ADVENT  1 – 11/28/10

    Happy New Year!  Here we are.  The first Sunday of Advent.  Does it take your breath away as it does mine?  Or is shortness of breath just a fact of aging?  Time flies faster each year.  Reminders surround me.  Among the comic strips I keep posted on my refrigerator is a Non Sequitur frame from 2002.  It shows two identical looking street prophets with long beards, shaggy tunics and sandals carrying placards and meeting face to face at a street corner.  The placard of one reads:  “Rejoice!  Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”  The placard of the second reads:  “Repent! This could be your last day!” 

    I never tire of that strip because it sums up the tension in my life.  Here we are:  The first Sunday of Advent marking the beginning of a new year for us, a chance for another new start  as we begin our walk to Bethlehem and the coming of the Christ Child once more in our lives.  I love the phrase “being on the tiptoes of anticipation” to describe our journey during Advent.  It recalls my childish anticipation for Christmas morning.  It took a bit more maturity for me to claim I stood on the tiptoes of anticipation for the second coming of Christ – the end times, the apocalypse. 

But here we are.  These pesky Advent readings  reminding us that as Christians we live these next few days not only in anticipation of the coming of the Christ child, the babe in the manger for whom angels sing, but also in anticipation of the second coming of Christ: the apocalypse.  Well, that could put a damper on things.  End times.  Life as we know it on this planet blown to smithereens, as it were….particles of matter blowing out into the universe and meeting God face to face. 

Have any of you experienced a time when you thought the world was coming to an end?   For me, that time was early 1968.  Fred and I had returned from two great years as Peace Corps volunteers in Chile.   Being apolitical was no longer an option in my life.  So, it was hard resettling in our U.S. culture with its seeming non-interest in other cultures. While the threat of nuclear holocaust had abated since the early ‘60’s, the war in Viet Nam dragged on.  The Civil Rights movement was churning things up everywhere, including our new home city of Louisville.  Close by, coal miners in Appalachia were struggling for reform.  The women’s movement was turning some apple pie and mother myths on their heads.  University administration buildings were under physical attack.  The world as I knew it had turned upside-down in the two years we were gone.  It was necessarily a bad thing, just very unsettling.  Then in a short time, MLK and RFK were assassinated.  That did it for me.  I believed the end was near.  It was frightening and overwhelming.    I felt apocalypse now.  I went into hibernation. 

Then a wonderful thing happened.  On the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels in 1968 our daughter Katie was born.  I was given a God-graced lesson in hope in a time of darkness.  Talk about putting on the armor of light.  That is what I did.  It was not as if the darkness did not exist either in the world or in me.  But I understood once and for all that  darkness will never, never overcome the light.  That is the promise of Advent.  We sing the hopefulness in our Advent hymns.  I love Charles Wesley’s lyrics in #66:  “Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.  Born thy people to deliver, born a child, and yet a king. Born to reign in us for ever, now thy gracious kingdom bring.  By thine own eternal Spirit rule in all our hearts alone; by thine all sufficient merit raise us to thy glorious throne.”  And every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember the !st coming and proclaim our belief in the 2nd:  Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
We are promised that every day offers a new beginning through God‘s mercy, love, grace and forgiveness.  We need to listen to and learn our stories from Adam and Eve to the present.  And while we are to learn from the past, we are not to dwell there.  We are not to dwell in the future either. 

Today’s readings reflect the place where those 1st century Christians found themselves.  They believed that Christ was going to come again immediately.  But as the apostles and the first generation of followers began dying off, what Jesus meant by his second coming had to be reconsidered.  Matthew is writing to a community that apparently was stuck in looking to the future and not living their discipleship in Christ in the present.  And before Matthew’s Gospel was written down, Paul was writing to the church in Thessalonica whose members by 55 CE were engrossed in the idea of the second coming as well.  They had given up their regular work and lives and were waiting around for the second coming of Christ.  Paul certainly anticipated the second coming, but knew there was life in Christ in the present and much work to be done. In his last letter to the Romans which we heard today, he writes: “The night is far gone, the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Put on the Lord Jesus Christ indeed. 

The phrase “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” appears in our collect, our gathering prayer for the first Sunday of Advent:  “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.”   This prayer was composed for the 1549 Prayer Book and from 1662 until our 1972 PB revision it was ordered to read daily during Advent.  Not a bad idea to resurrect.
It seems we Christians have always found it too easy to live in suspended animation between the first and second coming of Christ as opposed to living Christ like lives in the present and seeing Jesus as one who comes to us not once in the past and once in the future, but time and time again, day after day in the very ordinary events of our everyday lives. 

