Easter Prayer

He is Risen, Alleluia!  

An Easter Prayer:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well 
pleased with ourselves, 

when our dreams have come true 
because we have dreamed too little, 

when we arrive safely 
because we have sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things 
we possess, 

we have lost our thirst for the waters of life;

having fallen in love with life, 
we have ceased to dream of eternity; 

and in our efforts to build a new earth, 

we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, 

to venture on wider seas 
where storms will show your mastery; 

where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. 

We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; 

and to push into the future in 
strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our sure captain, 

Jesus the Risen Christ. 

AMEN.

Holy Saturday

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you as few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart today

Has made my eyes so tired, 

My voice strained,

My need of God

Absolutely clear.

Holy Week invites us into a world full of betrayal, abandonment, mockery, violence, and ultimately death. The Triduum, those three sacred days which constitute one unfolding liturgy, call us to experience communion, loss, and the border spaces of unknowing and loneliness. Holy Saturday is an invitation to make a conscious passage through the liminal realm of in-between.

The wide open space of Holy Saturday can be difficult to tread: we walk between the suffering and death of Jesus on Friday and the eventual proclamation of the return of the Easter fire on Sunday. Holy Saturday evokes much about the human condition—the ways we are called to let go of things or people, identities or securities and then wonder what will rise up out of the ashes of our lives. In reality, much of our lives rest in that space between loss and hope. 

Before we rush to resurrection we must dwell fully in the space of unknowing, of holding death and life in tension with each other, to experience that liminal place and its disorientation.

Good Friday

Tenebrae: a Latin word meaning darkness or shadows. 

Tenebrae also connotes a Christian religious service celebrated on the evening before or early morning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, which are the last three days of Holy Week. The distinctive ceremony of Tenebrae is the gradual extinguishing of candles while a series of readings and psalms are chanted or recited. 

But we do not observe this day as a people without hope. We know how the story ends and begins again...

Making Good Friday and Easter morning real requires an awareness of God's presence regardless of the storms of life, accepting a practice of ruthlessly trusting in Him. Brennan Manning writes: 

Ruthless trust is an unerring sense, way deep down, that beneath the surface agitation, boredom, and insecurity of life, it's gonna be all right. Ill winds may blow, more character defects may surface, sickness may visit, and friends will surely die; but a stubborn, irrefutable certainty persists that God is with us and loves us in our struggle to be faithful.

No matter how well or poorly you are doing, God is present. No matter the nature of the tragedy, God is present. In the sweet moments of joy, God is present. In the darkest and most embarrassing moments of life, God stands close.

God's presence shows us the tenacious nature of Good Friday and Easter. It is God's mercy, which follows us, whether we realize it or not. 

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? 

Yes...

Maundy Thursday

Today we celebrate Maundy Thursday: "Maundy" comes from the Latin meaning mandate or command. Jesus gives his disciples and all of us a command: Love one another as I have loved you. 

But, unlike an earthly ruler, Jesus doesn't just bark a command and return to royal duties. Instead, Jesus shows us how to enact this love. In following the example set by Jesus, we come to see that this love is much more than a warm fuzzy feeling. It is a giving love, not a needy love. It is a love that calls us to dive into the dirty mess of life with one another, washing each other's feet and serving others along the way.  

Over and over, God's call to us means that we must be willing to push our comfortable boundaries, embrace outsiders, and give up the notion that there is not enough to go around. We may resist, lose our tempers, but the call of God is insistent, calling us all, individually by name, until we finally step over the lines we have drawn for ourselves and discover a whole new world of plenty on the other side.

Jesus' enemies counted on his fear of death to shut him up and shut him down, but they were wrong. He may have been afraid and even disappointed. But, he spent his last free moments serving others, breaking bread with those whom he loved. 

Love one another as I have loved you; step out of your comfort zone, push a limit, take a risk, give up playing it safe. You have nothing to lose but your life the way it has been; and if you get scared, which you will, and if you get mad, which you probably will too, remember today's gospel story.

