We are yet in our January series of “Unwrapping the Gift,” although it appears that the gift-giving and gift-wrapping season is over. I like gift giving and gift-wrapping so I get to extend the season. Berry Church is good at giving gifts. We gave over $300 to our Christmas family and Krista and I had the great fun of wrapping all of the gifts we purchased. There was a moment when I wondered to myself, “Why are we putting all of this work into wrapping. Couldn’t we just go with the gift bags?” But then I remembered, “What is the fun in that?” I could imagine the three kids seeing the boxes all wrapped up and feeling special because they got to wonder what is inside their gift. And they had the thrill of untying the ribbons and tearing off the gift-wrap and opening up the box with the promise of what is inside. Do you still get that thrill? Watch the children with a gift. Or have you too often been disappointed with what is inside. Have you lost the intrigue with the ribbon and paper; with the Styrofoam “peanuts”; with the soft cotton inside the small box? For some of us the thrill, the promise, the zest is gone.

We still give gifts, but receiving gifts, especially when we start talking about the gift of Jesus, of the kingdom of heaven, and of community; we may wonder, “Why am I putting all of this work into it?” “Why do I keep coming back when I’ve been disappointed and hurt so often?” Is it still good news for you, this gift that has landed in your lap? “What do we do with this gift of incarnation; God in our flesh; with our calling; with our gift?” “That is for someone else,” we say, and like a hot potato we give it up before we’re burned once again. This morning I invite you to revel in the paper and ribbon anew; to hold this gift and hear the words of call; the good news.

The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark’s Gospel; “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the good news.” John the Baptizer is arrested and shut up. Jesus picks up the message and runs with it, just as John prophesied. God’s Word is on the loose. Play with the wrapping paper, the promise, and the wonder of the gift. It is here, now, in the fullness of time, the good news God’s kingdom is come. And what is God’s kingdom? It is the world where God’s power is the only power to be reckoned with. In the market economy of Jesus’ day, the Cesar of Roman Empire had a strangle hold on all. It is the building up of a community of resistance that refuses to be held sway by fear and divisiveness. The Kingdom of God is a subversion of the oppressive power of the empire and a total transformation of the hold of such power over all of life. It is moving from the house of fear into the house of love. Play with that. Revel in that for a while.

And what is the way into the kingdom? The way into the kingdom is to repent and believe, or the way that Jesus uses the verbs: “Keep on repenting!” “Keep on believing.” Repenting is the “I can’t” experience. When we come before God confessing, “I can’t be free. I’m too caught up in having to make money. I’m too lonely. I don’t have the faith, God.” Repenting is dying to self, letting go. Then we are ready for the believing; ready for the promise that “God can”. Believing is inviting God to do what we can’t do ourselves—to raise the dead; to change and recreate us.

And then Mark shows us Jesus on his way to call people into the kingdom. “Come after me and I will make you to be fishers of people,” Jesus calls out. The Greek word genesthai means to generate, to make happen, to create, “to be.” In a fresh act of creation, Jesus will make his followers into “new people” following a new “way” in a New Community. “Fishers of people” has nothing to do with today’s popular notion of evangelism. The idea is not to go around trying to “hook” people into Christianity so they can be “saved” according to our definitions. Jesus is telling these fishermen that he is going to give them a new purpose, a new vocation rather than to be trapped in the corrupt market system.

The reference to “fishers” recalls Jeremiah 16: 16: “I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them…” The context of Jeremiah is to “catch” those who have been cast out–those cast out by Yahweh! In Mark’s theology, this is exactly what Jesus will do. He will redeem everything, including those who would have been rejected by God’s law.

In response to the gift and promise of Jesus’ call, Andrew and Simon “immediately” leave their nets and follow Jesus. The Greek word commonly translated here as “left” is aphentes. It means released, or let go. The Greek text then says that Jesus “went a little further” to James and John. Indeed he would. James and John would “let go” of something even more central. They “released” themselves from their family. In other words, the New Community will indeed be new. It will be a “turn” from existing social structures and time-bound traditions. People in the New Community will derive their identity not from their present economic condition or their past familial relationships, but rather be given a new identity as followers of the “way” of the “kingdom of God” as taught and lived by their leader, Jesus of Galilee. I’ll close with a piece by Walt Whitman; a gift to savor.

Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.



– Walt Whitman 1819-1892

“There are more times when this home Jesus brings does not look like what I expected or wanted. Yet that is the power of the Word made flesh in me; the power to change my expectations.”

What words can we say for the wonder of God, the all powerful, Yahweh, Lord of Lords, Justice-giver, Covenant-maker, choosing, working, making new life happen. John begins his good news with a word, but so much more than a word. This is the Word spoken from the beginning of time; the Word that speaks an emotion, a relationship, a connection, an act, when spoken, “Let there be light,” the light rushes in to make it so.

