everyone, (though the farther I go, the more I like it) but finding the place where we can sit and trust being, where we can just let being be, is incredibly valuable  -- although it is not easy, because it can remind us of our noisy allegiances to those 3 ifs as well as the call of the Mall and the web. But the truth is that a meditative practice, a dedication to simple silence, can show so much noise in your life

A few nights ago I was having a meditative moment in my hotel room after walking out to that very interesting “Art Gallery and Museum of the Northern Territory.”  I was simply using a phrase and following my breathing to find the silence under everything, when I heard a very small sound and surprised myself by thinking that there was almost no likelihood that the son of Sweetheart, that very large crocodile, had found its way to the adjoining bathroom. To learn to lean into God's dependable silence is to come to know how noisy, how crazy, our lives can be if we’re not careful.

The third word Borg uses for faith is “Fidelitas” as a faithful relationship -- with a partner, friend, with a stranger at the party, with the very glory of God. For, in John's Gospel, Jesus calls us to a conversation, a dancing with God  with all the distinctive disabilities and detritus and desires of our lives while making room for absolutely everything and everyone in that dance. It makes the world very big and extremely intimate.

But This relates to today’s other lessons; the relentless egoism of King David taking another man's life, another man's wife, and not seeing a world that is larger than his own needs or ambitions. Relates to the vision in the letter of the Ephesians: the ecology of the faithful family or village, the community of faith, where gifts are shared, where compassion and companionship are held in common.

The fourth phrase is “Visio’ related to Vision. Finally Borg asks us how we see, envision, move to live out into this new possibility in these four dimensions of faith, with the given texts and contexts of our times, learning to lean deep into the dependability of God and the mystery of the present moment, committing to this lively wrestling with God in the context of each and all of our relationships; stepping into this in each and every moment of our lives in God's great dance right in the middle of humankind

That is what this liturgy is about, to turn us around to see today anew: that Christ is here, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. These four dimensions of life that come to us right here in the middle of our lives: the chance for a conversation with the God who has pitched his tent in the middle of all these gathering opportunities, beginning now and lasting forever.

Assensus, Fiducia, Fidelitas, Visio. “Life, Death, Resurrection, Return!” "Quick, now, here, now, aways", Jesus comes to the middle of our lives and asks us who we are. And we turn around like people newly born and say to him, you are the bread of life! 

Amen.

Teaching and Evangelism in Post-popular times.

We all know that Marks gospel moves around a lot: if it were a movie there would be quick cuts, close-ups, special effects, lots of sounds; all those miracles, all those stories, it turns out that the two words that show up most often in Marks gospel are ‘immediately’ and ‘astonished.’ If the Gospel of Mark were a Youtube video you might see a quick close-up of someone turning around to see what they never expected, their eyes opening wide, their mouth exclaiming in wonder that something very new and very wonderful is happening here.

Except not today - at least not at the start of today's gospel. For today Jesus returns to his hometown with his disciples after all these miracles, signs and wonders, and everyone in the home town is saying: “Where did he get all this, because we're pretty sure we've figured this kid out.”

Jesus says that a prophet is without honor in his own hometown and the Gospel tells us he could no deeds of power there except to lay his hands on a few sick people. So maybe the moral for the day is that not a lot happens when people think they know you too well in your own hometown. And to me that’s where the Gospel  meets us today: in a world where people think they already know Jesus and his church all too well.

In a way it is our own fault. In the last 2000 years we Christians have told our story, have done our work, proclaiming Jesus in word and deed; sometimes with great success, other times in some real disasters but mostly carrying on, with God's grace, the greatest wisdom, ethical, spiritual, politic, prophetic, religious practice and tradition in Western civilization.

In fact, in all that time, we have shared the Gospel so well in word and deed that the world – at least in the west – has become our own home town and, in a strange way, people now know us so well they no longer see us! That may be one of the things that's  particularly happened to the church in the last  - let's say- fifty years, simply because we've done our work so well.

Look at the advances; how we treat one another:  in caring for the poor and meek, in working for justice, freedom and peace, in speaking for and serving those in any kind of trouble. Yes, we might have a lot farther to go, but over the last 2000 years we have learned and shared a lot about loving our neighbors. The mission of the church has made the world a better place. So maybe, paradoxically, we've done such a good  job, now that the younger generation now tends to see our face and our faith everywhere, and at the same time, they really don’t see us anywhere; because they think they know us far too well. And that's the problem.

If we look around in almost all of the churches of the diocese, we find, for the most part very few people over 15 and under 50. We just are not interesting to them anymore. And the question I work with, pray with, live with (and I bet you do too) is what do we have to say to them, how do we speak the Good News to people who don’t even know they need to hear it?

So, if that question speaks to you, today's gospel arrives like a hand-delivered gift of God. For Jesus meets this moment in Mark’s Gospel, with people who think there’s nothing new they can hear from Him and his disciples; and if we look carefully at that lesson we can see that God tells Jesus and his disciples, and that means us, to do two simple (and not easy) things: get teaching and go talk to people.

First, Jesus goes among the villages teaching, and that’s one half of it. Teaching, and therefore learning, has to come first.  We have to learn to teach this eternal good news of Christ in a new way. In so much of our Church it seems like we are trying to speak to a 21st century world with the vocabulary of a 19th century theology and it doesn’t work that well. So we need to take time and effort to “read, mark and inwardly digest” our faith so that we can feed a famished world with the true bread of Christ in ways that can nourish anew.

I know that education is already important in this congregation, but elsewhere in the Diocese we’ve started classes and programs that are building learning skills for Christians who seriously want to teach and share their faith.

More than a half-dozen parishes in the diocese have people enrolled in the Bishop’s Certificate, a multiyear program that covers, scripture, history, theology, liturgy, pastoral care and evangelism in a comprehensive program.
Education for Ministry is another multi-year program that other Anglicans find fuels their faith and teaches them to share in new ways. Cursillo is doing great things in this area as well.

 We're also starting two new education and outreach programs this year to speak to Christians and non christians who might have overlooked the Anglican tradition. One is a book study on Marcus Borg’s “The Heart of Christianity,” which is very helpful resource  for reaching people who think they might be a bit too liberal for the Anglican Church. The other book, “Love Wins”, by a popular young evangelical named Rob Bell, works to reach out to people who fear that the Anglican church might be too liberal for them. That's why Anglicanism is often called the “Via Media,” the middle way, so in the work we’re doing, we're reaching out to meet people where they are and help them see the eternal riches  of Christ in a new way.

We’re also starting to build some gatherings on ways of getting better in the ways we each out in the larger community. This spring we’re starting a program called Pastoral Partners to offers some new skills and methods in making our ministry of caring more careful. It will take some time, mean some sacrifice and time working together, but it also means we'll be able to offer better pastoral care in our parishes, nursing homes, hospital ministry; learning and teaching ways to make a better ministry in our communities for Christ’s sake. To quote the motto of a growing contemporary English parish; God is love, we deliver!

