Water.

The hands of the hand of God.

The conductor waves his hands

And the hands of the hand make music.

God slept in the deep and God woke.

She opened her eyes to let there be light.

In the light was water and in the water light.

When she exhaled a dome in a dome in the water,

there was air.

The hands of the hand of God got busy.

They stroked and they fingered.

They plucked and they pillowed.

They wove into crevices,

Split fountains,

Spun seeds;

They saturated themselves in dust,

Waves of welcome-goodbye, waves of welcome-goodbye

For generations of generations of tides in and out.

And from all that waving, wicking, working water

Came all the world,

And us and you and me.

The water was good,

And the dust all quenched with it in the different ways—

Pine trees to snapdragons, anthropods to Neanderthals—

Dust animated by water, water by spirit,

Flipping, flying, farting, fetching, fecund and felicitous, frank:

Each way the water was was good,

And the hands rested and said so.

Exodus

Water came and water went.

And the Pharaoh arrived and spent

A Nile’s worth of Hebrew blood on bricks

For pyramidal graveyards for the rich and royal

In the dry Egyptian desert.

Water came and water went.

And water broke in Hebrew women

Faster than the bricks and fuller than the frankincense

In all the Sphinx’s monuments.

The Pharoah feared the Hebrew baby flood

Would just swallow up his gilded graves, it would.

And so, grimly reaping where he did not sew,

He ordered out his soldiers double on the go,

To kill the young in the dry Egyptian desert.

And they did.

But one young babe was hid among the Nile reeds–

Moses– who lived to garden other seeds.

And water came and water went.

And the hands of the hand of God sent

Warnings to the Pharaoh to relent

And let my people go.                         But No,

Laws of nature can’t be broken:

A Pharaoh can’t reverse himself, look’s weak,

And another one to speak:

The punishment you give you get.

These essentially were set

over doorways as a deadly token.

Save for Hebrews, who, hearing the Word spoken,

Smeared their lintels and jambs with the bloody cover

Of the lambs, and chasing Moses to the sea,

Ate their first Passover.

The chariots thundered after, in Pharaoh’s mighty name,

And water went and water came.

Isaiah

Water went, water came,

Seasons of seas, a rain of reigns. Generations of Chosen

Made wet kingdoms in the promised land—

some for prosper, some for sand—and

all converted through the stories told

to show God’s many hands:

steadfast mercy, jealous love, power and might and more,

a crowd of hands, different and yet all the same.

A new voice spoke the Word.

It said, wine from water.

It said, milk from water.

It said, bread from water.

It said, water from water and water is water

and You might as well drink, it said.

Because everyone thirsts and everyone drinks.

Water, water everywhere, unbidden and unbridled.

The land can’t not sponge it, and what sprouts and grows

Grows—they don’t know how.  It squeezes

the juice from the corners of the sky.

The rain and snow come down. It squeezes

the juice and runs down the corners of the earth’s mouth,

Works its justice and returns unempty,

Saying, Feed richly! and making food, and

Banquets of food and feasts of future food and feasts.

And Lo!

No matter fast and drought and mute, the new voice flowed.

In exile or in excess it rose and said–

Or if it only signed–

HOPE!

Ezekiel 1

Water loves the little children,

All the children of the land.

They are precious in Zeke’s water

And sprinkled spic-and-span.

Water loves the little children

From flint stone to flowing spring

Moses made a font from marble.

Let the Baptized shout and sing!

Water loves the little children,

All the children of the land.

Wading, wading in the water.

Hands of Hand all hand in hand.

Ezekiel 2

O dear my bones, my rattling bones,

when shall I come to you?

Such dryness aches my very marrow

And the sun burns off my dew.

O dry, dry bones, you scattered ones,

when shall you come to me?

Sailing back from your mirages

Across your sandy sea.

You left me lonely for the Ba’als

You left me to dance the hills,

My tabernacle a dusty barren

In a land of infidels.

Yet I will prophesy my bones,

I’ll sing to all four winds,

And call you back and hydrate you

With flesh-and-blood-y hymns.

O dear my bones, ‘twas my wet grace

That gardened all your tombs,

And it will be your bones, my love,

A Son of Man for earth to make,

That garden in my womb.

Two nights ago, among the readings at the Tenebrae service,

Was an excerpt from a book by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho.

In it, they describe how, by human standards,

Jesus’ death was a huge failure.

He cared for so many and made such a great case for love,

But his friends left him and he died, shamed and despised.

The cross can seem a fearful, lonely place.

Indeed, when we face the reality of crucifixion,

It is a gruesome place none want to be, a place that

only the bravest were willing to stay:

these three Marys and John.

But in fact the good of Good Friday is in that very failure;

Because that is exactly where we meet Jesus most easily

In our failures.

Most of the time that meeting is through our little failures.

You stand in the shower and feel a new layer of flab growing.

You look in the mirror and see hair missing or graying, wrinkles multiplying.

If you are younger, there always seems to be someone

prettier, funnier, smarter, more stylish, more athletic:

Someone more likely to be loved by the one you are in love with.

You aren’t making the grades you need to get into the college you want.

You aren’t noticed for the promotion you deserve.

You don’t earn the kind of money you wish you did.

Your house isn’t as big or as well decorated or as clean as you feel it should be.

You aren’t as kind to people as you plan to be.

The list of little failures could go on and on.

And sometimes we come up on a big gaping failure.

I saw a child get out of his car for school last week, and, as he did so,

He accidentally dropped his backpack.

He got so angry he picked up the pack and slammed it on the ground.

He kicked it and then drug it down the sidewalk into school.

Maybe that’s a kid who is dealing with a little failure,

Or maybe that is a kid facing a big, huge, scary abyss of failure.

Have you ever stood on the edge of a great height?

The lip of the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or at the edge of a tall skyscraper?

Out in front of you is a great expanse of air

And below you is a long, long fall to certain death.

No matter how centered we are, when we stand at that edge,

There is a strong psychological sucking sound

That comes from this abyss.

We wonder: What if I jump?  Would I jump?

There is something both repulsive and yet strangely alluring

About the emptiness and its graphic promise of our mortality.

A huge drop like this and the silent sucking sound it creates in us

is an archetype of ultimate failure, our own annihilation.

Henri Nouwen, one of the world’s great spiritual writers, described the archetype

As a deep hole in our being, like an abyss.

Maybe that sounds melodramatic.

One of the ways we flee from the hole inside us, Nouwen notes,

is to pretend it isn’t there, to laugh it off and to fill up our time with distractions.