John then brings our eyes back down to earth to see a testimony to the Word, John the Baptist, with a message that the Word of Light is coming into the world. John the writer then destroys all religious thought of his day and of ours that the Creator before whom we bow in awe and wonder became a human being, a member of our sinful human family of frail, short-lived creatures. The Word of God, God’s speech, uttered from the heart of God’s self lived in remote province of the mighty Roman Empire called Galilee. “Can any good come out of Galilee?” was the wise-crack of John’s day.

John affirms just that. This divine Word at the heart of God is spoken today; sent out, “Let there be divine being among humanity, one with God’s self. It is a powerful Word, spoken down through history, encompassing all people, nations, countries, and all words; spoken into the remotest corners of our world where suffering and poverty is great; where we wonder, “Can any good come out of there?” Life, the life of all peoples, truly human, personhood, and truly divine, for the Truth is that God is supreme Person, becomes flesh and lives among us, this is grace upon grace, upon grace.

In this entire Good News of the first 14 verses of John, there is pivotal turning point that we must not miss. The great and wonderful Word that is spoken today contains a power; the power of our entire Word of God, a power that we at African Community and Berry Church struggle to live out—the power of the Word acted out in our lives—the power to become children of God. We at African Community speak about being a “home away from home.” Today these become more than just words for each one of us.

Jesus, the glory of God, like the glory and honor of a Father’s only son, comes to us today in this form of a newborn baby out of a place of questionable worth to bring us home where we belong—or better, he comes to bring home to us. Late in his ministry, Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23). To make this home for all of us (“all of us” meaning God, Word made flesh, Holy Spirit and humanity together—no wonder we need “many rooms” [John 14:1]), Jesus takes up residence in a few different rooms of his own: rooms—or space at least—in Bethlehem (Luke 2), Egypt (Matthew 2), Nazareth and various other points between Galilee and Jerusalem, ending up (again) without any room at all, crucified on a hill outside the holy city. All of it is to give us power to become children of God.

There are times in my life that I have wanted to run away from home. There are times when I do not like the choices God makes for my brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. There are more times when this home Jesus brings does not look like what I expected or wanted. Yet that is the power of the Word made flesh in me; the power to change my expectations, to help me see that something good does come out of Ravenswood, Edgewater, Albany Park, and Uptown and the power to reconcile the hearts of children to their new parents, power to reconcile renters and landlords, power to become sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, power to become children of God in the flesh.

God’s gift to us may not be the right size or color, but the present may not be returned, and we must each decide what to do with it. We could use words to say, “The peace of Jesus the Christ be between you and me; we could also say: “You are my family, my home away from home. I want to say that I love you, but time and my actions will speak its truth.” And the words were made flesh, as we try to be God’s loving presence for God’s people and God’s world today. A prayer attributed to St. Theresa of Avila says it well:

“Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”

On this Second Sunday of Advent, we experience hope fill our bodies and souls; the kind of hope that quickens your breath and lights up your heart. Today, we peel back the curtains of the stage and we see backstage what God has been waiting and hoping and working, and doing everything in God’s power to get us ready for what is coming so that we will not miss it, be caught inattentive, or worse, disbelieving and rejecting what is to come. We begin our new church year out of synch with the rest of the world’s time so that we can begin again, change our routines, be ready with hope, looking for the coming of that day and trying to hasten it.

God speaks the word in the chaos of the world, let there be light, and the light rushed in to make it so. John the Baptist, the prophet in the wilderness and chaos, speaks the word of God once again, “Let there be light,” and the light rushed in to make it so. John shines the light in the darkness, out on the fringes crying out, “Prepare the way of our God,” and the land and the seas rush in to make it so. Valleys of despair are lifted up and mountains of power are brought low. The rough patches are made smooth and the crooked paths leading nowhere are straightened out; a highway for our God to return.

God’s word is sure. God speaks and the seas obey. God is coming. God is moving to us, rushing to us in a great redemptive movement like the prodigal father rushing to meet his lost son before the villagers could get to him and shame him. Today we see backstage what God has been preparing and hoping for and waiting for so long; for the people to come home, to cross over the river Jordan, to be baptized, and to experience the hope of God. God “lifted up the iniquity” of his people and he “covered over” all their sins, cries the Psalmist. Like the priests of old performing the work of kippur, “atonement,” the lifting up and covering over of sin. It is God who did such work in the past on their behalf. It is God who lifts up our despair and pardons. “Restore us again” the people cry. “Will you not revive us again?”

