Lord, we pray for our brother, Justin, who will soon be deployed to Afghanistan in service of our country. We ask you to keep him safe from harm and warm in your love. Be with him in the scary times and help him be there for others in his strength. Remind him daily of the love that surrounds him. Thank you, Lord, for all those who work to keep us safe in our daily lives, and for the freedom of living in a country like ours. Bless all who serve in the military, and bring them home safe to their families. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Lord, today I pray for the families of Bob and Harvey, who have died in the past weeks. Be with them as they mourn and help them through the days without the ones they loved. We know that you are with us always and that you promise the hope that we will see them again. Bless all those who mourn today and give us the courage and love to continue our work in the world until you call us home. Amen.

St. Francis Day Blessings

When Jesus reflected on the sins of the powerful people in his world he prayed these words from Matthew: I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you haven hidden knowledge of the kingdom from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed this to infants; for such was your gracious will. I paraphrased it a little, but this is a prayer from the Gospel lesson for the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, which we are celebrating today, October 4th. The Kingdom of our God of Heaven and earth is revealed to infants: shorthand for the suffering, the poor, the humble, the innocent and those who serve them, and that was Francis of Assisi. He was a deacon in the Catholic Church and the founder of the Order of the Friars Minor commonly called “The Franciscans”. In 1776, the Spanish explorers established a fort at the Golden Gate of California and a founded a mission named for Francis of Assisi. And that is how San Francisco was named. St. Francis was born of wealthy parents, but rebelled against a life of luxury after experiences in the military and of illness himself. He had great compassion for the poor and suffering and so left his wealthy family just as Jesus sent out the disciples without cloak or sandals or money. Francis devoted his life to “Lady Poverty”, as he called his mission, and his followers grew in number all over Europe. He lived a life of strict and absolute poverty to remain close to those whom he served. Francis and his brother friars were notably cheerful and full of song. There are many apocryphal stories about Francis’ relationship with animals – particularly wild animals, and how they loved him, and would willingly come to him. There is even a story about him baptizing a wolf. Francis followed his call from God to a life lived in Christ’s image in solidarity with the forgotten and disadvantaged people in his world. Last week we read the Gospel from Mark where Jesus tells us that it is better to lose a foot or an eye than to cause harm to one of the “little ones”. Which is, in my way of thinking, the least we could do in our call to further God’s Kingdom on earth by serving the marginalized! Then we move on to today’s reading which at first seems to hold two unrelated stories. In the first part the Pharisees seek to know Jesus’ view on divorce, trying to trap him into saying something they view as “illegal” under Mosaic law. In the second part Jesus stops the disciples from shooing the children away from him and blesses them as examples of the rightful inhabitants of the Kingdom of God. If we dig a little deeper under the surface of this reading, we find Jesus addressing the plight of two vulnerable, marginalized groups in the society of his time – women and children. Neither of these social groups had any inherent power or status in the world Jesus lived in. A woman’s sexuality belonged first to her father and then to her husband. Children, a great percentage of whom died before their first birthday, were powerless and at the mercy of their father or other guardians.
Let’s first consider Jesus’ view on divorce in this reading. He dismisses Moses’ certificate of divorce as Moses giving in to the pressures of male society to be rid of an unwanted wife. His concern is for the peril in which this places the woman, who may be, with or without the certificate, left without a place in society – for no woman had a place without a husband, father, or adult son. Unless she can find a new place in her world she will be left with few avenues for support for herself and her minor children. It often meant prostitution, slavery, death, or loss of her children. By standing up for marriage as a life-long commitment, Jesus stands up for the only hope a woman of his day has for a decent life, even if there is no love between her and her husband. In fact, this is not about a love relationship; it is about the life and death of a woman in a male dominated society. The marriage is a social and financial commitment that protects her from the harsher realities of the world. It is not a pretty picture, but Jesus is standing up for women in the reality of the world they lived in. This was the only way to prevent gross exploitation of women at the whim of their husbands.