But if we consider the many places we see people who, fearing their failures,

are being sucked toward the abyss,

We are ultimately led to our own.

The abyss story has been told by some who are

victims of child or domestic abuse,

humans trafficked and sold,

soldiers broken by battle,

lives cut short by tragedy,

people whose partner has not loved them,

women who have lost babies,

kids who never lived up to their potential,

parents whose kids can’t leave home,

and on and on and on until we come around to the name of our own abyss,

the one at the center of our being.

When we listen to the Passion narratives,

We hear Jesus walking resolutely up to everyone’s abyss

And naming it for them.

This is the way he comes into Jerusalem,

Turning over the money changers’ tables,

Confronting the big gaping emptiness of the Temple system

Which subjugated the poor and mocked the true religion of God.

He points to the hole in the soldiers who come to arrest him:

I told you I am he.

He points to the hole in Peter:

Put your sword back in its sheath.  You will deny me.

He points to the hole in the high priest’s examination:

I have said nothing in secret. Ask those who heard me.

He deftly turns Pilate back again and again to on his own emptiness,

his complete lack of authority in the matter.

"Are you the King of the Jews?"

"Do you ask this on your own authority, or did others tell you about me?"

Jesus shows Pilate is acting on hearsay and not his own authority.

What have you done?"

"My kingdom is not from this world.

Jesus won’t allow Pilate’s questions to run the conversation.

"So you are a king?"

"You say that I am a king.

Jesus highlights that Pilate is a puppet of the chief priests. 

It is they who accuse Jesus of claiming kingship.

"What is truth?"

Pilate has become Jesus’ student in wisdom.

Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?"

"You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above

Jesus does not counter Pilate’s power but simply names its source.

Over and over Jesus holds his captors’ abyss up to the light.

In each case the captors respond in the conventional system of power struggle,

Attacking truth with more and more violence,

While Jesus calmly points out that:

If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would [also] be fighting.

But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."

On that darkest of days in first century Palestine,

Jesus went to the cross to peel the scales from our eyes,

To say to Pilate and Peter, to the soldiers and the chief priests,

To Jews and Gentiles, to you and me:

Come up here to the edge of your failure. 

Look at and name the neediness you are afraid will swallow you.

See: it is not you.  It is not your territory to hide or protect.

It is a fiction.  You do not need to let it define you.

Instead, I will step in that abyss.

Through me the Father fills it.

It is gone.  Live in me.

Let me define you.  Follow my voice.

Let me live in you and you in me. 

Live in me and you will always be enough.

Even unto death, even death on a cross.

When family come together, they often tell stories.

Stories delight.  They connect the past to the present.

They fill children with the hopes for what will live into the future.

When I was a boy,

besides the stories around our supper table–

the typical stories that parents and grandparents tell–

my father told me stories about an Indian family.

In this native American family, there was a grizzled brave named Old Bear.

There was a beautiful, red-skinned mother named Flower of the Morning,

And there was a young brave named War Eagle.

War Eagle had a brother too,

but he was so little he was only ever referred to as the papoose.

This family looked deliciously like my own family,

But even better, War Eagle’s family did things

That were infinitely more interesting than my own family ever did.

They cooked over open fires; they hunted game and collected roots and berries;

They made their own leather clothes and bow & arrows and fishing poles.

They fought off bears, got swept down huge rivers,

Went into battle against other native tribes, and even weathered a tornado.

In most every episode, in addition to one or more of these challenges,

War Eagle would face some decision.

Would he obey his parents even when it was unclear what he should do?

Would he take advantage of a downed enemy or show mercy?

Would he admit it when he made a mistake?

Would he remember the papoose and take care of his little brother?

Today we begin a holy week of telling our story again,

The one many of us have heard told many times,

The one in which we live and move and have our being.

Jesus was betrayed by a kiss, deserted by his friends, tried by enemies,

convicted by bystanders, sentenced by a lame duck,

mocked and flogged by mercenaries, and crucified by humans

as ever well-intentioned and protective of good society

and the rule of law

as we are.

Telling this story is not necessarily at the top of our lists.

There are plenty of other options for the week,

Most of which would be lighter,

Many of which would be easier.

No one wants to rehearse the death of a good man,

Even less the murder of the one man-God.

But we come to tell the story each year because

Most of the year we are living its beautiful climax:

Lives brimming, God’s kingdom coming.

Most of the year we are living the glorious punch line: the empty tomb,

and we need to go back, need to remember the tension of the build up:

Christ’s kingdom alongside his cross. 

The Hosannas alongside the Why have you forsaken me? 

The victorious palms waving alongside the victorious palms nailed. 

I remember how dear it was to snuggle up to my Dad’s side

and hear him weave our family into fiction of truth and beauty.

How much more this story of Christ.

How much more this story which has become our story,

Our story not simply because we tell it,

But because it tells us;

it creates and recreates us each hour of our day

by that Paschal mystery which has no end.

The Paschal mystery draws its family together around the supper table.

Let’s come together this week and hear the story

Which has made us the family we are.

The Rev. Buff Grace

Some Greeks wanted to see Jesus. 

They wanted to see Jesus.

They wanted to know Jesus.

In Greek to see and to know are forms of the same word.

In the Greek mind to see is to know, and to know is to see.

They went and found Philip–

a disciple of Greek descent we can tell by his name–

they saw Philip and they told Philip they wanted to see Jesus.

Not hear Jesus, not spend time with Jesus,

Not follow Jesus, not eat with Jesus, but see him.

They wanted to see him and discuss his philosophies

from the rational points of view that bring people to see eye-to-eye.

Philip went to another disciple Andrew,

And then both went to Jesus.

From there it is unclear if the request was ever granted,

At least in the way that the Greek seekers wanted it to be granted.

Instead, Jesus speaks to Philip and Andrew.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain;

but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Those who love their life lose it.

Whoever serves me must follow me,

and where I am, there will my servant be also.

Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

Someone’s desire to see Jesus becomes the occasion

For these disciples to hear Jesus.

And what they hear is an invitation to do, to serve, to love.

As Jesus does in others times with other seekers,

He won’t give people a sign, but turns their desires for signs

To commands to follow, to imitate, to enact within themselves

The very thing they want to see outside themselves.

Blindness[i] is the title of a novel by Nobel-prize-winning author Jose Saramago.

In it, the residents of a fictional city begin to go blind due to a contagious disease.

Early on, the first victims are transferred by the government to a quarantine facility.

There they have to find their beds, navigate new bathrooms,

And retrieve the food left for them by military guards.

