May 20, 2012
In the world but not of it
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

I love the world. I love the sprouts coming up in my vegetable garden and the fresh green leaves on the cottonwoods set against the blue sky. I love good food and conversation with friends. I love climbing up the volcanoes on the West Mesa and taking in the sweep of desert, bosque, city, and the Sandias. I love my work and people I share it with. I love to love and be loved. I hope you love the world, too.

So what are we to make of Jesus today? In his final words before being arrested and crucified, he prayed I do not belong to the world. My disciples do not belong to the world. Then he prayed it again, in case his friends, who were listening, didn’t get it: We do not belong to the world.

Elsewhere Jesus makes the point more forcefully: Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it. But...I don’t hate my life in this world. I love it.  

These kinds of words have given rise to all sorts of problems through history: The Gnostics, who taught that this dark world was created by Satan; medieval penitents who hated their own bodies, whipping and starving them; Puritans, who became obsessive in their reach towards moral purity; and fundamentalists, who withdraw into a tight circle and point their bony little fingers at the sinners who surround them.

I know that many of you long-time Episcopalians were sorely disappointed when the following hymn was not carried over from the 1940 Hymnal to the 1982 one:
The world is very evil; the times are waxing late
be sober and keep vigil; the judge is at the gate.
The world is very evil...

All this depressing dualism misses Jesus’ point entirely. It misses the same point that is made in every religious tradition: that it is a mistake to be too identified with this world’s dramas, its striving, its failures and successes, and its temptations. We are to be in the world but not of it.

It is obvious that we are in the world. We are creatures of the earth, physical beings, interwoven with plants, animals, the seasons and the weather, with people to love and changing conditions that affect us profoundly. There is much about this world to enjoy, and much to grapple with in the effort to to make this world a better world for ourselves, for everyone.

So we are fully “in” this world, engaged with its delights and challenges. But what does it mean to not be “of” it, at the very same time?

I’m fond of the old gospel hymns and songs from the American South of the 19th and early 20th century. They’re strong, direct, and heart-felt. They sing of this earthly vale of tears and the sweet by-and-by, and in that sense, they speak to the dualists among us.

But they also manage to communicate something more subtle, something that has to do with this business of being in the world but not of it. They do it by recognizing, as Jesus did, that while we are human and a part of this earth, we don’t completely belong to it. It can never own us.

I am a poor wayfaring stranger
wandering through this world of woe

This world is not my home, I’m just traveling through

I am a pilgrim, and a stranger
traveling through this wearisome land

Now to understand this point of view, we might think first about what it means to be convinced that we do completely belong here, and what happens when we are.

When this is all there is for us, then this takes on ultimate value and significance. Something has to. Is the world I live in making me healthy, comfortable, and free of problems? No? Then I must fix the world I live in. If and when I do, then I will be happy. But I can’t be happy until then.

So I am a slave to the circumstances of the world in which I live and to which I am thoroughly wedded. The world owns me. When its conditions are good, I am well. When they are bad, I am unwell. And so my purpose is to constantly arrange and maneuver the world to remain the right kind of world, so that I will feel at home in it.

But this never works, of course. We can’t control the people around us to be the way we want them to be. We get sick, we lose things and people we love. Even the best stuff - a vacation, a moment of spiritual communion, a sweet child before they turn into an adolescent - is just about to change into something less preferable to us. The very things that we want to count on are always slipping through our fingers.

All phenomena - feelings, relationships, events, success and failure, even our life itself - is in a constant process of change and evolution. And so if we really believe that this is all there is, we will always be anxious, because this world never stays they way we want. If our preferred version of this world is where we think we belong, if we stake all our hopes upon this possibility - we will always be chasing a mirage. It will never satisfy.

So what is the alternative? It is knowing where we truly belong. I may be a pilgrim and a stranger traveling through this wearisome land, but I’ve got a home in that yonder city. And what is that city? Many say it is heaven, but that won’t help you here. “That yonder city,” if fact, is right here, right under our noses. It can be always found in the midst of all those changing phenomena that we pass through. Our home is our life in God.

I cannot describe what this home is like, or how to realize it in your daily life. If I did, it would be reduced, made into an object. This home, to which you ultimately belong, is to be sought and discovered by every seeker in different ways. It will appear to you in the way that speaks to you, and it will always give you exactly what you need.

You cannot describe or hold on to it, either, because it appears in the seeking, in the stretching towards it, when you are open and vulnerable to something beyond. This mysterious, ungraspable home is always available, always reliable, unlike the world of passing phenomena.

If we are grounded in this deeper reality, if that’s where we place our hope, then our experience of the world we’re traveling through becomes very different. Our circumstances and the other people who surround us are no longer things to desperately manage so that they will freeze into our preferred version of life. They are phenomena that rise and fall, sometimes beautiful, sometimes not, sometimes to be supported, sometimes to be changed for the better.

Though all this, as wayfarers, we are free. We are not only free from the world; we are free to enjoy it. For when the world longer carries the impossible burden of having to satisfy us, it can be what it is intended to be: an amazing, subtle, shimmering drama in which we play a part for awhile. And we become like monks that I once read described as “perched a little more lightly on the globe.”

At the end of his life, Jesus didn’t pray just that his disciples would know that they don’t belong to the world. He also sent them into it, and even promised that in it, they might find their joy. As you have sent me into the world, he prayed, so I send them into the world...so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.

And so we are sent from this place, where we are grounded in the mystery of God, where we are at home; we are sent back into the world. Perch lightly on the globe. Go as pilgrims who aren’t destroyed when things don’t go well. Go as strangers who delight in those fleeting things that come your way, and then, when the time comes, let them go. For when you know where your true home is, then you are free, no matter where you may roam.

Sermon: Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 15:9-17
St. Michael and All Angels
May 13, 2012

“The gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles…”
“Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
“The love of God is this, that we obey [the] commandments…”
“Abide in my love…”
“Love one another as I have loved you…”
“You are my friends…”
“I chose you…”
“Bear fruit that will last…”

The word love dominates the gospel and I John today. Love is not so simple. The words that accompany love in these texts are: obey, commandment, abide, and lay down one’s life. Love is a verb. The scriptures aren’t telling us what to feel, but how to act.

Peter speaks to the astounded believers proclaiming that God’s love was given to the Gentiles in the form of the Spirit. Who are they to withhold baptism? The call here is to act in line with God, rather than their own limited understanding of who is in and who is out.

I’m guessing very few of you followed the United Methodist General Conference that finished in Tampa last week. Every four years, the United Methodists come together as a whole and make decisions that affect the larger body of the church. One of their big decisions was not to change the language that says, “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The suggested change would have simply stated that United Methodists disagree on that issue. Most people will likely shake their heads and go on, but I find it very disheartening. The gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured out even on the lesbian gay bisexual transgendered community. The United Methodist stance is that LGBT persons can worship in most churches, but not have their love blessed and certainly not have their call affirmed and be ordained.

The United Methodist Church is talking about me. My parents met in a United Methodist Sunday school class. Instead of a three-legged stool that the Episcopal Church uses to discern God’s will, I was born into this church that talks about a quadrilateral…scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. I was baptized and confirmed in this church. I experienced a powerful call to ministry on a youth retreat with my United Methodist Church. I was educated at a United Methodist college and seminary and it was there that I met amazingly gifted gay and lesbian people who had been called to ministry just like me. Back then I thought I was straight, and it never occurred to me that I was “one of them.” I simply couldn’t understand that the church would deny ordination to people who were so gifted, just because of their sexual orientation. At that time, I decided that I would stand in solidarity with the folks who were denied ordination by the United Methodist Church and not seek ordination myself. This didn’t work so well. The call was strong and eventually I realized that if I wanted the United Methodist Church to become more inclusive, I would have to work from the inside. I moved to Oregon and was ordained. The congregation I served was a Reconciling Church – a safe place for LGBT folks - and it was clear that God was moving among us in powerful ways.

