Death, Where Now Is Thy Stink?

5 Lent             March 13, 2016     

Is.43:16-21        Ps.126              

Phil.3:8-14        Luke 20:9-19      

Lectionary Link 

  We Americans who pride ourselves, often wrongly, about being a classless society, are uncomfortable with cultural gestures which show unusual deference to people of authority.  We have read the story about Mary of Bethany anointing the feet of Jesus with perfume and wiping them with her hair.  She was criticized for her waste of the costly perfume and she was defended by Jesus.  Jesus declared her to be a prophet because she was actually symbolically preparing his future dead body for burial.

  This can all seem quite macabre to us since we don’t encounter such things in our everyday lives.  I do recall a party game called the “King of Siam.”  Did any of you ever play this game?   In this game, a person is blind folded and brought to have an audience with the King of Siam.  He or she then must bow before the King of Siam and kiss the ring of the King.   Once the initiate has kissed the ring of the King of Siam, the blindfold is removed only to see the ring on the big hairy toe of the King of Siam.  Laughter ensues, until the victim of the humor watches the next victim.  The ringed finger is quickly taken out of sight before the blindfold comes off.  So we feel really yucky about getting our faces close to other people’s feet in showing respect.

  In ancient cultures respect for authority involved having a foot fetish whether you wanted it or not.  Certainly in kissing the Emperor’s feet it symbolized the fact that he could literally walk all over you if he so chose.  Such honorific gestures were adopted by European kings and popes.

   As a Bible reader, I want to ask what does the anointing of the feet of Jesus have to do with me when it seems so culturally distant from my experience.  What function does this story have in the life of the early church, particularly in the community which generated the Gospel of John?  Why is this anointing of the feet of Jesus associated with the inevitable death of Jesus?

    In our Church liturgical calendar, the death of Jesus is once again inevitable.  Next week we will read the Passion Gospel twice, once in the Passion Sunday liturgy and again on Good Friday.  Since the Passion is in all four Gospels in different edited forms, we know that the Passion was a liturgy which was used in various widespread churches in the six or seven decades after Jesus left this earth.

  We also know that St. Paul wrote his letters before the Gospels were written.  In the writing of St. Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ had become the metaphors of spiritual transformation.  And so the Death of Jesus had become a good thing in that the death of Jesus symbolized a Higher Power to bring to an end all of the unworthy habits and former identities of one’s life.  Then one received the energy of the Higher Power of the resurrection to be re-created, to be made a new creation in Christ.

  The theology of spiritual transformation of St. Paul, became hidden in the Gospel narratives about the life of Jesus.  The Gospels externalized in narrative form the interior spiritual transformation that was found in the writings of St. Paul.  Only the spiritual initiates in the early church understood the spiritual significance of the Gospels.  It is amazing how we from the point of view of empirical verification and eye-witness journalistic writing have managed to make the Gospels into exact accounts of history.  And we have been fooled if we have not come to know the spiritual significance of the Gospel literature.  We have been fooled into making the art of spiritual transformation into exact eye-witness historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

   The Gospel of John from it first page is discourse about how the Death of Jesus is a planned divine event.  In the first chapter, John the Baptist is already declaring Jesus to be the Lamb of God who is and will take away the sin of the world.  This is not subtle writing; this is writing many years after the post-resurrection appearances of Christ recounting the spiritual experience of how one can experience interdiction in one’s life for one’s sinful, unenlightened ways.  In chapter three, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he is going to be lifted up, like the serpent in wilderness and that he would draw all people to himself.   This glorification of the death of Jesus, something in itself which was God-awful,  happened because of the afterlife of Jesus in his resurrection manifestations to his disciples.  The result of the post-resurrection manifestations of Christ for the disciples was the transformation of their lives.  These lives were so transformed that the disciples wanted to share this spiritual method of transformation as a regular practice within their communities and so the Gospels were written to encode the life of transformation within narrative presentations of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

   The placing of perfume by Mary of Bethany on the feet of Jesus comes in this progressive presentation of the inevitable Death of Jesus in the narrative of the Gospel of John.  Human logic would not naturally connect the anointing of feet with perfume as a sign predicting the eventual burial preparations of the body of Jesus.  We are dealing with a spiritual logic of transformation as it was practiced and taught within the community which wrote and read the Gospel of John.

  The writings of St. Paul and the writing of the Gospel of John are written proof that Christianity became a new faith community which was born out of Judaism.  In fact, St. Paul writes that all of his resume of Jewish identity was rubbish compared to his new identity with Jesus Christ.  While this may seem like a harsh separation from his past, it does indicate a confession of the reality of the Christian community moving into the Gentile world.

