I went through all the defenses. You may know them, in fact I bet that you do. Finally I did what always is needed. I went to the place where the sadness was and allowed myself to live, for just a few hours, in the context of the grief. Bunching up my windbreaker, I sat down on charred logs. In the midst of charred and blackened space, I remembered the times when I had come there to learn the painful lessons that we all have to learn about our mistakes. Is there any other way to learn anything except to learn from our mistakes? I remembered those times when I had to mourn the loss…manage a frustration…cope with a desolating experience…weep tears that my responsibility seemed to have forbidden me in moments of requiem or liturgy or loss. As I reached the pit of my remembering, I began to feel a letting go happen and only then… only at letting go… was I able to see something startling. Shyly, almost imperceptibly, through the pieces of charred wood were tiny green shoots poking up. There before me was life in the midst of death. I wept and then prayer came.

Several weeks ago I was at Ground Zero in New York City. Many of you know I do business with the Church Pension Fund on a regular basis. It felt very important for me to go there. And so I did. What I have to say is so long and extensive and at the present moment largely unfinished and unprocessed. You may hear more about it in times to come. But here are two things to share with you: First, the irony at Ground Zero where there is incredible, awful devastation and destruction; huge piles of rubble and debris; terrible smells; and smoke that still has particulate matter that sticks to your clothes and remains with you, even after a shower. In the midst of that is an incredible silence. I don’t mean the silence of the clanking machinery that is doing what it does or the occasional calling out of one worker to another… but the silence of prayer. Every prayer you pray from here has carved a piece of silence down there. It is incredibly holy in the midst of this awfulness.

The irony is just around the corner and down the way is St. Paul’s Chapel. It is the oldest, continuously-used worship space in this land and a part of Trinty Episcopal Church, Wall Street. This wonderful, historic place, this lovely little chapel previously had been so protected. "Don’t sit. Don’t be there. Don’t make messes. Be careful. Only come in at times when services are held. Don’t deface the historic material of the building or of the sanctuary." But now, in the aftermath of September 11, St. Paul’s is a shelter. Every pew has a blanket and a pillow on it and a person sometimes, including most wonderfully and ironically, the pew which has the brass plate affixed: "George Washington sat here." Isn’t that just right? And sleeping in that pew the night I was there was one very sooty young fireman.

The other snapshot: All around the periphery of Ground Zero, all in the middle of that prayerful silence I described, are incredible centers of loving activity… over here huge walls (and every wall for blocks) covered by pictures of loved ones, poems sent from all over the world in all languages pictures drawn by school children from this land and others, mementos, flowers, favorite items of people missing or known dead. A these shrines, people move back and forth praying in front of them, occasionally recognizing a name or a face. Then over here is the wall of boots. There is a man in North Carolina whose business it is to make those molded rubber boots that we remember from our childhood. Every two weeks he comes up with a semi full of boots. He hangs them on the wall so that people can use the boots which must be discarded at the end of each workday on site.

I want also to introduce you to another piece of this holy activity and that’s the Gumbo Man. A man from New Orleans, a loyal Episcopalian, has come up with his truck. He closed his restaurant and sets up his big pots with his propane heat source. He goes out to the Lexington Market every morning at 5 a.m. to get the freshest produce and makes gumbo all day for everyone who’s working at the site and everyone who’s there. If you’re lucky, you’ll be there when the Gumbo Man straps on his one-man band arrangement…the harmonica that goes up to his mouth, the foot petal for the drum and electric guitar…begins to sing the blues. He sings the blues. Stopping once in a while to serve his gumbo to everybody who needs a hot cup of something.

There is life in the midst of death. It surges out. It is triumphant. This kind of life does not deny the reality and the awfulness, the hideousness and the tragedy, the unbelievable wreckage of death. This life affirms that death is not the answer or the final end, but recognizes that it is there.

Twenty-five Centuries ago, a man sat in the ruins of a once-proud civilization. Judah had been strong and mighty. The power of King and Temple and Treasury dominated the known world. But the people who had called themselves "the chosen of Jahweh" were overpowered by the warriors of Babylon, who destroyed the Temple (the biggest, proudest building in their world) in 587 BC…people were scattered and cut off from one another, driven into exile, both geographically, and (more importantly) spiritually. Exile being when yesterday doesn’t seem to have any connection with today.

Within this devastation, his voice emerged, calling people to faithfulness, to trust in God, to welcome God’s transforming work within them, to hope – not in Temples made with hands, but in God’s sovereignty over every moment – over their future. These are his words which we heard moments ago, read to us by one of our youth:

His name was Jeremiah, a passionate, poetic voice – as intense and irascible as any prophet has ever been, I daresay.

It was Jeremiah’s sacred vocation to call his people into grief so that new life could begin.

To offer true worship (not the false comfort of the Temple’s empty cultism); Worship that told the story of God, worship that kept alive the memory of God’s saving power. Worship that transformed and set free!

To stand in that wrenching uncertainty, with devastation all around …trusting in God’s future, tiny green shoots beneath scorched earth…of blessing and well-being and safety.

To feel hope gathering them forward into a new time…for hope is not about what we can see (or plan or calculate), hope is about what is unseen.

To turn to God…to receive God’s gift of a New Covenant, not written on stone tablets, but written upon their heart…the New Covenant which we proclaim every time we lift the cup – the New Covenant sealed by the Blood of Christ. The New Covenant which baptismally shapes our lives. Jeremiah stirred the Messianic yearning of their hearts…and our hearts.

"For I know the plans I have for you", says the Lord…you will find me when you seek me with all your heart. When all your tears have been shed, and you are quite stripped of all that has comforted you, when all you have is memory and hope – THEN you will find me, says the Lord, doing a new thing.

Jeremiah called his people to grieve (and he goes on for many verses about all of the losses Judah has experienced. Jeremiah never minces words). He knew that Grieving is a prelude to new life.

What new thing is God doing in the devastation which a latter-day Babylon has brought upon us?

Not much different from Jeremiah’s day…

Calling us to true worship – reverent worship, not only holding in memory the Story, but DOING it…Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ who has died, is risen and will come again. Worship which is the offering of ourselves. Worship which is the birth canal of New Life.

Claiming HOPE…in God’s abundant goodness for what we do not yet see fully. Hope for restoration of what we have known is not hope, but nostalgia…fantasy…illusion. Hope in our own power and strength is not hope, but arrogance. Hope born in a manger, Hope rising from the tomb.

To seek God with all our hearts…to seek God’s will in discernment, in community…to open our hearts to a future which is God’s…

Living within our national grief, we gather here as the Body of Christ. It has been a hard few weeks, and we know our need for each other very deeply. We know how precious is life itself, how uncertain each moment can be. And we take this moment to reflect on our shared Stewardship of Life here in this part of the Body of Christ

What new thing is God doing in the Diocese of Maine?

As Jeremiah reminds us, newness begins with grief. It may seem odd to hear grief mentioned at the annual diocesan convention. I’m going to break every rule about what bishops should say at diocesan conventions. Some thinking equates a diocesan convention with an annual sales meeting: Boost our spirits! Announce record-breaking sales figures! Unveil a new product! Lift up the most productive sales units! Present them with glass bowls, gold awards, and plaques. Perhaps I will say that some year at our convention (but only when it’s TRUE!). But not, sisters and brothers, year. This year, we are to grieve.

Jeremiah knew that grief preceded newness, and his vision of a New

Covenant is fulfilled at the Cross, the intersection of grief and new life.

In our diocese, grief has been the womb of new life…

For congregations in transition, grieving the priest who has departed

has opened hearts to new forms of leadership, both lay and ordained, both interim and permanent. You see, an interim is not a place holder, an interim pastor IS new leadership…An interim period is a time for God to raise up leadership in new ways.

You who are leaders know how hard it is to encourage people to grieve, so that new life can begin. We want so much to skip over the grief part…to hurry through it ("just get a new priest in here next week, so we can get on with it").

Honest grief over what used to be has prepared the soil for new life

-- Renovation of buildings – or the planning of new ones: Wasn’t that hard? Weren’t there people who didn’t want to grieve? Who didn’t want something new to happen? Who wanted the old things kept so they wouldn’t have to grieve the loss?

-- New or expanded outreach to the community

-- Different forms, times and images of Christian Formation

-- Bold initiatives in ministry development (each requiring the death of the old so that the new may come)

-- New ways to be the Church – in shared space or in house churches: The people of messiah Dexter had to grieve so that new life could begin and now 18 to 20 people are a house church in Franny Cannon’s living room on Sunday mornings. They never, as recently as since I’ve been here, would have told you that they had a future and a hope but it is because of grieving that they are now having new life.

-- Partnership of churches in ministry (and minister)-sharing

The people of Dover-Foxcroft and of Brownville Junction have grieved, and welcomed new life – now doing the unthinkable: coming together to share in ministry, to call one pastor to share in ministry with them both (those of you who know the history here know how amazing this partnership is…and how much grief had to happen to get there).

Grief opens us to growth – losing the familiar intimacy we savored so we can genuinely welcome new members…

Each instance of new life has come at the price of grief. There is no other way for me to say it. All the more reason for us to support and encourage the many examples of new life we see around us,

And to treat one another with deep, deep tenderness.

Grief shared empathically – the grief of the poor, grieved with them, opening doors to new life…as our new mission outpost, St Elizabeth’s Church, serving the people of Bayside (the poorest of the poor in Portland), is recognized and welcomed at this convention… The continuing ministry of the Trinity Jubilee Center to the people of Lewiston, struggling to have their basic needs met, grieving all that life has denied them…

And finally – and most acutely, a grief which we need to name, here, as members of one Body, within the Liturgy of God’s Generosity; a grief we have begun to experience together warrants a word. A grief that Jeremiah would name if he were standing at my shoulder.

A grief that needs to be grieved if newness is to be given. It is the loss of an illusion, one of the hardest griefs to grieve precisely because it is so subtle. It is the loss of our illusion of scarcity… defining ourselves as "not enough", "not having enough". The Myth of Scarcity must die, and we must grieve its passing.

