The moment when Jesus kneels down to wash the disciples feet, (EVEN THE FEET OF JUDAS) is in one sense a tragic farewell, a night so bleak, so dark ------YET, we see the foreshadowing of great hope – of the light from God’s unconditional love!

With less than 24 hours left on this earth for him, Jesus gathers his disciples together away from the crowds to an upper room.  The noise from the street below is somewhat muted --yet there is something different about tonight.  Though they are gathered together for a meal, there seem to be no servants around making preparations, no one waiting to wash the disciples' dusty feet before they recline together for a meal.

Jesus knowing that His death is near, THAT HIS HOUR HAD COME TO DEPART FROM THIS WORLD, rises from his place, takes off his robe, and proceeds to tie a towel around his waist.  The sense of uncertainty in the room rises.  I can almost hear the disciples, turning to whisper to one another --"What is He doing?"  Jesus explains to Peter, "you do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

Jesus is kneeling in front of his disciples and washing their feet.  I can picture in my own mind, when Mary is kneeling and anointing Jesus feet, or even if the story was about Peter washing the feet of the Master.  But for Jesus to kneel tonight, if He were here at St. Michael's and to wash MY FEET!!!!!  Would I understand?  Would I, like Peter, be reluctant to participate in this- the most tender act of Jesus?

 "So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you."  Jesus spells it out by giving them a new commandment, "that you love one another….as I have loved you"!   They are to humble themselves (We are to humble ourselves) and to SERVE one- another.

"You do not know now what I am doing -- but later you will understand. " Jesus knew that his death was near and "having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."  Jesus girded himself to perform a menial act of service in spite of the concern and objections of Peter, who is puzzled and offended to see Jesus in the role of a servant.  And like Peter, tonight, we have to face our inner reluctance to serve and to be served.

We are called to wash each other's feet because that is precisely what Jesus did at the first Eucharist, at the Last Supper.  Both the Eucharist and the Foot Washing are meant to send us out into the world -- ready to give expression to Christ's love, Christ's hospitality, and course Christ's humility.  What is so unexpected, and so radically loving, about this foot washing, is --not just that it is the Teacher and Master doing a servants work.  What sticks out in my mind is that Jesus held their dirty feet (which undoubtedly they were dirty indeed)…and in that moment of intimacy --- he HELD SO MUCH MORE.    Jesus held their untrusting hearts, their weakened spirits, their calloused and embarrassed egos, and their unwillingness to be so vulnerable!

TONIGHT ----We ALLOW Jesus to serve us through one another!!!!

As Jesus has stripped his outer garments --- we will strip the altar this night, preparing for our journey to the cross tomorrow.  

Listen now to a poem,  by Ruth Mary Fox:  Stripped Tree 

Alone it stands and silent, a stripped tree,
         Robbed of its leaves, its nesting birds all flown.  
         Round it and through it bitter winds have blown,
         Testing its strength by stern adversity.
         Serene it stands tonight, all sorrow-free,
         Silvered with starlight, its branches radiant grown.  
         Had it been green with boughs, I'd have not known
         This rarer beauty now revealed to me.
         I am that silent tree upon the hill:
         Strip me of all my leaves, even of my song,
         If stark against the sky I can fulfill,
         My quest for ultimate Beauty.  Not for long
         Endures the darkness of earth's bleakest night.
         Serene the stars break through with silver light.

Serve one another this night, knowing that as we participate in this sacred act, we are experiencing God's love for us through one another.  Christ becomes present with us as surely as He is in the breaking of the bread -- Washing away the GRIME of all our frustrations, our struggles, our mistakes,-- tenderly touching us! 

Let us open our hearts to RECEIVE GOD'S LOVE, and to GIVE CHRIST'S LOVE, as we participate in the rest of our service tonight.  

AMEN

All I know is:  That I was blind and now I see!

Questions and more questions:
Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parent, that he was born blind?
Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?
How were your eyes opened?
Where is he? (the one who sent you to the pool of Siloam?)
How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?
What do you say about him?  It was your eyes he opened.
Is this your son, who you say was born blind?  How then does he now see?
How did he open your eyes?
Why do you want to hear it again?  Do you also want to become his disciples?
You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?
And the question that spoke to me:  Surely we are not blind, are we?

The disciples start all this questioning, asking "Rabbi, who sinned, this man 
or his parents, that he was born blind?  For the blind man, did the birth 
defect mean that he had somehow sinned in the womb,  or was he the
victim of his parents' transgression? 

The disciples saw what they had been taught to see -- a man who was 
being punished by God.  They obviously knew something of his story -- that 
he had always been blind.  So they raised a question already answered for 
them in the Book of Job:    Remember Job's so -called comforters who 
attempted to convict him of sin as the reason for his misfortune?  

It has been said that the world we live in is created for us by our 
perceptions -- by what we take in and what we filter out, by how we 
interpret the data we receive and by how we choose to respond to it.  The 
writer Anais Nin said "We do not see things as they are.  We see things
as we are."

Jesus asks the man, after he washes in the pool of Siloam, "Do you believe 
in the Son of Man?"  and our friend, who has just received his sight, says:
"Point him out to me, sir, so that I can believe in him."  Here Jesus gives 
an explanation that I think is worthy of our reflection:  

            Jesus says"  You have seen him and the one speaking with you is 
            he….I came into this world …. so that those who do not see may see, 
            and those who do see may become blind.

