2 Kings 2:1-15; Psalm 114; Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16; Mark 6:45-52
It all started with Batman. I don’t even know where our then three-year-old son’s first Batman toy came from, but there he was on our coffee table, his superhero body impossibly proportioned, his long plastic cape forever frozen in mid-rustle, standing strong and tall and proud, and towering over all the others. All the others, that is, who had come to visit the little toy baby Jesus lying in a little toy manger. It seems Charlie had arranged a somewhat chaotic jumble of sheep and shepherds, kings and camels, dinosaurs and matchbox cars all there together to visit baby Jesus, all safe under the protective watch of Batman. Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.
I think it was Spiderman who swung into Charlie’s life next; then came the Incredible Hulk, and Superman, and the Power Rangers, until his toy box was full of superheroes using their super strength to save the day. But that began to change after we took him to see The Incredibles, an animated movie about a whole family of superheroes. You see, in that family, each member is a superhero, but only the father, Mr. Incredible, has super strength. The mother, ElastiGirl, is super stretchy. The little boy, Dash, is super fast. The little girl, Viola, can become invisible. All of a sudden, then, toys without impossibly proportioned bodies and plastic capes became potential superheroes. Little Charlie’s stuffed monkey, rescued a thousand times by Superman, had the power to walk on his tail. The little red racecar had the power to fly. The happy meal puppet had the power to leap tall buildings….well, you know. The little toy baby Jesus had never been safer.
The little real baby Jesus was born in a world that felt very unsafe to the people of Israel. They longed for a messiah, a superhero with super strength to rescue them mightily from the weight of the law and the heavy hand of Rome. So far, it didn’t exactly seem like Jesus was going to save the day. Sure, he had some impressive powers – healing diseases, exorcising demons, restoring life, and that thing with the loaves and fish had been a really neat trick. Maybe this was just his secret identity, they thought. Maybe he was waiting for just the right moment to flex his muscles, brandish his sword, and defeat the enemies of God’s chosen people. But Jesus was not that kind of hero. All the while they were waiting for him to show his super strength, he was saving the day, saving them, saving the whole world by the power of love. He was defeating the enemies of God’s chosen people – not the religious authorities or the Romans but enemies far more prevalent, far more sinister. Fear. Hatred. Isolation. Judgment. Despair. Death. Like so many superheroes, Jesus’ power was completely misunderstood.
When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. It doesn’t sound much like saving to us, but as wind whipped water sent currents into chaos, and the little boat fought to move forward, Jesus wanted to show them that his power to save was far beyond the strength of even the mightiest warrior. His was the power of God. Take heart, it is I. Be not afraid.
In the ancient near east, and all throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the power to manipulate water belonged only to God. Water represented chaos and destruction (in Mississippi and all along the Gulf Coast we understand why). Over and over again, when water threatened life, God alone was able to hold it back, to dry it up, to contain its chaos. And yet in those same scriptures it is also out of water that life is born and with water that life is sustained and without water that life withers.
In the beginning….in the very first chapter of the very first book of the bible, a wind from God sweeps over the face of the waters, and begins to create the heavens and earth. Where once there was chaos, now there was life. In their flight from Egypt, God saves the Hebrew people when by faith Moses stretches out his hand over the Red Sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. In the very midst of chaos, the way to a new life is offered. While journeying through the wilderness, the Hebrew people grow thirsty, but there is no water to drink, and they despair, wondering if God is among them. God tells Moses, I will be standing there in front of you….Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink. When chaos disrupts or threatens life, God is standing there, mighty to save. Whose life was ever more chaotic than Job’s, who yet in the midst of his ordeal struggles to hold on to his belief that God still cares, saying, God is wise in heart, and mighty in strength….who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea….Look, he passes by me, and I do not see him. Like Job, straining against adverse winds, our eyes squinted and our muscles tense, we do not see God walking toward us, passing by, beckoning us to turn our boats and follow. The mission of Jesus Christ would be to help us see God in the midst of chaos, a mission that would begin when Jesus came up dripping from the waters of the Jordan River, and a voice from heaven said, This is my Son, the Beloved.
Water, the chaos that threatens our lives and the means by which we live, is the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace given to us in baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death, our prayerbook reads. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. We may never be able to part oceans or to turn flintstone into flowing springs or to walk on water, but in our baptism we do receive the power to be creative in the midst of chaos, to live in hope though the wind batters our boats, to see and to help others to see Jesus and not a ghost. In our baptism we receive power not as self-sufficient superheroes, and not as mere sidekicks, but as many members of the Body of Christ.
And so lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, Paul writes, sounding for all the world like Peter Parker’s grandfather….With great power comes great responsibility. Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
It wouldn’t do too well at the box office. By the world’s standards, it doesn’t sound much like saving the day. It doesn’t sound much like power. But then, our inclination to save ourselves, to strain against adversaries, to fight our way forward, to stand strong and tall and proud, towering over all the others….in the end, it just whips up more wind, more water, more chaos, more fear, hatred, isolation, judgment, despair, even death. In the end, it wears us out.
Adverse winds blow from every direction, in our world, our nation, our community, our families, in our dear Episcopal Church. Straining against those winds, against one another, against God, we misunderstand our own powers. Early that morning, on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus walked on the water full of the mighty power of God - not super strength, but the awesome power of humility and gentleness, patience and love, unity and peace. Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid. Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased.
As members of the Body of Christ, we are given the power to make a way in and through the chaotic waters of life. We are given the power to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors and our adversaries as ourselves, to work for justice freedom and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being – all this never by our own strength, but always and only with God’s help.
What would happen if we faced the adverse winds in our lives with humility and gentleness rather than fierce straining? With patience rather than fumbling urgency? What if, in the midst of struggle, we bore one another in love? What if we made every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, not blind to injustice and sin, to what divides us, but also not blind to hope, to the presence of Christ in our midst? The storms might not cease – they didn’t always cease for Jesus either, but it was by this kind of strength that he rendered wind and chaos, fear and isolation, hatred and despair and even death powerless.
When he sees that we are straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he comes toward us early in the morning, walking on the water. Will we see him? If not, we don’t have a ghost of a chance. But if we are willing to look into the wind, to look at one another, with the power of his love, then we are saved, and a new life has already begun. Let us pray,
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. Amen.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Proper 11B
Isaiah 57:14b-21; Psalm 22:22-30; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-44
Don’t Panic. So reads, in large, friendly letters, the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is intended to reassure travelers, to put them at ease right from the start as their journey through Life, the Universe, and Everything begins. Don’t Panic.
Of course, from time to time, the assorted characters in Douglas Adams’ novels about that journey do panic, and not without good reason. One character, Zaphod Beeblebrox, finds himself on a desolate planet where he faces a sentence worse than death – he is to be placed in the Total Perspective Vortex. It is worse than death, because it shows its victims how insignificant their lives are. For inside the Total Perspective Vortex (incidentally no larger than a coat closet), they are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation…the infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself in relation to it…an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small.
It turns out to be no problem for our hero Zaphod, who believes he is the most important thing in the universe. Inside the Vortex, he indeed glimpses how infinitely small he is, but he also sees that entire unimaginable infinity of creation revolving around his invisible dot.
Far more often, those who entered the Vortex were unable to cope with the perspective of life it revealed. The immensity of the universe, filled with countless spheres separated from one another by vast, empty space; the staggering population of lives – of invisible dots – separated from one another by vast, empty space….It overwhelmed the mind and heart and spirit of its victims, not killing them, but turning the rest of their lives into a vast, empty space in which they would always see themselves as small and isolated and alone.
Such a terrible machine seems out of place in a novel that otherwise has its readers laughing till they’re out of breath, but then the terrible realization that such a perspective of life isn’t very fictional at all would just take our breath away anyway.
Did it take Jesus’ breath away, and the breath of his disciples, wouldn’t it have taken your breath away, to come away to a deserted place – other translations say a lonely place – and find it full of people? A lonely place full of people….people who were hungry and hurting and hopeful that their lives could be happier. A lonely place full of people….
And in the midst of that lonely crowd were Jesus and the disciples, surrounded and yet, I suspect, feeling themselves quite small and isolated and alone. They had come to this place to escape the crowd, to catch their breath, to attend just for a moment to their own hunger and hurt and hope before facing the infinite needs of the world again.
