Don't Hold On: A Reflection by Fr. David

My son Aidan finished his last day of  high school classes on Wednesday. All the requisite paperwork has been completed, the library books have been returned, and he is good to go for graduation. The next time he has any school work to do, he will be in college. Like a zillion other parents before me, I am trying to get my mind around this, and I keep wondering how it all went by so fast. Adding to my bemusement was the gift Aidan gave to his English teacher on that final day. This is a person he has loved and valued as a teacher and mentor, and who is now pregnant with her first child. So Aidan chose some of his favorite books from childhood to give to her for her own child. These are books he cherished, books he thinks she will love reading to her son or daughter. They include such classics as Do Knights Take Naps?, The Caboose That Got Loose, and my personal favorite, Herb the Vegetarian Dragon. I must have read those books to him and his sister hundreds of times. And I loved it: I loved reading to my kids as much as they loved me reading to them. I haven't looked at those particular books in years, but I knew they were around, a link to a precious time in our life as a family.

And now they are gone.

When I heard he was going to give them away, I confess my first thought was, "No!" It wasn't that I had plans for them: I just didn't want them to disappear. But then I realized what a perfect gift that was, to share something rich and meaningful from his own childhood with someone he knew would value it and use it. So a source of fun, learning and bonding as been passed on to someone else. I do feel sad, but I am also thinking, "Yes: that is how it should be."

Giving away those books, watching my son finish high school, and preparing for the next chapter in our life as a family all touches something deep inside me. I keep thinking of Jesus on the day of his resurrection telling Mary Magdalene not to hold on to him. It's not that he didn't love her anymore or that he would no longer be involved in her life, but the nature of their relationship was changing. To know and love him in a deeper way meant letting go of the old, familiar relationship and opening up to a new one. It all makes sense when Jesus does it in the Bible. It's harder when I have to do it in my own life.

But I do believe that loving means not holding on, not trying to possess or control the ones we love. That is certainly the way God in Christ loves us: with open hands and open heart. My son is no longer a child, but I look forward to loving him as an adult. People dear to me have died over the years, but I look forward to loving them in the life to come. My understanding of God has grown and, I hope, deepened, but I look forward to loving God more fully even as my vision of God changes and expands. We are all in the process of becoming the human beings God calls us to be. That process involves real change and wrenching moments of letting go, but through it all there is one constant: the love of God in whom "we live and move and have our being." And that love we don't have to hold on to: it enfolds us and all those we love each and every moment -- and forever.

Connect. 5/21/17 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 14:15-21

So a few months ago I was at Brixx to get a gluten-free pizza for my daughter Emma. I ordered the pizza, and since it was the end of a long day, I ordered something to drink while I waited for it. I believe it was a Manhattan, and it was pretty good. I sat down to drink it, not really thinking about the fact that I was wearing my collar. I mean, that’s just what I do: maybe I should think about it more. At any rate, the moment I sat down, this guy at the other end of the bar made a beeline for me and started talking. He was drinking a club soda because he’s a recovering alcoholic. Not just that, but a recovering heroin addict as well. He’s been clean and sober for a while and owns a local business, but spends several months a year doing mission work in Haiti. He wanted to tell me about all this, and he showed me some photos. Then he told me that a friend of his was trying to get him to come to church, and he was seriously thinking about it and wanted to know my opinion. I didn’t get far into my answer before another guy came up to us. Big guy with a beard and huge grin on his face. It didn’t seem to faze him that he was interrupting our conversation. He just jumped right in, and his first words were: “Are you a priest?” Then he pointed at my drink and started laughing: “Can you DO that?” He wanted to know what kind of church I was at, and clearly felt like it must be a crazy one (little did he know!) — and then Emma’s pizza arrived, I gulped down the rest of my Manhattan, and bid them both a good evening.

While it was just a funny and quirky encounter, it touched on something quite profound. Can you be a recovering addict with a rough history and belong to a church? Can you be a father and haul person and enjoy a drink at a bar? Is it possible to be both fully human and fully connected to God? The answer may seem obvious — of course it’s possible — but we don’t always live that way. Our cultural stereotype of a churchgoer as a priggish, self-righteous do-gooder who never has any fun is a caricature, but it has some basis in reality. It’s tempting for us to come to church or to approach God in general with only our Sunday best on, all bright and shiny, focusing on our good deeds and our pious thoughts, our worthiness, while trying to bury the rest of us, the darker, broken, less-pretty parts of ourselves. We can be quite fragmented that way, and it can be hard to connect with our whole selves and to connect our whole selves to God.

