Red Shoes, Funny Shirt

It’s my next to last week at St. Andrews, which makes me all sorts of sad.  They really are a delightful congregation. The brought me peaches after I preached my stewardship sermon on the spiritual benefits of random gifts of fruit.  They started a signup so my college students could come to their annual rummage sale.  When it is time to sound-check the lectern microphone, the lectors imitate the Voice of God.

I hope they let me come back to visit.

August 19, 2012

Ordinary Time, Proper 15

John 6: 51-58

When I was in college, I worked at a gas station/ convenience store/deli, a renowned Pennsylvania institution known as Wawa, whenever I was living at home. ( Sadly, they do not exist this far west. So think of something like Circle K, only with a deli component. ) I mostly worked the overnight shift– 11pm to 7am. It was a blast. I sliced the freshly made bread in the deli, I restocked the sandwich toppings, all the lettuce, and onions and tomatoes.  I swept the floor. I made sure no one made off with free gas at 3am, and I got 50cents extra an hour for hazard pay!

And the people who came in were the best assortment of characters you’d ever want to know.

The Wawa I worked in was located at an exit of the turnpike, so by midnight or so, the only customers I ever got were truckers off the highway. They came in a steady stream, all night long. And all night long, they wanted coffee.   Coffee and a doughnut. Or coffee and a pastry, or a bagel or something. But coffee! They really wanted coffee. And if there was no coffee, freshly made and with plenty of caffeine, then there were going to be some mighty displeased truckers picketing my store at 4am. These were not quiet men, and they were pretty vocal in their opinions. I heard about it when the price of a large coffee jumped by three cents.

But I realized, pretty soon after starting the overnight shift, that mostly what those overnight customers wanted, more than coffee, was someone else to talk to. Just to see another person! To wander around at 3am can be a lonely experience, especially if you spend your life doing it. It’s isolating.

So that was part of my job, as I came to see it. To be the hospitable person who gave them enough so they could get to where they were going. I got to man the way station on the journey. I got to hand them coffee.

Coffee, usually so foundational and mundane that it gets overlooked, suddenly became much more than coffee to me. It started out as this boring piece of every day life, a thing we take for granted, and suddenly became a way to give hope, and blessing even to other people. Gas station Coffee, this thing that you can get for 85 cents, transformed into something more!

Last week, I talked about John’s gospel being like a commentary on the life of Jesus. The writer of John assumes that his audience knows the basics of the Jesus story, so he lays a solid, and occasionally impenetrable layer of theology on top– Christianity 2.0. What it all Means! And this week he’s doing it again. The writer of John doesn’t really include the story of how the First Eucharist happens. He has the story of the last supper. But if you flip back there and check, what you’ll find is that Jesus washes the disciples feet, and talks to them for quite a while, and eats dinner and hangs out. He doesn’t bless and distribute the bread and wine, and tell his friends that it’s his body and blood, like in the other gospels. The 4th gospel writer figures you know that story, it’s been done, 1st century t-shirts received–

instead, what the 4th gospel writer has given us is this long section of Jesus talking about being the bread of life. Not the how of the Eucharist– the why of the Eucharist.

Jesus says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven…and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. And the crowd said, Huh?

For an observant Jewish society, this was really upsetting. Aside from the fact that an observant Jewish society knew never ever to consume blood, the inner core of what he is getting at is downright shocking.

There are a lot of claims that Jesus makes, and that we Christians make about Jesus that everyone can nod along with. Jesus loves everyone, God is love, Jesus says love your neighbor as yourselves, stuff like that. Hard work to be sure, but dig hard enough, phrase it the right way, and most folks will agree with it to some extent.

But what Jesus is saying right here makes a claim that jumps way beyond all that stuff. What Jesus says right here is that God cares enough about the daily, tiny, material, flesh and blood details of creation to participate in them. God cares enough about the physical, material creation to participate in it, even in the most trivial, the dirtiest, parts. The parts we wouldn’t look twice at, or care about. God cares that much about the creation God made.

