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."

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – Year C Proper 13 (RCL) 2010
Hosea 11: 1 – 11; Psalm 107: 1 – 9, 43; Colossians 3: 1 – 11; Luke 12: 13 – 21
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, August 1, 2010

PENNY WISE AND POUND FOOLISH

Let us pray: Mighty God we gather in this “sanctuary” and holy space to lift our voices in prayer and song as your creation groans under the weight of our selfishness and neglect of all that has been so freely given to us. Keep us mindful this and every day of our call to be good stewards of the Earth and protectors of all who dwell upon her face. Keep us under your constant care and help us to learn how to share our abundant blessings with all of your creation and created, to the honor and glory of Your Name. Amen.

(SUNG) FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH, FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE
SKIES, FOR THE LOVE WHICH FROM OUR BIRTH OVER AND
AROUND US LIES, CHRIST OUR GOD, TO THEE WE RAISE
THIS OUR HYMN OF GRATEFUL PRAISE.

I would invite those of you who have not had the opportunity, to join with us some Sunday afternoon as we celebrate Communion in the Park, which is an outreach ministry of this parish community as well as several other denominational organizations in the City. This celebration of liturgy under the canopy of trees and foliage in the warmth of our mid summer season is fast becoming an important ministry in the life of our faith community. We are indeed blessed with a pastoral setting among the granite monuments dedicated to peace in the quietness of the south park blocks of Portland, where we can take advantage of the beauty of creation to turn our hearts and spirits toward the glory of God so visible in the world around us. This ministry intentionally focuses a spiritual encounter in the great outdoors with a simple service of Gospel and communion. Accompanied by a Celtic harp in easy to remember hymns and chants we gather in the glory of God’s creation raising our voices in prayer and praise. God has been most cooperative in the weather department over the past few weeks as we have shared the Good News with friends and strangers; neighbors and visitors from all walks and conditions of life. I think this is a wonderful reflection of what the early Christian community might have experienced as they looked to break bread and spread the message of the risen Christ. In the middle of a bustling and busy metropolitan neighborhood; a moment taken to listen to the lilting strings of a harp and whisper a prayer of need or thanksgiving is a welcome blessing for all who experience it.

In our readings from the sacred scriptures assigned in the lectionary for this tenth Sunday after Pentecost a theme is woven that can be visioned as an invitation to place God at the center of our lives, rather than follow our own human desires and wills. The minor prophet Hosea speaks God’s words to an Israel which has forgotten its calling to be the people of the covenant and conveys imagery which invites a reconnection with a compassionate and caring Creator whose faithfulness is never ending. Whenever I have had the opportunity to visit some of the great Gothic cathedrals in the United States, such as St. John the Divine in Manhattan or the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., – as I pass through the great main doors my attention is immediately and inevitably drawn upward! Upon entry to these great edifices, we often become aware of a change within ourselves of a lifting of our spirits and a widening of our visions to match the glory of the holy space in which we find ourselves. In the section of the letter to the early Christian community at Colossae, which we heard this morning, I experience that same moment when the author writes – “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…set your minds on things that are above.” Paul encourages the believers to lift their hearts and their lives to the things that are above, and not to the things that are of this earth, for it is in their death to self and selfish things that they can be resurrected to new life revealed in the Christ.

(SUNG) FOR THE BEAUTY OF EACH HOUR OF THE DAY AND OF THE
NIGHT, HILL AND VALE AND TREE AND FLOWER, SUN AND
MOON, AND STARS OF LIGHT, CHRIST OUR GOD, TO THEE
WE RAISE THIS OUT HYMN OF GRATEFUL PRAISE.

In our story from the Gospel text this morning, the author of Luke/Acts tells of a fellow in the crowd who demands of Jesus a judgment in a family inheritance matter. Jesus declines to be drawn into the matter, and instead uses the opportunity to address the crowd with a parable that is unique to the Luke/Acts Gospel narrative. Though the beginning of our Gospel text this morning might appear to us as brusque – and the intention of the fellow who asks Jesus to intervene in the matter of family inheritance rather presumptuous, we should remember that it would have been perfectly proper behavior in the context of our reading this morning for someone to ask for interpretation of civil law of a learned rabbi and to seek assistance in arbitrating a family matter. This, however, was not the practice of this rabbi and Jesus’ response – “friend, who sent me to be a judge or arbitrator over you” allows the rabbi to move the conversation and glean a “teaching moment” from it. Jesus tells the story, the parable, of the greedy rich man whose land produced abundantly. There is essentially no reason to believe that the man in the parable whom Jesus defines as a “fool” came into the good fortune and wealth of his life from anything other than good hard work; determination and a sound financial plan for the future that might provide for his old age and retirement. Yet Jesus calls him a “fool”, and notes that he is rich only toward himself and not toward God. The man seems to talk only to himself and in his self-absorption lays his foolishness. He tends to believe that his possessions and material wealth will provide for his well being and lacks any understanding that the bounty which has created his wealth comes from God, and that God expects that something more be done with it than merely pilling it up in hopes of keeping it for a rainy day. This man, whom we might refer to as a prudent businessman – Jesus calls a “fool”. It continually comes as a shock to us when we realize that Jesus looks at things differently than we look at things. We tend to honor those people who gain the whole world, those who seem wise enough to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power by their ingenuity and hard work – we constantly glorify them in our yearly roundups of the most successful, the most famous and the most beautiful. When the disastrous performance of the Chief Operating Officer of British Petroleum hit in the questioning before a congressional panel, the COO of BP was called “a fine Christian man,” by his Vicar. In an article in the New York Times the following is quoted from a self identified entrepreneurial Millionaire: "I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard. But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore." What do we suppose Jesus would have called this greedy man? Yet Jesus’ ideas around this accumulation of wealth are pretty clear. Note that in the three lines of the rich man’s monologue, the word “I’ is used six times, and the word “my” five. No thought is given to how others might have contributed to his success. What about a possible “bonus” to the hired hands who assisted? No mention of thanksgiving is offered for the contributions of others, or for the blessings from God. The difficulty for the man in this parable is not wealth and possessions – but rather the self centered and selfish use of that wealth.

(SUNG) FOR THE JOY OF EAR AND EYE, FOR THE HEART AND MIND’S
DELIGHT, FOR THE MYSTIC HARMONY LINKING SENSE TO
SOUND AND SIGHT, CHRIST OUR GOD TO THEE WE RAISE
THIS OUR HYMN OF GRATEFUL PRAISE.