This is exactly what Jesus does: he helps people to connect. He accepts and loves prostitutes, tax collectors, all sorts of supposedly sinful people for who they are. He gets that you can sell your body for money and still yearn to be close to God. He understands that even corrupt people working for the Roman occupiers had the potential for faith and goodness within them. So he hangs out with them. He eats with them. He helps them connect all the broken pieces of their lives. He loves them for who they are and his love makes them whole. And in doing so, he enables them to connect with God. Because only insofar as we are connected with our whole selves can we bring our whole selves to God and allow God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness to flow through us.

His disciples, a motley bunch of very fallible human beings, experienced this very thing. In Jesus, they found acceptance and wholeness. Through Jesus, they were connected to their full selves and to God. So imagine how they must have felt at the prospect of losing all of that. Today’s Gospel is set on the night before Jesus dies. He has told his friends that he will be crucified, and he clearly sees their fear and responds to their panic. He promises them that the Father will send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who will be with them forever, And then he says, I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you . . . On that day, you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you. In other words, he assures them, “You will still be connected: connected to yourselves, connected to me, connected to the Father. Always.”

I think one of the reasons that people struggle with faith is that they are not fully connected. Many people only bring parts of themselves to God, and invite Christ only into the “good” or “acceptable” parts of themselves, while ignoring the rest. And it doesn’t work. Our entire bring needs to be connected. So, for example, I’m a priest who tries to love and do good ministry. But I am also a human being with all sorts of desires, and a very imperfect person who makes all sorts of mistakes, who needs forgiveness and acceptance. It’s not just the priestly side that matters; it’s not just the “good” side that God cares about. And that kind of thing is true for all of us. So here’s my sermon: Connect. Allow God into your whole being. Really. Share everything with God, not just the “acceptable” stuff. Let the Spirit into every corner of your life and let Christ love you for who you really are. This involves far more than mere lip service: it demands daily, even hourly, acts of probing honesty and raw self-acceptance: “Yes, God, I’m afraid.” “You see, God, that I am angry or hurting or needy.” That is what ultimately leads to our transformation and growth. Thomas Keating once said: “The basic disposition in the spiritual journey is the capacity to accept all reality; God, ourselves, other people, and all creation as they are.” To experience that deep acceptance of ourselves is be connected and to know the love of Jesus Christ. And it is only by experiencing that love ourselves that we can ever hope to connect with others as they really are and, as Christ calls us to do, share that same love with them.

Skewed Judgement: A Reflection from Emily Rutledge

A few weeks ago my husband, Jay, was invited to judge a chili and beer competition in Scottsville.
Free food and beer… his immediate answer was YES.

We decided to make a day of it and thanks to bad weather and cancelled soccer practices the kids and I headed down to Hatton Ferry a little after Jay.  We were thrown back into the Dark Ages since there was no cell service and we could only use cash.  Our kids immediately learned an important lesson: figure out your family call and respond to it (also: it never hurts to carry a twenty in your wallet).  Our family has a whistle that we use in large groups to find each other.  We are basically pack animals just trying to make it in this world.  As we stood lost at the front gate we heard a familiar whistle from the hillside and found Jay, sequestered, with the other judges.  Since Jay is not a professional chili judge he had no clue that judging would mean he would not be able to enter the festival and walk around because his judgement may be skewed by booths and interactions and the such.  

As tempting as it was to keep a 3 and 5 year old sitting still on a patio we choose to enter the world of booths and people and skewed judgement.  We walked from booth to booth meeting people, trying chili, getting lots of fun swag (pink firefighter hats for the win!), and jumping in puddles.  I picked my favorite chili immediately. It tasted good but I LOVED the women making it and the ways they loved on my kids even more.  

My judgement was totally skewed.

After his high profile judging gig was done Jay and I reunited for a loop around the booths and some James River rock skipping.  We talked about the chili, which we liked most, and which he thought had won.  Then we talked about the fact that two of the judges had wives in the competition but they had no idea which chili they had made in an attempt to stay impartial.