Comfort them; comfort my people, says our God. Speak tenderly to their hearts, like Joseph spoke lovingly and compassionately to his brothers, forgiving them for selling him into slavery. Tell them that their despair and injustice is pardoned; their struggle is ended; their hard service . . .complete. Tell them that they can hope once again. God is going to do a new thing.

A voice tells us to cry out. “What shall we cry?” we ask. We cannot wait too long. We will despair once again. We are as consistent and watchful as cut flowers that fade in the vase. But the word of our God will stand forever. So, act like you’re going to climb a high mountain and cry out, “Let there be hope” and God is rushing in to make it so. God will feed us like a shepherd feeds her sheep. God will take us up and carry us across the Jordan, like the shepherd carries the lambs and leads the mother sheep.

I experienced hope yesterday at the Seeds of Change marketplace. I’d like to share a few of those experiences with you. I watched the Blue Nativity with Caleb and Mata and Adgate. Adgate’s (nineteen-months old) response was to laugh aloud at the Joseph, Mary, sheep, and wise men with their big camel. It was the most hope-filled time for me to hear Adgate’s laugh.

There was a table at the marketplace in support of the InTransit Empowerment Project. I went home and looked at their website and found their mission statement. InTransit Empowerment began as an idea for an organization in 2008. We recognized that there are not enough safe spaces for people who do not fit somewhere within the mainstream and are forced to hang in the margins, so we wanted to create an organization that would help create those safe spaces through artistic events and different forms of expression. It has taken some time for the idea to become something realistic and tangible and we are proud declare that we have taken our very first steps as an organization and are excited to see where the future will lead us.

Church is happening! God is rushing to us with outstretched arms. I also had the experience of seeing Berry Church members who have since moved on. One of them stopped me in the middle of the hubbub of the marketplace and asked if I had a moment. I said yes. This person needed to ask my forgiveness. It was a moment of pure grace and hope. Thanks be to God.

Today, we are jolted out of Ordinary Time with the invasive good news that it is time to prepare our hopes for the coming of God.

Today, the first Sunday of Advent, we begin our series on hope. I have been learning a lot about hope in the past couple of weeks. When you begin listening for the word, it comes up often. When we were together for Thanksgiving with some of my extended family at my sister’s home in Michigan, I overheard my niece ask my Mom what she hoped to be when she was young. My Mom replied, “I don’t think I knew how to hope for anything.” My niece went on, “Did you hope to become a mother.” “I didn’t know what it meant to be a mother,” my mom said. (Her own mother, my grandmother, died when my mom was two years old. Living on a farm in northern Michigan, my mom and her two sisters became the housekeepers and servants.) “I think I just hoped to get off of the farm,” my mom continued.

There was the evening of talking with leaders of Berry Church about our hopes for mission and one of our church members living in Los Angeles and just finished with grad school, struggling with the faith to keep up hope as she looks for a job. Another of our members hoping for physical healing and wondering how much hope for God’s healing is justified and good as a Christian. We’ve become so confused about hopes for healing and success. Televangelists and religion hawkers hold out the hope that if you pray hard enough, live good enough, and give up enough, you will receive whatever you want and ask for. Many of us cry out, “Why me?” when we don’t get what we ask for or expect. Others of us ask, “Why not me?” when we compare our own lives with the lives of so many others who are in our same boat.

The purpose of Advent is to connect our need for hope with the longing of our ancestors who waited so long for their Messiah to appear. They were waiting for hope, and with hope. We are in much the same place. When defining hope, most dictionaries include something like the following: Hope is the desire for something with the possibility of, or belief in, its realization. Hope must have an object or goal; we need to hope for something. Hope must have a basis; otherwise, our hopes are daydreams or, as Howard Thurman stated in one of our recent readings for Adult Forum, “despair can attract and swallow up our unassigned hopes.” And hope involves the belief or the faith that what we hope for can be accomplished. The readings for the First Sunday of Advent help us find a basis for our hope and some ways for us to think about preparations for hope.

The Scripture from the prophet Isaiah is a cry of hope that God will break in upon our world and the belief that divine intervention will set the world right. Written in a time when our ancestors were living on the edges of a power structure after return from exile, Isaiah expresses the heartfelt, anguished questions of a people who have a history with God. This long, long history holds memories of God stepping in and doing something when the need was great. Shared stories of defeating Pharaoh, raining bread from heaven, and enjoying the glory of David leads the people to have certain expectations of God. Hope is mixed with some dread in the questions from the prophet Isaiah. Where are you, God? Why don’t you act to fix this awful situation we find ourselves in? Why don’t you “come down” and make things right? Where is God now? Can we assign our hope to faith in God in all of the difficulties of life? What can we expect from God?