Part of the challenge for us in this parable is that we tend to distance ourselves from the central character. The tendency is for us to identify the wealthy foolish man as some kind of ultra-rich Phil Knight or Donald Trump type figure. The truth is that he’s not, he’s pretty much the successful, middle class worker with a livable working wage and a comfortable 401K and retirement package. The biggest challenge here is to find ourselves in the problem of Jesus’ parable. The abundance of possessions is so subtle and culturally acceptable that it goes largely unnoticed. The challenge of this story is that none of us is going to think that it applies to us. I found myself in the same pitfall upon first reading it – I don’t have an overabundance of material possessions so that I would have to tear down my barn and build bigger ones just to store them – and then I gave thought to the possibly twenty pairs of pants which hang in my clothes closet that I haven’t worn in how many years? Have you noticed the number of “self storage” sites that have sprung up around us in the past ten years? If we were to compare ourselves and our culture with say the United Kingdom and Australia we have 10 times as much self-storage space as they do. How many times do we envy the newer car or bigger house in the neighborhood, when we are already blessed beyond our needs with the ones that we have? This is what Jesus is warning us against by saying, “be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” Jesus knows that our appetites for “more” can be very subtle and so warns us to be intentional in looking out for those pitfalls. The problem for the rich fool in this parable is not that he was wealthy or had a great harvest. The problem is that he didn’t understand the spiritual reality behind all that he had. Our Christian ethics and responsibilities around material possessions and wealth are pretty clear: we are given so that we might give back; we are blessed so that we might be a blessing; we are loved so that we might love; we are reconciled to God so that we might be reconcilers to each other; we are forgiven so that we might forgive.

(SUNG) FOR THE JOY OF HUMAN LOVE, BROTHER, SISTER, PARENT,
CHILD, FRINDS ON EARTH, AND FRIENDS ABOVE, FOR ALL
GENTLE THOUGHTS AND MILD, CHRIST OUR GOD, TO THEE
WE RAISE THIS OUR HUMN OF GRATEFUL PRAISE.

Many of us have become aware in the past decade of our need to “live simply, that others might simply live.” The subtle lure and cunning infiltration of a consumerist society threatens to keep us blinded to the gospel truth that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” I think we all know ways in which we might “cull” some of the abundance of “things” in our possession and share them with others who might have need of them. One way is to seriously look at what we “have” and compare it with what we “need” and make the adjustments in our own evaluation of how we might be builders of bigger barns rather than distributors of blessings that have been given to us and therefore should be used to bless those who are in greater need. Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutièrrez writes: “Human beings fully realize themselves in solidarity with others. On the contrary, they are diminished as persons and as believers if their purposes do not go beyond self-satisfaction. Striving for the kingdom and welcoming it liberate us from a paltry and diminished worldview and allow us to journey with ease in the realm of love and generosity. ” From Gustavo’s lips to God’s ears, may it be so for us in this place in God’s Kindom.

Amen.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Today's sermon was preached by The Rev. Jim Corbett, retired priest of the Diocese of Los Angeles who was visiting our parish community and considering allignment as "Associate Clergy".

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – Year C Proper 11 (RCL) 2010
Genesis 18: 1 – 10a, Psalm 15, Colossians 1: 15 – 28, Luke 10: 38 – 42
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish Portland, OR
Sunday, July 18, 2010

BLESS THIS MESS

Let us pray: Gentle and patient Jesus you are always calling us to new visions of our relationship with you and with others. Help us to value the learning’s from our sacred stories and keep our hearts and minds open to new ways in which we might find your truth. In our eagerness to be of service to others, help us to remember to take the time first to nourish our spirits with your Word and our hungry hearts with your Sacrament, which give us all that we need to serve you and others in your name. Amen.

(SUNG) TAKE MY LIFE, AND LET IT BE CONSECRATED, LORD TO
THEE; TAKE MY MOMENTS AND MY DAYS, LET THEM FLOW IN
CEASELESS PRAISE.

Do you remember the promises around the benefits of the new age of technology? The gadgets and inventions of the guru’s of efficiency and organization promised us a “paperless” office; more time for leisure and learning as a result of less time needed for the mundane tasks of our work and household routines. For me these promises have yet to be fulfilled. As I spend more and more time retrieving voicemails and emails; surfing more websites for biblical commentary and sermon preparation resources; catching up with friends and family via Facebook and plugging and unplugging my cell phone and laptop from their chargers, I find myself with less and less time to sit back and reap the benefits of all this freedom the tools were designed to give me. The reality of our lives in the consumer conscious culture of the early part of the twenty first century is that we are all far too busy keeping up with the technology of our society to have any time to be able to engage with the deeper longings of our souls. We often long to simply “unplug” the complexity of our lives so that we might be able to focus on those deeper moments of connection with our spiritual selves. The alarm clock rings and we are off – filling our days with the necessities of work and family responsibility and rarely having the chance to whisper a word of prayer that we might hear God’s voice asking us to find some time for meditation and reflection. We have been dragged into our society’s compulsion to constantly produce more and more “stuff” so that the god of consumption might better be served and reward us with more and more “things” to help distract us from the ever widening gulf between the “haves” and the “have nots”.

Into this whirlwind of busyness and production – the never-ending cycle of consume and replace – comes our Gospel lesson this morning of the story of Martha and Mary. Our busy, busy lives are modeled in the activity and preparation which consumes the host, Martha – who is, after all only trying to carry out the duties of hospitality which are of paramount importance in her culture and society. Jesus enters “a certain village” un-named in this author’s account but from the other Synoptic accounts we know the town to be “Bethany” which is about 2 miles from the big city – Jerusalem. Note that the author of Luke/Acts tells us that Martha welcomed Jesus into “her home.” Once again we will be standing at the edges of “societal propriety”. Women of that culture, first of all, rarely owned a home – and if they did would never have looked to entertain a single male (and possibly his entourage of disciples and followers) without considering the possibility of gossip and scandal which might have resulted. None of that is recounted in our narrative; and so we might assume that Martha was a person of some means and social status who welcomes Jesus into her house that it might become a place of refuge and rest before the final journey toward Jerusalem. This Martha is no “shrinking violet” who serves merely as a device for the plot as a contrast to her sister Mary. This is a female “head of household” who looks to welcome the rabbi and healer into her home and honor his presence with them by fulfilling her role as “diakonos” or servant to the hospitality codes of her culture.

(SUNG) TAKE MY HANDS AND LET THEM MOVE AT THE IMPULSE OF
THY LOVE, TAKE MY HEART, IT IS THINE OWN; IT SHALL BE
THY ROYAL THRONE.

This code of hospitality and the responsibility to entertain and provide for the needs of the traveling visitor is laid out clearly in the story from the Genesis account of Abraham’s encounter with the three mysterious “visitors” who appear before his tent by the Oaks of Mamre. This encounter serves as a wonderful model for the idea of taking to heart the concept of providing for the stranger among us. In the desert encounter with the three men, one of whom is the Lord God, Abraham and Sarah receive in return for their faithfulness, God’s continued promise to give them a Son who will be the fulfillment of the Covenantal promise. In the Lukan account, once again the Lord God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, visits God’s people prior to the fulfillment of the new Covenantal promise fulfilled in God’s son, Jesus and the ultimate sacrifice made for humanity upon the cross at Jerusalem. The care and nurture of the visitor; the fulfillment of the hospitality code of her society and the personal connection between Martha, Mary and Jesus make for no light “dismissal” of the importance which Martha would have placed upon her welcome of her guest. She would have been frantically going about the business of making her home a haven of rest and peace for the road weary Rabbi. Contrasting Martha’s responsible role as host and head of household – is her sister Mary who also breaks with the cultural expectations of her society and takes a position at the feet of the teacher to listen to his words. This would definitely have been a role taken by the male disciples of that culture and was an accepted act of respect and deference given to a person of influence and importance by those who looked to learn from the wisdom and insight of the teacher – but certainly not an accepted role for a female of that time and culture. Once again, we find Jesus smashing the norms of his society and culture in order to break through with the radical gospel message of God’s Kindom come among us.

