Exodus14:10-14

Luke 9:1-6

Our theme for this Lent is “Our Time in the Wilderness.” I’ve always thought of time in the wilderness as a time of learning, but I decided to title this sermon “A Time of Formation." Normally I steer clear of church talk, but formation carries a more comprehensive meaning than learning does.

As the church uses the word, formation includes acquiring learning, but also includes acquiring experience as an element of that learning. In other words, it’s not just about book learning, but it’s about learning and practicing a set of life skills. It’s also about learning to do these things together, thereby forming a community.

When we look at the Exodus experience of the Hebrews, it’s quite easy to see why such formation is needed. They have lived for generations as slaves within the empire of Egypt. They are going to the long-promised land of milk and honey, without a king, and without any experience of self-rule. While in Egypt their numbers have grown beyond that of a wandering tribe. They have only Moses for a leader.

The first lesson they have to learn is to let go of the past and to rely on God. The first reading tonight from Exodus takes place just as they are leaving home and before they have even crossed the Red Sea. Already the whining begins: “What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

As you all know, this sort of looking back goes on over and over in Exodus. It’s hard to let go of the past. We prefer the demons we know to the ones that we don’t know – better to be slaves than risk dying. They complain about lack of food and water, surely important things, but they also complain about not having onions!

God responds by giving them manna every morning and quails every evening. But when Moses goes up on the mountain and is gone for 40 days, they make a golden calf to worship! It becomes clear, why God keeps them in the wilderness for 40 years – that is the time it takes for the generation who still remember Egypt to pass away. Then they can look ahead and embrace the future.

Meanwhile God provides not only bodily sustenance but also the 10 Commandments. I heard a lecture by the O.T. scholar, Walter Brueggeman, in which he said that essentially the 10 commandments are about creating a better neighborhood. They provide the guidelines for the Hebrews’ life in the new land as free people. The rules they lived under as slaves must go.

But as we know, change is not easy and forming new ways of living takes time and practice. The second great lesson learned during the time in the wilderness was that leadership must be shared. Jethro kept Moses from tearing out his hair in frustration by suggesting that he raise up a number of leaders to take on some of his work.

In the reading from Luke, we see Jesus doing the same thing. He not only called disciples, he trained them and sent them out to practice, so that they could carry on his work. John the Baptist had not done this, so when he died, his movement died. Jesus did not make that mistake. He did all he could to prepare his followers for his own departure and to prepare them to take over.

It seems to me that this is a key ingredient to living life in the kingdom. Sharing leadership is the only way to prevent one person or one group from taking over and restoring the hierarchy – which of course ultimately happened in Israel too. But I think that this lesson about shared leadership is also about shared living, about life lived in community, which is what we try to model in our churches. We are meant to share our learning with each other as well as our joys and sorrows.

The wilderness, as the Hebrews experienced it, was very real. They suffered hunger and thirst and endless wandering. But the wilderness is also an oft-used metaphor. It represents a time of crisis: going to work one day to discover you’re being laid off; losing your home and belongings to fire, flood, or mud slide; awakening to a phone call that a person you love has died.

Life-changing events such as these demand of us the same tasks as those demanded of the Israelites. We must let the old life go because yearning for what is gone and bitterness about it are dead ends. We must accept and eventually embrace the new reality. We have to trust God to lead us out of this mess, even though we can’t see a way out ourselves. And we need to share this time of trouble with our community just as we will share our joy when it is over. And perhaps we can take what we have learned in this wilderness experience, and pass it on to others.

Years ago when I lived in Minneapolis I met a woman I’ll call Margaret, who was a paraplegic. She came to church every Sunday, driving a modified van that allowed her to drive with hands only and with a lift to get her in and out while still in her wheel chair.

Margaret was unfailingly rather cheerful, had a great sense of humor, never complained in my hearing about her condition, nor ever talked about her past. When I finally heard part of her story I was shocked. She was in a terrible car accident when her two children were young. As a result, she was paralyzed from the waist down. By the time she got out of the hospital, her husband had not only divorced her, he had sold all her belongings, even her clothes!

How does a person even get past anything so awful? I never asked what had happened with her children, because I knew I couldn’t bear to hear it.

During this time I was doing some volunteer work for Wilderness Inquiry, a non-profit that takes mixed groups of able-bodied and disabled people into the wilderness. I also had taken some of their trips. One day I asked Margaret if she had ever heard of them.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I took a trip with them into the boundary waters.”

“And how was that experience for you?” I asked.

“Lynn, it was absolutely life-changing. I realized that if I could drag myself over a portage using only my hands and arms, I could do whatever I wanted to do in a big city.”

Margaret had experienced wilderness in both the metaphoric and the literal ways and found new ways to cope with life. I think this accounted for the authenticity of her outlook. In my own life I have gone to the literal wilderness for much the same sort of help. That experience has a way of changing our perspective.

The Lenten season gives us a chance each year to practice these Wilderness lessons, to embody them in ways that prepare us for the wilderness times that sooner or later will come to us.

The purpose of Lenten discipline is to mimic a wilderness experience, where, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “you lose your appetite for what cannot save you. . .” The Hebrews lost their appetite for onions and found they could live on manna and quail.

The same thing can happen when we give up things we have come to rely on, but that cannot save us. Have you considered giving up your cell phone – your video games, your comfort food? Think about it. Whatever you use as anesthetic, to soothe hurt feelings, or to block out what ails you, is something to consider giving up. To give up for Lent any form of anesthetic we use, whether pills or perpetual busyness or gossip or whatever, is to give ourselves a chance to return to a more authentic life, the life of abundance God wishes for us.

I think most of us “get” this aspect of Lent, but the sharing part is trickier. Partly because it requires us to be authentic with our community and it requires us to admit we’re not in control and to give up our attempt to control our own life or that of others. But I suspect that sharing of leadership, joy, and sorrow within the community is very important, because it mirrors our relationship with God and our community’s relationship with God.

The full quote from Barbara Brown Taylor is this:* “The wilderness is where you lose your appetite for things that cannot save you, but also where you learn to trust the Spirit that led you there to lead you out again ready to worship the Lord your God and serve no other all the days of your life.”