We love an impartial judge.  We need an impartial judge.  It’s crucial in many arenas: traffic court, the Olympics, and school science fairs just to name a few.  Yet, when it comes to our ultimate judgement, I am grateful for a very partial God.

We are seeped in a world of condemnation where the rest of the world loves to act as authority on the choices in our lives.

If my child did drugs I would kick them out of the house.

If my spouse cheated on me there would be no second chances.

I will NEVER be caught dead choosing soccer over church.

There is no way yoga pants can be worn as real pants.  

My family would never eat those kinds of processed sugars.

I can’t imagine my child going to private school, we are supporters of public education.

We are surrounded by people who think they know but really have no idea.  We are also surrounded by a God who knows.  She knows the intricacies of our lives, our hearts, our decisions.  She knows the pain and the hope and the depth of love that resides in each of us.  Our God does not sit on a patio sequestered making judgments about our lives to be handed down over a loudspeaker. Our God stands in the mud with us, sees the struggle, knows our hearts and intentions.  Our God sees our capacity for change and redemption.  In Matthew’s Gospel he tells us to, “go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13). Our God IS mercy.

As agents of Christ’s love in the world we are called to mercy.  Mercy is much harder, more intimate, and heart-wrenching than sacrifice.  

Mercy is personal.  

Mercy is messy.  

It’s easier for us to sacrifice each other.

I would never…

I can’t believe they…

How could you…

When we are being Christ in this world we are being radical forgivers.  We are being fearlessly hopeful.  We are partial to the stories, the struggles, the belovedness of each and every person we encounter.  We turn from sacrifice to mercy.  From judgement to understanding.  From separation to unity.  When there is space and understanding for the complexity of our lives, our decisions, and our mistakes, there also becomes space for more love, abundance, and connection.  

Praying this week we are each brave enough to choose mercy.  

It's All a Question of Emphasis Sunday 5/14/17 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 14:1-14

I never said you slept through my sermon.

That is an interesting sentence, in part because it raises the astonishing notion that someone might sleep through a sermon — at some other church, of course! But what makes it even more interesting is that it is actually seven different sentences, depending on where you put the emphasis. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. I never said you slept through my sermon. If someone were not actually speaking these words and you were just reading them on a page, they would become a kind of Rorschach test that reveals as much about the one receiving the message as it does about the one sending it. Left to your own devices, how would you hear these words? Where would you put the emphasis?

That is significant when it comes to interpreting Scripture. The Bible contains many difficult passages: Old Testament verses describing the Lord’s wrath, for example, or God telling the Israelites to slaughter everyone in Jericho. And the New Testament presents plenty of challenges as well: people tend to squirm when we hear what Jesus has to say about divorce or when we  read that section of Luke where Jesus tells his followers that unless they hate their parents and their children, they can’t be his disciples. So there are plenty of passages to take issue with, but interestingly, the one I have received the most comments on over the years of my priesthood is the one we heard today. It comes up frequently because this text is often used at funerals. So both in planning for funerals and in talking with people at receptions after funerals, I have been asked about this numerous times. What troubles people is not the many dwelling places part: that sounds great. What gets to people is the next part: I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And at issue here is where people put the emphasis, because so many people hear this as, No one comes to the Father except through me or No one comes to the Father except through me. In other words, lots of people both inside and outside the church hear these words as exclusive, as a way for Jesus to keep people out of the Kingdom. And that’s not how I hear these words at all.

The focus on many dwelling places, of course, undercuts any exclusive reading of this text. But more compelling for me is the emphasis on the Father. Jesus is always emphasizing his Father. In this very Gospel today, he goes on to say that if you have seen him, you have seen the Father. That if you know him, you know the Father. That the Father is in him and he is in the Father. That he does the works of his Father. So when I read verse 6, I hear it as, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And as Jesus makes perfectly clear, his Father is love. Any approach to God that doesn’t reflect the love which Jesus embodies and teaches will fail because there is no other God but the God who is love.

In light of that, where do we put our emphasis? If it’s not on God’s love, it is misplaced. Think about interpreting the Bible, for example. If we read passages and conclude that they call us to exclude or hurt anyone, then we are certainly not hearing them or understanding them correctly. We are putting the emphasis in the wrong place. In his book, On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds in the history of the Western Church, writes: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” Jesus, God’s love made flesh, is the truth: only that which leads us to love comes from God.