Life became more complicated when I moved to New Mexico and fell in love with a woman. This was news to me! I really had no idea that my passion around the issue of an inclusive church had anything to do with me. It also left me with some hard choices. I could not be open about my life with Anne Marie, Max and Maya as a minister in the United Methodist Church. Coming out at age 40 really changed the direction of my life. I felt a deep resonance with the Episcopal Church and struggled with a call to be ordained here, but the time wasn’t right in this Diocese. I became UCC and was welcomed without condition.

I am only one person. There are thousands like me. Years ago, I had the poignant experience of witnessing the Shower of Stoles project. This project is a collection of stoles from over one thousand LGBT clergy and leaders from thirty-two denominations. The stoles represent the gifts of so many that have been excluded from leadership because of their sexual orientation. It is powerful to stand before each stole and the person it represents.

It may seem too personal to describe my own experience this morning, but I cannot read these texts about pouring out the Holy Spirit, being chosen, bearing fruit, obedience to the commandment to love one another and forget where I came from. And the news this week reminds us that this is not just my story. It is the story of LGBT folks in North Carolina and throughout the country. The texts are about love in action: Don’t just treat love as a feeling and love when we feel like it; don’t think of love as an intellectual exercise and love those we deem worthy. It is a call for us to understand that love is a verb… it is what we DO as God’s people in the world. We simply love and continue to extend welcome to all… even the Gentiles, even the LGBT community, even those who stand at stoplights asking for money, even the ones who vote differently than we do, even the ones who live with disabilities, even the people we despise, even us.

The Episcopal Church has struggled with this issue as well. I don’t know where all of it will come out, but I know there is a great desire to share Christ’s love with all of God’s people. As we broaden our questions about who is our neighbor at St. Michael’s, I wonder where we need to extend our love. We are listening to those around us and seeking God’s call to love our neighbor in new ways. God’s Spirit has been poured out on people beyond our peripheral vision. Who are we to deny them love? Instead, we are called to look beyond our comfort zone and extend love into the farthest corners.

Passages about love often call forth a sweet, almost nostalgic response from us. But love isn’t always sweet and it certainly isn’t always easy. There is this word obedience that shows up today. Can’t we just talk about love and leave it at that? We all know we are supposed to love. Isn’t that enough? We aren’t slaves. Can’t we just be reminded that love is what we are about? Obedience is not something we care to add to the mix. Our culture doesn’t place a high value on obedience. But there is an invitation in these passages to see ourselves in relationship and the truth is obedience is part of being in relationship to one another. We are subject to one another.

“Perhaps love without obedience is not really love. Perhaps this is what Jesus is confronting us with in his own life—that love is never love on its own terms. Love is always tied to obedience because obedience is tied to hearing, recognizing and bending ourselves into the will and desires of the one who’s before us.” Brian Bantum, Christian Century May 2, 2012)

The phrase “bending ourselves into the will of the one who’s before us” isn’t telling us to be dominated by another. It calls us to really be in relationship with one another. Jesus’ image of friendship is comfortable for some and a bit too intimate for others. Maybe that is because we remember that a friendship is not one-sided.  We have been chosen for a friendship with Jesus. A loving friendship bears fruit. That will require obedience to the one who has chosen us. In some strange way, that obedience sets us free. I have asked myself many times who I am obedient to… is it the United Methodist Church? Is it the Episcopal Church as I seek ordination in this denomination? Is it to the One whose call has sustained me for thirty years? I found a way to bend my will to the United Methodist until it required me losing my soul. My call is alive and it seeks a home to love and bear fruit.

The call to love and bear fruit is for all of us. The fruits of love and compassion naturally grow out of a life grounded in God. I believe that they are contagious and not limited to the giver or the receiver. Somehow they make their way into the very culture we inhabit. I pray that it is so. As we move further into this election year names are called, fingers are pointed, and lines are drawn in the sand. Jim Wallis says that the 2012 election will be the ugliest one in many years. It is sad that the political process often involves trashing other candidates more than looking around at the needs in our world and asking how we can be part of the solution.

Who is speaking about abiding in love? What fruit is born of this form of politics? We are asked to see one another through the eyes of love. We cannot do that when we are too busy showing that we are right, we are entitled, and it is others who should bend to our will.

This text calls us to abide in a love more generous than we can imagine. Abiding in this love bears tremendous fruit. If we are abiding in God’s love, we don’t catch ourselves counting the cost of giving. We open our hands freely and find that there is more than we dreamed. For John there is only one measure of our place in the community of faith – to love as Jesus loved. When we do that, a whole new world opens up to us and we begin to glimpse the world as God sees it. As we see the world through God’s eyes, we treat the world as God treats it, and we bear fruit that lasts.

In order to more deeply realize the presence of God, the Psalmist tells us “to be still and know that I am God.” God is always in our midst, so let’s be still for a moment.

I have a question for you. Do you still carry a special remembrance in your heart and mind? Perhaps a time with a friend, at a play, a concert, something read in a book, a sunset, a sunrise, some meaningful, unforgettable experience? Our lives are shaped by such moments. I want to share such an experience with you now.

When I was in seminary many years ago, I went with several fellow seminarians to a play. The play was “A Sleep of Prisoners” by Christopher Fry. I was so moved by a piece of poetry in the play that I wrote it down, and have kept it in my remembrance all these years. Listen to the poetry:

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to meet us everywhere,
Never to leave us ‘till we take
The longest stride of soul man ever took.
Affairs are soul-size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.

These profound and powerful words still speak prophetically to me, and I believe they speak to our country, to the nations, the peoples and the religions of the world. I believe they still challenge and speak to our very souls, yours and mine, right here, right now. Certain words are particularly haunting – “Till we take the longest stride of soul man ever took,” “affairs are soul-size,” and, “exploration into God.” We hear this word “soul” tossed about in sermons, songs, scriptural studies and discussions, sometimes in common talk. But what is this mysterious soul that resides within each of us?

Recall the biblical book, Genesis. Our journey begins here. “When there was nothing but God, God began to create the heavens and the earth, and God’s Spirit, Like wind, like breath, unleashed his creative power, shrouded in mystery and wonder. In the midst of this life-giving power, his Spirit created human beings, persons, and all created life began to evolve. And it was good.” This is where you and I literally begin!

Each one of us is born a living soul, a spirit-filled creation with self-consciousness, making us aware that we are able to have a living relationship with God our creator. We are, then, “children of God” and we will have the ability to remember that relationship, and who we really are as our lives unfold. Each one of us here today is a unique “Child of God.” This is our real “I.D.,” the only one that really counts in the long run! No one can ever take that away from you! To “know God,” as the Psalmist wrote is to remember who you really are, and that relationship will define your life and your life’s journey forever, even longer. Remember who you are!

But as our Genesis story unfolds, human kind chose not to remember its heritage – “Children of God.” Instead the choice was “to go it alone” to be as gods, “full of ourselves.” We ill take charge of our own life-journey and deal with those good and evil issues along the way. So “God, don’t call us, we will call you.” (I think that is what many people now call prayer!) But, even as in the beginning God’s love was boundless; it’s still the same, always within us, but not forcing the relationship.

But in the midst of a beautiful world God called “good,” what have been the consequences of “going it alone, full of ourselves,” taking charge? Let me tell you a story: One morning in the year 500BC, Buddha addressed his community of monks. “Monks,” he said: “All the world is burning. Burning with what? It is burning with the fire of greed, burning with the fire of hatred, burning with the fire of delusion.” How could Buddha say the whole world is burning? Because it is inhabited by human beings, “full of ourselves,” which is why we all have some experience with greed, hatred and delusion. But here is my quick snapshot of each:

Greed: At a press interview with a very wealthy New York financier, a young reporter asked him a question: “Sir, how much money does a man need to be comfortable?” He replied: “Young man, just a little more, just a little more.”

