Need I tell you, “Today is Mother’s Day”?  A day fraught with complexity.  For some this is a difficult day—one that reminds them of what they did not have or of what they have lost.  For others this is a Holy Day of Obligation—the flowers, the cards, the Sunday brunch.  Some preachers wrap the day in cliché.  Others avoid it all together.   After all, it’s a Hallmark holiday, not a Holy Day in the church calendar.

And yet this is a day that offers us an opportunity to reflect on love—the kind of love that brings us to life, the kind of love we know in Christ, a mothering  kind of love.

Jesus says to his disciples, Jesus says to you and me, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “Love”—it’s a word that appears again and again in the Gospel of John and in the letters of John as well.  In the Gospel of John, the word “love” appears twenty times and in the First Letter of John which we hear today it appears thirty-three times.

When I was in seminary, I took Greek.  We all did.  It was a requirement.  The text we read was the First Letter of John.  Midway through the course, after maybe the sixteenth sighting of the word “love”, I raised my hand.  I wanted to know just what John meant by that word.  A three-sentence explanation would have sufficed.  The professor dodged my question.  “Hmm, aah,” he replied and then went on with the lesson.

He never did answer my question.  Today, I’m beginning to think that it was a question best left unanswered, a question I needed to answer for myself.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says to his disciples.  What does that mean?  What kind of love is that?  What does love like that look like?  What does love like that feel like?

Answers to questions like that don’t come from books or scholars or even poets.  Answers to questions like that come from life, from experience, from being on the receiving end of love.

There’s a picture I keep on my bookshelf.  I look at it every morning as I’m praying.  I keep it on my laptop too.  It’s a picture of my mom looking at me.  She’s looking at me with love and delight.  I’m always brought up short by that picture because the looks I often got from my mom were looks of frustration, confusion or exasperation.  And yet, when I look up, I see mom looking back at me with love.  It’s not that she has forgotten the time I mixed cookies on the kitchen floor or the time I spilled her best perfume on her dresser or the nights I came in rather late.  She remembers those but in the love that picture captures, those trifles do not matter.  The psalmist says of God, “She rescued me because she delighted in me.”

Perhaps you noticed.  I’ve changed the pronouns.  That’s because the love I know, the love of God and Christ, I knew first through my mom.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says to his disciples.  He’s not talking about a feeling.  He’s not talking about a kind of extended liking.  He’s talking about a way of living that involves coming back again and again to those one loves.  A way of forgiving time and again.  A love that welcomes people as they are.  A love that delights in people.  A love that says in ways big and small, “You are my beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  A nurturing kind of love.  A life-giving love.  The kind of love we all long for.

Today is Mother’s Day—a day fraught with complexities.  For some this is a day that reminds them of the nurturing love they longed for but never received.  Others find in this day a painful reminder of losses—mothers gone, children never born, children dead before their time.  I like to think of this day as a day that invites us to remember the nurturing, loving mothering that runs through every life.  Mothering we receive sometimes from our mothers, sometimes from our fathers, sometimes from our friends, sometimes from teachers or bosses or neighbors, and sometimes from total strangers.  Mothering that is not gendered.  Mothering that is simply an expression of deep, life-giving love.  Mothering love—the love of Christ and the love Christ calls us to.

Years ago I heard a person far more experienced in the ways of faith than I say, “It’s simple really.”  He was talking about a life of faith, a life in Christ.  At the time I found myself thinking, “What?  How can that be?  That’s not been my experience.”

Today, as I hear those words, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”  and couple them with the commandment to love one another, I find myself again thinking “It’s not that simple.”  Think about the things Jesus says, the things Jesus asks of those who would follow him:

“Sell all you have and give it to the poor.”

“Go and sin no more.”

“Forgive seventy times seven times.”

“Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.”

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

“Turn the other cheek.”

That’s an impossibly high standard Jesus is setting.  No one I know can reach that bar. We all fall short of the mark.  And yet Jesus bids us follow him.  Jesus commands us to love one another.  Jesus invites us into that circle of friendship with God and one another.  How do we, mere mortals that we are, live in love and friendship with one another and with the one who calls into life?

