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Going Home

3/15/2013

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When the younger son was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. Luke 15:20

“You can’t go home again” – so says the title of Thomas Wolfe’s novel, published in 1940. It’s about the experiences of a fictional writer who draws on the life and characters of his home town.  The man achieves great success as an author, but then finds that his former neighbors and relatives are angry and resentful at the way they have been portrayed in his books.

And that phrase – “You can’t go home again” – has come into our everyday language as a way to talk about the experience of out-growing small-town communities when you’ve once lived in the supposed bright lights and glamour of the big city.

It rings true in other ways, as well.  Who among us has not had the experience of returning home after having been away at college, or military service, or just living on your own  and managing very well at being a grown-up, only to find yourself and your siblings falling right back into well-worn patterns of teasing, bickering, rough-housing or some other form of adolescent behavior? It can be irresistible.

And yet…going home – home-coming; there’s a tug and a longing, a spiritual desire, to be home in that emotional and psychological place where there is safety and belonging and a loving embrace.

The Gospel reading today is all about leaving home and returning, and what that does to this family of a father and his two adult children.  It is, of course, the story we know as the Parable of the Prodigal Son – a very, very familiar story.  In fact it may be so familiar that it is hard for us to listen to it without thinking: “Oh right, the Prodigal Son; got that” and then not really pay attention to what we are hearing.  And so the version of the parable we’ve heard today is not what is printed in the lectionary insert.  The version we heard is from The Message, a translation of the Bible that tries to make the English as dynamic and street-friendly as the Greek of the New Testament was in its own day.

Right away we should be aware of what the younger son is asking: he wants his share of his father’s estate now; that means selling land and herds, liquidating assets so that the share of the property that would come to the younger son at the time of his father’s death could be paid to him in cash.  In effect he says to his father “I wish you were dead.”

When the son has run through all his money he is left without resources, and is only able to find work as an indentured servant to a Gentile farmer where he didn’t get enough to eat.  To add insult to injury, this Jewish son’s job is to feed pigs; he couldn’t get any lower.

And then, Jesus says, the younger son “came to his senses” and realized that, at the very least, the hired hands on his father’s farm had plenty to eat.  We don’t know if the son was truly sorry for the way he had treated his father, or if the speech he rehearsed was just a ploy.  What we do know is that this was a matter of survival; the man was desperate.

In the meantime, the father, the patriarch, the head of the clan, the pater familias, had not ceased to look for and hope for his son’s return.  In fact, the father saw the son way down the road long before the son came within speaking distance.  And the father acted in a way that no dignified land-owning head of a family at that time would have acted.  He ran down the road to meet his son and welcomed him with open arms – literally.  He then pushed aside his son’s speech about returning as an employee and ordered the household staff to prepare a home-coming banquet, a celebration.

And Jesus told this parable in response to some of the most religiously observant people and the religion scholars complaining that Jesus, this rabbi, was hanging around with questionable people.  Jesus told this parable, to show God’s character, and God’s attitude toward his people – as depicted by the father in the story.

Of course, the passage doesn’t end there.  The older son – the good, dutiful, responsible son – arrives at the house after a long day of work to find the party in full swing, and when he learns that the festivities are for his ne‘er-do-well brother, who had written off the whole family, he goes ballistic. And he has every reason to be angry – it’s as though his good and faithful service has been ignored, perhaps even insulted, by his father’s generous welcome of the younger son.

But the father stands his ground and says: “Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!”

If we are really open to hearing what Jesus has to say we may well find ourselves in this story, several times.  Each one of us, in different ways and at different times, may have been the younger son or the older son or the father.  We all have had times when we have been selfish and reckless with our closest relationships, and have hurt those we love.  We also probably had the experience of being the good one, of soldiering on, without a lot of splashy recognition or reward; and when someone else gets the appreciation and love that we deserve, we can be resentful.  And perhaps we can identify with the father who has had to let a child go, much against our better judgment, hoping and praying that one day he or she will return – and without being too beaten-up by life.

