How to reclaim what is joyful and dump what is not . . .
How to rethink the shopping madness . . .
How to give: saner, greener, cheaper . . .
How to survive the holidays with family or without family . . .
How to celebrate while facing grief, unemployment, divorce, illness . . .
How to connect with deeper spiritual meaning . . .                     

Saturday, October 20^th 1-4 pm
Holy Cross Community Center
118 Center Road, Weare

Something for Everyone!
Individuals and families, religious or not . . .
Bring your struggles, your ideas, your triumphs to share!

 Sign up at 529-1042 or holycrossvicar@mygsc.com www.holycross-weare.org

Exercise:  At the end of the day, write a list of at least five things that happened during the day that you are grateful for.  At the end of the week, read it out loud to a friend, partner, or mindfulness companion.

Reminders:  Keep a notepad and pencil or pen beside your bed or on your pillow.  When you get into bed at night, write your list before you lie down and go to sleep.

Discoveries:

When people first do this practice, they often think that they will have trouble making a list of at least five things they are grateful for.  However, they are surprised to find that when they start, the list often grows longer.  It is as if a long-neglected faucet were turned on, and the flow doesn’t shut off.  During the day you may find yourself taking mental notes of “things to add to the list.”  This encourages a lovely transformation into a mind-state of ongoing gratitude.

Research conducted by Lywbomirsky shows that 40 percent of happiness is determined by our intentional activities.  People who keep a daily “gratitude journal” or who regularly express gratitude to people who have been kind to them show a significant increase in happiness and decrease in depression.

How to Train a Wild Elephant, Jan Chozen Bays, pp. 46-47.

“Several times a day, become aware of your posture.  This has two aspects.  First it means to become aware of what posture you are in and how it feels within the body. . .  Being aware of posture also means to notice and adjust your posture many times a day.  If you are slouching, gently straighten up.
“A very good time to work with mindfulness of posture is at meals.  Sit on the front edge of the chair with your feet planted on the floor, knees a bit apart.  Straighten the spine to maximize room for breathing. Other interesting times to become aware of posture include while standing in line, driving, lying down in bed, in meetings, and while walking.”  How to Train a Wild Elephant, Jan Chozen Bays, p. 42.
To remember:  You might ask friends or family members to notice and comment on your posture.  You might put a bit of colored tape or a note saying “posture” near where you eat meals.

Discoveries

“People are often surprised to discover that they have poor posture.  Their posture looks OK from the front, but whetn they see their reflections from the side, they are shocked to discover that their shoulders are slumped.  We adjust our posture to different situations.  At a job interview or an interesting lecture, we sit up straight; watching, TV we slump on the couch.  It is easy to pick out those people who have ahd certain kinds of training, such as military officers, dancers, or royalty.  They have a noticeably upright posture.  Why is posture important for these people?  There is a Spanish saying, “You can tell a priest even in a bathing suit,” meaning that a religious person is distinguishable just by his or her outward demeanor, because this reflects on internal posture or alignment.

“In Zen practice we put a lot of emphasis on posture, not only in the mediation hall but also sitting at the table, and even walking about.  We walk with the hands held folded together at the waist, maintaining what Catholic nuns call “custody of the hands.”  When we pass each other in the walkways, we stop, put palms together, and bow.  When we are given our work assignment for the day, we bow, grateful for a body that can work. Four times a day during chanting services we do full prostration down to the floor, where we take a posture of humility, head to the ground, putting down our self-obsessed minds and guarded hearts, lifting our palms from the floor to signify we are seeking to raise up our full potential for wisdom and compassion.  Some days we do over a hundred of these full bows.  People who are doing atonement practice for past wrongdoing may do 108 extra full prostrations each day.  One Zen master did so many full bows each day that he developed a callus on his forehead.  He said that he was an obstinate, stubborn fellow and needed to practice humility.

“Japanese people bow many, many times each day.  Often old people there are bent over and cannot straighten up.  They do not mind this, saying that it helps them to keep on bowing to life and to be grateful for whatever it brings them.”

How to Train a Wild Elephant, Jan Chozen Bays, pp. 43-44, © 2011

Exercise:  When Eating Just Eat

“This week, when you’re eating or drinking, don’t do anything else.  Sit down and take the time to enjoy what you are taking in.   Open all the senses as you eat or drink.   Look at the colors, shapes, surface textures.  Attend to the smells and flavors in your mouth.  Listen to the sounds of eating and drinking.”

Discoveries

“This is not an easy task for most people.  If you’re on the go, walking from one place to another and about to take a sip of tea or coffee, you’re going to need to stop, find a place to sit down, and savor it.  If you’re working on the computer, you’re going to have to take both hands off the keyboard and turn your eyes away from the screen in order to savor a sip of coffee.

“Eating has become part of our modern habit of perpetually multitasking.  When we do this exercise, we discover anew how many other things we do while eating.  We eat while walking, driving, watching TV or movies, reading, working on the computer, playing video games, and listening to music.

