Today's Sermon: Galatians 3:23-29 "Gift of the Father"

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

Dramatic words from Paul in our epistle today, written to the church in Galatia. Paul lived in a time when categorizing yourself as Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, was central to how one lived in those days. So what was it that set Paul off so that he felt he had to write this letter to the church in Galatia?

Paul had traveled to Galatia and had converted people, who then formed the core of what was to become the church there. The people who became followers of Christ were pagans, Greek citizens of the area now known as Anatolia. He taught them about Christ, about how Christ had died to free us from our sins, how their faith in Christ was a great gift from God, and all they needed for eternal salvation. Paul had already had his argument with Peter about converting non-Jews to Christ, and whether it was necessary for non-Jews to convert to Judaism first, and at the Council of Jerusalem, the apostles agreed that it was not necessary. This was great news for Paul, since it’s hard to get people excited about becoming Christ-followers if they have to get circumcised first. And this was the way he had taught and converted Gentiles in his travels.

Now, Paul was a traveling sort of pastor, a circuit-rider, if you will, so after he got a group of people converted, he helped them set up an informal church community, and then he was on his way to the next place where he felt the Spirit leading him. But you and I both know that conversion is not a one-time fix. And churches, even though they are of God, are human institutions, and sometimes they can get off-track, can’t they?

Well, after Paul had left Galatia, some other people came in, preaching a different version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they said you had to become a Jew before you could be a Christ-follower. And so someone in Galatia wrote a letter to Paul telling him about these people…you can imagine the letter, can’t you:

“Dear Pastor Paul-

Greetings from sunny Galatia…well, it’s not so sunny because winter is setting in, but we certainly wish you were here. All is well here, except for one little thing. There are these new preachers passing through and they’re preaching all about Jesus, too. That would be just fine and dandy with us, but they’re saying that we have to become Jews first if we really want to be good followers of Christ, because Scripture says that it is the children of Abraham who are the ones who are saved, and that you are wrong about the whole no-circumcision thing. Some of our folks are getting a little worked up, because they really want to be good Christians, and these preachers are saying their baptism isn’t worth a single thin denarius because they didn’t become Jews first. It’s causing all sorts of arguments around here. So could you please write to us and clarify, once and for all, if we need to do the whole circumcision thing if we want to be saved?

Many thanks – yours in faith,

Your disciple, Anatolius.”

Paul gets this letter and is pretty frosted. These strangers, these ones who neither walked with Jesus or had the dramatic conversion experience that Paul did, how dare they teach so wrongly? How dare they say Paul is off-base? Didn’t he go and argue with the apostles at the Council of Jerusalem to get this very matter settled? Didn’t he win that argument? So he sits down and writes Anatolius and the rest of the Galatians a letter in response. And the heart of the letter is this:

“No. They are wrong. Remember what I taught you.

Before Jesus came, we all had to follow the Law of Moses, plus a thousand other little laws that told us everything from what kind of food we could eat to how we would pray. All that stuff about circumcision, the original covenant that God made, all of that was part of the deal between God and Abraham and all Abraham’s descendents. But the whole thing changed when Jesus came. Jesus, God’s son, who died on the cross as part of the new covenant. Suddenly the central point of the whole covenant wasn’t following the law, it was following Jesus, who wasn’t about what kind of food we could eat and what shape the ark would be. Jesus died. We are all God’s children because of that. In the old days, we would have to be children of Abraham by following the law. Now we are children of Abraham by following Jesus. So you don’t have to worry about whether you’re a Jew or a Greek or a slave or a farmer….those categories, and the rules that go with them, are no longer important. Got it?”

Yes, Paul was given to pressing the send button after writing out a dramatic and emotional response, just like we sometimes send out emails a little too quickly. But as dramatic and emotional as this statement is, it is sound theology.

And it’s all about our relationship with our heavenly Father.

Yup, it’s Father’s Day, so how could I not talk about the Father that we all share? God, our Creator. The giver of all good things?

Let’s talk a little bit about fathers, and their relationship with their children.

When you’re tiny, your dad does everything for you. Feeds you, protects you, maybe even changes a diaper now and then, teaches you to ride a bike…and he also is often the person who sets down the rules in the house. Not always – sometimes Mom is the rule-maker in the house – but pretty often. And you know that you’d better follow those rules, rules that your dad made because he loves you and wants to protect you and wants you to grow up to be a good person. If you don’t follow the rules, what happens?

I ran into a friend at the seminary one day. He was with his little daughter, Ella. Ella was four years old. She was looking pretty blue, so I said “Are you having a bad day?” She sighed a long, four-year-old sigh. “Sort of. I pushed Jamey (her baby brother) and Daddy got mad. He yelled at me. I got consequences.” “What?” “Daddy says when I do something bad, I get consequences.”

Consequences. Yes, when we break the rules, there are consequences to our actions, whether it is a speeding ticket or a broken marriage or being put in the time-out corner.

Now, the rules are important for little children, but as we grow, things change. When we become adolescents, we feel constrained by the rules. We want to do what WE want to do. We fight them, and we fight the father who has set the rules. Staying out a little past curfew, smoking a cigarette, hanging out with bad kids…we rebel. And while some fathers try to clamp down even harder, others step back a little bit and say “Okay. You want to get a little more freedom? Let’s test that out and see what happens. Let’s see how it affects your schoolwork, or your participation in the sports team, or your relationships with your friends. And if you make the wrong choice, you will have to bear the consequences. I won’t bail you out.” That father loosens the reins a little, lets the teenager or young adult start to make his own choices, and deal with the consequences of those choices for good or for ill. Eventually, the father hopes that the teen or young adult will figure out for himself what is right and what is wrong. After all, for sixteen years the father has been enforcing the rules and teaching the values behind those rules. Now it is time for the young person to live those values without the highly structured rules that were necessary when he was younger.

And that’s precisely the strategy that God is using when he sends Jesus to earth to teach us a new way of being in relationship with the One True God. Jesus preaches and teaches and heals and blesses, and then gives his life for us, so that we might have a more perfect relationship with God. Jesus takes away the need for the highly structured laws and rules that marked the old relationship. God is treating us as his children who have now matured sufficiently, with Jesus’ help, to be able to make our own choices.

And that means that the rules about the food and the curfew and the type of prayer, all the rules and punishments that were part of the old system, now are set aside, because we are now spiritually mature enough to be in relationship with God without them. The parent of the young adult says “you’re going to college now. I won’t be there to watch everything you do. I’ve taught you well, so make wise choices.” God says, “You’ve learned more about me through Jesus, and he has sacrificed himself for you to make sure you will be in good relationship with me. He has taught you well, so make wise choices.”

In the same way, Paul tells the folks in Galatia that they don’t have to revert back to the old rules and categories – don’t we love to categorize ourselves and others – they are now free. He reminds them of the gift that their heavenly father has given them, the freedom to love God not out of compulsion, but because we cannot help but respond to God’s love when we as mature spiritual creatures sense that love in our lives.

And in a few minutes, when we celebrate the sacrament of baptism with little G.G. , we acknowledge that even she, as young as she is, is set on a path shaped by God’s love, a path that will give her the tools she needs as she grows to love God and to love all of God’s world around her, and to make the choices that God would have us all make. She is a child of the heavenly Father who loves her boundlessly, as we are all that Father’s children.