This is a mind blowing thing to say. It’s easier, somehow, to picture a big, huge, far off, distant God up in the sky, or high atop a mountain, being all knowing and untouchable and above all this stuff, all the life we deal with. God’s off winding up the universe like a clockmaker, or dispensing vague advice. But removed from us. Far off! Above! Beyond!

But not so, insists Jesus. God is come so close. So close as bread that you eat every day, with every meal. That you depend on to live, to get by. That you see so often, depend on so much that you don’t even think about it. God is in these very things! Not distant, and not removed from our earthly existence, but right in the very physical heart of it. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

That’s what we reenact every week in the Eucharist. God come to us in ordinary, material things. Not lofty, above us, but here. In creation. In the things so ordinary and mundane we depend on them for our survival. The creator of the cosmos in a piece of bread.

God finds something this creation so valuable, so worth saving, that we are called to learn to see it in the same way. We, who follow Jesus, are called to learn to look for divine fingerprints in all of creation, too. To see everything as an opportunity for blessing and grace. A rock or a tumbleweed. A song on the radio and a cup of coffee at 3am. We are called to see the spark of God’s love in all creation. The image of God in everyone we meet.

Because if we look hard enough, and we learn to see God even in these little details of our lives, and in the faces of our neighbors, then we can learn to love and serve the world as Jesus does. Because when we learn to see the light of God shining in all the creation around us, that’s when the light of God’s love begins to shine the brightest out of us.  And only then, with God’s help, can we transform the face of the world.

Amen

(See, now many of you have that one song from the 1990s stuck in your head and there is nothing to be done about it.)

One of my favorite things about sermon-writing is the opportunity to take something really mundane, or odd, and find God lurking around in there.  It’s far too easy by half to write sermons all about Hallmark cards, or Profound Email Forwards, or actual theology texts, though occasionally I do throw those in as well.  Much better to talk about road rage, or supermarkets, or HMOs.  The sort of thing that actually occupies most of us from day-to-day.

Because, really, Christians should be able to locate the transcendent in the ordinary stuff of life.  We should be able to make meaning out of that; all the weirdness, the quirk and the boredom.  So these texts: David and Bathsheba, and the loaves and fishes, are goldmines.

Here’s what I did.

July 29, 2012

Ordinary Time, Proper 12

John 6:1-12

This past week, I was reading a cooking blog that I frequent, and discovered a recipe for peach pie. Naturally, this made me calculate the likelihood and practicality of driving to a place where peaches were readily available, since I have had no luck at all procuring decent peaches since moving out here. (Other produce, yes. Fresh peaches and tomatoes, no). I blithely posted this disappointment on Twitter, and promptly forgot about it. Imagine my shock, then, when a woman I’ve never met before responded to my post, and offered to ship me peaches from her neighborhood farmer’s market in Austin Tx. “You cover shipping if you want,” she said, “And I’ll do the rest. It’s only fair; after all, no one should have to endure a summer without good peaches if other people have them.”

She did send the peaches. A whole 3 lbs worth, along with some bonus tomatoes. I was so excited when they arrived on Friday that I took pictures of them, and stared at them sitting on my counter for about 10 minutes before I rolled out my pie crust and made my long awaited pie.

Aside from the fact that I have really missed fresh peaches in the summer while living out here, what delighted me most about my Twitter peach adventure was the spontaneous generosity of this person hundreds of miles away. Who looked at what she had, and said, “Oh! I can help with that. Let me give something, because I have that, and you need it.”

It’s the impulse upon which the Reign of God is founded. The acknowledgement that what we have, everything we are in the present moment is a gift from God, and so we have to use it in God’s service, to benefit all God’s people. The churchy term for this is (brace yourself) stewardship.

