Pando and the Communion of Saints

When someone dies, Americans are afraid to speak their name. We don't want to disturb the widow by mentioning her husband's name. We want to distract her! Talk about the weather, about buying clothes, about the economy, but avoid her pain at all costs. That is the LAST thing that she wants to be reminded of (as if she was thinking about anything else but her loss all the time!). Her husband is gone and we cannot bring him back, so why remind her? Right? After all, he is gone and never coming back.

He's gone and never coming back, right?

Today is All Saints Sunday. It is traditional on this day to baptize new Christians into the faith. Here at the Cathedral, we enjoy a great celebration as we baptize twelve people. It is one of the greatest joys of my life, to have the honor of baptizing people into the body of Christ, into the family of God. As the water runs over the heads of these twelve, God is welcoming them into heaven and this fact is so ultimately, mind-blowingly good that I can hardly take it in. Every time I baptize I am overwhelmed. How can I explain to you what we are doing? It is something so significant, so deep, that I don't even come close to understanding it myself.

This week, an image came to my mind...

The heaviest living organism on this planet is located one mile southwest of Lake Fish in Utah.  Can you guess what it is? It is a grove of aspen trees! These trees are called Pando. They are given one name because they actually consist of one living organism. Also known as The Trembling Giant, this grove of trees is actually one living being. They have one, enormous, underground root system that unites them all into the heaviest known organism on the planet, weighing in at 6,600 tons! The root system of Pando is about 80,000 years old. 

Whenever there is a forest fire, these trees will be burned to the ground, leaving nothing but ashes.  But underneath the ground, their root system is still alive.  And they are reborn once more, to ascend to the sky with beautiful leaves that dance in the wind.

Paul once spoke of Christians as one body, one living organism. When a person is baptized, roots are laid that bind them to the rest of us in Christ.  We cannot see these roots but they unite us all into one body, and they are stronger than death.

We are a family of God. And we are bound together by our faith and our relationships with God and one another. Once you are baptized, your life belongs to something larger than just yourself. You are part of a living entity, a life larger than your own.

 Jesus asks us to love God first and love our neighbor as ourselves, because everything that we do, we do in relationship.  Jesus' Great Commandment is all about relationships. We are bound to one another and to God. Together, we are called to usher in the kingdom of God.

I am reminded of how at the healing service on Wednesdays, we always join hands to say the Lords Prayer together. No matter how many of us are there. We unite as one. We are rooted in Christ at that moment, joined to Him and to one another.

We are bound not just to the living but also to the dead. On some instinctive level, you already know this, don't you? If someone that you love dies, whenever there is a special event in the life of a family, it is evident that someone is missing. The holidays are hardest for those who are grieving. A mother whose son died in a car accident once looked at me and said, "I can manage OK, but then Christmas comes along, or Easter or a wedding or a baptism, and I realize that he is not here with me. And the void in my life is unimaginable."

Someone is missing. Who is it? Your mother?  Your grandfather?  Your friend?  Your child?  Who do you wish were here?  Who are the ones that you love who have died?  

Jesus says we are blessed when we are poor, when we don't have enough, when we grieve and miss the ones that we love who have died and left us here alone.  We are blessed in that emptiness. Blessed. Because the emptiness proves to us that we are still connected.  We miss their physical presence but they still live with us, underneath the surface of this life, in something much more vast and beyond our understanding. They exist with us in bonds of love that transcend death and bind us all together, both the living and the dead.

That is what the communion of saints means. It is the root system of the Body of Christ. It means that you and I are linked and not just with each other but with all the people who have shaped and molded you into who you are. The relationships of our lives shape us and they live in us.

Did you know what Michelangelo said about carving his famous statue of David? He said that David was in the stone, waiting to be carved out. And what would carve David out of the stone, his relationship with the living hand of Michelangelo.

God carves you into who you are using relationships. Your mistakes and failures as well as your greatest achievements make you the person you are and the most important relationship is the one that you have with God.  You are baptized ones, children of God. All other relationships are secondary to the one that you have with God.