            IN OTHER WORDS, THOSE WHO HAVE MADE A GREAT 
            PRETENSE OF SEEING WILL BE EXPOSED AS BLIND!  

The man may have received his sight, but there were some powerful
people who were not interested in receiving theirs.  It's at this point that we 
see the comedy of shallow human comprehension!  They all thought they 
knew just how the world worked, and they weren't about to change their 
perceptions or their beliefs!  

This was, in a sense, a messy situation!  For the Pharisees it was easier to 
know how to handle someone's blindness  --as being the result of God's 
judgment.  But, now, when blind people get miraculously healed -- in God's 
name, ----  now this Jesus was here again, complicating their nicely "put 
together theology."  What if this healing had really happened? There must 
be some other explanation!!!  Or at least we'll create another reason.

They could try and get a confession from the blind man -- maybe get him 
to admit that he wasn't really blind -- it had all along been a hoax.  Or maybe 
they could get the parents to admit that their son wasn't really blind - get 
them to contradict their son!

It would seem that too many had decided in advance what was the truth 
and then they had to make the facts conform to their own prejudices, 
or fears.  Do we sometimes catch ourselves deciding in advance what
is the truth before we listen with an open mind?

Then there is the community, who have probably seen this particular blind
 man around town, since his birth and of course known about his blindness?  
            One says, "Isn't this the man who used to sit outside and beg?"  
            Some say "Yes", but others say "No, he just looks like the same
            man."
            It takes them awhile to get around to asking the man himself :
            "So how were your eyes opened?"
            "A guy named Jesus made mud, spit on it and rubbed it on my eye,-- 
            told me to go wash in the pool and I did. Now I can see."

 Not the act of healing which most physicians would choose to imitate today.

And the parents?  They simply answer, "yes our son was born blind -- 
but as to how he can now see, we have no idea -- ask him."  But we might 
ask them --  Was the fact that he was born blind such an embarrassment 
that you rejected him AND HE'S  NOW FORCED TO BEG?. Were you
tired of neighbors wondering what you had done to bring such punishment
on your son?

How did the blind man see himself?  Well, after a life of nothing but 
rejection-- how was he supposed to feel?

But then comes the touch of Jesus!  Jesus saw someone in need and he
didn't use that person's plight to develop a political or moral agenda.  Jesus
took the opportunity to demonstrate God's act of mercy!  WHERE ARE
WE IN THIS SCENARIO?  Which question are we asking?  Or on which 
belief are we stubbornly fixed?

This brings us to another important question:  Was BLINDNESS the only 
marker, the only characteristic, by which this man was identified?

What about those in our community for whom we see only by the markers 
or labels, with which they have been forced to live?  What about those who 
stand on the street corners - how do we decide whether to help or ignore?  
What means of justification or judgment do we use?  What about some of 
those veterans who have come home only to discover that there is no work 
for them,…..sometimes no home, or loved ones to welcome them home.  
Vets with PTSD!  many of them homeless on our streets!   Are they 
identified as "NOT DESERVING?"  How are we influenced by these labels
under which they have been forced to live?

What about those young people -- out there on the streets who have "come 
out" to their families and are rejected and forced to live on the street?  
There are many questions in our community for us to consider this day!!! 
SURELY WE ARE NOT BLIND ARE WE?

I was reminded of the words of Isaiah:  "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest 
upon him;  The Spirit of wisdom and understanding;  The Spirit of 
knowledge and fear of the Lord.  He shall not judge by what his eyes
see nor decide by what his ears shall hear…"

HE SHALL NOT JUDGE BY WHAT HIS EYES SEE NOR DECIDE BY 
WHAT HIS EARS SHALL HEAR!

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound ….I once was lost, but now am 
found; was blind, but now I see!  "All I know," he tell the authorities, is 
that I was blind and now I see"!

Those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great 
pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind."

Remember, a few weeks ago when the Rev. Douglas Travis said that 
people want to know God not things about God?

We are called to be intimately connected with one another, to serve as 
priest to one another.  That's what the "priesthood of all believers" means!

God is deeply implicated in our lives, in every place and moment and 
person in our human experience……In the book 
Down and Out in Providence, the former bishop of the Rhode Island, 
Geralyn Wolf who lived as one of the homeless, says this:

            It was from the cross that Jesus made the new family.  
            To John he said, "Look, here is your mother" and to Mary, 
            "Here is your son."  In the shelter,  Bishop Wolf continues, 
            it's not about class or race, schooling or jobs;  it's about 
            staying with someone when they are dying inside.

As Gregory of Nyssa said long ago, "human life is not directed toward a 
static goal….but a continual process of stretching and being stretched 
out toward God."  

We are called to open and to stretch our hearts and minds, to serve as 
priest to one another.  We cannot stand above anyone in the presence
of God -- only are we to stand along side one another! 

Surely, we are not blind, are we?  I once was lost -- but now I'm found,
I was blind -- but now I see!  

AMEN 

Second Sunday of Lent                                                                                             March 16, 2014           
Lections (RCL):                                                                St. Michael and All Angels, Albuquerque           
Genesis 12:1-4a                                                                                 The Very Rev. Douglas Travis           
Psalm 121                                                                                                                                          
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17                                                                                                                         
John 3:1-17


Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

Wouldn’t it be nice to be one of God’s chosen? To have God come down and tell us exactly what to do with our lives? And of course, implicit in the idea that God’s going to tell me what to do with my life is the notion that, if I’m obedient, everything’s going to work out just fine and I will be blessed! I will be happy, content, serene. And life will rarely be a challenge . . .

