Homily for Sunday, July 28th Graves Chapel

What Do We Seek?

Lessons:

Psalm 85

Luke 11:1-13

            When I was a child, my dad always had an office for his insurance business in our basement. Usually my mother was around when he needed something typed, but every now and then, Dad had to resort to typing something himself.  At those times, he used what he called the “gospel system” of typing.  You may have heard the old fashioned phrase “hunt and peck” to describe amateur two-finger typing, and Dad’s gospel system was a variation of that. Dad typed using what he called the “seek and ye shall find” method.

            I can’t read today’s lesson from Luke without being reminded of my dad and his typing. As Americans, we seem to be a nation of seekers, always on the look-out for the next big thing. The early settlers kept pushing the frontier farther and farther west until we had filled this land from “sea to shining sea.” These days our seeking may take some of us to the frontiers of space or space-age scientific discovery. For most of us, our seeking just takes us to the mall, looking for the next gadget or the best bargain.  We are rarely satisfied enough with our lives to rest in contentment.

            I don’t know about you, but this prevailing restlessness of our society often leaves me feeling anxious.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m always stricken with anxiety—there’s a pill for that, and I’m not yet at the point of needed a prescription. (It’s not surprising that many people do need such medication.)  In my case, I can find myself treading water in an undercurrent of anxious thoughts: Am I really able to handle this difficult challenge at work? Are all of my loved ones safe and well?  Will I run into that troublesome person I’d rather avoid?  If I do, what should I say to him or her? Do I need to make an amends to someone for some failing on my part? You may have experienced some of these same anxious thoughts, and they may seem to be worth the stress they cost us.  But I can also become anxious over what to cook for dinner or where to park my car, and you may be familiar with those stressers, too.

            My dad was born in 1912.  Over the course of his lifetime, he experienced changes that people of previous generations could not possibly have grasped and would not have witnessed even if they had lived to be hundreds of years old, like Methusaleh.  My dad recalled traveling by horse-drawn wagon  to Graves Mill as a child, with his mother at the reins as they forded five streams between their house on South River and here. My grandfather Mark Haney was working as the official blacksmith for the small-gauge lumber railroad here in the valley at that time, and my grandmother regularly came to take him home or bring him supplies. By the time my dad died in 1983, things previous generations had thought to be impossible dreams had become realities: automobiles, airplanes, television, the nuclear age, men on the moon, just to name a few. Since his death, computer technologies have advanced at such an incredible rate that our laptops and cell phones become obsolete within months. It’s no wonder that our rapidly changing world leaves so many of us feeling discombobulated. There is a constant impetus to update and upgrade!

            In his book Breathing Under Water, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr asserts that our American culture as a whole is addictive by nature.   Our common anxieties arise from our addictions to everything from television to online social media to shopping to food (especially sweets) to body image to social status. We can so easily be caught up in an endless pursuit of self-gratification.  Maybe as individuals we are less addicted than others in some of these areas. But are we truly free of any of these addictions? I’m willing to admit that I’m not, and it’s a very uncomfortable admission.  

            If the primary urge that drives us is the need to satisfy some addiction or another, we are clearly not doing the kind of seeking Jesus means when he says, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find.” What is it that He calls us to seek? How can we overcome our restless, addictive striving and replace it with inner peace?

            The parts of today’s gospel lesson contain signposts from Christ. In the first part--Luke 11, verses 1 through 4—Jesus is teaching his disciples how to pray, and the prayer we know as the Lord’s prayer is a simple, everyday one that asks for God’s blessing in the form of our “daily bread,” that instructs us to forgive one another as we ask God’s forgiveness, that requests God’s help in avoiding temptation, that prays for God’s will (not ours) to be done. In the easy-to-overlook phrase “your kingdom come,” Jesus tells us to welcome God’s presence with us on earth.

            In verses 5 through 8, Jesus tells a story about a man knocking on his neighbor’s door late at night and asking for bread.  Jesus points out that the annoyed neighbor may not give in to his friend’s request for help on the first knock, but if the knocking goes on and on, he may finally arise and heed the request just to end the commotion. The message of this story is to pray with persistence.  Keep praying!

