Chances are good that sometime in your life you have written – or received –
            an acrostic poem.
Do you remember those?
You start with the letters of someone’s name, and then write the poem
            by writing something good about the person for each letter of their name.
It’s a classic for mother’s day in preschools and kindergartens.

Believe it or not, Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem.
There is one verse for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
But even though we may think of this as the most simplistic type of poem,
            the psalm is a beautiful piece of poetry,
             a hymn of praise which expresses the belief and worship of God’s people.

The acrostic style – praising God from A to Z –
            emphasizes the completeness of God’s sovereignty.
The psalmist uses the word “all” seventeen times in 21 verses.
The psalm clearly sets out to claim that everything - all of creation and  every generation – praises God and owes it’s life to God.

I invite you to turn to Psalm 145 on page 801 of the BCP follow along,
            since only a brief portion of the psalm is included in our readings for today.
What originally drew me to Psalm 145 this week is verse 8, the beginning of our appointed reading.

         The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in    steadfast love.

This is an Old Testament confession of faith,
            found in the Torah, the psalms, and the prophets.
I love this statement of belief because, rather than trying to describe God and pin God down in fancy theological language,
it describes the people’s relationship to God, whom they experience as gracious, merciful, patient, always faithful and loving.

Look at verses 15-16

         The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
            You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.

These verses recognize that everything we have comes from God.

All the world is God’s domain
It reminds me of the words in the Nicene creed when we say,
            We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life”
We, along with all living things, depend on God for our very lives.

The psalm also recognizes a God who is present in our times of need.
Verse 14 says

            The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.

We all fall.
We slip, we stumble,
            we fall away from God,
            we fall into trouble
Gospel singer Donnie McClurkin sings,
“We fall down, but we get up – for a saint is just a sinner who fell down and got up”
We all fall,
but we count on God – who is gracious and merciful and steadfast in love –
to help us get up again and again.

It is this recognition of our dependence on God that Jesus invites us to in today’s gospel.
Jesus mocks the wise –
            those who come before God full of what they know and understand,
            those who count on their own strength and goodness to save them.
Instead, Jesus says, those who know God are infants –
            the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the persecuted –
            all whom Jesus called blessed.
The sick and lame, lepers and demon-possessed, tax collectors and sinners –
            those who come to Jesus seeking help in their weakness –
            those for whom Jesus says he has come.

Come to me, Jesus says.
Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

A yoke is not something we see or talk much about these days.
Literally, a yoke is the wooden piece laid across the shoulders of oxen or cattle so that they can pull a heavy load.
It can also refer to the wooden piece carried on the shoulders to carry a load,
            such as buckets on either side.
The word also means a burden of servitude –
            the yoke of oppression laid upon people by cruel or unjust rulers or leaders.

Instead of these yokes of burden and oppression,
Jesus offers a yoke of freedom.
Freedom from the wisdom of the world which will always want more. –
            the culture in which enough is never enough and nothing is ever good enough.
Following Jesus is not easy – it is full of risks and demands,
            as we all know if we read a few pages of any gospel.
But it is also a way of freedom, because it is the way we become who we are meant to be –
            beloved and cherished children of God, part of Christ’s body in the world.


Elisabeth Johnson, a scholar at the Lutheran Institute of Theology in Cameroon,
wrote:
“To take his yoke upon oneself is to be yoked to the one in whom God’s kingdom of justice, mercy, and compassion is breaking into this world, and to find the rest for which the soul longs.
“It is a life yoked to Jesus under God’s gracious and merciful reign, free from the burden of sin and the need to prove oneself, free to rest deeply and securely in God’s grace.”

Jesus invitation to be yoked to him means becoming joined to the God of Psalm 145 –
            who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
It means knowing the Lord, the Giver of Life, the lover of souls
It means accepting forgiveness and experiencing new life.
It means welcoming the peace of the Prince of Peace –
            not the peace of everything always going our way, or always be right,
            but the peace of grace and love and always being made new.
Thanks be to God.

Amen.

