4 Lent: John 3:16 For God so LOVED the world.

John 3:16                     The Rev. Julia W. Messer
4 Lent on March 18, 2012
(Sermon was mostly extemporaneous here is the outline of the sermon.)

~~~

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

[Hold up a sign saying “John 3:16.”] We see this everywhere, don’t we?  On bumper stickers, billboard, or on signs people hold on street corner streets (or in church).   We see it so often that it could be perceived as almost trite.  But it isn’t.  It is powerful.  This passage alone seems to summarize the Christian faith into one sentence and has been called “The Gospel in a nutshell.”

But have you actually ever given thought to this passage, examined what it really says?

For God so loved...    What is love? Can you define it? Can you hold it in your hand and say this is love? Not really. We can express how love makes us feel. We can act upon our feelings, such as when we show our love to someone by giving them a flower. The flower is not love but it is a tangible way we can represent our love.  It is something that we can participate in:   we can hold the flower, we can see it, and we know what it means. Sacraments are like the flowers; they are something we can hold in our hand, see, smell, and share with others.  The sacraments are the body of Christ, the Church, reacting to, and participating in God’s love and grace that are freely offered, in tangible forms and also remain intangible.

A Sacrament is an outward sign of an inward and visible grace.

So what are Sacraments? They are a sacred act that can celebrate the holy and pivotal moments of importance in our lives. Sacraments are relational, just as love is.  It is between God and us.

For God so loved the world.   We believe in a God that not only loved the world then but loves the world now. We believe in a God that is actively present in the world, in us, in these holy acts, and through us. These Sacraments are recognizing God’s grace that is freely given to us by God, where our sins are forgiven, our hearts are lightened, and our wills strengthened.

Sacraments make God’s grace and love visible and tangible in this world.

In the Episcopal Church we believe there are 7 sacraments but 2 of them are the great sacraments.

*Can you name the two Christ commanded us to do? (Baptism and Holy Eucharist).
*Can you name the other 5? (Confirmation, Marriage, Ordination, Confession/Reconciliation, and Last Rites/Unction).

 In and of themselves, these Sacraments are important, but what is more important is that we participate in them. And once we take these sacraments, they are a part of us and cannot be separated from us. Just as we can never be separated from Christ’s love for us. We become a part of Christ’s body, and therefore become the hands and feet of Christ in the world.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son    God did not send his Son to save only those who fit a certain stereotype or mode. He did not come to save us because of our nationality, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.  He did not come to save us for whatever reason we may think makes us worthy or unworthy.  God came to save the world, not just humans, not just those in a first world nation. 

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.    And what does he ask of us?  He asks us to believe in Him and His only begotten Son.  And for that, He promises us eternal life.  When we die we just are drawn closer to the love of God. Even though our bodies fail us and the world may abandon us, Christ is with us in the midst of our struggles.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him….   When we were baptized we were adopted into a family of God that loves us beyond comprehension, so strong that nothing we do can separate us from that love. When we participate in Communion, we participate in Christ’s act of love with his friends.

That Christ so loved the world that he gave himself, so that all those who believe in his Father and in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Just as God loves us, we are called to love our neighbors as Christ loved us.

For we so loved the world, that we give of ourselves to help others, not because someone is deemed worthy by us but becomes they are worthy because of Christ. We are called to be sacraments in life.

We are called to be a tangible, visible, and outward signs of the inward and spiritual grace that is within each of us.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Lent 3

March 11, 2012     John A. Baldwin

From point A to Point B is about 200 miles, a little less than the distance to Charlottesville, Lynchburg or Danville. I wouldn't want to walk to any of those places by choice....but if I had to, I might be able to do it in several weeks of hard walking. I'd have to add on to that time, of course, if I had to make detours to find water or food; if the terrain were particularly rough in spots; if I were traveling with an older or younger person who couldn't walk as fast as I can; or if the sun were too hot to walk in the mid-parts of the day....but can you imagine it taking 40 years to travel that distance even in the worst of conditions? Yet that's how long it took Moses and his people, as well as their flocks and herds, to travel the distance between the Red Sea and Jericho in the Promised Land (roughly 200 miles).

