Lauren Stanley

Come and see

February 12, 2012 by Lauren Stanley

John 1:29-42

The man was walking alongside the river late one night, trying to get from one place to the next, neither of them being home, but needing to keep going. It was a cold night, clear and crisp, with the stars shining brightly above him and the waters flowing smoothly beside him and the path laid out easily below him. Other people were walking that path beside the river with him, people also intent on getting from one place to the next, hoping that they could end their journeys for the day sooner rather than later, for no one likes to be out at night, especially when they were not at home.

And then the man heard the young men in the group ahead of him singing, singing songs loudly and joyfully (what, he thought, was there to be joyful about on this night, when it seemed so dark and life was getting more difficult with each rising of the sun?), praising God (which God? he wondered) and telling some sort of story with their songs (what story? he wanted to know).

The man continued to walk along, following these singers, feeling better for hearing them but not understanding why.

Finally, he asked the young men: Who are you singing about? What God are you praising? What is the meaning of this joyful music? What do you have to be happy about? (For the man was hearing these songs and asking these questions at the very end of a long and brutal war, a war in which his people suffered mightily at the hands of a greater and very oppressive enemy.)

And then the young men began to speak, to tell the story of another young man, from a place very far away in a land barely known to them. They told of how angels had appeared in the sky, singing, “Glory to God on high.” They told of how this one young man was God’s Anointed One, the Messiah, who would save their people, who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, who made the lame not just walk but leap like deer, who raised people from the dead, who fed the hungry and who filled their hearts with joy … with love … and most of all, with hope. And they told him, “Whatever you are looking for, you will find it in this man from this faraway land.”

As the young men spoke, the man’s heart was filled with that love, and he began to feel the joy and for the first time in a very long time, he began to believe that he, too, would find hope in a world that for so very long had seemed so very hopeless.

Then he asked them, “Where are you staying?”

And they replied, “Come and see.”

So he went and he saw and he heard and he believed. All night long, they talked and sang and prayed, and before the sun came up on the new morning, the man who had been walking alongside the river on a very dark night believed. He had not seen the man who gave such promise to the world, he did not know the whole story, and yet … he knew enough, enough to believe. He continued to learn the story from the youths, and he went to church, and three years later, he was baptized, and seven years after that, he was confirmed, and then he, too, became an evangelist, he, too, became the one walking along the river, singing the songs, and one day, years later, he became a priest.

And now he is the one who tells the story and gives people hope, and he is the one who teaches and preaches and pastors and baptizes and marries and buries the people.

All because one night, one cold, crisp Christmas Eve night, in the deepest part of South Sudan, walking alongside the River Nile, he heard Christmas songs being sung and the Christmas story being told, and when the young men said to him, “Come and see,” he went and saw and he believed.

• • •

The group gathered on the dock by the Bay of Gonave in Haiti, looking across the 2-mile stretch of open water to the Isle of Gonave. They were going, some for the first time, to see the tiny church of St. Simon and St. Jude in a village precariously perched atop one of the island’s mountain ridges, a church that only a year before had been but a dream but now was ready to be consecrated.

Normally, the trip across the bay came via a two-hour ferry ride, but on this day, a non-governmental organization was loaning the use of a speedboat to take the group across. Forty minutes later, they landed on the island, a fairly desolate place smack dab in the craw of the western end of the island of Hispaniola, where in 1492, Christopher Columbus had sailed the ocean blue and landed, bringing Christianity with him.

Somewhere on the heights of Gonave was a tiny village, if it even could be called that, known as Platon Balai, a wind-swept place of rocks and scrub brush, with little fresh water, little arable land and a population of hardy souls who for years had wanted a church of their own but had no way to build one. Until a group of Christians arrived – some from Arkansas, some from Georgia. Over the years, a medical clinic had been built nearby. Then a school room. And now, finally, after intense story-telling followed by even more intense fund-raising followed by incredibly hard work, a church had been built, a real church, made of concrete blocks with a tin roof well secured to withstand the storms and hurricanes that routinely attacked Haiti.

All the people needed now was the Bishop of Haiti to come to consecrate St. Simon and St. Jude, the bishop to come and bless the place and the people, to celebrate a Eucharist and baptize and confirm.

So he came, this Bishop, who once had served as the priest on the island, caring for the few thousand hardy souls who lived there, planting parishes without church buildings, organizing the people, praying with them and for them. The bishop led the group of Americans over the water by speedboat, then across the island on sorry excuses for roads and paths in borrowed SUVs for two hours, and then on foot on a meandering path that cut back and forth through the brush and up the mountain for another hour until the donkeys that had been rented finally caught up, and then by donkey ride up the rest of the mountain for yet another hour.

“We go,” the bishop said, “where the people are. If we need to drive for two hours, then walk for an hour, then ride a donkey for another hour, that is what we do. We go,” he said, “to the people, and the church grows.”

At the summit, the group was greeted by 100 or so of the members of St. Simon and St. Jude, proudly showing off their new church, which they had built with their own hands, funded by churches – Episcopal, Presbyterian and Anglican – in Arkansas and Georgia. Those Americans had come to Haiti to meet the people, to listen to them. They had come and they had seen, and they had believed, and now, five years later, after multiple trips, after working hand in hand with the people of Gonave, they were here again, to see the fruits of their labors.

• • •

Come and see.

This is what Jesus said to the two disciples, Andrew and another, who were disciples of John the Baptizer, who had proclaimed Jesus as God’s Chosen One, as the Lamb of God, and who wanted to know where Jesus was staying.

Come and see.

If we want to live the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the same Gospel that called Andrew and then Simon and then the other disciples, and then the 3,000 and then Paul, and then the untold numbers who came after Paul, the same Gospel that eventually called those young men who sang as they walked along the river that Christmas Eve night in 1973, the same Gospel that called Father Paulo, the same Gospel that called the people of island of Gonave in Haiti, the same Gospel that called the people of Arkansas and Georgia … if you want to live that Gospel, all of these people say to you: Come and see.

Come and see the Gospel as it lives in places where the people have nothing else, where war and oppression and famine and disease and nature itself claim their lives in untold numbers, where despite the hardship of their lives, the people believe. They believe in the man who came from a small village in a despised place, the man who walked the land as they walked the land, who came to them and lived with them and blessed them, even though the powers and principalities told them, day after day, that they were not blessed.

Come and see your brothers and sisters in Christ in Sudan and Haiti, who are related to you not by the blood of their birth but by the waters of their baptism, because it is only when you have seen, with your eyes and with your hearts and with your souls, the tragedies that are their lives that you can see, with your eyes, and with your hearts and with your souls, how alive they are in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

For the Gospel is alive – in places like Sudan, now split into two countries, where the wars that raged for five decades continue to this day; in places like Haiti, where four hurricanes in five weeks in 2008 was just the way life was, where a devastating earthquake in 2010 took the lives of 300,000 people and displaced another 1 million people – one-tenth of the population, in 38 seconds.

Your siblings in Christ are beckoning you: Come and see the Gospel come alive in their parishes, their schools, their villages. Come and see the Gospel come alive in their church-run schools, where all the children are given the education that the state denies them, because they are poor or from the wrong tribe or speak another language.

Come and see the Gospel come alive in their church-run clinics, where every single person who comes in for treatment is treated with dignity, even if they cannot pay.

Come and see the Gospel come alive in their evangelism revivals, where they preach the love of God in Christ Jesus to all of the people and proclaim God’s peace, which passes all understanding, and God’s justice, which rolls down like waters, and God’s reconciliation, which brings about God’s kingdom on this earth.

Come and see the Gospel come alive when your brothers and sisters in Christ proclaim God’s hope, in lands where the powers that be long ago proclaimed that for the poor and the destitute, for the people from the wrong tribe or ethnicity, that there was no hope from generation to generation.

Your Sudani siblings in Christ and your Haitian siblings in Christ join together to beg you:

Come.

And see. And believe.

For the Gospel is alive and well in Sudan and in Haiti, and they want you to know this. They want you to know this because they believe that if you know this, if you see it, with your eyes and with your hearts and with your souls, then you will be, as they are, empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the greatest thing of all:

You, like they, will spread the love of God to all of God’s beloved children.

You, like they, will spread that love – that undefined yet powerful love – that captured Andrew and caused him to bring along Simon, who was to be called Cephas, which means Peter; the love that captured Paul and made him an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God; the love that on Christmas Eve 1973 captured your brother in Christ Paulo Ajang Thiel Lual; the love that captured the people on the island of Gonave in Haiti; the love that captured the people from Arkansas and Georgia, causing them to travel thousands of miles, by air, by water, by car, by foot, by donkey.

If this is what we do – if this is what we all do, spreading God’s love to those who are far off and those who are near, here in Newtown and there in Sudan and there in Haiti and everywhere in between – then we indeed will change the world, we indeed will bring about God’s kingdom here on earth.

Spreading God’s love, proclaiming God’s love, living God’s love … this is what we are called to do. It’s what they are striving and sometimes even dying to do in Sudan. It is what they are striving and sometimes even dying to do in Haiti.

Which is why they want you … to come … and see.

Amen.

Sermon preached at Newtown United Methodist Church, Newtown, Pa., 12 February 2012, Year B.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Featured Story, Mission, Scriptures, Sermons Tagged With: Disciples, Gospel of John, Haiti, Mission, Sudan

Occupy God!

