​My niece has started asking me (a lot) what my favorites are. “What’s your favorite food?” “What’s your favorite sauce?” Etc. Sometimes I feel awkward when someone asks my favorite kind of movie, because my answer is “Documentaries.” When people want to know your favorite movies, they are often thinking of movies based on stories: a tragedy, a comedy, etc. Sometimes movies are best known for their actors: That movie with so-and-so. That one with what’s-her-name.
 
Occasionally, a movie’s setting vies for attention, even competing with the story. When I was young, I remember seeing Anna & the King in the theater and having a hard time following the story because the scenery was so captivating.
 
Sometimes we start to talk about a setting as if it’s a person. Think of how we talk about “what Washington is doing” or “what Moscow is saying.”
 
But, once in a while, the setting actually functions as a character in the story. Think of movies like Insomnia or Fargo. Or today’s gospel.
 
Jerusalem looms large on the narrative horizon all through the gospel of Luke. It’s the scene of the diabolical one’s final temptation of Jesus in Last Week’s gospel, and the place toward which Jesus is moves in today’s gospel. It’s more than a place, more than a backdrop; it’s a character, and it has a personality.
 
Jesus says three things about Jerusalem in today’s text that help make some sense of that personality.
 
…the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!
Jesus will face serious opposition in Jerusalem, from religious people who have a stake in the tradition and a lot to lose if the tradition should be altered. In fact, enough to kill for. Don’t mishear that as some ridiculous statement that all Jews killed Jesus – that’s not true. Rather, the people in authority, as those in authority sometimes are, were threatened enough to kill. Jesus knows this; he says it outloud, even after he’s just said the second thing I want to note:
 
I must be on my way. Federal Chaplain’s commemorate a day called Four Chaplains Day. It’s a day that commemorates a group of chaplains aboard a ship that was hit by a torpedo. The chaplains went to work handing out life jackets. By the end, there were 8 people left and only 4 life jackets. So, these four chaplains gave up their jackets and went down with the ship. I like to think I’d do what they did in that situation. But, would I? I mean, would I really? In case you ever can’t tell the difference between me & Jesus (that’s a little joke – it’s hard to tell with the mask on), Jesus doesn’t hesitate to move toward the thing that threatens him. Knowing what awaits him in Jerusalem, and committed to his mission, Jesus goes toward Jerusalem. But, lest we think that Jesus is going there to get everyone straightened out, note the third thing he says:
 
How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...
Jesus seems to have sympathy for Jerusalem, that wayfaring character in this story. Not only does he not refuse to go, and not only does he not call them jerks when he gets there, he seems to mourn their waywardness.
 
Jerusalem, as a character, is complex: a holy place and a hot mess, all at the same time; a threat to Jesus and the object of his love, all at the same time. In other words, and here’s the punchline, it’s us. Holy and a hot mess, a threat and the object of Jesus’ love.
 
In its vulnerability, Jerusalem lashes out, making itself more vulnerable. And, in response, Jesus comes near, opens his arms, and draws us under his wings. And, ultimately, on the cross, opens his arms even further, embracing all, and setting the whole creation free.

Matthew 6:19-34
Pastor Greg Schaefer, University Lutheran Church
 
For years, this gospel text has kind of annoyed me. Not all of it; just the part about not worrying. Has that advice ever helped you? You're all worked up about something, and someone tells you not to worry, and you think, “Why did not I think of that?” I don’t mean someone saying, "Oh, don’t worry about it” when you make a small error. Jesus is talking about some pretty heavy stuff here: what we will eat, or drink, or wear, and we might add worries about work, or school, or family, relationships. Some of you have heard me say, (and I don't want to brag) that when it comes to worrying, I'm pretty awesome at it. So I don't know if this text a lot annoys me as much as it eludes me; Why doesn't it work? I realized this past week that it's probably partly because I've been hearing it incorrectly.
 
There's the story of two people playing golf, and one persons ball goes off into the rocks. She takes a club, takes a big swing, there are rocks flying everywhere, the bottom of the club is all scratched up. Her partner asks, “What club did you use?" She says, “Your 4 iron!” The point here is that I’m not going to treat poorly something I care about and have invested in.
 
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel lesson. First, be sure to hear that in the right order; it doesn’t say where your heart is, there your treasure will be. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. It occurs to me that, despite the seemingly-involuntary movement of the heart toward the treasure, there’s also some volition, becuase I can control where my treasure is. And that’s about more than just gofl clubs – If I want my heart to be with a particular place or cause or organization, and I know that my heart follows my treasure, I can start with the treasure and use it to train my heart.
 
The health department says I should eat 2 servings of fruit and 3 servings of vegetables every day. They say it will improve my health and my shape and my spirit. But, I don’t do it. I know I should, but I just don’t.
 
