Sermon-St. Patrick Episcopal Church October 6, 2013 A couple of days ago I was on call at a local hospital and met a very young woman, very close in age to my daughter, who was in-patient in the adolescent psych unit. Her family had requested a routine spiritual care visit, and so I decided to stop by at the end of my shift and see if she’d see me. After I stowed my bag in a locker just outside the unit, the staff buzzed me in, I identified myself as a chaplain, and a social worker on duty went to check with the patient, who I’ll call Katie, to see if she’d like a visitor. A few minutes later Katie met me in the hall and invited me into her space. The room where she was staying was spare and white, all rounded edges on the furniture and on the bed. There was a minimum of bedding and no toiletries. Other than that the space felt pretty normal, pretty neutral to me. I could see the woods out of a long window that spanned one wall in Katie’s room and that view of the changing leaves warmed the space. Katie was wearing a white hospital gown with blue dots and ankle socks. She had long legs and big eyes- the look of a kid in the middle of a powerful growth-spurt. Katie was pale, not unexpected, and I couldn’t help noticing the shallow, angry scratches that ran diagonally up both her forearms, although Katie did nothing to bring them to my attention during the visit. After we introduced ourselves I asked Katie something innocuous, I don’t remember what now. Whatever it was I said it in hope that my words might open the door to conversation if Katie wanted to talk. We both wanted to connect, I felt, but neither of us knew how to start or what to say. We had that in common going into the visit, at least. Gradually, Katie starting telling me about her life, haltingly at first, then more fluently once she understood that I wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t going to shut her down. Although what Katie told me was heart-breaking, I, sadly, wasn’t shocked at all. I’d heard the broad outlines of her story before, too many times, while working in the juvenile court system. You’ve heard the story too I’m thinking, on a news program if not in your everyday experience. The drug of choice may change but the story stays the same for a child caught in the middle of her parents’ addictions. Katie tried to cope, she tried to care for her younger siblings, but she wasn’t equipped to be a parent, and she’d been robbed of her childhood by her mom the addict, as well as by the parade of addled drug-buddies who paraded through her house - most ignored the shy, skinny kid but some didn’t. Eventually Katie started cutting herself to let off steam and eventually she took a handful of pills to give herself a break and just make it stop. How can we describe the love of God to someone who has not frame of reference in a safe, loving human relationship? Katie loved her mom, and her mom loved her- she simply lacked the ability to stop the madness in her life and get the help she needed for far too long-Katie’s mom had given up hope and Katie witnessed this and absorbed this lesson of hopelessness. Katie loved her younger brother and sister, she protected them all as best she could, but the love she felt for her mom and for her brother and sister was laced with pain and with an anger she couldn’t admit to; a pain that Katie wouldn’t let herself feel: So Katie held it all inside where these conflicting feelings morphed into a hard knot of confusion in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t seem to lose no matter how hard she tried. In the end I didn’t really say a lot during my first meeting with Katie. I listened hard. I let Katie tell me everything she needed to tell me in her own words and in her own time. In the midst of telling her story Katie confided that she had an aunt and uncle who were as she put it “born-again”. They told her that God would change everything for her-make her problems go away, but when everything stayed the same Katie stopped listening to her aunt and uncle. God, she thought, was irrelevant. It was then that I told her about my experience of God in Christ-not as magician, or fortune teller, or televangelist but as presence without form, as light and dark- an emptiness and fullness that dwells in the core of my being and creates in me an oasis of warm stillness, of grace and, dare I say it, love, in the midst of my struggles. Is there anything more comforting in a crisis than to know that you are not alone? I told Katie that this presence, this Holy Spirit, has no weight but it fills me up if I have the sense to get out of my own way and let it happen. I told her that God seeks to be in relationship with us and that what we need to do to enter into reciprocal relationship with God is to pray. I encouraged Katie to try a prayer, perhaps a simple “help me, help me, help me, thank you” as suggested by the author Anne LaMotte- that usually works for me, or to say whatever she needs to say to start the conversation. It doesn’t matter what you say, really, does it? Every conversation has a starting place, most of them awkward! The point is to start talking and let it flow. In the course of living answers will come if we pay attention and try to do what is right. And what is right, really? Our job, if you will, as Christians is to live our lives in love. Saint Augustine put it this way “love and do what you will.” Love is the path to a Kingdom of God that is here and not yet-we are always on the cusp of it but it is never quite realized in the life that we live. The love of God is expressed by what we say and what we do every day, at work, at home, with friends and with strangers. The way in which we choose to communicate with others by our words and our actions is important. We honor God when we honor the other. Love is our standard. Faith begets love and love begets faith, and when this dynamic is in play, right action follows. In our Gospel lesson today Jesus teaches that that even the tiniest speck of faith, no bigger than a mustard seed, can move a sycamore tree to the sea. Given that example, our job as followers of Christ should be easy if we have any faith at all! But somehow, it isn’t easy most of the time, to live in love. We are offered no guarantees of wealth or sure happiness as we travel through our lives. Our experiences are as varied as the flora and fauna in a tropical rainforest. A life lived in love is not a charmed life, devoid of struggle or pain- Jesus made that clear to us by the example of his life and death. Every one of us has some story of struggle to tell - it’s simply the human condition and we’re all in it together. Even knowing as we do as Christians that love is the way we still turn away from it time and time again; we get angry, and resentful, and hurt; we feel insecure and ill-equipped and we inflict that pain and hurt on others-in other words, we screw up. That said, we know we can turn it around- we have a resource that will transforms any experience, if we let it, a reservoir of love accessible to us by the asking through the power of the Holy Spirit- a power that turns us around time and time, mistake after mistake, a power that turns us back to love. This resource, this power, is accessible to everyone. That’s the mystery and the promise of the resurrection. Again, Jesus showed us the way. Death transformed to new life by love; eternal life in the present moment and forever. To live by faith in love does not require us to change careers, to sell our posessions, to join a monastery, although sometimes we may choose those actions in order to get closer to God. It does require us to frame whatever we do, individually or as a community of faith in love and to have faith that our efforts will bear fruit in us and in others whether we see that turning, that conversion or not. In the end, love wins. Rob Bell said it in his book by the same name, and what he says is true. That’s the fundamental teaching of Jesus-his new covenant of love, our standard for living. It is this charge from Jesus, that we love one another, it is this charge and challenge that we must be brave enough to embody by what we do and by every word we speak – all the time and not just on Sunday. It’s hard work, but it’s our job. We are charged by Christ, as individuals and as his body, learn to speak truth in love to each other and to the stranger, in all the contexts of our lives, so that everyone can share in the love that we know to be the core truth of our existence. On October 10 we commemorated the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. Our Animal Blessing today is a living memorial to the truth of Christ as expressed by the life and work of St. Francis, who embodied sacrificial love by honoring all of God’s creatures. May these words of sacrificial love attributed to St. Francis guide us today and everyday in all that we say and do: Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace; Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is error, the truth; Where there is doubt, the faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled, as to console; To be understood, as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. AMEN-
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:34:07 +0000