Cross Talk

New Cross Talk Blog

2008-11-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

I've created a new CrossTalk blog. You can find it at http://trinitycathedralsacramento.wordpress.com/.

This is a WordPress blog which will give us more flexibility. One of the features is that posts are sorted by category (listed on the right) so you can go directly to a category of interest. This will be more helpful as we fill the blog out with more content.

Brian

on the eve of thanksgiving

2008-11-26T16:43:00.000-08:00

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)

The people God led through the desert,
the people who in darkness were shown a great light,
the people whom the Lord redeemed and called forth from bondage,
not once but again and again:
we are those people.

The people who call others forth out of bondage,
out of darkness into light,
out of poverty into abundance,
out of grief into joy,
out of despair into hope,
out of death into life:
we are those people.

The people God showered with manna,
bread in the wilderness,
bread for the journey,
the people God gave an abundant land,
an abundant life,
and a spirit of thankfulness:
we are those people.

Fisher- men and women by the lakeshore,
gathering in and mending our nets;
Seated by the tax-tables;
Thirsting by a well;
Stumbling blindly along a road;
or carrying a cross:
we are those people too.

God’s abundance is not the surfeit of this world’s pleasures,
not the largest or loudest or tallest or richest,
but the wealthiest in other ways:
in the redeeming hand when all is lost,
the recovered sight when all is blind,
the touch of kindness when all is cold.

We are the people of
forgiveness,
acceptance,
love,
grace,
providence,
blessing.
We are the people who experience God as creator, savior, sustainer;
who experience God as JOY.

All this summer and into the fall we’ve heard the story of Moses,
from the bulrushes to a glance across the mountains,
a glimpse of the promised land.
And this unlikely child would lead them,
the people of God,
from bondage to freedom,
from sufferance of Pharaoh to open hand of God—
and he would teach them the ways of God,
as surely as he taught them the ways of the desert.

Seek God’s reign first— put things in their right order of priority—
and live in accordance with the covenant God has made with you.

Do not forget— we did not earn this blessing, this abundance—
he gave it to you, as a loving parent cares for her child.

Remember, and be glad, and thank God.

Throughout the stories of Jesus, he is leading the people on the way—
picking up like Joshua where Moses left off—
guiding the people to the land of promise.

Who better than the Child of Promise to do this for us?
Who better than God’s Son to lead us to his Father’s house?
Who better than God’s revelation to show the way to us?
Who better than the bringer of life, to be our fount of blessing?

Blessed one, bless us,
in the breaking of the Bread,
remind us who you are—
Bread of Life,
and remind us who we are—
those who do not live by manna alone,
not even in the wilderness of wandering souls,
but by the WORD that proceeds from God’s mouth.

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

—W. H. Auden, From the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, (October 1941-July 1942).

We are the people
who seek God the Father.

We are the people
who know God in Christ.

We are the people
who live in God the Spirit.

A Litany of Thanksgiving

Let us give thanks to God for all the gifts so freely bestowed upon us.
For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea.
For all that is gracious in the lives of men and women,
revealing the image of Christ,
For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends,
For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve,
For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play,
For the brave and courageous,
who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity,
For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice,
For the communion of saints, in all times and places,
Above all, for the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord;
To him be praise and glory, with you, O Father, and
the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

Drawn from the Book of Common Prayer, 1979.

Thanksgiving Eve 2008

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After Christmas...

2008-11-26T00:33:00.000-08:00

After Christmas…

After Christmas… we put the presents away, recycle the wrappings, and store the boxes in the attic or garage.

After Christmas… the child Jesus grows up.

After Christmas… we try to get our minds around the mystery. Who is this child?

After Christmas… we wonder what will change. What will we do differently? What will we see differently?

After Christmas…

Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even;

Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath'ring winter fuel.

“Hither, page, and stand by me;
If thou know’st, telling—
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”

“Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine!
Bring me pine logs hither!
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear him thither."

The saint in the carol sees a way to serve Christ through the poor – and acts on it. He and his page go out into the snow to invite the man to dine.

In “The Rebel Jesus” (The Bells of Dublin, with The Chieftains) Jackson Browne sings of the irony of warm feasting indoors while the poor starve in the cold:

…And once a year when Christmas comes,
We give to our relations,
And perhaps we give a little to the poor,
If the generosity should seize us,
But if any one of us should interfere,
In the business of why they are poor,
They get the same as the rebel Jesus.

After Christmas… will we see differently? Will we act differently? Will we walk out into the cold in the footsteps of Wenceslas to seek out the poor? Will we speak out on the causes of poverty? Will we be working to transform the world into the image of Christ’s kingdom – a kingdom of peace and not of poverty, of abundance and not of scarcity; a kingdom turned not inward in self-preservation but outward in charity?

Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together,
Through the rude wind's wild lament,
And the bitter weather.

“Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.”

"Mark my footsteps, good my page,
Tread thou in them boldly;
Thou shalt find the winter's rage,
Freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master’s steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.

--J. M. Neale (1818-1866), The New Oxford Book of Carols, Hugh Keyte & Andrew Parrott, eds., (Oxford, 1992) #97.

A Franciscan Benediction:

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of all people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.

May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world; so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

***

The English word GOSPEL (Anglo-Saxon, godspell, ‘God-story’) is used to translate the Greek euangelion, ‘good tidings’. [Alan Richardson, A Theological Word Book of the Bible (Macmillan, 1950) 100]

As Christ’s hands and voice in the world we strive to proclaim the good tidings of Jesus in our words and embody his gospel in our deeds.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (Luke 4:18)

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Preaching ths Sunday: The Final Judgement

2008-11-20T11:30:00.000-08:00

I am preaching this Sunday. The gospel reading (printed below) is Matthew 25:31-46. It is a great reading. In it, Jesus uses an image that was common in his day of final judgment. The picture of the king separating the sheep from the goats was not new or newsworthy. It was rather the criteria for judgment. Two things are noteworthy. First, it is not observance of the Torah or Temple worship, or even membership in a chosen group that is the criteria for judgment. Rather, have you fed the hungry, clothed the naked, etc.

There is another aspect that is more subtle. It has to do with a lack of calculation, a lack of judgment, if you will, on the part of the sheep. They feed the hungry, simply because they are hungry. I believe the sheep in the parable serve those around them as a way of life. Whereas the goats in the parable withhold service because of who it is that is hungry. If they had known it was the king that was in need, why certainly they would have fed him. "When did we see you hungry," they ask the king.

For the sheep, there is no distinction. I believe the deeper meaning of this parable is connected to this looking at others without making distinctions of who should be loved and who shouldn't.
Here's the text:

Matthew 25:31-46
31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.”
41Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in
prison and you did not visit me.”
44Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” 45Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

Anglican Monastery Destroyed

2008-11-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

A stunningly beautiful Episcopal Monastery that was home for seven monks and a spiritual retreat to many visitors and pilgrims was destroyed in the fires in Southern California. Please keep them, and all the victims of the fires, in your prayers. This is from a recent New York Times article:

Early last Friday, fire consumed most of the complex where the monks had chanted, studied the stars and welcomed guests from around the world. The next afternoon, they returned to survey the damage.

“We were very quiet,” Brother Joseph Brown recalled in a telephone interview Tuesday. “We just looked around. We were in shock.”

By the time the Tea Fire, in Santa Barbara County, was under control, all that remained of the 60-year-old monastery itself were a skeletal archway, a charred iron cross and a large Angelus bell.

Two small artist’s studios near the main building were intact. An icon of Christ that Brother Brown had been painting with pigments made from egg yolk and mineral powder was still on a desk. A cello sat a few feet away, unharmed. In the chaos of wind and fire, a sheriff’s deputy had moved another monk’s telescope outside, where it remained unscathed.

“In the midst of all this destruction,” Brother Brown, 46, said Tuesday, “miracles happened all over the place.”

“The feelings right now are difficult to describe,” he said. “One of the hazards of monasticism throughout the centuries is we become attached to what we have or where we are. This is simply a reminder that what we are called to is not our stuff. This is a cleansing by fire.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Diocesan Convention 2008

2008-11-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I and other members of the Cathedral were in Redding for the annual convention of the Diocese of Northern California. I only took pictures at the end when we were having our closing Eucharist. The teenagers were having a parallel event (fun not business.) They joined us for this last service. I sat with them. Here are a few our my pictures.

YOU can make a big difference

2008-11-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

From parishoner Virginia McNeely:

Did you know that with minimal effort you can help scores of individuals and numerous groups in our community?

We all belong to a number of formal and informal groups and clubs: gyms, book clubs, hiking groups, professional and social clubs, school groups, etc. Each of these groups has the potential to help others in the community, but they need someone to help them to see how. YOU can be that person!

For example, I am a member of Curves and of WeightWatchers, where I’ve shared news about the ministry of Trinity Cathedral with Jedediah Smith School’s BackSnack program. I had encouraged WeightWatchers members to give me their “target foods” (foods that are too tempting) when they cleaned their cupboards, so the leaders at Sierra 2 chose our BackSnack program to benefit from the drive where members gave one pound of food for each pound they lost. Having heard me talk about Jed Smith School, my Curves location owner has had peanut butter drives and has also donated backpacks and clothing for the program. With truly minimal effort on my part, more than 200 pounds of food has gone to help the kids at Jed Smith School. In addition, people have heard about what great work Trinity does and know that this is a caring congregation that they might consider joining.

Take a few minutes to brainstorm what activities and groups you’re involved with. Art? Bread of Life can use art supplies for their community program. Hiking, hunting, fishing? Collect jackets and sleeping bags for the homeless at Loaves and Fishes when your friends upgrade. Reading? The choir is having a book drive; the BackSnack project can use children’s books; the Friends of the Library are always collecting books to raise funds. Scouts or a social or work group? Collect food for River City Community Services by asking participants to bring canned goods to meetings or social events.

As baptized Christians we all show thanks for how good God has been to us by giving of our time, talent and treasure. Think of how you can help others to focus their giving and join you in your ministries. With a little effort you can make a big difference!

Election at Trinity

2008-11-10T17:55:00.001-08:00

Election day was very exciting for us at Trinity Cathedral. As a polling place we had a steady stream of folks passing through. Regardless of political persuasion, people seemed upbeat and eager to participate in our democratic process. The election night dinner was great. We had folks who voted earlier in the day who came back for dinner. I had conversations with a lot of people who were grateful for our hospitality. I feel like we are becoming a better known, positive influence in our neighborhood. It has been a great week to be a member of Trinity Cathedral.

Bishop Beisner's comments after the election

2008-11-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends in Christ:

At last, it is over. I can hardly remember what life was like before this recent presidential election campaign. It seemed as if it had been going on forever, and would never end. But it has ended, and the ending is truly historic. Tuesday night, with its multiple media announcements of a decision, moving speeches by each of the two candidates, and televised scenes of great celebration, has already taken its place in our memories as another of those “Where were you when...?” moments.

As usual, the people of our Diocese covered the entire spectrum in their electoral choices. We are at one and the same time very Red and very Blue. I hope that every one of us feels that we have been good Christian stewards and voted well on all that was before us on our ballots. I say that not with regard to the color-coding of the actual choices we made, but in reference to our voting in an informed and prayerful manner, with Christ’s Kingdom in view. God acts in human history to accomplish God’s mission. Did we help or hinder that movement? We are accountable to God for our use of the gift of our citizenship.

Pastorally, this will be a time for us to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep over the various outcomes of the election. With regard to Proposition 8, I was clear with you where I stood and why, and so it won’t surprise you that I am very saddened by its passage. Whatever your own decision with regard to that particular ballot measure, I ask that we all be especially mindful of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, who have just experienced a deeply hurtful loss. This is a time to show true compassion.

Finally: the politicians are fond of saying it as a way of signing off; for Christians, it should always be nothing less than an earnest prayer: God bless America. With it should also come the admonition: Bless God, America.

In Christ,

+Barry

Election Dinner

2008-11-02T16:44:00.000-08:00

Prior to moving to California, I lived in Idaho. Idaho is very different from California in many ways. It is a state that is mostly public lands. The population of the entire state is about 1 1/2 million, which is about the same as the population of Sacramento County. It is also a state that is, for the most, part politically monochromatic. Almost all elected officials are from the Republican party and the state always votes for the Republican presidential candidate. Idaho has never been a political battleground. Which means the political parties really did not have to pay any attention to Idaho. Prior to my 12 years in Idaho, I lived 8 years in Hawaii, which was a monochromatically Democratic state. Consequently, for almost all of my adult life, I've lived in states that campaigns did not care about. Which means, prior to moving to California, I saw very, very few political advertisements. I remember watching the news and wishing I could see the ads that everybody was talking about.

Boy has that changed! Now I'm pretty tired of the political divisiveness and rancor. I wonder what damage we are doing to ourselves by this constant negativity. As a congregation we do not have to give into the voices of fear and judgementalism. We can be a different kind of community. We can model grace even when we disagree politically.

And we can do this is a concrete way this Tuesday. Because we are a polling place, many of our neighbors come here to vote. We will be offering them free dinner from 5pm to 8pm. This is an important and rare opportunity for us to model grace and hospitality at a time when poeple will be anxious and excited about the election. I hope you can help with this event. Volunteers are welcome to help from 1pm until about 9pm. I hope to see you there!
Blessings,
Brian Baker

Political Divisiveness - At what cost?

2008-10-31T06:44:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was moved by an article written by The Rev. Sara Miles from St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco. She was reflecting on the culture of this election season. She wrote:

It’s no secret that there’s a lot of time, energy, and money going into stirring up passions around this election. You’ve read the attacks on Barack Obama and his supporters, on Sarah Palin and John McCain. You’ve received or sent angry, rumor-filled emails. You’ve heard or told snarky, hostile jokes about the evils of the other side–whoever “the other side” is for you. You’ve sat there fuming reading the news or watching TV, and you may even have despaired about the general level of dishonesty, vitriol and division generated by campaigns and their supporters.

I want to ask you to pause and consider how our words and actions during this campaign are going to play out in the years to come. Anger– especially anger that feels “righteous,” when we’re raging against injustice and the bad guys– is addictive. It’s hard to let go of. As someone who’s lived in wars, during bitter political struggles, and also in post-conflict societies, I can tell you that anger flung around recklessly during a conflict poisons the water of civil society for a long time. And I see how carrying around rage and resentment hurts individuals personally. And as someone who considers herself a part of what we call the Body of Christ, I can tell you that it’s impossible to hate a part of that Body without damaging the whole.

So I want to ask you, first, to take a deep breath and pray for your enemies.

So much of the political discourse appeals to our lower selves. The flames of fear and judgment are fanned in order to motivate us to vote against the evil “other.” This divisive judgementalism is sinful and harms us socially and spiritually. I believe the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near. We will never see it, however, if we keep focusing on how evil the “other” is.

There is nothing wrong with being politically active. In fact I think we have a responsibility to take an active role in our civic life. But our civil action needs to be civil. I believe as disciples of Jesus, we need to affirm the good in our communities, and to work together, despite partisan differences, toward positive change.

Saturday Service Photos

2008-10-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

We’ve started a new service on Saturdays at 5:10pm. It is a great, simple, casual and reverent service. Here are some pictures.

love is all you need

2008-10-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord my strength, and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14-15)

It has been a long, long green season. Early on, we heard the story of Moses found in the bulrushes by Pharaoh's daughter - and how he was nursed by his birth mother, adopted by the princess, ran with the princes, then ran away a fugitive from justice (he'd killed a man, an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew slave) into the camp of Jethro, whose daughter he married and whose sheep he herded.

So there he was in the middle of the desert, herding sheep. He learned all the ways of the desert - and all the waterholes. Whatever for? What could God possibly have in mind?

Moses found himself in the midst of an outrageous training program -- and he must have wondered: "If this is the training program, God, what is the job?"

You couldn't blame him for asking. God however kept his peace, and revealed his purpose slowly. You, he said to Moses through the burning bush, are to lead your people out of slavery to freedom. You are to guide them through the desert (remember where all those watering holes are?) and lead them to the land of promise. As you travel you are to teach them the way - not just the ways of the desert but the way of God.

I will give you my word - I will give you my promise - and I will give you my Law.

Moses was alone on the mountain, Nebo or Pisgah, at the end of his life. He had climbed to a high place, and he could see all around. He could see as in a vision the Promised Land laid out before him.

It was like the view the Joad family had, in "The Grapes of Wrath", as they came over Tehachapi Pass and caught sight of the Great Central Valley of California, like a garden without walls. It was like that view for me - coming over that same pass, seeing the first green grass I'd seen for many months and two thousand miles.

For the people of Israel, it meant coming home at last to a place they had never known.

Moses had led them to this point; now God let him see the land with his own eyes.

God leads him up a mountain and shows him the view. Behind him, in the past, are the concerns for the freedom of his people, their physical safety - under threat from the overwhelming force of their declared enemies, from their hunger and thirst, from their foolish idol worship.

Moses looks out across the land. He stands there, a leader facing the future - knowing it is out there - yet dragging along the baggage of the past.

The future is so close now that he can almost taste it - and yet three problems remain: gossip, nostalgia, and, in another way, succession.

For all the time he has led them there has been murmuring - gossip - perhaps out of fear of the unknown, perhaps idle speculation, perhaps discontent with their dependency on God.

There has been a hearkening back to a past viewed in hindsight through rose-colored glasses.

And there is the challenge of bringing forth a new generation of leadership for the future.

Yes, Moses had had his hands full.

As he looks over the fair prospect of the Promised Land, he knows that his work is done-but that the work of the people goes on.

He has been their lawgiver, teacher, advocate, and guide. He has been their shepherd in the wilderness. He has seen to their needs. He has brought down to them the law - after speaking with God face to face, without a mediator. He has promised them a future with hope. And he has delivered on that promise. Now it is time for a new leader to step up.

Cheerfully obedient to the last, Moses accepts a peaceful end as a gift from the Lord, at this last place in the desert. He has reached the ideal age - 120 - and his strength is unimpaired. He goes silently to his end, alone with God on the mountain; there is no shrine to visit. His legacy is the Torah, the word of God, and the freedom of his people.

The Torah, the Law of Moses, can be summed up in two great commandments.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

All 613 commandments in the Torah come to their completion in these two deceptively simple statements. If you love and show the love of God in the world, you have gone beyond the letter to the spirit of the laws.

Augustine, a bishop in North Africa when Rome was falling, had a bit of advice about the two great commandments.

He summed up all of our duty to God and each other in one phrase:

Love - and do as you please.

Love - and do as you please.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Love - and do as you please.

Wait a minute. Sounds like a Catch-22 doesn't it?

If you love, what will it please you to do? What is the loving thing?

And where did all this love stuff come from, by the way?

Well, it came from the top, and it came from the start.

In the beginning there was LOVE.

Love was with God and love was God - nothing came into being that did not come into being without LOVE.

For LOVE is the essence of the Torah - the Law given to Moses, the Word of God given to the prophets - and it is embodied in the words and acts and life and being of Jesus.

Jesus is love incarnate - and this love is the love of God. This love is the light of all humankind. It shines in the darkness of the world. And hate has never overcome it.

Love - and do as you please.

How do you love? Micah the prophet put it in three phrases: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God. (Micah 6:8)

The Torah put it in two: Love God - and show that love in love for your neighbor. But where did this love stuff come from? From God: who loved us first.

Jesus is "the embodiment of the love the law requires" (Herb O'Driscoll).

Jesus is the Torah come alive, the living expression of God's will for his people.

And that Law is love.

Not from compulsion but out of love, the love that came first from God, are we to fulfill all the law and the prophets. And we do so in the name of Jesus, the epitome of love.

In the beginning there was love...

True holiness, obedience to God, is a response in love to the call to holiness, to right living, that is expressed in the two great commandments, the summary of the Law:

Love God with all your being; show that love in love for others.

Cheerful obedience to God's commandments - bearing the fruit of faith, hope and charity in the lives of believers - is a manifestation of the love of the God who loves you first and best: love God, love your neighbor.

In his obedient response to the will of God, Jesus fulfills the two great commandments - the greatest commandment, the Love of God before all else, and the second, to love thy neighbor.

In his brief encounter with the Pharisees, who asked which is the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus shows Messiah is more that Son of David, true king of Israel: he is David's master, David's lord, the son of God. And he has come, to set his people free.

The commandments Jesus cites in answer to the lawyer's question of which is #1, are parts not of action only or bare compliance, but are part of prayer - and of a life of holiness, a life lived in the knowledge of the love of God. They are part of the fabric of being, from day one and every day of our lives. And they speak to a renewal of the heart.

What are we called to this week, as God's people, in our prayers and in our daily actions?

Sounds like a tough challenge. But the answer is really very simple:

Love - and do as you please.

May the Love of God, which surpasses all understanding,
keep your hearts and minds, your souls and your selves,
at work or at rest, gathered or scattered,
obedient, joyous, and alive
with the good news of Jesus Christ - and of the God who always loved you first and best. Amen.

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."-Rabindranath Tagore

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"...or was it a croissant?"

2008-10-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

ANAMNESIS: An act of remembering that brings the past into the present; that brings the present and events of the past into conjunction, aligning them in unity.

NOSTALGIA: An act of the memory serves as an escape from present realities and anticipations of the future into a past colored with yearning.

Geoffrey Cuming taught our seminary class in liturgics just two new words: anamnesis and epiclesis. This month, I thought I’d tell you about the first.

As we use it in understanding liturgy, anamnesis is the recollection of past events, chiefly in the obedient response to the Lord’s command, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

When he instituted the Eucharist, Jesus led his friends in the symbolic acts that accompany the Passover meal. He reminded them of their heritage. He led them through the events of the Exodus, from the prophecies and the plagues, to the rescue from captivity and the parting of the waters, through the wanderings in the desert and the provision of bread from above.

Most of all, he reminded them of that last supper the people had eaten the night before they were free. And then, he took the bread in his own hands, and said the blessing, as the people of Israel had blessed it for a thousand years: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

And he broke it, and gave it to his friends. And he took the cup of wine, recalling those ancient days, and with it in his hands he made an offering of prayer and thanksgiving: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.”

All this he did – in accordance with the Law – but he added something that showed Grace in that moment: he said, “Whenever you do this, do it in remembrance of me.” Do it, then, to bring back this moment.

Make it present in your hearts. Remember when Jesus offered himself as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

Remember him as the one who leads us forth from the captivity of our own self-centeredness, the lower nature with its egotistical, passion-driven desires, into the freedom of reliance on the providence of God and trust in God’s eternal abundance.

I’m not sure it’s necessary to give much space here to defining nostalgia – that mixture of glad and sad longings that accompany recalling something long ago and far away – and we all know its effects.

If we try to recover a past experience for refuge from the present, or in worried retreat from the challenges of the future, if we try to recreate a feeling or mood to indulge in, we know it is at best a temporary patch on the fabric of time. It will tear away. We do not want to go with it when it goes.

We want to move forward, bravely and boldly, holding on to the promises of God, in the light of the world that dawns in Christ, because however dark the night, as children of the day we know that joy comes in the morning.

Joy opens the heart. –Rabbi Nachman of Breslov.

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Scary Fincial Times

2008-10-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Written for Trinity's October 2008 Newsletter by Brian Baker

We are living in scary financial times. Banks have failed. Credit is getting harder to get. Our lawmakers are scrambling to shore up our nation’s financial system. While I know the crisis has complex causes, I have been considering our own culpability for the problem we are in. I feel like we, as a nation, have been on a massive consumerist binge. Housing values/prices have doubled and tripled, thus increasing the “wealth” of homeowners. While home prices tripled, salaries did not Folks bought homes they couldn’t really afford because credit was made readily available. We all wanted a piece of the crazy real estate market. Stores regularly offered deals where you could buy expensive toys without paying a penny for years. So we bought, and bought and bought.

To what end. Were we happier? Perhaps for a brief time. But the joy of shopping doesn’t last. The new item quickly becomes old, and in need of an upgrade.

Is our current economic crisis a problem that needs to be fixed so we can get back to life as it was before? Or is it an invitation to change the way we have been living?

I believe it is the latter. I believe we are being invited to live a simpler life. We can’t keep filling our lives with new stuff. The stuff never satisfied us in the first place. That’s why we wanted more. Why don’t we stop our consumerist binging and learn to become a loving, caring community with what we have. I don’t believe we need anything more to experience the Kingdom of Heaven. My most fulfilling moments come when I am serving or working with others to help make the world, or the life of an individual, better.

I am not wondering how this crisis will end. I know things will settle down. I am wondering whether or not we will allow this situation to be our teacher. Will we learn to live life differently?
I am so grateful to be a part of a congregation that is focused on experiencing God’s Kingdom right now and generously sharing God’s love with others.

rebuild my church

2008-10-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may for love of you delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

When knighthood was in flower, when Richard the Lionhearted was triumphing at the Battle of Acre, and all young manhood yearned to be on Crusade, among them was a young man in central Italy, in the proud town of Assisi. His father was a wealthy merchant, a dealer in French fabrics, and his son was his best sales representative.

In fact he’d nicknamed the boy ‘the little Frenchman’ shortly after his birth. And that is how he is known to history, not as Giovanni Bernardone, but as Frankie – Francis of Assisi.

As a young man Francis longed to be a hero of romance and a singer of romances: a troubadour as well as a crusader.

He was popular with the other young men – he had the best clothes, and he fixed them up at a reasonable rate. The young nobles of the town formed his entourage. As I said, he was a good salesman – and his father’s clothes shop prospered as Francis’ friends followed his style.

So when Francis wanted to accompany the knights marching through Italy to embark on crusade, his father paid for his suit of armor. And Francis started out – but something turned him back, not long after he generously gave his armor to a poor knight who had none.

Later he was a prisoner of war in the town across the valley, for some months, as his townspeople waged war on theirs. He was in a low dungeon. It was not to be his last.

For one day, in a exuberant gesture, Francis – having visited a poor church – loaded a horse with cloth from his father’s storehouse, rode to the next town, sold both horse and cargo, and returned with the cash to offer to the priest.

The priest thought something funny was going on, and refused the gift – so Francis cast the money, no more use to him, into the corner near the altar.

His father came looking for him. He hid out in the church basement for some weeks, a virtual prisoner. Then his father had him dragged out and hauled in front of the bishop, in the town square. There in front of God and everybody his father demanded he return ‘everything you have had from me.’

Francis complied – he removed all his clothes, and placed them at his father’s feet. The bishop threw his cloak around the young man.

Francis later scrounged up a castoff garment from the under-gardener, and sketched a cross on it with a piece of chalk. He wore it proudly. He was beginning to understand there was another way to take up the cross than to be a crusading knight in armor.

He began to take up his cross and follow Christ. He took his place in the true crusade, the struggle within human souls to cast off sinfulness and embrace the life of grace.

It was soon after that Francis found himself praying at a small decrepit church – long deferred maintenance had turned it into a virtual ruin. But it still had an altar, and above the altar an icon of the crucified Christ. He stared at the icon and the open eyes of Christ looked back. He heard the call:

Rebuild my church, which as you see is falling down.

Rebuild my church.

He began with his own bare hands, there and then. He began quite literally to rebuild that little church. Day by day, stone by stone, they built it slow and surely.

