This parable has a sting to it. When it was first heard it was used to shake up the people-to look at themselves with more scrutiny than was comfortable. That, after all, is the function of a parable.

Superficially, it's all about superficiality. At deeper levels, too, but it takes twists and turns as it goes. As we've just heard it, it's a story about what happens when we rely on things that have no depth, that are merely superficial. And that kind of reliance gets overwhelmed by the challenges of life. We know that part. There's no cosmic secret here, nothing buried in the Gospel that surprises us. If you want something in your life to last, it must have firm roots, a strong foundation, your ties to it must be unshakable. In that way it's all about commitment-to an idea, an ideal, a way of life. And our lives seem to be custom-made to challenge our commitments.

You know, it's fascinating when you realize how many of the stories and parables in the Gospel are based on such practical examples, like building a house. We gather on Sundays-and sometimes other times-to focus on spirituality in ways that seem to draw very little from our own practical experiences. Yet we continue to be faced with the same stories and parables that doggedly bind the spiritual to the practical. An issue that we face today as Christians-and I have to add that this goes way beyond Christianity-is that religion has lost its sense of practicality in our lives. It is as if our secular lives have evolved and grown to be demanding and complex in ways that our religion…our spirituality...our faith can't keep up with. What we do on Sunday mornings has increasingly less to do with the remainder of our lives, and if this is a problem for us gathered here today, what about the millions "out there" who are sleeping in, who've found religion either not worth the effort or irrelevant?

Let me add a different perspective to this. Most folks who've given it any thought at all have some working concept of God, even if it's only the one they learned as children in Sunday School. But let me offer a question for you to ponder. Would you work for the God you pray to? Would the millions sleeping in today work for the kinds of Gods they imagine? And when you react with the simple answer, "Oh yes, I'd certainly work for someone who loves me," think a bit harder. Ever work for a boss who's unchanging, immovable, or maybe just judgmental? How about one who's capricious, magical, or mysterious? Or maybe one who's always extremely hard to get any response from? Or perhaps seemingly ambivalent to your needs but others claim to get through right away? What about the boss who keeps you in line by reminding you just how wretched you are, or better yet, has others do that for him or her? And what about a boss who seems to endlessly play favorites, even when you're trying your darndest to do what is right? And don't forget one of my favorites-the boss who has an endless succession of middlemen and intermediaries who offer conflicting interpretations of what is expected? We might say-though it's a stretch-that any of those bosses might be "loving," but all these other characteristics make it supremely hard to reciprocate. Face it-most of us would have great difficulty working for the God we pray to. And this brings us to a critical watershed. It also gives us some insight as to why religion has lost its "practicality" in today's world. And if we ignore all this…well, let me just ask, "What happens when we all decide to sleep in on Sunday mornings?"

Now, when I say that something is "practical" I'm using the term to identify something that both fits within what we do-our lives or work or families, for instance-and that it works there, empowering, enabling, bringing growth, change, or whatever is needed. It's kind of like identifying various things in our lives as the tools we use, especially when the tools…are the relationships we have. We are a practical species, I think, trying to solve impractical problems with whatever tools we can find. If you need some insight into how this plays out in a spiritual sense, wander the aisles of East-West Bookstore for an hour. People are yearning for ways to make religion practical again, to find how it can fit all the other parts of their lives.

The message I bring here today is that all that we need may already be within our grasp. And to illustrate this point further I'm going to begin with Scripture. You know, amidst all we've been told about the Bible's contents-almost exclusively in short excerpts, bits and sound bites-there are fundamental and practical insights about our relationships with God -and with each other running throughout. Sound bites and quick interpretations make us feel good but they are short cuts that ignore the real challenge of what we can learn. And make no mistake about it-spirituality and faith…are challenges, not short cuts.

