The Rambling Priest

Moving Blogs

2011-02-01T14:48:00.002-05:00

It's time for a switch.

I've been toying with the idea of moving my blog over to the competitor in this landscape for over a year now. And thanks to a snow day here in Massachusetts, I've made the jump.

So this'll be my last post over on the Blogger site. And you can now find updates from me at:

ramblingpriest.wordpress.com.

I hope you'll click one more link to see what I've been up to.

Come and See

2011-01-17T07:58:00.002-05:00

A great day for me at St. Mark's, Soutborough! Lots of new people to meet and the excitement about what lies ahead for the parish and the ministry we'll share in together.

My sermon focused on that invitation from Jesus to "Come and see." It's taken from John:1:29-42, the lectionary reading of the day. I know some (or at least one) out there wants audio sermons. No hookup currently in the church system, but we'll get there! Or else back to the iPhone for recording!

“Come and See”— John 1:29-42

Our reading this morning from the Gospel of John takes place sometime after Jesus has been baptized, and presumably after Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. We’re simply told that John the Baptizer saw Jesus walking near the Jordan River one day. John had previously encountered the religious authorities who wanted to know if he was the Messiah or not. John tells them that he wasn’t even worthy to untie the Messiah’s sandals. So when John spots Jesus nearby he proclaims: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” John tells any who would hear how the Messiah was coming into the world: not as the “All-Powerful… Deliverer” but as the “sacrificial… lamb.”[1] Jesus comes not in a display of might but with an unassuming nature to bring about transformation in all who would follow him.

We’re told that it takes another day for this to really sink in with those standing nearby, because John has to say it again. When he does, two of his disciples really hear his words and decide to go and follow Jesus.

Jesus hears these two walking behind him, so he stops and turns to speak with them. “What are you looking for?” he asks. “Rabbi, where are you staying?” they say. Teacher, where do you teach? Where do you live? The Gospel writer himself has already tipped us off to this answer in his prologue a couple of verses earlier. “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” or as the Message Bible puts it: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”

Jesus looks at these two men eager to follow him. “Come and see,” he replies. And they do. They spend the rest of the afternoon with him. They end up spending their lives with him.

Thirteen years ago this week Melissa and I were sitting almost exactly where you are sitting today, coming to see the new rector. In our case, we had endured a long and difficult interim period with two different priests, both not-so-gifted preachers, if you catch my drift. We were somewhat new to the Episcopal Church and had be hired as the part-time youth ministers for our parish during the interim, but we weren’t sure if we would continue. We came that Sunday morning somewhat tentatively; we decided to take a wait and see approach with the new guy. We wanted to be sure he could preach, if he was an authentic follower of Christ, if we could be guided by his leadership. And if not, if he wasn’t, we’d finish our commitment with the youth through the school year and then leave.

In our case it turned out very well. For you all, well, I for one have been praying that it will be likewise.

The invitation Christ makes is to come and see, yet how often in life—and especially how often in our spiritual lives—do we take a wait and see approach? How often do we stand back unwilling to commit or engage because we’re uncertain of what lies ahead? How many times do we waver because we need to think things through more fully or check things out or test our hypotheses about Lord knows what, instead of hearing the proclamation of the Baptizer and following Jesus?

How many times do we hesitate when faced with Jesus’ invitation to come and see?

Best selling author Donald Miller describes this dilemma in what has become one of my favorite books of the past year titled A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Don wrote a deeply personal spiritual memoir a few years ago that did very well, and he begins this new book by recounting a phone call he received from a couple of guys wanting to make a film of his memoir. He learns pretty quickly, though that while his pensive internal wrestling makes for good writing, it doesn’t make for a good movie, unless, as he states, you have James Earl Jones narrating your inner dialogue. So he sets out on discovering what makes a good film, how to create a story people really care about. He attends a three-day story-writing workshop in Los Angeles, and learns that “A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”[2]

When he gets back home, Don sees his friend Jason, who has a thirteen-year old daughter. Jason’s daughter has been dating a guy “who smelled like smoke and only answered questions with single words: “Yeah,” “No,” “Whatever,” and “Why?”[3] And to top it off, Jason and his wife recently found pot in their daughter’s room. They aren’t sure what to do: grounding hasn’t worked, instead pushing her further away. They were running out of answers, and it was getting worse.

Then Don said something that surprised even himself. He told Jason that his daughter was living a terrible story. Jason asked what he meant, and Don went on to describe what he learned in LA. He told Jason a good story involves a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it, although he wasn’t quite sure how this applied to Jason’s daughter. So Don said, “I don’t know, exactly, but she’s just not living a very good story. She’s caught up in a bad one.” Jason had a ton of questions, and Don, thinking maybe Jason was interested in movie-making, spent an hour talking about all that he had learned.[4]

A few months later Don saw Jason again, and he asked how things were going with his daughter. “She’s better,” Jason said, and when Don asked why, he replied that his family was living a better story.[5] He went on to tell Don that as he reflected on what they had spoken about, he realized that he hadn’t invited his daughter in to a better story. Instead she had latched on to the most exciting story she could find, the one with the rebel teen. So Jason went online to do some research and found out that there was an organization building orphanages around the world. He called the organization and found out it took $25,000 to build one of their building. The family had just taken out a second mortgage and didn’t have that kind of money, but it had the makings of a good story.

So he called a family meeting. Jason recounts it this way, “I didn’t tell my wife first, which turns out was a mistake. But I told them about this village and about the orphanage and all these terrible things that could happen if these kids don’t get an orphanage. Then I told them I agreed to build it.”

“You’re kidding me,” Don replied.[6]

He wasn’t. And it didn’t take long for his wife to forgive him for not talking with her first and to say as well how proud she was of him. It wasn’t much longer after that that his daughter, Annie, climbed into bed with them one morning—like she used to when she was a kid. She told them that they all needed to travel to the village in Mexico to take photos of the kids to help them raise the money. A few weeks later she dumped the monosyllabic boyfriend. Jason summarized it this way, “No girl who plays the role of a hero dates a guy who uses her. She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while.”[7]

“Teacher, where are you staying?” we ask. “Come and see.”

Jesus is inviting us into a better story. He wants us to follow him and live a life that is so much more than the ones we live by ourselves. He encourages us to come and see now, not to stand on the sidelines waiting for some elusive future moment. When we engage fully in the things of God, we not only live a better story, we also work with God as co-participants in transforming the world.

What kind of life is Christ inviting us into as a parish in the days ahead? What role will you take? There will be challenges to be sure—those first followers have no idea of either the great joys or great sorrows in store for them—but it takes those things to make a good story.

I am tremendously hopeful and confident about the future of St. Mark’s and the work and life we will engage in together as we seek to authentically serve Christ. Jesus has come into this neighborhood too, and invites us to follow him. The journey before us is about to begin, and I hope you will join with me as a disciple of Jesus Christ, as we come and see where he will lead us. Amen.

[1] Greg Garrett, “John 1:29-42: Homiletical Perspective.” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1. David Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. 263.

[2] Donald Miller. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. 2009. Pg. 48.

[3] Miller, 49.

[4] Miller, 50.

[5] Miller, 50.

[6] Miller, 52.

[7] Miller, 54.

Christmas Eve Sermon: Love Without Limits

2010-12-26T21:31:00.004-05:00

This is the last sermon I preached at Christ the King. It builds on the sermons for the first three weeks of Advent and the book Advent Conspiracy. You really should check this book out, even though Advent is over. Christmas can still change the world!

__________________________________________________________

Christmas Eve 2010

Luke 1:1-20

We’re finally here. The countless hours of shopping, the never ending task of wrapping, the plan for meals, the travel arrangements, the cranky kids and the excited ones too, and lists made and checked twice, it’s all been leading us to this moment in time, to this place, to this service. We are here, ready to peer once again into that manger scene in Bethlehem and relive it all again. The birth of the savior of the world.

We tend to over glamorize the whole event, of course. In all of the depictions of the manger that I’ve ever seen, every small detail is cleaned up. The barn animals have recently been groomed, and the stable itself has been mucked out. Mary looks nothing like a woman who’s just given birth—her hair is too perfect; there aren’t circles under her eyes. Everything is calm and peaceful, as if the young couple somehow knew that they were scripting lyrics for all those Christmas carols to come. We have this picture of how it is in our heads, and we see a Jesus who came to middle class America with the minor inconvenience of all the guest rooms being taken. But there are no worries, surely in the morning someone will give up their queen-sized bed for Mary and Joseph, and a new bassinette for Jesus will certainly be found in the garage.

And sometime in the next half day or so we’ll all be opening up gifts of one kind or another in supposed celebration of Jesus’ birth, and this day will become more about the new DS for the kids or those beautiful new sapphire earrings or that fantastic new cookbook or the new board game. We’ll sit down for a shared meal, watch a few hours of “A Christmas Story” on TBS, make a phone call or two to the ones we love who are far away, and then lazily call it a day while catching the Nuggets on TV.

Is that what Jesus came for? Is that really all there is to Christmas?

The angel with light blazing all around came to the shepherds who were hunkering down for the night to bring the announcement of Jesus’ birth, and the shepherds were scared to death. “Don’t be afraid! I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in Bethlehem.” Everybody. Worldwide. A great and joyful event. Wanna bet that seraph wasn’t referring to a sale at WalMart or free shipping from Amazon?

What does it mean that there is this great and joyful event for every person throughout the world?

This Advent I’ve been preaching my way through the Advent Conspiracy, a simple idea that suggests that Christmas can still change the world. The authors—three colleagues and ministers—suggest that if we shift our focus to worshipping Christ fully, to spending less of our money, to giving more through relational gifts and finally by loving all that this Christmas could be significantly different. They remind us that at Christmastide, the followers of Christ should be distinguished by their love that reaches out especially to “hungry and thirsty and sick and imprisoned.”[1] Jesus declares that when we do something for one of our sisters and brothers who are in need, we do it for him, so this is obviously very important to him.

The authors go on to say this: “Jesus himself was poor. He chose to be born into the poverty of a family struggling beneath the heal of Imperial Rome. Writer Scott Bessenecker suggests that ‘the first statement Jesus ever voiced about his concern for the poor, oppressed, marginalized people was when he cried out as one of them—eyes shut tight, mouth open wide, wailing, kicking…. It was one of the most profound acts of solidarity with the poor he could make.’ For all the other aspects of his Advent we celebrate each year, let us not forget this part of the story: ‘When God voted with his birth, he voted for the poor.’”[2]

How do we reconcile the message of Jesus being born into a poor family who lived under the rule of a foreign Empire with the hyper-consumerism that has reached a crescendo on this of all days?

It’s easier to just ignore this, I know. To act as if all is well in the world, and that there isn’t much of anything we can do about it anyway. We like to clean up the reality around us much like our image of the manger to make it all the more palatable. Satirist, or maybe Prophet, Stephen Colbert stated last week: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition... and then admit that we just don't want to do it."

Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord.

We gather on this most holy of nights to remember that God chose to be with us. God came to bring us life and hope and peace and joy. Jesus was born into our midst and he came to change the world. He was born in that smelly barn and not a upscale palace simply because he wanted us to know that no matter what the condition of our lives, he wanted to walk with us. Each one of us. He came for us all.

And what we must own as his followers is that we are called to take the joy we have as we enter the Christmas Season and share it with others because far too often promises are made and then not kept. It’s been said, “In this decidedly cynical world, where far too many people have heard far too many empty words, the way we love others makes a difference—whether the others live in the third world of the third house down the street.”[3]

How will you show Christ’s love during these Twelve Days of Christmas? While the packages and trees and decorations will be coming down in retail stores by the 26^th, the celebration of Christ’s birth is just beginning. How might this Christmas still transform you? Is there a neighbor in need of a kind word or a helping hand? Is there a person you know who is a single parent who might be needing a break from it all? Can you give a donation of your time to a local outreach center? Maybe you feel called to give a micro-loan of $75 to a woman in Uganda wanting to start her own business. Or you could make a contribution to bring clean water to a small village in the bush. The possibilities are as endless as God’s love.

As I end my time as your priest, if I could say only one thing that you remember, it would be this: Love without limits. Share the unfathomable love of Jesus with others. He came into this world to show that love to us, and asks that we do likewise. Do it unfailingly. Express it with gusto. Give it unconditionally. And always remember the great love God has for you.

Merry Christmas! Through the Nativity of our Lord, the world can indeed be changed. Amen.

[1] Advent Conspiracy, 85.

[2] Advent Conspiracy, 86-87.

[3] Advent Conspiracy, 90.

Farewell Sermon to Christ the King

2010-12-20T18:35:00.004-05:00

Here's my last Sunday sermon to the people of Christ the King, Arvada. I'll be preaching on Christmas Eve, but that is a different thing entirely from speaking to the faithful of this parish.

Matthew 1:18-25 — Advent 4

“What happens when the world turns upside down? When things take place that we didn’t expect or plan for?” That is the question before us this morning as we reflect on Matthew’s story about Jesus’ birth, and it is also a variation of the question before this congregation as I enter my last week of ministry with you all. Life is full of change and challenges to be sure, but at times it may feel like everything is in disarray.

Imagine Joseph’s excitement leading up to his marriage. In the Ancient Near East, the engagement or betrothal between Mary and Joseph was binding; there was no backing out by either member of the couple if one of them got the pre-wedding jitters. But I don’t think that even crossed Joseph’s mind; he most assuredly entered this time with joy and anticipation and dreams about how life would be like after he and Mary had taken those final vows. He began making plans, probably imagining the bassinet he would craft in his woodshop for the children he knew would come.

But then Mary broke the news to him that she was pregnant. Joseph was devastated. He knew he wasn’t the father—he and Mary hadn’t consummated their relationship yet and wouldn’t until after they had made their final vows to one another. It would have been Joseph’s right under the law of Moses—the Torah[1]—to have the men of his village stone Mary to death because she obviously was unfaithful. Yet we get a hint of Joseph’s character because he doesn’t want to do that, instead he desires to divorce Mary quietly, without making much of a fuss. Through his actions he shows that he is indeed a righteous man.

As soon as he’s decided what he will do, Joseph has this dream where an angel appears to him. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel declares, “don’t be afraid. Take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit. She’ll have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” When Joseph wakes up from this dream, he changes direction. Even though it might mean dealing with gossip from friends and family, he proceeds with his marriage to Mary. He is determined to not be afraid, and to trust God in the midst of uncertainty.

In other words, Joseph took his side along Mary on this journey to bring a little one into the world, and this child would be the very Son of God, the Promised One, the Messiah. We can only speculate that Joseph did this job quite well—we get just two more scenes in Scripture about Joseph as this young family escapes into Egypt to protect Jesus’ life from Herod and then again when Jesus is a tween and the family travels to Jerusalem. But we see the man Jesus becomes and know that Joseph had a hand in that, in teaching Jesus the craft of wood working, and certainly in trusting in God’s goodness. I suspect that Joseph told Jesus at some point about that dream he had, about the angel’s words and his change in heart. I bet as well that Joseph could have imagined it no other way. In looking back, surely he was so grateful to have listened to the angel.

And those words of the angel are the ones that I want to leave you with as well. Do not be afraid. God is with you. In the midst of uncertain times–as you weather this time of transition as a congregation–trust that God is with you. That God continues to love you and guide you and give you strength and God has unbelievable plans for you.

I am utterly convinced of this because I’ve seen the work that we have done together that God has richly blessed. The significant expansion of reaching out to the poor and the destitute through the generosity of our loose plate offerings. The emergence of a monthly meal for our neighbors so we can share the love of Christ with no strings attached. The deepening of faith formation through the funding of Catie’s position, and in moving Vacation Bible School to the evening and making it a free program for any child who wanted to hear the stories of Jesus. I’ve seen you hunger for faith exploration by your the participation in various Bible Studies, book groups and film series that I have personally led. And most of all, I’ve seen the look of anticipation and hope when you’ve come to this altar rail with extended hands in order to receive the bread of life.

You came offering yourselves in service to the Triune God.

And you have given of yourselves to me and my family as well. I’ve appreciated the cards and words of thanks that you’ve sent to me. I’m both grateful and humbled by the generosity to our family, and especially to Melissa, during what has become known as "The Sumo Wrestling Incident." I know that many of you have taken delight in watching our children grow and change in front of you, from being toddlers to the early elementary students they are now.

Thank you. Thank you for all that you have done, and for allowing me to share my gifts with you during this time.

I want to say once more that I have never questioned or doubted my call to come and be your rector. I remember vividly the weekend Melissa and I spent discussing the call to Christ the King, and during that time we were told quite directly by God that we needed to come here and not to be afraid. We listened and trusted and moved across the country.

And I can say as well that I have no doubts that I’ve done the work God called me here to do, and that it is now time for our family to move on in our journey. Additionally, we have experienced a great deal of inner peace in recognizing that God is calling us to a new place, and I know that God will continue to work here in the midst of transition through all of you and in the person who will become your next priest.

Some of you may be experiencing thoughts similar to Joseph at this time, that this isn’t what you signed up for and that things haven’t turned out as you expected. You may have decided to take a wait and see approach in the days ahead with Christ the King, maybe considering leaving or reducing or withholding your pledge. Maybe you’re just disappointed in me since you had hopes that I would do or be more as a priest. Or maybe you are just having doubts about your faith and this time of transition is complicating all of that.

My hope would be that in the quiet of the night an angel of the Lord would come into your dreams and tell you, “Don’t be afraid! Remember the name given to Jesus at his birth, Emmanuel. God is with you. And he will continue to be with you without fail in the days ahead, no matter what.”

My hope is that when you look back at this time after you’ve been with your new priest for awhile you can say with certainty that this was what God intended and that you can’t imagine it any other way. I am simply one of many workers in God’s kingdom building enterprise, and another worker is being prepared even now to join with you.

Hear again the words of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero (I know I repeated them often, but some of you may have never heard them, and they continue to be profound for me).

“It helps now and then to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.”

The future of the Church of Christ the King is bright indeed, even if it is beyond our vision. God has called each one of you here to follow Jesus, to be fed at this table, to remember the stories of our faith and to go out in the world proclaiming the good news of Christ. I am proud to have walked this journey with you as your priest, and I will be eager to hear the stories of what happens next in this parish. God’s grace will enter in and do things none of us have ever imagined as you put your trust in God’s goodness and love.

May this place continue to be a beacon of hope for the broken and downtrodden. May this parish be filled with joy and love as you reach out to one another. May it be a place of healing for those who are hurting. And may this community always be a home for those seeking an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ, this one we so desperately long for, and for whom we so eagerly wait. It is his coming that we have been preparing for, his return we hope for. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly and be among us, we pray. Amen.

[1] See Deut. 22:20-21

Preparing for Christmas

2010-12-06T12:07:00.003-05:00

The second Sunday of Advent gives us John the Baptizer on the River Jordan. His call to repentance isn't one we are particularly fond of, I think, because we're totally in the Christmas mood by now. Yet, Advent doesn't let us get to Bethlehem before it's time.

So, my sermon from Sunday.

Advent 2 — Mark 3:1-12

We got our first Christmas card the Saturday after Thanksgiving from a good friend of ours who has three kids, and who, along with her husband, works a high-powered job in New York City. I stand in awe of them since each year it’s the same, cards out at Thanksgiving, handwritten address to us sending their warm wishes. They remind us of course that Christmas greetings begin in earnest at Thanksgiving, although the holiday season has been pulsing underneath everything since Halloween in the desire that we would spend our way out of this recession. We get to experience some good ole holiday cheer every time we walk into any store from now until the 24^th.

It’s rather fascinating to me that our Gospel doesn’t even come close to being cheerful. It gives us broods of vipers and axes and winnowing forks and repentance and unquenchable fires. We get John the Baptist, this ranting and raving prophet wearing camel hair and eating locusts. He’s there near the river, screaming his head off, telling anyone who would listen that the way of the Lord is coming and with it would come a fire that would never be extinguished. The way of the Lord is coming, so repent of your sins and be baptized. And if you don’t repent, if you don’t prepare for the coming of the Lord, there are axes ready to chop you down. There are winnowing forks ready to separate you from the good and repentant wheat. And there is unquenchable fire.

Many of us in the church have the tendency to write John the Baptist off. It’s easier to think of him as a raving lunatic than a harbinger of things to come. Easier to accept him as someone with a couple of screws loose rather than a forerunner to Jesus.

And you may want to skip right over him and get to the good stuff about Jesus. You might want to clap your hands over your ears and block him out so you can just get to the manger. Yet his story is one of the few that makes it into all of the Gospels, and every year during the Second Sunday of Advent, John crawls out from under his rock and begins his proclamation. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” “Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight.”