But there they were, that crowd, that ever-present always hungry, always hurting, always hoping crowd. Them. Jesus and the disciples had every reason to be angry or resentful or, in their weariness, despairing, and I suspect the disciples felt all those things. But Jesus looked at that great crowd from a different perspective in which the unimaginable infinity of creation is not full of empty space and invisible dots but is, rather, a closely knit fabric with countless colorful strands twisting around one another. And so Jesus saw not a crowd but a collection of people, and he had compassion for them, Mark tells us, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
It would have been so easy to just see a Them – that’s how the world teaches us to see. Us and Them. In that crowded lonely place it was Us, the helpers, and Them, the needy. In Paul’s time, as we heard in his letter to the Ephesians, it was Us, the Jews, and Them, the Gentiles. But the categories areunimaginably infinite. Us, from this country; Them, from another. Us, with one skin color; Them, with another. Us, from this side of the tracks; Them, from the other side. Us, college graduates; Them, no high school diploma. Rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, immigrant and native born, liberal and conservative, labor and management, gay and straight, old and young, Baptist and Episcopalian and Methodist and Lutheran and Catholic, Ole Miss and State….We’re really good at knowing what makes us Us, and them Them. And we’re really good at knowing why it’s better to be Us than it is to be Them. And while this knowledge helps us feel strong and significant and secure, it is also what separates us from one another, not so much by vast, empty spaces but by walls which may as well be infinitely wide. We are surrounded by Them, and they by Us, but if our walls keep us from seeing one another....it is a lonely place full of people. “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” wrote Rudyard Kipling.
But there is another perspective. It is vision of the One who, according to Isaiah, dwells in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit. It is the sight of the One who was fully God and fully human. It is the perspective of the One who saw a great crowd with compassion, and who, Paul writes, created in himself one new humanity in place of the two (Jews and Gentiles, Paul means, but it could be any Us and Them), who created in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross. It is the perspective that allows us to sing, “In Christ there is no East or West, in him no South or North, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
The whole wide earth – it may not be the infinite universe, but it’s still a pretty big place. And there are still a great many hungry and hurting and desperately hopeful people, including ourselves from time to time. And there are a great many people who look or act or speak or hunger or hurt or hope or believe very differently than we do. It’s overwhelming. Try as we might to distance ourselves, to make this big lonely crowded place smaller by putting up walls, the foundation we’re building on, whose cornerstone is Christ, just doesn’t support that sort of structure. Jesus would have us stand face to face, to look with compassion upon one another, upon that great collection of people that surrounds us. Kinda makes you want to be invisible, right? How can we, who are so small, step into such a big place, such a big crowd, such hurt, such hunger, such hope?
The disciples asked Jesus this very question toward the end of that long day in that not-so-deserted place. There may have been some compassion in their suggestion that the crowd break for dinner, but it sounds to me like the need for distance was greater: Send Them away, the disciples said, so that They may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for Themselves to eat. When Jesus breaks down that wall, You give them something to eat, the disciples desperately throw up another, answering, in effect, Jesus, we just don’t have it in us. How can we, who are so small, step into such a big place, such a big crowd, such hurt, such hunger, such hope? We just don’t have it in us.
Mark doesn’t say so, but I think that in that moment, Jesus saw his disciples as he had first seen the great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because hiding behind that wall, the disciples, too, were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them about Life, the Universe, and Everything from his perspective. You don’t have it in you? Well, what have you got? Jesus asked them. You've got something. How many loaves have you? Go and see.
You know what happened. They brought back five loaves and two fish. That was all they had. Well, that and, and this is what I think they hadn’t considered, they had those few loaves and fish, nearly invisible before the size of the crowd, and they had Jesus. And everyone was fed.
It is the only miracle story recorded in all four gospels – a cherished event in the life and ministry of Jesus. Many have wondered just how five thousand people ate dinner. Did he break off enough tiny bits for everyone, more a symbolic meal than a feast? Did others, when Jesus blessed the disciples’ generosity, begin pulling food out of their packs for a giant potluck picnic on the grass? Or did five loaves and two fish, by some divine mystery, simply feed everyone until they were full?
The real miracle, though, is not that a small amount of food somehow fed a large number of people. The real miracle was a change in perspective. We may be small, but we are not isolated, never alone. We are sheep with a Shepherd. We are a collection of people upon whom Jesus has looked with compassion, whom Jesus has fed with his word and with bread, with his body and blood. Whether we have five loaves and two fish to offer, or much more, or much less, if we offer them to Jesus, he will bless them and use them.
Molly Wolf, writes, “Whatever you’ve got, give it. You don’t know what price tag God puts on it, after all.” (How valuable that day were five loaves of bread and two fish!) She continues, “It is probably safe to assume that God’s values are not much like ours, and what seems unworthy to us may please God greatly. But don’t worry about it. Just give whatever you have most of. It will do.”
A change in perspective. How do we, who are so small, step into such a big place, such a big crowd, such hunger, such hurt, such hope? Don’t Panic. We go together, no longer Us and Them, no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. Amen.
Don’t Panic. So reads, in large, friendly letters, the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is intended to reassure travelers, to put them at ease right from the start as their journey through Life, the Universe, and Everything begins. Don’t Panic.
Of course, from time to time, the assorted characters in Douglas Adams’ novels about that journey do panic, and not without good reason. One character, Zaphod Beeblebrox, finds himself on a desolate planet where he faces a sentence worse than death – he is to be placed in the Total Perspective Vortex. It is worse than death, because it shows its victims how insignificant their lives are. For inside the Total Perspective Vortex (incidentally no larger than a coat closet), they are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation…the infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself in relation to it…an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small.
It turns out to be no problem for our hero Zaphod, who believes he is the most important thing in the universe. Inside the Vortex, he indeed glimpses how infinitely small he is, but he also sees that entire unimaginable infinity of creation revolving around his invisible dot.
Far more often, those who entered the Vortex were unable to cope with the perspective of life it revealed. The immensity of the universe, filled with countless spheres separated from one another by vast, empty space; the staggering population of lives – of invisible dots – separated from one another by vast, empty space….It overwhelmed the mind and heart and spirit of its victims, not killing them, but turning the rest of their lives into a vast, empty space in which they would always see themselves as small and isolated and alone.
Such a terrible machine seems out of place in a novel that otherwise has its readers laughing till they’re out of breath, but then the terrible realization that such a perspective of life isn’t very fictional at all would just take our breath away anyway.
Did it take Jesus’ breath away, and the breath of his disciples, wouldn’t it have taken your breath away, to come away to a deserted place – other translations say a lonely place – and find it full of people? A lonely place full of people….people who were hungry and hurting and hopeful that their lives could be happier. A lonely place full of people….
And in the midst of that lonely crowd were Jesus and the disciples, surrounded and yet, I suspect, feeling themselves quite small and isolated and alone. They had come to this place to escape the crowd, to catch their breath, to attend just for a moment to their own hunger and hurt and hope before facing the infinite needs of the world again.
But there they were, that crowd, that ever-present always hungry, always hurting, always hoping crowd. Them. Jesus and the disciples had every reason to be angry or resentful or, in their weariness, despairing, and I suspect the disciples felt all those things. But Jesus looked at that great crowd from a different perspective in which the unimaginable infinity of creation is not full of empty space and invisible dots but is, rather, a closely knit fabric with countless colorful strands twisting around one another. And so Jesus saw not a crowd but a collection of people, and he had compassion for them, Mark tells us, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
It would have been so easy to just see a Them – that’s how the world teaches us to see. Us and Them. In that crowded lonely place it was Us, the helpers, and Them, the needy. In Paul’s time, as we heard in his letter to the Ephesians, it was Us, the Jews, and Them, the Gentiles. But the categories areunimaginably infinite. Us, from this country; Them, from another. Us, with one skin color; Them, with another. Us, from this side of the tracks; Them, from the other side. Us, college graduates; Them, no high school diploma. Rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, immigrant and native born, liberal and conservative, labor and management, gay and straight, old and young, Baptist and Episcopalian and Methodist and Lutheran and Catholic, Ole Miss and State….We’re really good at knowing what makes us Us, and them Them. And we’re really good at knowing why it’s better to be Us than it is to be Them. And while this knowledge helps us feel strong and significant and secure, it is also what separates us from one another, not so much by vast, empty spaces but by walls which may as well be infinitely wide. We are surrounded by Them, and they by Us, but if our walls keep us from seeing one another....it is a lonely place full of people. “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” wrote Rudyard Kipling.
But there is another perspective. It is vision of the One who, according to Isaiah, dwells in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit. It is the sight of the One who was fully God and fully human. It is the perspective of the One who saw a great crowd with compassion, and who, Paul writes, created in himself one new humanity in place of the two (Jews and Gentiles, Paul means, but it could be any Us and Them), who created in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross. It is the perspective that allows us to sing, “In Christ there is no East or West, in him no South or North, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
The whole wide earth – it may not be the infinite universe, but it’s still a pretty big place. And there are still a great many hungry and hurting and desperately hopeful people, including ourselves from time to time. And there are a great many people who look or act or speak or hunger or hurt or hope or believe very differently than we do. It’s overwhelming. Try as we might to distance ourselves, to make this big lonely crowded place smaller by putting up walls, the foundation we’re building on, whose cornerstone is Christ, just doesn’t support that sort of structure. Jesus would have us stand face to face, to look with compassion upon one another, upon that great collection of people that surrounds us. Kinda makes you want to be invisible, right? How can we, who are so small, step into such a big place, such a big crowd, such hurt, such hunger, such hope?
