In addition to our principal celebrations on the Lord’s Day, the cathedral celebrates Holy Eucharist every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Our weekday services are not well-attended. Occasionally, we’ll have as many as eight or nine people in the congregation, but most of the time it’s two or three, and on many days, like today, it is just me and the lay server. I will confess that I often find this responsibility tedious and burdensome When I already have an impossibly long to do list, a schedule full of meetings upon meetings, and when I’m always conscious of letting someone down by what I’ve failed to do, saying mass for one or two people doesn’t exactly feel like a welcome addition to a full plate. 

I’m the pastor, so I could discontinue the practice, of course, and I have come close to doing so many times. But our monk-in-residence and a few faithful souls love that we do it and think it’s important, and I love them and think they’re important, so here we are. 

To be honest, the longer I have put up with it, the more deeply I have been converted by it. Struggling with the very tedium and burden of daily Eucharists has helped me come to know Jesus more fully, experience God’s love in deeper ways, and better understand what, as a priest in Christ’s Church, I am for. 

I’m usually rushing from something to get to the chapel on time, then rushing off to something else as soon as I can get away. That means I’m almost always praying about whatever is right in front of me on any given day. Squeezing mass into the middle of ordinary days has forced me to learn how to lay everything from the smallest concerns to the biggest anxieties, on God’s altar, which has in turn helped me learn how to better see God at work in every ordinary moment. Taking a regular share in these services has helped me bring more of my life and myself to God. 

Saying mass in a small chapel with only a few people also offers a powerfully intimate encounter with Jesus. Sundays are full of conversations and laughter, music and people, and it’s all joyful and good and holy. But the quiet weekdays help keep my heart tuned to God’s still, small voice. Returning again and again, in the midst of the ordinary hectic day, helps keep me pointed toward Christ, the morning star, the true north for our souls. 

Sticking with this practice over the years has continued to remind me that the church’s main business isn’t producing or achieving anything. Saying mass day after day, when almost no one comes, reminds me that as disciples of Jesus, we are not called to accomplish and achieve, but to simply offer ourselves to God, to place daily on the altar of mercy our worries, our joys, our failures, our loved ones, our enemies, our life and our labor, “ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Liturgy isn’t useful or constructive, it isn’t worth doing for large numbers and not worth doing for small numbers. Liturgy, and the Christian life it enables, is about showing up for God and offering our lives to God. 

These simple daily offerings provide a gentle, quiet, spiritual heartbeat in the midst of our city and our diocese. There aren’t many people in downtown Omaha who take notice of what we’re doing at noon on weekdays. The saints who live and work across the plains and in the towns of Nebraska certainly don’t often think of their cathedral and its little weekday offerings. But two or three disciples are at the altar almost every day: praying for ourselves, praying for our city, praying for the churches and communities across our diocese, naming them and their clergy out loud before God, asking God’s blessing on their lives and ministries, thanking God for the gift of our connections across time and distance. I trust that spiritual heartbeat is, in God’s mystical economy, pulsing and resonating in the souls of those we pray for and with. 

So even though not many would notice or care, and as much as it would make it easier to get lunch, I don’t think I will discontinue our weekday services. As a cathedral church, they are an essential part of our vocation to pray without ceasing for the life of our city and diocese. As a priest, they irritate me into remembering what I was ordained for: to lead God’s people in offering our whole lives to God, and to help God’s people join the river of love that constantly flows from God and back to God, moment by moment, day in and day out, world without end. 

On August 12, 1805, Meriwether Lewis and his “Corps of Discovery” expedition reached the source of the Missouri River in the Montana mountains. He took a cool drink from the spring, rested a while, and ascended to the top of the ridge at Lemhi Pass. The group had been travelling in canoes upstream and uphill for many long months. They had endured illness, a harsh winter, grizzly bears, and the death of one of their companions. As they ascended that ridge, they expected to see what all the scientific experts of the day just knew to be true: the land and the river gently descending toward the Pacific Ocean. They thought they had finally discovered a water passage across North America. What he found when he stood on the top of that ridge was not a gradual descent to the ocean, but massive, awe-inspiring, snow-capped mountains as far as he could see. Lewis and his company were skilled canoe men, able to navigate the most challenging waterways. But if they were going to reach the Pacific, they had to become mountain climbers in a hurry. In an instant, all their preparation and training were thrown out the window by the awesome site of the northern Rocky Mountains.

I came across that story in a book I’m currently reading called Canoeing the Mountains.^[1] It compares the situation of the contemporary church to that moment in Lewis and Clark’s journey. Churches of every variety have been on a steady path of decline in membership, attendance, and participation since the late 1960’s. The fastest growing religious group is those who have no religious affiliation at all. We are now several decades past a time when Christian identity and belief could be assumed. Anyone who has a serious commitment to a Christian community in this moment is swimming against the stream. The church of early and mid-twentieth century America was a wonderful fleet of canoes, led by skilled water travelers, carried along by the current of culture. But standing on the ridge of 2018, the church is looking at a new reality, and suddenly needs to learn how to climb mountains.