Fathers, whether they be the earthly fathers who have taught us so well that we have matured and learned to make our own wise choices, or the heavenly Father who sent his son to teach us, deserve our gratitude and thanks. We no longer have to be bound by strict laws and rules to know how to live rightly. They have given us the knowledge and the freedom to grow in spiritual knowledge, and we owe them our deepest thanks.

Amen.

Friday Five: Running Late!

1. Do you tend to be a late person or one who is timely, arriving on time or earlier?

I don't much like it when others are late, and I try to be prompt myself. As I get older, though, I am finding myself always running a few minutes behind. Well, not always, but often enough that it causes me indigestion.

2. Have you forgotten anything of importance lately?

Nope. That's what lists are for, and the Droid. If I didn't have those tools, though, I'd be in deep trouble.

3. Is procrastination your inclination? Why or why not?

This is really about things I don't want to do. Then I vacillate between two poles: I tackle it first thing, before I can procrastinate, or I let it shuffle to the bottom of the pile where I can forget about it. The list thing, though, makes it harder to ignore.

4. Do you like schedules or spontaneity? Which works best for you?

Definitely schedules. Don't much like not knowing what the day will bring, which is pretty ridiculous in ministry. I guess the illusion of control has the same effect as decaffeinated coffee - it tastes enough like the real thing that I can convince myself that it really will have the same net effect.

5. How do you stay on track with the various things you need to, people you must meet, etc., etc.?

Google calendar, on my computer and on my Droid, plus a paper family calendar on the frig at home to coordinate with PH.

BONUS: Whatever comes to mind about forgetfulness or lateness.

I'd tell you about a song that I vaguely recall...something about "but you forgot to remember," but I can't remember enough to retrieve it...

Procrastination Post

I really should be settling in to write the wedding homily and the sermon for Sunday's HE/Baptism, but I'm just sort of blah today. It happens that way sometimes. I should also be editing the content for the new website, but I don't have the energy for that, either.

Part of this is due to the fact that I drove PH to the airport at 4:45 this morning. Cheap flight to the Windy City for a conference, and I promised him I'd drive, since he's doing this one on his own dime rather than having it paid for by the Professional Association of which he is president. I think they should cover this, since it's a related organization, but that's not my business, so I'll hush up about it now. I got slightly lost driving back, since the exit from the airport goes out another road from the entrance. Still, I got to see the sunrise and a couple bunnies hopping across my lawn in the half-light. I also got to do some final cleaning up of our house prior to the arrival of the lovely seminarian friend who is using our place as a halfway point in her journey south to her own diocese. She and I will talk about the General Ordination Exams - she's looking for guidance as to how to prepare, and it really isn't something you can study for or prepare for, other than organizing your resources. That and pray.

The other part of this is that I've been doing a lot. I've been here 45 days, and have done two services each Sunday, introduced a Wednesday service, done a funeral, am about to do a wedding and a baptism, have done 15 pastoral visits or meetings with folks who haven't seen someone in a collar in quite some time, have taken the Vestry on retreat to develop a mission statement, have started up the process of developing the new website, have helped celebrate Eucharist at a nursing home, have redesigned the bulletin, restarted the monthly newsletter....the list continues from there.

Taking the day off has been complicated by the funeral, the wedding, the Vestry retreat, and other stuff. I try to take some comp time on other days, but it's a challenge right now. Still, the exhaustion I feel is a result of this.

So I'll give myself a little grace today, putter some, get some stuff done, and look forward to tomorrow, my putative day off, until I have to go conduct the wedding rehearsal at 5.

Thank you, Lord, for this call to ordained ministry. Now could you please clone me so I can get everything done without frying myself to a crisp?

Time for a bit of chocolate, I think.

Today's Sermon: Luke 7:36-50 “Which Way Do I Go?”

Pharisees get a bad rap in the New Testament.

These good men don’t want to do anything more than clean up the Jewish faith, making sure that everyone is following the ancient Mosaic Law. They’re reformers.

Frankly, that’s a good thing, because God’s people have gone off the rails and aren’t really in the kind of relationship with their God that they should be.

And Simon, one of those Pharisees about whom we hear in today’s Gospel, gets the same kind of treatment we see in other parts of the gospel….he’s a Pharisee, and he just doesn’t GET what Jesus is about, so he’s some sort of fool. Seems sort of cruel, doesn’t it?

Simon, a devoted man of faith, at least as he himself sees it, is the Pharisee who invited Jesus over to dinner.

The question that sticks in my mind is why a Pharisee would invite this rebel preacher to his house for dinner. Is he curious about this man who has worked miracles? Does he want to hear more about Jesus’ teachings, which sound pretty radical? Does he think he will best Jesus in a theological argument, and will be viewed as a hero by other Jewish leaders? Does he hunger for something that is missing in his soul, and does he wonder if Jesus can offer him that missing piece?

We don’t know, but we do know that Pharisees are the guardians of the law, the zealous enthusiasts for “doing it right” in following the law. So it is no surprise how he reacts when a woman who is a notorious sinner shows up at the table. She has brought oil to anoint Jesus’ feet. She weeps. Her tears wash Jesus’ feet. She anoints his feet and dries them with her hair.

Simon’s reaction is horror. First of all, she is a woman. Second of all, she is a known sinner. In Mosaic law, those are two powerful reasons for Jesus to shrink from her touch. You’re not supposed to touch women who are not members of your family, and you’re certainly not supposed to touch “bad girls.” But Jesus doesn’t push her away; he lets her do this thing.

Simon thinks to himself, “If this man were really someone of God, he would know that this is an unclean woman and would not let her touch him.” But Jesus knows what he’s thinking. His response is a little parable about forgiveness…the person who is forgiven more will love the Lord who forgives more. Jesus knows that the forgiveness he offers the woman is more precious to her than his presence at the Pharisee’s table is to Simon, and he blesses the woman.

Simon may have had a particular direction that he thought the evening would take, but Jesus takes him off that path into a new and unfamiliar territory. Can Simon adjust to the change in route? Can he go with this changed reality? Can he be open to God working in him in new ways, ways that are not marked out by the old Mosaic law?

It’s a question for us as well, isn’t it?

Can we go off the particular map we have in our own heads, the familiar and comfortable path, if the Spirit leads us into a new place? Can we be open to God working in us in new ways that are not marked out by the old familiar landmarks?

That’s a scary proposition. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the familiar and the certain. Things I think I know well enough to control. That preference is exemplified by my love for my new phone. It’s got GPS, with turn-by-turn directions. When I’m going somewhere I haven’t been to before, which is a lot of the time these days, I can tell it where I want to go – “navigate to Gelati Celesti!” – and it gets me there, reasonably efficiently. I feel safe. I won’t get lost. Even if I take a wrong turn, it will say “recalculating!” and will get me properly turned around.

Before I had the phone, I had Mapquest. I Mapquested my way all over the place, and it usually got me where I wanted to go in a way that made me feel confident and secure. Before that, I used the Rand McNally Road Atlas, and was pretty darned good at getting where I was going. Here’s the secret: with tools like these, I felt like I was always in control.