I think we want to block John out because we know what is coming. We know that Jesus is going to be born in a holy stable in Bethlehem. We know that there will be shepherds and singing angels and peace on earth and good will to all. We know that when Jesus comes, he doesn’t bring fire and winnowing forks as much as he brings healing and love.

And yet here he stands, this blaring prophetic John the Baptist, front and center, blocking our view of the manger scene. Our Advent journey to Bethlehem isn’t complete unless we pass by John at the River Jordan.

What can we make then of John’s message of repentance? How does it help us to prepare for the coming of the Lord? How can we bring together the disparaging images of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and of a man clenching his winnowing fork ready to clear out his barn? What might he be saying to us in 2010?

When John was asked for specifics by the bystanders, according to Luke’s gospel, he said, “If you have 2 coats, give one of them away.” We might want to ask a follow up, “Do you mean 2 of the same type of coat, like 2 rain coats, or 2 warm-up fleeces?” John, is it alright if I have a fleece long sleeve pullover with a crew neck, another with a half zip pull and a fleece vest as well? I mean, I use them for different times; it depends on if I am exercising or not, or if I am just slightly chilled rather than downright cold. In my closet I have the three fleeces I just mentioned, a windbreaker, a Nike golf pullover, a winter coat, a raincoat, the overcoat I wear with my suits, the slightly heavier lined casual coat and probably a few others that I am forgetting. How easy it is for me to justify keeping all of them available for me in the front coat closet, just in case.

The JeffCo Action Center gently reminds us that “it is estimated that every night in Jefferson County, there are more than 2,000 homeless families living in their cars, hotels or overcrowding single-family homes. According to the 2007 Census, more than 42,000 Jefferson County residents are below the poverty line. Even more staggering is the poverty rates of those below the age of 18 which the census found to be more than 13,000 residents or 11.1 percent of the total population.”[1] In addition, “The Jefferson County Schools district reports that more than 20,000 students are on the free or reduced lunch program.”

I wonder if I should ask one of them if I have too many coats.

In the second step of the Advent Conspiracy, after worshipping God fully, it’s suggested that we spend less this year for Christmas. The authors write, “‘Spend less’ is ambiguous. Spend less than last year? Spend less than my neighbor? Spend less than the average American, who spends one thousand dollars on Christmas gifts? Yes and no. The key is to ask the question and be willing to engage the emerging tensions. How much is too much? How can you tell when you have too much? Who determines what you ‘need’? The line between excessive wealth and simplicity may be hard to find—but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that nearly all of us have too much.”[2]

Just ignoring the tension is a possibility, of course, albeit one that is corrupt. We can come down to the river Jordan once again this year for ourselves, maybe even metaphorically hop back in the water for a cleansing, but if we only are there to have some water sprinkled on our heads and not for a life change, then we are wasting both our own time and God’s as well. The Message Bible puts it this way, “When John realized that a lot of Pharisees and Sadducees were showing up for a baptismal experience because it was becoming the popular thing to do, he exploded: "Brood of snakes! What do you think you're doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It's your life that must change, not your skin! … What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it's deadwood, it goes on the fire.”

So, you may be asking, what should I do? Start by purchasing one less gift this year. That’s it. Just one less than last year. The gift that you have to buy out of obligation, the person that you hate buying for because they either have everything they need or because they are just truly difficult to shop for (if this is your spouse, let me give you a tip: pick someone else). Where you shop and what you buy might be something to consider as well. For example, many of the national chains exploit workers in sweatshops, and most chocolate products are created through inappropriate child labor, especially in West Africa where cocoa is harvested. Buying items that are marked Fair Trade or shopping at places like Ten Thousand Villages can be a way for you to eliminate spending “that brings harm to ourselves, our neighbors or our world.”[3] For a whole list of these organizations, please visit my blog.

Finally, another way to spend less, is to make a contribution to a worthy organization on behalf of someone else. Mike Durall, a church consultant who worked with us a year ago, sent out a quick note to many of the clergy he knows with a simple suggestion: “Invite your parishioners to give away an equal amount of what they’ll spend at Christmas to organizations seeking to make a difference in the world.” For example, you may decide to give the gift of an animal through Heifer International, or to make a donation to this month’s open plate offering recipient: Family Tree, Inc. that provides services for the homeless in our county. Perhaps you would like to sponsor a child through World Vision, a cost of only $35 a month while providing clean water, nutritious food, health care, education and spiritual nurture. If you’d like to do this, you can do so today; just see me after the service to find out how.

Doing these types of things with intentionality will lead us closer to the deeper meaning of Christmas, that Jesus comes to bring us life. As we continue to move toward Bethlehem and that manger and the arrival of Jesus as a babe, may we seek also to be fully prepared for his birth. May we continue to recognize that Jesus comes so that the world might be changed through his life, death and resurrection. Jesus is coming in order that our worlds may be changed. Amen.

[1] http://www.jeffcoac.org/Int/about-need.html Accessed December 1, 2010.

[2] Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder. Advent Conspiracy, Zondervan: 2009. Pg. 51.

[3] Advent Conspiracy, 57.

Life Changing Gift Ideas

2010-12-04T17:05:00.004-05:00

In my sermon on Sunday, I'm suggesting people purchase gifts from places that are Fair Trade or that they give a donation on behalf of a loved one to a worthy charity. Below are a list of places that I've found on the internet or have firsthand experience with and would suggest to you!

Ten Thousand Villages — Great store (with a location in Denver) that is all Fair Trade items.

Divine Chocolates — The chocolate industry makes extensive use of child labor.

Global Girlfriend — Products made by women and benefitting women worldwide.

Global Exchange – Online Fair Trade retailer

World Vision — Sponsor a child or a give a one time gift like a soccer ball or education for girls

Heifer International — buy an animal (from a chick to a cow) for someone who will pass on the gift

GAIA — tremendous organization fighting AIDS in Malawi

Kiva — site that provides micro loans that change lives

If you have other ideas, please post them!

Be Prepared

2010-11-29T13:38:00.002-05:00

My sermon from Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent. The Gospel was Matthew 24:36-44

The newspaper weighed a ton on Thursday, in case you didn’t get one. It wasn’t the paper part per se—that is, it wasn’t the news content that caused a big spike in the size of the paper—it was the flyers hawking sales for Black Friday. Target, Sears, JC Penney, WalMart, Kmart, Walgreens, Dick Sporting Goods, the Mattress Store and others wanted your money, and they wanted it bad. So they created some unbelievable deals for the Door Buster crowd on a couple of limited items, and hoped that by drawing you into the store at 5:30am you might part with some hard earned cash.

And we did, according to the lead article in Saturday’s Denver Post. “‘One of the interesting things this year is that the consumer is going back to shopping for themselves and back to impulse shopping,’ said Marshal Cohen,” a chief retail analyst in New York, according to the article.[1] We knew it wouldn’t be forever before people started buying again, and even though the increase over last year is expected to be a paltry 2.3%, we’ll be spending nearly $450 billion during this holiday season.[2] For comparison, that number is larger than the yearly Gross Domestic Product for countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, South Africa, Poland, New Zealand and Norway.[3]

Consumerism is coming back, it seems. Why else would we get up before the sun on the day after Thanksgiving to deal with short tempered people, emotionally drained sales clerks, 30 minute waits in the check out all so we can buy something for someone else or ourselves? Deep down we hope that the perfect gift we purchased will bring happiness and excitement and love to the person we bought it for; we hope that this thing—this electronic, this article of clothing, this new houseware item will bring them long-lasting comfort and fulfillment. That is what we hope, isn’t it? We hope that we will find exactly what we’ve been missing with this new thing that is about to enter our lives.

The co-authors of Advent Conspiracy put it this way, “In the religion of consumerism, the thing we desire becomes the symbol of whatever meaning it insinuates. Because we buy into meaning, we believe we will become more significant, able to rise above circumstances, frustrations and mundane moments of everyday lives. In short, our consumerism tells us that we’ll be reborn.”[4] We all know this isn’t true, of course, but we fall for it every time. We believe the lines spun to us by Madison Ave that life will be better if we just had whatever it is. If we didn’t, why were so many of us out on Black Friday?

And yet as we enter this season of Advent, we are to focus on preparing for the birth of Christ. Many might say that they are doing exactly that, that they are preparing for Christmas. But who or what are they worshipping in the over-indulging spending frenzy that happened this week and will continue to happen over the course of the next 27 days? I don’t think it’s Jesus. I would hazard a guess that Jesus wasn’t top of mind when shoppers were digging through bargains.

You might want to ask, “Should he have been? Should Jesus of Nazareth, and his approaching birth been the focus?” I think Jesus himself gives us an answer of sorts in Matthew’s gospel: “Before the great flood everyone was carrying on as usual, having a good time right up to the day Noah boarded the ark. They knew nothing—until the flood hit and swept everything away. The Son of Man's Arrival will be like that: Two men will be working in the field—one will be taken, one left behind; two women will be grinding at the mill—one will be taken, one left behind. So stay awake, alert. You have no idea what day your Master will show up” (Matthew 24:37-41, The Message).

The question before us this Advent is will we prepare for Jesus’ coming or will we prepare for the consumeristic rush that will befall on December 25^th? If we want to make this Advent different, if we don’t want to fall into the trap laid out for us by retailers and the rest, then we must be intentional about who we worship. If we want to stay awake and be prepared for the return of the Master, then we need to take steps now to be ready.

Imagine this Advent season being filled not with headaches, and overspending, and worries that the gift won’t bring what we’re hoping for, but a season filled with true joy, with us worshipping the living God, in experiencing deeply the reality that Jesus comes into our world to bring healing and wholeness. The authors of Advent Conspiracy put it this way: “The heart of what we’re truly searching for—hope, peace, love, rest, worship—is in Christ, but each time we try to meet our desire for fulfillment at the mall, we take another step away from the nativity.”[5] How this happens is with intentionality. This can happen when we make a conscious decision to fully worship Christ this Advent.

That’s what is going on in our gospel lesson about being prepared. We don’t know when Christ will ultimately return at the parousia, at the Day of the Lord. You can’t cram for this like a final exam, hoping that somehow you will get enough in to squeak by with a passing grade. You need to work at it faithfully. And when you get off track, stop, reassess, pick yourself up and continue on the way. If we are fully worshipping Jesus this Advent—taking part in the Daily Office, or spending a few moments together around an Advent Wreath, entering expectantly into God’s presence each week at the Great Thanksgiving, the Eucharist, then we will be prepared. We don’t get ready at the last minute, but in regular preparation. “Be vigilant,” Jesus tells us in Matthew’s Gospel. Don’t let your guard down. Keep at it, because that’s how you get ready for the Arrival of the Son of Man.

This season begins and ends with Jesus Christ, not anything else. And I invite all of you to join with me as we proclaim an Advent Conspiracy, that Christmas can in fact still change the world. You can learn more by googling that online or by visiting my blog. My strongest desire is that this year would give all of us an opportunity to fully worship Christ, and that through our worship, we might be fully prepared for his return. Amen.

[1] “5:30 A.M.” by Aldo Svladi, The Denver Post, November 27, 2010, pg A1.

[2] “5:30 A.M.”, A1.

[3] http://www.nationmaster.com/red/pie/eco_gdp-economy-gdp Accessed 11-27-10.

[4] Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder, Advent Conspiracy. Zondervan, 2009. Pg 23.

[5] Advent Conspiracy, 34.

Advent Conspiracy

2010-11-27T17:30:00.002-05:00

My last sermon series with the good people of Christ the King will be on the Advent Conspiracy, this simple idea that Christmas can [still] change the world.

I have a deep passion for the needs of the world given my time in third world cultures. We have so much, and yet we always want more.

Jesus wants to offer us so much more. So much more. And so it begins with intentionality in turning our focus away from consumerism and toward the living Christ.

I'll post my sermons along the way, but I hope you'll explore the AC website and begin your own conspiracy as well. Jesus' birth means way more than the presents we'll open on Christmas. And I plan on entering the story more fully this year.

What Kind of Life?

2010-11-17T11:11:00.003-05:00

This past Sunday's sermon on Luke 21:5-19. We had baptisms as well, so that started me thinking on the entire idea of what sort of life were we inviting these little ones into. And my regrets to Shane since I forgot to record this one!

________________________________________________

With the words of Isaiah ringing in our ears—there will be a new heaven and a new earth—it is hard to hear the words of Jesus about coming destruction, war and the like. There is this sense of foreboding in Jesus’ statements, especially the part about the betrayal by loved ones, the persecution that comes with being a follower of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but when I hear this sort of thing, it makes it slightly more complicated to nonchalantly say yes to following Jesus. There has to be grit and determination, not just a mere surface level desire to follow Christ.

Today we welcome two little ones to join us on this path of following Christ. What kind of journey are we inviting Caroline and Liam to join us on? From our lessons this morning, we aren’t given the idea from Jesus that this journey will be easy. In fact, we get the opposite. That it will be hard. That we will be misunderstood. That things won’t go as planned.

And yet we need to endure. Jesus will be with us, and it is through our endurance that we will gain our souls.

Endurance seems to be in short supply in this country these days. Surely we can see it in the hyper-consumeristic culture that wants everything handed to us instantaneously. Watch the impatience you see in others—or check your own blood pressure—when the line at King Soopers takes a turn for the worst because the machine is running slow and the person in front of you asks to run and get something else. Or check out the number of resolutions we keep each year. Or recognize the lack of implementation in your life or the life of another on goals that were so important at one point. Endurance is in short supply.

And yet Jesus says, “Endure,” to his disciples and to us. Don’t give up. Keep working at it. Even when the world is caving in. Especially when the world is caving in. Keep at it.

Doomsday scenarios often play themselves out on the internet these days. Predictions for the end of it all are given with amazing specificity only to see the supposed day come and go without Armageddon. I remember such dates being bantered about even when I was in Middle School. Although I portrayed a calm and uninterested demeanor on the outside regarding such fantastic ideas, inside I was somewhat fixated on seeing if the predictions were right. I also wanted to hedge my bets and made sure I was saying my prayers regularly, as I stared at my watch at the appointed hour.

Part of this can be traced to the branch of Christianity I was a part of at that time. Every couple of years in my church we would have an evangelist come and give a week long series on the ins and outs of the last days. It was the Left Behind series on steroids. There were charts and pictures depicting the end, and predictions and all the rest. We heard about wars and earthquakes and the other circumstances that will abound on the last day, and then we were encouraged to get our lives right with God.

That was impressionable on me as a young teen. I was fascinated by it. And worried like there was literally no tomorrow.

But Jesus takes a different tack in our text. Oh, these things will be going on when the end is near. And your family will disown you and turn you over due to your faith. You will be hated and treated poorly because of me. But don’t worry too much about all of this. Don’t plan on what you’ll say when the time of trial comes. The Spirit will be with you. Not a hair of your head will perish. And by enduring you’ll save your soul. Keep the faith. Don’t worry!

Jesus seems really quite indifferent about the struggle and difficulties. But he keeps reminding his disciples to trust, endure, stay the course and not falter or be taken in by charlatans claiming to come in his name. These are not easy words.

In a few minutes we’ll be renewing our baptismal covenant as Liam and Caroline make these vows for the first time. We’ll talk about the life we hope to lead as Jesus followers. When I spoke with the Landviks and Matters about these promises, we speculated that if people lived with these vows in mind, the world would be a much different place. There would be less strife, less bitterness, less anger. There would be more integrity, giving of self, and seeking after true joy.

If we are to live lives that endure, we must make sure that the vows we reaffirm on this day take primary importance in our lives. What might it look like if we continued in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers? Would we place more importance on deepening our life of faith? This vow focuses on the regular gathering each week of this body of believers, of making time for regular prayer and personal devotion, and constantly seeking to deepen our knowledge and understanding of faith.

The second of our vows says, Will you persevere in resisting evil and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? With these words, we acknowledge that none of us will ever lead lives of perfection. We will mess up. We’ll fall short in our relationships, cause people to be hurt due to our actions and find ways to put ourselves first. When this happens, then, how will we respond? Will we deny, cover things up and ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit to make amends? Or will we repent and return to Christ?

We are next asked if we will proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ. We as Episcopalians like the second part of that equation—the example part. And it is true that through our actions, people can and will see Christ. I am reminded of St. Francis of Assisi who said “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” However, there will be times when you need to use words. There will be times when someone asks about your life and you recognize that the answer includes your Christian faith. Sharing this with others can be daunting, but it can also be life giving for you and them.

The last two go together in my book: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself, and Will you strive for justice and peace for all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? Essentially this can be boiled down to one question: will we see the face of Jesus Christ in all those we meet regardless of their age, skin color, political affiliation? Can we not make judgments of others based on their sports team loyalties, the amount of money they make, where they live, what they smell like, or what they weigh?

Will we see the injustices done against people for whatever reason, and try to stand alongside those being harmed and fight against the ways our world crushes down on them? Imagine if practices meant to take advantage of the poor—like payday loan companies that charge APRs of over 200% for a six month loan[1]—were denounced regularly by Christians who told the truth about what these practices were: Predatory actions that take advantage of the disenfranchised.

These are the markers of the life we are called to in Christ. By continuing in them, we will, with God’s help, be able to endure all that comes our way which seeks to lead us away from God. And if we endure, no matter what happens, we will find our salvation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen.

[1] See http://www.advanceamerica.net/apply-for-a-loan/fees/CO. Accessed 11-11-10.

Running Life

2010-11-13T19:49:00.004-05:00

In honor of my 40th birthday and the one year anniversary of my surgery for a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear, I signed up to do the Colder Boulder 5K with Melissa. I've only got a few weeks to prepare for this race, but I've got a great supporter in Melissa who has promised that I can set the pace for the two of us as we run (since she can do 9:20 miles and I'm more in the 12:00 mile range).

I've run for the last couple of weeks and did 2 miles on the indoor track at the Apex Center. I can feel the patellar tendon from time to time (I developed tendonosis there), and afterward I'm a bit sore in the knee.

But I'm grateful to be running. I'm glad to have recovered enough to even attempt this 3+ mile jaunt, and I look forward to the time I will get to spend with Melissa as we train. And thanks to all of you for your prayers as I have recovered!

Discipleship and Money

2010-09-27T12:56:00.002-04:00

This is my sermon from Sunday on Luke 16:19-31 — The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. It's got some in-house issues specific for Christ the King, but I think it hits on some deeper points about finances and following Christ.

Proper 21 — September 26, 2010

Luke 16:19-31

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol holds the record for the most adaptations of a piece of literature into film, with at least 21 films being created since its publication in 1843, never mind the numerous theatre adaptations as well. It seems that we don’t mind watching the drama unfold around Ebenezer Scrooge on that Christmas Eve, seven years after the death of his business partner Jacob Marley. We know the tale, of course, Scrooge and his miserly ways being confronted by Jacob’s ghost. Scrooge is stunned to see what has happened to Marley, who is there shaking the chains that bind him as he interacts with Scrooge. Finally, he can bear the sight of those shackles no longer and finally asks trembling, “You are fettered, tell me why?”

“‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.’”[1]

* * *

Jesus continues his teaching with his disciples and the religious leaders about how to live life in relation to finances in the portion of Luke 16 we read this morning. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve been noticing a pattern in Jesus’ message about money and its impact on our lives, and how we are to deal with our money. Jesus has proclaimed that where our treasure is there our hearts would be also. He told the story of the rich many who tore down his old barns because they weren’t big enough. And then Jesus warned us that we should store up treasure in heaven. A few weeks ago we heard Jesus say, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all of your possessions.” Full-stop. No further explanations. (By the way, I’ve never heard it argued that we should take that tidbit from scripture literally). Last week, Jesus looked his disciples and the religious leaders square in the eyes and stated, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Clergy often get a hard time about always preaching about money. Given these words of Jesus, it’s pretty amazing that we’re not doing it more often. It’s obvious this was important to Jesus, and Luke doesn’t let up in the chapters following with stories like the rich young ruler, Zacchaeus the tax collector, the widow’s mite, questions about paying taxes and still more. This morning we get this vivid parable about a nameless rich man and a beggar called Lazarus. Even though they are merely feet apart from one another, the rich man is content to ignore Lazarus as he lays outside the other’s gate. Dogs are the only friends poor Lazarus has, it seems, and we get the horrifying image of them licking his seeping wounds. He’s so desperately hungry that even a few crumbs from the rich man’s dinner might satiate him. And then both die, and there’s a reversal of fortune.

