Magdalene's Musings

Follow Me

2012-01-23T05:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's sermon can be found on youtube.com at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4MNK-qd4FI&context=C360e463ADOEgsToPDskIxKYrp09iHIWDyNvzfLyP7

Or, when you get to youtube search for "magdastar52" and all my videos will pop up!

The Baptism of the Lord

2012-01-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

My sermon for January 8th, The Baptism of Jesus, can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud5GMRrqfac&context=C370b2edADOEgsToPDskIxKYrp09iHIWDyNvzfLyP7
Just copy and paste this address into your browser window and you'll be able to watch it on Youtube. Happy Epiphany everyone!

The Nativity of Our Lord

2011-12-26T05:05:00.001-08:00

Here is my Christmas morning sermon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggggkjcb8Ko&feature=youtu.be

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Annunciation, Advent 4B

2011-12-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

Here is the video of my sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW3EI5zSm8&feature=youtu.be

Make a Highway

2011-12-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

Here is my sermon from yesterday, Advent 2B, Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goSKKn-E9MM

Sr Carol Andrew and me at Carolyn Murdoch's ordination, 1-29-11

2011-11-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

The Final Judgment

2011-11-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

My sermon for November 20, 2011, Christ the King Sunday is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/MagdaStar52#p/a/u/0/LUQQDAO7Qew

Saints of God

2011-11-07T05:25:00.000-08:00

Youtube video sermon for All Saints Sunday, November 6, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqs44zkjqaM

New Video

2011-10-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

If you would like to see me preaching an extemporaneous sermon from October 23, 2011 click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C8VL2uQpNs

God's Blessing

2011-08-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Augusta, GA
July 31, 2011
Gen 32:22-31, Matt 14:13-21
The Rev Deborah Magdalene

I have a photo of Jacob wrestling with an angel over my bed. It was taken of a stained glass window from the sacristy at my seminary in New York City. The picture of that window reminds me of my time in seminary, but its position over my bed is a symbol of my 24-hour-a-day struggle to follow God’s will for my life. Picturing my life with God as a wrestling match in the dark of night is an apt metaphor for my own responsibility in being a child of God.

Our encounters with the Holy are much more likely to occur during our naps, get-aways and alone-times than in the midst of frenetic activity. God’s kingdom can break through the edges and seams of our existence with more ease than when we are caught up in our daily grind. We enter the liminal space between heaven and earth when we let our guard down and try to relax. It is then that our unexamined fears and anxieties seep like flood water into our carefully cleaned houses.

The struggle begins when we try to hang on to what God would have us do in the midst of our anxiety and let go of old, tired patterns of behavior that get us nowhere. In that space between heaven and earth, where God meets us face-to-face we are challenged to become more holy than human, letting our fears take a ride while we grab that angel of hope and hang on for our lives.

Jacob was at such a turning point in his life. After what must have felt like a lifetime away from home, he is finally within reach of the land of his grandfather Abraham, his father Isaac, and his estranged brother, Esau. The same brother who Jacob cheated out of his birthright; Esau, from whom Jacob stole his father Isaac’s blessing by disguising himself as his hairy older twin; Esau, with whom Jacob wrestled in the womb, and clung so stubbornly to his heel that Esau’s birth actually helped pull Jacob out into the world.

As we join the story today Jacob is afraid that the years spent away from his ancestral home will have allowed Esau to simmer in resentment to the point of boiling over when he finally lays eyes on his devious and dishonest brother.

So Jacob sends elaborate presents to Esau along with carefully worded pleas for good will. Then he sends all of his possessions, including all the women and children, on ahead of him while he stays behind one more night in prayer, pleading with God to change the course of his fate.

“Deliver me,” he prays, just before this story, “from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him…” (Gen 32:11a) After praying, he sends the gifts for Esau on ahead, along with his two wives and eleven children. He is left alone. Jacob has done all that he can do to manipulate and massage the worrisome situation. From this point on whatever Esau decides to do is in God’s hands.

So Jacob waits as it begins to grow dark. And although the man he wrestles so fiercely with proves to be none other than an extension of God himself, Jacob doesn’t realize this until after his hip has been permanently dislocated. He can look back on the night-long wrestling match and see the numinous quality of a Holy encounter.

This encounter with God takes every ounce of strength and endurance that Jacob has … and leaves him wounded for life. Jacob holds on for dear life to this holy being who is leading him into a new birth. Just as he held on to the heel of his twin, Esau, letting Esau guide him to new life, so Jacob clings to the angel – insisting on a blessing.

And that is what this story is all about. God’s blessing. We are to understand from this nocturnal wrestling match that we receive God’s blessing not just through our plaintive prayers, but through our ability to struggle with and endure the strange, and often deadly relationship with God.

God demands our participation in our own and other’s salvation. We must seek solitude and quiet places where we can invite God to come and wrestle with us.
Commentator Terence Fretheim suggests that God seeks out these liminal, or borderland, spaces in our lives in order "to enhance the divine purpose" and to allow us to practice for the challenges that lie ahead. He says, "To go through it with God before we go through it with others provides resources of strength and blessing for whatever lies in the wings of life."

Jacob was destined to wrestle with God as he wrestled with his brother in the womb. Just as he held on for dear life to the heel of his brother, he held on to the angel until he received the light he was seeking.

Jacob emerges from this struggle with the courage to face his brother and suffer whatever consequences await him. When he finally sees his brother approach he is caught off guard as Esau runs to embrace him and cover him with kisses and tears of reconciliation.

What wrestling with God foreshadows is the loving embrace of a brother who has no reason to forgive Jacob. Carrying the blessing of a new name, Israel, which means “one who strives with God,” Jacob must live with the memories of his impulsive youth, represented by a permanent limp in his gait.

But Jacob carries with him the knowledge that he hung on to God with a ferocity that birthed a new nation, as well as a new relationship with his brother.
Which brings us to our gospel lesson for today.

Jesus is intimately aware of the holy spaces that shimmer between heaven and earth. He embodies that holy space. Being in his presence is akin to stepping onto holy ground where human logic is turned on its head and God’s poetry makes the rules.

When we encounter Jesus in today’s gospel he is at a turning point in his ministry, much as his ancestor Jacob was. Like Jacob, he pauses to spend time alone, waiting for God to show him which direction to take. And, foreshadowing his painful prayers in the Garden of Gesthemane, his attempt to spend time alone shows him the inevitable conclusion to his ministry: he must give and give and give of his life until it is finished. There will be no more rest for him from this time forward.

Prior to withdrawing to his “deserted place,” Jesus received the news that John the Baptist had been beheaded, by order of Herod. Jesus not only grieves the loss of a fellow prophet, but is painfully aware that the same fate awaits him. He knows he must ratchet-up his ministry to the Hebrew people before it is too late.

Jesus could understandably be so deep in his grief and foreboding that he has nothing left to give. The crowd follows him to his private space, hounding him for the word of God that only he can provide. But Jesus is the Holy Ground, the space where heaven and earth meet, where God greets his children and feeds them with overflowing abundance. So a new thing happens here. Jesus hands the job over to his disciples.

I picture them huddling around him, trying to protect him from the masses of people who are demanding attention. And Jesus doesn’t need or want their protection. He knows that it is not him they are trying to protect, but themselves. They are frightened of the crowds because they think that Jesus has no more to give.

Jesus, in their eyes, is a limited resource. In the previous section of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus spoke to the crowd in parables, but reserved the true meaning for their ears only. They were able to have Jesus to themselves and bathe in the light of his numinous presence. Now that the crowds have pushed brazenly into their holy space they fear that they will lose their intimate relationship with Jesus.
They don’t yet understand who Jesus has come to save.

The benevolent grace flowing from Jesus is ridiculously abundant. But like the angel wrestling with Jacob, Jesus knows that his disciples must struggle with the ramifications of this grace until they believe.

The feeding of the five thousand is not about how many are fed by such sparse ingredients. The purpose of the miracle is to teach the disciples how to struggle with God’s abundance.

Their fear is expressed in their objections:
“This is a deserted place… It is late … Send the crowds away so that they can find their own food in the village … Look! We only have five loaves and two fish! ... What are you thinking Jesus? Send them away!”

But Jesus does not operate on the scarcity principle. His grace flows from a spring with unlimited resources. He knows that it is now time for his disciples to get in the midst of God’s people and do the ministry they were called to do.

“You feed them,” says Jesus, “because it is not through me that they will be fed, but through you.” And Jesus performs the first Holy Communion. He takes the tiny meal, the paper-thin fish and fist-sized loaves of bread, and blesses them, breaks them, and gives them to the disciples.

Jesus doesn’t feed the crowds, the disciples do. In blessing the bread Jesus blesses the hands that feed and the mouths that consume the word of God. The disciples are forced to act through their fears and unbelief.

Jesus’ deep compassion for the miracle-starved masses triggers the first spread of the gospel. The disciple’s reaching out to feed the hungry from their own baskets of abundance, shimmering with Holy food for Holy People, fastens a faith within them that will not let them go.

And, just as Jacob would not let God go until he received his blessing, so Jesus will not let his people go away hungry. Jesus hangs on to us until we understand that to be fed by God we must feed God to others. We cannot stand around praying for God to help this broken world without involving ourselves. We must get down on our knees and ask God to give us the food with which we will do the work of healing what is broken.

God’s abundance in our lives is beyond our comprehension. The only way to unleash this unbounded love is to become willing to go of our fears and allow the mysterious holiness of God to shimmer around those we feed.

If we see the feeding of the five thousand as a just another miracle, says Barbara Brown Taylor, it lets “us off the hook. (Miracles) appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let God feed the crowd, save the world, do it all.” God expects us to fight back, to argue and question; to tangle and struggle with the unruly ways of God. Miracles don’t happen unless we are willing to participate in them.

Taylor continues, “(God tells us), “Not me but you; not my bread but yours; not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now….Stop waiting for food to fall from the sky and share what you have. Stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead." (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven)

Baptized by the Spirit

2011-05-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

Easter 2A * May 1, 2011
The Rev. Deborah Magdalene
John 20:19-31

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. (John 14:27) Jesus says this to the disciples at the Last Supper. Christ’s peace is a greeting, a goodbye, an invitation to renewed ministry, and much, much more.

When the resurrected Jesus appears to his frightened disciples huddled together in their locked room he greets them three different times with these words, “Peace be with you.”

We use this greeting, ‘the Peace of the Lord be always with you,’ in our liturgy as we segue from hearing the Word of God to participating in the Holy Communion. The events on Easter Day, in the disciple’s locked and private room, are remarkably similar to what we experience here, week after week, during our service of Holy Eucharist.

We begin with readings from Hebrew and New Testament scriptures reminding us where we have come from and where Christ is asking us to pack up our bags and journey toward.

The sermon should reveal what is hidden in our travel itinerary. Like Jesus, revealing himself to his friends to be the risen Christ, preachers must reveal the Good News embedded in the ancient and familiar words.

It is with fear and trembling that I continue.

After we experience a ‘revelation’, if you will, of Christ’s message for us today, we re-enact Christ sharing his peace with us. Like the disciples, we are in our own private room of prayer and holy dining. And, just as the disciples were required to do, we turn to our neighbor and do likewise.

We greet one another in the name of the Lord, reminding one another that the Peace of God, which passes all understanding, is the powerful force, the Holy and unruly Wind that will change the world. Peace be with you. Abide in peace as you abide in Christ. And take Christ with you as you enter the world outside these doors.
We pass the peace to remind each other that Christ continues to come to us in scripture, is present in our own good works, and is the creative spark of new life in Christ.

Christ comes to each of us through the channels of peace, revealing his divinity in surprising ways, as we hear in today’s gospel. Christ knows how uniquely human is our doubt and unbelief.

Peace be with you – these deceivingly simple words carry with them the promise that our prayers have been and will be answered, our quavering faith fulfilled, and our isolation vanquished.

The disciples gather in their locked room on the evening of the first day of the week. It is still Easter day, the day that begins with Mary Magdalene visiting the tomb and finding it abandoned.

It is in the early hours before dawn when Mary sees that the stone has been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. She runs frantically to tell the other disciples that something is wrong. For a painful moment in time, she and the disciples remain in the darkness and fear of unbelief. They do not know what the empty tomb means.

As dawn begins to lighten the sky, Peter approaches the tomb to see for himself what Mary claimed was true. He gazes into the empty tomb and still does not understand what he is seeing. In the darkness, he returns to the frightened disciples, while Mary keeps a tearful watch at the empty tomb.

In the revealing light of dawn Jesus appears to Mary, yet she doesn’t recognize her Lord. Her inability to see, or her unbelief, needs only to hear her name called in that sweet, familiar voice to be completely dissolved. She then believes, and runs in haste and with deep joy to tell the other disciples.
They still do not believe her report.

When Jesus finally appears to Peter and the others, it is the evening of that same day. Darkness in John’s Gospel always denotes confusion and unbelief. (It was in the dark of night that Nicodemus approached Jesus with his first questions.) The darkness mirrors the doubt, fear and confusion of the disciples.

Jesus then uses the pivotal words meant to remind them who he really is, “Peace be with you.” Don’t you remember?

His greeting is intended to pull them back in time to their last meal together, shared in this same room, when he promised that he would return to them.

He had said to them, “Peace I leave with you; my [own] peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father.’” (John 14:27-28)

When Jesus shows himself to the disciples it is the fulfillment of the promise he made to them, just a few days before, at the Last Supper. He comes to them in order to abide with them – to call them each by name, to dwell with them in the peace that passes understanding, and to prepare them for their baptism in the Spirit.

John the Baptist testified that, “the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” (John 1:33) This is the moment of the baptism.

But, if we believe the text, Peter and the others still do not understand. It is not until Jesus intimately reveals to them his wounded hands and side that they finally believe, and finally rejoice, as a community, just as he promised that they would.

He reveals himself to them in a way that breaks through the fear and denial so that, through the chinks in their armor, he can blow the Holy Spirit into them, baptizing them in the Spirit, changing them forever more.

Peter had three chances to wake up, smell the coffee, and believe that he was really in the presence of the risen Lord. As we have experienced with Peter, it always takes three times for him to absorb Jesus’ teachings. (John’s gospel ends with the story of Jesus telling Peter three times to “Feed my sheep.”)

Once Peter and the others finally twig to who it is, standing among them, they rejoice, but they do not profess their belief in Jesus’ true nature: the Risen Christ, Son of God, in their very own presence.

That honor is reserved for Thomas. Once we understand how difficult it is for the disciples to understand, who know Jesus so well yet cannot recognize him in this resurrected form, we can have some compassion for Thomas.

Those who are in the room with Jesus need time and some extra help from their teacher in order to fully comprehend the ramifications of what they are seeing. Thomas isn’t there, for one reason or another, and his reaction to the news that they have seen the Lord is the same as the disciples hearing Mary’s report.

“I have seen the Lord!” cries Mary, but they believe her not. “We have seen the Lord!” cry the disciples, but Thomas believes them not. Peter didn’t believe when Mary told him, so why should Thomas believe what he hasn’t seen?

We need to take a step away from this story for a minute to see the full context of this locked room where the revelations take place. We must remember that this gospel was written during a time of great persecution and betrayal. The new Christian movement was literally being disowned by their parents in the faith – the Jewish authorities.

When we hear the words, ‘for fear of the Jews’ we are reminded of the context in which this gospel was written. Early Christian communities were being persecuted, punished, and banned permanently from the synagogues. Church took place in family homes, in rooms that were often locked and guarded for fear that they would be raided and run out of town, or worse.

Much of what we read in this story of Jesus appearing, in his newly resurrected form, to his community of disciples is designed to mirror early Christian worship and prayer.

Christians secretly gathered together in private rooms to share their experiences of Christ in their midst, to read passages of Hebrew scripture, to hear the occasional letter from Christian missionaries, like Paul, and to share in the Eucharistic Feast. From these early meetings evolved our current liturgies of worship and praise.

But fear was an integral part of the early Christian experience. When Christ says, ‘Peace be with you’, he is wiping away fear and replacing it with faith.
God intends for them to be right where they are, doing exactly what they are doing. Just as we, thousands of years later, are acting out our faith in the drama of our familiar liturgy – eager to hear God’s words of Peace to us, so that we can leave refreshed, comforted, and free of fear.

Jesus baptizes them with the Holy Spirit, creating in them a new humanity, reminding us that God created the original Adam, or earth-being, by blowing God-breath into lifeless creatures: inspiring new life.

It is as new life-forms that Jesus sends them out into the world, as he was sent into the world. Just as he revealed himself to the disciples, they are to reveal themselves to others as Christ-bearers. ‘Peace be with you,’ is to become the emblem of bearing Christ, and a sign of the new community.

When we come back to the locked room a week later, it is a Sunday evening. We recognize that this is just like the gathering of Christians on Sundays – a practice already in use during the time this gospel was written, in the late first century.

Thomas is with the disciples when Jesus appears and singles him out. In the midst of all of his friends, Jesus calls him to come and touch the wounds so that he can believe. And that is all it takes. At Jesus’ invitation Thomas falls on his knees and proclaims, “My Lord and my God.”

Each part of the story has presented a different way to perceive the Lord. Mary hears Jesus say her name, Peter and the other disciples see his wounds, and Thomas is invited to actually touch the risen Christ, which is enough to inspire the first proclamation of Jesus’ true nature – Lord and God.

The climax of this story occurs just after Thomas’ witness. Jesus first addresses Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Then, Jesus turns to us, to the readers of this gospel and says to us, gathered here, in this room, “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

We are the climax of this story because we depend on the hearing the Good News from others. Blessed are we who have come to believe that Jesus came into the world in order save us from ourselves.

The descriptions of the various ways Jesus’ disciples experience his risen form is one of the most compelling proofs of the resurrection. Something powerful happened to Christ’s followers after his death. Each one of them experienced the resurrection in a different way. Each received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in ways that called upon their individual gifts and created new, often powerful and courageous beings.

God raised Jesus from the dead in order to establish once and for all that the birth pangs of death are destroyed. Death no longer has the power to create or control life beyond the grave. Creation is in the hands of God. And it is through God that we receive the gift of the Spirit – the innovative, creative force that calls us to become bearers of Truth.

It is in Peace that we carry the message of hope out into the world. The Peace of the Lord is none other than the power of God, pulling Christ out of the grave in order to bring us life.

May the Peace of the Lord be always with you. Amen.

Easter Vigil, 2011

2011-05-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

And God Saw that it was Good
The Rev. Deborah Magdalene
Easter Vigil 2011

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!

When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to visit Jesus’ tomb it was the dawn of a new creation. In the twilight of this momentous morning God was doing a new thing. Like the beginning of time, on the first day of the week, when God separated the formless void of chaos and darkness by blowing His Holy Wind over the waters, God again blew a powerful wind deep into the earth shaking it fiercely with the birth pangs of resurrecting Christ, our new light. And God saw that it was good.

Christ is the new light through which we participate in birthing a new world.
The Paschal candle plays a primary role in the Great Vigil of Easter, reminding us that when Christ died our light went out, but with his resurrection at dawn, “on the first day” the light of our own new life with Christ is lit forever, never to go out again.

The two Marys, through their simple act of being present to Christ throughout his suffering and death, never once abandoning him, were the first to hear the Easter message, “Do not be afraid, for He is risen!”

Like the dawn of creation, Christ’s resurrection is the creation of a new form of life: inviting us all to abandon our old ways of thinking in order to follow Christ into an unknown, but abundantly creative and surprising future.

Tonight, we are literally co-creators with God as we bring new life to pass through Christ, in our liturgy. God is doing a new thing which we celebrate through an ancient and mystical midnight service, signifying the end of Lent. Tonight’s great liturgy of Easter pulls us into the present moment, where Christ rises again and leads us all into a new and resurrected life.

Christ’s death and resurrection is a culmination of the ancient Jewish celebration of Passover (or pascha). As God rescued the Hebrew people from the Egyptians at the Red Sea, so God rescues us through the death and resurrection of Christ: the central saving act of God in the New Testament.

God has a habit of creating new things when we least expect it. Tonight we hear the story of our Hebrew ancestors crossing the Red Sea. This parting of the waters is another mirror of the creation story. God’s Holy Spirit-filled wind separated the waters as it had once separated the dark and watery void from the light.

It was in this new light that God beckoned his people to follow Moses into the Promised Land, never again to be bound as slaves in Egypt. Our Christian ancestors in the faith saw in this deliverance of the Israelites an image of our passing through the waters of death into the promised land of our Baptism in Christ.
We participate sacramentally in Christ’s death and resurrection each time we celebrate the Eucharist, but the primary celebration of our Christian year is this Great Vigil of Easter.

During the Vigil the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist come together in dramatic fashion in the celebration of joy that is ours on Easter morn. This night of all nights is also the night of our own salvation, where all who believe in Christ are forever saved from sin and death.