Now, generally speaking, stewardship in church is associated with Fall fundraising campaigns wherein someone stands up to talk about the budget, and the importance of tithing your ten percent and so on and so forth. This is fine, but it’s not really a clear picture of stewardship. It’s, actually, about 10% of the picture.

The idea of stewardship has more to do with the young boy in today’s gospel. This kid, who arrives on the scene of this massive crowd, presumably to hear Jesus preach. And when he hears the disciples arguing about where they will find food for so many people, he volunteers what little lunch he brought. They need food, and he has some to give.

It’s not nearly enough, he doesn’t think, just a measly 5 loaves and 2 little fish for a couple thousand of your closest friends and relations, but it’s what he has to give, and when asked, he willingly volunteers it in the service of God’s people.

And lo and behold, in the hands of Jesus, it turns out to be plenty for everyone.

The boy was a good steward of his resources.

King David, on the other hand… King David goes down in history as the best, greatest, most fantastic king that Israel ever had. It’s worth noting that the unified kingdom of Israel had exactly two kings: David and Solomon, so his competition for this honor really isn’t that intense.

However, David gets all the glory for being God’s favorite king In Spite Of this story we read today. In this story we read today, David is being awful.

He comes home from a war, looks out from his bedroom window, and sees a nice-looking lady across the street. And then, he promptly uses every resource at his disposal to get what he wants. He alone.

He forcibly marries Bathsheba, he tries to manipulate her poor husband into sleeping with her, when that doesn’t work, he gets him killed. The whole episode is about David using every tool in his toolkit to get what David wants, to the very real harm–and even the death–of others who have been entrusted to his care.

He’s their king! He’s explicitly their steward– he’s supposed to use his power to take care of his people. And instead, this has become all about him.

Now, this episode with Bathsheba will haunt David for the rest of his life– in the next chapter, his court prophet even crafts this lovely parable for him and yells at him about it.

But for us, we rarely get visits from prophets to call us to task so explicitly. Hopefully we are not sending folks off to die for our own ends, either.

But we do perhaps, like David, fall into the trap of believing that our power, our resources are ours. And if we hurt someone, or if we have the power to help someone and don’t, well, that’s just the way it goes. What we have is ours to do with as we please, as will best benefit us, and us alone.

That belief, tempting though it is, does not befit stewards of God’s reign, and followers of Jesus. Which is what each and every one of us is called to be. We, like the little boy, are called to work with Jesus, to follow in his footsteps and help him miraculously bring forth his kingdom here. We’re called to throw all we have been given into that project–talents, power, privilege, resources, even money.

Because that’s why God gave it to us in the first place– so that we could be coworkers with him. It’s what we say every week at the offertory– at 8am we say “all things come of thee, o Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”. At 10am, we sing it. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

In each case, we affirm again, every week, that what we have, and what we give, is a gift from God, that we try to use to the benefit of God’s people and God’s creation.

We are stewards of God, coworkers with Jesus. In charge of all this. And that is an enormous responsibility, but an enormous gift, too. Think of how that little boy must have felt, when he saw his meager gift, his little lunch! turned into sustenance for so many. He got to participate in a miracle, just because he showed up, and volunteered what he had.

So, the question for us is: what miracle are you going to volunteer for?

Amen.

Last week, I was feeling so proud of myself, having written about 2/3rds of my sermon by Friday afternoon.

Then, like most every other preacher out there, I woke up Saturday morning, saw the news, and promptly chucked the whole thing.

I tell my students that ordination did not give me super powers.  It certainly never gave me the Hallmark-esque power of What Perfect Thing to Say When the World Ceases to Make Sense.  But, as my wise preaching professor used to say, you still have to say something.

So I said this.

July 22, 2012

Ordinary Time, Proper 11

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Something funny happens to people when they’re exhausted. With kids,

it’s easy to spot. Babies have a special cry when they’re tired that adults

learn to pick out– and plop the kid down for a nap. With toddlers, there’s

that glassy look in the eye, and every little thing becomes a fight.