And slowly and surely the church began to be recover, and to be reborn into new life – and soon companions came to share in the work. They rebuilt that little church. And soon, they had rebuilt two more.

It was just the beginning. For the days of the crusaders had left the church in a sorry state – and Francis and his companions, in their own simple way, began to follow the gospel as their rule of life.

And their lives, and the life of the church, began to be reborn, remade through the work of human hands and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Some years ago a pastor named Robert Munger wrote out a message, entitled, “My Heart, Christ’s Home”. (http://www3.calvarychapel.com/bellmawr/myheart.html)

In it he compared the chambers of the heart, the mansions of the soul, to the rooms of a house. He described how a person might invite Jesus into their heart, only to discover gradually that there is more and more work there for Christ to do, to turn their heart into a true home for the indwelling of the Spirit of God.

As we open the door to Jesus to come into each area of our life, he is able to rebuild each of us as the temple of God we are called to be.

There are many rooms in a Christian’s soul – the room of intellect, the room of emotion, the room of personal morality, the room of social responsibility, the room where we pray, the room where we give of ourselves to others, the room where the stranger is welcome. In each of them Christ has work to do, to transform our lives.

Another pastor, John Landgraff, talked about the work of personal transformation, and how we can begin, in a small way or more ambitiously, doing over one room – or the whole house. As Christ begins to go to work in us, making his home in our hearts, the whole house begins to take on new life and new purpose.

This is reflected in the promises we have made, or had made for us, at baptism:

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

I will, with God’s help.

In each of these vows you can see evidence of a building project going on, in the life of the Christian.

There is another building project going on – beyond the work of God in the individual there is the work of the Spirit in the Church, rebuilding it anew in every generation.

In his generation Francis heard the call: Rebuild my church. We are each called to take part in our generation in the work of the building and rebuilding of the Church.

We are to work alongside the master builder – and like those who have gone before us, Francis of Assisi and all the others through the ages – we have work to do.

Rebuild my church.

The call goes out to every new generation of believers. We are his people and our hands do his work in the world.

Rebuild my church.

There are many rooms in the household of God, the house of prayer for all people. They are not all visible to us – but we can see some of them. There is room for education of the young, there is room for music and worship, and there is room for fellowship and celebration.

However you are called to serve, whatever place you are to take in the work of the people, you are called, as one of the people of God, to be transformed - to become one of the living stones built into the temple of his Glory.

At the altar you have a chance to renew your own intention to follow the call of Christ, in your own vocation as a person of God, called here and now as a part of the church, to accept the transforming presence of God in your life, and to invite Christ anew into your life to do the continuing work of rebuilding your heart as the dwelling-place of the Spirit of God.

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Jed Smith Back To School Night

2008-09-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday night I got to participate in a remarkable event. Our congregation partners with Jed Smith Elementary School, a school located in housing projects in which ever student is enrolled in the school lunch program. For quite some time we had been supporting classroom teachers by compiling student materials at the beginning of the year, adopting classroom teachers and giving them little gifts and encouragement, providing every child with small gifts at Christmas, etc. More recently we have established a program where we send children home on Fridays with backpacks of food for them and their families. We started this when we found out that children were being adequately fed at school during the week but were going hungry over the weekends. We also started a free clothes closet at the school.

Last Wednesday night we did something new, and equally exciting. The remarkable, high-energy principal, Fay Sharpe, has been working hard to connect the life of the school with the neighborhood. (Every student lives within a few blocks of the school.) One of the key opportunities to foster this connection is Back To School Night, which is an open house at the beginning of the year that usually runs from 5-6pm.. Last Thursday, for Back to School Night, members of Trinity cooked dinner for everybody who came. They made over 20 gallons of delicious, meaty spaghetti sauce to serve with the spaghetti as well as salad, garlic bread and ice cream. We also had the clothes closest open. Usually the children are the only ones who go to the clothes closet because we open it on Friday’s when school is letting out. But this time, entire families could go. We also had a health fair with lots of health information and nurses on site to answer questions, take blood pressure of offer other services. We had a sign up for a parent’s group.

It was a breathtaking success. Fay said attendance was more than double the attendance in previous years. As an example she said in a class of 20 students, 18 students had their parent(s) come. The energy at the school was lovely. The clothes closet was crazy – good crazy. Lots of health material got picket up and the nurses spoke with many young women about women’s health.

I remember my former bishop in Idaho, Bishop Bainbridge, challenging congregations to make such a difference in their communities that if the church would disappear, the community would lament. I feel like Trinity Cathedral is starting to make that kind of difference.

Six parents signed up for a new parent's support group.

Talk Like a Pirate Church

2008-09-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Avast maties! Trinity Cathedral will be honoring International Talk Like A Pirate Day with a Pirate Church Service on September 19 at 5:30p.m. The entire service will use pirate-ese and costumes are welcome. To learn more about this fun day, visit www.talklikeapirate.com

Buddhist - Christian Meditation

2008-09-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last night my Tibetan Buddhist friend, Mercedes Bahleda, who was visiting from her Buddhist community in Arizona, led us in a Christian-Buddhist meditation. We used an ancient Tibetan Buddhist form of guided meditation to invoke the presence of Jesus into our lives and our hearts. It was beautiful. I'm hoping to have audio of the meditation posted on my blog in the next few days.

We put this together rather quickly with little publicity. We were surprised when people kept showing up. We had over 30 people crammed in the church nursery. We were relegated to the nursery because of all the other thing going on in the Cathedral: we were hosting homeless families in our classrooms, the choir was in the cathedral, a political action group wanting to preserve the right for same-sex marriage in California was in a meeting room, a Buddhist sangha was meeting in our conference room, AA in another room. Amidst all that bustle, we managed to carve out an hour of contemplative time and space. It was absolutely lovely.

-Brian Baker

Why would you get him a book?

2008-09-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

Why would you get him a book?

There’s a story that one day Peter Bogdanovich was visiting the director John Ford. “I got Duke a book for his birthday,” said Bogdanovich. There was a long pause as Ford thought about this. “He’s already got a book,” he finally said.

Well, gee, so do I. But – is one book really enough? Not all books are alike; we read different books different ways. How to read a book… depends on the book.

For example, we read War and Peace with … a sturdy bookstand – and patience: it’s as long as eight of the world’s best-loved novels bound in one convenient volume.

We read some light entertainment quickly – and easily set it aside if we look up once before page 50 (the infamous ‘fifty page rule’). Or we consume it like candy until we’re done with it.

A ‘non-fiction’ bestseller we might read dutifully, hoping to be informed as well as engaged. And perhaps we read it with a critical eye, wondering what the author’s argument is and how important it is to learning the subject matter. “It’s not as simple as the clichés say it is,” goes one cliché – and we’re glad to have an argument to propel us through a mound of useful, good-for-you, facts.

When we read a devotional book we may read for inspiration or contemplation. There is something peaceful about the reasonable, charitable tone of some author’s voices – like a quiet oasis in the midst of the bustle of the city.

When we read a more in-depth work of religion we may want to do so, as C. S. Lewis put it, “with a pencil gripped between our teeth,” working our way through the argument. And you might ask, where does this book lead me? Is it compatible with what I know of God from Scripture, prayer, and the teaching of the Church?

When we read the Bible we encounter the foundations of faith through several types of literature all bound together. For example: there is narrative – the stories of David and of Ruth come to mind; there is poetry – the Song of Songs and the prophecies of Isaiah; there are the hymns of God’s people, the Psalms; there are aphorisms – Proverbs; exhortations and arguments – in some of Paul’s writings; and there are the incomparable Gospels.

And of course all of these can be read both critically – to inform our minds – and as prayer, to warm our hearts. A cousin remarked to me there is a great difference between reading Scripture in these ways; to have the message clear in our minds is part of mature Christian life, and to bring the message into the heart – is pure joy.

What I’ll be reading this fall probably will include some of each kind of book – from recreational to theological to devotional - and among them will be a list of ‘required reading’…

This fall I’m embarking on a new adventure in lifelong learning. With the recommendation of the bishop, I've applied to - and been accepted into - the Seattle University program in Pastoral Leadership. This means that for a couple of days a month, from September through May, on my own time, I will be a student again. In that program I expect I will learn much that will inform my work as a pastor and refresh my soul as a believer.

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Forgiveness Sunday

2008-09-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Forgiveness Sunday
September 14, 2008

Here we are again, with good old Charlie Brown. Lucy is holding the football, and Charlie Brown is eager to practice the kickoff. But he knows – he knows! – that as soon as he gets up to the ball, Lucy will snatch it away, and he’ll miss and land on his back. Again. But she says, Oh, Charlie Brown, have you lost all your faith in humanity? And so – he goes for it. And at the last second, as he kicks, she snatches the ball away, and he lands flat on his back. He is lying there, and she leans over him, to say, “Isn’t it better this way, Charlie Brown? Isn’t it better to trust people?”

(PEANUTS by Charles Schulz, 1961, reprinted today)

Almighty God, whose beloved Son willingly endured the agony and shame of the cross for our redemption: Give us courage to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This is Forgiveness Sunday: the Sunday every year when we remember Jesus’ saying to forgive one’s enemies not just 7 times, but as many as 70 times 7.

It is three days after we remember the events of September 11, 2001, when nearly three thousand people died in a coordinated sequence of terrorist attacks.

If you were to pray for one person each day who died in those attacks, and had started that very day, you would not be finished going through the list for the first time until the middle of next October.

It is, this year, the day before the feast of the Holy Cross – when we remember the death of one, for all, that turned the world around, from death to life.

What would it look like to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven – or seven hundred times seven? What kind of world would it be? And what would it take to get there?

It would take a miracle.

God would have to go first.

Jesus gives us a clue – in his story of the impossibly wealthy person who demanded of, then forgave, an immense sum from her servant. As if God were to demand from us all that we have from him – all that we owe him – and then were to turn around and tell us that the slate is wiped clean, that our debt is forgiven.

All we have to do, it appears from the parable, is to go and – on our own small scale – do the same for those who are in our debt.

“Pay me that thou owest!” is the slave’s response.

It is the response of a person who acts as if he is still in bondage. He doesn’t know he is free; he still has the mentality of a man in chains.

The free person’s response is different.

Because we are set free, indeed, because we can testify – as Chris Tomlin sings:

My chains are gone
I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, Amazing grace

Then we can forgive, then we can on our own humble scale begin to imagine, begin to live into, a world set free by the mercy and the grace of the living God.

What would it look like? Not on a political scale, not even that –

What would it look like if someone was to demand of me my cloak and I gave my coat as well? If, pressed into service by a passing soldier, I carried his gear for him not one mile but two? If someone were to strike me on the cheek and I simply offered the other?

What would it look like to live as if the gospel were a practical guide to life?

What would it look like to set down the weapons of darkness and put on the armor of light – to put on the mercy and grace and forgiveness, and strength in truth, of Christ?

For his way is a way of truth and righteousness and justice and strength.

The peace of God is no false spring, no fake hope. It is real.

Look at how direct Christ is: he brooks no dishonesty or falsehood or false pride – or false modesty.

The woman caught in adultery is brought to him – and he says to her accusers, let the one without sin cast the first stone. That is enough for them to scatter. When they are gone, he turns to her, and says, “Go – and do not sin again.”

It is not forgetting, it is not denying, it is not saying to the one who has trespassed, “Oh, never mind – whatever. What you do is of no significance to me. (You are of no significance to me.)”

No. Christ gives to each the dignity that is their due – he does not lay aside their sin without acknowledgment: forgiveness is not dismissal.

He sees the person – and calls them to account, like the unjust steward in the parable; he calls them to a new way of being – a way of justice and truth, acknowledging their sins, and then – then – moving forward.

Once the chains are removed, then they are free.

Once the chains are removed, we – you and I – are free.

And that is the freedom he calls us to, one made possible only by the Holy Cross of Christ: for in his sacrifice on the behalf of the whole world, once offered, once made, came the forgiveness of the world, the reconciliation to God himself of all his creatures.

Now we are called, to make our own lives part of that discipline of forgiveness, part of that regime of reconciliation, no longer living as dark forms in the clashing night, but in the dawning of the day to become part of the army of light – to bear in his service the armor of day, to bring forth and make manifest the victory, through the holy Cross, of the Reconciler, the Light of the world.

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

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Pentecost XVIII
Exodus 14:19-31
Exodus 15:1b-11,20-21
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

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H O L D F A S T

2008-08-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

Good news – and a challenge: As we hear the stories of God at work in his people, and receive encouragement in the life of grace, we hear proclaimed the good news of God in Christ. We hear his call to serve, and his promise to be there with us. The one who makes the promise is faithful to see it through.

The God who made us is the God who redeems us.
The God who calls us is the God who empowers us and sends us forth.

The God of mystery is the God of history.
The God whom the people of old encountered is the God of today.
God delivered them and gave them the pathway to freedom; so he will for us.
We, like they, encounter God on the ground of his own choosing.

Abraham met him in the persons of three strangers who came to the oaks, where he and Sarah gave them their hospitality – and knew God was present when bread was broken. Isaac and Rebecca met him in obedience and sacrifice, and in continuing faithfulness. Jacob met God in strange places: in dreams, his pillow a rock, and by a stream, where he wrestled the stranger until daybreak.

Moses beyond the wilderness comes to the mountain of God. He turns aside to see a bush burn and not perish. And there, on the ground of God’s choosing, he encounters the living presence of God.

Moses finds himself on holy ground. In this strange and surprising place, he finds – his vocation. God calls to him: and he replies, “Here I am.”

I have heard my people cry.
I have come to deliver them.
I have come to lead them home.

I will send you:
Who? Me?
I will be with you:
Who are you? Reveal yourself – give me your name!

I am the God of Being, the God of Mystery: I AM WHO I AM.

I am the God of Becoming, the God of History: I am the God of your father – yes, Moses, the father you cannot even remember – and I am the God of his fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

I am the God of the mother who nurtured you – and of her mothers, of Sarah and Rebecca and Leah and Rachel.

I am the God they encountered, the God of the Promise: and I am sending you – to carry forward my promise to a new generation. To my people.

(Will he go?)

Peter thought he had a handle on Jesus, on who he was: he named him – you are the Messiah! But he hardly knew what he had. Messiah, indeed: but God’s Messiah, one whose path is downward mobility, not up to a world throne but down through the humiliation of death on a cross even to the grave – and only then to resurrection and ascension and glory. And he calls Peter to follow.

Jesus calls Peter – and us – to give up living by our own rules, living alone with our desires and follies and dreams, into a fellowship of disciples, followers of the suffering Son of Man (who is also the Son of Glory), who shows us the way of discipleship, and its cost: The way of glory is not apart from suffering.

Peter is going to begin to discover what it means to live in faith: to share in the destiny and calling and work of the Son of Man, and to begin to take his place in the kingdom of the Promise.

What will that Godly kingdom look like? How will people treat each other there? How do we get started?

Paul lays it out for us – we are redeemed sinners, living by the grace of Christ in the Spirit. We are a community of faith united by the mercy of God. We receive encouragement in the life of the Spirit, and gracious instruction:

• Let love be without any pretence. Avoid what is evil; stick to what is good.

• In brotherly love let your feelings of deep affection for one another come to expression and regard others as more important than yourself.

• In the service of the Lord, work not halfheartedly but with conscientiousness and an eager spirit.

• Be joyful in hope, persevere in hardship; keep praying regularly; share with any of God's holy people who are in need; look for opportunities to be hospitable.

• Bless your persecutors; never curse them, bless them.

• Rejoice with others when they rejoice, and be sad with those in sorrow.

• Give the same consideration to all others alike. Pay no regard to social standing, but meet humble people on their own terms. Do not congratulate yourself on your own wisdom.

• Never pay back evil with evil, but bear in mind the ideals that all regard with respect.

• As much as possible, and to the utmost of your ability, be at peace with everyone.

• Never try to get revenge: leave that, my dear friends, to the Retribution. As scripture says: Vengeance is mine -- I will pay them back, the Lord promises.

• And more: If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat; if thirsty, something to drink. By this, you will be heaping red-hot coals on his head.

• Do not be mastered by evil, but master evil with good.

(New Jerusalem Bible)

As Moses encounters him on the mountain, God has heard the cry of his people, and there on that holy ground he responds to his people’s cry, calling and preparing and sending forth his messenger.

As with Moses, God calls us – all of us, each of us – into the godly work of leading the way for his people into freedom. By the light, the same light of the burning bush, of the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, he reveals himself to us. And he will lead us, on the way of the pilgrim, the way of the disciple, the way of the people of God, into the land of promise, of just & peaceful life.

So then, we have the message of grace, and the task before us, and we have the promise of the living God, who assures us that he will keep faith with us, as we move forward in a hope founded on the life of Christ, to proclaim the good news, and to live into God’s holy reign of righteousness and of peace.

Therefore—

Let us hold fast in the hope we proclaim, for he who has promised is faithful.

(Hebrews 10:23)

Pentecost 16, Proper 17, Year A
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

JRL

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2 Summer Photo Albums

2008-08-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

I’m finally getting around to posting some summer photos.

HERE is an album from our week-long pirate themed summer program at Trinity Cathedral that culminated with a pirate communion service (in pirate language of course.)

HERE is an album from my week with 4th through 9th graders at our diocesan camp at Tahoe.

even the dogs

2008-08-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

have a look at the short story, "The Great Piano Player", by Tom Gordon, hospice chaplain of the Marie Curie Centre in Edinburgh, in the June/July 2008 issue of Coracle, the magazine of the Iona Community,

http://www.iona.org.uk/

and then have a look at Henry Ossawa Tanner's double portrait, The Banjo Lesson,

http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/s06/dooreyc/Images/the%20banjo%20lesson.jpg

and then have a look at the gospel for this Sunday (Matthew 15:21-28)

and then ask,

where is Jesus in the story of the great piano player? is he the mother? the daughter? the old lady? the admiring audience?

and where are you?

and,

where is Jesus in the painting? the child? the old man?

and where are you?

and where is God in the story of the woman who implored Jesus to heal her daughter of a demon?

is he
is he not
standing behind Jesus
with his arms around him

is she not
standing behind Jesus
with her arms around him
teaching him
to play?

and where is Jesus now?

is he not standing behind you
arms around you
his hands guiding your hands
teaching you to play?

and where is the Spirit?

is she not
close by you
closer than your own breath
breathing into you
the joy of music?

+

Camp Noel Porter and Lambeth

2008-08-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

Here's what i wrote for our church newsletter:

On July 27 I went to Camp Noel Porter to serve as the chaplain for a week of camp with 4th through 9th graders. The camp relies on volunteer priests to provide the religious services and education. Each day I was responsible for a communion service with a sermon as well as an hour of religious programming. It had been quite some time since I had worked so closely with children. Prior to seminary I was a lay youth leader for four years and for my first job after seminary I was a chaplain at an Episcopal elementary school. But that was 15 years ago.

It was more work than I had anticipated, but it was also fun, and grounding. Canon Britt Olson came to work with the children one day and as she said, it is a treat to step away from big issues and big questions and get to focus on articulating God’s love to children. We used clips from the first three Star Wars movies (episodes IV-VI) as a springboard for discussing spiritual topics. I had forgotten what good movies they are. In the end, Darth Vader is saved by his son Luke Skywalker because Luke was willing to believe that there was still some good in his father. The end reminded me of Jesus’ parable of the wheat and weeds, and the fact that we are all a combination of wheat and weeds. The challenge when looking at others and ourselves is to see the wheat through the weeds. Such gracious vision can save somebody. Our concluding scripture refrain came from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “Don’t be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” This seemed to be a fitting tag line for the Star Wars saga.

I was aware that while I was singing camp songs and talking with children, the Anglican bishops were having their own “camp” experience. The Lambeth Conference has now concluded. It was mostly a time for bishops to talk, study and pray together. They did not pass any resolutions but rather enhanced their relationships so they can continue to work through the challenges that face the global communion. From the reports I’ve read there is a deep respect among the bishops and perhaps it will be harder for some to characterize others as being completely misguided weeds. While I’m sure Lambeth was vastly different from Camp Noel Porter, I think in both places the Kingdom of Heaven may have drawn closer.

Blessings,
Brian
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

Prayer for the Church - A Revision

2008-08-06T07:17:00.000-07:00

During the past few weeks, we were asked to pray this prayer as we remembered the Bishops meeting for the Lambeth Conference:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

After hearing the prayer in church, Bud Swank, one of the members of Trinity Cathedral sent me this reflection:

Today I found myself meditating on the Prayer for Lambeth Conference. It
seems to me that we are, in part, praying for something that we ought not to
expect or even desire.
"...carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation...."
I understand the plan of salvation to be transformational and
revolutionary in nature. The old is made new. Individuals may become something
that their friends hardly even recognize, and with whom those old friends may no
longer care to associate. Institutions have boxes blown up, customs set aside,
and new leaders put in place. These are not things that ordinarily happen in
tranquility, but by radical commitment to doing things that have never been
thought nor done before. Individuals commonly pass through a period of turmoil
as part of moving from the old to the new, and so do institutions. Conflict is a
necessary part of the process, as that is the only way that we can be motivated
to make the transition from what we know to what we do not know. It was what was
experienced by those around Jesus, and is what I expect to see today as God's
plan of salvation is carried out.

Therefore I offer this alternative prayer:
"...may your plan of salvation redeem the ferment of our times and transform it into new life and holy vitality...."

Bud is right of course. Change, which is a necessary element of life, is messy. And not necessarily tranquil. Tranqility can be an idol that leads to death.

Brian
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

Anointing at Baptism

2008-07-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

Several people have asked me for the prayer I use when anointing people who are baptised. I adapted these words slightly from what Bishop John Thornton, my 1st bishop in Idaho, did when he baptised somebody.

I anoint your eyes so you may see God in everyone.
I anoint your ears so you may hear the cry of the poor.
I anoint your lips so you may speak nothing but the truth of God’s love.
I anoint your hands so everything you receive and everything you give is a sacrament.
And I anoint your feet so you may run to those who need you.

Lambeth

2008-07-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Anglican bishops from around the world are about to meet at Canterbury for the Lambeth Conference. The Conference has been meeting about every 10 years since 1867. The bishops engage in prayer, study and conversation. The purpose of the Conference is to build relationships that strengthen our communion. While the conference has not been empowered with legislative authority, statements from Lambeth are taken into consideration when Provinces make decisions.

This coming Lambeth conference comes at an important time in our history. There is strong disagreement within the worldwide Communion over the ordination of women and the full inclusion of people who are gay or lesbian. As I am writing this, the Church of England is deciding to allow women to be ordained as bishops. Hundreds of conservative bishops are threatening to leave the Church if they don’t receive concessions that will allow folks to avoid having to work with women bishops. Conservative bishops in other countries will likely see England moving forward with a secular innovation that disrespects their sensitivities.

Last week an international group of conservative bishops, priests and lay people decided to form a parallel structure within the Anglican Communion. Under their new system, a small group of archbishops will decide which dioceses are truly “orthodox.” They will move freely into other, “non-orthodox” dioceses to serve the true Christians therein.

While this may seem like modern craziness, it is really reminiscent of struggles in the English Reformation. In the 16h century, Protestants and Roman Catholics were killing one another over matters of belief. Elizabeth I created a compromise that has been the unique characteristic of Anglicanism ever since. We are a communion of faith that is united not by our doctrine but rather by common prayer. Anglicans do not have a theological “litmus test.” We pray together and respect our theological differences. Anglicanism was the first “big tent” before such a tent was in vogue. Puritans and Catholics pushed against this openness during the 16th and 17th centuries. Then for the most part things settled down. We got comfortable with our big tent.

With colonial expansion, the Anglican faith spread around the globe. The missionaries brought different aspects of this big-tent religion, some emphasizing the more puritan elements and others the more catholic elements. They failed, however, to export the big-tent ethos. Diverse religious views were exported without the underlying valuing of diversity. With the advent of the internet, it became clear to these different groups that there were others in the Communion who believed very different things. Shocked by what they have discovered, some Anglicans are branding others as unorthodox. We have been thrust back into the 16th and 17th centuries.

The tension present as the bishops meet in the coming weeks will be over the soul of Anglicanism. Should we have a centralized authority that will determine what is orthodox. Should we have a system in place to sanction those who are unorthodox? Or will we remain a big tent united in prayer. My prediction is that we will remain part of a big-tent religion. At least that is my prayer. The big unknown is who will be willing to join us in this tent.

-Dean Baker
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

Beach Reads & Other Bibles

2008-06-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

During the “long green season” after Pentecost, sometimes called Ordinary Time, we may find time to make “ordinary” some activities we’d like to have as part of our daily routine.

One long-established practice for many Christians is daily Bible reading and prayer.

***

There are a variety of Bible translations available; some intended for both common worship and private prayer; some best for private study. There is a spectrum, as Donald Kraus shows in “Choosing a Bible” (Seabury, 2006), from literal, formal, word-for-word translations, as faithful as possible to the sentence structure of the original language (New American Standard Version); other versions most concern themselves with easy comprehensibility by the modern ear: these can be “dynamic equivalent” meaning-for-meaning translations (Good News Bible, Contemporary English Version) or paraphrases which go beyond the original text to enliven the reader’s understanding (J. B. Phillips, The Message).

Striking out for the middle way are the versions authorized for use in worship by the General Convention of The Episcopal Church. Most formal (and venerable) of these is the Authorized King James Version (KJV) of 1611. It has many descendants including most recently the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) – which we use as our Lectionary text.

The New International Version (NIV) is concerned with conveying a consistent theological message. The Revised English Bible (REB) is a new translation from the original; along with the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) it has language both fresh and beautiful.

For private study I’d recommend hearing more than one version, and comparing notes and impressions with others. And, beyond that, I’d recommend a Study Bible: the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV), Oxford Study Bible (REB), HarperCollins Study Bible (NRSV), or New Interpreter’s Study Bible (NRSV). There are also study editions of the New Jerusalem Bible, the New International Version, and others. It is important to have a Bible that includes the Apocrypha, which is used in the liturgical churches (Episcopal, Catholic, Orthodox, etc.).

And then there are many commentaries, Bible dictionaries, and other helpful study aids. Episcopal booksellers, such as the Cathedral Bookshop at Trinity Cathedral (http://www.thecathedralbookshop.com/), can steer you toward some of the best.

***

During this long green season we are taking advantage of a feature of the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL): a track of readings through the summer months that follows a narrative thread through Genesis and Exodus into Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges.

This gives us an opportunity to see how the ancient people of God, the children of Abraham, grow in their faith and knowledge and experience of God, and how each generation faces anew the challenges of life in the presence of a holy and faithful Lord.

At the same time, the readings from the Epistles and the Gospels give us a sense of God’s people, growing in grace and faith, in the New Testament era.

All this will help us grow, in both public worship and private devotion, in our own sense of calling as God’s people in this place in this time – and help us understand why we are planted where we are, how to bloom where we’re planted, and how to continue to develop as a green and growing church, a fellowship of believers in the church of Christ.

JRL+

From the Rector’s Study

BEACH READS & OTHER BIBLES

(For the Gospel Grapevine – July 2008)

http://www.stalbansedmonds.org

Among the roses of the martyrs, brightly shines Saint Alban…

2008-06-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

"Among the roses of the martyrs, brightly shines Saint Alban…"

Long ago, two or three centuries after the first Pentecost, a man named Alban lived in the Roman town of Verulamium in the province of Britannia. He served the Emperor – Septimius Severus or possibly Diocletian – and did his duty by the pagan gods.