And when we pray, where do we put our emphasis? On eloquence? On stringing together lots of words and then adding the name Jesus at the end as a kind of postage stamp to make sure it gets into God’s mailbox? In the Bible, one’s name reflects one’s essence, and the essence, the core, of Jesus is his Father’s love. To pray in the name of Jesus means to pray with that love. What makes prayer powerful is not using the name of Jesus as a magical incantation: it is praying like Jesus, praying with the Spirit of Jesus — because prayer is just the love of Christ flowing through us. The more we emphasize that love, the more we let that love flow, the more powerful our prayer becomes. Try it: it makes a huge difference.

But most importantly, in our daily lives, where do we put our emphasis? When you leave here today, when you wake up tomorrow morning, where will you be focused? If our faith is just a form of life insurance, if our emphasis is just on the future, on a heavenly state after we die, then we are missing out. We can experience God’s love, which is to say, we can experience the beginning of eternal life, in every moment of every day. If our emphasis is on the love of God which Jesus reveals, we can know it while we sit with a dying relative or while we do the most ordinary tasks. That love pervades everything and can make everything a form of communion. St. Catherine of Siena once wrote, “All the way to heaven is heaven because Jesus is the way.” Imagine everyone in this church focusing on that love on a daily basis: imagine how that would enrich our lives, as individuals and as a parish, and bless the community around us. Imagine a billion Christians around the world emphasizing not their differences or their institutions or their buildings or their rules, or judging outsiders, but emphasizing the love of Christ. Jesus was right: we could do far greater things than even he could do because his love, embodied in us and in all his followers, would reach into every corner of the world and make everyone’s life better. It’s all a question of emphasis. Put it in the right place, and it changes everything. God grant that it change us.

No Comparison: A Reflection by Fr. David

I was visiting with a parishioner today who is dealing with a significant medical problem. We talked, I prayed with him, and he ended our conversation by saying, "Many other people have it so much worse than I do."

It's the kind of statement I hear so often that I almost don't hear it. Almost. The fact is, though, that I am acutely aware of our inveterate tendency to compare ourselves with other people over everything, even including our ailments! Sometimes the results are innocuous, as in this conversation, but often they are actually harmful:

She's prettier than I am.
He's smarter.
She prays better.
He sings better.
Her gifts are more important than mine.
His talents are worth more than mine.
This family has a bigger house.
That family went on a nicer vacation.
Everyone else is happier than I am.
Everyone else is a better person than I am.

I have heard people say all these things to me. And I have seen how such sentiments can corrode a person's sense of self-worth and value. Whole books have been written on why people do this to themselves, but I just want to point out that God does not do this to us. God is not in the comparison business. When the disciples of Jesus argue about which of them is the greatest (at least they are up-front about their insecurities and their need for affirmation!), Jesus will have none of it. Each of them is called to love and serve in her or his own special way. They are all precious just by being themselves.

What if we actually believed that?

An old Jewish story recounts that as Rabbi Eliezer approached death, his students and disciples felt overwhelming grief. Eliezer had taught them so much about Torah and about living in right relationship with God and other people. They dreaded losing him, but they also knew that he could still teach them one more thing: what it means to die a holy death. And so one of his followers said to him: “Rabbi, you are about to come into the presence of the Living God and stand before the throne of judgment. Are you not afraid that you will be compared to the great ones of our faith, men like Moses and Elijah, and be found wanting?” The rabbi looked intently at the young man and said: “I do not worry that that the Holy One, Blessed be His Name, will ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ or ‘Why were you not Elijah?’ Rather, I am afraid he will ask me, ‘Why were you not Eliezer?’”

We have the opportunity of a lifetime to be ourselves, to be the person no one else can ever be. I find it so liberating to remember that. I don't have to be like this priest or that bishop. I don't have to worry that other people have gifts I don't have or defensively point out that I have gifts they don't have. None of us needs to engage in such nonsense! It's a waste of life and produces no good fruit. Far better to view ourselves the way God views us: as utterly unique and priceless individuals who are lovable just the way we are. What if we actually believed that? We would embrace and use our own gifts. We would rejoice when others embrace and use their gifts. We would all be blessed by each other even as we would all just be ourselves. And we would stop wasting all the time and energy we devote to comparing ourselves with others. Such is life in Christ: there is no comparison.