The disciples asked Jesus this very question toward the end of that long day in that not-so-deserted place. There may have been some compassion in their suggestion that the crowd break for dinner, but it sounds to me like the need for distance was greater: Send Them away, the disciples said, so that They may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for Themselves to eat. When Jesus breaks down that wall, You give them something to eat, the disciples desperately throw up another, answering, in effect, Jesus, we just don’t have it in us. How can we, who are so small, step into such a big place, such a big crowd, such hurt, such hunger, such hope? We just don’t have it in us.
Mark doesn’t say so, but I think that in that moment, Jesus saw his disciples as he had first seen the great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because hiding behind that wall, the disciples, too, were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them about Life, the Universe, and Everything from his perspective. You don’t have it in you? Well, what have you got? Jesus asked them. You've got something. How many loaves have you? Go and see.
You know what happened. They brought back five loaves and two fish. That was all they had. Well, that and, and this is what I think they hadn’t considered, they had those few loaves and fish, nearly invisible before the size of the crowd, and they had Jesus. And everyone was fed.
It is the only miracle story recorded in all four gospels – a cherished event in the life and ministry of Jesus. Many have wondered just how five thousand people ate dinner. Did he break off enough tiny bits for everyone, more a symbolic meal than a feast? Did others, when Jesus blessed the disciples’ generosity, begin pulling food out of their packs for a giant potluck picnic on the grass? Or did five loaves and two fish, by some divine mystery, simply feed everyone until they were full?
The real miracle, though, is not that a small amount of food somehow fed a large number of people. The real miracle was a change in perspective. We may be small, but we are not isolated, never alone. We are sheep with a Shepherd. We are a collection of people upon whom Jesus has looked with compassion, whom Jesus has fed with his word and with bread, with his body and blood. Whether we have five loaves and two fish to offer, or much more, or much less, if we offer them to Jesus, he will bless them and use them.
Molly Wolf, writes, “Whatever you’ve got, give it. You don’t know what price tag God puts on it, after all.” (How valuable that day were five loaves of bread and two fish!) She continues, “It is probably safe to assume that God’s values are not much like ours, and what seems unworthy to us may please God greatly. But don’t worry about it. Just give whatever you have most of. It will do.”
A change in perspective. How do we, who are so small, step into such a big place, such a big crowd, such hunger, such hurt, such hope? Don’t Panic. We go together, no longer Us and Them, no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. Amen.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Proper 9B
Ezekiel 2:1-7; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-6
The first time I drove to Camp Bratton-Green by myself, I had been given pretty good directions – which exit to take, then take an immediate left, which state road to turn on to, which side of the road the entrance to camp was on. And I made it there just fine. But when it was time to leave, I noticed that the directions didn’t actually name the road between the exit and the state road, so, afraid that I would miss the turn, I asked someone for help, and was told, “Oh, you know, I don’t know, but it’s that intersection where the two-story house used to be.”
I’ve gotten a few directions like that around here, too – “Just turn at Mary and Dave’s house, well, the Smith’s live there now, and it’s right there. Just before the house where Ann grew up.”
Places – especially in the South it seems – are very often more than they are. They are also who they used to be. They don’t have names – they have stories, and someone who’s lived here a long time can recognize them as easily from a piece of their history as from a street address.
People can be like that, too, especially in the south, especially in small towns. Everyone knows everyone, and who their parents were, and who they took to the prom. Ask who was sitting behind someone in church, and you’re likely to hear, “Oh that’s Steve, the doctor, Jack and Lisa’s son. Scored the winning touchdown in the state championship. He grew up across the street from Mary and Dave’s house, well, the Smith’s live there now. ”
Nazareth was very much like a small southern town. Everyone knew everyone – most of them were related, if not by blood, then by marriage. Businesses were handed down by generation. No one ever left.
Except Jesus. Just as he was taking on his father’s trade and responsibility for supporting the family, he up and left, muttering something about water and the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God. Bless his heart.
When he finally came back home, the townspeople recognized him right away. He was the one whose birth to parents-barely-married had caused quite a stir. The rabbi remembered Jesus dutifully studied the Torah as a young boy, full of questions about God and the world. The shopkeepers remembered him running with his friends through the marketplace at breakneck speed. The young women, now mothers themselves, remembered wondering if he was going to be the one their parents chose to be their husband. And most of them had something in their home he had made with the careful, calloused hands of a carpenter – a bench, a table, a doorframe.
Jesus was no stranger to the people of Nazareth. They knew him as well as they knew themselves. Like them, he was not just ordinary – he was extra-ordinary. Jesus was no stranger, but no one had any idea who he was. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?
There is a modern-day story about a young man who, as a teenager, had been kicked out of the corner grocery store in his neighborhood for causing more than a few problems there. Twelve years later, the devoted father of two and a newly certified social worker, he returned home to visit his family. He walked over to the corner grocery for milk, and was surprised to see the same store owner behind the counter. The store owner looked up at him, squinted his eyes and said, “I told you, stay out!”
A more familiar modern-day story, perhaps, is that of mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent, so ordinary that all it takes is a pair of glasses to keep people from knowing that he’s Superman.
Theologians have called this the scandal of particularity. Someone or something is so familiar, so common, so extra-ordinary, that we miss what is extraordinary about them. We know them (or think we know them) so well that we don’t know them at all.
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Jesus, who spent most of his adult life as a craftsman, had no credibility as a tent-show evangelist in Nazereth. Where did this man get all this? they asked. What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands?
The people of Nazareth had such an opportunity that day. They could open their hearts and minds to something new, finally believe Mary’s strange story about an angel and a baby and a promise that God was going to be at work in the world in a very ordinary and wonderful way. Heaven right there, in their small town. Jesus, the Messiah, the boy whose sticky fingerprints were always on the water jars.
Instead, they took offense at him. His preaching – though apparently astounding – was scandalous. He was pretending to be something he was not. Instead of miracles, they saw magic tricks. Instead of God, they saw a carpenter. Their hearts and minds remained closed around what they already knew, that Jesus belonged among wooden beams, with a hammer, and nails in his hands.
Thousands of years and millions of witnesses later, we know that the man who walked into town that day was the carpenter, the son of Mary, and that he was also the Savior, the Son of God. In Jesus, God was a little boy who lost his father, who stubbed his toes, who learned a trade, who worked for a living, who supported his family. What was once a scandal we now take as the foundation of our faith, the scandal of a God whose intimate familiarity with us went even to death on a cross. In Jesus, love was made extraordinary in ordinariness.
There is, then, a unique challenge for us in this morning’s gospel. From our baptismal covenant we know that we are called to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ. Our beautiful worship spaces, our fine and ancient liturgies, our passion for outreach, our summer camp, are all truly extraordinary efforts to answer that call.
But this morning we are being called to something much more….ordinary. We are being called to see what the people of Nazareth could not, what they were too scandalized to see – that God is most profoundly present in what is most profoundly common, familiar, and ordinary in our lives.
The ordinary contains extraordinary wonders. We make that claim every time we share a meal of bread and wine, every time we are sprinkled with water from the font, every time we gather to celebrate the life of the carpenter, the son of Mary.
When you leave here this morning, go back just the way you came (you know, past Mary and Dave’s house, well, the Smith’s live there now, and through the intersection where the two story house used to be). Go back just the way you came and look along that familiar road. Every day, look in the most common, familiar, ordinary places and people of your lives – the ones you know so well – and see them, perhaps for the first time, as places where God is profoundly present, as people whose stories reflect something of the story of Jesus. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Yes, it is, and thank goodness, for in him the extraordinary love of God touched our ordinariness, so that our lives, too, could be made extraordinary. Amen.
The first time I drove to Camp Bratton-Green by myself, I had been given pretty good directions – which exit to take, then take an immediate left, which state road to turn on to, which side of the road the entrance to camp was on. And I made it there just fine. But when it was time to leave, I noticed that the directions didn’t actually name the road between the exit and the state road, so, afraid that I would miss the turn, I asked someone for help, and was told, “Oh, you know, I don’t know, but it’s that intersection where the two-story house used to be.”
I’ve gotten a few directions like that around here, too – “Just turn at Mary and Dave’s house, well, the Smith’s live there now, and it’s right there. Just before the house where Ann grew up.”