As for the 1st coming, we all know how hard it can be in our commercial culture to keep the Christ in Christmas, remember the reason for the season, and so on.  As for the second coming, although Jesus says many times not to worry about what the ‘morrow will bring, many Christians have spent a great deal of time speculating and indeed announcing the date of the end of the world.  “Rapture” literature has made a lot of money for a lot of writers and a lot of preachers.  Frankly, I like the bumper sticker that reads, “When the rapture comes, can I have your car?”  Its tongue in cheek humity cracks me up. I do believe in the second coming of Christ, I just find it ironic that so many who demand a literal rendition of scripture use the word “rapture” as if it occurs in scripture, which it doesn not. 

Be as that may be, what do we learn in today’s lessons?  Today Jesus says that God alone knows the time.  To speculate about the time of the second coming is a spectacular waste of time.  To be prepared, to watch, is the order of the day.  Jesus’ reference to Noah is a reminder to never become so immersed in kronos, clock time that we forget kairos, God’s time.  Worldly affairs are necessary.  We have families as well as strangers to feed and nurture now, but we must never forget life eternal. We must never forget that we have a God who loves us, a God who came and lived among us and thus showed us how to live.  And we need to live that life as best we are able with God’s gracious help. 

Today’s lessons also tell us that to live without watchfulness, mindfulness, invites disaster.  Today’s parable of the  house owner is not an admonition to put in a new security system or build a higher fence to protect all that precious material stuff we have accumulated but can’t take with us anyway.  Nor is the parable an admonition to live a life in fear of the thief who comes in the night.  It is simply a lesson reminding us to live life mindfully, to be aware of God’s presence all around, to be prepared but at the same time to hold on to our things lightly.  Because, what we have comes from God.  Every Sunday we say at the offertory “of thine own have we given thee.”  We need to believe that, live it.  We need to remember that we are stewards, not owners.  It is in our community as in healthy families, we learn to use the pronoun “ours” not “mine.” 

Then there is a final lesson. One of the plagues of my life is my ability to procrastinate.  A tattered and faded sign hangs over my work desk.  It reads: “If not today, then when?”  Still I am a master of procrastination.  Believe me, I know that an addiction to just about anything – alcohol, money, TV, sex, eating, you name it –allows procrastination, encourages it.  Scarlet’s oft quoted line, “tomorrow is another day” is any addict’s mantra. 

Today’s lesson says, the spirit that leads to disaster is the spirit that says there is plenty of time.  There is the old story of the three apprentice devils who are completing their training.  They are chatting with Satan about their temptation plans.  The first says, “I will whisper in their ears that there is no God.”   Satan replies, “That won’t delude many because many believe there is some sort of God.”  The second says, “I will tell them there is no hell.”  Satan replies, “That’s not going to fool many since many sense there will be hell to pay for certain actions.”  The third devil says, “I will tell people there’s no hurry.”  “Go,” says Satan, “for that will be the ruin of thousands.”  Amen.  That would be me.

Paul reminds us to put on the light of Christ but not just when we think we need it.  Darkness always resides in the world and in us.  But this light of Christ arms us, allows us to live each minute in the present.  Our life is not a philosophical showdown in a comic strip.   Each day is indeed a new day and should be lived as if it were our last.  It is a way of life, a rule of life.   It is living life today to the fullest in Christ Jesus:  It is not being bogged down with self recriminations over the past;  Nor is it worrying obsessively about what tomorrow will bring.  

Perhaps our most formidable challenge as disciples is to relieve that tension between Christ’s first and second coming.  Our task is to be Christ to others and to see Christ in others here and now in our often very ordinary daily lives. This is indeed the season when the days are becoming shorter. It can seem as if darkness is overcoming the world.  It is the season when store clerks are worn out and cranky,  when the homeless are colder, when the poor are more vulnerable, when strangers are more harassed, when the widowed and orphan are more alone and isolated.  It is the season when we are most tempted to give in to our personal demons.  And so it is the best time to practice being Christ and to intentionally seek Christ in others.  Let’s try it.  Repent! This could be your last day!  Rejoice!  Today is the first day of the rest of your life.   Put on the light of Christ! With God’s grace, repent and rejoice, indeed!    Amen

Thanksgiving, Year C            St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Deuteronomy 26:  1-11        Albuquerque, NM
Philippians 4:  4-9            November 24, 2010

Remembering God’s Goodness; Re-membering God’s People
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

It is so good to be here in this place on the eve of Thanksgiving. Gathered together singing  God’s blessing.  Giving thanks together.  So good to be hearing the old stories of God’s goodness—in fat times and in lean.  It’s so good to be here with you tonight.