We live this myth…in the words "just", as in…"we are just a small congregation", "we just have a part-time priest," "we just have 30 people in church of a Sunday," "we just have four children in our church school." May the word "just", as we have used it, vanish from our vocabulary. We are not "just…", we are SO BLESSED, by a lavishly generous God. These words and these concepts are toppling and crumbling and dying. We need to grieve the loss and that odd comfort of being "just little old us who are not much after all." That’s just not true.

We live this myth in our diocesan consciousness: "we are just a small diocese"…Beloved, we are NOT a small diocese. We have 14,000 members, and 66 congregations (now, with St Elizabeth’s joining us, 67) Other dioceses are small (North Dakota has 6000 members and fewer than 30 congregations…). Folks, that puts us in the middle of sizes of communicants in this country. It’s time to grieve the passing of that Myth of Scarcity.

The Myth of Scarcity allows me to participate in "scarcity thinking". If I believe that scarcity is the only reality, I need not examine myself to ask about my own stewardship (because, if I "don’t have enough", and there's not enough anyway, there ends my self-examination). If scarcity is the only reality, we can avoid new life (because new life is costly – ask any parent – and comes only with sacrifice). Before we even let a dream take shape, we instantly toss cold water upon it by saying, "We can’t afford it," "Be practical, Bishop," "No money, Bishop." The Myth of Scarcity screams loudly as it dies.

Scarcity-thinking also blinds me to the genuine scarcity around me -- if all I ever see is scarcity, I will never see it when it’s really there (if scarcity is everywhere, then it’s nowhere). I see evidence of the death of scarcity-thinking everywhere I go, as I move about in your midst. And, ironically, it’s the places where "scarcity" might seem true that the Myth is dying the fastest. A man in one of our tiniest poorest congregations: "Me and the wife didn’t get a vacation this year; our church needs our money…we’ll go next year".

And into our myth of scarcity, Jesus says in the Gospel text we heard just now, "You will do greater things than I because I send you the Spirit". Greater things than Jesus? Yes, he said it. Like Jeremiah who saw beyond the limitation of the present moment, Jesus sees beyond the limitations of our frightened myth-clinging.

As a diocesan community, we face issues of money. The call is to discernment about our expanding diocesan ministry (and that includes every moment of ministry in every setting, from local to diocesan to national and international). It will be tempting to make decisions about money by using secular (and scarcity) thinking. Lobbying and politicking is not what these issues are about, and I do not lobby us here. God calls us, in words spoken through Jeremiah down the centuries, to seek God with all our hearts…to discern, in this upcoming year, the priorities which are of God’s ABUNDANCE.

For that’s what Abundance is about: not that we can do everything we want (or that resources are unlimited – for we live in a finite creation), but that God will provide all that we need – and MORE – if we "seek God with all our hearts", as Jeremiah says.

However we move forward in facing the tension between our enlarging ministries AND our resultant enlarging needs, discernment is the work of the Christian community waiting upon God. This is how we are called to weigh the decisions we must make…as discerners (seeking God with all our hearts). Far more important than the results of this discernment is the faithful work of discernment itself.

Our diocese is poised at a turning point. We are growing in unity, creativity, and faithfulness. How I wish I could take you with me on every homecoming, to let you all see how ministry is flowering and growing – and how people are faithfully, with struggle, grieving their way into the joy of new life. God is calling us…into new life.

So, God, here we are today. Seeking you with all our hearts. Grieving, opening to new life, and trusting in Your future. Grieving the death of the Myth of Scarcity --- opening to the new life of Abundance.

To summarize at long last, we come to Jesus Christ, the ground of all we do and all we are…There are really two major threads of pagan thinking, and they loom seductively in front of us always:

That Jesus did not REALLY die! If he did not die, then we can avoid and run from the losses, the griefs, the hard truths, the reality of disappointment … and sin. And we can run from the New Life because we have had no reason to grieve…and without grief, there is no New Life.

That Jesus did not REALLY rise from death! If we buy this pagan-thinking, then we have no hope. Scarcity rules; there is never enough. WE are never enough. Life is a grab-it-and-go proposition and there is no goodness, no generosity, no future…in God or anywhere else, for that matter.

In the Cross, where grief and hope intersect, where death and new life are both elementally gathered into God’s own life, lived among us…In the Cross, where loss is gain and ending is beginning…HERE, HERE…does our Myth of Scarcity meet the ultimate test…HERE is our future held in God’s abundance, God’s lavish LIFE-ness. In this God-drenched moment, we KNOW that we have a "future and a hope". Scarcity is an illusion we have bought into…and it is now vanishing, dying in front of our eyes. Let the grieving begin.

Worshipping, and offering ourselves freely. Send us your Spirit, that we may do greater things than we can ever imagine. Life out of death. Hold us in your vision for us, God, draw us, hesitant and fearful, into the future you hold out to us…when we seek you with all our hearts. May we sing the blues in the midst of death, like the gumbo man…Through our grief, discovering Life in the midst of death… the triumph of Abundance. Now. Always. AMEN.