I’m afraid the implication is this: to find, to create, and or to live into the Kingdom of God, we have to go through the wilderness. Just remember that we don’t have to do it alone. In fact, we shouldn’t do it alone. We must all go together! And it’s even better if we all go singing.** AMEN

* “The Wilderness Exam,” Day1.org

** Thanks to Bishop Steve Charleston, from sermon at Diocesan Convention

LENT 3, A

John 4:5-42

“What if we gave up division for Lent? I wish we could let go of those things that divide us.” That’s how Brian Blount began his commentary on this story of the Samaritan woman and Jesus meeting at a well (Christian Century, 3/19/14).

I don’t hear much conversation any more about giving up things for Lent. I know I have moved from giving up watermelon, through giving up candy and later alcohol, to instead taking on something, entering into some form of spiritual discipline like daily reading or meditation, fasting, prayer, etc. So this idea of giving up something, something so much more important that food, really struck me.

When we look at the story in its first century context, it’s very clear that the divisions that separate Jesus from the Samaritan woman are enormous. Although the Samaritans worship the same God, they do it differently. (Imagine that!) The Samaritans have intermarried outside the faith and are considered unclean by the Jews. A proper Rabbi would never speak to a Samaritan, much less a woman, especially when they are alone. Jesus ignores all these taboos and divisions.

Notice that the story tells us that this took place around noon. The point is that the woman did not come to get water in the early morning with the other women of the village. Either she has excluded herself from their society or they have shunned her. We don’t know for sure.

However, this has often been preached as a story of transformation from immorality to morality by assuming the woman was a prostitute. David Lose points out that this is just not the case. There are many ways she might have had five husbands and she may be living with someone who is supporting her but is not her husband. The point is that Jesus, who clearly knows all about her, does not accuse her of any sin. She doesn’t ask for forgiveness. He doesn’t tell her to go and sin no more.

No matter what the detail may have been, it’s clear that she has had a hard and difficult life. She is dependent on others in ways most of us would find appalling. When she says to Jesus, “I see you are a prophet,” it suggests that she “sees” him more clearly than most others do. And Jesus “sees” her more clearly than others – as a person of worth, value, and significance. [David Lose]

This reminds me that when we accept the normative divisions in our society, they prevent us from even seeing the “others,” those who are not like us in one way or another. And that keeps us from any chance of knowing them, much less understanding them.

When the woman points out the primary difference between Samaritan and Jew – that her people worship God on the mountain top, while the Jews worship in the Temple, — Jesus responds that this is a false and short-lived division. True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Where they do it is not an issue.

Then he admits to this woman that he is indeed the Messiah, in whom she has just asserted her faith. What a quick and decisive way to break down any remaining barriers between them!

When this nameless woman leaves her water jar behind to go tell the village about Jesus, is it just because she doesn’t want to be encumbered by carrying it? Water jars were important and expensive parts of a household. Leaving it behind is not insignificant. Is she leaving behind her old understandings of the divisions between Samaritan and Jew? Is she leaving behind her concern with daily chores to instead pursue a new spiritual path?

This inclines me to ask further: what jars do we carry that help to sustain the divisions among people? What jars are we clinging to to protect us from change? Are they jars of bitterness or prejudice? Are they jars of fear – fear of the unknown, fear of other ideas, fear of unknown people? Are they jars of apathy? Are they jars of judgementalism?

I hope each of us will take some time this week to think about this image of the woman leaving her jar behind and running into the village where she witnesses to what she has seen. What does that jar represent in your life? Just consider it, look at it, and decide whether it is something you can give up – at least for Lent!

And what is the result of this woman’s actions? Jesus and his disciples stay for two days at this village. They worship and pray together with the Samaritans. This is astonishing!! It’s the formation of a new community, even though it is not a permanent one.

Haven’t we done the same thing when we began the Ecumenical Lenten services? I remember the first soup supper. I walked in a bit late and saw over there a table of Catholics, next to them a table of people from First Lutheran, over her a group from Zion, and along the way a group of Episcopalians and another table from United.

I think it says a great deal about our community that this separation by table only lasted one week! And I still remember the overwhelming sense of excitement among most of the participants about doing this together. There are still things that divide us as different branches of the Christian Church, but those things are not much important any more. And worshipping together formed the foundation for doing so much more together: the clothes closet, the Christmas dinner, Servants of Shelter. Who cares if we worship a bit differently from church to church?

Is it time to extend the tent of meeting again? We’ve been doing what we do for some time now and it’s gotten rather comfortable. Should we invite additional folks to join us? If not for the Wednesday night series, maybe our congregation can invite some “others” to join us for Ash Wednesday. How about some folks from the Covenant church? Could we include some Mormons, or Buddhists, or those with no affiliation? Not with the purpose of conversion but merely for the purpose of inclusion. Let’s think about this.

When Sam and Lee took ashes to the Villa this Ash Wednesday, they had a wonderful response. Next year, who knows?

We can’t make others give up divisions, but we can pledge ourselves to the struggle to give up such divisions, not just for Lent, but for life – the life God wants for us and for all God’s children. AMEN

Lent 2, A

John 3:1-17

One author tells this story: Once upon a time, there was a woman who decided to discover the meaning of life. First she read. Everything. History, philosophy, psychology, religion. She became a very learned person. She did not discover the meaning of life. She sought out smart people and asked them about the meaning of life. They had long, lively conversations, but could not agree on the meaning of life. In desperation, she put all her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. She travelled to South America, to India, to the Holy Lands, to the European seats of learning. Everywhere, people told her they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a man who did, only they were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in every country on earth until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house–a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain just below the tree line.

She climbed and climbed to reach his front door. When she finally got there, with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.

“Yes?” said the kind-looking old man who opened it. She thought she would die of happiness.

“I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question,” she said, gasping for breath. “What is the meaning of life?”

“Please come in and have some tea,” the old man said.

“No,” she said. “I mean, no thank you. I didn’t come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won’t you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?”

“We shall have tea,” the old man said, so she gave up and came inside. While he was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened, and listened, and listened. As she talked he placed a fragile tea cup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea.