It was a time of persecution for the church. To Alban’s door came a Christian priest seeking sanctuary. Alban took him in, gave him shelter – and listened to his story.

When at last soldiers came to take away the guilty man, it was Alban, donning the white robe of the priest (and martyr) who gave himself up, taking the fugitive’s place.

They dragged him before the judge. Accused of Christianity, would there be enough evidence to convict him?

Soon enough, he confessed, in words that still ring true: "I worship and adore the true and living God, who created all things." He was condemned out of his own mouth.

The judge sentenced him to death and the soldiers led him away to the place of execution. There he bared his neck to the sword, and died witnessing to the new faith he had learned.

He never went to church, he never owned a Bible: he never had a chance to. And yet he was a faithful servant of Christ.

The story of Alban – a story of an unwavering witness to Christ, who followed in his footsteps even to his death – still has power. By his example, he calls us from false faith to true.

What fake gods have we followed? What tricksters of glamour, of image, of ease, of wealth, of power, have gratified us with their easy answers to life? What causes us to turn from them, and seek the face of the true and living God?

Last year, preaching at the shrine of Saint Alban in England, the Venerable Mark Oakley, Archdeacon of Germany and Northern Europe, identified these gods for modern Romans: “Gloss”, the goddess of beautiful surfaces; “Obese”, the god of insatiable acquisition; “Instantaneous”, the goddess who says you can have it all now; and “Punch”, the god of violence, institutional and systemic, and cult-god of hate.

We might pick other gods – but should we?

Better turn to the one true and living God, source of all being, eternal Word, and holy Spirit: he who calls us out of error into truth, out of bondage to desire and appetite into the freedom of grace and gratitude, out of the death-cult of Empire into the life of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Almighty God, by the Passover of your Son you have brought us out of sin into righteousness and out of death into life: Grant to those who are sealed by your Holy Spirit the will and the power to proclaim you to all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Almighty God, we thank you for this place built to your glory and in memory of Alban, Britain’s first martyr: following his example in the fellowship of the saints, may we worship and adore the true and living God, and be faithful witnesses to the Christ, who is alive and reigns, now and for ever. AMEN.

JRL+

http://www.stalbanscathedral.org.uk/pilgrimage2007.htm

he sent them

2008-06-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Bill Pronzini is a mystery writer. He says there are only two stories in the world: some one goes on a journey; and a stranger comes to town. Some one goes on a journey; a stranger comes to town. In fact, there is only one story: just with two points of view.

Strangers came to our village: a pair of them. Fishermen, from Galilee, by the looks of them. Andrew, and the big quiet one, Peter. Rough hands. Rough voices. Rough manners…. They told us straight out – in fact, they blurted it, like bad news: the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. God’s rule is about to begin. Here. On earth.

In this village? I don’t think so, I said. The temple guards come and take their tax. The Romans come and take theirs. And then the tax collectors come again, for theirs.

But they had something to show us. Something to offer us. They healed the sick, they raised the dead – raised the dead! – and all in the name of one Jesus, of Nazareth.

He is the one, they said. The messiah. The one every body has been waiting for, to put things to rights. To put the temple people in their place – and send the Romans back to theirs.

No, no, no. Not yet: already, but not yet.

What’s that supposed to mean?

The kingdom of God is breaking in – like a thief in the night. The Romans cannot even see it; the temple proudies won’t know it until it’s right on top of them.

For now, prepare. Get ready. Tell the word – show the deed. The reign of God: it’s coming. Look sharp – starting acting like it. Start acting like God is in charge of the world. Start acting like the creator is the redeemer, the one who will bring us peace. The one we can rely on. To make us right with God, to make us free of our chains – our chains of misery and of hate and of fear, of suspicion and jealousy. The disease of human weakness, greed, power-hunger, lust, all its many symptoms: he will cure us.

He is curing us. Through these disciples he sent to us he is sending the word – the news. They act as his agents. They bring his message. And they show us the power – the power only the people of God could have.

They want us to join them. To carry the message beyond our village, beyond our borders, beyond our comfort zones – beyond any familiar territory. And they want us to begin by telling our neighbors, people like ourselves, as they have done, telling us.

They were Jews, like us. People who worked with their hands. People who prayed, too, with their hands – hands uplifted to God.

He sent them to us, first, the ‘lost sheep of the tribe of Israel’. For a season, we heard the message. And then they moved on, across the world, finding among us those who would travel with them, work with them, spreading the news and living the word.

Come with us, now: into the new world, the new millennium, the new age. Come into the kingdom of Heaven.

Because there are only two stories in the world – and really, there is only one: it is only a matter of perspective.

There are two kinds of people in the world – aren’t there? Jew and Gentile? Maybe, but maybe not: as Jesus taught us, as he showed us, all are welcome at God’s table.

AProper6 2008
The Readings for June 15th, the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6):
Genesis 18:1-15 * Psalm 116: 1, 10-17 * Romans 5:1-8 * Matthew 9:35-10:8

"There are only two kinds of people in the world - people who like oregano on their spaghetti and people who don't."--attributed to James Shelby

have a blessed day

2008-06-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

A year ago Sarah and I were in the Aran Islands, in the west of Ireland, and we walked out to the ancient stone forts on the western cliffs. The island lifted, at that point, hundreds of feet above the sea; when you came to the edge of the cliff you were at a sheer drop hundreds of feet into the Atlantic. Above was the endless sky. And to the west, looking out, across miles and miles of ocean, you could see a pathway shining in the sun, reaching almost as far as oblivion – or a new world.

This is what the ancient peoples of the Islands saw to the west – where mortality and immortality met. To embark on the journey to the west was to leave all you knew behind, and go to a new place, one from whence you might never return.

The Lord said to Abram, “Go,” and he went: he left his father’s house, and his kindred, and his country, and set out with Sarai and Lot and the people of their household, leaving the land of Mesopotamia and heading west across the desert to find a new land, Canaan, and to found a new people, the people of the Lord.

It was a tribal migration, of a herding people, yet it was more: Abram stepped out in faith. The people he gathered with him, and took on the journey, and the people who joined them, became a new nation – Israel. Yet it was more: in him, as the Lord God promised, all the families of the earth were and shall be blessed.

Abram’s true descendants are the people of faith, the people who share the promise. They do not just take a share in the promise for themselves, they extend to others the blessing they have received by faith.

Abram’s faith was counted for him as righteousness, as he put his trust in God. As we put our trust in God, and reach out to him in faith, we too receive the gift of righteousness, and the gift of life – from the source of life.

There is a great shift here: from trusting in our own righteousness, or achievements, or performance, or worldly connections – social status, family, tribe, or nation – to trusting in God as the source of life, the source of being, identity, and meaning. Abram stepped out into a new world in faith. He became the ‘father of the faithful’, those who follow his footsteps into the promise of God. We too are now heirs of the promise – and agents of the blessing.

There is a great shift here: a call from God to turn from fear to hope. This is the legacy of faith and this is the mission of the people of God: to go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, bringing the good news of salvation to all peoples, loving one another and loving our neighbors as ourselves. To become as numerous as the sands of the sea, as numerous of the stars: and for all of us and each of us to find our identity in the one true and living God who makes all things and gives them life, who gives life to the dead – giving the gift of new life into the lives of Sarai and Abram, raising to life Jesus his Son, raising from the tax tables Matthew to be a disciple of Christ, raising a young girl from her death bed to witness to God’s power, and calling forth in us the faith of the resurrection.

Trust in God: put your faith in him, believe and act knowing that God is present with you, guiding you every step of your own journey, from your origins onward.

‘The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse (I’ve got your back); and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

‘So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…’

This the Lord the psalm sings about, this is the nation that is blessed: the people whom God has chosen to be his own, the ones who trust in God and share the promise, the ones made righteous by faith. Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous; it is good for the just to sing praises. For the word of the Lord is right, and all his works are sure, and the loving-kindness of the Lord fills the whole earth.

We put our trust in God, and, as Herb O’Driscoll (who was with us in Ireland) puts it, ‘then, in confidence, we act.’

Faith and praise and promise: these are the life-builders. We are made right with God by God’s own gift of grace; we now live by faith. We leave behind the old world and strike out for the new: counting not for security on our own programmatic efforts but faithfully practicing the commandments of God; not trusting in old habits to define our future but by God’s merciful guidance performing those things that are right; not looking for easy answers but seeking the wisdom that comes with faithfully following the way of the living Lord.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And Matthew arose and followed him. And with Jesus and in following Jesus he found new life, new identity, new meaning. The source of his life and of his being was the living life gift of Christ.

As Jesus sat at dinner –with tax collectors and sinners— a leader of the community burst in and kneeling, pleaded for his daughter’s life. And Jesus arose and followed him – and brought new life into the household of that man.

As Jesus was going on his way, a woman in pain quietly touched the hem of his garment. And he turned to her, and with compassion said to her, “Take heart: your faith has made you well.” And she was well; she had found health in Christ, and her life was new.

When Jesus got to the home of the community leader, the people laughed at him – for he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” But he took her hand, and the girl arose. New life had come into that house. And the word spread.

The word spread: new life comes from the living Lord. Put your faith in him. Put your trust in God. Let him heal you and make you whole. And let him guide you. Follow Jesus – follow him on the path of life. Follow the blessing way – and have a blessed day.

Lord as you have called us, makes us worthy of your calling. As we reach out to touch the hem of your garment, touch our hearts, and we shall be changed: that we may live to your glory, O Jesus, Christ our Lord. Help us to trust in you, that we may hope beyond hope, and trust beyond trust. Let the people of the world see the faith of your church; let us witness to your almighty power. Though our faith is small it is in a great God. Grant that we, by the gift of your Spirit, may help to lift up your people, to raise the fallen, and restore the sick to health. Lord, heal us and raise us up. Guide us and teach us, and lead us on the way of life, in Christ.

AMEN.

Closing prayer drawn from "Clouds and Glory" by David Adam (SPCK, 1998)

What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality

2008-06-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a great short article about the New Testament's perspective on homosexuality. There isn't anything radically new, it is just a great, succint presentation. With all of the press about the upcoming conference in Lambeth, Bishop Robinson's visit and the move to bless same-sex unions, I'm sure there are people who are wrestling with how Christians can accept homosexuality. Here's a good answer:

What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality
from The Fourth
R 21,3 (May-June 2008)
William O. Walker,
Jr.

Mainline Christian denominations in this country are bitterly divided over the question of homosexuality. For this reason it is important to ask what light, if any, the New Testament sheds on this controversial issue. Most people apparently assume that the New Testament expresses strong opposition to homosexuality, but this simply is not the case. The six propositions that follow, considered cumulatively, lead to the conclusion that the New Testament does not provide any direct guidance for understanding and making judgments about homosexuality in the modern world.
Proposition 1: Strictly speaking, the New Testament says nothing at all about homosexuality.
There is not a single Greek word or phrase in the entire New Testament that should be translated into English as “homosexual” or “homosexuality.” In fact, the very notion of “homosexuality”—like that of “heterosexuality,” “bisexuality,” and even “sexual orientation”—is essentially a modern concept that would simply have been unintelligible to the New Testament writers. The word “homosexuality” came into use only in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and, as New Testament scholar Victor Paul Furnish notes, it and related terms “presume an understanding of human sexuality that was possible only with the advent of modern psychological and sociological analysis.” In other words, “The ancient writers . . . were operating without the vaguest conception of what we have learned to call ‘sexual orientation’.”1 (In the rest of this article I shall use the terms “homosexual” and “homosexuality” strictly for the sake of convenience.)
You can read the rest HERE.

in the boat

2008-06-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning our readings present us with a choice: stay at home and have it rain on you, or get in a boat and have it rain on you. (Of course, if you take the book, you have to round up a bunch of farm animals.) It is a Pacific Northwest kind of choice.

The readings also present us with an opportunity: to take God at his word, and, even as we do the best we can to face the challenges of our situation, to trust that the providence of God is what will really see us through.

Even while all the creatures of the earth were being destroyed around him, as Michael Sweeney points out, Noah was faithful. His faith was steadfast.

Jesus uses the image of a house in a storm to talk about faith and works. To hear the word and then act upon it is to live in a strong house built on rock. If you listen but then just go on as if you had not learned anything, it all fades away like sand into a storm wave.

This is how learning really happens: there is a herald, an announcement, that glad tidings are on the way – as John the Baptist proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom. Then there is the message, preached and understood. Jesus spoke in parables; he told us, “I am the bread of life.”

Then there is action based on what you have heard. This seals it: this takes the temporary memory and makes it permanent in your mind.

“Go and make disciples of all nations, and teach them all I have commanded.”

“Love one another, as I have loved you.”

These are not just good advice, or high-sounding words: they are the breath of life. To those who hear and do what Jesus teaches his words are transformative.

They take us out of our ordinary choices – to face the storm at home or risk the perils of the sea – and make them extraordinary, make them part of our preparation for and entering into the kingdom of God.

Last Thursday evening, Eric Hanson conducted the Thalia Symphony orchestra in music by three different composers, all from Bohemia, or Czech: One began with a stable job but lost his tenure and for the rest of his life moved around. The second was an itinerant conductor, a wanderer from place to place. The third was a man separated from his homeland by political conditions: his true homeland was a free Czech republic, but in his time it was a province of the Austrian Empire.

One of them was in exile in another sense: born Jewish in a world where Jews were, under the cover of civility, second-class citizens. Their true homeland was elsewhere.

So is ours, isn’t it? Our true homeland is to be in the realm where God reigns. But are we truly lost? No, if we listen to the words of what Jesus is saying, and put them into practice, we are beginning to come into that very country. We are beginning to come home. If you trust in God and obey his commandments, you are never truly lost: you are always at home.

There are five great prophets in the teaching of Islam: Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Blessings and peace be upon them all. …Noah?

Noah was righteous; to be righteous means to be in a trusting and loyal relationship with God. Noah walked with God; to walk with God means to obey and follow God’s will.

For Noah, the rains were coming. And, in obedience to God, Noah built an ark. An ark is a chest, a box, a basket – a container for life & living things – and this is the same word used for the basket, sealed with pitch, that saved Moses from death by exposure. The ark of Noah contained life, and the hope of the world. The Ark of the Covenant – a box or chest or basket – contained the words of life, the words of the promise of God. The words of Jesus contain the source of life. And this life of all that is past is what we recover as we celebrate together as a community of faith in the Lord’s Supper.

As we gather together this morning for Eucharist, let us take a moment to examine our hearts: what needs to go on the boat? What must we leave behind? What will carry us into the future of God’s promise? And what will we do – not to save ourselves – but to live into the righteous life of God’s people, to live by faith? Let us pray:

God, as we journey through this life, we journey home to you. And yet, you are the beginning and the end of our journey, and you see us through, walking with us on the way. Guide us, today, on your paths, for your name’s sake. Amen.

JRL+

The Access Bible (Oxford University Press, 1999) p. 10-13.

Imam Bilal Hyde, teachings on the maqams, Lama Foundation, 1989.

War

2008-05-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

Steve Dubner, from the New York Times, wrote a great little article that listed the opinions about war of 12 West Point cadets. They were all members of the Canterbury Club (an Episcopal fellowship group.) I posted the entire article as well as my reflections on my blog, but I wanted to share my reflections here as well.

As a West Point graduate, I agree with Stephen Dubner’s assessment. When I was there, and I’m sure it is still true, West Point did a very good job of creating thoughtful and critically thinking leaders. It is not a place of simple, monolithic answers. We were taught to do the honorable, ethical thing, even if it cost us personally. Even if it meant disobeying orders we believed to be illegal. It was also made clear to us that we did not get to choose when or where the military would be deployed. We were committing ourselves to submit to the will of the civilian government. This may sound crazy to some people, because it meant we would be willing to serve in wars that we might think were wrong. But the alternative would be to have a military that chose when it would fight. If this happened, then the decision to go to war would be separated from the checks and balances inherent in our democratic system of government, and you can quickly see how that is a bad idea. I can’t think of any other arena where people are asked to be as self-giving as they are in the military. And ours is an all-volunteer military.

But because these heroes who serve on our behalf do not get to choose where they are deployed, it makes it even more important for us, the civilian population, to be as careful as possible when we deploy troops. The first way we “support our troops” is to be as conservative as possible when we ask them to die, and to kill, for us.

You can find Dibner’s original article [HERE].

Prayers for the Armed Forces

2008-05-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to remain mindful of the sacrifices that have been, and are being, made by those in our armed forces. Let us pray.

O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP 839)

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP 823)

to paint the lily - and gild it too

2008-05-25T05:03:00.000-07:00

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal Word and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Little Bear wanted to go play in the snow. But it was cold. So he asked Mama Bear, “May I have a pair of mittens to wear so that my paws will stay warm?” She gave him the mittens and helped him put them on. Little Bear began to go outside; but it was still cold. So he asked his mother, “Mama Bear, may I have a scarf to wear around my neck while I play in the snow?” “Yes,” she said, and draped a scarf around him. Then he asked for galoshes… but before he clumped away, he turned back. “May I have a cap to wear, so that my head will stay warm?” And his mother put a cap on his head. Finally, Little Bear said to his mother, “I’m still afraid I might be cold when I go outside.” And she said, “Do you think you would like to wear a warm fur coat?” “Yes!” Little Bear. “That’s just what I need.” And Mother Bear took off his cap and his galoshes and his mittens and his earmuffs and his scarf. There was Little Bear, standing before her, and she said, “There you are, Little Bear. There’s your fur coat!” And he went outside and played and was happy.

Little Bear was worried – what did he need before he went outside to play in the snow? It turned out his Mother had given him everything he needed, long before he asked. Underneath all the special garments he put on, there was the essential thing: and when he saw that, he was okay.

He thought he needed more – he thought he needed to use a phrase, “to paint the lily.” But what he had already been given was just what he needed.

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
(Wm. Shakespeare, King John, 4. 2. 11-18)

Like Little Bear, sometimes it takes a while for us to trust what we have been given. We want to add to it, to make it safe, make ourselves secure. Pilate wanted to be secure. Jesus throws caution to the wind, the wind of the Holy Spirit, and calls for ultimate reliance on God. The providence of God is the one true security measure. And making anything less our ultimate allegiance is idolatry.

You cannot serve two masters – God and your own security, and you cannot find shelter under two roofs at once. You are called in humble trust to rely on God for what you need. “Give us this day the bread we need.” Single-hearted devotion, service, confidence, in God’s care, are what make us safe, and keep us warm in the snows of the world – however inviting they are, however threatening they seem.

Underneath all their other vestments, priests in Roman times wore the alb – a white garment, loose fitting, gathered at the waist by a cincture or rope. It was white, alba, like the white garment worn at baptism. It shows us that, underneath all the other functions a person may have, there is the fundamental identity of a person baptized into the life and death and resurrection of Christ, and the founded hope of eternal life in God’s own dwelling.

Think of us, then, as servants of Christ, having stewardship of God’s mysteries. To be judged by any human person is a very little thing; we belong to God. Let God be the judge; don’t try to forestall him. And for yourself, keep it together, stay focused on mission, know that God provides, and move forward in Christ.

More than Solomon in all his glory – you will be clothed as you need to be clothed, with the white garment of baptism, the white robe of the martyr – if need be; you will be clothed as a child of God. In this is your safety and in him is your security.

There was a man in ancient times, in the third century or fourth after Christ, who lived in a Roman town in Britain, north of London. His name was Alban.

It was a time of persecution for the church. Under the emperor’s orders, priests were being hunted down and made martyrs, made witnesses who died for the faith. One such came to Alban’s door, seeking shelter. Though he was a pagan, at the time, Alban took the priest in, gave him hospitality, comfort, and sanctuary; in turn the priest gave Alban comfort, hospitality, and sanctuary: in Christ, in Christ’s identity of him first as a whole person, baptized into the life and death and resurrection of Christ, founded in hope of an everlasting home.

The soldiers came to the door. By then Alban had received what the priest had to give him, and he was ready to take on the white garment of the baptized, the white robe of the martyr – and so he did. When the door was opened, there stood a man in the cloak of the priest – and the soldiers took him away.

When they got to the judge, they demanded to know his name, his parentage, right away: “I am Alban,” he said, “and I worship the one true and living God, who made all things.” And so they led him away – toward the arena…

Alban made his security, his home, in his identity with Christ; in God was his refuge. And in his service he found perfect freedom. The Romans could not touch him there. What happened to him then was of consequence, surely: but with him it was a very small thing to be judged by any human court. He did not even judge himself, either to acquit or to condemn. “It is the Lord who judges me.” It is the Lord who held his fate – he had put his life in God’s hands.

From God, who alone discloses the purposes of the heart, Alban would receive his commendation. And so he could proceed, without undue anxiety, on the path before him – in the keeping of God.

We have the assurance of our Lord that we are in his keeping, too: that true security lies not in the world’s goods, however much we amass – or however strongly we assert our independence. All things rightly are free under one Heaven – because all things will be drawn together under the one Christ.

For God has put all things in subjection under his feet… so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15: 27-28)

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, … so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory…

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that you may know in your inmost being the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his providence, and the greatness of his power. God put this power to work in Christ and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
(Ephesians 1:17 ff., paraphrased)

There is nothing left for us to do but put ourselves in his hands, put our hands to his work, and put our feet on his way. As he taught his followers earlier in the same sermon, so the Lord teaches us to pray: Our Father...

New Photo Albums

2008-05-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, May 18, we had our monthly family service in the Great Hall and our annual baccalaureate service in the Cathedral. We have two photo albums of these events posted on our gallery page of Trinity's web site: http://www.trinitycathedral.org/gallery.shtml

Marriage Equality

2008-05-20T13:26:00.001-07:00

I am pleased by the Supreme Court's decision to overturn California's ban on same-sex marriage. I participated in the amicus brief from religious leaders encouraging the Court to overturn the ban. Now that we have marriage equality in California, I see a few priorities in front of us:

We need to keep marriage equality by fighting the ballot initiative that would, if passed, change our state's constitution to limit "marriage" to heterosexual relationships. This is a misuse of the constitution, which should not be amended to restrict people's rights.
We need to support couples who are deciding to get married. Unfortunately we can't host marriage ceremonies in the Cathedral nor can I "officiate" at such services. There are things we can do as a church to support our members as they take this important step. We can help couples design services using prayers from our Prayer Book or other resources. We can participate in marriage ceremonies. We can also have services in the Cathedral where we can come together and celebrate the commitments that couples are making. Here I'm thinking of the service we hold around Valentines Day where all couples are invited to renew their vows and the congregation pledges to support them in their marriage. We could follow the service with a great party.
We need to advocate for marriage equality within the Episcopal Church. A very important national convention will be held in Anaheim in the summer of 2009. I am hoping that that convention will vote to allow dioceses across the nation to bless same-sex unions.
We need to make sure Trinity Cathedral remains a welcoming, safe and inclusive church. That inclusion needs to embrace those who are disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision as well as those who are thrilled.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Blessings,

Brian Baker
Dean
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

Food and Clothes for Jed Smith School

2008-05-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

We have started a new program where we provide clothes and food for students at our partner elementary school, Jed Smith School.

In talking with the administrators at the school we learned that the students get fed breakfast and lunch during the school week, but often go hungry over the weekends. So we now have a group of volunteers who provide backpacks of food the children can take home on Fridays. If they bring the backpacks back to school the following week, we fill them again for the next weekend. We also have a clothes closet where they can get clothes for themselves or family members for free.

It is taking off like crazy. We can only meet a small amount of the need, but we hope to expand the program. You can see some pictures here.

Brian
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

Pentecost: Like Christmas but Bigger

2008-05-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

Everybody understands Christmas and Easter. These are the big feasts of the church that have become a part of our American culture and their meanings are clear. But the feast of Pentecost, which is very important to the church, is not as well understood. For me Pentecost is just like Christmas, only bigger.

In Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus who, in his being, connected the human and the Divine. In Jesus, we see God with us. Jesus was so closely connected with God’s Spirit which dwelt within him that his human nature and the Divine nature within comprised one being. God’s love for us and God’s loving sacrifice was made physical and manifest in Jesus.
After modeling this deep, inner, abiding communion with God, and after offering his life in love for the world, Jesus commissioned his followers to carry on his work. He promised that God’s spirit would dwell within them in the same way God’s spirit dwelt in himself. The feast of Pentecost (50 days after Easter) marks the birth of God’s spirit within us. It is just like Christmas in that God’s spirit is made manifest in a physical way. It is bigger that Christmas because it happens on a grand scale. Instead of God’s spirit enfleshed in one human, God’s spirit is enfleshed in many, many humans. On Pentecost we celebrate the fact that we are all bearers of God’s spirit in the world and we honor our call to embody this spirit for the love of the world. In a sense, the world becomes filled with many Jesus-es.

While we may never perfectly embody God’s spirit in the world because we keep getting in our own way, that doesn’t take away from the fact that God is dwelling in us and we have the lovely obligation to be in communion with God and with the world around us.

Pentecost, which we just celebrated, shifts the focus from God in Jesus to God in us. And it challenges us with the question, what will you do with the gift of your life filled with God’s spirit.

Blessings,

Brian
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

How Shall We Worship?

2008-05-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

For quite some time, many in the Episcopal church have wondered if we were falling behind other churches because of our style of worship. We see the wild success of mega churches which have been able to appeal to a wide audience by using popular culture translate the gospel message. It seems however that, at least for some, pop-style Christianity is wearing thin. There is growing hunger for ancient and traditional forms of worship. Here's an excerpt from an interesting article by Mark Galli in Christianity Today about evangelicals discovering liturgical worship.

We've recently featured in CT's pages a story about evangelicals who are
attracted to liturgical worship, but in the context of American youth culture,
many wonder why. The worship leaders wear medieval robes and guide the
congregation through a ritual that is anything but spontaneous; they lead music
that is hundreds of years old; they say prayers that are scripted and formal;
the homily is based on a 2,000-year-old book; and the high point of the service
is taken up with eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a Rabbi executed in
Israel when it was under Roman occupation. It doesn't sound relevant.

Yet many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of
those evangelicals, I'd like to explain what the attraction is for me, and
perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and
paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance.
"The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world," writes Orthodox
theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to
"make Christianity understandable to this mythical 'modern' man on the street,"
we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point
of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange,
new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world
they need is more of the world out of which they've come. The world the liturgy
reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world
it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

You can read the whole article HERE.

Whose Feast is it Anyway?

2008-05-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

This Tuesday, Dean Baker offered a quote from Athanasius in his post. Usually, May 2nd would be celebrated as his “feast” day (meaning a day of remembrance and celebration); but he got bumped. Ascension Day (which is celebrated 40 days after Easter) took center stage yesterday, and that bumped Saints Philip and James. Since they were apostles, that meant they had to have a day in the sun, so they bumped into today, leaving Athanasius with no feast. Who in the world thinks it’s important to monitor all this, you might ask, and why?

