The Sunday Sermon: The Power of Love

I´ve been thinking about power this week. In our Gospel reading, Jesus horrifies his friends by saying that he´s going to be arrested, tortured, and killed. This sounds like loser talk to the disciples, and Peter takes him to task. What kind of Messiah is he, if he´s giving up so easily? Of course, Peter and the others have no idea what kind of Messiah Jesus is. They are stuck in the human power dynamic: the Messiah will conquer by force and drive the Romans out of Israel, they think. Jesus has a tough job on his hands convincing them that there is another way, and in fact, in Mark´s Gospel, he never does make them understand. The idea that power and force are the same thing is deeply engrained in human beings, then and now. But God´s power is different from human power.

Abram and Sarai were obedient to God´s call, they believed the promise that God would give them descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, but they were powerless against the curse of childlessness until God´s good time, which came well after they had given up hope of ever having a child, when, as St Paul puts it, they were as good as dead. God´s power is different from human power.

On Ash Wednesday we once again witnessed the power of violence to kill and destroy, in the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The lost child who took up weapons of war and massacred his former classmates and teachers put his trust in the most destructive kind of power, breaking our hearts yet again. But almost immediately we started to hear stories of the students and teachers who put themselves between the gun and their friends, saving lives while giving up their own. The power of such sacrifice will carry their devastated families through this terrible time, and they will not be forgotten.

I read a story this week of an elementary school teacher who interrupts cruel classroom power dynamics by paying close attention to the children who don´t have friends, who are never picked for a team. She carefully draws those children into the circle, letting them know that they are precious, they are valued. She is saving lives with this gentle power of love and encouragement.

Closer to home, also on Ash Wednesday, scores of our own cathedral folks spread out across this city and offered Ashes to Go, a moment of prayer and connection for strangers on the street, from the most down and out homeless persons to senior officials in city government. There are no power politics in the liturgy of the ashes. We are all made of the same dust and all equally worthy of God´s love. We reached over 1000 people with this ministry and we witnessed the power of communion through the smiles, the tears, and the pain people shared with us.

What about the corridors of worldly power? On the whole, our elected officials have not behaved impressively since the shooting in Parkland. We have heard accusations from some that the outraged and bereaved students who spoke up in protest were paid actors spreading fake news. We have observed others playing golf while people buried their children a few miles away. We have seen the power of the gun lobby which holds many politicians in thrall, to the point that their own freedom of speech is compromised by their craving for the power that money in the bank will buy them. Think of the US senator who could not - could not - honestly answer the question posed to him by a Stoneman Douglas High School junior: will you refuse to take donations from the National Rifle Association? How sad is that, that a man with such power to make a difference has been literally silenced by the power of violence.

And all the time we are raging and grieving and arguing about the causes of gun violence and mass murder, the Cross of Jesus stands in the background, a silent witness to the power of sacrificial love.

Each time one of these tragedies happens there is a flurry of activity, of calls for change, of marches and protests and laments. But then all the fuss dies down, and nothing changes.

It seems that we can only look at suffering for so long and then we have to turn our eyes away and retreat back into denial. Nothing we can do ... maybe it won´t happen again ... somebody else´s child, somebody else´s problem. Just like Peter, we don´t want to face the reality of suffering. We are unable to stay focused on the source of our pain.

The attendance numbers of Good Friday versus Easter Sunday say it all.

One of the biggest conflicts I experienced in my last parish was over the gift by parishioners of a new processional cross. It was a crucifix, with a rather lifelike depiction of the wounds of Christ. The church was extremely plain, and you had to look hard to see a cross in there at all most of the time. This crucifix was a startling departure, and people hated it. The givers had to take the gift back, because the people didn´t want to look at a suffering Jesus.

I´ve heard people say that maybe things will be different this time. Maybe the young people, who have witnessed the horrors of seeing their friends and teachers killed, will lead the rest of us to a new way. Maybe this time the young people will shame us all into not averting our eyes; maybe we will find the grace and courage to keep on holding up the names and faces of the dead, will be persistent and annoying and disruptive until something does change.

The collect for this second Sunday in Lent speaks of those who have gone astray from the ways of God. In this time and place where the voices of the gun lobby speak louder than those of our dying children, we have surely gone astray from the ways of God.

Lent is the time to turn our attention to the Cross, to dwell on the love that suffers for others, to stay focused on the suffering of the world. This is the season to open our ears and our hearts to the pain around us, to allow the injustice and the grief we see ignite an energy that will drive us to keep working for the transformation of the world, even if we won´t see it in our lifetime.

As Abram and Sarai discovered, God´s promises are not fulfilled on our timeline. Think of the LGBT activists who died without seeing marriage equality, or the abolitionists who didn´t see the end of slavery. Their efforts mattered, and the promise eventually came to be.

It may take a lifetime for the prevailing motivation in Congress to change from campaign funding to actual public service. It may take the current generation of teenagers growing up and coming into their own as community leaders. Our part in the transformation of the world may be simply to encourage, to befriend, to guide our young people into the ways of peace and to vote out the corrupt and power-hungry. That would be a job worth doing.

We are not good at looking at the Cross. We are more likely to be with Peter in denial than to stand up and proclaim our allegiance to one who taught us a different way, a way that is just as unacceptable in today´s world as it was 2000 years ago, a way based on self-giving love.

Lent is a good time to think about this unacceptable Messiah that the Gospel shows us, a time to reflect on who Jesus is for each of us and how the reality of the cross changes our lives. Maybe this time it will be different. Maybe this time we will step forward, refusing to look away, our faces and our lives steadfastly turned towards the Cross, the place where Love claims victory and God´s power triumphs.

The Very Rev Penelope Bridges
February 25, 2018

Lent 2018 Faith Formation

This Lent we will undertake as a community a conversation about issues surrounding immigration and refugee resettlement, “Seeking Refuge, Finding Home: A Community Exploration of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement,” focusing specifically on our call as Christians to respond to the needs of the world, to love our neighbors as ourselves and to be open to new possibilities of how God is moving in our lives and communities. This year there will be many ways to take part in this important conversation, as well as other offerings to help us explore our faith and how God is calling us to respond to our own needs and the needs of others.

The first way to get involved is to attend the Lenten forum series, “The Community of the Seeker,” which will include a variety of speakers who will explore various aspects of immigration and refugee resettlement in our community and culture. Speakers will include Dean Penny Bridges, Consul General Marcela Celorio, SDSU Immigration Economics professor Dr. Enrico Marcelli, Imam Taha Hassane from the Islamic Center of San Diego, as well as Katherine Bom from Episcopal Refugee Net and St. Paul’s member Irving Hernandez who will share from their own experiences.

The second way to get involved is by signing up for one of three Wednesday night class offerings, starting on February 14th and ending on March 28th. Each Wednesday gathering will begin with dinner at 6:00 pm and then classes from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm. The first class is “Finding Our Spiritual Home: Adult Preparation for Baptism and Confirmation,” which is open to all those interested in being either baptized, confirmed or reaffirmed at the Easter Vigil on Saturday, March 31st. This class will focus on the main teachings of the Episcopal Church, as well as on cultivating ways to continue to connect our faith with our everyday lives.

The second class offering is for those looking to delve deeper into an exploration of their own understandings of faith with, “Living the Questions,” which offers participants weekly opportunities to explore some of the most profound questions of our faith, and creates a safe space to openly discuss our faith with one another while also continuing to learn how to embody our faith in our daily lives.

 Finally, for those interested in focusing even more on the theme of global refugee resettlement, there is a book study of Michael Soerens, “Seeking Refuge: On The Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis,” which offers a Christian exploration of and reflection on the global refugee crisis. Whether you take part in one of these offerings, or in both, please know that you are being invited to go deeper, to take a journey with you fellow community members of silent and honest introspection and learning in safe and open spaces.

Good Friday meditation: this is what you get for saying "yes"

So this is what you get for saying yes.

The fruit of your body, the apple of your eye, bloodied, broken, gasping his last breaths while the brutal world, uncaring, continues its business.

Once, an angel visited a girl, its bright wings overshadowing her innocence. Dazzled by divinity, she said yes, and innocence departed. She endured the doubts, the taunts, the suspicion of her neighbors, because she had said yes. She risked being discarded by her fiancé and losing all social status, because she said yes. She carried the body and blood of God's son, holding him safe until she could deliver him, her great and unique gift, her child, God incarnate, the hope of the world, because she said yes.

