Third Sunday of Lent Year A/Feast of Oscar Romero by Mr. Timothy Dobbins

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord.

He was born in a dusty backwater town of no importance to an older father and younger mother.  At the time of his birth, his country was under occupation by a strong military force, which had no problem killing anyone who dared criticize or challenge them.   His father was a carpenter.  He learned that craft well, but was a child who was smart and craved a formal education, so he found a way to study with the religious teachers.  He was very observant in his religious practices, even at an early age.  When he grew up, he talked to everyone who would listen about the plight of the poor and marginalized.  He preached in the countryside about how God was on the side of those who had little, and that one day, God’s Kingdom of love and equality would push out the brutally cold military rulers.  He came to the attention of the political forces in charge and was warned to toe the line or else.  He decided God’s word was more important than the threats from these empty, angry men, and so continued speaking out for the oppressed.  He saw many others killed for doing less, but accepted a possible death as the cost of spreading the message of hope.  In the end, he spoke once too often against the bullies in charge, and so, was executed as a trouble-maker and threat to the established order.

You think I’m talking about Jesus don’t you?  Well, all this is true about him, yes, but this is also true about Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose martyrdom we remember today.

Oscar Romero was ordained on 4 April 1942 in Rome.  Two years later, he returned to El Salvador to begin his ministry as a parish priest.  He grew his remote parishes, started  AA groups, helped plan a cathedral building project, and was rewarded by an appointment to the inter-diocese seminary in San Salvador.  He was considered quite conservative when he ran the archdiocese newspaper, defending both the work the Opus Dei and the traditional Roman Church.

In 1970 he became an auxiliary bishop in San Salvador, and in 1974 became bishop in his own right in a poor and rural diocese.  On 23 February 1977, he was appointed Archbishop of El Salvador.  There were groans and dismay from those who hoped to be led by a bishop who believed in the new liberation theology.  The ultra right government welcomed what they thought would be an easy pawn.

Not even a month later, Rutilio Grande, a progressive Jesuit and good friend of Romero’s was assassinated.  He had been organizing the campesinos into self-reliance groups.  This was Romero’s ‘Road to Damascus’ moment.  He said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.’  Romero suspended masses in the cathedral and demanded the government and the press investigate this assassination.   Both remained mute and nothing was done, and both knew they had a new adversary!

Remember, it was traditional for the church in El Salvador to go along 100% with the repressive government and oligarchy, and to never question the abuses that the few powerful landowners used to keep the poor majority in line.

Last weekend I went on a hike with a man from Hong Kong.  I asked him what faith he claimed?  He said “I believe in myself.  If there is goodness in me, and I do the right things, then I am fine.”  I told him I was Episcopalian.  He said, “I do not much like Christians.  They say they love Jesus, but they do not want to do the hard things he said to do.”

Oscar Romero decided it was now time for him to do the hard things!  Over 40% of the country was owned by only 13 families who worked the illiterate campesinos brutally.  Romero began to criticize the forced poverty, social injustices, and mass torture and assassinations.  He used his homilies and a weekly radio broadcast to chastise the powerful and let them know their sins did not go unnoticed.  He began to gather more enemies!

In 1979, a revolutionary junta came to power in El Salvador, and the human rights abuses escalated as the right and left fought each other, slaughtering many innocent and poor people who were caught in the crosshairs.  Archbishop Romero wrote to President Carter in 1980 to warn that increased military aid from the USA would “undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the political repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights.” 

President Carter was concerned that El Salvador would become another Nicaragua (meaning a too close Communist threat), and so he ignored Romero’s plea.   In one of Carter’s most serious missteps, the USA continued to supply arms and death squad training, abetting a civil war that in the end claimed over 76,000 lives.

Romero was now noticed internationally for his human rights efforts, and on a visit with Pope Paul II in Italy, he told the Pope that it was no longer possible for him to even marginally support the Salvadoran government because it legitimized terror and assassinations. 

Upon return, Romero denounced the persecution of the members of the church who were working with the poor.  Just since Romero became bishop, more than 50 priests had been attacked or threatened.  Six were martyred.  Others were tortured and expelled from El Salvador.  Nuns suffered the same fate if they dared to speak out.  The Catholic radio station Romero used to broadcast his messages of hope was bombed.  The diocesan newspaper office was ransacked.  Parishes and churches were raided and threatened not to interfere with the government.

At a speech accepting an honorary degree from the Catholic University at Louvain, Belgium, Archbishop Romero said,

“But it is important to note why [the Church] has been persecuted.  Not any and every priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked.  That part of the church that has been attacked and persecuted put itself on the side of the people and went to the people’s defense.  Here again we find the same key to understanding the persecution of the church: the poor.”


Indeed, the poor were eager to hear what Archbishop Romero had to say.  They packed the cathedral on Sundays, and those in the countryside listened to him speak by radio on Mondays.  He began to list the disappearances, tortures and murders that happened weekly.  The deaths and actions the government would not acknowledge.  The diocesan newspaper carried the same lists of atrocities.  The people felt someone in authority was finally on their side!  With the newspapers and media heavily censored, the Monday broadcast was the main source of news about what was really happening in El Salvador. 