“Once we eliminate those obvious activities, we come to a more subtle aspect of inattention—talking while eating.  Our parents may have scolded us for talking with our mouths full, but we still find ourselves eating and talking simultaneously.  While doing this task we learn to alternate eating and talking.  In other words, if you want to talk, stop eating.  Don’t do them at the same time.

“It is so common to socialize while eating that you may discover that you feel awkward eating alone in a restaurant without reading or otherwise distracting yourself.  You might imagine that people are thinking, “Poor thing, no friends.”  You pick up a book or open your computer to show you are being productive and wouldn’t “waste time” by “just eating.”  One problem with eating and doing other things is that it becomes “waist time,” that is, time for extra food to go down unnoticed, and end up on your waist!

“In Japan and parts of Europe it is very rude to walk and eat or drink at the same time.  The only food you can eat in Japan while standing up or walking is an ice-cream cone, because it might melt.  People will stare at the boorish foreigner who busy fast food and walks down the street munching.  Even fast food is taken home, arranged attractively, and served at a table.  Meals are times to slow down and truly enjoy the food, drink, and company.”

How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventure in Mindfulness, Jan Chozen Bays, Shambhala, Boston, 2011, pp. 33-35.

Exercise:  Appreciate your Hands

“Several times a day, when your hands are busy, watch them as though they belonged to a stranger.  Also look at them when they are still.”

Discoveries:

“Our hands are very skilled at all sorts of tasks, and they can do many of them by themselves, without much direction from our mind.  It’s fun to watch them at work, busily living their own life.  Hands can do so much!  The two hands can work together or do different things at the same time.

“While doing this exercise we noticed that each person has characteristic hand gestures.  Our hands wave about when we talk, almost by themselves.  We noticed that our hands change over time.  Look at your hands and imagine them as they were when you were a baby, then imagine them changing as you grew older, until they reach the present time and state.  Then imagine them growing older, becoming lifeless when you die, then dissolving back into the earth.

“Even when we are asleep our hands are caring for us, pulling up the blankets, holding the body next to us, turning off the alarm clock.”

How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventure in Mindfulness, Jan Chozen Bays, Shambhala, Boston, 2011, pp. 29-30.

The Exercise:  Filler Words

“Become aware of the use of ‘filler’ words and phrases and try to eliminate them from your speech.  Fillers are words that do not add meaning to what you’re saying, such as ‘um,’ ‘ah,’ ‘so,’ ‘well,’ ‘like,’ ‘you know,’ ‘kind of,’ and ‘sort of.’  Additional filler words enter our vocabulary from time to time.  Recent additions might include ‘basically’ and ‘anyway.’

“In addition to eliminating filler words, see if you can notice why you tend to use them—in what situations and for what purpose?”

Discoveries

“At the monastery we have found this to be one of the most challenging mindfulness practices we do.  It is frustratingly hard to hear your own filler words and catch them before they are spoken—unless you are a trained speaker.  In the Toastmasters clubs (groups that train in public speaking) there are people assigned to tally filler words during talks, assisting members as they learn to be effective speakers.  Once you begin to hear filler words, you will hear them everywhere, on the radio and TV and in everyday conversation.   A typical teenager uses the filler word like an estimated two hundred thousand times a year!  You will also notice which speakers do not use them, and become aware of how the absence of filler words makes a speech more effective and powerful.  For example, listen to Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, or President Barack Obama’s speeches with an ear for filler words.

“Filler words seem to serve several functions.  They are space holders, telling the listener that you are going to start speaking or that you are not finished speaking yet.  ‘So . . . I told him what I thought of his idea and then, um, I said, like, you . . .’ Filler words also soften what we say, making it less definite or assertive.  ‘So anyway, I you know, think we should, basically, kind of go ahead with this project.’  Are we afraid of provoking a reaction or of being wrong?  We wouldn’t want a president or doctor who spoke in such a wishy-washy way.  Filler words can become an obstruction to the listening audience when they so dilute the meaning as to render it silly.  ‘Jesus sort of said, ‘Love your, you know, neighbor, as, sort of, like, yourself.’’’

Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elephant, Shambhala, Boston, 2011, pp. 25, 26-27.

Happy Father’s Day!  One of the best parts of my relationship with my Dad growing up is that he read stories at bedtime.  I remember sitting on the floor with my sister and three brothers as he sat in a chair and read to us from the Just So Stories or Winnie the Pooh.  He has a deep expressive voice—I can still hear him saying, “on the banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo river . . . “   This was such an important part of my childhood, that I vowed to read to my children.  From the earliest times, Eric and I read stories, all kinds of stories to them every night until they were 14.  We had many favorites including Mercer Mayer’s There’s a Nightmare in my Closet.

In this story, a little boy explains how he was terribly afraid of the scary things in his closet.  He would close the door and not look until safe in bed.  Then he would peek out, but not see anything.  Because the monster, the nightmare, was invisible to him.  But every time he looks away, we see this huge ugly monster coming out of the closet.

I don’t know if this story is for children, or if it is for their parents.  As soon as you have children, you start becoming aware of all the nightmares lurking in the closet and in the pantry, the medicine chest, the playground, in the neighborhood, on TV, on the internet . . . Everywhere you turn, there are invisible threats.  Traditionally, fathers have been placed in the roles of provider and protector for children.