Over the past 4 or 5 decades in our time, our attitudes toward divorce have altered greatly. When I was growing up I didn’t know anyone who had been divorced and only heard whispered conversations between my mother and grandmother about a cousin who was divorced. It was all shameful and hush hush. Then we had the great sexual revolution of the 1960’s when women started to take their destinies into their own hands, demanded equal pay for equal work (which we still haven’t achieved) and decent childcare, and adequate birth control to free them from the slavery of yearly pregnancies and in some cases their total financial dependence on abusive marital situations. It is still true that women die trying to escape abusive marriages, some women can’t find employment that would allow them to support their children after they have divorced, and that some women around the world still lack any of these rights at all. We have a long way to go – and yet. There is hope. I am very grateful that I was able to escape a financially and emotionally abusive marriage through the avenue of divorce, and grateful that I live in a society where I had a chance to make another life for myself, even if it has been hard at times. I know other women have not had that chance or the opportunities that I have had due to education and social status. Would Jesus have wanted me to stay in a marriage that hurt me and my children? I don’t know what Jesus would say to me today, but I believe that Jesus wanted to save women from exploitation and let’s include exploited men and children in that salvation as well. Marriage as a social institution that supports each person as an individual and protects their rights in their relationship is good, and as a Christian community we must support married people in their desire to remain married, as we promise when we witness marriages in this church.
Now let’s look at Jesus’ attitude toward children. “Let the little ones come to me. Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Normally when we hear this admonition from Jesus we think of sweet, open, loving children gathered up in Jesus arms, children of all colors, representing the innocent world at its best. But in light of the section of the gospel on divorce, perhaps this isn’t exactly what Jesus has in mind when he talks about children and the Kingdom. In this reading from Mark, Jesus says, ‘Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. Maybe in this reading, Jesus doesn’t mean sweetness, or openness, or even innocence. We all love our children, but we also know that they are not all sweetness and light! Perhaps, instead, he is talking about the vulnerability of children, their innocence exposing them to all kinds of exploitation at the hands of those with less than wholesome motives. We need look no farther than our local newspaper for examples in our time of the horrific exploitation of children. As parents we work for years to protect the children growing up in our lives from potential harm, and sometimes, no matter what extreme precautions we take, they still get harmed by strangers or even by someone they know very well. Are we to come into the Kingdom only in the state of this kind of vulnerability? Why? Why would Jesus require such open vulnerability as a condition for entrance into the Kingdom of God?
One of the themes of our reading from Hebrews and a matching theme from the Gospel of Mark is that of suffering for the sake of love – taking up the cross of Jesus as a requirement for discipleship. Jesus became lower than an angel temporarily to join us in the human condition. Not the human condition of kingly power to rule over peoples’ lives, nor even the condition of power of a husband to force an unwanted wife into the streets, but the human and vulnerable condition of a child. This is how Jesus entered the world – a child vulnerable and poor, born to a poor woman of low social status, whose husband stood by her faithfully though he could have legally sent her away because the baby was not his. She might have been stoned to death for that. This is the vulnerability into which we are invited as disciples of Christ. We are invited to share Jesus’ life if we can enter the kingdom as vulnerable and at risk of exploitation as he was. And this is how St. Francis entered service to God – as poor and vulnerable, without money or shoes, like a beggar. He was just as vulnerable as the weakest members of our society today. We are invited to stand with them as Joseph stood with Mary, as Francis stood with the poor and marginalized people and creatures of his day, as Jesus stood with the women, children, sick and other marginalized people of his time. This is a gift from God, our invitation to compassion as we join Jesus as vulnerable as a child and enter into God’s great Kingdom of mercy and love. Let’s pray together the Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
Hebrews 1:1 - 2:12
Mark 10:2-16
Matthew 11:25-30