According to every statistical trend, as a downtown church, founded before 1900, this old canoe ought to be wearing out, and coming apart, and facing a crisis of survival. But by every objective measure, that simply isn’t true. In 2017, we welcomed more than thirty new members to our cathedral community, our fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth. Our Average Sunday Attendance is up by more than 30 per cent since 2013, and our annual giving is up by more than 60%, moving from $214,000 pledged a few years ago to nearly $350,000 pledged for 2018. Our total membership is over 500 for the first time in more than a decade, and that’s not counting the dozens of people who are regular participants in our ministries but haven’t formally joined as members. Our children’s programming is expanding, children cooing and crying and joyfully singing are as regular a feature on Sunday mornings as the big organ trumpets. This crew of rowers is quickly learning how to climb mountains.

The people who are joining or renewing their commitment to our community regularly report they are doing so because you are showing how following Jesus can make a difference in our lives and in the world. Our ministries with the poor and marginalized, through the Friends of Tamar, DEO, Yates Outreach, and the Fricke Food Pantry have become more and more central to our identity in recent years, and they go hand in hand with our weekly worship to form us more and more in the image of Christ, and send us out into the world. We are learning how to climb mountains by simply connecting people with the power of Jesus to change lives and heal communities, and finding ways to share our lives more deeply with one another.

In 2018, I plan to devote more of my time to doing a deeper dive with spiritual formation and discipleship. In addition to continuing to build the ways we are forming both children and adults in the faith, I’ll be starting a handful of small discipleship groups that help people go deeper in their daily walk with Jesus. Father Steven, with several lay leaders, will be starting a series of small dinner groups, who will meet regularly to share life and faith in more substantial ways. I hope that this year will be a year of growing deeper in our faith and spiritual practice.

While God is up to great things in our midst, there certainly continue to be challenges as we learn to navigate this new terrain. While your incredible generosity continues to expand, we are still relying more heavily on our endowment each year than what is sustainable over the long term. Favorable market conditions mean the total balance on our trust funds is higher now than it was a year ago despite a heavy draw, but we need to continue to work to reduce the amount we are drawing each year. That means we will likely need to develop more creative and innovative ways to generate revenue for our cathedral.

One way we began to explore that in 2017 was to appoint a task force to begin to craft a plan for renovating an ageing and increasingly challenged parish house. We contracted with the architecture firm Alley, Poyner, Macchietto to help us dream about how God might be calling us to utilize and leverage this resource in the coming years. You all contributed big dreams and ideas, and the task force and architects are busy in this new year working to develop a more concrete plan. Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

Our corps of discovery here at the cathedral is led by some seriously talented and faithful field guides, and I would put our staff up against any staff, at any church, of any size, anywhere. In the first draft of this address, I tried to list out the specific things that each of them do for all of us in this place, and it literally doubled the length of this sermon, so I’ll say more about each of them downstairs. But when you see Father Steven King, Deacons Ellen Ross or Teresa Houser, Stacy Gustin, Erin VanZee, Brother James Dowd, Christine Misek, Maurice Thompson, Marty Wheeler Burnett, or our newest staff members, Linda MacTaggart and Kyle Smith, please say thank you to them. They all work longer hours, and handle more responsibilities, than any one of us fully realizes. That’s not even beginning to name the countless lay volunteers who put in long hours each week to support all that we do here.

In every generation, it can feel like our challenges are unique, or that no one has ever been looking at mountains like this before. But just look around this space, picture the people who are no longer sitting in these pews, or go look around the museum, and you’ll see that there is an army of people who have stood right here before, who are cheering us on. George Selwyn and James Patteson are memorialized in those windows, and they had to adapt and innovate in the South Pacific. Jackson Kemper is memorialized in that window back there, and he adapted and innovated across most of the central U.S. Dean Charles Gardiner, and Libby Lauritzen, Jack Fricke, Dan Loring, Gloria Dunbar, Warren Whitted, George Barger, Brad Ableson, and on and on and on, all had to do in their day exactly what we are doing in ours. What an unbelievable privilege for us to stand in that line, and be called to embark on that adventure.

Last March, my family did some mountain climbing of our own by way of a cog rail to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. As we stood at the summit, we could see as far as Kansas on the horizon, and just beyond Kansas, the actual curvature of the earth. We could see the edge of our planet while firmly planted on it. Standing in this pulpit, seated in that chair, I have the incredible privilege of looking out over all of you who I have promised to love and nurture as best I can. I see us learning to climb the mountains before us. And every day, every week, every year, I can see the horizon of God’s kingdom of love and peace, justice and life, drawing closer and closer, so that we can almost touch it. Amen.

 

[1] Bolsinger, Tod. Canoeing the Mountains. IVP Books. Dowers Grove, Illinois. 2015.

In the ancient church, before calendars were widespread, it was the custom for all of the holy days for the year to be announced on the feast of the Epiphany. Just as the Christian faith is centered around the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the Christian calendar is centered around the feast of Easter. The annual calendar helps us orient our days, weeks, and months around the central mystery of the Christian faith. The Epiphany proclamation helps us put in mind and look out over the whole scope of the salvation story as we enter into a new year.

