Perfection Is Overrated: Joyous Lives Lead to Generous Service

Sermon preached on Sunday, June 5, 2011 at Trinity Church, Reno, Nevada

“Be one as we are one”. Is the Gospel writer serious? Do these words really mean that we are we to live with one another as God lives with Jesus and the Holy Spirit in their Trinitarian love? Be one as we are one. Augustine of Hippo taught that we are to become what we touch. Are we really to become what we worship as the Body of Christ? Such an interpretation leads to idolatry.

It is thoroughly amazing to me how long this literal interpretation of today’s Gospel has been sustained through the centuries by Christian churches. This interpretation has been sustained by lofty theology. A short sermon is not the time to explore the theological specifics. The words, “Be one, as we are one” sets us up for impossible possibilities and constant disappointment.

Today’s scriptural text introduces an interpretative conflict between perfection that places our primary focus on ourselves versus shifting our focus to the needs of others through service. The conflict emerges from these two different ways of reading today’s Gospel.

Let us not miss the other words of today’s Gospel. The Gospel also says that as Jesus returns to God, we remain. The Gospel just says that we remain, but if we follow the story we are left to be Christ’s witnesses of the glory of resurrection. We are authorized to be ministers of Easter joy in the world.

“Be one as we are one”, this idyllic relationship also surfaces in other unexpected and even unrecognized ways. Too often in spiritual direction or other pastoral counseling meetings I hear good people express their self-doubts about their adequacy. Good people feel so less than perfect that they cannot even possibly think about service or ministry. Good people who are performing wonderful ministries are even caught up in this dilemma of faith, as they doubt themselves.

Several years ago I was having an early morning breakfast with my friend John. John asked if I would help him reflect on the ministry that God might be calling him. John and I had been friends for some time through All Saints Church in Pasadena, but still I did not know much about his personal life. He spent a good bit of time telling me about the routine nature of his work, his self-doubts and struggles living the joy he feels on Sunday.

Much of what he shared with me I had known, but I knew little about his family life. He told me that when he was in Africa many years ago that he adopted two children, each with severe handicaps. He went on to tell me about the cost of medical care, the racism his children experienced in the US and his struggles to provide adequate care.

Our time over breakfast passed and we both had to get to work. Before we said good-bye to each other, I asked my friend, do you not see your passionate vision to adopt and humble commitment to care as ministry. My friend is a well-educated man with a very important job, but somehow he did not see his life as ministry.

Through the messiness of all his struggles John did not see the way God had empowered him with special gifts, graces and blessings to be a father for special needs children. I reframed for John his self-doubts and lack of purpose into a richly, blessed, courageous and generous life. He was doing it, he just did not recognize it nor was he able to name it.

Have you ever felt like John? Do you see the connection between the way you feel fed by this congregation’s weekly worship on Sunday and the way you feed others through your life and work during the week? Theology makes a difference for the answers you have to these questions.

We are not in the world to suffer, but rather to flourish. God wants us to flourish! As Episcopalians we have been freed up from the pursuit of perfection. The Episcopal Church’s roots in its Anglican history through the Church of England are quite different than many other historical Christian churches. The English reformers who established the Church of England sought to change the Roman Catholic understanding of the church as perfect and unstained. Churches distracted by perfection are focused on perfect unity. Individuals are distracted by their desires to be perfect.

John Jewel one of earliest English reformers was so passionate on this point that he wrote a long essay on the broadness of the church not only with space for heretics but also for the papists. In Jewel’s context it was a generous accommodation to include papists. In those days much like today, religious conflicts were over the bounds of God’s love. The English reformers aspired to create a church that was as generously open as God’s heart.

It is our Anglican tradition as Episcopalians to appreciate that as baptized persons and as a church we are not called to perfection. Spiritually mature people resist the anxieties associated with perfection. The pursuit of perfection serves as a scrupulous distraction to our baptismal vocations. The pursuit of perfection isolates us and keeps us self-centered on our own needs rather than on the needs of others.

Rather than perfection, The Episcopal Church is called to humility and passionate service. Humility is simply about listening. When we exercise humility we step back from our exclusively self-centered desires in order to listen. Passionate people are energized by a compelling vision. Passionate people press forward with their vision.

It is very easy for humble and passionate people to be in conflict or worse to ignore each other. In our Anglican traditions these back and forth moves happen simultaneously. As a result our conversations are not always comfortable, but they are rich. There is a necessary tension between humility and passion. We are called to humbly listen and passionately move forward. These actions are not sequential, but rather simultaneous.

What holds humility and passion in creative tension is our commitment to stay in relationship with one another. Staying in relationship with one another is an ancient Anglican practice that goes back to the earliest English reformers. Several years ago after the controversy over Gene Robinson’s election and consecration as a bishop, Archbishop Rowan Williams called for a worldwide listening process.

The purpose of the listening process was for opposing sides and positions around the world to listen to one another. Unfortunately through the listening process and the more recent Anglican covenant being discussed by the churches of the Anglican Communion a notion of consensus has crept in. Consensus and unity as forms of perfection are wonderful aspirations, but they are not necessities of our Anglican tradition.

We have a far greater challenge as Episcopal Anglicans as we are called to stay in relationship and conversation with those with whom we disagree. In this way we have to resist common perfectionist expectations that listening necessarily leads to the achievement of common ground. Listening necessarily leads to reconciliation. Listening necessarily leads to unity.

Anglican relationships honor listening and passionate urgency without false correction that leads to perfect unity. False corrections are anxious efforts to force premature unity that we are not prepared to live into. As Episcopalians in an Anglican tradition we have been freed up from all of this pious individual and corporate baggage associated with the pursuit of all kinds of perfection. We have been given the gift of this freedom so that we may dedicate all of our energies to living lives of generous service. What matters the most is not what happens between these four walls of this church building, but the difference we each make in the world.

I love what we do here at Trinity Church. We are blessed with great liturgy, beautiful music, compassionate pastoral care, people with good humor and so much more; but it all really has one purpose. The purpose is for all of us to be sent forth into generous service. Service goes well beyond church sponsored activities and ministries. The primary thrust of our service is the way we live our lives between Sundays. Service is about the choices and decisions we make every day.

Episcopal laypersons and clergy freed from the worries and anxieties of perfection are empowered to heal the world through their choices, values and commitments. My friend John adopted two handicapped children, but he did not recognize his choice and commitment as his vocation, call and primary service.

Do we connect the good we have do as ministry?

If you see yourself in the story of my friend John or wonder about your value between Sundays, then I have a challenge for you. I invite you to choose a life freed from crippling self-doubts or perfectionist tendencies. Freed of perfectionist self-doubts I assure you that you will be freed up for generous service to live and love as Christ’s witnesses.

The good news of today’s Gospel as we anticipate the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we have been authorized for generous service. The Spirit of Pentecost will equip us for bold and generous service.

Simply remember Jesus’ other words, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”

The Journey: From Emmaus Piety to Emmaus Party

Sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Duggan at Trinity Church, Reno, Nevada on Sunday, May 9, 2011. Gospel: Luke 24: 13-35

If I were to title my sermon I would want to call it, “The Journey From Emmaus Piety to Emmaus Party”. The proposed sermon title sets the bar very high. Just to manage your expectations I may not be able to get you all the way there. As I said to friends recently I think the most frivolous thing I have ever done in my whole life was watch the Royal Wedding live from 1am to 5am, drink black tea, eat cream topped English scones and have a splash of scotch at 3am! I readily admit that I missed the rituals of staying up all night as a teen-ager!

Yet as we listened to the glorious music from Westminster coupled with daylong parties I had a vision of the spirit of Jesus’ hospitality at Cana and Emmaus. To really catch Jesus’ party spirit requires unpacking the piety that has become associated with the Emmaus story. After all the Emmaus story is simply a story about the journey of two disciples and the way they came to recognize Jesus. The Royal Wedding ironically reminded me that piety and party sometimes coexist. I think piety and party coexisted for Jesus and alas we have only remembered the piety.

It is understandable the way that the Emmaus story so easily leads to literal interpretations. As a former Roman Catholic I remember the way the Emmaus story was used as a proof text to substantiate and legitimize the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Roman Catholic doctrine teaches that Holy Communion is not merely a reminder of Jesus’ presence long ago, but rather the actual fleshy body and blood of the living Christ.

In this way of reading the Emmaus story the exclusive focus is on seeing Jesus in the breaking of the bread. All liturgical Christians such as Episcopalians can certainly resonate with the power of Holy Communion, though we have different beliefs than Roman Catholics. Holy Communion is certainly one of the very special ways liturgical Christians recognize Jesus.

However, if we are not careful we can read the Emmaus text in an exclusively literal way such that we only see Jesus in the breaking of the bread. I think the Emmaus story invites us to recognize Jesus in not just the breaking of the bread as in the Eucharist and Holy Communion but also in the simplicity of two friends walking on a path from one place to another as the disciples were on their way to Emmaus. The disciples’ hearts were burning before they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

The Emmaus story like last week’s doubting Thomas story can be read in a kind of an I have gotcha tone of criticizing the way the disciples missed recognition of Jesus in their midst. Such a reading leads to a missed opportunity to connect with Jesus in new and different ways than through traditional piety. The experience of the A Lot of Good Men has taught many men in this congregation that out of the simplicity and the ordinariness of sharing a meal we are over and over surprised by what we see in each other and the new ways we see life in community as members of Trinity Church.

I think the point of the Emmaus story is to recognize Jesus’ presence in every aspect of our lives together and apart. Sometimes though if we are not careful the Eucharistic ritual and celebration of Holy Communion can too easily become the only place that we recognize Jesus. When we fall into this trap then Holy Communion becomes an idol rather than the blessed gift of God’s abundance that leads to more joy filled lives.