What on earth were they doing, poking along like that? Was life in the desert so wonderful that they didn't want it to end? Hardly! Famine and thirst, squabbling amongst the rank & file, attacks by enemies, and sad, though unrealistic, remembrances of the good old days in Egypt....that was the Exodus experience. Why drag your feet for 40 years?

Actually a lot more was happening in the desert than trying to get from point A to point B. The Hebrew people were in transition from slavery to freedom, from dependency to self-reliance, from a simple and rudimentary faith in God towards greater spiritual maturity. In effect they were living out our theme for Lent this year - Letting Go and Returning Home....letting go of slavery, and returning home to the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. This couldn't possibly happen in a several week hike from Cairo to Jericho, even under the best of circumstances. It took a whole new generation to leave the old ways behind & create a new, strong & vibrant community.

Our Old Testament reading this morning (the receiving of the 10 Commandments) is a very important part of that transition from old to new. The Book of Exodus relates that it happened early on in the Wilderness experience, during the third month after they left Egypt. Moses has gone up Mt. Sinai to pray, reflect and open himself to guidance by Yahweh. He comes down the mountain to his people bearing a covenant - a new vision of what it means to live in community, and be the people of God. There is a focus of allegiance....I am the Lord your God - NO OTHER. There are guiding principles, making possible a strong and vibrant community.....regular, built-in times for rest (the Sabbath) ....honor for the older generation ....respect and decency towards one's neighbor.

Adoption of those principles for living didn't just happen overnight. It took years of experience and hard-living for the slaves of Egypt to become a people united in their allegiance of God, a people ready to enter the Promised Land, overcome fierce resistance, and establish a new society rooted in the land. The Exodus story is a classic example of the importance of times of transition from one way of living, thinking, experiencing and being, to another. Without that 40 year transition period, a motley crew of dependent people would have wandered into Canaan, and either lost their identity through assimilation by the Canaanites, or been wiped out by their enemies.

Some years ago I was introduced to some theories of transition that are borne out in the Book of Exodus, and have also been validated in my own experience. Transition theory tries to bring meaning and understanding to those turbulent times in human existence when things come to an end, and we are faced with change, whether we like it or not. Our lives are filled with transitions: the loss or addition of family members; changes in leadership (political, religious, cultural); getting married or divorced; moving to a new community, retirement or loss of employment. On top of that are the societal forces of change which we are powerless to resist, but against which we desperately want to push back.

Transitions involve an ending to things that are comfortable, established or predictable. Before we are ready and able to move on into a new beginning, we must of necessity go through a "wilderness" experience much as the Israelites did......a time of disorder and disorientation, heightened emotions, anxiety and fear, but also of longing and anticipation....a period that Transition Theory calls "the Neutral Zone".

Most people are anxious to get through the "Neutral Zone" as quickly as possible, seeking some semblance of stability and order in a sea of change. To rush through transitions, however, is to miss a wealth of opportunity for personal and spiritual growth. A helpful analogy is that of the change of seasons from autumn to winter which, on the surface, seems to be a movement through dying into a void of life and vitality. In reality, however, beneath the soil, plants and animals are gathering their strength for renewal & rebirth. Some may remember those powerful lyrics from the Bette Middler song The Rose: "When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long, and you think that love is only for the lucky & the strong, just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows, lies the seed that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes the rose."

Transition theory asserts that the "neutral zone" between endings & begin-nings is a fertile period when people are potentially more open to personal and spiritual growth than at any other time. Without a firm anchor of routine, with our world out of balance, we are more open to vivid dreams, mystical experiences, and unsettling questions about who we are, our value and worth, our directions and purpose, than when things are rolling along smoothly.

Against these realities, then, perhaps we shouldn't feel overly frustrated at the slowness many have in embracing change and getting on with living as quickly as we might want them to. Nor should we be so quick to despair when we ourselves have difficulty realigning ourselves to new leadership, new ways of doing things, or new directions of the Holy Spirit. In fact, it may well be in the times of transition that God is speaking to us more clearly and directly, if we take time to listen and reflect.

