Rev. Aron Kramer

Four words from this Gospel  have haunted me all week. Those four words: And he was speechless.  What happens to the man who was speechless?  What does the King who has invited all these people, the King who seems to have a will that blinds his own compassion and love, what does the King do to the man who was speechless?  He has him bound and tossed into the outer darkness.  I mean, come on, the man was invited, wasn't he?  The man was doing nothing wrong, it seems, he was harmless.

Not wearing the right robe as a parable for the Kingdom of Heaven is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.  I will be honest with you, the standard interpretation of this Gospel does not sit well with me.  The first group that rejected the Kings invitation are the Jews and the second group invited are all of us.  We all know where that goes, where it went.  Besides, there is an important historical question, was Jesus setting himself against the Jews of his time, or was he setting himself against the Roman establishment, the oppressive and corrupt Herodian government?

If Jesus' words were directed at the Pharisees and Saduccees I believe that he was not so much speaking to them as people who had rejected God, or even Jesus himself, he was speaking to them, rather, as leaders who stood idly by and watched as their own people were murdered, oppressed, raped and beaten.  The people Jesus was speaking to were people who had power and influence and chose not to participate in an exercise of liberation, chose not to participate in a process of freedom and dignity. 

We hear a whole lot about what it means to be silent.  Elie Wiesel said, "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..."  We have heard or read Desmond Tutu's and Martin Luther King Jr's statements about how those who remain silent side with the oppressors.  These are condemning words, because there is a lot of injustice and corruption in the world and we tend to remain silent on most issues.  Silence can, apparently, lead to death.  Now we can add Jesus to this list of people who have a deep disdain for those who remain silent in the face of injustice. 

This person who did not wear the appropriate attire to the wedding, which presumably was provided by the King, was rejected outright by the host of this marvelous wedding banquet.  How was the man brought to the King's attention?  Did someone else point him out?  Was what he was wearing so obvious that the King did not have to look long to find this sore thumb?  And why did this man not have a simple response?  Why did he not say, I don't know,, offering the King a teaching moment, or why not say, gosh, the stewards ran out, I was the last one in the line, leaving Jesus the opportunity to say the first shall be last?  Why did he remain silent, and what was so important that the King would not tolerate for one single ounce or second this man's presence?

So I began to ask myself about what it means to be silent, what it means to speak up, what it means to make a stand.  I found myself agreeing with Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King Jr. and Desmond Tutu, and of course, Jesus as well.  Silence is a form of oppression, silence does place us on the side of the oppressors, silence destroys our own soul, our own identity and even our own faith.  To stand by silently implicates us in ways we cannot imagine.  So does that mean we have to pick some issue, make it our own and be the voice for that issue in the world?

This is where I found myself struggling, and empathizing with the man who was cast out to the outer darkness.  I was driving to work one day, early, I think it was a Tuesday morning, and I heard a BBC report about how 2 some odd Billion people in the world don't have access to clean and sanitary toilets.  Thirty percent of those people live in Asia, it might have been more, I can't remember exactly.  The reporter talked about how for years the Indian Government has been trying to deal with this issue of sanitation to no avail.  It is a dignity issue, to say it simply, these people have had their dignity taken away from them.

So working to get the 2 billion plus people in the world a toilet, or access to sanitary and hygienic bathroom facilities sounds like a good cause, it is a basic human dignity issue that I can get behind.  But as I began to go through the list of causes, of human rights issues, I became quite overwhelmed, how in the world does my effort to get toilets in Asia help the massive and destructive famine that is currently plaguing Africa, which for the most part, I have been silent on.  And what about the environment?  If I work towards making the global climate change issue a centerpiece of my hope for the future, how does that impact the immediate need of people who use the processed food, which is a big part of the global climate problem, we hand out from our Shelf of Hope?  Is it simply enough to do something, anything and hope for the best on everything else?

Finally, in this struggle, I found myself circling around to the idea of justice, which has always been slippery to me, always been ambiguous.  Justice can be defined in so many ways, it can be understood in so many different contexts.  It was in the midst of this struggle that the Baptismal Covenant came floating to my eyes, on Wednesday as I was finishing up the bulletin for today.  There in all it's glory were the statements that have changed the Church forever. 

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

These words that often seem so innocuous yet fluffy and nice have a powerful and compelling argument for speaking up, for not remaining silent. 

The foundation we stand upon is not the cause we find passion for.  The foundation we stand upon is our baptism, or our understanding of Baptism, which claims these five commitments as core to our life in Christ.  In our understanding of Baptism, which is the incorporation of an individual into a larger community of faith, the global community of hope and love, the Human Family as we understand it, we are able to say that we believe all people must have basic human rights and dignities, not for any secular purpose but because this is what Christ calls us to offer the world.  This is what God desires us to share and strive for.  And when we are silent, this great gift we have been given, this gift of life that has been granted us, remains held in quiet security, not being taught, not being proclaimed not being served.  Silence is death, for those who are oppressed and silence is death for our own souls. 