In his last sermon, 24 March 1980, Archbishop Romero called on the Salvadoran soldiers as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violation of basic human rights; to stop killing their fellow citizens.  Moments later, as he was at the altar in the small chapel at the cancer hospital where he lived, he was shot by at least one gunman as he elevated the chalice during the Eucharist.

At his funeral in the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador on 30 March 1980, thousands of mourners came to pay their respects to a man who spoke out against the abuses of those in power, both economically and militarily. The civil war was still raging, and as canisters of tear gas and smoke bombs were lobbed into the crowd, snipers began firing from the rooftops.  The crowd stampeded and somewhere between 30-50 people died in the melee.  Yet the people returned to file by Romero’s coffin to pay their respects day and night.

The words in the Psalm today say: “Blessed be the Lord!  for he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city.  Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.”  How difficult that was for those in attendance, when their hope had been assassinated and when the snipers started to shoot.  How hard it is indeed to do the things Jesus asks of us.  And how harsh that some even have to die from following those commandments!

Just nine months later, following Jesus would result in the same sacrifice for four Maryknoll Sisters who were working in El Salvador feeding the hungry, burying the dead left behind by the death squads, and providing shelter for the refugees in the midst of the civil war. They were all fans of what Archbishop Romero was saying about the church needing to speak out and uphold the least among them, and they went to the cathedral to hear him preach several times.   On the night of 2 December 1980, Sisters Jean Donovan , Dorothy Kazel , Maura Clark and Ita Ford were ambushed in their car,  shot to death by plain clothes militia, and then buried in the woods.  But, someone leaked to the US ambassador what had happened, and the investigation of this slaughter finally tipped the scales against our formal involvement in arming Salvadoran soldiers.

Officially, the El Salvador Civil War is over, yet the killings there still continue on a horrific scale.  Newly elected President Sanchez Ceren has to deal with one of the highest murder rates in the world. A 2012 gang truce seemed to cut the country's daily average of 14 dead by half, but the drop appears to have been short-lived. Police statistics show 501 murders the first two months of this year, an increase of more than 25 percent over the same period of 2013.  It is a legacy of brutality carried over from decades of slaughter for power. 

In his book, The Violence of Love, Oscar Romero said, “When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise.  He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin’s consequences are all such injustices and abuses.  The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.”  

Who will speak of such things now, and who will do the hard work to wage peace on the streets of El Salvador now?  Who will do the same hard work against violence on the streets of San Francisco?  Who will give, that the poorest in Nicaragua have the water and sanitation we take for granted?  Who will speak out against the rending of families by unjust immigration laws?   Who will work to keep seniors in decent housing with the social services they need?  Who will monitor the violence against GLBT people and work for justice and equality for them?   Who will speak out against the endless wars waged by our government?

If Archbishop Oscar Romero were with us, would he ask us to show up on the Night Walks against violence, to show plainly and publicly where the church stands?  Would he ask us to give to El Porvenir?  Would he ask us to support SFOP?  Would he ask us to stand in front of the Federal Building every Thursday in solidarity with those demanding peace?  And if Oscar Romero and Jesus ask this of us, would you come do this hard work?

AMEN

Born Again (Second Sunday in Lent, Year A) The Rev'd Dr. Richard Smith

It’s the Second Sunday of Lent and the pace is picking up. We’re heading toward the Easter Vigil when we’ll once again stir the waters of the baptismal font and renew our vows as followers of Jesus.

And something else is going on as well. As Leah Forbes reminded me the other day, March is a big  birthday month in our community. Some of us are turning 26 for the second, even the third time. She and Cecil brought a special cake.

And it just so happens that in the midst of this journey to the baptismal font, and these birthday celebrations, we listen in on Jesus talking to Nicodemus about being born again, being born from above. Good time to reflect on this, this Second Sunday of Lent, whether you’re 26 for the first, second, or third time.

Because no matter how old you are, life can throw many things at you. Your life can be filled with zest and passion and purpose. It can also wear you down--the constant daily efforts to make a living, do the chores, struggle with relationships, look for a job, recover from disappointments, and heal from our wounds--these things can, if you’re not careful, make you half-dead, steal your joy.

How do we stay alive, increase the joy? Or to put it negatively, how do we not lose our souls, our spirits, our passion and zest and purpose? Or to put it still another way, how, in Jesus' words, can we be born again? How do we do this?

It’s not what Nicodemus thought. Being born again is not something to be taken literally--an absurd image Nicodemus had of a grown man trying to re-enter his mother's belly. Being born again is obviously not that.

Rather it’s a spiritual awakening that somehow changes us and the way we see ourselves and the world and people around us.

Nor is being born again like simply hitting the reset button on your cell phone, an act that completely wipes out all memory and data--all our mistakes, all the bad things we may have done or that others may have done to us--suddenly erased, gone, as though they never happened. Being born again is not like that.

Rather it means that we come to see those sad and painful things in a whole new way. They take on a new meaning for us. We come to see God at work in them, wiping away the tears from our eyes and bringing us--through those very mistakes and failures and disappointments--from pain and sadness to a more abundant life. It’s what we Jesus freaks call “resurrection”.)