Joseph in the book of Genesis that we read, he only becomes the fullness of who God calls him to be when he suffers a LOT.  He suffers because of the strained relationships that he has with his brothers, relationships of favoritism, ignorance and jealousy. Only after he is sold as a slave by his own brothers, wrongly convicted of a crime and thrown in prison, does he begin to become the man who will rescue his entire family from famine. Joseph knew that even though his family mistreated him, they were still fundamentally a part of who he had become. Joseph is carved into who he was meant to be, carved by suffering and loss.

One of the greatest parts of the Christian faith is that we are not afraid to speak of the dead, because we are still in relationship with them. The saints are those who have left us physically but with whom you are still linked in love. If you cannot imagine heaven without someone, then that person has become your saint.

The baptized can not only talk about death, we can name the dead. We can speak their names.  Why? Because we know that we will see them again. We believe in a life beyond this life. We believe in eternal life.  We are not afraid to name the one who is missing. And let the loss of their physical presence shape us into people of God.  We know that our roots are still linked to the ones we love, even after death.  We are the family of God, the body of Christ. 

Disagree to Live

Years ago, my husband and I walked from the Temple Mount to the town of Bethany just outside Jerusalem. As we were walking on a clear, crisp day, some children were standing by the side of the road.  I smiled at them as we walked by and one of them bent down, picked up a rock, and threw it at us. They missed, ran a bit down the road, and aimed another rock right at us. I was frightened.

What would cause a child to hate a stranger that much? Where did they learn such hatred? The hatred of Jerusalem is a hatred between religions and races, between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and it dates back thousands of years.

Just look back, thousands of years ago, to the relationship of Sarah and Hagar. Here were two women whose rivalry and competition birthed the hatred between Islam and Judaism. Yes, at the root of much of the worlds violence, there stand two women. One birthed Ishmael, who Muslims believe is heir to the promise of God's favor.  The other birthed Isaac, who Jews and Christians believe is the heir to God's favor.

God promised both Abraham and Sarah that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars. But, for the longest time, Sarah was not able to have children with Abraham. She was getting older fast. Even though God had promised that they would have a child, Sarah could not simply trust in God. She grew impatient. She could not wait. Sarah could not believe that she would be enough, that God would give her a son. She would not wait. She could not believe. So she took matters into her own hands. The seed of all the conflict and hatred for thousands of years rested upon this one decision, the decision of one women, who could not trust in God.

Sarah gave Abraham her slave girl, Hagar. And Abraham accepted. He lay with the slave girl and she conceived and gave birth to a son, Ishmael. 

Sarah tried to play God. She tried to take matters into her own hands. And it is remarkable how much of a mess we human beings make when we try to play God. Like Eve taking the forbidden fruit, Sarah tried to fix a problem that wasn't hers to fix.  God told her to wait. God promised to give her a child. But she would not wait. She would not wait for the fullness of God's promise. And she ended up making a mess.

How often to we fail to wait for God's answer?  How often do we not believe that we are enough, that God will redeem us, answer our prayers, heal us, find us?  So often, we don't give God enough time to really answer our prayers.

The Bible reads that Sarah was a beautiful woman. So beautiful that her husband was afraid he would be killed in Egypt when powerful men saw her, for they would want her as their own.  Sarah was gorgeous and she was used to being first, used to being admired. Her foolish husband did little to curb her self-centeredness. So when Hagar became pregnant, Sarah could not stand it. She could not stand being second place.  

Sarah used her slave girl and then, in doing so, created a broken relationship. She could not love Hagar. Everything that Hagar did seemed to anger Sarah. Once Hagar became pregnant, Sarah was overcome with jealousy.  She said that Hagar looked at her with contempt.  As often happens when one human being mistreats another, things only seemed to get worse.  

Sarah began to abuse her maid.  We don't know exactly what Sarah did but it wasn't pretty. She tried to hurt Hagar so much that the slave girl ran away. And the seed of one of the greatest conflicts in world history took root and grew.

Why do we hate those who win when we loose? Why do we hate those who disagree with us?  Why do we try to force others to think as we do? Our government is shut down because we cannot move forward in compromise, because each side cannot budge to see the good in the other. We are stuck in estrangement. We are angry and our country is suffering. All we do is stand apart, slinging rocks at one another.

Why could Sarah and Hagar not share a child?  Why could they not look each other in the eyes and see a sister?  When the angel appears to Hagar, the angel tells Hagar to go back, to return to Sarah and try to get along with her. Just like what I would like to say to our leaders.  Go back to one another and learn to get along.

