genevieve

This is Us

by • sermons • Tags: , , , •

Who are we?

In times of change, or in the wake of great transition, we look around and wonder. Who are we?

Big changes often change us. When our health or the health of a loved one degrades, and there’s no returning to how it was before. When our lives are turned upside down by divorce or death, and there is no getting back that old life. And it’s easy, when things change, to become afraid. Here in this place, we become afraid that we won’t have enough money to take care of our roof or our HVAC system or our plumbing. Afraid that our ministries don’t have enough people to do the work. Afraid that there is not ever enough. We are not enough.

But the story of God across time and space and generations is always the same: Love is always enough.

John’s first letter today is brimming with love—abundant, overflowing love. God IS Love! He says. And there is no fear in love. But John is equally clear that abiding-in-God-love isn’t just a feeling, a warm, fuzzy “I’m happy” sort of love. The love of abiding-in-God is an action—it means we actively care for our brothers and sisters, because when we love one another, God is alive in us. And loving makes us more fully alive.

Jesus is even more explicit in our Gospel reading this morning. To abide in God, to live in the love of Jesus, means to bear fruit. It means to actively work to feed others, to care for the least, the forgotten, the abandoned among us. We are the branches of Jesus’ vine, reaching outward and upward to those around us in need, to feed and provide for them. And doing that makes us more fully alive.

We at St. Timothy’s have listened to this story, over and over again. We have heard God’s call, over and over again. We have loved—in action—over and over again. We started The Closet in the 1970s. We started the first homeless shelter in Fairfax County in 1984. In the 1990s we started mission trips to help the poorest in our state, in Dungannon, Virginia. In 2003 we were called to help the poorest in our country, in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. And in 2011, after the earthquake, we went to the poorest in our hemisphere, in Chapoteau, Haiti.

This year we went to Haiti and, as we do each year, we took photos of our 25 sponsored children. We handed out the photos we took of them last year – the only photos of themselves they or their families ever see. We took soccer balls, to replace the plastic bottles filled with water they were kicking around. We took vitamins – nine thousand of them to last our 25 children a whole year. We took a video of St. Timothy’s children singing Jesus Loves Me to them in Haitian Creole. We took the Godly Play story of Noah and the Ark.

In Haiti we have built a garden, latrines, and begun repair of the school foundation. We have educated more than 70 children and enabled one special young man, Wilpha Pierre, to get a college education. We have given the people of Chapoteau—parents, teachers, and children—a reason to believe they are loved by Christians thousands of miles away, and a hope for their future.

We have always served the poor and we continue to do it, whatever fears we have, because that is what abiding-in-God-love means. It means when we fear we are not enough, we hold on to the sure knowledge that Love is enough. Enough to spread hope and faith in the darkest places. And in doing so, we become more fully alive.

I was on the Vestry – twice. I know the fears and pressures we face, and have faced, for nearly the entire 150 years St. Timothy’s has been around. And I’ve gone through tough financial times personally. And there are sometimes hard decisions to be made about money and time and space and resources.

But our readings today, our readings every Sunday, assure us that if we are listening for, and living into the abiding-in-God-love that serves others, we need not fear. We will bear fruit. We will be fully alive.

Who are we? Is this is still the place we thought it was?
When we become afraid that there is not enough, that we are not enough — we are given these words: “If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

This is who we are. This is us.

Amen.

Agape

by • sermons • Tags: , , , •

Acts 2:14a,22-32, 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31

by Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

So, here we are. Easter. Christ has risen, we sang our Alleluias, we celebrated the empty tomb and then we all went home. This is typically what we call a “low” Sunday—even fewer people attend church than normal, because although the Church wants us to celebrate Easter for another 6 weeks, we’ve kind of already moved on.

Contrast that with the disciples, one week after the first Easter, still locked in a room in fear—despite Mary Magdalene’s message, they haven’t moved on at all. Because while our Easters are bright and beautiful, filled with colored eggs and spiffy clothes—that first Easter was messy. It wasn’t something you moved on from all that easily.

So it’s one week later, and Jesus appears to the disciples, and he shows them all the very real, very messy holes in his hands and his side. All of them but Thomas.

Remember Thomas? He’s the disciple who, a few weeks ago, when Jesus said “Let’s all go to Galilee to wake up my dead friend Lazarus” and all the disciples said “Uh, Jesus, the Galileans just tried to stone you two days ago. If Lazarus is dead anyway maybe we’d better not go back just yet”. Thomas is the one who says with some degree of sarcastic resignation, “Fine –We might as well all go and die too”.

This is a man who is a realist if there ever was one. He has a particular kind of faith – the kind that is willing to do whatever is necessary, even though he’s pretty sure it’s not going to be in the least bit useful or successful. He has his doubts that any of this is really going to matter at all. But he’s willing to go wherever Jesus goes anyway.

And so it is that same Thomas, the resigned realist, who is out of the room when Jesus shows up. And he’s missing because he is the only disciple who is not afraid. For two millennia now his skepticism has earned him a bad rap and the nickname “Doubting Thomas”, but doubt isn’t a bad thing – Philip Yancey once said the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear. And the disciples are surely huddled in fear in that upper room, whereas Thomas – well, maybe he went to fetch some food, or get news of what was going on in the city – but he certainly wasn’t cowering in fear.

And you can, if you squint across the millennia and remember that this was a close-knit group of men who had traveled together for more than a year—and human beings haven’t really changed that much—you can just imagine this group of grown men deciding to play a little joke on Thomas the realist. “Let’s tell him we saw Jesus!” And Thomas, well he isn’t going to be played.

Which is why we need him. The truth is, we are all really Thomas— a little skeptical of being played. A little skeptical of what that homeless person will do with our dollar thrown in the cup. A little skeptical sometimes that anything we do is going to make any difference at all.

Why? Because we want to matter. We want to make a difference. It’s a noble impulse at first glance. We live in a culture that is defined by accomplishment, so that we want even our charity to accomplish something, to be successful, to do good (however we define “good”). We are goal oriented, even in our agape – our love offerings.

But love has no goals. Love is simply at-one-ment.

At-one-ment. Atonement. It is the meaning of Easter.

I’ll be honest, it’s a miracle they let me stand up here because I’ve always had a problem with Easter. The idea that God demanded a blood sacrifice as proper atonement for the sins of humanity, and that only his son could be perfect enough to supply the necessary blood, doesn’t seem like the kind of God I can fall into the arms of. But there is an alternative view of Easter offered by the Franciscans – you might remember St. Francis as a lover of all of God’s creation.

According to the Franciscans, Jesus is not some “Plan B” God had to come up with because of the whole Garden of Eden thing. Jesus was God’s first thought and first Word. He is not an afterthought—He is the whole point. He is the embodiment of the divine and the human, inseparable – the at-one-ment of God and created matter.

Every single moment of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, from healing the blind to washing the disciples’ feet to cooking a fish dinner on the beach, shows us how to be “at-one” with God and with the world God created.

And though we often think of the word “sacrifice” as meaning “punishment”, the meaning of the word is simply this: a freely given offering to God. Jesus offered his entire life to “God’s dream of union with all things and all people in every moment of his life, no matter how great the cost to him.”[1] He freely gave over the living of his entire life as the ultimate example of the at-one-ness of divinity and creation.

His entire life, every moment of it, not just the cross, is agape — a love offering.

And agape, Love, is extravagant. It doesn’t care about being taken advantage of and it doesn’t care about the end result. Love leaves us open and vulnerable, and it’s what we are asked to do—because to be hard of heart is to wall ourselves off from the messy creation that so desperately needs at-one-ment with God. We need it, too.