December 27, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Luke 2:1-20

In the summer of 1992, I was blessed to go to the Barcelona Olympics, to serve as an editor at that great sporting and cultural events. To do my job properly, I had to lug along one whole extra suitcase filled with reference books not for sports, but for the world – because this was in the days before the Internet, when Google wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s mind.

The summer of 1992 was the culmination of some of the wildest three years in history. The Berlin Wall had come down, the Germanies were united, and the Soviet Union had collapsed. The map of the world was changing so fast we could barely figure out who was competing for what country, how old that country might be, which flags and anthems went with which new country, and who led each new nation. I swear to you that I was the only editor present who knew that Nursultan Nazarbayev was the president of the new country of Kazakstan.

Revolutions had made the world go crazy. Everything we knew – everything we had grown up with – was topsy-turvy, and it took that extra suitcase of books just to be able to edit a basic sports story.

We thought we would never see the likes of this confusion again.

Until this year.

When once again, the world turned upside down. Starting with the death of a vegetable-cart owner named Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, we have seen the people of numerous lands rise up, dictators fall, civil wars break out – and in some cases, end – and, just like the late 1980s and early ’90s, confusion reigns.

The world once again has gone crazy with revolution, which eventually landed on our own shores, in the form of Occupy movement that started on Wall Street and spread like wildfire from city to city and across the ocean to London and cities throughout Europe and even, shockingly, to Russia.

The one thing that all these revolutions – those two decades ago, and those this past year – all have in common?

The dream of a better life.

The knowledge that life indeed can be different, that all it take is the unwavering conviction that if enough of us stand up, if enough of us band together, if enough of us can occupy the attention of the world, the attention of the powers and principalities that be, if enough of us work for the common good, we can change the world.

And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Changing the world?

Isn’t that why Jesus came? To show us that the world can be different, that life can be different, that it doesn’t have to be dog-eat-dog, I’ve-got-mine-and-I-don’t-care-if-you-ever-get-yours, that life itself can be better?

This is Christmas, my friends, the night when we celebrate anew the fact that God decided to become one of us. This isn’t like the 4^th of July, when we commemorate the signing of the Declaration of the Independence. And it isn’t like a celebration of a birthday, where someone asks, “So … what’s it feel like to be (fill in your own age)?”

We aren’t just remembering an event that took place long ago!

This night, my friends … this night is about God making a revolution in our lives!

This is the night when God comes down to occupy the world, to occupy us.[1] As the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, said recently,

Christmas doesn’t commemorate the birth of a super-good person who shows us how to get it right every time, but the arrival in the world of someone who tells us that everything can be different. [2]

Everything … can … be … different!

That’s the true meaning of Christmas … that God is occupying us, whispering in our ears, “Life can be different, my child. Life, my beloved, can be better.”

God is willing, despite our faults and shortcomings and willfulness, to occupy us … because God loves us … each of us and all of us, wildly, incredibly, inexplicably and eternally.

It doesn’t make much sense, when we look at the world around us, when we look at how we treat that world … when we look at each other and look at how we treat each other some days.

But … despite every indication to the contrary, God still comes to us … this night … in a revolution of love, to occupy us.

And all God asks in return is that we occupy God.

Jesus came to be with us … as a little baby boy … born in a manger (which, I have to tell you, was not and to this day is not, that unusual) … so that we could, at last, see God in the flesh, see God living and moving and having his being among us as one of us, so that we could, through God’s incredible Occupy Movement, know that indeed, the world can be a better place.

If only we are willing to occupy God.

Now, I warn you, occupying God is not an easy thing to do. God occupying us? Piece of cake. God has occupied us from before time began, God is occupying us right this very second, in this very place, and God will continue to occupy us … whether we like it or not, know it or not, acknowledge it or not … until the ages of ages.

But us …. occupying God?

That’s a whole ’nother bailiwick.

Because to occupy God, we have to be willing to set aside all our own wants and needs and desires and demands. We have to be willing set aside our version of truth, and claim God’s version of truth.

If we want to occupy God, we’re going to have to let … go …

If we really want to see the great light that is shining upon us, if we really yearn to increase our joy, if we really desire to experience the endless peace that comes only from the Lord of hosts, we are going to have to move out of the darkness that envelops us – and Lord knows, in this day and age, with revolutions happening all around us all the time, we are engulfed in darkness – if this is what we really want, we are going to have to leave that darkness behind, and embrace that Light that God is sending into the world, into our lives, right here. And right now.

The salvation we so desperately desire in our own lives does not come from us. It is not ours to decide, ours to give, ours to take away. Salvation, we know – and in our best moments we do know this – salvation comes from God alone.

So on this night, when God comes to occupy us in the form of a little baby boy, on this night, this is what I want you to do:

I want you to look around at the people gathered here tonight … at your loved ones and your friends, at the people sitting next to you and in front of you and in back of you and across the church from you, at the choir and acolytes and lay ministers up here, at the ushers in the back … I want you to look at each person here.

I want you to look for God Incarnate – for Jesus, for the Christ child – occupying every single person here.

Go ahead.

Look.

Do you see the Word that became flesh among you? Do you see God occupying not just yourselves, but each other?

If not, look again.

And again.

And yet again.

I want you to look until you do see Jesus … occupying each and every person here.

And when you leave this place tonight, I want you to look for God occupying every single person you meet … the other people on the road, scurrying to or from a service. The FedEx and UPS folks, hurrying to deliver one more present … the clerk at the store … the neighbor whose name you do not yet know …

I want you to look at every single person you meet, every person whose path you cross, not just this night, but every night, and I want you to see God Incarnate in each one of those people.

Only when we spend our time looking for God Incarnate – for Jesus – occupying each other, only then do we truly occupy God ourselves.

It is a revolutionary thing to occupy God as God occupies us … greater than any revolution in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union three decades ago, greater than any revolution taking place this very day.

Because when we decide to occupy God, we … change … the … world. We worry less about ourselves … and more about each other. We give grace … and we get grace. We see God’s love in each other … as we give God’s love to each other … as we receive God’s love from each other.

This is Christmas, my friends, the night when more than any other night in our lives, God comes to occupy us, in the form of the Christ child.

Look for that Christ child occupying each other, look for that occupation and honor that occupation, and I guarantee you, we will indeed be occupying God.

And when we do occupy God, I guarantee you this as well, the world will be a better place.

Let us pray:

How may God’s Love take shape in our world?

In dreams which move us to risk compassion for each other …

In a vision of a community whole and peace-filled …

In hope, which leads us to work for peace …

Lord of Hosts, King of Kings,

Occupy us … wholly, fully, eternally,

So that we may occupy you … wholly, fully, and eternally in return.

Amen.

Christmas Eve 2011 sermon preached at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Burke, Va., 5 p.m. service (a variation of this was preached at the 3 p.m. service.)

[1] “God’s occupation of the world in Jesus Christ.” The Rev. Michael T. Sniffen, priest-in-charge of the Episcopal Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn, New York, arrested Saturday, 17 Dec 2011, at Duarte Square (the property owned by Trinity Wall Street), along with a retired bishop, numerous other clergy, and scores of laity for trespassing. (via The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Keaton, “No Time For Anglican Circumspection,” Telling Secrets, http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/2011/12/no-time-for-anglican-circumspection.html

[2]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070448/Jesus-St-Pauls-protestors-Christmas-says-Archbishop-Canterbury.html

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Featured Story, Sermons Tagged With: 1992 Summer Olympics, Christmas, Luke 2:1-20, Occupy God, Occupy Movement, Occupy Us, Revolution, Rowan Williams

Suck it up! Deal with it!

December 12, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Mark 1:1

Good old Mark – he never misses a chance to beat us over the head with the obvious, does he?

I once sat in a theology class with one of the most respected theologians of the Church, Bishop Mark Dyer, shortly after he came to Virginia Seminary.

“The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” he intoned.

We all looked at him blankly.

“The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” he repeated, giving us one of his sterner looks.

More blank looks.

“Who said that?” he asked.

Even more blank stares.

“Which Gospel begins this way?” he asked, rather urgently.

(Now, this was before the advent of the Internet, so none of us could surreptitiously Google the quote … and none of us felt comfortable ostentatiously taking out our Bibles to check the Gospels riki-tik.)

“Mark!” he said. “Mark opens his Gospel this way! Why? So you don’t miss the point of the whole story! Jesus is the Good News! Jesus is the Son of God!”

We can all giggle about this now, because we just heard the beginning of Mark’s Gospel read right here in this place.

But the fact is, when we think about the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, we think of John the Baptist, because Mark jumps right there.

The fact is, we tend to miss the beginning of each Gospel, which is a shame, because every beginning is important.

Look at those other Gospels. Matthew gives you a big boring genealogy (how many of you have ever read that? You should, you know, because there’s pretty important news buried in there, like the fact that a harlot is one of Jesus’ ancestors). Because Matthew wants you to know that Jesus is descended from the right people.

Luke? Bet you think it starts with the Annunciation, don’t you? But it doesn’t. It starts with a note to “most excellent Theophilus,” with Luke’s explanation that he’s going to write “an orderly account … so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” (I’m guessing you skip over that part, too, don’t you?) Luke wants you to know his version is true.

And then there’s John, my beloved John, who speaks poetry: En archē ēn ho Lógos, kai ho Lógos ēn pros ton Theón, kai Theós ēn ho Lógos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? But it needs a lot of unpacking to understand that John is going beyond even in the beginning …

And Mark?

