Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, August 25, 2019

Proper 16C, 2019

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Hebrews 12:18-29

Luke 13:10-17

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace, Radford

I love Appalachian Trail stories. You know, those amazing people who through-hike the entire 2200 miles from Georgia to Main and then tell their story of the journey, the challenges and times they almost quit. My favorite of these was published in a book by hiker Bill Irwin who died in 2014 at the age of 73. When Bill Irwin hiked through Damascus, a friend who had joined him for part of the hike broke her leg and ended up in the emergency room where my sister-in-law was working and she was his friend’s nurse. Bill came along to see about the friend and he inspired my entire family through his story, even though only one of us actually met him in person. (He later published his story.)

You see, Bill was completely blind. He was the first blind person to make the through-hike.  His seeing eye dog, a German Shepherd named Orient helped him.  His friends helped him. But he took every step of that journey himself. He fell a lot, he got discouraged, but he kept going. His was a spiritual journey in which he decided to practice his faith after having been reunited with Jesus at a crucial time in his difficult life.

The bent over woman in today’s Gospel lesson meets Jesus in the very middle of the Story according to Luke. Both of them have been on a path, a journey, headed somewhere or maybe, for her, just putting one crippled foot in front of the other and doing the best she can. But this woman has traveled a very long way and feels she is at the end of her journey, the end of her rope, perhaps.

Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem as we are told in a previous chapter (Luke 9:51-56).  Jesus has a definitive destination. The bent over woman somehow traveled to the synagogue that day, probably to see Jesus, to hear him teach, perhaps she hoped of being healed, perhaps she merely wanted to hear a message of hope.

They both traveled a long way to the point of meeting each other. And they would each go on a long way from that meeting.

Several weeks ago, when we were closer to the beginning of our journey of this summer of sermons on discipleship, Deacon Jon preached on this text that described Jesus as setting his face to Jerusalem. Jon talked about setting your hand to the plow, another image from that Gospel reading.  Jon reminded us that it is essentially impossible to not look back, to not take your hand from that plow. He reminded us that our discipleship, that is our best plans to follow Jesus, get waylaid by our human nature, by sin, by unavoidable willfulness.

Just as we are right in the middle of Luke, we are also right in the very middle of this season of Ordinary time which calls us to look at how we’re doing in our best efforts to follow. And Jesus is in the very middle of his journey on Earth in this part of the story.

Back in January, I told you in my sermon about one of my favorite movies which I used to watch with my Dad when I was little. It is an old classic called The African Queen.  African Queen is the name of a boat on which Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart endured maladies and dangers as they sailed down a river in Africa on a makeshift mission to sink a WWI German Warship. It’s a crazy plot but they make it through three sets of rapids and waterfalls and gunshot until they get close to their destination but they get stuck in the mud of the marshes. And then they give up.

I bring this memory, this film back today as a sort of book end. If you were here when I told it before you may have forgotten it. But I told this story on the Sunday which is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. I can’t recall how I tied that together, but that particular Sunday is a sort of beginning place in the liturgical time called Ordinary. Since the Sunday after that we have been plodding through lots of parables and instructions and stories of Jesus healing and casting out demons and all of this is a journey through the summer months in which we are given the opportunity to examine our discipleship. In a few months, that journey will end and we will start the liturgical year over again with Advent, then Christmas then Epiphany, then Lent, then Easter, etc.

As we near the end of this journey of examining our discipleship this year, I ask you to consider the times in your life when you crossed paths with Jesus, when you had extraordinary experiences with the Holy Spirit, when you were stopped in your tracks as you gained a new awareness of the nature of God.

When Humphrey Borgart and Katharine Hepburn gave up in that movie. They decided to lay down they efforts, their bodies, exhausted in the crippled boat and stared up to the heavens.

The camera panned out into an arial view of the little boat and the audience could then see what the characters could not.  They were just feet from their goal.  But not knowing this, they decide they would die and prayed to get into heaven as they went to sleep and while they slept a steady rain filled the waters of the river and lifted the boat out of the mud and through the marshes to complete their journey. They awoke to friends from the other side of the conflict and they were saved.

One scholar said that we may be mistaken when we see this bent over woman as aged. He said that people only lived to be an average of 35 years of age at the time. That is likely true, especially of the poor, the widowed, those without healthcare. So she is crippled, but not necessarily old, and certainly not useless.

So Jesus heals her when they meet on the Way.

And the powers-that-be didn’t like that very much.

The Pharisees watch Jesus perform a miracle. They watch as this woman who has not been able to lift her head for nearly 20 years stands up straight and praises God because Jesus laid hands on her. He didn’t even quiz her about her faith. He performs this amazing miracle, and they’re worried about the law!

The Pharisees are more worried about the letter of the law that forbids working on the Sabbath than they are about the wellness of the people they supposedly shepherd. Jesus is reminding them, and us, that healing people is more important than structuring them.

On Tuesday, there was a very long article published in The Episcopal News Service, an excellent newspaper produced by the “national” church. You can find this free news source on-line. This article was shared to our Facebook page and Samantha will share it again in the manuscript of this sermon on our website this week, because Grace Church, Radford was in the national Episcopal news!

The article was written by a young journalist who came and attended the Pilgrimage for Racial Justice which our diocese organized and which took place through a series of events at sites throughout our diocese. It started, though at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria the night prior, last Friday night.  That nighttime candlelit march caught the attention of national news services like The Washington Post. Then early Saturday the pilgrimage continued in Staunton in the morning, Roanoke mid-day and then came here, to Radford. Grace co-sponsored this event locally with First Baptist Church, the one on Rock Road and the speaker was Tech professor, Dr. Wornie Reed who wowed the crowd with very interesting history of the slave trade in Virginia.

That is what the event was commemorating and lamenting, that this week marks the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved African people being brought to the shores of Virginia.

After coming through Radford, these pilgrims went on to St. Thomas, Abingdon where there was a Eucharist service at the end of the day. Several African American clergy members from neighboring churches in Abingdon were invited to participate. These guests read the scriptures, preached, led music and participated as congregants from the various churches and also led a Litany of Repentance and Commitment similar to the one used in Staunton. We used a modified version of that litany here.

The Episcopal News Service article when on to say that “perhaps the most moving aspect of the service happened during Communion, when the invited pastors offered healing prayers for all, embracing those who approached them and anointing them with oil. By the time everyone had returned to their seats, several people remarked that the atmosphere in the church seemed different – that something had changed.  ‘I believe that this is the beginning,’ said the Rev. Joseph Green Jr., who gave the sermon. ‘This is a moment in time that we can use to propel us into the next generations.’”

These pilgrims journeyed across the state, remembered and lamented the slavery of the African peoples, and then met and anointed each other and knelt together at the Lord’s table.  Of course the atmosphere was different after!

They met each other along the Way, the Way of Jesus. They also answered the invitation to join together for this event. And they were transformed by showing up. They were transformed by meeting each other in their journeys.

So, whether it is through social justice work in our community around this need for continued racial reconciliation, or perhaps in other ministries to which we have been already called, like supporting Boys Home or Our Daily Bread, homelessness, and campus ministry, we have to realize that we are on a journey. Sometimes this means moving on to a next calling while someone else takes up the mantel of work we have been doing in the past. It also means always being open to answering the invitation to show up. Mostly, it takes constant prayerful discernment to listen to God’s call for our ministries, so that we can better answer our call and better know what is needed of us in the Kingdom.

The epistle reading today is a letter of invitation of sorts. It reminds the Hebrews that they have responded to the invitation and have journeyed thus far and “have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” . . . “and to Jesus.”

The Prophet Jeremiah begins his story, which we will continue for the next several week, remembering the very beginnings of his journey.  He recounts this with the familiar lovely poetry, “"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”

Each of us was known and hoped for and purposed by God before we were born. God has longed to guide us on our journeys ever since. Sometimes on our journey we have faltered but we came back and we are here today. At some point in our journey each of us encountered the living God in such a way that we committed ourselves to that God, we experienced joy, relief, clarity and gratitude in those encounters. Other times we felt lost, we felt discouraged, we fell down a lot, but we kept going. And we are here today.

Hero’s like Bill Irwin and his dog Orient remind us of the beautiful, messy, challenge that is our life’s journey and remind us to persevere. And we won’t give up because just around the river bend may be the next best thing, the greatest joy of the journey, the clarity found when we answer God’s longing for us, when we answer God’s call for our lives. Because if we show up and keep following that call we will meet Jesus on the Way, over and over again, and he will heal us and make us whole and then we will know where next to go and we will be strong enough for the rest of the journey.

Amen.

Tenth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, August 18, 2019

Proper 15C, 2019

Isaiah 5:1-7

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Luke 12:49-56

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace, Radford

The Word is very near you, in your heart, and yet beyond all knowing. (The Living Church, 10/22/17)

Fifteen years ago when Kate was quite small, I left her at home with a sitter named Cecilia while I visited a family’s home for dinner. We had just moved from the dining room to the living room when the sitter called and told me my house was on fire. In a panic I rushed home. Those five miles seemed like a thousand. What I found there in the front yard was a crew of capable firemen, no flames but lots of smoke, and lay baby in her pajamas in the arms of an equally capable sitter.

The sitter had called 911, grabbed Kate, the dog, her phone and pulled the door to as she left.  That one act saved the house though it was gutted, mostly by smoke and water damage.

I lost everything. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

A funny side note, I called Cecilia the next day to check on her, she was pretty shaken by the ordeal, but I also called to apologize that in the chaos I had failed to pay her for her services. She declined to take the payment, as if the fire was her fault.  It was not. The insurance adjuster confirmed that later. I told her that she certainly deserved her wages considering that she saved the life of my daughter, my dog, my cat and the house itself!

In the midst of the clean up I was met with the overwhelming processes of insurance claims.  It is interesting to me that insurance companies still use the phrase “act of God,” as if God is the ultimate scape goat when accidents happen.  Well, actually, this is not a phrase that is formally used in documents by insurance companies but rather a colloquialism which indicates the difference between an accident, such as a wiring problem like the one that caused my house fire, and a natural disaster which would be the case if lightening hit the house. I do not know, nor do I want to know the difference in terms of payment of insurance claims.

But it strikes me as odd that we still blame God when storms of wind, rain, snow or tsunamis happen.  I don’t think we really still believe that God is an angry monster in the sky who send down suffering when we are bad.  At least I hope not.

Instead, I have found that the Christian faith has grown up since the dark ages and come to realize that God may be in ways “beyond all knowing,” but at the same time “the Kingdom of God is within us.” The Word is very near us, in our hearts - and yet beyond all knowing.

Hear these words from New Testament professor, Matt Skinner: “When Jesus speaks of bringing “fire to the earth,” I suggest you avoid connecting it to images of destruction or cataclysm. The fire Jesus wants to kindle is a fire of change, the fire of God’s active presence in the world. . . . We do well to hear this Gospel lesson from the twelfth chapter of Luke in connection to Mary’s and Zechariah’s stories from the first chapter. And in connection to John the Baptist’s preaching in the third chapter. Jesus yearns for the kingdom of God to break forth into the world in all its fullness. The transformations and justice that the saints envisioned in the first three chapters of Luke are the things that Jesus wants too. That means that oppression has to go. Greed has to go. Idolatry has to go. Same with exploitation, dehumanization, narcissism, and any other evils you can name that prevent the flourishing of all people and all creation. Those contagions are rendered powerless in the presence of God.”

In my manuscript, I have added italics to his two uses of the word presence and his use of the phrase kingdom of God. Because, these words remind me that at those times when we feel we have lost everything, at those times when we feel God is lost, that God is silent or distant or absent, I have learned that these are the times we most need to let go of fear let go of frustration and turn again instead to the center of our very beings. Because that is where we are most likely to find God. In the very center of our own hearts.

Here’s a story from my favorite biblical humorist:

A small boy is stumbling through the woods when he comes upon a preacher baptizing people in the river. He proceeds to walk into the water and subsequently bumps into the preacher. The preacher turns around, whereupon he asks the boy, “Are you ready to find Jesus?” The boy answers, “Yes, I am.” So the preacher grabs him and dunks him in the water. He pulls him up and asks the boy, “Brother, have you found Jesus?”

The boy replies, “No, I haven’t found Jesus.” The preacher, shocked at the answer, dunks him into the water again for a little longer this time. Then he pulls him out of the water and asks again, “Have you found Jesus, my brother?” The boy again answers, “No, I haven’t found Jesus.” By this time the preacher is at his wits end and dunks the boy in the water again—but this time holds him down for about thirty seconds, and when he begins kicking his arms and legs he pulls him up. The preacher again asks the boy, “For the love of God, child, have you found Jesus?” The boy wipes his eyes and sputters and catches his breath and says to the preacher, “Are you sure this is where he fell in?”

Sometimes baptism is a tricky business. We do it as infants and as adults. Some people believe in full immersion, some in a sprinkle of water. But the point is that we are uniting ourselves with Christ. Even in this joke where the boy cannot physically find Jesus in the river, he can join Jesus in living a godly life. That is what our baptism is about— dying and living with Christ.[1]

This reminds me of my experience yesterday over at the Kroger.  Have you been there lately? They’re in the midst of rearranging most of the inventory. So, I was just there for cauliflower for a recipe and planned to pick up some toothpaste but that was the extent of my list. But when I turned from the produce section to head to the pharmacy I realized the health food section was gone and the flowers had been moved forward. Then I realized that all the aisle had been rearranged.  And they were not done yet but are still in the middle of this transition.

What ensued was hilarious. Since I had such a short list and plenty of time, I decided to meander through each aisle checking out what was where and making a mental note so that I would be able to find my usual products next time I came. What I found was the usual 5:00-Friday crowd and everyone was lost and confused.  One man stopped me and asked in exasperation if I knew where the jelly was! Another woman was on the verge of tears because she couldn’t find the flour and another was outraged that they had moved the toilet paper in with the pasta sauce! It was chaos! Then I bumped into a friend and we chatted and laughed about the chaos of these lost and wandering shoppers.

We always seem to be seeking something that is lost.  And we treat God this way, as if God is lost. God seems fully other, out there, somehow lost to us and we tend to blame ourselves for our sinfulness with the wrong idea that God has abandoned us or punishes us. That is, when we’re not blaming God for our perceived punishment and cursed disorientation.

