The Sunday Sermon: Hope: the tender shoot

“A shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse.” The reading from the Hebrew Scriptures opens with such a particular and strange image.

It may be obvious to many of you, but I needed to look into it a little bit because this year for some reason it intrigued me. Why does Jesse have a stump and why does it have a shoot coming out? I’m a little slow.

It may be helpful to back up a few verses to see where we pick up this conversation. The previous few versus talk about “the glory of the forest” that will be destroyed, and “will be so few that a child can write them down.” “The tallest trees will be cut down and the lofty will be brought low.”

We enter the prophet’s judgment of the people of God at a time when the political situation they find themselves in is in stark contrast to God’s longing for them; when the religious imagination of Israel is crying out for something new.

It is a time when the prophet writes harshly about the neglect of the poor, the needy, the orphan, and the widow. The prophet writes poetically and angrily that this mistreatment of the most vulnerable has caused a blight upon the nation, a blight caused by their own neglect, and that it will spread to the very aggressors that perpetuated the mistreatment. As Israel has capitulated itself to the political whims of the world around it, its people have become more divided and prey to worldly motivations. They have forgotten what it means to love the Lord and neighbor.

Historically, Jerusalem has become captive to Assyria and its people spread among the captors empire, the beginning of not just decades but centuries of captivity from different empires. For hundreds of years this text of Isaiah would be fine-tuned to highlight the plight of the dispersed people of Israel, holding on to the hope that God still had a place for them somewhere.

Our passage opens with this scene of desolation, of a decimated and lifeless forest as a metaphor for the decimation of Israel. We don’t have to look very far to identify with the prophet right now. Division runs rampant, not only in our nation but in the world. You can hear the groans of humanity crying out in the images of a dead Syrian refugee boy on the beach from what seems like years ago but was only a few months ago, or another lifeless refugee boy carried in his father’s arms as they sought sanctuary in this country. We can hear the cries of creation as the glaciers melt and the oceans rise, as the birds shrink in size and the fish disappear from the sea. Our forests are literally disappearing. It is not hard to identify with the prophets image of feeling as if we are a forest, and the forest is burning. And it is burning fast.

The story of the loss of hope is not new. We have been here before. A lifeless stump appears to be all that is left of the beautiful forest. “Oh God! Will you hear the groans of your people, of all of creation, crying out!” And from a stump, seemingly lifeless and apparently desolate, there will come new life, says the prophet Isaiah.

The new life imagined by the prophet is not like the old. God’s imagination is not like ours. The new life imagined by God as a response to the groans of creation is incomprehensible to us. Shall we let the wolves wander over to stay with our lambs? Ridiculous. Let my child play with snakes? You are out of your mind! God’s love is so big that we cannot fathom the peaceable kingdom depicted by the prophet.

What kind of peaceable kingdom can you imagine ? I'm not sure it matters that much if we can’t imagine all the details.

What matters is the belief that there is something bigger. Something more than I can imagine or you. What matters is the promise of a vision beyond myself. What matters in Isaiah’s beautiful vision is that it brings hope to a desolate forest. Hope: The tiny shoot, tender and delicate, emerging from a dead stump in a felled forest.

Hope that it can be different. Hope in the God who dreamed up the stars and the mountains and the lion and the lamb; that that same God has the capability to dream up a new ending than the only one we see right before us. Hope in the God who created humanity in all of our beautiful diversity- that there in that God is also the capability to instill peace in a way that escapes us.

The prophet does not call for the listener to create the peaceable kingdom. The prophet says the anointed one, the one we wait for, will do that. But by instilling hope in a new ending; by planting a seed that a new tendril can unwrap its precious leaves from what looks like an old dead stump, that, perhaps, gives us strength to act differently, to keep going anyway. Hope itself changes things.

Advent is a time to turn from despair, and hope in an ending to this story that we can’t quite otherwise believe is possible. With hope, anything is possible.

I ran across a story this week of two unlikely people interacting on social media. Social media is not a place known for interactions depicting the peaceable kingdom.

An angry parent of a trans boy wrote to a well-known gender non-binary model named Rain Dove. The conversation opened with the mom’s projection of anger directed towards Rain: “My child is sick due to you!”

I am not sure how I would respond in such a situation. I think I would likely just ignore it. But Rain responded to each successive comment with compassion and empathy, with comments like, “How are you feeling about it? Does it feel a bit heavy?” And “For you to be reaching out to me about it shows that you must care about their wellbeing and happiness.”

The mom’s attacks continued, but they diminished in velocity, from “My child hates her body because of perverts like you” to “Why would my child do that to herself.” Rain continued to ask questions about the child, affirming the mom’s love and concern for the child.

In the end, the mom began asking Rain about the changes her child was going through and if she could contact Rain if she had anymore questions. They each signed off with “xxx”s.

Rain had hope in a different future. That hope made a change possible in Rain’s responses that lead to changes in the lives of others, especially the life of the mom and her vulnerable child.

I pray that as we go deeper into this Advent, we can quiet; that the whole creation can, in the midst of our groans, still just long enough to hear a voice crying in the wilderness, a voice that points to a new life emerging from the dead places; a place of hope; as we watch and we wait for the One who has something in mind for us that is bigger than any of us can ask or imagine.

The Rev. Canon Jeff Martinhauk
Advent 2A, December 8, 2019
St. Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
Isa 11:1-10, Matt 3:1-12

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Sources Consulted:
Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1. Ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2010.
https://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_december_8_2019

The Sunday Sermon: We begin again

So here we are again, back at the beginning of the church year. We have completed the cycle of seasons and returned to the starting point. Everything about this beginning feels contradictory: nature’s seasons begin with spring, but here we are starting out as the natural world is packing up for the winter, putting away summer colors, hibernating and retreating as the days shorten and the light diminishes. Our calendars are getting tattered, down to the last page, as 2019 comes to a close, while we turn to the first pages of our hymnals and lectionary guides. And as we celebrate the beginning of the festive season, Scripture points us to last things, to the second coming and the end times. It’s confusing and disorienting and counter-cultural.

So, Happy Advent! If you are feeling confused and disoriented and counter-cultural, that’s exactly where you are meant to be. Advent begins in the darkest season of the year. Even in San Diego we have some gloomy days; sunrise comes a little later each day and sunset a little earlier. We have three weeks to go until the solstice, when the earth will shift and the light will start to strengthen. I am confident about this, because the earth herself makes this promise. Every religion begins with the earth’s promise, that the light will return, that new life will ultimately spring up, even in the darkest days, even in the midst of death. And this is the time of year when we most need to hear that promise. It is a promise that underlies the promise of Scripture: light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

Today we ask God to give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. We are to awaken from any stupor of despair and be alert to the hope of our faith. The first Sunday of Advent is our spiritual alarm clock: Ring, ring! Wake up! It’s time to move, to make a change, to prepare for the new thing that is coming!