The prophet changes the imagery to clay in a potter’s hands at the end of the reading. We make ourselves as vulnerable before God as the clay is vulnerable to be shaped and molded. We pour out our anguish, our dreams, our expectations, what we want and what we need, preparing our hope to a God who will hear.

Chapter 13 of Mark’s story contains Jesus’ discourse to the disciples on God’s decisive action breaking into the world. Written in the stream of apocalyptic literature, which, though it comes from the depths of human desperation, is meant to bring us hope. Written when Jerusalem was under siege, the temple destroyed, and war making going on, Mark writes of hope. Yes, there is serious pain in the world, in your community. There are wars and rumors of wars. There’s strife within families, and even within the family of faith, those called to be one in Christ. God’s name is used as a political prop to assert power over the powerless — an abomination to those for whom God’s name is the name of one who feeds the hungry, lifts up the lowly, frees the prisoner, and welcomes the alien strangers. The first readers of the Gospel According to Mark knew that as well or better than we do. So when you see these things happening, do not stop preparing for hope in God’s Kingdom. We don’t know the day or hour, but we know that God is faithful. The full manger and the empty tomb are signs to us as they were to Mary, Simeon, Anna, and Elizabeth, to Mark’s community, and our own wounded communities: Jesus is coming, and the hope of God’s kingdom, inaugurated with Jesus’ birth is being revealed.

How do we make preparations for our hopes? We strengthen and nurture our gift of faith for it is faith that will provide the space for hope. We take up the ordinary tasks of our lives and all that is going on in our world and we treat them as sacraments—as pointing to a greater reality which lies beyond them. It is an approach to life that we are in danger of losing, this preparing hope, getting ready for the extraordinary to break in on the ordinary. At Advent, God’s people summon the courage and the spiritual strength to remember that the holy breaks into our lives daily. Today, we are jolted out of Ordinary Time with the invasive good news that it is time to prepare our hopes for the coming of God.

And so together we light one candle, we stay awake, and we watch. We are watching for any signs of God, we are listening for the stirrings of the Spirit, we are participating in the life of justice. We are ready to catch the flame of this one candle and gently carry it wherever we go, taking hope with us to share.

This is the last Sunday of the Season of Pentecost or Ordinary Time and the last Sunday before Advent and the beginning of a new church year. This Sunday marks the final homecoming of Jesus and the imagining of God and all of the angels and saints crowning Jesus as King. Usually called “Christ the King” Sunday with emphasis on the end of time and the coming judgment, today we are celebrating the “Reign of Christ” Sunday and our connection with the Spirit of Christ here on earth and in time as we know it.

The letter to the Ephesians dates from a time when the new Jesus communities are making changes. The expected second coming of Christ is taking longer than expected; the first generation of apostles is dying off with the glory still to come. It is a lonely place, prone to doubts. This reading from Ephesians uses the imagery of coronation to encourage the community that in the same way in which God responds to the rejection of Jesus, God does not abandon them. Where people had rejected Jesus in the worst possible way, God affirmed him in the best possible way – at least within the prevailing value system of the day. The powers that destroy do not have the last word. Love overcomes hate. God took Jesus home and celebrated him. The same God and the same hope is the life force of Jesus’ followers. It could just be wishful thinking. It can never quite escape the charge that it is a denial of reality. Faith understands that and needs to recognize that it is willful defiance in the name of love. Christ’s hope and ours belong together.

The connection between God’s affirmation of the rejected Jesus and not every abandoning us comes through very strongly in the last two verses. What happened with Christ was the beginning of something that reaches out and encompasses others and brings together into a network of people who share the same source of energy. Christ becomes the head of an expanding body into which we are incorporated. It is the Good News that is breaking down the powers that destroy and making us one.

The Rev. Dr. Peter Storey, former Methodist Bishop of South Africa and chaplain to Nelson Mandela while he was imprisoned; now professor at Duke University Divinity School says this about our present situation: I do not recall such unapologetic contempt for the poor. If I did not believe that the Gospel is about changing this deformed world, I would lose hope. I could not waste another day with Jesus. I would see no point to his coming.

God’s power to change the world is our hope. God’s great power at work in Christ is not simply ruling over the heavens, but active in the world. God’s power reigns over all: demons are cast out, people and institutions are healed, the deadening yoke of oppression is being broken and replaced with the reconciling power of Christ’s peace. Our “glorious inheritance” is a power for healing, liberation, and wholeness-peace-shalom. As St. Paul writes in Ephesians, “I pray that the God will light up the eyes of your heart so that you may know the hope to which you are called. Hope does not excuse; it demands. It demands first of all that we see the world as it is. It demands that we assess, seek to understand, analyze, think, argue, seek out solutions, overcome frustrations and failures. And, most importantly, it demands the courage and commitment of common action.

