Third Sunday in Easter Day 2011

The Third Sunday of Easter – Year A (RCL) 2011
Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:4, 12-19; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, May 8, 2011

PEOPLE OF THE WAY – PEOPLE OF HOPE – PEOPLE OF THE WIERD

Let us Pray: Dear God, as we go along our life’s way, help us to be aware of your presence with us. Open our eyes, make us expectant, eager to be met by you. Give us open minds, open eyes, open hearts to receive your gracious presence and to share it with all you would have us meet. You are the resurrection, and the life. Amen.

(SUNG) BE KNOWN TO US, LORD JESUS
IN THE BREAKING OF THE BREAD.

Our lifetimes are marked by spiritual, political and social events that have influenced us to such an extent that we can often recall, many years later the exact time and place we were when these events burst into our lives marking and changing them forever. Few of us (in a certain age range) would fail to be able to tell you where they were when they received the news that John Fitzgerald or Robert Francis Kennedy were assassinated; or when Tranquility Base reported that “the Eagle had landed” and Neil Armstrong spoke of “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” So, will your children; grand and great grandchildren report on what they were doing when they realized that passenger jetliners were being flown into the World Trade Center or Pentagon? Now will we mark with the same sense of cultural memory the events of last Sunday evening inside the walled compound of an unmarked estate in Abbottabad, Pakistan? Will the young men and women who spontaneously gathered outside the Whitehouse, College Campuses or the under construction Freedom Tower at the former site of the World Trade Center Towers in lower Manhattan, have wonderful stories to relay to their children and grandchildren around celebrating the violent end of another human life? Trust me; the hypothetical questions I’m posing fill me with as much confusion and torn emotion as I’m sure they do for you and the hundreds of thousands of Americans or Pakistanis; Muslim, Christian or atheist/agnostic who struggle to understand what we might do when our enemies face the reality of our outrage for the horrific crimes committed against innocent children, women and men who committed no greater crime than arriving at school or work or play on the impossibly blue sky late summer morning in September of 2001. I do know what the Gospel message of Jesus the Christ asks of us: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” I’m not saying the answers are easy, or fair (in the sense of human justice or fairness) and I am saying that the message of the Christ whom we claim to follow is clear when it comes to what we owe our enemies and those who hate us for the Prince of Peace whom we claim as our savior and our God. I encourage you to listen to the anthem that the Choir will sing just after Communion this morning [I’d like to share with you the lyrics of an anthem that the Choir will sing at the 10:00 AM service this morning] I discovered the availability of a hymn text by the well known writer Andrew Pratt when a clergy colleague of mine who is the Rector at St. John the Baptist Parish on the campus of OES told me that their Director of Music, Scott Crandal had written a hymn tune to set the text and was offering the copyrighted anthem for use by anyone who would find it helpful in generating a conversation around our Christian responsibility toward those whom we consider our enemies. The text reads:
We cannot gloat: a time for grief,
another mother's son is dead,
and if that son has killed and maimed,
it is the better least is said;
but let us mourn for all the loss,
within the shadow of the cross.
We mourn for victims we have loved,
and for the orphans yet unborn;
for those for whom a searing pain
greets this and every rising dawn,
and then we bow our heads and pray
that peace might drench the world today.
And to that end we pledge our lives,
our words, our actions and our deeds,
as following the Prince of Peace,
we'll work for peace till peace succeeds,
in breaking every barrier down,
that love may be our goal and crown. © Andrew Pratt 2/5/2011
We are called, each of us who claim this Jesus to live out the Gospel vision of God’s Kindom come among us. That is why we are the ones in our culture who have to give voice to the hard choices that Christ’s Gospel demands of us. We have to be the ones who continue to live out our responsibility to love our enemies and pray for those who abuse us. That same Gospel calls us today and every day toward the Kindom of God made manifest among us right here; right now. The Kindom might be messy, it might be imperfect – it might even at times be petty, gossipy or seemingly trite. It is however that same Kindom that Jesus came among us to proclaim that Kindom in which the hungry are fed, the captive are set free and the mourning rejoice in the Easter joy of the triumph of life over death. Is that that Kindom that we live our inside our Red doors and outside with our Red Tabernacle bringing the Good News into the places where it needs most to be heard.