We gather here tonight, you and I, with so much pressing on our minds—lists of things yet to do, lists of things left undone, memories of Thanksgivings past,  hopes for Thanksgivings to come, expectations about tomorrow.  I imagine some of us approach Thanksgiving Day filled with joyful anticipation as we remember the warm glow of Thanksgivings past; I imagine some of us come to the day with a measure of dread or resignation or even fear—determined just to get through the meal and get on our way.  There are so many different takes on the day.   And so much work that goes into it.

Sometimes you just need to press the pause button.  This is one of those moments.  Time to pause.  Time to take a deep breath.  Time to breathe in the goodness of God.  Time to linger in the memories of God’s grace at work in our lives.

After all, Thanksgiving is a day for remembering.  A day for telling and retelling the old family stories. A day for remembering quirks and healed hurts and the hurts that have yet to heal. A day for remembering and giving thanks for those who are no longer at the table.  A day for remembering God’s goodness in our lives.  

Yet for most of us Thanksgiving is not a private, individual meditative kind of a day.  It’s not a day of silent prayer.  How could it be?  It begins with a parade and ends with a game.  Thanksgiving is a communal feast.   A day of remembering in community.  The kind of remembering that leads to re-membering, re-forming community.   The glue of community—shared story, shared meal, shared laughter, and shared tears are all part of the day. Re-membering—it’s at the heart of Thanksgiving.

Remembering and re-membering are at the core of the scripture we hear today.  The Deuteronomist draws people’s attention to their past—to Abraham, their ancient forebearer, receiving an outlandish promise from God; to their ancestor Jacob, the wandering Aramean; to the good times and the harsh times in Egypt; and to the time in the Wilderness.  Through it all we see signs of God’s faithfulness to God’s promise and God’s people.   

But listen closely to this remembering.  The milk and honey part does not come until the end.  Remembering at it’s best embraces the pain along side the joy.  The light of God’s goodness shines most brightly against the darkness in our lives.  The darkness is there lurking in the background of this story the Deuteronomist tells.  It’s there in the despair of a childless couple long past child-bearing age; there in the ache of husband for his wife and a father for his favorite son; there in the hunger and thirst and bickering and faithlessness that serve as a backdrop for God’s signs and wonders in the Wilderness.  It’s in the despair, the ache, the hunger and the thirst that we encounter signs of God’s goodness and are reminded of God’s faithfulness.  

This is a truth that those Pilgrims understood on that first Feast of Thanksgiving in December  1621.  That was a feast celebrated not in a time of plenty but in a time of scarcity.  Only one of their three crops produced any fruit worth harvesting and not nearly enough to sustain a community over the winter ahead.  As they looked around the table, the people gathered could not help but count the losses—half their community dead.  And yet in the midst of all of that, those Pilgrims remembered the gifts of God and gave thanks for God’s goodness.  

Perhaps in getting there they followed Paul’s advice:  ‘Whatever is true, what ever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” I like to believe that in the midst of their fear, in the midst of their grief, they looked for the true, the honorable, the just and the pure and in so doing they found the hand of God.  I suspect that in their remembering, they re-membered their community.  

Re-membering—it’s at the heart of our Thanksgiving feast as well.  Remember and re-member—that’s what we do as we gather at this table.  As we remember Jesus at table with his friends—the lost and the lonely, the hapless and the hungry—we re-member  
the community gathered around the table.  We become a people forgiven, healed and renewed.  And as we do, we become the body of Christ sent forth to heal the wounds of those we meet in the world beyond the table.  

Shall we gather at the table?

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday November 21, 2010 Christ the King
Text: Colossians 1: 11-20 / Luke 23: 33-43
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Theme: Christ plays in 10,000 places

Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King - the last Sunday of the Church year. As we come to the end of our yearly cycle and begin to anticipate the coming of Mary’s child and child of God at Bethlehem, we are given an opportunity to consider the deep mystery of Christ in creation and the foolishness of the cross-shattered God.  

Many approach Christ the King Sunday with severe caution. There has simply been too much damage done, in the heady Triumphalism of Christianity throughout history. Too often Empire and conquest found a willing partner in the church baptizing their moral failings with a cocksure sense of God’s blessings on their greed, domination and violence. If celebrating Christ the King means the marriage of coercion and spirituality we would rather pass. We are not interested in a return to crusades and inquisitions or pogroms and genocides.

For women this feast carries with it the sexism of the Christian tradition. We are not so sure about this obviously male, hierarchical, patriarchal holy day.  Jesus was a sensitive guy, liked talking theology with women, and counted them among his disciples. This Jesus we can deal with but thrones and scepters and “yes my Lord” is a little much for democratic Christians, especially those who have suffered in a male dominated world with glass ceilings and much too elusive equality.