  The Jews who accepted the spiritual practice of the Gospel had to “die to their Jewishness” in order to accept Gentiles as their spiritual equals.

  We sometimes read the Gospels as somehow telling us why things happened when in fact the Gospels were written after the fact that things had already happened.  The Gospels were written to reveal the new spiritual practice of a Gentile Christianity.

   And so perfume can be placed upon death, because the hope of the message of the resurrection is that death has lost its stink.

   The Death of Jesus in the Gospel of John is presented as having two functions.  It provides us with the power of spiritual transformation in dying to what is unworthy in ourselves.  And since Jesus survived Death in his afterlife, his death and all death are made into but singular events which have to give way to a new future for the afterlife of all.     

  Let us today be like Mary of Bethany; let us start applying the fragrance of perfume on what we anticipate to be passing away.  Let it be an olfactory celebration that abundant life cannot and will not ever end.  Amen.

Sunday School, March 13, 2016 5 Lent C

Sunday School, March 13, 2016    5 Lent C

Themes:

What is good about never being finished?

St. Paul was very successful but he did not think that his success made him finished.  He wrote that he forgot what was past and he would keep pressing on until he died and then after he died he believed that he still had a future in continuing to press on.

So we should remember that our lives of faith, love and kindness are never finished.  We may be happy about our good successes and we may be sad about our failures, but we need to continue to have hope that our lives are never finish.  This means we keep looking to do the next best thing that we need to do in our lives.

Remember our lives are never finished because we have hope for a future.  And the future is calling us to be better than we have been in the past.

The Themes for the readings from Isaiah and the Psalms show us how God’s people still had hope in some very difficult times.  Even when they did not have a place to settle and live they had hope that God would help them find a home.  Even when their homes had been taken away and when they had been carried away into captivity, they still had hope that their homes, their temple and their special city of Jerusalem would be rebuilt for them to return to.

So when things are not going well, it is hope and thinking about how God will make things better which inspires us to keep going.

The Gospel Lesson

Sometimes when we are really thankful, we want to do something special for something special that someone did for us.

Mary of Bethany lost her brother Lazarus when he died.  But her friend and teacher, Jesus healed her brother’s death and made him to live again.  Mary was very thankful to Jesus for his special gift to her.  She invited Jesus to dinner and in front of everyone she wanted to honor Jesus, so she poured perfume on his feet.  Usually, they just used water to wash the dusty feet of guests, but Mary used more than water, she put perfume on the feet of Jesus as way of honoring Jesus.  Judas did not understand Mary’s love of Jesus and he told her that she used her money wrongly by buying such an expensive gift.  But Jesus defended Mary.  Jesus understood how much Mary appreciated what he had done for her and her family and so he accepted her gift.

Sometimes when you do something nice for someone, you too, need to know how to receive the thanksgiving from others.  When we offer thanksgiving and when we receive thanksgiving we are celebrating what is very best about friendship, family and living in community.

Sermon

  What if you only had the end of a story and not the beginning?  Would it make the story harder to understand?

  You remember the story of Cinderella.  What if you had only the part of the story of the prince’s helpers coming to Cinderella’s home with a glass slipper.  If you didn’t know the beginning of the story, how would you know the meaning of the glass slipper.

  Today, we have read in the Gospel the end of a story.  Jesus was at the home of his friend Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha.  And Mary does a very strange thing.  She puts expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus and then wipes his feet with her hair.  Back in the time of Jesus, that is how she showed Jesus that she was really, really, really thankful for some thing special that he had done for her.

  And what had Jesus done for Mary, Martha and Lazarus?  If we read the chapter before the chapter that we read today, we know what Jesus did for Lazarus, Mary and Martha.  Jesus had brought Lazarus back to life after he had died.  So now we know why Mary wanted to show Jesus how thankful she was.

  This Gospel story is important for us because it teaches us something that we believe as Christians.  We believe that after we die that God will do some thing wonderful so that we can live on in another way.  And if we know that God is stronger than death, we know that we don’t have to live in fear.  We can live in hope, because whatever bad that can happen, God can do something better.

  And so like Mary, we try to find some very special ways to thank Jesus for bringing us this wonderful news about our after lives.  We come to church to sing songs of praise and thanksgiving.  We worship God and this worship is a way of honoring God and respecting God.  When we worship God, we are telling Jesus thank you for the wonderful news that he has brought us about the resurrection.

  And since we have this good news, we know that it is greater than our fears.  And this good news helps us to have hope and faith and love in our lives.