The ministry that’s already occurred is only a part of the complete plan for God’s kingdom. Jesus took the last supper on the night before his crucifixion to teach his closest followers about hope. They had seen him as the solution to all political, economic, religious, and personal problems. And he took that night to tell them that he would be given over to a painful death. The disciples wanted to believe that it all wasn’t so and avoid the anguish of the Garden of Gethsemane. In the Gospel, Peter rebuked Jesus for suggesting that he would suffer and die. And after Jesus’ death, there was no doubt something in them that would have wanted to despair and hide in locked rooms. But Jesus called them to a hope that transcends suffering, death, and evil.

And so I pray, “Lord, afflict us with hope.” Let us not seek comfort in a blind optimism or a despairing pessimism. Let us confront the issues of our day with honesty and stick to our hope in the power of God’s love. Let us respond with courage. Let us call others to the same hope. Through these efforts we can renew the face of the earth.

Preaching in front of the Ebenezer Baptist congregation he loved the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told them–just two months before his untimely funeral–how he would like to be remembered, and in doing so, he zeroed in on that ultimate question: If Christ is King, what does that mean? If Christ is ruler over our lives, Dr. King told them, then my Nobel Peace Prize is less important than my trying to feed the hungry. If Christ is King, then my invitations to the White House are less important than that I visited those in prison. If Christ is Lord, then my being TIME magazine’s “Man of the Year” is less important than that I tried to love extravagantly, dangerously, with all my being.”

How are things going to end? What happens after we die? I don’t know, and neither do you. But we do know the shape of the story a loving God is writing: If Christ is King, we know Jesus waits at the end of that story, that he will see us, and know us, and that if we have done what he taught us, he will claim us as his own. We will enter Advent this week. Our church leaders have a vision of hope for Berry church. It is a hope of reaching out to those who are our closest neighbors. It is a vision of helping the strangers among us.

Don’t worry about the message title, please. I promise I’m not going to make you wait too patiently to get to the point of what I’d like to say. I’ll actually tell you right now: God wants you to act. But waiting is part of that activity. All three of our lectionary readings today are full of waiting — we hear about the exhaustion of waiting from the psalmist whose soul has had more than its fill of scorn and contempt. We hear from Paul and Silas and Timothy about the right way to wait. And Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, teaches us that we may wait a long time before someone speaks up about what is right and does something to change the world.

Traditionally, we interpret this parable by saying that God is the master, and God expects us to do much when we have been given much. Our talents might be our time, our money, our abilities — anything that God has given us, we are expected to invest and somehow offer back more than God gave us. We can also interpret this parable by saying that this is about what Jesus expects us to do between when he goes away and the long time until he comes back. Or we can look at this story and hear that God looks at our motivations and the quality of our work, not the quantity that our work yields. God just wants us to work and trust.

But.

This parable does not start with “The Kingdom of God is like…” Which makes those traditional interpretations a problem. In Matthew, when a parable is talking about what the Kingdom of Heaven will be like, it says so. In Matthew 13, there are nine parables about the Kingdom of Heaven, and each one of them gets explained with “the kingdom of heaven is like…” or even more detail. But by the time we get to Jerusalem with Jesus in Matthew 25, he’s not only talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. He’s talking about what’s going on right then right there on earth.
And to hear what’s going on, liberation theology teaches us that we have to listen to the words of the third servant. This master isn’t very godlike. The third servant says “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” And the Master says “you’re right. I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter, so you should have done something to get a return on my investment. But you didn’t. So I’m going to take what you had and give it to someone who has ten times as much as you and throw you into outer darkness.”

And we’re supposed to believe that in some way, this figure is supposed to be God?
God. The God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. The God who tells rich young men that it will be very hard for them to get into heaven. The God who constantly shows compassion for the poor, holds up the downtrodden, God who commands us to care for the widow and the orphan. This God is a harsh man who reaps where he did not sow? A God who says “you feared me, and so I will throw you into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth?” That God sounds mean. That God sounds like someone who says “I made it, it’s mine, and I’m not going to share,” not like someone who shares five loaves and two fishes between thousands.

That God sounds like an overlord. That God sounds like a conqueror. A conquistador, a plantation owner, a corporate farmer who sues neighbors so he can buy their land. That God sounds like a very powerful man who says “I didn’t see it and our team is winning and I don’t want trouble so we’re not going to do anything about it right now.” That God sounds like a jerk. That’s not my God.