It is a fine line to walk, because we are not here today for our own selves and our own souls.  We exist here today, we gather here today, to try to change the world.  To bring voice to those who have none, to bring justice to the places injustice, to bring love to places of apathy.  Christ is our foundation, love is our motivation and our faith is our future.  Today we will not be silent, today we will not keep our love to our selves, today we will speak, today we will love, today we will change the world.

There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and his position in life.  One day he passed a wealthy merchants house.  Through the open doors, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors.  "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter.  He became envious and wished that he could become like the merchant.  To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined.  But he was envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself.  Soon a high official being carried in a sedan chair passed by, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs.  "How powerful that official is!" he thought, "I wish that I could be a high official!"  Then he became the high official carried everywhere, feared and hated by the people all around.  It was a hot, sticky summer, so the official felt uncomfortable in his chair.  He looked up at the sun.  It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence.  "How powerful the sun is!" he thought, "I wish I could be the sun."  And so, he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by farmers and laborers.  But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below.  How powerful that storm cloud is!  I wish I could be the storm cloud!"  Then he became the cloud, flooding fields and villages, shouted at by everyone.  But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, it was the wind.  "How powerful it is, I wish I could be the wind!"  He became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees hated by all below him.  But then he ran up against something that would not move, a huge towering rock.  "How powerful that rock is, I wish I could be that rock!"  Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth.  But he heard then, the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed.  What could be more powerful than I the rock, he thought?  He looked down and saw far below, the figure of a stone cutter.

The stonecutter in his desire to be more powerful and more influential and more wealthy traversed the entire universe, he became the Sun and discovered in his journey, the most powerful person, the most powerful presence he could be was himself, the stonecutter, the man he ought to be, the man he was made to be by God.  God is much more interested in making us what we ought to be than in giving us what we think we ought to have. 

Richard Rohr, a theologian and spiritual writer, calls us circumference people, people who have little access to our natural Center.  He believes we spend much of our lives on the boundaries, on the edges of the worlds that we live in, on the margins of our lives, rarely able or willing to move back into our center.  And so, Richard Rohr decided to reframe this idea of having a center within ourselves, and suggests that we should not look to enter the center of our own beings, but rather understand that we are already part of a soul, a larger soul that we exist within.  It is to the center of this soul that we traverse.

I like the idea of moving in and out of a center of a soul that does not belong to us.  I love the idea that we move from the margins to the center and back out again.  We are an active, frenetic, constantly moving people.  We are.  And so, I asked this question, what if there is no such thing as centering of ourselves? What if centering ourselves is participating in the Gospel opportunities we have in our lives?  What if participating in God's mission, moving from the mission we do here at Gethsemane and in our own lives, back to the worshipful center we experience together and out again, what if that work, and that movement is the centering activity we are called to live?

Today we celebrate, we celebrate the work of the Garden, we celebrate the work of the Shelf of Hope, we celebrate the work our Malik Sealy Gym of Dreams, we celebrate the passion that we place into our worship and into this amazing faith community.  And today we don't celebrate us as individuals, that will be for another time, today we give thanks for these amazing opportunities that have revealed to us how God is acting in the world.  What is God up to?  We celebrate the opportunities to reveal to others that great and abundant love we know God has for the world.  We celebrate these events as our understanding of all the different ways that we see God at work in our lives, because all of these things that are around us, all of these opportunities we participate in are not ours, they are God's, they are God's and they are some of the most wonderful gifts, the most amazing manna from heaven, that we have ever been given in our life as a Church, as a faith community in Minneapolis Minnesota. 

It is these opportunities are what transform us, these are the things that move us from the centers we know, to the boundaries and the margins where we can soften the hard edges, dull the sharp corners, to the places where we can firm up the foundations and brighten up the dark places.  These are the opportunities we have been given to achieve the Reign of God here on Earth. 

And so, today, let's celebrate, let's throw our hands in the air and proclaim: Thank You God!  Thank you, God, for the amazing gifts and wonderful sights we have been given. Let's focus our love on the activity of God in our marvelous faith community, let's move our own selves out of the way and see this community gathered as the most vital part of our singular lives, this community that has shaped and formed and woven itself into our lives in so many ways. 

Let's journey together through the universe and take our chances as the Sun, as the wind, as the clouds, the powerful among us, but always return to that which God has done for us, that which God has made us to be, that which we ought to be, ourselves, our beautiful, wonderful, loved, and amazing selves, part of a community where we are fully loved by God, where we are held by God in God's own hand, where we are picked up every time we fall and brushed off and encouraged to continue on the journey.  Let's be God to one another, God made us for that purpose, so that we, together, could recognize the holy in every single person we meet and know.

Eliot's best friend is named James.  James sister Catherine is also a dear friend to Naomi.  I was at a play date with the kids when I heard this story.  James' Mom knew someone who was on the first plane that crashed into the Twin Towers on this day ten years ago.  She had recently had her first child, a girl, and had gone back to work after maternity leave.  Her flight that day was the first time she had flown for work since her baby girl had been born.  At the memorial service, towards the end of the service, because the little girl loved the song so much, all those gathered to remember the young woman who died and support the family after such a devastating loss, sang If you're happy and you know it.  Simple, sweet, focused on the family who had just lost so much, a song was offered to console this young girl who had just lost, forever, her mother.

