Sermon: The Annunciation

We began this season with Jesus telling us to stay awake. Larry [my co-pastor] has previously spoken about the Stay Woke Advent meme. Stay Woke is in the Urban Dictionary already. Deriving from "stay awake," to stay woke is to keep informed of the shitstorm going on around you in times of turmoil and conflict, specifically on occasions when the media is being heavily filtered- such as the events in Ferguson Missouri in August 2014.

Since Ferguson more cops have avoided incitement for killing unarmed black men. And I have been alarmed at how many people are asleep about systemic injustice. People I have spoken to and read are so incredibly blinded by the US myth of individualism they still think these are isolated incidents. They focus on individual cops’ racism. They can’t understand that these events are the straws that broke the camel’s back. It is years and years of a racist legal system, a racist prison system, a racist education system, and so on that is really fueling the protests and the (remarkably fewer) riots.

And since we last met details of the US sanctioned torture program have become available. Back in 2002 when the President said that the Geneva convention didn’t apply to terrorists I was aghast. But everyone I tried to talk to about it was still so traumatized by 9/11 they didn’t want to hear it. The mere mention of terrorism but them into a fear induced sleep. I honestly had a little bit of intolerance with those caught in the post 9/11 terrorism scare. Had no one else watched any European movies from the 1970s? Did they really think terrorism was a new thing?

But all this time later I’m reading all these defenses of torture still! And by Christian leaders no less! And honestly debates about whether torture works or not is irrelevant! The moment we engaged in torture we became war criminals. If we really need to torture in order to "save lives" then maybe we don't deserve to live.

And honestly I find that this self-destructive despair is the price of staying woke. I have been overwhelmed by feeling angry, impotent and alienated. Feeling angry and impotent about social injustice is nothing new. The alienation, while not entirely new, has been the most profound of late. Who the hell are these people that seem even more asleep than me? Frankly, I know I don’t see half of what goes on, and yet there seem to be incredible numbers of people who are totally clueless. Or at least I pray they are clueless. If they really do know how horribly immoral and cruel their arguments are, I couldn’t stand it. Even in their cluelessness though I find myself profoundly estranged from what seems to be a majority here in this country.

Of course the experience of estrangement is a large part of why the order was formed.  For many reasons and from many different places, we in the order and many of those we serve have found ourselves on the outside of what once was. Reconciliation is, for us, the only way forward.

Staying woke in part is being aware of our estrangements from the Body of Christ as there are seemingly endless reasons for one to be estranged from another.  Even as reconciled we find ourselves then also estranged from God. Even so we have come together to entrust ourselves to the Reconciling work of God in Jesus Christ.

We in the order have given ourselves over to the reality of God’s Reconciliation.  We proclaim reconciliation in the face of continued estrangement, division and animosity. We proclaim peace, and we offer ourselves and invite any who are called to offer themselves to this asceticism of reconciliation.

One reason a person takes vows is to commit to a way of life that they embrace in their more inspired moments. Because those inspire moments don’t last. And lately I’ve been a little cranky about following a reconciling messiah. I want the other messiah. I want Barabbas, the murdering rebel. Because in my limited human reasoning, I can’t see how anything will change unless the empire is overthrown.

The US is the Roman Empire of today. We here are the Romans. And as we look at today’s scriptures, keep in mind that Mary and Jesus to the Roman Empire would be about the equivalent of Puerto Ricans, or the Inuit, or the Chamorro people of Guam to us today.

And what would a Chamorro woman today make of the words, “You have found favor with God. You will bear a son, and he will be great, called the Son of the Most High, and God will give to a throne and his kingdom will have no end." Might she not say, “How can this be?”

I mentioned feeling impotent in the face of social injustice before. And while I did not mean that in a sexual way, Gabriel answers Mary by telling her of her barren cousin’s success at reproducing. “For nothing will be impossible with God." And certainly if I look hard enough I can find examples of progress in social justice, despite my anger at all that still needs to be addressed.

The Magnificat, which we sang today, is what Mary says to her cousin when she visits her after hearing this news. She says that God has looked with favor on her, low as she is in the world of the Roman Empire. She says that all generations will call me blessed, even though she risked divorce and disgrace as a sexual transgressor. That in the act of blessing the lowest of the low he has scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, filled the hungry and sent the rich away empty.

