December 25, 2014

Christmas III
The Rev. Kimberly Reinholz
Cathedral Church of the Nativity

Are you afraid of the dark?

I am.  I always have been.  I used to leave all the lights on in the house when I went to bed and my father who worked the night shift would be mad as a hornet when he came home if I was the last one to go to sleep when I was in high school.  My husband knows that if there is a storm coming he should bring me a pencil and a book of crosswords or word searches to get me through the worst of it.   I do not like the prospect of being in the dark.  It has been a saving grace having a child so it’s not “weird” to have nightlights on in the house.

What is it about the darkness that is so frightening?  I think that the fear can be broken down into three kinds– physical, mental, and spiritual.

We are scared of physical darkness, because it is threatening to our bodies.  This is the kind of darkness that we can experience at night and during storms.  This is the darkness caused by clouds and hours.  This darkness enables us to stub our toes on end tables and coffee tables which inexplicably move from where they have always been.  This darkness casts shadows and allows us to see things that aren’t there, a man in the corner, where a coat rack usually resides, a slumping body, in place of a pile of dirty clothes, a sleeping dog into a monster under the bed.  In the darkness our imaginations get the better of us. 

Darkness is unsettling but we know in the morning the light will come, or if we get up enough courage after our nightmare we can swing our hand out from under the covers, hit the switch and instantly the coatrack will once again be a coatrack the laundry pile will still be waiting to be washed, and our beloved canine will be snoring away as usual.

We are blessed in our lives by physical light.  The sun, the moon, the stars, fire, and the ingenuity to harness electricity, for all this and more or this we give thanks to God.  Physical darkness cannot over take us. 

We are scared of the mental darkness for less obvious reasons.  In modern American society mental darkness isn’t really discussed.  We share stories of our happiness, of our accomplishments, of our hopes and dreams. 

But we suffer from our anxieties, depression and sadness in silence.  If not in complete silence we only express these feelings in the presence of the select few, close friends, family members and therapists.  We do not share these stories in our larger communities with our colleagues at work, with our acquaintances, and certainly not on social media.

After all social media is supposed to be an escape right?  Who wants to hear about how you are struggling with grief over the loss of a loved one, six or seven months after they have passed, confusion over a relationship that has ended, or is in the process of falling apart, losing a job because of personal or practical reasons, the loss of a pregnancy or dealing with infertility?  Who wants to share the bad news? Who wants to invite people into the dark corners of your mind, isn’t it easier just to say we are fine, and move on?  

Isn’t that the darkness which we live with silently, the fear that no one will care that we are hurting.  The fear that nothing can lighten our dark thoughts.  The fear that our sadness, our depression, our anxiety will consume us.

This is where the hope of the Gospel shines through though.  In the darkness that we think is all consuming we know that God is the light, and that the light is present with us.  We know that Jesus is God incarnate and in his bodily form he knew the same sadness, confusion and anxiety that we know. 

He experienced loss, his cousin John, the one who was sent by God to proclaim the light, is eventually arrested and executed.  His relationships were strained, in different gospel accounts we have stories of his mother and brothers coming to bring him home, believing him to be crazy. 

Even his friends turn against him, one of his closest followers betrays him to the Roman occupation.  Jesus knows what it means to encounter mental darkness, he lived it too.

We shouldn’t let the darkness win, we ought to be more open and honest in our expression- both virtually and in person.  It is not a sign of weakness that we struggle.  It’s a sign of our messy humanity.  It is a sign of our frailty, but it is not something to be scared of, it is something to share and allow to see the light of day rather than hiding it we need to share it in community and hold one another in the light of Christ when we are too frightened to share it with the world at large.   This is the place where the light of Christ lives day in and day out, this community, between those of us who believe the spark of faith and hope reside. 

We are blessed in our lives with the light of family and friends, relationships of blood and choice.  We are blessed to be part of a community to not be left alone, to again and again be invited back into relationship with God through our relationships with one another- this is the basis of the great commandment to the Lord our God with all our hearts and minds and strength and to love one another as ourselves.  Even in the darkest times of our mental anguish the darkness didn’t consume Jesus and it won’t consume you.  I know that it feels that way at times, but what we have to realize is that we shouldn’t be ashamed of this mental darkness in our lives.

