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.

First Sunday of Advent/World AIDS Day 2013, Gregg Cassin

Our day for remembering, for feelings and tears (liquid prayers) and incredible pride in our community's luminous love!

Here we are in the advent season and also honoring world AIDS Day. 33 years ago I had come to San Francisco to come to terms with my sexual orientation. I came at the suggestion of my spiritual director at Boston College who was a closeted gay man and a Jesuit. I was grappling with the question of whether I have a vocation for the priesthood. He nipped that in the bud and said if you are questioning your sexual orientation you ought to head out to San Francisco. This is the kind of spiritual direction every young gay Catholic guy needs! And that was exactly what I needed because my 1st relationship was one that would have an impact on me for the rest of my life. His name was Bill and he walked me through my self-doubt and self-hatred in a loving yet firm way. The message and theme of many of our conversations became the foundation and standard that I would attempt to live my life. The message was profoundly freeing and healing… “Gregg, this man Jesus that you love so much identified as the truth and the light. That living one's truth was so important that that's how Jesus identified himself. And the amazing responsibility that each of us has to be our unique light.” It was as if some switch had been turned for me. That I began to recognize that each one of us is this unique and profound gift. That each one of us has a responsibility to be our essential self. And that this journey of self acceptance and self love was a sacred journey. But what can seem like a selfish or egotistical goal is actually more humble than anything else. Because it is this faith and this trust that there is something precious about every single one of us. And that each one of us as we begin to honor and love who we are we recognize that we have a personal ministry, a life mission to be fully who we are and to give generously of this gift. That who you are is not only acceptable but indispensable.

So when you are 22 and newly aware of this amazing gift that you are to the world :-) It would be incredibly selfish not to share it! Even better, give it to your parents living peacefully on Long Island as their Christmas present! (Years later my mother would laughingly say "Timing is everything.") My little brown paper that I hold here is the torn grocery bag on which I wrote my notes which was my Christmas present to my parents. It talks of everything that I just said. My parents had been leaving to the mall to go Christmas shopping and I was sitting on the sofa watching TV and it hit me. I have come to tell Archie and Edith Bunker that their son is gay. I have a critical decision to make… Take a cab to JFK while they were out shopping or tell them that they're getting their Christmas present when they get back. Clearly I chose the latter. I went into the attic and grabbed baby pictures, first-grade pictures and my high school graduation picture. I wanted a reference point for my parents. I wanted something that reminded them… As they received this life-changing information, that I was still that beautiful little boy that they love so much. Is every gay person's worst nightmare–to lose the love of a family. My parents came home I share my story and looked into my father's eyes… My father the 6' 4'', 300 lb. construction worker “My gift to you this Christmas is to share with you that I am a gay man.” Silence. Then my father stood up and with a big sigh said “Come here”. And my dad leaned forward and enveloped me in a gigantic bearhug with his face pressed against the side of mine and whispered into my ear “Son, I love you so much. It must have been so hard all of these years. I wish you could've told us sooner.”

All this came in handy a few years later when given another challenge of acceptance and trust. In the mid-eighties I found out that I was HIV-positive and like for many of us, it was devastating news. It was not only terrifying but for a period of time I carried great shame, feeling like I was a pariah, diseased and unlovable. I searched for healing. Another powerful, life-changing moment for me was attending a workshop for people with AIDS. It was the simplest things that I found transformative. We really are healed by one another, that is why it is so important to hear one another's stories. One part of the workshop was just people taking turns standing up and telling the story. The only have a short period of time and it could be anything that they wanted to say. And I remember sitting in the front row and leaning forward and taking in every single story and thinking to myself “Oh my God, I love that guy''. And the next one “Oh my God, I love that guy.” And the next one, and the next one, and the next one,… And then I realized–they are all lovable, they are all worthy of love, they are all innocent. I must be too.