This for me is what is so inspiring about Mary. That she sees the transforming work of God in her pregnancy, which while it has its remarkable aspect to be sure, and is a holy and cosmically significant pregnancy. Still, pregnancies are not in and of themselves unusual. The incarnation is at the same time ultimately profound and incredibly mundane.

And so Mary’s words are ones to sit with while we stay woke. That while the shitstorm is going on around us in times of turmoil and conflict, and we may long for great upheaval, God’s world shaking actions are carried out in everyday human matters.

And so I end with humbly quoting the mother of my Lord and God, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

Sermon: 11.16.14

I have never before longed for the wrath of God. Recent political events have caused my heart to burn for that wrath. And woe indeed be to those who deserve God’s wrath. Prophets like Zephaniah tell us that wrath will occur during the Day of the Lord. But the expectations of that Day have (or should have been) changed for those of us who truly hear Christ in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. For on the last day the Judge will be one who knows us intimately, who still carries our wounds for us; for the whole of creation.

The Day of the Lord is spoken of by many prophets. Later prophets, like Amos and our Zephaniah, are warning the Israelites that it is not going to be the kind of day they are expecting. The day where God defeats Israel’s enemies is not the day that’s coming. What is coming is the day of wrath.

Ah, Zephaniah. I must admit I rarely read a passage like this and think I’m one of the consecrated. I tend to tremble in fear and think, “oh, I’m gonna get it.” It’s my tendency really to identify with the underdog. But that’s shifted in the last couple of months.

As we’ve gone through the later part of Matthew this past season, I have been aware that the people Jesus has been giving warning to are not the sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. No rather it is those who hold power that he’s speaking against. The underdog is not who is incurring God’s wrath.

The Lord has prepared a sacrifice for the Day of the Lord Zephaniah tells us. And of course the Day of the Lord as interpreted by the early Christians is both the breaking in of God’s Kingdom through the incarnation and the Judgment Day when Christ returns. We all should know what the sacrifice was; we reenact it in the Eucharist.

And the Judgment Day will be described by Jesus in the Gospel passage scheduled for next Sunday. Jesus opens with the sun going dark and the moon red like blood, a quote from the prophet Joel’s foretelling of the Day of the Lord.

The criteria that Jesus uses to separate those who are given eternal life and those who aren’t is pretty straight forward and direct. I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

The goats have done none of those things. Zephaniah singles out in today’s portion of his writings those who sit back and do nothing; those who rest complacently on their dregs, saying the LORD will do nothing.

I’m reminded of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s words:

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

And perhaps that was the wicked and lazy slave’s problem; he rested complacently on his dregs. He was asleep when the day of the Lord came like a thief in the night.

I’ve been woken up to something lately that truly shocked me. I read a news report about a Christian man who was arrested for feeding the homeless. I dug deeper and I found that in the last year alone 31 cities have passed or attempted to pass legislation making it illegal to feed the homeless. This has enflamed my righteous indignation.

I’ve heard or read many Christians argue that voting to gut or erase government programs designed to help the least of these, is not going against Christ because his commands to help the needy were addressed to the individual or the church and not the government.

Now whether it is these same people or not who have passed these laws preventing individuals or faith based institutions from following Jesus’ desires, the point is there are not simply goats or sheep now. There is a third category of people actively preventing the sheep from acting out of compassion. And woe be unto them!

And hated for these people has claimed my heart. In my fury I want to see and revel in their blood pouring out like dust, and their entrails like dung. How dare they tie the hands of those who minister to Christ Himself!

But hatred is not the Gospel. No, I am to love my enemies. And even if they deserve that fate, even if I continue to fight them tooth and nail, I am to find some way of loving them still. I’m not sure how to do that and so I must pray on it. I am definitely expected to pray for them. Pray for though fight them still.

For the while Day of the Lord is not finished, it has come breaking in. It came when Christ was born and died and seated in the judgment seat, indeed the Israelites did not get what they expected. God did not defeat their enemies. But neither was it a day of wrath. God did free us, but not in any way that was expected.

Christ revealed to us that God’s desire is to be reconciled to all of creation. We in the order of Jesus Christ Reconciler give ourselves over to the reality of God’s Reconciling love. We proclaim reconciliation in the face of continued estrangement, division, and animosity. From the first moments of the young Church, the Body of Christ has understood itself to be about the work of reconciliation. This work has taken on many forms over the centuries, but it is always an echo of Christ's reconciling act. Through the Incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are reconciled to one another and to God through Christ who saves us. Salvation is Reconciliation.