Have you ever tried to think your way into a new practice? Waiting until something makes complete sense before doing it? I don’t find that to be very effective for me.
 
There’s a principle in Christian theology: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. It means that what we pray is what we will believe. That prayer shapes belief, and liturgy shapes theology, not the other way around. Put simply: We learn by doing. The phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi takes it a step further: what we pray shapes what we believe which shapes how we live. In other words, we don’t think our way into a new practice, but we practice our way into a new way of thinking.
 
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. It’s as if Jesus is saying, Lead your heart to where want it. If you want it to be with your family or church or society or justice or education of whatever, it will follow your treasure, so lead with that. Practice your way into a new way of thinking.
 
What if we were to hear the don’t worry passage the same way? Lead with what you can control; not your thoughts but your practice. Live as if you’re not worried, even if that doesn’t fully make sense yet. Live as if God’s providence and mercy are enough for you. Strive first for the Reign of God, Jesus says, which, by the way, also is like that – live as if it already is and we live it into being.
 
This is, after all, the way of God; As we learn from the story of the Prodigal, God lives as if the best possible thing is true, and treats us better than we deserve. A principle of the Reign of God is that there is enough – let’s live as if there is enough. There is grace and mercy – let’s live as if grace and mercy is all there is. There is justice for all – let’s live justice for all.
 
There is plenty about which to worry. But, it’s not going to solve anything. What can we do, how can we live, that makes a difference for the vulnerable and worried in the world and makes real the truth that there is enough in the world and that God's love is for all?
---------------
There were several extemporaneous comments that I made that I can’t remember now.

Wildfire Sunday in the Season of Creation 2018
Pastor Greg Schaefer, University Lutheran Church
 
“Was it smoky?”
 
That’s a question I find myself asking a lot lately as people talk about their summer trips. “Was it smokp there at Tahoe?” Was is smoky out there at Yosemite?” “Was it smoky up by Clear Lake?”
 
Fire is, of course, a part of the natural ecology. It clears undergrowth so that trees don’t have to compete with shrubs and so that the sun can reach the forest floor. It burns out disease from the ground and opens up pine cones so they can spread their seeds. Fire is a necessary part of the health of the ecosystem.
 
In scripture, fire is also an expression of God: to Moses in a bush that burns but isn’t consumed, in a rain storm as in today’s Psalm (29), in today’s lesson from Acts (the Pentecost story), fire represents a new beginning, refining, guiding (as when God’s people are led by a pillar of fire), Holy Spirit (Acts), and God’s power (Psalm). And, in today’s gospel, John the Baptizer promises a “bapt by fire” – actually, by “Holy Spirit and fire.” Scholars question whether this is a pairing of two positive things, a pairing of two negative things, or one of each – Don’t worry; G is coming with Holy Spirit, but beware because God is also coming with fire. The latter seems to be the majority opinion, especially when we consider that, in Matthew, fire tends to mean judgment. Well, it doesn’t ‘tend to’ – it does. John the Baptizer seems to be announcing two coming choices.
 
California has had 6390 wildfires this season, which have burned 1.5m acres, which is more than 2300 square miles. If you add up the area of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San FRnacisco Counties, that still isn’t 2300 square miles. This season saw the largest single fire in modern Califronia history, and the largest complex fire in our recorded history.
 
Partly because of a little critter called the Bark Beetle, there are a record 129 million dead trees in California, fueling these fires. But, lest the Bark Beetle take all the blame, note that drought has also contributed to these 129m dead trees. This season has been dry and hot and, as a professor from across the street (Stanford University) warns, because of climate change, we can only expect fire seasons to get worse. These fires are fueled by climate change.
 
Fire is an expression of nature; it’s an expr of G; and it’s an expression of us. California’s wildfires are not similar revelations or judgments of God as we see in the scriptures. It’s important to me that you hear that, so I’m going to say it again. California’s wildfires are not similar revelations or judgments of God as we see in the scriptures.
 
The image of God as a tyrant has not helped us to be more knowing, trusting, or loving of God. The idea of “hell” and a quid-pro-quo God is based more on Dante’s Divine Comedy than on scripture. (One theologian says the Divine Comedy is good poetry but not very good theology.) The word “hell” isn’t mentioned in the Torah, isn’t mentioned in Paul’s writings, isn’t mentioned by John. Most of what-we-call the Eastern Church Fathers, and many of the Western mystics, didn’t believe in a literal hell.
 
Why do I mention all of this? Because images matter. They shape us, all of us, as theologians. (All of us are theologians. If you have a word to say about God, you are by definition a theologian.) The images we have, even in the backs of our minds, shape our theology. Bad theology can lead people to say things like hurricanes or fires or AIDS are caused by God to punish people. And, I feel obligated to say out loud to you that that is not true.
 