We have expectations of ourselves, and we have expectations of our God and how that relationship works between us. We agree to take on the responsibilities of our lives, to do the job, to earn the rewards of our work well done – and when we look for our final accounting with our creator we hope to hear, “well done, good and faithful servant.” Yet in today’s Gospel story we want to identify with Martha, we want to say, “Lord, why is it that we always have to do all the work – could you please point out to our wives, or our husbands or our children that everyone is expected to do their fair share and no one gets to sit around and daydream about your Word while the rest of us are trying to simply do the things that must be done?” And Jesus smiles and reminds us that if all we do is do, do, do – all we get is dodo. Jesus points out that we are too often distracted by the many “things” which we know have to get done and too often we fail to take the opportunity to sit at Christ’s feet and listen to what is being said in the Word made flesh who dwells among us.

(SUNG) TAKE MY VOICE AND LET ME SING ALWAYS, ONLY, FOR
MY KING; TAKE MY INTELLECT, AND USE EVERY POWER AS
THOU SHALT CHOOSE.

The events of today’s Gospel lesson immediately follow those that we read last week, in which Jesus compels the inquiring young lawyer after telling him the story of the Good Samaritan, to “go and do likewise”. It is a command from our Rabbi to be disciples of action; to be doers of the Word rather than merely hearer’s. The message from the story of Martha and Mary appears to be the exact opposite – in this story Mary is commended for her faithfulness in being at the feet of the teacher and listening; while Martha is chastised for her action, her busyness and her distraction by “things”. That response is often difficult for some of us who are Martha’s. Some of us are doers and preparer’s and the one who is always to be counted on to make sure that everyone has everything that they need – who are righteously justified when we take umbrage that others are not doing their fair share! Because, after all God which is it? Are we to be doers of the Word (“go and do likewise”) or are we to be hearers of the Word (“Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken from her”)? Is it black, or is it white? Is it either or is it or? Oftentimes to our annoyance and consternation Jesus’ response is; “it’s shades of grey”; Jesus’ response is, “it’s both and”.

(SUNG) TAKE MY WILL AND MAKE IT THINE, IT SHALL BE NO LONGER
MINE. TAKE MY SELF, AND I WILL BE EVER, ONLY, ALL FOR
THEE.

The late Henri Nouwen, who sparked much energy and challenge in our exploration of his short work, The Wounded Healer - had this to say about our “busyness”. He was talking about the busyness of Christmas, but it could have just as well been about the busyness of Fourth of July or any other “normal” day in our busy schedules. He said: “I often think, a life is like a day, it goes by so fast. If I am so careless with my days, how can I be careful with my life? In many ways we are like the busy person who walks up to a precious flower and says, ‘what for God’s sake are you doing here? Can’t you get busy someway?’ And then finds themselves unable to understand the flower’s response; ‘I am sorry sir, but I am just here to be beautiful.’ Nouwen asks, “How can we also come to this wisdom of the flower that being is more important than doing?”

Part of the lesson to be gleaned from God’s Good News of this day is of the importance of being able to strike that balance between our call to be Disciples of action and our invitation to be Disciples of discernment and introspection. I offer you my mantra of calming when I become too deeply embroiled in the activity of my life – when I become too cluttered with the noise of the committee that often takes up residence in my head, I use this simple phrase from the 46th Psalm and pray it backward:

Be still then and know that I am God
Be still then and know that I am
Be still then and know that I
Be still then and know that
Be still then and know
Be still then and
Be still then
Be still
Be.

Amen.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 10 Year C (RCL) 2010
Deut. 30: 9 – 14; Psalm 25: 1 – 9; Colossians 1: 1 – 14; Luke 10: 25 – 37
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, July 11, 2010

“WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR”

Let us pray: God of our ancestors and of our children’s children; we have long struggled as you’re chosen to know who you call us to love as our neighbor. There are so many who claim our love in a world that has such need. Guide us to a right understanding of your commandment to love them as we love ourselves. Turn our hearts to know that the commandments that you call us to are not beyond our capabilities to obey. Widen our narrowness of heart, mind and spirit so that we might become the embodiment of your Word, which is very near to us. May we who gather in your temple be fed by your Word and Sacrament and go out to become food for our neighbors. Amen.

(SUNG) JESU, JESU FILL US WITH YOUR LOVE,
SHOW US HOW TO SERVE
THE NEIGHBORS WE HAVE FROM YOU

Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. Barukh sheim k'vod malkhuto l'olam va'ed. V'ahav'ta eit Adonai Elohekha b'khol l'vav'kha uv'khol naf'sh'kha uv'khol m'odekha. “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” These are words of prayer, which are taken from the Hebrew book of Deuteronomy (6: 4 – 9) and referred to, by the first word of the prayer as the “shemah”. It is considered the most important prayer in Judaism and its twice-daily recitation is a “mitzvah” or religious commandment. In a religion and culture dominated by law and commandment – this prayer would be as familiar to an observant Jew as “for thine is the Kindom and the power and the Glory, forever and ever” would be to observant protestant Christian. The prayer would continue with further wording from the 11th Chapter, verses 13-21 and would conclude with text from the Book of Numbers 15: 37 – 41. The remainder of the prayer commands that the words be taught to the children; that they be prayed when rising up or lying down and written on the doorposts of the house and gates. It tells of the rewards that will come from God for living out these commandments – and conversely gives an admonition about failing to heed these commands lest we arouse the wrath of God.

(SUNG) KNEELS AT THE FEET OF HIS FRIENDS, SILENTLY
WASHES THEIR FEET, MASTER WHO ACTS AS A SLAVE
TO THEM. JESU, JESU FILL US WITH YOUR LOVE, SHOW US HOW TO SERVE THE NEIGHBORS WE HAVE FROM YOU.

My point in sharing the text and the message of the “shemah” with you this morning is that the Lawyer in today’s story from the Author of Luke/Acts account knew already the answers to his questions before he asked them. Jesus was aware of this and calls this character on his stuff! A “lawyer” from the time and culture of this story would have been a lawyer of the Talmud – of the law of the Hebrew people handed down to them from the Prophets. This lawyer would have learned the “shemah” at his father’s knee – able to recite it before he even knew what it meant or what it commanded. Jesus knew this law just as well and was not interested in being dragged into a rabbinical argument about the finer points. So, Jesus asks the lawyer to tell what he interprets to be necessary to inherit eternal life. The lawyer recites the 3rd line of the “shemah” – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and will all your mind,” and then adds a command from the Levitical Code – “and your neighbor as yourself.” Ah, here comes the “twist” in the story. Jesus tells the man – your right, you have the right answer – do this and you will live. Not willing to leave well enough alone – the lawyer presses on – and who is my neighbor? Here is the deep question that lies at the heart of our relationship with God and with each other. Who is it that God commands me to love; who is it that God loves? Who is it that is worthy of my time, my money and my energy? The same question, put in its reverse leaves an interesting conundrum – who is it that God commands me not to love; who is it that God does not love?