You don’t need to unpack Mark, because he just slams you upside the head with his baseball-bat Gospel:

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

You know what this means, don’t you?

It means that we know, right from the beginning, that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the one for whom God’s chosen people had been waiting.

Mark’s message: No more waiting! It’s done! Suck it up! Deal with it!

Mark makes sure that you are never in doubt as to what’s going on, never wondering what something means.

Because Mark doesn’t have time to mess around! He doesn’t bother with little things like birth stories or angel’s visits or pretty words.

He gets right to the point, so much so that he can say: “Look, Ma, no Verb!”[1]

Mark is immediate (he uses the word 42 times in his short Gospel). He’s urgent. He wants to give us the Good News – the Gospel – of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God because there is no time to waste … so listen up!

And isn’t that what we need right now, on this Second Sunday of Advent?

Isn’t it nice to have some urgency not for buying and wrapping and partying, but for God? And for God’s marvelous news that God is with us? That God loves us so much that God is willing to be one of us, so that we can see God, and touch God, and hear God (not through the prophets but directly), and smell God, and yes, even taste God?

Isn’t it good for our souls to have someone knock us upside the head and say, Pay attention!!!

Because really … we don’t pay enough attention to God, do we? Especially right now, when society is pushing us relentlessly toward a vision of Christmas that really isn’t about God, but about ourselves, and our wants and our needs.

Mark doesn’t stand for that kind of faith. Over and over again in his telling of the Good News, Mark urgently says: It’s not about us. It’s about God.

Suck it up! Deal with it!

Just look at what happens in Mark’s story as soon as he’s delivered that Good News to us:

He starts talking about John the Baptist, whose whole message is that he must decrease so that Jesus (“the one who is more powerful than I is coming after me”) may increase.

“I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals,” he announces to all those – and I do mean all those who have come out to see him – “the people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” – thinking that perhaps he was the Messiah for whom they waited.

And if John can decrease, if John can be so humble, if John can say (and this would be a paraphrase, mind you): “It’s not about me, it’s about God!”[2] can’t we do the same?

That’s what Advent is about, my friends. Putting God first.

So, really. Mark’s urgency is a gift to us in this season of waiting. Because we’ve more or less forgotten how to wait. We’ve forgotten how to be attentive. We’ve forgotten how to put God first in everything we do.

I know, I know: According to society, it’s Christmastime. (I’m pretty certain that the business world has no idea that Advent even exists, much less what it means.)

Let’s be honest: At this time of year, we all have a bit of the child in us, with dreams of getting the coolest gifts and giving the bestest gifts, of family gatherings that are filled with nothing but laughter and joy, of roaring fires on cold nights, and of cookies … lots and lots of cookies. It’s what we want for Christmas.

So it’s easy to get sucked into the Christmas urgency that society foists upon us.

But Mark?

Mark’s urgency doesn’t focus on Jesus’ birth story.

Mark’s urgency focuses on Jesus’ story.

Mark wants us to know, in no uncertain terms, whether we want to know it or not, whether we like it or not, that our lives were – and are – and ever will be – irrevocably changed by Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

In short, Mark is telling us repeatedly: Deal with it!

Deal with the fact that God is here among us. That God loves us. That God calls us to love one another.

Deal with the fact that God wants our attention … this day and every day.

Deal with the fact that the Jesus is the Son of God and that this is all the good news we are ever going to need.

My friends, we have 21 more days of Advent.

And in this Advent season, Mark has a message for us:

Get urgent about God.

Now.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the Second Sunday of Advent, Year B, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Blue Grass, Va., 4 December 2011.

[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber, [TheHardestQuestion], “Go Ahead, Judge a Book by Its Title,” http://thehardestquestion.org/yearb/advent2gospel-2/#more-2123.

[2] Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, The Geranium Farm, The Almost Daily eMo, “The Courage to Yield,” http://www.geraniumfarm.org/dailyemo.cfm?Emo=1371.

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Filed Under: Featured Story, Sermons Tagged With: Advent, Good News, Jesus' birth story, Mark, Son of God, Urgency

Now thank we all our God …

December 12, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

In the early 1600s, Europe was torn asunder by the Thirty Years’ War, a war that began because of religious intolerance between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire and devolved into a power play involving most of the European powers. It was one of the most destructive wars ever in European history.[1]

The walled city of Eilenburg, Saxony, was a flash-point in that war. The town changed hands repeatedly, and was filled with refugees fleeing the destruction.

Toward the end of the war, in 1636, Swedish forces laid siege to the town. Famine and plague soon added to the miseries of the people. According to history reports, “there was a tremendous strain on the pastors, who conducted dozens of funerals daily.” Finally, all of the pastors died but one, a Lutheran named Martin Rinkart.

“During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart conducted as many as 50 funerals per day;” he performed more than four thousand funerals that year, including that of his wife.[2]

“When the Swedes demanded a huge ransom, Rinkart left the safety of the walls to plead for mercy. The Swedish commander, impressed by his faith and courage, lowered his demands. Soon afterwards, the Thirty Years’ War ended.”[3]

Rinkart was known as a writer of hymns – when he found time, I have no idea. You would think that he wrote hymns of lament, hymns of rage against God, hymns of desperation. But he didn’t. Instead, he wrote one hymn in particular, that was a celebration of God, that was a hymn of praise, a hymn of gratitude.

(Sing)

Now thank we all our God,

With heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things have done,

In whom the world rejoices …

“Who wondrous things have done?”

“In whom the world rejoices?”

Really?

After surviving decades of war … after burying four thousand people in one year … after burying his own wife … Rinkart wrote a hymn that celebrates God’s wondrous acts?

(Sing)

Who from our mothers’ arms

Has blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love,

And still is ours today.

Rinkart is the author of the hymn we still sing today, the hymn we sing especially today, on Thanksgiving, celebrating all the good things in our lives, all the bounty, all the blessings.

He didn’t have much to celebrate, when you think about it. He had seen a terrible war, had survived the plague and famine, had buried thousands in one year alone, had buried his wife ….

And still … he thanked God.

As we gather today for our celebration of Thanksgiving, Rinkart serves as a model of what it means to truly place God at the center of our lives, the center of our celebrations. He teaches us how to praise God, even in the darkest moments of our lives.

We live in what many are calling dark times, my friends. War, the economy, unemployment … uncertain about our future together, and our futures individually.

We live in a time when we aren’t certain we can see beyond the next few days and weeks, when the next few months seem opaque, and the new few years seem … well, we can’t even see that far, can we?

And because of all this uncertainty, because of all our anxieties, our fears, our anger, our frustration, we find it hard to praise God. We find it hard to thank God.

We are so much more comfortable raging against the fates and each other, aren’t we? Just listen to talk radio and partisan TV … listen to and read about the candidates running for public office, and those who already are serving, none of whom can seem to pass up a chance to attack each other, to denigrate each other, to make sly comments about each other.

We have Occupy Wall Street and K Street and Oakland and Portland and dozens of other places, demanding reform in this country for the 99 percent … and so many of us are in that 99 percent … but where’s the outrage for the rest of the world? Where’s the acknowledgement that we who are the 99 percent in this country are the top 15 percent (or better) in the rest of the world?

We feel besieged …

And in that feeling, we lose sight of God … of God’s blessings … of God’s love … of God’s grace.

Until we listen again to the words of a Lutheran pastor who truly was besieged in a walled city in Saxony in 1637, and who despite the atrocities he witnessed, still found the time, the heart, the voice to praise God.

I want to remind you today: We are Anglicans, and as Anglicans, we pray what we believe, and we believe what we pray.

Meaning: Even in our darkest hours, we are called to thank God (even when we can’t identify that for which we are grateful).

We are called to give grace, even when we don’t feel grace-filled.

We are called to receive grace, even when we are not certain grace is being given.

If we at least say we are grateful, one day, we will be thankful.

If we at least say we are giving grace, one day, we truly will give grace.

If we at least say we are receiving grace, one day, we truly will receive it.

And if we remember nothing else this day – because of our uncertainties, our fears, our anger – if we remember nothing else, remember this:

We are blessed.

Because we are loved.

The God whom we frequently forget to thank? Still loves us.

The God against whom and to whom we rage? Still loves us.

And not only does God love us, God loves everybody else as well.

At the end of the Thirty Years’ War, Martin Rinkart had little to celebrate. His friends, his family, his congregation, along with thousands of others, were dead. But still … he gave thanks.

Because he knew, in his heart and in his spirit, that God was with him, and that God loved him.

On this day of Thanksgiving, I pray we can remember the lesson that Rinkart gives us, the lesson that says, despite all the darkness, there is the light of God’s love in our lives, because

God truly does love us. Every single one of us.

And for that, we truly can give thanks … this day, and always.

Amen.

A sermon preached on Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 2011, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Burke, Va.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years’_War

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_Thank_We_All_Our_God

[3] http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/n/o/nowthank.htm

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Tales from the communion of saints …

November 7, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Today is All Saints’ Sunday, the day when we celebrate the saints of God who have gone before us, the saints of God who are among us still, and the saints of God that we hope to be.

And what better way to celebrate the saints than to tell stories about them?

Our first story took place two weeks ago near Doswell, Va. For those of you who don’t know where that is, think Kings Dominion.