One thing is for sure—it’s not a matter of simply clicking the like button.  Think of your own deep friendships.  The ones that have stood the test of time.  Remember the bumps in the road.  The challenges you faced.  The times you were ready to throw in the towel.  The fallow times.  The times when it felt like you were drifting apart.  The times when you said “enough”.  There are seasons in any long-standing and loving relationship—seasons of drought and seasons of abundance and mud season too.

It’s not easy to be a friend.  Living in love and friendship takes work and time and attention.  Making time for the friendship to grow and thrive.  Putting aside your interests in the interest of your friend.  Laying down your life for your friend as it were.  Letting go of  your convenience or your needs or your self-importance.  Putting the friendship first.

“Love one another,” Jesus says to his disciples.  It’s a commandment he gives twice.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Love is hard.  Loving like Jesus.  How?  Even on my best days, even when I’ve had a good night’s sleep and lots of exercise and spent considerable time in prayer, I don’t come close to that kind of love.  And so I wonder, “What is Jesus asking of me?  What is Jesus asking of us?”

I’m beginning to think that the key to it all is in forgiveness.  Not ours but God’s.  The kind of forgiveness that just happens.  That’s the way of deep forgiveness.  You wake up one day and find that that old hurt no longer has hold on you.  You’ve moved beyond that point of pain, resentment, anger.  You’re in a different place.  The hurt’s gone.  Forgiveness happened through you more than by you.

I wonder if it’s that way with the love Jesus calls us to.  I wonder if that love Jesus calls us to is something that just settles in us, that comes to abide in us—kind of like Carl Sandburg’s fog coming in on little cat paws surprising us when we look up and see it there in us and around us.

I’m beginning to wonder if abiding in God’s love opens the door to loving one another.  God’s love moving in us the way forgiveness moves in us prompting us to the patience and the kindness and the generosity of spirit and good humor that are characteristic of deep love.

I’m beginning to wonder if love is the fruit that that grows on that vine Jesus talks about, the true vine we know as Christ.  When we’re attached to the true vine, we get all the nurturing that we need to grow in love.   Love is our response to the love we receive in God.  We can’t help it.  It flows through us like the nutrients flowing through the vine to the grape.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says to his disciples.  He’s not talking about a feeling.  He’s not talking about a kind of extended liking.  He’s talking about a way of living that involves coming back again and again to those one loves.  A way of forgiving time and again.  A love that welcomes people as they are.  A love that delights in people.  A love that says in ways big and small, “You are my beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  A nurturing kind of love.  A life-giving love.  The kind of love we all long for.

Today is Mothers Day—a day fraught with complexities.  For some this is a day that reminds them of the nurturing love they longed for but never received.  Others find in this day a painful reminder of losses—mothers gone, children never born, children dead before their time.  I like to think of this day as a day that invites us to remember the nurturing, loving mothering that runs through every life.  Mothering we receive sometimes from our mothers, sometimes from our fathers, sometimes from our friends, sometimes from teachers or bosses or neighbors, and sometimes from total strangers.  Mothering that is not gendered.  Mothering that is simply an expression of deep, life-giving love.  Mothering love—the love of Christ and the love Christ calls us to.

The folks at Rev Gal Blog Pals sent the following prompt today:

Hi there~~
Happy Friday to all of you.  Today’s Friday Five has no theme, other than randomness.
That’s o.k., right?
So, just to get to know each other a little bit (even more) here is the meme:

1.  What is the first thing that comes to your mind (right now) that you want to share about yourself.   Only 23 days of training left until the big bike ride.  Yikes.  Time to get on the bike.
2.  What is your favorite piece of jewelry or accessory? Why?  A spider pin that looked so real it scared people.  (It was wooden and fell apart years ago.  My second most favorite–a pair of black widow spider earrings.)                                                                                                                                                              3.  If you could have a starring role in a T.V. show/movie/series, which one would it be, and what would your character be like?   I’m the character actor type.  I would never have a starring role.  Having done that, I know it’s much more fun to play from the side than the center!                                                                                                                                   4.  What is one thing you will eat this weekend?   Arugula and avocado salad as often as I can.                                                                                                 5.  How do you waste time? (If you do, that is…)  Watching NCIS