The other day I ran across a poem by David Ray in which he tells of a conversation in which the great American poet Robert Frost was asked about hope. This poem tells us something about being born again.

Thanks, Robert Frost

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought...
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.

A good poem whether you are 26 the first, second, or third time--whether you’re old enough to have more past than future or future than past. It’s about being born again. Not erasing our past mistakes and failures and disappointments, but seeing them in a whole new way. Hope for the past.

This is what we believe: That God is always working for us, transforming our past mistakes and failures and sins into gateways to a richer and more abundant life.

I once went through the loss of a relationship. At the time it felt like the end of the world. But after a while, I was able to see how that loss helped free me for a richer and fuller life. With all its grief and sadness, the loss of that relationship was a blessing, not a curse, both for me and for him.

I've also made many mistakes and often failed to live up to my aspirations, but, as the writer Parker Palmer notes, rather than looking back with regret, it’s possible to see all of our mess-ups as humus or compost for the growing we needed to do.

He notes that “humus”, the Latin word for compost, is the root of our English word humility, a big word for us in these days of Lent. 

The good I do today may well have its roots in something not-so-good I did in the past. Knowing that takes me beyond both the sinkhole of regret and the hot-air balloon of pride.

Regret shuts life down. Humility opens it up.

This is also true in how we think of forgiving others, of being born again after we have been wounded by others. Here again, it's not a matter of simply hitting a reset button and erasing all memory of being hurt. Forgiving does not mean forgetting.

Rather, when we forgive someone, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as physical scars.

But forgiveness and being born again change the way we remember those moments and those wounds, they change a curse into a blessing.

When we forgive our parents for their mistakes, our spouses for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in a crisis, our co-workers for their betrayals, we cease to be victims of events we had no control over. We claim our own power and refuse to let those events destroy us. In being born again we enable these wounds to deepen the wisdom of our hearts; make us more compassionate, joyful, loving; and lead us to a fuller life.

We Christians say that every movement from death and pain and sadness to more abundant life is the work of God, the one who is continually at our side, leading us from death to life, inviting us to be born again. With the passing of the years, and on this Second Sunday of Lent, this is the basis of our hope--not only for the future but also for the past.

A couple of questions for you:

•     Do you have in your own life, wounds either self-inflicted or inflicted by others?
•     As Christians, we believe God is working in and through those wounds, to lead you to life. So what are the ways God has been part of your story even in those moments, leading you from sadness and pain and disappointment to more love, more joy, more life? How do you see God at work in your life?

The Temptations in the Desert, First Sunday of Lent, Year A, The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

At first they tried to kill Polycarp and Lucy by burning them alive but when that failed they stabbed them to death with a swords.

The apostle James, then later Justin and Alban were tortured and then beheaded.

Perpetua was publicly executed by the sword in the arena.

Cecilia was stoned to death, Sebastian was shot with arrows and then beaten to death.

These were some of the first Christian martyrs. Back then, being a follower of Jesus was no easy thing. It meant positioning yourself over against the very powerful Roman Empire, refusing to worship Caesar and the Roman gods, refusing to live according to many Roman values of the day.

Because baptism pitted you against the Empire, it was not something you casually walked into. It could cost you something, it could cost you your life.

In that context, the church started the season we have now  begun, the season of Lent. Since baptism could have enormous consequences for an individual, the early Christians developed a three-year formation process in which you as a convert could ponder, discuss, pray over the potentially risky decision of getting baptized.

Lent was the final stretch of that process, a time to switch up the prayer and preparation before finally taking the plunge, literally, into the waters of baptism at the Easter Vigil.

So Lent is about converts preparing for baptism. But it's also about those of us already baptized. At the Easter Vigil we will gather at that font in song and celebration to renew those noble and foolhardy vows we once said or that were said on our behalf at our baptisms.

And during this Lenten season, in preparation for that Easter Vigil moment, we wrestle with what our own baptisms mean to us this year, at this stage in our journeys. This wrestling involves both individual soul-searching as well as time together as a community.

The readings of Lent are chosen primarily with converts in mind, but they also give the rest of us plenty to chew on. Take, for example, today's gospel that wants us to remember who we are, what it means, and does not mean, to be God's beloved daughters and sons.

Jesus has just been baptized and has heard the voice from heaven, "This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased." But what does it mean to be the Beloved Son in whom God is well pleased? The spirit leads Jesus into the desert so he can wrestle with what all this means, the implications it might have for his life.

There in the desert, the tempter will have some suggestions of his own about what it means.

The first temptation begins by calling into question whether Jesus really is the beloved child of God. Notice the IF: “IF you are the Son of God”, and IF God really does love you, then command these stones to become loaves of bread. The implication is that being God's beloved son means never going hungry, means always being full. This fullness will be supplied by supernatural means. The laws of planting and harvesting will be suspended.

But Jesus rejects this idea that being loved by God means that you will always be filled. Instead, he remembers the word he heard that day in the Jordan. That word was Beloved. Nothing could change the reality and power of that word.

At some times he may be full and at other times he may be hungry, but the word remains true in either case. There may be times when he goes hungry, but Jesus will still be the Beloved Son.

In the second temptation, the devil implies that if you really are God's beloved child, then you will always be physically safe. You can leap from the pinnacle of the temple. The laws of gravity will be suspended for you. Angels will break your fall. You won't even injure your foot.