These end-times passages in the Gospels are jarring. Most of us don’t want to think about people, especially loved ones, being left behind or excluded. We don’t want to imagine an apocalyptic scene. If the God we know is a God of love and forgiveness, how can Jesus be so judgmental? In the euphoric anxiety of this busy season, why are we subjected to this grim warning? It’s hardly comforting to read of Jesus saying that even he doesn’t know when these things will happen. Maybe we can look beyond the doom and gloom and find the promise, because there is always a promise. The promise of the Gospel is that God is present to us in the here and now. We don’t have to wait for Kingdom life, we can grasp it today.

I am a creature of habit. I like a routine, I like to be able to do certain things on autopilot. Some days I get up, make the cat’s breakfast and my own, and get ready for work, and an hour later I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth, because it’s so routine. These last few months, since construction began and we moved into our temporary offices, all the cathedral staff have had to switch off our autopilots. Every time I leave my office, I have to stop and think: how will I get there from here today? It’s surprisingly tiring, but it’s also a reminder to live fully in the now, to wake up.

Autopilot is a great coping mechanism. Human beings have the capacity to adapt to the most distressing circumstances. Autopilot gets us through when life feels too hard. When we hear of yet another mass shooting we start to refer to it as “yet another mass shooting”, relegating what should be a shattering tragedy to just one in a series. This kind of diminishment of trauma helps us deal with it.

When I was a child in Northern Ireland I got used to stopping at the entrance to a shop and opening my shopping bags for inspection. It was something I did automatically, not even pausing in conversation, because if I had really thought about the implication - that anyone entering the store might be carrying a bomb - I wouldn’t have been able to function. But here’s the problem with autopilot. When we get really good at it, we start to die inside. We start to lose the capacity for pain, and without the possibility of pain, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity for love. The God of love wants us to be fully awake, to open our hearts to the pain of the world, not so that we will be traumatized - suffering is never what God wants for us - but so that we will be able to enter into the fullness of life, receiving, appreciating, and sharing the beauty of creation, the sacredness of relationship, and the overwhelming joy of closeness with God. This is what Advent is calling us to.

We create routines to make life easier, but we all know that our routines can be interrupted and our lives changed radically an instant. On this international AIDS day I think of the call from a doctor that can change a life, of the unwelcome news that a new strain of AIDS has just been identified. I think of the millions of lives, families, relationships, that have been shattered by a diagnosis or an accident. I think of the family whose wage-earner is picked up by immigration enforcement on his way to work. For some things there is no good time and no way to prepare.

Jesus warns us that we may be similarly unprepared for God to come into our lives and turn them upside down. In the midst of our daily activities, God is seeking us out, inviting us to changed hearts and changed lives. Advent is our annual opportunity to prepare for this change. When is the right time for Jesus to come into our world, into our lives? His first coming was into a world of poverty, violence, and oppression. Not much has changed for most of the world over 2000 years. Today his coming is needed as much as ever. And so we are invited, this Advent, to wake up to the possibility of Emmanuel, God with us, to live into the promise that the light of Christ will grow in our world, and to walk through these dark times trusting in the light of the Lord.

December 1, 2019
The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges

Adventword

As you may know, there is a tradition now from SSJE of "Adventword" where a word is given each day as a prompt for social media to react.  The Cathedral photographer Susan responds to this prompt from her own library of photographs, on the SPC page.  These were our photographs this year, with a brief description of why Susan chose them.
You can follow Susan on instagram or facebook as @slfphotographer or view her website SLFphotographer.com or Thin Place Photography

2 Dec: Journey: walking on a trail in  Grand Teton National Park. The hiker is moving away from the viewer.  What are you leaving behind as you set out on the journey this Advent? What are you seeking on the trail?

3 Dec Watch:   a service at Advent.  Dad is watching the chancel but his son is watching another thing altogether.  What you may want to watch may not be in front of you.

4 Dec: Focus:  a close up of an old Brownie Camera.  What does it mean to focus in our hyper digital age?

5 Dec:  Night.  Our Cathedral lit in Advent colors, with the moon just rising.  

The darkness of night can be a time of beauty and peace, lit by hope.

6 Dec:  Light.  The morning sun peeking through the eucalyptus trees in the Berkeley Hills.  Something wakes and inspires us in early morning.

7 Dec:  Sprout.  The water lilies in Balboa Park are bursting forth with new life! 

8 Dec: Alert.  Stay back from the danger....or not?  We need to pay attention where we are, not just look into the sun ahead.

9 Dec:  wild.  Grand Teton National Park at dawn.  Wildness inspires!

10 Dec:  Cry.  The monument at Manzanar, site of one of the Japanese internment camps 

from WWII, where the sound of the wind still carries weeping.

11 Dec:  Go.  A great blue heron in San Elijo lagoon takes off awkwardly.  

Aren't takeoffs often awkward?  But we should go anyway.

12 Dec:  Rough.  The waves break over the seawall in La Jolla Children's cove. 

Their power awes. 

13 Dec Smooth. A snowy egret on the rocks at the shore. 

The relentless waves and rough seas have smoothed the stones--feel their soft texture.

14 Dec:  Prune.  The most beautiful flowers (camellias, here) only come when the bush is pruned. What do you need to prune to bring forth beauty?

15 Dec:  Prepare.  Canon Sacristan Konnie ties back the curtains in the sacristy with ribbons that match the colors of the liturgical season.   Deliberate, thoughtful, intentional preparations make the season more meaningful.

16 Dec: Rejoice!  Ringing the bells at the Easter Vigil, and celebrating together.   Community is much to rejoice in.

17 Dec:  Sing.  The gentlemen of the Choir lift their voices.  All of us can sing in some way.

18 Dec:  Ancestors.  Our Dia de los Muertos offrenda celebrates our friends and forefathers. If we keep them in our hearts, they are always with us.

19 Dec:  Wash.  Maundy Thursday at the Diocesan center.  Washing the feet of another is an humble act of service and caring.  Washing is also a symbol of letting go.  How can we wash ourselves and others free?

20 Dec:  Ablaze. Our former bishop The Right Rev James Mathes at the Easter Vigil. This makes me think of Shakespeare's Henry V:  "Oh for a muse of fire!"  

Fire warms, purifies, enlightens and inspires.  What are you ablaze for?

21 Dec:  Sign.  Banker's Hill, San Diego, a 1-way behind a stop sign.  

What signs are around us, directing us, and telling us?

22 Dec:  Expect.  A cormorant sitting eggs in La Jolla.  

Instinctively, the bird expects new life.  We see hope and promise in her eggs. 

23:  Persist.  Ta Prohm temple, Angkor Wat Complex, Cambodia.  This ancient temple has persisted for centuries through cultural changes and violence, and trees  now grow through its structure.  Yet it remains a place of beauty and spiritual connectedness.

24 Dec:  Peace.  Our labyrinth at St Paul's is a contemplative and peaceful space.   Don't forget to find peace during this season.