The thing to remember here is that the father, God, has more than enough love for both the sons; this is not a zero-sum game where whatever one gets is taken away from the other.  This is not about God being fair or giving rewards, but about God’s being merciful and restoring us to wholeness, restoring the family to wholeness – because the older son had lost his brother, as much as the father had lost a son.  It is in God’s character and nature to want to make us whole, to redeem families and communities, as much as individuals.

This parable is about coming home – coming home to God and to our true place in the family of God.  And in the process of doing that we are all changed; we bring our wounds, and our shame, and our anger and frustration, as well as our joy and relief at being restored and welcomed home.

It’s fitting that we should be hearing this passage on this particular Sunday – Mid-Lent, sometimes called Refreshment Sunday, Mothering Sunday in England.  It’s a day in which the rigors of Lent are lightened somewhat – in some churches the purple hangings and vestments and changed out for rose-colored ones, the psalm ends with words of rejoicing and in our second hymn this morning we even snuck in a little ‘hallelujah.’  It’s all a reminder that Easter is coming, that the repentance and starkness of Lent is not an end in itself but a preparation for the joy of knowing anew the Risen Lord and feasting at Christ’s banqueting table.

As Paul said in his letter to the Christians in Corinth: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

When we come home to God, when we come home to Christ, we are made new – each and every one of us, all of us held together by the generous love and embrace of God – and that is something to celebrate!  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10, 2013

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AA Gratitude Mass

6/18/2012

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But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. James 2:26

It is wonderful to see you all here, to be gathered with you as you celebrate Founder’s Day, and sobriety and new life. It is a joy and an honor to share this day with you.

And I’d like to ask you to think for a moment about how it is that you came to be sitting in that pew, here in All Saints’ Church today. You might answer that someone at a meeting invited you,

or strongly suggested it to you; or maybe someone handed you one of those cards with the picture of the church on it and all the particulars of the service and you thought it sounded interesting or curious – at least enough to check it out.

Or maybe you were here last year, and you found this service a good way to gather with others to give thanks to God for strength and sanity and healing - and just plain fun!

All of that may be true, but there’s another, deeper reason why you are here today - and that is because someone, somewhere along the way, reached out a helping hand to you in your path to recovery.

In fact, I hope that there have been a good number of people who have helped you - whether as a sponsor, or a friend, or someone who was willing to share their strength and story at a meeting; but when it comes right down to it, we all are here today because someone, at some point took the trouble to tell us the truth about ourselves, about human nature and about the reality of God in such a way that we could hear and absorb it.

We are all here today because someone acted in faith to offer us hope.

A few minutes ago we heard a reading from the Letter of James in the New Testament:

“Someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead”

I want to make sure we get the right picture here.

When James says “faith without works is dead” he’s not talking about trying to buy your way into heaven, or earning brownie points with God, or trying to be a really, really good person so that God will think well enough of you to overlook your faults.

God doesn’t work that way; God loves us just as we are, just the way we come. There is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us anymore than he already does when we are at our very worst, nor love us any less than God does when we are at our best. God’s love and favor for us is a gift that we don’t earn or deserve – in the Church we call that “grace.” That’s what we have faith in, put our trust in, count on and give our hearts to: faith in God’s grace.

But when we put our faith in God, when we entrust God with our lives and draw close to him, we will naturally want to become more and more like him – not to try to be in charge of the universe, or be the Savior of the world – thank God there is a Savior, and that savior is not us!

So when we turn our lives over to our Higher Power and seek to live a spiritual path, then we are drawn to reflect the truth and goodness and self-giving love of God in our own lives.­­ If our faith is alive and active it will be reflected in our desire to reach out in compassion and love to others; that’s what James means when he says that faith without works is dead.

This is not always an easy position to come to. There are lots of people in every Church and every religious tradition who come to a service for their own private reasons, for their own connection to God, their own spirituality, and then go away again, never looking beyond their own concerns, never asking God how they might help or befriend ­another person, or relive their suffering or sorrow or loneliness.

