Depression and Hope

So I have spent most of the day in a funk. Both the ban on gay marriage/civil unions and the death penalty referrendum passed. The only thing that makes me feel a little bit better is that they didn't pass in my county. I'm pretty sure that the death penalty will not be made law as our new governor has promised not to do that, but the gay marriage/civil union ban is now in our constitution and that sickens me to think that we are limiting people's rightsjust because they either cannot get married or choose not to. (See sermon on marriage below.)

I am a bit hopeful that the country spoke loud and clear about who they wanted in leadership and what issues were important to them. I'm also hopeful after having lunch with some of the students here and seeing what the present and future leaders of our country have to offer. I'm trying to let the hope outweigh the depression, but I'm not sure that I'm being that successful. I'm praying lots and asking for God's guidance on next steps.

Voting

I went to the polls early this morning as my son woke us up at 6:15 a.m. As my husband and I walked down the street and turned into our polling place with Malcolm in the stroller, I got this tingling of pride and excitement that I was going to vote. I felt like a dork and then realized that it wasn't just that I was going to mark a few things on a ballot, but that I was doing my part to make the world what I think it should be and that we were bringing our son into the process at an early age.

There are big issues on the ballot, gay marriage and death penalty. I find my heart beating fast everytime I think about them because how these issues come out effects people around me. I don't believe that we should be in the business of killing people - we are not to be an eye for an eye kind of people, but a people who "Loves the Lord their God and loves their neighbor as themselves." We are to be a people who stand up for the rights of others rather than trying to restrict their rights.

God, be with us today as we vote that we may see the enormity of what we are doing. Guide us and give us grace to do your will in the world you have given us to care for and to nurture.

Saints, Kwame Gordon and Us

Saints are everywhere. In our chapel, we now have an icon of St. Francis and there are pictures and statues of him everywhere in this building. There are pictures of saints or references to saints everywhere in our church and in our culture. You may hear people talking of their “patron saint” which is a saint who has special affinity for that group and its members. For example, St. Francis is the patron saint of many things, but most widely known for being the saint of animals who need rescuing, of the environment, of families and of birds. When one prays, it is said that their prayers are considered more likely to be answered by their patron saint. There is a patron saint for just about anything. There are patron saints for bakers and bikers, for safe driving and for sports, for sore eyes and sore throats, for engineers and scientist, for musicians and for historians, for journalists and for librarians, for prisoners and for peace. There are 17 patron saints for students and 4 patron saints for colleges.

I was talking with my sister, who is not particularly religious at all, on the phone and told her that I had to go because I had to write my sermon. She asked what I was preaching on – and I told her it was All Saints’ Sunday and, so I was preaching on the saints. She said, oh, I have a story for you. My mother-in-law is in the midst of redoing her kitchen and is having a really hard time with the workers and the plans. So, I went online and sent her St. Thomas, the patron saint of builders and construction workers. She emailed me back and said that she had just gotten a $2000 credit on her bill because they ordered too much tile and she owes it all to my sister’s email and St. Thomas.

Why do we celebrate All Saints’ Day? Why do people pay attention to saints? What do saints have to do with us in our lives today?

We celebrate All Saints’ Day because in the early days the Christians were accustomed to celebrating the anniversary of a martyr's death for Christ at the place of martyrdom. They would gather at their graves to witness to the gospel and to commemorate their death. Because there came to be so many days that they were venerating saints and martyrs, they came to join all of them into one feast, which is now known as All Saints’ Day. This is the day that we celebrate, remember and honor all those who have gone before us. It is the day in which we pause and reflect, look back and remember those who have inspired us, those who have led our way, those who have lived lives of faith no matter what the cost. Saints were ordinary people just like us. They were people who lived and died, they had families, went to school, lived in communities, and they had to deal with every day things just like you and I do.

So what makes them saints? Robert Ellsberg says, “The saints are those who, in some partial way, embody - literally incarnate - the challenge of faith in their time and place. In doing so, they open a path that others might follow." Saints are those people who have lived their lives in a way that others are inspired and encouraged by their actions and their faith. One of my favorite authors, Joyce Rupp, says, “I think of “saints” as not only those women and men who have been canonized by the church, but all people whose lives reflect the goodness of God. Saints are not perfect people. They have their faults, and weaknesses, their struggles and difficulties…yet the saints are people of integrity. They have a central focus at the core of their lives [and that is] the love of God.” (Joyce Rupp, Out of the Ordinary, p. 32).