These soldiers guard only from outside the prison walls,

deathly afraid of catching the disease themselves.

The quarantined inmates also have to meet and get to know one another,

Completely unable to see each other.

They are from all walks of life:

A thief, a young boy, a prostitute, a financial advisor, a policeman,

a teacher, and an ophthalmologist and his wife.

The group shares intimate moments from the beginning,

Helping one another eat, calming one another’s fears.

They discover quickly that reality must be spoken into existence

Because it cannot be seen.

The bread is at this end of the table, the fruit is in the middle.

The extra blankets are here beside the hall door on the small table.

Watch out for the steps, there are three of them.

I am here beside you.

Touching one another in ways that are appropriate,

but much more familiar than we would be comfortable with,

they have to fill in for the body language their eyes cannot read.

Inexplicably, the eye-doctor’s wife has somehow not contracted the disease.

Some immunity saves her, but as the book progresses,

We see this difference also shuts her out of the community as it forms.

She becomes a kind of unwilling voyeur unable to speak their language.

She and her husband have been careful not to let the others know that she can see,

Still she secretly serves them, apparently feeling guilty for having been spared.

But when the others discover her secret,

their first instinct is to suspect her of treachery and to scapegoat her.

At one point they are ready to kill her.

Only through a harrowing crisis from which she saves them,

Do they come to trust and respect her.

After months, the group finds that the guards have vanished.

They walk out of the quarantine prison unchecked

And make their way back to the city.

There they discover that the disease has taken over.

Everyone has gone blind and the rapid onset

Has caused huge traffic accidents, power outages, mass chaos.

Thousands are dead.  The remaining scrounge for food.

In the film version of Blindness, the scenes in this part of the story

Graphically highlight the stark difference

Between the small band of those first quarantined and the rest of the city.

The band holds together, helping one another along.

The city residents are mostly scattered about, individuals wandering alone.

They stumble and fall, they grab from one another.

They nurse their own injuries.

When they walk together, it is the blind leading the blind, falling.

The band however leans on one another, talking to and encouraging each other.

They have a destination in mind– the ophthalmologist’s home–

And they are led there by one who can see, the doctor’s wife who serves them.

*******                        *******                        *******                        *******

Jeremiah reminds us that seeing is not always believing.

Rather un-seeing may be.

Instead of a tangible, distinct law carved in stone to last the ages,

God will hide the new covenant in the dark chambers of the human heart.

There the law of love will be ironically more durable.

There, no one will have a reason to point to the stone tablets and say,

‘See the Lord,’ for they will all know God from the least of them to the greatest.

Likewise Jesus says we have to be buried to be alive.

The seed has to go into the darkness to know the light.

We have to lose our life as we know it to find our life as Christ knows it.

The way is not seeing and deciding from our own knowledge,

But groping along and, without sight, still doing what love says we do.

Jesus invites the Greeks who come seeking him to begin this life

Right where they stand, not seeing him, but hearing the irrational

Call to lose their lives, to go into the earth.

Jesus’ soul was troubled too at the lip of this planting into the earth.

What should he say, God, save me from this hour?

No, but God, glorify your name.

That is, Jesus asks God, ‘Take me as deep as love will go.’

What I am asked to suffer, help me suffer–

With forgiveness in my heart.

What I am asked to suffer at the hands of others help me suffer–

With the new covenant written inside me.

With my heart beating bravely in acts of love.

If we say we see, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,

but if we admit our blindness, and in our bodies follow Christ,

we become those who know without seeing, and

who see through eyes not of this world.[ii]

Though blind, we hear God in the Word,

Though blind, we taste God in the meal,

Though blind, we rest in God through prayer,

Though blind, we live in God through following.

In all this, we know God, not rationally, but richly and carnally.

And so we are made ready to walk with Christ,

Even into the absurdity of Holy Week:

The walk to the cross,

Where love is shown to be what it is

For all the world to see.

We find the wilderness a delicious, inviting place full of wonder, full of God.

We not only see beautiful landscapes and wildlife there,

But we feel and even touch God in an unusually intimate way.

Wilderness is not only the mark of the Creator,

But it is the very body of God, the living and breathing sign of divine presence.

Yet wilderness is not always a beautiful rainbow.

The wilderness can be a dangerous place.

Simple mistakes such as not drinking enough water

Can quickly lead to deeper and deeper consequences.

Small injuries like a burn or sprained ankle take on larger proportions

Without enough bandages or braces to treat them.

Larger mistakes can be made without realizing it until it is too late.

People fall through the ice, people get lost without a compass,

People trigger an avalanche, people spook a grizzly bear.

And then there are “Acts of Nature”: lightning strikes,

rain, snow and hail, flash floods, forest fires, giardia,

running out of toilet paper.

When we think of the Hebrews being delivered out of Egypt

And wandering in the wilderness for 40 years,

We should picture city people going out there into the Sinai.

The Hebrews were slaves, treated as slaves,

But– even if only to make bricks more efficiently–

they were accustomed to a certain way of living that was urban and insulated.

They enjoyed a stable and secure food system.

They enjoyed the stability of markets and a trade system.

They enjoyed buildings built by former generations.

They enjoyed, even in a limited way, a judicial system, and the stability it created.

None of this structure is there wandering in the wilderness.

They are free and they are burdened with the freedom.

Now able to see all they left behind and clinging to it,

They can’t embrace what they have now or what lies ahead.

Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."

If there is really no food, how is that it tastes so bad?

The Hebrews remind us that we today love wilderness

precisely because we can come and go from it as we please.

In other parts of the world,

the line between wilderness and society is not so clear.

Most of us would describe living in the developing world:

Living without running water or even clean water,

Living with intermittent electricity and scrappy housing,

Living with little or no income and uncertain food supply,

(Essentially living the way a huge percentage of the world’s population lives),

As a camping trip, and not a particularly good camping trip.

Susceptibility to disease is perhaps the most graphic

Way that wilderness is ever present in many lives.

Dracunculus medinensis is still a vibrant nematode

In parts of Asia and much of central Africa.

This “Guinea worm” as it is called, is ingested through contaminated water.

It incubates internally and then wiggles up to the skin from inside.

The body’s allergic reaction to the worm creates a biting, burning sensation.

It is almost impossible for us to imagine facing wilderness

so up close and personal, in our very skin.

The common treatment is to slice the skin and, taking a small stick,

To wind the worm out of the body.

This is the treatment that has been used for centuries,

And it is likely that the rod of Asclepius is in fact a picture of this very thing.

Asclepius was the Greek God of medicine,

and his staff with entwining snake is very familiar to you.