Two lives converged that day on the road to Gaza—two men encountered one another in the wilderness and the noon-day sun.  One, a foreign dignitary, a court official, draped with the trappings of wealth and power, riding in a chariot down a wilderness road, the other, propelled by the Holy Spirit, running to catch up with the man in the chariot.  The former we know as the Ethiopian eunuch; the latter we know by his name–Philip.  Two men separated by a wide gulf of class and race and sexual identity.  Two men drawn to one another by the Spirit and the word of God.  Two men meeting at the margins of their lives.  Two men changed by an encounter on a road through the wilderness.

As he approaches the chariot, Philip hears its occupant, the Ethiopian eunuch, read from Isaiah, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.  In his humiliation justice was denied him.  Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth” That Ethiopian eunuch turns to Philip and asks, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”

I wonder what was behind that question.  Do you think that that Ethiopian eunuch was remembering the treatment he received at the temple?  Was he recalling the words from Deuteronomy that were hurled at him on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem?  The words that banned people like him from the assembly of the Lord.  Was he remembering the temple gates slammed shut when he approached.  Was he recalling the humiliation he felt?

I can imagine Philip telling that court official about Jesus and his promise to let the oppressed go free.  I can hear Philip recalling the people Jesus healed and the people Jesus welcomed in his midst—prostitutes, tax collectors, the blind, the lame, even a bleeding woman.  And I can imagine the Ethiopian eunuch wondering to himself, “Does that include me?  Does Jesus welcome me into his midst?”

Maybe he then points to another passage in Isaiah—the passage where the prophet says, “and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

Do you wonder if maybe, just maybe, Philip found himself wondering just how broad God’s love really is.  Do you think Philip was going back and forth is his mind about baptizing that Ethiopian eunuch?  Maybe that’s why that Ethiopian eunuch, points to the water and says, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  “What is to prevent me from being part of God’s family?”  “What is to prevent me from sharing in God’s love?”

It’s the Ethiopian eunuch who spots the water.  It’s the Ethiopian eunuch who stops the chariot.  I like to think that it’s the Ethiopian eunuch who leads Philip to the water.  Both go down to the water—the baptizer and the baptized.  Both come up out of the water.  And both are changed by the encounter—the baptizer and the one baptized.

It’s that way sometimes with encounters at the margins.  You meet the other, the outsider, and things change.  Not always, but sometimes.  You get a different perspective.  You see a different side of things.  Maybe even of yourself.  New possibilities open up.  I think that’s what’s happening in our church right now at this moment in our history as a denomination.  For over thirty-five years our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered brothers and sisters have challenged the church to open the doors to all the sacraments.  “What is to prevent us from receiving communion or having our children baptized or being ordained a deacon, a priest, a bishop?  What is to prevent us from being married to the one we love, to the one who shares our life?”  “What is to prevent us from being a full member of the Body of Christ?” our LGBT brothers and sisters ask the church.

Come down to the water they say to the church.  Step in.  When we come out of those waters, we will all be changed.  And that is what is happening to our denomination, to our worshipping community and I hope to you and me as well.  As we see the witness of loving commitment manifest in the lives of those whose relationships shower blessings on all whom they encounter, we ask ourselves, “What is to prevent this relationship from being blessed?”   As we step into the waters of same-gender blessings, as we look at the words of commitment and the theology that undergirds those words, as we witness God’s love made manifest in the couples in our midst—be they same gender or different gender, maybe we will all be changed, maybe we will all draw a little bit closer to that ideal of loving, life-giving and reconciling covenantal relationships that Christ calls us to and that our liturgies proclaim.

Step into the waters of love.  They come from God.

What was your first church like?  How did it feel to you to be there?  Did you feel welcomed?  Loved?  Accepted for who you were?  Did you have a niche to fit in?  Space to grow in?  Did people know your name and the names of those you loved?  I can imagine that there are as many different first experiences of church as there are people in this room.  Churches take so many different shapes and forms.