St Michael and All Angels: Live at Five
Rev Kristin Schultz
March 2, 2014

Do not be afraid
These words echo throughout the Scriptures, appearing time and again in the stories of the lives of God’s people

We hear these words when someone is facing a particular challenge or change,
            like Abraham waiting decades for a son in an unknown land,
            or Joshua taking on leadership of God’s people after Moses dies.
Both Isaiah and Jeremiah, struggling with the very difficult task of bringing God’s call to repentance and faithfulness to the people of Israel, are told,
            “Do not be afraid, because I am with you.”
And they in turn bring that message to the people –
Do not be afraid – times are hard, but God has not forsaken us.

Throughout the Psalms, there are images of God as hiding place, as protector,
            as the one who cares for us and protects us from danger.

Do not be afraid.
These words also appear when God reveals God’s-self and God’s glory
When Moses sees a bush that burns and is not consumed, and hears the voice of God from the bush, God tells him, “Do not be afraid – I will be with you.”
When an angel comes to Mary and Zechariah to tell them of miraculous babies to be born,
            they BEGIN with the words, Do not be afraid.
When an angel appears to the shepherds, and the sky fills with God’s joyful glory,
            the first words are “Do not be afraid! I bring you good news”
Apparently, when one comes face to face with God, it is natural to be afraid.

Which is precisely what happens to Peter, James and John on the mountain top.
Jesus has invited them to come with him to walk on the mountain.
When they get to the top, Jesus is transfigured –
            his appearance changes,  his clothing and his face shine with light.
Moses and Elijah – the most revered religious figures in Israelite history –
            appear with him and speak to him.
And there is a voice – I imagine the kind of voice that fills your ears and your mind at once
Like James Earle Jones, or maybe like Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings.
“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
The disciples, quite naturally, fall to the ground in fear.
And that’s when Jesus says it.
He comes to them, and touches them, and says,
            “Get up and Do not be afraid”

Peter, James and John have come face to face with a new reality.
Jesus has just finished telling them that he will be killed.
They are struggling against the idea that their friend and leader will die – that their journey of faith will lead, not to comfort and safety, but to fear and betrayal.
Then they see Jesus filled with the power of God and are reminded of their task
            to listen to him, to not just hear but to follow and commit themselves to him,
wherever that journey goes.

So it is no wonder that the words they most need to hear in that moment are,
Do not be afraid.
They are words of assurance that have accompanied God’s people through the centuries.
Do not be afraid, because I am with you
Whatever trials you face, I face them with you

I discovered this week a debate on the internet about whether the words, Do Not Be Afraid, Fear Not, or similar statements actually appear precisely 365 times  in the Bible – once for every day of the year.
I didn’t follow up enough to make a judgment, but it struck me:
Both the number of times the words appear in scripture, and the internet debate about them now 2 thousand years after the scriptures were written, make me think that I am not the only person who struggles with fear.
Fear is a pretty natural human response.
Fear that we won’t have enough.
Fear that we will lose what is most important.
Fear that we will not be loved.
Fear that we are not good enough.
It has also been a time of loss and change at St Michael’s,
            a time of uncertainty about the future and what will happen next.  .
When we feel such anxiety rising, it is good to remember these words –
            Get up, and do not fear. I will be with you.

My favorite preacher and blogger, David Lose, wrote this week that “this scene has been called by some a “displaced resurrection story” -- the dazzling white, the command to be raised, the injunction to fear not. It parallels the resurrection scene except in this scene it is not Jesus’ resurrection but that of the disciples, as they are pulled from their fear and failure to new life and courage.
“And what’s interesting to me is that Jesus doesn’t, at least at this moment, rebuke them for their failure, or call them to repentance, or grant them forgiveness. Rather, he calls them to be raised and to shed their fear, sending them forth into life restored and renewed.”

By their experience on the mountain with Jesus,
            Peter, James and John are called more deeply into discipleship.
It is an invitation which comes to us also – to listen to Jesus, be attentive to his call,
            and to follow him with all of our lives.
Sometimes, when we sense God’s presence and God’s claim on our lives,
            we fall into fear.
Sometimes the circumstances of our lives overwhelm us and drive us into fear.
When this happens, God does not scold or rebuke or chastise,
            but instead calls us to get up, to be raised, to be free of fear,
and to continue walking by his side.

God’s voice echoes through the ages, assuring God’s beloved people:
Do not be afraid, for I am with you.