In the words of Leonel Mitchell, in his book “Praying Shapes Believing”, it is “in the baptismal waters [where] sin is washed away and grace [is] given – a grace which establishes, through Christ, a new relationship between God and the race of Adam”.

Tonight we hear the great narrative of our Christian faith from a series of readings out of the Hebrew and New Testaments, plus multiple collects and psalms that draw our attention to Paschal, or Easter, themes. The readings are our final class, or a catechumenate review of Scripture, to prepare us all for Baptism.

This ancient Vigil service contains the passion and resurrection in a single, unitive celebration. Early Christian liturgists and theologians developed this service out of an instinct that the power of God in the resurrection is a mystery that emerges by, through, and in human suffering.

In our participation in the renewal of our baptismal covenant, we are plunged into the water of our own baptismal renewal, before we receive the Eucharist as if for the first time. The effect is powerful.

In the early church, baptism into the body of Christ occurred at Easter, after months (and sometimes years) of catechumenate study. Baptism was seen as the entry point into the great Paschal Mystery which focused their attention on the great redemptive themes of our faith.

Immersion into the water is intended as a burial into Christ’s death, followed by a physical rising out of the water as a sign of our resurrection with Christ. We enter the life of the resurrected where time is compressed and the end of time is upon us now, calling us to urgent and new action based in Christ’s love.

The order for Holy Baptism emphasizes God’s role in creation: especially in the Thanksgiving over the Water:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.

Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage
in Egypt into the land of promise.

In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death
and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are
buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his
resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.

It is in the reborn state that we approach the Eucharist. In our Eucharistic Prayer we affirm the relation of God to all of creation. The earliest Eucharistic prayers always included a thanksgiving for God’s creation, echoing the ancient Jewish prayers of thanksgiving.

Eucharistic Prayer II in Rite I includes the line, “for that thou didst create heaven and earth,” and in Eucharistic Prayer A, which we will use tonight, we hear this:

It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and every-
where to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth.

But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious
resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the
true Paschal Lamb, who was sacrificed for us, and has taken
away the sin of the world. By his death he has destroyed
death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us
everlasting life.

This prayer, known as the Proper Preface for Easter, contains the images of Christ’s triumph over death, reminding us that suffering does not have the last word.

As the Hebrew people suffered during the years of slavery in Egypt, and as Christ’s followers suffered in their bewildered horror at his painful death, we have a tendency to suffer through our days as if we have not been already saved.

In our weekly liturgy we are asked to gather up our sufferings in order to present them to God as our gift – along with our faith and hope in the new life we receive through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Like the two women at the tomb, the light of Christ beckons us to follow Christ as he awaits us in Galilee. The only way there is through actively reaching out to others to join us in the quest. We are on our way to salvation, and we must spread the Good News.

“Go quickly,” says the angel, “and tell the others, ‘He has been raised from the dead and has gone ahead of you – waiting for you as he leads the way.’” And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day of our renewed life in Christ.

Be “Perfect”

2011-04-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

7 Epiphany, February 20, 2011
Lev 19:1-2, 9-18, I Cor: 3:10-11, 16-23, Mat: 5:38-48

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy…You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (Lev 19:2b, 19b)

The Hebrew word for holiness, "kedushah," has spiritual as well as physical connotations. It literally means ‘separate,’ or ‘set-apart’. That which is ‘holy’ is completely or wholly ‘other’ and is suffused with the numinous shimmer of God’s true nature. Holiness is considered to be the very essence of God.

In Jerusalem there were concentric borders surrounding first the Holy of Holies in the inner sanctuary, then the temple itself, and finally the walled city of Jerusalem. People knew when they stepped inside the boundaries of the city of Jerusalem that they were in a place set-apart from the ordinary. They were literally approaching the borderlands between our world and God’s world.

This holiness, or "kedushah," had an inner quality also. When Moses came down from the mountain after speaking with God his face glowed with the residue of holiness. The encounter with God changed his inner nature and set him apart from the Hebrew people. The holiness emanating from Moses was considered fearful and awesome, yet was desired as something everyone could aspire to.

The ancient Hebrew people structured their lives to emulate God’s holiness. By saving the outer portions of their fields for the poor to reap they were not only creating a healthier community but affirmed that in doing these acts they became holy as the Lord their God was holy.

The commandments for moral and ethical behavior were put before the people as a way to become closer to God. God acted ethically and compassionately with them therefore, out of their love for God, they aspired to act likewise.

Jesus asks us to, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mat 5:48) Our culture has so much baggage attached to the word ‘perfect’ that it’s become difficult to see this jewel of Hebrew wisdom. Being perfect, in this case, has nothing to do with perfectionism – that neurotic self-imposed voice that tells us we never do anything right and must try harder and harder to overcome our own mediocrity.

The word used exclusively in Matthew’s gospel stems from ‘telos,’ the Greek word for ‘goal’, ‘end’ or ‘purpose.’ We are to meditate on God’s whole and undivided nature in order to become more whole and undivided ourselves. Instead of telling us to be perfect in human terms, Jesus is telling us that we were created whole and complete in order to remember our origins: the same complete holiness that created us and gave us life.

It is in this sense of ‘being’ as our maker intended us to ‘be’ that we are asked to endure harsh treatment, love our enemies, and pray for those who attack us. Jesus does not mean for us to endure an abusive relationship at the risk of our own and our children’s safety.

These teaching of Jesus use the plural form of the word ‘you’ and are intended to teach a community how to live as a community of God, belonging to God, and desiring to live in holiness with God.

Matthew’s gospel was written at a time when the Christian community was being attacked and persecuted. Jesus’ words of wisdom became the template for passive community resistance against tyranny and evil.

Like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Egyptian people in Tahrir Square, Jesus teaches the beauty of setting ourselves apart from the self-involved cruelty of political systems.

Jesus was raised in a communal culture and spoke to communities of disciples, religious authorities, and common people. It is as a community that we are asked to turn the other cheek, to give away our coat of security and warmth, and to feed the hungry. When Jesus tells us to be perfect it is as a community.

Another way of saying this is, ‘Be whole and undivided among yourselves as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is whole and undivided.’

Paul is asking the Corinthian community to aspire to this same principle. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you… For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” (I Cor 16, 17b) Once baptized as a member of the Christian community we become an integral part of the Body of Christ that dwells in, and yet is separate from, the world and its chaos.

Paul is speaking to a fractious and competitive community that has lost sight of the big picture. He reminds them that it is not human leaders who will teach them how to live a Christian life, but Christ himself.

The community is called to be the Body of Christ in a literal way, with each person living into the gifts God gave them. As Christ belongs to God, they belong to Christ. Their communal responsibility is to become one whole and holy container for the Spirit of God that dwells in their midst.

Each of us must find the role that God is asking us to fill in this community. We are not very good at identifying and promoting our own strengths. This is why our culture of individuality clashes headlong into God’s Kingdom community. We can recognize the holy in each other only when we’re not threatened by or jealous of one another.

The early Hassidic sage Rabbi Zusya once said, "When I reach the next world, God will not ask me, 'Why were you not Moses?' Instead, he will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?”

This ancient wisdom bumps up against our American do-it-yourself individualism. The idea that God may have a design for our lives sounds suspiciously like God wants to rob us of our freedom to choose what is best for us. The author of the book titled ‘Bobos in Paradise’, David Brooks, writes that the prime directive of the baby boomer generation is "Thou shalt construct thine own identity."

It is easy to assume that our deepest desires must be obeyed, or we wouldn’t feel them so powerfully. The answer to this dilemma is multi-faceted. Our deepest desires are related to God’s desires for us, but they are in a language we are not accustomed to hearing.

God speaks to us in conundrums, labyrinths, dreams, and metaphors. I still remember clearly my childhood desire to be an actress. From the age of five until I was in high school it was all I thought about. I knew without a doubt that God wanted me to act. When I bumped into my first real road block I concluded that I must have gotten the message wrong.

At the age of fourteen I landed the role of Wendy in Peter Pan. But when an accident put me on crutches the director (wisely) had to choose another, more nimble, Wendy. I interpreted my broken heart as God trying to tell me to choose something a little easier to accomplish in life. I was sure that God didn’t want me to feel as badly as I did.

I grew up with the adage, “You can be anything you want to be. You just have to want it badly enough.” I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be the star. And I wanted it to be easy. I wasn’t prepared to suffer. The ironic thing that I couldn’t have known at the time, is that suffering is what we human beings do best.

Until we embrace the truth that no matter what we think we want in life, all choices involve suffering, we will be wandering around in the spiritual desert. It is how we deal with our own and others’ suffering that separates the truly wise from the ordinary whiner and complainer. The Corinthians were whiners. We are encourage to do better than that.

God did not create us to suffer but, with God at our side, to transform suffering into new life. No one teaches this better than Jesus. The verses we heard from our Gospel today come after the Beatitudes and are meant to be an extension of them.

These pithy wisdom sayings of Jesus are the essence of the road less traveled. They are the exact opposite of normal human desires as they are the epitome of ancient Semitic wisdom.

The desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century interpreted being perfect as, “Being perfectly humble in your recognition of who made you.” The ancients knew that we can’t even come close to behaving and thinking as God would have us behave and think. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

It is in trying to act as God would have us act that we bless other’s lives with holiness. This was one of the many reasons I felt called to join a religious order. I thought that if I were living with a group of people who committed themselves to daily prayer and service I might finally be acting as God wanted me to act. Maybe I was, but I was also trying to escape the voice inside my head which told me that I was never good enough.

I confused perfectionism with Christ’s call to be perfect. There is nothing wrong with joining a religious order as a valid way to live a life closer to God. But my own sticky wicket was the discovery that life lived within a closed community of women is just as ordinary and flawed as any other life, only much more intense.

I constantly bumped up against my interior ‘behavior police’ who constantly nagged, “These sisters aren’t doing it right! Why does one get away with being grouchy all the time and another with dominating the conversation? Why do the sisters always talk about each other behind their backs, blah de blah de blah.”

I was thrown right smack up against the same issues that plagued me before I entered. My desire to be perfect was deflected onto everyone else in my vicinity because of a neurotic wish that they should behave perfectly – like nuns should! As long as I stayed focused on them I avoided the hard work that God was calling me to do.

I eventually realized that my only escape was to shine that piercingly neurotic spotlight on my own behavior and begin to accept that I didn’t have a clue how to behave with humble tenderness toward my sisters or myself.
I turned toward scripture and spiritual writings, and I found a wise spiritual director. I began to grow up spiritually.

I still struggle with my interior behavior police directing my attention toward others’ mistakes rather than my own pride, but I have developed a healthy sense of humor about my own foibles and missteps.

Just as the ancient Hebrew people set apart what was holy from the mundane sludge of everyday life, we can set apart our spiritual life in Christ. We can set aside a times to pray and mediate on God’s whole and healthy desire for us.

We can consider ourselves part of a holy enterprise and therefore cherished by God. As Christ’s own beloved people we can allow ourselves to have an inner shift – an awakening to the joy of belonging to God.

We make things much too difficult for ourselves. We belong to Christ as Christ belongs to God. We can stop and think before allowing ourselves to be directed by our habits and compulsions. And we can learn to be spiritual people living a spiritual life – focused and aiming constantly toward our holy and undivided Christ.

Third Sunday after the Epiphany

2011-01-26T09:13:00.000-08:00

Isa 9:1-4, 1 Cor 1:10-18, Mat 4:12-23
January 23, 2011
The Rev Deborah Magdalene

Two weeks ago tomorrow President Barak Obama gave a eulogy for the innocent victims of the recent massacre in Tucson. He gave words of comfort to grieving families, friends, and coworkers; he summarized the lives of the dead, giving us all a better idea of their common humanity; and he encouraged Americans to refrain from blaming those who think differently from us.

Obama said, “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
Those words carried light into my heart, and made me grateful that I wasn’t listening to a political speech, like I’d expected, but a sermon: a crafting of words chosen to illuminate the good news of hope in humanity, and faith in God’s power to help us change old behaviors.

Obama quoted Job to describe the suddenness of the attack in Tucson, “When I looked for light, then came darkness.” The whole verse reads, “But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.” (Job 30:26)

The people lined up to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that Saturday were there because of an active interest in their representative – to make real their little corner of Arizonan democracy. The last thing they expected was the sudden darkness of senseless tragedy.

In times of shock and grief we have an instinct to do something to make the hurt go away. Obama encouraged everyone to use that ‘do-something’ energy to do the hard work of “[Becoming] willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.”

Challenging old assumptions – sounds strikingly like the language of Martin Luther King Jr. On September 16, 1963, King said in his “Eulogy for the [3] Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing” in Birmingham, Alabama,

“God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city… The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.”

This theme of God’s light breaking-in to transform heartbreaking, evil and unjust circumstances is what runs through our church season of Epiphany.

The first line of the Psalm for today says it well, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” (Ps 27:1) We must always be attentive to the inbreaking of God’s grace in our human history.

God has a habit of breaking-in to the world’s chaos and creating light. In God’s world, “Let there be light,” is not a past event, but an ongoing process of creation. Where there is darkness God will create light.

The rainbow after the flood is the magical light-filled promise of God’s new covenant with his people. The light emanating from Moses’ burning bush and the pillar of light that guides the Hebrew people through the wilderness are examples of the inbreaking of God’s transparent clarity and power in times of struggle. God actions are not obtuse.

God speaks to us with the clarity of light. But we have to walk through some dark, difficult, and depressing times before the light can break through. This is why we repent of our shortsightedness and clumsy self-centeredness before we can feel the inbreaking of light through God’s forgiveness.

Isaiah cries out, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them has light shined.” (Isa 9:2)
Here the prophet is encouraging the Hebrew people who lived in the areas in and around Galilee in the 8th century before Christ. They were overtaken by the Assyrians and had lost all control over their own lives. The lands of Zebulun and Naphtali were the Assyrian names given to the areas in and adjacent to first Century Galilee.

Isaiah prophesies that the Assyrian oppressor will fall and that the Hebrew communities of faith will be restored. The troubled people of Galilee will gain control over their lives, will be able to worship their God freely, and will have no need to fear any more. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”

In Paul’s letter to the troubled community of Corinth, he warns of the same dissensions that trouble Americans after the shooting in Tucson. Different factions are trying to gather momentum and overpower each other in their bids for supremacy. The impulse to do something creates chaotic and pointless posturing and resentment. Human behavior hasn’t changed much in two thousand years.

Paul believes that any factions competing for power are in blatant denial of the light and truth of the gospel. “Was Paul crucified for you?...Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?...Has Christ been divided?” (1 Cor 1:13)

Paul is striking them with his sarcasm in order to wake them up and shake them. All that matters to Paul is that they understand the radical message of the cross.
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18) This is one of the most famous quotes of Paul that encapsulates the new saving grace of the death of Christ.

Jesus died as a common criminal in direct opposition to the belief that the Messiah was coming as a powerful leader in this world. Jesus in fact came to us as the inbreaking of God’s world into ours, turning everything upside down and sideways. The power of Christ is the power of transformation – not takeover.

Because of the brutal way Jesus died the majority of faithful Palestinian Jews couldn’t get their heads around the transformation of God’s promise to them. They could not reconcile that God’s emissary died the most shameful and public death of an enemy of the people.

Paul emphasizes the cross for a reason. It is only through embracing the complete humiliation of being a fragile human being and dying a death that terrifies the most faithful Jews that he could expose the radical love of God.
This is a love that follows us down into the grave, embracing all that is lost and hopeless, in order to raise us up in the full sunlight of God’s forgiving grace.

Paul knows that if the Corinthians had fully realized what Jesus did for them they would drop all their self-centered arguing and posturing and fall down on their knees in awe. There is no need to follow anyone but Christ. Paul doesn’t want followers, and he ridicules their desire to follow anyone but Christ. He wants believers who know what a precious gift they have been given.

esus brings eternal life to those who believe. The promise that the Kingdom of God is near – that because we believe that Christ is the Son of God and that he rose from the dead – the Kingdom of God has now entered our lives and has the power to change old behaviors. In God’s Kingdom we never have to fight our way to the top of the pile.

Fighting for political power, for human attention, or for religious popularity is another way of saying that you have lost the central message of Christ. Christ came to us in order to bring us the prism of new light. Nothing is the same when you keep your eyes glued to the wisdom of Christ’s saving power.

The ramifications of getting caught up in crowd mentality are nothing short of denying the message of the gospel. Our guide for behavior is our faith that God will guide us in no less a way than God guided Jesus – through the most painful work we can imagine in order to bring us out into the light.

When Jesus called the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John, he was calling them to a new vocation. He called it, “Fishers of men.” But he never tells them, or us, exactly how we go about this kind of fishing.

Do we brag that we have the best church in town? Do we attract believers by inventing new and exciting programs? Do we call all our old friends who used to come here and ask why we haven’t seen them recently? Do we walk door-to-door and share with the neighborhood our stories of salvation?

Jesus never tells us to do any of that. But he does say, “Follow me.” Follow me and I will move you through darkness to a great light; for you are sitting in the region and shadow of death and cannot see that the light has dawned.

It is only through repentance of our old habits that keep us stuck and unable to see the Christ-light in the faces of those who love us – it is through repentance of our inability to consider a radical change in our lives – it is through repentance of our attitudes of hopelessness and our exaggerations of doom and gloom that we can relax and feel God’s blessings and love forgive us and set us free at last.

Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. Matthew emphasizes that this was to fulfill Isaiah’s prophesies. Jesus came to Galilee to live as God’s light of justice and reconciliation. When he says ‘Follow me’ he doesn’t promise that it won’t hurt. But he does promise that through our transformed lives we will not only see light, but will bring light to others. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”

God did not let bad things happen to the innocent people in that shopping center in Tucson two weeks ago. But God can salvage souls by showing us the way through painful times.

Nine year-old Christina Taylor Green was born on 9-11 in the year two thousand and one. She was one of 50 children born in the United States on that day. President Obama wisely used the story of her brief life to illustrate the saving power of hope.

Because Christina had such an unusual gratitude for the gifts God had given her he encouraged us to not let her death be the last word. Christina was fascinated by the world of politics and believed that she could make a difference in the world.
Obama said, “I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.”

The Good News that Jesus brings us all is that we have to work hard to discern God’s will for our communities. It is through the hard work of doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and acting abiding love that we bring light to our communities and to one another. “The LORD is our light and my salvation; whom then shall we fear?” We need fear no one.

The Baptism of Christ

2011-01-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Rev Deborah Magdalene

In the movie, ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou,’ three men escape from a chain gang and begin an epic journey through the South, looking for an illusive hidden treasure. At one point in their journey, as they are walking through a dimly lit forest, they begin to hear the sound of many people singing:

“As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol' way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!”

The fugitives hide among the trees and watched transfixed as a large group of men and women, dressed completely in white, hurry toward a ravine where a large, lazy southern river winds its way through the forest.

“O sisters let's go down
Let's go down, come on down
O sisters let's go down
Down in the river to pray.”

Then, continuing to sing, one man wades into the river and beckons the first woman in line to come into the water. With a forceful shove on her shoulders, the preacher pushes the woman down into the water and holds her there for a breathless moment.

The force of a gale propels the woman up out of the water shaking and sputtering with new life. She has no time to catch her breath as another woman approaches, ready for her turn to be shoved into the water. And so it goes, as everyone takes their turn to be baptized in the river.

Suddenly, one of the fugitives breaks free from their hiding place among the trees and pushes his way through the people-in-white and into the river, presenting himself eagerly to the preacher. The preacher looks him in the eye, recognizes his desire, and shoves him into the water.

Up he comes shouting jubilantly “I been saved! I been saved!” while his friends shake their heads in disbelief. What looks like foolhardiness to them is a true epiphany for the baptized man. Throughout the rest of their journey he remains a changed man. He thinks about his actions and worries about the helpless. It was a new being that rose up out of that lazy river.

This last Thursday was the Feast of the Epiphany, and the first day of the season of Epiphany. This is when we traditionally celebrate the arrival of the wise men, guided on their journey by a bright and luminous star, to Christ’s manger in Bethlehem. The foreign wise men traveled hundreds of miles in order to see a tiny prophet who would reach across boundaries and bring all nations together in peace.

When the magi visited the baby Jesus it was a foretelling of the future of Christianity. Because of Jesus, all nations would be invited to recognize the true nature of God. When the magi leaned in to worship the infant Jesus they recognized something new coming into the world.

This is what the word ‘epiphany’ means: a breaking-through of divinity into human understanding… a ‘showing’ or an appearance of God’s true nature in the midst of the darkness of our struggles, disappointments, and fears.

The word ‘epiphany’ can also mean a “perception of truth by means of a sudden intuitive realization.” We’ve all experienced an epiphany. Cartoons illustrate a light-bulb turning on suddenly in the bubble over someone’s head – that ‘aha’ moment when everything becomes clear and Popeye has a new idea.