This struck me in a particular way, surprisingly, in a hopeful way, I have asked several people here at Gethsemane what they wanted to hear from the pulpit about 9/11 and the resounding answers to that question has been "Nothing at all."  I don't blame them, we have been inundated with special after special about that day, we have been drowned in the sensationalist stories of new videos, and never before seen clips and first ever highlights of the experiences of people who saw some aspect of the events of that day.  It is crazy that in a world filled with brokenness, filled with need, filled with pain, our media can only find time to cover and re-cover issues that only spark political debates and accusations, or have only sentimental value and cannot help us face the questions of that day with strength and courage and grace..

The idea of singing if you are happy and you know it at the end of a funeral really got to me.  How will this girl, who lost her mother in an extreme act of violence, grow up to understand what forgiveness is?  How will this little girl forgive those who killed her mother?  How will she reconcile when she is able, her own brokenness about losing her mother and the need for all of us to live together in peace, and love and joy?  What would Jesus say to this little girl if she approached him and asked him about whether or not she should forgive those who committed such an atrocity against her?  Would Jesus say, forgive them?  Jesus never was all that pastoral, he rarely reached out in compassion, he always challenged and pushed people in their questioning.  What would he say to this little girl if she asked him about forgiveness?  If he said what he said in this Gospel we heard today, would she hear his words?  Do we hear his words?

Our country is in an out of control, violent and vicious cycle of blame, accusation and division.  We live in a culture that can barely grasp what this Gospel is proclaiming.  We do not listen well to one another, we do not challenge out of love, those people who are struggling with deep questions of faith, forgiveness and hope.  We do not support with care and generosity those who are in need.  Our country, our culture is focused on everything but compassion, everything but grace.  I wonder what we would hear from our politicians if we sat them down and gave them this Gospel text and asked them to discuss it, as politicians, not as private citizens. What would their conversation say about our current social crisis?  What would Al Franken say?  What would Michelle Bachman say?  What would President Obama say?  Very little they do as politicians in this country remotely emulates this Gospel.  As politicians they are still waging war, , they are still supporting torture, they are still creating unjust laws that put an inordinate amount of people in prisons.  As politicians there is little room in their agendas for an understanding of forgiveness.

But we elected these people, we provided them with the authority to wage war, to torture, to create unjust laws, to perpetuate the cycle of violence that threatens our schools, our communities, our lives.  We elected these people.  So it makes me wonder, does forgiveness begin with those on top, with the leaders of the countries that wage war against one another or does forgiveness begin with us, the people, the masses, the communities gathered together.  What would it take for me to forgive Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and others for what I see as their egregious and unethical use of manipulation and hatred to sow division and violence in our country?  What would it take for me to consider forgiveness of people like Christopher Hitchens and his crusade against Christianity?  What would it take for me to forgive myself for my own role in the divorce I am undertaking now?  

I have to confess, right now is not a good time for me to think about forgiveness, I don't want to think about it, I don't want to talk about it.  I don't want to have anything to do with forgiveness.  The last thing I want to do right now is forgive.  I want to yell, scream and call people that disagree with my political views bad names.  I want to stand up against politicians I think are sowing divisiveness in our country and take back with emphasis the values I understand our country to be founded upon.  I want to blame everyone but myself for my own divorce.  I don't want to forgive.  But then this Gospel comes along, and I see I have no choice.  I see the hurt and the despair that could grow and live in my heart, the anger it could become and the horrible person that would form because I chose not to forgive.  So I will forgive, I will forgive slowly, even though, again, this is not what the Gospel is compelling me to do.  Forgiving someone a little bit, I think is like being a little bit pregnant, right.  You either are pregnant, or you are not.  You either forgive someone or you do not.  

The kind of forgiveness exhibited in the parable of today's Gospel is atrociously exorbitant.  It is interesting when you look at the numbers behind this parable.  It says, the servant of the king owed him 10,000 talents.  One talent was 20.4 kg of silver.  That equalled 6,000 drachmas.  6,000 drachmas was the equivalent of the wages of a manual laborer for fifteen years.  Ten thousand is the largest possible number that could be imagined.  We are talking about 60,000 drachmas, or 900,000 years.  The servant could not possibly pay back what was owed.  And it was all forgiven him.  On the other hand the amount that was owed the servant by one of his own fellows was not insignificant, it was a large amount, about 100 days worth of wages.  Of the two debts, the reasonable one was actually the one owed the servant, not the one owed the king.  The numbers show that this was not an actual story, but rather a parable to make a point about forgiveness.  Imagining the worst and most crazy possible things we can, we are still forgiven by God.  We are still forgiven, we are still forgiven by God even though we may be horrible and terrible people.  

I had a seminary professor who always challenged us on the idea of heaven and hell and forgiveness.  He was Dutch, and his family was devastated in World War Two by Hitler and the Nazis.  Many of his family members were killed in gas chambers, buried in mass graves, never to be found for memorializing or putting bodies to rest, little closure was granted them.  He would always listen as someone in our theology class would get up and say they didn't believe in hell and gave evidence and support as to why they didn't.  He would then stand up and slowly, always gently, dismantle their argument and say, as the final statement of his own argument, "If Hitler is in heaven, then I would rather be in hell."  

