Lake effect snow.........

When you live in an area that receives 'lake effect snow' you know that there's no predicting exactly what is going to happen.  We just watched West Seneca, a suburb south of the city of Buffalo, and Lancaster, a community north of the city of Buffalo get hammered with snow while whole portions of the city were left with but a dusting.  Some of our neighbors in Buffalo are organizing volunteers to help dig out others; some of our neighbors are wondering if their windows will hold firm against the weight of the almost 7 feet of snow outside their homes.

You just can't predict.  You know it's going to snow.  

You just don't know how much, how bad, how long. 

All this and I realized that life is much like living in a 'lake effect snow' region.  You just can't predict.  You know stuff is going to happen.  You just don't know how much, how bad, and how long.

What's a person to do?  Let's revise that:  what's a person of faith to do?  If you live in West Seneca, NY you need a good emergency snow plan.  If you live on this earth, you need a good emergency life plan.  Instead of water and canned food and back up generators, people of faith look to prayer and those few pieces of scripture they memorized long ago.

We start talking to God, asking questions, seeking answers, renewing a relationship that had fallen a bit fallow in the good times.  We re-discover the psalms and their words of sorrow and fear, longing and anger.  "Lord you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up...."  [Ps139]

Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings we make our way to a fellowship of worship, leaning on other believers and the strength they have.  We join our Lord's table again, opening ourselves to the very presence of God in the Eucharist. We seek out community; we seek out the body of Christ.

Our vision changes.  We see what we hadn't really seen before.  Then, surprised at ourselves, we reach out to give to another. Exactly at that moment when we are so in need of spiritual and emotional support, when we need friends to be there for us, generosity wells up within us and we give to the others.

For your presence in our lives; for your faithful listening to our strangled prayers; for the power of the gathered community filled with the Holy Spirit; for the bread and the wine; for your love which knows no end.........we give you thanks O Lord.  Amen

When did we see you hungry and gave you something to eat?

In the end, it’s not about you.  It is about who loved you and where that love went.

Christ’s love for you flows over you every day, covering your naked places, quenching your thirst, filling your belly, binding your wounds, remembering your name when you are imprisoned.  Christ’s love pours out on you, naked, thirsty, hungry, lost, forgotten person that you are.  The God who gave you life in the beginning comes to you in the love of Jesus and gives you life again and again and again.

You know this because one day someone handed you a cup of water, that small gesture that claimed a shared humanity.  One day someone offered you steak when only oatmeal was on the table and you saw God’s abundance and mercy with new eyes and a satisfied stomach.  One day someone picked you up when this world, which is so far from the Garden of Eden we can’t imagine paradise ever existed, crushed you.

Until a day came when you saw another who was alone and forgotten and the love that claimed you poured out and claimed them as well.  One day the love that kept you upright found one who was laid low and it lifted them up.  One day the love that called you by name, the love that called you beloved, cried out in your voice and called the stranger beloved as well.

Paul called us clay vessels.  I think we are more like cracked pots who leak the enormous love of God that has been poured into us wherever we go.  We can’t help ourselves.  It’s what we are, what we do.  But we never do it ourselves, we just allow the water to flow through so God can bless others.

Right v. wrong, legal v. illegal

Some years ago Tom Selleck made a series of made for TV movies with Jesse Stone as the main character.  Jesse was the police chief in a small Massachusetts coastal town called Paradise - which of course, it wasn't.  He had been kicked off the LA police force because of his drinking and Paradise was his last chance in this lifetime to do police work.

I happen to enjoy the series and have watched it a couple of times but here's the point: one of Jesse's favorite sayings is this "You're talking about right and wrong.  I don't do 'right and wrong'.  I do 'legal and illegal'.

It's a wonderfully succinct summation of a long standing dilemma for most of us.  We are often confronted with stuff that is clearly wrong, it just isn't illegal.

I mention this because the Grand Jury in Ferguson, Missouri is about to hand up its findings.  I do not expect the police officer to be indicted.  The burden of evidence necessary to bring an indictment against a police officer is huge.

Which doesn't mean that what happened isn't wrong.  It doesn't mean that we shouldn't use this occasion to pressure all those in positions of power to confront the reality of our ingrained racism and re-tool, re-evaluate, and re-train themselves.

It is wrong that young black men need to have police survival skills.  It is wrong that mothers of teenage black boys kick into serious worry when their sons are late getting home.  It is wrong that we - the privileged white population - continue to make assumptions about others based on the color of their skin.  We try not to; we are often successful.......until we aren't.

It doesn't do anyone any good to claim we don't make judgments based on race, because it isn't true. Although I can't give you any examples, I know we make all kinds of judgments, subtle and otherwise based on racial assumptions that we don't even know we have (which is exactly why I can't give you any examples).