She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall.

“What are you doing?!” she yelled when the tea burned her hand. “It’s full, can’t you see that? Stop! There’s no more room!”

“Just so,” the old man said to her. “You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk.” (adapted from Barbara Brown Taylor, COPYRIGHT 1996 The Christian Century Foundation)

Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night. We don’t really know why it was in the night. Speculation abounds. He was a member of the pharisees, the most powerful, most orthodox group of Jewish leaders; a group that was beginning to get an inkling that this peace-loving, leper-healing, love-preaching crazy Jesus person might represent not only a disruption to their way of life, but a threat to their power. Perhaps he needed the cover of night to protect him in his curiosity quest. On the other hand Jesus was hanging out at the margins of society, essentially homeless – “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head”. Nicodemus would have been clean, groomed, proper, and he was known – “a leader of the Jews”. He openly spoke to Jesus, in complimentary tones. He would have stuck out like a sore thumb. He would have no secrets on this venture. He would have studied primarily at night. Perhaps the questions burned too deeply – he just could not wait until morning and ventured out through the darkness to find answers. Perhaps the Gospel writer John just couldn’t resist the symbolism of the Light of Jesus shining through the darkness.

Who knows why Nicodemus came, but come he did. Full of questions, full of knowledge, full of the law. So full, in fact, so very full of the law that fit his life, the life that fit his knowledge, the knowledge that fit his world, that the spiritual nourishment Jesus offers splashes to the ground.

“For 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,” John 3:16. I’m not so sure it is a scripture verse for us anymore, so much as a cultural icon. It is on T-shirts and billboards, graffiti and pop music, it is printed on fast food cups and on the faces of athletes.

Jesus invites Nicodemus, invites us, to believe in him. This is not command to say the words “I believe” louder, better, or more often than the next guy over. It is not a demand that His words be blazoned (in properly abbreviated form and bold font) across our chests, our billboards, our faces. There’s nothing particularly wrong with those things, it just isn’t what he’s saying. His challenge to Nicodemus, to us, is to turn our cups upside down. Let go. Trust in Him. Ride the wind. Be born anew. Today. Tomorrow. Everyday. Become Water-Flesh-Spirit-Wind-Breath-Newborns (thanks for the phrase to D. Mark Davis)

We all love newborns. Babies turn us all into cooing, babbling, happy idiots. The babies in turn burble and suckle and smell of powder. But that is the sanitized version. That’s afterwards. In reality, brand spankin’ new life is not pretty or easy or clean. That life is squeezed forcibly into the world, molded and slimy and screaming. Spiritual rebirth is emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and practically messy. It is easy to stand with Nicodemus, asking the practical down to earth questions and declaring the whole notion ridiculous.

Canadian theologian Jean Vanier rephrases Jesus’s proposal another way, “In the face of the certitudes, the “we know” of Nicodemus, Jesus proposes another way: they way of “not knowing,” of being born from “above.” That means becoming like a child again, a child of God, a new person, listening to the Spirit of God and letting ourselves be guided by the Spirit. … We do not know where she is leading us.”

Nicodemus appears twice more in the Gospel of John; interceding on Jesus’s behalf with the other Pharisees, and finally caring for Jesus’s body along with Joseph of Arimathea. I like to think that by the time he was risking reputation, status, life and limb to speak and care for Jesus, whose mission he could not possibly yet understand, he had emptied his cup and learned to be born anew.

To Live With the Spirit

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener.
It is to keep the vigil of mystery,
earthless and still.

One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit,
strange as the wind’s will.
The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows
turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love.
It may lament like Job or Jeremiah,
echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove.
It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow
that emulates the freedom of the sky.
Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing;
it has cast down forever from its hand
the compass of the whither and the why.
To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.
It is becoming love, and like to Him
toward Whom we strain with metaphors of creatures:
fire-sweep and water-rush and the wind’s whim.
The soul is all activity, all silence;
and though it surges Godward to its goal,
it holds, as moving earth holds sleeping noonday,
the peace that is the listening of the soul.

-Jessica Powers 1905-1988
Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers

Lent 1, A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Gil Bailie tells the story of a teacher who wants to teach artistic imagination to her students. Her plan is to draw pictures on the board and have the students free associate, teaching them gradually to see beyond the mere shapes. She draws a circle on the board and says, “Johnny, what does that make you think of?” Johnny answers, “Sex.” A bit non-plussed, she erases it very quickly and instead draws a triangle: “Johnny, what’s that?” Johnny considers the drawing and thoughtfully answers, “Sex.” The teacher draws a square, “Johnny?” “Sex.” Frustrated, the poor teacher bursts out, “Johnny, you have a one-track mind. All you can think about is sex.” “Me?!” says Johnny, “You’re the one drawing the pictures.”

If I write Lent up on a board, what do you see? Lent – a time of prayer, penance, repentance of sins, almsgiving, atonement and self-denial. If you grew up in the Episcopal church or almost any church that observes Lent, this has become ingrained. Every year as we approach Lent all these things translate to one question – what to give up. I could do what I did last year, but, was that too easy? Should I try something really painful this year? Did I suffer enough? Enough for what? Really, how much must one suffer to please a compassionate, loving God? We, like Johnny, have gotten a bit stuck on one idea. With some help from St. Paul, and a great deal of help from St. Augustine (an extraordinary thinker who struggled with precisely the same single-minded focus as young Johnny) we have somehow internalized the concept that God demands that we be punished for living as the very creatures He created. One author says, “I was at least twenty-five years old before I learned that Lent wasn’t about punishing myself for being human–and it took me five more years to figure out that it wasn’t about giving up Hershey’s or taking on Pilates–so I don’t blame anyone who has decided to give Lent a pass.” (Barbara Brown Taylor)

So, if Augustine, immersed in his own personal struggle to keep his toga where it belonged*, over-read Paul; if Lent and life and suffering are not, in fact, about rending our garments and gnashing our teeth over the choices of our great, great, great, (and so on) grandparents in a garden with a smooth-talking snake, what is the point? Why can’t I just keep my chocolate or my cell phone or my swear words or whatever I might have decided to forgo.

