Area Ministry: Whoever is not Against us is For Us!

Christ the Lord, Pinole, 9/27/09

Good morning and thank you for having me. My name is Este Gardner Cantor, and for a little over a year I have had the privilege of working as coordinating chaplain for a 28 year old chartered organization of the Diocese of California, “An Episcopal Ministry to Convalescent Hospitals.” Very soon after this name was chosen, it was recognized as way too unwieldy, so that unwieldy name was turned into an unpronounceable acronym- AEMCH. Sort of rhymes with the Yiddish word, mensch: but not quite.

As I have spoken to the elders of our organization who have blazed the trail before me, I began to piece together a creation story for AEMCH.

Well, In the beginning there was the Rev. Bill Clancy, dynamic Rector of All Souls Parish in Berkeley. And as far as an organized ministry to convalescent hospitals went, things were pretty much without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the East Bay. But Rev. Clancy had a bright idea and he said “let there be light” and Deacon Arlinda Cosby suddenly appeared across the table from him at a CDSP community night dinner and was positively lit up with enthusiasm for an idea he had.

This igniting spark of an idea was to form a ministry dedicated to those people who live in convalescent hospitals- people who Bill Clancy and Arlinda rightly felt to be among the most needful of fellowship, worship and friendship. The idea was to train, encourage and inspire each Episcopal parish to have a thriving ministry to at least one local convalescent hospital. So Arlinda proceeded to be the light in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon AEMCH for 27 years.

All Souls church was the first to be swept along, and St. Mark’s Berkeley next took flight, followed by St. Alban’s church in Albany which hit the ground running.

Many other East bay churches came on board with AEMCH, including your own, and the wonderful work of supporting, training and encouraging congregations to bring their energy and love and worship to the populations of their local convalescent homes began, providing the warmth that has warmed so many people. And Bishop Swing who was closely involved with AEMCH until his retirement, saw it all and saw that it was good.

I have had absolutely wonderful personal experiences with convalescent ministry and I have had wonderful community experiences with congregations doing this good work. The residents you see are not always bright and chipper, but you do meet some amazing people.

I got to know Camille Folker, who was 109 years old when she finally left us, sharp and funny and politically conscious as ever. When I first met her, and she was a mere lass of 108, I immediately complemented her on her sharpness and liveliness.

“What do ya mean?” She said “I’m lyin’ here like a wart on a pickle!” In her more serious moments she would tell me what she thought about when she woke at night and could not go back to sleep. “I think a lot about God,” she said. Then, back to her old self she said

“It comes in real handy being spiritual when you’re an old bag like me.” She remembered Indians in Mill Valley. She remembered when her family got their first model A and how handy it was not to have to crank it up. She remembered the 1906 earth quake- after all, she was born in 1899! I always felt I that I had traveled through time when I visited her.

I have had the pleasure of bringing youth groups and groups of children to convalescent hospitals and seeing how the faces of the elders light up at the sight of children. I am always struck by the commonality of the young and old and how small things- cards, cookies, ice cream- can be so enthusiastically shared between the generations.

And I have had the great pleasure of sharing the ministry with groups from various East Bay and now Marin and Contra Costa congregations, seeing how contagious the joy of this ministry can be. Seeing the wonders that a little attention and love can do for those who may not get many visitors, or any at all.

So on this day I am bringing to you the gospel of AEMCH, and for those of you who might be doubters, we have the perfect Gospel reading.

Ever since Bishop Marc began to talk about Area Ministry, I have been pleased to note that AEMCH was Area Ministry before there was Area Ministry. The gospel story today shows us a very early form of the competitiveness that sometimes exists between local parishes. John thinks he has done a good thing in castigating the non-homey exorcist, who was in fact doing what the disciples themselves had just failed to earlier in the same chapter- casting out a demon in the son of one of Jesus followers

But Jesus recognizes good work being done in his name, even outside of his small group of intimates. Jesus, I am sure, would have believed in Area Ministry.

According to Bishop Mark, Area Ministry encompasses three things:
Diversity in the participants, collaboration between parishes, and a non-word that Bishop Marc made up: “Embeddedness” in the community. In other words, action that will benefit the community in structures and institutions within the community. I am happy to say that AEMCH fulfills all three requirements. We welcome all parishes to join with us in this Jesus-filled work, that takes us out of our churches and into the institutions who need us so much. And to the individuals in those institutions who need our love, our touch, our listening and our worship services.