Hatred: Jonathan Swift, Anglican priest, Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, 1713, “author of Gulliver’s Travels said “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to love one another.”

Delusion: Have we the habit of inverting the divine equation to mean that God exists to do our bidding?

From the beginning of human history, greed, hatred, delusion, have all been, and are, the source of all human misery. What in the world shall we do? “Affairs are soul-size. Our enterprise is exploration into God.” If each of us wants to find out, we have to journey deeper into the presence of God who already resides within our souls as well as beyond our souls. Let’s now imagine we are standing together with Jesus’ first disciples and some other folks gathered around:

“Then to all Jesus said: If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, will find it. What gain is it for a man to have won the whole world, and to have lost or ruined his very self? (Lk. 9:23)

But what kind of talk is this, and what does it mean? It means Jesus is offering a new and unexpected way to continue your life’s journey. Now imagine yourself standing around with Jesus and other folk:

“He was setting out on a journey, when a man came running up, knelt before him and put this question to him, ‘Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You must not kill, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not defraud, you must honor your father and mother.’ And he said to him, ‘Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days.’ Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, ‘There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.” (Mark 10:17)

The young man in our story really wanted and expected Jesus, the wisdom teacher, to give him an additional “religious study program” which would at last qualify him for eternal life. He would gain the knowledge he desired without leaving the community, perhaps going to Jerusalem from time to time. His present lifestyle would not change, there would be nothing to give up, but he would still gain the assurance of eternal life. Instead Jesus cut to the core of his life. He was discovered by Jesus love, and the young man sadly walked away.

The apostle Paul, a law-abiding Pharisee, was cut to the core by Jesus on the Damascus road. But he chose the disciple’s road, following Jesus. He left his religious tribalism behind, shouldered his invisible cross, and began his new life, his journey of transformation. In his life of personal struggle, as well as shepherding new communities of Christians, he came to know what “full of yourself” self-love really was as well as what self-giving love really is. Listen to a portion of his letter to the new church in Corinth. It is a letter addressed to all of us.

“If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all. If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever.” (1 Cor. 13:1)

And Paul can tell us something about self-giving love as well:

“Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love never ends.” (1 Cor. 13:4)

We are nearing the end of our journey. But, as has been said by others, “in our end is our beginning….” Our souls forever echo the unending love-call – “you are a child of God.” God brings us that love-call in Jesus, that human face of God’s love, as well as the road we are called to travel with our invisible self-giving cross in companionship with him, on the road he has already traveled. In our life’s journey, Jesus reminds us that because he is The Light of the world, each of us is called to be a light in the world. Our light is to shine in the darkness of life, the darkness of greed, of hatred, of delusion, that destroy and deface the world that God created good. But our lives, like our invisible cross of self-giving, must be like candles. For a candle to be a shining light, the wax must empty itself for the light to shine. Our souls were created by God for self-singing love through our lives – your life, my life – for the sake of all life. “It is the longest stride of soul one can ever take!” So –

Remember who you are! “Affairs are soul-size!” “The enterprise is exploration into God” Get on with your life’s journey and “Shine!”

SERMON on April 29th, 2012

As we said the 23rd Psalm this morning, I wonder how many of us could have said it for memory.  As I child committing it to memory, I discovered that saying it once or twice as I fell asleep was a much better method than counting sheep and left me knowing how much the Good Shepherd cared for me.  Many of us will remember the Mother Goose rhyme about how “Little Bo Peep lost her sheep and didn’t know where to find them.  Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.” I’m not sure what the theological implications of those sheep were, but, according to our gospel – sheep definitely need leadership.  

 It’s fairly common to hear comments about the stupidity of sheep.  However, the facts are that sheep are more aware than we thought.  Studies have shown that sheep are smart enough to recognize the faces of more than 70 other sheep in their flock; and that they are able to recognize that some are getting special attention and will demonstrate jealousy toward some of their own flock.  Hummmmmm

Reflecting about the Good Shepherd and the sheep recognizing each other,  I found myself wondering:  “Do we recognize each other as ‘children of God?’  Do we pick and choose to whom we assign the face of Christ?    Or like some sheep do we show jealousy because others get special or more attention?”  

Karl Barth reminds us that there is no such thing as an individual Christian.  In the same vein, there is no “separate singular form of the word sheep,” (in other words, there is 1 sheep, or fifty sheep). As children of God, we are not separate from one another.  Brian reminded us of this last week!  And yet, I suspect that all of us at times find it awkward or even feel uneasy if we have to make room for “those others”, especially those who are marginalized from our clan.

What if the words we heard this morning were Jesus claiming to be the “the good migrant worker”!  Would we see those folks as the image of Jesus?  Like Jesus, we are to provide a space where all are welcome.  The flock is open-ended, never closed.  

In Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, An Altar to the World:  she reflects on “encountering others” as a spiritual practice and she expands our understanding of hospitality as the biblical “love of stranger.”

Taylor does a remarkable job at describing our tendency to be at the center of our own awareness and forgetting that other people are at the center of their own awareness; not on the fringes of ours.  We need to be challenged as to whom ”the others” are in our lives, in our churches, our communities, and in the world:  These “others” are on the margins of our horizons, -- horizons which are established through circumstance, habit, and some of the unfairness and unjust practices present in our society.  

Let me tell you about something that happened to me some years ago in Cambridge.  I was spending six weeks at Harvard as a part of an NEH grant.  I had  started running very early along the Charles River each morning before we all gathered for breakfast.  The campus streets weren’t crowded yet and the people out and about were mostly runners or walkers.

One morning coming back from my run, there was a woman of a different ethnicity who started following me, shouting all manner of obscenities at me, very loudly.  She was obviously wounded and full of hatred; for whatever her reason, I was the scapegoat for her that day.  At first it was embarrassing, awkward to say the least, because everyone in the Cambridge Square was staring at the two of us.  Block after block she followed me, relentless in her determination to let me know how much she hated everything and everyone I represented.  

I tried to ignore her at first, then I tried to pray for her under my breath, and then finally after several humiliating blocks, I decided to stop and face her, which I did.  “I’m truly sorry, I really am, for whatever it is that I represent to you.  I can tell that you are deeply hurt, and I’m sorry.”  

Her response I can still hear:  With venom, she responded:  “that just doesn’t cut it, BITCH.”
You, know, she was right; my telling her that I was sorry from her perspective was pretty meaningless to her in that moment.  

Our reading from I John this morning puts it like this: …we should…love one another, not in speech but in action, knowing that Christ abides in our brothers and sisters because of the Spirit that God has given us.  

There’s a story told about Robert Coles going to interview Dorothy Day in 1952.  Upon entering her “house of hospitality” he found her talking with a woman who was obviously very drunk.  Eventually Dorothy got up and came over to Coles.  With a voice that could be heard by the woman, she said:

“Are you waiting to speak to one of us?”ONE OF US?  The troubled, intoxicated woman was not “the other” “the outsider”, or “one of them”; she was definitely not AN OBJECT of Dorothy Day’s charity.  Rather, Day was ONE with this woman -- in the love of Christ.

What an example for all of us.  Taking down the boundaries that we all have a tendency to put around our circle of those we accept!  Was there a way that I could have better responded to the woman that followed me that day?  
And with others like her, how are the traumas of our falls and fears to be healed and what is our place in helping to set one another free?  Free to experience God’s healing love!  My avoidance at looking at this hurting woman for several blocks, ignoring her because of my own discomfort still haunts me.

What about my own commitment to grow with God’s help in being responsible in ways that might help prevent some of my own blindness and ignorance?

Jesus lived a counter- cultural lifestyle which took him away from security, daring to express by words and actions the grace of God for all peoples in ways that scandalized so many of the respectable.  Rather than exalting princes or religious leaders, he was quite often to be found with the most rank of outsiders, telling them that they had a stake in the Kingdom of God.  And through it all, he was attracting the enmity of the predators of his day, predators who would eventually get their way in his being hounded to a brutal public execution.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, not only revealed God in his teaching, but how important to recognize that he revealed God in his WAY of BEING!  As the image of God, we know what God is like – a compassionate Jesus who was moved to touch lepers, to heal on the Sabbath, to see in the ostracized members of the human community –“children of God”; and then to risk his life for the sake of saving his people from a future which he could see and they could not.  