            In verses 9 through 13, Jesus tells us how our prayers and seeking will be rewarded: the Heavenly Father will “give the Holy Spirit to those who ask for him.”  What does it feel like to have that Holy Spirit residing in our hearts?  As Christians we have all surely had the experience, as fleeting as it may have been, of peace of mind and spirit, knowing the Lord was with us and within us.  The question for us, as we swim upstream in our addictive society, is how do we hold onto that peace?  How do we more consciously and more continually make ourselves aware of God’s presence?

We pray with thanksgiving. We pray with love. We pray when we are worried and in need of help.  Most of all, we pray with persistence. 

Paul admonishes us in Philippians 4, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  

Amen.

           

Homily for Sunday, July 7, 2013 Celtic Evening Prayer Buck Mountain Church

Lessons:

Psalm 66:1-8

Isaiah 66:10-14

Galatians 6:1-6, 7-16

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

“The Kingdom of God has come near to you…

The Kingdom of God has come near.”

Jesus sends out seventy evangelists

to spread the good news.

He tells them to say, “The Kingdom has come near”

to those who accept the good news

as well as to those who do not.

Celtic Christians lived every moment of their lives

believing God was near them.

At the remote western reaches of the Roman empire,

the native peoples of the British Isles

were converted by the Roman Christians

in the 2^nd century after Christ.

When the Roman legions abandoned England in 410

the Celtic Christians kept and spread the faith.

St. Patrick was among the English Celts

who took the good news to Ireland in that same century.

The Celtic Christians recognized God in nature,

in each other, in their daily tasks,

in all the trials and joys of life,

and they called on God’s presence at all times.

They heeded the words of Paul in his first letter

to the Thessalonians: “Pray without ceasing.”

Psalm 66 includes these beautiful words, praising God:

“All the earth bows down before you,

sings to you, sings out your name.

Bless our God you peoples,

make the voice of his praise to be heard,

Who holds our souls in life,

and will not allow our feet to slip.”

These words from the psalm could very well be

the model for a Celtic prayer.

For every activity of the day,

from the splashing of water for the morning bath,

or the churning of cream to make butter,

to the plowing and planting of a field,

the Celtic people had a prayer for every occasion.

They continuously invoked the presence of God

and praised God’s name.

What Isaiah says about the Lord’s loving care of his people,

suggests what the Celts believed:

“Thus says the Lord, I will extend prosperity to her

(to Jerusalem) like a river, and you shall nurse

and be carried on her arm,

and dandled on her knees.

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.

You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;

your bodies shall flourish like the grass;

and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord

is with his servants.”

These words of Isaiah would have resonated deeply

with the Celtic people, who surrendered their children

to God at the moment of their birth.

The midwife who delivered a Celtic baby

was called a womb-woman.

As soon as an infant was born,

the womb-woman sprinkled water on the baby’s head,

what they called a “birthing  baptism,”

as she said,

“A small drop of water

to thy forehead, beloved,

fit for the Father, Son and Spirit,

the Triune of power.

A small drop of water

to encompass my beloved,

fit for Father, Son, and Spirit,

the Triune of power.

A small drop of water

to fill thee with each grace,

fit for Father, Son and Spirit,

the Triune of power.”

Later the baby would also have an official baptism.

In living their lives as an ongoing conversation

with God, the Celts achieved a seeming intimacy

with the Holy

that modern Christians might envy.

But we shouldn’t be deceived and imagine

that such intimacy lacked the proper awe.

If anything, their nearness to God

inspired in the Celts

a greater reverence for the Divine.

May we learn to follow their example

living our lives in prayer. 

The Kingdom of God is very near. Amen.

Homily for June 30, 2013 Graves Chapel

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Caught in a Whirlwind

Lesson:  2 Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14

There is a bumper sticker that I see fairly often, and I like it. Unfortunately, it includes a word I would never say aloud in the chapel, so for that word I will substitute a blank.  “Blank happens.” Maybe you’ve seen that one, too?

You may be wondering why I would admit to liking such a statement, and I will explain. That bumper sticker expresses the truth. We could substitute the phrase “bad things” for the unspeakable word, and I think you will see what I mean.