But with older people, with actual adults, exhaustion takes varied forms.

Forgetfulness can set in. There was a stretch in seminary where I locked

myself out of my apartment 5 days in a row. Snappishness can set in, or

you can go the other way, and suddenly, everything can become very

funny. And you find yourself laughing over the dumbest jokes ever.

And then, soon after, you find yourself collapsed in a little heap.

And unlike being a toddler, when you’re an adult, generally speaking, there

isn’t anyone looking over your shoulder to hand you a juice box and send

you off for a nap, before you completely crash either yourself or something

else. In fact, as folks who have grown past toddler stage, many of us sort

of resent the idea that we might need a break at all.

Because we’re grown ups! We’re self sufficient! We need no help, we’re

indestructible, rest, reflection, time out is for lesser mortals than we, we’re

fine!

We’re Fine. Always Fine. Keep going. Stiff upper lip and soldier on. Keep

calm and carry on, as those signs say.

But watch Jesus and the disciples this week. In the past few gospel stories

now, Jesus has been attempting to take a break. The man is tired out.

Now, he has welcomed back the disciples that he had sent out to preach

and heal in his name, the disciples who have gone out and done all this for

the first time.

Now they are back, full of stories and experiences. Some good, some not

so good. It’s the first mission of the church– a trial run, sort of, and here’s

the debrief.

And Jesus says– Come away by yourselves, to rest and pray.

Take a break! Think about what you’ve seen, and done, and take a

moment. It’s ok, to take a moment, before rushing on to the next thing.

Because, otherwise, how will you know how to continue? If you don’t rest,

and reflect and take a moment? The work of ministry, the work Jesus calls

us to is too big, and too complicated to be done quickly and without

thought. Living in the world, Actually, is too complicated to be done without

reflection, or care, or pause for rest. It’s too complex and shaded with grey.

If we are forever charging forward with no time to listen to God, or listen to

each other, or listen to our own hearts, we cannot do the work we are

called to as Christians.

There’s this comment, in the text, about Jesus’ reaction when he sees the

crowd before him– he saw them harassed and helpless, like sheep without

a shepherd, so he has compassion on them.

How often do we ignore the signs of our own exhaustion– be it physical,

emotional or spiritual, and just charge ahead? How often do we end up like

the crowd, harassed and helpless and tired, but milling about, still, because

we just don’t want to rest?

Rest, prayer, contemplation– these things aren’t luxuries. They’re

necessities for people of faith. They are how we gain strength to work in a

confusing and unruly world. They are how we stay in close relationship

with the God who sends us out into this world. They are our daily bread.

Trying to go for long without does not make us superheros; it makes us

weaker.

Especially in weeks like this one, when we stare into the face of loss, the

horrific tragedy in Aurora– it becomes so easy, it becomes tempting to

charge ahead without reflection, or contemplation. To be the first to blame,

or to explain away what happened. To cover the gaping hole of loss with a

lot of words.

That’s easy to do. But harder, I think, to pause. To take a breath and reach

out to the God who suffers with the suffering, and mourns with the

mourning. And who surrounds all of us with a love more powerful than

even death.

The evil that destroyed the lives of so many people in a movie theater

Friday night cannot be papered over by any quick and easy explanation,

however much we might want to, just to make it stop. But all of our words

and solutions won’t make it stop and won’t help the pain and confusion.

The only thing that ever stops evil, really really stops evil, is the love of

God. God’s love, cutting through our exhaustion and confusion, and our

easy solutions. It doesn’t bring back the lives that were lost, but it does

bring redemption and healing into even the most painful times in our lives.

And the way we let that happen is to ask for it. To be open to the Christ

who cared for the helpless crowd, and who cares for us, and not be so

hasty to charge ahead with our own solutions.

Wait. Rest and pray. And the Jesus who had compassion on that crowd

back then, will surely have compassion on Aurora today, and on us too, and

will show us how to have better compassion and love for each other.

Amen.