In the second half of the Gospel reading, Jesus gets really serious. He invokes the term “stumbling block” for whoever causes harm to his “little ones” in other words, his followers. He goes on to very sternly warn of the seriousness of sin, and to offer a few gruesome suggestions as to how to deal with our own foibles. I don’t believe he was literally speaking of removing body parts, but he may have been referring to something almost equally unpopular in our society: sacrifice.

Sacrifice of any kind, like discomfort of any kind, is avoided in our culture as much as self-amputation. We have a hard time sacrificing, which creates our own stumbling block to really living a life which honors us as Christians.

Discomfort is our stumbling block. If you had a crew from another planet come and look at how we actually spend our weeks, and they ignored Sundays, they might sometimes have a hard time telling that we are Christians. What do we actually do?

My favorite shorthand for the Christian life is in Mt. 25:35:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

When the disciples object that they never did these things for Jesus, he answers them back,

Inasmuch as you did it to the least of my brethren, you have done it to me.

Jesus wants us to take care of, feed, clothe, visit and welcome the poor, the powerless, the friendless.

We have opportunities everyday to do these things, but I have never found a ministry that encompassed so many of these sweet dictates as the one I am presenting to you today.

I invite you from the bottom of my heart to join us in this joyous and communal ministry, to join me as we step over our stumbling blocks and live into the Kingdom of Heaven together, free of competition, free of fear and doing it in the name of Jesus.

Amen

A Lot to Swallow

Holy Innocents, Corte Madera
August 23, 2009 John 6:56-69

Once upon a conference, we were asked to identify what Christian feast day we would be if we could be any one of them. I jokingly said “Halloween.” Then I found that the next step was to begin to design a liturgy for that personal feast day. The group got into the spirit of the thing and I asked "OK- what would be a good hymn be for my Halloween liturgy?" Someone immediately began to sing “Eat my flesh, drink my blood…” Everyone laughed of course, but it did high-light the fact that it is a phrase that conjures up more vampire than messiah.

This hymn repeats the words from the Gospel of John verbatim- and in a hymn the words sound less shocking- less earthy and challenging. But as we know, Jesus never shrinks from being earthy or challenging. Instead he kind of rubs our face in it: “Eat my flesh and drink my blood. That’s a lot to swallow…

We have been going along on what I think of as the Summer of Bread for six weeks now, delving into the Gospel of John and it’s mysterious and profound meditation on the Bread of Life. Although the Gospel of John does not have a last supper breaking of the bread event, what is called the words of institution of the Eucharist, it does seem to have this very long and very significant reverie on the Eucharist.

There are many thoughts as to why this is. I read one source that felt that those words, “This is my Body which is given for you…and the rest of that section of our Eucharistic prayer, which first appeared in the letters of Paul : I Corinthians 11:23, was so sacred that the words were meant to be kept secret knowledge. But a half a century of so after Paul, the words were included, though slightly changed in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But no where in John.

Our Summer of bread begins with a miracle: the feeding of the five thousand, the followed by Jesus patient and persistent attempt to try to explain the deeper significance of this “sign.”

Then comes the first of three references to the Manna from heaven that God sent to the children of Israel during the Exodus in the wilderness. As is so often the case in the Gospel of John, a line is drawn between the traditions, miracles and feast days of the Old Testament and the revelations of the new- the manna was bread from heaven indeed, but after eating of it you still lived and died as you would have anyway. The Bread of Life is something altogether different- something above and beyond mere nourishment for the body. It is bread that will bring you a kind of utter transformation- a kind of radical real time abundance that Jesus calls eternal life. The people plead with Jesus, “Sir- give us this bread always.” The next week’s reading answers the hungry crowd with the beautiful words, “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.

This leads up to last week’s reading, when Jesus first uses the word abide - “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” In case anyone did not catch the distinction between manna from heaven and the bread of life, he makes it again. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” He says “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood ABIDE (or LIVE) in me, and I in them. Abide- is trannslated from the Greek work menos which has many meanings: abbide, remain, stay, live, dwell, last, endure, continue, await, wait for.

