December 6 Sermon at St. Matthew/San Mateo Episcopal Church, Auburn

Every year during December

            John the Baptist shows up on a Sunday morning

                        proclaiming the quintessential Advent theme:

Prepare the way of the Lord!

                                    Rather a catchy phrase, isn’t it?  Prepare the way of the Lord!

The image that is given for this preparation comes from the Prophet Isaiah.

            It is an image of road excavation described on a gigantic level –

                        mountains bulldozed into valleys,

                        taking the bends out of the road,

                        one straight, well paved super highway

            to drive home the point that

“…all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Clear away every visual obstruction

            so that nothing obscures the view of what everyone needs to see:

                                    the salvation God reveals to us in Jesus.

I think it is important to ask right now,

            What is meant by this word, salvation?

This is very important because salvation is one of those key words

            associated with the heart of our Christian faith,

but somehow we Episcopalians

                        don’t directly talk about salvation very much.

Salvation, simply put, is liberation, being set free.

We then have to ask, “Set free from what?”

It is liberation from whatever imprisons us, constricts and binds us,

whatever thwarts living out our full humanity,

            that is, in a word, sin,            whatever thwarts living out our full humanity,

Sin can be expressed blatantly

            in all kinds of violence, greed, and hard-heartedness

                        seen all too often all around us,

but there is also sin that is more subtle,

                        the littleness of our minds,

                        our self-centered focus of attention turned in on ourselves,

                        providing blinders to wear so as not to look too much

                                                            at all the human suffering around us.

We need saving from that just as much as from the more spectacular sins.

Salvation is the result of Jesus working intervention in our lives,

                                    the outcome of the Cross and Resurrection,

            and when we come to recognized that we are saved,

                        this comes as revelation,

                        as a given awareness of Jesus present with us.

So the John-the-Baptist Advent message is

                                                to prepare the way for seeing salvation.

Now, December is a very dark month,

            not just for lack of daylight,

                        this being the time around the winter solstice

                        when nights are longest,

                        when seasonal affect disorder kicks in.

December is dark

            because it is also a depressing time for many

                                    who are in grief or want or loneliness,

                        for whom the holiday cheer

                                    associated with rosy family scenes

                                    and full of happy expectation,

                        is more like a cruel taunt,

                                    something hopelessly out of reach,

                                    a painful reminder of your isolation and loneliness,

                                                                                                of how bereft you are.

Every year during Advent

I think it is important to talk about this, especially in church.

This has come out of past experiences of innumerable Decembers

in which pastoral care situations would present themselves,

and it became obvious

that December was a particularly difficult month

for more people than you would expect.

As we look around the pews this morning,

the one you are sitting near

could be facing some bleak situation right now,

or it might be you yourself.

What is the personal darkness that you may be in at the moment?

            Is this a time of facing illness, disability, or the death of a loved one,

                        or the memory or anniversary of a death?

            Is it some other form of personal loss?

            Is it loneliness, isolation, or “spiritual dryness?”

Perhaps you have been struggling with uncertainty about the future,

                        fear of transition, the pain of self doubt,

both personally and for the parish.

            Or economic hardship,

            or the various ways we can become paralyzed and imprisoned,

            psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.

            Or take your pick of addictions,

            where there are attachments that bind and imprison us.

            Or relationship issues,

                        or the effects of sin in your life

                        where you find yourself as the one who sinned

or the one who was sinned against - or both.

 Too often all this can seem as though

            we are left facing a very real and personal challenge

                        of living in a crumbling culture,

                        seeing the end of life as we have known it

            without a clear view through the terrain to the salvation of God.

Too often, I fear, suffering people just quietly give up

                                    in a search for faith or hope or being saved,

and silently drift away from church; they just quit coming.

They don't have a connection with or identity with Gospel hope.

So let’s look at what the Apostle Paul,

            corresponding with the Church in Philippi, wrote.

                        Paul was in prison at the time of writing.

                        He knew incredible difficulties.

And yet this letter he wrote to the Philippians

                        stands out particularly among all his epistles

                                                                                                            because of its joy.

He wrote:

“I thank my God every time I remember you,

            constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you,

            because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.

I am confident of this, that the One who began a good work among you

            will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

It is right for me to think this way about all of you,

            because you hold me in your heart,

            for all of you share in God's grace with me,

                        both in my imprisonment

                        and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.”

Verse 6 again:

“I am confident of this,

that the One who began a good work among you

will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

Now and again we need to hear a message of hope,

            not the pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by kind of hope,

but the Gospel story of God's mercy and saving grace and loving kindness.

