Moving to a new site

So, I won't be posting entries here on this blog for some time now, as I move my work to the blog on the Church's website.  My blog can found at http://downtownepiscopal.org/aron/.  This is in the context of our existing website, so join me over there.

When you arrive at the website, look for "The Rev. Aron Kramer" on the right side of the page and click on my name and you will be able to find my blog there.

Thanks!
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Pentecost 4, Proper 10 Sermon, July 10, 2011

Most of us when we hear this Gospel begin to think of the different gradations of soil in a qualified way, in a way that places us in one particular location, while at the same time placing others in a less pleasant location or more pleasant location.  We can identify people in our lives who are caught up on the path and do not respond to the Word of God. We can identify people in our lives who fall on the rocky ground and respond to the Word but have no sustainability and fall away fast.  We can also identify people in our lives who we think are saintly, phenomenal people who do so much good it is clear to us that they have fallen on fertile soil and are responding in their vocation fully to the Word of God in their midst.  It is kind of a natural process, to try to compartmentalize people in certain ways, to look at folks and attempt to determine their worth based on our understandings of the moral implications of the Gospel as told by Jesus, contrasted with their behavior and lifestyle.

            If we are lucky, or if we are a little wiser, maybe, we take this Gospel and internalize it.  We can see that we have times in our lives when we fall on the path and have little chance to respond to the Word of God because it is taken away before we can take hold of it.  More often than not, we can frame our lives in the vision of the third image from this Gospel, seeds that fell among thorns, when the Word of God falls to us but is choked out due to our penchant for things, both valuable and not valuable.  When our idols get in the way and keep us from holding the Word of God present in our hearts.  And we also can identify times in our lives when the Word of God lands on rich soil in our souls and our response has produced on a great and amazing level. 

            This Gospel is rich with metaphor for our personal lives, it is also helpful to bring order to our relationships, at least, perceived order on our part.  It is a wonderful parable that allows us to engage the Word of God in many different ways.  My thoughts have taken me down a new path, a path that I wish I had weeks and weeks to explore, because when I imagined this parable in a way I hadn’t before, I found myself liberated, I found myself excited, I found myself yearning for more.  I read a sermon by The Rev. Ramona Soto Rank, an ELCA pastor from Portland Oregon, she wrote one thing that sparked my imagination. She wrote, “Think of the seed as God’s word.  The seed will fall where it may, but will never fall in vain.”   It will never fall in vain.  Which of course is not how we understand this Gospel, right?  There were some seeds that fell in vain, there were some seeds that did not take root, and of course those were in vain, they were failures, right?

            The parable of the Sower inevitably is interpreted as a picture of this God of ours who is outrageous and wasteful and reckless.  It is a parable that helps us to see that God is constantly and abundantly covering the earth with God’s word in every language that has ever been told and in those languages that have no words.  There is nothing wasteful about the actions of our God, there is nothing in vain about the actions of our God, there is no failure in the actions of our God.  Is this a liberating thought?  That nothing God does is in vain?  That noting God does is wasteful, it may look wasteful, careless or reckless, but in the end, it is not.  In the end, God’s Word, sown as seed in the world and in our lives, always has transformative implications and always turns our own expectations and order and our world’s expectations and order on its head.

            Tied together with the Old Testament reading from Genesis we see and understand more clearly God’s saving action in the world, and God’s saving action in the world is not an action that brings comfort and joy to our lives.  The story of Jacob and Esau is a puzzling story, God clearly has a plan for these two, and it is a plan that does not sit well with me.  God speaks to Rebecca and clearly states to her that Jacob is the favored Son, that the promises God gave to Abraham will be given to Jacob, not to Esau.  Then, when the two are born, Esau comes first, and in that society, as well as in our own, the firstborn is privileged, is worthy of special rights simply for being the first born.  I should know, I am a first born and, like all the rest of you firstborns, raise your hands please, we know we are particularly special people, right.  The law of primogeniture, Walter Brueggemann states, claims two particular things, first, that the oldest is first and favored and second that some have natural rights that cannot be questioned.  Jacob comes out of the womb grasping at Esau’s heel, Jacob is born second, the birthright belongs to Esau.  Yet later in the story we discover that Esau gives over his birthright for food, Brueggeman again states that this is not a qualified action, this does not make Jacob better than Esau, the contrast that is made in this giving over of the birthright contrasts two particular things, first it is a contrast between deferred and immediate blessing and second the contrast is between material blessings that can be taken managed and controlled and well being that must be received only as gift.  Jacob took the birthright for his own, and Esau received something for his well being as a gift from Jacob and God, we come to understand, is tampering with the fundamental convictions of society.