25 Dec:  Celebrate!  a child greets our SPC tree to celebrate the coming of the light.

The Sunday Sermon: Rejoice, Anyway

Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is known as “Gaudete” Sunday. That means “Rejoice”. For those who treat Advent as a penitential season of fasting, today is the mid-point when you can take a break, have that glass of wine or piece of chocolate. It’s a companion to the fourth Sunday in Lent, and both Sundays are known as Rose Sunday, which is why we have lit a pink candle today. In some churches the clergy wear rose vestments on this day, but sadly we don’t have a full set of rose here. If you look at our Scripture readings you can see the Rejoice theme reflected, in the Zephaniah passage - “Rejoice and exult with all your heart” - in the response from Isaiah - “Shout aloud and sing for joy” - and in the verses from Paul’s letter to the Philippians - “rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”

Why all this rejoicing? The feast of the nativity is drawing near. We are more than halfway through our seasonal preparation for the coming of our Lord into the world. We rejoice because, all evidence to the contrary, we hope and expect that the coming of Jesus will make a difference, that we will take a step closer to peace and goodwill for all, that the pain of the world will be healed and all people will know the salvation of our God.

We never lose hope that the vision of Zephaniah will be fulfilled. The prophet speaks confidently, proclaiming the mighty deeds of God. The Lord your God is in your midst, says Zephaniah. No need to wait for some future event: God is here with us now. Isaiah too proclaims that the Holy One of Israel is in the midst of the people. Emmanuel is here now, moving among us, saving the lame and restoring the outcast. It’s all good news.

But then we turn to the Gospel, and things don’t look quite so rosy. The facade of joy begins to crack. John the Baptist doesn’t mince his words: you brood of vipers, he says, it’s time to shape up. He offers threatening images of axes and fire - and after seeing the media coverage of the wildfires this fall, with the horrifying accounts of a fire that traveled miles within minutes, I find his language all the more vivid. John’s mission is to disillusion the people who imagine that their choice of religious tradition makes them immune from God’s judgment. It’s what you do with your life that matters, not your self-image as a person of faith. Turn your life around, thunders John. Practice generosity, integrity, honesty ... or else. John even describes the Messiah as a figure of terror. And then the last sentence calls John’s preaching good news: I always find that quite funny.

Now that the Gospel has burst the cosy bubble of joy and gladness, we take a second look at the other readings and find a tension just under the surface. Zephaniah calls on the people to rejoice only after a lengthy condemnation of God’s people for their faithlessness. He foresees invasion, ruin, and terror, speaking of the day of wrath when the whole earth will be consumed in the fire of God’s passion.

Isaiah’s song of trust in God was written in the context of a nation that had been defeated by and become subservient to the Assyrian empire. All around the prophet was injustice, oppression, and fear. And yet he found the grace to imagine joy and gratitude for salvation.

And the letter to the Philippians was written by St Paul when he was in prison, possibly awaiting execution. How could he speak of peace, joy, and thanksgiving in this situation?

As it goes with Scripture, so it goes in our own lives. We see the world in a mess: climate change causing hardship and famine, governments financing international violence, homelessness becoming ever more prevalent, the poor becoming poorer, health care costs rising ... and yet ... Advent. This season of hope and expectation lifts our hearts in spite of all that’s going on in the world. We are called to rejoice anyway, to give thanks anyway, to find the peace that passes all understanding anyway.

The tension is real: Advent is a time when we look forward to joy even while we feel anxious and stressed. For many of us this time of year carries associations of sadness and loss, crashing into the seasonal joy, and the manic celebrations in the world around us make it difficult to admit to the pain. My personal Advent tension resides in two indelible memories: one, from 1986, of having to wait until Christmas Eve to get a doctor’s appointment for a pregnancy test, an Advent that ended in great joy; the other, this week six years ago, of what still feels like the longest week of my life, after my ex-husband died unexpectedly and I had to wait for my younger son to come home from law school before I could get my arms around him.

This Advent there are some among us mourning the death of a family member. There are some who have suddenly become unemployed. There are some who are separated from loved ones by a family conflict. There are some facing serious and even terminal illness. And yet we all come together to make Eucharist and give thanks for the God who loves us and who is coming to us. As a community there is much to be thankful for. There’s a renewed spirit of community, a new energy in this congregation. We are at the start of a year of celebrating the last 150 years of ministry and looking forward to the project of positioning ourselves for the next 150. We are together, and we are surviving, and we are thriving, with innovative forms of ministry that are reaching our far beyond our walls, ministries like live-streaming and Faith2Go. And so we give thanks, anyway.

Rejoice in the Lord always, says the apostle. Bear fruits worthy of repentance, admonishes the Baptizer. Stir up your power O Lord and with great might come among us, implores the Collect for today. We feel the Advent tension and so we pray for God to be manifest among us, even while we follow Scripture’s instructions to give thanks always, gathering as the body of Christ to share the meal that makes us one, making Eucharist and inviting all the world to join us at the table. And we never lose hope in the promise: that the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in the love and knowledge of Jesus Christ our Savior, the one who is coming, and who is already among us.

December 16, 2018 

The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges   

The Sunday Sermon: Putting on the Armor of Light

Imagine you are walking down a city street. It is night, and the street is dark. The buildings around you are ancient, stained black with the soot of centuries. You see a light shining from a street-level window, piercing the darkness. As you come abreast of the window you see a Bible on a bookstand, open to a passage from the Gospels. A spotlight illuminates the print and its light spills out into the world. You stop and read.

This is the image described to me by a priest I met recently. His church, St Mary Magdalen in Southwark, London, on a site that has been sacred ground since the 800’s, displays a Bible open to the Gospel of the week in a window looking onto a city street. He tells me that there is nearly always someone standing at the window, reading. The light that shines in the darkness is feeding hungry souls.

On this first Sunday of Advent we pray, “give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” In this darkest month of the year, we light a candle to remind us that the darkness will never overcome the light. It’s a candle of hope, because we are a people of hope.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote at a time of turmoil and disaster for the people of God. They had been invaded and occupied by barbarians. Their leaders had been taken away into exile. They were hungry, afraid, and anxious about the future. The darkness seemed to be winning. But the prophet had confident words of hope to share. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made ... Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” These are surprisingly cheerful prophecies, considering the source. In a dark time, the prophet recognized his responsibility to call the people of God out of despair, to remind them of the God who stands above and beyond all earthly powers, to encourage them to live into and up to the motto, “The Lord is our righteousness.” Justice and righteousness might not be evident in the land but they could rely on God’s promises to hold. The days are surely coming. Don’t despair. The light will shine again.

One scholar writes that human beings despair when they cannot imagine God’s promised alternative future. God’s promised alternative future is laid out for us in Scripture, and it’s an especially vivid idea in Advent. We are entering a season of waiting and hoping. We have hope that God has an alternative future for us, a future of justice and righteousness, a future when there will be peace on earth, when all will be safe and fed and housed, when the abundance of the land will be shared and neighbor will watch over neighbor, the stranger will be welcomed and the vulnerable cared for. This is the hope of Advent, as we watch the light grow, week after week, and we see the feast of the Nativity drawing near.

And we wait. We can look at our calendars and see that today is December 2nd, and know that in 22 days it will be Christmas Eve and we will be celebrating the birth of the holy child, the ultimate pledge of God’s faithfulness, God With Us; but we also know that we have celebrated over 2,000 Christmases and we are yet to see justice and righteousness prevail in our world.