Our Gospel text for this morning, from the Author of Luke/Acts tells the story of the amazing journey from the cold hard despair of the locked room we visited last week, to the joyous and faith filled hope that happened on the road to Emmaus when the two un-named disciples, completely unknowing met the risen Christ in Word and Sacrament just as we have the chance to do each time we gather in table fellowship.

Those earliest followers of the risen Christ were known simply as “people of the way” and that way is what we later followers cling to with expectant hope – filled with the joy of our God’s victory over darkness and death. The author of Luke’s Gospel recounts the Emmaus roadside journey of amazement and blessing in the revelation of scripture and the recognition and fulfillment of hope in the blessing and breaking of bread. The disciples welcomed a stranger and found in that welcome the reality of God with us – Emmanuel – in the person of the risen Christ. Filled with hope they returned from Emmaus to Jerusalem to share the good news with the other apostles who were gathered in the locked house; and with us – that God indeed is with us in the welcoming of strangers and in the sharing of our table fellowship.

From that journey shared on the way to Emmaus, from the scriptures revealed and explained by the risen Christ to the bread taken, blessed, broken and given we have followed the way for two centuries. In each of our encounters with the risen Christ we continue to be amazed at the unexpected gifts found in the welcoming of strangers as we find the Christ revealed in them. It is in the common and everyday experiences that we are caught unaware – in the simple gifts of bread and Word that the Divine presence continues to reveal itself and move us from cold despair to joy-filled hope.

(SUNG) BE KNOWN TO US, LORD JESUS
IN THE BREAKING OF THE BREAD.

On this Sunday when we recognize the Easter joy anew; when we share bread broken and wine for all from the one cup – we also share in the fellowship of our community around coffee and cake; and we move from this place to take that bread and wine (actually the cup we take out to the park uses grape juice rather than wine) and add to it bread spread with peanut butter and jelly to share with the hungry of body as well as the hungry of spirit; and we have recently added eggs to our feast that we share will all who ask – and we make sure that we also have treats for the critters who share our lives and are such a blessing to our ministries; critters like ranger and sophie & [Drew’s dog] this is our community of believers led by an Irish Catholic Episcopal priest and a UCC Minister of Outreach who met each other and connected in the Good News of the Gospel shared among the members of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus; and who now are growing into a greater understanding of what Jesus meant when he called us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. It’s all good and it’s all powerful and growing into our unique and wonderful ministry at the corner of 13th and Clay and moving out further and further into the heart of our city. Sometimes it is rich and full of deep and reverent liturgy and sometimes it is real and rough and full of drug addicts and drunks and we are all children of a loving God and I can just bet that God is watching and smiling and wondering what we’ll do next. In closing, I’d like to share with you a passage from Mike Yaconelli’s book Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People:

“In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch has turned many of the inhabitants of Narnia into stone, but Aslan, the Christ figure, jumps into the stone courtyard, pouncing on the statues, breathing life into them.

The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white, the courtyard was now ablaze with colors; glossy chestnut side of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, ruddy-brown of foxes, dogs and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence, the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.

Lewis’ summary of what is happening in Narnia is a brilliant description of what a church should look like: “The courtyard no longer looked like a museum, it looked more like a zoo.” It is in the incongruence and oddness of our disjointed spirituality that ought to characterize every church. For God so loved the world, that whosoever believes in him will, from that point on, be considered weird by the rest of the world, which means the church should be more like a zoo than a tomb of identical mummies.”

We are about bringing that unique brand of Christianity to a city who’s unofficial motto is Keep Portland Weird; as messy as it is; as funky as it can get – I wouldn’t want to worship with anyone else I know – Would You?

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – Year C Proper 20 (RCL) 2010
Jeremiah 8: 18 – 9: 1; Psalm 79: 1 – 9; 1 Timothy 2: 1 – 7; Luke 16:1 – 13
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, September 19, 2010

GOD AND MAMMON

Let us pray: Holy God we are tempted to squander the opportunities you place before us for ministry and service in your name. We are busy furthering our own fortunes and we often neglect the fortunes of others who have so much less than we. You, however, call us always to service to discipleship in your name with an unswerving devotion. That commitment is beyond our grasp without you, O God, give it to us in your grace. We ask that you help shape our priorities so that we might spend what you give us on things which truly matter. We pray this in the name of the One, Holy and Living God. Amen.

(SUNG) THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD, TO MAKE THE WOUNDED WHOLE. THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD, TO HEAL THE SIN SICK SOUL.
SOMETIMES I FEEL DISCOURAGED, AND FEEL MY WORK’S IN VAIN, BUT THEN THE HOLY SPIRIT REVIVES MY SOUL AGAIN.

