The Kingdom has Come Near: Sunday, February 22

Lent I

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” 

Jesus is baptized and then driven immediately into the wilderness.  This is our story too.  We go from baptism directly into the wilderness of human community and human society.

This past week Bishop Gunter posted a quotation from Lutheran pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, on his Facebook page that I re-posted on mine.  Nadia says:  “I think God is wanting to be known.  And my experience of God wanting to be known is much more in the person who is annoying me in the moment rather than the sunset.”

It would be easier if Church was simply talking a walk in nature---after all, there are no people there who will annoy us or challenge us or frustrate us.  But we are called to find God in community---in humanity----where God dwells.

What if Christianity is all about loving Jesus?

You might be thinking, “Duh, Mother Jane.  Of course, Christianity is all about loving Jesus.”

But sometimes, we act as if Christianity is all about believing the right things or worshipping in just the right way. Yes, knowing the truths that God would have us know are important, and showing our thanks to God in beautiful and meaningful ways is important too.  But, what if, the absolutely most important thing is simply loving Jesus?

What if being Church, loving Jesus, means asking others to come and experience this love with us?  Just as they are.  Not requiring right beliefs or right worship, but just the willingness to come together and expecting to experience the love of Jesus, expecting to feel the movement of the Holy Spirit.

What happens if we let people who don’t know if they believe in God join us? Or people who are pretty certain they won’t find anything of value in Church?  Or people who believe in Allah or Buddha or Yahweh?  Or people who do believe it does really matter that you believe all the right things---and the right things are what they believe?  Or people who think it’s all about doing the right thing---serving others, so it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you serve others---what if we let them in?

Imagine this space filled with all these different kinds of people.  And the only things they have in common are their humanity, their need for love and belonging and their desire to live in truth.  What if we said, “Here is a place where you don’t need to wear a mask.  Come just as you are.  You can know the love of Jesus here.  We may disagree with one another; we may not all believe the same things, but we think it’s God’s job to transform our hearts and to change our minds.  Our job is simply to welcome you here.  To let you know you are loved by Jesus.  We may not worship all the same way. You may think God wants to be praised in that way, and I think God wants to be praised in this way, but we are going to agree to disagree, and believe that God will accept both ways. 

What would it mean to be a community like this?  A gathering like this?  What would it cost us---what understandings would we have to set aside? What preferences? What would we learn about our rituals and what would we come to understand about our traditions? 

What would we be saying?  I wonder.

I wonder if there was a community like this if they wouldn’t be saying something like: “I believe what I believe strongly, but I may be wrong.  And I recognize that you believe what you believe strongly, but you may be wrong. But, we know that there is truth in each one of us because each one of us is made in the image of God and God is truth.  Jesus says: “I am the Truth”.  So, if each of us is made in the image of God—in the image of Jesus---then each of us carries the Truth.  And as we are drawn together---fragments of a whole---we bring our splinters of truth together---creating a clearer picture of Jesus and a sharper image of the Truth. 

Perhaps, this community would be saying that we each have something to say; we each have something to teach; we each have something to learn---even those who don’t believe or who believe differently or those who aren’t sure and those who are so sure that their version is THE version.  Yes, even them.  What if we can only come to know The Truth, to know Jesus, by drawing close together---even with all our variations and variegations and separations---drawing together and listening and learning and being and loving?

What if this is what Jesus means when he says: “The Kingdom of God has come near?” 

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday 2015

Today is a new beginning.

Not only the beginning of Lent. 

Today can be a new beginning for each one of us.

If we are willing to return to the beginning,

willing to turn and remember from where we come---dust.

The dust into which our Almighty Creator God blew the breath which restores, the wind which renews, the spirit which creates—God’s very own breath turning dust into life.

Today can be our new beginning

if we are willing to acknowledge that we are not our own.

We are not our own. We are God’s.  We owe our every breath to God.

All that we are, all that we have, comes from God.

Who we are is based on whose we are---signed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.