With Jesus as our model, we are called to step over the lines we have drawn for ourselves in loving and serving one another, not because we have to, and not because we ought to, or even because we always want to, but because we know that it is God's own self who waits for us with his grace, His unending gift love, on the other side of the Cross.

On this eve so long ago, Jesus shows us something very important: that our God wanted to do something to help real people, people who might be walking wounded like you and me—he wanted to feed them and to make them clean, to restore them to the glory of being Beloved Children. 

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

I invite you to come tonight as we remember and enact the actions of our master, our Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest joy I know as a priest/pastor is in sharing the Word and Meal with you weekly; and tonight, in washing the feet of those who labor in Christ's vineyards every day.  

Spy Wednesday

Today is Spy Wednesday, so named because tradition tells us that this is the day that Judas betrayed our Lord. As we read the gospel about Judas' betrayal, I think we can heed a twofold warning: that we not push forward our own agendas, steamrolling over the will and the wisdom of others, the will and wisdom even of God; and, that we not choose the way of pride, the pride that insists on our own wisdom and the pride that thinks we can commit a sin so great that God cannot reach down as far as we have fallen. 

The Judas in us fails to hear God nudging us toward a better way, and then shuts out God's offer of forgiveness. The Judas in us would rather die than to look at the Cross. As much as we would like to think that the greatest crime ever committed had at least a great intention behind it, the truth is that it probably was done for very base motives. It is hard to comprehend someone living so closely to Jesus for years, yet succumbing to something like simple greed. Yet, don’t we do the same every day?

For centuries, scholars have debated the reason for the discrepancy of Judas' fate in Matthew 27:5 and Acts 1:18.  Several theories have been offered, but the one that makes the most sense to me is this: the  'gut spilling' incident is a metaphor that people of the time would have understood. The first passage about hanging is about how Judas died in the flesh and the second is about how Judas died in the spirit. To get your brain around the symbolism, you have to understand that the Jewish people equated compassion with the gut or bowels, the way we equate the heart with feelings of love. Now you have an image of Judas "falling" from God and losing his compassion on a field of blood.

Make no mistake: there are fields of blood all around us and people like Judas who have lost their way. Who among us has not felt the great pain of betrayal or even participated in such? There are the abandoned spaces of loathing and remorse in which God’s children have isolated themselves. The gut wrenching reality of isolation can threaten all of us, just as it threatened and enveloped Judas in the darkness of night. 

I am reminded of Brennan Manning's powerful words of hope: 

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

'But how?' we ask.

Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. 

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.” 

― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Gathered by the Holy Spirit, forgiven, blessed and together: may we turn our gaze to the Cross of Christ and mutually bear one another's burdens with hope and faith. May we not fail to offer a word of hope to those who have betrayed and hurt us, those who have isolated themselves in darkness. 

Beasts of Burden

We celebrated Palm Sunday a few days ago. As somewhat of a biblical nerd, there are interesting details in Matthew's story of Jesus' ride into Jerusalem. This same ride is told quite straightforwardly by Mark and Luke. But, unlike Mark and Luke, Matthew features an interesting scenario in which Jesus seemingly rides two animals simultaneously.

Matthew got this idea from a statement in the Jewish scriptures, "Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." Mark and Luke correctly understand the mention of two animals as a form of Hebrew poetry known as parallelism. There aren't really two animals. The second line merely clarifies the meaning of the first. There's only one animal. But Matthew uses this poetry to create a striking image. 

Matthew has Jesus tell two of his disciples, "Go into the village and you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me." 

Matthew continues, "They brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat over them." Again, notice the plural. He sits "over them." Matthew deliberately literalizes the poetic parallelism to give us a picture of Jesus mounted astride two separate creatures. The first is a donkey, which was the kind of beast on which king Solomon rode to his coronation, as did all the kings of Israel after him. The second is, literally, "the son of a pack animal." It is a common beast of burden, whose life is lived serving people.

The story goes on to describe the lame and the blind coming to Jesus in the temple. To catch the significance of this, we need to know the story of King David's original royal ride into Jerusalem after the city had been taken from its occupants. King David rode majestically into Jerusalem not to serve its inhabitants but to order the murder of all the lame and the blind (2 Samuel 5:8). 

