ThisWeeksSermon, 1st Sunday After Christmas, Dec. 30

"But the church knows and remembers that it was that particular newborn, the original Christmas gift, seemingly inappropriate, useless, and impractical, a “partridge in a pear tree”, born out of wedlock, born in a cow stall. It was that particular newborn who grew up and became a man who taught a revolutionary ethic."

“Perfume and roller skates for Grandma?”
The First Sunday After Christmas Day, December 30, 2007

May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

You cannot live in this culture without experiencing how the air is let out of the holiday balloon on December 26.
The wise men will not arrive in Bethlehem until January 6th, but for most, Christmas is over.
But we know that today, it’s really just the Sixth Day of Christmas.
Most of the rest of the world was half-way through Christmas by noon on Christmas Day, but we’re just half-way through Christmas today.
It won’t be the 12th day, the final day of Christmas, until Saturday.
And then it’s the Feast of the Epiphany on Sunday, And our parish gift exchange on that day.
The 12 days of Christmas
“The 12 Days of Christmas” is one of my favorite Christmas songs, a song you won’t find in our hymnal, though.
I understand “The 12 Days of Christmas” was recently voted one of the most irritating Christmas songs, surprising for a classic that’s been around so long.
The date of the song’s first performance is unknown, but we know it was used in Scandinavian traditions as early as the 16th century.
It’s actually a children’s rhyme, a memory game, a “cumulative song”, …four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves, ending up every time with a partridge in a pear tree.
Each verse is built on top of the previous verses, each describing a gift given by “my true love”, on one of the 12 days of Christmas.
I love the tune.
Doesn’t matter who sings it.
Alvin and the Chipmunks, Bing Crosby, even the Hawaiian version that starts and ends with a mynah bird in a papaya tree.
I love the whacko lyrics!
I love the list of incongruous, ludicrious, totally silly gifts.
A partridge in a pear tree?
What would you do with that!
Four calling birds, two turtle doves, seven maids a-milking?
Makes no sense.
It’s laughable.
But Halford Luccock, a former professor of New Testament1 at the Yale Divinity School said this:
Those silly gifts are precisely the beauty of the song.
He points to a certain wisdom in giving completely inappropriate and useless gifts at Christmastime.
His advice would be to give your true love exactly that, an impractical gift.
Give grandma perfume, or roller skates, not woolen mittens.
Give your 17-year-old an album of antique phonograph records, not a Best Buy gift card.
Give your husband a footall, instead of a necktie, your wife a book of paper dolls instead of a kitchen appliance.
“The best gifts of love,” he wrote, “are those that show a lovely lack of common sense.”
He’s a New Testament scholar, and he is simply being faithful to the New Testament text.
The original Christmas gift, according to the New Testament stories, was certainly impractical.
It was a baby, a baby born in a cow stall.
What people wanted was a king like David, a king who would unify the nation, rally the troops, drive out the Roman occupation, and reestablish the monarchy.
That’s what a messiah was supposed to do.
Make things right by defeating the enemy, establish a new order of things based on real power.
Instead, the gift was a baby.
So when the gift was given, nobody much noticed.
An unwanted gift
God’s gift of love was not what people wanted then.
For that matter, it’s not really what people want now either, for that matter.
We live in a world of conflict spilling over everywhere.
Civilizations are clashing.
Competing ideas about who God is, and about what God wants, these things are cause for assasinations, and for suicide bombings, even for all-out war.
Competing ideas about The Truth are a cause for conflict and a cause for alienation and estrangement.
It’s more comfortable to deal with a God who confirms our own ideas, a God who puts our opponents “in their right place.”
But that original gift was a baby, a baby who grew into manhood, who became the one who continues to challenge the world to think differently about who God is, and what God really wants.
Christmastide
Almost anyone can be touched emotionally by the birth of a baby, especially a baby who’s close to you.
Personally, I’ve been overwhelmed by the extent to which I’ve been touched by the birth of my first grandchild this month.
By the way, they let Amelia Jane go home with her mom and dad on Christmas Day.
And on January 10th, four days after the Feast of the Epiphany, Rob and I, bearing gifts, will take on the roles of those traveling “astrologers”, magi making a trek from New York City to the San Francisco “manger” of Amelia Jane.
Touched by the birth of a baby
Almost anyone can be touched by the birth of a baby.
But the church knows and remembers that it was that particular newborn, the original Christmas gift, seemingly inappropriate, useless, and impractical, a “partridge in a pear tree”, born out of wedlock, born in a cow stall.
It was that particular newborn who grew up and became a man who taught a revolutionary ethic.
It was an ethic of unconditional love.
It was an ethic of practical forgiveness.
He overturned cultural convention by welcoming the marginalized, welcoming the excluded.
The church remembers that this baby grew up and got into trouble with the authorities, got in trouble for living out his notion of what God’s kingdom looks like, a new social arrangement without all the old barriers and boundaries, an arrangement in which all are loved and welcomed at the banquet table.
The church remembers that the baby grew up, and that the grown-up baby challenged social convention by forgiving enemies, turning the other cheek, responding to violence not with violence, but with love.
The birth of that baby is a sign, for us, that God is alive and at work in the world.
You cannot live in this culture without experiencing how the air is let out of the holiday balloon on December 26.
The culture may drop Christmas like a hot potato, but not us.
For people of faith, Christmas is a beginning, not an end.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
Jerry Brooks
Saturday, December 29, 2007

ThisWeeksSermon, Christmas Eve, December 24th

“It’s Christmas, all over again.”
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, December 25, 2007