It’s all too easy to keep our distance, to become hard hearted. When we hear the news that we have bombed someone and our first thought “Good! They deserved it!” When we hear of another incident of violence and our first impulse is to take sides and decide who was “right”. When we use argument and indignation and self-justification to wall off our hearts from the hurt around us and inside us because it’s just too messy, too painful, and too difficult to love this world, and each other—that is when we need Thomas.

Thomas gets to put his hands into the wounds in Jesus’s side, his hands, and his feet. Because keeping a “safe” distance from the messy, painful stuff is not what Jesus’ disciples are charged to do.

And if we are to get close enough, like Thomas, to be at-one with God’s creation and with our Creator, as we are meant to be – at some point we will hurt. And at some point we will doubt it is all worthwhile or that there’s any point.

I struggle, having been part of our Haiti Mission for 6 years now, with how overwhelming it is to accomplish anything that feels substantial, even in a single village. I struggle with the fact that year after year we barely keep the school open, keep our children and the other 250 students there outfitted, with access to teachers and books. I struggle with the fact that it’s been 3 years of effort for us to just be able to say we have finally started a building project to bring basic sanitation to the school. It’s hard to feel, sometimes, like we’re getting anywhere at all. There are times in November before each trip that I, like Thomas, want to throw up my hands and say “Fine—for all the good it will do we may as well go there and die with them!”

But. Love has no goals. Love is simply at-one-ment.

People here who will never get to visit Haiti will never touch the hands of the children we support, will never see their feet kicking the soccer balls we bring, will never return their smiles in person. People here believe without seeing that our small act of witness in this world, our agape in the face of this world’s terror and brutality and corruption, matters. That somehow in all the waiting and uncertainty, Jesus will walk in out of seemingly nowhere and show us in every breath, a love-offering—a life at-one with creation.

Love has no agenda, no list of accomplishments, no purpose that can be quantified and demonstrated. Love just walks in, and breathes peace where there was fear.

And although our Gospel writer turns Thomas into a morality story about how we should all believe without seeing, it’s important to notice that Jesus does give Thomas exactly what he needs. He meets Thomas where he is, in his skepticism, his realism, his doubt that this is all going to be worthwhile. And He comes very, very close to him. He touches him in the messiest possible way.

And then love sends us out to do the work He has given us to do – we are sent to be God’s own messy hands and feet in the world, to live at-one-ment with God’s creation as best we can. We could do a lot worse than to be like Thomas, to have the faith to do what is necessary even we when doubt that any of this is going to matter at all.

Because we don’t know which of the children being educated today in Chapoteau is the next Wisnel, the next who will work selflessly, tirelessly for a people in desperate need of some Good News. Who will bring them close to at-one-ment with their and your and my Creator.

Thomas is the disciple who shows us that what it means to be faithful is to keep on following Jesus, even when all indications are that it’s pointless to do so. To keep on opening ourselves to the messiness of at-one-ment with creation. Thomas is an example of the faith of love that needs no purpose, other than closeness with the creator and the world God created.

Love that has no goals. Agape.

Amen.

[1] Jakeowensby.com

Get up and do not be afraid

by • sermons • Tags: , , , •

by Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

Exodus 24:12-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9

I’ve always thought the most puzzling thing about our Gospel lesson this morning is what is not said. God speaks. That’s pretty significant. That only happens twice in the New Testament – once when Jesus is baptized, when God says “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased” and here, which starts in much the same way “This is my son, the beloved”. But then God goes on to give the only direct, from-the-mouth-of-God command in the New Testament: “listen to” Jesus.

And then, Jesus appears to not really say anything! You’d think when God says “listen up!” The next words out of Jesus’ mouth would be something pretty profound.

To recap, Jesus has taken a couple disciples up the mountain with him, and they have seen him “transfigured” – hence what we call Transfiguration Sunday in the church. And Peter’s first thought upon witnessing this incredible thing is to memorialize it, so the spot where it happened will be always known. So that it can be celebrated, and not forgotten.

And what’s wrong with that? We humans seem to have a need to capture and preserve the moment. Nationally, we commemorate Presidents and leaders, we remember wars and tragedies. In the Episcopal Church we still have vergers that originated in the 12th century who carry sticks to swat at any animals disrupting the procession. I’m rather certain that today Peter would have suggested taking a picture and posting it on Facebook. Preserving and sharing personal and institutional memories is important. They celebrate and define who we are, and where we come from. The things we choose to remember and commemorate become our narrative and our identity.

Personally, I am an incurable photo album keeper and video documenter of my children’s lives. Every year I create a birthday video for each of my children. I try to capture everyday moments as well as pivotal ones from the past year. I hope one day, maybe when they’re teenagers, I’ll be able to use it as documentary evidence that they did not have awful childhoods! And rewatching those videos together cements in them a narrative, a story of who they are. But on occasion, I miss the shot. When Sara got her ears pierced for her 9th birthday a month ago, I was using the iPad instead of my phone, which worked a little differently, and the video didn’t start recording until after the big moment was over. And I was so upset! Ridiculously upset. That moment was gone forever, would never happen again, and now I didn’t have documentation of this important life event!

In a sense, we feel that we ARE our memories. Our bodies change, but our memories, we believe, create the continuity that allows us to have an identity – I am Genevieve, because of all the things I remember experiencing. It’s the reason why Alzheimers and Dementia are so very scary. For those of us watching a loved one lose their memory, we seem to lose the person.

And that, perhaps, is the problem this morning. Because it is not Truth.

The Truth is that what makes us who we are is not our memories. Our identity as individuals is not in anything we have seen or done. Our identity as a church is not in our work in Pine Ridge or Dungannon or Haiti, or in our preschool or our Spanish service, or any of the things we do. Doing good work in the world is wonderful and necessary and even important. But it is not our purpose. We are not just a group of generous people supporting another charitable non profit.

Our Identity, our Truth, is that we belong to God. And that is something no loss of memory or institutional turmoil can ever change. We are not created to work, but to live, as beloved by God.

So why did Jesus take those disciples up to the mountain in the first place – If not to memorialize and remember the experience, and pass it on to us? Notice Jesus doesn’t take just one disciple, he takes a few – and he will tell them later that where a few are gathered, he is there. It is together, in community, that Jesus calls them to witness who he truly is – not in the sense of standing by and watching and remembering, but in the sense of bearing witness. Jesus’ disciples are to be living examples of God’s revelation to the world.

They are to re-live, not enshrine, their experience.

Likewise, we do not come here each week and have Eucharist to memorialize or re-enact something that happened a long time ago in a particular time and place. We come here each week to re-live the experience of Jesus’ love for us. To know that we belong to God, we are God’s beloved, and to bear witness, as part of a community that is a living example of Jesus’ Truth, here and now.

So, to those first witnesses, those few disciples, God says “listen to” Jesus, my beloved.

And then all Jesus says is “Get up and do not be afraid.” And because Peter has apparently just fallen to the ground in awe or terror, and because we hear that “do not be afraid” phrase virtually every single time someone encounters God, or a messenger of God, we are inclined to hear this phrase as a simple reassurance to Peter. But it is much more than that.

Get up. And do not be afraid.

It is the answer to the question of how we live in witness to Jesus, instead of merely memorializing or remembering him. It is the answer to the question of what we do once we define our identity as “those who belong to God”, those who have experienced the transfigurative love of God.

Because when we know, with certainty, that we belong to God, are beloved by God, then we can be not afraid. Not afraid of losing a moment or a memory or an identity that we cling to. Not afraid of change in our family or our church or our country.

Get up. And do not be afraid.

When we know, with certainty, that we belong to God, are beloved by God, then we can get up, and stand up, and do what we know Jesus would do. We can act with radical love towards the world, because we do more than just remember Jesus, we are living witnesses to how Jesus acts towards the world.