These are very important questions for us to consider to hold gently in our hearts to weigh and process so that we can have meaningful conversations about forgiveness in our lives and what it looks like.  I am coming to believe more and more that it is not so much our good deeds that get us into heaven, it is not so much our actions or our words, or even what we believe, rather it might be the quality of our forgiveness that grants us access to the holy, that opens the doors to heaven for our entry.  It is also the quantity of our forgiveness that gives us the grace to walk through our days with integrity and dignity.  It is the quantity of our forgiveness that transforms our brokenness into wholeness, our pain into health, our sadness into joy.  The quantity and quality of our forgiveness is what allows to experience the holy and be happy all the way to our core.

If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands.  It's grace, it's hope, it's faith.  All of it is summed up in our ability to forgive, which leads us into our ability to love and to be loved.

Sermon preached at Mount Olive Lutheran Church, August 15, 2011, 7PM

On the Feast of Mary the Mother of our Lord.

I found myself sitting at a bar in the western suburbs after having been contacted by a young woman who wanted to know more about the church and about theology and spirituality.  It is fascinating to work downtown Minneapolis, as many of you know, the people you meet along the way are spectacularly interesting.  I had been walking to Target, wearing my collar for some reason, when this same woman stopped me on 9th Street and asked me, "Are you priest?"  I said I was and she proceeded to ask me all these questions about perfectionism and true happiness and how these things are achieved.  I told her I would achieve true happiness once I got to Target and bought my Snickers bars for the week.  She laughed and I asked if she would be willing to meet with me in a less busy place to discuss her questions.  So I found myself in a nice bar somewhere west of the cities, talking about Jesus over a nice Australian Malbec.

As we talked I found myself thinking about Mary, St. Mary the Virgin, and the amazing contradiction's and the amazing paradigms we place on this simple teenage woman.  On the one hand she is this perfect specimen of humanity, this perfect woman, she holds the world in her hand and there is no human before or since, for many people even more so than Jesus, who has exemplified what it means to be the perfect human.  My Dad's side of the family are what I call, "Good Roman Catholics".  Lots of kids, very devout and faithful to the teachings of the Church and the Pope, they don't recognize my own ordination and chuckle every time I bring up the fact that I work at a Church.  They also have a deep reverence for Mary, and sense of devotion that is deep and abiding, and the one piece of their practicing faith I find admirable.  But there is this idea of absolute perfection, absolute truth that goes along with it and it is fascinating that Mary, the Mother of Jesus is the person who manifests these amazing beliefs and behaviors.

And on the other hand, opposite this pedestal raised, perfect specimen of humanity is the scriptural description of Mary.  This picture that is of a sweet, obedient woman who desires the world to be turned on its head.  A young woman who sings of how the world will be transformed and justice will prevail.  I never heard my Fathers side of the family speak of justice in the name of Mary, but the Magnificat, sung by Mary in tonight's Gospel, clearly lays out a plan that God has for Mary and for the child in her womb.  There is no question that the Bible has different plans for Mary, different plans for Jesus, plans that entail justice rolling down like water, righteousness being done, nothing short of revolution, or even rebellion!  Listen, "He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty."  Where is the happiness in that?  Where is the gentle, peaceful and perfect Mary in that story?  A teenager is singing about the toppling of governments, the overthrowing of the powerful, the demise of the wealthy.  Imagine if Taylor Swift started singing about such things.  A teenager filled with the Spirit, because this is what God does, people, God comes to us in our weakest moments, in our most foolish people, in our times of deepest despair.  

James Mays, in his commentary on the Psalms, and his particular comment on Psalm 34 says, "It is to the broken hearted and the crushed of spirit to those who know they cannot help themselves or base their lives on how they live, that the Lord is near."  As I was talking to this young woman, at the bar, drinking wine, as we talked about her ideas of true happiness I found myself, quite animatedly, speaking of how it is in our emptiness, in our brokenness, in our despair that God comes to us.  It is in vulnerability that God is near to us whispering in our hearts, showing compassionate healing to our souls.  I even went so far as to say that God was not really hanging out with us in that bar, God was with the starving children, women and men who are dying in Africa as I speak these words.  You know how hard it is to try to convince people that Christianity is great when all you can say is that God is found in the darkness and the brokenness, that God is present in the despair and loneliness we often feel in our lives and see in our world?  It is really not all that effective, but there is good news, because it means that after the proud have lost their minds, after the wealthy have been divested of everything, God will be with them, when they are broken, when the powerful have fallen, God will be present to them, and likewise with us, when we are fallen, when we are broken, when we are finally despairing of the injustice in the world, when we can no longer depend on ourselves and can no longer base our salvation on how we live, then, and only then, will God be near us.