And that take us to the other point in the Gospel today where Jesus sends the disciples out, giving them authority, telling them to proclaim that all should repent, turn around and see that the man they thought they knew so well, this Jesus, is the way to see, live and love life anew; is the grace and gift of God willing to meet us face to face, here and now, and open us all up to larger life.

This is not an easy ministry, it wasn’t then and it isn’t now. But I am convinced that this is still the good news for today. We live in a world in which the Church has done such a good job that people take us for granted, that they  no longer see who we are and what we can offer; that we’re just seen as yesterdays hope looking sadly out of date in terms of tomorrow promise.

 And we need to take that into consideration, so we just need to make sure our message can speak to the concerns, hopes, fears of the people with whom we seek to share this good news. So we need to pray, we need to study, we need to teach and we need to learn to reach people where they are so that we can show them the true hope we offer.

For we are called as disciples, to take that message of Jesus to the world, even while facing the same facts he faced in his own home town: that people felt they had nothing to learn from Him. We can live with that, and we must learn from that too; to take the chance  to tell people the good news that God’s love, God’s living life and ministry, has come to their home, is facing them face to face, and looks a lot  like someone they thought they already knew well; like an old friend or even like a member of the family. Because the simple fact is that, we are the body of  Christ, and the good news of God just might look just like you and me. That is our call, our ministry and the Gospel we share today, in the name of Christ. Amen.

Marcus Borg in Christian Formation and Education

I have a warning for you before I start. Have you ever turned on your television in the morning, maybe on a weekend morning, seen people talking, and thought, OK, talk show format, and then you see that they seem to be very excited about a particular product: it can be for building muscle or losing fat or learning a certain way, but they are so enthused, and then it hits you, this is not real entertainment, this is a paid commercial program! Now I want to warn you, I have an agenda, this is not a real sermon, just remember, you have been warned. 

Some 35 years ago, towards the end of a fairly noisy party, a friend, a man I had known for a few years, leaned over to tell me that when I had said a certain thing to him (actually quoted a verse from the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews), it had been a great help getting him through a particularly tough time. I thanked him, punched him on the right shoulder, and realized, as I wasn’t a real big Bible quoter, that I actually hadn’t said that. Doing campus ministry in the 1990s, I had a student come to me and thank me for giving her such valuable advice that I am now prepared to swear that I never offered, but I believe that she heard it from me anyway. And often now, in sermons, people thank me for something they heard from someone else’s sermon while I happened to be preaching. I smile and say, “That’s all right” and it is. It’s even more than all right, because it says something about how God sows his word in the world.

John’s Gospel speaks of Jesus as the word of God, and certainly Christ is the definitive statement, but the truth is that each of us, is, carries that seed, casts out God’s love and God’s life in our lives and in our ministries, sowing seeds of connection and compassion and courage and truth in all we say or do (even if we don’t remember) in all of our meaning and our ministry. That’s one of the reasons we’re here as the baptized body of Christ, to hear the good word, the Gospel, so that we can be good news, so that we can remind and renew the whole creation with the Good news of Christ Jesus.

But for the last half century or so, we haven’t done it real well. (Even early in the last century, I think it was Bertrand Russell who sarcastically pitied “poor talkative Christianity.”) so sometime it seems like the whole party has moved to another corner and we’ve gotten harder to hear and less to say, with all the background sounds and now it’s more difficult to speak out and act out the word, the truth, of God’s love in our lives to our friends, family, neighbors, in our whole world.

So maybe the question is what I said here some six months ago:

How do we witness and work to reignite our church in a world that's fast moving in another direction, What do we say and do where slick slogans and quick answers are shouted at every corner? [certainly]... we don't stay quiet as the greatest ethical, spiritual, wisdom tradition within Western civilization moves slowly towards the sunset… we don't let the last person standing turn the lights out fold up the tent,  but what do we do?

Let me get a little personal here. I was ordained about two and a half years ago but before that I spent almost twenty years as a layperson in University ministry, chaplaincy, with some part-time teaching on the side. I had never planned for that. Actually, when I got to seminary in the 1980s I had no concrete plans, I just wanted to be there. I remember one staff member saying he felt that my most creative ministry in the church might be to go outside the church (and I thought, hmm), and in the late 1980s I worked part-time for Lauren Artress, who some of you know, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. When the bishop said he wasn’t ready to ordain me, Lauren asked if I had ever thought of University Chaplaincy, ministry in education, and I said I “think it would be too easy for me.” She looked at me and said, “Well, that’s interesting”, and it was.

But it wasn’t that easy. When I started campus ministry in 1991. it wasn’t that easy to try to speak simple, honest words to 19, 20, 21 year old undergraduates, to sow those seeds, to tell of Christ, after all that seminary education, and too many years in graduate school. So I tried to make new sense, to sow new seeds, to speak some new words on the road and in the dining commons and at the cafe and the gym and in hallways and wandering wherever the spirit led, even eventually in classrooms; and I listened a lot and learned to love more  and also found sometimes when I opened my mouth wide, God said, and people heard, things that were better than I knew. But I also found that the more I worked at It, the better it became, and the more real it got.

There’s the paradox, the gift gets better the more you give it. Ben Hogan was once asked how he became one of the greatest golfers in the world, and he said it was just luck. A reporter said, “But, Ben, you practice for eight hours every day”, and Hogan said, “Well, It just seems the more I practice, the luckier I get”.

And so several years ago, almost twenty years later, I got ordained and now one of my tasks in diocesan lay formation and education is the flip side of what I used to do: where I used to tell the world about the riches of the church, now I am trying to help the church share our truth with the world, because that’s where our hope is to be found.

So how do we come to sow our seeds? How do we live out our baptism vows to embody the word of God in our own lives? The simple truth is this; the more you practice the better you get.

For the last several years in the diocese, with St Columb’s Fair and some other offerings, we’ve worked at building places for people to learn more of the heritage we hold; the riches of Christ, the ebullient breath of the Holy Spirit, God’s loving creativity in the world we share. We’ve talked prayer and pastoral care and archiving our records and publicizing our events, and a lot in between. With this plus the Bishop’s Certificate and Education for Ministry (which you do so well here), people are growing mightily in faith, heart and mind, encouraged and encouraging each other in the ministry of  Christ, and now we are going farther to grow our faith and practice.

And here’s what I am selling. For the next six Thursday nights, from 7:00pm to 9:00pm here at St Augustine’s, I am offering a series of two hour gatherings with a systematic overview of Christian belief based on a book called “The Heart of Christianity” by Marcus Borg, Some would say Borg’s a serious scholar and theologian, others would say he’s too damn liberal, and I would say he’s very interesting, and offers a valuable way to see and question and work with  issues of faith and practice anew.