On Sunday, Oct. 23, an 8-year-old boy, Robert Wood Jr., visited the North Anna Battlefield Park near King’s Dominion with his family. Robert, severely autistic and unable to communicate with others, ran away from his family in mid-afternoon; within hours, hundreds of professionals were scouring the 2,000-acre park for him.

The searchers looked all day Sunday and all Sunday night. They called for volunteers, who turned out by the hundreds, and searched all day Monday. And through Monday night. They searched Tuesday and Tuesday night. Wednesday. Thursday. And still they didn’t find him.

Six thousand people volunteered to help in that search – 6,000, from as far away as Alaska and Florida, showed up to be trained in search techniques, to learn about autism, and to comb the hills and gullies, to struggle through the brambles, to scan trees and fields, looking for this boy.

There were reports of grandmothers from Pennsylvania joining the search, because they have autistic grandchildren themselves, and they couldn’t stand the idea of their own grandchildren being lost in a wilderness.

People took time off from their jobs and drove miles to participate … because they cared.

They didn’t know the child. They didn’t know the family. For the most part, they didn’t know the area.

Yet they showed up.

Because a little boy with severe autism was all alone, lost in a park, and not one person could stand to think of him like that.

I didn’t show up until the sixth day – I honestly thought that Robert would have been found by then. I’ve never participated in a mass search before and wasn’t certain I could be of much help. But I went … because, just like those other 6,000 volunteers, I cared about a child I didn’t know and to this day have never met.

When I first arrived, I found hundreds of people standing in line, quietly, not saying a word. Have you ever been to an event, stood in a line with hundreds of other people, that was as quiet as church?

Well, I’m an extrovert, so after about 10 minutes of silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Does anyone remember,” I asked, “where they parked their cars?”

For the next four hours, we stood in line as the temperature dropped and the snow came and went, hoping to get a chance to go into the field to search for Robert. We talked about all kinds of things, including why we were there (because we cared), what we hoped to accomplish (find the child) and what we feared (none of us wanted to be the one to find Robert’s body).

While we waited, volunteers brought us Starbucks coffee and Dunkin Donuts coffee and 7-Eleven coffee. They brought us fresh Krispy Kreme donuts, and fruit and granola bars and even Burger King breakfasts. They had tons of food donated by local organizations; some of the volunteers spent all their time taking care of those who were going into the field, and those coming back from the search.

Finally, we reached the registration tent, where I was asked the oddest question: Do you have a title?

“Well, sure,” I said. “It’s ‘the Reverend.’ I’m an Episcopal priest.” There seemed to be some people there not used to women priests, so I added, “I can be a chaplain.”

“Make sure you tell your team leader that when you get into the field,” the registration people told me.

“Cool!” I thought. “I’m going into the field!”

Then we were trained in searching and in how to approach an autistic child – because each autistic child is unique. Robert, we were told, could not communicate much beyond saying, “Ba ba ba ba.” He didn’t like to be touched – apparently it felt as though someone were drawing razors across his skin. He didn’t like strangers. And he had never been alone this long before.

Finally, they took us by bus out to an area to search for Robert. As I got off the bus, I told our team leader, a professional firefighter who’s also a Marine sergeant in the Reserves, that I was a priest and could serve as a chaplain if they need me.

And then we began to search.

Now, if you’ve never done this before, there are rules for it. You line up about this far apart (arms outstretched) and your search area is only the area in front of you. You don’t look left and you don’t look right, because the searchers on the left and the right are responsible for those areas. And you walk along (the team leader calls, “Step out!” and frankly, all of us were worried about stepping out first with our left or right foot!), looking intently at the ground, and oh, yeah, don’t forget to look up, because Robert is a climber, we were told. The area where we were searching was covered in pine trees – you know, the ones that are easy to climb with all those branches – so we had to look up and down, and struggle through fields and gullies and brambles that caught at us, and climb over barbed wire fences, and cross small streams.

We only went about half a mile before we ran into another group, searching their sector. The team leaders consulted and made some calls, and next thing we knew, we were told to turn around and search our areas again, going back to our starting point.

There we were, standing on the road with at least three other search teams, when we got the word through someone’s iPhone: Robert had been found, and he was alive! We waited until the news was confirmed, first by one TV station, then another, then another, and finally by the sheriff himself.

And then we all cried.

We all had wanted to find Robert, but we all feared being the one to find his body. Now, that fear was removed, the boy was safe, and all we could do was cry with relief.

Then the team leader came over to me and said, “You’re the chaplain, right? Can you say something?”
So I did. I told them who I was, that I was just like them – a concerned member of the community who came out to look for a boy we didn’t know, and that this was why God created us: To care for each other in community. I asked if we could pray (everyone said yes), and led us in the Lord’s Prayer (the most universal prayer in the world), which we said while a bus went down the road.

My friends, if you want to know what the communion of saints looks like, if you want to see the saints among us, just look at those 6,000 lay volunteers who showed up to look for a boy no one knew … beacuse they cared.

• • •

The second story comes to us from your local neighborhood Starbucks (and I can assure you, I am not being paid for this endorsement).

On Tuesday, on All Saints’ Day, Starbucks launched an effort to put people back to work. If you give $5 (or more), you get this lovely bracelet (show them), made in America, and every single cent of your contribution goes to the Opportunity Finance Network, an organization rather like a community bank (think, the difference between, say, a local bank like Virginia Commerce, and a national bank like Bank of America).

Howard Shultz, the CEO and founder of Starbucks, has decided that we as a country can’t wait for our government to take care of the high unemployment we face, because our elected leaders are squabbling too much and doing too little. So he’s put up $5 million of Starbucks’ money, and is asking customers to put up $5 at a time to help people get small loans so they can work, or hire others to work for them. If you have an idea for a business, or if you have a small business, you can apply to the Opportunity Finance Network for help, and they will give you that small loan, and train you and help you to grow a business and put America back to work. (http://www.opportunityfinance.net/about/)

It’s an example of the community coming together to help each other. For the price of one Carmel half-fat, no-whip, decaf Macchiato (or whatever that thing is – I don’t know, I drink tea at Starbucks), you can help someone in need get back on their feet.

It’s the communion of saints at work.

• • •

Our third story comes from Detroit, once known as the Paris of the Midwest (or as we called it when I worked for the company that owned the newspaper there, Zee Par-ee of zee Mid-wessst). The founder of Quicken Loans – not Quicken, the program you use on your computer, but Quicken Loans, where you go to get loans – is from Detroit. He grew up there, and he remembers the stories his father told him about his hometown and what it was like in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, when anyone could get a job, regardless of their race, creed or color, and move into the middle class (Detroit helped create the middle class).

But I think we all know that Detroit is not what it once was. Two decades ago, they build the Renaissance Towers there, because they wanted to have a renaissance in Detroit. But now, buildings stand empty.

So Dan Gilbert, Quicken Loans’ founder, has moved his company back into downtown Detroit, and with a group of other businessmen and leaders, he has formed an investment network to give people a chance to work and learn and hire others. If you need a place for a business, if you have an idea for small manufacturing, you can apply to this group and get help. And it’s not just money – they put you through a rigorous three-year program, training you in bookkeeping and accounting and management, and even in writing a decent sentence in English. They have the buildings and the funds, and are looking to give people a step up the ladder, so that Detroit can go through a true renaissance.

Again, the communion of saints is working together.

http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/28/best-places-11-detroit-michigan-bing-snyder-ford-conversation.html

• • •

Our final story comes from Coney Island, N.Y. Has anyone here been? I’ve never been there, but I’ve always wanted to go. It has some kind of mystical allure for me.

This story is about the Coney Island Bagel and Bialy Shop, the oldest Jewish bagel shop on Coney Island. After 91 years in business, the owners had to shut it down six weeks ago because the owner said he wasn’t making enough money and couldn’t do this anymore.

Five weeks ago, the business re-opened.

Two men in New York heard that the bagel shop was closing and couldn’t stand that idea. Turns out one of them had worked there years before when he first came to this country. So he and a friend bought the company.

Two New York cab drivers bought the shop and reopened it.

Two Muslim cab drivers.

Two Muslim New York cab drivers reopened the shop and promised to keep it kosher.

Some of the employees, who were planning to retire (because the shop was, after all, closing), have decided to stay on, to make sure that the owners know how to make kosher bagels. Another example of the communion of saints working together to take care of each other.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45165318/ns/us_news-life/#.TrQzymA7-9R

• • •

Today is All Saints’ Sunday, the day when we celebrate the saints of God who have gone before us, the saints of God who are among us, and the saints of God we hope to be.

I could have told you stories about other saints, the ones we know … Patrick and Gabriel and all the others we know and love.

But sometimes, the saints among us are those we least expect.

And those are the ones who can help us learn to be saints as well.

By focusing on our communities, by reaching out, by helping each other.

We, too, are saints of God.

If we decide we want to be.

It is All Saints’ Sunday, after all.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the Feast of All Saints’ Sunday, 6 November 2011, at St. Matthew’s, Sterling, Va.

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Why not??

October 11, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Philippians 4:1-9

OK, it is true confession time:

How many of you have something that Steve Jobs created? … How many of you have something that Steve Jobs created? iTunes? An iPod? An iPhone? An iMac? A MacBook? An iPad?

Isn’t it amazing how ubiquitous those little things are?

In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company that he had co-founded with Steve Wozniak, the company that had fired him, and within a few years of his return, our world was a different place.