In Seminary my history professor playfully suggested that we were all monarchists at heart. I bristled at the idea. But, then again, what do we mean when we say, “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Isn’t this an admission that there is a kind of king we’re willing to embrace? And isn’t it a way of saying that the kingdoms of this world are not what they are meant to me? Is this prayer in fact an overtly political prayer, calling down the ways of God in judgment upon our own flawed and failing systems? To pray “Your kingdom come,” is an invitation to see the world as God sees it, not just as it is. It is a way of saying that faith in Jesus is not just simply an idea or an emotion. It is a concrete reality in which we are invited to become part of, to participate in, if we are to become part of the adventure now that God has come into the world in Jesus.  

In our Epistle lesson today Paul wrote to the Christians living in cosmopolitan city of Colosse, a town in what is now modern day Turkey. Paul had never visited this faith community but he is writing to encourage them and to warn them. Paul is writing to counter something akin to Gnosticism in the church at Colosse. Gnosticism was an early theological challenge to Christianity, and for Paul theology was not an intellectual game but a matter of life and death because it had the power to shape the understanding of human life and destiny.

Gnosticism began with two basic assumptions about matter. First, it believed that spirit alone was good and that matter was essentially evil.  Second, it believed that matter was eternal and that the universe was not created out of nothing but rather out of this flawed matter. This way of thinking had several inevitable consequences.

If God was spirit, then he was altogether good and could not possibly work with this evil matter.  Therefore God was not the creator of the world.  God put out a series of emanations, each of which was a little more distant from God until at the end of the series there was an emanation so distant that it could handle matter; and it was this emanation that created the world.

Gnosticism had a significant effect on understanding the person of Jesus.  If matter was altogether evil and if Jesus was the Son of God, then Jesus could not have had a flesh and blood body.  This of course removed Jesus entirely from humanity and made it impossible for him to sympathize with suffering humanity or get anywhere close to them in a saving way.  Now lest you think that that Gnosticism is long gone, I want you to give you an example from my own Gnostic childhood. When I was a child I had a red-letter edition of the bible, where all of the words of Jesus were printed in red. This is a Gnostic idea, that somehow the words, the ideas of Jesus are more important than the actions of Jesus.  What Jesus does in his bodily life is just as important as what he says or teaches.

Ultimately Gnosticism was a highly intellectual way of life and thought. There exited this long chain of emanations between humans and God. Humans must fight their way up this long ladder to God and in order to do that one needed all kinds of secret knowledge and esoteric learning and hidden passwords, and clubhouse handshakes. Consequently the higher realms of spirituality were for an elite few.  This kind of theology was creating a kind of religious aristocracy in Colosse and threatening the hospitality and openness of the emerging church there. So Paul writes his letter to the Colossians. At the center of Paul’s letter encouraging the church at Colosse is a beautiful piece of Liturgical poetry that scholars believe to be an early baptismal hymn to Christ.

In college I had a philosophy professor that one day confessed that although he was an agnostic most of the time, when he sang the great Christian hymns in church he believed while he was singing. To which I responded, then you should sing more often.  Paul knew the power of music and he used it to carry his argument for understanding the saving work of Christ.  

“He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation:
For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.  (Col. 1:15-20)”

In the face of Gnosticism’s rejection of creation as evil, Christian theology proclaims that the “image of the invisible God” the one in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” is intimately involved with creation. This was and is radical theology, while both Jewish and Greek thinkers had ideas of Wisdom and the Logos as the instrument by which the world came into being and by which it was sustained, no philosopher ever thought of Wisdom or Logos as the goal of creation. But the apostle Paul articulates Christian theology in such a beautiful way that we realize that not only is Christ the King because everything has coming into being “through him” but that creation is also, “for him.” Creation not only belongs to God but also is God’s delight. God continues to be involved with the materiality of the world because he made if for himself.

One of the featured attractions of Gnosticism is that one no longer has to take seriously or to care about the material world, namely things or people. It leads to a strict divide between the spiritual and the material world, the sacred and the secular. If matter is indeed evil and God is spirit, then the whole of creation is devalued. All of a sudden one does not need to take seriously the care of the earth as our home because we are trying to escape it or see it as unrelated to the divine life. Thinking through a Gnostic lens means that the “spiritual needs” of humanity become more important than any physical needs as if the two are not connected. Thus it becomes possible to give a starving person a bible instead of a meal. Gnosticism enables one to push the material world, what you can touch, see, taste and smell into an inferior realm. If we consider our own history, following the Gnostic way the church would never have created hospitals, child labor laws would not have mattered, the abolition of slavery would never have animated our lives, women would not have been given the vote, we would not be trying to honor the bodies of or GLBT brothers and sisters. When you think about it our current conversation about healthcare has strong Gnostic overtones, as only some people’s bodies deserve care, only some bodies are important and worthy of healing.