Friends, God is not fully other. God is not punishing us. God is deep in our hearts. Each and every one of us. That is where we need to look, and the way to find this ultimate love is through listening prayer, not the busy-ness of good works or strong faith, or ego or self centeredness, certainly not through thoughts-and-prayers or even wordy intercessory prayer but through slowing down, quieting down and learning to listen.

I spent last week at at Centering Prayer training working on my own practice of this type of prayer. It is often called “being present to the Presence” among other names. Present to the Presence. I found out that there are many names for this one thing and that one thing is our communion with the Holy Spirit through listening prayer, contemplative prayer, centering prayer. Whatever you call it, it is a way of recognizing God within us, the Kingdom of God within each of us.

We think of Christian discipleship as doing the right thing.  Like, we have a to-do list from Jesus. We push ourselves to be ethical, loving, and always seeking ways to serve others. We also work hard at not sinning. We have a list of behaviors that is around the stuff of “thou shalt nots” and we strive to not do these bad things and then when we sin we repent, say we’re sorry and try again.  That is the basic recipe for Christian discipleship of the past several centuries.

And all of that is good and true.

But there is a recent movement in the Church in which we are being asked to dig a little deeper, to look outside the box of these lists of dos and don’ts and inside our hearts instead - or maybe as well.

And it is simply about prayer.

Well, we already know about prayer, right? We know how to pray. We’ve been praying since we were children, most of us. We’ve been talking about that a lot lately in this pulpit, about how The Lord’s Prayer is a formula for all the thoughts to use when reciting what I’ve come to call “Dear God” letters. And that type of prayer is good, and true and it is enough.

We pray with words through our beloved prayer book, in the prayers of the people we use at each Eucharist, and in the Eucharistic prayers themselves. This is all good.

I am not suggesting we change any of that. But there is another way of praying that is less about our list of intercessory prayers and wish lists and the like.

I am asking you to consider with me though, a posture of prayer that is more about listening than speaking as a way of enhancing our relationship with God, a way of enhancing our discernment of what God then wants us to do.

In the course I have just taken we learned how to quiet our minds and allow our spirits to rest in a wordless communion with what most Christian contemplatives call the Ultimate Reality (Thomas Keating).

So, I plan to teach you what I have learned because I’ve been transformed by this way of praying and I want to share that with you. I’m excited about how we might find a new Christian expression through this new, yet ancient, posture of silent prayer. Come to the 9:15 formation class on third Sundays this Fall and find out more.

In spite of our experience of being lost in this world, of always seeking something that seems out of reach to us, we must learn to remember that God is not the distant wrathful God of our ancestors. Jesus came to transform us with the baptism of water and also with a baptism of fire. We must remain aware of the challenge of discipleship and we must do so through prayer. I have found, especially during times when I felt I had lost everything, and at times when I felt I was lost in my journey, that the best way home is through listening for God in centering prayer.

And this is the way we “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” We persevere through the strength of our hearts. The strong heart of a conditioned runner.

For the Kingdom of God is within us. We don’t have to go looking for it out there. It is in here. All we must do to find the Ultimate Reality of the Love of God is to be present to God’s Presence.

Amen.

[1] Markham, Ian S.. Lectionary Levity (Kindle Locations 4266-4272). Church Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Ninth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, August 4, 2019

Proper 13C 2019

Hosea 11:1-11

Colossians 3:1-11

Luke 12:13-21

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, Virginia

One of the foundational elements of the Harry Potter series is the Boggart. I’d be interested to know how many of us remember the Boggart from the series.

Here’s a definition from a fan page: “A Boggart is an amortal shape-shifting non-being that takes on the form of the viewer's worst fear. Translation for non-Harry Potter fans, it’s like a ghost which when you encounter it becomes your worst fear. So, if I encountered a Boggart on a normal Sunday morning it would probably become the bishop saying he was here for confirmation and I forgot.”

(But don’t anybody tell the bishop I said he is my worst fear!)

“The charm that combats a Boggart is to say, with the right flick of your wand, Riddikulus. (If the charm works the Boggart turns into your favorite funny thing, like a clown or Professor Snape in drag!) Boggarts are defeated by laughter, so forcing them to assume an amusing form is the first step to defeating them. The intention is to force the Boggart to assume a less-threatening and hopefully comical form.”[1]

I love that part of J. K. Rowling’s fantastical world of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The defensive charm against your worst fear is laughter and the word used for the charm is Riddikulus.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about prayer and Jon and I have both been preaching about and discussing prayer. We feel the Holy Spirit is leading us all to consider our prayer practices. In light of today’s readings I am wondering about praying through fear, and laughter as a God given anecdote to fear.

Jerry Seinfeld has a show on Netflix called “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” And that is just what it is, comedians in cars getting coffee. With each episode you get some background on a classic car or a luxury car which Seinfeld rents and fills with cameras, and a camera crew following in other vehicles, and the viewer gets to ride along through the camera lens. Jerry drives through LA or New York and picks up his guest, usually a friend, always another comedian. They drive and talk about the craft of comedy, especially stand up comedy. Then they go to a coffee shop and sit at a table with coffee and food and continue the conversation.  These conversations are, naturally, very funny.

So the viewer is entertained and informed and the car maker and the coffee shop both get good advertisement.  Everyone goes home happy.  My favorite part is that these episodes are each only about 20 minutes long.

Kate and I watched a few of these the other night and a couple of things stood out for me.  One was when one of the comedy writers described how a comedy TV show is written. He used The Office as an example. He told of one formula where one of the characters, for ridiculous reasons, decides to do something outside of his or her given abilities. The character usually looks at the camera to include the viewer in this plan and then goes on trying essentially, back flips or whatever the crazy, overdone, act is and makes a fool of him or herself.  So, it’s funny because we relate to our own failures but it’s also easier to watch someone else be the fool.

One comedian told Seinfeld this joke. (And before I tell it I’ll warn you, it is not funny. It is not meant to be funny.) So a Jewish guy, a Holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven and meets God. God says, “Welcome.” The Jewish guy says, “Let me tell you joke" (so now this is a joke inside a joke). So he tells God about the Holocaust. And God says, “I don’t get it.” And the Jewish guy says, “Yeah. I guess you had to be there.”

It’s not funny.  Not in the least.  But it catches your attention and takes us all to that difficult place of questioning the answer to prayer.  Like, we prayed for rescue from the Nazis and God seemed very silent.

We pray for comfort and action from God when we are afraid of such evils and God seems absent still.

There is a larger story, however. God isn’t a magician. And God is always there. Wherever there is. We don’t just ask for a raise in our allowance or to not get grounded when we have misbehaved. God is compared to a good and stern father in the Bible, like in this section of Hosea which we’ve been reading for a couple of weeks. But, God is more than that. God wants us to be in constant, deep relationship, not a “tit-for-tat” deal making type of relationship or a reward and punishment relationship. God wants us to walk daily in deep relationship.  And that takes, as Jon said in last week’s sermon, “being quiet, waiting and listening.”

Some say that if the German Church and the German people had been in such a relationship with God in the late 19th century, Hitler might not have risen to the level of evil power he did and we may have been spared the Holocaust. But it’s really not that simple. The problem of evil would still exist. We would have to go back to original sin, the original Fall of (hu)man in the Garden of Eden in order to avoid evil, to avoid sin. But we can’t.

We are faced with the human condition of being fallible, finite, limited creatures who struggle for a lifetime, trying to accept what we can’t have or do.

We are in the middle of the summer lessons, Ordinary Time. We will hear lot’s of stories and lots of parables this summer. In today’s Gospel lesson we have an argument between family members over an inheritance. And then we have Jesus relocate the argument to this parable. The man whose biggest struggle in life is to find a place to store the abundance of his crops is the prototype of wealth. If the resources are plentiful, planning for the future becomes easy. The illusion of control over one’s life becomes second nature. Only God’s intervention can save us from that grand illusion. We never know what tomorrow will bring - if we will get to spend our inheritance or build that storage barn.

In the end life is fleeting. As we obsess over the accumulation of shoes, clothes, gadgets, antiques, homes, cars - add to the list your temptation - as we obsess over these possessions, Jesus simply points out that this cannot be the focus of our lives. At any moment our lives can be cut short. We need to focus on the eternal; we need to focus on God. (Ian Markham)

The story of The Rich Fool is a joke of sorts. This character is ridiculous. We want to laugh at him for being a hoarder.  We want to point out his folly, his mistake.  We assume he is isolated and lonely in his miserly ways. Some would assume he is destined for hell. He is just a joke.

George Carlin captures this human dilemma when he muses on our attachment to stuff. Do you remember that monologue? Those who do just perked up and are worried I’m going to quote him word for word. That would include a great deal of profanity.  But, editing the profanity out, here’s the gist: Carlin said,

You know how important that is, that’s the whole . . . that’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it? Trying to find a place for your stuff. That’s all you house is . . . you’re house is just a place for you stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff . . . you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. That’s all you house is, it’s a pile of stuff . . . with a cover on it. You see that when you take off in an airplane and you look down . . . and yo see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff Everybody’s got their own pile of stuff. And when you leave your stuff, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff . . . That’s all your house is, it’s a place to keep your stuff . . . while you go out an dget more stuff. Now, sometimes, sometimes you gotta move . . . you gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff. You’ve gotta move all you stuff . . . and maybe put some of your stuff in storage. Imagine that, there’s a whole industry based on keeping . . . an eye on your stuff.[2]

One scholar says this of the parable of the rich fool: “This inordinate craving to hoard as a guarantee against insecurity is not only an act of disregard for those in need but puts goods in the place of God. Luke calls this not being ‘rich toward God.’ Paul calls it worshipping and serving ‘the creature rather than the Creator.’” (Fred Craddock)

Another scholar put it this way:

“Many who hear this parable, especially in a North American context, may wonder: Why is the rich farmer called a fool? One could easily argue that the rich man is a wise and responsible person. He has a thriving farming business. His land has produced so abundantly that he doesn’t have enough storage space in his barns. So he plans to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store all his grain and goods. Then he will have ample savings set aside for the future and will be all set to enjoy his golden years. Isn’t this what we are encouraged to strive for? Isn’t it wise and responsible to save for the future? The rich farmer would probably be a good financial advisor. He seems to have things figured out. He has worked hard and saved wisely. Now he can sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of his labor, right? Not exactly. There is one very important thing the rich fool has not planned for -- his reckoning with God. And God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20) That’s a fancy way of saying “you can’t take it with you.”

The rich farmer is a fool not because he is wealthy or because he saves for the future, but because he appears to live only for himself, and because he believes that he can secure his life with his abundant possessions.

When the rich man talks in this parable, he talks only to himself, and the only person he refers to is himself: “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry’” (Luke 12:17-19). That sounds like the “me generation.”

I appreciated Deacon Jon’s sermon last week on prayer. The text he was preaching on was The Lord’s Prayer and he reminded us how much we need to work on Silent Prayer, or at least quiet time spent on the intention of our relationship with God. If we can increase our practice of prayer, we can increase our deep relationship with God. And most importantly we can increase our clarity in discernment.  What to do about wealth or need becomes more clear when we enter into prayer. 

Fear subsides when we pray this way, not when we use prayer as a bargaining tool. When we pray with words we think we can just tell God to get us out of a bad situation. When we show up late in the story and proclaim what we want from God we miss the opportunity to be in relationship with God. We need to re-learn how to pray, and not really use words at all.

Because if we are already in daily and constant prayer then we are practicing a deep relationship with God. This is what Paul meant when he said to “pray unceasingly.” (1 Thess 5:17) This is not to pray, necessarily with words though.  It’s not a practice of walking around in a wordy conversation with God all day. That sounds exhausting!

That would be like this foolish farmer: “I want this, and so I need to do that, and I think I should go there, and then I need to buy some of that, and then I need to sell this and, oh yeah, Dear God, give me all this stuff because I know you love me and want me to be prosperous.”  Whew! Where’s the resting, waiting and listening type of relationship in that?!

No, this type of prayer practice is a state of being which becomes more clear and brings us to a more whole and balanced way of living in our hearts. It is a becoming that takes setting aside time each day to step away from the noise and the clutter and “wait and listen.”

And laughter? That will come not in our ridicule of others nor in our ridicule of that which we fear but through the shear delight of all the beauty and love and joy of this life in Christ. And we can best see that when we move away from the clutter and quietly enter into the loving fold of being with God.

Amen.

[1] Test taken from Harry Potter Fandom page: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page (accessed August 2, 2019).

[2] George Carlin. The text is taken from http://allreadable.com/e69382te (accessed Aug 2, 2019).

Seventh Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, July 28, 2019

Ask, Seek, Knock—then Listen

Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, VA

Proper 12, Year C: Hosea 1:2-10, Psalm 85, Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19), Luke 11:1-13

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts, be always acceptable to you, O Lord, our savior and redeemer.

Generally speaking, we as a society and even as the Episcopal Church, aren’t very good at praying.

As evidence I turn to the noted theologian, Ricky Bobby.

My younger two daughters and I have a couple of particularly sophomoric movies that we like to watch together. 

One of them is “Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” starring Will Ferrell

It is, in truth, a bad movie and I cannot in good faith recommend it, but there are a couple of really funny scenes. 

In one, Ricky Bobby, a very successful, if vane, materialistic and not particularly bright, NASCAR driver offers grace over a table filled with fast food with his family and friends packed around the table.  His version of grace starts:

Dear Lord Baby Jesus, or as our brothers in the South call you: 'Hey-suz'. We thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell.

He continues to thank the Baby Jesus for his sons, his wife (who he notes is “smokin’ hot”) and the large amounts of money he has won.  There ensues a number of interruptions, but eventually he concludes:

 Also due to a binding endorsement contract that stipulates I mention PowerAde at each grace, I just wanna say that PowerAde is delicious and it cools you off on a hot summer day and we look forward to PowerAde's release of mystic mountain blueberry. Thank you, for all your power and your grace, Dear Baby God, Amen.[1]

Silly I know, but I think the reason this scene strikes me as so funny, is that isn’t too far removed from some prayers that I’ve heard.

Contrast that prayer with the version of the Lord’s Prayer that Luke shares:

Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.