To abide in Jesus is all of that. He urges us to remain with him, stay with him, live with him, dwell with him, endure with him, continue with him and await him.

Finally, in this week’s passage, the last in our Summer of Bread, we are led to several essential elements to compete this long teatise on the Bread of Life.

The only reference (veiled though it is) to the last supper is heard nin the words, “Jesus knew which one would betray him.” Even this has a Eucharistic tone, because the only breaking or giving of bread in the last supper in the Gospel of John, consists of Jesus handing a morsel of bread to Judas, just before Judas betrays him. I have always felt that this underlined the universality of the mercy and grace of God- even when we are betrayers, God’s mercy is available to us, God will feed us still, the body and the blood are there for us still.

But with Jesus’ continued urging to eat his body and drink his blood, like so many of us, who read the teachings of Jesus, some of the disciples recoil. “This teaching is difficult- who can accept it?” They ask. And many of them desert him. Anticipating further betrayal, , Jesus says to his faithful twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”

And it is the bumbling Peter, another one who exemplifies the faithlessness in all of us, who sees that there is no where else to go. Who proclaims that Jesus is the Holy One of God. Who says, “You have the words of eternal life..” And so we are harkened back to the beautiful prolog of John- Jesus is the word of God- the word made flesh. It is Jesus the word made flesh that is our bread- the word that is spirit and life. To me this is the meaning of the incarnation- the word made flesh- Jesus living the word of God. And if we truly allow Jesus to abide in us, and we in him, that spirit, that word will be incarnated in us. I beleive that the meaning of the incarnation of God in Christ is incomplete without the the incarnation of Christ in us. Of Christ abiding in us. Of Christ remaining with, staying with, living with, dwelling with, enduring with, continuing with and waiting, always waiting, for us.

Amen.

Bless Me a River

John 17: 6-19

The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor

Church of the Holy Innocents, Corte Madera

Today we are privileged to eavesdrop on an exquisite 3-part prayer Jesus prays to God his Father in the presence of his beloved disciples. This beautiful prayer is often called the high priestly prayer of Jesus. In the first part Jesus prays for himself, in the longest section (our Gospel for today) he prays for his disciples, and in the short last section he prays for the believers yet to come- you and me.

Jesus prays with great love and great concern for the welfare and protection of his small flock. He begins by affirming that he has made the name of God known to his disciples- he has made God himself known. He has in fact fulfilled the promise of the beginning verses of the Gospel of John- the glorious hymn that reads in part:

It is God the only Son who is close to the father’s heart, who has made God known.

This prayer we hear today often echoes the Lord’s Prayer, which is given to us in the Gospel of Matthew. The name of our Father in Heaven is frequently hallowed in this prayer. And references to the Kingdom proliferate: The disciple’s joy that will be made complete speaks of the coming of the Kingdom, as does the longed for oneness of the community- Jesus prays to God, “That they may be one as we are one.” Jesus asks God to “protect his disciples from the evil one” just as the Lord’s Prayer asks that we be delivered from evil. But this is not a prayer Jesus teaches us to pray. And this is not a discourse addressed to the disciples as the rest of the long farewell address at the last supper has been. Jesus prays this prayer directly to God for the disciples, for us, perhaps as a lesson. In his last hours on earth Jesus does not make a last ditch effort to give the disciples a final list of revelations. He addresses it all to God, as if to instruct that he is leaving the church in the hands of God, which is where the disciples should place their future and their hopes. They need to understand that the life of the community rests in God’s hands.

We get to hear as did the disciples, the utter intimacy of Jesus’ relationship with God his father. The Hebrew word Abba, that Jesus used translates not as father, but as Daddy, an affectionate term you will not hear in used in Old Testament references to God- this intimate relationship with God was something new. Jesus’ faith in the love that God has for him is striking, and the confidence that he will be heard seems to be complete. ”You have given, you have loved, you have sent. Now keep, sanctify, and let them be one.” Jesus prays. Jesus is moving toward his pre-existent relationship with God- moving into a permanent oneness with Him. But for Jesus to return to this pre-existent glory, the incarnation must come to an end- Jesus must die. So there is an urgency- a poignancy to this intimate intercession.

