Mark 7.1-8,14-15,21-23

I want to say that Jesus is a natural disaster. In order to do that I have to set some boundaries around what I mean when I say Jesus is a natural disaster. Four come to mind. A natural disaster is the past tense of the occurrence. A natural hazard is the potential tense. In life there is the potential hazard and the resulting disaster. In order for there to be a disaster or a hazard you need to have humans involved. After all an earthquake in the middle of nowhere which only moves dirt is simply an earthquake. Add a town and you get the hazard of earthquakes and the potential for disaster. You need humans around in order for Jesus to have any impact. In Jesus you have the hazard that he might disrupt the regular flow of your life. Jesus could be a disaster to your ordinary living if his disruption were to occur. Jesus is a naturally occurring hazard, he lived and taught, and he is a natural disaster to the religious of the day and the religious of now.

In order for a disaster to occur, humans have to use much of their energy to build and create things, homes, businesses, livelihoods that are close to the potential hazard. We do this in our religious life. We build churches and committees inside them close to the divine boundary. We do this in order to fulfill the mission of the church, what we were taught to do. However when we build we run the risk of complacency, of comfort, of weekend living in stilted emotional beach houses built right next to the water. We come to revere the committee, or the action, or even the traditions in such a way that we over build, over crowd our hearts. We become so entangled in our own process that we end up logically illogical, a catch 22 of our own making. When this condition is present, the natural disaster will be great when hurricane Jesus comes.

We need to account for the fact that in natural disasters the potential for loss of human life is great. Hurricanes come and people die. We live in amazing times, where we can track hurricanes, and we can tell where the potential tornados are lurking. However, we still loose lives. The kind of natural disaster that I am speaking of, that of Jesus, does indeed involve the loss of life, but not in the tragic sense. When you lose your life in this disaster, it is a disaster for you because the regular order of things is ripped up and thrown up on the shore, or lost at sea. What remains is a wreck of a self, plank boards right thinking and pink insulation of hardened hearts, car tires of gossip, and human emotional debris strewn all around. The life that we built close to the shore of Jesus must have realized the hazard it was choosing. Do not tempt the divine. Jesus comes on like a storm, with or without warning. The potential loss of your life is present. Indeed, in Christianity you will lose your life as you know it. So if you want to keep your life as you know it, you should run. Run away, because you will not be the same afterwards.

In any natural event, be it an earthquake, fire, flood, volcano, you pick, we see the disaster. But for the earth her self, these events are as natural as breathing. These events are what the earth does. When they occur, there is an odd sense of beauty to them. They are almost cleansing. The natural occurrence of the earth is only a disaster to you and to me, and only a disaster if they kill us or take away the things we hold dear. But to the earth, these events are normal. Jesus is normal. All he did and said and taught was normal, to him. It is normal for Jesus to heal and feed people. It is normal for Jesus to ask hard questions of the religiously minded people. It is normal for Jesus to be Jesus. It is a disaster to you and to me when we our abnormal selves are confronted with the normal self of Jesus. When this happens, we will loose our lives as we know them. Jesus is the normal one. We are the abnormal ones. When the natural and normal confront us we are doomed. We should run from this church if we want to stay the same.

I will now make a bold and generalized statement. Everyone of us, you and me, each of us should wince whenever Jesus quotes Isaiah as he does in today’s Gospel. We should have a visceral reaction to it. If my initial reaction to these words is that I am above them, and that they are not about me, then I need to go home and prepare for the natural disaster that is about to occur in my life.

The Lord said:
Because these people draw near with their mouths and honour me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote, so I will again do amazing things with this people,
shocking and amazing.
The wisdom of their wise shall perish,
and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

Uh-oh.

And if anyone of us, you and me, can sit through the list that Jesus gives us, “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly,” and then hear how “All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person," and not see the disaster coming, well that is our own fault. Evil comes from within and spews out of us. We defile each other with our gossip, and our maligning tone of voice. You do it to me, and I do the same to you. In the meantime we ignore the coming storm that will change our lives, change them for the better, even though it might be painful.

The storm that I am speaking of, the natural disaster of Jesus that is the hazard we run when we are baptized, this for me is Pentecost. The wind of the Holy Spirit uproots civilization. The storm of languages that suddenly appear, and all hear and understand, this storm is as natural an occurrence as we can find. The disaster is set for our sinful natures. When the storm hits us, we will die, we will die a spiritual death, and those things that defile us will die too. The pain of the storm will be great. The destruction of the storm wide spread. The seas of envy will rage. The beach houses of pride and slander will fall. The tall buildings of folly will come to the ground. The rubble of a false emotional self will be everywhere. The clean up will take months, even years. But we need to remember that we are an Easter people, people who participate in a resurrection. When we die to sin, when we are confronted by the Christ, when the Holy Spirit storm blows ashore and our old self dies, our new self will rise. After any storm is a chance to rebuild. Resurrection, earthly resurrection happens. After the storm we rebuild our lives without folly, we become new creations without slander or pride. Our old religious self is rebuilt and renewed. The natural disaster is not a disaster after all. The lives lost are found to be new lives. Jesus is a natural disaster, and a natural hazard that we welcome.

So enough with the symbol and metaphor. St. Mark’s has lived through several storms in her short seventy years. At each juncture, right before these storms you can see her church body over build too close to the religious shore. When you read the history of our church you can see the rhythm, since 1939 we have lived through pride and slander and folly. But we have also lived through 500 children in Sunday School, an extremely successful and financially viable parish ministry. We have seen women’s groups and youth groups and music programs that were the envy of everyone around. We have lived through wars and political upheaval, moon landings, conservative and liberal movements, new prayer books, new hymnals, general conventions and social debates. We have seen natural and spiritual disasters and we are once again having a Rally Day. Today is the day where re rebuild, renew, begin again, start. Today is the day where we calculate our risks as Christians and determine whether we are in a hazardous place, a place where we are only paying lip service to God. We re-think ourselves and prepare to do the work God has given us to do. We re-think our roles, we re-volunteer, we review the language of our prayers, we take a deep look inside of our hearts to see if we are hardened or if we are open. If we do not do this, then I am afraid that Jesus will, and when he does it, we better run. Run because a disaster is coming. Jesus will naturally change us, whether we like it or not. As we rally again, we are reminded again of the great things Jesus has done in the life of this parish. As we rally again we get the chance to participate in the normalcy of the divine. Whether we teach, preach, sing, pray, whatever we do in the life of St. Mark’s we are alive in the spirit of God and in that spirit we rededicate ourselves to the service of our Lord.

Amen

John 6. 51-58

I forget. It is as simple as that. I forget. Maybe you do to. I forget names, events, appointments. I forget. I also forget God, which is a terrible mistake to make. After all, we Christians make a public declaration with our baptisms. We say very clearly to the world who we are and what we do. We renounce Satan, we accept Jesus, and we declare to follow him as our savior and Lord. Except when we forget. Which is easy to do. I forget and when I am reminded, it hurts to know how much I forgot.

The Christian life is just that, a life. When we embark on the journey we accept a few fundamental propositions about the life we are to lead. For me, growing up in Waco, Texas these propositions were more about the rules and the rules revolved around St.Paul and his words in Galatians 5.19-21.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Ouch. I forgot to not do these things often. It is a part of the living to forget. And it is a part of the living to be reminded.

Of the things in Paul’s list of “do nots” my personal favorite is the phrase, “things like these.” To say, “things like these” is as if Paul ran out of adjectives and went for the short hand. “Things like these” leaves the imagination wide open for all of the things that these could be, these works of the flesh. Things like these might be J-walking, parking spot stealing, sacristy bread eating, choir music plagiarism, new car envy, office cleaning product pilfering, things like these. You can hear Maria’s voice, “These are a few of my favorite things,” these.

The list that Paul makes, these works of the flesh, are actually a few of our favorite things. They are things we love to do. If we didn’t like doing them we wouldn’t do them. Some of them are fun. Ouji boards are fun. Who doesn’t want to know the future? Who cares if it is sorcery? Envy is fun. Who doesn’t look around at what other people are doing and want to do the same? If not more? I caution us to not go holier than thou, because envy is fun, come on admit it. I am not trying to tell you it is necessarily good, but being envious is fun. If it wasn’t fun we wouldn’t do it. Getting shots in your arm is not fun, we avoid doing that. Chores are not fun, we put them off. Walking through poison ivy is not fun. We do not ask to do that everyday. Oh, but envy, and quarrels, for some people envy and quarrels are like breathing. Some people would rather have envy and quarrels than eat. People love a good fight. We do. Fighting is fun. Especially the game where we “watch you and him fight”. Setting up a situation where we can get others to fight so we can watch, we love that. We relish it. We talk about it. The baseball game was boring until the benches cleared. Did you see that? Those grown men acting like boys. I am going to write a letter and demand they do not do that again until next time. I wish I got paid millions of dollars to do that. Oops, there I go again being envious.

And by now you are well aware of the word that I am avoiding. Church is not the place for that kind of conversation. It is easy to talk about how much we love a good fight or how much fun we have being envious or the enjoyment we took being over served with margaritas at Chili’s last night. But we all heard the word when I read the list, and we are all waiting to see if I will address it, say it out loud, go into it at church so you can write the Bishop and start a good church fight. Well here it is, and I am not afraid to say it, I am, get ready, here it is, the big word of the Sunday, your ears will melt.

Impurity.

Oh, I hate to disappoint you and not go into a length discourse about fornication. I think we all know that one, and its brother pornography. They are so obvious. We like them too. Otherwise we would not spend billions of dollars on them. We do.

