Sermon for Sunday, August 3, 2008 Matt 14: 13-21

When we are required to do something that is new and strange and difficult, we balk.

“I can’t do that. I don’t know how.”

Even at work, even when it’s a task that is part of the job description, we struggle and resist, until someone either forces us to do this new thing or patiently explains how to do it. We need help when we try something new.

Think about riding a bike. When you were little, you may have wanted to learn how to ride a bike because you saw an older brother doing it, or other children in the neighborhood, or even favorite characters in cartoons. So mom and dad got you a bike, and now it was time to learn how to ride it. I suspect most of us started our bike-riding with little tricycles. Easy to learn on, because the three wheels didn’t require any balancing. The trike did most of the work for us. All we had to do was pedal. Then we graduated to a larger bike, and that bike usually had training wheels.

The training wheels were designed to help us start to understand the balance required to keep the bike upright on two wheels. Just two small extra wheels, attached by some strips of aluminum to the back wheel, just a bit more help to maintain one’s balance…the guidance that would give us the confidence to try and balance the bike on two wheels ourselves. Later on, we might learn that balance with the training wheels off by our dads holding the back of the seat and running along side of us until we got a good start, then letting us ride by ourselves, as we realized that we could do it on our own, even though it had seemed impossible a few weeks before. Of course, if we forgot how to use our brakes, we might wind up in the bushes or down in a ditch, but we knew that we had begun to understand this bike-riding thing. And in that knowledge we found the courage to try and do it ourselves.

It happens in other aspects of our lives as well. Just about every new mother I have known - and I count myself among them – has had a moment of panic upon bringing the baby home. “How do I do this? How will I manage? Will I hurt the baby by doing something stupid?” Many of us have been fortunate to have our mothers or mothers-in-law available to help, to ask questions of, to show us the way she had done things. Of course, we knew that we were done with the apprenticeship when we started to get annoyed at suggestions, started to wonder when mom was going home. We were no longer in need of those training wheels to help us keep our balance, we were ready to ride by ourselves.

I found myself thinking of that stage of “almost ready but not quite sure enough to be on my own” in listening to the gospel story today. On the face of it, it’s a story about a miracle, about God’s great abundance, about Jesus’ care for those in need…but I’d suggest there’s something else going on here, a story about doing the work, but feeling unready, needing help to try something new.

Let’s step back a minute and think about where we are in the Gospel of Matthew.

Way back in chapter 10, Jesus called the twelve disciples to follow him and work with him. Since then, he’s been going around Galilee, teaching and preaching, healing and helping, and what started out so simply and beautifully has started to cause some problems with the authorities. He’s recently visited his own hometown and been rejected. And now, he has heard that the evil Herod Antipas has killed his cousin John the Baptist as the climax to a sumptuous banquet, at the request of his stepdaughter.

I can picture Jesus, grieving his cousin’s murder, feeling alone, wondering how this was all going to play out. He wanted to be by himself, to think and to pray. It’s what we all long for, when we’re hurting. But even as he climbed into that little boat to feel the gentle waters under the keel, to feel the rock of the waves, to hear the cries of the birds overhead, there was a crowd of people who wanted to hear what he had to say, following him out from the city.
He saw them, and he saw that there were some among them that were in need of healing, so he went back to the shore and got out, and began to heal the sick. His heart was sore, but his desire to help those in need of his healing power was greater.

So this huge crowd of people, five thousand men and perhaps triple that number of women and children, have followed Jesus, looking for his words, his healing power, and now they’re out in a deserted place, a wilderness. No 7-11 or Wendy’s down the street. And it’s getting on towards dinner time – these city folks ate the main meal in the evening, unlike the country folk who had the big meal at lunchtime – and the disciples knew all these people would be thinking about food. So they went to Jesus and said “send them back into the towns so they can get some food.” And Jesus turned around and said to the disciples just the thing they least wanted to hear : “YOU give them something to eat”. And in the Greek, it’s the emphatic form. YOU give them something to eat!

Think about it from the disciples’ point of view. All the way from the gathering of the disciples and their commissioning to follow Jesus in chapter ten, these guys have been following Jesus around. All through miracles, parables, q&a sessions. He gave them their instructions in chapter ten. But here we are in chapter 14, and they haven’t done much of anything, just followed the Lord around and asked some questions when they didn’t understand what he was saying.

Perhaps Jesus was a little tired of them at that moment. Perhaps he thought it was time for them to do something. Perhaps they needed a little kick to get moving. Perhaps they needed a little help to try something new.

So he said “YOU give them something to eat.” Notice he didn’t make them do the whole thing themselves. When they said, “All we’ve got are these pitiful few loaves and fishes,” (can’t you hear the whining in their voices as they say it?) he probably sighed, then said, “Bring them to me.” So he blessed the bread and the fish and gave it to the disciples to distribute.

Here’s the interesting question here: where does the miracle occur? He gives those few loaves and fishes to the disciples to distribute. It is only in their hands that the loaves and the fishes keep coming, keep coming, keep coming, until everyone has had enough to eat. How do we know they’ve had enough? Because there are leftovers. Twelve baskets full, which sounds like a lot until we realize that there were something like twenty thousand people sitting there. Twelve baskets of crumbs doesn’t sound like so much anymore. The Lord has provided enough to satisfy, not much more. And the Lord has used what was available, what the disciples had to offer, to care for the hunger of all those people.

But this question of when the miracle actually occurs is a pertinent one, one that deserves a closer look. On the face of it, we might say it’s the Lord’s blessing that does the deed. But it is when the bread and fish are in the disciples’ hands, that’s when the deed is made manifest. It is the disciples carrying out that order “YOU feed them.”

Perhaps the Lord could have had instructed them to say a blessing over the bread and fish. Certainly later in the disciples’ ministries, they would do exactly this to carry out the work that Jesus commissioned them to do, way back in Chapter Ten. But here, in this deserted place, they simply receive the blessed bread and fish, the peasant meal, no sumptuous banquet, from the hands of Jesus, and distribute them.

Perhaps the real miracle of this moment is not the transformation of the bread and fish into enough to feed the multitudes. Perhaps it is the transformation of the disciples, from those who merely follow after the Lord and ask a few questions, to those who do the work He has asked of them. This moment is a re-commissioning, a call again from Christ to do the work. The move from Chapter Ten to Chapter Fourteen is not just the passage of time, it is the embracing of a fuller understanding of what it means to be his disciple.

But remember Jesus doesn’t simply send them out on their own to do that work. He helps them. He tells them what to do. He models caring in his own actions of healing and bidding the multitudes to sit and be fed. He responds to their doubts by taking the bread and fish and blessing them. It’s a commissioning with the training wheels on. They’re not doing this thing alone; Jesus is guiding them step by step through their active participation in this miraculous act. His words may have generated the miracle, but their participation makes it real.

We sit together and we wonder what Christ has in store for us. Not a one of us hasn’t said at some time, “Lord, I can’t be of use to you. All I have are these meager things, and I don’t know how to do what you ask.” We feel the tug of Christ calling us to do something, and it is inconceivable that he would use us. We may not be facing tens of thousands of hungry people, maybe just some folks at the soup kitchen, or children in a Sunday School class, or parishioners waiting to hear our sermon. The feeling is still the same. We are unequal to the task. We know that as Christians we should be doing something more than just following along and asking a few questions, we should be doing the work of the Body of Christ in the world. But where to begin?

That beginning is Christ. He calls us. We bring him the small gifts we have to offer. He blesses them and hands them back to us, and says, “Use them. I’m right here helping you. The training wheels will stay on as long as you need them. You are not alone.”

The miracle occurs for us, somewhere between Chapter Ten and Chapter Fourteen. We don’t need to know precisely when…we only need to know that moment will occur. It may be with training wheels at first, but it will occur, and we will take our first tentative ride into true discipleship knowing he is right with us all the way.

Amen.

Random Dots of Ministry

• I went to visit the sick parishioner from Saint Diverse, and was gratified that she is doing much better today. Mixed feelings about the lack of clarity in my role, though. Not a priest but a pastoral presence. Not a seminarian at that site anymore, but still called upon by my supervisor to help out in his absence. I'm glad to be of service to folks whom I consider parish friends, but he really should have a clergyperson who's covering for him in his absence. Lord knows there are enough Episcopal priests around here.

• I spent a good part of the morning planning my work at Saint Middle School for this year. I'll be doing several Adult Spiritual Formation classes, maybe a women's retreat, some KidZone, and the usual liturgist/deacon stuff. It will be fun to be teaching adults again.

• Non-ministry moment: I took StrongOpinions to the DMV to replace her driver's license, which had expired two months ago (oops). It's a new experience, standing there while the DMV clerk hits on your daughter. He asked her out tonight. She said, "I'm going out tonight, but not with you." Bada-boom! That's my girl!

• StrongOpinions is advocating hard for PH and me to move to the Big Apple...I imagine there are jobs in ministry there for me, and we love the place, but I'm not so sure about that. On the other hand, I'd be closer to the grandkids. No need to decide on that anytime soon, thank goodness. It's hard enough to imagine moving to another abode here in VA. The thought of moving a few hundred miles north gives me a headache.

And this is what happens after you go to seminary and get advanced degree(s) in ministry - you get to be a silly pirate in Vacation Bible School and make a blessed fool of yourself. PH (Princeton MDiv & PhD)is at the right, pastor of his church (Yale MDiv) in the middle, forlorn teenager at left (learning his lesson about this kind of thing in case he has any interest in pursuing a call to ministry). Brings new meaning to "fools for Christ."

Faithful Living, Faithful Dying

There is an excellent book on christian ethics and issues of death and medical treatment by the name of this post. We read portions of it in my ethics class this year, and had some fascinating and difficult discussions about the issues it raised.