Was yours one of those churches where you knew you were loved right down to the tips of your toes?  Could you count on someone smiling warmly when you caught their eye—even if you were in the midst of making mischief?   When you shrieked—as most kids do—did folks turn to you and smile or did they turn and scowl or did they not respond at all just pretending that that noisy you wasn’t there?

One of my good friends often talks about the church she was raised in.  My friend was never an easy person to pigeonhole or to control.  She pushed every boundary she could find.  But that church of her childhood not only accepted her, they reveled in her.   My friend knew she was loved no matter who she was or wasn’t—no matter what she did or didn’t do.  That’s how my friend came to know she was beloved of God.  That’s how my friend grew to love God.  She was loved and that was all she needed.

My friend was lucky enough to be born and baptized into a community that knew how to love the children in their midst.  They weren’t perfect, but they knew how to love their kids.  I suppose you could say that that was one of their special gifts, one of their charisms, one of the marks on their part of the body of Christ.  What a gift that community gave their children!  What a gift that community gave the future!

The community to which John wrote or maybe preached was also a community with charism—a special gift.  The gift of that community was the gift of an active love for one another.  It wasn’t something that came easy to them—time and again in the three short letters of John—we hear about the challenges they faced as they worked to live out their life in Christ as a life grounded in love for one another.  But work at they did.

I wonder how they did it—I wonder how they kept coming back to that practice of love. How they returned to love when they felt cranky, hurt, ignored, misunderstood.  How they returned to love when the love they gave was not met with love.   I wonder how they learned to live that active kind of love—that love of neighbor that loves no matter what is given back.  It couldn’t have been easy.  If it were easy, we’d have no letters from John.  He wouldn’t need to write.  But write he does.

Could it be that that little community was one grounded in connection—connection with one another and with God?  How does John put it—“we are God’s children” and “we will be like him”.  They weren’t strangers tossed together, they weren’t people gathered together because they shared a common interest or a common end.  They weren’t an interest group or a business or even a club.  They were brothers and sisters—all children of God, all beloved of God.  Children of God joining together to help one another live in love.  How they lived with one another, how they treated one another, what they held dear mattered.  Such things matter for us as well.

Today we are baptizing Silas Jude Ruiz.  We are welcoming him into the Body of Christ.  This is not something I do or his parents or his sponsor.  This is something we all do together.  We receive him into the Body of Christ and commit to helping him live his life in Christ.

We welcome Silas into a community where all are welcome.  We welcome Silas into a community where all can safely live.  We welcome you, Silas, into a community where you can grow into the person God created you to be.  Challenge us.  Inspire us.  Help us to grow in our life in Christ.  Shake the walls.  Rattle the foundations.  Keep us ever mindful of the One in whose name we gather.  Like you, Silas, we are marked as Christ’s own forever.  Thanks be to God.

In the Episcopal Church we view baptism as something that happens in community.   No late afternoon baptisms in secluded chapel for us.  When a person is baptized, the whole community is a part of it.  The one being baptized, parents, sponsors, presider, prayer leaders, and everyone there have a part in the service.  What I love about our service of baptism is the communal nature of it that underscores the communal nature of our Christian journey.  When the people of God shout out a loud, “We will” to the question “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?” we are really promising to support one another in our lives in Christ.

Giving legs to this promise is hard work.  But I think it starts with the recognition that we are all beloved children of God.  Starting with this notion of belovedness changes everything—how we view one another, the questions we ask one another, the hopes we have for one another and for the community we share.  “Beloved of God”—how different that is from “target audience” or “our competitors” or “the opposition” or “the enemy”.   Imagine how our corporate life would change if work-places, playing fields, political campaigns all started with the notion of “beloved of God”!

Tomorrow is Earth Day—a day in which we recognize not only the beauty of the earth but also that our very earth itself is beloved of God.  I wonder how our lives would change if we really lived into the notion of the earth on which we live and the water we drink and the air we breathe all are beloved of God.  What if we thought of even time itself as beloved of God?  How would that change things?

“Dance, dance, wherever you may be.