So for six weeks we’ll look at what belief and scripture, and God and Jesus and the community of the Holy Spirit might mean for us today. There will be a small charge for copies of each chapter, while the books are on the way and we can loan you one if that would help; but what we’re doing, and why this is important, is offering a systematic overview into understanding what God in Christ might mean in todays world and how we can get better in sharing this new creation. By the way, if there is any interest after that, we could consider a second  six week series on Christian practices, but that is very much up to you.

But I would bet that each of you, every Sunday, pray for people who are not here. They may be family, friends, neighbors, even strangers; and the very simple truth is that you just may be God’s word for them, and that call needs to be taken seriously, exercised, allowed to be graced (because so much of our ministry is Grace, and so much can be made better by regular practice). So, if you are interested in extending your understanding and ministry in Christ, you might bring them along, or you might carry them carefully and prayerfully in your heart; in either case, I commend this series to you. If you you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me after our Eucharist.

We will now return to our regular programming. In the name of Christ, Amen

For the Diocesan Celebration of Anglican Women of Australia. St Antony of Padua

1 Kings, 18:20-39
Matthew 5:17-19

To start, I need to confess two things; first, that I made a mistake for the first lesson, and so if you think it sounds like the first lesson for yesterday, you are right! The second confession will come later in the sermon.

But my mistake makes it clear that there are even more reasons to celebrate the witness and life of St Antony of Padua, known as the Saint of the things that get lost.

There are some real lost causes in the two readings for today.

In the Hebrew Scripture, the Prophet Elijah asks a widow on the edge of starvation to fix one more company meal and assures her it will last for a long time. And then Jesus says that our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, that unless we fulfill the law and the prophets, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And if that  demand does not - at least on some days -  seems a bit of a lost cause, then at least it can give us pause,

Because when we look at the church, and the memories of fuller happier days -- still with a hope of the future, but still keenly aware of our losing numbers, our aging communities, the increasing numbers of friends, neighbors, family members who don’t see what we know to be at the heart of the church, the heart of God’s love for the world we see in Christ -- then we might feel we have lost at least some of our hope. So with all of that we have good and timely reasons to turn to St Antony of Padua.

He was born in Lisbon of prominent parents in 1195  - he’s in the same era as St. Francis. At the age of 15 he joins the religious order of St. Augustine and ends up spending nine years at the Convent of Santa Croce. To quote: “Gifted with an excellent understanding and a prodigious memory, he soon gathered from the Sacred Scriptures and the writings of the Holy Fathers a treasure of theological knowledge”. Before long he’s ordained as a priest and it looks he’s found his place, a teacher of theology; doing well, Antony, go to the head of the class.

But then he meets some Franciscans brothers, off to convert the Islamic people of Morocco ,and sees their lives and ministry moving, not from the head, not from mere  knowledge, but from the heart, giving their hearts away to, not just remind, but encourage others in the life of Christ.

In Morocco they are martyred, lose their lives, and when Antony witnesses this, he decides to joins the Franciscans; to leave behind the matters of the head, all that straw-dry theology, and give his heart away. He decides that he will offer his life as a martyr to convert the world to Christ.

But things change, it doesn’t happen. He does join the Franciscans but  he gets sick on the way to Africa and an unplanned wind blows his boat off to Italy. He ends up in Tuscany, working in the kitchen of a hospice without time for either prayer and study, a slightly marginal member of the community, not quite fitting in, a bit of a duck in the chicken coop, and maybe he has found a happiness and a simplicity beyond his expectations.

But again, it doesn’t last long. Antony happens to be around one day, when a number of Franciscan and Dominican friars are brought together for an ordination and there’s no one to preach. They turn to the Dominicans then to the Franciscans but everyone declines, saying they’re just not prepared. In desperation they choose Antony, “whom they thought only able to read the Missal and Breviary”, and they command him “to speak whatever the spirit of God might put into his mouth and Anthony, ‘compelled by obedience, spoke at first slowly and timidly, but soon enkindled with fervour, began to explain the most hidden sense of Holy Scripture with such profound erudition and sublime doctrine that all were struck with astonishment.”

Things change: a few weeks later, in 1224, Antony gets a letter from headquarters. “Brother Francis sends his greetings. It is my pleasure that you teach theology to the brethren, provided, however, that as the Rule prescribes, the spirit of prayer and devotion may not be extinguished. Farewell.”

Theology, prayer and devotion. A trinity of ingredients that balance and compliment our lives together, the makings for food from heaven, that can make a feast, that can feed a starving family, giving hope to a widow and child with some left over for a wandering prophet; food for a time when the old recipes seem to have dried out and left us hungry and without a lot of hope.

 Theology, prayer and  devotion: ingredients that grace us with a righteousness that can feed ourselves, our friends, families, neighbors, nations, and even passing strangers, the bread of heaven, the cup of salvation, the food of a full and balanced faith, the riches of Christ, The gift we are given in order to to give it away.

Now that second confession: In the 1970s I used to joke that I was raised by feminists; the truth was that I learned then and still learn now how most women have a greater facility, a deeper gift than men do, of combining head and heart; integrating theology, prayer and dovotion. Perhaps one of the reasons so many men were against the ordination of women to the churches priesthood was that women do so much better in the priesthood of all believers: lifting the world, the pain and glory, the sadness and sanctity, the head and heart and wholeness of people and places and all of life back to God, with a natural grace that does not come too easily to most males. And we all need this whole priesthood to share in the priesthood of Christ. Especially now, when theology has gotten so cerebral, so heady, so… can I say, blokey?

An American theologian and writer, Diana Butler Bass, who we are hoping to bring to the diocese in 2013, has a good way of looking at this. BTW, we have some copies of her book “Christianity for the rest of us” at the Registry Library,  so if you want to borrow one, come on by.

Butler Bass comes at theology prayer and devotion with three simple questions which she finds at the heart of a spiritually vibrant Christianity -- old questions of believing, behaving, and belonging. But she says we are changing the way we ask those questions, changing in ways that enlarge and embolden the faith, ways that just might give us hope and vision, help us even exceed the righteousness of those dried out Pharisees in the old boys network.

Believing, behaving, and belonging. Now over the centuries, Butler Bass says Christianity has engaged these 3B's in different ways, with different interrogators and emphases and for the last 300 years or so, the questions were asked as follows:

1) What do I believe? (What does my church say I should think about God?)
2) How should I behave? (What are the rules my church asks me to follow?)
3) Who am I? (What does it mean to be a faithful church member?)

But now the questions have changed as the world has changed.  Butler Bass writes that contemporary people care less about what to believe than how they might believe; less about rules for behavior than in what they should do with their lives; and less about church membership than in those whose company they find themselves.

So, for Butler Bass, the questions have become:
How do I believe? (How do I understand and live with faith in my daily world
2) What should I do? (How can my actions make a difference in the world?)
3) Whose am I? (How do my relationships shape my self-understanding,my self-giving?)