Like Stevie Wonder sings: Signed, sealed, delivered….I’m yours.

Today’s cross of ashes on our foreheads points to the cross that marked us in Baptism---our God tattoo that is embedded in our hearts and minds---declaring us to be not our own, but God’s.

If we choose, today we can turn and re-turn to our Creator; we can make ourselves available to the incredible power and love of God—not simply in a “I’m spiritual” manner, but in the more gritty, real, everyday display of a commitment to regular worship, daily prayer, fasting and giving of our very selves.  This is the way of Jesus—this everyday living of prayer, healing, forgiveness, mercy, Word, service and messy community that Jesus calls us to live, to walk, to come and follow Him. 

Today is a fresh start.  Another chance to move closer to the Divine who so completely desires an intimate and loving relationship with us.  Today is a day of new beginning.

Or it could be just another Wednesday, like every other Wednesday.

God leaves that choice in your hand. 

Set Free: Transfiguration

I need to give a shout out to +Bishop Matt Gunter and fellow Episcopalian Brené Brown for providing reflections and words that have led to today’s homily.

Recall a time when you told someone about someone you deeply love.  Perhaps you were talking about your child or grandchild, your best friend, your partner or spouse.  Relive that moment as you tell someone else about your beloved---can you remember the warmth that radiates from the joy and delight you feel?  You’re probably grinning from ear to ear.  If you were to look in a mirror, you’d be glowing.

Now recall to mind when you knew, without a doubt, that you are someone else’s beloved.  Maybe the person doesn’t use the word, “beloved,” to describe you, but you are 100% certain that person loves you.  It could a parent or grandparent, a dear, dear friend, a sibling, a child, or your spouse or partner.  Warmth covers you like a blanket; joy bubbles up within you; and again, there’s a lightness that emanates from inside out.

Today’s Gospel is God’s moment of love proclamation.  The warmth of God’s love is flowing toward Jesus as Jesus climbs the mountain—a sign of Jesus drawing nearer to God.  The love God the Father has for Jesus shines and makes Jesus shine in return.  Jesus is transformed and transfigured because the authenticity and absoluteness of God’s love cannot be mistaken.

Okay, now close your eyes for a minute.  Picture this scene that unfolds on the mountaintop in today’s Gospel.  Can you see the glow of God’s love?  Feel the warmth.  Hear God’s voice wash over Jesus: You are my beloved.

Keep your eyes closed and continue to see this moment of intimate connection with God, with Abba, in your mind’s eye.  Okay, now, take Jesus out of the picture and put yourself there---you: a living member of the Body of Christ.  Let the warmth of God’s delight and joy in you wash over you.  Let the light of God’s love and grace flow in you and through you.  Rest in the absolute assurance that you are God’s beloved.  Without a doubt, God loves you--- not because you are so good or perfect or complete. God loves you because God is so good and perfect and complete. You are loved with the never-ending, always-another-chance, cannot-be-severed love of God.

Okay, open your eyes.

When we can finally believe that this love of God for us is real and forever, we are transfigured.  When we are able to soak in God’s joy and delight in us, we are transformed.  Knowing we can be sure in God’s love, we are freed.  God’s love for us is the Truth that sets us free. 

Set free to admit our wrongs and failures because we know that even in our errors we are loved.

Set free to believe we are enough.

Set free from wishing we were smarter or thinner, richer, more powerful or somebody else altogether.

Set free from the fear we are not worthy

Set free to have the strength to be vulnerable.

Vulnerable—like Jesus on the cross.  Honestly, is there a more vulnerable position than this? The world may tell us not to be vulnerable, but we cannot be the living sacrifice we are called to be unless we are willing to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable means we have a strong sense of love and belonging. Being vulnerable grants us a great capacity for hospitality—making room in one’s heart for another.  Vulnerability allows us to display great generosity---give of oneself for the benefit of another.  Brené Brown, a researcher, writer and speaker of the human experience, says people who allow themselves to be vulnerable in this way are whole hearted.  Whole-hearted people have the 3 C’s: courage, compassion and connection.