Places – especially in the South it seems – are very often more than they are. They are also who they used to be. They don’t have names – they have stories, and someone who’s lived here a long time can recognize them as easily from a piece of their history as from a street address.
People can be like that, too, especially in the south, especially in small towns. Everyone knows everyone, and who their parents were, and who they took to the prom. Ask who was sitting behind someone in church, and you’re likely to hear, “Oh that’s Steve, the doctor, Jack and Lisa’s son. Scored the winning touchdown in the state championship. He grew up across the street from Mary and Dave’s house, well, the Smith’s live there now. ”
Nazareth was very much like a small southern town. Everyone knew everyone – most of them were related, if not by blood, then by marriage. Businesses were handed down by generation. No one ever left.
Except Jesus. Just as he was taking on his father’s trade and responsibility for supporting the family, he up and left, muttering something about water and the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God. Bless his heart.
When he finally came back home, the townspeople recognized him right away. He was the one whose birth to parents-barely-married had caused quite a stir. The rabbi remembered Jesus dutifully studied the Torah as a young boy, full of questions about God and the world. The shopkeepers remembered him running with his friends through the marketplace at breakneck speed. The young women, now mothers themselves, remembered wondering if he was going to be the one their parents chose to be their husband. And most of them had something in their home he had made with the careful, calloused hands of a carpenter – a bench, a table, a doorframe.
Jesus was no stranger to the people of Nazareth. They knew him as well as they knew themselves. Like them, he was not just ordinary – he was extra-ordinary. Jesus was no stranger, but no one had any idea who he was. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?
There is a modern-day story about a young man who, as a teenager, had been kicked out of the corner grocery store in his neighborhood for causing more than a few problems there. Twelve years later, the devoted father of two and a newly certified social worker, he returned home to visit his family. He walked over to the corner grocery for milk, and was surprised to see the same store owner behind the counter. The store owner looked up at him, squinted his eyes and said, “I told you, stay out!”
A more familiar modern-day story, perhaps, is that of mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent, so ordinary that all it takes is a pair of glasses to keep people from knowing that he’s Superman.
Theologians have called this the scandal of particularity. Someone or something is so familiar, so common, so extra-ordinary, that we miss what is extraordinary about them. We know them (or think we know them) so well that we don’t know them at all.
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Jesus, who spent most of his adult life as a craftsman, had no credibility as a tent-show evangelist in Nazereth. Where did this man get all this? they asked. What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands?
The people of Nazareth had such an opportunity that day. They could open their hearts and minds to something new, finally believe Mary’s strange story about an angel and a baby and a promise that God was going to be at work in the world in a very ordinary and wonderful way. Heaven right there, in their small town. Jesus, the Messiah, the boy whose sticky fingerprints were always on the water jars.
Instead, they took offense at him. His preaching – though apparently astounding – was scandalous. He was pretending to be something he was not. Instead of miracles, they saw magic tricks. Instead of God, they saw a carpenter. Their hearts and minds remained closed around what they already knew, that Jesus belonged among wooden beams, with a hammer, and nails in his hands.
Thousands of years and millions of witnesses later, we know that the man who walked into town that day was the carpenter, the son of Mary, and that he was also the Savior, the Son of God. In Jesus, God was a little boy who lost his father, who stubbed his toes, who learned a trade, who worked for a living, who supported his family. What was once a scandal we now take as the foundation of our faith, the scandal of a God whose intimate familiarity with us went even to death on a cross. In Jesus, love was made extraordinary in ordinariness.
There is, then, a unique challenge for us in this morning’s gospel. From our baptismal covenant we know that we are called to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ. Our beautiful worship spaces, our fine and ancient liturgies, our passion for outreach, our summer camp, are all truly extraordinary efforts to answer that call.
But this morning we are being called to something much more….ordinary. We are being called to see what the people of Nazareth could not, what they were too scandalized to see – that God is most profoundly present in what is most profoundly common, familiar, and ordinary in our lives.
The ordinary contains extraordinary wonders. We make that claim every time we share a meal of bread and wine, every time we are sprinkled with water from the font, every time we gather to celebrate the life of the carpenter, the son of Mary.
When you leave here this morning, go back just the way you came (you know, past Mary and Dave’s house, well, the Smith’s live there now, and through the intersection where the two story house used to be). Go back just the way you came and look along that familiar road. Every day, look in the most common, familiar, ordinary places and people of your lives – the ones you know so well – and see them, perhaps for the first time, as places where God is profoundly present, as people whose stories reflect something of the story of Jesus. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Yes, it is, and thank goodness, for in him the extraordinary love of God touched our ordinariness, so that our lives, too, could be made extraordinary. Amen.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Thanksgiving for the Life of Lib Tatum
Psalm 27
One thing have I desired of the Lord, we read in the psalm just a moment ago. One thing have I desired of the Lord, which I will require, even that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple.
It is difficult to imagine a house more beautiful than this one, this house of the Lord that is St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The stained glass windows in which light and color dance to tell the story of Jesus Christ. The rich hangings, today in white and purple and yellow and green, that adorn the sacred places where the word of God and the body of Christ are broken open for us. The carefully and lovingly stitched needlepoint on the kneelers at the altar. The brass, curled and shaped and intricately etched as embellishment, as support, and as the cross that leads us into worship in this beautiful house of the Lord.
One thing have I desired….to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Lib very nearly did, I’m told. For more than 80 years, she worshipped in this house. She worshipped, and she cooked, and she carried out the many ministries of the women of the church. And as a member of the altar guild, Lib tended to this house, preparing it for worship; she cared for the hangings and the brass and the needlepoint, making everything beautiful.
Yes, Lib lived, she came alive, in this house.
But throughout all those 80 years and more – indeed all the days of her life – God was also at work in her. God is at work in all of us, tending to us and making us beautiful. And through Lib, through all of us, God is at work in the world. In fact, God lived, God came alive in Jesus Christ so that we might learn from him how to care for one another, how to tend to one another, how to love one another, how to see what is beautiful in all people, in all of creation.
And just when we thought that in Jesus’ death we had seen the extent to which that care, that love, that desire to make us beautiful would go, Jesus lived. As light and color dance in the window that tells this story, so did heaven and earth dance on the day of Resurrection, because on that day Jesus lived so that we might live, so that we might truly come alive. So that we might, although we die, live forever in the house of the Lord.
Sometimes, if you look closely – sometimes if you just look – there are fingerprints on the brass. The hangings aren’t quite even. A prayerbook is out of place. Sometimes in our kitchen soup burns on the stove, and sometimes we run out of doughnuts. Sometimes our thoughts wander in worship, and sometimes we sing off key. Sometimes we are afraid, or forget, or choose not to care, to tend, to love. We can and often do hold such imperfections against ourselves and against one another. But God does not. Indeed, if we look closely – sometimes if we just look – our fingerprints and fears are the very places we can see God at work in and through us, carefully and lovingly tending to the beauty deep within.
Because of God’s work in and through Jesus Christ, we are able in this beautiful if imperfect house to catch glimpses of the house of the Lord in which Lib and all the faithful who have gone before us now live. In each other’s beautiful if imperfect lives we are able to glimpse something of the beauty of the Lord, which they now see face to face. In the places where God is at work in and through us, we are able to glimpse something of the perfection to which God has brought Lib and will bring us when we, too, are standing in God’s presence.
With the psalmist, then, let us also desire thing of the Lord, one thing which we will require: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple. Amen.
One thing have I desired of the Lord, we read in the psalm just a moment ago. One thing have I desired of the Lord, which I will require, even that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple.
It is difficult to imagine a house more beautiful than this one, this house of the Lord that is St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The stained glass windows in which light and color dance to tell the story of Jesus Christ. The rich hangings, today in white and purple and yellow and green, that adorn the sacred places where the word of God and the body of Christ are broken open for us. The carefully and lovingly stitched needlepoint on the kneelers at the altar. The brass, curled and shaped and intricately etched as embellishment, as support, and as the cross that leads us into worship in this beautiful house of the Lord.
One thing have I desired….to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Lib very nearly did, I’m told. For more than 80 years, she worshipped in this house. She worshipped, and she cooked, and she carried out the many ministries of the women of the church. And as a member of the altar guild, Lib tended to this house, preparing it for worship; she cared for the hangings and the brass and the needlepoint, making everything beautiful.
Yes, Lib lived, she came alive, in this house.
But throughout all those 80 years and more – indeed all the days of her life – God was also at work in her. God is at work in all of us, tending to us and making us beautiful. And through Lib, through all of us, God is at work in the world. In fact, God lived, God came alive in Jesus Christ so that we might learn from him how to care for one another, how to tend to one another, how to love one another, how to see what is beautiful in all people, in all of creation.