Dear brothers and sisters,
the glory of the Lord has shone upon us,
and shall ever be manifest among us,
until the day of his return.

Through the rhythms of times and seasons
let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation.

Let us recall the year’s culmination,
the Easter Triduum of the Lord:
his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial,
and his rising celebrated
between the evening of the Twenty-ninth of March
and the evening of the Thirty-first of March,
Easter Sunday being on the First day of April.

Each Easter — as on each Sunday —
the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed
by which Christ has for ever conquered sin and death.
From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy.

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent,
will occur on the Fourteenth Day of February.

The Ascension of the Lord will be commemorated on
Sunday, the Thirteenth of May or Thursday, the Tenth day of May.

Pentecost, joyful conclusion of the season of Easter,
will be celebrated on the Twentieth day of May.

And, this year the First Sunday of Advent will be
on the Second day of December, 2018.

Likewise the pilgrim Church proclaims the passover of Christ
in the feasts of the holy Mother of God,
in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints,
and in the commemoration of the faithful departed.

To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come,
Lord of time and history,
be endless praise, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Over the next few months, our Old Testament lessons will follow the lives of the great patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith in the book of Genesis. These stories are artful, fun, and spiritually rich, but they can also seem quite strange. There are a lot of unfamiliar social and religious customs, the characters are often deeply flawed and behave in morally reprehensible ways, and what is playful and poetic in Hebrew often comes across as stilted and sparse in English.

But for all their strangeness, the basic point is pretty simple: No amount of human weakness and human folly can stand in the way of God’s love and God’s promise. The whole message is that we can’t screw things up badly enough to thwart God’s love.

Today we get the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar is a slave in the household of Abraham and Sarah, and Ishmael is the son she conceived by Abraham at a time when Sarah and Abraham were convinced they wouldn’t have a child of their own.

Once Sarah and Abraham miraculously do give birth to Isaac, Sarah doesn’t want the slave’s child hanging around as a possible usurper, so Hagar and Ishmael are sent out into the desert wilderness: desolate, rejected, and alone. When they run out of water, in a heart-wrenching moment, Hagar places the baby under a bush, and sits just out of sight and sound, unable to watch her own child die, but also unable to completely turn away. As the story is told, you can almost hear Ishmael’s cries of thirst, and Hagar’s screams of anguish. But shockingly, we are told “God heard the voice of the boy. . .And God was with the boy.”

God was with the boy, in the depths of grief and the agony of thirst. God was with the boy, who was rejected and cast out. God was with the boy, who was insignificant, and illegitimate. God is there, in the lonely, deadly, desert, in the parched screams of a baby and his mother. That’s who God is with. That’s what God does. Ishmael is not the chosen one, Ishmael and Hagar are sent to a sure death out of the jealousy and fear of one of our faith’s heroes, but not even that can stop God’s love and God’s promise. That’s who God is.

The fact that God tends to be with the despised, and lonely, and unworthy is exactly why Jesus tells his disciples that joining up with this God is likely to get you into a whole lot of trouble. We get edgy Jesus in today’s reading. “I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” I have come to set a son against his father, and a daughter against her mother.” When you really join up with the God whose love knows no limit and can’t be stopped, watch out.

The God we worship, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Ishmael and Hagar, King David and Mary and Jesus and the rest, is a God who is always turning the world upside down. The poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, weakness is strength, dying is the path to life, the outsider is beloved and worthy of God’s promise and love. Whenever people really believe that, and really start to live like that’s true, feathers get ruffled for sure.

Even recent Christian history bears that out. Dorothy Day was arrested over and over and over, mocked and criticized and despised for standing up for the rights of workers, and welcoming the poor and destitute into beloved community. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed because he dared to take on the racism built into the foundation of our society. Oscar Romero was shot while saying mass at the altar because he stood with the poor in El Salvador and stood up to the government that ignored and exploited them.

But that’s what it means to sign up with Jesus. It means joining God in the wilderness, sitting with the desolation of Hagar and the cries of Ishmael, hearing those same screams in the laments of mothers whose children are killed by guns; in the desolation of a refugee family who has watched their son wash up dead on a beach, only to meet contempt from the nation they flee to. Following Jesus is about shining a light of love into the dark life of the woman sold on the streets, it’s about taking starving Ishmael into our arms by sharing a table with the homeless and hungry.

God heard the voice of the boy. And God was with the boy. Do we hear his voice today? Are we with that boy, or that girl, that man or that woman?

But Jesus isn’t just edgy in today’s gospel lesson. His warnings of resistance are backed up by re-stating God’s promise that has endured since all the way back in Genesis. “Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” “Even the hairs on your head are counted.” There is nothing that can happen to us, there is nothing we can do, to escape God’s love and God’s commitment to us.

God heard the voice of the boy. And God was with the boy. God hears your voice: scared, broken, angry, doubtful, grieving, filled with regrets, singing with joy. God hears your voice. If God was with Ishmael and Hagar, that means God is with you.