It is the symbol so often associated with the medical community,

From the American Medical Assoc. to the Emergency Medical Services.[i]

Could this be the healing sign that God told Moses to make

and raise before the people?

Could the serpents that bit the wandering Hebrews be the guinea worm?

Interesting questions, but not ones we need answer

to hear what God is calling to us today.

As the Hebrews went into the wilderness,

As Jesus went into the wilderness,

So we this Lent go into the wilderness.

There we get our freedom back,

The freedom to quiet our minds and restless needs,

And to listen for the worms crawling within us

which feed on us and are alien to us.

This can be scary stuff,

to acknowledge those places we have been twisted from our true human purpose.

That is why we need a spiritual community.

The spiritual community codifies our individual serpents,

Into one serpent, showing our individual broken places

to be sourced from a common brokenness and burden.

This takes away their venom from us each personally,

And helps us turn together towards life and God.

Much more for us than Moses,

God has converted Jesus’ tragic waste of life on a first century cross,

To a lifting up of cosmic proportions

Which echoes through the millennia for us.

In Jesus lifted up on the cross we are confronted with the fact that,

Had we to live in the wilderness alone with our serpents,

The worms might just take over.

We too might slink away to survival as Jesus’ disciples did,

We too might deny Jesus as Peter did, betray him as Judas did,

Shout “Crucify him!” with the crowds,

even, if beset by serpents with no relief, scourge him, mock him, nail him up.

What else is child abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence and the like

In our day, but the same serpents running wild, that slithered in Christ’s day?

Our deepest problem in the civilized West,

Is that we have depended on our modern technological state for our security,

Instead of embracing the great way out through the wilderness.

We have patched over our worms and pretended we don’t have them,

Under the respectability of everything from botox to neckties.

And where wildness erupts, we have either run from it,

Such as the filth and squalor of ghetto or rural poverty,

Or we have ogled it as if it were something wholly alien,

the quirky intensity of monasteries, the violence on the evening news.

Jesus lifted up on the cross says, “The wilderness is a safe place.” 

Not because we can get in our SUV and leave when we want to,

But because there we can find the truth.

And the truth is this:

None of us get out of this world without worms.

But God so loved the world, that he sent his Son, not to condemn the world,

But that through him the world might be saved.

The world, you and I, can together face down our fears and serpents,

Bear one another’s burdens, call one another to love as Christ loved,

turn our suffering to occasions for joy and thankfulness.

[For God has shown] the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God– not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

The story has been told that:

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, “Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.”

The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.

Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd and he came to Death and asked, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”

“That was not a threatening gesture,” said Death, “it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.[i]

For all its finality and hopelessness, this story is comforting. 

It assures us that some things are simply set,

that fate cannot be undone or outwitted or escaped. 

Our lives are determined, and even though that means our days are numbered,

we get a certain satisfaction knowing that we cannot change it. 

Because if we cannot change death,

perhaps there are other things we cannot change,

other events or determiners in our life. 

Perhaps we cannot change where we went to school

or who we married or what career path we took

or what town we moved to or stayed in. 

We cannot change who our neighbors are.

This is comforting because making these decisions can be a heavy burden. 

It is an awesome responsibility. 

The land of the free must be the home of the brave. 

Because it takes bravery to take responsibility for freedom,

to set the course of our lives and the course of others’ lives. 

It is daunting because there are so many times

and evidences that we can take as signs of failure. 

Things didn’t turn out as we planned. 

Someone gets cancer,

someone has a miscarriage,

a house burns to the ground,

a lover finds a lover sleeping around,

a test comes back with a C-,

someone gets fired,

two vehicles crash,

a secret gets repeated,

an old flame reappears,

a person dies too soon. 

When these things happen, a big chasm can rip right between

what is and what ought to be in our lives like an earthquake,

and the gaping wound of that chasm can send us down into ourselves

as if the epicenter of the quake could be found in us,

some mistake we made, some flaw of character, some fault of ours. 

And the fact is that sometimes that hunch is right,

there is something we need to realign; the fault may indeed be ours.

Then again it may not. 

But the burden that it is or could be can be too much to bear.

So we like stories like today’s about Abram and Sarai: 

the chance that there could be a God out there who has it all under control,

who has a specific destiny for us. 

Then it is just a matter of hearing the grand voice call to us: 

I am going to make of you a parent of many nations. 

A giant grandfatherly voice who gives us our charge and sends us on our way,

and even kindly renames us Abraham and Sarah so we don’t forget. 

That is a comforting idea told and retold in stories from Odysseus to Dr. Seuss, from Hardy’s Tess of the D’ubervilles  to Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams.

But this God bears little resemblance to most of our lives. 

Most of us are not struck down on the road to Damascus,

are not called from the clouds,

are not sent a secret scroll unveiling the secret destiny of our life. 

For most of us life is a great tree trunk branching out of decision after to decision

to ever finer limbs and branches,

a great watershed we’re ascending, choosing tributary after tributary

toward a source water we cannot see and a promontory we may not reach.  Accidents more often decides us.

Charlie Bucket, by the slightest of chances, just happens to open one more chocolate bar, and find the golden ticket that takes him to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Saying Yes, saying No.

33 ‘Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” ³⁴But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.^*[ii]

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ ¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ ²⁰For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God. ²¹But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, ²²by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.[iii]

Each season in the church is an invitation to know the God of all our days.

Lent is a season of contrasts.

Satan and angels; baptism and desert; 40 days of rain, 40 of emptying;

The Spirit says “You are my Beloved,”

The Spirit says “Get out now into the wilderness.”

Noah brings the wild beasts into the ark to save creation.

Jesus is driven out with the wild beasts to become himself.

These juxtaposed symbols, tattooed on the Bible’s psyche,

Call us to get away in the next five weeks.

To get away with God, and not timidly—

as if the Creator were an Aunt who might leave us something in her will–

But to scramble out the window at night like a runaway,

Dive into our Divine’s hotrod with our heart in our throat,

and leave town behind with nothing more than a toothbrush and a pair of jeans.

I'm gonna take you on a trip so far from here,
I've got two tickets in my pocket, now baby, we're gonna disappear.
We've waited so long, waited so long.
We've waited so long, waited so long.

I've got two tickets to paradise,
Won't you pack your bags, we'll leave tonight,
I've got two tickets to paradise,
I've got two tickets to paradise.

When Eddie Money sang this tune in 1978,[i]

he may have had nothing grander in mind than the next town’s Motel 6,

but the urgency of his crooning is the urgency of Lent.

