St. Michael and All Angels
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 25, 2013
Luke 13:10-17

The first time I preached about this bent over woman in Luke, I invited the congregation bend over to hear the gospel lesson to get a glimpse of this woman’s story. Seven verses felt like a really long time. It was incredibly uncomfortable. It was hard to pay attention to the words. We couldn’t begin to wrap our heads around being bent over for eighteen years. I try and imagine this woman who had to live with that kind of pain and isolation for so many years. She could never make eye contact with anyone. Her ability to see was limited to the ground beneath her. Hers was a particular kind of bondage. What an effort it must have been to come to the synagogue, to do daily errands or chores around the house. Would people disregard her simply because she was literally beneath them? Who would take the time and effort it would require to interact with her? It would have been much easier to write her off or ignore her. Given the beliefs of the day, many may have blamed her for her affliction.

The Pharisees seem less concerned that Jesus healed the woman than when he healed her. Healing was considered work and work was banned on the Sabbath. How funny that the issue was which day the healing occurred. Jesus points out that they would make sure their ox was led to water on the Sabbath. So, an ox is more important than a woman? I can imagine him saying, “Look. You are all worried about the wrong thing. This woman is standing upright after eighteen years. She can look you in the eye. She can participate in the life of the community in a new way. She is daughter of Abraham. She is one of us. And you want to talk about what day it is? This is the day God gave us to worship. Why don’t we praise God instead of complaining about what day it is?”

What is it in us that keeps us from celebrating with one another? What is it that causes us to be upset over the good news of someone else? Why would we get worked up over someone being healed on the wrong day?

The pressures and demands of our days can easily weigh us down. Some of those are just ordinary life stuff – getting out of debt, conflict with a friend, relative or coworker, or making difficult decisions about our future. There are others that are more systemic and feel beyond us – how do we help people find their way out of poverty? How do we make the world a safe place for children? What can we do to live in peace? As we carry these concerns around, we may feel them weighing us down making it hard to stand up straight. In some ways, the bent over woman in this story is not just someone from a place long ago and far away. She lives in us and the burdens we carry. She gives us a simple clue to freedom – go where Jesus is and wait there. He will see you. He will touch you and he will make you whole.

Her story is ours as well. Just as we carry the weight of those who suffer, we also have the opportunity to stand up and celebrate with those who are healed and those who find liberation.

In this story, Jesus stops teaching to heal the woman. It seems that more than the woman was healed that day. Helen Pearson says that “All rejoiced. All were freed from bondage of tradition that placed more importance on keeping law than responding to the needs of humans. When the woman is healed, all stand straighter.” (Helen Pearson, Do What You Have the Power to Do p. 57)

This story doesn’t tell us that the law is unimportant. Can you imagine trying to drive anywhere with no laws? The law can keep some chaos at bay. It gives us some parameters with which to live. But the law is not exclusive. It can step aside and make room for God’s great healing love to break through and turn things upside down.

“Law helps order our world, but grace is what holds the world together. Law pushes us to care for each other, but grace restores us to each other when we’ve failed in the law… For above and beyond all the laws ever received or conceived, the absolute law is love: love God and love your neighbor. Or, perhaps, love God by loving your neighbor.” (David Lose, workingpreacher.org)

The community stepped in and rejoiced at the woman’s healing. This woman who had been denied access to the fullness of life was now a community member in good standing. She was free and in her freedom, they could imagine their own.  This story is a powerful reminder that we are born to be whole. When the world has weighed us down, God wants us to be free. In the story, Jesus is teaching and the woman appears. Jesus stops what he is doing to heal her. It is almost as if he was waiting for this moment. He wanted so much to set her free that he didn’t wait until he was finished teaching. He stopped as soon as he saw her.

Maybe that is what he asks of us… that we notice one another and show kindness, that we celebrate with one another and hold one another in our pain. I keep going back to the words from Isaiah this morning, “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs 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.” (Isaiah 58:9b-10) That is a description of what God wants to do for us – to guide us all of our days, satisfy our needs, and quench our thirsts with life-giving water.