I realized what healing took place as we came together to be supportive of one another, finding comfort and inspiration in one another. By joining together we could 'find our way' even in the middle of this horrifying and devastating epidemic. Lots of people came, and a lot of people died. While preparing for this talk today I thought I would just start writing down a few names… And here are some of my losses.

I never had the courage to even consider writing until yesterday morning. So on this World AIDS Day,  I fill my mind and heart with some of my sweet ones whom I've loved so much and lost way too soon. But who left me with more than I thought one could be left with after so much loss.

PHILIP - friend, support, roommate, like a brother to me, no an older sister  a really strict one who calls you on your stuff, expects the best of you, walking through the Castro your face covered with lesions-the biggest on your nose, we sat in the middle of the restaurant I was prepared to be in a corner with you facing the wall "I want to face out." you said. I never was prouder of a friend, I hear your voice still requiring so much of me. And I can't forget the gift/miracle of holding your cold hand after you passed and in my other hand  your Mom and Dad's hands, remembering you saying the night before "Be the bridge for my parents, help them understand this is my 'healing' - And we did and it was.

XAVIER - lover - for 25 years you've come to me in so many dreams(one recently) and after every one of them I wake thinking you're alive "I'm going to Paris to find you"-then I remember, you are gone. You were so 100% unconditional- I swear if you were alive I'd ask you to grow old with me, I'm sorry I couldn't stay.

MICHAEL - my dear, dear quiet roommate whom I let down, I got terrified when you got sick, I'm so sorry, I asked you to move out. Seeing you alone in Mother Theresa's hospice and you held my hand smiling, "Who'd believe it would come to this?'' If I got a do-over you'd die in my big green chair in the living room surrounded by Melinda and Karen and the other guys and I'd be making soup in the kitchen-still in denial that you or any of you were really going to die.

LUIS -  BEAUTIFUL Luis! your profound love transformed Tom, and it lives on with him and Jim. I'll never forget you calling- just returned from a very hard Dr's appt, so sick, mouth and throat full of lesions and you spoke for about a half hour telling me how wonderful people are "Gregg, the nurse took my hand and held it so gently, she didn't have to do that." I was in tears the whole time I covered the phone thinking 'How could she not?'

JAMES - roommate, friend my beautiful sweet James welcoming my new partner & daughter David and Breauna here "Have them live here! I'll move out and live with Douglas!", and you did and WE DID! Thank You!

KEVAN - Breauna's first dad, never met you but I owe you. You gave the world- Breauna. No greater gift in my life. 1995 when it seemed every friend was dying, all hope was lost- into my life came Bree and David. No greater gifts. The luckiest day of my life. Thank you Kevan. .

MATTHEW - your generous incredibly broken heart. You forgave your mom who disowned you and sent back every birthday and christmas present you ever sent her. On your deathbed she took your call. Her loss was our gain.

MORRIS - like your best friend Matthew disowned by your parents. On your deathbed in the hospital your dad called. i begged you to talk with him. 'No thank you!'

DOUG - you sent me to that NY quack of a Dr 97 years old, eyes closed prescribing me something that i think was nail polish remover-and I drank it! Jeez!

DORIS - cried every time you told the story of your baby dying and laughed every time we watched the documentary you were in and the part where you shifted your weight and went 'Phrumph!! " Oh Lord Jesus, I'm going on a diet."

DAN Burlando - the toughest, most skeptical guy at group, scared the hell out of us, we were trying to heal and we knew nothing- Too sick to come to group we went to you, into the evening you said "Guys, this isn't BS, your love is really working, i haven't been able to eat solid food for a month and  I've just eaten 2 slices of pizza and french fries!' Courageously lived with those KS lesions, the biggest on your nose…Burlando you became 'Fernando the Bull' in the children's book and the bee on the tip of his nose was replaced a butterfly sticker, to cover that lesion. Loved hearing from Lois that you sent away for a box of monarch butterflies and released them in your loft.

CEYRA - were you 16,17,19? TOO YOUNG!  calling you 'Pickles' and 'Peaches' it kept changing. My goal- a smile on that face of yours. I never believed you'd die that young.