            The birthright becomes Jacobs, the second born and the work and goals of this God of ours becomes clearer.  God’s purpose in our world is to turn everything on its head.  God’s work in this world is to make our human expectations lose their power, their control over our lives and those of others.  God’s mission in the world is to take those who are second, those who are last, those who are least and hand over to them the rights and privileges of power, love and joy.  As Desmond Tutu says, “God has a bias and that bias is for the poor, the orphan the widow, and the least of these.”  While we gather together here on a Sunday morning to worship and be fed by the Body and Blood of Christ, God is out there with the people who have nothing, shivering in the rain.  God is out there with the people who are suffering from the heat and who do not have enough water to give them life or food to give them energy.  While we are in here, God is out there caring and loving and moving and breathing, giving God’s self completely and wholly to those who are in need.  God is out there working to turn the world on its head.

            Nothing God does is in vain, and there is nothing wasteful about God’s great abundance.  There is a future for us that God has imagined, but it is a future that we cannot comprehend, but also a future that allows us to choose to participate in the mission of God in the world.  God has a promised and preferred future for all of us, a future that takes our expectations and removes them from the world, that takes our expectations and replaces them not with ordered reality, but abundant and fanciful and reckless possibility that will become a new reality for us all.  The seeds sown in today’s Gospel are not for us, and while we are not called to be the Sower, or the judge of how the seeds fall, Jesus makes this clear when he alone, the Son of God, takes the opportunity to explain the parable, explain its implications for judgment, that its determination is not in the hands of the disciples but only in the heart of God.  The disciples are called to recklessly and abundantly sow the seed, likewise, we are called to sow, we are called to share, we are called to take the risk of being abundantly reckless like the Sower of today’s Gospel, we are called to be intentionally careless about how we share God’s word.  Some will say we have to share the Gospel with those we don’t know, I would say yes, that is true, but we also have to share the Gospel with those we love.  We have to share the Gospel with those we know, we have to share the stories of God in our lives, the stories of the spirit moving and shaping and blowing us to and fro, the stories of how we are trying to follow Jesus and be and do good in the world.  If we can claim and see and share those stories from our lives, if we can understand how the Word of God has been planted in us, we can begin to work with God to turn the world on its head. 

            Risk is never fun or easy, and the risk that God is calling us to today is a risk that takes us beyond anything we have accomplished in our lives to date.  We are now called to participate in the turning of the world on its head.  We are called to turn our own selves over to God, to open our hearts and let the Word of God break out of the prison we have contained it in all these years.  Our hearts and souls are filled with the Word of God, the Word of God as seed that we have been afraid to let go of, because we weren’t sure how it would be received.  Now, we have permission to let it all go, to release it all, for the Word of God, the seed of God within us is not for us, it is for everyone else in the world, those we love, those we do not love, those we know those we do not know.  Sow your seed, sow the Word of God that sits in your soul, share it with everyone who has ears to hear or eyes to listen.  And know, that there is nothing wasteful about spreading God’s word, the Word of God is never sown in vain.