When I was growing up in Virginia Beach our church sponsored 4 young men to immigrate to the United States, just four among the thousands of the Lost Boys of Sudan. As 6 or 7 year old children they had fled their homes when parents, friends, and neighbors were slaughtered or kidnapped. They walked hundreds of miles, masses of children, dying along the way from lack of food and water, from crocodiles and lions, to reach a refugee camp across the border in another country – Kenya. And there they lived for years, sharing food and space and lives with children from the enemy tribe, also refugees from the violence. And after 10 years or more waiting in a refugee camp, four of them came to this country and were given 3 months in which to learn their way around, get a job and become self-supporting. One of them got a job waiting tables and rode a bike to and from work every day. And one day, as he was riding home, a local youth with a gun stepped in front of him and demanded his bike. And this young refugee replied, “If your need is greater than mine, you may have it.”

Get up. And do not be afraid.

Our letter from Peter, recounting the experience of witnessing to the transfiguration, reminds us that we are living witnesses to extraordinary transformation. When all around us is dark, the knowledge that we are beloved by God, that we belong to God, is what we are to be attentive to. And then we witness, through our lives, what being beloved looks like.

Two weeks ago a man who works with immigrants in Savannah, Georgia, led an adult forum at Christ Church. He talked about a immigrant from Iran who was taking public transportation to his job at a car wash. It was a two hour commute, each way. Back in Iran this man was a gifted tailor and an embroiderer of exquisite wedding gowns. One of the adult forum members at the church knew a woman who ran a tailoring shop in town, and called her right there from church. The woman said that although business was slow, she would offer this immigrant a job on the spot, on faith.

Get up. And do not be afraid.

Our identity, our Truth, is that we are beloved by God. We all belong to God: robber and a refugee, immigrant and an entrepreneur, Christian and not. And what do we do with that Truth?

Get up. And do not be afraid.

Amen.

Come Down!

by • sermons • Tags: , , , •

by Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, Luke 19:1-10

Being 5 foot two and having spent quite a lot of time in trees as a little girl, I have to say I feel a certain affinity with Zacchaeus. We had this enormous, wonderful old magnolia tree in our yard when I was about 10, and I would climb up there with a book and disappear for hours. My mother would come looking for me, calling for me, and I would stay up there watching the world (and yes, totally ignoring her)—escaping from everything.

And it seems Zaccheaus probably needed an escape from time to time, too. He’s not, shall we say, well liked. He’s rich, and he’s a tax collector—an occupation universally despised, because tax collectors were often corrupt and they worked for the occupying Roman government (and who in this history of time doesn’t love to complain about taxes and low-level government employees?)

But like many other outsiders throughout our Gospels, Zaccheaus wants a glimpse of Jesus. So, he climbs a tree.

There’s a whole new way of seeing the world, being in a tree. Nobody ever looks up. Nobody sees you. You’re isolated. From up there everything looks tiny and insignificant, and you can see much farther. You get a shift in perspective, as well as an escape.

And shift in perspective is exactly what this Gospel story requires. Because there is, actually, no evidence in our story that Zacchaeus was dishonest or corrupt. The Hebrew translation of his name, in fact, means “pure” or “innocent”. And Zaccheus himself has a telling word in the story: “IF I have defrauded anyone of anything”—the implication being that he hasn’t.

So the people muttering about Zacchaeus appear to be judging him unworthy of hosting Jesus, without really knowing him. It’s a very human thing to do – we’re all guilty of using a kind of mental shorthand just to get through the day. We tend to categorize people into boxes that enable us to make sense of the world, of other people’s behavior, and move on. That jerk that cut us off in traffic. That sullen looking teenager at the package store. That rude customer service representative on the phone.

That’s not a great thing to do, admittedly, but most of the time, we think these things briefly to ourselves and move on. But the people in this story “grumble” instead. They talk amongst themselves—about Jesus and his poor choice of companion, about Zaccheaus and how undeserving he is.

But throughout Scripture, God has never picked the people who are worthy, by our standards, of his fellowship. God has never been about rewarding only the deserving with His presence. In this instance, Jesus is quite literally “standing up for the little guy”.

And so Jesus says to Zaccheaus “Hurry and come down! I MUST stay at your house!” Jesus is urgent, and insistent, in his call. It is a call that (unlike my mother’s) Zaccheaus can’t ignore from up in that tree. Jesus invites himself to Zaccheaus’s table (which I can tell you is definitely not How Things are Done in the South)—because Jesus invites himself into our lives even when he’s not really invited. Even when we’re jealous or hurt or resentful or busy or impatient or some other not-so-great version of ourselves.

Jesus bursts into our lives while we’re watching from afar, and insists that we become active participants in the unfolding drama of God’s incredible story.

We know that when 2 or 3 are gathered, Jesus is there. And we certainly seek out God in times of need. But there are lots of times we’re don’t invite God to be with us. And yet, God shows up anyway, and calls us to come to table.

When I was a recent college graduate and had just moved to Northern Virginia, I knew pretty much nobody in the area. I didn’t have a church yet, and I was commuting from Centreville to Alexandria every day, which meant getting up at 5 am to beat the traffic. I was tired all the time, and lonely, and not sure of myself. And then a couple girls I knew from college who had also moved to this area sent out an email asking if anyone wanted to get together for dinner. We met at Maggiano’s in Tysons Corner in October of 1999. And we’ve been getting together for dinner every month since then. We’ve seen each other through 3 weddings, 5 houses, 6 kids, 2 divorces, 2 advanced degrees, more job changes than I can remember—and in 17 years I can count the number of months we’ve missed on one hand with fingers left over.

One thing I credit my Southern family with, is understanding that table fellowship breaks down those boxes we put each other in. What happens around a table is spiritual. We mostly don’t know one another’s story, and we almost never can. But breaking bread together is supposed to change us. It’s supposed to take us out of our boxes and make us more generous towards each other—make us see each other as the flawed, vulnerable, fellow sons and daughters of God that we all are. It builds relationships, and community. It changes lives.

And welcoming Jesus gladly, sharing hospitality with Jesus, does change Zaccheaus. Not necessarily from a dishonest tax collector into an honest man, but certainly from a rich man into a generous one. Zaccheus vows to give away half his wealth—enough to make a difference not just in his own life, but in the lives of those in his community.

In doing so, he reminds us that we are stewards not just of our financial resources, though our Stewardship Ministry would certainly like to remind you that’s pretty important, and your pledge cards should be turned in by next week! But we are also stewards of each other. Zaccheaus’ vow to give away his wealth after sitting down to break bread with Jesus brings him into connection with all those other people, those who would grumble about him. It changes not just him, but everyone in the story, as Jesus reminds them that Zacchaeus, too, is a brother of theirs, a son of Abraham.

Because that’s what Jesus does. Jesus calls us each out of our isolation, out of our own perspective, and insists that we come to table, and then join the community and become active participants in God’s story.

So, how can you join God’s story here, in this place?

This is where I think Paul’s letter is also, in its own way, a beautiful invitation. Paul talks about growing in faith and increasing in love for one another—something we strive to do during this Interim Time. He talks about steadfastness in difficult times—something we strive to be in this Interim Time. And he reminds us that it is not any of us who are responsible for whatever comes—it is not your Vestry or the RSC or even whoever is our Rector, past, present or future—it is God who will fulfill “every good resolve and work of faith”.

We are about to open a new chapter, yet another change in what feels like a sea of change over the past 18 months. And when there’s chaos and crowds all jostling with one another, we may want to step back, climb a tree, watch from afar. But next Sunday we will celebrate St. Timothy’s 148th birthday. We will rejoice in All Saints Day, remembering the long line of saints we come from and singing about how we, too, are God’s saints. We will comission a mission team to go out to Haiti to spread God’s love. And we will welcome a new priest, the Reverend Anne Turner, to join the journey with us on the road towards the calling of a permanent Rector. The amazing and wonderful story of God at work in this place continues, and it’s our story.