We are not the gate - Jesus is the gate. Sunday 5/7/17 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

John 10:1-10

Gender, sexual orientation, marital status, race, political affiliation, even unruly children, poor hygiene or incomplete paperwork are just some of the reasons that people have been given second-class status in the Church or told to leave altogether.  It’s the work of gatekeepers - those who decide who’s in and who’s out - that seem to abound in certain church congregations. 

It’s nothing new, gatekeeping is an age old problem.  In fact, today we hear Jesus declare twice that he is the gate, but it’s very important to understand the context of this statement.  Just before our reading today Jesus encounters a man who was blind from birth.  And his disciples asked him, who sinned?  (Because if something bad happens to you the common assumption back then and even for some people now is that surely there’s someone who’s done something wrong - someone has sinned.)  But Jesus sets them straight telling them that it has nothing to do with sin and gets to the business of healing the man.  And when this man who has never seen the light of day receives his sight, what is the response?  Not celebration, but investigation.  The Pharisees are on the case and waste little time before this man, along with his parents, is thoroughly questioned.  And after all is said and done, the man is driven out of the community.. 

What was going on in that story is that the disciples at first, and then the Pharisees even more so, are acting as gatekeepers.  They are trying to be the gate that determines what is right and what is wrong; what is sin and what is holy.  They seek to be clear about who is in and who is out.  And in their defense, my guess is that they thought that’s what God wanted them to do - to act like God had authorized them to be God’s gate.

But in response to this uncompromising and uncompassionate slamming of the door on one of God’s beloved, Jesus swings the door the other way by declaring, “I am the gate.”  Not just once, but twice.  “I am the gate for the sheep.”  Although Jesus was talking about sheep, everyone knew that he meant more than that.  For generations, Jewish prophets had referred to the Israelites as God’s sheep.  By declaring himself to be the gate for the sheep it meant that it wasn’t the Pharisees job nor the disciples nor anyone else’s, no matter how well meaning, to get in the way of God’s beloved.  Jesus is the one who decides who’s in and who’s out.  For Jesus is the true gate, a gate not of exclusion, but a gate of invitation, of love , of healing, of forgiveness through which the sheep, all the sheep - particularly the lost ones, like the blind man - receive abundant life.  

I don’t know about you, but I find it very easy to shake my head at the obvious ways that other people try to operate as God’s gate or at least God’s gatekeeper.  The disciples, the Pharisees, the church leaders who explicitly turn people away from their congregations - those are easy targets to condemn.  But what about us?  Do we ever get in the way of God’s beloved and become gates ourselves?   One time I witnessed a couple come into church (it wasn’t this church) and sit down in an empty pew towards the front.  Let’s just say they had a certain aroma about them.  Behind them sat another couple.  They were good, church-going folk, but once they got a whiff of these newcomers they got up and moved away to another pew.  It was painful to watch that gate door close.  But here’s something a little more subtle.  I wonder how many of us have thought about inviting someone to church and stopped, closed that gate so to speak, because we figured they probably weren’t interested anyway?  Or when you see someone in church, maybe a newcomer or maybe just someone you haven’t been acquainted with, but no doubt the Holy Spirit has done her work to get them here, do you go out of your way to extend a warm welcome and engage them in conversation or do you act like you didn’t notice them and close the gate in order to visit with a friend you haven’t seen all week?  And I wonder how many of us play the role of gate or gatekeeper for ourselves?  We decide that for one reason or another we should not have access to God.  That we, ourselves, don’t deserve God’s forgiveness or God’s healing or God’s love, 

No!  We are not the gate - Jesus is the gate. The gate through which we are given abundant life, a life not necessarily of things or comforts or success, but a life that is rich and meaningful, connected in love to God and others.  This abundant life is the vision Jesus has for us all.  This is why he came.  And this is why he invites us to come to him with no obstacles, no barriers, no gates put in our way.  It’s ultimately what our souls crave.

I know this is because you tell me so, and in particular I hear it often when we use a certain invitation to the Holy Eucharist that comes from the Celtic tradition.  Every time it’s said there’s at least one person who tells me how much it means to them.  I get it because it stirs my soul too.  It is Jesus’s invitation to all of us, no matter who we are, to come and enter more fully into God’s abundant life.  It goes like this, “This is the table of the Lord.  It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more.  So come, you who have much faith and you who have little.  You who have been here often and you who have not been here long.  You who have tried to follow and you who have failed.  Come, for it is the Lord who invites you and it is his will that those who want him shall meet him here.”  Come, for Jesus is the gate, Jesus is our gate and the gate is wide open.     