I tend to think of the Lord’s Prayer that we repeat every Sunday as direct, to the point and efficient, but this one is stripped to the bare bones.

Luke is the most florid and has the biggest vocabulary of the four Gospelers.[2]  But the version of this prayer is pared down even from what we see in Matthew.

We know that Jesus prayed for hours at a time according to Luke’s Gospel.  If this is teaching the disciples to pray like he did, why is it so short and why is the language so sparse?

After the prayer he tells the parable about waking up your neighbor in the middle of the night; the lesson here apparently, is that perseverance in prayer will lead to answers.

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

It concludes with the assurance that if we ask for good things, we will surely not be given wiggly, venomous things.

All wrapped up in a nice little package. 

Only we know that some parents ask that their children be cured of cancer, and sometimes the children die.

There are parents that search for a job that will pull them out of poverty, but they do not find one.

And there are people that knock on the door of the US Southern border and are turned away.

While we typically don’t receive scorpions or snakes in response to prayer, there certainly are some disappointing and nasty responses.

Perhaps even worse, sometimes what we get from our prayers is silence. No response at all.

Why is this?

Some will explain it away saying “it’s God’s will” or that “it’s all part of God’s plan”  or “all in God’s time”.

But the suffering of a child being part of “God’s plan” makes no sense for the loving God that I know.

The truth is that no one can provide a succinct and credible answer on why sometimes our prayers go unanswered.

But perhaps if we look at Jesus prayer practices we can get a hint of an answer.

When asked how to pray, he gives his disciples 6 lines and 38 words and never once does he mention PowerAde.

Jesus prays a lot in Luke’s Gospel.  Luke records that after the Last Supper

He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22 39-42)

Those are the only words recorded in this prayer.

It’s certainly possible that there were more, but my theory is that a great deal of the time that Jesus was praying he was just waiting and listening.

Waiting and listening for the Holy Spirit.

Further, I believe that what he waited for was not answers, but for what one of my favorite hymns refers to as mystic sweet communion.

Mystic sweet communion with all that was and all that is and all that will be. 

Mystic sweet communion with the Living God.

Mystic sweet communion with what he (and we also) came from and what we will one day return to.

And that mystic sweet communion doesn’t always provide answers, doesn’t always provide the healing that we ask for, but it always provides a little more wholeness and the ability to get up and do what we need to do, what we are meant to do, which is to play our part in the continuing creation of the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ practice came out of the Jewish contemplative tradition.  And this continued as an important part of early Christian spirituality.

But, somewhere along the line, that important, for me crucial, element of spirituality got lost in our faith tradition and in the western church  generally.

Only in the last fifty years have we, as a community, “discovered” a group of practices called contemplative prayer.

There are a number of methods included in this type of prayer, but they all have in common a focus on deep listening for the voice of God.

I am so excited to hear that Kathy intends to do a session on contemplative life every third Sunday starting in September.  I hope your will join me in attending; there is much to learn.

When I look back on my prayer life, I started out, just like you did I would imagine, kneeling by my bed at night saying, “God Bless Mommy and God Bless Daddy…”

Growing up in the Roman Catholic faith, I was taught that there were five forms of prayer: adoration, petition, intercession, thanksgiving, and praise.

All of them involved me flapping my gums or at least me reeling off a bunch of words in my mind.

I stuck to that formula as I matured.  But as I entered my formation as a deacon and talked to others, it became clear to me that my prayers weren’t a whole lot different than when I was four kneeling by my bed. 

My prayers weren’t a whole lot different from Ricky Bobby’s.

I have begun a journey in which more and more of my prayer is contemplative 

Not giving God a to-do list of things I need or want, let’s face it God knows what I need much better than I do, but listening for the still small voice and seeking to walk, humbly, into the presence of the Living God.

I’m no expert, I’m just learning, but every once in a while, I get a glimpse of that mystic sweet communion.

And while I start every day at work with a prayer of thanksgiving and follow with a prayer for intercession for friends and family that need help, and much of my prayer life still involves my gums flapping…

And I know that sometimes those prayers won’t be answered, at least not in the manner that I ask.

I’ve come to believe that the ultimate aim of prayer is to get a glimpse of that mystic, sweet communion and to join in the ongoing process of creation that God invites us into.

And while that can and does occur with our mouths moving, I’ve found it’s far more likely to occur when we shut up and listen

Perseverance in prayer is still important.  We still need to ask, to seek, to knock…but then we should…wait and listen.

Amen

[1]

[2]

Fourth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, July 7, 2019

Proper 9C 2019

Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, Virginia

It was 1974.  Fashion was weird.  Hair was long and there was a revolution of sorts happening in our culture.  I was 12.  I couldn’t understand it very well.  My parents sheltered me. They kept me from watching the war on the news or any other real news.

Mom and Dad added on to our split level 5 years before that and the oldest of us four had gone to college 2 years before and I had gotten the old master bedroom complete with my own in-room bathroom.  I was on the verge of my teenage years and curious and a little scared.

One day my oldest brother showed up around 4:00.  It must have been a Friday.  He had a man with him.  He came in and introduced the man by asking him, “what was your name again?” Said he had picked up this guy Brett Samples hitchhiking and could he stay for dinner?

Brett Samples was barefoot.  His hair was longer than mine, he had a full beard and he was wearing overalls with no shirt.  He looked kind of dirty too.

The next few minutes caused a new course in the formation of my family.

Mom must have taken two breaths but pretty quickly came back with, “Of course!” followed by something about putting another pork chop on before she excused herself to the kitchen.

I don’t remember the details of the next couple of hours but I remember they were tense.  Brett Samples didn’t say much.  Mom served dinner in the dining room, a gesture usually saved for important guests. We usually ate in the kitchen. Over the course of dinner it became clear that Brett Samples would be spending the night.

I was mortified.

As soon as I could be excused from dinner, I rushed to my room and not only locked but barricaded the door. I figured since I had my own bathroom that I could just stay in there until Brett Samples was gone.  I didn’t come out until 10:00 the next morning.  Brett Samples and my brother were gone.

I asked Mom when and where questions and she began to laugh.  It turns out, she told me, that Brett Samples was a student at Emory and Henry College a fried of my brother and the whole thing was a practical joke! He was no hitchhiker.  He was a philosophy major and pre-law student! And they didn’t stay the night!

For the next couple of years Brett Samples spent many evenings with my family.  He did really cool things like scrape the butter off of the top of the stick instead of slicing it for his bread and he talked about intellectual stuff like philosophy and literature and I came to think of him as the coolest person I’d ever met!

The story of Jesus’ sending of the 70 from this morning’s Gospel lesson gives a rare window into what it looked like to follow Jesus in the first generation. Jesus sends out disciples with the first proclamation that sounds deceptively simple: “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’” (verse 5). This word of peace is the first word, the opening word, the announcing word. Notice that Jesus does not tell them to do any sort of assessment before making this proclamation. He doesn’t ask them to determine whether this house follows the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or whether this house has kept the law or whether this house is likely to receive the good news Jesus brings. Jesus doesn’t ask them to do a risk assessment or pre-judge whether this house will be worth their time.

Jesus goes on to instruct them in the dynamic of sharing peace: “if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you” (verse 6). This verse is packed with instruction for the reactive lives we lead today. This one verse is worth taking time to unpack.

First, Jesus assumes that these apostles he sends, do in fact have peace. Jesus says that “Your peace” specifically, not just random, generic peace, will rest on others or return to you.  “Your peace.”

The Holy Spirit is leading the church to new ways of evangelism and hospitality these days.  Of this I am certain.  Many folks say that all this talk of becoming more missional is a trend or a fad.  I find that sort of talk, frankly blasphemous.  You see, the church is being asked to do some house cleaning.  It’s time to do some honest assessment of our own home, and hospitality is among the questions.  Are we good at welcoming strangers?

Next month I will be pursuing a two year course of study with the Shalem Institute in Maryland. This will only require one week each year to be in residency with my class of 10.  Most of this work will be done online and through my own study.  But be forewarned.  I’m going to dig deeper into the realm of prayer and I want you to go there with me.  I want to learn more about how to pray prayers of discernment for God’s will for me, you and us as a parish and I want us to look together at ways we can do some listening.

What is God calling us to do as a parish?  What gifts do we have to offer?

One of the best gifts for ministry this parish has is hospitality.  We are very good at welcoming guests and newcomers and y’all are really good with food!

But there is more to being the church than coffee hour.  What might that be?

One of the knee jerk reactions to this conversation is to bemoan how busy we all are and how daunting it is to hear that we need to work harder.  Well, that is not the message I’m hearing from the Holy Spirit.

Getting on board with the church of the 21st Century is not about working harder.  It is about opening ourselves to new ways of being.  And I for one believe that we cannot do this work of becoming part of these changes without prayer. We must learn to first quiet our minds before we can learn to listen to the workings of the Holy Spirit.  We must first learn to look around and recognize the Spirit at work all around us in so many ways.

Of course, if you’re like me, you don’t want to change the way we do church. I mean, I love Sunday mornings with old hymns and new hymns and old prayers and communion and checking in with each other.  What more could we want?  What more could we be?  Why must we talk of change?

Well, the church is ever changing.

When Brett Samples first came to visit my family in 1974 the church was in the midst of great changes.  There was a lot of noise about the ordination of women. There was a lot of protesting of the war.  There was turmoil around race relations.

But we still want to go back to 1964, or 1954, or whatever era seems like the good old days.  We still want to come to church to get that good feeling and we want to feel O.K. about all the good works we do.

The church of 2019 is struggling to answer the call of the Spirit to move out into the world in new ways.  Rather than feel peaceful we need to spread peace.

Hear the words of one of my preaching mentors:

“As we engage others, we must first be well-grounded in God’s peace, the peace that passes understanding. God’s shalom is more than being calm. It is confidence in God’s abiding presence so that we also share that presence with others. Engaging others means not treating them as objects upon which we act, but as sacred others with whom we are called to be fully and peacefully present. If they do not share this peace, Jesus does not advise reactivity, scorn or polemics. Instead, he reassures his followers that their peace is not diminished and cannot be taken away from them: ‘it will return to you’ (verse 6).” -- Amy G. Oden

So, let’s get our peace on friends.  Let’s claim our peace, not so that we can feel better about the world but so that we can take that peace to the world. In fact, let’s go out into the world first and greet the stranger and get outside of our comfort zone.  That is where we are more likely to find the peace we seek. That is where we are more likely to meet the Holy Spirit.

When my mother agreed to let Brett Samples the hitchhiker dine and sleep at our house she acted as a hospitable Christian.  This was not lost on me in the moments before we knew he wasn’t really a stranger.

But the better lesson that I now take from this memory was that Brett Samples had the peace to sit quietly and let us respond to him in whatever way we needed.  I don’t think my brother and his friend thought this prank through enough that they were acting maliciously.  But Brett Samples taught me through that encounter what it is like to not only welcome the stranger but be the stranger.

In order to engage others, we must first be aware of ourselves as other, though well-grounded in God’s peace.  How can we work on that?

When those first 70 disciples came back, they were pumped!  “They returned with joy” (verse 17) talking about all the ways the Holy Spirit was moving in and through and all around them in ways they could never have imagined.

“Our chief joy should be, not that we have certain gifts and powers, but that God has received and accepted us.” (Fred Craddock)

I mean, we want to change the world, right?  Getting sent, which, by the way is what the word disciple means, getting sent seems exciting in this story.  Jesus empowers his followers and magic happens!  It starts to seem like a Harry Potter movie and we all start fantasizing about having magical powers and wands and zapping our enemies.

That’s the mistake humans always make in response to Jesus.

Instead of trying to become warriors, we must learn to think of ourselves as conduits for the workings of the Spirit and allow ourselves to be sent, and to be led, with our own God given peace, into new and mysterious currents.

Amen.

Third Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, June 30, 2019

Putting Our Hand to the Plow

Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon

Grace Episcopal Church Radford

June 30, 2019

1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21

Psalm 16

Galatians 5:1,13-25

Luke 9:51-62

I have a fear of heights.

I’m also hard headed and haven’t let that keep me from doing a lot of things.  That’s led to some sweaty brows and a number of white knuckle moments over the years.

When I was in the Navy, we worked hard to try and get our best sailors to reenlist. 

On a number of occasions I told sailors, I would reenlist them “anytime and anyplace” that they choose.

Be careful what you promise.

One Chief Electronics Technician took me up on it.  He said he wanted to reenlist on the mast of the ship. 

Now I was on a smaller Navy ship, a frigate, but the top of the mast was still 115 feet in the air and the “platform”—where there was room for two people to stand--was 75 feet in the air—over 5 stories high.

When you climbed up, you put on a climbing harness and you were always connected to something.  So, there was no possible way I was going to fall.

But when you have an innate fear of something that logic doesn’t seem to matter.

The climb up was okay.  I looked at where I was putting my hands and focused on putting one foot, and hand, ahead of the other.

When I got to the top and stood on the platform, where two of us could stand for the oath of office, I immediately latched on to any anything I could grab onto in an absolute death grip.

The Chief could tell I was freaking out a little and I think was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get me down.  So he advised me, “Don’t look down.”

Now, I knew this was the correct advice, but, again, when you have this irrational fear of something somehow it becomes really important to examine carefully the manner in which you are about to die. 

I mean it was important to me to see if I was going straight down 75 feet to splat on the deck or if I was going to bounce off some things on the way down.

Would it be quick? would I linger?

I had to look down. 

Even If I knew it wasn’t the smart thing to do, I had to look down.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

This message stings a bit for me.  Because not only can I not keep from looking down; I can’t keep from looking back.

The phrase to put one’s hand to the plow is a proverbial expression for starting a new task.  And Jesus’ audience knew well that if you were plowing and looked back, you wouldn’t plow a straight line.  And crooked rows mean wasted space.[1]

So Jesus wants us focused on our call to serve…just as he was. 

But the demands he made, well…they just seem unreasonable to me.

When a prospective disciple responds, I’m all in, but first I have to bury my Father, Jesus responds, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Ouch.

Another says, I’m coming, but first let me say Goodbye to my family.  Jesus tells him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Wow. 

What would I do given those options? 

Honestly, I’d look back.

