Come! The drinks are on us!

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, May 12, 2013

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The drinks are on us.

The drinks are on us.

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Last week, Fletcher Harper walked us through the end times in the book of Revelation – both the popular notion of what it says and what it actually says.

He reminded us that the popular view – where Jesus MediVacs Christians off the earth into the clouds and then takes off with them into deep space where God lives and when they are sufficiently far away, God presses a button and blows up the earth – that that view isn’t even close to Biblical.

Then he walked us through the text of last week’s reading from Revelation and showed us that what the Bible really says about the end times is that God gives us a renewed and rejuvenated heaven, a renewed and rejuvenated earth. That the “end times” is not the earth exploding but a heavenly city right here. A city that does not battle or exploit the created order but emerges out of it, within which the natural world and all that it represents is integrated and there is a fullness and a mutuality and a peace between the city, the height of human civilization and the natural world.

That is our destiny. That is who we are to be. That is what we are to be about. A city. A new Jerusalem that like the psalmist sings is “a city that is at unity with itself.” A city where all people are restored to unity with God and each other in Christ, where Jesus’ prayer of “that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me” is reality.

A city whose streets are lined with trees bearing fruits whose “leaves are for the healing of the nations.”

A city of God. A city with waters of life and healing. Where

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The drinks are on us.

The drinks are on us.

Christ Church Cathedral has stood on this spot for nearly 150 years as a living sign of all creation’s destiny. That like every city, this city of St. Louis is a work in progress, and that we aspire to and in fact believe our destiny is that renewed, rejuvenated city of which the psalmist sings and God promises. And that the work we have been given to do is to help God in that work of renewal. To make this a city that makes glad God’s heart. To be a spring from which the river of life will flow and to plant the trees whose leaves will be for the healing of the nations.

And the role of a Cathedral in that cosmic process of urban renewal is to be the place to which God gathers and from which God’s voice booms out. Our role is to be a place from where that water of life springs, and sings

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

It is to invite everyone in, to hold out the water of life and say

The drinks are on us.

The drinks are on us.

So what does this look like? It looks like any number of things. It looks like things of which we have not even conceived yet! It looks like ways of being the church, ways of being Christ Church Cathedral that are yet to be discovered and adventures yet to be embarked upon.

But it also looks like some things that we have seen. Places where we have looked out and seen the deep brokenness in our city and asked the question “what does the water of life look like there?” And then where we have said, “Let everyone who is thirsty, come. Take the water of life as a gift.” Where we have gone out there and invited people in here and said:

The drinks are on us.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like this past Wednesday night when 20 months after Becca Stevens brought women from the Magdalene program in Nashville into this Cathedral so we could hear their stories of coming from the depths of prostitution, violence and drug abuse into a community that bathed them and filled them with the water of life. It looks like 20 months later, 400 people filling this Cathedral – people not just from this Cathedral, not just from this diocese, but from all parts of this city coming together to dedicate their time and talent and money to open the door to Magdalene St. Louis and to be a part of opening that first house by the end of next year. Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like Dr. Huldah Blamoville looking out and seeing so many homeless and low-income people with undiagnosed medical conditions and putting together her own physicians group, Mound City Medical Society with the people from BJC and coming to Chapter with a proposal that last month they unanimously approved for once or twice a month on Saturday mornings the back of this Nave and the Chapel to be used for a referral clinic for our guests at Miss Carol’s Breakfast. Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Saying the drinks are on us is as simple as these doors being open every day for anyone to come in and sit and think and pray. To let anyone who wants to come slake their thirst for beauty and peace in this space and at the foot of that cross. Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like Debbie Nelson Linck and the “As If We Weren’t There” photo exhibit. It looks like Lena Loewenstine gathering new, younger members of the congregation taking church outside these doors to Gelateria Tavolini on a Tuesday night to talk about The Screwtape Letters. ->->->->
It looks like Hopey Gardner taking our Lenten challenge to see what new thing God might be doing and discovering a call to teach kids to read through the YMCA community literacy program and inviting anyone in this congregation to join her.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like us as a Cathedral seeing what Hopey saw … seeing children in our city starving for education and welcoming into our space an elementary school that can give that high quality of education to children across the racial and economic spectrum. It looks like our Sunday School teachers, children and parents working so hard to share the space they love, and Cathedral members getting trained to go door to door in low income neighborhoods telling them about Lafayette Preparatory Academy. Please come and join us. I’ve gotten the training. You can get it too. It’s a public school. It’s not proselytizing and yet when we are inviting people to send their children to this school in this place where they can thrive and grow, we really are doing nothing less than saying “let everyone who is thirsty come. Take the water of life as a gift.”