Jesus is already and always coming down our road. And we are all called, like Zaccheaus, to come down. Jesus MUST stay with us! He has invited himself to this table, to this community, and invited us all to a central place in God’s incredible story.

Amen.

Change is Where God is Acting

by • sermons • Tags: , , , •

by Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

Exodus 3:1-15
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8

There is a purportedly ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” It speaks, I think, to the truth that most of us spend a great deal of our time on earth trying to keep things humming along as usual – in our job, in our marriage, in our church. We human beings get pretty comfortable with what we know, or think we know, and we often dislike change.

And this is tough, because our readings this morning remind us that Change is where God is acting. We worship a God who is not about the status quo; a God who is sometimes even impatient with our reluctance to participate in the dream God has for our lives.

Take Moses. Moses has by all appearances a pretty nice life – he’s married, he’s a partner in his father in law’s successful sheep herding business, he has two fine sons. He’s been settled happily after his escape from Egypt for a “long period”. He appears to be doing well – doing everything he’s supposed to be doing. So it must have seemed preposterous – out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ordinary sheep—to see this completely unfathomable burning bush. An rather dramatic interruption of his daily life.

And in the ensuing conversation Moses manages to come up with reason after reason why he can’t possibly leave that nice, ordinary life to do what God is asking: Moses starts with self doubt: “What if I’m really not adequate?” And God says “Don’t worry, I will be with you.” “What if they ask me which God sent me, what is his name?” And God says, “Then tell them my name.” And after our passage this morning ends, Moses goes on to raise more objections: “What if they don’t believe me?” And God says “Your staff will turn into a serpent so they will believe”. “I can’t speak well.” And God says, “I’ll help you”. Finally Moses simply resorts to “Please send someone else”, and God, like many a worn-down, fed-up parent who just wants their kid to PLEASE get on with it, finally says “Fine. Your brother can help you.”

And Moses is just one in a long line of people called by God who aren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect. Because to be called by God is to be asked to leave behind what is comfortable and comforting, familiar and safe. And even if our call isn’t quite as dramatic as Moses’s, our first reaction is often to push back – to come up with all the reasons why we can’t change our lives and what we have now is perfectly fine, and we’ll just keep on doing that, thankyouverymuch.

But Change is where God is acting. And Jesus tells us that in fact, we have already lost the lives we think we have. Everyone will perish, one way or another. And just because it happens suddenly, or dramatically, is no commentary on the person’s life any more than your being still alive is any commentary on your own righteousness, he says.

And then Jesus tells this parable which sounds like its all about God striking down the fig tree for failing to bear fruit. This is the kind of passage we’d certainly rather ignore, rather relegate to the backburner under the idea we Christians sometimes have that the God of the Old Testament is the one who gets impatient and angry and punishes people to make an example out of them – as Paul says in his letter – but the God of the new testament, in the person of Jesus, is all gentleness and forgiveness and love.

But this parable, like Jesus overturning the money changers tables and the parable of the sheep and goats, shows us the love of God isn’t gentle and it isn’t at all complacent – the love of God is a love that is sometimes even impatient with our resistance to change, our resistance to growing into the people we are meant to be.

So we can’t ignore these readings, as much as we’d like to. These difficult passages—Jesus’s parable and the letter from Paul— are what I call rather “Lent-ey” in what appears to be their emphasis on punishment – excellent fodder for a “God will strike down sinners” sort of sermon. But before Lent was a period of time to flog ourselves for our unworthiness before going back to eating chocolate or ice cream on a regular basis, Lent was a period of preparation – preparation for becoming a Christian. And I think it’s worth noting in these readings that Moses and the fig tree both need preparation in order to bear fruit. After all, it’s hard to embrace God’s plan for us when we are stressed, overwhelmed with fears and doubts, and not getting what we need. It’s hard to be faithful, as Paul exhorts, when we feel like we are being “tested” and there’s no end in sight.

Last year my business was falling apart – I had to let my employee go. Then my marriage of 17 years ended. On top of that, my church seemed to be falling apart too, with the departure of Brad, Leslie, and Filippa. In every area of my life the status quo wasn’t any more, and everything that kept me comfortable was suddenly changing—all at once.

And to walk through change is to walk like Moses through a wilderness where we don’t know the way, to walk through Lent to the cross. But to walk through change is also to walk, like Moses, on Holy ground—because change is where God is acting. It is the place where we come to rely on God the most, when we are no longer sure of our reliance on ourselves or the world around us.

And it is hard when we are in the midst of walking through the wilderness, walking through the darkness of Lent, walking through times of great change, to see how, as Paul assures us, God will provide what we need. But the amazing thing is that even as we resist change, God is still willing to meet us where we are and give us what we need. Both our Old and New Testament readings show people arguing with God – and despite God’s impatience, God gives Moses exactly the preparation he needs to grow into God’s dreams for him. The fig tree also, is given fertilizer, oxygen around the roots, an environment in which it can blossom into its full potential. God gives us what we need to bear fruit and asks only that we do what we are created to do.

After all, who Moses is, at his core, is a shepherd – and God doesn’t ask him to change that – God asks him to become a shepherd of a people he will lead through the wilderness so that they, too, can become what they have the potential to be – a light to the nations. And the fig tree, too, isn’t asked by God to be an apple tree — it’s asked to bear fruit, to grow into the best fig tree it can be.

Both our old and new testament stories this morning show God calling us to live fully into who God made us to be. The impatient love of God pushes us to stop holding on to the status quo, and get on with it! Get on with becoming who we really are.

And God’s impatience with our love of our nice, stable lives at the expense of God’s dream for us is not like human impatience—when we are impatient we see others as a hindrance to our plans, we get angry with each other. And so we are inclined to view God’s impatience in human terms – inclined to read our readings today with an eye towards how we might be punished if God is having a bad day.

Of course, a certain amount of self-examination to see where we have fallen short and where we can strive to do better is worthwhile. But the crux of what Jesus says is that none of us are worthy. There is nothing we can do, nothing we can say, no amount of trying harder that will ever make us worthy of the love and grace and joy we experience when we become who God means us to be. The idea of being worthy, or unworthy, is missing the point entirely. God doesn’t love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good.

So what if we aren’t the fig tree about to be chopped down for our failure. What if we are all the gardener? What if we are asked during Lent to look at our souls and spend some time watering and fertilizing them, figuring out how to prepare ourselves and nurture each other, so that in the midst of the wilderness of change, we can all bear fruit.

Last Fall I was having one of “those” days. I unplugged the freezer to defrost the 2 inch layer of ice inside and found green goo leaking from the electrical outlet. So I replaced the outlet myself, and I felt accomplished! Then I went to take the kids to birthday party. The garage door wouldn’t open because the spring had snapped. So I opened it manually, moved everything to the other side of the garage so I could park on the side with the working door, and called a repairman. No problem. That evening I discovered the toilet upstairs wouldn’t stop running. And I poured some wine, turned off the water and gave up.

Then I posted this story to Facebook. Within 30 minutes someone from St. Timothy’s sent me a text volunteering to come over and fix my toilet.

This is the kind of tending we do for each other, the small acts of nurturing that create at St. Timothy’s fertile ground for us to bear fruit. It is an undeserved gift, pure and simple.