We All Deserve a Trophy: Reflection from Emily Rutledge

A common phrase I am finding myself using is ‘I deserve a trophy’.

For example:  my kids have been on a long streak of getting up in the middle of the night for no particular reason (they have reasons like ‘my blanket is not sitting right’ and ‘I had a bad dream about the library’ but I don’t consider those valid reasons to wake up at 1am).  Each night I have been getting up and helping them back into bed without losing my mind or screaming.  I deserve a trophy.   

A sweet friend of mine had surgery on her hip almost two months ago.  The recovery has been THE WORST and this week she went down from two crutches to one.  She’s done a million hours of PT and had to totally reorient her life to do all the things she still had to do while also being debilitated by pain and immobility.  She deserves a trophy.

At pick up a daycare this week one of the amazing teachers hurriedly walked into the classroom as I entered with a girl bleeding profusely from her nose (apparently this is a regular occurrence for this girl) and without one ounce of panic, frustration, or fear, dealt with a 3 year old gushing blood all over her.  She deserves a trophy.

At Dairy Queen on Monday I watched as two teenage boys spilled an entire orange soda and while they could have easily just walked away they spent ten minutes cleaning up every last drop.  Even the splatters.  Even the puddles under the table where it’s hard to reach.  Those boys deserve a trophy. 

Each of us gets out of bed each day, puts on clothes, and decides to live another day in this world where really really big things and really really small things are going to break our hearts and hurt our feelings and set us back.  We all deserve a dang trophy for getting out of bed.

But as you and I know:  no one is handing out these trophies! 

Where are the stinking judges who are supposed to tell us we are doing a really good job and give us a prize?  Why do we keep doing this hard stuff when often it seems like there is no actual reward. 

When I was young I thought that God was going to be that person.  That when I did something really stinking awesome or hard or ethical there would be some magical reward for me like I’d find a $20 on the sidewalk or win a radio contest or get into my reach school or have a really good hair day coincide with a really good outfit day (obviously the reward would be proportionate to the action). 

Let me share a hard truth I had to learn about that strong-held belief:  God is not a game-show host.  This life has no scorecard and on our worst days that is really comforting and on our best days that really annoying. 

When Christ came to be with us he gave us the reality check that the real prize; eternal life, community, and life-altering love was not handed out to a few winners but given to EVERYONE. There was nothing we could do to earn it… it was already ours.   Our life is just a reaction to that gift and no matter how we choose to react (with grace and kindness or with cruelty and hate) no one can take it away. 

This ultimate prize we all already have doesn’t make the day to day of existing any easier.  Life is still hard.  Daily we are surrounded by difficult situations that call for humble and grace-filled responses.  All of us are working really hard to do our best with what we’ve got.  I’m not yelling at my kids in the middle of the night, my friend is pushing through on one crutch, our son’s teacher is covered in blood and loving on toddlers, those boys are cleaning up soda with 1,000 napkins without complaining, and you got out of bed this morning even though you had no idea what today had in store for you. 

Two thousand years ago Jesus was literally walking around telling people he loved them and giving them hope.  We don’t get the Messiah.  Sorry… we were born too late.  What we do have is each other.  That means it’s our job to open our mouths and say the things.  It’s our responsibility to give the trophies.  At the core of each of us is a profound need to be seen and recognized. When we see the kind gesture or hard choice or extra effort of another and recognize it we open ourselves up to a deeper connection to each other and to the Holy.  When we allow ourselves to be instruments of encouragement and light for each other we give a gift better than that of a good hair day that coincides with a good outfit day… we are validated as worthy humans doing hard things.  A reminder we need to sustain us through the daily work of being human.   