Jesus’ response to that questions leads to the story of the Samaritan who was traveling down from Jerusalem to Jericho. We are all familiar with this story, which appears only in the Luke/Acts account. We call the story the “good Samaritan” though Jesus never refers to it by this title; and the very statement would have been an oxymoron to the ears of those in Jesus’ time who heard it – “good” and “Samaritan” simply did not appear in the same sentence. We’ve explored the history of the Hebrew and Samaritan peoples before; and we know that Samaritan’s were not beloved of the Jewish people to put it politely. The true “twist” within the story though is the introduction of the “hero” being a Samaritan. The priest was of the highest social status, followed by the member of the tribe of Levi – and one would have expected in the natural progression of the “characters” in the story that the third person would have been a faithful member of one of the other tribes of Israel. This is where Jesus broadens the scope of inclusion to dare and suggest that the favor of God – and the example of hospitality and Godly concern come from the hands of a Samaritan. That, however, is Jesus’ point. That was always Jesus’ point – to delight in the despised; to welcome the wretched to sanctify the sinner. The Samaritan in Jesus’ story does not stop to calculate the costs and risks associated with helping the injured person who needed assistance. The Samaritan does not have an internal debate about what his feelings tell him he should do; the Samaritan doesn’t stop to consider what he thinks he should do – the Samaritan simply takes the action and does what he and everybody else who passed by knows should be done. I was struck earlier this week by a comment which I read from a story in the Book titled Alcoholics Anonymous (which we lovingly refer to as “the big book” and reads: “You explained the Big Book had no chapters titled “Into Thinking” or “Into Feeling” – only “Into Action.” When Jesus asks the lawyer who of the characters in the story was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers – the lawyer, unable to even speak the name of his perceived “enemy” says “The one who showed him mercy”. Jesus, who had ample opportunity at this point to chide, deride or scold simply says – “Go and do likewise.”

SUNG) NEIGHBORS ARE RICH AND POOR
NEIGHBORS ARE BLACK AND WHITE
NEIGHBORS ARE NEAR BY AND FAR AWAY.

JESU, JESU FILL US WITH YOUR LOVE,
SHOW US HOW TO SERVE
THE NEIGHBORS WE HAVE FROM YOU

Despite what we know to be the “right” thing to do; despite the example we have in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and the lessons taught to the disciples and passed down to us in the gospel stories we often fail to live up to this call to “Go and do likewise.” I remember the incident from my youth of Kitty Genovese. Do you remember it? It led to a great national ethical discussion. Kitty Genovese was a young woman in New York who, one on early spring evening in 1964 was raped, stabbed repeatedly, and left bleeding in a stairwell in the Borough of Queens in New York City. That’s how horrible crimes occur. But this terrible crime was notable because it occurred within the full hearing of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors. Over a period of about 45 minutes, Ms. Genovese screamed, cried out for help, and pled for someone to intervene. In the investigation afterwards, it was revealed that a least a dozen of her neighbors actually heard her cries for help. And no one did anything. Many of us know, instinctively, even without having to think about it, what we ought to do, but doing what we ought to do is another issue.

“Good Samaritan” stories abound in our own culture and the phrase has even been borrowed by to describe certain behaviors. “Good Samaritan Laws” exempt those who might stop to help an injured person, and by their actions cause further injury or death to the person – and frees them from any “liability”. A modern day “Good Samaritan” story evolved just about a year ago on the upper slopes of Mt. Everest. On the morning of May 26, less than 1,000 feet from the summit, American guide Daniel Mazur abandoned his own climb toward the top of the world to save another climber who had been left for dead by his own team. Despite the fact that Mazur’s decision to aid the fallen mountaineer meant that none of his group, which included two paying clients (at $60,000/person) would make it to the summit, Mazur’s action acknowledged who his neighbor was. The fallen climber was Australian Lincoln Hall, who had succumbed to the oxygen-poor altitude the previous night and become desperately ill. The two guides with him tried to help, but they eventually had to leave to save themselves. Hall was declared dead, but when Mazur and his team found him the next morning, he was sitting up, though disoriented. Mazur’s team gave him emergency assistance and set to work to bring him down the mountain. They also radioed for help, but by the time others arrived to take over the rescue, Mazur’s group had expended too much energy at that life-sapping altitude to complete their own summit bid. While Mazur’s team was helping Hall, two Italian climbers passed by en route to the top, and Mazur asked them to assist. The pair claimed not to understand English and kept moving. Later, their claim was discovered not to be true. We may not claim that we don’t know who is our neighbor. We may not claim that we don’t understand the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves; for it is not a difficult concept and it is taught to most of us at our parent’s knee. What then is it that prevents us from doing that which we know to be the right thing? Ethicist’s and Moral Theologians have written volumes around the failure of humanity to do what it right toward our neighbor. In spite of our tendency to protect ourselves and “our kind” from the onslaughts and horrors of human behaviors – we know that our neighbors are Jews and Gypsies and Homosexual’s imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. We know that our neighbors are starving and malaria weakened refugees in Darfur. We know that our neighbors are hungry and homeless families in Lane County. We know what is the right thing to do. “Go and do likewise.”

(SUNG) NEIGHBORS ARE RICH AND POOR
NEIGHBORS ARE BLACK AND WHITE
NEIGHBORS ARE NEAR BY AND FAR AWAY.

JESU, JESU FILL US WITH YOUR LOVE,
SHOW US HOW TO SERVE
THE NEIGHBORS WE HAVE FROM YOU

Amen

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 9 Year C (RCL) 2010
2 Kings: 5: 1 - 14; Psalm 30: Galatians 6: 1 – 16; Luke 10: 1 – 11, 16 – 20
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, July 4, 2010

WHEN NUMBERS COUNT IN THE KINDOM OF GOD

Let us pray: Loving Jesus, we stand before you amazed that you have entrusted the continuing of your kindom among us to such an unprepared people as ourselves! Yet we are constantly aware that you have no hands in this world but our hands; no passion for justice but our passion – no children to be the daughters and sons of God but our children and our childlike spirits. Fill us with the power you gave to those who came before us so that we might continue the work of your kindom come – here on our earth as it is in your heaven. Grant us your Spirit to help us live out your call to spread the Good News here in this place, and especially outside of it. Amen.

(SUNG) CHILDREN GO WHERE I SEND THEE – HOW SHALL I SEND
THEE? I’M GONNA SEND THEE ONE BY ONE, ONE FOR THE
LITTLE BITTY BABY – BORN, BORN BORN IN BETHLEHEM.

