All Saints' Sunday with Baptism - 11/05/2023

The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs by Fra Angelico

 Readings for today.

Coffee hour last Sunday was a glorious celebration of Trinity’s generous gifts of hospitality. I arrived a bit late and admired the delicious offerings, including a tree themed dessert table.  The chocolate trunk of the tree was heavenly!  

Beyond the bounty of food and coffee, a warm parish hall and the hum of conversation, I saw several unhoused neighbors being welcomed in.  I learned that one of those neighbors is a young woman I had seen in church.  It was really cold last weekend, and before the service, one of our congregants invited her to come in.  The same person sat near her and helped her find her way through the service.  She was invited to coffee hour, where people learned her story and that she needed a place to sleep safely.  One person went down to the WHEEL shelter to find out about shelter resources.  Upon learning that there were beds available at a nearby location, a second person walked her to that shelter.  

A cold and frightened young woman found compassion, kindness, and hope because this community together shared their gifts for welcome, and connecting resources with urgent needs, and gentle companionship.  What a beautiful, lived statement of our faith!

22nd Sunday after Pentecost / Stewardship Ingathering - 10/29/2023

 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Readings for today

Listening to the news from the US and around the world this week, I have been noticing my emotions. From politics to public safety, finances to climate changes, the world feels risky, scary and uncertain.

Risky to live on this planet that is shaken by earthquakes and battered by suddenly powerful storms.

Risky to be part of a social fabric that is rent by violence and human competition for power that disregards the value of human life and dignity.

Risky to wonder if, when, where we matter and whether we can change any of the things that scare us so much.

20th Sunday after Pentecost - 10/15/2023

Image by Zoltan Matuska from Pixabay

Readings for today.

I love a jigsaw puzzle. I love the process of sorting pieces, figuring out the shading and gradations of colors, the shapes of the knobs and slots, the fragments of the picture that carry across multiple pieces. And then there’s the satisfaction of the picture coming together one little bit at a time.
It’s especially sweet if you’re working the puzzle with other people, everyone doing the parts that they see and can do.

One of my favorite puzzles is a drawing of a hedge maze embedded with all kinds of clues to solve a mystery. It’s 1,000 tiny pieces. The flowers, statues, and water features of the maze often span multiple pieces. Just one missing piece can obscure an important clue. It doesn’t matter whether your puzzle has 1,000 pieces or 50, a missing piece means the overall picture has a hole in it.

Trinity is like a jigsaw puzzle. We have many pieces of different shapes and, by some holy miracle, every piece has a place they fit. Without any one piece, the full picture of Trinity is incomplete.

New pieces are being added all the time and our puzzle is always expanding. Where we had a 3 dimensional puzzle that has pieces we can fit together, time adds a 4th dimension. Our Trinity puzzle has been taking shape, many shapes, since people began gathering informally for Anglican worship on a ship in the harbor. It has changed and grown many times. A time lapse photo across the last 158 years would show different sections coming together, all of them forming a big picture of who we are today. Every piece is needed to complete the picture, even as new pieces are being added and the puzzle is always expanding.

Over time, our ever-expanding Trinity jigsaw puzzle is immense. Bigger than we can take in. So big that we cannot see the edges, where it began or where it will end. And, as I say this, I’m not sure it’s flat. I suspect it has layers that relate and connect through space and time. And, because we are a community of faith, I am going to suggest a 5th dimension, a spiritual dimension that relates the whole Trinity that was and is and is to come to the Holy Spirit. I think I just blew my own mind.

In today’s Exodus reading, the people of Israel longed to put all the pieces together and understand what was happening to them. They wanted to understand the God who would call them out of slavery in Egypt to wander aimlessly in the wilderness. The God who invited them from a life where they had plenty to eat and drink out to a place where they wondered on a daily basis when they would die of starvation or dehydration. Sure, they had been enslaved and exploited, but at least they had fresh fruits and vegetables, and plenty of water. So where IS this God who promised a better life?

Trying to fill in the missing piece, the mysterious God they cannot see, they beg Aaron to make them a statue while Moses is away. Oooh, God is mad that the people didn’t trust God’s promise to take care of them!! Good thing Moses reminds God of how it will be hard to fulfill the promise to multiply the descendants of faithful Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to be like the stars in heaven if God kills them all!

Fast forward a few decades, and the people DO arrive at the Promised Land. Where they multiply, as promised, and thrive. In that moment, in the wilderness, they could only see their current time and place.

We only ever see where we are, and hopefully remember some of how the pieces fit together in the past to bring us to this place. We cannot see the full picture that includes the future. Only God can. God’s time is not our time. God’s time is all time all at once. We can only see what is right here and now.