So let me start close to the beginning. The story of Adam and Eve is one that's been used and interpreted for thousands of years to show how awful we are and how we are always poised somewhere between heaven and hell awaiting salvation or judgment. Really makes you feel pretty wretched, when you think of it. But that's not what's there…or at least I'd like to offer a practical alternative, some new food for thought. In the middle of the Garden of Eden were 2 trees. God told Adam and Eve that if they ate their fruit he'd kill them. The tree that caused all the problems was the one that gave the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. Knowing that difference was something that had belonged to God alone. Well, one thing lead to another, they ate the fruit, got the knowledge, and God got angry. God also had 2 basic options. One-get rid of these 2 losers, make 2 more and start things over, or, two-do something else. According to this ancient story God did "something else," and it tells us something important about God and ourselves. What God did, so to speak, was to tell Adam and Eve, "Okay, you now know the difference between good and evil. You wanted to be like me. Fine. But you can't do anything with that in here. Go outside into the world as it has evolved, the one that's full of evil, and pain, and toil, and mortality and work with me to fill it with something else, to help me clean up this mess." You see, what we can learn from this story isn't just how wretched we are-that's the impractical outcome of the tale-but what we are called to do, whom we are called to be. God has given us work to do in a place that desperately needs it. God hasn't given us damnation but responsibility. I don't know about you, but as a boss I like God better already. The story of Noah, when you think about it, is just another radical way of explaining our responsibility to fill the world with something better than before. Noah, though, turned out to be all too human. The world, as the story goes on, is still waiting for something different.

Now, history and religion and people being what they are, you know the story can't end here! We need to know more about the practical issue of how we are to do all this, what the tools are that we need to bring along. The answer to that runs, surprisingly, throughout the entire Bible, Old Testament to New. And to introduce that I'll offer an old and very short story. It may even be true.

In Jerusalem, right around the time of Jesus, lived a famous rabbi named Hillel. Well, one day a young man comes to him and makes the proposition, "I will become a Jew, worship your God, if only you will interpret all of the Torah for me, standing on one foot." I guess the complicated laws of the Torah had their own impracticality. Well, Hillel stands up and says, "No problem. You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and you neighbor as yourself. Everything else is commentary. Now, if you are serious, go and study the commentary." Love, it seems, is the tool. And it appears to be the only one necessary to understand either the laws of the Torah or the relationships we have with God and one another. Funny…if you think about it, the Ten Commandments can be kept by even the most unloving or unfeeling among us. Here is the rule of life that pulls it all together in a practical sense, one that fits and works well within human life. Not by judgment or revenge or clever use of conflict or whatever, Love. And when you consider how impractical hate and envy and oppression and conflict are in life, this rule of life becomes the only practical alternative.

The last little bit I'd like to give you this morning comes from what I think is one of the most heavily over-interpreted Gospels, John. It has to do, though, I think, with how this rule becomes woven into our Christianity, again, in a practical sense. It starts out with the crucial sentence, "In the beginning was…the Logos." Yes, sometimes we translate-poorly-logos as "word," when it actually means the expression of one's heart and mind. So…"In the beginning was the expression of God's heart and mind." God had a message for us, something to convey. The message, though, was delivered as a baby that grew up among people and who touched many lives along the way. Jesus was that human being and how he touched those lives is what we remember in the Gospels…and here at the Eucharist. But I say this to make the vital point that Jesus was not the Messenger sent by God but God's own Message to us. It is the Message of God's own immeasurable love for us and God's own dream that we would return that love and share it with all creation. We have received the Message. There is no need to wait for another. There is also no need to endlessly reinterpret the phrases and nuances of each parable except to understand that they express how the Message came to us. "It is finished" from the cross marks the death of the human being. "He is risen" marks the moment that we are called to acknowledge that the Message has been delivered. The rest is up to us. The Message demands response. Love demands love. It is impractical to follow a messenger when it is the Message that must guide our lives. It is impractical to wait for a different message, one that might fit in your view of reality but leaves others behind.

As I said, we stand today at a watershed, a crossroads, whatever you like. We live in a world full of pressure and tension because of the rational and practical forces that drive us in how we live and how we relate to one another. However, to assume that religion or spirituality or faith have less and less to offer this kind of life only works if we assume that we have no part to play in how it develops in our lives, that it offers nothing helpful or guiding. It gets left behind when we see its practicality wane, when it has grown too troublesome to deal with, like the boss you'd never work for. But also, as I've tried to point out here, it works, it fits, it becomes a useful, practical, and essential part of our lives when we listen to the ways it calls us into our own lives, to serve Love and God and our lives and relationships all in the same way. I'm sorry that this has gone on a bit longer than usual, but as your Canon Missioner I have so much to say and have so seldom the time to be with you and listen to you and share ideas. I hope you'll forgive the long sermon. But I also hope that if nothing else I have opened up the question for you about how our faith-or spirituality or whatever-fits into everything we do in ways that don't need for us to be drawn out of your lives, our work, our relationships. The whole idea of this message is that it works within our whole lives. The message is not the property of any group of theologians, clergy, scholars, or philosophers. It violates no laws of physics and requires no special training. All it requires is a willingness to accept it. God has given us tasks to do and the tool to do them that fits anywhere.

Amen