This afternoon I got to live some of those issues. Although I'm done with my internship at Saint Diverse, their priest is away, and an elderly parishioner was hospitalized, so I was asked to go make the hospital visit.

This dear soul is 96, and had been housebound with severe arthritis for the past few years. she suffered what appeared to be a stroke, and is now in renal failure. The family is debating whether they should try dialysis. She is allergic to most pain medications, is in great pain and is not recognizing people. Her husband of 68 years is with her in the hospital, looking sad and lost. We prayed and read the psalms and talked stories. He quetly said, "I'm not optimistic. And I don't know what will happen if things get worse."

I sat and listened as he told me of their life together as husband and wife, as faithful Christians who did so much for Saint Diverse over the years, as just plain good people.

The books tell a story about decision making at the end of life, and about how we as Christians are to approach these sacred moments. But it is in the stories that we learn how they are truly lived. And in those moments, there are no words for me to say. I can only listen and silently pray.

Monday

and I'm moving slowly. I had intended to pop up at the crack of dawn, take a walk, have breakfast, then go to the library to work on sunday's sermon. It's 10 a.m and I'm still in my pajamas, sitting on the couch. I guess this qualifies as vacation, or something.

Time to go upstairs and make an attempt to get dressed.

"Me Me" Meme

I was tagged by LauraLew for this meme, and so here are the rules, etc:

1. List all the rules.

2. Tell us seven things about yourself.
a. I write icons. See one below. Sometime in the next few days, I'll post how and why I do them.
b. I have been an East Coast nomad for most of my adult life, living in various and sundry places between Boston and Virginia, but I've also traveled pretty extensively around the US and other countries, and there are lots more that I hope to get to at some point.
c. Cooking is a passion. I had a part-time wedding cake and catering business for a while, and i studied cooking in Italy.
d. I was adopted at the age of four months. I was told that I was supposed to go to another family, but my godmother pulled strings at the adoption agency so I could end up with my adoptive parents. I don't know how I feel about that.
e. If I had my way, I would never leave the couch and have an ever-replenished supply of good books to keep me company.
f. I was once yelled at by a Senator on C-SPAN.
g. I've given a speech before three thousand people and I've sung before the same number. I think I prefer singing.

3. Tag seven others...

I don't know...reverendmother? Songbird? St. Casserole? anyone else want to play?

Back in the Saddle...or something....

I spent Tuesday through Thursday down in the capital of the Confederacy, taking a course in Interim Ministry. It's the first step in a four step process of certification in Intentional Interim Ministry.

Observations:

• It feels good to be treated as a colleague by other folks in ministry, rather than as a lowly peon seminarian.
• I know more than I sometimes give myself credit for.
• Being good at reading people and analyzing situations must be balanced by a willingness to abandon your first impression when you get more information.
• Much of the work of entering the "system" of a church is the same whether you're an interim or a pastor who will be there for a goodly chunk of your career in ministry.
• Much of what was taught in this course should be taught more thoroughly in seminaries. In ours, we get some of it but not all of it. Skills of unpacking the history of the parish, dealing with difficult people, helping heal old wounds, getting people to imagine the future rather than being mired in the past...it's the work of every pastor, every day. We all need to know this. For interims, because one deals with some specific tasks in a compressed time period, it's more evident. Still, we all should be learning the skills. We will all need them at one point or another.

I'm still processing much of what I learned but I'm pretty sure I'll continue with the training toward certification. That's the last "official" stuff I've got until classes start at the end of August, with the exception of some supply preaching gigs.

StrongOpinions is in town for a visit - it's good to have her around the house. She cleaned and organized our ridiculously tiny fridge last night. I never thought the day would come when she'd ask for permission to do that! Her brothers are coming into town next week. Should be fun.

The morning was spent at the funeral of the mother of a friend who died the day after her 91st birthday. A dear, outspoken, incredibly open and friendly person. She will be missed. May she rest in Jesus' loving arms, and may the knowledge of that blessed rest be a comfort to her family, who loved her so deeply.

The afternoon was spent on the couch, watching a DVD of "The Diary of a Mad Black Woman" from Netflix. Ah, stay-cation!

Actually, PH and I are going on an actual vacation, spending a few days at a French style B&B, a few days at a mountain cottage near Shenandoah National Park, and then a couple of days on the Eastern shore, eating crabs and lobsters and such. Bliss.

The Gabriel Icon is Done...

Goodbyes and Hellos

Tomorrow is my last Sunday at Saint Diverse. They'll be having a little fete for me afterwards, which should be fun. Remarkable how one can get connected with people in just eight weeks. We have a Wednesday Eucharist at noon, and some of the folks who attend that don't come to Sunday church, so the goodbyes started then. Learning to say goodbye has been one of my learnings over the past few years. I am finally starting to get more comfortable with them, although it doesn't mean I don't get sad. I just face the sadness head-on, and face the gift of the time I did have with these people in my life.

This morning PH and I went down to the Farmers Market in Old Town and bought way too much gorgeous produce. To my surprise I ran into a friend from my former life whom I hadn't seen in two years. We chatted and arranged to get together in another week or so. It was a delight to see her and hear a bit about her life these days.

Not all goodbyes or hellos are planned. They're all a gift.

Meeting with the Standing Committee

In our seemingly endless process towards ordination, I met with the Standing Committee today. 'Twas a good interview. I knew only one of the committee members, but it was good to have one familiar face in the room. It was clear they had read all 34 pages of my material, because the questions were deeper than I had expected. It appears it went well, but I won't know for sure until the bishops come back from Lambeth and tell me if I've been approved for candidacy for ordination.

The only downside to it was driving 35 miles down the NASCAR track that is Rt 95 in the midst of road construction. This was not an environmentally friendly meeting, since a dozen people traveled from some distances (mostly in separate cars) to get there.

Their final comments were that they liked my shoes - Icon brand clogs, which replicate the Gustav Klimt painting "Adele H.". Not the lace-ups at left, but I couldn't find a photo of the clog version. I figure if a girl can't have a sense of humor in her shoes, she shouldn't be a priest. I guess they concurred. Glad all the truly important stuff was assessed.

Reflection Papers

May I say I'm thoroughly sick of writing reflection papers for the various and sundry powers that be? Repetitive squishy questions that hint at desired answers are not truly reflective of how I am forming my "priestly identity."

C'mon, folks.

We can devise better ways to assess the impact of an internship and how we evolve in ministry.

Bah.

Sunday Sermon - Pentecost IX, Matt 13:1-9, 18-23

Gardening is not magical. It requires hard work.

If you’ve tried to garden here in Northern Virginia, you know that the soil is not too friendly to planting. It’s that tough red clay, great for making mud, but thick and sticky and slimy and hard to dig. So if you want a garden, be it full of lovely flowers or tasty vegetables, you’ve got to do what the garden books call “amending the soil.” You’ve got to dig down maybe a foot or so, through that rocky, thick clay, and add things like sand and compost and vermiculite and lime to lighten it, to make it loose enough for those delicate plant roots to snake through, to make it the kind of dirt that gracefully accepts rainwater and holds it.

When PH and I owned a house over in Arlington, we decided we wanted a fish pond, with a little waterfall, in the front yard, under the trees. My son StoneMason was with us for the summer, and we thought this might be a good project for him to help with. The starting point was, of course, the digging of a hole. Most good gardening seems to start with a shovel. PH and Stonemason hit that hard clay soil, under the hot summer sun, and suddenly the little project looked a lot more daunting. Stonemason lasted little more than a day doing that dirty difficult drudgery, but PH kept on plugging, digging, digging, fighting with the clay. It took all summer, but eventually (after moving what seemed like eight bathtubs full of soil and putting in a couple of tons of stone), the pond and waterfall was done. The work was long and sometimes very tedious, but the result was great. Sometimes the soil isn’t receptive to the project, though, is it?

There was an article in the Washington Post home and garden section last week about a couple who, over the course of thirty years, built a garden not from the ground up – from well beneath the ground and up, making an environmentally sustainable garden, eventually even using the bathwater from their tub to water it. It’s a gorgeous place, full of plants that do well in this climate, and at this point, it looks as if it was there forever. But the starting point, though, some thirty years ago, was digging three feet down into the dirt, and amending it, adding sand and peat moss and topsoil, turning it over, folding it like chocolate into cake batter to make it hospitable soil in which things could grow.

It’s an interesting image, preparing the soil so that the plants can thrive, and it relates to an image that Jesus uses in the parable of the sower and the seed from the Gospel of Matthew today. The parable is really more about the place where the seeds are planted than it is about the seeds themselves, and it begs the question: what kind of soil are you? Are you tough and hard to dig? Are you hospitable to the seeds that are tossed on you?

Jesus talks about the words he preaches as seeds. As the sower, Jesus, spreads these seeds, not all of them will take root. He tosses them out generously, across all sorts of terrain, as a Palestinian farmer in the first century would do. Some of the seeds will fall on rocky ground, grab a little soil and sprout, but will be burnt by the heat of the sun because their roots have no depth to reach down to the water table. Some of them will fall on the path, and the birds will swoop down and eat them up. Some will land in among thick bushes, and even if they sprout, they’ll be choked by the larger plant. But some will land on good soil. Their roots will grow deep. They’ll flourish. They’ll produce lots of fruit.

So, too, when we hear Jesus’s words, some of us will not understand it. We won’t even try. The word will not grow in our hearts. Some of us will hear the message and embrace it, but not put any effort into it. We will be rocky soil, and we’ll get bored with it or unhappy when something difficult happens in our lives, and the word will wither and die. Some of us will hear it, but become distracted with the busy-ness of our lives and the things we want. But some of us will hear, and work at it, and keep trying to understand it, even the hard parts, and the word will blossom in us.