Compassion is both a feeling and a way of being!! We feel compassion and then we are to be compassionate.
There is a social dimension as well as an individual dimension to the compassion of God as we see it in the image of the Good Shepherd”.  For him, as for the prophets before him, the divine compassion included grief and anger about the blindness, the injustice, and the idolatry that CAUSED human suffering.  Persistent blindness and heedlessness do have their consequences!

But Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, discloses that at the very center of everything – is a Reality, a God, that is in love with us and wills our well-being, both as individuals and as individuals within society.  When you and I are filled with the Spirit of God, the Compassionate One,  then compassion is given us as a grace ---not an achievement.  Our level of compassion is dependent upon our relationship to the Spirit.

And so if we know Jesus as the Good Shepherd, then growth in the Christian life is essentially a growth in compassion!  Do we recognize the presence of Christ in one another, here in our own church, or in those ostracized members of the human community?  Will we seek and serve Christ in ALL persons?

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed……”

Let me close by sharing from Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:  (listen with your hearts open to the wisdom that Merton speaks)

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness, which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point of spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal…. which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind, or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us…….It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.

IT IS IN EVERYBODY, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…”
Merton goes on to say:  “I have no program for this seeing.  It is only given.  But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”
AMEN

April 22, 2012
The Third Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

In the 1977 film Jesus of Nazareth by Franco Zeffirelli, there is a non-biblical character named Zerah. He is a Sadducee, a temple official who is most anxious to get rid of the troublesome leader from Galilee. After all, Jesus’ followers blasphemously claimed that he was the Messiah. And so Zerah pushes for Jesus’ condemnation and crucifixion.

Zerah has also heard the boasts that Jesus would rise from the dead. He knows that the disciples might even go so far as to stage the resurrection by stealing the body, and then create God knows what kind of public ruckus after that. So Zerah sees to it that the tomb is sealed with a boulder and guarded by Roman soldiers.

But on the third day Zerah hears troubling news. There are reports that Jesus has risen from the dead. Zerah rushes to the tomb, and gazes despairingly into the empty space. He laments: “Now it begins. It all begins.”

Zerah was right. Everything changed with the resurrection. Before, the disciples had been a timid, confused, and unreliable bunch. But then the resurrection happened. In the gospel today, we heard about their first encounter. At first, naturally, they couldn’t believe it. Who would? But with a bite of fish and a few words, the impossibly risen Christ opened their minds to the impossible.

The disciples woke up to a new reality, and the past three years flashed before them in a completely different light. Jesus was the Messiah; his miracles were real; the scriptures had been fulfilled. Knowing this, they would never be the same. They would now live with a new boldness - to love as Jesus loved, to trust God as he trusted, to be as generous and free as he was. They would even lose their fear of death.

Now it would begin. It would all begin. And so Jesus told them to go out and “proclaim repentance,” which means simply to turn direction. So he wanted his friends to create situations where others would experience what they had - to see everything in a new light, turn to God, and change their lives.

Which is exactly what Peter and John did in our first lesson. They healed a paralyzed man at the temple gate in Jerusalem. The people gaped in astonishment as the man stood up and walked. And Peter said “Well, what did you expect, after Jesus’ resurrection? Everything is different now. Anything is possible. Repent therefore, turn to God; change your life.”

So this is the pattern: an encounter with God has the effect of waking one up to a new and deeper understanding of reality. Things are seen in a completely different light. There is nothing to do but turn, change, and start a different kind of life.

I wonder if you have had such an encounter. Some of you might have woken from a kind of sleep because of a vivid awareness of your mortality. You had a close brush with death, or the life of someone you love became fragile and uncertain. Knowing this, really knowing it, things begin to look different. With this knowledge, what shall you now do? How shall you live?

Others of you might have come at one point to a hard realization, long ignored, of some central fact. You fell in love with someone of your own gender, and guess what? You’re gay! Or you’re an alcoholic. Or you’re unhappy in your marriage, in the work you do. You have been living a lie, and now you have come to the truth. Knowing this, really knowing it, nothing will ever be the same. What then shall you do?

This can also happen as life unfolds naturally over time. At some point a father wakes up and realizes he is a father. He sees himself, his relationships, his responsibilities, his whole lifestyle in a new light. How shall he now live?

In each of these situations it is a new understanding of ourselves that changes everything. We see things differently, and we can’t help but be different.

We frequently think of those moments that motivate us to repent, to turn, as requiring a decision and will power. We finally get to the point where we say “Enough! I’m going to make myself the kind of person I know I should be!” But this approach is never very effective. Anyone who has tried to diet knows this. Anyone who tries to make themselves holy knows this.

Neither is fear a good motivator. We may say to ourselves “Oh no! I’m in deep trouble! I’d better get it together, quick!” But when the fear subsides, we wipe our brow and thank God we’ve dodged that bullet, and go on with life as usual.

What truly heads us in a new direction is an experience that gives us a clear understanding of the way things are. For instance, if we really get it, in the depths of our heart, that we are going to die, we will be affected. We may then make different choices about how we spend our time, what is worth worrying about, and how we love. If we hit bottom and face the inescapable knowledge that we are not what we have pretended to be, then we have begun a new journey.

And if, as people of faith, we have discovered that that God is real, that the Spirit dwells within us, we see ourselves in a new light. Then we naturally live as one who is beloved, at peace, empowered by a wisdom beyond our own knowing. We are naturally more able to trust, to listen, and to be guided.

What is true for us individually is also true for society. I don’t see us becoming motivated to turn from the path of global warming because we have become frightened by the disastrous scenarios that every reputable scientist is telling us. I don’t see us turning from war as a means of resolving our conflicts because we have finally decided it is the right thing to do. As a people, we will only repent from environmental destruction, violence, and indifference to the underprivileged because we come to truly understand ourselves differently - namely, that we are all one.

We are one with the whole planet, the whole universe. Nothing is separate; everything affects everything else. Our actions harm or benefit plants, oceans, and the atmosphere, and they benefit us. We are one with every other person, no matter what race or nation or creed. How the goods I consume are produced, how I vote, whether I care that people are homeless or without adequate education or medical care, even how I think and feel about people that are different from me - all this affects people who are my sisters and brothers in God. We are one.

If, and only if, we as a society can evolve to the point where we let ourselves experience this, and by that experience gain an understanding of the way things really are - and I have my doubts that we will, at least anytime soon - we will repent. We will change naturally, not because we fear, and not because we think we should, but because we see things differently, and we cannot help but live differently.

You and I cannot steer the massive ship of society towards a more evolved understanding. But we can wake up within our own lives, and help others to wake up, as well. And because we are all one, we affect the world around us.

We can take seriously that shock of our mortality, that awareness of God’s presence, those times of complete honesty or of hitting bottom, or those moments when we know that all of life is one sacred organism. We can receive the gift of seeing things as they are, and let this knowledge change us.

We do not know where this understanding will take us. A journey into new life begins without being able to see the destination, or even the twists and turns of the road ahead. All we know is what we know here and now, and that we shall now turn, trust, and walk. As John put it in the second reading today “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”

In our moments of realization, we are the same as the disciples after Easter. They saw the resurrected Christ, and nothing was ever the same. At times we are given clarity and deep understanding. If we take the time, if we take the risk to allow this new vision to affect us, we are changed. We repent, we turn down a new road, and now it begins. It all begins.

Spreading Shalom:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

“Dance, dance, wherever you may be.
“I am the Lord of the Dance” says he
“And I’ll lead you on wherever you may be,
“And I’ll lead you on in the dance,” says he.