May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

I bought a Christmas music CD last week.
The CD is called “It’s Christmas, of Course.” 
Twelve songs by Darlene Love.
She’s a couple of years younger than I am.
She’s been singing most of her life.
Began singing in churches out in California, I think.
And she’s closely associated with Christmas in New York City.
She does a Christmas show here every year.
She’s also been an annual guest on David Letterman’s program at Christmas as well.
The album I got is pretty cool!
Not the usual Christmas jingles.
This music has an intimate, live-blues-club feel.
Darlene Love’s voice is smooth and comes from a place deep inside.
There’s a spirituality that comes through.
She sings about war. She sings about peace. She sings about the true meaning of Christmas, about dreams coming true, about the way things ought to be. She sings about the manger, and the Prince of Peace. She sings her thanks for Christmas and for the love she feels. She sings the message: “Christmas Is the Time to Say ‘I Love you’.”
My favorite track is “It’s Christmas All Over Again.”
It’s upbeat. The music is catchy. And it captures a certain truth about this celebration that comes around every year, on the almost darkest night of the year, just when we need it most.
Christmas all over, again
It’s Christmas, all over again.
It comes earlier and earlier every year, it seems.
Even before Halloween we were seeing red and green M&M’s and cardboard Santa displays at the drug store.
We love Christmas.
We can’t wait for it to get here.
So we start early.
There’s something transformational about giving, about giving of ourselves and giving gifts.
For me, it actually changes the way I feel about myself.
The mid-November “Scrooge” that I always become transforms into a December 24th, generous “Santa Claus.”
It’s the decorations and the bright lights, and the Christmas tale of a magical birth, a wandering star, shepherds, angels splitting open the night skies to sing, and the birth of a “god-king” in a primitive stable.
It’s magical.
What about that miraculous birth?
The story we tell tonight, of Jesus’ miraculous birth, was one among many similar stories floating around in the ancient Mediterranean world that Jesus was born into.
There are stories in the Old Testament of unexpected births, births by women long long after years of infertility.
Outside the Bible, legendary heros and even actual kings have been frequently portrayed as the offspring of gods.
Greek mythology was full of such stories of miraculous births.
Romulus, the traditional founder of Rome, for example, was said to have had a divine father and a mortal mother.
Perseus was said to have been fathered by Zeus, the supreme god of Greek mythology.
In that world, it was how you explained an extraordinary individual’s exceptional impact in the world.
Suggest an extraordinary, exceptional birth.
It’s interesting to note that the apostle Paul, the earliest writer of our Christian scriptures, however, never even hinted at a miraculous birth tradition.
He never mentioned Jesus’ family of origin, except to say that like every other human being, Jesus was “born of a woman and descended from the house of David.”
Mark, the writer of the earliest of the gospels, begins his story of Jesus with Jesus’ baptism.
Doesn’t mention the birth at all.
The earliest telling of the tale didn’t show up in print for the first time, as one of our gospels, until 40 years after Jesus had lived among us.
According to Matthew, who wrote one of the two Christmas stories, Mary and Joseph were already living in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth.
They later moved to Nazareth.
According to Luke, who wrote the other biblical Christmas story, Joseph and a very-pregnant Mary traveled 90 miles from their residence in Nazareth to get to Bethlehem, to be counted in the census.
John, writing much later, left the story of Jesus’ birth out entirely.
It wasn’t important.
On two occasions John simply refers to Jesus as “the son of Joseph.”
He apparently had little use for virgin birth tales.
He probably regarded them as pagan, which they were.
In spite of its less than unanimous acceptance, however, the Christmas nativity story caught on.
It’s captivating.
It’s so captivating that it has not only survived over the centuries, it has been embellished.
The camels in the nativity scene?
You won’t find any camels in the biblical stories of the wise men.
You won’t find a stable or any stable animals either.
The stories, simply, are beautiful, written “portraits”, portraits painted with words, painted with imagination by first century Jewish “artists.”
The Word of God?
As I was preparing this sermon, I was thinking about the folks who would be siting in our pews tonight, some of whom maybe only attend church once or twice a year, some of whom maybe have been staying away precisely because incredible stories like tonight’s have been presented as history, presented by preachers and teachers who lump together the myth with the history, the fantasy with the fact, the poetry with the honest Truth.
It’s all been lumped together and called “The Word of God” for a long time.
The narrative describing Jesus birth is simply this:
It’s an uplifting, inspirational, heartwarming tale of a homeless couple with a new baby, a story of shepherds and angels and wise men recognizing that a far-away God of the Universe had actually come among us.
The point of the Christmas story
The God who had previously only been experienced as holy and “out there somewhere”, intervening from time to time, now was revealed to be present in the heart of human life.
That’s why they said that angels sang.
That’s why the said a star appeared in an eastern sky as a sign of that birth.
That’s why wise men and shepherds were said to have journeyed from near and far to worship this moment of revelation.
The birth was a sign that the infinite could be known in the finite.
The birth was a sign that the eternal could be met in that which is transitory.
It was a sign that the divine and human could not be separated.
Christmas raises our consciousness about war, against the backdrop of a Prince of Peace.
It raises our consciousness about the way things ought to be.
Christmas is a manger.
Christmas is about dreams coming true.
Christmas is the time to say “I love you.”
It’s Christmas, all over again.
Comes around every year, on the almost darkest night of the year, just when we need it most.
Christmas is the moment of light that can shine in our darkness, a light can still call us all, searchers, seekers, holy people everywhere, a light that can call us all to Itself.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.

