Sermon at visitation to St Luke’s Cedar Falls, Iowa, 17 May 2015

I would hope that all of you who are coming for confirmation and reception, along with the rest of us who will renew our baptismal vows with you, know that you are carried by someone in their prayers. That is one of the greatest gifts of the Church to their Bishops. Can you imagine the jobs we would do, if you didn’t pray? 

Pastor Evans, the Methodist pastor of my youth, prayed for us all as young people.He upheld us to God asking one fundamental question: “Lord, what will this one do?” A strong sense of call and the faithfulness to be true to it were the two things that he desired for us before God. 

For St. Paul and his Ephesian brothers and sisters, it was enlightenment that the apostle prayed for most of all: “that your eyes might be opened.” He prayed that they may be given a spirit of wisdom to know the hope to which they were called — the riches of their inheritance in Christ and to know and release the greatness of God’s power through their lives. Paul linked that force with the same power by which the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. It was resurrection power. 

Of course, we have no idea how to understand such power. And yet for Paul it was an essential gift to be asked from God for the people of God. The Christian business is all about life changing business. 

These past few years we have been invited to think in fresh ways about the Kingdom of God. As the Church declines in apparent attractiveness, we must ask where to turn in response as a Church? To understand the Scriptures, there is a need for both our eyes and our hearts to be opened. These are times to look at Jesus and His mission in new ways and to see things we have overlooked or been too preoccupied to notice or realize that we need.

And yet, precisely because we know the fuller story of Jesus than was known to the first disciples who were living in it, we cannot underplay their faithful willingness to hear the call and obey the words of Jesus — especially when he told them to “wait.”

It would have been enough for them to get used to the comings and goings of the Risen Christ for those forty days after the resurrection. 

Luke tells us that Jesus rehearsed with them the story of God’s revelation and way of salvation for humanity. He taught them to open their minds and hearts to understand the way that Moses, the prophets and even the Psalmists, all of which pointed to the coming of Jesus. 

“This Jesus,” Peter would grow bold to say “God appointed to bring forgiveness to the people.” 

They were beginning to make the connection of famous and familiar passages in the story of Moses. For example, in the wilderness when He lifted up the image of a snake on a pole to draw away all the sickness inflicted by snake poison upon the rebellious Israelites, they heard differently the phrase: “When the Son of Man is lifted up, he will draw all people to himself.”

Or when they heard the passages from Isaiah about the Suffering Servant, by whose stripes we are healed, or the one born to a Virgin, or being called the Prince of Peace, the Counselor, the Mighty God – they made a different linking. They made the connection when the Psalmist referenced the God called upon in agony of abandonment or forsakenness. 

Jesus was helping link the dots and help them see that “Yes, the Messiah had to suffer.” God had to become one with human suffering – to release us, as one with us, from the ultimate power such suffering and even death could hold on us.

It would have been enough to get used to this new arrangement with the Risen Christ, but by then He left them for good with the work half finished, or perhaps barely begun. “Be My Witnesses” was His command, adding, “but wait for power before you start.”

How long do we wait? How will we know the power has come? Will we recognize it? What if we miss it? What if we are supposed to do something else while we wait and we get confused? 

We know they waited, but it could not have been easy. These are questions we all might have asked. And they are questions we do ask in our own hesitation to discern and pursue the will of God.

I am fascinated by the 10 days that passed from Ascension to the Day of Pentecost. There was no physical presence of Jesus and no spiritual presence either. Just memories, emotions, trust and the resolve to be obedient.     

Compare the anxiety of our own Church decision, our need for clarity, to see what you are getting at. We want to know exactly what we are getting ourselves into before we commit or consider a decision. 

One final time Jesus says  “Trust Me.” And one final time the disciples said “We will.” 

So came the rushing of the wind and the fiery illumination. They were blown beyond themselves and given voices to speak their witness. Things fell into place as Jesus had promised and the Church, as we share in it, was born. 

In reality the disciples discovered that they could not have possibly anticipated the extent of what it meant to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. It literally took some so out of themselves that they were able to face their own deaths in being Jesus’ witnesses. 