So we hear this parable, this little story that Jesus has told his followers to help them to understand what his expectations are for them. He has explained the parable even further to his disciples, whom he knows will have to continue his teaching after he is gone. Here’s the interesting thing: the subtext of this passage is that understanding the gospel is hard work. By inference, the work of discipleship is hard work. Being a Christian is not supposed to be easy. And here in our town, with our relative comfort and our houses and our cars and our vacations – those lures of wealth and the world – it’s easy to compartmentalize religion into one small comfortable niche. And in putting God and God’s word into that niche, we run the risk of trying to make religion easy. And easy religion is the kind that has shallow roots, that get burned and shriveled under the hot sun. Growing deep roots is hard work, particularly in the hard red clay soil of a life lived shallowly.

So how do we grow those deep roots? How do we live a life in which our religion is not shallow, not sentimental, not merely a little compartment that has no bearing on the rest of our life?

Here is where the image of planting really shines a light on the work of discipleship. Let’s take it as a given that we start off as clay soil. We are hard to work. We are resistant to the threads of roots of the word working through us. We don’t hold water to nourish the roots very well. How can we improve ourselves, amend ourselves in such a way that God’s word grows deeply into us and informs every aspect of our lives? Some of the logical starting points are the things we know enrich our souls, like prayer, like worship, and the reading of scripture, and doing things like helping out at the local homeless shelter.

But I’d suggest that there are also some other things that we can do to enrich the soil of our souls, some things that might not immediately come to mind. These things might fall under the general category of “the compost of life.”

Now you all know what compost is. It’s gathering up kitchen waste like the onion peels and the ribs and seeds from the bell peppers, the brown-edged lettuce leaves and the egg shells, and putting them in a pile with some grass clippings and some old mulchy leaves, and letting the whole mess just sort of simmer for quite a while, getting hot, breaking down all the organic matter, until what you have is not a smelly slimy mess, but beautiful rich brown compost that can be shoveled and folded into your garden, providing lightness and richness that helps plants grow.

It’s remarkable how something that starts out so nasty can turn into something so life-giving, so useful. By the time it’s done going through the composting process, after several months, it doesn’t even smell bad. In fact, to some folks, it even smells sort of sweet and nice.
And here’s what we can learn from this, in our effort to become good soil to receive the seeds of the Lord’s word: sometimes the most enriching thing we can add to the red clay is what we learn from the difficult, smelly, nasty stuff that makes us screw up our faces in disgust.

Sometimes, the things that will lighten the soil are the least likely of things, the detritus of our lives, the pain.

What does this look like? Is it the moment when bank forecloses on your house, and you fear that you will end up on the street, with nothing…until your friends help you find a place to live and give you a shoulder to cry on and hang in there with you as you start to rebuild your life? Is it the time that you get very sick and your church family goes into high gear, bringing meals, taking you to your doctors’ appointments, praying for you, keeping you company? Is it the day that you lose your job and two friends start making calls to help you find another position? Is it the day that you take your youngest child to college and come home to an empty house, and your sister calls up and says “Come on over and have a glass of wine” and you suddenly don’t feel so alone?

These hard times, and what we learn about ourselves and our friends and family in the midst of them, are the compost. When we are in the midst of them, they smell bad. They feel bad. They appear to be useless, garbage. But time – sometimes a long time- and prayer and help turn them into a recognition of Christ touching us, of the Word lived well, of God’s great love for us. When we recognize these moments, and fold the thought of them into the hard clay of our hearts, we loosen the soil. We make ourselves more open to what Christ is asking us to do. We take the pain and use it, transform it into something that is no longer about us, it is about our relationship with God and with all of God’s creation.

We know from our time in our backyards that gardening is hard work. My son Stonemason, who gave up after only a day when we built the fish pond, has learned that and – irony of ironies - now works in landscaping and stonemasonry up in Vermont. Sometimes preparing the soil is the work of a season. Sometimes it’s the work of thirty years. Sometimes it’s the work of a lifetime. But the digging deep, the enrichment of our hearts, the aching muscles of struggling to loosen the red clay of our hearts, all of it will lead over time to a soul that is prepared and ready to know God and to serve him.

Amen.

Happy Saturday

It's been a good day - a trip to the Farmer's Market for luscious fruits and vegetables, a successful Fare Ministry family event at Saint Diverse, where a group of nine of us prepared six large casseroles and six smaller ones to be frozen and available for those who need a meal delivered, then icon-writing class, where I finished up my Saint Gabriel icon and will start Saint Paul next week, and now I'm resting a bit before getting ready to go to an evening wedding celebration for two dear friends.

Oh, and the sermon is done for tomorrow, so I really will be able to enjoy the party.

PS: I'll post a picture of the Saint Gabriel when it gets back from being varnished next week.

Music Stuff

Here's some new music to feed your soul:

Beth Neilsen Chapman's two-disc set entitled Prism. It's songs from a wide variety of religious traditions spanning the world.

Fleet Foxes. A Seattle alt-group that has some amazing vocals and very unusual lyrics. Harmonies like you wouldn't believe. Good - no, great - driving music. Now I only need the gas money to take a road trip...

I got arm-twisted into singing something for my last Sunday (July 20) at Saint Diverse, my summer internship parish. I briefly toyed with singing "Hear Ye, Israel" from Elijah, since that would sort of go with the readings, but the space is not singer-friendly, and the piece starts out on a high F sharp, for heaven's sake. If I'm not getting paid, I'm not going to risk a note that sits right on the break in a room that's dead as a doornail. I think it's going to be "Amazing Grace." Always a crowd fave, and everytime I've sung it, someone has come up and said "I want you to sing that at my funeral." That's either a compliment, or they'd rather be dead than hear it again out of my mouth.

This coming Sunday, when I'll be preaching on the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, there will be a teenaged tenor singing "I Believe."

Oh, dear.

Bliss

Blue Saabie is finally repaired and home again after a week and a half in the shop waiting for her rebuilt ABS controller. I drove her back home on the highway. She ran beautifully and no ugly warning lights lit up. She looks pretty darned good for an eight year old car with 90K miles on it. I'm hoping this will be the last repair for a while, since it was a wee bit pricey. PH and I did very well sharing one car between us with two jobs far apart and not on public transport lines. Still, I'm glad that we're done with that for a while. Probably shouldn't say that out loud, since it will jinx me.

The eco-conscious part of me would love it if we could get by with one car, but it doesn't seem likely right now. Maybe someday.

New Name

Spooky, the somewhat neurotic but amusing black cat who shares our home, has been renamed.

PH now calls her Emme, short for Emesis, which seems to be what she does most. We find "gifts" from her mostly in the basement, on the rubber flooring underneath all the exercise gear. At least she's considerate that way. We gave up having live flowers in the house because she would eat them and then...well, you know what she would do, and usually on the carpet. We brush her a lot to keep down the hairballs, but she still has this habit of urking up.

Suffice to say it would be strange if we had a normal cat.

Learning

I had a difficult and lengthy conversation with a parishioner. We started off with his anger and frustration about a difficult situation and ended up somewhere a bit more peaceful, I think.

Sometimes folks expect the church to wave a magic wand and solve their problems...even deeply faithful people struggle with this, I think.

Some wonder why the church doesn't do more, and why people of faith have to work through government structures and systems. Shouldn't the church be the place to address conflict?

Well, yes and no. Render unto Caesar, and all that.

So it was an interesting 45 minutes working with this parishioner, because some of the questions raised were good ones, and I had to fight my own defensiveness about the church not doing enough in the world. But it was a reminder to me that I am not expected to fix (particularly in an eight-week summer internship), I am simply expected to be present and loving.

I'm hoping that was what I offered this day, and I'm praying that I helped, or at least did no harm. I leave this one (as I should leave them all) in God's great big hands.

Sermon for Wednesday Noon Eucharist

Matt 10:1-7


Everybody deserves to have an Aunt Ethel.

Aunt Ethel is the one who tells you that that dress really does make your behind look big.

Aunt Ethel is the one who frowns when you say you’re going to tile your downstairs bathroom in all different color tiles, because it will be so festive, and says “You sure you want to look at all that craziness if you use that room when you’re sick to your stomach?”

Aunt Ethel is the one who tells you the guy you want to marry is up to no good, when everyone else keeps their mouth shut. When her warning turns out to be true, and you learn it the hard way, Aunt Ethel is the one who doesn’t say “I told you so.” She just lends you the money for a good lawyer.

Aunt Ethel tells you to buy the little car, not the big SUV, because gas prices will go up. She says “Waste not, want not.”

Aunt Ethel never married, because her bluntness seemed to get her in trouble with the men in her life, but she’s happy. She lives with her two cats, Toothless Bob and Miss Petunia, in her two-bedroom condo a few blocks from the beach in a state south of here. The second bedroom has been turned into a little art studio, where she paints watercolors that she doesn’t give as gifts. She simply saves them in a pile in the corner. If you visit her, you should know there is no bed in that second bedroom – you’ll be on the couch in the living room. Aunt Ethel knows it’s unlikely you’ll stay for very long in that condo if you have to hear her starting the first pot of coffee at 5:30 in the morning. Aunt Ethel is no fool.

And so you’d be wise to listen to Aunt Ethel’s advice. She’s got a lot of it, and it’s practical advice. She’s been a careful observer of the human condition for nigh onto seventy-eight years, and she’s figured out what works and what doesn’t.

So when she says to you, “clean up your own house first, before you criticize someone else’s housekeeping,” it’s a teaching she passes along because she has seen what happens when you don’t do that. Your criticism doesn’t carry much weight if you haven’t done your own work first.

She would be the first to nod, and say, “Um-hum!” when she hears Jesus’ message to the disciples in today’s Gospel reading.

