Epiphany 5B—February 8, 2015

Homily preached by The Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

This was really a week. It was not the week I expected but it was a week that was full of learning for me and full of the Holy Spirit. It began with clergy conference. Bishop Mary gathered us together, and we were down at San Juan Bautista, and I was wondering what it was going to be like. For our last clergy conference, last spring, we had Cynthia Bourgeault, who is an Episcopal priest who teaches about being present to the Spirit through centering prayer, through community work and through living the Benedictine life. She brought us in to a quiet place—a centered place—and we time throughout the two days we were with her for reflection, prayer, and for a lot of fellowship. It was a really special time, and I knew that this year was going to be different. So, I was wondering what it was going to be like.

This year we had another Episcopal priest who came to be with us. His name is Bill Miller. You can see his blog at FatherBill.net. He’s different. He was born in Texas, which is a start. He’s about yea tall, and he’s got kind of frosted hair, and it’s kind of blondish on top and darker underneath—you know, he looks like he had a two-color process—you know, dark underneath. He served about ten years in Austin, then he went to Kauai, where he’s served for the last nine years. He’s written two books: The Gospel according to Sam. Sam’s his dog. Sam has since gone to his reward. The other book is A Beer Drinker’s Guide to God. He owns a bar—he co-owns a bar and music venue in Marfa, Texas. You go to nowhere and turn left, and that’s where Marfa is. Now he’s going to go to a little town—Covington—in Louisiana, about 40 miles north of New Orleans and four miles away from the Abida brewery. Abida is the beer in New Orleans, and he just wanted us to know where he’s going to be.

So, he told us stories. He’s a great story-teller, and he told us stories about the events in his life—about startling things and waiting time and more startling things. And interspersed with all this story-telling, he read from his book, and he read from three other peoples’ books. He told us about three books. One of them, the first was Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. The lesson there is that sometimes when we’re listening to everybody around us, it’s hard for us to know what we’re supposed to be doing. The second book he talked about was The Age of Speed, which is on the bestseller list right now. The third one is Essentialism. Try saying that three times fast. Essentialism. How we get down to the basics of what we’re supposed to be doing. How we declutter our lives and our souls. And that’s kind of what happened for those two days. We had time for prayer—together and individually. We had time for reflection. We had a lot of time for fellowship, and, I’ve got to tell you, it was so joyful. There were so many of us there—more than we have ever had—and that’s a sign of the health of this diocese. When you enjoy being with your colleagues, that means that good work is happening, and we had a great time together. We really did.

The final event was our Eucharist. Bishop Mary described it as a pop-up Eucharist. She said, “I’ve given it a lot of thought, but we’re just going to kind of do it.” And she assigned someone to think about how we might sing during communion and someone else to think about something else, and she said she was going to read something instead of doing a sermon. So, at the time for the sermon—we’re noticing that there are these balls in front of the altar. All different colors—about seven of them—different sizes: this big to this big—and they’re those soft balls, and they’re not heavy, and they don’t hurt when they hit you, which is a good thing, because she said, “OK, I’m going to be reading this story to you, and y’all do something with these. She threw all these balls out to u[...]

4 Epiphany February 1, 2015

Homily preached by Field Ed student Karen Cuffie

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

Epiphany 3B – January 25, 2014

Homily preached by The Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

Last night, we had our first Saturday Evening Family Service. There may have been other ones at some time in the past—I don’t know—but this was the first one lately, and it was just terrific. Susie was the one who called this into being, and there were 19 of us—plus Jerry who was stuck in the kitchen—eight children and 11 adults—total of 12, so that’s just about the right ratio, you know. And it was wonderful. We had a great time. We did the liturgy of the word downstairs, in the Learning Center. So while the kids were learning about this gospel—today’s gospel—through all the things that Susie had created for them to deal with: they made fishes, they made all kinds of things. They fished for fishes, and they fished for fishes some more—they did a lot of fishing for fishes. They had a great time. While they were doing that, the adults and I sat and did our own bible study. In our bible study, the words that kept attracting people were “immediately” and “left” and “follow”. We talked about what it would be like to just drop tools right now and walk away. What it would be like to leave people—what it would be like to be left—what it would be like—what made people just follow—right there in that minute. We talked about all of that, and then we came up here and we did Holy Communion together. And then everybody else had dinner, but I didn’t have the sermon yet, so I went home. On the way, I was reflecting about our bible study in particular, and I noticed that we talked about all these transitional things, but we never said the word “change”.