Do not imagine that we suffer to please God. That simply makes no sense. Not for a God of Love, of Compassion, of Justice. Such Lenten discipline as we endure, and certainly it will prove mild enough in the overall scheme of things, we endure in order to enrich our experience of God.

Jesus goes into the wilderness, driven by the Spirit. Jesus, free of sin, still wet with the waters of the Jordan after his Baptism, ears and heart still ringing with God’s approval – You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased – is not being punished. He is being prepared. Prepared for a life of relationship with God, of servanthood to all people, of life-giving ministry.

These lessons are less about sin than they are about identity. “IF you are the Son of God” says Satan, “IF you are the Son of God” then you can make bread”. “IF you are the Son of God”, prove it – he’ll save you.” “You know, Jesus, you’re out here in the wilderness – I don’t see any Father-Son loving thing happening. Worship me and you’ll get loving here and now.” The tactic is reminiscent of school yard tactics – “If you’re not chicken, you’ll skip class.” “If you were really my friend, you’d let me copy your homework.” The tactic works better with Adam and Eve than it did with Jesus, “God doesn’t really love you – God’s jealous of what you could become. Try that fruit. You’ll see.”

Our identities are rooted in our relationships. I am daughter, mother, wife, sister, friend, doctor, priest. To a large degree, these relationships determine my activities, my reactions, my sense of worth. Our relationship with God is at once the most important and the most nebulous of our relationships. 17th century philosopher, Blaise Pascal, describes an innate sense of craving, of helplessness, of emptiness within human beings as a God-shaped hole, a hole we try in vain to fill with everything around us. For Adam and Eve – tempted to doubt the love of the Creator, the fruit seemed perfect to fill the hole – “good for food” “a delight to the eyes”. Lacking a tree of Good and Evil, we reach for other things – from chocolate to alcohol; from tweets to TV; from computers to cell phones; from social standing to political influence – always trying to fill that God shaped hole. We live in tension between the opposing notion of innate human sin and the culturally endorsed opinion that if it feels good, it must BE good.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian author imprisoned in a forced labor camp for many years, and later forced into exile. He described the lessons of his Gulag wilderness in this way, “I learned two great lessons from being in prison camps. I learned how a person becomes evil and how he becomes good. When I was young I thought I was infallible, and I was cruel to those under me. I was madly in love with power and, in exercising it, I was a murderer and an oppressor. Yet in my most evil moments I thought I was doing good, and I had plenty of arguments with which to justify my deeds. It was only when things were reversed, when as a prisoner I lay on rotten straw, that I began to feel within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually I came to realize that the line which separates good from evil passes not between states, or between classes, or between political parties – but right through every human heart. Even in hearts that are overwhelmed by evil one small bridgehead of good is retained. And in the best of all hearts, there remains an un-uprooted small corner of evil.”

Lent – a time of prayer, penance, repentance of sins, almsgiving, atonement and self-denial, yes. These are the tools we use to journey through a self imposed wilderness, that we might hear the small, still voice of God. There in the wilderness we learn to look at ourselves without our spiritual fig leaves – recognizing the bad, embracing the good and trusting God to love it all. **We learn to trust the Spirit that led us there to lead us out again, ready to worship the Lord our God and serve no other all the days of our lives. Amen.

*Thank you to Rev. Lynn Naeckle for the toga image

**Paraphrased from Barbara Brown Taylor’s “The Wilderness Exam”

Last Epiphany, A

Exodus 24:12-18

2 Peter 1:16-21

Matthew 17:1-9

I am not a math person. I come from a family of math people, engineers and so on, back for a generation or two. I even married a math person. I just never could relate to it, math. Never found satisfaction in an equation well solved – it takes a mindset different from mine. But I remember the occasional concept from mathematics that I could relate to -that I found exciting. Cusps were one of the few math concepts that caught my imagination. In mathematics, a cusp is a point at which at which a curve crosses itself and at which the two tangents to the curve coincide.

Less mathematically, it is a point of transition. To move from that spot is to commit to certain futures and leave others forever behind. It is the top of the mountain. It is a mountain pass. Which valley will the stone roll down when it finally moves at all? History is a story of cusps. Will America declare independence? Will we invade Iraq? Cusps often make us uncomfortable. But once you arrive at a cusp, if you are to move at all, you must commit.

We are at a liturgical cusp today. We have been traveling through the season of light; the season of Epiphany. From our mountaintop we gaze back at the rising star lighting the climb of Epiphany, and glance forward to the valley that is the mist-shrouded stark reality of Lent.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of the Transfiguration. Each year at this time, as Lent stares us full in the face, we stand together on this mountaintop. We hear a story that is frankly, uncomfortable. Clearly it made the disciples uncomfortable. They fell to the ground on their faces, trembling in fright. Well, what would you do if you heard a great booming voice from the sky and the man you thought you knew suddenly started glowing? They were uncomfortable because they experienced the immediate presence of God. We are uncomfortable because we do not. Disembodied voices, chatting with ghosts, unearthly lights? In this age of science and proof and concrete evidence, this story evokes for us not a sense of awe, but rather a sense of disconnect or of disbelief – an uncomfortable feeling for a person of faith.

We have long since learned, however, that the scripture need not be taken literally to be taken seriously, even for a person of faith – maybe especially for a person of faith. As the Rabbi Ben Sylva pointed out, “A literalist interpretation of Scripture tells us that God is a rock that sent a bird to cause a virgin to give birth to a loaf of bread. And this is supposed to be an improvement on obtaining a chiseled code of conduct from a flaming shrubbery in a cloud. If a literal understanding is all that is required for faith, then I’m a yellow ducky.” The truth of scripture is deeper and fuller than historical fact. And lest we imagine that deeper interpretation of scripture is a by-product of our modern need to reconcile it with the modern age, in the 6th century Gregory the Great opined, “Scripture is like a river, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim.”