So believing, behaving, and belonging still matter. But the ways in which we engage each area have undergone a revolution… For her “The old faith formulations were externally based, questions that could be answered by appealing to a book, authority, creed, or code. The new spiritual longings are internally derived, questions of engagement, authenticity, meaning, and relationship. The old questions required submission and obedience; the new questions require the transformation of our souls.”

As Francis writes to Antony, so I say to you.  “It is my pleasure that you teach theology... Provided... that, the spirit of prayer and devotion may not be extinguished. Farewell.”

Francis said one other thing: Preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary, and you already know that!

Dear Anglican Women of Australia in the Diocese of Wangaratta. I look around this morning and I see so many lives as sound theological texts, sermons in flesh and blood, in lives given over, served out in offering wholeness, hospitality, health, hope and home; combining head and heart, exceeding the righteousness of all those macho scribes. While those macho Pharisees argue about their their desiccated commandments and their dried up meals, you have been singing the songs of praise and providing the bread of heaven. The heart of Christ’s ministry, that eternal priesthood, is found in your hands, blooms in your  very lives.

And as God is blessed in your ministry, may you continue to be blessed, may you continue to give blessings; today and always.  Amen

Towards a Theology of the Cloud

Today’s Gospel focuses on a time when Jesus’ family thinks he’s  really lost it. He’s doing things everyone knows you can’t do, and he’s going well beyond the local rules: so his family, his mother and brothers (Luke adds his sisters as well), are trying to bring back him home because he’s simply getting too big for his boots.

Astonished is the word that shows up a lot in Mark’s Gospel; Jesus, the disciples, the crowds, everybody gets astonished by what’s happening here; the local boy making good way beyond expectation: teaching with authority, casting out demons, healing the sick, preaching good news, even pardoning sinners! It’s almost unbelievable, and the people who know him best, his own family and the home town folk, are saying, this boy is getting above himself.

But what happens when you get above yourself? What happens when you see the horizon is higher, that life goes farther, that love comes closer than you ever knew?

This is a universal question. Some years ago a teacher in the Zen Buddhist tradition was asked if he could encapsulate his wisdom in two words, He was quiet for a moment, and then he answered, “Things change!” There’s a lot there, things do change.

Do you remember when computers were really big? In 1965, when I was in University, a friend used to spend one night a week playing chess with a computer that was as big as a room. Now I have a computer I can lift with one hand and an iPad that I can carry with three or four fingers and a phone that may very well be smarter than I am, but, as long as I remember the passwords, I am all right with that.

But things do change, and technology’s gone so far in such a short time! From the 1930s to the 1980s my father was a printer and typographer in California. He used to give tours of our small printing business to school kids, asking their names, tapping the keys and letting them watch as the machine manufactured a line of type with their name flashing in silver metal which he would proudly present to them.

And when computer typesetting came in the late 1970s he told me they could never match a well trained typographer and a fast linotype. Now when I play with my laptop, carefully adjusting the relationship between letter and word and page, between dark ink and light space, I think he would be very happy to see how wrong he was.

For finally he was able to see that the future would be bigger than the past, that what was coming might contain more  possibilities than what has been before. This is both a material and a spiritual reality, but it does takes a certain kind of faith to let the future be different than the past, to rest in the hope that God’s word and God's world, can be bigger then you know, and it’s often not easy.

For the crowd around Nazareth, and Jesus’ family too, figured that God was to be found in a certain way, following a certain direction, the tried and true traditional path, and, for the most part, they were right: but they were starting to see some things, right in front of their faces, that astonished them even more, that told them God and God’s word, God’s life in their sight might come to look like nothing they had ever seen before, and it scared them.

So their temptation was to split the world into two parts: on one side, “what we know, what we’re used to”, was good; and on the other side, what was new, surprising, “beyond us” was bad, damaged or demonic. But Jesus tells them that the world might be bigger, might be better, than they had thought; that the new answers might be larger, have more largesse, than those old questions. For Jesus tells us, as surely as he has loosened the yokes of those under oppression, he has also bound the adversary, he has also saddled sin and he has set us free.

Now, I will freely admit that it may take some time to see the fruits flower in this new creation, but it looks like God’s truth is that if Christ is risen from the grave and we are raised with Christ, then by the grace of God Jesus’ way has already won, and so have we. And then the question comes, how can we live with, how can we live out of this new truth?

St Paul gives us some of the answer in his Second letter to the Corinthians;

“the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus... so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day… preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

And how do we get our heads around this?

Let’s go back to technology for a that. In the last few years there is this new thing called “The Cloud” where individual computers users can store documents and records offsite, in a central location, sometimes quite a ways away. And now we can put programs and plans and letters and documents on this remote cloud and share them more easily and access and edit them from various locations and with different devices at different times, and it ends up we’re working better together to store and share and keep our work and our life in the cloud, and that sounds, if not a little like heaven, then at least like something, once again, bigger, different than the world I thought I lived in.

So I am not saying God is like a computer: but I am saying that we, right now, in our very deepest ecology, are building an heavenly glory (somewhere beyond the clouds) in the realm of God’s eternal now.

But before we get too happy, lets realize that can be a tricky truth to live into, because there's a danger that we get so “spiritual,” that we end up caring less for our earthly ministry. I remember, in the early 70s, when I was a youth group leader, a young woman telling me that she hoped her father accepted the Lord before the rapture came (which for her was somewhere like Wednesday) and I wanted to say, “Listen, God’s family might be bigger than that; God’s love might be bigger we know, we might want a bit more time to work on this.” I didn’t say that, instead I tried to follow the old bumper sticker wisdom, “Be patient, God isn’t finished yet!”

But now I’d quote Henry Thoreau; "If you have built castles in the air.. that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." For I am convinced that what we build in our ministry here, day by day, just in time, is foundational for always, for what lasts forever.

So maybe the plain truth is that we just need to keep looking at Jesus, who gives and lives his life right here in sight of heaven: living with sinners and saints, healing those broken hearts, sharing bread and wine and tears and hope,and always reminding us that the family is this big, the world is this large, the victory is this sure; for our lives even now are hidden in Christ, and nothing can ever separate us from that eternal love.

St. John Chrystostom preached this one Easter some 1600 years ago, it’s still true:

“Rejoice today for the Table is richly laden...
Let no one go away hungry. 
Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,

for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; 
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, 
for the Death of our Savior has set us free...




Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!

Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is Risen, and life is liberated...




To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

Living with Law and Love, Easter 5B

The thing that gets me wondering in John’s Gospel today is the question of pruning: “He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” And I am not too sure about this pruning,

But the night before last I gave a talk to the young men and women at the Debutante Ball hosted by St Stephens’ in Rutherglen and I told them they should learn to make  good mistakes. I even quoted T S Eliot: “‘Life is what we make of the mess that we make of things” and that wreckage is the raw material where we find the force and the fuel to make our lives our own. The kids looked at me with some disbelief, but a few adults smiled and nodded; I might not have reached many of the younger people, but it was something I wish I had heard when I was younger.

