Sermon Links & Notes: 5 February 2012

Good morning friends.  Here are a few links related to yesterday's sermon for your further edification.

First of all, some more info about the Babylonian Exile.

Second, my sermon borrowed heavily, directly and indirectly, from a flippin' awesome sermon preached by The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints (ELCA), Denver, CO, on 10 November 2011 at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.  Here is a video of the entire worship service that day.  The sermon is from 12:25 to 24:30.

In addition, some Edie & the NB ...

And for grins ...

I might need a Pepto.  Have a good week y'all.  Be Well & God's Peace.

Sermon: 5 February 2012 (5 Epiphany, Year B)

Readings: Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-12, 21c, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 , Mark 1:29-39

Audio: .mp3 | podcast | iTunes

Holy and Loving God, write a message on our hearts.  Bless us, direct us, and send us out, living letters of the Word.  AMEN.

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Has it not been told you from the beginning?  Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

Very harsh words from the prophet Isaiah on behalf of God – someone most defiantly had on their grumpy pants.  They are in reaction to Israel’s lament.  A little background this morning – I appreciate your indulgence of this history major.  We are in the sixth century before Christ, and Israel is in exile: captives in Babylon, separated from the land and from the Temple.  Everything they had built, everything they had nourished, everything they had held dear was snatched away from them by a foreign power and they were forced to march off to imprisonment in a faraway, unfamiliar land.  Israel’s heads were shaved and their beards plucked.  They were made to build shantytowns buy the Chebar River and then left to weep over their lost Zion.  Because of their separation from the land and the Temple, the people feel lost and alone, forsaken and unable to connect with God.  Israel is beyond the sadness or depression.  They have succumb to total despair.

Have you ever despaired?  I’m not talking about a touch of melancholy.  I’m not talking about being bummed or disappointed.  I’m talking about full-blown, full-on, unadulterated, can’t get out of your sweatpants, nobody knows you when your down and out, despair.  Despair can take many forms.  Despair can be very active and hijack your entire life.  You lay in bed, unable to sleep, unable to silence the mind, and what ever you are despairing turns over and over again, churning and heaving, like some sinful appliance invented by a demented Ron Popeil.  You feel like you have no hope, no future, no worth – you are nothing.  As the minor folk rock icon Edie Brickell once sang, “There's nothing I hate more than nothing / Nothing keeps me up at night.”  Needless to say, it is a very bad place to be.  But, as hard as it is to imagine, a far worse type of despair is the more passive, more insidious form.  “Walking Despair” one might call it.  You seem fine, you seem to be an upright, functional, productive member of society.  But your despair marinates your soul and clouds your view of life.  Nothing seems right, nothing is satisfactory, nothing is worth celebrating.  Every encounter, every discussion has a negative undercurrent.  Despair becomes a virus, infecting everything it comes in contact with, prohibiting any kind of growth, any kind of evolution, any kind of accomplishment, any kind of real happiness.  Despair, active or passive, reduces us to a pile of worthless nothing.  Nothing.

And yet, in the midst of our blackest nothing, the voice of the prophet still cries out, “Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Has it not been told you from the beginning?  Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?”

My friend Eyleen recently introduced me to a Lutheran pastor and preacher named Nadia Bolz-Weber.  Her parish is the House for all Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado.  Last November she preached a sermon about nothing.  Her text was the feeding of the five thousand and how, when Jesus turned to the disciples and asked if they had anything to feed the people, they turned out their proverbial pockets and said no, we have nothing.  I am reminded of when I was a child and my dad would ask me what I did in school that day and I would say, “nothing.”  Sounds rather despairing, doesn’t it?  But then she made one of the more profound points I have heard in quite some time.  She said, “[the disciples] forgot that they have a God who created the universe out of nothing!  That can put flesh on dry bones out of nothing!  That can put life in a dusty womb out of nothing.  Let’s face it, nothing is like God’s favorite material!”

And that same God reached out to Israel in our Old Testament reading and spoke to them out of their nothing.  The prophet says, “Have you not known? Have you not heard?  The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.  He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless … they shall mount up with wings like eagles.”  God says, I hear your nothing, I see your nothing, I know your nothing, and if you give it up to me, I will do something.  I will take your nothing and make something you never imagined.  With me, I will transform your nothing into accomplishment and effectiveness and worth and mission.  Out of our nothing, God will create the new heaven and the new earth.  Our God is an awesome God, or have you not heard.