And just when we thought that in Jesus’ death we had seen the extent to which that care, that love, that desire to make us beautiful would go, Jesus lived. As light and color dance in the window that tells this story, so did heaven and earth dance on the day of Resurrection, because on that day Jesus lived so that we might live, so that we might truly come alive. So that we might, although we die, live forever in the house of the Lord.
Sometimes, if you look closely – sometimes if you just look – there are fingerprints on the brass. The hangings aren’t quite even. A prayerbook is out of place. Sometimes in our kitchen soup burns on the stove, and sometimes we run out of doughnuts. Sometimes our thoughts wander in worship, and sometimes we sing off key. Sometimes we are afraid, or forget, or choose not to care, to tend, to love. We can and often do hold such imperfections against ourselves and against one another. But God does not. Indeed, if we look closely – sometimes if we just look – our fingerprints and fears are the very places we can see God at work in and through us, carefully and lovingly tending to the beauty deep within.
Because of God’s work in and through Jesus Christ, we are able in this beautiful if imperfect house to catch glimpses of the house of the Lord in which Lib and all the faithful who have gone before us now live. In each other’s beautiful if imperfect lives we are able to glimpse something of the beauty of the Lord, which they now see face to face. In the places where God is at work in and through us, we are able to glimpse something of the perfection to which God has brought Lib and will bring us when we, too, are standing in God’s presence.
With the psalmist, then, let us also desire thing of the Lord, one thing which we will require: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple. Amen.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Proper 7 B
Job 38:1-11,16-18; Psalm 107:1-3,23-32; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Mark 4:35-41 [5:1-20]
When I was in elementary school, my family spent a few summers living with my grandparents in South Carolina. These were wonderful summers, full of ice cream sandwiches, jars of fireflies, Big Wheel races, and being barefoot outside all day. The only part of the day I didn’t like was Quiet Time, right after lunch, when we all went to our own rooms, and mom set a timer for a bazillion hours and put it in the hallway. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to rest, or read my mom’s old Nancy Drew books, or play quietly – it was that I knew as soon as that timer went ‘ding’ we would pull on our bathing suits, still damp from the day before, and go down to the lake for an afternoon of swimming.
One of those summers, though – a summer very unlike this one! – the ‘ding’ of the timer that brought us racing out of our rooms also brought on dark storm clouds, and more often than not, there we were, my brother and I, in our bathing suits, sitting on our towels by the sliding glass doors, watching the rain go down to the lake, counting the seconds between lightening flashes and thunderclaps, and singing a song we had learned at school, “It’s gonna rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain…100% chance of rain!” It became that summer’s theme song.
Most days the storm would pass, and we’d get to swim, but sometimes it just rained the rest of the day, and then we had to play inside. By dinner time, we’d have worked ourselves up into our own storm, with toys and coloring books strewn everywhere as though a great wind had blown right through the house. And chances were, cooped up inside, our little disappointed tempers would flare up into a squall or two of their own….On those days, the chaos inside reflected the chaos through those sliding glass doors.
The fishermen among the disciples would not have thought it strange that a storm would come suddenly upon them as they crossed the Sea of Galilee that night. Such storms were common. Mark doesn’t tell us how long they wrestled with the boat before they realized it was filling with water faster than they could empty it out. I suspect they were actually angry with Jesus when they shook him awake, not expecting any miracle, just expecting him to pull his weight – he was sleeping while they were sinking?!?! They needed all the hands they could get. Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Come on, get up, here’s a bucket, now quick….
We are hearing this story safe on dry land – I imagine most of us have, thankfully, not been on a small boat in the middle of a raging sea. But we do know about storms, about wind and water and thunder and lightening, how storms can literally change our landscape, crush our endeavors, wash away our livelihoods, even our lives.
And we all know it doesn’t have to rain, and the wind doesn’t have to blow, for us to feel like we’re caught in a terrible storm. Violence, poverty, hunger, hatred, and suspicion are like mighty swells in our great sea of humanity, and pride and greed and power can be like a blinding rain.
Our own church – the Episcopal church, the whole Anglican Communion – is caught in a whirlwind, in which so many are convinced that the Holy Spirit is blowing their way. The compass spins, and many hands on deck are trying to keep the boat from breaking into pieces as it plows through uncharted waters.
And then, there are the storms in our own lives, our personal storms, those times and circumstances that keep us from smooth sailing. Sometimes they come upon us suddenly, unexpectedly, and we are caught unprepared for the force of their fury. Sometimes we hear the thunder rumbling far off in the distance, we feel the pressure begin to change, and we brace ourselves for the worst. Sometimes the storms pass quickly, and sometimes our little boats fill with water faster than we can empty them out, and we feel ourselves sinking.
We try everything we know to stay sea-worthy, and when all that fails, we cling to whatever piece of stability, of control we can find. We are afraid of having our landscape changed, our endeavors crushed, our livelihoods or even our lives washed away. We angrily turn to God, and very often we do expect a miracle. Lord, don’t you care that we are perishing? Come on, get up, grab a bucket, do something….
On that stormy night on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus did wake up, and sounding for all the world like a mother during after-lunch Quiet Time or at the height of a storm-induced sibling squall, he said Peace, be still. We hear those words as comfort, and they certainly can be, but in the original text they actually have considerable force behind them, as if Jesus were to say, “Be quiet, now get a hold of yourselves!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
The wind ceased and the waves subsided, but only, I think, as a courtesy. You see, I think Jesus wasn’t speaking as much to the storm outside as he was speaking to the disciples, to the storm inside them – to the fear, the panic, the doubt, the need for control, the lack of faith. A little wind and rain was nothing compared to the storms that were to come in his life and in theirs, the howling, raging storms that would lead to the cross. Jesus knew that the landscape would indeed be forever wonderfully changed if they could just hang on a while longer. The wind and water obeyed Jesus, but it was the disciples’ faithful response – and ours – that Jesus wanted.
It’s gonna rain, rain, rain….100% chance. The wind is going to blow. Sometimes the storms are out there, sometimes they are in here. Sometimes they descend upon us, sometimes we stir them up ourselves. However they happen, they throw our lives into chaos.
Peace, be still. Jesus’ words are an echo of the command God gave the infant sea in the story of creation, at least as God tells it in the Book of Job. Sounding for all the world like a mother or father speaking about and speaking to a child, God said to Job, Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’….Peace, be still. Job had been sitting, miserable and wet, on the wrong side of the sliding glass door, in the middle of the worst storm of his life, his landscape, his endeavors, his livelihood all washed away. All he had left was his faith that God loved him, but when even that began to waver, Job worked himself up into a storm and demanded that God wake up. Do you not care that I am perishing?
Peace, be still, Job, God seems to say. Stop your proud waves. I am here, and I do care, and I hold all things, and you cannot control this storm. But you can cling to me.
Perhaps because of that night on the Sea of Galilee, a storm-tossed boat with a cross for a mast has long been an image for the church. With generations of sailors we cry out to God, "The sea is so wide and our boat is so small…." But Dame Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English mystic, gives us an image of the care that God does indeed have for us, because we are so easily lost, so easily overwhelmed, so very small. Julian wrote, "I saw that [Jesus] is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us….
"And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.
"In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God keeps and preserves it."
Why are we still afraid? Have we still no faith?
It’s gonna rain. 100% chance. But Jesus himself calls us to the other side of the sliding glass door, calls us into the boat, as he has called all his disciples, knowing full well that there are storms ahead. In the midst of the whirlwind and in the waves of our own making, he says, Peace, be still – not to the wind and the water, but to us. In the midst of the storm, he wants us to see him, that he is there, he does care, and our little boat, storm-tossed as it may be, is indeed pointed toward the harbor he has prepared, if we would just stop trying to wrestle with it.
"And thus," Dame Julian writes, "Our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably, ‘I may make all things well; I can make all things well, and I will make all things well, and I shall make all things well. And you yourself shall see that all manner of thing shall be well.’" Amen.
When I was in elementary school, my family spent a few summers living with my grandparents in South Carolina. These were wonderful summers, full of ice cream sandwiches, jars of fireflies, Big Wheel races, and being barefoot outside all day. The only part of the day I didn’t like was Quiet Time, right after lunch, when we all went to our own rooms, and mom set a timer for a bazillion hours and put it in the hallway. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to rest, or read my mom’s old Nancy Drew books, or play quietly – it was that I knew as soon as that timer went ‘ding’ we would pull on our bathing suits, still damp from the day before, and go down to the lake for an afternoon of swimming.