Lazarus is carried off to Abraham and attended to, while the rich guy—“Dives” is the name traditionally given to him from the Latin for “rich”—finds his way to Hades. Dives is tormented, and he can see across a great chasm to where Lazarus and Abraham are. “Father Abraham,” he shouts, “have mercy and me and send Lazarus” — ah, it seems he does in fact know the beggar’s name — “send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.” Abraham explains that the chasm can’t be crossed, that their respective fates were sealed while they were on earth. Fearing for his family, the rich man then begs that good ole Lazarus be sent back up to warn his five brothers. Again Abraham declines, reminding Dives that his brothers have Moses and the Prophets to warn them. Besides, they wouldn’t be convinced even if Lazarus rose from the dead.

I am struck by the difference small things make in this parable. All Lazarus wants as he’s out on the curb nursing his wounds is the few things that fell from Dives’ table. And all Dives wants is for a drop or two of water to come and cool his tongue. If I were in either position I might ask for more—a meal if I were Lazarus, a bucket if I were the rich guy. But those small things can make a huge difference.

Dives doesn’t give Lazarus the time of day, and, in fact, goes further and doesn’t even acknowledge him. Lazarus is invisible to him as he comes in and out of his house, running errands, and whatnot. What would it have cost him to notice? Maybe some time, a bit of food, some Neosporin and gauze. But look what it cost him not to notice, to plead ignorance and scoot out the gate quickly with his sights on his next destination.

I think it’s hard for clergy to talk about money in general because we don’t want to seem like we are constantly asking for it on behalf of the church. We know what a taboo it is to discuss financial matters in our society—imagine the next time you’re sitting next to someone you don’t know and asking them how much money they make. If we don’t talk about finances especially in church, this area of our life can go completely untouched by Christ. If we ignore any conversation about money in relation to our faith, we think can plead ignorance. We can just pretend not to see this, and scoot off to our next destination.

It’s been said that if you want to check the spiritual health of a congregation, have its parishioners pull out their check ledgers. It’s just another way of repeating Jesus’ words that our hearts follow our treasure. What’s important to you? Your cash flow will show you.

Our parish is struggling financially, right now. I wish I didn’t have to say it, but it’s true. We’re about $11,000 in the hole for the year, much greater than previous years’ deficits over the same time period. This is due to the financial circumstances of parishioners, to people making pledges and then drifting away from our church, and for people being unable to follow through on the commitment they made to God for whatever reason. I’m not going to belabor the point nor make such individuals feel guilty. It’s just a reality that we are facing.

But when it comes down to it, it’s not about dollars and cents, as our bishop has said recently, it’s about mission. It’s about building the kingdom of God. And we at Christ the King do that in numerous ways. We are offering more opportunities for Christian Education for all ages this fall than we have since I’ve been here—an adult book study, Bible study, and a series on Anglican formation, in addition to youth and children’s classes. We’ve given generously to our loose plate recipients and the work that they do. A neighborhood dinner has begun and is feeding people in our area who are not only hungry for food but for conversation as well. We’re building community intentionally, and we want to continue to do so to the best of our abilities.

Given the realities of our finances, however, the church leadership is going to have to make drastic cuts if things can’t be turned around in the next few weeks. It takes money to keep the lights on in our buildings, to have bulletins formatted and printed, and to run our programs. Both of your clergy are being paid less than the diocesan recommendation for this year, and the support staff members haven’t been given recommended raises either. The vestry has approved the bare minimum budget we feel is necessary to support the programs and wider ministry of Christ in this place rather than the dream budgets or even the standard budgets that ministry leaders submitted to us. In other words, we are doing great work for Christ in this place on less than we would like, but we will be forced to curtail our work even more with either staff reductions, or the reduction and possible removal of cherished programs or both if things don’t change.

I want to be clear: some of you cannot give more than you are already giving due to your financial realities. You may be living on a fixed income and your discretionary spending is non-existent. Or you may be facing either a job loss or making ends meet through unemployment benefits as you stare down the possibility of foreclosure and bankruptcy. Give as you feel God is leading you, but don’t think this message is intended for you.

For the rest of us who aren’t in these situations, I have two practical suggestions. First, if you aren’t currently reaching this amount, try to give $1 every week for each thousand you make a year beginning next week. For example, if you make $50,000 a year, strive to give $50 each week to Christ the King. If you make $75,000, attempt to give $75 a week. If you are giving above that level already, consider giving a one–time gift to Christ the King. In August, the vestry suggested those gifts be at least $200 per pledging unit to cover our shortfall.

For those who feel that we keep asking the same people for money—that is, who think we keep asking them for money—I simply say this: Recognize that everything you have is a gift from God. Everything. And that Jesus tells us again and again and again that our relationship with money is of vital importance to our lives as his followers. Melissa and I understand the reality of giving when there are bills to be paid, and maintenance due on the car, and yet another pair of shoes to buy for the kids. But we feel called to tithe on my salary to this parish in addition to the other money we give away each month to charities we support. Determining how to make an additional gift to our church has not been easy, but we’ve decided to do this because we fully support the work of this place.

As disciples, we are called to recognize the needy in this world—to remember that more than 80% of earth’s population lives on $10 a day or less. Our mission at Christ the King is to live in and demonstrate Christ’s love by intentionally sharing that love with others. We are doing that work faithfully in this world, and we hope to continue doing it in the future. We hope you’ll join in that work both in your time and your treasure. And if you can do nothing more, please do this small thing: purchase scrips—gift cards—for King Soopers, Safeway and Sunflower Market. Some are re-loadable, and the little extra time it takes for you to purchase them during coffee hour gives us 5% of grocery bill at no cost to you.

* * *

When faced with his actions and whether his life showed usefulness or not by Marley, Scrooge turned the attention to something else. “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’” he said.

“‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands... ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’” May we recognize the business of Christ in this world and show with our actions our commitment to our Lord. Amen.

[1] Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. From http://www.charles-dickens.org/a-christmas-carol/ebook-page-08.asp. Accessed 9-22-10.

Shrewdness in Everyday Life

2010-09-21T20:37:00.002-04:00

My sermon from Sunday on Luke 16:1-13. Notoriously one of the hardest parables out there....

On a brilliant morning, James P. Sullivan and Mike Wazowski make their way to work. As they enter the building, they’re stopped by two young janitors–Needleman and Smitty—wishing Mr. Sullivan good luck. “Guys, please, call me Sully,” he responds lightheartedly. Mike turns his evil eye on the pair and says, “Hey, hey, hey, come on get lost! You’re making him lose his focus.” You see, Mike and Sully work at Monsters Incorporated, and they’re heading to the scare floor. They’re about to break the all-time scare record, so Mike wants Sully in the zone. “See ya later, fellas,” Sully calls out as he and Mike turn away, which prompts another verbal response from young Smitty. Needleman quickly smacks his partner, saying, “Quiet! You’re making him lose his focus.” “Oh, sorry!” comes the reply as Mike and Sully walk away, and the two young janitors stand in awe.

You’re making him lose his focus.

Jesus has just finished his story about the prodigal son, when he begins to spin another tale. “There’s a manager, a steward, who’s cooking the books,” he tells his disciples. “And soon enough, word gets back to his boss—the owner of the company—that this guy’s cheating him. So the owner calls him in demanding to know what’s going on. And before he can get a word in edgewise, the owner fires him.

The manager is freaked out. He hasn’t been exercising regularly so manual labor isn’t really an option. The thought of begging for money makes him cringe with embarrassment. And then he has a brilliant idea. Before word filters out that he’s been fired, he makes a few phone calls. “How much do you owe my boss,” he asks one client. “A hundred grand,” is the response. “Quick, make it fifty,” he says. He calls another customer, again slashing the amount that is owed.

“It doesn’t take long for the owner to hear what the manager is doing,” Jesus says, and you can imagine the disciples are waiting on bated breath for the fury this shiester will endure. Jesus continues, “Then the owner says to him, ‘Even though you just hosed me, I have to give you your due. The reason I hired you in the first place was because of your shrewd business dealings. It seems like you’ve done it again—albeit at my expense—and set yourself up nicely for the future.’ Ultimately,” Jesus says, “people like this trickster are more shrewd—more perceptive—than the children of light.”

You can hear it, can’t you? The disciples’ thoughts churning furiously in their heads. “Um, Jesus, are you sure that’s what you meant? I mean, you’re saying this cheater is better than the children of light, but aren’t we the children of light? Aren’t we the followers of God? Is he better than us?”

Luke has Jesus follow up with this: “If you can’t be faithful with earthly money–with worldly possessions–why should you be trusted with true riches? And if you haven’t been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? No one can serve two masters; in the end, you’ll be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Money.”

I’m sure stunned silence followed. If nothing else, I know it does for us. This parable, even with the explanations that follow it, is a true head-scratcher. There’s no doubt about it, the manager’s a cheat. Yet somehow Jesus commends him; Jesus seems to hold his actions up for us to model. But then Jesus says that if you’re dishonest with very little, you’ll be dishonest with a lot. Wasn’t this guy dishonest through and through?

One commentator explains it this way, “This manager, this person of questionable character, understood something that the children of light have had difficulty grasping: dishonest or not, this man understood how to use what was entrusted to him to serve a larger goal. Believers, take note. How much more, then, must the children of God understand the riches entrusted to their care? … With the end in mind, the manager redeemed whatever he could about his present situation. He understood that, in order to be where he wanted to be in the future, how he handled today counted.”[1]

Have we, the children of light, forgotten the connection between today and eternity? Has it been lost on us that what we do now with the things we’ve been given has eternal implications?

In his fable The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis shows how far apart good and evil are from one another when a busload of Hell’s inhabitants embarks on a daylong visit of Heaven. The protagonist—a resident of Hell—sees that he and the others on the bus are wispy, transparent creatures—mere phantoms—when they arrive. In Heaven they are eventually met by friends and loved ones, people who are much brighter and significantly more substantial. These implore the ghost-like ones to let go of their anger and bitterness—their control of their own lives—and give themselves entirely over to Christ’s love. Many refuse, running for the bus, wanting to return to the familiarity and comfort of the Underworld.

In his Introduction, Lewis remarks that there is a pervasive belief that we can avoid “either-or” scenarios, that eventually all things–including good and evil–if giving enough time, will converge together, so we’ll be able to have our cake and eat it too. Lewis emphatically states that such a belief is a disastrous error. “Evil can be undone,” he writes, “but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutters of dissevering power’—or else not. It is still ‘either-or.’ If we insist on keeping Hell,” he writes, “we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven, we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”[2]

“No one can serve two masters” was Jesus’ way of saying the same thing.

Over time, we begin to think that we can have it both ways. We think we can serve both God and our own interests. Oh, it doesn’t happen all at once, the powers of this world are much more sneaky than that. But over time we allow things to become cloudy; rather than deepening in our walk with Christ, we tend to slip. We get muddled with our priorities, and our faith takes a back seat. “Sure, I can afford NFL Sunday Ticket to watch the Patriots,” you might say, (okay, I might say), but then also think that the budget’s a bit too tight to pick up some canned goods for the food bank. We don’t mind spending a few hours a week doing our favorite activities—golfing or hiking or scrapbooking—but then balk when asked to give a couple hours a month for a worthy organization or a Bible study insisting we’re much too busy. We know what we’re supposed to do, of course, but we get distracted.

We lose our focus.

What is it that is making you lose your focus on Christ these days? Is it constantly wanting to be entertained by TV and music, or endlessly following current events? Is it an unhealthy relationship, the unknown of the future, your finances or a job? Maybe your attention is focused on an addiction to social networking, pornography or alcohol. Or maybe it’s none of these. Maybe the daily grind has taken you down a path away from Christ, and you haven’t really noticed the change of scenery until now.

“Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much, Jesus tells his disciples.” Keep an eye toward eternity and be shrewd with what you have, he implores us—not so we can control the fiefdoms we build up around ourselves, but so we can impact the kingdom of God. We can’t serve more than one master. We can’t serve both God and ourselves.

We choose each day whom we serve in the small ways we live our lives. We declare our allegiance in the seemingly insignificant moments of our existence when we decide to live for Christ or not. “It’s easy to grow complacent about the responsibilities God gives us,” one theologian put it. It’s easy to become persuaded that the here and now don’t play much if any role in the future; that the present doesn’t really impact eternity. Sure there are countless people who have never experienced the good news of Christ, but we’re busy enough with what’s on our plate already. Is it any wonder that Jesus declared that the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than the children of light?

We are called to renew our vision—to keep our focus—on the one who brings us life. We are invited to follow Jesus Christ, recognizing that every moment presents us with an opportunity to bring about the establishing of his kingdom. As his disciples, as children of light, we are called to be faithful both with little and with much, thereby showing that we can be trusted with true riches. Each week we come to this table to be forgiven and renewed by Christ so that we may go from this place and faithfully serve him who is our master and Lord. Amen.

[1] Helen Montgomery Debevoise, “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 16:1-13” in Feasting on the Word Year C Vol. 4. Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett, eds. Pg 94.

[2] CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, viii-ix.

Sabbath Keeping

2010-08-23T11:30:00.003-04:00

I spoke about Sabbath keeping yesterday. I forgot to bring my iPhone up to the pulpit with me, so didn't get an audio of the sermon and I don't have a text, so my apologies.

My sermon was greatly influenced by the book Sabbath by Dan Allender. His premise is that the Sabbath should be a day of delight, a time for celebration.

His question is this: "What would I do for a 24 hour period of time if the only criteria was to pursue my deepest joy?”

What might you do?

As I mentioned, Melissa and I are beginning a longer conversation about what that might look like for our family. Due to my schedule, we'll do our Sabbath from Friday evening to Saturday at the same time. I won't check email or phone messages during that time, we'll have a celebratory meal on Friday evening, and then do something either together as a family or individually that brings us delight. This past week we went to the zoo to see the new baby orangutan, and next week we plan on taking a hike and having a picnic lunch. We won't do the mundane tasks of life: laundry, grocery shopping, etc. etc. Too often we allow those things to fill our time of rest and renewal. It takes some intentionality, but it's worth it in the end, I think.

So I invite your conversation as well. What would your Sabbath look like? How can we being living in this rhythm that God desires for us?

Frederick Buechner on Prayer

2010-07-28T12:07:00.003-04:00

On Sunday I read a quotation from Frederick Buencher on prayer. A few have asked about it, so here it is. It comes from Wishful Thinking: A Seekers ABC

What about when the boy is not healed? When, listened to or not listened to, the prayer goes unanswered? Who knows? Just keep praying Jesus says. Remember the sleepy friend…. Even if the boy dies, keep on beating a path to God’s door, because the one thing you can be sure of is that down the path you beat with even your most half cocked and halting prayer the God you call upon will finally come, and even if he does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring himself. And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for. (pg 87)

Shameless Audacity in Prayer

2010-07-25T15:59:00.006-04:00

Today's gospel lesson is Luke's take on "The Lord's Prayer." Or rather, the prayer Jesus teaches his disciples when they see him off praying. They want to pray, too.

The text of the gospel is below, from Luke 11:1-13. And if the sermon audio doesn't appear right below this sentence, click here for another version of it.

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In the Journey

2010-07-19T16:57:00.004-04:00

Last week Monday I climbed the highest peak in Colorado (and the 2nd highest in the lower 48): Mt. Elbert.

I traveled with a couple of friends, both of whom had summitted other 14ers (peaks in Colorado above 14,000 feet) previously. Sean said at the beginning, "It's not the destination, but the journey" kind of in that tongue-in-cheek way that kids will sometimes say to their parents, although this time it was parishioner to priest. And he was right, of course. While the destination was well worth it (it was amazing to be up on that summit), I had to work through the highs and lows of walking 9 miles, gaining over 5,000 feet of elevation and the decreased level of oxygen.

I'll admit it, there were times when I wanted to give up. Not because my knee was hurting (my repaired left knee did unbelievably well), but because it was tough and I was getting tired.

We walked through some amazing scenery — aspen groves, and open meadows, and wonderful vistas providing breathtaking views. And that helped since the difficulty came down to being mental. I was worried that I was a drag on our group. That I hadn't done enough cardio work to merit my trip up.

But I kept at it. And if it weren't for my friends, I'm not sure I would have made it. But that's why we live in community, isn't it? To help us out when we get discouraged and feel that the goal is too far off, too difficult to achieve.

And it's good to have reminders that we make it by taking a single step. That we can rely on others. And that it really is all in the journey.

I can't wait to summit another 14er this summer.

Oil of Abundance

2010-06-07T16:58:00.007-04:00

The 2nd in my attempts at recording my sermons when I don't use a text. I'm trying a different embed program here.... The passage is from 1 Kings 17.

Or, if there are technical difficulties and there is nothing to click above, Please click here to listen to the sermon!

God's Variety

2010-06-07T16:54:00.003-04:00

My sermon from the Feast of Pentecost--I forgot to post this sooner :-)

Pentecost — Year C — May 23, 2010

The portion of Psalm 104 that we heard this morning only gives you a taste of the joy and wonder the psalmist feels in God’s work of creation. The Psalmist begins “God, my God, how great you are! beautifully, gloriously robed, Dressed up in sunshine, and all heaven stretched out for your tent. You built your palace on the ocean deeps, made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings. You commandeered winds as messengers, appointed fire and flame as ambassadors. You set earth on a firm foundation so that nothing can shake it, ever. You blanketed earth with ocean, covered the mountains with deep waters; Then you roared and the water ran away— your thunder crash put it to flight. Mountains pushed up, valleys spread out in the places you assigned them."

Immediately you can feel the awe, can’t you? God is so great, so amazing, so mind-blowing when compared to us. It is God who stretches out the heavens like a tent—a pretty amazing tent, if you ask me—God who makes fire and flame the bearers of God’s message, who makes fire a servant. And then from this beginning, the Psalmist details how God acted in creation. God separating earth from sea. God creating mountains and valleys. How the grass grows to feed cattle, and how the stork finds refuge in a fir tree. He finds amazement in mountain goats and badgers who dwell among the rocks. All of these animals—from the lion to the donkey—find their sustenance from the Creator; it is God who feeds and cares for them. It is God who made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun to provide both light and darkness at the appropriate times so lions can find their prey at night and so people can work during the day. “In wisdom you have made them all,” the Psalmist declares in verse 24, “the earth is full of your creatures.”

It is a world of abundance and beauty and of great variety. And God created all of it, and even made that great Leviathan for the sport of it, or, as the Message puts it, to be your pet dragon romping in the seas. The God of all creation doesn’t just create and walk away, the God of the universe provides for this creation. “All of them look to you to give them their food in due season. You give it to them; they gather it; you open your hand, and they are filled with good things.” God provides for this amazing creation. When God sends forth the Spirit—ruach in Hebrew, meaning “spirit, wind or breath”—the great variety in the world are created and have life.

Is it any wonder then that on this day of Pentecost and we see God’s Spirit moving as wind and fire among the disciples, that God’s message of salvation comes to all of the people living in Jerusalem on that day. And that message comes not just in the local language—Aramaic—or the languages of commerce and government—Greek and Latin—but in the diversity of languages of those present, a full representation of the world. While some thought that the second language skills of the Galilean disciples were enhanced by drinking some wine—which has not been my experience, by the way—it was God’s Spirit, God’s Wind, God’s Breath—“pnuema” in the Greek—that came to these disciples. It was the Holy Spirit coming to declare God’s love for the world shown through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus for everyone, for all of us. That declaration wasn’t just in the language of our schools and of our minds, but in the languages of our homes, the language of our heart.

The God of the Universe cares about all of us. Just as God provides sustenance for the lions, for the rock badgers, and the salmon, God wants to provide life for us as well. The message of Jesus couldn’t be contained to just the Jewish people living in the Roman-occupied area around Jerusalem and up to Galilee. It was meant to be shared with the world.

This has become a bit of a thorny issue today for some: how do we both live as Christians and share the good news of Christ while also respecting others and their religious beliefs. Living in a pluralistic world—and whether you like it or not, we do—makes us cautious and nervous and reticent in sharing our faith. Part of this comes from the fact that some Christians frame the question around the final destination of a person’s soul—that they are going to hell unless we convert them to Christianity. Thankfully it is God who gets to determine all of that at the end of the age. But the response of many—and especially with those of us who worship in the mainline denominations—is to espouse an almost universalistic approach with an “I’m okay, you’re okay” mentality that God can work in all the religions of the world and that in the end it doesn’t really matter since we will all be a part of God’s glorious kingdom.