And when God pushes us through change, prods us to become who are are meant to be, that too is a gift. Not because we deserve or don’t deserve it, or because we have done the right kind or the right amount of pennance, but because we are loved with a fiery, burning-but-not-consuming, impatient kind of love. Our faith is that what God has in store for us beyond the scary times of change and wilderness and walking to the cross is more great and bountiful than we could ever ask for or imagine for ourselves.

Last weekend the Rector Search Committee kicked off the Search process. They will start by creating a parish profile – a snapshot of St. Timothy’s – the good, the bad, the ugly—and a picture of who we want to be – who we are in the process of growing into. We as a congregation have been through a wilderness of change, and we are still walking on that holy ground.

Our call, as individuals and as a church, is to listen very carefully, to discern how to nurture ourselves and each other to be what we are already made to be. And we can raise objections if necessary, absolutely! God is clearly not above a good argument! Ultimately, we are to live as fully as possible into who we are and where we are called to go, knowing that like Moses and the fig tree, God will indeed meet us where we are and give us what we need. Because Change is where God is acting.

Amen.

Not Known, But Trusted

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , •

by Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

Welcome to Trinity Sunday! If there’s anything that’s hard for non-Christians, or even most Christians to understand about our idea of God, it’s the Trinity. Our Nicean Creed uses a lot of beautiful language to talk about the Trinity – God from God, Light from Light, begotten not made, proceeding from, of one being with … but do we really know what any of that means?

Theologians have struggled for thousands of years to explain the unexplainable, to put into words the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—as if in defining God we could somehow know God. As poor Nicodemus struggles this morning. Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dark of night – a Pharisee who nevertheless recognizes that Jesus has some sort of special relationship to God—but what that is, he’s not exactly sure. He comes seeking answers, seeking explanations. And what does he get in response to his earnest—if timid—inquiry? A Jesus who speaks in riddles and never seems to answer a question straight! Nicodemus comes confessing his faith, wanting to understand, and Jesus puts him off!

And how many times do we feel this way about God? We seek after God in the dark places of our lives—when change is all around us and we don’t know what the future holds—faithful, yes, but wanting to understand: Why did a loved one die? How can we possibly heal from a heartbreak? Where do we go from here?

How can these things be?

But this Jesus in John gives us no satisfying answers. He is rather remote, certainly confusing, frustratingly un-knowable. Today we are not given the comforting shepherd or the parable teacher. Today we are given a God incarnate who reminds us how little we understand—the wind of God’s Spirit blows where it chooses, and we do not know where it comes from or where it goes. Because God cannot be fully known.

But, God can be trusted.

Trust doesn’t happen instantly. It happens gradually, one step at a time, as we find that over and over, when things seem darkest, God is with us. St. Tim’s began with 9 people in 1868. As we were preparing to construct our first building, we needed to come up with $200 to purchase the land. We couldn’t afford it. But when the land owners realized it was wanted for a church, they envisioned what God could do in this place and they sold – for $1.

Twenty years ago during the search process for our current rector, the Vestry conducted an 18-month process culminating in an offer to a candidate, who then backed out – resulting in our call to Brad. From generation to generation in our history, we have learned to trust God.

We humans tend to trust others once we get to know them. But of course the difficult part of faith is in putting our trust in something that is ultimately, sometimes frustratingly, un-knowable. And so we tend to ask, over and over like Nicodemus, questions that are mostly the wrong questions. Because God doesn’t generally hand down timely answers to Why or How or When?

Instead, in response to our search for understanding, God continually offers us something completely different – and sometimes not at all what we’re asking for: a glimpse of the holiness that does indeed fill the earth. A taste of bread and wine. A birdsong breaking through our thoughts. A vast expanse of starry sky. A vision, like Isaiah’s, of heaven. A holy moment in which all our questions and worries become somehow irrelevant.

To get a glimpse of the holy is not to have our questions answered or our problems solved. And to trust God doesn’t mean everything will turn out exactly as we want—as Isaiah found out when his people went into exile and slavery after his glorious vision of God.

Trusting God means that somehow, if we seek after God, if we come questioning in the dark places of our lives as Nicodemus did, God will give us a glimpse of the holiness that fills the earth, and work with us to fill our lives with that holiness.

Nicodemus’s encounter with God incarnate does just that. After his encounter with Jesus, it is Nicodemus who calls into question the legality of his trial. After Jesus’ death, it is Nicodemus who brought 100 pounds of embalming spices for his body — an abundance that exceeds all normal proportions and would have been more than enough for even a royal burial. He does these things despite being a Pharisee, despite the personal danger of associating with a criminal executed for treason and blasphemy .

Some time ago I had the opportunity to walk a labrynth. A labrynth looks a bit like a maze, but there is only ever one way to move forward through it. The first time I walked it, it was daylight. I could see my destination in the center of the circle, but to get there, I had to walk the pathway that doubled back on itself, moving me sometimes closer and sometimes farther from the middle. For a type A personality like myself, I have to admit, it wasn’t the peaceful, spiritual experience I had heard others recommend. It was actually rather maddening! I could see the destination, but there was no straightforward way to get there. And it took SO LONG.

I returned to the labrynth at night though, and walked it again. This time, it was much harder to see the destination in the center or even the direction the path in front of me was taking. To move through the labrynth in the dark I had to put one foot in front of the other, over and over, knowing that eventually I would get where I needed to be.

In the dark places in our lives, when we are in gut-wrenching sorrow or heart-breaking pain or deep confusion, we cannot clearly see the path ahead, much less the final destination. We cannot know what God has mind, to what good God will turn our walking in darkness. But we can trust that if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, God will walk with us, and we will reach the center, and it will be filled with God’s holiness. Because God cannot be known. But God can be trusted.

And when we are not, ourselves, in the midst of darkness?

It is then we get to walk with someone else. It is the reason we come here, week after week, not only to seek solace, but to get a glimpse of the holy that fills the earth, so that we can be solace to others. At Shrine Mont about 60 members of our congregation had a chance to share the places in our service that they felt were holy. It was different for everyone, and sometimes the experience of the holy varied from week to week. But when we come here and are touched by the holy on earth—the holy we experience during Eucharist, during quiet moments of prayer, during the exchange of the peace or the singing of a hymn—we can put aside for a moment all our questions, our need to understand the Whys and Whats and Hows …

and respond as Isaiah did, when the hosts of heaven ask “Whom shall I send?”

“Send me.”

Because whether we are walking in the dark places ourselves, or walking with others through their dark places, God cannot be known, but God can be trusted—one step at a time.

Amen.

 

Transforming Hearts, Feeding Souls

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , , , •

by Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

It’s really tough for us to get on board with the idea of plucking out an eye. Mark is the earliest of our four Gospels, the one most concerned that the end time is near, Jesus’ return is imminent, and the message of repentence is urgent.

Frankly, after 2,000 years, we’ve lost a bit of that urgency. Sure, we say in our creed that we look for the kingdom of heaven, but mostly we mean we’d like to visit it after we die, and we’d really prefer that the world keep right on turning pretty much as it is—with maybe a slightly better job or slightly more mindful children or slightly better health than we currently have.

But what Jesus is saying here is vitally, urgently important – woven through the exhortations to take this as seriously as the loss of a limb is the real point of this morning’s Gospel: Jesus’ insistance this morning that God is not about following our idea of proper procedure.

God is about transforming hearts and feeding souls.

When Jesus’ followers try to stop others from casting out demons in his name, Jesus says “whoever is not against us is for us”. Note that this is the counter-cultural opposite of the oft-heard saying “if you’re not for us, you’re against us”. Jesus is urging his disciples — that’s us, by the way — to start with the assumption that we are all on the same side—all working towards the same Good, regardless of how we do the work we’ve been given to do.

We humans aren’t very good at that. We like order. We get caught up in all the whos and hows and whys, in all the details of proper procedure and authority and the “right” way to do a thing.