Over the past 50 years our church, the Episcopal Church, and other mainline Protestant churches,  have been in the midst of significant and powerful transitions. In the 1960's we were deeply in the midst of the civil rights movement. In the 1970's and 80's we grappled with changes in our Prayer Book and forms of worship, along with movement towards affirming the ministry of women at all levels in our church. In the 1990's and the new millennium we have been moving through contention and controversy over human sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular.

 For some, these transitions towards affirming the worth and dignity of every human being have been unsettling, filled with anxiety and uncertainty, and even at times pretty painful. They have also been also a fertile period, as women have moved gracefully into leadership, as gay people have experienced God's love through the Church in ways unimaginable in the past, and as new and vital liturgies and music have emerged, lifting us to soaring new heights of awe and wonder. Some have felt these transitions to be richly infused with the Holy Spirit of God, while others have felt we were heading down paths contrary to scripture and the way God means things to be. These have not been easy transitions at all. People we love have departed for other faith communities, or thrown in the towel completely on involvement in organized religion. We are still in the Wilderness, but hopefully ultimately on the journey to a Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.

Here at Emmanuel in Kempsville, we are in transition too, make no mistake about it. The realignment of Princess Anne Road from our front door to the back of our property is challenging us. How will this affect us in the years to come? How will we transition from one reality to another? The jury is still out. Another involves a new financial reality....moving from a time when we were blessed with an abundance mentality, anything we wanted to accomplish we could, to one of greater scarcity. How will we respond to the challenge to dig more deeply into our own personal resources for the sake of our spiritual community's well-being? We are facing unsettling questions as we look to our future about who we are, our value and worth, our directions and purpose. Yet if we listen faithfully, God's Holy Spirit will guide and lead us as it has so powerfully throughout human history.

As much as we might like to, we simply cannot avoid transitions in this life unless we are dead. Even then, theologians would argue passionately that at death we are embarked upon the greatest transition of all, from mortality to immortality in the nearer presence of God.

Lent 2B

Lent 2B

March 4, 2012

The Rev. Marguerite Alley

  

“ For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Mark 8:33-34

For a few years Lent was a very troubling time for me personally. While it has always been one of my favorite seasons of the church year, it has not always been a time that I looked forward to because I am not very good about denying myself. When I was growing up I had many Catholic friends. Lent was a time when the entire family was engaged in a church “activity” if you will. Everyone openly discussed what they “were giving up” and helped remind each other to stick to their promise. There was a little competition sometimes amongst teens to give up something really important to them and therefore prove beyond doubt who was the most devoted. Of course chocolate was at the top of that list along with drinking soda, listening to the radio, and the all time favorite (especially of parents) swearing. The part that made me begin to dread Lent was the family part. My family was not “into” church like I was. So when I made a Lenten promise, I was pretty much on my own to keep it. My youth group friends tried to be supportive but they were little help on Wednesday when I was rummaging through my room looking for lost Halloween candy because I wanted chocolate more than life itself. I realized that it was hard to keep that promise alone and that I needed a support group to help me keep that promise. So, as Lent approached, I could feel myself begin to feel somewhat down, because I knew I would have to endure the 40 days, basically alone. That was back in the days when we Episcopalians kept our faith to ourselves and would never dream about talking about it with others!

Well, we Americans are nothing if not an ingenious lot. Sometime back a great church leader probably felt sorry for all of us who were feeling down in Lent; or maybe it was a teenage theologian who offered this as a way to take the sting out of what was intended to be a “learning experience”. I am not sure who it was, but somewhere along the line, it was suggested we didn’t need to give anything up. Maybe we could take on something instead. So, we started making promises like, “ I will read the Bible every day”, “I will spend 10 minutes thanking God for all my blessings”, “I will get up 30 minutes earlier and exercise each day” and so forth. So we went from being a little down about having given up our favorite thing, to being exhausted, sore, and confused about how to be thankful for cancer.