Jerry Brooks

Christmas Eve, 2007

ThisWeeksSermon December 23d, the 4th Sunday in Advent

“A place where we are known by what we do, not by what we say.”
The 4th Sunday of Advent, December 23, 2007



While imprisoned by Herod, John sent his friends to ask
Jesus the ultimate question: “Are you the One?”
Are you the Messiah?, the one we’ve all been waiting for?
Jesus answered them by saying this:
Go and report to John what you hear and see:
The blind are able to see. The lame are able to walk. Lepers are cleansed. The deaf can hear. The dead are raised up. The poor are having some good news preached to them. The deeds of a person, they were told, speak more about that person than his or her words ever could.  That was Jesus’ answer, according to Matthew’s telling of the gospel. The deeds of a person speak more about that person than his or her words could ever speak.
Our deeds speak louder than our words.
I want to tell you, right about now, I am so incredibly proud to be a member of The Episcopal Church in Marlboro. It’s because of our deeds. We’re not just a religious cloister here, selling hats to on another, serving one another. We’re not detached from the world out there, introverted and self-absorbed. This little church is not an “island” here in the mid-Hudson region of New York State.
The outreach of this congregation is truly amazing. Every month we send a contribution to the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley. Our monthly contribution provides about $700 worth of food to alleviate the pain of hunger and to prevent food waste. This year we’re providing Christmas to two needy families in our community. We just offered our second annual nondenominational Taizé service to our community. We’re a part of Episcobuild, the Episcopal Habitat for Humanity effort in Newburgh. Our members are jumping at the chance to send AIDS orphans in Africa off to school, with breakfast, uniforms, and books, through the diocesan Carpenter’s Kids program. Right now we’re cooking dinner for Carrie Ross’s family here in Marlboro, until she gets back on her feet. Here’s what Carrie had to say in eMail she sent me last week:
I have to tell you this—my family has been humbled and totally overwhelmed every time we open the door and a package of food is being handed to us. And not just any old cans of beans either—people cook chickens, roasts, meatloaf, salad (with dressing!), lasagnas, chili etc. and often even include breads and homemade baked goods! One parishioner of yours even downloaded an article about my disease. Often the Lanzettas even thoughtfully include a vegetarian dish for me- waaaaaaaay above and beyond anything I would ever consider asking for. 
Rather than the junk that my kids have been eating since early summer, when I started feeling ill, they get to eat real food every night. Every night! And we always have leftovers as well. My husband [Jon] initially felt awkward and uncomfortable about accepting it—he is a giver and has never been good at receiving. But even he acknowledges that without this outpouring of generosity and kindness his children would be eating garbage. After the Lanzettas hand us a box of food, Jon and I just stare at each other, slack-jawed, smiling uncomfortably. What can I do to thank you guys? Should I write something? [She’s a reporter for the Post Pioneer, you know.] Can I donate something? What can I do to give back? I think people should know how special and incredible your congregation is. Thank you so much for this. We are so grateful. Thank you so much.
The deeds of a people speak louder than the people’s words, don’t they!
Getting ready for the annual “commitment Sunday”
We’re in the process of preparing the parish budget for 2008. We pretty much know how to anticipate normal expenses. The missing piece is the income number. This morning we’ll distribute some statistical information along with pledge cards. It’s the annual opportunity for each of us to express our commitment, to one another, to our neighbors on this planet, both near and far, and to express our commitment to our God, the Ultimate Meaning we find in our lives.
Talking about money in church ruffles the feathers of some. It’s pretty much a hot button. Personally, I don’t quite get it. In our denomination, there’s no pressure. We only pass the plate once on a Sunday, never twice. Opportunities for reaching out come up from time to time, but responding to those opportunities is purely voluntary. It’s just this once a year that we ask for evidence of a commitment, a number we can use for budgeting purposes, a number we can use for planning programs and activities and education and outreach, a number to show to people in other churches around the diocese who support us financially, to demonstrate that we’re doing our part. Every other nonprofit organization has to do this very same thing, ask for money. Only most of them are doing it year-around. We do it just once a year.
I’m talking about money in church today because I want to, because I think it’s important, and because I’m supposed to. When you all filled out the questionnaire this past year, the questionnaire that came from the Congregational Support Plan, the people who continue to help us pay our bills, you were asked a number of questions. One of them was “Has the concept of proportional giving been mentioned in church?”, something they consider to be essential. Many of you answered, “Yes”, that “proportional giving” had been mentioned in church. But it hasn’t! At least not by me. I’ve never mentioned it. But get ready. I’m making up for that omission. I’m going to mention it now.
Proportional giving
The idea of proportional giving is this.
The Bible states a specific obligation to “tithe”, to give back to God one-tenth of what we have received from God. One-tenth! Ten percent! The Biblical tradition set the bar very high, too high for most of us to think about. When considering how much to pledge, however, I would encourage you not to think first about an amount you will commit to the life and work of your parish, but instead to think about what percentage of your income you will commit to the life and work of your parish.
Consider promising to give two percent each year, or maybe three. The average pledge to churches nationally is 2.6 percent of income, and maybe that's a good place to start.
The important thing is that the Biblical notion of proportionality is the ultimately fair way of giving.
You commit and give in proportion to what you have or what you make. There's no hidden standard. There’s no "dues" structure. A senior citizen living on a fixed, modest income who gives 5% is a way more faithful giver than the rich man who dashes off a check for $10,000. Sound familiar? Of course it does. It sounds just like Jesus. In the 21st chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus looks up and sees rich people dropping offerings in the collection plate. Then he sees a poor widow put in two pennies. “The plain truth”, he says, “is that this widow has given by far the largest offering. All these others made offerings that they’ll never miss. She gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford.” Jesus was suggesting proportional giving.
Who we are
At this church, Everyone is important. Absolutely everyone. It doesn’t matter how much work you do around here. It doesn’t matter how much you contribute financially. Everyone is included. Absolutely everyone. It’s a core value of ours. It’s a guiding principle of our congregation. It’s maybe the most fundamental reason for our existence. We wish that everyone might know the peace that we know, feel accepted as we feel accepted, and experience a spiritual wholeness and oneness with the Universe.
Our ambitious, long-term plan, if you’ll allow me to articulate it, would be for us to become the “gem of Marlboro”, a stunning, elegant place, a place that reflects God’s beauty, in its buildings, and in its membership, a place and a people that reflect God’s creativity, a place that is known by what is done here rather than by what is said.
While imprisoned by Herod, John sent his friends to ask Jesus the ultimate question: “Are you the One?” Jesus didn’t answer with a “yes” or a “no.” He answered by saying, The deeds of a person speak more about that person than his or her words ever could.
Jerry Brooks
The 4th Sunday of Advent, December 23, 2007