Saints are not just those who are put into a book of Saints, or put onto a calendar. Saints are also those in our own lives that have stirred us to become something greater and to go a little deeper into our lives with God.

Every All Saints’ Day, I carry with me in my heart all those who I know who have died. The list is long and it includes family members, friends and colleagues, and others that I have never met, but that have inspired me through writing, art, music or in how they have lived their lives. This year, I bring with me a young man named Kwame Gordon who was in my youth group in Pasadena. He was 16 years old when died on June 2 of this year as he was shot down in gang violence in Los Angeles. He was not a member of a gang, he was a young man of peace and life and laughter and love who got caught up in something bigger than him. He was quiet, he had lots of friends, he did well in school, and his death was senseless and tragic. His death rocked our community, especially the teens and young adults that had grown up with him. And his death reached farther than just those who had known him. Kids that hadn’t known him, or just knew of him, were hurt and touched by his death too. We had a gathering for all those who wanted to talk about his death and for those who wanted to grieve. What came up for most kids as they were talking and crying was their deep sadness that one of their peers was gone. One of them – had been shot and killed and for what? We talked. We cried. We sat in silence as we thought about Kwame and what he meant to each and every one of us in that room. At the end of the evening, one of the girls said that the best way to remember him and to help this not happen again was to carry his memory with us and to remember who he was and what he stood for in his life. So, we all lit candles before leaving and said aloud what we would remember Kwame for and how he had inspired our lives. As I remember Kwame, I remember his quiet faith and how he served his community in a variety of ways.

In a few moments, during the prayers of the people, there will be silence for you to add names of those who have died in your life. It could be a recent death, it could be a death that happened years ago. I invite you to name aloud those people in your life who have died so that they may be honored and celebrated here, today, in the midst of this community, in the midst of your peers and your faith community.

Whether we like it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known because when someone comes into our lives, they become a part of us. I find myself doing things and smiling because it is something my uncle would have done, or that my grandmother inspired me to do, or that my friend Mike taught me. We carry people with us in spirit because they have become a part of our soul. This is how people survive long after they have been gone. So I invite you to honor those who have changed your life just because they were in it. I invite you to name those who have died who have inspired you, given you courage, given you love, given you hope, or given you a gift in your life. The saints are people who help us find our potential and our direction on our journey. Let us honor them today and as our collect said at the beginning of the service, “give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all righteous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.”

Bartimaeus - Faith - Doubt

Sermon from 10.29.06

Bartimaeus, the blind beggar sitting on the side of the road said, yelled and screamed, until he caught Jesus’ attention, then said, “Teacher, let me see again.” People around him were telling him to hush, to keep it down, they didn’t want to disturb Jesus who was coming by with his disciples. But he persisted until he was heard.

What would it be like to be Bartimaeus? A blind man left to beg on the side of the road, waiting for money, waiting for someone to have compassion, waiting for anyone to care about him, to take mercy on him. In Jesus’ time, those who were handicapped were looked down on as the lowest of the low. No one was there for them, they had no one to care for them or even want to be around them. After all he had been through, he knew enough, that he had to get Jesus’ attention. What did it take for Bartimaeus to be healed - for him to see again? It took FAITH.

He says to Jesus, “My teacher, let me see again.” My friends, this could be something that any of us could say. We have all been blinded by what we choose not to see, we have been blinded by what the world doesn’t want us to see, and we can become blinded if we don’t look beyond our comfort zone. Bartimaeus was sitting in the street – he had been cast aside, and had to yell above the crowd to even get noticed and once he finally did, he asks to see again. Our blindnesses are many, money, politics, stress, not enough time, not looking deep enough, etc. We have to ask God to help us see, to help heal our blindnesses.

For Bartimaeus, all it took was FAITH. For us, it takes Faith.

Sounds simple enough, just have faith and you will be healed, your life will be made whole again. Jesus said, "Go, your faith has made you well." But what is faith?

Well, for some help on this, I turned to the good old dictionary - Websters says that it is "unquestioning belief, complete trust of confidence in a thing, deity, or person." To me this definition makes faith seem impossible because of the concise, absolute language. Faith is not impossible, but it does take work and it is not something that you get and always have. The only way to know faith is to experience it - and to experience that over and over again. Faith does not come easy, but it is not impossible. Bartimaeus' faith made him well, and it will do the same for all of us if we let it work and if we work at it each day.