After the betrayal, the cooked-up charges, the Cross, the nails, the empty tomb, the Lord of the Dance comes to his disciples hiding behind locked doors and says, “Peace.  Peace be with you.”  Often we hear that word peace in the context of our lives—thinking when we hear it absence of conflict or inner calm.  But Jesus was saying not peace but “Shalom.”  “Shalom”—it means so much more than just absence of conflict or inner calm or even peace of mind though surely they are a part of it.  Prosperity, health, peace, wellness, completeness, safety, harmony, fulfillment, unity, restoration are all a part of God’s Shalom.1  That’s what the Lord of the Dance offers his disciples.  That’s what Jesus was bestowing on those huddled behind locked doors.  Shalom.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. The Lord of the dance breaks through doors closed by fear and guilt and more than a measure of confusion, breathes his spirit on his disciples and invites them into the dance saying, “I send you to do as I have done.”  He’s sending them out to love and serve their neighbors; he’s sending them out to spread shalom.    

It takes a while for the disciples to get it, for them to step into the dance.  Remember, they huddle in that room for quite some time.  Finally Peter has enough.  He stands up and says, “I’m going fishing.”  That’s when Jesus comes back to them again, meets them on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, hails them by the shore, cooks a breakfast, shows them how to love their neighbor and sends them out to feed his lambs and tend his sheep.  

When next we meet those followers of Jesus, they are being blown or shaken out of their locked-in places—whisked out into the world of deep need.  The author of the Acts of the Apostles tells us first that “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need”(Acts 2:  44-45).  As the community grew, they continued to share what they had.  Indeed, we hear today, “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:  34-35)  

You and I and this part of the Body of Christ we call St. Michael’s are part of a long chain of Christian communities called to love and serve their neighbor as themselves thus spreading Shalom to the world in which we live.  Spreading shalom—it’s  so clearly part of our DNA as Christians though a part that often gets overlooked.  Our early Christian forbearers had quite a reputation for meeting deep human need:
    *Tertullian, an early Christian writer and theologian observed, “Our care for the     derelict     and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy...     ‘See,’ they say     ‘how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each other.’”2
As Tertullian implies, it wasn’t only Christians that noticed what was going on. The Emperor Julian the Apostate in the 4th century commented caustically, “The godless Christians feed not only their poor but ours also.”3  

You and I and this part of the Body of Christ we call St. Michael’s come from a long line of individuals and communities turned outward toward the needs of the world. I think of Clare and Francis and St. Martin of Tour’s all who focused on serving the least of God’s children. I’m reminded of communities like the Beguines in the Middle Ages and Catholic Worker communities of today—communities that devote their common life to serving the neediest, communities that practice a radical kind of love of neighbor.  All part of that great Apostolic train of communities and individuals intent on being the Body of Christ spreading God’s Shalom to the world of great human need.

Just this last week I saw a group of people right here in Albuquerque, including people from St. Michael’s, dancing the dance of Shalom, practicing deep love of neighbor.  In the community room of St. Martin’s coffee shop, a group of people gathered to work out how they would support a person making that difficult transition from living on the streets to living in an apartment.  They talked about who they were and why they were there, what they thought the person moving off the streets might need, what they each brought to the project.  And then one person asked, “What if all of us—all  of St. Michael’s—were a part of this home team each contributing their skills, their knowledge, their unique gifts to people in Albuquerque heading home?”  What a question!  

What if we all got together, this whole community--St. Michael’s—all of us, and worked together to address a deep need in our community?  What if the marks on our part of the Body of Christ were mission, service and a radical love of neighbor?  What if the marks of our discipleship were the spreading of Shalom among the homeless, the hungry, the poor right here in Northwest Albuquerque, right here in our neck of the bosque?  Think of it—St. Michael’s as part of that great Apostolic train of compassion serving as Christ’s Body in the world.  

Soon you will read Brian’s column in the Angelus. in which he suggests we, “imagine, a few years from now, a group of parishioners sitting in a room, responding to the question “What do you value about St. Michael’s?” Imagine them naming not only spirituality, inclusivity, and community, but also saying that we are characterized by “An obvious passion and commitment to effectively serve the most vulnerable in our surrounding community.” What would it take for us to get to this point?”

Brian then answers his own question, “I believe it would take the next step in our faith development. It is natural that in the life of faith, one begins with personal spirituality, then moves to one’s immediate community. But if we are to continue to mature, the next step in faithfulness is to expand further, beyond the self and the parish, to the world around us.”

Could it be that the Lord of the Dance is coming through the doors of this community and inviting us, like our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, into the world of deep need just beyond those doors,  inviting us to join in the spreading of shalom, inviting us into the dance of true communion with our neighbors, with one another and with Christ?

“Dance, dance, wherever you may be.
“I am the Lord of the Dance” says he
“And I’ll lead you on wherever you may be,
“And I’ll lead you on in the dance,” says he.

_____________________________

1Mary Donovan Turner, Old Testament Words, 2003, 110.
2Dan Clendenin, “Communities of Compassion, Then and Now”
http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20120409JJ.shtml
3Dan Clendenin, “They Enjoyed the Favor of All People” http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20090413JJ.shtml.

Sermon: Mark 16:1-8
Easter Sunrise April 8, 2012
St. Michael and All Angels

Some of you may remember the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire with host Regis Philbin. Contestants are asked multiple-choice questions that go from easy to very difficult. They are allowed lifelines to help when things get difficult. They can ask the audience, phone a friend for help, or get half of the four answers removed so they are choosing between two and not four answers. Regis would ask the question, contestants would talk it through out loud and then answer. Regis would always follow with “Is that your final answer?” That isn’t so bad when the question was worth $100, but when it reached the $500,000 mark and the person risked losing everything if they were wrong, it was stressful for those of us watching at home. “Is that your final answer?” I feel the stress even now.

I have always found Mark’s telling of the resurrection compelling. He ends in the middle of a sentence. A literal translation of the Greek would read, “To no one anything they said; afraid they were for…” It feels as if Mark got distracted and just never got around to finishing his sentence. The resurrection is so difficult to understand that I appreciate Mark not making it neat and tidy for us. We are left with more questions than answers. If you are the type that prefers closure to this kind of open-ended account, you may want to try another gospel. Mark ends with frightened women fleeing the tomb in silence and preacher Tom Long complains, “That’s no way to run a resurrection.” (Christian Century, 2006)

I disagree. The resurrection is a miracle that doesn’t fit into a paragraph, a box, or apparently, into a tomb. Let’s be with it as complicated as it is rather than seeking an easy answer to this miracle that defies human understanding. Astonishment, trembling, fear and silence aren’t inappropriate for Easter. As one commentator said, “Easter is no time to be glib and chatty about the empty tomb and risen Lord.” (Preaching Through the Christian Year, p. 225)

We are left with awe at what God has done. Sometimes there are no words. This isn’t a story about us. It is about God who is not willing to be contained in human definitions and understandings. It calls us to shift our attention from our human centric world to God’s amazing power to bring life where there is no life. Only God can breathe life into dry bones and make them live. Only God can call Jesus forth from the tomb to walk among us and set us free. Only God can bring hope to the places where humans have given up. It invites us to place our hope in a God that calls forth a staggering belief in what can’t be done nor even conceived by us.

I try to imagine the women making their way to the tomb and I wonder what they were feeling. We talk about their incredible grief. But do you think that perhaps they came with some relief? This One whom they loved and followed got into the most difficult situations and created tension and stress wherever he went. It wasn’t all sweetness and light. Following him was often terrifying and very risky. Perhaps they came to the tomb thinking all that was behind them only to discover that he had risen. Oh no, here we go again!

It is easy to look at the women and say that they blew it! They really should have told people. They had this amazing message and they were too scared to share it. But what if they did exactly what they needed to do because there is another ending that waits to be lived out in us?

