Those who sit in darkness: Sermon in Sullivan County NY, January 26, 2014

       Let me ask you if this seems strange.  John and Jesus have been down is arrested and thrown into prison.  Jesus leaves the scene of the crime, so to speak, and goes north to Galilee.  That sounds right.  But if he wanted to avoid John’s fate, he’s making a mistake.  Instead of keeping quiet, he takes up John’s cry: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  If he wants to stay out of trouble, he’s got a funny way of showing it.

But I think there’s a method to his madness, or his brilliance.

Jesus is not concerned for his own safety.  He’s concerned to spread the good news of what God is doing among the people.  In order for that good news to spread, he has to be heard.  He doesn’t have to be heard in Jerusalem, not at first at any rate.  He doesn’t have to be heard by the Jordan where John was baptizing.  He knows that the message needs to be preached everywhere, so anywhere he goes can be a place to share the good news.  Even Galilee, that backward, out-of-the-way place.  Even here, even now, can be that place.  Jesus speaks to crowds, and he speaks to one person at a time.  He’s not counting.  He’s teaching, and proclaiming, and healing.

That’s what I have to do today.  I have to bring you news of those who sit in darkness, and call for repentance.  The kingdom of heaven is at hand, but so is another kingdom.  We must choose where to live.

The latest estimates are that 29 million people around the world are currently living in slavery, the victims of what today we call human trafficking.  

As defined under U.S. federal law, victims of human trafficking include children involved in the sex trade, adults age 18 or over who are coerced or deceived into commercial sex acts, and anyone forced into different forms of "labor or services," such as domestic workers held in a home, or farm-workers forced to labor against their will. The factors that each of these situations have in common are elements of force, fraud, or coercion that are used to control people.  Then, that control is tied to inducing someone into commercial sex acts, or labor or services.  Numerous people in the field have summed up the concept of human trafficking as "compelled service."  

Every year, human traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits by victimizing millions of people around the world, and here in the United States.  Human trafficking is considered to be one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world.  

This is a local problem as well as an international one.  The CIA estimates 50,000 people annually are brought into the United States for slavery, debt bondage, or enforced servitude.

This is especially timely because the Super Bowl, to be played next Sunday, is the biggest single trafficking event in the United States.  Every year, over 10,000 prostitutes are forcibly brought to the Super Bowl venue, where they are forced to have sex as many as 50 times a day.  They may be tortured if they don’t meet their quotas.  This involves women, girls, and boys.  

But not all trafficking is sex-related.  Domestic workers as well as workers in hotels, in restaurants, in agriculture, in garment manufacturing, and in nail salons are often being held against their will and compelled to work.

All races and social groups are victimized.  The key is the powerlessness or marginality of the person.  They might have run away from home.  They might have come to this country with the promise of work, only to have their passport taken from them on arrival.  They might have been sold by their parents because they couldn’t feed the family.

If you don’t believe that there is a battle going on between good and evil, between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, then you haven’t been paying attention.

There is no place, no out-of-the-way corner, that is not infected by this scourge.  We have to start where we are, with our local farms and businesses.  We have to ask questions about where our clothes and our food are coming from.   

As William Wilberforce, the great 19th century anti-slavery crusader, said, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

The Episcopal Church is trying to raise awareness of this shocking problem.  This is a direct mandate from our Baptismal Covenant, in which we commit to resist evil, to seek and serve Christ in all person, and to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.  

You can get involved by going to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, or by liking Episcopalians Against Human Trafficking on Facebook.  They will guide you to initiatives, to legislation that is pending, and to information about what to look for and what to do.

The Kingdom of heaven is real.  It is here and now, as real as the kingdom of Satan.  But we have to choose it.  We have to choose to be part of God’s good news of freedom.

As Jesus came to Galilee and shared his message, some people shrugged.  Some people ignored him.  Some mocked him or tried to get him arrested as a troublemaker.

