Chris Yaw

Years ago it occurred to me that spending my life void of any sort of physical exercise may have a long-term health implications, So I decided to join a gym.

However, my fondness for keeping my money in my bank account and not Vic Tanny’s, led me to construct a home gym in the basement using second (or third) hand equipment purveyed from various suburban garage sales (the upside of living in a culture where fitness is more aspiration than practice, is that this sort of equipment is not hard to find nor afford).

But the trick of course is not joining a gym, but using it.

That’s when a friend imparted a very useful piece of advice. ‘Every other day,’ she said, ‘choose a 30 minute time slot and go down to your home gym and just sit there’ - the savvy reasoning being that anybody can do that - plus sitting in my empty gym for 30 minutes, surrounded by equipment, will lead to its use, and hence a regular workout pattern will emerge.

She was right, it did.

And both body and mind were aided - as it occurred to me that conversion isn’t something totally out of my hands - but often, something I can influence - and is well within reach.

On Sunday we’ll hear a conversion story like this - about a man who’d lost everything, and found himself in surroundings that motivated him to a dramatic conversion.

And isn’t that the point of Lent?

You and I want to be converted - we want to be more kind, more patient, more forgiving, more generous, more relaxed, more at ease and able to enjoy and more fully participate in the life we’ve been given?

And we can be ‘converted’ to that kind of person when we, too, pay attention to our surroundings.

To use the analogy about the gym, Lent is when we take time to sit in our chapels - be they at church or at home - with our Bibles or faith books or icons - to get in better spiritual shape - to do our exercises - to pray, to journal, to contemplate what God might be saying to us - and how we might respond.

And how we can start, is by taking my friend’s advice - choosing 30 minutes, a few days a week, and just going there - and sitting. Soon we’ll be doing more than just sitting.

Friends, conversion isn’t something we have to wait for - it’s often something we have to work for -

What is it we want to be converted to? What kind of project do we want to accomplish? What kind of person do we want to become?

Conversion is possible, we can play a role, Lord, show us the way.

If we lived 2,000 years ago we may have asked what those 50 New Zealand Muslims had done to get themselves killed.

How had they sinned? How had their parents sinned? It would have been the subject of endless debate.

Today we ask, what has our culture become, so that hateful ideologies can be so easily communicated? Why has our society failed to be properly infused with tolerance and mutual respect? And it is also the subject of no small amount of pontification.

While we’ve certainly evolved to a better informed and more compassionate understanding of how the world works, we can’t help but notice the way both of these responses fall short. For neither of them gets to the most critical question we can ask: what are we going to do about it?

All the endless chit chat, Monday morning quarterbacking and water cooler debating, does just as little 2,000 years ago as it does today. We’re all wired to take way more time talking than taking action.

And what this world needs is more action.

On Sunday, we will hear Jesus teach about this.

He knows the easy role of the critic and cynic - and the far more difficult job of the doer and mover.

And he urges us to be among those who get off the sidelines and get into the game.

What does this mean to you and me?

In what ways do we talk more than do?

Ultimately we need to ask, what are the stall tactics we use to avoid doing the work?

The story is told about a quaint little farming town that could only be reached by a narrow road with a bad curve in it.

This curve was the site of occasional accidents, and every decade or so, even a death.

Since the town was too small to have an E-M-S unit, members of the local Episcopal Church organized a volunteer medic service, and when word would come on the police scanner of an accident, these volunteers would be first on the scene to transport accident victims to the County Hospital.

The Church took this ministry so seriously, they even bought a used ambulance to help them in their work.

One day a town councilman suggested a wider road be built, one that would eliminate the bad curve. However, the mayor owned a profitable fruit market right in the middle of that curve - and was against the measure.

This councilman asked the rector of the Episcopal Church to talk to the mayor, as he was a parish member. But the minister, and most of the people, thought it best for the church to stay out of politics. So the following Sunday, the rector preached on The Good Samaritan and encouraged his members to continue their fine work of tending to accident victims, which they did.

It can be so hard for us church-folk to rock the boat.

It’s much more comfortable and safer to keep things the way they are - and even find some Bible passage to back it up.

The problem is that these injustices go on all the time - often untended by us.

We know foster kids need our help - but we pay more attention to Oscar winners.

We know our neighbors are lonely - but we know our favorite sports stars better.