But that person in power is a very familiar figure in our world today. You’ve heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s been happening since September. Protesters in New York, here in Chicago, in Denver, in Oakland, in Paris, in Israel, around the world, are saying that it is not right for 1% of the population to control 99% of the resources and all of our lives. People who are saying that it is time to take back our lives and our rights before there is nothing to do and nowhere to go and no way for us to help others. People who are saying that we have had enough and change must happen now. People willing to get arrested for their belief in human dignity. People willing to get shot. Jesus is there, in the streets. Tied up by the police and headed to jail. Offering food and gloves and a tent with a heater.

The master in today’s reading would be in a corner office on a high floor of a high building. Looking down at the little people. A God who loves us because we make God money, not for who we are. Here at Berry, we’re committed to things like fair trade, environmental preservation, human rights. We believe those things are part of what it means to be the Kingdom of God, and we work to change the world for the better. And yet many people say that God is a harsh master who gathers from places where God did not scatter seed and think of that as *good*? Uhn-uhn. I’m not buying it. God is not Monsanto. God is not Bank of America. God is not the CEO of a Fortune500 company, God is not out there waiting for our businesses to fail and our housing payments to get too high and our needs to get too great so that God can swoop down and take what we have and give it to someone who already has ten times that.

God is the God of abundance. God is the God of love. God is the God who says “let the fields lie fallow so that they can recover. Leave the gleanings for the people who need them. Look to me, be patient and look to me, and I will have mercy on you!” God is not out to take your stuff. God wants you to share generously, because that is the work of the kingdom. God cannot reap what God did not sow. God was the original sower. It is all God’s to begin with. As stewards, we are to act justly with everything and everyone, because all is God’s.

So how do we live lives of integrity? How do we support each other in the face of injustice? This is a parable intended to teach us to live without fear. We should not be afraid of risk in order to get things done. We are called to risk. As Christians, we are called to be the third slave. We are called to call it like we see it, to speak truth to power, to say that you are taking what is not yours and it scares me and it is not okay. We are called to stay our course and be brutally honest about what is happening around us, even when the people to whom we are speaking are bigger, stronger, and think that they own everything. We know that everything is God’s.

How do we live that? Three things.

First: pray. If we are not in constant contact with God, we cannot hear God’s voice and direction. We hear when it is time to act or be guided in what to say and do by prayerfully listening. The psalmist talks about the exhaustion of waiting. And it is contact with God that will sustain us in this exhausting period.

Second: Resist while waiting. Paul and Silas and Timothy talk about the proper things to do while waiting. And the good and right thing to do is to be aware of the injustice going on, and to resist where and how we can, and encourage each other as we wait for the moment to do God’s work.

Third: Don’t wait too long. We hear Jesus in the Gospel tell us what to do when the waiting is over. There comes a point in our prayerful waiting when we hear God’s voice say “NOW.” The master comes home, those who are complicit in evil are rewarded, and those who do right are threatened. The moment is not always obvious. The action is rarely easy. But we are not called to wait forever. We are called to be ready, be aware, and place ourselves on the side of the Kindom of God. In the face of harsh masters who reap where they do not sow, we are called to rise up, act out, and offer another way. A way of abundance and love. And so, as we draw near to Advent, when our waiting focuses on Christ, let us also remember that we are called to not wait too long to act for justice and in Christ’s love. May it be so.

I am presently reading Frank McCourt’s memoir, “Angela’s Ashes.” It is a story of extreme poverty, alcoholism, immigration, and discrimination. Frank’s baby sister dies, one twin baby brother and the other twin baby brother both die in turn from lack of health care, the disease of grinding poverty and heartache. I am reminded of my own family genogram and counting the numerous deaths of infants and children a couple of generations back. The veil between life and death was thin and grief was all around.

During its first three hundred years, the church suffered widespread persecutions, and so Christians celebrated their leaders, heroes and especially martyrs of the faith. Literature of the fourth century indicates that churches honored saints in their liturgies. Churches were named after saints, relics were collected and honored, the dates of their death were commemorated, and special communion services were held at their tombs. Churches were even built on their tombs. All of this was done in the church’s efforts to encourage the struggle and provide hope for the living.

Today, All Saints Sunday, we lift back the veil between life and death. We let down our defenses and allow the questions to flood over us when we face the mystery of death. We remember that a great cloud of souls surrounds us, witnessing with us that death no longer holds ultimate sway. We are reminded that our souls are connected with the souls of our ancestors as our children’s community is learning this morning; connected all the way back to Abraham and Sarah promised that their generations will be as many as the sand grains on the lakeshore.

Celebrities distance themselves from us by their fame, whether it lasts 15 minutes or a lifetime. But saints share our common ground and open a place in the circle of forgiven sinners. The late William Stringfellow described saints as “those men and women who relish the event of life as a gift and who realize that the only way to honor such a gift is to give it away.” One of my most favorite saints, Dorothy Day, when she was yet alive in the body, when greeted by some one as a saint, replied, “Don’t dismiss me that easily.” In other words, rather than set her apart as different from me, she challenges me to join in the struggle for justice.