This ‘new idea’ shines through the ministry of Christ throughout the season of Epiphany – unique manifestations of God’s nature as seen through the saving humanity of Jesus.

We traditionally celebrate the baptism of Christ on this first Sunday after the Epiphany. It is at the River Jordan that the immensity of Jesus’ ministry to the people of God is made clear to him. As he rose up out of the meandering waters of the Jordan River “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” (Mat 3:16)

As Matthew tells the story, this is the first time that Jesus hears the voice of God, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” (Mat 3:17) It is only after the baptism and this anointing by the Spirit of God that Jesus begins his public ministry.

In his novel, ‘The Last Temptation’, Nikos Kazantzakis explores how Jesus might have suffered before his baptism by John. He imagines that as Jesus reached adolescence he began to experience crushingly painful headaches that accompanied frightening ideas about his own death and the suffering of his people.

Except for the pain, these experiences were all shadowy and indistinct. The teenaged Jesus felt the deepest part of his being struggle with these bizarre visions that came from an even deeper and mysterious place within him. It was not until his meeting with John the Baptist that Jesus discovered the truth of his destiny.

Matthew emphasizes that it takes two important figures coming together in righteousness in order to complete God’s plan. The Baptizer immediately recognizes the holy nature of Jesus and begins to back away from him in humility. “No, no, it is you who should be baptizing me!”

But Jesus draws John back to him with the words, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." (Mat 3:15) And so the baptism becomes a dual act, an obedient coming-together of the baptizer and the baptized, setting the stage for God to show himself to Jesus.

The word, ‘righteousness’ is very important to Matthew. He uses either the word ‘righteous’ or ‘righteousness’ repeatedly throughout his gospel, drilling the concept it represents into our understanding.

So. What does ‘righteousness’ mean to Matthew? Joseph is called ‘righteous’ when he takes his dreams seriously and agrees to wed Mary and make a home for the Christ child. Jesus teaches that those who hunger and thirst for ‘righteousness’ are blessed and will be fed. (Mat 5:6) He says again, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and all that you truly need will be given to you. (6:33)

Righteousness can mean justice, uprightness, and redemption. It can be an attitude or an action. When we comply with God’s righteousness it implies that we are working, with unified attitude and action, toward the completion of God’s work on earth. We are literally bringing in the Kingdom of God with God.

Jesus and John the Baptist work together as equals, conforming their actions to God’s righteousness. This public moment becomes the template for all future baptisms in the name of Christ.

When the priest helps the child of God emerge from the water bath, they have participated together in the birth of a new being. For Christians, each time we witness a baptism we remember not only the moment of Christ’s own baptism, but his death on the cross.

Like the preacher in the movie, the cross shoves Jesus into the darkness of the river of death, where he stays long enough for us all to lose hope. Then, in complete alignment with God’s righteousness, Christ rises from the depths of the grave as a new and radiant being.

This is our promise, as baptized members of Christ’s family. Like Jesus, we know that we are beloved by God, and that we now share his new and radiant life in our lifetime and in the next.

Baptism is where it begins. Eternity is where it continues. It is the water that is our physical and outward reminder that we are part of God’s plan.
The oil used to seal the new Christian is a reminder of the epiphany of God to Jesus. As Jesus heard the voice of God, we hear the voice of the priest saying, ‘You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.’ (BCP p.308)

This public act of adoption into Christ’s family was so important to the early Christians that it became part of their earliest creeds. In fact, in the reading we have today from Acts we hear an early form of this creed in Peter’s speech to Cornelius and his family:

“You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ-- he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:36-38)

Peter’s speech reminds us of the close link between Christ’s baptism in the water, followed by the sealing of the Holy Spirit. And at the end of Matthew’s Gospel he makes clear that the mission of the new Church is inseparable from baptism.

After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his closest followers, saying powerfully, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And lo, behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mat 28:19-20)

Jesus and John the Baptist showed us how to align ourselves with God’s righteous plan for his world. It is in baptism that we celebrate the new life we have in Christ as we are joined to Him and adopted as God’s own children forever.

Whether or not we remember the event, at our baptism God takes up residence in our hearts, willing us daily to pay attention to the holy and righteous purpose of God seeking to live through our attitudes and actions.

Like Christ, our ministry begins at the moment of our baptisms.
We belong to God, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are all gathered at the river, looking forward to the day when we will rise with Christ to life eternal.

Ordination Sermon

2010-12-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

December 3, 2010, in honor of Nathan Ritter and David Carlotta's ordination
Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25 Phil. 4:4-9 John 10:11-18

Desmond Tutu once said, “There is nothing a Christian can claim of personal significance. Everything that I am, that I do, everything that I have ultimately is corporate...If you stand out in a crowd it is only because you are standing on the shoulders of others.”
This Episcopal service of ordination appears to make two individuals and their call to priesthood very significant and the focus of our attention. Just the opposite is true, actually.

We are here to rejoice in the new life Christ has given us. We are here to sing God’s praises and to pray for grace in our lives and in the lives of others. We are here to listen to the Word of God read in our midst. And we are here to dig into the Scripture a little bit to see how it can enlighten our journeys and inform our ministries.

Later, we will share a sacred meal together so that, as a community, we can feed the Body of Christ before we head back into a hungry world.

Oh yes, and before the Eucharistic meal begins, God willing, we will all participate in the ordination of Nathan and David to the sacred order of priests. Just remember, they are standing on the shoulders of all the Christian communities that have had a hand in their formation.

The readings we’ve just heard make clear that this business of leadership in the church is a communal affair. The only significant focus of our worship this evening is God. The readings make clear that there are some very important skills that a new leader should have in his bag of tricks.
Let’s begin with Moses.

Before Moses was told to gather the seventy elders, he complained bitterly to God that he couldn’t carry the people of Israel all by himself. “I am not able to carry all these people alone, for they are too heavy for me,” Moses whines. “If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once – if I have found favor in your sight- and do not let me see my misery.” (Num 11:15)

Moses could be a little melodramatic. What God tells him is one of the most important lessons that a leader can learn: stop complaining and acting like a martyr and go out find some other leaders to help you. One of the most common traps that a priest falls into is thinking she must do this job perfectly, and absolutely must do it alone.

From the looks of it, Moses never even gave a passing thought to the abilities of his fellow leaders. They were right there under his nose. They were called ‘elders,’ which, when translated into Greek, is presbyteros, the word used to refer to the evolving role of a priest in early Christian writings.

Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in the year 107, wrote frequently of the threefold church order of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. While the roles of bishop and deacon were very clearly laid out, there was still much ambiguity around the role of a priest.

Like the elders selected by Moses, the earliest Christian elders functioned as an integral part of a community. They were communally a chosen people – a people destined to worship God continually, and to remember who they belonged to: God. Leaders served the purpose of reminding them whose they were.

The early Christian communities believed that the onus of responsibility and leadership fell on them all equally. The First Letter of Peter makes clear, “…for you are [all] a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” (1Peter 2:9)

It is a common misconception that our hierarchical structure in the Episcopal Church is intended to make some people holier than others. It may look that way sometimes. Just look at the regalia of tonight’s ceremony. Majestic vestments and props; regal processions; dramatic bowing of heads and laying on of hands; and heavenly voices singing with the king of all instruments – the mighty organ. It all hearkens back to medieval ceremonies.

All of this pomp and circumstance signifies a grand event that demands our attention. What is happening here tonight is not the crowning of two new princes, but the humble acceptance of our very human role in God’s magnificent Kingdom.

We, like the early Christian communities, go to great lengths to remember the holy presence of God in and among us. The medieval echoes of our ceremony serve to focus our attention on the ethereal and numinous nature of the risen Christ in our midst. Our senses are alerted to an altered reality. God is worthy of praise and adoration, and the primary reason for our being here tonight.

Our leaders are but trusted servants, fellow workers, and humble sheep among sheep; which brings us to the Gospel lesson for today.

The Gospel of John was written so that those who listened to the Word would “come to believe” that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the son of God. The gospel’s cyclical nature winds in and around itself, kneading the listener into the dough of a new community, rising out of their Jewish heritage.

Theoretically, when we arrive at the tenth chapter about the Good Shepherd we have acquired certain listening skills. For instance, we have learned that the gospel itself was written to be the place where one actually encounters the risen Lord.

Like the apostles who first saw, and then believed, we readers of the Fourth Gospel have a real encounter with Christ through the words themselves. Because of the mystical and poetic nature of this gospel we can have an experience of Christ among us comparable to those who actually knew him.

When Jesus tells his disciples, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep,” (John 10:14-15) we recognize, once again that the words circle around themselves in direct imitation of the Prologue to John’s gospel.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2) The proclamation, “I am the good shepherd,” directs us to the nature of Jesus’ relationship with God his Father. Jesus was sent by God to be the only shepherd of God’s sheep.

In John’s Revelation we hear, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Rev 7:17)

All the illusions clergy have about being the good shepherd are misguided. In fact, they are dangerous. If any of us model ourselves on the Good Shepherd we run the risk of self-aggrandizement. We are not the Good Shepherd, Jesus is. Our attention is better spent on trusting God to guide our clumsy sheep behavior.

Like Isaac, offered on the altar as a sacrifice to God, Jesus lays down his life in the gateway of the sheep’s fold. No one can harm us without encountering Christ first. It is through grace that we count ourselves among Christ’s flock.

As our shepherd, Jesus seeks each of us out and calls us to our ministry in the church. We all have the responsibility of reminding each other that Christ is our shepherd, so we shall not be afraid.

This is such a paradigm shift from thinking that our pastors are supposed to be the good shepherds. In the Episcopal Church that I grew up in, we took for granted this skewed model of leadership.

As one of our professors at General Seminary said, the old model for ministers and congregations was, “My job is to minister and yours is to congregate.” So little was expected of us we were lulled into believing that we actually had no work to do. Just show up!
What would the apostle Paul think of this?

In the letter he writes to the church in Philippi, Paul is excited beyond belief that the community is working so hard without him. This is the model of leadership that we are trying to regain in the twenty-first century.

A good leader rejoices in the leadership skills of his community, and sends them out to do the same. Leaders raise up new leaders, who in turn raise up new leaders, who raise up yet more new leaders. And God rejoices.

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4) Paul reminds his friends that, like a shepherd with his flock, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (4:6)

With these words, Paul states the primary responsibility for every leader in God’s church: “In everything, by prayer and with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

Which brings us to the distinctly Anglican practice of prayer, the Divine Office. The Office marinates us in the psalms that were so dear to Jesus, and makes our prayer a deeply engrained habit.

The daily recitation of psalms and beautifully written Anglican prayer helps bring our focus back to the Word of God. In spite of the fact that there are so many other things you can get done in the time it takes to pray the Office, we believe that the activity of daily prayer is actually pleasing to God.

Praying the Office is pleasing to me because my soul becomes quiet as my mouth recites the beautiful words. The ordinands just promised that they
“believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”

What better pastime than to spend time daily with the words so necessary for our salvation?

When Paul says to imitate him, it is his immersion in prayer, coupled with the joy he finds in Jesus that he wants to see mirrored around him. Imitate a deep prayer practice, and seek the joy that comes from serving Christ and you will live into Paul’s idea of ministry.

All baptized Christians have a responsibility to lead, minister, and witness to their faith. We bear witness to Christ by leading lives of integrity and faith, always mindful that it is up to us to work for reconciliation in our world, and to witness to our faith in the risen Christ.

And now, David and Nathan, would you please stand up?
If you would, please, take a look around at whose shoulders you are standing on.

They have just promised to uphold you in your ministry. Remember that and hold them to it. You are here because of them.

And now, a reminder from the prophet Micah: “Remember all that the Lord requires of you; to do justice, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Heb 13:20-21)

Something's Coming

2010-11-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

Advent 1, November 28, 2010
The Rev Deborah Magdalene

Something’s coming. Heaven is leaning in to earth, people are gazing expectantly at the stars, and the earth is paying attention to something intangible – something electric and fascinating – something full of promise and new life; beyond the reach of our own imaginations.

Something is coming that will change forever the way we perceive ourselves in the world. No longer will we be the center of our own universe. Gone will be feelings of anger and resentment, self-doubt and humiliation, and the pain of being betrayed by someone you trusted more than yourself.

No more will we have to expend energy to defend ourselves in a world that feels out of control. We won’t be encouraged to cheat, to take shortcuts, or to tell white lies. We won’t give up our faith out of distraction and boredom, but will believe once again that hard work and agape love really can change the world.

Something is coming that will validate every kind deed we have ever had the grace to perform as it reassures us that compassion is more powerful than tightfisted stinginess.

Something is coming that will forever keep us close to the heart of God, and that will help us to know that all the suffering we have ever experienced served a purpose unique to each of us. Because of our struggle we now have gifts of the Spirit that will forevermore enrich the Kingdom of God.

Something is coming that will turn terrorism and deceit into interreligious dialogue and farming cooperatives….or as Isaiah says, will “turn turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; [where] nation shall not lift up sword against nation” and nevermore will we learn how to war. (Isa. 2:4)

The words of Isaiah help us to yearn for righteousness with every fiber of our being. He is speaking to a people who are beaten down by struggle and who wander aimlessly in the wasteland, forgetting who they really are. He lights a fire under them by simply naming the heavenly truths they yearn for.

If we lived every day with a full awareness of how deeply we hunger for a meaningful life for ourselves and our loved ones it would shatter our self-composure.

We are not built to withstand such vivid and high frequency yearning for long periods of time. We go into denial and busy ourselves with easier tasks. We have short attention spans for difficult issues. We turn on the TV, turn up the stereo and mute the dull throb of our own yearning for justice, fulfillment, and peace.

The theme of our readings for today is a vibrant and annoying wakeup call. It jolts us into readiness for the Advent of Lord, where we wait for a humble birth while focused on our need for a Savior.

In order to understand our Christian season of Advent we must remember that what we wait so impatiently for has already come. We are in a time of already/not yet. Christ is here and is coming. It’s a divine conundrum that calls us to examine ourselves and our faith.

The word ‘advent’ means ‘coming.’ But what is coming is not anything of this world. We live in a world of microchips and phone apps; of online ordering and unending lines at the Verizon store. We are not wired, so to speak, to look for the advent of a world beyond our imaginings.

What Isaiah writes about is the coming of a supernatural event. One that will make every hair on your head stand up at attention and will send chills rippling down your spine. There will be no credits or commercials at the end of this event, but the beginning of a world beyond our imaginings. The end will be the beginning.

Isaiah’s words are about the coming of a new age of consciousness….a cosmic trip out of the land of slavery and oppression into a time of everlasting felicity.

The voice of the prophet Isaiah cries out that God is coming to “teach us his ways that we may walk in his paths.” (Isa. 2:3b) He paints a picture of a New Jerusalem – one that rises out of the rubble of destruction and abandonment to become the center of the universe – a place where all nations of the world will come in humility to learn a new way of living.

The picture we have from Isaiah is of a Kingdom that rises as the highest place on earth; rising to a point where it touches heaven. Every nation in the world will flow gently and peacefully across paper-flat geography toward and up the slopes of this new kingdom on a mountain.

The Hebrew word, ‘naharu’ means to "flow like a river," and to "shine in joyful radiance." We can picture all of the world’s people flowing like a river uphill toward God’s light. The desire for supremacy and power is replaced with humble acceptance of a benevolent and creative majesty beyond their imaginings. It is this humility in the face of a love beyond understanding that causes them to shine in joyful radiance.

What they yearn for now is to be taught how to live with such unexpected fulfillment. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isa 2:3)

The psalm for today is called "A Song of Ascents," intended to be sung by a band of pilgrims climbing the heights of Jerusalem and entering "the house of the Lord." With the psalmist we are invited to know the dwelling place of God's presence, where war is transformed into dances of love.

A useful way of understanding a transformation of this magnitude is
through art. In 1957 a musical written by Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim opened on Broadway. The story was a reworking of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Set in the projects of New York City, “West Side Story” was a smashing success.

The tale is of a love that transcends the human conditions of poverty and abuse; racism, jealousy, and even death. We watch, knowing that the end will be tragic, and yet needing to see the reenactment of this divine love between two innocents.

Tony, a working-class white boy is drawn into a state of alert readiness by a supernatural pulling on his heartstrings. The air has changed, his dreams are more vivid, and he wakes with a lump in his throat. He goes through the motions of his life as if it belongs to someone else. His friends don’t interest him anymore and he is buzzing with a new energy that he tries to understand through song:

“Could be! Who knows?
There's something due any day;
I will know right away, Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye, Bright as a rose!

What comes is an unexpected, powerful, and forbidden love with Maria, the Puerto Rican immigrant sister of the leader of a rival gang. Like the Gospel story, the tale of powerful, life-changing love ends in death and disillusionment.

But in the death we see a mirror of our own foolishness and are left with a desire to stop hating each other and become more open to learning new ways of being with each other.

The advent of Jesus is a love story that doesn’t end. Like ‘West Side Story’ the Good News of Christ opens out hearts to the possibility of a life lived in an altered state of reality – one that expects miracles to happen and dreams to come true.

In the already/not yet world of today’s Christianity we live in a state of suspended animation. Christ has come. Christ will come again. We can withstand the strain of waiting, knowing how deeply we yearn for justice and reconciliation by turning our wills and our lives over to the care of a God who wants to guide us in every move we make and breath we take.

Because we believe that the resurrection really took place; that Jesus was able to conquer death and walk among us as a new creation; because we return to Scripture to remind ourselves that we were created for a purpose; because we are Children of the Resurrection we await the coming of Christ with assurance that it is while we wait that the miracles occur.

It is in this age of already/not yet that Christians have been saying their prayers and willing themselves to be led by a power greater than themselves; a power that sees possibilities for life where we see only defeat and death.

It’s this unexpected new life that comes to those who believe that grows the Kingdom of God among ordinary slobs like us. Who could guess that that such a motley crew would be destined for such happiness?

Like the Jerusalem Pharisees and the upstart Christian community, who both drew on the prophet Isaiah to support their point of view, God’s love unexpectedly opened the hearts of the most unlikely candidates for a new way of seeing the world.

God pulled believers in his Christ from the holiest of Jews and from the margins of Jewish society; then through the unbelievable miracle of his Son’s resurrection, reached outside the boundaries of Judaism to make disciples out of the Gentiles.

Faith in Christ:
“Who knows?
It's only just out of reach, Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due, Gonna come true,
Coming to me!”
It’s this personal message of unexpected salvation that we all hunger for. There is a miracle coming, and it’s coming to me!

Jesus teaches about the necessity of watchfulness. “So as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” In other words, all of a sudden, out of the blue, dark clouds and torrents of rain will descend on the unprepared and take us away forever. The only ones left behind will be like Noah and his family, saved from the deadly flood because they paid attention to God.

Unlike the ‘Left Behind’ series, the ones who are left after the apocalypse are the faithful remnant – Noah’s family, safe in their wooden boat. In the Gospel for today Jesus is predicting what will happen at the Second Coming.

He is not trying to scare the disciples, but is imploring them to pay attention and to work hard. Just because Jesus works as hard as he does doesn’t mean that we can slack off and not contribute to our own resurrection.

“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Mat 24:42 & 44)

We keep awake through hard work and learning how to practice agape love. We focus on our need for a Savior with every breath we take. Is there something we can do to help Christ bring in the Kingdom? How will we know what to do? How do we make wise and loving choices in life? How do we stop hurting each other?

We must examine ourselves and our faith. Advent is a time to turn down the volume, build a fire in the fireplace and sit quietly in the presence of our Lord who is already here and not yet come.

“Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something's coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is Gonna be great!”

Christmas comes whether we are ready or not. But the Incarnation of God’s own Self on earth becomes reality when we learn to embody our share of the Holy. The ‘something’ that is coming is none other than our own decision to make each day a testament of our faith; to pull out our Prayer Books and remember how to yearn for a better life. Holiness comes through our participation in God’s plan for this world, on this day, in this city, through the work of our hands and our hearts.

Maranatha. Our Lord has come. Come Lord Jesus.

Down on Our Knees

2010-10-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 22, October 24, 2010
16-18, Luke 18:9-14

A week and a half ago the world watched with awe as thirty-three Chilean miners were rescued one-by-one by a little caged capsule that looked remarkably like a suspended egg. The images caught on camera were iconic.

One man jumped around in glee and led the onlookers in a Chilean cheer. One playfully balanced a soccer ball on his foot. One dropped down to his knees and began to pray. The world took a collective breath and watched in silence as the man prayed. Even the reporters stopped talking and the silence allowed us at home to pray with him.