In contrast, Matthew makes the point that it was the lame and the blind who came to Jesus to be made whole when he arrived in the temple at the end of his ride. The two animals are a metaphor that point to greatness: Jesus is King David's royal son, known as the "greater David." He shows us what greatness really is.

In Lent we admit that it is easy to become a person who needs recognition and control, gets into a position of power, and then uses it to oppress others. In contrast, Jesus calls us to be a people who use greatness to serve humanity. 

How can we better use our "greatness," our power, our sphere of influence, our gifts, our talents, our treasure, our time to serve the Kingdom of God? 

We will have a beautiful opportunity to serve and be served on Maundy Thursday evening. It is my prayer that we find our greatness in humble service to one another, to the world, and in receiving the Bread of Life for our true sustenance.

Interstellar Space...

By request, I am discussing "interstellar space" today. Why? Because it is a reference that occurs in Eucharistic Prayer C and because when I first started praying that prayer I had a tough time saying this phrase (and a certain lady with the initials LB giggled each time I stumbled through it). 

The prayer begins: "God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise. At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home."

So, someone asked "what is interstellar space?" To begin, I'll give you the NASA definition. At first glance, the answer seems simple. ‘Inter’ means between. ‘Stellar’ refers to stars. “Easy!” you think, “Interstellar space is the part of space that exists between stars.” Not so fast! Wouldn’t that pretty much mean that all of space is interstellar space? 

For interstellar space to be something different, then there must be some defined boundary between the space near a star and the space in between stars. But what is that boundary?

Scientists define the beginning of interstellar space as the place where the sun’s constant flow of material and magnetic field stop affecting its surroundings. This place is called the heliopause. The sun creates this heliosphere by sending a constant flow of particles and a magnetic field out into space at over 670,000 miles per hour. This stream is called the ‘solar wind.’ 

Like Earth wind, this wind pushes against the stuff around it. What it pushes against are particles from other stars—pretty much anything that doesn’t come from our own solar system. Once you arrive in interstellar space, there would be an increase of “cold” particles around you. There would also be a magnetic field that does not originate from our sun. Welcome to interstellar space!

Okay, that's as far as I can go with the scientific definition of interstellar space. Now to let my theological imagination take over with regard to our prayer.  

It seems that the first impulse I feel in uttering these words is acknowledging the majesty and power of God. At God's command, you, me, the birds, the earth, and the VAST expanse of interstellar space came into being. That's pretty powerful.

Connected to this reality are the words we hear in the Prologue of John's Gospel: through Him all things came into being.

Through the Christ, all things came into being. And Christianity is, at its heart, a call to follow that Christ, yes even when it feels we are following into unknown territory, maybe even interstellar space!

It is a call to engage purposefully and to live intentionally in the light of Christ. Yet it seems to me that we are tempted to add so much more to it-- Wear that.  Do this.  Don’t do that. Run in these circles.

Exactly how we follow Christ is a call that that you and I must wrestle with individually. How I follow Christ in my life may be nuanced a little differently than how you follow Christ in yours.  We will spend our whole lives trying to make sense of what this call means. We will go left and we’ll go right.  We’ll make U-turns. We’ll become lost in interstellar space and we’ll be found by God, again and again. As our prayer reassures: "again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages, you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace."

It is through trial and error and God's unending mercy that we will find our way by following the light of Christ, by being still and listening for the whisper of God. It’s the ultimate great unknown. The "final frontier" isn’t interstellar space, it is the interior space of our spirituality, our relationship to and with God.

If we truly follow Christ, and I mean truly follow Christ, that journey will lead us ultimately to the cross. That is the heart of all we do and remember this week.

Following Christ, living on the growing edge of justice and mercy, learning to love foolishly those who hate ruthlessly, and to give without thought of receiving, believing in life even while the specter death still haunts the shadows – following Jesus is hard work.

May we all give our heart and lives to this hard work no matter where it leads us. Indeed, interstellar space is not the final frontier.