John the imprisoned visionary and author of our bookend letter of Revelation helps reveal to the persecuted church members and to us that God and the company of saints are not far away. The imagery is strange and unfamiliar to us. It is a cascading flow of images meant to wash over us and assert a way of hope for people who faced hopelessness. It is a way of making God central and keeping the vulnerability of God in our vision. These are not images of judgment and not to be read as a narrative. These are images of good news, employing Old Testament scriptures and repetitive phrases, and going back and forth in tense and in time to help bring hope to the listeners.

Connect today’s reading with the cry of the saints resting under the throne in chapter six and you may hear these words differently.

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who, like Jesus, had been slaughtered out of fear or the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” There is no other power that can save us from the hopelessness of death.

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

People of every tongue and tribe and nation gathered around the throne of the Lamb. The entire crowd has front row seats and they are making room for each of us, singing and worshiping, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and might be to our God forever and ever!” But the Greek word that is used here for “worship” can also refer to work, to labor that is performed for wages. The saints are ministering to God and then extending their work to the streets to serve one another. These are the wounded healers, healing the wounded. The healing going on in heaven is a healing not only of body, mind, and spirit, but a healing of the entire social order.

There is no social hierarchy or gender or sexual identity discrimination. There is no more grinding poverty, disease, or heartache; no more children dying on our streets from gunshots as the Lamb who is seated upon the throne takes on the role of good shepherd, leading the beloved sheep to springs of water where God wipes away every tear from our eyes. We are coming through the great tribulation, between life and death, in joy or despair, faith or doubt, sin or grace, millions of saints gone before us and millions travel with us. And at the end, whether we ran well or poorly, we find rest in God’s grace that knows no boundaries and love that knows no limits.

“And I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” Today we finish our series on Psalm 23 and Stewardship month. Today we celebrate that our God has given us a home, within God’s life where the abundant banquet table is spread, where our cup of grace overflows; where our souls are restored of what eats away at them, and where we end up after being pursued by God’s mercy and goodness. Our God has given us a home. No wonder the great mystic of the fourteenth century, Meister Eckhart, said: “If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘Thank you’ that would be enough.”

There is a miracle that happens here. I’m not talking about the kind of miracle where suddenly I win the lottery or my daughter can get up and walk after being quadriplegic. I’m talking about the miracle of my heart opening up after being squeezed shut for so long; the miracle of experiencing God holding me up; or the miracle of someone who had hurt me so much and I could say “I forgive you” when he saw me next. The American writer, Willa Cather, once wrote: “The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.” What is there about us always is the House of the Lord: the heavens above, the earth below, and neighbors all around.

Richard Foster, a Quaker, tells a story about a time of temporary homelessness in his childhood during which he learned how to find home in God, giving thanks for it. He calls it “his grateful center.” When he was seven, his parents wanted to move from their home in Nebraska to the West Coast. But they ran out of money before they reached their destination and spent the winter in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains. What was surely a very difficult time for his parents was heaven to Richard. For, unlike the coal furnace of their old house, the cabin had a big fireplace. And every night, Richard slept near it on a sofa bed under a big, heavy quilt. He wrote: “Night after night I would fall asleep, watching this strange yellow blaze that warmed us all. I was in my “grateful center.”

What are those experiences for you that open up to you your grateful center? So often I feel lost as if I’ve forgotten my address or forgotten the way to get home. To be in our grateful center, to dwell in the house of the Lord, is to be captured and cared for by the Good Shepherd. Scripture tells us that this happens to God’s people over and over again; that we forget, or get confused, or are reluctant to move out of the house of fear and into the house of the Lord. It’s as if we keep one foot in each, afraid of letting go, not quite faithful enough to let ourselves be scooped up by a love waiting to bring us home.

God’s alternative to this house of fear is the house of love, in Nouwen’s words, “the place where we can think, speak, and act in the ways of God, not in the ways of the fear-filled world.” We make our home here, our grateful center. It is a miracle. As we unpack the boxes and settle in, we move from the clutches of fear to the liberated joy of gratitude.

Jesus confronted the Pharisees because they couldn’t live out what they taught. They taught the 600 and some laws and walked around in fine clothes and sat at the best seats at the banquets and they believed that they were self-sufficient. They had not experienced the miracle; the conversion from living in the house of fear to the house of love; to being overwhelmed with goodness and mercy. Jesus so wanted them to receive the gift of God’s home and they could not since their hands were so full.