  I don’t recommend that you get perfume and put it on some one’s foot.  I don’t recommend wiping feet with your hair.  But in our way and in our time you and I can find special ways to honor God and show Jesus that we love him for the special things that he has done for us.

  So I want you to think about some special things that you can do for Jesus today, to thank him.

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

March 13,  2016: The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Gathering Songs: Only a Boy Named David,  I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,  Let Us Break Bread Together, Joyful, Joyful We Adore Three

Song: Only a Boy Named David (All the Best Songs for Kids,  # 112)

Only a boy named David, only a little sling. Only a boy named David.  But he could pray and sing.  Only a boy named David, only a rippling brook.  Only a boy named David and five little stones he took.  And one little stone went in the sling, and the sling went round and round.  And one little stone went in the sling, and the sling went round and round.  And!   Round and round and round and round and round and round and round.  And one little stone went up in the air and the the giant came tumbling down.

Liturgist: Bless the Lord who forgives all of our sins.

People: God’s mercy endures forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Litany of Praise: Chant: Praise be to God!

O God, you are Great!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have made us! Praise be to God!

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Praise be to God!

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Praise be to God!

Liturgist: A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Phillipians

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 126

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, * then were we like those who dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter, * and our tongue with shouts of joy.

Then they said among the nations, * "The LORD has done great things for them."

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:                        And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory Hymn: I Decided to Follow Jesus (All the Best Songs for Kids,  # 130)

1-I have decided to follow Jesus;  I have decided to follow Jesus;  I have decided to follow Jesus.  No turning back, no turning back.

3-Though none go with me, still I will follow.  Though none go with me.  Still I will follow.  Though none go with me, still I will follow.  No turning back, no turning back.

4-Will you decide now to follow Jesus?  Will you decide now to follow Jesus?  Will you decide now to follow Jesus?  No turning back, no turning back.

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Let Us Break Break Together,  (Blue Hymnal,  # 325)

1-Let us break bread together on our knees.  Let us break bread together on our knees.  When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun.  O Lord have mercy on me.

2-Let us drink wine together on our knees.  Let us drink wine together on our knees.  When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun.  O Lord have mercy on me.

3-Let us praise God together on our knees.  Let us praise God together on our knees.  When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun.  O Lord, have mercy.

Post-Communion Prayer. 

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song:   Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee (Blue Hymnal, # 376)

1-Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, God glory, Lord of love.  Hearts unfold like flowers before thee, praising thee, their sun above.  Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of clouds away; giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day.

3-Thou are giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blest, well-spring of the joy of living, ocean-depth of happy rest!  Thou our Father, Christ our Brother: all who live in love are thine;  teach us how to love each other, lift us to the joy divine.

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

A Theology of Excess

5 Lent     C        March 17, 2013       

Is.43:16-21        Ps.126              

Phil.3:8-14        Luke 20:9-19      

Lectionary Link

  In the Gospel story traditions there are multiple accounts of a woman or women who have approached Jesus in social settings and who have washed, anointed, kissed and wiped the feet of Jesus with their hair.

  One cannot get any lower on the human body than the feet and so if one adores the feet of another it is an act of excessive devotion or honor.  In some cultures it was not a voluntary act.  Ancient monarchs had protocols of bowing and prostrating oneself before royalty as the only prescribed way of being in the presence of the great one.  There are all sorts of protocol for showing respect.  Have you ever been to an ordination?  Often the ordination begins with the candidate lying face down in front of the altar as the litany for ordination is recited.  You can been sure that lots of brother cardinals were genuflecting and kissing the hand of the prelate they elected to be their new Father in God, as their Pope even though he doesn't seem to be one so inclined to such stuff.   The irony of a church that became an Empire is that the princes of the church ended up taking over protocols of respect that were practiced in secular culture where the Emperor had been reverenced as a deity.  It perhaps offends our democratic sensibilities even as it inspires our sense of attraction to ancient customs.  Some cultures still observe the practice of touching the feet of someone who is respected.  Gurus and Sufi sheikhs often receive bowings and kisses and touching of their feet.    It is a cultural way of acknowledging what a community regards to be a particular personal oracle of the sublime.

   Comedians often satirize such behaviors: The comedy team of Wayne and Garth used to mock such customs of adoration by doing fake bows and saying, “We are not worthy, we are not worthy.”

   There are lots of feet jokes too: there was the woman who said to her husband with a foot fetish, “I will only let you honor my feet by buying a $1000 pair of Italian-made high heels.”

   I doubt if any of us is too socially comfortable with this scenario of Mary of Bethany pouring perfume on the feet of Jesus and then drying his feet with her hair.  How uncomfortable would this be for us?  In our speechlessness we might be thinking, “Get a room!”  The only context for us to understand such excessive and unusual display of devotion would be in the privacy of the silliness of things done under the influence of the pathological state of romantic love.  Book her with a DUIL, done under the influence of Love.