Food for the Dogs

Mark 7:24-37 Food for the Dogs
Our Gospel reading for Sunday falls into the category of things we wish Jesus’ never said. It seems very counterintuitive to our understanding of Jesus to hear him call the Syrophoenician woman a dog and refuse to heal her daughter. It is almost shocking to our ears to hear our compassionate champion of the poor and outcast say these things. Why then, is this story included in both Matthew and Mark? The writers of the Gospels must have a reason for including such an unflattering picture of Jesus in their writings, or so it seems from our point of view. So let’s take a closer look.
There are several ways to read the gospels: the first way is to read behind the text to discover and reconstruct the world of Jesus’ day. This would include learning about the customs and taboos of how people from different regions of the time related to one another, and what was acceptable social interaction between men and women of different ranks in society. Another method of reading the Gospels is to read in front of the text. This means we examine how we each subjectively interact with the words and try to discover the personal meaning the Gospel has for us. And then there is the method of reading on the text; trying to discern the message the author was conveying by his editorial work. Each of these methodologies has its place and merit. The third method of reading on the gospel is the methodology recommended by Dr. Scott Sinclair in this gospel reading and might help us understand the story of the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter who was possessed by a demon. Jesus’ insulting reply to her and general lack of pastoral care for this twosome is difficult to explain if we take a historical or personal approach as his actions are really counter to our general understanding of the compassion Jesus had for the marginalized people in his life. So today we are going to see if we can understand this story by reading on the text to discover what the author of the Gospel of Mark was trying to tell us. In order to do this we need to read back a couple of passages to the story that came just before today’s story. In Mark chapter 7 verses 15-16 Jesus says to a gathering of Pharisees, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person which by going into him can defile him; but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” Now the Pharisees often get a bad rap because they were so rigid in their insistence on following the rules for living set down by Moses. And essentially, these are good rules which lead to a healthy and wholesome life and can lead to a deeper spirituality. But when the emphasis on obeying the rules becomes more important than compassion for human suffering, then the rules lose their meaning and people can get hurt. So here is a tricky topic for Christians of all ages, following the “rules” versus caring for those who suffer and whose lives are not always virtuous or acceptable to our way of being.
In our story at first Jesus embodies the traditions of his Jewish heritage of that time and views the Syrophoenician woman as a “dog”, someone not fit to sit and eat at his table. She represents a person who is outwardly defiled by background and lifestyle according to Jewish thought of the day. When Jesus says that the food for the children (children of God, the chosen ones) should not be given to the dogs, she comes back at him with “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” She passes his test with her trust and determination. Jesus has tested her faith and finding her faith undefiled he is then willing to make a miracle in her life by removing the demon from her daughter. He says, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” Once again we find Jesus turning the rules upside down. Defilement, according to the Pharisees, comes from eating that which is impure. But according to Jesus, only what exists inside a person can defile him or her. The Syrophoenician woman did not look, or act, or speak in a socially acceptable way to the social group Jesus lived in, but on the inside she had faith and purity of heart. That is what made her acceptable to Jesus in a way that no adherence to rules or family ties could have done. That is the story of Jesus. It is not what is on our backs or which family we were born into, or the strict rules we doggedly adhere to, but it is the intention of our hearts that pleases Jesus and creates the Kingdom where he invites us to live.
Last summer I had the privilege of doing my Clinical Pastoral Education at Napa State Hospital. There are two parts to the hospital – one building houses the most mentally ill people who are without means to support themselves in any way. Family has been understandably unable to care for them, and they are dependant on the state to create the best quality of life that is possible, given their unimaginable mental and physical conditions. The other part of the hospital is a state prison where folks wait for court dates and rulings on their mental health, and are striving desperately for health and physical freedom. To say that it is a daunting place is a gross understatement and yet…the Kingdom of God is present at Napa State Hospital. My own personal understanding of the Holy Reign of God changed forever during my CPE experience. I went there bound by my own rules of what it means to be a good deacon and a caring Christian. I knew what I expected of myself in this circumstance –I had and still have a deep compassion and desire to be a healing force in the midst of desperate suffering. It is a romantic and mystical vision that I have been able to live into through other experiences in hospice and hospital work. But at the state prison hospital all bets were off. None of the usual “stuff” works there – it’s hard to get the attention of someone lost in their own schizophrenic world. It’s hard to talk with someone who is being assaulted by demons as you speak. It’s hard to be fully present when you are afraid for your own safety from moment to moment. But the Kingdom of God is present there. Because of the depth of the suffering and the Spartan condition of the prison hospital, I had to keep asking myself, where is God present in this place? And slowly I began to see the hidden corners and pockets of love and compassion dotting the landscape. And I realized that because I couldn’t use my usual props and words – that I was free in a way that I had not ever been free before. No one expected anything particular of me except that I try to be present to the suffering. I didn’t have to fix anything, or come up with a program, or even make myself heard while I preached over the murmur of voices. I couldn’t carry my prayer book because it would be stolen. I had to wear an alarm at all times in case something happened, and yet I was free to be myself more in Napa State Hospital than anywhere before or since. Without a plan for the day, or words to read from a paper, I had to make it up as I went along. With a deep sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit in me; and with the incredible guidance of Nick Ristad, the Lutheran Chaplain at Napa, I found the freedom to proclaim the love of Jesus in a place that was full of the most defiled characters in our society. The healing love of Jesus is present even there, particularly there.
How does this understanding of the gospel reading affect us here today? Which of us feels really totally acceptable deep in our most secret heart? In our teenaged heart that still wonders if we are good enough, acceptable to the crowd? In our struggle with the economy, in our worries about family and health and job stability? In our conflicts with others at home and work, do we ever feel really acceptable? Jesus sees into our secret hearts, into the dark corners of our lives, and looks past the defilement that we fear and loves us for our purity of faith and dogged determination to know and love him more. To Jesus we are all worthy of mercy, compassion and healing. That is the story of Jesus. When the Syrophoenician woman went home she found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Amen.

