​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Proper 16, Year A ‘17
                                                                                    Matthew 16: 13-20
                                                                                    27 August, 2017
                                                                                    Trinity, Monroe
 
“Take my lips, oh Lord, and speak through them; take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen
 
What stood out for you as we read today’s powerful gospel lesson? Jesus’ question to his disciples always jumps out for me. “But who do you say I am?” It’s an important question I think. After all, our answer stands to make a big difference in how we live day to day. Then there’s Peter’s answer to the question. It sounds so spontaneous, spoken from the heart of this outspoken man who often seems to put his foot in his mouth. How often have we heard him say just the wrong thing at the wrong time? In today’s Gospel he gets it just right though.  “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Well, yes, we answer. Of course, Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. It seems self-evident. It confirms what we already know from countless Sunday School lessons, hymns, Bible studies and sermons. It’s just that, in my experience, each time I read such a familiar passage something different stands out. This time it’s the pun we don’t really hear. Jesus said; “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” In both Aramaic, the language Jesus undoubtedly used, and in Greek, the name Peter and the word rock are the same, hence the pun.  In Greek it’s the name “Petros” and the common noun “petra”. In Aramaic the two are the same “kepha”. Does that pun matter do you suppose or is it just an accident of language? I suspect it does matter. Our ability to put a name to one another is a powerful thing indeed. Psychologists tell us that the names and labels we give to others really do shape both self-image and behavior. I once read about a study comparing two classes of elementary aged children. One group was told regularly to pick up after themselves and to take care of their surroundings. The other group was simply told that they were an exceptionally tidy group who did a great job of taking care of things. At the end of the study the two groups were compared on measures of tidiness and the way they cared for the classroom. The second group outscored the first hands down both on their awareness of the need to take care of things and on the actions they took in caring for their surroundings. And so we have it. Jesus says that Simon Peter, Petros or Kepha”, that entirely human man is the rock “petra or kepha” on which Jesus will build the church. Peter, who is so often portrayed as misunderstanding Jesus and who on the eve of the crucifixion denies him, doesn’t seem like much of a rock to me. At the same time, Peter gives me courage. He is so clearly fallible, just as I am. And yet, once in a while he is given the faith to get things just exactly right. But there is more of course. As I read the passage, and thought about Peter a question came to mind. I began to wonder about the church. What is it exactly that Jesus is building on that rock, on Peter? Certainly, it seems Jesus was talking about more than a building here. The question led me to the catechism in our Book of Common Prayer. There is an entire section of 10 questions and answers concerning the church. Read them sometime, they are on pages 854 and 855. They begin: “What is the Church? The answer is this; “The Church is the community of the New Covenant.” Huh. Sounds like the church is, in fact, you and me, all of us collectively and all people everywhere who answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am”, as Peter did. “You are the Messiah. The Son of the living God.” So, the church is a community, one founded on Jesus himself, through the ministry of Peter. Of course, if the Biblical record is to be believed, and I trust that it is, then look at the way Ephesians and The Revelation to John expand that notion. We learn that the foundation of the church is formed by all the apostles. The Catechism takes it a step further to say that the church “continues in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles and is sent to carry out Christ’s mission to all people.” To paraphrase, the catechism teaches that the mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other as we pray, worship, proclaim the Gospel, and promote justice, peace and love. Please notice the “we” in there. The catechism is clear that the mission of the church is carried out through the ministries of all its members. Is this beginning to sound like a big job, one too hard for the likes of us? This is why I’m so grateful that Jesus called Peter, of all people, to be the rock on which the church is built. If Peter, with God’s help, could reach out in that way so, by the power of God, can we. The Rev, Kirk Kubiecek reminded me of something important this week. To quote from his sermon on this lesson; “It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church.” It’s a helpful reframing I think. It’s God’s mission and we are God’s church. It is God who has called us together in this community and God who gives us the power to be and to do more than we think we can. Remember Simon Peter. He was not especially insightful, perceptive, or intelligent compared to his companions. He understood Jesus imperfectly. Peter’s clearest understanding of Jesus’ identity was a matter of divine revelation, just as it is for us. And yet, Jesus named him, ‘Kepha’, Peter/rock. Look at how that naming stretched Peter, how it called him beyond who he was at the moment, until by faith, that entirely human rock/Peter did provide the foundation on which Christ built the church. Here’s the thing. God can, and does, work through each one of us to continue the work of God’s church. Let me suggest a helpful exercise from Anthony de Mello in his spiritual guide Sadhana. Start by listing as many names as you can for Jesus and then apply each of those names to yourself. It wouldn’t hurt to use that name Jesus gave Peter too. Can you imagine it? God’s voice whispering in your ear: “you are my very own, my beloved, my chosen one, my rock.” Now, here’s my challenge for the week. Take one of those names as de Mello suggests, then apply it to yourself for a minute or two each day. Let that experience sink in until you can hear God calling you by that name. Let that name stretch you and shape you in whatever way God wills. And then dream big, use your holy imagination and your so evident kindness. Between us we have so many gifts. God will make good use of us to fulfill Jesus’ mission of justice, unity, and peace as we pray and work to proclaim the Gospel, the Good News of God’s love come among us, right here in Monroe.  Amen
 