But Jesus thinks this whole way of understanding God's loving care is wrong-headed. You do not put yourself in danger so God can protect you and show others that you are truly God's beloved child.

In the course of Jesus' life, there will be times when he is not safe. Jesus will be hurt, but even then the word he heard on the day of his baptism in the Jordan will still be true: He will still be God’s beloved son.

Finally, in the third temptation, the devil tells Jesus that if he worships the devil and adopts his ways, he will have control over the kingdoms of this world. The assumption is that the kingdoms of this world are controlled by the devil and political power is his to give.

But Jesus, who is a Jew of the first commandment, worships only "the Lord your God". He refuses to worship the devil and live according to the devil’s values, and that means he will not have political power.

But although, from a political point of view, Jesus will be powerless, the word he heard that day in the Jordan remains true: he will still be God's beloved son.

So Jesus is very clear about who he is. "I am God's beloved son and there will be moments when I am hungry, moments of pain, moments when I am powerless and helpless in the face of all the political oppression. But through it all, I will still be God's beloved son.

Jesus is very clear about who he is. This clarity gives him the insight of how to respond to each of the temptations the devil throws at him.

I remember the story of Martin Luther, the great reformer. Whenever he was feeling discouraged or confused or lacking confidence, he would do some self-talk, he would say: “Martin, Martin, you are baptized!” This remembrance of his own deepest identity gave him a renewed strength and clarity to move through the confusion and to discern the path he needed to take.

Jesus may have been conscious of his true identity in a clear and immediate way, but for most of us, this kind of clarity comes after some reflection and spiritual work. This spiritual work is what we do during Lent. It’s why we take on the ancient practices of extra prayer, some fasting, and giving alms.

I have a couple of questions for you, and I’ll close with these:

    Today, on this first Sunday of Lent 2014, what joys and struggles, what clarity and what craziness are going on right now in your life?

    In your life at this moment, as you look at that font, what difference would it make to remember that you are baptized, that you are God’s beloved daughter, God’s beloved son? Would that change anything? How might your life be different if you allowed yourself to really believe this incredible truth about you?

Radicalizing the Commandments (Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany; February 16, 2014; the Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

(Warning: The language of this gospel passage is a little over the top--all this talk of plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand. Jesus is using a rhetorical device of many of the rabbis of his day, using extreme language to make their point. Obviously, it's not to be taken literally.)

Jesus is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, and just before the passage we just heard, he says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This would have stressed out his hearers, because, they would say, “Well, the scribes and Pharisees are the professional holy people. If they, with all their fastidiousness in observing the law, can’t get into the kingdom, then the rest of us poor slobs don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell!”

What Jesus was getting at was that although the scribes and Pharisees obey each commandment with the utmost precision, they miss the whole point. They are fixated on the externals. Whatever they do, they do to be seen by others. They pray on street corners, sound trumpets before they give alms, and look dismal when they fast. All this calls attention to themselves, and they gain a reputation for righteousness, but the fact is, their hearts are cold, flatlined, without zest; they lack justice, mercy, and compassion.

• They may never have killed anyone, but their hearts are full of hate, their mouths full of bitter words that can lodge in people’s souls like bullets to the spine.
• And technically speaking, they may never have committed adultery, but they are unfeeling toward their own wives whom they were willing to divorce for simply burning the bread, while at the same time their own hearts wandered elsewhere.

Although they’ve been technically observant, they’ve missed the whole point of the law, and, for that matter, the whole point of their lives.

So he says No more gaming the system. A life of faith can’t be just about a technically correct, dry, passionless observance of the commandments. It’s also gotta be about the fire we carry in our hearts.

As Frederick Buechner writes, the scribes and Pharisees are like a kid taking piano lessons whose exasperated teacher tells him "You haven't got it right!" The fact is, the kid is holding his hands precisely the way he's been told. His fingering is absolutely correct.

He has memorized the piece perfectly. He has hit all the proper notes with deadly accuracy. But his heart's not in it, only his fingers. What he's playing is a sort of music, but nothing that will start voices singing or feet tapping. He has succeeded in boring everybody to death, including himself.

The scribes and Pharisees were playing it by the book. They didn't slip up on a single do or don't. But they got it all wrong.

Righteousness, as Jesus sees it, means getting it all right. “If you play it the way it's supposed to be played, there shouldn't be a still foot in the house.”

So the question is how to bring the outside of our lives into synch with the inside? How do we become not like the scribes and Pharisees but integrated and whole?

It requires some spiritual work. It's a task of gradually, over the years, coming to know ourselves. The more we know ourselves, the more we come to understand the blocks to fully living the Sermon on the Mount and how to overcome those blocks.

It’s a matter of:

• Slowly understanding how anger rises in us, comes to expression, and then subsides.
• Learning how our own lust can get out of our control, hurling us along paths we never would have chosen
• Discovering also how we can shortcut forgiveness, how we hesitate and sometimes completely stall when it comes to initiating conversations that are both truthful and reconciling.