The drinks are on us.

When we embrace our destiny as a spring from which the waters of life run. When we cry out to a thirsty world, “Come! The drinks are on us!” we are living not just our ultimate destiny but God’s earliest dream for us. Fletcher told us last week that God giving us dominion over creation in Genesis was not about giving us license to control and exploit but a call to nurture and tend for the common good of all creation. Well, the same is true for us and this Cathedral. If we view this Cathedral as a resource for us to control and use only for ourselves, we are no better than those who pump pollution into our air and dump chemicals in our rivers.

I don’t care what any deed of title says. This Cathedral is not the property of this congregation or Chapter or even the Diocese of Missouri or even the national Episcopal Church. This Cathedral is a herald of the heavenly Jerusalem. And we have been given the great honor and opportunity to nurture it and tend it not for ourselves but for the renewing and rejuvenating of the entire city. It is sacred public space owned by God for use by all who thirst. It is to be a place to which God gathers and from which God’s voice booms out.

And it’s the best thing ever. Because that means we don’t just have to be one more old church building. One more failing nonprofit whom people used to use looking back wistfully at the past and staring ahead at the same financial projections as newspapers and bookstores.

No. We get to be a place from which the river of life springs. We get to look out and point others to the deepest thirst that is out there and say we’ve got something here for you. And with the Spirit and the bride, say, “Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, “come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

Come. The drinks are on us!

Flower Sunday Sermon by the Rev. Fletcher Harper

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Preached on Flower Sunday, May 5 at 10 am at Christ Church Cathedral by the Rev. Fletcher Harper.

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Before and After

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, April 28, 2013

“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."

Each of us has a before and an after.

Each of us has a before and an after.

For some, the moment is clear. The moment up to which is “before.” The moment that in an instant turns everything from then on into “after.” Sometimes we see that moment coming. Most of the time, we don’t.

Joshua was 19 years old. He was sitting in the back of a minibus by the side of the road outside Jerusalem looking up at a stone town on a hill. He was in the bus going to collect a pizza that he had won playing basketball the night before. He was healthy and strong. He’d grown five inches and done 20,000 pushups in the last eight months. Joshua was 19. He was invincible. He was Superman.

Before.

Joshua didn’t see it coming. He didn’t see the truck loaded down with blue tile barreling out of control as it came down the hill. He heard a great bang behind him, like a bomb going off. His head snapped back, his eardrum blew, his shoes flew off. His body, neck broken, flew through the air with the rest of the bus and when he landed, he was a quadriplegic. In an instant, everything had changed.

Before.…. After.

 
Hear Joshua Prager tell his story -- and the incredible story of searching for the man who was driving that truck in this TED talk. Thanks to Robert Duffy for sending this my way.

In the coming months, Joshua had to learn to breathe on his own. Can you imagine having to learn again even how to breathe? This was the after. This was, what’s the phrase we use now: “the new normal.” After his first stage of recovery, Joshua’s “after” … his “new normal” … was that he was a hemiplegic – his body was divided vertically. He was in a wheelchair. His life would never be the same. Before was over. This was after. Nothing could change that.

But was the die cast? Did what happened determine who he was, determine who he was to be? Was Joshua, and in a larger sense, are all of us merely the result of things done to us or for us. Are we all just the sum total of genes and experience?

Joshua decided the answer to that was no. He spent four years in that wheelchair then got up out of it never to return. He learned to walk with a cane and traveled the world. He became a writer, working his way from news assistant to senior writer at the Wall Street Journal and became an award-winning author, typing every word with one finger of one hand.

Joshua’s after is not what he thought his life would be. He is not the doctor or the baseball player he thought he would become. That was his before. This is his after.

Each of us has a before and an after. Sometimes we see the things coming … the birth of a child, a graduation, a wedding. We know that “this will change everything” – partly because people keep telling us “this will change everything.”

But the most profound things, the most significant watershed events are the ones we don’t see coming.

The car crash. 

The phone ringing in the dead of night with news that couldn’t wait until morning.

The discovery of infidelity. The letter with news of the scholarship. The test results from the doctor. The lottery ticket. The police officer showing up at our door.

The chance meeting with someone who makes our heart jump and dance and sing and who through some amazing chemistry and physics and grace we do the same to them.

The cup of coffee shared where inspiration happens that changes the course of our life.

