5th Lent March 9, 2008
Preached by Rev. Deb Seles St. Hilary March 9 2008
Choices. Our lives are full of choices great and small—what job to take, who to marry, who to play with, what school to attend. Small choices—whether to have roast beef or a turkey sandwich, whether to take the expressway or the side roads. And sometimes our small choices can have great consequences. We might take the side roads and run into an icy patch. We could choke on a chicken bone.
All over scripture we hear about people being given choices—when God calls, whether to follow God or follow some idol. Jesus was faced with a choice when he heard his beloved friend was ill. And for some reason he chose to delay his journey to Bethany. Martha and Mary had choices about how they would receive their friend: did they greet him with anger and accusation?
We don’t often think about the dead having choices but clearly Lazarus did have a choice. If you’ve ever heard about people having near death experiences, often you hear how they are given a choice about whether to return to the land of the living or not.
Last week Pastor Terri talked about a baby she encountered that was experiencing ‘failure to thrive,’ and she talked about how both human beings and communities make a choice about whether to thrive or not. It’s a mystery, she said, about why some babies do not thrive despite being given food. So too it is a mystery about why some communities thrive and others do not.
Perhaps it has to do with how we see our vocation. Vocation—the word comes from the Latin—to be called. Not only priests and deacons are called but mothers are called, fathers are called, the compassionate are called—we are each, in our unique ways called to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb when he was good and dead. Now there is speculation that the reason Jesus delayed returning to Bethany was that the Jewish people believed that one’s soul hovered near the body for three days. Waiting till Lazarus was buried four days would have meant that any speculation about this being a revival of a not-quite dead person would be eliminated.
We can speculate and discuss why Jesus waited four days but we have the result that Lazarus answered Jesus’ call. And is that not our duty too—to answer Jesus call whomever and wherever we are. Both as individuals and as a Christian community, we are called to respond to God’s call to life.
What is wonderful about this grouping—Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—is that it looks very much like church. In church there are those people who serve, like Martha; those people who listen in quiet contemplation like Mary and those people who are ill or who are bound by something—like Lazarus. Maybe we are each of these characters at any one time.
You know in our discussion with Vicky Garvey, some of us saw anger in Martha’s accusation of Jesus—“Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.” And that’s a legitimate response after all to grief. Anger—Martha might very well have been angry. Just as there likely is some anger with Pastor Terri that she left this community. Likely that there is or will be some anger with me because I am not Pastor Terri. Maybe there is even some anger with yourselves and some thought—if only we’d have been ‘better’ Pastor Terri wouldn’t have left. Whatever you are feeling—it is legitimate.
Does Jesus tell the sisters that they shouldn’t be angry? No, then I will not do so either. In fact, we hear that twice in this passage, Jesus himself is angry. At what, we’re not told but there it is. Anger is an important part of grief. What we do with it is what matters.
And anger is not opposed to faith—in fact Martha gives the most complete confession of faith from anyone we’ve heard yet. “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him. You are the Messiah, the One coming into the world.” So anger and faith can exist side by side. In Martha and in Mary and at St. Hilary’s.
The vocation of this community in the coming months will be to listen to God’s voice and find out where Jesus is inviting us to break free of whatever binds us and keeps us in the land of the dead instead of the land of the living. And if we think that’s going to be neat, let’s go back to scripture.
When Jesus orders the stone rolled away from the tomb, Martha, ever the pragmatist says—but it’s been four days, there is already a stench. Sometimes, in order to have a resurrection, matters first appear foul and messy. Resurrections do not happen when all is sterile and clean and smelling like our favorite room deodorizer. Where things stink is exactly where resurrections can also occur!
Because now, the community needs to assist in the resurrection. "Unbind him, and let him go." There are some people yearning to live resurrection lives. There are some folks who have been born again; they have risen from the dead!
In these next months, we are being invited as a community to assist in resurrection. Just how a community can do this is brought to mind by a real life story of Dick Hughes and Bill McLaughlin. Three years ago, Bill McLaughlin’s wife was dying of Alzheimer’s. We know the horror of this illness and the isolation that can come about as a spouse takes care of an increasingly disoriented partner. Dick Hughes was an acquaintance of Bill’s from their church, St. Paul’s Episcopal in Chestnut Hill Pennsylvania. He took it upon himself to invite Bill to tour a Philadelphia museum and have a picnic lunch.
That began a friendship between the two men. In the course of three years, they have toured 203 Philadelphia museum and have written a guidebook to benefit their church. Dick Hughes describes how he felt it was his Christian duty to help Bill. And so their adventure began.
Resurrection happens when ordinary people follow their vocation to be people of God. You will recall that last week we spoke about and named the Samaritan woman who was called out of her old life and who became an evangelist for the gospel. She returned to her old community a changed person.