But others listened.  Some of those went home and pondered.  Some of them opened their homes and their wallets to Jesus and his companions.  And some, like Peter and Andrew and James and John, left everything to follow him.  They knew it was crazy, and probably dangerous.  But they saw the kingdom in Jesus, and they knew it was worth everything they had.  In time, they found their own voices and their own power through the Holy Spirit.  They taught and proclaimed and healed in turn.  Just ordinary guys, who made extraordinary choices.  They brought light to the world.

May we who gather here find our voices and bring light into the dark corners of our world.  May we repent, and turn to God.  May we proclaim wherever we are.  And may the light dawn on your town, and region, and world.

What do you see? Sermon at Christ Church Poughkeepsie, January 19 2014

Thank you for inviting me to be with you today.  I live close by, but I’ve only been here once.  And many of you, perhaps, have never been to the monastery across the river.  I hope that, like Jesus and the disciples, we will get to know one another’s places of rest and renewal - and more than that, I hope that we will see God in our midst.

The Gospel reading today is a perfect snapshot of the whole Gospel of John, because of this focus on seeing.  John refers to seeing ten times in this short passage.  Seeing is a major category for him, in a way that it isn’t in the other Gospels.  Giving witness to who Jesus is is another, and we see that here too.  But I want to spend some time on this question of seeing.

The first disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?”

That seems to me an odd first question to ask of a teacher.  What they really want to know is likely to be something like “Who are you?”  or “Are you the Messiah?” or even “What is John talking about when he calls you the Lamb of God?”  They might want to ask, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  But no.  They ask this.  “Where are you staying?”

I suspect that this is cocktail party nerves.  You’ve just met someone you’re intrigued by, maybe awed by.  You don’t start with the big questions, the big desires.  You start small and superficial.  “Where do you live?  What do you do for a living?  Are you married?”  So the first question is maybe not so odd.

But Jesus’ answer - that’s a little odd.  “Come and see.”  He could just give an address, or a name - “I’m staying at Jonah’s" - but he doesn’t.  I suspect that John doesn’t want to privilege any of the disciples by making one of them the host.  If someone already knows and welcomes Jesus, then these two aren’t the first disciples after all.  So instead we get this cryptic “Come and see.”

Whatever they see, it changes their lives.  Andrew sees enough to go get his brother.  And Jesus sees in Peter a whole new future, even a new name.

The question of seeing is trickier than just ferreting out what they saw.  We all know times when two people are looking at something but seeing very different things.

We all have friends who have married people we don’t like.  We say, “I don’t know what she sees in him.”  And it’s true.  She sees something we don’t.

An old movie, Field of Dreams, elaborates on this.  The protagonist hears a voice that tells him to plow under his corn and build a baseball field.  His brother in law works for the bank that holds the mortgage to the property.  Each night, dead ball players come out and play magnificent games, but the brother in law can’t see them.  He’s been so emotionally walled off that he literally can’t see what his sister’s family sees.  And then, in a crisis, his eyes are opened.  He looks up and asks, “When did all these ballplayers get here?”

When MLK was alive, some saw a prophet and a deliverer.  Others saw trouble.  We’re looking at the same person, but seeing two different people.

I think that seeing Jesus is like that.  Two people go to church.  One feels surrounded by God’s love.  The other likes the hymns and the people.  Or two people walk in the neighborhood.  One sees derelicts and bums.  The other sees Christ, wounded and needy.

I don’t know why some people see Jesus and others don’t.  I don’t know some see the Son of God and others see a wise teacher.  It never works to just label the others as hard-hearted, or as soft in the head.  Seeing is mysterious.

I think, though, there is some connection between seeing and loving.  In Field of Dreams, the brother-in-law becomes able to see the ballplayers when one of them crosses out of the baseball field and becomes the doctor he was later in life.  A girl is in danger of dying, and he chooses to save her.  He can’t go back to the field once he leaves, so he has given his dream, and his continued life, to save a little girl.  At that moment, the brother-in-law can see.

And what do our friends see in those people we don’t like?  Whatever they see, they see through the eyes of love.  The light that shines in those unlikable people is visible to the lover, and in that light they see the beloved for who she really is.