That’s a really different way of approaching getting to a new place than that of my mother. My mother was very good at general orientation. She could always tell whether she was going north, south, east or west. She was notorious for getting into the car and heading off in a particular direction towards a new destination, without a clue as to which roads she should take. We’d leave from northern New Jersey to go to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. Road map? Nah. She’d head in the direction she knew was north. As I started squirming in the car, thinking we’d never get there, she’d smile serenely and say “we’re headed north. We’ll get there eventually.” She had much more faith in her basic directional skills than I did, and much more faith that no matter where we ended up, we’d be able to orient ourselves toward the Berkshires and get there somehow, and – oh, by the way – we’d probably see much more interesting things than if we had sped confidently up an interstate that would get us there in three hours instead of seven on the back roads.

I have always been much more heavily invested in controlling my environment, but that’s not how God works. God laughs when I try to control things. God wants to stretch me out of the familiar, take me on some of those back roads into new places that I might not have otherwise visited, into new territory of the heart. Can I be open to that? Can we be open to that? As I asked before, can we go off the particular map we have in our own heads, the familiar and comfortable path, if the Spirit leads us into a new place? Can we be open to God working in us in new ways that are not marked out by the old familiar landmarks?

It’s an interesting question to ask today, for two reasons.

First, your Vestry spent most of yesterday trying to listen for God’s voice, to feel the Spirit working in Epiphany in both old and new ways. We came away from that time together with some interesting insights into who we are and how God is calling us, and you’ll be hearing more about those insights in the weeks to come. We haven’t come up with a new roadmap…we like a lot of the old landmarks and hope to incorporate them into our ongoing journey, but we expect there will be some fresh and new ways of traveling ahead of us as a parish.

Second, today we honor five young people who are graduating from high school. We recognize their involvement in the life of this parish, as acolytes and working in the nursery, and in many other aspects of our common life. They are headed down a new path, and the skills we have taught them in reading the map of their future will serve them when it all looks very new and unfamiliar and frightening.

That is, in fact, one of the challenges when God disorients us when he wants to do a new thing in us. We get frightened and we want to revert back to old familiar patterns. We reach back not only for familiar landmarks, but for all the old familiar ways that feel comforting. Whether it is in how we drive from Lakeside to the Fan, or whether it is how we get from being a small and loving family-style parish to a somewhat larger but equally warm and caring parish, when it feels like we are on unfamiliar ground, we long for the old way, and we want to abandon the path that God sets before us. We don’t want to be part of the new thing that God is asking of us.

Our Pharisee Simon is shook up. God is taking him to a new place in the person of Jesus, doing these radical things that no nice Jewish boy should do, teaching Simon that what he cherishes most, that orderly path of following the Law, is missing the point. It won’t get Simon to where he needs to go. Jesus is pushing him down a new path, a dimly lit one, and Simon is frightened and resists it.

He’d much rather just keep on trying to follow the ancient Law in a more perfect way. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, and it’s been pretty good so far.

But Jesus has a different message, and a different direction for Simon and for the rest of us to follow. Jesus says: “Don’t try to follow the recipe book that is the old Law! Think creatively about how God interacts with God’s people! Think about God’s great love and generosity as demonstrated by the forgiveness which is offered to this woman!”

Jesus is forcing Simon off the GPS of the Law. He is forcing Simon to get off the interstate and onto the backroads, forcing him to navigate with his wits and his love of God, and with God’s love of him as his only landmarks.

Jesus is working in a new way with Simon. He is working in a new way with these young people, as they step out into a new and unfamiliar world. He is working in a new way with us as we discern how we live as God’s people in this place at this time. There is no roadmap, no GPS for this work. All we have is the certainty of God’s love, the assurance that the wisdom of the Holy Spirit will be poured down on us, and that our true north star is Christ the Lord. Can we trust? As my mother would say, “We’ll get there eventually. We’re headed north. Everything is alright. And we may find some really interesting stuff along the way.” And with Christ, it will be so.

Amen.

Busy Week, Busy Weekend

A funeral of a parishioner's parent in a neighboring church, three evening meetings plus a dinner gathering, Clericus, Fresh Start an hour north of here, a meeting with another local clergywoman, pastoral visits, redesign of church bulletin, and prep for tomorrow's Vestry Retreat....it has been a busy week. I survived my first Finance Committee meeting - we decided we would not solve all the problems of the world in one meeting.

Tomorrow's meeting is about our vision for the coming year and what we discern is God's call for us in this place at this time. We may even concoct a mission statement. As with the Vestry Retreat I did with my prior parish last January, I will be using the Appreciative Inquiry methodology - I've found it to be very fruitful. Less likely to get lost in the "we don't have the resources to do x..." thing. as well.

I am uncharacteristically waiting to write my sermon until after the retreat, since I hope some of what we do at the retreat can be incorporated into the sermon. We'll see if that works, or if it is a total cluster-fumble. I'm nervous waiting until Saturday night to write a sermon - I normally get them done by Thursday - but this feels like what I'm supposed to be doing.

Today was spent on household and spouse. We slept in, all the way to 7:30 am. I started the process of staining and finishing the footstool for by my bed (it's a high four-poster, and I'm a short person). I also started the master bedroom drapes. The first panel of any project like this is tediously slow. I'm hoping the rest will go a bit quicker. Chocolate damask with seafoam velvet bands around the edge, mitered in the corners (takes a lot more time, but looks so nice). The window where the window seat is will have a Roman shade - oh yes, I need to make a cushion cover for the window seat, but that's down the list a bit - and the other widows will have those drapes, with a tailored valance with an inverted pleat, I think. Dinner at a local BBQ joint after going to see Shrek in 3-D. Wonderful silliness followed by wonderful meat and carbs. Just call me fat 'n' happy!

The coming week is relatively quiet - wedding on Saturday and Baptism the Sunday after, so there will be a rehearsal on Friday evening and such - but during the week I'll spend my evenings quietly sewing. These drapes may even be done a week from now, but if they're not, it won't take too much longer beyond that. Then it will be on to the next things on the list, and the ones beyond that...

For now, it's time to go to sleep, I think.

Someday

this will all be organized and running smooth as a top.

It is clearly not someday yet.

Sermon For Pentecost II Luke 7:11-17 “That’ll Preach”

It is an occupational hazard amongst preachers that we are always looking for material for sermons, and we tend to view our lives as a series of events that can be sermon illustrations. When you get a few preachers together, and they catch up with what’s going on in their lives, invariably, after someone tells a particularly interesting or funny or sad story that one of us will nod sagely and say “That’ll preach.”

Doug and I had one of those moments on Wednesday.

He had gone out for a bike ride – yes, he’s a little crazy to do that on a hot summer afternoon, but that’s another tale – and I was busy working on the computer, working on this sermon, as a matter of fact.

And as often happens in the early stages of sermon writing, I sat there and stared at the screen and thought to myself, as the kids say, “I got nothin’.”

I was about to get up and fuel myself with a Coke when the phone rang. Odd. Not many people have the home number. Had the telemarketers found us already? When I picked it up, I noticed it was Doug’s cellphone number on the caller id, and immediately I thought he’d had an accident and the medics were calling me to tell me about it. But no, it was Doug. He said “I’m out on the back porch, and I’ve got a stray dog here. Can you get something I can use to tie her to the porch? I think I know who’s looking for her. Come out very carefully so she doesn’t get spooked.”