Like the miracle at Cana where Jesus made more wine for all to drink, similarly the miracle of Emmaus is that we enjoy the abundant presence of Jesus. Sometimes though like the disciples were distracted, other people, institutions or even our selves will impede our recognition of Jesus’ abundant presence in our lives.

When my mom was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, she was denied Holy Communion by a Roman Catholic priest who felt she was no longer able to recognize the presence of Jesus in Holy Communion. Like children who cannot receive the age of reason this priest followed the same logic at end of life. On her behalf I wrote to the Archbishop of New York and reminded him of the Emmaus story and implored him to have a priest bring Holy Communion to my mom.

The Archbishop was willing to make an exception, in what he described in a letter to me, as a ministerial accommodation for my mother. The Archbishop also instructed me that I should not make his accommodation public for fear that his gesture would give scandal to the faithful. Shortly after our correspondence my mother received Holy Communion.

Now as I look back on those days through my Protestant eyes I smile as I see that my mom experienced the deeper meaning of the Emmaus story even in her end stage Alzheimer’s. By the way at my mom’s funeral many spoke of the way she loved to have parties and at the same time she was a very religious woman.

No doubt it is why throughout her 11-year journey of Alzheimer’s she had experienced the abundant gift of recognizing Jesus in many forms beyond the Holy Communion distributed and so narrowly controlled by her beloved church. In the last three years of her life my mom laid in a nursing home bed and spent most of her day just staring at a fifty-year old crucifix on the wall that hung in every home my parents shared since their wedding day.

My Mom’s loving steady gaze gave her sons and daughters every indication that she recognized Jesus in the form of that cherished crucifix. Most of all as my mom forgot all of her children’s names and even lost the power of speech, she seem to be comforted by just sitting with us and holding our hands. I am confident in those last years that my mom recognized Jesus’ presence and warmth through holding her sons’ and daughters’ hands.

Like other marginalized people the person who suffers from Alzheimer’s has often been abandoned by their body, mind and even most friends and sometimes by even family. Jesus remains and continues to be recognized by the person with Alzheimer’s who often looks to us as just an empty shell of their former selves. As Jesus makes himself available to be recognized he reverences us even in our diminished humanity.

I tell you this story not just to say that we have the privilege to recognize Jesus even in end stage Alzheimer’s, but to show the way Jesus stays present to us beyond every impediment to our visible recognition. Jesus made a meal for the disciples for he knew in sharing a festive meal his disciples would recognize him. Jesus’ gesture was a gesture of friendship and joyful celebration. If we read the Emmaus story as only one of Holy Communion we will miss the communion also found in and through life’s ordinary celebrations at our many tables.
I don’t think that the Emmaus story is a proof text for Eucharist or Holy Communion. The Emmaus story simply offers us the occasion to celebrate the abundant presence of Jesus. The call of Emmaus is to live with open eyes and generous hearts that recognize Jesus. Both the doubting Thomas and Emmaus stories are about Jesus’ generous availability to us.

Jesus let Thomas touch his wounds and took the time for the disciples at Emmaus to recognize him. Likewise the Emmaus story calls us to live with the same kind of generosity that Jesus shows us by taking the time to let others recognize who we are.

The reason A Lot of Good Men have met for two years without an agenda of any kind is to remove the pious clutter that sometimes otherwise impedes our availability to be surprised like the disciples were at Emmaus by the presence of their friend Jesus.

As we all make an effort to remove all the unnecessary clutter from our lives we will be increasingly surprised to see that Jesus had been with us all along in forms most familiar to us. Let us share this Good News and the miracle at Emmaus with all we meet. The miracle of Emmaus has the potential to transform the world into joyous people who celebrate life just as Jesus did at Cana and at Emmaus. Than in this way our piety will lead to party and not end in idle/idol worship without joyful transformation.

"None of Us Are Blind, Are We?"

Trinity Church, Reno, Nevada

Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year A)

John 9:1-41

Few of us will ever be literally blind. How then do we make sense of this Gospel and make it work for our spiritual development and hear the Good News? One way is to see the mud that Jesus rubs in the man’s eyes as our own dirt. How might the mud and dirt of our lives let us see? As we proceed, it will be helpful to recall the line, “remove the plank from your own eye before you attempt to remove the speck from another.”

In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind”. For years I read this Gospel and saw blindness as the struggle or curse and sight as the gift or blessing. It is a bit murkier than this stark simplistic contrast between good and bad. I now see that blindness can also be a gift and sight, particularly self-righteous sight a curse. The disarming invitation of today’s Gospel is our free choice to be blind for a purpose.

To choose blindness we must be willing to be judged. Might we like Jesus be willing to say that we have come into the world for judgment so that others may see? Judgment in this sense is our willingness to put our faith on the line. It is so much easier to remain silent.

I remember several years ago being with a friend at dinner. He told a racist joke. I said nothing. In my head I was trying to figure out what to say, how to say it, if I had the right to say anything, could I say it charitably or would I just make matters worse. After the joke I probably did not hear a thing my friend said all night as I was trying to figure out what to say. I have often wondered how might I have acted differently. I have judged my silence as complicit in the act of telling the joke as I let it stand unchallenged.

Recently I was with Phil, another friend who is a shopkeeper. Phil was telling me a story of a man we will call Sam who had worked for him. In the first few days of his employment Sam would make very racist remarks about people as they passed the shop. A pregnant woman of color passed and Sam said one bullet is all it would take to get rid of those two.

Each day Sam mouthed off another shocking racist remark about people as they passed by Phil’s store. When Phil had heard enough, he said, “Get out of here, you are fired!” Phil told Sam that he was offended by his beliefs and that his customers deserved better. The two parted ways. I was so impressed with Phil’s actions. I immediately thought wow Phil is a much better man than I am. I was silent when a racist joke was told. Phil spoke up and he was willing to be judged.

A few minutes later, Phil said to me, “Say what do you think of all these crazy Muslims who want to build mosques in our country?” “Don’t you think we should make building mosques in America a criminal act?” The shift in Phil’s tone convinced me that he was pulling my leg. I thought he was mocking himself and other types of hypocrisy. I cautiously laughed. Phil was serious.

Somehow Phil could not see the connection between his stance against Muslims and Sam’s stance against people of color. My example this morning is racism, but who among us has not been inconsistent in some way when it comes to consistent living out of our values? Even more so who among us consistently lives in the way Jesus taught that embraces all humanity as beloved?

Phil’s words, “don’t you think, don’t you agree” brought me up short.
Again, I had a choice to be silent. This time I chose otherwise. I told Phil I disagreed with him. I said you know there is understandably alot of fear in this country after 9/11. I fully agree that we need to hold those who took those terrible actions accountable and bring them to justice. However, it is not all right to make all Muslims into terrorists.

I told Phil that as informed citizens we have the responsibility to learn about Islam. We need enough education on Islam to be able to discern who are the Muslims who follow the faith of Islam and those Muslims who interpret the Quran for their self-righteous political aims. Without specific knowledge of Islam it is far too easy to say there is no such thing as a good Muslim and refuse their right to worship in a mosque.

Phil was silent. He never remarked if he agreed or disagreed with me. He quickly changed the topic of our conversation. I self-righteously wanted to make the connection for Phil between Sam and himself, but that seem to be a bit harsher than was necessary. Phil like all of us is flawed with his blatant inconsistencies. He clearly was blind to his own inability to see in accordance with his own stated values.

Initially I was awestruck by Phil’s inconsistency. Later that evening I felt empathy for Phil. Days later I was more empathetic with myself. OK this time I was not silent, but I still felt like I had not said enough. Was my discretion polite or simply my lack of willingness to be judged by my faith? Should I have been more dramatic as Phil in his correction of Sam?

To speak up and charitably correct another is very messy work. I still do not feel thoroughly equipped to challenge others. As I continue to develop skill in the charitable correction of others, my encounter with Phil opened up an even deeper set of questions. Like the Pharisees in today’s Gospel I know where I see and even where and under what conditions I have the courage to speak. Like the Pharisees my blindness terrifies me. The space between terror over my blindness and the Pharisees self-righteous determination of sight is a very short distance. To work against our self-righteous sight it takes courage and enormous grace to ask, where we are inconsistent and act like hypocrites?

Hypocrite is a derogatory term. We don’t go around calling each other hypocrites. Hypocrite is not in our common parlance. The term may make you uncomfortable. So pick a different term. How about vulnerable or humble or fallible? My point is that we all have been inconsistent at one time or another. We are fallible. None of us live like Jesus yet!

The question is do we really want to know. I think we each face the same temptation that the Pharisees did when they said to Jesus, “surely we are not blind, are we?” If we do wish to know, then the Pharisees story may be an occasion to see our blindness in the various forms it takes. Racism is only one of an infinite number of ways we can be blind. It is our Pharisaic refusal to recognize our blindness that keeps us firmly planted in self-righteous patterns that harm right relation with other people.

Self-righteousness lets our energy be invested in being better than another rather than in our kinship with others. On Wednesday evening this past week Stefani and I heard Fr. Greg Boyle speak. Fr. Boyle is a Jesuit priest and founder of an anti-gang prevention center in Los Angeles. For 90 minutes he told one story after another of redemption.

Fr. Boyle said that by giving to one another we do not just fill needs, but we have an opportunity to see ourselves in another. It is seeing ourselves in the temptations and weaknesses of others that we develop empathy and kinship with each other. Fr. Boyle said that time and time again he has witnessed hardened gang enemies work together and become friends.