And no one is even surprised about the news this week that rich kids get into elite colleges easier than poor kids.

In Sunday’s Gospel we see that Jesus' work of healing the world was something from which he could not be distracted.

So in Lent, we ask ourselves: how distracted are we from the work God has called us to do?

How have we lost the script?

And how are we getting back on track?

May our attention be captured by on the problems - and solutions - that captured Jesus’ attention.

One guy said it was busier than the McDonald’s drive-thru.

That’s right - more than 500 people came through the St David’s Drive Thru Ashes this year, our 5th and most attended to date - nearly twice as many as last year. Here’s what we heard:

‘I was just diagnosed with a brain tumor, can you pray for me?’

’Will you pray my sciatic nerve can be healed?'

‘Please, please pray we can have a baby.’

We are hungry for God’s touch in our lives.

We want to know that God cares for us.

We want to draw closer to the One who can heal, comfort, and forgive - and we see Ash Wednesday as a particularly fitting time to do so.

So as we begin this season of Lent, let’s learn from our neighbors that this indeed is a terrific time of year to reach out to God.

What does God want from us?

What does God have for us?

What do we have for God?

What can we do to draw closer to that One who heals, comforts, and forgives?

It was the fall of 1993 when I sat on a friend's sofa and knew in my heart that God had called me to a certain job in a certain place to do something important.

And I needed to experience that, because the job I was being called to would be fraught with difficulties, challenges, and complexities that would seriously test my decision.

You might call that moment on the couch a mountaintop experience, a time in which I felt particularly close to to God and how God was directing me.

Can you name a time in your life in which you felt the same thing? Tuned in to the transcendent, particularly close to the one whose voice echoes most deepest in your soul?

We call it a mountaintop experience because we see something similar in Sunday's gospel, when Jesus and his closest disciples ascend a mountain and Jesus is transfigured, his face changed, his clothes a dazzling white, and he finds himself in conversation with Moses and Elijah, before the audible voice of God speaks from the heavens.

God gives us the these moments of affirmation, because God knows there will be moments of doubt.

God gives us these moments of unforgettable bliss because God knows there will be moments of unendurable pain.

God gives us these moments of clarity and insight because God knows there will be moments of confusion and occlusion.

Mountain top experiences are as rare as they are impactful.

That's why it's so important for you and me to remember; remember that we do not go through this drama alone, that the world is made up of much more than the things we can see, feel, and touch.

That there is more going on than we will ever know.

That there are saints conspiring on our behalf, loved ones in a different realm plotting our advance, unseen allies who work day and night for our goodness and wholeness.

So friends let us remember our transfigurations - our mountain top experiences - they are reminders that God is near - and that the darkness in the valley that can surround us - will not last.

This week children across America are getting little Valentines ready for their fellow students.

It's a bit of a hassle at my house because one of my children doesn't want to write Valentines to all 21 fellow students and says "Dad I only want to give out a half dozen Valentines, to the people I play with and really like."

My child speaks for us all when we, in our own ways, favor the people we like, who are like us, and whom we want to impress. We too want to pay less attention to those with whom we have little in common, we don't particularly like, and maybe even find a little bit weird.

I remember hearing a bit of parenting advice from a Christian leader who asked his school-aged kids to do just two things: 1) to always stand up to bullies, and 2) to always make friends with those who have few or no friends.

When we think about it, we suspect that’s what God does. We suspect God looks out for those whom others overlook. And when we're asked to be like God, that means we do the same thing.

This is at the heart of the message of the beatitudes we will hear on Sunday.

Jesus will call the the hungry, the mourning, and the unpopular “blessed," and he will warn those who know only what it's like to be rich, well-fed, and popular, that their eyes need to be opened to the suffering of the world and to their responsibility to help alleviate it.

In other words blessed are those who participate in the brokenness of the world and woe to those who ignore it.

Like everyone, I struggle in the morning when I wake up - to either enjoy the beauty of this amazing world, or to buckle down and get to work fixing it. It's a delicate balance. And I think we know from experience that our default setting is the former - we favor the easy road: of comfort, security, and safety - over uncomfortably putting ourselves out there, giving of ourselves for the benefit of others - and truly participating in the healing of the world.

Friends, what does it mean for you and me to look a bit more at the poor, the hungry, the mourning, and those in genuine need?

How is God calling us to give of our abundance - to those who have less?

