Lost In Translation
Beginning Monday, October 26, this course explores key Greek words used throughout the New Testament, their use in conveying the central themes of the gospels, and what they reveal about the spiritual process of salvation, discipleship, resurrection, the work of the Holy Spirit, creation, light, eternal life, etc. We also look at how this deeper exploration of the gospels in their original language can inform an understanding of Christian meditation. No prior knowledge of the Greek language is required. Sitting in silent meditation is a part of each class session as an effective spiritual practice in preparation for reading scripture. 12 Mondays from 9:45 to 11:15 AM at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island.
12 Week Course at Emmanuel, Mercer Island
For new and returning meditators, the 12 Week Course is a comprehensive foundation course of the Prayer of the Lamb designed to give support to establishing a reliable practice. Course includes meditation, study of the original text plus new material, and passages from the gospels that give light to the spiritual work of meditation. Tuesdays from 7 to 9 PM, Emmanuel, Mercer Island, beginning October 27.
Calm in the Storm, Developing a Rule of Life
A day-long workshop at St. Mark’s Cathedral on November 14, 9 AM to 3 PM, in Skinner Auditorium: The Rev. Beverly Hosea, of the Community of the Lamb, will facilitate this workshop on developing spiritual practices for daily living that engage our ministries in the world.
The ancient practice of following a Rule of Life helps us to integrate our faith practice with experiences of every day activities. This workshop will explore how the Prayer of the Lamb offers an integrative spiritual practice that is biblically, sacramentally and ecologically connected to the ministries of intercession and service in the world. The workshop will include instruction and times of silent meditation with the Prayer of the Lamb, as well as discussion on building a personal Rule of Life.
In follow-up to this workshop those attending may want to continue exploring and developing their personal Rule of Life with this spiritual resource of meditational intercession. A twelve week course will be offered to give support and further teaching for establishing an effective and sustaining spiritual practice for individuals and community for living this out.
Register by contacting the Rev. Marilyn Cornwell at St. Mark’s Cathedral: 206-323-0300, ext. 222, mcornwell@saintmarks.org
Clergy Meditation Group
Already underway this meditation group meets Mondays from 7:30 to 9:00 AM, for Episcopal and other clergy. Support for personal spiritual practice, instruction in meditating with the Prayer of the Lamb, and confidential reflection on practice.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sermon Oct. 4 St. Francis, Emmanuel, Mercer Island
Looking around at you this morning, you are amazing;
you are all such lovely and loveable people.
It is so good to be here with you
in this beautiful space, all of us gathered together
to sing God’s praises along with the stars and moon and sun
and all God’s creation
and to plunge again into the incredible Mystery of the Eucharist
communing with the Heart of Christ, and with each other.
I am just back from a 30 day meditation retreat,
the entire month of September off in the woods near Spokane
with a few other veteran meditators
getting grilled daily by my meditation teacher about my practice
and reveling in the uninterrupted silence
of several hours of meditation each day.
Now I should say something about this retreat
because I know a number of people will ask me, “How was the retreat?”
And the quick answer that usually is all we have time for is “fine.”
But I think it is more helpful to say
what value this meditation retreat has had for me.
To that I can say with greater clarity
that meditation for me is energizing,
that it is the most effect way for me to process what I am feeling
and for being with what is really going on with me,
and that meditation is grounding for me,
especially during high demand times.
Through meditation I am empowered for action, for service, for ministry.
And just as we are here communing with God and with each other,
so too the retreat was a form of communion,
a Eucharist not of bread and wine
but of all creation.
Communion in that setting was different in configuration
than here at this altar.
Our retreat facility was set very closely within the natural setting of creation.
We were the interlopers intruding into the habitat of white tailed deer,
chipmunks, rabbits, hawks and crickets,
quail and myriad varieties of beetles,
coyotes singing to the moon,
and wild turkeys, always the wild turkeys making their daily visit
to the buffet table that seemed to be spread
right outside the barn we used for our meditation room.
All this set back up in the pine-covered hills away from civilization.
Then came the task of returning to “civilization”
which is often more like UN-civilization
returning to traffic lights and grocery stores
and mechanical sounds and artificial vistas of cityscapes
and the need to lock one’s door.
However, while in this beautiful pine forest perched on a hill
happily ensconced in my little hermitage,
I thought about Francis of Assisi,
whose Feast Day is today.
I thought about Francis of Assisi on a similar meditation retreat
likewise during the month of September 800 years earlier
perched on another high hill, Mount La Verna,
meditating there at the time of the Feast of the Holy Cross
and receiving within his own body
the same wounds as our Lord absorbed at the crucifixion.
This was more than Francis identifying with our Lord Jesus
and therefore wishing to imitate him to the ultimate degree,
although that certainly was expressed in all the literature
about this remarkable event.
This was more about Francis’ personal realization of oneness with Christ,
of being in Christ, as the Apostle Paul wrote about,
of baptismal identity in the Eternal Word of God.
And in that Francis’ own body then manifested this blood baptism
as a sign and witness of this union, this unity of being,
to his generation and for all generations to come.
That September of 1223/4 alone in the woods of Mount La Verna
Francis was in intimate connection with his environment.
You might even say that the distinction between self and environment was gone,
for that distinction is really arbitrary and dependent
for one cannot be distinct from environment,
we are ourselves part of the environment.
Admittedly this is not as easy for us to recognize,
because we can separate ourselves off from the environment so readily:
step inside a building, climb into our cars,
set the thermostat, screen the windows,
plant our gardens in neat rows and remove the weeds,
spray for cockroaches and ants in the kitchen.
We place ourselves over and against the environment
building artificial barriers.
It was after this time when Francis received the stigmata
that he composed his famous Canticle of Creation.
In it he expresses this interrelationship and interdependence
of all living beings in creation
all living beings including Brother Sun, Sister Moon,
Brother Fire, Sister Water, Brother Wind,
and our sister, Mother Earth,
all the primal elements
and all of them speaking in each their own way the praise of Creator God.
Francis, you see, is the ecological saint,
who saw the intrinsic connection between us humans
and all the other creatures, indeed the whole planet,
the entire ecosystem,
the interrelatedness of all life forms,
the interconnection that binds up all our destinies together,
so that we must both honor
our four legged and winged brothers and sisters,
and our sister Mother Earth,
both honor them and serve them for the sake of us all.
And also listen to them.
Did you pick up on that from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible reading
for today? From Job, chapter 12
7 "…ask the animals, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
8 ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
9 Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this?
10 In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of every human being.”
The animals can teach us if we will let them.
The birds of the air have been trying to tell us, but will we listen?
Their very disappearance speaks volumes to us!
I grieve that it is more and more likely
that I will not again hear the song of the meadow lark
or the haunting call of the loon that graced my growing up years.
And should we not all tremble at how this gives us warning
of the likelihood of our own extinction?
of the madness of our own self-destructive behavior
that ignores their message.
St. Francis of Assisi saw clearly that interconnectedness
exhibited to him through all members of creation
as examples to illustrate the need for and the way to
reconciliation,
for indeed Francis is a saint for reconciliation,
for peace making
for relationship to creation and care for all living beings
for embracing Gospel poverty, non-ownership, as key to this
for the embodiment of a love for Jesus in imitation of his life and death
and for the power of that love, fiery and sweet as honey,
to save us from our own foolishness.
Francis was so remarkable in his own day 8 centuries ago
that thousands and thousands of people followed him,
and history was changed in Europe because of it.