How do most of us deal with the nightmare in the closet?  We work harder and harder, don’t we?  Every time we turn around, there is a new threat.   Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or the increasing amount of autism; hormone-altering chemicals in food can liners and sports coaches who turn out to be abusers; rising obesity and diabetes, epidemics of bullying and suicides.   We are often so bombarded with information about these “closet nightmares” that we have no clue how real they are, how much we should worry about them, or which are real and likely to affect us and which are not that big of a deal.    Add in a wild economy, lots of unemployment and life upheaval, and we can truly feel besieged.  Some parents get to the point of spending all their energy trying to keep their children safe—to the point that they have no life of their own.

Even if we you don’t have children, life today can make you overwhelmed with monsters, real and imagined.  A few months ago, I heard a radio show on finances—a woman called in, explaining that she was thinking about retirement and wondering if she had enough money socked away.  The show host responded vehemently that she shouldn’t even THINK about retiring until she had saved up $750,000.  So great.  There’s another closet nightmare—since there are many people for whom this is an unattainable goal.   Even when you work hard, even when you do everything you can for your children—and of course, that is not good for you or your children in the long run—even so, you can’t fight against all the scary invisible unknown dangers.  You can exhaust yourself and cripple your children.

There is, however, another kind of invisible force running through the universe.  It is called the power of God, or the kingdom of God, or the Way.  It is energy for good, energy that brings life.  It is, says Jesus, like the force inside a seed that causes it to sprout and grow, put out flowers and produce grain.  The earth and water help it, but it is this force for life that works in it, invisibly, without help even from humans.  It is a force that turns the tiniest seed—even a mustard seed—into a huge bush.  The Way of God is like that, working invisibly, working when we sleep or aren’t paying attention, working God’s will, often under the surface, undetected, or through the smallest or most unlikely people or things.

An example of this is seen in the Old Testament reading.  In last week’s reading, the people of Israel demanded that God give them a king.  This week, we skip ahead.  Saul was made king, and was fine for awhile, but then he started disobeying God.  Samuel is grieved, and even the Lord is sorry he made Saul king.  So he works under the surface, invisibly to produce a new king for Israel.  The Lord starts the ball rolling.  He has Samuel go to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse to look for the man whom the Lord will pick as the new king.  One by one, all of Jesse’s tall, fine sons go by, and one by one the Lord says, “Nope, not him.”  Samuel is startled, because they look wonderful, but God says, “Don’t look on their appearance or height, for I do not see as humans see;  I look at the heart.”  The Lord is looking for a quality that may be invisible to others.  So Samuel asks if there are any others sons.  Jesse sends for the youngest, a sheep-keeper named David.  When David comes in, the Lord says, “That’s the one,” and Samuel anoints him king.

There is only one problem.  Saul is still the king, and will kill anyone who declares himself king instead.  That does not seem to be a problem to God, however.  Working invisibly, he engineers a way to bring David into Saul’s household.  Saul gets fits of madness—maybe anxiety or depression– that seem to be calmed by music; he asks about a musician, and his servants tell him about Jesse’s son, who plays the harp.  That is David; David is called to court and plays for Saul.  Eventually, David takes over as king, but is all happens subtly, invisibly, by the hand and power of God.

We try so hard to achieve; we try so hard to cope with all the real and invisible threats in life, but it seems we can just run from one crisis to another, trying to plug one hole in the dyke after another, knowing that eventually the flood of water or danger or economic ills may overcome us.  There is another way.  A way of letting go.  A way of accepting that we can’t fight off all the dangers or crises; we can’t ultimately keep our children safe, we may not be able to live up to somebody’s standard of what we need to retire, we may not be able to keep from getting cancer.

You know what the truth is?  You can’t keep yourself or your children safe.  You can’t plan for every eventuality.  The old notions of retirement may not hold water for many people today.  On Friday night, my daughter Becca and her boyfriend Matt stayed overnight with me.  They got up early, packed up, and headed out the door to meet my other daughter and her friends and climb up Mt. Washington.  An hour later I got the call every parent dreads:  “Mom, we were in an accident!”  Not even a mile from my home, they were looking at signs for the highway and didn’t see the stoplight.  They plowed into a car crossing the intersection.  They were fine; the other driver had minor injuries.  The car is totaled.  They were horribly shaken up.   I had seen them just minutes before, but had no power to keep this from happening.

Bad things happen.  But the force for good is always present; God tries to break in and grow wherever we are.

In the book, There’s a Nightmare in My Closet, the boy eventually comes face to face with the nightmare.  Both are terribly afraid of the other.   When the boy realizes that the monster is scared, he is able to befriend him and invite him into his safe bed with him.  I’m not sure we can make friends with all our fears, but letting go of the need to try to control life is like making peace with the nightmares.  Bad things happen.  But the force for good, the kingdom of God, is always present, trying to work through all sorts of things, small things, invisible things, to increase life, joy, hope, positive change.  Just hours after the accident, Matt’s grandparents decided to give him a car they have held onto but not been using.