What if the ones who disagree with us are the ones we are called to spend more time with?  What if disagreement is itself divine?  What if God WANTS us to disagree?

Abraham bargains with God. Job argues with God. God is practically on trial in the poetry of the book of Lamentations and Jesus, whenever he was faced with a question, usually responded with another question.

The ancient fathers said that the words of Scripture were filled with black words on white pages, with lots of white space and that God left the white space so that we could respond and argue and debate and voice our desires and longings and hopes and insights. 

When Jesus healed the lepers in todays gospel, nine of them left, taking the healing for themselves as if they somehow accomplished it on their own. Only one turned back to say thank you, for he alone realized that healing happened because of a connection that he had with Jesus himself. Only one realized the truth, that we are nothing without each other. Nothing.

You define yourself by who you disagree with as much as by who you agree with. Disagreement is part of how God calls us to learn. Arguing is good. Let us not shutdown or separate like Sarah and Hagar did. Let us learn from one another, wrestle with good intentions, struggle together, argue, debate. Let us trust that God has something to teach us and that this something is found in the mind of the person who looks at us in the way that makes our skin crawl. Let us believe that this person could be our teacher.

Malala is 16 years old and she has been shot in the head. She was riding a bus in Pakistan when a member of the Taliban shot her. She nearly died. After a miraculous recovery, Malala has penned a best-seller and is up for a Nobel Peace Prize. I watched her in an interview.

She has a beautiful, clear speaking voice that rings out like a bell. Without hesitation or fear, she spoke of how education is the key to answering the world's problems. When asked how she felt about the Taliban, she said that she thought they blew up schools because they were afraid that girls would be educated. They are afraid of the power of education, she said. The audience watching the interview cheered at this remark.

Malala was asked if she encountered a Taliban today, what would she do. "My first thought, she said, was that I could take my shoe and hit him with it. But then, I realized that this action would make me like the Talib and I don't want to be like him. So I would speak to him. I would argue with him.  I would tell him that I want his children to be educated too..."

What if Sarah had waited for God's promise?  But even after she failed to trust in God and abused her maid, what if she had asked for forgiveness? What if she had embraced Hagar as her sister?  What if they had raised their sons side by side, as brothers? What would the world look like if they had been able to look one another in the eye and listen to the other? What if they had been able to disagree and still love one another? What would our world look like today? 

It is not too late. It is never too late to begin to learn how to disagree with respect and love. And it is never too late to learn to trust in God to answer us.

The Tower

Years ago, a young woman in my parish died of cancer, leaving behind a distraught sister and mother. Before the funeral service was to begin, the young woman's sister got up to speak. She was a successful businesswoman and normally had no trouble speaking with clarity and accuracy. She began the eulogy well, talking about her sister with love and devotion. But then something happened to this young woman and all of a sudden, she could not speak. She was wracked with tears, silently unable to utter a word. She stood at the lecturn immobile and overwhelmed.

We all sat there at a loss.  I wondered if I should go to her, to help her to her seat. I didn't want to embarrass her.  We all just sat there, dumb and helpless.

The young woman's mother quietly got up from the first pew and with calm, walked over to her only surviving daughter. She did the most wonderful thing. She just stood behind her daughter. She did not try to take over the eulogy or even put her arm around her daughter, she just stood, so close that her daughter could feel her presence. She stood behind her daughter and the young woman gradually became calm. She resumed her eulogy and when she finished, mother and daughter walked to the pew, holding hands.

That mother gave up her own grief for a moment to be there for her one living daughter. And because she acted not for herself but for another, the mother and daughter truly communicated without saying a word. Strength flowed from one to another. Without a word.

It says in the Book of Genesis that God scattered human beings. We only had one language and we wanted to build a tower, something so high that it touched they sky, something that would make a name for us, "for ourselves," we said, "for ourselves." We wanted to be like God. So God destroyed the Tower and scattered mankind over the face of the earth. And now we speak thousands of languages and cannot even communicate because our cultures are so different. We tried to make ourselves as high as God and we ended up babbling and confused.

God did not want us to try to be God. God did not want us to live just for ourselves. It's like when we ate that fruit in the garden. The fruit was supposed to make us like God. But trying to be like God causes us suffering. It causes us pain. It causes us to be confused. Doing anything just for ourselves never works out well. We were not created to live just for ourselves.