One of those summers, though – a summer very unlike this one! – the ‘ding’ of the timer that brought us racing out of our rooms also brought on dark storm clouds, and more often than not, there we were, my brother and I, in our bathing suits, sitting on our towels by the sliding glass doors, watching the rain go down to the lake, counting the seconds between lightening flashes and thunderclaps, and singing a song we had learned at school, “It’s gonna rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain…100% chance of rain!” It became that summer’s theme song.
Most days the storm would pass, and we’d get to swim, but sometimes it just rained the rest of the day, and then we had to play inside. By dinner time, we’d have worked ourselves up into our own storm, with toys and coloring books strewn everywhere as though a great wind had blown right through the house. And chances were, cooped up inside, our little disappointed tempers would flare up into a squall or two of their own….On those days, the chaos inside reflected the chaos through those sliding glass doors.
The fishermen among the disciples would not have thought it strange that a storm would come suddenly upon them as they crossed the Sea of Galilee that night. Such storms were common. Mark doesn’t tell us how long they wrestled with the boat before they realized it was filling with water faster than they could empty it out. I suspect they were actually angry with Jesus when they shook him awake, not expecting any miracle, just expecting him to pull his weight – he was sleeping while they were sinking?!?! They needed all the hands they could get. Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Come on, get up, here’s a bucket, now quick….
We are hearing this story safe on dry land – I imagine most of us have, thankfully, not been on a small boat in the middle of a raging sea. But we do know about storms, about wind and water and thunder and lightening, how storms can literally change our landscape, crush our endeavors, wash away our livelihoods, even our lives.
And we all know it doesn’t have to rain, and the wind doesn’t have to blow, for us to feel like we’re caught in a terrible storm. Violence, poverty, hunger, hatred, and suspicion are like mighty swells in our great sea of humanity, and pride and greed and power can be like a blinding rain.
Our own church – the Episcopal church, the whole Anglican Communion – is caught in a whirlwind, in which so many are convinced that the Holy Spirit is blowing their way. The compass spins, and many hands on deck are trying to keep the boat from breaking into pieces as it plows through uncharted waters.
And then, there are the storms in our own lives, our personal storms, those times and circumstances that keep us from smooth sailing. Sometimes they come upon us suddenly, unexpectedly, and we are caught unprepared for the force of their fury. Sometimes we hear the thunder rumbling far off in the distance, we feel the pressure begin to change, and we brace ourselves for the worst. Sometimes the storms pass quickly, and sometimes our little boats fill with water faster than we can empty them out, and we feel ourselves sinking.
We try everything we know to stay sea-worthy, and when all that fails, we cling to whatever piece of stability, of control we can find. We are afraid of having our landscape changed, our endeavors crushed, our livelihoods or even our lives washed away. We angrily turn to God, and very often we do expect a miracle. Lord, don’t you care that we are perishing? Come on, get up, grab a bucket, do something….
On that stormy night on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus did wake up, and sounding for all the world like a mother during after-lunch Quiet Time or at the height of a storm-induced sibling squall, he said Peace, be still. We hear those words as comfort, and they certainly can be, but in the original text they actually have considerable force behind them, as if Jesus were to say, “Be quiet, now get a hold of yourselves!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
The wind ceased and the waves subsided, but only, I think, as a courtesy. You see, I think Jesus wasn’t speaking as much to the storm outside as he was speaking to the disciples, to the storm inside them – to the fear, the panic, the doubt, the need for control, the lack of faith. A little wind and rain was nothing compared to the storms that were to come in his life and in theirs, the howling, raging storms that would lead to the cross. Jesus knew that the landscape would indeed be forever wonderfully changed if they could just hang on a while longer. The wind and water obeyed Jesus, but it was the disciples’ faithful response – and ours – that Jesus wanted.
It’s gonna rain, rain, rain….100% chance. The wind is going to blow. Sometimes the storms are out there, sometimes they are in here. Sometimes they descend upon us, sometimes we stir them up ourselves. However they happen, they throw our lives into chaos.
Peace, be still. Jesus’ words are an echo of the command God gave the infant sea in the story of creation, at least as God tells it in the Book of Job. Sounding for all the world like a mother or father speaking about and speaking to a child, God said to Job, Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’….Peace, be still. Job had been sitting, miserable and wet, on the wrong side of the sliding glass door, in the middle of the worst storm of his life, his landscape, his endeavors, his livelihood all washed away. All he had left was his faith that God loved him, but when even that began to waver, Job worked himself up into a storm and demanded that God wake up. Do you not care that I am perishing?
Peace, be still, Job, God seems to say. Stop your proud waves. I am here, and I do care, and I hold all things, and you cannot control this storm. But you can cling to me.
Perhaps because of that night on the Sea of Galilee, a storm-tossed boat with a cross for a mast has long been an image for the church. With generations of sailors we cry out to God, "The sea is so wide and our boat is so small…." But Dame Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English mystic, gives us an image of the care that God does indeed have for us, because we are so easily lost, so easily overwhelmed, so very small. Julian wrote, "I saw that [Jesus] is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us….
"And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.
"In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God keeps and preserves it."
Why are we still afraid? Have we still no faith?
It’s gonna rain. 100% chance. But Jesus himself calls us to the other side of the sliding glass door, calls us into the boat, as he has called all his disciples, knowing full well that there are storms ahead. In the midst of the whirlwind and in the waves of our own making, he says, Peace, be still – not to the wind and the water, but to us. In the midst of the storm, he wants us to see him, that he is there, he does care, and our little boat, storm-tossed as it may be, is indeed pointed toward the harbor he has prepared, if we would just stop trying to wrestle with it.
"And thus," Dame Julian writes, "Our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably, ‘I may make all things well; I can make all things well, and I will make all things well, and I shall make all things well. And you yourself shall see that all manner of thing shall be well.’" Amen.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:25-32; 1 Corinthians 12:4-13; John 20:19-23
What a joyful noise we just made! A marvelous jumble of sounds and words and voices! All those languages at once speaking the same gospel, the same good news, the same story of the night when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit – the breath, the life of God – on the disciples, filling them with power to do God’s work in the world.
The Holy Spirit – the breath, the life of God – has always been moving in and around and through God’s work in the world. It was the Spirit who brooded over the waters at the beginning of creation. The same Spirit breathed life into those created in God’s image. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the same Spirit filled judges and prophets and dreams with the voice of God speaking in fiery passion or a still, small voice. The Spirit of God overshadowed Mary, and she conceived and bore a son. The same Spirit came down like a dove as Jesus came up from the Jordan River waters. Taking a deep breath, he went out to do God’s work in the world. The same Spirit.
But on the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit did something new. The breath, the life of God, moved, no, rushed in and around and through the disciples; and then, it rested on them. It rested in them. And although the disciples knew that Jesus had ascended, had left them and returned to God, they suddenly felt closer to him than ever before, as close as their own breath. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples began a new life as Christ’s Body in the world, guided, protected, strengthened and empowered by that same Spirit.
It was a intimate moment….that sounded like a zoo at feeding time! One Spirit, one Body….but all those languages, all those voices! We heard only a few languages this morning, but the Book of Acts tells us that people from every nation under heaven were there that day, and that each one heard the disciples speaking in the native language of each. Visitors from Rome, residents of Mesopotamia, and Arabs heard them speaking about God’s deeds of power. Egyptians heard fluent Egyptian, Pamphylians heard perfect Pamphylian!
Do you hear what I hear? Bishop Gray heard, and has been repeating it to us over and over again. Filled with the Holy Spirit, living as the Body of Christ, our first and most essential act is to proclaim the good news to the whole world, and not just to people who speak the same language that we do. That may mean learning Spanish or Swedish or Pamphylian, but language isn’t just about ethnicity, nationality, or geography. The Woods know that – Nicholas and Henley and Ashby speak to them all the time. They don’t use words, but their parents and siblings still understand, mostly….
The truth is, we all speak many languages, whether we know French or German or just English. Our words and actions and voices and memories and emotions, our hands and faces and posture, our experiences and our silences, all of who we are speaks. Recognizing this, our baptismal covenant calls us to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.
Each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. This morning, an Episcopal parish in Pennsylvania is reading the gospel in many languages….all of which are English. Some of the voices are reading right from the bible. Some are telling the story in their own words. There are male and female voices, very young and very old voices, soft and loud voices. There are tired voices, excited voices, angry voices, anxious voices, hesitant voices, fearful voices, grieving voices. One Spirit, one Body….all those languages, all those voices at once speaking the same gospel, the same good news. Is one of them your native language? Perhaps several of them you understand, mostly….
The same Spirit rests in each one of us, and as Christ’s Body we are sent into a cacophonous world. Taking a deep breath or two or more, we are inspired, empowered to plunge deep into life, to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ first and especially in the lives of those no one else wants to speak to or listen to, those who are lost in their own languages, and those who have retreated into wordlessness. To learn to speak these languages we will have to listen very carefully – they are sometimes only audible in a rattling cough, only visible in an outstretched hand, only understood in a shared experience.