But the problem with that thinking can be shown in the people living and gathered in Jerusalem on that Pentecost Day so many years ago. If it didn’t matter to God that the good news be shared, then why did the Spirit come to the disciples and give them this supernatural ability to speak in other languages? If the Parthians and Medes and folks from Lybia and Crete didn’t need to hear God’s message, if they were just fine living their lives as faithful and devout Jews, why would the Spirit have come in that particular way? Surely the Spirit could have come and been with the 120 or so disciples gathered in that place without this language business, the Spirit could have invigorated their lives without the proclamation of God’s wondrous deeps, yet God wanted to offer them so much more. God wanted the message of good news to be proclaimed to the whole diverse and wonderful world. And notice how this happens, the Spirit of God comes, giving this ability to speak, and then the crowd asks, “What does this mean?” Through their question, Peter shares the message of Christ. Peter gives meaning to the experience, and the good news is shared.

In a few moments we will reaffirm our baptismal vows (with Brooklyn and Addision who will be affirming them for the first time), and one of the questions we will be asked is this: “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” If all we are concerned about is padding the numbers of our church or denomination or the number of souls we have saved, then this endeavor will ultimately fail. If all we are concerned about is doing good works without connecting them to our hope in Christ, then this endeavor, too, will ultimately fail. Instead we are to declare that the Good News of God in Christ is that the God of the Universe, the God who created wants to take part in our story, wants to show us how our stories become a part of the larger story that God has been telling since the foundation of the world, and that there is more to our lives than just the day in and day out, that God brings about transformation in the work of Jesus Christ, and we do this in both word and deed. Jesus both taught and healed. We are called to do likewise, to share our faith by what we say, and by how we live our lives.

But what about sincere people of other faiths? There is the famous story of the blind men in a village who hear there is an elephant nearby. They go out to it since they have never seen an elephant and each feels a different part of the elephant to explain it. “It’s like a pillar,” says the one touching the leg. “No, it’s like a rope” says the one grabbing the tail. “It’s a solid pipe,” says the guy touching the tusk. They all go around describing the different parts: ear and belly and trunk as best they can. They get into an argument about it, each certain that they know what it is until finally a wise man comes by and tells them they are all right, that they have all just experienced a different part of the animal.

This story gets told to show that God is revealed to everyone, that no one faith has the market on God. But, as theologian Leslie Newbigin declares, that misses the point entirely. If there was no wise man who has seen the elephant then they would still be in the dark, there would be no story. If Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (as he tells the disciples in the verses just before our reading from John), then we, as his followers, have seen the full elephant. That does not mean we understand the elephant, that we have the market on what the elephant does or how the elephant works, but we’ve seen it. We can point to it.

That might sound arrogant to some of you. Notice that Philip says the thing all of us long to say, “Lord, just show us the Father.” In other words, “We really just want to see the elephant, Jesus. Could you help us out?” “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” he replies. “Do you want to see God? Look here; I’m right here in front of you.” I think what would be arrogant is to say something like this, “What you’re touching there isn’t an elephant at all, it isn’t God. Let me show you what an elephant is really like; I’ve got it hidden under this tarp.” What Jesus claims, and what we as his followers declare, is that he is the full revelation of God, of the Creator of the Universe. What God is like, how God acts in humanity is shown in the person of Jesus.

And, of course, we must recognize that Christianity has often used force, political clout and intimidation to make disciples, all of which negates the message of Christ, all of which is, to name it bluntly, “anti-Christ.” As Newbigin puts it, “When coercion of any kind is used in the interests of the Christian message, the message itself is corrupted… We must affirm the gospel as truth, universal truth, truth for all people and for all times, the truth which creates the possibility of freedom [of thought and conscience]; but we negate the gospel if we deny the freedom in which alone it can be truly believed.” It is that freedom to experience Christ, to see the work of Christ about us and to share the message of Christ that should be our aspiration as his disciples. We are called to share good news.

And that good news is that God longs to be in relationship with each of us, to become a part of our stories as we find our way into God’s story. The God of the universe is wrapped in majesty and honor and glory, and the Creator cares deeply about each one of us. So let us treat others with dignity and respect, working alongside them for the common good of our world, and intentionally share with them our faith journeys and the way in which Jesus Christ has brought us fullness of life. That is our call as disciples. That is our call as Christ’s body. Amen.

Fences

2010-05-17T14:06:00.004-04:00

Below is the audio file for the sermon I preached yesterday. I'm trying out using my iPhone to record sermons, especially when I don't have a written text.

Tell me what you think about doing this...

Sermon for Easter 7C

Acts 16:16-34

"One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God."

Rethinking Resurrection

2010-05-02T16:25:00.003-04:00

I focused on resurrection this morning in my sermon, a more theological sermon in nature, and I promised that I would post it here. I was influenced with NT Wright's book Surprised by Hope.

My hope is that this reflection will spark conversation and thought. And, as I mentioned at the service, I hope you put this in your theological pipe for awhile and smoke it (as one of my favorite professors once said). Put another way, I hope this is something we keep coming back to in conversations.

Rev 21:1-6

The verses we heard the morning for the Revelation of St. John the Divine are often heard at funerals because there is this promise of death being no more and pain and sorrow being taken away. These words are of great comfort to us as we mourn and take those we have loved and place them lovingly in God’s hand as we bury them.

But these verses can greatly influence our understanding of life after death, and possibly, as Bishop Tom Wright put it, “life after life after death.”[1] I know I am wading out into deep waters—especially when I could be preaching a sermon on love and acceptance—but you’ve heard me preach those sermons before, and we are in the midst of Easter when the resurrection of Christ and our future resurrection are paramount, so there you are. I must say that I have been thinking a great deal about these things in recent months through my reading of N.T. (or Tom) Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, which I heartily recommend to you.

St. John the Divine writes at the beginning of Revelation 21: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” Immediately, we are to recall the first creation account in Genesis as we hear these words. Newness is present in this vision, due to the passing away of the first heaven and earth, but the sea is no more, John writes.

In Ancient times, the sea was the source of chaos. It still is for us these days when seen from the perspective of the reality show “Deadliest Catch” or stories like The Perfect Storm. Out of the deep came Leviathan, that great monster. In Genesis, God’s Spirit hovers over the waters of chaos (See Gen 1:2) and out of the chaos God creates. So, of course, in this new earth, this new heaven where God is fully present, there is no chaos, no disorder. Does that mean there will be no ocean in that new world? I don’t know. As someone who loves paddling on the ocean water in a kayak and playing in the surf with Noah and Olivia, I hope not. Like many other details about this new creation, we just don’t know.

And then John gives these most interesting and unexpected statements. “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.” (Rev 21:2-3) Now think about all the ideas we have about heaven and life after death. We imagine going up to the sky, to the heavens, and sitting on a cloud and playing a harp. We picture our traveling to where God is, far away from here. And yet John’s vision is the exact opposite. God comes to us. “See,” a voice from the throne, the voice of God, says, “The home of God is among mortals!” Or as the Message Bible puts it, “Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home among men and women!”

In popular Christian culture there is much to be made about being caught away and being with God. “I’ll fly away,” that campy song many of us know, is a classic example. As is the Left Behind series. There is a mentality that the goal of Christianity is simply to suffer through this life so we can die and get to heaven, our eternal bliss. This seems for many to be a disembodied eternity—meaning a place for our souls rather than our physical bodies—because many of us even as Christians hold onto the dualistic belief made popular by Plato that the body is ultimately not good and the soul is both good and immortal. More on that in a couple of minutes. This image from John is of God coming down from heaven to live among us, not the other way around. We’re not flying away, ascending to heaven, rather it seems God is descending to us.

John also speaks about this city, the new Jerusalem, being like a bride adorned for Christ. Bishop Wright explains these verses in this way: “Heaven and earth, it seems, are not after all poles apart, needing to be separated forever when all the children of heaven have been rescued from this wicked earth. Nor are they simply different ways of looking at the same thing, as would be implied by some kinds of pantheism. No, they are different, radically different, but they are made for each other in the same way (Revelation is suggesting) as male and female. And when they finally come together, that will be cause for rejoicing in the same way a wedding is: a creational sign that God’s project is going forward; that opposite poles within creation are made for union, not competition; that love and not hate have the last word in the universe; that fruitfulness and not sterility is God’s will for creation.”[2]

Wright’s idea that the project is moving forward reflects the idea that God doesn’t simply “wipe the slate clean” in regards to the new heaven and earth.[3] Quite differently, God redeems creation. God transforms creation. God takes what God created at the beginning and brings it finally to the purpose that God always intended. Just as Jesus was bodily resurrected at Easter—and the gospels make this a significant point with Jesus eating and Thomas touching the holes in his side and hands—yet he was different, he was changed, so God will take this earth and transform it.

And the big change is that death will be no more. I’ve been having an ongoing conversation via email with a friend about death. He contends that physical death was always part of the plan God had in mind in nature, surely plants dying and decaying providing nutrients for new crops, or frogs eating insects so we’re not overcome by mosquitoes is a good thing. And we experience this too, with our bodies rejuvenating themselves every 7 years or so. This skin of mine is different skin than it was when I was in college.

Bishop Wright addresses this by saying that evil—which is real and powerful—doesn’t consist in “being transient, made to decay.” “There is nothing,” he writes, “wrong with the tree dropping its leaves in the autumn. There is nothing wrong with the sunset fading away into darkness. Evil consists of none of these things; indeed, it is precisely the transience of the good creation that serves as a pointer to a larger purpose. Creation was good, but it always had a forward look. Transience acts as a God-given signpost pointing not from the material world to a non-material world but from the world as it is to the world as it is meant one day to be—pointing in other words, from the present to the future that God has in store.”[4]

So this physical death and decay is in effect good, pointing us forward to resurrection to that larger purpose. The death brought about through Adam and Eve’s rebellion is primarily spiritual death, then. Distance from God, in other words, as shown by Adam and Eve’s removal from the garden. Christ’s work was to bring about redemption for all of creation, including our place in that wider creation.

Let me return to bodies and souls and death. I am often asked what happens to loved ones when they die. The immediate response that many are looking for is that they are in heaven. But the common understanding of heaven—eternal and everlasting bliss in the clouds—deludes the meaning I now believe as well as what I see in Scripture. I don’t think that we fall asleep in the ground waiting to be reawakened; Jesus did tell that penitent criminal hanging beside him that he would be in paradise. Nor do I think that life after death is the final destination. What I gather is that there is a place to be with the Lord—Paul makes this clear himself when he tells the church at Philippi that by dying he departs and is with Christ (see Philippians 1:20-23)—but that is not the ultimate destination. I am not espousing the idea of Purgatory, which includes the belief that we are in need of purging from sin, but rather the idea of paradise where we go to be with Jesus as we await a future resurrection.

And I make that distinction because of this extremely important and central tenant of our faith: our bodies will be resurrected. God will take this material, this flesh and blood (whatever is left of it) and will make something new with it. God will redeem it, along with all of creation. This decaying, dying, slightly pudgy, prone to sickness, balding body of mine will become something utterly new. It will still be me—the resurrected Jesus had the marks still with him, it was him—but it will be a changed me, a new me, a me that is much more than this shadow of myself that is before you now.

But not only that. There will be a new you as well. And a new earth. A new set of Rocky Mountains to behold that will be more spectacular than ever. And a new Jerusalem, and maybe some other new cities as well (yes, I’m holding out for a new Boston). Heaven and earth will be joined together in ways that we can only begin to speculate about. All of this stuff around us, the earth and the ground and the places we call home, will be transformed, will become what God always intended. All of this will be redeemed.

All this redeeming leads to something here and now. Toward the end of his book, Bishop Wright describes it this way. “The point… is that a proper grasp of the (surprising) future hope held out to us in Jesus Christ leads directly and, to many people, equally surprisingly, to a vision of the present hope that is the basis of all Christian mission. To hope for a better future in this world—for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful and wounded world—is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought. And to work for that intermediate hope, the surprising hope that comes forward from God’s ultimate future into God’s urgent present, is not a distraction from the task of mission and evangelism in the present. It is a central, essential, vital and life-giving part of it…. What [Jesus] was promising for that future, and doing in that present, was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so the could enjoy, already in the present, the renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose—and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that larger project.”[5]

“See, I am making all things new,” God declares from the throne to John the Divine. That is the message of Easter, and our hope as Easter people. That God not only will make things new in the future but in the present. In our lives, our relationships, our world and in the lives of others. And as we wait for the world to come, we can actively take part in that act of renewal now. That’s our call to mission. God ultimately will transform and redeem all of this earth, and God will come down to us and live among us. That will be a glorious day of resurrection, and that is our hope as we too will be given the water of eternal life. Amen.

[1] N.T. Wright Surprised by Hope. HaperOne: New York, 2008. Pg 169.

[2] Wright, 105.

[3] Wright, 105.

[4] Wright, 95.

[5] Wright, 192.

Living Together

2010-04-26T16:17:00.000-04:00

Easter 4C — Acts 9:36-43

As much as I would like to say otherwise, the reality is that we live in a broken world. Relationships are fractured. Loved ones get sick and die. Frustration and anger get the best of us. Addictions take us away from family members, leading us into isolation. Children and parents drift apart from one another. Friends feud over politics. We hurt. Depression and insecurities grip us. We lose our jobs. We listen to the voice of fear.

And not only that, but we believe, as one minister put it, that “we are left to our own devices to fix our predicaments—or, more to the point, that our predicaments are not fixable at all.”[1] We live in a Humpty Dumpty world, he goes on to suggest, assuming that putting good ol’ Humpty back together again is utterly impossible—never mind fixing our problems.

So we hole ourselves up. We hide behind masks of our own making. We go inside recognizing that it’s up to us to make things right, knowing full well that even we can’t do it. Clamming up seems like the best possibility. So that’s what we do, disguising our pain and hurt and mustering through as best we can when we see others whose lives we assume are perfect. Talking about our hurt is furthest from our minds, because to do so would mean admitting we are struggling. And so we remain in those broken places, alone—desperately wanting healing, but unable to make the first step.

We aren’t told much by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles about this disciple named Tabitha or about the community she was a part of in Joppa. We are told she was a pillar there. She was a follower of Christ who was devoted in service to others and good works. And she got sick, Luke tells us, and then she died.

But she’s not really the focus for Luke in this story about her. I think Luke is really telling us about the gathering of disciples—the church— in that place. I still hear the stories about the pillars of this church who died before I arrived, and I can tell how much those individuals meant to this community. I imagine the people of First Church in Joppa felt the same way about Tabitha. And so after preparing her body for burial, someone thinks it would be a good idea to invite the Apostle Peter to come; they’d heard that he was nearby in Lydda. Word had gotten out that while Peter was there he healed a man who had been paralyzed and bed-ridden for eight years. So they begin to imagine what it might be like if Peter came to see them. So they send same messengers over, not telling Peter why they wanted him to visit but just asking him to come at once. Immediately upon hearing the request, Peter heads off without question to this broken community, this group of people filled with pain.

This community asked Peter to come because they believed deep down that this apostle could bring healing and wholeness. They were hurting, grieving, and the wanted to experience Christ’s healing work. I don’t know if they even thought of asking him if he could bring Dorcas back to life—they might have hoped that he could like all of us do who have experienced the death of someone dear to us—but they knew that this man who had walked with Jesus could bring about a whole lot more comfort and peace than they could achieve on their own. So when the chips were down, and the pain in the life of their community was completely unbearable, they asked for help.

Peter arrives and goes up to the room where Tabitha’s body is. All around him are these women—her friends and companions—who are weeping because of their loss. They show him her handiwork, the clothes she had made for them, holding on dearly to things that could connect them to her. And then Peter shoos them all out of the room.

The unthinkable happens next. Peter kneels and prays and then looks at her and says, “Tabitha, get up.” And she does. And then Peter calls the community of believers, especially those widows, and presents Tabitha to them. I can’t even begin to imagine the joy and healing and restoration they experienced on that day. It must have been something, because many people came to believe in Jesus because of it.

Why is it so hard for us to ask for help when we are hurting? Why is it that during the times in our lives when we need love and care and support, we stop communicating and put up walls and suffer quietly on the inside? Are we so concerned with what others will think about us if we disclose difficulty that we refuse to be honest at all?

Do we really think that others’ lives are so perfect that they haven’t experienced pain and suffering themselves?

We’ve been speaking the past two weeks about being good neighbors, simply beginning with getting to know the names of the 8 people who live closest to us. But what would it look like if we moved beyond just becoming acquaintances and established a relationship with these people? What would happen if we became authentic, sharing life’s experiences with them? What good could we ultimately do if we got together for a block party with our neighbors and sat down with a soda or a beer and shared parts of our lives? Could you do that? Could you with one of your neighbors plan a barbecue this summer simply to connect with the other human beings who are made in God’s image who happen to live near you?

If this text is more about community and less about the resuscitation of Tabitha, which I think it is, what can we learn from it? I am under no delusions about the enormity of the fear and insecurity many of us have in being authentic with others. To be honest is both costly and scary.

Yet the Christian life is lived in community, not in isolation. We need each other on our journeys. We have to, with God’s help, fight against the desire driven in to us by our society that when there is difficulty we must handle it by ourselves in separation from other while putting up a false front.

Hear the words of Scott Cairns, a theologian, who published an essay called “Lives together” in the Christian Century recently. He writes, “These days … I want to be saved from what passes for myself. This is because what passes for myself does not always feel quite like the self that is framed in the image of God and is thus united with those around me and is, allegedly, growing with them into His Likeness. I would like to replace this recurrently hamstrung, self-defeating and sometimes isolated self with the more promising image: the person in communion with other persons. And while I’m at it, I wouldn’t mind undergoing something like a lasting re-pairing of heart and mind, body and soul. As I continue to discover more fully day by day, this journey toward wholeness is not something that one is able to undertake alone. Fellow travelers aren’t simply a welcome luxury; they are crucial to bearing our crosses as we seek to follow God.”[2] Let me say that again, “Fellow travelers aren’t simply a welcome luxury; they are crucial to bearing our crosses as we seek to follow God.”

The Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ himself, calls us into community. We are crucial to one another so that we may become the people Jesus is calling us to be as his followers. It begins with opening ourselves up to the possibility that others have so much to offer us. It begins with new life. With Jesus bringing us wholeness, healing and restoration. May we receive his gentleness and love, and share those same things in our communities. Amen.

[1] Joseph S. Harvard, “Acts 9:36-43: Pastoral Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word, Year C Vol. 2, Barbara Brown Taylor and David Partlett, eds. Pg. 428.

[2] Scott Cairns, “Lives together.” The Christian Century, April 6, 2010, pg. 44.

Easter Day Sermon

2010-04-05T15:41:00.000-04:00

I did something different this Easter by preaching on the same text for both the Easter Vigil and Easter Day sermons. They certainly stand alone, but also can be read together....

Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

I can’t even begin to imagine the range of emotions experienced by these women who had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee, these Christ-followers. Luke tells us that on Friday they saw the tomb and how his body was laid, and that they prepared the spices and ointment for Jesus. They rested from nightfall Friday to sunset on Saturday to observe the Sabbath. And then early on Sunday morning, just as the sun was breaking over the horizon, they made their way back to that tomb, carrying those spices so they could take care of Jesus’ body.

The others had scattered, of course, fearing for their lives. But these women, Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James and the other women, couldn’t care less about the Roman soldiers or the religious authorities. They had followed Jesus all the way from his hometown and they weren’t about to abandon him now. They wanted to honor him the best way they knew how, to take the time to anoint his broken body with those spices and offer their prayers as they gave him back to God.

So they came bearing those gifts, much like the Magi who came at the start of Jesus’ life, to honor him. Grief certainly turned into uncertainty as they arrived at the tomb only to discover the stone rolled back, and then quickly that uncertainty transformed into horror when they saw that his body was no longer there. They wailed and cried, “Why, why would anyone do such a horrible thing as to steal his body?”

And then suddenly, two men in dazzling white appear. Shock. Alarm. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but he is risen. Remember how he told you that he must be handed over and crucified and on the third day rise again.”

They are perplexed, Could it be true? And then it dawns on them. They do remember, Jesus did say that. He did tell them that he was going to die and rise again. They didn’t understand it, they thought he was talking in metaphors, but it must be true, mustn’t it? His body is no longer here. He must have been raised just as he said. Unbelievable joy.

They head back with tears of happiness running down their faces. Just wait until the others hear this. They will be elated! They will be overcome with great joy to learn that Jesus is alive! They quicken their pace to hurry to the other disciples, the men who are hiding.

They rush in, and the words start rushing out in their excitement. Their out of breath, and speaking over one another, and the other disciples have to slow them down and have one of them tell them what’s going on.