Coming to this self-awareness is the interior spiritual work we must do if we are to live the Sermon on the Mount. It’s why our tradition and every great tradition urges us to have a spiritual practice. It’s part of what Buddhists call mindfulness. And in the Christian tradition, we have our own version of this mindfulness practice.

For the next few moments, I’d like us to walk through that Christian exercise of mindful awareness as it is described by the Irish Jesuits. We’ll do this for a few moments, and I’ll close with this.

So close your eyes. Take a slow deep breath. Feel the weight of your body in your chair, your feet touching the floor, your hands resting in your lap. Relax. Be still. Let any tensions of today slip away.

Know that you are in the presence of God, that God rejoices in your presence.

Look back over the last 24 hours. What do I have to thank God for? What gifts have I received?

Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit whom the father has sent in my name will teach you everything”. Ask God’s spirit to guide your memory as you look back over the last 24 hours. Look back peacefully and see what comes to mind. Trust that the Holy Spirit will help you see what God wants to show you.

Recall the sights and smells and tastes and sounds. Look at places you have been, things you’ve done, people you’ve been with.

Look for those moments when there has been energy, life, light. When have you been open to the gifts of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control?

God is always present with us so that we and others can live abundantly. Ask yourself: When did you most fully cooperate with God? When did you feel most alive?

Become aware of the times when you felt out of tune with God. Ask yourself, “When did you feel least alive?” Try not to be judgemental, but simply to notice.

What do you want to ask forgiveness for? When have you chosen distance over closeness to God? Perhaps when your own preoccupations have taken center stage, and crowded out other peoples needs. Receive that forgiveness and healing with confidence.

What do you want to ask God for? What do you need to strengthen so as to follow the way you are being drawn by the Spirit? Ask God for whatever you need, to open your heart to whatever surprise may come, to open your eyes to God in unexpected places, to open your ears to become tuned in to God’s voice.

This God forgives and empowers you to follow Jesus in your daily choices, great and small.


Glory be...

Renewal of Our Ministry and Welcoming of a New Vicar, January 18, 2014 (The Rev Dr. Richard Smith)

First, a few brief words in Spanish:

Bienvenidas y bienvenidos. Estamos muy contentos de que ustedes estén aquí, y esperamos que ustedes se sientan--como en casa--orando con nosotros. 

Aunque hablamos inglés--en vez del idioma de los ángeles--es solo por falta de bastante tiempo para hablar ambos idiomas. 

Específicamente a nuestros hermanos de la Iglesia del Buen Samaritano, bienvenidos. Tenemos ganas de estrechar nuestra amistad y reconciliación. Agradecemos a dios por su presencia en esta celebración y por los lazos entre nuestras dos comunidades. Bienvenidos.

Now, back into English...

This is a formidable group, and to be honest it’s a little daunting to speak to you, so many people that I have come to know and love and admire.

I look around and I see:

• Immigrants who continue to struggle against unbelievable odds just to keep their families together and who have taught me so much about faith and not giving up.
• I see transgender women who have taught me so much about integrity and courage.
• I see many strong and beautiful gay men and lesbian women. Sometimes we have not been understood, and sometimes we’ve been shamed and disgraced, but here we can proudly take our rightful place at this table.
• I see staff and leaders of Mission Graduates and the San Francisco Organizing Project, and the Julian Pantry who give their hearts and souls to the families and elders of this neighborhood.
• And clergy with so much wisdom and eloquence and love for their people, including three of our own beloved former rectors.
• And our bishop with his powerful vision for our diocese, and his prophetic words about marriage equality and immigration reform and about healing our fragile planet. I’m personally very grateful to Marc for the support he has given me this past year.
• I see members of this community of St. John’s that has been through earthquakes and fires and economic downturns. And God knows this past year has seen it’s own challenge. And with God’s help we’ve come through all these things together. I couldn’t be more proud to be part of this community that I love and feel so privileged to serve.
• And I think of all those others members of St. John’s who are now in heaven--from the many strong lay and clergy leaders over the years, to the legendary Miss Emily and Barbara Colt, to our many gay brothers who found a shelter here in the worst days of AIDS and are now  buried in our garden. All of us are here in the communion of saints, A formidable group.
• And then there’s Rob, the man of my heart and my best friend, and our incredibly awesome son David.

You are a formidable group. It’s daunting to speak to you.

It reminds me of when I was a Cub Scout and was slated to receive five silver arrowheads--five of them. To do this, I would have to get up on a stage in front of my whole school, all my classmates and all the big kids, with the priests and all the nuns standing in the back watching.

It was daunting. I was stressed. And when I told my grandmother how stressed I was, she simply said “Just be yourself, Richard. Just be yourself.”

So that’s what I’ll try to do today.

And I’m going to direct my words to the people of St. John’s, but of course the rest of you are welcome to listen in.

Let me tell you about one of the first break-ins at our church. It was in the late 1800s. It was the work of Mrs. Green. She ran the Sunday school.

Back then, the parish was broke and couldn’t pay the rent, so one Sunday everyone showed up for services only to find that the landlord had locked the doors. Some of the men on the vestry went to negotiate with the landlord. But while they were away, Mrs. Green showed up.