We like these gang members do this through our willingness to claim our blindness as the first step towards true sight. Do we have the courage to be led through our blindness through all the muck and mud of our lives so as to be led into a place of Christ-like sight? The Good News is if we say yes, then we may have the privilege to experience the freedom of true sight. True sight frees us up from all our self-righteous petty distractions. True sight turns our attention away from our outrage and condemnation of others and produces a space so we see our own blindness. True sight in this sense leads to non-violent communities where we cherish each other and share communion with God.

Restoring Integrity to the Words: "Do Not Worry"

Trinity Church, Reno, Nevada

Eight Sunday after Epiphany
Is 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
I Cor 4:1-5
Mt. 6:24-34

In the Gospel today, Jesus says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink.” Initially I admit that these words are of a little comfort to me. As you know through my new monthly column in the Trinity newsletter I do worry a lot about what I am to eat and drink. As fun as those little restaurant pieces are to write, a literal reading of today’s Gospel risks the loss of a more provocative message. The Good News of today’s Gospel is that God will provide for our most basic needs so that we are free to unreservedly live into the fullness of God’s mission. Jesus knows however that our availability for God’s mission has been diminished due to the way our trust has been scarred by broken human relationships.

The question Jesus asks each of us today is meant to invoke indifference to our most basic human needs. Common definitions of indifference suggest postures of not caring about something. Obviously then not caring is utterly irresponsible and we ought to reject this Gospel as unhelpful to our contemporary human condition. (End of sermon) However, not caring is very different from when we act out of complete trust. Jesus invites us today into this kind of radical trust when we do not even care what it is we will eat. Holy indifference means that we live absolutely convinced that God provides for our needs.

When we live this way then all of our energy is available to be invested as Paul says in the first Corinthians reading, as “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries”. I have always associated stewardship with prudent preservation of resources not with preservation of God’s mysteries. When I think about stewardship as preservation of scarce resources that seems without fail to increase my anxieties about what I am to eat. The Gospel challenges us to redirect our worries about from what we are to eat to God’s mysteries.

We miss a deeper message behind these readings if we interpret mysteries as some lofty way of thinking theologically or even philosophically about God. The mystery is not exclusively about God as if God was some statue in a museum that draws our idle worship. The Isaiah reading beautifully focuses our attention “I have inscribed you on the palm of my hands”.

The words that precede these state “Can a woman forget her nursing child?” The Psalmist words were “But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast; my soul is quieted within me.” The mystery we are called to preserve is this sacred trust between God as nursing mother and all humanity.

In this way today’s Gospel attempts to call us back from the chronic loss of trust that we all suffer from through our broken human relationships. When we lack confidence in God and fail to trust God’s fulfillment of our most basic needs then we become anxious and cherish that, which does not nurture us. To be a steward who “preserves God’s mysteries” is the work we all do through our efforts to preserve the honor and dignity of every person. When we act out of our abundance and trust that God will care for our needs then we serve families through Family Promise or Baby Bundles or sack lunches.

My focus so far has been on relationships specifically between God and humanity like that between the nursing mother and her child. If we take this analogy too far then we may be inclined to believe, as often is the case, that our life of faith is solely based on our relationship with God. As a congregation however we are responsible for one another. Not only are we responsible to one another, our individual actions represent and speak for Trinity Church and also for The Episcopal Church. When we are warm and friendly to newcomers, they do not just say that was a lovely person they also say Trinity is a warm and friendly place. Think about it we are all responsible for Trinity Church not just through our pledging and ministries, but the way each and every one of us treats strangers.

In 1787 Absalom Jones and other black members of St. George’s were asked by the senior white ushers to sit in the balcony. The ushers’ poor choices have been remembered as choices St. George’s Church made. If those ushers who sent Absalom Jones and his friends to the balcony thoroughly trusted God then they would have met Absalom Jones and his friends and showed them to the best seats in the church. Instead the ushers’ individual anxieties became an expression of an anxious, unwelcoming, self-centered and even violent church. History does not even remember the names of the ushers. All that has been remembered is the name of the church.

The Episcopal Church has made so many strides of inclusion over the last few centuries and even during the last year. We all do well to celebrate these inclusions too. However, there is much more at stake for congregations as we live into the fullness of God’s mission than just a spirit of inclusiveness and radical hospitality.

We might be the most inclusive church in the world, but if we are anxious about our most basic needs then we will be vulnerable to cherish things of the world more than God’s beloved people. Are we anxious about what we will eat and all other human concerns or do we abundantly invest in God’s beloved people?

A pastor friend of mine who is not an Episcopalian spends much of his ministry knocking on doors and welcoming people to come to his church. He particularly looks to knock on the doors of families with children who might not otherwise afford to go to high school or college. When he visits these families he often gives them money to send a needy son or daughter to college. My pastor friend has done this for many years. He reports that when the funded person graduates from college they never forget their pastor or his church.

Those who return to Reno come to his church and others who live far away send him money to continue his ministry. My friend is convinced that churches grow when they invest more in people than in buildings. My friend’s ministry is counter-intuitive to our anxious human inclinations to worry about our next meal and all that self-centeredness entails. The counter-intuitive move of today’s Gospel is that we honor the sacred trust of being nurturers of God’s beloved like the nursing mother with her child in the Isaiah passage. To invest in people is a profound act of trust that the pastor will have enough to eat so that he may give abundantly without reserve.

I want to tell you now about another good man. My dad had the posture that I think the Gospel is calling all of us into today. I grew up in a working class family. My dad worked three jobs so his five children would trust that their most basic needs were met as well as received the privilege of a college education. My parents never owned a car or a house and never could afford to travel outside of NYC until he retired.

My dad never worried about what it is he was to eat. In fact Dad’s lunch every day of his working life was a jelly sandwich and a couple of socialtea cookies. In the midst of my parents’ obvious lack of wealth, my dad always told us kids that we were his most precious assets. Dad often said, particularly in times of his most dire need, “I am a very lucky man as I have five precious jewels in my two daughters and three sons”. Fifty years later I remember my dad as an unselfish man who gave without reserve all he had. My dad like my Reno pastor friend invested in my future dignity. Today Jesus invites us to transform our anxieties from what it is we are to eat and to preserve, cherish and invest in all God’s beloved, restoring humanity’s trust in God and the Gospel’s integrity.

Raising the stakes a little bit higher (afterall we are in Nevada!), in years to come will history remember Trinity Church and The Episcopal Church as having preserved the dignity of every person as their most precious assets? We know in 1787 St. George’s answer to Absalom Jones dramatically fell short of this godly ideal.

I readily admit to you that this is a very demanding Gospel. Today’s Gospel invites us to completely and without reserve trust God. When we cease to be anxious about what we will eat then we can throw ourselves completely into God’s mission. However remember the Gospel invitation is not just about us. Anxiety of all kinds depletes energy and serves as a distraction from our mission as stewards of God’s mysteries. Untransformed our self-centered anxieties also hurt people like Absalom Jones and risk their trust in God.

When we have successfully restored trust to our daily human relationships it will be more likely for others to believe that God takes care of their most basic needs. The words “do not worry about what you are to eat” represent our unreserved trust in God. Our lifetime work is to preserve that sacred trust when our anxious souls are quieted through our holy indifference and all our energy is free and available to live into the fullness of God’s mission. In the meantime let us thank God for God’s awesome trust in us and in this church! Let us collectively choose to live into this awesome responsibility and be remembered as stewards of God’s mysteries.

The Magnificat: Dangerous Words

December 12, 2010

As a child I imagined God as Robin Hood who cast down the mighty from their thrones and filled the hungry with good things. Utopian thinking makes for wonderfully entertaining stories like Robin Hood. The Gospel, however, is not a utopian fable intended for our mere pleasure. However, we get to choose living fables or into the world-altering potential of the Magnificat.

Father Rick Milsap reminded me recently that the Guatemalan government in the eighties arrested people who recited the words of the Magnificat in public. Fortunately, you and I in this country enjoy religious freedom. Yet in the absence of such public threats how do we access the radically world-altering nature of the Magnificat?

The Guatemalan police well knew that the words of the Magnificat were potentially world-altering and fully realizable. To alter the world in this way is a subversive act that risks the marking of a revolutionary.

Stay with me.

The word, “subversive” offends our law-abiding natures. We might be inclined to limit subversive activity as falling under the umbrella of Wikileaks or anarchy inciting chaos. A Gospel text or ministerial action is subversive when it or we go against the dominant worldly norms of society’s unity and order.

There is no easy way around the Magnificat not being subversive. Judge for yourselves.

Do worldly powers look with favor on the lowly?

Do worldly powers cast down the mighty from their thrones?

Do worldly powers fill the hungry with good things?

Do worldly powers send the rich away empty?

By unpacking some of the language of the Magnificat, I want to help recover some sense of its edgy character by pointing to its world-altering visions.

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My Spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.”

“My soul magnifies the Lord” is the original translation of the Magnificat’s opening line versus the new version that says, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”. We are called to magnify God’s power and proclaim God’s word. “My soul magnifies the Lord” because God has made me in God’s image. The first step is to find God’s image in our selves so that like God we can look with favor on the lowly.

One of the spiritual practices in the recent Trinity Church spiritual basics series was to stand in front of a full-length mirror. I instructed participants to pray for the grace to see themselves as made in the image and likeness of God. To magnify the greatness of God we must live out of God’s image and not out of self-centered worldy images of self-reliance. In our self-centeredness we are not likely to look with favor on the lowly and we fail to proclaim the greatness of God.