As is always the case when you’ve got to find something in a hurry, I scrambled and couldn’t find the one thing I wanted – a stout piece of rope. All I had was an extension cord, so I brought it out back, where Doug was waiting with bike and dog, and said “Will this do?” He said, “Yes, that will work. I saw the people who were looking for her earlier, at the beginning of my ride, so I’ll go back out and see if I can find them.” He had run into a couple in a car who asked him if he had seen a black dog who had run away, young, about 65 pounds, and he had promised to keep an eye out for her. Little did he know that the dog would be perched on our back step when he came back from his ride! The sweet-faced black dog, Jasmine by name, looked hot and tired, so I brought her out a bowl of water. In a few minutes Doug had returned. Behind him was a weeping young woman, crying, “Jasmine, Jasmine, don’t you ever do that again! You scared me half to death!” She said she was sorry she didn’t have any money to pay Doug – not that he would have taken it – and said “This dog is all I have. We were over here pick up the remains of my pet rabbit – we had her cremated over there – and this dog is my whole life. She’s all I have left.” Of course, I’m not sure the effect that statement had on the young man who was with her….he seemed to be a boyfriend, but who knows? If I didn’t know about the pet crematorium, I sure wasn’t going to hazard a guess about the relationship. It was a strange and wonderful moment. All that she knew was that this guy in the funny-looking biking gear had shown up out of nowhere and magically given her back her beloved pet. She didn’t know how to respond to it. She was grateful and overwhelmed and a little mystified, and clueless as to what she was supposed to do.

When it comes to stories like this, you shake your head. You can’t make this stuff up. Who would have guessed that the same dog that Doug heard about from the woman would decide to come sit on our back porch? Who would have guessed that the woman would still be driving around the neighborhood an hour after she first saw Doug on the bike? Who would have guessed, for that matter, that there was a pet crematorium in our neighborhood, but that’s a story for another sermon….

When strange and wonderful things happen, we have a hard time making sense of them. Preachers, of course, are required to try, and so we tell these stories, so that together we can try to make meaning of the things that cause us to wonder what it is all about.

There is more than a little bit of the strange and wonderful in the Gospel story today, when Jesus raises a widow’s son from the dead. Jesus and his followers come into a town named Nain, and they come upon a funeral procession. People are weeping and wailing over the death of this young man. The evangelist Luke makes a point of noting that this man is the only son of a widow….a widow who is weeping and wailing the loudest of all. Her loss is a mighty one – not only the son whom she dearly loved, but the man who would serve as her support and protection as a widowed woman. She was losing both love and stability in her life. No wonder her grief was so great.

Jesus saw her in all her misery, and knew he must do something. So he stepped forward. He comforted her, saying “do not weep.” He reached out and touched the bier on which the body lay and he spoke to the dead young man. “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

The gospel tells us that the young man sat up and began to speak.

What was the first reaction of the crowd to this miracle? Fear.

When strange and wonderful things happen, we have a hard time making sense of them. The crowd was afraid, because they couldn’t figure out what was going on, and what kind of power this man Jesus had that could cause him to raise someone from the dead. They struggled to make meaning of it, and once they got past their fear, they started to praise him as a great prophet and man of God. And even in an age without FaceBook or webpages, word got out that someone very special was doing very special things in the name of God. The people hadn’t quite figured out that Jesus was, in fact, God, but this was the start to the recognition of how truly strange and wonderful this man was.

Contrast it to the other story we heard this morning, of a widow with a dying child and the man of God who just happens to be on the scene. The prophet Elijah is staying with a poor widow in the town of Zarephath. God has sent him there, specifically so that this particular woman will feed him. An odd choice on God’s part, a strange and wonderful choice, since the woman and her son are on the edge of starvation. They have so little that even if they don’t share their meager provisions with Elijah, they still would probably starve. But Elijah says that God will provide for her. Trusting in her faith in God, the widow is gracious beyond all comprehension. She makes the meal, and they eat. The household had ample meal and oil “for many days.”

Now that would be strange and wonderful enough, this miracle of meal and oil in the midst of starvation, but the story continues and takes a darker turn. Suddenly the son of the widow takes sick. He cannot breathe. Is it a bad asthma attack? Some sort of pneumonia? We don’t know, but it is clear from the woman’s words that her boy, the thing she cherishes above all else, is about to be taken from her by death. And the woman tries to make sense of this difficult thing that is happening, this time not a strange and wonderful thing, but a strange and horrible thing…all she can imagine is that Elijah has something to do with it. Elijah has brought God’s grace, in the miracle of the meal and the oil. Has he now brought God’s fearful judgment and punishment in the illness of this child?

But once again, something strange and wonderful happens. Elijah prays to God to save this child. Unlike the Gospel story, when Jesus himself resuscitates the child, because Jesus is God, Elijah needs God to intervene. Elijah is simply the messenger. Interestingly, Elijah basically says to God, “You sent me here to be with this woman and her son, and things were going pretty well…then you have to mess up the whole thing by taking the boy. Please bring him back to health!” God considers what Elijah has said and brings the child back from the brink. Elijah brings the boy downstairs to his mother, alive, well, restored. A strange and wonderful moment.

The mother skips the step of fear that we heard from the crowd who witnessed Jesus’ raising of the young man from the dead. She immediately takes this as a sign that Elijah is indeed a man of God and a great prophet, and that his words carry truth.

That’s the way these strange and wondrous moments go. They happen. We cannot understand them. We try to fit them into our own human understanding. We react in fear, in pain, in wonderment, in awe. We shape them based on our own sense of who God is. God or his representative may be a hero, or a frightening being, or someone who only delivers the goods some of the time, based upon these moments.

But if we start from the premise that the only way we know God is through Christ, and that even that great gift only gives us limited understanding – remember Jesus saying last week “I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now?” – our attempts to make meaning of strange and wonderful moments will fall short of the mark. We cannot fit God into a human-sized box. So in those strange and wonderful moments, the one response that makes the most sense is the one that we heard in the Gospel: “They glorified God saying ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.” So for now, when those strange and wondrous moments occur, we step back from trying to understand. We simply and joyfully praise God and spread the word, and look to the day when we might be able to understand, when we meet God face-to-face. That will be the final strange and wondrous moment, won’t it? And finally, we will not have to work to make sense of it. It will all be before us, with no preacher to intervene. That won’t have to preach.

Amen.

My weekend starts on Thursday night...

...so I am sitting on the living room couch in my jammies, with the television on. Feels like the first time I've sat and relaxed in about a week and a half. PH and I have some tasks to attend to around the house tomorrow, and I've got an ordination to go to on Saturday.

The challenge of this time is to try to pace myself. I was with my dean today, doing a service of Holy Eucharist at a retirement home nearby, and she said "are you taking your day off?" Last week, no, because of the death of a parishioner. So her comment was a good reminder to me that I am not superwoman, and that if I don't take days off, I'll burn out. There is the temptation to just plug away endlessly, because there is that much work to do. But the work will still be there, and frankly there are few things that are so critical that I cannot address them in something less than an instantaneous way. Slowly plowing through. I've nearly got the Church Register caught up (nothing had been entered since 2004). I reconstituted the newsletter and am in the midst of putting together the FaceBook page and redesigning the bulletin and announcement sheet. It will get done. A team of parishioners is working on the new and improved web site.

Several very ill parishioners, a funeral of a parishioner's mother, a couple of baptisms, a wedding, a renewal of wedding vows for a couple married for a quarter century, all in the next couple of weeks. The people are more important than the administrative stuff, which will get attended to as soon as I can.