The church I attended in in Virginia Beach was a very old, very historic place with long traditions. Every year for decades the church held an Oyster Roast and bazaar on a Saturday in November—the kind of event that lasts all day and draws people from miles around to enjoy the food and shop the various rooms. One of the most popular and lucrative rooms was the “pickle room”, where a thousand homemade pickles made great Christmas gifts. And one year some new folks volunteered to help the ECW make pickles under the direction of, as she was known, the “pickle lady”. Well, as they began cutting hundreds of cucumbers into spears the pickle lady came by, tsking and shaking her head. “No, no. They really need to be one and three quarters by five eighths inches.” she said. “I like to make a mark on my cutting board.”

Now as many of you know I’m a type A personality and I am all about having things done well, and right. I get it. Without proper channels and procedures and process, there’d be chaos, I say! And we’re human. We’re going to disagree with each other from time to time about how to best go about doing the work we’ve been given to do.

But there’s nothing that kills the Spirit faster than having your freely given gifts rejected. To try to stop other people from doing God’s work simply because they are not doing it “our” way, Jesus says, is a great evil. It is not just thwarting the work of God—although it is that—it is thwarting another’s faith, the work of their soul.

Find that many times they are so high that online pharmacy in UK it is your the costal direct kamagra uk cartilage. Ten, year follow, up of a unique blend of natural.

And that is a terribly serious thing.

The Good News is, the Gospel is: God will not be constrained by our ideas of proper procedure. God is bigger than our institutions, and God’s transforming work will be accomplished anyway, often because of us—but sometimes, in spite of us.

The warning this morning is that all too often we want things done our own way, and that can starve our spirits. Like the pickle lady, we are oh-so-good at finding fault with others when things aren’t to our exact specifications. Like the Israelites in our first lesson things morning, who after having been redeemed from slavery, given water from a rock, given manna in the wilderness, are now complaining that they are starving for meat and melons!

It is astounding, our ability to one-up each other with our complaints about work and spouses, parents and children, in-laws and exes, illness and inconvenience, traffic and weather, hectic schedules and church committees and Congress.*

And when we focus on how the world isn’t conforming to our exact specifications, we utterly fail to appreciate the ways in which God is feeding us every day. We fail to see the miracles God pours out on the world. God poured out the Spirit on Eldad and Medad, and all Joshua saw was another problem to be solved. God poured out the Spirit on some random person in Judea to cast out demons, and all the discliples saw was a process foul.

Because even more important than doing God’s work, Jesus and Moses tell us today, is living in a community that is accepting of all kinds of ways to do God’s work. If you can’t do that, well, you might as well cut off a hand, because it is less important for any of us to have two hands than it is for us to have many hands working together.

And it is urgent that we do this. Urgent that we catch the seriousness of Mark’s gospel not necessarily because we want to avoid the fires of hell, but because we must avoid quenching the fire of each other’s souls.

This is risky. Saying “yes” to the Spirit when it doesn’t fit within our notions of what is proper, efficient or orderly. But God will not be constrained by our notions of proper procedure, so we must not let those notions constrain our vision for this community, either. Eldad and Medad didn’t follow proper procedure. That guy healing people in Jesus’s name didn’t get official permission to do so. But God’s spirit came upon them anyway. Because God’s not really about following our procedures.

God is about transforming hearts and feeding souls.

And doing God’s work is transformative. Jesus tells his disciples that no one who does God’s work can afterwards speak evil of Him. And the transformative power of doing God’s work doesn’t even need to begin with something as showy as casting out demons—work as simple as offering a cup of water will do.

I know a deacon who, long before becoming a deacon, was just looking for a place to volunteer, wondering what work God wanted her to do. She signed up one day to go to a nursing home, and after being there a couple hours was headed out the door fully convinced that volunteering in nursing homes was definitely not for her. On her way out, she passed an open door and glimpsed a resident in her bed, straining for a glass of water on the nightstand that was just out of reach. So, she went in and held the glass of water while the woman drank. Then the woman leaned back into her pillow, sighed, and said “I was SO thirsty.” And in that moment she saw Jesus asking for a drink of water. She was transformed. Both she and the women were fed, and she eventually became a deacon and spent the next 20 years ministering in nursing homes.

In the smallest of ways, doing God’s work leads to more doing God’s work, more faith, more hope, more love in the world. It is food for our souls, to be engaged in the work of the Spirit, and it is work that feeds the world, one person, one glass of water at a time. And that is our job: to create a community where everyone can use their gifts of the Spirit—a place that feeds everyone’s soul.

As our letter from James this morning reminds us, building a community is really what God’s work is all about—pray together! He says. Call together the elders of the church, he says, because where any two or three are gathered together, that’s where Jesus is to be found. The church, and St. Tim’s, isn’t about the person who is the past, present, or future rector—it’s not about when our services are held or how they are structured—it’s not about the Vestry’s decisions or each Ministry’s charter—it’s about who we are. It’s about how we feed each other’s souls—how we recognize the Spirit in each other and build that up. That’s the kind of community that feeds and transforms the world.

We will certainly starve—ourselves and each other—if we think that our way is the only way. Because God’s not about following our procedures.

God is about transforming hearts and feeding souls.

And so are we.

Amen.

 

 

*Adapted from the prayer by Maren Tirabassi and Joan Jordan Grant

 

 

 

Prophets of Discomfort

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , •

Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62: 6-14
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
Mark 1:14-20

Prophets are uncomfortable people. There was a man when I was in college who carried around a giant cross – I have no idea how he lugged that thing about – and stood on the lawn in the center of campus shouting that we were all doomed – most especially the girls wearing short skirts. In this day and age we are likely to walk by him or any other street corner preacher proclaiming the end of the world, averting our eyes and thinking privately that he’s more than a little bit, well,crazy.

Because prophets are embarrassing. Poor Jonah from our reading this morning walks the city of Ninevah end to end – it takes three days – shouting imminent destruction. And he wasn’t the only one. The prophet Isaiah went naked and barefoot for 3 years, as a sign to the Egyptians that the Assyrians were going to conquer them and drag them naked into exile. Ezekiel cooked his food over cow dung for over a year to show the people how disgusted God was by their degredation – imagine the flavor imparted by that particular kind of smoke.

All of them lived out visions of God, because a true prophet is someone who calls attention not just to him or herself, but does uncomfortable things in the service of God and others.

Some time ago a friend of mine was acting as the caretaker for her mother in law. “I’m not Miss Nurse” she said, explaining how far outside of her comfort zone this was. She administered morphene, bathed her mother in law, did all the messy, terrible, uncomfortable things you do for someone at the end of life, and she was afraid of making mistakes. But, she said afterwards, “It gave me compassion. It changed me for the better.”

God gives us comfort, but that is very different from making us comfortable.

God asks of prophets that they leave their comfortable lives behind to spread his message, and the prophets in turn ask that we leave the familiar behind in the service of God and each other—and frankly, none of us are happy about it. Jonah, you may remember, gets God’s call to Ninevah and heads straight in the opposite direction, finally arriving there after a detour through the belly of a great fish. Like Jonah, and like James and John, Simon and Peter – being called by God means leaving stepping out of our known lives to something new.

The problem is, deep down we’re pretty sure our comfortable lives are what we deserve, or at least, part of God’s “blessing” on us. After all, how often do we say “I’m blessed” when referring to our house, our income, our lives that are going just as we planned. And there are preachers who will agree, who will say that God wants us to be “happy”. (Sorry, I’m not one of them.) It seems in our readings this morning God has other priorities than making people “happy” – at least, our usual definition of happy. We often equate being happy with being comfortable, and God seems to be all about disturbing our lives and calling us to be more than that.

Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian empire – decidedly not Jewish – and God sends an extremely reluctant Hebrew prophet to preach to them. Not only that, they actually listen and change – profoundly. They start a new life. In the Gospel this morning Jesus calls his first followers to leave their boats and the life they know and do something new. And Paul’s letter this morning, in which he tells us to imagine a completely different life from the one we currently lead – rejoicers not rejoicing, married people not being married – invites us to overcome our contentment with our own status quo and imagine something new: wherever you are, Paul says, imagine that you are the opposite.

And all of this doing something new and listening to prophets and imagining change that God asks us to do is uncomfortable.  Because while God gives comfort, that is very different from making us comfortable.

Yet, as Christians, we are actually uniquely equipped to tackle uncomfortable things – things we initially think “I could never do that”. Because Christianity is mainstream, because we do this every week, we have a certain blindness about how utterly preposterous we Christians are. We have forgotten that to believe an all-knowing, all-powerful God became a limited, utterly dependent, human baby is beyond belief. That to believe Jesus was killed, and then came back and walked and talked, is utterly without precident. That to eat his flesh and drink his blood in some sort of celebration of that is actually pretty disturbing when you think about it. Like the white queen in Alice in Wonderland, we Christians may believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast!

It is part of who we are, to be a little bit well – crazy. Which is actually comforting, because when it comes down to it, God needs more people who are willing to do uncomfortable, unsettling, seemingly impossible things in order to proclaim by word and example that God’s kingdom is here, all around us, and to build that kingdom up. We are called to be Prophets –all of us.

That doesn’t necessarily mean leaving home to far-flung places like Ninevah, or to Haiti, Pine Ridge, or Dungannon. It means listening to what God is nudging you to do, most especially when it makes you uncomfortable. It can mean hosting a coffee hour or going up to a stranger and starting a conversation after church – even if you’re an introvert. It can mean volunteering to perform music during a service even if you don’t consider yourself a performer. It can mean standing up here and reading the lesson or administering communion or preaching – even if you’re afraid of public speaking (you know, just as a completely hypothetical example).

Because when we care for the sick and poor, reach out to a stranger, feed one another’s souls, we are acting as prophets. We are living out God’s vision of the Kingdom.

As a church family, we are exploring transitioning the 11:00 am service to a bi-lingual, Spanish and English service. We are about to spend more than a year conducting worship without organ music. Your new Vestry is setting visionary goals related to Involvement, Growth, and Outreach. In all of this and much more, God is with us – doing new things – and God will give us comfort, but that is very different from making us comfortable.

We can choose to try to run away, like Jonah. Or we can step out with Simon and Peter, James and John. Because notice that Jesus, when he calls those first disciples, does not offer to make them farmers or bakers. He takes the skills they already have and puts them to use in a new way – I will make you fish for people. When we do that, take what we have and use it in the service of God – even when it’s new and uncomfortable – we bring the kingdom of God nearer to those around us, and the Kingdom of God is indeed at hand.

So I offer this prayer, adapted by Bishop Desmond Tutu, for all of us as Prophets in training this year:

Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.

Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.

Amen

 

Written on Our Hearts

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , •

Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

 

Once, God was with everything, and everything was with God. God was with the rocks and plants and animals and people, and they were with God and each other. God talked with the people, and they shared the Dream of all of creation. And God declared it Good. But the people wanted to decide for themselves what was Good. And to know what is good, you have to know the Differences – between good and evil, right and wrong, close and far, faith and fear. And when they knew the differences, the people became afraid. So they hid.

And God saw their fear, and God let them go. He stayed near them still, but not so near that he would frighten them[i]. Sometimes God came very close to some of them. Once, God came very close to Noah, so that Noah knew in his heart what God wanted, and the earth was saved. Once, God came very close to Moses, so that Moses knew in his heart what God wanted, and the Israelites were taken by the hand and brought out of the land of Egypt and saved. Over and over, God came close to people – Elijah, Isaiah, Jonah, Jeremiah. But mostly, the people were still afraid. And in their fear, they hid. They put up more and more barriers between themselves and God. Priests. Temples. Rituals and Requirements.

Jeremiah knew what God wanted – that not just the prophets but everyone would come close to God again, everyone from the smallest to the greatest. That instead of using the Differences against each other – saying to each other “know the LORD” as if there were only one way to know God – instead they would know that God was with them and everything, and they and everything were with God, and they would not be afraid anymore.

So God decided to come close to the people in a way that wouldn’t frighten them. God would make himself like one of them[ii]. Small. Helpless even. And in Jesus, ordinary people came close to God again. They began to see what the prophets wrote – that God longs for a relationship with people. All people. And Jesus began to teach people how to read the will of God already written on their own hearts. On our hearts.

For God to write on our hearts means its possible for each of us to know God’s will, to know what God’s law is, to know what God considers Good.

But it is hard to read our hearts when fear gets in the way, when our hearts are troubled by our job or a family crisis or overwhelmed by grief. It’s hard to read our hearts when there are so many distractions and other objects of our affection. When our heart is busy reading Twitter and CNN. When our heart is chasing after tomorrow or next week.

Jesus tells us today that he draws all people close to God, into the relationship that God longs for with each of us. During Lent we look for the things that draw us from the love of God, that pull our hearts in other directions. One of St. Tim’s members said she’s spent most of Lent trying to let go of her anger at a former boss. We all have things we need to let go of. But despite all the things other than God that occupy our hearts, on this last Sunday of Lent we are offered the promise that we can learn to read our hearts, and find God’s Dream written there.

Jesus shows us how. With prayer. And not just any prayer. He prays “Glorify your name” instead of “Save Me From This Hour”.

Now we humans do a lot of “Santa Claus” prayer – “God, here’s what I want, help me with this, please do that, I really need …” God knows there is certainly much we need help with, and there’s not really anything wrong with asking for help when we need it. But prayer is a relationship. It’s a conversation. Imagine if 90 percent of the conversations you had with a loved one, a spouse, a parent, or a friend, consisted of “Could you do this for me?”

Not much of a relationship is it?

For prayer to help us cut through our fear and distractions to read the word of God written on our hearts, it has to be more than “save me from this” – it has to be “to your glory” – not our own. It has to be “thy will be done” – not our own.

I’ll admit this is usually my prayer of last resort. Many years ago my parents and my sister had a falling out. The reasons don’t really matter, but the family I knew and loved, which had been so “normal”, was gone. I spent years doing everything I could to “fix” it – listening to both sides, suggesting courses of action, trying to interpret one side to another – and none of it helped. Until I gave up. And my prayer changed from “fix this, please!” to “Your will be done.”

Of course, answers to prayer aren’t always what we want, and they aren’t always clear. The crowd that heard God’s answer to Jesus thought it was thunder, or an Angel. Because prayer isn’t just about the answer we receive. We ask so often to save our own lives, to fix the things we think are wrong with our family or our health or our job. And Jesus tells us today that trying to preserve all the things we love about our lives is the surest way to lose the life God offers to us. “Those who love their life lose it”.

Because what we ask for is often so much smaller than what God has to give us.

One of our member’s has a son who desperately wanted to attend Thomas Jefferson High School. He didn’t get in. Instead, he went to Chantilly, where he received honors and accolades that sent him on to the Naval Academy. It’s where he says he was clearly meant to be.

Another member of St. Tim’s, many years ago, attended a convention where she couldn’t wait to get to know a young man she was interested in. Instead, she met someone entirely different, who became her husband of 35 years.

