The jigsaw puzzle has eight-thousand pieces. When finished it will be more than four by six feet. Four of us spent yesterday afternoon sorting straight-edged pieces and we got only part of the outside edge done. There were jokes about having a party in about twenty years for all the folks who will have worked on it to get it finished by then. Already we seemed to be missing some pieces. I looked suspiciously at the dog chewing something under the table had my doubts about whether the huge puzzle will ever all be one picture.

The kingdom of heaven is like a jigsaw puzzle. . . . You're a piece and so am I and so is the guy down the street who disagrees with everything I say or do. We can't even get our own bishops to fit themselves together into a neat episcopal whole, how can we hope for the unity of the great diversity of all God's children?

And yet that is Jesus' prayer: "that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one."

When John writes about this kind of mystical unity it can seem really puzzling. The pieces don't always match up. John tells us Jesus and the Father are one. John pictures Jesus telling us to eat -- to gnaw on -- the bread and that Jesus himself is the bread. So the Son, who is in the Father is in us. But then again, no one can know the Father but the Son. But if we know the Son we know the Father. . . . No. I think that piece doesn't match here ... it goes over there, or maybe with this other one or .... Sometimes I wonder whether the huge puzzle will ever be one picture.

What is it that holds this puzzle together? Can someone pass me the glue? "Ghostly Glue" -- that's what some medieval mystics called the Holy Spirit. The Spirit -- the God that fits everything together: "We are one in the Spirit" we sing. "In the unity of the Holy Spirit" we pray at the Eucharist.

But right now the puzzle is jumbled. At this time of year, if we follow the disciples' journey, Jesus ascended into heaven last Thursday. But it's still another week until Pentecost -- the time when the Holy Spirit arrives to comfort and "glue together" the church. No Jesus. No Spirit. They're off somewhere with the Father and here we are. Now what?

Stand around looking up at the sky or hang around in the upper room again, waiting? Go fishing or form a committee and write a mission statement? It's really scary when the puzzle we were just beginning to figure out falls apart. In our fear we feel cornered ... trapped. How are we going to get out of this prison?

In prison at "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened."

Not fishing or a committee, but a choir. It seems that it's possible to sing one's way out of prison, out of the scary, trapped places in our lives.

What kind of person sings in prison?
---- one who somehow, despite the jumbled mess around them, feels joy and hope;
---- one for whom the deepest reality is elsewhere;
---- one whose spirit is free.

Paul and Silas sing themselves free from prison because they already are free in Christ -- because they have taken the advice they give to the jailer: they believe. They have the faith that results in rejoicing. "Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved" they tell their jailer. And when he became a believer he and his entire household rejoiced. Paul and Silas have been stripped and beaten and chained in place; chains even around their necks -- but still they sing. And when they sing, the foundations of their prison are shaken and both the singers and the listeners are freed.

What kind of person sings in prison? One who believes.

Corrie Ten Boom writes about her sister Betsie when they were taken to Ravensbruck, a Nazi extermination camp. They slept that first night unsheltered on the ground in the rain. And Betsie began to sing: "The night is dark and I am far from home .... Lead Thou me on." Her sweet soprano was joined by voices all around them. The song, like the Spirit, reminded them of Christ and connected them to God, and for a moment they were free.

In fact Betsie lived through unspeakable conditions in the freedom of the Spirit that allowed her to almost continuously sing God's praise ... even giving thanks for the fleas that infested their sleeping area. She lived in the Spirit instead of the concentration camp. And she sang.

Singing somehow connects us with the Spirit. And that shakes the foundations of our prisons. What kind of prison are you trapped in? What restricts your life and your growth? Just because it's not as horrendous as an extermination camp, doesn't mean your prison is any less real or any less threatening to the spiritual freedom God intended for us.

We all encounter prisons in our lives. We are good at getting stuck. We can be trapped by circumstances: by poor health or inadequate income. We can be chained up by other people's expectations of us. (Or by our own expectations of ourselves.) We can be imprisoned by addictions -- alcohol or overeating or overworking. We build our own prisons out of our fears: Fear of making a mistake can freeze us in place. A fear of appearing foolish or stupid may tie us down. Shame and embarrassment can build insurmountable walls.

What's your prison? How can you set your spirit free?

Paul and Silas seem to suggest that it's worth trying to sing our way to freedom. Even if your prison, like one of my own, is fear of singing poorly, it can still free you.

There's something about music and singing: It touches our souls. It connects us with others, even with others we might rather not be connected with. It's a kind of glue like the Spirit -- it's a community builder, a kingdom builder. Singing connects us with the Spirit.

Song and music touch our spirits, touch The Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes to remind us of our liberation in Christ. It draws us into Christ, even into the kingdom of heaven where he has ascended. Like a momentary time warp we become one in the Spirit. We become one in Christ just as Jesus is in the Father.

Singing connects us with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit can shatter the foundations of our prisons and free us to be one in Christ with all who sing God's praise. Listen to the hymns we sing:
---- O for a thousand tongues to sing,
---- Alleluia, sing to Jesus,
---- This is my song of songs ...
Jesus and his followers from the beginning until today, sing God's praise.

In song the Spirit frees us and unites us with Christians throughout the world and with all our loved ones who have gone before us in the faith. All the pieces come together in the Alpha and Omega and the puzzle is complete.