It sounds a little odd to us. Not the commissioning part – we’re not surprised that Jesus gathers the disciples around and gives them their marching orders. It’s the last part of today’s message that comes as a surprise: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.'”

We wonder why Jesus is saying that, why He wants the disciples to preach the good news to the Jews and not the Gentiles. Most of us would be classified as Gentiles, and we’d like to think Jesus wants us as part of the party, wouldn’t we?

But instead, Jesus sends the twelve to preach to the Jews. It’s only later on that the Gentiles are brought into the fold, in chapter 28 of Matthew’s gospel. Why would Jesus limit the preaching of the Gospel only to the Jews?

Part of it is that Matthew’s audience was the Jewish Christian community near or around Jerusalem. They would hear Christ’s words of new covenant as a refinement of what their relationship to God as God’s covenant people meant. Just as we heard in today’s psalm, they’d remember themselves as offspring of his servant Abraham, children of Jacob, his chosen ones. It would be natural to see Christ’s message in Matthew’s gospel as an extension of the many times that God tried to help the Jews of the Old Testament to “get it right” – to repair things when the Hebrew people breached the covenant. Thus this commission, Jesus’ words while he was still alive, living and working in the Jewish community, would make sense. Christ’s work was yet again God trying to get God’s people on the right track, this time, by sending His own Son to live and work among them.

But we can also see this as a message like Aunt Ethel’s: “Clean up your own house first, before you criticize someone else’s housekeeping.” Jesus is telling the disciples, and us, that the starting point for our work of learning how to put the good news into action is to put ourselves into good order, into right relationship with God. We can’t preach to those outside that circle until we’ve got our own act together first.

Now that’s not a comfortable place for us. It’s easier to look outside of our own house, our own community, our own nation, and go “tsk, tsk” about something we see as wrong. But until we’re able to say we’ve corrected our own bad behavior, as individuals, as part of a larger community, as a nation, we have no right to speak ill of others. The good news for us is that the disciples eventually got around to preaching to the Gentiles, and we’ve become part of the Body of Christ as a result. But I suspect we all could do some housekeeping of ourselves about how we live as part of the Body of Christ. Perhaps it’s time to clean our own house before we criticize anyone else’s housekeeping. Aunt Ethel would approve.

Amen.

Sunday Afternoons

So what is it about naps on Sunday afternoon when you work in the God business?

I came home today after church. It had been a light day with no preaching responsibilities, just our two services lightly attended due to the holiday, no visits to the homebound afterwards...and after a bite of lunch, I utterly conked out on the couch for two hours. And I mean comatose. Afternoon of the living dead.

PH is taking me out for supper tonight - yay - and that's about the extent of my energy level.

Interestingly, just about every clergyperson I know also takes a Sunday nap.Who knew that this was part of the gig?

They should ask during the Commission on Ministry interviews: "Ms. Mibi, are you capable of afternoon siestas on the Lord's Day? It is a job requirement, you know."

As the Rocket's Red Glare Fades From View...

Last night ended with a whimper rather than a bang, given the rainstorms that swept through. They still had the big fireworks downtown on the Mall, but we took a bye on that. Visited some friends of PH's for a cookout. Gotta love beer-soaked brats on the grill and two kinds of cheesecake! The scale isn't being kind to me today.

It was quite wet this morning, taking my walk with K and then going down to the farmer's market in Old Town. It didn't help when PH accidentally dumped an umbrella full of rainwater on me as I paid for some produce. At least he said it was an accident. Squish, indeed.

Icon-writing was, as always, wonderful. The Saint Gabriel icon is a week from being finished - I'll post a photo of it when it's done - and then I'll start on a Saint Paul, I think. I also saw a wonderful Theotokos (Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus) that will go into the queue. Baby Jesus has one of his little sandals dangling off his foot, and a round little baby nose, very different and more human than most icons. I love doing this work - it's such a prayerful discipline - I just wish they didn't take so darned long (six months per icon on average, sometimes longer).

PH is experimenting with a Ramos Fizz recipe that he saw in the NY Times Sunday magazine last week. The recipe looks....interesting. I am hoping we get dinner cooking before we start tasting. Somehow I think my scheduled arrival time at church tomorrow (7:30 am) will come very early. At least I don't have preaching duties tomorrow. I do have Lay Eucharistic Minister training to do, so I'm hoping I won't be too cranky.

Please say a prayer for A. His wife, my dear friend M, died of pancreatic cancer this time last year. He just had part of his lung removed - cancer - and the doctors seem to think that he will recover and survive this. We hope so - he's a dear man.

Blah

For some reason, I'm not feeling very energetic today. I'll have Thursday through Saturday off for the 4th of July, so I should be feeling more lively, but today just isn't that day.

I stayed up late finishing the new Elizabeth George novel, "Careless in Red." It's the latest in her Inspector Lynley series. I recommend it highly. The Lynleys are not a book series - they're an addiction. Anyway, staying up late reading it has taken my edge off, I think.

PH is having The Medical Test That Shall Not Be Named today. He was up as late as me drinking the prep stuff and dealing with the results. I think he got some sleep, but I decided I would sleep in the spare bedroom in case he was up and about every hour. It turned out to be a wise choice.

I've been walking several mornings a week with a friend who is the wife of a classmate. We both have weight to lose and could use the exercise. Why is it so much easier to keep to a walking routine when you've got a walking buddy? One would think that I, as an introvert, would prefer doing it alone, but it does seem to make a difference. We've been doing 2.5-3 miles each time we go out. Not quite as energetic as PH's 3000+ mile ride across America, but it will do for me. The weight loss is stalled and I'm hoping this will start it up again.

Plans for the 4th: a BBQ at PH's colleague's house, an organ concert and dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence at a historic church nearby (we have many historic churches...some even use the word in their web addresses). Chilling out. Going to the Farmer's Market. Sleeping.

It's all good.

Lambeth Awaits

After listening to an ordination sermon where the bishop opined that those entering the priesthood were not really shepherds, but in fact sheepdogs (and after I had myself used the border collie metaphor to describe us seminarians in a sermon earlier this year), I was delighted to see this picture of the Archbishop of Canterbury getting in a training ride preparatory to the upcoming highjinks at Lambeth. At least most of the GAFCON crowd won't be around to require heel-nipping by the dog.

No disrespect intended, but the cat-herding picture has already been over-used. Tip of the hat to MadPriest for the picture of Whiplash the Rodeo Monkey.

A Prayer In This Season

From the incomparable John O'Donohue's To Bless the Space Between Us (New York: Doubleday. 2008):

For Citizenship

In these times when anger

Is turned to anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and the mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground.

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

John O'Donohue, Irish poet, former Catholic priest and Hegelian philosopher, died this year at the age of 53. Too young, too soon gone.

Random Dots of Monday

• I've made an initial stab (or poke) at the next sermon in my queue: Matt 10:1-7. Go do good stuff and preach and share the good news, but go the the Jews, not those heathen Gentiles. Should be fun. Only two more sermons for my time here at Saint Diverse. Only three more weeks here...the time has gone so quickly.

• Lunch plans today with my rector from my home parish - that should be fascinating, as he is just back from a trip to Africa as part of our diocesan work on the complicity of the church in the slave trade. All that and Indian food...it will be a feeding of body and soul.

• Blue Saabie is in the shop with a flukey ABS controller. The instrument lights on the dashboard panel - all those little warning lights that usually come on when I turn the car on in the morning and they do the self-test - stay on all the time. The car runs fine, but my mechanic says the braking system may punk out if I don't get it fixed. If I took it to the dealership, they'd make me get the whole board replaced, to the tune of $3K. My trusty Swedish Motors guys send the board to someone who rebuilds it...only $700. Of course, it's $700 I don't really have, but we will figure it out. I'm just hoping Saabie will last until I'm through with seminary. Then I can get something tiny and green, with all-wheel drive for when I get middle-of-the-night pastoral calls. I always wondered why clergy all seemed to have Subaru Outbacks. Now I understand.

• StrongOpinions is having a blast at the writer's conference where she's spending the summer months. She's been invited to read some of her work publicly, and she'll be interviewed on local radio about the nexus of poetry and political activism. Can you tell this is happening in a radically liberal college in a radically liberal mountain community in the Rockies?

• StoneMason is coming down here for a visit. in a few weeks. We're trying to figure out the cheapest way to get him down from the Green Mountain State without spending megabucks. It may be possible to coordinate his visit with StrongOpinions'...it would be great to have them both here at the same time.

• PH is having that test on Wednesday that all of us have to have when we turn fifty. For a surgeon's son, he has little stomach for things medical. He will start the prep meds tonight. We may move the television and his laptop into our tiny WC for the duration. Poor baby! Say a prayer it all goes well. We expect no problems, since there is no family history of such stuff.

• Summer months are quiet at little churches, and I have moments of feeling guilty that I'm not more busy here at Saint Diverse. The convener of my peer colloquy group says that this is one of the things we as soon-to-be-priests need to learn - to be at peace with the lull times as well as to be ready to dig in during the busy times. Frankly, I'm happier when I've got my hands full.

Today's Sermon: Gen. 22:1-14

There are moments in our life that are so shocking, so horrific, that we feel we are propelled out of normal time and space and into a world that bears no resemblance to the life we thought we knew. When we enter this alternate reality, we feel confused, alone. We struggle to understand what has happened, what this means.

A couple of years ago, Volkswagen introduced a series of television ads for their cars that focused on their safety features. You may remember them. Four young people are riding down the street in conversation. They’re talking about the everyday things, the inside jokes, the little disagreements, that people who know each other well can share. In mid-sentence, suddenly there is a crash. Another car has smashed into them. Time shifts. Reality shifts. The people in the Volkswagen stand outside the vehicle, shocked. They say an expletive. I doubt they remember the conversation they were so engrossed in during the seconds before the crash. Now they are standing at the side of the road, wondering what happened, how they got to this place, and what to do next.