I had to write a paper in seminary on an atonement theory and I chose something called apocatastasis, a word from a little-referenced passage in Acts (3:21) that is usually translated “universal restoration” – God drawing all things into wholeness and reconciliation. The idea of a geographic hell is destructive, compared to the restorative idea of the Gospel. God is about the business of restoring the creation, not destroying it. Are there things the Reign of God wants to destroy? I think so. Just like there are things that, to use that extreme image, we’d like to destroy about ourselves. (I’m thinking of the weeds and the wheat growing together in each of us.) But, the God revealed to us in Christ is not a God of wonton destruction, punishment, or disregard for the Creation.
 
So, why are we?

Just a little smudge of chocolate –
hot fudge at the corners of a child’s mouth,
            sitting on the front porch;
a smear of cocoa powder
on the brow of the candy-maker;
chocolaty fingerprints
on a red, heart-shaped box.
 
They are signs of love –
a child’s love for sugary treats,
the confectioner’s love of his work,
a lover for her beloved.
 
They are signs of ritual – prompted
by the sound of the ice cream truck and kids running,
or by the alarm clock: time to get up and make more candy,
or by a date on the calendar, appointed for celebrating love.
 
They are signs of abundance –
the spare time to sit and eat a treat on a warm day,
the generosity of spirit to hand-make sweet confections,
the love expressed in word & deed in honor of St. Valentine.
 
And, they are also signs of finitude –
            candy doesn’t last forever,
some love doesn’t either,
even the hot fudge
will be wiped from the child’s mouth by bedtime.
 
Love.
Ritual.
Abundance.
Finitude.
 
Just a little smudge of ashes –
mixed with tears and ocean water
as a family stands solemnly;
mingled with water and sweat,
running down a firefighter’s brow;
            shaped into the sign of the cross,
pressed on your brow by the imposer’s thumb.
 
These are signs of finitude –
a life returning to ashes, a being returning to dust,
buildings and belongings reduced to ruble and ash,
Palm Sunday’s fronds put to just one last use.
 
They are signs of abundance –
scattering the remains of a departed loved one,
having enough belongings that a fire is possible,
faith, however weak or strong, that leads us to this place.
 
They are signs of ritual –
of honoring life,
of the cycles of grief,
of the liturgical year.
 
And, they are signs of love –
the love of a family for its departed one,
the love of a firefighter for protecting her community,
the love of God for God’s people,
in times of sweetness and of ashes.
 
Finitude.
Abundance.
Ritual.
Love.

Chocolate and ashes.
Today is a day for both:
Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day.
 
We celebrate love and romance and the sweetness of life,
even as we remember our mortality and finitude and brokenness;
And God’s abundance and love in each.
 
At first it seems paradoxical:
celebrating love and abundance
and death and mortality
all on the same day.
 
There is something odd about it,
even comical
(maybe not as comical as Easter on April Fool’s will be,
but comical) and the comedy is in the tension.
 
When I finished college, someone gave me this journal.
It’s called “Good Days” & if you flip it over, it’s called “Bad Days”
…as if they are two different things.
If I every have a purely good day, or a purely bad day, I’ll write…
 
But, if we’re honest,
isn't this day, and isn’t this book,
emblematic of every day of our lives?
 
Doesn’t the book have just as many pages
going this way as this way?
Don’t we “eat chocolate” and “wear ashes” every day,
even sometimes at the same time?
Don’t notes of consolation and desolation
sound together in one chord?
 
It’s Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day;
How perfect –
because we never just live one of these days at a time.

No one’s life is all chocolate.
Not even that person who you’re sure has it all together.
You know who I mean – you’re thinking of someone.
Sure it looks that way from the outside,
but no one’s life is all chocolate.
 
And, no one’s life is all ashes.
It can look that way, too –
our own, or someone else’s.
But, entire people, entire lives, countries or continents,
can’t be written off as inferior.
 
Our lives are a blend of both.
Weeds and the wheat grow together.
Sheep and goats graze together.
Wheat and chaff get harvested together.
We are both; our lives are a blend of each.
 
The good news is that God has joined us,
in our sweetness and in our bitterness,
in our life and in our death.
 
God’s love is abundant,
Jesus’ life is laid down and taken up,
and, with it, our lives are taken up, too.
 
As we enter into these 40 days,
we enter a wilderness,
we undertake a journey,
we embark on a pilgrimage.
 
It does not lead us to salvation.
It does not lead us to 100% Good Days,
It does not even lead us to God,
as if God were somehow someplace else.
 
God is already within.
Calling and nudging, feeding and healing.
This Lenten journey is in part a journey within,
to attend to the Spirit of God within us,
but not to stay there –
it’s also a journey beyond ourselves,
to bear witness to God’s grace and justice for all creation.
 