We’ve waited so long, waited so long.

We may have waited so long that we gave up hope a long time ago.

Gave up hope that paradise is still out there,

or that, even if it is, we could ever actually get there.

We know this hometown.  We know our job at the factory.

We make our compromises. We settle for the real world.

Gradually we get used to living in the country

with the highest incarceration rate in the world.[ii]

We stop seeing the economic injustice that marks our region,[iii]

less than 5% poverty rate in Washington and Dakota,

more than 15% in Hennepin and Ramsey.

We forget that visits to food shelves have increased 62% over the last three years.[iv]

We nod to the nagging thought that this crazy winter

Forebodes a climate change beyond repair,

But we settle the nagging with comforts that likely burn more CO2.

We know we can’t solve all these problems,

We know peace begins at home, peace begins with me,
I can only really cultivate it in here.

Paradise after all is another name for the Garden of Eden:

The place not only where everything is right and good,

But the place small enough that we have a chance at keeping it right and good.

Paradise is the place God lovingly calls us to in Lent.

God says I have a ticket for you, do you want to ride?

And riding means, going down deep into the promises of God.

Checking out the rainbow in the clouds,

Hearing God say, “You are my beloved.”

Confirming with the first letter of Peter that baptism saves us–

Not by removing sins as if they were dirt–

But by mixing our yearning for God with God’s hope for us.

Lent really offers a delicious, seductive time with the Divine.

We’ve got a ticket to ride, we’ve got a ticket to ride, we’ve got a ticket to ride,

So why– like the archetypal femme of the Beatles’ smash hit,[v]

Does it seem that we don’t care?

Perhaps we are too beset and distracted by the worldly cares of our day.

But this excuse is flimsy when we look as some of the ways we spend our leisure.

It is more likely that we think Lent is the time we are supposed

to tot up all the things we’ve done wrong

and wring some spiritual regret from ourselves,

No amount of ought will move us to spend time with this God.

If we move to a deeper level though,

It may be that we balk at the vulnerability we face in the desert.

When we don’t have the usual distractions and escapes,

The deep parts of us come out, comfortable with the other wild animals.

Before Satan got a face and horns and tail and all the cartoonish accoutrement,

Satan was just a Hebrew word for “Adversary.”[vi]

On the other hand, the Spirit is often described as, “The Advocate.”[vii]

When lovers run off to be alone,

not withstanding the distraction of bodily yearnings,

They are saying to one another, “You are my advocate.”

“You are the one who knows me best, the one I am most myself with.”

This Advocate silences the chorus of well meaning people

Who distracts the lover from being who she is.

The Beatle who penned “She’s got a ticket to ride,” John Lennon,

Said in one interview that he meant by the phrase

to allude to the city of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

The Isle of Wight has been a vacation spot for Brits for more than a century,

so it is likely that Lennon was nodding to the homonym’s ability

to name both the amusement one might ride and the place one might do it.

But what if Lennon had something else in mind?

Charles Dickens was one of many Victorian writers who made

The Isle of Wight his getaway spot.

There he wrote one of the English world’s best works of art:

David Copperfield, praised by everyone from Dostevsky to Joyce,

And even by some of Dicken’s most famous adversaries.

David Copperfield is thought to be Dicken’s most autobiographical book,

Not so much for the actions which occur in it,

As for the progress and pitfalls Copperfield faces in his soul.

This Lent, let's go away with our Beloved.

Let's turn in our tickets and go away with God into a wilderness Paradise,

Each to write her own David Copperfield.

Each to acknowledge his own wild beasts

And turn from the Adversary to the Advocate of steadfast love and mercy.

Sing to the Lord, you servants of his. +

What Naaman needed was some backup singers. 

There he was out on the stage in the spotlight. 

He had his horses and his chariots. 

He had his soldiers and armies of soldiers. 

He had the ear of the king of Syria himself. 

And he had this irritating skin rash,

an extremely embarrassing situation. 

What he needed was some good, soulful backup vocals.

<music>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg94cXAqPcs

Van Morrison knows all about good, backup vocals. 

Many of you will be familiar with the six-time Grammy-winner

for popular tunes like Brown-Eyed Girl, Moondance, and Domino. 

But Van Morrison is also known for an enigmatic fusion of jazz and Celtic styles.  His lyrics echo great poets such as Yeats and Coleridge,

and he often sings in a kind of stream-of-consciousness form,

his voice like another instrument,

improv-ing and reaching for a kind of transcendental experience. 

He speaks directly about his spirituality too,

referring in his songs to the Spirit, the Eucharist, and to Jesus by name and deeds.

In this song, titled Did ye get healed?,

Van is asking someone– perhaps a deeper form of himself—

about the feeling of the Spirit moving within him. 

He says, When the spirit moves me, I can do many wondrous things. . .

and he goes on to answer his own question,

I begin to realize it manifest in my life in oh so many ways. 

The upbeat tempo and mellow sax say Yes,

you are going to get healed, you are definitely going to get healed,

but it is the back-up singer, who really lays the background foundation. 

It is her vocals that allow Van’s voice to wander all over the place

almost apart from the music, talking to himself. 

It is her voice that provides the depth and texture

for Van to enter into this intimate dialogue with God in his soul.

<music>

Naaman needed backup vocals, and he got them in full force. 

First, a slave girl captured in the recent war against Israel. 

She is so background she doesn’t even speak to Naaman directly,

but drops the key information to his wife. 

Backup singers may not use words at all,

but resonate notes like the music itself,

helping to bring out the Spirit speaking in our everyday lives.

Naaman isn’t used to sharing the spotlight with anyone except other stars,

so he goes to his king, asking him to go to the king of Israel. 

The Syrian king obliges his famous general and sends royal gifts and a letter,

but the plan backfires because the King of Israel

is also unaccustomed to backup singers,

certainly not to performing in that role. 

Instead of seeing this as a place to serve and build peace, he assumes the worst,

that the Syrian King is trying to provoke another war. 

Fortunately, Elisha gets word and offers to help solve the problem.

Naaman comes to be healed only as he knows how,

full of his fullness with his great horses and chariots,

and he is put off when Elisha won’t come out himself

but sends a messenger instead– the second backup singer in this story. 

Backup vocalists, like Elisha, are most content to be off center stage. 

By their small dance moves or slight variation of harmony,

they may indicate where a song is going,

but they leave the focus on the headliner. 

Elisha’s messenger dutifully tells Naaman to wash in the Jordan,

but this is a small, humble river compared to the great rivers of Syria,

and Naaman is offended.

