Here we are, my last sermon with you.
I remember back to my first sermon with you
back
in December of 2007.
It’s been a good time here together with you. I really mean it.
I
have loved being here with you.
Over the years I have participated with you in joyful
baptisms,
I
have watched children grow up and become young adults,
and
that has been an absolute delight.
I have walked with a number of you through illnesses,
surgeries,
stints
of being in rehab and physical therapy,
and Hunt and I have presided over the burial office
of
way too many parishioners,
being
there with you in the grief, but also with the love and consolation
of
our Lord Jesus present to encourage faith.
Over the years I have also continuously encouraged us all
to
be ever engaged in faith formation and education,
and we have had some great Sunday morning adult forums,
speakers,
Lenten
series, women’s gatherings, retreat opportunities,
and, of course, I can’t leave out mentioning meditation.
With my other hat of the Community of the Lamb
I
have offered here at Emmanuel meditation seminars,
the
basic 12 week course
and
numerous subsequent courses and series
on
a whole variety of topics relating scripture to meditation,
often times attended by those beyond this congregation.
But you, Emmanuel, have been the host in providing this
space.
I leave behind two ongoing groups of meditators
who
are clear that they can continue without my presence.
That lets me know that I have done my job well.
You folks have also opened your doors to letting my Hindu
friends
use
the facilities on occasion
and
even had a great fund raising dinner for my sabbatical,
so
that I could take a generous donation check to Amma in India
for her humanitarian projects there.
Which is amazing because you were also good natured about
my
“cabaret
act” as we had some fun together that evening.
I have had a lot of fun with you all, which I treasure in
my heart.
I have also shared a lot of tears with many of you,
which
I also treasure in my heart.
It is in the tears and the laughter as it says in Kate
Wolfe’s song,
“Give
Yourself to Love”
It is in the tears and the laughter
that
we are most intimate and experience the love.
As an aside, it’s worth going back and checking out that
song from the 80’s
that’s
been an earworm with me this last week.
And it makes my heart extremely glad to know that just
recently
the
Outreach Committee in your name
just gave the Jubilee Center at St. Matthew/San Mateo in
Auburn
a
wonderfully generous donation
for
the very vital ministry they do
especially in the areas of
immigration advocacy and domestic violence intervention.
So thank you very much for that show of support,
and I do hope that you will continue this connection with the Jubilee
Center.
Thank you for the privilege and joy that it has been for
me
in
the work of mutual ministry in this faith community.
So now I must say some words to you,
a
message from my heart, words I would like you to remember me by.
Jesus did that with his disciples the night before he
died.
Each of the Gospels devote special chapters to that final
conversation.
John’s Gospel gives it Chapters 13 through17, five whole
chapters.
There
it starts off with the New Commandment.
Jesus said,
“This
is my commandment, that you love one another.
Just
as I have love you, so you love one another.”
That commandment was not just
for those disciples there with him at the time,
but
it quickly became the distinguishing mark of all followers of Jesus after
that.
We are called to love –
that
New Commandment that Jesus gave his disciples
on
the night of violence when he was then betrayed
and
taken and tortured and handed over for execution.
If that is what he asked of us
at
that incredibly tense and challenging moment in his own life, how can we not
take his words without absolute seriousness?
So how are we doing with that?
Looking
at the Church as a whole,
not
just this congregation or denomination,
but
the whole enterprise, the whole institution,
it looks like we’re dying.
In the eyes of the general society we
are becoming irrelevant.
And so the Presiding Bishop for the
Episcopal Church, Michael Curry,
has
been calling us to a renewal in the Jesus Movement.
That’s important for bringing us back
to the realization
that
Jesus has to be at the center of the life and ministry of the Church.
Because if it’s all just our own
efforts,
we
can’t put the world right in the politics of things.
Too often the Church has fallen into
the same trap as the people of Israel did
in
the reading from I Samuel 8
when they came to Samuel and asked
him to get them a king
so
that they could be like all the other nations.
Give us the powerful ruler who will
govern us and go out before us
and
fight our battles.
But it’s not a political answer or
making the best deals or by wielding power.