Where do you hear Ishmael, where do you see Hagar this week?

It’s no secret that we Christians are not always particularly Christ-like. The church and church people are just as flawed as Abraham and Sarah and the rest. But whenever Christians start to take Jesus at his word, whenever Christians start to live with Jesus’ heart, they often start to seem crazy. But in a world gone crazy with fear, in a world mad with violence, in a world full of demented divisions, living and loving like Jesus might just make us go sane. Loving wastefully, waging peace, living like Jesus, might just throw out a lifeline of hope and joy, and announce the Kingdom of God has come near. Amen.

 

The title for my sermon this morning is “Proclaim Original Grace”, which is the title of the second chapter of our Lenten book Find Your Way Home. Our Old Testament reading today is actually the story of our original sin. That juxtaposition was intentional. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that original sin is not a particularly popular Christian doctrine. When most people think of original sin (which isn’t often), they tend to recall some vague sense that it’s about how cute little babies are in fact terrible sinners, and need to be baptized to get rid of all their horrible sinfulness. Or we might think it has to do with the way humans procreate, and how that’s inherently bad. If those are what we mean by original sin, no wonder it’s unpopular, because that’s an absurd notion.

Our reading from Genesis today reminds us that human sin doesn’t really have anything to do with babies or hell fire or sex. It’s a familiar story. God makes the world, puts Adam and Even in the garden of Eden, tells them to have a good time, just as long as they don’t eat this one fruit from this one tree. A serpent tempts them to eat the fruit, they eat it, and now childbirth is dangerous and painful and life is hard.

The key to understanding sin is how the serpent hooks Adam and Eve. “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” You’ve got this situation here where you are in relationship with each other, and with God, and with all the great stuff in the garden. But eat this fruit, and you won’t need God. You’ll be able to know it all and do it all on your own. Our original isn’t about all the naughty things we do, it’s about the way we reject our need for God and for one another.

We were made for community. We were made for relationship with God, with each other, and with creation. That’s why we’ve selected the book Find Your Way Home for Lent. The twenty-four spiritual principles outlined in that book were developed by and for women who have experienced unspeakable trauma to help them learn how to live in the kind of genuine, loving community both they and we were made for.

See, what comes before original sin in the Bible is original grace. We were made in the image of God. The perfect, beautiful, loving, compassionate, thumbprint of God can be found at the center of every single one of us. Original grace is the idea that every single human being is endlessly valuable. Every single human being is sacred and worthy of love. Original sin is nothing more than the way we reject original grace in ourselves and in the people around us. We forget that we are loved immeasurably by God, so we try to fill our love hunger with money or booze or stuff or status or whatever. We forget that we are all invaluable in the eyes of God, so we spend our days trying to prove that we are valuable by trying to be perfect or by overworking, or by shrilly trying to win the game of life.

In a recent sermon, Bishop Barker quoted a friend of his who says there are two types of people in the world: the enough love people, and the not enough love people. The enough love people are generally cheerful and pleasant to be around. They are able to let perceived slights and insults roll off, they forgive easily, and they are a joy to be around. The not enough love people are generally irritable and grumpy, demanding of friends and family, they hold grudges over any small insult or perceived slight. The enough love people act out of courage and generosity. The not enough love people live with fear and a sense of scarcity.

The first step in finding our way home is to reclaim our original grace. Finding your way home begins with remembering that you are loved. Finding your way home is about learning how to live as an enough love person instead of that not enough love person all of us can be.

You are loved deeply, immeasurably, unalterably: not because you are perfect, not because you deserve it, but simply because you bear in your body, soul, and mind, the very image of God. True peace, true joy, true freedom all start from really believing that to be true. And if it’s true for you, (which it is), it’s also true for every other person on the planet. It’s true for the people you like, and the people you don’t like. Your life, and our world, will really start to change when we really believe that. If you are loved endlessly, if the people around you are loved endlessly, then they don’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to be perfect. As our book puts it, “We don’t’ have to live in shame for all the things that have been done to us or that we have done to one another.”

Lent is a time when we are called to repent. That doesn’t mean feeling ashamed and beating ourselves up for all the crumby things we do. Repenting means turning it around, re-turning to the fact that you are loved. Repenting means remembering that we need God, and we need each other. Repenting means admitting we can’t go it alone. Repenting means accepting the first sentence of our book: “No matter where we are, we are better coming together than living separately.” Repenting means proclaiming original grace, seeing yourself and everyone around you as beloved, valuable, wonderful children of God.

Try it this week. Try sitting quietly for ten minutes some morning or evening and just thinking of how you carry the image of God, just contemplating the fact that God loves you. And then, if you really want to see your life change, anytime you see someone–at work, or at home, the person behind the cash regiser, the person you walk by in the store–think about how you are seeing the face of god. Think about they, with all their shortcomings, are beloved of God. Reclaim original grace, and then proclaim original grace. Right now, this week, start to find your way home to the God who made you by love, through love, and for love. Amen.

