Second Chances

Luke 17:11-19

A man is met at the airport by a friend. They’re on their way to the baggage claim when his friend notices an older woman with a cane struggling up a ramp. The friend stops to help her.

They get the man’s bags, and then head for a cab. On the way, his friend notices two little kids trying to see Santa Claus from behind a crowd of adults. His friend stops to lift them above the crowd so they can see.

While they’re in line for a cab, they hear the guy behind them say that he is late for his daughter’s birthday party. The friend immediately flags down a cab for the guy, helps him load his bags in the trunk, and sends him off with a smile.

Finally, the two men are in the cab on the way home.
“How did you get to be like this?” the man says to his friend.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. So thoughtful.”

With Every Step
That’s when his friend tells him that he had once been a soldier leading a platoon in combat. For several days, his platoon had to fight their way across a large open meadow strewn with landmines. From time to time, he’d hear an explosion, look back, and see another comrade blown to pieces.

He knew that with every step, his own life was in danger.

Well, he got out alive. He was one of the lucky ones. But when he got home from the war, he decided that he would no longer take his life for granted. He would try to live differently.

He had gotten a second chance. And he seized it. From that day on, there could be no business as usual. He would never be the same again. With every step he took, his life was different.

This can happen when you get a second chance: It gets you thinking. Maybe you narrowly escape a car crash, or survive the onset of cancer, or some creative medical intervention pulls you back from death’s door. You go through some serious self-evaluation, ask yourself some tough questions.

When you’re given a second chance, you have to decide whether you will seize it.

You can, after all, simply take a deep breath and go back to business as usual with perhaps little more than something like a shallow New Year’s resolution to show for it all.

Or, something new can begin to emerge. Maybe you decide not to go back to the life you lived. In that case, your second chance has had an effect.

Seizing the Second Chance
In today’s gospel, only one out of ten seizes the second chance. It’s not a good return, and you can feel the sadness of Jesus. It’s a story of lost opportunities.

But mostly it has to do with that one person who does seize the second chance, who “gets” what that moment is about.

Look back at the story for a moment… When Jesus sees the lepers, he sees more than the sores on their skin. He recognizes their isolation. They are outcasts who must live outside the city, away from family and friends. There were laws on the books meant to protect not the lepers, but society from the lepers. They are kept out, isolated, alone.

Jesus tells the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests.

The priests are the gatekeepers of the community. His command to go see the priests means they are on their way back into the community. If the priests declare them clean, their isolation is over.

At this point in the story, the question becomes: What happens to these people as they re-enter community? Will they simply go back to their old familiar ways as if nothing had happened? Or have they learned something along their solitary journey? Will they be any different once they have returned home?

In this moment of healing, they are being given a second chance. But will they seize it?

The Samaritan, the most unlikely one of the bunch, does seize it. First, he does the most natural, spontaneous thing in such a moment: he bursts out with praise and thanksgiving. And then, when he falls at the feet of Jesus, it’s more than a gesture of reverence. It symbolizes his decision to follow the new way that Jesus teaches. For this man, a normal, respectable life is not enough. Something more beckons.

And Jesus instructs him: “Get up and go.” It is time to live—not to go back home as if nothing had happened, but to find a new way that his faith has begun to forge for him.

Second chances can do that; can send you on new paths, down roads you had never imagined. Often, they send you out of the familiar and comfortable into the unexpected.

It drives Rosa Parks to the front of the bus. Harvey Milk to San Francisco City Hall. Cesar Chavez to the vineyards of Fresno. Dorothy Day to New York’s Bowery.

Second chances do that: They lead you down roads you never imagined. A normal, respectable life is no longer enough. Something more beckons.

This Crazy Parish
Sometimes I think coming here to this crazy, struggling parish has been a second chance for many of us. Here where “LGBT” and “Christian” are not contradictions in terms. Where you’re surrounded by so many who try, each in our own way, to live with a little more compassion, a little more joy, a little more love.

In this parish, some of us have actually found ourselves falling in love with God again, and rediscovering a big part of our own souls.

True, this motley group of people creates much consternation among the religious right. But it also gives much hope to many others. Many of those folks may never cross our threshold: maybe they simply hear about us, stumble across our website, or pick up from a local coffee shop one of those little cards about our concerts, Taize services, and many celebrations. No matter. Our presence has made a difference.

And think of all the flurry these days in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. Can you think of a time when a parish like this, in a diocese like this, has been more important? Like it or not, we’re up to our necks in this great historic moment.

Just Make It All Go Away
A personal confession… I have moments when I would be so happy of this whole controversy about gay bishops and gay unions would just go away. Just let me quietly live a normal life: do my job, snuggle in with the man I love, raise our kid, pay the bills. If I didn't have to send money to human rights organizations and letters to congress, solicit signatures on street corners. Please, just make it all go away so I can live a quiet, unperturbed life.