I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Lot’s wife.  You remember that story?  Lot is living in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah and two angels come to destroy the city, they tell Lot and his family to flee and don’t look back.

But Lot’s wife, we don’t even know her name, was human and looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.[2]

I love that she did that; I would have looked back too.

You may have heard that I had a birthday last week.  The big 6-0! 

That’s a pretty big milestone.  One of my co-workers was kind enough to put a big sign on my door that said 60 isn’t old…if you’re a tree. 

Milestones like that lead one to look back.  Wondering what would have happened if…

I look back.  I just can’t help it.

And when I’m not looking down or back, I’m looking around. 

I start something and, almost immediately, something else pops up.  My life seems to be one huge series of distractions.

You can ask Kathy…she’ll ask me to do something and I’ll say sure, I’ll do that.  I’ll leave church and by the time I get home, shoot, by the time I get in my car…it’s gone.

If she doesn’t get me to put it on my calendar or my to do list…chances are I forget. 

I put my hand to the plow and look away.

Even stuff I’m passionate about, if I’m honest with myself, I’m always looking down or away or around.

I spent about 2 ¾ years of a 3 year diaconate program wondering if I should quit. 

I get fired up about suicide or school shootings or teen pregnancy or sexual assault or racial reconciliation or children in Haiti or at the border and decide I MUST DO SOMETHING!

I get fired up and then I look around at all the other things I need to do at work, at home, on NETFLIX and somehow that passion just fades away.

I put my hand to the plow, and then…I look back or down or around, and sometimes I just walk away from that plow leaving it in the middle of the crooked row that I’ve been plowing.

And Jesus tells me I’m not “fit for the kingdom of God.”

That stings.

This is a tough passage.  One of many where Jesus really challenges us to live a Way of Love that just seems so foreign to us.

We have tendency to explain such passages away and say, "Of course, Jesus doesn't really mean to leave without saying goodbye to our family or burying our father.” 

But I fear that any time we explain away a passage with the "Jesus doesn't really mean this" argument, we are out on a limb.

Because Jesus calls us to radical action.

Living the Way of Christ is not safe, it’s not comfortable, it’s not easy.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm not telling you to quit your job and go live in the desert and preach and eat bugs and honey.

But I am telling you that you are called to follow Jesus.

And that call has a particular meaning, a particular plow and a particular field, Jesus has in mind for you.

That may involve eating bugs.

It may involve going to Haiti.

It may involve working with the homeless or racial reconciliation.

And it may involve being a caretaker, or a Mom or a Dad.

Or just being a positive presence at work.

I don’t know—that’s between you and the Lord.

But you are called.  And what you are called to now, is not necessarily what you will be called to next year or even tomorrow.

But, make no mistake, you are called. 

And, if you are anything like me, you spend much of your life with your hand off the plow.

I believe Jesus' message to his disciples then, and to us today, is there is no place for half measures--you either have your hand to the plow and your eyes on the mission—or you do not.

You are either fit for the kingdom of God—or you are not.

That’s a pretty stern message, and, as I said, I can’t seem to live up to it.

Now you may think I’m about to go all hellfire and damnation on you, here, but you’ve got the wrong deacon, so just hold on a minute.

Tell me someone, one person, in the Bible or from your life, that doesn’t look back or down or around.

Moses killed a man and spent a good part of Exodus arguing with God.

Elijah’s sons were downright evil and he didn’t correct them.

David was an adulterer and murder.

Peter denied the Lord three times (after being told he would).

In fact, every single one of the disciples ran away and left him to be crucified (except the women of course—guys we need to let that soak in).

You see they were just as ignorant and distracted and downright sinful as we are.

There has only been one man that put his hand to plow and didn’t look back.

That, as we are told in today’s Gospel, set his face toward Jerusalem and walked directly to the Cross

…and through the Cross.

There was only one man worthy of the Kingdom of God…

And He was God incarnate…Jesus, the Christ.

And while none of us are worthy, again and again, He invites us to join in His Kingdom.

He calls us and says, “Follow me.”

And, sometimes we do. 

We put our hand to the plow and start plowing straight and true

But inevitably we find out it is dangerous and uncomfortable and hard or we just get distracted.  We look down or back or around and we cease to plow that straight row.

We cease to follow him.

And, as we wander off, He waits patiently for us to return. 

He continues to call, urging us to return to the plow and to the field that needs turning.

He calls me still…and he calls you.

To what plow, to what field is He calling you?

Listen.

For He is saying, “Follow Me.”

Amen

[1] “What Does it Mean to Put your Hand on the Plow and Look Back? (Luke 9:62),” Becoming Christian,” https://becomingchristians.com/2016/08/22/what-does-it-mean-to-put-your-hand-on-the-plow-and-look-back-luke-962 , retrieved 5/31/19.

[2] Genesis 19.

Second Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, June 23, 2019

Proper 7C 2019

Galatians 3:23-29

Luke 8:26-39

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Dunagan

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, Virginia

In light of today’s reading I am pondering this question: How much does God ask of us toward reconciliation?

On Wednesday I had the privilege of viewing a newly released film that changed my life.  It is a documentary on the event which happened four years ago this week when a white supremest shot and killed nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston while they were praying. They were in their weekly Bible study and the murderer joined them, waited until they were done and bowed their heads to pray and that is when he opened fire.

The film doesn’t pay too much attention to the shooter or his motives but rather, focuses on the response and healing since then of the families of the victims.

You remember the story. The perpetrator was arraigned by videoconferencing technology so they wouldn’t have to transport him.  They had him on camera and projected this onto a huge screen in the courtroom which was full of the family members of his victims and a judge who was keeping order and informing him the charges against him which included nine counts of first degree murder.

And the family were invited to speak directly to the accused. And the first person who spoke found that she ended up saying words that she did not prepare.  A surviving pastor coached the group of family members before this hearing but he only said to “hold their tongues” from expressing anger. Nadine Collier ended up telling Dylan Roof that she forgave him for killing her mother and that she would pray for his soul. Several others in the group followed and ended up saying the same or similar expressions of forgiveness.

Each person interviewed in the documentary of this tragic tale indicated the same thing.  I don’t remember the media indicating this fact.  All of them had an experience of speaking words that seemed to come suddenly to and through them.  Words of forgiveness.  Words of hope.

I was left blown away by the power of the spirt at work in this story and none of us ever saw that detail.  We were too busy being outraged.

How much does God ask of us toward reconciliation?

Karl Vaters, who has a blog called Pivot on the Christianity Today web site posted a blog on Friday asking this question: “Why do we invest in people who fail us over and over again.?”

And he led the blog with his answer to this question. He said, “We need to invest in people, not because they might do something great some day, but because they’re made in God’s image, and that alone is worth investing in.”

This message struck me as relevant to our readings this morning because we are talking about equality.  And, well, on the one hand there is no such thing as equality. Right?  I mean I’m no Einstein and even our wonderful Music Director Mason is no Mozart.  Some of us have more artistic ability and some of us have more degrees and some of us have more talent for sewing or cooking or skateboarding. So, one way we’re not equal is in our talent.

But we are also not equal in status, wealth and privilege in our culture.

So, let’s look at that for a minute.

Vaters proposed the thesis that we should invest in people more than things. He illustrates this by reminding us of the struggles of Vincent van Gogh. But his point is not so much about Vincent as it is about the relationship of Vincent and his brother, Theo van Gogh.

After reading about their relationship[1] (actually, about Theo’s stubborn insistence on loving his brother, no matter what) Vaters was moved to reaffirm that what we do for other people has value – whether we ever see the results or not.

Here’s a shortened version of the story of the van Gogh brothers.

(And a quick disclaimer: Obviously, everyone has potential. The point of the title and of this article is to invest in people whether we see that potential or not.)

Vincent van Gogh was a lousy painter. He had no talent, no promise, and no potential. He lived his entire adult life with severe mental illness, emotional, social and financial problems. He had only two things going for him. A passion to keep painting, and a brother who loved and supported him.

While art lovers today study, celebrate and learn from the ground-breaking work of Vincent van Gogh, we should all be striving to be more like his brother Theo than like Vincent. It is not an understatement to say that, without Theo van Gogh, no one today would remember the name Vincent van Gogh. We would have none of his paintings and none of the lessons learned from them. But, more than that, without Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s life would have been even harder and certainly much shorter than it was.

Vaters said, “No one should strive to be like Vincent van Gogh. He lived a life of misery, poverty, immorality and insanity. Outside of his paintings, he is most famously known for one act – cutting off his own ear. Why? No one really knows, because he was never able to explain it, even to himself.”

“Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire lifetime. If it had not been for Theo, who not only encouraged him to paint, but sent money every month for him to live on (money that Theo himself could barely afford) Vincent would have starved to death.”

“So why did Theo invest in someone with so little promise and no visible potential?”

“Theo simply loved his brother. So he supported him to do the only thing he was passionate about. Theo van Gogh literally invested his time, money, patience and loving support into someone that no one, including he, thought had any promise, any potential, or any possibility of producing anything of value.”

The story of this demon exorcism in Luke is a strange and somewhat scary story.  It helps to remember that this is one story in a series.  Kind of like watching episode 4, season 1 of a TV series and not watching the previous episodes.  Most of the time you lose track of the ongoing story.

Jesus calmed the storm on the sea in the previous episode. The episodes after  this morning’s section include healing a sick woman and raising a dead girl but I’ll avoid a spoiler alert.  You’ll have to go and read that part in your own Bible anyway because in next week’s lectionary we’re moving on to another series.

But that Jesus got his disciples to get in a boat with him and cross the Sea of Galilee and beat back a severe thunder storm on route is important to the setting of this story.  It is also important that for some reason he went from Jewish territory to Gentile territory and beat back a storm of demons when he got to the second.

This poor man with demon possessions is a tragic figure. He is naked and homeless, and while he apparently can escape shackles, he ends up alone in the wild. The demons, and the man in which they harbor, correctly identify Jesus and fear the possible exorcism. Then, when Jesus commands these demons to come out of the man, they enter the swine and drown in the lake. Whatever the reason for this, we are faced here with the realization that some healings are often more complicated than others.

It is as if there are elements of hesitation that Jesus needs to work with to bring about healing. In this case the demons had to enter swine.

One scholar I read in preparation for this sermon suggests, for a joke, that this is the “first instance of deviled ham!” (Ian Markham quoting Stephen Farris)

In these actions, Jesus seems to be showing us the power of the love of God through him and he he is also emphasizing that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile.

Or, as St. Paul put it, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” “all (of you are) children of God through faith.”

How much does God ask of us toward reconciliation?

Well, there is one difference between these two episodes of calming a storm and sea and excising a legion of demons.  When Jesus calms the sea and ends the storm in the previous episode, the disciples worship him, follow him and attempt to emulate him.  For the rest of their lives!

But the story in today’s episode has a negative fallout: the people of the area of Gerasa, these gentiles, these pig farmers, they reject Jesus. They ask him to leave (vv. 34-37).

Later in Acts (16:16-39), also written by St. Luke, Paul is said to have cast out a spirit from a slave girl and as a result he too was asked to leave that city. In both stories there are two reasons for the negative responses: fear and economic loss.

The fear is prompted by the presence of a power (God in Jesus) greater than that of demonic spirits. The people had isolated this man with the demons and had figured out how to guard and controlling him. That cost them time and money though it was working for them.

They had met the situation with tolerance and management of the demonic among them. Now the power of God comes to their community and disturbs that way of life. Even when it is for good, power that can neither be calculated nor managed is frightening. What will God do next in our community? One is reminded of the fear created by Easter. The resurrection is scary. Those first witnesses trembled and fainted with fear. What would we do?

How much does God ask of us toward reconciliation?

As for economic loss, it remains the case that the impact of Jesus Christ affects any community’s economy. The embrace of the Gospel influences patterns of getting and spending. The Gerasenes are not praising God that a man is healed; they are counting the cost and finding it too much. Such was Paul’s experience in Philippi and in Ephesus as well (Act 19:18-34): powerful economic forces array themselves against the good news. It remains so today, and being asked to leave by persons you seek to help is a pain unlike any other. (Fred Craddock)

How can we love like Theo Van Gogh loved his difficult and challenging brother? Are we lost in the mire of racism and fear in a violent and turbulent world? No. Because we are sealed as Christ’s own forever in our Baptism. We have Jesus. We have the love and grace of God who moves in and through us.  And not even the violence such as the families of the nine victims of unspeakable violence at Mother Emanuel four years ago can take that away.

But the most important good news here is that we are not trapped or frozen or even limited by fear or economics.  Nothing can keep us from practicing brotherly and sisterly love. Nothing can keep us from the love of God in Christ, as St. Paul put it in Romans 8.  He was not talking about the love that we receive.  He was talking about the love that flows - in us, through us and among us. 

Our job is to get out in our community and see how that’s happening in our brothers and sisters in Christ in other churches in other ways than we might possibly imagine.

How much does God ask of us toward reconciliation? Everything. It says so just two chapters later in Luke: With all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our strength and all our minds.  So go forth friends and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

Amen.

[1] The book was Lust for Life, a novelization of the life of Vincent van Gogh, written by Irving Stone in 1934.

Trinity Sunday - Sunday, June 16, 2019

Trinity Sunday 2019

John 16:12-15

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Dunagan

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, Virginia

I once counseled a man who told me that he was “raised in a very conservative Christian home and church.”  I’m not sure what that meant exactly, but it was something he went on to tell me that he wanted to leave in the past, something harmful in some way, something he wanted to “recover from,” as if his faith practice had been like a harmful addiction.

He told me that the fathers of this past church experience told him that the key to faith is to be able to claim, on a personal level of faith the phrase “I know, that I know, that I know.” These elders from his past church then pressured him to speak these words aloud and wouldn’t stop hounding him until he sounded convincing. Then he told me that he left that church and had come to believe, in his nearly thirty years, that he more values the mystery of Grace than a theology of certainty and that he was struggling to learn how not to “know” so much.

Well, I figured I knew all about what he meant by living into a faith built on God’s Grace and mystery. But I was left pondering what it would be like to personally claim the phrase, “I know that I know that I know.”