We don’t really like to talk about change. It’s not a good word for most of us—unless we’re generating the change. Have you noticed that? I used to work with someone—she would say, “I just love change—I love it!” it quickly became apparent that she loved change as long as she was driving it. When somebody else had a change in mind—not so much! Not so much. But that’s what happens when we’re called. Change happens. We’re called to something or from something. We’re never—hardly ever—get a new call to the same place. Have you noticed that? It doesn’t happen.

So, I got to thinking about Fe—the Filipina nun I told you about two weeks ago—and her story and wondering about what her experience was, because we resist that change—we resist those calls that take us out of the place where we’re comfortable. I can imagine that when she took her vows to be in that convent in Manila, that she imagined that was it—that she had made the choice—there were no more choices to be made. And then came the coup d’etat that overthrew Marcos, and she felt herself called to go out into the streets. Tiny, shy, quiet Fe found herself called into the streets and found herself teaching nonviolent resistance to the people that she found there. And I wondered what that was like for her to answer that particular call. We generally don’t want to do something that we don’t feel comfortable doing or competent to do. We just don’t—we don’t want to go there.

And now we’ve got Jonah. He certainly didn’t want to go there. We came into today’s story into the middle of his story. It begins with the second time he is called. The first time he was called, as soon as he heard God calling him to go to Ninevah, he said “No way,” because he hated the Assyrians. Ninevah was the capital of Assyria, and there’s always a back-story. You know, we all have a back-story. His was that he was the counsellor—the prophet or counsellor—the person who was hanging out with King Jereboam II during the Assyrian and Israeli conflict. So, when God told him, go to Ninevah and tell them “Forty days more and this shall be overthrown,” he thought, “That’s good!” Why would I want to tell them? Why would I want to warn them to repent? He’d just as soon see them wiped off the face of the earth. So, he jumped in a ship [...]

1 Epiphany: January 11, 2015

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

Her hands were shaking, and her mouth trembled when she came to the front of the class to tell her story. Fe is a tiny woman—inches short of 5 feet and maybe 70 pounds soaking wet. Fe is Filipina, a member of an order of Roman Catholic nuns. She works in a retreat center in Manila, where she teaches seminarians and serves as spiritual director to people on retreat. Our paths crossed in a one-week preaching course at the Baptist seminary in Berkeley–16 years ago this January. She was there in that class because she wanted be more comfortable when she needed to stand up and speak in front of a group.

We began our speaking, that very first day, with our first assignment, which was to tell a story of our lives. Fe began her story about he life by telling us what it was like to wake up that morning. It was one of those days when we had a wonderful, blustery January storm. It had begun just at daybreak—which was 7 o’clock—and when she woke, she was surprised by the storm, and that led her to wonder and to think about all the other surprises that she’d had in her life, and especially the one that she told us about. She was wondering what God had in store—what kind of surprises God had in store for that day—and it drew her back into her past, and she decided that she would tell us about one of those surprises. Her story was about her experience—the surprises she had—during the coup that overthrew Marcos.

There was a call to the convent that night—late at night—and the superior of the convent took the call. She was told, “Keep your sisters inside. Don’t let them go out where it’s dangerous.” So she came back and gathered the sisters around her and told them about this call and about what was happening outside their doors. She said “We need to stay inside so that we can be safe. And Fe said, “That doesn’t feel right. Why should we be here while all our community is outside.” She suggested that that they should think about that and pray about that and sleep on it and let the Holy Spirit tell them what they needed to do. They all agreed, and the next morning, the superior called them together again, and she said, “Those who want to go outside may go outside. Those who want to remain inside may do so and will pray for those who go out.” So Fe went out into the streets, which were full of people—and soldiers—and tanks—Marcos’ army. And she and other women and children joined hands and stood as a living barricade on the streets to keep the tanks from coming deeper into the city. And they went to the tanks and they knocked on them and they said, “Little brothers, come out. We are your brothers and sisters. You cannot do this. Come out.” And they took them water and food and flowers, and some of those soldiers did abandon their tanks and came out to be with the people.