No fornication is not the word, impurity is the word. We love to be impure the most. It is the one we are the most comfortable with because as long as we stay impure we can use it as an excuse to act anyway we want to behave. We just blame it on our impurity. We love the actions on Paul’s list. If we didn’t he wouldn’t have needed to make the list. And if we didn’t the list would not still resonate with us two thousand years after Paul wrote it. We are human beings, and a part of us loves fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing… and things like these. We do.

The list is jarring, and it is meant to be. So are the words in the Gospel of John,

Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.

They are jarring, shocking, demanding. Eat Jesus? Cannibalism? Is this a metaphor? A symbol? Those who heard these words in that synagogue in Capernaum were confused. Rightfully so. What is this Jesus teaching? Who can understand it? Who can do it? Maybe it means the bread and wine of Eucharist. I do not know.

We forget. We need to be reminded. We need to be jarred from our complacency and be set back in our right minds. The works of our flesh, our flesh, is easy to spot. The works of Jesus’ flesh are being revealed. Our flesh and Jesus’ flesh are two different natures. Our flesh leads us to those things we love. And when we overdose on them we destroy ourselves and we destroy those around us. We electrocute the church we love with fighting. We get drunk with envy and fornicate with anger and steal souls with reckless abandon. We yell and scream and gossip and hate and atrophy our hearts because we love to. We stay impure because it is comfortable to our human selves.

Jesus flesh is the opposite. And in a very shocking statement Jesus says we have to eat and drink him. We need to ingest him. To receive eternal life we must consume him. We are to take Jesus completely into ourselves otherwise we will die. And we will, we have, we are, everyday we forget ourselves and get lost in the love of impurity. We forget, it is our weakness, our flesh, we forget, and we need to be reminded. Paul reminds us when he writes
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

The hard work for us is to go against ourselves, the core of us, and reorient ourselves to a new way of living. We fully consume Jesus and in doing so we fully rework who we are and what we are about in this world. Fully consuming the Son of God into our lives infuses us with a new love, a new joy, a new peace, a new patience, a new kindness, a new generosity, a new faithfulness, a new gentleness, and a new self control, and new things like these. When we do this consuming of Jesus we are no longer forgetting, but we are now living past our human frailties and into a new purity. We break with our human self and unite with the divine through the body of Christ. Now we are guided by the Holy Spirit, who does not let us forget whose we are, and what we are called to do. We become reminded. Paul’s word for that was Metanoia, other minded. We take on the fruits of the spirit of God, reminding ourselves of our baptismal self, and we act on them, and things like these. Amen

John 6.35,41-51

You followed him over there because you were sick, and all of the cures the others had tried did not work.

You followed him over there and he fed some five thousand people in one day.

You followed him over there after he went across the sea in a boat. When you got there he told you he was the “bread of life.” Life is what you were seeking. New life. Life without disease. Then he tells you it is not this life, the life with all of the pain, that he is talking about. It is eternal life. The body perishes, he says. This age will pass away, he says. You are apart of the one who sent him, he says.

The others around you think he is crazy. He is just a man. He is Joseph’s son. How can he say these things? They walk away. You stay. Curious.

The people of St. Mark’s are a part of a religious movement that takes its roots by the Sea of Galilee in the ministry of a man named Jesus. The ministry of the parish of St. Mark’s is a direct extension of these stories in the Gospels. This ministry listens to the conversations in the letters of St. Paul and the other Epistle writers and then we look at our own current Christian community and try to discern our behavior and our mission. We are bearers of a tradition that started very simply as a man walked through the towns and proclaimed that God was doing something different. God was doing something new. Healing and feeding people so that their bodies might be strong was only half of the equation. Healing and feeding people so that their souls might be strong became a different conversation. Bread by the shore and bread for the soul become the two nourishments that raise people up. They are nourished enough to rise and follow Jesus. And they are nourished enough to be raised up with Jesus.

Healing and feeding is who we are. It is what we proclaim. It is our mission as the new generation of proclaimers. The poetry of the words in the Gospel of John pushes us to ask a question. Who is Jesus to you? Who is Jesus to us? What is Jesus calling you to do? What is Jesus calling us to do? Once you and I have that figured out, we do it. In discerning what we are to do, I bet Jesus’ calling involves healing and feeding people. I bet it involves forgiveness. I bet it involves love. But you and I live in a constant state of discernment, interrupted by moments of calm. These moments are fleeting, as the Holy Spirit never stops working, and the world never stops changing. We are always on the move. Never satisfied. Who is Jesus? What is your call? How are you living that out? These are our three fundamental questions as the people of St. Mark’s. Questions we ask ourselves all the time. We ask them in our prayers. We ask them in our vestry meetings. We ask them in our marriages. We ask them of our children. We ask them in our offices. We ask them of our church, our diocese, our faith. Who is Jesus? What is your call? How are you living that out?

Many of you know that I just returned from the Holy Land. I promise to temper my preaching from here on out to limit the anecdotes that begin, “When I was in the Holy Land.” But since I have just returned, here is an anecdote from “when I was in the Holy Land.”

In one day I went from the Church of the Beatitudes, to Capernaum and Peter’s house. Then I went to the Church of the Loaves and Fishes and a Eucharist by the Sea of Galilee. Then I had lunch. Then I went on a boat ride in the Sea of Galilee. Then I got off the boat in Tiberias and got on the bus to go to the River Jordan to renew my baptismal vows. It was suppose to be a climatic moment to a day of seeing all the places where Jesus’ earthly ministry started. It is amazing to be on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is amazing to look out over that water and think about how the topography has not changed all that much in two millennia.

The one down side to being on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in July is that you are on the shore, not in the water. It was hot. By the afternoon, after being on the shore, or on a boat, or is a bus, all you wanted to be was in the water. You learn to appreciate full immersion baptism after standing in the heat all day. I am sure that is how many people were converted. “Yes I will be baptized as long as I get to go under water, three times is good, anything to beat the heat.”

Do to military issues you are not able to go into the River Jordan where they believe the baptism of Jesus took place, which is further down the river near where it enters the Dead Sea, closer to Qumran. But to help out the faithful Pilgrims who come to the Holy Land to be baptized, a section of the Jordan near the Sea of Galilee has been dammed to provide enough water for full immersion. Along the banks small stadium chapels have been erected to allow groups to come and have semi-private ceremonies. A curved ramp descends from each chapel bay into the water. A railing has been added so the faithful can have something to hold on to as they enter the water. To get to that spot you have to pass through the Christian gift shop, where you can buy a commemorative white robe and some other bric-a-brac to take home with you. You can stop and get a coffee on the way to your assigned area. You can even stop, and for one shekel you can use the bathroom, or change into your commemorative white robe. I personally found the commercialism amusing, Jesus mugs, Jesus crosses, Jesus place mats, commemorative white robes. I especially liked the idea of paying a shekel for the bathroom. There is some sort of irony to paying a shekel to go to the bathroom near the River Jordan. Couldn’t they have made that free? Or, at least free with the purchase of a commemorative white robe?

Our chapel bay had been sitting in the sun all day, and its concrete was hot. I was hot. The railing was hot. As we renewed our baptismal vows, I noticed people dressed in white commemorative robes who kept wandering into our area and then immersing themselves in the river in front of us. After we said our vows, we were then directed to roll up our pant legs and amble down the ramp holding onto the iron railing, submersing ankle deep into this section of the Jordan River. We were sprinkled by the priest. And there we stood. Stoic Anglicans, while the other people enjoyed the water.

After we were done and reminded about the coffee shop, and after we had declined the commemorative photo, I held back. I was hot. So hot that I jumped into the Jordan River with my clothes on. I found myself floating next to a person in a white commemorative robe. We were two believers floating the murky waters of the river. We were two swimmers at the baptism theme park. One believer had jumped in out of curious devotion. The other jumped in because he was hot.

And there are the two sides of the Christian coin. Why do you follow Jesus? Are you curious? Curious about this faith. Curious about this message. Curious about this tradition. Willing to don a white robe and get into the water and see for yourself what this Christianity is all about? Or are you hot? Just seeking comfort from the day, comfort from the living. Cool water, a comfort in the desert, simply tired after a whirlwind life. Do you come to this faith life out of necessity? Practical measure. Are you in the true River Jordan? Or one set aside to remind you? Does it matter? Do we need Jordan River water in our baptismal fonts to make it count? Do we need to go all the way to the Holy Land to see the face of Jesus? Why do you follow Jesus? Bread of life. Why do you follow this promise that you will never be hungry? You will never be thirsty. You will always be full.

The Christian life is about following faithfully. It is about not being hungry, both physically and spiritually. It is about not being thirsty, both physically and spiritually. And while we are promised to be full, we should never be satisfied.

The call of the Christian is to mission, an unsatisfactory mission where we will always be burning to get into that river again. Only this time we take someone with us. Maybe two. Maybe three. Maybe three hundred. The point is to take someone with you. Feed someone this bread. Heal someone with this water. Remind yourself who Jesus is to you through this church we share. Float a little while in your clothes and look over at the person to next to you and be full. Be full of the Holy Spirit. Be full of the mission of the church we love. Be full of the bread of life and the water of salvation. Be full, but do not be satisfied. Take a minute to look around at what else needs to be done to proclaim the message of salvation, maybe even take a nap on the shore. Maybe even take a few weeks off. Maybe go to the Holy Land. Maybe go to Camp Allen. Maybe go to sleep. But afterwards, when you get back, full of the bread and the water, do not be satisfied, but get ready to discern the call of God in this place. Discern it, and then go do it. Christian mission mixed with a fullness that is never satisfied. Amen

Mark 6.4-29

You can only be two things in this life we share. It is simple to say, and Hamlet says it best in act 3 scene 1, “to be or not to be, that is the question.” You either you “are”, or you “are not.”