Sunday Sermon, June 26, 2010

I was looking through Facebook posts the other day when I ran across one that made me stop and do a second look.  It said, “We all have at least 60 friends on Facebook; but when it comes to needing someone to talk to, how many would actually be there for you? I can guarantee not even one of your Facebook friends will copy this status. If you would be there for me, set this as your status & see how many of us would be there for you! Let's try it out & see.  Prove me wrong.”  My first response to it was to think that whoever created it must be angry and bitter, maybe they were left at the altar or betrayed by someone they loved, went to Facebook seeking comfort and when no one responded to their post because most of that persons friends weren’t online at the time and unlike that person don’t spend every waking minute posting new statuses or looking at everyone else’s, that person must have freaked out and put this post together. It is angry, selfish and unrealistic, that guarantee they offer is not one I would put money on.
            What is this world coming to that someone can post such a selfish, unrealistic thought and have it become some kind of popular and dare I say, meaningful thread on Facebook?  It wasn’t even National Cheeseburger Day, or Reach out in love instead of hate to the cockroaches in your life day.  It was a call for help, I imagine, a call for human touch, human connection, human relationship.  It was a call to be welcomed in love into the arms of another, or at the very least to be shown some kind of love by another, love that could go deeper than a simple “I like this” post or pithy comment back suggesting a get together over coffee.  As a community of faith, we must hear this not in the way I heard it, but instead as a call from our culture, from our society to experience hospitality.  To experience welcome.  It is easy to dismiss this technology as irrelevant and a threat to human morality, I disagree, I think it is an opportunity to deeply connect, it is not the end all be all for the human race, but it is another opportunity for us as Christians to embrace the idea of radical hospitality, the virtue of Christian hospitality as a means to transform the world.
            We, as a congregation, have committed ourselves to being a hospitable congregation, a place of hospitality, a place of warmth and welcome.  We are seeking to become a place where the words from today's Gospel are reality, not just nice words that warm the heart.  Jesus said, "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  There is great weight in these words of Jesus, yet there is also a hollowness, an emptiness, or maybe not that, but a lack of meaning for us, or a loss of meaning.  When I was in Duluth, we ran a summer program for at risk youth in the neighborhood, and every summer, twice each summer, a couple from St. Paul’s would open up their home to the children of this program.  It always amazed me, they gave money to this program, and they volunteered at it as well, just as many other people did, but they were the only ones to actually step into that risky place and welcome these young children, rambunctious and wild, into their own home.  They lived on a lake in Duluth, and the kids every year waited anxiously for the day they got to go to Laura and Frank’s house to go swimming, fishing, water skiing, to play and to run.  To this day I remain overwhelmed by the example that Frank and Laura set for all of us.  To me, this is what hospitality is about, welcoming people who are strangers or outcasts into our own homes, offering exactly the same thing we would offer our family members and closest friends.
            Hospitality over the past many centuries has lost its meaning. Christine Pohl, in her book “Making Room” writes, “Today when we think of hospitality , we don’t t think first of welcoming strangers.  We picture having family and friends over for a pleasant meal.  Or we think of the “hospitality industry”, of hotels and restaurants which are open to strangers as long as they have money or credit cards.  Those of us with resources can usually avoid depending on the personal hospitality of strangers for food, shelter and safety.”  In the early Church, its leaders were adamant about the importance of hospitality.  John Chrysostom, insisted that hospitality be face to face, gracious and unassuming, nearly indiscriminate and always he said, always enthusiastic.  Martin Luther wrote that when persecuted believers were received hospitably, “God himself is in our home, is being fed at our house, is lying down and resting”.  John Calvin wrote that, “No duty can be more pleasing or acceptable to God than hospitality to religious refugees.  Calvin viewed Christian hospitality as a “sacred” form of work in the Church. 

            Hospitality has lost it impact and it has lost potency as a virtue of the Christian Church.  Hospitality is often reserved for those we know can pay us back, those we know can reciprocate our hospitality in kind.  But for the early church it was a different story. Actually for most of the history of the church, hospitality was understood to encompass physical, social and spiritual dimensions of human existence and relationships.  Pohl, in her same book, “Making Room” writes, “It meant response to the physical needs of strangers for food, shelter and protection, but also a recognition of their worth and common humanity.”  Without this understanding of hospitality the Gospel would never have been able to spread across the world in the first several centuries of the Christian Church. 