Courage: the root of the word courage comes from “couer”—an old French word that means heart.  Courage means we have the ability to tell and live the story of who we are, able to be imperfect and to deal with our own junk and imperfections without dumping or inflicting them on others.

The whole-hearted have compassion; they are kind to themselves first, so that they can also be kind to others.  The whole-hearted are connected.  Because they are grounded in the truth of God’s love they are able to be authentic—to live as their true selves.  Transfigured and freed from the fear that they should be whoever the world tells them to be, they are inspired by the Holy Spirit to be who they truly are---God’s beloved---made in the image of God.

Isn’t this what we yearn for, long for, what we are seeking?  To be whole-hearted.  Soaked in the love of God and freed to be our authentic selves—God’s beloved.  As whole-hearted people, with courage, compassion and connection, we become the ones who can say: “I love you” first, and “I forgive you,” and “I’m sorry,” even when there are no guarantees that the other person will respond likewise.

As whole-hearted people we can afford to invest in relationships that may or may not work out.  We can take chances on others because God takes chances on us.  Anchored by God’s love, we can reach out to those the world declares are beyond the boundaries and draw them closer to God’s love by living out God’s love so that they, too, may know God’s love and be set free.

Beloved: we are worthy.  We are enough.  We are loved beyond reasoning.

Let us be so transfigured by this love that we can vulnerable enough to be:

            radically welcoming

            courageously generous

            boldly compassionate

            authentically connected

            a web of grace.

Grace---the unearned gift of God’s love that is the first word, the last word, and every word in-between.  For you, for me, for all of Creation.  Grace. 

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Sunday, February 8: Shout it from the Rooftops!

Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23 
Mark 1:29-39

Theologian and Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon wrote:  The church is the Real presence of the living Christ in the world today. The church is the incarnation of the Word of God---God with skin on.  The church is not an enclave of “refugees from the world; it is the sacrament of God’s presence in the world.” (114, The Astonished Heart).  Our catholicity isn’t found simply in ritual—it is found in the belief that the church has a truth for all people. 

St. Paul urges us today to proclaim the Gospel---the Good news—in ways that people can hear, receive, and understand it.  Paul tells us that we are to proclaim the Gospel “free of charge.”  This doesn’t simply mean we don’t charge people to get into church on Sunday, (although this would be one unethical way to fill a budget gap).  What Paul means by “free of charge” is that we proclaim the Good News at our own expense, at our own cost---liturgy—the work of the people.

 Robert Capon goes so far as to say that the Good News, theTruth we know in Jesus, is something we are to shout from the rooftops.  So what is the Good News?  How do we proclaim it in ways that people can receive and understand it?  How do we ourselves receive it?  How do we as a church proclaim it in such a way that we are God with skin on---the real and living presence of Christ here in Stevens Point, Wisconsin at the corner of Church and Ellis?

The Evangelist Mark tells us that Jesus came to Simon Peter’s mother-in-law’s house and she was sick with a fever.  Of course, we think: “No big deal.  A fever.  Take a Tylenol.”  Well, in Hebrew times, a fever was far more serious than it is for us today—no Tylenol at the ready—and many times, it was life-threatening.  So, Jesus coming in and taking her hand and helping her to rise is a big deal.

In fact, it’s a big deal in many ways.  Jesus takes her by the hand and lifts her up.  The Greek verb Mark uses for “ he lifted her up” is the same Greek verb, egeirw, Mark uses to describe God raising Jesus from the dead.  By taking her hand and lifting her up, Jesus brings this woman back to life.

And here is the truth we are to shout from the rooftops. In our struggles: our dark places, our places of pain, disease, loss, fear, dissatisfaction, depression, and death---Jesus comes into our struggle, takes our hand, and lifts us up---brings us back into life.  Not by magic or nebulous spirits.  Not by wish, luck, or happenstance.  But through Incarnation---God with skin on.

