Lent 1: Temptation from belovedness

Lectionary: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; salm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13;Luke 4:1-13



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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

If I could reduce the purpose and practice of Lent into a single idea, I would use this quote from a poem by St. Theresa of Avila:“[God] desired me, so I came close.” Here’s the fullness of that poem:

A thousand souls hear [God’s] call every second,
but most every one then looks into their life’s mirror and
says, “I am not worthy to leave this
sadness.

When I first heard his courting song, I too
looked at all I had done in my life
and said,

“How can I gaze into his omnipresent eyes?”
I spoke those words with all my heart,

but then He sang again, a song even sweeter,
and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence
God showed me His compassion and spoke a divine truth,

“I made you, dear, and all I made is perfect.
Please come close, for I
desire
you.”

It’s very sad to me that the most common notion about Lent is that it is a dark and difficult season, to be approached with dread, guilt, and sometimes even self-loathing; that we have to “tame” our desires by giving something up, then use all the self-control we can muster to keep our Lenten promises.

The irony is that exerting our self-will is exactly what we are called NOT to do during Lent. Lent isn’t meant to be a time of practicing self-control. It’s meant to be a time of relinquishing it.

During Lent, we practice discipline and repentance. It’s a mistake to confuse discipline with self-control and penitence with wallowing. In fact, it’s sin: the sin of hubris – the very thing that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the garden.

Our discipline and repentance are the means by which we re-enter the womb of God where we can rest, be restored, renewed, and prepared. In his book, “Praying Shapes Believing,” theologian Lee Mitchell reminds us that: “Joy, love, and renewal are as much Lenten themes as are penitence, fasting, and self-denial; and we need to remember that it is within the context of preparation for our participation in the Feast of feasts that [our] Lenten penitence is expressed.” (29).

Jesus said: “Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28-30)… and “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” (Jn 15:11) St. Theresa of Avila said, “[God] desired me so I came close.”

Temptation is anything which leads us into sin – and sin is that which causes us to forget who we are, whose we are, and why we’re here.

The gospel writer tells us that Jesus, the Incarnate One, the manifest reality of the unity of humanity and divinity, was tempted to separate himself into a dichotomy of body and spirit; to focus on his humanity (he was famished) and forget about his divinity.

Next, though he knew his divine purpose, Jesus was tempted to walk away from God’s plan for his life and live out a different plan – one in which he would get glory and avoid pain and humiliation.

Finally, Jesus was tempted to throw his life away, daring God to prove that he mattered.

We share these temptations with Jesus. The first temptation, forgetting the divinity that dwells in us, goes to our very identity. We are body and spirit. The actual coexistence of humanity and divinity was made manifest first in Jesus. Now each of us is a living testimony to that co-existence.

The second temptation, putting ourselves and our wills ahead of God’s will for us, goes to how, or even whether, we will live into our purpose. If Jesus’ life is an example,living into our purpose won’t be all blessing and honor, but it will be redemptive – for us and for the world.

When we’re honest, it seems ridiculous that we think we can devise a plan for happiness and fulfillment by chasing after the perfect life partner, the perfect job, the perfect body, or the perfect car, home, or salary. That’s how the world tempts us away from our divine purpose, and about the only thing being fulfilled is the corporate bottom line.

The third temptation, testing God to prove we matter, goes to our core understanding of our relationship to the Divine, one another, and ourselves as beloved. Whatever our earthly experiences have been, our faith assures us that all whom God created are beloved of God. We don’t need to prove that – or prove it again - to anyone, not even ourselves. Our identity and purpose are fulfilled when we live into the divine belovedness that belongs to all.

Identity, purpose, relationship. Temptations are what lure us away from true knowledge and experience of these, which is why discovering what our temptations are and repenting of them is one of our goals during Lent.

For example, some of us eat, smoke, or drink to comfort ourselves. Repentance might involve attention to the stewardship of our physical bodies - noticing the physical signal that starts the process of filling an emptiness within us, then acknowledging the justifications as they speak in our thoughts (I can have this one cookie, or I deserve this drink) and responding differently (which is to say repenting), saying “no” to the temptation; saying “no” to the self. Living in the emptiness until it is redeemed.