Every Miracle Begins on the Platform of a Problem. Sunday 4/30/17 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Luke 24:13-35

Last Sunday I worshiped at a church in the Boston area. I know that parish pretty well because about twelve years ago I almost became their rector. I had been in the discernment process for a while, feeling strongly like the Spirit was leading me somewhere, and that particular church just felt right for a number of reasons. So much so that I thought, clearly, that was where I was supposed to be. I submitted all the paperwork, and had some good interviews. They visited me in Worcester. I really hoped that I would end up there. And then they chose someone else, someone they thought would be a better match. And I felt crushed, really disappointed. But last Sunday, with some people from that very search committee sitting in in the same pew I was in and the one behind me, I enjoyed the service but felt so happy that I had not been called to that parish. It hurt at the time, but I had also been around the block enough times in my life at that point to know Christ was with me and that the Spirit was moving somehow. And, indeed, it was shortly afterwards that I was contacted by this woman named Katherine Talley asking me to consider putting my name in for this church in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The rest, as they say, is history, and I am so glad I am here, but that episode came to mind as I sat with this Gospel. But to explain why, let me share one other thing with you. Years ago I heard someone say something that has stayed with me, something so obvious that I was embarrassed I had never noticed it before. In the Gospels, every miracle begins on the platform of a problem. Every one of them starts with a problem: that man has leprosy; that woman’s daughter is sick; they ran out of wine at the wedding; those crowds are hungry. The greatest miracle of all, the resurrection of Jesus, begins with the thorniest problem of all — death. So in this passage from Luke today, we have a miraculous appearance of Christ brought on by a problem: brutal disappointment. Looking sad and talking about the death of Jesus, these two disciples said, We had hoped he was the one. And this is where I connect with them. Just as I hoped for a different outcome in that search process, they had also hoped for a very different outcome than Jesus being crucified.

And we can all relate to this. Who among us has not had their hopes dashed at one time or another, if not many times? We all know what it feels like to be disappointed. We had hoped to land that job . . . we had hoped the chemo would work . . .we had hoped our loved ones would make better decisions . . .we had hoped for a happy occasion or a successful project . . . .  We had hoped — and it didn’t happen. It hurts to experience that ourselves, and I don’t know about you, but as a parent, it hurts even worse to watch my children experience it, to see them hope excitedly for something and to witness their disappointment and pain when it doesn’t come to pass. Crushed hope is a problem . . . but every miracle begins on the platform of a problem.

And whether we are dealing with bitter disappointment or any other problem, there is one miracle we should look for in this season of resurrection. And this road to Emmaus story illustrates it beautifully. These dejected disciples are trudging the seven miles out to this village, accompanied by this seeming stranger, talking to him, listening to him, eventually having dinner with him until, finally, they get it and realize that Jesus is right there with them. But, interestingly, even before they recognize him, they know he’s there, they know it deep inside themselves: Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road? On the platform of their problem comes the miracle of Presence, the Presence of the Risen Christ. And that same miracle is available to all of us, all of the time.

The last thing the Resurrected Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew’s Gospel is, Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age. The gift of the Holy Spirit is crucial in the New Testament and crucial in our faith today because the Spirit is the Presence of God in Christ with us now. That Presence will not necessarily alter our circumstances or free us from the challenges of living, but it changes everything, including the way we view all of our problems. As a priest, I have the privilege of walking closely with people who are dealing with everything from minor annoyances to catastrophic tragedies, and I see the same thing over and over. The people who thrive, who find meaningful and abundant life no matter what, are those who recognize that Christ really is present, with them always, even in the worst circumstances. And that Christ is always working for greater love, always working for fuller life. Always — even at the moment of death. Desmond Tutu, the great Anglican archbishop who fought against apartheid in South Africa and then helped to heal the wounds left over from it, was once asked whether, in light of all the intractable problems in our world, he felt optimistic. And he said, “Oh, no, I don’t feel optimistic at all. But I am full of hope.” As followers of Christ, we don’t blithely believe that somehow things will always get better in the future: rather, we know that Christ is here with us now, in the present, and that is the basis of our hope.

I imagine that all of us here face a whole slew of challenges and problems at this moment in our lives. But it all just primes us for the miracle of Presence. It took a while for those two disciples on the road to recognize Jesus, but even before they recognized him, they knew he was there. We know it, too. We don’t have to imagine it or talk ourselves into it. If there is anything clear in the resurrection narratives, it is that Christ wants us to know he is with us. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, is right now moving in you and in me to assure us of that Presence, praying within us in sighs too deep for words. Be open enough to trust that, and every problem we have will become a platform for Presence and a gateway to God.