One of the most common interpretations of this story posits that Moses is a symbol for the law, Elijah represents the prophets, and Jesus, of course, symbolizes the Gospel, the Way. They clearly interact, they are clearly all important, but in God’s words, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” He clearly indicates His desire that His people turn towards the Way. This gives us a clear direction, and a good one, to go with this story. It places things comfortably in the metaphorical realm and fits nicely with our established theology.

“Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days”

“suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

Literally or metaphorically, a thick impenetrable cloud, bright and overpowering seems to be the image portrayed of close encounters with the glory of God. Followers of Christ, we travel in the light of Epiphany with Peter and James and John up the mountainside, clear sighted. After all, as the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor points out, “Once you emerge from the cloud, you are supposed to be surer than ever what you believe. You are supposed to know who’s who, what’s what, where you are going in your life and why. You are supposed to have answers to all the important questions, and when you read the Bible you are supposed to know what it means.” That sounds very comforting, very clear.

But what if being comfortable isn’t the point? What if clear understanding is not what it is all about?

Again the Rev. Brown Taylor, “What if the point is not to decode the cloud but to enter into it? What if the whole Bible is less a book of certainties than it is a book of encounters, in which a staggeringly long parade of people run into God, each other, life–and are never the same again? I mean, what don’t people run into in the Bible? Not just terrifying clouds and hair-raising voices but also crazy relatives, persistent infertility, armed enemies, and deep depression, along with life-saving strangers, miraculous children, food in the wilderness, and knee-wobbling love.”

This is Transfiguration Sunday. Peter and James and John witnessed the Transfiguration, the metamorphosis, and their own lives were changed, unalterably. The certainties they held dear on the way up the mountain disappeared and they were themselves transfigured. Peter later shared his new certainty – “You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

Liturgically, we stand at a cusp. In our lives we will travel to our own spiritual cusps. We can choose to slide down the curve back into certainty and comfort. Or we can enter the cloud and be changed. We can brave the valleys of darkness, and fear, knowing that we do not stand alone, that the light of God will shine on us, can shine through us.

EPIPHANY 6, A

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Matthew 5:21-37

Choices. It’s all about choices.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. So says Moses, the bringer of the law. Life. Death. Blessings. Curses. Choose life. Can it really be so simple?

The pharisees thought so. Not easy maybe, but simple enough. Their lives revolved around the law – observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances that they might live and become numerous.

First blush, doesn’t seem so difficult – not really. I don’t mean I could live the life of the pharisees – way, way too many rules. But we’ve pared those rules down a bit, haven’t we?

Jesus emphasizes a few for us today. Murder, adultery. Those are clear enough. Divorce. That one deserves a little more comment. In an age and culture where about 50% of marriages end in divorce it is so tempting to just ignore this part of the lection altogether. Pretend we didn’t hear it. Keep in mind, though, divorce now is not what divorce was when Jesus was teaching. In the days of Jesus, initiating divorce on any grounds was not an option for women, no matter what the circumstances. Women whose husbands divorced them (something which could be done on essentially no pretext) faced social isolation, ostracism, poverty. Divorce did not simply end a relationship or a contract, it left a person abandoned and bereft.

So, murder, adultery, abandonment.

When I go to bed at night, thinking over the day that was, looking back at events and happenings, it is easy enough to ask myself these questions

Did you murder anyone today? No. Check.

Commit adultery? No. Check.

Leave anyone profoundly abandoned and bereft of all support? No. Check.

L’chaim, then. To Life. We have thus chosen life, right?

Ah, but we have chosen to follow another path to life. We have chosen to follow Jesus. Jesus who shows us the God of love, of light, of relationship.

But love and light and relationship clearly does not always mean warm and fuzzy. Far from offering the easy out of allowing us to happily absolve ourselves of the crimes of murder, adultery and abandonment, Jesus ups the ante. Clearly he did not study at the Mary Poppins, Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down school of thought. He champions instead the “cut it off and pluck it out” approach. Scholars seem united in the idea that Jesus was not actually promoting self-mutilation (good news there), but was instead utilizing the time-honored rabbinical approach of hyperbole to underscore his point.

Even without actual dismemberment, what He is saying is radical. “I have come not to abolish [the law], but to fulfill [the law]” He told us in last week’s lection. Fulfillment of the law, living the law means that it is no longer enough to restrain oneself from killing – we must learn to recognize, to rout out the root cause of murder – unresolved anger, disrespect. We are no longer responsible merely for our actions, but for our thoughts, our emotions, our relationships. Anger is a part of our nature when we are threatened, physically, emotionally or psychologically. Physical desire is a part of our nature, well, pretty much any time in some cases. It allows our species to procreate, and often allows our relationships to deepen. We are not asked to prevent our emotions it in the first place – that is not our nature. We are not asked to deny them, stuffing it down where it merely festers and grows. We are asked to mindfully, deliberately teach ourselves not to live in them, foster them, dwell in them.

Rev. Beth Johnson tells this story, “Once there were two monks who were on a journey. Each of these monks had taken a vow to never touch a woman, for any purpose. They came upon a river and a woman, in attempting to cross the swiftly moving river, had lost her footing and was in danger of drowning. The older monk leaped into the water, and delivered her safely to the other shore. As they travelled along the younger monk was most distressed that his mentor had broken his sacred vow. Finally the older man replied, “Brother, I set her down several hours ago, why are you still carrying her?”

Jesus asks us to put down our burdens of anger, of all-consuming desire (this could easily be extended to a desire for things, power, money, influence, whatever occupies our energies in addition to physical desire). He asks us to put down these burdens and seek reconciliation and harmony with our fellow creatures of God. To do this is its own act of faith, its own act of courage – it leaves us feeling vulnerable. According to Henri Nouwan, “Jesus.. says, ‘Let go of your complaints, forgive those who loved you poorly, step over your feelings of being rejected, and have the courage to trust that you won’t fall into an abyss of nothingness but into the safe embrace of a God whose love will heal all your wounds.”

Healing or hurting?

Serving self or serving God?

Festering in anger or seeking reconciliation?

Community or isolation?

Blessings or curses?

Life or Death?