Others among us work too much in order to win approval or to feel like we matter. Repentance here might involve attention to the stewardship of our time and relationships - committing to a schedule that balances time devoted to work, family, leisure, and includes time devoted to corporate and private worship of God. Lent is a good time to commit to regular attendance at Sunday worship or Evening Prayer, remembering that we live out our purpose in community as the body of Christ in the world.

Some of us habitually deny ourselves anything good out of a sense of unworthiness or, at the other end of the spectrum, deny ourselves nothing from a sense of privilege. Repentance here might involve stewardship of our spiritual lives - fasting from criticism of self or others or keeping a prayer journal which acknowledges the daily gifts and blessings God is giving.

The disciplines we practice are meant to help us enter humbly into the presence of God, where we surrender ourselves to God’s unfathomable love and unfailing care for us. The emptiness in us that continually seeks satisfaction comes from our sense of separation from that love. I think we know this deep down.

God desires communion with us. Jesus came to make that happen – once for all. Remembering that helps quiet those voices of temptation that play like a tape-recording in our heads, saying: ‘you’re not worthy, you’re not beautiful, you’re not gifted, you’re not loved.’

We are. We’re also unfinished… continually growing and maturing in body and in spirit.

Our brokenness is not something to be ashamed of or to avoid. It is as much a gift as any talent we possess because it is the place in us where God dwells most assuredly, most compassionately.

Our brokenness is the cross we bear; the place where we witness the redeeming love of God still at work in the world. When others see spiritual growth and maturation happening in our brokenness, they are empowered to stop being ashamed of their brokenness, pick up their own cross, and walk into redemption.

God desires us to come close and we hunger for that too. Bound together in the eternal love of God in Christ we discover love that protects, satisfies, and delivers us.

This is our Lenten journey. God bless us as we begin it. Amen.

Ash Wednesday, 2019: Divinely massaged soul-soil

Lectionary: Joel 2:1-2,12-17; Psalm 103:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21



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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

I’m want to share a story with you about my dear departed dog, Ollie. Ollie died a few years ago at the young age of eight (8), after having caught and eaten a mouse that had eaten rat poison.

Ollie was a mixed breed - dachshund and Jack Russell terrier, and it wasn’t a very good mix. I loved Ollie, but he must have gotten the DNA bearing the most difficult qualities of each of those breeds, and it made him… challenging.

Ollie was not a very good dog and he was doxie enough to make training him difficult. So, Ollie found himself in trouble a lot. When Ollie got in trouble he was put in time out, which meant he had to go to his crate until he could relax. Ollie knew when he’d done a bad thing, so he rarely disobeyed when he heard the command: “Ollie, go to time out.”

Over time, when he’d done a bad thing, Ollie just went ahead and put himself in time out. He knew the drill. When we’d come home from being out, sometimes Ollie was already marching himself to time out and we’d immediately look around to see what he’d done.

Eventually, Ollie would put himself in time out and walk right out again. He wasn’t really repentant and knew we’d forgive him anyway, so he didn’t bother spending any real time in time out. He just got the procedure over with.

I tell you this story because that’s how so many people I talk to treat Lent. But that isn’t what Lent is about. Lent isn’t just going through the motions of a perfunctory time-out without really repenting.

So what is Lent about? Well, let me start by saying what I always say: we don’t do Lent, God does it in us.

When we practice Lent we are responding to God’s invitation to us with an invitation of our own. We are inviting God to bring about that most feared, oft-avoided reality: change. We practice Lent so that we can be changed by God.

The season of Lent is a short, finite bit of time we set aside to allow new life to be formed in us. Our traditional Lenten practices of prayer, abstinence, and almsgiving represent our invitation to God to not only plant the seeds of new life in us, but also to change the very nature of the soil, that is, ourselves.

Medieval mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, talks about the “greening” of our souls which is, I think, a good image for what Lent is. I picture Hildegard’s concept like this:

We go about our lives basically unaware that the demands and influences of the world have caused the soil of our souls to slowly but steadily dry up. Our soul-soil hardens and cracks like a dried up river bed in a drought.

When we practice Lent we enter into a period of self-examination that brings to our awareness just how dry we’ve become – a revelation which brings with it the realization that we are unable to irrigate ourselves. There is almost a desperateness in this moment of revelation, a deep knowledge that without this irrigation, our souls will completely dry up and turn to dust.