Admit it, when you heard that phrase [Is there no balm in Gilead?] in the reading from the Prophet Jeremiah, your mind immediately jumped to this old chestnut! In my previous parish we had a training session in the church for Lector’s and we used this reading to give each person an opportunity to read aloud for the group and be critiqued. One of the lectors, Sandy commented that it was not until she began to learn to read that she realized that she had heard the phrase incorrectly – and her young mind searched for some logic around why God would have planted a bomb in the city of Gilead. In the midst of Jeremiah’s chastising of the people of Judah and Jerusalem around their creation of graven images and foreign idols Yahweh speaks to the chosen people. God speaks in first person voice of hurt, grief and dismay and tells them that a fountain of tears would pour from heavenly eyes as God wept day and night for the wounded and slain people God claimed as God’s own. Gilead was a region of the Transjordan and was a major stop along the trade route called the Kings Highway, which stretched from the Gulf of Aqaba all the way to Damascus. The exact composition of the famed balm in Gilead is unknown to this day. Jeremiah speaks of this balm at several other points in the oracles collected in the book attributed to this major prophet and it always serves as a metaphor of the healing power of God’s love for the people.

Fr. Jim, who was here last week to cover for my short trip to British Columbia, gets to preach on the beautiful parable story of the shepherd who leaves the ninety nine to go and search for the one lost sheep. The previous week was an opportunity for my colleague in ministry and our Deacon extraordinaire to tackle the difficult text from this author’s account wherein Jesus tells the crowd that they must hate their father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters; and even life itself in order to be a disciple. If I thought he had a difficult Gospel text to preach on two weeks ago, the lesson from the author of Luke/Acts chosen for this Sunday wins the “difficult” prize hands down. All of Jesus’ parables are challenging but the story of the dishonest manager who is praised by the master for acting shrewdly (while, incidentally, he appears to be robbing him blind) is one which will make any hearer turn there heads and ask “what is that all about? This Gospel stuff has surely risen to the heights of obscurity today – I wonder what he’ll have to say about this one”! The fact is, I have nothing to say about this one – so if we could all just sit and meditate upon what we think might be happening in this story we’ll get on with the Nicene Creed and press on. Seriously, I have studied commentators and searched through preacher’s galore to see what God’s Holy Spirit might be leading me to say about this challenging text. One of the first courses which I enrolled in at the Episcopal Seminary, Church Divinity School of the Pacific was titled; God and Mammon – the Politics and Theology of money. Dr. Marion Grau crafted this course and challenged those of us who took it to discern for ourselves our understanding of the theology of money. Dr. Grau cited the number of times that Jesus spoke to issues of economics and money (including in those statistics mention of the poor and our responsibility toward them) and the number though I cannot find in the mess of my seminary 1st semester notes the exact citation, was astronomically high – and certainly many times higher than the number that Jesus gave mention to the current issues which divide our Anglican sisters and brothers so fractiously. My point in bringing this up is that Jesus, in this morning’s Gospel narrative opens the door for the followers and disciples to have those conversations and discussions, which we find to difficult to have and they mostly center on money. Not necessarily how much we have or don’t have – but most especially about how much we give away; that is truly the taboo topic in our Christian theology of economics.

(SUNG) THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD TO MAKE THE WOUNDED WHOLE THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD TO HEAL THE SIN SICK SOUL.
IF YOU CANNOT PREACH LIKE PETER, IF YOU CANNOT PRAY LIKE PAUL, YOU CAN TELL THE LOVE OF JESUS, AND SAY HE DIED FOR ALL.

