Rev. Madeline

Rev. Madeline

Rev. Madeline

In our Gospel today we’ve taken a step back in time. Jesus is preparing his disciples for his death, resurrection, and ascension at the last supper – Remember that was almost six weeks ago in Holy Week! Hearing these words again in Easter time is like experiencing a flashback – standing here looking back we understand Jesus’ words differently in the context of the resurrection. We anticipate his departure as we look to the feast of the ascension this Thursday. Jesus is going away. He’s going back to the Father. And where he is going we can’t quite follow. Not yet.

Standing here in the time of the Resurrection, it’s hard for us to imagine the disciple’s fear of losing Jesus and their confusion by what he means. We haven’t known a time when God wasn’t near to us in Christ. But that’s all thanks to the ascension. The Jesus we know is present because in his place Christ sends the Advocate, the comforter, the Holy Spirit.

Because Jesus has returned to the Father God’s own Spirit will come to us and make it’s home with us. And because that Spirit is with us, we have hope for becoming the people Jesus knows us to be all along. This Spirit helps to guide us, to bring us hope, to show us true peace, to be our companion when life around us is rough and when life is beautiful. That’s what happens when God makes a home with us. We are never abandoned.

It’s no small thing that God chooses to make a home with us.

Home is such a personal thing. The first home we know from parents or grandparents comes with its own comforts and sorrows. For some of us home is a safe space. It’s a place we could truly be ourselves and be loved. But for some of us home was a terrifying place, a place that was far from safe, maybe full of yelling or violence or emotional mine fields. So memories of what we each think of as home can be complicated.

We carry all this love and hurt within us when we think of home. So when we are old enough to make home for ourselves, we bring all of that emotion – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.  We take those memories and craft a life and a home that is in fact about true belonging.

As I chatted this week with other priests, someone asked – What would it be like for God to literally ring your bell and come in and make God’s self at home with you? I imagined God standing at the door, suitcase in hand standing on my stoop. I imagined the panic of wanting to rush and go wash the dishes that I know are sitting in my sink. I imagined the unmade bed, the dog hair on the floor. There was a part of me that for a moment thought about this panic. And then I realized, God doesn’t care. God doesn’t come to make a home with us as a guest. We don’t have to pick up our lives for God. God gets it. God knows that I hate dusting, and God wants to make a home with me anyway. The home we make with God isn’t about making it perfect, but about if we can be real with God. If we can share real life with God. Because that’s what God wants to share with us.

I have only a few friends who can show up on my stoop like that. And I treasure them like the greatest gifts in my life. One has been visiting recently from New York City. It’s been two yeas since she was here in Austin. She’s the kind of friend I can ask to help me reorganize my pantry, who will sort through endless boxes of tea and all the tiny spice bottles of dill I always buy and forget I have. She’s not a guest. She’s family.

Jesus tells us that God comes to make a home with us not like a guest, but like one of our own family. We don’t have to clean up the house before God arrives. We belong so fully to God that God knows all our mess – God knows our sin, our struggle, our hopes and our talents. Knowing all that God shows up at the front door of our life to love us fully.

God comes to make a home with us because we belong to God’s family. This belonging isn’t something we manufacture or earn. Rather it’s realized as we become present to God in Jesus

Rev. Madeline

This week one of my spiritual heroes passed away Jean Vanier was the founder of communities where people with and without disabilities lived as peers. It became an international movement, with communities around the world. His whole presence embodied what living a holy ordinary life could look like.  It looked like humility, simplicity, and living in service to others. Love, Jean Vanier said, looks like doing ordinary things with intentional tenderness. It looks like eating together, helping one another to dress and go to work, to clean and to do chores, to laugh and to cry with one another. It’s about relationships where we willingly give up power and embrace humility. It’s as simple and as hard as that.

I’ve been thinking about living this love that is intentional tenderness, because it seems to me a roadmap for our time. It seems like the Good News of Jesus that the hurting scared people I know long for.

And in our lesson today from Acts we have a small window into what this love of intentional tenderness looks like for a few of the early disciples.

We meet the disciple of Jesus named Dorcas, Tabitha. And we meet her in a moment when she’s passed on from this life.  In the everyday moments of her life, being a part of Jesus’ flock was about ordinary faithfulness.

Dorcas was probably a seamstress all along, using her hands and her eyes and her imagination to craft useful and beautiful clothes. So when she became a disciple I can imagine her hearing Jesus teach “Lord, when did we see you naked and clothe you? I tell you, Jesus said, what you do for the least of these you do unto me.” I can see her bent over her loom, weaving cloth and taking up needle and thread to clothe those widows and their children as she would have clothed Jesus. I see her offering what ordinary skills she already knows with intentional tenderness. I see the way that the Love of God flowed through her to her community.