“He’s alive!” one of those women says. Blank stares from the others, who are incredulous. So they start over, more slowly, telling them everything that had happened. Nothing doing. Those guys aren’t buying this story. They stood off in the distance, but they saw him die. They saw him when his tortured breathing stopped and his head collapsed on his chest. Those women feel the disappointment rising in them. And the frustration. They look at one another, stunned that they won’t believe them. They watch as a couple of the men quietly whisper to one another, looking at them. They hear someone say “idle tale,” and one of them begins to cry. “Why won’t they believe us?” they whisper to each other. Hurt, disappointment, disillusionment.

Luke tells us that Peter leaves the place where they are staying. He runs over to the tomb and finds just the linen cloths in the tomb, and he is amazed.

Sometimes when we hear unbelievable stories from others about the amazing things God has done for them, we approach them skeptically. Determining that these stories are merely fantastical, we take them with a grain of salt. It isn’t that we don’t believe God can do amazing things, it’s just that we have never experienced them ourselves and can’t muster up enough chutzpah, or enough disbelief in reality, to believe that such things can take place. So we politely dismiss the stories in our heads, while slowly smiling and nodding to the crazy person talking to us trying to get them to finish up with their story so we can get on with our days.

Who could believe that God can save marriages? Or that after praying for that person riddled with cancer, that now the doctors can’t find anything? We learned long ago that people don’t change, that even the idea of new life is just not real, it’s not practical, because Jesus doesn’t work in that way. So we’re doubtful, cynical.

In describing speaking about the things of God, C.S. Lewis compares it to reading a map. A map is useful in describing things, in showing collectively what many have seen as attributes of God, just like it can show you the outline of a shoreline along the ocean. The creeds are helpful in describing God, for example, just like a map. But while maps are useful for getting you to your destination, it cannot begin to prepare you for what’s in store. A map’s outline of the Acadia shore in Maine cannot prepare you for the breathtaking beauty of being there, of hearing the waves crash in on the rocks and having the salty spray hit you in the face.

Perhaps you are thinking this morning, I’ve had quite enough of maps, thank you very much; I want to feel the spray. I know the creeds, or what others have said about Jesus Christ, but I want to experience it myself. I want to encounter the risen Christ because I am uncertain. The whole thing seems like an idle tale.

Maybe you’re here this morning and are staring down great difficulties. Maybe your marriage is beyond repairing, or you’ve become estranged from a child. Perhaps you are in bondage to addiction or anger or fear and you think there is no way out. It’s possible that you’ve been attending church for years but inside you feel that your faith is dead, and while others have had experiences with living God, you’ve never had those types of experiences or haven’t had them in a very long time.

And perhaps most of all, all of this talk of new life, of experiencing the risen Christ seem to you to be nothing more than idle chatter. Words that must be endured because you’re expected to be here, and you really just want to head off so you can get on with the rest of your day.

I want to say as emphatically as I can that Jesus came into this world to free us from those things that weigh us down, to forgive our sins and to bring us new life. Experiencing the living Christ does not mean that we give up our identities, our deepest and truest selves; it was God who made us who we are to begin with. Rather, encountering Jesus brings us healing, reconciliation and wholeness; it allows us to be the people we were created to be: our best selves. When we stumble upon Jesus–or maybe when he stumbles upon us—it is like being at the ocean for the first time and feeling the spray of the water as it crashes in on the rocks, rather than just tracing the shoreline on a map with our finger.

That’s why we gather on this day, and why we come to this table: to experience the risen Christ. Jesus wants to “help us embrace the mystery of salvation, the promise of life rising out of death.” May we “hear the call of Christ” and be given the “courage to follow it readily,” so that we may lead others to Jesus, “who is our shepherd and guide.”[1] May we proclaim with joy the good news of the risen Christ, and may we as well experience Christ anew this Easter season, for he is in fact risen, jut as he said.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

[1] Phyllis Tickle, The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime.346.

Easter Vigil Sermon

2010-04-05T15:37:00.002-04:00

Easter Vigil—Luke 24:1-12

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” In the name of the one, true and living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Gathered around the light of the Paschal candle, we’ve heard the stories of how God delivered human beings from destruction. God warned Noah of the coming flood, and made provision for Noah and his family to be safe in the Ark with all of those different animals. The chosen people of Israel are delivered from bondage in Egypt and brought safely through the Red Sea by God’s mighty hand. Ezekiel is brought into a valley filled with sun-bleached bones, and through his prophesying the bones rattle and come together and are given muscles and flesh, and then God breathes in them as God did to Adam and Eve, bringing them to life. So it is, says God, for the whole house of Israel that is in exile, I will breathe my Spirit in them and they shall have life. Through God’s abundant grace, people are released from bondage and death and are given life.

Through hearing these stories again, we remember that our God is a God of life, a God of fullness, of unbelievable abundance. God desires for us all to have that life both in this age and the one to come. And above all else, God wants to be a part of our lives; God wants to be in community with us.

And so God sent his Son, Jesus, to live among us and show us what God’s desire was truly about. Jesus went to weddings and dinner parties, he brought about healing and restored relationships, he made time for the downtrodden and the outcasts. He easily forgave those who so desperately were sorry for the wrongs they had forgiven, and held up the bar for those who were proud of their positions in life, calling them to something better.

He prayed and taught, using stories to make his point. And he loved without fail. That’s what God wanted to show us more than anything else. That God loves us, and wants us to have fullness of life. God wants to deliver us from the burdens we face—those things that bring us death—in order to give us life.

When faced with the overwhelming nature of that love, we in the world couldn’t handle it and all of its implications, and so we murdered that Son of God. Rather than imagine what this world could be like if we allowed the glow of that love to change us, we got rid of it. And while we thought it was all done with on Friday when he was sealed up in that tomb, God wasn’t finished with humanity even then.

Those who loved Jesus dearly, the women who followed him and were his disciples, came early in the morning on that Sunday to anoint and care for his body. When they got there, the stone was rolled back from the tomb and they couldn’t find his body anywhere. Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes appeared—presumably angels—to ask them that simple question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

God used what the world intended for evil and brought about good. While we had hoped that by doing away with Jesus, we could just get on with our lives, God had something us much more beautiful in mind. Jesus suffered death, but through the power of God working in him, overcame death forever. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

That question from those angels is a powerful one for us too. Do we think that the power of the living God can transform our dead lives, our dry bones, and bring about something new, something resurrected? Or do we hold on to the belief that what we need is not God’s abounding love but the way we have always lived our lives and how we have handled our own problems by ourselves for all these years. It may not be fullness of life, but, by golly, it is the life we know. Imagining something different would be foolish. So we continue to live in the shackles that bind us because at least that life is a familiar one. We think that if any change is going to take place in our lives, it’s one that we are going to pull off ourselves.

In the Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle, there is a scene where the old world of Narnia has passed away, and a new world has come to be. There were some dwarves who had come into the new world by passing through a door into a stable. The door really opened up unto the new Narnia, but the dwarves couldn’t imagine that they were anywhere else than in a dingy, dirty, and stinky old stable, and that is exactly what they saw. Try as they might, the others there couldn’t convince them that instead of being in the dark, straw-filled room, they were really sitting on the grass in a world more wonderful than they could ever imagine. The dwarves knew that they were in a stable, and nothing would change their minds. Aslan, the Christ figure of the story, finally says to those trying to help, “You see, they will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and [they are] so afraid of being taken in, that they cannot be taken out.”

There are those times when we are not able to believe the words of the Lord. There are those times when doubt consumes us, and we live in a world of shadow and darkness and night. Times when we do not see the light of Christ before us, and we cannot hear the words being proclaimed to us. Yet, that light is there, and the Gospel message is clear: Christ has given himself for us so that we might have new life. His body was broken in order to bring us more wholeness than we could ever imagine or realize on our own.

That’s why we gather on this most holy of nights, and remember God’s many works of deliverance; it’s to remind us that God wants to deliver us from the darkness and bondage of our own lives. God wants to shine the light of Christ into our lives. God desires for us to have the life God has always intended for us, one of fullness, abundance and joy.

Jesus came into the world to show us God’s love. He was raised from the dead to offer us life. May we as we gather in this place, and join the communion of saints gathered at that table, may we truly receive God’s gift of life and love. Alleluia! Christ is risen!

An Innocent Man

2010-03-28T17:04:00.004-04:00

My sermon for Palm Sunday, based on Luke's Passion narrative.

In his retelling of the Passion, Luke makes certain that we understand one very important thing: Jesus is innocent. Pilate declares three times that there is no basis for charges against Jesus, let alone for crucifixion. Herod doesn’t see any guilt in Jesus either. One of the criminals hanging next to Jesus says it outright, “This man has done nothing wrong.” And when Jesus finally breathes his last from that bloodied cross, the centurion utters, “Certainly this man was innocent.”

As commentator William Carter put it, Luke wants to declare “the truth that Rome and Jerusalem would otherwise ignore, Jesus is innocent.”[1] He continues, “Jesus has done nothing wrong. He has not led people down the wrong path. He has not rejected the Scriptures. He has not trained terrorists to resist the empire. He has not spoken against God. There is nothing violent about Jesus.”[2] But it is this very part of him that causes people to strike out.

It wasn’t too long ago that Luke reminded us that Jesus’ own hometown wanted to throw him over a cliff (Luke 4:29). He’d also been warned by the Pharisees that Herod wanted to kill him (Luke 13:31). And yet Luke tells us emphatically during this trial and crucifixion that Jesus is innocent. He’s done nothing to deserve this horrible death.

Nothing, that is, except faithfully follow God’s word and God’s desire for his life. Jesus is above all else faithful; he is who he says he is in both word and deed. He lives out the life his Father has called him to with integrity.

And it’s that embodiment of God’s desire that gets him killed. By showing the world what God was truly about through the way he lived his life—by bringing healing and wholeness, advocating justice for the downtrodden, faithfully following the law, preaching forgiveness and second chances—Jesus gave hope for so many who were in need and also sparked fear in those whose lives would be disrupted by these actions. Why else would the religious leaders demand that he die? Why else would we demand that he die when we played our part in the Passion narrative? A pastor puts it this way: “We resist the love, mercy and truth of Jesus Christ. We silence the honest voice. We condemn the innocent agitator. We pursue our own agendas for the sake of expediency.”[3]

And we do this because, at our core, we are unsure of following the way of Jesus Christ. While we speak with our lips about following the way of Jesus, about being Jesus’ followers, our actions speak otherwise. We look out for our own interests. Or at least I do. I want to make sure my needs and wants are taken care of. I want to be certain that I do what is best for me and my family. And at times I do this without regard to others. Why else do I not give more of my time to organizations and ministries in need of help? Or why do I sometimes give less than my full self in my relationships? Why do I not stand up always for those in greatest need, or even for principles I hold to be true? Why do I resist Jesus’ love and mercy and truth, silencing his voice? I know that I fail Christ miserably when I pursue my own agenda simply because it is convenient. Often Christ’s call is inconvenient, it is costly, it is demanding, and so when faced with his love, his mercy, his life, we falter.

“If we would follow him,” William Carter writes, “we must honestly appraise the situations before us. We have the choice to push ourselves away from every form of cruelty. Authentic faith takes root when we decide, ‘I am no longer going to participate in something that is vindictive, punitive or evil.’ This stand takes great courage. [And] it will certainly provoke its own controversy and opposition.”[4]

Jesus was innocent. We all hoisted him up on that tree all those years ago. It wasn’t Rome or Jerusalem or Pilate or the religious leaders. It was me. It was you. And every time we choose our own paths rather than the path of Jesus Christ, we do it again. When we don’t do what we say, when we pay lip service to Christ’s work, we sin. We fall short of Jesus’ way for us. Certainly there will always be this disconnect between Jesus’ way and how we live our lives; and his work on the cross brings us much needed forgiveness.

But can we, with God’s help, move closer to the ideal of Jesus’ life and ministry? Can we, through God’s grace, become more and more the people God calls us to be by allowing authentic faith to spring up in our lives regardless of the cost? That’s the reason Jesus came to this earth. That is why he endured the cross and why he will rise again. To bring us fullness of life. To continue the work that this innocent one began, and to work with him in bringing peace and healing. May it be so. Amen.

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, David Bartlett, eds. Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2. “Pastoral Perspective,” pg 178.

[2] Taylor, & Bartlett “Pastoral Perspective,” pg. 180.

[3] Taylor and Bartlett, “Pastoral Perspective,” Pg 182.

[4] Taylor and Bartlett, “Pastoral Perspective,” pg 182.

Knee is Officially Healed

2010-03-22T16:59:00.002-04:00

After nearly 5 months from my injury in that blasted summo suit, surgery on my tibial plateau (and the fun of learning the phrase "tibial plateau") for a 1/4+ inch depression on the lateral side, 12 weeks of non-weight bearing, and 7 weeks of PT, I've been given the green light. I can do all the things my body will let me do.

In other words, I still have to listen to the knee — I've developed some tendonosis—but the bone is healed, the screws aren't an issue, and I am in the clear. I hope to be 100% come the summer and get out to do some hiking; a Colorado 14er or two is in my future....

So thanks for the prayers!

God's Desired Fast

2010-02-17T18:50:00.004-05:00

This is my sermon from Ash Wednesday on Isaiah 58:1-12. I was struck by the fast that God desires and how different that is from the fasts we undertake during Lent.

__________________________________

Isaiah receives these words from the Lord about God’s chosen people: “Day after day, they seek me, and delight to know my ways…they delight to draw near to God.” And yet, these people ask the Lord, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” “Look,” the Lord says, “you serve your own interest on your fast day, and you oppress your workers.” In other words, you make this all about you. But the Lord continues on to describe the fast he requires, to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to see the naked and cover them, to share a meal with the hungry, to “be available to your own family.”[1] That’s what God desires more than anything else.

Biblical scholar Tomas Currie puts it this way, “[W]hat makes God’s ‘fast’ remarkable is not its social or political or economic sensibilities but its reckless self-forgetfulness. ‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?” is the question of an anxious idolatry eager to make God ‘useful,’ worshipping God for the sake of something else, in this case, one’s own salvation. Lusting for such a possibility was the great threat that continually confronted Israel and continues to tempt us today in both liberal and conservative garb. All desire the power to save themselves. All.”[2]

At the beginning of this holy season of Lent we must ask ourselves whose interests we are serving by our intended religious piety over the next 40 days. We may have already decided that we will give up meat, or chocolate, or perhaps read a Lenten devotion once a day or be more faithful in church attendance, which are all fine endeavors, but are we merely hoping to save ourselves through these actions? Do we expect to get into God’s good graces through some trivial self denial? If God’s desired fast is about “reckless self-forgetfulness,” then how do we transfer our focus from ourselves to others? How do we see what God intends for us through fasting? God declares that such a fast is about others, the hungry, the homeless, the poor and naked, and even our own families. Our self-denial isn’t about the significance of our own spiritual journeys, it should be concerned with the other, with those who are not us.

This is a question, ultimately, about community. God desires for us to experience the freedom in life to see others not as stepping-stones, or things to be used for our own good, but as children of God. When we reduce others to labels, to names based on their economic situation or nationality or political ideologies or the color of their skin, we dishonor them, and we also dishonor ourselves. By concentrating on ourselves, even our own longing for God, we miss the opportunity to draw closer to others who bear God’s image.

Philosopher Martin Buber expresses this quite well by comparing what he calls an I-It relationship with an I-You relationship. When I interact with someone, if I see only their house, or the way they can help me achieve my goals, or as an obstruction to the rest of my day, I see that person as an It. I’m not present with them. I get angry, or jealous, or dismissive towards them. My heart is hard. The opposite way, of course, is to enter into a relationship at that moment, to see them as an equal, to be concerned about them as human beings, as someone God loves. The person is no longer an It to me but a You. When I do this, I am set free from my own self-focused desires to a place where life can be fully experienced.

That is what God describes at the end of our lesson from Isaiah. If we fast as God desires, “then you shall call, and the Lord will answer.” “Then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” If we enter into deep, life-giving relationships, our yearnings will be filled—not in selfish or self-serving ways—but through the very thing God “delights” in, “the life shared together.”[3]

I invite you during this sacred season of Lent to fast in ways that draw you closer to “the other” in your life. Deepen your connections with your spouse or children by sharing a meal, making time for a conversation, or taking a walk together. Maybe you could, as was recommended by a children’s book I read to Noah the other night, sort through your old games and puzzles, take them to an assisted care facility and spend an hour playing a game with an elderly person who is craving connectedness with another person. Perhaps you could sign up for a turn at the Food Bank, or the Jeffco action center. Or you could possibly make a coffee date with someone here at Christ the King who you’ve never gotten a chance to know. Is there a co-worker that could use a friend? Schools, like the one that sits across the street from us, are often looking for tutors. The possibilities are truly endless. If we fast these next 40 days from looking inward and begin looking outward, then we will truly be prepared for Holy Week. Ash Wednesday is leading us to Christ’s Passion, as Thomas Currie puts it. The cross is “the place where God’s fast pours itself out for the sake of the whole world. There God’s fast becomes our food, and we are set free to sit at table with others whom we have not chosen and would never choose, to eat and even delight in this fearful mercy.”[4] May it be so. Amen.

[1] Language from The Message Bible.

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlet, eds. Feasting on the Word, Year C Vol. 2, 4.

[3] Taylor, 6.

[4] Taylor, 6.

Called to Something Greater

2010-02-07T19:18:00.002-05:00

My sermon from this Sunday. I mention "Darius Goes West," and I cannot recommend this life-giving film enough. We'll be viewing it at Christ the King in a couple of weeks as part of our Lenten film program.

Luke 5:1-11

Imagine Peter’s surprise when Jesus, who had been teaching the people God’s word near the lake of Gennesaret, simply climbed into Peter’s boat and sat down. Having fished throughout the night to no avail, Peter was now washing his nets, pulling the seaweed and debris and whatnot out of the nets. The people kept pushing up against Jesus to hear his words more clearly, and amidst the jostling, he was getting closer and closer to the water’s edge. So the boat was the best available option. But I suspect this situation stumped Peter—or at least slightly amused him—that this teacher, this rabbi, would have the chutzpah to climb in without really asking.

Jesus does, however, request that Peter push the boat out a bit from the shore. Peter does this, and Jesus continues teaching. And Peter is a captive audience. He might have some work to do on the boat—things to wipe down, ropes to coil—but he would certainly be listening to Jesus’ words.

Jesus finishes teaching the crowd, and then tells Peter to head out into the deep water for a catch of fish. Peter certainly was flabbergasted at this request. He was the professional fisherman; Jesus was just a teacher. He—like any fisherman worth his weight in salt—would know that fish were more readily caught at night. Daytime fishing when the sun shone bright lead to futility. But something about Jesus—maybe the teaching, or the way he just clamored into that boat, or his mere presence—something caused Peter to look at this teacher and say, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” He points the boat toward deeper water and sets out, eventually putting the nets back into the water.

Luke simply describes what happens next in this way, “When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.” Pandemonium ensues. Fish flopping all over. The boat creaking under the strain and tilting heavily to the one side. Peter signals to his partners still onshore–James and John—and they immediately head out to help. Once they get there and the nets are finally brought up, the fish fill both boats to more than capacity and they start to sink.

It’s then that Peter sees this whole scene and regains his senses. He’s probably been working in overdrive without really thinking—years of instincts kicking in. But in finally seeing the sinking boats, and the multitude of fish and this teacher still in the boat with him, he puts it all together. Peter’s overwhelmed by it all, and falls down before Jesus, “Get away from me, Lord; leave me alone, I am a sinful man.” Jesus looks down at him with compassion, “Don’t be afraid,” he says, “from now on you’ll be catching people.” Nothing else is said, and they head back in to shore. When they arrive, Peter gets out of the boat and leaves everything behind—the nets, his livelihood, and that unbelievable catch of fish—he leaves it all and follows Jesus. He’s caught.

Clergy are asked all the time about their call. If you’re ordained, you have the story ready in your back pocket. Mine starts all the way back in Mrs. Sears 2^nd grade class, when I wrote a theme entitled “My Wish.” “When I grow up, I want to be a priest,” I wrote in big, slightly wiggly letters. I remember dressing up like a priest the summer before that, wearing my white terry cloth robe and giving my parents a communion of Ritz crackers and grape juice. I can trace it back even further if I try, to the cousin of my father who is a priest. He often came by our house to visit with my family. Fr. Bob showered compassion, kindness and love on me, and as the youngest of six, I drank up the attention. So it was then—when I was a boy—that God called me.

Other clergy call stories start differently. Some priests had lived much of their lives before they recognized that all along God was calling them to ministry. A few had a major life event that turned them upside down. Others were simply invited to church or a Christian gathering by a friend and that changed everything. But each has a story of that call. And people expect us to have one; if there wasn’t some story, some retelling of how God got us into kingdom work, then we would probably be suspect.