When I was in college, I had a part-time job at a small, independent bookstore in Hastings. This was during the era when the self-help book industry was just starting to explode. Books flooded into the store and flew off the shelves that promised to make you happier, better set up for love and connection, more productive, and more successful. The unabashed optimism and cheeriness of these books always made my cynical Generation X eyes roll dramatically and often. The epitome of the books from this age was Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is a time management and leadership manual sealed with a kind of smarmy spiritual veneer. Despite my constitutional allergy to the whole idea of the book, it’s actually not too bad, and I remember more than my pride wants me to admit. One of the habits Covey discusses is “to begin with the end in mind.” The idea is that if you have a clear goal for where you want to go in some area of your life in the future, it will transform how you live in the present. When you see the end, you know how to begin.

The Transfiguration of Jesus, which is the story in our gospel lesson today, is Matthew’s way of beginning with the end in mind. It seems like something right out of science fiction. Jesus and three of his disciples go up on a mountain together, and suddenly Jesus gets a mysterious glow, his clothes become dazzling white, he’s joined by two long dead prophets, and the thundering voice of God declares Jesus his beloved son, and urges the disciples to listen to him. I can’t hear this story without thinking of the final scene in Return of the Jedi when the shining, ghost-like figures of Anikan Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda appear to Luke and company.

It would be easy to dismiss this as just a fantastic invention of the gospel writer, but there’s a lot more than a simple magic trick going on here.

Up to this point in the story, things have gone pretty well. Jesus has been teaching, healing, and building up a nice little group of followers. But right after the episode this morning, things start to get a little darker. Jesus starts to journey toward Jerusalem, his conflict with the religious and political authorities starts to build toward its violent and tragic conclusion.

So right here on this mountain, just before things get really hard for Jesus and his disciples, God gives them a preview of what the end will look like. This episode is God’s way of saying, no matter what is about to happen, my light will outshine the coming darkness, my life will overcome the impending death. They are beginning a very difficult period with the end in mind. They have a glimpse of God’s victory at the end of the hardship they are about to face.

At the end of it all, when the disciples are on the ground overcome by fear, Jesus comes to them, touches them, and says, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

That’s exactly what Jesus says to us this morning, too. Get up, and do not be afraid. This story is always read on the Sunday right before Lent starts, and as we prepare to begin Lent, we get a preview of Easter. As we face different kinds of darkness–the worries about our jobs, our kids, fear for the nation, weariness at how conflicted we all are, fears about our health, or our money, or fears about potential assaults on our own dignity or that of others—we hear the promise, we see the preview, that God’s light and love will outshine and outlive the worst our world can be.

Get up, and do not be afraid. Do not be afraid because God’s light and love will shine brighter than the darkness you’re facing. Get up because God’s love is more powerful than the hatred and intolerance that are out there. Get up because that light and that love needs to be carried out into the dark world, and that’s what we are for as followers of Jesus.

Every week, this is meant to be a small little mountaintop, a place where the beauty of this space and the ancient prayers are meant to dazzle us just a little with a preview of God’s promised future, so that our experience of the present darkness can be reshaped by God’s light. Each week, the Jesus we meet on this mountaintop offers us a chance to begin again with the end in mind: the end of God’s loving kindness, God’s compassionate justice, God’s perfect peace.

We stand on this mountaintop each week so that we might go back out there and help dazzle the darkness around us, transfigure whatever sorrow we encounter, infect the world with love and hope. As our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry often puts it: our job is to help God transform the world from the nightmare it has become for so many into the dream God has for all people. Get up, and do not be afraid.

In a few minutes, we’ll baptize Oliver Pendell. As part of that, we’ll renew our own commitment to being light in the darkness, working for justice and peace in the world, and we’ll receive Oliver as a beloved brother in that work. Every baptism is this incredible moment to hear God call us beloved, to see God’s light shining in the darkness, and to be reminded that we are called to be that light in our lives.

All of us have plenty to be afraid of. All of us have more than our fair share of worry, of anger, of grief. We stand on the mountaintop again this morning, we are invited to begin again with the end in mind, with God’s glorious love and mercy in sight. We’re invited again to feel Jesus’ hand tap us on our sagging shoulders and say again:“Get up, and do not be afraid.” Amen.

 

 

 

 

There are people who shy away from AA because they think it seems too religious. Welcome to the Episcopal Church where we seldom make the mistake of seeming too religious.

You can tell by my outfit that I’m not a cowboy, so let me introduce myself: I’m Fr. Chuck Peek and I’ve been sober since April 30, 1986. For those for whom that form of introduction doesn’t mean anything, I’m a failed drunk. Once I belonged to the Poor Me club…poor me, poor me, pour me another! I don’t have to live like that anymore thanks to a program of recovery, such as AA; AA in turn owes its thanks to Fr. Sam Shoemaker, whom we celebrate tonight. Fr. Shoemaker, in turn, owed his life and ministry to his dedicated grasp of the essence of the spiritual tradition of Christ’s Church.

When we celebrate Fr. Shoemaker, we are celebrating a priest who was not at times shy about being critical of priests—something we can all relate to. (If you’ve been standing outside, finding fault with the Church, come on in and meet some of us who not only know its faults but sometimes are its faults!)