“I am the Lord of the Dance” says he

“And I’ll lead you on wherever you may be,

“And I’ll lead you on in the dance,” says he.

After the betrayal, the cooked-up charges, the Cross, the nails, the empty tomb, the Lord of the Dance comes to his disciples hiding behind locked doors and says, “Peace.  Peace be with you.”  Often we hear that word peace in the context of our lives—thinking when we hear it absence of conflict or inner calm.  But Jesus was saying not peace but “Shalom.”  “Shalom”—it means so much more than just absence of conflict or inner calm or even peace of mind.  Prosperity, health, peace, wellness, completeness, safety, harmony, fulfillment, unity, restoration are all a part of God’s Shalom.¹  That’s what the Lord of the Dance offers his disciples.  That’s what Jesus was bestowing on those huddled behind locked doors.  Shalom.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. The Lord of the dance breaks through doors closed by fear and guilt and more than a measure of confusion, breathes his spirit on his disciples and invites them into the dance saying, “I send you to do as I have done.”  He’s sending them out to love and serve their neighbors.

It takes a while for the disciples to get it, for them to step into the dance.  Remember, they huddle in that room for quite some time.  Then Jesus comes back to them again, hails them by the shore, cooks a breakfast, shows them how to love their neighbor and sends them out to feed his lambs and tend his sheep.

When next we meet those followers of Jesus, they are being blown or shaken out of their locked-in places—whisked out into the world of deep need.  The author of the Acts of the Apostles tells us first that “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need”(Acts 2:  44-45).  As the community grew, they continued to share what they had.  Indeed, we hear today, “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:  34-35)

You and I and this part of the Body of Christ we call St. Michael’s are part of a long chain of Christian communities called to love and serve their neighbor as themselves thus spreading Shalom to the world in which we live.  Spreading shalom—it’s  so clearly part of our DNA as Christians though a part that often gets overlooked.  Our early Christian forbearers had quite a reputation for meeting deep human need:

*Tertullian, an early Christian writer and theologian observed, “Our             care for the derelict and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy…      ‘See,’ they say ‘how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each  other.’”²

As Tertullian implies, it wasn’t only Christians that noticed what was going on. The Emperor Julian the Apostate in the 4^th century commented caustically, “The godless Christians feed not only their poor but ours also.”³

You and I and this part of the Body of Christ we call St. Michael’s come from a long line of individuals and communities turned outward toward the needs of the world. I think of Clare and Francis and St. Martin of Tour’s all who focused on serving the least of God’s children. I think of communities like the Beguines in the Middle Ages and Catholic Worker communities of today—communities that devote their common life to serving the neediest, communities that practice a radical kind of love of neighbor.  All part of that great Apostolic train of communities and individuals intent on being the Body of Christ spreading God’s Shalom to the world of great human need.

Just this last week I saw a group of people right here in Albuquerque, including people from St. Michael’s, dancing the dance of Shalom, practicing deep love of neighbor.  In the community room of St. Martin’s coffee shop, a group of people gathered to work out how they would support a person making that difficult transition from living on the streets to living in an apartment.  They talked about who they were and why they were there, what they thought the person moving off the streets might need, what they each brought to the project.  And then one person asked, “What if all of us—all  of St. Michael’s—were a part of this home team each contributing their skills, their knowledge, their unique gifts to people in Albuquerque heading home?”  What a question!

What if we all got together, this whole community–St. Michael’s—all of us, and worked together to address a deep need in our community?  What if the marks on our part of the Body of Christ were mission, service and a radical love of neighbor?  What if the marks of our discipleship were the spreading of Shalom among the homeless, the hungry, the poor right here in Northwest Albuquerque, right here in our neck of the bosque?  Think of it—St. Michael’s as part of that great Apostolic train of compassion serving as Christ’s Body in the world.

Could it be that the Lord of the Dance is coming through the doors of this community and inviting us, like our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, into the world of deep need just beyond those doors,  inviting us into the dance of true communion with our neighbors, with one another and with Christ?

“Dance, dance, wherever you may be.