Now, there are certainly days and seasons in life when all you can manage to do is to drag yourself to church, put your butt in the pew, listen to the words from the pulpit or altar or Scripture reading, and maybe say some prayers, and hope that God will sustain you for the next week or day or hour – and to try to add anyone else into that equation just seems way too much to handle.

And I can imagine that the same might be true for some of you with attendance at AA meetings; has anyone here ever had that experience?

Good – welcome to the human race!

And guess what? You walk in the door of a meeting or worship and God meets you there – actually, God walked in the door with you, and he welcomes you and loves you; no doubt about it.

But the catch is…you can’t stay in that place of having your prayer and your meditation and your life be only about you. Sooner or later, if you are to grow and deepen spiritually, if you are to maintain your health and sobriety and (using the church word) salvation, you have to move beyond yourself in a generous and self-giving way, to help others find the peace and hope and wholeness that you yourself have found.

Each person does this in their own way; there is no cookie-cutter approach to service and compassion; there is only a deep and attentive listening to another person and to the Spirit of God speaking in and through both of you.

If you listen thoughtfully and prayerfully, God will show you how you can be of service to the person in need. You won’t be the only one who will help them, you probably will not be the most important or most memorable one, but your service will be valuable – even on a small level – and it will form a link in a chain of hope and strength. And at the end of the day, you’ll find your own faith strengthened, as well – maybe not in ways that you expected or imagined – but you will be blessed if you serve with an open mind and a humble heart. That is what James means when he says “faith without works is dead.”

So we are here today because someone, somewhere, reached out to us in loving concern to offer us hope and strength and salvation – in the Kingdom of God, and in AA in particular - a reaching out that stretches back seventy-seven years to Bill W. and Dr. Bob.

And so let our hearts be filled with gratitude for that chain of compassionate action, and let us pray and listen and act so that we may take our place as the next links in the chain, for the good of others and for the salvation of the world.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
AA Gratitude Mass
June 15, 2012


 

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Who Did Jesus Love?

4/6/2012

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Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  John 13:1

I love you. How often do we say that to our spouse, or our child, or a parent, a friend, a sibling, a beloved one? Or even a cat or dog or other pet? And when we say those words we know we mean them on several different levels, depending on who we are speaking to. Our love for our friend is not the same as love for a parent, or a husband or wife; but it is all love, just the same – it all springs from the same source: an affection, a regard for, a commitment to another who delights us and enlarges our world. These are all close, intimate relationships where there is give and take, and much is shared: sometimes the little details and trivia of daily life, and sometimes the grand visions and longings of our hearts.

For most of us, the circle of our loving relationships is pretty small; it’s hard to be “up close and personal” with a large group of people; after all, for all the “friends” you may have on Facebook, how many of them do you really follow on a consistent basis?  How many can you actually keep track of, all at one time?

There is a classic poster featuring the “Peanuts” comic strip character Lucy – you know, Linus’ bossy older sister? In the poster Lucy is saying “I love mankind – it’s people I can’t stand!” For the crabby, critical Lucy it is far easier to claim affection for a nameless, faceless humanity that she will never meet - let alone have to work with and get along with - than it is to love real, individual flesh-and-blood people – and I suspect that many of us would echo Lucy’s sentiments. Loving real people can be hard work, after all. And so our circle of love and affection is fairly small.

But what about Jesus? Who did he love? We know he had a family – Mary (his mother), Joseph, his brothers – but only rarely in the Gospels do we hear what his relationship with them was like: when he was twelve years old and causing his parents anxiety for staying behind in the Temple on a family trip to Jerusalem; being at odds publically with his mother when they were guests at a wedding; at the Crucifixion when Jesus commended Mary to the care of his friend and disciple John. We don’t know too much about the love that Jesus had for his family.

But we know a great deal about the love that Jesus had for his disciples. On the last night of his life Jesus gathered with his friends to share a festive seder meal, celebrating the Israelites’ freedom from slavery in Egypt by the goodness and power of God. Jesus took the wine and the bread of the Passover feast and transformed them for all time, to be his Body and Blood, the Real Presence of Christ for his people, the members of his Body. That’s the way we hear it told in Matthew, Mark and Luke; that’s the way that Paul relates the Last Supper to the church in Corinth.

