St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopal Church 
Sunday, November 30, 2008 Advent 1B 
Gospel: Mark 13:24-37
Preacher: Christopher McLaren 
Theme: Addressed by God, again and again.

Our reading today comes from what is called the “little apocalypse” in the Gospel of Mark.  It is kind of call to vigilance, a wake-up call to the faithful to pay attention, to eagerly await the coming of the Lord.  Apocalyptic writing such as this tends to come out of historical periods of great suffering, communal struggle, or calamitous events.  Biblical scholars tell us that this particular writing is a key to dating the gospel of Mark after 70 C.E., after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions in response to a series of failed Jewish rebellions. For all of its troubling imagery and darkness, apocalyptic is a genre of literature that has its roots in the human longing for salvation, the leaning toward hope of rescue, of the good guys riding in on their white horses to save the day.  In essence apocalyptic writing, focuses not on the present but on a hidden future, soon to be revealed in which things will be set right, healed, redeemed, made new.  Apocalyptic literature asks us to look for what is truly real, to look beneath the surface of things in hope of discovering God at work. 

It is this hidden future, this surprising in-breaking of the kingdom of God, or “the Son of Man coming in the clouds,” that this passage instructs us to wait for.  Over and over again we are told to keep awake, to be aware, to keep alert.  There is urgency in the text that is both troubling and attractive to us.  We know that there are things we are waiting for, things we have waited for all our lives.  They may be childish longings, the horse for Christmas that never came, the sports team that never quite made it to the playoffs. But we all have our poignant and perhaps secret hopes, the quiet hope that mom and dad would rediscover their love for one another and restore the family, that our loved one would be healed, that the child we so wished for by conception would finally come, that the carelessly lost friendship could be rekindled. We all have these deep longings within us, these hopes we waited for and will find ourselves waiting for again and again.  

Advent is about one of the most essential things in our human makeup.  We all wait, we all live, with great hunger to be spoken to, to be touched, to be loved, to be known, to be valuable enough to be judged, and honored enough to be absolved or forgiven.  And the truth of the matter is that the things we most desire, the experiences we most need we cannot create or make for ourselves. No one alone can assure themselves of being loved. It is not possible to be known in isolation.   We carry a deep need to hear these foundational affirmations but not merely from something of our own making, we want to hear it from something outside ourselves, from the realm beyond our control. We desire revelation, which is what the word apocalypse means. The discovery of the thing you’ve been hoping for or wishing for all your life and suddenly you see it, for the first time, like a sudden gust of wind or a sneaker wave.  

As a culture we are unable to assure ourselves of our own worth, our own dignity, our own “lovableness.”  In response to our enlightened culture’s denial of any divine affirmation, of a word coming from beyond ourselves to assure us of our worth or value, we seem to have wrapped ourselves in things, surrounded ourselves with toys, and gadgets and objects of great beauty to assure ourselves that we are worth a great deal.   At one very basic level our own environmental crisis seems the result of human beings as a species trying to affirm their own worth by using up creation in a way that is unsustainable. We have it seems mistook our need of God for our use of creation. Our insatiable desire for more is what is left of our longing for the divine. At the same time, our generation is so aware of humanity’s corporate responsibility, for so much violence and neglect, that we are in need of affirmation of our own basic humanity.  How are we to be forgiven for standing by while genocide ravaged Rwanda, while ethnic and religious cleansing continues to litter the globe, while undocumented immigrants are targets of ongoing hate crimes and exploitation? We are so deeply compromised as a people.  We know that our tax dollars support the largest military in the world. We know that our money funds wars.  We know that there is blood on our hands.  We know that the environment has suffered from our hungry way of life.  We know that we have developed and pursued arsenals that could destroy the inhabited world several times over in an awful display of self-annihilation.  We know that our greed and thirst for debt has sent shock-waves around the worlds financial markets. 

In the mist of all this troubling news, all of the moral angst of our age, we long for some kind of word of hope. We long for a fresh word that will put us back on track, that will bring us back into recognition of who we are.  It doesn’t have to be just a kind word, it could be a word of deep truth that at once judges us but assures us of our value, that we are worth judging that we are worth saving, that we are worth healing, that we are worth new life and new direction.  

All of our human longings, our desires to be loved, accepted, known, and forgiven assure us that we are quite literally talked and touched into life.  None of us possess life in ourselves. It comes to us as gift as grace from another.  All our longings hold within them a danger, that we will attempt to construct something to meet our own needs, this is the human temptation,  our idol-making habit.  But nothing made of our own initiative can truly speak the words of affirmation, the words of life into our souls that we need.  