The praying miner’s picture was in the New York Times the next morning and you can see this surreal moment frozen in time. Mario Gómez, bent in prayer, with the empty egg cage swinging behind him. The onlookers bow their heads and appear to pray with him. A few of the workers sneak a look at Gómez with big grins on their faces.

It was a beautiful sight. Seasoned reporters were speechless and had tears streaming from their eyes. Mario Gómez was the oldest of the miners and was suffering from pneumonia. The day of the rescue operation he had begun to hear loud explosions in the shafts surrounding him, and feared another cave-in was imminent. He began to have panic attacks, growing more certain that the rescue operation had come too late.

There is no telling what was in his mind when he opened the door of the rescue pod, but we saw that he was unable to get off of his knees without help. His wife rushed over to him and lifted him up to meet her embrace.

I’d like to use this moment to help us understand what is important about today’s Gospel reading. Something momentous happens to one of the men in the parable. The Pharisee and the Tax Collector – a story we’ve heard so many times before we think we know what it’s telling us:

“Don’t be full of pride like the Pharisee, and gloat over your own accomplishments. But be humble and prayerful, like the tax collector. Beat your breast for good measure. And then you will go home justified by God.”

But we know from experience that nothing Jesus teaches, especially in his parables, makes sense at face value. If we think we know the lesson then it is not doing its job.

The parable works by poking and prodding us to change our habits. Everything Jesus teaches, especially in his parables, is designed to make us squirm uncomfortably and recognize that we have a lot of work to do.

We must look deeper into this little parable to see what is so important that Jesus has to teach this same lesson throughout Luke’s Gospel. Keep your focus on the tax collector. He is the one whose example we are to follow and whose words mimic those of Jesus and his followers.

The tax collector cries out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!” He knows that the money he collects from the poor goes directly into the hands of the oppressor. In order to feed his family he must break Jewish law. He is caught in a no-win situation. Be merciful to me!

In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches, “[You must] be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36)

From Mary’s Magnificat we hear: “And [God’s] mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation. “(Luke 1:50)

From the Song of Zechariah: “And you, Child, through the tender mercy of our God…will give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, [and will] guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

From the parable of the Good Samaritan: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" The answer? "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise. (Luke 10:36-37)

Our mercy is to match God’s mercy. We receive mercy, so we must give mercy.

Shortly after this Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Jesus passes a blind beggar who cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Told sternly to be quiet, the beggar cries even louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38, 39)

The blind man who is reduced to begging is able to see the Son of God for who he really is. Jesus rewards him by giving him his sight and declaring that his faith has saved him.

Lord be merciful to me, a sinner!

We are to understand from all of these stories that God desires to give us tender and abiding mercy, but first we must yearn for that undeserved mercy as if it is the only thing worth living for.

The God of Luke’s Gospel is a God of mercy, who comes to his people to set them free from oppression, poverty, blindness, illness, and death. If you think you are doing just fine and are self-sufficient, you have no need of this merciful God.

The Pharisee is a parody of the God-fearing Jews, just as he is a parody of the 21st Century Christian who knows she is on the winning side. And I’m not talking about Christine O’Donnell.

The Pharisee says his prayers. We say our prayers. He fasts and tithes. We fast and tithe. He goes to the temple. We go to church. He pays his taxes and sends his children to school. He is a righteous man just as we are righteous.

But Jesus doesn’t come to save the righteous. So how can we be saved if we can’t get down on our knees once in a while and admit that we mess up? It’s really not a very politically correct thing to do. But is exactly what Jesus asks us to do… again and again.

It is the theme of the Lord’s Prayer. Give us this day our daily bread, we pray, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We beg for mercy as we promise to give back mercy. God forgives. We forgive. It is the breath of God that wants to breathe in us.

It could be a daily practice or a moment-by-moment attitude of prayer.
Lord be merciful to me, a sinner! These words are an ancient breath prayer. A prayer short enough to say in one exhalation. If we learn nothing else about the Gospel we can be assured that we have the main idea with this one prayer.

And how does it interpret itself within us? Well, let’s see, I forgot an appointment with a friend. I forgot to thank my mom for the card she sent me. I didn’t give God the credit for the beautiful day we had yesterday. I forgot to be grateful!

Lord be merciful to me, a sinner! We all mess up. We can learn to have an attitude of humility. But it takes practice and perseverance.

People in 12-Step programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous, are asked to “take a searching and fearless moral inventory” of themselves and then admit to God, and another human being, the exact nature of their wrongs.
Only then do they ask God, humbly, to remove their shortcomings.

Alcoholics know, as few others do, what it means to be completely unable to stop a behavior which is killing them and ending all their relationships.

Remarkably, it is through this practice of confessing their faults that so many alcoholics achieve sobriety. They take the focus off of themselves and focus intently on the God who can save them.

Lord be merciful to me, a sinner!

Our own Episcopal liturgy emphasizes the tax collector from today’s parable. Listen to this excerpt from our Rite One Eucharistic prayer:

“And although we are unworthy through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses, through Jesus Christ our Lord…”

Priests are taught to mimic the tax collector’s beating of the breast as they say these words, in order to remind the people of the Parable of the Tax Collector.

The intent of this Eucharistic prayer is to accept our responsibility as frail human beings. What do we really have to offer to a God who gives us a gift as eternal as Jesus? What can we give to a God who gives us everything we need?

It is certainly not a recitation of our merits (not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses.) All God wants of us is to see us as we really are – every bump, pimple and faux pas.

As we open our hands to receive the bread and the wine we are opening our hands in a gesture of helplessness. Like hungry baby birds we admit how frail we are and we seek to be filled with the abiding grace of God.

“Show me who you really are,” says God, “and I will love you with tender and abiding mercy. Your faith in me will save you. But you need to get the clutter out of the way. Admit how frail you are, and then you will crave only mercy.”

God knows, this is not something the human race is very good at. Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves and regarded others with contempt. (Luke 18:9)

That could be our congress. But we are the ones sitting here and struggling with this story, so we need to keep the focus on ourselves. We can save congress for another day. What should we take home with us from this parable?

I know that when I catch myself sounding arrogant, or bragging about my own accomplishments, (like the Pharisee) I can always find a trace of fear. I boost up my struggling sense of self-esteem by listing my accomplishments. It’s childish and silly, but I do it all the time. I brag because I am afraid that I am not good enough.

It was in the convent that I really learned how to catch these moments and let them rise up to the surface so I could take a good look at them. Convent life is good for that. I hated what I found. It made me feel small and petty and immature.

It became the most difficult task of all just to sit and feel the remorse and embarrassment of blowing my own horn and not to try to fix it or make it go away.

This was brand new behavior. I had never practiced feeling healthy remorse for anything I’d ever done. I grew up in a family where shame was used to punish. Healthy remorse was not a skill I possessed.

What allowed me to sit and feel the remorse of saying something stupid and self-centered was the conviction that a loving God desired a freer life for me. The more I could practice admitting my own shortcomings the more
I was ready to receive the grace that was offered to me. This was not toxic shame, but honest remorse.

God wants us to grow into the image that is reserved for only us. We can’t become free if we don’t see the bars that imprison us. The message we take away from the parable today is this: there is always an attitude of the Pharisee lurking about our happy-go-lucky face we shine on the world.

Find your inner Pharisee and drop him down on his knees. Let him feel a touch of remorse and then share the Good News with him. Christ came to set us all free (including our inner Pharisee) and to prepare us for the tender mercy of God.

Mario Gómez had nothing to offer his God. He was a skinny shell of his former self. Ravaged by starvation for the first seventeen days after the cave-in, the miners were allowed to eat only liquid diets until their bodies slowly remembered how to absorb nutrients again.

When people are in life-threatening situations they begin to exhibit certain predictable behaviors. You see your life flash before your eyes. You see how inevitable death is for everyone. And you vibrantly appreciate what life has given to you up to this moment.

With months spent in the damp, hot darkness of the desert subfloor, the miners had time to reflect on their lives. Their desire to come back to their lives someday in the future forced them to cherish the things they had taken for granted before the ground gave way.

We could all sense their awe and gratitude as they were set free from their underground grave. They were born again and we yearn to feel the same release. We are hard-wired to be born again. But we can’t get there without an attitude of complete surrender to God’s mercy. It takes practice. But I thnk we can accept the challenge.

Travelling Along the Way

2010-10-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 6, July 4, 2010
Galatians 6:1-18, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Deborah Magdalene, OSH

When I was a speech therapist in California I travelled from one school to another with my bag of toys and games and my charts of goals and progress notes. I also made house visits. The objective was to teach the parents how to play with their children in a way that encouraged more language and better speech.

I was not always well received. In fact, most often the parents saw me as a free babysitter who would play with their children long enough for them to escape into a soap opera.

But I remember one family who not only stayed in the room to watch me work with their little boy, but offered me food and gifts. This was a very poor family of Hmong immigrants who had been living in Laos for generations after being forced out of China.

The Hmong are a travelling people, used to roaming the mountains because they were systematically persecuted and driven away from any established settlement. They have no written language of their own, and depend upon an elder in the family learning Mandarin so that they can know what is going on in their world.

When Hmong families immigrated to Eureka, California the transition was very abrupt and complicated. But when I was in the home of my one Hmong family they were the ones who offered me their unique hospitality.

They had no furniture, but squatted on the floor and ate from bowls. They raised their own food, including a yard full of chickens, and they were not at all sure about our dependence on indoor plumbing.

Their culture drew me in as my play with their child drew them in. We made an exchange of trust, using pantomime and play as a universal language. I ate their strange food and they learned to play with their child.

Eventually we went our separate ways but the peace they gave me remains with me to this day. I think this is exactly what Jesus had in mind.

“Go on your way,” says Jesus, “to every town and place that I intend to go.” The operative word in this reading today is Go. The Jesus we meet in Luke’s Gospel is always going somewhere. He is on a journey. Jesus is constantly moving toward Jerusalem and inviting friends to either follow him or go ahead of him. It is a grand processional. And it is one that we all know will end in death.

Last week we heard the prologue to today’s reading. Jesus and his followers were moving along the road to Jerusalem when several would-be followers asked to join them.

“I will follow you wherever you go,” says one. And Jesus answers, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” In other words, to follow Jesus is to take up a new way of life – a life that is in constant motion, always moving toward the completion of God’s will.

Jesus then asks someone to follow him who says he must first go back and bury his father. But Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” To walk with Jesus is to join an urgent walk headed in only one direction – we’re going to Jerusalem. We are all travelling together toward Jerusalem. There is never any turning back.
Another hopeful prospect says, “I’ll follow you, but first let me go say farewell.”

And Jesus tells him that if he even pauses to look back he is not fit for the kingdom of God. Keep your eyes on Jerusalem and move, always move, toward the goal in Jerusalem. And what is it we see when we strain our eyes to see into the distance? Well, it is a cross. A transformational cross at is what is waiting for us.

Just as in our processional every Sunday, we move forward in song and harmony behind a travelling cross and toward the cross of our redemption. We are always turning and following the cross, wherever it leads. Jesus teaches us that the Kingdom of
God is not a passive, restful place, but a moving processional, gathering followers and building up strength through the love of Christ that we carry within our midst.

Jesus picks seventy of his choice followers – disciples who don’t turn back for anything but move as one unified body with, and for, and because of Christ. He sends them out, as he sends us out, moving ahead of him. This little phrase is extremely important. For the first time in the Luke’s Gospel Jesus is following his disciples. He is following them because they are now preparing the way for Jesus.

And that is our message. Two thousand years later we are still moving along “the way.” We are making way for Jesus, who we know without a doubt is coming. What happened long ago on a cross in Jerusalem was a death to sin once and for all, and the birth of a new way of life. We are walking the new way of life that has never stopped moving since the morning Mary Magdalene ran from the tomb and cried out to her friends, “He is alive!” To be a Christian is to move.

In Paul’s passionate letter to the Galatians he is very clear that we are to invite everyone to join our procession: this new way of life is available to all because Christ lived and died for all. It is an all-inclusive Gospel. We gather up followers from everywhere, and the only prerequisite is the desire to keep moving closer to where God wants us to go.

The big argument that Paul is refuting throughout this letter is whether each new Christian convert needs to become a Jew before he can qualify as a Christian. Now to become a Jew in the first century was a whole lot easier for women than it was for men. Paul was aware that the men who had bitten the bullet and allowed themselves to be circumcised were now bragging that they were the better Christians. This is why he writes so passionately against this kind of bragging.

And it wasn’t only bragging: these newly circumcised converts were also escaping persecution by fundamentalist Jewish Christians. If you refused to be circumcised and yet called yourself a Christian, you opened yourself up to criticism and persecution.

These persecuting Christians were a large group in the early Church. They argued that since Christ first came to his own people, the Jews, you could only become a true Christian by way of Judaism. Those who chose this way began to persecute the growing numbers of Gentile Christians – the ones that Paul dedicated his entire life and ministry to.

Paul argues that it is through our works, not private scars on our bodies, that we will be known as true Christians. We will reap eternal life, says Paul, if we do what is right and never give up. We are to work with gentleness for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

Paul warns us that we are not to brag about what we have borne in our flesh, nor to persecute one another, but rather to “Carry one another’s burdens, [so that] in this way [we] will fulfill the law of Christ.” The only law that we need worry about is the law to love one another as oneself and to love God as Christ loved his Father God.

If we feel the need to boast we are to boast only “in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to [us,] and [us] to the world.”

These are powerful words that still carry a potent message for us today. Paul believes that the only thing we need to worry about is the new creation which Christ birthed into the world through his death, resurrection and ascension to heaven.
Paul says that this new creation is everything to us.

Picture us back in that processional with Christ. We are walking along the way, carrying one another’s burdens. That means we must listen to our fellow travelers with ears that don’t try to cover up the pain or, worse yet, to not really listen but instead mentally rehearse ways to fix real crises with easy solutions.

But it is extremely difficult to carry one another’s burdens when we all have burdens of our own. How do we share our own pain if we are staggering under the weight of other’s painful and heavy loads?

Paul’s answer to this dilemma is explicit: we are all to carry our own loads by testing our own work. This sounds like it is more work, but it is actually the way towards real freedom.

We test our own work by rigorously examining ourselves and by regularly confessing our sins against God and our neighbor. It is only through the act of self-examination and confession that we can let down the heavy burden of guilt on our backs and experience the freedom of forgiveness and new life.

But this is where many of us run into road blocks. I, for example, have huge trust issues. I have inappropriately shared my personal burdens with people who couldn’t listen, or who worse yet, used my confession as a tool to have more power over me.

I had to learn that some people are not safe, in spite of calling themselves Christians. Some that abused my trust were even ordained. This can be very confusing for those of us who are trying to build trust within a Christian community.

But thankfully, truth and wisdom are powerful magnets. In every Christian community that I have ever belonged to I have found people that were worthy of being followed and who could hold a confidence with loving compassion. We Christians are a mixed bag. If others are to know we are Christians by our love then we have work to do in our own communities.

A healthy Christian community depends on our ability to listen to each other and to honor one another’s journeys. We are to bear one another’s burdens by listening to them with compassion and understanding – without trying to hurry and fix it so it will go away. The loads on our backs are eased by being heard with the heart of compassion. We are supported by knowing we are not alone in our troubles.

There are some days when I find this particular part of my Christian call to be next to impossible. Where do I get the energy to support others with this deep sincerity when my own load feels so heavy?

Let’s go back to the Gospel for a minute.

The seventy disciples are sent out in pairs to prepare the way for Jesus. They travel in pairs so that there is always someone there to carry the other’s burden. No Christian should every travel the way alone. We desperately need each other to share and to care for the precious gift we carry together – our faith in a God of Love, who bears our burdens and sets us free.

The only time Jesus tells us to stop constantly moving along the way is when we find a home that receives the peace that we give them. Jesus says, “If anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not it will return to you.” This is the kind of peace I received from the poor Hmong immigrants.

In the first century, the church began in believer’s homes. They were called house churches. We are allowed to stop the constant travelling, take off our dusty shoes, and enjoy the fellowship of faith when we enter a house of worship.

Like the early church, we listen to our shared story in Scripture. And like them, we confess our faith in Christ, sing His praises, and join together in confessing our sins before we are free to receive the gift of the Eucharistic meal.

The travelers are finally allowed to rest in the knowledge that Christ is within us and among us, nourishing us for the journey that waits for us outside these doors.

We leave refreshed, and nourished with the knowledge that we have a home here. These is where we stop, every week, and share our peace with others who give us back more peace. Peace flowing like a river among us.

But this is not a passive, quiet peace. The peace of Christ is a lively spark that starts us moving again. We are sent out from the Eucharist to start the hard work of listening to each other and offering to carry another’s load for awhile. The journey doesn’t end until Christ comes again.

On this Independence Day we can be grateful that we aren’t persecuted for our faith. We live in a country that was founded on this belief: that all of us are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

As a Christian, I would add to this declaration that our happiness rests in doing God’s will. The road we walk is a difficult road, but our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness depends on knowing that we are trying to please God through our actions of love with and among one another.

Lost and Found

2010-10-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

1Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10
The Rev Deborah Magdalene, September 12, 2010

It’s an interesting exercise to take a look around our worship space and notice the images that are meaningful to us. Many of us have been coming here for years and are so used to this space that we have stopped noticing the particulars. We identify this space as our spiritual home. This is what ‘church’ looks like.

We sit here, or here, or over there, and from our particular vantage point we see various symbols of our faith. Much of the symbolic richness of this particular church has become comforting and familiar.

But what does a guest see? Try to see this space as if you are visiting St Alban’s for the first time. Mentally choose where you would most likely sit.

Now, find the image, symbol, or object that is most meaningful to you. Look over at the windows, look up at the altar, at the ceiling, the candles, the crucifix, look at the altar rail. Look behind you and see if you can find the baptismal font, or see the organ loft. Look at the doors, the pews, and the lights.

Find one image that stands out to you and really look at it. Then see what it has to tell you about your own faith. Why is this symbol meaningful for you? Why do you find it comforting, or enlightening, or central to your worship experience? What do you suppose this object has to say about what we do here on Sunday mornings? What would a Christian archeologist in the next millennium conjecture about your item as a relic? What does it say about your faith?

When we go back in time and look at the earliest images adorning Christian worship spaces we learn a lot about how they practiced their faith. We find some images that are familiar, and some that seem strangely out of place, and we notice the absence of many important symbols.

For instance, there are no crucifixes, and very few pictures of Jesus. There are altars, and baptismal fonts. There are frescoes painted on the walls, and beautiful handcrafted mosaics on the floors and walls. If we catalogue the images we find in the earliest Christian worship spaces we find several recurring themes.

There are many images of Jonah inside the whale – the important Hebrew Testament story that prefigures the three days Jesus was swallowed by the whale of death.
There are pictures of loaves and fishes – signifying the feeding of the five thousand – a central symbol for the Eucharistic feast.

Then we find the recurring image of a shepherd carrying a lost sheep on his shoulders. The belly of the sheep is resting against the back of the shepherd’s neck and his hands grasp the feet of the lamb to comfort and stabilize it for the ride back to the flock.

This image, so central to early Christian worship, is the theme of today’s gospel message as well as the pivotal energy behind the Apostle Paul’s conversion.

Lost and Found – the story of how we come to believe in a God who seeks us out again and again and again – never tiring of bringing us home to God. It is the rhythm of our faith. And until we learn to accept our various roles in the repeating pattern of the Lost Sheep story, the story so central to the early Christians’ experience of God, we will not fully grasp the power of being carried home to God.

At any point during our lives we can identify ourselves as the lost sheep; or maybe we are helping the shepherd to find the lost one; or, my own personal favorite, we are one of the faithful 99 sheep who is not happy to wait for the shepherd’s return but feels indignant, bent out of shape, and jealous that the shepherd abandons me in order to go off find that stupid sheep who wasn’t working hard enough to keep up with us smart, savvy, and grumpy sheep.

In the first letter to Timothy Paul writes of his own experience of coming home to God. Paul describes how he considers himself to be the foremost, or the most striking example of, a sinner. Then he tells of how Christ sought him out in order to bring him home to God. In fact, Paul says that the reason that Jesus came into the world was to save people like him.

Paul believes that he was found and brought back to God because of how far away he had strayed, because God had another purpose for his life, and because of how deeply incapable he was of finding his way home on his own.

Paul writes that he was the epitome of a sinner and, “…for that very reason [he] received mercy, so that in [him], as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making [him] an example to those who would come to believe in [Christ Jesus] for eternal life.”

In other words, if Jesus can bring that sorry sheep Paul home then he certainly can bring one of us home. Paul persecuted and stoned the early Christians, and did so with a hatred and self-righteousness that he will remember for the rest of his life.

But he does so with full confidence that he has been completely forgiven.

That is the point that Jesus makes with the parable of the lost sheep. The action of coming home to God is a process of gaining a right relationship with God. Paul was out of alignment with the God of his ancestors. To sin is to be out of alignment with God’s purpose for our lives.