But for tonight, I think it's just watching a little tv and relaxing, not even working on sewing the bedroom drapes. Time for rest.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday Prov 8:1-4,22-31 & John 16:12-15 “Dancing with Wisdom”

On any given day, if you go up to Union Station in Washington, DC, you’ll see a preacher with a microphone, a portable amplifier and a car battery. He stands outside the train station – I don’t know why he picked that place, but it works for him – and he preaches. He’s talking mostly about how sinful the world is, and how we need to repent, because Jesus is coming. He makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and they try to avoid him, or else stick their fingers in their ears as they walk past, because, man, this fellow is LOUD.

We don’t always want to hear the message that God sends to us through uncomfortable people, do we? Prophets, preachers, messiahs…most of us don’t want to hear that loud and discomfiting message, and I suspect that’s why God sends us the loud ones to do that kind of communication.

In contrast, imagine you are in Istanbul, standing before the great cathedral called Hagia Sophia. Enormous, beautiful, it looks as if it has been there forever, and it almost has – it was built in 360. It speaks of the power and majesty of the church of God. When you hear its name, “Holy Sofia,” you might think it is named after a Saint. Saint Sophia. But it is something entirely different. Not a saint, but an attribute of God. Sophia is the Greek word for the wisdom of God. This is not a tribute to a saint, but a recognition of Divine Wisdom. And wisdom in this case is big and imposing and something you can’t ignore as you’re standing in the street in Istanbul.

That helps us with our reading from Proverbs this morning. Hagia Sophia, the wisdom of God…it sounds like a woman. That’s no mistake. In the Old Testament, wisdom – the thing we all want, the thing we expect to get from God, a very good thing indeed – is a particular character. And Wisdom is –SURPRISE! – a woman. In the ancient world, “Lady Wisdom” is an attribute of God, one of God’s characteristics, but she is often spoken of as if she were a separate being.

And this “Lady Wisdom” in the reading, well, she’s as assertive and omnipresent as that street preacher in front of the train station. She’s as hard to miss as the gigantic cathedral in Istanbul. “On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads.” This Lady is everywhere, and she is telling her story out loud, and insistently, to anyone who can hear, and probably some people who don’t. The wisdom of God, that divine wisdom whom we call “she,” tells the story: she has been part of this story since the beginning of time, almost as long as God has been around, which is forever. She was created first, before the light and stars, before the birds and fish and animals and Adam and Eve. Lady Wisdom, God’s created wisdom, always part of the story.

And this Lady Wisdom doesn’t act much like the sort of wisdom we expect from the Scriptures. She is not staid and serious. She is, in a word, playful. Look at that line “Then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” We read that, and we think a master carpenter and his assistant, doing holy work. But when you take a closer look at the Hebrew, it’s actually a very different picture. It could just as validly be translated “Then I was beside him, like someone learning the craft, and I was daily his delight, dancing and frolicking before him always.” A very different picture, yes? Wisdom growing into herself, learning the craft of being an attribute of God, dancing with God, making God laugh.” An eight-year-old girl perhaps, a little clumsy, making a lot of noise as she plays with God, making God snort with laughter at her antics. I think of my daughter as an 8 year old with lots of opinions about how she saw the world, dancing around the kitchen as I cooked, telling me the way things ought to be. Or Wisdom might be an 80 year old woman, no longer needing to prove to anyone exactly how proper she is, jabbing us in the ribs as she tells a joke that proves what is really important and what is not. I think of my 88 year old mother in the year that she died, saying exactly what was on her mind, with no filter for politeness’ sake, not much caring if she made us us uncomfortable, because she had something to tell us that was important.

This is Lady Wisdom, ever-present, not always very well-behaved. Lady Wisdom is sometimes loud, never shy, and that’s not the way we usually think of the way that God is.

But there is a delight to seeing an aspect of God in a new way…it opens us up to the possibility of understanding God differently. That is, in fact, a good thing, because God is so much bigger and more complex than we could ever understand that if we get fresh glimmers of the light of who he is, that’s a gift. Sometimes I think of God as a jigsaw puzzle. Most of the pieces are turned over. I try to figure out the puzzle, what goes where, I have a vague sense of the outline, and some sections are assembled, and I see some of the other color groupings of pieces, but I don’t have the whole picture, nor will I ever have the whole picture in this life. Every now and again, I figure out another section as I turn over the puzzle pieces, but I still don’t have the whole picture.

And today, on this Trinity Sunday, we are faced with the challenge once again of figuring out who God is, what God is, how this thing called the Trinity works. Good luck with that.

Some have thought that the Trinity is God playing different roles, doing different jobs at different times, depending on the need. But Scripture clearly says that they coexist, so it can’t be that. Some think that this is three facets of one personality, as if God was some sort of creature with multiple personality disorder. But the Scripture says “three persons” not “three personalities,” so it can’t be that. Some think that God the Father is the chief and the other two persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are subordinate. But that’s not what the creeds of the church tell us – they are co-equal and unique, so it can’t be that.

We’re not the first to wrestle with the question of the Trinity.

St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the great doctors of the early church, lived in the late 4^th and early fifth century. He thought he would write a book about the Trinity, about that relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, how God could be three persons in one God, how they were different yet the same. That book, De Trinitate, almost 800 pages long, ends up being rather like the jigsaw puzzle…he senses pieces of how it fits together, but never quite gets the whole picture. He tries to use an analogy: think of the three aspects of love: beloved, loving, love. Three different aspects of love: the object of love, the process of love, the fact of love. That sort of gets us there…but only sort of. How do the three persons of the Trinity exist simultaneously as one God and as three persons?

We cannot completely understand this – I have come to the belief that this is one of the questions I’ll ask God when I present myself in heaven – but perhaps we can get some clues. And Lady Wisdom, dancing through Proverbs, might help us get there.

We have a pretty clear understanding of God the Father – he is the creator of all the universe, all powerful, all knowing, all present. We also seem to understand that Jesus is God’s Son, although he, being God, has been here since the beginning as well. We know that Jesus was sent to earth by God the Father to save us from our sins, and that he was given a fully human nature as well as a fully divine one. Jesus himself talks about how he was sent so that we human beings might know the father in heaven. That much, we can start to comprehend.

The part that seems to stop us in our tracks, though, is the Holy Spirit. The dove coming down in little tongues of flames on the head of each of the disciples as we heard last week in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles about Pentecost? The Spirit who is sent down to remain with us forever? What is this Spirit, this third person of the Trinity?

New Age enthusiasts might think of the Holy Spirit as some sort of cosmic energy force, but that seems too unfocused.

No, Lady Wisdom is the clue. Wisdom is that ever present sense of the order of the universe that God created. That playful one who invites us to dance with God, with the wholeness of God, both the one who creates, the one who saves, the one who enlightens and sustains us. In fact, the Eastern Church talks of the “perichoresis” of the Holy Trinity, a word that means intertwining and dancing around together. Imagine a square dance with the dancers weaving in an among each other, the relationships handing off, bowing, embracing….this is the way the Eastern Church sees the Trinity, and it’s a beautiful way to recognize the individuality of the persons of God and their interrelationship.

The three persons of the Trinity complement each other and give us the fullest possible experience of God. The Trinity invites us into that dance that the three persons enjoy with each other, and Lady Wisdom, who might also be called Holy Spirit, teases us and invites us to join in the dance. We may not know all the steps, and we may not see everything that is happening as we dance, but we can feel the love of the three persons in one God as we enter into the frolic.