The Blessing of a Birthday

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of another year. Thank you for my friends, family, work, ministry, children, Dr. M, Sr. S, and dear pets. Thank you for sending the Holy Spirit, my good buddy, always right on time. Thank you for challenges and hope and keeping me going. Thank you for using broken vessels. Bless those who suffer and are sad or lonely or scared or hungry or lost. Give us, me in particular, grace to know you in the faces of strangers and in the breaking of the bread. Help us, me in particular, to be Christ for those I meet. I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Perishable Food and Soul Food

I have spoken several times now about my New Testament teacher at School for Deacons, his name is Scott Sinclair. He is a wonderful teacher with a depth of knowledge that is impressive at least. You will hear me refer to him often. And I like to give credit where credit is due.
In Scott’s class we learned that he and other scholars believe that the Gospel Acc to John was written as a manual on how to live the Christian Life. The other three Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke, are more historical than John. It is thought that the author of John was portraying Jesus’ life from God’s point of view – an instruction book rather than a history book. I find it an interesting and helpful way to approach reading the Gospel of John. Keeping all this in mind, then, Chapter 6, where we are now is about the Eucharist and is preceded by a section on Baptism.
Last week’s Gospel from the beginning of Chapter 6 is set at Passover time. For the author of the Gospel, Passover equals the Eucharist. The crowds of people were following Jesus around because of the signs or miracles that he had performed - healing those who had diseases. Jesus had gathered the people on the side of the mountain and the familiar story of the Feeding of the 5 thousand follows. This part ends with Jesus escaping the crowd when he senses that they want to make him king. At night the disciples start across the Sea of Galilee in a boat without Jesus which isn’t explained, and they row three or four miles when Jesus comes walking across the water to the boat that holds the disciples. When he got into the boat it was immediately on the far shore of the Sea of Galilee. The crowds who were still searching for him were flummoxed because they couldn’t figure out how Jesus got there and they were continuing to be amazed at what had happened on the other side of the sea with the miracles of the feeding and healing. The crowd focuses on the spectacular nature of the signs and miracles. And they had rowed across the sea to find him. Jesus says they are still “hungry” and have worked hard to find him because they want the magic food from him again. As a rebuttal and perhaps defense, the people in the crowd talk about Moses and the manna from heaven because the Messiah, who they now think Jesus is, was expected to produce the miracle of that manna again. The crowd are looking for earthly signs of the coming of a new king and a new reign on earth. They are looking for earthly solutions to earthly problems. Jesus says to the crowd, don’t work for the food that perishes, but for the bread of life which is the true bread from heaven. This is what he has to share with them and with us. Jesus is talking about Food for the Soul versus Food that Perishes. Soul food and Perishable food. Being a nutritionist in my day job I immediately picked up on the “perishable food” idea. We think and talk a lot about the perishable nature of food at my work, because we first and foremost don’t want to make anyone more sick than they already are when in the hospital. Food borne illness is bad for people and it’s bad for business, too. If we eat something and it makes us sick we lose your trust in the food and in the person who gave it to us. Trust is implicit when one takes and eats food from another person whether at home or in a restaurant or a church. This is especially important in a hospital as patients are dependant on the Nutrition staff for their food and drink. The metaphor of hunger and thirst implies wholesomeness, trust, healing and renewal.