I believe that things are going to get very heated in Ferguson; I pray that there is very little and limited violence.  But I think Jesse Stone put it well.  In the end, this is about right and wrong, and we all know which is which

.

Hope is......

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,


And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land                                            And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
 It asked a crumb of me.

                             Emily Dickinson

Hope is God's greatest gift to God's beloved creatures.  Hope means tomorrow does not have to be like today. Today's sorrow can become tomorrows joy.  Today's storm can become tomorrow's sun.

Hope means that whatever my past, my future can be different.  Hope means that in the face of everything that would steal life away from me, there is life out there waiting.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." says the writer of Hebrews.

We call this hope Jesus.  Isn't there someone who needs to hear about this great treasure?

My money? Now you're asking too much..........

He was pious and respectful.  "What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?" he asked Jesus.  Well, you know the commandments.....oh, yes, and I follow them all.  Then there is just one thing.....

Here it comes.........."go, sell all you have, give it to the poor, and some follow me."  Five commands. All his money and worldly possessions.  Oh no!

Talking about money is OK as long as we are talking in the abstract, about someone else's money.
If we are talking about MY money, then it's really none of your business.

And that is true to a point.  You can have an opinion on how I spend my money, but in the end, it is all moot.  I can do what I want.

Of course you can.  Who would you have to answer to?  Your spouse.  Your children.  The tax collector.  The bill collectors.

God.      God?          God.

Baptism is the beginning of a journey of faith formation.........a looooooong journey of becoming a follower of Jesus, of allowing ourselves to be shaped by Jesus' teaching because Jesus loves us with a love that rocks our world into new adventures.  Baptism begins our learning about Jesus, practicing his lessons, and sharing his story. That's one of the reasons it is called 'new life.'

Baptism is the beginning of a new life in Christ.  Everything about us is now understood through the lens of God's great love for us.  Everything.......including our money.  It's all or nothing.  Either you follow Jesus, or you don't.

The rich young ruler just about got there.  He was willing to be baptized into new life in Jesus......as long as it didn't include his money.  Can't you picture him holding his wallet over his head as the minister dunks him in the baptismal pool?

Know anyone like that?

Weirdos welcome

"You may feel like a weirdo, but remember, all weirdos are welcome here."

That was one confirmation student's take away from his pastor's sermon.  I saw it posted on facebook and thought to myself......".you want to hear the gospel from a teenager?  Here it is!"

Of course, we are challenged by the weirdos.  Not so much because we think we are totally normal, but because we have put almost all our energy into looking normal.........and having the weirdos around threatens our little secret.

Except of course, that to the others, we are the weirdos.

But to God, we are all beloved children.  That's my way of speaking the gospel.

Either way, preach it brother.......all of us weirdos are dying to hear this good word.

For all the saints..............

I am especially fond of the Prayer for the Day on All Saints Sunday.  "Almighty God, you have knit your people together in one communion in the mystical body of your son, Jesus Christ our Lord."

Not that I truly know what the mystical body of Christ is, but the very phrase lifts me beyond the ordinary and into a realm of being that defies description. It certainly is a place I would like to be.....knit together with all god's people.  somehow we are joined with the entire cosmos, the full sweep of life, the now and the beyond.  It is a mystery in which we want to live, somehow.

Or maybe not.

I find great comfort (albeit, great challenge as well) in a relationship with God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit.  In times of great sorrow and loss, the promises of the faith and the church building itself provided a framework for my grieving, and hope for a different tomorrow.  God's tomorrow.  A tomorrow filled with new life.

Not everyone feels this way.  This was very clear on Sunday, when all the families whose relatives we have buried this past year, and whose names are remembered in our All Saints service chose not to attend worship.  (please note that they were individually invited).  Now some of these families do worship in other traditions, and I expect that's where they were.  Or maybe not.

Maybe the knowledge that I am loved by a power not only greater than me, but great enough to create the cosmos, is neither valued nor known by the wider public.  Maybe the call of the Spirit to live beyond my own imagination and into my better self is non-sensical to my neighbors.  Maybe the deep connection that I find in prayer and communion is found by others in .....well, I don't know what.

I don't know.  I was just surprised, and a little disappointed.  I think we will have to find a way to carry this news of Jesus into the world in a new and different way.  Think about how you minister to your friends and neighbors when they experience loss.  You will be the ministers on the street, sharing this good news of God's presence in the other's sorrow and in the final journey of the deceased.  You.

What will you say about God and God's calling to life through Jesus?  Perhaps if we practice before the time comes, we will be prepared to be Christ's light to others in their time of need.