Another thing backup singers do for us is echo our own words back to us,

not in our exact voice, but harmonizing with us,

so that we can hear our own best voice, the voice of the Spirit inside us. 

This is what the third backup singer does for Naaman. 

It is Naaman’s own servant who takes a big risk to ask a little question. 

Why not try it?  He deftly steers Naaman away from the pride

that keep tripping him up,

and points simply to the music of God in the song of Naaman’s life. 

Once Naaman can see this from the humble river,

he returns to the flesh of his youth,

back to the person he was meant to be

before all the trappings of success distorted him.

We can almost hear the slave girl and Elisha and Naaman’s servant sing in unison:

Did ye get healed?

Whether friends or lovers, whether colleagues or children,

whether spiritual directors or hairdressers,

we all need backup singers who will remind us who we really are. 

We need people in our life who will listen to us

and gently harmonize our voice to help us hear

what we are singing and to know if it sounds right and true. 

We need people who love our songs

and who want to add the texture and foundation to let us wander

and improv and celebrate the feeling of the Spirit down in our souls.

That means too that there are people in our lives

who need us to be backup vocals for them. 

Partners, parents, friends, co-workers.  Children.

Our children don’t need us to tell them what to do,

so much as they need people who know them and love them

people who will sing in tune with the Spirit in them.

There are people everywhere who feel alone on stage

Who long for some backup vocals

to give them the courage to be who the Spirit is calling them to be.

When Van Morrison felt the Spirit, he sang

I want to be daily walking closer,

I want to talk about it and walk about it every morning and every day.

When the leper was healed by Jesus,

he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word,

so that people came to Jesus from every quarter.

The Rev. Buff Grace+

Mark’s gospel throttles along on an edgy tension.

It is populated by hucksters and lepers, demons and the possessed.

While his friends and admirers dotter along behind slow and confused,

The nefarious types call Jesus by name, scramble for cover,

And wage a spiritual warfare that seems at times much more real

Than all the sands and waves of Galilee, all the synagogue walls.

Last week we heard an unclean spirit cry out,

What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?

This morning, Jesus heals a routine fever

And instantly an entire city besieges the house he’s in.

People pained by deformities, cripples, the burned and lame, missing parts;

Sufferers of hepatitis A to C, malaria, water blindness, syphilis,

Mystery plagues of all sorts, diseases of all descriptions,

People itching, smelling, moaning, rag-fumbling and hocking sputum.

It’s easy to forget, in the clean, well-lighted places most of us inhabit,

It’s easy to forget with the grand almighty God Isaiah gives us today,

But Mark wants to remind, Jesus came to darkness.

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all

who were sick or possessed with demons. 

The dying sun casts ominous shadows across the little house of Peter’s

Mother-in-law, as the needs of the world descend upon it,

crowding around to the very door.

It was this kind of world– Mark’s kind of world–

Invoked by one of the best preachers I ever heard,

my highschool football coach.

Coach Potter’s game night world was a world of the primitive elements.

Of light and dark. Of the enemy and the heros,

of the righteous and the God-forsaken.

Every Friday evening from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, 50-some teenage boys,

Sweating the smell of anxiety and fear and anticipation,

Would heap themselves across the benches and floor of the Big Blue locker room

To be

castigated, remonstrated, excoriated, masticated, berated

and begrudgingly repatriated with a fervor to beat

the best hell-fire and brimstone any continguous county

could muster any Sunday morning of the year.

Because this, folks, was the Bible belt.  Chattanooga, Tennessee.

And yet as I’ve driven the country,

from the hot sands of eastern California to the frozen fields of western New York,

from practice fields scratched out of Texas Ranchland

to fresh, lush game-sod in the upper Midwest,

I have found American football, in all its many cultural iterations,

To be this same fertile ground for spiritual battle.

It may be Touchdown Jesus at Notre Dame,

Or the ritual victory bell tolling of the Buckeyes,

It may be a golden-haired Viking seizing the holy grail

Or green and gold fans “worshipping” at Lambeau Field,

Wherever it is, football is so often this curious mix of religion and sport.

Quarterbacks throw Hail Mary passes.

Sideline players go reverently down on one knee.

Players huddle as if in prayer.

The referees are as choreographed as acolytes,

And marching bands play a rousing hymnody.

One Nebraska Cornhuskers fight song cries out:

Dear Lord, the battles we go through life,

And begs to win with Faith and Honor held high.

At times in my life, I confess I have looked down my nose at this

Tawdry collusion of football and faith.

At best it has seemed to me a simpleton’s spirituality,

In which God roots for one team over the other

And high school heroes go on to gain yardage in life

And face life’s challenges as third and long.

At its worst it’s been blown up under the big lights

Where the blood and sweat of gridiron gladiators

Is framed and streamlined like the silver tongue of the televangelist.

Such as a thread running through this year’s Super Bowl,

Which was described this way by an LA times reporter:

But many New England players also believe there's a special purpose to this season, an angel on their shoulder. They have dedicated their season and Super Bowl run to Myra  Kraft, late wife of team owner Bob Kraft, and will continue to wear her initials —  MHK — over their hearts. "She is a woman who has been smiling down on us over the course of this season," Brady said. “Mr. Kraft said the other day that he is a very spiritual person, and hopefully we can go out and get a win for him."

O the drama and the melo-spirituality.

Looking down our religious noses is something Episcopalians are pretty good at.  We’re smart. 

We can reconcile the paradoxes of scientific discoveries and Biblical traditions.

We can explain the psychology of religion.

We can explain theology quoting poetic prayerbook phrases by heart,

And we can sing in four part harmony.

All that is very good and worth being proud of I think.

And none of it is what Mark is talking about.

Mark is talking about getting in the thick of life where Jesus is.

Mark is talking about getting our hands dirty.

None of this perspicuous scrupulosity, no pernicious righteousness.

Mark says: Wade into the National Enquirer, hang out on the park benches,

Walk down the back alleys, wash wounds,

Stand in line with the freaks and barefoot and speak gibberish.

Confront the principalities.

Here people are still doing faith healings,

Like the high school running back, C. J. Williams from North Augusta,

Who was diagnosed with lymphoma and expected to miss his senior year,

Not simply off the team, but out of school.[i]

A huge group across the city began praying for C. J.

And a few weeks later when he went for chemo,

Doctors reversed their diagnosis and cleared him completely,

Baffled, they said “Somehow the cancer is gone.”

 Or the mobile intensive prayer unit[ii] which has logged

More than 500 faith healings, some on video,

in public places from football games to gas stations.