In the Gospel today, Jesus has had a busy day.  He has spoken with authority in the synagogue, as we heard last week, he has healed the sick, and cast out demons.  I would imagine that in Capernaum, he is one popular dude.  And it would have been easy to just be in Capernaum, to do good work, to perform a few miracles at parties.  If Jesus had stayed there he would have made a difference, and we probably would never have heard about him.  If Jesus had stayed, I am sure he would have been busy, but busyness for busyness’ sake seldom leads to anything, except dissatisfaction and even more busyness.  Busyness can be an excellent cloak for despair.  If Jesus had stayed in Capernaum, he might as well have done nothing.  But the next day, after saying his prayers, Jesus girds his loins and says, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”  I can hear the disciples reaction now, “are you kidding me!  We’ve got a great gig here!  The people love us.  That trick with Simon’s mother-in-law was awesome.  We never have to pay for dinner.  Why do we have to leave?”  The disciples, like Israel before them, like us, forgot about what God can do.  For with us, with nothing, God can do anything.

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Has it not been told you from the beginning?  Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?  The nothing is so over.  With God, a new something is just beginning.  AMEN.

The Bark Side

Oh gracious ...

Sermon: 15 January 2012 (2 Epiphany, Year B)

Readings: 1 Samuel 3:1-20, Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, John 1:43-51 

Audio: .mp3 | podcast | iTunes

Holy and Loving God, write a message on our hearts.  Bless us, direct us, and send us out, living letters of the Word.  AMEN.

From today’s Old Testament reading, “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called.”

I am struck by an image Ellen Roberds used in this pulpit a week ago: the image of the Clergy person who is a central figure in one’s life, the priest or pastor who was present for so many life events that she or he becomes legend in our own minds and souls.  Many of us are blessed with that person and for me, that person is Ted Gulick.  Ted was my bishop.  Ted married Ellen and me, buried my father, and ordained me to the Deaconate and the Priesthood.  Ted was not perfect.  A few years ago, I planned all of the worship for the national Episcopal Youth Event, an event attended by over a thousand youth and most of the bishops in the Church.  And during the opening Eucharist, while all the bishops in their liturgical finery were processing in, Ted passed me.  I was a nervous wreck and as he passed, Ted leaned in to whisper something in my ear.  I was hoping for some nugget of wisdom, some morsel of solace, but instead he said, “make me look good!”  Still, when Ted preached, I thought he was preaching to me and me alone – so much so that I made an utter fool out of myself one Sunday when he was making his official visitation to my first parish and he preached this fantastic sermon and I approached him afterwards, a sniveling wreck and said something like, “thank you SO MUCH for preaching about me today,” and he replied, very deadpan, “I wasn’t preaching about you.”  Oops.  Perhaps one day I will learn that it isn’t all about me.

At my ordination to the Deaconate he did preach to me, or at least I assume so, and he preached about call.  He preached about how God had called my fellow ordinand and I to do good work in the World and accomplish great things in the Church.  He recalled the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”  He reminded us that we had been called to listen for the Holy Spirit, and to find our voice, and to speak out, for we had been called by God.  God calls.

We hear two great stories from the scripture this morning about call.  First is the story of call of Samuel, who was sleeping in the Temple next to the Ark of the Covenant (an interesting choice - hasn't he seen Indiana Jones?), and he hears a voice.  And he assumes it is his friend and mentor Eli who is old and infirm and he runs to him and says, “Here I am, for you called me.”  But Eli had not called out to Samuel and after this happens three times they both realize that God must be calling and so the fourth time, Samuel replies to God and says, “speak, for your servant is listening.”

The second story is from the Gospel.  It is a couple days after Jesus’ baptism, as we heard and celebrated last week, and Jesus is in Galilee.  He finds Philip and he calls him.  He simply says, “follow me.” No great discourse, no miraculously persuasive argument, just drop everything and "follow me."  And they do.

Call is a very personal endeavor.  God made us in the image of God, God gave each of us particular talents to do good work, so, if we are listening, God inspires us and reminds us to use these gifts.  God calls.  Sometimes it is difficult to hear God’s call, sometimes it is difficult to understand God’s call, and sometimes there are earthly impediments to respond to God’s call, but God calls.  God calls each of us and God calls again and again and again until we answer.