Those of us who have had serious medical diagnoses know this feeling as well. We are going along in our normal life, doing all the familiar and comfortable things. We feel an odd ache that won’t go away. We go to the doctor’s. She says, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but…” and suddenly everything in the room, every word, every sensory perception, slows down, and we are taken out of our lives into some other reality, some strange place where the old rules don’t apply, where time stretches and contracts and the things that were important no longer seem paramount.

When these horrific moments happen, we are taken out of our normal frame of reference. We are shocked into a different kind of perception. We are only able to utter a few words, an expletive, a prayer. We struggle to understand something which, on the face of it, seems incomprehensible.

So it is, too, this story of Abraham and God’s outrageous request.

It’s a horrific story. We cringe at it.

God speaks to Abraham. “I want you to do something.” “Okay, I’m here.” – in the Hebrew, Abraham says: “Hineni.”

As we’ve heard of the journey that is Abraham’s life over the past several weeks, we’ve learned that Abraham has been given many wonderful things from God – sons in his old age, riches from Pharaoh. Although he may have had questions about God’s promises before, and behaved accordingly, he no longer seems to have any doubts. God has delivered. God has heard. But we now hear of one more test, an inconceivable one (here’s that word we’ve used over the past three weeks). Suddenly, our frame of reference – indeed, Abraham’s frame of reference – is shifted. This makes no sense.

God asks Abraham to take the most precious thing God has given him, Isaac, that gift of laughter and life, and says, “Take Isaac to the place I will tell you, over beyond the hills, in the land of Moriah, and offer him there to me as a burnt offering.”

We hear this message and time shifts. This makes no sense. We say, “What kind of God would ask this of Abraham? What kind of father would not scream back to the heavens, and say ‘No! I will not!’”

But Abraham is silent.

Suddenly, the story seems to go into slow-motion, much like the young people in the aftermath of the car crash. Details stick out: the bitter, angry energy with which Abraham chops the wood, the two servant boys, Abraham slowly tying the bundle of wood for the offering on Isaac’s shoulder. And yet whole swaths of the story line that we would expect are missing. What did Abraham tell Sarah about this trip? Does Abraham say anything at all to God in response? What do the father and his son and the two servants say to each other on their three day journey? ; No words are spoken until the third day, when Abraham and Isaac prepare to go up the mountain and Abraham gives directions to the servants who will wait below. Is Abraham wondering what he will say to the servants when he comes back down the mountain without his son? Is he wondering what Sarah will do?

Is there a moment in your life when you are faced with the horror, and words fail you? This is that moment for Abraham. And yet he follows God’s directions, this tenth test of Abraham’s faith to the one true God.

It is the moment, too, for Isaac, as his father ; binds him with rope, as one would an animal for slaughter. It is no mistake that in the Jewish tradition, this story is called The Akedah (עקדה), the binding of Isaac, because in some ways it is the most chilling moment in the story. This young man – some scholars estimate Isaac’s age somewhere between 25 and 37 - sees his father building an altar. He sees the wood for the fire. He sees his father with the knife, more likely something like a cleaver or a butcher’s knife. He sees no sheep. He asks where it is, and Abraham says something surprising:” God will provide.”

And yet, there is no sheep. Is God providing one?

And then his father begins to wrap the rope around his hands and feet, as they would have done to the sacrificial sheep. Is this precious son, this gift from God to Abraham and Sarah, the sheep that God has provided? Isaac can see now what is happening, but he doesn’t say another word. He knows in this moment that he is the sacrificial offering, that his father will lift up that cleaver and slam it down with great force, and Isaac’s nephesh, his spirit, contained in his life blood, will drain out of him. He will die. And Isaac says nothing, even as his father Abraham said nothing when God demanded this sacrifice.

Abraham’s hard, calloused hand raises up, slowly, slowly. The action slows down to a quarter speed again. The cleaver is in his hand, poised above that gift, that son, now a sacrifice. The promise of the future generations, that covenant promise that God made, seems to be a stroke away from destruction. How can there be future generations if the child is killed?

But suddenly, there is a voice.

“Abraham, wait a minute. Stop.” “Okay, I’m here. I hear you.” Hineni.

We’ve been holding our breath, waiting for the cleaver to fall, to cleave the neck, to cleave the covenant…and now it is stopped. We breathe again. Abraham’s hand drops. The angel says, “You’ve passed the test of faithfulness. Don’t hurt your son. God asked for the ultimate sacrifice, of the thing you loved most, and you were willing to give it.”

We breathe again, and Abraham breathes again. As Hagar suddenly looked up and saw the well, so now Abraham looks up and sees ; the ram in the thicket, a sacrifice that we and he can tolerate. The story speeds up – the ram is sacrificed. The angel restates God’s covenant, that promise of future generations as plenteous as the stars in the heaven or the sands on the shore of the ocean. The generations will roll forth through the centuries.

But we are left with confusion and anger. What just happened here? Those same questions we started with: why would God ask this of Abraham? why would Abraham assent to it? they’re still there with the taste of ashes in our mouths. Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis has said, “I’m glad I don’t worship the God of Abraham” if this is what that God is like. We’re with her on that one.

Can we get some distance from the horror if we say that it is just Abraham’s bad dream or overactive imagination, as did the medieval rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi? There are some scholars, such as those who wrote the midrash Genesis Rabbah, who think that Abraham knows all along that Isaac won’t die, because God has already promised the future generations. There are some such as Martin Luther, who feel very clearly that the story is as it was: that this was a test, and Abraham’s faith was so great that he did what God asked without question even if it would mean that Isaac would die. Luther is said to have refused to preach on this story, saying that Abraham’s faith was so great that Luther was in awe of it, and could add no more words to the subject. Maybe we can finally understand this story if we turn to the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, writing on faith in his Letter to the Hebrews, draws the parallel to the death and resurrection of Christ, and implies that Abraham would go ahead and sacrifice his son (as God’s own son Jesus was sacrificed for us) because he would know that Isaac would be raised from the dead. We are not alone in struggling with this hard lesson.

But perhaps we can finally come to a difficult peace with this story by imagining the inconceivable moments in our own lives, when it seems that God has asked us to participate in; a journey that we know will end badly. Do we question God at those times? Perhaps. Perhaps time slows down as we see how these things will play out, and we wonder what good can come of them. Can we imagine the possibility of stepping back from argument with God, to say ; “Hineni. Here I am. I trust you. Tell me what to do next.”

Amen.

Vestry Meetings

How is it we can spend thirty minutes tussling over the meaning of the words "Outreach" and Mission" and we can't get people to actually do them?

And why isn't there wine at Vestry meetings?

Last Sunday's Sermon on Genesis 21: 8-21

We’ve traveled with Abraham from his initial covenant conversation with the one true God, to the birth of Isaac. Quite a journey.

But a funny thing happened on the way to baby Isaac, and we find out a little more about that story today.

This is the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Ishmael, in case you’ve forgotten, is Abraham’s first child.

Hagar was Sarah’s Egyptian slave. Sarah, despairing that she would ever have a child, did something that was very common in that time, when having a child was of paramount importance – she gave Abraham her slave and said, “Since I’m not having any luck giving you a child, take Hagar and sleep with her. Maybe then you’ll have a son.”

Now, it’s important to remember that God had already promised Abraham, way back in chapter 15, that he would have children. But we get to chapter 16, and Sarah is still without children – no surprise there, since she’s older than she was in chapter 15 – and the two of them are getting nervous. Abraham is a wealthy man in goods and he wants an heir so he doesn’t have to leave all those goods to a servant.

And Abraham and Sarah get a little impatient. Surprising, since before God had told Abraham he would be father of a great nation, they had seemed resigned to being childless. Sarah gives Abraham her maid, the Egyptian girl Hagar – note that there is no mention of how Hagar feels about all this – and Hagar becomes pregnant by Abraham.

You’d think that Abraham would be happy. You’d think Sarah would be happy, because this was what the plan was. But it turns into a soap opera of the first order. Although this was the common practice of the time – servants being surrogates for infertile rich women – Hagar doesn’t follow the plan. She starts to look down on Sarah, essentially saying “Look what I could do and you couldn’t.” Not surprisingly, this makes Sarah pretty angry. She complains to her husband. And he shrugs and said, “She’s your servant; do what you want with her.” Not the most sensitive response, is it? So Sarah treats her badly, and Hagar runs away into the desert – not knowing how she would get bck to Egypt, not knowing how she would even survive - what was she thinking? – There, an angel tells her to go back. The angel says she will bear a son, and he will be named Ishmael, meaning “the Lord has listened to your distress.” Hagar should submit to Sarah, and Ishmael will grow up to father his own nation, and will be quite the feisty guy.

So Hagar goes back, gives birth, and everything settles down for a while. Then the baby Isaac, the miracle child, is born to Sarah. This is where we ended last week, and we begin this week with that child, Isaac, being weaned – something that would make him about three years old in that culture. Weaning was a big event back then, because it also marked the successful survival of a baby through the period when he was most likely to die. So Abraham throws a party. And Sarah sees the little one playing with that stepbrother of his, Ishmael, who is a teenager by this time, and it suggests in the text that Ishmael – whom the angel had warned would not be the most agreeable sort – is teasing him – it’s unclear in the Hebrew whether Ishmael is merely playing with Isaac, or mocking him. Sarah , though, clearly sees it as a problematic relationship. She is like a mother bear defending her cub. Ishmael is also a threat to her son’s legacy as the next in the line of generations that would be a great nation, as God had promised. So she demands that Abraham throw out “this slave woman” and Ishmael, out into the desert just as when Hagar was pregnant with the boy.