Post-note: I learned to slow down while speaking the words of Eucharistic Prayer C--the...vast...expanse...of...interstellar space...and in slowing down I can pronounce the acclamation of our powerful and creative God with joy and great humility. I hope we can all slow down this week and digest the rich journey to Easter morning.

Palm Sunday

As I read from Pr Nadia Bolz-Weber once: Nothing could have stopped this Pascal mystery of God and humanity. No amount of super-good discipleship or wisdom or hindsight would make a lick of difference to God’s determination to draw all people to God’s self through Jesus lifted high and on a cross.

Today we will see and feel that we are no different than the shouting crowds – those that do the right thing for the wrong reason or those who do the wrong thing for the right reason. There is no better class of improved people. There are just people, just us.

And as soon as we think the good news is that we know better than those caught up in into the tragic events of that first Holy Week, we are sorely mistaken. As soon as we think the good news is that we now know how to do the right things and for the right reasons, we are sorely mistaken.

Because it had to happen like this. When the Pharisees told Jesus to stop his disciples from such an embarrassing display, he said that if they were they to stop, even the stones would cry out. So there had to be crowds who shout praise  and friends who betrayed and followers who denied and women who wept and soldiers who mocked and thieves who believed. It would have happened like this even if the Jesus event were happening now instead of then.  

Even if we knew everything in advance – were we the ones on the street we too would shout Hosanna and a few days later shout crucify him. We face that stark reality today and the rest of this week.

And, yet, that’s the good news when it comes down to it. Because these people of the Holy Week story are we the people. And we the people are the likes of which God came to save. God did not become human and dwell among us as Jesus to save only an improved, doesn’t-make-the-wrong choices kind of people. 

There is no improved version of humanity that could have done any differently. So go ahead. Don’t wait until you think your motivations are correct. Don’t wait till you are sure you believe or understand every single line of the Nicene creed. 

Don’t worry about coming to church this week for the right reasons. Just come. Wave branches. Shout praise for any reason. Eat a meal. Have your feet washed. Shout Crucify him. Walk away when the cock crows. 

Because we, as we are, and not as some improved version of ourselves…we are who God came to save. And nothing can stop what is going to happen.  Hosanna.

"Missional" personality

I spent half of yesterday having my personality tested for my upcoming transfer to the Episcopal room in God's mansion. It set me to thinking about our chapter on mission and this conclusion about Jesus: These attributes—openness, vulnerability, receptivity, humility, fearlessness, faithfulness—are some of the hallmarks of what we might call a spirituality of mission, the sort of approach that Christians can take to the world.

After answering hundreds of questions on the personality tests, I noticed how many dealt with anxiety. This set me to pondering how our existence is belabored with a kind of survival anxiety. 

Due to this anxiety we can be tempted to possess, own or dominate some part of the world to secure our status, health, and security. Obviously, when we are all doing this, human existence becomes competitive, envious, selfish and violent. In short, the "identity of possession" can also be seen as one source of sin in our lives.  

This is the predominant idea in a book I read a while back by Arthur McGill, Death and Life: An American Theology. McGill demonstrates how Jesus' identity comes from outside of himself and how as Christians we must "die" and discover that our identity comes from outside of ourselves, from God. We must let go of the "technique of having," of possessing ourselves and cultivate a posture of gratitude and acknowledgment that our being is in God, not in us. 


McGill writes: What is the center, the real key, to sinful identity? It is the act of possession; the act of making oneself and the resources needed for oneself one's own. This act can be described with another term: domination. If I can hold onto myself as my own, as something I really possess and really control, then I am dominating myself. A sinful kind of identity surely requires aggression or appeasement; it requires defenses against others and against the threat of death as final dispossession. But fundamentally, a sinful kind of identity consists in the act of domination.


The key for the spiritual person is to bypass this cycle of domination/possession. In the New Testament portrayal of Jesus, nothing is more striking than the lack of interest in Jesus' own personality. His teachings and miracles, the response of the crowd and the hostility of the authorities, his dying and his resurrection--these are not read as personal windows into Jesus' own experience, feelings, insights, and growth. 