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that we may live with him. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; let us not rest complacently on our dregs, but fight the good fight; putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Texts:

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 

Matthew 25:14-30

On the Folly of Ownership: A sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – Year A

"And whether we see it or not, our lives do depend on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God. And I mean this quite literally. We don’t live in isolation from the ecosystem. Human life on earth relies on a delicate balance that is quite frankly in jeopardy. We have not been good farmers. And if we don’t listen to the prophets that are warning us about this, who knows, after we destroy ourselves maybe the new tenants won’t even be human."

http://theuac.org/2014/10/07/on-the-folly-of-ownership-a-sermon-for-the-seventeenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-a/

Why I am Co-founding a Religious Order and Taking Permanent Vows.

On September 6, 2014, I will be co-founding possibly the first ecumenical religious order; the Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. All our founding members will profess permanent vows. Perhaps not a few of you may wonder why I’m doing such a thing. What follows is a statement of why I, personally am doing this, how I see the order's work in the world is for another post…

All quotes from A Little Rule for The Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler will be in Italics.

The simple answer is that I’m taking what looks like the next step in deepening my commitment to God. To quote a prayer by Thomas Merton: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going… Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.” You see I want to please God because I love God. I love God because God loved me first.

The very fabric of the Universe is loving relationship. This is one way of understanding of my personal revelation that God is Trinitarian. That God is love in relationship (Trinity) is the revelation of Christianity, not mine alone. Through the Christian sacraments, however, I have had my own unshakable revelation of this knowledge.

I don’t have to look far, or for that matter very deep into myself, to see that humanity is alienated from that love. As I understand it, the Second Person of the Trinity incarnated, suffered and resurrected in order to address that alienation; an act of reconciliation. “For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col 1:19-20 NRSV)”

I do not understand this act of reconciliation as God’s deliberate self-torture in order to appease God’s “angry judge” self because we’re really really bad children (what I was raised to believe.) I rather see God reconciling us through solidarity, through shared suffering. Remember that the resurrected Christ now carries our wounds. God has taken our pain into God’s self. [By the way this is my understanding here, not the position of the order.]    

I continue to need this reconciliation since I am far from free of alienation from God’s love, even though that alienation has considerably lessened as I live into the reality of God’s reconciling work. That alienation is not a simple matter of ethics. That alienation is a deep and profound inability to believe that one is intrinsically lovable or capable of love. In my case it was a hopelessness, a despair that led me to a crossroads where the only options I could see were death, jail or the asylum. But then “[the Lord d]rew me out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud of the swamp, Set my feet upon rock, steadied my steps” -Psalm 40   

Loving in kind (because God first loved me) led to a deeper love, an intimacy of body, mind and spirit. I became conscious of God’s presence in the eating of Christ’s body and blood, the divine body entered mine. I studied the Gospels, putting myself in the story as a beloved, devoted disciple, hearing Jesus’ words spoken to me personally. Images, words, emotions that were not of my own origin were given to me as pure gift. How was I to respond?

I eagerly (though cautiously at times) followed a gradually more committed, more surrendered, path. From minister of care (taking the Eucharist to hospitals), to divinity school, to ordained priest to  associate pastor, to taking vows as a religious. All of this propelled by deeper commitment to God, more surrendered discipleship.

Each time I reached for another traditional way of giving more of my life to my beloved Lord and God, I found it harder to do that by way of conventional denominations. No small obstacle was that to give oneself fully, one must give one’s authentic self. And for me that meant owning I was transsexual and transitioning.

That alone put me on the fringes, on the outskirts of the vast majority of institutional Christianity. Even more problematic for me was that what had been revealed to me in intimate mystical moments and in soul searching and in sincere conversation, did not at all fit many contemporary theologies. What many mainstream Christians were saying about God sounded like heresy to me.

I belong to Christ. Despite what I believe are well founded opinions, I am not the one who gets to say who else does or doesn’t belong to Christ. And even though self-proclaimed Christians are actually my enemies, my Lord tells me to love them (He doesn’t tell me to agree with them, however.) But to even say that (possible) members of the body of Christ are my enemies is very disorienting.