But this time, unlike the last time, Abraham doesn’t simply acquiesce; he is greatly troubled. He loves Ishmael. But God says to go ahead and do what Sarah asks, because she is Isaac’s mother, and Isaac is the one who would be part of the covenant people. Ishmael will have his own rich legacy, the father of his own people, but God tells Abraham that this next step is necessary. So Abraham fills a wineskin with water and takes a loaf of bread, giving it to Hagar, and sends them out into the desert. Not very much in the way of supplies for someone who is expected to wander through the desert to who knows where. Does Abraham really think this will sustain Hagar and Ishmael?

Remember this part of the story. God tells Abraham to do something that on the face of it is inconceivable – that word again – to listen to Sarah, to send his firstborn and the child’s mother out into the desert. God says he will make the child the father of his own people, thus saying he will protect him – how he will do that isn’t specified – because Abraham has fathered this boy. And Abraham trusts God and does as he is told, without complaint or argument. There seems to be no doubt in Abraham’s mind as he fills that meager wineskin full of water and hands it to Hagar with the loaf of bread.

So Hagar trudges out into the desert with her obstreperous teenage boy in tow. It doesn’t take long before the water and bread are gone. She knows they are going to die. She tells her son to sit down under a bush, hoping to provide him at least a little shade, and then walks a good distance away. She doesn’t want to watch her son die of dehydration and heatstroke under the relentless desert sun. She sits, and she weeps, as any mother would.

And suddenly Hagar hears a voice of an angel, saying that God has heard her son’s cries. God has plans for this boy – the same plans that God told Abraham about. They are not going to die. The boy will become a leader of a great nation. And Hagar looks up and sees a well – can you picture her rubbing her eyes in disbelief? – and she fills up the wineskin…and that’s the beginning of good things for Hagar and Ishmael, although they don’t share the covenant with God that Abraham has.

So we’ve got a pattern here. God promises. God demands something that makes no sense. If the people obey, God delivers, even though the people can’t imagine how it will happen.

Remember this: we will see this again.

But even as we ponder this relationship between God and his people, I’m also fascinated by the role of the two women, Sarah and Hagar. There are some biblical scholars who believe that these stories were written by a woman, because the female characters are so much more richly described than the men. These are certainly flesh and blood women. They are engaged in a power struggle, and that’s particularly interesting because they have limited power as women. Sarah is a woman who is essentially the property of her husband. He lends her a certain status, because he is a rich man, but she is still a woman. She has to do what he wants. Hagar is even lower in status. She is one of the servants that Pharaoh gave Abraham to get him out of Egypt. She not only is a servant, but she is a servant to the woman of the house. She has no rights.

But these two strong women challenge their traditional roles. Sarah makes it very clear that she as the wife of a wealthy man is set over her maid. She dispatches Hagar to have a child by Abraham. Hagar says not a word against this, at least as far as we know, because this is a common practice in this era. Once she gets pregnant, though, Hagar uses her pregnancy to try to diminish the position of Sarah. And Sarah drives her out by being mean to her. If this was a boxing match, the referee would intervene between the two fighters. But Abraham does not, and God only speaks through an angel. He seems to step back from all this powerful emotion, and intervenes only when someone might die. God has a plan, and he will do what is necessary to make sure the plan is carried out, but he doesn’t really get deeply involved in the day-to-day human conflicts. Suddenly it seems that God isn’t in people’s faces so much any more, as we talked about in last week’s sermon. He seems to step back and let the people try to work it out themselves.

If anyone thinks the bible is full of sweetness and light, this story doesn’t fit that mold. This is a messy story, full of human emotion and conflict.

Have you ever had the experience of being in a difficult conflict situation and wondered why you felt so alone? Have you wondered where God was in those painful, lonely moments where what was happening seemed to make no sense? That’s precisely where Sarah and Hagar, these two strong women, were, as they battled for what they thought was right for their sons. God was with them, and God was watching, but God didn’t step in to set things right until it was absolutely necessary. The Plan would be fulfilled. God would see to that. But God wasn’t – and isn’t - simply a universal Fix-It Man who mediates every argument, ends every battle. No, humankind has to struggle with the conflicts. There is no guarantee that God will step in, because we don’t know how this situation is part of a larger plan. That’s the heart of this story, and it’s also part of the message we hear in the Gospel today.

The message is clear: we will live in the midst of conflict. As Christians, we are not exempt from them. In point of fact, being Christian means we may be at the center of conflicts. We may stand accused by those who don’t know or understand this Christ whom we serve. And Matthew says that the Lord tells us “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Living as a Christian is a high-risk proposition, just as trying to follow God in the Old Testament was an endless series of battles. You know that old saying, “you may win the battle, but lose the war.”? Some of the battles we as Christians engage in may end in victory. Some may end in failure.

The point, though, is not the battle. It is the one whom we serve. The victory is found in living fully into that ancient covenant, despite the conflict, despite the fact that this life on earth is hard. The joy awaits, the covenant is fulfilled, if we are willing to take that risk.

Amen.

Sermon Process

The first draft of this coming Sunday's sermon on the binding of Isaac is done. This is my pathology - maybe I think subconsciously that I might get hit by a truck and someone would need my sermon to read at Sunday's service (not likely, right?) so I start writing early. For a first draft, it's not bad. Some good storytelling, some good lit-crit, some "what do we do with this" but it's clearly got some more work to be done.

This one is a little earlier than usual, though, since the topic is one that I've been thinking about for a couple of months, since I knew I'd be preaching on it. The word study, looking at the Hebrew and the various English translations, has been intriguing. The midrashes and commentaries are all over the map. Abraham was having a bad dream. Abraham knew God wasn't going to let him go through with it, Abraham knew God was going to let him go through with it but would revive or resurrect the boy, Abraham knew the covenant of future generations could not be broken and trusted despite the outrageousness of God's demand...no one is utterly lock-tight convincing.

As this is the final sermon in the Father Abraham series, I want it to be good...but it may end up simply being a meditation on the hard journeys God sets us on, and how we must give up control (and the things we love best) and trust in Him.

Some preachers are adept at staying up late on Saturday night and pouring the words out on paper, inspired by the Spirit (or not). Someday I may get to that place, but I guess my level of trust isn't high enough yet. I'll post yesterday's sermon on Hagar and Sarah tomorrow, after I revise the written version I carried with me Sunday morning to match what I actually ended up preaching. It happens like that sometimes.

Aftermath

This morning, PH and brother-in-law and sister-in-law and I went through the ton of stuff in their van, the official follow vehicle for the team as they rode across the US. There were a lot of leftovers. Some of the nonperishable food will go to the Food Bank. Some of the perishable stuff went into our fridge. There is still a goodly amount of the various GatorAde-PowerAde-HammerNutritition-ClifBar stuff here. I expect it will be consumed over the next few months by PH's pedaling buddies, the Saint Peter's Pedalers.

The first of several loads of wash are in the washing machine. Pretty ripe!

PH woke up in the middle of the night and thought he was still in the RV, and that it was stopped because it was time for another cyclist exchange, and where was his stuff? When his brother woke up this morning, he said he had the same experience.

I think it will take a few days for PH to decompress. He's still pretty emotional about his team-member's accident, and feels somewhat responsible. As for me, I'm super happy to have him home, but also a little unused to having someone else in the house.

So, too, are the cats, who are snubbing him for abandoning them to my harsh care (not really) for two weeks.

Second sermon in the Abraham series tomorrow, on Sarah and Hagar, the power struggles between people who have no power, and what happens when you get impatient with God delivering on God's promises. It's tolerable, but not one of my best. I'm hoping the spirit will descend for the Akedah sermon for next week. We shall see.

Time to put in the next load of laundry...

They're Home!

PH and the team crossed the finish line in Annapolis after pedaling 3015 miles across the country at 8:30 this morning. They looked remarkably good for crazy people. And it is important to note that the person who started them on this quest was my husband, the mental health professional.

Thanks be to God that they're here, and they're safe. The one rider on the team who was injured is home as well, visiting the orthopedist to see if he has dodged the need for shoulder surgery.

It was an amazing accomplishment, and many thanks to all those who prayed for their safety!

PS: PH is the guy being held up by his teammates, his brother C and C's colleague M.

Team 2600 Update

PH and the team have crossed into Maryland from West Virginia, the state with the most brutal climbs. The new anticipated arrival time is somewhere between 6 am and noon tomorrow in Annapolis. At midnight last night, when they got to Parkersburg, WV, a contingent of friends from Pittsburgh were there to cheer them on. Nothing like devoted friends. There will be a similar group of DC-area folks when they get to the finish line.

Go Team 2600!

Work

I've been busy setting up a lay pastoral care ministry here at St Diverse. I've got the Lay Eucharistic Ministers trained and licensed to bring communion to shut-ins, I've got the meal ministry semi-organized, and we've been in touch with a number of folks who would like to receive help. My hope is to get it chugging far enough along that it will survive when I am done with my internship in four and a half weeks. Remarkable to think I'm approaching the halfway point at this place. It's a brief enough time that I can look upon it as a case study in congregational issues, but long enough that I can develop relationships with some of the people of the parish, as well as with the rector and the parish administrator. A good experience, all in all.

We had a good meeting (despite a monster storm that knocked out the power) earlier this week on the research project for 2nd semester. My prof, our dean of academic affairs, me, and another prof who is a nationally recognized expert in congregational analysis through the lens of sociology of religion, all working through methodology of the project. It's going to be a great learning experience. My prof will get a good book out of this work, and I may be able to use elements of our research in my thesis (which I'd like to publish either as a monograph or expand into a book). We shall see.

PH and his team are pedaling across Ohio at this time. One of the riders was injured and is out of the race, so there are three left on the team. This translates from each rider doing 100 miles per day to doing between 120 and 150 a day. I can't even imagine.