Bad things happen. That’s the truth, and there’s no getting around it. There isn’t anywhere in scripture where we are promised eternal happiness. There are no guarantees that all of our experiences will be happy ones. How could that even be possible? Our world is made up of complicated people and complicated systems—including the operations of nature—interacting and competing with each other. Bad things are bound to happen sometimes.

The people of this valley have good reasons to acknowledge that bad things do happen from time to time. Eighteen years ago this past Thursday, on June 27^th, 1995, a great flood swept down the valley, causing unbelievable destruction and tragic loss. Those of us who experienced that disaster and its aftermath will never forget it.  A year ago today, when David and I arrived here for a wedding, trees and power lines were down in front of Graves Chapel. The derecho had struck.  Those are two examples of physical, natural storms, not unlike the whirlwind in today’s reading from 2^nd Kings.  But sometimes the bad things we experience are emotional storms, caused by personal disasters: the break-up of a relationship, the death of a family member, a difficult diagnosis for ourselves or a loved one.

Today’s story about the great prophet Elijah offers a truly amazing perspective on a seeming natural disaster—and where God can be found in it.  In the beginning of the story, it isn’t clear why Elijah is traveling and trying to leave his persistent young understudy, Elisha, behind. All we know is that Elijah says he is going where God has called him. They encounter a company of fifty prophets who also decide to follow them, and these fifty are eyewitnesses to the ensuing mayhem.

Standing by the Jordan River, Elijah (as the great prophet Moses before him) parts the waters, and he and Elisha cross the river on dry land. At this point, Elijah says to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you before I’m taken from you,” and Elisha makes a bold request.  “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” Elijah points out that Elisha’s request—his prayer—is a presumptuous one, hard to grant, but he tells Elisha that if Elisha sees him as he is taken away, then Elisha’s request will be granted. As they continue walking and talking, “a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind to heaven.” Elisha stands his ground, calling out to Elijah and telling him what he sees: “Father, Father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” Then he grieves for his lost father, tearing his own clothes in despair and taking up the mantle Elijah left behind. As an illustration that Elijah’s spirit does now, indeed, rest on Elisha, when he strikes the waters of the Jordan with the mantle, they part for him as they had for Elijah, and Elisha walks across to the other side and rejoins the company of fifty prophets.

Our lesson for today ends there, but the next passage in 2^nd Kings tells us much about the reaction of those fifty waiting prophets. Remember, they watched all that transpired from a distance, from the other side of the Jordan River.  What they saw looked like a lightning firestorm and a tornado, natural events that are fairly common in their Middle East. They saw Elijah being carried away in the whirlwind, and when Elisha returns safely, they acknowledged that, since he is the apparent survivor of a terrible natural disaster, Elisha now bears the spirit as well as the mantle of Elijah. One of them speaks up and says to Elisha, “There are fifty strong men here. Let us go and see if we can find the body of your master where he has been thrown down by the Lord on some mountain or in some valley.”  Elisha believes that such a search is futile, but when the prophets insist on going, he gives them permission.

So, what can this very dramatic story say to us today about the natural and other disasters that we have to face in our lives?

Elisha’s loss of his mentor and father-figure reminds us of the natural order of things: generations move forward with time, and we lose our grandparents and parents. Our sorrow at such times is unavoidable, but we can be comforted in the knowledge that God has called them, as he does Elijah, home to heaven.  This kind of passing on is one that we anticipate, even if we wish we didn’t have to say good-bye to our older loved ones.

But how do we cope with the unexpected losses? I believe God has a plan for each of us. Sometimes the events of our lives will take us to unexpected and unwanted places. We may find ourselves experiencing natural disaster or personal tragedy.  Wherever we are and whatever we face on our journey toward God, God is always present with us. God will always allow something good to come out of any bad thing that happens. That is the promise of God’s redemption and the gift of eternal life granted to us by Christ’s resurrection.        Amen.

Homily for Sunday, June 2, 2013

Buck Mountain Church   (Youth Sunday)

Faith and Trust

            What does someone have to do to acquire faith?  Where is faith found?