In this Advent season of 2018 there is darkness aplenty.

The town of Paradise, California is in darkness this Advent, and thousands of people have lost everything they own.

The migrants sleeping in a waterlogged stadium in Tijuana are trying to keep hope alive having arrived at the border only to be met by teargas and riot shields.

The political soap opera in Washington DC becomes more conflicted and tumultuous every day.

Children in Yemen are starving while we and our allies provide arms to those who are destroying the country.

In South Sudan, five years into a vicious civil war, citizens are collectively holding their breath as a fragile ceasefire is extended.

We search for a point of light in the darkness, a beacon of hope. And sometimes we find it: generous donors, compassionate local governments, peacemaking efforts.

The prophets remind us of God’s imagined alternative future, and as people of faith we are called to live into that imagined future. We can use our imagination, fueled by the promises of Scripture, to live into the future Kingdom of God, even in the midst of darkness and suffering. That’s what the slaves did, when they sang of crowns and thrones under the whip of oppression. That’s what the prisoners in the concentration camps did, when they recreated Verdi’s Requiem from memory. That’s what the thousands of Central American migrants just the other side of the border are doing. They refuse to believe that the God who loves them wants for them to live in fear and oppression, unable to keep their children safe or feed their families. They are imagining an alternative future, one of freedom, of opportunity, of dignity.

And we have infinitely more reason for hope than they.

Yesterday I was in Fresno, representing the diocese and the North American Deans Conference at the installation of the new dean of St James’ Cathedral, Ryan Newman. The cathedral is in the diocese of San Joaquin. You may recall that San Joaquin was one of the dioceses most affected, indeed almost destroyed, by the Episcopal Church’s split a decade or so ago. The cathedral was claimed by those who had left the Episcopal Church and it took years for the Episcopal Diocese to reorganize and successfully bring a lawsuit to reclaim ownership.

It’s been ten years since the people of St James have had a dean, and yesterday’s service was an important and joyful moment in their journey of healing. I commented to the diocesan chancellor that the exchange of the peace seemed to go on a very long time, and he responded that they had not been allowed to socialize under the breakaway regime. It brought tears to my eyes to see how very happy they were to be together and moving forward. They had held on to hope, they had waited and worked through dark and tumultuous times, and their long Advent season was at last being fulfilled.

Today is the beginning of a new church year, and the first Sunday of the year of Luke. The first words we hear from Luke’s Gospel are the words of Jesus, describing times of darkness and distress, and encouraging us nevertheless to live in hope, to trust in God’s imagined alternative future, to free ourselves of anxiety and fear and instead to be attentive to the signs of redemption.

Jesus calls us to let go of worry. That’s easier said than done for some of us, especially in a season when the culture all around us hypes up unrealistic expectations of perfection. But we can see the light shining in the darkness.

The points of light may be subtle; we will have to be attentive to notice them: the food offered to a homeless person, the pet saved from a burned neighborhood, the delivery of blankets and clothing for migrants, the sharing of a home or a table. It’s almost like a secret code or password: when you see these things, you know that God is at work.

In stressful, uncertain times we have a particular call: to uphold the promise of God’s kingdom, to keep hope alive, to imagine that alternative future, to demonstrate a different way of being for those who have a hard time seeing the light. Sometimes we are called to be a point of light ourselves. St. Paul’s Cathedral is literally a light in the darkness, as our Advent colors shine out, visible even to travelers arriving in San Diego by air. We are a literal beacon, and our community, rooted in love, is a spiritual beacon for all who feel the darkness weighing heavily on them.

As we enter this season of hope and waiting, we are putting on the armor of light, wrapping ourselves around with the love of God. What might it look like to live as if justice and righteousness are already the rule rather than the exception? It might look like a congregation that engages in prayer for each other, that makes a commitment to celebrate together, that stands up for human and civil rights, that flings open its doors to those outside, that sings praise and gives thanks to God both for the promises already fulfilled and those still to be delivered, that shines a light in the darkness and waits with hope and joy for the coming of our God, Emanuel.

Amen.


First Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2018
The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges

The Sunday Sermon: God's favor

The Rev. Canon Jeff Martinhauk

Advent 4B, December 24, 2017

St. Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego

2 Sam 7:1-11,16; Luke 1:26-38

The story from second Samuel this morning is one of great hope and anticipation.

As the text says, the Lord has just helped King David defeat all of his enemies, and Israel is now at peace. David is so glad for the victory he is ready to do something happy, something fun! He wants to go and build a house for the ark of the covenant, for God. He’s tired of the symbol of God being housed in this shabby old tent and carried around to and fro.

But the Lord- who never asked for a house- has a word for David, spoken through the prophet Nathan. “Who are you to box me in to a house?” says God. I’ve been out here working since long before you, and I’ll be out here long after you’re gone, continuing to do what I’ve always done, working out salvation history.” Most scholars agree that this text is about David’s desire to claim the glory for the house-building, about human desire to claim God’s power as one’s own. It’s about getting busy doing what we want to do, but doing it in the name of God.

This text really grabbed my attention this last Sunday of Advent, this last day of waiting-- when hope is so ripe-- when the coming joy, especially in this particular year, is so full we almost had to put up a screen over there as if to say, “pay no attention to the tree behind the curtain.”

We have ideas. I have ideas. I know what I want. I know what I’m waiting for. This advent, I’ve been particularly mindful of that idea of waiting because there are so many things I can name that I would like to see put right, that I can say I am tangibly waiting for. But the opening of the lectionary for this year’s lectionary in advent has, at least for me, underscored something… unsettling about waiting and its nature:

“Be awake.” “Get ready.” “About that day or hour no one knows.” “Prepare the way.”

Advent opens with an urgency that almost seems to exhort us to get busy with this thing we are waiting for, and to get busy now. It’s up to us, it seems.

So David thought, too.

But not so fast, says the Lord. The main point of this passage is that God responds with grace and freedom even when humanity still tries to use this gift for personal gain.

How often, at least in my life, I fall into the same trap David does. I get ready to work hard, I’m so sure I know what direction to go, and… well, it may just turn out that I have put God in a box.

One wonderful commentator on this passage noted that it likely came about during the Babylonian exile. That means this passage was probably not written for an audience rejoicing from victorious war, but many years later for a fallen and defeated nation of Judah who was living in captivity to Babylon.

What would such a broken people have to gain from such a story as this? What might we have to learn about God from their relationship to this text?

I wonder, what it would be like to be exiled from home and to hear this story about a God who refused to be limited to a physical space?

They believed in many ways that their exile was the result of the arrogance of their leaders. Stay with me here- we’re talking about then, not now. What might this story say about a God who did not punish the arrogance of David and his kingdom but instead reminded them how God’s love for them could never be broken, and of a hope that was yet to come?

And of course that makes me wonder what it is like for you and for me to hear this story today, and to be waiting-- maybe even waiting a little like David assuming we know God’s purpose for the world and urgently going out to prepare the way for it? Or what it might be like to hope beyond hope in a God that is not in a box but somehow works for our benefit even through exile and diaspora, not in simplistic ways that instantly fix pain and suffering with a magic wand but in deep ways that heal from the inside out, not bound by physical space.