You see, the miracle of living in the House of the Lord requires coming to the end of your rope where mercy and goodness have been pursuing you for so long that you let go and land in the arms of God. There is a danger in that letting go. That is why we so need the church. This miracle does not happen in a vacuum. Last week I asked you to wrestle with Psalm 23, like Jacob wrestled with the angel; to live in the tension of trust that the cup is full and knowing that the person next to you has an empty cup. Some of you may have done that and continue to do that. I did and I have. And then yesterday afternoon I experienced this miracle of seeing the beauty and abundance around me, and saying “thank you” to God. I want to share that with you this morning. Filling out my pledge form this morning is my way of practicing this gift of generosity. I know that the doubts will return. I know that there will be days of discouragement, of mistrust and even of regret that I committed too much. It’s why we need to do this together. It’s why I commit to a church and to showing up for worship and being a part of a small group; so that we can hold each other and help each other and engage in spiritual practices of formation that will open up the experience of the grateful center. The House of the Lord lacks for nothing. It is a place of abundance and beauty. God is our home. And the more we experience that, really know that, and believe it in our heart of hearts, the more we will shift from anxiety to assurance, from fear to fullness, from getting to gratitude. Our prayer will become, “Thank you” and our cup will overflow with the miracle of generosity, of sharing abundantly.

Thank you God.

This month we are focusing on the theme of Stewardship – caring for the gifts that are not ours. We have been using Psalm 23 as our guide.

Psalm 23 is a psalm of trust; a song of trust in a God of radical care and hospitality, like that of a good shepherd caring for his sheep and a host preparing a feast for her guests. This morning we reflect for a few minutes on the image that is the theme for our month of stewardship, “My cup runneth over.” Seated as stewards at the feast our God provides, we begin to realize that this is not a feast of holding back. There are no questions of who was invited or who crashed this banquet; who can repay or who is best dressed. This is a banquet where the water flows freely and the food has a mysterious way of satisfying in the presence of so much that is not satisfying.

In reflecting on the purpose of the psalm of trust, Walter Brueggemann writes:: The function of this kind of psalm is theological, that is, to praise and thank God. But such a psalm also has a social function of importance. It is to articulate and maintain a “sacred canopy” under which the community of faith can live out its life with freedom from anxiety. … There is a givenness to be relied on, guaranteed by none other than God.

Brueggemann also writes that the experience of such a powerful note of trust sounded in Psalm 23 is perceived as disorienting. There are many in our lives, maybe even some of you seated here that find such a simplistic faith in things being better or different than they really are, hard to accept. Rather than seeing your cup overflowing, you find your cup only half full and are so very mindful of the person seated next to you whose cup is empty. You meet such a psalm of trust in God’s abundance with skepticism (and even outright disbelief). If the sense of disorientation is acute enough it can express itself in anger or end up in despair.

It may be that for some the disconnect of not experiencing or feeling this “givenness” will lead to the exact opposite of thanks to God expressed in praise. The serious problem of disorientation and ongoing tension— between the psalm’s claim on its reader/hearer to share in its spirit of trust and the reader/listener’s disconnection from such a social/theological possibility— may lead to a rejection both of the psalmist’s words and of God. The “sacred canopy” that Brueggemann describes is rejected as in effect a cover that is no cover, a freedom that is no freedom. a guarantee that is void of surety.

In post-modern, post-Christian American popular culture, one might expect just such an outright rejection of the psalm, but what many cultural engagements with Ps 23 provide is a vital ongoing social function of their own, a reversal of field that is in response to and in conversation with the social/theological function of the psalm. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel through the night, contemporary artists wrestle with the problem of trust—neither letting go and walking away, nor refusing to be let go short of any result other than a true blessing.

And so, I invite you to wrestle with this Psalm and with your card of commitment to giving. Don’t leave behind the present realities of your world; realities that demand to be acknowledged, realities in which trust may not be the leading voice, realities in which the transition from trust…to lament…to trust is paced out—evenly, naturally, inescapably, and above all appropriately—through the steps of the one who trudges through death’s dusky veil and arrives at the dinner table with a great thirst.

At the beginning of this year I spent five days at the Norbertine Community in Albuquerque, New Mexico on a personal retreat. I stayed in my own small studio apartment with one wall all windows looking out on a small, enclosed desert “yard.” There is very little that is green in the desert. My small yard had a few desert plants and was visited by a small group of wildlife, a few birds, a cat most likely cared for by the brothers of the community, and a rabbit. I noticed that the visiting rabbit came usually at morning and again at twilight with the express purpose of licking the few drops of water escaping from a hose that was lying there in the yard. I felt like the rabbit, coming to God with a drained cup, living in a desert, questioning what I have to give. Yet the rabbit came, faithfully, every day that I was there, whether the hose was flowing freely or trickling hesitantly.