But our faith assures us that it is from the dust we were created in the first place. So we trust… and we wait… 40 days, and 40 nights.

At some point, the hands of our Creator reach into the soil of our souls, breaking through the dry surface. The Almighty kneads and kneads the soil of our souls removing any hardened bits in there (like anger, judgment, hatred of self or other) and other miscellaneous trash (such as addictions, a hunger for power, elitism). Then our Creator moistens our soul-soil from the well-spring of life, Jesus the Christ, and God kneads the soil some more ensuring that the nutrient-rich, life-giving water reaches all the dry parts.

Into this divinely massaged soul-soil the Creator places the seeds of new life for us, sweeps the surface of the soil smooth, sprinkles on a bit more life-giving water, and asks us to wait while the seeds within us take root and grow.

This is Lent.

When we are ready to offer our invitation to God, the traditional practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving offer deeply meaningful as well as tried and true ways for us to practice a holy Lent. When we make time to pray during Lent, we are responding to the Holy Spirit who is already calling to us, gently awakening us from our world-induced sleep. By our prayer, we consent to open our eyes and see the face of Love looking back at us, inviting us to let go of the old day, the old ways, and live into the new life God is planting in us.

When we fast during Lent, we are actually and symbolically emptying ourselves of all that already fills us, including the need to be full and satisfied. When our stomach is empty, it cries out to us to fill it. Most of us here have the privilege of knowing that we can eat, and so we can choose not to eat for just long enough (which is what 40 days means) so that we experience emptiness in our bodies and in our souls. (Note: if you're taking meds or have diabetes or something else that prevents fasting - don't! It isn't about that, and you don't get demerits or score any points for fasting).

Only when we have emptied ourselves can we be filled by God.

Fasting also provides a way for us to experience solidarity with those who truly hunger. When we remember how real and compelling hunger is, we are moved by compassion to do something to relieve it – even if it means we must sacrifice our comfort to do so.

Which leads to the practice of almsgiving, which represents our consent to intentionally enter into a new relationship with the poor. Within each of us is the capacity to judge, blame, and avoid those who are needy or suffering. This protects our comfort and relieves us from responding to answer their cry for help. Giving money to the poor or food to hungry enables us to welcome their story into our awareness and them into our lives in a real and sacrificial way.

In a few moments, we will remember both the limits of our mortality and the limitlessness of God’s love by marking the sign of our salvation - the cross of Christ - on our foreheads with the dust of ashes, traditional symbols of repentance and humility before God. This action is our acknowledgment that God is as the Scripture says: full of compassion, slow to anger, and forgives our sins. God cares for us deeply, intimately, with a sacrificial love that knows no bounds.

So please, let’s don’t do Lent like Ollie - let's not just go through the motion of a Lenten time-out. Let’s go deeply, faithfully, fully into the dust of our souls and invite God to work the miracle of planting seeds of new life in us. Amen.

Epiphany Last-C: A cloud of new unkowing

Lectionary: Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99 ; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]



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En el nombre del Dios: Pardre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

The story of the Transfiguration is a story of freedom and empowerment which comes from humanity’s direct experience of God. This represents a shift from the traditional expectation of that time that no one could see God and live.

Jesus chooses Peter, James, and John from his band of 12 disciples to share this experience. We don’t know why he chose only these three. It doesn’t necessarily indicate that they are better or more faithful than the others. In fact, it may indicate that these three needed this kind of dramatic, transforming experience more than the others to help them break through the walls restricting their freedom. Or, it may be that they were more open to receiving this kind of transforming experience. We don’t know because our Scripture doesn’t tell us that.

What we do know from this story in Scripture is that this kind of direct experience of God happens sooner for some, than for others. We see that when it does happen, Jesus leads his followers to it and we remember that are called to imitate him.

During the dramatic moment of transformation, Jesus is praying when the glory and presence of God is revealed in and through him. The disciples were “weighed down” our Scripture says, but since they stayed awake, since they remained open and aware, they saw his glory; and they heard a voice emerge from the cloud. From the fogginess that had covered their bodies and filled their minds came a voice that named Jesus as “my Son, my Chosen” and directed them to listen to him.