Because I think we have to  get it wrong before we get it right in a lot of our life and certainly in our ongoing journey with the Lord. That’s the reason for the pruning shears, that’s what we need to lose at the last; we need to move from the love of law to the law of love.

Let me put out some definitions: the love of the law is that concern, that interest, that occasional compulsive fixation on who or what is right so we don’t get it wrong. The love of the law worries about how we miss the mark and tries to make a map to take us where we’re supposed to be. It starts small; most maps we make to learn to love the law start with the standards of our friends or our family or our neighborhood or our nation: some standard of law can simply be a way to say, “everybody should live life like we do” and they can be pretty basic.

Some examples: when I was a kid, my mother had old Blue Willow dishes in the kitchen, so that was right; but my aunt had a brand new set of green and yellow melamine resin dishes, called, Melmac; and I wasn’t too sure if they were right.

In school all the kids looked more or less like me; except in fifth grade we were joined by the daughter of a family of refugees from Estonia, and she was different. By the seventh grade, there were what we called colored people in our classes. I thought these people were probably all right, but I wasn’t sure, because they looked so different from what I had grown up with.

I grew up around a small tennis club in Sacramento, California in the 1950s. And in those days tennis was all white clothing and no arguing allowed, a sport for ladies and gentlemen. I remember sitting in the grandstand watching a tournament when I was a little boy, and when a player lost a crucial point and threw his racquet on the ground, I spoke out with all the authority of a precocious seven year old and said, “Just for that your score goes down to zero!” My parents were embarrassed but I was proud! I knew the rules; the ones who played by the rules and observed the law were right: Ken Rosewall, Arthur Ashe, Margaret Court, Chrissy Evert. When Jimmy Connors came  along the game changed; he was noisy and that wasn’t right: it might have been more exciting, but there were still rules for things like that.

So when I joined the church in 1967, part of the reason was so that I might find more rules to follow. But something else happened: a certain growing edge, a somewhat  uncomfortable feeling, like I was being turned around, learning to live into a growing tension and understanding how we might try to act in respect, to get it right, in our love of the law, and yet grow to prayerfully and gracefully live out our lives in the light of the law of love,

John writes this: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

As I came to know Jesus; I saw that he wasn’t the lawgiver, the judge or the son of the big policemen in the sky; rather he was the icon, the model, even, if you want to use tennis as the metaphor, the teaching pro who shows us how the game really should be played. In his relationship with his father, with his family, with his friends, in his relationship in the Spirit which he sends to share with us; he shows us how to play out, live out the law of love we see in his life and death and resurrection, and that makes it all a whole new and different kind of game.

And it wasn’t, it isn’t easy, trying to connect this new life and law of love we see in Jesus back to the old laws we might have seen so clearly before; those customs and expectations, the etiquette and law that we so wanted to use to order our ideals. It is not easy to try to leave those old laws behind as we move to live in this new love.

Paul puts it his way in the letter to the Galatians: “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” But there comes a time when we must graduate to the law of love.

And it can be tough to face the fact that a large part of us would like to keep those old expectations as we come to understand ourselves in a new family of relations. For the fact is that Jesus’ family keeps getting bigger!

Some examples going back to John, “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” and “those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”  That sounds easy at the start, but the plain truth might be that the rules on these relationships, the law of love, might be wider than what we find immediately comfortable!

Look at Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus is told that his mother is outside waiting for him,. He replies, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers? whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Remember the definition of neighbor that the lawyer in Luke had to come to; the neighbor is “the one who showed mercy.” That is not easy to see clearly if you’re carrying around the love of law. This is an offense to many of our old familiar sensibilities. How do we make sense the of the law if we’re called to live with a family that just might include everybody, if love can be that large?

Let’s go back to tennis for that lesson! I didn’t learn easy, and remember having to take lots of time to groove my stroke in tennis before I could be free to move it out, to play well. But  following the rules and the ritual finally made me fit to play the game freely. And the same when I learned to cook, I was tied to the recipe book:  how many “quarter teaspoons” was important! When I learned more, then I knew better; when I knew what rules could be moved, overlooked, set aside for the love of a good family meal.

Moving from law to love takes us to a different focus. It could be the difference between the sensate thought (the part of us that knows how much and how many) and the intuitive idea (the surprising hunch that comes out of nowhere and is right on the money). Perhaps it’s the difference between slavishly following the recipe and formula;or carefully, prayerfully, lovingly preparing the bread and wine. Maybe it has to do with what tastes better, is more real, lovelier to the touch or the tongue at the last.

But as I grow older, I find by grace that the law in me grows less and love seems to matters more, and this may be true for you as well. It has not always been an easy process, and sometimes there’s been pain. But, for the most part, the rigid rules and roles I followed faithfully for such a while have faded away, burned out, maybe been pruned back, to be replaced with a new and abundant  neighborhood of sharing and caring that tries to makes room for not less than everyone.

So perhaps that is where the lopping off of the old limbs makes sense: to help us be free to live in that larger landscape; where, as Paul writes in Second Corinthians, “what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

For we know that love never dies, and pruning just might be what it takes, so that, in letting go of the love of law and faithfully following the law of love, we might live both wilder and deeper, making better, more charitable mistakes in all our ministry with family, friend, neighbor and stranger, in a world that grows ever larger,  less concerned with law, more infused in love, more grounded in  grace, rising with the gift of the spirit, coming to live more life and bear more fruit, as we come to abide with Christ in the love of God.

Amen

Easter Sunday and the three witnesses

I want to start this morning with the very end of a poem called "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry. I first read it about 25 years ago and it often comes to mind at Eastertime. He starts out:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.


And then he shares his antidote to all this deadly business: 

So, friends, every day do something 
that won't compute. Love the Lord. 

And he ends the poem with a two word prescription: it simply ends,


"Practice Resurrection"

“Practice Resurrection.”  Maybe that is what we are starting to see in the Gospel of John we just shared. in the way that the three main characters, these three witnesses, in the Gospel work through a new understanding of where, how and why Jesus lives. This isn't easy. To practice resurrection means to practice life and death as well, because the three seem to be tied up together, and this is not always easy.

So many of us long to not be afraid of death. To live our lives as through nothing could destroy us, nothing could wipe us out, could separate us from the rest of life in the largest sense: for is this were true, then we might live life more freely, less concerned with survival and competition, and more in touch with the caring and quality of life – for ourselves and others – on the way. If the end of life were seen as good, godly, connected to God; then the way we travel, the present moment, here and now, day by day, might be seen in a different light.

"So, friends, everyday do something that wont compute. Love the Lord."

But how do you get there from here?

Let's look at the three ways we see touched on, lived out, by the three witnesses we see at the tomb this morning.