I picture her as a cross between the church lady and Rosie the Riveter. Like a cat burglar, Mrs. Green cases the place, finds a window slightly ajar, pries it open, hikes up her skirts, and climbs in. Then she opens all the doors to let everyone else in. Later, when the men return, they find the church services and the Sunday school in full swing.

That’s Mrs. Green, the cat burglar who breaks in and opens the doors.

And she’s like God, the cat burglar of the heart, who, like Mrs. Green, is very determined, who cases our locked and barricaded hearts 24x7 looking for a way to break in. Once he finds the slightest opening, a window ajar, he climbs in and slowly begins opening the doors to let in more life and more love, eventually letting the whole world in.

Our scriptures tell us to be on the lookout because this cat burglar of the heart, this God of ours, can arrive when you least expect.

It’s happened to many of us here at St. John’s.

• Maybe it’s in the swirl of our Anglican liturgy with its incense and colors and stories and songs. Suddenly a part of your heart opens up that had lain dormant for many years.
• Or maybe it’s when seven-year-old Ben bounds up the center aisle like he’s running for office, smiling his toothless grin, high-fiving all of us his adoring fans.
• Maybe it’s the awe you feel from watching how the light comes through these windows just before twilight
• Or the goosebumps you get from watching the people that gather around this table each week--
• activists and professors
• monks, and computer nerds
• black, white, and brown
• straight, gay, and transgender
• octogenarians, millennials, and babes in arms
• middle class and homeless
• most of us happily clean and sober, some of us three sheets to the wind

Each with our own stories of love and loss, each with our own ragged edges

How did we all manage to get here?

Be on the lookout, the scriptures say, because God, the cat burglar of the heart, will show up and break into your heart when you least expect.

And we can vouch for it. We’ve seen it right here at St. John’s.

Our patron, St. John, also knew all about having his own heart broken open.

One part of our tradition says he was the one our scriptures call “the beloved disciple” who, when all the other men had fled, stood with the women at the foot of Jesus’ cross. The one who, when the disciples reclined at table, would lean back and rest his head on Jesus’ chest.

And there, in that moment, in that privileged and intimate space, he would listen to Jesus’ heart, find out what made him tick, what made him happy, and what made him sad; what made him angry and what made him laugh.

The scriptures give glimpses of this Jesus, this crazy, elusive character John grew to love.

• This Jesus who would say, "Blessed, blessed, blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for justice;
• Who throws aside all the laws of ritual purity and touches the untouchables: the leper, the lame, and the blind;
• Who sits at table with those deemed shameful ad repulsive, and by eating with them, renders them acceptable, outcasts no more

John leans against the heart of Jesus, and from that amazing place, he looks out at the world, seeing it all now with the eyes of Jesus.

In my more presumptuous moments, I like to think we in this community of St. John, like our patron, are also invited to listen to the heart of Jesus and from there, to look out at our own neighborhood and world, becoming the hands and feet of Jesus in this place.

It’s happened to many of us, taking us on paths we never would have imagined.

• Several of us have gone on nightwalks along some of the more violent streets of our neighborhood, pausing at times to talk and pray with the families and friends of those killed by gun violence and to call for peace.
• Some of us have come here on Saturday mornings to the Julian Pantry to distribute food to seniors and parents struggling to feed their kids.
• Some of us have gone to rural villages in Nicaragua with El Porvenir to help people get clean, safe water.
• Others have helped neighborhood kids through school through the amazing work of Mission Graduates
• Many of us have stood outside Senator Feinstein’s office with immigrant leaders from the San Francisco Organizing Project, demanding simply that our government stop tearing their families apart,
• Or stood at the Federal Building silently calling for an end to the longest war in our nation’s history.

Along the way we’ve discovered something, perhaps to our surprise: That we, with all our loose ends, can matter. That our own wild and precious lives can make a difference.

It happens here at St. John’s where we listen to the heart of Jesus and our own hearts slowly get broken open.

And in the days ahead, as we watch our kids grow, and bury our dead, and welcome new members, and marry off our friends; after all our coffee hour chats about cabbages and kings, after all our triumphs and setbacks, our laughter, our fights, and our celebrations; through all these things, one question will remain: Have our hearts, like that of our patron, become more in tune with the heart of Jesus: full of more joy, more compassion, more life, more love. Yes, more love. Amen.

First Mass of Christmas, 2013, The Rev. Dr. Richard Smith

At this time of year, our scriptures and our tradition ascribe to Jesus so many great titles: Son of the Most High, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace, and many, many more.

And in light of tonight’s gospel, one other title comes to mind. It’s one I heard several years ago: Jesus, the Compassion of God. Jesus, the Compassion of God.

Years ago, when I was a grad student, I spent a summer traveling and studying in Peru. Along the way I visited a town high in the Andes Mountains called Yungay. It had once been a booming town surrounded by beautiful, high, snow-covered peaks on all sides. In the middle of town was a lovely plaza surrounded by palm trees, with a fountain in the center, the cathedral at one end. Each day, while the men were out working in the fields around the town, the women would come to the plaza to sell the things they had made at home--colorful and warm fabrics, and breads, and goat cheese--and together they would keep an eye all the little kids.

At one end of the town, at the top of a small hill, the people built a huge statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched over the town in blessing. He stands there strong and beautiful, poised and powerful.