Well, it all has to do with what made Athanasius famous in the first place. In the fourth century, followers of Jesus began to struggle over how to capture what is important about Jesus. For one or two centuries, most Christians thought the world would end very soon, so there was no need to define an enduring tradition. That didn’t happen, so Christians began to focus on capturing core truths they wanted coming generations (including us!) to receive. Athanasius and Arius were two participants in wider discussions about how to capture who Jesus was in words. Both felt strongly that the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus were a fulcrum in human history that changed everything, that Jesus brought new possibilities for humanity into being. Sadly, they couldn’t agree about how to describe Jesus himself so as to get this across. Athanasius wanted to emphasize that Jesus was God incarnate, bringing eternal, divine power into our condition. Arius wanted to emphasize Jesus’ true humanity, to underscore that his actions inure to the benefit of all humans.

We treasure apostles like Philip and James because they were first-hand witnesses. Without first-hand witnesses, none of the later saints would have anything to argue about. That’s why the feast for Philip and James takes priority today. I have always found what Athanasius and Arius agreed upon much more significant than their disagreements. The Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday concludes with these words of prayer from Jesus, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:11). The spiritual feast Jesus brought to earth is for everyone, and today is a good day to remember that.

Happy Ascension Day

2008-05-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Today, the church in the west celebrates “Ascension Day,” when the resurrected Jesus left the earth, no longer appearing in physical form. You might wonder why this is something to celebrate. Wouldn’t life be easier if the resurrected Jesus still made appearances in physical form? Then no one would need to doubt the truth of everything in the Gospels. Jesus could just keep teaching directly, so we wouldn’t have to take anything second hand.

Our tradition has special prayers (called “collects”) written for every special day. The one for Ascension Day gives thanks that, “Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things.” Ascension Day is really bigger than Christmas or maybe even Easter. It’s the day that the divine love revealed in Jesus was blasted free to be on the loose, available to complete the re-creation of everyone and everything. The author of 1 Peter (one of the early Christian letters preserved in the Bible) speaks of the Spirit of Christ in all and gives a great clue about how we can receive this divine “in-filling.” “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (1Peter 4:10). Don’t tell Hallmark, but Ascension Day is perfect for gift-giving. But we can’t buy the gift we need to give this day and every day. We need to give of ourselves. Happy Ascension Day!

TJ Pare's Sermon from 4/20

2008-04-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

Theosis and Silence

2008-04-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve been studying the Eastern Orthodox notion of Theosis (divinization.) In the Eastern Orthodoxy, theosis is the principal movement in the spiritual life. According to St. Athanasius, ”God became man so that man can become God.” In the Incarnation we are united with the Divine nature and the Christian spiritual life is a process whereby that Divine nature is more fully realized within us. I vaguely remember reading Athasasius in seminary but am enjoying delving more deeply in this line of thought.

A great beginning reference on theosis, if you are interested, is found here: http://kevinburt.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/hang-up-1-theosis/

An unrelated gem was found in one of the comments on this blog. A reader, Craig Brown, wrote, “I have spent my life hunting God in words. Now I wait for Him in silence.” While I’m still hunting God in words (and Lord knows I speak many) I have reinvigorated my practice of silent prayer since my recent encounter with my Buddhist friends. It has been a nice homecoming.

If any are interested, Trinity Cathedral is hosting a workshop on Centering Prayer this Saturday.

Blessings.

Brian Baker
http://blogs.deanbaker.org/

Uncle Stand-In

2008-04-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

‘In him we live and move and have our being’

1 John 2:1-14

Christ Our Advocate

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments.

Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him’, but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.

***

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal word and holy spirit - AMEN.

In the book of Acts we travel a long journey with the apostle Paul, from Saul the self-righteous persecutor to Paul the missionary. He begins his journey appealing to the Law – even against the Spirit and the Son of God. But last and least appeared to him the resurrected Jesus – and he became his messenger to the nations.

From Ephesus and Thessalonica and Tarsus and Damascus, where he had been able to speak in the synagogues – for a while – he goes to Athens; the capital of sophisticated discourse, of philosophers. He cannot appeal to the Law, the law they do not know: he can only appeal to the law they know in their hearts; as their own poets said, ‘for we too are his offspring.”

Paul proclaims to the Athenians that the god unknown that they have built an altar to is the god who needs no altar, who is not confined by time or space, certainly not by shape or form in stone or wood or metal, and indeed not by anything in all their philosophy – he is supreme, creator, One: he is the source of all being. And he is not simply the ‘mover unmoved’ – the original push (or bang) that got the universe started; he is the God who sustains life and gives breath to all his creatures.

He made all nations of the earth from one ancestor, Paul proclaims, and so planned the times and places of the lives of all people so that they would seek him – and, perhaps, ‘grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from us.’

Paul contends with the philosophers, the intellectuals, the coffee house crowd, honoring them and showing them that what they have sought is coming to pass: the one that they all have been seeking is seeking all of them. Indeed, he has sent a man to be their advocate, their vindicator, their righteous judge, and assured us of this by raising him from the dead.

Jesus comes to them, even the pagan world, not to condemn them but to bring them to life, full life, abundant life – that which they have worshipped in the dark – in ignorance – now they will be enabled to worship in the light of a new day.

What is dawning is an enlightenment born of God – and of the Spirit. Therefore what they hear in Paul’s proclamation is a completion of the groundwork God laid in the very foundation stones of creation. Earth and sky and sea testify to him – and now in fulfillment of his plan God sends one, his own, to call all to repent, and begin turning, turning home, to the home they never knew – to the one in whom we live and move and have our being, the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

“Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for me.” – this is the psalmist’s summons – and the psalm carries us on to the next step. Beyond argument there is devotion – and prayer – and the petitions of the psalmist have not gone unheard.

“I called out to him with my mouth, and his praise was on my tongue. If I had found evil in my heart, the Lord would not have heard me; but in truth God has heard me; he has attended the voice of my prayer.”

Far from rejecting the plea of the unknown God fearer, the Lord hears the cry of the seeking soul, and all, Jew and Gentile, far and near, sophisticated and plain vanilla, can echo the psalmist’s thank offering and praise:

“Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld his love from me.”

In the second lesson, from the first letter of Peter, the days of reassurance are far away – and the days of persecution ‘for the sake of my name’ are close at hand. Do not fear, do not be intimidated – nothing the world can throw at you can separate you from God.

In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord – let your conduct reflect his glory, and your speech confess the hope that is in you – the hope of Glory. With a clear conscience – made clear through the resurrection of Christ Jesus – you can hope.

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh in deed, but he was made alive in the spirit. His life and death and resurrection and ascension give us freedom from fear forever – we no longer need be intimidated by the world’s judgments. We are already vindicated before the highest court – and in the name of Christ we are welcomed into God’s favor. And so Peter, like Paul, reminds us to be worthy of our calling and of the name of the one in whom we receive life.

In the Gospel of John we continue to hear the words of comfort and assurance, and of exhortation, that are part of the long discourse at the end of the Passover meal – remember, Judas has left, to go ‘do what he has to do’, and now the rest of the disciples are coming to terms with what it will mean when Jesus goes. How are you to go on living when the one who is the very principle of life has gone?

This is the dilemma and the bereavement that the disciples face, on the eve of the crucifixion: how are they to live in the absence of their master, their teacher?

Many teachers would leave their students feeling abandoned, orphans – this is the image used of the followers of men like Socrates. But such is not our fate – as followers of Jesus we are heirs to the promise made to the disciples on that first Holy Week, that Jesus will ask the Father – he will be our advocate to the Father, and make petition to him on our behalf – and what he asks for we receive: another advocate, to be with us forever; the spirit of truth.

Jesus makes of the spirit’s coming an ‘open secret’ – the spirit is only revealed to those in whom he makes his home. In Christ and through Christ, in the Spirit and through the Spirit, in the Father and through the Father – in all these ways, the three persons of the Trinity, we abide in God – and God abides in us. This is the promise Jesus is making on the eve of his own departure – that, in the spirit, he will be present. He will not abandon his disciples – and he does not. The world no longer sees him, but he lives – he lives in the Father, and we in him, and he in us. This is the promise of the spirit, of the abiding of God with us and us in him.

How heady this all is! And yet, the practical steps are laid out before us: to know him, is, well, to love him – and this is the love not of emotion but of obedience: if you love me you will follow my teachings; the one who keeps my word – and carries it out in the world – this is the one who loves me, and knows I am here.

Jesus’ promise is to send a ‘paraclete’ – originally a legal term, a “paraclete” was an advocate, a counselor, or a stand-in: someone who would speak on your behalf before the court. And a paraclete can be a teacher, and a comforter.

For example: when Sarah was ready for her ‘coming-out’ party all the girls were to gather every weekend to receive dancing lessons, together with their fathers, so that on the day of the big dance they could be presented, and escorted, and dance together, fathers and daughters.

Sarah’s father had died three years before, and so her Uncle was to escort her. But he lived in Texas. And so he could not attend the weekly dancing lessons.

But an old friend of Sarah’s father stepped in – he offered to go with Sarah to all the lessons, - he said, “I’d be glad to be your Uncle stand-in” and so she, the only girl without a father present, was not alone. Frank learned all the dances and taught them conscientiously to her uncle, who performed them perfectly on the day of the dance. It was a great success. And so I was especially glad, when I met Sarah’s family, to meet “Uncle Stand-in” – representative, comforter, and teacher.

We are not alone. Come, Holy Spirit, advocate and guide, be with us, to teach, to comfort, to lead: and bring us into the presence of the living God, in Christ. Amen.

Diocesan Visioning

2008-04-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

For the Dean's reflelection, click HERE.

Dean Baker speaking in NYC

2008-04-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

Path to Heaven: Speaking in NYC

I was invited to speak with Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally ( http://www.starintheeast.org/teachers.html) last weekend. They had just released a book that looks at teachings of Jesus from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. They are interested in teaching Christians Buddhist practices to help them achieve heaven in this life (”The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand”) and they wanted a Christian minister to speak at their talks about a Christian perspective on Heaven. The questions I was asked to answer were: What is the human condition? What is Heaven? How does one get there?

Read more (w/ photos and video) HERE

plaid sheep

2008-04-12T15:40:00.001-07:00

In the name of God, merciful Father, compassionate Son, Spirit of wisdom. Amen.

When she was a freshman in college Margaret had a poster in her dorm room, of a herd of sheep. They weren’t ordinary white or black sheep: they were colored like Benetton fabrics, in wild bright solid colors, and polka dots, and stripes, and plaid. They were a little like us, all different, some of our patterns dyed in the wool. And they were like us, too, in that underneath those colors they were all the same – and all, if their wool were washed, would be as white as spring lambs.

Last week (Tartan Day) some of us wore tartans – symbols of clan or family or country or state, of some affiliation: a sign of a source of identity. Not everybody got the word, and not everybody has a tartan.

Of course you could just wear plaid.

But coming up is a celebration we all have a part in, and have an identity in: at the Table of the Lord, we break one bread, as we are one body, and we bring to that table all that we are and have.

We offer the gifts of our life and labor to the Lord, each of us from our own particularity, our own special gifts and identities – tartans included – as we come together around the one table to celebrate in the presence of the one who is Lord.

And even before that, earlier in the service, we will affirm our common faith in the words of the creed, just as we do on baptismal Sundays – including Pentecost, All Saints, and the Baptism of our Lord – and the Easter Vigil. For as different as we are, we are one in the Lord, and we share one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

At baptism we don a simpler garment than our everyday patterns and plaids – we wear a simple white garment, the alb – which symbolizes our common heritage in Christ, our washing white as snow in the waters of baptism. The alb symbolizes baptism – and resurrection. This garment, blending all the colors of the rainbow, shows our true nature:

All of us are baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ. For each and all of us that is our first identity. We belong to God.

Christ is our Savior, our guide, and our shepherd: he leads us, calling us by name, by the waters of baptism. He is the one who knows us best of all. To understand this true identity let us revisit the waters of baptism.

Let me take you on a journey down to a river. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and imagine yourself at the banks of the river Jordan. Jesus has been baptized, and so have you.

You have been baptized with him, and in him; into his life, his death, his resurrection and ascension. And so when you hear these words – that you are about to hear – you know the Lord means Jesus, and, because Jesus is your Savior, he means you as well.

Hear then, these words, as you are baptized into Christ and live in his Name:

You are my beloved; in you I am well pleased.

Listen to these words: breathe in and out, repeating them like a quiet prayer.

You are my beloved; in you I am well pleased.

Remember them, and remember that you are one of Christ’s own, and he is with you.

You are my beloved; in you I am well pleased.

We are at the river, at the shore. The current is flowing by: gently and softly in places, still and sweet; in others, it is frothy and turbulent, and strong. And yet beside you stands the Shepherd, braced in the living water, ready to guard you, ready to guide you. The waters of baptism are living waters, flowing with life, refreshing you, and carrying you along. Where will they take you next?

Wherever you go, wherever the current of the living water carries you, Christ Jesus is always beside you seeing you through.

Even if you should walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the Good Shepherd is with you, his rod to defend you, his staff to guide you – and he will lead you beside quiet waters and tranquil shorelines, to the pastures of abundant life.

Imagine yourself walking down into the river, immersing your self. When you are baptized the waters close over you like a symbol of death – but as you are lifted out of the water, as you are raised, you begin to breathe in the new life, you begin to see in the new day.

You begin to live in the light of the life of the lord, in the Lord’s Day, in his world.

What will this look like to us here in our community? What will it look like to you?

As you begin the new Day, the Day the Lord has made, today – as we make Eucharist together and then go forth in the name of the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, where will the Spirit lead you, the Shepherd guide you? So much is unknown, and yet he is with us.

We know how to begin: it’s laid out for us in the second chapter of Acts: “Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to (1) the apostles’ teaching and (2) fellowship, to (3) the breaking of bread and (4) the prayers.” They praised God with glad and generous hearts. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

May it be so with us. Amen.

The 23rd Psalm, in the King James Version (Book of Common Prayer, pg. 474):

The LORD is my shepherd; *
I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; *
he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul; *
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; *
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; *
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

******

The guided meditation is based on one led by the presiding bishop at Olympia diocesan clergy day this past Wednesday.

"If it's true...."

2008-03-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

Jesus Christ our Savior, you have delivered us from sin and death. You have brought with the dawn of this day a new beginning and an empty tomb; grant us strength and humility, love and courage, hospitality and faithfulness, wisdom and compassion, mercy and grace, to enter into life, and to welcome into the new life in Christ the stranger we meet who becomes our brother, the foreigner who becomes our kinsman, the enemy who becomes our friend, the opponent who becomes our teacher, the sorrowful who becomes a well-spring of joy: all the fruits of the Spirit we anticipate may we receive with abundance of grace, through your transforming love. Amen.

If the Resurrection is true, Jesus is true: he is indeed the Son of God, the Savior, the one in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell, our best hope of seeing the mind of God and therefore the meaning of the universe; and to know him is to have a relationship with him, not an intellectual proposition to demand our assent, but a living Lord to call for our obedience.

If it’s true that Christ is risen, evil has been vanquished. No longer can the powers of this world – Pilate, Temple guard, the coterie of power brokers – none of them hold sway after all. The real power is in God’s hands, the hands of a Savior.

If it’s true that Christ is risen, the gates of death have been shattered, torn from their hinges – he has walked freely through them. Beyond death there is life, new life in Christ. Baptism, the immersion into the waters of mortality and re-emergence into life, shows us that as we die to sin, we are raised to new life in Him.

If Christ is raised, life means something beyond itself. Our petty purposes and grand schemes, the bumps and slingshot wounds of daily life, the deep disappointments of tragic news and wearing sorrow, come around the compass to a new bearing: the compass-needle of our lives now points beyond ourselves; our true direction is found in Christ.

If it is true that Christ is risen, then Jesus is alive – now. You can get to know him – in the breaking of the bread, the sharing of the cup, the anointing, baptism, prayers and peace; you can get to know him through friend and stranger: his image is all around you.

If it is true that Christ is risen, he is offering us a friendship of transformative power: both stern teacher and careful shepherd, he guides us through the painful metamorphosis of our lives into a new life of sacramental meaning and purpose.

If Christ is risen indeed, then we are right to believe in LIFE against DEATH, a revelation of life that is the opposite of the obsessive vision of death and violence so often purveyed in our worldly world, as if it were the end of the story.

If Christ is risen, then the limits are off. If Christ is risen indeed, LIFE is possible – we can do anything through the One who strengthens us.

If Christ is risen, the life of the world – politics, science, art and music, all of it – matters; it is redeemed, it is transformed, it has value and purpose and honor because God has given life value and purpose and honor through the resurrection of his Son.

If it’s true that Christ is risen, then justice is a given. It is going to happen. And how can we do less than work for justice, when God has given his own Son that we might be free?

For by raising his Son from the dead, God has given all of us new life. God sent his Son into the world – bringing his justice indeed – not to bring it condemnation but to redeem it, not to render it meaningless but to give it meaning. For God gave his Son so that who ever put his trust in Him would not perish – would not be sent down to death and shadow – but would be brought into the light and life and love and laughter and joy of the day that dawns today, the new life in Christ that we celebrate on Easter morning. Death no longer can claim the last word; beyond death is the triumph of the Son of the living God: life everlasting, flowing as a river, in the presence of the Son of the living God.

And we are called to enter the new life in Christ now, today, as we speak, on Easter morning: Christ is alive!

And this present moment is the moment of freedom: we define ourselves as we choose life; we define ourselves as his people, children of the day. We live no longer in darkness, no longer subject to the powers of sin, but in the full light and joy of the Day of the Lord.

This is the Day that the Lord has made – the day when behold! He has made all things new – let us enter into that new day, and the work and the play and the love and the laughter, the burden of sorrow shifted onto the broad shoulders that carried the Cross, the joy of his emerging Kingdom present & effervescent in our hearts and in our lives – this is the Lord’s Day; indeed He is risen: Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Amen.

--------------------

Easter Day
Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 31:1-6
Psalm: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
New Testament Reading: Acts 10:34-43
Gospel: Matthew 28:1-10

A New Zealand Prayer Book, p. 592-3
John Pritchard, Living Easter Through the Year (SPCK, 2005) p. 33-36.

We have come by a long road, you and I

2008-03-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

We have come by a long road, you and I, my friends. From Cana in Galilee, where we celebrated at the wedding-feast together – remember, “You have saved the best wine for last”. From Cana where we saw the Savior work a miracle – turning water into wine, showing all the wedding-guests that he was like a bridegroom himself and that until some consummation unforeseen by us he would be with us like a bridegroom and we should party like a bridegroom’s friends. As if he himself were the source of love and laughter.

And so we began a jolly company, and made our way along the road as happy as the merry men of Sherwood or the knights adventuring from Camelot. Would we be legends too? The thought crept into more than one head.

But then we saw stranger things. There was the woman at the well, in Samaria, and Jesus was there with her. We had gone into town and forgotten all about him – and here he was talking to this outcast. And he promised her something beyond belief. There at Jacob’s Well he said he had something better to offer, better than that old still water of the well, from which she drew (in mid-day, no less, so no one else was about her as she drew up the bucket): he offered living water, running water, flowing water – and he offered it as if he were its source. As if he were the source of life itself.

Then there was the man born blind, to whom he gave sight – as if he were the source of light itself.

And then he came to Bethany – despite our pleadings he walked into almost certain capture, to see one last time his old friend Lazarus. By the time we got there though Lazarus was a stinking corpse. There was no point in staying there any longer. If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died. Both sisters said that. And then Jesus said, “Lazarus, come forth.” And the dead man walking, bond as he was by his grave clothes, came out and was alive again.

And there we were, with Jesus, just a man no longer – now appearing to us as the source of life and light, of love and laughter. We knew now he was Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah. He was the king of Israel, and its hope. He was our deliverer, our savior: the liberator that God had promised to his people.

He was more than that, to us. He had led us all this way. He was our teacher, and our leader, and our friend. We had journeyed a long way together, and taken the long road. He set his face toward the city, and we traveled with him.

We came at last to Jerusalem.

It was all over. We had a good week, at the start: an excellent week. There was the procession of the palms, the days in the Temple – do you remember the whip of cords, the overturning of the tables? – and the nights outside town, together. There was the anticipation of the Passover, and the invitation to the feast. Then there was a strange incident at dinner. What you have to do, go on and do it. Jesus said that to Judas. What did that mean? We wondered. And then we went into the garden at Gethsemane, and Peter and James and John went apart a little ways with Jesus, and then he went on alone. And then the soldiers came, and we knew what Judas had been up to. But it was too late.

And we ran for it. Peter tried to stop them – for a while. Then he too fell back.

And they took away our master.

We followed, some of us, at a distance. Peter even got into the high priest’s courtyard – by lying.

The women among us were not so obvious about it, and somehow they managed to stay alongside Jesus as he was led to his death. They followed him up the hill, and he spoke to them: “Do not weep for me, daughters of Jerusalem. Weep for yourselves, and for your children.” What was coming – what, that could be worse than what was happening before their eyes?

For the soldiers took Jesus, and handed him over to the executioners, and they nailed him right onto the cross. And he was raised up – and then he died.

It was a quiet afternoon. We hid out, did ordinary things, or kept to ourselves. And wept.

He was gone. The one who had been our teacher, our most beloved teacher, our master, Rabbouni, and more than that, our friend. For he had made us his friends, on that last night if no other, when he got up from washing our feet and came back to the table and ate with us, and reminded us that – that some day he would not be with us when we gathered but he would be there in the midst of us nevertheless, if we remembered him whenever we came together.

And so we promised we would. Little knowing. The moment would be soon.

And now he was gone. Our hope – and not ours only, Israel’s: and not only that, the hope of the world. That hope was gone now; Pilate and the Temple rats had won.

I think.

I know.

I feel it.

And yet…

Good Friday 2008

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25 or Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Thanks to Steve Moore, Herb O’Driscoll & Esther Davis for good ideas.

JRL+

a simple act of service

2008-03-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

First let me acknowledge that none of what I am about to tell you is original. I owe it all to three of my brothers in Christ, Paul, Stan, and Jerry.

Jerry was the bishop who saw me through from my first tentative expression of a desire to serve as a priest, to my ordination to the diaconate, my ordination to the priesthood, and most importantly to my marriage with Sarah. He showed me how to serve, and to aspire to be the servant of many. So, thanks to Jerry.

Stan I last saw at his wedding, in the Mount Hermon chapel at a summer camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where he served as leader of outdoor education programs. When I first met him, he was organizing a Sierra Club chapter at our high school, and getting us together to celebrate Earth Day, April 22, 1970. He showed me the importance of Christian faith in the stewardship of the earth and showed ways to be of service there. So, thanks to Stan.

Paul – whom I will speak about for a bit longer than I did of the others – I last saw when I was a seminarian at St. Anselm’s, Lafayette, California, where he belonged. And when I realized who he was, I told him two stories – about himself. Which I will tell you now, he shrugged off – but which were great teaching moments for me. I had seen him first on New Year’s Eve 1968 when he was regional administrator of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration (FWPCA) in the San Francisco area; he’d pulled together a conference that brought into one room people from all sides concerned with conservation of natural resources, and, a new word – ecology. There they were polluters and protesters alike – complete with jerks from the home office and guerilla theater acts. There was room for all of us under that one roof, and we got a chance to talk, and to learn. (I was a Boy Scout – so conservation was the word that got me in the room.)

I met Paul again – after high school and before seminary – when I was working for a summer in a U.S. civil service job, as file boy for the EPA office in San Francisco.

One day at the end of summer there was an unusual amount of activity among my senior clerks & typists: it was the end of the fiscal year and so the deadlines for getting out some grant letters.

They were all working feverishly against the deadline, as was the head of our division and her assistant. The middle managers all left at 5 – leaving the clerical staff and the senior managers to finish the job by midnight, when a postal clerk would meet us outside the post office to take our mail in just before the deadline.

We worked away, typing and photocopying, and addressing and labeling, into the hours of the evening – until all the copy machines on the floor gave up the ghost.

I know what to do! someone said. We can use the big machine in the copy room downstairs.

Usually it had a team of operators running it full time, but they had gone home, at 5, too. And the door was now locked.

I know what to do! someone said. We can break in through the regional administrator’s office next door.

And so they went downstairs –

-- and the door was open, and the light was on, and there, working late, was the head of the whole agency for the Western United States. The big boss. Paul.

What’s going on? He found out – and got up from behind his desk and ran the copy machine himself until the work was all done and the letters were in the mail and the deadline was met.

I told him, when I saw him those years later in Lafayette, that he had set an example of leadership for me, twice. Gathering the people together under one roof, so they could talk to each other. And getting in there and doing what needed to be done, setting an example and pitching in.

Aaaah, he waved it away. No big deal.

But still I think of Paul when I think of servant leadership.

Maybe there is some one you think of, too.

Of course. We turn from these modest examples of service to a story, a dramatic enactment, of true humility.

It had been a pretty good week, so far, for the disciples. They’d seen last Sunday the Romans shown up at their own game – as Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg told us in their book, The Last Week, the imperial progress of Pilate and his soldiers into Jerusalem was easily made ironic by the same-time scene of their Jesus entering the City on a donkey’s colt, saluted with palm branches, his path paved by overcoats.

This is real leadership, they seemed to say: to come not as judge but as savior, to be one of the people not their overlord.

And then he’d shown them up again, taking up a whip of cords and driving the moneychangers from the Temple. All that, and now, a gathering in an upper room, a meal together – a celebration of the passing over of Israel in Egypt and a hope for similar deliverance in the very near future, from Rome.

More than Rome was at stake, however. And the triumph would not be of this world: it would come only at the end of a long hard road that led to a cross – and only then beyond.

Jesus – the Messiah, as they had begun to think of him; Christ, the King of Kings – now we were at table with him; surely now we were in our element.

And then, he shows them what real leadership means: before he even takes the bread to give thanks and break it, before he takes the cup and shares it, he takes upon himself something that would surprise Moses, shepherd as he was, and even Abraham, the host of the angels. He gets up from his place at the table, and takes on the role of a servant. He does what only the lowest slave in the household would ordinarily do: he washes their feet.

They’d come a long way from Galilee, on foot mostly likely, on dusty roads, through crowds and countryside, village and town. This was no mere demonstration – it was real work. And Jesus does it. He washes their feet.

And so before he takes on that deeper humiliation we will recall tomorrow, he did what was ordinary, and uncelebrated: he served. And he still does.

And he invites us to join him, in his service.

JRL+

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

May I speak in the Name of the Son,
in the Power of the Holy Spirit,
to the Glory of God the Father. AMEN.

the dream is ended

2008-03-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

On the last page of the last chapter of his last book for children, C. S. Lewis wrote:

“The dream is ended: this is the morning…” the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures…had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

***

This is not the end of the story. It is only the end of the beginning.

The story began, in this earthly realm, 93 years ago. Allison Morrison lived a long and full life, a memorable one, with memories left behind that we can begin to share today, as you meet each other and hear each other’s stories – of Allison getting together with folks on Friday mornings at Pancake Haus, of Rob and Allison anchoring their pew at the 8 o’clock services, of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This is the part of the story that we know: but the story continues beyond our knowing, as Allison is received where she is known best of all, in the presence of God.

For each of us this life is only the beginning: death is not the end: life, in Christ, goes on into eternity.