However, with call, as with many things with God, there’s a rub.  For God does call you. God calls you to do amazing things.  As the song goes, the Lord of sea and sky asks whom shall I send and you are the answer.  God calls you, but … but, God’s call isn’t about you.  God’s call is not a cosmic pat on the head merely to confirm how special you are. Don’t get me wrong, God loves you.  God loves you unconditionally.  God knows every nook and cranny of your soul, even the parts you are ashamed or afraid of and God still loves you without exception.  And for that cosmic fact I am very thankful.  But God’s call is not to merely to sit around and bask in the glory of how wonderful it is to be called.  God’s call is about action.

When we are called by God, we are called to do something.  We are called to go out into this broken world, a world not unlike the world described in the Old Testament, where word of God is rare, visions is not widespread, and our eyesight has grown dim.  [At 9, Please pardon the plug, but one could go to the Great Hall after this service and learn from Katy and Bailey Leopard about some of Calvary’s outreach efforts and how God is calling you to participate.]  God made us and God gave us these gifts to do something, to make a difference, to make a difference for someone else who is hurting, who is struggling, who is searching.  God calls us to respond.

On this weekend when we remember the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, I am reminded of a passage from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  He wrote, “There was a time when the church was very powerful … In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."  But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were … God-intoxicated.”

Be disturbers.  Be intoxicated.  Respond to God’s call.  Know that through you great things will happen.  Be the embodiment of the Epiphany or our God.  And when you respond to God’s call, not only will you see great things, as Jesus said in today’s Gospel.  But, as Jesus says later in John’s Gospel, “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”

God calls and God’s call is good.  But, God calls us to do, and that can change the world for good.  AMEN.

Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar: Day 24

As I begin the last post of this series, this seems only appropriate.

And here he is - the last Lego of the series:

Yoda dressed as Santa Claus!  How great is that.  Yoda is an odd little dude - green, short, hunched, hair in very geriatric locales.  But, at the same time, wise and powerful.  I remember when I first saw him duel during the prequel trilogy.  First, there was a lot of screaming and flipping, which was just strange.  Also, I always assumed that he would never need to fight.  He was so powerful all he would have to do to an opponent was say, "defeated you are," and s/he was.  I guess that would have made for boring filmmaking.

Also, at first, Yoda seems rather grumpy (I would be grumpy too if I had been stuck on a swamp planet for over two decades), but thinking back on the "saga," he possesses a great deal of patience.  He is a teacher and he meditates, both disciplines requiring a great deal of patience.  Furthermore, his actions speak volumes.  A person of his power and wisdom would undoubtedly be tempted to, when confronted with the petty annoyances of life (Sith, bureaucracy, Gungans), take matters into his own hands - but he did not.  Plus, anyone with the patience to train a whiny Mark Hamill demands respect.

The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a beautiful article that was published in The Times today.  In it, he related the tragic tale Congolese children abducted by terrorists.  He wrote, 

"I won't try and make readers wince with the details, though they are the sort of thing that you wish you could forget; the important thing is that they had escaped. They had been brought out of the bush, prised out of the grip of the militias that had captured them and reintroduced to something like normality. At twenty-one or twenty-two, some were completing their secondary school work. All had been assured of a safe place to live if they managed to get away from the militias. Many had been reunited with families. They had advocates and helpers in their communities, people who were willing to stick their necks out to support them when others looked at them with suspicion or even disgust. 

How had it happened? They all had one answer. The Church had not given up on them. At great risk, members of local Christian communities had kept contact with them, sometimes literally gone in search of them, helped them escape and organized a return to civilian life. They had prepared congregations to receive them, love them and gradually get them back into ordinary human relationships. 

It wasn't just a story of happy endings. The trauma of these experiences doesn't go away overnight. Drug use, conditioned behavior, the deadening of emotions, all these take time and involve a fair number of failures as well as successes. The miracle is that any manage rehabilitation or perhaps the miracle is that anyone believes enough in the possibility of it.
Yet the message was always the same: 'they didn't give up on us'."

I write and preach and blog a lot about Emmanuel, the God with us, the miracle of the Creator of the Universe wanting to know and be with and love each and every one of us.  That is an amazing gift and a theological reality that in and of itself is enough to celebrate on this holy night.  But God does more.