The Christian story, our story takes its cue from the story of the people of Israel who were summoned to be a people by God, affirmed by their deliverance out of slavery and nurtured by a covenant that asked them to reject any idol of their own making in favor of a living God.  As Christians we too were summoned, summoned by a mysterious child, summoned to an unlikely stable along with shepherds and angels, peasants and wisdom seekers, by the love of God taking on fleshly form. Addressed by something beyond us that could only be described as God’s glory. 

This child grew up and in surprising ways spoke and touched people into new life. He awakened people to God in uncanny ways, ways that no one could fabricate on their own, ways that spoke to the deep longings inside each person.  While Jesus walked this earth he was constantly waking people up, wiping the sleep from their eyes, pulling them out of their dreams into a reality that made them feel so alive, so free, so open to God that one realized that they had been spoken to by something beyond themselves, something beyond just a merely human companion.  In and through Jesus people heard the words they most needed to hear, you are loved, you are valuable, you can change, you can be forgiven, you are worth my judgment, you matter. 

The person of Jesus was and is a being too wild to be domesticated, too unpredictable to be made into an idol though it has been tried many times. In the end Jesus was killed not because he was found boring or irrelevant but rather because he was found to be dangerous, dangerous to the status quo.  His death, however, had a curious effect. For some reason his followers seemed to grow stronger and to feel in their very bones that in a real way Jesus’ life continued unseen and that in time he would come back, that there would be another Advent of this life-affirming person.  In fact, the early followers of Jesus sensed in their very bones, in the center of their souls, the ongoing life and love of Jesus so strongly that they described it as the Holy Spirit working within them.  They began to sense that God was at work in the world in surprising ways, even though Jesus was no longer with them. 

They remembered strange stories that Jesus told, like the one about the fig tree which seemed to say that if you want to know what God is up to you can begin by attending to the ordinary world around you.  The world it seems is full of parables happening on every street corner and in every office cubicle.  There are clues to the kingdom of God in every nook and cranny of the earth but most of us are not looking for them.  By saying hey look at this fig tree, Jesus was saying look for the signs of new life around you and you will find me there at work.  You don’t have to look too hard, you don’t need to focus on earthquakes or hurricanes to see me. I’m at work almost everywhere, in the food pantry, in a South African prison, in a small private school for immigrants, in a youth program in the south valley, in the Arizona border town, if you just have eyes to see it. I’m at work in the most ordinary of events in your life. 

Advent is the reminder that all around us God is trying to tell us something. That through the mundane and ordinary aspects of life God is reaching out to touch us, to address us, to speak into our lives.  Advent reminds us that we are not alone, or if we think we are, Christmas will and has shattered that aloneness forever. God will invade his own universe. God has addressed us in such an ordinary and surprising way that we cannot escape into isolation.  

The point of Advent is not only to prepare for the coming of Christ in the manger at Bethlehem, the point of Advent is that God has already come, that God continues to come, that if we will only prepare ourselves, if we will only wake up, if we will only snap out of our habitual slumber we could see God at work in the fig tree, in the difficult words of those who love us most, in the longing to grant forgiveness, in the urge to meet a real need in front of us, in the eyes of stranger, in the laughter of children, in the numbers of your checking account, in the pain of a friend, in the surprising gesture of kindness. The challenge of Advent is that God is fierce and wild, unpredictable and beyond our language.  God will not allow himself to be caged within our own ideas, he will constantly exceed or deepest longings, and our wildest speculations about who he is.  Newness breaking into history, newness breaking into our lives, surprising turns, and wild outcomes can remind us of who God really is, a being who will not be tamed but at the same time is secure enough and willing to come close to us to speak and touch us into life. God is constantly coming to speak to us again and again. We only need to wake up to see it and by God’s grace we will. 

The Feast of Christ the King
November 23, 2008
Matthew 25:31-46

Today is the Feast of Christ the King, which always falls on the last Sunday of our liturgical year. Next Sunday we begin a new year with the season of Advent. As we look back over the last year and forward into the next, we pause to celebrate Christ as our King, our God in human form, our Savior, our Way. 

But what kind of king is this? All too often he has been portrayed as a powerful king seated on a throne in gold-plated cathedrals, a conquering monarch who demands obedience and does not tolerate competition or disloyalty. But this is not who Jesus himself claimed to be. It is not how he acted. It is not the Jesus of the gospel appointed for this day. 