I imagine for those first followers, who actually witnessed the Resurrected Lord and the Ascension of our Lord, those men and women who were present at that Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit blew the knowledge of God not them, these who were so blessed, who didn’t have televisions, iPads, laptops, or Google. I imagine for them it was merely a memory they carried for the rest of their journeys.  They knew that they knew that they knew because they had stood there and heard Him in person ask God in prayer “That they may be One.”

I wonder if most of the Church feels that we have wandered so far from that sort of certainly that we must at all cost recreate it. Like we have to be certain of what fits inside the box in which we keep God and we must live according to the rules and conventions that hang on that box.

Yesterday, I watched one of those “get a tissue” videos on social media where the whole team cheers on a disabled kid.  In this one, a small framed person (gender unknown) clearly makes a hit from Home Plate and begins to run toward First.  They don’t exactly run though.  They seem to have cerebral palsy or some other cause of weakened legs and so they sort of hobble toward First.  All the umpires, and the entire home and away teams run to congratulate them when they make it to First with high fives and hugs. And yes, I had to get a tissue.

I remember a time in my early life when most people around me, well mostly adolescents, ridiculed anyone who was disabled. It was a time when the word retarded was used by boys and girls frequently to indicate anyone who didn’t match whatever the image of the day was for the elite social bracket to which none of us could seem to gain entrance. Like we were all climbing over each other to get to nowhere.  And those “other” kids didn’t have a chance to even be themselves. So I’m gratefully thrilled by these feel-good flash mobs.

But, how can anyone do that without a faith community? Without a spiritual discipline based in some sort of prayer and sacrament?

It is something to be celebrated how far we have come if our children and grandchildren now clamor to be a part of lifting up those who are other-abled. And a big-time cheer that the R-word has been eliminated from the vocabulary.

But yesterday when pondering this video, I had questions.  I found myself distrusting what I called in my thoughts “another sappy video of care-takers.”

I came to understand, many years ago the difference between merciful acts that are pure and faith based and an altruism in which crowds jump in to help in order to experience an individual (or collective) feel-good. 

The line between this divide is very fine. Because, how can the kind of love displayed in watching kids act inclusively and compassionately be criticized? And I do not doubt their sincerity.

My criticism is not of those kids it is of the Church.

Maybe the young leaders among such acts of kindness got the idea from their home church, I hope so. But it seems to me that this has become a new type of church, the church of random-acts-of-kindness and it has become a discipleship of following that feel-good stuff and I think this new church is missing something.

Is it missing Jesus as Lord? Is it missing Common Prayer? Structure? A gathering space? An altar? Sacraments? Do feel-good flash mobs pray and discern God’s call before filming themselves giving alms in the marketplace? (Matthew 6:1-21) Is the discipleship of feel-good missing the Church?

John Philip Newell, who recently spoke in Blacksburg is a Christian scholar who leads spiritual pilgrimages on the Scottish island of Iona. Seekers from all walks of life travel far and wide to visit Iona and pray on her shores and walk the corridors of the ancient Abby there where early church mystics like St. Columba and St. Aiden prayed and wrote.

My prayer group has been studying Newell’s recent book titled, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings.  I highly recommend it.

This week we were working our way through a chapter in which Newell outlines all the ways we can and should reconnect with spiritual practice.  This may all sound like new age hype but this Scottish Presbyterian minister is simply suggesting that we all re-learn how to pray.

He tells a story of a volunteer who came to Iona one season. Newell was leading the orientation and training of the volunteers when Julie approached him and told him she wanted to make sure he understood that she was agnostic.  She understood that morning and evening prayer were part of their daily rhythm at the Abbey - and that she was expected to participate in this aspect of their community life - but she wanted Newell to know that she had no religious belief.  He tells us that he respected her forthrightness and willingness to take on the full range of commitments. He said that he often noticed Julie during her tenure at the Abbey, working hard in the housekeeping department and showing up for prayer. At the end of her seven weeks, Newell met again with her for a review. When he asked her what had been the most memorable aspect of her time on the island, she said it had been communal prayer in the Abbey. “I am still agnostic,” she said, “but I really loved morning prayer.”

Now, that’s a different kind of inclusion. 

Newell tells another story of a catechist, a person going through the classes to become a Chrisitian in the Greek Orthodox Church. The catechist got to the part about learning the Nicene Creed and told his teacher, a monk that he just couldn’t say those words because he wasn’t sure he believed them.  The monk didn’t threaten to kick him out or force him to participate in the ritual.  He simply offered this, he said, “That’s O.K. I’ll say the creed for you."

(Quoting Thomas Merton, Newell goes on) Spiritual practice is not about an idea or concept of God. It is about seeking the experience of presence. What Julie had experienced in morning prayer at Iona was a sense of presence. What was important was not her idea or concept of God. It was her existential accessing of something at the heart of life. Being in touch with that something at the heart of life affected the way she lived her life.

Julie remained in touch with Newell for many years. Newell says that he did not questioned her about her theological beliefs but his guess is that she is still more interested in knowing than knowing about, hat she is more interested in experiencing the Essence of God rather than holding particular beliefs about the Essence of God.[1]

Today is Trinity Sunday, that dreaded day in the church when preachers everywhere are sweating out how to explain the Trinity.  It is good to take a Sunday each year to ponder the Holy Trinity, to remember this doctrine in the history of the Church, it is good to struggle to comprehend the Trinity.  But it is not a good thing to explain the Trinity.

One of my most valued mentors once explained to me that since the Trinity is technically unfathomable, most people tend to lean toward one person of the Trinity or another as they try to imagine what God looks like and that this changes throughout our lives.

Now, let me distill that down for you a bit.  Three Gods in One God.  Got it?  Well, no.  We get it on some level and then again, we can’t fully understand how three-in-one is possible.  So, we tend to get an image of God like father, or creator, protector or top down authoritarian; or Jesus like brother, teacher, redeemer, or the Spirit - which I talked about last week as like water, fire, wind, or a dove descending. And we tend to go with that one image when we pray and discern God’s call for us as individuals and as a community.  But there are as many images of God as our imaginations can muster and these images change as we grown in faith. And these images all fall short.

Thousands of years of Catechesis classes led by thousands of priests and deacons has included hundreds of awkward descriptions of the Trinity in order to at least get followers to begin to ponder this great mystery of the Church.

These lesson include gems like the fact that water can exist in three different states: liquid, ice and steam. Then there’s folks who call today, instead of Trinity Sunday, “Math Sunday” because, you know, only today one plus one plus one equals one. The Trinity is like an egg; white part, yellow part, shell. There are lots of images of triangles in all of this. And my favorite: the Trinity is like a fidget spinner.

If you ask theologians it gets more confusing because lots of fancy words are used in these descriptions like coeternal, consubstantial, pneumatology, soteriology, Christology and hypostases.

(Also, if you look up Trinity on the Urban Dictionary you’ll find that the word has come to be used by young men solely to indicate a girl named Trinity whom you fall in love with because she has all three of the most desired character traits: Trinity is smart, beautiful, and funny.  But in this use of the word, the girl is also a heart breaker so boys hate girls who are Trinitys.)

So, I’m not going there. I’m not going to stand here in this pulpit on this Trinity Sunday and try to explain the Trinity to you.

It reminds me of the cartoon I saw last week. It was a two frame drawing. In the first frame, Jesus is ascending and looking down from about 15 feet up at some disciples who are standing on a hill looking up at him and he says, “So, you’ve got this, right?” and the disciples say back to the Lord, “Sure! Love your neighbor, forgive each other, what could go wrong?” Then in the second frame Jesus has moved on and the disciples look over their shoulders back down the hill at men in academic gowns, bishops’ miters and the like coming up the hill and the disciples say, “Oh no. Here come the theologians.”

Explaining the Trinity is dangerous and maybe even pointless.

Instead, let’s live into the mystery of this God who loves us unconditionally and live out the love as a message discerned through prayer and sacrament.  And, yes, it does feel-good to live out this discipleship - sometimes.  Other times it is work, and discipline and study and struggle and discernment.  And we will never be able to say that we know, that we know, that we know. Rather, as Jesus said in this lesson from St. John, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

So, let’s learn to wait for the Lord and let’s learn to listen to the Spirit and live into the loving mystery of this triune God.

Amen.

[1] John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God, Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings, Skylight Paths Publishing, 2015, 62.

Day of Pentecost - Sunday, June 9, 2019

Pentecost 2019

Acts 2:1-21

Romans 8:14-17

John 14:8-17, (25-27)

The Rev. Dr. Katherine Kelly

I once assisted at a baptism for just one child.  He was about a year old and he was tall and thin and leggy and adorable. He didn’t cry or wiggle much.  A perfect angel.  After he was baptized, while the parents were drying his face and the priest was readying the chrism oil for his forehead, his foot was dangling and fell into the font.  So, he flipped his foot and splashed everyone around him including the first three rows! We all burst into laughter! The parents were embarrassed at first but then realized our laughter was that of delight in this moment when we all sort of shared in their son’s baptism.

Today is a principle feast in the church calendar it is The Day of Pentecost. And it is a perfect day for a baptism because of our focus on the nature of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit came to the disciples on the Day of Pentecost through wind and fire and the Holy Spirit comes to us at our Baptism through water.

The Day of Pentecost was a Jewish festival that was celebrated fifty days after Passover.  That’s what Pentecost means - fifty.  So, they were being good Jews and honoring this feast when the Holy Spirit showed up and filled them with her power.

Some folks consider this the birthday of the church. Episcopalians everywhere today will have balloons and birthday cake!  Usually they serve red velvet cake because it is red, the red color for this day which is the color of the Holy Spirit because of the fire and the blood on the doorways at the first Passover.

So, I want us to ponder three images of the Holy Spirit for a few moments and then we will baptize all these beautiful babies.

There is a story of a child of about 3 or 4 years old who was very excited about the birth of his baby sister. After the family brought the new baby home he kept asking to hold her and so they would allow this with much monitoring and guidance. Then he started asking to be left alone with the baby and the parents said “no.” But he hounded them begging to be left alone with the baby for just a few moments so finally the parents decided to allow the boy to go into the nursery while the baby was in her crib and they left the monitor on so they could hear him. This was before video monitors so they could only hear him walk into the nursery and it sounded like he leaned on the rungs of the crib and then they heard him say something.  He said to his baby sister, “What is God like? I’m starting to forget.”

Surely this is how we feel about our children. They seem to have come straight from heaven and are so beautiful and innocent they must still be close to God.  Why do we need to baptize them?

In our story from the book of Acts, there are two competing images of the way the Holy Spirit enters a room. One is through wind and one if through fire.

“Suddenly,” the scripture tells us, “from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.”  That’s amazing! Can you imagine that?

As we watch with empathy and sadness our brothers and sisters across the map getting slammed with tornados lately it comes to mind that this was like a tornado.

I have a friend from Pulaski who’s sister moved to Hampton when she finished school to be the editor of their newspaper so when their aging parents decided to scale down they moved from Pulaski to a condo near Hampton to live near their daughter rather than to Atlanta to be with my friend, her brother.

Their story is hard to believe. That there was a tornado on the coast of Virginia is hard to believe but there was and for some unknown reason both parents were found after the chaos in the back yard still sitting in their matching recliners. They had somehow both been air lifted from the home and landed upright in the back yard. The entire building was crushed to matchsticks but Mom and Dad were just fine!

Can you imagine winds like that entering a house where lots of folks were gathered and no one being injured?  That is what we are told happened on this Day of Pentecost when the disciples were gathered to celebrate.

But can you imagine lighting a candle or starting a fire in such wind?  Anyone who’s tried to get a campfire going on a windy day knows this.  It would be impossible.  And, well, maybe the wind had died down before the flames showed up but how did they have flames on them in all that wind?!

One of my colleagues has some industrial parishioners. At their church they made flames out of felt and pasted these tongues of fire to some plain headbands so that everyone in the congregation could where them this morning!  Now, can you see us doing that? Maybe next year.

When I was on retreat last spring at Sewanee I spent three days listening to the wind and pondering this image of the Holy Spirit. St. Mary’s convent sits on the edge of a bluff on the western side of that plateau. And it was windy that week. Each time the wind would kick up and whistle and howl through the woods around us I would remember the Holy Spirit and wonder what she was up to.

I found a lovely and similar sentiment this week in the words of a priest in Australia.  She said this about the waters of Baptism:

At some point in seminary, I was introduced to the ida of remembering my baptism every time I interacted with water. This idea has held so strongly through years of practice that it now comes without thought - rain starts falling and every drop on my head, every plink on the gutter reminds me I am loved even when I do not have the capacity to ask for it. Tear ducts become wellsprings within me, sometimes gushing open at the most unexpected moments. The rain on my back a reminder of the holiness around me, each tear a reminder of the holiness within me, grounding me in who I am and connecting me to everything else. It rains and I am loved. I cry and I am loved. I wash my hands and I am loved. Hard as I may try sometimes (and I guarantee I have certainly tried hard), I have realized that I simply cannot outrun my belovedness.  None of us can.- Jess Cook

So my friends, these are some of the images used to try to describe the Holy Spirit.  And they all fall short for the Spirit is mysterious and difficult to define.

Let me add one more though.  Many talk these days of stardust.  Physicists tell us that all matter is stardust. We are all made of stardust. It sounds like a line from a song, but there is some solid science behind this statement: almost every element on Earth was formed at the heart of a star. Joni Mitchell’s song from 1969 captures this image this way: “We are stardust, we are golden, but we’ve got to get our selves back to the garden.”

So as we turn our attention to these Baptisms we are about to participate in, let’s remember our own baptism.  Each of us came into the church this way, through the Holy Spirit and the waters of Baptism.

We are not just symbolically washing these children in a rite that hopes for their atonement in Christ, we are making Christians out of them.  We are taking vows, all of us, to raise these children in the faith, to model for them in the best ways we can what Christians do, how Christians act, what it means to be a member of the church.

Well, what is that?

We all want to belong to something.  But what constitutes membership in the church? Hazing and rites of initiation are used in just about any group you might join.  Everything from having to memorize a bunch of stuff to pass a big test to being forced to act silly to rituals of allegiance are used by clubs and fraternities and professional groups and religious orders. But what does membership in the church take? What does it mean to belong to the church? Is it just because we tithe or attend or help with something like coffee hour or altar guild or choir?   What about discipleship? Service? Am I doing the Lord’s will? Is it enough? Is what I am doing, my offering, my little part in things effective? Is this what God is calling me to do and to be?  How is membership in the church different from the Rotary Club or a Country Club?