In that cloud of their new unknowing, Jesus is set free from the box the disciples’ expectations had placed him in – a box which their tradition had carefully crafted about the Messiah and how he would deliver Israel to freedom.

The revelation of the divine in Jesus’ countenance also sets the disciples free to experience God with no veils, no habitual expectations, no filters on their minds or hearts. In Jesus, they can see and touch and be with the glory that is God – and it is a tangible reality.

The journey down the mountain marks the beginning of a transformed life for these three disciples. The truth that has been conceived in them begins to take root and grow. It's a long journey for them; one in which they constantly come up against the limits of their own habits and thinking. Jesus allows them their growing pains, staying present with them and patiently guiding them beyond those limits again and again, as we see in the story of the failed healing that concludes today’s Gospel reading.

On this the last Sunday after the Epiphany, Christians around the world begin our liturgical journey down the mountain. We have been looking up as the divine light of Epiphany has filled our souls and senses. Now we are led to look down and in and enter the earthy wilderness of Lent where we will intentionally seek to discover what limits and restricts us; what veils and filters we have that get in our way of leading ourselves and others to direct experience of God.

The transitional time we are in has also offered us a wonderful opportunity to listen together for the voice of God that calls St. David’s to a new understanding of who we are as a church and what that means as the search for a new rector gets underway.

As you well know by now, transitions are always a bit uncomfortable and change can be scary. But this journey, like the journey of those first disciples, is held firmly in the loving hands of God in Christ who journeys with us.

So my prayer is that we will continue to cling to one another, and together cling to Jesus, remembering what our patron saint, St. David of Wales said,” Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed, and do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about.”

The style of Christian life developed in the monasteries founded by St. David emphasized learning, asceticism, and missionary fervor. If we are to joyfully emulate our patron saint, we can begin with these – which, by the way, I see evidence of in our community already.

Learning: One of the most readily apparent gifts of St. David’s, Cullowhee is that there is a love of and devotion to learning. Perhaps our proximity to WCU helps, or maybe that’s a gift from God to enable us to nurture this part of our identity. Either way, as we descend the mountain and approach this Lenten season, the monastic commitment to prayer, reading, and writing at the monasteries of St. David can be our inspiration. It’s one of the sources that inspired me to offer a Lenten series on prayer, which is a reliable means for direct experience of God.

Asceticism: I’m not a big fan of severe self-discipline, but I do appreciate the goal of ascetic practice: to steer a person toward simplicity and to promote awareness of the many ways we mindlessly succumb to our own desire for satisfaction and satiety. I want to be clear: I do not hold pleasure or even indulgence to be sin.. to be something that separates us from God. Pleasure is a gift hard-wired by our Creator into our biology. Over-indulgence can separate us from one another and from God, but so can the severity of asceticism. As 21st century, middle-class Americans, however, it can do our souls good to identify and deny ourselves the satisfaction of some of our indulgences. Lent affords us just such an opportunity, but we’ll talk more about that in the weeks to come.

Missionary fervor: While some may not consider this a strong identifier for St. David’s, I do. This is definitely a characteristic where nurture and work can benefit us, but we have a strong beginning here. If you want to see missionary fervor, ask anyone to tell a story about Jo and how she brought so many people into this community, promising them welcome, healing, and a God who held them as beloved even while the world condemned them for their sexual identity.

The recent decision by our cousins in faith in the United Methodist Church offers us the opportunity to accompany our sisters and brothers thereon the difficult transitional journey to full inclusion they’ve begun – not to take their members, but to be a safe place for them, cradling them in love, and offering them hope in this moment of pain.

If you want to see the seeds of missionary fervor at St. David’s, watch the machine of this church engage when someone needs prayer or food or companionship. This particular gift blossoms missionary fervor when its offered beyond our walls, which the Task Forces are preparing us to do using the framework of the Stewardship of the Entirety of Our Lives.

The journey we are on as God’s people doing God’s work in the world today will bring us great joy and fulfillment. We will also hit walls and confront opportunities to grow past limits we didn’t know we had. As St. Paul says, however, we do not lose heart, because it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry.