Among the legacy Fr. Sam left us was a kind of wish list for priests. Fr. Shoemaker’s “wish list” for the priest of the church is, it seems to me, no different than the wish list for all Christians, and, taken possibly in reverse order, no different than what the 12^th step asks of those recovering:

“…I wish they would not forget how it was

Before they got in. Then they would be able to help

The people who have not even found the door,

Or the people who want to run away again from God.

You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long,

And forget the people outside the door.

As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,

Near enough to God to hear [God] and know [God] is there,

But not so far from men [and women] as not to hear them,

And remember they are there, too” (“I stand at the door,” silkworth.net 2016)

The spiritual steps offered as the steps to recovery in AA (or any other twelve-step recovery group) include steps that should be familiar to every practicing Christian. They include taking a moral inventory, making amends for harm done (in Christian repentance, it is not enough just to tell someone you are sorry for hurting them, you need to make amends for the harm), making a daily practice of meditation and prayer, turning our wills and lives over to God, which folks in Recovery and a great many Christians call “surrender”: laying down the arms of self-destruction and hoisting the flag of surrender to a loving God who can make us whole and useful.

In a letter to Fr. Shoemaker, Bill Wilson (sometimes called the founder of AA) said that the steps summed up what had been taught “primarily by” Fr. Shoemaker. Without Shoemaker’s teaching, Bill said, “there could have been nothing—nothing at all,” and he usually listed Sam’s name among the “co-founders” of AA (along with Dr. Bob Smith).

If you have been in meeting rooms of AA you have seen pictures of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob. You never see Sam’s picture, nor do you see the picture of Ebie who helped Bill get sober but couldn’t stay sober himself, and you certainly don’t see pictures of the long-suffering spouses, such as Lois. If I had my way, every one of their pictures would hang in the meeting halls. But, then, the program of recovery constantly reminds me that it is not all about Chuck Peek getting his way. Being a member of AA is not conditional on the member getting his or her way. (Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true of the Church as well.)

Not only the conception of the program of Recovery but also its very language echoes language and concepts found in the sermons and books of Fr. Sam Shoemaker. These same words and thoughts also echo the scripture once read in recovery meetings before there was a Big Book (the manual Bill Wilson wrote for AA), especially The Book of Acts, the Sermon on the Mount, the book of James, and Paul’s hymn to love at the close of Corinthians. And they all in turn mirror the standards used in the Oxford Groups that were forerunners of AA and for which Fr. Shoemaker was the American leader. Let me give one example of the close resemblance: in his preaching, Sam Shoemaker charged each listener to come to a “decision to cast my will and my life on God.” That is almost word for word the 3^rd step of recovery (found in your program): “We made a decision to turn our wills and lives over to God.”

Now having mentioned the Big Book, let me say that tonight’s celebration is not necessarily a recommendation to go out and immediately read a copy of “the big book,” Alcoholics Anonymous. (Unless of course you are in Alcoholics Anonymous, and then it might be a great idea to read the manual!) But as to what good the book will do for those not addicted or committed to helping addicts: all the spiritual steps of any sound spiritual discipline are there to be sure, but they are definitely framed in the language of addiction, and possibly you are not an addict and do not operate from a personality that leans to any obsessions.

Perhaps…although for most everyone the possibility bears more thought than it is usually given. But even with the specific language to people who are addicted to substances, or behaviors, or experiences, the spiritual principles in the book come through loudly and clearly, so maybe a Christian or a church study group could benefit from a reading of the Big Book.

There you would find that the principles are simple and basic. Love and Tolerance (and the honesty, openness, and willingness necessary to become loving and tolerant) are the keys, and when it comes to being loving or tolerant, honest or open, it is my experience that we all stumble, all fall short. “All fall short of the glory of God.”

These principles we try to practice one day at a time. Scripture tells us that sufficient to the day is the evil thereof…meaning: we only get one day at a time and waste it if we try to live yesterday or tomorrow, if we take it for granted, or if we devote it to a fixation on all that is wrong with the world. We live only when we live the day we have, thankful for its blessings, and devoted to the solutions to our life’s problems. In short, your day is either run by the evil of people, places, and things, or it is run by the goodness of the grace of God! You cannot have it both ways, you cannot serve both God and what is not of God!

[During the Sunday Eucharist at St. Luke’s, Kearney, our celebrant tonight, Fr. Ness, gathers people for thanksgivings and blessings, and he always begins by asking them all to take a deep breath of the Spirit. Spirit and Breath come from the same root word, and a little thought will tell you that breathing is important to spiritual practice. Nothing better arrests a moment of panic than getting control of our breathing. Nothing eases stress better than regular, deep breathing. So I want you to take a moment right now and, with me, breathe deeply in and out: slowly breathe in God and breathe out what is not God, breathe in the spirit of God, breathe out what is not of the spirit of God, breathe in peace, breathe out discord . . . already you may feel the benefit of this, and you will find that adding this to your prayer and meditation times helps you to peace and quietness of mind.]