Push on that a little more and there is the reality for each of us, we “are”, we “be”, we “now”, we “the present”. Then we will not “are”, not “be”, not “now”, become “the past”. It is the core of our existence, to be. And it is the whisper in our ears, “momento mori” remember dying. On these two poles spin our living.

In his book, God and Empire, John Domminic Crossan relates the logic of Jesus’ work in the world very succinctly, “heal the sick, eat with those you heal, announce the Kingdom of God’s presence in that mutuality.” That is what we heard about last week. Jesus sends his disciples out two by two. He asks them to heal and exorcise demons. He then asks them to stay and be fed, staying and being with those healed people who welcomed the pair of disciples.

The story of the sending of the disciples becomes famous enough that the upper echelons of the society hear of it, most notably the king. King Herod hears the rumors about Jesus. He hears that Jesus is John the Baptist resurrected from the dead. That Jesus is Elijah, ringing in the end of the world. That Jesus is a prophet like the ones old. All of these rumors swirl in the ear Herod, who decides for himself that Jesus is indeed John the Baptizer, the person he had murdered.

Herod is wrong by the way, and we know that. We have been following the story and know that Jesus is not the resurrected John the Baptist. However, the ministries of the two men are at one time similar, they both are showing the powers of the day where they are wrong, and John and Jesus are both bringing good news to the poor. They both have a significant following, and John and Jesus each make very powerful people very nervous. And we know that both will be killed for that. Then we see that they are distinctly different in their ministries. Mr. Crossan points out the “John [the Baptist] had a monopoly, but Jesus had a franchise”

A person had to go to John, only John, to be baptized. John set up his baptizing shop by the river, and it was there that the crowds went. I would make sense that if you wanted to stop that activity, if you feared John’s disciples and the crowds that followed him. If you thought that his ministry might indeed want to change the society by force, then you would need to kill John. Kill the leader, cut off the head of the organization and the organization dies with the head.

But Jesus does it differently. He empowers his disciples with the ability to heal and to feed. If you want to know Jesus, look at his followers. If you killed Jesus, then his work would continue on without him. By design, Christianity is not the work of the leadership, Christianity’s brilliance is in those disciple who went out two by two. Crucify their leader, publicly humiliate their saints, martyr their beloved, but you will never kill the fundamental message they proclaim, God is about healing and feeding.

Over the next few weeks you will hear this message over and over again. You will see that when multitudes are brought to Jesus and his disciples for healing, when five thousand people are fed, after these amazing events, Jesus will tell his disciples, “you do it.” You heal them, you feed them, I will go away, but the Kingdom of God will continue. I will go away and come back for you, but in the meantime you have work to do. We have been doing that work ever since.

The church is its best when it goes back to its basic call, heal and feed. Make whole and make full. Touch and give. However those words enter your mind, your call, my call, our call to work is found in the most difficult and yet most honorable call to heal and to feed. How we do that is up to us, but we have a model for success. We are told to go in pairs out into the world. We go out with a partner to do only two things, heal and feed.

Too often in modern day church life I hear people talking about church growth. I will hear people say, almost in a panic, “We have to grow the church, we are loosing members. No one comes to church here anymore.” And the truth is we have been in a decline as a denomination of Christianity for almost forty years. It has been a steady decline for us, not dramatic, just steady. This Episcopal Church we share and love has seen more people leave it than join it in the last four decades. Where they go is a matter of debate.

Many in our society just do not go to a church. Who could blame them? In the busy world we have constructed for ourselves, with our eighty hour work weeks and our multi-tasking blackberry’s and I-phones and you add traveling sports teams and our children’s activities, who would want to come and sit on a wooden pew for an hour or so? Who would want to come and sing songs from a blue hymnal and pray prayers from a red book? Who would want come and then walk up to the front of the room to receive flat bread and port wine from a person in a long white robe? Who would want to do this? Who would do this especially when the language is a bit archaic and the outfits a bit too regal? We do not look like anything people do normally. We look a bit silly really when you think about it. I look strangely out of place in my white robe and green stole at the Jack-in-the-Box ordering two tacos for 0.99! “Who are you?” they ask,”Mr. Ireland?”

I love my church, I love my vocation as a priest, I love going to church. I happen to like the blue hymnal and that red book. but look at us? Where are we? We desire to help, help raise children, help people handle loss. We desire to proclaim Jesus’ message of healing and feeding to the whole world, and yet on balance only a handful come to worship with the good Episcopalians each week.

Then we get nervous when we see mega churches like Mr. Osteen’s or Mr. Young’s. Flashy websites, big parking lots, arena seating, millions spent on the choir, staff members on the ready, schools, people flocking to these parishes. Our General Convention is going on right now, a once every three-year meeting of the national church. But we are not big news unless we are fighting, and we are not fighting. Thirty one Million people tuned into watch Michael Jackson’s funeral. Pages of blogs and news articles have been written about him, twitter crashed the day he died, but our little side of the Christian pond has received little or no notice. Is it that I think too much of myself? I think that we are important. We are important, our voice and our views are relevant. We have been a voice to help change the society for the better. And our voice is needed. Isn’t they? Isn’t what we say and do relevant to the society that we find ourselves in? Are we doing good work in the world?

No. The truth is we are not relevant, and we are not news worthy and much of the work that we do is ignored.

Good.

The disciple went out in pairs to heal and feed, not because they would get their name in the paper, or because million of people would come to their funeral. They did not move out two by two to heal the sick and feed the hungry with the express written intent to get the attention of King Herod. John did not go out into the wilderness preaching repentance to make a lot of money and live in a big house. Jesus did not plant his church in a place where the parking lots were nice, and the seating comfortable. Jesus did not ask his church to wear vestments and have flashy websites with catchy vision statements and nicely marketed core values. Jesus did not get the attention of the world though an ad campaign, or rumor, or because he and the disciples were fighting and it made the front page of the Jerusalem Journal. Our glory is not about numbers, and our success is not measured in bank accounts and bottom lines. These may be important earthly pieces of our work, but they are not what makes us great, or stand out, or get attention, or any of the things we think might be important. We are not in the business of making headlines, or getting attention. We are not in the market to be marketed, or sell shares or do any of that which society deems so important.

What we are to do, and what we end up coming back to in each generation is healing and feeding. I would add risk to that. Healing. Feeding. Risking. These are the things we do. And we do them, not for coverage, we do them for Jesus because he told us to do them. I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus’ message of salvation. That salvation is not my own. The salvation of Jesus is done for others. Our work is for others, not for ourselves.

As long as we are leaving this church and looking for the ill and infirmed, the old and sick, the lost and the forgotten we do what we are suppose to do.

As long as we are leaving this place and looking to feed the hungry, feed their stomachs and their spirits, feed their hopes and starve their fears, then we are doing what we are suppose to do.

As long as we are risking our lives for the Gospel, risking our place in the society in order to do justice and love mercy then we are doing what we are suppose to do.

As long as we are doing this work and risking our lives in the face of a wicked world, then we answer the call to Christ. As long as we are doing that, who cares about the rest? Jesus called you by your baptism into this ministry. Jesus asked you to go, even if the world kills you, you are to go. Amid the darkness, we are to go in tandem. They may ask for our head on a platter, or our body on a cross, but the message of the kingdom of God will out live the rulers. You either “are” or you “are not.” In the middle time you are called to heal and to feed. “So shines a light in a weary world.” We are that light, we are that healers, we are that feeder. No we go. Amen.

Mark 4. 35-41

“Do you care that we are being ruined?” I said, “Do you care that we are being ruined?” I say again, “Do you care that we are being ruined?” And getting up from being asleep, looking at the storm and looking at me, then looking back at the storm, which was all around us. Then looking back at me, the one who woke him up, he said,

“Peace, be still.”

“Hush, be silent.”

“Quiet, be not a word.”

And the sea was quiet.

Do I care that you are being ruined? You asked me if I cared that you were being ruined. Did you really wake me up to ask if I cared that you were being ruined? Am I not in the same boat as you? Would not your ruin mean ruin for me also? Who do you think I am? Why would you assume that I would allow you, allow us, to be ruined? If you think this storm was bad, hide and watch what comes next. It will take more than a simple tempest trick of weather control to get us through the next three years, and you think I would let you perish? What? I would lead you out of the bondage of Egypt only to die in a desert? What? I would ask you to come with me, leave all that you have behind, walk away from your families, only to be as some sort of cruel joke where I drown you in a stormy sea. You of little faith. Give me a break will you?

When I was first ordained I got into trouble with the Bishop, it happens. I didn’t do anything nefarious, nothing illegal, or immoral or insane, just kind-a dumb. But I was in trouble none-the-less. After three years for seminary, and a long discernment process, I thought here it is, the end before it began. I thought that this ordination thing was about to be over for me. The truth of the matter was that I should not be a priest. I should have not gone to seminary. I should have stayed in place and not risked. Besides, who am I anyway to be a priest? I do not fit that mold. My field work supervisor once said, “You know when people look at Sean, your co-worker here at the church, they see a priest.” And his silence to me was deafening and the implication dug deep into my soul. “Right, Sean is a priest, I am not.” And then the prophecy was coming true, I was in trouble with the Bishop, waiting for a month to meet with him. A long month of March 2001, at then end of that month the Bishop would say the words I knew I would hear, “Patrick you are not a priest. Thank you for your time.”

I still did my job. I was still a deacon. I did my work, but always with a kick in my gut. It is hard to admit when you are weak. Especially for me. And it is difficult to discern when to tell you all these stories about me and my family, but we are family now, and so this is your story too, a story of vulnerability and the grace of God.