But let’s think for a moment about what really happens to Abraham.

He’s 75 years old when he gets the word from God that he’s to leave his country, everything he’s ever known and loved, to set out for a new country! Imagine setting out on such an adventure at 75!

God assures Abraham that he will be the father of a great country, but somehow he and Sarah keep failing to have a child! How is he to be the father of a great nation if he has no progeny? As it happens, God waits till Abraham’s about 100 – just to be sure Abraham gets the message! – before Sarah finally conceives . . .  at the age of 90! And then later, as we all recall, God requires of Abraham that he sacrifice Isaac, their son! [Now, the story of Isaac’s sacrifice is probably God’s way of prohibiting the ancient Israelites sacrificing their children – something they were inclined to do. But as the story is told we nowhere see Abraham deriving any message other than that obedience to God required the death of his beloved son. What a horrible decision to have to make!]

ARE WE FEELING BLESSED YET? The fact that God calls us scarcely means that the journey is going to be simple or easy!!

Now let’s lay Abraham aside for a moment and think about Jesus. Let me unpack a little today’s Gospel.

“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” [Interesting – a Pharisee – a 1st century Episcopalian – comes to Jesus by night because he doesn’t want his fellow Pharisee’s to know what he’s up to, but he can’t quite deny that there’s something going on with Jesus because he keeps doing these things that only someone from God can do. Nicodemus’ experience requires that he take Jesus seriously] Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can SEE the kingdom of God without BEING BORN FROM ABOVE.”

Those of us raised in the evangelical south were taught to think that being born again was a matter of going to a hot August night revival, having a dramatic experience in which we personally encountered Jesus, to whom we gave our lives in that moment, and thereafter were able to rest assured that we had purchased celestial life insurance. Now hear me very clearly. I believe in the born again experience, but with this twist. Whenever I’m asked, “Have you been born again?” my response is always, “Which time?”

To be born again is to have a conversion, to be lifted up to higher and broader horizons, to see things in an altogether new way as God touches and molds our lives. And it’s going to happen again and again and again, if we’re truly open to experiencing God’s influence in our lives. God is nothing if not surprising!

 “Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ [Notice that Nicodemus does what we all do – he automatically goes to the merely physical world – Jesus has to lift him up to give him a new vision.]

“Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can ENTER the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin the word for “spirit” is the same as the word for “breath” is the same as the word for wind.” God breathes God’s Holy Spirit into us, and we’re lifted up into a different, broader, more meaningful world – a world we’re disinclined to believe really exists.] Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.” Jesus is referring to an experience, an experience he had and an experience he ushered in for his followers – the experience of God. This matters. All human desire is ultimately the desire for God, the desire for communion with God, and without providing that experience no religion can long endure.

In 1960 there were 3,444,265 Episcopalians in the United States. In 2011 there were 1,923,046. We all know about our statistical incline, but now let me share a statistic that will blow your socks off.

In 1962 22% of Americans reported having had a “mystical experience”. In 1976, just as I was commencing my seminary career, 31% reported such an experience. In 2009 48% of Americans reported having had a mystical experience![1]

In other words, in the last 50 years, as the mainline denominations have reported a 40 to 50% decline in membership, the percentage of Americans who report having had a mystical experience – a direct experience of God – has risen from 1 in 5 to 1 in 2, nearly half the population! What’s going on!!!!!

Jesus said, “We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen!” Jesus said, “Let me tell you about my experience of God!”

We are all Abraham, called on a journey into the mind of God, called on a journey to know ourselves in God. The great Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote: “There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.”[2]

And as surely as we are all Abraham, so are we all Nicodemus, coming to Jesus in the night, hoping that it’s all true, that God really is there for the asking, but suspicious and more than a little bit inclined to want to keep our cards close to our chests. And yet the deepest appetite every human being has is to know God – not to know about God, but to directly know God.

I am convinced that many of the people who have wandered from our churches have done so because we appeared to offer no path to actually knowing – to actually experiencing – God.

Let me sing the praises of this parish. From everything I know of you, you’ve done more than just about any parish I know of to foster your members actually having a relationship with the living God. Keep it up! I’m convinced that’s the church of the future.

We are all called on the journey. We are all called to be born again . . . and again, and again. We all want to know – to really know - God. And so we are all pilgrims. But pilgrims spend great amounts of time walking in the dust, putting one foot in front of the other, again and again and again, before they arrive at their destination.

I’m a great friend of 12 Step Programs and Alcoholics Anonymous. Are you aware that as surely as there are 12 Steps so there are 12 promises! And to my mind, the last promise is the greatest:

WE WILL SUDDENLY REALIZE THAT GOD IS DOING FOR US WHAT WE COULDN’T DO FOR OURSELVES.[3]

Continue the wonderful work you’re doing as a parish. Continue the wonderful work you’re doing as individuals. Continue on your journeys, continue your lives as pilgrims. Continue to seek to be born again . . . and again and again. And invite everybody to join you on the pilgrimage we’re in fact all called to.

_____________________

[1] Cf., Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion, p. 3.


[2] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 36.


[3] Alcoholics Anonymous (“The Big Book”), p. 83.

“Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful,
             slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (sung)

I’ve been singing those words ever since Wednesday.
Those words from the prophet Joel are often read on Ash Wednesday,
     and in the church I grew up in we sang this refrain every Sunday throughout Lent.
For me, these words hold within them the whole purpose of Ash Wednesday and Lent:
God’s invitation to turn away from all that distracts and misleads and tempts us,
            and return our attention to God’s steadfast love and grace.

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent.
If you have been around churches for a while,
            you’ll recognize the signs.
The vestments are purple – including a drape on the cross.
We don’t say or sing Alleluia, because it’s a season of penitence.
And our story today is the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness.
In every year of our three-year cycle of readings, this story is read on this Sunday –
            in versions from Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Jesus has just been baptized.
While he was in the water, the Spirit descended from heaven as a dove,
            and a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with whom I am well pleased.”
God says, “This is my Son,” and with those words lays claim to Jesus as God’s own,   and sets Jesus on a particular path of ministry and obedience.

But what does this mean?
What does it mean for Jesus to be God’s Son – living in the world as a human being?

Immediately after being baptized, and hearing these words spoken over him,
            Jesus goes into the wilderness and fasts for 40 days.
Actually, the story says that The Spirit of God leads Jesus into the wilderness
            in order that he might be tempted.
Whatever it is he needs to learn or make clear for himself in his fasting and temptation,
            it is by God’s hand that he finds himself there.
Jesus is tempted by the devil.
It is helpful to remember that “the devil” here is not the horned creature
            who rules over hell in later mythology.
The word for devil – dia ballo in Greek – is a noun that means “one who attacks, misleads, deceives, diverts, discredits or slanders.”
In their encounter, the devil tries to mislead Jesus about the meaning and purpose of his life and ministry.
Instead, Jesus defines for himself what it means to be the Son of God.

Jesus has been fasting for 40 days, and he is famished.
He is fully experiencing the discomfort and vulnerability of being human.
The devil – the exploiter of weakness – tempts him to choose divine power over human weakness.
His temptations force the questions –
            Can you really abdicate power and be fully human?
            Can you really exercise restraint and work in obscurity?
The devil tempts Jesus to use his divine power for his own good,
            to take back what he has denied by living as a human.
And each time, Jesus chooses to trust God and follow through as God’s human Son.

On a website called Journey with Jesus, Debi Thomas writes,
“If those forty days in the wilderness was a time of self-creation, a time for Jesus to decide who he was and how he would live out his calling, then here is what the Son of God chose: Deprivation over power.  Vulnerability over rescue.  Obscurity over honor.  At every instance in which he could have reached for the certain, the extraordinary, and the miraculous, he reached instead for the precarious, the quiet, and the mundane.”

In short, Jesus decides each time to throw in his lot with us –
            the ordinary, mundane, vulnerable humans for whom he came.
His fast and temptation bring Jesus face to face with his humanity,
            and he chooses over and over to trust solely in God’s love and grace.

The journey of Lent is a journey of facing our own humanity,
            in all of its messiness, vulnerability, and obscurity.
Ash Wednesday brings us face to face with the most mundane, terrifying reality: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In Lent we remember the many ways we are tempted –
            tempted to forget who we are and whose we are,
            tempted to choose the easy way, or the way of power, instead of love.

Maryetta Anschutz, head of the Episcopal School of Los Angeles, helpfully describes some of our struggle with temptation:
“Temptation comes to us in moments when we look at others and feel insecure about not having enough.
“Temptation comes in judgments we make about strangers or friends who make choices we do not understand.
“Temptation rules us, making us able to look away from those in need and to live our lives unaffected by poverty, hunger, and disease.
“Temptation rages in moments when we allow our temper to define our lives or when addiction to wealth, power influence over others, vanity, or an inordinate need for control definies who we are.
“Temptation wins when we engage in the justification of little lies, small sins: a racist joke, a questionable business practice for the greater good, a criticism of a spouse or partner when he or she is not around.
“Temptation wins when we get so caught up in the trappings of life that we lose sight of life itself. These are the faceless moments of evil that, while mundane, lurk in the recesses of our lives and our souls.”

Wow.
If none of that makes you wince, maybe you don’t need Lent.
But for the rest of us – who heard too much of ourselves in Anshutz’s descriptions of daily temptation and mundane evil – Lent is an invitation and a blessing.
Just as God’s Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness,
          that he might be tempted and thus remember what it means to trust God alone,
God’s Spirit leads us into a Lenten journey.
We are invited to practices of prayer, repentance, and fasting,
            to assist us in seeing ourselves more clearly –
            our faults, our ordinariness, and our messy choices.
But it is not to make us feel guilty, or to suffer as Jesus suffered.
Lenten practice is meant to free us – to clear our minds and help us see –
            even with all our faults and messiness, we, too, are Beloved of God.
We, too, can trust solely in God.
We are God’s children, and that is our primary identity,
            the most important thing.

Lenten practices are really meant to help us get out of our own way
            and show up for God.
Skip a meal and spend time in prayer instead.
Add a practice of meditation or Scripture reading, daily or a few times a week.
Commit to being in worship each week.
Join a group reading Down and Out in Providence and discussing what it means to follow Jesus in a world where children experience homelessness.
Take a morning walk and thank God for the day ahead.

What you do is less important than just doing something to
            show up, slow down, and open yourself to God.

“Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful,
            slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (sung)

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

In elementary school I had a good friend who was a Roman Catholic.  While our friendship was tolerated by our parents, I certainly couldn’t attend church with her or she with me.  If she were a boy, our friendship would not have been tolerated because the potential of dating would be an intolerable thought.  But Mary Miller and I talked about church and God and Jesus because those were important elements in our lives.  I wore a plain gold cross around my neck and Mary wore a crucifix.  In our conversations, we realized her church did not have a cross without Christ crucified and in my church there was not a crucifix to be found.  I asked my grandfather about this and he replied simply: “They are more into the suffering and we are more into the saving.”  

That answer satisfied me then, mainly because whenever my quiet grandfather answered my questions, I listened.  Now I know there is much more to the issue of suffering and salvation than an either-or answer.   Much of Jesus’ life and teaching rests on paradox.  Jesus challenges us to live in tension:  the first will be last, lose your life to gain it, the burden is light, those who come late will be paid the same as those who worked hard all day.  His very human death was no different: Suffering is a way to salvation.  

The cross symbolizes suffering and salvation.  Today we embrace the suffering.  And although we know the end of the story, today we sit at the foot of Christ being crucified.  As a child it may have felt good to have the clean cross of victory and salvation, but I learned you cannot live without the flip side of the crucifixion.  This very emotional day tells us precisely that: we cannot have one without the other.  It is something to contemplate.  In pursuit of that, I give you two questions to ponder.
The first question is:  Why are you here?  The second is:  What is saving you today?
 Why are you here?  What brings you to this place on this black Friday they call Good Friday?  Are you here out of habit because this is simply what you do during Holy Week?  Is it because Fr. Christopher told you to go for a home run?  Is it for an emotional high or low?  

Are you here because you, too, are feeling crucified and want company?  Or is it because you simply wonder about this day and are trying to understand what the Gospeler John meant when he wrote: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” What kind of God do we have anyway?

Is there a more subtle reason?  Do you have this nagging feeling that perhaps you have not been able to hold your ground in this post-Christian era and too many times you were guilty of shouting “crucify him” without saying the words out loud.  Perhaps your actions didn’t reflect your heart.  Perhaps it was just easier to keep your mouth shut than to open it and reflect the heart of Christ.  Perhaps you are here to just say to God that you are sorry.

Well, there are as many reasons for being here as there are persons in this place.  Times haven’t changed.   In the 4th century there was a pilgrim named Etheria (or Egeria or Sylvia…we are not sure or her name) who travelled from Spain to Jerusalem and kept an extensive diary which included the events of Holy Week in the Holy City.

In her account of Good Friday, she relates that when it came time to venerate the cross, the Bishop seated himself at a table behind the large crossbeam, holding the beam firmly in both hands.  Two hefty deacons stationed themselves at either end of the beam as the faithful came by to kiss the cross in memory of Jesus’ sufferings.  Etheria writes that this precaution resulted from an incident several years earlier when a pious pilgrim, anxious for a relic, took a bite out of the cross instead of kissing it.    

I agree with the commentator who says this story holds a warning for us.  As we gather here to remember Jesus’ death, we must guard against becoming that ancient pilgrim with strong teeth and splinters in his gums.  We could say, “Look!  I was there!  I can tell you about the emotions, the music, the words, the silences.”  I showed up.

Whatever brings us here, Jesus on the cross is our common ground.  Why are you here?  Are you a pilgrim looking for a relic?  Are you a casual visitor searching for answers?  There are answers at the foot of the cross.  But how does one sort out the intense suffering and the resulting salvation?  Here is one analogy:  Think of yourself as parents who are bedside of their very sick child and are praying to God to let them bear the pain instead of their child, not because they are masochistic or guilty, but simply because they love the one who is suffering.  

Today’s Good Friday Liturgy invites us to embrace the suffering of Jesus on the cross as we would the pain of a family member or friend we love deeply. (Read quote from Nouwen’s Road to Daybreak)   And through our prayers in this service we are invited to embrace not only Jesus’ suffering, but the suffering of our brothers and sisters throughout the world.  A commentator continues, “The cross is raised before us, not as a souvenir taken down from the shelf and dusted off for our admiration, but as the bed of our suffering brother, who incarnates and bears the world’s pain.”

“Like all the events of his life, the death of Jesus stands as our judgment.  We can respond to it like curious tourists, who look and then move on, little changed except for some painful splinters.  Or we can recognize the face of the one we love, though ‘marred beyond human appearance,’ and embrace his pain as ours,  In that embrace, we find our own pain enfolded in God’s love, united with the world’s pain and healed because Christ first loved us and embraced our pain.”  (Author unknown.  Excerpt beginning with story Etheria comes from Homily Service: An Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word, Vol.20, No.1, April 1987,pp. 27-28)

Why are you here today?  My second question folds into the first:  What is saving you now?  I was away from the parish for most of Lent.  As a Lenten study, many here read Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World.    I read it a couple of years ago when it first came out and frankly had not reread it for our communal study.  But when I picked up the book last week, I found I had highlighted the story in the introduction where Ms Taylor relates that she was invited to preach on the topic of “what is saving your life now.”  BBT writes, “It was as if he(the priest)had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground.  I did not have to try to say correct things that were true for everyone.  I did not have to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church.  All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on.  All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about is that helped my listeners figure those same things for themselves.  The answers I gave all those years ago are not the same answers I would give today—that is the beauty of the question….the principle is the same.  What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.” (unquote,p.xv)

No spiritual treasure exists apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.  That is precisely what Jesus taught by his life and death.  We say:  Jesus is my Lord and Savior.  Jesus saved me.  What does that mean?  How is Jesus your Savior?  How is Jesus your Salvation?  What does he teach?  What does Jesus say to you?  What does his suffering on the cross and death do to save you?