Well, here’s the thing. It is different because of the Holy Spirit.  To become a Christian means coming to understand on a deep experiential level the nature of this Spirit which came in like a tornado and left the first disciples on fire. So, in our best efforts to become one with the Spirit, we bless water and splash each other in the name of the Trinity in order to Christen each other, in order to name this child as Christ’s own forever.

You see, I am going to drown these children this morning.  Well, not physically, but spiritually. As they each encounter the blessed water of baptism, like us when we were baptized, they die unto Christ and are raised with Christ in the resurrection.  And the rest of us are about to take vows to raise these children in the faith as a community.  Will we teach them the ways of the church? What is that?  Is that all about social skills - to know which fork to use? Or is it about prayer, scripture and how to follow the workings of the Holy Spirit?

Stardust. Wind. Fire. Water.  All of these images have been used throughout the history of the Judeo-Christian faith to attempt to describe the Spirit and yet none of them can quite capture the essence of the third person of the Trinity. You just have to experience her to know and even then the Holy Spirit cannot be penned down.

And these children have not likely experienced the Spirit yet.  Or, perhaps their memory of God is beginning to fade and they need us to guide them.  Perhaps no one has experienced the Spirit in the way the disciples who were gathered at that first Day of Pentecost did.  I can’t say that I have ever been with other Christians praying and had the doors blown open by strong winds and then seen flames on each other’s heads. I have had my moments though of experiences with wind and fire and water and even stardust.

And so I try to tell these stories in order to share the spirit.

And so will you.

And so will these children as they grow.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sixth Sunday of Easter - Sunday, May 26, 2019

I Want Answers!

Grace Episcopal Church

Radford, VA

May 26, 2019

Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon

May change bring hope, may hope bring love, may love bring change.

Amen.

I want answers.

I absolutely hate it when I call someone that is supposed to provide customer service and they just shrug off my questions. 

But sometimes answers aren’t forthcoming.

Last month my daughter Madi was picking up a prescription, I can’t remember what it was for, but it was something she needed to take that day.

She called me and told me that the pharmacy said they couldn’t fill it.

So I called the pharmacy, they said she was ineligible according to the insurance company. “You need to call the insurance company!” they said.

So I called the insurance company, they told me she was ineligible because the Department of Defense didn’t show her as an eligible dependent.  “You need to call the DoD!” they said.

I should say that we are very fortunate to have health insurance provided to me and my family through my status as a military retiree.

So I called the DoD office responsible for health care enrollment.  They told me she was ineligible because when she had recently been issued a new dependent ID card, they apparently didn’t do it correctly.  “You need to call the ID card issuing office in Roanoke!” they said.

I should point out that all of these calls required going through multiple layers of automated answering systems:

“Press one to check on your own eligibility.”

“Press two to check on the eligibility of a dependent.”

“Press three to be repeatedly asked for your password and be told, “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that username and password, please try again.”

“Press zero to speak to a real live human being.” 

“Your wait time is 47 minutes.”

So I called the ID card office.  I ended up speaking to a young sailor. 

Her job was to make ID cards. 

That’s all she did. 

That’s all she knew how to do.

 She told me, “I really don’t know what to tell you.”

All this is right in the middle of my work day, by the way.

Eventually I got it resolved: six calls and two hours on the phone later.

I want answers.  I like to make a phone call and have someone answer my questions.

And, when I have questions of faith, I like to read the Bible and find answers.

But, today’s Gospel reading leaves me with more questions than answers.

We are working our way through the Gospel of John in this Easter season.  Today we continue with Jesus’ final discourse to his apostles. 

They are still at the table after the Last Supper and Jesus has just spoken  the words we heard last week when he pronounced the new commandment, that we love one another.

Today we read a rambling response to a question from Judas (not the traitor).

Judas had just asked a question that, for some reason, is not included in the lectionary, “How is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?”[1]

Now this is a REALLY good question. 

In fact it’s one that I still wrestle with. 

If Jesus the Christ is the only Way to the Father, then how come he is revealed to you and I,

but not the kid down the street whose parents don’t go to church.

Or the Muslim in Toledo, the Jew in Jerusalem or the Hindu in Mumbai?

So I personally would REALLY like to know how Jesus answers this question. 

I want an answer. 

But Jesus gives a puzzling multi-part response.  He says (to paraphrase):

Those who love me will keep my word.

The Holy Spirit…will teach you everything.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I am going away.

And then the next phrase (also not in our lectionary) is

I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming.  He has no power over me;

And then he finishes with

Rise, let us be on our way.

Huh? 

What about telling the rest of the world?

Jesus says a lot of stuff here, but Jesus doesn’t answer the question!

I’m reminded of the “non-answers” that politicians are so good at giving.

Or of the way the bureaucrats treated me with my daughters prescription, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you; you need to contact the Department of Redundancy Department.”

Or of Abbott and Costello’s act, “Who’s on First?” Remember that one,

Lou Costello asks, “Who’s on First?” and Bud Abbott responds, “Yes.”

Now there are a couple of reasons that people don’t answer questions.

It may be like Abbott and Costello where they just aren’t communicating.

It could be like the politician that really doesn’t want to answer the question or the bureaucrat that can’t.

Or it could be that Jesus just ignored the question, because it wasn’t the right question.

Whatever the case, I even find the answer he did give a bit troubling.

Let’s break it down…”The Holy Spirit will teach you everything…”

Everything?

Ok Lord I’m ready…bring it on!!!

I don’t know about you…I don’t feel like I have been taught everything, in fact I’m pretty sure I know next to nothing.

My peace I give you…now where exactly is this peace?  In Yemen?  In Syria? In downtown Richmond?

Don’t be troubled and don’t be afraid…

Seriously?  We spend most of our time troubled and afraid…What about the opioid epidemic?  What about China, Russia, North Korea?  What about Iran?   What about American democracy devouring itself?

The ruler of this world is coming, but he has no power over me?

Dude, they killed you pretty dead and they can kill us too.

We could spend time parsing his multi-part answer and trying to make sense of it all, and I urge you to do that.

But I want to focus on the beginning and end of his response.

Jesus starts his answer with “Those who love me will keep my word.

Those who love me will live the Way of love that I have taught you.

Then he closes this part of the discourse with the command to “Rise, let us be on our way.”

Let’s get up and walk into this scary, chaotic world and let’s carry the Word of God into it. 

Even though the decision to Rise and be on our way, directly led to Jesus’ death.

Even when there is risk to us.

Even when we don’t have the answers.

Jesus didn’t tell the whole world, Rise let us be on our way to share with the rest of the world the story that has changed our lives.

Rise, let us be on our way.

I still want answers.

But the Way of Christ is more about asking questions than getting answers.

The Way of Christ is more about the way that we live our lives than a dogmatic set of beliefs.

The Way of Christ is about searching for (not necessarily finding) truth.

The Way of Christ is about striving to live the life God means for us to live.

The Way of Christ is about seeking to become what we are meant to be.

The Way of Christ is a journey, not a destination.

In a few moments, we will ask our brother Devan to join us in this journey through the sacrament of baptism

Just before the sacrament, we will renew our baptismal covenant.

When we read that covenant, pay attention.

You will find, there is no promise that Jesus is going to give us the answers.

On the contrary, we will promise to continue…to preserve…to proclaim…to seek and to strive.

We promise to work at it.

We promise to walk the Way of Love.

This “being a christian” thing is not about a destination…it is about a journey.

It is not about answers…it is about the search for answers.

If I’m honest with you, with myself, I’ll tell you that I still want answers.

But sometimes answers aren’t forthcoming.

So rise, let’s be on our way.

Amen.

[1] 14:22

Fourth Sunday of Easter - Sunday, May 12, 2019

Easter 4 Good Shepherd Sunday Year C

The. Rev. Judy Spruhan

I have decided that Good Shepherd Sunday is my least favorite Sunday of the year to preach. Even more than Trinity Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday challenges my liturgical brain.  After all, how much can any preacher say about this image?  It made perfect sense in the historical and cultural context in which it was first presented, but how do we wrap our minds around it in today’s world, when we are so separated by time and culture from the reality of sheep and sheep herding (except for those few of us who still raise their own sheep)?

In order to prime the pump of my preaching brain, I thought of some of the connections I have in my own life to the image of the Good Shepherd.  I remember telling you about the plastic glow-in-the-dark Good Shepherd plaque I won in Sunday School for memorizing the 23rd Psalm. I thought of another connection, which was the fans we used in church during the summer in West Virginia. They were donated by the local funeral home and had a picture of Jesus holding a lamb and surrounded by sheep. For that matter, the only other time we regularly use Psalm 23 in our liturgy is during funerals (in King James Version, of course). It is the only Psalm which many of us know by heart, even those who have not darkened the door of a church for many years. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” triggers the memory of many elders who have long since lost their memory for other things. Even from the distance of time and culture, we still cling to this image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. But why?

Today’s Gospel reading follows the famous passage where Jesus talks about being the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep. The context of today’s passage is very different. He is not talking to his disciples or to those hundreds of people who gathered wherever he went to hear his teachings.  He is speaking to the Temple authorities, who have cornered him and demanded that he tell them once and for all if he is the Messiah they have waited for centuries to arrive. He is also speaking on a major Jewish feast day, the Feast of the Dedication, which we know as Hanukkah. The authorities are hoping that he will entrap himself in his words, either speaking in such a way that they can charge him with blasphemy under Jewish law, or accuse him of treason with the Roman authorities. He is speaking in the Portico of Solomon, an enclosed area where there is no safe way out if things get out of hand.

Jesus’s message is plain and simple. Those who believe in me hear my voice, and they are my sheep. I’ve already told you who I am, and my deeds should prove it to you. If you don’t believe me, it’s because you are not my sheep.

He then draws on one of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies in Ezekiel. In this passage, the prophet is ordered to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel-those who only ate the choicest meat and clothed themselves in the sheeps’ wool, those who were using their power and authority only to abuse the sheep.  The prophet proclaims that these shepherds are not healing the sick, binding up the wounded, seeking the lost, or strengthening the weak.  Because those who claimed to be the shepherds were not defending the sheep, the sheep were scattered and became prey for wild animals. As a consequence, God will remove the unfaithful shepherds. God will search for the sheep, will seek them out and gather them from all the countries where they have scattered, and will bring them to their own land. Because the leaders have failed in their trust, God will be the shepherd of God’s people, and God will feed the sheep with justice. This is the shepherd Jesus is claiming to be when he confronts the authorities. As God promised to care for God’s people, so Jesus is tending his sheep, even at the cost of his own life. The works which God would do-healing , binding, seeking and strengthening-Jesus is doing. The love which God promised God’s people, Jesus is showing. Jesus claims to be both different than and more than the promised Messiah-he declares at the end of today’s passage that he and the Father are one. In his own person, God is present in the world and among the people, who will hear his voice and recognize the Shepherd. One thing you can say about Jesus, he certainly did not lack courage!

For me, one kernel from this passage which struck me this year is the declaration that the Shepherd knows each sheep by name, and calls them to him by that name. Remember the Easter story of Mary Magdalene in the garden, assuming Jesus is the gardener and asking him where he moved his body. She recognizes Jesus when he calls her name. I remember when our Bishop of Chicago, Frank Griswold, became Presiding Bishop. Our daughter was so thrilled to know that the Presiding Bishop of the whole American church knew her name. And when he visited the reservation where we were working, his first response was to give my husband and I a big smile and a hug, which made us instant celebrities to the people whom we served. So how awesome is it that the Creator of the universe, of all time and all space, knows each of us by name?

Another kernel from the Good Shepherd passage is that Jesus declares that his sheep recognize his voice, and will follow him and no one else. The custom of his day was to shelter several flocks of sheep in the same cave, where they would mingle with each other during the night. In the morning, each shepherd would leave the sheepfold and call his sheep. Only his sheep would come to him, as they were the only ones who recognized his voice. The other sheep would remain in the cave until they heard their own shepherd’s voice. Jesus compares himself to this familiar shepherd, who will give his sheep eternal life, and declares no one will be able to snatch them out of his hands. He again tells the Temple authorities that they do not believe him because they are not his sheep, and do not recognize his voice. This should give us pause to consider if we are listening to the voice of our Shepherd, or to some other voice which calls us away promising a life of success, fame, or tranquility.

Our passage today in Revelations carries this theme of Shepherding further. Here, Jesus is the Lamb who will shepherd his people. These are the people who have heard his voice, those who are loyal to the Lamb, have washed their robes, and have worshiped in God’s heavenly Temple. They are told that the Lamb who is at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe every tear from their eyes. The One who has died and has risen, who has defeated death forever, will be both their goal and their reward.

Again, this passage in Revelations is one which we usually don’t hear except at funerals. By relegating the Good Shepherd passages from the Psalms, the Gospels, and the book of Revelation to funerals, we have lost the power of this image. So what do these passages have to say to us as 21st century Christians far removed from the world of sheep and shepherds, who are not attending a funeral today (at least I hope not!)?

The theme of each of today’s readings centers on the type of relationship which the Shepherd has with his sheep. Our relationship with Jesus is a relationship based on faith. As one writer expressed it, “faith is not the result of an intellectual pursuit-faith is the ability to hear the Shepherd’s voice and find connection, peace, and confidence from this intimate association.” Faith is a deeply personal and intimate relationship with God. The relationship which Jesus offers each of us is one based on love, one which has been created and sealed by the blood of Jesus. Our Shepherd does not love us because we are particularly smart or educated sheep, but because God is love, and loved us before we even knew there was a God to love.

I may have told this story here before, but it is very relevant to today’s readings, so I will tell it again.There is a story of a famous stuntman (like Evel Knievel) whose biggest trick was to ride his bicycle across a giant water fall. He had a large basket connected to the front of his bike.  He would talk to the crowds that gathered and ask, “Do you believe I can ride this bike across this waterfall?” And the crowd would answer, “Yes, yes, we believe you can do this!”  He would ask again, and again the crowd would roar their response. Then he would pick out the loudest person in the crowd and ask, “Do you REALLY believe I can ride my bike across these falls?”  When the man answered, “Yes! I REALLY believe you can ride this bicycle across these falls,” the stuntman would answer, “Good-get in the basket!” 