            The importance of hospitality is never more clear than in our first reading from Genesis today.  Without Abraham and Sarah’s expression of hospitality, this story might have turned out a little different.  Abraham and Sarah welcomed, at one time late in their lives, three strangers to their home, unaware that these strangers were actually angels. It was in this meeting that Abraham and Sarah were promised that they would have a son, that the generations that would proceed from them would be as many as the grains of sand on a beach.  It was in this expression of hospitality that Abraham was given a promise by God, it was in this expression of hospitality that Abraham held his hope, his confidence as he marched toward the place where he would sacrifice his only Son.  We cannot say for sure what Abraham was feeling, or Isaac, and we know that God did not know what the outcome would be, reference his statement at the end of the reading, “now I know”.  But we do know that Abraham took God’s promise seriously, placed it deep in his heart and knew that God would find a way to fulfill that promise.  Otherwise, how could he have done this.  He must have, as he walked with Isaac, been replaying that night with the three strangers in his mind over and over, remembering the promise of God to give him a son. 

            Some of my favorites stories of the early Church’s hospitality and rise to prominence come from the book The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark.  He writes about how when the plagues and pandemics swept the communities of the early church, many people died, but often not people belonging to Christian communities.  In roman society when someone was sick, or ill they were cast aside as no longer useful to society, they could offer nothing more to the community or to the power that the Roman Empire desired for itself in the world.  However, when the same pandemics and plagues would sweep through the communities of Rome, the Christians would gather together to care for one another.  They would tend one another, and work to heal one another.  We have stories of this throughout our histories, stories of disaster and illnesses striking and individuals and groups from Christian communities remaining in the danger zones to minister to those in need.  What was different in the early church was that these people used their hands and the presence to heal.  People stayed in relationship with one another and did not cast anyone out who was ill or dying.  And because of this the mortality rate dropped significantly while the mortality rate among communities around them increased dramatically.  Hospitality is about touch, and presence, it is about healing and life.  Hospitality is vital to the success and life of another person.  We do not seek advantage or wealth in our hospitality, we seek love and we seek life.  Hospitality is so much more than simply saying hello.

            So what does hospitality look like for us, what will our hospitality, which is very much in its infant form be like as we grow this community forward?  We believe that Christ is in all people, not just those we know.  What if we took seriously our Baptismal Covenant that states “We will seek and serve Christ in all people.”  Through the leadership of Roger Green we developed a ministry that has had a lasting impact on our downtown community.  In this ministry we see God’s grace abundantly flowing from this Church into the lives of others and we see God’s grace more than abundantly flowing from the people who are served by the Shelf of Hope into our lives here at Gethsemane.  We have been transformed because of the people that come to us each Wednesday for food.  Yet, there is a deeper calling being formed, there is a stronger ministry waiting to pop out.  And that ministry is centered around our call to be a hospitable people.  Our call to create a place of worship that is steeped not just in welcome, but in Christian hospitality.

            It would be easy, if anyone wanted, to invite people into your homes, or to welcome people deeper into this community.  Come by on a Wednesday for an extended lunch or take the day off and sit with the people who come to our Shelf of Hope.  Come and ask them to lunch, or take them to dinner.  Welcome them to your own home, and listen to what their needs are.  We cringe at the idea, I cringe at the idea, because it would be a risk, wouldn’t it.  It would be tremendously hard to open up our homes to such an experience so far outside of our safety zone, but isn’t this the kind of hospitality that God is calling us to?  Isn’t this the kind of friendship God is seeking us to offer those who are in need.  We have many opportunities now in place that have brought excitement and life to our community and to our ministry.  These opportunities now sit before us and call us in a new way, they call us to look closely at our hospitality, to look closely at our own hearts and how we love.  Who do we love, and why do we love?  How does this idea of hospitality seep into our hearts and broaden our experience and our desire to know more fully God in the world?  John O Donohue in his book “Anam Cara writes, “Love is absolutely vital for a human life.  For love alone can awaken what is divine within you.  In love, you grow and come home to your self.”  This is what all humans want and desire, to come home, and through our love, we can offer that gift.