We have choices to make. They are simple. They are not easy. We are not perfect. We will make bad choices. With Jesus as our guide, with the body of Christ as our support, with God as our help, we are forgiven, and we walk on. Onward to love, onward to justice, onward to the Kingdom, onward to life. L’chaim. Amen.

EPIPHANY 5 A

Isaiah 58:1-12

Matthew 5:13-20

For several weeks now we will be hearing Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. If last week had not been the presentation of Jesus, we would have heard the Beatitudes. The reading for today immediately follows that.

Please notice especially, that unlike John’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “I am the light. . .” in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says, “YOU are the light of the world. YOU are the salt of the earth.” This is not qualified; it is a statement of fact.

The commentators this week all talk about salt as a seasoning, something that adds zest. True, but we should also consider its use as a preservative. Back in the days before refrigeration, this was a common way of keeping food useable.

Even more interesting is a bit that I have preached before about how salt, cut in a large block, was used in the communal ovens of Jesus’s time. It acted as a catalyst, to make the fire of dung burn brighter and hotter. When it lost that ability, it was broken up and thrown out on the paths like gravel.

So if we are to be salt we are to act as seasoning, preservative, and a catalyst. As Amy Oden points out, “Neither salt nor light exists for themselves. They only fulfill their purpose when used…”

What Jesus means when he tells us, “You are the light of the world,” becomes clearer when we look at the Isaiah lesson. It begins with a discussion of fasting, contrasting fasting for form or influence with “true” fasting. Here’s how Isaiah defines true fasting: “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke.. . to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them. . . Then your light shall break forth like the dawn. . .”

Your actions in the world are what make your light break forth. Your acts of justice, mercy, and compassion make your light shine – and by the way, also make the world around you a better place to live. To paraphrase David Lose, Jesus is not asking us to earn our salvation, but to live out the salvation and discipleship that has been given to us as a gift.

We are salt. We are light. If we put a bushel over our light, that is our choice, but the light itself is a gift of God, meant to be shared with others. It might be good to consider what bushels you or we as a congregation use to block the light. Individually, that bushel is often a sense of unworthiness, an inability to see our own gifts. As a congregation it might come, as Amy Oden suggests, from comparing what we are today to the good old days when our church was full of young families.

The Isaiah reading, after saying your light shall break forth, goes on to say this: “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.” Carol Dempsey sees this as Isaiah redefining fasting and worship as a lived experience of being in right relationship with one another and with God rather than some sort of bribe or requirement to get what we want.

Andrew Connors agrees: “True fasting – and by extension, true worship—leads not simply to a reordering of the liturgy, but a reordering of the life of the community. . . What concerns God is not our reordering of worship, but how worship reorders us.” (Remember that old Episcopal statement: praying shapes believing)

Our reading from Matthew ends with these challenging words: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And this just after he has said “Do not think I have to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” So what does he mean?

We know that the Pharisees lived absolutely according to the law, keeping all the rules for righteousness. How can anyone exceed that? I found the answer in some comments by Marcia Riggs: “The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is concerned with observance of tradition, public displays of piety and adherence to the letter of the law. The righteousness of Jesus flows from his relationship with God and, in turn, is the ground of Jesus’s relationship with his followers.”

So, the Pharisees see righteousness as following the rules; Jesus sees it as being in right relationship with God and all of God’s creation. Following the rules flows from that relationship, as do our acts of justice, compassion, and mercy.

Another way of thinking about what Jesus says here comes to us from Edwin Van Driel: “The Pharisees read Torah in the context of a world governed by sin” (or hardheartedness). Jesus read Torah no longer in the context of sin, but in the context of the kingdom. Now that the reign of God is at hand the measure is no longer human weakness, but the abundance of God’s grace. Relationship between a person and God, and the relationship between humans, is now the basis of things – or the lens through which we are to read Scripture.

The followers of Jesus are thus both commanded and enabled to live their lives in ways that surpass the conventional obedience of the Pharisees. They do what they do, not to earn a place in heaven, nor to impress their neighbors, nor to win any favors from God, but rather as a response to the love and compassion they receive from God. Their behavior becomes a sign of their relationship with God.

Wow! When I was growing up, it seemed to me that being a Christian was all about obeying the rules – and all about salvation. But this understanding of what Jesus tells us, turns that around, not by abolishing the rules, but by pointing out that the relationship of a person to God and to other people is more important that the rules; that we do not need to be concerned about salvation, but focus on how we live our lives here. Are we helping to bring the kingdom into reality or not?

Living by rote is not what Jesus asks of us. He says we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. He asks that we live our lives in relationship with God and our neighbors, and from that will flow actions that reflect God’s justice, mercy, and compassion. AMEN

Celebration of the Life of ART CORRIN

When you think about Art Corrin, what is the first word that comes to you? I did that this week and was surprised – because the first word that came to me was not curmudgeon. It was servant, followed immediately by faithful. And I think that is as it should be. Art was such a faithful servant in and to this church.

The Gospel lesson blesses those servants who keep watch for their master, and that seems so appropriate for Art. I can’t begin to list all the things he did here. He was the unpaid organist for many, many years. He bought this organ and paid for its maintenance. He counted the money every week and deposited it. He put in and tended the mini flower garden outside the front door every summer, deadheading and watering every week.

Art was vigilant, where the church was concerned and if you should leave a door or window open or leave a light on, not only would he come in and take care of it, he would make sure he said something to the offender. We may not even find out what other tasks he did regularly, until we notice now that they aren’t getting done!

And Art was first and foremost the Gatekeeper of this faith community. He was an Anglican to his core and wanted to make sure that everything that happened here was done properly and good order. He unlocked the church on Sundays and always seemed to know who was here – or not.

When I moved here in 1977, I attended pretty much every Sunday from September through May, but during the summer I sailed. So when I returned on the first Sunday in September, Arthur would always say, with that twinkle in his eye, something like, “Wouldn’t you like to sign the guest register?”

In some memories of Art written by Holly Davis, she talks about his sense of humor. “As we all sat at afternoon coffee he’d pick the biggest guy in the room, lean in, and say, ‘You think I can take him?’ Or he would see something I was making and say, ‘I wouldn’t wear that to a dog fight!’” She loved it that at Christmas time he would sing a bit of The Holly and the Ivy to her.