Today within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion
there are those of us who are caught up in the same vision
that Francis had,
who see Francis as role model in living out faith
in our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Third Order, Society of St. Francis, of which I am a member,
there are many of us who take this ecological interdependence
with all the other life forms very seriously,
and we look critically at our own relationship to creation
and interdependence with other species of living beings.
We have been blessed to have my dear friend and fellow Franciscan,
Susan Pitchford, with us again today for the education hour.
This last Lent when she was with us, she was very well received.
Susan had more to say about the Franciscan understanding
of relationship with creation
and indeed our communion with creation.
And while I am taking a moment here to kind of make announcements
in the course of this sermon,
I want to mention the outstanding internationally known person
that we are bringing to Emmanuel as a guest lecturer on January 30,
Bishop Mark MacDonald, another Third Order Franciscan,
former Bishop of Alaska
and currently serving as Anglican Bishop
for the native peoples of Canada.
Bishop MacDonald will also preach here on January 31.
His is another voice echoing St. Francis,
helping us see this relationship of communion with creation
with astonishing freshness and clarity.
So this morning I stagger out of that space
of living in communion with creation
listening to coyotes and wild turkeys
singing the praises of Creator God.
and I come once again to this sacred ground, this holy table
for communion with you, beloved creatures of God.
And this afternoon when we include our animal companions
in our celebration of this feast day of St. Francis,
but may it also be a time of reflection about our relationship
with all our brothers and sisters of the diversity of creation,
the four legged and winged brothers and sisters,
and the ways in which they bless us
and the ways in which we are dependent on them
for our own existence.
And for all of us living, breathing beings
may we know more truly how each breath
is an incredible miracle and gift from God,
the One who is Source of all life, Creator and Sustainer,
in Whom we live and move and have our being.
Amen.
you are all such lovely and loveable people.
It is so good to be here with you
in this beautiful space, all of us gathered together
to sing God’s praises along with the stars and moon and sun
and all God’s creation
and to plunge again into the incredible Mystery of the Eucharist
communing with the Heart of Christ, and with each other.
I am just back from a 30 day meditation retreat,
the entire month of September off in the woods near Spokane
with a few other veteran meditators
getting grilled daily by my meditation teacher about my practice
and reveling in the uninterrupted silence
of several hours of meditation each day.
Now I should say something about this retreat
because I know a number of people will ask me, “How was the retreat?”
And the quick answer that usually is all we have time for is “fine.”
But I think it is more helpful to say
what value this meditation retreat has had for me.
To that I can say with greater clarity
that meditation for me is energizing,
that it is the most effect way for me to process what I am feeling
and for being with what is really going on with me,
and that meditation is grounding for me,
especially during high demand times.
Through meditation I am empowered for action, for service, for ministry.
And just as we are here communing with God and with each other,
so too the retreat was a form of communion,
a Eucharist not of bread and wine
but of all creation.
Communion in that setting was different in configuration
than here at this altar.
Our retreat facility was set very closely within the natural setting of creation.
We were the interlopers intruding into the habitat of white tailed deer,
chipmunks, rabbits, hawks and crickets,
quail and myriad varieties of beetles,
coyotes singing to the moon,
and wild turkeys, always the wild turkeys making their daily visit
to the buffet table that seemed to be spread
right outside the barn we used for our meditation room.
All this set back up in the pine-covered hills away from civilization.
Then came the task of returning to “civilization”
which is often more like UN-civilization
returning to traffic lights and grocery stores
and mechanical sounds and artificial vistas of cityscapes
and the need to lock one’s door.
However, while in this beautiful pine forest perched on a hill
happily ensconced in my little hermitage,
I thought about Francis of Assisi,
whose Feast Day is today.
I thought about Francis of Assisi on a similar meditation retreat
likewise during the month of September 800 years earlier
perched on another high hill, Mount La Verna,
meditating there at the time of the Feast of the Holy Cross
and receiving within his own body
the same wounds as our Lord absorbed at the crucifixion.
This was more than Francis identifying with our Lord Jesus
and therefore wishing to imitate him to the ultimate degree,
although that certainly was expressed in all the literature
about this remarkable event.
This was more about Francis’ personal realization of oneness with Christ,
of being in Christ, as the Apostle Paul wrote about,
of baptismal identity in the Eternal Word of God.
And in that Francis’ own body then manifested this blood baptism
as a sign and witness of this union, this unity of being,
to his generation and for all generations to come.
That September of 1223/4 alone in the woods of Mount La Verna
Francis was in intimate connection with his environment.
You might even say that the distinction between self and environment was gone,
for that distinction is really arbitrary and dependent
for one cannot be distinct from environment,
we are ourselves part of the environment.
Admittedly this is not as easy for us to recognize,
because we can separate ourselves off from the environment so readily:
step inside a building, climb into our cars,
set the thermostat, screen the windows,
plant our gardens in neat rows and remove the weeds,
spray for cockroaches and ants in the kitchen.
We place ourselves over and against the environment
building artificial barriers.
It was after this time when Francis received the stigmata
that he composed his famous Canticle of Creation.
In it he expresses this interrelationship and interdependence
of all living beings in creation
all living beings including Brother Sun, Sister Moon,
Brother Fire, Sister Water, Brother Wind,
and our sister, Mother Earth,
all the primal elements
and all of them speaking in each their own way the praise of Creator God.
Francis, you see, is the ecological saint,
who saw the intrinsic connection between us humans
and all the other creatures, indeed the whole planet,
the entire ecosystem,
the interrelatedness of all life forms,
the interconnection that binds up all our destinies together,
so that we must both honor
our four legged and winged brothers and sisters,
and our sister Mother Earth,
both honor them and serve them for the sake of us all.
And also listen to them.
Did you pick up on that from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible reading
for today? From Job, chapter 12
7 "…ask the animals, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
8 ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
9 Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this?
10 In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of every human being.”
The animals can teach us if we will let them.
The birds of the air have been trying to tell us, but will we listen?
Their very disappearance speaks volumes to us!
I grieve that it is more and more likely
that I will not again hear the song of the meadow lark
or the haunting call of the loon that graced my growing up years.
And should we not all tremble at how this gives us warning
of the likelihood of our own extinction?
of the madness of our own self-destructive behavior
that ignores their message.
St. Francis of Assisi saw clearly that interconnectedness
exhibited to him through all members of creation
as examples to illustrate the need for and the way to
reconciliation,
for indeed Francis is a saint for reconciliation,
for peace making
for relationship to creation and care for all living beings
for embracing Gospel poverty, non-ownership, as key to this
for the embodiment of a love for Jesus in imitation of his life and death
and for the power of that love, fiery and sweet as honey,
to save us from our own foolishness.
Francis was so remarkable in his own day 8 centuries ago
that thousands and thousands of people followed him,
and history was changed in Europe because of it.
Today within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion
there are those of us who are caught up in the same vision
that Francis had,
who see Francis as role model in living out faith
in our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Third Order, Society of St. Francis, of which I am a member,
there are many of us who take this ecological interdependence
with all the other life forms very seriously,
and we look critically at our own relationship to creation
and interdependence with other species of living beings.
We have been blessed to have my dear friend and fellow Franciscan,
Susan Pitchford, with us again today for the education hour.
This last Lent when she was with us, she was very well received.