Even within communities like this one, where we strive to bring one another into the light of Christ, to share the hope and faith in Jesus. We struggle with fear, what we as a community cannot even begin to express is spiritual darkness.  More than the physical darkness or the mental darkness we struggle to even name this deepest fear.  While there are those out there who proclaim their atheism and agnosticism proudly.  Announcing proudly or matter of fact-ly: “I don’t believe in God”, or “I’m not sure about God”, or “There is no God”.  Most Christians, struggle with periods of disbelief.  There are times when God seems to have turned away from us, when the light that Christ supposedly provides seems to be snuffed out.  Only you know the times when this darkness have encompassed you. 

I know for me it was when my grandmother died.  It was when a 6.5 year relationship ended suddenly.  It was when I lost my first pregnancy.  In these moments I longed for the light, I longed for proof that God was real.  I longed to know that the darkness would not overcome me.  But in those moments of spiritual jaundice I clung to the words in today’s Gospel.   

As an infant who is born needing, not just any light, but a certain light, I attach myself to the knowledge that in the beginning was the Word.  I cling to the belief that the Word was with God, and the Word was God and that what has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

When a child is born into the world with Jaundice they physically needs to be set up with special a Bilirubin light so that they can get rid of the toxins which have built up in utero.  Similarly when Christians are baptized in the sacrament of new birth they need to get rid of the sins which have built up in our lives, we need the light of Christ.  We need the light of the incarnate God, to dispel from us the physical, mental and most of all the spiritual darkness in our lives.

We can turn on the light in our bedroom in the darkness of storms and midnight terrors.  We can hold onto a flicker of hope in community in the midst of mental exhaustion, anxiety, stress, and worry.  We can turn to our spiritual practices in the moments of doubt when we are in spiritual darkness.  We believe that praying shapes believing.  We believe that what we do here, what we do together in worship spreads the light of God into the world.  We believe that we carry the light of Christ with us, that God is with us- Emmanuel, God is with us.  Even in the darkness.  God is with us. 

This is the blessing of the incarnation of God.  That we can turn to Jesus when we are scared: physically, mentally, or spiritually, when the darkness tries to overtake our lives it will be beaten back by the eternal light of Christ.  That in our most dark hours spiritually if we have honed our hearts and minds to listen for the still small voice of God, it will shine through any darkness.  In these deep, dark, scary and overwhelming times, when we wonder where God is in all the mess and the shadows, we can find him, in our hearts and minds, all we have to do is remember that God created the light – the sun, stars and moon to guide us, communities to strengthen us and support us, and he came to earth to be allow us to hear his voice and know that he knows what we know- the darkness will not over takes us. 

Thanks be to God. 

Amen

The Rev Kimberly Reinholz - November 16, 2014

November 16, 2014

The Rev. Kimberly Reinholz
Cathedral Church of the Nativity

Proper 28
Matthew 25:14-30

I have good news and I have bad news.  Which do you want first?

• The bad news is, I’m not Rick Cluett.  He hurt his back and had to stay home today, he is healing but he regrettably isn’t here with us this morning.  We keep him in our prayers for a quick and complete recovery.

• The good news is, this is the LAST parable that we are going to talk about for the never-ending season of Pentecost!  And boy is it as doozy.  I know why Tony went on vacation and left Rick with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But let’s get down to this parable.  These servants and their talents, what are we to make of them?  The kingdom of heaven is like this?   Really, if we don’t make money in the market place, if we don’t invest wisely, then we will be beaten and thrown out into the darkness.  This doesn't sound like the kingdom of heaven that I was taught about in Sunday School.  This doesn’t sound like the heavenly kingdom where all dogs go to, it doesn’t sound like the kind of God that I want to be judging me. 