Today, we gather to wait for the sunrise and hear the words, “He has been raised; he is not here.” We come bringing all the times we have denied, betrayed or failed Christ and one another. We come confused about our past, bewildered by our present, and scared about our future. Christ walks among us and offers us a new beginning. We are human. Our fears and our failures do not define us. They are redeemed when the risen one reminds us that they are NOT our final answer.

In the summer of 1961, a shopping center came to Thornton, Louisiana. Sidda had just finished second grade. To celebrate this grand opening, Lawanda the Magnificent, a huge elephant came to offer free rides to any kid in the area. The whole community came for this occasion and everyone took turns riding the elephant. Sidda knew this was coming. She had dreamed of this day for weeks. When the day finally came, she was beside herself. Lawanda was the most amazing animal Sidda had ever seen. When it was her turn, she climbed up onto the platform and she froze in fear. The adults tried to coax her onto the elephant, but she couldn’t do it. She climbed down in humiliation.

On the way home, she realized that she had made the gravest mistake of her seven-year-old life. She burst into tears and claimed she didn’t feel good. She cried all the way home and finally confessed to her mother, “I will die if I don’t get to ride Lawanda.” Her mother’s response was, “Okay, time to implement plan 27-B.” When they got back to the parking lot everyone was gone and they were feeding and hosing Lawanda down. Her mother asked sweetly if they would possibly consider one more ride for her daughter, but the man refused. At that point, she went through a herculean effort to get some cash so Sidda could ride Lawanda. She would not be deterred…after all; this was a matter of life or death. She made a deal with Lawanda’s owner and they climbed on together. Her mother helped her imagine that they were in the jungle and the jungle came alive around them. Reflecting on the ride years later, Sidda said, “All we had done was circle that puny shopping-center parking lot, but when that ride was over I was a different little girl.”  Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (Chapter 29)

God can take the worst the world has to offer and turn it into wonder and beauty. Death can’t dim God’s glory. The last word belongs to God. No matter how we have hidden in fear, stopped short of our own goodness, or failed to see Christ in one another, God goes ahead of us to give us a new beginning.

Mark wrote this gospel to stir people to action. He believed that there was no time to wallow in our failures and disappointments. It was his hope that people would carry the message of hope and resurrection to a world that desperately needed it…and still does. The resurrection becomes real to people as they see the risen Christ in us.

Clarence Jordan was a farmer and New Testament scholar who lived in Georgia and founded Koinonia Farms.  Clarence was instrumental in the creation of Habitat for Humanity. He took Jesus words seriously and often found himself in trouble for that, but he was clear about what it meant to follow Jesus. He said, “The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church.”

Mark ends the story of the resurrection with silence. We look at ourselves and ask when have we been silent? Now we face the million-dollar question. Christ is risen…what will we do with this message?

Is that your final answer???

Easter Sunday
April 8, 2012
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

What a mysterious, richly textured story: Three women in a cemetery at dawn, the smell of burial spices in the air, a calm young stranger in a white robe, and the inexplicably empty tomb. The women were struck with amazement, terror, and silence.

The Easter mystery continues. Jesus appeared in a locked room, seemingly having passed through the wall. He ate fish by the lakeside. He walked along a road, talking to friends who didn’t recognize him until he broke bread with them, and then suddenly disappeared.

The stories are nuanced with symbolism and suggestion. As was the custom in religious storytelling back then, details and even events were added to bring depth and urgency to the meaning they were trying to convey. This was before the time when fact and fiction were neatly separated.

As a seminary professor said to our startled class in the first week of our first year, “All we really know is that Jesus attracted a following during his lifetime; was executed as a criminal by the Romans in the usual manner; and that something happened after his death that transformed his followers from a small, confused, fearful band into an electric and unstoppable movement. All the rest - well, there is just no way of knowing for sure.”

I have never doubted that supernatural things do happen in this world. And so I have no problem with believing that that “something” that happened after Jesus’ death could have been very much like what is described in the gospels. But my seminary professor’s point was that the specifics of that “something” are less important than its effect. What matters is that Jesus’ followers experienced him as still alive, within and among them, even more powerfully than during his physical life. And this presence transformed them.

After Easter, there was a supernatural, divine force at work that was beyond the human capacity of the disciples. In the same way, Jesus did not raise himself from the dead inside the tomb. He was raised up by God. The disciples were raised up spiritually as well, by a force both within and beyond them. They didn’t self-actualize. They God-actualized. We call this “grace.”

God’s grace is a force that flows throughout everything, all the time, birthing, dying, renewing, guiding everything towards new forms, new possibilities. This is why there is such a strong link between Easter and springtime, when the earth bursts out of its winter hibernation into color and bugs and green succulence. God’s amazing grace, or the life-force of nature, if you prefer, is a force working invisibly within the dirt and the dry twigs, bubbling up into fresh and tender life.  

The whole earth, the whole cosmos pulses with this divine energy of resurrection, and we are an integral part of it. And so we join the whole creation in singing God’s praises, standing in worship before the Source of all. As it says in the great Song of Creation in our Prayer Book,
<em>Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain and fall of dew, all winds and fire and heat.
Winter and summer, give to God your thanks and praise!
O nights and days, O shining light and enfolding dark,
O springs of water, seas, and streams,
O whales and all that move in the waters,
All birds of the air and beasts of the wild,
O women and men everywhere, glorify the Lord!</em>

Jesus’ resurrection is but one occurrence of what is taking place everywhere, all the time. As the entire creation births and dies and renews and evolves, it is a living song of praise to our Creator. And we humans, gifted with self-awareness, are privileged to see this, to know it, and to marvel in this energy of life, this grace, that infuses and directs the whole show.

But don’t stop here. There is more to resurrection than worship and praise. It becomes personal, if we let it, if we seek it out. For this same force of life, this transforming grace, is available to us. When we are at our lowest - when we can do no more, like Jesus lying in the tomb, unable to resurrect himself - when we surrender and open our hearts to some other possibility within and beyond us, it creeps in. When we’re not looking, we find ourselves affected.

In the midst of a serious illness, a spaciousness and trust can appear, and we know that no matter what happens, we shall be well. An empty, blank time of gestation gives birth to new interest and vigor. After the disappointment of a closed door, we turn and see another one open to a vista we had never considered before. A failed marriage can make one like the winter earth - cold, hard, and lifeless; but then spring comes, making life fruitful again. Parts of oneself sprout up that were long-forgotten, or never even known before.

The point of a life of prayer, the point of faith, is to face intentionally into this renewing grace in trust and hope, waiting like a cat in front of a mouse-hole. God will appear, and we will be ready. Without specific expectations, we are nevertheless expectant. When grace stirs within our tomb, we do what we can to cooperate with it, and in its power, we rise and become new people.

But don’t stop here, either. There is yet even more to resurrection than personal transformation. We are empowered by this same life-force of grace to be resurrectors with God. We are invited into God’s glorious work of raising up the world around us. We are co-creators of the kingdom of God on earth.

It’s tempting to think of the world as going to hell in a hand-basket. In a world of nearly 7 billion    souls, we hear the endlessly repeated story of one murderous soldier, one paranoid vigilante, and we shake our heads saying “What is this world coming to?” The most pressing problems seem unsolvable - global warming, population growth, healthcare, economic crises, deadlock between political parties. And we despair, becoming cynical.

And yet, here’s an interesting thing that doesn’t sell air time on the nightly news. Compared to 50 years ago, far more countries are democracies, now free from oppressive dictatorships. In the same period of time, the rate of poverty has dramatically lowered around the globe, with a huge rise in the middle class. The number of women who are now educated is much higher than any time in history. And the number of deaths from the violence of war is far lower than generations before.

How did all this happen? And how have we moved beyond slavery, segregation, and inevitably, homophobia? It has happened because people like you and me have participated with God in the resurrection of the world. We can’t help it. We are made in the image of our Creator, stamped with God’s own character. And so we, too, are resurrectors, never ceasing to breathe life into those places where there seems to be only death.