It may be something as little as sending a Valentine.

A friend of mine survived another round of job cuts at General Motors.

After the early retirements and thinning out of half his department, what relief when the angel of death skipped over his cube…

While I was certainly happy for him - I had to confess I wasn’t surprised.

When hiring people, two qualifications many employers look for are punctuality and attitude: can the employee get there on time, and are they genuinely positive about the work?

My friend has both, but especially the second - he loves his job, drops everything to take on new projects, rarely complains, and is an exemplary team player. His job connects with his gift and enjoyment of problem-solving.

Sure, he does it for the paycheck, but also because engineering is deeply satisfying.

Howard Thurman famously wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

On Sunday, we’ll hear a fascinating story of Jesus calling his first disciples.

We know Peter, James, and John were not singularly learned nor accomplished theologians.

However, it seems they were in touch with what made them come alive: the story says they dropped everything, career and family, to follow.

It makes us consider that our greatest satisfaction comes when we, too, are taken with the pursuit of that which makes us most fully alive.

Perhaps, then, our most profound human task is to discover, hone, and share that which most deeply enlivens us.

After all, the one thing, the only thing, that you and nobody else can do, is to identify, shape, and share that one thing that only we have been given - that most enlivens us.

Own it. Hone it. And loan it - with no expectation of return - freely we were given, freely we give.

Lord, help us drop the nets. Look inside and follow. What the world needs is people who have come alive.

I got mad at my children the other day.

They didn’t listen, were dawdling, and were mildly disobedient. So I raised my voice and told them things for which I later had to apologize.

It took me longer to simmer down - become peaceful - and begin to unpack why I chose to express my anger the way I did.

After all, anger is a valid and helpful emotion. It stems from passion for the things most dear to us, the things we work hardest to protect, safeguard, and nurture.

As the poet David Whyte says, anger is the purest form of care.

But when we get angry we are often unwilling and unable to plumb the depths of what’s really going on: I become blind to the significance of the work for which I am working. And I bristle at tempering my reactions, which are expressions of a love unable to yield to a wider more expansive definition, one I’m unwilling or unable to accept. And so I give anger a harmful voice.

We learn more from a scenario in this Sunday’s Gospel, when Jesus tells long-time friends that the God they hold in highest esteem, doesn’t favor them as much as they suspect.

They flew into a rage, mobbed him, and nearly killed him.

We understand. We too often fail to realize that God’s equitable love for all people is actually something to be embraced and celebrated - and not exclusively claimed, denigrated or riddled with fault.

Like us, Jesus’ opponents fail to realize that most expressions of anger are actually displays of frustration with our unwillingness or inability to accept a wider reality, a more expansive definition of love - one that brings its own threats and fears.

We do well to understand the teachings of our anger - it shows us what we love most deeply, most yearn to protect, and most covet: we simply don’t get angry over things we don’t care about.

It is in this contemplation that the foundation stones for new ways to express our deep yearnings can find bedrock, that we might live more authentically into our anger not as deprivation and insufficiency, but as profound care for another whose well-being we care more about than our own.

"Honey, should I wear the black one or the grey one?"

I was asking about turtlenecks as we prepared for dinner with friends one night.

I suppose in some small way I was letting my wife define me as I took her advice (grey, always grey), for we humans are communal by nature and rely on the opinions of others to form our self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence.

But the way we allow others to define us is analogous to the ways we worry and fear: none of these are bad in themselves, we just participate in them way too often.

As Christians, we work to make God the biggest influencer, the biggest definer, of who we are, for we know that the wider culture often offers influences that are antithetical to the way of the Gospel.

in this season of Epiphany, Sunday's gospel brings a revelation. We hear of Jesus entering a synagogue, reading scripture, and claiming the declaration it makes about who he is and what he has been called to do.

Would that I could accept as readily and claim as confidently the identity scripture gives to me!

Time and again the Bible tells me I am provided for, I am forgiven, I am purposed, and I am destined for a greatness in God's plan that only I can fulfill.

Too often I look at challenges as road blocks to my happiness, and not stepping stones to a more aware and alive existence.

Too often I choose the saccharine soft drink of familiarity and routine to the Red Bull of risk and chanced failure.

Who's defining me and why do I let them do so?

Lord, be my mirror and give me ears to hear only you.

I recently left a movie theater scratching my head.