The tumult continued, and when at last it seemed certain that the coup would be successful, there was a lot of noise and talking in the streets. And there were loud speakers and microphones on almost every corner, and Fe noticed that whoever had control of the microphone was able to shift the rest of the people in whatever way they wanted. A young man was talking and he was calling for violence against Marcos, and Fe thought, “This does not feel right.” So, she waited, and as soon as that young man put down the microphone, she went to it and she picked it up, and she said, “Brothers and sisters, Marcos is a child of God also. We cannot call down violence upon him.” She spoke for a little longer. When she was through and put down the microphone, her knees were so shaky that she had to sit down. She said she couldn’t remember what else she had said that morning, but she remembered how the spirit of violence began to dissipate as she spoke.

After that night, people remained in the streets for a long time. There was a community that built up—a c[...]

January 4, 2015  Celebration of the Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ

Isaiah 60: 1-6, Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12,  Matthew 2:1-12

Homily preached by The Rev. Jerry Drino

2 Advent B  – December 7, 2014

Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13, 2 Peter 3:8-15a, Mark 1:1-8

Homily preached by the Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

1 Advent B – November 30, 2014

Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; I Corinthians 1:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

Homily preached by the Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

 

I think in pulpits all across this country a lot of preachers are talking about the decision of the grand jury in Ferguson, and I decided that I was not going to preach on that. Monday night, when I heard the news, all of me just kind of turned off. I didn’t want to go there, I didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want to listen to it. I knew that all over this country there would be demonstrations—that there would be more hurt—more damage—more anger—more fear—and I did not want to go there. There’s no part of me that wanted to go there, so I didn’t listen to the news. When NPR would talk about it, I just turned it off. I didn’t read the newspaper; I just did my puzzle page. I didn’t want to go there.

 

And then on Thursday morning, my daughter’s sister-in-law posted on Facebook. She posted something by Benjamin Watson. Benjamin Watson. He’s a tight end for the New Orleans Saints. He’s way tall. He’s 34, he’s been married about eight years, and he and his wife Kristen have four children—aged four, three, two and not quite one. And he is a Christian.   And after the decision was made known, Benjamin had to go play—he had to go work—he had to do Monday night football. And he needed to deal with what he was feeling and what he was experiencing, and there was no way that he could talk with people before he had to go to work, so he wrote about what he was feeling. He wrote about his feelings, and he wrote a line or two about the context for each of those feelings. He wrote about his anger, his fear, his frustration. He wrote about his sadness and his sympathy and his feeling of being offended. And he wrote about his introspection and his confusion and his hopelessness. What really drew me to these feelings was one particular one: his feeling of being sympathetic.

 

He wrote that he didn’t know whether Darren Wilson was doing the best he could as a peace officer. He didn’t know whether he was doing what he had to do in the line of duty or if he had provoked the argument with Michael Brown. He said: I don’t know what happened. And that really caught my attention, because we all always know. We read about something in the newspaper, and we know what happened. We know what they were thinking, we know what they were feeling, because that’s the way we work. When I meet somebody—you know, five seconds later, I know who they are, I know what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what their problem is, what they need from me—I know all of that—before I even start listening, because that’s the way we are. Some people might call it projection. That’s when we put all our stuff out there into somebody else. Things that we don’t even know we’re dealing with go out there into someone else. Our demons—we see in someone else. We see that in the reading from Isaiah this morning. The people cry: God has hidden from us, so we’ll transgress. When did God ever hide from us? God doesn’t hide from us. We hide from God. We hide our faces from God.

 

We don’t know what happened that day when Michael and Darren were in that conflict, but we do know some things about that day. We know, for instance, that neither of them woke up knowing what was going to happen. Darren didn’t wake up thinking “I’m going to kill somebody today,” and Michel didn’t wake up thinking, “This is the day I’m going to die.” We know that earlier that morning, Michael was talking with a group of workers about Jesus. We know that one of Darren’s first calls that morning was a 911 call, because a baby was running a fever, and I can imagine those parents not knowing what to do—I was a parent at 18, and I was lucky to have family around, but I can imagine what would have happened if I didn’t and my child was running a fever. So they called 911, and Darren was the one who showed up. And when you respond to a [...]

Christ the King Sunday – November 23, 2014

Proper 29: Ezekial 34:11-16; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

Homily preached by Seminarian Karen Cuffie

Have you noticed that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas? Every year lights twinkle and bells jingle a little earlier. Things are winding up. Thankfully, as Episcopalians, we have a liturgical calendar to keep us from getting sucked into the vortex of frenzied shopping, decorating, cooking and more shopping. For example, today is not only the last Sunday of the liturgical year and the Sunday before the start of Advent, it is also Christ the King Sunday. We close out the year with scripture that reminds us of Christ’s glorious reign – and the judgement that comes with it. The texts have imagery of sheep, shepherds, goats, eternal life and eternal punishment. Does the gospel reading make you a little uncomfortable like it does me? It’s clear that there will be judgement and I would really like be on Jesus’ right side when the time comes, wouldn’t you?