Even in the prisons of our lives, let us rejoice, give thanks, and sing.

May our singing shake the foundations of our prisons and shatter the divisions in our lives, that we all may be one. AMEN

You'll know you're really a mother when ...

• You count the sprinkles on each kid's cupcake to make sure they 're equal.
• You hide in the bathroom to be alone.
• You hope ketchup is a vegetable because it's the only one your child eats.
• You hear your mother's voice coming out of your mouth when you say, "Not in your good clothes."
• You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you.
• You say at least once a day, "I'm not cut out for this job," but you know you wouldn't trade it for anything.

There are ways to recognize mothers. This list circulating on the Internet suggests some of those ways. "Mother" is just written all over some people, even when there's no child in sight. Some of those people may never have given birth. Some people who are good at mothering happen to be male. Even in unexpected places we know how to recognize mothering.

People often carry visible signs of who they are: Uniforms, or tools, or clothing tell who we are. (A green sash and carrying cookies, must be a girl scout.) Bumper stickers, pins, or badges proclaim that we belong. (She wears her collar backwards, she must be a priest.)

How is it that we Christians tell others who we are? Jesus told his disciples "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples ... " He identified the visible sign of discipleship. Not the sign of the fish, or even the cross The visible sign of following Jesus, of being a Christian, is having love for one another. Or more specifically: loving one another just as Jesus loved us.

Wearing a cross or carrying a Bible or having a fish symbol on the back of your car is not the sign by which Jesus tells us the world should recognize us. It is by our love like his.

That's much harder than toting a Bible around or even than wearing one of these tight priest-type collars. Jesus' loving act is pretty hard to follow. Think of Peter trying to figure out what kind of love this is. As usual it takes him a while to get it. Remember the story where Jesus asks him over and over: "Do you love me? " And, with some frustration, Peter keeps answering "Yes, I love you." The story loses something in translation from the Greek. Greek has several words for "love." You're familiar with some of them: "phileo" or brotherly love -- as in the city of brotherly love, "Philadelphia" and "agape" which is an intentional self-giving love, the word Jesus used when he commanding us to love as he has loved us. But when Jesus asks Peter "Do you agape-love me?" Peter responds "Yes, Lord, I phileo-love you." Peter loves Jesus like a brother- - like someone familiar, someone "like me." Jesus asks for another kind of love, one that reaches beyond the familiar, one that breaks the old boundaries.

Just look at how Jesus loves. Not just his brothers and disciples who are familiar and try to be like him. Jesus loves all the unlovables who are not like him: the IRS guy who makes people pay huge taxes on money they never saw, the woman who fools around behind her husband's back, those dirty lepers and bloody women, even those nasty, misguided Samaritans.

This is crazy love. It's the kind of love that calls ketchup a vegetable when the kid doesn't eat right. It's the kind of love that is proud of the homework paper even though when saving it on the computer the kid deleted mom's own work files. It's the kind of love that cleans dirty diapers, trusts a newly licensed 16 year old with the new car, and embraces a son-in-law to be of the wrong color or religion or political party. This is motherly love.

Some saints of the church, like Julian of Norwich, whose feast day was last Friday, referred to Jesus as "Mother." Because Jesus does it right -- he shows us perfect motherly love. We all know that human mother-love sometimes goes wrong, sometimes terribly wrong, but at its best that parental self-giving and for-giving love may be our best human example of agape-love.

This is what Jesus is commanding -- not just asking, but commanding -- us to do: To love even when the other appears unlovable or isn't the way we want them to be.

Paul and Barnabas seem to have figured this out in Acts of the Apostles: they have learned that the old boundaries are blasted away by Jesus' agape-love. They reach out in love not only to their fellow Jews, but also to those foreign Gentiles. And as a result they are filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Motherly love without boundaries. Maybe we don't struggle with Gentiles or Samaritans today, but today Jesus is still asking us to love those who are not like us, to love the unfamiliar, the seemingly unlovable. So where are your boundaries that Jesus is asking you to stretch?

I can guess at some of my own personal ones (and they are just that -- personal): I have a difficult time loving people who tell me that as a woman I should not be a priest; or people who choose to drink and drive; or people who confidently condemn others.

Who is it that's unfamiliar to you and hard to love? Who makes you most uncomfortable? It might be a real foreigner, with another culture, religion, and language. It might be a neighbor with a criminal record or a begging bag lady. It might be someone who sits next to you in the pew and disagrees with you about what hymns to sing or what direction our church should go. It might even be your own mother, or those parts of her that have hurt you.

Jesus says: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

Jesus loves them all; gives himself to and for all: the talented one and the failure, the selfish one and the loving one, the well behaved kid and the one who's always in trouble. That's the kind of mother Jesus is. He loves us that way: whoever and however we are, when we're selfish and when we're loving, when we shine and when we fail.

Brotherly love is good, but it's not enough. Jesus asks for motherly love when he commands his followers to love as he loved. If we can accept that overwhelming love, it will flow through us into the world. We are able to love because as Christians we accept Jesus' love for us, and we become God's children: Like Mother, like daughter. We are images of our Parent, whose love has no bounds.

How do you know when you are really a Christian? Jesus' motherly love puts sprinkles on EVERYONE'S cupcakes. Let's try to do the same.