The dance will make us dizzy, but it will make us as joyful and frolicsome as six-year-olds doing the Electric Slide. That, in the end, may be our truest understanding of the Trinity – the emotions, the intimacy, the energy, the joy. That may be all we really need to know.

Amen.

Theological Engineering Exam, Courtesy of Tim B

THEOLOGICAL ENGINEERING EXAM 1
5 Questions, 60 Minutes.


You may use a calculator, the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and the Book of Mormon. The speed of light is c. Show all work. For all problems, assume a perfectly spherical Jesus of constant density D.

No praying during the exam....

1. (20 pts.) Bob and Joe are standing on a street corner. God loves each an equal amount L_0. Bob then accelerates to .9c. In Joe's rest frame, how much does God now love Bob?

2. Sven, a Catholic, is in a state of grace. He then has sex with sheep S.
a. (8 pts.) What is Sven's atonement coefficient following the act if the sheep was not willing?
b. (12 pts.) What if the sheep, while not technically being willing, could not be said to mind either?

3. (20 pts.) Let the eternal, all abiding love of the Holy Spirit be the xy plane. Let Sue's soul be at (0,0,5) at t = 0 sec., traveling at 5 m/s in the direction of the positive z axis.
Everything is in Cartesian coordinates bespeaking subscription to a perfectly rational enlightenment attitude towards the Universe.
At what time t will Sue be saved? (Hint: Assume a point soul.)

4. (20 pts.) Assume the Rapture occurs at time t.
Cornelia, a saved human weighing 90 kg, in a state of grace, has her head in the closing jaws of an alligator at time t.
What mass of meat will remain to the alligator at time t + 10 sec.?

5. Stan is a frictionless, massless Mormon in a rest state.
His sin level for his faith is currently 11 McBeals.
He eats .3 kg of pork, and enjoys it very much.
Assume that the Jews are right about, well, pretty much everything.
a. (10 pts.) What is Stan's sin level now?
b. (10 pts.) Stan is one of them Salt Lake City Mormons. He ain't so damn smug now, is he?

Extra Credit (10 pts): 25 grams of wafers and 20 ml of cheap wine undergo transubstantiation and become the flesh and blood of our Lord. How many Joules of heat are released by the transformation?

Hand in exam when done, and may God have mercy on your work

Sermon for Pentecost, May 23, 2010 Acts 2:1-21 “Lost and Found”

At 9 o’clock this evening, a number of people I know will sit down and finally figure out what it all means. The story is coming to an end…or is it?

The television show “Lost” is coming to an end, with a final episode appropriately enough called “The End.”

I’m not a true “Lost” fanatic, although I’ve watched it occasionally. I do have some friends who are, who get lost in the plots and subplots, the shifts in time, the various roles played by the different characters. If you’re a fan of the show, you know what I’m talking about. For those of you who are not, I’ll try to give you a brief synopsis of what this show is about.

A plane crashes on a seemingly deserted tropical island. The survivors of the crash are a mixed bunch: a doctor, a fugitive, the child of an industrialist, a construction worker, a lottery winner, a former Iraqi soldier. The 71 survivors discover that their little world is more complex than they first thought. There are others on the island, there is a mysterious malevolent force, there are constant questions of who is in charge, what they should do, who is good and who is bad, and if they will ever be saved.

Some characters bear the names of philosophers like Locke, Hume, Bentham, Bakunin and Rousseau. Others bear the names of famous scientists, like Hawking and Faraday. The storyline reflects that as it touches on a number of the “big questions” – what is our purpose in life, are human beings essentially good or evil, is there something other than us in the universe, and perhaps most importantly, how do we respond to disorienting change?

Over the six seasons of the show, the plot twists and turns have become ever more complex, the time shifts more radical, and the end point more obscure. So those who have followed it faithfully are hoping that this final episode tonight will make it all clear, that suddenly the crash and its aftermath will all make sense.

The producers of the show couldn’t have picked a more perfect Sunday for this final chapter.

It is, after all, Pentecost.

And what is the story of Pentecost? It is the story of the aftermath of disorienting change.

The disciples of Christ have survived a horrific and seismic shift in their world: Their beloved teacher and Lord, Jesus, has been killed. Just as they are struggling with their grief and confusion, Jesus reappears, risen from the dead, comforting them, praying with them, giving them final instructions before he departs from them for good, to be with his heavenly father. Those who had thought that Jesus would be a secular king and save them from Roman oppression have been sorely disappointed. The story doesn’t play out that way. His kingdom is not an earthly one. His promise is of something much different, much harder to understand…an eternal and heavenly kingdom that seems beyond our comprehension.

The shifts between the living Jesus to the dead one, and then to the risen Christ, and then the ascended Christ in heaven…it’s too hard for the disciples to wrap their heads around. So Jesus gives them a gift. He sends them the Holy Spirit, to help them to understand, to give them the skills they need to carry on the work. The disciples had felt like they were lost, but the Holy Spirit has helped them find their way, their mission, to lead more people to an understanding of the teachings of Christ.

In case they don’t get the message, the Holy Spirit gives them a visual aid: she comes down in tongues of fire, little flames of knowledge and strength above each disciples’ head. And then there is the auditory aid: they start speaking, in their own Aramaic, because that is the language of their native Galilee. But those from other places hear it as if the disciples were speaking in their own native language. They say, “And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." The gift of understanding, that great transformation, comes from God, and affects not only the disciples, but also those who hear those disciples. In the midst of disorienting change, the Spirit comes to bring some measure of understanding and the strength to continue the journey.

In a sense, these survivors in their small world are given the roadmap for finding their way through the disorienting change, and they are given the tools to lead others on that journey. That is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

But the world is distrustful of those gifts. What happens when the disciples receive this gift of speaking in a way that all can hear? Some disbelievers say that they are simply drunk and babbling…they’ve had too much of the new wine. Peter, unable to contain himself, snaps at them: it’s 9 in the morning. Of course they’re not drunk. It’s something else, something from God, just as the prophet Joel said:

`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy. ‘

As an aside, for those who think that women can’t preach, look to those words from the prophet Joel!

No, these strange and wonderful gifts that God sends through the Holy Spirit have the power to bring us through times of disorienting change. No longer lost, but found.

I’ve been talking a lot about change over these past few weeks, and we have begun an adult education series on the subject. We at Epiphany have survived many changes in recent years, large and small. Some have felt seismic, big changes, such as loss of someone we loved, departure of old friends from this parish family. Some have been the little changes that sometimes feel like thorns in our sides – taking out the Doxology from the worship service, changes in the bulletin. All change can be disorienting, can’t it? But my hope is that we can use this time of change to be something other than mere disorientation.

If we look at what has happened and what is to come not as change, but as transformation, then we move it to the realm of the spiritual, and we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit. It becomes something other than a shift in situation, it becomes a chance for the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts and fill us with what we need to do things differently, to be different. It becomes the necessary evolution of our understanding of God, and our relationship with God, that informs how we live our lives. It is both wonderful and a little bit frightening.

In a recent episode of “Lost,” one of the characters, Jacob, passes on the responsibility for the survivors to another one, a reluctant one. Jack is understandably nervous about this new role and says, “How long am I supposed to do this?” Jacob replies, “As long as you can.”