Our mindfulness course starts today.  Mindfulness is all about letting go of fear, let go of control, and being present to the day, the hour, the minute.  It calls us to let go of our illusion of control.  There is little that we can actually control, and when we recognize that, we are freer to live life now.  I can’t control the stock market or price of gas or the weather or whether my kids get in accidents.  I can’t guarantee that I’ll be healthy or that Holy Cross will become a huge parish or that I’ll retire with lots of money.  I can decide that I have enough today.  I can try to take care of myself and my relationships and my work here at Holy Cross the best I can each day.  I can look in the closet and decide that the nightmares may not happen and aren’t worth worrying about or may happen and I will cope.  But that’s it.

The Tao Te Ching is an ancient text from a Chinese teacher, Lao Tzu.  Tao Te Ching means “the book of the Way.”  Jesus also called his path of life “The Way,”—“I am the way and the truth and the life.”  The brief sayings have a great deal of wisdom in them.  This in is about what we can accomplish with all our striving and work and worry:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.       (Tao Te Ching, Steven Mitchell, © 1988, p. 9)

“Do your work, then step back.  The only path to serenity.”  We do what we can each day, and then let go.  There is a wild stream of God flowing around and through us.  The best thing we can do is stop striving so hard and let go.  Allow it to use us.  Stop fretting and trying to hold on.  Jesus promises that when we trust in God, we will be filled and carried and used to produce great fruit.

It is the best thing we can do for our children, our parents, our friends.  Do our small piece of work each day, and then let go.  As AA says, “Let go and let God.”  That is the Way, a way of freedom and joy.  Let us pray.  Amen.

 What information would you most like to have?  What would be most helpful to you to know?  We live in the so-called “Age of Information” and we bombarded with messages from every direction these days—whether we want it or not.  There are all these different ways to communicate—through cell phones, iphones, smart phones, laptops, ipads, tablets where you can talk, email and text—you can also follow Twitter or check in on Facebook.  There are 200 cable channels on the TV.  Lots of information everywhere.  But the vast majority of it?  Ads for stuff we don’t need—I really don’t need Viagra—or details of people’s lives that I really don’t want to know, or time-wasting games and videos, or just huge quantities of information that may or may not be true.  Not useful.

And what information would you like to communicate to others?  Perhaps there is something you want to be able to convey to your son or daughter or to your spouse or friend or coworker.  What is the message you want to give and how would you give it?  As much as we want to be able to give useful, meaningful communication to others, most of what we convey is pretty mundane, surface.  Worse, it might not even be true.  I recently read about a new phenomenon among teens and young adults.  It’s called “sleep texting.” My daughters provided me with an example.  Last summer, Karin went on an early morning run and sent her sister a text to have her open up the apartment door.  She got a text back—“I’m busy.  I’m in a meeting.”  Karin stood there for 5 minutes until she realized that Becca couldn’t be in a meeting—she was asleep in bed.  When she woke up, Becca had no recollection of what she had done.  We laughed at the story, but talk about meaningless communication!

So think about these two questions:  what would you most like to know or understand or feel?  And what would you most like to be able to communicate to others?  Write down a few answers on your piece of paper, or if you don’t like words, draw a picture or symbol of what those might be.

Today is the celebration of Pentecost, one of my favorite days in the church year.   The disciples scatter after the death of Jesus.  When he comes to them, resurrected, he gathers them back at Jerusalem, where they hang out together and start to understand when it means that he died and was brought back to life.    Jesus tells them to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes, because then they will be equipped and directed into their ministry.  And Jesus is carried up into the sky; the disciples wait around for what is to come.

And come it does.  On the day of Pentecost, which was a Jewish harvest festival celebrating the first fruits of the new harvest year, the disciples are together.  There is a sound of wind and the sight of fiery tongues and then the Spirit taking hold of the disciples and compelling them to speak fluently in languages that they didn’t know.  And they weren’t just saying, “My, what a nice day,” or “Have you tried the restaurant down the street, known for its great falafel?”  They were speaking specifically of the amazing deeds of power that God did through Jesus Christ.  And all these people from all over the world were in Jerusalem, and they heard these words in their own language from these northern hicks.  Boy, were they confused!  What in the world was happening?

I reckon the disciples were also a little astonished.

Peter recovers enough to rebut the people who were sneering that the disciples had just been drinking.  No, he said, this is what God foretold through the prophet Joel, that God’s spirit would pour down on people and allow them to speak words of truth directly from God.

Pentecost is all about the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is all about communication.  But a particular kind of communication.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t sell you stuff that you don’t need.  It doesn’t fill up your mind or time with useless fluff.  It doesn’t lie or give you directions that turn out to be wrong.  The Holy Spirit communicates the mind and heart of God.  It’s a direct line, a direct data stream, direct satellite dish to God Central.  This is communication that builds community, builds up relationship.  That’s its hallmark.  It is life-giving, essential communication.

So the Holy Spirit works in this direct-line-to-God way.  Falling down on the disciples as wind and flame, it opens them up to be vessels filled with God.  All they have to do is open their mouths and out comes God-words.  They are so connected to God in that moment that they are clear conduits.  They themselves know God intimately.  Can you imagine having that experience?