For many years, in the morning, as I shaved I would look in the mirror but not see myself. I looked past myself. As a spiritual director I know that this experience is not just something uniquely odd to me. When we see nothing or only our flaws, we miss the potential of God’s image in our being. To work against this now each morning as I look into the mirror I say as a mantra to myself, “Joe, you are made in the image and likeness of God”. I don’t just say these words, but I encourage myself to accept the gift and power of this image. In the spirit of the Magnificat you might say, “My body magnifies the greatness of God”. Try this tomorrow morning and make note of how you feel.

I share this spiritual exercise with you because I believe that if we were thoroughly convinced that we are made in the image and likeness of God than our bodies, minds and spirits would have a greater likelihood to magnify and proclaim the Good News of the Lord.

Mirror gazing is far from a naval gazing narcissistic exercise. Be careful though as it is exactly this kind of thinking that can quickly become subversive. Mirror gazing becomes subversive when our spirits rejoice in God our savior. Then we trust the power of God working through us as we abandon ourselves to the transforming vulnerability of world-altering ministries.

The mirror gazing exercise is the beginning of a life-altering, world-altering process. We cannot alter and change the world unless we change ourselves first. In a Pauline view of magnification we become less and Christ becomes more. As we become less, it is not the Magnificat’s intention for us to become passive and whither away into a false humility. When Christ becomes more then we are more likely to magnify and proclaim the greatness of God. In this way the words of the Magnificat are intended to transform us into God bearing vessels of radiant love that transforms ourselves, so we look with favor on the lowly.

“He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly”.

The newborn child to come that the Magnificat anticipates casts down the mighty from their thrones, as those mighty ones rely not on being made in the image and likeness of God, but they are self-sufficient and rely on themselves, on their own worldly power. The world’s powers do not look with favor on the lowly nor do they wish to lift up the lowly.

So how do we make this shift from worldly thinking to practice the liberating message of the Gospel?

In Ignatian spirituality there is something called the “three degrees of humility.” The three degrees of humility are intended to assist us in examining our lives to self-assess our progress in authentic humble living.

The three world-altering visions that I have highlighted from unpacking the language of the Magnificat coincide with the three Ignatian degrees of humility.

The first degree of humility and world-altering vision is for us to look upon the lowly with favor as God does.

The second degree of humility and world-altering vision is to lift up the lowly one by acting out of God’s power not worldly powers.

The third degree of humility and world-altering vision is to find God’s power within ourselves when we go beyond the impediment of our self-centeredness and disturb the order that oppresses and enables oppressive injustices.

Our progress towards these world-altering visions embodied through Christian ministries flowing out of our Baptism begins with that which we first desire and practice for our selves.

As we look into the mirror and see the image and power of God manifested in our being, do we find it any easier to look at the lowly with favor as God does?

As we look upon those the world considers lowly with favor, are we also willing to work towards a different world order and not just feed the lowly, but advocate for their needs in ways that lift them up to share in worldly privileges?

It is the lifting up of the lowly that makes Christians effective vessels of God’s love in the world. Lifting up the lowly reveals the subversive nature of the Gospel. There are lots of good Christians who look with favor upon the lowly. That is not to say that looking with favor on the lowly is a small accomplishment. The world does not look with favor on the lowly. Looking with favor on the lowly does not however risk altering the world in ways that benefit lowly ones. Looking with favor on the lowly lets us rest in the comfort that we will always have the poor and lowly with us.

The late Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero thought otherwise and gave the world a glimpse of the cost of doing more than looking with favor on the lowly. Romero did not just look with favor or even just feed the world’s lowliest. Romero taught the lowly of El Salvador their innate value as human beings and called them into a life-giving solidarity that made those with worldly power very nervous.

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise to us that the Latin American police once arrested people for public recitation of the Magnificat. Nor should it surprise us that Romero was assassinated. Public arrests and even Romero’s assassination were signs that people were beginning to believe in the liberating power of the Gospel, specifically the embodiment of the Magnificat. The Latin American government saw the Magnifcat as a threat to the unity and peace of their order. In worldly ordered societies the rich and powerful are looked upon with favor and the lowly are to be kept silent, subservient and forever grateful for the scraps from the tables of the wealthy.

Today we savor in the awesome beauty and majesty of the words of the Magnificat. The good news is that world-altering Christ-like presence is not magical like fables but presume a lifetime of self-effacing work. Our individual spiritual practices and community building of churches such as this are one of the key means to nurture our becoming Christ-like. Yet two life-altering choices face us every morning.

Do we wish to aspire to embody the compassion of Christ who looks with favor and lifts up the lowly?

Alternatively, do we prefer to let the Gospel be as powerless as the child’s fables?

Come Dine With Us Jesus: A Community of Sinners

How do you feel about being the lost sheep or being referred to as the lost coin?

The predominant interpretation of today’s Gospel and second reading is that Jesus eats with sinners and the lost are saved.

It seems to me that these interpretations have been so overplayed by preachers that the church has been partially misled.

Friends who are not church people have told me that they don’t go to church because they don’t want to be with either the self-righteous churchgoers or the thoroughly wounded churchgoers.

Why do they think this?

Take a look at the second reading. I am grateful that Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. Formerly a sinner, but now this lost sheep is amongst the chosen.

Is the church about the chosen?

I guess I think about church and who is called very differently.

When I took my vows as a Jesuit, I said these words – In the presence of the divine majesty, I recognize myself as a sinner and the words of the vow formula continued.

We Episcopalians do not often talk about sin, but sin is a reality of our lives and the communities in which we live. Not talking about sin does not make it go away. Surely some tele-evangelists have so sensationalized sin and the condemnation of humanity that their words and actions have made sin dis-credible.

As you know I have much experience as a hospital chaplain and have even spent some time as a prison chaplain. A number of years ago a spiritual director asked me, when you visit people in prison, “Who are you visiting?” Are you visiting a criminal with whom you have no relationship? Are you visiting somebody because you are suppose to visit the imprisoned? The spiritual director continued, do you see yourself in the prisoner? Me, as a prisoner? Absolutely not. I am a law abiding citizen.

My spiritual director disagreed with me. He believed that we all have the capacity within us to harm another. As a family systems therapist he was convinced that we all have triggers that if set-off we might do some horrible things. Of course most of us never have those triggers set-off. However, this series of questions and challenges has I think made me a more effective chaplain over the years.

I read a book a long time ago that I highly recommend to you. The book is called The Violence Within by psychologist Paul Tournier. All of his books are wonderful. He wrote in the seventies and eighties. His most powerful book was I think The Violence Within. It was through reading The Violence Within that I was able to begin an answer to my spiritual director. This particular spiritual director did not so much want to spend our time talking about perfecting the spiritual life through prayer or fasting. Rather this director wanted to bring people face to face with their frailty and vulnerability as persons and as sinners. He challenged his directees to see not only the face of Christ in the prisoner, but to see oneself in the prisoner. This spiritual director worked through every self-righteous defense that I had that wanted to avoid even a remote connection to the prisoner I visited as a chaplain. I was not alone as this man had other directees and he took the same approach with them too. I suspect if he had been a parish priest he would have worked through the defenses of his congregation too.

I am sure you would agree that it is easier to say “I am called by God, though I was once a…” You fill in the blank. However, can we like the prophets of old say that though weak and a sinner we were and are chosen to serve?

What is it that keeps us so defiantly apart from recognizing ourselves in the homeless, in the prisoner and in the public sinner?

I have become very suspicious of those who claim to be better than all of us as sinners. We need only look at the former Governor of New York, Andrew Spitzer, who was the most vigilant prosecutor on sex crimes and then he was removed from public office for the same offense. There is also the story of John Edwards. It would be too easy for us to say, oh those politicians, again distancing ourselves from their offenses. Indeed these two men presented themselves as better and were harsh on those who were less than perfect. It would be interesting if today they have a different heart towards others in their shoes.

When I took my vows as a Jesuit, I quarreled with my superiors over the choice of words, I recognize that I am a sinner. I thought what an odd thing to say, but now many years later, I see the wisdom of the Jesuits.

As a pastor and priest I know the human struggles that we all face to live a good life. I also know that the stakes and expectations of goodness are very high.

As a priest I cannot give absolution to those who come to me to share a sin, unless they are repentant and willing to repair their life and sin no more in this way. However, that is far less frequently a problem for me as a priest. The more common experience is the rejection of sin, so much so that we defiantly refuse to see the potential in ourselves of the most horrible sin of those we might meet in prison.

Yet we must come face to face with ourselves as sinners in need of God’s healing balm.

Here is a very different image of church that I quite like from Dostoevsky…

Church as “a communion of unmerged souls, where sinners and the righteous come together.”

Dante put it this way, “where there are the penitent and the unrepentant, the damned and the saved…”

Are we courageous enough to live in this kind of church community?

The church is not a community of mediocrity where anything goes. No a community of the penitent and unrepentant is an intentional community in process. It is a community that yearns and desires the healing balm of God. In such a community there are far more than one lost sheep. There are many lost sheep.

A few years ago when I was in Scotland we lived on a sheep farm for a week. Every day we watched the sheep travel as one community into pasture. The sheep dog kept them together. The young and the old, the babies and the working sheep, the white sheep and yes the black sheep too all stayed together.

Closer to home, at Blackstone’s Pizza in Sparks there is a picture of sheep. There are easily 20 white sheep in the picture and one black sheep. The picture gives a vivid image to the words, he is the black sheep of the family.

Again, I say to you who among us wants to be the lost coin or the lost sheep? Who wants to stand out and be different? Nobody, so we stay very close to the self-righteous. We just need to be careful that in staying close to the self-righteous that we do not deny that we are the sinners whom Jesus dines with every week at this rail.