All of this nonsense is a scheme. It is a scheme created by some well- meaning church leader to help us understand this concept of denying ourselves.

Being Americans, it is easy for us to forget that the entire world does not see things the way that we do. We are after all the land of plenty, the land where the streets are paved with gold. We are not really very good with the whole “deny ourselves” idea, are we? And our current culture is certainly no help either. Everything is made out to be the absolute best, the biggest, the most economical. Every product is such that you must have it or risk being left behind, left out or left over. So when Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, within a nano second, we are bombarded with 52 ads about how that would be bad for our health, bad for our complexion, bad for your sex life, bad for your marriage, bad for your kids, bad for your dog, your yard, your house. Denial just isn’t in our make up. (Unless of course you are a politician, a public official or a loan officer). We have a hard time denying ourselves because unlike the ads we see on television we can find no immediate benefit to our family, our income, and ourselves. We cannot deny ourselves until we know “what is in it” for us.

Not knowing what we “get” out of this denial suggests that we are so self centered that we cannot even imagine ourselves doing something, just because it is the right thing to do, or the thing that Jesus suggests would be best for us. It smacks of some kind of deep- seated need to be the center of the universe and have the world revolve around us. I don’t like to see myself this way, yet there is plenty of evidence of this truth all around me. We can’t control our eating at times, I can’t seem to make myself get up 30 minutes earlier, we can’t slow down and stop feeling so impatient. We can’t imagine what life must be like for that person, because we already know she is homeless because she made bad choices in her life. I cannot remember what it was like to be told: “stop being a baby, you are too old to act this way” and “what were you thinking! You are not old enough to make that decision!” all in the same day. We cannot understand why young people can’t see that 15 years from now they will understand why we are holding them accountable now. We can’t make our kids get up and come to church, it is the only morning we have together as a family. Has it never occurred to us that getting up and coming to church together and then going out to share a meal together rather than everyone sleeping in, in their own room, doing their own thing, might be the most cherished time our family spends together? Have we not figured out that sometimes the pay-off is a little down the road? For goodness sake, we can’t leave our cell phones at home or even just turn them off during worship. My goodness,  I guess I  am the center of the universe! Let’s proclaim it loud and clear folks! We are the most important people on the planet! There now, don’t you feel better? It feels good to tell the truth, because that is what we think of ourselves. We may not say it out loud, but deep down, we act that way…and just as we teach our children, we know that actions do speak louder than words. We cannot deny ourselves anything. We aren’t wired for it.

There is a deeper and more disturbing truth here though. Having established that we cannot deny ourselves and looked at some of the ways in which we place ourselves above everyone and everything around us, let’s look at what is to me the single most important truth born from this lesson. In not denying ourselves any of the little things that we have come to cherish through familiarity and habit, we deny ourselves THE ONE THING WE ABSOLUTELY CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT. By denying ourselves the chance to let go  of some of the trappings of modern life, if only for 75 minutes once a week, we are denying ourselves the chance to actually engage in a relationship with the one who created us. We are denying ourselves the chance to know some measure of peace in our lives, to feel as though our lives have meaning and purpose, to set an example in word and deed for our children to find meaning in their lives as well. To deny ourselves the opportunity at a real relationship that comes from familiarity, faithfulness and discovery is to deny ourselves the greatest gift of all, the most expensive and priceless, the most beneficial to our health, the one that sets us apart from the others. Wow! We need to make that into a commercial!

So it is not that we are incapable of self-denial. We deny ourselves, our TRUE selves every day. We deny our true nature every day. It is our nature to be in community, not to be alone. We deny ourselves support when we cannot talk about our struggles, when we don’t share our wisdom and our experience with those who most need it. We deny ourselves the chance to hear God’s voice gently speaking to us, because God’s voice is softer than the ring tone on your cell phone.  We deny ourselves the chance to have a glimpse of the Christ because we cannot allow ourselves a single moment of discomfort, anxiety or fear.

So as it turns out, we are capable of denying ourselves after all.