 

​                                                                                    Proper 15, year A ‘17
                                                                                    Matthew 15: 10-28
                                                                                    8-20-17
                                                                                    Holy Apostles
“Take my lips, oh Lord, and speak through them; take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
 
The Gospel lesson this morning starts out just a bit cryptic what with all that talk of what defiles a person. And yet, it seems to fit right now what with all the talk about who was right and who wrong in Charlottesville last week. In asking us to really think about what it means to live as though we value all of God’s human creation that moment in our history calls us to reassess our priorities.  We are reminded how easy it is to put human tradition ahead of God’s call to us. For those of Jesus’ day it was those traditions of ritual purity. For us it’s that issue of who is welcome and who is not. Jesus reminds us that when we push others away we are acting in ways that negate God’s presence. We are challenged with the notion of what it means to offer God’s presence if we understand ourselves to be followers of Christ. But what about that story of the Canaanite woman and her interactions with Jesus? How does that fit? Let’s look at the action of the story. It begins with the woman shouting, pleading that Jesus have mercy enough to heal her daughter.  And her story is a heart breaking one indeed. What happens? First Jesus just ignores that Canaanite woman. Then the disciples ask him to run her off. Next Jesus explains that she is not entitled to his healing services. She is of less worth than a dog. Now, on one hand, it helps to know a little bit about the cultural realities of Jesus’ day. Jews simply didn’t associate with Gentiles. They were considered to be “unclean”. Further, Jesus had been interrupted, again and again, by all the people seeking healing and by the religious authorities who challenged his interpretations of the Law. He was still trying to get away into a relatively deserted region when he met up with this Canaanite woman. To interact with her would mean pausing yet again to complete the purity rituals. I don’t recall another time when Jesus seems so impatient, even rude. On the surface, the story doesn’t show Jesus in the best light, does it? I want to suggest another way of seeing the story. Maybe in this uncomfortable story, where we seem to see Jesus at something less than what we like to think is his best, we really are catching him at his very best, experiencing a kind of AHA moment, a burst of realization and growth. By now Jesus has been doubted and questioned by many. And still everywhere he turns he finds need and more need, people crying out to him, begging for his help, but, at the same time, blind to who he really is. Then he meets this persistent Canaanite woman. He is pretty clear in saying he has nothing to offer the likes of her but she names him: “Lord, Son of David”.  She is a pagan, someone he has been taught to avoid all his life, and yet, she of all people, recognizes him for who he is. And her faith allows Jesus to see something new in himself. Here is the thing that is most wonderful to me in this story. We see a critical change in Jesus and in his understanding of his own mission. In the midst of his verbal duel with this woman Jesus suddenly realizes, he is not just a Messiah for the lost sheep of Israel, he is more. He is the Messiah for the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike. Jesus expands his own boundaries to include this new vision of himself. Then he reaches out beyond those categories of clean and unclean, of who’s in and who’s out, to draw in this foreign woman, an outcast by all reasonable standards. And, in that moment of new understanding he offers God’s healing, God’s acceptance, God’s welcome to her. He offers God’s presence. It’s a powerful thing to see Jesus growing into the person God called him to be. But doesn’t it also offer a challenge to us as well? Have you ever struggled to make some change in yourself? I can testify that it is not an easy process. Minor changes in behavior, say how we exercise or the kinds of things we eat are hard. Changes in our view of ourselves and who we are in the world are more difficult. Changes in our view of other people, in how we approach others, in who we trust and admit into our circle of friends are the most difficult of all. Usually we resist opening ourselves. We resist becoming vulnerable It is easier, and more natural, to simply exclude those that we regard as different, strangers. Do we make outcasts of others because we fear what might happen? Do we fear losing something important to us or simply losing control? Those are powerful fears for most of us. I wonder what it felt like for Jesus when he saw that there was no more controlling his ministry? When he found himself opening his arms to embrace the whole world? Jesus saw that he was called to something much bigger than what he had envisioned for himself. Don’t we hear the same challenging message throughout scripture that Jesus heard? God continually seems to call us to outgrow our own self-restricting boundaries, to be open to lost causes, to include even those people we regard as outcasts. And surely there is someone or some group we each consider as outcast. Who is it for you? As always, I am pushed to ask; How do we need to change in order to stay faithful to our baptismal calling? Is there some way in which our attitudes or prejudices have limited how we make Christ’s presence known in our world?  Being human it is so easy to limit ourselves through fear. This gospel challenges that self-limitation. Certainly we can hear that when we are called by God we are always being drawn into new territory. The Gospel points to change that makes a noticeable difference, the difference between pulling protectively back from others, rehearsing all the reasons we cannot change and putting ourselves in the path of strangers, extending a hand in welcome, trying new things and changing our minds. That is painful sometimes of course, and maybe we will lose life as we have known it. At the same time though don’t we also already know the great blessing of God’s mercy?   After all, it is because Jesus understood himself to be the Messiah for the whole world and opened his arms on the cross for us that we now live within that guarantee of new life in Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.
 