That’s the thing about the gift of understanding, and of transformation in the midst of disorienting change. It is a responsibility. But a certain grace comes with it as well.
God knows our limitations.

God asks us to open ourselves to the transformation and the responsibility that goes with it.

But God also gives us help, and even relief, if that is what we need.

So on this day of Pentecost, when we wear our red clothing to remind us of the flames of the Holy Spirit descending on the heads of the disciples, we remember how they were transformed in unimaginable ways, and took on new responsibilities.

We hope that we, too, will be transformed.

Not changed, but transformed.

Not lost, but found.

Not alone, never alone, for the Spirit is with us always, and the flame always burns.

Amen.

Yes, I've been busy...

...the move and starting the new gig and everything. Bad blogger, I know.

The various and sundry tasks involved with getting settled in the house have fallen disproportionately on me since PH is still wrapping up his practice in Your Nation's Capital. no, I'm not aggravated at him - this was our deal, and I'm fine with that. It's just that it sometimes feels like being pecked to death by ducks. This morning it was the following:

• arranging for someone to retrieve a zillion empty boxes (thank you, Craigslist, for making it possible to recycle all those boxes rather than taking them to the landfill) to be used in her move.
• having the insurance inspector come to eyeball the house and see if the insurance company can charge us even more money to insure an older house.
• getting the city to pick up the brush that PH and his buddy cleared out of the back yard this weekend - what wonderful plants we found after the ugly stuff was taken out!
• trying to find a replacement part for the dishwasher so it can actually be mounted to the cabinets instead of jiggling freely (don't know whether the contractor or the former homeowner was to blame for that one, which is also related to the improperly mounted microwave, but it doesn't much matter at this point, does it?)
• searching for the gift card that PH got for his birthday, so we can use it for something useful at the Home Despot.
• unpacking more boxes and planning the hanging of the pictures in the living room and foyer. Many pictures and antique maps and such of all different sizes - wow. Like planning storming the beach in Normandy.
  
• arranging for the plumber to come and complete the installation of our new tankless water heater. Thanks be to God, the city inspector (one of the items on last week's list) approved the new gas line without blinking. Pete, thanks for the nice work.
  

Yes, I'll take some cheese with that whine. We've got a lovely house, and we can afford to do the odds and ends we need to do to bring it up to snuff. Life is good.

But in the meantime, I'm also trying to untangle some administrative odds'n'ends before my first Vestry meeting tomorrow night (not that I'm nervous or anything). The secretary is reasonably helpful, the parishioners are dear, but there aren't enough hours in the days, and it's hard to know what to tackle first.

These are all good problems to have, though, so I'll just get me a bowl of ice cream and stop complaining now.

Continue what you were doing....


Yes, I know I'm outing myself with the picture above, but I don't say anything quite so radical that the world can't know from whence it came.

First Sermon at the New Place, Rev 21:1-6

The New Jerusalem. A holy city come down from heaven.

That’s what we hear from the Book of the Revelation to John.

I will bet you a good steak dinner that when John’s friends and relations heard that passage that we just heard, somebody said, “New Jerusalem? What’s wrong with the old Jerusalem? It was perfectly fine most of the time, and my Grandmother came from the Old Jerusalem! Why do we need a new one? What’s with all the changes around here?”

And there were other folks nodding their heads, saying “We don’t need a new Jerusalem. We’d much rather have the old one.”

That’s what happens when the world around us swirls with change. We want the swirling to stop, we hate the dizzy feeling it gives us. We want the familiar, the comforting, the good old ways…even when we know that the good old ways weren’t always so good.

Change is an uncomfortable thing…

PH and I moved down to Richmond from Alexandria this past week. Moving is always hard work, even when it’s for an exciting new adventure in one’s life, and we took turns feeling stressed and disoriented by it. Going back and forth on the phone with Comcast to get the cable set up, dealing with buying a washer and dryer for the new place, figuring out how to get our two geriatric cats down here without too much stress on them and on us, all of it made for a hectic week. And yes, we did paint a bedroom or two in the midst of all this, and I wrote this sermon. Change is an uncomfortable thing.

But our worries about the move seem pale in comparison to those folks who first heard the message of the Book of Revelation.

Scholars tell us that this book, the last one in the New Testament, was written somewhere between the year 68 and the year 95. It was not a good time to be a follower of Christ…the emperor Domitian was busy imprisoning, banishing, or martyring Christians. John was using language in this book that was prophetic, to be sure, but in the eyes of the Romans, it was also political. Romans heard this idea of a new Jerusalem about the same way some people today would hear the phrase “new world order…” something that was talking about a new Jerusalem that would replace the world as it existed then. No surprise then, that John was probably exiled to Patmos, where he later died. They saw him as a political instigator.

In that world, at that time, life was not good. In point of fact, Jews and Christians had already lost the old Jerusalem…the great temple had been destroyed and the Jews, and Jewish Christ-followers along with them, had been banished from the city. The small number of Jews and Christians who remained were persecuted. And even those who went to different places, to Greece, to Syria, suffered persecution from the Roman authorities.

So perhaps the idea of a new Jerusalem wasn’t entirely an unwelcome change…perhaps there were possibilities in this new Jerusalem. After all, what was John describing? A Jerusalem so wonderful that it was heaven come to earth. God dwelling right alongside God’s people. That sounds pretty promising, doesn’t it?

Sometimes change is not so uncomfortable, when we see that the new thing may bring great joy.

Even so, while we’re in the midst of it, change takes us out of our comfort zones into something very different.

It feels for all the world like one of those merry-go-rounds in the playground. Not the great big ones with the music playing and the wooden horses we ride on, but the big disks about ten feet in diameter, with poles to hang onto…you get them started by hanging one foot off and pushing, pushing, pushing, until it is spinning at a crazy pace and you’re hanging on for dear life. If you’re looking out from the edge or the center, you see the world zipping by, and before long you’ve got that queasy feeling in your stomach.

Now here’s the trick about those merry-go-rounds: if you look in to the center as you’re spinning, rather than out at the world whirling past, you don’t get sick. Focus on the center, and what happens around you doesn’t affect you anywhere near as much.

It’s not just about merry go rounds, though. It works the same way for us in the midst of change…if we focus on what is important, then the spinning, whirring wheel of change doesn’t make us anywhere near as disoriented.

One of the great change agents of the last century, Mahatma Gandhi, said , “ I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a Living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power…is God. And since nothing else I see merely through [my] senses can or will persist, He alone is.” He is talking about that kind of focus on what is really important, the center of our existence, which makes the wheel of change tolerable. We are looking inward to the center, not outward to the world whizzing by.

What is that center?

The Book of Revelation and Mahatma Gandhi agree on this:

The center is God dwelling among us, being with us in all things.

God wiping away every tear from our eyes, even in the midst of making all things new.

God at the center, helping us in the midst of change, comforting us when it feels too strange and new.

That’s particularly good news for us here at the Church by the Lakeside, where it probably feels like there has been nothing BUT change over the past couple of years. Different priests, different ways of doing things, worries about who would eventually be called to be your permanent priest, wondering about where God has been in this time of change.

God has been right here. Dwelling among you. Wiping tears from your eyes, smiling as you smile, nodding graciously as you worship, as you remain faithful to our covenant with the One who has given us life.