We can share in the presence of Christ in this community together, in Eucharist: Allison and all those who have gone before us, share in that communion, too: in the presence of the Lord.

“Our journey,” Archbishop Sentamu has preached, “is towards oneness with God. As we journey, our calling is to make manifest to everyone the compassionate face of God made visible in Jesus Christ.”

We follow Jesus. We follow him to life in the presence of God. Someday like Allison each one of us will see him face to face. When that day comes, may we be like Peter, who, hearing on Easter morning that Jesus was alive, ran to the tomb to greet his risen Lord. In the meantime, may we run or walk, may we journey, as if Jesus were walking beside us – his presence a forgone conclusion.

“Jesus is in fact the presence of God’s truth and God’s life in the world,” Lesslie Newbigin writes, “and to know the Father means to follow the way which Jesus is, and which he has opened” for us, through the veil between this life and the next, “by his living, his dying, and his rising from the dead.”

The presence of God, the forgiveness of God, the grace of God, are all around us and present to us. It is a matter of us becoming present to Him.

Quite often we may feel his absence, as if he were gone. But even at those times he is right beside us, grieving with us in our sorrow and despair.

Sometimes we may forget how he sees us: the Lord sees the person he made and that he loves. He sees each of us in aspiration – in the Spirit – and sees the child of God within us. However distorted that image may seem to be, from time to time, it is there, shining behind the clouds of sin and desire, of folly and disease, and on the day that the Lord greets us, as he now greets Allison, we will shine with the reflected light of God’s glory and his loving greeting to us.

“Come my child, my beloved. Come home to the place I have made for you. Come to the table – and sit at the banquet – and rejoice in the presence and the plenty of God.”

May God in his grace abundantly enfold you, bringing you into his peace. Amen.

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Edmonds, WA
March 15, 2008

Memorial Service for
Allison Morrison (October 11, 1915 – February 15, 2008)

Lamentations 3:22-26, 31-33
Psalm 121
Revelation 21:2-7
Psalm 106:1-5
John 14:1-6

(C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, the last chapter, the last page.)

(Lesslie Newbigin, The Light Has Come, Eerdmans, 1982, p. 182)

John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, “We journey towards oneness with God“, Monday 12 February 2007
Service of commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Janani Luwum at Westminster Abbey, London
(http://www.archbishopofyork.org/261)

May I speak in the Name of the Son, in the Power of the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father. AMEN.

dry bones

2008-03-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

In the name of the God who lives, who was, who is, and who is coming...

Imagine a deserted wilderness, an ancient battleground: now desolate, picked over, even the scavengers long fled. It is a wasteland, occupied only by old bones of the once living… It could be Stalingrad, Chancellorsville, or a village in Iraq. It is Israel. Once proud, inheritor of David’s realm, conquered by Joshua, the Promised Land: now desert. The Babylonian army has crushed their hopes – they are in Exile, now, by the rivers of Babylon, and their own land lies discarded, bleak.

What could possibly revive their hopes? What, indeed, but the word of God? The word of Life, which brought forth upon the earth bread, the fruit of toil, all the produce of the garden, all that is, all that we have – Life itself. This is the voice that comes to the prophet Ezekiel.

Breathe – breath the breath of God. And prophesy: and the old bones come to life. Israel returns to the Promised Land. And builds anew. The people return; the land begins to recover, to quicken with new life. Laughter can be heard in the streets, once empty, now full of life, and hope, and light. What could revive the people of God – but the Word of God?

Out of the depths I call – this is the cry of the lost, the abandoned; the desperate soul, in a desert of its own: a prison ward, a hospital cell; a place of abandonment. There is nothing to bargain with.

The soul waits, alone – bereft of any hope … but the original hope, the origin of hope, the Creator and Redeemer and Sanctifier of souls. Breathe on me, the soul cries. Make me live, take me out of this desolate place. And God responds – lifting me beyond myself, into a scene beyond dreams.

Jesus has left Jerusalem, where it is dangerous. Hot. They’re after him, now. And so he has cooled off, gone across the Jordan to a quiet place.

And then the word comes after him – from that beloved village, that home where he is at home, where Martha and Mary and Lazarus are, tragic news, and desperation: Lazarus is dying.

Dare he risk it? Can he make it to his friend’s side, in time, before the cops come and drag him away?

He waits.

He waits.

It is not for anything less than the glory of God that he has come, and nothing less will bring him forth, to risk it, to go where certain exposure could take him to his own death. But Lazarus is dying.

He goes quietly. Before he can even get to the village, Martha comes out to greet him – and a crowd follows her.

No entrance through the back door, no slipping in and out – this must happen in full view of the people, of the Jews of Jerusalem: the authorities will hear of it.

Where were you? You could have saved him. I will take you to him.

Jesus wept.

And then, he is there. He is with us. And he brings more than consolation, more than revival: he brings the word of Life. He is Life, and Resurrection, and in Him the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

And he says the word – as simple as, let there be light. He says,

Bring him out.

And they do – and the dead walks. The forgotten man lives, and is restored to his home.

This is the resuscitation of a corpse, not the resurrection of the last day. Lazarus is not the first-born of the dead, but the last and most wonderful and most dangerous Sign Jesus performs before the powers of the world crush him and bring him down to his death, to his own place of desolation (and from which he will rise to God’s glory).

For now the glory of God is restoration – to see hope once abandoned live again, to see a beloved brother restored to his sisters.

Soon enough a greater miracle will come – Jesus will be betrayed to his own death, and beyond it will come… (the unexpected morning, the dawn of Easter.)

Jesus performs this sign, this miracle: and the cost is his life. Now he’s torn it – now they will meet in council to dispose of this problem.

And he knows it – he knows it. And this too will be to the glory of God. Because beyond their planning, beyond their imagining, is a scene unimaginable to the eyes of the world-bound: the vision of plenty, of abundance, life in God’s new world, in his very presence.

For beyond death and even now God is present with us. And beyond this life we are present with him, no longer seeing through a glass darkly, but face to face.

This new life, this eternal life in the presence of God, does not wait for death or the second coming: it begins now, as God is present with us, in the midst of us… as he was in the dark valley, of the shadow of death, as he was with Ezekiel in the valley of bones, as he is with the prisoner and the abandoned and the desolate, ...

...as he was with Jesus and Lazarus at the side of the tomb unwrapping the grave clothes, hurry – hurry! As Martha waits to embrace her brother, all hope abandoned now all disbelief exchanged for joy.

Mary waits; she has seen it. And perhaps she sees beyond, too: to a day when she will see another beloved one emerge from the grave.

He is with her. He is her master. He is ours. And she waits – as we do – for the day beyond Good Friday, the day of the resurrection, the day when all hope will be transformed in the joy of Easter morning.

Be with us now, Lord, in the breaking of the bread. Breathe on it, and us, that you may be present with us and we with you. Even now.

Come, Lord, restore, renew, & revive your people. Amen.

+

THE BLESSING

May you find in Christ crucified
a strength in times of darkness,
a support in times of weakness,
and the assurance of eternal life,
and the blessing of God almighty,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you now,
and remain always with you. Amen.

(adapted from David Adam, Clouds and Glory)

Lent V Year A
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45
Psalm 130

David Adam, Clouds and Glory: Prayers for the Church Year: Year A (London: SPCK, 2000)

Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, Carl R. Holladay, Gene M. Tucker,
Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year A (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1992)

Barbara Crafton, "If Christ Were Here/Hope in the Dry Bones", The Almost Daily eMo, Geranium Farm
http://www.geraniumfarm.org/dailyemo.cfm?Emo=962

Scott M. Lewis, S.J., New Collegeville Bible Commentary: The Gospel According to John and the Johannine Letters (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2005)

Lesslie Newbigin, The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982)

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today: Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Volume 2 (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1999)

Mary Hinkle Shore, Herman C. Waetjen, Richard Eslinger, Melinda A. Quivik, New Proclamation: Year A, 2007-2008: Advent through Holy Week (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007)

What would it be like to be born blind – and suddenly receive your sight?

2008-03-02T12:54:00.001-08:00

What would it be like to be born blind – and suddenly receive your sight?

Would it be like this: like coming into a familiar place and seeing it as for the first time?

Would it be like coming back into health after a long illness?

Would it be like – discovering a new faith & embracing it & then coming home?

How would your family react? What would the neighbors say? The priests & politicians?

This man was blind from birth: and the question posed to Jesus was, which sinned, him or his parents, that this is his condition? It had to be one or the other, right? But Jesus shows them the way out of this false dilemma. Neither one: he has been born blind in order that God’s truth might be revealed in the world. But they still don’t see it. And so, Jesus goes to work: he makes mud, he who made the world, and he takes this primordial ooze and he spreads it across the man’s eyes.

“Go, wash….”

And then the man returns. Not all of them do. But this one does. And he can see. And his family and his neighbors can see that he can see.

Not a very comfortable moment. For him, for them. Can it be that this man had not sinned? That he was not being punished for some ancient fault? Can this be right? Is it a valid miracle if you do something like this?

So they take him to the experts – the Pharisees. The purest of the pure. They deserve sight, surely.

And oh dear – he says something unfortunate. He tells them the truth. What he has experienced: “I once was blind but now I see.”

And just how did that happen? “Jesus put mud on my eyes, then I washed, and now I see.”

And what do you say about him? “He is a prophet.”

This really upsets the apple cart. If sin is not the result of your fault, if sight is not the gift of the privileged few who – somehow – have not sinned, then what is the world coming to?

Grace. It is coming to grace. And truth, and light, and life, in the revelation of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.

Dangerous, dangerous words.

“One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

They cannot believe it; they cannot accept it. And so they drive him out.

Jesus finds him, and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Do you trust him?

And the man once blind begins his new life in the light of Christ.

“I came into this world,” says Jesus, “for judgment – for a dividing of the truth – so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

The experts are revealed in their blindness, their willful folly, their failure, their refusal, to see – it is much more comfortable in the dark with your eyes shut. So they pretend.

The man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent Jesus while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as Jesus is in the world, he is the light of the world.

And he heals us. And then:

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. This is what’s next.

The apostle Paul tells us what we are to do with this new life, this new light: Live as children of the light.

“Though you once were darkness, now as Christians you are light. Prove yourselves at home in the light, for where light is, there is a harvest of goodness, righteousness, and truth. Learn to judge for yourselves what is pleasing to the Lord; take no part in the barren deeds of darkness, but show them up for what they are. It would be shameful even to mention what is done in secret. But everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light. That is why it is said:
‘Awake, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you.’” (Eph 5.8-14 REB)

It takes a while to get used to this new sight. It takes a while to get used to this new light. To be restored to wholeness, when we are used to brokenness, and even more to be made a new creation – this is the promise of Christ Jesus. In him we find a new identity, a new community, new selves and relations. This is proud and painful. The man once blind now has a new life to live. Blinking in the sun, he emerges into the morning. It is a new day.

It is the new day of the Lord. The light of the world is shining. This is the day that the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Amen.

JRL+ 3/2/08

Sources & Resources:

Lent IV, Year A

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41, Psalm 23

Frederick Niedner, "Living by The Word: Reflections on the Lectionary", The Christian Century, February 26, 2008, Vol. 125, No. 4, p. 20-21.

Barbara Crafton, "The Almost Daily eMo: AN ASTONISHING THING. FUNNY, TOO. / STILL HEALING THE BLIND", March 1, 2008, The Geranium Farm, http://www.geraniumfarm.org

The Judge Must Be Crazy

2008-02-17T07:06:00.001-08:00

In the beginning God … created the heaven and the earth.

In the beginning … was the Word.

In the beginning there was … no sin. Was there? Then Adam bit into it – and the world was changed. Adam, – Adam meaning the man, the archetypal human being, – distrusted his Creator and took his own way in the world. That meant he learned about death, and sin, and folly, and loss.

And yet, God sent his own Son, to take the form of a human being, to take the form of Adam – that archetypal human being, and, as the Son of Man, he became the new archetype, the new model of what a human being can be – and is.

God sent his Son not to condemn the world but to redeem the world. We do well to remember that judgment was vindication, to the poor, the innocent, and the oppressed, the ones that Jesus came to, and he was their Judge – in the sense that he was their vindicator and defender.

It all reminds me of the worst play I ever saw… well, second worst, if you count the musical version of Major Barbara I sat through in college….

The Caucasian Chalk Circle: The Musical – put on by students at Carlmont High School. Oh, brother.

One of the best plays I ever saw was – The Caucasian Chalk Circle, by Bertolt Brecht, put on by Arena Stage. In it the story of the judgment of Solomon is changed: a rich woman has abandoned her child, a poor woman has taken it as her own and raised it – and now the rich woman wants it back. Azdak, the judge, who has a habit of judging in favor of the poor and oppressed, comes up with a test:

A circle of chalk is drawn and the child is placed in the center. The true mother, says the judge, will be able to pull the child from the center. If they both pull, they will tear the child in half and get half each. The test begins but the poor woman refuses to pull, as she cannot bear to hurt the child. The judge gives her one more chance, but again she cannot pull the child. The judge then declares that the poor woman is the true mother, as she loves the child too much to be able to hurt him.

The judge appears on the stage not to condemn the innocent but to save them: he is the vindicator of the poor and the oppressed. How crazy! How just.

Later, Abraham could have chosen to depend solely on his own efforts – to be a self-made man. “If Abraham was justified by works he has something to boast about,” as the apostle Paul says. But Abraham depended on God – and it was his faith that made him right in the eyes of God. He was a brave man, he worked hard, and he took risks we would hardly dare to take – today would you walk from Baghdad to Cairo and back to Jerusalem? But he depended on God. His life was in God’s hands and it was safe there.

Adam was disobedient and faithless, left the Garden in shame, under a curse. Abraham was obedient and faithful, left the land of his fathers in hope – headed toward promise, under the blessing. Jesus, the son of Adam, is even more the child of Abraham, bringing to us the fulfillment of the promise – that ‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

Nicodemus, a member of the council, is a leader of his people: responsible, brilliant, resourceful, powerful; yet, there is something missing – and he comes to Jesus by night. Being born from above, being born again: this requires becoming vulnerable again, beginning again. He knows he must expose his soul without the carapace of power if he is truly to live.

And then, Jesus tells him: the wind – the spirit, the pneuma, the breath of God – blows where it chooses, and you do not know where it comes from or goes. You have no control over the Spirit.

How can these things be? How, asks the accomplished and prominent member of the council, can a person – with all my advantages and achievements – give it all up to start over? How could he so humble himself? Could he give up all he has, all he has acquired and accumulated, for this one great thing – the gift of life?

He will have to give up his position, won’t he? Or at least admit that what he has based his life on is all wrong, and make the consequences? Take on a new life, based on a new reality?

It seems unlikely – it’s way too hard. It’s asking too much of a man, to start fresh.

And yet later Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, is there to receive Jesus’ body in his arms when his body was taken from the Cross. (John 19:39-42)

Something changed for him – something in Jesus’ message, that day, long ago, when he was the vulnerable one. He had been born anew.

His life has found its meaning – his inheritance as a child of Abraham has been fulfilled; he becomes an heir to the promise as he based his life on faith.

He has been born into the promise of Abraham at last; he has received the vindication of God’s justice, and he is saved, not by his own accomplishments and advantages, but by his faith, as innocent and dependent as a newborn child, in God, “the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:17)

***
ALent2
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 33:12-22
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
JRL+

Johannine ‘double-words’ (from www.preachingpeace.org):

Nuktos (night)
Semeia (signs)
Anothen (again/above)
Pneuma (spirit/wind/breath)
Hupsao (exalt/lift up)

***

Sources & Resources for Study and Preaching

Bibliography

Abingdon Bible Commentary (1929)

David Adam,
Clouds and Glory: Prayers for the Church Year: Year A (London: SPCK, 1998)
Traces of Glory: Prayers for the Church Year: Year B (London: SPCK, 1999)
Glimpses of Glory: Prayers for the Church Year: Year C (SPCK, 2000)

Christopher Irvine,
The Pilgrims' Manual (Glasgow: Wild Goose, 1997)

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today: Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary: Year A, Volume 1 (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1998)

Nicholas Thomas (Tom) Wright,
Matthew for Everyone, ed. 2 (London: SPCK, 2004)

Barbara E. Reid,
New Collegeville Bible Commentary: The Gospel According to Matthew (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2005)

Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, Carl R. Holladay, Gene M. Tucker,
Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year A (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1992)

Mary Hinkle Shore, Herman C. Waetjen, Richard Eslinger, Melinda A. Quivik,
New Proclamation: Year A, 2007-2008: Advent through Holy Week (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007)

The Lectionary Page http://www.io.com/~kellywp/index.html

The (Online) Book of Common Prayer http://www.bcponline.org/

Oremus Bible Browser http://bible.oremus.org/

Michael Hardin, Jeff Krantz & Anthony Bartlett,
Preaching Peace http://www.preachingpeace.org/

Anthony Bartlett,
Bible Studies at Preaching Peace http://www.preachingpeace.org/biblestudies.htm

Paul Nuechterlein,
Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary http://www.girardianlectionary.net/

Jenee Woodard, ed.,
The Text this Week http://www.textweek.com/

Mark I. Wallace and Theophus H. Smith, editors,
Curing Violence: Essays on René Girard (Polebridge Press, 1994)
http://www.westarinstitute.org/Polebridge/curing.html

Gil Bailie,
The Cornerstone Forum http://www.test-cornerstone.org/index.html

René Girard,
"Violence and the Cross", CTNS Forum, The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, February 11, 2003. http://www.ctns.org/news.html

Looking beyond Good Friday

2008-02-13T15:36:00.001-08:00

Looking beyond Good Friday, at the end of this season of Lent, requires more than worldly eyes. The historians of the Jesus Seminar, when they voted on the actions of Jesus, culminating in the events of Holy Week, could go no further than his death. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

Then what happened? What happened after he died? What happens after you die?

The answers are married, so closely are they related. Jesus became the first-born from the dead, the first one to experience resurrection. Looking at him, and at his appearances to the disciples, to Mary of Magdala and Joanna and to Peter and John and to many others, we see what resurrection life looks like. We know that he was raised, and we know that he continues to lead us, both in this life and beyond, as we approach the throne of God.

The events of Holy Week, and the actions of Jesus, beginning with Palm Sunday's ironic procession - holding up a mirror to the false pretensions of worldly glory of the powers of Empire, confronting entrenched interests even in the precincts of the Temple, holding the Passover meal with his friends, facing a jury-rigged midnight tribunal, and accepting the death of a common criminal, then passing through the tomb: these events, leading up to Easter, emerge in their full significance only when we look beyond the Tomb, to the first day of the week, when the women carrying spices and ointments went to pay their last respects to their dear Friend. There, where they looked for death, they found life: he is not here; he is risen!

As I write this we are still in the season of penitence and preparation, of Lent, and, with intervening celebrations, it is during this season that you will receive this newsletter. We will, on occasion, look back on events of Jesus' life - the wedding feast at Cana, notably - that foreshadow the joy of Easter, the hope of glory, and the love manifest in the Spirit.

In the meantime, however, we will prepare: we will look, at ourselves, our community, our nation and our world, and we will see there the need for God, the need for his presence among his people, the need for his voice and his hands to show his love to the world. We will see the need for his church to become ever more fully the people of God. And, even as we anticipate that last bite of darkness at the end of winter - Good Friday's solemn black - we will know that beyond it comes the dawning of the new day, the Lord's Day.

See you there.

God illumines my aunt

2008-01-27T06:07:00.000-08:00

One day in the office my cubicle neighbor turned to me and whispered, "Do you know what it means?" She pointed to the corporate logo: an open book with seven seals, and the motto written on the pages. I looked at it. I wasn't sure. I don't read Latin. So I ventured a guess: "God illumines my aunt?"

Lydia laughed.

The motto of our company, Oxford University Press, was very old, dating back before Columbus, back before Richard II (who signed off on it), back before Christ. It was:

Dominus illuminatio mea: The LORD is my light.

The beginning of the 27th Psalm, our psalm today.

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

The light that illuminates me - and you - is the Lord.

In the 10th Century before Christ, the prophet Isaiah gave good news to the people of northern Israel, people who were being over-run by the Assyrian empire.

Even they, distant from Jerusalem, far in the north, on the shores and on the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee, would experience a vindication, a salvation. For along the road to the sea, where they lived, the light of the Lord would shine:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them light has shined.

This is the land where Jesus walked, at the beginning of his ministry. Herod Antipas had arrested John the Baptist, and Jesus left that territory and moved north toward Nazareth, the place where he was raised. He made his home in a larger town, new and busy, down by the lakeshore: Capernaum, where fishing was the industry. It was along that ancient trade route, the road to the sea; Via Maris, it was called now. Traffic passed along, goods were transported, from Damascus to the west, and to Egypt.

And there, after the voice of the 'one crying in the wilderness' had been silenced, Jesus began to spread the good news himself, and to call to the people to turn away from the reign of the rulers of this world, Herod and such, and leave aside their own follies and past sins.

Something new is beginning, a light is dawning, & the reign of God is at hand.

Jesus begins to call his disciples. And his call to them has two parts:

Follow me.

And.

And I will make you fish for people.

There is a call, an initial response of faith, and an action. They do something, right away. Later Jesus will call Matthew from the tax tables, and put him to work, at something much greater: gathering in, no longer, tax monies for the overlords, but gathering in the people of God to bring the kingdom of God.

Now, it is follow me, -- and.

Later, one of these fishermen, Peter, will answer a question, "What must I do to be saved?" and his answer, again, will begin with an initial response of faith: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved."

But that is, generally speaking, not the end of the answer: beyond this initial act, there is an action. "Believe, and be baptized." Believe, and ---. Believe, and act to make it real. Make the salvation not a thing of head only, but of heart, not of words only, but deeds. Act it out with your body. Go and be baptized. Go and sell all you have, and distribute the proceeds to the poor: then you are really following me.

And Jesus reveals to the fisher folk what it means to follow him. First he said, "Follow me," but he continued, "and I will make you fish for people." I will make you fishers of men. Together.

And they dropped what they were doing, right then and there, said good-bye to their families, and went. That is when they found out what it meant to 'fish for people.'

Jesus led them up into the hill country and throughout the region. He proclaimed the good news. And he enacted the kingdom of heaven, embodied the reign of God - by curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Here he gives a clear sign, an early warning, quite distinct, that something new is happening. The Messiah, the light of the Lord shining forth from one person, is the dawning of the new day for Israel, the day of the Lord. The Lord's anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, leads the way.

He calls to Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, and to James and John the sons of Zebedee, to follow his way. And -

He calls us.

The apostle Paul, in speaking to those exemplary Christians at Corinth - examples of so much that we recognize as behavior of the church - makes an appeal to them as his own brothers and sisters in the Lord, and he makes it in the name of Jesus: be in agreement, let there be no divisions. Don't fall apart into factions or parties, as if your identity lay in anything less than in the Lord.

He gets a little caustic: "Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" What he is doing is reminding them of their true allegiance, the only one that really matters in the end: they are the people of God, the people redeemed by the Lord and baptized in the name of the Savior.

His primary task is not the initial plunge: it is to proclaim the gospel, to preach the good news, so that the power of the cross of Christ - that paradoxical sign of the power of God - the cross might be revealed as the sign of glory.

And that the people of God - you and I, and they - the Corinthians - might know that in Christ alone is our salvation and our hope and our identity - and our mission.

They are not to divide themselves up into little camps, or tribes.
They are to stay together, focus on mission, and move forward in the name of Christ.

Follow me and.

Believe and.

What is left for us? Two things:

A great commandment.
A great commission.

The first is about staying together. The second is about focusing on mission. And they both are about moving forward in the name of Christ.

We will encounter these again later in Matthew's gospel, as the year goes by.

First,

The Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37-40)

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

And second,

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20):

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Together, these two directives, great commandment and great commission, form us into the people of God, shape us as a church, and remind us of what we are doing. So we pray,

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

--------------------

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Jesus (accessed 5:12 AM Sunday, January 27, 2008)

The Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 27, 2008
Year A, Revised Common Lectionary (RCL)
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 5-12
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23

Psalm 27:1 (Page 617, BCP)
Dominus illuminatio mea

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

Robert Burns Night

2008-01-19T00:36:00.000-08:00

With Robert Burns night coming up next Friday it's worth a listen to Paolo Nutini singing A Man's A Man For a' That

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOBcFt5tevY&feature=related

Lyrics at http://www.robertburns.org/works/496.shtml

Another rendition at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjr5boTgis4&feature=related

and to Kent McNair's sermon for the Kirkin' o' th' Tartan at Trinity last November 25th

http://www.trinitycathedral.org/Sermons/20071125km.mp3

by the leading of a star

2008-01-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

The season of Epiphany lasts from the Twelfth Day of Christmas until just before Lent. At the beginning of the season is the feast of Epiphany, or Little Christmas, also known as Three Kings Day; the feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas (Candelaria), February 2nd, marks its end.

On the feast of Epiphany, in some places, a lucky person will find a little clay (or plastic) baby Jesus – or a bean or a coin – in their piece of festival cake; that means they’re king or queen for the day, and it’s their turn to provide the refreshments at the next feast, on Candelaria DayCandlemas.

In between is the season of Epiphany, of ‘appearance’ or ‘manifestation’, celebrating the ‘shining forth’—or revelation—of God becoming present to humankind in the person of Jesus.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

The whole event of the Incarnation, including the Birth of the Messiah, the visit of the ‘Magi’ – the Wise Men or ‘astrologers’ – to the Holy Family at Bethlehem, all of Jesus’ growing up, his Baptism in the Jordan River, the Presentation in the Temple, the Wedding-feast at Cana, can becelebrated illuminates at this season; we pay particular attention to his Baptism on January 13th.

This continuing celebration of the mystery of the Incarnation, of ‘God in Man made manifest’,—in Christ— shows forth to the whole of creation the love of God.

The star in the east, the pilgrim kings bearing royal and mysterious gifts, the night flight of the holy family, the descent of the dove as Jesus emerges from the river water, Cana — all these portents point to the question, “Who is Jesus?” Who is he now, here, in our lives and our world? Who will he be for us? How will God be present to us in our lives?

And how will we make God present to others? Epiphany is the season to explore that…

the wise still seek him

2008-01-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

The wise still seek him – and they still come bearing gifts. They bring to the Christ Child the symbols of his glory: gifts for royalty, for priesthood, for martyrdom. “Gold for the King, frankincense for the priest, myrrh for the sacrifice.” And what they bring is still less than what they receive, and being wise, they know it.

That is why they come: because here at the feet of the Christ Child they are in the presence of a mystery greater than any king, any priest, any martyr, any prophet. They are in the presence of the living God.

In Jesus the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

In Christ we are ourselves invited to dwell: to live in his kingdom as he has come to live among us, as one of us.

Today we are invited to kneel with the wise at the feet of the Christ. We bear our gifts: our selves. We stand like them in the presence of the living One.

Isaiah 9:2,6

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Shown to us by the leading of a star, or some less likely light, we too travel from afar to be at this manger side. We too have been chosen to receive the gift of his Light, and to reveal to the World his Word.