When hearing Jesus’ great intimacy with God, we are given a glimpse of the Kingdom. We are given a glimpse of a relationship with God that transcends all limits and conventional notions of life. A glimpse of a day when our joy will in fact be complete, a day when God’s care and love and knowledge of us will be realized. We will experience the end of ordinary reality and the beginning of our reunion with the divine.

And finally, at the end of this prayer, it becomes clear that what we are hearing is a commissioning. We are to be sanctified in the truth. To sanctify is to be commissioned for some particular task, and therefore to be made holy. But it is mission that is the substance of this sanctification- the task is more important that the holiness.

And so the disciples, and you, and me, are being sent out- commissioned, to spread the truth. A chapter after our Gospel story, Jesus, being interrogated by Pilot, says to him,

I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilot famously asks him, “What is the truth?” Jn 18:37

Truth in the Gospel of John seems to be the whole of the revelation of God, and it seems to be synonymous with “the word,” and synonymous with Jesus. Jesus brings grace and truth (1:17); he is the truth (14:6) the true light (1:9); and the true vine (15:1) and he is the way, the truth and the life. This truth then, is the revelation of God’s substance as redeeming love as expressed in Jesus. Jesus then prays for the disciples to be set apart for the truth. This truth is both the sanctifying power and the purpose for the sending out of the disciples, for the sending out of all of us.

As much as the gospel message today is full of Jesus’ great love and protectiveness for his disciples, its last words are these words of commissioning- of dedication. The prayer is no less that the sanctification of the whole world through the sanctification of Jesus’ disciples.

I am reminded of a time I was preparing some young people to watch a baptism. I was about to show them the blessing over the water that is part of the baptismal service, when one rather precocious child said, “Shouldn’t we use living water- wild water for something like that? So we walked a short block to a creek in the park and we scooped up a bowl full of water. Having brought the prayer book with me I said the blessing over the water, and we prepared to head back to the church. Another one of the young people suddenly lit up and said “Why don’t we pour the holy water into the creek- then the creek will run into the river, and the river will run into the ocean, and all that water will be holy!” Unable to resist such an original theological thought, I handed the bowl to her and she poured the water into the creek. I never checked in with the creatures of the creek and on-ward to the sea, but we never forgot that day, when we sent out that blessing, all the way to the ocean.

Jesus poured his disciples into the river of the world, having sanctified them, having taught them to know God’s name, God’s truth and God’s son. And those disciples poured us out into that untested water. And in the last part of the priestly prayer, Jesus says, “May the love with which you have loved me be in them, and I in them.”

This is a solemn commissioning, but it is not without levity- even joy. Jesus wants to make our joy complete- he said so. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” He wants for us the joy of the children who were so easily welcomed into the kingdom of heaven, the joy of children who stop at nothing in their joyous attempts to sanctify a creek and a river and an ocean. If we can but glimpse that infinite love that exists between Jesus and his father, that Jesus so generously shared with us, if we can even begin to mirror it with our own fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and especially strangers, that blessing just might begin to stretch from ocean to ocean, and illuminate a truth we will never have to explain.

Feed My Sheep

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley

May 2, 2009

The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor

Good Morning, and thank you for having me. Well, as we can hear from our exquisite readings, today is Good Shepherd Sunday. It seems appropriate on this day to honor the ministry that St. Marks has faithfully carried out for an amazing 25 years to the ever-changing flock of elders at Berkeley Pines Convalescent Hospital, and to listen to see if we might hear the voice of the shepherd calling us to do something similar.

All our beautiful readings today, and perhaps psalm 23 most gorgeously of all, sing the glories of the Good Shepherd- the glories of healing and nurturing, binding up wounds and protecting the weak. And like so many images in Jesus’ stories, the image of the good shepherd vs the bad Shepard (the hired hand in our Gospel of today) is an Old Testament reference, in this case from Ezekiel. Initially in the book of Ezekiel, the Lord God seems to damn all shepherds as selfish, careless, carnivorous. He childes the shepherds for only being interested in feeding themselves. He says,

You eat the fat, clothe yourselves with the wool, slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the sheep.