Each of us has a before and an after … and in fact each of us has many befores and afters, many moments that are watersheds, hinges in our life. These moments have the potential to define us. They have the potential to be our masters, whether the moments be good or ill. They have the potential to convince us that we are nothing but the sum total of genetics and experience. That what code was embedded into us in our conception and what happens to us from birth to death is the sole determinant of who we are.

But we are much more than that. We are human beings created in the image of God. There is a depth of beauty and possibility breathed into in each and all of us that transcends the seeming whim of genetics and experience. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” and each of us is waiting to burst into that glory, to become fully alive, fully that image of God that God dreams for us. And our ability to do it is not limited by genetics or experience. It is only limited by the choices and response we make when these shaping events happen.

Each of us has a before and an after. What is yours? What has your response been? What will your response be?

The disciples were living in the before. But the after was barreling down on them like that runaway truck. And like Joshua sitting in the back of that minivan, their attention was elsewhere and they had no idea it was coming. But Jesus knew. And so at the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus tried to prepare them:

“Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me but ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’”

But Jesus was trying to do more than just give them a heads up that a new normal was on the horizon. He knew that this was his last time with them. And when we know this is our last time with someone we care about, we want them to know the most important thing. We do it all the time.

It’s the coach who says “no fouls” as the team heads back onto the floor or the parent who says “do all your homework” as they head out the door for the evening … or the soldier who looks deep into her partner’s eyes and says “I love you” before getting on the plane perhaps never to return.

It was the night before Jesus died. Judas had just left. The wheels of Jesus’ betrayal, torture and death were already in motion. The truck was barreling down that hill and the impact would not just affect Jesus but all who had followed him. So he wanted to tell them that most important thing they would need to know to sustain them. And this is what he said, and he said it three times just so they would be sure to hear it:

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.

Everything was about to change – and in ways they couldn’t expect. Jesus was about to be arrested and killed and they might be next. But even more than that, they were about to be given news too good not to share but which would put their lives in danger when they did – that death had been defeated, that there was a power greater than empire, that God’s surpassing love did not recognize the human boundaries of Jew and Greek, rich and poor, slave and free.

And Jesus knew that the disciples – and all of us – are not just the sum total of genes and experience. He knew that they would have choices to make. And that often the choices we are tempted to make in moments of great stress and tragedy are to run away from our best selves, to turn inward, to let fear, pity, and anger consume us. To let the moment and not our best response to it define us.

And so Jesus gave the disciples that most important thing: Love one another. Love one another in the same self-giving way that I love you. In the midst of a new normal that will tempt you to be only concerned with your own skin, be instead only concerned with one another. Give yourselves to one another. Rise above the difficulty of the circumstance by holding one another up. And in so doing become the glory of God. Become human beings fully alive.

Jesus’ words to his disciples that night are the constitution of the church. For we are not a safe haven from the changes and chances of this world. We are not a community immune to the moments that create the befores and afters. But we are a community that loves one another through them, that calls one another to our best selves in the wake of them, and that uses those moments to create new normals of opportunity = to glorify God by pushing the limits of the potential of each and all of us as beautiful creatures made in the image of a loving and self-giving God.

We tend to look at stories like Joshua’s and marvel at what an extraordinary person he is. But without diminishing Joshua's story, that misses and truly even cheapens what he and his story can teach us. Because the true marvel is that it’s not just that Joshua is extraordinary, it’s that we all are – or rather we all can be. We all have the potential to move from the dreams of before to extraordinary afters.

Joshua talks about people’s reaction to his story and says, “People are wrong to marvel at those like me who smile as they limp. People don’t know that they have lived through worse. That problems of the heart hit with a force greater than a runaway truck, that problems of the mind are greater still, more injurious than a hundred broken necks.

“What makes most of us who we are most of all? Not our minds, not our bodies and what happens to us. But how we respond to what happens to us. This, wrote the psychologist Victor Frankel, is the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Jesus stood among his disciples and stands among us today not promising that life would never change but knowing that life will continue to change – change in profound and traumatic ways. Knowing that we share a life where trucks slam into buses and bombs explode at finish lines and gunshots ring out of passing cars, a world where pension and health benefits labored for for a lifetime disappear with the stroke of a pen, where in the middle of raising children we all of a sudden have to care for parents. A life where cancer comes and goes and comes again.

A life where each next moment might be the moment that changes everything.

Jesus stood among his disciples and stands among us today not promising that life will never change but that those changes do not define us. But that what does define us, what enables us to create afters of power and glory is our ability to love one another with the depth and passion that Christ loves us.