As you probably know, Art also served his family, probably in many ways, but especially in caring for his mother and his sister.

When I saw the first part of the Gospel lesson, I realized something else about Art that I had not paid attention to before. He lived very modestly – in the home he grew up in. He didn’t buy stuff they way most of us do. His frugality on behalf of the church was an extension of what he had learned growing up and practiced at home.

Not that he was without vanity. Mavis Tanem told me about Art complaining that people didn’t speak up and he was having trouble hearing them. She said, “Well, Art, why don’t you try using hearing aids? They have certainly helped me.”

“Oh, no,” he replied. “I don’t want hearing aids. They’d make me look old.”

We all know that Art was terribly “proper,” a word he always said with a British accent. He loved traditional things and resisted change of any sort with great passion. While frustrating at times this is not entirely a bad thing. I suspect that his appreciation of tradition had a lot to do with the way he chose to live his life.

The fact that he lived frugally allowed him to be very generous, although he hid that light from public view. He made sure there was a purse for the Rector every Christmas and I’ll bet he was the largest donor to it. Any time the church needed some big item – a new roof, new carpeting, a kitchen remodel – Art, Walt Mahle, Fred Day, and Fred Boeck would say, “We’ll take care of it.” They said that they went around to personally put the touch on all the members (meaning, of course, all the men in the church) and they always came up with what was needed. I, at least, never knew where the money came from, but I feel certain that Art was a major contributor.

I chose the passage from Paul about nothing being able to separate us from the love of God, because the confidence of that statement reminds me of Art. As a traditional Christian he knew that God was with him. One time, when I was grousing a bit about our priest Art told me, in a most patient tone of voice, “Oh nothing he does bothers me.” And just as I was starting to think Art was being very saintly, he added, “I’ll be here long after he’s gone!”

To say that Art was reliable, faithful, a pillar of the church is still an understatement. He never seemed to have any doubts about his faith, in good times or bad, which led me to the passage from Job that we read today. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; . . then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold and not another.” Somehow that just sounds like Art.

As I’ve thought about Art all this week what has kept flashing through my mind was imagining Art’s arrival in heaven. That vision wavered between seeing Art just assume the organist’s job with the heavenly choir and seeing Christ greeting him, probably with a very proper handshake, saying, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”

And I could hear Art reply, “Well, finally I’m home.” Then off he goes to join the Corrin brothers – for coffee at the heavenly version of Grandma’s Pantry or joining their mother for popcorn and beer.

We will miss Art and at the same time are honored to be a part of sending him home to the place he so richly deserves. AMEN

BAPTISM OF OUR LORD, A

Matthew 3:13-17

As you well know, the Catechism defines the sacraments as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.” That said, could you possibly put that definition on hold for this morning?

Why? Because that definition was long in the future when Jesus was baptized. John the Baptist was calling people to repent of their sins and to receive baptism as a sign of their sins being forgiven and of their return to a life of righteousness – righteousness in a Jewish context, not a Christian one. Right?

In a general sense, baptism by John represents a transformation. A person goes into the water a sinner and emerges to a life of righteousness. This is similar to rites in other cultures that promise or indicate a similar kind of transformation.

The mystery religions so prevalent in Greek culture around this same time were also about transformation. The very popular one at Eleusis in Greece did a three day initiation rite about which I know very little, except that it made use of bread and wine, and it included a symbolic death and resurrection to new life. The initiation rites of the Mide Society of the Ojibway also include a symbolic death and resurrection to new life.

For John the Baptist, the plunging of a person into the waters of the Jordan, symbolic death by drowning, and raising them up out of the waters to a new life of righteousness, leaving their former life and former sins behind creates a strong sense of transformation.

So what happens when John baptizes Jesus? Unlike Mark’s version, in Matthew John recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and so questions the propriety of his baptizing Jesus. Jesus insists – “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” So the Baptist proceeds.

It might help to think of the baptism of Jesus being like our sacrament of ordination. There are several distinct parts to our process. When the individual feels called to ordained service, there is also discernment by the faith community and by the Diocese to insure the call is a valid one. Jesus lived long before such rules. However, ordination does provides a public forum in which the person who has been called by God answers, “Yes! Here am I. Send me!”

God has called Jesus to a unique ministry and his baptism marks the beginning of service to that call. Baptism transforms Jesus from a carpenter to a Rabbi, and then some!

Now a full understanding of the Baptism of Jesus depends in part on your underlying theology. If you agree with the Gospel of John and accept that Jesus was fully divine, then you would conclude that he was always without sin and didn’t need baptism. This view then posits his baptism as an outward sign of Jesus standing with his human brothers and sisters. That’s all. No transformation needed.

If you believe Jesus was either wholly human or half human, then there is the distinct possibility that he was not perfect. Then, like us, he could have been standing before John the Baptist in need of forgiveness and a chance at new life. He’s about to embark on a career that tends to have a very short life span. It’s fraught with dangers and temptations; the greatest of which is to run – not walk, but run, fast, in the opposite direction.

The gift of grace in any of the sacraments includes courage, strength, and fearlessness. It includes connecting us or re-connecting us to the Holy Spirit, whose presence in our lives gives us access to these attributes above and beyond what we can do on our own. That connection to God’s love for us and the Holy Spirit’s support for us is what creates the transformation in us.

So – consider any or all of our sacraments. Again, the Catechism says that in Baptism God adopts us as his children. I would say that we are all born children of God and thus see baptism as our assent to and recognition of that relationship. In baptism we agree to be and to behave as children of God. We enter the water as unknowing children of God and emerge as a committed child of God, indeed as a minister of God.

In Eucharist we participate repeatedly in Jesus’s teachings, death and resurrection in order to emerge free of sin and guilt and rededicated to our task as God’s ministers in the world. We also emerge confident in God’s love for us. We arrive flawed and leave strengthened and refreshed for the tasks ahead.