The same isn’t always true, however, for lay people. If I were to ask you at coffee hour to tell me about how God called you, I suspect that some of you would be caught off guard. You might be able to put something together after a time, the patterns and weavings of God’s work in your lives, but I would guess that such a question would be unexpected.

I can only speculate the reasons why. The most obvious one is that we rarely ask each other this type of question, reserving it only for the ordained in our midst. Growing out of that might be the reality that many, while certainly baptized Christians, might not see their lives as being called by God. Sometimes a person might get an inkling that God is calling them, but they are unsure of what they are called to do. Mike Durall, the consultant who worked with our Stewardship Community this past year, often asks the churches and religious groups he works with if they would be willing to give of their lives for the greater good. “Yes!” is often the resounding response, and then many times as a side note someone will say, “but my church never asks me to do this.” People are willing, but they are never asked. They might feel what could be described as a call—or maybe even a desire for a call—but where that leads next is not clear.

Melissa and I saw an amazing documentary a few months ago, about a young man named Darius Weems who has Duchene Muscular Dystrophy. We learned early on that Darius’ brother Mario had muscular dystrophy as well, and succumbed to the disease when he was 19. Darius is confined to a wheelchair in his early adolescence, and the film documents Darius’ first trip away from his home of Athens, Georgia. A group of 11 friends pack up a rented RV, and head West with 15-year-old Darius. With scheduled stops along the way, they hope to raise awareness of muscular dystrophy, and how the Duchene is the leading genetic cause of death in young people.

Their first stop is telling. We see Darius using his lift to get out of the RV so he can get in to use the bathroom at a gas station and grab a snack. The only problem is that the Qwik-E-Mart isn’t accessible for Darius’ wheelchair. The first pit stop in his life is a failure for Darius. He has to head back to the camper, and use the tiny bathroom there. One of his friends comments that you don’t realize how big an issue handicap accessibility is until you experience it firsthand. “We’re hoping to raise awareness with our trip,” he says, “and the very first stop shows how far we have to go.” The young man who says this, Logan, recognizes that he wants to help address the disparity for people like Darius. We see Logan later in the film answering questions from a reporter as Darius and the other crew members are explore an underground cave system that is fully accessible to wheelchairs. “If this cave can be accessible, and not just accessible, but giving someone like Darius options down here, why can’t new buildings be accessible?” he asks. Logan and Darius and their friends heard a call. I won’t say much else about the film, entitled “Darius Goes West,” but invite you to view it as the first of our Lenten Film series later this month. I will only say that lives are changed, and these amazing young people have given their lives for the greater good. They answered a call.

It’s so easy to understand why Peter wants Jesus to leave, isn’t it? He’s there in the boat with this unbelievable catch of fish, and he recognizes that Jesus is so much more than he first thought. How can you measure up against someone like that? He’s overwhelmed, and scared and sees that he has little he can offer. He’s merely a fisherman. Get away, Jesus. I can’t be near you. I don’t have anything to give you. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus says. You might not think you have what it takes, you might be overwhelmed in my presence, but don’t fear. Don’t be overcome by that type of thinking. From now on you’ll fish for people.

Except he doesn’t say fish, does he? He says “catch,” although most translations of Luke you’ll read out there still say “fish.” And I’ll bet that even though our version said “catch,” you mentally inserted “fish.” But in the Greek, Luke’s version is different from how Mark and Matthew tell of Peter’s calling; Luke uses the Greek word zogreo, which literally means “catch living ones,” the prefix coming from zoe or “life.” The Greek word Matthew and Mark use, the word for “fisherman,” connotes that some of the fish will die. It’s just part of the process of pulling in nets chockfull of what will eventually become someone’s dinner. Luke, however, casts a slightly different version of Jesus’ calling of the first disciples. Jesus wants Peter to catch people, but they will still be full of life—full of zoe. The call Jesus gives is to bring people in as his followers, so they too can participate in the life-giving work of his kingdom.

I want to say as vigorously as I can that clergy aren’t the only ones whom Jesus calls; he calls us all. Peter didn’t think he had anything to offer, but Jesus found him. Jesus went to Peter’s workplace, and called this not so experienced person to go out and catch people in God’s love. I think most of us say that we don’t have much if anything to offer, but Jesus just simply says, “Don’t be afraid.” And notice that he doesn’t stop there. You might not think you have anything to offer, but Jesus thinks otherwise and there’s work to be done. “From now on you’ll be catching people.” Or if they were doctors, Jesus would have said, “From now on you’ll be healing the soul.” Or if they were mechanics, “I’ve got much bigger repairs for you to be part of.” From now on, you’ll be about the work of my kingdom. From now on your life will be for a greater good.

Can we hear that call? Will we be willing to give our lives for so much more? Will we take our place alongside those who have been found by Christ in order to change the world with his love? Will we allow Christ to catch us so we can go out and catch others? Can we leave everything behind—our fears and insecurities in our skills, our reluctance, our security with the status quo—can we leave it all and follow him? “Don’t be afraid,” he says to Peter, he says to us; “From now on you’ll be catching people.” Amen.

National Prayer Breakfast Remarks

2010-02-04T14:41:00.003-05:00

I saw some of the remarks President Obama gave at this morning's National Prayer Breakfast. While you may disagree with his policies, his call to civility is certainly on target. As an Episcopal priest, I am constantly aware of the fact that not everyone who attends the church I serve is of the same frame of mind about much. People have opinions on things political and religious and everything in between, and we are not of one mind.

Some find this frustrating. I find it both life-giving and challenging. It causes me to recognize that I don't have the market on how to experience God or how to think about life. It makes me cognizant of others and invites me to listen to them. To me it says a great deal about how when we gather for communion, while we may be very different from one another, we are all one body.

Here are selections from the President's remarks.

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At times, it seems like we’re unable to listen to one another; to have at once a serious and civil debate. And this erosion of civility in the public square sows division and distrust among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion. It leaves each side little room to negotiate with the other. It makes politics an all-or-nothing sport, where one side is either always right or always wrong when, in reality, neither side has a monopoly on truth. And then we lose sight of the children without food and the men without shelter and the families without health care. Empowered by faith, consistently, prayerfully, we need to find our way back to civility.

Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable; understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, that "civility is not a sign of weakness." Now, I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. (Laughter.) But surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith, or, for that matter, my citizenship. (Laughter and applause.)

Challenging each other's ideas can renew our democracy. But when we challenge each other's motives, it becomes harder to see what we hold in common. We forget that we share at some deep level the same dreams -- even when we don't share the same plans on how to fulfill them.

Surely we can agree to find common ground when possible, parting ways when necessary. But in doing so, let us be guided by our faith, and by prayer. For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm; while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle -- and I assure you I'm praying a lot these days -- (laughter) -- prayer can also do something else. It can touch our hearts with humility. It can fill us with a spirit of brotherhood. It can remind us that each of us are children of an awesome and loving God.

It is this spirit of civility that we are called to take up when we leave here today. That's what I'm praying for. I know in difficult times like these -- when people are frustrated, when pundits start shouting and politicians start calling each other names -- it can seem like a return to civility is not possible, like the very idea is a relic of some bygone era. The word itself seems quaint -- civility.

But progress doesn't come when we demonize opponents. It's not born in righteous spite. Progress comes when we open our hearts, when we extend our hands, when we recognize our common humanity. Progress comes when we look into the eyes of another and see the face of God. That we might do so -- that we will do so all the time, not just some of the time -- is my fervent prayer for our nation and the world.

Love Never Dies

2010-02-01T12:53:00.002-05:00

My sermon text from Sunday is below. It was a big day for us here at Christ the King, with a combined service for our Annual Meeting, and also the retirement of our beloved Deacon, Jodie Steeves. You'll find the text below.

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1 Corinthians 13:1-13 — Annual Meeting Sunday, January 31, 2010

St. Paul’s words to the Corinthian church in this thirteenth chapter are familiar to say the least. If you have attended a Christian wedding at all, you have probably heard these words read aloud. We like to place them in that context when the two come together as one flesh for the rest of their lives, and we remember that to survive as a married couple, love needs to be front and center. And not just romantic love—that love which is infatuated with the other–but self-giving love—agape, if you know the Greek—the kind of love Christ showed through his living and dying and rising again.

The problem is that when words become familiar, they lose some of their intensity for us. We zone out. The sounds enter our ears. but that’s about it. We don’t register anything new in our rehearing of them. So, if you’ll permit me, I’d like you to hear these verses again from the Message Bible.

“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,

Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always ‘me first,’

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” (The Message Bible 1 Cor. 13:1-13)

The love of Christ is to be at the center of our faith, according to Paul. If it’s not—if at our core we don’t have love, then what we do on Christ’s behalf is worthless. If love of God and love for our neighbor isn’t our motivation—if we share our money grudgingly, if we support the food bank but look down on those who are in need of assistance, if we look at life from a posture of anger or arrogance, we are bankrupt.

I am amazed at the “coincidental” nature of our lectionary readings at times, and on this day when we say goodbye to Jodie Steeves, I cannot help but think that our reading was chosen intentionally by God this morning. Jodie through her words and actions embodied this spirit of love. She worked tirelessly on behalf of others. She always looked for the good in others rather than belittling them. She kept at it, not keeping track of times when someone else hurt her. Jodie loved as best she could, and certainly with God’s help, throughout her many years here.

With her retirement comes a great opportunity for this community. Jodie has worked hard on our behalf for a long time, and now we are given the chance to continue her work. No, we will not be able to do all of the things she did in the exact way that she did them, but we too can be about the work of the kingdom like she has been for so long. As she beautifully said in her sermon last week, we are members of Christ’s body, and we share in this work together, each with our own unique gifts and talents to offer. As members of the body, we work together in our individual ways, but always for the greater good; always for the reign of Christ.

These past weeks, I’ve heard folks say that Jodie was a rock for this congregation, a pillar during some pretty trying times. In the midst of storms—both individually and corporately—she was there for many of you. She provided a listening ear when you were grieving. She held your hand when loved ones died. She kicked you in the pants—gently, of course, always gently—when you could have been doing more. And I know you are grateful for all of that. But now it is time to allow Jodie to retire and move on. It is time to let go of the pastoral connections you have made with Jodie, and to honor her desire to retire and focus her energies elsewhere.

Let me address a few things. First, Jodie decided herself to retire this year. Canonically, once a clergyperson reaches the age of 72, they need to ask for permission yearly from the bishop to continue in active ministry. Jodie has done that the past few years, and decided this year that rather than continue on, she would like to retire. Conversation between Jodie, the Bishop and me focused on the best timing for that retirement in relation to the needs of our parish community, and we decided together that the Annual Meeting would be a good time so that we could honor Jodie, while also giving us time as a community to shore up the gaps her departure will create in the many ministries she was involved with here.

It is also common for pastoral leaders to be asked to take some time away from a congregation in which they serve, usually 1-2 years, sometimes longer. We see this most often in priests who retire or move to a new position, but it is not uncommon for deacons as well. The reasoning behind this is to provide an opportunity for both parties involved to experience some down time, to change habits and patterns, and to allow the departing clergy person to establish new relationships, especially if that person retires and continues to live nearby. This is healthy for all of us, even though it may seem both arbitrary and difficult. As a congregation, we have all come to depend on Jodie a great deal, and habits will be hard to break—for all of us who have a relationship with her, including for me. The Bishop after our conversations determined that the best thing for all of us would be an 18 month hiatus for Jodie. While you may dislike this decision, Jodie and I both vowed at our ordinations to obey our Bishop, and I think that this, in the long term, will lead us to be a more healthy and vital congregation, simply because we can no longer depend on Jodie to serve on our behalf. She has given us a wonderful example, but now it is time for all of us to step up to the plate on behalf on Christ’s mission in this world.

And we need to do so with love. St. Paul wrote, “Love doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,… Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.” We should honor Jodie and her work not by airing our grievances with the Rector, the Bishop or our Diocese; rather we should, like Elisha from the Hebrew scriptures, pick up her mantle and continue God’s faithful work.

This past year, a group has been meeting regularly to assess the internal structures we have here at Christ the King. We have over 40 different groups, entities and committees, most of which are supposed to report directly to me. This Congregational Development task force, after gathering the data and speaking with representatives from many of our ministries, and also checking in with people who are newer to our congregation, recommended that our 40+ groups lose some of their autonomy and fall under the auspices of five large communities—Oversight, Hospitality, Worship, Faith Formation and Service. Your vestry will be discussing this in detail at our retreat later this week, but suffice it to say that such an organizational structure will allow new attenders to find their way into our structures much more easily—so that they too can share their gifts for Christ’s work—and it will allow all of us to take more active roles in ministry as well. You’ll hear more about this in the near term.

Finally, as we look as a parish on the year ahead, I want to echo again the words of St. Paul. “We have three things to do to lead us toward [the coming of Christ]: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” If these three things completely guide us both as individual members of Christ’s body and also as a worshipping community, we would be known in Arvada and around Denver as a vibrant, healthy and mission-shaped parish. May it be so, and may we, above all else, be filled with Christ’s love. Amen.

Random Updates on the Knee

2010-01-27T17:15:00.004-05:00

On Friday last week, I met with the surgeon who operated on my leg back in November. After some x-rays, he declared my tibia fully healed and able to bear weight. My muscles, tendons and ligaments, however, would be another story. They hadn't worked in over 3 months, and would need some time to get back to normal.

So I'll be beginning PT in full force tomorrow morning, and will be walking with the help of crutches for balance for a bit longer -- until I see that I don't need them anymore. So I'll be out of the wheelchair on Sunday mornings now and able to stand up again!

And, of course, he recommended that I stay away from sumo wrestling.

Noah keeps telling me that he's going to teach me to run again, and I know he means it by the determined look on his face. All I have to say is that I am very glad to be up and about!

Signs of Transformation

2010-01-20T16:49:00.002-05:00

Sermon from the 2nd Sunday After the Epiphany

John 2:1-11

This story from John’s gospel is best explored looking at it from a distance. It is loaded with imagery and references to other things. However, taken at face value, it is a strange little incident about Jesus and his supernatural power, and we are left to ponder this bizarre interaction that Jesus has with his mother. On first hearing this story, we have a tendency to focus on Jesus’ seeming reluctance to act, until finally he does, as if he is goaded into it.

I imagine this scene from John as flashback in a movie. The camera is focused on a man in a wild landscape filmed in sepia tones. At this moment the camera closes in on the man’s eye, and it dissolves to a scene in vibrant colors. We see a gathering of talking people, smiles on their faces. Laughter is in the air. We hear music and see a couple dancing together. And then, outside the area of the party, a quick shot of those massive water jugs. The camera angle moves left to Jesus’ mother talking nearby with the host, who has a worried look on his face. The camera follows her sightline to a bearded Jesus who has just tilted his head back and gives off a full laugh. She walks over him, and the people he’s talking with turn away. She leans in to whisper in his ear.

Shock is on his face. He looks at her with a sense of uncertainty. “Woman, what does this have to do with me?” he asks her. “My hour has yet to come.” She says nothing more, and leaves him pondering as she walks over to the servants. “Do whatever he tells you,” we hear her say.

The servants eye each other with questioning looks, trying to figure out what she’s talking about. And then Jesus comes over to them. The camera scene opens up, and we see those six jugs off in the distance. He looks over at the jars, “Fill them with water,” he says, “all the way to the brim.”

We see the servants pouring water into the vessels, hard work given the quantity, about 150 gallons in all. Sweat drips from their foreheads as they finish. They look to Jesus with furrowed brows. “Take some to the chief steward,” he tells them.

One of the servants draws enough liquid out for a sample taste, taking it to the steward. Astonishment. You can see delight on his face. The steward runs off to find the bridegroom. “People usually serve the best wine first,” he says to him. “And then, after people have celebrated for a while and have a had a few drinks, the inferior wine comes out. But you’ve saved the best wine until now!” The camera follows the bridegroom who is somewhat befuddled, and it stops as he passes some of Jesus’ disciples. The camera closes in on the face of one of Jesus’ disciples’, and the movie fades from color to sepia once again, still focusing on the same disciple who looks a little older and the flashback is over.

It’s so important to note that these verses are so much more than a mere tale of Jesus’ power. It’s a pre-cursor for the rest of John’s gospel. It is Jesus’ first sign, and it sets us up for the rest of Jesus’ signs that John will detail in the narrative to follow.

First there is the mention of Jesus’ mother. Notice we don’t get her name in this gospel. We don’t know what motivates her to come to Jesus when she learns the wine has run out. She certainly knows what no wine would mean for the host. It would be seen as a social train wreck. Not having enough wine would cause a lifetime of embarrassment, and the happy couple would perceive it as a bad omen for their marriage.

But what makes her come to Jesus? Has she seen him work miracles before in the carpenter’s shop? Or does she hold onto his miraculous birth, those words from the angel, the mysterious arrival of the wise men? Whatever the reason, she comes.

His use of the term “Woman” is almost off-putting for our Western ears given the context of her request. Yet Jesus addresses her the same way the next–and last– time she appears in John’s gospel: at the foot of his cross. You may remember the scene, he is hanging in agony, and he looks down with compassion on his mother standing there at his feet. He sees his beloved disciple, probably John, there as well. “Woman,” he says to her, “Behold your son” looking toward John. He wants his mother to be cared for after his death; he shows her love.

At the wedding feast he responds to her request in this way, “My hour has not yet come.” Why bring this request to him? Why tell him about this wine. It sounds like Jesus is reluctant to start his ministry when he utters these words. But again, this is merely a set up. Jesus will say this same thing throughout John’s gospel, that his hour hasn’t come yet, that this is not his time. He says this until his prayer in Gethsemane, when he declares to his Father that the hour has come, that he is there to reveal the Father’s glory.

It is at this point that the focus of the story comes into view: Those six water jugs. Did you notice how John moves us along swiftly through his narrative until this point—we don’t know why Jesus was invited, we never meet the couple, we don’t know how long this event has been going on—it’s insignificant to John. But he stops fully at these massive stone containers. He describes them in detail. We’re told they are there for purification rites. We learn that each holds between 20 and 30 gallons. John informs us that they are empty.

And then we hear Jesus telling the servants to fill these immense jugs to the brim. Around 150 gallons of water have to be moved; no small feat to be sure. When the servants have finished, nothing else has to be done. They’ve already completed all that was needed: they listened to Jesus’ words. They did what he asked.

Somewhere between that filling to the brim and reaching in for the taste-test, the centerpiece of this story happens. John doesn’t even give us a word for it, but we know it’s there. Transformation. The miracle takes place. We can’t explain it, and John doesn’t even attempt to, leaving it a mystery. But it happens.

And what a glorious transformation that must have been. You can sense it when one of those servants scoops out some of the water-turned-wine, and takes it to the master of the banquet. When he takes the obligatory sip, he’s astounded. He is profoundly stunned by this change in usual protocol. Even though the party has been going on, the toasts made, the glasses raised and emptied, still the best wine was reserved. The servants know what has happened, but no one else does. They know about this change; they recognize that water was made wine.

At its core, this miracle is about transformation. John gives this first sign of Jesus at the wedding in Cana to announce that Jesus’ work in this world is a work of transformation. If Jesus can take ordinary water and turn it into the best wine so a family can be saved from social disgrace, what can he do with ordinary human beings? If Jesus cares enough about what’s getting served at a wedding, how much more does he care about us as individuals?

Jesus’ work of change is not only to turn water into wine, but also to take old lives and make them new. The glory he reveals about his Father is the promise of change, the assurance of conversion. The Father’s glory is made manifest in doing away with the old and making all things new.

His disciples see it. They make the connection between those vessels of stone and their own lives. John says they put their faith in him when they saw this sign. They believe.

And we are called to do the same. Jesus wants to transform the big problems in our lives, and he desires to show compassion on the seemingly insignificant details as well. He wants to bring change and renewal and conversion to every aspect of our supposedly ordinary lives. You see, he takes the ordinary and transforms it into extraordinary. He takes normal, boring water and makes it into the best wine of the party. When we listen to his words and follow his commands, the same can happen to us. We just need to believe. We just have to put our faith in him and trust that he will work in our lives. This is the first sign of many. Jesus’ work of new life continues to this day, even all the way to 6490 Carr Street in Arvada.

Is it any wonder then that John begins this story of transformation with those four tiny, seemingly insignificant words: “On the third day”?

Talking about Suffering

2010-01-04T10:13:00.003-05:00

The lectionary committee gave Episcopal clergy three choices on the gospel reading yesterday, and I took option three from Matthew 2 on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, but I extended it to include the reason for their flight: the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. I didn't attempt to answer the theodicy question, rather just to add some more thoughts on the issue of when bad things happen to good people.