This girl once sang a defiant song of triumph, spellbound by the angel's glory, affirmed in solidarity with cousin Elizabeth, fulfilled in the swelling that promised a healthy baby. My soul magnifies the Lord, she sang. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. Where is that savior today? As Jesus croaks his last words, words of abandonment, from the Cross, Mary is left to wonder about broken promises, the promise God made to Abraham and to his seed for ever. How have the mighty been cast down? Where do the rich go hungry while the poor are filled with good things? This is not the vision the angel offered, this shame and loneliness and pain.

What mother hasn't known the secret grief of giving birth, the letting go of the most intimate bond, the ache of seeing the child grow up and away, reaching out to stretch, to risk, to fail or succeed without her gentle hands to steady, to caress, to heal?

And for Mary, now, all that love and care and grief comes to this, the bloody Cross, the jeering soldiers, the crushing of joy and hope, ah such a hope.

The Syrian mother cradles her child, poisoned by gas. The Sudanese mother buries the baby whom she could not nurse because she herself has nothing to eat. The Baltimore, or St Louis, or Atlanta mother screams her grief at city hall's door, her teenager lying cold and still in the city morgue with police bullets in him.

We say yes to new life, but the world has other ideas. Our children are exposed to danger, to injustice, to the brokenness of humanity and we cannot protect them. But we can stand with the mothers in their grief. We can hold accountable those in positions of power. We can engage in the vocation of the church, to bring about reconciliation among all people and with our God. And even as we join Mary in her agony, we can remember that this is not the end of the story. God's promises are sure, and all generations have and will call Mary blessed. Her son is broken today, but he will rise again. He will defeat the principalities and powers, he will bring new hope to those who are in despair, he will light the darkness for multitudes yet to come. The lowly shall be lifted up and God's mercy will endure.

All this shall come to pass, because she once carried the body and blood, because she once risked her future for an angel's word, because she once, in innocence and gentle obedience, said yes.

The Very Rev Penelope Bridges

The Maundy Thursday sermon: A new commandment

 When death came it was an invisible enemy, striking down adults, children, animals. It must have been like God's destroying angel, invading bedrooms and bomb shelters, catching the first responders as they raced to save lives and in the process lost their own. There was no Passover for the people of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria.

And on Palm Sunday, as Christians across the world sang Hosanna, "Save us Lord," the bombs exploded in Tanta and Alexandria, Egypt, one in a front pew of the church, the other outside the door, killing and maiming dozens, not only the faithful and their children, but also the professionals assigned to protect them from just such an attack. No Passover protection there either, for the Coptic Christians in their holy places.

When the people of God escaped from slavery under Pharaoh, they knew they were not yet safe. Pharaoh, an unpredictable, dangerously volatile leader, had changed his mind before, and he would probably change it again. It took a national catastrophe, the killing of the first-borns, to distract Pharaoh enough that he finally let the people go. The headlines were filled with terror and death: the mass departure of the Hebrew slaves wasn't the big news of the day. And after their on-the-hoof dinner, they slipped away into the dark, equally afraid of what was behind them and what lay ahead, not knowing where they were going, only knowing that somewhere out there in the wilderness was freedom.

Last Sunday the headlines were once again all about terror and death. Our observance of Palm Sunday would probably not have gained much media attention except for the fact that our Coptic cousins in Egypt had been attacked in the context of the very same worship that we were undertaking a few hours later, and so our voice was sought out. How tragic, how deeply ironic, that as we prepared to commemorate the brutal execution of an innocent man of faith, we gained public attention because of the horrific attack that killed dozens of innocent people of faith. In the very land where the people of God once celebrated the first Passover, the angel of death spread its wings, even as we began our week's journey to the Passover of the Lord. And tonight, hours after our military has deployed a bomb of obscene capacity, we re-enact the first Eucharist, the last meal of a condemned man, a meal shared with friend and enemy alike.

Tonight's Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament readings telescope as much as a thousand years into a few minutes. At one moment the people of God are eating their last meal in captivity, bags packed, sandals on, ready to hit the road, humming the Psalm as they go: I will lift up the cup of salvation ... you have loosed my bonds ... Praise the Lord!

And in the next moment Jesus is washing the dusty feet of his friends as they gather to relax in the holy city, the destination of their ancestors, and he is offering them bread and wine for body and blood, as a symbol of the death that he will now suffer on their behalf, the firstborn of God himself willingly shedding his blood so that God's people may once and for all pass through the valley of death to the land of promise. As Paul reminds us, "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

Jesus gives new commandments in place of the perpetual ordinance of the Passover: "Do this in remembrance of me;" "Love one another as I have loved you." A perpetual ordinance of love.

We cannot escape the sharp juxtapositions of our story: firstborns killed to save God's people. An innocent executed for the sins of humanity. An intimate dinner with a traitor at the table. A congregation that proclaims its trust in God in the midst of anxiety and fear.

Our faith is never tidy: reality intrudes no matter how hard we try to shape our practice with beauty, with carefully rehearsed words and movement, with familiar ritual.

We celebrate the Eucharist tonight, welcoming all, coming to the altar rail with friends and strangers, with the people who annoyed us today and the people we annoyed. We share a symbolic meal, the wafers equally tasteless for everyone, a reminder that the Eucharist isn't about flavor but about coming together before God as one people. But then, after the Eucharist, we will celebrate a real meal together. Our soup supper continues our sacramental gathering, and we will celebrate the wonderful diversity of gifts and personalities in our congregation as we sample the different varieties of soup, knowing that the gift lies in the distinctiveness of each recipe. Think what we would lose if we mixed all the soups together, just as our community would lose if we insisted on a homogeneous congregation. We are one body, but that doesn't mean we are all the same.

The third component of our gathering tonight, the mutual washing of feet, weaves yet another strand into the rich tapestry of our life together. In this intimate ceremony we serve one another as Jesus served his friends and even his betrayer. It may well be that you or I have at some point betrayed or let down the person who washes our feet. It can be excruciatingly uncomfortable to be served in this way. As Jesus points out, your feet may be clean, but that is not why we do this. As we wash each other's feet we wash the feet of the refugees fleeing Pharoah. We wash the feet of Syrian children and Coptic clergy. We wash the feet of all the saints who have witnessed to the power of Christ in our lives. And we wash the feet of Christ himself, who loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges
13 April 2017

The Sunday Sermon: God So Loved the World

There's a lot of baggage attached to this section of John's Gospel. Many of us have been beaten over the head with questions about being born again. We have become almost immune to the power of verse 16: God so loved the world ... because it's been abused and over-exposed, on billboards and even at football games. I have a vivid memory of being told, at age 13, on a car ferry in the middle of the Irish Sea, that a bad bout of seasickness on top of a sleepless night was God calling me to be born again (I didn't believe the earnest teenage evangelist who told me this). So let's admit that it's hard for many of us to hear this passage as the good news that it really is.

I wonder what happens if we come to the Gospel story by way of our Genesis story. You may remember that last week we heard the story of the Fall, the first time humankind was tempted to sin and of course failed the test. Now we have leapt to the twelfth chapter of Genesis. In the intervening chapters a lot has happened, and much of it isn't good: the first murder, the spread of violence and crime, the flood, Noah's drunkenness, the tower of Babel. It seems that humanity is determined to thwart God's loving plan for peace and obedience. So, God surprises us by coming up with a radical new approach: unconditional blessing. God will bless Abram (and Sarai, although she isn't mentioned here) to be a blessing for humankind. All they have to do is leave the nest, launch out into unknown territory, trust that God will guide them and care for them, and they will become the names by which all humanity will be blessed.

It's really quite astonishing. After all that disobedience and disappointment, in the face of all the evidence of humankind's faithlessness, God chooses to stick around, to remain in relationship, to continue to try new ways to care for the creation. God is not going to give up on loving us. And why Abram? We aren't told of any special virtues or gifts that cause God to single him out for this honor. In fact, the one thing we do know is that his wife Sarai is barren, and childlessness has usually been regarded as a sign of God's disfavor rather than the reverse. This elderly, childless couple will be the parents of a great nation. Notice how God repeatedly confounds our expectations and our small ideas of justice by choosing the most unlikely people to carry the blessing forward.

And it is carried forward, by one flawed individual after another, through treachery, adultery, violence, greed, incest, corruption, idolatry, murder - the pages of Scripture are filled with reasons for God to give up on us, and yet it never happens. God does make of Abram and Sarai a great nation, and that nation becomes the yeast that leavens the lump of humanity. Through God's people, all the people of the earth will be blessed, and the blessing has come all the way down to us, God's people in this time and place, flawed and sinful as God's people have always been, and yet still charged with carrying the blessing forward. And God loves us through it all, in spite of everything, no matter what.