Perhaps we fell a long way away from such a happening. Have we do domesticated our relationship with God through our system of thinking, cross referencing and calculating expectations that we have left ourselves too anxious to be in control that we limit the Spirit? Scripture says that she can indeed be quenched. 

Like Paul, I want us to have our eyes enlightened — to know the rich inheritance of a life buoyed up by God’s call of hope and by an awareness directed by the Holy Spirit’s power. It is a link up with a life that issues into ages to come.  

So, what will God do with this one? Whatever it is, it will be about witnessing to love, forgiveness and the transforming power of what happens in society when the Spirit of Jesus is released. You, God and the community work out the details. Wait when you have to wait, and pray as you wait. However, once the Power is engaged, don’t expect time to catch your breath and be ready to be thrilled, enthralled by what God will do with you, His very own — “His One.”     

                -Amen

(Readings: Ascension Day – Acts 1: 1-11; Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 24: 44-53)

Pastoral message to the congregations of Iowa

Dearly Beloved in Christ,

I know you join with me in expressing shock, sorrow and outrage at the recent shootings in Charleston, South Carolina. Many of us are gathering from across the Diocese prepared for a weekend of engagement with the inspiring aspects of being followers of Jesus Christ through the offerings of our Ministries Retreat, and we find ourselves confronted by the harsh reality of our society's alienation for which Jesus came as God's agent of reconciliation. When we awoke yesterday morning to the news of this act of senseless violence and of outrageous racial hatred which killed nine people in the very place that was their sanctuary, Emanuel African American Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, we may have asked how are we to respond? There are opportunities beyond stunned passivity and a sense of despair.

As a mark of mourning and in prayerful solidarity with the families and community members of the victims, we are invited to ring the bells of our churches at noon today for ten minutes - nine for the victims and one for the soul of the young man whose own mental state drove him to such hatred. The Bishop of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, the Right Reverend Charles von Rosenburg, also asks us to join with many across the country in reciting the Prayer of St Francis:

"Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; the be understood and to understand; to be loved than to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life".  

This is also a time for people to come together and so please consider gathering at St Paul's AME Church on 1201 Day Street in Des Moines from noon to one o'clock for a time of prayer and mourning; or Bethel AME at 7.30 pm for community worship on 1528 University Avenue, or at an Interfaith Shabbat Service from 6-7pm at Temple B'Nai Jeshurun on Grand and 51st street. We at Grinnell College will seek to make our own action of solidarity and prayer.

Remember too that the people of Waterloo are still undertaking their Jericho Walk each Sunday at 7:30pm to mark and reclaim as sacred their own streets and locations of gun violence that has taken a number of their children.

Longer term, we need also to recognize and intensify the serious task of conversation about what constitutes truly sensible gun laws that promote greater human safety, as well as the very serious question of our racial tension. How high must the mountain of senseless acts rise before we stop letting fear and money talk? One young man I met at the Jericho Walk said that there was no such thing as common sense when it comes to the possession of guns. When I raised the issue of tapping into people's self-interest, he said "there was no self- interest apart from money. That's what talks."

With the Psalmist we ask: "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I have perplexity in my mind and grief in my heart, day after day? How long shall my enemies triumph over me?" And we seek his courageous answer: "But I put my trust in your mercy; my heart is joyful because of your saving help."

  

+Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa

Sermon at St Paul’s, Council Bluffs—22 March 2015

As a young man I was fascinated with Christian biographies. I remember the story of Jim Elliot, a missionary to Ecuador. His biography was called Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot and was written by his wife Elisabeth because Jim had died—killed by the very people to whom he had gone to preach the good news of Jesus Christ.

Jim lived by the principle, “No one is a fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” This did not mean that he looked for the ultimate sacrifice that he ended up paying, but that in his desire to proclaim Christ he was prepared for any consequence. I don’t believe a generation has ever passed without some members of the Christian Church experiencing this same fate. We are called to witness to people about One whose promises we desire, and whose commands we love to keep, no matter what the cost. And we are invited to know God even as we know ourselves and those closest to us.