And sometimes, we find ourselves not in the midst of cacophony but, rather, a profound silence. Grief and loss in waves overwhelm us, take our breath away, and we cannot find in any language a single word to speak. Paul gently reminds us that in these difficult times, the same Spirit, on the breath of God, intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.
Receive the Holy Spirit. We have good news for the world – a message of forgiveness and reconciliation and salvation, a story about God coming among us as close as our own breath. And we tell it best by listening, by engaging in the lives of our sisters and brothers, by hearing their voices and how they make meaning. Through the Holy Spirit, God is so intimately present in our lives – through the same Spirit we are present in one another’s lives, and that intimacy speaks volumes, silently or aloud, and even if we only understand one another mostly. One Spirit. One Body. Many members. Many languages. One Word, Jesus Christ. Amen.
What a joyful noise we just made! A marvelous jumble of sounds and words and voices! All those languages at once speaking the same gospel, the same good news, the same story of the night when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit – the breath, the life of God – on the disciples, filling them with power to do God’s work in the world.
The Holy Spirit – the breath, the life of God – has always been moving in and around and through God’s work in the world. It was the Spirit who brooded over the waters at the beginning of creation. The same Spirit breathed life into those created in God’s image. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the same Spirit filled judges and prophets and dreams with the voice of God speaking in fiery passion or a still, small voice. The Spirit of God overshadowed Mary, and she conceived and bore a son. The same Spirit came down like a dove as Jesus came up from the Jordan River waters. Taking a deep breath, he went out to do God’s work in the world. The same Spirit.
But on the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit did something new. The breath, the life of God, moved, no, rushed in and around and through the disciples; and then, it rested on them. It rested in them. And although the disciples knew that Jesus had ascended, had left them and returned to God, they suddenly felt closer to him than ever before, as close as their own breath. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples began a new life as Christ’s Body in the world, guided, protected, strengthened and empowered by that same Spirit.
It was a intimate moment….that sounded like a zoo at feeding time! One Spirit, one Body….but all those languages, all those voices! We heard only a few languages this morning, but the Book of Acts tells us that people from every nation under heaven were there that day, and that each one heard the disciples speaking in the native language of each. Visitors from Rome, residents of Mesopotamia, and Arabs heard them speaking about God’s deeds of power. Egyptians heard fluent Egyptian, Pamphylians heard perfect Pamphylian!
Do you hear what I hear? Bishop Gray heard, and has been repeating it to us over and over again. Filled with the Holy Spirit, living as the Body of Christ, our first and most essential act is to proclaim the good news to the whole world, and not just to people who speak the same language that we do. That may mean learning Spanish or Swedish or Pamphylian, but language isn’t just about ethnicity, nationality, or geography. The Woods know that – Nicholas and Henley and Ashby speak to them all the time. They don’t use words, but their parents and siblings still understand, mostly….
The truth is, we all speak many languages, whether we know French or German or just English. Our words and actions and voices and memories and emotions, our hands and faces and posture, our experiences and our silences, all of who we are speaks. Recognizing this, our baptismal covenant calls us to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.
Each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. This morning, an Episcopal parish in Pennsylvania is reading the gospel in many languages….all of which are English. Some of the voices are reading right from the bible. Some are telling the story in their own words. There are male and female voices, very young and very old voices, soft and loud voices. There are tired voices, excited voices, angry voices, anxious voices, hesitant voices, fearful voices, grieving voices. One Spirit, one Body….all those languages, all those voices at once speaking the same gospel, the same good news. Is one of them your native language? Perhaps several of them you understand, mostly….
The same Spirit rests in each one of us, and as Christ’s Body we are sent into a cacophonous world. Taking a deep breath or two or more, we are inspired, empowered to plunge deep into life, to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ first and especially in the lives of those no one else wants to speak to or listen to, those who are lost in their own languages, and those who have retreated into wordlessness. To learn to speak these languages we will have to listen very carefully – they are sometimes only audible in a rattling cough, only visible in an outstretched hand, only understood in a shared experience.
And sometimes, we find ourselves not in the midst of cacophony but, rather, a profound silence. Grief and loss in waves overwhelm us, take our breath away, and we cannot find in any language a single word to speak. Paul gently reminds us that in these difficult times, the same Spirit, on the breath of God, intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.
Receive the Holy Spirit. We have good news for the world – a message of forgiveness and reconciliation and salvation, a story about God coming among us as close as our own breath. And we tell it best by listening, by engaging in the lives of our sisters and brothers, by hearing their voices and how they make meaning. Through the Holy Spirit, God is so intimately present in our lives – through the same Spirit we are present in one another’s lives, and that intimacy speaks volumes, silently or aloud, and even if we only understand one another mostly. One Spirit. One Body. Many members. Many languages. One Word, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
6 Easter B
Acts 11:19-30; Psalm 33:1-8, 18-22; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:9-17
Greg has on more than one occasion wondered if he might begin a sermon with a line from a movie he’s seen, and I’ve seen, and I suspect many of you have seen, more times than we can count. And I’m so sorry, Greg, but I’ve just got to use that line today and begin my sermon by saying that this morning’s readings are all about wuv, twue wuv.
Do you know that line? It’s from the movie The Princess Bride, spoken by a linguistically challenged pwiest presiding over the marriage of Princess Buttercup to the evil Prince Humperdinck. But she’s really in love with Wesley, a pirate who used to be the stable boy on her family’s farm, and the whole movie is about their belief that true love conquers all. Atop the Cliffs of Insanity, against the terrors of the Fire Swamp, even in the Pit of Despair, true love endures, giving Wesley and Buttercup each the strength to risk everything for a happy ending.
It’s a love story. But it’s not, the narrator assures us, a kissing story. Wesley and Buttercup aren’t the only ones who find strength in love and friendship. Two others join Wesley in his quest to be reunited with Buttercup, and they, too, are willing to risk their lives, all because of true love. They are perhaps the unlikeliest of friends – a princess, a pirate, a dim-witted but gentle giant, and a single-minded sword-happy Spaniard – but friends they become as they work side by side, their assorted skills intertwined, and in the end, true love does indeed conquer all.
Jesus said to his disciples, Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God….God is love. In our epistle and gospel readings today, taken together, the word “love” appears 36 times. This morning’s readings are all about love, true love, the kind worth risking everything for, the kind that conquers all. The kind that God has for us, revealed, the first letter of John says, in this way: God sent God’s Only Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent Jesus Christ to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins…. Now that’s a love story.
But Jesus wasn’t the only one who found strength in love. He picked up a few friends along the way, an unlikely bunch: fishermen, tax collectors, a few Pharisees, women, outsiders. And they would pick up a few more unlikely folks, women and men, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, slaves and free, and one of those, the writer of first John, would look back at the whole story and say, Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another….After all, the commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also, or their love is not true. Social activist Dorothy Day, whom many believed was as unlikely a saint as they come, put it bluntly, “We only really love God as much as we love the person we love least.” It seems our love of God is measured by our love of others. Will they know we are Christians by our love?
The Greek language used in Jesus’ day had three distinct words for “love,” each with a different nuance, but all meaning “love.” Today, in our language, we have the reverse – one word, “love,” with a thousand different meanings, so that it is often difficult to know exactly what we mean when we say we love someone or something, or if we really mean it at all. We know how we feel when we love and when we are loved, and how we feel when we are not. We speak of love beginning, and of love ending. We love cake more than ice cream, gardening more than eating vegetables, we love this person more than that person. At times we think we must earn love, and at times we think we must prove it. We place limits and measures on love, else why would the word “unlovable” exist?
And so we hear those who love God must also love their brothers and sisters and those thousand meanings swirl inside us. Well how much love is proof? Exactly which and how many brothers and sisters are proof? Is this like cake-love, or gardening-love, or, probably, person-love, but is it like this-person-love or that-person-love? Can I say, “ I love you” if I don’t feel it?
To tweak an observation from that single-minded sword-happy Spaniard, “Jesus, you keep using that word, love. I do not think it means what we think it means.” Not even the Greek words completely capture what love is, true love, the kind with which God loves us, because this love is not a thing or a feeling or a moment or a thought or a word but, rather, a motion, an action. Love is the source and sustenance and shape of life, always moving outward toward the other, toward the beloved. This love was revealed in Jesus, it was the shape of his life, always moving outward toward the other, no matter how likeable they were.
Love is not about how we feel. The cross was not exactly warm and fuzzy. Love is not about how we measure up. We only love because God loved us first – do you see, there's that motion? Love is not about how much we like our brothers and sisters. We’re not perfect, either, and yet we are beloved of God. Love is about how we live.