What can define us is our ability to be honest and vulnerable with one another about our struggles and to love one another through them.

What can define us is our choices to love in the face of fear, to give instead of being tempted to hoard, to reach out in those moments when all we want to do is curl up and cry out “Just. Leave. Me. Alone.”

Each of us has a before and an after. What is yours? What has your response been? What will your response be?

Each of us has a before and an after. And Jesus has just one important thing to tell us as the truck barrels down, as we hear the bang and our neck snaps back, as we fly through the air and land in a place we never expected to be and didn’t see coming. Jesus has just one important thing to tell us as we are learning how to breathe again … and walk and write and hope.

And he really wants us to hear it, so he is holding our shoulders and looking deep into our eyes.

And he’s saying it three times just to make sure we hear him.

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. 

 Amen.

James Hayashi funeral homily

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral for the funeral of James Hayashi on Saturday, April 6, 2013

Click here to listen to the audio podcast of the service.

"In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

James Hayashi was not always a Christian. He grew up as a Buddhist, and it was his love for Alice as much as anything that led him to embrace Christ. But embrace Christ he did … and like everything else he did, he didn’t do it halfway.

For the past 65 years, Jim has been a part of the life of Christ Church Cathedral. Think about that, 65 years. When Jim and Alice first walked into this space, Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter were roaming the outfield for the Cardinals at Sportsmans Park.

For 65 years, as St. Louis has changed, as the world has changed, Jim Hayashi was a constant here at Christ Church Cathedral. Even in these later years when he couldn’t get here every Sunday, and finally when he couldn’t get here at all, his presence has never left this place … and truly it never will.

The faith that his love for Alice led him into was a perfect match for Jim. And I’m convinced it’s part of why this Cathedral meant so much to him. Because at its heart our Christian faith is about two things that Jim at his heart was about, too … incarnation and feasting.

When we talk about incarnation, about God becoming human in Jesus, what we’re talking about is a God who loves us so much that God just can’t bear to be separate from us. When we talk about incarnation, we’re talking about a God for whom relationship is everything. A God who isn’t content just to observe us from afar but needs to be right here with us, living with us, abiding with us, sharing with us.

That was Jim, too. What was important to Jim was relationships, and he structured his whole life around them. Jim was incarnational, and by that I mean he showed up again and again and again and again and again. He was a faithful, loving, living presence in the lives of his family and friends and community. Not just a voice on the phone or a card in the mail – though he was those things too – but more than that Jim was a constant physical presence because he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jim was not someone who ever said “I don’t have time for you.” Jim made time because he knew that time was relationship and relationship was what he loved.

John, you tell that great story of when you got your first place in the Bay Area that you dad came out and looked at it and said not “this place isn’t big enough for YOU” … but “this place isn’t big enough for US.” And then pushed you to find a place that was big enough for him to come and stay. Jim never thought in terms of me or you. Jim always thought in terms of us.

Jim was incarnational in the best sense of the word, in the most Christian sense of the word, because it was his greatest joy to give his life in love for those he loved. Alice, Bob, John and Joanie were the primary beneficiaries of that love, and his love for Joanie is absolute proof that even death cannot strain those bonds of love. But it wasn’t just family. Jim gave himself in relationship to this Cathedral community. To the Japanese American community in St. Louis during a time of great racism and persecution. And even to people he didn’t know. When a classmate of Bob’s was killed the same way Joan was, Jim went and spent the day with the family because he knew that pain and he knew that they should not be alone in that pain. That is the essence of Christ. That is incarnation.

But the essence of Christ is also celebration. The essence of Christ is also feasting. And if there was one other thing about Jim Hayashi it is that man knew how to eat. If you asked him how a trip he’d taken was, he’d recite the menu from the luncheon. In a new town for the first time, Jim’s radar could scope out a great restaurant every time.

Jim loved to feast. And feasting is what we do as Christians because we believe that God created us and gave us this life to celebrate. I have to believe that one of the things that continually drew Jim more deeply into the life of Christ is that our central act together is a meal. We come together to do the two things that Jim loved most – to be with one another and to eat.

And so it is fitting that as we celebrate Jim’s life today and commend him to God, that we do just that. We gather here as those whom Jim loves and those who love Jim. We gather to do what Jim always did with us … to be with each other, to share this time together, to not let one another be alone. And we also gather to do what Jim always did which is we gather to share a meal. We gather to feast at the table. As we remember and give thanks for and celebrate the life of James Hayashi, we remember that all life is to be celebrated and given thanks for. And that we honor Jim by going out and living his legacy of loving presence and feasting celebration in our own lives.