Several years ago St. Timothy’s was part of a group of churches that started a Hypothermia shelter during cold months here in Herndon. The people who visit the shelter go there because it’s the only alternative to freezing to death. Because they live on the streets, they keep to themselves, and they are used to receiving other’s leftovers – unsold bread from Panera, overstocked pasta from Costco. They are generally suspicious – some are mentally unstable, potentially violent, possibly criminal. They gather at the shelter hoping for just a night out of the cold and a basic meal.

And then, one Sunday, members of St. Timothy’s showed up to serve dinner. Platters of home cooked Southern food began emerging, the smell of fried chicken and beans and corn and potatoes began to fill the room. Suddenly, everyone wanted to help carry trays, set out dishes, and pour drink. As plates were piled high, more food kept emerging. They went back for seconds. And thirds. The room changed from tense to almost jovial as people ate and talked and laughed. One man, on his third plate full, confessed “I can’t actually eat any more. I just can’t believe I can have more” and settled down to sleep with the plate of food next to him.

What God has to offer us is so much MORE than what we ask for.

How we view the world determines how we act in it. If we view ourselves always in need, we fail to appreciate the abundance that God called “Good” all around us. If our conversations with God are mostly about what we want, we cannot learn to read what God has written on our hearts, to see how we can act on what God wants.

To pray “Thy will be done” is to let go of our own dreams for our life and look for the Dream God has written on our hearts. And like a single grain of wheat, that Dream bears much fruit – enough to feed the world.

Amen.

Grace, With Skin On

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , , •

Genevieve Zetlan, Licensed Lay Preacher

1 Samuel 17: 32-49
Psalm 9:9-20
 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41

Spiders. Public Speaking. Change. Death.
What are you afraid of?

We don’t much like to think about fear except to talk about how we should really get over it. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Or that old saying, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”, implying that all we have to do to live life to the fullest is just ignore all our fear. Even our scriptures might have us believing that fear is a problem to be eliminated –every angel ever starts out with “Fear Not”.

And our stories this morning are dramatic illustrations of fear, and our reactions to it. Saul, the King the Israelites asked for, is facing the Philistine army, and he and all of Israel are “greatly afraid”. The disciples, weathering a great storm in a small boat, are afraid. Someone once said “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear”, and this morning our story of David facing down Goliath and the Gospel where Jesus contrasts fear and faith seem to be saying that, too. These stories seem to be saying that if we just have enough faith, we won’t be afraid anymore.

The problem with this neat little juxtaposition is that when it comes down to it, there’s plenty of room in us broken and flawed human beings to be both very afraid and very faithful. And when life gets messy and our boat is swamped and we are facing challenges that loom like Giants over us, saying “just have faith!” makes weathering the storm all about us. It says to those in the deepest of crisis that if only their faith were stronger, they wouldn’t be so afraid.

Shortly after my son Davis was born, I was a certifiable wreck. Davis was premature, he wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t sleep, he cried all the time and I think I cried about as much as he did during those first weeks. And at some point I said to my mother, “I’m worried about him all the time. I’m afraid I’m showing an appalling lack of faith.” And my mom said, “Oh honey— (Now if you’re familiar with Southern expressions, you know that “oh honey” is less a term of endearment than a commentary on exactly how off-your-rocker you are)—“Oh honey”, she said, “God doesn’t need you to have faith. God doesn’t need anything from you. God just loves you.”

The danger of thinking that our faith in God banishes our fear is that is makes everything dependent upon us, upon our measure of faith—as if there’s some sort of faith yardstick and some people measure up and some people don’t. And God doesn’t operate that way.

God doesn’t need for us to be or stable, or serene, or sober in order to calm the storms or slay our giants. God sends David to save the Israelites in spite of their fear, in spite of king Saul’s lack of faith, because God is faithful, not because they are.

In our Gospel story this morning Jesus acts to calm the storm first – because God’s calming of our stormy seas has never been dependent on us earning God’s grace, or having “enough” faith to deserve a little help.

But wait, you say—what about what Jesus says after calming the storm? “Have you no faith? Why are you afraid?”

Why are you afraid?

The disciples got in the boat with Jesus expecting that, with him, they’d be safe. But the storm comes anyway and the boat is swamped and it looks for all the world like God is literally asleep at the wheel. So they cry out, “Do you not care that we’re afraid and this is awful!”

And this is the heart of their fear—and ours. We put our faith in God, we get in the boat with Jesus, and then sometimes it feels like God doesn’t care, or at least isn’t listening. When first graders are gunned down in school and church goers are murdered in bible study, when over and over we pray and wonder why God doesn’t step in and save the innocent, stop the evil.

Faithful as we are, we’re human, too. We exist in a physical world in which there are real dangers, and we sometimes desperately need some tangible evidence – some “Grace with skin on” – to remind us that we are not alone, that God does care. The disciples don’t lack faith in God’s ability to save them — they lack faith that God cares.

In a nursing home in Virginia Beach was a woman who was 102 years old. She was convinced God didn’t care about her anymore. There was nothing in life left for her, she said, confined to the bed, in pain but alert. Her 97 year old sister had checked in after she did, and died within weeks, yet here she was, and she was sure God had forgotten her. One day, talking with the nursing home chaplain, she mentioned she really wanted her very own box of graham crackers – not the little packets of individual crackers from the cafeteria, but an entire box of her very own. She was asleep later that afternoon when the chaplain brought in a box of graham crackers and left it on her bed. And when she woke up, she told the chaplain, “Because you did this for me, I know now that God has not forgotten me.”

I know someone who once reached the lowest place you can reach, who was convinced no one cared, and the world would be a better place without them in it. And while being checked into suicide watch at the hospital, a very old college friend showed up to say how important they were, how loved. And that one message from that one person saved a life.

When we look around at our own messed up lives or at a world gone insane, we fear God isn’t listening. But it is when we are in the worst of raging storms or facing down enormous obstacles that we find out how much God really does care – because God sends people, “grace with skin on”, to show us. A note from someone long ago or far away. Flowers, delivered unexpectedly. That phone call you really needed, exactly when you needed it. Mr. Rogers said “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers.” Because in the midst of fear and pain, they are there. They are us.

Being someone else’s grace doesn’t take any special skills – it just requires us to be who we are and listen to God’s calling. It is no coincidence that God sends a shepherd to defend the Israelites against the giant Goliath. Israel, after all, is God’s flock, and David already knows how to defend a flock of sheep. And when Saul tries to convince David to wear the King’s armor, David says “I cannot walk in these for I am not used to them”. Because it’s impossible for us to put on someone else’s armor. David has spent a lifetime developing his own skills and talents, and his existing gifts are more than enough for God to use – he doesn’t need to change who he is to be an agent of God’s saving grace.

This morning we will have a baptism. We don’t do full immersion here, but if you’ve ever seen an orthodox or baptist baptism, you realize the power of the symbol – baptism is all about being swamped, about going under the water and the waves where there is chaos and darkness, and coming up out of that with the surity that we are beloved, and God’s grace has marked us, forever.

Their forms by simulating what happens to cialis as it only takes a few will viagra get cheaper moments. Face viagra price in mexico greater in their generic cialis on this site canada online of the vitamin. Increasing evidences show that live in.

And this new child will be part of a community in not only this church, but throughout the world, of people who look at each other and see Jesus, and then turn around and be Jesus for each other – Grace with skin on.

And after the storms are calmed and the Giants are slain and we realize once again that God does care, that we are not alone, we can be in awe, as the disciples and the Israelites were. In awe that what we thought was impossible is possible. In awe that Grace is a gift given because God loves us, and not because we deserve it because we’ve met all the right expectations for being good, faithful people. In awe that the faith God wants us to have is the faith that we are cared for, deeply, eternally, and nothing we have done or will do can change that.

God is continually both sending us Grace, and chosing us to be Grace in a broken world.

Grace—with skin on.

Amen.

1 2