The gospel story tells of an excessively graceful God as well.

In this story, the first thing that happens is that Mary-- who has done nothing, who is lowly, who is undeserving-- finds favor. Unlike David, she had nothing to offer God. The fact that God found favor on her was perplexing to her. Why would God favor one who had nothing to offer? But God does favor her. And that is where the story begins. God favors Mary, who hasn’t done anything, doesn’t have anything, but is favored nonetheless.

Like us, she struggles to understand why she can be in favor in such a one-sided relationship. She questions it. And what came of that questioning- that intrigue-- was something she never could have dreamed of herself. Mary, after hearing a somewhat astonishing description from Gabriel of God’s desired plan for her, says yes to this plan. This whole new enterprise- this incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus-- is this partnership that comes about because Mary was able to hear a perplexing new thing, to consider it, and then to say yes. Somehow, despite the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that she had nothing to offer, that she was vulnerable, that she was at risk in this proposition with God: she consented. She found the courage to agree to this partnership with God that began with God’s favor, and a new thing happened.

So on this last Sunday of Advent, these two stories stand out to me for a couple of reasons.

First, both Mary and David are blessed or favored by God not because of what they did or didn’t do. God just loves them. They didn’t earn it first. David didn’t have to build a house to earn favor-- in fact, quite the opposite. Mary didn’t have to say yes-- she found favor without having anything to offer. They didn’t have to be baptized, or profess their love of Jesus Christ, or even wear the right liturgical colors during advent. Mary was favored. And so are you. And so is everybody. God just loves us. David tried to earn it in some way, but that doesn’t work. Grace just comes.

And the second thing is that David and Mary had very different responses to that grace. They both had their own wilderness experiences, their own places of being outcast, of struggle. But David emerged and forgot. He forgot that he didn’t get through the struggle on his own. He emerged in a privileged place and came up with his own plan. And he planned a course to keep going without remembering that he wasn’t alone in it.

But Mary-- Mary listened. And Mary forged a collaboration by listening. And she was amazed to find she was favored by God. She learned who she was in the process. She stepped into her very identity, her most authentic self, theotokos, God-bearer. She became a partner in the creation of something new and wonderful. I wonder how we respond, knowing we, you, all of us, are God’s favored? Can we bear to know we are loved so unequally by God that we won’t ever be able to earn it? Mary found freedom not in being able to choose herself from an unlimited number of choices, not in being able to work for it, but by hearing what she was made for and consenting to it.

So here we are, in the wilderness. The anticipation is high, and we are so ready to leave it that the tree has already sprouted up from out of the desert.

But my hope for us is this: Don’t forget to linger a little, still. God favors you. Don’t stop waiting around here and there, open to being truly, deeply amazed- even perplexed at how much you are favored by God, and to hearing a new way to participate with God in birthing a whole new creation, should you trust enough to say yes. It may just change everything.

---

Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1. Ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2010.

The Sunday Sermon: Pointing to Jesus

Christmas preparations have a way of bringing to mind old family traditions and conversations. When I think of the Christmases of my childhood I envision the special, handpainted china that we used at Christmas dinner, and recalling the festive table, I immediately hear my mother’s voice, saying things like, “Children are to be seen and not heard,” “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” and “Elbows off the table unless you are an aunt.” That one only worked until I actually became an aunt at age 8. The mantras of our childhood never completely fade away, and I think that’s why this Gospel’s description of John the Baptist makes me a little uncomfortable. You see, the traditional statue of John depicts him with arm outstretched, pointing away from himself like an ancient traffic cop. I think of that image, and I hear my mother’s voice saying, “It’s rude to point.” But maybe it’s time for me to erase that tape. Maybe we should all be pointing. Pointing to Jesus.

Today’s odd little story from the fourth Gospel tells us of a conversation between John, a man sent from God, and the religious authorities who were anxiously awaiting the Messiah, the one chosen by God to save Israel. John had become famous for his ministry of preaching and baptism on the banks of the Jordan, so the authorities sent messengers to ask him, Who are you? And the text says “he confessed, I am not the Messiah.” What a strange way to put it. Another way to translate this sentence might be to say, “He told them plainly, I am not the Messiah.” In fact, this whole passage is told very plainly, in short, simple sentences and in terse questions and answers. John twice says, “ I am not.” And then simply “No.” He could hardly tell them more plainly that they are barking up the wrong rabbi. But the Gospel writer goes further. John is giving testimony, we are told, witnessing to the truth, pointing away from himself to the one who is coming after him. He even uses the words that Jesus will later use to identify himself with God: the mystical phrase “I AM”; only of course John says “I AM - NOT.”

So, who is John for us? He is the one sent to show us how to point to Jesus. In this Gospel, John is the first person to recognize Jesus. In the verses just after today’s passage, John runs into Jesus and says to his own followers, Look, here is the Lamb of God; and for the first time, at least in this telling, people start to notice Jesus and to listen to what he has to say. This is before Jesus has done any teaching or any miracles. Nobody realizes who he is until John points to him. So, John is sent from God to point to Jesus and witness to his identity, because otherwise people won’t know who Jesus is.

Last week I participated in a conference call with other diocesan leaders, to share information about the Lilac fire in North County and to learn what we could do to help. The good news was that no members of the diocese had been hurt or lost their homes. There were several well-functioning official shelters for evacuees. But there were two items that pierced my heart: undocumented people were afraid to go to the shelters in case they were arrested; and homeless folks driven from the canyons by the fire were not being made welcome at the shelters. Our diocesan staff, thankfully, were working to find an alternative shelter where such people would feel truly safe and truly welcome.

Why do we do this? Why do we take the trouble to care for those who are on the margins, who aren’t acceptable to the mainstream for one reason or another, who are overlooked and unheard? You already know the answer. We do it because we promise in baptism to seek and serve Christ in all people. We do it because our Judeo-Christian culture is unambiguous in insisting that the mark of a civilized society is the care of the last, the least, and the lost. We do it because, like John the Baptist, we see Jesus in the crowd and we are called to point to him wherever he shows up, to say with John, “Look, here is the Lamb of God. Here is the one we have waited for.” So, with apologies to my Mama, it’s not rude to point if you are pointing to Jesus, because, how else will people recognize him in each other?

And, while we are exercising our pointer fingers, while we are being absolutely clear about who Jesus is, we are also to point at the broken places in our world where the light of Christ needs to shine, where truth is obscured, where the essential worth of every human being is not treasured. Wednesday’s vigil for victims of gun violence gave us an opportunity to shine a light on the horrific national epidemic that claims at least three Americans, every hour of every day.

But there is more for us to do. We need to point at the abuse of the vulnerable. We need to point at the for-profit prison industry. We need to point at white privilege. We need to point at the lies that persist at the highest levels of government. The #metoo movement is a finger pointing at structural abuses of power throughout our world. The free press is a finger pointing at institutional corruption. The equal rights movement is a finger pointing the way forward out of oppression to true liberation for all of God’s people.