So, he figured out a way at the end of September to turn it into a “stewardship” Sermon. The Christian Scripture reading from First Timothy and the Lukan text about the dishonest manager suggest some alternative ways of addressing stewardship in our community. First we are urged by the writer of Timothy to pray. Why, because when we pray we are giving voice to the relationship we have with our maker and redeemer. Relationships require communication, and prayer is the principle form we use to signify our relationship with God. Will be doin’ a lot of prayin’ in this stewardship season. Learning about prayer deepens our relationship with God, and lays a foundation for our response in giving from what God has given to us. Learning to pray also begins to order our life around a subject that is still difficult to talk about in our culture – money! Oh, we can talk about how to spend it, how to save it, how to invest it – but few talk about how to give it away. That is where today’s parable from the Author of Luke/Acts sixteenth chapter can give us some insight. As we noted, Jesus talks about money, a lot; and in today’s Gospel story Jesus talks about it in ways we can really identify with – getting it anyway you can. Of course, the point of the parable is that the crafty steward uses his cleverness to assure himself a place when the bottom falls out of things. Jesus commends that cleverness – though not the dishonesty, for us. Jesus also says that we cannot serve God and Money (Mammon), that’s because Jesus knows how we struggle with our limited resources; how we wish we could have more and how we even say, “when I get rich I’m going to give a whole bunch to charity.” Jesus doesn’t want to hear that, Jesus wants us to feel freedom and joy, and to give from what we have – right now. God knows how bound we are by our feeling of scarcity – God wants us to claim abundance.

It is important to remind ourselves of the setting of this story, nothing in the narrative indicates a movement by Jesus or the disciples or the Pharisees so we can safely assume that we are still at the same dinner party sitting with outcasts and sinners and religious authorities who have their noses pretty out of joint. Throughout this party Jesus has offered the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the two lost sons (or the Prodigal Son). These three stories talk about the generosity of God’s love, not the rejection of sinners and outcasts, plus the setting of the telling is in intimate table fellowship. This setting can give the disciples and followers a sense of what potential there can be when they join together around that table and share gifts with each other. They learn that the appropriate outlook on outcasts and sinners is an open heart, one that expresses itself in the love for one another, in their willingness to be the best for another no matter where that other comes from, or what treatment popular opinion says they deserve.

As if to drive home the point, Jesus tells an outrageous story that has some pretty dicey ethics, at best. To say that Jesus is encouraging his hearers to “think outside the box”, is an understatement, but in doing so Jesus illustrates the zeal and determination that is being sought from the disciples to choose the Kindom of God and to live in it. Richard Obach and Albert Kirk in their commentary on the Lukan Gospel have a great description of this story:

“As the parable unfolds, a servant is about to be dismissed for wasting his employers money; he was neglecting his responsibilities. The servant’s future looks very bleak. Beggary awaits him because he lacks the strength for manual labor. As he ponders the bind he is in, he receives a flash of insight and realizes how he can solve his dilemma. He then makes a decision that makes a bearing on his entire future – the security of being welcomed into the homes of his master’s former creditors; he reduces their indebtedness by giving up his rightful commission. As a steward he had a right to a percentage of what he collected for his employer. The employer praises the steward not for his earlier neglect of his duty, but for having the foresight to give up his commission for the sake of what would be needed later on when he had no job…”

A possible moral for this story is that Jesus wants those who are listening to see that the choice before them is of the same gravity and magnitude as the one before the steward. Their whole future hangs in the balance. Jesus wants them, and us, like the steward to be shrewd, daring and willing to sacrifice for the future. This is an all or nothing proposition. The people in fellowship around the table that evening have already tasted something new in what life can be. Jesus is asking if this is going to be for one night only, or do they (and we) see the importance of re-orienting the way we live to the standards present only in the Gospel – and in the Kindom of God, which is present among us.

(SUNG) THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD, TO MAKE THE WOUNDED WHOLE. THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD, TO HEAL THE SIN SICK SOUL.

I was struck by a quote which was I came across while reading one of the sermon illustration resources to which I subscribe; it was credited to the Grand Dame Brook Astor who died at the ripe old age of 105. Ms. Astor, an American socialite and philanthropist, was the chairwoman of the Vincent Astor Foundation which had been established by her third husband, Vincent Astor, the last surviving member of the moneyed Astor family. Brook was quoted by some unknown sources as saying: “Money is like Manure, it should be spread around.” What a wonderful theology of stewardship, from this remarkable woman who knew that serving God and wealth (Mammon) is impossible. As we gather and pray with God and each other in the weeks ahead and look for the ways in which we might give back to God what God has so graciously given to us as part of our prayerful and personal stewardship. I share with you a Prayer written by former Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold:

“Lord God you gave bread to your people in the wilderness, and sent Jesus to be bread for the life of the world. May we, your family, who week by week break and share the bread of the Eucharist, be bread for one another, and for all who stand in need. This we pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I was on Vacation in Victoria BC for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost and the Rev. Jim Corbett presided and preached for Sunday, September 12th, 2010

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Deacon Ken preached the sermon for Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, for Sunday September 5th, 2010

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 17 (RCL) Year C 2010
Jeremiah 2: 4 – 13; Psalm 81: 1, 10 – 16; Hebrews 13: 1 – 8; 15 – 16; Luke 14: 1, 7 – 14
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, August 29, 2010

GUESS WHO’S (NOT) COMING TO DINNER?