Inner knowledge and a yielded disposition is what God offers and expects. The collect for today captures it all, especially as we ask God to “bring into order the unruly wills and affection of sinners.”  Now the word “sinners” is a loaded term. We might feel a little better accepting the term—people who have a tendency to (m)uck things up—as an adaptation of the description of the human condition from Francis Spufford’s book Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense which am using on my teaching series this year. 

In whatever way we can relate to the idea of our inadequate and faulty nature, I invite us to get there, and not play games with ourselves. Recognize our part in human messiness and failure so that we have some substance or weight in the request that God bring order to our unruly wills and affections. Only discipline and a yielded spirit can actually bring about the strength of a Jim Elliot. And it is okay actually to ask God to bring the order about!

A number of years ago I coached track-and-field and cross-country running. Over a gradual period of time we started to bring order to some pretty unruly wills and affections in beginner athletes. When a new recruit sat on the corner of the street believing that after one mile she could not possibly run another step, that was not the time to tell her that by next month she will probably be running five miles! The athlete’s will was so unruly and her affection so turned in on herself and her discomfort that she would have quit on the spot. Yet, what joy it was to see her running several months later at distances and speeds she would never have thought possible.

You wait those several months until perhaps you find yourself once more sitting by your athlete, eating an ice cream cone—a fitting end to a ten miler—all inner turmoil intact and under control and a sense of self-confidence that seemed to have come from nowhere.

We all begin such endeavors somehow. The coach begins where the athlete is at and trusts the training process. At the early stage it is only the coach who can see the future and how the finished product will look. And because it is strong and beautiful—full of self-possession and toughness of will—we keep on.

We know the outcome. It is gaining what you can never lose, and to get there we take our athlete along a path of losing what she cannot keep—her life of ease, no pain, comfort-zone only. With God the stakes are much higher but the process is the same.

The Hebrews author speaks of Jesus as having learned obedience from the things he suffered. In fact, his very suffering was his obedience as He did the will of His Father. When the Greeks wanted to meet him, He knew that He could meet them only one way—by dying like a grain of wheat that falls to the ground,  changes nature, and is raised into something new as the grain transforms into wheat. In Jesus’ case that someone new would be able to place His Spirit into His followers and through them enter into the Greek world and into the whole world.

When seeking His son’s obedience, God knew what the outcome would be. God could see the shining light of resurrected love and joy on the faces of those who would believe and feel their sins forgiven; and their unruly wills and affections ordered for the sake of pure joy.  

Jesus faced the ultimate test because of all the smaller tests in which he had been made ready to put his life in his Father’s hands. He yielded many, many times and found joy and assurance in that. And so he could yield that final time upon the Cross.

God’s goal is not our martyrdom, but it is to have our lives be witnesses to His love and purpose for human beings. God’s goal is to have our lives in His hands, our vision to be shaped by His promises and hopes, and our hearts growing and reflecting His love for all. So where do we begin?

First, we begin by being persuaded of these things—that by ourselves we are unruly, disordered, willful, a mess-up. Second, we accept that by knowing that what God asks of us, He has already performed in Jesus Christ. Jesus had to yield to God to bring order. Third, we acknowledge that God sees the belovedness we will become, long before we can see it in ourselves. And that belovedness is about knowing God as we know ourselves. God knows the ultimate outcome and calls it joy.

So how do we begin? We begin by paying attention and yielding ourselves up to create the time to pray, study, worship—all of which becomes purposeful and intentional. And we find that we make that first step in everything we do to be the question, Lord what would you have me do even before we let each day, each phase of our life, unfold?

Jesus simply said, “Father glorify your Name.” And He heard the reply, “I have already and will glorify it.” As it is with the Master, so it will be with the follower. You are no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

                                                                                                                                                                  Amen   

Easter 4, St Thomas, Sioux City—19 April 2015

Readings: Acts 3: 12-19; 1 John 3: 1-7; Luke 24: 36-48

There is a lot going on this morning: a baptism, confirmation, and the marking of the end of the ministry with you of your Rector, Torey. In many ways it is bittersweet. And yet it is an end and a beginning rolled into one. The baptism and confirmation are both a fruit of the ministry of your Rector, and at the same time are evidence that God continues to work with you as everyone moves forward. For in a few moments you will promise to support these persons in their life in Christ—a statement of upholding the future—even as you say farewell to a passing present.