I have a story I share at every wedding I do when I do the homily, it goes like this.  A student went to his Rabbi and asked him, "Rabbi, why is it God writes God's name ON our hearts and not IN our hearts."  The Rabbi thought for a moment, and replied, "Because, when our hearts break open from grief, loss or despair, a small piece of God's name falls deep into our hearts, and as our hearts heal, we come to know God a little more fully than we did before."  We are so afraid of brokenness in our culture, we are so afraid of sadness and loss that we run as fast as we can from these experiences.  But the truth is no matter how far or how fast we run we are constantly surrounded by the brokenness of the world, the suffering of people we know and love, the injustice of systems that deeply oppress and destroy. We cannot escape it, and as dire as it sounds, we must find strength in that brokenness, as Mumford and Sons sing in their song, "the Cave", I will find strength in pain, I will know my name as it's called again.  As Bruce Springsteen sings in his song, Into the Fire, "May your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love give us love."  Despite the great despair in the world, God came to meet us, despite our brokenness, God made us holy and more powerful than we can ever imagine.

And so I begin to wonder, I wonder if we are not a small piece of God's name, written on this world.  I wonder if we truly are a piece of God's name written on this world tasked with seeking out the places where the world has broken open so that we can fall into those crevices, those dark holes and bring with us the name of God, the healing presence of God, the deep and abiding love that God has for the world.  And when we emerge from those places of brokenness, we are bolder, stronger and filled with an appetite for justice.  The psalm says, Taste and see that the Lord is good.  This has little to do with food going into our mouths and everything to do with practically and physically and actually experiencing the participation we have been offered in the Kingdom of God.  Tasting God has nothing to do with the communion we will receive here tonight and everything to do with how we will go from this place desiring to experience the justice God is trying to bring into the world.  Taste and See is actually feel and know, God has no hands in the world but ours, our hands are what hold this world together, our hands are where God's compassion resides.

Yes, we celebrate the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus tonight, yes, it is wonderful to gather and be with one another as we celebrate this moment, but we should truly tremble at the words of this young teenage mother, we should truly fall to our knees begging for God's mercy, for we are the ones facing the indictments Mary has for the world, we are the proud, we are the wealthy, we are the powerful.  We are the ones who will be turned upside down and we are the ones who risk losing everything.  But!, in our loss, we will find God, and in finding God we will discover that we are holy, a holy piece of God's name, tasked with bearing God's presence, God's divine and powerful love to the broken places of this world.  Mary was pierced through the heart when she saw Jesus hanging from the cross, may we likewise be pierced through the heart at the site of injustice in the world so that we too can sing with joy for the transformation of the world, so that we can be God's name written on the heart of our world.

The Rev. Aron Kramer               7 Pentecost                                      July 31^st, 2011

I feel like I am wrestling with God.  Especially if wrestling with God feels like butterflies in your stomach, butterflies with razor sharp wings.  I feel like I am wrestling with God, especially if wrestling with God feels like God is inside of me rerouting each and every vein, intestine, nerve ending and neuron connection I have.  Here, this shouldn't go here, it should go here!  I feel like I am wrestling with God, and I even have a little affinity for Jacob at the moment as my hip feels like it is out of joint as well.  The commentaries all say that God and Jacob were actually wrestling, human to human WWF style wrestling.  It was not a psychological imaginative event that happened, it was real.  While I don't know if God has ever physically wrestled with me, I do know God is at work within me, and it feels like a WWF smack down.  I just wanted to say that.

What does wrestling with God feel like for you?  I can't say what it feels like for all of you, but I might guess that wrestling with God feels truly human, or rather, makes us feel truly human.  Wrestling with God feels like we are wrestling with another human being.  Wrestling with God seems to be an incarnational event, or opportunity or moment to be avoided.  We all wrestle with God, I think sometimes we call it other things, wrestling with our demons for instance, struggling with the challenges in our life.  We all wrestle with God in one way or another, and in our wrestling we discover that we are much closer to God than we ever imagined.

It is said that if you see God face to face, you will die.  So maybe getting close to God isn't such a good idea.  Jacob decided to take that risk, to attempt to see God face to face.  As their wrestling carried on through the night and the morning slowly crept in it was God who saw that there was little time before Jacobs' death would occur.  It was God who decided to end the match, but not because God wanted to, rather because God could not break Jacobs will, could not break Jacobs embrace, could not break Jacobs hold on God.  Jacob decided of his own accord to engage the challenge of wrestling with God fully.  Jacob desired deeply God's blessing, and God's goodness in his life. 

God's blessing, Jacob wrestled with God, and in the end received God's blessing.  Jacob is blessed by God because he struggled, Jacob stayed with God the entire night.  While we may not wrestle with God in the same way, we still do, I believe, wrestle with God.  We often feel those razor winged butterflies during moments of turmoil, our wrestling is often that experience that makes us feel more human, more vulnerable, more open to God's presence and love in our lives.  The challenge is remaining locked in that struggle with God.  The challenge is not running away from the fear, the loneliness, the pain, but rather making friends with the fear, the loneliness and the pain, sitting with it to hear its story, to hear what it has to offer.  I want  God's blessing in my life. I want to know that every step I take forward God will be by my side, that every struggle I face, every evil that confronts me, every time I fall, God will be beside me, for the rest of my life.  I deeply desire God's blessing. 