Susan had more to say about the Franciscan understanding
of relationship with creation
and indeed our communion with creation.
And while I am taking a moment here to kind of make announcements
in the course of this sermon,
I want to mention the outstanding internationally known person
that we are bringing to Emmanuel as a guest lecturer on January 30,
Bishop Mark MacDonald, another Third Order Franciscan,
former Bishop of Alaska
and currently serving as Anglican Bishop
for the native peoples of Canada.
Bishop MacDonald will also preach here on January 31.
His is another voice echoing St. Francis,
helping us see this relationship of communion with creation
with astonishing freshness and clarity.
So this morning I stagger out of that space
of living in communion with creation
listening to coyotes and wild turkeys
singing the praises of Creator God.
and I come once again to this sacred ground, this holy table
for communion with you, beloved creatures of God.
And this afternoon when we include our animal companions
in our celebration of this feast day of St. Francis,
but may it also be a time of reflection about our relationship
with all our brothers and sisters of the diversity of creation,
the four legged and winged brothers and sisters,
and the ways in which they bless us
and the ways in which we are dependent on them
for our own existence.
And for all of us living, breathing beings
may we know more truly how each breath
is an incredible miracle and gift from God,
the One who is Source of all life, Creator and Sustainer,
in Whom we live and move and have our being.
Amen.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sermon 9th Sunday after Pentecost, Emmanuel, Mercer Island
(To the children:)
How many know the story of Moses and the Israelites, the Children of Israel?
They were freed from slavery in Egypt
crossed over the Red Sea escaping Pharaoh’s army
Now they were on their way to a land where they could live free
where our rector Hunt is on his way to
traveling through a rough wilderness desert area to get there
Hunt gets to go there by airplane
but 3,500 years ago when this story takes place, no planes.
They had to walk.
It was going to take a long time
and they would be walking through the desert,
a hilly and stony desert.
Now there were not any grocery stores or restaurants out in the desert.
There was very little grass even for their flocks of sheep and goats to eat.
And there were a lot of people out there in the desert in that band of Israelites.
They had had to run away from Pharaoh’s army
so they had not been able to bring whole lot with them.
What food they did have with them didn’t last very long
before it was all gone.
So they started complaining,
and do you know what they said?
They said they would rather have stayed back in Egypt as slaves
than to be free out there in the desert
because at least there in Egypt they had something to eat.
So what did God do?
God sent them some special food.
First that evening at dinner time
some quails, a small bird, sort of like a chicken,
thousands and thousands of them flew into the camp.
It was like everyone getting a big bucket of fried chicken from KFC!
And then in the morning, what happened?
Here they were in the dry, dry desert
and in the morning there was dew on the ground.
Do you know what dew is?
Have you ever noticed the grass in the morning sometimes
covered with tiny drops of water all over
shining in the sunlight
and you know that it didn’t rain. That’s dew.
And when the dew dried up in the sun
there on the ground was something small and white and flakey.
And the people looked at it and said, “What’s that?”
In Hebrew the word for “What’s that?” is manna.
They picked it up, and someone tasted it and said, “Mmmm, this is good.”
They said it had a sweet taste like honey, and it was like bread.
Let’s look around from some manna.
Does anyone see some manna here? No.
Wait, I know something that is sort of like manna.
-- get basket with communion wafers from credence shelf –
The grown ups that prepare all the things for the altar on Sunday morning set out some of the communion bread for us.
This bread has not been consecrated yet,
not had the special Eucharistic Prayer said over it yet.
So it is simply bread, little round pieces of a particular kind of bread.
These look sort of like manna: flat, white, flakey.
Let’s see what they taste like.
Put your piece in your mouth and suck on it so that you can taste it.
What does it taste like?
Every day as long as they were out in the desert, which was a long time,
the Israelites found this bread waiting for them in the morning.
They always had enough for everybody, but just for that day;
and the whole time they were in the desert they got fed one day at a time.
God was taking care of them until they came out of the desert
to the place where they could plant their own gardens
to grow their own food.
Now let’s look at our Gospel story, the reading where we all stand up
and face toward the Gospel book
as we bring it right down into the middle of the congregation.
Last week we heard about how Jesus feed 5,000 people with a boy’s lunch.
Today we heard about how people went looking for Jesus the next day.
Why were they looking for him?
They wanted to see him do that miracle again.
Because they wanted him to feed them again this day like yesterday.
Jesus had fed them all with the boy’s lunch
because he had compassion on them and loved them.
And now when they wanted him to keep on feeding them
Jesus began to feed them with words
that would be even more nourishing for them than bread,
words of life.
The people came looking for bread like the manna that the Israelites knew
bread that would last only one day
But Jesus told them, “I am the Bread of Life,”
a different kind of bread than they assumed,
bread that would last far longer than only one day,
bread that would last forever.
(To the children:)
Thank you for helping the grown ups listen to the story,
and when you come up for communion,
when you come up to receive the Bread and the Wine,
think about how Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.”
(To the adults:)
Jesus fed the 5,000 because he loved them.
He saw their need,
and his compassion and love were put into practical action.
So he touched the food and enlivened it,
causing an expansion that resulted in an abundance,
more than what was needed,
because they had so much left over after they were all stuffed to the gills.
And his touch began to enliven the people
as they sought him the next day,
and as he engaged them in life giving dialog.
“You were looking for me,” Jesus said to them,
“because you ate your fill of the bread
that you didn’t have to work for yourselves, free bread.”
You know what it is like to work hard day after day
to put groceries on the table at home.
But I’m going to say something different to you, Jesus said,
Do not work for the food that perishes,
food that gets eaten up and then it’s back to work again.
Work for the food that endures for eternal life
- well, obviously, a different kind of food -
food from the One upon which God has set his seal,
upon whom God has indicated approval and authenticity.
So they ask how they are to work for this kind of food,
what works are they to work to be doing the works of God.
And here is the crux of all that is too follow in this chapter,
indeed, the central point of this whole Gospel.
This, as we would say back in Minnesota where I spent so many years,
is “the whole kielbasa.”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God,
that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Does this strike you as odd?
that the work of God that we are to do is to believe?
not to keep all the Commandments
not to do good to others
nothing that requires muscles and sweat
or that make a product, accomplishes a task
but to believe the One God sent.
Let’s look at this word believe.
You have heard me say more than once about the challenge of translation,
how a word in one language usually has
a constellation of meanings about it,
and when we translate it to another language, say English,
we have to pick a word that inevitably cannot include
the whole scope of meaning of the original word.
That’s how it is with the verb that is translated here as believe.
I would rather translate it as have faith in.
To believe has the connotation of giving mental assent,
to accept as a doctrine, like when we say in the Nicene Creed,
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty…”
But the Greek word is much richer.
We could begin the creed just as well with
“We have faith in one God… We have faith in one Lord, Jesus Christ…”
To have faith in someone
means that we have a history with that person.
We have experienced that person as trustworthy in particular areas,
such as keeping their word, or arriving on time,
or doing a good job at fixing your car.
What we have faith in is the truth of that person as we have experienced it.
So this is the work we are invited to do:
to trust Jesus, to have faith in him,
to trust him, especially as we have experienced him in our lives,
how we have experienced him in our prayers and meditation,
how we have experienced his Resurrection Spirit guiding us,
how we have experienced his voice, his presence
through others who reflect his life in their own,
how we experience him in bread and wine week by week,
how all of creation points us to him,
in all the hundreds of ways we can come to experience and know him.