This kind of hope grapples with all the negative stuff,

            and faces up to the suffering which is universal,

so that negativism and grief and disillusionment

do not end up siphoning off all that is positive, joyful and hopeful,

or obscuring from view the tremendous salvation love

                                                                                                of God for all of creation.

Paul spoke out from such a capacity of joy:

                  “because (he said) you hold me in your heart.” (verse 7)

Now for Paul this was obviously more than

            people just having a warm feeling about Paul.

He was being held in the heart of the community.

What does this look like if we were to apply this in the same way

                                                                                                to this congregation?

            I think you have stories you could tell me.

Holding each other in the heart of the community

            is our work of bringing peace to others, our work of reconciliation,

                        standing by one another,

                        asking how your neighbor is

                                    with the intention of really wanting to know how they are.

These are small ways in which a faith community expresses

            holding one another in our hearts.

And in these challenging times may that Spirit-given love and compassion             rapidly expand within us

                        to meet ever increasing needs.

With the Apostle Paul I trust that

            “…the One who began a good work among you

            will bring it to completion/to fulfillment/to fullness

                                                                                     by the day of Jesus Christ.”

In Advent we recall that the life of the whole church

            is an in-between time of waiting, watching and preparing

                        between the first coming of Christ

and his appearing in fullness in our lives and at the end of time.

But it is also a time of great hope

            in which we too can become like John the Baptist

                        and cry "Prepare the way of the Lord."

BECAUSE our hope is based in God's love for us,

            a love so profound that God became one of us,

                        and was born in Bethlehem

            just so that the times of grief and loss,

                        the times of hardship and difficulty,

could be overcome through and dissolve away in

the love of God

present here and now in the Spirit of the Resurrection Jesus.

And so I would join with Paul in saying:

“…this is my prayer (for you),

that your love may overflow more and more

with knowledge and full insight

to help you to determine what is best,

so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,

having produced the harvest of righteousness

that comes through Jesus Christ

for the glory and praise of God.”

Sermon for November 8 at Emmanuel, Mercer Island

This week in the mail I received my pledge card for 2016

            to fill out and bring back to church and put in the offering plate.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again,

            and I actually like it!

This year the mailing also included some graphics and information

            about the budget and what we use the money for here.

But beyond that what I “like” (?!) is the open opportunity

            for the preacher to talk about money and giving.

I mentioned this to Hunt earlier this week,

            and did he notice what the Gospel for today was?

                        and he had asked me, a Franciscan, to preach.

Hunt said maybe he should rethink this.

Yes, it’s dangerous to turn a Franciscan loose with a Gospel like today’s.

St. Francis of Assisi was a lot more than the patron saint of pets,

            or as common as the bird bath in garden décor.

Francis rejected his father’s wealth producing business,

            and, in fact, stripped himself of even the clothing his father’s wealth provided,

                        to embrace Lady Poverty

            and live in radical obedience to the Gospel.

Imagine for a moment how Francis would respond to today’s Gospel.

            Yes, he took it literally and followed the example

                        of the widow who gave all the money she had.

Let’s look at this Gospel and the context in which it takes place.

Why did Jesus, after cleaning out the Temple

            and taking on the chief priests and scribes and elders

                        with preaching heard by the crowd of people that had gathered,

            preaching that called out the hypocrisy of these holy leaders

                        and warned about following their example,

why did Jesus then sit down and watch the people putting their money

                                    in the “offering plate” of that day?

It wasn’t by accident or because he was tired and wanted to rest,

            or that he was checking out what everyone was wearing.

This was a purposeful action with an intention directly connected

            to what had just been happening and what he had just said.

It was part of his teaching. 

            “Here, guys, sit down beside me and watch.”

The disciples were going to see a living parable

            played out before them,

a lesson that they needed to observe closely and get

            before what was going to happen next.

And what was going to happen next?

Well, the setting is in the middle of Holy Week:

            between the entry into Jerusalem, and the purging of the Temple,

            and the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane and you know the rest.

We heard the story:

            People are putting their offerings in the chest as they enter the Temple.

Some who are wealthy are giving their offerings

                        with a certain amount of flair

                        so that it is apparent that theirs is a substantial gift.

Good for them, that money will go into the building repair fund,

            or buy some new vessels and thuribles for the priests,

            or fund some special project.           

And then there is the widow.

The disciples would remember that Jesus had just said,

            “Beware of the scribes… They devour widows’ houses…”

Here is what you need to know:

Women in those days could not own property,

            indeed, they were essentially the property of their husbands.

If the husband died,

            then the property went to the sons.

            (Not the daughters, of course.)

If there were no sons,

            then the property is taken by some other close male relative.