Like John, we are all called to witness to the truth and light of God’s inclusive love. The testimony of John is the testimony of the church, the voice calling out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Christ is coming, Advent tells us so, but it’s up to us to point to him, to witness to his truth, and to make sure that the world knows him when he comes.

Advent 3, December 17 2017
The Very Rev Penelope Bridges

The Sunday Sermon: Keeping the Hope Alive

It’s Advent. Advent means chocolate calendars, silly animated videos of Hershey’s kisses and dancing reindeer, premature Christmas carols, lights in the window, happy conspiracies over gifts, sparkly clothes, holiday sweets.

And now, this, courtesy of Scripture: Grim confessions. Apocalyptic prophecies. Human sin and divine anger. The Psalmist’s desperate plea for rescue: “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.”

What is that about? Where is the joyful expectation? Where is the good news? On this first Sunday of the year of Mark, couldn’t we have heard the first verse of that Gospel? “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Apparently not: in their wisdom the editors of our lectionary decided to delay that good news announcement until the second Sunday of Advent.

Just when we were getting comfortable with the holiday routine, finalizing our lists, brushing off our decorations, we receive a jolt, as it were, from heaven itself, a reminder that Advent isn’t just business as usual, that this season holds within itself a promise that should fill us with equal measures of hope and terror. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, O God. Well, be careful what you wish for, because today we are no longer living in what the church calls ordinary time.

Today we are hearing about a time that is difficult, suffering, fearful. We hear a longing for God to turn the world upside down. Three of today’s Scripture passages are written in a historical context of exile, defeat, despair, destruction. Humanity demands an intervention, a breaking into a world that has gone terribly wrong. Much of that rings true for us today. Much of our world seems to be falling apart. Men whom we have trusted to tell us the truth, to entertain us, to govern, have fallen from their pedestals. How interesting that in a time when “fake news” is the prevalent slogan and lies the currency of public discourse, women are finally finding the courage to come forward and tell a truth that has been suppressed for decades, the truth that powerful men have routinely used their power to treat women as sex objects. In the midst of all this grief and confusion, a light is shining out and growing stronger, and we need that light and that truth.

Advent is our time to prepare for Christmas. But the incarnation, the eruption of God into our world, is more than a chorus of well-loved carols and a daily glance at a calendar. It is an end, and it is the beginning: the end of a world that has lost its way, that is self-destructing on a cosmic scale, the people of God eating the bread of tears. This is a time for judgment of all those who have fallen short in doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. This is the Advent of a new creation where God’s presence will be constant and God’s countenance will shine forth, where truth will be told and justice rendered, where the faithful people of God will know salvation and the promise of life immortal.

Advent is no season of passive waiting. We are to be actively preparing our hearts and the world for the coming of Christ in glory. We aren’t sitting in the doctor’s office, flipping through magazines that we would never buy, feeling bored and idle. We are waiting for the wedding day to arrive, and there’s a lot to do, cleaning house, cooking special dishes, making sure everything is absolutely at its best for the honored guests. That kind of waiting can feel all too short: we aren’t killing time, we are using every moment we have to be as ready as we possibly can for the big day.

And meanwhile, we are attentive to the signs that God is already at work, that Christ has already come to us and set in motion an inevitable chain of events. Those signs give us the hope and the determination to do what we need to do, to serve and work and proclaim as people of good news, people of Advent hope.

The promise is contained within a grim reality. The premise of apocalyptic literature like this part of the Gospel is that the worse things get, the closer we are to a new heaven and a new earth. Some extremist evangelicals want things to get worse, to force the arrival of the crisis and the end of the world as we know it, to precipitate the second coming of Christ. And we can see that things will likely get worse before they get better. More millions will die in war and from preventable diseases. Living standards will decline in the developed world. The poor will get poorer. The weather will get more extreme. More species will become extinct.

But look what happened after Mark’s prophecy of the end times: the message of Jesus, the good news of God’s unconditional love, grew, spread, prevailed, and persevered for 2000 years. It is a message that outlives human sin and faithlessness. It survives persecution and ridicule. It persists despite the worst that humanity can do.

Now, we can’t force God’s hand. We don’t know when the end and the new beginning will come. We must simply be, watchful, hopeful, confident that God’s promises are sure, and alert to the signs that God is at work.

If you’ve been following the investigation of Russia’s interference in our electoral process, you know that journalists are watching every move the Mueller team makes and they read significance into every twitch. Anyone in community leadership knows that a small action or off-the-cuff remark can be pounced on and given significance. I remember preaching in Advent years ago and describing this as a pregnant season. Almost immediately a rumor went around the church that I was expecting a baby. So, we need to be careful about how we interpret the signs of the times.

I’ve heard it said that St Paul’s focuses too much on serving those outside, to the neglect of those inside. People in the congregation see us offering food and showers to our neighbors in the Park and they say, “What about me?” “When is someone going to care for me?” I could speak about the Stephen Ministers, Eucharistic Visitors, and small group ministries that flourish here and are available to everyone in our cathedral family, but let me also suggest that, instead of waiting for someone to take care of us, we can adopt an active ministry and start caring for others. In my experience it’s when I grasp the opportunities to share God’s love, actively participating in the transformation of the world, that I most receive love myself.

In a time when we are all suffering from crisis fatigue, it’s tempting to metaphorically put our heads under the covers, and withdraw from active resistance. It’s so tiring to keep working for justice and liberation when all we see is injustice and oppression. But this is discipleship. This is the way of the cross. This is what we signed up for.

We are called to pursue our mission of reconciliation, of building community, of opening a space for real conversation, real lament, real transformation. We are to speak the truth. We are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the isolated, and care for each other within this community too. Above all, in this Advent season, we are to shine a light in the darkness and keep hope alive for those in danger of despairing. That was the purpose of the apocalytic writings in Scripture, and we surely need that hope today.

This will be our Advent way of waiting, our response to God’s love and compassion that we ourselves experience every day, witnessing to our confident hope that God’s justice will prevail, that love will conquer fear, and that Christ will, some day, come again in glory.

Dec 3, 2017
The Very Rev Penelope Bridges

Thank You notes Show the Reach of Our Advent Gifts

During this time of Lent, Advent feels like it was a long time ago. But we recently received some notes that show the many blessings that came from the Advent project created by our outgoing Director of Children, Youth, and Families, Robin Taylor.

You may remember that more than 30 St. Paul’s families signed up to engage in Advent through an at home spiritual practice devised by Robin. Each family was given a basket and daily scripture and meditation cards, one for each day of Advent. Each family was also matched with a family in the All Kids Academy Head Start program at St. Alban’s in El Cajon, many of them refugee families. The cards asked the St. Paul family to meditate on an idea and, if they wanted to, add something to the basket for their match family. In January, Robin then took a carload stuffed full of gifts to St. Albans.