I don’t want a Lord who will judge me based on my bank balance- because – I’ve done the same thing that Tony talked about last week.  I’ve borrowed against that 401k to invest in my marriage- to pay for my wedding, to invest in my education- to pay for part of seminary, to invest in my living expenses- when I was in school to pay for some unexpected expenses.

But then I remember that all of these parables, are metaphorical, and maybe (God I hope so) this parable of the talents is as well.  So what could Jesus be trying to teach us in this parable what are the talents that God has given each of us equally?  I believe the talent which God has given each of us for our investment – for our greatest “earning potential” is the gift of Love.  Now we all know that the greatest commandment according to Jesus is the Shema- You should love the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and the second is like it you should love your neighbor as yourself.  

Consider for a moment if God, your neighbor and yourself, were investment opportunities like those offered to the servants in the parable.  And love was the currency.

Could we imagine that loving God, loving your neighbor and loving yourself would yield the greatest return?  Could this be the kind of wise investing that the first slave who was given five talents, and doubled his investment was capable of?  Could this slave be the ideal follower of Jesus- one who is not only capable of loving God, loving their neighbor, and loving themselves, but able to love God, their neighbor and their self.  

Could we also imagine that the second slave, the one whose two talents yield two talents is a person who is capable of only loving others, and loving himself, but not loving God?  How many of our friends and neighbors fall into this category- the spiritual but not religious, the humanists, the “nones” who proclaim love for one another and profess love for themselves, but there is no love of God.  They do have worthwhile relationships in this world, but they live in a world without the hope of eternal life (as we heard in Paul’s letter to Thessalonian’s last week) a world without God, a world without the Body of Christ, a world without the Kingdom of heaven.   

Could we finally imagine that last slave, the slave who is afraid of the master, the slave who is afraid of harsh judgment, the slave who buries the talents, as the person who is so paralyzed by fear that they cannot love anyone perhaps not even themselves?

We have all been given this gift of Love which can only increase if it is shared.  This gift that grows in power when we love ourselves, when we love one another and when we love God. 

But sometimes we cannot love. 

Sometimes we cannot love ourselves, sometimes we feel unworthy of love, sometimes we feel worthless and talentless and lacking in some capacity. 

Sometimes we cannot love God, there are times when we cannot understand God’s motives and we get angry, frustrated, and confused. 

Sometimes we can’t love our neighbor.  People can be crazy.  People can be mean and vindictive and hateful.  And it’s not always easy to love them. 

But it is not supposed to be easy to make investments in ourselves, in others or in God.  We have to have faith that our investments will produce good returns even when we have doubts about them. Sometimes it just takes the opportunity to care for someone else to shake us out of our fear, our doubt or our uncertainty about the validity of loving ourselves, our neighbors or God. 

How many of you have seen the movie the Wizard of Oz, or read the books by Frank L. Baum? 

You know the premise Dorothy Gale of Kansas travels to the Land of Oz, somewhere over the rainbow.  She spends the entire length of the movie/book trying to make her way back home with the help of the tin man, the scarecrow and the lion.   Each of them deem themselves defective in some way.  The scarecrow is without a brain, the tin man a heart and the lion courage. 

I hope this isn’t a spoiler for any of you, but the companion’s journey to the Emerald City in hopes of meeting the Wizard who tells them that they had had these particular talents all along – and they had used their brains, their heart and their courage to bring Dorothy safely to the Emerald city.  All they needed was to have faith and the love they had for Dorothy and one another, allowed them to increase their gifts and talents.  But it was the love that was the currency and the investment brought about the fulfillment of their desires. 

Let me tell you about one of my Dorothy’s.  Someone who I cared about very deeply in a time when I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me, if I was worthy of being loved, and if anyone was worth my time, never the less my love. 

I was 25 years old and heart broken.  My boyfriend of 6.5 years had broken up with me and I was devastated.  I had been attending church at a small parish.  I started volunteering with a group of refugees and asylum seekers on Wednesday afternoons in order to get out of my head for a while every week while I was writing my masters thesis.  While I was there I met a lot of people, I helped babysit little kids while their parents met with lawyers, sat with siblings or spouses while meetings were happening, and did dishes after other meetings.  I was just there to keep myself busy.