When people have power over you and your life the vulnerability you feel is palpable. In that awful month of March 2001 I broke. The voices in my head were yelling at the top of their lungs. I am always amazed at my ability to self accuse, and self loath. I am better now, but then I was not. Worry, anxiety, newly married, car payments, rent, the future, my identity, who I was, all of this was in question. “Is he a priest or not?” “Will we ordain him or not?” And the pressure became too great. And in the shower one morning I fell to the floor and began to sob.
Naked and crying, crying in a way that you may or may not know. Crying for the last five years, fearing failure and feeling abandoned, crying in that way that we sometimes do because there are no words and we are overcome. I sat there in the running shower sobbing when the water was turned off and a hand lifted me up set me on the bed and covered my naked self with a towel and then said to me, “it was going to be ok.” Peace be still, hush be silent, quiet, not a word.

A life changing moment. My wife Allison found me and held me and told me it was going to be ok. Since then, in so many ways and moments, her actions to me have been my actions to others. It was not about the power over me, I was no longer frightened by it, my faith suddenly was uplifted by what mattered. In that moment I found God working through the life of one person to another. God found in the people ministering to people. Be they a friend or a wife or a clergy, ministry to each other in the darkest moments, in the middle of the storm, is reminder of what faith is to be about.

Eric Clapton sings:

Lately I've been running on faith/What else can a poor boy do? But my world will be right/When love comes over you. /Lately I've been talking in my sleep/I can't imagine what I'd have to say/Except my world will be right/When love comes back your way/I've always been/One to take each and every day/Seems like by now/I'd find a love who cares just for me/Then we'd go running on faith/All of our dreams would come true/And our world will be right/When love comes over me and you.


Someone asked me this week about my faith and where it comes from, and over time I have come to believe that I have faith in God, since God had faith in me first.

Trust is implied in faith. Trust in the other entity that he or she will come through on their end of the relationship. God trusted me first when I was given my life. It was as if God said, “here you go, here is a life, it is yours, let’s see what you do with it.” I believe that the initial trust was done by God to me. The question for me is would I then return the favor and trust God with that which is God’s own? For me, it is simple God trusted me first, therefore I trust God.

And I do. Time and time and time again, when I think the oil is running out, or that the situation has no solution, or that I am surely lost, and confusion and failure are immanent I remember that what Jesus reveals is that God is in the boat too. God is in the boat, in the storm, in the path of ruin with us, Emmanuel, God with us. And, as St. Paul said, if God is for us, who can be against us?

It is true, lately I have been running on faith, what else can a poor boy do. Because I know, I have seen it, felt it, lived it, naked and seemingly alone, you are lifted up and covered up by someone you love, and in their words of comfort you hear the voice of God.

It is important to realize that what we proclaim in this faith of ours is that Jesus is the Son of God. What is revealed in the person of Jesus is that God is more than a creator. God is an actor too. The story of the raging sea, the frightened disciples and the “not in a panic” actions of Jesus reveal that we are in the storm with God. We are tethered to God in our creation and when we realize this truth, we proclaim it in the way we live out our faith. There is no need to panic. If God trusts you with a life, why would God not be with you in that life? We are not alone, ever.
Ever, always, always there appears out of no where a sense of the divine, be it in the storms at sea or in the storms of living, we are found in our weakest moments yelling do you not care that we are perishing, that the priesthood you called me to is falling away, that the disease is killing me, that the life you gave me is in ruin? Do you not care, are you asleep, what are you doing? Peace, be still, God put his faith in you, now you are called to put your faith in God. Peace, hush, be quiet and know that God is good. Amen.

Mark 4.26-34

I am not sure what it means to be “the greatest” any more. I used to. When I was little, to be great meant to be powerful, like the Bionic Man. The Bionic Man was truly great. He could run very fast, lift heavy things, see very far. There was a sound that he made when he did his bionic thing. I used to make that sound when I would run. It is a mechanical sound, as if all the tiny wheels and cogs, the electrical wires and the nano batteries that made the bionics in the bionic man work began to whir and spin and hum. The sound was like this, “chun-chun-chun-chun, dun-dun-dun-dun, chun, chun, chun, chun, chun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and it would alternate pitch as the muscles contracted and relaxed. The Bionic Man would do great things with his power, save people, defeat the bad buys, subvert the evil plot, and all in an hour’s time.

In the opening credits, the line reads, "Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster."

Steve Austin, the Bionic Man’s name, became the bionic man after a tragic plane crash. And the rest of the time between 1974 and 1978 was history. Boys across the country had Steve Austin dolls, with little fold back skin that revealed the inner workings of the bionics. I would spend my time at school drawing small patches of bionic wire and then taping them to my arms and legs. These were my own crude bionic designs, imitating Steve Austin’s true bionic design, bionics that made me powerful on the playground, more powerful than David Hartwell. David wore Star Trek uniforms to school and would try and use the Vulcan grip thing on us. But his powers were no match for our bionics.

It is funny to me, The Bionic Man. A TV show. Steve Austin was played by Lee Majors. It was based on a novel “Cyborg” by Martin Caidin. All of the core values that our society holds dear were wrapped up in it. In the Six Million Dollar Man story, we find the power of the human mind able to create a technology that improves upon the imperfect human being. Steve Austin is made better, stronger, faster by the work of the human mind. He uses his new power for good, for the betterment of his fellow humans who are admittedly lesser beings without their own bionics. As a boy I wanted that strength, that power. Boys go through a super power phase, brought on, I believe, by a repression of the truth, the reality of powerlessness. At some point in our development we realize the truth about ourselves, an inescapable truth, a true powerlessness that comes with our creation. We have brains, and muscles, and ego, and will. These are truths about us. And there is a hidden truth to the Bionic Man, a truth that they do not get to in the hour long show, the truth of the man part. His technological better half is still hobbled by his frail and perishable man half. Death comes for us all, and we have no power over it, it has power over us. We live underneath it, aware of it, repressing it, fantasizing that it does not exist. Or, that we can somehow beat it by creating a technology that will surpasses the dying. But the truth is we won’t. This is a hard lesson to learn, and many of us learn about it too early. When death comes for us and those we love it is always shocking that we are so vulnerable, so weak, so powerless. Like a little boy imitating a TV show, which is imitating a science that the culture wishes existed. Botox, steroids, plastic surgery, lipo suction, humanity redone, made better, stronger, faster, power filled. All of this is to say nothing about our love of money and the collection of financial power. All of these later turn to dust at the end of the day. The earth spins without our help, and time moves without our assistance. As created things we are dual in our nature. We are at once fantastic to behold, and at once fragile and fleeting. Power and powerlessness combined in every newborn child.

In his teachings, Jesus makes an observation about the way things work. Jesus paints a distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world. For Jesus, the Kingdom of this world was manifested in the Roman Empire. The Romans represented the power of the day. They held sway on the lives of everyone in Jesus’ world. Land use, food, shelter, all of the needs to stay alive, were held in the power of the Romans. They were fond of saying of themselves, “Pax Romana.” The Peace of Rome. But this peace was forged out of violence. The peace was kept in check through fear. A Roman legion would wipe out all things in its path. Step out of line, stand up to this power, and you and yours would be gone, erased from the earth.

The Kingdom of God was the opposite. The Kingdom of God was about peace as well, but peace that did not come from violence or fear but from love. The parables in Mark point to a new kingdom, a place where violence and fear do not exist. A place of safety, of salvation, a banquet where there is too much food, too much fellowship, too much God. This Kingdom is not found in the kingdom of this world. The Kingdom of God is found in your heart, your soul, in your love. Deep within each of us is the power of God. Jesus reveals this time and time again. The power that will last and be the greatest is the power of God in the smallest thing imaginable, something small like a mustard seed. Set it in a place and watch it grow to a place of greatness. And all that it does with its greatness is provide a place where others may come and take shelter in it.

"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." These words in Mark are from words in Greek that literally say, “ a shrub plant which starts so small, becomes so mega, that the birds of heaven can pitch their tents in it.”

The power of God is a mystery. Even Bionic men and women are fleeting. All of us are fleeting, but we have a power that is endowed within us. We do not need anything, except to look deep within us and realize it. The kingdom of God does not create power that is used over people, the Kingdom of God creates power that is used for people. It takes us and makes us into places where the birds of heaven can pitch their tents, find shelter from the sun, rest from the day and realize safety during the night. There is no need for us to alter our bodies to find the power in the Kingdom of God, we need only to alter our vision in order to see the power of God working through us, doing more than we could possibly imagine.

Here is a vision of the Kingdom of God for our time. We are that place. Those who were before us nurtured it to create a place for others to pitch a tent. We are a place to provide shade and safety to anyone who would find it. Like the mustard tree which set in place so the birds of the air find it, and when they do, they find a place of shelter, a place of solace. We are that place. We are set in place, set here on the street, welcoming any that would come our way. We do not need to be Bionic to save the world. We do not need to alter ourselves in anyway, what it means to be the greatest is answered for us. Anything that welcomes the children of God is the greatest.

And we do that. We are a mega church without being mega. We are Bionic people, with out needing to be bionic. We do not imitate TV, we live in a reality of the power of God. We need to only look inside our hearts to find it. Our bionics come not from human hands, they come from the divine call. The heroes of our Gospel story are the people who decided to plant a church here. They each nurtured it in their own day. The goal was and is to create a place where the heavenly birds can pitch their tents. In our living and in our dying we are the people of God. We strive each day to make the Kingdom of God appear now. We do this out of love, aware of our frailties, and loving in spite of ourselves. We need to be no greater than a simple mustard plant. We need no other calling than to be a place of shelter for whoever might find their way into our shade. Amen.