First he gave us the iPod, that magical little device that carried thousands of our songs.

Two years after that, he gave us iTunes, the fastest, cheapest way and most legal way to buy those songs.

Then he gave us the iMac, the first personal computer that was not steel gray. Then he gave us the iBook. And then the MacBook. And then iPhone. And then MacBook Air. And then the iPad.

In 10 years, one decade, Steve Jobs changed the world.

You know how he did it? He managed to change the world by refusing to settle. He would not settle for seeing things as they were and asking, “Why?” Steve Jobs dreamed of the way things could be and he asked, “Why not?”[1]

“Why not?”

Now whether you are a Mac person or not – and here is my true confession: I am – you have to admit that Steve Jobs, who died last Wednesday, changed the world. He did so because he always, always, was striving for the “Why not?” He was always striving for the pure, for the pleasing, and for the commendable, and whatever he dreamed, he made happen.

In many ways, Steve Jobs emulated what the Apostle Paul charges us with this morning in his love letter to the Philippians:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Now, I know that when we are listening to Paul’s instructions, they can be somewhat Pollyanish, they can seem like they are some over-the-moon optimism that completely, completely divorces us from the reality that is our lives.

Because when we take a good hard look at our lives right now, when we take an honest look at our lives right now, we know that life is not all that great.

To quote Jim Wallis from his God’s Politics blog on Friday:

“Tomorrow, almost 14 million Americans will still be unemployed.

“Tomorrow, the homes of more than 2,500 new U.S. families will enter foreclosure.

“Tomorrow, one in seven U.S. households still will not know where their next meal is coming from.

“Tomorrow, one in four American children under the age of six will still be living below the poverty line.

“Tomorrow, three billion people around the globe will still be living on less than $2.50 a day.

“Tomorrow, 400 million children will still lack access to clean water.

“Tomorrow, 300 children under the age of five will die in the Horn of Africa because of famine.”[2]

When you paint a portrait of the world with those numbers, the situation seems bleak.

And it seems very nearly impossible to find, much less name, that which is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable. It seems even more impossible to find any excellence.

Quite frankly, when we use those numbers to paint the portrait of the world, most of us think that the world has already gone to hell in a handbasket. And that there’s not much that we can do about it.

And yet …

And yet … there is Paul, writing to us from prison, from a Roman prison, in chains, facing death and still demanding that we look for that which is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, and excellent.

Paul writes these instructions because Paul knew that all things come of God, and therefore, all things are good. Paul knew that each and every one of us comes from God, and therefore, each and every one of us is a beloved child of God.

Paul was looking at the world with God’s eyes, not with human eyes. He was not trying to advocate the “power of positive thinking.” He was not trying to get us to go with a “technique and persuasion”[3] that was Pollyanish. Instead, what he was doing was trying to show us how to fill ourselves with God so that we could go out into the world and take God’s life with us into that world. He didn’t want us to be a bunch of Pollyanas paying no attention to the truth! He was not trying to get us to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world! Or to make us pretend that there’s really nothing wrong, because “I’ve got mine and I don’t really care if other people got theirs.”

Paul is trying to get us up off our duffs and get us to go out into the world with God’s life in us and share God’s life with the world.[4]

Paul wants us to change the world.

To stop looking at things as they are and crying out, “Why, Lord, why???” and to start dreaming of things as they can be and saying, “Why not?!”

Why not?!

Why not focus on the good things and the holy things, the things that come from God and are blessed by God?

Why not build on God’s holy foundations, so that we can make the world a better place – not the guy up the street, us, so that we can make the world a better place!

Why not make the “why not’s” of our dreams and make them come to fruition?!

This is our moment, my friends.

This is our time …

It is our time to stop the negative comments that pass for conversation in our lives and to start enunciating every good, God-blessed thing that we can find in each other.

It is our time to give grace, even when nobody’s giving grace back!

It is our time to work together for the common good, not for our gain, but for the common good!

This is our time to change the way things are, so that we can make them the way they can be.

Right now, when the world seems to be in such desperate straits, when our public conversation is so nasty that we don’t even want to expose our children to it, when our leaders cannot even go one day – one day, one, measly day – without denigrating people on the other side of the aisle, right now, this is our time, this is our opportunity to change the world.

It is not enough for us to simply say, “Well, this is wrong, and this is bad, and this is awful!”

It is not enough to denounce evil, because “denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”[5]

What we have to do is dream of the way things can be and say, “Why not?”

And then go make those things happen!

And we can do this. We can focus on even the tiniest of things, that are true, that are honorable, that are just and pure and pleasing and commendable. If we spent more time looking for what is excellent and worthy of any praise, and less time looking for what we can tear down, we could make the world a better place!

This is our call.

And now is our time.

Now, is anybody here going to be the next Steve Jobs?

Anybody?

I know I’m not.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t emulate him. That doesn’t mean that I can’t dream the way that Steve Jobs dreamed. That doesn’t mean that I can’t change the world.

We have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to dare to dream … as Paul dreamed … as Jobs dreamed.

And we have the ability to make those dreams come true.

Right now.

Why not?

Amen.

Sermon preached at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Burke, Va., on the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23, Year A, 9 October 2011.

[1] Paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw, the Serpent to Eve, in Back To Methuselah.

[2] Jim Wallis, “Praying for peace and looking for Jesus at #Occupy Wall Street,” God’s Politics blog, http://blog.sojo.net/2011/10/06/praying-for-peace-and-looking-for-jesus-at-occupywallstreet/.

[3] paraphrase from William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia, http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/AEpPentecost17.htm

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.” ~ Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, the story of the Rwandan genocide.

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Define yourself …

October 3, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Philippians 3:4b-14

Who are you?

Who are you?

How do you define yourself?

When I was a child, back in the ‘60s (and yes, I’m telling you my age now) we used to define ourselves by our ethnicity … who was Irish, who was Italian, who was French, who was English. And while we might have been nice about the terms we used to define ourselves, we certainly were not nice when it came to defining others.

By the time I was 7, I think I knew every derogatory term out there. You name an ethnicity, and I knew the name.

And I used it.

Because that’s what we did in those days.

We used names – horrible names – to define each other.

I am one-half French, one-quarter Irish and one-quarter Russian. I got called names right along with the rest of my friends.

And I thought that was normal. Because that’s the way the world was in those days …

Thankfully, the world has changed somewhat in the last 40 years, to the point where a lot of the youths I know don’t even know what those derogatory names mean, much less use them.

Which is a good thing on every level, I admit, but in the long run, it turns out those names never meant a thing anyway.

Because those names? They don’t define us. Our ethnic heritage, like so many other attributes of our lives, is nothing more than an accident of nature.

What defines us … the only thing that defines us … is that we are beloved children of God, created in God’s image, called into being by God’s love for us … for each of us.

Everything else?

Whether we’re tall or short, black or white or Latino or Asian, blue-eyed or brown-eyed? The countries we come from? The countries our ancestors came from?

They don’t mean a thing.

Because they really are but accidents of nature.

Think about it: You don’t get to choose where you are born. You don’t get to choose the color of your skin or your eyes or your hair. Where your parents came from? You have no say in that. So these things … which so often seem so important to us … really do not define us.

What defines us … what really defines us … is that we are beloved children of God.

This is what Paul is trying to teach us this morning in his letter to the Philippians.

He is writing to a community – a new community – in Philippi, a city filled with people from all over the world, with Roman citizens and slaves, with Greeks and Romans and Jews and Africans and any other nationality you can think of. In that community, you kept to your own, as it were. Sometimes, your own was defined by your faith or ethnicity. More commonly, it was defined by your trade … so stone-layers belonged to an association of stone-builders. Tent-makers hung out with tent-makers. Each form of labor had an association of some kind, and that association was your community.

But the community to which Paul was writing was breaking those boundaries. Tent-makers and stone-layers and everyone else was all mixed together in this new community of Christ followers, this community that broke all the boundaries that normally fenced the people in in those days: boundaries of race and religion and work and citizenship.

Paul is telling the Philippians that it was OK to cross those boundaries, because they didn’t define the people any more. What defined them, Paul says, is their faith in Christ Jesus, which taught them, as they had never been taught before, that each of them was a beloved child of God.

To make sure that the Philippians understand this idea of radically realigning their lives, of radically and dangerously going against the grain that Roman society demanded, Paul lays out his own credentials first. He was, he says:

• “Circumcised on the eighth day” – meaning according to the Law, meaning, he came from a Law-abiding family.

• “A member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin” – meaning that he was descended from Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son, meaning that Paul’s parents were not some Johnny-come-lately Jews, but were descended from a long and faithful line of Jews.

• “A Hebrew born of Hebrews” – again, Paul was not a convert. He was born into the faith.

• “A Pharisee” – meaning that not only had he studied the Law with the very best teachers, but he could interpret the Law and then tell you how it applied to you.

• “A persecutor of the church” – remember, this is Paul, who once was Saul, who stood by and held the coats of the men who stoned Stephen, the first deacon to be martyred. This is Paul, who once was Saul, who was on that road to Damascus precisely so he could arrest these Christians and haul them back to Jerusalem to be tried, found guilty and stoned to death just like Stephen.

• “As to righteousness under the law, blameless” – This is Paul at his arrogant best: I knew I was in right relationship with God.

Paul is explaining that he knew exactly who he was, defining himself through worldly standards (and yes, even the Law was, in Paul’s estimation, a worldly standard). And he was darned proud of who he was in the world.