A few weeks ago, David and I went with Connie to Christ Church to hear poet and essayist Christian Wiman speak about his own faith.  The former editor of Poetry magazine, the preeminent journal of its kind in America, Wiman is about to begin a new phase of his life as he joins the faculty of Yale Divinity School.  In his address at Christ Church, Wiman acknowledged that his topic was one that most of the poets he has published would probably never choose to discuss in a public setting—faith.  Really, it’s not a topic most people would wish to discuss publicly; faith is personal and individual and talking about it can be prickly.

            So I really appreciated Christian Wiman’s willingness to discuss his faith journey with us. His story began with his upbringing in a west Texas town, where going to church on Sundays was just what everyone did. As a young adult, Wiman abandoned the church and pursued other paths.  I believe many twenty-somethings do the same; I admit that I certainly did. But in his late thirties and after receiving a diagnosis of a rare and incurable form of cancer, Wiman found his faith again. Actually, it is probably more accurate to say that his faith found him, and found him willing. From the moment we are born, God is with us, pursuing us no matter how far we attempt to stray from faith’s path.  When we, like Wiman, decide to turn around and move back in the direction of God, it may seem that we follow a trail toward God as if we are searchers.  What we don’t understand is that the desire we have for faith in God was planted there within us by God.  Jesus said to his disciples in John 15: 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Faith—the desire and capacity to believe confidently in God--is a gift of grace we’ve all been given. What we do with that gift is really up to us.

            Wait a minute, you may be thinking. Faith just isn’t that easy. We rarely know with any certainty what God is calling us to do, and having a conversation with God usually means we do all the talking. During difficult times, doubt seems more accessible than faith.  When is faith simple?

            Today’s gospel lesson from Luke tells the story of the centurion whose faith, Jesus tells us, is exemplary.  The centurion, an officer in the Roman army, sends some Jewish elders to ask Jesus if he will heal a very ill slave. The elders praise the centurion to Jesus, extolling his virtues, and Jesus agrees to go with them and tend to the centurion’s sick servant.  Before they arrive at their destination, another envoy from the centurion comes to meet Jesus. Repeating the words of the centurion, this friend says: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, `Go,' and he goes, and to another, `Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, `Do this,' and the slave does it."  Jesus is astonished by this comparison of himself to the centurion, by what the centurion is saying about the authority of Jesus.  The centurion must have heard stories about other people Jesus had healed. Believing in those stories, he asks Jesus to come to his home and heal his sick servant. When he amends even his invitation and asks Jesus simply to say the words of healing from a distance, confident in Jesus’s power to accomplish such a thing, Jesus says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” At that moment, the sick servant is healed and the centurion’s faith is both justified and rewarded.

            In this story of the centurion, we have everything we need to know about how faith works. Faith requires confidence, but not a blind confidence in something we can’t see and don’t know first-hand. The centurion as a Roman officer was someone used to giving orders and making decisions. Clearly, someone he trusted had told him about this man Jesus and his reputation for healing. Maybe it was a close friend of his or a subordinate officer in his command who had witnessed one of Jesus’s miraculous cures first-hand. Whoever the source was, the centurion had faith in HIM, and having faith in what he had heard, he simply knew Jesus would be able to cure his slave.

Our faith is based on trust, and often it is trust in others.

            Think about Jesus and his reaction of astonishment. His disciples witnessed his powers first-hand repeatedly, but at times they lost faith and questioned Jesus. The disciples, who surely should have known that Jesus was the Son of God and capable of all kinds of miracles, often just didn’t seem to get it. We certainly see Jesus’s exasperation with them at times. Yet, here was this Roman officer, who had only heard about Jesus and had never seen him in action, who yet believed that Jesus had the authority to bring about a miraculous healing.  Now, that’s faith, Jesus exclaims!

            In reality, we are far more often like the disciples than the centurion. We question and we doubt.  It’s hard to live every day, every minute with a conscious awareness that God is present with us. We lose sight of what the Lord is really capable of doing and we let our faith slip. That’s just the way we humans are.