You give to a charity and people are fed and vaccines distributed. You work in a profession that searches out effective ways of improving the lives of the most vulnerable among us. You vote, and occasionally help people get elected who inch this resistant state and country forward into new life. You may be creative, bringing beauty and truth that enlivens those who see or hear what you do.

All of us are made in the image of God. We are filled with the same life-force that fills the universe, the same grace that enters your own dark places. And it is our responsibility to use this power. We are gifted with this precious life in order to give life to others. We are born to resurrect the world where it lies dormant, broken, or lifeless.

We are vehicles of God’s grace - of that power that is within and beyond us, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the same power that transforms our personal lives, the power of springtime. When we open our hearts to the needs of the world around us, when we call upon this grace, and when we join together and act, this grace multiplies exponentially. And the world is made new.

Today is a special feast day, obviously. But it is like any other day. Every day is filled with grace and glory. So take Easter forth from this place. Allow yourself to be made new, and help God to resurrect the world.

Ascension Day 
The Rev. Daniel Gutierrez

Today we celebrate Ascension Day.  A major feast in our Church calendar, but one often overlooked. We jump from Easter to Pentecost, and seemingly ignore the celebration where the risen Christ takes his place at the right hand of God.  

The act of Jesus being reunited with God is quite a significant event.  So why the obscurity?  
As a child, my recollection of the Ascension story was through the pictures in Sunday school books.   The scene depicts clear skies, green meadows and 11 smiling Apostles waving at a floating Jesus, who is going up, up, up and away.  I was quite stunned to see a similar floating Jesus at the Balloon Fiesta.  

I suspect the reason Ascension Day resides in the festal shadows is that when Christ departs from this earth, we are each given a responsibility.   Previously, in all our encounters with the living God, it is God who initiates and takes responsibility for the relationship.  

At Christmas, the divine becomes incarnate and lives among us.  At the Last Supper – he integrates us with his being.  In the Cross and at Easter we discover the ultimate act of his love and thus the assurance of our inclusion in God’s eternal plan.  At Pentecost – we are given the power of the spirit.   Up until this point, we haven’t exerted much effort.  

However, on Ascension Day, as Jesus is moving toward God, we are given the ultimate going way present:  we are entrusted with the continuation of his message and presence.   His last words on this earth are:  “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  

Think of the enormity of the trust.  The divine, the creator, our God - asks each one of us – to be his witness on earth.    So for every word he spoke, every action he carried out, we must live it and proclaim it to those who do not know him.   We must love not only God, but love one another.  We are asked to become Christ to the world.    

And God truly believes that we can do it.  If not, why would he ask it of us?   Think of this world if the disciples would have kept looking for Christ in the clouds?  What if they sat around and waited for Jesus to return; hoping that he would come back and continue to do all the work?  

What if Paul ignored Christ message and went into a lucrative tent making business in Athens.  Or if John embarked on the healing or speaking circuit in order to amass a fortune.  If Peter decided to go along with Nero’s policies and quietly retired on a hilltop villa in Rome?  

Even more disturbing - if the assembled followers thought of Jesus only on Sunday and forgot about him the rest of the week.  After all, Jesus was not around.  Who would know? What difference would it make?  It made a world of difference.   Followers of Christ stand out for helping the poor, the oppressed, the sick, and the excluded.  They gave Christ a voice in the world when other voices were silent.   Why?  Because as Jesus ascended, his love descended.  He left part of himself in the world.  

There is a story of a man who learned he was going blind.  He was a great lover of art; his career was dedicated to the preservation of great pieces.  As his sight began to fail, the man booked a plane to Amsterdam and spent a week in the Van Gogh museum.   Each day he stood for hours upon end looking at each of the paintings.   He wanted these images to soak into this brain as his last visual images.

So on that hilltop, all the assembled men, women and children did not wave goodbye, they soaked the image of Jesus into their beings.  They kept the vision of his physical being, but also his teachings, presence and grace.  Jesus was infused into their minds and his memory was etched in their hearts.  The Apostles instituted the practice of Christ rather than the terminology of religion.

Christ’s followers became blind to the world and made Christ their vision.  He was on their lips, in their hearts and on their minds.  They did not forget.   When their faith was challenged, they remembered his wounds.  When afraid, they remembered his loving embrace.  When angry, they remembered the way he played with children, and cried with Martha and Mary. 

Jesus colored their lives, so when their hearts hardened, the Apostles remembered how Jesus touched the sick and accepted outcasts at his table.  When lonely, recalled how Christ laughed out loud.  When they could not go on, they heard his voice saying he would never leave their side.  The Ascension recalls that we are not left behind; we have the opportunity reflect his light.   

My favorite depiction of the ascension is a 19th century print.  The sky is cloudy and dark, and in the middle of the clouds is a break, as if someone had punched a hole in the darkness.   Rays of light illuminate men, women, children, short, tall, young, and the elderly.   

The light of Christ shines on each one.  Their faces radiate, they seem transformed – as if they were becoming something new.  The love in their hearts seems to leap off the page.  

That print reminded me of the hour immediately following a heavy downpour.   The dark massive clouds blanket the sky.  Yet for a moment, through a small break in the clouds, white shafts of afternoon sunlight hit the Rio Grande Valley.  The light is soft, yet bright and it allows you to see details of the earth that are often hidden from our daily sight. 

The greens and blues on the west mesa are revealed.  The escarpment becomes a vivid black; the edges and canyons of the Sandia Mountains expose their depth and beauty.     For a few seconds something new is revealed.  Then suddenly the clouds close, the light shifts and then it is gone. 

In a stable in Bethlehem, a hole was punched in the darkness of sin; the light became flesh and dwelt among us.  In Jesus’ Ascension, a hole was punched in the darkness of humanity, and the earth was illuminated in a light that allowed us to see the world, and one another in a different way.  
By his Ascension we are given the responsibility to take the light the Apostles first carried to the ends of the earth.  To illuminate Christ message of love, faith, acceptance.  Not only to those we like or those we know, but to everyone.

For when we enter into his light, it is not some vague, random occurrence.  It is a conscious choice that we must reaffirm.   Christ is calling us to be his witness.  In this sanctuary, in our homes, communities, and in this nation.   

This responsibility is not only for Priests, Deacons or the devoutly religious; Jesus asks each one of us carry it.  We all are graced with the same inherent collective memory of Christ.  Like the 
Apostles, Jesus is infused into our minds, his memory etched in our hearts.  It is who we are.   We are created in his image; we are claimed by him at Baptism.  So deep inside we hear his voice of acceptance, feel his love without conditions - it is who we are. 

Many ask “how can I bring Christ into this world?” Justice, equality and acceptance are what love looks like in a public setting.   Bring forth his light.  If you question if you can truly make a difference in Christ’ name, try it, one person at a time.   Jesus encountered people individually, and they were transformed one loving action at a time.  Those he transformed reached out to others and they too were transformed.  It spread to the ends of the earth.

If each one of us makes a conscious effort to punch holes in the darkness, in the name of justice, acceptance and love, the brilliance of Christ’s light would diminish the sun.   When we punch holes in the clouds for the forgotten, we might have the ability to recognize the plight on a homeless 3 year old child, sitting in a darkened playground with a distressed mother, before the dark finality of despair overcomes the light of hope.

So today as we contemplate Jesus moving toward God, become the messengers of his light, of his love.   Take this gift of responsibility, and make a difference in the world.  Shine your light on those instances of bigotry, exclusion and hate. Your love in the name of Christ can punch holes through the darkest clouds of injustice.  One person at a time, one encounter at a time, one loving action upon another.  Your light can reflect his beauty to the world.  

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Albuquerque, New Mexico 
Sunday May 17, 2009 6 Easter Year B 
John 15: 9-17 
Preacher: Christopher McLaren 

I have a strong affection for the 15th chapter of John with its repeated admonition to Abide.  At one point in my life that single profound word hung framed above my desk calligraphied in four inch letters as a daily reminder of what each Christian is called to in this beautiful passage.  Abide in me as I abide in you (15:4). Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit (15:5).  As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love. 