If that is what God wants for us, why would we want anything else for one another? Can we wish that for each person we encounter? Can we pray for their thirsts to be quenched and their lives to be whole?

Three weeks ago, a group from St. Michael’s went to the Santo Domingo Feast Day. We watched people of all ages dance in the hot sun. It was a powerful sight to see the devotion and beauty in the movement of small children and elderly folks. There are some members of the Pueblo who watch the dancers and when there is a need, they respond. They helped with various “wardrobe malfunctions”, they held the long hair up to help the dancers cool off and offered other forms of support. Their job is to help the dances run smoothly and support the dancers. It was lovely to witness their care.

Our culture teaches us that we have value when we have it all together. We are worth something when we are smart, strong, well dressed and sure of ourselves. But over and over, we see Jesus meeting people in their vulnerability. He stops to touch people in their weakness, to care for their brokenness, to love them in their pain. It’s significant that we meet Christ in his vulnerability and brokenness. Our worship centers on the table, which is the story of Christ betrayed by his friend, abandoned by others who had promised loyalty to him, and his body broken by those in power who were threatened by him. The Christian story begins with whatever weighs us down, whatever keeps us from fully entering the community, whatever binds us. We don’t start from the place of utter freedom and hope. We show up in all of our humanness – in our despair and in our bondage – and Christ meets us there. He stops what he is doing to really see us as we are and he comes to us in our vulnerability.

Each week, we gather here and we come as we are. Christ waits to meet us and to touch the parts of us that are broken and in need of healing. I believe that he helps us all stand a bit straighter. Together we witness the power of his touch and the freedom to be whole.

St. Michael and All Angels
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 18, 2013
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

The movie Dead Poets Society is set in a boy’s boarding school and features Robin Williams as a rather unconventional Literature teacher named Keating. On the first day of class, Keating leads the boys out into the hall where he tells them to look closely at the pictures on the wall of former students. These students long gone from life on this earth have a message to the current students. Keating tells the boys the message is: “Carpe Diem, boys. Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.” Keating’s unorthodox approach unleashes a vision and passion in this class to make their lives count. It is like letting the genie out of the bottle. It’s interesting to me that Keating uses the school alums to call forth that vision.

The Hebrews passage continues this morning with a list of heroes of faith and the amazing lives they lived. Here are a few of their achievements… administering justice, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching raging fire, escaping the edge of the sword, crossing the Red Sea, and circling the walls of Jericho until they fell down. The writer of Hebrews only names a few, but goes on to tell what some endured – stoning, being sawn in two, killing by swords, wandering, being persecuted and tormented. So you can see right away, that it didn’t always go well. We certainly don’t want to lift up these as examples of the rewards of a life of faith. But there is an incredible perseverance and faith in one after another. They were so clear that they belonged to God that they would not give up no matter how difficult the journey.

Hebrews calls us to be inspired by that great “cloud of witnesses” as we run the race that is set before us. I’ve been reflecting on my great cloud of witnesses this week. I’m curious about those whose names I cannot forget and those whose names I cannot remember. It is amazing how so many people can touch our lives in a lifetime. It really is a great cloud that surrounds us. Who are those saints for you and how do they live on in you now? I encourage you to spend the day with them giving thanks for them and the way they are part of you now.

Sharon was my youth director many years ago and one of the reasons I am in ministry today. Sharon is a vibrant, gifted woman who mentored me and had a profound impact on me as a teenager. I am grateful for the way she walked with me through some of the most powerful moments in my life. My prayer life was formed through my time in that youth group. I experienced contemplative prayer in the sanctuary on candlelit evenings. As a teenager, I was blown away as I saw the ocean for the first time on a trip with my youth group. Each morning we would get up in the dark and go out to watch the sunrise and I was amazed at the way God was palpable in this place. Sharon was on the youth retreat where I experienced a powerful call to ministry. She sat with me when I couldn’t stop crying afterward. Sharon is retired now and she travels around the country building houses for Habitat for Humanity. She is one of the people in my cloud of witnesses because she witnessed so much for me and with me. She continues to inspire me and she believes in me thirty years later.