Let us pray: Help us gracious God to live out your call to be followers of your Christ and not merely admirers. When the lessons are harsh, when the message is hard, help us to dare and take the risks you took in your time among us as The Anointed One, the Messiah of God. When we envision your Kindom come on earth – may we glory in the reversals of pride and poverty; of position and powerlessness and especially in the Angels who come among us disguised as strangers that they might teach us all that you have given in the ultimate act of salvation through Jesus, you’re Holy One and our savior. Amen.

(SUNG) NOW WITH GOD AT TABLE WE SIT DOWN,
NOW WITH GOD AT TABLE WE SIT DOWN.

The long green season of time after the feast of Pentecost is designed to allow us through the scriptures commended in the Revised Common Lectionary to hear from the authors of our Hebrew, Christian and Gospel texts lessons and examples of the truth of God and God’s plan for humankind and its ultimate salvation. Often those stories and examples handed down to us by our ancestors in the Faith (both Hebrew and Christian) are difficult for us in our twenty first century sensibilities to comprehend; and indeed probably were as difficult for those in the centuries before us. Jesus’ life and ministry as revealed to us by the authors of our Gospel texts was a prophet and preacher who was a threat to the religious and political authorities of his time and preached a message of reversal of fortunes for those who held the power and authority of humankind. I honestly believe that Jesus was not the kind of dinner guest that any of us would have been interested in hosting for a light evening of casual frolic and bon vivant! No, this “Irritant Preacher” as some author’s have referred to him – was all about turning the tables upside down and humbling the proud in the middle of their folly. Each and every Sunday that we gather around the Altar Table we pray, as a joined community of believer’s that Jesus will come among us and be our guest at God’s table; are we really and truly sure that we want that prayer to be answered? If we get the Jesus who is revealed to us in the author of Luke’s account this morning – I think I might hesitate at that invitation.

If we are to believe the events narrated from the Gospel story this morning, Jesus was not always the most pleasant of dinner guests. Here Jesus has been invited to the “house of a Pharisee”. As soon as we hear the mention of Pharisee’s in the author of Luke’s account, we can expect the conflict and drama of the story to intensify. Perhaps this Pharisee invites Jesus so that more ammunition can be gathered for the eventual payback that this group of religious leaders looked to exact. Perhaps this Pharisee invites Jesus into his home to try and negotiate some sort of peace between the established temple leadership and this rebel preacher who had been doing so much to rile up the crowds; the unkempt and unclean crowds; the irreverent and unapologetic crowds, the crowds that would eventually turn against him and echo the cries of the religious authorities to crucify him. “Maybe if we can just get Jesus to sit down at the table in the midst of us and offer the hospitality of our spacious home, we can negotiate some sort of peaceful resolution between him and those who look to stop him by any means possible.” I guess they can forget that pretty quickly. No sooner has Jesus arrived when he begins to stir up controversy and turns his indignation toward the gathered guests. Jesus calls them on their behavior by noting how they all scrambled as quickly as they could for the best places at the table. Think if you will about our own cultural norms when we are attending or organizing a dinner or banquet. Table cards are marked and set out in a seating arrangement that places the honored guest at the front or center of the gathering hall and seats are assigned to the “head table” or those tables closest according to the protocol of the most honored guests up front and the less notable or desirable further and further back. In today’s Gospel message, Jesus condemns this practice telling those who look for positions of influence that “those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

(SUNG) NOW WITH GOD AT TABLE WE SIT DOWN
NOW WITH GOD AT TABLE WE SIT DOWN.