But now, he says, now … all those definitions are gone. They no longer matter.

Because now, he says, he defines himself solely as belonging to Christ, he names himself a beloved child of God, saved through Christ, obedient to Christ, following Christ, every moment of every day.

Those old definitions? he asks.

They are nothing but rubbish. Garbage. Basura.

Because Paul knows, to the core of his being, that he belongs to God, and he defines his belonging through Jesus Christ.

The truth is, we are just like Paul.

Like him, we have been asked to give up our past – glorious or desperate, it matters not – asked to give up our worldly identities so that we can find, so that Christ can define us.

Everything in the past? Not important.

Because our future lies in the future, with God.

Now imagine what our world would look like if we took this definition to heart, if we really defined ourselves in this way.

How would we treat ourselves? What would it feel like to know that the single most important part of our identity is being the beloved?

Defining ourselves in God means that we accept people for who they are – beloved children of God – and then we act as though everyone – everyone – actually is a beloved child of God.

Imagine what the world would look like if we actually lived this way. If we actually dared to be as bold as Paul, to define ourselves not by the world’s standards, but by God’s standards, and then acted that way?

I can tell you what happens: The world looks at us and says, “You can’t do this. You’re a dreamer. You’re a fool.”

But what the world has to say about this is not important, because the world doesn’t get to make those decisions. God does!

And God, who created us all in God’s image, declares that all of us belong, that all of us are equal, that all of us are beloved.

So let’s do this:

Let’s be radical go out into the world today – and every day after today – and let’s live as the people we truly are: God’s.

And let’s treat everyone else as the people they truly are: God’s.

This is the greatest gift we can give to the world: To stop defining ourselves by accidents of nature and start defining ourselves by the only thing that matters:

We are beloved children of God.

Full stop.

Amen.

Sermon preached on the 16^th Sunday after Pentecost at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Bailey’s Crossroads, Va., Proper 22, Year A, 2 October 2011.

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We are the link …

September 26, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

John 14:6-15

When Bonnie asked me to come here to preach on the Feast of St. Augustine, I started looking for stories about your patron saint. Most of stories I found are ones you already know, but there is one story that dates back to his youth, when his mother, Monica, wanted him to embrace the Christian faith in which he was raised and become a priest.

Augustine, we all know, had other ideas.

The official biographies, which I think you well know, tell the story of how he left home to teach rhetoric.

The unofficial biography apparently says – or so the story goes – that he told his mother he was leaving to get a loaf of bread … and went to Egypt instead.

But as Augustine learned – and as we know – no matter where you go, God is there.

No matter how far you run, God is there.

Because there is no place you can go, no place you can run where God is not.

Augustine learned that … he ran. But, as the saying goes, he couldn’t hide.

The same is true for us.

We may try to run, but we can never hide.

Because God is always there. And God is always there because God loves us.

There is no more powerful lesson on earth than that, is there? The lesson that God loves us?

There may be days when we doubt this is true, when we think that we are too much like Augustine was in his youth (which as you know was not a pretty picture).

But in spite of what we may think of ourselves, the good news is, God loves us – God still loves us – whether we are good or bad, whether we are high and mighty and lowly and poor … because none of that matters.

All that matters is that God … loves … us … that we are God’s beloved children.

And we know this because the Bible tells us so.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth … meaning, God was before we were, and God will be after we are.

Which means, quite simply, that we are not necessary to God.

God is necessary to us, yes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here today.

But we are not necessary to God.

Which in turn means, quite simply, that God wanted us, that God desired us, that God loved us into being.

This is what God meant when God said, way back in the beginning, “Let us create humankind in our image, according to our likeness …” God’s image, God’s likeness, has nothing to do with the color of God’s skin (does God even have skin?) or God’s gender, or God’s height or weight (does God have any of those attributes?). God’s image, God’s likeness, is center in one thing only:

Love.

But God’s love, my friends, does not exist in a vacuum.

Yes, God loves me.

And yes, God loves you.

But because God loves me and because God loves you, God intends for us to love each other.

Since we each are beloved of God and since we each are created in love, God intends us to live in love.

With each other.

That’s called community.

And our mission in life, the very reason for which God created us, is to love the community.

Augustine, despite fighting God and fleeing God, learned this in his own life.

“What,” he asked, “does love look like? It has the hand to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That,” he said, “is what love looks like.”[1]

So in the words of one of the greatest theologians of our faith, in the words of your own patron saint, our very reason for existing is to take care of each other, to love one another.

That is our mission in life – loving those whom God loves … every moment of our lives.

It’s not an easy task, this mission that God gives us.

But we know we can do it.

We know we can do it because Jesus – the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for us – because Jesus said so.

Throughout his entire ministry … through his preaching and teaching, his feeding of the hungry and giving of water to the thirsty, his healing of the lame and returning of sight to the blind and hearing to deaf and speech to the mute, through every meal he ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, his every touch of the lepers, his every willingness to include the excluded, to love the unloved, to give hope to the hopeless … Jesus taught us what to do. He taught us how to live our lives on a mission from God.

And then, facing his own end, he bequeathed to us his great command:

Love one another as I have loved you.

With that love, he told us, we will do great things.

In fact, he said, our mere faith, in him will make us do the work that he did, and indeed, he said, we will do greater works than these!

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine what it would be like to do greater work than Jesus himself did?

New Testament professor Jaime Clark-Soles heard those words and wrote, in great astonishment,

Those who are “left behind” when Jesus goes to the Father have [an] advantage beyond all telling of it. Because Jesus goes, they will get power they wouldn’t get otherwise. Instead of wannabes, they’ll be the real deal – they’ll be the Jesus in the world.[2]

You want to know what it means to be on a mission from God in the world?

Being on a mission from God means we get to be Jesus!

Well, OK. We don’t get to actually be Jesus. But we get to do that which Jesus did, only in a bigger way. Perhaps even in a better way.

So long as we understand: Everything we do is to come from God’s love for us, and God’s love for everyone else.

In 1969, Neil Diamond debuted a song called Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show. It’s a great song – it has a great beat (even though you can’t really dance to it) – not just because of the story of the traveling salvation show, but because of its theology.

Do you know this song? You don’t?

(Sing) Brother Love,

I said, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.

Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies

And everyone goes

Cuz everyone knows

‘Bout Brother Love’s show …

Hallelujah …

What’s amazing about this song, though, isn’t that chorus. It is that in the middle of the song, there’s a sermon. Now, if you look up the words online, you won’t find the words to the sermon. You’ll just see the word “sermon” printed in the middle of the lyrics.

But it’s the sermon that provides the power … the message … that we all need to hear, every single day:

This is what Brother Love preaches:

Brothers! I said, Brothers!

Now you got yourself two good hands.

And when your brother is troubled

You’ve got to reach out your one hand for him …

Cuz that’s what it’s there for.

And when your heart is troubled

You got to reach out your other hand …

Reach it out to the man up there …

Cuz that’s what he’s there for.

(Sing) Take my hand in yours

Walk with me this day

In my heart I know

I will never stray.[3]

Halle. Halle. Halle! Halle …!

We each have two good hands. And with those hands, we are called, as people on a mission from God, to always … always … reach those hands out to those who are troubled, who are in need, who need to be reminded of God’s love for them.

This is what it means to be a missionary, my friends. To reach out to others, while at the same time, holding on to God.

We are the link … everywhere we go, with everyone we meet.

Because wherever we go, God is there. And everyone we meet is a beloved child of God.

You want to be a missionary?

Reach your hands out …

That’s all there is to it.

Now, I’m a missionary. I spent four years as a missionary in Sudan, and one year serving in Haiti. And I know … I know … that many people are surprised to discover that The Episcopal Church even has missionaries. Even though we are The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America – that’s our official name, you know … quite impressive, isn’t it? – even though that is our formal name, people are surprised when they find out that I am, indeed, a missionary, and that I’ve been one for years.

Well, let me tell you something:

You are missionaries as well. And not just because you are Episcopalians.

No, you’re a missionary because God said so.

And your mission – if you choose to accept it – is to live in love and in community … to reach your hands out to those who are troubled … every moment of your lives.

Just last week, NPR interviewed Stephane Hessel, a former World War II French resistance fighter who narrowly escaped execution by the Nazis in two concentration camps. Hessel’s book, Time for Outrage, was published in the United States this week; in it, he argues that indifference is the worst possible attitude we can adopt.

If you want to be a real human being – a real woman, a real man [he says] – you cannot tolerate things which put you to indignation, to outrage. You must stand up. I always say to people, “Look around; look at what makes you unhappy, what makes you furious, and then engage yourself in some action.[4]

This is what Jesus was talking about – look at what makes you unhappy (the suffering of others, the needs of others, the desires of others to be loved) – and do something about it.

Our mission – which we accept every time we reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant – is to do something – something greater than the work Jesus himself did!

Just because it seems hard, just because the world tells us it can’t be done (we can’t possibly feed all the hungry in the world, despite the fact that we throw away more than enough food every day to feed every single starving person out there; we can’t possibly provide health care for all – even though that’s what Jesus did; we can’t possibly … we can’t possibly … we can’t … we can’t … we can’t …), doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference.

We start by reaching out our hands … one to the person in need … the other to God … and being the link between the two.

And when we doubt (which we will)?