Our relationship with our Shepherd is based on this kind of trust. As the sheep trust their shepherd to protect them and to lead them on good paths, so we come to trust our Good Shepherd to hold us in his hands, to be with us throughout all of the dangers and trials of this life. Our faith is not an intellectual assent to the Creed or the Prayer Book or to our particular branch of the Jesus Movement-it is not about getting all of our questions answered. We have been called into a personal relationship with the One who loves us and gave himself for us.

Do you have this kind of relationship with Jesus? In the words of the old Gospel hymn, “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.” Do you hear his voice calling to you today in love, calling you to a deeper and more intimate walk with him? Do you recognize the voice of our Shepherd calling to you this morning in the words of Scripture? Do you hear him calling at the altar, where we offer ourselves anew to him, and he gives himself to us in the bread and wine? Do you know his living, loving presence in your life each day? If not, reach out to him today, bleat your heart out, and the Shepherd will hear and will draw near to you in love.

A child once tried her hardest to memorize the 23rd Psalm for a program the Sunday School was putting on for their parents. Each night, she would struggle with the words, until she thought she had it firmly in her mind.  But when the day came, she got up on the stage and all the words had flown from her memory.  So she said meekly, “The Lord is my Shepherd-and that’s all I know.” 

Maybe that’s all we need to know.

Third Sunday of Easter - May 5, 2019

Easter 3C 2019

John 21:1-19

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Dunagan

I have told you this story before but want to tell it again in light of today’s Gospel reading.  It is the story of how I once got lost as a kid. 

We were at a church camp called Camp Ahistadi near Damascus. We were in the meadow down by the creek which flows beyond through the wooded mountainside. It was a parish retreat, I think so I was with my entire family and most of my church family.  We were finishing up our day and were playing one last game.  It may have been tag, or our more elaborate favorite, fox and hounds, or some new game, I don’t remember which, but there was a “get ready, get set, go” called and a group of about 12 children took off running scattered into the woods.

It was a sparse grove of tall hardwoods that seemed to have spilled out of a thicker forest beyond.  I took the lead ahead of my two best friends.  We were strategizing and giggling as we ran.  I was pushing myself to run as fast as I could, probably trying to beat the boys to whatever the goal was, when it happened.

I stopped cold and realized that dusk is much darker in the woods than in the meadow I had just run from.  I was suddenly afraid to go on and turned to tell my friends but they were gone.  It was as if they had vanished into thin air.  I guess they found the ball, or whatever the goal of the game was or the game had ended, and they had returned to the meadow.  But I was left behind.  I could see no one.  In fact, I was very much alone in the dark woods.  I could hear voices in the distance, but they seemed miles away.  I stood there frozen, aware only of my panting breath and the touch of a cool evening breeze from the creek nearby. I was suddenly afraid and suddenly very aware of the dangers of the woods.

All I had to do was follow those voices back to our camp where my mother would hug me and my father would carry me to the car.  All I had to do was follow the still laughing voices of my siblings and friends.  And I did.

But for that brief moment, I was lost.  And I knew it.  And I realized how easy it would be to get lost for good and not have such an easy way finding home.

Today’s Gospel lesson is packed full of wonderful images of the resurrection of our Lord.

This part of the story takes place about two weeks after the resurrection and so two weeks since the first two appearances of the risen Lord, according to John. The disciples are gathered by the Sea of Tiberias, another name for the Sea of Galilee. Simon Peter decides to go fishing and the rest of them follow him.  They fish all night and catch nothing. Then Jesus suddenly is there but they don’t recognize him. Imagine, some stranger is standing on the shore a football field distance away and starts giving them fishing tips!  “Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’” I figure they’d have been shouting to each other at that distance, “They answered him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.”

Then one of them recognizes Jesus and Peter puts on clothes because he had been naked.  I guess nude fishing was hip in those days! So Peter puts on clothes and then jumps in the water. And while the rest of the disciples row the boat full of fish ashore, Peter swims this football field length of the way to the shore.

This all sounds crazy!  How bizarre Peter’s behavior is here! But I suppose that is the way excited people act. Peter swam because he was in a hurry to get to see Jesus.

But let’s back up a bit and look again at this narrative.

Why did Peter decide to go fishing on this particular night? Perhaps this was his way of regaining some normalcy after a week of horror. Just two weeks prior, the same night Jesus washed their feet, Jesus predicted Peter would deny him three times. Then later that same night, Jesus was arrested and then worse Jesus was crucified later that week.

Then, as we have been remembering these weeks of Easter time, there was an empty tomb.  Peter ran to that tomb and saw the lack of a body in it, saw it with his own eyes. And then the resurrected Lord started showing up in random places like in that locked room where they had hidden themselves for fear of also getting crucified.

Peter would have seen him in that room twice - once when Thomas wasn’t around and a week after than when Thomas was there.

One scholar attempted to put together a time line of the resurrection appearances of Jesus and got bogged down in the fact that each gospeler tells it differently.  So, the story of Emmaus, for example, when just a couple of them encounter Jesus and don’t recognize him at first, when he sits at table with them and celebrates the Eucharist, which is when their eyes are opened and they recognize Him in the breaking of the bread, this story is only in Luke’s gospel.

Post resurrection appearances in John, however, are more curious. The first was when Jesus appeared to Mary in the Garden (John 20:11-16). The second was when the disciples were in the locked room, later that same day, when Thomas was missing, and when Thomas returned, a week later was the third. Now another week has gone by and here Jesus is again.  Suddenly.  At dawn.

I’m left wondering what seeing Jesus on the beach that morning might have been like, especially for Peter.  Peter, who had denied him three times now sees him in person a third time and gets the chance to pledge his love to Jesus, three times.  “Do you love me? Feed my sheep.” Three times.

When I got lost at Camp Ahistadi as a child I experienced the fear and pain of being isolated from the community, if for only one moment.  I knew for that moment what permanent isolation might feel like.  It occurred to me how much I needed my family and my community and the experience caused me to appreciate them even more.

When Peter denied Jesus three times he wept bitterly.  It is not until now in the story that we hear again from Peter.  In fact the only mention of Peter between his denial and weeping until this swimming to shore fully clothed moment was the part about him running to the empty tomb when he heard about it from the women on Easter.  But he didn’t speak then.  He just looked at the absence of Jesus and then he went home.

Peter must have been at the other two appearances of the risen Lord but maybe he didn’t get a chance to ask for forgiveness for having denied him three times.  I imagine that Peter, after another week has gone by is grieving and is feeling the pain of remorse, the shame of his denial.  I imagine he was feeling lost, and isolated from his community because of his shame.

So he decided to do what he knew best.  Fishing.  And his community joined him.  They all went fishing.  At night.  They were lost and grieving and confused and not sure what to do next so they did what was most comfortable for them, these fishermen.  They went back to fishing for fish.  They seemed to have forgotten how to fish for people.

Some scholars suggest that the decision of the disciples to go fishing at this point in the story indicates that they gave up on continuing to follow Jesus because they were thinking the death of Jesus was the end of the story.  If that is true, they must have doubted their first two encounters with the risen Lord.  Or, maybe it takes three encounters with a resurrected Jesus for it to finally sink in.

The Gospel of John begins and ends with the disciples following Jesus.  The first words that Jesus speaks in John’s unique version of the story are these:  Jesus’ first words are, “What are you looking for?” These are the same words Jesus spoke to Mary in the garden at his first appearance after the resurrection.  The other disciples went home after they saw the empty tomb. But Mary went back for one more look, she alone saw the angels and was there alone with these angels whom she mistook as gardeners and then Jesus appeared, whom she also mistook for a gardener, but he said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

“What are you looking for?”  (John 1:38b-42)

So the first words Jesus said were “What are you looking for?” “Come and see,” and then he changed the name of Simon to Peter at their very first encounter.  The next thing he said, on the next day, was “Follow me.”  The last thing he said, at the Ascension was “Follow me.”

My point is this.  Peter was transformed in his relationship with Jesus. When he first encountered our Lord his name was changed and so was his heart.  Immediately. But then he struggled throughout the next three years of following Jesus.  He muddled things and made mistakes and stumbled along.  But he kept following.

Until this dark night of his soul when he decided to go back to fishing.  When he was left with shame and isolation.

The disciples were grieving and hurting and then Jesus showed up and said, essentially, let’s have some breakfast.

How wonderful.

How stunning a way to appear, as the cook, the servant, the one who invites us to rest and eat and enjoy the breaking dawn.

The night is over. The abundance of the second attempt to bring in fish has proven their doubt silly.  Jesus showed them where to fish - on the “right” side.  And that is when they remembered they were called to fish for people. 

And Peter was transformed.  And he became the leader he was called to be.  He was never the same after that. From that day forward he was fearless and clear minded and open to the workings of the Holy Spirit who spoke and acted through him to preach and heal and spread the Word.

We too can be so transformed.  But we must meet the risen Lord at the feast first. And it might take three times. But where we feast, at this altar, that is where our doubt and grief and shame can be left behind like it was left behind on that beach that day for Peter, And we, like Peter, will find our way.  We will find the abundance of God’s gifts in our labor and in our hearts and we will know how to follow Him.

Amen.

The Burial Service of Jeannie Fender - April 27, 2019

Laura Jean Fender Funeral, April 27. 2019

Isaiah 61:1-3

Psalm 90:1-12

1 Corinthians 15:20-26,35-38,42-44,53-58

John 14:1-6

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford VA

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Dunagan

In the Episcopal Church we still do funerals. That means that, though we may talk of a “celebration of life” or a “memorial service” to ease the discomfort associated with funerals, we still gather in the church as a community, read these scriptures and pray these old prayers together.  In that way we are joined as a community sharing the burden of our brokenheartedness. This is the liturgy of the Burial of the Dead in our Book of Common Prayer. We don’t really like that sort of language. But this doesn’t mean that this hour must be full of sorrow and pining.  No.  This hour is all about joy because of our belief in resurrection.  This is not just because this particular funeral comes during this time of Easter (though isn’t it just perfect that we have all these extra Easter flowers?), this morning we come together to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and the promise of our own resurrection and the promise of Jeannie’s resurrection.  So, this is not just a “celebration of Jeannie’s life” it is not really even a “memorial service” though those names for what we do here today fit.  This is a funeral.  And funerals are celebrations because we believe in the resurrection of the dead.

That’s why we wear white and put out white hangings and flowers and say Alleluias, for saying “Alleluia even unto the grave” is how we see it.  We are here to celebrate Easter.  Easter for Jeannie.

There’s a saying that all of this is easier when the loved one lost lived a good life.  I’m not sure it’s really easy in any way to lose her, but Jeannie did live a good life.  She was kind and caring, especially with the special needs children she taught for all those years. I’ve always been quick to call a special needs teacher a saint.

She was also an artist who painted landscapes because, in her words, “I love to paint the macro world full of fractals and abstract patterns that only nature can provide.”

I had to look up the word “fractal” when I read that in the Artist Statement about her that is in the bell tower.  A fractal, according to my dictionary is “a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.”

I am grateful to her for that gift.  I will see the patterns in nature anew now.

Jeannie is also remembered for her generosity.  Apparently her gifts keep on giving.  One example of her generosity is that she would give hand-me-down clothes directly to the parents of her less fortunate students. Rather than send them to Goodwill or the clothing bank this sort of gesture comes through relationship and guards dignity. I’m sure you can think of all the other ways she gave to others from the heart.

Through her love of nature she taught her students to appreciate nature’s ways. One friend remembers that the students in one of her classes published their own personalized journal about nature.  She was a good teacher.

She was also a good daughter, wife, mother, friend, and member of many groups, particularly the PEO sisterhood and this church.

So it is hard to say good-bye.  It is always hard to say good-bye but especially to someone as kind and beautiful as Jeannie.

I hope and pray that the readings we have read together this morning are of great comfort in the face of this great loss.

Isaiah proclaims that the Lord “binds up the brokenhearted” and “comforts all who mourn,” and says that God will give us a “garland instead of ashes, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”  I don’t know about you but that passage leaves me feeling all cozy, wrapped up in God’s quilt.

St. Paul reminds the Corinthians, and through them us, that though all in Adam die, “so all will be made alive in Christ,” the first fruits, “O death, where is your sting?”  Where, indeed is that sting? Our faith comforts us.

And St. John tells us that Jesus said, this is the red letter Gospel truth part, Jesus said to “not let our hearts be troubled” because “there are many dwelling places” for us.  That sounds sort of like a free reservation at a nice resort for whenever it’s time to go.

But it is the words of Psalm 90 that I want most to lift up for you this morning.

10 “The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty.”

Jeannie turned 70 two weeks before her death. So this part of the Psalm jumped out for Richard. “The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty.” Other passages of this Psalm, if I may dismantle it backwardly, continue this theme of exasperation with the brevity of life:

10b  “the sum of (our years) is but labor and sorrow, for they pass away quickly and we are gone.”  3 “You turn us back to the dust and say,  ‘Go back, O child of earth.’"

But there are other passages of Psalm 90 that are quiet comforting:

5  “You sweep us away like a dream; we fade away suddenly like the grass.”  This is the image of a peaceful death, of a passage that is as light as the dawn of a new spring day.  The Psalmist goes on:  6a “In the morning it springs up new.”

The point of the Psalm, you see, is not that life is short and difficult and then you are gone but rather, God’s time and love for us is huge and we too are more large than we tend to think.  We are not limited to the lifespan dates of our birth and death.

2  Before the mountains were brought forth,

or the land and the earth were born, *

from age to age you are God. (says the Psalmist)

4   For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past *

and like a watch in the night.

And the best news is the first verse:

1 “Lord, you have been our refuge from one generation to another.”

The Lord will continue to be our refuge and our strength as we live into and through our grief in our loss of Jeannie.

Richard shared with me some thoughts about his loss. One is that “every morning when a couple wakes they should (each) tell their significant other “I love you” and the significance is if you don’t do it, one day it will be too late.”  Richard feels he didn’t say it enough to Jeannie.