ThisWeeksSermon December 9 The 2nd Sunday in Advent

“Peace in a world of war.”
The 2nd Sunday of Advent, December 9, 2007

Let us pray.
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

Christmas at war
My earliest Christmas memories are actually from a time of war, the Second World War.
I must’ve been about three years old when the United States entered that war.
I remember ration books and ration stamps and little reddish-orange ration “tokens.”
Those stamps and tokens were used to control the purchase of food and other necessities that were in short supply:
sugar, butter and meat, rubber tires and gasoline, and just about anything made of steel.
Mostly what I remember is Christmas with cardboard toys.
Previously, most toys had been made from metal.
Plastic hadn’t been invented, I don’t think, and all metal was being diverted from nonessential uses.
Metal was being diverted to the “war effort.”
On one of those wartime Christmases, I was given a cardboard gas station with wooden cars that had wooden wheels.
On another cardboard Christmas, it was a cardboard circus tableau.
Cardboard circus tents, and cardboard animals that stood on wooden bases.
In later years, I learned about the painstaking ordeal it had been to assemble “the cardboard circus.”
I learned that my parents stayed up most of the night on that Christmas Eve.
So my earliest Christmas memories were of Christmas during wartime, the Second World War.
A few years later, 1950 to 1953, it was Christmas during The Korean War, then the Lebanon crisis in 1958, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, the Dominican Intervention in 1965
and the unending Vietnam War, 1965 to 1974.
Then, on to Grenada, Beirut, Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Liberia, and now Iraq, another seemingly unending war.

A world at war.
Always, from the beginnings of history, a world at war.
The prophet Isaiah
This morning’s words from the prophet Isaiah are so welcome.
Seems even more so these days, when the world and the climate and the economy seem to be especially out of control.
Isaiah had made a prediction.
Another king would be on his way, a king who’s smart and understanding, a king who will stick up for the poor and the meek, and rid the world of evil.
The king will be righteous and faithful.
And not only that:
The wolf will live with the lamb.
The leopard will lie down with the goat.
The calf and the lion together.
The cow and the bear grazing, their young lying down together.
It’s a remarkable vision of a peaceful world, a just world, over which this Messiah king would reign.
It’s not like weather forecasting
Prophesying is nothing like predicting the weather.
Accu-Weather it’s not.
There’s no such thing as “Accu-Prophesying.”
And if Jesus truly was the hoped-for Messiah, then Isaiah got it all wrong, his vision of a return to a Garden of Eden and a world of peace and justice has not come true.
Personally, I do think of Jesus as the hoped-for Messiah, and I love the images presented by Isaiah, but that peace that the messiah offers, I believe, is a different kind of peace on earth.
A different kind of peace
Following that first Easter, after Jesus’ gruesome execution, his friends knew he had died, but they also knew that somehow he was still with them.
Somehow, Jesus had strangely fulfilled that remarkable vision of a peaceful and a just world.
Early Christian writers looked back at the life of Jesus.
They recalled what he had said.
They remembered what he had done.
They remembered how he had lived out his life.
Jesus had offfered, Jesus had shown, a new Way of Living in this world, in a different dimension.
Jesus offered the possibility of life in a heavenly dimension of peace and justice.
Jesus offered a peace that comes within the souls of people when they realize their oneness with the Universe.
It’s a state of consciousness in which everything is the same, life is the same as death, land is the same as the sea, day is the same as night.
To achieve that state of consciousness, what you have to do is let go of your Self, forget all your troubles.
Think of yourself as nothing, and totally forget yourself as you pray, or meditate, or simply sit in silence.
Just remember that you are hoping to experience the Divine Presence.
Sometimes that state of consciousness just “happens”, all on its own, the experience of disappearing into a Universe of Peace.
But it can also happen unexpectedly.
It can happen in a moment of grief.
It can happen in the midst of a wedding, when married couples are asked to remember the vows they made to one another at their own weddings.
It can even happen at an emotional moment during a movie in a darkened theater, or even in your own living room.
It can happen at the birth of a child.

Amelia Jane is born
Yesterday morning I went to my computer at about 7 o’clock to check my eMail.
Found a message from José, my son-in-law, sent half an hour earlier.
The subject line was this:
Jenn is delivering the baby.
The message simply read:
Will call you once all is done.
Got the call one hour and two minutes later, 8:02 a.m.
Amelia Jane Quiñonez Brooks had let out her first yelp.
She’s breathing on her own, in spite of the fact that she’s five weeks early.
She weighs 3 pounds and 12 ounces, and she’s 17 inches tall.
I went right out to Hannaford and bought her a birthday card, on the day of her birth, of course.
“It’s a Miracle” is what the card said on the outside.
Inside, I wrote a note welcoming her to “our world.”
Signed it from the two “grandpa’s.”
Handed it to the mailman, explaining how important that piece of mail was.
He agreed to give it special consideration.
As I was talking with that mailman, tears flooded my eyes.
Believe me, I know the peace that Isaiah was describing.

A different kind of peace.
Yesterday, the wolf was lying with the lamb.
The warring goes on and on out there, but in here, in my heart, it’s a Garden of Eden, a peaceful world of justice, in which everything is the same, life is the same as death, land is the same as the sea, day is the same as night, oneness with the Universe, not a “cardboard Christmas” by any means.

Prayer

Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.

Jerry Brooks
The 1st Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2007

AUDIOVERSION: http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071209ThisWeeksSermon.mov

December 2 - ThisWeeksSermon

“It’s about not knowing.”
The 1st Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2007
AUDIOVERSION:http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071202ThisWeeksSermon.mov
My daughter has been in the hospital, you know.
Watching and waiting for the baby, waiting for obstetricians to declare that the optimal moment has finally arrived for bringing our immediate family’s first grandchild into the world.
I told Jennifer that I rather enjoyed at least one thing about all this waiting:
At least when I call her, she’s there.
She answers.
That’s quite a new experience for me.
She’s always in a meeting, or on the road, or on the phone.
I leave a message, and she calls back when she gets time.
But now that she’s “tethered” to her bed, so to speak, I call and I get an answer, usually.
Tuesday morning I called Jennifer from Grand Central Station.
No answer.
Figured she was in the bathroom or something.
Tuesday afternoon, from Grand Central Station, I called again.
No answer.
Couldn’t imagine what was going on.
Again, I told myself it was just a coincidence that she’s in the bathroom every time I call.
When I got home, I called again.
Still no answer.
Then I called José, my son-in-law.
He hadn’t been able to reach her either.
First time he called, he said, the line was busy.
Later, there was no answer.
He said he’d track her down for me, for us!
I sat next to the phone, watching and waiting.
Imagining all sorts of things, imagining an emergency, imagining it was such an emergency that she’d been rushed from her room so quickly that no one had time even to call José.
What could be going on, I wondered, as more and more anxiety welled up inside me.
All was well
Of course all was well.
Not long after talking with José, Jennifer called me, herself.
She had been “entertaining” a string of visitors that afternoon, and she thought it would be rude to take phone calls while they were there, so she was ignoring the phone, ignoring me.
(I don’t think she’ll do that again.)
As I speak here this morning, Jennifer’s undoubtedly sitting there in her hospital bed, at the Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley California, still watching and waiting.
There’s a little test they can do to determine how developed the baby’s lungs are.
They ran that test Thursday.
The baby wasn’t ready.
They’ll test again tomorrow.
Meanwhile, we’re all “watching and waiting.”
The beginning of advent
Seems appropriate on this first Sunday in Advent.
It’s what the experience of Advent is supposed to be about.
“Watching and waiting.”
In Advent, we’re expected to re-experience the anticipation that something wonderful is about to happen.
we’re not sure exactly what will happen, or exactly when it will happen, or exactly how it will happen, but in the season of Advent, we are to know, somehow, that something wonderful is just beyond, readying itself for a miraculous entry into our world.
The Church’s New Year’s Day
Today’s not only the first Sunday in Advent.
It’s also the first day of the new year for the Church.
Every year at this time, everything starts over.
We just finished Year C in the lectionary cycle.
Today is the first Sunday following the lectionary for Year A, where we’ll be reading primarily from Matthew’s version of the gospel story.
And today it was a strange prediction of a time when Christ would come to establish a reign of God in the world, a prediction of a day when, apparently, not every person, but every other person, would be unexpectedly “taken.”
Two men will be working in the field—one will be taken, one left behind; two women will be grinding at the mill—one will be taken, one left behind.
Unexpectedly.
No warning.
Some people read this prediction and take it quite literally.
You’ve probably seen a bumper sticker or two:
Warning. In case of rapture this car will be unmanned.
It’s a warning to nonbelievers.
Or this:
After the rapture, can I have your car?
A response to that warning by those who don’t take the prediction literally.
I don’t it literally either.
I don’t think there will be any kind of “second coming” resembling the scene described by Matthew.
Scholars will tell you that these warnings are not thought to be words of Jesus, although attributed to him.
It was out of poverty and hopelessness that the Jews began to dream of God’s restoration, and envision exactly what might take place at the end of history when God’s kingdom would finally be established.
It was poverty and hopelessness that fed the yearning for a messiah who would come, reestablish a Jewish nation, restore a Jewish throne, and usher in a new Kingdom of God.
They found comfort and hope in apocalyptic fantasies that anticipated the end of the world.
The promised one, they said, would descend out of the sky at the end of time, and usher in a new age of peace.
Many definitions of the messiah floated around in Jewish circles.
He would be the son of David and heir to David’s throne, some said.
He could be the new Moses or the new Elijah, others guessed.
He would be the “Son of Man”, even the Son of God.
All of the apocalyptic language is mythological language, language expressing hope not bound by the pain of this world.
It was never meant to be literalized.
Literalizing those myths has actually falsified the Christ experience so extensively that it’s actually difficult for many, many contemporary people to relate to Christianity at all, difficult for many even to call themselves “Christian.”
The end of the world?
When will the world end?
When will God-in-Christ return?
When will God act?
What will happen in the future?
No one can know the answer to these questions.
More than anything else, this passage from Matthew is not about knowing.
It’s about not knowing.
Theologian Paul Tillich said that the most painful human reality is that we don’t know.
Yet, at the same time, we must choose.
And our most informed choice is never more than an educated guess.
The future remains mystery until it’s happened.
The experience of Advent
This is what the experience of Advent is supposed to be about.
“Watching and waiting.”
Hoping without knowing.
Anticipation that something wonderful is about to happen.
We’re not sure exactly what will happen, or exactly when it will happen, or exactly how it will happen, but something wonderful is beyond, readying itself, maybe it’s just a baby, readying itself for a miraculous entry into our world.
What will happen in the future?
More than anything else, probably, this morning’s passage from Matthew’s gospel is about not knowing, about trusting, about simply watching and waiting.
Jerry Brooks
The 1st Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2007

ThisWeeksSermon November 25th, Feast of Christ the King

AUDIOVERSION: http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071125ThisWeeksSermon.mov

(Unfortunately, there are a few "skips" in the recording. Don't know why, yet.)

“A reading from the Book of Chinook.”
Feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2007
As most of you already know…
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest…
in Seattle.
I spent many summers with my grandmother.
She lived on what is called “Hood Canal”…
a long…
narrow…
fjordlike inlet of Puget Sound.
It’s a little community that looks across the salty water toward the Olympic Mountain range…
snow-capped…
even in summer.
Salmon-fishing was a big deal there.
Still is.
Not commercial fishing…
but fishing for sport…
and for huge banquets.
There are about as many different kinds of salmon in those waters as there are varieties of fir trees in the State of Washington.
Cherry salmon…
Chump salmon…
Pink salmon…
Sockeyes, Steelheads, Humpbacks, and Silvers…
King salmon…
Coho salmon…
Chinook salmon.
They’re spectacularly beautiful…
streamlined…
determined animals.
Salmon are ana’-dro-mous…
a word that means they’re born in fresh water…
yet they live out their lives in the salty oceans.
Finally…
they return to their fresh-water origins…
to give birth…
and then…
almost always…
to die.
A few years ago…
during a visit to Seattle…
I remember seeing salmon working their way up a fish ladder…
working their way up from their salty world into a fresh-water world.
I stood right next to them…
with just a sheet of glass between me and them…
watching them as they obediently worked their way up…
step by step…
toward their eventual demise.
Holy salmon!
David James Duncan…
in a little book called God Laughs and Plays
writes about salmon.
He thinks that salmon should be considered “holy.”
He calls wild salmon…
“divine gifts created in an unending Beginning, a product less of evolution than of divine love.”
He compares the “holiness” of salmon with the kind of urgency and zeal associated with Old Testament prophets.
He writes about asking a friend…
a friend who’s Roman Catholic…
he writes about asking a friend if the friend might be well enough connected in Rome to get these innovative views on salmon’s holiness published in some obscure corner of the Bible.
The books of the Bible could read like this…
he suggested:
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, Coho.
Or maybe Nahum, Habakkuk, Humpback, Zephaniah.
Or Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Song of Salmon!
His friend suggested that they’d already missed the deadline for submitting new writings for the biblical canon.
If Rome can saint new saints…
David James Duncan suggested…
they ought to be able to add a book to the Bible.
David offered to write it for nothing.
He promised to be inspired.
He offered to wear a crimson beanie while writing it.
“Think of it…
he said…
a Book of Chinook in the Holy Bible!
Salmon as a metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ
David James Duncan is a huge fan of the gospels.
He suggests that when young salmon feed their bodies to kingfishers and otters and eagles…
and their larger oceangoing bodies to seals…
sea lions…
and orca whales…
and when they feed their other magnificent…
sexually driven…
returned-to-the-fresh-water bodies to bears and Indian tribes and sport fishers and fly fishers…
and when they feed even their spawned-out bodies to sword ferns…
and salmon berries and cedar trees…
and mosses and wild flowers…
they have served us…
from one end of their lives to the other…
as a kind of living gospel themselves.
When a salmon’s nitrogen-rich body feeds trees and flowers…
it is…
literally…
“considering the lilies of the field.”
When its flesh feeds even the most intractable salmon haters among us…
they are literally “loving their enemies and doing good to those who hate them.”
All species of salmon have forever climbed our rivers like the heroes of a wondrous Sunday sermon…
nailing their shining bodies to lonely beds of gravel…
not for anything they stand to gain…
just for that tiny silver offspring…
and so 300 salmon-eating species of flora and fauna might live and thrive.
It’s the story of Jesus
In some ways…
it’s the story of Jesus…
arriving from the “fresh-water” amniotic world of his mother’s womb.
It’s the story of Jesus…
living out his life in a salty ocean of friendships and confrontations…
threats and betrayal…
spiritual awakening and self-sacrifice.
It’s the story of Jesus…
loving his enemies and doing good to those who hated him…
working his way from our salty world…
fish ladder step by step…
toward the fresh water from which he came…
until he was eventually nailed to a cross…
patiently…
without complaining.
It’s the story of Jesus…
serving us from one end of his life to the other…
until his eventual demise…
accepting his fate…
a living gospel.
They mocked him.
They labeled him “the king of the Jews.”
And then he returned from the salty brine of this world to the Warmth and Oneness and Truth and Meaning from which he came.
He did it all not for anything he stood to gain.
It’s how we’re called to live out our lives as well.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God…
the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside….
keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real…
a faith that helps us to live happier lives…
a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe…
and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer.
Amen.
Jerry Brooks
Feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2007

Rehearsing for the children's mass...

Boys and girls at The Episcopal Church are rehearsing for next Sunday's children's mass and in preparation for the Christmas Eve family mass!

For some reason, the audio got stripped away when I converted the movie. One of my settings must be off. I'll work on fixing it when I get a chance. Meanwhile, here's a link to am m4v version of the clip:

http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/RehearsalForWeb-desktop.m4v. Looks as though you'll have to copy it and paste it into your browser.

November 11 sermon from The Episcopal Church in Marlboro

DOWNLOAD AUDIO VERSION: http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071111ThisWeeksSermon.mov

Young adults are smart, and aware, and interested in spirituality.

Any visit to Barnes and Noble will show that there are probably more books on matters of spirituality than there are books on sex.