People of the Exodus got worried about their future, worried about where God was, worried that they might not survive this trek in the wilderness. There was a promise of milk and honey - but WHEN? Even Moses didn’t know how long it would take. In the meantime, they were worried about their survival. If only the Israelites had our stewardship theme of Rooted in Abundance!

If we look at the bigger picture of their puzzle, which is history for us, we can see the abundance that was hard for them to recognize. Abundance of community (they weren’t out there alone, they had each other), manna (food, nutritious and plentiful even if it wasn’t really tasty), freedom from oppression, water (miraculously flowing out of a rock), all the wisdom and skills of crafts- and tradespeople, laborers, people with skills to cook, to care for children and elders, experienced and trusted leaders at many levels, and many levels of faith in God.

But they couldn’t see all those pieces working together to create a whole and beautiful image of their life together. In their anxiety about the future, when and where and how they would get there, they focus on what is missing. So they do something they had seen the Egyptians do in their worship of many gods. They create a shiny statue to worship. Something concrete to receive their offerings and supplications. They borrow something from a familiar culture, but not the culture of their faith, to assuage the discomfort about their current situation.

Moses reminds God, and the people, that there is a bigger picture, a bigger concept of time. God has promised to be faithful, and God keeps promises. God’s desire is for us to live and thrive.

Our puzzle that we see here and now is a small bit of God’s puzzle. And that the puzzle is incomplete without the unique shape of each of us. Our skills. Our time. Our life, offered with gratitude to the God who releases us from enslavement to idols and leads us toward fullness of life.

Sometimes it feels like the gifts we have to offer are too small, too insignificant to make a difference. So often when we hear stewardship campaigns, we take away a message that all that matters is how we share our wealth of money. In our social agreements, money does pay the utilities and salaries. It is one piece of the puzzle.

Without the offerings of wisdom and works, our puzzle has many blank spots. We all have wisdom, gathered from life, skills from work and hobbies, passions that ignite and engage us. Works are how we share that wisdom. Our time, as precious as any monetary commitment, offered to help complete the picture of God’s hope for us and for all the world to thrive and multiply in peace.

As you pray about God’s desire for Trinity and how you can be part of it, I invite you to listen with your heart and mind. Listen for the tabs (knobs, bumps, loops) and blanks (pockets, sockets, locks) of the puzzle piece that is uniquely you now. Not the you of the past, because we are always changing and growing. Not the you of the future, because we aren’t there yet. What part of God’s Trinity puzzle are you NOW?

I am excited to see how all of our pieces will bring the puzzle together, filling some empty spots, expanding new sections, and all with the energy of something we are working on with one another and with God.


Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.

19th Sunday after Pentecost - 10/08/2023

 

Photo by Ylanite on Pixabay.com

Readings for today

One of our younger members almost always brings me acorns, presenting them to me with wonder and delight. Acorns are amazing.  From this tiny seed grows a huge oak tree. Did you know that the average oak tree lives 600 years?  600 years!  The tree that grows from this acorn could be around for the next 20 generations!!  That’s children, grandchildren, and 18 generations of great-grandchildren.  Roughly 4 times as long as Trinity has been a congregation already. With this tiny seed of knowledge, it comes as no surprise that in various cultures throughout history, acorns are symbols of life, growth, fertility, potential, and immortality.

18th Sunday after Pentecost / St Francis Sunday - 10/01/2023

Readings for today (Track 1).

Did you know that, in 2020, Seattle had the highest ratio of dogs to people of any major city in the US and more dogs than children?  Plenty of cats here, too. 

We don’t have any pets at our house right now so when I think about animal companions in my life, I have to go back a few years.  I can see my 12-year old self, sitting in the fall sunshine on the back porch of the blue 1890s farmhouse where I grew up.  I am holding one of my 4-H chickens.  I’ve got a blue bandana triangle holding my hair away from my face, braids falling over my shoulders, wearing my poultry club t-shirt, and this bantam hen nestled in my lap.  She was a buff Brahma. She was so pretty and she had such personality!  She loved to pose on the show table.  

15th Sunday after Pentecost / Homecoming Sunday / Blessing a Marriage / Season of Creation - 09/10/2023

 Readings for the Day.

Wow!  It really feels like fall already, doesn’t it?  School has begun, or will soon.  Weather is cooling.  Days are shorter.  The air vibrates with the energy of new beginnings.  New routines.  New life and relationships.  

It is so good to see all of you here this morning.  Welcome home!!  Thank you for making Trinity part of your fall transition.  

Today is Homecoming Sunday.  We come home to this place, to this community, and to God.  Whether we have been here before or not, we come home to belonging, to being known and seen as we are - beloved and uniquely created children of God.  Imperfect and amazing.  Welcome home!!  