In the Gospel Alice picked for this day, Jesus talks about preparing a place. And there is a place prepared for Jim as there is for all of us. But it is not solitary confinement. Jesus talks about there being many dwelling places in his Father’s house but what is being prepared and where Jim is now is not his own room isolated and cut off from anyone else. That wouldn’t be heaven. Where Jim is now, even more fully in the presence of God is dwelling at a place at the table. A place at the heavenly banquet, where the food is sweet and the company is even sweeter. Where he is no longer separated from his beloved Joanie but in truth even though he is not here in flesh with us, he is not separated from us either. For such is the nature of a God who is about relationship and celebration. Such is the nature of a God who breaks down barriers for no other reason to be with us.

That was the life Jim lived on earth. That is the life Jim shares now in heaven. That is the life to which we are all invited and destined. Amen.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! This is not a drill!

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Easter Sunday, 2013.

Listen to the audio podcast of the sermon here:

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I want you to repeat after me … and say it loud, say it proud:

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
(Alleluia, Christ is Risen)

Louder!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
(Alleluia, Christ is Risen)

Louder!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
(Alleluia, Christ is Risen)

That's the stuff! We do this every year, don’t we? We come together on Easter morning … some of us for the first time since last year, or at least since Christmas … and we shout these four words: Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Now when we do something every year, it can become rote. When we do something every year, we can forget its power. When we do something every year and then we go back to life and business as usual, it can become just one of those things we do.

Which is why we need to add something to those four words this year. Something that reminds us that this is more than just tradition. So try this one more time … and then just as strong repeat what I say after.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen.
(Alleluia, Christ is Risen)

THIS is NOT a DRIL!
(This is not a drill!)

That’s right. Christ is risen. And this is not a drill.

What does that mean? It means that this is real, this is urgent, and that we are ready.

One more time:

Alleluia, Christ is Risen.
(Alleluia, Christ is Risen)

THIS is NOT a DRIL!
(This is not a drill!)

This is not a drill means that this is real. That Jesus really is risen from the dead. It’s not a metaphor, idea, illustration, concept, theory, analogy, simile, or treatment for a screenplay on The History Channel. It’s real.

God really did love us enough to be born in human form.

God really did love us enough to go to the cross to die.

God really DOES love us so much that even death cannot stop the love of God from reaching us, from binding us to God and binding us to one another.

This is real means that we really can trust in God’s passionate love for us … each of us – and yes, that means you, no matter what dark secret lurks in your heart that you think God thinks is unforgiveable. It’s not.

This is real means we really don’t need to let fear imprison us.

This is real means we really can live and love boldly and deeply, knowing there is no barrier that can be put in front of us that God has not already removed.

Alleluia, Christ is risen. This is not a drill. This is real.

This is not a drill also means that this is urgent.

When we hear “this is not a drill,” it kind of gets that adrenaline coursing through our veins, doesn’t it? That’s a good thing. When we hear “this is not a drill,” we know that it’s time to put everything else aside and focus. When we hear “this is not a drill,” we know that this moment – right now – is the moment of truth.

Holy Week is a drama we walk through every year – but really it is going on all around us all the time. And too much of our world, too many people get stuck before they get to the empty tomb.

Too many people and structures and systems of our world are stuck in the betrayal of Maundy Thursday , they’re stuck in the pain and death of Good Friday – they’re stuck there and believe that betrayal, that pain and death is the end of the story.

Now is the time. This very day. This very moment. Now is the time to proclaim in word and deed to this Good Friday world that there is an Easter. That Alleluia, Christ is Risen … and that this is not a drill.

Now is the time because there are people out there and people in here who can’t wait any longer to hear that resurrection is here.

Women on the streets of St. Louis right now who believe the only end for them is the life of prostitution, drug abuse and violence they have known since they were little girls, They need to hear Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

Children watching corporations use 3rd grade reading scores to decide how many prisons to build and seeing their Head Start funding cut in the sequester. They need to hear Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

People, some of whom are in this very room, struggling with unemployment and homelessness. A St. Louis broken by deep divides of race and class, deep poverties of trust and understanding, a Delmar Divide that looks like the Grand Canyon. A world suffering from a poverty of meaning for whom the false Gospel of endless consumption has consumed us in return. Sisters and brothers suffering from loneliness and despair. They all need to hear it, they’re waiting for us to shout it. Alleluia. Christ is Risen. This is not a drill.