Next this gentle dinner guest turns on the host. “The next time you give a dinner party, don’t invite those like you have invited here; your friends, your relatives and those who have power and influence in your circle and will be able to repay the favor by inviting you to their next soiree; rather invite the lame, the blind the poor and the destitute – those who would never in a million years have the ability to reciprocate your hospitality.” Does anyone here have that understanding of how a dinner party should be organized? Then again this is Jesus, this is the one who takes on the powerful and privileged of his society and turns them all on their heads with shocking regularity. This is the Jesus who speaks of the greatest banquet of all – the feast in the Kindom of God. Who is seated at this table? Those who have nothing are given everything – for nothing. The outsiders of our societies become the insiders of God’s Kindom. Do we remember the song that Luke’s author puts in the mouth of Mary at the announcement of Jesus’ birth? “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.” As God has promised, so will God deliver. I wonder if I am blessed enough to be seated at God’s great banquet how surprised I will be at who is sitting next to me, and who is sitting next to them – and who is seated closest to the head table?
Would any of us fare any better if Jesus were the invited guest at one of our dinner parties? Are we humble enough to let our neighbor’s be that highly exalted, especially our neighbors that we would never think of inviting into our banquet tables? Are we prepared to sit with sinners and saints? Are we ready to extend our generosity to the prostitutes and drug addicts, to the dirty and bedraggled beggars? I want to share with you a story that I came across as I was searching for sermon ideas this week. It’s a story called Thank you, Mike.

This story appeared in a local newspaper years ago about a “regular” street beggar and a woman named Ellen Friedman and her son:
The man in question stands at the same street intersection every day, rain or shine, with a cardboard sign in hand, asking for money. On occasion, the Friedman’s have been known to give him a dollar, or even a sandwich. One rainy day Mrs. Friedman was ferrying her son from lunch at home to his music lesson and they saw that the beggar on their corner was barely able to walk. In fact, the man appeared to be staggering. The light turned green and off they went.
Later, Mrs. Friedman wrote: "Thinking out loud, I said to myself, 'he might have been drunk.' But being in the presence of the relentless honesty of youth, I had to add, 'but he looked like he was in pain.' We drove for several blocks in silence. At length my son said, 'Mom, I just don't feel right. We just ate pizza for lunch, and you let me have drum lessons, and pitching lessons, and camp, and that all costs lots of money, and he's sitting there in the rain.' I began looking for a place to U-turn. This was not the first time my children have urged me to turn around in the name of charity....At Krieger Schechter, the Jewish day school my children attend, they have learned that tzedakah (the Hebrew counterpart for 'charity,' but which literally means 'justice') is a way of life. Discovering she only has a 20 dollar bill with her; Mrs. Friedman pulls into a fast food chain and buys a meal, and returns to the corner on Roland Avenue to deliver the lunch. "...he turned toward the car, and (for the first time, I'm ashamed to admit) I looked into his face. He wasn't as old as I had expected. Maybe not much older than I. He was also visibly upset. Amid his thanks I caught another story. '...just drove by and threw somethin' at me. What makes people be so hateful? Don't they think I got feelings too?' The light changed, and we drove on with tears in our eyes. I was humbled when I thought how close we had been to just driving home. We could debate all day whether it's appropriate, safe, or good public policy to give to individual beggars, or whether all giving should be done through institutions. But when faced with the decision of whether or not to give to an individual, the Talmud, the ancient commentary on the Hebrew bible, instructs us that...if a beggar says, 'I'm hungry, please give me some food,' we should do so with a kind word, certainly without insults. Sometimes, as this experience has us, the words of encouragement may be the most important part."

The next week Mrs. Friedman and her son drove back toward the intersection with lunch in hand and asked the man on the corner how he was feeling. As the man explained to them, he had been to the emergency room for the pain he had been suffering. Mrs. Friedman noticed something for the first time. Scribbled at the bottom of his cardboard sign were the words, "Thank you, Mike."
"Now I knew his name.’Mike, we won't be coming this way for a few weeks. Take care of yourself.' Mike wished my son a good time at camp, and then the light changed. We'd like to think that the hot food and the kind words we gave Mike had a value beyond the dollars and the time it cost to give them, but we do know that what we learned from the encounter with Mike had a far greater value. Thank you, Mike."

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” says the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, “for by doing that some have entertained Angles without knowing it.” I know I don’t have the insight to discern the bums from the Angels. I pray that God might lead us, in community to a closer understanding of how we might be better followers of this one we claim as our savior, this Jesus who calls us to open our banquet tables to a different seating arrangement than we have ever known before.

Amen.