But John tells the story in a different way, from a different angle, and for a different purpose. John tells the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, taking on the role of a servant, a household slave - doing for his friends what Middle Eastern hospitality required; but Jesus as the host of the meal should not have been the one to take up the servant’s towel and bowl of water. Yet, it was exactly what he did.

And washing their feet was an invitation for the disciples to experience Jesus’ love for them more fully, to see a new aspect of love and service, to know that they were being invited to draw closer, to be more connected to Jesus, to share fully with him the same intimate relationship he has with God. John tells us that Jesus, “having loved his own who were in the world…loved them to the end”; Jesus loved the disciples fully, completely, with persistence, with steadfast endurance, to the end. And the picture and action that Jesus offered to the disciples that expressed this love was washing their feet – a gesture of hospitality, and an invitation to deeper relationship.

Jesus went on to say: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” He was commanding them to love beyond their natural circle – beyond their families or friends or sweethearts; to love in ways that include humility and service, as well as affection, kindly regard and warm feelings. And Jesus was not just talking about the Twelve loving only each other, the inner circle; he was talking about loving all those who would be drawn into relationship with Jesus, loving all Christians, loving the Church, loving the community – and, by extension, loving the world.

As Jesus’ followers, as the descendants of the Twelve, we are also loved by Jesus – not just as individuals¸ but as the Church, as the community of faith – and our call is to love one another in the same way Jesus did during his life and work on earth, and in the same way that Jesus loves each one of us now. We are to move beyond our own family circle of loving relationships to embrace with humility and spiritual intimacy all those God calls into our community. And as we do that, as we live our real-life, flesh-and-blood, day-to-day relationships with one another in ways that are rooted and grounded and marked by the deep love of Christ, we will be living symbols and sign-bearers of the name of Jesus. People who are curious about God, and want to know more of Jesus will look at us and the way we love one another, and no that they have seen God at work, a glimpse of divine truth and reality in our midst.

That is, at least, what we are called to do and to be. It is a big job, an impossible task – when seen from a purely human perspective; thank God we are not relying on our own strength and resources, or we would never be able to do it. But we have the love of God in our hearts - given to us at baptism, strengthened every time we receive Christ’s Body and Blood, practiced day-in and day-out in the midst of all the challenges life brings our way.

This love is God’s gift, and the best way we can use and honor this gift is by giving it away – to one another, to the Church, and to the world.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Maundy Thursday
April 5, 2012
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If You Love Me

6/17/2011

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Jesus said: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  John 14:15-16

A couple of vignettes to start with:
About six months ago a package arrived for me at home.

It was a photograph I had never seen before, a group shot of my father, my uncle and their cousin sitting at a banquette in a night club in New York, with pictures of Benny Goodman and other musicians on the wall behind them.

It was April of 1944; my father was just barely 18 years old and was home from basic training before he was sent to join his unit.

My uncle was 15 and their cousin was 17; the younger boys wore jacket and tie, and Dad was in uniform, his medical corps insignia on his lapel, a very serious look on his face.

I think it’s the only picture of my father where he wasn’t smiling; the photo conveys a real sense of the weightiness of going off to war – a war where everything you loved and held dear in the world was on the line.

Love of country, love of family, love for friends who had already gone off to serve and had lost their lives ­- all captured in that moment.
+ + + + +
Somewhere today a couple is getting married – probably many couples are getting married, and lots more got married yesterday and Friday night.

All the services will be different from one another – Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, a civil ceremony; weddings with many bridesmaids and ushers, weddings with just the couple and two witnesses; a reception with a sit-down dinner for 250, or cake and a champagne toast in the backyard; all very different from each other.

But all weddings have one thing in common – they are about love and commitment, about taking the next step with another person, about building a life together in the face of all the challenges and joys that life brings you.

They are about love that begins where romance leaves off, love that sees beyond the here-and-now, love that expands into a widening circle of family and friends.
+ + + + +
In the movie “Stepmom” Susan Sarandon plays a woman who is dying of breast cancer.