We continue to reject God, we continue to reject this gift.  From the Garden to Gethsemane, we, in our brokenness, in our self-centeredness, try to separate ourselves from God.  And yet God, remembering our covenant with God, keeps coming back.  God never gives up.

And the ultimate expression of God's not giving up is Jesus.  God so loved us that he gave his very self.  I am not giving up, he says.  No matter what you do, no matter what you try, no matter what you try to pull, I am not giving up.

++Rowan continues,

"'I'm not going away' is one of the most important things we can ever hear, whether we hear it from someone at our bedside in illness or over a shared drink at a time of depression or stress – or at a moment when we wonder what's happening to our neighborhood and our society. This is the heart of what Christmas says about God. And it's the real justification for any local church or any national church being there. When people are pushed by all sorts of destructive forces into seeing themselves as hopeless, as rubbish, so that what they do doesn't matter any more, it's this that will make the change that matters."

As you sip your first cup of coffee tomorrow morning, as you open presents with beloved family or friends, as you shuffle off to church, or as you awake to an empty house, remember this: in the words of C3-PO, "we're doomed."  We are doomed to be loved by God, doomed to encounter God in ways we will never anticipate, and doomed to be joined by God on every step of our journey.  God is not going to give up - so get used to it!

Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning;

Jesus, to Thee be glory given;

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.

Happy Christmas.  

Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar: Day 23

Well, I have to give some dap to our friends at Lego.  I was not sure what to expect behind Door 23 this morning.  Yesterday afternoon, I indexed in my head all of the previous pieces and I could not identify a glaring omission.  I am pretty sure I know what tomorrow's is, but I had no idea what today's might be.  Here we go.

A mini Lego Christmas Tree.

How great is that?!?

I love Christmas trees.  I also love America, apple pie, and my mother.  But seriously folks, there is nothing better than a huge live tree, smack in the middle of the den, lit and full of a hodgepodge of decorations.  I certainly understand folks who have "theme" trees with nothing but one color ornament or one type of ornament and they are lovely, but there is something magical and beautiful about that random assortment of gorgeous glass spheres and ceramic pieces coupled with a random assortment of Snoopys, Pooh Bears, college athletics, whomever's first Christmas, and whatever the little darlings made in Sunday School that year - that is a Christmas tree.

And after the Tree is in the stand, watered, lit and decorated, I love to turn out the lights and just sit and look at it.  Perhaps with a warm beverage, perhaps with some soft music, but the best is just silence and the tree.  Once I have done that, I know Christmas has almost arrived.

Silence is a rare commodity.  We go go go and are surrounded by noise noise noise noise.  After the kids are in bed and my chores are done, I crave silence (and PTI).  As I wrote on Wednesday, "These days resemble that moment in a action movie with the car is jumping over the canyon or the hero is jumping from one building to another.  Action is most certainly happening, but the music stops, the sound effects go mute, and all hold their breath," (wow, I just quoted myself, how pretentious).

I am reminded of a poignant moment during college.  The fall semester was almost over and exams were in full swing.  A fresh snow had fallen the day before and I was walking back from the library to the dorm around midnight.  The world looked something like this:

Photo by michell

And the silence was deafening.  There was no noise whatsoever, except the crunching of the snow beneath my feet.  And yet, there was an energy in the air, a joy, a wonder.  All was calm, all was bright.  I strolled quietly, feeling the cold, dry air flowing in and out of my nostrils, and gazing at the lit trees and gothic buildings.  I had the rare forethought in that moment to press record in my brain and cherish what I knew would be fleeting.  The stress of exams, papers, and then the rush home for Christmas soon returned, but that walk was pure enchantment.

Christmas is less that 48 hours away.  Don't panic.  Don't move.  Sit.  Sit in the silence.  Sit in the darkness.  Relish the light and presence of the Spirit in this sacred time.  Such meditative time can be difficult to find, but try.  One must prepare the soul for the celebration ahead - the tree is a good place to start.

Have a good afternoon.  See you tomorrow.  Blessed Advent.

And so it begins ...

A very cool, newly ordained Episcopal clergy person has a new blog.  I am fairly confident that it will be more than a little awesome.

And so it begins ...