What would I do for God's blessing?  Would I, could I wrestle with God in a similar way that Jacob did?  I often feel like I am wrestling with God, and recently, that wrestling match has amped up, as if daybreak is approaching and God does not want me to die. Until I read this Old Testament reading, I wanted the match to just be over, I felt tired, I felt exhausted, I felt spent.  I felt like there was little to be gained.  But Jacob has shown me otherwise. Jacob has shown me that there is something to be gained, there is  something good that can and will come out of this wrestling with God.  God's blessing and maybe even greater than that is the fact that in the wrestling with God that we experience, we discover that God is rooted to this world, rooted to our humanity more than we ever imagined.  God stands beside us through thick and thin, God walks with us in every danger we experience, God comforts and cries with us during our deepest sorrows.  We were made in God's image, so a God that does not do these things for us and with us is a God that would never struggle with us or connect with us or love us.

I want to throw you all for a loop right now, I want to finish by reading a parable of sorts written by the Theologian Peter Rollins, he is from Ireland, and has burst on the theology scene in the past couple of years.  I stumbled across this parable when someone tweeted about liking it. 

The Rapture, by Peter Rollins, from his new book titled "insurrection"

Just as it was written by those prophets of old, the last days of the earth overflowed with suffering and pain.  Earthquakes, lack of water, war ripped across the globe.  In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through the earth with death upon its back and hell in its wake. 

During this great tribulation the earth was scorched with the fires of war, rivers ran red with blood, the soil withheld its fruit and disease descended like a mist.  People everywhere cried out, "Lord, protect us!"  One by one all the nations of the earth were brought to their knees. 

Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly realm, God watched the events unfold with a heavy heart.  An ominous silence had descended upon heaven as the angles witnessed the earth being plunged into darkness and despair.  But this could only continue for so long, for, at the designated time, God stood upright, breathed deeply and addressed the angels with a booming voice. 

"The time has now come for me to separate the sheep from the goats, the healthy wheat from the inedible chaff."  Having spoken these words God slowly turned to face the world and called forth to the church with a booming voice.  "Rise up and ascend to heaven all of you who have sought to escape the horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing."  People everywhere were stunned, saying, "Can it be?"  God continued, "Come to me all who have turned from this suffering world by calling out 'Lord, Lord'". 

People everywhere called out to God, "Lord, Lord, come quickly!"  In an instant, millions were caught up in the clouds and ascended into the heavenly realm, leaving the suffering world behind them.  People were ecstatic, praising God that they had escaped the tribulations.  They were filled with joy and laughter. 

Once this great rapture had taken place, God paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying, "It is done, I have separated the people born of my spirit from those who have turned from me.  It is time now for us to leave this place and take up residence in the earth, for it is there that we shall find our people.  The ones who would forsake heaven in order to embrace the earth.  The few who would turn away from eternity itself to serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life that passes from existence in but an instant.  

And so it was that God and the heavenly host left that place to dwell among those who rooted themselves upon the earth.  Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for the world and thus who bore the mark of God.  The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of forsaking it. 

Doubting is the moniker we give to Thomas, and I have to wonder if once again the Church is attempting to water down, sanitize and make clean something that underneath the surface could deeply transform us in some way we would have never expected.  In this day and age when doubt has become the new faith, is doubting an appropriate way to describe what Thomas was doing or feeling?  I say doubt is the new faith because it is, and as Episcopalians we probably relish in that idea.  Sit down with a bunch of people who call themselves Episcopalians and one will inevitably hear that the Church is good because it lets people ask questions, it allows people to have doubts.  We have believed all along, as Episcopalians that one has the right to ask questions, to doubt as Thomas doubted.  Thomas is kind of our unspoken patron Saint.  Thomas allows us to believe that we can live a life of faith steeped in the questions we have about God and God's activity in the world.

But I want to ask us to look a little closer at this text and wonder with me about the moniker Doubting.  Thomas himself does not say to the Disciples who tell him they have seen Jesus, "I doubt it."  He says specifically, "I do not believe you."  He has no qualms in telling them all that they are lying, all 10 of them, each and every one of them comes to him saying we have seen Jesus, not to mention the women.  In this day and age ten people corroborating the same story would put us in a place we call beyond a reasonable doubt.  Thomas is not a simple doubter who demands evidence, Thomas is a person who simply does not believe, he does not trust his own friends, he does not, to put it succinctly, love them enough to believe them.

This is a two edged sword I believe, on the one hand, it is pretty damning to have his sort of unbelief.  To flat out deny the truth in the face of people who were speaking to him about their experience and probably even looked transformed in some way as well, you don't see Jesus appear out of no where and remain the same.  We are talking about some serious heights and depths here in terms of Thomas' doubt.  It was clearly unbelief.  If someone had this kind of unbelief in our Church we might throw them out, or simply ignore them or somehow shun them from our midst.  It's true, someone with such a passionate disagreement when the entire community speaks the same truth is more than a simple prank or April Fools joke, this guy needs to go.