Matthew concludes his gospel:

[And] Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (28: 18-20)

Each of us is called to witness, each of us is called to serve; but first, each of us is called to worship: to adore, at the side of this little bed, in the smallest of miracles, that quietest of triumphs, the living God present among us in the form of a human being like ourselves.

With no trappings of glory other than those he receives from us – and from us he is more likely to receive, inevitably, a crown of thorns – he yet comes to us, bringing to us Light and Life and Hope.

Seeing the star in the east, the wise ones sought the holy One of Israel: and they followed the star. And they found him. We can do no less. And no less will we receive, in word and sacrament and through his Spirit, the gifts of him whom they sought.

Epiphany • 2008 January 6 • Isaiah 60:1-6 • Psalm 72:1-7,10-14 • Ephesians 3:1-12 • Matthew 2:1-12

unto you a child is born

2007-12-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

We were just ordinary men trying to make a living - out in the fields all night, guarding the flock, keeping watch. We had seen a lot of strange things, at night, out in the fields. We had our share of bear stories, wolf stories; we'd fought lions.

But we had never seen anything like this. Right in the middle of an ordinary night, right in the middle of an ordinary job, something broke through from a realm beyond our sight.

A choir of heavenly messengers filled our eyes. Unto you, they sang - unto you! Salvation comes, the king is born, God has fulfilled his promise. Go and see: go into the town and look for a baby, an ordinary baby, all wrapped up and ready for bed, but sleeping in a manger -- that's him.

That BABY is God incarnate: a baby lying in a manger, gently breathing, his folks standing by. This is the sign of God that everyone has been waiting for. This is the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Son of David, Christ Almighty -- don't you want to tell somebody about it?

We're no angels. We're just shepherds, working the night shift on a far hillside. The mother herself saw no angels tonight, only us -- bringing the message, confirming what she knew in her heart, that today, in the City of David, is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

How then on an ordinary day are you to recognize the Christ Child? How is he born in your life -- in your town?

You go about your business in your ordinary way -- and yet: something extraordinary is happening even now, in your heart, in your life, in your will. Christ is being born. God has sent his Redeemer to you, to establish the way of peace, to bring righteousness and peace to the world he has made, to the person he has made, to you.

JRL+
Christmas, Christmas Eve, Luke 1:1-20, John 1:1-14 (15-18), Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14,Isaiah 62:6-7, Psalm 96, Psalm 97, Psalm 98, Titus 3:4-7, Hebrews 1:1-4

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today (Anglican Book Centre)

Fred B. Craddock et al., Preaching through the Christian Year (Trinity Press International)

St Alban's Episcopal Church
Edmonds, Washington

in the waiting room

2007-12-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday I made a mistake: I went to Urgent Care without my copy of War and Peace. I had a long wait. I am not sure I used it as well as I could.

Waiting for the Christ to come may feel a bit like waiting to be treated in Urgent Care. You get a few promises up front, and are told to wait.

Hours go by. What is going on? When will I be seen? Have I been forgotten? When will I be treated? When will I be whole again?

But that’s not it. There is more to the story.

Waiting for the Christ to come may feel even more like reading War and Peace. While you are in it, it is totally absorbing. Then eventually you finish the book.

All those characters, all those people you have met, even friends you have made among them, now disappear into a past memory, only a haze. You are no longer in the world of the novel: now you are in the “real world.”

Of course characters in a novel are merely shadows in a play. But we might feel like that ourselves, sometimes. This world may seem a brief and transitory place. Real life lies ahead, as well as all around us (though hidden), in the mystery of Christ and of the Resurrection.

And this is like Paul’s comment, “now we see as through a glass darkly: then we shall see face to face.” Imagine what it will be like to see Christ in person.

Every week when we take communion, and at holiday times like Christmas when we remember loved ones, we put ourselves in touch with not only those who like us see through a glass darkly, those who are living, but also with those who have gone on before us to see God face to face. We ourselves are not ready, we protest, for such a blessing. Just a little bit more time, please.

In his mercy God is preparing us so that when we do meet him face to face, in the life to come, we will be able to stand it. That “glass darkly” is a little like the smoked glass you used to watch an eclipse through; it kept you from being dazzled by too much light.

These eyes, that dazzled now and weak,
At glancing motes in sunshine wink,
Shall see the King’s full glory break,
Nor from the blissful vision shrink:

In fearless love and hope uncloyed
For ever on that ocean bright
Empowered to gaze; and undestroyed
Deeper and deeper plunge in light.

(John Keble, “Fourth Sunday in Advent”, The Christian Year)

We need to be prepared, so that—not on our own merits but by the grace of Christ—when we see God face to face we will be able to stand it.

A foretaste of that glory is ours today, in the mystery of the coming of Christ. And a foretaste of that mercy is ours as well, for God came to us not in the form of a ruler or a man of power (much as we might have hoped for that) but in the form of a helpless baby. He comes as prince of peace.

As Luther said, “Divinity may terrify us. Inexpressible mystery will crush us. That is why Christ took on our humanity, save for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm. …he is come, not to judge you, but to save.”

(Roland H. Bainton, ed., The Martin Luther Christmas Book, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1948, p. 40)

Salvation, however, does not wait. The message of Jesus, and the joy of life with him, is not postponed until some later time, after death or the second coming. It is present with us here and now, brought forth for us first in the tiny manger-dweller we meet on Christmas morning.

In this humble and innocent form comes to us the majesty of God. In other words, we find God not in inaccessible realms of glory but in day-to-day, even humble, form.

And we continue to find him, in practical terms, in loving God in our neighbor.

“You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.” (Luther, p. 38)

Even as we place our neighbor in the place of Christ, serving God in our neighbor, we begin to take on the characteristics Christ showed for us on Christmas morning.

He, the Son of God, being above all angels, did not take equality with God as a thing to be grasped onto, but allowed himself to be emptied into the form of a child, a helpless human infant. And then he began to serve.

“For unto you is born this day—that is, unto us. For our sakes he has taken flesh and blood from a woman, [so] that his birth might become our birth. I too may boast that I am a son of Mary. This is the way to observe this feast—that Christ be formed in us.” (Luther, p. 44)

And this is the secret: Christ in you, the hope of Glory. This is the season of a new birth—not only the birth of the Messiah 2000 years ago but also his emergence within our lives, as we become formed into the people God has called us to be.

JRL+

December 23, 2007
Saint Alban’s Episcopal Church
Edmonds, Washington

Jed Smith Christmas

2007-12-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

Today we delivered Christmas gift bags to children at Jed Smith Elementary School. The kids were thrilled to see Santa. One young boy was so excited to get a small box of crayons. I heard others excited about their new socks. It was touching and great fun.

Santa (Randy Cheek) with a student from the school.

You can see all the pictures here.

Katharine Jefferts Schori for President

2007-12-20T20:17:00.000-08:00

Here's an excerpt from a remarkable article written by Teresa Morrison for The Advocate.

I firmly believe that within a generation the antigay hate speech Bishop Schofield so freely espouses will receive as little tolerance as we do today, and I look forward to a time when men like him will wish they had quietly harbored hatred rather than staking their reputations on it. Meanwhile, Bishop Jefferts Schori and other proponents of inclusion will be credited with having furthered the integrity of their faith institutions as dynamic, relevant forces in the 21st century.

Non-Episcopalian gays and lesbians might not think we have a dog in this fight, but we all have a vested interest in the outcome. We find ourselves in a very rare position here, one so unfamiliar to LGBT people we can scarcely grasp its significance: In the determination of the U.S. Episcopal Church to take a stand for our equality and inclusion, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, while the folks fighting for us risk their political and financial footing in the Anglican Communion, the third-largest Christian body in the world, which is far more sympathetic toward your Bishops Schofield than to the progressive platform embraced by Bishop Jefferts Schori and the majority of her church’s 2.5 million members.

We never asked Episcopalians to take up our fight. Rather, it seems, their spiritual path has led them to believe that we aren’t any less deserving of ministry or recognition or even consecration simply because we happen to be unpopular sexual minorities. I wish that weren’t an extraordinary concept in 2007, but it is. And Bishop Jefferts Schori has hardly blinked in a year of denominational strife that has seen her character and her commitment to her religious office questioned, challenged, dismissed, and maligned.

In this age of gay bashing from all sides, it isn’t often we encounter a religious leader—or any leader—willing to bulldog for our rights, especially when faced with such a potentially high cost to herself and the institution she represents. What I wouldn’t give for such genuine representation in our elected officials.

When I consider the trail of broken promises left by those we helped to elect, Bishop Jefferts Schori's position becomes that much more remarkable. Reacting to the secession vote in San Joaquin, she not only refused to retreat from her position, she reiterated it: “We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness. We wish them to know of our prayers for them and their journey. The Episcopal Church will continue in the diocese of San Joaquin, albeit with new leadership.”

I keep meaning to bake that woman a cake.

In my fruitless search for a presidential candidate who not only believes in my essential equality but is willing to say it out loud and stand by his or her position when the inevitable attacks come down, I wonder if any money I may have set aside to donate to that elusive candidate’s campaign might not be better spent tithing to the Episcopal Church. At least there I know my support will go toward furthering my rights, not sending them to the back of the bus—or throwing them under it.

Like others who have read this article, it makes me proud of my Church. You can read the whole article here.

Blessing Same-Sex Relationship

2007-12-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, December 8 I was given the opportunity to bless the union of Richard Stapler and Michael Mendez at Trinity Church in San Francisco. While I love weddings (I've officiated at well over 200) this service was special. It was my first blessing service for a same-sex couple. It was done during a remarkable weekend on which we hosted two Tibetan Buddhist monks at Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento. It was also ironic that both the blessing service and the mandala occurred on the same weekend that the Doicese of San Joaquin chose to leave the Episcopal Church.

Mandala Overview

2007-12-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

From December 6-9 we hosted two Tibetan Buddhist monks who created a sand mandala of the Medicine Buddha in the East Transept of the Cathedral. It was a remarkable experience. Close to 5000 people came to the Cathedral and our Sunday morning services were over-full. Here are some links to images and articles:

Articles I wrote for the Sacramento news and Review:

Radical Hospitality
Sand Mandala

Audio of Sunday (Dec. 9) sermon

Sacramento Bee slideshow

Sacramento Bee article

KCRA slideshow

KCRA video

Trinity Cathedral's Photobucket page

Turtle Vision images

Message from Mike Halfhill of the Dalai Lama Foundation:

On behalf of the Dalai Lama Foundation Sacramento Area Chapter I would like to thank everyone who helped make this event a beautiful and fulfilling experience for many. Our community has been uplifted and strengthened through the efforts of Trinity Cathedral, Spiritual Life Center, East West Books and Sacramento Friends of Tibet as hosts along with the DLF. I would like to give a special thanks to Trinity Cathedral and Dean Brian Baker for their overwhelming hospitality and support in allowing the use of their facilities for the monks to be there and share their Sacred Healing Arts with us. It is a living testament that we can come together and work side by side with great respect for each others traditions. I would also like to thank the media for acknowledging this as a newsworthy event. Thank you all.

Christmas Tree

2007-12-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

This was originally written for Trinity's newsletter.

Yesterday (Monday before Christmas Eve) we got our Christmas tree. Andrea and I drove up to Apple Hill and tromped through a muddy tree farm. It was a rainy day. We pushed through wet branches and found the right tree. We cut it down and hauled it to the car. We stopped at a winery for a tasting and bought a case of wine to have for Christmas parties. (It was our first time visiting a winery in the foothills.) We got home just in time to get the kids from school. We had to drive them around to their various activities, help with homework, etc. After attending an elementary school band concert, we hauled the boxes of decorations down from the attic. We put on Christmas music, lit a fire, made cider and got to work. Of course each of these items, mentioned in passing, took more time than expected. We had to find the Christmas music. It was our first fire of the season so we had to find all the necessary equipment and split some wood. The cider, well that was pretty straightforward.

The tree, however, was not. The tree that looked so perfect in the pine forest, was too tall for our living room. And it was very fat. And it had odd bulges. Of course I didn’t measure the height of the tree until after I brought it into the house and tried to set it up. Then I had to cut the tree down to size (in the house) and as a family we muscled it into its stand. I got to work trimming the bulges and thinning it so it would fit in the room. I was tired and grumpy as I lay on the floor adjusting the stand so the tree would stand straight(ish). By the time the lights were strung, it was well past bedtime. But the tree was up, music was playing, the fire was lit and hot cider was consumed and one of the Baker family traditions (including the grumpy dad) was observed one more year.

The day of tree getting and decorating has always been for me a symbol of Christmas and of my life. It is a great deal of work. There is much to be done. And it would be easy to see this day as a chore rather than a blessing. It would be easy to be distracted by the business of it all and miss the joy.

Of course the whole point of Christmas is to show us that all of life is a blessing. God is with us constantly. And at least this year I’m blessed with a glimpse of that presence in my family, in my church and in my too-big, oddly shaped Christmas tree.

Radical Hospitality

2007-12-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

This essay was originally written for the Sacramento News & Review

How would you describe the brokenness of our world? In what ways are we living lives too small for us? One way Christianity answers these questions is through language of separation. We are estranged, or separated from God, from one another and from our true selves. Separation within the human family is obvious when watching the news or listening to political rhetoric. Whether it’s Sunni vs. Shia, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, pro-life vs. pro-choice, people are estranged from one another in endless ways. And this separation is not usually benign. We all too often consider ourselves superior to those in the other group. This superiority allows us to demonize and belittle the other. And the world becomes more fractured.

I do not believe this is how God intends us to live our lives. We are created to be interdependent, not independent. We are designed to be in communion and community with one another, which is one reason why hospitality is such an important spiritual discipline. We exercise hospitality when we make room in our lives, in our homes, in our social circles for others, particularly those who are different.

One reason Trinity Cathedral hosted the Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala and the monks who created it was to model radical hospitality. We wanted to show the world how two different religious traditions could come together, not simply to have a discussion, but to share intimate worship space and spiritual practices. And the willingness of the Buddhists to bring their spiritual practice into a Christian cathedral modeled the same hospitality.

The results were spectacular. The mandala alone was radiant and the monks were gracious and spirit-filled. But the context, the mandala within the Christian cathedral, made it even more remarkable. I was enthralled. I found it difficult to focus on anything else. It felt like God’s Kingdom of Love was blossoming right there.

But the hosting of the mandala was not problem-free. Hostpitality can be messy. We often have to make accommodations for others. People have different ways of living, different cultural expectations. The Cathedral can be a very busy place and people have different expectations of what will go on in a church (talking/laughing vs. silence, eating vs. not eating.) Worship services and music rehearsals took place while the monks were working and visitors were passing through. There were collisions of sound and space.

One such collision happened at 9am on Friday. We celebrate communion every day at Trinity Cathedral. On Fridays, the communion is at 9 a.m., which is also when the monks began their work with prayer and chanting. On Friday, Canon Carey, an 80-year-old priest, was at the high altar blessing the bread and wine (a particularly holy moment in the service) when the monks began chanting in the East Transept, about 15 feet away.

Some people might have taken offense. After all, shouldn’t the guests be more sensitive to services that are happening in the Cathedral? When Canon Cary recounted this experience for me, he was not offended at all. In fact, he said he was so moved by the beauty of the chanting happening at such a holy moment in his service, that he was moved to tears. He told the small congregation gathered for communion that this was a communion they would never forget.
Isn’t that beautiful? Christian communion enriched by Buddhist chanting. Such beauty can become manifest when we open our lives to those who are different from us. And God’s Kingdom of Love draws nearer.

-Dean Baker

Sand Mandala

2007-12-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

This essay was originally written for the Sacramento News & Review

Several years ago, while serving as a priest in Sun Valley, Idaho, a young woman visited me. She was to be married and she wondered if I would officiate at an Episcopal wedding service that included Tibetan Buddhist prayers. I was a little skeptical. Not because I didn’t think Buddhist prayers should be said at a Christian wedding. Rather I wanted to make sure Pilar, the young woman, was serious about her Buddhist practice. In my community Tibetan Buddhism had an exotic mystique and I wanted to make sure the prayers would be said with integrity rather than simply added to be chic.

As it turned out, Pilar was a devout Tibetan Buddhist and was very intentional in her spiritual practice. I did officiate at her wedding and she and I became good friends. She taught me Yoga. We began meditating together and after we prayed, we would teach each other about our different religious traditions. We opened our conversations to the wider community. Because of my friendship with Pilar, I took my own spiritual disciplines more seriously. I became a better Christian because of my friendship with a Buddhist.

There were some aspects of Pilar’s faith, like emptiness and compassion, that connected readily with my own perspective. There were other aspects of her beliefs that will probably always feel foreign to me. It was not necessary for us to be the same (as in “all religions are basically the same”) in order for us to respect one another and to learn from one another.

Toward the end of my time in Sun Valley, I was asked to organize and facilitate a meeting between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and local religious leaders. It was one of the highlights of my ministry and a lovely culmination of my relationship with the Buddhists in Sun Valley.
When I arrived in Sacramento, one of the first people to see me was Lama Jinpa, the leader of the local Tibetan Buddhist community. Pilar had asked him to visit me. Lama Jinpa and I have met a few times and have discussed how we might be able to work together. Because of this new friendship, Trinity Cathedral has been invited to host two Tibetan monks who are coming to build a sand mandala in early December.

I think it is important that the mandala will be created in a Christian church. In our world with so much conflict and division, religious groups should model hospitality and inclusion. Not only is this an opportunity for hospitality, it is a chance for mutual enrichment. The mandala will depict the Medicine (or healing) Buddha. At Trinity Cathedral, we take praying for healing seriously. We have people at every Sunday service that pray for those who need special prayers. These prayers take place in the same part of the Cathedral where the Medicine Buddha mandala will be. The mandala , which is a kind of icon, will be placed next to a beautiful icon of the Trinity at the Cathedral. These are just a couple of obvious connections. Others will become manifest as we spend time together.

The mandala will be open to the public and it is my hope that many people will come to visit the Buddhist monks as they create their beautiful and deeply spiritual artwork.

first cousins, once removed

2007-12-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

John came like Elijah through the wilderness, calling the people to turn away from falsehood, to turn back to their true allegiance, to Almighty God. He called them to repent: to start clean, to be washed in the waters of the Jordan as their spiritual forefathers had when first they walked into the land of the promise.

He called them. He was a “voice crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” He was the herald, the fore-runner: coming before, bearing glad tidings. The message he brought, to prepare the way of the Lord, is a message of impending – JOY.

And his joy is to be made complete in the coming of the Christ. “Are you the one we have been waiting for?” he asks Jesus; and the answer is YES! Look around you: see what is going on, what is happening. It is just beginning, but it is beginning to break through: the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

We look ahead this Sunday from the midst of Advent’s expectation to its fulfillment in the joy of Christmas. We light the pink candle. Today is “Gaudete Sunday”; “guadete” means REJOICE! Rejoice in the coming of the Savior. In the words of the 14th Century hymn:

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary: rejoice!

The time of grace has come for which we have prayed; let us devoutly sing songs of joy.

God is made man while nature wonders; the world is renewed by Christ the King.

Therefore let our assembly sing praises now; at this time of preparation, let it bless the Lord. Greetings to our King!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary: rejoice!

And so we have a messenger who calls on us to prepare the way, to make room in our hearts and in our lives for the coming of the true King.

Let me read you a story. It is a story of some people, a boy and two girls, and some animals – beavers – who are traveling through a winter-bitten frozen landscape, running from the evil witch who has cast a spell on the land, where now it is “always winter and never Christmas!”

They run, and they hide, and they spend the night in a lonely cave, and even in their dreams they are pursued by the White Witch in her sledge drawn by tiny reindeer the color of snow.

They wake, and they do hear the bells of a sleigh. Mr. Beaver goes out to investigate. The children, and Mrs. Beaver, hear voices. They are alarmed. Is it the White Witch? Then comes Mr. Beaver’s reassuring voice:

[The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis, chapter 10]

And so you see Santa Claus came to Narnia. And he brought presents: TOOLS NOT TOYS – to equip the humans for the tasks ahead.

John the Baptist, as he called on people to prepare the way, provided a gift of a different sort: a clearing out, a ‘re-set’, and a readiness to start over and start fresh. Then the gifts become real. They become necessary – as the Savior comes.

Jesus, when he approached, began with the working of healing: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and this last: the poor are gladdened. They are glad because the Kingdom is coming, the reign of God on earth when all will be put to rights.

If you know your Narnia you know this is Aslan’s job: to overthrow the false reign of the White Witch, to set everything to rights, to release captives, to warm the frozen, to restore the lost, and to protect the innocent.

This is indeed the Day of the Lord that John proclaimed.

Son of Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, John grew up as one set apart, with a duty to perform. He was the one to prepare the way: and to herald the coming of the Messiah.

And this is what Mary was expecting Jesus to do: in her magnificent song of expectation and of triumph, she proclaims the greatness of God, who looks with favor on his lowly servant, and who brings to her and through her – in the bearing of the Christ Child – the time of grace for which we have prayed.

Therefore let our assembly sing praises now at this time of preparation; let us bless the Lord: Greetings to our King!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary; rejoice!

______________

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Macmillan, 1950) Chapter Ten: The Spell Begins to Break.

The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols, edited by Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott (Oxford University Press, 1993), Carol 24, Gaudete!

David Adam, Clouds and Glory (SPCK, 2001) 3rd Sunday of Advent.

Isaiah 35:1-10, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11, Canticle 15

Pilate slept in

2007-12-02T14:21:00.000-08:00

Pilate slept in. Pontius Pilate had made a late night of it – in fact, he had turned in not long before dawn. He had washed his hands of the latest “Messiah” in the early hours of last Friday, called it good, and walked away. The nights since had been full, full of celebration – of a kind: reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy, all the fleshly indulgence the apostle Paul so well describes. He was a creature of this night: the night at the end of the week. Pilate slept in.

It was early on the first day of the week, and it was still dark.

Across town, though, things were beginning to stir. Just quietly, a few women (Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, Salome, perhaps a few others) gathered together ointments and spices and made their way out of their houses and down through the pre-dawn streets, to pay their last respects to their friend, do their last duty to their master. And so they made their way to the tomb of Jesus son of Mary, Jesus of Nazareth. They thought they knew what they would find there.

It was dawn minus thirty. Day was coming; dawn was soon to break.

Imagine a desert landscape half an hour before dawn. A star glimmers in the east. As you move out into the open you see the moon, almost full, in the west, illumining the landscape – nearby trees, houses, hills, and the mountains beyond. The star in the east has a companion, a lesser satellite, still shining with brightness from the night before. There is a rustle here and there of night sounds. A campfire flickers: it can be rekindled.

The night is far along now, and the day is about to dawn.

We are waiting: you and I, together. We are waiting for the new dawn, the day of the Lord, the day when righteousness and peace will embrace, when swords will be beaten into plowshares and never will nation learn war anymore. We wait for the day when the poor are justified, and receive their due; when the widow and the orphan are protected.

And we are moving: we are not waiting passively, but actively, expectantly, we begin to move into this new day. Because something happened that morning as Pilate slept in; something that Salome and Mary and Joanna did not expect to happen. When they got to the tomb they found not the beginning of eternal night but the rising of a new day, the day of the Lord, just beginning, the day breaking into night’s dominion, bringing peace.

They ran to bring the news of this new day to all the disciples so that they could begin living in it, living into it, living it, as soon as possibly joy could allow.

And so we too are moving, running walking climbing, making our way into the world to let it know that Jesus is alive: the King has come home, the true King, the Messiah indeed, at last, is coming to his own – and his own shall know him and be set free.

He comes to us, this unexpected Jesus, in a form unsuspected: where we look for a king, a royal birth, we find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Where we look for a warrior we find a man of peace. Where we look for a master we find one who empties his self of all majesty and serves. Where we look for an answer, a question:

How are we to live in this new day, the day of the Lord? How are we to announce it?

Every year it comes back around to us, at the top of the year, as we face both backwards into the past – the Nativity of our Lord– and forwards into the future – the Return of the King; and yet at this present moment, when we stand on the precipice of time, we live in the moment of freedom: to find ourselves and define ourselves anew, as people of the passing night or as the people of God, Christ’s children, the Church.

How are we to live at this moment? Whiling away the waning hours of night? Or shall we begin, even now, in this moment, to live as children of the day?

To live as children of the day is to begin to live into God’s kingdom – to take the values Jesus has taught us and without waiting for a big sign in the sky – like the one that says, “Welcome to Las Vegas!” – to say, “Eternal life starts here”, to begin to live that way. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

We cannot be again what we once were, but we can become what we should be, can be, and are called to be. We cannot recapture lost time, but we can stay focused, keep together, and move forward in the name of Christ, into the redeeming of time: future, present, past – all are made new and whole in the light of Christ.

The ways of the Lord are so precious and true, so giving of life, that Isaiah predicts all nations will come seeking instruction, to learn to walk in the ways of God, and to be shown his pathways. God through the Holy Spirit – and through the Body of Christ – teaches us the way. It is a way that leads to justice, that finds peace, that sees an end to the strife between people and nations – a time so confident of its fruitfulness that the tools of war are no longer needed and can be turned into the tools of productive abundance.

We are his hands and his feet in the world, his voice and his ears, and we are gathered here in this place in this time to embody to the world his message of peace. As we bear forth his message – even in the absurd and timeless form of a baby – we bring the greatest force to bear that the world has ever known: and that force is the love of God.

Irresistible, it moves mountains; immemorial, it lasts forever; inconceivable, it is real… the most real thing of all.

This is the season of advent, of new beginnings, for you, for me, for all of us who live in this world – a new hope is dawning as surely as the light is rising in the East, beyond the mountains, unseen, but closer every moment.

We experience that new hope in our own lives, even in the midst of sorrow. Where Pilate would find only the end of night, the women of Jesus found a new dawn. Where the world runs out its string, there faith begins to take hold. Jesus is with us, even in the darkest hour, just before dawn. And he is our light.

And if we are transparent enough, the light of the love of the Lord shines through us, a beacon for others, beckoning them to join us in this new day.

O come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

JRL+

The First Sunday of Advent: December 2, 2007
The Church of Saint Alban, Edmonds, Washington.

God, who ever comes to you, draw you to his love, draw you to his light, draw you to himself; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

(David Adam, Clouds of Glory, Year A, Advent 1)

Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122/Canticle 15, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44

Spiritual but Not Religious?

2007-11-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

This essay was originally written for the Sacramento News and Review

It’s an odd thing being a priest. It’s pretty much a cocktail-party-conversation killer.

“So what do you do?”
“Well, I’m an Episcopal priest.”
Long pause. Then the inevitable, “I used to go to church but . . .”

I think that’s so strange. When I’m introduced to a dentist, I don’t have the urge to confess my poor flossing habits.

Besides, I think there are great reasons for not going to church. Most notably, many Christians have done such a poor job representing Jesus. Jesus’ life and teachings were intended to give us life, to connect us with God, one another and our true selves, to free us from fear, free us from judging one another and free us from oppressive social structures (including religious structures.) One could argue that Jesus came to do away with religion, insofar as religions are organizations that treat God’s love as a commodity that is controlled by the religion.

On the other hand, “religions” are necessary for two reasons. First, spirituality needs community. We need to explore our beliefs with other people. Unless one has reached enlightenment, one needs the wisdom of others. We also need others with whom to strive for justice and peace, and others to love. In church, I’m required to love a wide variety of people, some of whom drive me crazy. It’s like spiritual boot camp.

