announcements for December 4th

There are many items coming up this month:
December 7th - Bible Study in the undercroft at church with Darel Olson 2:20 - 4:00
Mending Wings Dinner - 5:30
December 9 + 10 - Missoula Children's Theater Production at Wapato High School
December 17 - Posada 5:00 Campbell Farm
December 24 - 5:00 Christmas Eve Service at Christ Church
11:00 Christmas Eve Service at Toppenish United Methodist Church
December 25 - NO SUNDAY SERVICE

Remember to return your pledge card.

Remember your gift for the St. Michael's Outreach - due Sunday December 11th.

Prayer List: Joan, Joe and family, Jim, Carrie and Mike, Lynn and Dave, David, Crisol, Christian and family, Beth, Ryan, Josh and family and friends, Carol and family, Alma, J.B., Dorothy, Bob and Laura, Mark, David N, Kathy, Lori, Belinda, Dionna, Ashley, Grace, Muriel, Chris, Oney, Joe, Darlene, Lloyd, Mildren and Jeff.

Church Announcements for the week of August 28, 2011:
*Saturday, September 3rd 7pm - Miss Wapato Pagent at Wapato High School
Jennifer Cruz is a candidate - Come and support her!

*September 5th - Labor Day - Wapato Harvest Festival, Wapato

*Sunday, September 11 - Worship Service Commemorating 9/11. Details to follow.

*Interfaith Observance "A Time for Wholeness and Peace". Sunday, Sept. 11, 4 pm. Yakima Millennium Plaza S. 3rd St., Yakima (across from the Capital Theater)

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2pm at Christ Church. Ecumenical Fellowship and Bible study group. Everyone is always welcome.

Wednesday, Sept. 28th Preconvention Delegate and Clergy Gatherings with Bishop Waggoner. All Saint's Episcopal Church, Richland. Delegate Gathering, 4 - 7 (light supper provided). Clergy Gathering 10 - 3.

September 10th - Veteran's Workshop and Veteran's Support. 9-3 United Christian Church 317 S. 41st St. Yakima

Prayer List:Beth, Ryan, Josh and Family and Friends, Carol and family, Alma, J.B., Dorothy, Bob and family, Willie, Marilyn, David, Sherida, Paul, Carmen, Julie, Judy, Becky, Laura, Mark, David N, Kathy, Lori, Belinda, Dionna, Ashley, Grace, Muriel, Chris, Oney, Joe, Brian, Darlene, Lloyd, Mildred, Jeff, Crisol.

Sunday Aug 28, Proper 17 After Pentecost

This is part two of the last week’s sermon.  You will remember that Jesus called Peter the Rock and I said it was because Peter had correctly identified Jesus, and I drew a parallel between this estimate of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, with our own estimate of ourselves as children of God, Created in the Image of God, members of the Body of Christ.

Well it didn’t take long before Jesus went from calling Peter the Rock upon which we were all to build our faith.  To calling him Satan!  And demanding that he get behind him!  That he not get in his way.  So well, it is one thing to really know who we are, and to know who Jesus is, quite another to follow the implications of Christ’s identity and our own identity and be really willing to go where such a realization leads us.

Peter was not willing to accept that Messiah, Son of the Living God, lead inevitably to death on the cross.  But this was not just what Jesus knew he must face.  Jesus says, this is the fate for all of us.  I spoke last week about how this realization of who we are gives us strength to face every trial that comes our way. Gives us strength take up our cross just as Christ did.  But in today’s scripture we go one step further.  It is not really a choice.  If you want to follow Jesus taking up your cross is a requirement, actually, an inevitability.  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  If we are really going to be following Jesus, that is what we are going to be doing, that is the path we are going to be on, one that leads to the cross.

None of us really want that.  We wouldn’t wish it on anyone else either.  We certainly would not readily accept it as the fate of our loved ones.   Calling someone Satan seems pretty harsh when we too would naturally say, “now wait a minute.  Think twice about this, are you really sure you want to” …  and we can fill in the blank with all the risky schemes, half baked ideas, dangerous antics from which we want to protect those we care about.   At the same time we are proud of loved ones when we know they have sacrificed so much for the good of others, when they have shown themselves to be heroes in the face of great personal risk,  when they have made that ultimate sacrifice our hearts overflow with grief and pain and loss as well as ….  Well I think of Mary as she knew what lay ahead for her own child, and scriptures says, “She pondered all these things in her heart.”

None of us want this for ourselves either, a life of sacrifice and suffering, not really what you dream about when imaging your career choices.  Is that really what we signed up for?  Some of us might fantasize about being saints. I’ll admit St Francis is my hero, but the one who sits in the beautiful field of flowers, and talks to the animals.  Nevertheless, we come face to face with the reality of our call.  Can you imagine the disciple’s first reaction to this exclamation for Jesus?  “Say what?”  There were so many other possible outcomes they could have had in mind.  The old standard:  revenge on our enemies, the Romans.  That would be good.  What about a seat at the right hand of God?  That would be nice.  What about making us all kings and queens of your new reign on earth?  What about all that peace on earth stuff and good will to men, that sounded nice, can’t we have that.  Then there is that scene in Jesus Christ Superstar, the disciple are singing as they fall asleep at the last supper, “Then when we retire we can write the gospels and they’ll all talk about us when were gone.”  That sounds nice.