Matthew 2:13-23

It happened a couple of weeks ago as I was driving over to the church one morning. The thought had probably been ruminating in the back of my head for some time unbeknownst to me, when it lurched into my consciousness. “I needed to break my leg,” I thought to myself.

And, of course, I was stunned by the thought.

First, I knew immediately that Melissa would have a different opinion. She has had to bear the brunt of this injury from driving me all over, to getting things for me, to watching me have reactions to pain medication and all the rest. She did so with more grace and empathy than most, but it certainly was not without its challenges. But more than that, I began to see how this difficulty in my life has brought about some changes in me.

I’ve tried to become more patient, and be less worried about particulars while accepting any help offered to me graciously. I’ve often failed at that; it’s hard for someone who has a lifetime of experience taking care of things to just let it all go, but I’ve made some progress. I’ve been able to reevaluate what’s most important in my life, and to reorient some. This is ultimately a blessing in disguise, and sometimes it takes this sort of experience to get us to realize these things.

Rob Bell—the preacher who is featured in the NOOMA series we’ve had as part of our adult forums this year—recently wrote a book about suffering, creativity and art called Drops Like Stars. It’s a gorgeous book really, as Rob weaves his way through the stories of pain and what pain does to us, and how it is related to art. On one of the pages he writes, “Imagine being at a public event like a movie or game or play or religious service and before it starts, someone says to the crowd, ‘Please stand up if you’ve been affected by cancer.’ What would you feel? Compassion? Empathy? Solidarity? Connection? Love? A setting of strangers and yet you mention cancer—a specific suffering—and there’s instantly a bond. If someone said, ‘Please stand … if you’ve been to Hawaii’ or … ‘Please stand … if you drive a station wagon,’ it just wouldn’t have the same effect, would it? But suffering, suffering unites”[1]

Our sufferings, our struggles, the difficulties we face, they can lead us to think about those things which are most important to us, and it can impact the way we live. And while you may be thinking, surely there has to be a better way, surely we don’t “need” to face struggles, yet I’ve discovered it consistently helps us become the people we have always desired to be. It helps us become the people God is calling us to be.

I know I’m on thin ice here, because we believe that God did not intend life to be like this, and I would agree to a certain extent. The story of our Creation details what life could have been like. However due to the Fall, the trajectory of human history changed; suffering, illness and death became a part of what it means to be human. In spite of this, I can hold together the seemingly contradictory statements that God did not intend for us to suffer and that suffering in this world is unavoidable.

The question becomes how can a loving God do this to people, especially those who are most innocent, like the children in our lesson this morning. You can spin out this story any number of ways, but it will always come back to the question of why did the God of the Universe allow this to happen?

There are no easy answers to this. I’ve met people who have faced unbelievably excruciating tragedies and experienced hope and life. I’ve met people who have met hardship and been hardened by all life has tossed their way. I suspect in Bethlehem’s community, both things happened. Some were able to make their way through the pain, and others might have been paralyzed for life. We human beings are resilient, but sometimes life throws such a curveball at us, we are unable to recover.

“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” These words taken from Jeremiah show the connection Matthew drew with Israel’s history when telling this story. They were first spoken as a lament for the people taken off into exile in Babylon in 586 BC. Jerusalem had fallen and been destroyed, and the people of Judah were forced from their homes and taken off to a distant and foreign land. Rachel, the wife of Jacob, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, died in childbirth and was buried in Bethlehem, not too far from Jerusalem. The exiles would have passed by her tomb as they were lead off. Her children were being taken from her.

The Jewish hearers of Matthew’s words—and scholars believe Matthew’s audience was primarily Jewish—would have known the context of these words. The very next verse is this: “Thus says the Lord, Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.” Hope in the midst of suffering. A promise for life.

And while the presence of the Israelites back in their homeland points toward the fulfillment of these promises—Jesus’ contemporaries are living in the Promised Land—we must remember that at the time of Jesus’ birth they are still under Roman rule. In other words, the Rachel’s children are still in exile. This slaughter of the innocents brought about by Herod recalls the events leading up to the exile, and it certainly outdoes it. And we must remember, as one commentator put it, that, “Jesus and his family will soon be exiled, and for them, too, slaughter lies ahead.”[2]

I cannot even begin to imagine why bad things happen; I only know that they are part of our world, and they were also part of Jesus’ world. When even the Son of God could not escape pain, there is no reason to believe that we will either, as difficult as that is for us to hear.

Does a loving God just sit back and watch this happen? A close friend recently said that it depends on how you define love. Most people, he suggests, like to think that love means stopping people from having unpleasant things in their lives. But he soundly rejects that definition and offers this instead, “Love means never abandoning someone but always going with them through whatever happens.”

How do we respond to the difficult times in our own lives and in the lives of those around us? Are we able–in time–to see beyond our immense grief to what lies beyond? Can we make out the flicker of hope? Do we show love to one another, never abandoning those we care about, and sticking by them no matter what comes their way?

Toward the end of the exile, Isaiah receives this word from the Lord, “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her—that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. For thus says the LORD: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. (Is. 66:10-13)

This is why Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He came so God could free us from sin and evil and death. We must remember, though as a preacher put it, that “when God works among us, when God comes among us, Emmanuel, we are confronted not only with bowing Magi and great gifts. From the beginning there is opposition; from the beginning the way to life lies through death.”[3] We cannot see the manger without the cross, but with the cross comes resurrection. Through this means of death comes hope and love. Amen.

[1] Rob Bell. Drops Like Stars, 2009. 60-63.

[2] Andrew F. Gregory, David Bartlett, Morna D. Hooker, and Henry Wansbrough. The New Proclamation Commentary on the Gospels, 2006. 20.

[3] Ibid.

Review: The Poor Will Be Glad

2009-12-30T12:18:00.003-05:00

I read Peter Green and Phil Smith's amazing book The Poor Will Be Glad this week, and it is an amazing book. The subtitle is "Joining the revolution to lift the world out of poverty," and the authors give great detail on how to do that.

And that is what is most exciting about this book. Often when we talk about poverty, illness, the lack of education and other issues plaguing so many in the 3rd World, our hands seem somewhat shackled, or we feel that this is not much we can do as individuals. Not so with this book. It's hands-on, and an in-depth look at how charitable giving can be used in more effective ways for those in need, remembering the adage that there is a significant difference between handing out fish for free and showing someone how to use bait and tackle.

And that difference is seen in micro-finance. Green and Smith look at the ways small businesses can flourish with the added injection of a little capital–and they do mean a little, loans from $50 to $1,000. They tell real stories, like a man who runs a small pharmacy who needed to close multiple times a day to run out a get more supplies because he had only enough money to buy a few things. With a small loan, he could buy more supplies for a cheaper price, cut down his traveling to once a week, and keep his store open for longer hours. He easily paid back his loan and expanded his business.

Green and Smith also focus on the spiritual impact these programs can have. These run the gamut from being explicit about faith in the weekly or bi-weekly repayment meetings in the community (community building is central to all micro-finance programs, Christian or not), to living out a faith through business practices and care. More often than not—and the authors greatly suggest this—micro-finance opportunities and others like them (like the nifty Rotating Savings and Credit Associations) rely on local churches to assist in being an active part of the community. This is another strong focus of the book, that local administrators of these programs are far better than a Westerner coming in with "American know-how" to solve problems that might not exist.

And the key to all of this is building relationships. By listening to local leaders, we can understand what the greatest need might be, where the greatest interest might lie, and how help can be offered, not in the form of handouts, but in assistance that leads to self-sufficiancy.

The authors list a number of places where individuals can help, either by providing capital for such loans to using their gifts and skills from their work lives, devoting about 100 pages in their book to Part III: Joining the Revolution.

A must read for anyone who desires to do something about alleviating poverty from a Christian perspective, and a great resource on the ins and outs of micro-finance for the everyday reader.

Christmas Eve Sermon

2009-12-26T19:04:00.002-05:00

My sermon from Christmas Eve at the later service at Christ the King, 11:00pm. May the coming of Christ bring you joy and peace this year!

__________________________

(Luke 2:1-20)

In November an article came out on tips for successful holiday airplane travel in 2009. The report began with the simple line that if it had been a while since you traveled, by golly, it was just like riding a bike and you’d be on your way in no time.[1] I suspect that some of you, your family or friends, have already been or will be among the 4.2 million people traveling by plane this year for Christmas, so this may be helpful.[2]

The first few tips were somewhat generic, like making sure that the name on your photo ID (which, of course, you must have) matches the name on the ticket exactly, while also noting that TSA’s new “Secure Flight” program requires airlines to also obtain your gender and birth date when you purchase your ticket. They reminded you that you can check in online ahead of time, and that you’ll probably have to pay extra for your bags or other services. My favorite, however, was the last tip that began with a one word sentence, “Relax.” The writer gives this further advice: “Airports have behavior detection officers who can subject you to additional screening if you're acting strangely, so be patient, polite and poised.”[3]

Behavior detection officers? Relax? Has the writer of this article never traveled? Relaxing is often not achievable in the ordeal we put ourselves through when we must get from one place to another. You need to make sure your liquids and gels are no more than 3 ounces each and placed all together in that handy quart-sized Zip-lock. It’s best to have shoes that you can whip on and off, and even better planning to steer clear of those socks with the hole in the toe to avoid embarrassment when your shoes are removed.

If you are lucky enough to be chosen, you can go through the airport puffer to make sure you are not carrying explosives, or even better, the newer backscatter x-ray machine that produces an exceptionally accurate picture of your nude body to remote screeners—not to worry, because your face is made unrecognizable by the technology. You must take out your laptop, turn your pockets inside out, and even then if you, like me, have metal in your body as a result of a surgery, you’ll still trip the sensors. Finally, after all the screening is through, you have the added bonus of paying four bucks for a bottle of water, since you will have thrown yours out before going through the check point. Oh, and, be sure to relax; you never know where those behavior detection officers might be stationed.

Now imagine what it was like for Mary and Joseph.[4] It’s tough enough to travel during normal times in our lives, but adding a very pregnant woman into the mix would make it so much more difficult. The discomfort, the swollen feet, the added rest stops. But travel they did, because Caesar wanted to take a census and tax his empire. The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem would probably have taken most people three or four days on foot or donkey, but for fear of a miscarriage and the added discomfort, it probably took Mary and Joseph twice as long. To add insult to injury, when they finally got to their destination, Bethlehem is hopping, and all the hotels are full. If you’ve ever been stranded at the airport when bad weather comes in and discovered the only options available for the night were the chairs at your departure gate, you realize what it must have been like for them. So when the stable was offered, it must have been seen as a great relief. Just somewhere to sit down. Someplace to get mildly comfortable for the night.

It all sounds so pedestrian, doesn’t it? Mary and Joseph traveling, just like you and me, paying their taxes, just like you and me, finding themselves the short end of the stick, as we sometimes do. They were merely two of the thousands of people making their way to Bethlehem at that time, feeling much more like a number than a real person, which is exactly how I feel when I hop a plane for the holidays or pay my taxes. Could there be anything more typical?

And yet, when they get settled in to that stable, Mary’s contractions start. With scant words, Luke describes it this way, “[S]he gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger.” Jesus is born into the world.

And it all instantly changes. With the coming of Christ, humanity learned that above all else God loves us. Each of us. Individually in the unique way God created us. We are not merely some number or statistic, but a person created in God’s image.

It’s so hard not to feel like a number sometimes in our world. We hear statistics rattled off, and we become numb to them. Do any of us have a clue just how many people 4.2 million is (the number of people flying this week)? You would need more than 55 Broncos’ home games sold out at Invesco Field to match that number. Or every man, woman and child living in Denver would need to travel 7 times to hit that figure. It’s mind- boggling.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel says to the shepherds sitting out by their sheep on that chilly night; shepherds who don’t seem fazed or troubled with Caesar’s people counting. “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.” All people. Each one of them. And all those folks crammed into Bethlehem. And each of us, too. We aren’t merely some number in a census or a report. Rather, we are so important to the living God that God sent an angelic message to proclaim the good news. “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you.”

And that is good news. Jesus was born for all of us. For the woman who was taken into bondage by human traffickers on this of all days. For the boy in the slums of Mumbai without enough food to eat. For the girl tucked into bed on the Upper East Side of Manhattan who will get everything she wants for Christmas. For the farmer in rural Latin America unable to scrape together a living. For the Canadian heading out on a holiday to Jamaica. For the man trying not to be overcome with fear in Kabul. For us sitting here, living ordinary lives of travel and taxes and paying our bills and the rest. Each one of us, individually known by the God of the Universe. “I bring you good news of great joy for all people,” the angel announced.

Jesus was born on this night as Savior, Messiah and Lord, because God desires to break into our world, into our lives. May he do so, bringing each of us his peace. May we find in Jesus the love that God wants to shower on us and on all of creation. And may we experience this Christmas that, to the Creator of the Universe, we are more than just a number, we are, in fact, shaped by the One who is the Hope of the World; and we are, above all else, immensely loved by the Triune God. Amen.

[1] http://www.baltimoresun.com/travel/bal-tr.holidaye22nov22,0,3816042.story Accessed 12/17/09

[2] http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6774167.html Accessed 12/17/09

[3] http://www.baltimoresun.com/travel/bal-tr.holidaye22nov22,0,3816042.story Accessed 12/17/09

[4] This idea of travel came from Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1, 116.

A Year of Reading

2009-12-21T15:15:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking about what I want to do next year, sort of planning for the onslaught of New Year's resolutions. And I've realized how many books I have on my own shelves that I haven't read, or read and don't remember.

Some of these books were gifts from friends, and while embarrassed that I never made time to read them, these fall under the category of "better late than never." Others were books assigned during seminary or college that I either read too quickly or just perused and don't remember much of what they contain.

So that's my challenge and desire for the year. To read more frequently. I'm shooting for a book every week or two from my own collection—although I may supplement from the library every so often. I'll post reviews here as I go along. These will be largely books on theology, memoirs or nonfiction books, novels and mysteries—which shows you where my interests lie.

I'm in the midst of starting the new Barbara Kingsolver book, The Lacuna, a recent gift from a good friend. That'll be my reading for the next week or so, even though the New Year isn't here yet.

Random Thoughts This Advent

2009-12-17T18:39:00.005-05:00

Just a few thoughts on this Thursday evening. I haven't posted in a week and wanted to give some of an update.

This Advent has gone pretty quick for me. Yep, there's a week left, but as the parent of two younger children, Christmas is almost here. We've been listening to Christmas music that they want to listen too, and have seen some Christmas specials. I had hoped this year to prolonging our tree lighting, following an example a book we have which suggests doing the first lighting of our Christmas tree as part of the family celebration on Christmas Eve. But, it's hard to teach a 3- and 5-year old to wait on the tree lights, and there is always next year. We'll be putting out our creche tonight, and we'll place Mary and Joseph in another part of the house, and the Magi too, having them move closer to the stable this next week. Baby Jesus will be hidden too, not arriving till next week.

It's been refreshing not to do an excessive amount of shopping in stores or malls, due in large part to my injury (I can only go to stores with Melissa, and only if there is an electric cart for me to ride since I am still on crutches (those carts are a blast by the way!)). We've significantly cut back our spending taking part in the Advent Conspiracy and giving more of our money away. So most of my "shopping" has been online, and I haven't missed the crowds even slightly.

I've been more house-bound, which has also been a blessing. I don't feel as harried this year. Not nearly as frazzled. Advent and Christmas has a tendency to drain a priest, but so far (and yes, I'm not finished yet) has been remarkably different.

So, I hope this last week of Advent is filled with hope, joy and longing for you. Christ is coming, and he breaks into our world in ways we never expect.

6 Weeks Post-Op

2009-12-11T15:17:00.004-05:00

I met with the doc today, and I have good news and okay news.

First the good news :)

I am no longer in need of my knee brace, so as of this morning, my leg is on its own.

In 2 weeks time, I can begin walking in the pool at the APEX center with out assistance whatsoever.

And, I can drive.

The okay news is that I won't begin putting any weight on my left leg for another 6 weeks, meaning crutches through the holidays and well through January. I am disappointed in this, of course, but am thankful for the steady progress that I am making.

So that's it. Thanks for your continued interest and prayers!

Prepare the Way

2009-12-07T12:57:00.002-05:00

My sermon from this Sunday, the Second Sunday of Advent, taken from Luke 3:1-6.

__________________________________________________

The beginning of our lesson today from Luke reads either like a history lesson or the names and places section of the newspaper. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius,” he writes setting the backdrop for this story. And then Luke goes on to say something like this: “In that time Pilate and Herod and Philip and Annas and Caiphas were the names of the powerful people in that land.” They were the names people dropped; they were the people you wanted to know, or at least thought you did know because you followed all the gossip about them.

But this story isn’t concerned with any of them. Yes, they were the powerful ones, and their names will return again later on in our story, but it isn’t them that this story is about. This is about a man living out in the wilderness. A man, the other gospels tell us, who ate wild honey and locusts. A man you’d want with you if you ever got lost in the woods. But also a man who subsisted in the places most of us would shun.

Yet this is the man Luke says received the word of God. It wasn’t Tiberius or Pilate or Herod or even Caiphas the high priest. It was John the Baptist. Not the one living in the palace, but the one living in a hole.

And so God’s message come to him, and John travels along the banks of the River Jordan, calling for repentance, inviting people to be baptized and to seek forgiveness of their sins. “Prepare the way,” he says. “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

It’s hard to hear these words with any sort of fresh ears. We’ve heard John’s message from the River’s edge for years, and the words don’t have much impact on us. Sure, we hear them, but they don’t do anything for us, they don’t mean anything to us. We’re caught up in our own worlds, especially these days leading up to Christmas. Our attention is on buying the right presents, and making sure our decorations look better than that guy’s across the street. The way we are preparing is less the Lord’s way and more of our own.

And I think one of the problems is our locale. We don’t live in the wilderness. We live in the Promised Land. We don’t live in places that are barren and desolate, rather we live in a place overflowing with wealth. Yes, some of us are experiencing financial hardship this year—and I don’t want to underestimate that—yet remember that 2.6 billion people in the world eek out their existence on less than $2 a day. Consider, also, that the richest 2% of our world controls 50% of the wealth in the world, while the poorest 50% of the world controls less than 1% of the wealth. And, here’s the kicker, to be considered among the wealthiest 50% of the world you need only $2,140 to your name.[1] Let me say that again, you need only $2140 to your name—your assets minus your debts— to be counted among the wealthiest 50% of the world. When you realize that the average US home is almost 2300 square feet—“which is twice the size of typical homes in Europe or Japan and 26 times the living space of the average person in Africa”—you can easily say that we live in the palaces of our day.[2] And, even more so, that we would be the modern day equivalent of the people mentioned at the beginning of our lesson from Luke. We are the Pilates and Tiberiuses and Caiphases and Philips.

Because of this, our spiritual lives can languish some. This is not an uncommon problem, of course. That’s why John received that word from God in the desert all those years ago. “Prepare the way,” he says. “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Put another way, he shouts, “Get ready! God is coming! Prepare for God’s arrival! Make the road smooth and straight!”

Strangely enough, they came out in droves to hear these words. They came from the cities, from the well-to-do areas, to get a glimpse of the crazy man out by the Jordan and see what all the fuss was about this. And they heard his message that they needed to have a life-change, that they needed to reorder their priorities, that they had to swim against the torrent of their culture and prepare for the arrival of God. The problem is that it’s hard to know what to expect in the coming of God. It’s hard to plan for God’s arrival.

We prepare for it nowadays by spending money to buy gifts for each other. Holiday spending by Americans this year is expected to be over $437 billion—a decrease of 1% from last year.[3] For comparison, “the worldwide water crisis could be solved with 10 to 15 billion dollars a year.”[4] Safe drinking water for every human being alive could be had for less than 4% of what we spend on holiday sweaters, electronic hamsters, and all the rest. 4%. That’s less than $25 for the average family.

A few years ago a group of pastors got together to talk about all of this, the mind-numbing reality of the inequality in the distribution of wealth in our world, the excess of Christmas which resulted not in more happiness, but in more stress; let alone racking up credit card debt, and the unhappy obligatory gifts we both give and receive. They wanted to make a difference in their faith communities, so they began the Advent Conspiracy. They built this movement on 4 core principals.[5]

First they decided that they would worship fully. Christmas is about Christ’s arrival, and so they deemed it essential to focus this season on Jesus. Jesus came to bring peace, salvation, and love. Worshipping Jesus should be at the center of our Advent and Christmas celebrations.