Just a brief reminder that in the gloriously warming 80+ degree-days of July, Christmas is just around the corner! Actually today’s Gospel story of the sending forth of the 70 (or the 72 depending on your Bible translation) is a perfect chance to pick out anyone of dozens of “sending” hymns or songs which could help to illustrate the importance of the call to continue the work of spreading the Good News of God in Christ. This call is also referred to by that word which strikes fear deep into the heart of every good, quiet and decently ordered Episcopalian – EVANGELISM. That word comes from the Greek έϋαγγέλιον (transcribed as “euangelion”) which originally meant a reward for good news given to the messenger. It is also the word given by the Church to the four individuals credited with authorship of the canonical Gospels, i.e. evangelists – though, in reality the names of those evangelists are deeply in question by modern scriptural scholars. Expressed in its simplest form it denotes spreading of the good news – and perhaps in its most formal and frightening sense our vision of one who stands on street corners or travels from door to door with copies of the scriptural texts often used to promote conversion from non-believers and especially in the non-believers of “the one true way” that the particular evangelist subscribes to. A truly inspirational piece of learning that I picked up in my travels this week to the Episcopal Campus Minister’s Conference in Atlanta was a clarification that the keynote speaker, the Rev. Stan ?? highlighted and struck me deeply – especially in light of those who might use the bible and its verses as an instrument of judgment or condemnation; Stan said “the author tells us that the Word became flesh; and this is quite different than what most biblical fundamentalist espouse that the “text became flesh”. The reality is often that this “good news” is misused; and results in our discomfort and distrust of “teleevangelists” and fundamentalist “evangelicals” thus tainting our perceptions of the call to announce that the kindom of God is among us.

The joy and delight of the good news of God’s kindom is often lost in the zealous attempt to “bring the Gospel” to those who have yet to hear it, or for whatever reason have chosen not to accept it or, in fact, openly rejected it. I found the musings, meditations and actual work experiences of Rev. Stan to be deeply motivational and in many ways appropriate to the situation we find ourselves in here at St. Stephen’s in downtown Portland. In the weeks ahead I would like to share some of those thoughts with the vestry, leaders of our different ministries; and perhaps finally with the entire parish community to have a serious conversation of what our future might look like when we come to understand that our Parish is not those of us sitting in the pews here this morning; or even the sometimes full houses that we manage to garner at Christmas and Easter; but rather the city that surrounds us and all of the wounded souls in that city who are yearning for a way to connect on a real level to the good news of God in Christ Jesus, under the progressive vision of The Episcopal Church with all of its messiness and all of its beauty. Many of you, I am sure were caught up short by the visit of Harry the Homeless who arrived in your midst last Sunday to tell you what he might need in order to hear the Gospel as “Good News” in his life and the lives of those like him. This afternoon, as we recognize the birthday of our Nation and the principles to which she once stood – we have to ask the difficult questions around why nearly 60% of young African American Males are incarcerated or living in the deepest levels of poverty and unemployment. We need to ask the difficult questions of how we fix a broken immigration system in our heavily populated border states while honoring the dignity of every human being as we have promised to do in our covenant with God at Baptism. We need to ask the difficult questions of how we survive as a Parish Community in a world changing under our very feet and shifting to a “post Christian” mentality; while honoring the beauty; tradition and history of our beloved sacramental systems of worship. One of the ways we will attempt to do this is gathering later today at the Peace Chant between Clay and Market in the South Park Blocks to join with our neighbors; housed and un-housed; churched and un-churched; poor and wealthy, sick and healthy – a true representation of the Kindom of God made manifest among us, to break bread and share community in a new way. Ecumenical partners will join us, one of our preachers will be a seventy two year old transsexual evangelical Pentecostalist; and some folks will come and be fed; others will come and wander away; others will come looking for a hand out and still others will come looking for the Good News we claim to proclaim. We will try this my friends, and we will try a piece of “Kno” Theater written by our own beloved Deacon as the Liturgy of the Word at the 10:00 Service in two weeks; and we will try many other ideas some that will be a success and some that will not and as sure as God’s Holy Spirit is present among us whenever two or three of us gather in God’s name; that loving and Holy Spirit will show us the way we are to live out the call to spread the good news of the Kindom of God right here, and right now. Jesus, as the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophets – has now set his face toward Jerusalem and its final redemption in the act of supreme sacrifice and death – and ultimate triumph in Resurrection and new life to bring about the reign of God among mortals. It is the reality of this coming of the kindom of God which is at the root of the “evangelism” or good news reward that Jesus extends to those sent out in pairs to every town and place which he himself intended to go.

(SUNG) CHILDREN GO WHERE I SEND THEE, HOW SHALL I SEND
THEE? I’M GONNA SEND THEE TWO BY TWO – TWO FOR
PAUL AND SILAS, ONE FOR THE ITTY BITTY BABY WHO WAS
BORN, BORN BORN IN BETHLEHEM.

So here’s the good news (and trust me, it is good news despite what you might think) about our clear call from today’s Gospel story to be evangelists in Jesus’ name; we don’t have to do it alone; and we are given a clear set of instructions and suggestions for how to deal with success and failure as we meet them along the journey. The number chosen for this mission (seventy or seventy two, depending on sources) was not inconsequential or accidental. Numbers and numerolgy in the scriptural texts have fueled theories and interpretations for as long as humankind has been reading and interpreting them. Consider the propensity of the number 6 in today’s liturgy; The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the 6th Chapter of Galatians the first through the 16th verses and the 16th verse of the 10th Chapter of the author of Luke/Acts account of the Gospel which reads, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” In earlier accounts from the Hebrew scriptures (specifically the Book of Numbers) the great prophet Moses appoints 70 elders of Israel who are given a portion of God’s spirit and who, with this spirit, help Moses to lead God’s people. Whether Jesus meant to send out seventy or seventy two, the point is that in all of God’s power Jesus, much like Moses, graciously empowers a body of workers to join with him in ministry. As we know from the story of the Exodus, Moses had all sorts of difficulties with those who were appointed to help. They constantly rebelled, complained, misunderstood, and generally made a mess of things. When Jesus sends out those called in the story today, they “return with joy”. Jesus has dared to commision them to do the very same work that he does and they return filled with excitement and awe saying, “it works”. Truly this is, good news – an encouraging text meant to give a word to all of those who have been enlisted in helping Jesus spread the vision of God’s kindom come among us. We are those sent out with a sense of urgency and empowered by the Spirit to help declare the Good News of God in Christ – the incarnation of God made very flesh in Word and Sacrament, at this time and in this place as surely as it was in Bethlehem of Judea centuries ago. Jesus leads us out of all the captivities that enslave us and all the demons that possess us named conspicuous consumerism, alluring addiction, incipient imperialism greed grabbing capitalism or whatever you will call it.