Remember when this king was born outdoors in a stable, into a poor family? Remember when he rode into Jerusalem among the crowds, seated not on a horse with banners flapping and trumpets blaring, but on a humble donkey, with the common people cheering and waving palm branches? Remember on the night before he was arrested, he tenderly washed his disciples feet, saying that he didn’t consider them his servants, but his friends, and that he was, in fact, their servant? Remember when his humiliating death on the cross was later called his “glorification?” What kind of glory, what kind of king is this? 

He is the kind of king who is disguised as the least among us, the one whom everyone sees right through, as if he were invisible. This king is your waiter at the restaurant, the woman who cleans your hotel room, the child in foster care, the man sleeping under the bridge. He is the kind of king that says that his followers, like him, will feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and care for the prisoner. 

It is easy enough to point to the kinds of things that the friends of this king ought to be doing. Jesus lists examples of servant ministry in the gospel today. What is not so easy is to have the heart of a servant. What is not so easy is to be moved towards humble and selfless service not because we think we should – which never seems to take us very far - but because it is natural for us, because we want to. 

Some seem to be born with this. They learn it from an early age because their parents model it. For many others, it doesn’t come so naturally. We have to learn it. And we learn this not out of duty; rather, it comes to us along the way, as we mature spiritually, as we become more the person that our servant God created us to be. 

Maturing spiritually isn’t really all that different from maturing emotionally, and a big part of this is developing a healthy, secure identity. A weak ego will always be fearful, defending its imagined rights and preferences, hoping to come out on top. A weak self doesn’t have room for others; it can’t afford to be generous; it is too busy protecting and building itself up. A healthy ego isn’t concerned about such things. It can afford to be humble, to serve others. 

Sometimes we think that to develop a healthy ego, all we have to do is list our good qualities and accomplishments and then toast ourselves in the mirror, using Stuart Smalley’s Daily Affirmation “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” 

Strengthening our sense of self as people of faith is really paradoxical, because it means that we lose the self. “Deny yourself,” Jesus said; “those who lose themselves for my sake will find themselves.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “It is no longer I who live but Christ in me,” wrote St. Paul. 

For us, security is found when we learn that it never was about us, about how good or bad we are. Security is found when we learn how to ask for guidance, try our best, admit our mistakes, and detach from the results of our efforts, leaving it all in the hands of God. Security is found when we are willing to empty ourselves and be a vehicle for whatever the Spirit might do through us. Security is found when we are not concerned about getting what we want, but rather hoping for an outcome that serves God’s purposes, for the benefit of all. 

This is a secure Christian ego, an ego that is empty enough to be filled with God. This is when we have a strong sense of self, knowing that we are a vessel of the Spirit, able to serve others naturally, from the heart. 

The way into this security, unless we were lucky enough to be born into it, is directly through our fear – because it is fear, learned through hard experience, that weakens our ego, that tells us that we must fight for what we want, that we are no good unless we can prove it through success and the esteem of others, that something terrible will happen if we don’t get our way, that others who are different from us are a threat to us, that there isn’t enough to go around, so instead of serving others, we’d better serve ourselves, because no one else will.  

The spiritual path takes us through these fears. The path to glory is not upwards, but downwards, through our darkness. The way of the cross is the way of life. We are called to go downwards, right through the things we are afraid of, holding them up to the light of God, admitting our powerlessness over them, getting help so we don’t have to walk this path alone, coming eventually to the root of our fears, to the place of emptiness. 

This is the Holy of Holies in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, where only the High Priest could go once a year, a fearsome place that was, astonishingly, an empty room. As we go through our fears into our own Holy of Holies, standing empty before God, we discover a fullness and a strength that is not our own, a sense of self that is no-self. We find that it never was about us; it is about God’s goodness and power. 

I speak in metaphors, because I find it impossible to explain. All I know is that it works. When we face into our fear of being inadequate, vulnerable, different, or not in control of our own future, when we do this in the presence of a loving God and wise friends along the way, emptiness is no longer a threat. It is filled with the light of God. We can stand empty-handed before God, trusting that the invisible power of the Spirit will never disappoint us. And we are led into new life that is not of our own making. 

A mark of that new life is servanthood. Because with the fearful and weak ego out of the way, we are free to do our best, to fail, to be unattached to the results of our efforts, to take ourselves lightly, because we know that it isn’t about us at all. It is about being a vehicle that God can use for the greater good of all. Without a self to build up or protect, there is nothing in the way of serving God’s world. 