Last month, St. Paul’s received gifts of gratitude in return from some of the families at St. Alban’s. They sent thank you notes, chocolates, and a teddy bear. We invite you to read their touching notes, which have been transcribed below:



To the wonderful people at St. Paul’s Cathedral,

This is just a short note where I can’t say thank you enough for the beautiful Epiphany gifts and turkey. The card from your best friend A makes me want to explore and the scarf, hat and gloves were much appreciated for my daughter. My grandson is thrilled for baseball season to start to use his new glove and my son who is autistic fell in love with the backpack. Every item is cherished and appreciated.
Thank you,
T, K, KJ and M
*********************************************************************************
Thank you for the Christmas gift and turkey. My family really appreciated the wonderful gifts and drawing! Love,
The H Family   *********************************************************************************
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We are very honored and humbled to be blessed by the staff and families at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Many love and blessings to you all,
The F Family
*********************************************************************************
Thank you so much for the gifts. As a single mother of two small children, I am very appreciative of all of this. My children are as grateful as I am. Every bit helps make my life and my children’s life better. Again thank you so much. Happy Holidays from myself and my babies.
Thank you!
M, N, and N
*********************************************************************************
Dear C
We are very grateful for the blessings you have given us. I’m also a grandma, and I know what is like to be proud of one’s family. God bless you, and your family too. Also, I know you like crafts, so I give these to you with love!
From,
NP and family
*********************************************************************************
Thank you for the act of kindness and everybody included.
Thank you from the B family *********************************************************************************
To Whom It May Concern,
I wanted to write a letter acknowledging the generosity and kindness this holiday season. My son was rewarded with a Three Kings Basket with numerous great gifts, as well as a holiday turkey. We are very grateful that we were chosen to receive such great gifts.
Thank you again,
S, R, and W
*********************************************************************************
Dear A & family
Thank you so much for all the wonderful goodies. We truly appreciate them. We hope your holidays were great.
A & B
*********************************************************************************
I really want to thank you for the beautiful gesture of generosity that you so kindly give to us. My kids and I enjoy the basket gifts and we also went on a shopping spree (groceries!). Words do not express my gratitude, but I am very thankful.
The R Family
*********************************************************************************
Thank you so much for all the gifts. My son is very grateful and as a single mother of two children I appreciate it very much as well. My little family is very fortunate to have received these gifts. God Bless!

The Sunday Sermon: let the light find you

I had a friend once who worked very hard to make sure that all of his plans went the right way. He followed all the rules. He worked hard. He found a spouse. He had children. He saved money. He did everything he was supposed to.

But one day, his world came crashing in, and his life fell apart. The best-laid plans didn’t hold up, and his relationships turned out to be superficial. It turned out his family needed him in a way that he hadn’t been available because he had been so busy trying to play by the rules, trying to work hard. His relationship faltered because he hadn’t been available to be present to more important things.

Or my other friend, who worked very hard to ensure that she got everything done in a different way. She worked very hard to be present to everyone’s needs in her family while also trying to manage a successful career. She spread herself so thin that she was exhausted. She tried to meet every expectation laid upon her, a different set of rules, and in so doing always felt insufficient at all of them, sort of stretched too thin. One day her life fell apart when she realized none of it was making her happy.

Sometimes the best laid plans, following the rules, meeting the expectations-- it just doesn’t seem to work out that well.

We think that following the rules is always the way to fix our problems. But sometimes it doesn’t work. This time of year in the children’s hospital where I used to work, there would always be a set of parents who would go through a series of devastating setbacks as they worked really hard to follow the rules, take the prescribed regimens of physical therapy or medication, and try to get home before Christmas. And when following the rules sometimes did not get them home in time for Christmas, there would be a sense of unfairness, of loss: “Dr. - I did what you said! Why can’t we be home for Christmas!” Following the rules just doesn’t always land you where you hope it will.

I so want Christmas to be a time of relief from that rat-race of chasing expectations. But sometimes the postcards and trying to live into a picture-perfect idea of what this season might look like ends up adding a kind of pressure that doesn’t help. How will I get the cards out? What if the kids don’t care about the traditions? How will I find all the money I need? How will I get the cookies baked? Where will I find the time to do it all? But also: What if I’m alone? What about the ones I’m reminded of this time of year that I can’t be with? What if the joy isn't there? The expectations we have set for the holidays don’t always align with the reality.

We’ve got families in the congregation who have loved ones in the hospital this Christmas, who are grieving this Christmas, and who won’t have the Norman Rockwell postcard Christmas. The darkness that comes at this time of year can take its toll, and the difficult fact is that darkness comes into our all our lives at sometime or another, and no action on our part can prevent it.

In today’s gospel, I imagine Joseph trying to do the right thing to break what must have been a dark moment in his life. With his fiancé pregnant, the kind thing to do for both of them was for him to leave quietly without making a big fuss, and he was going to follow the rules and do just that. Joseph had the best intentions to take what he perceived to be a bad situation and follow the rules that would make the best of it.

But then this angel broke in, unexpected, and told him not to follow the rules-- not to leave Mary-- and to risk it all to stay with her.

How reckless! How messy! How culturally inappropriate! This is not the postcard answer to the scandalous situation they found themselves in. This is a messy answer that is only going to make it messier. I can't imagine this solution getting through committee, much less General Convention.

But that is the point. We like our pictures of Christmas that are cute, and gentle, and orderly. But this-- this is grace breaking into this world, setting the stage for the messy incarnation to come, an incarnation of God into a child in a dirty manger surrounded by filthy barnyard animals who probably haven’t had any vaccinations and are going to get that baby sick!

This is grace, taking this man Joseph by the throat and saying, “Everything you know tells you to leave this woman quietly, but I’m telling you not to.” This is grace, saying, “Do not be afraid. This is hard stuff, but take courage, because even though it will be worse before it gets better, and you will flee into the night in the very next chapter of Matthew-- you will leave your nation to go to Egypt because they are trying to kill this baby, the very one you yourself are trying to leave now, I am with you. And though it isn’t going to be easy, you’ve got to step up and have faith, and love.”

Because that’s what grace is. It’s that messy breaking in, it’s love! It’s the voice that comes in the middle of the night and tells you that even though it is going to cost you, you are loved enough yourself to risk going out and loving somebody else, even if it isn’t in your plan, even if it breaks a few rules. Do not be afraid.

There was a time, once, a few years back, when I was lost. I felt like life was so dark. I remember working so hard to get out of it, to find the light. I met with my spiritual director at the time, who said to me, “Stop working so hard to find the light. Let the light find you.”

We want so much to work to find the light, hoping that if we follow the rules we can get there. But that’s not grace. That's control. Grace isn’t about finding the light.

Grace is the light that finds you. Grace is the light that breaks in when we least expect it, though we may be so busy working on our own plans that we miss it. Grace is God’s invitation for risky and messy love in God’s own self-- a light so powerful that we can risk to love without fear. Grace comes not in a booming voice but in a small, still whisper. Grace comes not in a majestic Christmas portrait but in a messy and dirty manger, one that we may well walk by without a second thought because we think it doesn’t fit the rules we have built to hold it.

I love this story of Joseph, this final advent moment before the incarnation next week. It is so powerful in its call to move us out of complacency, to listen in the darkness, to prepare the way for the light, to listen for the voice that is always beckoning us to love. Whether or not we have ears to hear, even when it doesn’t match our rules, our expectations, is up to us.