But the Spirit’s communication has a direction and an object.  The first way is out–as conduits for God, the words and actions of the disciples send them out to others.  The Spirit equips them to communicate God to others.   They are given the ability to preach, heal, teach—and thus, from the first moment of its existence, the Church is outward-looking.  They are sent to bring God, healing, forgiveness, mercy, hope, justice—to others outside of their small disciple group.  And this is an essential characteristic of the Spirit.

The other direction for the Spirit is seen just a few verses later from this passage in Acts.  It says that “All the believers met together constantly and shared everything they had.  They sold their possessions and shared the proceeds with those in need.  They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and share their meals with great joy and generosity—all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people.”  This is the vision of the early Church—eating together, worshipping together, and sharing what they had to care for those in need.  The second way the Spirit equips and communicates is to build up relationships between those who are the Church—“in” you might say, but it is an ever-expanding, ever-changing “in,” not a “us-vs-them” kind of in.

The Spirit brings God to the disciples– God through the disciples to those outside the Church, and through the disciples to each other and those who recently joined the Church.    The Spirit builds up relationship through the truth, mercy, and justice of God.

So what kinds of questions do you have?  Anyone willing to share what you wrote?  The Holy Spirit can answer that . . . What to do next for a job; how to live a less crazy life; how to cope with a certain family member; how to bring healing to difficult relationship; how to live in a way that heals the Earth; to know that I am forgiven for something I did or didn’t do that weighs on my heart  . . . the Spirit can answer that.  Not only that, the Spirit WANTS to answer your questions and give you the direction and assurance that you need.  Call on the Spirit.  The Spirit will not fail you.

The Spirit does not show up empty-handed, however.  The Spirit comes bearing gifts.  Not surprisingly, the gifts of the Spirit have to do with communication in one of these two ways—from God through the disciples outward, and from God through the disciples to build up the Church.  The Gifts of the Spirit are distinctive in this way, and so are not just skills or talents or things you might be good at.  They also have power beyond ourselves.

Some of the gifts make people into apostles or evangelists, people who can particularly bring the Good News of God to others.  Being able to perform miracles is another gift of the Spirit that is outward looking.  As Episcopalians, these gifts tend to make us uncomfortable, because we don’t like the idea that we are going to brow-beat people into conversion—not our style.  But St. Francis said, “Proclaim the Gospel always; use words if necessary.”  Remember what you want to communicate to others?  If it is compassion or hope or forgiveness or justice or reconciliation or acceptance—that is Good News—and whether you speak it or act it out, you are being an evangelist, conveying God’s heart and mind to others.

Some of the gifts are particularly for building up people in the Church—the gifts of pastor, teacher, administrator, leader—these focus on assisting people in their walk with God and helping the church community be grounded, healthy, moving out in faith.

Many of the gifts can be applied with the Church or as a tool to minister outside the Church.  The gifts of healing, helping, mercy, encouragement, wisdom, faith, serving, even being a prophet—these can either strengthen the Body of Christ, the Church by communicating God’s knowledge and love, or they can bring people closer to God who may not know God.  They are tools for making relationships stronger, healing wrongs, increasing hope and justice.

Do you know what spiritual gift you have?  Everyone has at least one.  It is something that both helps you know God and communicates the mind and heart of God to others.  If you don’t, don’t worry.  Others may be able to see it in you; or it may not have been revealed to you yet.  It’s important for us to claim our spiritual gifts, and to know as a community what we all have.  That may determine what our calling as a parish is, or we might find that we lack certain gifts, so need to pray for people who have them.

After you come up to communion, I invite you to spend time walking around the altar, looking at the spiritual gifts listed here.  See if one of them jumps out and grabs you—either something you know you have, or something that you wished you had.  Or, if you see one that you know to be true for someone else, go ahead and give that to other person.  If you’re not sure, don’t worry.  Ask the Spirit.  It will come.

What do you want to know and experience?  What do you want to be able to communicate to others?  The Spirit is the source of all true, helpful, and life-changing knowledge.  We need the Spirit.  Let us pray.

Amen.

               Yesterday we elected a new bishop.  As I wrote this sermon before the election happened, I now say, “As I’m sure you’ve heard, we elected ________________ the X Bishop of New Hampshire, and we’re thrilled and are sure that he/she will do a wonderful job. “  I don’t know why we have to use Roman numbers for our bishops, we’re not Roman Catholic after all.  But I digress.  _____________, I mean                 is our new bishop, who will be consecrated on August 4^th, X days before our celebration of a new ministry here at Holy Cross on August 14^th.

Today our first reading– from the Acts of the Apostles–is about another election—the election of the XII apostle after Judas killed himself.  This story takes place just after the Ascension, forty days after Easter, when the recently resurrected Jesus is carried bodily up into heaven, leaving the disciples down below, scratching their heads.  So then they figure they’d better get a new apostle to replace Judas.  They decide on their search criteria—someone who had been with Jesus all along—find their two nominees, and vote.  Actually, they let the Holy Spirit vote by casting lots.  And Matthias was elected.

It’s a straightforward story.  Clear plot, defined action, conclusion.