Too often in church we come expecting a God whose love is in fact judgment, a God we have to measure up to, a God we fear displeasing.  In Jesus, though, God shines forth as love.  But in order for us to see that shining love, we have to become lovers.  We have to show up with the eyes of love if we are to see love.

What is true of literal sight is true for all the ways we apprehend the world and God.  Do we read with the eyes of love?  Do we listen with the ears of love?  Do we speak with the voice of love, and touch with the gentle touch of love?  By this I mean not only how we treat others, but how we perceive them treating us.  When my friend corrects me, do I hear love or do I hear blame and shame?  What am I listening for, looking for?

In John’s telling, the first disciples are already listening and looking for the Messiah.  As much as we might like the unpredictability of Mark’s call story - “he called, and they immediately left everything” - John’s version is more real and helpful for us.  For the big question, “Why did they follow?” is answered here.  John pointed him out as the one they wanted.  Jesus called, and they followed.  They looked with the eyes of desire, and they saw the fulfillment of that desire.

Of course, early on they had no idea where that would take them.  We never do.  We fall in love, we start walking with someone, and then life happens.  If the love ripens into commitment, it will always take us places we are afraid to go, and it will carry us through them.

Take time this week to approach God in love.  Tell God all the things you tell your beloved, and listen for the whispers in return.  

Don’t believe me?  Come and see.

Sermon, church of the Messiah, Rhinebeck NY, January 12

Thank you for letting me join you in worship today.  I’m looking forward to getting to know you, and to telling you about what I’m up to over in West Park.  And today’s readings are a great place to start.
For the last three weeks we’ve been celebrating Jesus as an infant.  Now, suddenly, he’s a man.  We don’t know what his life was like between infancy and his baptism by John.  There are lovely stories about his life growing up in Nazareth, and some students speculate that he was a disciple of John’s before he went out on his own, but we don’t really know.  As far as the Gospel writers are concerned, it didn’t matter.  What matters is what happened to him in these few short last years of his life.  And they all agree that it started on the banks of the Jordan.
The Gospels don’t agree about who saw or heard what at the baptism.  Matthew and Mark say that Jesus saw the heavens opened and heard a voice, but they don’t suggest that others saw it.  Luke makes it a little ambiguous, but it sounds like others saw and heard something.  And John?  Well, John is big on signs and testimony.  He presents John himself testifying, saying “I saw the dove, I heard the voice.  He’s the one.”
Now, why does this matter to us?  I think it’s important because it reminds us how ambiguous and hidden a call from God can be, even when the one called is Jesus.   Was that God, or indigestion?  Or neurosis?  Or full-out insanity?
We are called throughout our lives.  God’s dream involves all of us.  Some calls are big and obvious and showy, but most are just a matter of daily faithfulness in living.
Still, there are specific times when we, like Jesus, like the servant in the Isaiah passage, are commissioned.  We are sent forth with others, with God, as co-missioners from God’s heart to the world.

Baptism is the first time we’re commissioned.  Baptism is incorporation into the body of Christ, and the covenant we affirm there is in fact a commission.  God is sending us out to do what we have promised, what others have promised for us.  Jesus’ baptism was not the end, not a completion, but a beginning.  And so it is for us.
Confirmation, too, is  a beginning.  It’s not graduation.  It opens us up to adult life in Christ.  We commit to continue in habits of worship and prayer, to persevere in resisting evil, to proclaim the Good News of God’s love, to seek and serve all persons, and to work for justice and peace.  That’s a big commission!
But it’s not the only time we are commissioned as adults.  A tour through the Prayer Book shows us lots of commissions.
Marriage is a commission to the couple to live as a sign of God’s love.  That is why the Prayer Book says that marriage is “not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately.”
Ordination is a commission to particular ministries in the Church.  Monastic vows outline the shape of the commission for monks and nuns.  We commission lay readers, missionaries, Sunday School teachers, all sorts of workers in and out of church.  Actually, God does the commissioning - we pray for the commission and for the strength to be faithful to it.
I have not always lived up to my commissions.  But my awareness that I have been commissioned helps me be better than I would be otherwise.  And because commissions always come from a community, I am surrounded and supported by others.