For most of us it is just a nice quiet life that we long for, and at first glance that seems to be what Paul is talking about in his letter.  He is talking about loving one another and being good and living in harmony.  We can go for all of that.  He uses words like “joyful, patient, faithful, hospitable.”  All those nice value words, like the one’s up on the electronic boards of all the businesses throughout Yakima.  The word of the month is “Consideration.”  Sure we can go for that.   As much as possible live at peace with everyone, now that sounds like the nice quiet life we are after. 

But then he says stuff like bless those who persecute you, bless not curse.  Persecute, why would anyone be persecuting us, and why in the world would I be blessing such mean people?  But it turns out that hidden in this passage are some other things that begin to hint as something even more radical.  He says “associate with people of low estate,” that is hang out with poor people.  He says, don’t repay evil for evil, but repay evil with good.  “Now wait a second.”  Paul says, don’t take revenge.  We know about all that forgiveness stuff.  We can even put that word up on the reader board.  But come on.  We have to be able to draw the line somewhere, to tell the difference between us the good people and the bad people. That’s what being law abiding is all about, good people get rewarded, bad people get punished.    But Paul says, echoing Jesus, “Love your enemies.”  In fact if your enemy is hungry feed him.  What!  Come on now!   If he is thirsty give  him something to eat. 

“Love your enemies.”  I have not seen that one on one of those signs at the banks yet.  We Christians let it roll of the tongue like it one of those platitudes, all of this stuff we imagine is not controversial at all, does not call into question the way the world is set up at , is not really a radical alternative to the way the world is set up.  We imagine it is all quite reasonable,  no one would look at us like we were crazy, no one would think we were dangerously subversive.  “Love your enemies.”  Right.  Love Saddaam Hussien, Love Osama Ben Ladin. Love Adolf Hitler.  Come on folks do we really believe this!?

But we don’t really have to go that far to know that we really don’t buy into this.  How many of you have been hurt by someone, violated and victimized, who among us hasn’t had someone say something bad about you, been on the opposite side of issue from us, and who hasn’t let our anger boil, had bad thoughts about someone, and so on.   Evil people deserve what they get.  Aren’t we pretty clear about who my people are who the others are.  Don’t we have our group and know who is not in our group.  Don’t we want our team to win, and the other team to lose.  The world is set up to have good guys and bad guys, to have winners and losers, victims and abusers, oppressors and the oppressed.  It is the survival of the fittest, the whole natural world works this way, hunters and preys.  It is just the way the world is set up.

And the Bible seems to confirm this sort of thing.  Back to the story of Moses. Last week Moses was a baby in the bulrushes and his people were suffering greatly.  God hears the cries of the oppressed and brings them a deliverer.  This week we have the call of Moses at the burning bush.  God is telling Moses all about the Promised Land he is about to give to the Israelites.

“ I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.

But this land Promised Land already belonged to someone else, other people were already living there.  It was their home!  In order for the Israelites to have a promised land they had to take it from someone else.  And remember the Song of Moses, how we are asked every Easter Vigil to gloat over the drowning of the Egyptian army.  What follows in scripture is the bloody recounting of a ruthless God who demands genocide and the complete elimination of all these others who stand in the way of what God wants for his people.

It is really hard for me to stomach.  But that is the story.  The oppressed people get to be liberating and then violently overthrow other people and kick them out of their land - with God justifying, commanding this kind of invasion.  Some biblical scholars imagine the real underlying story to be more about a peasant revolt in Palestine. But whether it is a conquest or a peasant revolt the story still is about the liberation of an oppressed people, and about overthrowing another people and the labels of oppressed and oppressor get attached to each of these respective nations in history and we then know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.  And to this day many of us believe that Israel is always the good guy and the Palestinians are somehow just like all those ancient people Canaanites, Hittites etc they are always the bad guys.

A number of years ago we brought a Palestinian woman to the Campbell Farm.  I forget her name.  She was a member of the Presbyterian Peace Makers Delegation touring the county, a social worker, a Palestinian Christian.  But I will always remember one story she told.  Back before 1948 it was Palestinians who were living in the land, in their homes, and it was the Israelis who were the terrorists fighting for what they believed was their land actually against the British.  And when it was given to them by UN Declaration, more war erupted  with Arab nations and after the war, it was Palestinians 700,000 of them who are forcefully removed from their homes and Jewish families who moved in to take over these homes.  This Palestinian Christian told a story of coming to a meeting once in Jerusalem at a home that had now become the offices of Jewish social service organization.  It was a meeting to foster Jewish Palestinian dialogue around a particular social issue at the time.  The home to which she came to attend this meeting turned out to be her old family home.  The piano she learned how to play on as a little girl was still there in the living room.  Can you imagine the pain of entering into your former home, still seeing the things that once belonged to you, that were forcibly taken from you?  Asked to enter as a guest, to be a part of a dialogue, an attempt at civil discourse.  To be a victim of this sort of violation and still not be about perpetuating evil, seeking revenge, but being about something completely different.  Being a peace maker.  To walk another radically different path that still seeks liberation, still seeks justice, but also heeds the call of Christ to love your enemies.

Yahweh, I AM WHO I AM is the name God gave to Moses.  It can also be translated I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.  I don’t know exactly how we get from the God of just Israel, to a God who is on the side of the poor and oppressed wherever they are to be found.  To a God who’s answer to the world is not more violence and oppression, but a boundless love, an unwavering commitment to peace, a radical hospitality that welcomes all, friend or foe into the household of God.  How do we get from My God to the One God who is God and Father of us all? 