Contrast that reading with the Gospel reading from John.  This is part of what is called the “High Priestly Prayer of Jesus.”  John 17 goes kind of like this:  “Thanks, God, glory, glorify, glory, disciples you gave them to me, I give them to you, you gave me your word, I gave it word to them, now they know that I came from you;  I’m going to you, I kept them safe, you keep them safe, in the world, out of the world, not of this world , evil one bad, coming to you, others not yet, they may be one, you and I are one, we are one, they are one, glory, glorify, glory, love you, me, them.”   OK, maybe not exactly, but you get the idea.  Jesus talks in circles.  Did he really talk like that, I wonder?  If he did, no wonder the disciples were confused most of the time!

What today’s passage in John boils down to is the relationship between God, Jesus, and the disciples.  God gave his word or understanding to Jesus, which he gave to the disciples.  And that word/revelation/understanding is that Jesus comes from God; Jesus is God.  That is the first piece—the disciples have been entrusted with this peek into Jesus’ true nature.  And the second thing is that Jesus is asking God to protect the disciples from the Evil One, because Jesus is about to die and the disciples are going to be sent out into the world.

Now we can see that the two readings deal with a common theme.  Jesus is praying to God about what is about to happen to the disciples—when Jesus will die, the disciples will go through a huge time of transition.  They will be scattered, come back together, encounter the risen Christ, lose him once again when he ascends, and then finally be reconstituted by the Holy Spirit as apostles, people sent out to speak and be the Good News to others.    In Acts, we jump into the middle of this transition time—Jesus is gone, the Holy Spirit hasn’t yet come, the disciples/apostles haven’t yet gotten their mission, their special gifts, their marching orders.  It’s a vulnerable and scary time, a time of preparation, waiting, changing gears.

A time remarkably like the one we’re in.  It’s the end of an era in the life of the diocese.  Gene Robinson’s tenure as bishop is coming to an end.  Tonight at St. Matthew’s in Goffstown they’ll be showing a film about Gene’s election and its impact on the wider church and it is a very good film.  Whatever you think about the bishop, his election has been deeply significant to our church; his status as the first openly gay bishop has also in many ways hijacked his episcopacy—it took over, and whatever else he might have wanted to do—well, didn’t happen.  Who he is and what he has done are important.  It’s also great to be able to move forward and to address other issues and other needs of the diocese, which may have suffered in the meantime.  But transition takes time.  Things will kind of fall apart for awhile as Gene steps down and ___________steps in.  You can’t move in a new direction until you kind of slow down and make the turn.  It will be an exciting but vulnerable time for the diocese.

And, lest we forget, we’re still in transition here in at Holy Cross.  I’ve been here less than six months.  I’m still getting to know the parish and community, and we still have all the challenges you had before I came—how to spiritually feed people who are stretched thin by life, how to serve the children and youth and their parents, how to keep stuff going without burning everyone out, how to be engaged with the community, etc.  They didn’t magically get solved when I came.  Surprise!  Some things are fallen by the wayside, we have a change of some personnel, attendance is up and down.  OK.  It’s been less than a year since John left.  Holy Cross is not where it was when John was here, BUT we’re not yet claiming a new vision, a new mission, moving forward boldly.  That takes time.  We’re still in transition.

In fact, we all live in transition times.  Moving from one economy to another,  from a life based on fossil fuels to eventually, a life based on renewable resources, maybe from individualism and buying lots of stuff to living more simply and with richer community connections.  We’re aren’t where we were, but we surely aren’t where we need to go.

Jesus prays for the disciples, that God would keep them safe from the Evil One.  Not that they would be sheltered from the world—that means all the daily stresses and tensions and difficulties that any person will encounter—or even from the special assaults they will get as ambassadors for Christ—rejection, beatings, jail, hardship.  Jesus asks that they be kept safe from the Evil One—Satan, the Devil, or whatever you will call it.  The Evil One causes dissention and destruction, preying on people’s fears, causing them to believe lies about God and themselves.  Where the Holy Spirit breaks down barriers and helps people to understand each other better, the Evil One puts barriers and misunderstanding between people.  Where the Spirit assures people that they are loved and will have enough, the Evil One assures people they deserve only punishment and will have to grab all they can.  Where the Spirit fosters community, healthy relationships, and caring, the Evil One fosters factions, overly close or overly distant relationships, and selfishness.  Where the Spirit brings clarity and joy, the Evil one brings confusion and despair.

Jesus knew that the disciples-turning-apostles would be in for a hard time.  When you’re in transition, you’re in danger.  Danger especially of doing something, anything, to get out of transition.  Either glomming to the past, because it feels safe, or else running and jumping into something new, anything, because it gives a sense of direction.  Either way, you’re acting out of fear, and you just open the door to the Evil One—“move right in and take over.”  If I’m going to err here, it’s going to be in the running off and doing new things department.  I am impatient, I confess it.  I need people to say, “Yes, maybe we should try this” but also people to say, “Whoa, let’s take our time here.”  Both.