Today more than ever in my lifetime, we need our community of faith. As our economy struggles to right itself, and our friends struggle to make ends meet, we see clearly that we cannot go this alone. We cannot turn our backs to those outside our doors; we cannot batten down the hatches and weather the storm. We need all hands on deck. We need to be encouraging one another and caring for each other. More importantly, we need to be willing to stop denying ourselves the greatest gift we have been offered.

So when we read, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” let us remember that to deny ourselves does not mean to live without our most important relationship. It is to live without some of the little things we have added along to way to make ourselves feel better about denying our relationship with God. To deny ourselves is to let go some of the things that we have used to try and fill the God space, and that have come up woefully lacking and have made us feel strangely more empty. To deny ourselves some little substitute is to make a home in our lives for God.

Lent 1

The Rev. Julia W. Messer
1 Lent 2012
Mark 1:9-15
“Shakers, Divine GPS, and Lent”

____________________

Message of Lent: The place you are called to be may not be the place you expect to be but it may be the place God calls you to be.

____________________

                In days past, the Shakers had a song they would sing, called “Simple Gifts.” The group would gather around in a circle singing the words: “‘'Tis the gift to be simple, 'Tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, It will be in the valley of love and delight. // When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed, To turn, turn, will be our delight, 'Til by turning, turning, we come round right.”
        The Shakers would dance around the room in the circle and at the end of the verses when they finished singing, “When we find ourselves in the place just right,” and “We come round right”, they would jump into the air and wherever they landed, that was where they believed they were meant to be.

        Life today doesn’t seem so simple.  I don’t know about you, but for me there have been times in my life when I’ve wondered if I’ve been on the right path or I felt myself in a spiritual wilderness.  There have been times when I couldn’t figure out what path to take and there are times when I knew the path that I was on was where God had called me. I seem to do okay when I know the right path because it is very clear to me.  The gray areas get to me, making me second guess myself and wonder.  For me it’s the completely unclear paths that I struggle with; these are the ones that pull me to my knees in prayer. And it can be scary when I find myself in a wilderness and cannot discern where God is calling me to go…that the place I am right now may not be where I am meant to be.

Today’s Gospel reminds me of this Shaker song, in  that the place we may find ourselves in our journey may not be where we want to go, but it is where we could be meant to be. Jesus did not plan to set out into the wilderness but that was where he needed to go.

In the Bible, the wilderness was both a frightening and a powerful place. To look at wilderness as a physical location, it was a location that was uninhabited and uncultivated. Applied spiritually it takes on an even more powerful meaning. Wilderness was a time when people of the Bible underwent temptations and they used this time to get a clearer sense of where and how God was calling them. It was the time and place that they used, like Christ, to face their adversaries.

Lent is the church’s time set aside for us to consciously go into our wildernesses.   Lent lasts for 40 days, the same amount of time that Jesus found himself in the wilderness.  Lent is a time that we are called to unite ourselves with the mystery of Jesus in the desert, who faced temptation through the hand of the devil and yet, did not sin. As we prepare to celebrate the Easter mystery, Christians are called to use this Lenten season as a time to consciously look at our lives and find ways to draw closer to God.

  Even Jesus was called to do this. Immediately after he was baptized, he went into the wilderness, to really look at himself and recognize what God’s plan for him was to be. To me, it was as if Jesus had to figure out what his ministry would be and come to terms with that and what it meant to be the Son of God, the Beloved. As Christians, during Lent, we are invited and encouraged to look at ourselves and ask one way or another, “What does it mean to be who we are,” and “Who we are meant to be?”

        Lent can be a time to take on or give up. We can take on an action that will draw us closer to God through more devotion to prayer, to consciously perform acts of charity, or to even take up some action, some behavior, that will improve our relationship with God.  Or we can give up something.  Giving up something can either be as a symbolic gesture of sacrifice (that reminds us of all that Christ forfeited for us) or to give up, not just for Lent, but permanently, something that tempts us away from our relationship with God.

        Lent is a season of challenge, to honestly and truly look at ourselves and the areas in our lives where we are more prone to giving into temptation that leads us into sin. As an unknown author once wrote, “Temptation is not a sin.  It only becomes a sin when it is yielded to.  Even our Lord was tempted.”