We need each other’s help. We need community. We need others. Often, it is the task of Christian community to complete the action of Resurrection. Jesus has called forth new life: Lazarus, come out!" But Lazarus still has burial clothes on.
Ask the group to sit in silence as you offer a few ideas.
Ask them to see themselves “bound” — tied-up — not free.
Ask them to notice what it is that is constraining them.
Tell them it is not about feeling guilty — just noticing what it is that is holding us back.
Then, imagine Jesus coming to us and telling us to untangle each other, free each other, let each other go.
Now, see yourself free of this strangling binding.
We pray: thank you God that you are now, today, in our very lives the resurrection and the life. Thank you for breathing new life into our dry bones. Thank you for calling us out to be the people, the community you would have us be.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Eyes Wide Open
A reflection on John 9:1-41
Six and half years ago I stood in this spot and offered to you my first sermon as your rector. I no longer have a copy of that sermon, long lost in one of the numerous computer crashes before I learned how to back up my data on a flash drive. But I do remember the illustration I used and the point I wanted to make.
In that sermon I described my experience working as a volunteer in the pediatric unit of a local hospital. I talked about one baby in particular. The mother came to this country from India but the father’s visa was repeatedly delayed. So, the mother, pregnant with their first child had to give birth in a foreign country without family or spouse. And the baby developed “failure to thrive” syndrome.
Failure to thrive is somewhat of a mystery to doctors, no one knows exactly what causes it. All they know is that despite everything appearing normal a baby fails to gain weight and grow; instead the baby diminishes and sometimes dies.
The Indian mother cared for this baby night and day, comforted and loved him, even as she grieved her own struggle to parent in this lonely way.
I used that illustration to name what I felt was a fear here – that this congregation feared its ability to grow and that that fear would manifest into a failure to thrive.
Underneath all of our work over these last years it has remained a subtle but lingering fear. Will this church die?
The point I wanted to make in that first sermon was that the desire to live, and the ability to do so, resides in large part with you, the people of St. Hilary’s.
Just like the baby, no matter how much loving care he received, something in him needed to decide to live. Somehow it seems the baby needs to make that decision, in what ever context the baby is able to do so, before the organs begin to fail from lack of nourishment.
Church communities need to make a similar decision to live. It needs to be an organic decision; the energy to live must rise up within, with the people willing to do what it takes to live.
Of course I had only a glimmer of an idea, in that first sermon, just how challenging the road ahead would be. Together we faced, just three short weeks after my arrival, the events of September 11, 2001. We gathered here that night in our fear, to be comforted by one another, to share stories and to pray.
We spoke of the evil of this world, the tendency for chaos to rear its ugly head, and God’s desire to forever scoop into the chaos and pull forth new life.
We had to remind ourselves that God desires life; God desires health; God love us and wants only the best for us; and, God will always win out over evil.
We have waded through natural disasters in the world around us – of Tsunami’s and hurricanes, finding our strength in helping others.
We have mourned through the deaths of many beloved people in this parish and found that we are stronger because of our ability to care for one another.
We have faced deep profound challenges to our faith in the actions at General Convention in 2003. We have found our voices as individuals and as a community as we willingly entered into difficult conversations. We have learned how to speak from our hearts and to listen with respect.
We have learned to let go of those who felt they had no choice but to choose another way, another church.
We have found our strength in living the tension of the middle way.
We have learned how to listen to others and understand that Christians can disagree on a whole number of issues, doctrines, and dogma, and still be good and faithful Christians.
We have learned how to read scripture and realize that each of us brings our own bias, our own lens.
But we have also learned that there is a central truth to the Word of God – that God loves us just as we are – and that we are called to love God, love others, and love self with that same generous spirit that God shows us.
We have learned that this is not easy – it has not been easy to extend love to those who would rail at us for not taking sides; for choosing to follow the middle way.
Sometimes it has not been easy to love God as we wondered what was happening to us, to this faith community – why didn’t God make us big like other churches?
And it has not always been easy to love ourselves and see the strengths and beauty and value of this parish family in the midst of our stress and strain and fear that we will fail to thrive.
Our gospel reading this morning offers us a direct link to all these same issues. In the story of the man born blind the Pharisees seek to point fingers and lay blame – surely the man was blind because of something he did before birth, or something his parents did before he was born.
The Pharisees see a direct link between cause and effect, between well-being and sin. But in the process they spend all their energy pointing outward and fail to look inward, fail to see their own sin and spiritual blindness.
And therefore fail to see God’s love evident in the world.
We have spent much of the last six years looking directly at this same theme -
that we begin first by looking at our selves and the ways we as individuals and as community are living in broken relationships with God and one another.