Trinity Sunday 2009

As I am speaking to you this morning my longtime friend is being entrusted with the authority as the ninth bishop of Texas. This morning The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle is symbolically entering Christ Church Cathedral where the eighth bishop The Rt. Rev. Don A. Wimberly will hand Bishop Doyle the symbol of the office of Bishop, the Crosier, an ornate shepherd’s crook that has been handed down to each of our bishops since the first Bishop of Texas, bishop Alexander Gregg.

The crosier of our diocese has been held by the leadership of our church from the civil war through the world wars. Bishop Quinn brought it when we started Camp Allen and held it over this parish of St. Mark’s. Bishop Hines held it when we started the Seminary of the Southwest and St. Luke’s Hospital. Bishop Richardson held it as he ordained my mentors and confirmed me. Bishop Benitez held it as he started Episcopal High School. Bishop Payne held it as he called us to reclaim our mission as Christian people. Bishop Wimberly has held it through the storms of our church at our conteious church times and through our hurricanes. Now,it is Andy’s turn to guide this diocese by holding this symbol of our church.

I have a privileged place in that I have a relationship with our new Bishop that stretches back into our youth when we both were training to be counselors at Camp Allen. My first memory of him is sitting across from him in the dining hall of camp site II. We were laughing at the way we could take a dinner roll and turn it into a space ship that would then bomb the Jell-o on the other person’s tray. With each bombing run the dinner roll became more emboldened, striking targets into the mashed potatoes and green beans. The game left a mess of camp food on the table and forged a friendship that lasts to today.

That summer we worked at the same camp sessions minding our cabins and goofing off. We would sneak through all the cabins kidnapping each of the stuffed animals and then set them on display along the rafters of the dining hall for the kids to see at breakfast the next morning. We would spend hours creating a radio show that would be played over the camp sound system as a way to wake people up. In future summers we would serve on the senior staff together. Into our twenties and thirties, through weddings, ordinations, children and jobs we have stayed connected. Now he is my bishop, our bishop, and I am curios what the future holds. Bishop Doyle is hard for me to say, he is Andy, the guy with the spaceship dinner roll and the quick wit. Bishop Doyle is being sat today in his Cathedral. But that is Andy, father of Caisa and Zoe, husband to JoAnne, the guy who likes to paint. Bishop Doyle will lead the one of the largest dioceses in the country, but that is Andy, Chip, not C. Andrew.

Who thinks this stuff up? Who takes a child from spaceship dinner rolls blowing up Jell-o and then gives them the crosier of the Diocese of Texas? Who takes a skinny actor frat boy and makes him the rector of a parish called St. Mark’s? Who takes the kid from the youth group that no one thought would do much and makes them the Dean of the Cathedral? Who allows grace to be given and leadership found in the most unlikely of places? The common life that we share moves into uncommon places of grace where we see regular people called upon to serve. This common life is animated by a God who seeks not the perfect but the faithful to lead his people. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, and Ruth and Hannah, Mary and Joseph and Peter, Paul and Phobe, Patrick, Andy and Joe, all of us are unlikely leaders. And you are too. Your baptism makes you an unlikely prophet. Our faith life takes on new meanings as we look at God and ask, “Who are we to stand before the Lord?” And God says, “I know who you are, whom shall I send, who will go for us?” And we each say with our own lives, “here I am send me.” With that declaration we suddenly are re-born, not of the flesh, but of the spirit. The child becomes the Bishop, born again through faithful living. That same rhythm of life is for you and for me, the child in each of us is called to grow into the adult and take on a ministry of baptizing and renewal. All of us are in a dance of salvation, finding it in the strangest of places and through people we do not expect, be that an immigrant from Ur, a woman from Moab, a ruddy shepherd, a carpenter’s son, all the way to you and me.

The same year I met Andy, I was entering my high school phase. My father had struggled with alcoholism, he was a good man who was also a sick man, and the disease took him away from love. Aware of that, the peer pressure of alcohol came late for me. One day Mark Smith and I conspired to steal scotch from my house and meet at Mountain View Park and drink it with coke-a-cola (Yes that is correct). The plan we made was for me to steal the scotch and Mark to bring the cokes. Something happened and Mark did not show up. I was left sitting at a park bench with a bottle of scotch in my bike bag. I had spent a camp session at Camp Allen, and was in that conflicted moment of morality that comes for most of us in our adolescent years, the cares and concerns of the world versus the matters of faith in God.

I sat at the park, under a big oak tree, at that cement picnic table thinking. I thought about Camp Allen. I thought about entering high school, I thought about my dad. I thought about what it means to be faithful to God. And in my own innocent and youthful way I thought about what it means to be Christian, and the sacrifices it takes to follow the way of Jesus. I do not know why I did what I did next, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. I took a piece of rock, I drew a cross on the table, I took the scotch out of my bike bag, I said a prayer and I poured it out on the cross. I sacrificed before the Lord, in a temple of oak trees, in the church of Mountain View Park. I asked God to be with me. I then got on my bike and road away into the rest of my life, re-born by spirit as a young man who now is a husband and father, a priest and a rector. I stand up here in front of you today to prophesy to you and ask you to do the same for me, being a prophet for me, preaching to me and to everyone else using your life as a pulpit and showing the world what it means to be a people of faith, to be born again in the power of the spirit.
What does it mean when God takes us, and makes us into a people of faith? What are you doing? What are we doing? What are we as a parish of St. Mark’s? What are we doing now that we are reborn in the power of the spirit?

Our parish is no longer poised to do great things, the time has come to live into the great things we will do. And we should be getting ready. The road construction is almost done. The balance sheet is strong. The staff is unified for service. The school’s health is sound. At the end of the summer we will enter the fall with more people looking to us, to you, to lead them through a journey of faith. There is no question that we are both Isaiah and Nicodemus. But we are not the reluctant prophet and the curious faithful Pharisee. We are now the faithful proclaimers of the power of God. We are the apostles sent out to tell the story of the good news of God. The coals have been set on our lips and our baptisms have made us clean. We are reborn in the spirit, and the road construction is complete. God is ready to do amazing things with us, each of us, be it a new Bishop, a young rector, or that faithful acolyte who is looking at her own new faith, praying to God and making sacrifice so that she might be made whole and setting off on a journey in the power of God.

We are not looking to be reborn, we are reborn. Our new birth calls us into a new life, a new energy, a new way of living. You are a part of that, I am a part of that, we are a part of the new things happening here at St. Mark’s, in the diocese, in the world. God is using us, even when we never thought God new our name. God is calling you, calling me, calling us out. We face our past demons, we face the frailties of our fathers, we look into the eyes of the six winged Seraphs and we hear, “who will go for us?” And we say, “here we are, send us.” Amen

Pentecost 2009

I am not sure why I am a Christian. For that matter I am not sure why I am a priest. Many of you may wonder the same thing, “yes, why is he a priest?”

My birth was like everybody else’s. I had a childhood that was a paradox of experience in that it was both good and bad at the same time. Good, in that I grew up with love and care knowing safety and security. Bad, in that I was a child of divorce, never knowing my father, developing early on in my childhood damaging coping strategies that have on more than one occasion caused me and those around me distress. Our collective upbringing sets the stage for a lifetime of exploration into the world of our self. Why we do the things we do, react the way we react, defend the way we defend, pursue the way we pursue, these are all tied into those early years. Our childhood experiences are not excuses for our behavior, they are simply places to explore and discover and then change our behavior for own betterment. And I will wager that each one of you could recall your own childhood, and your own paradox, your own two truths held in tension at one time.

So why are you a Christian? What brought you into this faith? We each have a story, a testimony as my Baptist cousins call it, a witness to the events that led up to our conversion. Some people recall mighty events of God in their lives, others recall more quiet moments of prayer, but each of the stories are united in a common thread. So often when I hear stories of people’s lives there is a preamble to the narrative, a catalogue of events that lead them up to a moment in time, a moment where they then express a place where words no longer worked. I have heard it countless times. Someone will describe the death of their spouse, and then they will stop and say, “Words cannot express what I felt.” When I saw my son and daughter for the first time, words left me. People use the description, dumbfounded, found dumb, wordless. The phenomena when experience comes on so fast that the brain fails to formulate the correct signals to send through the synapses into the language center to tell the lungs, larynx, tongue and jaw muscles what words to use. Perhaps the same is for you. What is your story? What brought you into this faith? What converted you from one way of living into another way of living? What was the dumbfounding moment for you? You all? All of us? Has it happened yet?

I grew up in a time of the “personal Jesus”. Depeche Mode sang a song about this 1989. Growing up, a question I was often asked was, “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.” In Waco, Texas, the answer had better have been, “yes”. Later in my life that question seemed so odd. As if accepting Jesus was accepting him to be a personal valet, someone to get your spiritual clothes for you, or run a special spiritual errand, a personal savior, one who saves only me. What about you? Well did you get yourself one of these personal saviors? They are all the rage. I got one in blue. Discounted. Very handy in times of sin.

A problem that I see is that we got too personal with our savior and we lost sight of the thing that the savior came to save. We got to singular in our salvation and forgot what we celebrate on this day. There is indeed a personal aspect of the Christian life, yes it is about you and me and our own walk with God. But the power of the Christian life is not found in solitary work alone. No, it is found in the community. Perhaps another question to ask is “has your group accepted Jesus as their Lord, their guide, their counselor?” Does the group, the community we associate with, those people we love, have we accepted the story of God’s saving work through the power of Jesus? Forget a personal Jesus, has the community had an experience of the Holy? Are you a Christian because the community you grew up in showed you a way of living that might just be a better way to live? The community asked you whether or not you turned to Jesus as your savior, and if you said you did, then you were a part of a group of believers that stretches back two thousand years. This is a paradox, it is simultaneously about you and then it is not about you. “Are you a Christian” moves to, “are we Christians?” And if so, what does that mean?