We are to be in the world but not of it.  That’s a core quality for our whole lives, not just here at church.  Right now, the world says, “Do!  Be busy!  Achieve!”  Yes, we are called to do something, but that something needs to be from God, not from a place of fear or need to achieve.  And whatever you are dealing with in your life, no matter how hard or how large, Jesus still has the same prayer for you:  to be protected not from adversity, but from the Evil One.  Stay connected to God; believe that you are loved and cared for; stay connected to others who will support you, who also believe in the love of God; continue to speak and be the Good News to others.

The primary way we do this is through prayer.  We tend to have a pretty narrow vision of prayer.  So let’s call it something else:  on vestry retreat, we talked a lot about having our pitchers filled vs. watching around empty and depleted all the time.  It’s not just about standing there passively and having God fill us up, because there is also this relationship, this give and take, the creativity that we can participate in.  So maybe the idea is being a vessel with a lid.  God is always trying to pour in, but most of the time, even though we may be empty, we keep the lid on.  Nothing goes in.  There are places and occasions in our lives that allow us to open up that lid.  Music or beautiful sunsets or creating something or hiking or playing with your children or . . . . ?  What is that thing or those things that  allow you to open up to that life-giving, creating Spirit, where you feel refreshed and regrounded and able to allow God’s life and love to soak into you?  Prayer does that too.  And then this God-filling also changes your vessel—its shape or color or usefulness.

As we go through these various transitions, it is vital that together and also individually fill up, stay grounded, allow God in.  If our worship leaves you tired or bored or underwhelmed, we need to change it.  We need to be filled.  We need to be drawn together by the Spirit.  We need to actively pray for each other, for Weare, for Holy Cross, for the diocese and the state.  Not just on Sunday but the rest of the days too.

When we are filled, when are much more able to act out of love not fear, to be patient for the Spirit’s leading and mission, to have courage to try new things and fail or change course, to reach out beyond our comfort zone.  We are able to trust that God gives us enough and more than enough and that we will be part of amazing works, amazing community.

Love is everywhere.  In the Bible readings today. In the news:  President Obama said the “L” word when explaining his position on gay marriage—saying that two people who love each other should be allowed to marry each other.  Love is even in my fruit bowl:  my bananas say, “I love your heart.”  How sweet.  Of course, it’s Mother’s Day, which lets loose a flurry of advertising, reminding us to go buy stuff and tell our moms how much we love them, because of course we all love our moms!

The truth is, the love between mother and child is the most complicated love on the face of the Earth.  Fathers and children—that is also a powerful relationship fraught with danger—but, correct me if I’m wrong, mothers take the cake.  It’s that relationship that keeps psychiatrists in business.  Mothers are God to their children.  Think about it.  We look to God to provide what we need, to give us a sense of belonging, of being cared-for.  We run to God when things go wrong and we need comfort.  We ask God for direction.  We need to know that we are loved—by God.

The first relationship is with our mother—before we are born, we know her, we are enveloped by her, fed by her.  We even know her voice.  Once we see daylight, she is usually the one who tends to our needs—feeding, changing, cuddling, soothing.  We know security in her arms and by her sight and voice.  She is the first person to teach us about relationships and the lessons that we can trust the world to take care of us, that we are cared-for, cherished, and loved.  She truly is God.

But she is not.  She is human, and will of course fail.  Sometimes in only minor ways.  Sometimes she fails in crucial ways that scar the child for life.  One friend told me that her mother said, “Children are like waffles—you should throw away the first one.”  My friend was the oldest of four children.  Another friend grew up with alcoholic parents, who failed on many levels to care for her.  Instead, from a young age, she would clean up after her parents when they were drunk, cover them up with blankets, and take care of her younger sister.  Or a mother might beat her children or be in an abusive relationship and not protect them from physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.   My second mother, whom I’ll called and considered “mom,” generally took good care of her five children.  But she had a wicked temper.  My mother-god was both caring and benign and also a wild angry woman.  I grew up fearing to fail her, fearing her anger.  You can find that kind of thing in the Bible with the real God too.

So Mom love is imperfect love.  At best. it is pretty good.  Mom was there for you, didn’t screw up in any lethal way, managed not to pass on too much of the family baggage to you.

But there is another reason that mom-love is complicated.  That’s because, to love your child properly, you always have to change HOW you love.  When you have a baby, you—and others–absolutely have to take care of his every need.  But if you are still spooning food into your kid’s mouth and wiping his butt when he is five, ten, or twenty, you have failed to do your job.  Bring on the psychiatrist!  Every year or three, your role changes.  From the moment your child is born, the trajectory is all about the kid leaving, and about you helping her leave.  It becomes less and less about physically caring for your child and protecting her, and more and more about education, support, encouragement, equipping, comforting.  Kissing the boo-boos, but letting your child experience the world enough—in a controlled way—to get boo-boos.