In Ezekiel God judges the fat and strong sheep against the weak and injured sheep and in the gospel, Jesus’ judgement is illustrated as separating sheep from goats. At first glance it seems like it would be easy to distinguish the fat sheep from the lean sheep or, the ‘good’ sheep from the ‘bad’ sheep. The differences between goats and sheep are even easier to see, but what happens when we think about people in terms of goats and sheep?

My older brother, Eddie and I were as different as night and day. He got in trouble – I didn’t. He played hooky – I didn’t. He had long hair – I had short hair. He watched MTV – I watched The Waltons. I could go on and on. The bottom line is I was nice – and – he wasn’t, from my perspective anyway. Here’s a typical example of the kinds of things he would do just for kicks: One winter when we were young, elementary school age, he dared me to stick out my tongue and touch the fence in our yard with it. It was a chain link fence. I hesitated, but he egged me on and assured me that because there was a coating of frost on the bar, my tongue wouldn’t stick to it. Keep in mind that a few of his and my friends were standing by watching and waiting. I guess I was a sucker for a dare because sure enough, I did it and yes, my tongue stuck to the fence rail. Now, that was just mean. If I had known then about Jesus separating the goats from the sheep, I would have definitely pegged Eddie for a goat, and I, obviously, would have been a sheep!

Today I know better. It’s not that easy and besides, we don’t get to decide who belongs where. It’s not our place. It’s God’s place. When we judge, even unintentionally, we try to push Jesus off of his throne. When we judge, we create boundaries that separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ – boundaries that Jesus came to tear down. Jesus describes what the judgement will look like when he comes again. It’s very clear really. The sheep on his right are those who fed the hungry, gave a drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger and visited the prisoner. The goats on the left didn’t do any of that. Jesus embodied all those things in the events leading to his death. On the cross Jesus was a prisoner, naked and thirsty. Jesus expects us to care for and welcome those living in the margins – the hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, and imprisoned. He expects us to treat others as if they were Jesus himself and not because we want to earn merits that let us in the gate, but because it is good and right – good for goodness’ sake. Neither group understood how what they did or didn’t do affected Jesus. “How was it that we fed you?” they asked. They didn’t recognize him. The righteous acted out of virtuous habit. It was second nature. What a wonderful surprise it would have been if they had recognized him! The lefties didn’t recognize Jesus either, but their response to his revelation was that if the[...]

23 Pentecost – November 16, 2014

Proper 28A: Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Psalm 9-:1-8, 12; I Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

Homily preached by the Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

Well, I guess today is another episode in how to make a shorter service—by accident. We are infinitely creative—or at least I am, it seems to be, when it comes to omitting things from the service. This is my first Sunday, and I’ve done something strange every single week. So, I’m consistent. This is a good thing.

So, we have this parable. Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven will be like this.” Really? Really? Is this what the kingdom of heaven is like? For years this parable has been used at this season of the year—pledge time—to batter people into giving more money—into putting more stuff on the table. We used to looking at parables as allegories, and in this one, we’ve seen the master as God—who gives us things then wants them back. And he gets really cranky if we don’t build it up. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is looking at it upside down, which is what Jesus generally tried to do—look at things upside down. If we think about the master as the Roman occupation, it puts a little bit different slant on this. And if this slave—the one who was given the one talent—decided he wasn’t going to play the game—wasn’t going to live according to the rules of the Roman occupation, that would be a scary thing for him to do, wouldn’t it? He would be afraid when he got it and afraid when he gave this big hunk of money back.

Fear comes around a lot when we talk about our money—when we talk about our stuff—when we talk about our resources. We’re always afraid there’s not going to be enough, and I’m right in there with everybody else. I have a room full of stuff, in fact, that I might need some day. My anatomy notes from junior college are beautiful, and I might need to look at them someday, so they’re still there, in a binder. We get fearful. We get fearful.