We carry the blessing forward when we reflect the unconditional love of God. When we open our doors to our neighbors. When we go out and offer ashes to people hungering for God. When we give water to thirsty dogs in the St Patrick's Day parade. When we become extended family for those who have been rejected by their biological families. When we protest and march on behalf of immigrants, or women, or transgender people, or this fragile earth, our island home.

In their different ways, both the Genesis story and today's Gospel are pregnant with possibility. They speak of the future in God's longed-for world. If Abram obeys God's call he will be a blessing. If Nicodemus commits himself to God he will be born into a new life. God is always preparing something new, something we cannot articulate or understand. What is this new thing to be birthed? It lies ahead, just out of our sight on this pilgrimage of life. God is leading us towards a new thing, a fruitful future, and God is not concerned with the past or who we used to be but only with who we are becoming now.

Spare a thought for Nicodemus. Maybe you've been in that place of being a seeker, an inquirer, hesitant to commit. Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. He is a public person, a community leader. Perhaps he has something to lose by being seen with Jesus. Our faith doesn't cost us anything - or at least, no more than the time, talent, and treasure that we willingly give. But there are Christians in the world for whom faith is costly indeed. This week I read a news story about a Syrian man who converted from Islam to Christianity and was baptized in an Oklahoma church. Knowing he could be in danger from violent extremists in his home country he asked the church not to publish video or photos of his baptism, but they were excited about the conversion and shared the news on the web. When the man returned to Syria for a visit he was captured and tortured by fundamentalists who included members of his own family. Fortunately he escaped before they executed him as they had planned. Not surprisingly, when he returned to the States he sued the church, to discourage other churches from advertising their conversions. Faith can be very costly, and we should never take for granted our privilege of the free exercise of religion.

So Nicodemus, as someone active in local politics, is cautious, and he chooses not to wear his faith on hs sleeve. I'm reminded of my shift of Ashes to Go at City Hall last week, and of the two elected officials who greeted me warmly but declined to have ashes imposed. Compare and contrast this with Tony Reali, the ESPN commentator who is known for wearing his ashes on screen every year. Reali wrote about his practice, and here's a little of what he said.

"Realizing faith and spirituality can have [a] current voice is a powerful thing when you consider where we are in the world today... What happens if it feels like the world isn’t progressing the way it should? Trying to answer that last question is like hugging smoke. But I think I know how I want my answer to start: by not being silent. Change starts with voices. Those voices might be sparked by anger — maybe we have to allow for that — but they can’t only be anger. What if the voice comes from empathy? What if the way to move forward is by staying engaged with other people and putting our feet on the street? What if we saw people as the human beings they are, not the scarf on their head, country on the passport, or ash on their face? These are the questions I find I’m asking myself. Questions that should not be silenced." (Washington Post commentary, March 4, 2017)

As we walk through these middle Sundays in Lent we will hear stories of Jesus interacting with a whole cast of characters: today Nicodemus, then the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, and finally Lazarus and his sisters. Each story takes us a step closer to the final drama of the Gospel. Each step leads us further along a path from disbelief to conversion: Nicodemus is at the beginning, not even ready to be seen talking to Jesus. The Samaritan woman not only talks with him in public but believes him and tells her neighbors about him. The man born blind miraculously receives the gift of sight and after being rejected by his own spiritually blind community becomes a disciple. And Lazarus is restored from the grave to life, demonstrating in the most dramatic and public way the power of Jesus to give new life to those who love him and who want to love him more.

Lent invites us to journey with these characters and with each other from wherever we found ourselves on Ash Wednesday to a place of new understanding, new trust, new life as God's beloveds, carrying the blessing forward. You won't want to miss a single Sunday as we walk together along this wilderness road to Jerusalem, to the Cross, and ultimately to the joyous miracle of Easter.

March 12, 2017
The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges

The Sunday Sermon: Places in the Heart

Today is the 1st Sunday of Lent, 2017 - a season that draws us on, from the Incarnation of our Lord, from the starry sky of his divine manifestation, into the lengthening daylight of a more introspective season. For today, we ponder in our hearts how the Holy Spirit, who visited Mary, who gave Jesus life in the first place, and who blessed him at his bap-tism; how the Holy Spirit has now driven Jesus up into the wilderness - so that he may be tested during these 40 days and 40 nights, for the hard journey that lies ahead. What a change in perspective this is for us all - as from the glorious vision on the Mt. of Trans-figuration, that dazzled our eyes just last Sunday, we come now into this desolate place.

For then, the disciples saw the shining face of Jesus revealed, at high altitude, where God even spoke to them from the bright cloud - now God's Beloved Son shows forth the face of his human determination and conviction. Pared down. Flint hard. Uncompromising. Here in the wilderness, all sound is absorbed, we notice, and the silence is deafening... Yet, after 40 days and 40 nights, the silence is broken by the combat of Jesus with Satan. This is no mere word game, nor test of debate skills, no scriptural quiz show to reveal the weakest link. It isn't a question of who knows scripture better... For, when Satan attempts to deploy scripture as a weapon, it fails. The combatants may seem equally skilled, yet, it is Jesus, who prevails. And angels come to minister to him, as Satan slinks away...

Think of what Satan offered... Bread?! Yes, hungry people must be fed. Yet, all good things come from God's Providence, to feed so much more than just our bodies...

Physical safety? Jesus will not test God on this point... Political power? It will be cen-tral to the justice of the coming realm of God. Yet not power at any price, nor power for it's own sake. Certainly not power from bowing down before the personification of evil, and worshipping its malevolent form! Having fasted 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus clings to bedrock truth, and to God's commandments. For this combat is about spiritual allegi-ance and purity of heart. "Worship the Lord your God, and God only shall you serve."

And while it's true, that Jesus affirms the value of Satan's bait: food, security and power,

He will not compromise his own integrity. Jesus stands firm, holds fast to God's truth. He prevails with faith, not with force. And he steadfastly refuses to take credit - or to cast himself in the role of hero. Soli Deo Gloria. "To God alone, be the glory." The real bat-tle, Jesus shows us, is waged and won in the believer's heart, where our foes are internal... where we are tempted to fall prey to self-confidence, self-interest and self-promotion. We are tempted to confuse ends with means, to rationalize everything, every day, every step of the way, in the form of a self-centered triumphalism; all the while thinking that righteousness personified leads to personal pride and praise. Not by this season's light...

For Jesus, born and blessed by the Holy Spirit, knew that listening to Satan is always catastrophic. Listening to God alone is what we all are called to do. Jesus' own life was now set on a course that could end in no other way than in a direct and final confronta-tion with this tempter, who promises what can't be delivered. The stakes are very high, indeed... Who would have the last word over the future of this world? The Spirit of God, or Satan? There could be no compromise with this tempter, who spoke to Jesus in the desert. These two would constantly encounter one another in the months to come, until that final moment in another desolate place, called the Garden of Gethsemane... The temptations presented to Jesus there, will echo, throughout his hard journey to the cross.

Along the way, Jesus had to constantly warn people against speaking about his mighty deeds, lest those very deeds be turned against him. And, there would be other taunts, about turning stones into bread: As for the 5,000, not counting women, children and the elderly, who were fed in the wilderness from five loaves and two fish, they would want him always to feed them. To give them their daily bread. People would pursue Jesus as a miracle worker rather than as God's beloved Son. They would see how powerfully the word of God worked through him. So that he would have to say, "Your sins are for-given," before saying "Take up your bed and walk." For the two were conjoined in him, and release from suffering wasn't the only end in view, for his mission and ministry.

And, in the end there would be another taunt... to throw himself down from a high place:

"Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God." Do the spectacular, then we'll believe! There would be constant pressure for Jesus to wrest the mantle of power from the dominion of this world, in order to accomplish God's purposes. The people yearned for one to come, who would throw off the yoke of Rome. Even his disciples kept looking for him to do that. "Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory," James and John said. Even on the triumphal entry into Jerusalem - the tempter was there again, in all the "Hosannas," and acclamations of "blessed is he, who comes in the name of the Lord." "If you will bow down and worship me - I will give you all this!" was the echoing whisper in Jesus' ears.