It is in Paul’s complete acceptance of the tender forgiveness he receives from Christ that his relationship with God is restored. Paul writes, “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

This point is so important for our faith. When we go off and act out our anger in a hurtful and self-righteous fashion, we often do so in complete ignorance of how we can do otherwise.

Throughout my 18-year marriage I failed to protect my children from their father’s unpredictable outbursts of anger and abuse. At the time I felt as terrified and helpless as my children did. I didn’t know I had a choice.

I needed God to send a shepherd to find me and bring me home to a place where I could see the errors of my ways with the same compassion and tenderness that Jesus had for me.

I had been fueled by self-hatred and resentment for so many years that there was no way that a God who acted as a fierce disciplinarian would ever make any headway with me.

No, it was in the awareness of feeling forgiven for my ignorance that I wept for joy. Because of how long it took for me to find the Jesus who had been looking for me all along my long-awaited conversion was profound.

The moment I realized that I could learn another way of being in the world – that it was possible to learn how to make better choices in my life – was, and remains, the pivotal moment of my life. Like Paul, I felt profound gratitude that I didn’t have to act out of ignorance any more.

Luke sets up the parable by separating the Pharisees and the scribes from the inner circle.

The Pharisees and the scribes are not there to listen to Jesus. They are there to see for themselves that Jesus not only welcomes sinners, but he actually eats with them. They are the ones left behind, and they feel critical and judgmental about it. They came to judge, not to listen with their hearts.

This reference to a meal is code for the Eucharistic feast. It is the lost sheep who are welcome to join the Eucharistic meal in thanksgiving for being found, and forgiven, and carried home to God across Jesus’ shoulders.

The irony in this parable is the value of the one sheep when compared with the rest of the flock. Jesus explains that the 99 sheep are left completely on their own so that the shepherd can quickly go and find one lost in the rocks somewhere.

What happens to sheep without a shepherd? Don’t they wander in countless different directions, getting lost and confused without their leader? Aren’t they sitting ducks, so to speak, for wolves and predators?

Well, yes, that is exactly what happens. In real life it is crazy to endanger the lives of an expensive investment in living bodies of wool on the hoof. No one in the ancient world would leave 99 sheep to go after one. They wouldn’t do it today either. This story makes absolutely no sense to a crowd familiar with sheep behavior.

Unless the crowd understands that Jesus is talking about God’s kingdom this parable is foolish. In God’s kingdom everything is governed by different laws. In God’s world the shepherd knows that the sheep left on their own will be cared for and protected in the arms of God.

The Pharisees and scribes are the 99 sheep left behind because they have no need of God’s redeeming love – they already have it. They are already in right relation with their God, or at least they know the steps necessary to regain their right relation. They are always invited to confess their sins and turn to God. They do not need to be found.

It is the shunned, the ignorant, and the ritually unclean who have been excluded from God’s inner circle that need to be found and brought back into the flock.

When the early Christians heard this story they related to the one little sheep who was lost. Each of them had a story of being found by God and brought back home to the family.

God sent his only son to be the Good Shepherd – the shepherd who finds the most unlikely lost and forsaken sheep to bring back to the fold. It was this parable that became a symbol of the early Christian experience of being born again.

Instead of a processional cross and a giant crucifix behind the altar they were drawn to pictures of a beardless Christ, illuminated by a halo around his head, carrying one little lamb back to God.

The parable ends with an image of all of heaven rejoicing at the return of one little lost sheep. Included in that rejoicing is a great banquet that they will all eat together. Christians never tire of hearing this simple tale because it says so much about the joy of discovering you’ve been found and a feast is prepared just for you.

We come to the altar to receive the body and blood of Christ after we have made our communal confession. We are kneeling down to partake in the feast of heaven where angels and archangels and all the company of heaven join us in our celebration.

The parable of the lost sheep is one of three parables designed to teach the same point. You will find all three in Chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel. After ‘The Lost Sheep’ comes ‘The Lost Coin’ followed by ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son.’

Three lost and found parables all pointing to one basic fact about God’s Kingdom: God never stops looking for us because that is what God does. Our job is to let ourselves be found, or else sign up as a shepherd and help bring more lost souls in to the feast. If we feel abandoned and left behind it is not the truth.

God is always holding us
God is always seeking us
We can choose to be found
And we can always learn more
We can change and move where God wants us to be

A Life of Integrity

2010-10-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 12:49-56
August 15, 2010
Deborah Magdalene, OSH

In the summer of 1972 my family fell apart. My 17-year-old sister became a Mormon, my parents were having serious fights, and I dropped out of college and moved in with my boyfriend.

It was a time of great upheaval. With the backdrop of the endless war in Vietnam, and in a culture of protest and resistance I began my own journey of truth-seeking.

Of course my parents didn’t see it that way. My sister and I were on opposite sides of a protest against our parents. She took the road of a conservative religion and I chose the road of the love-struck hippie.

Mother against daughter
Sister against sister
Daughter against both parents
Both parents against both daughters
And the United States at war with itself.

My family mirrored the chaos of the country we lived in. We were divided and at war with each other, and we each dreamed of a completely different outcome.

My dad wanted his family back together. My mom wanted to rescue my sister from unseen forces. My sister wanted a safe family religion where people lived what they believed. And I wanted to create a new world of love – with my beloved and me in the very center of it.

What we each desired, in our own distorted and confused points of view, was to be seen as we really were – to be acknowledged by someone, anyone, as honest and good people trying to live lives of integrity and honesty. What we all really wanted was to be loved and accepted as only God could love and accept us.

All I remember of that time now is how messed up my family seemed to me and how perfect my own little life with my chronically unfaithful and angry new boyfriend, who soon became my husband. I fell in love with a young man who embodied the exact problems that I thought I was leaving behind.

The next eighteen years of my life were spent in a prolonged state of denial. I denied that I was unhappy while choosing to believe that my marriage and new family were worlds away from the home I had grown up in.

But God has a way of teaching us lessons that will lead to greater understanding, broader perspectives, and the courage to change the things we are capable of changing.
God has a way of cleansing us with fire.

Jesus shouts at his closest companions, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

His words are not for the faint of heart. This is no gentle shepherd or humble servant washing his disciple’s feet. It is always a challenge to our faith to come to terms with the Jesus who overturns tables and shouts, “Hypocrites!” to the crowds.

But this is the Jesus we read about today and I believe that the angry power of this Jesus is something we Episcopalians must claim as our own, and not just the property of our Pentecostal neighbors. We need to understand what exactly this fire is that Jesus came to light. We have all been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. It is part of our call as Christians to carry Christ’s fire along the way as our Olympic torch of faith.

This isn’t the first time we hear about fire in Luke’s gospel. John the Baptist told his followers, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke3:16)

We are to understand from these words that our own baptism brings the Holy Spirit into our lives as well as the fire of Christ. We too easily associate New Testament fire with damnation and judgment. Today’s reading does refer to significant judgment. It is the judgment of the coming age. The age that Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension bring to pass. It is not the fire of damnation and hell.

Earlier, Luke quotes Jesus teaching that the vineyard owner will cut away the branches that do not bear fruit and throw them into the fire. (Luke 3:9) There is judgment implied in both this parable and today’s Gospel. But who or what is being judged?

There are two answers to this question that help explain why Jesus is so exacerbated. First of all we have the disciples. They are on their way to Jerusalem where Jesus has told them repeatedly that he would suffer and die. But they still don’t believe him. Jesus knows that his death will be the cause of the greatest division among Jews that the world has ever known.

It is the shame of the cross that keeps faithful Jews from accepting that Jesus is the Son of God. It is only after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ that his own disciples fully grasp who this man was and what his coming to them continues to mean. Those who believed were, and are, transfigured.

The “signs of the present time” that Jesus calls the crowds hypocrites for not seeing – is HIM. Jesus is the ultimate and final sign that the world as they know it is about to end. They are hypocrites because they daily recite the words of the prophets who warned them that these things were coming, that God would send a Messiah, and that God would purify Israel.

In the words of Mary’s Magnificat, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever." (Luke 1:52-55) The Magnificat promises division.

Jesus is the one who divides those who believe from those who don’t. His disciples believe what they have seen, but only up to the point of their own denial. When truth hits denial it takes a jarring experience to knock the truth into our consciousness.

The second answer to “who is being judged” is the inner life of the disciples. More importantly, it is our inner life that we are meant to examine. Are we brave enough to allow Jesus to tell us the truth about our own faith, or lack thereof? Are we willing to accept the whole truth of who Jesus really is? We know how hard it was for the disciples.

Peter denies Jesus three times in spite of being one of Jesus’ closest companions.

It is no coincidence that during his denials Peter sits in the courtyard of the high priest’s house warming his hands at the fire.
He is much more comfortable sitting next to the flame than he will be when he finally accepts the burning shame of truth that he abandoned Jesus in his time of greatest need.

It is the burning flame of compunction that the gospel calls us to today. A very out-of-date word, compunction was one of the favorite words of the desert fathers and mothers. They called it ‘penthos.’ For them, “penthos was a Godly sorrow, engendered by repentance.” (Saint Cyril of Philea)

And that is what eventually washed over Peter. As he sat next to the warming fire he was flooded with shame and remorse that Jesus had predicted his denial. Jesus knew that Peter did not fully comprehend that the world as he knew it was about to come to an end through the wrongful persecution and death of Jesus.
There is nothing like shame to burn the truth deep into one’s soul.

The truth of who Jesus really is and what he accomplished for us through his death, resurrection, and ascension continues to divide families and friends just as it did in the First Century. But it is the division that lies deep within each one of us that causes Jesus to cry out, “Hypocrite!”

How many of us have said lightly to our children, ‘Do as I say, not as I do?’ How many of us have criticized and shunned someone for their behavior only to discover at some point that you yourself have exhibited that same behavior? We all criticize with clenched teeth and pinched face the behaviors that are most repellant to us.

They are repellant for a reason. I was terrified of my mother’s temper so I secretly ridiculed my husband’s outbursts. I am better than that. I don’t scream at the children. I will be the better parent. Hypocrite.

I had to face the shame eventually when I realized that my inability to speak up and face my husband’s wrath full on meant that my children grew up in fear. I wasn’t there to protect them in the way that I could have if I had known the truth.

It was the burning compunction of my own complicity in an abusive marriage that led me finally to ask God for help. I knew after my marriage ended that only God could gently teach me how to live a better life. And I also knew, deep within me, that I would continue to face layers and layers of denial once I began the deep journey with Christ.

It was too late to give my children a peaceful upbringing, but it is never too late to repent and turn to God for help.

There is one more concept for which Luke uses the image of fire. We are told that we will be baptized by the Holy Spirit and with fire. This fire is not just the truth of who Jesus really is; or of our compunction when we realize we never trusted him as fully as we could have.

In the continuation of Luke’s work, in the Book of Acts, we hear what happened to the first Christians on the day of Pentecost, “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” (Acts 2:3-4)

This fire danced on the believer’s heads as they spoke in strange languages that all could miraculously understand. This fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, is what was released through the power of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.

We are meant to see these acts of God as the ushering in of the present age. We are no longer alone, but are continually reminded of the truth through the workings of the Spirit of God who will never abandon us.

We are guaranteed that we will mess up, live in denial, ruin relationships, and make fatal errors, but we can always turn to Christ in repentance and ask for God’s will to be done. We must let go of the outcome when we repent, or the repentance doesn’t take. We can’t modify and correct God’s abundant compassion for our human predicament.

God’s beneficence is totally beyond our control. But self–examination and true repentance are ours to use as frequently as we desire. Peter didn’t wallow in self hatred and remorse. He went on to become a leader in the Church. At the end of his life, his final act of compunction was to be hung upside-down on the cross. He did not feel worthy to die in the same manner as Christ. His manner of death shows how deeply his shame affected him.

We do not need to do our soul-searching alone. Christian community is meant to be a place where we can bear our souls and receive forgiveness from our God and from each other. We invite this integrated way of life by listening to each other’s stories. We all have burdens. In our call to follow Christ we are asked to listen to each other and bear one another’s burdens for them. It is what the fire is telling us to do.

The Day of Pentecost

2010-06-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Day of Pentecost
May 23, 2010,
The Rev Sr Deborah Magdalene

This last Thursday I was driving home from a meeting downtown when I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Now, as is usually the case, I didn’t know it was the Holy Spirit. At the time, it felt like a crisis. Something happened that knocked me right out of my rhythm, off my game, and into a state of suspended animation. In the middle of the day, on a road I am very familiar with, I was suddenly in the middle of an accident.

I was waiting for the green arrow on the corner of Kissingbower and the Gordon Highway. I remember noticing, with gratitude, that the light turned green much earlier than I’d anticipated. I’m used to waiting at that light long enough to read all the area billboards and all my dashboard buttons.

As I proceeded, gratefully, into the intersection I became suddenly aware of a large black something coming up very fast on my left side. No sooner had that awareness flashed through my consciousness than I felt the hit. It was powerful and full of noises and smells – Crash, the engine is whining, gasoline fumes are filing my car, and pieces of car are landing in some very unexpected places.

My first thought was, “You are in the middle of the intersection – back up the car against the curb and be safe.” I began to back up my whining, wounded car, and became aware, in a flash of insight, that I was physically intact. “I am OK. Oh my God, I am OK. I am backing up my car and thinking like a normal person.”
Once I was safely out of harm I looked around to see if the “black hulk” had stopped. I was surprised that it had – it had been going so terribly fast. The speeding black thing was actually a pickup truck, with two young girls in the front seat.

I was quite slow in picking up the fact that they were not in the least bit concerned with me. I shouted over to them, “I’m OK!” before I realized what they were actually doing. The driver of the truck was screaming obscenities at me and at her truck. Then I heard her say, “I had a green light!!!!” This information seeped in very slowly. In fact, I even shouted back, earnestly, “Well, maybe the light is broken.” And I meant it. But reality finally sunk in. Those girls really don’t care that I am OK.

The rest of this event went down according to the law. I called 911. The girls called their mother. We each gave our diametrically opposed statements to the police and we had our vehicles towed away by two separate tow trucks. I asked the officer if he couldn’t make the driver of the truck take a lie detector test. No – it’s up to the insurance companies now.

So. That was the event. Where exactly does the Holy Spirit fit in?
Before I can explain that, it’s necessary to take a look at the disciples in the story from Acts this morning. Now they definitely had an experience of the Holy Spirit. But without looking at their understanding of what and Who the Holy Spirit is there would be no way to put my experience in the proper context. My understanding of the Holy Spirit is a direct result of the earliest Christian experience of Jesus, the God he called his father, and the Holy Spirit he promised would come.

The disciples had been through their own shared crisis. Luke tells us at the beginning of Acts that it was through the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave his final instructions before ascending into heaven.

This is Luke’s hint that the entire book of Acts is going to be focused on the workings of the Holy Spirit in forming communities. The earliest Christians believed that the Holy Spirit had no context without community.

The resurrected Christ told his friends to wait in Jerusalem until the moment arrived when they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit. He said, “It won’t be long.”

I guess it depends on what you do while you wait that makes time go by quick as a wink or slow as molasses in January. You be the judge – the apostles waited for ten days. Ten days of praying all night and all day.

Now I imagine that these ten days were quite agonizing for his friends. When Jesus said Not Long, there was no way to measure what he meant by that. After the Ascension there were no more experiences of the risen Christ to comfort and lead them.

Luke tells us that these ten days were spent in constant prayer, in the same upper room with the closed door that Jesus had walked right through when he first appeared to them. But after the Ascension they were all alone with a promise. Day after lonely day.

Ten days and nights of prayer, with only one brief intermission to elect a substitute for the disciple they had lost to betrayal – Judas Iscariot. Once Matthias was chosen, the community was whole again. They didn’t know it, but now they were ready for the coming of the Spirit.....and they kept right on praying.

This is not a coincidence. Luke wants us to equate a whole community, symbolized by all 12 tribes of Israel and the newly restored group of 12 apostles, with the united community of the new church. And he wants us to see the energy that comes from a community in prayer. The day that the Spirit comes to the whole and complete community of Jesus’ friends is the day that the church of Christ begins. Pentecost is the Church’s birthday.

The prayer-delirious group of apostles were baptized in the Holy Spirit as a community, In the Name of Christ. From this communal baptism in the upper room will come all the different forms of Christianity that we have today. Every definition of “The Holy Spirit,” “The Holy Ghost,” the “Comforter and Advocate,” the “Paraclete,” all comes from this original baptism by fire. And it is all good.

We are told that Jews from every nation under heaven came and heard the apostles, each in their own language. And they saw tongues, “as of fire” dancing on the head of each of the Christians.

Have you ever seen someone’s face light up, as if they are lit from within by some mysterious goodness? It is almost like they are aflame with their love of God, but without fire.

Like the burning bush in the wilderness, that is aflame, but not consumed, the Holy Spirit lights us from within for the benefit of others – not for our benefit. Faithful Jews from nations around the world were drawn to Jerusalem in order to experience people aflame with joy and praying in the name of Christ.

The Pentecost experience is the exact opposite of the tower of Babel. If pride is the cause of the tower collapsing, and if human pride is the reason that a people once united under God are now scattered and unable to understand each other – if pride is that powerful – Luke wants us to focus on the opposite of Pride.

The opposite of pride? It is prayer. And the power of prayer comes from communities gathering and praying with purpose and passion. As weary as those disciples were they knew that their lives depended on the power of their communal prayer.

It was just this week that I understood for the very first time what the miracle of Pentecost actually was. Individuals from all nations, from all those strange sounding countries, heard the entire group of apostles praying in their own language – all at the same time.

It was not that one of the disciples was praying in the language of the Elamites and another was praying in Mesopotamian slang, and another in some strange Asian dialect. But, each person from each country heard the entire group praying in a language they understood, while the first Christians were praying the whole time in Aramaic. They were praying in their own language, AND they were praying in 15 other languages all at the same time.

It would be like members of the United Nations coming in here and listening to us recite the psalm for the day and understanding the intent of our prayer as if we spoke each of their languages.

And that is what the Holy Spirit does. It speaks in heart language – breaking through our thick skins, stubbornness, and stuckness, even when we least expect it. And always for the benefit of the Kingdom of God.

Luke is clear that not everyone in the room believed what they saw and heard that day. When logic can’t explain a phenomenon it’s actually rare that the majority will interpret it as an experience of God’s presence. But many did, and many were baptized by the apostles, who then began to leave Jerusalem – bringing Christianity to the very nations they’d just met.

The Holy Spirit works through and for community. My accident was just an accident. My experience of the Holy Spirit was the intense gratitude I had for the miracle of my life. My sisters said it was a miracle that I had survived. A few more inches and my side of the car would have taken the impact and I would be toast.

But I don’t believe God rescued me from the jaws of death. It was just an accident. God does not rescue some and let others die or get hurt. God is not capricious. But God does send the Holy Spirit to fill us with the truth of the miracle of life.

Each of our lives is a miracle – every day. It is a miracle that I can get up in the morning and walk and write and sing and pray. I had a near death experience this week that helped me to appreciate the miracle of my life. What joy to be able to frame my experience within the context of my life as a Christian. My sisters at the convent and you at St Alban’s give such deep meaning to my life.

The first Christians believed that the Holy Spirit worked for and through communities of the faithful. Miracles had no meaning without communities to interpret them.

Our liturgy in this Eucharist service is a beautiful example of the communal quality of the Holy Spirit. We begin with this prayer, “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you...”

At the height of Eucharistic Prayer D we pray that God’s “Holy Spirit may descend upon us, and upon (the bread and wine), sanctifying them and showing them to be holy gifts for holy people.”

The service ends with a call to the Holy Spirit, “Let us go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Thanks be to God.”

Our communal Eucharist service is not possible without the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that stirs our hearts to listen for God’s word, sing God’s praises, and pray for God’s mercy.

In John’s gospel message for today we hear that the Holy Spirit, or the Advocate, only comes to us after the fully human Jesus is gone. Before his death he says to his disciples, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever...this is the Spirit of Truth.”

This Advocate, or Holy Spirit, is the presence of Jesus that we experience in our shared faith. The Advocate is a witness in defense of Jesus, a spokesperson for Jesus, a Consoler of all who believe in Jesus, and a teacher and guide for us in our times of need.

What gives the Spirit power is the fact that Jesus overcame death. Once the apostles recognize the Holy Spirit blowing powerfully through them they can finally believe that Jesus abides with God, and that they are now abiding with the same God, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We gather on Sunday mornings in a place of great power. Christ is risen from the dead and we are alive for a purpose. The Holy Spirit is none other than the breath of God, breathing us in blowing us up against each other for one reason. To show forth the great love of God – who loved us enough to become one of us. We are to mold our lives around this profound love and draw others into our fire.