The Lord God then goes on to further scold the shepherds, pointing out the utter lack of the pastoral skills that later defined Jesus ministry:

You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not sought the lost.

In contrast to this image of a hungry, careless and selfish shepherd, The Lord God says:

I myself will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places they have been scattered on a day of thick darkness.

This is the course Jesus is claiming when he says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” If the wild animals come, the course of the good shepherd is staying with his sheep thereby risking his life to protect them. There was a practice of shepherds at the time of Jesus, of lying down to sleep across the threshold of the enclosure to insure that wild animals could not get in, and the sheep could not get out. This was literally laying down the body for the sake of the sheep, which recalls of Jesus laying down his life, with great willingness and authority, out of a great love for his flock.

What is described in all these beautiful words is a kind of true community, a community where the weak are protected and comforted. A community where there is chance for reconciliation and redemption for everyone.

In our reading from the first letter of John, it is our brothers and sisters for whom we are asked to lay down our lives. As Jesus has elsewhere said, it is the least of our brothers and sisters who most need to be found, healed, strengthened, loved. These are least esteemed of society, that Jesus always raised up- the sick, the poor, women, orphans and widows. The hired hand may have the job, he may be in the community, but he is doing little more than taking up space and feeding on lamb chops. We may feel sympathy and some identification with the hired hand because all the sacrifices that are implied in creating true community, putting other’s needs before our own, are hard to make in our present climate of economic crisis, flavored with swine flu. It might seem like it would be better to stay home- hold no one’s hand, avoid contact with the rest of the flock, keep your store of fat and wool close to your chests, hang on to what you’ve got. But it could be argued that too many hired hands and not enough Good Shepherds got us into our present situation where too many wolves are at the door of too many of our flock. I have heard it said that most people will not see the light until they feel the heat. We are feeling the heat of the neglect, worldwide, of the realities of true community. We really are utterly inter-dependent.

The only reading today that does not specifically sing the praises of the Good Shepherd is our reading from Acts, which celebrates a healing at the Beautiful Gate and the power of Jesus’ name.

Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit proclaims to the rulers of the people and the elders:

`The stone that was rejected by you, the builders;

has become the cornerstone.'

And he goes on to say that there is salvation in no one else but Jesus.

Well, what is it to be saved- what is salvation? We often hear that it means proclaiming Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. We might think it means that if we believe in Jesus, we will go to heaven and not to hell.

Or we may think of salvation as freedom from the prison of our membership in the society of the hired hand. Maybe salvation is freedom from the hell of living only to eat fat, wear wool and save our own necks, attractive as that hell might sometimes be to us all. But Jesus clearly points out that doing that is not the way to salvation. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and Jesus is the beautiful gate- and it is through him- through modeling, however imperfectly, his own acts of mercy and justice that we will be saved. And as he continually reminds us, the sacrifices we make toward this end shrink in comparison to all you get back- the life you take up again, the promise of overflowing abundance.

Maybe salvation is hearing and then answering the voice of the shepherd, calling us into true community, calling us to be a true shepherd, or at least a true member of the flock. The hired hand who runs away at the pain or need of a brother or sister, the loneliness of the old or the pain of the wounded, pays for his comfort with his soul. Pays with the loss of a community of the spirit.

Sometimes it is good to hear from a voice that is technically not of our flock- here is a reading from the brilliant Sufi mystic Jellaladin Rumi:

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street,

and being the noise…

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you….

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Amen.

The Unexpected Kingdom

A Reflection on Mt. 29:13:31- 13:52
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor

I went on a pilgrimage recently, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I had an experience of the Kingdom of Heaven in the most unexpected of places.

The destination of the pilgrimage was supposed to be the gigantic Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where one would expect to have a revelation. But my first unlikely glimpse of the Kingdom was in the huge and dilapidated Methodist Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on 86th and Broadway. I stayed there for 8 days with my fellow priest, Father Richard, the other adult chaperone, Gay Johnson, and 7 of our wonderful high school youth.

There is no denying the fact that the church was a daunting place to live. We shared a shower with the homeless shelter, and after my first look, I attacked the stall with a long brush and some Comet and strove to make it look clean. But for all my scrubbing, this was not really possible. There was also a considerable population of mice in that church. We took to adopting the habits of wilderness campers who hang their packs high in the trees to keep them from the bears. We hung our bags from the wall lamps to keep them from the mice. Our youth group was housed in two fine rooms the first night- until a huge youth group took over one of our rooms, and then, later in the week, a third youth group was welcomed in, and even our plan B space became endangered.