We have a tradition in my house this time of year. We usually watch this movie, The Polar Express. I don’t know how many of you have seen it, but it is the story of a boy’s journey to believe.

The movie begins with the boy doubting his belief in Santa. Just when he is tossing and turning in his bed, something happens on the street outside, and a train appears from out of nowhere. He is invited on board, but he asks the conductor where the train is going. The conductor responds, “One thing about trains: It doesn’t matter where they’re going. What matters is deciding to get on.” He struggles with whether or not to board the train. What a difficult choice! This mysterious train from nowhere-- full of intrigue, yet he knows nothing about it. Is it safe? What if it goes someplace dangerous? He refuses. But what if it goes someplace wonderful? As the train pulls away, he says yes and boards anyway.

It turns out to be a life changing adventure. He meets many people. He has lots of joyful and scary experiences. And in the end, he discovers that he believes, all stemming from his decision to take a step onto this mysterious train that appeared from nowhere that is leading to an unknown destination, breaking all the rules he knows.

The thing is, when the train came to his town in this mysterious adventure, the adults all slept through its arrival, even though it was loud and noisy and shook the whole house. The train didn’t fall into their expectations, their rules. They missed the opportunity to go to a new place, even though that journey required risk and uncertainty.

But the boy, he listened. He risked. He was willing to receive the gift that was so freely offered in this mystery that came to him. My wish for all of us is that the train wakes us up, shakes us, and startles us into getting onboard to a destination we’ve never dreamt of before.

In the words of poet, author, and pastor Peter Traben Haas on this Advent season as we come to its end,

You now enter the deepest days of darkness.
Take time to recall through story and song the message of my descent to you in love.
While it's an ancient story told with the poetry of a different era, remember this: I surprise with wonder. I make the impossible, glorious.
Watch. Wait. Wonder.

The Rev Jeff Martinhauk
18 Dec 2016

The Sunday Sermon: The season of Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

New Englander poet Emily Dickinson knew the power and necessity of hope, in a land where winter seems to go on for ever.

Today we face a mess of contradictions. It's the first Sunday of Advent, the start of a new church year, and yet our calendars are old and tattered, the days continue to get shorter and cooler, the world is full of signs of endings - a lame duck administration, falling leaves, the publication of end of year lists. Are we at the beginning or the end? Our scripture readings don't do much to resolve the confusion.

If you aren't familiar with the church's peculiar logic, here's a summary of how our Sunday readings are structured. We have a three year cycle, each year focusing on one of the first three Gospels (I've never understood why it isn't a four-year cycle with the four Gospels, but like I said, peculiar logic). On this first Sunday of Advent, as we begin year A, we start hearing each week from Matthew's Gospel. The Old Testament reading is selected to match or contrast with the Gospel. The Psalm is a congregational response to or meditation on the Old Testament reading.The second reading is usually from one of the letters by Paul and others, and often runs sequentially from week to week through the highlights of one letter, although in Advent the second lesson jumps around to pick up various Adventish themes, today's theme being "Watch out! Wake up! Jesus is coming!"

Now you might think that we would start at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel and go forward, but no. Today we jump right in near the end, to the teaching Jesus offers his disciples after they arrive in Jerusalem and just before he is betrayed and arrested. It's not until the fourth Sunday of Advent that we find ourselves at the beginning of the story, with Matthew's unique portrayal of Joseph, that most patient and forgiving of fiancés.

Today is all about being ready for the unexpected. In our culture, Christmas is anything but unexpected. We've been seeing signs of its approach for a month or so already. And it's not just Christmas. We try to insulate ourselves from the unexpected and unplanned in every part of our lives, from the sensible such as signing leases, to the fanciful such as reading our horoscopes. We buy insurance policies. We check the weather forecast. We plan budgets - something we've been very occupied with at church lately. We design career paths and family structures and vacation schedules. We make Christmas present lists and wills.

But, as the saying goes, life is what happens when you are making other plans. A young girl in ancient Palestine was visited by an angel and the world turned upside down. Three years ago I was preparing to start a Doctor of Ministry degree at Virginia Seminary, and God called me to San Diego. Three Sundays ago I gave Communion to a member of our choir who was his usual cheerful self, and the next day we learned that God had called him home. That same week our entire nation was stunned by an electoral upset that nobody saw coming. And, try as we may, we cannot know or predict when the kingdom of God will be fully inaugurated.

We live in a time between times, a time when Jesus has visited the earth but has still to return to claim it for his own, a time when we have seen the ultimate gift and we have witnessed humanity's rejection of it. Advent is about living in the time between the times, living in expectation, in tension, experiencing painful reality while placing our trust in the new creation that God has promised will some day come to be.

Sometimes it feels like we take two steps forward and then one and a half steps back. We celebrate marriage equality, and up spring so-called religious liberty laws designed to discriminate. We get within spitting distance of electing a woman as president, and instead face a real possibility of seeing reproductive choice restricted across the land. We take strides towards racial equality and then see young black men shot and native Americans driven off their own sacred lands. It's easy to feel helpless, to feel that there's nothing we can do to move the needle back towards equity and justice.

What we can do is live in hope that it will happen, that God is in charge, that whatever happens to us individually, or as a congregation, or as a generation, the Kingdom is coming ever closer, the plan of salvation is, ever so slowly, inching towards its fulfillment. Advent is, above all, a season of hope, and that is the message that is woven through these readings. We hope with Isaiah and the Psalmist that the world will know peace. We hope with St Paul that our leaders will set an example of honorable living, and that we will put behind us the xenophobia, greed and discrimination of our history. We hope with Jesus that, whatever happens to upset our carefully laid plans, we will continue to prepare the world to be a better place, worthy of the presence of God, a safe and welcoming home for the vulnerable, the refugee, the oppressed, in a world better than the one that begrudged the Christ child a bed, the one that stands by while a government bombs its children in Aleppo or fires smoke grenades at young water protectors in North Dakota.

We can be better than this, with God's help.

Last week our ingathering of pledges was moving and impressive. It was wonderful to watch everyone, old and young, streaming up to the altar to make our commitments. But we haven't yet reached the level of giving that we are hoping for. We have great plans for next year at St Paul's. We want to expand our youth ministry and launch an alternative worship service to bring the good news to people who aren't attracted to our traditional services. But we may have to put those plans on hold, and Chapter will need to be prepared to make tough budgeting decisions, in case our hopes don't materialize. But my hope remains strong. Now more than ever, we need strong leadership from our faith communities. We need to be able to feed the hungry, house the homeless, speak for those without voice, teach our children what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.

Meanwhile, look for the signs of hope, that thing that perches in the soul and never stops at all. Hope in a family rehoused after being homeless. Hope in the birth of a beautiful child. Hope in a moment of tenderness between friends. Hope in a prayer for healing. Hope in a prisoner freed. Hope in the graceful letting go at the end of a long life. Even though the days continue to shorten and the world continues to thrash about in violence and injustice, we hold to hope, because we know how the story ends, we believe the promises, and we are getting ready for the one who is coming into the world. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

November 27, 2016
First Sunday of Advent
The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges