"Standing Alongside in Loss" May 25, 2014

John 14: 15-21 Acts 17:22-31 Who among us has ever experienced loss? With death of a beloved Grandparent, parent, spouse, child, or companion? We want to be assured, we want know, what happens after death? We feel this void, this hole where once we were whole. Paschal described we each have an eternal longing Abyss! This is Memorial Day Weekend, insofar as Skaneateles is a community that work hard and play hard, this is the official beginning of summer. But throughout the last 150 years, Memorial Day has been remembrance of the Civil War, the War of Northern Aggression, the War against ourselves, where more Americans died than in any war before or since. Memorial Day has become a tradition, of parades, of cemeteries, of honoring not only our Civil War dead, but all those who gave their lives in Battle, and by extension of admitting the loss of arms and legs, sanity and relationships in every war, and marking the graves not only of soldiers but of all those whom we have loved and lost. In 21st Century America, we are not adept at coping with loss, or talking about loss, consequently we are dysfunctional, tip-toeing around that whether children or adults, we feel ORPHANED by loss. What I hope we will take from worship this day, is not a greater sense of loss, but rather the realization that while loss is a natural part of life, there are losses every day, we have been given the resources and the people who stand alongside us, that we may never have seen before, who more than allowing us to cope, through relationship gift us with the ability to live through and beyond loss. Because that is a part of Christianity that has been lost! Christianity has become a religion focused on an empty tomb over two thousand years ago, in a far distant culture and reality. IF Christianity, were only about Jesus of Nazareth, the teacher, the healer, Miracle Worker, if Jesus alone was God, then that is all there is. BUT Jesus himself described that his life was embodiment of the love of God with us, and that he and God would not leave us orphaned, but with the loss of Jesus, God would send Another Advocate. The point is that we believe in the Trinity, yet most often we Christians have focused on a Duality, as if there were a God in the Old Testament and a different God in the New Testament, or perhaps even that we reject the first as being old, and believe in Jesus Christ alone. Our High Holy days center on the Birth of Jesus, the Death of Jesus and the Empty Tomb. Here 6 weeks later, after the eggs have gone rotten, we are still speaking of Easter, in part because we have little language about the Holy Spirit and we struggle with integrating faith in our reality as being more than inclusion of an Unknown. I would claim to have lived a life of privilege. Most Americans in the 21st Century live in privilege, never having lived “without.” Because of this, we are perpetually searching for what is The new thing. My own privilege was having had the luxury of education, in College and Theological Seminary, where the purpose of life was to read and to learn and to try to understand. Even more, the privilege you provided by enabling a return to Theological Seminary for Doctoral Education, where the purpose was to take everything you have mastered in academic intellectual knowledge and spend time interpreting, reflecting upon personal experience of faith. One awareness I had to relearn, is that the Trinity is not a statement of Time, as if there was a God in the Old Testament, a Jesus in the Gospels, and an Invisible Holy Spirit with us today. But rather that the Creator, who separated light from darkness and place from chaos, who called life into being and breathed life into Adam, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, continues to create in the Here and Now. AND ALSO, that in an historic real life, God became human to bring us into relationship and to atone for our wrongs. A human life, in our reality has a conception, a birth, maturity and responsibility, friends and foes, and a human life dies. HOWEVER the new reality created by God through Jesus is revelation that loss of this life is not all there is, death is not a nothingness, an empty tomb. Rather, we live on, both in full relationship with God AND in the love and relationships of all whose lives we have touched. The critical point in Jesus' words of assurance to his disciples is not to tell them he was going to die, he had said this over and over. But, that his loss was in order that they would be given Another Advocate. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, what we name as the Old Testament, there is affirmation that God created the universe and everything therein, especially you and I, wanting us to choose to be in relationship with God. Over and over and over since Adam and Eve, while God tried, humanity sought to create a reality without God. Even creation of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, and the Temple at Jerusalem were attempts at creating a reality of God with us. The New Testament begins with the incarnation of God in a human person, as Advocate for God's Truth, demonstrating and standing beside us, accompanying us in to relationship with God. So when that life died, which we have historic corroboration occurred, that life returned to be in relationship with God, WHILE GOD sent Another. Part of the excitement of the New Testament, is that the Apostle Paul, like us, never knew the historic Jesus of Nazareth. Like us, Paul struggled to integrate his knowledge of the Hebrew Faith and the stories, teachings, parables, and life of Jesus, with his reality. What the Epicureans and Stoics describe as BABBLINGS and FOREIGN DEITIES is that Paul was comfortable defending the Covenants of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, BUT ALSO in his own personal experience. The Epicureans and Stoics were Greek Philosophers, who routinely argued Philosophy at the Areopagus, but their means of debate of truth was either who had the greatest number of corroborations, or whose argument was the more logical and reasoned without emotion. What Paul preached, was filled with citations of corroboration of the presence of God in reality, and the logical reasoning of God's love in Jesus' teachings, but he added his own personal experience. What Paul named for the Greeks at Athens, and by application names for us, is looking around our Village, our Homes, it is immediately apparent that we idolize a great many things. Personally, I enjoy every time I drive Route 20 East from Auburn, coming down over the hill to see the Church at the center of this community. But looking around, it is apparent we idolize leisure. We idolize comfort. We idolize a good meal. We idolize our children and their education. We idolize owning land. We idolize our freedoms. In our community are several different churches, are these idols to an unknown god, a faith we have accepted because we did not want to leave anything out? OR, are there experiences where you can name God's reality in your life? Paul was doing what Jesus preached at the Last Supper, not with a wagging finger, but with an open invitation, “If you love me, love others as I loved you.” Paul is doing what Simon Peter described in our Call to Worship and Illumination this day, “Be prepared to make a defense for the hope that is in you, with gentleness and reverence.” I made reference last week, to something which happened, that now a days occurs extremely rarely, and yet is what faith in the KNOWN GOD is all about, and it is vital each of us be able to do. In Examination for his Ordination, not simply as a Master of Divinity and Reverend, but as a Pastor, our Candidate was asked three questions. NOT questions whose answers come out of a book, but out of taking The Book to Heart and applying through your reality, because in the end all other authorities of reality are meaningless to us. 1) What is your favorite Parable, Story, Teaching about God, and why? 2) Describe a time when you saw The Church acting as the Body of Christ, the Community of Faith? 3) You claim to be Christian, to believe in the Trinity, how do you explain the Trinity of God, in particular the reality of that elusive presence the Holy Spirit in our lives? I recall when my father in law died, and a lifelong friend named to you that we were all right. I recall being gifted the costumes of another church, so that whole congregation could dress in Medieval costume for a Boar's Festival with a burro walking up the center aisle, where the pastor played The Fool, and we celebrated the Christmas pageant differently. I recall when we dedicated the rebuilding of the Church, and while everyone explored the new resources one of the elders on Session asked “Having accomplished what we have talked about for so many years, what do we do now?” I recall Bunt Osborne at the congregational meeting where we discussed replacing the organ, saying “If you want a re-built instrument you already have one.” I recall, a worship service where the Bell Choir was going to play and one of their number had died, so we placed flowers at her position and sat in silence. I recall, when my own father died and not only did our leadership step up to lead, you ministered to me. I recall one Sunday morning where I shared with the church that we had planned to have a wedding that in the end did not occur, and a baptism but the parents had filed for divorce and could not even agree on Baptism of their children. I recall a Baptism on the morning a child of the church dressed in Military uniform was leaving for war. In all these ways and many more, we have named LOSS, and that not even death, or accomplishments, or anything else in all of life can separate us from the Love of God and one another.

"If All Had Faith" May 18, 2014

Numbers 11: 1-30 Acts 6:1-8 Having served as your pastor for 17 years and 5 months, this morning represents our 900th Sermon. One might think that after 900 sermons, this people of God would have learned & resolved everything. One might even imagine that after 900 sermons the Preacher would have gotten the message to give up. At the end of September, I will have been ordained for 30 years, which while not a Biblical 40, has been a major era of social change during which the “Church” describing Christianity, faith in God, has changed, from denominations fighting over which is the true religion, to spirituality rejecting religion. But like this morning's Scripture passages, we continually respond to this group's complaint, or planning and responding to the next transition, and we rarely discuss “theology”. We struggle to even remember the language of what theology, that is “our relationship with God is about:” Fidelity, Redemption, Reconciliation, Salvation. Sometimes the best we can say about our theological convictions is, as was said of Andy Warhol paintings, and the marketing campaign for Campbell's soup, “It's In There!” But when we do not name our theology, actively work on our relationship with God, then other convictions take the place of God in our lives. At those times, our faith begins looking like our peers, like our family, and evil becomes anything that does not taste good. Please understand, you have worked tirelessly, we have worked tirelessly, and I am truly thankful. But I guess every preacher who struggles and strives to interpret and apply the Word of God with integrity, knows and believes that they have wandered in the desert and reacted to circumstance of what people crave to hear, rather than listening for God's direction. In both the Old Testament and the New, people complained; also in both the resolution becomes greater delegation, but in both because people were unaware of what else was taking place (instead of faith) this led to new and different problems. The Book of Numbers in the Old Testament records other stories of what took place during the Wilderness Wanderings searching for the Promised Land. How often have families complained about what we have, instead of being thankful to be family? I recall when our children were little, making meat loaf, and because it was different, because the ingredients were touching one another, one of the kids complained that he would not eat. We sat through tantrums and tears, until finally after dinner, when he was hungry enough I offered to make him a hamburger, and slicing the meatloaf placed this on a bun, which he ate as the best burger ever, until he discovered it was actually the same meatloaf. The people in the wilderness complained about eating manna. One of the lessons learned from Mission partnership has been that in developed places, with wealth, come choices. In many parts of the world today, and throughout history, the question of food has not been watermelon versus ice cream, but shall we eat today or not! Day after day for 40 years, they gathered up something like coriander seed from the ground, which they ground with a Mortar and Pestal and fried to the consistency of tortillas, with nothing to fill the taco. They began reminiscing about the taste of fresh fish! Watermelon, onions and celantro, beans and rice, maybe even real meat! But they were not yet ready for substance. What Moses heard was there are 600,000 people who want meat. How many Wendy's Frostys, Big Macs or Taco Bell Breakfast Waffels would it take to satisfy 600,000 people! One of the issues of faith, is that instead of an instantaneous disposable society, we need to slow down and appreciate being. Moses recalls caring for his Father-in-Laws sheep when suddenly he heard the voice of God from a burning bush. The Call to Ministry was promised to be about setting free God's people! The Call was to fight the forces of Pharaoh! How did Moses ever become Nanny to 600,000 complaining people? Feeling overwhelmed and burned-out, Moses recalls that the bush was not consumed, God was in it and the bush never burned-out. What God heard however was the People of God prefer Going Back to Slavery than following God! Ready or not, the people carved digesting the substance of meat to appreciating that they were being fed a miracle. The wonder of God's FIDELITY, is that as often in each of our lives as we have complained and dismissed God, turned away and created something to satisfy us instead of God, God has never gone away. We may not appreciate the lessons of REDEMPTION, but God continues to have fidelity to BE IN COVENANT, no matter what. So God tells Moses, tomorrow they will have meat for 600,000 people, not just meat for one meal, but an abundance of meat greater than for a month. They will have meat until they sicken of eating meat. And not being accustomed to digesting this, the complainers will all get sick. Then we will see if the people of God want to eat meat, or trust what God gives them. But in all wisdom, for what else is going on, in addition to hearing the people's complaint against God, in addition to hearing Moses fears and frustrations, God hears what is true for Moses, that so much more could be done if he were not the only leader, and Delegates not only Authority, but also appropriate Faith to 70 in addition to Moses. God did not create 70 clones of Moses, but whereas Moses was able to Prophesy, they were able to preach. Where Moses could lead the people after God, the 70 could manage and administer and care for the needs of the people. However, the human problem, is that our lives, families, businesses, community are easier to control when there is ONE leader, one to take responsibility, one to blame. Whenever we delegate responsibility we give up control, and in order to do so, we must learn to trust more. The point of trust, is that you usually do not have to DO anything, but to name that this is a demonstration of trust, this is different, so we must trust different. Joshua, the apprentice to Moses raises concern for Control over Eldad and Medad, who were not among the 70 chosen, but were given faith, given ability and begin preaching. Moses responds to Joshua, sometimes we do not have all the answers, the leadership of faith is not about control, not about power. All those things are in there, but shifting from one to delegating to more than one is a demonstration of trust and commitment an exercise of faith in one another & God. After Jesus' Death and Resurrection, the disciples now appointed and Changed to be Apostles lead the community of faith. As we mentioned last week, the early church was an amazing community of faith, because everyone shared openly to care for the needs of others. They prayed for one another, they ministered to each other, the community knew their needs and instead of acting out of craving, they turned to God for help. BUT a new problem arose. The early church was successful, they grew by thousands, and the 12 could not Baptize and Preach and Heal and Teach, as well as waiting Tables to earn money to provide for those in need. Appointing of Deacons, was identification of different responsibilities (Job Descriptions) from Apostles. Invariably, the difficulty with having greater number of people is that they will confuse roles. Stephen filled with Holy Spirit preached. Stephen's sermon was eloquent and insightful, powerful in cutting to the heart of faith, but it was not for Stephen (a Deacon) to Preach. The Deacons were to Wait Tables and to Pray, being cornered by one who was not an Apostle, the people reacted and stoned Stephen to death. If anything, our Scriptures this day are Negative examples, which could instead have been... The people of God were set free from slavery, and wandered in the wilderness being fed and hydrated by miracles! The people craved more, to have substance, greater than the satiation of hunger for a day; and the Spirit of God that had been given Moses was distributed upon all people to act in faith, some as preachers, some as teachers... this is 1st Corinthians 12. But instead, what comes across is the people complained and challenged the leadership of Moses, challenged the authority of God,... for which they became sick. The people in the early church complained of Unfair distribution and Neglect of one group of widows and orphans, for another. Through the laying on of hands, through the appointment of Deacons the resources of the church were increased, prayer was increased. Not so much a theological issue as an issue of the church. Yet instead, we have a bloody awful circumstance that only seems to serve to introduce that one whose name was Saul of Tarsus held the coats of the mob as they took up rocks. If all the people had faith to be one body instead of complaining, what might have become of the human race? God is not done with us yet. But do not imagine the cravings of people or the problems of the church will all be resolved simply because we now have two God-guys. Now the resources and challenges of the community are simply doubled, each with our own job descriptions.

May 11, 2014, "You are Known and Loved"

Acts 5:1-10 John 10:1-10 You are known, you are loved! You are and will be remembered! So give yourself to others! That is the simple and profound message of this day, of the Bible, of Baptism, of Mothers Day. Often, we try to make life too complicated. You are known and you are loved! Before this little one is able to speak, before she has been taught anything, not because of what she has or has not done, simply by virtue of being, she is of Child of God, she is loved. Someday, she may be President of the United States, someday she may be a University Professor, some day she may be someone's wife, some day she may be somebody's Mother. In all those ways and many more experiences she will be known, she will be claimed, she will be loved, and remembered, and she will give herself to others, over and over. But today, we affirm that being known to God, she is loved. I have always been quite transparent with you, even that in my birth my mother died. About a year later, my Father married the Church Organist, giving us a new role model for mother. In between, though I was too young to remember, a woman in the congregation raised me with her children. Over the years, because she was not a blood relative, we only saw her on very rare occasions, but when I was Confirmed, she sent a plaster-of-paris hand-print spray painted gold, with my name across it. When Judy and I married, another Hand-print arrived. When I was Ordained there was another gold hand-print. I began wondering if as an infant she had been fingerprinting me in plaster of paris every day? Just how many of these hand-prints did she have? And yet, there was something very re-assuring that before she had been there before I knew anything else, and at all the markers of life, she remembered and loved. You are known and you are loved. Earlier this year, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks Basketball team contacted a Sports Radio announcer and offered him $50,000 to legally change his name for a year to be “Dallas Mavericks.” It would have proven instant publicity for Cuban's team. Every time, the announcer introduced himself, or signed off he would be naming the team. Fans wrote emails and called into the show telling him he should do it. When the announcer did not act, the owner of the team offered to increase his offer to $100,000 and another $100,000 would be donated to his favorite charity, if he would change his name for a year. But finally the announcer said, “I cannot. If I did, I would be selling out my integrity, I would be selling out who I am. Perhaps I would be offering promotion to the local team, but to me every time I introduced myself I would be stating I will do anything for money, for a job, for acceptance.” You are known and You are loved. We seek familiarity, we seek to be known, yet not really. More than ever before we are connected, through Facebook, Skype, Vimeo, Twitter, Email, Smart-phones, Blogs, we are more immediately connected to more people than ever before, and yet there is less intimacy, less caring, less sharing of who we really are with one another. In seeking connection we continue a pattern begun in our infancy, regardless of culture, regardless of family, as infants we all mimic, Our eyes are pre-set to focus upon the face of our Mother and Father. They smile and we smile back. They raise an eyebrow and we do. We seek validation of those like us, seeking to be known, to be loved, to be remembered, and as infants we have no boundaries. But as we mature, our mimicing shifts to a desire for validation, for acceptance; and one of the last things to develop which some of us never do, is discernment among those validating. Is the acceptance of our Mother as important as that of our peers? Is having a really good and trusted friend the same as being able to be seen by 2,500 friends? In the case of Dallas Maverick, is a money worth more than a name? You are known, you are loved, you will be remembered, so give your whole self without restraint. During Lent we began this story of a man born blind whom Jesus healed. But where we tend to be distracted by the miracle, a major point of remembering the story is that suddenly he was different from how everyone knew him. The disciples questioned whether he or his parents had sinned to cause his blindness...the Pharisees judged and rejected him as not being accepted...his own parents said: He's old enough, let him take responsibility for his own life. After having healed him of what had made him different, Jesus sought out the man, offering love and acceptance. Jesus had looked into his eyes and knew him and offered for the man to know his Savior. The Gospel of John is wonderful for having these puns or riddles, we might even call them double en tend-re. The man who had been blind was given sight by the Savior, and knowing the man blind and knowing the same man able to see, made everyone else question their own blindness. Years ago we had a Beagle, and a fenced in back-yard. But regardless of the fence, that dog would try to get out, she would dig under, jump up, pull at the wires to get out to where everything else in life was. Gates in a rural society were important. When animals are penned in, they will find any way possible to get out. But outside is not secure, is not safe. There are predators and robbers seeking to destroy. In the wild, when grazing sheep over night, a shepherd would gather stones and sticks to create a perimeter, an enclosure to hold the sheep which was called a sheepfold. I recall years ago, when we first developed relationship sponsoring refugees from Sudan. One day, I drove to lakefront home of John and Mary Ayer, and I was asked about our relationship. I recall John describing, I want to bring my children and their children to this church and name to them, this was the gate through which we came to be part of America. One of the churches I grew up in had a great deal of artwork. One print was a copy of a woodcut from the 1500s, roughly when Martin Luther was a teenager. In the print, Jesus stood at the gate of the sheepfold, and the sheepfold was the church. While Jesus was at the gate, there were Church officials checking people's papers, to determine who should get in and who should be kept out. Meanwhile, there were Church leaders running away from the Church carrying away members and ideas. The print was what today we might consider a Political Cartoon about the need for the Reformation, and in recent years I have thought a great deal about that print being descriptive of today, as Church leaders fight over who belongs and who does not, while important ideas and people are being carried away and lost. The passage about Ananias and Saphira, names what was required was not that they donate everything they had. Before they sold the land, nothing whatsoever was required of them. No, the difficulty was that they conspired to withhold part, to claim that they had given their all and lied to God, lied to the community, when they were choosing to hide. Being known and being loved, requires that we act honestly with one another, that we recognize and claim each other with our love in response. When there are gates, you had to be careful to use the gate every-time. If you crawl over a gate, over time the hinge would spring lowering the gate to where animals would try to climb over. If you crawled beneath, your pushing away brush and loose dirt would invite animals to believe they could too. My favorite image is of the Shepherd who would lay their own body down as the gate, to keep animals from going in or coming out. Literally, the Shepherd's own self became the Gate. And more important than trying to narrow the gate to keep unwanted out, the shepherd used their own body to extend the width of the gate to try to bring more inside. The secret to understanding faith is a question of where we begin. Are we Human beings searching all our lives to become more spiritual? OR are we spiritual beings, known by God, loved by God, searching to be accepted by humans?

"Founded on Disappointments" May 4, 2014

Luke 24: 13-35 Acts 10: 34-48 But, we had hoped... For the last many decades we have been part of an intellectual revolution. Our human understanding has increased exponentially, and what our minds could not fathom, our computers and devices could calculate for us. We are rational beings, but we are not only intellectual, we also feel and live and act and relate to one another. The quest to know, the desire to understand and make sense of the world only works for the tangible, the length and breadth, height and depth from nothing to our greatest achievement. The difficulty is that we have equated faith in contrast to science, or philosophy, or psychology, as something to know and master. But to believe is not to commit to mind as memory, but to commit to heart what we treasure. In faith we begin at Chaos trusting God to redeem. What I am struggling to describe is there is a rational progression to our minds; but leaps of faith are not rational, not progressive, if anything Christian faith is built on disappointment, doubt and disillusionment, the traumas which prevent continuing unchanged. If Christian Faith were reasonable and logical, all we would need is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is Karma, what goes around comes around. Good things happen to good people. Following the rules guarantees success. Except, these do not always work out. Bad things do happen to good people, just as those who do terrible things get away with bullying and successes. Life is not always as cyclical as the seasons, as rational as gravity, or laws. The Resurrection is not about Jesus being born at Bethlehem, baptized as a 30 year old, a gifted preacher, teacher and healer who entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and was promoted to being the Son of God. We cannot make the transition, to Jesus rising from the dead, without his having died, died in the most gruesome horrible way of suffering designed to instill fear and domination and hopelessness. Luke 24 is a very real human story. In response to Jesus being arrested, executed, buried 3 days before, two of those who had been followers declare: Road Trip! Let's Get out of Dodge. Let's go south for the winter. Let's clear our heads by going for a walk, or a run. We are taught Escapism. When stress gets too much, when we do not know how to cope with disappointments, we take a pill, have a drink, watch something mindless, go away for a while. When we are Depressed, we DeCompression, except when we are rested, when we come back, this “disappointed reality” is still inescapable. Luke has this wonderful aramaic phrase: “Hlpizomen” “But, we had hoped...” The disciples thought everything would be predictable. In a baseball game the pitcher pitches, the Catcher catches, the shortstop intercepts and runs down the player between 2nd and 3rd. A Surgeon excises tumors. So a Messiah is here to gather to change the world. The Messiah will confront our oppressors, call for revolution against the Empire, we have evidence with Noah, and Moses and King David. But Jesus died... But, we had hoped. Hlpizomen is not specifically about Jesus dying on the cross and being raised on Easter, but our every conversation of disappointment. We had hoped our child was going to be the first to college... We had hoped that going to college they would get a Job... We got married and we had hoped to live happily ever after... We bought a house and had hoped to live here all our days...We had hoped to retire to spend time together... We invested in the stock market to have money for retirement... All these are discussions on the road of disappointments. Struggling to make sense, to change from what we thought we understood, to accept a different reality founded on this disappointment.. We had hoped, Life was Perfect, Fair, We could Win.. Our language, our culture, quickly adapt and use phrases until they become trite, overtly familiar, one of the most recent that has been used to excess is A NEW NORMAL. When we are traumatized, when we had hoped to spend a lifetime together and that other cheats on us, or dies, that is not a new normal. When in a Marathon raising awareness and money for Cancer research, or Mental Illness, and someone blows up a bomb, that is does not create a new normal. In trauma, in hopelessness the disappointment of what we have known, become the foundation of what we will be a Fresh Beginning. The Emmaus Road is the Gospel, within the Gospel of Luke, within the Bible. After the Crucifixion, Resurrection when followers confront Jesus, saying we had it all figured out, we were in control, We had hoped... And Jesus beginning with Law and the Prophets explains how everything fits together differently, from a foundation of disappointment. It takes a seven mile journey for them to hear, and arriving at their destination he appeared to be going further but they twisted his arm to stay for dinner. For many of us, food can become another Escapism. Chocolate, Comfort Food, Red Wine, these fill us with empty calories, satiating our desire, without transforming us. I went to Seminary with Baptists and Congregationalists and AME Zion who emphasized the new understanding that came intellectually from the Word; with Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians all would be priests, who seized on this point in the story, that in the breaking of the bread, in that sacramental moment, they recognized him. As a Presbyterian, I believe in both/and, in receiving the Word and experiencing the Forgiveness at Table we are changed. Acts of the Apostles describes a different meal. Simon Peter was attempting to pray, but he was hungry. Have you ever tried to do something, and been distracted by your body's needs and desires? Peter's mind continually drifts off to food, except, in this prayer-state he witnesses this great white table cloth lowered from heaven, filled with Armadillo, Snails, Rattle snake, Tortoise, Mollusks, Vulture, Horse and Pig, all Non-Kosher food, all forbidden in a former time and place. So Peter rejects what is offered. Three different times, his prayers are interrupted by the same vision, the same dream of succulent Non-Kosher forbidden food and a voice from God saying “eat”. Three different times, Peter rejects what is offered from heaven... It seems like it always takes Simon Peter 3 times of denial and rejection, before he recognizes God. Suddenly, instead of the Cock crowing, there is a knock at the door where there were three strangers, with invitation to Go. Peter went with these Gentiles, though again it was out of his comfort zone, in a disillusioned world. The strangers took him to Cornelius a Roman Centurion, who although Gentile, an Officer in the Roman Legion, Cornelius bowed down and asked Simon Peter for blessing. Peter is more eloquent than “But We had hoped...” Peter replied “Where I have always been Kosher, I now perceive that God shows no partiality.” This is not a simple statement of Universalism. I'm Okay, You're Okay, Everything and everyone is Good. Instead, following upon the Vision, Peter is constructing a different reality built from the disappointment of the former no longer being sufficient. There is a powerful irony in all of this. Jesus was incarnate as a human being. Like all of us, his mother's womb enfolded him. At birth he was held and caressed. After he was Baptized, he “touched” people. He touched the ears of a deaf man, the eyes of one born blind, children, lepers and those mourned as dead he touched, a woman in the crowd reached out just to touch the hem of his garment. And being touched by him, all were made well. At the resurrection, in the Garden, in the Upper Room, Jesus invited those disillusioned to touch him, to feel where the spear pierced his side, to touch the holes made by the nails in the cross, and None are recorded as physically touching these. The point is not that our logic or knowledge has been wrong. Not that the Covenant is broken or abandoned. Not that we have to touch the physical wounds of his body's suffering. But rather, that in all our disappointments, all our disillusion-ments, we can now see how those were sufficient in an earlier time and place, but the Covenant can be fulfilled in ways we never before dared. This was not the home where we lived happily ever after, but rather one of the homes where we treasure great memories. We had hopes for what this child would be, and they have become so much more than we imagined.