So what does it take to work at your faith? For each person it is different, and for each person it is an experience that is lived.

In the movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there is a great example of faith. If you haven’t seen the movie, here is a brief overview. Indiana Jones and his father, Dr. Jones, are on a quest to find the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from at the last supper. It has been his father’s lifelong goal to have this relic. They reach the place where it is hidden, and discover that getting the grail will be more difficult than they thought. Dr. Jones has been shot and injured, so Indy must go on by himself to find the grail, because it is said to have healing powers and contain the key to eternal life. His father needs him to find this cup so that he may be healed. To get to the grail, Indy must pass three tests, going through a sort of maze. In this maze, he must become a penitent man who kneels before God, he must follow the word of God to move on to the next place and he must take a step of faith into the unknown. He passes the first two tests, but with time running out and with people chasing him, he has to summon all of his courage and step out in faith into a chasm that seemingly has no way across. On the other side of this chasm lies the grail. He takes a deep breath, and steps out to find that there is indeed a way across, it was just hidden from the human eye. His step of faith, lead him to the grail and led him closer to God.

Franz Werfel, a writer and a Jew during World War II said, "For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible." Faith cannot prove or be proven. It has to live, it has to grow, and it has to be lived out through doubts and struggles, through joy and belief. It takes faith to step out into the unknown, it takes faith to love and to live, it takes faith to serve, and like Bartimaeus, it takes faith to call to the Christ and be made well.

Faith is not easy to understand, but maybe it would help us all if we stopped thinking of faith as a noun and started thinking of it as a verb. It is a process not a possession. It is not something that you are born with and always have. It is something that you truly have to work for and work on. Faith is not being sure about where you are going, but going anyway. It is in our doubting and in our trusting that we come to discover faith. Belief is an element of faith, as is doubt. If we did not believe that we were going to make it from moment to moment in our lives how would our lives be? But we also must doubt and wonder about the future and the present and who God is and where God is in our lives in order to come to believe. Faith cannot happen without Doubt.

In a new TV show called, The Monastery, five guys go to live in a Benedictine monastery in the middle of New Mexico. Though watching a deeply religious group of men pray, sing, and walk the halls in silent reflection may not seem to make for good television, when you add a recovering addict, an ex-con, an aspiring priest, an injured Iraqi war vet, and a cynical paramedic, things get turned upside down for many of the participants – men and monks alike. Each of the five men are having a personal crisis and each is going there to supposedly find direction, to seek God, to find the faith that they have lost or that they have never found. Now, I’ve only watched one show, and it appears that some are having an easier time stepping out in faith than the others. Some of the men are constantly bumping up against the rules of the monastery, testing the monks, and seeing what they can get away with. They are testing and questioning and pushing because they are not ready to take that leap of faith. They are not ready to call out for help at least not yet. I think it will be interesting to see if they are all able to, at least at some point, take a leap of faith – even if it’s a tiny one.

I wonder if Bartimaeus ever doubted his decision to call to Jesus when he and the disciples came through. I wonder if he did not fear what Jesus would do and what may happen to him. Bartimaeus wondered and doubted just as we all do, but he believed and took the step forward. He took the step into the unknown and had faith in God, in Jesus, and in the Spirit. God did not hide from Bartimaeus and God does not hide from us. God is waiting for us to doubt and believe, God is waiting for us to go places that we have never been, God is waiting for us to leap from our comfortable places and feel the void in between so that we can learn and experience more of ourselves and our relationship with God. It is in the unknowing that we come to know, and it is in the experience that we become experienced. Faith will make you well, it will make us all well if we take the chance to explore and come to know ourselves and God in a new way.

Faith made Bartimaeus well, let God work in your life and see what happens. I have been surprised by faith before and I am sure that you have been too. I am convinced that the future will surprise us just as well. Faith in God is not easy, nor is it impossible. It is worth the struggle because within faith you will find more than what you thought. Doubt and believe. Step out in faith, and see what you might find.

All Saints'

I found the quote as I was doing sermon prep and wanted to share.

"The saints are those who, in some partial way, embody - literally incarnate - the challenge of faith in their time and place. In doing so, they open a path that others might follow."
- Robert Ellsberg