And to trust that, to rely utterly on Jesus
who would feed us with himself.
Jesus gives himself fully,
so that when you receive him,
you are nourished to fullness of Life.
He will feed us with what he is.
He will feed us with what he is.
And then we become him,
for, as they say, “You are what you eat.”
Jesus is the bread of God who comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.
We may want to make a link between this Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel
and the sacrament of the Eucharist
The essential Bread of Life is there for us
to sink our teeth into spiritually,
living bread that conveys life to the eater.
What are you hungry for? What does your soul crave?
Work for what will satisfy that hunger like nothing else can.
So come to the Table today with all your hunger,
and you may want to say a little prayer prior to eating,
such as the grace we say at home before a meal,
something like this:
For what we are about to receive,
may the Lord make us truly grateful.
How many know the story of Moses and the Israelites, the Children of Israel?
They were freed from slavery in Egypt
crossed over the Red Sea escaping Pharaoh’s army
Now they were on their way to a land where they could live free
where our rector Hunt is on his way to
traveling through a rough wilderness desert area to get there
Hunt gets to go there by airplane
but 3,500 years ago when this story takes place, no planes.
They had to walk.
It was going to take a long time
and they would be walking through the desert,
a hilly and stony desert.
Now there were not any grocery stores or restaurants out in the desert.
There was very little grass even for their flocks of sheep and goats to eat.
And there were a lot of people out there in the desert in that band of Israelites.
They had had to run away from Pharaoh’s army
so they had not been able to bring whole lot with them.
What food they did have with them didn’t last very long
before it was all gone.
So they started complaining,
and do you know what they said?
They said they would rather have stayed back in Egypt as slaves
than to be free out there in the desert
because at least there in Egypt they had something to eat.
So what did God do?
God sent them some special food.
First that evening at dinner time
some quails, a small bird, sort of like a chicken,
thousands and thousands of them flew into the camp.
It was like everyone getting a big bucket of fried chicken from KFC!
And then in the morning, what happened?
Here they were in the dry, dry desert
and in the morning there was dew on the ground.
Do you know what dew is?
Have you ever noticed the grass in the morning sometimes
covered with tiny drops of water all over
shining in the sunlight
and you know that it didn’t rain. That’s dew.
And when the dew dried up in the sun
there on the ground was something small and white and flakey.
And the people looked at it and said, “What’s that?”
In Hebrew the word for “What’s that?” is manna.
They picked it up, and someone tasted it and said, “Mmmm, this is good.”
They said it had a sweet taste like honey, and it was like bread.
Let’s look around from some manna.
Does anyone see some manna here? No.
Wait, I know something that is sort of like manna.
-- get basket with communion wafers from credence shelf –
The grown ups that prepare all the things for the altar on Sunday morning set out some of the communion bread for us.
This bread has not been consecrated yet,
not had the special Eucharistic Prayer said over it yet.
So it is simply bread, little round pieces of a particular kind of bread.
These look sort of like manna: flat, white, flakey.
Let’s see what they taste like.
Put your piece in your mouth and suck on it so that you can taste it.
What does it taste like?
Every day as long as they were out in the desert, which was a long time,
the Israelites found this bread waiting for them in the morning.
They always had enough for everybody, but just for that day;
and the whole time they were in the desert they got fed one day at a time.
God was taking care of them until they came out of the desert
to the place where they could plant their own gardens
to grow their own food.
Now let’s look at our Gospel story, the reading where we all stand up
and face toward the Gospel book
as we bring it right down into the middle of the congregation.
Last week we heard about how Jesus feed 5,000 people with a boy’s lunch.
Today we heard about how people went looking for Jesus the next day.
Why were they looking for him?
They wanted to see him do that miracle again.
Because they wanted him to feed them again this day like yesterday.
Jesus had fed them all with the boy’s lunch
because he had compassion on them and loved them.
And now when they wanted him to keep on feeding them
Jesus began to feed them with words
that would be even more nourishing for them than bread,
words of life.
The people came looking for bread like the manna that the Israelites knew
bread that would last only one day
But Jesus told them, “I am the Bread of Life,”
a different kind of bread than they assumed,
bread that would last far longer than only one day,
bread that would last forever.
(To the children:)
Thank you for helping the grown ups listen to the story,
and when you come up for communion,
when you come up to receive the Bread and the Wine,
think about how Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.”
(To the adults:)
Jesus fed the 5,000 because he loved them.
He saw their need,
and his compassion and love were put into practical action.
So he touched the food and enlivened it,
causing an expansion that resulted in an abundance,
more than what was needed,
because they had so much left over after they were all stuffed to the gills.
And his touch began to enliven the people
as they sought him the next day,
and as he engaged them in life giving dialog.
“You were looking for me,” Jesus said to them,
“because you ate your fill of the bread
that you didn’t have to work for yourselves, free bread.”
You know what it is like to work hard day after day
to put groceries on the table at home.
But I’m going to say something different to you, Jesus said,
Do not work for the food that perishes,
food that gets eaten up and then it’s back to work again.
Work for the food that endures for eternal life
- well, obviously, a different kind of food -
food from the One upon which God has set his seal,
upon whom God has indicated approval and authenticity.
So they ask how they are to work for this kind of food,
what works are they to work to be doing the works of God.
And here is the crux of all that is too follow in this chapter,
indeed, the central point of this whole Gospel.
This, as we would say back in Minnesota where I spent so many years,
is “the whole kielbasa.”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God,
that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Does this strike you as odd?
that the work of God that we are to do is to believe?
not to keep all the Commandments
not to do good to others
nothing that requires muscles and sweat
or that make a product, accomplishes a task
but to believe the One God sent.
Let’s look at this word believe.
You have heard me say more than once about the challenge of translation,
how a word in one language usually has
a constellation of meanings about it,
and when we translate it to another language, say English,
we have to pick a word that inevitably cannot include
the whole scope of meaning of the original word.
That’s how it is with the verb that is translated here as believe.
I would rather translate it as have faith in.
To believe has the connotation of giving mental assent,
to accept as a doctrine, like when we say in the Nicene Creed,
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty…”
But the Greek word is much richer.
We could begin the creed just as well with
“We have faith in one God… We have faith in one Lord, Jesus Christ…”
To have faith in someone
means that we have a history with that person.
We have experienced that person as trustworthy in particular areas,
such as keeping their word, or arriving on time,
or doing a good job at fixing your car.
What we have faith in is the truth of that person as we have experienced it.
So this is the work we are invited to do:
to trust Jesus, to have faith in him,
to trust him, especially as we have experienced him in our lives,
how we have experienced him in our prayers and meditation,
how we have experienced his Resurrection Spirit guiding us,
how we have experienced his voice, his presence
through others who reflect his life in their own,
how we experience him in bread and wine week by week,
how all of creation points us to him,
in all the hundreds of ways we can come to experience and know him.
And to trust that, to rely utterly on Jesus
who would feed us with himself.
Jesus gives himself fully,
so that when you receive him,
you are nourished to fullness of Life.
He will feed us with what he is.
He will feed us with what he is.
And then we become him,
for, as they say, “You are what you eat.”
Jesus is the bread of God who comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.
We may want to make a link between this Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel
and the sacrament of the Eucharist
The essential Bread of Life is there for us
to sink our teeth into spiritually,
living bread that conveys life to the eater.
What are you hungry for? What does your soul crave?