So Monday, I was sitting, looking at this parable and poking at it and poking at me, and I had kind of a déjà vu experience, which happens a lot to preachers. Particularly after you’ve been preaching for a while, because this is my fourth trip down this particular parable.   I was sitting there thinking about that, and I remembered when I preached it two times ago, in 2008. 2008 was rough times. You may remember. That was the year our 401K’s dropped by a half. It was a rough year. And I was going to preach on this, and I couldn’t figure out how to find the good news in it. So I kept poking at it and poking at me, and I thought I’d do this or I’d do this, and it didn’t happen. And I remembered that several years before I’d read about a church back east, where they’d given—the church had given–$50 to every single parishioner. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. They were each given $50—entrusted with $50—and told to go out and do something with it and to report back in six months. And I had always been in love with that. I thought wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to do? Wouldn’t that be so cool? And then I looked at St. Mark’s financial situation, and I thought maybe that was not a good idea for right now, because we didn’t have the money to give $50. We didn’t have the money to give $10. We were a little bit underwater at that point—particularly at that point in the year—and I was sitting there thinking and feeling really wistful, and I said, “Well, you know, I’ve got that much in my savings.” Whoa! Get back! Don’t go there, baby. No, no, no, no, no. And that had been about on a Monday, and all week long, the Holy Spirit and I fought over this. At least once a day, I would have this little niggling thing come to me, and I would say, “No. I’m not going there. I might need this money. I might need this money.”

So, I wrote another sermon, and on Saturday, a little after noon, I was comfortable, you know, I was doing just fine with my decision. I was driving to Tr[...]

Episcopal Church in Almaden

22 Pentecost—November 9, 2014

Proper 27A: Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16; Psalm 78; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

Homily preached by the Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor

Well, it’s all over. Finally. The election is done. There is much sorrow, and there’s much rejoicing, and it’s very neatly divided down the middle. There are those of us on one side and those on the other, and there’s not much meeting in the middle. The robo-telephone calls have stopped, and we can give thanks for that, but talk is continuing. It’s keeping on going, and I imagine it’ll keep on going until 2016. The talk is still going, but I’ve noticed and you’ve probably noticed as well that there’s not much talk about is reconciliation. There’s not much talk about is reconciliation.

We gather this morning to worship, and we bring with us our various perspectives on the world. We don’t all see things in the same way or in the same light. We have different opinions, we have differing thoughts about the world and how it ought to be run, but we come together to worship and stand here in the middle of all this disagreement, and we hunt for common ground together.   And we’ve got a lot of practice at that: 400 years of being the middle way—the via media—held in tension by the poles: there’s a group over here and a group way over here, and most of us are somewhere in the middle. That tension keeps us pulling—keeps us pulling—keeps us aware of what we’re thinking—keeps us working on how we believe—keeps us thinking about how we’re acting in this world. As people who are accustomed to being in the middle, we Christians—and I think we Episcopalians—I’ll just go ahead and say it—have a particular duty. You’ve probably heard about this. If you haven’t, you’ll be hearing a lot about it in these next three months while I’m here.   Because on page 855 of the Book of Common Prayer, where all our traditions live, it says The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. And the way we’re supposed to be doing that—the way we’re supposed to pursue that is to pray and to worship, proclaim the gospel and pursue justice, peace and love. That’s it. That’s the marching orders we’ve got.

And immediately, you know my first thought is well, if we can just get those other people to pray, everything will be fine. But that’s not what it says. It says we’re supposed to be praying. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. When we come here together and when we pray as individuals, our prayer brings us a stronger connection to God’s love. Our prayer grounds us more deeply in God’s grace. And our prayer prepares us to live in this world that’s filled with conflict and disagreement and lack of reconciliation in a way that’s respectful, responsible and life-giving. That’s what our prayer prepares us to do.

Preparation is the watch-word for today’s gospel. This strange little gospel that proves to us once again that parables sometimes can let us look at one point, because if we look at the whole thing, we don’t get it. It’s kind of strange. I mean those five wise ones—those mean girls—who say “no, I’ve got mine, you go get yours.” That’s not Christian. That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing. But as I read this gospel and I think about that moment when the five bridesmaids who have gone off to try to find oil for their lamps are standing there in the dark. It’s long after midnight by that time. It’s long after midnight. They’re standing there in the dark and they don’t have enough oil. I’m wondering if they have enough light—if they have enough oil in their lamps—so that the bridegroom can see their faces and recognize them.

It’s our job to carry the lamps—to bring healing light to this broken world, and we can’t do that unless we’ve got oil. This is where we come to fill our lamps—to find the oil that we’ll need to ta[...]