There were always meetings going on in our room when we wanted to be there to rest. We soon learned that obtaining a set schedule for these meetings was not possible. When we wanted to use the kitchen, we would often find it occupied by some darn program feeding the homeless. It was an amazing experience to be there, but it certainly was uncomfortable. We actually considered leaving at one point, and then one of our youth pointed out to us we were on a pilgrimage, not a vacation.

I slowly began to realize that this dilapidated church we were camping in resembled nothing so much as the radically welcoming branches of the transformed mustard seed.

This church runs a women’s shelter. They host a food pantry, run by former clients, who are now happily employed there. The church sends out hundreds of Meals on Wheels packages every day. They have a mothers and babies group. They have a martial arts class for youth. They have a tutoring program. They have music classes in the sanctuary. The night we arrived there was a huge and joyous Indian flavored rock concert in progress, also in the sanctuary. They have a beautiful theatrical stage on the 2nd floor, which was used by no fewer than six theater groups. They have dozens of 12 step programs going all the time, and they often happened in the room we were staying in! The church houses a very large and rather famous radical synagogue, B’nai Jesurun. It also houses a Presbyterian church whose usual space was being renovated. During the Sunday service on Gay Pride Day all of the marchers were welcomed to the center of the church, and everyone laid hands on them to bless them on their march. They used inclusive language in every prayer- God was never a “he.”

Everyone was welcomed in- even us- even the mice. It seemed that no bird would be turned away from building a nest in this great tree, and if a place could be said to have a great heart, this one sure did.

It seemed to me that the blessing and the curse of being part of this great teeming Kingdom was the same thing- we were automatically part of the hospitality because we were given hospitality. We had to accept that our nest was just one of hundreds, and not the center of the tree. And after a while we found that even if we were bumped out of our room there was always somewhere for us to perch, and we found some rather lovely places. We could always camp on the cool and quiet balcony of the vast sanctuary, sometimes hearing the beautiful strains of music from some of our neighboring birds. It did feel a little like heaven up there.

The Kingdom of Heaven popped up unexpectedly again for me in quite another place- this time after the planned part of the pilgrimage was over.

My husband joined me after the pilgrims went home, and after a few days in New York, we decided to go to Washington DC to see the fireworks on the 4th of July. I had lived in Washington for many years, so I called an old boyfriend of mine, Art Grosman, who still lives there, and I asked if we could stay with him. He was delighted to offer us a room at the big brownstone he shares with his girlfriend. I hadn’t seen him in 20 years, but he hadn’t changed a bit. Long ago, when we were both professional hippies, we had crossed Canada together in our VW van, resplendent with tie-dyed curtains. When I saw him on this recent visit, he still had all the photos from that trip, which included the many and sometimes motley hitch-hikers we picked up along the way.

I left this man because he was always doing exactly what he had done for those hitch-hikers and for my husband and me. He was always inviting anyone and everyone to stay- every derelict old friend of his was welcome at the table. Art’s particular call was providing services for free that usually cost something. He started the Washington Free Press. He started the Washington Free clinic, and when he got together with his girlfriend, they housed the Washington Free School. I now realize that I had to leave him because my heart was not big enough. But I got to know his girlfriend Marty for the first time on this trip, and realized that this time he had found someone whose heart was big enough. Before he met her, Marty had already adopted two kids whose parents had been institutionalized. Nobody else wanted these kids. Then, once they got together, they spent the next 20 years, taking in emergency foster kids- kids whose parents were in prison, or on crack, or just not there. Some of these kids stayed for 10 years or more. During this time they managed to have two of their own biological kids as well.

Art is a Jewish atheist (like all my friends were in Washington), and so I was surprised to see an obituary tacked up on his wall for Kenneth Taylor, the man who started the huge Christian publishing house, Tyndale Press. Kenneth Taylor created “The Living Bible” which I have on my shelf because my grandfather gave it to me. This was an early attempt to put the bible into understandable English. I was told that this titan of the Christian publishing business was Marty’s father. He used to read the bible to his children every night and explain what it meant. One time Marty said, ”Well, if that’s what they mean, why don’t they just say it?” This was the catalyst for the creation of "The Living Bible.”