        Honestly, I almost wish sometimes that a very clear Divine GPS would be available to us. It would say, “Turn here,” or “Choose this path”.  We could use it when we are in our difficult times, such as when we are faced with an unexpected relationship problem or job loss.  We could use it when we try to discern what our future will hold and map out the best route to take to be a Christian and “Detour” around ALL wilderness experiences. 

But as the Shaker song says, the place we find ourselves is where we are meant to be and we can use these wilderness experiences to grow closer to God. We may not like or want to be in the place we are now, but it may be just exactly where God has called us to be.

Remember Lent is not suppose to be easy; it can be disheartening and upsetting, especially if we honestly look at ourselves and see both what we are becoming and what we are failing to become.

We began this season with the imposition of Ashes, and I pray that something as joyous as Easter may be at the end of it for all of us. And that we will find ourselves in the place just right.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lenten Reflections are now online!

Follow us with a daily Lenten Reflection!

"Letting go and returning home."

A compilation of Daily Reflections for Lent.

Written by Variouys Parishioners and Friends of

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On our website:http://emmanuelvb.com/DailyMeditations2012.php

On our blog: http://emmanuelvb.blogspot.com/p/lent-reflections-2011.html

February 5, 2012       John A. Baldwin

This morning's Gospel gives us a glimpse into the healing ministry of Jesus. Not only does he heal Peter's mother-in-law and others in Capernaum, but Jesus also goes about casting out demons. Some have suggested that the term "casting out demons" is a quaint way of saying that Jesus healed people of their mental illnesses - schizophrenia, bipolarity and the like. Perhaps so. Jesus may well have been an early practitioner of psychiatric cleansing and healing.

On the other hand, all of the demons Jesus cast out may not have been quite so exotic as paranoia or obsessive-compulsive disorders. They may have been unclean spirits present and familiar to us in our own lives, yet nonetheless just as powerful and debilitating.

The Gospels portray Jesus as possessing an acute sense of discernment. He had an amazing ability to see into a person's heart & soul, and to know what's blocking their growth towards wholeness & maturity. Jesus knew the names of these demons - envy, fear, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, and the like. He called them forth by name, rebuking them & exorcizing them from people's lives.

Knowledge gives power. Evil flourishes in the dark, and withers in the bright light of the truth. This perhaps is what lies at the foundation of Jesus' casting out demons. Consider an "AHA" experience you may have had in life, when it became clear why you'd been acting the way you were. Effective counseling leads to many "aha" experiences and the opening to transformation in our lives. When the hurts and fears which trouble us are called by name, they become less powerful & menacing. When we become aware that our wounds are shared by others, they become more bearable and manageable.

Adult children of alcoholics, for example, have been known to say, "When others began describing their childhood experiences, it was truly amazing. They sounded just like mine. I had a new sense of awareness & understanding." When we are able to name our demons, they lose their power to control and cripple us.

Jesus was able to name and address unclean spirits with authority because he was as whole and healthy in mind, body and spirit as a human being can be. The unclean spirits knew that they were diseased when they encountered Jesus, and this is what gave Jesus power and authority over them.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like, if we were walking through a park & there was Jesus himself sitting on a bench, inviting us to join him in conversation? Would you expect it to be all warm fuzzies, or would something within our spirit feel mighty uncomfortable. Would Jesus look deep down inside us, recognize some unclean spirits, & call them forth.....spirits we've perhaps become too comfortable with, like excuses for our behavior, laziness, egotism or self-absorption. It's hard to maintain illusions of sweetness & light when we meet health & wholeness in its power & might, and know we have a long way to go.

During the summer before my final year of seminary, I entered a 10 week Clinical Pastoral Education program at Boston State Hospital where I served as chaplain in an acute schizophrenic ward. It gave me plenty of opportunities to see unclean spirits in action, and to reflect on how they might be affecting my own soul as well. The head chaplain for the program, the Rev. Joe Woodson, was a crusty Baptist minister who had a reputation (like Jesus) of being able to see into the souls of the ministers in training, past our defenses & pretensions, and nailing us in our weaknesses & vulnerabilities, so as to enable us to mature and grow strong in our abilities to be pastors in a hurting world.