As we receive ash on our foreheads today,
let us feel the grit and the dust
of our lives and the valley of the shadow of death.
 
But, let’s also know that we don’t walk through that valley alone;
let’s taste in our mouths the sweetness of another day G has made,
and let us know the presence of God who journeys with us,
dwells with the sheep,
calls us to abundant life.
 
And, when these 40 days are over,
and we celebrate resurrection
by biting the ears off of a big chocolate bunny,
let’s not forget feeling of ash on our forehead –
ash that we will receive today in the very same spot
where many of us were marked
with oil at our baptisms and
with the words:
“You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and
marked with the cross of Christ forever.”
 
When you look in the mirror tonight
and wash the ash from your forehead,
you don’t wash off the reminder of the fragility of your life,
the commitment to repentance on our Lenten journey,
or the honest reflection on our brokenness.
 
But neither do you wash off the cross by which you’ve been sealed:
            the cross of Christ’s death and resurrection,
a symbol of God’s grace and abundance,
a reminder of Her abiding presence,
an emblem of His blessing and love.
 
Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day are not incompatible;
in fact, they are kind of essential to each other.
 
The paradox is beautiful.
The two are one:
The finite and the infinite together.
 
May that glimpse in the mirror
set you on a path of paradox for this season of Lent:
May you awake to God’s presence within you
even as you rest in it securely around you.
May you share the goodness and justice of God broadly,
even as you receive it as God’s personal gift to you.
May you acknowledge your brokenness,
            even as you revel in your belovedness.
May you taste the chocolaty sweetness of your abundant life,
            even as you feel the gritty dust of your messy life.
 
And, may you hear and tell the truth:
the truth about yourself
– blessed and broken,
and the truth about God,
– gracious and merciful,
   slow to anger,
   abounding in love.
 
Our bodies and lives are broken and fleeting like dust,
but life is abundant and eternal with God.
 
Amen.

The liturgical calendar calls the last Sunday before Lent “Transfiguration Sunday,” because the usual text for this day is the story of Jesus taking some disciples up the mountain and getting all shiny, them wanting to stay, and the whole crew heading back down the mountain to people in need. (I’m paraphrasing.) But, as we are using the Narrative Lectionary, and John’s gospel doesn’t have a transfiguration scene, we get this story instead – a story of Jesus, who calls himself the light of the world, healing a person who has been blind from birth.
 
Under the heading, “No good deed goes unpunished,” note the reactions in this story: disbelief, anger, blame. Today, I want to focus on the question of “blame” that comes up right away in the story, and on a few extra words inserted into this chapter when it’s translated into English.
 
“Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” This was a typical ancient worldview: no one gets anything other than what they deserve, so someone sinned that this man was born blind.
           
I read a story this past week about a priest in Atlanta. He’s lived in the US since he was 2, when his parents brought him here from Mexico. He’s one of 690,000 people who were brought here as kids, and who are protected by DACA – protected for now, at least. I couldn’t stop thinking of that story when I read the question, Who sinned, this man, or his parents?
 
Jesus says something powerful: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” He upends that ancient worldview, which was present even in 1st lesson (Exodus 20:1-6), that God punishes multiple generations for sin. He doesn’t lodge the blame somewhere, but instead deals with the reality in front of him – the blind man.
 
But, the NRSV inserts a few words in English that change the meaning of this passage. Look with me at verse 3: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me…” But, when we read this in its original language, this is what it says: Neither this man nor his parents sinned. So that the works of God might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me…” [I reviewed this a couple of times to make sure everyone could see it.]
 
Jesus didn’t search for blame or cause or anything else. Rather, he said, ‘Given this reality, given this blindness, now what? What can God do from here?’ Jesus starts from here, from now, with the situation right in front of him.
 
What is your blindness? What do you or others look backward to see? Where do you place blame? “I wouldn’t be in this position if I’d only…” or “She brought this on herself…” [I can’t remember what else I asked here.]
 
Imagine now Jesus kind of coming to your defense; ‘Let’s forget about that; Let’s start over from here.’
 
One of the things I like about Mardi Gras Sunday is the invitation to drop the masks – masks we put on ourselves or masks put on us by others and that pretend this is who we really are. [Again, I can’t remember what I said next.]
 
One last thing: the weird story of Jesus and the mud – Jesus spits in the dirt, makes mud, and rubs it in this guy’s eyes. I think we can all agree that that’s kind of weird. But, remember how this gospel begins? (“In the beginning…”) What other book starts like that? (Genesis) One of the ways we read John is in parallel with Genesis. So, what happens with dirt in Genesis? (Creation). John seems to be suggesting a new creation for the man born blind. He is reborn like Nicodemus, given living water like the woman at the well. They start again, anew, from right where they are.
 