Ultimately Gnostic theology offers a spirituality without the inconvenience of people we don’t like or who aren’t our kind or who are self-sufficient or don’t seem as enlightened as us. Thus Gnostic strains of spirituality exist almost everywhere. In fact no church is safe from its influence. It is much too easy to believe that having a church full of people just like you is the perfect mix, but Christian spirituality is a bit messier than that, a bit more inclusive, for the arms of Jesus’ are wide open to all of humankind.

But our ancient Christian hymn will have none of this distaste for humanity and materiality. Against the Gnostic assertion that Jesus was not truly flesh and blood, but only temporarily entered a human body to give us the inside story on God and initiate us into the secrets of the spiritual life, Paul uses the powerful phrase, “the first born from the dead” thus proclaiming the messiness of the incarnation, the real humanity of Christ, the word made flesh as God’s full and complete revelation of God himself. Christ is king not only because he has created all that is but because he is also the one who has entered his own creation and suffered in order to save it.  Christian life is not found in spiritual elitism in which only a precious few can obtain the necessary secret knowledge to escape the world. The Christian story is that because God so honored human flesh by entering into it, the spiritual path is to be found in the midst of the human condition and through its dark waters. The spiritual life is not found in trying to escape our humanity but by embracing life as a pilgrimage in the company of the saints and by following the way of Jesus.

For Paul the real proof that Christ is King of the Universe is seen in the everyday lives of those who love him and attempt in their faltering ways to follow the way of Jesus in the sacred ordinary. The only Christ the King anyone will ever see, is the reconciling community that Christ has begun in his followers. We are quite literally, my apologies to the Gnostics, the hands and feet of Jesus. The church, Christ’s body, is a community that is first and foremost a forgiven people, brought into right relationship with God. From this place of deep acceptance and love the people of God are able to demonstrate that the Kingdom has come near. Not in some overbearing hard to take, we’re always right kind of way but rather by shaping themselves into a cruciform people, facing their fears, seeking their own healing and making of themselves the shape of the cross in the way they live for and with each other.

For Paul this hymn is a song of praise for the crucified Christ. It is by the cross, through the self-giving love of Christ that humanity is salvaged and offered a new beginning. It is this mind-bending condescension of God, this wild idea that the maker of heaven and earth could die at the hands of flawed humanity that is the antidote to Gnosticism of any kind.

How is Christ the king?  In love, in forgiving, in showing mercy. How is Christ King? In teaching us to face our fears, to acknowledge our needs, and to accept the generous grace of God filling us up everyday if we are willing to empty ourselves. How is Christ king? In the unexpected way of a suffering servant, through humility not entitlement. Christ is enthroned, but not in kingly raiment with the accoutrements of power. Christ is enthroned in the everyday love and service of humanity. Christ the king is found among the wounded and the lost. Christ the king is standing in the unemployment line. Christ is king in the father struggling to control his anger with his children. Christ the king is in the businessman wrestling with being honest instead of making a killing. Christ the king is in the woman finding her strength to lead in a man’s world with compassion and vision and toughness. Christ the king is reigning everywhere, everywhere the human heart is willing to be filled by the abundance of his grace. Christ plays in 10,000 places.  

The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Jesus of Nazareth that we too might know the fullness of God in our very lives, not as some fanciful idea but as the life-giving grace of relationship with God that can transform us into people whose lives are shaped by the cross, made cruciform by the stories and life and love of God in Christ. Christ is king when the love and sacrifice and self-giving of the cross invades your life and mine.

What does it mean to be a people of HOPE?

This morning’s gospel reading about the walls of the temple being leveled reminded me of the first time I had ever heard about this kind of doomsday message:  One summer morning in my mid school days, my friend Carolyn and I were sitting on the wall outside her house, trying to decide just what to do with our day, when two visitors approached us.  Inquiring if “the parents” were home, -- they were assured that they weren’t -- and so they decided to trust two girls with their “very important message.”

“We are finding rooms for our members,” they said, “who will gather in Albuquerque later this summer in order to prepare for the end of times and we would like to give you an opportunity to provide room and board for the five conference days here.”

Wide – eyed and a little overwhelmed with the news that we were to be preparing for the last days, Carolyn informed our visitors politely that they would be leaving shortly to spend the summer away at the lake and so their home wouldn’t be available.  She smiled sweetly, obviously relieved that using their home as a base for this ominous get together wouldn’t be possible.