Next they decided to spend less. They did this by encouraging people to buy one less gift than they normally would. Usually, this would be one of those obligatory gifts for a friend or relative—think of that person on your list who is impossible to shop for, or with whom you exchange gifts unnecessarily.

They then encouraged people to give more. Take time to deepen relationships during this time of year rather than spending so much time at the mall. Think about buying some youngster you love a soccer ball, and then heading outside to use it together. Or go sledding. Or bake some cookies and invite a friend over. In other words, take time to show love through, what they called, “relational giving.”

Finally, they encouraged their parishes to love all. By spending less and giving relationally, parishioners would have more to give to those who are hurting in our world. They recognized that when Jesus came into our world, he came for the downtrodden, the broken hearted and the poor. And so these four parishes, with their one less gift and worship centered on Jesus and giving more relationally, that first year they gave over a half a million dollars away to “the least of these locally and globally.”[6] They showed their love for all.

When John the Baptist preached, he talked about God bringing salvation to all. The rough places would be smoothed out, the crooked made straight, mountains made low, and valleys raised up. In one sense, John was talking about equality. A level playing field. What would that look like for you and me? How can we better prepare the way of the Lord?

John’s message of repentance, of turning around, often focuses these days on what we deem as egregious sins, and usually on those who are not us. I personally am becoming more and more convinced that our abundant wealth and what we do or don’t do with our money, our time, and all our resources is becoming the most unnamed—and egregious—sin of our day. We need not stew in guilt over this, but rather, turn around, which is what repentance literally means. We need to change our typical behavior and patterns, and live in a more Christ-like way.

This year Melissa and I have joined the Advent Conspiracy. We’ll make a small donation to a charity of our choice—a single gift we won’t buy for someone who doesn’t need it—and think also about giving a few more gifts to charities in honor of those we love. We’ll make more time for each other, for our friends and loved ones. We’ll play some more games with the kids rather than heading out to Flatirons Mall or Target so much to shop. We’ll gather around our Advent wreath and tell the stories of our faith. It isn’t much really, but it is a small way that we can prepare the way of the Lord. Will you join us? Will you make this Advent and Christmas more about Jesus and the work of his kingdom and less about consumerism and stress? Will you too help prepare the way of the Lord? Amen.

[1] Mike and Danae Yankoski, Zealous Love. Zondervan, 2009. Pg 210.

[2] Worldwatch Institute, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1493. Accessed 12/3/09

[3] National Retail Federation, http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=News&op=viewlive&sp_id=806 Accessed 12/3/09

[4] Yankoski, 214.

[5] Check out their website online at adventconspiracy.org.

[6] Yankoski, 214.

Changing Patterns of Gift-giving

2009-12-05T17:55:00.009-05:00

This year Melissa and I are joining in on The Advent Conspiracy. The concept is quite simple; Christmas is too consumer-driven and patterned after non-Christlike ideals. When we as Americans will spend some $437 billion this holiday season, our priorities are wrong.

The Advent Conspiracy—founded by four pastors a few years ago—refocuses us on the worship of Christ, on giving a little less (they suggest buying merely one less gift this year than you usually do), spending time with those we love (giving relationally) and then loving all by making a donation (with the money you would have spent on that one gift) to a charity that addresses a global problem—your choice. If you need some help, try World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, Heifer International, Hope International, charity:water, Living Water International or Compassion International.

When you recognize that every living human being could have access to clean water next year for 10-15 billion dollars (less than 4% of what we will dish out on gifts and the rest), it's easy to see that our priorities are off.

So join with us, if you can, on changing the patterns of gift-giving. Together we can make a real difference in this world.

Waiting

2009-11-28T13:48:00.002-05:00

Advent begins tomorrow, although the holiday season has been with us since mid-October. And I'm living a personal Advent right now as I wait for the next steps—literally!—in my recovery. It's nearly 4 weeks post-op (and 6 weeks since my accident) and I'm at about the halfway point of my healing. Meaning I've got a lot more sitting to do.

Waiting is hard for me. But it's also a great time to learn this lesson (he says with clenched teeth). The kids want to know when I can chase them again, while they climb into my lap with another book, settling carefully to avoid the bad knee. And, yep, I could lament the time lost chasing them. Or I could recognize that I have extra time to see them since I'm not out as much these days. And I can get excited about being in the moment and playing games with them, or watching them dance around. There's nothing quite like watching one of them run over from the door to the chair where I'm sitting when they get back from story time to plant a huge kiss on me.

Advent is all about waiting. Living in expectation that Christ will come again, both as a babe and as a king. And while I may want it all now—we do live in the age of instant gratification and fulfillment—I recognize that there is goodness to be found in living in the present moment, no matter how difficult.

So I sit and wait and trust that all will be well.

Book Review: Drops Like Stars

2009-11-23T10:39:00.002-05:00

Last week for my birthday I was supposed to go with Melissa to hear Rob Bell who was on a speaking tour giving a performance of his new book, Drops Like Stars. Rob's a pastor of large church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he's put out some wonderful books and videos in recent years. Our parish is using the video series, NOOMA, as part of our adult education this fall.

Drops Like Stars is a gorgeous book, with many wonderful photographs amidst the written text. It's coffee table sized and substantial. In the book are Rob's reflections on suffering and creativity. He sends out a warning to the slow, numbing death of boredom. He shows how suffering in all its varying forms disrupts our lives; it forces us to imagine a new tomorrow.

Rob readily admits he is less concerned with theodicy—the ever present question of why bad things happen, especially to good people. Why does a mother of 2 young kids develop breast cancer, or why is a life is cut short due to violence. Rather, Rob focuses on the other question, Now what? Now that life has thrown us a curveball, what do we do about it.

He writes, "[Suffering] compels us to eliminate the unnecessary, the trivial, the superficial. There is greatness in you. Courage. Desire. Integrity. Virtue. Compassion. Dignity. Loyalty. Love. It's in there—somewhere. And sometimes it takes suffering to get at it."

Rob explores other aspects of this as well, in light of creativity, the arts, and how failure can spur us on to new opportunities. It becomes a question of framing, of how we look at the world.

This isn't an overly "Christian" book in that it doesn't drip with references to God or God's work in this. But that never bothers me, frankly. I look at the book of Esther, for example, that also deals with some of these questions, and yet not once is "God" mentioned in that story either. This text is so filled with God's presence, God's desire for us to live the lives God designed for us, that it leads us forward in our spiritual walk.

You may want to know where the title comes from, but I won't ruin that for you. You'll have to get the book and take delight in that imagery.

Christ the King Sunday

2009-11-21T19:06:00.004-05:00

It was a big day at our parish: our patronal feast day, four children being baptized, and the day when we offer our pledges for next year to God. Add to that my first Sunday back since my surgery, and it's quite a day.

Here's the text from my sermon on John 18:33-37.

________________________

Pilate walks over to where Jesus is standing, looks him over—this man who is bound—and asks that simple question. You can well imagine that the tone of Pilate’s question drips with sarcasm and mockery. “Are you the King of the Jews?”

He knows the answer, of course. Jesus is not technically the King of the Jews as Pilate is thinking about it. That’s really Herod, although Herod himself is merely a tetrarch, a puppet king, put in place by Rome. And so Pilate waits, with that smirk on his face, for Jesus to answer.

They banter back and forth, and ultimately Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world. It’s not from here.”

And in that moment, it all comes together for the followers of Jesus. Jesus’ message, his life, has been about that other kingdom, the real kingdom, the kingdom of the reign of God. Jesus’ kingdom isn’t a part of the political process of our world; it isn’t about power in the way we think about it—through controlling means and heavy-handedness. His kingdom is about the last being first; it’s about inviting those on the outside into the wedding banquet because the ones who should be there have taken a pass. It’s about healing, and setting captives free, and proclaiming peace and binding up the brokenhearted. It’s about wholeness.

But that is lost on Pilate. And it’s lost on most of our world, and, dare I say it, many of us as Christians, too.

This kingdom Jesus talks about—his kingdom—is the one we so desperately want on one level. We long for peace and justice and mercy and forgiveness. But we want control of our own lives; we want to write our own stories. We want it all.

In a few minutes we’ll make our way to the font and baptize Marissa and Victoria and Cooper and Raleigh and welcome them into Christ’s church. As a congregation and in one voice we will reaffirm with them our baptismal covenant—the vows they will be making for the first time today—about how we desire to live our lives. How we will continue in gathering at the Table, hearing the stories of our faith, and praying to God. That when we sin—when we turn our backs on God— we will repent and return to God. How we will share the Good News of Christ, and show mercy and justice to all, and respect the dignity of every human being. We will do this, of course, by adding “with God’s help,” recognizing that we cannot do this work on our own.

With those five questions, and our answers to them, we lay down the road map to living in Christ’s kingdom. It’s not about us. It’s about others. And that message is so not the message of this world. The kingdoms of this world all center on how to get the most for yourself, how to take care of yourself. They revolve around selfishness, greed, impatience, entertaining ourselves, hording and the like. None of us is surprised at this, I would imagine. It’s the message we’re bombarded with every day, especially in our culture. Buy that, watch this, imagine how life will be once you do this. Live in the center of your own personal drama. Forget about others, they’re merely bit players in this performance.

Is it any wonder that Jesus was taken down to Jerusalem’s town dump and crucified? Do we truly recognize the counterculture statements in our baptismal covenant? What sort of life are we inviting Marissa and Cooper and Victoria and Raleigh into?

I read Donald Miller’s fabulous new book last week. It’s called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and it follows Don’s life after he had written a surprising best-seller memoir. When he should have been on top of the world, Don became semi-depressed, avoiding responsibility, often just sitting on the couch watching TV or not wanting to get out of bed. Until, that is, two filmmakers showed up wanting to turn his first book into a movie. He realized his life didn’t translate into a great story for the screen. In fact, it didn’t make for a good story period. So he began thinking about what would happen if he edited his life, if he “launched a new story filled with risk, possibility, beauty and meaning.”[1]

In one of the vignettes in his book, he talks about the frustration of writing fiction, because often the characters don’t do what he, as the writer, wants them to do. He explains, “Stories are only partly told by writers. They are also told by the characters themselves. Any writer will tell you characters do what they want.”[2] Those of us with kids certainly know the irritation of not having them do what we might want them to do—especially when we know it’s for their own good—but characters in a book you’re writing, come on! How annoying would that be?

Don writes, “As I worked on the novel, as my character did what he wanted and ruined my story, it reminded me of life in certain ways. I mean as I sat there in my office feeling like God making my worlds, and as my characters fought to have their way, their senseless, selfish way of nonstory, I could identify with them. I fought with my [character] who wanted the boring life of self-indulgence, and yet I was also that character, fighting with God and I could see God sitting at his computer, staring blankly at his screen as I asked him to write in some money and some sex and some comfort.”[3]

As this idea percolates, Miller questions his desire to write his own story, to not listen to God as the writer of his life. He talks about wresting control, of hijacking the story for his own means. But then he reconsiders. “At first, even though I could feel God writing something different, I’d play the scene the way I wanted. This never worked. It would have always been better to obey the Writer, the one who knows the better story. … So I started obeying a little. I’d feel God wanting me to hold my tongue, and I would. It didn’t feel natural at first; it felt fake, like I was being a character somebody else wanted me to be and not who I was; but if I held my tongue, the scene would play better, and I always felt better when it was done. I started feeling like a better character, and when you are a better character, your story gets better too.”[4]

What does all this have to do with Consecration Sunday, you may be asking. Has the rector lost a few of his marbles since his injury? Are the pain meds too strong? Has he missed the memos that he’s been sending out? I’m glad you asked.

My answer would be simply, “Everything.” This has everything to do with stewardship and giving back to God. Because for me, making pledges for next year isn’t merely about keeping the lights on, or paying for toner, or allowing us to find new curriculum for our Jr. High aged students; it’s about Christ’s kingdom. In this parish, we are committed to being about the work of the realm Jesus established through his life and ministry. This place and the leaders here are determined to make an impact in our community, to allow God to write better stories both in our own lives and the lives of others. We want to continue sharing the Good News of our faith, we want to keep educating our young people; we yearn to make our world a better place. Put simply, we are focused on mission.

That’s why Melissa and I will be giving a tenth of our income to Christ the King this year. Because we believe strongly in the work being done here, and the work that could be done here in the year ahead. We’ve seen what happens when people give generously both financially and of themselves—their time and skills and joys and strengths—God’s work gets done. And I know personally that when I give generously and joyfully, I live into the story that God is writing for me, I enter more faithfully into the baptismal covenant. I invite you to join with me in that story. I encourage those who have found a church home here to strive toward giving 5-10% of your income to God’s work in this place. If that is too steep for you, I’d suggest 3% this year—3 pennies on each dollar you make—with the hope of moving toward a larger percentage next year, not because there’s some sort of secret formula to giving, but because being a disciple of Jesus Christ means we desire to live in countercultural ways. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus told Pilate, and there is nothing more countercultural than sharing your money with others.

This journey we are on, this road as baptized disciples, leads us always to Christ’s work; it brings us to mission. May the stories we allow God to write in our lives be filled with the ways in which we join in that work, and may the story of this place, the history and future of the Church of Christ the King, be filled with a cast of characters —filled with the baptized—who are fully engaged in the mission of Christ’s kingdom. Amen.

[1] Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Taken from back cover text.

[2] Miller, 85.

[3] Miller, 85-86.

[4] Miller, 88.

Knee Update

2009-11-13T18:08:00.003-05:00

It's 11 days post-surgery, and I had my follow up with the surgeon. Everything looks good, the stitches are out, and I was reminded again about not putting any weight on my left leg/knee for at least another 6-8 weeks. Muscle tone in my quad and calf muscles are diminishing rapidly (talk about recession, sheesh), and I can do some leg lifts that are non-weighted while I wait for all to heal properly, along with bending knee exercises (I'm at 90 percent these days of bending the knee).

So thanks for your prayers, and continued support for me and Melissa as we journey through this time in the weeks ahead. I don't have another follow-up appointment for a month, so it'll be status quo for quite some time.

Book Review: have a little faith

2009-11-12T12:53:00.007-05:00

I've been reading a lot lately. Melissa got me the new Mitch Albom book have a little faith and I highly recommend it.

Mitch is a sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press (and I remember him fondly from my growing up years in Detroit), who became well known nationally through his book Tuesdays with Morrie. This is Albom's first non-fiction book since then, and it is fantastic.

The story begins with Mitch's childhood rabbi (aka "Reb") asking him to give the eulogy at his funeral. Mitch looks at Reb wondering if he is dying, but Reb tells him it's coming but not in the near future. Mitch accepts and begins meeting with Reb, this man of God he used to fear, on a regular basis as part of the agreement. Mitch wanted to get to know Reb as a human being. The book chronicles the 8 years Mitch travels from Detroit to New Jersey to meet with the rabbi, a wonderfully joyous man who sings all the time, ("How are you doing, Reb?" Singing "The old gray rabbi, ain't what he used to be....") and who has given his life's service to building a single community of faith.

The vignettes are marvelous, ranging from snippets from Reb's sermons throughout the years, to how the Reb handled inter-faith connections in his community, including a scene with the Roman Catholic priest from the church across the street. Just fabulous.

But intertwined with the Reb's story are the details of another man Mitch has gotten to know during this same time: an African-American pastor in the inner-city of Detroit who ministers to the homeless. Henry is a former drug dealer and addict who had a life changing experience with God, and now leads this small congregation called "I Am My Brother's Keeper" in a dilapidated church abandoned by the Presbyterians. Mitch, in part through his interactions with his rabbi, wants to give back to his community. Tentatively, this well off Jewish man begins reaching out to the impoverished Christian people he meets.

I won't give more than this away. This is a remarkable story and one that will stay with you for some time.

Reveling in Being Dependent

2009-11-08T18:12:00.006-05:00

There's no way around this, but I don't like sitting for too long and having people do things for me. It's hard for most clergy, and other people in "helping" professions, to be recipients of care and grace, to have people get my meals, help me put on my shoes, or run my errands.

And yet that's what's happening right now.

I've been reminded of that wonderful passage from Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. The book is about Mitch's mentor Morrie who is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. Mitch asked Morrie how it was having people do even the most basic things for him, including wiping his bottom. Morrie responds:

'I'm an independent person, so my inclination was to fight all of this—being helped from the car, having someone else dress me, because our culture tells us we should be ashamed if we can't wipe our own behind. But then I figured, Forget what the culture says. I have ignored the culture much of my life. I am not going to be ashamed. What's the big deal?

'And you know what? The strangest thing.'

What's that?

'I began to enjoy my dependency. Now I enjoy when they turn me over on my side and rub cream on my behind so I don't get sores. Or when the wipe my brow or massage my legs. I revel in it. I close my eyes and soak it up. (115-16)

I'm no way near Morrie's acceptance (nor his condition), but I am trying to revel in being dependent. To revel in being loved. Not in that shower-me with-all-your-attention sort of prideful way, but recognizing that when I accept the love and care offered me with graciousness, I honor the people who are doing things for me.

The reality is that all of us will at some point in our lives need to be dependent on others. Sure, our culture tells us we shouldn't need to depend on others, but life isn't like that. And when we shut ourselves off to that help when we need it, we rob both ourselves and those who desire to show us love of meaningful connections, of building community and deepening friendships.

So I'm learning to revel in being dependent. It's a tough lesson for me, to be sure, but one I'm needing to learn.

Finding Wholeness

2009-11-06T09:52:00.003-05:00

On All Saints' during my sermon, I read a a couple of paragraphs from Frederick Buechner's book The Longing for Home about how we can find wholeness. It's a great quotation, and I wanted to share it again in case you missed it or if you wanted to hear it again.

The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind, and it can be cruel. It can be beautiful, and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up all hope. It can strengthen our faith in a loving, God and it can decimate our faith. In our lies in the world, the temptation is always to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running strongest. When good things happen, we rise to heaven; when bad things happen, we descend to hell. When the world strikes out at us, we strike back, and when one way or another the world blesses us, our spirits soar. I know this to be true of no one as well as I know it to be true of myself. I know how just the weather can affect my whole state of mind for good or ill, how just getting stuck in a traffic jam can ruin an afternoon that in every other way is so beautiful that it dazzles the heart. We are in constant danger off being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. The fragmentary nature of our experience shatters us into fragments. Instead of being whole, most of the time we are in pieces, and we see the world in pieces, full of darkness one moment and full of light the next.
It is in Jesus, of course, and in the people whose lives have been deeply touched by Jesus, and in ourselves at those moments when we also are deeply touched by him, that we see another way of being human in this world, which is the way of wholeness. When we glimpse that wholeness in others, we recognize it immediately for what it is, and the reason we recognize it, I believe, is that no matter how much the world shatter us to pieces, we carry inside of us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons to us. (109-110)

Home!

2009-11-05T09:56:00.004-05:00

My surgery for the tibial plateau fracture on Monday was very successful! I was in surgery for 2 hours (shorter than anticipated). The bone was fixed and secured with 2 screws; there was a tear in the meniscus that was also repaired. During the surgery, the doc checked for soft tissue/ligament damage, and thankfully there was none! Also, I was wrong when I thought the screws would come back out at a later date; the doc said they'll be with me for life (take that, TSA!).

I came home last night, and am dealing with a fair amount of pain, although we seem to have gotten a good level to keep this under control. I'll not be able to put weight on the leg for 8-12 weeks (so January), including standing for sermons and celebrating the Eucharist. We'll have to think creatively about that!

In the meantime, I get lots of time to read, think, pray and catch up on "Lost." This is definitely a new chapter for my life and will be a challenge with Noah and Olivia. Olivia asked Melissa the other day, "How come Daddy hurts his leg everyday?" PT will start in earnest in a 10-12 days, and I get the slow-moving knee bender machine today to begin enjoying.

Thanks for all the well wishes, prayers and care that we have received. We appreciate and will continue to appreciate it in the weeks ahead.

Surgery set for Monday, Nov 2

2009-10-31T14:37:00.003-04:00

Just a quick update that my surgery to correct the tibial plateau fracture on my left knee will be on Monday, Nov. 2 in the afternoon. I'll be in the hospital a day or two, and then home to recuperate. The surgery is invasive, and will include a few screws, and maybe a plate. For 8-12 weeks I won't be able to place weight on my left leg so I can heal. I'll be out of church probably a couple of weeks.

I'm in good spirits overall. While I'm not pleased with needing surgery or the injury itself, it is what it is, for better or worse. It's a new opportunity for Melissa and I to relate to one another and for me to rely on her love and care in a different way. And I am hoping that, as a mentor put it, I may discover the gifts Christ has for me in this process.

Thanks for all the prayers and good wishes.