This is not a realization that should give us an untrue need to condemn ourselves and make ourselves unworthy. Nor is the realization that should make us give into no attempts to live a life worthy of our calling as Paul says in Ephesians. No, our realization of being a sinner should as my former spiritual director advised me, make us more effective as ministers.

When you next meet a homeless person or a prisoner, maybe you will see yourself in that person. Not in their current state, perhaps, but also not out of the realm of possibility either. I think this kind of awareness at its best gives a sense of urgency about our life in Christ.

As I read the Gospel, Jesus has more joy over the one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” If this is the case do any of our churches stand a chance with this kind of judgment?

The point of recognizing ourselves as sinners and in need of God’s mercy is to recognize our need as individuals and as a church for God. Many prisoners and homeless have met God up close in this way and they can say, I am a sinner in need of God’s mercy. The Gospel calls all of us to this kind of courage to claim our fragile humanity and to courageously name it.

Let me off you a model of this as a spiritual practice. I am sinner. It feels awkward and uncomfortable to say this. Yet I serve you as a priest as much out of my struggle with sin as out of my knowledge and desire of the good. As you prepare to go to another church, do you see yourself as better than others or do you see yourself as you are and as one in need of God’s mercy? You may not be ready to stand in front of this church and say you are a sinner. You might at least be ready to acknowledge to yourself that you are a sinner. Once you can then you can live with a sense of urgency to reform your life and you will be more compassionate with those who struggle to reform their life.

It is with this kind of bold clarity about ourselves that lets it be possible for us to bring hope to those whom we minister as they will see in us one who truly understands and empathizes with their struggles to be companions of Christ.

Come Jesus dine with us, a community of sinners.

Give Me A Tranquil Heart Oh Lord

There is a lot of picking and choosing going on in our texts today.

In the opening collect we prayed for an increase of “true religion”. Many a blog fight has been had in recent years over what is true religion. Since the Reformation the Christian churches have argued over who is the true church. Even the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church are divided over divergent arguments and opinions over the true church. There is picking and choosing going on in the Gospel to as to who should be invited and who should not and where they should sit at the table.

All of you are in the process of picking and choosing another church where you will worship after St. Stephen’s Church closes. You will be picking and choosing your next church. It is a stressful time for you to make these decisions as you are also in the middle of grief over the loss of your first choice, St. Stephen’s Church. It will not be an easy time for you.

No doubt your picking and choosing will even be further complicated by some important things you may not yet be aware of or have been unable to express about the close of this church and what that might mean for you. Before you get through all the stages of dying and grief you may feel compelled to think about what will come next as to the church you will attend.

You will continue to have organized opportunities to visit the other churches with a visit scheduled to St. Catherine’s in September, another visit to St. Paul’s in October and even a visit to Faith Lutheran during convention weekend. You will also have time to meet together as a parish on Sunday, October 3 as you share your reflections with each other on your church visits.

There is no doubt that there is a lot on your individual plates as a congregation. It might be helpful for you to know that Ignatius of Loyola always counseled his companions never to make decisions in times when you are spiritually uncertain or unstable by extreme doubt or even joy. The time to make the best decisions that is the ones you will live by for a long period of time is during periods of sustained tranquility.

How will you find that space of tranquility for yourself as you prepare to pick and choose another church?

First you have to look inside of yourself and judge for yourself if your heart is tranquil before the Lord. You are only ready to make decisions if your heart is tranquil. The collect mentioned the “fruit of good works” that echoes the gifts of the spirit that Paul often writes about in the New Testament. Remember the Pauline reading about the gifts of the Spirit? The gifts are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

You might make it a spiritual practice over the next few months to occasionally ask yourself as you are driving in the car, for example, do I feel love, joy, peace? Am I growing in patience? Do I have a gentle tone? Is your heart and spirit calm? These are very generic questions and they may need more specifics to be more meaningful to you.

As you speak about other parishes you visit do you speak with a tone of the Spirit inspired gentleness or rather one of aged suspicion? These will be important questions for you to ask yourself. People with tranquil hearts live in the present with the gifts that God gives them today. By asking yourself these questions you will know if you are tranquil of heart and ready to pick and choose your next church. Again these are hard choices that you face. You will likely even with your best efforts get your grief mixed up with premature picking and choosing.

We all have experienced other losses in our life apart from the loss of a beloved congregation. I have been present with people who have suffered terrible losses in their life. I have been an ER Chaplain with parents who lost a toddler to a sudden case of incurable meningitis. I have been a first cousin to parents who lost their youngest daughter in a sudden car crash. I have been friend to a family who lost their young mother to cancer leaving behind five kids behind.

I share these few examples with you because behind them are people of great faith. You don’t have to look far even in this congregation to find families who have suffered great and untimely losses of a son and or a husband. I found that often those who suffered the greatest losses in their life, these people’s lives were changed by their losses. The grief of the sudden loss of a child never goes away.

My first cousin never recovered from the loss of her youngest daughter. Some in our family have wondered if the cancer she developed only a few years after her daughter’s death had something to do with the terrible assault on her mind, heart and soul due to the loss she suffered. Yet other people who have suffered major losses often have a different perspective on life. Those who suffer great losses are often more free, as they have lost what meant the most to them and thus don’t cling to anything ever again in the same way.

This reflection brings me to today’s Gospel. “The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can anybody do to me?” I read that last bit “do to me” as take away from me. For the one who has lost everything, their most cherished love in a spouse or in a child have only their relationship with God in tact and thus risk losing nothing anymore. Losses are never the same after that terrible loss. No other loss can match that one loss and so people are free of ever having to suffer other losses in the same way. These people learn to hold on to most other things very lightly.

These people place their hope in God for it is God and their faith that got them through their loss. The most senior members of this congregation personally know and have lived this story of loss and of hope. These members may bring wisdom to the people of this parish at this time of its loss of a church that they and you have loved. There is wisdom and a tranquility that comes through loss. This kind of wisdom is a grace of the Spirit.

The person of faith’s heart is brought to a place of complete indifference. Early in the time of loss this indifference is a feeling of emptiness, but as time passes and the heart sustains the loss, the indifference becomes an undefeatable love. The undefeatable love is that the one who has lost everything is faced with the one possession that cannot be taken away. That possession is their faith in God, their hope in God alone. It is a stunning cost for this kind of faith to be attained. Ask somebody who has suffered an untimely loss of a spouse or child, how they have since dealt with other losses in their life after that first major loss. You may be surprised by their answers. Their answers may help you process the loss of this church.

When I was a Jesuit thinking about leaving the Society of Jesus and the Roman Catholic Church looking for a spiritual director, I asked a wise Jesuit how I should decide who should be my spiritual director. I will never forget what the Jesuit said to me, “Joe find a Jesuit who has suffered much, lost deeply, fully grieved through that grief and deepened his faith through that loss”. Well I looked hard for that person but never found that spiritual companion until I came to Reno twenty years later. The people who have this kind of wisdom are often the most humble and it is like looking for a needle in a haystack to find that person.

You are much more fortunate than I was as you need not search far as these wise and tranquil people are in this congregation. Follow the example of those who have suffered great losses and come to a place of hard earned tranquility where you like they can say that nothing can be taken away from me for my hope is in God alone.

When you find this tranquil space within you then you will be able to pick and choose your next church wisely and your choice will be sustainable and continue to nurture your baptismal faith. You will also be able to live peacefully and joyfully with the people who have found what they need in other churches. You will be able to recognize your worship preferences, name your desires but see God in and through all people. The tranquil heart is the joyful person that clings only to their love of God and is free of all else.

Those who live with this kind of wisdom often do not speak authoritatively, but they are present. These wise forefathers and foremothers are in this congregation. I pray that as you grieve the loss of your church that you will be nurtured by the strength, fortitude and gentleness of heart of this congregation’s forefathers and foremothers.

The Death of Magical Thinking and the Birth of Spiritual Maturity

We need to be very careful the way we read healing stories such as the one in today’s Gospel. The OT lesson and Gospel are both about the power of God’s constant presence and about the miracle of healing. Yet more often we aggressively pursue God’s healing power for our own rather than imitating God’s unfailing presence amidst severe challenges.

There is a difference between miracles and magical thinking. Magical thinking is when we think we can either demand that God act as we wish or make little miracles into something they are not. Learning the difference between authentic healing and magical thinking has for me been a series of trial and error, mostly my errors.

One of my favorite shows as a little boy was Bewitched. Do you remember the show? Samantha, a witch played by Elizabeth Montgomery was married to a mere mortal Darrin Stephens, played by Dick York and later Dick Sergeant. Samantha would twinkle her nose and all would be well to every embarrassing or uncomfortable situation. As a youngster my mom was sick for several years after my birth. I was a surprise birth! She had me when she was 48 and so it was a difficult birth leaving her very weak. Of course I knew that I could not twinkle my nose to make my mom well. Even at that young age I knew that much about the difference between real healing and magical thinking.

Even so, as much as I loved the Bewitched show and even though I could not articulate it, I was always frustrated by the huge gap that I felt between my lived reality and the falsity of the Bewitched possibility of prompt magical corrections. Another kid in my neighborhood loved the TV show Superman, but he was not so fortunate and jumped out his family’s fifth floor apartment window so he could fly like Superman. Tragically he did not live to learn the lesson that he could not fly like Superman. Magical thinking cost him his life. My friend died a physical death. Magical thinking can also sometimes lead to a spiritual death too. Today I want to talk with you about the way magical thinking leads to our spiritual death and if not challenged will impede our access to an authentic Christian life.