God has chosen us and promises to guide us and be with us every moment, each step on the way. This then is why we can “have such a hope and act with great boldness” as St. Paul says.

Our faces are unveiled; our experience of God, unfiltered. The divine light, which now lives in us, shines into the world through us revealing God’s glory and presence. For so many who are lost and least, restricted by habit or expectations, or held at arms’ length by human-made rules and categories – this is truly good news, and it is ours to share.

Epiphany 7, 2019: Praying into agape love

Lectionary: Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50; Luke 6:27-38



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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

In our Collect today, we prayed that the Holy Spirit would come to us and pour into our hearts her greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and source of life. As Episcopalians, we believe that God is love and that all life is created, sustained, and maintained by the love of God. Outside of God’s love, there is no life, only death – of body or spirit.

Love requires relationship. God, who is love, is also community. The Trinity of God is a dynamic relationship – a continually active, expressive, complementary way of being. Jesus’ command to us to love God and neighbor as self reflects the very nature of God’s own self.

Love reconciles, that is, restores harmony and wholeness, to whatever or whoever is separated or divided. Where God sees division, God acts to redeem (which means to take possession of). It is God’s own self filling the gap and covering the parts, unifying them into harmony again.

What is so important for us to remember as followers of Christ who embody his spirit, is that we are the current vehicles of this redeeming, reconciling love on earth. God looks through our eyes, responds in our hearts, and acts through our hands.

The word for love used in our gospel reading is Agape – a familiar word, I think for most of us. Agape love is full of goodwill. It is deliberate – a choice to pay attention to someone else and have regard for and respect them. This love is reflected in our Baptismal vow to respect the dignity of every human being.

Agape love is self-denying and compassionate. It places the other ahead of self and joins us to that person in their suffering (com – passio: to suffer with). It is willing to share someone else’s nightmare, bearing light into their darkness – even when drawing near to them puts our comfort and safety at risk.

Agape love is not being attracted to another. That’s eros. It isn’t even about liking them. That’s philia. And it isn’t about being bonded by empathy. That’s storge.

Agape is a whole other kind of love. Theologian and author Allen Myers defines agape love as: “the divine, selfless love which will go to any length to attain the well-being of its object.” Myers, Allen C., The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 26. And we don’t have it unless God gives it, hence our prayer in our Collect today: pour into our hearts your greatest gift, God, which is love.

In this continuation of his beatitudes sermon from last week, Jesus is teaching a new way of being love in the world – one that goes against our natural inclination for self-protection and judgment. Did you know that biologically, humans have a part of the brain specifically designed for judgment? Its role is to create binary images in order to aid us in our survival, enabling us to differentiate between what is safe and what isn’t, who is for us and who is against us. This lives out in our cultural experience as well. We are constantly challenged by our propensity to create “them” and “us.”

We need to remember that in our gospel story Jesus is speaking to a people who are currently oppressed and know what it feels like to be hated, dismissed, ignored, and disrespected. They are the “them” in their culture and they’d already had a long history of being the targets of oppression and genocide. To survive, they separated themselves, marking their separation with circumcision and ritual practice.

It is in this context that Jesus is preaching a new way of being in the world. Jesus is calling them (and us) to reconciliation rather than separation – even when separation has worked to ensure our survival.

Jesus new way of love calls us to trust God for all we need, including our survival. This is kind of love is that was demonstrated by Joseph in our reading from Genesis and it’s what the Psalmist is calling us to – a love that isn’t distracted by what seems like the success of those who don’t love, causing us to abandon our way of love; a love that cooperates with God who desires reconciliation and relationship.

This is also the underlying message in the portion of St. Paul’s letter we read today: we, the created, exist on earth as in heaven since we have been raised with Christ by our Baptism. Therefore, we must love as Jesus loves.

Truly, none of us can do this easily or successfully all of the time. But we know when we aren’t there, don’t we? We know when disdain or indifference or hate infect our hearts.

So what do we do? We pray, drawing closer to God, then watch as God’s redeeming, reconciling love happens. Our prayer opens the pathway and is an important way we cooperate with God in the work of reconciliation.

When we pray God’s lavish blessings all over those we’d rather not love, that prayer changes us, enabling us to open and receive God’s greatest gift into our hearts. This allows us to draw nearer to them rather than move away and has the added benefit of drawing us nearer to God.