Young adults these days are extraordinarily interested in spirituality.

ALL people have that longing.

“A great spiritual hunger.”
The 24th Sunday After Pentecost, November 11, 2007
May I speak only the Truth, and may only the Truth be heard by you. In the name of God, our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.
A fourth dimension?
The woman who cleans my house has vivid dreams.
Always has, she says.
When she was a child, she told me, she’d worry about going to sleep at night because her dreams were so vivid, so real.
It was as though she was leading two lives, one while she was awake, and another while she was asleep.
On occasion, she told me, she’s actually recognized and met people during the day that she already knew from a dream.
A tale from The Twilight Zone?
In and out of a fourth dimension?
I really don’t know.
A hallucination?
The other day I asked Fr. Charlie Dupree, the Episcopal priest in Woodstock, I asked Charlie how he liked the confirmation workshop we’d attended together down at St. Matthew’s Church in Bedford.
He looked at me blankly.
I had seen him walk up the path from the parking lot and into the parish hall where we were meeting.
I was as sure as I could be.
He said he wasn’t there.
A tale from The Twlight Zone?
Was I hallucinating?
I really don’t know.
A different realm?
Years ago, I would visit my father every day in the Saratoga Hospital nursing facility.
I’d hang out in the common room where folks needed a lot of assistance, mostly Alzheimer’s patients, I expect.
Some were bitter and disturbed.
Others were peaceful and apparently happy.
One woman I remember was on the move all the time, strapped into a wheelchair, wearing a pair of rubber-soled sneakers, she was able to “walk” herself around at quite a pace, pulling herself along with her toes, and did she ever like me!
(Actually, she liked any man, I think.)
Wanted to hold my hand all the time.
It was almost romantic.
Conversations with those folks were sometimes unintelligible, sometimes not, but mostly inappropriate, at least by my standards.
In the beginning, I would feel sorry for them.
But I changed my mind about that.
I now think it’s just that they experience life in some other dimension, a different reality.
Maybe it’s actually a halfway point in a person’s journey from this reality back to the reality from which we all came.
The readings
Some Sunday mornings I feel as though I have to apologize for the readings.
I feel a need to explain away the no-longer-relevant theology that comes to us from an ancient world.
But not today.
Too much good stuff, stuff from “The Twilight Zone.”
The prophet Haggai
First it was the prophet Haggai…
“channeling” the voice of God.
In the movie, “The Exorcist”, it was that little girl, you remember, Regan McNeill, possessed by Pazzuzu, channeling the voice of an ancient demon.
This morning, though, it’s Haggai, channeling the voice of God, with some words of encouragement from the heavens:
“Work, for I am with you.”
God speaks using Haggai’s voice.
“My spirit abides among you.”
A voice from a from dimension?
Channeling of a hallucination?
I don’t know.
The psalm
Then the psalm.
We chanted words that described the marvelous things that our Jewish ancestors considered God to have done, God, showing righteousness, mercy, and faithfulness.
Let the rivers clap their hands, let the hills ring out with joy before the lord.
Some pretty mystical stuff.
Rivers clapping and hills ringing!
Paul’s letter
Then there was St. Paul’s letter back to the church he had started in Thessolonica.
Paul clearly got it wrong, at least in part.
He sincerely believed in the imminent return of a risen Christ.
That, of course, hasn’t happened.
It’s not going to, at least not in any kind of literal way.
But maybe it has happened, in an unexpected way, in the abstract.
Somehow the risen Christ has returned, is with us, a “real presence” in a dimension that is as-yet invisible to us.
The gospel
Of all of this morning’s readings, it’s the one from the gospel that really resonates for me, the story of a group of Jewish lawyers trying to trap Luke’s Jesus into violating religious law, with a trick question.
Jesus said, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, this God is a God of the living, for to this God of ours, all are alive.
God is not the God of the dead!
Jesus suggests another dimension, a mysterious dimension in which no one has died.
All are alive.
Yearning for mystery
A former dean of Virginia Seminary, Martha Horne, said this about mystery.
A mystery is, by definition, something beyond our comprehension, something we cannot fathom and certainly cannot control.
The truth is, we know that the mysteries of God will never be known by sticking with those things that are familiar.
One of the consistent things about God is that God always calls us out of our places of comfort and into the unknown.
Even as our hearts yearn for mystery, it takes some time and effort, and we make little room for it in our lives.
Canon Dietsche on “Why Church?”
A few weeks ago, The Rev. Canon Andy Dietsche was the keynote speaker at the meeting of the Mid-Hudson region over in Hyde Park.
“Why Church?” was the topic.
He talked about a great spiritual hunger and need on the part of young adults today.
Young adults are smart…
and aware, and interested in spirituality, he said.
Any visit to Barnes and Noble, he pointed out, will show that there are probably more books on matters of spirituality than there are books on sex.
Young adults these days are extraordinarly interested in spirituality.
All people have that longing.
But very very many, unfortunately, do not see the church as a spiritual resource.
They don’t see the church as a place to exercise, and experience, and explore their spirituality.
They are biased against the idea that they can get their very real, and sometimes urgent, spiritual needs met by the church they have known in the past.
Andy suggests that our job is to create a place here in our churches, a place where people may encounter God!
We must nurture a vital spiritual life among and for members of the church, he said.
It seems that the essence, the point, the main thing, of the Christian purpose is to make happen a genuine transformation of people by bringing them into an encounter with the living God.
A mystical realm more real that real
Mystics insist that they experience a realm of being that is more real than the “real” world, the world we trust without question.
They will claim a dimension with no sensation of space, No passage of time, No clear boundaries between the self and the universe, Ample room for the possibility of God.
Common sense compels us to reject this mystical reality as nonsense.
But I don’t know about that.
Those vivid, realistic dreams, and lifelike hallucinations, the voice of God “channeled” through an ancient prophet, rivers clapping and mountains ringing for joy, and a fourth dimension, a Twilight Zone, a mysterious dimension where no one has died.
All are alive.
It all sounds pretty good to me.
Maybe more real than the “real” world.
Ample room in that place, for the possibility of God.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside….
keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real…
a faith that helps us to live happier lives…
a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe, and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer.
Amen.
Jerry Brooks
The 24th Sunday After Pentecost, 2007

Photos from the Children's service October 21st

Here are a few photos that were taken this morning at our first (since I've been in Marlboro) "children's mass."