Having noted that, I warned and somewhat apologized to the candidates that Torey’s leaving would be dominating my expressed thoughts today. At times like this it is easy to be anxious or even to feel sorry for ourselves. We are facing loss and change, right on the heels of your extraordinary bravery as a community to say that Church as we have known Church doesn’t add up; and we need to be flexible. Torey has led you along that path. I think it has helped stop doomsday thinking that would look to your savings and predict how long you would survive in the traditional model of being served by a full-time, seminary-trained priest.

Wonderful as we all may be, that is not what our faith depends upon. God has brought you someone new to be baptized and a lively person to be confirmed to emphasize that point.

In fact, as I looked at the readings for today, I initially saw little that excited me for the occasion. They in fact seemed somewhat “pat” for our special circumstances; until I looked deeper, and remembered something. The disciples were in the middle of receiving some rather startling testimony, as we come upon them in the Gospel. The two men who had been walking home to Emmaus had encountered a stranger, you recall, on the way. They had, at first, scoffed at him for seeming quite oblivious about the sad events that had happened in Jerusalem around Jesus’ crucifixion, but became increasingly intrigued by his knowledgeable response about Moses and the prophets. Suddenly, as they were breaking bread together with him, they recognized that the stranger was in fact the Risen Christ, and had just come hurrying back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. Those who stayed in Jerusalem in turn were saying how some of them had also seen the Lord when Jesus appeared among them.

The disciples did not expect the appearance even while some had experienced the Risen Christ. And so it would happen over the next forty days that Jesus would pop in and out of their lives, and as they became more anticipatory about it, they began to hunger for the opportunity to learn from Him while He was among them. They were in transition, and it became a time for intense formation.

There was a sense of urgency to have ears that could ear. They knew something no one else would believe if they dared mention it. “This Jesus who had been crucified, God had raised from the dead. And they were witnesses of these things.” This was a precious time—these forty days while Jesus was with them—and they took to it with great eagerness.

What I am trying to say and I think what the Word of God selected down the centuries and not specifically for this day is saying is to remind us that we are not the first and only community of faith to move into the unknown of transition. The early disciples stood where you stand except perhaps even more so. Torey speaks of the Jesus the disciples were transitioning from; and seeks to articulate and model His way of life with us all. He is not Jesus; and in fact Jesus is not leaving the building with Elvis! Jesus did leave His disciples but this is where the encouragement of the readings from Acts and 1 John come into play. In them we hear the voices of the two leading apostles—Peter and John—who, like the others, had been left wondering and amazed, perhaps even afraid, at Jesus’ comings and goings. Yet now they appear as changed men!

Peter has a story to tell—as incredible as it ever was—but this time he believes it and knows its significance. “This Jesus, whom your leaders crucified, God has raised from the dead. And through Him there is forgiveness of sins to all who repent.”

Likewise, John, years later, nevertheless has the same sense of confidence and assurance. To a very different audience, John reinforces that his life has become a witness to who Jesus is and how, through Him as Crucified and Risen, we are all made clean. You can hear the sparkle in their voices. They know of what they speak and write. Their eyes, I imagine, tell the story as well as their words.

They were men who had witnessed something extraordinary and of God. It would drive them to be able to face exile and their own deaths on Christ’s behalf. By now John was so at one with the Spirit of God that he could admit his ignorance about the details of the afterlife. He knew that he looked forward to when we would see Jesus, “whom you do not know.” He added, “We may not know how we will be—but we will be like Him.” Isn’t that what we are preparing for when we look around and see one another acting as Jesus with one another—praying for healing; offering forgiveness and reconciliation; delivering from oppressive forces; being illuminated by wisdom and insight on the human condition? We catch glimpses of Jesus in one another, and John says this will be the ultimate recognition of our own identity when we see Him face to face.  It happens constantly—in and through and beyond transition.