Art and Marty never married during their 30 year old courtship, and this was hard on Marty’s father. But I understand that before he died, he came to realize that Art and Marty were married in the eyes of God. And I hope he realized that contrary to appearances, the words of the bible he had read his daughter all those years had not fallen on deaf ears. Married or not, Marty and Art were doing the work of the Kingdom of Heaven-- taking in the homeless orphans, providing for the poor, opening their house to everyone who needed it- even me and my husband.

Being part of this bustling kingdom must not have been easy. I’m sure there were hardships for their birth children, navigating between so many little sheltered birds, and probably difficulties among the many foster children. And surely there were stresses between the two parents. But they too, apparently recognized that they were on a pilgrimage, not a vacation.

This led me to consider that life is, or should be a lot more like a pilgrimage than a vacation. And if we believe what Jesus tells us, that the Kingdom of God is at hand, maybe that Kingdom isn’t supposed to be entirely comfortable either. Or maybe in the Kingdom of Heaven we are transformed in a way that changes the meaning of being comfortable all together. How comfortable is the wolf when she lies down with the lamb? And if the lamb is comfortable, it is in a way we can’t yet fathom.

I read that if we wanted to have every human being on earth enjoy the lifestyle of an affluent North American, we would need four planet earths. I wonder if the bustling and rich kingdom of our New York City Methodist church, or the loving chaos of Art and Marty’s house could be microcosms of what life might be if we evened out the score on a global basis. It might not be comfortable in our own present terms, but it just might be our introduction into the Kingdom of Heaven.

I believe that in the Kingdom of Heaven, we all get enfolded in the great green branches spawned from that tiny mustard seed, we all glory in the abundance of unconditional love. And, if we can bear it, we get to bring out our treasures, both old and new, and scatter them out from our comfortable households throughout the whole of the Kingdom.

Amen.

The Undefended Heart

The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Reflection on John 12:22-33 and Jeremiah 31:31-34

Archbishop Desmond Tutu points out that Jesus did not say “I draw SOME people to myself." He said, "I will draw ALL people to myself.” And the most ancient texts are even more radically inclusive- they say, “I will draw all THINGS to myself.”

What strikes me about this passage, as with so much of what Jesus said is the radical inclusivity, the radical abundance, and the radical love that is illuminated, even with the approaching darkness.

The introduction of the Greeks at the very beginning clues us into the idea of universality- of an abundance of nationalities, of ethnicities. Then Jesus speaks of the grain of sand that dies, but then bears much fruit- in fact has to die in order to bear an abundance of fruit.

Jesus speaks of those who love their lives losing them- a frightening comment on the face of it. But it could be that those of us who hang on too desperately to our life as we need to see it (and I preach to myself here) may not end up with the kind of abundance we most want. Like us, the crowd in the story never seems to get what Jesus is talking about. Like us, they sometimes hear God speaking and all they perceive are storm warnings. But even in a storm, there can be abundance. In fact I have just recently heard it said that life is not about waiting for a storm to pass- it is about learning to dance in the rain.

The things that I hear over and over again from Jesus, the things that stand out either because they are said so often, or because they are so revolutionary and impossible, are all expressions of divine abundance: abundance of love, of inclusivity and of courage:

Love your enemy
Let go of your possessions
And do not be afraid.

“Do not be afraid,” said mostly by angels or by Jesus, appears in scripture 365 times- perhaps once for every day of the year. So Jesus must have meant it we have to work this practice every day of our lives- have this faith on a daily basis- do not be afraid, no matter what.

In this terrifying time of economic insecurity I have had the twin traumatic experiences of losing my job, (and I am very sorry to be leaving you) and my daughter preparing for college, and so, potentially leaving me. And then a tragedy occurred that made my misfortunes seem like nothing. Someone I knew lost her child. Suddenly I realized that I had been living in riotous abundance- paradise, really, possessing a literal embarrassment of riches, without even noticing it. It also made me realize with a shock how fragile, how precious, and how terrifyingly unpredictatable life really is. I absorbed some of the shock myself and was initially plunged into fear. I learned the meaning of “pray without ceasing” and I saw at very close vantage point Job’s whirlwind.