            For me, the simplest and most significant thing Christian Wiman said in his talk was this: Even though we have all had moments of blessed assurance when we knew all was well and God was on our side, we can’t seem to hold onto those times when our faith was strong. Wiman said that even when we cannot summon that feeling of nearness to God, we CAN trust in our memories of those past experiences. When we feel our faith slipping in the present, we can recall our past experiences of being close to God and be comforted.

            The story of the centurion further illuminates the way this kind of trust in faith can work. Faith is often something we catch from someone else. In fact, that is probably the essential truth for most of us who grew up in the church. As children, we simply came to believe about God and Jesus what the grown-ups in our lives, the people we loved and trusted most, told us. Often, the way the grown-ups lived their faith was the most compelling testimony to us.  As we grew older, we may have questioned (as we are encouraged to do) and refined our beliefs, but our simple beginner’s faith in God really never left us.

I hope and pray that our young people today will always have deep memories of what they learned here about love and faith.  I hope that when they grow up and face difficulties, the faith of their fathers and mothers and everyone they knew here at Buck Mountain Church will come back to them as something they can trust with all their hearts to see them through.

Amen.

Homily for Sunday, May 26, 2013

The Trinity: A Unity of Love

Lessons:

Psalm 8

Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31

Romans 5: 1-5

John 16:12-15

Since we’ve last met, the Easter season has ended and the season of Pentecost has begun.  As the time approached for his death and departure, Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for the difficulties that lay ahead, and he told them he would not leave them alone, that he would send an Advocate to be with them always. This Advocate he called “the Spirit of Truth,” or as we have come to know the Advocate, the indwelling Holy Spirit. Jesus in fact tells the disciples that he has to leave in order for the Advocate—the Spirit—to come to his followers.

On the fiftieth day of Easter, May 9^th, we celebrated the Ascension—when the resurrected and risen Christ, having appeared to his disciples and continued his ministry among them, finally leaves the earth—the human realm—and rises to heaven as the astonished disciples watch. 

Last Sunday, May 19^th, was Pentecost Sunday, when the church officially celebrates the arrival of the Advocate.  The Spirit falls as tongues of fire on the disciples, and they are able to speak in all the languages of those who hear them. As Christ had foretold, in this way the followers of Jesus, strengthened and guided by the Advocate (the Holy Spirit) were able to spread the Good News throughout the world.  A salvation that the Hebrew people, the chosen children of God, originally believed would only be offered to them became available to all tribes of people.  We worship here today in Graves Mill because our ancestors were beneficiaries of that spreading word, just as the prophet Isaiah had foretold: “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations so that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” The Spirit entered the disciples, and the light of the salvation of Jesus Christ made it all the way to this end of the earth!

Now we have arrived at Trinity Sunday, which, as we say, celebrates “God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Since it is difficult for us to grasp an intelligent, communicative being who is not human, we attribute personhood to God.  I think that attribution, considering God to be some extremely smart person, may be the source of our common confusion about the Trinity. God is God, far beyond any human’s ability to comprehend or explain, and as such, is ultimately a mystery to us. Dividing the powers of God among three persons has been our human way of deciphering the mystery.

Even as we continue with a discussion of the Trinity, it will be good to remember that we are simply using the tools available to us—human words and human characteristics—to bring God to our level of comprehension. God, thankfully, is willing to meet us there.

I heard of a child once, who in that wonderful way children have of cutting straight to the heart of a matter, explained the Trinity to his Sunday school teacher. She had been attempting to explain the concept of the three persons to the class, when this little boy said: “Oh, I think I see. It’s sort of like the way my mom is my mother, but she is a daughter to Grandma and a sister to Uncle Roy.”  One God, but different roles, depending on the situation—that’s a simple way to look at it. St. Patrick, who famously used a three-leaved shamrock to explain the concept of a three-in-one God, emphasized that the Trinity is a Unity of love.  What holds the three aspects of God together and plants God within each of us is love. A simple Irish invocation illustrates the function of love in the Trinity in this way:  “O Father who sought me, O Son who bought me, O Holy Spirit who taught me…”

By all means necessary, the eternal God ever seeks us and calls us home.

Amen!