Jesus himself does not live out of himself. He lives, so to speak, from beyond himself. Jesus does not confront his followers as a center which reveals himself. He confronts them as always revealing what is beyond him. 
In all the early testimony to Jesus, this particular characteristic is identified with the fact that Jesus knows that his reality comes from God...Jesus never has his own being; he is continually receiving it...He is only as one who keeps receiving himself from God.

Does our reality come from God?  Do we really "possess" our own being?  What does it mean for Jesus to continually receive himself from God? 

McGill suggests that we must struggle to be dispossessed of our anxiety: Because I no longer live by virtue of the reality which I possess, which I hold, which I master and keep at my disposal, I am free to share myself and all my possession with others. Above all...I can be honest with others.  Since I never have myself, I can never be dispossessed of myself. In short, in all my relations with other people I am freed from the anxiety of having always to keep possession of my own reality in order to be.

Perhaps a whole new way to ponder death and resurrection this week...again, I pray: let Him increase, let me decrease.

I AM...

As we continue in our chapter on mission, I was struck by these words:

God's call to mission and evangelism can seem burdensome in a context where fewer people come to church and even fewer seem to think it matters. Soon, our fear of the future and of the cultures emerging around us takes over, and we lose sight of the hope and wonder toward which the Holy Spirit calls us.

I am reminded of Brennan Manning's words, "we are Easter people and Alleluia is our song." Hearing these words in conjunction with our gospel last Sunday, I wonder why Jesus explained what the raising of Lazarus meant before he raised him? Is it because the action would be easily misunderstood and misinterpreted by many, by us? 

When we think about the raising of Lazarus, do we place our focus on "I am the resurrection" alone and forget that Jesus also says, "I am the life"? Do we too quickly jump to the security of eternal life, imagining our future residence in heaven rather than the provision of life in the present?

Like Martha, I think we too easily encapsulate resurrection as a future existence and not as the possibility of life right here, right now, with Jesus. Yet for Lazarus, the Gospel describes not his future with Jesus but his life in the present. 

New life in Jesus is intimacy and closeness; it is not just the death of Jesus but also the life of Jesus that brings salvation. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, through which "we have all received grace upon grace."

Jesus breaks his pattern because in the end he was not sent into the world for eternal life alone. The Word become flesh means everything that "grace upon grace" can mean. 

The entirety of the Gospel of John shows us what abundant life looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like and sounds like. The raising of Lazarus on the last Sunday of Lent breaks our patterns so that we can hear for ourselves what Jesus' resurrection can mean...so that we will not lose hope in our mission and spread of this Good News. 

May we not lose the hope and wonder toward which the Holy Spirit calls us as we move through this world as Easter people.

Servant leadership

As we continue our journey through A Faith for the Future, and consider the chapter on mission, I am reminded of conversations in pastoral care class at seminary.

We covered several “models” of leadership in the church.  One that seemed to captivate and inspire most of the seminarians in my class was that of “Servant Leadership” or what can be better called “Incarnational leadership.” The servant-leader role is rooted in the life of Jesus, as “He took a towel” (John 13:2-5); we will celebrate this model of servant ministry on next Maundy Thursday. 

I found this inclination to be emphasized in our book: The good news of Jesus Christ is ultimately about the relationships we share with God, one another, and the world. So it takes a community of people to share the Christian message. Jesus told his followers as much: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples," he told them, "if you have love for one another." Relationships of reconciled love within the Christian community can teach other people more about Jesus than a slew of words ever could.

If you think about it, Jesus was very efficient with people; he had goals in sight but was also relational over being task-driven. This kind of leadership produced a community filled with real purpose and motivation as people were called, appreciated, loved, encouraged, and involved by mentoring and discipleship before they were deployed (or dismissed) for ministry.

How do we do this? This is what many of my colleagues wondered. One thing became apparent in answering this question: we must make sure we seek God’s Spirit at the center of any ministry. Thus, the leadership derived from the model of Jesus-as-servant hopes to produce a church of spiritual maturity, keen discernment and involvement.  

As seminarians we were encouraged to embrace this model and to equip and encourage others toward the same. 