We go back again to your own patron saint, to Augustine of Hippo, who once told his mother (or so the story goes) that he was going out for bread and never came back. He once wrote:

Hope has two beautiful daughters.

Their names are anger and courage;

anger at the way things are, and

courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.[5]

We never give up hope, and we pray to have the courage to live our lives on a mission from God, to be missionaries, living every moment of our lives in love and in community.

It’s why we were created.

(Sing) Take my hand in yours

Walk with me this day

In my heart I know

I will never stray.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the Feast of St. Augustine (translated), at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Kinston, N.C., 25 September 2011.

[1] As quoted in Quote, Unquote, by Lloyd Cory, p. 197.

[2] Jaime Clark-Soles, Associate Professor of New Testament, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Teas, commentary for 20 April 2008, emphasis added, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/20/2008&tab=4

[3] Neil Diamond, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, on the eponymous album, UNI Records, 1969.

[4] Stephane Hessel, author of Time for Outrage, in NPR interview, http://www.npr.org/2011/09/22/140252484/wwii-survivor-stirs-literary-world-with-outrage

[5] As quoted in by Robert McAfee Brown in Spirituality and Liberation: Overcoming the Great Fallacy (Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 136.

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Filed Under: Events, Mission, Personal Writings, Scriptures, Sermons Tagged With: Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show, Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, Gospel of John, Image of God, Jaime Clark-Soles, Mission, Missionaries, Neil Diamond, St. Augustine, The Episcopal Church

Gospel-worthy

September 18, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Philippians 1:21-30

The House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church is meeting in Quito, Ecuador, this week. One hundred and sixteen bishops from the 109 dioceses spread out over 16 nations have gathered to pray, to learn … and to think …

One thing they were asked to think about came from Don Compier, a liberation theologian who recounted to the bishops a recent conversation he had had.

Compier told them that “he was recently asked by someone in another denomination: ‘If you care about the poor, why are you an Episcopalian? Aren’t you just interested in liturgy?’ Compier reminded the bishops that “our tradition of witness to the concerns for the poor is not well known, even by us.”[1]

What Compier was asking the bishops to think about was, in essence, the same thing St. Paul asks, in a variety of ways, throughout his letters: How then shall we live?

Shall we live as people who are in love with liturgy?

Or shall we live our lives in a manner worthy of the Gospel, as Paul exhorts us this morning?

And what, pray tell, does that even mean, to live our lives in a manner worthy of the Gospel?

For Paul (and implicitly, for the person who asked Compier that question), Gospel-worthy lives begin and end in community.

Gospel-worthy lives are never about us … They are never about getting ahead or getting more, never about adopting the attitude of “I’ve-got-mine-and-I-don’t-care-if-you-get-yours,” never about leaving others behind.

Gospel-worthy lives are about love.

Gospel-worthy lives are love.

Paul makes this clear in what is known as his “love letter to his friends in the church at Philippi.”[2] Everything he writes them is about how we are to live in love and in community because this is what God desires for us.

As Walter Brueggemann, one of the most respected theologians of our times, preached not long ago:

Paul says to his beloved church, imagine your life caught up in the great divine drama in order that you may not imagine your life as a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing, in order that you may not imagine your life as an endless rat race that no one can win, in order that you will not imagine your life as an endless series of accidents that amount to very little. Christians (he says) are people who imagine and receive their lives differently, bracketed and ordered by God’s goodness and God’s resolve for us.[3]

Our lives will have meaning, our lives will fulfill God’s desires for us, if we bracket and order our lives in God’s goodness, in God’s resolve, if we live focused not on ourselves but on God’s beloved community.

That’s what Paul is talking about when he says “living is Christ,” that living is “fruitful labor” for him, that it is “more necessary for you.”

Paul is talking about community, which can only be lived in love.

Even the word Paul uses to instruct his beloved friends in Philippi underscores this. The Greek word for “live your life” is politeusthe – which comes from the Greek word for “city” – polis – which according to one commentator “has the sense of ‘live as a free citizen,’ [or] ‘conduct your public life.’”[4]

So Paul is crystal clear that our lives are never to be about “me-me-me, mine-mine-mine.” Not only are they are always to be focused on others, but, Paul insists, we are to bring our focus as a community.

Because we are the Body of Christ, Paul teaches, we are to act as the Body of Christ.

If all of us were to focus our lives and our love together, there wouldn’t be 52 million Americans living in poverty right now. There wouldn’t be 48 million Americans living right now without health insurance.

If we focused our lives and love together, there wouldn’t be 14 million unemployed people in our own country, there wouldn’t be millions of our children going to school hungry every morning, there wouldn’t be a wealth disparity in this country and in this world that more closely models medieval times than modern times.

If we brought our Gospel-worthy lives to bear on the problems of the world, do you really think there would be 650,000 Somalis about to starve to death in the Horn of Africa right now, because no one will give them food?

Would there really be children who die of easily cured diseases – diseases we can cure for less than one dollar per child – because no one will give them medicine?

If we lived Gospel-worthy lives – and we can easily choose to do so – each person, each beloved child of God in this world – would have enough – not too much, not an over-abundance of things, but enough – enough food and water, enough shelter, enough education, enough money to not just survive but thrive.

Paul “is speaking (to us) about how a community whose common life is founded and sustained by the crucified and risen Christ should live together.” [5] And, he’s telling us, this is our choice to make.

Now, I need to warn you:

Being Gospel-worthy – living Gospel-worthy lives – is dangerous. It gets us in trouble. It upsets the status quo. And sometimes, when we focus our lives in this way … sometimes … we end up in jail … like Paul. Sometimes, we end up dying … like Jesus and Paul.

You don’t think Paul was hauled off to prison – which is where he was when he wrote this love letter to the Philippians – just because he didn’t pay his taxes, do you?

As Paul himself would say, Me genito! By no means!

Paul ended up in jail – Paul ended up being executed – because he upset the Roman apple cart!

Because he kept getting in the face of those in power, he kept threatening those in power, with the Gospel … with Jesus’ instructions to care for those in need, to feed the hungry, to cure the sick and touch the leper and eat with the tax collectors and worship with the prostitutes and the destitute … to give hope to the hopeless and power to the powerless, to include the excluded, to love the unloved.

And that’s just not where the world – or, I should say, where the powers-that-be in the world – want us to go.

The powers-that-be in no way want us to stand up and say, No more. Nada mas. Bas. Basta.

In no way do the powers-that-be want us – members of the Body of Christ – to upset their apply carts.

But we are the Body of Christ, commanded by none other than Christ, to love God and love our neighbor – to live in love and community every moment of our lives, to make choices – every moment of our lives – that are for the common good, not for our own good only.

• • •

This past summer, I was at Camp McDowell, the Diocese of Alabama’s camp and retreat center, helping to lead a week-long summer camp program for 125 seventh- and eight-graders. Our program was focused on how to live together as the Body of Christ.

We called it, OMG, Y’all! (That stands for … wait for it … wait for it …) On a Mission From God, Y’all. (Not what you thought, eh?)

One part of the camp program was a game called “Survival,” in which we asked each small group of about 10 campers to become a “nation,” to which we then gave red and green beads.

Each red bead, we told the campers, represented 1,000 people.

Each green bead, we said, represented enough food for 1,000 people.

No group – no nation – started off with an equal amount of beads.

Some nations had lots of red beads – lots of people – and very few green beads – very little food.

Other nations had enough food to feed their people several times over.

The goal of the game, we said, was for each nation to end up with an equal number of red and green beads – with enough food to care for all their people.

Now, what normally happens in this game is that the nations swap food and people with each other – all the while dealing with disasters or blessings, with locusts or emigration, with tornadoes or gentle rainfall, with drought or bumper crops, with whatever disaster or blessing we decided to drop on them, whenever we decided to do so. What normally happens is that at the end, each nation has enough food to feed its people, but some nations are huge, and others are small.

That’s what normally happens.

Not at Camp McDowell, of course.

There, the kids decided first that they would take care of each other. One group, every time it found itself with a surplus of food, started going to other groups and simply giving their extra food away for free, asking nothing in return. Others entered covenants: You take care of us, we’ll take care of you. Still others formed coalitions, sharing food and people equally.

And then, in the end, in a completely unexpected turn of events (which I have never seen before), the groups decided they no longer wanted to experience famine or overcrowding. So they joined together.

All 12 groups.

Into one nation.

That way, they reasoned, everyone would have enough to eat. No one would go hungry ever again.

May I remind you that these children were in seventh and eighth grade? That they ranged in age from 11 to 14?

These children understood what it means to live Gospel-worthy lives.

And then they lived them.

Let me tell you: Those children in Alabama? They knew how to answer Paul’s great question of “How then shall we live?” Yes, it was just a game in a week filled with games. But they still did it. For them, it was a no-brainer! (Actually, I believe what they said to me was, “Duh!”)

And if those children can do it, can’t we as well? If they can see this solution as a “Duh!” can’t we do the same? After all, we are the adults here!

The children already know this, and they teach us about our call in life. Their answer Paul’s question:

We are called … as members of the Body of Christ … to live Gospel-worthy lives.

We are called to be Gospel-worthy.

Gospel-worthy.

Amen.

Sermon preached on the 14^th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20, Year A, 18 September 2011, at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Blue Grass, Va.