Why do we love money so much? Money is power. With money, you can live just for yourself. If you have money, you can walk into any restaurant or store and get what you want. The more money you have, the more attention you get, the more choices you have. Money is power. Money makes us able to build towers and shout out orders and think that we are it, that we are God. Money makes us think that we can do it all by ourselves.

This past week, a homeless man in New York City found a backpack with a lot of cash in it, about $40,000 to be exact. The man had no home. He could have considered this his lucky break, his chance to get a place, eat some good food, get some stability, some respect. 

But he returned the bag. With a severe stutter, he spoke in public about his decision. "God has always taken care of me," he said. The $40,000 "wasn't my money to take."

Is what you have really your tower to build, your money to spend, your life to live? What if all of it really belongs to someone else, someone who stands behind you, to support you, who gives you freedom to find your way, all the time knowing that the only true way is the one back home to him? We do our greatest work when we realize that we are not God, that all is not up to us and that we are not alone. That is when we stop babbling and really begin to serve one another, to know and be known by another.

The story of the homeless man went viral. Thousands of people heard about his honesty, his generosity. Donations poured in for him; $90,000 has been raised so far, a free gift, for the one who did not take matters into his own hands, but returned what he found and trusted in God.

They say that success is like an ever higher mountain. As soon as you reach the top, you see that you are not so high, that there is something higher. And you are never satisfied. No matter how high you climb, you are not God and you are never high enough. Meanwhile, Jesus stands behind you quietly, as you work and sweat and struggle. He just stands there, close but not interfering, waiting for the day when you will feel his strength and his power infuse your soul. When you will stop shuddering and crying and stumbling and babbling and know that he is there for you and has been all along, when you feel the presence of our Lord right behind you, you will know that you are rich and that your life is not your own. And you will learn to truly give back what was never yours in the first place.

The Many Faces of Greed

I want you to imagine that you are standing at a cocktail party. You are dressed up. There is a smile on your face. The purpose of the party seems to be to look as good and feel as good as you can. There is great food, lots of wine. You don't know anyone else there. People come up to you and they ask you what you do for a living, do have a family, where did you get your degree? And you ask them the same questions. And it's all about this is who I am verses this is who you are. Labels. And the entire evening is spent on your self-examination and comparing yourself to other people. You get home worried that your career is not enough, your finances not enough, your relationships not enough. You feel alone after being in a room full of people. You leave feeling empty. Have you ever been to a party like that?

The author of the book of Ecclesiastes tells is that All if Vanity and a chasing after wind. In other words, if your goal is life is to feel good, you might as well spend your time chasing the wind. We cannot hold or control our feelings. If happiness is your goal, good luck with that.

I was walking on the beach about a month ago with an old friend. He asked me what the goal of my life was. I told him I wanted to serve God as best I could.  Then I asked him the same question. He had suffered from depression for the better part of his life. His answer surprised me. "My goal is that I want to feel as good as I can," he said.

I was struck by his honesty. Most people would have made something up that sounded less selfish. He was clear and truthful. All he wanted was to feel good. But the answer seemed so sad to me. Here was a man who was so spiritually poor that the best he could imagine in life was simply to feel good.

And most of us want to feel good too. We want enough resources to be comfortable, enough time to spend with family and friends, we even want a purpose in life so that we can feel a sense of worth, feel that we are important. We want to be happy. We will even do good works to feel good about ourselves. All we want is for ourselves. We seek to please ourselves and all it leads to is emptiness. For we are chasing a mirage, the mirage called happily ever after. Our advertisements believe it. Movies promote it, this idea that if you buy the right stuff, you will be happy. I need to buy the right stuff, I need to find the right job, I need to find the right relationship....it's all about me, me, me...

 When Jesus came by and asked you to follow him, there was one thing that you couldn't do. One thing just didn't jive with his invitation. You could not stop to think about yourself. To get invited by Jesus meant to trust him with everything. Just say yes and give yourself to him. All the folks who wanted to care for their stuff, say goodbye, even bury their loved ones, they got left behind. You just couldn't be concerned with yourself. Jesus did not give you time. 