We spent this Lent at Christ Church Cathedral on the mountaintop looking into the promised land, looking for that new thing that God is doing. And we’ve seen it. Behold, God IS doing a new thing and we can perceive it. We see it in Bridge Bread and Lafayette Preparatory Academy and Magdalene St. Louis and Home First. We’ve seen it in Miss Carol’s Breakfast and Grace Hill. We’ve seen God’s new thing in the conversations we’ve had as we’ve read the Bible together and we’ve felt God’s new thing as we’ve held each other’s hands through times of death and loss. We’ve been up on the mountaintop for 40 days and we’ve seen God breaking through all over the place.

Well, it’s time to come down from the mountain and get into the game. And we’re already doing it. But it can no longer wait. What is it for you? What is it for us? There is no shortage of options, but the time is now.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! This is not a drill.

Finally, this is not a drill means that we are ready.

Yes, this is real. Jesus really is risen from the dead. Yes, death really has been defeated. Yes, there is a living God who is moving all creation out of sin into righteousness, out of error into truth, out of death into life.

Yes, now is the time for us to get in the game and jump on the train.

And yes, we are ready. We are ready to be this Easter people.

We are ready not because we have no doubts. Not because we have some airtight and unassailable theology. We are ready not because we know exactly what we’re doing and have a brilliant five-point plan for transforming the world.

We have none of these things – in fact just the opposite. But that’s OK, in fact that’s great.

We are ready to be Easter people because it’s not up to us. It’s God’s power and wisdom that has made and is making and will make all this happen. And we are ready because God has promised that if we get out in front that God will have our backs.

We are ready because like Mary at the empty tomb, the risen Christ looks at us and says, “You got this. Go!”

But most of all, we are ready to bring this Easter life to the world because we are ready to for joy. Because we are ready for life. Because we are ready for transformation and celebration of cosmic proportions.

We are ready to enter the promised land and continue the proud legacy of Christ Church Cathedral in new ways for a new St. Louis for new generations. We are ready with our deep prayers, faithful companionship, powerful words and bold actions to partner with God in making St. Louis a city that makes glad God’s heart.

We are ready to live without fear. To love without judgment. To give without counting the cost.

We are ready to shout, Alleluia, Christ is Risen! Shout it so loud that there is not a corner of this city or a far reach of this globe where those words do not knock Good Friday into Easter Sunday.

Because this is Easter. And this is real. And this is urgent. And we are ready.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen. And this is not a drill.

A sermon for the Memorial Eucharist and Burial of the Rev. Priscilla R. Allen

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A sermon preached by the the Rev. Jason W. Samuel at Christ Church Cathedral  for the Memorial Eucharist for the Rev. Priscilla Allen on Saturday, March 9, 2013

I am sure many of you have heard many times, the reading today from Paul’s letter to the Romans where he says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creations, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Today especially, I hope you did more than hear it, I hope you let it sink deep into your hearts and minds. I have had the pure joy of knowing Priscilla for sixteen years. Many of you have known her much longer and are filled with stories of how your lives were touched by knowing and being in relationship with her. I hope you all will continue to share those life changing stories with each other as we journey through our grief, knowing God’s promise of love and life even while we hurt, and celebrating life - as Priscilla so well knew – that nothing could ever separate us from the love of God in Christ.

This passage from Romans is one of the few passages of scripture where I had a lengthy discussion with Priscilla. In 1999, we were just beginning our second year at Church of the Transfiguration in Lake St. Louis. Honestly, I was overwhelmed and fearful of my abilities to be the priest this congregation needed. Michael and Priscilla perceived the need for us to get away, so they invited us to come and share time with them on Martha’s Vineyard. At some point, Joe was off smoking a cigarette and Michael was off on one of his walks. Priscilla and I sat on the patio in quiet until I could resist the urge no longer to run off at the mouth. Somehow I could not resist telling her all the burdens of my heart.

Of course, she listened and listened. I finally stopped with all my anxious talk and she asked, “Are you done”, I said yes – she said, “good”.

She then proceeded to love, nurture and care for me in a way that I had not experienced, especially since I began my ministry as a priest. I know this does not surprise you. Priscilla was always the natural pastor and care-giver, even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear. I moaned on about that I may not be a good enough priest for this congregation and I was not sure if we could make it. She said, you’re right, you will never be good enough, and you just don’t have that much power. In all that you have learned Jason, I hope you have found that it is not being a priest, but it is Christ who dwells in you and that you allow yourself to be a messenger of justice and love. She then said what I will never forget, “Jason, just remember this – love them as you are, not as the one they want you to be. Be Jesus to them, with all your brokenness and all your joy and never forget – nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.”