My daughter is a great believer in self-affirmation. Her mirror is surrounded by statements of dignity and things to uplift the self-esteem. She also takes time to reward herself for things we might think just part of a normal day. One day she gave herself a check mark for announcing as she looked in the mirror, “Kim, you are awesome!” It is not narcissism, but a healthy dose of self-esteem bolstering.

John says we should look in the mirror and see Jesus forming in us, and rejoice. What if we placed 1 John 3: 2 on our mirrors?

Peter and John received their new Rector, but she did not come in any human form, but in a fiery tongue and a rushing wind. I say that the Spirit did not come in human form but, in fact, assumed the form of every one who was in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost. What had been a start for the disciples has been continuous with us. Today I will affirm for J.T. that he is sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. I think it is time we began to believe or appropriate more directly our belief that the Spirit is always present to bridge our transitions, and never stops shaping us into that image in which we will be able to recognize ourselves in Jesus.

How blessed it would be if your new partner in ministry, your new rector, fitting perfectly within the material circumstances you can afford as you agree to work together, found here such a community of the Spirit. What if, in this place there were a people with an extraordinary story of how the Risen Christ walks among them as an ongoing reality with or without a transition of persons? What if the new partner found a people who carried themselves with a certain gaze of love and confident faith that knowingly registered that the purpose of God continues with them? What if, such a people were ones who know that even if they might not be sure of the details of what lies ahead and how they will be when the ultimate transition comes upon them, at least are certain that when they see Jesus, they shall be like Him!

                                                                                                                                                                  Amen 

Easter Vigil, Cathedral Church of St Paul, Des Moines—4 April 2015

Readings: Genesis: 1:1-2:2; Genesis 22:1-18; Exodus 14:10-15:1; and Ezekiel 37:1-14

In a month’s time I have a rather special birthday coming along. It is one that seems to have the attention of a number of well-wishers who are sending me numerous invitations to let them help me. Of course it is my 65^th and the well-wishers have all kinds of Medicare packages they want to sell me. Whether the significance of becoming an official “senior” is impacting my Easter reflections, I cannot say, but I want to begin by saying the obvious—life is a one-way street. It sounds more like the title of a country-and-western ballad than a sermon, and no doubt by the end of the service someone might have googled and discovered the same!

Clearly, life is a one-way street, and one which none of us actually chose to find ourselves traveling down. In the best circumstance, love brought us here at the human level, and no matter what our circumstances of origin, we believe Love at the divine level has everything to with this unexpected and unrequested gift of life. Into that very same Love we commend our own loved ones at our end for we grow to realize that nothing can ever separate us from such Love.

It is also clear to us as we reach midlife, perhaps that we cannot go back, and in most cases we do not want to go back. I am not interested in returning to my youth, strange and counter-cultural as that may seem.  We may have mid-life crises, which look like we are seeking to relive the past, but normally it is just that we are doing NOW what we would have done THEN. And it is the strangeness of this that catches our eye, only reinforcing the fact that nothing rolls back the clock.  As I say, few of us would ever seek to go back to younger years—younger dreams, yes, and younger vigor, certainly. But the one way pull of living wins out.

What the Christian life offers, however, is this—at every place along the one-way street, there’s new life; at every place where reflection meets reality, reality meets hope, repentance meets forgiveness and failure meets mercy.

God simply starts again with us, breathing again into our being God’s own breath that creates life. For some it is a new life literally through healing; for others it is about emotional deliverance or spiritual awakening. And it happens at our most vulnerable and exposed moments. God brings this new life to where we are along this one-way street. There is never any need to go back in time or wish things were different. God says, “Behold, I make all things new,” and asks us to “receive the Spirit” as we hear in the first words of the Risen Christ to His disciples in the Upper Room.

I share this sermon with one of our beloveds who most recently reached the end of her one-way street. Barbara James was my phone interviewer as part of the Iowa Episcopal election process for which today I celebrate my 12^th anniversary of consecration.  Barbara left some books behind on a shelf in the Guild Hall and invited any of us to take whatever we were drawn to. I took Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing, a book I believe you studied in one of the book study groups Barbara was part of. The title gripped my attention, especially its subtitle—The Search for a Christian Spirituality. Through that book God has met me on my road with the offering of new life in “search for a Christian spirituality.”