2 Pentecost

2010-06-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

Proper 5, June 6, 2010
I Kings 17:8-24, Gal 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-17
The Rev Deborah Magdalene, OSH

I want you to imagine for a minute that you are one of the very first converts to Christianity. You live in the center of present day Turkey, in an area that the Roman Empire calls Galatia. Before your conversion you worshipped the many gods of your Greek culture. These gods demanded much of you, while dominating with capricious and unpredictable power. Although you offer these Gods sacrifices and prayers, and sing their praises consistently, you never really know where you stand with these gods.

Much to your surprise, you are unexpectedly converted to “The Way” of Jesus by the words of a zealous and outspoken young man who teaches you about the miraculous thing God is doing in the world through the resurrected Christ. This bald and muscular man is known as Paul from Tarsus, an area not far from Galatia, and he comes with an entourage of believers who are all anxious to talk with you about their faith and how they came to believe in the Messiah.

Paul teaches you that it is God’s benevolence working through Christ that allows every Christian to enter into an intimate and life-giving relationship with God. This relationship is anything but capricious and unpredictable. The familial relationship with God through Christ is sustaining, life-giving and creative.
It is through Paul’s teaching that you learn the context of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in the faraway lands of Israel.

You learn that:
• The God of Jesus is the tenaciously faithful God of the Jews, who freed them from captivity and led them to the Promised Land;
• the same lovingly faithful God who sent Jewish prophets to guide and correct his misguided people;
• the same bountiful God who poured himself into a human form in order to bring his people back home to their Creator.
• The God that Paul teaches you about is a God of such abundant Grace that it is only through the lens of this Grace that you can understand the Gospel of Christ.

Paul teaches you everything he knows and then packs up and leaves with his entourage, leaving you to carry on as one of many struggling new churches in the area. It is not long before your fragile hold on the faith is challenged. During these early years of Christianity there are as many different versions of the gospel as there are storytellers, magicians, and soothsayers.

Word reaches Paul that his fledgling churches in Galatia are being viscously attacked. But Paul is on a ship headed to another country and cannot leave his mission to come and set things straight. He decides to send a letter. This letter must resonate with knowledge of Christ as well as his passionate belief that the Gospel he told you is the truth.

Paul must give you the tools to fight off the arguments and attacks which teach of a lesser god than the one he experienced in his own conversion. He must send a letter that will so inflame the hearts of his listeners with the truth of Christ that the faith will flourish and grow for generations.

If he only knew what would happen to Christianity because of this letter.

When you and your new friends receive this compact and passionate scroll from Paul, in his own handwriting, you receive rare jewel. This letter, meant to be passed around to all the churches in the huge area of Galatia is destined to become one of the most famous of Paul’s letters. In this letter he describes his own conversion by the unexpected, unimaginable and completely overwhelming Grace of God.

This letter convinces Martin Luther that is through God’s grace, not our works, that we are called to relationship with Christ. Luther, like many of us, tried to please God through his actions. He spent years of his life in arduous and painful work for God. But nothing ever felt like it was enough.

Luther was a prolific writer and an overly scrupulous monk, but nothing he did was ever enough to give him the assurance that he was loved by God. He became more miserable, working himself into a frenzy, as he desperately sought approval from God.

It is in this state of exhausted despair that Luther discovers the hidden jewel of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

Paul makes an impassioned and uncompromising defense of the radical grace of God. He boldly defends Christ’s unique Gospel of free and unearned grace against every other confusing argument they might hear. To understand and experience the true Gospel, says Paul, is to enter into the very heart of what God did in Christ.

What we hear from Galatians today is from the beginning of the letter, after a brief introduction in which Paul writes, “There are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!”

After this passionate beginning Paul goes on to describe the miracle of God’s grace through Jesus – in terms that both proclaim the Gospel and strengthen the new Church. He does this by showing the power of God’s grace working in and through Jesus.

Paul once persecuted the Christians with as much passion as Luther pursued God’s assurance. What threw Paul off his horse and changed his entire world was nothing less than a direct experience of the risen Christ. Christ came to him not to convert him, but to remind him of his calling. This is the same reason that Christ comes to each of us.

Paul had been set apart before he was born to receive the grace of God through the resurrected Christ in a surprise encounter on the way to Damascus. The original Greek text reads, I was set apart while still in my mother’s belly.

Paul goes on to say that the only reason he was given an extraordinary experience of the risen Christ was to reveal the hidden truth in the Gospel to the Gentiles. When he says that, “they glorified God because of me,” he is referring to the original disciples in Jerusalem who heard of Paul’s missionary excursions on behalf of Christ. They knew Paul as an unrelenting persecutor, and yet he appeared to possess the same gospel they were preaching. The disciples glorified God because of the miracle of Paul’s work for Christ.

It was the work he was born to do.

Martin Luther was able to discover a long-hidden truth of the Gospel through Paul’s words to the Galatians 1500 years after they were written. God’s grace comes to us unearned, and with surprising consequences in spite of everything we do – not because of what we do.

Paul was not trying to hide this news. It is the news that Jesus taught and demonstrated with his life and death. It is just so opposed to everything we are taught about the world that it makes no sense to us unless we have a firsthand experience of such unearned grace.

In the Gospel reading for today we have one of many examples of this grace. Jesus touches a dead man, who sits up on his funeral bier and speaks. Jesus does this, not to draw attention to himself, but because God’s will flowed through him in an abundance of grace for the lost people of God.

God wants to heal and reclaim his people through a love that binds us together and sets us free. Each of Jesus’ miracles is an act of pure, generous and highly personal grace.

The people of Nain were seized with fear. Dead men don’t rise and speak unless God is trying to tell you something powerful. They knew to pay attention. And they were moved by the mother’s cries of joy. God restored her son to her because that was her son’s calling, from the time he was set apart in her womb. He was destined to be called to new life by Jesus, who showered on him the Grace of a God who wants to found.

Luther discovered that the assurance he had sought all his life had been there all along. We are each called by God to fulfill a destiny that is uniquely ours. We can only find our calling by paying attention to where the moments of grace in our lives point us.

The little letter to the Galatians is easy to overlook. But the grace it describes is the same grace that Jesus lived – an intimate connection with a majestic God who is constantly creating and recreating each of us to be more of who we are designed to be: an integral member of the Kingdom of God.

Second Sunday of Easter

2010-04-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

April 13, 2010
St Alban’s Episcopal Church
John 20:19-31
The Rev Deborah Magdalene, OSH

Jesus suddenly appears to his disciples in a room – without opening a locked door. He has fatal wounds, yet is vitally alive and peaceful. He shares his peace with them, sends them out into the world, and then blows a holy breath of heaven on them all, baptizing them into a new creation.

He breathes on them and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ and God’s breath of life and truth abides in them, as he had promised them it would. Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Then John tells us that “by this he meant the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, for Jesus was not yet glorified.”

What happens in this locked room, when the risen Christ appears to his confused and frightened friends is the beginning of a new creation. It is God’s own breath that Christ blows over his friends. It is the stream of living water, the fountain of all life. Jesus is now glorified. But not everyone who sees him understands what they have seen.

In Genesis we hear that when God formed the first human from the dust of the earth, God’s breath brought the human to life. Ezekiel told the dry bones, “Dry bones, hear the word of Yahweh, I am going to make breath enter you and you will live!” And God tells Ezekiel to say to the breath itself, “Come from the four winds, breath; breathe on these dead, so that they come to life!”

The disciples gathered in the locked room are not at all clear what this breath of life is. They are frightened. They are isolated. They are full of doubt. Jesus suddenly appears to them and says, “Peace be with you.” And after he shows them his wounded hands and pierced side they glow with joy. It is really Jesus. The joy of Easter morning is breathtaking and mysterious and full of hope. But that is not the full story. In fact, in the Gospel of John, if it weren’t for Thomas expressing his doubts in such a bold way, we wouldn’t hear the truth of the resurrection. We have much to thank Thomas for.

When I was 17 the faith of my childhood died. I’m sure this happened over a period of time, but as I remember it, I suddenly realized during the recitation of the Creed that I didn’t believe anymore.

I stood outside of myself for a moment and watched my body recite the Creed like a wind-up doll. I looked around me and everyone looked like they possessed something that I suddenly didn’t have any more. The wave of doubt pounding over me didn’t appear to be touching them.

They went on with the liturgy like everything was normal. But inside of me everything felt changed and unfamiliar. I was now outside the group. This used to be my group. I prayed that the feeling would go away, and yet I understood at a gut level that something mature was waking up inside of me.

The next week it happened again. This time I stopped saying the Creed. And nothing happened to me. I didn’t feel guilty. I felt honest and adult. But I felt frightened and completely without familiar landmarks. I felt very alone. The reality of doubt filled me head to toe. And it never occurred to me to share my angst with anyone.

I didn’t know then what I know now. I didn’t know that doubt is the beginning of mature faith. I didn’t know that there were others who had experienced exactly what was happening to me. In my teenage hubris I believed I had to walk this path alone because I felt so alone. So I left the church.

It is painful to sit, week after week, in the midst of people who believe in something that you don’t understand. Many people experience the isolation of doubt that Thomas did, but very few are brave enough to ask the hard questions.

Lack of understanding and the fear it instills causes many of Jesus’ own disciples to abandon him. His friends anxiously whisper about him. What is it this man teaches? What do the healings mean? No one dares put words to what they instinctively know is true for fear of what people will think. But, what is it exactly that they are afraid of?

John’s Gospel tells us that the Jewish authorities have the power to exclude the faithful from their place of worship for saying out loud what they believe to be true – because what they believe confronts and questions the Jewish faith of their fathers and mothers.

At the time John’s Gospel is being written the people who boldly pray in the name of Jesus – who are courageous enough to say who they believe Jesus is – are thrown out of the synagogue and shunned.

In the year 70, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish authorities make an historic decision. They excommunicate all the Christians from the synagogues, forcing them to choose between Judaism or following ‘the way’ of their Jewish leader Jesus.

When John writes that the disciples locked the doors because “they were afraid of the Jews” he is naming the fear that has consumed the community since Jesus was condemned to die. The band of early Christians are being shunned, excommunicated and put to death because what they believe threatens the faith of their own religious family. It is a family feud over how to interpret the truth.

What horrifies the Jewish leaders is what the confused and frightened disciples finally started saying about Jesus. And it is Thomas who said it first.

The doors are locked for fear of the Jews and Jesus suddenly appears among them. He says twice, ‘Peace be with you’, and he shows them his wounds. The disciples don’t understand what they have seen. They tell Thomas that they have seen the Lord. They have yet to comprehend what seeing him means.

Thomas is no fool. He thinks they have seen an apparition – a ghost. He doubts because he is human and is trying to be calm and logical. They must all be crazy with grief. He wants to see for himself and actually touch his teacher before he will allow himself to believe he is alive.

Eight days later, or one week from Easter morning, which is today, Jesus appears in the locked room again. This time Thomas is there. Jesus again says, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then, in an intimate moment, he looks directly at Thomas and says, "Put your finger here and see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe."

Thomas answers him with the supreme Christological pronouncement of John’s Gospel, "My Lord and my God!" It is the profound truth of the resurrection. All that Jesus said and did in his lifetime were signs pointing to the nature of his being. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the final sign.

It is not a resuscitated Jesus who is alive again, but an entirely new form of life. Because of Thomas’ insistence that he see more evidence before he can believe, Jesus comes to him and gives him more than he asked for. Contrary to popular understanding, Thomas never actually touches Jesus. He sees, and believes, and proclaims him to be God.

Thomas’ words “My Lord and my God” are spoken on behalf of the entire Christian community. They are the last words spoken by a disciple in the Fourth Gospel and are meant to have a covenantal aspect. It is these words which invite us to look again at what Jesus says in the midst of his friends, behind doors shut tight against their powerful fears.

Peace be with you. He has said this before. At the Last Supper, when he was predicting his death, he said pointedly,
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.....
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me;
Because I live, you also will live.
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you”. (John 14:18-20)

This is what Thomas realizes as he gazes on the wounded risen Christ before his eyes. It’s not the wounds, but the memory of Jesus’ promise that penetrates his fear. It is an “Aha!” moment that allows everything to fall into place.

All the mystery of Jesus’ strange yet familiar post-resurrection presence coincides with the realization of who he really is. He is the man they remember, yet he is changed. This is what he promised them would happen. But who, in their right mind could believe such a thing was possible?

What finally moves us all from fear to faith is a profound shifting of the ground we walk on. We remember with clarity that everything was leading up to this moment. We see with new eyes that the moments in our lives are all connected. We are just a tiny piece of God’s miraculous creation.

This is the day, in the darkness of a room filled with fear when the disciples finally understand that Jesus is in the Father, and they are in Jesus, and he is in them.

When he breathes on them he blows new life into them, just as God breathed the breath of life into the first human ‘Adam’, and blew a living spirit into Ezekiel’s dry bones. This Holy Breath of God is now what sustains them, advocates for them, and draws them together in community.

The disciples are to go out from the dark, closed room, into the light of day and fear no more. The Holy Spirit within them is now breathing the truth of Jesus into their DNA, and they will never be the same again.

When we share the peace with each other it is this moment that we remember. May the Peace of the risen Christ be always with you. Amen.

Maundy Thursday notes

2010-04-12T06:28:00.000-07:00

April 1, 2010

Maundy is short for the Latin word Maundatum (commandment) Love one another How?
Tonight is chock full of sacramental gifts.
The sacraments are Outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace. (BCP)
• Meal – Agape (love) feast.
o Our meal together is a sign of the meal the disciples ate with Jesus – the Last Supper.
• Water – wash/bathe the feet –
o In remembrance of Jesus bathing the disciple’s feet
o reminds us of our own baptism and points us toward the baptisms awaiting us at the Easter Vigil.
o We are washed clean in the water of Christ so that we can follow the path of Jesus with pure souls
• Bread – used by Jesus first to signify who will betray him –
o and then to become the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven
o We receive the bread of Christ tonight for the last time before the altar is stripped and it is taken away from us
• Wine –
o Bread most likely dipped in a mixture of wine and olive oil before it is given to Judas
o both the bread and the wine are first used to point out betrayal before they become the Body and Blood of Christ
In Matthew’s gospel Jesus says: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”(5:23-24)
Why are the gifts of the Eucharist so wrapped up in betrayal?
It is probable that Tiger Woods understands this better than anyone.
After the entire world learned of his betrayal of his wife, Elin, Tiger Woods was admitted to a strenuous rehabilitation center ironically called “Gentle Path”
12 Step Program that helps you face the ugly face of your own addiction. In this case – addiction to sex.
First admit powerlessness over your own ability to manage your life, then make a decision to allow God to do the managing from here on out.
Before you can come to the altar and receive sacramental grace, Jesus asks us first to be reconciled to those whom we’ve hurt the most.
Full Disclosure: Tiger had to face his wife and fully disclose the nature of his addiction.
Not such a “gentle” path
The hardest step is letting go of the outcome of your full disclosure. Confession with a priest is one thing, but confession to a partner is something else altogether.
Last Sunday we saws how quickly the crowd could turn against Jesus. We went from Palm fronds, hosannas and carpeted runways to Pilate’s headquarters where we shouted, “crucify him!”
As Jesus washes the feet of his closest followers he knows who will betray him. We will.
The intimacy of the foot washing ceremony is meant to jar us.
If we imagine Jesus at our feet looking up into our eyes as he washes us clean we get a hint of the intimacy involved in God’s love for us. It is trusting in that love that will bring us through the grief of Good Friday. We can’t predict how the Resurrection makes all things new, but we can have faith that it will. It is through Love.

The Widow's Mite

2010-04-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Deborah Magdalene, OSH

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17 and Mark 12:38-44

Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes – they devour widow’s houses and say long prayers just for the sake of appearance!” Then, he calls his disciples to come near and watch one widow in particular. We don’t know her circumstances. She could be young, old, infirm, or healthy. We can tell by her offering that she is destitute. Widows in First Century Jerusalem were at the bottom of the social strata pile – along with the diseased and crippled, foreigners and most women. The self- important scribes that Jesus refers to would scoff at the amount of money this poor widow placed in the temple’s treasury.

But we are familiar with her offering as the famous “Widow’s mite” – the tiny donation that represents everything this woman has. The same “everything” that we are asked to give to the God of Love and Justice. Jesus makes a point of calling the disciples to observe the widow as a teaching moment. What is it, exactly, that he wants them to understand? They know very well about giving everything they have. They have already given up their jobs, homes, and family in order to follow Jesus.

Those of us in religious orders know what it feels like to give up everything and follow a call. It’s a pretty heady feeling. I got quite a bit of attention when I told my fellow teachers that I was quitting my job as a Speech Therapist, selling my home, and moving to a convent in New York. I felt a bit special, unique and important for a few, brief months. I watched my motley collection of furniture go out the door to friends, family, and strangers, and I sent boxes and boxes of trash and recycling to their various resting places. I was starting over again and allowed a chance at a new life. I was headed forward toward a new adventure that beckoned me toward the unknown, but much fantasized convent.

As soon as I arrived at the convent the novelty of my situation evaporated. All of the women I was now living with had given everything up years ago and they were less than impressed with my sacrifices. In fact, as they watched my many “essentials” move in, they remembered the days when they brought all that they owned in one small suitcase. I had a little travel trailer stuffed to the gills with books, clothes, bedding, and favorite pictures, chairs, and bookshelves.

I soon learned that this business of giving everything up for Jesus was meant to be more of a day-to-day offering of self than an audible clink in the collection plate. The kind of offering that Jesus attempts to teach his thick-skinned disciples and the rest of us who are less than spiritually brilliant, is the moment-by-moment offering of our steadfast love and undying commitment to God.

The Hebrew word for this lovingly tenacious spirit is hesed – the steadfast love of God given freely to us as an act of grace. And, nowhere in the Bible is hesed better illustrated than in the Book of Ruth.

I’m going to fill in what is missing from our reading this morning so that the impact of Ruth’s unusual actions on the threshing floor can affect us more powerfully.

The story begins in Bethlehem, literally, the House of Bread in Hebrew. Naomi, her husband, and two sons leave Bethlehem because of a severe famine in the land. Ironically, there is no bread in the House of Bread.

They travel very far away to the land of Moab – one of Israel’s historic enemies on the far side of the Jordan River. They go to a land held in contempt, yet find abundance there. They prosper on all counts. The sons marry Moabite women and the family settles in to their new home for the next ten years.

Then disaster hits in ways that remind us of Job. First Naomi’s husband dies, and then both of her sons. Suddenly there are three widows: Naomi, the Israelite, and two young Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah.

Hebrew customs leave widows with very few viable options. The Torah demands that the oldest brother of the deceased will marry his widow so that the father’s line can be continued. Naomi knows that if she has any chance of survival it will be with her own people back in Bethlehem. In addition to family she has heard that the famine is over. She sets her face to return to the House of Bread and her daughters-in-law follow in her footsteps.

But Naomi stops, turns back to them, and tells them that they must not follow her. They have no male relatives in Bethlehem and Naomi knows that no self-respecting Israelite would marry a Moabite woman. “Go back to your mother’s home,” she tells them, “and may God grant that there you will find a new husband.”

But the young women surprisingly resist. They show their mother-in-law Naomi an abundance of hesed – a steadfast loving-kindness that refuses to part from her. Naomi gets more explicit with them. “What hope do you have of getting a husband from me? I am old. I have no more sons in my womb and I have no hope of ever having another husband. I am without hope, and am so bitter that my name is no longer Naomi, which means Pleasant, but Mara, which means Bitter. Your only hope, my daughters is to return to your own mother and find a husband among your people.”

Orpah listens to Naomi’s pleas and returns, tearfully, to her home in Moab. Ruth however, clings tenaciously and lovingly to Naomi, in a direct imitation of the quality of God’s love for us.

“Do not press me to leave you,” Ruth says, “Where you go I will go; where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” Here is the hesed of a new convert to Judaism, demonstrating that even from the land of the enemy can emerge the most faithful of God’s people.

When Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem it is harvest time. The people of Bethlehem are gathering the abundance of grain that will go into their famous bread. It is a new day and famine no longer rules the land. One of the most prominent land-owners is a man named Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s deceased husband. With Naomi’s blessings, Ruth makes her way to Boaz’ fields and begins to gather up the scraps behind the harvesters, as is the custom of the poor.

Boaz notices this beautiful and strangely exotic new woman among the gleaners. He asks about her and is unperturbed by her troublesome ancestry. He watches as Ruth works tirelessly, without taking any breaks. Boaz approaches her and tells her that he has heard of what she did for Naomi. He blesses her for showing such tenacious love for Naomi that she left her own people to come to a land she did not know and worship the God of Israel.