God has been right here, helping you to be patient. God has been other places, too, like my former parish, where I have served in a variety of ways for the past 2 ½ years, preparing me to be here with you. God was helping me to be patient as I wondered where I was meant to be.

For this parish, the past couple of years have been a ride on the merry-go-round. Lots of changes and lots of questions and lots of wishes that things would just settle down.

In one sense, my arrival marks a time of settling down. But being Christians means we do not necessarily settle, because God is always calling us to do and be something new.

We have dreams for this place, for welcoming others into this parish family, for finding fresh ways to serve God even as we honor the things we’ve been doing faithfully for a long time. But dreams sometimes mean moving out of the comfortable ways of the old Jerusalem to the surprising and different ways of the new Jerusalem. That’s what the apostle Peter was dreaming about in our reading from Acts earlier this morning…a religion that would bring together Jews and Gentiles without barriers or preferences, a radical concept in that time and place. That was their surprising and different new Jerusalem.

We do not fully know what our new Jerusalem will look like. I can tell you that it will start with prayer and thoughtful discussion of where God is leading us in this time and this place. I can also tell you that our work to discern that new Jerusalem will be open. It will be the work of the whole parish, not just me, and not just the Vestry. We will map our path to that new Jerusalem by focusing on the center, on the God who dwells among us and guides us, and wherever it leads us, God will be with us. Consider me your tour guide, who knows some of the key information you will need….but we will all be walking on the path together, and it will be good.

So we step onto that path, and prepare for change.

Not change simply for change’s sake, but transformation. Transformation into the new Jerusalem. If we allow God to transform us, and if we keep him at the center of what is to come, we will not get dizzy and disoriented. We will know better than ever before where we are going, and it will not frighten us, it will strengthen us.

So let us walk together, toward a future with a new Jerusalem. We are not alone. God dwells among us, this day and every day.

Amen.

Home again, home again ,jiggedy jig.

Back from the fabulous RGBP BE3 Cruise. A delight in every way, with new friends, new ideas, some great rest and relaxation and a bottle each of duty-free tequila and dark rum. Sara - Dark and Stormies coming up!

I'll blog a bit more later and share some pictures...right now there's laundry to do and a husband to hang out with.

Preparation of the Soil

I'm headed out tomorrow morning to go on the RevGals Big Event, a cruise from Miami to the Bahamas, with lectures by the wonderful Rev Nanette Sawyer of Wicker Park Grace. I'm looking forward to meeting so many great RevGals whom I've gotten to know on the Web over the past five years or so. It's also a good unhitching from Alexandria just prior to our move.

A little enforced replanting for a few days reminds me that I can thrive in new soil.

That said, there are things I'll miss about this place:

• The doe that lives in the thin strip of greensward between Van Dorn Avenue and Rt 395, an urban and heavily trafficked environ. Nature overcomes human predation somehow. The doe wanders back and forth amid the trees, seemingly placid in spite of it all.
• The cluster of parents in the neighborhood seeing their children on to the bus. Two women in niqab, three in saris, one in shalwar kalmeez, two guys in loose basketball shorts and Redskins t-shirts, a woman in extraordinarily tight jeans and a Be-Dazzled t-shirt that says "I'm a sexy bitch." All smiling, all waving at their children on the bus as it pulls away.
• The Smithsonian Folk Festival each July. Nothing since has equaled the Silk Road year (Tuvan throat-singers! Yo-yo Ma!), but there is always something interesting to see (who knew that fishing for eels is a big industry in Ireland?) and the people-watching is almost as wonderful as the exhibits and music.
• Finding out that your neighbor can't tell you what he does in his job. If he told you, he'd have to kill you. But he'll never tell you. Seriously.
• Meeting people who think big, about all sorts of things. Even if I don't agree with what they think, they stretch my brain in new ways.

But there are also things that I will gladly leave behind :

• Traffic. The Beltway is the deepest circle of Hell. Rt 95 and 395 are tests of Christian forbearance...I fail miserably on a regular basis.
• Excessive focus on what you do for a living as a measure of status. I can remember one dinner party where I was pretty much ignored by the hostess (wife of a person with whom I had a business relationship) until she learned what my pay grade was (how things are measured in Your Nation's Capital), then decided I was worthy of her attention. SES (Senior Executive Service) is more prestigious, it seems, than the GS grades. Not that I really wanted much of her attention, but that really is the way of things more often than it should be.
• High, high cost of living. Not quite San Francisco, not quite NYC, but pretty damned high, particularly housing. For those who do the manual labor in this town, this means they live out a ways and endure long commutes on public transportation, which is not always as reliable as it should be. For those of us who don't make megabucks, you have to make some very strategic choices to live as you think you should.
• Hard place to raise kids. Mine are mostly grown now, but I cannot tell you the number of times that I've heard about cliques, "mean girls," overwhelming pressure for kids to get into the best colleges, a lot of pressure re sex and drugs in schools both poor and rich. On this side of the Potomac, a large number of kids get a fancy car when they get their license. Across the river, kids struggle to avoid getting drawn into gang/drug/gun trouble. Many don't succeed. Something is very wrong here.

In all, my time in the DC area (fifteen years this go-round) has been rich and wonderful. I got here a mess, in the final stages of a painful divorce and difficult custody struggle. I met PH, remarried, changed from a career to a vocation, was ordained, and began to serve God's church. Now I go to another place, very different from the last one, and begin again.

I pray I find the humus beneath my feet, grow new roots, and thrive. And I am grateful for this week of respite and rejoicing. Necessary preparation of the soil, I'd say.

Pack Your Bags Friday Five

A great Friday Five from Songbird:

"I'm preparing to pack my bags for the Big Event Three, and as I gather what I need I'm thinking about just that: what do I *need* to take with me? As a person who likes to pack light, I worry that in the end I may underpack and wish I had other things with me. I own the gigantor version of the bag to the right, but my morbid fear of having it go astray and not get to the ship means I'm more likely to try to pack it all in a carry-on bag instead, especially since I have a very tight connection on the way to the cruise. But won't I be sorry if I don't bring _______________?"

With that in mind, here are five questions about packing to go on a trip.

1) Some fold, some roll and some simply fling into the bag. What's your technique for packing clothes?

Roll and stuff. I can fit bunches of things into very tight spaces. Part of it comes from having a mom who was in the military in WWII and who learned efficient packing in a duffle bag, part of it was having been a road warrior in my prior life, and traveling a lot all over the place. I also am good at finding clothing that is space-efficient and non-wrinkling. That sure helps.

2) The tight regulations about carrying liquids on planes makes packing complicated. What might we find in your quart-size bag? Ever lose a liquid that was too big?

Never lost a liquid that was too big. In my quart-sized bag are basic toiletries including the contact lens stuff and moisturizer and such. I've also got, I'm sad to say, another quart-sized bag with meds. Such is middle age. Glad I don't have to fit that stuff into the first bag or else I'd be un-deodorized, un-moisturized, un-toothbrushed - yuck.


3) What's something you can't imagine leaving at home?

The iPod and a couple of books, and maybe some knitting.

4) Do you have a bag with wheels?

Mais certainement! Life is too short to have a sore shoulder or back.

5) What's your favorite reading material for a non-driving trip (plane, train, bus, ship)?

Mystery novel or design magazines, usually.

I'm happy to say I'm going on BigEvent3 - my first with these women - and i cannot wait!

How about you?