And so the following words from the Rule of Life of the Order I’m helping to form are so very true for me:

The essential and foundational Christian faith-claim is an echo of Christ's act of reconciling all Creation to the Creator. From different denominations and traditions, we (perhaps surprisingly) find ourselves about the same work of Reconciliation. Today we are aware of our estrangements from the Body of Christ as there are seemingly endless reasons for one to be estranged from another.  Whether by virtue of the Ecumenical Movement, the decline of mainline Protestantism in the United States, the burgeoning Emergent Movement, or by some other path, we find ourselves living in the ruins of some thing in some place, on the outside of what once was. Reconciliation is, for us, the only way forward.

Claiming nothing for ourselves, but in living and working together under this Rule, we give ourselves over to the reality of God’s Reconciling love. We proclaim reconciliation in the face of continued estrangement, division, and animosity. We proclaim peace, and in love we offer ourselves - and invite any who are called to offer themselves - to this asceticism of reconciliation.

In this we humbly seek reconciliation between church and world, between divided Christians, between Christian and the church, recognizing that we also are the estranged who are reconciled only through the blood of the Cross.

When one joins an order one does this by taking vows to God. There are three traditional vows for committing to the life of a religious; they are poverty, chastity and obedience. Poverty and chastity are part of our vows, however they are vows that flow out of our primary vows of Reconciliation, Obedience and Humility.

    

    God's desire is to be reconciled to Creation. In the commitment to Reconciliation, the Order witnesses that we are no longer alone but are part of Christ's loving desire for all people.

    The Order and its members live this commitment to Reconciliation through the cultivation of the virtues of Obedience and Humility.

Let me speak to why I’m committing to these vows (and their component parts as understood by the order)   

OBEDIENCE

    Obedience is not mere submission to authority/ies, but rather a choice to be faithful to God's creative action and one’s own individual call.

The call of following Christ cannot be done alone. “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Yet, beyond power from God to love and forgive as radically as Jesus asks us to, we still need other people to support us in this effort, and to tell us when we act out of our alienation. This is why I need the community of an order.

This Obedience is understood particularly in terms of the virtues of Stability, Perigrinatio, and Chastity.

    Stability

Reconciliation is made real in the witness of the Order to the work of God in a particular place.

In my case this is a re-commitment to living in the intentional community that will become a house of the order and being associate pastor for the worshiping community of the oratory of the order. Here I will quote the rule of the community I’ve already vowed to be a part of:

“Following the example of Acts and nearly 2000 years of ascetics, monks and nuns, we turn aside from the individualism and self-reliance of the world, resolving to hold real property in common for the purpose of service to Christ in, through, and for the Church and the world. We have chosen to live in Christian community, in part, to speak to the current economic system, attempting to remove from ourselves the fetters of economic necessity. In doing this, we no longer trust the economy focused myopically on the creation and accumulation of wealth for individualistic benefit. We seek an economy of mutuality and the sharing of personal wealth and talents for both the common good and personal development, an economy beyond individual ownership and beyond all economies: the economy of the Kingdom of God. We come together sharing real property and other goods (material, spiritual, and personal) so that, through the joining of individual resources for the sake of the community, individuals may have not only what they need but also the means fully to mature and exercise their talents.”

    Perigrinatio

    In these latter days, however, few live in one community for long.

Perigrinatio is a sense of pilgrimage. The Spirit may lead me elsewhere in time, and as a member of the order I support, as I can, others call to move about in the world.

    Chastity

Whether single or partnered, chastity puts limits on sexual expression so that we see ourselves fulfilled not in another human being nor in sexual expression but in relation to God.

Sexuality is an inherently vulnerable thing. Inherent in sexual desire is the desire for another to desire us in return. It’s a deep risk, to allow making sense of our physical selves become a collaborative effort.  Abuse of our sexuality is mainly an effort to control or deny this risk. As Christians, we are called to see this risk, this vulnerability in the context of God’s desire for us. To quote Rowan Williams, “To be formed in our humanity by the loving delight of another is an experience whose contours we can identify most clearly and hopefully if we have also learned or are learning about being the object of the causeless loving delight of God, being the object of God's love for God through incorporation into the community of God's Spirit and the taking-on of the identify of God's child.” To see it in this way makes the taking of this risk a thing not to be entered into without serious consideration and prayer.