First, for John, Scripture simply says, "He saw and believed." For some of us  there can be this given miracle of faith, the gifted sudden insight, the new understanding, when all the old ways we've often seen the world fall away and we look on a truth that surprises us with new life. Even if it look like nothing we've ever known before. That can be mystifying, for as Thomas Merton writes, "If a message has no clothes on, how can it be spoken?" But this fresh love, this new life, the reality of this relationship, rising up in a new understanding, a new creation, the old clothes put aside, the naked truth, and the peace of a new beginning, can come in simply witnessing the moment when the world changes.

It is not that uncommon. Every so often I wake before dawn, put on a robe and make coffee, then move to the living room where there are windows facing east. And I simply sit and watch the light change, the shadows move, the sun rising. I don't say anything, It's a quiet time, but sometimes, as I sit there in silence the changing beauty of the new day reminds me of how and why we live, it reminds me of the truth of love and life in a way I might never learn from any other source. That sunrise makes me remember how light comes in darkness, how new beginning comes when the old times are moved aside, when I simply wait some newborn angles of sight and insight come that I had never expected to see. One morning recently, I just sat there watching; and when the light came and the room was bright I turned around to see the place where I lived like I had never seen it before. Suddenly I saw new life in the middle of my old world, and it was a wonderful day. Sometimes God gives us that gift of new beginning, and  we simply need to simply take the gift of a new insight, a new vision, and live into it like John.

But more often, I think, we're like Peter and it takes more time. We rush in, look everywhere, get confused and unsteady if we can't make sense of it right away (if the burial clothes are gone and the body nowhere), and then we  head out again. No sudden insights there one , but sometimes grace and time and habits and community can arrive over time and help us move into that new world of possibilities.

Peter's faith, like so many of us, is one that is fed in community, one that can be carried by the church. That's what happens for him a few days later, he's back at work fishing with his friends, and he sees, with a little help, what John had seen immediately, the Lord is alive! And this time he moves by faith: he takes off his old work clothes, leaves them  aside like a burial garment, and dives into the deep water of new life. It's almost like another kind of baptism for him.

 It takes Peter time to see, follow, watch; to be washed and found and fed by this new understanding of living with Jesus: it takes good time for him to learn the dance of faith. Those of us who aren't natural dancers can appreciate this: a 1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3 rhythm that helps us finally move into living in the rhythm of the resurrection: conversation, communion, community; again and again and again, until we can meet with and move like Christ. Peter even gets a threefold call from Jesus. It's not that he's slow, it just takes time until he finds the message he's made to carry, the life-giving faith that he must live for, the truth for which he can give his life. For Peter, the living body of Christ is found, is seen, in the company of believers, is known in the hands outstretched, the storied shared, the lives knit together in caring company. That may be the model that makes sense for us,

We don't know much about Mary. She may have been a rich woman, one of those who supported Jesus and the disciples in their journey; she may have been a prostitute, perhaps the woman who poured oil on Jesus' feet and rubbed them with her hair; some would say she was the sister of Lazarus, but we don't really know. There are all sorts of stories of who she was and what she means, but this we know; that she was the first at the tomb, she stayed with the mystery of it, she saw the stone had been  taken away, she asked the angels, heavenly messengers, where Jesus has been taken; she cries until a stranger, a gardener, asks her why she cries and she suddenly realizes that the one who asks the question is himself the answer.

John is given sudden insight, Peter's faithful call comes through the grace of the community and the sense of the sacraments and the scripture, Mary is saved, sees the Lord, comes to know Jesus resurrected, because, even with all her tears, she keeps on asking questions. The tenth century Saint, Symeon the New Theologian, says the Spirit is most often shown in the gift of tears, and The Cloud of Unknowing, a 14th century text, says that sometimes the best prayer is simply to say "Help!" Perhaps it is that our desperate desire for wholeness, to find the face of hope, will take us along some mysterious way to find ourselves face to face with the Christ we seek, for that's what happens to Mary.

May we, today, be willing to join this company of witnesses, may we be ready to receive the insight of John, to take the road of sacramental community and ministry of Peter, and to let our tears and our desires lead us, like Mary, to the Lord of Life; that we may join in that company and add our voices to that chorus, "We have seen the Lord."

For Christ is risen from the dead, Alleluia!

Sermon: Palm Sunday in your City, in your Heart.

This morning I want to start with a story.

In March of 1972, a bit over forty years ago, my grandmother, Eva Storey, came closer to dying. She was just eighty, had been dealing with leukemia for several years, with a few remissions and one time what seemed like a miracle recovery, but now it was coming closer to the end.  Her eldest child, my uncle, flew out from the East Coast to be with her and I remember, as if it were yesterday, the day he carried her in his arms, followed by his younger sisters, my mother and my aunt, across the lawn to the car to take her to the hospital for the last time.

 I stood watching from the kitchen window. I might've been crying. But two things happened that I remember: first, something like the music of the Sanctus, a sense of bells and music sung by some great choir; “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, Heaven and earth are full of your glory.” And, second, a conviction that came into the middle of my pain and felt like sunlight in the center of that dark day. “Thank God,” something in me said so deeply, “Thank God we matter this much.”

Now the moment that touches me from the Gospel for this Palm Sunday is at the very end, when Jesus looks "around at everything" before heading out to Bethany with the twelve.  I wonder what he saw: and my hope is that he sees, everything, all of us, exactly as we are, in all our living and dying, and he knew – he knows – how much it matters. And that gives me great comfort.

I don't know about you, but there's been lots of living and dying in my life this year, this Lent.  Early in the year my best friend John Davis' father died after a long life. His family has adopted me as their American son so I was part of the mourning and preparation for the funeral, and that time reminded me of deaths in my own family: father, mother, brother, nephew; good friends who died too young and too soon of heart conditions and HIV, suicide and substance abuse. And then last month I spent a few days around Numurkah after the floods hit; saw people whose homes and hopes had been  flooded out, washed away: great courage and great sadness.  Then two weeks ago I got a call from California that my niece, Lisa, had passed away after courageously living with cancer for several years: not yet fifty, loving husband, two children still in their teens, a beloved younger sister; and her mother at her bedside at the last. Then finally last week, Fr Glyn Reese of St John's, Wodonga, who I am proud to call a friend, found that his  elderly parents  had been murdered in their home in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Glyn and his son Anthony flew over there right away, his wife Liesl and daughter Laura are joining them for the funeral tomorrow night. Too much life and too much death.

 And I think Jesus sees all that as he looks around Jerusalem, sees all our fears and anger and anxiety about death, see all the trials and tragedy of our everyday lives and he walks right into the middle of it all: maybe he even carries us along like an elder son into the middle of that very noisy city. And even though it might not feel like it, I think there is some good news there.