In 1970, an enormous earthquake hit Yungay. Boulders from the mountaintops came crashing down at the speed of 250 miles per hour. There was no time to escape. Within a few minutes, almost the entire town was buried alive. Out of 20,000 people, only 92 survived. Of those who did survive, many suffered severe mental and emotional illnesses from the trauma.

On the day I visited Yungay, all I could see of the former town was the huge statue of Jesus. Because it was built at the top of a nearby hill, the crashing boulders simply bounced off the sides of the hill, leaving the statue untouched. So today, the beautiful, powerful statue of Jesus stands there with his arms outstretched over what has now become a mass grave. A sad and sobering thing to see.

I spoke with an old man from the town. When he was younger he had helped build that statue of Jesus up on the hill. He said, “We put Jesus up there to bless and protect our homes and our families and our kids. But when the earthquake came, all he did was protect himself.”

A man of simple faith, carrying an unbearable pain in his heart. I had no idea what to say to ease his pain.

His words stayed with me for several weeks. In fact, they became for me what the Buddhists might call a koan, a paradox that you simply can’t figure out through reason.

Then, a few months later, I read this evening’s gospel about a beautiful and poor young Jewish couple, pregnant and about to give birth, making their way to Bethlehem. No one would welcome them, so their child was born in a stable. This is how God enters the world, not with power and grandeur and magnificence, but vulnerable and fragile, like a small child, like the people of Yungay, like each one of us.

That’s when it finally occurred to me that the Jesus we meet in the gospels does not stand powerful and aloof on a serene mountaintop while everything falls apart below. He is at the bottom of the hill. He’s with the people of Yungay.

With those who were buried alive in the earthquake. He was buried alive with them.
He’s with those few who survived. He shares the trauma they went through.
And he continues, even after all these years, to struggle at their side, to rebuild their lives and their families and their beautiful village.

Jesus, the Compassion of God. This is the one our scriptures speak about:
Who doesn't cling to his divine power but becomes a fragile child, gazing up with unspeakable trust into the face of his mother;
Jesus, the Compassion of God, who later says, "Blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
The one who touches the lame, the crippled, and the blind;
Who speaks words of forgiveness and encouragement;
Who dies alone, rejected and despised;

Jesus at the bottom of the hill. Jesus, the Compassion of God.

In Jesus’ day there was a social grouping of people who felt wholly unacceptable, maybe like some of us here feel at times. The world had deemed them disgraceful and shameful. They took this toxic shame inside, internalized it, and became outcasts.

Jesus’ strategy with them is a simple one: He eats with them. Precisely to those paralyzed in this toxic shame, Jesus says, “I will eat with you.” He goes where love has not yet arrived, and by eating with these despised outcasts, and reminding them of their own loveliness, he renders them acceptable.

How do we explain this everlasting God becoming an immigrant, crossing the border into our history, our moments of love and laughter, our pleasures and delights, our pains and disappointments, the ups and downs of our days? How to explain this migration of God?

How to explain that we are freed by someone who became powerless, that we are lifted up and strengthened by someone who became weak, that we find new hope from someone who divested himself of all distinctions, and that we find a leader in someone who became a servant?

This downward movement of God runs so completely counter to the logic of the world, the logic of Wall Street and national defense programs, the logic that urges us to climb to the top at all costs, acquire more power, more money, more respect and fame.

How do we explain the logic behind the downward movement of God on this Holy Night?

The answer, of course, is simply Love. Love does such things. The One who loves us wants to be with us, through thick and thin, and so draws near, experiencing with us all that we go through, sharing our lot. Love does this.

And if we are to be followers of this Jesus, then we, too, go where he goes. Sometimes that might mean going to the bottom of the hill, to those places of fragility and weakness.

First of all, to those weakest places in our own hearts, in those places where we feel most broken, most insecure, most in agony and afraid.

Why there? Because there, our familiar ways of controlling our world are being stripped away. All the struggles perhaps of coming to terms with an addiction, healing a broken relationship, keeping hope alive when you’re without job, coming to terms with a scary medical diagnosis--in these moments we are often called to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency.

And in these moments, where we are weakest and most vulnerable, at the bottom of the hill, Jesus, the Compassion of God, comes to dwell with us, makes his home with us, brings comfort and hope, labors at our side to create a fuller, more abundant life.

We find this Jesus here in this parish family, with all our struggles and uncertainties and idiosyncrasies, where we gather week after week to break the bread and tell the stories--not only the Story of Jesus, but our own stories as well. Sometimes we just talk of cabbages and kings and the small, ordinary stuff of our lives. At other times we talk about things that keep us awake at night.

Here, with each other, perhaps to our surprise, we sometimes get a glimpse the face of Jesus, the Compassion of God.

And seeing him here in our own midst gives us the eyes to recognize him in other places as well, places we never would have imagined.
Several of us have gone on nightwalks along some of the more violent streets of our neighborhood, pausing at times to pray for those killed by gun violence and to call for peace.
Some of us have come here on Saturday mornings to the Julian Pantry to help with all the chores of food distribution and hospitality to people struggling to feed their families.
Many of us have literally stood with immigrants threatened with having their families torn apart by deportation, demanding with them a change in our nation’s unjust immigration laws.