When Jesus tells us that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” and asks us to pray and ask God to send out laborers into the harvest, this is not as was perpetuated in the Church of my youth simply a plea for more ordained priests to carry out the work of the institution. It is rather, a genuine call to each and every one of us here this morning, to carry out the continuation of Jesus’ earthly ministry in our lives, in God’s Church and in our world. Those of us who might be tempted to equate the call to “ministry” which is clearly laid out in the story of the sending of the seventy with “minister” and leaving that responsibility in the hands of the ordained clergy would do well to head the advice of Episcopal priest and noted author of among other titles Leaving Church in which she describes her agonizing decision to leave active parish ministry. Taylor passionately speaks of the need for the church to mean “the ministry of all baptized Christians” when we use the word minister. In her book, The Preaching Life, Taylor recounts an experience she had with a college graduate who spoke to her about his desire to be ordained. She describes an articulate and committed Christian who had been active in campus ministry and deeply influenced by the Episcopal chaplain at his school. She goes on to detail how she was perplexed as the young man described his “call” to ministry. He did not seem interested in serving a church, didn’t think he would like being held accountable to an Episcopal authority or denominational body and found no attraction to a ministry of the sacraments – although he did express an interest in being able to preach once a month or so. Barbara recounts the conversation thusly: “Then why do you want to be ordained? I asked him. He thought a while and finally said, ‘for the identity, I guess. So I could sit down next to someone on a bus who looked troubled and ask them how they were without them thinking I’m trying to hustle them. So I could walk up to someone on the street and do the same thing. So I could be up front about what I believe, in public as well as in private. So I would have the credentials to be the kind of Christian I want to be.’ His honesty was both disarming and disheartening. God help the church if clergy are the only Christians with ‘credentials’, and God help all those troubled people on the bus if they have to wait for an ordained person to come along before anyone speaks to them…In many ways, those who pursue ordination take the easy way out. They choose a prescribed role that seems to meet all the requirements, and take up fulltime residence in the church. They forego the hard work of straddling two different worlds, while those they serve have no such luxury. Those in the pulpit may know where they belong, but the people in the pews hold dual citizenship. Whey they come together as the church that is where they belong – in God’s country which is governed by love. But when they leave that place, they cross the border into another country governed by other, less forgiving laws – and they live there too.”

(SUNG) CHILDREN GO WHERE IS SEND THEE, HOW SHALL I SEND THEE

Hiring me on a half time basis as a professional minister to work among you does not free you from the Gospel imperative to go and live out your ministry in Christ’s name. It simply allows me to ask the difficult questions and help steer you in community to identify the work you already do as ministers of the Gospel and find ways to support you in that work. It allows you to feast at God’s table on Sunday and then carry that full spirit into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…(well you get the picture). As Barbara Brown Taylor probably knows, and I definitely know – one doesn’t find many ordained clergy riding buses to hear the cries of the troubled and offer them God’s peace and blessing. Jesus has to use you and your ministry to reach all those who clamor for meaning and gospel in their lives and invite them into this place, or into the South Park Blocks where they can be inspired, forgiven, nourished and encouraged to go forth and pass on what they have received. That is how the called are equipped to serve the world as servants of the Gospel, spreading the good news that God’s kindom is among us.

Amen.

Trinity Sunday Year C

The Deacon of our Parish, The Rev. Ken Arnold preached the sermon on Trinity Sunday. Isn't that what happens in every parish? One of the blessings of being the Priest in Charge is that I can palm off the Trinity Sunday sermon to my Deacon!

The Day of Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday – Year C (RCL) 2010
Genesis 11: 1 – 9; Psalm 104; Acts 2: 1 – 21; John 14: 8 – 17 [25 – 27]
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, May 23, 2010

HOMETOWN LOCAL VOICES – BIG CITY ETERNAL WORDS

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth you’re Spirit, and we shall be created – and you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit instructs the hearts of the faithful, grant by the light of that same Spirit we may truly wise and ever rejoice in Her consolations, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE CLEAR RUNNING WATER,
BLOWING TO GREATNESS THE TREES ON THE HILL,
SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE FINGER OF MORNING,
FILL THE EARTH, BRING IT TO BIRTH AND BLOW WHERE
YOU WILL. BLOW, BLOW, BLOW TILL I BE BUT BREATH OF
THE SPIRIT BLOWING IN ME.

I was traveling to some un-remembered city for yet another business appointment for the Fortune 500 Corporation in which I was a Human Resources manager. Air travel was an almost weekly requirement for my job and this jaunt to some un-remembered State (I think it was one of the square one’s, they change those around every four years you know and no one knows the difference) was from my home here in Portland where I had been living for about 3 years. As I sped down the airport corridor to meet the taxi at curbside, which would take me into the downtown area for my meeting, I heard two women in a conversational exchange from behind me. The one at a clearly audible level said to the other, “I don’t really have the time, but if you’ll sit down with me and have a cup of coffee we can try and talk it out, just the two of us.” Immediately I was at home, I knew these people, these were “my people” these were people who came from my neck of the woods and though I was living in the cosmopolitan city of Portland, OR I was still deep at my roots a Jersey boy. I’m sure you have all had a similar experience – one where you heard your own language in the midst of a foreign situation or place. Whether that is in another country where you were relieved and thrilled to hear your native tongue being spoken by a store clerk or restaurant server and knew that you could breath just a little easier – or hearing your native “dialect” or “accent” in a part of this country where you would not expect to hear it and instantly feeling a little rush of familiarity and relief. This is something of what those 3000 gathered in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost Sunday experienced and it marked the power of God’s Holy Spirit in their lives and their Church and would change them forever. That same Holy Spirit continues to speak in the myriad of voices in our Church and it has – and will continue to change us forever.

Into the life, mystery and majesty of that Church today we call down God’s Holy Spirit to fill the hearts of each of us who have gathered here to worship and work; to minister as choir or cook – reader or greeter in order to make this place in God’s Kindom at the corner of 13th and Clay a place of healing and prayer for those who are the baptized children of God looking to discover what that God is calling us to do as disciples of the 21st century. What we will do today, as we renew our commitments made in the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, is unchangeable for the remainder of the earthly life of Christ’s Church. The Book of Common Prayer says that the bond, which God establishes with us in Baptism, is indissoluble. The Apostle Paul writes in a letter to the early Christian community at Rome that, “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” What that means for those of us who are less familiar with Church lingo, is that no one – at any time, or for any reason can take away the effects of this sacramental action that we received and remember today and in which we each were indelibly marked as Christ’s own, forever. The Holy Spirit whose coming we recount on this festival day will fill our hearts and minds and souls and claim each of us as a beloved child in whom God is well pleased. That is pretty powerful stuff – So, we take on a deep and important task this day as we remember the coming of God’s Holy Spirit to the first church meetin’ and we welcome the coming of that same Holy Spirit into our Church meeting and vow to support each other as God’s saints sharing in God’s ministry among us. We will renew our own Baptismal Covenants and re- connect with joy the memory of our own baptisms when we entered into covenantal relationship with the God who has loved us since we were formed in our mother’s womb and who has led us into the warm welcome of this faith community where a place has been prepared for us at God’s table and where we as sisters and brothers in the faith say, to each other “welcome home.” I’m particularly struck by the irony of this day of coming of the Holy Spirit that we remember in a renewal of our baptismal promises – that we also hold in prayer and beseech God’s Holy Spirit to be with our brother and Friend John as he nears the end of his journey and receives the promise of that Holy Spirit to take him to that place where the communion of saints joins in that worship and praise that has rung through eternity. Please hold John and his family in your prayers this day and ask that the holy spirit of God might guide him in peace as he nears the end of this piece of his journey in Christ.