12th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15 - 08/20/2023

 Readings for today

“Why not?” the woman asks Jesus.

First, Jesus ignores her.  So she gets louder.  Which makes his disciples beg him to send her away.  He turns to his disciples and tells them that his mission is for ‘other’ people.  More deserving people.

Finally, she gets close enough to make her petition to Jesus directly.  In the language of those other, more deserving people, she kneels at his feet and humbly asks for his help.

Before we go on with the dynamics of this interaction between Jesus and the woman, let’s pause for a moment to notice context.

After feeding the 5,000 men plus women and children, Jesus sent the disciples ahead in a boat and went up the mountain to pray.  Then there was a storm and the disciples were in trouble, so he walked on the water to save them.  Safely ashore in Gennesaret, the healings continue.

Then, at the beginning of this chapter, the Pharisees have come to find Jesus and engage him in a legal debate about washing before eating and other purity laws.  Jesus turns the debate into a teaching moment about how keeping the letter of the law can lose the spirit of it.  

He then leaves that debate and goes much further north, into the historic Promised Land of Abraham and Sarah, near the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon. Matthew doesn’t specify why Jesus travels this far from home, though his reputation for healing clearly goes with him.

Traveling in a foreign land, the home of Jacob who became the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, Jesus brings with him an assumption, based in ancient prophesy, that his work and ministry is to bring good news of God’s remembrance ONLY to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  This woman, a foreigner to Jesus, who is ironically a foreigner in this context, does not fit Jesus’ preconceived idea of his ministry audience.

So he ignores her, hoping she will go away.  But she persists.  SHE believes in him.  People have been healed by touching the hem of his garment.  She refuses to be dismissed, dehumanized, or gaslit into believing that God’s generosity of healing grace does not include her daughter.

She believes in the kingdom Jesus has been preaching about when he isn’t healing or feeding people everywhere he goes.  A kingdom where there is justice and release from oppression, health and peace, bountiful harvests and great rejoicing.  And why wouldn’t that kingdom include her?

Her persistence as she counters Jesus’ rebuff about throwing the children’s food to the dogs recalls Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees in the preceding passage.  Is a narrow historical interpretation of the prophecy getting in the way of the spirit of the good news?   

I wonder how long the silence stretched on as the disciples (who were never far away) watched and wondered at her chutzpah to talk back to Jesus.  As Jesus considered her words.  As she continued kneeling at his feet, in humility, desperate for her child’s life and health.  Was it 2 breaths?  10 breaths?  How long did Jesus wrestle with what he understood from tradition and this overt challenge to live into the spirit of his own teaching?

Embodying the grace and generosity of a God who desires wholeness, healing, fullness of life for every person, could he continue to say the Good News was for only some people?

I imagine that, after a tense silence, he draws a deep sighing breath, and with some admiration for her shrewd argument, proclaims, “Woman, great is your faith!”  She believed that Jesus could recognize the limitations of his own thinking and live into the spirit of grace and generosity that his ministry demonstrated in other places.  After this story Jesus returns south to his home territory around the Sea of Galilee.

How often do we get caught up in the letter of something and forget to consider the spirit behind it?

Jesus, as the power-holder in this situation, could have reacted very differently.  He could have continued to hold rigidly to his preconceived limitations, stepped over the prostrate pleading woman, and continued on his way.  Instead, He chooses vulnerability.  He chooses to hear and consider her counter-argument.  

He chooses an awkward, and grace-filled, position.  He chooses the spirit of the Good News of God’s kingdom of justice and peace and abundance.

It’s risky and vulnerable to choose to live into God’s kingdom.  It challenges us to open ourselves to uncertain and scary possibilities.  What if those ‘other’ people hear how great this place is and they want to come here?  What will happen to our known community if a bunch of strangers show up and expect to be treated like they belong here?  We might not be able to do things the way we always have?  How will we survive?

So much uncertainty.  So much possibility.  It’s hard to imagine breaking out of the safety of the letter of things.  And that’s the moment of faith in God’s promise to be with us, to extend healing and hope to ALL people, to empower us to ministry as a welcoming community of justice and love.

As we head into this fall, Trinity is looking at how to invite more neighbors to join us on this journey of faith, how to grow deeper in our own faith and share the good news of abundance that we know from our own lives.  It will be risky, and vulnerable, and awkward at times.  We will undoubtedly try some things that don’t go as expected.  We will learn and try again.  Our only failure will be to not try, to not extend ourselves in faith that God is with us as we share the good news of God’s generous grace and love with every person.

Let us pray.

Living God, you let the Gentile woman subvert your plans; give us the faith that comes from the heart and walks beyond our boundary posts that we might be surprised by outrageous grace; through Jesus Christ, son of David and light of the world. Amen.