HUMILITY

Humility is… the acceptance of God's will, our own limitations, and our own responsibility. Humility is seen in the life of the Order in terms of holy poverty, hospitality, and labor.

     Holy poverty is a generous expansive practice of sufficiency, mindfulness, open-handedness, stewardship, and care-taking. The embrace of holy poverty calls members to a frequent examination of their practices of stewardship and consumption. Whether members are residents of a House or unattached to a House, all are called to treat all of their goods and resources “as if they were sacred vessels of the altar” consecrated to the service of God (Rule of Benedict, Chapter XXXI).

If all my goods and resources were consecrated to the service of God, what might that look like? It might look like finding use for that which I do not use. To simplify greatly. To value what I do use and properly care for it. 

This must apply to my inner resources, my talent and usefulness in the world. To cultivate and (promote/provide?) my skills in such a way that I can achieve a sustainable living. To recognize and admit to the world my own sacredness and the worlds sacredness.

Frequent examination of my practices of stewardship and consumption, turning away from blind consumerism, this is hard work. I need support in this.

This all feels right. Not easy, but right. Much of what gets in the way are old ideas, values that don’t belong to me, emotional challenges & a resistance to see my inner resources as sacred or valuable - especially giving a voice to my abilities.

Some part of me doesn’t want to want anything for myself, but I do and in my shame I have taken without giving and acted greedily – collecting secretively and unaccountably. If I allow for sufficiency (modest comfort); if I can honor what I truly want for myself I believe this will change.

    Hospitality

Houses of the Order will welcome those who are marginalized to a space of welcome and spiritual life.

Yes! Marginalized! Also, treat all as the beloved of God (‘cause they all are.) Intrinsic worth exists in all. Again, though, seeing everyone as God sees them is not something one can do alone.

    Labor

Paul’s witness of tent-making, tells us that supporting ourselves by other means than our ministry is a part of this work of reconciliation.

The clergy of my entire denomination is bi-vocational. I have the great fortune to be working for a feminist collective which does just work in an unjust world.

PRAYER

Though not a vow per se, we commit to praying daily, together whenever possible. Especially for

•           all the other members of the Order,

•           those with whom we are reconciling, and

•           our reconciliation and the reconciliation of all to God and each other through Christ and the Blood of his Cross.

We also acknowledge that continuous regular prayer is hard to maintain by oneself. Having others pray with you, even if not in the same place, helps a great deal.

The daily office as well as the Eucharistic service that all oratories of the order will celebrate, illustrate the ways in which we value the deep traditional practices of the historical Christian faith. In my ministry I do emphasize an embodied, incarnational worship, whether that’s understood as “mystical” or not to those I serve. As I mentioned earlier it was through these practices that my faith came to me. And though in my journey I rejected them for a while - because of what was taught along with them - when I returned to them, trusting them, more than any words or teachings, my faith blossomed. It is this entering deeper and deeper into my faith that calls me to the kind of commitment the order asks of me. It is about tangibly practicing being in relationship with God through Christ.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Petecost

http://theuac.org/2014/06/29/mother-jubis-first-video-sermon-please-be-gentle/

“Put your finger here.”

"The second person of the Trinity, which pre-existed Jesus, now carries Jesus’ wounds eternally. God has taken on our pain and suffering, knows it intimately. Christ died for our pain and suffering. For isn’t sin the result of pain and suffering? - Or attempts to control or deny pain and suffering?"

From my sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

http://christreconciler.blogspot.com/2014/04/sermon-for-second-sunday-of-easter.html

Sermon for Ecumenical Sunday, in the Octave of Prayer for Christain Unity

A couple weeks ago there was a news story about two pastors who called for a public stoning of gays in response to the gay wedding at the Rose Bowl parade. Now, I doubt they expected anyone to take them seriously, but the hate and vitriol behind such a joke is clearly evident.

A couple years ago there was a pastor who was proposing putting gays and lesbians in concentration camps, and was certainly a lot less tongue in cheek than the rose bowl parade pastors.

And so when it came time to preach during the prayer for Christian unity, my knee-jerk reactionary response was, “how do I pray for unity with people who want me dead?”

But here’s the thing that’s easy to forget. Knee jerk reactionary responses are the raison d'etre of the spread of these stories. They manipulate you in to waiting through advertising on You Tube to see if this is really what these guys said, or waiting through a radio commercial to hear more. And advertisers couldn’t care less if you agree or disagree so long as they’ve got your attention. 