Jesus tells us of a man who stored vast amounts of grain in his grainery and thought only of his own comfort. The man was consumed with providing for himself. He was convinced that if he stored up enough stuff, he would be comfortable, happy, not afraid. He accumulates so much grain that he has to build an extra storage facility. Sounds like some of us with our storage facilities, doesn't it? As soon as he is sure he has hoarded enough to really ensure his own happiness, he dies.  And when he dies, he has nothing, he is poor with God. 

Jesus tells us to be on guard against what he calls "all kinds of greed." 

All kinds? I did not know that there was more than one kind...

Greed does not just consist in hoarding possessions or money or even food. Greed is formed in a person who focuses solely on the self by hoarding. And you can hoard more than just money. You can hoard success or relationships or even emotions. You can greedily hold on to your ambition, your honors degrees, even to your wounds. You can greedily hoard all those times that someone you love has hurt you or offended you. You can hoard your hurt. And all of these are kinds of greed. All of these kinds of hoarding make you spiritually poor. If your goal in life is about you and only you, it is not of God. And ironically, you have nothing. 

In Eden, the tempter asked Eve to disobey God in order to feed herself. Take this for yourself and you will be like God, he said. The fall of humanity began with selfishness. It began when Even put her desire over God's command, when she made herself the first priority and it continues whenever we put ourselves in front of God.

Remember the order of the great commandment that Jesus gave us. LV the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Number one is love God, number two is love your neighbor as yourself. There is a reason why Jesus did not begin with love yourself first. The love of God must come first or the love of self is distorted and not love at all.

Why do we go to church on the morning of the first day of the week? We do it to put God first. 

God would not have us focus on ourselves. Love ourselves, yes, but not focus on ourselves. If you spend your day thinking of only yourself and doing only for yourself, then beware of greed. Or perhaps a better way to put it is in a positive light, be rich towards God rather that rich for yourself.

Todd Huston was fourteen when he severed his right leg in a waterskiing accident. The doctors saved and reattached the limb but infection crept in. After 28 surgeries and ongoing physical therapy, this young man from Tulsa had to accept the fact that he would loose his leg. He began a life of self-pity.

He wrote, "I would hide my physical scars from my friends. I seldom swam and I used humor to hide my mental scars."  He tried so hard not to loose that leg, but it was time it let it go. He had every opportunity to wallow in self-pity, every excuse to live a miserable life because life itself had not been fair to him. But he got tired of hoarding his self-pity. So he decided to live for others, more specifically, to champion those who had disabilities.

Todd Huston decided to climb Mount McKinley, the highest point in North America. His goal took him years of training to complete but when he reached the top and returned, this is what he said. "I see myself as a representative of the forty-three million Americans who, on any given day, are struggling against a major illness, a disability, or any other health-related challenge."  He even went on to describe such things as divorce, the death of a loved one, or overcoming addiction. Todd climbed for all of us, because all of are missing something that we wish we had. All of us feel the urge to hoard something to make up for our insufficiencies. All of us. We hoard because we feel empty. We are greedy because we feel poor.

That is why we can feel so lonely at the cocktail party, because we are trying to appear to have it all together. And it is not the truth. The truth is that we are empty. We get greedy for stuff or money or relationships or success because we feel empty inside. But the truth is that we cannot fill our own emptiness. The only thing that fills our emptiness is not taking more stuff but giving it away.

There is only one recipe to treat all kinds of greed. It is generosity. Every single day, do something for someone else. Do it not just for family members or someone who will make you look good. Do something for someone else who has no impact on your life. Give so that you may be rich with God.

Instead of asking yourself, first thing in the morning, "How can I feel good today?" ask yourself, "What can I do for you today, God?"

There are all kinds of greed but there is only one kind of generosity. Generosity belongs to God. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Store up love and hope and generosity. Store up gratefulness. When we talk about giving money to charities and to the church, I don't tell you so that we can pay the church bills. I tell you this because you MUST give your money away. No matter how much you have, you must be generous. There is no option if you want to follow Jesus. And believe me, you don't want to let Jesus walk on by and be left with only yourself to focus on.  Give yourself away so that you may truly live.

The Bridge: How and Why we Pray

I went to grandfather mountain last week. On top of the mountain, there is a bridge called the Mile High Bridge. It is terrifying. They call it the mile high bridge because it is exactly one mile from sea level to the altitude of the bridge. One mile UP. There was a high wind on the afternoon that we walked across. A high wind, a swinging bridge, and me, trying not to look down.