Today, and every day, even in Lent, we are invited to celebrate the new creation, the water, the light, the life, the love of God for us and for all who once were lost but now are found, who were blind but now can see. Amen.
 
 
---------------
 
There were several extemporaneous comments that I made that I can’t remember now.

[The Children’s Sermon today picked up on the Sunday School text of the Feeding of the 5000. I asked the kids to tell me the story. Then, I asked them how much Jesus charged everyone when they had eaten. I expressed shock when they said it was free. I asked if it would be like that at a store. One boy said, no because the store owner has to make money, but Jesus just wants everyone to have enough and to love each other. Knowing I wasn’t going to improve on that, I prayed with them and sent them off.]
 
 
Hardly any people I went to college with had heard of Reformation Sunday. It’s not all that surprising, I guess, considering I went to a Roman Catholic college so it wasn’t exactly a major feast day.
 
The Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther proposed a conversation intended to lead to the reform of his antagonist – the Roman Catholic church of his day, a church in which he was a priest and a professor. The conversation centered largely on Indulgences: payment that could be made to the church to hasten the salvation of oneself or others. Besides the economic problem (the Vatican was in the midst of a rather large building program at the time, and some of the money was certainly coming from people who could scarcely afford it), Luther had a theological problem with indulgences; one that is summed up this way: If the pope has the power to free people, he should just do it. Because, as Luther knew, the grace of God is free.
 
[As our presiding bishop elect reminds us,] Lutherans came to this continent in waves of European immigration in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. English was almost always a second language for Lutherans in part because they gathered in ethnic enclaves. A Norwegian Lutheran marrying a Swedish Lutheran was about as close to scandal as people were willing to get. Lutherans were aliens.
 
Over the last 25 years as the ELCA, and for centuries before that, Lutherans’ gradual assimilation into American culture has led us to blend in now. It’s hard to walk down the street and spot a Lutheran just by looking. We blend right in.
 
And I think there is some danger in that. I wonder if we have taken off to much of the edge of the Reformation.
 
My nephew Liam, about whom you’ve heard much over the last 4 years, has a song he likes to sing: “Everything is opposite on opposite day.” I won’t sing it for you because it will get stuck in your head and annoy you. But, the gist of it is that everything is opposite on opposite day, things just happen in the opposite way.
 
So much of our Lutheran theology, so much of the gospel itself, is (in a word), opposite. The Lutheran voice is not a generic Christian or a generic Protestant voice. Rather, it’s a voice of opposites. It’s a voice that says the gifts of God are free, despite any indication to the contrary. In a culture of glory, we point to the cross. We are simultaneously saints and sinners. We find life in the Resurrection as well as in the Cross. We know that nothing we can do will make God love us less. And (sometimes harder to believe) we know that nothing we can do will make God love us more.
 
It is easy for us to forget that we have more to contribute to the conversation than beer brats and Lake Wobegon and lefse. While culturally significant, this list of foods should at least include frybread and pho and papusas. But, more importantly, our distinctive Lutheran voice is not cultural. It’s not cultural. In fact, it is countercultural – because it’s theological. It speaks of the Christ whose truth makes us free.
 
I have a friend new to the area who asked me what it’s like to serve a congregation in a part of the country where even the “spiritual but not religious” crowd is in the minority. I said that I think it’s probably a lot like what the early Christians experienced. Or, in the words of Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention, we can no longer pretend we are a moral majority. We are maybe a prophetic minority. Or, to put it another way, we are aliens.
 
I have this Keep Tahoe Blue sticker on the door to my study. It reminded me of this Keep Tahoe Cardinal sticker, which I picked up from the Stanford Snowboarding and Skiing group. And that reminded me of a conversation Vicar Maggie and I had a while ago about a movement called Keep Church Weird.
 
I admit, at first, I didn’t really like that idea. Why should church try to be weird? Between the language and the clothing and the music, we are already pretty set apart from the world around us. Then, I realized, maybe that’s the point. Besides what we say and wear and sing, this is different. I’m reminded of Flannery O’Conner’s take on today’s Gospel text: You’ll know the truth and the truth will make you odd. The truth we deal in is grace, mercy, peace, love, forgiveness. And, if those don’t make us odd, I don’t know what will.
 
In today’s gospel, Jesus offers freedom to people who respond by saying, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone.” But they had. And they were. And we have. And we are.
 
Martin Luther’s antagonist was the Roman Catholic Church of his day. The antagonist of our day is the sin of a society, a workplace, a school, our selves – whatever says to us, “You are what you produce, what you achieve, what you accomplish, what you earn.”
 
And, to that antagonist, we bring reform. And Good News.
 