It’s humbling to name those who walked with us and invested in us. Who would we be today without them? This is true for us individually and it’s more than true for us as a community of faith.

I asked for some examples of the St. Michael’s Cloud of Witnesses this week. Here are some folks who were named:

Ann Dietz is one saint who had a vision for St. Michael's. Ann was the catalyst to bring John Tatschal, Paul Saunders and the Vestry together to tell the story of The Life of Christ in our stained glass windows. Ann gave one quarter of her inheritance from her father to pay $7,000 to install the organ in his memory in June 1955.   She was organist at St. Michael's and she purchased hymnals in memory of her mother. Some were shocked at her generosity and questioned her decision. She was unswerving and today we reap the benefits of her big-heartedness.

Another saint is Myndert Gilbert - also one of the original members of St. Michael's - who served as director of the Sunday School for probably 25 or 30 years.  He adored kids and made each child feel like he or she was the most important member of the church.  Sometimes everything came to a halt because he let hyper-active children run the projector for church gatherings. He was also the mastermind behind the Christmas Eve posole suppers after midnight mass, and made sure that we all had the right recipe for cooking legs of lamb for the Seder suppers on Maundy Thursdays.

A third saint with a vision that has shaped who we are today is John Tadigan. John was a first class violinist who had played with the Chicago Symphony before coming to Albuquerque.  He persuaded Brian Taylor to offer the Service of Reconciliation for Gays and Lesbians who had been wounded by the institutional church.  Word of that service spread through the community and we had a packed house of people from all over the city and from many traditions.  It was the beginning of our community becoming a sanctuary for people who had been rejected or wounded by the church.  And John's vision succeeded in getting us in trouble with the Bishop who withdrew the loan for the construction of our sanctuary. That was the impetus for us as a community to define ourselves as a community who sees tries to live the Gospel imperatives of loving our neighbors regardless of differences that sometimes invite discrimination.

This community is what it is today because of those who have come before us. I am grateful for every person in our cloud of witnesses, for the ways they have blessed us with their vision and generosity and for laying the foundation for us at this time. We are in a time of change as a congregation, but it isn’t the first time. We have been here before. We will be again. We have what we need because we stand on the shoulders of so many who have gone before us. This week, I talked with someone who told me she could feel all those saints every time she walks into the sanctuary. They are here in our walls. They are in the hymns that we sing, the prayers that we pray, the peace that we pass with one another. They are in us all and they are calling to persevere and to look to Christ as we continue this race.

I am training for my first triathlon next weekend. It’s a sprint triathlon, which means the run, bike and swim are short. As I feel nervous about it, I have this assurance that it will all be over in a few hours and I’ll be on my way. The life of faith is not a sprint race; it is a marathon. It requires that we train, support one another, and that we stay focused on Christ who goes ahead of us and shows us the way.

I’m struck by the line “let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely”. What do we need to lay aside to run this race? To truly be God’s people, we must set aside our personal agenda and need to get what we want to make way for the greater good. We need to lay aside the part of us that wants to walk away when things get difficult. When I look back at some of what St. Michael’s has been through over the years – arson in the sanctuary that is now our parish hall, the widening of Montano taking away all of the parking, and persecution from the Diocese when we welcomed the gay and lesbian community openly – I am astounded at the cloud of witnesses who stepped up to carry the load.  The strength and vitality of this community is a gracious product of all who give generously in all times and places.