Dan’s mom, a friend of mine in grade school went to the doctor to discover that she had leukemia and would die in three weeks. Dan’s mom was a woman of great faith and prayed every day of those three weeks seeking a miracle, a cure. His mom even went to great efforts to travel to a shrine in Ireland known for its healing qualities, but an exhausting trip yielded no miracle or healing. His mom became very bitter in those last days before her death and her family too. When she died my friend Dan left the church for over twenty years for that is how angry he was at God.

Dan and I grew up in a Roman Catholic context where if you say these many prayers, the Blessed Mother will give you special favors or if you light these many candles something else will happen. It was a theology of chemistry, mixing magical elements together to get exactly what we wanted. I wish I could say that I left behind the predominance of magical thinking to the old fashioned, pious Roman Catholic Church of my youth. The truth is that I have found that magical thinking is alive and well in The Episcopal Church. Frankly, magical thinking is one of the demons that we all face and that we must all constantly strive against as we choose to follow the path of Christian life.

It was mom’s Alzheimer’s that eventually helped me get over my magical thinking. In the last stages of my mom’s Alzheimer’s she had a massive seizure. She was expected to die. She was being kept comfortable with some oxygen to ease her breathing. At about 3am she began to speak having not spoken for over three years. She recognized us in the room with her and was able to thank us for our loving care. The experience lasted for only ten minutes. And then she fell silent again, never to speak again. She died three years later.

Hearing my mom say my name and hear her words of love after three years of her silence was an experience I cannot put in words for you. Perhaps, a description of my resistance to letting her go again will give you some sense of my lack of indifference. As she slipped away from a little miracle of awareness back into end stage Alzheimer’s I ran down the ICU hallway to insist that the doctors keep her on oxygen and maybe she would speak again.

I was not just thinking that she would speak again but that she would be completely healed of her Alzheimer’s. I knew that part of the deficit of Alzheimer’s has to do with a lack of oxygen to the brain. I was absolutely furious at the doctors and they looked at me like I was nuts. I needed a Chaplain right then not a doctor. In those minutes of rage I went from enjoying the unexpected in a little miracle to demanding that it become a life-defining miracle.

I did not get the miracle I wanted; but my life was transformed. By standing by her side for her 11 years with Alzheimer’s, I learned how to stay present in the midst of very painful, unrelenting losses without denying it, rejecting it, pretending that it would go away, but just by consistently choosing to be lovingly present until the end.

For me being a priest is not about my healing power to fix what ails you or even to fix this congregation. Being a priest for me is about being be a sign of the unconditional love of God. As a son I lovingly and silently stood by to the end with my mother in end stage Alzheimer’s. As a priest I have been able to stand by people without giving them false hope because it might be easier for me than standing silently by as they grieve their humanity. This is not my call alone, but it is yours too. Remember the way I started this sermon. Do we yearn to be great healers like Jesus or are we willing to be fragile signs of God’s unconditional love to Elijah and to the man with demons in today’s Gospel.

Unconditional love leads to transformational healing. Magical thinking suggests that one of us has more healing power than another. None of us can fix each other. Yet powerful transformation can emerge when we choose to be fully present to one another without censoring out the ugly truths of our selves or our shared life.

Over the last few weeks a little miracle has been happening to St. Stephen’s Church. When you have said I need healing prayers, I hurt here, I am tired, I am without hope, I am sad, I feel abandoned by God and more without fear of communal judgment – these our little miracles of healing. However, we must be careful not to magically want to make this little miracle we have been experiencing here at St. Stephen’s more than it is or we risk becoming like the little boy who thought he could fly like Superman and then died the tragic death induced by magical thinking.

God’s healing rarely matches up to the healing we imagine for ourselves. Let’s face it, the miracle that we all really want for ourselves is to be immortal like Samantha in Bewitched. We want to blink away all that is uncomfortable, undesirable and painful. Yet if we wish to be truly spiritually mature, then we must let this kind of magical thinking die.

Do not be fooled it is never an easy path traveling from a life paralyzed by magical thinking to the spiritual freedom associated with authentic Christian healing. To my surprise I grieved the loss of my mother’s cognitive capacity the second time much more deeply than the gradual loss over her eight years of Alzheimer’s. Yet more than anything else in my life it was because of that little miracle that I eventually received the freedom to completely let go of my mom.

As a kid my mom always told me that she was dying. I took her at her word and believed her. Of course I now know that it was her anxiety speaking, as she did not die until forty years later. Yet as a little boy I constantly feared her loss. That little miracle changed me after I got over my momentary rage at the doctors. The little miracle and the rage were spiritually cleansing experiences that gave me the freedom to accept her mortality and to gracefully let her die when the time came.

Big miracles are very, very rare. Big miracles spontaneously happen through God, but never because we pray for them, organize all the magical elements or hold our breath insisting that they magically appear. When we live only for the big miracles we spiritually and physically exhaust ourselves closing ourselves off from the authentic life that God calls us to experience.

Therefore to avoid this, on a daily basis you and I must give our free consent to spiritual cleansing and regularly choose if we wish to journey towards eternal life with God or prefer our magical immortality. The path to spiritual maturity is not an easy one, as we must admit that we are human and that even little miracles will not let us avoid the inevitability of death when God calls us.

We must be ready and willing to let go when God calls us – no sooner like my mom’s anxious fears and no later resisting to indefinitely the call of God. Yet at the same time in all our wounded mortality throughout the process of becoming authentic we bear witness to the unconditional love of God through works of justice, love and mercy.

God Bless You!

Non-Anxious Discernment: Holy Patience Amidst Ambiguity

May 2, 2010 - retreat meditation for the Daughters of The King in Reno

Today’s Gospel is about discernment and love. The Gospel says that the way we imitate Jesus’ love is through discipleship. Jesus leaves me wanting to have a set of directions about how to be a disciple who loves. Jesus leaves the disciples with very little in the way of directions. I bet the disciples are anxious just as we are when we don’t know exactly the way to proceed. We learn the specifics of our unique calls to discipleship through non-anxious discernment. Discernment is not easy and requires our patience amidst ambiguity.

Discernment often anticipates long periods of meaningless waiting until we hear the voice of God manifested through the movements of the Spirit. Meaningless waiting is a challenge for all of us as we are purposeful people who want solutions to our real problems. Our sense of urgency for quick solutions judges meaningless waiting and we resist discernment.

If you are like me I am sure you can remember times in your life where it is very difficult to wait and listen. If we are honest then we remember the way we rushed into major decisions. I can vividly remember making important life decisions out of a sense of urgency. The time I went into seminary a second time in NYC was one such time. All my family and friends told me that it would not work. I ignored them. I did not pray about it. My decision was not a spiritual decision. It was a pragmatic decision. My parents had Alzheimers and Parkinsons and I wanted to stay near them. The Jesuits would have sent me to the Caroline and Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. By going to the NY seminary I was able to get on with it. I knew the day I entered that I made a terrible decision and 18 months later I left. I made my own decision, but not one in the Spirit and so no surprise that it was not sustainable.

Discernment is the process of choosing between two loves. Loves are often manifested through multiple calls. We are called in a number of ways, but can only follow one or two of these calls. When there are many calls, desires and gifts there tends to be lots of inner noise in us. That is when we pray we cannot seem to escape the clutter in our minds and hearts.

A multiplicity of calls, desires and gifts is a blessing, but it is also fertile ground for anxiety. Anxiety impedes fruitful discernment. All of us experience different degrees of anxiety and it is not judged to be good or bad. However, when our anxiety holds us back from making responsible and mature decisions than we lose opportunities to live in the Spirit’s time.

There is a huge difference between the Spirit’s time and our time. The government moves very slowly. Like the Post Office they are slow! Yet when we want the Spirit to move us it is can also be even more painfully slow. And at other times the Spirit is ready and we are not. Both times can be ones of great anxiety. Due to the way anxiety is uncomfortable discernment is often avoided. We need to discern often when we are least ready to discern.

A multiplicity of choices is often a sign of the need for discernment.

An anxious resistance to listening is a sign of the need for discernment.

When we have much to choose we are least likely to be inclined towards discernment.

Each of us has learned responses to the ways we encounter a multiplicity of choices.

Do you feel blessed with many choices?

Are you patiently non-anxious with many choices?

Are you peaceful amidst sustained ambiguity and uncertainty?

Be honest now!

There is a wonderful model to which we can all turn to in Mary, the mother of Jesus. When the angel Gabriel visited Mary in her sixth month, he said, The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid Mary, God has found favor with you. When Gabriel said Mary would give birth to a child, Mary said, how can this be for she was without child?

Discernment always takes place in God’s time. It is necessary to be patient, to maintain trust that all is blessing and that in time you will know the way to proceed. Before we can even begin discernment we have to be willing to give up our control over the outcome. Otherwise we might just as well get on with it, make some decisions and not call it discernment. Sometimes there is little fallout from making routine decisions in this way. When we are at Cotsco picking between two brands of pasta discernment really is not necessary. At the same time I can attest to you from my life experience that the biggest decisions in our lives truly benefit from discernment. Discernment means we are inviting God into our decision-making process.

To engage in the practice of discernment means letting go of our need to singularly make the decision. Mary did not decide, she was open to the angel Gabriel’s message and consented. Consent is very different than decision and can only be recognized when we are in touch with the Spirit working in and through us. Discernment means we are willing to listen to God and the Spirit working through our lives. Listening means we are willing to be still and simply to listen with open hearts, without judgment and holding things very lightly. Play can be a form of holding things lightly as long as we are paying attention and listen.

We introduce play by looking at our lives as they are as pieces of clay that can be molded and formed in this way or that way. Playful listening is a posture towards our discernment and listening. Listening means we first begin trying to slow down the inner noise so that we can hear God rather than just our own minds talking. We listen in many different ways. Listening to God means spending time alone with God in prayer. Yet listening typically requires more than just listening to God in the solitude of our own chosen and tightly controlled spaces. Listening needs to be more than just what happens between God and us.