Homily for Sunday, April 28, 2013

 The Disciple’s Way                                                                           Graves Chapel                              

The Collect for the 5^th Sunday of Easter

 Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel for today:

John 13:31-35

At the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Our nation has now suffered another dreadful terrorist attack, this time perpetrated by young men who were both home-grown and Islamic extremists.  We ask why and how this could happen, and there are no good answers. We wonder how any religion could condone the murder and mutilation of innocent people, including young children.  Our government will respond to this event as it must. But how do we respond? How can we process yet another national tragedy?

It is worth remembering at such a time that the three great world religions of Middle Eastern origin all trace their roots to the city of Jerusalem and, in essence, all worship one God. On that most basic level, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are blood relatives.  As Christians, we know we share our faith history with Jews; our Old Testament is Hebrew scripture and contains the law, history and literature of the Jewish people. Jesus himself was a Jew, and the first Christians were all Jews who came to believe that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the Saviour of His people.

So how do Muslims fit into this family history?  The Father of the Hebrew people was Abraham, and we remember that Abraham proved his faithful obedience to God when he nearly sacrificed his only son Isaac.  As you recall, God intervened and stayed Abraham’s hand, providing a ram instead for the sacrifice. Isaac would go on to be the father of Jacob and Esau, and through Jacob, renamed Israel, the entire genealogy of the Jews is traced. 

But think again. Isaac was not Abraham’s only son, although it can be said he was Abraham’s only legitimate son. When Sarah, Abraham’s aging wife, believed she would not be able to bear a son for her husband, she gave her servant woman Hagar to her husband, who fathered Ishmael with her.  According to Genesis, Ishmael was about thirteen years old and beloved by his father Abraham when Sarah finally gave birth to Isaac.  Jealous of Ishmael’s relationship with his father, Sarah insisted that Isaac had to be designated the only rightful and legitimate heir of Abraham. Sarah demanded that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away.  And Abraham did indeed send them out into the desert, where an angel intervened and saved their lives, telling Hagar, “Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”  Those verses are from Genesis 21:17-18. There it is, in Hebrew scripture, the place where God sends an angel to say that a great nation of people would descend from Ishmael. Arab Muslims would tell you that they are that great nation. They consider Ishmael to be the direct ancestor of the Prophet Muhammed.

There is a long history of reasons why these members of the same family—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—have often become alienated from one another.  I won’t go into that sad history now. It is also equally true that there are many places in the world where people of the three faiths live in peaceful harmony. As with the Boston Marathon bombing, it is usually the extremists of any one of these religions who want to impose their version of their faith on everyone around them.

That is as true of Christians as it is of Muslims. Adolph Hitler called himself a Christian when he massacred 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.  The Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church persecutes his fellow Americans, among them many Christians, when he brings members of his church to picket funerals. Rev. Phelps even planned to picket funerals of the children killed in December’s Sandy Hook school shooting. He calls himself a Christian pastor? He is a religious extremist. His way of hateful vengeance is not the Lord’s way.

In 1993, the Oslo Peace Accords were signed, a milestone agreement between the Jews and the Palestinians paving the way for potential peace in the troubled state of Israel.  Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the agreement, and the two men were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994.  There was hope at last for Jews and Muslim Palestinians to broker a peaceful settlement of their long conflict. Then, in 1995, before the peace could be finalized, a radical Jewish extremist who opposed the Oslo accord assassinated Rabin. 

As Christians, if we but look at the words of the founder of our faith, Jesus Christ, we will see that the way of hatred and violence, the way of extremists, is not His way. Nor did Christ ever suggest that we respond to such hatred in kind.  He told us to love our enemies and to turn the other cheek.  Jesus, as we are reminded in today’s collect, called himself “the way, the truth, and the life.”  The way of Jesus is fundamentally the way of love, mercy, and forgiveness. In a world beset by war and cruelty, by terrorist attacks, that way may seem to be a difficult way. (Boy, is it hard to turn the other cheek!)  Sometimes it can be difficult to love our own family members, but love them we must.  We may certainly find it impossible to love the young men who perpetrated the bombings in Boston, but we can work at holding back our hatred of them and of Muslims in general. Their extreme position in no way represents all American Muslims. If nothing else, we can begin the healing between Christians and Muslims by working toward better mutual understanding.