I am grateful for those who stayed in the race, who kept the faith, who took risks to move forward and who generously gave of themselves so that we could be the people of God no matter what adversity we face. It is on their shoulders that we stand. It is our turn to look to Jesus and see where the race will take us next. I don’t know what it will look like, but I believe that the scenery will be stunning and that the gifts that await us in this journey are greater than we are capable of imagining.

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*With thanks to Oleta Saunders for the descriptions of Ann Dietz, Myndert Gilbert, and John Tadigan.

St. Michael and All Angels
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost – August 11, 2013
Luke 12:32-40; Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

There are times that I read the scriptures for the week and I feel rich. Today as I hear the lessons again, I am stunned by God’s goodness. We are recipients of God’s generosity and I’m not talking about a hundred-dollar bonus, or a gift card to our favorite restaurant. This God gives childless Abraham and Sarah descendants as abundant as the stars. This God gives them a new homeland. This God promises us the kingdom. Maybe we need to hear that again… this God gives us the kingdom!

Here is what our texts give us today: promises too vast to wrap our heads around and the words that so many others have heard: “Do not be afraid.” So we have stories of those who heard God call them to step out with nothing but a promise of everything, and they did. God has given us the kingdom; and yet how many hours of each day do we spend worrying about our bills, our health, our relationships, and all the problems in our world? I wonder if we really believe this kingdom promise. If we did, we wouldn’t be so quick to stress over things like credit cards, insurance, and how we will get everything done we have committed to do.

We want to believe it, but it’s scary. What would have to change if we took this kingdom stuff seriously? What would our lives look like if everything we did were a response to a God who has already given us the kingdom?

Alyce McKenzie is a seminary professor who does a unit on fasting each Lent with her students. Some have health issues that make fasting difficult, so she assigned them the task of fasting from anxious thoughts for a week. One student raised her hand and said, “Dr. McKenzie, if we fast from anxious thoughts, what else will we have to think about?” (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2010/08/thethief-is-at-your-door-lectionary-reflection-for-august-8-2010/)

Wow! On the one hand, it’s funny. But it’s also very real. We spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about things that will go nowhere when God has already given us the kingdom. Alyce goes on to say that “fear is not a protective shield, but a thief. When we dwell on our fears, they become our treasures.”

When God looked for Adam and Eve in the garden, they hid because they were afraid. The Bible is full of stories of folks who fear God. But people fearing God isn’t ancient history. It is true today. Fear is more destructive than we realize. We can become so paralyzed by our fears that we fail to respond to God’s call.  

On any given day, there is plenty to fear. But we gather here to give thanks to a God who has given us the kingdom. Doesn’t that make everything different? You will be excited to know that we are preparing for a fall pledge campaign. I have been through this many times and I know about looking at my money and trying to decide what I will give to the church in the coming year. I know about looking at my money with all the caveats… one of my jobs will end next year, we have this big home improvement project coming, and then there are the debts we already carry. What if I say, “God has given me the kingdom. What shall I pledge in response?” How do I live as a person of faith in the face of a God who has given me everything already?

We tend to get things backwards. It is tempting to think that we are taking the lead here. The psalmist even says “Let your loving-kindness, O Lord, be upon us, as we have put our trust in you.” (Psalm 33:22) That sounds like we trusted in God so God should be kind to us. There are some who believe if we live a certain way, we will be rewarded or punished by God. That doesn’t make sense to me. God breathes life into us and gives us everything. That means everything we do is in response to God.

And if that isn’t enough, Luke tells the story of those who are waiting for their master. Their master arrives and finds them waiting so the master serves them. We show up on any Sunday morning in all forms – we are centered and prayerful or we are running late and a step behind or we are frustrated because someone is driving us crazy. We listen, we pray, we sing, and then we reach this place in the service where we come forward to the altar. God sets the table for us and invites us to come and be fed. Do you ever find as you step into the aisle that you change just a bit? Maybe you are softer, more aware of yourself and those around you, maybe you are more open. I don’t know about you, but so often as I stood from the pew and began to walk toward the front, I would look around and see your beautiful faces and I could feel the table prepared for you, for me, for the whole world. Then I would take my place in the circle and open my hands to receive “the body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” Some good person placed the bread in my hands, but it was God who is serving me. It is God serving us. That is staggering!