Or, to stretch to the more global football, (soccer)

One of the top teams in England, whose head coach

Seems willing to put his job on the line in order to keep

a well-known faith-healer on staff because

she heals his players faster than conventional means alone[iii].

And while we are in England,

How about the tabloid beloved, Harry Potter extra, Lucy Hussey-Bergonzi?

Lucy died at age 13 of a brain hemorrhage because of a rare disease,

But she miraculously responded of her own volition while on life support systems

When the water of an emergency baptized sprinkled her face.[iv]

Are these healings real?  Can we trust them?

Just the sort of questions we Episcopalians tend to ask.

While hundreds of thousands suffer in a world

in which these are the only healings they can ever hope for.

This is the crazy, irrational world Mark’s Jesus invites us to go to

Because it is the crazy, messy world that he went to.

And surprisingly, we find there familiar signs we knew all along.

Our healing touch ministry team here at Ascension,

Practices a version of this faith-healing,

grounded deep in prayer together as ministers,

some of whom have taken graduate level courses in

and devoted hours of careful practice to this work.

You can find out more every second Saturday at 9 a.m. in the parish hall.

We find in Mark, the humble, quiet healing of Peter’s mother-in-law,

Someone we can identify with,

Who does not gasp and roil in melodrama,

But simply gets up thankful and refreshed and serves dinner.

We see Jesus in the act of tending his own personal health,

Going out alone for morning prayer to connect to the Source of all sources.

And we see him gently but resolutely set his own boundaries

With Peter and the crowds, defining what he will do

By one measuring stick alone: what God is calling him to do.

*****

That Jesus sounds a lot like Ricky Williams.

Ricky is a yoga teacher and a massage therapist.

He is versed in carniosacral therapy, quotes Greek philosophers,

And wants to continue his path to becoming a Hindu healer.

He went through a very difficult time in his life,

A time in which he himself received some miraculous healing.

Ricky might say he was third and long.

Because Ricky is also a famous NFL running back[v].

You won’t see him in tonight’s Super Bowl.

But I bet he has heard his share of coaches preaching.

The Rev. Buff Grace+

Episcopal Church of the Ascension

Rector Address January 29, 2012

Introduction

When we drive a vehicle, what is behind us is just as big as what is in front of us, but we are given a small mirror to frame what has passed and a large windshield to see all that lies ahead.

In the spirit of this metaphor, I want to commend to you this valuable rearview mirror– our Annual Report– which, while small in size, captures well the horizon behind us, chocked full of deeds of faith and acts of love.  Please take time to pull onto the shoulder and take a long, loving look at the real gospel work that you and many have done in the last twelve months.  When I took that loving look writing my report, I found it an exercise of cascading gratitude, so much so I had only room to mention a portion of all I am thankful for here.

Also in the spirit of the metaphor, I want to devote the rest of my remarks this morning to the larger windshield in front of us:  where we are and where we are going.

Where We Are

We live in an E-world.  E-mail, E-news, E-shopping, E-books, E-banking, E-commerce, E-dating, E-giving. The mind Googles.  We could also call this an I-world.  I-pads, I-pods, I-phones, I-touches.  The Internet and all its many fascinating and capricious windows: from Netflix to Facebook to Wiki to MP3 files. 

But these are just the surface of calling our world an I-world or E-world. At a more fundamental level, these I-pads and E-mails and all their technological cousins are actually consequences and not causes.  Down at its foundations our world is E and I at a greater magnitude: Extra-terrestrial, Inter-faith, and Individual. 

Living in this Extra-terrestrial world is an existence which is literally out-of or above-the-earth.  It is a living that, like Luke Skywalker’s land speeder[i], hovers over the ground even when it stops. It is a living which is  more and more virtual, increasingly like Neo’s Matrix[ii], increasingly ungrounded.  This has been at least the trajectory if not the ardent desire of the last 100 years, a drive to escape the earth.  We have now done it, not only literally in NASA rocketry, but in our everyday lives from video games to chat rooms, diets rich in medications and highly processed food, ivory tower economic theories which do not account for the gifts and limitations of earthly systems, papers and reports—such as this one– composed in pixels puppeteered by electricity.

Our world is an Inter-faith world[iii], no longer a society of discrete denominations whose members reach across shared and distinct boundaries at times like Thanksgiving to show a common love.  Now there is much more open space between denominations and religions.  According to Jim Bradshaw of Bradshaw Celebration of Life Center, about 50% of people live in this frontier of open space, coming to bury their loved ones with little to no intact faith system, having little or no experience with prayer or ritual, not supported by any community of faith. 

At the same time our Inter-faith world is one in which truth is pluralistic, denominations and religions bleeding into one another in the minds of their followers. This is good in that the world can now see itself as a common humanity before one God, the colors of faith like the colors of a religious Benetton mixing in tye-dye rainbows illuminated by the one truth-light.  But this psychedelic mixture has been more than some can handle, and truth being everywhere has resulted in some rejecting truth anywhere, or else crawling into their monochrome bunkers with the King James Bible to wait for the End.  To use another metaphor, we live in a giant game of religious pick-up sticks, in which we are largely free to collect the practices we want to collect, guided by our own compass.

Thus our world is also Individual, radically individual.  That may be a bland statement to an American audience, our hemisphere having been reengineered on individual liberty and our technology creating plusher and bigger mansions for our personal needs.  Yet if we will tend to one of Christianity’s fundamental truths, this hyper individuality should create real tension in us.  And not only Christianity but Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and more.  The most common thread in this pluralistic truth is that we are NOT individuals, but part of one beautiful and ever interdependent web of life, and we can’t be truly spiritual by ourselves.  On Sundays we say, “We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.  We who are many are one body because we all share in the one bread.”  Thankfully, many of us can straddle the paradox in our minds.

Can we, however, straddle the paradox with our bodies? Is reading the NY Times with a good cup of coffee or taking a walk in the woods or going to a hockey match simply another truth among many, just as good a spiritual practice as breaking bread on a Sunday morning?  This is an honest question evidenced by the many of even our own congregation who select these activities over coming to church on at least some Sundays of the year.  I break bread over my cup of coffee to share in the body which I am discovering through my NY Times.  We slap this puck to share in the Body of Christ.  We who are many are one body because we all share in the one game.  (Nothing against coffee, the NY Times, hockey or woods walking; we could substitute any number of activities here.) In this context, the ritual acts of Sunday church compete for physical space in our lives with other activities, some of which may fulfill our need to belong, our need for ritual, and our longing to meet God.