For two hours I’d watched the long, meandering film hoping to find some sense of continuity, consistency, or meaning. But couldn’t. When the closing credits rolled I could only think of how it didn’t end as much as it had just stopped. Frustrated, I suspect I was in the minority because the movie had been critically acclaimed.

The point is that there are stories in search of meanings - and there are meanings in search of stories.

There are stories that either hide their meaning or have none, and there are meanings that are so profound, so desperately important - that any story fails to do it justice.

This is what’s happening in one of the most fabulous stories in the Bible, which we’ll hear this weekend, the wine-making miracle at the wedding in Cana.

We know what happens, Jesus, his mom, and friends are invited to a wedding where the wine runs out. Nearby are some pots of water, which Jesus turns to wine.

We discover more in the exaggerated details: Jesus makes 780 bottles of wine - enough for 3,000 guests - and it’s fine quality wine.

The point is that God’s desire to love and care for us is that big.

And the contemplation of this loving care is crucial, because we desire more than anything to be loving people and enter into that rest of knowing that God’s got it all under control.

After all, we suspect that the cure for our nagging anxiety is in a deeper connection to God whose nature is to love and provide for us more than we will ever, ever comprehend.

So let us raise our glasses to this love, acknowledging the boundaries of human expression and the glorious boundlessness it will always fail to contain. God is hard at work, caring and providing for us, more than we can ever know.

I woke up early the other day, so worried about something that I was unkind to those around me.

Unable to put things into perspective, I was inconsiderate and preoccupied with something that ultimately didn’t amount to anything.

I hate when that happens.

In fact, when I take a mental inventory, I can think of a number of aspects of my life that do not inspire pride. Maybe you’re like me and have wrestled with moments of over-worry, unforgiveness, selfishness, catty conversation, and little faith?

Don’t we wish we could pile all those unsavory aspects of our behaviors into a wheelbarrow, take them to a bonfire, and watch them go up in smoke?

On Sunday we will hear Jesus described as one who gathers the chaff, that which is unwanted and unneeded, and burns it with unquenchable fire.

This is such and important and attractive part of Jesus’ ministry: that we can be free of those aspects of our lives that are not life-giving and productive for ourselves or others.

What would life be like if we could get rid of our worst habits?

While this is far from instant - the Christian life suggests it can happen gradually - as we move to make our participation in Jesus' divine life a bigger part of our human lives - to help melt away all that junk that’s better off elsewhere.

What Christ bids of us, is to get closer to the fire - close enough to warmly nurture that which gives life - and closer still to burn away that which does not.

In this season of Epiphany, what does God want to burn away? What’s the chaff? And how are we going about our work of drawing closer to the Light - and the fire - that heals and brings life.

I remember getting a wake up call when my boss fired me.

Sure there were warning signs, comments made, meetings I wasn’t invited to - but I didn’t want to think about these things - because they were difficult and unpleasant

In hindsight, it would have done a world of good if I had -

Being more aware of who we are and what our place is in the world is nothing but beneficial to us and those around us.

That’s why I like this season called ‘Epiphany’ - this season of revealing - the revelation of truth -

Epiphany is when we stop hitting the snooze button every time we get a wake up call.

It’s when we see that embracing our whole - especially the unseemly bits - is where the real growth, learning, and ultimately, fulfillment comes from.

On Sunday we’ll hear the familiar story of the Three Kings -

This story wakes us up to a number of realities -

Certainly with 3 Kings following a star - reveals to us the reality of divine guidance-

When King Herod tries to find the baby - it’s to the reality of wicked and oppressive forces that are working to harm - not just in their world, but in ours

It’s revealed in Joseph and Mary - those two nobodies from nowhere - that everybody, no matter how insignificant we feel we are, has a vocation.

I think that last bit is really important today - because there’s a lot of apathy out there - a lot of people asking, ‘Hey, does my life matter?’

This magical story reminds us that our relationship with our vocation - with our unique calling - is like a relationship between a father and a son - or a mother and a son: if dad doesn’t show up for that kid, if mom doesn’t show up for that kid - no one else can or will - the job of a parent is irreplaceable - and so are we in God’s world - doing the work that only we can do.

So this Epiphany, let it be revealed to us anew how important we are to God and to the world around us -

That the Divine is invisibly working to keep us from harm -

And that guidance from above will come - stars do appear - may we have eyes to see.

Chris Yaw

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