In any given week, there are things that cause us to lose our way; there are things to fear, and so many unknowns. It is in the midst of all of it that we learn to trust things not seen. It’s hard to believe that Abraham and Sarah in their old age would leave their homeland for some unknown destination with no GPS, and no children to carry  on the family name if they became ill or were injured. All they had was God’s promise to guide them. We don’t really know our destination. Life has a way of showing us new things and moving us in new directions.

God offers us the kingdom and here is what God asks in return… that we say yes. Not a half-hearted maybe, but a unreserved yes – a yes with our whole being. You may remember that at the Annual Meeting in January, I offered a word to guide our journey this year:

“The word is wholeheartedness. How many of our days are we tired and less than enthused about what lies before us? How often do we find ourselves going through the motions? One of my favorite reflections on this comes from a question David Whyte asked because he was doing work that left him empty. David had no energy for his work and he asked Brother David Steindl-Rast about exhaustion. You may know of David Steindl-Rast as “the gratitude guy.” David Steindl-Rast had a surprising answer to David Whyte’s question about exhaustion:

“The antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest. It is wholeheartedness… You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers… You must do something heartfelt and you must do it soon.” Brother David Steindl-Rast (Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity pp. 132-133)

That conversation inspired and moved David Whyte forward to becoming a poet who has profoundly impacted the larger world with his words. It is a good reminder that when we enter the world wholeheartedly, many will benefit.

It is easy to get to the place where we are lethargic about our commitments.” (Annual Meeting Report, January 2013) Perhaps some are feeling fatigue in this in-between time at St. Michael’s. In times like this, we may want to slip into the background. Wherever we are, God comes and asks us to commit wholeheartedly with one word: “Yes.” We hope to have a priest in charge in the next several weeks. In the meantime, a generous God is serving us and we have the privilege of being God’s community. All we have to do is say “yes.” We all know that saying yes doesn’t lead us instantly to a life of ease where everything is simple. But saying yes leads us in an ultimate way to the kingdom, to the place where God’s goodness sets us free and makes us whole.

There’s a series of AT&T commercials out now featuring comedian Beck Bennett talking to a group of children – do you know the ones I mean?
They remind me a bit of doing children’s sermons, because Beck asks the kids a question, such as, “which is better, bigger or smaller?” and gets random kid answers in response. They are cute commercials, and I smiled when I first heard them.
But then it started to sink in. 
The tag line ending each commercial is “It’s not complicated. Bigger is better.”
The quintessential American message.
Bigger is better. 
Faster is better. 
More is better. 
All of advertising and marketing is designed to appeal to this theme – you don’t have what you need, but we do. 
Enough is not enough. 
Enough is not an option. 
Bigger is better – faster is better - More is better.

It is in this context that we hear the story of the rich farmer in today’s gospel lesson.
And it seems like the farmer’s actions make perfect sense.
He has a larger-than-usual crop, and he decides to build new barns to store his newfound wealth. 
He is saving towards a secure future, not blowing his windfall on luxuries. 
A wise man – a good steward – what’s the problem?
Why is he called a fool?

The rich farmer is a fool because he believes his wealth secure his future.
He trusts his possessions to give him security. And his possessions are of no use to him when, that very night, his life is demanded of him. All his plans come to nothing.

It’s not that wealth is a bad thing.
It’s not that saving for retirement is a bad thing.
It’s just the place those good, useful things take in our lives that makes a difference.
A few weeks ago Sue preached about the story of Mary and Martha, and the One Thing that is necessary for our lives.

Jesus invited Martha to focus on One thing-her relationship with him.