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost – Year C Proper 16 (RCL) 2010
Isaiah 58: 9b – 14; Psalm 103: 1 – 8; Hebrews 12: 18 – 29; Luke 13: 10 – 17
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, August 22, 2010

AN ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP

Let us pray: Holy and loving God we are gathered this day to bring before your presence the prayers and praises of your people. We look to offer in our worship the glory and honor; the might and power of your Word and Sacrament as a means of maintaining our relationship with you through your Holy One, our Savior Jesus the Christ. In the words that we pray and the actions that we offer we ask that you receive our feeble attempts at pleasing your mighty presence in the holy places where we have found our connection with you. Be among us this day, O God – and every day as we seek to serve you in all the holy places of our loves and lives. Amen.

(SUNG) O BLESS THE LORD MY SOUL, HIS GRACE TO THEE PROCLAIM
AND ALL THAT IS WITHIN ME JOIN TO BLESS HIS HOLY NAME.
O YEAH.

We are coming to the end of the summer season – and I know that I always approach that reality with a mix of sadness and joy. Sadness to witness the shortening length of daylight as it ever so slowly slips from our western skies; sadness to loose the fullness of bloom and blossom in the earth and sadness to hear the fading of the children’s excitement as the carefree boredom of summer days marches toward the structure and discipline of the return to classrooms and soccer practices. In this mix of sadness comes the joy of remembering the glory of a crisp fall morning; the excitement of potential new friends and adventures to be had in the starting of a new school year and in the comfort of returning faces in the routines of our ordinary lives. All of this mixture of joy and sadness is reflected in the stories from our sacred scriptures that we encounter on this thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

We start with a writing from Third Isaiah – this is the prophet as we love and remember; giving us the hope and promise of renewed relationship with God if we but turn our hearts and forsake our rebellion against God’s mercy and grace. If we remove the pointing of the finger (he did it not me; look at what they did), the speaking of evil (gossip and betrayal of confidences) – if we offer our food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted as this Parish family has faithfully done for many years on Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings – and yet God would ask us to do more; to stretch ourselves into an understanding of making this commitment part of the very nature of our relationships with God and with each other; then our light shall rise in the darkness and our gloom be like the noonday. What good news is that to carry with us into the lengthening dark of our Pacific Northwest autumn. The poetry of the writer is magnificent in description of the relationship between God and God’s people. “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your need in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” Think of what those words must have envisioned to a desert people – to a nation that longed for its land of Milk and Honey as it had been promised of old! All that Yahweh would ask is that God’s people honor the Sabbath covenant – that on God’s Holy day we refrain from our own interests and that we call the Sabbath a delight and the Holy Day of the Lord honorable. That is, if our worship on God’s Holy Day might give delight to God and to us as we gather to hear God’s word and share God’s Sacrament with all who seek nourishment at God’s Holy Table.

(SUNG) O BLESS THE LORD MY SOUL, HIS MERCIES BEAR IN MIND
FORGET NOT ALL HIS BENEFITS – THE LORD TO THEE IS KIND.

This particular version of the musical setting of the hundred and third Psalm is taken from Stephen Schwartz setting for the Off Broadway Musical Godspell. In my early twenties this musical was a major part of my life – I was in a long running production at a regional theater and this adaptation of the author of Matthew’s Gospel that established a pop culture Iconic Christ who sang and danced his way into the hearts of young people was my worship at an age where I was rebelling against the structures of my parents Church as was my entire generation. I can remember few more profound or deeply personal connections with God in Worship than I experienced on the stage as we joined in the distribution of communion with a Dixie cup for chalice; or as we gently lifted the symbolically crucified body of the actor portraying Jesus and carried him in sorrowful procession and chanted:

(SUNG) LONG LIVE GOD – LONG LIVE GOD. LONG LIVE GOD, LONG
LIVE GOD.

I think that the point which our generation looked to make with the language of the stage and movie musical versions of Godspell and say, Jesus Christ Superstar, was that Worship needed to be a profound and deeply personal connection between God and those who gather to worship that God. That same longing to make our worship reflect the reality of our lives is continued in this generation’s adaptation of the music of Bono incorporated in many places as an “U2charist”. In the Christian tradition, especially of the more “liturgical” churches our tendency is sometimes to worship our worship rather than to worship our God. I do not mean to imply that the deep and ancient rituals and rites of the Church which form our style of liturgical expression and therefore a major piece of our Sunday worship can simply be dismissed as irrelevant to a modern culture. In our pericope from the sermonic text addressed to the Hebrews the author speaks to that most fundamental of our connections with the worship of God and our history of how that has been lived out. The author uses the contrasting images of the Mountain of mystery and danger (that of Mount Sinai and its ancient connection with the people of Israel) verses the mountain of calm and peace which is Mount Zion and represents God’s connection with an availability and approachability that is called a heavenly Jerusalem where humanity might dwell with divinity as a result of the presence and ministry of the Christ who reconciled us to be once again God’s chosen people. This is how the author expresses God’s Kindom that cannot be shaken and so we give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.