Discernment is often strengthened in community. We listen and hear differently in community. We particularly listen differently when we participate in communities of deep trust. Trust is not the same as loyalty. Sometimes loyal friends will not tell us what we need to hear, as they are loyal to us. You often hear people say, he is my friend meaning he would never say anything against me. Against me typically means agreeing with me and supporting me. You hear people say, he is my friend I can rely on him or her. However, true friends who know us through our hearts in community can help us see beyond our blinds spots. True Christian community has a quality of being open to the Spirit leading you.

Communities of the Spirit draw a diversity of people who do not easily get along. I have found in communities that it is in the uneven edges of community life, the asymmetries in the uneven spaces between us that is where the Holy Spirit most often resides. If we can listen at the edges of the community from those on the periphery as well as at the center we are more likely to make Spirit inspired decisions. The mature community is not anxious to make quick decisions. The mature community is willing to patiently wait and remain content in community holding ambiguity lightly.

Be honest how many of you love ambiguity in this way in your lives?

Now the good news is that you need not love ambiguity, but on the other hand if you loathe ambiguity, you make yourself vulnerable to making poorly discerned decisions. Poorly discerned decisions are decisions we make without listening to the Spirit of God. When we are less anxious then we make the inner space to listen to and hear multiple perspectives.

These multiple perspectives are not merely other peoples’ opinions, but if expressed through holy listening in communal prayer, may be inspired words that God would like us to hear. This means that we understand and respect each other as vehicles of grace and of the Spirit too. Each of you are vehicles of grace and a means by which the Spirit speaks and lets us know what we ought to do and what we are called to do. Discernment is our willingness to patiently wait to be inspired by the Spirit of God in multiple ways before we choose to act.

Spirit inspired decisions do not change from day to day, but benefit from felt continuity. It is this memory of continuity that strengthens us when challenges inevitably come later. When challenges do come we are less inclined to think that we made a bad decision. Rather than running away from a decision we made, we stay the course remaining faithful because we remember that the Spirit led us here. We are more likely to suffer with the choices we have made for we have the confidence that the Spirit directed us to this place and in time whatever challenges we experience will work for the glory of God. I don’t offer use the word “suffer” often in my sermons because I grew up over associating suffering with faith in God. Yet we are willing to suffer with life choices we have made when we made that decision convinced that the Holy Spirit called us to that place. When I decided as in when I went to seminary the second time in NYC it was easy to leave.

In discernment we pray as a community to discover that which will give glory to God. The quick decisions typically give glory to us but the Spirit inspired decisions give glory to God.

I have personally come to learn that the decisions I have made in haste have been the least sustainable and prone to my frequent change in whims. Yet when I have waited sometimes even for years before making certain decisions, then these decisions were grounded in God’s time with the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is these latter decisions in my life that have not wavered, but have remained constant amidst the challenges of life. The difference is making decisions that are based on calls from God not merely our anxious solutions to problems. Anxious solutions are rarely sustainable ones.

So, let us pray that we will be blessed with non-anxious hearts so that our spirit may be attentive to the way we are being uniquely called. Let us pray that when an angel visits us with a Spirit inspired message, we might be able to say, let it be done to me according to your loving desires God not according to my desires.


God Bless You!

The Church As The Means Not The End - February 28, 2010

Readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1 and Luke 13:31-35

Abstract: The sermon focuses on three questions: Do you and I know the way we are grounded in our relationship with God? Do we understand the difference between belief in God and coming to church? Do we appreciate the tension between practice and belief? These three questions are crucial to be freeing enough to hear and respond to God’s unique call to St. Stephen’s Church, even being led to a different place.


The subtitle of my sermon could be taken from the words of the Decalogue that we just recited together, “You shall not make for yourself any idol”. Extending that which we should not make into idol, let us include the church. All too quickly we can make the church into a false idol for our worship.

The psalmist says today, “The one thing I seek is to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” In the OT reading Abram asked God about how to possess the land, his home in relationship with God. The NT turns our attention from the cares of our life in towns, cities and the buildings where we dwell to our “citizenship in heaven”.

In the Gospel we see resistance to God’s efforts to gather the disciples into a new place. Jesus says in his frustration with the disciples, you have been left with your house. So as to say, you refused to be gathered and so I leave you to your worldly concerns, as Jesus turns his focus on realizing God’s mission. The disciples were invested in Jesus in that one place. In the Gospel the disciples stayed in the familiar place they knew versus following Jesus’ invitation. Makes you wonder if the disciples really understood Jesus’ message of mission.

When the psalmist says, “the one thing I seek is to dwell in the house of the Lord”, it does not mean to dwell as we do in this building. House of the Lord is God’s being. The house of the Lord is for the people of the new covenant in NT times, the mystical Body of Christ. Most Anglican theologians have taught since the Reformation that the mystical Body of Christ is not the same as the church. This is very different than what Roman Catholics believe. Roman Catholics believe that there is a literal meaning of the church as the Body of Christ.

Membership in the mystical Body of Christ is different than our membership in St. Stephen’s Church.

Do you believe in God? Do you believe that you are very members of the mystical Body of Christ?

I don’t mean a belief in a higher power or a creative force in the universe. I mean do you believe in God? Do you believe that you are specially knitted into the mystical Body of Christ? I don’t even mean do you believe in the words of the Nicene or Apostolic Creeds. Do you have an affective, that is, personal relationship with God that binds you to God alone? At first glance that might seem like a very silly question to you. Well of course I believe in God, I am here in church.

This is fundamentally a very important question as the parish sorts out its individual and corporate commitments to St. Stephen’s as a parish and to God. These are related but distinct commitments.

If like the disciples we hesitate in following Jesus then we cling on to places sometimes making them idols of false worship. These idols become distractions from the true God. The English reformers criticized the Roman Catholic Church for making the church their God.

The disciples in the Gospel today resisted Jesus’ invitation to follow Jesus to Jerusalem. The disciples do not even understand what Jesus is talking about. Are there ways that we relate to this church building that impede seeking only to abide in God’s house in the mystical Body of Christ?

To get at this question we really do need to ask the question do we believe in God. Do we have an affective relationship with God?

The scripture text that has had the most influence on shaping my life is John 21 where Jesus says three times to Peter, “Do you love me?” Peter says, of course I love you. I can imagine Jesus saying Peter do you believe in me, for to love Jesus is to believe in God. Later in that text Peter wants to cling on to Jesus and stay with him to keep things just the way they were. But Jesus says no, I must leave you. Peter keeps on clinging and Jesus finally says, when you were young you went about as you pleased, but when you are older, you may be led to a place you may rather not go.

In the Gospel this morning the disciples are unprepared to be led to a new place. They clung on to what they knew, missing Jesus’ invitation. Jesus is inviting the disciples to align their lives with his in a mission that will draw them away from their land and homes. Mission is different than clinging to Jesus.

Do we cling to God in the house of the Lord or do we cling to the holy houses we construct?

As a spiritual director I have met several people who though their entire lives were ones of apparent commitment to the church, at some point the veil was pulled back and they were faced with the raw question – do I believe in God. It is a scary question as I have watched people who love the church realize that it was the church not God that was the focus of their love. Often this is a disorienting discovery leading people to fundamental questions about the way they have ordered their lives around the church but not around God.

Several years ago I met Julie. Julie had not grown up in a Christian household where the bible was read or her parents went to church. Yet Julie fell in love with God in the stories of the new and old testaments. Julie told me of her powerful relationship with God. Julie loved God in a home that was not friendly to God and indeed the name of God was strange. Julie had a secret relationship with God that she kept to herself and to her journal. As a young college student Julie was drawn to connect her relationship with God to a church community. Julie joined a church. It was in the church that she joined that she was told that God hates homosexuals. Julie had known she was a lesbian for many years and at news of this she broke down in tears having lost, she thought in that instant, her first and only true lover, God.

What is an affective relationship with God? Julie had an affective relationship with God that preceded her relationship with a church. Julie had fallen in love with God without the church. Then the church told Julie exactly the opposite. It took Julie almost twelve years to recover from that church’s condemnation of her. Julie has recovered and is an ordained Metropolitan Community Church Pastor. Today Julie knows the differences between loving Jesus, believing in God and coming to church. Julie knows about the tension between belief and practice. Julie knows the grounding of her belief is in God alone. Had Julie not been centered in God then when that church condemned her, she might have lost all her desire for God.

Do we cling to God or to the church?

Julie grounded her faith in God so she was free of clinging to a church that had betrayed her love of God.

So what role then does the church play or parishes like St. Stephen’s? Simply, St. Stephen’s, Trinity, St. Paul’s, St. Catherine’s and Faith Lutheran in Reno to name just a few as well as churches elsewhere around this nation and the world are a means to being fed by Word and sacrament to participate in God’s mission.

I like simple mantras for my prayer. You might try this mantra in your prayer:

St. Stephen’s church is one means to God. Our citizenship is with God alone.

Churches are nothing more and nothing less than a means to God. Our only end is our “citizenship with God” participating in God’s mission. All that supports this divinely mandated end in God and in mission is of God. All that impedes our love of God and participation in God’s mission is not of God and we should make an effort to remove these distractions. If you find yourself clinging to a church without freedom of movement, it might be worth your while to ask if you love God or the church. If you love God more than the church you will be much freer to go where God leads you. If you love the church more than God, you may lack the freedom to be led.