Thanks be to God.
Amen

We're sorry, but the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.

We're sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.

We're sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.

St Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church – Live at 5
Seventh Sunday of Easter; John 17
May 20, 2012
Rev. Kristin Schultz                


Jesus is at dinner with his disciples.
It is a Thursday night – the night of Passover.
It is the last meal Jesus will eat with his friends before he dies

Like so many teachers, or parents, given one last chance to hand over some package of wisdom for their charges to remember, Jesus tries to tell the disciples what it has all been about.
For three chapters, John’s Jesus preaches to his disciples – trying to sum up three years of ministry together and prepare them for the next step.

Jesus knows what will happen in the coming days –
his arrest, his death, and his resurrection.
And he knows that after the resurrection, he will be with the disciples only a short time.
He is truly going away, and leaving them to tell the story –
    the amazing, life-changing story of his life, death, and resurrection.

He knows it will not be easy.
Jesus knows there are challenges ahead,
and so he has promised his disciples help.
He will send an Advocate, he says – one who will guide and protect them
as they carry out their mission in the world.
He will leave them –
but he will not leave them alone.

Then we come to chapter 17, the chapter of today’s gospel lesson.
In this chapter, Jesus does something wonderful:
he prays for his disciples.
David Lose, who writes a wonderful weekly blog for preachers,
calls this “The other Lord’s prayer.”

Once, when they saw him go apart to pray,
the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray.
so he gave them a prayer to teach them to pray – for themselves and for others –
in a way that would shape their faith and bring them closer to God.

Now, again, Jesus gives them an example of prayer,
when he prays for them, with them.

So what does he pray?
He does not pray that all their problems will be solved and their work will be easy. He knows it won’t happen that way.
He does not pray that all their enemies will be defeated
and they will never make mistakes.

As Lose says:
So what does he pray for? He prays for them to hang in there.
And for them to hang in there together.
He asks that God would strengthen them,
care for them, protect them, and keep them together.
In fact, Jesus asks that they would be one,
one fellowship, one family,
not just modeling the “oneness” of Jesus and the Father but actually living into it, participating in it, making it real and in this way sharing in Jesus’ joy.

What’s important for us in all this is that Jesus is not just praying for his disciples back then.
When I read the gospel lesson, you may have noticed that I read a little beyond what was chosen for today.
There is a very important piece in those verses I added on:
Jesus says,  “”I ask not only on behalf of these,
but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word”
That’s us, my friends.
We are the ones who believe through the words of the apostles;
    we are the ones for whom Jesus prayed, and prays still.
We, too, benefit from Jesus’ prayers for strength and courage,
his prayers for community and love.
Each time we read these words, we are reminded of Jesus' constant care and concern and compassion for us,
     and for all the world God loves.
This, indeed, is the work of the Spirit, the advocate and comforter:
to remind us of Jesus' active and ongoing love and compassion
and to draw us more deeply together.


Now I want to invite you to enter a bit more deeply into this message,
    and give you something to take with you when you leave here tonight.
Think for a moment about what you would like Jesus to pray for, for you.
What bit of comfort, or strength, or courage do you need.
Try to boil it down to one or two words – words that express what you need Jesus to pray for for you.

Now I invite you to write your word or words on the cards JP passed out.  
You can take that with you, put it in your purse or billfold or on your desk,
    and remember throughout the week that Jesus is praying for you,
that the Spirit of Jesus is with you to guide and care for you.

(Pray – invite people to share the words they wrote):
Gracious and loving God,
We give you thanks that your son came to live among us, to teach us to live.
We thank you that he lived a life of prayer and service, that we may learn to pray and serve. We thank you that he loves us – that you love us – that you wish for us abundant life. We pray tonight for :

For all these things, and whatever else you see that we need, we pray in the name of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Happy Easter!
Our bulletins this morning say “2nd Sunday of Easter,”
    and our Easter season will last seven weeks and end with Pentecost.
But does it really feel like Easter any more?
The eggs have been colored, found, and made into egg salad.
The chocolate bunnies have been eaten and Easter baskets put away.
For most people, Easter is over.

Which is a shame.
Because we live in world that needs Easter.
Not just one day, but every day.