Knowing all this, it shouldn't surprise us, that Christ's Church sets aside 40 days and 40 nights as a time for examination of the whole community of faith. In the early church, Ash Wednesday's penitential prayer called for any who had committed "notorious sin" to repent and do penance befitting their deed, so that they might be returned to the fold. That prayer was offered on our behalf, just last week, and I suspect that most of us didn't think the term: "notorious sin," applied to us, for we assume that none of our sins are excessive or dramatic enough, to be counted as "notorious." Yet, the Church crafted this prayer out of the early experience of persecution and oppression: Those who were not strong enough to resist, those who had betrayed their Lord, informed on their neighbors or paid bribes to be left alone, they had, in the eyes of the Church, "sinned notoriously."

Then, as now, private sin had public and political consequences. Lent became a season to refocus on love of God and love of neighbor, so that a homecoming might be possible, and Community in Christ restored. Even today the Church wrestles with "notorious sin" and its consequences in all parts of the world, on all continents, as we learn in daily news reports, and as we face the fears of extremist ideologies... that lead to threats of terror in places where the Church has been persecuted in the past, and even now is being persecut-ed - places where the Church, too, has been and sometimes still is complicit in wielding illegitimate, oppressive power... where fear for survival drives neighbors to hate, to be-tray, even to take lives. In all of these places, the Church agonizes over notorious sin. And yet, the Church in this season, is called to offer a healing absolution in response to heart-felt confession, truth-telling and repentance - so that reconciliation and restoration to right relationship is possible - between neighbors and nations, all around the world.

And, lest we think that Lent is only for the sake of others: our own spiritual fasting, lis-tening, and reflection leads us into our own personal self-examination, repentance, con-fession and absolution. And yes, a Holy Lent leads us toward our own personal recon-ciliation with God and our neighbor, as well. For the false gods of self-righteousness, arrogance, isolation, lust for power, even vengeance - these idolatries are always with us - always ready to lead us astray. And yes, the tempter will return, again and again, for sin is "always crouched at the door" of our hearts, "looking for an opportune moment." Yet, the Good News is - that we are not left alone in the wilderness of our struggles...

For God sends angels to us, too, who bring God's Spirit, to touch & restore us. These visi-tations will come suddenly - when we least expect them, when we are most exhausted & vulnerable, they will bring the Love of God to us - when we are most in need, they will come, to lift us up. Therefore, in our worship & service of God, Jesus' mission & ministry continues, as we bring our own witness into his Story of Salvation, his story of freedom from oppression, with justice, mercy and love. For yes, as Jesus has shown us today, we are not left to languish in a desolate place. And so, even with traces of ashes still on our brows, we move out - from the innermost places of our hearts, into all the earth. That is what the hard journey to the cross requires & the Holy Spirit strengthens us, on the way.

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Carol M. Worthing
March 5, 2017 St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral
1st Sunday of Lent 

The Ash Wednesday Sermon: Two Lenten Truths

Holy God, You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind;
and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we
return. For so did you ordain when you created us, saying,
"You are dust, and to dust you shall return." All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song of hope and praise.


It is striking to me that as we hear the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” the smear of ash across our foreheads does not stop with a horizontal smudge -- but continues with a second vertical line to form a cross. Perhaps that reflects the two truths the Church trusts that you hear tonight -- that your life will end, and God’s love for you is endless.

Oh, we know that first truth well enough. Well enough to do everything we can, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid facing up to it. The life of my friend Cassandra ended too soon by a car accident while we were in high school, and I remember realizing for the first time that there’s no reason that couldn’t have been me instead. It was a terrifying thought for a teenager convinced of his invincibility! The clarity of the realization faded in the weeks that followed; the truth that “we are all terminal cases” is difficult to bear in the conscious mind.

Even more bracing was my first experience taking our then three-month old daughter Robin to the Ash Wednesday service at our seminary. When the priest told her that she too was dust and that she too would return to the earth, I got angry. If my perfect baby daughter wasn’t going to live forever -- well. Maybe something was deeply wrong about this entire project, experiment, whatever you want to call it -- life -- that God placed us into.

Sitting in the NICU at UCSD Medical Center with our second child, Jem -- seeing the tiny, tiny babies around us living only with the help of machines, fighting to stay alive -- I found a new gratitude so close to the edge separating life from death.

But are we ever that far from the edge ourselves? How precarious is the ledge we’re standing on? And we don’t live in Raqqah. Or Mosul. Or South Sudan. Remember that you are dust. Your life will end.

And yet. Even at the grave, even at the edge of our existence, we make our song of hope and praise. Because God’s love for you is endless. You! I know, it doesn’t make any sense. We don’t deserve this love. We turn away from God time after time after time, forgetting who made us with tender thoughtfulness and affection. We disregard, often willfully, God’s wise guidelines for right living, and reap the consequences of these poor decisions. Even worse, we fall into bad habits and addictions that strip us of our free will. We become slaves to our desires, our insecurities, our fears. Have mercy on us, oh Lord! And God does. I don’t know why, but God does.

As most of you know Laurel and I are working at St. Luke’s in North Park now -- missing y’all though! (I’m still pastoring the Cathedral’s 1 pm Spanish-speaking congregation, too.) Last night St. Luke’s held a Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner -- which not one of our Sudanese congregants attended, incidentally -- I guess we missed the cultural memo on that one -- but was attended by some of our early morning service parishioners. Beautifully, at least a dozen of the participants of our Tuesday night AA group came early and enjoyed a meal with us. The scene was unlikely and strange and perfect in a way that only the Holy Spirit could orchestrate. With only a few minutes before the start of their meeting, I invited a tall, 50s something man looking for the group to grab a plate and dig in. With some Zydeco music playing on my phone in the background, he said hello to our pancake flipper, asked about the syrup, grabbed a couple sausages, and found a napkin and fork. He turned to go, then hesitated, suddenly looked me in the eye as if answering a question I’d just asked, and spoke in the voice you’d use if you were asking the love of your life to marry you, “I’m 412 days sober. This is new life.” And he walked out of the room, taking my breath with him. I didn’t even know his name. But I know his God.

412 days of new life. God has mercy on us, and God loves us every single day of our new lives and our old lives. Your life will end. God’s love for you is endless.

Ash Wednesday marks day one of a “searching and fearless moral inventory” that you are invited to pursue through the forty days of Lent. During this time of courageous introspection we will be following Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. He is walking toward his cross, and the crowds that followed him in Galilee are thinning. Fewer and fewer are ready to make that trek, especially when they find out Jesus’ final destination. But what about you? Are you ready to follow?

You don’t need to know for sure. Because you don’t have to do this alone. We’ll be walking together -- so take the next step and join the Wednesday night inquirers class, or the community-wide book study, or make a habit of attending church each week and staying afterward to meet someone new.

You are infinitely treasured by the Creator of heaven and earth, and you were made for relationship with Jesus, God’s beloved Son. Though your life will end, God’s love for you is endless. Make these days count for good.

The Rev Colin Mathewson

Via Crucis Border Pilgrimage

Members of the Los Angeles and San Diego Dioceses participated in a pilgrimage to the border on Saturday, March 19, where a joint Eucharist was held with our Bishop James Mathes joining Bishop  Lino Rodriguez-Amaro of the Diocese of Western Mexico on the Mexican side, and Bishop Mary Glasspool of the Diocese of Los Angeles on the US side.

See a photo slideshow here, on the EDSD flickr Page:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/edsd/sets/72157666001620481

Your Containers or Your Life

Eight people are participating in the current Formation Series track "The Journey of Your Art and Poetry." Each Wednesday night they share with one another how a Lenten poetic or art making discipline is helping them grow spiritually. Facilitator of the group, Mark Turner, offered the following to the group in their second meeting.

“Containers and Life” by Mark R. Turner, 11.5″x8.4″,
mixed media on paper: pencil, pen, collage

My mixed media image has us sitting out with the containers. But, wouldn’t you like to see what that design is like on the layer behind?

There is a story about a wedding celebration which went way beyond an afternoon reception and partied so hard they ran out of wine. Jesus and his disciples were there and his mother tapped him to help out with the pending disaster.

Jesus looked at six major containers: six amphorae each with a capacity of 20 to 30 gallons of liquid. With drink like that the party would have to go on for days even with a large crowd. But they were reserved for religious ritual cleansing water — a technical process strictly observed. He told the servers to fill the containers with water as they were meant to be.

Then he directed the servers to draw some of the water out and take it to the master of ceremonies who, rather than washing in the middle of the party, decided to sip it and was blown away. It was the best wine he had ever tasted.

Needless to say the party went on — and on — without a hitch — except for the couple who really were hitched and whose wedding would never be forgotten. (John 2:1-11)

Everyone truly appreciated those huge containers and never mentioned they had been employed for a much different use than intended. But, then, who cares about containers? It’s what is inside and poured out that matters.