This is the glory that Jesus spoke of. This is the kingly power that he exercised. This is true freedom and peace, a peace that all the success and affirmation and security of the world can never give. It is the majesty and splendor of becoming nothing, so that God can be all. This is our natural state because it reflects the character of the One in whose image we are made, God himself. 

Keep in mind that every day, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty and Eternal Holy One, empties himself of heavenly glory and power in order to come down to us, to serve us in concrete and personal ways. Every day, we pray for patience, for insight, for healing, and the Creator of All makes himself small enough and loving enough to hear us, to be gentle with us, to nudge us forward into the light. 

What humility! What self-denial! What an accessible king! God empties himself, coming to us every day as a servant, ready to help us in whatever way we need, just as Jesus washed his friends’ feet and dwelt among the lowly, like an invisible man. 

This is God’s glory, and it is ours, too, as we learn to walk the way of the cross, as we move through our fears and lose the fragile self along the way. It is then that we find ourselves as God made us, with the heart of a servant; for it is God’s own heart that beats in our breast. 

Nov. 9, 2008
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Matthew 25:1-13

What a strange story. 10 bridesmaids sat in the desert at midnight. They were on their way to a wedding, and perhaps because they were related to the bridegroom, they were waiting for him to come with his entourage, and take them the rest of the way. 5 of them were wise enough to bring extra oil for their lamps, but the other 5 were “foolish,” probably too excited to remember such practicalities.

But the story takes an ominous turn. When the bridegroom drew near, the ones with oil refused to share, and the others had to rush back to the village to find oil merchants – at midnight, mind you – and, of course, they missed the bridegroom’s coming. They made their way to the wedding on their own, but found that they were shut out of the feast. The host didn’t even recognize them at the door. 

This parable has been told about God’s tough love on Judgment Day, when those who have not bothered to pay attention to God will find their lamps empty of oil, shut out of the kingdom of God. 

But, as always with parables, there are other dimensions to this story. It is about spiritual readiness, it is about being alert for the journey ahead. It is about being awake to the possibility of God’s coming at any moment, and responsive enough to get up and go. It is about taking the risk and moving down the road so that you can join in the party of God’s kingdom. 

Today I’d like to talk about being alert and ready to move forward as citizens of this nation. Many of us have felt as if we have been sitting in the desert at night for many years, and last Tuesday’s election seemed like the coming of a kind of bridegroom, taking us down the road in a new direction. President-elect Barak Obama is not the Messiah, and he won’t be able to wave a magic wand and make everything bright and beautiful, but this is a turning point in our history, and I want to mark it. I also want to be awake and ready, with my lamp filled with oil, so that I can go where this moment might take us. 

Last Tuesday night, President-elect Obama said that we have “put [our] hands on the arc of history and [bent] it once more toward the hope of a better day. It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did…at this defining moment, change has come to America.” 

Whether you are jubilant or disappointed about the outcome of this election, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, I think we can all recognize that the arc of history is bending, that many are placing their hope on a better day, that change has come to our nation. 

There is, of course, the historic change of an African American with mixed-race parentage rising up out of our traumatic history of slavery and racism, and becoming our 44th President. The enormity of this cannot be overstated. We will always struggle with racism as one of the imbedded sins of our nation. But millions of African Americans are dancing with joy, hardly able to believe that the Emancipation Proclamation has finally been fulfilled, the arduous and bloody Civil Rights Movement has finally come to fruition. Thank God. 

Tuesday night I talked to my mother about Nettie Lynch. Nettie, an African American, was hired as a young woman in the 1920’s by my grandparents to be the family nanny, cook, and housekeeper. She stayed as a member of the family for some 50 years, outliving my grandparents. Nettie’s father Willie Lynch was Abraham Lincoln’s valet when he was President, and was present at the Ford Theatre when he was shot. After that tragic event, the family migrated to California for a new life, starting over in the wild west of Carson City, Nevada, where she met my grandfather. 

Nettie really raised my mother, with a formidable guiding hand, and she was a kind of grandmother to me. I remember her sitting in the living room watching television with my grandmother, two elderly women, almost like partners, witnessing the events of the civil rights movement unfold on the screen in front of them, but not talking much about it. After my grandmother died, my parents bought her a house and supported her until she passed away. I’d mow Nettie’s lawn every Saturday and then we’d listen to the radio, hoping that Willie Mays would hit another home run for our beloved San Francisco Giants. 