Of course there is a division in among Christians concerning sexual orientation, and some of it seems insurmountable. And it’s hard to be patient about such things when Christians are still arguing over whether or not women are inferior to men (which is a whole other sermon, believe me.) And frustration can easily be fanned into rage by the inflammatory language of the attention grabbers. But there are the stories you don’t hear on the news. The stories of people who find out someone they know and care about is gay or lesbian, and they have to rethink their position on the argument.

And for the people who call for public stonings, I want to remind them of what did Jesus said to the people who brought before him someone they could legitimately stone to death. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” But doing this reminds me of my own sin, my own alienation from God and creation. And it humbles me.

A definition of humility I really like is “to remain teachable.” I so want to be right. I so want to have control. And admitting I don’t have all the answers can sometimes take more away than just my reactionary anger; it can make me question whether I have any of the answers. It can leave me questioning my call, it can undermine my understanding of my faith.

But how well do we really understand our faith?

There’s a human need to make sense of faith. Christianity was given to me in my youth as a package all wrapped up and tied in a ribbon. I was told that it all made sense. But I wasn’t allowed to unwrap the package or even tie the bow differently. And it didn’t make sense the way it was all wrapped up, and I struggled with it for years.

Then I came across a quote attributed to an early Christian apologist, “I believe it because it doesn’t make sense!” And that perspective was so freeing. All the crazy claims of Christianity are stumbling blocks to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles, and that’s what makes it so compelling!

It is in letting go of the illusion of control, of being able to figure this all out, that freedom comes. No human can know the mind of God. Or as John puts it, “No one has ever seen God.” Except Jesus alone, who in faith we claim has revealed God. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

And how do we understand this, how do we account for this? Well, there have been centuries upon centuries of debate about it. While for many the issue has been settled, it doesn’t really make any more sense. It’s still a crazy claim. It’s just the commonality of the claim, the fact that we’re used to it, that gives us the false security of sense, or understanding that we want and in some ways legitimately need.

Those of us who are sacramental in our faith eat bread and drink wine in a ritual setting, trusting that somehow, in some way we can never know or understand there will be body and blood; we will be in some way physically intimate with Jesus Christ.

And the mind can reject such an idea, which is why I encourage us to pay attention to the sensuality of it, to approach the altar with reverence beyond what it makes any sense to do, to surrender ourselves to the moment.

We are told in our first reading to say, “So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” We are told to set it down before the Lord our God and bow down before the Lord our God. If we can approach God acting as if our very life depended on God, as if all we have is a gift from God, then that truth can work its way into us in a much deeper way than mere speculation.

Turning to the words of Paul, I’d like to point out what he says about understanding. “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” That our LOVE may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight.

And is this not a prayer we can pray for all Christianity? Can we, as we question where we are right and where we are wrong, not ask that question in anger but in love? Can we remember that the early church welcomed Paul, who persecuted them?

Think of this: when Paul went to the council to plead for the inclusion of gentiles; ones who wouldn’t or couldn’t follow all the tenants of Judaism; who none the less had faith and the gifts of the spirit. He was facing people that knew Jesus before the resurrection, which he did not. But the real kicker? These were people he had been out to kill! Who’s brothers he sentenced to death.

He pleaded for those he loved, despite all the obstacles, all the opposition. And here it would be tempting to say he won his case. More accurately, the council recognized the grace of God in the conversion of the gentiles. Just as we are dependent on God for our lives and all that we have, so it is God, ultimately, that reconciles, not us.

And tonight you are worshiping in the oratory of the Order of Jesus Christ reconciler; an ecumenical order. How can we not participate in the week of prayer for Christian Unity? It takes a great many people from many different denominations, different understanding of faith to put together this week of prayer. Our rule calls us to be faithful to God's creative action and one’s own individual call. Unity does not mean we should stop arguing. But let us not argue as in “both sides think they’re right.” Let us instead champion those who we love and we know are loved by God.

We are an order that humbly seeks reconciliation between church and world, between divided Christians, between Christian and the church, recognizing that we also are the estranged who are reconciled only through the blood of the Cross. Knowing that we are only participating in God’s work; trusting that God desires reconciliation with all creation. This desire has been revealed to us in the Word made flesh.

Readings:

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Philippians 1:3-11

John 1:1-18