Life is more than containers.

Pots, pans, houses,
Cars, stores, businesses,
Jobs, banks, corporations,
Institutions, systems,
Governments, nations,
Race, class, culture,
Our Way-of-Life,
Religion.

We make them to serve that which really cannot be contained, the spirit which Jesus would later compare to the wind.

All these containers are temporary, but we tend to concentrate on them and forget the on-going party, to keep busy maintaining and guarding the containers while life radiates beyond us.

Peel back the container layer of my drawing and contemplate the uncontainable.

“Part of a Moment of Life” by Mark R. Turner,
7″x5.25″, mixed media on paper: pencil, pen

-  Mark Turner
co-leader, Cathedral Center for the Performing and Visual Arts

The Sunday Sermon: Pay Attention!

We are coming up on the halfway mark in our Lenten journey, and our Scripture readings aren't letting us off the hook. God calls Moses to an impossible task; the Psalmist is dying of thirst; Paul sternly reminds the Corinthians of the deadly consequences of misbehavior; and Jesus utters a dire warning to those who don't bear fruit for the Kingdom: repent or else.

It's a challenge to find the good news today.

As Mark Trotter reminded us last week, this season is about repentance, and Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, is urgent in his call for the people of God to repent. The people who crowd around him want to know why innocent people suffer. We ask the same question when an Uber driver shoots people at random, when a tree falls in a storm and crushes someone passing by, when our loved ones are felled by cancer. We want to know that there is logic in the universe, that there is a reason why one person is killed in a tornado while another is spared.

But Jesus calls our attention back from others to ourselves. Don't worry about whether someone else deserved what they got: look to your own life and get that in order while you still can. When I heard the news about Justice Scalia a couple of weeks ago a petition from our Great Litany came to mind: from dying suddenly and unprepared, good Lord, deliver us. We are called to regular self-examination and yes, repentance, and Lent is a good time to start, because in Lent we walk on holy ground, the road that leads to the Cross.

But for many of us, paying attention to our own lives and to what God is doing in them represents a shift in our behavior. The amendment of life, what the Bible calls metanoia, is a process, not a one-time change. I think that's in part why the church in her wisdom has given us a whole season in which to practice it. Ash Wednesday gets us started with the Litany of Penitence and the imposition of ashes, but that's not enough. I know I need more than one jolt to get me heading in a new direction, and by the middle of Lent I might be just beginning to get to grips with it.

We start by paying attention. Moses was following the flock when something odd caught his eye. He might have walked on; perhaps others had seen the flaming bush and hurried past in fear. But Moses paid attention. He was curious. He stepped boldly onto holy ground. He asked the question: how can this be? And God rewarded him for that curiosity, that inquiring mind, that boldness, by speaking to him, by revealing God's self to him, by recruiting him for an awesome task. I will send you, God says, to bring my people out of captivity. And so began the long and tumultuous relationship between Moses and the God of Israel, the God of a people whose very name means "those who wrestle with God".

Centuries later, God's people are once again in captivity. They are occupied and cruelly oppressed. The Roman governor has no compunction about murdering the Jewish people even on their holiest ground, in the Temple. The nation is in crisis, beset by injustice and corruption; the people are looking for a leader who will do as Moses did, who will liberate them from fear. They are looking for a Messiah who will fight and conquer as the Israelites once conquered the land and made it their own. Many of them think Jesus is that Messiah. But Jesus is a different kind of Messiah. He is marching on Jerusalem, yes, but not at the head of an army. He plans to confront the oppressive powers, yes, but not with force of arms. He will defeat the powers that be, but not by violent rebellion.

As he walks the road to the Cross, Jesus confronts the oppressive powers over and over. He teaches about love, about forgiveness, about abundance and sharing, about building on rock and seeking lost sheep and welcoming the stranger. In a culture that is fueled by fear, where the wealthy hold all the cards and the authorities have sold out to imperial powers, such teaching is confrontational indeed. As he approaches Jerusalem, Jesus focuses more narrowly on the national disfunction.

The parable of the fig tree is aimed at Israel herself: it's not good enough to take up space, to claim a position just because the roots of Israel's identity go deep in the garden of God's creation. She must bear fruit. God is patient, but the time is coming when God will call others to service, when the chosen people will no longer be favored over other nations.

Jesus knows how unlikely it is that Israel's leaders will heed his warnings. In fact, all his efforts will achieve is to put a price on his head and seal his fate. Those who seek to correct a community's culture will always face resistance, sometimes resistance so strong that it leads to crucifixion. Those with a stake in the status quo aren't interested in repentance.

But what about us? Assuming we aren't going to join the scribes and Pharisees in their obstinacy, how shall we go about this Lenten exercise of amendment of life?

First we pay attention. We look closely at the burning bushes in our lives. We listen for the voice of God calling us into loving relationship and we trust that promise to be with us no matter what. We turn from judging others to reflecting on our own brokenness. Time is short: today is all we have, and there is no knowing what tomorrow may bring.

We bring ourselves before God, not just the good bits, the shiny bits, the well-behaved bits, but also the parts of ourselves that we would rather not see: the cruelty, the thoughtlessness, the selfishness, the pain we don't want to feel. We bring it all to God and we proclaim our willingness to be changed by love. And God will change us. This is a God who acts. The burning bush is alive; God creates life out of what was dead and brings into being things that had no being. Our God longs for us to turn our lives around, to recognize that we are loved, and to bear fruit.

Take off your shoes, for this is holy ground. We walk the way of the Cross in Lent looking for the ways God speaks to us, the places God calls us to go, the tasks God has for us to attempt. We pay attention, we look inward, and we step forward, following Jesus all the way to Jerusalem, even all the way to the Cross if that is where he leads. This business of repentance and amendment of life isn't easy; it's a struggle - the people of God are those who wrestle with God - but the struggle results in abundance of life, in liberation of the captive, in resurrection. Let resurrection be our hope and our destination.

The Very Rev Penelope Bridges
Third Sunday in Lent

Lenten Dilemma

The death of Antonin Scalia last Saturday almost immediately spawned a political argument about his replacement. The clichéd phrase of his not being cold before the vultures arrived is, like many clichés, exactly apt. During their debate the Republican candidates universally agreed that President Obama ought to forego putting a name before ‘their’ Senate for consideration, that doing so would mean a long delay until after the November election at least.

But Scalia’s death also instigated debates between the views that he was after all a human being, worthy of respect and dignity, the “Love your enemy” faction, against the “By their fruits, you shall know them” group who outlined Scalia’s rather nasty history of arguing against civil rights for gay people. Facebook filled with opinions on Scalia’s legacy, and whichever side you join, his life and death present something of a dilemma for Christians entering the season of Lent.

Every service from Ash Wednesday forward points us toward introspection, self-evaluation, repentance for what we have done and left undone, and a determination to lead a more godly life. Left in the spiritual realm and the sacred spaces of church, all of those activities move relatively smoothly, leaving us with an air of sanctity, of having communed not only with our own souls, but with God whose direction we prayed for all the while.

It’s outside the church walls that things sometimes unravel, and we’ve been through this before with bishops (not the current one) of this diocese whose legacy, like Scalia’s, is apt to lead us toward a deep-seated hatred for all they did to us or failed to do for us. Such feelings move us away from what’s called a Holy Lent, identified by the search for righteousness and forgiveness. Those emotions bring up the question of how much we are to forgive (Jesus had a lot to say about this amount), and how much we can forget about the hurtful slings and deadly arrows aimed at us.

No, we cannot ever forget. Doing so ushers in the possibility of the return of those days of repression and marginalization. To not remember past abuse is to allow its repetition. Forgetting breeds complacency and the smug notion that nothing like the past could ever happen again. “Tis a bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking,” Shakespeare tells us. Vigilance depends on memory, of a vivid recollection of the past and a resolve never to let bigotry rise to destroy the rights we have wrested from the benighted beliefs held by the likes of Antonin Scalia.

Forgiveness is nevertheless more than possible; it’s required. In the quid pro quo of asking and receiving forgiveness, we have no choice if we profess to be Christians. It’s a hard thing to do sometimes, forgiving people like Scalia who could have championed gay rights in his long career. But doing so makes us emerge much stronger in faith from the refiner’s fire, better tempered like fine steel for the next time we must forgive until forgiveness becomes automatic, and doesn’t require us to decide whether the other person is worthy of our forgiveness. Forgiving humbles us and ennobles us at the same time. It is the essence of love that endures all things and forgives all things.