Work for what will satisfy that hunger like nothing else can.
So come to the Table today with all your hunger,
and you may want to say a little prayer prior to eating,
such as the grace we say at home before a meal,
something like this:
For what we are about to receive,
may the Lord make us truly grateful.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sermon 8th Sunday after Pentecost, Emmanuel, Mercer Island
Today we begin a 5 week series
with the Gospel readings from the 6th chapter of John,
the Bread of Life chapter,
taking us up through August 23.
This happens just once every 3 years,
a rare opportunity to examine a very important biblical theme
for a whole month.
Today we give the setting
for what the next 4 Sunday Gospel readings will be addressing.
The Gospel story today starts with telling what Jesus did
when a huge number of people came to hear him speak
and to bring those who were sick for him to heal.
(To the children: )
What did Jesus do when he saw the big crowd?
He fed them.
How did he feed them?
With a boy’s lunch.
Do you think that the disciples took the boy’s lunch away from him?
No!
What do you think might have happened?
The boy may have heard them talking
about not having enough food to feed everyone,
and so he offered his.
What did Jesus do next with the boy’s lunch?
He gave thanks (said grace)
and then he gave the food to all the people.
How far around did the boy’s lunch go? How many got to eat something?
Everyone.
Did they each just get a little bite?
No. Everyone got enough.
Everybody got filled up with as much as they wanted.
How can we tell?
There were leftovers.
How much leftovers were there?
Enough to fill 12 baskets full.
But how many little loaves of bread did the boy have to begin with?
Five
How can this be! There are more leftovers than what they started with.
What do you suppose the people there were thinking?
They were amazed.
They thought it was a miracle.
They wanted him to do it again.
They wanted to make him their king.
So what did Jesus do then?
He left.
He went up a mountain by himself to pray.
Now comes the second part of this story,
something else about Jesus that was very extraordinary.
First of all, the disciples are in a boat going across the Sea of Galilee.
In a few days our rector, Hunt, is going to be on the Sea of Galilee
during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
He’s going to get to go for a ride a boat
similar to what the disciples were in.
Each time I’ve been on the Sea of Galilee the weather has been quite calm.
But it can also get very wind, which makes for rough sailing.
Now the Sea of Galilee is actually a very big lake, about 10 miles long.
And the disciples were in the boat
when a strong wind was blowing and the water got rough.
Apparently the wind was blowing against them for where they wanted to go,
so they had to row.
Pretend like you are in the boat and you are rowing.
Everybody row.
The wind is getting stronger! Row harder!
Getting tired? Keep rowing!
Now it was starting to get dark,
and they had only made it part way across the lake because of the wind.
And suddenly they see something,
something on the lake.
Even with the wind howling and the waves surging,
here was something moving toward them on the water.
(figure under a sheet comes down the aisle)
What’s that?! -- Is it a ghost?
The disciples are terrified. Everyone act terrified.
(person emerges from under the sheet with a big sign that says “Jesus”)
“It is I, do not be afraid.”
And immediately they reached the land they were trying to get to.
Thank you all for helping me retell this story for the grown ups.
You were helping them pay attention to the story.
Now you can go back to your seats
while I say some things for everyone.
The disciples had been doing their best to row against the wind,
and they had not made much progress across the lake
because of a strong headwind;
it was a time spent in fruitless labor.
We all have probably experienced times like that.
So what’s the deal with Jesus?
walking on top of the water
as though he were taking a stroll along any old road
light enough for the water to hold him
yet not blown away by the howling wind,
while the disciples strained at the oars.
One might even think that Jesus is expressing a quirky sense of humor here
messing with the disciples’ minds.
Well, the disciples see him and of course get quite a start.
This is way out of any understanding they had about the laws of nature.
What human can make himself so light
that water will support his full body weight like that?
Not even Moses at the Red Sea or Elijah at the Jordan River could do that!
They had to clear a path through the water.
Jesus has just blown away their whole understanding of reality.
The world the way they knew it just didn’t hold together any longer.
Water can be walked on like solid ground.
The disciples don’t get it,
and the Gospel writer links this story in
with what happened with the bread.
There is a connection
between these incidents of superceding the known ways that reality works
in the feeding of the multitude and walking on water.
I suggest to you that it all has to do with the nature of the Resurrection
Walking on water is living out of Resurrection reality.
But maybe in this case Resurrection is even more mind-blowing
because this is before Good Friday and Easter; Jesus hasn’t died yet.
This is called paradigm shift,
a shift in our understanding of reality
that reorients the way we look at our world,
jarring to the sensibilities
blowing our previous way of looking at things to pieces
so that we cannot go back to the way things were before.
I would like to suggest that, maybe,
Jesus may be doing something similar here at Emmanuel
- a major paradigm shift
opening up a whole new spectrum of meaning and understanding
about the nature of the faith community,
how we are as a congregation.
From my many years of ministry among various congregations,
what I observe here at Emmanuel
is the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus emerging in awareness
and being expressed outwardly
through such things as how we worship on a Sunday morning,
and inwardly in what I see in individuals I talk with pastorally
and in meditation groups.
The Jesus who walks on water
would mess with our minds and change the way we see the world.
He would open us up to new possibility
way outside the box of our currently limited vision,
and what each of us might perceive as fruitless labor,
so much rowing against the wind.
He wants, I dare say, folks who will walk on the water with him,
people who will discover faith,
faith that is more than belief,
more than believing certain creeds, statements of right belief,
faith that recognizes the Divine as one’s experienced reality
and then puts full trust in that.
What is our faith and knowledge of Jesus?
What is our trust in Jesus, what is our personal experience of Jesus?
Is our knowledge limited to what we can figure out with our minds?
Or will we be frightened if we see Jesus show up in a new, surprising way?
I put these questions out to you for your serious consideration,
because this is really at the heart of why we are here to begin with:
FAITH.
And this is also a major theme for the next four weeks in John, chapter 6:
that to do the work of God means to have faith in Jesus,
and where else can we go? These are words of Life.
Jesus himself is the Bread from the boy’s lunch.
He himself is life sustaining nourishment.
So here is my prayer for the congregation and for each of you here,
words from the Epistle reading from Ephesians today:
I pray that,
according to the riches of [God’s] glory,
he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being
with power through his Spirit,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend,
with all the saints – with all those who have encountered Jesus,
experienced that profound paradigm shift of faith,
and have lived out of this new way of being
faithfully throughout the rest of their earthly lives,
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend
what is the breadth and length and height –
what is the expansiveness of this love
in which we are being rooted and grounded -
and to know – deeply know – the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
- understanding, what the mind can take in -
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Filled with all the fullness of God – be so God-filled, so God-filled
that how can there be room for anything else.
with the Gospel readings from the 6th chapter of John,
the Bread of Life chapter,
taking us up through August 23.
This happens just once every 3 years,
a rare opportunity to examine a very important biblical theme
for a whole month.
Today we give the setting
for what the next 4 Sunday Gospel readings will be addressing.
The Gospel story today starts with telling what Jesus did
when a huge number of people came to hear him speak
and to bring those who were sick for him to heal.
(To the children: )
What did Jesus do when he saw the big crowd?
He fed them.
How did he feed them?
With a boy’s lunch.
Do you think that the disciples took the boy’s lunch away from him?
No!
What do you think might have happened?
The boy may have heard them talking
about not having enough food to feed everyone,
and so he offered his.