Next Sunday's First and Most Challenging Reading

This text from Genesis, the eternally perplexing and difficult text where Abraham takes his son Isaac up to the mountain to be sacrificed is on tap for Sunday.  I am struggling with it today, it seems to be calling to me to be preached on, but I have yet to break open the other texts for Sunday.  The question I have as I read this text is this:
What promises did God make to Abraham prior to this test? 

Seems important to keep the whole picture of the story of Abraham in view when dealing with this one.

Genesis 22:1-14

God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

Trinity Sunday 2011 Sermon

I was pulling out of the driveway here at Church this week when I was approached by a man who has worshiped here a couple of times.  He is a client at House of Charity, and has played basketball in our gym and worked on our garden.  He is in the process of getting his life back on track, he said, and he was getting really frustrated with the obstacles and the troubles he was facing to get back on track.  He had made some poor decisions in the past that were keeping him from moving as fast as he would like.  Decisions that forced him to jump through hoops he was not at all pleased to jump through.  He said his life was chaotic, in upheaval and just plain crazy and sometimes all he wanted to do was run back into those familiar places which held for him, nothing but darkness and death.

We talked about Jesus, and God and faith.  Where do you see God in all this?  How could God be in that?  How could God be in the midst of this chaos working and striving and thriving where you seem to be flailing and failing with great ease?  I talked about how when the chaos is ripping through our bodies and souls, when the world seems to be upside down, that might mean more than ever God is at work not only in our lives, but in our world.  The uneasiness, the uncomfortable nature of chaos, means we are struggling with the moral and theological questions that run through our daily lives.  The chaos in our midst is much more an indicator of being fully alive than it is an indicator of approaching death.  The opposite of faith, you have heard me say, is not doubt, the opposite of faith is fear, because fear immobilizes us and causes us to not act, to stand in silence as injustice glides by eliciting little to no response from us.  Doubt is threshold to belief.  Without doubt, there would be no belief.  Without doubt, there would be no struggle, without doubt there would be no new creation.

After our brief conversation, I pulled out of the driveway and started on my way.  I stopped however, in front of the Parish Hall and waited for him to catch up with me and I asked him, “What did God do at the beginning of the Bible?”  He answered, “Created the heavens and the earth.”  So I asked him, “And after the earth, what did God create?”  He answered, “Mankind.”  And then I asked him, “And what did God say about the earth and human beings when it was all created?”  He shrugged his shoulders, and I pointed at him and said, “God said it was good, it was very good, you my friend are very good, God says so!”  And I drove off, and that alone would have made me feel pretty darn good about myself, but when I turned onto tenth to head to my next appointment for the day, I caught him leaping in the air, tapping his heels together with a huge smile on his face.  We are good, indeed, God says that we are all very good, and the mess we have made of our lives never defines us.

Many of us were taught that God created the world out of nothing, that in the beginning there was nothing at all, nothing existed, and we think we have to do the same, create something out of nothing.  This is not true according to the bible, and oddly enough, should be a comforting thing, that God did not create the world out of nothing.  In the beginning was chaos, a formless void, not of nothing, but of chaos.  And from this chaos the world was brought into being, from this chaos the world was ordered into life.  From this chaos life sprung at the Words of God.  God made the world, yes, and it was God’s words, such as breath, light, darkness, water, land, plants, animals and finally, humans that brought everything into being, but these things did not come into being out of nothing.  They came into being out of chaos.  This should be comforting for us all because out of the chaos of our lives God can create something good and God does create something good.  Out of the chaos that our lives offer the world, something good will be created.  Is it comforting to know that in our chaos, in the chaotic lives we sometimes live, is it comforting to know God can create something beautiful?  The chaos of my life is creating something new, I hope, my life is being honed and built and formed into something I can’t see yet, and may never see, but I can feel it most days, out of the chaos of my life something is being created.  I have been told by many of you that the messiness around me will clear up, it will just take time.