So we may send Justice Scalia to God with our forgiveness with the sure and certain knowledge of God’s mercy. For us to do less within the covenant of our baptism would be a betrayal and most certainly would interfere with our symbolic journey toward Jerusalem this Lenten season.

Robert Heylmun
February 15, 2016

The Sunday Sermon: Truth and Lies

Several times a week I receive emails from AARP; they cover a multitude of topics, of special interest to the over-50 crowd. This week I noticed an article about the latest crop of scams.

It's not just about rich Nigerian widows any more. There are countless cons out there, many of them relying on the internet. There's the tech support scam, the IRS scam, the "please verify your account details" scam, the faith-based dating site scam and many more. Older Americans are conned out of nearly $13 billion every year. And it's not just about money. Social media are full of scams that simply set out to waste your time or mislead you with suggestions that you must share a post if you want to keep your friends or have your prayers answered. I know about scams, but I have a tendency to trust people until otherwise persuaded, so I still get caught out.

Discerning truth from falsehood can be very hard. The current political process is demonstrating this to a massive extent. Who is telling the truth? Whom should we believe? They all quote Scripture when it suits them, so that's not a reliable guide. If I wanted to be a real cynic I might think that some of the political consultants have taken their cue from the story of the temptation of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Luke.

Jesus has just received the baptism of John and the Holy Spirit at the Jordan. It's time for him to begin his ministry, but, typically for Luke, first he must pray. So he goes on retreat in the desert. I don't know what image you have of the desert, but I can tell you that I have never seen any terrain more barren than the Judean wilderness between Jerusalem and the Jordan. If it isn't artifically irrigated, it has no life in it. I cannot imagine surviving 40 days in it alone, with or without the leading of the Holy Spirit.

In this relentless environment, Jesus wrestles with what it means to be God's beloved. He faces a wilderness that is fertile with nothing except temptation. Temptation doesn't usually arrive with a big disclaimer label on it. It can be disguised as expediency, logic, beauty, common sense, kindness, entitlement, self-preservation, even generosity. The temptations presented to Jesus would allow him to do good: feed the hungry, rule the world, demonstrate his divinity. He could save millions of lives, achieve world peace, get everyone in line. Tempting indeed.

Luke tells us that the devil begins his fishing expedition with a modest bait: a single stone, that Jesus may, if he chooses, transform into just enough bread to take the edge off his hunger. What harm can there be in that? But Jesus sees through the trap: for one beloved by God, physical comfort must not take priority over trust in God's abundant care. Next, the devil claims ownership of the glory and authority of all the kingdoms of the world. It is his to bestow, he says (that's a lie, of course), and he asks just one small thing, an acknowledgment that he is equal to God. Not on your life, says Jesus, the law by which we live makes very clear whom we are to worship, and it isn't you.

Finally, the devil creates a dizzy-making illusion: "Look, here you are, poised over the center of power in your world. Quick, take my offer before you fall! You don't have to bother with living a human life, going through all the pain and toil of wandering through the countryside recruiting followers and preaching the Gospel. You can go straight to the finish line, prove who you are with one spectacular stunt, and claim the crown." For who in Jerusalem would doubt that he is indeed the Messiah if he were to float down unharmed from the Temple's pinnacle?

But this is not how God's beloved is to prove himself. Even when Scripture seems to prove the point, Jesus can stand firm, can keep his eye on the big picture, will not be distracted by short-cuts or easy answers. Jesus is able to see through the devil's lies, to recognize that he, as the Truth of God incarnate, must make no compromise with falsehood, must remain faithful to the call to live among humankind as one of us, Emmanuel, God with us, taking the same winding routes to Jerusalem as his neighbors, enduring the same pangs of hunger, facing the same frustrations of serving a God whose ways are mysterious, whose time is so often not our time, whose truth can be hard to hear, whose call can mean suffering and weakness and even death.

The devil retreats, defeated, for now, by the spiritual strength that Jesus draws from the deep well of God's love. But Luke adds one last tantalizing detail: the devil departed from him until an opportune time. The master story-teller provides a clue for the attentive reader, leaving us to wonder: when will that opportune time arrive?

We know, because we know the end of the story, when this final temptation becomes deeply ironic. Jesus isn't protected by the angels in Jerusalem. In fact, the horror and abandonment of his death is the essence of his mission: he suffers for and with us, he endures death, so that we will trust that God is always with us, even to the end of the age.

Returning to the present moment, we can see that, in this testing, Jesus provides a model for our discipleship. Like him we have received the Holy Spirit at baptism. Like him, we wander in wildernesses and face temptations tailored to our particular callings. Like him, we have been claimed as God's beloved. And as God's beloved, we must walk through the world and do our best to discern truth from lies.

The master of lies appears in many guises and disguises, often dressed up as something good and attractive, often appearing when things are going really well. In fact, it's been my experience that when I or an institution I'm part of is really on the right track, growing spiritually, doing the work of the Kingdom, we can count on the devil showing up, redoubling his efforts to derail us, even quoting Scripture, manifesting himself in resistance to change, or new bad habits, or a serious case of distraction.

Who has the truth? Which direction, which fork in the road do we take? Is it the one with the fast-track solution, the easy answer, the special offer that you must accept immediately or forfeit the opportunity? Or is it the one that promises a lasting relationship, something worth working on, a trust to build and a promise to keep?

If you want the truth, there's no substitute for incarnation. Jesus comes to us, in person as the truth of God. We can trust him because he has shown up. When we show up in person we are saying that you matter, this community matters. That's what many of us did on Ash Wednesday all over this city. That's what we did for the Muslim women last month. That's what we do when we participate in the AIDS walk and the Pride parade. That's what our Stephen Ministers do for fellow parishioners going through a hard time. We show up, to be Christ for others, to demonstrate that God's love is true. That's the kind of truth that will set us free.

Our temptations are tailored to our uniqueness, as they were tailored to Jesus's uniqueness. What are your particular temptations? What have you given up for Lent? Chocolate, alcohol, Starbucks? Or have you chosen less material weaknesses, like gossip, or complaining, or worry? Perhaps you are taking something on, like a devotional reading or more intentionality in what you say and how you treat others.

Whatever your Lenten discipline, you are likely to face temptations, and you may need some extra help in staying the course. Jesus had secret weapons with him in the wilderness that helped him withstand the seductive voice of sin: he was secure in God's love and the Holy Spirit was with him. The same applies to us. Each of us is God's beloved, each of us has received the Spirit. And as we together walk the path of discipleship, we will draw our strength from the very words of God as we hear them in today's Psalm, the same Psalm the devil quoted to our Lord: "Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them." Therein lies our Lenten hope.

The Very Rev Penelope Bridges
February 14, 2016. First Sunday in Lent 

Ash Wednesday Sermon: A Time of Fragile Greatness

On Ash Wednesday two years ago Laurel and I sat with our two-day old baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or NICU, of UCSD Medical Center up the street. This was not how we had hoped to spend our second day with Jem, who was connected to several electrodes monitoring his heart, breathing, and oxygen levels and hooked to an IV administering antibiotics. We felt sad that he had to experience the more sterile and sharp parts of this world so early in life, but thankfully, we weren’t worried about his long-term well-being after those first couple days. The doctors were being cautious with a breathing rate that wasn’t quite right.

But we sat three feet away from a 28-week old premature baby who weighed much, much less than she should. Her incubator’s rectangular walls were clear and coffin-shaped, and they formed the bounds and held the means of support for her fragile body. Yet from the coffin breathed life. For months this baby would breathe manufactured air and consume manufactured formula, the best human minds can produce, to enable her miraculous growth. Imagine the money, the time, the care and concern involved to keep this little one alive. I trust that now she thrives.

Today we acknowledge just how fragile each one of our lives really is: We are just dust, and to dust we will return. We are so small, so insignificant, and we live in a bounded world determined by natural and immutable laws. We face this fact each morning when we get out of bed — that living this life is risky, and that we are entitled to no particular promise of health, wealth, or prestige. And yet, like the premie next to us two years ago, we are cared for more than we can ever know. We are loved beyond measure and beyond reason by the God who brought us into being.

How can we be so small, so insignificant, and yet be loved so much and be capable of so much? This is the dilemma of the NICU, and it is our invitation to ponder this Lent, a time of great limits and fragility, great love and possibility.