What did Jesus do next with the boy’s lunch?
He gave thanks (said grace)
and then he gave the food to all the people.
How far around did the boy’s lunch go? How many got to eat something?
Everyone.
Did they each just get a little bite?
No. Everyone got enough.
Everybody got filled up with as much as they wanted.
How can we tell?
There were leftovers.
How much leftovers were there?
Enough to fill 12 baskets full.
But how many little loaves of bread did the boy have to begin with?
Five
How can this be! There are more leftovers than what they started with.
What do you suppose the people there were thinking?
They were amazed.
They thought it was a miracle.
They wanted him to do it again.
They wanted to make him their king.
So what did Jesus do then?
He left.
He went up a mountain by himself to pray.
Now comes the second part of this story,
something else about Jesus that was very extraordinary.
First of all, the disciples are in a boat going across the Sea of Galilee.
In a few days our rector, Hunt, is going to be on the Sea of Galilee
during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
He’s going to get to go for a ride a boat
similar to what the disciples were in.
Each time I’ve been on the Sea of Galilee the weather has been quite calm.
But it can also get very wind, which makes for rough sailing.
Now the Sea of Galilee is actually a very big lake, about 10 miles long.
And the disciples were in the boat
when a strong wind was blowing and the water got rough.
Apparently the wind was blowing against them for where they wanted to go,
so they had to row.
Pretend like you are in the boat and you are rowing.
Everybody row.
The wind is getting stronger! Row harder!
Getting tired? Keep rowing!
Now it was starting to get dark,
and they had only made it part way across the lake because of the wind.
And suddenly they see something,
something on the lake.
Even with the wind howling and the waves surging,
here was something moving toward them on the water.
(figure under a sheet comes down the aisle)
What’s that?! -- Is it a ghost?
The disciples are terrified. Everyone act terrified.
(person emerges from under the sheet with a big sign that says “Jesus”)
“It is I, do not be afraid.”
And immediately they reached the land they were trying to get to.
Thank you all for helping me retell this story for the grown ups.
You were helping them pay attention to the story.
Now you can go back to your seats
while I say some things for everyone.
The disciples had been doing their best to row against the wind,
and they had not made much progress across the lake
because of a strong headwind;
it was a time spent in fruitless labor.
We all have probably experienced times like that.
So what’s the deal with Jesus?
walking on top of the water
as though he were taking a stroll along any old road
light enough for the water to hold him
yet not blown away by the howling wind,
while the disciples strained at the oars.
One might even think that Jesus is expressing a quirky sense of humor here
messing with the disciples’ minds.
Well, the disciples see him and of course get quite a start.
This is way out of any understanding they had about the laws of nature.
What human can make himself so light
that water will support his full body weight like that?
Not even Moses at the Red Sea or Elijah at the Jordan River could do that!
They had to clear a path through the water.
Jesus has just blown away their whole understanding of reality.
The world the way they knew it just didn’t hold together any longer.
Water can be walked on like solid ground.
The disciples don’t get it,
and the Gospel writer links this story in
with what happened with the bread.
There is a connection
between these incidents of superceding the known ways that reality works
in the feeding of the multitude and walking on water.
I suggest to you that it all has to do with the nature of the Resurrection
Walking on water is living out of Resurrection reality.
But maybe in this case Resurrection is even more mind-blowing
because this is before Good Friday and Easter; Jesus hasn’t died yet.
This is called paradigm shift,
a shift in our understanding of reality
that reorients the way we look at our world,
jarring to the sensibilities
blowing our previous way of looking at things to pieces
so that we cannot go back to the way things were before.
I would like to suggest that, maybe,
Jesus may be doing something similar here at Emmanuel
- a major paradigm shift
opening up a whole new spectrum of meaning and understanding
about the nature of the faith community,
how we are as a congregation.
From my many years of ministry among various congregations,
what I observe here at Emmanuel
is the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus emerging in awareness
and being expressed outwardly
through such things as how we worship on a Sunday morning,
and inwardly in what I see in individuals I talk with pastorally
and in meditation groups.
The Jesus who walks on water
would mess with our minds and change the way we see the world.
He would open us up to new possibility
way outside the box of our currently limited vision,
and what each of us might perceive as fruitless labor,
so much rowing against the wind.
He wants, I dare say, folks who will walk on the water with him,
people who will discover faith,
faith that is more than belief,
more than believing certain creeds, statements of right belief,
faith that recognizes the Divine as one’s experienced reality
and then puts full trust in that.
What is our faith and knowledge of Jesus?
What is our trust in Jesus, what is our personal experience of Jesus?
Is our knowledge limited to what we can figure out with our minds?
Or will we be frightened if we see Jesus show up in a new, surprising way?
I put these questions out to you for your serious consideration,
because this is really at the heart of why we are here to begin with:
FAITH.
And this is also a major theme for the next four weeks in John, chapter 6:
that to do the work of God means to have faith in Jesus,
and where else can we go? These are words of Life.
Jesus himself is the Bread from the boy’s lunch.
He himself is life sustaining nourishment.
So here is my prayer for the congregation and for each of you here,
words from the Epistle reading from Ephesians today:
I pray that,
according to the riches of [God’s] glory,
he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being
with power through his Spirit,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend,
with all the saints – with all those who have encountered Jesus,
experienced that profound paradigm shift of faith,
and have lived out of this new way of being
faithfully throughout the rest of their earthly lives,
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend
what is the breadth and length and height –
what is the expansiveness of this love
in which we are being rooted and grounded -
and to know – deeply know – the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
- understanding, what the mind can take in -
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Filled with all the fullness of God – be so God-filled, so God-filled
that how can there be room for anything else.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sermon 4th Sunday after Pentecost, Emmanuel, Mercer Island
I just got back last night from a few days of vacation,
time spent with family,
especially my two little grandsons who are such a delight in my life.
I consider myself very blest to have this family,
to share these significant primary relationships,
and for us all to be in a wonderful place at the moment.
But like just about every family, it hasn’t all been wonderful.
Our family has experienced its share of suffering, death, grief and heart ache
and that makes this present time so precious.
Yet it is in the time of darkness and trial
when the purpose and meaning in life is tested
that we find our spiritual grounding and discover faith.
The Gospel reading for today is about such a crisis moment
for a family suffering for 12 long years of brokenness and grief.
I am going to tell you something today about this story
that you probably haven’t heard before.
It may or may not be true,
but I think it is not only probable, but implicit in the passage.
First and foremost is the implicit connection
between the woman who was hemorrhaging for 12 years
and the 12 year-old girl.
Didn’t you ever wonder why the text made a point
of mentioning the 12 years?
In these necessarily brief and sparse ancient documents of the Gospels
every little word is there on purpose.
The woman, you see, is quite possibly the girl’s mother.
And the word for woman and wife are one and the same in Greek,
so this shifts the whole way in which we can look at this story.
This story appears in all three of the synoptic Gospels,
Matthew, Mark and Luke,
and the three accounts are very similar.
In fact, they concur on all the important points that support what I am saying,
that this woman was the child’s mother.
Again the Greek is clearer than the English translation
because of syntax as well as vocabulary.
That makes this a story about Jesus healing, reconciling and restoring a family.
And this has application for us even in this contemporary setting,
in which this woman’s post partum hemorrhaging
could have been readily handled medically today as opposed to then.