(SUNG) FILL THE EARTH, BRING IT
TO BIRTH, AND BLOW WHERE YO WILL. BLOW, BLOW, BLOW
TILL I BE BUT BREATH OF THE SPIRIT BLOWING IN ME.

So what of this “Whitsunday”? What of this festival of Weeks, which we have inherited from our sisters and brothers in the Hebrew tradition and which, we claim as the birthday of the Church? Pentecost translated from the Greek means “fifty” and for the Hebrew people was celebrated as a festival for the harvest. Fifty days were counted from the offering of the barley sheaf at the festival of unleavened bread (or Passover). The book of Leviticus compels the faithful to “count until the day after the seventh Sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the Lord.” The feast became known as the feast of weeks, because the countdown was seven Sabbaths – seven weeks – a week of weeks. Subsequently, fifty days after the 1st Christian Sabbath (the day of the empty tomb and Resurrection) when the disciples were once again gathered in what is presumed to be the familiar “upper room”, a sound like the rush of a violent wind filled the entire house where they were gathered. Divided tongues like the flames 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 the ability. The devout Jews from every nation under heaven were gathered in Jerusalem for the festival and when they heard this sound they assembled – and the story tells us they were bewildered because each of them heard the disciples speaking in their own native language. Comments were made about their questionable level of sobriety – however it was 9:00 in the morning and a devout Jew would yet to have broken fast prior to their morning devotions, much less partaken of the fruit of the vine. Something was up – something very big was up and people were bewildered, confounded, amazed, perplexed and wildly curious about this group of folk from the hick town of Galilee who could suddenly speak, and be understood in all of the languages of then known world. This was the reversal of the curse at Babel, which we heard from the Genesis recounting of that famous story explaining the formation of separate languages for the peoples of the earth. It was now, is seemed, God’s intention to allow humanity the gift of common communication so that the word could be spread to all the faithful from every land.

Then Peter, the same Peter who had a mere seven and a half weeks earlier denied three times that he even knew the Christ – delivers the sermon of his life, calls on the words of the Prophet Joel and interprets them for a new covenant and new vision of God’s saving work in the world. Peter might indeed be the preacher on this first gathering of the Church in Jerusalem – but it is the Holy Spirit with which all of the disciples have been filled – who is the author of that sermon. Joel, in the second chapter of the book which bears his name and his visions says: “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” For Joel’s understanding and prophesy “all flesh” meant all Jewish flesh – for Peter (really for the Holy Spirit) “all flesh” meant “all nations of the world” and even Peter at this point in the story is not fully aware of what this vision of God’s Holy Spirit will entail. It is not until the tenth Chapter of this second part of the author of Luke’s Gospel which we call The Acts of the Apostles, that Peter will come to understand that “all flesh” means “all flesh” (no asterisk or footnote that “some restrictions may apply”). It is that radical and inclusive Gospel, which Jesus came to reveal, that challenges us in the Church to this very day. The names of the currently excluded group may change; the circumstances of the “difference” will vary – and the church continues to learn, and learn, and relearn that “all flesh” means “all flesh” and that in the words of our baptismal promises, we “will respect the dignity of every human being.” This promised filling of God’s people with the “paraclete”, the “advocate” who will come as the spirit of all truth is foretold in the Gospel narrative, which we heard in this morning’s reading from the Author of John’s account. This Spirit – this Holy Spirit – will demand much of those who are chosen as disciples of the risen Christ and not merely followers of the historical Jesus. Those of us who have been baptized into the Holy Spirit will have great demands made of us by that Spirit. As one of my seminary Profs told us as the incoming class – “folks, when God calls you God’s not doing you a favor” and there is some truth to that. However, it is also the promise that God’s Holy Spirit will be with us “forever”. It should be evident to us, in this time and place, in this work of welcome and healing to which we are called in God’s Church, that the Holy Spirit is powerfully and plainly in our midst; moving, stretching and exploding the boundaries of Her church by the powerful and prophetic wind which is sweeping through it.

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD EVERYONE’S HEART IS LONELY, WATCHING AND WAITING AND HUNGRY UNTIL; SPIRIT OF GOD WE LONG THAT YOU ONLY, FULFILL THE EARTH BRING IT TO BIRTH,
AND BLOW WHERE YOU WILL. BLOW, BLOW, BLOW TILL I
BE, BUT BREATH OF YOUR SPIRIT BLOWING IN ME.

So we have emblazoned the Church in deep shades of fiery red, as we mark this festal day and in recognition of the two thousand and tenth birthday of this body which we call the Church. It is fitting that we do this and that in so doing that we renew our promises and recall that moment when we promised or it was promised for us and we became members of Christ’s church becoming Christ’s body. This is another of our “festival days” and we mark it as special and blessed. Unlike the festival day that we celebrated fifty days ago, we don’t have to add any chairs to accommodate the hoards of people clamoring to sing happy birthday to the church – or the festival day that we celebrated five months ago when we gathered to say happy birthday to Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem. This festival day, though, is no less significant or important to our lives as the gathered community of faithful followers of the Risen One who has sent us the gift of the Spirit to prod and to push us; to guard and to guide us; to beckon and to blow us into the breath of the Spirit which will renew the face of the Earth.

Amen.

Seventh Sunday after Easter - Year C

Seventh Sunday after Easter – Year C (RCL) 2010
Acts 16: 16 – 34; Psalm 97’ Revelation 22: 12 – 14, 16 – 17, 20 – 21; John 17: 20 – 26
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, May 16, 2010

BIG CHANGES COMING

Let us pray: Our hearts are strangely stirred within us as we greet your resurrected presence among us. We are coming to the end of our season of Easter and the joy and reality of that holy time will give way to the gifts of your Holy Spirit made manifest in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. Help us to stay always present to the reality of the Easter moment and our call to be the people of new life and Resurrection. Grant us the gift of unity in you as you are united with Creator and the Spirit, so that where you go to prepare a place for us; we might be with you in glorious eternity. So also, loving savior prepare a place for us where you enter human suffering and pain – where you are the victim of this world’s cruel injustices, when you stand beside us in our hours of deepest need; that where you are we might be also showing your face of Easter hope. Stir our hearts and hopes to be always where you are. Amen.

(SUNG) AND WE PRAY THAT ALL UNITY MAY ONE DAY BE RESTORED,
AND THEY’LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE, BY
OUR LOVE – YES THEY’LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR
LOVE..