I spent as much time as I could with my friend, and to my astonishment I saw grace and healing even in what I considered to be the very worse possible thing. Her community embraced her, she was not alone with the bearing of her cross, floods of love came her way, not just from her community but from her daughter’s sweet friends as well. I saw the beginning of healing, the beginning of resurrection.

And yet my friend’s loss struck me in the heart- removed my denial that something like that could ever happen even to someone I knew, let alone to me. In our passage today the human Jesus tells us, “Now my soul is troubled.” He apparently is fearful because he forsees his own death, and perhaps tempted to say what he did say in the Gospel of Luke “Take this cup from my lips.” But Jesus is steadfast and heaven answers him that he made the right decision, that his Father’s name will be glorified. The fearful moment seems to pass.

It is somehow comforting to have an incarnated God who is sometimes fearful, sometimes in pain and grief and even rage. Jesus cries tears of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, he weeps at the death of his friend Lazareth, he explodes into a violent rage at the money changers in the temple. And yet he somehow returns to faith, to love, to an awareness of God’s abundance. Even at the threat of death, even through death itself.

In the Old and New Testaments, there is a constant reminder that God’s abundance, God’s grace is limitless, and is there is for all people- therefore there really is enough for everyone, in spite of our fears. I have heard this described as God’s “more-than-enoughness.”

We are now moving to the end of Lent, and we are asked by Christ to mimic the ridiculous abundance of the anointing woman- to have such over-flowing abundant love that we wash each other’s feet- doing the work of a slave, as Jesus the master did. Jesus models the abundance he sees in God his father, described in the scripture he knew so well. In Genesis, God makes his covenant, when he places the rainbow in the sky, not with humans only, but with all creation.

God Blesses Abraham and Sarah so that they will bless all nations.

And when the Pharoah finally lets the Hebrews slaves go, they start on their way across the wilderness, with “A mixed multitude and very many animals, both flocks and herds.” So it follows that the covenant at Sanai was not given only to the Jews, but to all people- to the whole “mixed multitude” of humanity. To ALL of us, God extravagantly declared, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”

With the birth of Jesus, it was the foreigners, the non-Jewish Magi who found the Christ child- the abundance of revelation was not only given to the chosen people even in this treasured nativity story of ours. They brought valuable gifts, like the nard ointment the woman poured so recklessly on Jesus’ head, like the spices brought by the women at the tomb to lavish on what they thought was their dead master.

In the Revelation to John, he speaks of “a great multitude that no one could count, of every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the Lamb.”

And in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I will draw ALL people to myself.” This is Jesus of the undefended heart- the mind of Christ that St. Paul urged us to attempt. Jesus always accepted, always loved “all people.” The undefended heart knows no fear, knows no limitation, and excludes no one. Jesus’ impossible but persistent teaching is that we love abundantly-fearlessly- even our enemies. That we have nothing to be afraid of, because abundant life is all around us in the abundant love of God. As the Buddhist/Christian poet and holy man Thick Nat Hahn has said “The winds of grace are always blowing- you have only to put up your sails.”

It may not look like the abundant life we thought we should have. It may sound like thunder and look like crucifixion. It may scare the daylights out of us. But Jesus said “I will always be with you”- this is the meaning of Emmanuel- “God with us.”

Jesus would have known well the beautiful passage from Jeremiah about the new covenant. This is one of my very favorite passages in the whole bible. How can we think the Old Testament is Old when it contains the New Covenant?

"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah."

We have the rainbow covenant in Genesis and the covenant at Sinai revealed to be for all people- surely this promise is as well: Surely the law will be written in all of our hearts. Surely the struggle can end- straining to know the law, know the Lord, know the answers to everything. Surely this promise holds abundantly for all people- that we will know God without fear, and know that even in all circumstances, even in the very worst circumstances, even in our pain and in our fear, that we are deeply and abundantly forgiven, and deeply and abundantly loved, and that God is with us.

Then we can feel, beating in our breast, the undefended heart, the heart that has opened up and let go of fear where God can and will write her law.