To this turn down, one of the visitors responded.  “Oh that’s no problem - your family can turn over the keys for the house to us and great will be your reward when the end time comes.” Then the other visitor added this: “If we don’t find the necessary rooms we will surround the city and our trumpets will sound as in the days of Jericho and the walls of this city will fall down – and this will be a sign of what is to come”!!!!!!

The visitors then left and Carolyn and I giggled a bit at the thought of the walls falling down admitting to each other that what these “Witnesses” had said just didn’t sound right at all!  Fortunately for us, the humor of it saved us from falling into the fear and despair of what sounded terribly hopeless!

 – Jesus predicts that this temple was to be destroyed.  This temple that Josephus described as having its entire face and sides covered with massive plates of gold.  Imagine the outer walls of the Temple which were constructed with extremely large stones weighing 2-3 tons each.  The walls towered over Jerusalem, 400 feet in one area.  Inside the four walls were 45 acres of bedrock mountain -shaved flat – and during Jesus’ day a quarter of a million people could fit comfortably within the structure. It’s been said that “No sports structure in America today comes close”!!!

Jesus’ prediction that a structure so immense would be leveled to the ground seemed implausible.  But the listeners pressed Jesus for more information.  They wanted to know when this would happen.  What would be the sign that this was about to take place?  In their voice was fear -  fear of the unknown  -- fear that this structure in which they placed their hope and their security - might be taken away..

The first temple had lasted four hundred years until it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 Before the Common Era (BCE).  Jesus’ prediction that the Temple would be destroyed did actually come true in 70 of the Common Era (CE) when the Temple was destroyed by Rome?

So what message was Jesus trying to convey in this prediction?  A temple on 45 acres of bedrock mountain - shaved flat ----a temple that appeared so secure –leveled to the ground--
Perhaps this was the key to their fear – they were putting their hope, their sense of security in the wrong place!
Perhaps the message is: that the bedrock of  our HOPE is not in TEMPLES -- is not in SIGNS!  Rather the bedrock of our real HOPE – IS IN THE  LIVING CHRIST!!!!!!!

I have heard that there were those on the islands of Japan who gave up their new found Christian faith when the bombs of Hiroshima were dropped during the war.  They couldn’t find the hope of the gospel in the midst of the devastation.

In the 14th century, in the midst of the impact of the Black Death, the Plague that swept across Europe, much theological optimism was devastated in the Western and Christian world.

A man that I greatly respect, Bishop William Frey, has said that TRUE HOPE HAS THE POWER TO DIMINISH THE EFFECTS OF ADVERSITY.

In the INFERNO, Dante tells us that the sign above the gates of hell says, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
    ABANDON HOPE – can anyone here today remember a time when they were at     least tempted to abandon hope?  
    TO GIVE UP -  TO forget Paul’s reminder:  “to rejoice in hope, to be patient in     suffering, and to persevere in prayer. (Romans 12:12

Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in all of us.

Christian community is the place where we can live into the Gospel Message which is grounded in HOPE -- a place where we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power within us when we are together -that allows us to live in this world without surrendering to the powerful forces constantly seducing us toward despair.

And as Father Christopher reminded me this week:  “the idea of Hope allows us to live into a future where we can see God’s triumph and the tearing down of that which impoverishes humanity, in the form of greed, the abuse of power, the hoarding of resources, and the inequity of care and education.  HOPE for the Christian is a practice, something that we all need to cultivate and live into!   

I think that we are being invited this day to take a fresh look at what it means to BE A PEOPLE OF HOPE  -- A PEOPLE OF HOPE REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!!!

What would it mean to take a fresh look at the GOSPEL OF HOPE through a different lens ---- from a fresh perspective.  Are we willing to have a fresh encounter with the LIVING GOD?

Miller Williams, a young assistant curator at the Hermitage in Leningrad (now known as St. Petersburg), tells this story about a group of people who saw through a different lens.

They knew the Germans would come and so they had boxes precisely built to every size of canvas in that great art museum, the Hermitage,.  The boxes were then sent from Leningrad in less than a week and stored somewhere in southern Russia.

But they left the frames hanging, so that after the war it would be a simple thing to put the paintings right back where they belonged.

Each day the staff stayed on to clean the rubble after the daily bombardments which lasted nine hundred days.  Much of roof was lost and snow would lie at times a foot deep on the floor, but the walls stood firm and hardly a frame fell.

Then one dark December morning, Miller Williams tells, three young soldiers were seen waiting outside, pacing and swinging their arms against the cold.  They were from far away they explained, but all had dreamed of one day coming to Leningrad to see the Hermitage.  Now they were here to defend the city and couldn’t believe their good fortune.