Confirmation is the chance for someone baptized as a baby to say their own “Yes!” to God’s call to them. Matrimony transforms two individuals into a single partnership. Reconciliation does the same work as baptism and Eucharist, but is meant for someone whose connection to God has been seriously severed by sin or trauma or doubt. And unction is a final sacrament to give one added healing, strength and connectedness to God for the journey through physical death.

All of these contain what’s necessary for our transformation, clearly a process that is not a one time event, but something that happens many times in our lives and is meant to refresh and renew us to live as God intends.

Through prayer, whether public or private, we have another means to strengthen and maintain our relationship with God. Jesus, who had to carry on without most of our sacraments, used prayer frequently to renew his pledge to God and to receive encouragement, energy, and healing – maybe even forgiveness for his moments of doubt or uncertainty.

Marcus Borg has claimed that transformation is the central task of the Christian life. With that in mind, let us pray:

Holy God,

We ask you for the ongoing gift of transformation in our lives;

Transform our weaknesses into assets for your service; Transform our pride and self-centeredness into humility and

compassion for others;

Transform our desire to control into trust of you; and Transform our fear into confidence in your promises to us,

so that we may show forth your light in the world. AMEN

EPIPHANY, 2014

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany, as you know, means a showing forth, a manifestation, especially of a spiritual truth or reality making itself felt or visible in the real world. It is a beam of light in the darkness, like the star the Wise Men saw. It’s the experience we have that makes something clear, like the cartoon character with the lightbulb over his head. It’s that click we hear in our heads when we suddenly see the whole picture – when we finally “get it.”

On Epiphany, 2007, I described the hardships of the journey the Wise Men made to seek out the baby born in Bethlehem. They believed the ancient predictions and saw the new star; they were sure enough of it’s meaning to leave home to find out. I suggested that their journey to seek the Holy Child could be seen as a metaphor for our spiritual journey.

On this Epiphany, 2014, I want you to think about the Wise Men after they found Jesus. Think of the relief they must have felt at having found what they were seeking, at realizing they had been right, both about the star and about its meaning, and that they had been the first Gentiles or maybe the first people in all the earth to greet the new child with a clear understanding of what his birth meant. They had traveled long and hard to find the holy, to find a glimpse of God, and they had succeeded.

Suffused with joy and contentment they camp for the night just outside Bethlehem on a hillside overlooking an olive grove. Now they have time to consider their experience, to talk of their hurried glimpse of Jerusalem, and to make plans. “I can’t wait to return to Jerusalem,” exclaims one. “Just think, hot meals, hot baths, clean clothes and a chance to talk to their scholars.”

“Their scholars of the Holy Book must certainly be able to teach us many things. For one, I can’t wait to see that stunning Temple up close and stroll along the ramparts of the city. I did not expect Jerusalem to be so beautiful.”

“And don’t forget,” replied the first, “that the great inland sea is only a few days journey to the west. Surely we must see it too before returning home.” Nodding their assent they settle once more on the hard ground to sleep.

Then imagine being awakened – once more in the dark—and told they have to get up and leave, NOW! One of them had a dream that it was not safe to return and report to Herod. That means it isn’t safe to return to Jerusalem or Jericho at all. They must leave the country by another route and do so immediately.

So, without a hot meal, a hot bath, clean clothes or even fresh supplies, the three Wise Men rise before dawn and head south, around the Dead Sea towards the Kingdom of the Nabeteans. Did they have to cross the Arabian Desert to Babylon to escape Herod? No matter, they had to return to the hard life of travel – this time with no star to guide them, and with the joy of their discovery in Bethlehem fading in the face of their disappointments and the hardships of travel.

Once again they faced the blistering dry heat of the desert and the snow and cold in the mountain passes – and now perhaps even the green valleys were just something to be crossed, to get past, especially as the images of home replaced the star. The yearning for home now drove them on, not just for hot meals, hot baths, and good beds, but also the warmth and comfort of loved ones, the desire to return to their studies, to cast off their traveling clothes, burn them even, perhaps vowing never to travel again. Home, normalcy, an end to struggle and maybe an end to questioning.

Were they old men – these Wise Men from the East? Perhaps upon their return home they felt a bit like Simeon felt when he took Jesus in his arms in the Temple for the rites of purification after his birth. Simeon had been promised he would see the Messiah before he died and he was very old. When he saw Jesus he became the first Jew to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. He said: “Lord, now you have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised; For these eyes of mine have seen the savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see: A light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Consider the Wise Men returning home and think of it as a metaphor for the last part of our spiritual journey. We have experienced epiphanies, small and large in our lives. Do we remember them or do we forget them in the stress and disappointments of daily life? Can we carry the joy of Christmas Eve through to the end?

I suspect the Wise Men were able to do so – that after the hard journey home, they had time enough to consider their experience and reflect on its meaning. We can do the same. Pay attention. See the holy as it is manifested or displayed in our daily lives and reflect on that experience.

Give thanks to God for showing himself to us – in the birth and life of Jesus, in the return of the sun to this white world, in the shrieks of children at play, in the colors and smells of our summer gardens, in the sound of waves shaping the granite shore of Rainy Lake, in the soaring of a bald eagle overhead, and in the love of our families and the kindness of strangers.

This is how I put it in poetic form many years ago:

Son, Savior, I sing this song of thanksgiving

For the gift of night and peaceful sleep,

For the vision of dreams,

For the wisdom of old age,

For the stars that guide me,

For the glory of the northern lights.

I sing thanks for the winds of the white world

That blow about my body and

Feelingly persuade me what I am;

For the creatures of the air,

For Eagle, Hawk, Dove, and Sparrow,

Who teach me grace and freedom.

Grant to those who are old the respect of their children

And a noble death;

To those who are oppressed or in prison

Give light in the darkness

And the promise of another dawn.

Grant me the joy of homecoming at journey’s end,

That I may end where I began

And know it for the first time.

Only at journey’s end will we find our true home, and the gift we give will be ourselves, laid at the manger each Christmas, offered at the altar every Sunday, and returned to the Spirit when we die.

The spiritual journey of our lives is determined by how we experience the holy in the world around us and how we respond to that experience. We can ignore it. We can poo-poo it, or we can thank God for it.

Thanks, thanks, thanks be to God.