He promises to protect Ruth and asks her to eat with him and his men. Then he prays for her, “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”

When Naomi finds out that Ruth has found favor with Boaz, she hatches the plan for Ruth to sneak down to the threshing floor at night and lay at the feet of Boaz. She instructs Ruth that when Boaz wakes and discovers her there he will tell her what to do. Ruth obediently follows Naomi’s plan to the letter.

We don’t know the symbolism of Ruth uncovering Boaz’ feet, but the implication is that the intimacy of her actions, coupled with the fact that it was the middle of the night, forced Boaz to take some action.

When Boaz takes Ruth as his wife he takes possession of Ruth’s deceased husband’s name, continuing the important line of inheritance. His decision, essentially, restores the fortunes of Naomi, who lost her sons and had no grandchildren to carry on the line. By marrying Ruth, Boaz brings new hope to Naomi’s bitterness.

The child that Ruth bears is given to Naomi to nurse. What was once barren in her is now fertile, because of Ruth’s self-giving hesed – her faithful and tenacious love. And by giving Naomi her first-born child, Ruth is giving her mother-in-law everything she has. Just as the widow at the temple gave her two copper coins.

The story of Ruth and Naomi is continued in the line of descendants that come from this special child. They name him Obed, and he becomes the father of David. It is from David’s line that Jesus comes. It is because of these family ties that Joseph and Mary must return to Bethlehem for the census. Jesus is born in the same House of Bread where his female ancestors found the abundance of new life.

It is this abundance that Jesus wants the disciples to learn from the widow at the temple. What the widow offers to God is her undying, faithful, and abiding love for her creator. It is this love that is represented in the two small coins. When there are no more coins to give, she will continue to give her love and willingness to do whatever God asks of her.

What we offer to God is much larger than a yearly pledge or a frantic fishing in our wallets for some loose change to put in the plate. What God asks of us is a never-ending supply of our own hesed – to mirror back to God the same tenaciously faithful love he has shown to us through Jesus Christ.

If you watch today while the offerings go up to the altar you will see how we reenact our faithful love for God. The wine and the bread are at the back of the church for a reason. They come from us, and are given back to God in recognition that all that we have is ours only because God gave it to us in the first place.

Our offerings of money and food for the food bank are symbolic gestures of what we give to God from our inner being. Yes, we need the money to run this church and to uphold our responsibilities as a member of this diocese. But, the money is really not the point.

The meaning comes from what that money means to us. We prosper in this life when we recognize that our lives are completely dependent upon God. The offering we give here is a wake-up call. We come together as a community to watch our offerings of tangible gifts travel up to the altar where they are transformed into the intangible hesed- filled gift of God to us through the broken body of Christ.

We lift the offerings up to God in recognition of all that he gives us, and what little we are able to give back. Then we move into the Great Thanksgiving where we sing God’s praise before we recount in the prayer what Jesus did for us.

We dine on nothing less than Christ himself, giving us his entire being. It is harvest time, and as Christians, we gather together to offer God our abundance. We give of ourselves in order to see a communal reminder of what we’re asked to give God every moment of every day – our undying and tenaciously faithful love of Christ and each other. May we walk in that love always.

Christ the King

2010-03-31T16:39:00.000-07:00

11/22/2009
The Rev Deborah Magdalene, OSH
John 18:33-37 and Revelation 1:4b-8

Today we end the Christian year by celebrating the authority and mercy of God as seen through Christ in his glory. It is Christ the King Sunday where we sing songs of praise and thanksgiving that the center of our lives is not a cause, or a person, or even a theology, but none other than the risen Christ – who was, and is, and is to come.

This ultimate and eternal power of Christ is manifested not only in his role as savior, but by his authority, power, dominion and influence over all those who believe. Today we are given a glance into heaven where God’s creation is always in the process of being created and where eternity touches our lives today.

We have vibrant images of the reign of Christ in today’s readings. The gospel reading from John takes us to Pontius Pilate’s headquarters where Jesus is being tried by Roman law. The author wants to make clear the difference between the other-worldly quality of God’s kingdom and the fragile, broken and sinful nature of human kingdoms.

The entire Gospel of John is written as a trial, which culminates in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. These scenes with Pilate lead up to Jesus’ shameful death by order of the crowds of Jews gathered outside Pilate’s chambers.
Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” to which Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.”

Here is the key to understanding this episode between Jesus and Pilate. Jesus says that if his kingdom were from this world his followers would be fighting to keep him from being handed over to the Jews, who want his death.

Why aren’t the disciples there fighting to save Jesus? His words indicate that the disciples already know that Jesus has come to rule a world that exists beyond the one they can see and touch. Since his followers are not fighting to protect him we are led to believe that they fully understand the nature of his kingship. Can they know that Jesus reigning over a heavenly kingdom is the culmination of God’s plan for the redemption of the whole world?

Just prior to this scene with Pilot, Peter denies Jesus three times, showing us how frightened and confused he is by Jesus’ arrest and trial. The other disciples are nowhere to be seen, and we can gather that they are as numb and shell-shocked as Peter. What are we to make of this apparent contradiction – that Jesus says his followers have good reason not to fight for his life, but we see that the reason appears to be fright, denial, and shock? Are those good reasons?

The community that these words were written for were being persecuted by a group of Jews who wanted to purify the synagogues. The Jesus community that formed around John the Evangelist believed that they were good and faithful Jews who went to synagogues, followed the food customs, and lived transformed lives because of believing the truth of who Jesus really was – the much anticipated Messiah who died shamefully on a cross.

It was this shameful death that convinced many that Jesus could not be the Messiah. A number of influential Jews believed that the Messiah was coming as a king of this world, not a heavenly world – and as such would never have died on a cross.

This controversy so threatened the status quo that an edict was issued to ban the Jewish followers of Jesus from the synagogues, and gave license to persecute them.

The answer to the dilemma lies in the upside-down nature of time in God’s world. What happened to the original disciples is happening to us today and was happening to the early Christians as they were being banished from the synagogues.

The words in John’s gospel are meant to be interpreted as eternal words. As such, they reflect back on what was, forward to what will be, and shining within this church right now, as what is.

Think for a moment about the stars. On a dark night, far away from the city lights, we look into the past as see in the present the light of one bright star. This star that we choose to gaze at could have exploded like fireworks thousands of years ago, but we see it as if it exists today.

John wrote his gospel to reflect the eternal quality of God’s world against the backdrop of the horrors of discrimination, exclusion, persecution, and death that filled the First Century Middle East.

The disciples are full of denial, shock, and fear when Jesus is confronting Pontius Pilate, AND they know later that they always knew the truth of who Jesus was, but needed the resurrection experiences to remind them of all that Jesus had said and what he promised those who believe in the truth. They listened to his voice, and they belong to him. In God’s time it all happens at once.

We experience eternal truths as “Aha!” moments when we see the past with the eyes of learned compassion, knowing now that we just didn’t see the whole picture back then. There were reasons we suffered so, and irreplaceable spiritual personal growth came from that very suffering. God never punishes us with catastrophes, but rather provides opportunities for us to rise up through the suffering, as our dependence upon God’s mercy grows in more intimate and personal ways.

Just over a week ago, on Nov. 14th, about 75 clergy and lay delegates who gathered at All Saints Episcopal School in Fort Worth, Texas, unanimously elected the Rt. Rev. C. Wallis Ohl, retired bishop of Northwest Texas, as their next provisional bishop.

One week ago today, a throng of more than 400 well-wishers gathered at St. Luke’s in the Meadow Church for the 5:00 p.m. ordination of the Rev. Susan Slaughter, who is 67 years old.

After her ordination, the newly elected Bishop Ohl immediately installed her as rector of the Fort Worth parish where she has served as deacon for several years, also making her the diocese’s first woman rector.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote the diocese that there is great gratitude “for this sign of resurrection in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Many thought this day would never arrive, but you have all been faithful, hopeful, and highly persistent.” She compared the diocese to the biblical story of the widow who persisted until she received justice.

She added, “May the Rev. Slaughter be a living witness to the ministry of such seekers after justice.”

Susan Slaughter is a grandmother and a widow; her husband of 28 years, Jerry, died two years ago. She had pursued her dream of becoming a priest since the 1980s but the former diocesan leadership opposed women’s ordination.

She holds bachelor and master’s degrees in teaching, speech pathology, audiology and counseling. She says, “It is with a deep sense of awe in the mysterious ways of our Lord that I arrive at this moment.”

The President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson, sent gifts, and called Susan Slaughter’s ordination “the day we see hope realized in God’s time.”

Here again, we have the upside-down nature of God’s time. At the General Convention in 2006 I spoke with a woman from the Diocese of Pittsburgh who was grieving at having to join her break-away diocese in their separate celebration of the Eucharist, held in a room away from the communal gathering of Episcopalians.

Her grief was as vibrant as the grief I heard at this recent convention from the men and women who chose to stay with the remnants of Episcopalians who stayed behind. Susan Slaughter was one of those.

In 2006 no-one could see the eventual outcome of our split Episcopalian views on sexuality, justice, and inclusion. Few anticipated any joy coming from such pain. But I’ve seen joy in the faces of the members of Christ Church, Savannah, and I cheered when I heard about Susan Slaughter.

I hate dissention. But I love strong relationships forged from hard times, suffering, and honest work. We have to follow our own truth, with Jesus as our guide, knowing that others who claim the same guide march to different rhythms.

It is in God’s time that we are able to see Jesus enthroned in glory, even as we look today at our own struggles, grief, and anger.

Jesus describes the quality of his kingship in terms of God’s eternal justice. The reading from the book of Revelation speaks of Jesus the King freeing us from our sins and making us royal.

We live with the promise that we will see Christ in his glory, and that eventually what we see will be seen by all. In God’s time, it is all happening right now. We are being created and are being redeemed as we pray, worship, and follow Christ’s path as community of believers.
It is Jesus on the throne, reigning in the majesty of peace, reconciliation, and mercy that we pray to today in the Prayers of the People. We do this at every Eucharist service.

But our attention is not always drawn to King of Kings, and Lord of Lords who is receiving our prayers.

In God’s time, that reality of vibrant Christ-Presence, ruling with eternal mercy, sucks up our prayers and supplications and transforms every fear and worry into peaceful and gentle resolution.

But because it is God’s time, and not our own, we have to trust that this will happen, in ways to glorious to envision. Jesus already died and rose for us. This fact alone invites us to be confident that all will be well, and justice will flow among us, as we worship our eternal Christ.

The Baptism of Christ

2010-03-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Rev. Deborah Magdalene, OSH
Isaiah 43:1-7, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

We begin the season of Epiphany today with the Baptism of Christ. For the first Christians, it was Jesus’ baptism that introduced this extraordinary man and his ministry. During Epiphany we focus on the miraculous “showings” of God, through his son Jesus. These showings began this last Wednesday on the Feast of the Epiphany.
The Christmas season ends with the arrival of the three kings, travelling from the land of the Gentiles. Their gifts to the Christ Child represent the coming together of all nations under Christ.

The star they follow is the star of the Epiphany – the miraculous light of God, breaking through our dark doldrums and routines to show us a much grander and more glorious world than we could ever imagine on our own.

Epiphany shouts: “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” Throughout this season we are asked to pay attention to the epiphanies of God’s inspiration and creativity all around us – in our personal lives and in our shared sacred stories. Christ continues to shine his extraordinary light on our ordinary existence, transforming us all into little lanterns of God’s light.

Christ comes down to the Jordan River to be baptized, and emerges glowing with the light of God. The most important thing to remember about his baptism is that it was God’s action through his Christ, and toward us.

Luke is unique among the gospel writers in claiming that Jesus was baptized, not by John the Baptist, but by God. If you look carefully at our Gospel for today you will see that John’s name is not mentioned after Jesus enters the scene. The Baptist, for Luke, is the last of the Old Testament prophets, standing at the precipice of the old age and pointing across the divide to the One who brings in the new age.

The words, “After Jesus had been baptized...” omits John’s name on purpose. The phrase is meant to downplay the actions of the Baptist, and emphasizes that it is God who baptizes his son, as it is God who baptizes us. God affirms his presence at Christ’s baptism through another epiphany – the Holy Spirit, sent from God, descending as a dove upon Jesus, followed by God’s voice from heaven, proclaiming, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

This epiphany, or showing of God, is the first example of the Trinity revealing itself to the community. The audible voice of God, the visible body of the dove, and the presence of Christ, emerging naked out of the waters of the Jordan are a shocking sign of the emergence of a new creation. Our own baptisms are meant to shock us, if not by the temperature of the water then by the tangible presence of the Holy at every baptism.

The mention of water, Spirit, and the voice of God also recall the story in Genesis, when all three are mentioned as part of God’s activity in Creation.

Our baptisms are intended to make each of us a brand new creation taking our first breath after emerging out of the waters. God tells the story of the divine love that created the universe and continually creates history as each individual is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It is through the waters of baptism that God calls to mind the stories from Genesis: the creation of the world, where God’s Spirit hovered over the watery mass of chaos and divided the waters into seas, rivers, polar ice caps and streams by creating the magnificent masses of land.

The waters of Baptism remind us also of the story of Noah, when the torrential floods punished the sinful as they redeemed the faithful few who floated in a homemade ark. It is the dove that brought the good news of approaching land to Noah....the same dove of the Holy Spirit that anointed Christ. That this dove appears again at the baptism is no coincidence.

The land Noah and his family discovered rose out of the very water that caused so much death. God made a new covenant with the people – never again to destroy the world with the flood of many waters. The water that brought death to God’s creation is the same water that brought Noah’s family to the redemption of a new life, sealed with a promise and marked by a rainbow.

It is this same death and new life that we are called to in our baptism. We symbolically sink into the waters of death, renouncing our old way of life as we renounce Satan. We emerge from the waters, joyously alive – a brand new creation, as God makes a new covenant with us.

The baptism itself is the covenant, initiated by God. The water is the sign that reminds us of our emergence into a new life. Like a newborn, bursting naked out of the watery amniotic fluid, we are vulnerable, innocent and teachable. We emerge from an old world into a new, Christ-centered world where stars lead our way, and ancient sacred stories build our path.

The earliest Christians looked back to Isaiah and recognized that his prophesies had come true with Jesus – the beloved servant of God. When Isaiah wrote the words from our first lesson, he was anticipating the restoration of Israel after their Babylonian captivity, which happened in the sixth century before Christ.

Christians believed that what was written by the prophets not only predicted the restoration of Israel from Babylonian exile but also clearly pointed to the restoration of Israel through the coming of the Messiah. The first Christians were Jewish, and were so immersed in scripture that most of them had the first five books of the Bible memorized, as well as the Psalms, and much of the Prophets.

This immersion in Scripture allowed them to see that God’s mighty acts in history followed a consistent pattern, and that God is true to himself and his purpose.
The pattern God consistently follows isn’t as easy for us to see today. This is why we need to remind ourselves of God’s covenant with us through our sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist and Holy Baptism.

That is why our current version of the Book of Common Prayer places Baptism front and center and gives a place of honor to the ancient Vigil of Easter where we tell the ancient stories of our faith and renew our baptismal vows at the font full of Holy Water before we receive the Easter Eucharist at the first light of dawn.

Look at the water imagery in the Isaiah reading in relation to baptism. “Now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel. Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine.”

The sponsors or parents of the soon-to-be-baptized Christian must say his or her name before presenting them to the priest. This first name is known as our Christian name, so that God and the Christian community can call us by name. The names of the Trinity are also called out as the new Christian receives the branding of the cross, marked with Holy Oil, as Christ’s own forever. The rainbow was Noah’s sign, and the cross is ours.

Before we are doused with or submerged into the water we can imagine God using Isaiah’s words, “When you pass through these waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you...For I am the Lord your God and your Savior.”

The ancients associated death with any body of water. Baptism likewise reminds us that we die in the baptismal water, in imitation of Christ dying for us. We emerge from the waters of death as newly resurrected children of Christ.

Jesus warns his disciples in Mark’s gospel, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” Jesus refers to his approaching death as his baptism. And invites us to follow him there.

“Do not fear [the water of death] for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold;’ bring my sons from far way and my daughters from the end of the earth – everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

We are a new creation after our baptism. We are known as Christians, and are identified through our love.

The ancient baptismal rite was a lengthy process. All who sought admission to the Church had to be carefully scrutinized and examined. Christians were under persecution at the time, and they had to be certain that no spies infiltrated their ranks. To be baptized was to be called to a life of grateful, obedient service to God.

During the Eucharist service itself, the non-baptized were allowed to stay only until the sermon was finished. The Eucharist itself was celebrated just for the baptized.

Once you were selected as a baptismal candidate you began a three-year course of instruction known as the Catechism. The final phase of this instruction occurred during Lent, and culminated in the early dawn during the Easter Vigil, where the entire group was baptized by full immersion and then clothed in white garments and, in some cases, given a lit candle.

The newly baptized then processed into the church and received the laying on of hands by the bishop. He then poured oil on their heads and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads with his thumb. He blew air in their faces to represent the wind of the Holy Spirit. They then received the kiss of peace from the bishop and the entire congregation.

In this way the new Christians were welcomed to the table of the Lord where they were allowed to receive communion for the first time.

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and John pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit among the Samaritans. This group of Jews was particularly hated by the Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. Saved and redeemed by their baptism into the body of Christ, they still lacked the vibrant sense of God’s presence.

The laying of hands is what brings the Holy Spirit among them. In the baptismal rite, it is the priest’s hands touching the head of the baptized, that signifies the same holy touch of the first apostles upon the heads of the brand new Christians.

John the Baptist is clear that he baptizes with water, but the one who is to come will baptize with the fire of the Holy Spirit. The first Christians understood that our baptism makes us Christ’s own forever, but it is only through prayer that can we receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is in the act of praying when the Spirit descends upon him. During the ancient baptismal ceremony, the non-baptized were allowed to listen to the readings and the sermon. But it was only after the three-year preparatory course of study, followed by their Easter baptism, that they were finally allowed to pray with the congregation.

Those early Christians took the story of Jesus’ baptism literally. He emerged from the waters of his baptism and immediately began to pray. The early Christians reserved the right to pray with fellow Christians only after the lengthy baptismal process was over. Because it took so long, many died before they were actually baptized. But they were considered saved and were as Christians.

Our modern service of baptism includes prayer before, during, and after the baptism – assuring all of us of the continual presence of the entire Trinity during our Eucharist service.

I invite you this morning to pay attention to the water in our service. Douse yourselves with water from the baptismal font, and dip you hand into the water at both entrances to this church.

Watch the water being poured into the wine at the preparation of the Eucharist. This represents the water of our creation, our baptism, and the water of Jesus’ first miracle that he turned miraculously into wine. The water that flowed from his side at his death becomes the mixture of water and wine that we drink.

We gather together this morning to remember Christ’s baptism as a sign for us to follow. May we pay attention to all of God’s signs, sent to us, because of God’s abiding and eternal love.

Epiphany 4

2010-03-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

January 31, 2010

The Rev Deborah Magdalene, OSH
Jeremiah 4:1-10, I Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-39

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

We are usually at a wedding when we hear this beautiful hymn to love from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The words themselves are beautiful and have a calming effect, “Love is patient; love is kind; love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful – Love rejoices in the truth....” he writes.

I look at the wedding couple and see an icon of God’s timeless love. But I know that only God’s love lasts for eternity. Human love, with all of its promise, has a dark shadow. And unless we learn the practice of giving up our own plans and expectations in order to follow God’s will in our lives we will flounder and get lost on the way.

The love that Paul describes so beautifully is about the daily struggle to lose one’s Self in a bottomless well of God-centeredness.
This is a love that only one man was able to pull off perfectly – Jesus from Nazareth. And in this letter to the Church in Corinth Paul goes to great lengths to help us understand the complexities and gifts of Christ’s God-centered love for us.

Paul is writing this letter to the ragtag group of new Christians in Corinth (in present-day Greece.) He writes his letter because they wrote to him, asking for clarification on how one is to practice Christianity on a daily basis. They have opposing and passionate ideas about how to live out God’s call, and they are feuding with each other over issues that threaten to tear the new Church apart.
Sounds like the Church we all know so well.

It is no easier for us to understand the call to love one another than it was for the first Christians, but our modern culture throws some unique stumbling blocks in our path.

The first thing that trips us up is our language. “Love” has so many meanings that we each picture our own definitions of love as soon as we hear the word.
Romantic love is everyone’s favorite – we can feel it, remember it, and at a deep level we all yearn for it to come again and wake us up. It feels good. The world is transformed when you’re ‘in love’ – food tastes better, the birds sing louder, and poetry suddenly springs from our lips.

Then there are all the other forms of love – I love the new movie Avatar, I love chocolate cake; and crab dipped in butter. I love my cat, and my parents. I love waking up on a day off and sitting by the window with a steaming cup of coffee.
When I grew up in the Episcopal Church I had a vague sense that the love we sang about in hymns was a different kind of love than the ones I’ve just described, but I couldn’t put the pieces together.