That day, Priscilla help set me free from all the false expectations which the church and I had on myself and to the ministry for which we are all called.

Priscilla knew of which she spoke. Life at times had been harsh or difficult for her. I know in the many years of marriage, Michael and Priscilla had to face great challenges from both the church and world. The gospel of Jesus Christ was not something for her just to ponder; the gospel was a reality in how she chose to live her life.

Many of you know the many little sayings that people mean well when the say them, but that can become trite, like “what would Jesus do”. But there is one saying which has never lost its meaning for me, attributed to St. Francis, which says, “Preach the gospel at all times, when necessary, use words.” In many ways, Priscilla was an embodiment of this saying. If fact, just the other day, someone told me how they wished Priscilla would have preached more. At first I agreed, and then I said, well, you know Priscilla really did preach a lot, just not always in the pulpit. She proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ every time she listened and loved someone who felt rejected and shamed by the world or the church. She preached the gospel every time she made a witness for the justice found in the kingdom of God, but that the church had not yet embraced. She preached the gospel of Jesus Christ every time she showed us exactly who she was, another broken human being, continuing to grow and be healed by the love, mercy and grace of God. I believe we need more preachers for Christ like her than some of the fluff we hear too often in our churches.

As we grieve today, I hope you also rejoice. Rejoice that a life so full of the love of God touched and helped changed our lives. I used to joke that, I think Michael would go where even angels fear to tread and scare a few of them in the in the process; then it would be Priscilla who would go and be the one to say, “Do not be afraid, peace be with you.” We all have different ministries in this church made up of many peculiar people.

I am grateful that in these last sixteen years I have become more keenly aware that in the end, all I have to truly do is love others, exactly as I am. We give thanks today for this woman, this priest, mother, wife and friend to so many, who helped us understand Jesus’ words in the gospel today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Thanks be to God that the gospel can be preached in so many ways and that we can take our next step in this journey knowing that absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

"If Only..." -- a sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral  on Sunday,March 3, 2013

Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

If only…

There is nothing in the universe that holds us back, nothing that enslaves us, nothing that keeps us from grasping the new thing that God is offering more than sentences that begin with those two words.

If only…

“If only” is the tip of the sword. What comes next is what cuts us to the heart.

If only I could control my drinking.
If only I could find a better job or any job.
If only I could find a place to live.
If only her surgery had gotten all of the cancer.
If only I could figure out how to talk to my children.
If only my children would talk to me.
If only I had someone, anyone who wanted to be with me.
If only…
If only…
If only…

What is your “if only?” What is that thing in your life that is keeping you from grasping something new because it is grasping onto you? Think about it for a moment. What is your “if only?”

And its not only individuals who have “if onlys.” Communities have them, too. We have them as a Cathedral community … and they hold us prisoner as well.

“If only we could get more income and stop being in deficit.”

“If only we could hire a staff person for children and youth.”

And it’s doesn’t stop there. We have “if onlys” as a city and as a nation:

“If only we could fix our schools.”

“If only we could get everybody health care.”

“If only Congress and the administration could get their act together.”

To paraphrase Rodney King, “If only we could just get along.”

Our “if onlys” are not just litanies of excuses … though sometimes they can be. Our “if onlys” are windows through which we see the deepest brokenness in our lives. How we finish those “if only” sentences reveal where we are in most need of healing, where we are in most need of liberation, where we most need God to break into our lives and do a new thing.

If only.

The first Sunday of Lent, we heard God’s promise to the people in the desert, and we talked about how this year, we are getting out of the desert and getting up on the mountaintop to catch a glimpse of the new thing that God is doing and is inviting us into right here, right now.

Last Sunday, we heard the story of the call of Abraham and talked about God’s new thing for us being a puzzle that we don’t have the boxtop for … but one that is much bigger and more glorious than we can imagine. Abram had his own “if only” … “If only I had a son” … and yet he couldn’t believe it when God said he would not only have one son but descendants that numbered as the stars. When we think small and despair, God dreams big and says “that’s what I’m talking about.”

And this Sunday finds us still on the mountaintop. And we’re straining to see what that finished puzzle looks like. But we realize that in order to grasp God’s new thing, in order to get to this promised land, we have to be freed from the old things, we have to leave the old land behind.