Yet while this passage was one of my favorites, I struggled to understand the concept of abide. This numinous word abide caused me to wonder, what it might be to abide, how is it one achieves such an intimate state with Jesus?  Abiding sounds so wonderful, how could I experience it? But the gospel of John does not give us much to go on in terms of what abiding means.  There is no self-help section, no easy 3-step process to abiding in the footnotes.  

At the core of the Christian faith is the persistent mystery and paradox that the God who is beyond all knowing, invisible, immortal, source of all being is also deliciously near, intimately present in the minds and hearts of all living souls. 

In fact this presumption of presence is something that is found throughout the Gospel writings. Over and over again the New Testament writings remind us that God is present to believers in a way that they can know and acknowledge. From the very beginning this is the message: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel” which means “God is with us,”; and “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them; and “remember I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 1:23; 18:20:28:20); Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”; (I Corinthians 3:16).  Abiding is one way of talking about this same experience or presence. 

However, as I said earlier this is not an easy experience to wrap our hearts and minds around. One rich and creative attempt to express this intimacy between Jesus and those who are his followers comes from within Celtic Spirituality.  In the ancient Celtic prayer known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” we get a stirring and many-faceted look at how to imagine our spiritual life our abiding with Christ. 

You can find the words to this in the blue hymnal in front of you on page 370. It is one of my favorites hymns because of course the Irish are my people.  Here is the portion I want to focus on. (sing hymn)

Christ be with me, 
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ before me, 
Christ beside me,
Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me, 
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, 
Christ in danger, 
Christ in hearts of all that love me, 
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. 

Each line of this Irish poem, each preposition is a way of understanding the intimacy of abiding in the divine presence that was so much a part of the early Christian experience. 

Christ Be With Me
One of our deepest human needs is companionship.  Each night I treasure the time with my children sitting on the couch reading the books they have chosen for the night and then laying in the dark with them as they drift off to sleep.  Just being with them is a blessing, hearing news of the day, whispering our prayers into the dark, singing bedtime songs and giving them a blessing.  We know what it means to have others with us and this makes Jesus’ promise, “Lo I am with you always” one of the most comforting.  In fact this is probably one of the most important ways that we minister to one another. Simply being there for each other, “being with” is not always easy in the midst of tragedy, loss, depression, or confusion. Often we are not sure what to say, but our presence even our silent companionship can mean more than anything.  

So when Jesus says “abide in me as I abide in you” this is an assurance that we desire and value. We will not be alone. We will not be abandoned. Though we may not always be comfortable with God’s presence in our lives and it may not always be exactly what we had in mind, God will show up, be our companion on the way, and as the Gospel of John begins, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). 

Christ Within Me
This line reminds me of on of my favorite prayers from the morning office that begins, “Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being (collect BCP p. 100 or Acts 17:28). Not only is it true that Christ lives within each of us, intimately and personally but it is also true that we are in Christ. “If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). I remember as a child my pastor working to impress upon us that being “in Christ” meant that we stand before God clothed with the Christ, that God sees us as if we were his own beloved. 

As catholic Christians we are well aware of the notion that God dwells in us. This indwelling of God’s Spirit is made tangible as we ingest the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  It is a testimony to the ongoing intimacy we are called to with Christ, God entering us and abiding in our very person.  What we can say is that God is our dwelling place just as each of us is God’s dwelling place. It is a wild idea that God humbly inhabits our bodies. It places enormous importance upon our physical body, the care of our soul and the unnerving knowledge that we are ourselves a site of God’s revelation to the world. 

Christ Behind Me
On a pilgrimage retreat I participated in, I was given the job of wrangler which meant that I was to bring up the rear on our travels, attending to those who had fallen behind, care for the injured, encourage the tired and try to motivate the lazy.  

The Christ that is “behind me” is the Christ who guards my back.  We have all see too many scary scenes in movies where danger comes from behind. The hero keeps looking behind, sure that someone or something is following in the shadows, the footsteps coming nearer.  The fact that we only have eyes in the front of our heads may seem like a design flaw in moments of fear but it is also a way of making us dependent upon one another.  To know that Christ is behind me, to know that Christ has our back is to know safety.  If frees us to attend to what is truly important in front of us.  Christ is our holy wrangler, walking behind us always there to lend a hand, to encourage the feint hearted, protecting us from unseen danger and to share our load when things seem overwhelming. 

Christ Before Me
Recently our Rite13 youth read Psalm 139 as part of our worship that celebrated their transition into manhood and womanhood. This psalm is a wonderful meditation on finding God ahead of us.  “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I feel from your presence?” the psalmist asks. and the answers to these questions are deeply reassuring.  “If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter most parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.” 

Wherever we go, God has arrived ahead of us. I remember as a young candidate for Holy Orders, my sponsoring priest reminding me that in every situation Christ is present, he is already there ahead of us, our job is simply to discover this live-giving presence.  We are never in a situation God doesn’t know intimately because God has “been there” before us.  

To understand abiding in Christ as knowing that Christ goes before us places a great emphasis upon listening for God’s voice in our lives, discerning the leading of the Spirit. It challenges us to a life that is as open to following as it is to leading. Our culture seems to worship leadership at times but there is something profound and wonderfully countercultural about following.  Becoming a follower of Jesus requires that we stay in relationship, watching, listening, loving, taking the next steps as they become clear, saying yes to the adventure of following the one leader who truly has our best interests at heart.

Christ Beside Me
Evidently the original text of St. Patrick’s Breastplate reads “Christ on my right, Christ on my left”.  But the hymn writer Cecil Francis Alexander who wrote or adapted many hymns in our hymnal like Once in Royal David’s city and All things bright and beautiful compressed this line into one “Christ beside me”. It is a comforting thought that abiding with Christ means that we are flanked by God, by one who knows us, supports us and accompanies us. It is also provocative to think that Christ walks with us in our strengths our right hand (sorry lefties) and in our weakness or shadow side.  This leads to a knowledge that God is to be found in our skills and abilities our strong hand as well as in the midst of our weaknesses our faults and our unconscious.  

Christ Beneath Me
As a child I remember a song about a wise man building his house upon rock.  As the great theologian, Paul Tillich, put it, God is the “ground of our being.” We all need a rock. We need a firm foundation a touching place from which to operate with confidence. John 15 uses the image of a strong vine from which the branches obtain their nourishment. It is by the root stock of God that we are supported and this is to be our orientation, refusing every temptation to turn elsewhere for security, companionship or hope. 

There of course is a great deal more one could say about the prepositions in this beautiful piece of Irish poetry and prayer.  Together they remind us that God’s embrace is so intimate, so comprehensive that we are never outside of it.  To abide is to relax into these prepositions. To surrender yourself to the presence of God that surrounds you already. To abide in Christ is to find the love of God at the center of all things.  It is to be taken captive by this love, to recognize it as the pearl of great price and to have gladly abandoned everything for the sake of it.  Abiding means turning toward God again and again, struggling to hear God’s voice and to begin to follow Christ again after we have lost our way.  It asks of us a kind of attentiveness to God’s presence that is actually open to following in unexpected ways, rather than determining on our own what path we will take.  Abiding is neither effortless nor is it something so demanding as to be impossible. Abiding is to discover that God indeed surrounds us, is within, behind, before, beside, beneath, and above. There is no place we can go away from this loving presence and in Christ we find our abiding joy. 

Christ be with me, 
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ before me, 
Christ beside me,
Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me, 
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, 
Christ in danger, 
Christ in hearts of all that love me, 
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. 

Abide.
  
 I wish to acknowledge my debt to Marilyn Chandler McEntyre for her wonderful meditation on St. Patrick’s Breastplate in her article The Encompassing Embrace that forms the basis for this sermon. May this sermon be an encouragement into the abiding place of  Christ.