My friend Aimee picked up her kids at school this week and the teacher gave her three donuts as they left, one for each child. Aimee promised the kids they could have them after their quick stop at Walmart. She says the kids were not “in any way human” for the thirty minutes they were in there. But, when they got to the car, there were the donuts. And she gave them to them with these words, “You are not receiving these donuts because you’ve done anything to deserve them, but because I promised, and I love you, and I’m keeping my promise.”
 
To the antagonist of our day, who would have us believe that our worth is a commodity that can be earned, we are Reformers – you are Reformers – shifting the paradigm, saying something different, changing the rules, sharing the Good News that grace is not for sale but is the free gift of God – not because we earn it, but because God loves us and God keeps promises. You are worthy because you are. You are loved because you are. You are valued because you are.
 
That’s truth that makes us odd.
 
And it’s truth makes us free.
 
Amen.

A well-known astrophysicist (who happens to be in the room) once told me that, as long as we have a planet that spins, there will be storms. Storms are the natural consequence of physical forces affecting the Earth.
 
But before people knew that, before they knew that the movement of the earth and the energy of the sun affect the earth, people personified that natural phenomenon. Zeus, Thor, Indra – these were gods of the storm. Thunder was the sound of Thor’s chariot wheels; Lightning was thrown from the sky, and for the Canaanites, whose storm god Baal was also the god of fertility, the rain was seen as seed fertilizing the female Earth.
 
The Hebrews, our ancestors, believed that God was made known through nature – and any of us who has been out in a storm might believe that they may have been on to something. A thunderstorm is a popular image to reveal God, in part because it makes use of many senses – our eyes, our ears, even our sense of fear. In today’s Psalm, the G of Israel’s History, of the Exodus, of their Freedom, is seen in the power of a storm coming across the desert.
 
Fertility, blessing, wrath, unrest. Even today, people make lots of associations with the weather.
 
Some of them are primitive: some saying publicly that Hurricane Katrina was punishment to the people of New Orleans for the way they live. Or the people sitting next to me at the Churchwide Assembly of 2009 in MPLS, where they suggested that the tornado that hit the building was a result of the vote on . . . . .
 
Some point out the dynamic role between weather and life. The civil war in Syria may have its roots in a drought in that country. Could we be witnessing the first war caused by climate change?
 
Still, some of us see the majesty of God in a storm moving across desert.
 
Ecologists tell us that storms are necessary for the renewal and refreshment of the Earth: ecosystems are nourished, life is sustained, the Earth is regenerated. But, if we presume that Jesus is not aiming to calm majesty and refreshment and regeneration, then we need another image to discern what’s going on in today’s Gospel text.
 
Controlling Nature is a funny idea to me. It’s not so funny that we don’t talk about it, but just funny enough ath it sounds odd to me. I’ve been noticing the language used when talking about the floods in Colorado and the fires in Yosemite and on Mt Diablo. Words like control and contain. It’s as if we try to separate ourselves from the Earth, putting ourselves over the creation.  
 
But we aren’t separate. We are linked/connected/dependent. There are things we can control – our habits, our use of the Earth’s resources, our CO2 footprint. And there are things we can’t control. And storms can be a symbol for those things – the things we find overwhelming. In today’s Gospel, a squall comes, the boat is swamped, the disciples are overwhelmed, and Jesus is awakened because his followers are afraid.
 
What are our Storms? The storm for a couple I met last Friday was where to live while the husband is on dialysis. For some people, it’s being unemployed. For some, it’s being overemployed – occupied by more things than we actually have time for. For some, it’s our family. For some it is a constant feeling of inadequacy, and the attendant fear and anxiety. Today’s gospel reminds us of the power of God to quiet storms, and there’s something remarkable in how.
 
On Sept 11th, Death Certificate #1 in NYC went to a Franciscan priest named Michael Judge, a chaplain with the FDNY. With rescuers who were responding that morning, he went into the storm that was the North Tower – he went into the storm.
 
Jesus’ calming of the storm is the preface to three healing stories, and all four of these are prelude to Jesus’ commissioning of the twelve. Could it be that this is the ministry Jesus is calling them, and us, into? To be woken up, to heal the world, to protect the Creation, to serve the neighbor.
 
But, note that Jesus first ministers to the 12 himself. Jesus, too, has entered into the Storm, he sees it from the inside, from our side. And not just the squall on Galilee’s lake that day; Jesus enters into life, into the world, into the storm of what it is to be a human being. And, from there, the sea is quieted, the destruction is forestalled, by the power of his word, bringing the Reign of God.
 