NOTE: The previous post (below) contains the "script" for the children's sermon and a link to the audio. I recommend the audio version. I didn't stick with the "script." (You'll want to turn up the volume.)

ThisWeeksSermon from The Episcopal Church in Marlboro, New York

NOTE: This is a children's sermon. Pretty cute, I think, shared at base of the altar with eight kids -- preschoolers through third grade. It went well. I recommend the audio version. I didn't stay with the script!

(I have some nice photos -- in the next post.)

AUDIO VERSION: http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071021ThisWeeksSermon.mov.

“Don’t worry. God’s here with us.”
Children’s Sermon on the 21st Sunday After Pentecost, October 21, 2007

RING THE BOWL BELL
Do you like that sound?
Want me to do it again?
When you heard it, what did you do?
When the bell rings…
I want it to say…
Pay attention!

THE PHOTO OF JACKSON
Do you know who this is?
It’s Jackson.
Jackson’s my dog.

THE BEAR
Do you know what that is next to his nose…
on the pillow?
It’s Jackson’s favorite thing.
It’s a stuffed animal bear…
made especially for a dog to keep.
I brought it with me today.

THE LABEL
The bear was made by people who make Coleman lanterns and stoves and canoes…
all kinds of equipment for camping.
They make bears, too.
Check this out.
There’s a label on its side.
It says Coleman.
That’s why I named the bear “Coleman.”
“Coleman the bear.”
Jackson’s favorite toy
Jackson knows the names of a lot of his toys.
“Get the the red porcupine,” I’ll say…
and he goes looking for it.
Doesn’t always find it.
Sometimes he gives up.
I say…
“Jackson, find me your squeaky bone,”…
and he goes looking for it.
Doesn’t always find it.
But when I say…
“Jackson, bring me Coleman-the-Bear”…
he doesn’t give up.
He looks all around the kitchen…
then he goes into the living room…
comes back without it…
and I say…
“Look upstairs!”
He runs upstairs…
going from bedroom to bedroom.
If he comes back without it…
then I say…
“Look downstairs”…
and off he goes.
He always finds it eventually.
Coleman-the-Bear takes a “bath”
Last week Jackson went to the groomer and got a haircut and a bath.
Last week Coleman-the-Bear got a bath, too…
in the washing machine!
Our washing machine doesn’t have a door on the top.
It has one in the front.
You push all the dirty clothes in through the front door…
add some detergent…
and everything starts spinning around inside until its washed…
and rinsed…
and clean.
Jackson watched me as I pushed Coleman-the-Bear into the washing machine along with my blue jeans…
and flannel shirt…
and towels…
and everything else.
The washing machine was totally full!
I couldn’t have gotten another thing into it.
When the wash is done…
there’s always a bell.
It sounds something like this.
It got Jackson’s attention.
He ran to the washing machine and waited for me to open the door.
Before I could even begin pulling out my blue jeans and towels and socks…
his head had disappeared into the clean laundry.

I pulled my jeans out by the leg.
Jackson’s head was still in there.
I pulled a towel out by its corner.
Jackson’s head was still in there.
I pulled out a big old flannel shirt…
and out came Jackson’s head with it.
He had Coleman-the-Bear in his mouth.
Can you believe that?
Jackson keeps track of that bear
Jackson always keeps track of that bear.
He knows where it is.
Jackson sleeps on my bed with me.
When I turn off the light, he always makes sure the bear is with us.
If it isn’t he goes and gets it…
all by himself.
You see…
Jackson will always keep track of that bear…
and be with that bear.
That’s the way God is with us.
God always keeps track of us, too!
We don’t have to look for God.
God keeps looking for us…
no matter what we have done.
Looking for us all the time…
no matter where we have gone.
God will look all around the house.
God will look upstairs.
God will look downstairs.
God will even look for us in a washing machine!
We don’t have to look for God…
because God is right here.
God is right here with us.
God is in our hearts.
God might even be in this bowl.
Listen to the bell.
Sometimes I think I can hear God in the bell.
Can you?

PRAYER
Let us pray.
Lord, you told us not to worry about tomorrow,
which brings worries of its own.
Help us to have love right now for You. Amen.

Jesus will not be an idol. Jesus will be a doorway.

What lies ahead for us are new spiritual possibilities in an ever changing culture.... I believe it’s the Energy of God that drives many of our culture shifts. I believe the Energy of God will always be a mystery into which we travel, and the Truth of God will always be just beyond, just beyond the ability of human minds to understand, to explain, or to exhaust. (Bishop Jack Spong said this part. But it's true for me, too.)

Jesus will not be an idol. Jesus will be a doorway through which we pass in our journey to the Mysterious Energy of God, our journey back to the place from which we came. Our religion will be a journey, rather than a faith that must be believed. Our religion will be a faith that can be explored.

That is my hope for the future, the future that lies ahead for us ... in this, the 21st century following those ancient days when Jesus walked the dusty roads of the Middle East.

The sermon in its entirety is available oneline:
http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/ThisWeeksSermon.html
Audio version: www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/20071014ThisWeeksSermon.mov