“I am the Lord of the Dance” says he

“And I’ll lead you on wherever you may be,

“And I’ll lead you on in the dance,” says he.

 ¹Mary Donovan Turner, Old Testament Words, 2003, 110.

²Dan Clendenin, “Communities of Compassion, Then and Now”  http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20120409JJ.shtml                       ³Dan Clendenin, “They Enjoyed the Favor of All People” http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20090413JJ.shtml.

“Enough,”  he says, “I’ve waited long enough.  I’m heading home.”

Rising, he turns to his companion.  “Are you coming with me?” he asks.

She shrugs her shoulders and gets up.  What else is there to do?  They’ve waited long enough.  Three days,  an empty tomb, rumors of angels claiming that the one they love lives, but still no sight of him.  The tomb is empty.  He should be here by now.  And yet He’s not.  They’ve waited long enough.   It’s time to go.

And so they leave that locked-up, stuffy upper room and head down the road to Emmaus—two despairing hearts welled up with grief and fear and pent up pain.

They had hoped—oh how they had hoped—that He would be the one, the one to change the lop-sided world  in which they lived; that He would be the one to throw off all those chains that bound them to a life of burdens they often couldn’t bear.

But now—but now He’s gone.  Leaving them with only their hopes, a promise and an empty tomb—hardly enough to penetrate their gloom, hardly enough to keep them waiting in that upper room.

So down the road they walk. As they walk they remember what He said, what He did, what He promised, and maybe most of all how He treated them with dignity and with love.  They remember how he lived that Reign of God he talked about so much.  Sometimes it almost felt as if they were living it too.

Lost in their memories and in their conversation, they don’t see the stranger coming their way.  They don’t see Him until he’s right there in their midst.  And even then they don’t really see him at all.  Their eyes are blinded by their dashed hopes and unfulfilled expectations.  So focused on what they expect, they miss the risen Christ in front of their eyes.

I think Cleopas and his companion are not alone in that.  Expectations too clearly drawn and too tightly held can keep you and me from seeing the risen Christ standing right before us.    But the risen Christ isn’t that easy to shake.  Like the stranger on that road to Emmaus, the risen Christ comes to us in different ways, in different shapes, at different times in our lives.   Sometimes as a neighbor, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as a stranger, and sometimes a pesky co-worker or an annoying cousin.

Sometimes we meet him in a story told—a story that shifts our understanding of our world and our place in it; a story that helps us see our way out of a dilemma we thought we were stuck in; or maybe one  that expands our horizons just a little.

Sometimes we meet him in a question asked.   “Are you sure?  Are you sure that’s how you want to play it?” someone says to us in one of those moments when we’re about to cut a cord of connectedness.  In the question we meet the risen Christ Eastering us into a different way of living, into a different way of being in the moment.

Sometimes we meet him in an invitation offered.  “Won’t you join me?” or “You’d be great at…” or “I hear they need some help…”  Invitations to join the risen Christ in the work of Eastering the world in which we live.

Cleopas and his companion meet the risen Christ in their despondency and despair. Walking with them, He begins to Easter them into new life.

Eastering.  As Cleopas and his companion can attest, it’s not a one-shot-only kind of thing.  Eastering.  For some of us it happens slowly over time.  A brush with newness here.  A glimpse of hope there.  First stirrings of new life.

We get a whiff of Him and a sense of something changing in our lives.

And then the wine is poured, the bread is broken, a glass is raised, a loaf is shared.  Gathered around the table we meet Him in the breaking of the bread.

In our best moments we, like Cleopas and his companion, rush off—off to join the Resurrection.  Off to be the Resurrection bringing light and life and word of the living Christ to the dark corners of our world.  Off to do the work of Eastering.

Eastering.  It’s not something to put off until the just the right moment appears. Eastering.  It’s not something we wait for.  Eastering.  It happens when we work for justice. It happens when we live with love.  It happens when the passion for God’s reign burns white-hot in our hearts.  Shall we be off to our work of Eastering?