One day I met Teresa.  Teresa had come to the UK from Chile to Pinochet.  She had lived illegally in the country for nearly 35 years at that point.  Because she was in the UK illegally she couldn’t get health care, she couldn’t get housing, she couldn’t get any of the basic needs that the government provided.  She came to the program seeking some legal counsel about how to find help, she had been cast out of her native land and was effectively a non-person in her new home.  Talk about being in the darkness weeping and gnashing your teeth. 

Teresa and I started to talk, before and after her appointments with the lawyers, counselors, and ot  her officials.Not because I had anything to offer her, but only because I was the only one in the volunteer corps with even a basic understanding of Spanish.  When we first met we talked about the weather, about the coffee we were drinking, about her sons and daughters in law, about her grandchildren.  But eventually when she felt more comfortable we spoke about her journey, about how she came to live as she did, about her husband who had been killed in the coups, about the life she had lived. 

Through these hours of conversation, I came to love Teresa.  I came to invest in her, I came to work for her and use my gifts and talents to help her, even when I couldn’t invest I myself, or invest in God.  It was through this love that I was able to begin to love myself again, and eventually to love God. 

However the rest of that is a story I will have to tell you another time.  For now I invite you to spend a few moments thinking about your Dorothy’s – those people who show up in your life.  Those people who seem to need help, those who need love, and support and you think you can provide it.  Those who are hungry, lost and alone.  Those who we are called to as Christians to love – and our love takes the shape of feeding, clothing, visiting, praying for, providing a drink to.  Think about those whom you have invested in, those whom you have loved. 

Give thanks for them, and give thanks to God who gave you the love to begin with.   Amen

The Rev. Kim Reinholz - Oct 12 2014

Kimberly Reinholz

Sunday October 12, 2014

Cathedral Church of the Nativity

Proper 19 A

1Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, "Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8

We’ve all heard that saying – it looks like a duck, it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck then it must be a duck.

Well today’s Gospel looks like a single parable about a wedding feast, and while it might look like a duck, but in reality it’s not.  In reality it’s two ducks, or rather two parables strewn together over the course of creating our canon because they are both set in the same context of a royal wedding banquet. 

If we were to break today’s reading into the two distinct stories the first dealing with the invited guests and the second dealing with the inappropriately attired guest we can see this selection in a much different light.  Especially if we consider the context in which the Gospel of Matthew was written.   A context of complicated social responsibilities and expectations not easily translated into our modern mainly middle class American culture. 

It is believed that the author or authors of Matthew’s gospel survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and accordingly the author and those who followed blamed the Jewish leaders for their complacency in the Roman occupation. 

The parables of Matthew indicate over and over again an understanding that while the Israelites were the chosen people, they denied their esteemed status as the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah.  Those who were the rightful heirs of the Kingdom of God were cast aside by their own choices.

This is what Matthew is attempting to prove in having Jesus tell parables where those who were invited deny their invitation by choosing what appeared to be the good alternative options –one went to his farm and the other to his business.  Later in the same parable, these invited guests assault the slaves who come to escort them to the festivities. 

It can be understood that the slaves are an analogy for the prophets whose lives are recorded in scriptures, they were those who served the King without distraction, without differentiation.  They were not slaves to the land or to the economic pressures of the world.

Matthew’s author continually derides the Pharisees for their inability to see that the Kingdom of God is greater than the Kingdoms of People and this parable is no different.  He casts the light in such a way that the Pharisees neglect to see that they are being honored as guests at the King’s wedding feast, instead they are choosing to focus on earthly matters instead of heavenly things.

Only after those who had initially been invited are destroyed and their city burned do they realize that they have chosen unwisely to focus on their work rather than their life.  Some bible scholars claim that this is an allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem and use it to base their understanding of the time in which Matthew’s gospel was composed.  But the destruction of the farms and the business could also be an allusion to the temporary nature of the human world, and the understanding that the Kingdom of God is eternal where the kingdoms of humanity are fragile.