The other edge of the sword is that it is interesting that he did stand his ground so clearly and with such great passion.  There is something commendable in that.  His doubt, his unbelief was rooted in something that he believed strongly.  Clearly he had come to some sort of conclusion about what the future would hold for the new Christians and was holding fast to that idea or vision of the future.  He had made plans and was out acting upon them unlike his comrades who had remained locked in the upper room.  Maybe that is why he did not believe them; maybe that is why he denied so completely the individuals he had called dear friends.  He had made a vision and a goal out of the desperation and the fear that resulted in the death of their beloved Jesus.  He was acting on his own inspiration and his own call, a call he believed Jesus had given him.  What were these others doing?

I like this idea a lot; Thomas had the courage in the face of the people who had just killed Jesus to be out in the world doing something, creating something, carrying on Jesus' ministry.  Thomas, of all the disciples, was the one who had made plans and executed those plans to carry on the work of Jesus.  How else might you describe his outright hostility to the disciples in the upper room?  I think he probably felt the same way as Jesus did, aghast that these men, ignorant men, had shut themselves away from the world, a world that Jesus had clearly told them they needed to engage, love and transform.  The way the world will know we are Christians is by our love, not our invisibility.

Thomas' passionate unbelief is something that we might want to consider as we live out our lives of faith, and we may want to consider changing his moniker as well; Doubting Thomas does not truly grasp the passion, the zeal, the innovation that this man might have had at his core rather than mere doubt.  I think we should call him Thomas the Innovator, or Thomas the Creator, or Thomas the Doer, maybe even Thomas the unbeliever or Thomas the denier.  There are a couple of ways that we tend to see doubt in our culture today.  First as anathema, something we should never have or know if we call ourselves Christians.  This is not something many of us embrace.  Second, doubt is a dispassionate expression of our own disagreement, disconnected from the belief of Jesus and the resurrection, or at best, timidly supportive of an idea we have no intention of standing up for.  The ten disciples were this kind of doubters, even after the first appearance of Jesus they were still locked in the upper room, safe from the hostile world.  Their doubt was more a doubt that was rooted in fear and immobility; it was about indifference and apathy, which often tends to be how we doubt as members of mainline denominations.  Just let the majorities decide for me, I am fine with what every one else is doing.

The other kind of doubt is a spectrum from belief to unbelief.  It is a spectrum that we all walk and often find ourselves journeying back and forth from unbelief to belief and back again.  Doubt is a journey, it is something we do, and not something that describes us.  I think most of us would claim this is where we land when thinking about doubt and what doubt is.  Indeed, I often say, doubt is not the opposite of faith, fear is the opposite of faith, and doubt is only the threshold to belief.  Without doubt, without questions, we cannot deepen and broaden and raise our faith.  Doubt, like the betrayal of Judas, is an integral part of who we are as Christians. 

But let's go back to doubting Thomas and look again at this idea of what it was that Thomas was doing outside of the upper room away from the disciples.  Could it have been that in the absence of Jesus Thomas was the only one with the courage to be in the world, continuing the work of Jesus?  Could it have been that Thomas was formulating a vision of mission and setting it into motion?  Maybe it was a vision he felt he had to do out of obligation, maybe his work in the world was empty, cold and not at all fruitful.  Maybe it was his plans, his vision and his mission that were bereft of belief.  Could it have been that the appearance of Jesus to Thomas was less about making Thomas into a believer and more about filling him more completely with a hope and passion and of course the Spirit for the work he was doing.  Was jesus really saying, do your work, carry out your vision continue my mission with passion, with zeal, with joy and with spirit, for that is the only way love will reign, even people as dense as these other ten disciples will see the Good News in your work if you only carry it out first in love, not out of obligation and dispassion. 

Jesus went to Thomas directly; Jesus sought Thomas out in the midst of all the disciples in that room.  Jesus wanted to affirm what Thomas was doing, while also chastising him for not loving his neighbor, loving his friends, loving his enemies.  Thomas' character, our character, Thomas' mission, our mission requires love and peace to be carried out, without either, our work is nothing but sowing the seeds of unbelief.  May we all have the misdirected passion of Thomas and be as open as Thomas was to receiving the Spirit and receiving new direction from Jesus as love guides us in the mission and work we do.

On the back of the Fantasy novel I am reading it says, "When hope dies, there's still survival."  This has caused me to think a lot about humanity, organizations, faith and religion.  When hope dies, there is still survival.  Our culture, the American narrative is littered with stories of survival, stories that say to us, even when you lose hope, if you just try hard enough, if you just survive, you will make it, whatever making it might mean.  It seems, as we live in this difficult economic culture with regular glimpses of a turn around, often followed by some new controversy or scandal, or economic blow, all we can do is simply survive, hope has been lost it seems, and we are lost as well.

This of course makes me think we have a pretty cheap idea of hope, a cheap idea of grace, a cheap idea even of the value of our own lives.  Have you seen that cartoon with the bird trying to swallow a frog but the frog has its hands tightly grasped around the bird's neck?  The caption of the cartoon which I have seen most, and I have seen many, says, "Never give up." One of these two parties is going to die.  Either the bird will succeed and swallow the frog, or the frog will succeed by strangling the bird and escape.  There is no room to imagine that the two would go out for martinis and dine instead on a nice fish or some other edible plant that they could both enjoy together.  When survival replaces hope, hope is indeed dead.