​                                                                                    Proper 14 Year A ‘17
                                                                                    Matthew 14: 22-33
                                                                                    13 August 2017
                                                                                    Trinity, Monroe
 
“Take my lips, oh Lord, and speak with them; take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
 
Where to start? I had a sermon about 95% written on Friday afternoon. It began with an “I wonder” question. In this case: I wonder, have you ever been really afraid? It’s a question that works well with today’s Gospel lesson about Jesus and Peter walking on the water I think. But then there were those headlines on Saturday morning. I’m sure you saw them too. You know, the headlines reporting the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, VA. on Friday. And, after some significant prayer and meditation, I knew I had to start over. Now, that question about fear is still a valid one. We’ve had a week of news concerning nuclear brinkmanship being played out between our president and the North Korean government after all. That threat of nuclear war is a fearsome thing indeed. But this particular show of violence in Charlottesville, based around the ideology of the alt-right, the increasingly active Ku Klux Klan, and the hate speech of the white-supremacist movement, cuts to the heart in a different kind of way. Let me introduce a term here. It’s a Hebrew word, Shoah. Shoah refers to God’s absence. It is how modern-day Jews refer to that phenomena during World War II we often refer to as the Holocaust. Shoah, God’s absence. It played out progressively before and during World War II with blaming and demeaning some people. It progressed to setting those people aside, marking them, so that they stood out, registering them, and, finally, killing them. It is a supreme act of dehumanization, of anti-creation. It is a way of saying these people are not like us, they are not really human. It started with hate speech. It ended with death for millions of people, Jewish people, Gypsy’s, homosexuals, people who had special needs, and, people who stood up, who spoke up for those being dehumanized. And so I came to the Gospel According to Matthew, to that story of Jesus walking on the water, and the first part of that portion of the Gospel, the action that sets the stage for what we heard today, which was the Feeding of the Five Thousand. I came to Jesus’ story set against the background of violence in the here and now. I experienced that feeding of the crowd and that walking on water through the lens of Shoah. What does the one have to say about the other? Let me re-cap what we heard, and what we missed, from the Gospel According to Matthew. I’m going to start at Matthew 14:13. We missed this important story last week when we celebrated the Transfiguration. The name, The Feeding of the Five Thousand really isn’t accurate. That crowd probably numbered upwards of twenty thousand. The author of Matthew reports there were five thousand men plus their wives and children. You probably remember the action. Jesus has had a busy time teaching and healing and John the Baptist had just been killed. In an effort to get away for a bit Jesus traveled away from the crowds. But all those people followed him. He had another busy day but this time, as night fell, they were in the wilderness. There was no handy Tim Horton’s next door for a quick sandwich. Having been told to feed the crowd the disciples looked around and counted up five loaves and two fish. Jesus blessed the food and somehow everyone was fed. In fact there were leftovers. We always want to know what really happened, we look for logical, factual, explanations. We’re asking the wrong question. This story is crucial to our understanding of who God is and how we can see God in the person of Jesus. A more useful question has to do with the theological point that’s being made. At a very basic level we hear that we can count on God to meet our needs because God is compassionate. God cares for all the human creation. All of us, men, women, children, no one is left out. But there’s more. God is active through Jesus and Jesus involves his disciples in that compassionate care. We are called to be God’s hands and feet when it comes to meeting the needs of others. It doesn’t matter if we think we don’t have enough, it doesn’t matter if we think our gift is too small. God will use what we bring to good effect. At the same time, remember those left overs? 