Jesus uses this metaphor of hunger and thirst throughout the book of John. We remember another scene from the Gospel of John when Jesus meets the woman at the well in Samaria. He offers her a drink of water that will keep her from ever being thirsty again and she is amazed and amused at his suggestion. She is the first person he tells about his true identity, as one who can provide a permanent solution to the hunger and thirst of the soul. She begins to trust and understand him when he tells her facts about her life that no stranger could have known. He uses a sign or miracle to get her attention and make her hunger for more and she begins to understand who he is. She tells others to “come and see” because she believes she has met the Messiah. Now here in this passage in John, Jesus is telling the crowd about his true identity as well – “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It is the opinion of the author of the Gospel acc to John that we are saved by believing that Jesus is God infleshed; what we call the Incarnation; by believing that the Spirit of God can exist in our material world and satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst.
So what it is about this perishable food, the potentially hazardous food (as we say in the hospital) that we are to look beyond? In John’s Gospel the miracles and signs are done to get one’s attention but are insufficient in themselves for really understanding who Jesus is. The miracles are food but perishable. When my daughter Sarah was in junior high she had a girl friend who invited her to church. The kids were rewarded for inviting other children to church by the promise of a limousine ride to the child who brought the most friends each week. I don’t know if Sarah’s friend won the limo ride for bringing her to church that week but I know Sarah liked going there. There was also a rock-climbing wall and a big-screen TV to watch bible videos on. Now far be it for me to criticize any other church’s evangelism program, but I always wondered what theology these tempting activities taught Sarah. I wondered how she understood Jesus’ presence in her life. I wondered if the fun and games did more than pull her in. She also attended the confirmation program led by Michael Carney, who was the previous vicar here at St. George’s. Both my daughters and my son were in that program. When it came time to be confirmed Sarah didn’t want to go to the Cathedral and stand up in front of all the other confirmands and their families. She asked me why I wanted her to do that. I was taken aback by her question but I said that by being confirmed she was showing her personal commitment to the baptismal promise that I had made for her many years before. She looked confused so I added that it showed that she believed in Jesus. She answered, well, that’s silly. EVERYONE already knows that I believe in Jesus, I don’t have to go to the Cathedral to prove it. So I said, honey, just do it for Mommy. It was a great moment for me, as you can imagine. She had partaken of the soul food that Jesus offers – the one that doesn’t leave us hungry for more but satisfies deep in our hearts. And she didn’t feel like she had to prove it to anyone, her love of Jesus had become part of her being.
Today, when we take the bread and wine, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are acknowledging our belief that Jesus is God in the flesh. We believe that Jesus died and rose from the grave and lives in the world with us by the power of the Holy Spirit and is alive with us here today in this room, in this Eucharist, when Amber breaks the bread. The miracles point us to this life that we live now together with Jesus – the hope of the resurrection and giving of the Spirit, the love that we have for each other, and in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine.
God loved the world so much that he gave us his Son in human form, knowing that he would suffer as human beings do. Jesus says to us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It is the deep compassion of Christ for the suffering in the world that lets us trust, hope and love enough to be Christ for the world. And in the breaking of the bread when we see Jesus again we renew our trust, hope and love. Let us pray.
Dearest Lord Jesus – we ask you to send your Holy Spirit to be present in our gathering today. We thank you for the gift of your human life which inspires us to be Christ for the world. Bless our work as a parish and send us out to love and serve our neighbors as we follow in your Way. Amen.

Ephesians 4:1-16 • John 6:24-35

Prayers for the Godsquad Mission Trip

Heavenly Father,
We ask you to be with the Godsquad missioners as they go to make a difference in the lives of folks in Texas who are in need. Keep them safe and give them comfort in the challenges they will face. Let them feel your loving care for them and for those who they serve. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.