When we separate ourselves from anyone or any group it’s easy to forget that God’s spirit dwells in them as much as it does in us. It’s easy to not pay attention, to disregard or disrespect them – the make them, “them.”

Note: SAFETY TIP about turning the other cheek. This assumes privilege. It is not an invitation to let people abuse you.

In one sense, all of us who follow Christ are privileged in that we know we are loved, and from that eternal well of love there is endless refreshment. We are the carriers, the cupbearers, of that refreshing, redeeming, reconciling love into the world.

I mentioned once that whenever we are called upon by heaven to bear the love of God into the world, God always sends these words ahead of it to us: “fear not.” This is one of those times because being this kind of love means trusting our very survival to God.

So fear not, Julian of Norwich says, because “In [God’s] love [God} clothes us, enfolds us and embraces us; that tender love completely surrounds us, never to leave us.” (Feast of Anglican Spirituality, 137) Amen.

Epiphany 6-C, 2019: It's about choice - the privilege of plenty

Lectionary: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

Today's sermon was extemporaneous, so no written text.

Technical note: the app I use to create the audio player is having "issues" so please click the link below which takes you to the sermon on my website. I'll try this app again later today.

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Epiphany 5-C, 2019: Continually called by God

Lectionary: Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11



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En el nombre del Dios: Pardre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

We talk a lot in the church about being called, and most of the time we share an understanding of what we mean by that. Through our prayer, through one another, through contemplative insight, through dreams, through repeated patterns in our experience – we feel God tapping on our shoulder or nudging us from within to act on God’s behalf, as the ambassadors of Christ we are through our Baptism.

The choice is always ours whether or not to acknowledge that tap on the shoulder or inner nudging, and whether or not to act on it. God never forces us, but God does keep on tapping or nudging us - mostly gently, though sometimes we hear folks talk about being clobbered by a spiritual 2 x 4.

The key for us is to learn the language of God for us. How does God call to us? Then, we practice learning to notice it and soon, we consent to respond to it.

This is much of the work we do in spiritual direction. One of my favorite experiences as a spiritual director is when a directee talks about having finally learned the language of God for them, that is, how God calls to them, then takes the risk of responding. This story generally ends with their surprise and amazement at the outcome.

For example, one of my directees spoke of a difficult discussion he needed to have with his priest. He loved this priest, but also feared an anticipated angry response – something he had experienced before. Prior to the meeting, the directee and I prepared prayerfully, opening a path of grace and trusting God to guide the meeting.

At the meeting, the directee had a plan for what he was going to say, but in the moment, he noticed what had become a familiar “tap on the shoulder” from God (those are his words). Having practiced paying attention to those taps, the directee recognized this as a call from God and words came from his mouth he hadn’t planned or even thought about; words that surprised him even as he spoke them.

These words changed the entire tenor of the meeting and the outcome was one of deeper friendship, grace, and a new openness to the presenting problem by both the directee and the priest. The directee was so amazed by this, he called me after the meeting to tell me about how powerfully God had acted – and that God had acted through him - both of which amazed and excited him.

As Bother Andrew once said, “God does not choose people because of their ability, but because of their availability.”

All three of our stories from Scripture today offer us insight into how God calls us and how we humans respond to being called. In Isaiah and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we learn that the one called often feels unworthy of the call at first and even suggests to God that maybe they aren’t the right choice.

But it’s the gospel story that illumines us so much about being called, and it does so through the naked humanity of our forbear, Simon (who is Peter – a nickname Jesus will give him before long). The setting is the north part of the Sea of Galilee near the region of Genessaret. Jesus is teaching by the lake and the crowd starts pressing in, drawing closer to hear the word of God.

Jesus notices that there are two boats nearby. The fishermen had come in from an overnight fishing expedition that brought them nothing. Exhausted and frustrated, the fishermen were cleaning their nets, ready to let this work shift come to an end.

Then Jesus climbs into to Simon Peter’s boat and asks him to put out from shore. You can almost hear Peter sighing: Aw man! I am so ready to go home and just sleep. But, Peter does as Jesus asks, and once they are a little bit away from the shore, the rabbi sits to continue his teaching.