12 baskets full of left overs. It sounds like a lot but 12 baskets in the face of twenty thousand people? There’s no room for greed here, there’s no room for waste. If we don’t give what we have or if we waste our resources somebody will be going hungry. And God is really interested in making sure every last person is taken care of. Now we get to this week’s reading, that part about walking on the water. Again, it’s a hard story for us. We want to know how that was possible and we miss the point. The story is not about walking on water, it’s about Jesus and it’s about God and it’s about us. For the author of Matthew and for the Gospel’s first hearers Jesus’ walking on the water is a sure sign that he has been empowered by God to care for God’s people. In Jesus we see God who is right here with us, present for us in our times of need. In Jesus we see our Creator who is unwilling to abandon us. That being said, what about Peter? Did you notice that it’s not just Jesus who’s empowered to walk on the water? Peter steps out in faith and, however briefly, walks on the water too. I love Peter. In this story especially he is the perfect picture of what it is like to be a Christian, empowered by God and caught up between faith and fear. He dares to believe, he steps out in faith, and his fear overwhelms him. Still, he does remember to call on Jesus. I appreciate his willingness to take a risk even in the face of his fear. Here’s the thing. Peter shows us clearly that faith is not a possession so much as it is an activity. If we don’t use our faith it will wither. We will be overcome by fear. Today we are not faced with towering waves that literally threaten to swamp our small boats leading to certain death. We face something worse by far. We face spiritual death. We face death when we turn away from the God we know dimly, and experience occasionally, in hopes of keeping ourselves safe in the face of anger, hatred, or the discomfort of confronting the evils of injustice that go on around us day to day. Like Peter we too have been empowered by God to do God’s work in this world. It’s hard, and it’s often scary. We never feel like we have the right gift or that we have enough to do the job. But God is with us. If Shoah is the absence of God reflected in fear and hatred and leading to the death of millions of God’s people how can we reflect God’s presence? Look at Jesus. When he heard that his cousin John had been killed by Herod he withdrew to be by himself. But the crowds followed Jesus and he met their needs by healing those who were sick. Then, at the end of the day he told us to feed the hungry crowd. There wasn’t much on hand but Jesus got people organized into smaller groups. He gave thanks for what there was and somehow, with God’s help, things worked out. Look at Jesus, he was empowered by God and so are we. Then look around, look for what is needed. I know for sure that there are people all around us who really need the kind of caring community that we have right here. Invite people to come, to sit down around the table and share what we have. Then let God work things out. All that violence in the news, it’s based on fear that leads to hatred, and death, Shoah. In the face of that we have the gift of God’s presence. Right here. Right here. Right now. We are healed, and strengthened and nourished by that gift. It’s a gift we need to share, for the world’s sake and for our own sake. Amen
 

​                                                                        Feast of the Transfiguration, Year A ‘17
                                                                        Luke 9: 28-36
                                                                        6 August 2017
                                                                        Trinity, Monroe
 
“Take my lips, oh Lord, and speak with them; take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
 