The two different worlds of church and home didn’t seem to have much in common. We went to church regularly because that was our responsibility. And we were proud that we were regular church-goers. Once home we went back to rocky and chaotic life as usual, until we dressed up in our finest the next week and proudly went off to church again.

Pride and arrogance are the primary blocks to living out God’s call to love one another as Christ loved us. It is this pride in being a Christian that threw me off track and is what gets to the heart of the problem in Corinth.

Even at the dawn of Christianity human pride started mucking up the clear Gospel of Christ. It is a very subtle and sneaky issue, this pride, which is why Jesus shows us the way to call it what it is and learn how to walk away from it.

Today’s gospel is the second half of the story we heard last week. Jesus is in his home town of Nazareth and is reading from the Prophet Isaiah. The verse he chose to read spoke of freedom, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18

Then he puts down the scroll and says to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” These are electric words. If Isaiah’s prophecy has come true then this means that their world is about to change. It would make sense to expect that their very own Jesus, Joseph’s son, would pay special attention to them since he is one of their very own.

Much of Galilee, and especially Nazareth, was looked down upon by the majority of Jews. They were called ‘peasants,’ ‘common people,’ and the ‘unwashed of the land.” They spoke with an accent colored by many different cultures and races. It is interesting to note that when Mary and Joseph are turned away from the inn in Bethlehem it was because they had no room for them, not because they were full.

It is quite possible that when the people of Nazareth heard Jesus speak they immediately pictured their long term dream of becoming privileged and chosen coming true. They wanted the privilege and status that went along with Jesus’ popularity. They had heard what he had done in other towns in Galilee. Just imagine what he would do in his home town, with the people who saw him grow up. Surely their days of hearing “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” were over.

They were proud of Jesus as long as he lived up to their expectations. But he dashed their hopes to the ground and they turned on him like a pack of hungry dogs.
The two examples Jesus gives them illustrate the true nature of his call. The great prophets Elijah and Elisha skipped over all the Jews suffering from either starvation and thirst, or leprosy, and chose to heal instead a Gentile. Jesus doesn’t want to taunt or ridicule the Nazarenes, he just wants them to let go of their pride and arrogance and see that the word of God cannot be contained in one privileged home town.

Parker Palmer writes, "At the heart of any authentic religious experience is recognition that God's nature is too huge, God's movement too deep, ever to be comprehended by a single conception or point of view….God's truth is singular and eternal, but the forms in which we give it expression are as finite and fragile as clay pots, and we must always be ready to break them open on behalf of a larger vision of truth."

There is a reason that Luke uses this story as the introduction to Jesus’ ministry. It has all of the themes that Luke returns to again and again in his Gospel and the Book of Acts. Luke stresses throughout both books that Jesus came in order to bring the Gospel, the Good News, to all lands and all peoples.

Jesus fulfills what the prophets promised and brings his message to the people who need it the most – regardless of their class, status, religious beliefs or cleanliness. Jesus is persecuted by his own people because he shakes up the status quo and turns his back on their expectations of grandeur and fame.

At the end of the Gospel Jesus is crucified in Jerusalem – at the very heart of the Jewish power center. Today’s reading prepares us for what lies ahead for Jesus and his followers – the vengeance of an angry crowd that has missed the point of Jesus’ words.

What the crowd at Nazareth didn’t have was the love of God that drove Jesus to find a more receptive audience. The full extent of this cosmic love wasn’t understood until Resurrection. It was only then that everything he taught began to fall into place.

Paul was one of the people that hunted down the Christians with vengeance and murderous rage. His conversion showed him the extent of his pride and arrogance and gave him the fuel to warn others of the dangers self-righteousness.

Paul is able to see that the Christians in Corinth are in grave danger. Their self-centered dissents threaten to break the church apart. The love Paul describes is agape, the unmotivated and free gift of God’s love for us. It is vibrantly different from the self-seeking, romantic love of human beings. It doesn’t necessarily feel good when we act in accord with this agape love, but it does resonate with God’s will for us and for the entire world.

The people of Corinth were proud of all their spiritual gifts – they were speaking in tongues and prophesying. They were eating together and singing songs of thanksgiving and praise. But they were excluding many people from the inner circle and were fighting with each other over who had the best gifts.
Paul emphasizes that any spectacular manifestations of spiritual power or prophecy are pointless unless they flow from the selfless and unmotivated fountain of God’s love.

There are two important characteristics of this love: agape is beyond our control and it depends upon a deep and abiding humility. One cannot love by willpower alone. We can’t leave the church today and make the promise, “Today I will love,” and then succeed at loving everyone.

Love is beyond our control. In order to understand its illusive and penetrating power you must practice true humility. And this is the most difficult of Christ’s teachings.

There is a story of a man who wanted to be humble: “He was very happy when he managed to be humble. But he was very sorry that he was happy that he was humble. And he was very happy that he was so sorry that he was happy that he was humble.”
This story describes the problems we run into when we try to be humble – it creates a vicious circle. Once humility is possessed it is lost, since humility grows out of knowing one’s poverty.

This poverty is what connects us to Christ’s love. He became poor for our sake and asks us to do the same. Love is not a feeling at all, but a relationship with the divine that is simply there at times and not at all in our control. It is a radiation of cosmic power, like a wave. Our job is to lose our need for control and let the wave of God’s love overpower us.

We can’t really love one another without admitting that our human ability to act out this love is wounded. We are dependent upon God acting through us. We must attribute any true act of love as stemming from God alone. And we must learn the difficult task of letting others glow with the love of God when we feel left out. Love is not a quantifiable substance. There is enough love of God to fill each of us for eternity. And we need not be jealous of other’s gifts.

The people of Nazareth didn’t understand this. They were angry, threatened and jealous that Jesus took his gifts elsewhere. They were left standing on the precipice wondering where he disappeared to, and clueless to the message he brought.
If they were to act in the spirit of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians they would give up their self-centered need to be famous and accepted and follow Jesus to the next town. Agape love celebrates at every lost sheep found and every wounded soul saved.

It is our daily challenge to let go of our own preconceptions of love in order to admit we have no idea where God’s love might take us today. May we help each other to nurture this love in our own community.

Last Sunday in Epiphany

2010-03-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

February 14, 2010
The Rev Deborah Magdalene, OSH
St Alban’s Episcopal Church
“With You, Oh God, is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light.” (Ps 36:9)
When I was 20 years old I spent the summer working in a High Sierra camp in Yosemite National Park. The camp was called “Sunrise” and at 10,000ft high it felt like a home among the clouds.
It was the most amazing summer of my youth. I worked as a waitress in the food tent, a maid in the overnight tents, and as a concierge, mountain guide, and naturalist in my off hours. I played my guitar and sang John Denver songs to the campfire in the evenings.
My favorite hike was to a place called Cloud’s Rest, a huge slab of granite that served as an overlook to Yosemite Valley, nestled 6,000ft below. Sitting on the edge of this precipice I felt close to God. And like the name implies, hikers were regularly engulfed in the cold mist of clouds coming to rest like lamb’s wool on the cold granite dome. When the clouds came it was time for the hikers to leave. Lightening is often not very far behind.
The season of Epiphany comes to a close today with the story of Jesus’ transfiguration on a mountain top in Galilee. It is a story of the illuminating light of God setting off a chain of reactions that brings light into the lives of the hopeless and helpless even as it sends Jesus to his fate on the cross.
Epiphany begins with the wise men from the east, following the light of a star to find the infant Jesus, lying in a manger. What they discover brings them to their knees, as they recognize the true nature of God in a unique infant.
The word “epiphany” means, “the appearance or manifestation God.” Another term for this phenomenon is theophany: “a visible manifestation of God.” The season of Epiphany features the Gospel stories where the divine nature of Jesus emanates from him like the light of the sun, blinding in its power and able to transform doubt into dazzling belief.
During Epiphany, we hear Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, “The Spirit of God is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (Luke 4: 18) Jesus’ first miracle is the turning of water into a ridiculous abundance of fine wine, revealing his glory to the disciples, “who believed in him” from that point on. (John 2:11)
Jesus increases the disciples’ faith by giving them such an abundant catch of fish that their boats begin to sink, leaving them questioning their sanity and shaking with fear and awe.
At Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist’s followers hear the voice of God proclaim, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22) They witness a dove, a sign from God, descending on Jesus in a fluttering of wings, stirring up awe, wonder, and fear as the known world changes before their eyes.
Epiphany stories wake us up and recharge our batteries so that we can make it through the hard times ahead. We are about to descend into Lent, beginning this Wednesday, as ashes are smeared on our heads and we are reminded that we are “but dust and to dust we shall return.”
It is helpful to remember that even dust originates from the stars and has the capacity to glow, just as we carry the light of Christ through the darkest of times. Faith is belief without tangible evidence. Our faith in the light of Christ is buoyed by Epiphany stories but gains its power from the testing of darkness.
Mountaintop experiences end, but we carry the faith we receive on the mountaintop securely in our communal heart – passing the flame among us in order to keep it alive.
Today’s readings compare two mountaintop experiences – Moses and Jesus. Paul teaches the Corinthians how the two stories differ. Let’s look at how they are the same.
Moses descends from the mountain with his face glowing so brightly that it hurts the eyes of all who look upon him. But, “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” (Exodus 34:29)
His transformation was for the benefit of the God’s people. The rays of light radiating from Moses’ face provide evidence of his intimate relationship with God. The fear of those who witness this physical transformation, this theophany, or epiphany, instills a respectful obedience from the Israelites. This man Moses is obviously someone who can lead them through the wilderness because he speaks to God so intensely that his face glows with God’s light.
The Israelites believed that no-one could look upon the face of God and live. The light they see radiating from Moses is God’s light in a human face. They don’t know how to handle this new phenomenon. When in doubt, better to veil Moses’ face while it glows, lest they gaze upon the light of God and die because of it.
The Jewish liturgy continues the practice of keeping scripture under a veil, or covering, reminding the faithful that underneath the veil waits the blinding light of God’s revelation.
Jesus is on the mountaintop to pray. Just like Moses, Jesus climbs to the highest point he can find in order to enter into the luminal space between earth and heaven, human and divine. The air is thin up there and it literally takes your breath away. Jesus already stands with one foot in eternity, but when he prays, wherever he is, time stands still – the past becomes present, and the future twinkles with reality.
Peter, James and John gaze upon Moses and Elijah, standing there on either side of Jesus. Commentators explain that the presence of Moses and Elijah is confirmation that Jesus is the continuation of the ancient faith story of his people, and is the fulfillment of all that has come before.
Moses represents the Torah, the great and ancient stories of creation, human sin, redemption, promise, and covenant. Elijah represents the stories of the great prophets – warning humankind to pay attention to God in their midst, calling them repeatedly to change direction and focus on God’s will instead of their own.
Jesus is planted firmly in between the two figures as the bridge between the old and the new, between promise and fulfillment. As Moses led his people out of slavery into freedom, Jesus will lead all of God’s people out of the slavery of sin and death into a new home where all of creation will be redeemed.
I have a great deal of sympathy for Peter, wanting to build some kind of sheltering monument for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. It is a natural enough thing to want to build shrines where the Holy has taken place. Just look at what the Christians have done to the Holy Land.
There are treasures of gold, jewels and icons, lit by the light of eternal flames that burn around the entrances to the cave in Bethlehem, the mount of the Transfiguration, and the tomb at Calvary – none of which are verifiably holy sites, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
What matters is that there are places here on earth where Holy events actually happened. And that is enough to bring tears to pilgrim’s eyes even thousands of years from the time it all happened. Jesus did climb some mountain in Galilee, but as our Gospel stories emphasize – no-one built a shrine, so we’re not exactly sure where it was.
Peter wants to remember it forever. He’d like to come there again, to the very mountaintop where Jesus was transfigured before them, in order to remember that Yes, it really happened, and there were three of us there to see this marvelous theophany.
This is not what Jesus wants them to do. No matter how powerful a transformative experience is, it is not in the remembering of it, or the hallowing of the place where it happened that its power lies. No. The power of an experience of the Holy is what transforms within us.
Think of a time when you have seen someone’s face glow with the radiance of holiness. We have all seen it. We recognize it at ordinations, consecrations, baptisms, and Christmas Eves. We see it in the eyes of children reaching out for the blessed bread at communion.
Frederick Bueckner writes, “That they had caught something from Christ, I thought. Something of who he was and is flickered out through who they were.”
Paul explains to the Corinthians that with Jesus, a new light has come upon us all: a light that results in our own transformation. Paul uses the term ‘light’ interchangeably with truth. The truth of the Gospel is light to those who believe, but is veiled to those who don’t. Here Paul is using the word ‘veil’ to mean misunderstand.
When Moses descended from the mountaintop his face was radiant with blinding light. Those who believe in the truth of the Gospel see the words themselves as glowing with the light of truth.
“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2Cor 3:18)
What Paul is teaching us is exactly why Jesus told the disciples not to be afraid. The glory of God, living in the truth of who Jesus is, changes all believers into bearers of the same glory that lit Christ from within.
What Peter, James and John witness is the light of Christ shining a light straight to his fate in Jerusalem. Moses and Elijah whisper to Jesus where he is to go, and it is this news that lights him up with the holy purpose of God. When he descends from the mountain he turns his face resolutely toward Jerusalem, knowing what will happen to him there. And he tells his disciples not to fear.
The light of Epiphany points us toward Calvary and challenges us to be steadfast in our faith and never to abandon our hope in God’s glory.
When I left my aerie in Yosemite I was married within the year and quickly had two children. I suffered from a prolonged post partum depression that eventually morphed into clinical depression. I didn’t quite lose my faith, but it became the darkest time of my life.
It was because of my belief that my children needed to find God in their own lives that I finally went back to church. I was acting on instinct alone, having them baptized at the Easter vigil service when they were 3 and 4 years old. Their baptism was the beginning of a long journey of faith for me. I never left the church again, and it was through pastoral counseling that my depression finally lifted.
The Psalmist writes, “With You, Oh God, is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light.” It is our responsibility as Christians to carry the light within us as if it is the Christ child himself.
Throughout the season of Lent we will come up for air every Sunday, reminding each other that Easter already came, so we can celebrate the Resurrection in the midst of our disciplines and dark Lenten stories.
Matthew writes, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16) It is in the sharing of our Epiphany light that we keep it glowing. We must be as ready to ask for this light when we need it as we are to offer it when we feel abundant. It takes faith seekers as well as faith givers to make a complete community.
May we have the grace to look at our own St. Alban’s community and share not only the light of Christ with each other, but also our pain and struggles. It is what Jesus asks us all to do as we walk with him from the mountaintop to Jerusalem.

Palm Sunday

2010-03-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

March 28, 2010
Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 22:14-23:56 Deborah Magdalene, OSH

It all happens so fast. One minute we are with the multitude of the disciples spreading our jackets and sweatshirts on the ground so that Jesus and his donkey will have a royal carpet to walk on. We cry with holiday excitement, “Blessed is our king who comes in the name of the Lord!” And before we know it, we are shouting just as loudly, “Crucify him! He saved others, let him save himself!”

This morning’s Passion Play, taken from Luke’s Gospel,leads us up to the empty cross and then just leaves us there. The words we hear this morning prepare us for our walk through Holy Week, but they leave us hanging on the precipice of death. How do we reconcile that the same crowd of disciples who adores Jesus can turn so quickly into a lynching mob? How did it happen so fast?

For years I thought that I was supposed to feel the agony of Jesus’ suffering and death. I believed that the purpose of Lent was to focus on my own sin and to wallow in the pain of knowing I’d let Jesus down. It was almost as if the more sorry I felt for my sins the more joy I might feel on Easter morning.

Thank God I have learned otherwise. Any time we focus on our sins without seeing them through the prism of Christ’s abiding love for us we are off base. It will remain a mystery to me what was going through Jesus’ head as he moved from riding astride the donkey to bending under the burden of his own cross. And my task is learning to be comfortable with that mystery.

It is not so very hard to imagine how Jesus’ disciples got so frightened that they let him down in the moment of his greatest need. They were only human. But it will always remain a mystery how Jesus kept his promise and rose from the dead in order to save all of humankind for God ..... and me from myself and my confused ways of thinking.

As I participate in the events leading up to Jesus’ trial, execution and burial my job is to let go of reason and grasp on to the mystery of salvation. It is only though accepting the miraculous mystery of God’s love for us that we can begin to comprehend the power of Christ’s death.
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While I was in New York City attending seminary I got introduced to opera. And not just any opera. I was given tickets to attend the Metropolitan Opera – the Met. I was so transformed by my experiences there that I saved my money in order to buy a season ticket for my last year in New York. My seat was at the top of the nose-bleed section, but I didn’t care. I was affected just as deeply by what was happening way down there on that distant stage whether I sat in the 12th row, center (which happened once) or the farthest seat back. It didn’t matter where I sat.
What happens during good opera is art – a beautiful mix of orchestral music, talented singers, brilliant intertwined melodies and poetry, breathtaking set design and take-your-breath-away magic. It was the mysterious magic of it all that kept me coming back.

Good opera transports you to another reality. You become one with the drama or comedy unfolding before you on the stage. On the stage there is always frustrating miscommunication, ridiculous coincidence and inevitable tragedy. We in the audience see what the actor/singer cannot see, and it gives us the advantage of knowing what is about to happen.

We watch helplessly as tragedy hunts them down and one or another favorite character dies a gruesome and painful death. We get somber hints of grief through key changes in the music, while the gathering darkness of deep violet stage lights signals the cataclysmic. Music, lights, costumes, vocal artistry, and passion overwhelm everyone in the room and we’re left numb as the chandeliers rise and the curtain falls. We sit stunned in the afterglow of the mysterious effect of opera.

The story of Christ’s passion and death are just as much a mystery. But just because this paschal mystery is the center of our Christian faith, doesn’t mean that we understand it any better this year than we did last. In fact, because it is the focal point of our shared Christian story, it assumes a life of its own and is easy to misunderstand.

All four gospels tell the same story. Though they differ from each other in unique ways, the key points never vary. In fact, the gospels are all described as passion narratives with long introductions. All of Jesus’ earthly life leads up to these moments of arrest, abandonment, betrayal and death.
The key to understanding what happened at the end of Jesus’ life is to place these events within the context of the entire gospel story – from the beginning to the present moment.

Jesus’ death is not the focus of his ministry or of his life. Christ came to us that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. (John 10:2) And if we don’t understand that key point, we will misunderstand why he had to die.

The first Christians were bewildered and lost during the events of Christ’s passion and death. It all happened too fast. One minute they are learning from their teacher and the next they are hiding in fear. It was only in the afterglow of Christ’s resurrection and ascension that they were able to look back on his life and death and put the pieces together.

have the advantage of knowing the whole story. But it is about this time in our Lenten journey that we all need reminders. Two images help me to put Holy Week in perspective.

The first is the Incarnation. The limitless vastness of God empties himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbles himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.”

The miracle of today’s story is that God’s own self could be born in a human body, that like all of us, has a permanent date with death. Jesus’ death was inevitable, as is our own. We mustn’t forget that without the incarnation there would be no resurrection. We are called to see the passion of Christ through the lens of Christmas.

The other image that helps during Holy Week is when Jesus invites the little children to come to him, “For it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs." We are the children invited to the Last Supper with Jesus, and invited to sit and be present with him as he protects us with his love. We are designed to be loved, but the journey of deep and abiding love is inevitably paved with hardship and turmoil.

The Easter joy that awaits us is the miraculous life we are all given after the Resurrection. There is now a purpose for our lives – we are Christ’s own forever, as our Baptismal Covenant reminds us, so that we can co-create God’s heaven here on earth. It is our job to invite the little ones to come to us because we have such good news to share.

One week from today we will celebrate Pascha – the Orthodox name for Easter, which means, “the Passover.” God lets Jesus pass through death so that we can have life. The Paschal Mystery is that Christ has come, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. Christ came to us as a child on Christmas, he rose to show us how deeply we are loved and he will come again to make all of history complete.

May we allow this coming Holy Week to wash over us in the same mysterious way in which God washes over us – bathing us in the light of mystery and opening new doors of possibility through the cycle of death and new birth that surrounds us all.

2010-03-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

2010-03-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Tuesday of Holy Week and I've got the Last Supper on my mind. Still looking at palms from Palm Sunday stashed on countertops, choir desks, and tables around the convent. I plan to put all my sermons from the last few years on this blogspot, but first must learn how to use this new tool. Today I'll start my sermon for Thurs evening. All of us sisters are going over to St Alban's Episcopal Church (just down the road from us) to share the lamb dinner and foot washing liturgy with our neighbor parish. Luckily I'm on staff there so it's a second home for me.