Where We Are Going

In interpreting this E-world and I-world we live in, I may have sounded biased against it, but I honestly want to look at it objectively and ask the question, What should being church look like in this day?  If these bricks and glass are going to stand, we are going to sink a lot of money into them.  If we spend that money to prop up a refuge from the E and I world, if we are just tuck pointing a bell tower to have a big billboard for the 19^th century, then we will fall and the bricks and glass with us.  But if we embrace the world of our day, if we spend money here on this building in ways that make something more divine happen out there as well as in here, then this body of Christ will go on living long after us and these bricks and glass will last.

So here are the three top objectives I propose for 2012. 

Strengthen Relationships, Pray More, Make Peace.

Strengthen Relationships

We have some notable sub-groups of strong relationships here at Ascension.  We need those groups to reach out to others within our parish and give the gift of belonging.  We need more events and occasions that foster relationships.  We have already begun planning for a mission trip to Guatemala in August, but Mission Projects close to home are also great for bonding. Talent Shows, Coffee-Houses, Movie Nights, Book Clubs, Outdoor Trips, an Oral History Project; these are just a few other ideas for ways we can strengthen relationships here.  I know you have more.  Our softball team and quilt guild are great examples, but we need to cross fertilize.  How about the softball team and quilt guild get together to serve at Valley Outreach?  How about the finance committee and vestry join up for a hike together or some birdwatching?  We need to improve our outreach to newcomers too.  I am thankful to be working on a loosely structured befriender program which matches parish families to newcomers.  And I am grateful for a burgeoning pastoral care team whose members are already strengthening relationships throughout our parish.

Pray More

Sunday morning may not be the best time for everyone to pray, but all humans need prayer.  It is the way we are created.  We can learn from the Saturday Meditation group which has met every Saturday morning for more than a year.  Other times and places may fit more schedules.  Morning Prayer with Our Community Kitchen breakfast. Compline with a weeknight Committee Meeting.  Centering Prayer at someone’s home on a weekday.  Home Eucharists at a birthday party or other celebratory occasion.  A hymn sing or prayer vigil in a park or a parking lot.  If 50% of the community won’t come to us on Sunday, let’s take prayer to them.  We need to scoop that living water of Christ over and over and over.  Get a friend or two together and give me an idea for prayer.  We’ll try it.

Make Peace

There is plenty of brokenness in the world that needs healing, some of it within us.  We have a long standing healing ministry here, and as children of God, we are all the peacemakers of today.  How about some adventures in peacemaking?  These start with inquiry into issues and pains.  We coalesce around an issue on our heart; we explore its depth through study, discussion, and prayer; and then we go out to practice forgiveness, justice, and peace.  This is how some projects of yesterday started at Ascension such as the prison ministry and the vehicle assistance program.  This is how Our Community Kitchen began. 

I am glad to say that in this year’s budget we have provided funds for a group of Ascension people to enter into a long term relationship with a valley family in poverty, through Episcopal Community Service’s Supportive Housing Program. This relationship will not only help genuinely move the supported family out of the poverty cycle, but it will train a group of us about the true nature of “poverty” in our day.  These can then further teach and draw all of us to recognize the needs of the poor in our community.

I am thrilled that we are supporting Our Community Kitchen with $20,000 of the Margaret Rivers Grant we have received and I hope more of you become involved there, volunteering in the kitchen and eating at table with a wide array of the valley’s residents.  As always we continue supporting Last Sunday Suppers which offer similar opportunities for service and communing with people we might not otherwise befriend.

I am excited about the Mission Trip 2012 to Guatemala which kicks off with a planning meeting next Monday, February 6.  This trip is targeted to Senior High, but is open to everyone.  Come find out how you can join this amazing adventure.

In 2012 we have two particularly critical demands for making peace: Marriage Equality and Ecology.

Marriage Equality

This is a place Episcopalians are particularly called to bring peace to Minnesota.  In the proposed marriage amendment we are not simply dealing with a question about accepting a certain minority.  There are already laws on the books that limit that minority.  We are facing an attack on the Holy Spirit because a constitutional amendment will institutionalize this prejudice in such a way that prevents us from ever hearing God’s call differently or responding in love if we do.  I hope you embrace all people as God created us, but even if you have not made up your mind on the issue of homosexuality, you have vowed to respect the dignity of every human being as part of your baptism. We must do all we can to say NO to this amendment for Minnesota.  This means engaging the issue at whatever point you are along the journey.  If you are against people who are homosexual, reach out of your circle and have an authentic conversation with someone who is not against them.  Listen to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, trusting that you are each doing the very best you can to live in love.  If you understand people who are GLBT to be equally loved by God, then get involved in widening the perspectives of your friends, neighbors, and co-workers.  Come join a phone bank event, calling and talking to Minnesotans who have not made up their mind.  You can do so with me on Thursday, Febraury 23, and other times throughout the year.

Ecology

The extra-terrestrial alienation from our earth which I mentioned above has led already to catastrophic loss of ecosystems critical to our planet’s health.  We don’t know exactly how the earth will recover these systems, but we do know we can either join to serve God’s creation as the gardeners we are or we can continue to trash it for our own needs.  We Episcopalians are sharp on this issue, and many of you at Ascension are particularly knowledgeable.  This is a place the valley is crying out for our church in particular to act. And the joyous thing is that action here can be vibrant and exciting.  Half the battle is just going outside to appreciate the grandeur of God in the natural world.  The more often we go there, the more willing we are to live in harmony with it.  To this end, we are planning another Confirmation trip to the Boundary Waters this summer and another junior high youth trip to the Montana wilderness.  But this effort cannot be limited to youth.  How about a church camp out and Eucharist at a local state park?  How about some of you lead birding trips.  How about others of you teach us about native plants and rain gardens?  How about others of you deliver slide shows on the exquisite places of natural beauty you have wandered in the world?  How about a famous expedition to raise awareness that religion and science are partners in the race to save the planet from our own excesses?  We can make a huge difference here and our work can be beautiful, lively, and fun.

Conclusion

There are my three proposed areas of action in 2012.  The vestry will of course set the course for this year, but this gives you a picture of the terrain I am asking them and you to consider.  Most of all I hope you hear in this address that I believe in us.  We have wonderful gifts, and God wants us to be lit on fire for things that truly make a difference in this life.  I hope Ascension catches Holy Spirit fire for adventures of faith.  At the end of 2012, I hope we are able to look back the way you look back after some adventures and say, “Wow, there were times I didn’t think we were going to make it.  But God was with us.  God wanted us to make it, and God brought us through.”