As we listen for the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd, we live more like Dorcas. We embody the Good news with the wholeness of our lives. We make our lives holy by faithfully doing everyday things with profound tenderness. We let Jesus reshape our lives.

Where to begin? Our lives can seem so hurried, so painful, so tiring. This isn’t about one more thing to do. But about slowing down to recognize God when he shows up in our life. We might begin with three simple questions.

Who is God giving me to love?

What resource or gifts have been given me to share?

What Good News do I know that I can offer?

Steven Tomlinson at the Seminary of the Southwest offers these three questions for discernment. And just as we might ask them in prayer as we discern our own purpose in the flock of God, we can ask them together as a church.  

Who are the people around us, already alongside us God is calling us to love?

These might be neighbors. These might be vulnerable groups of people. As we pray about mission, and where the Good Shepherd is guiding us, these are probably people beyond our own sheepfold out there in the word. For Jean Vanier, God was giving him people with disabilities to love and be in relationship with. Who is vulnerable, or hurting, or in need?

Next, what has God given us to share? This is a question of stewardship. It’s a question that builds our capacity for gratitude. We might even identify things we have taken for granted as a gift to be shared. For Dorcas, God had given her a skill as a seamstress to offer as a blessing to others. For our community, I think we can identify a lot that we have been given. Our land is a source of beauty and refreshment for our neighbors at the apartment complex next door. Our community cultivates a sense of hospitality that offers belonging to those who feel lonely or isolated. Think through what we already have been given. Let a sense of gratitude for those gifts well up within you.

The truth is that gratitude sends us out to share w

This week one of my spiritual heroes passed away Jean Vanier was the founder of communities where people with and without disabilities lived as peers. It became an international movement, with communities around the world. His whole presence embodied what living a holy ordinary life could look like. It looked like humility, simplicity, and living in service to others. Love, Jean Vanier said, looks like doing ordinary things with intentional tenderness. It looks like eating together, helping one another to dress and go to work, to clean and to do chores, to laugh and to cry with one another. It’s about relationships where we willingly give up power and embrace humility. It’s as simple and as hard as that.

I’ve been thinking about living this love that is intentional tenderness, because it seems to me a roadmap for our time. It seems like the Good News of Jesus that the hurting scared people I know long for.

And in our lesson today from Acts we have a small window into what this love of intentional tenderness looks like for a few of the early disciples.

We meet the disciple of Jesus named Dorcas, Tabitha. And we meet her in a moment when she’s passed on from this life. In the everyday moments of her life, being a part of Jesus’ flock was about ordinary faithfulness.

Dorcas was probably a seamstress all along, using her hands and her eyes and her imagination to craft useful and beautiful clothes. So when she became a disciple I can imagine her hearing Jesus teach “Lord, when did we see you naked and clothe you? I tell you, Jesus said, what you do for the least of these you do unto me.” I can see her bent over her loom, weaving cloth and taking up needle and thread to clothe those widows and their children as she would have clothed Jesus. I see her offering what ordinary skills she already knows with intentional tenderness. I see the way that the Love of God flowed through her to her community.

As we listen for the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd, we live more like Dorcas. We embody the Good news with the wholeness of our lives. We make our lives holy by faithfully doing everyday things with profound tenderness. We let Jesus reshape our lives.

Where to begin? Our lives can seem so hurried, so painful, so tiring. This isn’t about one more thing to do. But about slowing down to recognize God when he shows up in our life. We might begin with three simple questions.

Who is God giving me to love?

What resource or gifts have been given me to share?

What Good News do I know that I can offer?

Steven Tomlinson at the Seminary of the Southwest offers these three questions for discernment. And just as we might ask them in prayer as we discern our own purpose in the flock of God, we can ask them together as a church.

Who are the people around us, already alongside us God is calling us to love?

These might be neighbors. These might be vulnerable groups of people. As we pray about mission, and where the Good Shepherd is guiding us, these are probably people beyond our own sheepfold out there in the word. For Jean Vanier, God was giving him people with disabilities to love and be in relationship with. Who is vulnerable, or hurting, or in need?

Next, what has God given us to share? This is a question of stewardship. It’s a question that builds our capacity for gratitude. We might even identify things we have taken for granted as a gift to be shared. For Dorcas, God had given her a skill as a seamstress to offer as a blessing to others. For our community, I think we can identify a lot that we have been given. Our land is a source of beauty and refreshment for our neighbors at the apartment complex next door. Our community cultivates a sense of hospitality that offers belonging to those who feel lonely or isolated. Think through what we already have been given. Let a sense of gratitude for those gifts well up within you.

The truth is that gratitude sends us out to share what we’ve been given. And

Rev Madeline

Rev Madeline

Rev Madeline

Rev Carlos