CAROL - it was breast cancer that took you but you were the one who we were 'booking to do our memorial services', each speaking gig you'd call and say a prayer and ended with "Well, we know God's no fool...you're the only man for the job Gregg, the only man for the job." It was crazy talk but it worked every time.

SCOTT F. - and then there was Scott,  Healing Circle you brought with you only joy, your last gift to me was joining your Mom and Larry anointing your body with holy water and oils, singing, praying, crying, dressing you in your orange sneakers & an orchid blossom, lifelong lover of orchids
you carried that one for years from city to city, it never bloomed and you never gave up on it… Larry called to tell me you died, "And" he said "that orchid bloomed! Come help us with Scott." And I did.  A few months after you memorial I was having a terrible time-too much loss. I needed some hope, a miracle…so I got out my monthly Day Book-each day had a poem, or prayer or a reading from something. What was the reading the day Scott died. Flipping through the pages I found your day.

"Silently a flower blooms,
 And silently it falls away;
 Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
 The world of the flower, the whole of
 the world is blooming.
 This is the talk of the flower, the truth
 of the blossom:
 The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

And it all came back - the possibility that miracles can sweep in effortlessly and by surprise–and take care of you. That we are not alone. And that it's not all up to us, that the burden does not rest on our shoulder's alone. That there is this loving presence that will send in caring, caring that you are unaware of needing. And as a result faith is restored. Faith in the possibility of grace.

Feast of Christ the King; the Rev. Dr. Jack Eastwood; November 24, 2013

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

This Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year, is commonly called the Feast of Christ the King. The gospel for each of the years in our three­year lectionary bears the same theme. Today it is St Luke’s turn to give us his witness to the kingship of Christ in his portrait of Calvary. All the gospel writers agree that Jesus did not die alone.   But only Luke includes the three crosses making the story much fuller and more complete.   It is all a concluding testimony to the significance of Jesus Christ for us and for our world before we embark once again on the Advent Season and the journey to Bethlehem.

From the moment of his birth, the child represented some new implication for all the kingdoms of our world. And that is played out here some thirty years later as Christ hangs from the cross, being mocked and derided, as the so called King of the Jews.  It was earlier that day that He had before Pilate saying: "My kingdom is not of this world."

Obviously Pilate hoped that Jesus meant that he was not concerned with this life, only with the life to come. After all, if Christ and his church are not really interested in questions of justice, or concerned with how people are treated and mistreated, threatened and abused, then the kings and kingdoms of this world really have nothing to fear ultimately. If Pilate can be assured that Christ's kingdom is not of this world and without serious concern for this world, then the status quo is not threatened, and the rule of intimidation goes on unchallenged.  "I find no fault with this man",  Pilate concluded, and in that conclusion, he became a victim of his own hopes for power and control.  And for that reason he misunderstood Jesus and his significance for us.

We must ask ourselves,  "Am I complacent about Jesus?"  "How does he challenge me?  Does the story of Jesus cause me to struggle with myself, with my hopes, and with my values?
Does his life empower me?  Or, have I fallen victim to my hopes for power and control and misunderstood Jesus?  How is Christ significant for me"

God’s sovereignty and the ways the people of the Bible resisted it is a major part of the biblical experience. The people of Israel struggle with God; Jonah runs away from God. Job argues with God.  Over and again stories of disobedience and incidents of rebellion with heroes like Moses, David, and Joseph and in the history of the nation of Israel testify that the sovereignty of God is not irresistible.  It is resisted all the time.

Yet however resistible it might be, God's sovereignty is nonetheless, invincible.   And that is because it comes from a love that will not let us go. For God to bear with us may break God's heart, but the one thing God cannot bear is to give us up. God can let himself be nailed to a cross and sealed in a tomb and still not be done for.  This is a strange sovereignty.  It is grace, not irresistible, but still and nonetheless invincible.  God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

"Grace to you and peace...from Jesus Christ...ruler of kings on earth".   AMEN