First to understand why the mother of the dying child
was sneaking up behind Jesus to touch him,
and why she was so afraid of detection,
why she was acting in this way,
recall the significance of blood in that time and culture.
There were a lot of laws around matters involving blood,
and they had to do with ritual purity.
Women who were menstruating were “excused” from social contact
so as not to make others ritually unclean,
since merely the touch of a woman during that time of the month
was considered as polluting all that she touched.
And her husband, Jairus, was a leader of the synagogue,
so this meant that he and his family had greater obligation
to uphold the customs of their religion and society.
They were in the public eye,
and therefore obligated to be scrupulous in their religious observance.
Quite possibly this flow of blood had originated
at the birth of their first, and – notice – only, child,
and so for 12 years the girl’s mother, Jairus’ wife
had had to be excluded not only from society and the synagogue,
but also from the marriage bed.
Here was a family that had been living with a severe disruption all these years,
and now their only child was dying.
But the woman’s faith is greatly encouraged by the Presence of Jesus,
and perhaps she reasons with herself
that if Jesus is coming to heal their daughter,
then she too has the opportunity to receive the overflow of that healing.
But how to get near enough to him…
She must have been both bold and stealthy,
veiling her face so as not to be recognized
in the close and jostling crowd,
since if she were detected, can you imagine what an outcry there would be
among all those who would be wondering
how many of them she had touched and made unclean
by pushing her way through the crowd to Jesus.
Yet Jesus knows that she has touched him and that she is healed,
and he calls attention to it.
In all three Gospels what Jesus says to her is key,
is the heart of this whole story.
First he addresses her as daughter, he calls her his daughter.
This is typical, traditional language for identifying the disciple.
The prophet, guru, sage, spiritual leader
names the disciple by calling them son or daughter.
Jesus is identifying her as his disciple, laying a claim on her.
She had responded out of faith in him,
and he recognized that and validated that.
A powerful spiritual connection has been made here.
This woman’s need was great.
For the entire life of her child she had been separated from society,
excluded not on the basis of moral consideration
but because of ritual impurity from no fault of her own.
And now the child was dying.
One might wonder that she had any faith at all,
that she hadn’t railed against a God who seemed deaf to her prayers,
a God whom she could blame for the unfairness of it all.
But her need was so enormous for her daughter, her family, herself
that she would do what she had to in order to reach Jesus.
So the need draws her to Jesus, calls her to Jesus.
This is often how the disciple gets called to the spiritual master.
We don’t often get the chance to see true spiritual masters at work
so as to see how this process of calling disciples works.
We mostly don’t see how it is
that each of us has been called into discipleship with Jesus either.
In most cases our need hasn’t been as great as hers.
It’s not as clear cut.
I have been fortunate enough to spend time around
one of the world’s true spiritual leaders currently living,
and I have been able to observe close up the significant spiritual power
that can draw people irresistibly.
That’s how I ended up in India.
Four years ago Amma – Mata Amritanandamayi – took me in her arms
and whispered “My daughter” in my ear,
and a monthly later I had airplane tickets to India my hand
and I was scratching my head wondering how all that had happened!
And Jesus, as the Gospels give witness about him, was in his earthly life
a most powerful spiritual guru,
and now in the Resurrection he is even more powerful.
But we often miss that because we are just too ignorant
in this western, post modern, highly secular culture
to know what to look for or how to name our spiritual experiences.
What I am leading up to is that I think that in this Gospel story
this huge spiritual Presence of Jesus is already drawing the woman
and she is able to make it through the thick crowd
because, in a sense, the way is opened for her.
The way is opened for her.
Such mercy and love from our Lord…
Then Jesus calls attention to her, affirming both her healing and her faith.
“Your faith has saved you.” “Your faith has healed you,”
The Greek word here is the same for saved and healed.
“Your faith has saved, has healed you,” Jesus says,
affirming both her healing and her faith,
and thus restoring her to her family and to the whole community.
This is very important to note.
This is the center point of the whole story.
This is crucial for what follows.
Because it is right then that the word comes that the girl has died.
And then Jesus continues to their home despite the news of death,
bringing both the father, and the mother now, into the home with him,
and only 3 of the 12, the ones closest to him – Peter, James and John.
Those without faith, all those standing outside the house wailing,
they stay out.
And then Jesus touches the dead body – another taboo;
(crossing another ritual boundary)
taking the child by the hand would also make him unclean,
and he raises her to life again.
And the family is completely restored and reconciled,
all flying in the face of what seemed to be proper religious mores
for one who is a synagogue leader.
And Jesus was taking all that uncleanness upon himself.
Then Jesus orders them that no one should know about this,
what with all the rules having been broken,
and because people will end up attaching to Jesus their own ideas
about the Messiah
and miss the point about faith and responding to the call of Jesus.
But most importantly this family was restored again,
brought back together.
The family was far more important than either
religious rules or culturally accepted norms,
and rules were broken for the sake of basic human relationships.
Thank God!
What might be the ways in which you and I as brothers and sisters in faith,
might bridge cultural norms and societal ideas
in order to bring healing, reconciliation, and restored relationships?
Even though we are not all of us here related by blood,
we can still call each other brother and sister.
We can think about this on a global level
with such concerns as what might come up at General Convention
coming up in July,
concerns about how we can all stay together in the Anglican Communion.
We can think about this on the local level
in terms of how we here in this congregation
follow our Lord in discipleship and faith, and relate to one another.
We can think about this in ways in which our own social norms
are broken for the sake of compassion to meet basic human needs.
Need comes in many ways.
Needs for the basic necessities of life – food, housing, medical care,
and also our basic human needs for love, relationship, family.
And we can see from this gospel story
that needs can actually work to our good to propel us toward God.
What needs brought us here today?
What might impel you to reach out your hand to touch Jesus?
to seek his love, mercy, healing, reconciliation, peace?
Would that we were as impelled as that woman in the Gospel
that we would push our way
through whatever is blocking the way to Jesus!
push our way through whatever in ourselves is blocking the way.
Here is the Good News:
The healing Presence of Jesus is just as much here
as it was in the streets of Jairus’ town.
You can, if you want, reach out your hand to touch the robe of Jesus.
Consider this: you can actually physically touch Jesus today,
this very morning.
His physical Presence is with us powerfully,
albeit hidden in bread and wine.
You could push your way through the crowd to the altar rail
and grab hold of the very Body of Jesus
and claim the faith that brings healing and reconciliation.
In his great love and mercy
there is reconciliation and restoration and healing
for the whole family of God.
The healing Presence of Jesus is just as much here
as it was in the streets of Jairus’ town.
You can, if you want, reach out and touch Jesus.
time spent with family,
especially my two little grandsons who are such a delight in my life.
I consider myself very blest to have this family,
to share these significant primary relationships,
and for us all to be in a wonderful place at the moment.
But like just about every family, it hasn’t all been wonderful.
Our family has experienced its share of suffering, death, grief and heart ache
and that makes this present time so precious.
Yet it is in the time of darkness and trial
when the purpose and meaning in life is tested
that we find our spiritual grounding and discover faith.
The Gospel reading for today is about such a crisis moment
for a family suffering for 12 long years of brokenness and grief.
I am going to tell you something today about this story
that you probably haven’t heard before.
It may or may not be true,
but I think it is not only probable, but implicit in the passage.
First and foremost is the implicit connection
between the woman who was hemorrhaging for 12 years
and the 12 year-old girl.