The list goes on: working with El Porvenir to bring fresh water to poor villages in Nicaragua, standing silently for peace each Thursday noon at the Federal Building, working for a more secure and dignified future for our elders.

In each place and moment, in our own personal lives, the life of this faith community, and in the larger world, sometimes at the bottom of the hill…

and perhaps to our surprise, we discover
The fragile child born in a manger
The one the scriptures on this Holy Night call Emmanuel, God with us
Jesus, the Compassion of God.

Freedom, and Truth and Reconciliation, The Rev. Deacon Jackie Cherry, Advent 3, December 15, 2013

Last week, amid the memorials to Nelson Mandela, I was curious about how religious leaders

addressed his death from the pulpit. I read several, and even listened to a few, sermons from

Advent II. During this process, I began to feel hot and irritated. Usually, I feel this way in a

meeting or at some public event when something that I think should be said isn’t being said.

What the media, and the preachers, are saying about Mandela is true – he was a peacemaker,

freedom fighter, hero, reconciler, prophet. Mandela committed his life to human rights. In 1993

three years after his release from prison, Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South

African president Frederik Willem de Klerk.

But what they are not saying is also true - the leaders of this country and many countries around

the world, considered Mandela a communist terrorist; he was reviled by some until the day he

walked out of jail, others reviled him until the day he died. Before he was imprisoned, the once

nonviolent Mandela shifted his political strategy after realizing the tragic truth that peaceful

resistance was not enough to overturn an entrenched and brutal government. Mandela was

offered freedom in exchange for publically denouncing the use of armed resistance. He refused.

Isaiah and John the Baptist present conflicting descriptions of the coming of Christ; the prophets

contradict themselves and one another. Isaiah presents a world transformed; a paradise where

waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. And the rough and rowdy John

calls his hearers to repentance holding a winnowing fork in one hand and the water of baptism

in the other.

As surely as John the Baptist proclaimed the coming of the Messiah last week, this week he sits

alone in his jail cell, death drawing near, overcome with doubt. John wants to know the truth and

sends his disciples to ask Jesus: Are you the one? Or shall we wait for another?

Like Isaiah and John the Baptist, Nelson Mandela proclaimed his vision of a new world. Unlike

John, who was killed in prison, Mandela lived to walk free. Mandela said, “To be free is not

merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that enhances the freedom of others.” And

that’s just what he did. The mainstream media is stuck on the image of Mandela as the peaceful

master of reconciliation. However, I’m not entirely sure Mandela himself would agree with this

representation.

Still annoyed by the narrow scope of commentary on Mandela’s life, I happened upon President

Obama’s memorial eulogy. With relief and gratitude, I heard the president say,

There are too many people who happily embrace Mandela’s legacy of racial

reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic

poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with

Mandela’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.

And there are too many of us on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism

when our voices must be heard.

Obama continued,

It took a man like Mandela to free not just the prisoner, but the jailer as well, to show

that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is

not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion and

generosity and truth.

Reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with

inclusion and generosity and truth.

We Christians talk a lot about reconciliation, both in the worldwide church and here, in our

parish church. We say Jesus came to reconcile God and humanity. We have the sacrament of

Reconciliation of a Penitent. Bishops often heavy-handedly advocate for reconciliation – a thinly

veiled attempt to stifle conflict by avoiding unpleasant truths.

German theologian and Nazi resistance organizer Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined what he called

“cheap grace”. Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer wrote, is the grace we bestow on ourselves. It is the

preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance; it is grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

I’ve noticed that progressive Episcopalians tend to be uncomfortable with the concept of sin.

It’s a challenge for us to lovingly hold others and ourselves accountable for past and present

wrongful actions. We need desperately to find the middle way between ignoring sin altogether

and hitting people over the head with it. True reconciliation demands that we not shy away from

conflict.

After Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, he appointed Archbishop

Desmond Tutu to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In his 1998 book Struggling

to Forgive, Brian Frost wrote about Mandela and Tutu’s shared, yet differing, approach

to reconciliation and forgiveness. Mandela often believed that reconciliation concerned

letting "bygones be bygones," but Archbishop Tutu emphasized that reconciliation and

forgiveness require repentance and confession.

Tutu’s insistence on repentance sounds strikingly similar to John the Baptist’s message from

last Sunday: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near". In today’s gospel, Jesus

offers reassurance to John, and to us, that he is indeed the One about whom it is written,

‘I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.'

I’d like to suggest that the familiar Advent theme of “prepare the way, make straight the path”

actually describes the process of reconciliation – a complex, three-part formula:

• Truth telling, or confession;

• A change of heart, or repentance;

• And an authentic effort to repair any damage done; restitution.

Confession, repentance and restitution make straight the path to justice. And reconciliation flows

from justice.

Today we are called to reflect, we are called to repent, we are called to open ourselves to God;

not just in this short season of Advent – God is forever ready to be born – but always.

When our cantor sings Come to us and set us free, we are not asking God to free us from

bondage, we are praying for the freedom that binds us in sure and certain hope that Jesus is

the one. May that bond free us to speak the truth; for my friends, bearers of truth, are bearers of

God.

Amen, come Lord Jesus.