They have less than 600 miles to go and should reach Annapolis in the wee hours of Friday morning. Can't wait to see them!

Yay!

PH and the team have passed the halfway point in their Race Across America. 1500 miles down, 1515 to go. Hoping they'll get in to Annapolis the afternoon of the 19th. Go, Team 2600!

Today's Sermon: Pentecost 5, Genesis18: 1-15, 21:1-7

Last week, Father David started our series on the story of Abraham, who is revered as the father of three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. One of the images that he presented to us was that of journeying on. It’s a powerful image, that our faith is not a static thing, but a journey. It is a journey that is represented in the life of Abraham, both in the physical journey from Ur to Canaan, and it is a journey to a covenant agreement between the one true God and his people. That journey image applies to families as well. I mention that, because the story of Abraham is really about all of us, because we are all children of Abraham. His story is the story of his family as well.

Every family is a journey of sorts. Every family has a story about its beginnings. My mother met my father in France in World War II. They were both in the US Army there, my father in Paris, my mother in Alsace. They had grown up a mere five miles apart, in Jersey City, New Jersey. But they courted, and became engaged, in the fields of sweet peas in France. It took a journey of almost four thousand miles from west to east, and another four thousand miles back again, for them to become the family that would adopt me, and raise me, back home in Jersey City.

Other families’ journeys are even more remarkable. One of my professors and his wife traveled 7000 miles to adopt a little girl in China. It was a journey of love and of commitment, one that they would use to build their own family with a child whom they had never met until one day in Shanghai.

Sometimes the journeys are metaphorical. We recently heard of the death of Mildred Jeter Loving, a woman of color whose marriage to a white man violated Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws, beginning a battle that rose all the way to the Supreme Court. It caused the end of laws that prohibited interracial marriage. For two average persons, one white, one black, who simply wanted to love each other, their journey toward legalization of their union was not measured in miles. It was measured in tears, in jail time, in threats against their lives, in loneliness.

Think of that wonderful old musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” Each of Tevye’s daughters marries in a way that is inimical to their father, a devout and traditional Jew. The journey is not only that of the young women and the men whom they choose, it is that of the whole family from a way of life that seemed settled and solid, to one that would scatter them around the globe, away from their little village, away from the traditions that had seemed so inevitable and comforting.

Abraham and Sarah are embarking on their own particular family journey in our passage from Genesis this morning. The Lord is making them a promise that on the face of it seems absurd: they will have a son. Sarah, standing outside the tent eavesdropping, laughs out loud. She’s in her eighties, and Abraham is even older. They’ve long since given up on the idea that they would have children. You’ll remember in last week’s story from the Old Testament, when God sends Abram out to Canaan , he says “I will make of you a great nation.” It’s hard to make a great nation from a man when he and his wife are old, and they have no children of their own. Abram has started on this journey, both a journey of travel to Canaan, and a family journey that will lead to the birth of Isaac, but that boy hasn’t been conceived yet.

If ever there was a situation where the word “inconceivable” would be more apropos, I can’t think of one.

So on this journey, some visitors show up at Abraham’s encampment. They’ve come for a very specific purpose. It’s not clear who they are…the text seems to imply they are angels, but one of them, or all three together, seem to be the Lord, with whom Abraham has been having all those interesting conversations. Abraham shows them traditional Middle Eastern hospitality, offering them water and food and rest under a shady tree. We still see it in nomadic herder traditions. You never know when you are going to be stuck out on the trail with little resources, so the rule is you always offer hospitality to the traveler passing through, since you may be in the same boat some day (or on the same camel!)

They are there to reinforce the covenant that the Lord has made with Abraham, to remind him that in exchange for Abraham’s devotion to the one true God, Abraham will become the progenitor of a great nation. A reminder of that inconceivable thing, that Abraham will have a son. And Abraham laughs, and Sarah laughs.

And yet, when Sarah laughs, the Lord is aggravated with her, and calls her on it: “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Sarah, frightened, says “I didn’t say that.” And the Lord comes right back at her, “Oh yes you did!”

A remarkable exchange, wouldn’t you say? To have God standing up close and personal, getting into your face. To have God telling you that your journey didn’t end with your arrival in Canaan. Oh, no, it has only started. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

Apparently not. Our reading leaps ahead in the story, and Abraham, at one hundred years of age, becomes the father of Isaac. Isaac, whose name means “he laughs.” Isaac, the precious culmination of a journey that began with a promise from God, a promise of family, not only of the next generation, but of a thousand thousand generations to come. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Can the Lord make a family of three, and thence a family of three hundred million, like stars in the sky or grains of sand by the ocean? Can the Lord put father Abraham on the path of this family journey?

The Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh : says this of families: "If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. all of them are alive in this moment. each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people."

We read this story forward from Abraham, to Isaac, to all the generations that are to come. But can we read the story backward? Can we trace back on the palms of our hands all those generations that preceded us? Can we look back through generation before generation, a genealogy called a toledot in the ancient scriptures, and link ourselves back to that moment when the Lord said to Abraham, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah will have a son.”

Here is the gift of that story: we can trace back on the palms of our hands. We can link back through the generations, all the way back to father Abraham. The inconceivable gift of the Lord is passed through all those generations to us. Abraham’s covenant with God is passed through the hundreds of generations. God’s love for us, and commitment to us, is passed back from us through all the generations that preceded us.

And it’s important to look backward as well as forward, because there are lessons to be learned among our forebears. For me, one of the most comforting ones is to look at those in the generations who were less than perfect. Think of Peter, who denied his Lord. Think of David, who took Bathsheba and had her husband killed. Think of Rahab, a prostitute. Think of Jacob, who deceived his father to steal his brother’s inheritance. God has worked through them – even the ones who were murderers, even the ones who were adulterers, even the ones who were liars, even the ones who were a disappointment to God. God has worked through them all, for His purposes.

If God can use people like this, perhaps he can even use us for his purposes.

So here’s a thought: when three strangers show up at your door, welcome them in. The message may be a surprising one, an inconceivable one. God has use for you, and your journey will link you to all who have come before, and all who are to come.

Amen.

Saturday Stuff

PH and the team will hit the 1000 mile mark very soon, putting them 1/3 of the way through the race. Everyone seems to be holding up well. Today they will be doing a pretty brutal climb in Cimarron - should take them over 10,000 feet elevation. Intense!

It will be milder for me, just going to a friends's ordination, then icon writing. Glad to be doing something mellow. It is a beautiful morning, so I think it's time for a walk.

If It's Friday, It Must Be Utah

PH and the team just made it across Arizona, and are now in Utah. 650 miles down, 2365 to go. Wild and crazy guys! They had a breakdown with the RV in Arizona (the charge for which - $4K - is sitting on my American Express card right now) - but it seems to be resolved for now.

Things are quieter here at Casa Mibi on my day off. The carpet cleaners came at 7:30 this morning. Supposedly, it was supposed to dry within two hours. We're at 5 hours now, and it isn't dry. Oh well. at least it looks clean. I'm glad I got it done. Now I just want it to finish drying so I can move the smaller furniture back into the room and out of the kitchen.

I think it's time to escape the house and wander around the mall...

Update: The team is now in Colorado. Three states in one day. Wow!

Random Dots of Thursday

• Alone in the church office, since rector and wife (the church admin) are away today. An odd sensation!

• PH and the team are into Arizona, having finished the California leg of the race. They aren't going very quickly, but that was strategic on their part - slow and steady gets you to the end of the race. Going too fast at the beginning burns you out. Three Time Stations down, only 51 to go!

• Sermon and powerpoint slides are done for this Sunday. Time to start on Wednesday's homily and the sermon for next Sunday. I am telling myself what good experience this is for me.

• Spent yesterday lunchtime with the other priests of the region and our Bishop Coadjutor, who is a very cool guy. I think he will enliven this diocese, which (although the largest in the US and the oldest) has gotten rather worn down by the legal battles over who stays and who leaves TEC, and whether they relinquish their property as church canons state or keep it. Oh, I will be happy when the lawsuits are decided!

• Still no paperwork back from last semester's schoolwork. I actually got a call from one of my profs yesterday who couldn't find the grade for my final paper (delivered in early March) and wanted to know if I had a copy of it. Sigh...I shouldn't be surprised. There is - believe it or not - one class that ended in March 2007 for which I have not received a final grade.

• I'm fantasizing about a week of vacation with PH after this internship ends, and my three day interim ministry class which immediately follows it. It will have to be close, given the gasoline prices, but even a long weekend somewhere in the Shenandoah would revive me.

• I will be going to meet with the Standing Committee of the Diocese on July 17th for the interview for candidacy for ordination. The Commission on Ministry recommended enthusiastically in favor, but in moments of paranoia, I fear the Standing Committee will start all over again with the questions from ground zero. Maybe not. My friend L will be meeting with them in June, so we shall see what her experience is. Since she and I are alike in many ways (with the exception of my kids being more or less grown and her still being pretty young), our interviews have been quite similar.

• And as my Commission on Ministry Liaison was on sabbatical, and thus not there to support me, for the COM interview, my Standing Committee Liaison will also be gone for my meeting with them. Ah well, what doesn't kill makes me me strong.

• Temperatures right now are a balmy 79 degrees. Humidity is low. Thanks be to God! Another few days of heat indexes of 110 and high humidity, and I wouldn have melted into a puddle on the floor.

• Carpet cleaners come to our little townhouse tomorrow. A good thing, since between the cats puking and PH running his bike into the house, that neutral beige carpet is looking pretty grungy. It should stay clean for, oh, about three days.

• PH (along with his father and brother) will be on the ride for Father's Day. So do you think I should get him a massage for when he comes home as his FD present?