In these longer and quieter days of summer our Worship as community has been focused in what some of us call Rite III or what the Church calls the “Supplemental Liturgical Materials” which are found in the texts of our prayers and responses and often call us up short when we look to pray from our memories rather than reading the revised texts with their changes. Would you take your bulletin that provides those prayers and responses out for me right now? If you take the time to peruse the prayers and responses in these liturgical materials you might notice subtle differences from our more traditional “contemporary” prayers in Rite II from the Book of Common Prayer. Depending on one’s “liturgical purity level” these differences may not seem all that “subtle” and can often seem “jarring” to our ears which are used to the more “formal” language of our Tudor English forebears who crafted the original language of our Common Prayer in the 16th Century. These “supplemental liturgical materials”, including three alternate Eucharistic Prayers (of which we are using prayers 1 and 3 this summer) which further “contemporize” the language and imagery of God’s saving work in humanity have been part of our formal “approved” worship since 1991. In this reworking of the liturgical materials approved by General Convention, there is also some “reworking” of the more traditional language of the Nicene Creed which we use each Sunday to make our profession of faith as a gathered community. Look at the text of that Creed found on page six. In the third Paragraph beginning with the statement “We believe in the Holy Spirit” you might notice in the next sentence something which has been “tripping” people up all summer – the text reads “who proceeds from the Father,” and most of us, because of years of conditioned response in prayer will continue that sentence with “and the Son.” Now at this point I could launch into a 45-minute presentation on the wars and schisms that have been fought around the “filioque” clause. This is an obscure and historic disagreement in Trinitarian theology, which threatened and actually contributed to the brake in the unity of God’s Church between its Roman or Latin branch and its Eastern or “Orthodox” branch in the year 1054. The papal legate acting on behalf of Pope Leo III excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople (Michael Cerularius), who in response excommunicated the Pope’s legate sent to negotiate a settlement between the two leaders. The decision by our Standing Liturgical Committee to drop the clause from this version of the Creed was an attempt to offer a gesture of reconciliation to our Orthodox sisters and brothers – and as I’m sure most of you would agree probably matters little to the God who hears our prayers. All of this “history” is merely to point out that how we “structure” and craft a language around our Worship of God is of profound importance in our tradition and “liturgical” heritage – and actually of little importance to an “acceptable worship” which reverently reflects our desire to offer praise and thanksgiving (or Eucharist from the Greek) to our God and the God of our Ancestors, both Hebrew and Greek.

The author of Luke’s Gospel carries the theme of the day into the synagogue worship of Jesus’ time. The focus is placed in this story on the hypocrisy of the legalistic interpretations of the laws surrounding what it means to honor the Sabbath. The leader of the synagogue challenges Jesus’ healing ministry by complaining that the healing act itself is a violation of the Sabbath. Jesus, who in typical fashion is able to dismiss the argument of the opponents and shame them into silence, decries this small minded and narrow interpretation of the day of the Lord. Then we are told by the author that the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that Jesus was doing. This adulation, as we well know, will not last forever and the synagogue leaders will only lie in wait for their moment to strike back at this radical rabbi and exact their revenge; but that story will come later in our liturgical cycle. For now it is perhaps best for us to reflect on what our worship is and what our worship isn’t. In the traditions of our founders in the faith a great effort was struck to balance those portions of our worship experience that might maintain the mystery present in the very act of approaching God’s Holy presence – with a genuine need to make that encounter genuine and personal by hearing the words in the language which was spoken by the faithful. That language, so beautifully crafted and poetic as it is – must continually be adapted so that we speak to God and allow God to speak us in ways that communicate where the divine mystery can lead us as faithful followers of the Word – made flesh who dwells among us.

Amen.

Eleventh and Twelfth Sundays after Pentecost

The Priest in Charge is away on Vacation for the next two weeks. Upon my return I will next preach on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. I will try and "update" this blog at that time and stay faithful to that process going forward. However, as "mi sainted irish mither (may she rest in peace) used to say; the road to hel* is paved with good intentions."