And that brings me to a crucial truth about God’s commissions:
They always flow out of God’s love for us.
They are not a matter of earning God’s love.  They are not a system of ranking and comparing calls.
Jesus’ commission grew out of God’s love for him.  And so does ours.

We are all the beloved one, children of God.  We are beloved from our birth, just as Jesus was.  The moment of commissioning is when we hear clearly, in our hearts and through others, the shape of our response to that love.  Some of us will be parents, some will be teachers, some will foster growth in others in a variety of ways.  But we are all commissioned to show God’s love for the world.

I think this is hard to get.  I didn’t really get it until 2005.  On this same Sunday, I heard a sermon.  I was already a nun.  I was serving as a lay assistant in a local parish.  I could tell others they were loved.  But on this day, I heard it.  I heard that I am God’s beloved.  And I knew that that is what I am supposed to tell others.  My commission is to tell you that God is crazy about you.

And that brings me to the Companions of Mary the Apostle.   We began when four of us found out we were all hungry for intentional life in community, a life that witnessed to contemporary people in and out of the Church.  We wanted to especially empower women’s leadership, lay and ordained.  We chose Mary Magdalene as our patron because she was first to the tomb on Easter; she is known as the “Apostle to the Apostles” in the Eastern churches because she brought the news of the resurrection to the men - who didn’t listen!  And eventually we knew that our desire was God speaking in our hearts.  We were commissioned.
We are commissioned to be a sign of God’s love by living in community, sharing our possessions, loving God above all others, and listening to one another with reverence, as the voice of God among us.  Our ministries grow out of the daily life of prayer and and mutual commitment.  I look forward to telling you more about us at coffee hour.

But here, I want most for you to know this:
You are God’s beloved.
Really.
Before you do anything.
Being loved does carry implications.  Being loved and being commissioned are inseparable.  But nothing can separate you from that love.

So rejoice today.  Revel in being loved.  Go home, take a bath, and hear the words: “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God bless you and keep you, today and always.

Lost in the labyrinth

I'm in the midst of eight days of silent retreat.  We had several inches of snow, blowing into uneven levels (not quite drifts, but mini- drifts).  The next day I walked by the labyrinth on the monastery grounds, and I could see the path of stones sticking up.  I thought it would be a great prayer exercise. I could see the path, but I'd have to walk slowly because I couldn't always be sure which way to turn. But it seemed clear enough.

I set out, step by step, enjoying the sun and the fresh snow.  I walked slowly and deliberately.  I made choices where I wasn't clear.  I prayed.

Then suddenly I was turning and coming up to the center.  But I had missed a whole section of the labyrinth!  My careful walk had bypassed a whole third of the path.

I couldn't stop laughing.  It struck me as hilarious.  Then, I saw the gravity of that moment.

I had not been careful.  I had been slow.  Being careful would have meant brushing snow off to see the turns, really looking rather than enjoying the walk and assuring myself all would be well.  Being careful would have been work.  By being slow rather than careful, I could have the spiritual jollies of communion without being bothered by actual attention, actual commitment.

This is a powerful truth in my spiritual life.  The labyrinth is not the only place I can do this.  My prayer life has lots of joy and wonder in it, but sometimes lacks the careful reflection and patient uncovering that are needed to find the path to God.  The stakes are much higher than whether I missed part of a pattern on the ground.  They are whether or not I can hear God speaking and find the courage to answer.  They are whether I can hear others clearly.  They are even whether I can hear my own heart.

And yet, I found myself in the center.  Catapulted, short cuts taken, suddenly in the center.  And life, and prayer, and God, are like that too.  Sometimes God just reaches across my laziness and sloppiness and grabs me by the shirt and plucks me down in paradise.  I can imagine her saying, "Oh, here.  You missed a turn back there.  That way won't work anymore.  Just come here."  And I snuggle in, a lost sheep rescued once again.

I want to be a better sheep.  I want to do my part, and be more careful.  But in the meantime, in most times, I'm so grateful to the mother sheep who grabs me and plants my feet in the center.

May you be safe and warm in this season of blowing snow.  May your light shine for those still lost in the drifts.  Have a blessed week.