*******

For months he went without a cane because he didn’t have the means to follow the doctor’s orders to get one.  For months he went around with only one lens in his eyeglasses because he couldn’t afford to replace his broken pair.  Now, thanks to the Shalom Center at Intercession, he was put into contact with the Lincoln Center which loans out medical supplies like canes and he was able to purchase his new eyeglasses with two lenses.  Restoring sight and helping the lame to walk.  The living presence of Christ in the world.  Taking a hand and lifting a person back to life.

*********

Scared and beaten down, she knew she had to find a better way for her family. Her home was filled with violence because her husband physically, mentally, and verbally abused her.  She found the courage to leave the house with her children, taking whatever clothes they could carry, each child bringing some personal items to comfort them, and they found shelter at the Family Crisis Center.  They also found a community of people—those in the shelter and all those in the community supporting  the shelter---who reached out to her family.  Assisting them and encouraging them in this fresh start to a new possible way of living.  This is what resurrection looks like.  Taking a hand and lifting a family back to new life.

********

Money was tight.  He often simply went with the cheapest product out there---the best bang for his buck.  But then he attended a forum that talked about Free Trade items---coffee and chocolate and food products that are intentionally produced, marketed, and sold in a manner that gives more profit back to the farmer, the worker.  He learned that the cheap products he was buying often benefited the large corporation that sold the product, but they came cheap on the backs---and at the cost---of the laborer—often made in conditions that many consider to be slave labor.  While he had to sacrifice some of his personal benefits (cheap products, which meant he could buy more or keep more money in his pocket), he decided to be a different kind of consumer and to begin by buying some of his items in fair trade form only.  It meant he would probably have to buy less or less often, but someone else wouldn’t have to pay the price for his convenience or his desire to buy cheap.  Across the world and without even having seen the face of the ones he was helping, this man took the hands of the laborers and raised them up by choosing to consume differently.

Paul says: “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel.”  This sentiment is why I became a priest---the burning within me to proclaim the Good News of Jesus that I have known throughout my life.  For it has been in my lean times, my dark times, my times of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty; it has been in my losses and the many shadows that seep into our lives that this Good News today, this Gospel, has been proclaimed to me.  Proclaimed to me by the hands, the voices, the visits, the notes, the help, the assistance, the presence of Christ in the people who reached out, took my hand, and lifted me back into the light—the new life promised in Jesus.  Like Robert Capon, I believe that the abiding and irremovable presence of Jesus is in “all people, at all times, and in all places---whether they know it or not, believe it or not, like it or not” (111, The Astonished Heart).

Beloved, let us continue to be the real presence of Christ in the World today.  Let us dream how to further be the Church, the Body of Christ, in Stevens Point. God provides us with significant resources –the gifts and talents of the people who participate at Intercession, the collective resources of our time, our enthusiasm, our treasure, and our spaces.  Let us shout our Truth---that Jesus enters our struggles, takes up by our hands and lifts us up---let us shout this Good News from the rooftop into the neighborhoods, the families, the shelters, and the hearts of Central Wisconsin and beyond.  

Let us live as the incarnation of the Word of God---God with skin on---right here and right now---supporting one another and those around us in a web of grace.  May we open our eyes, our hearts and minds—to recognize the Good News and then point to it, giving of ourselves and diving headlong into the waters of resurrection. Transformed, renewed and strengthened as we, our neighbors, our communities and peoples are brought back to life. Is there anything more relevant or more worthwhile than this?

One last story, maybe you’ve heard it before, but it is worth repeating: An anthropologist proposed a game to kids in an African tribe. He put a basket of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first won the fruit. When he told them to run, they took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying the treats. When he asked them why they had run like that since one of them could have had all the fruits for himself, they said: UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad? UBUNTU in Xhosa culture means: "I am because we are." 

Amen. Amen. Amen.