  There is something quite transgressive in going public with such stories of devotion.  We know from first century culture and from many traditional Middle Eastern cultures today, the practice of the public segregation of men and women.  So, the event of a woman touching Jesus in the presence of other people was a violation of social custom.  Mary was unwomanly for doing so; Jesus was unmanly for allowing it to happen.

  I think to understand this story is to move beyond the fact of any original event and understand how the writer of John was writing for his community with the sense of the anticipatory present tense, meaning how can stories in the life of Jesus be told to represent our own experience with the risen Christ?

  And this preacher preaches with the same anticipatory present tense:  How can I relate to us the meaning of this wildly, exotic and foreign story the relevance of it in our understanding of the risen Christ in our lives today?

  Obviously, the act of Mary could be understood as her profound gratitude for Jesus bringing her brother Lazarus back to life. (A story found in the chapter before).   The book of Signs is a document incorporated into John’s Gospel, and the bringing of Lazarus back to life was the last Sign.  The early church writers were trying to teach their members how to live their lives knowing that Jesus was the Resurrection and Life.

  Their conclusion: The life of the Risen Christ invited the expression of excess.  This act of Mary was an act of excess that defied social custom and the logic of the priority in the use of assets.  Acts of excess co-exists with lots of poverty and human need.  One sees examples of this everywhere:  Why do Cathedrals and Temples get built with the beauty of architecture and gold, silver and ornamentation in the midst of people of poverty.   Doesn’t it seem ludicrous that Cathedrals and Temples exists in place of such poverty and yet people will shuffle on bloody knees as an act of thankful devotion, penance or act of anticipation for something good to happen to them?

  Like the infamous Judas Iscariot in the story we might point out the contradiction of excess and poverty in this life.

  And the words of Jesus tell us to leave her alone in her excess.  The event of excess has to be permitted.  In fact, one of the secrets of life might be finding where we can commit events of excess.

  I would like to make the case for a theology of excess.  I think that deep within each human being is life force and this life force comes to have many names depending upon how we experience it or categorize it.  This life force is so profound that it represents the capacity for excess that is at the center of all of us.  This life force is known as it radiates through us and focuses upon all of the objects in our outer world.  All of the objects and the people of our outer world provide for our excessive life force the occasions of attraction and repulsion.  If our life force can be spread out in in even ways on general objects it is sublimated or diluted in its intensity and it can provide the general pleasure and enjoyment that is necessary for sustaining hopeful lives.  The truth of the excess of our life force is that some of it gets fixated or more intensely focused upon some items or people or activities more than other.  Why do people fall in love with one person and not another?  Why do people like baseball but not cricket?  Why do some people like knitting but not football?  The rhyme and reason of how our life force gets focused is not always known.

  When our life force gets too fixated it leaves us in the state of addiction.  Some addictions are more acceptable than others; some addictions allow us to remain more functional in our overall life.  I would say that lots of the problems in life have to do with not understanding the profundity of our life force, not knowing how our live force is meant to be expressed as the energy of our charismatic personalities and gifts to interact with others, not knowing what to do when depression does not allow us to enjoy the flow of our life energy, and  not knowing that the purpose of our life energy is not to create an environment that adores us as our narcissistic reflection.

  The theology of excess is what I believe that Jesus allowed from Mary and what the writer of John’s Gospel was encouraging of the people who came to worship together.  It is known in the famous phrase of the once very worldly and passionate St. Augustine, when he wrote, “The heart is endlessly restless until it finds its rest in God.”

  The profundity of our life force is that it seeks more than life can visibly give us.  It seeks Christ beyond his life and death and in his resurrection.  And when our hearts know that they cannot be satisfied completely with anything that we can know in this life but can have this beyond life touch of the sublime, then we can find the occasion of excess, the excess of worship.  This is the ecstasy of the prophet Isaiah hearing the Holy, Holy, Holy, in his heavenly vision.  It is the joy of finding love of love and love in love.  It makes one profoundly grateful and when one is profoundly grateful excess happens; Cathedrals get built, people get fed, ministry gets done.  Excess is the natural response of gratitude.  Neither spiritual gratitude nor spiritual excess is found where people live thinking God has been stingy, inaccessible and parsimonious with them.

  The Gospel is read today with the message of hope that people will have the occasions of excess and gratitude from having the experience of knowing that God has done something special for them.  And I pray for the serendipity of such excess and gratitude today.    Amen.