In sorting the wheat from the chaff, we are called to be aware that manipulation, conniving, and posturing are to be absent, and that God’s Love is to be the fuel that sustains us. This kind of leadership sees God glorified as our tempers and temperaments come in line with His precepts. It means being imitators of Jesus as we go in the direction of the possibilities; we stretch beyond what we think we can do or go, and seek where and what He has for us, even with our limitations and frailty.

How can we, in this Lenten season, draw nearer to a servant model of leadership? 

The challenge lies before us and within us. As our book clarifies: This can seem like an impossible dream. Not only are Christians dismissed and called to take the Eucharist into the world, but we have to do it with other Christians who can drive us absolutely crazy with their different beliefs, challenging personalities, and odd practices...[BUT]...Mission is not primarily about church; it's about Jesus.

This painting was set before us in every pastoral care class I attended. The professor said, over and over again, no matter what you learn, you are to be the bony finger you see on John the Baptist here: point to Jesus. Indeed. Let Him increase, let me decrease.

Living the Eucharist

As we move from the chapter on Eucharist, it is fitting that the next is entitled "Mission." We read: "the Episcopal prayer book defines mission as 'restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ' (BCP, 855)."

It is a short statement that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we are to do. The unity of relationship that God created in Eden was surrendered, but in Christ these relationships are reformed, especially in Eucharist.

I spent part of yesterday counseling persons who have felt strained and hurt by church in many different ways. I was reminded of an article by Lillian Daniel that I read many years ago.

She wrote about how in church we hear scriptures like the one in which Jesus says to ordinary, fallible Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my church." In other words, you people are stuck with each other as I have chosen for it to be.

Now there is much in the church that people do not seem to want to be affiliated with these days. And this can complicate our sense of mission and outreach. 

The church has done some embarrassing things in its day, and a lot of us do not want to be associated with those egregious actions—particularly when we might have been personally involved in church splits, struggles, arguments, etc.

But—here's the gospel news flash—human beings do a lot of embarrassing, inhumane, cruel and ignorant things. And here we come to the crux of the problem that the spiritual-but-not-religious people have with church. If we could just kick out all the human beings, we might be able to meet their high standards. As Daniels' writes, "If we could just kick out all the sinners, we might have a shot at following Jesus."

But in the church we are stuck with one another; therefore we don't get the space to come up with our own God. Because when you are stuck with one another, the last thing you would do is invent a God based on humanity. In the church, humanity is way too close at hand to look good. It's as close as the guy singing out of tune next to you, as close as the woman who doesn't have access to a shower, as close as the baby screaming and as close as the mother who doesn't seem to realize that the baby is driving everyone crazy. 

It's as close as that same mother who crawled out an inch from her postpartum depression to get herself to church today and wonders if there is a place for her there. It's as close as the woman sitting next to her, who grieves that she will never give birth to a child and eyes that baby with envy. It's as close as the preacher who didn't prepare enough and as close as the listener who is so thirsty for a word that she/he leans forward for absolutely anything.

With the humbling realization that there are some things we simply cannot do for ourselves, communities of human beings have worked together and feuded together and just goofed up together. We cannot deny this. 

We come together because Jesus came to live with these same types of people, with us. 

Thousands of years later, we're still trying to be the body of Christ and I hope we are human and realistic enough to know that we all need a savior. It is in this need for a real savior that we come to the impulse for genuine mission: "having made peace with one another and with God, and having been reconciled to the reign of God in the Eucharist, Episcopalians are told to 'Go'." 

This is the dismissal, a word that literally means "sending away." There is a clear and close connection between Eucharist and mission...Christians can't help but want to take the Eucharist into the world to draw more people into this community of people who have died and been raised again with Christ and live in his shalom and hesed. 

At its core, our mission is living into the radical welcome of the Eucharistic community realized through baptism. Can we, will we, go OUT and share that welcome, share the consolation that we ourselves have received? In Lent can we develop more of an apostolic impulse (apostle=one who is sent) even when we ourselves are tired, weary, unsure or straining to see new life in and among us?

I will and I ask God to help me.