Didn’t you ever wonder why the text made a point
of mentioning the 12 years?
In these necessarily brief and sparse ancient documents of the Gospels
every little word is there on purpose.
The woman, you see, is quite possibly the girl’s mother.
And the word for woman and wife are one and the same in Greek,
so this shifts the whole way in which we can look at this story.
This story appears in all three of the synoptic Gospels,
Matthew, Mark and Luke,
and the three accounts are very similar.
In fact, they concur on all the important points that support what I am saying,
that this woman was the child’s mother.
Again the Greek is clearer than the English translation
because of syntax as well as vocabulary.
That makes this a story about Jesus healing, reconciling and restoring a family.
And this has application for us even in this contemporary setting,
in which this woman’s post partum hemorrhaging
could have been readily handled medically today as opposed to then.
First to understand why the mother of the dying child
was sneaking up behind Jesus to touch him,
and why she was so afraid of detection,
why she was acting in this way,
recall the significance of blood in that time and culture.
There were a lot of laws around matters involving blood,
and they had to do with ritual purity.
Women who were menstruating were “excused” from social contact
so as not to make others ritually unclean,
since merely the touch of a woman during that time of the month
was considered as polluting all that she touched.
And her husband, Jairus, was a leader of the synagogue,
so this meant that he and his family had greater obligation
to uphold the customs of their religion and society.
They were in the public eye,
and therefore obligated to be scrupulous in their religious observance.
Quite possibly this flow of blood had originated
at the birth of their first, and – notice – only, child,
and so for 12 years the girl’s mother, Jairus’ wife
had had to be excluded not only from society and the synagogue,
but also from the marriage bed.
Here was a family that had been living with a severe disruption all these years,
and now their only child was dying.
But the woman’s faith is greatly encouraged by the Presence of Jesus,
and perhaps she reasons with herself
that if Jesus is coming to heal their daughter,
then she too has the opportunity to receive the overflow of that healing.
But how to get near enough to him…
She must have been both bold and stealthy,
veiling her face so as not to be recognized
in the close and jostling crowd,
since if she were detected, can you imagine what an outcry there would be
among all those who would be wondering
how many of them she had touched and made unclean
by pushing her way through the crowd to Jesus.
Yet Jesus knows that she has touched him and that she is healed,
and he calls attention to it.
In all three Gospels what Jesus says to her is key,
is the heart of this whole story.
First he addresses her as daughter, he calls her his daughter.
This is typical, traditional language for identifying the disciple.
The prophet, guru, sage, spiritual leader
names the disciple by calling them son or daughter.
Jesus is identifying her as his disciple, laying a claim on her.
She had responded out of faith in him,
and he recognized that and validated that.
A powerful spiritual connection has been made here.
This woman’s need was great.
For the entire life of her child she had been separated from society,
excluded not on the basis of moral consideration
but because of ritual impurity from no fault of her own.
And now the child was dying.
One might wonder that she had any faith at all,
that she hadn’t railed against a God who seemed deaf to her prayers,
a God whom she could blame for the unfairness of it all.
But her need was so enormous for her daughter, her family, herself
that she would do what she had to in order to reach Jesus.
So the need draws her to Jesus, calls her to Jesus.
This is often how the disciple gets called to the spiritual master.
We don’t often get the chance to see true spiritual masters at work
so as to see how this process of calling disciples works.
We mostly don’t see how it is
that each of us has been called into discipleship with Jesus either.
In most cases our need hasn’t been as great as hers.
It’s not as clear cut.
I have been fortunate enough to spend time around
one of the world’s true spiritual leaders currently living,
and I have been able to observe close up the significant spiritual power
that can draw people irresistibly.
That’s how I ended up in India.
Four years ago Amma – Mata Amritanandamayi – took me in her arms
and whispered “My daughter” in my ear,
and a monthly later I had airplane tickets to India my hand
and I was scratching my head wondering how all that had happened!
And Jesus, as the Gospels give witness about him, was in his earthly life
a most powerful spiritual guru,
and now in the Resurrection he is even more powerful.
But we often miss that because we are just too ignorant
in this western, post modern, highly secular culture
to know what to look for or how to name our spiritual experiences.
What I am leading up to is that I think that in this Gospel story
this huge spiritual Presence of Jesus is already drawing the woman
and she is able to make it through the thick crowd
because, in a sense, the way is opened for her.
The way is opened for her.
Such mercy and love from our Lord…
Then Jesus calls attention to her, affirming both her healing and her faith.
“Your faith has saved you.” “Your faith has healed you,”
The Greek word here is the same for saved and healed.
“Your faith has saved, has healed you,” Jesus says,
affirming both her healing and her faith,
and thus restoring her to her family and to the whole community.
This is very important to note.
This is the center point of the whole story.
This is crucial for what follows.
Because it is right then that the word comes that the girl has died.
And then Jesus continues to their home despite the news of death,
bringing both the father, and the mother now, into the home with him,
and only 3 of the 12, the ones closest to him – Peter, James and John.
Those without faith, all those standing outside the house wailing,
they stay out.
And then Jesus touches the dead body – another taboo;
(crossing another ritual boundary)
taking the child by the hand would also make him unclean,
and he raises her to life again.
And the family is completely restored and reconciled,
all flying in the face of what seemed to be proper religious mores
for one who is a synagogue leader.
And Jesus was taking all that uncleanness upon himself.
Then Jesus orders them that no one should know about this,
what with all the rules having been broken,
and because people will end up attaching to Jesus their own ideas
about the Messiah
and miss the point about faith and responding to the call of Jesus.
But most importantly this family was restored again,
brought back together.
The family was far more important than either
religious rules or culturally accepted norms,
and rules were broken for the sake of basic human relationships.
Thank God!
What might be the ways in which you and I as brothers and sisters in faith,
might bridge cultural norms and societal ideas
in order to bring healing, reconciliation, and restored relationships?
Even though we are not all of us here related by blood,
we can still call each other brother and sister.
We can think about this on a global level
with such concerns as what might come up at General Convention
coming up in July,
concerns about how we can all stay together in the Anglican Communion.
We can think about this on the local level
in terms of how we here in this congregation
follow our Lord in discipleship and faith, and relate to one another.
We can think about this in ways in which our own social norms
are broken for the sake of compassion to meet basic human needs.
Need comes in many ways.
Needs for the basic necessities of life – food, housing, medical care,
and also our basic human needs for love, relationship, family.
And we can see from this gospel story
that needs can actually work to our good to propel us toward God.
What needs brought us here today?
What might impel you to reach out your hand to touch Jesus?
to seek his love, mercy, healing, reconciliation, peace?
Would that we were as impelled as that woman in the Gospel
that we would push our way
through whatever is blocking the way to Jesus!
push our way through whatever in ourselves is blocking the way.
Here is the Good News:
The healing Presence of Jesus is just as much here
as it was in the streets of Jairus’ town.
You can, if you want, reach out your hand to touch the robe of Jesus.
Consider this: you can actually physically touch Jesus today,
this very morning.
His physical Presence is with us powerfully,
albeit hidden in bread and wine.
You could push your way through the crowd to the altar rail
and grab hold of the very Body of Jesus
and claim the faith that brings healing and reconciliation.
In his great love and mercy
there is reconciliation and restoration and healing
for the whole family of God.
The healing Presence of Jesus is just as much here
as it was in the streets of Jairus’ town.
You can, if you want, reach out and touch Jesus.
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