As my husband, Lee, recently said to me,
    if you feel your spirits getting too high,
        just spend a few hours reading or listening to the news.
News reports are full of violence, around the world and here at home;
    insensitive comments and inappropriate conduct by politicians;
    and constant fear for the future of our economy.

It is in this context that we come to church this Easter season,
    to hear again the stories of the Risen Christ and his followers.


The stories began with an empty tomb.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus that early Sunday morning,
    to pay her respects to her dead friend and lord.

It was already the third day – the third day in a world Mary Magdalene could not imagine
    – a world without Jesus.
So she came, weeping, to his tomb.
She expected to find it sealed.
Instead, she found that the tomb was open, and empty.
She heard her name spoken, and everything changed again.
Her grief was replaced by wonder and joy.
Mary was no longer lost, but given a new purpose –
    to share the good news about the risen Christ.


That same evening, the disciples were gathered in a locked room.
They did not believe the crazy story Mary came running to tell them that morning.
They did believe their lives might be in danger,
    from the same men who had arrested and killed their teacher.
They did believe that everything they had longed for was gone –
The one they thought was God’s promised Messiah was dead,
    and with him, all their hope.

Then Jesus came to them.
Just like that, Jesus appeared, and everything changed again.
“Peace be with you.” Jesus said.
“As the Father has sent me, I have sent you.”
Then he breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Once before, Jesus had called these men and women to leave the lives they knew
    to follow him.
Now he gives them a new promise.
He offers them a peace that the world can not give –
    the peace of knowing and being known by Jesus,
        who has conquered sin and death.
Now he gives them a new purpose –
    sending them out, filled with the Holy Spirit,
        to witness to what they have seen and heard.
He sends them to bear witness to what God has done
    in the life, death, and resurrection of their Lord, Jesus Christ.

After his resurrection, Jesus appears three times in the Gospel of John.
He visits twice in a room where the disciples are meeting, fearful and doubting;
    and he appears to his friends as they fished,
        and eating with them on the beach.
Every time he comes to them, they become stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring.
Every time he comes to them, they become more like him.

Jesus is making them Easter people –
    his followers,
        filled with the news of the resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit.


A while ago I read an interesting quotation from a book called The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, written by the Jewish NT scholar Pinchas Lapide.
For him, the proof of the resurrection lies in the changed lives of the disciples; he writes:

“When this scared, frightened band of the apostles, which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.”

When they met the risen Christ, the disciples were transformed,
    from a frightened band of misfits
        to God’s powerful witnesses in the world.


We, too, have met the risen Christ.
We, too, have been filled with the Holy Spirit,
    and sent to bear witness to our Lord.
And so we go –
    hoping that we, too, will become stronger, wiser, kinder, and more daring;
    praying that we, too, will become more like him.
God changes hearts and transforms lives to create God’s Easter people.
This is how God continues God’s work of resurrection in a world in need of healing –
    by sending God’s Easter people to bear witness to the truth.

Easter people know that our sins are forgiven,
    so that we might forgive others.
Easter people know that Jesus loves us unconditionally,
    and sends us to love as he has loved.
Easter people know that whatever we face, whatever we fear,
    it cannot be more powerful than the God who broke the power of death itself.


Our world desperately needs Easter people.
People who bring comfort and peace where there is grief and despair,
    bring reconciliation where there has been hatred and fear,
    bring new beginnings where there has been death and chaos.


Jesus lives!
–    not only 2000 years ago, leaving behind an empty tomb,
    but now, here, among us.
We have heard him call our names –
    in the water of baptism, in the bread and wine,
    in the many and varied ways Jesus encounters each one of us in daily life.
And so we are his Easter people.


Alleluia! Christ is Risen!      
    (Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!)

For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

This is perhaps the #1 best known bible verse,
and it would be easy to hear this in the gospel reading and say,
”Oh, yeah, that again. I know all about that.”

But I wonder if we really do know about it.
For that matter, I wonder if John really knows all about it.  
It’s almost as if he comes out with this really wow, prophetic statement:
For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

And then he backs away from it.
John goes on to say that, actually, some of the world will be condemned
through whether or not they believe in God’s Son.
John makes this amazing statement about the depth of God’s love and will for the world’s salvation –
    and then he sets conditions.
Belief in Jesus = salvation; unbelief = condemnation.