Recently, I was astonished to find that my relationship with my kids has changed in a profound way.  I’ve heard mothers say, “My kids and I are friends now.”  And I thought, “Clearly this woman has abdicated her authority as mother by trying to be pals with her children.”   Certainly being friends is not appropriate with your minor children.  But I now find that my young adult daughters and I have become friends.  And this was probably hastened by our divorce, which happened just as they went to college—but our relationship is much more equal now.  I teach them, but I also learn from them.  I support them, but they also support and encourage me.  We are all in the process of changing, growing up, trying to make sense of a world that is in flux.  I’m still mom, as in, “Waah, my boyfriend dumped me,”   (“poor thing”) or “I need money” (“yes, I’ll send some”) or “I’m going to rent a ZipCar and drive to Providence in the dark” (“no, you’re not, that’s a bad idea”).   But we are also, greatly friends.  It’s not a part of mother-love that I ever imagined, and it is not something that I ever shared with my own mother.

Mother love is complicated.  So is God-love.  Amazingly, if you read through the Old Testament and into the New Testament, you see that God-love also changes.  It isn’t clear if God actually changes over the centuries, or whether it takes all this time for the people to grow up in their capacity to know and love God.  But there is real movement in the way God reveals himself/herself to the people.  At first, God chooses one people, the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob to be the Israelites—they will be God’s people, God’s chosen children and God will be their God.  And God smites people when they are bad and sometimes has the Israelites wipe out peoples and take over their land.  But over time, God uses other nations to chasten the Jewish people, and then God gives a vision of all peoples and all Creation being included in harmony, salvation, restoration.  Everyone as God’s beloved child.   Even in the Old Testament, you see this theme.

Then with Jesus, you see not just that God loves the people she created, God is willing to suffer to death for God’s own beloved ones.  Rather than fight off and kill the Romans and religious people who plotted to kill Jesus, God allows Jesus, God’s own son, to die.  And then, Jesus came back to life, preaching not vengeance, but forgiveness.  It’s a true change of how we understand God-mother-love.

And the most astonishing thing of all, perhaps, is what Jesus says in today’s Gospel.  He says, “As the Father/Mother God has loved me, so I have loved you”—that is, I have loved you with this divine parental love—but then he says, “You are my friends.  . . I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father/Mother God.”  What could it mean to be friends with Jesus?  Jesus is calling the disciples his friends—his equals—ones who know his mind and his heart—ones who share in his life and in his mission.  Equally.   Jesus says, “I have told you everything I heard from God.”  They are friends with God, knowing God’s mind and heart as well.

Isn’t that amazing?  And by extension, that means that we too could be friends with Jesus and friends with God.  Not in a “Jesus in my pocket” or “God does everything I want” kind of way.  But in a way that it is possible for us to know the mind and heart of God and to be co-creators with God, co-workers with God, friends-on-a-mission with God in the world.

This means, of course, that we have to grow up in our relationship with God and Jesus.  It should give you pause.  That although God will always be God, provider, guider, beloved, comforter, boo-boo kisser, forgive-us-our-messes-God, what God wants most of all is to be working beside us and through us as equals.  Seems laughable, doesn’t it?  Or even kind of terrifying—we’re supposed to do that??

There is a story about a monastery (“The Rabbi’s Gift,” M. Scott Peck, in A 2^nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield, Mark Hansen, 1995, Health Communications Inc., pp. 56-59) that had fallen on hard times.  “There were only five monks left in the decaying mother house:  the abbot and four others, all over 70 in age.  Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearly town occasionally used for a hermitage. . . As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut.  But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him.  “I know how it is,” he exclaimed.  “The spirit has gone out of the people.  It  is the same in my town.  Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.”  So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together.  Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things.  The time came when the abbot had to leave.  They embraced each other.  “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here.  Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?”

“No, I am sorry,” the rabbi responded, “I have no advice to give.  The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered.  “We just wept and read the Torah together.  The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving—it was something cryptic—was that the Messiah is one of us.  I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words.  The Messiah is one of us?   . . . one of us monks here at the monastery?  If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot?  Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot.  He has been our leader for more than a generation.  On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas.  Certainly (he) is a holy man. . . a man of light.  Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred!  Elred gets crotchety at times.  But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. . . Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred.  But surely not Brother Phillip . . . so passive, a real nobody.  But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him.  He just magically appears at your side.  Maybe Phillip is the Messiah.  Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me.  He couldn’t possibly have meant me.  I’m just an ordinary person.  Yet sup-posing he did?  Suppose I am the Messiah?  O God, not me.  I couldn’t be that much for you, could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with e      extraordinary respect on the off-chance that one among them might be the Messiah.  And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

(Now) . . . it happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even . . . go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate.  As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place.  There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it.  Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray.  They began to bring their friends to show them this special place.  And their friends brought their friends .

Then it happened that some of the younger men . . . started to talk more and more with the old monks.  After a while one asked if he could join them.  Then another.  And another.  So . . . the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

We are to grow up in love.  Maybe we’ll never be friends with our mothers, but at least we can forgive them and be grateful for whatever good they were or are, whatever gifts they gave us.  And ask for forgiveness from our children for our failings and give them our blessing as they ultimately need us less.

We are also to grow up in love with God.  To let God infuse our very lives, our work, our relationships.  To ooze out of us and work through us, so that we do great works with God.  To dream big, act boldly.  To treat each other as friends of God.  Maybe even as the Messiah.  Let us pray.  AMEN.