Now Peter is up close, watching Jesus preach and engage the crowds. He’s listening to Jesus as the word of God issues forth from this man who has already had such a strange effect on him. Something is happening in Peter, but what it is isn’t clear yet. So he watches, and listens, and waits.

When Jesus finishes his teaching, he asks Peter to head out to deep water and let down his nets again… the nets they’d just finished cleaning and stowing. Peter, the experienced fisherman in this conversation, reminds Jesus that they been out there all night; there were no fish out there.

Despite that, Peter obeys (which you’ll remember means to hear and respond). Peter hears the call from Jesus and chooses to respond, acknowledging it and obeying. The outcome was surprising and exciting: their nets captured so many fish that the other boat had to be called out to help them haul it all in.

Peter’s response to all of this was to fall to his knees aware of and confessing his sinfulness. Given our current use of this word, it’s important to point out that the meaning of the Greek word here translated as “sin” is: to miss the mark, to be wrong, to transgress from the divine will.

Peter recognized this about himself and it drove him to his knees in humble surrender. That’s what a call does. It leads us to humble surrender.

Jesus comforts Peter saying those words that always come from heaven right before a call is issued: “Do not be afraid.” Then Jesus overtly issues Peter his divine call: “from now on,” Jesus says, “you will be catching people.”

Notice that a call from God is a proclamation of a divine truth. Jesus didn’t say, “Hey, Peter, want to catch people with me?” He said, this is who you are now – a catcher of people. Then through the course of his relationship with Jesus, Peter was formed and empowered to answer this call, which he did following Jesus’ ascension. And it was amazing.

Scripture teaches us that there is a process that happens when a divine call is issued and it goes like this: God taps us on the shoulder or nudges us from within and we hear the call issued. We respectfully decline, believing we are not worthy or able to answer. God comforts us, empowers us, and sends us anyway. We obey and are amazed.

Discerning a call from God takes practice, like any other spiritual discipline. For a few of us, like Moses or Mary, God speaks plainly, powerfully, unmistakably. For most of us, however, it will be a still, small voice, a nudging, a tap on the shoulder.

The noise of the world tends to drown out that still small voice. We must also acknowledge the earthly judgment about people who hear God’s voice. For some it truly is a diagnosable event requiring psychiatric treatment. But for most of us, it’s a traditional means of conversation between the Creator and the created.

Thankfully, as Episcopalians, we approach discernment from two fronts: individually and in community. When a person discerns a call from God, for example, a call to ordained ministry, that call must be affirmed by the person’s parish and later, their diocesan community. We do this because the church is a body of which we are individual members; and we believe that if the Holy Spirit is calling, we will all hear it if we listen together.

That is our continual calling as church: to listen for God’s proclamation of divine truth for us - who we are and what our divine purpose is in this moment of our history. Like Peter, we are catchers of people. If we choose to acknowledge God’s call to us and obey it, God will form us, empower us, and send us out to answer our call. And it will be amazing.

Amen.

Epiphany 4-C, 2019: The unifying love of God

Lectionary: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30



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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

Yesterday Steve and I attended the wedding of Paul Ulrich and Cayla DeLuca in Asheville. Y’all know Paul as a one-time baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant long, long ago. I had the privilege of providing Paul and Cayla the premarital counseling required by the Episcopal Church prior to the sacramental rite of marriage. In our discussions, we went deeply into the difference between how the world views and lives out love and marriage and how we, as Christians, do that – and it’s a big difference.

The bottom line for us is that in this sacramental rite, two lives become one, united together by the grace of God for the mutual joy of the couple and to witness God’s love to the world by their relationship. A marriage demonstrates how this union in God works. Two distinct people, who remain distinct in the relationship, choose to live as one for the rest of their lives in the unifying love of God, by the grace of God.

This is the difference between unity and uniformity. The love of God doesn’t obliterate difference, it celebrates it, completes it by joining one to another in a synergistic union where both are greater together than either is alone.

This is why marriage is a commonly used metaphor in Scripture: because it demonstrates how the path of redemption works, a path where two are made one in the love of God: two people, two nations, two ideologies, two anything.

As Jesus’ disciples in the world today, we are witnesses of God’s unifying love. We do this by the way we live our lives and by our witness, that is, the words we use in response to the world, especially when it fails to love.