But then comes the verse that I think is really the zinger:
This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
There, I think, is the real condition.
Not a condition of belief or unbelief,
resulting in eternal salvation or condemnation,
    but the condition of brokenness in which we find ourselves
unable to choose the light, even when it is right in front of us.

It is a choice we face every day – between darkness and light.
Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite authors, wrote:
“Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of hate and fear and indifference which surrounds us, or we light a candle to see by. “
 
Some very few people seem to be almost wholly of the darkness or of the light – to be what we have sometimes called saints, or to be irrevocably evil.
But in the gray in-between of our daily lives,
    aren’t people really a complex mix of the two?
Don’t we live every day in the struggle between these poles?
Paul perhaps described it best when he said,
    the good which I would do I do not, and the evil I would not do, I do.
Haven’t we all experienced that that place –
    striving to walk in the light of Christ, but falling short.

And this is where salvation finds us.
Because God offers us forgiveness,
    and each day another change to walk further into the light.
God knows when we stray, and does not shut the door on us –
    but rather, as the Father who welcomes home the prodigal son,
    comes running down the road to meet us and draw us home.
God loved the world – loved us – so much that God sent Jesus,
    who came to be a living incarnation of that love.
Jesus came to show us love, not only for those who are like us,
    but for those whose race and tradition and ideas
are very different from ours.
Jesus came to teach us forgiveness by constantly offering forgiveness to all -     both those who were despised and outcast,
    and those whose rank and privilege made them think
they did not need forgiveness at all.


Can you think of a time when you were very aware of God’s love for you and God’s forgiveness of your sins and shortcomings?

I remember one night rocking my new baby boy in the rocking chair in his room. I was basking in the love and tenderness I felt for my long-awaited child. Suddenly, it hit me, that if I say God loves me as God’s beloved child,
 that means God feels for me just the way I feel now –
the tenderness, the hope, the acceptance and joy. Wow.

I also know that it isn’t easy for everyone to experience
or accept such love from God.
I remember a discussion I had with my roommate in college.
She was intense and single-minded in her studying
 and pursuit of grades and accolades, and she told me,
“I have to get good grades and constantly prove myself to my father. I’m never sure if he loves me. That’s why I don’t really understand you when you talk about God’s love. I just don’t know what it means to be loved unconditionally.”


That may have been the first time I realized the power we have
to bear God’s love to one another –
     or to be a stumbling block which keeps another from knowing God’s love.
Again, we find that we have the ability to bear light into the life of another person – or to hold them more firmly in a darkness of loneliness and fear.

There is a bit of Lutheran teaching that addresses this idea,
    which I want to share with you briefly.

Luther was all too aware that the message of God’s love and forgiveness could be hard to hear. He had spent most of his life in utter terror of God’s judgment, certain he would be condemned for all the petty sins he discovered in his hours of self-examination.
His realization that God’s love and forgiveness is a gift,
    not earned, but given freely through the love of Christ,
    changed everything for him.

He knew that when we speak words of grace and forgiveness,
it is easy for them to be missed
by just the people who most need to hear them.
But there is more to our practice of faith than words.
One gift we have in worship is the meal that we share –
    the sacrament of Holy Communion in which Jesus comes to us.
When Lutherans serve communion, we say,
“The body of Christ, given for you,” and “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”
These words are significant, because here is where everyone encounters
the personal message of God’s grace.
Not just general statements like, “God so loved the world” or
“the blood of the covenant shed for all people” –
but this bread, this sip of wine, carrying Jesus’ presence and promise to you,
here and now.


There are many ways we may experience God’s love  -
    through beautiful worship and music,
    through the Word and sacrament shared in church,
    through the wonder and beauty of nature,
    through the love of a family member, friend, or teacher,
    or the care of a community.
One reason to practice prayer is to be open to receive God’s grace,
    to see God’s love when it is offered to us.

And once we have received the gift of grace,
    we can go out into the world God loves to share that love.
When we live in the light of God’s love, it is easier –
    not easy, but easier –
    to choose, day by day, to light a candle in the darkness.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

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