Her six year-old son Ben is fascinated with wanting to be a magician.

For Christmas, just weeks before her death, she makes Ben a magician’s cape, with photos of the two of them stitched into it.

He is delighted with the gift, but then he comes right out and asks his mother if she is dying.

As she tries to answer his questions she kisses Ben’s hand and places it on his heart and says, “Right there, that’s where I’ll always be, inside.”

And Ben reaches out for his mother, to hug her, saying, “No one loves you like I do;” his mother replies “No one ever will.”

The love of parent and child – the most basic kind of love there is.
+ + + + +
All of these different kinds of love are things we know, we experience, we recognize.

And then we hear Jesus in this morning’s Gospel talking about loving him and keeping his commandments – love Jesus how? in what way? and what are the commandments that Jesus is expecting us to keep?

It is helpful to know a little bit about the context of Jesus’ words.

We are reading in the Gospel according to, as written down by, John; and throughout John’s version he is always trying to bridge the gap between heaven and earth, always trying to show how the majesty and the magnificence and the divinity of God are present in human life through Jesus.

Basically John’s message is: if you have seen and known Jesus, you see and know God.

And the particular setting of this passage is during the Last Supper – the meal Jesus had with his closest friends and disciples before being arrested and crucified.

They have gathered for a meal, Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet just the way a servant would, he acknowledges Judas’ plot to betray him, and then he tells the disciples:

             “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Jesus then spends the next four chapters trying to prepare the disciples for his death: love one another, don’t worry, the Holy Spirit will come and be your comforter, strengthener, advocate, guide and encourager.

So the commandment that Jesus wants us to keep is, “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

This is not a flimsy, haphazard, conditional kind of love.

God’s love for us comes with no strings attached; it is a gift, it is strong, it’s abundant, it sees clearly.

As St. Paul says: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This is the love that Jesus wants his disciples to have for one another; this is the kind of love that Jesus wants us and all his followers to have for one another.

This kind of love is hard; it takes work – not that we earn God’s love (or anyone else’s, for that matter), but that in our human limitations and short-comings we are not always as full of God as we could be.

And so to love with God’s love we need to keep focusing our attention on Jesus, to learn from him, to see how he does it, to love with the strength of Jesus’ love for the friends and enemies he was willing to die for.

And Jesus promises the disciples and us that we won’t be alone, we won’t be orphaned, comfortless, without guidance.

esus says he will send the Holy Spirit to be with us, to live within us – much like the mother in “Stepmom” tells her son that she will be inside his heart always.

It is the Holy Spirit who will teach us how to love as Jesus loves.

In two weeks we will celebrate the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, one of the great festivals of the Church year.

But the Holy Spirit doesn’t just make an appearance once and then go back in the box until next year; the Spirit is present in our lives, even when we aren’t particularly aware of him.

Many of you know that the window next to the altar is a descending dove, a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

That image is there week in, week out; not visible until you get up close to the altar, but always there, nonetheless; and at certain times of the year, the light will come through that window just the right way and clearly project the dove’s image onto the wall behind the altar.

That’s the way it is with the Holy Spirit: always there, but not visible unless you are close enough and paying attention, until suddenly the Spirit will show up in unexpected and surprising ways.

But the hallmark of the Holy Spirit is to teach us to love as Jesus loves; to give us strength and courage to love as Jesus loves; to draw us into intimacy with God so that we may be infused with Jesus’ love - the love that underlies all sorts and conditions of human love, and in which they find their fulfillment.

This is what we Christians are to be known for, this is what we have to offer to the world: the love of God which touches, saves, heals, restores, encourages, redeems and dwells with all whom God has made.

God’s love brings joy and new life; it sends us out with ample abundance so that we may share it with others, and then gathers us back in again so that we may be renewed.

Jesus says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to be with you forever….They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
Sixth Sunday of Easter - Rogation Sunday
May 29, 2011
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All Saints' Episcopal Church

 15 Basking Ridge Road, Millington NJ 07946    phone: (908) 647-0067    email: allstsmill@hotmail.com