But maybe it is not that we have cheap ideas of hope, grace and our own lives, maybe it is more because we have isolated ourselves from one another in ways that prevent us from experiencing the glory that is God and the personal sacrament of presence that was so strongly present in the person of Jesus.  The extent of our communal experience often is simply our nuclear families, and today, even that experience is varied beyond recognition.  We are in a confusing transition period as we try to discern and understand how technological advances will change our lives, our future, our church and our religion.  Did you see that Trinity Wall Street twittered the passion this past week?  And how many of you on Facebook saw the Passion of Jesus according to Facebook this week as well?  Some will say we are becoming more disconnected, but I say we are becoming more fearful of claiming value for our future lives and the future of the life of the communities we belong to.

I wonder if hope has been replaced by survival, have we finally gotten to the point where it is not so much our hope for things unknown and unseen that drives us as it is a game of survival of the fittest?  Hope seems to be lost, or at the least, reduced to cliché slogans that we do not really believe but continue to say, for the sake of our children.  Vision has failed us, personally and corporately.  The light that has shone from the heart of the Glory of God, human beings fully alive, has been replaced by darkness, or at the very least, a dark cloud, a veil of mist impenetrable to our sight, feeling and touch.  Fear has gripped our world, fear has gripped our Church and it clings to us, desiring not our downfall, not our death, not our destruction, but rather our apathy, our indifference and our familiarity. 

Yes, I said that, death is not the ultimate goal of fear as we are pushed into survival mode, or into the darkness, survival is the ultimate goal of fear.  Our energy and attention focused entirely upon our survival is what fear seeks to accomplish, the disciples succumbed to it in their denials of Jesus, the crowd in the cries of "Crucify him" were coerced or moved towards survival by their own fear.  Anytime that which is familiar in a way that is warm and gentle and historical comes under some threatening experience, fear moves us to survival, fear seeks to squash hope and make it disappear.

Brian McLaren, a contemporary theologian and author was asked at a recent presentation he gave, "Is there any hope for mainline denominations?"  His response is one that is genuinely insightful.  He said that there is great hope, because while yes, it is difficult to turn the Titanic around, you have to ask yourself, what is harder, turning the Titanic around or turning 15,000 individual boats around.  Of course it is the Titanic that is much easier to turn than the 15,000 boats driven by individuals.  He was referencing our structures and our polity, mainline denominations having a structure that lends itself to having a few highly placed leaders able to make certain decisions to turn things around, where as his tradition, the Evangelical tradition, is one that is quite varied and resists the type of authority that is represented in most mainline denominations.

But he continued, lest you get comfortable in the false hope that you can turn the ship around think of this bridge in South America.  A beautiful bridge that was built to perfection, spanning a beautiful river that one year flooded, and the erosion from the flood redirected the river around the bridge, so that the bridge was no longer functioning and had no purpose.  Put in tension, those are two examples of our future that are poignant to consider.  Both require change, transformation, new thinking in how we live and move and have our being together.  But it is hard to change, isn't it, we often wish we could change, or simply choose not to change because we have no hope in the transformation that change would bring.

Tom Peters, in his book the "Pursuit of WOW!" asks, "How long does it take you to achieve change or spiritual transformation?  A nanosecond, but it takes a lifetime of passionate pursuit to maintain that transformation."  I like this, we can change in a blink of the eye, it is the lifetime pursuit of that change that is the difficult part, it is the challenges and obstacles that we and others put in our ways that keep us from accomplishing our Goals.

Look at Mary Magdalene in today's Gospel.  She changed in the blink of an eye; she changed at the simple saying of her name.  The Gardner who stood before her turned into Jesus like that (snap).  If we listen, I believe we will hear Jesus calling our names on a regular basis, every day Jesus calls to us, I am alive, Jesus says, I have been resurrected, death no longer holds sway, I am alive.  We hear it, we know it, but we too often leave it in the far reaches of our minds, never allowing that voice to filter into our very being, into our broken hearts that long for healing, human touch and relationship. 

In the naming of her name Mary is changed and transformed.  Just as today Emelia and D'Angelo will be transformed by the saying of their names.  You can feel it as we baptize these children, you can feel it when you read the Gospel, Mary's exclamation is full of joy, full of excitement, full of newness, full of possibility it is rich and wonderful and she has changed, but she falters immediately, because this man whom she loves, who she walked with is alive, and she desires nothing else but to hold him, to cling to him, to be with him, but what does Jesus say?  Seeing her need, seeing her desire, he says to her, do not cling to me.  Do not hold on to me, for I am going to a place that is more mysterious, more mystical and more dangerous than anything you have imagined.  Go Jesus says, do not hold on to me, but go and tell others about me.  And today we start with Emelia and with D'Angelo, tell them your story, share with them your relationship with God, don't hold on to a sentimental nice and comfortable Jesus, speak to the truth, the passion, the fire the excitement of the God we all love so that Emelia and D'Angelo will be able to grow in the fire that is the love of God. 

In the letting go we find not despair, but hope, in the letting go we find not death, but life, in the letting go we find not nothingness, but abundance greater than we have ever imagined.  When we give up our fight for survival we might just feel once again, in the very beat of our heart, the power of hope in our lives.