At our Bible study yesterday, we struggled with THE RESURRECTION.  One person said, “I just don’t know what to do with it” and another echoed, “I’m not sure I buy it all.”  It was like a gust of wind blowing into the room clearing out all our shoulds and “have always heards” and opening the way to a deep conversation about Easter, the Resurrection and the risen Christ.  For some of us, Easter comes too soon.  We need a longer Holy Saturday, a longer interval between Good Friday and Easter.  We need time to absorb the grief, time to absorb the pain.  Others need more time with the empty tomb and the open question—what does that empty tomb mean in our lives as individuals and our shared life in community? Still others wonder about Jesus outside the tomb, the Risen Christ, the Resurrected One.

We talked about the various stories of the Easter Jesus—on the road to Emmaus, at the table eating bread, on the shore building a fire, in the locked room showing his wounds to Thomas and the others.  We talked about Paul’s take on the resurrection, his distinction between earthly bodies and heavenly ones, his focus on the body of Christ.  We talked about the myths and stories we had heard.  And we talked about how we made sense of it all.  From one side of the table came a voice saying “I see Jesus in you and you and you.”  Imagine it:  the Risen Christ appearing in those who follow him!

Then I went home and read an e-mail that pointed me to a video of Sara Miles speaking to the people at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.  I’m a Sara Miles fan.  I admire the way she lives her faith by running a food pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church.  It’s not so much that she runs or started a food pantry but that the food pantry is run from the table where the bread and wine are blessed and served on Sunday morning and run in that same eucharistic spirit that surrounds the sharing of the bread and wine.  It is so clear that Sara Miles sees the work the food pantry folks do as part of being Christian.

In talking about the work she does and the grounding of that work, Sarah Miles asks, “What if you and everybody around you actually were Jesus and filled with that power?”

She goes on to suggest that we “take Jesus’ teachings literally and go out the front door and act on them.”  Yet what captured my attention after our Bible study conversation on Resurrection was how Sarah Miles ended her short talk.  “Every single thing the Resurrected Lord does on earth now he does through our bodies.”   In a way she’s saying, “We are the resurrection.”  It’s not a one-time only event.  The Resurrection as an unfolding thing with Christ continually being resurrected in those who follow him.

Easter is coming.  It’s time to practice Resurrection!

Two families

Two families turned out to the streets.

A father seated

his head in his lap

children crawling around his legs

one leaning into his shoulder

Is she crying?

Slowly his story tumbles out

A family down on their luck

The car that was to take them to a new job, a new life, broken beyond repair

No shelter with space for all of them

Children at sixes and sevens not knowing what to do

They ‘re staying with their mother in a shelter

He shares a room with his crack-smoking brother

Hardly a place for a family with kids.

He wonders what to do

“This is no life for kids,” he says.

“Maybe it’s time we give them up,” he wonders to himself.

The question lingers in the stale shelter air.

“No room.  No room,” they hear when they knock on the door.

“No room for you or the baby you are carrying.”

They are turned away

away into the cold night air.

Labor pains come heavy now and still no place to stay.

“The manger?  That’s all there is?” we hear them say.

“So be it.  The baby’s begging to be born.”

On any given night, over two thousand people in Albuquerque are turned out to the streets.  Some find a bed in one of the few overnight shelters.  Some surf on couches.  Many sleep on the street or under a bridge or in a culvert.  Few get the rest they need.  Even those in shelters are turned out early in the morning.  Turned out to walk the streets in search of a place to sit and catch a wink of sleep.  Like Jesus they have no place to lay their head.  Like Jesus they show the face of God to one another and to us.

We pray, O Holy One, you come to us, a person of the streets, a baby born in a manger, a baby born to parents turned out to the cold.  You travel from town to town, but you have no place to lay your head, you have no place to call your own.  You know the weary road the we walk.  You’ve walked it too.  You know the load we carry every day.  You’ve carried such a load yourself.  Grant us the courage to walk the road you walk.  A road that can end at the Cross.  Open our eyes, open our hearts to see you in those we meet on the way.  Tune our ears to hear calls for justice and cries for help that we might lift our voices in one accord with yours as we pray for your reign to begin now in our hearts, in our streets, in our churches, in our homes, in our schools and in our halls of justice.  Amen