What, indeed, is saving you now?  Now, this moment.  The answer can and will change.  Here are only  a few things I have discovered for myself.  It isn’t a job that saves me.  For years I depended on my various job identities in church work to explain to the world who I was.  It isn’t my good looks.  I still have a great smile that has blasted me through and saved me a lot of times.  But I am, friends, growing older and am shaped differently and I have a decided limp.  Good looks aren’t going to save me.  Alcohol saved me from reality for many years.  It helped me to get away from inner pain, to go somewhere else.  It no longer saves me, it will in fact kill me if I abuse it.  

I say Jesus is my Savior.  What do I mean?  I mean just that.  Jesus teaches me how to live in paradox, how to live mindfully each moment in this world if I simply pay attention.  It’s pretty simple because it’s about embracing the suffering in a circle of love that reflects God’s love to me and to the world.  It is about relationships.  It is living out the great commandment to love God with all your heart and mind and soul.   And if you love God, you must surely love God’s creation, this earth, our planet home.  I felt it more than ironic that during this Holy Week we remembered the first anniversary of the Gulf spill, that we continue to read of the impact of nuclear power uncontrolled in Japan, and today is in fact Earth Day.   I find it hard to believe that my husband Fred as a reporter covered the first Earth Day in 1970 in Bloomington,Indiana.
 Another sermon might be:  Are we crucifying the earth which is, in fact, the same as crucifying God?  More simply, sitting at the foot of the cross, we might ask ourselves if we are playing any part in causing the earth’s suffering.  Are we, in fact, connected to everyone and everything, by the arms of Jesus stretched out on the cross?  That is connected, of course, to the rest of the great commandment.  Jesus says, to love the Lord your God with all you heart and mind and soul.  The second is like unto it:  love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Can you love your neighbor, can you love God if you don’t love yourself?

Can you embrace the suffering?  Can you prepare yourself to walk from the foot of the cross and through the cross knowing you are not alone?  Can you wear a two sided cross of suffering and salvation on your chest and in your heart?

Why are you here?  What is saving you now?  Amen

The Maundy Thursday service is one of endings and beginnings.  What was begun on Ash Wednesday is brought to a close here tonight.  What begins tonight does not end until the resurrection of Easter.  It is the ancient Triduum: “The Three Sacred Days,” which lead us to Easter:  Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday:

Listen to the words of our gospel story:        
    
“Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet     and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”

He came to Simon Peter who said to him, ”You will never wash my feet.”
    Jesus answered, “UNLESS I WASH YOU, YOU HAVE NO SHARE WITH     ME.”
    Later, after Jesus had finished washing all the disciples feet he said this:
    
“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example,  that you also should do as I     have done to you.”

We note that Jesus did not wash the disciples feet when they first arrived.  Foot washing was very much a hospitable act of the day.  The guest would arrive for dinner and their feet would be dusty and dirty from the day’s travel.  Of course the host would not wash the guest’s feet, but a servant would do so.  But Jesus takes this simple act and creates something different in its meaning.  He waits until they are in the middle of their meal and then he stops eating and performs the task during the meal.  
Jesus was drawing attention to something much more profound than just a gesture of hospitality.

When Jesus takes the feet of the disciples and lovingly cleans and dries them, it is an act of beautiful relationship.  Jesus proclaims to each one, individually, that they are intimately connected with him.  

When Jesus reaches Peter, he meets with resistance. Peter is not rebuked for refusing to wash someone’s feet.  He is rebuked for refusing to let Jesus wash his feet. Peter expresses for many of us – that feeling of awkwardness in having someone else wash our feet.  It is easier for us to wash someone else’s feet than to expose our own vulnerability by having another care tenderly for us. .

A couple of years ago, I was sitting outside a Catholic school waiting for my grandchildren to come out and I happened to notice a sign outside the church building.  It read in Spanish:  “Deja que Dios te ame! which translated means:  ALLOW GOD TO LOVE YOU!!!!!!

Many of you know that this has become a phrase that I have taken to heart very personally and often use it in my own ministry to others --  the reason being that these words really are profound.  If you were to put this into the first person you would say:  Dejo que Dios te ami: meaning:  I allow God to love me!!!!!

Think about this for a minute.  We know that God is Love, but what would it mean to all of our lives if we truly could began each day by saying:  I ALLOW GOD TO LOVE ME TODAY!!!!!!

Just this last week I was asked to pray for someone who is having a very difficult time.  I had suggested that this person begin the day by saying I allow God to love me this day.  The following morning I was asked – Just how do I go about allowing God to love me?

It made me pause for a moment and then I realized that the answer is PRACTICE!!! PRACTICE is how we learn to allow God go love us.  Everyday, we have to practice surrender, we have to practice willingness, gratitude, openness, honesty, and trust!  THAT’S HOW WE PRACTICE EACH DAY - ALLOWING GOD TO LOVE US.