Looking out over all of you I know I am not alone in my chaos.  But I look out over all of you today and I see a lot of chaos, I see a lot of upheaval, I see a lot of pain.  Some of you are going through all sorts of things, individually, or as families.  A number of you have loved ones who are sick or in pain.  A number of you are anxious about friends and neighbors as they deal with crises of their own.  A number of you are dealing with health issues and ticking time bombs that you cannot see or hear or even feel.  Some of you are unemployed or underemployed.  In all this chaos, where is the good, in all this upheaval, where is the calm, in all this stress where do we find peace? 

Walter Brueggeman believes that in creation, God moves over and makes room for others, for us as co creators.  I wonder if that is not what happens in our own lives, in our own chaos, that God moves us over to make room for others, so, as many of you might assume I would say, in our chaos God creates community, God creates opportunities for compassionate community.  Where we are being made new, or being remade into something similar to what we were, in that making or remaking, in that forming or reforming, we are being put in a place where there is more room for others, more room for our experiences, more room for compassion.  When there is room in our hearts and in our souls, then the healing can begin.  Then compassion and love can enter in and transform the brokenness that resides deep in our souls.  Chaos is the threshold to wholeness, maybe, as doubt is the threshold to belief.  But that wholeness is not to be held onto for ourselves, that wholeness is not our own bodily or spiritual wholeness, it is a wholeness for the entire Body of Christ.  The messiness we have created in our lives, the chaos that seems to constantly jostle our lives around is about the creation of God’s future, a future that is not our own.

I heard a wonderful story from some classic and great timeless piece of literature which I have forgotten the name of so if you know from which book this comes, let me know.  A wealthy woman died and stood before the gates of hell facing something really evil looking that was saying to her, “Account for your deeds, if you do not want to enter the gates of hell.”  The woman thought long and hard, she was a very selfish woman who had never given anything to any charity much less to any individuals or homeless people she had passed in her entire lifetime.  As she thought she remembered an onion that she had given to a homeless woman on the streets of the community where she had lived.  She told the gatekeeper about this and sure enough, the records indicated she had done so.  It was not an act you or I would have been proud of, in fact it was quite small and done out of pity more than charity.  Just then an onion, the same onion in fact, small, insignificant and unappetizing floated down attached to a thin string.  The woman grasped the onion with great fear and doubt, how could this one single onion, attached to such a small string carry her all the way up to heaven.  She held on to the little onion and it began to raise, bringing her with it, her hopes began to ascend as well.  As she rose up she felt a tug on her legs, and saw that some others who desperately wanted to go with her were clinging to her.  She panicked and kicked her legs saying, “No, no, no, don’t hold on to me, let me go!”  But the hands were desperate and she could not break free from them, “Please, please, no, let go of me, this onion cannot hold us all, please let me go.”, the hands that clung to her held on even more desperately than before.  Then in anger she hugged the onion as strongly as she could and yelled at them, “Let go! This is my onion!”  The string holding the onion, in that moment snapped, and she fell back to the pit of fire. 

Our acts, our lives, our deeds, almost everything about us is not our own. The woman being carried up to heaven by the onion and string had an opportunity to save a number of others, but could not see past her own chaos, her own danger to witness the possibility that something as small and as ridiculous as an onion on a string could bring countless people into the goodness of God.  Is it possible that when we let go of the chaos within ourselves, and let God create in the midst of that chaos, that we then don’t have to define what our lives will look like or what we will be, we can simply be who we are, and let God do the work in us to create something for other people to cling to, experiences that can raise others up from their darkness, peace within ourselves that can calm the troubled waters of people who are being tossed to and fro.  You see, we are made to be sent into the world to do and be good, to bring the goodness of creation to the world, we are made to delight in creation with God, to dance at the sight of a rainbow, to sing with the birds, to run with the animals of the earth.  We are made to delight in creation, we are made to enjoy the world completely.  So as Meister Eckhart has said, “Put on your dancing shoes and leap into the heart of God”.