Second, humanity needs the teachings of the great spiritual traditions to be passed on. We need communities of people to record these teachings and to teach them to later generations. The Bible, the Koran, the Buddhist Sutras are religious texts. We would not know about Mohammed, Jesus or the Buddha if it wasn’t for religions.
Religions are simply communities of spiritual people who want to journey and serve together.

Yes, some religious groups are homogeneous clubs who believe they have a corner on Truth or God’s love. And yes, I think people are wise to not be “religious” in that sense.
But beware of limiting your spiritual options because of these bad examples of spiritual community.

I believe people are hungry for authentic community. People are hungry for a way to encounter
God and deepen their spiritual lives. And people are hungry for a way to make a difference in the world. I know there are many different ways to feed these hungers. For me, these deep spiritual hungers are fed by being a part of a spiritual community that has Jesus as its guide. Trinity Cathedral is a welcoming community where people are passionate about their spiritual lives and serving others. If you are interested in encountering the teachings of Jesus in such a community, please join us. If you want more information, email me. I would love to hear from you. Or if you have a different path, I would enjoy hearing about it. Blessings!

Between December 6th and 9th, Tibetan Buddhist monks will be at Trinity Cathedral to create a sand mandala of the medicine (healing) Buddha. The Cathedral will be open to see the work in progress on Thursday and Friday from noon to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The monks will do a medicine Buddha healing ceremony Saturday night at 7 p.m. The monks will participate in our Sunday morning services at 9:00 and 11:15. The Dissolution Ceremony will be Sunday at 1 p.m. where the sand will be swept into a big pile and then placed in little bags that will be available for people to take.

on prayer

2007-11-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

This essay was originally written for the Sacramento News and Review

I first learned to pray when I was 11 years old. My nonreligious, Air Force colonel father came home one day and declared that the family needed to learn to meditate. The six of us piled into the family car and drove to the Transcendental Meditation center in nearby Amherst, Massachusetts. (This was in the early 70’s.) Each member of the family received private instruction and was given a mantra. For the following two years, meditation was part of our family routine. Before dinner Mom would remind us, “Have you meditated yet?” If we hadn’t, we would trot down to the basement and sit in silence for the prescribed 20 minutes.

While the practice didn’t last longer than the two years we lived in Massachusetts, it did open a quiet place in my soul. Years later, when I entered seminary to become an Episcopal priest, I became very grateful for the gift of meditation. Seminary was hard for me. My undergraduate work at West Point focused on engineering mechanics and computer science. I then spent 5 years in the left-brained world of the Army. In seminary I was completely out of my element. My classmates had all majored in philosophy and religion. I remember trying to read a theology text and having to look up every third word in a dictionary.

Then one day, at noonday prayers, I came across this prayer: O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength. (Isaiah 26.3 30.15) I wrote the words on a post-it and stuck it on my mirror. I returned to my practice of sitting in silence. I regained my center as I listened to the still, small voice of God.

While I have never been consistent in my spiritual disciplines, prayer has been an important part of my spiritual life. Prayer for me is much more than sharing my concerns with God. Prayer is a way of shaping the way I see the world—of being open to the way God sees the world. In addition to silent prayer, one of my favorite ways of praying is to recite words written by other, more spiritually mature people. In the Episcopal Church, much of our worship consists of reciting, as a community, beautiful enlightening prayers.

One of my favorite prayers comes from a nighttime service. Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

I have this prayer memorized and recite it as I am going to sleep. It helps me realize my deep connection with those who “work, or watch, or weep this night.” Prayer invites me into a world that is bigger and more whole than my day-to-day existence.

I’m sure I thought my father was crazy back in 1973. But he introduced me to a priceless gift. Let us pray.

for all the saints

2007-11-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

All Saints 2007

One of the great joys and benefits of observing the holidays of the days of the dead is our gratefulness for our connection with them through the communion of saints, which is for the glory of God. We anticipate All Saints Day on All Hallows Eve – the eve of All Saints – and continue our worship November 1st in the feast of All Souls, or All Faithful Departed – a memorial day for remembering those who have gone before us in obtaining “those ineffable joys” spoken of in the Collect. I like to say, “It is always tea-time somewhere in the Anglican Communion” – that our bonds of affection and common heritage include this enjoyment, and that somewhere in the world someone is praying for me as I pray for you and for them.

And yet this fellowship extends beyond space into time – the saints of ages past share our hope for things to come. And we share in their hope, in their love, through our fellowship with Christ, in Christ, memorialized and brought to present life in the sacraments – the body and blood of Christ – the head of whose body we make up the members – and through and with him be all honor and glory to God, including that fellowship which is his joy – the church which is his body – the fullness (fulfillment) – of him who fills all in all.

This all boils down however to some practical behavior, most succinctly and most famously stated in the Golden Rule, the last sentence of today’s gospel reading: Do as you would be done by.

Imagine yourself a buckaroo from Paradise – that is, a cowboy from the Paradise Valley in Nevada. You raise mules. You have a day job: construction work on the interstate, building bypasses around Elko, Battle Mountain, and Winnemucca. You are on the way to work – you have about 80 miles to go. It is Sunday, late afternoon, the sun is setting slowly over the sage, and you are headed up a mountain pass about 8 miles west of Carlin.

On the side of the road, hood up, is an old car – a 1964 Pontiac Tempest. You stop. The young people inside think they have a mechanical problem. You have a simpler explanation and with a siphon hose prove it. “Yep, bone dry.” They are out of gas.

You drive them back to Carlin, make sure they get some gas, follow them to the next town, Battle Mountain, to make sure they are okay. As you leave, you give your parting benediction: “Make sure to stop and gas her up once in a while.”

To them you are an angel – a messenger of God – or someone who has followed the Golden Rule. Who wouldn’t want to be treated the way you have just treated them?

I was not the cowboy. But I was there. And I am sure glad he stopped.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It sounds so simple – and sometimes it is.

In practice this is carried out in as many ways as the engineer’s dictum Murphy’s Law – if it can go wrong it will – is manifested in the real world. As there are many examples and applications of Murphy’s Law, so there are many of the Golden Rule.

Here is one example. For pastors and their congregations, there are issues of communication, straightforwardness and honor of each other, which come into play.

When I spoke to Greg Rickel, bishop of Olympia, four weeks ago, I asked him if I could use the 10 Rules for Respect in communication he'd introduced at his parish as rector - and he readily gave his permission.

Before I share them with you, though, a disclosure – in the form of a story.

Donald Nicholl, the English Catholic layman who taught me so much at UCSC, loved to tell the story of Gandhi and the little girl. Her mother brought her to the great man complaining of her addiction to sweet foods, and asking Gandhi to do something about it. Gandhi told her to come back in two weeks.

When she did, he took the little girl aside and in a few simple words told her how to break the habit. The mother asked, why did you not tell her this two weeks ago? Because, madam, two weeks ago I was still addicted to sweet foods myself!

In other words practicing the Golden Rule takes – practice!

So with some trepidation... here are the 10 Rules for Respect in communication between a congregation and its pastor:

10 Rules for Respect

1. If you have a problem with me, come to me (privately).

2. If I have a problem with you, I will come to you (privately).

3. If someone has a problem with me and comes to you, send them to me. (I’ll do the same for you.)

4. If someone consistently will not come to me, say to them, “Let’s go to him together. I am sure he will see us about this.” (I will do the same for you.)

5. Be careful how you interpret me – I’d rather do that. On matters that are unclear, do not feel pressured to interpret my feelings or thoughts. It is easy to misinterpret intentions.

6. I will be careful how I interpret you.

7. If it’s confidential, don’t tell. This especially applies to Vestry meetings. If you or anyone comes to me in confidence, I won’t tell unless a) the person is going to harm himself/herself, b) the person is going to physically harm someone else, c) a child has been physically or sexually abused. I expect the same from you.

8. I do not read unsigned letters or notes.

9. I do not manipulate; I will not be manipulated; do not let others *manipulate you. Do not let others manipulate me through you. I will not preach “at” you on Sunday mornings. I will leave conviction to the Holy Spirit. (She does it better anyway!)

10. When in doubt, just say it. The only dumb questions are those that don’t get asked. We are a family here and we care about each other, so if you have a concern, pray, and then (if led) speak up. If I can answer it without misrepresenting something, someone, or breaking a confidence, I will.

*******

This is one example of how we are to put into effect the golden rule, not only to refrain from doing to others what we would not want others to do to us, but positively to treat others as we want to be treated ourselves.

The gospel lesson contains some paradoxical sayings. Jesus seems to be turning worldly wisdom on its head – give to whoever asks of you, invite beggars to your banquets, go the extra mile – and in some ways I think he is suggesting this as a revolutionary, non-violent protest action. The people of Palestine were, after all, deeply oppressed, and violent protest would lead, as it did, to disaster and destruction. What Israel held most precious, the Temple in Jerusalem, was torn down stone by stone.

Our own pretences of worldly wisdom, canniness and morality, are confounded by Jesus’ sayings – and by the reality of the in-breaking kingdom of God. Jesus is not after all selling us a bill of goods, pie in the sky, nor is he trying to get us killed – though living his way can lead to the cross. What he is doing is trying to get us to live into the kingdom, to begin to conduct ourselves as citizens of the city of God.

It looks topsy-turvy, through the eyes of the world. With the eyes of the heart opened, it is a glimpse of paradise.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Bishop Gregory Rickel’s biography and answers to search committee essay questions, Diocese of Olympia (http://www.ecww.org/inthenews/rickel.pdf)

Donald Nicholl, Holiness (Seabury, 1981)

C All Saints RCL

The Lessons Appointed for Use on All Saints' Day - Year C - RCL
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

The Collect

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

communication

2007-11-04T03:22:00.000-08:00

When I spoke to Greg Rickels, bishop of Olympia,
four weeks ago, I asked him if I could use the
10 Rules for Respect in communication he'd
introduced at his parish as rector - and he
readily gave his permission.

Donald Nicholl, the English Catholic layman who
taught me so much at UCSC, loved to tell the
story of Gandhi and the little girl. Her mother
brought her to the great man complaining of her
addiction to sweet foods, and asking Gandhi to do
something about it. Gandhi told her to come back
in two weeks. When she did, he took the little
girl aside and in a few simple words told her how
to break the habit. The mother asked, why did you
not tell her this two weeks ago? Because, madam,
two weeks ago I was still addicted to sweet
foods myself!

So with some trepidation... the 10 Rules for
Respect in communication between a congregation
and its pastor:

10 Rules for Respect

1. If you have a problem with me, come to me
(privately).

2. If I have a problem with you, I will come to
you (privately).

3. If someone has a problem with me and comes to
you, send them to me. (I’ll do the same for you.)

4. If someone consistently will not come to me,
say to them, “Let’s go to him together. I am sure
he will see us about this.” (I will do the same
for you.)

5. Be careful how you interpret me – I’d rather
do that. On matters that are unclear, do not feel
pressured to interpret my feelings or thoughts.
It is easy to misinterpret intentions.

6. I will be careful how I interpret you.

7. If it’s confidential, don’t tell. This
especially applies to Vestry meetings. If you or
anyone comes to me in confidence, I won’t tell
unless a) the person is going to harm
himself/herself, b) the person is going to
physically harm someone else, c) a child has been
physically or sexually abused. I expect the same
from you.

8. I do not read unsigned letters or notes.

9. I do not manipulate; I will not be
manipulated; do not let others manipulate you. Do
not let others manipulate me through you. I will
not preach “at” you on Sunday mornings. I will
leave conviction to the Holy Spirit. (She does it
better anyway!)

10. When in doubt, just say it. The only dumb
questions are those that don’t get asked. We are
a family here and we care about each other, so if
you have a concern, pray, and then (if led) speak
up. If I can answer it without misrepresenting
something, someone, or breaking a confidence, I
will.

Adapted from Bishop Gregory Rickel’s biography
and answers to search committee essay questions
Diocese of Olympia

(http://www.ecww.org/inthenews/rickel.pdf)

Donald Nicholl, Holiness (Seabury, 1981)

How are you?

2007-10-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

Each week the same thing happens to me. I am greeted by Charles or Thomas, two of the custodians who work at Trinity Cathedral, "How are you today Dean?" I respond, "I'm fine Charles (or Thomas). How are you?" "Blessed, Dean Baker, I'm blessed!" And I think to myself, "Why did I settle for fine?"

Why be fine, when I could be blessed? I woke up this morning. Today didn't have to happen for me. But it did. I get to breathe air, eat food. I have people in my life who love me, whom I get to love. And I'm just fine? No, I am Blessed!!!

One of the problems for me is I take the many blessings in my life for granted. The gift of life and the gift of people to love simply become normal. They are the status quo; I no longer notice them.

What I do notice is what I don't have. I don't have a digital SLR camera. I don't have a motorcycle. I know my life would be so much better if only I had these things.

I also notice what I have that I might lose. I bought my house 1 ½ years ago. I'm sure it has lost value. My financial security feels like it is slipping away. And of course, so will my health - if not now, then eventually. It's hard to feel fine, let alone blessed, when life is so precarious.
I get to choose, of course, whether I want to look at my life through the lens of scarcity or abundance. I get to choose to be fine or blessed. But it is difficult in our culture to live in abundance. So many of the messages we receive tell us we either need to buy something new for fulfillment or we need to worry about our health or prosperity slipping away.

I find two spiritual practices helpful in realizing that I am blessed. First is the simple act of gratitude. I am reminded of this whenever Thomas tells me he is blessed. He often adds, "I got out of bed this morning." He reminds me it could have been otherwise. I too got out of bed. I was given the gift of this day. This little nudge from Thomas helps me remember that I'm blessed in many other ways as well. I thank God for this remarkable gift of life.

The other spiritual practice that helps me realize I'm blessed is generosity. For some mystical reason, giving things away, things that I care about, gives me life. It is strange, because our culture tells us we need more to be happy. But living as if my life was abundant, and sharing this abundance with others somehow makes my life more abundant. In being generous, I become more alive. And the voice in my head that tells me I can't be happy unless I have more, is weakened. My blessings increase.

I don't want to be fine anymore. I want to be BLESSED! I'm going to start by changing my response when greeted by others. So if you see me around town, please ask, "How are you?"

Premarital Sex

2007-10-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

“What is your position on premarital sex?” It isn’t like this is a completely unusual question for a priest to be asked. However, this was someone I had never met and who had never been to my church. And this question was our first exchange of words. I had just been introduced to this young woman, and the first thing she said to me was, “What is your position on premarital sex?” What a delightful way to begin a relationship. Actually I was thrilled. I’d much rather wrestle with an important issue than make small talk. And I like a challenge.

What was she expecting me to say? That premarital sex is wrong; that one should wait until marriage. Or that it is fine between consenting adults? I rarely find single sentence answers are adequate for ethical questions. After a long pause, here’s what I said:

The purpose of the spiritual life is to become more alive. (St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century said, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”) I try to judge courses of action by whether they will bring me more alive or deaden me. Not by whether they will be fun or easy, but will they bring me more alive. Of course the “me” that needs to become more alive is not my ego or “false self”, but my interior, spiritual self. Will a given course of action bring my true self more alive?

Our sexuality is a lovely gift from God. And sexual intercourse can move us out of ourselves and unite us to another person in a way that is spectacularly beautiful. I can imagine situations in which two people love one another, and are committed to one another to such an extent that sex would bring each of them more alive as it draws them closer together. The couple would not need to be married for this to be true. I can also imagine instances when sex between two people is not life-giving—times when it is cheap, or hurtful or vacuous—times when the sacredness of the act is not sustained by a relationship of mutual love. This deadening sexual act could happen within marriage as well as outside of marriage. Marriage does not guarantee that sexuality always be life giving. But it helps. The commitment to remain together, to love one another during happy and difficult times, or even when the “feeling” of love is gone, that commitment helps create a safe space for sexuality to be freely and safely expressed.

Our sexuality is a precious gift from God. And sex, outside of marriage as well as within marriage, needs to be engaged in lovingly, respectfully and reverently.

My new friend seemed satisfied with my answer. There was much more I could have said about the topic. Like how complicated sexual relationships can get in our materialistic culture where individuality and self-fulfillment trump authentic relationship and the value of self-sacrifice. Perhaps that can be covered in our second conversation.

Blessings,

Brian Baker

Same Sex Marriage

2007-10-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

This essay was written for the Sacramento News and Review

Marriage is . . . something more than a civil contract subject to regulation by the state; it is a fundamental right of free men...legislation infringing such rights must be based upon more than prejudice and must be free from oppressive discrimination to comply with the constitutional requirements of due process and equal protection of the laws. – California Supreme Court in a 1948 decision that invalidated laws barring interracial marriage.

If, as the State Supreme Court states, the right to marry the person of one’s choice is a fundamental civil right, on what basis would we deny this right to same-sex couples? Because it is a new idea? Because the concept makes some people uncomfortable? Because it seems to go against the way we thought God has designed the world? These were all arguments used to justify laws against interracial marriage. Fortunately the State Supreme Court saw this prejudice for what it was and led the nation in invalidating laws that barred such marriages.

Now, it seems, history has a chance to repeat itself. The State Supreme Court may be on the verge of invalidating laws that bar same-sex marriages. Not everyone is pleased with this development. I have heard three arguments against same-sex marriage.

First, marriage has traditionally been limited to opposite sex couples. But tradition is poor justification for denying people civil rights. In our past, slavery was our tradition. Same-race marriage was our tradition. Fortunately we have moved beyond these traditions and broadened access to civil rights.

Second, some believe there is a strong religious consensus against same-sex marriage. Even if the Court was to consider religious arguments, which it shouldn’t, there is no religious consensus. I am an Episcopal priest in a congregation that welcomes with open arms people who are gay and lesbian. I believe that anybody willing to commit himself or herself in love to another deserves our support, our respect and our admiration. I believe the state should honor same-sex couples the same way it honors opposite-sex couples. And I am not alone. Over 400 religious leaders in California joined me in signing an amicus brief that stated our support for same-sex marriage.

Third, some argue that same-sex marriage threatens heterosexual marriages and families. How silly. My marriage is not weakened when a gay or lesbian people choose to pledge themselves to one another. It is foolish, as a society, for us to deny marriage to any group of people. Marriage, with its commitment to fidelity and stability, helps society. When two people want to pledge themselves in faithfulness to one another we should celebrate this commitment and honor them with the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage. It shouldn’t matter if the couples are opposite-sex or same-sex. The marriages of same-sex couples will strengthen marriage as a whole, strengthen families and strengthen our society.

60 years ago California led the nation in ending prejudice and allowing interracial couples to marry. We now have the opportunity to bring this same justice to same-sex couples.

Forgiveness

2007-10-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

This essay was recently published in the Sacramento News and Review

Tariq Khamisa, a 20 year old college student was delivering pizzas when he was confronted by a 14 year-old boy. The boy, Tony Hicks, demanded a pizza. When Tariq refused, Tony shot him in the chest. Tariq died in the delivery car.

This past weekend, at the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival, I met Tariq’s father, Azim. Listening to him was a remarkable experience. After learning of his son’s death, Azim spent time in meditation. Informed by his Moslem faith, he realized that he had to forgive Tony. He knew that for his own sake, he needed to let go of his resentment and anger toward Tony. He also realized that Tony was a victim. He decided to fight, not against Tony, but against the influences that led Tony to do what he did. Azim met with Tony’s grandfather and guardian, Ples. Azim, a Muslim, asked Ples, a Christian, to work with him to end the escalating spiral of youth violence. For over 10 years now, they have been teaching forgiveness and nonviolence in schools.

Azim and Ples are featured in the film, “The Power of Forgiveness.” Prior to its television debut, this film is being shown in a few select locations, including Blacksburg, Virginia, the home of Virginia Tech. The film features Thich Nhat Hanh, Desmond Tutu, Marianne Williamson and other spiritual leaders. It also highlights the struggle to forgive embodied by the Amish community that was recently devastated by a mass murder in an Amish school.

When watching the film this past weekend, I realized that forgiveness is a learned skill. And that for many of us is not learned well. We don’t really understand forgiveness. Many of us think that if we forgive somebody, we must refrain from punishing or we must allow the other to continue to harm us. Or we think we must forget the infraction.

From a spiritual perspective, forgiveness is an internal act on the part of someone who feels they have been wronged. When I forgive someone, I say no to the voice inside of me that screams for retaliation. I strive to let go of the anger and resentment I hold toward them. And I refuse to look at them solely through the lens of how they have wronged me. To withhold forgiveness, to harbor anger, is like drinking poison in the hope that the other would be harmed. It only hurts me.

We desperately need to learn and practice forgiveness. We need to learn to respond non-violently in our increasingly violent world. We are fortunate to have models of forgiveness like Azim Khamisa. I am grateful for our religious traditions that teach forgiveness. And I am grateful that I belong to a religious community that is a lovely training ground for forgiveness.

the far side of the world

2007-09-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Monday 24 September - Ordinarily for tonight's healing & eucharist service, we would look for a saint's day to remember, or just use the readings from the back of the book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2006) in the two-year cycle for daily eucharist. However, recently I found that two on the calendar - Nathan Soderblom and Albert Schweitzer - were also Nobel Peace Prize recipients. So I went to the Nobel Prize website and searched on "September 24" ... which turns out to be the anniversary of the forming of the National League for Democracy, in Burma - the political party of Aung San Suu Kyi.

A Buddhist, she sees her quest as basically spiritual. “To live the full life,” she wrote, “one must have the courage to bear the responsibility of the needs of others… one must want to bear the responsibility.” And, she added, the quest for democracy in Burma is the struggle of a people to live whole, meaningful lives as free and equal members of the world community. It is part of the unceasing human endeavor to prove that the human spirit can transcend the flaws of its nature.

Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991, yet even today lives under house arrest in the capital city of her country.

Very much in the news today are the protests of the current military regime of Myanmar - the country better known as Burma - which began Saturday with hundreds of monks gathering outside the home of Aung San Suu Kyi to pay their respects. How these events will end, in the short term, we do not know. We have hope of the eventual outcome, a restoration of peace and justice, for Burma and the world.

It was on September 24th in 1988 that the National League for Democracy was formed in Burma, with Aun San Suu Kyi as general-secretary, and a policy of non-violence and civil disobedience. There was hope in that year of many nascent democracies that Burma, too, would shake itself free of the grip of its ruling military junta. The struggle continues today: earlier today nuns and monks of the Buddhist tradition, predominant in central Burma, took to the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay in mass protest.

We do not know what turn these events will take. If the regime acts with restraint… I’d breath a sigh of relief. If in coming days some glimmer of recognition of the need for change were to emerge inside the junta’s palace… it would be an early sign of hope.

The readings for the evening of September 24 were not chosen for their appositeness to currents events - and yet they fit very well.

Ezra 1:1-6 recounts the End of the Babylonian Captivity of Israel.

Psalm 126
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion...
Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.

Luke 8:16-18
'No one after lighting a lamp hides it under a jar, or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to light. Then pay attention to how you listen; for to those who have, more will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away.’

From the history of ancient Israel, we know that powerful kings and military rulers do not give up power easily. But we also see in that history a continuing witness of hope, of fidelity to the promises of God.

That hope has begun to be fulfilled in Christ Jesus. In Jesus, the kingdom of heaven was proclaimed – and the day of the Lord began to dawn, the day of peace, righteousness and justice. We are called to live as children of that day – to align ourselves with the coming reign of God, knowing that, try as the rulers of this world might try to hide it, the light is dawning.

How are we to live? As children of the light, letting our light shine before all people – in our personal dealings, in our relations with one another, in our actions as a people of God, to follow the Lord of Light, Jesus Christ: to be the light of the world.

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Sources for 2007 September 24th:

The Nobel Foundation - Nobel Peace Prize 1991 - Aung San Suu Kyi
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1991/

BBC News - Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia-pacific/1950505.stm

The Telegraph - Burma protest swells as 100,000 join march
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/24/wburma124.xml

Jim Carrey - Call to Action on Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NySuaJ2B20E

The Age - Tens of thousands add their voice to Burma protests
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/burma-protest-numbers-grow-by-thousands/2007/09/24/1190486223208.html

The Guardian - Burmese junta threatens protest crackdown
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2176125,00.html

Church of Ireland
http://ireland.anglican.org/worship/weekdays/2007/23-09-2007.pdf

A protester's view
'The middle class are now poor, the poor are destitute'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/burma/story/0,,2177204,00.html

those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it

2007-09-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

John Coleridge Patteson
Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs, 1871
September 20, 2007

Eight time zones east of here is the birthplace of John Coleridge Patteson; he was born in London on the 1st of April, 1827. Four time zones west of here is Nakapu, an island in the Santa Cruz group north of Vanuatu, where John Coleridge Patteson and his companions were killed on 20 September 1871.

And yet far away as these places are, and as far away as the 19th century is from us, we are bound to them by ties not only of affection but also of our common humanity.

Melanesia has an Anglican church now; Patteson went there to found it. Instead he went to his death – by mistake.

He worked to stamp out the flourishing slave trade in the Solomon Islands. The people of Nakapu mistook his party for slave raiders, returning after a recent raid, and took their revenge on his body – one stroke of the hatchet for each native who had been killed in the earlier raid.

The reaction of the government in England was to work even harder to stamp out slavery, and the slave trade, in the south Pacific territories under their flag.

The church redoubled its missionary efforts; Bishop Selwyn, who had sent Patteson to Melanesia from New Zealand, worked to reconcile the people of Melanesia “to the memory of one who came to help and not to hurt.”

The Most Revd Sir Ellison Leslie Pogo KBE, primate of The Church of the Province of Melanesia, is Patteson’s successor: we are all his heirs.

Stuff happens. The joke goes on: Why does this stuff keep happening to us? Or, less popularly: Why do we keep on doing this stuff?

As Tony Campolo recently pointed out, God created humanity to act in freedom, and thus to be capable of going against his will. Out of love, God gave us the freedom to choose to love God in return. Out of love.

Christine Sine of St. Alban’s, Edmonds, Washington, recently wrote: “All of us, no matter how strong our faith, will at some point in our life journey suffer pain and death.” Through Christ, God is able to use the suffering we endure to further God’s purpose in our lives and in the world. God’s grace works through human weakness.

Out of love, he gave us freedom. Out of freedom, we may choose, in the words of the apostle, to “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way [to] fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2) Out of love.

And somehow, out of death, comes life: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)

To really live involves, eventually and inevitably, dying. But death is not the end of the story.

The life that is saved is not the life of this body as it is – but ongoing life in God, that begins when we choose to live in Christ.

Out of love. Out of freedom. Out of death. Into life.

****

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

****

Sources

Lesser Feasts and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2006)

1 Peter 4:12-19, Psalm 121, Psalm 116:1-8, Mark 8:34-38, Genesis 22:1-14, Romans 8:31-39, Galatians 6:2

http://www.anglicancommunion.org/tour/province.cfm?ID=M1

http://orders.anglican.org/mbh/history.htm

http://www.bcponline.org/

http://bible.oremus.org/

Context, September 2007, Part A, page 3-4 & Part B, page 6.