But when this daughter of President Lincoln’s valet took the bus to San Jose on her day off, the only restaurant that would serve her was Woolworth’s – this was only 50 years ago, in the San Francisco Bay Area. And when this beloved member of our family served us Sunday supper, she would go sit in the kitchen by herself and eat. The ugly line of racism, even in our kind and generous family, was traced across the floor. 

You, no doubt, have your own stories. Reviewing where we’ve come from, it is obvious that change has come to America, and I hope that Nettie is able to see this day. I would want to celebrate and dance in the streets with her. 

But President-elect Obama is not just a black man. He is also, in the words of Colin Powell, the next generation. He has come to embody the conviction that many of our ways of doing things are no longer working, that it is high time to rethink how we approach the global economy, international conflict, immigration, health care, and so much more. It is time for us to make a leap forward in our evolution as a human community. I pray that we are at a tipping point, when a historic shift just might take place. Humankind does this from time to time. 

We cannot be passive in this time. We cannot sit back, half asleep, and wait for the bridegroom, hoping that he will take us to a better day. “Keep awake,” Jesus said. If we hope to bend the arc of history towards hope again, we’ll need to make sure our lamps are full of oil. What would that look like for us, as citizens today? 

It includes continuing to be as involved in the democratic process, as so many millions were in this campaign. I’ve never seen such engagement in my life. Everybody I know was doing something. Don’t stop now! Find a cause you believe in, something that your Christian faith motivates you to do, and remember what Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 

Filling our lamps with oil also includes doing what we can to make sure that communities and institutions that are a force for good, such as St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, are as strong as possible. This parish is not just a place to come for personal inspiration, a kind of spirituality club. We are a lamp of hope to our city and our state, as we provide inspiring worship, compassion for the suffering, formation in the faith for children and adults, food for the hungry, and advocacy for the marginalized. 

Our nation will only be as strong and forward-moving as its neighborhood churches and other local institutions, like ours, are. We may not be able to make Congress do everything we want, but we can invest in communities of hope where we live, and in so doing, encourage the forward momentum of our nation. 

So when you go to a pledge party soon, or when you get your pledge card in the mail and you fill it out, think of it as an investment in your nation. Today, the world needs St. Michael’s spiritual depth, strength, and compassion more than ever. This is no time to hold back, sitting in the dark with empty lamps. This is precisely the time, at this tipping point in history, to fill up our budget, our buildings, our worship, and our ministries with the oil of the Spirit, and be a part of this movement. 

As our President-elect said, “I ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand….it can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice…where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.” 

God comes to us in this moment. So wake up and get ready for the journey ahead. Fill your inner lamp, fill the lamp of our parish community, fill the other lamps that are within your circle of concern. Then together, illumined by the Spirit, let’s move on down the road, so that we can all join in the wedding feast of God’s kingdom. 

All Saints Sunday, Nov. 2, 2008
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

I didn’t grow up with much of an appreciation for this feast day, but I have come to love All Saints, Dia de los Muertos. On this day we remember our loved ones who have died, by naming them in our prayers and by displaying their photographs in our ofrenda behind the main altar. We also claim our desire to be a saint, by renewing our baptismal covenant, in which we promise to follow Christ’s ways. 

And on this day we hear in the gospel our beloved Beatitudes, the 9 verses that Jesus spoke that summarize his entire teaching. They ring through the centuries as bells of hope and truth. In miniature, they capture the very heart of Jesus’ character, and the character of all the saints who follow him. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 

On the hillside that day, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Jesus opened his heart to the crowds and expressed his own experience of God. What a precious record we have in these words! But Jesus was also saying that they could join him, right then and there, with purity of heart, poverty of spirit, mercy and a holy thirst. Those who did were never the same. Their lives truly became “blessed.” The saints – all very human, every one of them - show us that this blessedness is not beyond our reach, either. 

Remember this when you say the Baptismal Covenant in a few minutes: you are not just reciting some liturgical formula. You are answering “yes” to God’s call to become a saint, saying “yes, I want to live these Beatitudes. I want to see Christ in every person; I want to strive for peace and reconciliation; I want my worldly spirit to be poor and empty enough to be filled with the Spirit; I want purity of heart. And with God’s grace, it shall be.” 

Our hope for a truer life extends beyond ourselves, especially this week, with national elections only two days away. We’ve been hearing a lot about “hope” and “change” from both candidates, but these are not just slogans that we’re all so tired of hearing. These words express a real longing that so many of us feel very deeply. 