But it is not enough to just look at our brokenness. We have to do something about it. We have to make amends. We have to look at the ways we reject God’s love for us and for the world. We have to look at the ways we reject others and hurt people – and how we do this in ways known and unknown. Then we have to ask God to forgive us and to help us.
In traveling the journey of Lent we are pointed in the same direction as the disciples – a direction that helps us learn, over and over again, (like the disciples)that God is not a judging punishing God. Yes, God can be that. But what we learn from Jesus is that God is really one who aches for the brokenness of this world – in all its manifestations.
And, in Jesus we learn that God yearns to heal that brokenness. Also in Jesus we learn that God has chosen to do this, to heal the brokenness of the world, by working in and through human beings.
In Christ God came to heal this sin sick world and restore us to wholeness. But like that baby, we have to be open to God’s transforming love. We have to let it into our lives and into our spirits and we have to act upon it.
I don’t know why some failure to thrive babies turn around and live anymore than I know why others don’t. All I know is that is complicated and very sad.
And I don’t really know why some churches turn around and live and grow while others do not. I do think that Diana Butler Bass is on to something.
Remember our meetings in January 2006 when I shared with you her model, the tinker toy model? I think she is on to something when she suggests that we need to learn a new way of being church – one that is less about “authority” and “more about questioning without easy answers.”
And I think she is on to something when she says that the churches that grow have three factors all working together: a clear vision for mission, quality leadership in lay and ordained positions, and the Holy Spirit energizing the place.
I like to think that the work I have done here has been setting the stage for this to happen. We have laid the foundation for a clear mission with our work with refugees – whether that work plays out in selling Bishop’s Blend Coffee and the proceeds to Mexico, or with resettling refuges, or other Fair Trade endeavors…there is a clear sense of mission here. B will now take over as the Episcopal Migration Ministries Refugee Program Diocesan Liaison. She will help to keep this ministry remains front and central with the parish and the diocese.
I also like to think that we have quality leadership in our vestry and lay leaders, and these folks will hold the helm and steady this ship to navigate the waters ahead. They will need your support, prayers, and love. Be sure to pray for them and thank them.
And you will be in good hands with Pastor Deb. She will bring a calm and steady hand to the leadership as well as new enthusiasm and inspiration. Pray for her too and offer her your full support.
Remember always that you are a strong faith community making a difference in the world. Remember always to love God, love your selves, and to love others.
Remember me as one who loves you too.
And, remember that this church is not a community gathered around its priest – rather this is a community gathered around Jesus. All you have to do to thrive is to be yourselves, to love generously, and to continue to see beyond yourselves.
Don’t allow your anxiety about the future make you blind. Don’t allow your fear to limit what is possible. Allow the healing love of God to wash you and to open your eyes anew, to see clearly what is possible.
With eyes wide open, with the clarity of new sight you will see Jesus,
and he will lead you to new life.
Six and half years ago I stood in this spot and offered to you my first sermon as your rector. I no longer have a copy of that sermon, long lost in one of the numerous computer crashes before I learned how to back up my data on a flash drive. But I do remember the illustration I used and the point I wanted to make.
In that sermon I described my experience working as a volunteer in the pediatric unit of a local hospital. I talked about one baby in particular. The mother came to this country from India but the father’s visa was repeatedly delayed. So, the mother, pregnant with their first child had to give birth in a foreign country without family or spouse. And the baby developed “failure to thrive” syndrome.
Failure to thrive is somewhat of a mystery to doctors, no one knows exactly what causes it. All they know is that despite everything appearing normal a baby fails to gain weight and grow; instead the baby diminishes and sometimes dies.
The Indian mother cared for this baby night and day, comforted and loved him, even as she grieved her own struggle to parent in this lonely way.
I used that illustration to name what I felt was a fear here – that this congregation feared its ability to grow and that that fear would manifest into a failure to thrive.
Underneath all of our work over these last years it has remained a subtle but lingering fear. Will this church die?
The point I wanted to make in that first sermon was that the desire to live, and the ability to do so, resides in large part with you, the people of St. Hilary’s.
Just like the baby, no matter how much loving care he received, something in him needed to decide to live. Somehow it seems the baby needs to make that decision, in what ever context the baby is able to do so, before the organs begin to fail from lack of nourishment.
Church communities need to make a similar decision to live. It needs to be an organic decision; the energy to live must rise up within, with the people willing to do what it takes to live.
Of course I had only a glimmer of an idea, in that first sermon, just how challenging the road ahead would be. Together we faced, just three short weeks after my arrival, the events of September 11, 2001. We gathered here that night in our fear, to be comforted by one another, to share stories and to pray.
We spoke of the evil of this world, the tendency for chaos to rear its ugly head, and God’s desire to forever scoop into the chaos and pull forth new life.