But then I wake up, or something wakes me up and reminds me that business as usual is not the vocation God has given me as a gay man in 2007. Nor is it the vocation of this parish. For whatever reasons, God has placed us in the center of this perfect storm, and called us to keep showing up, speaking our word, giving hope and a second chance not just for our sake but for the sake of many others as well.

And I have to trust that it’s in living out this vocation, not in pining for quieter times and business as usual, that we will find our deepest peace.

Do you remember the story Martin Luther King once told about the old woman he met in one of the picket lines during the height of the civil rights struggle? She'd been out there for hours in the hot sun, ankles swollen, shuffling up and down the picket line carrying her sign. He asked her why she didn't stop and take break. "Aren't you tired," he asked? She said, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested."

I think you and I in this parish know what she meant.

These thoughts cross my mind on this particular morning as we commission our canvassers and begin our parish pledge drive for the year.

Because seizing a second chance is not just a cerebral exercise. It involves putting one foot in front of another until you find yourself walking a different path. And it can involve adjusting our finances as well, putting our money where our hearts are.

A U-Haul Attached to a Hearse
There’s story about the crusty old tycoon celebrating his 90th birthday. At his birthday party, a local reporter asked him for the secret of his longevity. He said, “It’s simple. I just decided that if I can’t take it with me, I’m not going.”

Well, obviously, he did go. And, no, he did not take it with him.

In fact, Billy Graham gave one of his best lines when he said he’d never seen a U-Haul trailer attached to a hearse.

We can’t take it with us, but we can seize our second chances and put our money where our hearts are.

The healed leper laughed with a joyful, exuberant burst of praise and thanksgiving—but then went further, to become a follower, walking a new path. He recognized his second chance and seized it.

Just as we must do with our second chances. Such moments are not limited to escapes from death or miraculous cures. There’s nothing that stops us right here and now from recognizing that our time on this planet is short, and that the time for more love is right now. We can begin, right now, to direct our steps on the path to that new, fuller life that God so very much wants us to have.

Within Every Step You Take
Because ultimately, the second chance lies within every minute, within every step you take. And the question you and I must ask ourselves today and every day is whether we will seize it.

The Shrewd Manager

Luke 16: 1-13

He's a man in crisis. He's about to be fired and the job prospects don't look good. Not butch enough to dig for a living, and too proud to beg, he's endearingly vulnerable. I imagine Woody Allen playing the lead in the movie version.

The guy is also smart. Very smart. True, he panics when he first gets the call from the boss, but then he makes a plan. The plan works: He gets both his job back and his boss’s praise for being shrewd.

The story is a metaphor for your life and mine. It’s about how not to lose your soul. If you want to hold on to your soul, be like this endearing and shrewd manager.

What’s it like to lose your soul? One of Rachel Remen’s patients, a gifted cancer surgeon, told her, “I can barely make myself get out of bed most mornings. I hear the same complaints day after day; I see the same diseases over and over again. I just don’t care anymore. I need a new life.” He’s in an advanced stage of ennui, plodding along to be sure, sitting upright and taking nourishment, but zest for his work has disappeared. He’s lost touch with his soul.

Years ago, a friend described his own feelings when he was in this state: “I feel like I’m lying face down in a half inch of life and drowning.”

It sneaks up on you. Somewhere along the way—in your routines of getting up, making the coffee, going to work, paying the bills, checking in with friends and families, renting the latest video—you fall asleep, lose your passion and purpose, lose sight of the pleasures of moving about this vast and glorious planet. Your spirit slips away. Everything becomes gray, empty, and tedious. Suddenly you find yourself living, but not really living.

And there you are: up to your ears in what we religious types call a spiritual crisis. You’re like the man in today’s gospel when he is brought to account. But in this case, it’s not your boss’s property you’ve squandered, but the life that God has so graciously given you.

Perhaps a day of accounting arrives— maybe in old age or maybe sooner—when you look back at your life with regret:
• So many things you wanted to say or do, but were just too afraid, or just couldn’t overcome the inertia.
• So many wonderful moments you wanted to savor, but were too busy with the details of making a living and paying the bills.
• So many people you wanted to let into your life, and who would have let you into theirs, had you taken the time and made the effort.

And what will you do then, oh man, oh woman in crisis? What will you do?

It’s tempting to simply change your life’s outer circumstances: move to a new place, start a new career, find a new lover. And it’s true that sometimes changing the outer world can help. But often the old maxim holds true: Wherever you go, there you are. We carry our own mental conditioning with us, and if we’ve managed to screen out spirit from our lives where we are, chances are we won’t find it in any new circumstances either.

Today’s gospel hints at how we can respond to such a crisis. In the story, Jesus suggests that, to reconnect with our souls, we need to be like shrewd business people, like the manager in the story.