---

Last weekend I was in Guadalajara as our bishop’s representative to the Anglican Diocese of Western Mexico’s annual convention. He and many others hope that we might soon form a sister relationship with our neighboring diocese to the south, which includes the entire Baja California peninsula and all of northwestern Mexico to Colima more than a thousand miles away. The convention was held in St. Paul-the-Apostle Cathedral, a twenty-year old concrete block structure on a dusty lot with faux-wood finish paint peeling from its metal front doors. Inside, the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling featured naked fluorescent bulbs; one of the spiraled bulbs had gone out in the fixture above the altar; and another glowing naked bulb next to the aumbry announced the presence of consecrated bread and wine. A cockroach scurried under the pew during one point in the day.

The Diocese of Western Mexico can no longer afford stipends for the priests of its 20-something missions, which prompted one of two priests in Tijuana to work at a Verizon customer service call center before moving to the States in search of a better job to feed his wife and teenage son. Another priest in Sinaloa took on a six day-a-week job as a hotel bellhop to feed his wife and five kids and continue his ministry on Sundays. The priest in Mexicali, Armando, admitted to me that he and his wife will eat just beans, rice, and tortillas for months at a time to make ends meet.

Now it’s not our fault that St. Paul’s Cathedral in Guadalajara lacks doors to the stalls in its bathrooms, any more that it’s my and Laurel’s fault that our total compensation is more than the entire 2016 budget of the Diocese of Western Mexico. But I do think something in our moral selves is awakened and unsettled when we hear of such stark contrasts. We yearn for an explanation that could help us feel less implicated, less troubled in our gut.

But rather than an explanation, I only offer this: Armando, who at age 58 suffers from diabetes and deteriorating glaucoma and who may or may not find the money or connections to get the eye surgery he needs to keep from going blind, gave his clergy shirt and collar to a newly ordained priest at the end of the convention, telling me that he has one other clergy shirt back home — why would he need more? And during the diocesan convention, Bishop Lino announced a new initiative (of unknown cost) to accept pastoral oversight of two dozen destitute indigenous communities in the mountains of San Luis Potosi who have been abandoned by the government and their former church.

I don’t know about you, but this level of generosity and faith is way beyond anything I’ve been able to come up with in my life to date. When I witness such spiritual power in the face of such material scarcity, I am brought into an unsettled place, a place where it is less obvious how I am to live a moral life in the midst of such material abundance.

Lent is a time when we seek out this unsettled place voluntarily, when we step out of our daily steady routines. It is a time when we search fearlessly inside ourselves, confronting our addictions and all that holds us back from a fuller relationship with God, and give that which holds us back into God’s love and grace.

Ash Wednesday is the door we’ve chosen to buzz that will let us into the church’s Lenten season in the NICU, a place of great limits and fragility and great love and possibility. Walk the aisles of the NICU with us this Lent -- notice those in need and witness their healing; walk the margins, the places of unsettled risk, and be strengthened by the stunning faith of those who reside there; contemplate this manifestation of God’s love beyond all measure and reason. See miracles born of determination and love from the smallest beginnings. Stay in relationship with your family of faith as we walk beside Jesus along the uncertain and dangerous edges of his society. Watch his lonely temptations, his resolute march to Jerusalem, Mary’s anointing of his feet, his triumphal entry into a misunderstanding city, his terrible cross.

If you think your religion has gone stale, if you think your faith has dried up for lack of challenge, let Lent be your insistent reminder that God has great dreams for us, all of us gathered together right now. Our Maker invites us, we of fragile bodies and limited moral selves, to restore streets and rebuild cities upon a foundation of justice and truth. Our Creator has gifted us with magnificent imaginations, gritty courage, and dogged persistence in this cause.

Yesterday Jem’s godparents in Alabama informed us that their three-week old baby will need to spend at least two days in a nearby NICU due to a high fever. That is a scary prospect, indeed, and yet there is comfort knowing the magnitude of resources that will be brought to bear in caring for Alice Grace. With God’s help this Lent, together we will bring to bear the material and spiritual resources given to us to share our bread with the hungry, invite the homeless poor into our house, and the loose the bonds of injustice afflicting those in the world’s forgotten places. Sure, what we have to offer may seem small and insignificant, but there is much possibility waiting to be born of God’s great forgiving love.

The Rev Colin Mathewson
Feb 10, 2016

The Sunday Sermon: "We Want to See Jesus"

Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2015

It was spring festival time in Jerusalem. The city streets were awash with tourists and pilgrims. The Temple was crammed with people coming to both worship and sightsee, from all over the Empire. Visiting Gentiles had heard about the Galilean rabbi who had created a stir, parading into the city like a king after reputedly raising a man from the dead. They wanted a glimpse of the celebrity. Someone pointed to Philip and suggested that he was one of the Galilean's friends; his Greek name suggests that he spoke their language. So they tugged on his sleeve and said, "Sir, we want to see Jesus."

We want to see Jesus.

At this moment in the Gospel story Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem for the last time. The first 11 chapters of John, known as the Book of Signs, tell us who Jesus is. The Word became flesh, John says, and dwelt among us. And as he dwelt among us Jesus revealed his divinity by turning water into wine, healing the sick, feeding the multitudes, walking on the water, healing the blind, and finally raising Lazarus from the grave. Death to life, darkness to light, blindness to sight: these are the themes of the Gospel. Jesus speaks to the spiritual blindness of his own people when he says, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."

Now, in this second half of the Gospel, we are given the Book of Glory: the story of how Jesus walks into the darkness, going willingly and knowingly to his death, so that he will draw all people to himself. Right now he's a rock star. The crowds are going after him: they seek him out and they want to believe in him. They want to see Jesus. But the leaders of his community take up stones to kill him and plot to have him arrested and executed. They remain blind; they do not want to see Jesus.They do not see who he is.

Just a couple of verses before the Greeks' request, the Pharisees have been wringing their hands and complaining that the whole world is following Jesus, and now John offers evidence that his fame has indeed spread beyond the Jewish community. It's perhaps a measure of the mounting tension and danger around Jesus that the disciples don't immediately take the tourists to their master, but they confer with one another and then consult him. Even then, it's not clear that the Gentiles ever receive a response to their request. It seems to be a big deal, to be allowed to see Jesus.

Celebrities are of course often protected from public contact, sometimes for their own safety, sometimes for an arrogant sense of exclusivity. But Jesus didn't usually shy away from crowds or even undesirables: it's one of the things that we love about him, that he was and is so willing to be vulnerable, to hang out with all the wrong people. So why did these visitors have to practically submit an application in order to see Jesus? Or is John, in this brief anecdote, simply providing a voice for a question that needs to be heard? A question that expresses a longing that rings down the ages. Faithful people and outsiders alike have ever said, "We want to see Jesus." We all want to see Jesus.

That is our purpose as the church: to see Jesus, and to allow others to see Jesus in us.

Where shall we find him? We can't just walk up to one of his disciples and request an appointment.

Like those Gentiles visiting the Temple, we are all strangers, pilgrims, traveling through life. We wander down roads of sorrow, loneliness, confusion, seeking purpose, seeking unconditional love, seeking someone who will help us discover meaning in our lives. We want to seek light in the darkness. We want to see Jesus.

We long to see Jesus.

We look for Jesus in the right places and in the wrong places: in our families, in our friendships, in our professions, in our addictions. We struggle through the messiness of our relationships and our own sin, trying to discern the face of Jesus in those we want to be rescued by or in the people we most admire.

Where do we find him?

We come to church, and we say "We want to see Jesus". In some ways he is easy to find here. We see him on the Cross, suffering as in the west window, or triumphant, as in the cross over the altar. We see him superimposed for better or worse on the person of the celebrant at the communion table. We see him in the blessed bread and wine of the sacrament. But do we see him in the person sitting next to us in the pew? Do we see him in the family member we are fighting with? Do we see him in the fragrant individual who comes to use the Showers of Blessing on a Saturday morning? Do we see him in the server at the restaurant? Do we see him in the politician or the commentator on TV? Do we see him in the suffering face of our abused planet? Do we see Jesus when we look in the mirror?

We want to see Jesus. And so do others. There is another way for us to hear this request, and that is as the church, hearing the stranger, the seeker, the skeptic who looks to see Jesus in the face of this insititution. When the stranger comes to the door of the church and says, "I want to see Jesus", what do we show her? Do we go into a huddle to discuss whether this person is eligible or worthy to see Jesus? Do we have an answer? How do we show Jesus to our neighbors, to San Diego, to the world? How accessible is Jesus at St. Paul's?