While storms in nature may inspire us by their beauty and majesty, let us remember that they can be destructive, like those that rage around and within us. The nature of the God revealed in Jesus, the power of Jesus’ presence in the world, is to calm the storms of injustice and desperation and death. Jesus speaks a word of life and of peace, calming Anxiety, reversing Injustice, bringing the healing of God, who brought order to the chaos, hovering over the waters at creation, and who comes to us and to all amid the storm.

Yesterday, my sister told me that my nephew Liam asked her: Where does God live? It reminded me of a time, when I was a few years older than he is now, when I asked my Uncle Paul where a particular tree on our ranch came from. “From a seed,” he told me. “Where did the seed come from?” “From another tree.” “Where did that tree come from.” If you’ve ever been around an inquisitive child, you know that this could have gone on forever. So, eventually, Uncle Paul said, “It came from God.” Oh. Ok.


The creation story in Genesis was written while God’s people were in exile, at a time when they were asserting their identity and theology as a people amid the hegemony of the Babylonians and Persians. You can imagine the scene – sitting around a fire when a child breaks the silence: “Where did this all come from?” Someone else, probably the eldest person in the group, begins to tell a story. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless, a void. God hovered over the surface of the deep. On the first day, God separated the Light from the Dark. On the second day, the water above from the water below. On the third day, the Earth produced life – all kinds of plants.


Note the difference here from the 5th and 6th days, when God says the water and the land should bring forth animals and then God makes animals. Here, in verses 11 and 12, God says the earth should bring forth life and the earth brings forth life. It has agency – it is a partner in creation. [Note, too, that the creation of humans on the 6th day is not so much the climax of the story as it is a weird plot twist. But, that’s for another time.] Today, I want to call attention to the God’s speaking. God’s creative action happens with a word.


In the lesson from Romans, Paul takes Genesis a step further: “God’s Eternal Power and Divine Nature are understood and seen in what God has made.” In other words, Creation is a Faithful representation of and witness to Who God is. Not only does the fact that God created tell us something about God, but what God created also reveals God to us.


I read something yesterday that offered for pondering this distinction: When we destroy something created by humans, we call it vandalism. When we destroy something created by God (like a forest or a river), we call it progress. Paul, in writing to the Romans asserts that autonomy (self-law), or the failure to recognize God as God, is the heart of the human dilemma. Carl Jung puts it another way: The worst sin is unconsciousness, by which he means not recognizing the Oneness and the Wholeness of which we are a part.


Have you ever had a dream where animals or objects can talk? Where one person turns into another person? Where one place turns into another place? Dream-work suggests that this is a window into what our minds know deep down – that there is one current flowing through the multiple layers of life. That one person is another person, that one place is another place, etc. That it’s all connected.


Maybe you’ve felt that Oneness. I have. I think it’s what I started to feel that day on the Ranch with Uncle Paul and the trees. I’ve felt it in the woods. At the ocean. In the desert. I feel it when I’m outside and barefoot – just half an inch closer to the ground, yet so much more directly connected. Dana [an astrophysicist] probably feels it when he looks into space. Nathan [a neurobiologist] probably feels it when he looks into the human body. Carol [a teacher] probably sees it in the mind of a child.
 
Today’s Gospel is John’s variation on the Creation story: John 1:1-14. In the Beginning, John says. That is, before God spoke through Creation, before the creative word was spoken, before light and dark and waters and land and plants and days – before all of that, in the very beginning was the LogoV/Logos, the very Word of God, the expression of what God has to say. And, John tells us, that expressive / creative Word became flesh and lived among us in the person of Jesus. But note how the Word ‘dwelt’ among us: By tenting. We have neighbors who invite us into their Sukkah at the Jewish festival of Sukkot. It’s a temporary shelter – a tent – built in their driveway, built by Jews (in part) to remind them of the vulnerability of life and the temporary nature of existence. And it’s the same word John uses – the Word became flesh and tented among us. Jesus came as One vulnerable; and he tended, fed, healed, restored the vulnerable.


The children this morning in Sunday school learned the lesson of the Burning Bush, and two things come to mind regarding that text. One is that the bush, though burning, was unharmed – a fitting image for our touching the Earth lightly. But the second image is of that bush as a meeting place between the human and the divine. Moses is told to remove his shoes because the place he is standing is Holy Ground.


Yesterday, Gwen and I went over to Saint Mary’s College for a mass that kicked off the sesquicentennial year of the college. As I sat in that chapel, where I first sat 18 years ago, I realized that it, too, is a meeting place. I met some of my dearest friends there. I met the Christian Brothers there. I began to meet an adult faith there. I began to meet my adult self there. And I began to meet God in a new way.


The lessons today speak of God’s speaking; Speaking the creation into being; speaking to us through the creation, and speaking through God’s very Word, which came to dwell in the creation. These are meeting places. These are where we meet God. We meet God here in this place: in Word and in Sacrament, in community and fellowship. We meet God in prayer and service and contemplation. And we meet God in what God has made.