Fortunately for me, Joe Woodson was retiring at the end of this summer. He was on autopilot, and I escaped his intense scrutiny. This made for a much more comfortable summer experience for me than I had anticipated. In later years, however, I've come to the conclusion that I was actually the poorer for it. Escaping his scrutiny meant my avoiding having to deal with the issues, wounds & liabilities which impeded my full effectiveness as a pastor & minister until later in time.

I have little doubt that Jesus could find traces of unclean spirits in every one of us were he to focus his scrutiny upon us. He certainly saw them in the Pharisees & Sadducees of his day, who though very pious & religious, were lacking in their compassion for the poor, the marginalized, and the “sinners” in their society. They resented Jesus deeply when he named their hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Unclean spirits do not like being exposed at all. They react with anger, defensiveness and indignation. They are subtle and devious too, masters of the lie, and adept in distorting the truth. I think, for example, of that little demon who whispers to us, “Am I my brother's keeper?” who was surely present when the priest and the Levite stepped around the victim on the road to Jericho in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and who is present in all of us when we express little concern for the very poor or homeless.

I think of that little demon who was present in Jesus' parable about the Pharisee who stood up in the temple flushed with pride that he was not like other men - extortioners, unjust, adulterers or like that miserable tax collector over there, and who is present in us whenever we look upon others with scorn or contempt.

When we read, mark, learn, reflect upon and inwardly digest the parables and teachings of Jesus, it seems clear that he is getting at all of the ways in which we allow demons, unclean spirits, fears and anxiety, selfishness and greed, to impede our growth towards health, wholeness and closeness to the heart of God. We make a huge mistake when we only see the flaws and impediments getting in the way of others, and don't discern them within ourselves.

Perhaps it may seem too scary for us to make honest, moral inventories of ourselves, but therein lies the only sure and certain path to spiritual health and wholeness. I believe we may draw deep courage to face and overcome our demons and unclean spirits in this scripture passage from the First Epistle of John: “God is love, and he (or she) who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. …..There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us.” (1Jn 4:16,18).

Last Sunday after the Epiphany B

The Rev. Marguerite Alley

February 19, 2012

Are You My Mother?

Let me tell you a story. It is a short story, but a touching story. It is not a true story, but it is very much the truth. It is not a story about anyone in particular, but it is a story about us. Once upon a time there was a bird, and she laid an egg. She left her nest in search of food for the day when the egg would hatch. While she was gone, the egg did indeed hatch. The baby bird couldn’t find its mother, so rather than patiently wait, and being somewhat impulsive and of a mind that surely he could do anything, he set off in search of his mother. He asked everyone he came upon, including a large assortment of animals and even an old car. Each said no they were not it’s mother and the baby moved on.  Finally the baby came upon a steam shovel named Snort and it was Snort who returned the baby bird to his nest where he finally met his true mother.  You may recognize that as being the wonderful and charming children’s book by P. D. Eastman called “Are you my Mother?”  I sometimes wonder if we aren’t  metaphorically just like this baby bird. We are born hungry and we begin looking for our mother the moment we are born because we know deep down that she is the only ne who can feed us. If we don’t immediately see her, we begin searching. Since we do not know what she looks like we don’t really know what we are looking for. So, we ask everyone and everything “Are you my mother”?  Metaphorically speaking we ask money “are you my mother”? We also ask fame, education, status, cars, jobs, titles and a host of other things “are you my mother”? Can you feed me?