There are, in general, two hearers, two groups to whom our testimony as witnesses of God’s love must be given: those being excluded and those doing the excluding. In today’s gospel story from Luke, Jesus is speaking to those doing the excluding.

Today’s gospel story picks up just after Jesus has gone to the synagogue, picked up the scroll of Isaiah and read from it. As his hometown people heard him read and teach, they found his words to be full of grace.

But then they began to think about that. You can almost hear them… Wait a minute! That’s Mary and Joseph’s son! How does he teach so wonderfully? How did he do those amazing things we heard about him doing in Capernaum? Do those things here too, Jesus. Amaze us too! But Jesus knew he could do no healings there because of their unbelief.

Instead, Jesus shared the truth that the salvation of God was for the whole world, that the two groups they had traditionally known – Israelites and the Gentiles - would be made one in God’s unifying love. He also knew this truth would make them mad – and in fact, Luke tells us they were enraged by it.

Why? What made them so mad?

Jesus says to his homies in the synagogue: “…the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when … there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

Both the widow (notice she has no name) and Naaman were outsiders, Gentiles, and unclean in some of the most obvious ways. The widow was from Phoenicia, the center of pagan worship at the time. Jesus is referring to the time when Jews and Gentiles alike were dying in droves due to famine. In fact, the widow’s only son had just died leaving her a poor beggar who would probably die soon after her son’s funeral. It was this outsider - this pagan, Gentile, homeless woman, whom God chose to save.

And Naaman was a Syrian, a Gentile, who had leprosy which Jews believed was a curse due to some sin in them or in their family. There were Jewish and Gentile lepers suffering all over Israel, but the one whom God chose to heal and restore to fullness of life, was the Gentile.

Jesus words shocked his listeners. Here they were feeling so proud of their hometown boy-made-good. His reputation was grand, his words so gracious.

But now, instead of dazzling them with amazing works of power, Jesus insults them and calls them to bring down a wall that had separated them from others for generations. St. Luke says they were so “filled them with rage” that they tried to “hurl” Jesus off a cliff!

We live in a time when God’s own people, as so many groups define themselves, are full of rage over the notion that God might unify us to outsiders, and I wonder… where is the love?

When I’m on social media listening to “Christians” respond to events in the world or in the church I’m often not seeing love that is patient and kind or words that aren’t arrogant or rude. The love I’m seeing witnessed by “Christians” is often not willing to bear or endure much of anything at all, especially challenges to what they believe or what they’ve always done. And if I’m not seeing it, then neither is the one who is outside of us looking in: the unbeliever, the unchurched, the ‘none.’

The modern reality of social media makes prophets of all of us who use it, like it or not. So, what is our witness on social media?

Our churches are meant to be communities in which a person can learn and practice love so that they can be sent forth as witnesses of the unifying love of God to the world – by their words but also by the way they live their lives. Our churches are places where we can piece ourselves back together when the world gets mad at us for witnessing this unifying divine love – because it will get mad at us. There will be times people will want to hurl us off a cliff.

We might lose the affection of friends or family when we welcome the outsider or point out a division they prefer not to see. We will definitely feel insecure about ourselves and our ability to speak the truth of God’s unifying love, especially when the world is raging at us about it, trying to enforce the divisions it prefers; divisions that serve them or are comfortable for them.

Our comfort, however, is found in each other and in our Scripture. When God called Jeremiah to speak the truth to the people he begged off saying, I can’t do that. I’m only a boy (in other words, I’m not educated or experienced in this).

But God’s words to Jeremiah are for us also: ‘…you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I give you authority to say. Don’t be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.’

Notice God doesn’t promise that all will go wonderfully but that God will be with us to deliver us just as Jesus was delivered when he faced the rage of his homies at the synagogue, passing through the midst of them and going on his way.

This gives us hope for our time. Wherever there are people divided within the church or in the world, whether by expectations, power, ideology, race, gender or sexual identity, belief, politics (pick a category), we are called to witness the unifying love of God – even knowing they may want to throw us off a cliff in response. Despite that, we continue undaunted for we are journeying with Jesus on the path of redemption as witnesses of the unifying love of God by the grace of God.

Amen.