I like the words of Jean Vanier from the l’Arche community in France living with those who are mentally challenged.  He reminds us: “that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, not to those who serve the poor.”  AND WE ARE POOR – ALL OF US –IN NEED OF GOD’S LOVE.  Vanier goes on to say: “I do not believe that we can truly enter into our own need for healing and open our hearts to others unless we have an experience of allowing God to touch us.”

Do you remember the beautiful lyrics of the Musical Les Miserables, based on the touching story of Jean Valjean set at the time of the French Revolution?  Jean is finally released after being sent to prison for 19 years simply for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s child who was starving and close to death.

Finally NUMBER 24601 is released but still on probation and no matter where Valjean turns he is met with recrimination – given half the pay for the work he does, and finds every door closed to him as well as being refused a night’s sleep in a barn.

Then Jean Valjean sits down despairingly outside a house from which emerges the Bishop of Digne – who comes out and says to Valjean:
    “Come in, Sir, for you are weary,
    And the night is cold out there.
    Though our lives are very humble
    What we have, we have to share.
    
    There is wine here to revive you
    There is bread to make you strong.
    There’s a bed to rest till morning,
    Rest from pain, and rest from wrong.

When Valjean then steals the silver from the bishop’s house the next morning and is brought back by two constables, here is what the Bishop says:
    
    “But my friend you left so early
    Surely something slipped your mind.
    You forgot I gave these also
    Would you leave the best behind?  
(And the bishop gives Valjean two silver candlesticks as well)  The Bishop truly becomes an example of the Christ figure giving so much to wash away the pain and wrong from Valjean’s life!

And then the Bishop addresses Valjean one final time –
    “But remember this, my brother,
    See in this some higher plan,
    You must use this precious silver,
    To become an honest man.
    By the witness of the martyrs,
    By the Passion and the Blood,
    God has raised you out of darkness,
    I HAVE BOUGHT YOUR SOUL FOR GOD!!!!!

Like the Bishop of Digne – ready to follow the commandment of Jesus who says to each of us:  “As I have washed your feet, so you are to wash one anothers’ feet”

Valjean has some of the same reaction that Peter had with feelings of unworthiness -- when the Bishop reaches out and ministers in love to him-- we hear Valjean saying to himself:
    
    “Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
    Become a thief in the night?
    Become a dog on the run
    And have I fallen so far
    And is the hour so late
    That nothing remains but the cry of my hate?

    Yet why did I allow that man
    To touch my soul and teach me love?
    He treated me like any other
    He gave me his trust
    He called me brother
    My life he claims for God above
    
The disciples are called to this foot washing to share in the relationship that Jesus and God have with one another.  The foot washing becomes a symbol of hope to each one of us.

When we participate in this moment of the sacred we are experiencing God’s love for us through another as we allow our feet to be washed and we are at the same time called to take off our outer robe, wrap a towel around ourselves -- to minister to those in our community -- to share our hope with another.

When we come together on this night, we meet to remember Christ’s example of servant-hood by washing one another’s feet;  in that remembrance He becomes present with us as surely as He is in the breaking of the bread!  Washing away the pain and the wounds from each of us.

We will wash each other’s feet tonight, not because we want to pretend we are in the upper room two thousand years ago but rather because Jesus showed us that washing feet is what loving one another looks like and what allowing God to love us looks like.  
God’s love is big enough to include the whole sorrowing, hurting world, but it is also exact enough to address each and every one of us personally and individually.

ALLOW GOD TO LOVE US –EACH OF US –THROUGH ONE ANOTHER.  This must become our PRACTICE --Say to yourself as you prepare for this sacred time tonight:  “I ALLOW GOD TO LOVE ME-- DEJO QUE DIOS TE AMI”!!!!!

AMEN

The look on one’s face can express many thoughts and emotions.  Happiness, sadness, anger or even love.  While Deacon Judith was reading the Gospel, I watched the look on your faces as you listened to this story that has been told every year for over 2000 years.  A story that is simultaneously so familiar and yet so distant.   

What look comes over your face when you hear of that amazing young Jewish man, who welcomed the outcast, loved everyone he met, touched the sick, embraced the lonely, is betrayed, tortured, hung on a cross, dies slowly, and then becomes life for each one of us.  

Do you look at the cross in wonder or has it become so familiar that it has become another symbol or even fashion design.  We wear it on vestments, necklaces, rings and earrings.  We have it tattooed; it sits atop buildings and even carved into headstones.  

After hearing that story, an instrument of torture that represented a excruciating death now becomes a simple symbol of hope, a symbol of God.  Think of it, how more telling can those two pieces of wood be.  Two beams, one vertical signifying the relationship between God and his creation; reaching out and reaching back.   

The horizontal beam signifying our relationship with one another, reaching toward the person next to you.  And the bottom, the rough worn out place where the wood of the cross touches the earth and radiates out into the world.  And at the center, where the two pieces converge is Christ, God and humanity tied together by love.    

This realization came into view a few weeks back in a conversation with a friend.  Mark prides himself in his independence, which includes independence from the Church.  Yet he needed someone to talk to.  I could see he had been crying.  He explained that he lost the love of his life due to a series of bad decisions on the part of both of them.  

He could not make sense of the pain, how something that had given him so much joy was now tearing at the depths of his being.  As he was leaving, he pointed to a small crucifixion in my office and with a look of despair on his face said “and tell me how that makes any sense?” God sends his son to suffer, all you church people are happy here in church, yet there are killings, wars, discrimination, tsunamis, people out there hurting one another.  I thought this was supposed to solve all that.  