Have you noticed anything different today? To me the white hangings stand out in the midst of this season after Pentecost when usually the color is green. Why the white? Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, one of only three special days that interrupt the usual flow of lessons when they fall on a Sunday. What are we to make of this crucially important story in the Christian tradition? Can you imagine standing there on that mountain top? Luke says: “While Jesus was praying the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white…suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him…a cloud came and overshadowed them… from the cloud came a voice that said “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!…And they kept silent.” It’s an
​awe-inspiring scene. Even without the voice from the cloud those disciples knew they were witness to a special moment. All they held sacred was right there. Moses representing the law, and Elijah the prophets, and Jesus shining with that brilliant white light, just as Moses did when he encountered God on Sinai. I’m struck by the way The Feast of the Transfiguration, celebrated on August 6th, intersects with more recent human history. You see, today is also the 72nd anniversary of the day that the U. S. Army Air Corp dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. On that day, in that moment, in another unbelievably bright flash of white light, the world was changed forever. To those on the ground it must have seemed as though the gates of hell had opened. Perhaps as many as seventy thousand people were killed instantly, countless others were fatally injured or maimed. The emotional toll, the sense of confusion and horror, was greater and more wide spread still. The moral questions are still debated. It seems to me that the remembrance of Hiroshima provides a real and dramatic example of how we treat each other at our worse. The memory of August 6, 1945 provides a snapshot moment, one that illustrates how readily we turn away from God’s desires for creation. Seven decades later we still live caught up in frustration and fear when we hear how other nations are working to improve their capacity to deploy nuclear weapons. For all those seven decades we have lived uneasily with the fearful knowledge that we humans have developed, and hold stockpiled, the capacity to utterly destroy the creation the God called very good. We can literally negate God’s purposes for creation. For me that remembered look at hell on earth provides a glimpse of what our future would be without God. It’s an extreme example of course, a worse-case scenario. But can’t we all think of smaller, more ordinary, ways in which fear, or hatred, or a simply a need to hold onto what we consider absolutely right, controls our behavior toward another? And we find ourselves, somehow, once again, turning away from God and God’s will for creation. Today’s Gospel stands in stark contrast. It shows us a deeper reality. Recall what’s going on in the Gospel at this point. Jesus has just announced his death at Jerusalem. That news was beyond believing for his first followers. They just could not get their minds around it. Then immediately Peter, James, and John are given a hint of Jesus’ future glory. They, and we, are filled with the knowledge that God insists on having the last word. In the memory of God’s blinding white light, shining through Jesus, we see that God will always be transfiguring hell into heaven, death into life. We may in our fear or hatred speak hell into the world. But God will not let our fear, or selfishness, or inhumanity to one another win out. The moment of transfiguration shows us a different reality. We are reminded of God’s definitive yes to life. Being entirely human I don’t always remember that I can trust God’s absolute commitment to life and love. I see it, after all, only imperfectly, reflected in the relationships that God has gifted me with. I need that hint, however brief. How about you? As we encounter the Gospel it’s clear that for Jesus and the disciples that moment on the mountaintop was enough. It gave them the power to go on, back down the mountain and into the crowds. Jesus and each of his disciples found the power to go on to, and through, the fear and destruction they found in Jerusalem, then on into the future. It’s been a long time since that day on the mountaintop, a long time since Jesus came back down into the crowds to heal and teach, to pull people along with questions and parables and stories until they could also begin to experience the God he knew so well. A lot has happened in two thousand years of history. That little group of followers that were left after Jesus’ resurrection has grown. I wonder sometimes what Jesus might think about the religion that has grown up around his memory. What would he think the variety of worship forms, or doctrines and the arguments that surround them? What would Jesus think about the state of our world today? In my imagination, I see Jesus standing on that mountain with Moses and Elijah, gaining focus to carry on his own work. I imagine him as he turned toward his friends and heard Peter say the words that are echoed so often and easily. “it is good for us to be here, let us make dwellings.” Let’s hold on to what we have, put boundaries around it, keep it safe. Did you notice that Jesus gives no response at all to that suggestion? In my imagination, I almost hear Jesus sigh as he wonders how to get his point across more clearly to his closest friends. I suspect him of worrying, just a bit. After all, if Peter didn’t get it who would? We don’t need to freeze the moment. It not important that we build those booths, they don’t give us the security we imagine they will. I expect the disciples wanted more just as we do. They wanted the certainty and security of holding on to what they had. But God doesn’t work that way. God overshadows us with the divine presence and we hear God’s words. “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.” Then God sends us out, equipped only with glimpses, mountain top moments, that tell us, even when we can’t see it, that the future is in God’s hands. We can hold onto the faith that the future is trustworthy and good. Each Sunday we gather together, we hear God’s word, we respond with prayer and praise, we are nourished in our own kind of mountain top experience. Then, if we believe the words we pray in the post communion prayers we are sent out into the everyday world of work and worry to represent God to a fearful and fear filled world. We have only that glimpse of God’s glory and love to sustain us. I don’t know what will come in the next week, not really. Do you? I trust though that God is good, I thank God for inviting me to listen, to wrestle with the questions. And I ask God to fill me with a readiness to learn and grow beyond the limits of my fear so others can experience God’s loving yes to life.  Amen.