Today is the day of Pentecost. Christians do not own a total hold of that word. It comes from our Jewish roots, it is the festival of “Shavout” commemorating the fifty days after the Exodus and the giving of the Torah. It is a symbolic time for us, fifty days after an escape from captivity, through Moses, God gives the people the law. Fifty days after Easter, through Jesus, God gives the Holy Spirit. We have two moments in history where we say something extraordinary occurred. God moved through the created order in such a profound way that words could not express it, but after the event people were so transfixed by the experience that the reverberations of that initial moment still echo into the lives of people like you and me. And we commemorate this day as a birth day. A day likened to that moment when each of us had our solitary birth, and then with our single lives formed a community around the saving work of God. The birth of Christianity as we know it.

The birth of Christianity was an amazing event. At that moment there were People like you and me, people with joys and cares and concerns, people who had been amazed by the teachings of Jesus. People who witnessed something beyond words, the resurrection of a man thought to be dead. On the day of Pentecost, these people were suddenly able to speak in languages not their own, The reverse of the tower of Babal. Words came from no where, and each and everyone understood. They understood the power of God and were able to tell it to someone else who was not of their same background. The power of Holy Spirit so infused into the lives of the people gathered there, that it did not matter where you were from, and the nationality of your blood line was of no consequence, your station in the society did not matter. The movement of the Holy Spirit in that place, in that moment unlocked the ears of the faithful in such a overwhelming way that all people were able to have access to the saving power of God.

I have no idea why I am a priest. For that matter I have no idea why I am a Christian. It is the religion of my family, and after careful thought I have accepted it as the religion for myself, but I was not converted, I was “brought along.” It is odd to say it this way, but it is the language we use, I also believe that God called me to the priesthood, and oddly enough, I went. I thought for sure that at any moment someone very wise would come into the seminary and ask me to collect my books and clean out my locker, but they never did. When I was on my knees in front of Bishop Wimberly, surrounded by other priests, with several hundred of my friends and fellow believers looking on, I thought surely someone will come and pull me out of there, but no one did. The power of the Holy Spirit that was present on that fiftieth day after Easter was and has been a power that continues to infect my soul when I do not expect it and particularly understand it. Each time I walk into a hospital room, or a nursery, or a hospice, or a divorce, or a wedding, or a baptism, or a confession, or a Eucharist, or any of the countless situations I am placed in daily, in each of those instances I tremble at the reality that God has called me there. And the personal moves to the communal as I humbly stand up here, and tell you, that on this day of Pentecost, God is calling the people of St. Mark’s to get up out of your own pew and begin proclaiming the good news of God in Christ to anyone who will listen.

We are Christians. We are a paradox. We are two truths held intension at one time. We are human beings and we are holy beings. We are able to join together with each other and combine our holy selves and our human selves into one voice, one community, with one goal, to proclaim the saving help of God in Jesus. We are all priests, all ordained to the work of God through our baptisms. And we are the people of St. Mark the evangelist. We walk out of here and into a world that needs to hear what we have to say. A world divided by many languages, but a world that can understand what we mean when we feed the hungry, heal the sick, find the lost, gather the scattered, do justice, love mercy, seek humility. I do not know why God called us into this Christianity, but we are. And a question for us is what do we do on the day after Pentecost? Well, twelve disciples went in twelve directions and changed the world. I guess it is our turn. Amen

Easter 2009

I was once asked by a teacher what heresy I thought the United States was guilty of committing. It was a loaded question. On one level I needed to know my heresies, and I had not paid much attention to those during Seminary. On another level he was asking me to judge my country’s piety. Tricky teacher.

Heresies are not a part of my common daily examination of the world. I do not drive around looking for them or looking to excommunicate the people who commit them. If I knew them well, and found a person committing an egregious heresy, my first response might be, “Hey, stop that you Mono-phsyte! Or I shall excommunicate you this instant, Madame!” Or, “Sir, enough of you and your Modelist ways, I now excommunicate you for heresy, sir! Hah Hah!” Or worse still, “ I see you, you dirty Gnostic know it all. Excommunicate!” No, I would not be a very good grand inquisitor. I do not know my heresies well enough. I am a simple Episcopalian and heresy for me is found in the simple phrase, “We do not have a reservation under your name. Miller, is it?” So, I looked at the teacher and slurred my words grasping for the only official heresy I could find in my small mind,“prieigtlos..?”
“What?” He asked.
“Peltricuahiraism”
“Did you mean 'Plue'...”
“Yes. 'Plue'....” I mouthed with him, repeating his syllables, hoping that I would get it,
“Plue?”“plue...
pelga”“pelag?”
“pelagi”“pelagi...”
“pelagism.”“pelagism?”
“Pelagism?”“Pelagism!”
“Pelagism!”“Yes, Pelagism!”
“Pelagism?
Yes that’s the one! Pelagism!”

And after a beat he asked, “Why?”

In the fifth century, Augustine argued with a certain thinker named Pelagius and a part of their conversation revolved around the idea of earning your salvation. The heresy that my teacher felt we in the United States were guilty of is the notion that we could somehow earn our salvation. Earn it by doing something for it, like give up something for forty days and then earn your place in the eternal heavens for your piety with chocolate. My teacher felt that the protestant work ethic had been combined with a passage from James, and that together we had spun off course with the notion that faith without works is a dead faith. That you had to work to show your faith, and that you ultimately had to earn it by doing something to show Jesus and the rest of the cosmic tribunal that you were somehow worthy. Worthy to live the short life you were given, in order to pass on into the bonus round of eternal life, where you are given a white robe, a palm branch or harp, and then asked to sing forever. Go ahead, you earned it.Earning it is indeed a part of our collective psyche. You earn your grades, you earn your money, your title, your prestige. You earn your harvest by the hard work you put into it. You earn your right to stand at the head of the line, and you earn your salutation of Dr, or Judge, or Reverend, or President, or Bishop, or mom. You earned it, and therefore deserve all of the benefits and glory that come with what ever it is that you earned. Well done. And there is pride that comes with a job well done.

I am personally proud of St. Mark’s. We have had worked hard around here lately and it shows. We have a healthy church community. We have a healthy school. We have solid traditions mixed with fresh ideas. We have an energetic staff and dedicated teachers. There is much we have done, and there is much that we will do. We have earned our way through, or did we?I once heard a Christian thinker describe a Buddhist shrine he visited. The Buddha was so big you could not see it in one glance. You had to walk around it seeing only parts of it at a time. The reason they built it so big, it was recalled, was to emphasize the enormity of wisdom and that you cannot take in wisdom all at one time. You had to work your way around. There is a certain amount of work required of you when you accept your call as a Christian person and you will not ever grasp the height or depth or length or width of this faith tradition we share, you will not, not in one life time, not in ten. But you can start, and in starting you can earn your way around the cross of Christ. You can earn your way around, but you cannot earn the cross. That is not yours to earn and if you think you can, if you think that by checking off the Christian boxes of goodness, clean living and happy thoughts, that you will then earn your salvation, then you are a heretic.

A heretic because you think you can earn this cross, and you cannot, you did not, Jesus earned that cross for you.Our church of St. Mark’s is a great church because of the dedication of her volunteers. Our school is a great school because of the dedication of her faculty and staff, but not one of them, not one of us, earned anything without first stopping to pay respects to the cross of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That sounds pretty preachy, and it is supposed to.You and me, we, didn’t do anything to earn the right to call ourselves Christians, much less St. Mark’s church members, we didn’t do a thing. We did not earn anything. And we do not deserve anything. If we think we did, we need to rethink why we are gathered in this sanctuary today. Jesus earned it for you. Jesus climbed up on that cross. Jesus had the nails in his arms, not yours, not mine. Jesus was the one who was mocked and ridiculed and cast out, whose own mother had to watch and whose friends ran away. It was Jesus, not you or me, who was laid into that tomb. It was Jesus who went down into Hades, not you, not me. It was Jesus who looked at death and took the keys of eternity and led the way out of the tomb. It was Jesus who appeared to the women, it was Jesus who breathed the gift of the Holy Spirit onto those first disciples. It was Jesus who ascended into Heaven, it was Jesus whom people proclaimed. It was for Jesus who people martyred their lives, it was for Jesus who people built those Cathedrals. It was for Jesus who Guttenberg printed that bible. It was Jesus who Luther wanted the church to remember. It was Jesus who Cramner wanted people to hear in the liturgy. It was Jesus who inspired Harriet Tubman and her underground railroad. It was Jesus who Martin Luther King proclaimed. It was Jesus who inspired those first worshippers to gather under the name of St. Mark’s in West University. It was Jesus who started this school. It was Jesus that inspired that priest in your home church to go to seminary, and then pour water on your precious head and call you “you.” It was Jesus who whispered into your ear, “Do Justice, Do Mercy, Do Humility.” It was Jesus and it is Jesus whom we proclaim on this morning, and the fact of the matter is we didn’t do anything to earn it or deserve it, all we can do is try and live it.

Live out a life you did not ask for, into a death that you will surely face, live out your life as a new creation, as a new thing, as Christian person called by God through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of this Jesus this Messiah, this Christ, this Holy One of God. You didn’t earn it. Jesus did. And on this Easter we celebrate our belief that after he earned it, he gave it to you and me, looked us square in the eyes and said, “It is yours. Now proclaim it.”