Our lives tend to organize around One vital thing. If that one thing is our retirement savings, or our health, or our career, it may work for a while, but ultimately we will be disappointed. Because all those things are temporary. None of those things will give life the meaning and fullness which God intends for us.

But I think you all know this. I think we all know, in our hearts, that money can’t buy happiness and the meaning of life does not lie on our possessions. The challenge is to live according to what we know.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine about dieting, and she said, “I know just about all there is to know about food and nutrition and balance. I just don’t eat the way I know I should.” With all the easy, inexpensive options for delicious treats and quick food that surround us, it’s hard to eat the way we know we should.

It’s the same with money and possessions. We know that our money and possessions are not our One Necessary Thing. But it is hard to stay focused.
We live fast-paced, complicated lives, and there and hundreds – thousands – of products designed to help us out. To make us look better, feel better, save time, have fun, be at peace – the list goes on, and it is hard to block out the voices.

Preacher and seminary professor David Lose says this story is about living the good life. In his words: 
What, then, does the good life consist of? 
Read the rest of what Jesus says across the gospels and it becomes pretty clear: relationships -- relationships with each other and with God. And, as you inevitably discover while reading, these two can’t really be separated. Hence Jesus tells stories like the parable of the Good Samaritan that invite us to think more broadly about who we imagine being our neighbor, and he preaches sermons that extol caring for the poor, loving our enemies, and doing good for those in need.

The full life Jesus offers is a life centered in relationships with God and others. Which brings us to the farmer’s other pitfall - his self-centeredness.
When his land produces abundantly he says, to himself, 
What should I do? I will do this: I will build larger barns, to store my grain and my goods. I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods. 
The farmer does not seem to have any gratitude for the role of anyone else in his newfound wealth – his workers, perhaps. Or gratitude to God and the universe for the conditions that allow rich crops to grow. He has no sense of relationship – of sharing his wealth with others. 
Any good Jewish farmer in Jesus time knew what is expected of him, to tithe and to give alms to the poor. It is part of living in community – of being in relationship with God and others. But the rich farmer of the parable overlooks these lessons.

We know that the good life, the faithful life, consists not in gaining and hoarding possessions, but in relationships with God and one another. Our lives are richer when we share ourselves – our time and our resources – with others. We know that our security rests, not in what we have, or what we do, but in being God’s beloved children. But it is hard to live that way. So what can we do?

This is where spiritual practice comes in. 
We can practice the things that help us know when enough is enough.
We can practice things like gratitude, and community.
I have a few ideas – and I know that you have many more.

As a community, we have begun to practice gratitude in a variety of ways. 
We have gratitude cards in the pews, which we invite you to use by writing down something your are thankful for in your life and putting it in the offering plate. 
We have begun a weekly celebrations column in our email noticias. And we have been commissioning lay ministers in a wide variety of church ministries throughout the summer – IPG, altar guild, Vestry, EV’s, and many others. This morning we commission a group of people who give their time at St Martin’s Hospitality Center, Dismas House, and Albuquerque Opportunity Center.

These things remind us of all we have to be grateful for –all the valuable resources we have to share with one another and with the wider community.

Each of us can do similar things in our own lives. Keep a gratitude journal to remind yourself daily of the blessings you have. Write a thank-you note to someone who’s done something nice for you. Spend some time in silence, clearing your mind of all the to-do’s and pressures which fill your hours, opening yourself to quiet.

And we can practice relationship and community. Talk to someone you don’t know in the parish hall after church. Make a phone call to someone you’ve been thinking of but haven’t talked to for a while. Set aside one-on-one time for someone in your family. Come to worship or a church event even if you don’t feel like it, because your presence builds up the community.

David Lose finishes his blog on today’s lessons with these words: 
God wants so much more for us than simply more stuff. 
God wants for us life and love and mercy and community. 
And God will not stop sharing this message.
Indeed, the same Jesus who warns against greed and invites abundant life and tells us of God’s love carries this message all the way to the cross, so that we can see just how much God loves us.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.