Now there are basically three things programs of recovery say about God:

First, Recovery tells us that there is a God and I’m not it. No matter from what religion or denomination, it is fundamental to every spiritual life to get rid of grandiosity and embrace humility. And by grandiosity I mean from both ends, the grandiosity of feeling that you are better than everyone else and the grandiosity of feeling you are worse than everyone else.

Now my good friend, retired Roman Catholic priest Fr. Jim Schmitt tells the story of parishioner who was just a horrible man—mean and abusive to his family, dishonest in his life, awful. But one day that changed and the change lasted another day and into weeks and weeks and Fr. Jim finally asked him what had happened that made the change in him. The man, now in recovery, said it was simple: he had turned in his resignation as head of the universe . . . and God had accepted his resignation!

So, first “there is a God and I’m not it”; then secondly recovery tells us that God is and has been all along in our corner. We don’t discover that God is with us now that we’ve gotten sober or clean. Drunk-a-logs (the stories we tell of our former drinking lives) prove that God was with us over and over again. And that tells us that the God who has been with us all along is not the hateful, angry God we had been taught or we had come to believe to be God. God was not missing in action, though we often missed the signs of God’s presence.

There is a God and I’m not it. God is and has been with us all along. And finally God expects something of you. I know we do not not seek controversy and I am sure this will be controversial, but here it is: contrary to a lot of sentimental Christianity preached today, God requires more than pious words. We are called not just to say God is in our hearts or Jesus is our savior, but to strive to actions that make those words real. The 3^rd and 7^th step prayers in The Big Book are essentially the prayer that God might do with me today whatever it takes to make me useful to God and other human beings. And one follow-up thought about being useful . . . we can’t be useful off by ourselves. Every addiction I know of—again to a substance, a behavior, and experience doesn’t matter—ends up isolating us from others. We may have started out going to the bar to be social; we end up alone in our rooms hoping no one will bother us. You cannot remain in isolation and recover and you cannot remain in isolation and be useful.

Making our new understanding real by putting words into action is exactly what we heard urged by St. Paul in tonight’s second reading: “Clean out the old leaven of malice and evil and eat of the bread of sincerity and truth.” (I Cor. 3)

We do not get into action once for all. We get into it daily. Sometimes we get over-confident or lazy. So the fact is that all of us some time, some of us all the time need to be reprogrammed, need to reboot the system. We celebrate Sam Shoemaker because that’s what Sam Shoemaker teaches us how to do. Let us celebrate Sam’s day by listening to what Sam teaches. My few examples all come from his book Realizing Religion—even in the title you can hear the idea of making something real. Anyone can be religious, but the challenge is to make that religion real in your life. So here is just a sample of what Sam taught.

Sam wrote, “There are laws for the production of the Christ-type of life. Without heeding them it is . . . foolish to hope for success.” 7

And with that he noted, “It is extremely hard, and in most cases frankly impossible, for anyone to secure results which are fundamentally spiritual without using any spiritual means, or fulfilling any spiritual conditions.” 6-7

Again, Sam taught, “Surrender to the Divine Life . . . takes on reality as we have in mind definite cooperation with God in definite work for one definite person.” 79

(When we first get into recovery, the definite person is ourselves; as we grow in recovery, then the definite person becomes another person in need.)

Then Fr. Shoemaker knew what all sound psychology teaches us, that one of the three things most needed in our lives is a sense that our lives have meaning and purpose. He told us that in recovery, we are:

“Armed with that fortifying [strengthening] sense that we are cooperating with God and doing the work which of all work [God] most wants done.” 78

I could hear that thought echo scripture tonight when Dottie read the reading from Isaiah, “Awake, awake, put on your strength”! (Isa 51)

And since you have all gathered here in a church tonight, here is what Fr. Shoemaker tells us about Church:

Sam taught: “We need the Church—need its irksome discipline as well as its inspiring teaching—and not less the Church needs us.” 69

How many ever stopped to think the Church might need us!

And he added: “There is no greater testing place of character, especially of the disposition which is able to work with others, than the fellowship of the Church.” 69

As I come to a close tonight, I want to say a word to those of you already in Recovery; remember this: the fellowship of the program is meant to lead us to the fellowship of the spirit. In the Fellowship of the Spirit, then, let me close with Fr. Shoemaker’s invitation to all of us…to you tonight…and invitation I repeat with fervent hope that you will take it to heart:

God will always give the regeneration we want . . . God has a great spiritual experience and destiny to which [God] calls you, if only you will rise up to receive it.

AMEN.

On Christmas Day this past year, my family spent the afternoon watching the original Star Wars movie. It was the first time our daughter Mari had seen it. I’m not sure what she thought of it, but for her nerd father who grew up with it as a staple of his childhood, it felt like a big moment. It had been years since I’d watched the movie, and this time I was struck by just how fast the plot moves. Princess Leia moves from an imperial senator, to an imperial prisoner, to commander of the rebellion with barely taking a breath. Luke Skywalker moves from being an ordinary farm boy on a backwater planet to being a major figure in the rebellion in about twenty-five minutes. The sequence of events that move the characters along seem like a rapid series of coincidences, but of course, in the Star Wars theology, it is the God-like force that is calling and moving them toward their destiny. In an instant, an ordinary person, in the midst of his ordinary life, is called to play an extraordinary role.