Proclaim the Good News of God. Proclaim it in all that you do and say. Proclaim it to your friends and neighbors. Proclaim it in how you are with your wife or your husband. Proclaim it in how you are with your children or those you teach. Proclaim it in how you do your job. Proclaim it in how you manage your fears. Proclaim it in how you face your diseases. Proclaim it in how you use your time. Proclaim it in how you spend your money. Proclaim it in how you handle your grief. Proclaim it in how you treat the poor. Proclaim it in every part of your life, proclaim this good news, that the cross has been shattered, that the victory is won, that God has done a new thing, in a new way, proclaim with the other two thousand years of voices ever since that first voice, that looked at the women and said, “He is not here, he is risen.” Proclaim that which you did not earn but that which you have been given freely and which you find new salvation, a new safety, a new safe place, a new heart.Salvation in Jesus Christ means you are safe. You are reminded on this day that God carries you like an eagle carries her young on the wing, safe, away from the arrows, up high, safe. Salvation is not then, later, in the future, no, salvation is now. You are safe now.

You are safe even though you die. You are safe, held close, even though you do not deserve it. You are safe, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who have all accepted the call, proclaimed it in their lives, lived, loved, and died in the hope of the resurrection. You are safe in the middle of the danger, you are safe in the middle of the war. You are safe, and your salvation requires that you seek to make others safe. Seek to make others assured. You and I are not heretics. You and I are not ashamed. The resurrection that we proclaim is one has God shown us, no matter what, be it a crucifixion, or be it an unknown disease, be it addiction, or sin against God, we have been made safe, redeemed, made whole. We didn’t earn it. There is no way we could. It was Jesus’ to do, and it was done, and it is now our turn.Bless you all, God is good. Bless you all, we are safe. Bless you all. Without Jesus, I would not have met you, or my wife, or these kids I have to raise. Without Jesus and this Easter day, we would not have been blessed by each other. It was Jesus who earned this day for us and I am very glad he did. Amen

Palm Sunday

Processions are a particularly interesting human phenomenon. Our parades tell us much about ourselves. A procession’s line up and the particular order of the participants reveals our values as a society. Any given parade has a line up. Where you ride in the parade is important. Be it an inaugural parade, a homecoming parade, a Martin Luther King day parade, a Mardi Gras parade, a graduation day celebration, a bride and her bridesmaids, a coronation or a funeral. We humans love to parade and preen.

We have a parade every Sunday in our church. Sometimes they are small and understated. Other times they are grand. It is something we do when we gather to worship. The processional piece of our worship tells us much about our theology as a church. The cross processes first, the clergy process last. The place of honor, the front of the line, is announced with a symbol of execution. The place of lowest esteem, the place of the servants, is carried by the clergy, in ranking order, with the celebrant of the Eucharistic feast as the last member of the parade. Who we are and what we proclaim about living our faith lives is found in our weekly parade. We follow a cross carried by a young person, flanked by two other young people carrying lights, followed by heralds singing music, followed by servitude ministers carrying our bible, and lastly the one we call the celebrant enters the space to lead and unite us in one voice in a ritualized celebration.If you stop to think about it, our weekly church procession is an odd thing. Look at the first thing in the parade, the cross. What an odd assignment we give to our youngest church members. On most Sundays we ask the youngest ones among us, the people at the beginning of their lives, to proudly carry a symbol of the end of their lives. What does that say about us? The cross is an odd symbol. We carry it like a victory flag. We hang it up and wear it around our necks, but it is not a beautiful thing. The cross is a deadly thing and not a symbol of immortality but of our common mortality. In our procession we show our whole lives in one act, namely, our youth, which is fleeting, carrying a certainty of our living and the reality of our dying. It serves as a reminder of our existence, and the sad and grieving nature of being human. We parade our youth along with our death. We make an initial proclamation in our worship together. The cross is real and the procession of living leads to a dying. That is a truth we cannot escape.

Yet, if you push on that a little further, the cross is a rich symbol of our faith and defining piece of what we proclaim. What if we looked at our church procession as the opposite of our living? What if the procession spoke of what happens after you die? What if the procession were the inverse of existence? What if this parade says to us, “What is on the other side of the cross”? We are people who proclaim the other side of the cross and what we celebrate is the after death. What we do each Sunday is proclaim a feast, a feast where all are welcome and all are worthy and all can participate. The parade signifies life and death and life again. We live and we die and live. This is something worth a celebration, something worthy enough for our singing of hymns, something profound that we need to proclaim as good news, something we ordain people to lead. Our parade, our procession, occurs in the midst of the realities we all face. It is an expression of our belief that our living and our dying are not to be feared. The procession of life winds its way through the years and we follow it along. It is what we do. At times we carry the cross, at times we sing the songs, at times we lead, and at times we follow. The whole time is spent in procession, in living, living past the cross as Jesus did. The procession of Palm Sunday leads us into a Holy Week. Over the six days we will walk through the best and worst that human beings have to offer. Each year we spend a week of our lives in holy contemplation about ourselves and see how ugly we can be, how unfortunately we can behave. In a week’s time we see how we can oppress and occupy and destroy. Each day in this holy week we process in front of the cross and each day we will see ourselves and our failures on display. By Thursday we will see how we are called into the service of each other and how the servant’s heart is the highest virtue. By Friday we will all be on the cross and our pain and suffering on display for all to see. By Saturday we will begin to emerge on the other side of the cross through the cross of our living into the cross of our dying and into the crossroads of a resurrection. This is our week to process as Jesus did, in a parade that proclaims who and what we are as followers of Jesus Christ.

The way is set. The path is clear. The days ahead will be holy because we will walk them together as a holy people of God. Afraid, yet faithful. Ashamed, yet redeemed. Anointed and called out. Amazed and filled with awe. The power of God revealed in seven days. Creation and revelation combined in a parade of living, dying and rising. Amen.

Lent Four

Do you believe you are sinful? Do you? Do you really? Do you really think that you are the sinful one? Or do you kind of think you are? “I am kind of sinful.” “I am not that bad.” “I am OK with the kind of sin I commit.” “My sin is small in comparison to the other sin going on.”

Well, we are not talking about the other sin going on, we are talking about your sin, all of you. Do you believe you are sinful? Sin filled. Sinning? Right now, do you think you are doing it? On your way here to church this morning did you? Maybe later will you? By sin, I mean, will you not be able to see the goodness of God, not be able to be close to God, because of some pathology, some thing that you relish, some thing you adore, some thing that you find too precious to part with. And by sin I mean those things that block you from the altar. Sin is anything that keeps you from being able to sacrifice to the Lord. Whatever that thing is, whatever blemish, impurity, malady, whatever it is that keeps you from approaching the altar of the Lord and offering a sacrifice, a physical act to make your life sacred. A sacrifice that acknowledges your small and finite place in the universal mystery. A Sacrifice that humbly gives a moment of your esteem to the entity we call God. Do you believe you are sinful? And if you do what are you doing about it?

I happen to believe that I am sinful. Very much so. There are things about me I do not want you to know. Dark things, very dark things that haunt me, drive me, and often get the better of me. But I am not alone. I bet you are the same way. I bet you allowed your narcissism to get the better of you just a few seconds ago when I asked you if you were sinful. I bet your mind went through a laundry list of possible sins, all superficial ones, not big ones, like hatred of someone, or your qualified opinion about someone else’s personality. I bet your darkness was on display last night. I bet some of you were enjoying the company of someone else who is not your spouse. The company of someone who makes you feel younger, more alive. Someone who helps you forget how compact and stilted your life has become. I bet some of you yelled at your child with comments that would shock even you if you were to hear them recorded and played back to you. I bet some of you allowed your fury to get the best of you and you physically hurt someone, maybe not with your fists, but with your words, lashing out in a way that would seem unduly cruel and even mythical to the casual observer of you. The darkness is there in you, in me, in us.
We are capable of sin and, indeed, we are fallible creatures. We are blind to see our selves as we are, as we truly are, in our darkest selves. We fail to see us in our violent words, in our ugly actions, in our desire to be someone else, just not ourselves. In our mean and spiteful ugliness, we are blind, we are hypocrites, we are grotesque, deformed, relentless in our pursuit of goals that please only one god, the god of our selves, a home grown god, a god of reattachment to things, material angels, idols, status, immaturity, displaced lust, forgery of spirit, rage filled souls that scream at the innocent, defile the pure in heart, lob sarcasm at the young, and deter the spirit of the true God from every growing inside you again. You love the dark, you stay there, it is a place of comfort, of ease, you know the dark, like dust that settles on the sanctuary of our hearts, at first it is simple to wipe away, but as it settles you get used to it and it builds up, ultimately covering up the truth. You can see it in this sanctuary right now, dust of many years covering the true color of our souls.

Yet, for two thousand years, men and women have dared to stand up in front of the others and tell the world over and over again that Jesus Christ came into the world to save. Jesus Christ came into the world to make the world safe. Jesus Christ came into the world to save the world, to save the world, the cosmos, the whole of us, that we might not be condemned by our sin and by the things that keep us away from God but that we might be transformed by the light. We have stood up here and we have stood on street corners, anywhere where anyone might be passing by, and we have yelled, cajoled, implored, demanded, lauded, prayed, hoped that each generation might listen and understand, might have their eyes opened and believed that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. We have said this in as many ways and in as many languages as has ever been known. God loves the world, God made the world, God loves the world, loves the whole world, loves you. God loves you. God loves you, the way you are, the odd way you are, the way you turned out, the way you are right now, God loves you, loves you. I do not know of any other way to tell you, no tricky allusions, no literary devices, no fancy terms, God loves you. And it is this love that is infused into the life of Jesus. If you want to know what God is up to look at Jesus, look at his life, look at what he did. To be a Christian is to look at the life of Jesus, see the people he healed, see the sinners he took in, see the way he fed, and loved. See the way he lived and the way he died and in that story, in those Gospel moments, see yourself. See yourself in the blind beggars, in the ill and the infirmed. See yourself in the self righteous. See your self in Peter, in James and John, in Mary, and Salome, in Mary Magdalene, in Elizabeth. See yourself in Bartemeus and in the unnamed recipients of the grace of God. See yourself in the Gospel of Jesus, and see all of that sin literally wash away. See it fall off of you like scales, see it disappear. See your heart turned from one way of darkness to another place of light. See the weight of anxiety and despair and habitual behavior fall off of you in the name of Jesus. See the beginning of exploring your way out of a cave of darkness and into the light of the creation. Those of us who look for the light, desire to find it, waking up from our sin, suddenly find something that was true the whole time, God loves us, and that we are not condemned. God asks us to turn and be found in a new spirit of love. The old self goes away, and we are a new creation. A resurrected thing. Do you believe you are sinful? Yes I do. But I also believe that my sin is not a natural part of me. God created me and called me good. God created you and called you good. You are a created thing and you are a good thing.