Our society lives in that space
and
people suffer as a result:
the
weak, the powerless, the alien, the marginalized,
women
and children,
all
get exploited, taken advantage of,
while those at the top, the ones with
the power,
secure
their power and wealth for themselves.
But Jesus was not a king, not a political presence,
even
though some have addressed him as a king,
even
though some have politicized his words,
and used their faith beliefs as
a rationale for judgment and moral exclusiveness.
A king is so different from the liberating, healing power
of Love
that
a Crucified Savior brings.
No Jesus is out of his mind.
That’s what they said about him in the Gospel reading for
today.
He’s
crazy. That’s how this society,
this culture would characterize him.
Say he’s crazy and you can discredit that whole love one
another thing.
That’s a familiar tactic used over the ages.
Call
your opponent a liar, discredit their work.
And the culture we live in today has such a pervasive
effect on us
that
we unconsciously start to accept the whole political thing
that
led the people of Israel to say to Samuel give us a king,
and
reject God as their Sovereign Creator.
So I say to you today that here is what our problem as a
faith community is:
It is our lack of yielding to the intimacy and awareness of
the Presence of Jesus
that
is killing us off.
If we were to let down our guard
and our tight grip on a belief in a merit based morality,
and
instead take our suffering in all its many forms to Jesus
there would be a huge break through in the spiritual
potency of the Church.
We would experience the stunning intimacy of Love in the
Presence of Jesus
and
we would discover how to love one another
with
authenticity and genuine intention.
And that would rock the world.
Crazy – The Cross of Jesus is a mass pardon. – Crazy.
It
stands between us and the condition of suffering in the world.
One might think Jesus was crazy to attempt that – saving the
whole world –
but
then he went farther and in one huge Resurrection appearance,
there is then the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection Spirit and
Presence of Jesus
put
on us,
into
which we were baptized
which
provides in us a continuous process of sanctification
provided
in that space of the Cross, which we call salvation.
This is the experience accessible to all in the Church,
accessible
through spiritual practice
spiritual
practice such as prayer, meditation, the liturgy and sacraments,
reading and hearing the scriptures,
breaking
bread together, forgiving one another.
That being in the Presence of Jesus Love
is
what liberates us to freely love others.
This is not the way of a king or any other type of
political leader.
They called Jesus crazy, out of his mind.
And he didn’t do a thing to deny that.
He looked at those sitting around him and said,
“These
are my mother and my brothers and sisters.”
Those doing the will of God,
those yielding to experiencing that Divine Presence
as
it was coming to them through Jesus at that moment.
Brothers and sisters in the same craziness as Jesus.
And mother also, in whom the divine seed is planted and
grows
and
is born and comes forth into the world. Crazy.
Matthew chapter 25, the story Jesus told
about when the king would come and separate the sheep and
the goats,
you
know the one:
“Lord, when was it
that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave
you something to drink?
And when was it
that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you,
or
naked and gave you clothing?
And when was it
that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”
And the answer,
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are brothers
and sisters, you did it to me.”
Jesus tells us
in this story that these are the people he identifies with.
Crazy
the world would say. Those
people?! Those
losers?!
Just look at how
our society treats the homeless poor,
the
aliens seeking refuge and asylum at our borders,
those
needing to access health care and the incarcerated.
But I have seen
that those people, the ones in need,
are
those who get it about Love.
That’s where Jesus is, really.
Crazy.
Our presiding
bishop, Michael Curry, has referred to the followers of Jesus
as
crazy Christians. He even wrote a
book with that as the title.
This way of Love
in the heart of Jesus is craziness to the world
that
will call it names and call what is good evil and of the devil
and
seek to discount, discredit, ignore and push it aside.
But when you
experience being loved by Jesus then you can get crazy too
in
that life-giving, liberating way for others.
That’s what I want to say to you,
what
I have said in one way or another over and over again,
what
I first said to you and last say to you now.
It’s crazy but Jesus is the Love of my life.
Don’t be afraid to get close to that Love, to get close to
Jesus.
Give up resisting, give up the merit based theology and
and
accept the fact that you are just as much in need of a free gift of Love as
anyone else.
Let yourself be loved by Jesus, and
go crazy in that good way with him.