Our total focus must always be on our “citizenship in God” rather than in to that which we cling. Jesus said to Peter, do you love me? Hear these words as do you believe in God and then Jesus saying, feed my sheep. And at St. Stephen’s all might say, we love you Jesus and we have faithfully fed your sheep through our Bread Ministries, the Food Bank and Family Promise naming but a few. Then Jesus may say to you, are you willing to follow me wherever I lead you? Of course the parish says! Then Jesus will say, will you follow me even if it is to a place you may initially rather not wish to go?

This morning in the Gospel the disciples clung to what they knew, staying close to their familiar surroundings. But the disciples refused the divine invitation being offered by Jesus. After all they are very happy being exactly where they are – next to their favorite restaurants, movie theatres and right next to the camel crossing.

St. Stephen’s Church is one means to God. Our citizenship is with God alone.

St. Stephen’s might discover anew its life right here or be invited to participate in God’s mission in another place. None of us know for sure. Until we do, let us wait with open hands and open hearts to be led only by the Spirit of God.

As Saint Augustine once said, we will always be restless, until we rest in you, oh God. Augustine did not say, “we will be restless”, until we find that one perfect church.

Learning from Jesus’ words we know that when we have an affective relationship with God, then we will no longer cling to anything less than God.

Let us persevere in our discernment processes so that we will stay focused on our true home in God alone and in God’s mission with heartfelt love.

God bless you!

Malleable Enough to Become Fully Human

February 6, 2010 – Fifth Sunday After Epiphany

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 138, I Corinthians 15:1-11 and Luke 5:1-11

Abstract: The sermon invites prayerful consideration on two questions: Do you wish to be malleable enough to discover the life of God in new and unexpected ways or will you maintain your known comforts at any cost? How does your need for things to be exactly the way you have known them to be, impede you from being open to invitations to new life? If St. Stephen’s Church chooses life, then it will do whatever is necessary to be nurtured by God even letting go of fear and the comfort of familiar places.


“Set us free” seems to be the recurring theme of our texts this morning from the opening prayer through the Gospel. To trust the Lord’s invitation to drop their nets, the disciples had to learn to be free of their failed experiences, their inability to find fish. Do you have a sense of the empathy of this text for our challenge in finding newcomers to be members of our parish? The disciples have to work hard to be open enough to follow the Lord’s invitation to drop their nets again despite their recent failures. They doubt Jesus and even grumble that they had been exactly on that side of the boat and found no fish. We are about to enter a year of discernment on the parish’s future mission and identity. You might say, oh no, not more discernment about our mission. We have done that before and look at where we are. Obviously that did not work.

Then as the story goes their nets broke with the abundance of fish. Wow! Given the very close connection between the disciples and the life of St. Stephen’s it might be worth exploring what might have made the difference for the disciples. For the moment I am not concerned about the way we catch fish or even newcomers. I am more interested in the disciples’ change of heart. How did they go from finding a scarcity of fish to an abundance of fish? What do you think made the difference between when they dropped their nets out of their own wills and when they dropped them at the Lord’s invitation? Do you think it is merely that their luck was better with Jesus?

Is this Gospel story about luck? I don’t think so. If the story is more than about luck, then I think we have some work to do so we like the disciples might drop our nets anew. If we take nets too literally, we might hear this text as only being about fish or at best finding newcomers. Might we exchange nets for dropping our guard. How do we drop our guard to hear the invitations of Jesus and the Holy Spirit anew? The opening words of today’s collect have given us a clue as to what may be necessary – set us free.

There are different kinds of freedom. For example there is freedom of self-determination and political freedom. We live in the land of the free. For the most part we enjoy a high degree of self-determination in America. There are constraints due to our natural talents and for some a lack of privilege, but compared to many other countries we Americans have great freedom in planning our own destinies. Not too few American presidents have gone from rags to riches and even global influence. Our political freedom follows closely too. We choose to live where we want to live, drive the car that we like, choose friends, give to charities that match our values, worship where we wish, believe what we want to believe in and more.

Through self-determination in a land of political and religious freedom we are the masters of our own destiny. After living in India for a few weeks I have a renewed sense of the privilege of being an American surrounded by the wealth of our country. Though I like most of you are not wealthy I/we benefit from state and federal infrastructure of transportation, sanitation, water and electricity. In contrast in India the power goes off every afternoon. There is not mass transit and traffic is chaotic. Poverty is side by side to wealth. It was a very disorienting context for me. As much as I wanted to be there in India, I was aware of the way my comforts here at home sometimes prevented me from fully entering into this foreign experience. I could sense myself holding back. I had a sense of longing for some of those comforts. At times I am even embarrassed to say that I may have judged some Indians as less through my American lens. We traveled on an overnight train that looked like it had been made in the early 1900’s. It was old and filthy. As a former businessman I found myself wondering why this could not be different. I found the space unfriendly and at times I was frankly afraid and angry at carelessly entering this new context.

Stefani who had been to India before was a bit more comfortable in this very different place. Crossing the street without traffic lights, with hundreds of pedestrians, fast motor bikes whizzing in and out and thousands of old rickshaws I probably would have stood indefinitely at one side of the street without ever crossing over. One day we were crossing the street and I was absolutely terrified, frozen in my tracks with all this traffic fast approaching me from every angle. Stefani said don’t hold on to me and then said, keep walking they will drive around you. They will not hit you. She was right, but wow each time was a trust walk to just cross the street.

I was way out of my comfort zone and yet I would go back. Honestly everything in me says, don’t go back. Yet at the same time I uncovered some insights there that I have not found in any book. I learned about postcolonial theology from a very different lens. It is a lens that will improve the quality of the work I do here in the US. Many postcolonial theologians write about India, but very few have been to India. In these experiences I can empathize with the disciples. I hope when I go back to India in a few years that I will feel a little less threatened by being in such a different context. I hope and pray that I will be set free so that I can more fully enter the culture of India. At the same time I expect that as I plan travel to Africa and to the islands off of Australia to visit with Aboriginal peoples I will have these jarring experiences again.

Over time during our stay in India I was less harsh on myself. I acknowledged that I had come a long way from growing up in a family for whom a foreign vacation was going from one borough of NYC to another. We lived in the Bronx and every year vacationed in a bungalow at the beach in Queens. My brothers and sisters like my self have been to Italy, England, Spain and Ireland. Yet none of us had ever been to Africa or India or places that are not designed to cater to the American tourist’s need for comfort. Stefani had been to Africa and to India. Her growing up was no more diverse and even a little less so than the Bronx as she grew up in Santa Barbara. Yet we both have a passion for hospitality. It is one of the values that literally binds us in marriage. Part of genuine hospitality is learning to be a good guest. The host has all the privilege and power of leading the guest. The guest has to be free to experience the life that the host invites the guest to experience.

Jesus as our host invited the disciples to trust Him. Jesus knew of their failures to find fish in exactly that place, but he was determined to show them a different way of seeing in the same place. As challenging as it was for the disciples to see differently in the same place, the stakes are a bit higher in different places as it was for me in India. For St. Stephen’s you too are being called to see differently in this place and the Spirit may in its own way eventually call you to see possibilities of new life in a different place.

Spiritual freedom is something very different than political and religious freedom. It has to do with the freedom to respond to God and the way the Spirit leads us into new life. Spiritual freedom is not merely about our self-determined desires, but God’s desires for us. Our desires and God’s desires very often conflict. Sometimes the conflict has been named as sin. When our desires dominate God’s desire we are vulnerable to sin. Yet sin is not the only outcome of when our desires conflict with God’s desires. Another outcome is that we become less than we are gifted to become. That is we never achieve God’s full purpose for us and so we settle for being less fully human to be comfortable.

In our home we have a framed set of words by St. Irenaues, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive”. These words were on our wedding invitation and these last seven years have been near our entryway. These words are a reminder to Stefani and me of our commitment to each other. The words are a reminder to our shared commitment to work with each other through love to bring the best out in each other. Bringing the best out in each other is different than covering each other’s back. It means that we open ourselves up to be molded by God. As we both do this, our love deepens for one another.

It requires each of us bringing a willingness to be malleable. By malleable we become like clay in the potter’s hand being molded into something of beauty. I was not totally malleable to my Indian hosts or to the Spirit of God last week. I want to be more malleable because I have had the occasion of malleability in other contexts in my life and the treasures I have discovered like the disciples have been of rich abundance. As I hear the opening collect and then the Gospel, I heard “Set us free of ourselves”. “Set us free of our own desires”. “Set us free to see as God sees”. The OT lesson instructed us to give up our sight and it is implied to take on God’s sight.

The disciples’ seashore context and India seem far away from the realities of St. Stephen’s Church. The disciples had found their inner strength to drop their nets. Instead of nets might we say they dropped their guard so that they could take in the abundance of God. I am working to drop my guard, so that the next time I might more fully enter the Indian and or African experience so I will be free enough to receive the gifts that can only be received in that context. I could stay home and never go again. If I did I would know that the reason would be simply fear and discomfort. Fear and discomfort are signs of a lack of my spiritual freedom. I want to be free to experience God in India and wherever the Spirit leads me.

What about you? Do you wish to be malleable enough to discover the life of God in new and unexpected ways or will you maintain your known comforts at any cost? How does your need for things to be exactly the way you have known them to be, impede you from being open to invitations to new life? Are you willing to let go of experiences of the past that might hold you back from going to new places, initially uncomfortable and foreign to your desired comfort? There is a real choice here. You can stay exactly where you are and leave the work to others. Yet if you do choose out of fear than we like the disciples may not find any new fish. Ultimately if the disciples stayed in that one place they would have gone hungry without anything to eat. To be fed we need to eat what the Lord puts before us. If St. Stephen’s Church chooses life, then we will do whatever is necessary to be nurtured by God even letting go of fear and the comfort of familiar places.