Faced with financial calamity, most people hustle to make ends meet: cut back on the lattes and videos, and maybe figure how to bring in a few extra bucks. We may be shrewd at money matters, but we are not so shrewd at keeping spirit alive. When chained to a life that no longer gives pleasure or passion or purpose, that ability to spring into action doesn’t seem to kick in. As Jesus puts it, “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

So what does this Woody Allen-like manager do? First he makes a decision—“I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed…, people may welcome me…”—then he gets into high gear, takes the concrete steps to do what he has to do.

When we lose our souls, the simple decision to really live, and not just go through the motions, is the first step to finding our way back. This decision can itself arise from simply recognizing where our present path is heading, picturing what a life without spirit is like. Recognizing the monotony and boredom of such a life can put us in high gear to find another way. The simple decision to live spiritually is the first step.

And concrete actions must follow that decision. These can vary depending on your unique situation: Start reading books that challenge and inspire, or listen to music that opens your heart, or hang out with spiritually serious people who can support your own effort to live with more spirit.

One action step is suggested by the early fathers and mothers of Christianity. It involves simply moving through all the small and big moments of your day and giving thanks for each one.

Here’s how this works for me: I opened my eyes this morning and I could see. There’s no law that Richard Smith has to be able to see, but I could. This is not something I can take for granted. It’s a gift. Acknowledge it for what it is, and give thanks for it. And I could get out of bed on my own and make my way down the hall to the bathroom and the kitchen, fix coffee, read the paper. Again, no law says I have to be able to do these simple things. There are many people in the world who can’t do them. The fact that I can do them is a gift, one to acknowledge and give thanks for.

The early fathers and mothers suggest we offer this simple kind of thanksgiving consciously and frequently all throughout the day: the light turns green just as you approach the intersection, or a stranger in the checkout line lets you move in front of them, or that ice cream cone is especially tasty, or your partner gives you a quick peck on the cheek on the way out the door. Each of these moments is a gift, God’s special gift to you.

Maybe when they occur, you’re too busy to notice them. Fair enough. But later, when you have a moment, look back on them, savor them, and give thanks.

Try this for a few days, and see if you feel any different: a little more alive, a little lighter, more joyful, more aware of God’s constant presence and care for you. Think of it as a suggestion, perhaps a part of your own action plan, from our early forebears in the faith. Try it and see what happens.

Speaking of giving thanks, in a few moments, we will gather at this table. It’s not by accident that the central mystery we celebrate here is called “eucharist,” the Greek word for “giving thanks”.

This morning, as you come to this table, for these few moments let your whole life be caught up in the mystery of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Are there any corners of your life where you feel depleted, worn out, bored? Bring them, too. Let those parts of your life be caught up—and transformed—in this great prayer of thanksgiving and praise. Let this sacrament feed your spirit, filling you with more joy, more laughter, more passion, more life.

The Spittin' Image of Mom

"Actually, I was expecting someone with a full head of reddish-brown hair," I say to the gray-haired balding specimen squinting back at me from the bathroom mirror. It's not the first time I've been surprised and confused like this. In fact, it happens more these days, and sometimes it's annoying.
Like when I'm walking down the sidewalk innocently minding my own business and all is well, but then I'm suddenly ambushed from a storefront window by my own slouching reflection, which in turn awakens my inner scoutmaster: "Suck in that gut, shoulders back, atta boy, stand up straight; there now, that's more like it."
It's kind of obnoxious, actually. But not always.
For example, the other day one particularly sneaky mirror in a coffee shop gave me a candid glimpse of myself. I was the spittin' image of my mom when she's deciding whether to buy something at a hardware store, or figuring out her reply to some amazing thing I've just said. The gears in her head then turn as she wavers between desire and prudence, or maybe between admiration and utter stupefaction.
Whatever I was thinking at the time, there she was, looking back at me from behind my face in the mirror.
For some of my friends, discovering in themselves such traces of their moms would be the kiss of death. Me? I savor such fleeting moments.
Because the woman I call mom has class: a single parent with two kids, always there when we needed her, reliable as the dawn; a pioneering businesswoman from the days when banks refused to lend to women; a lover of quality--whether in a thread of yarn, an elegant old house, or an exquisite solo in the Seattle Opera.
And how many older women could receive the news that her son was gay as graciously as she did? She was front and center for Rob's and my wedding, loves him like a son, and adores her grandson, David. She's a blessing beyond words to my family.
Today, at 89, she takes long morning walks around her neighborhood, runs errands for the folks in her condominium complex, reads voraciously, hangs out with her good friend Joe and his lively dog, Abby, and even joins them for weekend camping trips.
And, oh yes. She, too, thinks George Bush is a cretan.
And just think: I sometimes look like her; I'm made from the same stuff! It makes me glad.