When my babies were little and they cried in bed at night, I would immediately get up and get them whatever they needed. It was instinct. I didn't stop to think. But now my youngest will be nine in October. And sometimes, he will yell from his bed, "Hey, mom! Can I have a drink of water?" sometimes, I do just get it for him, but lately, I have taken to saying, "Sure, you can have a drink of water. Just get up and there is a glass in the bathroom."

"But I want you to get it for me. I'm tired."

"Well, I'm tired too," I say, and then the interaction doesn't get much better from there.

Now, you may think that I'm selfish and sometimes I truly am. But I also know that it would be better for Max to learn to do some things himself. I don't want him, at age 30, to roll over in bed and ask his spouse to get him a drink of water. I want him to be the kind of guy who offers to get her one.

Today, Jesus talks to us about praying. And he says some pretty insightful stuff. He tells a story of a man who is traveling at night. In Israel, especially during the hotter months, this kind of travel was not uncommon. The sand and heat were simply too much to bear during the day so a person was more comfortable traveling at night. And, of course, there were no drive-throughs or gas stations, so the traveler would eventually have to rely on the generosity of strangers in order to eat or rest.

A traveler arrives at the home of a local but the person has no food. So the local man comes to the door of a friends house and it is midnight. He has to ask his friend for bread in order to feed the stranger who has come to his house. Now many homes in Jesus' day were just one room. All cooking, cleaning, and sleeping were done in one space. So when the friend knocks at the door, he is waking up the man's entire family. But Jesus tells us that the friend must be persistent. He must keep knocking and if he does, eventually, the owner of the house will come out and feed him, if only just to get him to stop with the knocking.

So God will answer our prayers if we just keep asking. 

But most of us think of God as some kind of vending machine. If I pray for health and a successful career, then I should get what I ask for or something is not working, either God does not exist or God is not listening or God fundamentally does not care. If I ask for a drink of water, well then, God has better get me one and fast. And if God does not respond with speed, we figure that God is just not there.

In 1870, a creative engineer by the name of John Roebling dreamed of building a bridge that would connect New York to Long Island. All the engineers of his day thought he was crazy but John managed to convince his son Washington, also an engineer, to tackle the project with him. They hired a crew and began. After only a few months, there was a terrible accident on site and John was killed. His son, Washington, was severely injured and suffered brain damage. Washington could only move one finger. The rest of his body was paralyzed and he could not speak.

Engineers across the world criticized John and his son for tackling such a project. But Washington would not stop pursuing his fathers dream. He figured out how to communicate with his wife by tapping his finger on her arm. His wife listened with a kind of patience that was amazing. Using his direction, she rehired the crew and they continued the project. It took Washington 13 years of asking his wife to complete this and that detail until the bridge was finally finished in 1883. The Brooklyn Bridge stands today as a model of persistence, a tribute to a man and his father, two men who would not give up hope.

Jesus says Ask and your will receive. I looked up the koine Greek. It is a present imperative, which could also be loosely translated as keep on asking or keep on knocking or keep on seeking. Remember that God does not act like fast food. God is trying to develop a relationship with you. God is trying to build a bridge between you and the divine, so that you may know him. The purpose prayer is not to get what you want. The purpose of prayer is to come to know God.

Sometimes, we do get an answer and that answer is no.  If God does not do exactly what you asked for, it does not mean that you are not loved. Jesus asked God to take this cup away from him on the night before he was crucified. And God answered Jesus' prayer but the answer was NO. God did not take the cup from him. God asked him to suffer and die for us. And even now, two thousand years later, we are still discovering the nature of that kind of love and sacrifice. Gods answer had a perspective to it that would only be revealed years later. Though God answered no in that moment in the garden, his greater answer to Jesus and to all of us is yes. God is building something in you and for you, a bridge to the heart of the divine. And God wants you to pray constantly and for everything but with the understanding that God's answers sometimes take time to hear and understand. 

Next time to envision your prayer life, think of it more as a bridge than as a vending machine. And remember that there is a living being much more intelligent and loving than yourself on the other end of that bridge and that God can see things much more clearly, things present and things to come. The answers will come but the most important thing is that you build and fortify that bridge.