The new thing God is doing is about freedom. The new thing God is doing is freeing us from our “if onlys.”

In this morning’s reading from Exodus, we’re back way before where we were two weeks ago. The Exodus hasn’t happened yet. The people of Israel are still in slavery in Egypt and they are saying “if only we could be free. If only those promises God made to our father Abraham could be true. If only God would remember us.”

And God appears to Moses in a burning bush and says, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses says, “Here I am.” And God says, “Take your shoes off. The place you are standing on is holy ground.” Because God is about to have a real, honest conversation with Moses, a conversation about the “if onlys,” a conversation about the real stuff that’s going on in the lives of the people. And wherever the honest reality of our lives meets the presence of God, that’s where holiness happens.

And then God lets Moses know that God has been keeping track of what’s happening to the people. God says, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry.”

God says, “I have seen them. I have heard them.” That’s good news by itself for the people. God is at least aware that they have been suffering in slavery for generations. Nice to know. Thanks for checking in, God.

But then God says something amazing. God says “indeed, I know their sufferings.” That word “know,” is one of the most powerful words in scripture. It’s the Hebrew word “yada” … only when God says “yada, yada, yada” here, it really means something. Yada means to know intimately. You know what I’m talking about, like “Adam knew Eve.” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?) That kind of know. In “the biblical sense.” God knows the sufferings of the people … intimately, physically, feeling them as intensely as they do. God has not just been observing the people’s sufferings from afar. God knows their sufferings.

God says “Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

This is the Word of God for us this morning. In the midst of all the “if onlys” that hold us hostage, God comes to us in this holy space, this holy space where we bring the unvarnished, warts-and-all reality of our life into God’s presence. God comes to us and says not just I have seen your sufferings. Not just I have heard your cries. God says “Yada. Yada. Yada.” I know your pain. I feel your pain. Your “if onlys” are my “if onlys”

And I am about to do a new thing. I am about to deliver you from them.

God’s response to knowing our pain, to hearing our cry … is to set us free. God’s dream is to liberate us. To break us out of the “old things” that imprison us and deliver us to a “new thing.” To break the iron grasp of “if only” in our lives, in the life of this Cathedral, this city, this nation, this world.

But God does not do this alone. God calls on Moses to be God’s partner. God says, Moses, you will go where I have been and indeed am right now. You will go into the heart of the people’s suffering. You will fearlessly name the suffering. You will say that I have sent you to them in the midst of the suffering. You will proclaim that I am more powerful than the suffering. You will lead them out of their suffering.

And that is God’s Word to us today, too. This new thing of liberation. This new thing of freedom from our “if onlys.” God does not do this alone. We will be God’s partners in it. God doesn’t do TO us. God does WITH us. Like Moses, we are God’s partners in liberation … bringing ourselves and the people out there who don’t even know it yet to a new life of freedom.

And so this week from our vantage point on the mountaintop, we hear the story of the call of Moses and we realize that the new thing God is doing is about freedom. And because of that, we realize that we can’t look forward to the new thing God is doing until we look back and look around at what it is we need to be liberated from.

This week, we hear God’s call to Moses and we realize those words are for us.

That every time we cry “If only,” God not only sees us cry and hears us cry, but God intimately knows the pain of those if onlys.

That for ourselves and for the world, God is calling us to fearlessly name the suffering. To go with God into the heart of the suffering. To proclaim with one voice that God is more powerful than the suffering. And with God to lead the people and be led ourselves out of the suffering.

And like Moses and like Abram before him, we struggle with all of this.

We struggle with the ground we stand on being holy, with God’s presence actually touching our own.

We struggle with believing that God really knows our pain.

We struggle with the possibility of liberation.

We struggle with God wanting to partner with us.

We struggle with our own worthiness

We struggle with what authority we have.

We struggle with “what if people challenge us?”

And because we struggle, the first thing we do is remember that like Moses, we do not do this alone. We bring our “if onlys’

Like Moses, our answering this call will not be easy. But we will not do it alone. God will be with us. And if we trust God, we will be given power over the “if onlys” in our lives that we can scarcely imagine today. If we trust God, we will be given power to free not just ourselves but the world from the “if onlys” that bind us and that keep us from getting to the promised land.

What is your “if only?”
What is our “if only?”
What is the “if only” that is echoing from the deepest valleys and most desolate streets out there?
What is God’s song of freedom we are being given to sing?