The scribes, the doctors of the law, those who were learned in the Torah,

            were consulted in cases of interpretation

                                                                        of the Torah and the commandments.

In the case of a widow with no children,

            the widow was considered to have no value in the culture,

                                    since there were no children to raise,

            which would be the woman’s fault, of course – she was barren.

I think you can see where this is going:

            the door is wide open for neglect,

even though the scribes would have known full well

                        what the prophets had said

about God’s special care and attention to

                                                widows, orphans, the poor and the resident aliens.

So here comes a widow, no child in tow.

Jesus knows, as he always knows,

             exactly how much she has put into the treasury chest –

                        (probably very discretely)

                                                two tiny copper coins worth about a penny.

"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more

            than all those who are contributing to the treasury.

For all of them have contributed out of their abundance;

            but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had,

            all she had to live on."

That was the living parable Jesus was showing his disciples.

Now, just when you thought I was going to launch into

                        a stewardship rant in this sermon,

            I am going to say that this is not about stewardship.

It’s about something else,

            the lesson the disciples were to observe.

A parable is a biblical mirror.

We look into it and see our own condition

            in how we respond or react to the parable.

Some will just scratch their heads and say I don’t get it.

“For this people’s heart has grown dull,

    and their ears are hard of hearing,

        and they have shut their eyes;

        so that they might not look with their eyes,

    and listen with their ears,

and understand with their heart and turn—

    and I would heal them.’”

the words of Jesus in Matthew 13:15 quoting from Isaiah 6:10.

But some will look into the mirror of the parable

            and discover a truth about themselves,

                        maybe a joyful thing, or maybe a moment of conviction.

"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more

            than all those who are contributing to the treasury…”

This woman, poor, homeless, in desperate straits,

                        giving away ALL that she had to live on,

            is a living example of a life style of faith.

She is an exemplar of discipleship defined in terms of a life-style

                        of 100% self offering,

                        total non-possession.

Jesus was showing the disciples what he was asking of them.

Yes, I really think this was the point.

Didn’t he previously send them out two by two

            to proclaim the Kingdom of God was at hand?

And remember, he told them not to take anything with them,

            no money in their wallets, no provisions, no change of clothes.

He sent them out as penniless as that widow,

            totally dependent upon those to whom they were going

                        with their Gospel message of the Reign of God.

This is the life-style of the disciple,

                                                a life-style of faith.

Jesus shows them this poor woman, worthless to the culture,

            and presents her as an example

                                                            of fulfilling what it means to be a disciple.

These chosen twelve are to live with the same generosity,

            the same clarity,

            the same completeness of commitment and self-offering.

This is the way they are to be in the world

                        so that they will be a revelation of the Holy

                                                                                    and what the Reign of God is like.

This is the way to be the bearers of the Presence of Jesus,

                        the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus,

            that brings the power of liberation and redemption

in the midst of suffering, violence, greed and all that sucks life out of people.

Well now,

so for us, what do we see when we look into the mirror of this parable?

None of us here are a disciple of Jesus like that.

What kind of a disciple am I, or are you?

The widow gave all that she had, and why was that?

It is an indication that she has peace within herself in her relationship with             

a world that does not seem to be very kind to her,

and she has utter trust in God,

            who does not see her as worthless, merely an empty womb.

Last Sunday, our new Presiding Bishop for the Episcopal Church,

            Michael Curry, was installed at the National Cathedral,

and in his sermon he called for the church to be a church that follows Jesus,

            to be on the move, a Jesus Movement church.

And this will be the theme of our diocesan convention coming up

                                    the end of this week.

In his sermon Michael Curry made some points about following Jesus.

One the Church must go out to people declaring God’s liberating love.

            He talked of being agents of a creative engagement

                        between the world and the Gospel.

God knows the world is in need of some real liberating love!

There is also the image of meeting the resurrected Jesus in Galilee,

            what the angel told the women at the tomb,

                        “Go and tell the disciples that Jesus has risen

                                    and has gone before you to Galilee. 

                        You will meet him there.”

In the African American preaching tradition Galilee

            is wherever there is suffering, strife, oppression, violence and poverty.

There the healing, reconciling love of God is to be proclaimed and offered.

It is there in the places of suffering in the world

            and our engagement in that for the sake of God’s love

that the revelation of the Resurrection Jesus will be seen with clarity.

So a final word that may have some stewardship implications:

Security in this world is measured in ownership and insurance policies.

            For the world that is the faith system that is being lived out.

Where is your security? in ownership?  That is your faith system.

In faith and the accompanying joy and generous love that comes from an intimate encounter with God?  That is your security.

Don’t be afraid to look deeply into the mirror of the parable.

                        God’s liberating love is there.