As we strive to live in love, as Christ loved us, it is important to remember that His is not a way of weakness. Turning the other cheek takes great courage, and God’s immense power is best demonstrated in love.  As Jesus prepared his disciples for his imminent death, he said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

We demonstrate to a troubled world that we are true disciples of Jesus Christ in this one way: by our love.

AMEN.

Homily for the Easter Vigil, March 30, 2013 Graves Chapel

Tonight, in the Old Testament stories about God’s rescuing of the Israelite people, how Moses led them out of Egypt, we see a God who goes to great lengths to demonstrate his abiding love to his people. The same God who sent Moses to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt sent his Son into the world to save all people through the power of love.

In St. John’s gospel, in Chapter 12, Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time, riding a borrowed donkey.  Palm Sunday is the commemoration of that triumphal entry, when the people thronged the streets to see the great teacher, shouting “Hosanna!” His followers must have exulted at the prospect that their beloved Lord would finally take the reins of political leadership, but that was not what Jesus—or the Father--had in mind.  Later that day, Jesus says to his disciples, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  Jesus explains the necessity of his approaching death.  His disciples, who refused to believe he would die, didn’t get it. 

Like the disciples, we may not fully understand or accept why every human life, at some time or another, endures the darkness of pain, suffering, fear, or grief, but we know such agony is unavoidable. Now, two millennia after the life of the carpenter from Nazareth, maybe we can agree that what Jesus said about his death bearing fruit was extraordinarily accurate: Today, according to the Pew Research Center, there are 2 BILLION, 180 MILLION Christians in the world. Why are so many still attracted to the Christian way?

In the name of radical love, Jesus died a cruel death so that his followers would have assurance that death is not the final human reality.  Christ’s resurrection promises the ultimate salvation. His beloved followers, even the majority who were not present with Him near the cross, had their fears and doubts removed by their encounters with the resurrected Jesus. Thanks to Mary Magdalene and the other women who first saw the risen Lord, the disciples were called into action and founded the early church. They finally understood the power of Christ’s love to bear fruit. The church rests on a love that denies the self for the greater good of others.

 The words LOVE and CHURCH both imply community. It takes at least two people—the one who loves and the beloved—for love to happen. Church is a fellowship of Christians, and the church universal is one very large family. The church is called the “bride of Christ” to suggest the ideal closeness borne of Christian love.  Father Edmond Browning, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has this to say about community: “There is nothing more important than community. We are in community from the moment of conception, dependent upon our mother, our bodies sustained by her heartbeat. The mysterious doctrine of the Trinity is really all about this fact: Even God has never been alone. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that incomprehensible three–in-one that has always been and will always be—God is a relationship.”  Isn’t that a wonderful thing to ponder?

This Holy Week I’ve been especially conscious of Jesus as a member of that special kind of relationship we call a family. March 25^th is always celebrated in the church as Annunciation Day, the day when the angel appeared to Mary and told her that she would bear the son of God.  This year, Annunciation Day fell on the Monday of Holy Week, and it was a good reminder of how Mary was with her son from beginning to end.  From Bethlehem to Golgotha, Mary was a constant in Jesus’s life. She was one of the few gathered beneath the cross.  We can only try to imagine how much pain she suffered watching her son die in that terrible way. Let’s go a step further and try to imagine God’s anguish over the pain his son endured.  As did Jesus, God knew this pain was necessary and would bear fruit.  Knowing that didn’t make it less painful.

So here we are at last to the fulfillment of the promise: Easter morning is upon us, and the Lord Jesus will rise to new life. Jesus’s experience on the cross, his entering into the darkness of death, is the revelation of God’s covenant with us. God KNOWS how much we hurt, and God chooses to be with us, to comfort us, in all our suffering. That Trinity, which Bishop Browning called a relationship?  We are invited to join it.  In fact, we are already members of the body of Christ whether we choose to be or not.  The promise of eternal love is always extended in our direction, in this life and the next. That is why when we turn our hearts toward God, we find God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit already there, awaiting us. Maybe they are saying, “What took you so long?”

Allelujah! Amen.