At first I did not know what to say, was that cross the great eraser that is supposed to wipe away all the pain.  And then I thought of an article, that allowed me to remember the meaning of that cross, not as an eraser, but a healing balm.   

Brian Doyle wrote about a young girl named Isabel and Ms. Doyle was Isabel’s art teacher in the hospital.  Isabel was 4 years old when she got unbelievably sick. At 5 years old she stunningly wonderfully got well. When she was 6 years old she got even sicker than before and soon she died.

She was buried in a nearby cemetery so that her parents could be close.  Her coffin was small and when it was lowered into the ground, one of the ropes slipped and her coffin tilted.   Her baby brother burst out laughing and then he wept and wailed like a child has never wept before.

The author’s wife spent much of the previous year with Isabel in the Hospital.  As Isabel got sicker and endured oceans of pain and grew more swollen and weary by the day, his wife, the day before Isabel died sprawled on the grass, weeping like never before. She cried out – “Isabel is being crucified. Everything they do to her hurts. It's torture. Why do they torture her so? All little crucifixions.

Isabel just accepts it. She never complains. She has that look on her face.  She just stares at us with that stare from another planet. She gets crucified every day and no one can stop it. All the little children being crucified. I can't bear it anymore. They just look at me. Why does this happen? Why does this happen?”

As I told this story, Mark had this look on his face of compassion.  For one instant, it  seemed as if the images and pain of all the crucifixions in this world seemed to float through our collective thoughts.   All these tiny crucifixions in the world, Isabel, children killing each other because of gangs and drugs, loved ones who believe suicide is the only way out,  children sold into prostitution or how a precious child of close friends, is killed in his backyard this past week because he was tormented by schizophrenia.  

All these tiny crucifixions.  What could I say?  Some theological babble or psychological soothing?  Any word is insufficient.  How do I explain a mother watching her son be tortured and nailed to a cross and then holding him in her arms; there are no words for what she felt. A mother watches her daughter suffer in the hospital as she slowly dies, and she holds her in her arms and there are no words for how she feels.  How do I explain that tomorrow our friends will bury their precious son and as they touch his casket there are no words for how they feel.

We looked at that broken body on the cross, and the only word, the only look was that of love.  Love, the only explanation for the unexplainable. This nonsensical, illogical, unreasonable, insupportable, improvable conviction that one time a long time ago a thin young mysterious eloquent Jewish man was crucified and died and then he came alive again in a way that no one understood then and no one understands now.

God looking down, not wanting us to be alone, sharing in our journey in this world.  Understanding the tremendous pains and the indescribable joys of life.  God’s voice whispering "You are my creation and I know you well."  Because God, in Christ, not only knows us,  but has lived among us—has been one of us.  All because of a  look of love on Gods face, hoping that the love will be reflected in ours.  

And what is amazing is that if you really listen to this passion story, you will see your life reflected in that last week. In this story, God is closer to us, to our lives, than ever before, all our tiny crucifixions hung on his cross.   Think of it, friends loving us one minute, like the joy of Hosanna into Jerusalem and then deserting us in our desolate gardens.  Jesus life like ours, the struggle with brokenness, uncertainty, breaking bread with his friends, betrayal, jealousy, questioning God, fear, loneliness, abandonment, pain, suffering, crucifixion, darkness.   Yet, always transformation and a knowing of eternal hope.

This story of a young Jewish man nailed to a cross, a mother crying in pain, an empty tomb makes sense because we are reassured that God knows what it is like to be human.  The amazing, unbelievable story that we are loved by God, a loving who gave up a heavenly crown in order to wear a crown thorns.  All because God wanted to see that look of love on all of our faces, for each one of us to know that Easter is coming.

There is a poem that captures God desire to see the expression on our face:  Have you ever wondered why God gives so much?  We could exist on far less.  He could have left the world flat and gray; we wouldn’t have known the difference but he didn’t.  He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue.  And if you love to see geese as they gather, Chances are that you’ll see that too.

Did he have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing?
And the funny way that chickens scurry Or the majesty of thunder when it rings?
Why give a flower a fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be that he loves to see that look upon your face.

God could of walked away and never allowed the divine to become human,  Why send his son to empty himself, and die on the cross.  But he did not, he loved the look on our face when we are happy, and sent his son.  Mark smiled and said, I guess I cannot explain love, so I guess that cross thing kinda makes sense.   

Somehow it does, because for all the tiny crucifixions, there is an understanding that a knowing God is with us, and understands.  There are no explanations only those beams that reach up and out.   So for Mark, Isabel, Christopher and others.  We cannot explain it, all we can do is tiptoe into Isabel's room, and spread out all the holy colors on her bed, and make her laugh, and sing her grace under duress.  

All we can do for Mark is walk with him as he takes those solitary steps into a new world.  All we do for Christopher’s mother is hold her hand as she tearfully says goodbye to her youngest son.   Because somehow, in ways we cannot explain, love conquers all. God has proven it with his son, and with Isabel and Christopher.  They will come alive again, each one of us will live again, and there will be a light, the light of Christ on all our faces for which there are no words, only a look of love.

*I would like to acknowledge Brian Doyle for his beautiful article “The Terrible Brilliance for the use of Isabel’s Story and Max Lucado for the poem.