Sustainable Farming

Stumbled across this interesting article about sustainable farming.  Hope you enjoy it, and let me know your thoughts.

Click here to read the article.

Sermon for Sun Jin 12, 2011 Day of Pentecost "We are all God's glory."

“The Glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  This quote from Irenaeus is one that I have found to be deeply comforting and inspiring in my ministry.  Irenaeus also said, “God became human, so humans could become like God.  Christ became what we are, so that he might bring us to be what he himself is.”  Diana Butler Bass in her new book “A People’s History of Christianity” wrote “Salvation is a kind of dance, a process of growing ever more to be like God.”  I love this as well, it speaks to the wonderful nature, the wonderful goodness that we find in all of creation, and in our own selves as well.  We are constantly in a process of becoming, a process of imitating Christ. 

Sarah Thomsen, a singer in Duluth captured the process of coming fully alive, this dance of salvation, if you will, in her song, Little One, the first verse goes like this:

Hey there little one

You’re life has just begun

You’re learning how to cry

You’re learning how to smile

You are a blessed one

You are a Holy One

Part of the process of salvation is discovering the goodness within our own selves.  Discovering our divine spark, the holiness that we already possess.  The process of salvation is not simply following the rules and making sure that we don’t cuss and swear too much, it is developing a relationship with God and with our own bodies, understanding that our bodies, created and made by God are a whole and complete picture of the potential of the divine presence, the reality of our own divinity.  And of course, part of this process of salvation, this dance of salvation is learning that we do not participate in this process alone.

Oh child may loving arms

Surround and keep you warm

There as you learn to crawl

To catch you when you fall

And may you learn to stand

Held by a loving hand

That when Christ came to earth as a little baby, born in the same way each of us was born, lived his life the same way each of us have lived our lives, died the same way, albeit a little more painful than most of us will die and then was raised, in that process Jesus took on human flesh and carried it back to God so that our flesh would be made holy and divine in the spirit of God. 

Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard University wrote in her book, “Honoring the Body”, “We have a difficult friendship with our bodies.  Our friendship with our bodies bears witness to God because the body reflects God’s own goodness.”  We are all created in the image of God, and therefore are all endowed with the same spark of divinity.  No single person is greater than another and no single person is loved by God more than any other person, this is clear to us, we all carry the spark of the Holy within us and it gives us all access to the holy, to the deep and passionate love of God.

Thinking about the divine spark within us, Louis Pasteur, a theologian, said, “The Greeks have given us one of the most beautiful words of our language, the word “enthusiasm” – a God within.  Happy are they who bear a God within.”  But it is difficult to bear a God within, it is hard to have a deep and abiding friendship with our bodies.  Our bodies betray us, our bodies don’t work like they are supposed to, our bodies breakdown.  This very breaking down of our own bodies is probably a piece of what causes us to not see as clearly the goodness of God within our own souls, within our own bodies.  This is a piece of what causes us to not believe that we are holy, how can this, yes I gestured to all of me, who we are, be even remotely divine or holy or even good? 

This is when Paul’s letter to the Corinthians becomes important and helpful, for our gifts, the gifts given to us by the Spirit are what make us holy and blessed in the eyes of God.  Our bodies by themselves cannot make us fully alive, can they?  We must engage the gifts of the Spirit in order to accomplish that feeling of being fully alive.  Whatever our gifts may be, they have been decided upon already by the Spirit for the benefit of the community.  The community as the Body of Christ is a Pauline image that has stuck in a major way for us Christians.  It is by no means the only way that Paul used to describe the beloved Community of God, but it is one of the ways that he used to help the Corinthians come to a place of understanding for their own roles in the community that they lived in. 