The Good News this morning is that the Finite bears the Infinite; that the Earth is alive, full of the presence of God and of God’s creative and redeeming Word. Every bush is burning, with the Living Presence of God. The answer to Liam’s question – Where does God live? – is: Take off your shoes! God lives in the creation, in me, in you, in each one, in every place. It’s all meeting place. It’s all Holy Ground.


Amen.

​July4th.
Apr15th.
Dec25th.
 
There are some dates that are more than just a spot on the calendar, dates the very mention of which has weight, gravity, and an aura. Dates that convey a deeper meaning. July 4 brings to mind the struggle for Independence. April 15 - Taxes, and out mutual responsibility toward each other. December 25th - the Incarnation of God in the world.
 
9 years ago today, “September 11th” joined that list of freighted, weighty dates. It was a day of attack, violence, and the worst kind of disunion between God’s creatures. Still, the very mention of it brings to mind tragedy, disharmony, fear, and even hatred.
 
These are too-common emotions. Too many days bring up these emotions for too many people. Mother Teresa said: Never has the  world had a greater need for love.  People are hungry for love. Pray. Pray that you might understand how much Jesus loved us, so that you might love others.
 
We’ve come here today to pray; to pray for ourselves, that the love of God would be made real in us; to pray for you and your life together; and to pray that love (despite what the world tells us is normal) would transform you, and us, and the world.
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There’s no shortage of Scripture passages about Love, and you’ve chosen to highlight some good ones today by having them read publicly.
Ecclesiastes [4:9-12] speaks of benefit: the benefit of two people – help, warmth, strength:  things that draw us into companionship in the first place.  1Corinthians [13:1-8]  speaks of the expectations of Love. And these are a pretty tall order!
 
Paul’s familiar words and even more striking in paraphrase:  Love sticks to it. It doesn’t have a swelled head. It’s not always ‘me first’.  It cares for others more than for itself. It doesn’t keep score. It takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth. It looks for the best in the other.
 
Paul reminds us what Love is and does because sometimes we need reminding! As well-intentioned as we are and as much as we might pray that the Love of God would be made real in us, the reality is that hman beings are not always patient, kind, caring, modest, and generous. Would that we were! If humans were always patient, kind, caring, modest, and generous, then September 11th would be just another spot on the calendar and your wedding would be the only association we make with this day.
 
But we aren’t. And it’s not.
 
Human beings, being what we are, don’t always take things in stride. Sometimes we are inclined to be First. Sometimes we want others to see Our Truth. And sometimes seeking the Best in Others eludes us. So, instead, September 11th is a day with an aura.
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In the Gospel lesson you’ve chosen for today, Jesus says we must receive the Kingdom of God as little child. Children have many qualities: tantrums, fits, wining, screaming, throwing things, etc. When we’re Adults, we call this, “difference of opinion” or “divergent vision.” Whatever we call them, we’ve all had our childish moments, when we’re most decidedly not our best selves. We’re not always generous, patient, kind, and al the rest. Even your beloved Pete, and even your beloved Christina won’t always be his/her best self.
 
But you already know that. Because you’ve been moving toward this day for quite some time. You’ll leave here today having made promises and signed a license, but you’ve been in the process of coming together as a family for years.  So you know each other’s habits and shortcomings.
 
Yet here you stand, ready to take each other as husband and wife. Because you committed, loving, caring people also know that, despite our childish moments, we are also capable of Childlike moments: moments of trust, of short-memory when it comes to being wronged, and of pure love. You take the wise counsel of 1 Corinthians, you know you’ll let each other down sometimes. But you also know that Jesus calls us to Forgive, to Recommit, and calls us to Faithfulness.
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So today, you will make promises and sign a license – AND you’ll publicly profess what you have for each other: Love – that is, patience, kindness, hope, Faith, and endurance.
 
And because you do that in our presence, September 11 will hereafter have for you and for us 2 auras, distinct in their dichotomy of how we respond to life. There will be the 9 year old aura of violence, enmity, and vengeance. And there is a new aura, born today in our lives: the choice for love, for forgiveness, and for re-commitment.
 
In a few seconds, we’ll go up these stairs to a Holy Moment. And I daresay it’s holy not because of where we are or what we are doing, but because of what this moment celebrates that’s already true: That you’ve chosen to commit to love for each other.
 
Surrounded by our love and affection for you, and the love of God in which and for which you were made, today you bind yourselves to each other in love and you set love  loose in your lives, asking God to transform you, your lives, and the world.
 
Today, you reclaim this day, saying “Anger and fear won’t have the last word here. They are cast out. Love and New Life are invited in to dwell and to stay.”
 
Today, the 11th of September; What a day!
 
Amen.