[1] Quoted in “Theology of Liberation” on the blog of The Rt. Rev. Michael Hanley, Bishop of Oregon, http://www.bishop.episcopaldioceseoregon.org/, 15 September 2011. Compier is a professor at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, “A Love Letter…concerning a Work in Progress,” First Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Mich., 6 December 2009, http://www.fpcbirmingham.org/worship/sermons/a-love-letter/, emphasis added.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Susan Eastman, Assistant Professor of the Practice of the Bible and Christian Formation,

Duke Divinity School, Durham, N.C., “Reciprocating Glory,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx.

[5] Stephen E. Fowl. Philippians (Two Horizons New Testament Commentary), 79, Kindle Edition.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Featured Story, Scriptures, Sermons Tagged With: Camp McDowell, Diocese of Alabama, Don Compier, Famine, Gospel-worthy, Health care, Paul, Philippians, Somalia, Unemployment, Walter Brueggemann, Wealth disparity

Extravagant forgiveness, extravagant love

September 11, 2011 by Lauren Stanley

Matthew 18:21-22

How many of you have found yourself weeping this week?

How many of you have found yourself turning off your televisions and radios, turning past stories in the newspaper, skipping the Facebook comments …

… because you just can’t go there again?

Ten years after the horrible tragedies of 9/11, many of us, myself included, are still filled with grief.

We have moved on from the immediate shock, from the numbness, from the piercing pain that came with the attacks.

But we are still filled with grief.

• • •

This morning’s Gospel lesson from Matthew – chosen years and years and years ago, long before September 11, 2001 – is about forgiveness. In it we hear the story of Peter – poor, befuddled Peter, who never quite gets it but never stops trying – asking Jesus how many times he has to forgive.

“As many as seven times?” he asks, knowing that seven times’ worth of forgiveness would be wildly extravagant.

No, Jesus replies. “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

This is, I tell you, a lesson in extravagance, in the extravagant, wild, radical, never-ending love of God that Jesus proclaims in his preaching, in his teaching, in his healing, and in the end, with his own life.

We are, Jesus says, to forgive extravagantly. More than we want. More than we can imagine.

And yet, on this morning, on this tenth anniversary of terror and murder, that kind of forgiveness seems … well, it almost seems out of our reach.

It almost seems as if God is asking us to do something far greater, far grander than we can possibly imagine, much less accomplish.

And yet … it is what God is asking of us.

Forgive.

More than you want.

More than you can imagine.

I don’t know about you, but I need to admit something, I need to put something out on the table:

I am not certain I know how to do this.

I am not certain I can forgive as extravagantly as Jesus asks.

And I think that is why I am still weeping, 10 years after the fact.

Like you, I remember that day.

I remember hearing the plane fly over my parish in Annandale and saying to the secretary, “Wow, that guy is way off course.”

I remember hearing the plane hit the Pentagon and saying to her, “Man, that guy just dropped a load,” because I thought it was a construction accident.

I remember returning hours later to my apartment, less than a mile from the Pentagon, and finding it filled with dust and ashes … because I had left the windows open – it was such a beautiful day, wasn’t it?

I remember being unable to keep my apartment clean or to sleep soundly for weeks afterwards, because the trucks carrying the debris – the dust and the ashes – drove by my place, day after day, night after night, constantly spreading more dust, more ash, constantly rumbling along.

Like you, I remember the military jets that flew overhead night and day, watching as they left lazy contrails in their wake.

I remember the fear … the grief … the loss …

I remember …

And because I remember … so vividly … so profoundly … I think I cannot fully forgive.

Not as Jesus asks.

Not seventy-seven times.

Not yet.

• • •

And yet …

I want to forgive.

Really, I do.

I want to forgive because it is what Jesus taught us to do. It is what we pray for when we pray in the very words that Jesus gave us: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

I want to forgive, because I think if I don’t, my very soul may be in danger.

But I’m not certain I’m there yet.

Which is why, especially this past week, I have cried.

• • •

You know what is that I cannot forgive?

It’s not the hijackers, Mohammed Atta and those 18 others who turned airplanes into missiles.

And it’s not Osama bin Laden and all who have followed his misbegotten ideas of faith.

No, what I cannot forgive is the hatred that fueled those men to do commit these atrocities.

What I cannot forgive is anyone bastardizing the love of God for all of God’s beloved children.

And what I cannot forgive is the suffering that these men caused, all so they could – they thought – have their own way.

I agree with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who wrote, in 1955:

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and a willingness to remain vulnerable.”[1]

The hatred they rained upon us, the deliberate misinterpretation of God’s will, the suffering they caused … for what? I ask you … those are the stumbling blocks on my path to forgiveness.

From conversations I have had with others, from news stories I have read and the very few news shows I have watched or listened to, I think I am not alone in this pain.

And so I think that perhaps now, on this day, the tenth anniversary of that awful day, which we cannot escape no matter how hard we try, I think that perhaps today is a day to … let go.

A day to … set my feelings free.

A day … for release.

For that is what the word forgive means, in the Greek. It means release. To let go. To set free.

Because only by releasing, by letting go, by setting free, do we have a chance … a chance … not of moving on, but of moving forward.

Author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor, writing in 1998 – again, years before 9/11, proclaimed:

When you allow your enemy to stop being your enemy, all the rules change. Nobody knows how to act anymore, because forgiveness is an act of transformation. It does not offer the adrenaline rush of anger, nor the feeling of power that comes from a well-established resentment. It is a quiet revolution, as easy to miss as a fist uncurling to become an open hand, but it changes people in ways anger only wishes it could.[2]

I want fists to uncurl today. Not just my fist, but all fists. I want our hands to be open … to the possibility of transformation … to the possibility of peace … to the possibility of love.

The Rev. David F. Sellery, a priest in Bay Shore, N.Y., wrote about forgiveness in a reflection for today:

Forgiveness, he says, “is the essence of Christian love. … It is not a largesse we dispense by power of our innate superiority [but rather] the grace of God transmitted through us. It is,” he says, “the ultimate witness of Christ’s love in the world.”[3]

Sellery knows that the pain of 9/11 remains. And he is clear that forgiveness is not a “get-out-of-jail-free card for perpetrators.” God, he says, “has not issued an easy-pass for evil in the world to benefit the bad guys.”[4] There is to be justice – as long as it is not revenge.

Sellery concludes: “The choice is ours. We can live in love or we can live in hate. Both are transformative forces. We can become what we value and love or we can risk becoming the evil we obsess upon.”[5]

Forgiveness, it seems, really is about opening our fists to the possibilities of new life.

Writing in The Washington Post last Tuesday, Lynne Steuerle Schofield, whose mother, Norma Lange Steuerle, died on American Flight 77 when it flew into the Pentagon, suggested the same kind of transformation, the same willingness to open our fists to release. She said that with every anniversary, it is as though she is being asked to go to her mother’s funeral over and over and over again. Instead, she wrote:

What if we all spent the 11^th anniversary of the attacks (she is speaking of next year) reflecting on what we admired most about our lost loved ones and trying to emulate those ideals? Or what if we spent time building not another structure in memorial but, instead, building our relationships with others? Or raising money for our favorite charity?[6]

If we want the world to be more compassionate, safer and more equitable, she writes, we have to work to make that happen. We all have to be on board. We should reflect on the characteristics of our loves ones that we want to keep alive, and then we must behave that way.[7]

Our Gospel today, my friends, teaches us about forgiveness. It teaches us about extravagant forgiveness, which can only come from extravagant love.

Not our love.

For our love is, sadly to say, far too often far too small.

But God’s forgiveness?

God’s forgiveness is extravagant. It is overwhelming.

Because it comes from God’s extravagant love.

And it is what God is calling us to.

I may not be there … yet.

But if I can’t forgive extravagantly, perhaps I can love … just a little bit more extravagantly. Perhaps I can, as Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says, be “more inclined toward peace,” at least a little bit more extravagantly.

Perhaps I can relax my hand on the pain that still grips me – and in that moment, release the pain as I reach out to others still in pain, still in mourning.

I think that this morning, I am more like Peter than I realize: I haven’t quite gotten it yet, I still can’t quite go to where Jesus wants me, but I am still trying to understand. Still trying to be extravagant with my forgiveness, my release, my love.

My prayer for us this morning … for those of us here, for the Church as a whole, for this nation and for the world … is that we relax our hands, opening them as much as we can. My prayer is that we focus on the extravagance of God’s love for us, and in the releasing of our pain and sorrow, we set that love free for the whole world to see and know and hear and feel.

We do not have to forget.

We cannot forget.

But perhaps … just perhaps … with the help of our Lord, we can forgive.

Amen.

Sermon preached for the Service of Remembrance on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, at St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church, Leesburg, Va., Sept. 11, 2011. (Proper 19, Year A)

[1] Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, 1955.

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Christianity Today, Feb. 9, 1998.

[3]The Rev. David F. Sellery is rector of St. Peter’s By-the-Sea Church and Day School in Bay Shore, New York. http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_129713_ENG_HTM.htm

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Lynne Steuerle Schofield, “A 9/11 event that embraces the future,” The Washington Post, Sept. 6, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-911-event-that-embraces-the-future/2011/09/01/gIQAm6np7J_story.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews&fb_source=profile_multiline.

[7] Ibid.

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Filed Under: Featured Story, Scriptures, Sermons Tagged With: 9/11, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, David F. Sellery, Extravagance, Forgiveness, Grief, Katharine Jefferts Schori, Letting go, Love, Lynne Steuerle Schofield, Matthew, Mourning, Peter

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