We live, Jesus said in the verses just before where we picked up today, we live as branches, and he is the vine, and God is the gardener who planted the vine. Love is the source and sustenance and shape of life, moving from the root through the vine to the branches so that they may bear fruit in a world that is starving for love. I am the vine, you are the branches, Jesus said. Abide in me.
Of course, the branches on a vine do not grow in the same way as branches on a tree, distinct from one another. Branches on a vine grow long and winding, and they twist around one another and by tendrils cling to one another so that it is difficult to tell where one branch ends and another begins. And they are all nourished and sustained from the same vine, planted by the same gardener. Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also because it is the same love. The branch in which love stops moving will wither and die. But the branch that abides in the vine, the branch through which love, true love, moves will live and will bear fruit.
And here, Jesus went on to say, is how you abide in me, here is how you let love shape your life: you love one another as I have loved you. You become part of one another’s lives, and find the unlikeliest of friends. You seek and serve me in those whom you would least like to love. You care for those who are hungry, hurting, grieving, or alone. You forgive. You lay down your life, and take up mine, and live my love story. Atop a cross, against the terrors of death, even in the pit of a tomb, true love endures, and there is a happily ever after.
That we could love as Jesus loves seems impossible, inconceivable. Who is less like us than he is, perfectly human, perfectly God, perfectly Love? Rem we are branches on his vine – we are not asked to find this love within ourselves but, rather, to abide in Jesus, to let the love of God move through us, to let it sustain and shape our lives to make them fruitful. Not perfect, God knows we’re not like that, not yet – we’re still growing, you see. But there is fruit where love is moving.
Love is moving down on the coast, where the unlikeliest of companions from all over the world come together at Camp Coast Care to work; where “liberal” and “conservative” are meaningless words because we are all branches; where entire congregations have laid down the lives they once knew and are taking up a new life and ministry directed outward in their devastated communities.
Love is moving throughout this diocese, where congregations are increasing their budgets for outreach; where campers come together and form lifelong friendships; where a new church has been planted for the first time in 30 years.
Love is moving right here, where we welcome the community in our new building; where those who are sick or hurting are prayed for by name each day; where young and old, women and men, rich and poor, black and white, come together to worship, sometimes the unlikeliest of friends, but branches intertwined.
Beloved, friends, we are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord, one in the vine. Let us love one another, because love is from God. Let us walk with each other, let us walk hand in hand. Let us work with each other, let us work side by side. And they will know we are Christians by our love, true love. Amen.
Greg has on more than one occasion wondered if he might begin a sermon with a line from a movie he’s seen, and I’ve seen, and I suspect many of you have seen, more times than we can count. And I’m so sorry, Greg, but I’ve just got to use that line today and begin my sermon by saying that this morning’s readings are all about wuv, twue wuv.
Do you know that line? It’s from the movie The Princess Bride, spoken by a linguistically challenged pwiest presiding over the marriage of Princess Buttercup to the evil Prince Humperdinck. But she’s really in love with Wesley, a pirate who used to be the stable boy on her family’s farm, and the whole movie is about their belief that true love conquers all. Atop the Cliffs of Insanity, against the terrors of the Fire Swamp, even in the Pit of Despair, true love endures, giving Wesley and Buttercup each the strength to risk everything for a happy ending.
It’s a love story. But it’s not, the narrator assures us, a kissing story. Wesley and Buttercup aren’t the only ones who find strength in love and friendship. Two others join Wesley in his quest to be reunited with Buttercup, and they, too, are willing to risk their lives, all because of true love. They are perhaps the unlikeliest of friends – a princess, a pirate, a dim-witted but gentle giant, and a single-minded sword-happy Spaniard – but friends they become as they work side by side, their assorted skills intertwined, and in the end, true love does indeed conquer all.
Jesus said to his disciples, Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God….God is love. In our epistle and gospel readings today, taken together, the word “love” appears 36 times. This morning’s readings are all about love, true love, the kind worth risking everything for, the kind that conquers all. The kind that God has for us, revealed, the first letter of John says, in this way: God sent God’s Only Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent Jesus Christ to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins…. Now that’s a love story.
But Jesus wasn’t the only one who found strength in love. He picked up a few friends along the way, an unlikely bunch: fishermen, tax collectors, a few Pharisees, women, outsiders. And they would pick up a few more unlikely folks, women and men, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, slaves and free, and one of those, the writer of first John, would look back at the whole story and say, Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another….After all, the commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also, or their love is not true. Social activist Dorothy Day, whom many believed was as unlikely a saint as they come, put it bluntly, “We only really love God as much as we love the person we love least.” It seems our love of God is measured by our love of others. Will they know we are Christians by our love?
The Greek language used in Jesus’ day had three distinct words for “love,” each with a different nuance, but all meaning “love.” Today, in our language, we have the reverse – one word, “love,” with a thousand different meanings, so that it is often difficult to know exactly what we mean when we say we love someone or something, or if we really mean it at all. We know how we feel when we love and when we are loved, and how we feel when we are not. We speak of love beginning, and of love ending. We love cake more than ice cream, gardening more than eating vegetables, we love this person more than that person. At times we think we must earn love, and at times we think we must prove it. We place limits and measures on love, else why would the word “unlovable” exist?
And so we hear those who love God must also love their brothers and sisters and those thousand meanings swirl inside us. Well how much love is proof? Exactly which and how many brothers and sisters are proof? Is this like cake-love, or gardening-love, or, probably, person-love, but is it like this-person-love or that-person-love? Can I say, “ I love you” if I don’t feel it?
To tweak an observation from that single-minded sword-happy Spaniard, “Jesus, you keep using that word, love. I do not think it means what we think it means.” Not even the Greek words completely capture what love is, true love, the kind with which God loves us, because this love is not a thing or a feeling or a moment or a thought or a word but, rather, a motion, an action. Love is the source and sustenance and shape of life, always moving outward toward the other, toward the beloved. This love was revealed in Jesus, it was the shape of his life, always moving outward toward the other, no matter how likeable they were.
Love is not about how we feel. The cross was not exactly warm and fuzzy. Love is not about how we measure up. We only love because God loved us first – do you see, there's that motion? Love is not about how much we like our brothers and sisters. We’re not perfect, either, and yet we are beloved of God. Love is about how we live.
We live, Jesus said in the verses just before where we picked up today, we live as branches, and he is the vine, and God is the gardener who planted the vine. Love is the source and sustenance and shape of life, moving from the root through the vine to the branches so that they may bear fruit in a world that is starving for love. I am the vine, you are the branches, Jesus said. Abide in me.
Of course, the branches on a vine do not grow in the same way as branches on a tree, distinct from one another. Branches on a vine grow long and winding, and they twist around one another and by tendrils cling to one another so that it is difficult to tell where one branch ends and another begins. And they are all nourished and sustained from the same vine, planted by the same gardener. Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also because it is the same love. The branch in which love stops moving will wither and die. But the branch that abides in the vine, the branch through which love, true love, moves will live and will bear fruit.
And here, Jesus went on to say, is how you abide in me, here is how you let love shape your life: you love one another as I have loved you. You become part of one another’s lives, and find the unlikeliest of friends. You seek and serve me in those whom you would least like to love. You care for those who are hungry, hurting, grieving, or alone. You forgive. You lay down your life, and take up mine, and live my love story. Atop a cross, against the terrors of death, even in the pit of a tomb, true love endures, and there is a happily ever after.
That we could love as Jesus loves seems impossible, inconceivable. Who is less like us than he is, perfectly human, perfectly God, perfectly Love? Rem we are branches on his vine – we are not asked to find this love within ourselves but, rather, to abide in Jesus, to let the love of God move through us, to let it sustain and shape our lives to make them fruitful. Not perfect, God knows we’re not like that, not yet – we’re still growing, you see. But there is fruit where love is moving.
Love is moving down on the coast, where the unlikeliest of companions from all over the world come together at Camp Coast Care to work; where “liberal” and “conservative” are meaningless words because we are all branches; where entire congregations have laid down the lives they once knew and are taking up a new life and ministry directed outward in their devastated communities.
Love is moving throughout this diocese, where congregations are increasing their budgets for outreach; where campers come together and form lifelong friendships; where a new church has been planted for the first time in 30 years.
Love is moving right here, where we welcome the community in our new building; where those who are sick or hurting are prayed for by name each day; where young and old, women and men, rich and poor, black and white, come together to worship, sometimes the unlikeliest of friends, but branches intertwined.
Beloved, friends, we are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord, one in the vine. Let us love one another, because love is from God. Let us walk with each other, let us walk hand in hand. Let us work with each other, let us work side by side. And they will know we are Christians by our love, true love. Amen.
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