You see, we all have to keep up with ourselves as we grow. That is why we celebrate dying and rising year after year on the big stage of Holy Week and Easter Day; and also daily in our personal prayers for this world of confused and desperate nations, and of our own personal strivings. It does not matter your role in the Church—bishop or not, this process of growth must and does, at our best, go on.

Rolheiser writes of appropriating the essence of the Paschal mystery deep into the many areas of our lives and he stretches out the Paschal message all the way through to the Day of Pentecost, and invites us to live in harmony not only with the death and resurrection of Jesus but also with His forty days of Eastertide—His ascension and the gift of the Indwelling Spirit.

Good Friday for him is an occasion to “name our deaths,” in the face of the real deal of the loss of life.                        

                  

Easter Sunday is the time to receive new life or to claim our births.

The forty days send us along a period of readjustment to this gift of the new, and is appropriate as a time for grieving what we have lost as we adjust to the new reality.

Ascension invites us to let go of the old and let it bless you, refusing to cling on to it. “Don’t cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessing,” he writes.

Finally, the Day of Pentecost is the reception for new Spirit for the new life you are already living. “Accept the spirit of life you are, in fact, living.”

Among the things he writes for us to name as our deaths, he includes youth, wholeness, dreams, honeymoons or our ideal of God and Church.

The claiming of new birth as we grieve and let go in a way that blesses us and the subsequent receiving of the Spirit’s gifts for this moment is the reality portrayed in Ezekiel. It is how dry bones get up and live as a marching army. And it is how each of us are never in such despair that we cannot be met with the Living God for a new and deeper gift of new birth suitable for our age and place along life’s one-way street.

In a few moments we will declare Christ as Risen. The organ will spring into life; flowers will appear from nowhere and transform the sanctuary, and the dry bones of liturgy will live with new life. Even more glorious will be the living and breathing icon or image of the Risen Christ declared in the new life received in baptism of our baptismal candidates, and in our renewing of baptismal vows.  This is Christ Risen, through each and every one of us who believes and so declares that Christ is Risen. Let the words of your declared faith sink into you as a people of conviction—both about how God reveals God’s self to us and the world; and about how such faith provides more that food for thought, but also power for living.

I can base my relationships, my sense of purpose and vocation, my vision for recrafting the world about me and my greater hope for human potential on such faith—that we are created, restored, and spiritually empowered. Made new at every point, we find ourselves this evening on the one-way street of Glory and to Glory.

Every Scripture we read tonight tells us about reaching dead ends on that road. We began with the nothingness out of which everything was made. The Universe was at a dead end and then God said: “Let there be.” We then heard how God brought Abraham and Moses, the great Patriarch and Prophet of the Jewish Faith, to the end of themselves: one at the extraordinary and unfair request to sacrifice Isaac, the very one on whom Abraham’s promised descendants would depend; and the other at the incomprehensible mockery of reaching the Red Sea shore where God directed Moses to bring his people into freedom only to be hemmed in by Egyptians on the one hand and the Sea on the other.

Where God leads us sometimes feels like a cruel joke at our expense. It often seems unfair and confusing—a dead end up a one-way street, with life barreling down upon us. Suddenly, God offers an alternative way—unimaginable and, because of that, unseen from our perspective: life out of death, truth out of error, and righteousness out of sin. We are invited to claim a new birth out of a named loss.

How ready are you for God’s unexpected new and renewed life?

Name your death.

Claim your new births.

Grieve the losses but only as you adjust to the new.

Don’t cling to what you must let go of, but be blessed as you let old things pass.

And accept the Spirit of life that in fact is gifting you for the life you are living NOW.

For in reality, we don’t go back. Rather, we are always invited to cycle and recycle forward from generation to generation in and with the Risen Christ who makes all things new, and meets us at multiple points along our one-way gift of life.

                                                                                                                              Amen