The Corinthians at the time of Paul’s letter were having disputes over who was the greatest and what roles and gifts were best for the community.  Paul squashed that as quickly as he could, saying that if you used your gifts to attain status then the spirit was not being honored.  If the community delineated who was superior and who was inferior by placing upon the differing gifts each person had a value of some sort, then the holiness of God was being diminished.  On one level it is comforting to hear that the early Christians were subject to the same kind of issues we are subject to today, isn’t it?  This understanding of the gifts we receive got me to thinking about the people who worship here in this building. 

I started thinking about the people who have a gift of creativity. Gloria Hoglund and her writing ability, able to capture pictures of real life in gritty, compassionate ways and describe them with a great fullness. 

Sarah Brickson and her dance, graceful and attentive, a gift, not for her, but for all of us. 

I thought of Maggie and Cindi, and their gift of music and composition to this community, a gift they have given us with great passion. 

John Belk and his cello, his ability and gift for music will take him far and we will be able to watch him grow into that. 

I thought of Tien Belk and the Sundays that she bakes delicious homemade goodies for us all. 

I thought of Heather Hunt and her voice and leadership, and Walter Cogswell and his vast musical talent and all the musical gifts they bring to our worship here as well.

Sara Logan, who can write thoughtful and solemn prayers that send us deep into that place of holiness as we listen to God in our midst. 

I thought of Elaine Madigan and her ability to speak through writing her experience of the Holy Spirit and the spirituality it moves her to feel.

I thought of Mary Martin, Zara Renander, Jane Eschweiler and Dale Dienes, these four people lay hands on those who come to church seeking healing and wholeness and prayers.  Their compassion and their presence has brought a depth to our worship that is profound. 

I thought of David and Lindsay Becker, without whom we would have no garden to share with the community and to inspire our mission.

I thought of Ricky Nolan, Donald Fox, Douglas Kruger and the work at the Shelf of Hope that they do, their gifts help us to accomplish justice in our neighborhood, by feeding those who are hungry. 

I thought of Lou and Linnah Schoen whose work on racial injustice moves us constantly to look at how we are creating an equitable and just community. 

I thought of Ed Anderson, George Hoglund and Don Rosenquist who work tirelessly to maintain and care for this beautiful old building, that like our bodies, is slowly falling apart, you three are the equivalent of Medical Doctors of this parish. 

I thought of Katie and David Olson, and Chris Bowman, who have immersed themselves in the politics of the Diocese, not because they felt obligated to do so, but because the gifts they have been given can bring transformation to the Episcopal Church in Minnesota in ways that no one else can accomplish. 

I thought of Joanne Cogswell, and her gift of humble hospitality, she hates that I am saying this right now, but there is no one in this parish who exhibits the kind of practical hospitality that she does, making sure that people are fed and welcomed each and every Sunday.

I thought of Tom Hara and his dedicated service at the 8AM Eucharist, where almost every Sunday he is serving at the altar, carrying on the traditions that were taught to him by the saints of this parish when he was a child. 

I thought of Charlie Hample, who is deeply committed to this place, not just its maintenance, but its thriving, who by his work and passion has carried us into a place where we can confidently move forward as a community of faith positioned to accomplish God’s work in the world.

I thought of Sean Huizinga, who we will baptize today and the loving and caring family he has.  Two young people who are so in love with him and proud of him and his accomplishments.  Two parents who look caringly and compassionately over his life, catching all the good and forgiving all the challenging parts.  I thought of Sean and the love that he will see when he looks at the two of you looking into one another’s eyes and how blessed he will be.  And I thought of Sean and how lucky we are that we get to witness first hand the life of a child that will change the world, that will change this community and already has in so many ways.  I hope that all of us gathered together today feel the same great joy as we witness a human being coming fully alive through baptism and community.  And may Sean’s baptism remind us of the Holy that resides in us, as all of creation knows resides in it.

Hey there little one

The moon the stars the sun

The hills and valleys low

The trees and flowers know

We are all blessed ones

We are all Holy Ones.

We are all blessed ones, we are all Holy ones.  We are the Glory of God.