Sadly the young soldiers were told that there was nothing to see but hundreds and hundreds of frames, hanging where the paintings had hung.

“Please sir,” one of then said, “let us see them.”

And so they were led around to most of the major rooms, allowing them to take their time as the staff tried to tell them part of what they would see if they could view the paintings.

The next day a dozen more waited to see the “frames” and then more and more visitors came as the staff pointed to even more details as the days passed – and so it came to be called the “UNSEEN COLLECTION.”

Miller Williams ventured to say that before the war the staff didn’t pay much attention to what they were telling.  In fact, he says, it probably sounded more like a memorized speech and they weren’t even looking at the very paintings they were describing.

Then something else began to happen.  Blind people began to come.  They listened, cocking their heads - and they even seemed to shift their eyes, those that had them, so that they could better see what was being described for them.

After the siege was over, and the Germans left and the roof was fixed, and the paintings were back in their places, the blind never came again. “It might seem strange,” says the young curator, “but what I think is that they couldn’t any longer SEE the paintings.  They might have listened, but then the lectures had become rather matter of fact again.”  There was no passion or life in the stories.  The lens had become dull once more..

It is in choosing to hope that something happens for us that is far beyond our own imaginings.  It is in giving up the control over our future and letting God define our lives   that we are able to allow” the God of HOPE to fill us with all joy and peace in believing.  …So that We can abound in HOPE by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  (Romans 15:13)

Let us not be negligent “in holding fast to the confession of our hope without wavering” because  WE ARE A PEOPLE OF HOPE – A RESURRECTION PEOPLE. Like the Unseen Collection we know that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Christian hopes should include the ability -- an interior ability to laugh, perhaps even to  giggle at what looks so insurmountable, so devastating that only the power, love, and tenancity of God can overcome it  ---   to see those moments as something to smile about, or to giggle about because after all:  THE END OF TIME IS ALL IN GOD’S HANDS.                                               
AMEN

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Sunday November 6, 2010 Feast of All Saints
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Title: Saint Search


More than any other Sunday in the Church Year, today is a kind of designated family reunion day.  With this beautiful Ofrenda for El dia de los muertos in our midst we celebrate the major feasts of All Saints and All Souls. This is an important time of checking in with our family members, ancient and modern.  It is a time to take out the family photo albums and scrapbooks remembering where we came from and hopefully to get some perspective on where we are going.  All Saint is a time to remember our ancestors in the faith, men and women who served God in innumerable ways and to heighten our awareness of the millions of saints living around us.  

All Saints can be rather daunting as a day set aside to recognize persons of heroic spirituality, whose deeds and lives we recall with gratitude and at times wonderstruck amazement. You might think of St. Francis who walked away from wealth and privilege into the countryside around Assisi communing with the birds, serving the poor, and sharing everything he was given. You might muse about Joan of Arc, a young girl who eschewed dresses preferring armor and swords, leading men twice her size into battle.  She was a woman of rare determination with the voice God so loud in her head nothing else mattered.  If you’re of a more mystical bent you might be attracted to Dame Julian of Norwich living in her cell attached to the church with one window facing the sacramental altar and one looking out on the street, a blending of the sacred and secular Christians still strive toward today.

But if you look a little harder, you will find others, obscure but no less interesting and inspiring.  For instance you might happen upon Samuel Issac Joseph Schereschewsky, a priest so facile in language that answering a call to help in China he learned to write Chinese on the voyage there, eventually translating the Bible and Prayer book into Mandarin. After being elected bishop of Shanghai Schereschewsky was struck by paralysis. Samuel resigned as Bishop but not his life goal of translating the Bible into Wenli. With heroic perseverance Schereschewsky completed his translation of the Bible, typing some 2,000 pages with the middle finger of his partially crippled hand.  Before his death he said, “I have sat in this chair for over 20 years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”

You might find Hilda of Whitby, a remarkable woman and Abbess of the famous double house at Whitby a monastery for men and women with a chapel in between. Hilda and her monastery became famous as the sight of a meeting in 664 which decided the fate of the clash between the two vigorous Christian traditions on English soil, her native earthy Celtic Christianity and the more organized, powerful and wealthy Roman Christianity. Hilda, the host of the meeting, greatly preferred the Celtic customs in which she had been reared, but in the interest of unity and peace she used her moderating influence in favor of the acceptance of the Roman Way. A decision so difficult it staggers my heart.  

You might stumble upon the story of Saint James the Greater, brother of Saint John, who was so full of grace on his way to his death that the guard assigned to him fell on his knees and confessed faith in the prisoner’s God. James raised him up by the hand, kissed him on the check, and, “Peace be with you.” Then both men were executed together, but their last sweet exchange lives on in our Eucharistic exchange “The peace of the Lord be always with you.”  (story from Barbara Brown Taylor).