The way we’ve been living is no longer working. It is a pivotal time in history, when we have the opportunity to take a fresh approach to the political process, international conflict, immigration, health care, our environment, education, poverty, and how we run the global economic machine. It is truly time for a change, an historic shift in how we think and how we live. 

The other day I was reading an article about racism in our country, and the author’s point was that the type of politics that prey upon people’s fears and prejudices is like a house of cards that thankfully, in many places now, shows signs of collapsing. He said “That’s what happens to weak ideas: The don’t die a slow, lingering death, but lose their power all at once, like a broken spell.” 

This was the point of the book The Tipping Point, published in 2000. Malcolm Gladwell described little things that appear at just the right time, adding up and becoming a force of momentum for change that is unstoppable. He uses two examples from the 1990’s in New York City, one frivolous and one serious: the sudden return of the Hush Puppy as a fashionable shoe, and the dramatic reduction in crime. When circumstances are ripe for change, when little things add up, old ideas lose their power, and new ones spread like an epidemic. 

This is what has happened over and over again at tipping points in history, with the advent of the printing press, democratic revolutions, and the age of the computer. It is, I hope, where we are today. All at once, a shift takes place. Humanity stops trudging along with its eyes on the ground, looks up, and leaps into the future. 

At the CREDO conference I help to lead twice a year, my faculty counterpart in the spirituality component always tells the same story, as she did again last week. It is about pond fish, circling round and round in their muddy little existence, and how one day, a brightly colored, sparkling fish from beyond the pond splashed in. He spoke of a glorious place, the great ocean, with all its wonders and possibilities, and how if they would just jump out of their pond into the stream only a few feet away, they would be on their way to the unimaginably magnificent sea. 

Well, one pond fish says “No, we’ll surely die; it’s a scary world out there. Best to stay where we are.” Another holds up tradition, saying “Don’t listen to this dreamer! Why, this radical proposal would destroy our way of life if we act upon it.” A professorial type wants to set up a weekly study group that will discuss it for a few months. 

The stranger replies “All you have to do is jump.” A few of the pond fish gather around their colorful new friend and leap into the world. The others stay behind, and resume their quiet little existence. 

On the way to the airport we were talking about All Saints Sunday, and another of the faculty said to me “You know, the only thing that distinguishes a saint is that they are the ones who jump.” I’ve been thinking about that ever since. 

What would it be like for you to jump into the kingdom of God? Jesus and the saints have splashed into your pond in vibrant, living color, promising you the Beatitudes, pointing towards God’s ocean, towards holiness of life. 

Is there something that prevents you from making the leap with them? Is it the assumption that you that you don’t have any other options than the life you live? Is it the notion that God really has no power to free you? That stress and overwork are inevitable, and that you don’t have time for prayer or creativity? That you just don’t have the personality that would make it possible to be more loving and kind? That your hunger for peace and righteousness is a stupid dream, that this world will always be a mess? 

Perhaps the spell you live under is about to be broken. Perhaps your weak ideas are about to lose all their power. Perhaps enough little things have added up, and you are now reaching your tipping point. 

When we reach this point, we face a crossroads. One direction is the denial of hope, a refusal to risk, where we consign ourselves to the life of a puddle fish. It leads to cynicism and quiet desperation. It is a kind of death. This is what alcoholics do again and again; they turn their backs on the tipping point that is right in front of them. This is what we do when we hear the ringing words of Jesus and say to ourselves “Maybe that’s for the saints, but I couldn’t live like that.” 

The other direction at the crossroads is scary, because it is unknown to us. We can’t see where the stream will take us; we’ve never been to the promised ocean beyond. But when we jump over our doubts and let the stream of God carry us onward, a shift occurs. 

God matches our willingness to leap with a grace that we had no way of seeing before. And in this alchemy, the Spirit makes us new people. We don’t have to know how to be holy. We just have to look for authentic signs of it in Jesus and the saints, say “yes” to this possibility every day, and persistently offer to God everything within us that stands in its way. God will do the rest.

When we take a chance on God and leap out of our little puddle, we are given new life. That’s what the saints did, and that’s what we are called to do: to make a leap of faith into God’s kingdom.

Our nation - even the whole world -  is at a crossroads, and a tipping point lies in front of us. Our weak ideas have already lost their power, and the spell is almost broken. Will we make the leap? 

And what about you? Will you make the leap that God intends for you, without knowing what it will cost or where it will take you? Will you risk it all, and become a saint?