The English theologian, Austin Farrer, writes that we are invited to exchange our living death for Jesus' dying life.  We are invited to stop holding on so tight to our fears and our hopes and our tensions and our ideas about the times we live in; and instead to have faith that Jesus will take us in his arms and guide us through the middle of it all. Now (as they used to say) that's the good news; and the bad news is that we can only get there from here, from exactly where we are, by being exactly who we are: being mixed bags of fear and hope and hate and love and longing and death and life, just being who we are as the Lord hugs us close in the life of Christ and takes us right through the middle of each and every death into the heart of God's eternal life.

 So the events of the coming week in our church calendar give us a kind of circle tour of all the sites of the human condition: we see power politics and cunning betrayal, compassion and community, virtue and violence,  death and resurrection. And, for each of us, that will resonate with our own histories and hopes, stories we remember, people we miss, things we fear. Holy week can be a difficult way to follow. But Jesus knows this route, looks and sees all there is in Jerusalem, in every city, in any city and country, in our own homes and hearts: so that nobody and nothing shall be outside the loving embrace of his ultimate love.

Sometimes it's not easy to take this in. We might not always think that the universe could be knit together so carefully, we might not be able to hope that the holiest One will hear our fear and hope and loneliness. But we are called to have faith that Christ holds us close through these crises, these dangerous opportunities, that Jesus will take us through every turn, every tight corner of the human journey from birth to death and beyond, will take everybody everywhere, and bring us home, to what we call heaven to what we hold in hope in our hearts at the last.

That's why we call it Good Friday, because God meets a every needless tragic death, all the violence and the shortcuts of the city, all the separation from what we  care for, and Christ carries all that home in love.

So this week stay close to your Bible and prayer book, to your church and community, to all your friends, feelings and your fears, and to your hope and your heart too: because the heart of God, the God of love we see in Jesus Christ, journeys to Jerusalem to meet His death and to bring us life. And we must thank God that it matters this much.

Amen

Mary, Movies and the Mother's Union

 Everybody has a bad movie that they like, though sometimes we keep quiet about them. If you ask me to list my favorite films, I will come up with some well-known movies that show a wide variety of good taste, perhaps with too much fondness for low comedy and full-color musicals. But if you ask me for a film that I'm I want to see when I'm recovering from the flu or feeling slightly sad then I might come up with a different list. One on the middle of that list is a film called “Foul Play” starring (are you ready?) Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. She plays a serious but slightly wacky librarian who gets involved in an assassination plot. He plays a creatively crazy policeman trying to win the maiden and solve the case. All this in 1970s San Francisco, a city I knew and loved. It has one of the best car chases you'd ever want to see, though it goes on a bit too long, but in the middle there's a bit of a love scene that is just wonderful.

It happens when Goldie, who has just missed being murdered by an albino with a knife, being luckily saved by Chevy, is now, for security reasons, going to spend the night at his Sausalito houseboat. Nothing's really happened romantically yet, but there seems to be an possibility of something else on the horizon, and they begin talking.

He says, "What if you think of me when you first met me?" She says, "I thought you were  a bit of a fool." He says, "But what did you think before that?" She says, "I thought you are arrogant." He says, "And what did you think before that?" She says, "I thought you were cute." and He says, "And what did you think before that?" And all this time they're getting just a little bit closer and they're taking very quick little looks, sort of snapshots, at each other's eyes and each others lips. And he says, "And what did you think before that?" And she says, "I thought you might be nice to kiss." And they do, and the lights fade, and the next thing you know they're having breakfast or something. 

And it seems to me in every one of these interchanges, these playful and erotic and building dialogues, that each one of them is getting younger.  It starts out with a guarded quality, yet with each response more honest innocence shows forth, they look at each other more openly, more keenly, sharing perhaps both their fear and their desire for completion, for wholeness, for the moment that connects, and they look younger every time.

And I think that happens with Mary and the Angel. 

Mary starts out a little guarded, "What can this mean, how can this be, this cannot happen to me" But she keeps coming back to the angel, they keep looking at each other, they keep being surprised by how deep and honest the interchange, the affection, the opportunity for a great joy just might be. What must she have looked like in that final Yes?

It must've been like a little girl, not knowing that anyone was watching, dancing before a lighted Christmas tree. What they call an authentic gesture, not tentative, but opening and articulate, allowing  space and making song and sense of the opportunity that has arisen.

And I want to say that that moment, a moment like that, is at the  ending, middle and beginning of every encounter in the Gospels. The preliminary question, the more direct response, the eyes searching, the faces facing, two people getting closer when desire and want meet opportunity and love, when healing happens and when new creation comes out of nowhere:

 Think of these people in the Scripture who are face-to-face with Jesus: putting their incomplete questions to him in the middle of that unfinished journey; just a bit awkward: because it always happens that way when we risk, when we're unsure, beginning, opening a new, just starting out, but it is still a kind of blessed poverty; think of the Beatitudes in Luke: 

"Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of heaven, blessed are you more hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who we now, for you will laugh, Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on  account of the Son of Man; rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven."

 So every dialogue, every dance with the Lord, with God, is an opportunity to grow younger, is a chance to wake up to life, life larger, life containing more contradictions, life pulsing with possibilities, life birthing a new way of being beyond any ending we might've seen before. That opportunity is there every time anyone takes the risk to seek Jesus face to face and ask the crucial question that waits to be asked in the middle of their life.  As the philosopher/theologian Suzanne Langer says, "If we would have new knowledge we must get a whole new world of questions." 

Still, some get it wrong, can't take the risk, have no room for questions. Instead, they hear a challenge and tried to choke it off, they hear an opening and try to close it out, they see a door opening to a more loving life and they try to nail it down; and they shut themselves off from so much.

Yet others listen, those who want to live larger, those who want to go beyond limitations, those who have to endure great suffering and deep pain but still hear in their hearts that hymn that keeps hope alive. And when they come to Jesus they get younger.

Look at the disciples in the Scripture, they start out as such staid people, such old fools, asking silly superficial questions. They consistently misunderstand Jesus and, when he gives them parables of opportunity and freedom and grace, they ask for security and positions and powers. It has to make you laugh!

  Thank God we have models of the faith like that, because they give us room to begin, and then they grow in faith and dedication and discipline and heart and hope through from those shaky beginnings to the ends of their lives.

 We talk about people maturing in the faith, getting wise sometimes and in some ways, and maybe we do; but I'll bet we get younger in the bargain.  We might not look younger (though that would be nice too) but we're still more likely to take it on living faith, more likely to let hope fly, maybe even foolishly, more likely to dance in front of the Christmas tree, and every other tree, every chance we get, every day of the year.

 It isn't always easy, and sometimes it will hurt like hell. Even for Mary. Later in Luke you get, “And a sword will pierce your soul,” and still later Mary will see things that no mother should see: witness that love and life to which she said "Yes" meeting a bloody end, a "No" that seems to have no hope for hope. She must have wished that cup could have passed by her child 

But perhaps she realized that she had taught him to walk that way, to dance in that direction. After all, Jesus', "not my will but thine” is not too far from Mary's, “let it be to me according to your word." Her hands lifting in that girl's garden to accept the Angels mission is a kind of overture to this solemn celebration he will enact, arms open wide, on the  Mount of Calvary. Perhaps she had helped to teach him to be the Lord of the dance, even with that damnable tree.