Sum, Sum, Summertime

Yes, it's hot here in Your Nation's Capitol. Once again, we should have heat indexes over 110. I've got on my coolest flax linen outfit, since I've got a meeting several miles away with my peer group - we all are doing summer parish internships. It will be nice to see my friends and be somewhere different for a change. Tomorrow is a Clericus meeting for our region, so I'll go with my supervisor - we're meeting with our Bishop Coadjutor, so it should be interesting.

PH is out in CA. His race across America will start tomorrow. I cannot imagine cycling across the desert. Then again, I can't imagine cycling any sort of long distance. Just sayin'.

Stay cool and peaceful.

Random Dots of Day Off

• an early-morning walk
• relatively pain-free Physical Therapy
• new Croc sandals
• pedicure (couldn't have one without the other)
• a little fun housewares shopping
• food shopping
• late light lunch
• reading fun stuff
• phone call from PH as he was heading into Iowa

Life is good.

Alone

PH left for the Race Across America yesterday morning. His brother had driven down from Steeltown to retrieve him and the two tons of assorted gear the prior night, arriving after a bad storm and tornadoes had knocked out our power. I had intended to cook a big farewell meal, but we ended up going out for Indian food. So yesterday they left at 6:15 a.m., heading first to Steeltown, then on the the City with Big Shoulders and their parents' house for the night. Today they drive on to Mile-High City to pick up another couple of the support driver team members, then on to CA.

It was odd to be alone in the house yesterday. I worked from home, and did some house work as well as office work. I ate some food that I shouldn't have, and watched two movies on Netflix Instant-View. It felt like a day when I just wanted to cocoon a bit.

Today will be busier. It's my official day off from work, so I'll go to Physical Therapy, do some food shopping, make some gazpacho, go to L's house to help her pack up for moving, try to start organizing some of my books...or maybe not. I did walk for 45 minutes this a.m. - it's going to be in the 90s today and I don't do well in the heat, so I like to get the exercising done in the early hours while it's still around 70 degrees.

The counters:
Weeks of Summer Internship Left: 6
Days Until PH Comes Home: 13
Months Until Graduation: 12

Stay chill.

Today's Sermon: Noah and the Flood, a Love Story

Pentecost 3, Year A

Gen 6: 9-22; 7:24; 8: 14-19 (Noah and the Flood)
Romans 1: 16-17; 3:22b-31
Matt 7:21-29

You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that our Old Testament story, that of Noah and the ark, is really a love story.

For most of us, who have heard it so many times, it feels like a children’s story. Noah, building the great big boat in his back yard. Happy animals, lined up two by two, walking up the gangplank. Great rains, with the boat floating around in the water. Then the rain abates, the sun comes out, the dove brings back a branch with leaves on it – that bit of new growth that the writer Frederick Buechner calls “a sprig of hope”- and the boat settles on top of a mountain. It’s not quite like what the movie “Evan Almighty” portrayed, with the ark settling at the edge of the US Capitol, but seems like a happy story. We read it as a story of great charm…but is it really?

Let’s go back to the words of the text. How does the story begin? “And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.”

God is so angry with the way humanity is behaving that he is going to destroy them all. He is going to abolish everything he created, all those beautiful things that were part of the act of Creation we heard about a few weeks ago. God is deeply unhappy.

Have you ever been that angry?

You’ve seen children act this way – when my daughter was little, if she didn’t like what she had crayoned, she’d sometimes just scribble the whole sheet with the black crayon in frustration.

God sounds like he’s frustrated in the same way. Here he made this wonderful earth and all its creatures, and the pinnacle of his work was the creation of humanity…and humanity disappointed him.

Now remember, God had laid out the ground rules. If you don’t believe me, go home and read Leviticus and Deuteronomy in your bibles – long lists of what to do and how to do it.

Rules…not suggestions, not guidelines. Rules.

Now, the thing about rules is that they imply that something happens when you don’t obey them. It’s like a conversation I had last year with my friend Jack’s little girl Ella. Ella was three at the time, and the whole family was awaiting the birth of a new baby, a little sister for Ella.
When I saw Jack and Ella, I said “Ella, are you excited about the new baby?” “Oh yes, but you know the baby isn’t here yet.” “I know, honey, but you’re going to be a big sister soon! That must be exciting!” “Yes, but Daddy says I have to help. I have to be a good girl.” “Well, gee, Ella, I know you’re a good girl, that shouldn’t be too hard.” “I’m a good girl, but sometimes I misbehave. I don’t like it when I misbehave because when I don’t behave Daddy says there are CONSEQUENCES!”

Yes, there are consequences. That’s certainly the case in the story of Noah and the Flood.

The people misbehave, and there are consequences. God tells Noah what those consequences are: He is going to destroy everything.

Now, when people tell me they don’t like the Old Testament, because the God of the Old Testament is a vengeful God, this is the kind of thing they talk about. The people don’t follow the rules. God punishes them. It happens a lot in the Old Testament, because the people of Israel are, as the Scripture says, a stiff-necked people.

They’re a little like my son S, who’s 22 now, but when he was a teen and first got his driver’s license, he was convinced that he knew it all and didn’t have to follow my rules. One night he asked to borrow the car so he could go to a friend’s house. Frankly, I was happy when he began to drive, because that saved me from having to drive him everywhere, but there were upsides and downsides to letting him drive. He wasn’t always good about getting back in time. This particular night, I reminded him he had to be back by 11 pm, because our city had a curfew for teen drivers. I liked the curfew, because I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep until he got home safely. I reminded him “You know, driving is a privilege. If you want to use the car, you’ve got to follow the rules. Be sure you’re back by 11. Call me if you think you’re going to be late.”

You can guess what happened. He didn’t get back by 11. I had dozed off – my first indicator that something was wrong was when the phone rang at midnight. It was a police officer: “Mrs. T? Did you know your son S was out driving past curfew? We’re down on Military Road. Do you want to come get him and the car?” So my husband and I got up, drove down to retrieve the car and a very nervous 17 year old.

He was worried about what my reaction was, and he had good reason to be.

“What were you thinking! How come you didn’t come home on time? You know there’s a curfew.”

“Gee, Mom, I lost track of the time.”

“That’s no excuse. You broke the rules. You can’t use the car for a month!”

Suffice to say, I was pretty angry.

And in my anger, I imposed consequences on S for breaking the rules. But then, my husband PH, my wonderfully calm husband, quietly said, “Mibi, I’m wondering if S might come up with another punishment instead of being denied the use of the car for a whole month.”

PH knew that the consequences that I spoke of would be as much a punishment for us as for S, since we’d be the ones driving him to work and to other activities. He also wanted S to take some responsibility for his actions.

S proposed an alternative that meant that he couldn’t use the car for two weeks, but he would do some additional chores and errands. He knew he had done something wrong, he was required to pay for it in his actions, but he also knew that the punishment could have been a lot worse.

It was a moment of saving grace. A bit of mercy, while still recognizing S’s responsibility for his actions.

And it’s that saving grace that is God’s gift in the story of Noah and the Flood. Even in the midst of God’s towering anger, even as God was planning the destruction of the earth and everything in it, he stops. He sees one righteous man, Noah. He sees a shaft of light amidst the storm clouds of a deeply dysfunctional world. And he holds back, out of love for the possibilities of humankind. Instead of killing everybody and everything on the earth because of humankind’s misdeeds, he says, “I’m going to give them a chance to start over, and I’m going to use this human being to make that happen.”

Here’s a God who is not simply a vengeful judge, this is a God who so loves what He has created that even when his creation is misused, he still wants to give them another chance. It’s a moment of hopefulness, a moment of saving grace. He says, “Yes, I have to clean house here – these people have broken my rules in a deep and disturbing way - but I will give humanity a second chance.” And so he instructs Noah to build the ark, to bring his family and the animals aboard, and he allows that shaft of light to shine through the forty days of rainfall…a new beginning for humanity, a new beginning for the earth.

This is God’s great love story, to be willing to give a second chance when it seems we don’t deserve one. It didn’t just happen in Noah’s time. It happens to us every day.

Jesus talks about this in an oblique way in the Gospel today. He warns us that we will fall short of following the rules. He says if we only go through the motions of following him, we’ve missed the mark. If we don’t follow the will of his Father in heaven, even if we go through the motions by saying we’re Christians, we’re out the door. We haven’t built our house on rock, as Jesus says. He warns us that there are consequences for our actions. In the New Covenant, the focus is a little different: it’s not about the kinds of rules that are outlined in the Torah, in the Old Testament, where it’s about not mixing wool and linen and not eating pigs or shrimp. It’s about who we honor in our life. If we honor God, and let that be the guiding principle in our life, we’re on the right track, and we are welcome.

But that’s hard. We forget, we misstep, every day, often in little ways. Each time we make a rude gesture to the guy who cut us off in traffic, each time we contemplate the extra dollar because the cashier miscounted our change, each time we think unkindly of the relative who bores us with her endlessly repetitive stories, we forget who is the guiding principle in our life.
And that is frightening, because Jesus has told us in the gospel that if we don’t live in a way that honors His father, he will declare that he never knew us…he will deny us. And that’s the last thing we want, even though we fail and will most likely continue to fail.

And that’s where the words of Paul in today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans give us an insight on how God’s saving grace works in our lives today. Paul knows who we are, in all our weakness: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” but he shows us that shaft of light, he reminds us of that saving grace: because we believe in Christ, and because of Christ’s redemption of us by dying on the Cross, we are saved. We have broken the rules, and there are consequences. But the great gift of God’s love for us is that we are saved, in spite of our failures, because we have God’s son to redeem us. That is love, even when we don’t feel we deserve it. That is grace. And that is the promise that will hold us up when we most need it, now and forever.

Amen.