The second parable – the “what not to wear” parable is a little more complicated.  It seems that the King has prepared a feast, but the guest whom he invited, the Pharisees, who are distracted, are unworthy of their invitation.  Instead the adopted heirs, the sinners and tax collectors, who have no right to even be invited to the wedding banquet, are now given the place of honor at the table. The Pharisees are the same but the context of this parable is different, the guests in the first parable would rather farm or sell wares, but in this parable, they are deemed unworthy of attending the event for some unknown reason. 

So instead of having unworthy guests at his table the King casts a wide net out into the community inviting all who the slaves encounter on the street into the wedding feast. 

Upon entering the feast the King finds the ragamuffin crowd of guests, including the one who is inappropriately attired and the sentence for this fashion crime is being gagged, tied and left outside of the city walls where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I thought Joan Rivers was a tough fashion critic, apparently this King is even more judgmental. 

But as with all parables there is exaggeration and hyperbole present in the images.  The message is extreme but there is a lesson to be learned in this parable as well.  And I believe the message is you better be prepared.

Now I have a bit of a confession to make, I am a HUGE fan of Rupaul’s Drag Race and also Project Runway so when I hear this parable I imagine the King looking at this wretched individual like Rupaul and tell on of the drag queen contenstants to “sashay away”. Or Heidi Klum “auf wiedersehen -ing” another designer whose outfit just didn’t pass muster.  

But the problem is that the man on the street wasn’t planning on coming to a wedding that day, he wasn’t planning on meeting RuPaul, or Heidi Klum, he was planning to just run to the store.  I feel like it's the first century equivalent of showing up to class in your pajama pants, or running to Wawa for a quart of milk with your grubby sweats on. 

So why is the King so judgmental?   What does it matter what the unintended guest is wearing?  Shouldn’t we all be received and accepted as we are, aren’t we a come as you are kingdom? 

I think that the point isn’t as superficial as it seems.  The point isn’t that the guest is dressed in white after labor day or seersucker before memorial day.  The fashion faux pas is an example of how one ought to constantly life “as if” and be prepared to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

We shouldn’t live our lives in the “good enough” realm.  At a certain point in my life I lived by the motto- “done is better than good” and how many of us can relate to that feeling.  When 7 million things are pulling us in 7 million directions when our lives are out of control we sometimes feel like our “C game” is good enough.  This is what Jesus is warning us against in the second parable. 

We always ought to bring our “A Game” – we always should be ready to serve God when the call comes, we should always be ready to follow the commandments, and if we come up short there will be judgment. 

However, there is one aspect of this parable that I think is missing, or at least it is not directly mentioned, the Tim Gun character, the mentor, the advocate, the prophet, the dare I say it, the messiah (the savior) who stands before us and teaches us and helps us to do our best with what we have been given.  The person who tells us to “make it work” when what we are working on isn’t quite up to snuff, and that person isn’t the slave who will bind us and throw us into the darkness, but that person is Jesus who is telling us we have to be prepared- which is not a new theme for the parables in Matthew- who shares with us many times, the message of being prepared for the coming of the Kingdom.  Proof that Matthew and those who followed him believed that the Kingdom was coming eminiently.

For us 2000 years later the immediacy of the end of days doesn’t seem so inevitable in our lifetime.  We tend to live our lives not as if the invitation will be coming soon rather we tend to focus on our day to day life and loose track of what is truly important.  We tend to get comfortable and complacent and figure that getting by is good enough.  But what we are called to do as Christians is respond to the invitation the opportunity, the chance to take risks and fulfill our calling to Love God and love our Neighbor in all places and at all times.  What we as Christians are called to do is be prepared at all times to fulfill our baptismal vows to: observe the sacraments; preserve the prayers; resist evil; proclaim the Gospel; seek, serve, and love our neighbors; and strive for justice for every human being; not some times, not when it is convenient, not when it suits our agenda, but at all times.  

Jesus teaches us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like so that we won’t miss the invitation, and we won’t show up unprepared.  He wants us to make it work.  But it’s up to each of us to make the choices to respond, to show up and not skate by.

Amen.