Lent comes from a word that means lengthen. The light lengthens during the time from Ash Wednesday to Easter morning. The earth rotates to a place where there is more light, and we say that during that time we too rotate to a place where there is more light. We are in our fourth Sunday of Lent, and the days have grown longer, and there is more light to be found. That light shows us our darkness, our deepest darkness, our condemnable darkness. But that light also reveals a truth, a truth that we will celebrate on Easter Day. The trouble is, to get from here to there, we must travel even deeper into the darkness that is within us, we must see an even more dismal picture of ourselves in the Gospels. As we move to the light, we will try and destroy it, keeping ourselves in the dark. This is the sad part of our sinful selves. But there is hope in our lives, that we will overcome the darkness. This is the hope of the Christian message, the Gospels, a hope beyond our darkness and our sin. A hope that calls us into a new place, an Easter place at the end of the dark. A place of love in the place of sin. A place where those who do what is true come to the light, a place where it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God. Amen

Lent I

Jesus came up out of the waters after he was baptized in the Rio Grande and he looked around at all of the people on the bank of the river. They all just looked at him and there was silence in the air. It was the kind of silence that is a bit disconcerting. You can hear the wind, you can hear the water, you can hear a bird or two, but the silence of many people all gathered together and not talking is always odd. Even John the Baptizer was silent, which is hard for him.

Jesus sloshed to the shore, fully drenched. He wiped his face off and looked around and smiled, the water coming off of his beard.
“Huh.” He thought.
His eyes meet a woman in the crowd, “What gives?” his eyes seemed to say, and she looked down to avoid his gaze.

A Ford F150 pick up pulled up the edge of the crowd and the silence of the moment was broken by the skid of the tires in the rocks. The silence was also broken by the sound of the radio playing, Jesus could barely make it out, the Gypsy Kings’ cover of “My Way.”

The crowd, still silent, parted as Jesus sloshed over to the truck. The Holy Spirit was sitting in the front seat swaying back and forth to the song. Watching the Holy Spirit sway to music is always interesting. She has a habit of swaying and then clapping and then swaying again with a sincere humming that sounds like creation. When she gets too excited she taps the roof of the cab of the truck and her hands, and then they go through the roof, which is ok to do, if you are the Holy Spirit.

Jesus got into the passenger side and shut the door. The crowds gaze following his every move. The crowd was not sure which was more fantastic a moment. The current one, with the driver of a pick up dancing in herky-jerky movements to a Spanish band’s cover of a Frank Sinatra tune, or the moment when the young man came up out of the water and the line between the human and the divine was broken and a voice came from no where and said, “you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” Which moment they were witnessing was the more fantastic one, they were not quite sure. The crowd didn’t have much time to think about, as the truck pulled away. They were left there, dumbfounded. Even John the Baptist. Even Ray the Pharisee. Even Carla the widow. All three were usually chatty, but not now.

Inside the truck, Jesus looked around for a towel. The Holy Spirit laughed, and breathed on him and he was dry. “Nice trick” Jesus said. The radio played another Gypsy King tune, and they drove into the wilderness.

“What is in this wild place?” Jesus asked as they bumped along in the truck. “Where are we going?” He wanted to know. “Maybe I should get some food.” He stated. “Maybe I should get some sleep?” The Holy Spirit laughed to herself. “You need to shed it, you have to go out there on your own. I am just dropping you off. This is your deal, not mine.”

After about two hours, the truck stopped. Jesus had fallen asleep. The Holy Spirit, quietly opened the door and then gently nudged the Son of God awake. It was about 3:00PM. Jesus looked around and his look asked more questions than the Holy Spirit could answer. “Over there.” She said. “You are alone on this one. But God’s good. I will see you in about forty days.” “Forty Days?” Jesus asked. “Yeah, forty days.” “Forty Days?” Jesus asked again. “Heal the deaf brother Jesus, yes, Forty days.” “Forty Days.” Jesus said to himself. “Ok, forty days.” “You’ll be fine” She said, as she hoped back into truck. “You’ll be fine.”

As the truck drove away, and the dust from the tires rose into the air, Jesus looked out in the distance and saw someone leaning on a bolder near a dry creek bed. “Oh great” he said. “You.” He said. “Me.” Satan said. “You.” Jesus said.

Satan looked at Jesus, looked him up and down, and after a few minutes said, “I thought you would be taller. They told me you were taller.” “They were wrong.” Jesus said. “Well, no matter. This is a silly exercise. Forty days with me, here in the wilderness. Adam couldn’t do it, and he was the first son. His children couldn’t do it, even after a parting of the Red Sea and being fed in the middle of no where, they still went back to the idols. And who are you? What are you this time?” Satan was such a goof, Jesus thought. Jesus looked at Satan, looked him right in the eye. Looked at him and the silence was again in the air. And in a flash, Satan disappeared, and Jesus was left alone in the wilderness.

His first thought was that it was getting late. His second thought was that the dessert teaches everyone, and even the beloved son has something to learn from her. “What have I got to shed in order to survive in nothingness?” Jesus thought. Strip it down to its bare bones, and the wilderness teaches you that you are very small, very insignificant, very fragile. The wilderness can eat you. The heat can melt you. The cold can freeze you. There is nothing between you and the creation except your skin. You are a part of the very creation that will kill you. “This place can be the end of me.” Jesus thought. “I die.” Jesus thought. And ten days passed.

The wilderness also teaches you that you are a part of it. A created part of it. Inside your DNA is a piece of wilderness commingled with divinity. You came up out of it. The water, the air, the blood, the bone, all of it is joined in some odd way. Earth and spirit, finely tuned, tuned so finely that sound comes out, and singing can occur and laughter happens and tears fall and love occurs. Inside each person there is a faculty for understanding and thinking and then creating something else. Ideas, calculations, rocket ships, surgery techniques, jokes, all of this is in the wilderness too. Love is in the wild. Shed of things, in the emptiness, underneath the stars in the silence love is there. As is if we thought it had ever left. Love is there, sitting there, waiting there. “I love.” Jesus thought. And then more days passed.

Thirty days in, thirty days without. Thirty days of fasting and prayer, Jesus looked around. He was a bit dirty. He had lost some weight. He could use a bath, any bath. That wild baptism bath with wacky John the Baptist looked better all the time. “Man, John is wacky.” Jesus thought. Jesus forgot how long he had been sitting slumped up against the rock. The days seemed to pass slowly and with purpose. Jesus just couldn’t figure out what the purpose of the days was for. Just sitting there. “What do I need?” He thought. “What do I really need? I need that Holy Spirit to come back with that truck and pick me up. That is what I need. What do I need? Do I need? Do I want? Do I go? Do I hide? Do I make? What is this time for? No food. No stuff. Just me and this dessert and this rock and this time. I need that Holy Spirit to come back in that truck. Look at me, the beloved Son of God babbling to the air in the middle of nowhere. I need nothing.” And ten more days passed.

On the fortieth day, Jesus was lying on the ground and Satan was standing over him. Satan moved Jesus’ arm with his foot. With his walking staff he poked at him. Satan stood over Jesus and looked at him for a long while. After a some time, after just looking at him an old women came running up saying “shoo, shoo you devil, shoo away from him. You get away you nasty thing. Shoo. Go on get. Get away from him.” Satan looked over at her. She looked deep into the devil’s eyes and in a loud voice, louder than anything Satan had every heard, louder than the noise of creation, in a loud piercing voice she yelled, “Get away from the Son of the living God you nasty terrible awful deadly, rotten cursed thing of all creation.” And in a blink Satan was gone. And the women lifted Jesus up with a strength that did not match her appearance. “You’ll be fine.” She said. “You’ll be just fine.” And she carried him out of the wilderness. In her arms she carried him, just like she had done when he was born, and sadly, just like she knew she would do in a very short time when he would die. But for now she carried him in such a tender way, as only an angel of the Lord can do.

When Jesus woke up, the Holy Spirit was standing next to her truck with an obnoxiously large sombrero and a very silly looking serape. “What are you wearing?” Jesus asked. “Leave me alone.” the Holy Spirit said. “What are you wearing?” she said in return. “Leave me alone.” Jesus said. The Holy Spirit helped lift him up. “Whew, you need a bath.” she said. “You stink. John the Baptist has been arrested, otherwise I would drive you back over there to get re-baptized you stinky Son of God you.” “Just drive the truck.” Jesus said. “Where to?” The Holy Spirit asked. “We have so much to do,” Jesus said. “Don’t you know it.” The Spirit replied.

As they drove back towards civilization, Jesus saw a man walking down the road. It was a hot day. They stopped the truck. “Hey.” Jesus said. “Hey.” the man said. “My name is Jesus, what’s yours?” “Patrick.” I replied. “So, Patrick, do you want to tell the world that the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; to repent, and believe in the good news?” “Yes I do.” “Then get in.”