Each of these replies  No! I am not your mother”! So we are faced with a dilemma: we can “bed down” with one of these folks, knowing full well that they are not our mother, and cannot fill that role or we move on and keep asking. Some of us choose the former, and some of us choose the latter. To carry this metaphor a bit further, let’s say that we come upon a flock of birds. We are excited because they look just like we do…assuming we know what we look like. And we immediately latch onto them because they look and sound so much like ourselves. After a while though, we begin to notice some differences….their song is not exactly the same as ours. Their looks are not exactly a match….and most important none of them has lost their baby. Again, we are faced with a dilemma: do we stay because them seem familiar or do we go? They are so much like us…but not quite…and they are not looking for us or welcoming us to their flock. Finally, we encounter Snort the Steam Shovel. Snort is big, ugly, noisy and very scary. He scoops us up and deposits us right back where we started and right then our mother returns with food for us and we are united. In our metaphor the role of Snort can be played by any number of big, scary, noisy things. Addiction, health scares, relationships, loss, grief, anger. Really the list is endless.  I hope you can see the many ways this children’s story is our own story!

Now let’s look at the Gospel. Just before our passage for today begins, Jesus is in the villages of Ceasarea Philippi with his disciples. He asks them “who do you say that I am”? It is almost as though the disciples had asked “are you my mother”?  They answer as best they can, he teaches them more about what will happen in the days to come. Now, in today’s passage, Jesus gathers Peter, James and John and leads them out away from the others, to a secluded place on a high mountain. (we know how God loves this sort drama on big, high cloudy mountains! Kind of like Snort!) Right in front of them, he is transfigured into something other. This moment serves as another teaching tool in the revelation of who and what Jesus really is. He is standing with 2 of the most important prophets of the Jewish faith …….yet he is the one is glowing, He is the one who is brilliant white.  Peter, being very excited and touched by this revelation suggests that they build three dwellings so that they can stay and savor the moment.  And  suddenly, a voice from the clouds proclaims “This is my son, the beloved, listen to him”.  In this moment we are led to some very important revelations. Of course, we immediately see that God demands to have the last word. We all know what lies ahead for Jesus…so God chooses this moment to transfigure “hell” Jesus’s suffering, into heaven for a moment. But there are other revelations in this moment as well. Of particular note is the fact this transfiguration does not occur in private. It is not an affirmation for Jesus. Jesus has known all along that he was God’s beloved…or that God is “his mother” so to speak. This revelation is for the witnesses. It is for the public.

Today is the last Sunday of the Epiphany season. During this season we have learned about Jesus and the role he was meant to play and we have been called to be “light for the world”, a role which becomes really important in the dark days of Lent to come. Today also happens to be World Mission Sunday where we remember our mission projects and missionaries around the world. If we might look back to our metaphor for a moment, I think we sometimes get a bit mixed up as to what our mission really is. Is it our mission to show others who our mother is even though their mother may look a lot different than our own? Are we to assume and say to them this is our mother, therefore it must be yours as well? Is our mission to find out for ourselves who our mother is because we have not yet met her and we are hungry for what only she can give us? Or is our mission to re-affirm for ourselves who our mother is because we do know who she is and what she looks like, but because she doesn’t look like other mothers, we have begun to question?  As a church what exactly is our mission? The Gospel says (at least to me) that we are called to seek out the transfigured Christ in each other and in the world.  It also says that we are called to “listen” to the voice of Jesus, and to each other. No where does God say, “preserve his words in a book and treat them like an historic artifact. Look at them, adore them and them go home a glow with the knowledge that you have seen them.” God says “listen to him”…..subtext, absorb, think about, reflect upon, incorporate. 

 Here at Emmanuel we have recently taken some important steps to be transfigured before our witnesses. We have made intentional steps to be more welcoming, to be better stewards of creation, and to care for each other more intentionally and carefully. This is our public transfiguration. Each of us also has many opportunities in our daily lives for individual public transfigurations. The trick is to see them for what they are, to listen for the voice of Jesus, and to be willing to stay on that high scary mountain until we are certain whose voice we are following. As we begin our Lenten journey this year, I pray you will consider the ways in which you might be transfigured. This transfiguration might involve some anxiety. It will also involve letting go of our impatience, our strong willed independence, and our constant need to ask  “are you my mother”? And when we return home, perhaps in the bucket of a Steam Shovel named Snort, we will have learned that if we had been a bit more patient, we would have been fed, by the only one who can feed us.