Tony Campolo, “God as Suffering Servant”, Tikkun, May/June 2007
www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0706/frontpage/sufferingservant

Christine Sine, “The Challenge of Suffering”, Prism, March-April 2007
http://www.network935.org/Images/mmDocument/PRISM%20Archive/Sines%20Times/MarApr07SinesOfTimes.pdf

whose service is perfect freedom: (costing not less than everything)

2007-09-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

When it came time to sign the marriage license for two of my college friends, the minister gave as his title, “Slave of Jesus Christ”. In his letter to the Christians at Rome, Paul introduced himself as “doulon christou iesu” – a servant of Jesus Christ, not distinguishing between bondservant and freedman.

In his letter to Philemon, a brother in Christ and a slave owner, Paul makes distinct the difference between enslavement in the world’s system and free service offered to the Lord. He greets Philemon as a “dear friend and co-worker”, telling him he remembers him in his prayers always thankful because of Philemon’s love for all the saints – all the saints – and his faith toward the Lord Jesus. This love Philemon shows is a source of encouragement and joy. “The hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother,” Paul writes.

Therefore, Paul continues, I appeal to you – rather than making a command. “Refresh my heart in Christ”, he asks. Back to you I am sending Onesimus, whom you held as a slave. He has become a Christian, and hence my brother – and yours. Meanwhile I myself am held as a prisoner, for the love of Christ. Do something extraordinary, Philemon: receive him back but do not punish him; embrace him as a brother, and further than that, do not hold him accountable for anything you might hold against him. Charge it to my account.

It was not unusual, scholars like Richard Horsley tell us, in those days for one person to own another. Even for Christians, to be a slave or a slave owner was a simple matter of economics. But not to Paul: he is challenging Philemon to break free from the economic system the world has enthralled him in, and to do something that will strike its own blow against the empire.

Set him free. Furthermore, flying in the face of the practice of the time — slaves could buy their freedom for a price but would always owe their former master a share of their income — do not charge him for his freedom, or require him to pay you royalties on his future earnings. And you shall be made free yourself.

Slaves are compelled; to serve in Christ is an act of freedom. Paul asks, implicitly, for Philemon to free Onesimus, and so to free himself.

Paul does happen to mention a little debt, and a small requirement for obedience. Not to himself, not really, not to anyone on earth: but to God in Christ Jesus. You owe him everything, Onesimus: even your life.

And here we are back at the cross, with Jesus, who reminds the crowds who were following him – up to this point anyway – that to follow him means giving up all you have. Family, possessions, even life itself, all are to be counted as loss, compared to the one thing left to them, the service of Christ.

Philemon is not being asked to give up a little. Paul reminds him he owes everything in obedience. It is being asked of him now. To give up – “I know my rights!” – he might protest – to give up what he has in the world’s terms in order to take his place in the kingdom of God. Like the rich young ruler who went away sorrowing, Philemon might have thought of what he had to lose – but perhaps, since after all he did save the letter, he thought of what he had to gain.

All this may sound symbolic, to modern ears… until we think of the cost of discipleship we might be asked to pay.

Imagine a world in which one person might presume to own another, a world in which people are bought and sold like possessions. Imagine, indeed, millions trafficked this way across the globe today. And then imagine someone taking some small step to redeem, or set free, someone who is being held hostage to wage slavery or debt, or through physical or other coercion.

That is a world we live in, even now. Organizations of Christians across the world – World Concern among them – are working to help people out of this system, and to challenge the system that enslaves. We might or might not be called to take direct action on this front, but we all will be called at some point to estimate the cost, of carrying the cross, of discipleship.

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.… So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

Our God, whose service is perfect freedom (costing not less than everything) – how are we to serve? Whom would we consider a saint?

If a man were give up a good job in a prestigious institution, leave his fiancée behind, and join a conspiracy to assassinate the duly elected leader of his country, would we consider him a good Christian? If, then, caught, convicted, and imprisoned, he wrote that girl, telling her we now live in a world without God, would we praise his faith? We might acknowledge his contribution to Death of God theology, but would we call him a saint?

And yet there he is, on the calendar in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, for April 9th: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pastor & Theologian, 1945. Bonhoeffer left Union Theological Seminary to return to Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, and who subsequently was involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler that failed on 20 July 1944, is widely held as an exemplar of faith in the 20th Century.

If a nun were to talk her way out of her vow of stability, and go live on the streets of a big city, would we consider her a model of obedience? If then, and from then on, she felt – and wrote in her letters – that she too felt the absence of God, would we consider her a model of faith? If she carried on like that for fifty years, would we call her a saint?

And yet Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who confessed that she had experienced the dark night of the soul over a period of fifty years of serving the “poorest of the poor”, is widely acclaimed as a model, an extreme model, of faith.

To give up family, friends, possessions, life itself – even to experience existence bereft of a sense of God’s presence – indeed our Lord cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – and yet somehow from this total loss, to experience the life of Resurrection, this is the cost, and the glory, of discipleship.

Sources:

Readings for Year C, Proper 18 (RCL): Philemon 1-21. Psalm 139:1-5, 13-18. Luke 14:25-33.

T. S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’ (1942); Four Quartets (1943) [http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/gidding.html]

Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World (Grosset/Putnam, 1997), p. 182-183.

http://www.worldconcern.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=527&srcid=429

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bonhoeff.htm

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/calendar/holydays.html

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20031019_index_madre-teresa_en.html

Lesser Feasts and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2006) [http://www.io.com/~kellywp/CalndrsIndexes/TxtIndexLFF.html]

My Life with the Saints by James Martin, S.J. (Loyola Press Chicago, 2006)
http://www.nimblespirit.com/html/my_life_with_the_saints_review.html

September 9, 2007, Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento.

He comes to us as One unknown...

2007-09-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

September 7, 2007

Our reading from Colossians this morning is more hymn than theological statement. From its tremendous phrases we learn the glory of the cosmic Christ, the Lord who is Lord of all, the first and the last. And yet this is the same Jesus our first comrades in the faith knew as a fellow human, walking the dusty paths of Galilee, bringing the message of the coming Kingdom of God to the people of Israel. The Christ of faith and the Jesus of history – the same person – and so compelling, for humankind ever since. For example,…

From the website of the Nobel Foundation we learn that: "Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875-September 4, 1965) was born in Alsace... At the University of Strasbourg he obtained a doctorate in philosophy in 1899, and received his licentiate in theology in 1900. He began preaching at St. Nicholas Church in Strasbourg in 1899; he served in various high ranking administrative posts from 1901 to 1912 at the University of Strasbourg. In 1906 he published The Quest of the Historical Jesus, a book on which much of his fame as a theological scholar rests. Schweitzer wrote a biography of Bach in 1905... Having decided to go to Africa as a medical missionary rather than as a pastor, Schweitzer in 1905 began the study of medicine at the University of Strasbourg... In 1913, having obtained his M.D. degree, he founded his hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa, [where except for the period from 1917 to 1924 he spent most of the rest of his life].... At Lambaréné, Schweitzer was doctor and surgeon in the hospital, pastor of a congregation, administrator of a village, superintendent of buildings and grounds, writer of scholarly books, commentator on contemporary history, musician, host to countless visitors. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1952. With the $33,000 prize money, he started the leprosarium at Lambaréné....Albert Schweitzer died on September 4, 1965, and was buried at Lambaréné." [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1952/schweitzer-bio.html]

Schweitzer’s work on the historical Jesus summed up the scholarship of the preceding two centuries, well enough indeed that it was not until California’s James Robinson (senior) initiated the new quest in the 1960s that much new ground was broken. Indeed the Westar Institute, sponsor of the Jesus Seminar, having finished its own work on the historical Jesus and looking for new worlds to conquer, followed in Schweitzer’s footsteps by turning to a study of Paul. Of course other people have followed Schweitzer’s footsteps in other ways, notably by serving to relieve poverty, suffering and disease. Even in the 1980 comedy “The Gods Must Be Crazy” a volunteer teacher en route to the bush is asked, “So, are you going to do an Albert Schweitzer in Botswana?”

Carlos Noreña, chair of the philosophy board of studies at UC Santa Cruz, once remarked on what could happen if you took philosophy too seriously. Albert Schweitzer seems to have taken his own scholarship quite seriously. While he continued to write – The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle came out in 1930 – once he had made the move to the mission field his main work, his exegesis in action, if you will, was his service to the poor. This follows quite logically from his conclusion to The Quest of the Historical Jesus:

"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me!' and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is." [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter20.html]

Colossians 1:15-20
Psalm 100
Luke 5:33-39

Friday 7 September 2007, Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento

What Better Day?

2007-08-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

God, the source of our joy, you gladden our hearts as we journey toward the heavenly city. Deepen within us a desire for peace, a longing to see your justice done; that sharing a common purpose, your people may prosper and come to praise you with the songs of Zion, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Larry Dossey, author of “Prayer is Good Medicine”, an advocate of prayer for healing, once said, "If you have appendicitis, you should get an appendectomy." I endorse this advice.

What if more is needed? What if the healing must be of the spirit as well as the flesh? Then, indeed, prayer is good medicine – including our prayers for healing at eucharist - though in some cases, more may be needed: an action to restore wholeness, if like the woman in the gospel, eighteen long years of suffering have separated you from your right place in your community. Back then, any physical infirmity might be attributed to a spiritual cause. People might shy away from you, trying to keep pure and holy for worship. I mean, what if she did something to cause it? If I get too close, will it rub off on me?

Jesus will have none of that. He calls to her and he touches her and heals her -- on the Sabbath.

Following Jesus can be – embarrassing. Here he was in the synagogue, the guest lecturer, center of attention – the result, Judas might have told us, of careful planning – only to break the decorum of the holy day and work, do the work of healing.

Jesus breaks the rules. The Sabbath-day decorum is shattered. Jesus breaks the rules, but he keeps the covenant. He holds true to God’s promise.

The Sabbath is meant to be a sign, a foretaste of Shalom, of God’s reign of peace, of harmony and justice, when all shall be set to rights, and we dwell in the house of the Lord. Where better to experience that setting to rights, and what better day to find peace and wholeness established, than in the Lord’s house on the Sabbath day, the day of peace?

The officious leader of the synagogue, impatient to keep the purity-piety machinery running smoothly, hastens to object: there are six days for work, come then to be healed, and not on the Sabbath. But the rabbi Jesus rebukes him, arguing persuasively from small to great: if you would do so little a thing as unbind an animal to take it to water on the day of rest, how much more on this holy day is it right that a big thing be accomplished in the life of this poor woman, that she, having been bound by suffering for eighteen long years should be released from her misery?

Jesus restores her to her true dignity. As a daughter of Abraham she is an inheritor of the promise, the covenant of God’s faithful people. She is not, to Jesus, “the woman with the crooked back”, but a child of God.

What we have seen is, as preacher Herb O’Driscoll puts it, not just curing but healing. The physical malady is relieved, to be sure, but so is the spiritual distress that weighed down this woman’s soul, rending her unable to stand straight among her neighbors, as if it were a burden of guilt that bent her back. But Jesus – in the middle of his Sabbath teaching – stopped and laying hands on her made her well and whole and welcome as a child of God.

Looking back on our lesson from Isaiah, we see that this is only a foretaste of the coming reign of peace, of Shalom – and a meet and right thing to do on the Sabbath day, revealing as it does that God in Jesus keeps his promise to his people, restoring what was broken to wholeness, and freshening the world and his people with new life in the light of the coming of his kingdom. The examples the prophet gives are very practical: Unbind the captive, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless.

Elsewhere he says, “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)

Isaiah’s vision of the promise fulfilled is tangible and alluring: you shall be like a watered garden. The legacy of the past shall be renewed and foundations for new generations shall be laid. Carrying God’s people forward from generation to generation, we inherit, develop, and pass on a living heritage of the abundance and providence God, who gives them – us – a future with hope.

As Christians we look forward to a heavenly city, a New Jerusalem not made by human hands, at the consummation of time; yet more immediately we have Jesus before us, revealing to us the kingdom of God in the freedom of the present moment. Jesus is present to the woman in the synagogue, restoring her to health and leading her into a new sense of her dignity as Abraham’s daughter – she reacts by glorifying God. Jesus is present to us now on this holy day, inviting us to loosen up a bit from our own bondages by the grace of his sacramental presence in the Eucharist and in Baptism, and to take up our full stature as children of the promise, children of Abraham – along with all who descend from him by means of putting our faith in the promise.

Jesus breaks the rules indeed – but he has brought home to us what the keeping of the law was all about: honoring the covenant with God, that we would be his people, unbinding the captive, healing and serving, and glorifying God.

That is what Sabbath is about: delighting in the Lord. Turning this day of all days from our own efforts and enterprises, amusements and ambitions, to remember that we rely on the providence of God through scarcity and abundance, and giving God the glory for all he is accomplishing according to his purpose: the establishment of peace, harmony and justice in the world he has made.

As Methodist pastor Joy Moore wrote in The Christian Century, “The lifestyle of Christians is to live the hope we speak: the Creator of the universe, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the One who raised Jesus from the dead, is reconciling the world to the original design of justice, righteousness, and peace.”

The other night I watched the 1981 movie “Chariots of Fire”, in which an Olympic athlete refuses to compete on the Sabbath – he believes Sundays are not for sport – and so must skip the race he thought he’d win. A generous teammate steps aside and allows him a chance at “another race, another day”. Before that unexpected race begins, a competitor hands Eric a note: “Mr. Liddell, it says in the old Book, ‘He that honors me, I will honor.’ Good luck – Jackson Scholz.”

It’s a movie – he wins the race. More importantly he has won the struggle within – to turn from his own pleasures to delight in the Lord. You may disagree with his practice – but honor his principle. You may have a different idea of how to keep the Sabbath; the point is to remember God’s providence in all you do, especially on the day of rest. Remember, then, that this day of peace is only a foretaste of God’s kingdom of Shalom – and everything you do today that proclaims that is your own celebration of this holy day.

Recently I received a questionnaire from another parish, which began “Describe your spirituality.” I am tempted to answer in the words of Johnny Cash: “I’m just tryin’ to be a good Christian.” There is much humble, hard-won wisdom in what he said. Being a Christian is my way of being human – and I highly recommend it. Indeed from my first real discovery, in teenage years, of what the gospel could mean, I have sought not only to understand its mysteries more deeply for myself but to share them, and their blessings, with other believers and with people outside the fellowship halls.

Liberation from the bondage of oppression, whether it is personal or corporate in impact, is a troubling message to some, if your old patterns of behavior suited their codependency. Old friends, comfortable with your old self, will resent your new freedom. And yet in Christ we find a new place in society, new relationships with family and friends, and a new home that is a very old home indeed: it is from the source of all being as well as the ultimate point of all life – that is, our dwelling in Christ.

Like the woman unbound from eighteen long years of affliction, I and others have learned in Christ our real dignity as human persons: that we are sons and daughters of Abraham, children of the promise that the peace and rest of the Sabbath are just a foretaste of a world made new that remembers its sustenance comes not from self-made striving but from the Word of God, from Jesus himself, the Alpha and Omega of existence: Christ behind us, Christ before us, Christ above us, Christ below us, Christ within us, the hope of Glory. Amen.

August 26, 2007 9am
Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento
13th Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 16C
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Luke 13:10-17

Sources

Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (SPCK, 2001)

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today: Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Volume 3 (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2001)

Chariots of Fire (Enigma Productions, 1981)

Joy J. Moore, "Living by the Word: Bearing witness", The Christian Century, August 7, 2007, Vol. 124, No. 16, p. 17.

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 16) - Year C [RCL]
Jeremiah 1:4-10 or Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 71:1-6 or 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
By Joseph S. Pagano and Amy Richter , August 26, 2007
Episcopal Life Online (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_89268_ENG_HTM.htm)

Barbara Crafton, "An Ancient Joke" and "Learning How-To in Haiti", The Almost Daily eMo, August 24, 2007,
The Geranium Farm (http://www.geraniumfarm.org/dailyemo.cfm?Emo=874)

Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World (Grosset/Putnam, 1997)

Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus' Final Days in Jerusalem (HarperCollins, 2006)

Christopher Irvine, The Pilgrim's Manual (Wild Goose Publications, 1997) p. 27.

Martha and Mary in the presence of the Lord

2007-07-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

CProper11 BCP
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 18:1-10a(10b-14)
Psalm 15
Colossians 1:21-29
Luke 10:38-42

1. This week’s gospel, the story of Mary and Martha, is the second of two stories about the kingdom of God, about listening and not listening to the good news of what it really is, what really is, what we really are. It is also the second of two illustrations of the summary of the law: Love God, and love your neighbor.

Last week we listened in as a lawyer asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He himself supplied the answer:

Love God, and love your neighbor. These are the first and greatest commandment, and the second, which is like unto it. “Do this, and you will live.” But then, because the lawyer wanted to secure his hold on the kingdom, he asked Jesus to clarify his terms. “But who is my neighbor?” Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, and the lawyer learned there is more to the kingdom than fulfilling his obligation under the law.

In this week’s story, of Martha and Mary, we have another chance to see what the kingdom is – and more explicitly, who Jesus is. We see a woman being reminded of the first law, the love of God: the very reason for what we do, for all that we do, is the love of God.

There are two sisters. Mary takes the place of a disciple, sitting at Jesus’ feet. Martha -- distracted and worried by many things -- objects to this.

What she is doing is fine, in a way: it is the ordinary task of an ordinary day in an ordinary household. This is, however, no ordinary day: Messiah has come and he is under our roof, at this very moment. Rabbi is teaching: what are you doing in the kitchen when you could be listening, picking up pearls as they fall from his lips?

For a woman to take the place of a disciple was NEW: it was unexpected, unheard of. Jesus’ message of the kingdom breaks down traditional barriers. The love he shares with Martha, Mary, and us is so expansive, so outrageous, and so extraordinary that it overflows. The channels of ordinary piety cannot contain the Spirit. It floods into our lives. This is no ordinary day.

Maybe that makes Martha a little nervous. Maybe that is why she is busying herself among the pots and pans. She is doing hospitality – at a moment when the one thing necessary is to wait – to wait not on tables but to wait on the Lord, to listen to what the Lord is saying. To see that this is the day when righteousness and peace embrace: the kingdom has come to our house, Martha, and it is time to rejoice.

2. Like the lawyer Martha made a good effort. She wanted to do what is right. She may even have wanted, as the lawyer who asked the question did, to inherit eternal life. What is missing is that you do not earn your way into heaven. You celebrate its arrival in the midst of you. It is present, even in an ordinary day, even in the completion of ordinary duties. But when the day comes to listen to the Lord, take off your apron, drop the duster, set down your pen, turn off your computer, hang up your cellphone, and sit at Jesus’ feet.

Our culture values the doer. We say: “Come on, let’s get going; let’s get something done.” We get up early so we can ride the elevator up to the twelfth floor with the boss. At least I have. We spend our week getting things done, and at the end lean back in satisfaction at what we have accomplished. At least I have. But then on that same Friday evening, in the very next moment, I asked myself: What was this all for? Have I lost track of the very reason for what I was doing, as I was so busy doing business? Do I need to step back, take a long look, and remember why I am here?

The lawyer meant well but he may have forgotten the relationship, to God and the neighbor, which was the reason behind the rules. Jesus breaks the rules; but he fulfills the Law. He reinstates the relationship between God and us. He reminds us why we are here. And he does it in part by overcoming judgment with mercy, by showing us the outrageous abundance and the exuberant overflowing of the kingdom of Heaven. Remember this is the Christ who, presented with the need to feed five thousand, had them sit down and share five loaves and two fish – and they all were well fed. Maybe Martha is worrying too much.

3. Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying, took a disciple’s place. Martha, on the other hand, was “distracted and anxious” about many things.

“Mary has chosen the better part” – there is that word “chosen”. As Canon Lynell Walker has pointed out, the good news is that you can choose, that your time has come, that now it is your turn to be in the presence of the Lord. The part “which will not be taken away from her” – what is that? Clearly Jesus is only there for the night but, as Dean Brian Baker has pointed out, the Word of God will remain forever. As will the Spirit.

4. By the oaks of Mamre – the scene of this morning’s Old Testament lesson – Abraham, the exemplar of faith, saw three strangers approach. He was host to the three men. Sarah, in the tent, made cakes; a servant prepared a calf; and Abraham served the men himself, standing by them under the tree while they ate. One promised to return in due season, and that Sarah should have a son. [Sarah laughed.]

This is the classic example of Middle Eastern hospitality – the welcome to strangers, preparing them food. The blessing in return, here a promise of children – and thus a future with hope – is probably characteristic too: but here it has a larger purpose. The three men represent the three persons of the Godhead, indeed icons of this scene are entitled “The Old Testament Trinity”.

So here we have the image of hospitality – and the roles of men and women – that Martha and Mary and Jesus grew up with. For Mary to break with this pattern was a surprise. Yet here she is, sitting at the feet of the Lord and listening to what he is saying: she has taken her place among the disciples. This, even though tradition would indicate that those who sit in the presence of the guest would be men – the man of the house – and that the women would like Martha concern themselves with children, church, kitchen. … leaving the men to themselves to discuss man stuff like … what?

Is the Messiah here only for men? Is the Kingdom of Heaven exclusive? No, in one situation after another we see Jesus break the rules. The kingdom of heaven is for all people. He is here to announce it, to proclaim it, to manifest it, to usher it in.

So this is not your typical guest, nor your typical meal. The occasion is extraordinary. Jesus, the Messiah, is here present now in Martha (and Mary’s) living room. What to do?

Maybe it’s all a bit upsetting. I mean, Jesus breaks the rules. Who knows what he’ll do to my life? Maybe he’ll change it all around, stretch my boundaries, and eliminate my preconceptions. Maybe he’ll call me to some new level of service of which I’m afraid.

Martha may want a bit of business, ordinary business in the household, to occupy her hands while her mind races to take it all in. What we hear from her, though, is a plea: Lord, make my sister come help me in the kitchen.

Is this what you would ask Messiah for? If he were to come to dinner today at your home, what would you say to him?

“My Lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree…”

“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

And what will he reply to you? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

5. I used to read a lot of mysteries. Mysteries come in several sorts. There are puzzle mysteries, like Agatha Christie novels. There are mysteries that present problems to solve, situations to investigate, and secrets to be discovered. There are stories to be told. Some mysteries are only resolved in the telling of the story. And some mysteries are only fully revealed as they are lived. “The mystery that has been hidden through the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints,” – “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” – is one of these last. To begin to tumble to the truth, in this story, takes all your living. God, who was present to Abraham and Sarah, Mary and Martha, is present to you, now, this morning.

Your freedom to act is in the present moment. It is today not yesterday or tomorrow that you receive the divine invitation. Now it is your turn. Today you are invited to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to what the Lord is saying. This morning he has come to your tent – and he is here to share with you a meal. The cup is your salvation and the bread his presence.

Sources

Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (SPCK, 2001)

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today: Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Volume 3 (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2001)

Herbert O'Driscoll, Patrick's Well (www.herbodriscoll.com)

Barbara Crafton et al., Geranium Farm (www.geraniumfarm.org)

Arthur J. Dewey, The Word in Time (New Berlin, WI: Liturgical Publications, 1990)

Sharon H. Ringe, Luke, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995)

Thomas W. Walker, Luke, Interpretation Bible Studies (Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 2001)

Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990)

Michael F. Patella, O.S.B., The Gospel According to Luke, The new Collegeville Bible commentary, New Testament; v. 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press)

Keith F. Nickle, Preaching the Gospel of Luke: Proclaiming God's Royal Rule (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000)

Common Worship (Church of England, 2000) http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/

The Book of Common Prayer (Church of England, 1662)

Oremus Bible Browser http://bible.oremus.org/

Stephanie Frey, “Living with Martha (Luke 10:38-42)”, Living by the Word, The Christian Century Magazine, July 13, 2004

Posted by John Leech at 1:41 PM 0 comments

Labels: Colossians 1:21-29, CProper11, Genesis 18:1-14, Luke 10:38-42, Martha and Mary, Mary and Martha, Psalm 15

It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called “Christians.”

2007-07-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called “Christians.” (Acts 11:26b)

We come as witnesses to the world: witnesses of God’s power and light, of his freeing us in Christ to become the people God truly means us to be. This does not mean that the world welcomes us with open hands: as they did our teacher, sometimes the people wedded to the world reject us. But behind us backing us up is the incredible life-giving power of the Spirit.

“Christian” was initially not a complimentary term. It was a slang tag applied by non-believers to the followers of the way of Christ. But through the witness of the saints this offhand dismissive term became transformed into a symbol of the victory of the gospel: just as the shameful sign of the cross itself became the symbol of the triumph of God’s son over death itself.

No longer would sin have power over us; no longer would we be in bondage, slaves to worldly opinion, indebted, indentured, trying to pull ourselves up out of folly by our own fallacious efforts. No: in Christ’s cross came the victory that was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, for in its embrace we found the shelter of God’s grace. The cross, which had been meant as an engine of final humiliation, turned into the means of a new beginning for us & for the world.

In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and among us he chose to pitch his tent, to encamp with us in this world of pilgrimage, and to lead us into the place where we can finally be at home: where God reigns.

stranger in a strange land

2007-07-17T20:03:00.001-07:00

“You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” (Deuteronomy 26:5).

Two or three years ago at the Bishop’s conference on borderland and immigration issues, held at St. Philip’s in the Hills, Tucson, someone asked, is there any thing in the Bible that speaks to these issues?

Imagine yourself a new widow: your husband is gone, your brother-in-law, your father-in-law. Your land is desolate, in famine. You travel. You walk, with your mother-in-law, seventy miles across the desert, seeking life, a way to live, a way to earn your bread, and you come to a town on the other side where the grain is ripe in the fields and the workers are among the crops to harvest them.

And then word comes down to you: DO NOT WORK IN AMERICA. Go, Ruth, take your mother-in-law Naomi, and go back to Moab. Let her starve. Live in grief. Do not become the great-grandmother of David. Do not let his son our Savior be born. Go back across the desert. Leave us alone. Starve. Grieve.

I don’t think so. That is not what the Bible teaches us. From the story of Ruth we learn: Do not begrudge the harvest fruits to the poor: let them glean. Take up the cause of the widow. Defend the poor and hungry (Psalm 82:3). Then, when righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Psalm 85:10), you will dwell in the land in safety.

During the week of the Fourth of July, in Tucson, a leader and elder in that community received a visit from a new member of Congress. She talked with her about immigration and our need for a new approach – not confronting each other but working together.

She held up her hands as if to push away The Other, and then moved them, turning them around to face each other and interlacing her fingers, to show that we must work together. Speaking practically, she suggested training for employment could begin across the border, so that people who live there could have a future and a hope. Remember this is God’s promise to us, to his people, fulfilled through Jesus and through Jesus’ hands in the world: our own.

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11).

Serving Jesus as we serve the least of these we see around us is what we do: not just so that we can all get along, but so that we can all go forward together into God’s kingdom, where peace and righteousness embrace.

Show us your mercy, O LORD, and grant us your salvation. I will listen to what the LORD God is saying, for he is speaking peace to his faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to him. Truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him: that his glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven. The LORD will indeed grant prosperity, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness shall go before him, and peace shall be a pathway for his feet. (Psalm 85:7-13) AMEN.