Thomas Merton writes this: 

"It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God...

She crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.

She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible mercy, to die for us on the Cross."

By Our Lady's mindful mercy we see the almighty grace of God take baby steps into the middle of our humanity. With her innocent ascent we see caritas and courage meet on a dead tree and make the whole world bloom anew. In her accepting witness and her walk of faith we join with her to meet the angel proclaiming that, "He is risen from the dead" so that the whole creation may rise and dance in love. 

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you, Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. 

Holy Mary, Mother of God: pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

Lent 4B, "Snakes, Sunsets and the City" St John's Wodonga

I have to admit that when I first looked at the lessons for today, I was less than thrilled. They're all pretty packed: the Israelites remembering all charms of  Egypt, and complaining loudly at the beginning of their desert pilgrimage to the promised land; the letter to the Ephesians talking about being lost in the desires  of flesh and senses, requiring a rescue of vast proportions; and Jesus continuing his dialogue with Nicodemus on how we might find refuge and hope in holding tight  to the death and resurrection of the Son of Man; all packed together pretty tight.

But Robert Frost, the  20th-century poet, once said something like "you should take the light things seriously and the serious things lightly." So I want to move into these complex readings with a couple of simple images that might help us, make sense of where we are in this journey with Jesus today

First a story about what happened to me and my family when I was in early adolescence and when It seemed like my world was falling apart: the death of a beloved grandfather, an idolized older brother getting married, starting his own household, my parents having trouble with money and their marriage; and in 1960 my mother and I moving to my uncle's sheep ranch in the Sacramento Valley. So visualize this 14-year-old boy, his back against the wall on the front porch of a  1930s California ranch house in territory that looks a bit like the land you see between Benalla and Shepparton with some hills to the west. This kid  in early adolescence sitting there with T-shirt and shorts on a warm summer evening - maybe late August or September -  watching the sunset over the Coast Range.

Now this kid thought he might have been smart, but vigilant would be a better word. He was trying to make sense of the world around him, had abandoned formal education and was educating himself by watching television, reading popular novels and books on psychology and sociology; figuring that if he looks for all the clues, eventually the puzzle will make sense, and the chaos will turn into some kind of order that he can control, or at least make peace with. He thinks, worries, wonders, about these things a lot. But that particular evening, just for a moment as he watches the sun begin to go down between the two distant mountains, he becomes aware of a subtle change in the air. It may be something you know. This moment when the earth baked by the sun since the morning starts to give up its heat to the cooler evening, with a bit of a fresh breeze; the threshold of  the day ending and the evening beginning, with a a kind of give-and-take, relinquishing and recovery, a rhythm, and a sudden unexpected sense that some sort of silent music might just be under everything.

 As I say he, will keep himself busy with his plans to move to the city, to be a successful person, to know what needs to be done, to be able to answer the questions of what matters and who is in control. But this silent music gives him pause for just a moment.

And that was one moment when I realized for a very short while (over 50 years later I've never forgotten it) that where I was, even though I thought it was in a cultural desert and a land I needed to escape from, might instead be a place for faithful pilgrimage, for a knowledge and a wisdom that was more than information.

Now fast forward some 30 years. A middle-aged mean is walking across a park in the middle of San Francisco. I joke that I spent my 20s making up for my teens and my 30s making up for my 20s, but there's some truth there: I was a bit of a hippie in my 20s, then  a perennial student and graduate student in my 30s, and when I got to my 40s I was doing campus ministry and teaching part-time as an Anglican layperson at the Jesuit University of San Francisco. I was somewhat underemployed and very underpaid but after a number of years wandering around doing a bit of everything I was working at something that seemed to connect, not only with what I needed but with what the world needed as well; an effort that seemed right and true, with some real mercy, making a difference in a very small way.

So I was walking across this open space and up ahead there was a hill of newly replanted grass set apart, circled by strings tied to sticks stuck in the ground and one small sign in front with three words printed in big black letters: "Shortcuts Cause Erosion" and I saw marks of dog paws and peoples shoe heals cutting across the new growing grass and realized I live in a world full of shortcuts. crowded with erosion. And that I was part of that world

Now this could be San Francisco in the 90s, Egypt or Babylon or Jerusalem a few thousand years ago, or Wodonga, Wangaratta, or anywhere else now: a green field of a world scarred by a lot of shortcuts, And I am a part of that world, we all are. It starts in Eden or anywhere,  whenever some snake in the grass tells us to take shortcuts to find a place where we can feel at home, be in control, on top of things at whatever cost. But it doesn't work and those shortcuts never fail to turn around and bite us in the end, painfully, while we're just trying to just holding on to what we thought we wanted, to follow those noisy and conspicuous desires of ego, of flesh and senses, cutting through to the place we thought we wanted to be. Those shortcuts end up killing us, like the letter to the Ephesians says, with our hands full of treasures that aren't worth it and our hearts aching from all the trespasses that took us where we shouldn't go.

Now I'm not bragging about my sins, the fact is they weren't that flashy, anymore then anyone else's, and the fact is too that everyone does the best they can. But I did see, that day at the park, that there were some serious reasons to avoid the shortcuts and get back to Jesus; there always are, and it's often isn't easy.

Because, as Sebastian Moore writes in a book called, "The Crucified Jesus is no Stranger," when we look on Jesus, God's light of love, we can clearly see our own shadow, all those mindless worthless shortcuts, and it burns like a snakebite as well, and there is something is us that wants to push him away, to protect what we thought we wanted to have, to hold on to that old history of who we thought we wanted to be.

That's part of the story of our lives, everybody lives: just jump forward to Holy Week, where todays lessons are taking us. Where are you as that week winds to an end? Are you with the faithful women watching from a ways off, are you with the scared and scattered apostles, running from their own denials, are you with so many in the crowd, feeling the sting of this Jesus, and pushing him away at any cost? Most days, I will confess, I am all over the map.

Here's a quote from, I think, Austin Farrer: "We are invited to exchange our living death for His dying life."  That's the good news from todays Gospel. We are invited to take up the truth that to hold on to your life, no matter what the cost, is a shortcut to nowhere, and to go beyond that. Instead to lay down our history and our burdens and our prizes and to take the chance to open our arms wide like Jesus for a bigger hope and a larger life. For when we listen and learn and look at the Lord, at what he says and how he lives and dies, we can see that sunset in the middle of the City, of every city, and every place; a certain promise, calling us to give up our ego and come to our heart and soul, to give our life away in love, to take the long way home in the surprise and hope of that God-given sunrise.


Here's how John Donne finishes his poem Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward. We can end here too.


O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree...
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face. 

Amen.