The same thing is happening in today’s gospel lesson. When we read this passage at both our Wednesday Bible study and most recent chapter meeting, several of us were particularly struck by how Simon and Andrew, James and John immediately drop everything and leave their lives behind to follow Jesus. Four ordinary fishermen, in one instant, are called to play an extraordinary role. Because they responded to that call, those ordinary fishermen are all enshrined in these windows, and countless others like them around the world.

Like the movie Star Wars, the events in this morning’s lesson are set against the backdrop of a cruel and oppressive empire. The fishermen Jesus called were kept in crushing poverty by what was extortion disguised as tax law, and for the people living on the little slice of earth known as Galilee, that was nothing new. Back when it was known as the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, the Assyrians were doing the same thing the Romans. In the midst of a dark political landscape, Matthew frames Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s ancient promise:

“Land of Zebulon, land of Naphtali. . .Galilee controlled by the Gentiles. . .the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

Jesus is the light promised to a people living in the darkness of oppression, fear, and poverty.

The rest of the lesson then shows us what that light gets up to, how it works in the world: it calls people to a new way of life, it invites people to form a new community of love, it heals those who are sick, who are desperate, who are desperately poor. God’s promised light works in the world by forming a alternative community of love and healing that will resist the world’s darkness.

In the words of one of my favorite biblical scholars, David Lose: “Jesus called ordinary people, in the middle of their ordinary lives to do extraordinary things. . .and he still does.” [1]

When we normally think of Jesus’ call, we think it’s the ordained clergy who are called, or we think that maybe some people are called to a particular job or something. But Jesus calls each and every one of us, exactly like he called Simon and Andrew, James and John. He is not so much calling us to do a particular kind of job, he is calling us to be light in a dark world. Jesus is calling us, Jesus is calling you, to form an alternative community, to join an alternative kingdom of love, and work together to heal the desperately sick, the desperately lonely, the desperately poor, and maybe most of all those who are just desperate.

Jesus is calling you, ordinary you, to play an extraordinary role. Jesus is calling you to light in the darkness. Jesus is calling you invite others into an alternative community marked by love and hope and healing. Jesus is calling you right where you are, in your own fishing boat, in your home, at your office, to join God’s extraordinary movement of bringing hope where there is despair, love where there is hatred, life where there is death.

I wrote this sermon on Friday morning, just before the presidential inauguration, as a handful of people were sitting in this cathedral praying. It’s an anxious time for our nation. These past several days, everyone has seemed a little more on edge. We are deeply divided, there’s anger all around, many are afraid. The good news for us today is that the people of Zebulon and Naphtali knew what all of that was like, Simon and Andrew, James and John knew what all of that was like, Jesus and everyone he touched and healed knew what that was like. Throughout the Old Testament, in the gospels, and in so many places in the history of the church, God’s people have come together in the midst of uncertain times, in the midst of all kinds of darkness, in fearful times and in exuberant times, and formed once again an alternative community of love and light. This morning, Jesus is calling you, ordinary you, to be extraordinary light and extraordinary love, saturating and infecting the world wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you are with love and hope and peace. Jesus stands right here in the midst of us today, and calls us again, “Follow me.” I will make you fish for people, I will make you light for the world. Land of Zebulon and Naphtali, land of the United States, land of Omaha, the people who have walked in darkness have seen, see right now, and will see again, God’s great light. Amen.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3018

In the ancient church, before calendars were widespread, it became the custom for all of the holy days for the year to be announced on the feast of the Epiphany. The days and seasons of feasting and fasting that give shape to our life as Christians are all oriented around the date of Easter, which is the central mystery of our faith. The annual Epiphany proclamation helps us put in mind and look out over the whole scope of the salvation story as we enter into this new year.

Dear brothers and sisters,
the glory of the Lord has shone upon us,
and shall ever be manifest among us,
until the day of his return.

Through the rhythms of times and seasons
let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation.

Let us recall the year’s culmination,
the Easter Triduum of the Lord:
his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial,
and his rising celebrated
between the evening of the Thirteenth day of April
and the evening of the Fifteenth day of April,
Easter Sunday being on the Sixteenth day of April.

Each Easter — as on each Sunday —
the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed
by which Christ has for ever conquered sin and death.
From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy.

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent,
will occur on the First day of March.

The Ascension of the Lord will be commemorated on
Thursday, the Twenty-fifth day of May.

Pentecost, joyful conclusion of the season of Easter,
will be celebrated on the Fourth day of June.

And, this year the First Sunday of Advent will be
on the Third day of December.

Likewise the pilgrim Church proclaims the passover of Christ
in the feasts of the holy Mother of God,
in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints,
and in the commemoration of the faithful departed.

To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come,
Lord of time and history,
be endless praise, for ever and ever.

Amen.