Our Vision for Mission committee is starting to work on goals and objectives. We know our mission is to love Christ, to serve others, and to welcome all. Now, how will we live out that mission: in our worship, in our formation, in our community, in our outreach, in our identity as the Cathedral for the Diocese and the City? How easy can we make it for others to see Jesus in the life of this place? That's the challenge before us, and I am confident that the group of bright, creative people who make up the Vision for Mission group will come up with some brilliant ideas.

The letter to the Hebrews describes Jesus as a high priest. In ancient Judaism, the high priest was the only person permitted to enter the central chamber of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, and then only on certain days. The high priest had to enter alone, unprotected from a dangerous and powerful deity. It was the loneliest of places. For Jesus, as the ultimate high priest, the Holy of Holies is the sacred space of his sacrificial death, the sacred space of the Cross. Its loneliness is appalling - even God is absent, as we learn from Jesus's cry of dereliction, "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?" The high priest enters the holy place in fear and trembling, but he goes willingly because it is his vocation. Jesus admits that his soul is troubled, but he goes willingly; he teaches that the way to receive eternal life is to let go of your life, to let it fall into the earth so that you may be born again and bear much fruit. The path to life lies through death; the hour of death is the hour of glory.

These next two weeks will take us to the Cross. Here at the Cathedral we have all kinds of special activities: parades, footwashing, Vigils and fiestas, along the way. There are lots of distractions, rather like Jerusalem at Passover was full of distractions when those Greeks asked to see Jesus. We are called to serve others as we would serve Jesus and so to follow Jesus regardless of the distractions, to keep our eyes fixed on him, the light of the world, so that we can share him with others, as he walks towards Calvary and the darkness of Good Friday.

"Sir, we want to see Jesus". He is here, he is among us and within us, he is leading the way forward, and we can show him to the world.

The Very Rev Penelope Bridges

The Sunday Sermon: Facing Down the Fear

The owl

Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, my older sister gave me a little stone owl, just big enough for me to close my fist around. At the time I was all about the classics, and the little owl reminded me of Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom, who is often portrayed with an owl. I kept the stone owl on my desk, and whenever I took an exam I brought the owl with me and put it where I could see it as inspiration. I don't consider myself superstitious - I make a point of walking under ladders, I never pass along chain letters, and I have a special affection for black cats - but I still keep that little owl on my desk. It provides a link back to my childhood, and it reminds me of my sister.

Perhaps you have an object like that owl - a talisman, that you like to have within sight or in your pocket on important occasions, an object that seems to bring you luck or give you confidence. For some people a religious icon might be that object, for others a photograph of a hero or loved one, a piece of jewelry or an inspiring quotation. Human beings value symbols. We have the ability to assign special meaning to certain objects or images, and they can affect our emotions and even behavior. This works in negative ways too, of course. Think of receiving a voodoo doll with pins in it, or those pictures of dismembered babies that are displayed outside Planned Parenthood clinics.

The very strange story from the book of Numbers we heard today conjures up an image that probably makes most of us squirm. Snakes. Venomous snakes. A plague of poisonous serpents, on the loose among the people of God. It reminds me of that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones looks down into the cave where he must go and sees the floor writhing with snakes. "Snakes," he says, with that famous Harrison Ford crooked sneer, "I hate snakes."

The rattlesnake

Where does this archetypal fear of snakes come from? It's no accident that the villain in the very first horror story, the Genesis account of the expulsion from Eden, is a snake. From the beginning of time, human beings have feared and detested snakes. And now, in the wilderness, the people of God are faced with what they fear. The Israelites have been wandering in the wilderness a long time. This is the last in a series of stories about their grumbling and whining. Freedom isn't what they thought it would be. Freedom means uncertainty. It means experiencing insecurity about what they will eat and where they will live. Freedom means learning to trust in God's goodness and grace; and the people don't much care for it. Moses has repeatedly talked God out of destroying these whiners, and now it seems that God has run out of patience and is teaching them a painful and horrific lesson.

For those of you who picture heaven as somewhere that cherubim and seraphim fly around, you need to know that the word we use to describe the serpents as poisonous is actually "seraph", which means something fiery. So you might want to adjust your heavenly vision. Presumably "fiery" refers to the burning sensation of a venomous bite.

Once again Moses steps in to save the people, and God relents; but the remedy is the strangest part of the story. Make a "seraph" image and set it up where everyone can see it. Just looking at the image of the thing they fear will give them life. For a people who were taught that images were forbidden and magic was anathema, this is very strange indeed.

Make an image of that which you most fear, that thing which threatens to destroy you. Put it where you can see it, and look upon it, and you will live.

I wonder what it is that you most fear. What threatens to destroy your life? We live in a culture which trades on fear. Every day there are new examples of how fear is used to modify our behavior and our attitudes. The insurance industry uses our fear of loss and death to drive its business. Politicians use fear to seduce us with their false promises of prosperity and security. The movie industry uses fear to titillate and thrill us. The news media create headlines that startle and alarm us, so that we will read what they are peddling. And we are all too ready to cave in to our fear of the unfamiliar and the unknown, opting to stick our heads in the sand and keep on doing what we've always done, rather than launch bold experiments and try something new, whether that means remaining in disfunctional relationships, voting for the incumbent at election time, or resisting new ways of being the church in this 21st century world. Fear holds us back from the freedom of new life, as it held back the Israelites from the freedom promised by God after the Exodus. And fear threatens to destroy us, as those serpents threatened to destroy the people of God.

When have you faced your fear? There have been times in my life when I have been faced with a fearful thing and I was tempted to run from it. Sometimes I was brave enough to face it down, and I was never sorry afterwards. The walkabouts in the Bishop election in New Hampshire three years ago were very scary for me, with their open question-and-answer sessions. Last weekend's conference on preaching to Latino congregations was an intimidating prospect: the conference was conducted mostly in Spanish; we were expected to bring a Spanish sermon to preach in our small groups; and I didn't understand more than one word in 50 of what our first plenary speaker said. I could have made excuses and not gone, or stayed in my room for much of the time, but I showed up, I listened, and I'm glad I went. Facing the fear is almost always better than avoiding it. You can avoid that root canal for a long time, but sooner or later you will have to face the drill. And sometimes, facing the fear is the way through to new life and new possibilities.

For a year or so around the end of my marriage I attended Al-Anon meetings. One group happened to be exclusively made up of women, most of whom were middle-aged and married to or living with someone who was the alcoholic in the family. I used to listen to their sharing and wonder why on earth they stayed in the marriage, when life was so stressful and the relationship so unhealthy. I came to realize that for those women, fear kept them from exploring freedom. They were terrified of what it might mean to be on their own, even though staying in the relationship was making them sick. Fear can paralyze us, just as much as the bite of a venomous fiery serpent.

Fifty years ago last week a group of faithful people started to walk across a bridge in Selma, Alabama. On the other side of that bridge waited hostile police officers with guns and dogs. The recent movie "Selma" did a marvelous job of conveying the fear of the brave people who kept on walking towards the object of their fear, even though they knew that to continue to walk would mean humiliation, pain, and possibly death. Today we honor their action as heroes of our faith and of our nation, people who faced down fear and so led the way to radical changes for everyone in this country.

As we walk through our Lenten wilderness time, we are coming nearer to Holy Week, the heart of our faith, the dark time of Jesus' arrest, suffering, and death. Some people choose not to participate in Holy Week services because they are too somber, too redolent of pain. I encourage you to push through that reluctance and attend our services. We know that Jesus went to Jerusalem knowing what likely awaited him there. We know that he experienced profound terror in the garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed to be spared his fate. And we know that in spite of the fear he went forward to face the Cross, giving himself to a horrible death so that all people might look upon him and be saved.

Sometimes we need a symbol to gaze upon, a token to hold onto in a time of fear, of pain, of loss. For some it might be a rainbow flag; for some it might be a phrase from Desmond Tutu or Nelson Mandela or the Bible. For the 21 Christians beheaded recently in Libya, it was the phrase they shouted at the moment of execution: "Jesus Christ is Lord!"

Just as the serpent on a pole was a symbol of death lifted up to give life, so the Cross, an instrument of torture, is a symbol of death that is lifted up before us so that we may live. It is part of the deep mystery of the Cross that when we face our fear of death, whether it be the death of Jesus or our own inevitable death, we will receive the grace to persevere through the fear, through the denial, through the darkness.

As the old hymn Abide with Me] has it, "Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes; shine through the gloom and point me to the skies; heav'n's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee; in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me." May God abide with us every step of the way to Easter.


The Very Rev Penelope Bridges
15 March 2015