Jesus answers this with the inevitability of the cross.  We who are call to follow Jesus are inevitably crucified on the structures of this world, just as he was.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[i] and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.   If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” Your love must exceed everyone else’s in order for the world to truly change.  Perhaps we are called to let go of some power we have over someone else.  Perhaps we are called to give until it hurts to provide for people who are left out.  Perhaps we are called to include in our circle someone we were sure was our enemy.  Perhaps we are called to be the first to lay down our weapons, open our homes, speak a word of peace.  In all of this we are called to lay down on the structures of this world, take up our place alongside Jesus, willing to risk all ourselves in order to destroy all that stands in the way of new community that is build on the Good News that we are all Children of God, Created in the Image of God, Members of the Body of Christ.

Sunday Aug 21, 2011 Proper 16 After Pentecost

“Our Help is in the Name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

The line from our Psalm today is from the Opening Sentences to Compline. We don’t get to say this service much unless we are closing the day’s activities say at a church retreat.  Compline is the last service before the night fully takes over and we go to sleep.  It is a service that takes place in that liminal, in between space between waking and sleeping and full of images of life and death and light and darkness.  Prayers about Jesus as the light and life of us all, in this time when from our childhood we have had to be coaxed to bed, assured that there were no monsters in the closet, that this sleep was not forever, but we  would wake again in the morning.   It is the quintessential time of transition that conjures up all sorts of images of transition in our life.  And at this time we call upon the Name of the Lord as our only help, secure in the knowledge that it is the Maker of heaven and earth who established the strong foundation upon which our lives depend.

Transitions are always times in which the stuff we have taken for granted are shaken, our identity can be called into question as our normal circumstances and the stuff we relied upon change.  We are often found in these times searching to hang on to who we are, what we believe, as all around us things are changing and we often have to begin again to redefine ourselves and bring ourselves through the transition.  We look for something solid upon which to stand, upon which to hang on to, upon which to rely.

The Israelites in the Exodus passage were in a time of transition.  The famous line “Then a new king, who knew not Joseph, came to power in Egypt,” – this speaks of a time when all that was familiar passed away and they found themselves once again in a strange land without the protections and status they had enjoyed before.  This time of transition led to oppression as the new folks in charge had no idea of the history of the Jewish people in Egypt, no longer valued them, enslaved them, saw them now as threats and moved to extinguish them.

This was a on a societal level, a whole people who’s status suddenly changed because their protectors had been forgotten.  But I can’t help think about this on a personal level.  I know that all of us go through transitions.  Work is a good example of this.  I know in my own position, one of my many jobs I have, we have just merged with another organization and suddenly the community I took for granted and the position I held in that community, the direction and purpose of that community of which I was a part, all of it has suddenly changed with the addition of new people, new visions, new structures.  And suddenly everything is up for negotiation.  Who are we?  Am I still a valued member of this community?  What is my role now?  Will we be able to unite the disparate cultures that have come together?  Will the things that I valued still be here?  Will there be a place for me in this new organization?  Who am I and what do I want to do?  All of this up for grabs again in this moment of transition. 

I know that many of us are going through the same kind of thing.  A new corporation takes over a company we have been a part of for years and suddenly everything is different.  A new principal comes to run a school and suddenly the programs that were valued before are all renegotiated.  Others of us are in between jobs and in this uncertain economic times we struggle to hang on to a sense of our worth and purpose as the weeks and months go on without a “real job.”  Some of have just retired or are considering retirement, and in this time of transition we come back to the basic questions of who am I now, and what am I going to do now?  Retirement may be good news, it also comes with all the questions that any transition brings about who we are, what we have to hang on to, what are the solid foundations of ourselves that stay the same from one transition to the next.  Who are we really?

Going back to the Israelites.  This question of “Who are we really?”  is one that oppressed and disenfranchised people ask constantly as they struggle to hang on to their humanity and dignity in the face of vilification and stereotypes and prejudice designed to keep them down, keep them enslaved.  “Who are we really?”  It reminds me of the preacher’s proclamation during the civil rights movement, “You are Somebody!”  I just watched the movie The Help about black maids in the south in the 60’s.  It was through the telling of their own story, finding their own voice that these women found themselves again, defined themselves rather than being defined by the incessant, relentless definition of who they were reinforced by the white community that attempted to keep them in their place.  I think also of the youth we are coming to know in Mending Wings, the Campbell Farm and the Yakama Christian Mission.  Self esteem is a major issue as the Native America community seeks to define themselves and know their own worth in the face of hundreds of years of domination by another culture.  We often come to these communities as though they were “so needy” and we reinforce their subordinate position by keeping them always as folks who “need our help.”  But new strategies coming from the National Episcopal Church in consultation with Native Communities are seeking to overcome centuries of oppression and deal with generational trauma by discovering new ways to heal people through story-telling, and focus on Asset Based Community Development which emphasizes strengths rather than deficits.

Paul talks about this in the epistle reading for today.  He says make a sober estimate of your selves.  He says you ought not think too highly of yourselves, but I would add you ought not think too lowly of yourselves as well.  He says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  I want you to imagine these words being spoken to you in those times of transition, in those times when the old bosses are gone and the new King who knew not Joseph is now in power.  I want you to imagine if you can what it might be like to hear these words after years of abuse, years of oppression, years of being dominated.  Do not conform to what the powers of this world have been saying about you, leading you to believe, but allow yourselves to be transformed by God, by a true vision of who you are, by how God sees you.  You are God’s beloved child, God’s own creation. You are a full fledged member of the Body of Christ and you have been gifted from above with just the gifts you need to contribute to the whole body in a special and unique way!

Knowing this is what Paul calls our “spiritual worship.”  That word spiritual is also translated “reasonable worship.”  I like that.  It goes with sober estimate in the following verses.  We have all sorts of things that slant our perceptions, warp our ability to see, all sorts of emotional trauma that gets in the way of us seeing ourselves for who we really are.  But the central act of worship is to present ourselves before God the way God sees us.  Scripture uses the phrase “living sacrifice” here, and to our ears sacrifice sometimes implies that we are continuing to participate in an abusive system.  But not so in this passage.  Here it is all about transformation.  To be transformed by the Spirit of God, to enter into this profound mystical relationship with God in prayer and worship that allows us to see ourselves for who we really are.  God’s own creation, Child of God.  We are the Body of Christ and individually members of that Body.  Each of us, as we come here, sometimes, alone, uncertain, not knowing our place, we discover in worship that we are one with everything, one with the Living God.  This is the foundation, the Rock, as today’s Gospel says that can keep us strong and steady through all the trials and transitions of our life.  But not just strength to continue to take the abuse, but like the women of the Help, courage to take great risks for the sake of transforming the world.

This is what is behind the proclamation that Peter makes in today’s Gospel.  We do not get to know who we are unless we can know who Jesus Christ is.  Peter’s proclamation:  “You are Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the Living God.”  This is not just a prophet before us, this person we worship is the Son of God, one with the Living God and that is why through him we can be made one with God as well. 

This is a profound statement of trust in God at a moment of profound transition and trial.  What Peter said to Jesus was as much for Jesus as for any of us.  It was Peter who defined Jesus, told the truth about who he really was and it was this that gave Jesus the strength to face the cross, his own death, a moment of ultimate transition, trial, uncertainty, doubt, in which Jesus too had to hang on to who he really was.  We know when he finally makes it to the Garden of Gethsemane, he sweated blood, he asked God to take this cup from him, he doubted and was tempted to turn away himself from who he really was and what his calling was.  But Peter knew him, knew him for who he really was, and it was this recognition of true self, that gave him strength, this Rock of Faith that he called upon in his own time of trial. 

Just as Peter said these words to Jesus, so we speak words of encouragement and hope to ourselves.  We can stand on this same Rock as we come to know ourselves and call others to be who they really are beloved children of God, created in God’s image, full fledge members of the Body of Christ, One with God.  It is this proclamation that gives us the strength to face our own trials, but more, it is this knowledge that gives us strength to take up our own cross for the sake of the world, to present ourselves as a living sacrifice, our spiritual worship, and to be united with Christ in his sacrifice for the whole world.  We offer this Good News, this word of liberation from all the ways the world defines and oppresses us.

I pray that we can like the Psalmist say to everyone facing the nighttime of difficulties, “Our Help is in the Name of the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth” and we can know ourselves to be above all else children of this Living God, Created in the Image of God, members of the Body of Christ capable of overcoming all that is set before us.  AMEN.

Pentecost Sermon June 12, 2011

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”

Today we are here to share a joint communion between brothers and sisters of several denominations. We gather together as Disciples of Christ, United Methodists, and Episcopalians. Anyone else out there from a different tradition? We know the sharing of this meal by different names, The Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, which is a fancy Greek word for Thanksgiving.

The United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church have officially entered into a time of Interim Shared Communion as we move toward the day of Full Communion. All of our denominations are in one way or another in dialogue as we seek to live out concretely the Prayer of Jesus, “That we all may be one, even as our God is one.”

It is fitting that we gather together on this day, Pentecost, meaning basically 50 days since Easter. Pentecost also coincides with the Jewish Feast of Weeks. It can be tied to Passover and the giving of the Law, 50 days from these events, a part of the salvation history of the Jewish people. But it also relates to the underlying agricultural festivals tied to creation. The Feast of Weeks is also a harvest celebration, a time to give thanks for the fruit of our labor and again 50 days from the festival of First Fruits, all tied to the various grain harvests in the Middle East. Seven as you may know is an important number in Jewish tradition. And seven times seven is 49, add one is 50 and this is a great symbol of completion, of culmination.

We have been working together, many of us for many years in this community. Recently we have been doing lots of stuff together, feeding young people at Mending Wings for example. Some of us have been meeting regularly for bible study and leadership has been meeting monthly in our Ecumenical group. We have been working together on our joint Organizing for Mission project. Together we have raised lots of money for hunger relief both here and internationally. So today is a culmination, a celebration of our work together as we seek to model our unity in Jesus Christ. On this 50^th day, this day of culmination.

But today is also a day of new beginning. It was originally the birth of the church, when the promised gift of the Holy Spirit was given and filled all those gathered together on that day. We say happy birthday to the church, and we look forward to another year of our life together and imagine what we might accomplish together in the future.

We do see also how far we have to go to get to the vision of church that was described in that first celebration. Then, it says, all were gathered together in one place. I am not suggesting that we need to go backward and reclaim some lost glory days of the church. Many of us know all too well that the past is gone. But even what we had when our various buildings were filled with people is not the vision put forth by Pentecost. It is a vision of all gathered together in one place. In the early church it was a few disciples who had gathered for the first time together to receive the Holy Spirit. Now in our recent history, the church has waxed and waned in numbers and spread and diversified throughout the world. But it has been for some time many different denominations and faith traditions. Ecumenical movements have come and gone, but that vision of unity remains elusive.

What does a new vision of unity in which we can celebrate our diversity look like? I really don’t know! But today is a celebration of the journey we are on to discover together what it might mean to be a visible sign of the unity we have in Jesus Christ. On this day, at least, we can begin to model a new vision of unity in diversity in which, at least on one day of the year, we can all gather together in one place and be a visible sign of unity. We have a long way to go, we are painfully aware of who is missing from our circle today. Our Circle? What might it mean for us to be a part of circle that is not really ours at all, but one drawn by God to include all of God’s children?

This vision of unity described in this first story was not just one of Christian Unity: the unity of Christian denominations and the Christian church. The people in the crowd that day described everyone who was there: “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

What does this mean indeed? It is a vision of the whole world able for a moment to hear and understand one another. A vision of the world in all its diversity, united. I am not again suggesting that we need to go back, rather this is a call for us to go foward. It was after all, perhaps a fleeting moment, come and gone, a glimpse of something yet to be fully realized. We call it the Kingdom of God. I like to call it the Community of Creation, a vision in which all can share in the blessing of God’s creation, in which there is place at the table for everyone and everything, in which we can truly celebrate all the incredible diversity of God’s creation and know that we are indeed one. But what does it mean to go forward toward this vision. What does it mean indeed! We also right now live in a community full of different languages and cultures and people from many nations, all sharing together this land. We live here also with all the plants and animals, with the river and sky and the valley and mountains. What indeed does it mean for us to live together celebrating our unity in diversity? We have a long way to go.

But this day can be for us a marker of our progress toward that vision as we seek in all we do to embody the unity we share in the Spirit of God.

I often think of our work together as an artist’s work. Monet, the French impressionist, painted a series of paintings of haystacks. He painted them from every angle, at every time of day and every season, with lots of different colors and textures. Imagine the intensity of this kind of play or work, depending on how you look at it. I sometimes say that he was trying to get it right, but there is no right or wrong here, there is only getting to know that haystack in all it possibilities, just getting to know in all its various forms and expressions, one field of haystacks, in all its depth, in all its variety.

That seems to me what our life together is all about. We are called to model a new kind of community in which all can be included. A new vision of unity made possible by God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. God has made us all one, God proclaims us all one, and our task is to live into that reality, to be who we are. One people in filled with the Spirit of God. As God is One so we are all One! Take out your paint brushes brothers and sisters and go to work, playing with that image. Draw for each other a picture of what this unity looks like, find your inspiration from the Holy Spirit, and play with all the colors on your pallet, spend time exploring this vision of unity every day and throughout the year. This is your liturgy, the work of the people, your calling, your mission, your sacred play. To be one as God is one.

On this day, we come together at this table to join together once again in sacred play. We take these symbols of bread and wine and we say that they are the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and we gather around the table a visible sign of the unity we have in Jesus Christ, we say that we too are the body of Christ a visible sign of unity of all of creation. I want to tell you that whole world is the Body of Christ, these elements of creation, bread and wine, proclaimed by us here to be the Body and Blood of Christ. Do we fully understand what we are doing? Hardly. Are we a full and complete expression of this unity as we look around the room today? Hardly. But nevertheless on this day we have arrived at a culmination. We are here today to celebrate the fruits of our labor and most importantly the fruit of Spirit of God at work in us. But every end is also a new beginning, moving us forward into the future. Every end is a beginning.

One of my favorite quotes from St Francis is, “Brothers let us begin in earnest.” He said this at the beginning of his ministry and he said on his death bed. Sometimes we can get frustrated when we think of how far we have to go to truly model the kind of unity that God would have us be. It always seems like we are always just beginning. But on the other hand if we imagine the infinite task, the eternal play involved in just getting to know a haystack, then we can turn our lives from dreaded task to sacred play. The truth is we are always just beginning to model, unravel, know in all its depth, the mystery of this infinite Spirit of God that unites all of the incredible infinite diversity of creation.

And so brothers and sisters let us begin in earnest. Come share this birthday meal, which is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet which we will share one day with the whole world gathered together all in one place. AMEN

Sermon July 17, 2011 Proper 11, Year A

One theme in today’s lessons is the question of discernment. How do we know God’s will? In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that we have to leave the wheat and weeds growing together in the field until harvest because if we try to pull out the weeds we may damage the wheat. It’s hard to know the difference between the good seed and the evil seed, but it is also about just logistics and practicality. It’s just hard to separate weeds from a field of wheat, hard to separate out the good from the evil. I went to see the final Harry Potter movie on Friday. And not to give it away if folks haven’t read the book or are interested in seeing it, but if you read any of them you know that this same question runs through the books. It is pretty obvious who the main villain is, but throughout the books the allegiance of many of the main characters is uncertain, often in question. Even Harry Potter the hero himself has a strange connection to Voldemort, the villain, and is often questioning himself, others are doubting him, and not to give it away, separating the good from the evil even in Harry Potter is saved to the very end.

In today’s Gospel, who is good and who evil, these kinds of judgments are left to God and the angels, its not our business. It is hard to really gauge our own best of intentions let alone those of others. Decisions we make are often able to be second guessed, and we struggle with what is the right thing to do in a world that often gives us choices between the lesser of two evils. And when we look inwardly we see that that line between good and evil runs right through the middle of all of us. Outwardly, life is at best ambiguous. It’s hard to tell if things are getting better or worse, and when we look inwardly at ourselves it is so easy to doubt our motivations. Are we really following God and some higher calling or are we really being somehow selfish, tragically misguided.

But there are moments of clarity that we put our faith in. That night in the desert Jacob had his future pretty clearly laid out for him. Well at least the broad brush strokes: He was going to get the land, have abundant off spring, and be a blessing to many etc. Maybe this vision was not so clear on the details of how this was going to happen. So it with us. “We pray, thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done.” We’ve got the broad brush strokes of the Kingdom of God as where we are headed, what we are anticipating. We know that Jesus is our example and we are called to follow him, even to the cross, and we have a whole list of the fruits of the Spirit and a sense of the kind of people we are called to be and the kind of community we are called to model together as the Body of Christ. But we don’t always get the details of exactly how that is going to come about, and we don’t have any certainty or guarantee of exactly what our role is going to be in the grand scheme of things.

What Jacob did know though when he woke up was, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I did not know it.” This little place in between Beer-sheba and Haran was non other than the house of God, the gateway to heaven. He got both a glimpse of the future, but also a glimpse of the present, the here and now in a new light. And it became now a past moment that he always wanted to remember. Jacob marked it with a stone, a pillar, and called the place Bethel: House of God. We mark holy places and set them aside because something important happened to us. How many of you have holy places, special moments where something deep and powerful happened to you? You may or may not think of them as Holy. But we all have places where you learned something important about yourself, where you confronted something, a danger inward or outward that you triumphed over, where you saw or felt something that transported you beyond ourselves or deeper into ourselves than you had ever gone before. We have moments in our family history, the birth of child, a marriage, a death which we mark and memorialize, maybe not with pillars of stone but at least with photo albums. These are moments that we know that we have to remember. And we spend a lot of time re-membering them. That is what we do every Sunday here at the altar, re- member, and bring forward again, make present the Last Supper, but also the many ways that Jesus fed us, the Wedding at Cana, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, all the ways that Jesus brought forth for us a taste of the heavenly banquet, a vision of the whole world sharing in the blessing, having a place at the table. This is an encounter with the Holy.

So this is a first step to discerning God’s will. We must know that everyone, at every moment, and in all places can encounter God and get a glimpse into heaven. All places are potentially holy places like sleeping out in the desert, or eating a meal together. We are in relationship to God’s through God’s creation and one another and the possibility of revelation is around us all the time, the world is constantly speaking to us.

I remember a moment in Heathrow Airport, in London, after I had taken my children around the world with Sheri’s ashes and I was thinking about how God has spoken to me on the trip and I suddenly realized as if for the first time that this was nothing unusual at all. God was speaking to people all the time. I looked around the airport. We were sitting at some tables is a coffee shop, people were browsing the newsstand nearby or sitting in chairs at their gates, and suddenly I realized that everyone was in some kind of relationship with God right at that moment. I began to imagine them all. That man over there just had a fight with his wife on the phone and in his anger he was having a hard time listening to God. This guy running to catch his flight was too busy to hear anything, though that doesn’t mean he wasn’t being called. That woman over there sitting quietly reading a book – you’d never know it to look at her - but she just had the most profound religious experience that will completely redefine her life, and she was utterly transported by it and maybe know one will ever know about it. That older man in the corner is confessing some deep pain that he is trying to let go of right there in front of me. This young man is dreaming of all the things he is going to do next in his life, he’s anxious and excited and scared all at once and he is trying to stay calm, praying for some peace. That woman also lost a loved one and is deep in thought about her grief grasping for some way to comfort herself and looking out into the darkness for some sense of a way to deal with her pain. That guy in the business suit with the lap top and the brief case, just made the biggest deal of his life, and he is awe struck by his good fortune and under his breath you can barely see his mouth move as he utters a silent thank you. And so on and so forth all around me people were in relationship to God, to some ultimate reality, a holiness beyond themselves that called them to respond to something deep within them, or to stretch beyond who they were, or to understand something new, or to able to receive a gift beyond measure.

The Psalmist says, Lord, "You know my sitting and my rising, you discern my thoughts, you trace my journeys and my resting places, acquainted with all my ways.” God knows you and you are in a relationship with the holy in all you do, everywhere you are, in all your relationships. You are surrounded by this holiness, in God you live and move and have your being. God knows you. The Psalm goes on, “You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me it is so high that I cannot attain it. . . I climb up to heaven and you are there, I make the grave my bed and you are there, I take wings, and dwell in the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.”

This awareness that God is guiding behind and before us, coaxing and calling us, and surrounding us on all sides – this may be the first step and the last step in discerning God’s will. All we really get to know. But this does not mean that we can know exactly what God is up to in our lives, in fact it is quite the opposite. This lead the Psalmist to exclaim, “How deep I find your thoughts, O God, how great the sum of them. To count them all, my life span would need to be like yours." Exactly. It turns out that it is enough, the beginning and end, just to have this wonderful knowledge that God is there, which is itself unattainable but through God’s revelation to us.

Nor does this great vision of being surrounded by God and upheld by God mean that we are immune to suffering. We are not guaranteed our personal safety just because God is watching out for us, or calling us to some grand purpose. In fact, again quite the opposite. More suffering, more pain, more risk, that might just be what lies ahead of us the more we follow Jesus. We follow him into uncertainty, risk, and what we can expect if anything at all is a cross, which we are called to take up. We like to think that if God has given us a particular ministry, God will take care of us and it. This may be true, but we have no idea about what “taking care of” means. What happens to each of us individually or how it is that our lives together play out to bring about the kingdom, all the details of how we get from here to there are not worked out really, for us to know at least. We have no idea exactly what our part in the grand scheme of things will be. We are a just a small part of cosmic story of the whole creation being made new again.

The passage from Romans speaks of “All of creation groaning in travail, waiting for the revelation of the children of God. We are apart of this cosmic context of what God is up to. In the words of Julian of Norwich, the 14^th Century Mystic who who had an incredible vision of all of creation like a hazelnut in the hand of God, “All shall be and all manner of thing shall be well.” She had this vision while contemplating the suffering of Christ on the cross. We are all suffering, groaning as in labor pains, waiting for a new creation to be born, in which the vision of the Just and Peaceable Kingdom of God will indeed come and God’s Will will indeed be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is what we wait for, no matter what, and it is this that transforms all of our lives now into glimpse of the holy, knowing that this God is not some far off God, in the future, but comes to us out of the future and surrounds us now with Love and Joy and Peace beyond measure….. We have the potential to encounter this God now in every moment of our lives no matter what. It is this reality that allows us to endure everything and anything for the sake of the Gospel.

I know that we are facing many decisions as a congregation. God is calling us all the time and in all places to follow him. God has said to us as surely as he said it to Jacob that we are a part of cosmic, universal grand work of God bringing about the healing of all of creation. This is God’s will. We pray for guidance as we should, even though we are not always clear about which way to turn, which particular fork in the road to take. Not always clear what it means to be faithful in any particular moment. Knowing that even if we chose wisely we will not be immune from risk or danger, or disaster even, there are no guarantees. But nevertheless, we can risk all because we know that no matter what we do, where we go, God is with us. And this wonderful amazing knowledge gives us one certainty and one certainty alone. One thing we believe, no matter what: “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Brothers and Sisters, find your holy place, know that God is with you and make this your prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is heaven.”

Sermon, Proper 20, Year C, September 19, 2010

Throughout the banking crisis we watched as banking executives continue to reward themselves with large bonuses even as the crisis continues. Every time a new round of bank bonuses is paid out, a public outcry follows. We consider it beyond reason and good conscience that those who presided over conditions that fueled the crisis and used public funds to bail themselves out, would then pay themselves lavish bonuses. We wonder what the bonuses are for since the performance of these executives does not seem to indicate these large sums of money. The unemployed may well ask, “Where’s my bailout?”

The bankers seem to turn a deaf ear and find various ways to defend their actions, saying the bailouts are necessary to fulfill obligations set by contracts. However it works, the message beneath it all remains, “This is the way the world works.” Only when the public outcry becomes loud enough, do these “leaders” reconsider.
In the Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about a dishonest manager. He’s too proud to beg and not strong enough for manual labor. He acts cleverly for his own benefit. He uses his position to make friends for himself so later he will have a place to go after losing his position. And then, we are amazed to here the master in Jesus’ parable commend the manager, though not for his dishonesty, but for his carefulness in his affairs of business.

Understanding Jesus’ commentary following the story is one of the most challenging in all the gospels … Is Jesus advising his followers to do likewise? Here is a more convincing interpretation… “Children of this age,” Jesus observes, understand how the world works and use it to their benefit, why do “Children of the light” not understand the ways of the Kingdom of God? … “While those who have the most at stake in this age make use of their understanding of “the way the world works” in order to shore up their own privilege and security, Children of the Light are advised to use their understanding of the way the Kingdom works in order to aim for a different goal, their welcome into “God’s home.” Children of the Light are those who respond to examples of “the way the world works” with witness to “the way the Kingdom works.”

But how does this Kingdom work? The idea of eternal homes gives us a glimpse…The dishonest manager was about to lose his means to earn a living and he made deals with who might be expected to repay him a favor by welcoming him into their homes… Jesus has told his followers to give to others without expecting anything in return and to give to those who have no other way of returning the gift. In giving without expecting return the Children of Light are anticipating their welcome not into the homes wealthy in the present age, but into God’s eternal home in the Kingdom.

God’s Kingdom is one of most abundant grace. I think that is one of the experiences of Mending Wings over the last year. We had the idea of offering something of ourselves and gifts from this congregation via the funds from the grant. Not everyone was physically present but everyone WAS present on Wednesday nights at Wapato Presbyterian Church with our thoughts and prayers. And we received so much more than was given. I’m sure each of us would reflect in a different way on the experience. Children of Light therefore respond to “the way the world works” with witness to “the way the inclusive Kingdom of God works.”

Jesus counsels his followers to use their wealth as a witness to the way God’s Kingdom works as opposed to making friends with the powerful in the present age.

The scriptures today call out a sense of extraordinary stress and despair over economic oppression with resulting poverty and the results of war that lead a people to cry out for help from God and to wonder with Jeremiah, “Is there a balm in Gilead?” and to affirm with Jesus, “You cannot serve both God and wealth.”

Francois is a refuge from Rwanda, after fleeing genocide. Jean is a refuge from Congo and narrowly escaped a brutal mass execution of the entire staff of the hospital he served. Both are professional men with Africa as their country of origin. Francois was a medical liaison training villages throughout the country in AIDS prevention. Jean worked as a microbiologist. They both lost family, friends, stability , hopes, dreams, jobs, their homeland.

After a long time, they came to Chicago, “a very foreign place.” They connected with a church in Evanston, Illinois and began attending a men’s prayer and study group. They had lost much, but not their faith in God. The leader of the prayer group, one day, asked a question. “How do you plan for your future?” The members of the group were primarily professionals and then there was Jean and Francois. Someone spoke of needing to make his own way, to plan and prepare for success and in living in this way be protected from harm. The refugees spoke of discovering that no plan was really trustworthy, even if you do pray regularly and give your tithe. The professional spoke of material property, the marker of success. Francois and Jean spoke of steadfast faith despite calamity as the marker of success. The first group spoke of a corrupt government and its leaders. The refugees suggested the group couldn’t fully comprehend a corrupt and broken government and simply offered to pray for our leaders. The first group spoke of needing to save resources and be cautious in charity as a hedge against personal disaster. The two men spoke of learning to be happy with daily bread and finding ways to help other refugees and people in need with any resources available. Very different world views emerged from people who studied the Bible and have experienced very different lives. “A penny saved is a penny earned” - Ben Franklin. A Rwandan proverb says, “We hear you eating in the bushes.” (Meaning you are hording a resource you should be sharing).

All of this happened six years ago. The professionals are now asking, “Is there a balm in Chicago?” Francois continues to thank God for daily bread. The real estate developer is now attempting to rediscover who he is, relearn what faith in God is about and to find peace with daily bread and broken dreams.

Francois found his wife and family after ten years. His trust is in God, not circumstances. His favorite hymn is, “God will make a way.”

God will make a way. He works in ways we cannot see. He will make a way for me. He will be my guide, hold me close to his side. With loving strength for each new day, He will make a way.

AMEN

The Mystery of The Holy Trinity, May 2010

Last Sunday, we baptized Jennifer “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Today we try to get a glimpse, a hint of understanding of who this three-in-one God, this Trinity, is. Does believing in the Trinity, as Christians – do we mean that we believe in one God – or three Gods, as the Muslims claim we do?

What do we mean when we recite the Nicene Creed? “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty…We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ…We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…” Do we believe in one God or three Gods?

For us to fully understand the nature of the Trinity is as futile as the little boy’s actions in a story about St. Augustine. One day, while Augustine was struggling to understand the Trinity, he decided to take a break and go for a walk on the beach. There he saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell. When he had finished digging, the boy ran to the edge of the ocean, filled his shell, and raced back to pour it in the hole.

After several trips back and forth, Augustine asked him what he was doing, the boy replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole.” Augustine then realized that this was precisely what he was trying to do – fit all the great mysteries of God into his mind. But we do need to have some understanding of the Trinity.

Suppose we look at an egg. There are three parts to it: the shell – would you call that an egg? And the white or albumin – would you call that an egg? And the yolk – would you call that an egg? Well, the egg is made up of all three parts – the shell, the white, and the yolk. The egg is incomplete without one of these elements – yet we would call all of them egg!

So it is with the Trinity. God is one – just as a complete egg is one. Yet God is made up of three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, the answer is YES – Christians do believe in one God – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit! Three persons, ONE God.

If I were to separate the shell from the white and the white from the yolk, the egg wouldn’t now become three eggs, would it? It would still be one egg. So it is with God.

If you find that you have difficulty envisioning the Trinity, you are not alone. That difficulty is wide-spread. Steve Woolley, the retired priest from Walla Walla whom I have mentioned before, appears to thoroughly enjoy putting articles, or reflections of his own, on the Internet to stir up the clergy in this Diocese. This week, he wrote a bit about the Trinity. He says, “Speaking for myself, I like to think that I am a rather orthodox Nicene Christian…

The fact is that orthodox as I might claim to be and try as I might, I cannot hold a comprehensive unified view of the Trinity in my head. One ‘person’ or the other keeps popping out as a rather unique individual, existing within a hierarchy at that. How embarrassing!” He also quotes the author Katherine Mowry LaCugna, who wrote: “The doctrine of the Trinity is more like a signpost pointing beyond itself to the God who dwells in light inaccessible…”

All we can ever know about God is what God chooses to reveal to us. Beyond that, in this life, God will always remain a mystery. The mysteriousness of God is the whole point behind the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine does not define God, but it does describe what God has allowed us to know of Himself. It will always remain a mystery, because God will always be a mystery – at least in this life anyway. In today’s reading, Paul writes to the Romans: “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…”demonstrating his understanding of the triumvirate nature of God. Paraphrasing the words of Paul writing to the Christians at Corinth: now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything in perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

We are encouraged by science to see mystery as the opposite of knowledge. And yet today we are asked to view the mystery through the eyes of Wisdom. Wisdom was present with God at the creation and she continues to be present – not only with God, but with humanity. By calling all people to seek her, Wisdom offers humanity access to the living God. She is at once the embodiment of God’s delight in the world and a dynamic portal to the creating God. Wisdom invites humanity to engage in a joyful search for God’s presence in and through this world.

There is coming a day when we will understand all things completely. But until that time, we live in the mystery of this life. The Gospel passage this morning has Jesus telling his disciples “there is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now.” Jesus promised his disciples – and he promises us – that the Spirit of truth would come to guide us into all truth. Not suddenly and instantaneously, but slowly and gradually, in a measure appropriate to our ability to receive it.

So what are we to do with this doctrine of the Holy Trinity? I would like for us to be reminded every time we hear about it or ponder it, that the Good News is not that we have God all figured out, but that God has us figured out. I want us to be reminded that our journey of life is not one in which all the mysteries of life will be solved, but one in which we know that God is behind us, ahead of us, and beside us leading us to the day when all mysteries will be revealed.

As Jason Sierra wrote, this day we are invited to stand in faith, to be precisely where we are, in the mystery of the Trinity, in the mystery of a God revealed to us in this moment, this age, this life, and this faith – a mystery that we can explore and unravel together, knowing that in seeing more truly, with each new revelation, we step into greater hope, greater joy, greater love, greater knowledge and communion with God the Three-in-One.