We had to remind ourselves that God desires life; God desires health; God love us and wants only the best for us; and, God will always win out over evil.
We have waded through natural disasters in the world around us – of Tsunami’s and hurricanes, finding our strength in helping others.
We have mourned through the deaths of many beloved people in this parish and found that we are stronger because of our ability to care for one another.
We have faced deep profound challenges to our faith in the actions at General Convention in 2003. We have found our voices as individuals and as a community as we willingly entered into difficult conversations. We have learned how to speak from our hearts and to listen with respect.
We have learned to let go of those who felt they had no choice but to choose another way, another church.
We have found our strength in living the tension of the middle way.
We have learned how to listen to others and understand that Christians can disagree on a whole number of issues, doctrines, and dogma, and still be good and faithful Christians.
We have learned how to read scripture and realize that each of us brings our own bias, our own lens.
But we have also learned that there is a central truth to the Word of God – that God loves us just as we are – and that we are called to love God, love others, and love self with that same generous spirit that God shows us.
We have learned that this is not easy – it has not been easy to extend love to those who would rail at us for not taking sides; for choosing to follow the middle way.
Sometimes it has not been easy to love God as we wondered what was happening to us, to this faith community – why didn’t God make us big like other churches?
And it has not always been easy to love ourselves and see the strengths and beauty and value of this parish family in the midst of our stress and strain and fear that we will fail to thrive.
Our gospel reading this morning offers us a direct link to all these same issues. In the story of the man born blind the Pharisees seek to point fingers and lay blame – surely the man was blind because of something he did before birth, or something his parents did before he was born.
The Pharisees see a direct link between cause and effect, between well-being and sin. But in the process they spend all their energy pointing outward and fail to look inward, fail to see their own sin and spiritual blindness.
And therefore fail to see God’s love evident in the world.
We have spent much of the last six years looking directly at this same theme -
that we begin first by looking at our selves and the ways we as individuals and as community are living in broken relationships with God and one another.
But it is not enough to just look at our brokenness. We have to do something about it. We have to make amends. We have to look at the ways we reject God’s love for us and for the world. We have to look at the ways we reject others and hurt people – and how we do this in ways known and unknown. Then we have to ask God to forgive us and to help us.
In traveling the journey of Lent we are pointed in the same direction as the disciples – a direction that helps us learn, over and over again, (like the disciples)that God is not a judging punishing God. Yes, God can be that. But what we learn from Jesus is that God is really one who aches for the brokenness of this world – in all its manifestations.
And, in Jesus we learn that God yearns to heal that brokenness. Also in Jesus we learn that God has chosen to do this, to heal the brokenness of the world, by working in and through human beings.
In Christ God came to heal this sin sick world and restore us to wholeness. But like that baby, we have to be open to God’s transforming love. We have to let it into our lives and into our spirits and we have to act upon it.
I don’t know why some failure to thrive babies turn around and live anymore than I know why others don’t. All I know is that is complicated and very sad.
And I don’t really know why some churches turn around and live and grow while others do not. I do think that Diana Butler Bass is on to something.
Remember our meetings in January 2006 when I shared with you her model, the tinker toy model? I think she is on to something when she suggests that we need to learn a new way of being church – one that is less about “authority” and “more about questioning without easy answers.”
And I think she is on to something when she says that the churches that grow have three factors all working together: a clear vision for mission, quality leadership in lay and ordained positions, and the Holy Spirit energizing the place.
I like to think that the work I have done here has been setting the stage for this to happen. We have laid the foundation for a clear mission with our work with refugees – whether that work plays out in selling Bishop’s Blend Coffee and the proceeds to Mexico, or with resettling refuges, or other Fair Trade endeavors…there is a clear sense of mission here. B will now take over as the Episcopal Migration Ministries Refugee Program Diocesan Liaison. She will help to keep this ministry remains front and central with the parish and the diocese.
I also like to think that we have quality leadership in our vestry and lay leaders, and these folks will hold the helm and steady this ship to navigate the waters ahead. They will need your support, prayers, and love. Be sure to pray for them and thank them.
And you will be in good hands with Pastor Deb. She will bring a calm and steady hand to the leadership as well as new enthusiasm and inspiration. Pray for her too and offer her your full support.
Remember always that you are a strong faith community making a difference in the world. Remember always to love God, love your selves, and to love others.
Remember me as one who loves you too.
And, remember that this church is not a community gathered around its priest – rather this is a community gathered around Jesus. All you have to do to thrive is to be yourselves, to love generously, and to continue to see beyond yourselves.
Don’t allow your anxiety about the future make you blind. Don’t allow your fear to limit what is possible. Allow the healing love of God to wash you and to open your eyes anew, to see clearly what is possible.
With eyes wide open, with the clarity of new sight you will see Jesus,
and he will lead you to new life.
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