There is a sign on the Winchester cathedral in England that reads as you enter the church, “you are entering a conversation that began long before you were born and will continue long after you’re dead.”  To be a Christian partly means that we don’t have to reinvent the spiritual life.  We don’t have to make up this faith as we go along.  The saints will teach us, if we will listen.  And for modern, North American people, it takes a kind of studied act of humility to think that we actually have something to learn from the saints.

In his book Wishful Thinking, Fredrick Buechner writes, “In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief.  These handkerchiefs are called saints.”    This seems to suggest that the creation of saints is more God’s doing than our own, but regardless the main point is that saints do exit.  There really are ordinary men and women, boys and girls whose love of God has led them to do extraordinary things.  And while Billie Joel might rather “laugh with the sinners, than cry with saints” that really is no reason to ignore the reality of the saints for ourselves. In fact, the opposite is true.  The more we encounter or learn of the saints the more open to the possibility of encountering saints around us in everyday life we become.

I want you to think for a moment about how you were called to be a disciple? Is following Jesus something you thought of yourself? Was it revealed to you by staring up at the stars, or walking through a sacred grove? No, my guess is that you are here, if you really reflect upon it, because of friendship with other Christians.  Someone had to tell you the story. Someone had to live this faith in such a way that you said to yourself, “I want to know more about this. I want to be part of that.” Perhaps it was a believing parent, or someone you met at work or in school, or by reading the scriptures.  We get by only with a little help from our friends.  We get saved with a little help from our friends. St. Paul calls these followers of Jesus, saints.

The truth of the matter is that faith is probably more caught than taught. We learn how to follow Jesus by hanging out with other followers. You may never have thought of it but we are saved – as a group, praying together, correcting one another, forgiving one another, stumbling along after Jesus together, memorizing the moves until his way has become our way. Our way. Even when we pray the most familiar of prayers “Our Father,” we are naming the way we are saved, together in the communion of the saints. To celebrate All Saints is to acknowledge the mystical and communal dimension of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. So on this Feast of All Saints and All Souls we not only remember the strange and eclectic crowd of saints that have been athletes for God and the many faithful family and friends who surround us today, but we also consider the wild idea that we are surrounded by saints ourselves.

Now I’m not trying to be cute or clever.  I’m proposing that if you understand yourself to be surrounded by saints this feast becomes a good deal more interesting. Think of it as our own little reality show, Saint Search at St. Michael’s. I feel like I run into saints all the time, but I wouldn’t dare tell them. They are people who are heroically caring for an aging parent, or trying to forgive someone who hurt them deeply.  They are quietly working behind the scenes, teaching our children or guiding our youth. They may be the prayer warriors of St. Michael’s who daily bring the needs of the parish into the presence of God. Or they may be doing something that no one has noticed, but that reflects such faithfulness it would humble us. There are so many people who serve without reward, love without measure, forgive with the greatest of ease, sit in the silence of God’s presence so joyfully, speak words of encouragement so naturally, mentor with such attention – these are the saints of God in our very midst and I challenge you in the midst of this feast of All Saints to join me in a little game of Saint Search.  

Open your eyes and hearts and consider the saints in our midst. Sainthood means desiring God enough to include God in your journey. It is not so much something we aspire to as it is the fruit of following Jesus in a such a way that your life is bent more and more in a God-ward direction. Join the Saint Search, look for the telltale signs of sainthood, joy in the journey, a willingness to grow, the ability to share another’s pain, the courage to admit failure, the hopefulness of sharing a vision, prodigal forgiveness, the abiding sense when you are with them that even when things go wrong, they trust that God is present and working at bringing the kingdom near.

To be sure as Christians we believe that our friends in faith extend not only to those who happen to be in the pew beside us, but also to those whom we call “the communion of the saints,” that is, that great community of those who have gone before us in faith. You are never alone in church. Every time we gather to pray, the saints pray with us, as if leaning down from the ramparts of heaven to join their voices with ours in the praise of God, as if to cheer us on in our current struggles to be faithful.  

And while it is deeply comforting to know that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses that cheer us on, it is also a deep comfort to realize that we are not alone on our journey here and now. We have companions who are along-side us puzzling out the faith, working out their own fears, sharing their pain as they struggle through their issues, laughing at their own efforts to be a faithful and patient parents, or looking into the aging eyes of our own beloved and realizing that life is a wondrous mystery and that sainthood is not far away, rather it is very near, in our very midst, in our shared journey to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength. Let the Saint Search begin.