I wanted to take some time this morning to share with you some of my experience from the time spent in the Diocese of Newark. As most of you are aware, I was attending a meeting in that Diocese of the Jubilee Ministry of the Episcopal Church. There were about 150 of us who represented the ministries of Jubilee, the Episcopal Community Services in America and the National Episcopal Health Ministries. The Conference was entitled “Called to Serve: The Episcopal Church Responds to Domestic Poverty”. Led by the keynote address of the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the participants who hailed from across the United States, prayed, studied and conversed with one another about the ways in which our church might begin to explore the issues and effects of domestic poverty in this nation. A model of Community Based Organizing and resource sharing among the participating groups led us to heartfelt and difficult discussions around who are the domestically poor and how are we called as a church to serve them. One of the major discoveries for me was that I am among the domestically poor. Now I don’t mean to imply that my economic situation places me in that percentile of the population that falls at or well below the “poverty level” as defined by the government (though I’m not far above it); what we were encouraged to reflect on is that all of us find ourselves numbered among the poor; some of us economically, some of us due to the conditions of our physical and/or mental health and still others of us who find ourselves morally or spiritually poor. That reality ought to make us truly humbled and genuinely involved when we address issues of domestic poverty. Somehow the “them” becomes the “us”. Demographics and statistics provided by Federal, State and Local governmental organizations can help us to identify ways in which we might be called to serve the economically disadvantaged among us – and we also need in our Church and in our communities to address those areas and issues of domestic poverty that we individually might find ourselves identifying as areas in which we number among the poor. I believe that Jesus had something to say about those of us who might blessed to be among the poor in spirit. Gathered as the Church – specifically as The Episcopal Church – the participants in this conference are among those for whom Jesus prays in our text this morning taken from the account as told by the author of John’s Gospel. This reading is part of what scriptural scholars refer to as the High Priestly Prayer, which the author places into the midst of the farewell discourse just prior to Jesus’ crucifixion. The author of this fourth Gospel account shares a unique literary and theological message with the faith community of the early first Century, and carefully crafts the Gospel telling of the uniqueness of Jesus’ relationship to the Father and the Spirit. The Church looks to summarize this relationship at the end of our recognition of the Easter season while hanging at the precipice of the coming of the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate next Sunday. Big things are afoot for the newly forming Church and its ministers in Jerusalem, exciting times and possibilities lay at their feet; and Jesus looks to fill them and bless them with his priestly prayer which will guide their priesthoods in the service of the Risen one.

For the community gathered in the name of the Episcopal Church and charged with the enormous task of responding to domestic poverty – the fact that we all were doing the work of the Gospel, each of us in our own particular circumstances living out the command of Jesus to feed the hungry, or care for the widow and orphan, or visit the imprisoned – was shared work with each other in our particular organization and with each and every one of you as members of the Body of Christ. It was this shared call to serve that gave us the strength in our few numbers to dare and address huge issues that effect the lives of all of us – and filled our hearts with hope that with God’s grace and assistance our work would, in fact, lead us to the unity of God that Jesus prays for in the passage we heard from the Gospel text this morning…”also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” When we gathered in fellowship and fun, the laughter was raucous and real. When we gathered in worship and work the connections were genuine and grace filled. In the silence and solitude we lifted each other intensely and intentionally to the God who is the source of all of our ministries and listened for that still small voice to unite us as one. Theological and ideological positions were abandoned for a time to allow the work of the Holy Spirit to renew our hearts and refresh our souls. None of us separated ourselves from each other by identifying the role that we hold in the ministry of the Church. Clerical collars were absent so that we didn’t need to identify who was a bishop, or deacon or lay minister – only that each of us shared in the Priesthood of All Believers and in that role serve each other in God’s name. The earliest biblical description that we have for Christian leadership in the earliest communities was “deacon” which means literally “butler” or “waiter”. Christians did not call their leaders priest, or president; Christians called their leaders servants. I think that each of us was able to reclaim that humility and servant hood that are such essential elements of our lives as Priest’s of the Church. I am deeply grateful to this faith community for the gift of time away – to the diocesan faith community for the chance to serve as Jubilee Officer of this Diocese – and to the national Church community for the support of those who labor in the fields of Christ’s Church with the invitation to gather in Christ’s name and fearfully work out the solutions we seek in order to address the issues of Domestic Poverty that cripples each and every one of us who gathered in the name of the Christ we claim to serve.

The author of Luke/Acts recounts the story we heard today from the sixteenth Chapter of Paul’s stay in Philippi. Several characters are introduced to extend the story line and then discarded when they have fulfilled that purpose. Such is the case of the slave girl who possesses a spirit of divination and who’s “fortune telling” talents brought great profit to those who managed her. As soon as her function as mover of the plot line allows us to have Paul and Silas ensconced behind prison walls, the main story can emerge. The powerful presence of God in the midst of the depravations and shackles of human prisons portrays for the early community the sure and certain power of belief in the risen Christ. Many of the early believers would face just such a fate for their ministry, and this example would serve to strengthen their resolve. The jailer’s question has rung down through the ages – “what must I do to be saved”? For those whose flavor of salvation runs closer toward the evangelical side of the Church Acts 16:31 serves as a lynchpin for their mission, “believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” However, even for those of us who shy away from that sort of evangelical fervor – the power of the message of salvation is no less diminished. Identification with and living out the ministry of the Good News of God in Christ is central to the lives of all who follow the resurrected carpenter’s son from Galilee. It is the power of that message of hope from the Gospel accounts which calls each of us here on a Sunday morning to witness and worship; to continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship and to be nourished in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.

It is this work of discipleship in community for which Jesus served as our model and our great high priest. The prayer that we might share in the Glory, which has been given to those who believe so that we might be with Christ to “see” the glory that is, and was, and has been from before the foundation of the world – speaks to the great and unfathomable love between Father, Son and Spirit which the author of John’s Gospel begins to articulate. It is this priestly ministry in which we are all called to share – that the strength and value of community begins to unfold as our gift and our giving. L. William Countryman in his book Living on the Border of the Holy – Renewing the Priesthood of All; writes of several types of priesthood. Countryman identifies them as the priesthood of Humanity, the priesthood of Religion, the priesthood of Christ and the priesthood of the Christian People. I highly recommend this text for anyone who is looking to deepen their understanding of, what for me had been a foreign concept – the priesthood of all believers. I share with you one paragraph from that book in which Dr. Countryman is examining the Priesthood of the Christian People:

“The priesthood of the Christian people is the priesthood of all humanity, interpreted and formed by the priesthood of Jesus. To suppose that Jesus created a new priesthood from the ground up, as if no priesthood had existed before him, would be a radical break with our tradition. The earliest Christians insisted, despite prolonged challenges from Gnosticism, that the GOD of Jesus was also the original CREATOR of humanity. The HOLY does not deny its former work in its later work. The CREATOR doest not push aside the grace of creation in order to make room for the grace of resurrection, for the two are, at their deepest level, fully continuous. But Jesus interpreted the fundamental priesthood through his own service in it, as he taught and celebrated and lived out the good news. The priesthood of the Christian people, then, is the fundamental priesthood of humankind, understood afresh in terms of Jesus’ message and experience.[1]

I discovered during my week in NJ, in community with others who live out the ordained priesthood of the Church – part of the glory of the priesthood of the Christian people. It is this work, this priesthood which each and everyone of us gathered here this morning takes on in our choice to gather around this table and remember as Jesus taught us to take bread and bless it and break it and share it with each other to be spiritual food for our human journey. The gift and blessing of this place in community is learning the role of priest and exploring and sharing that with our families and neighbors and becoming the kindom of priests to serve our God and each other. It is in that ministry – in that priesthood that the Christ can offer on our behalf the prayer…”so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”
Amen.

[1] L. William Countryman, Living on the Border of the Holy, Renewing the Priesthood of All, Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, PA, 1999, p. 63