But I am sure he did.  I am certain that Jeannie knew how much you loved her, Richard, Nathan, I am sure she knew the love of all of her family and all of her friends.  Because the way that we show our love for each other is not in just saying it each day, it is in all the little ways we show grace to each other, patience, understanding, the way we share a smile or laugh at a joke.  It is in the way that you knew her. The way that her memory lives on in us. You were her friend, her cheerleader, her confidant her rock.  All of you, in some small way loved Jeannie and she knew it.

Richard asked me to share the story of Jeannie’s final moments in this life.

Richard’s good friend, Drew Cormier (pronounced Core Meer) came all the way from Spencer, Massachusetts when Richard called to let him know that Jeannie had fallen ill and he stayed with Richard over the weekend following Jeannie’s death on Feb. 7.  Drew, his wife Carol, Jeannie and Richard had taken several cruises together and become close friends.

A couple of days later, Drew was sitting at Richard’s kitchen table. Richard was at the sink washing a dish and they were discussing the events of the week leading up to Jeannie’s death.

Richard told Drew there was just one five minute window in which no one was in the hospital room with Jeannie.  Her sister, Mary, had stepped out to the cafeteria for a takeout sandwich, Richard had gone home to feed and walk the dog and no hospital personnel were in the room for that moment.  That is when Jeannie left this world. Like a lady.

Drew said “Richard, you know my mother is Catholic.  She said a rosary for Jeannie at 6:30 that evening and asked God to take Jeannie into his hands.  What time did she die?”

Richard told Drew “She died at 6:30.”

For Richard, as he puts it, “this is a testament that there is a Higher Authority and He showed up for my wife at 6:30 p.m. February 7.  Praise be to God.”

Praise be to God indeed.

Amen.

Easter Vigil - Saturday, April 20, 2019

Easter Eve 2019

Romans 6:3-11

Psalm 114

Luke 24:1-12

This is the night.

There is a story of a white preacher who was asked to preach at Atlanta’s famous Ebenezer Baptist Church on the first celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  He must have been very experienced and esteemed as a preacher to have been asked to preach in Martin Luther King Jr.’s pulpit on such a momentous occasion and naturally would have been well prepared, but when he stepped into the pulpit that day he looked out at that packed sanctuary and froze.  He couldn’t seem to speak at all. In the silence, a voice from the middle of that gathering shouted out, “Help him Lord!” It was the voice of a deacon.

I heard this story in the sermon for a deacon ordination by a priest named Hazel Glover at St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta more than a decade ago. I’m repeating it this evening for a couple of reasons.  One, I want to talk a little bit about the deaconate and two, I want to talk a lot about story telling.

The interesting thing to me about the retelling of this story of the deacon cheering on the reticent preacher, is that I don’t remember the details.  I don’t know who the preacher was, or the deacon. I don’t recall what month and year it was, though I suppose I could Google that. And I don’t know why the preacher stalled. The racial overtones of that setting might have set a tone of intimidation, or maybe he was just really moved by what that particular celebration meant.   I don’t remember, and I can’t look it up a reference to the feelings that night.

You see, this is a mini oral tradition. We don’t know the details.  But do the details matter? I also don’t remember what else Hazel said about the story, except that she used it to expound on the deacon’s special calling to proclaim the Gospel.  What I do remember is how I felt about it. I remember my experience of Hazel’s story.

This is the way that we tell stories, from our experiences.  For the women who found the empty tomb of Jesus on that first Easter morning, the story was very personal.  They ran to tell the others what they had just discovered. It was a complete surprise, they were awed by this turn of events and didn’t know yet what to make of it.  I imagine they were very excited and very scared, maybe even a bit reticent to tell of it. I expect they were careful to tell only those whom they trusted would understand.

It is interesting to note that the disciples didn’t believe them.  Peter didn’t believe until he went to the tomb himself. Others didn’t believe until they saw the resurrected Lord in person.  Thomas didn’t believe until he had the chance to actually touch Him.

But I don’t want to talk about hearing the story tonight.  Rather than concentrate for this moment on how we hear the Easter story, I want to challenge you to consider how it is that you do the telling.  How is it that you will tell this story when you leave here?

When I was in college I was in a traveling passion play of sorts.  One of our little troupe, Charlie, would hide in the back while we gathered and began the telling of the passion story and sang some songs and after we got started Charlie would sneak quietly into the back of the nave and on his cue would shout as loudly as possible, “He’s Alive!”   Well of course this would scare the living daylights out of half of the congregation. Silly young people that we were, we had a little game of watching each unsuspecting audience startle and we would laugh later about it like some sort of April Fool’s joke.

Tonight we are actually celebrating four liturgies in one. The Liturgies of Light, Word, Baptism and Eucharist.  The service begins with the Liturgy of Light when the darkness of the night is broken by the kindling of the Easter fire. The community gathers round this sign of new light and warmth and watch as the light of the Pascal candle is drawn out of the ashes.  As this light gathers the community we sing the Hymn of exultation, of rejoicing: the ancient and beautiful Exultet. The Liturgy of the Word follows - and the telling of the story of the whole history of salvation from Creation - through Noah's Flood -  right through Exodus to the prophets - culminating in the Proclamation of the Easter Gospel.  

Then we celebrate the Liturgy of Baptism with the rich symbolism of newly blessed water - newly kindled fire - anointing with oil - enrobed in white.  At least we are supposed to have a baptism. This was the only time baptism was done in the first and second centuries. In the early church, new converts spent an entire year learning the story of Jesus before they were finally baptized at the Easter vigil.  

Easter was originally celebrated with this liturgy – these liturgies, four in one - just before dawn.  It was primarily about the initiation rites of new Christians who had studied and fasted for months and carefully prepared themselves to die unto Christ, sometimes literally as the early Christians knew well they would likely die as martyrs.  The experience of these rituals, after such careful preparation left the participants ready to “go forth into the world” because of the experiential nature of the practice. Baptism is a one time experience; Eucharist is the re-telling of our story every week.  The reason we do Baptism at night, this night, is that Jesus was resurrected at night. Those baptized die unto Christ and are resurrected with Him - at night. The women came after the dawn to find an empty tomb.

So, this is actually a sunrise service.  We just don’t have the capacity to stay up all night reading scripture and praying before that part.  So it became tradition to sing about the light and baptize who we can and then go home and rest before celebrating the Easter part the next morning.

We just celebrated the Easter part with the first Alleluia.  But still, we keep it toned down to save some rejoicing for in the morning.

I had hoped we could have baptized young Stone Iglehart tonight so that we could have a taste of that part of the tradition.  But last Sunday was a fine time too. So tonight we will renew our own Baptismal vows anyway, in honor of this ancient tradition.

Finally, at the Liturgy of the Eucharist around the Table of the Lord we celebrate our New Passover. The old unblemished lamb gives way to the new: the Lamb of God. The People of God pass from the old slavery of sin into the liberation of new life in Christ.

The retelling of our story in this way, every year is the reliving of an experiential model of the great mystery of God’s love for us in the resurrection of our Lord.  Come and see then go and tell.

Tonight I have enjoyed hearing the telling of the story through the proclamation of the Exultet that Jon sang. The voicing of this call for us to sing out our rejoicing in the light of Christ.  I wish that I could express for you what that experience has been for me to both sing and listen to the story through this ancient chant. But I find it hard to describe.

There is a groaning amongst deacons and others who are blessed with the assignment of singing the Exultet.  While it is beautiful and feels special to get to stand up here and look important singing such a long solo and all, the truth is – nobody really wants to sing the Exultet, because it’s hard.  It is difficult to sing and it is long. A perusal of the internet will reveal blogs and the like of deacons everywhere scrambling to prepare for the singing of it this week. Most of them are searching for recordings of it so they can learn it by listening to it over and over again.  Chanting does not come to us modern church musicians very naturally and requires work. Most clergy don’t get the opportunity for this type of singing lesson. One such exasperated deacon replied, “This great chant, like Easter Eve itself, ‘humbles earthly pride.’"

Part of the problem is that we don’t sing in the way that the early church did.  The Exultet evolved out of the Gregorian era of chant in the sixth and seventh centuries.  Chanting was then a kind of speaking that we seem to have lost the ability to do. It was a way of voicing the story that is now so old it puzzles our modern ears.

I too, in spite of my musical training was initially intimidated by this enchanted chant. It is terrifying to enter this dark room and sing out “the light of Christ” and begin into this mysterious ritual but when I used to sing it, about mid way through this vigil service, I would always find Easter. The light would begin to shine in my heart like thought a break in the curtain. Then I knew how to tell the story through the song. As is true of most music and of most story telling, I can sing it best when I can feel it.

How then will you tell the story of your experience of Easter?  I don’t think we need to shout it so loudly as to frighten people.  But neither do we need to assume they’ve already heard the story. Perhaps we need not be concerned too much with details.  I believe it comes through our experience of it and is retold in the way that we show love to others. Our telling comes out in our behavior, in the way that we model our experience of Easter.  But in the end it comes down to you, each individual is called to tell the story in his or her own way. Each of us must find our unique way to carry the light of Christ into the world.

So Come and see then go and tell.

Go in Peace, rejoicing with your own Exultet.  

Amen.

Good Friday - April 19, 2019

Good Friday 2019

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9

John 18:1-19:42

We’ve all been watching the sad news from Paris this week of the fire that destroyed much of Notre Dame de Paris. The beautiful and ancient Cathedral “Our Lady” of Paris is named after the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is world famous, beloved and full of priceless artifacts.  There was much sadness and bitterness among those of us who feel so strongly for this sacred space that has housed prayer and worship for nearly a millennia. We are grieving its demise.  Others were critical that those of us who cried for Notre Dame were acting wrongly in some way, that we loved “just a building” and were wasting our tears on materialism when we could be using that energy to raise funds and do good works for the poor and disenfranchised.

I don’t know.

I had the great opportunity to spend my summers in college traveling around the Methodist Conference in this part of the world with other college students working with local parishes’ youth programs. There were five of us and we each developed two workshops.  One of mine was called “Worship With Wow!”  Pretty corny, I know.  But youth would flock to this workshop in which I would challenge them to learn about the architecture and symbols inside a sanctuary.  Do you know what the means?  Do you know what this symbol stands for?  Do you know why we do that during the prayers or songs or why we have pews?  That sort of thing.  These young people were eager to learn more about their church building.

Then, after I had them talking about all of the stuff in here and why we love it I would ask them what they would do if their church sanctuary was gutted by a fire or a tornado or some other disaster like that.  What if all of this was taken away and all we had left was an empty room?  Could we still gather and pray here?  Would our prayers be the same?  Our songs?  Our faith? 

I always got a resounding “yes!” from those young people.

What would we do here at Grace if we lost even part of this historic structure that we love so much? Would we still pray? Would we still have faith?

I think so.

I went through a house fire once and lost almost everything I owned.  It was awful.  But, a year later I had replaced it all with insurance money and life went on. I was still me.

In the end, all is temporary.  All buildings come down eventually.  All our work comes to pass too.  So it is worth asking ourselves, especially during Lent what we put our faith in, our hope and our joy too.  

I told the lectionary group on Wednesday that if you were to attend all of the services this week you would hear somewhere between 20 and 40 scripture readings.  (That larger number is possible in part if we were to read all 12 of the readings on Saturday night but I’ve trimmed that down a bit to save time.)

One of the Holy Week scriptures that has been ringing in my mind all through this past week was not even read this year.  Again, to save time, because we had a baptism on Palm Sunday, I chose for us to skip the Liturgy of the Palms.  In that liturgy, we read a short reading from Luke and there is a blessing of the palms and then the tradition is to join in a processional around the block and show off our ways to the Lutherans and Presbyterians and anyone else who might be awake, I guess.

But, we didn’t do that this year.  So we missed a passage of St. Luke’s version of that part of the story about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and it keeps ringing in my ears.  It goes like this:

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." (They were talking about all those folks shouting Hosannas.) He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”  (Luke 19:40)

The stones themselves would shout out. Or, as the line is phrased in Jesus Christ Superstar, “The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing!”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about shouting and keeping silent.  There are times when we strive to keep silent in order to listen.  If we can shut up enough we can listen to each other better, but also, if we can quiet our minds we can listen to God better..

But I’ve also been thinking about all those voices in our world which are silenced by threat or violence or isolation or starvation.  The innocent, the children, the elderly, the refugees, those who need advocacy for one reason or another.  Those who need to be heard.  Those whose voices have been silenced.

Last night we read the story of the washing of feet from John’s gospel when Jesus commanded his disciples, and us, to love one another.  It was the last thing he said before his arrest.  And as we have just heard, he didn’t say much after that until, his seven last words on the cross.

So this last commandment went like this:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

A new commandment.  To love. They will know we are Christians by our love.

But then, in the middle of this passion narrative from John which we have just heard read, Jesus said, in answer to a direct question from Pilate about whether or not Jesus is the King of the Jews:

“You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

We, the believers, we “listen to his voice.”

Do we?

Silence of the Lambs was a terrifying movie to me. You may not be familiar with this old movie.  It was released 28 years ago.  It is the story of FBI agent Clarice Starling who is working on a case searching for a kidnapper and she wants to pick the brain of Hannibal Lecter who is a brilliant Psychiatrist in prison for gruesome murders. A couple of years after it’s release some Italian filmmakers did a parody titled “Silence of the Hams.”  As a vegetarian facing Easter feasts, I had to share that one with you. But I digress.

The title of the movie, Silence of the Lambs is revealed in a short story-inside-the-story near the end of the film. It is a personal story Clarice shares with Hannibal in exchange for his knowledge. 

Clarice has asked this sociopath from his prison cell for help in understanding the murderer they are trying to find. She needs a profile. Hannibal wants something in return, the chance to play some mind games with her. He asks her to tell him of her deepest fear. Clarice recounts a traumatic childhood incident where she was awakened by the sound of spring lambs being slaughtered on a relative's farm in Montana. She admits that she still sometimes wakes in the night thinking she can hear the lambs screaming.

I suppose the silencing of the lambs is relief from the screaming she heard.

Jesus told Pilate that he was born for this.  We assume this means that Jesus was born for the atonement, for his sacrifice of himself to the crucifixion.  That he was born to die for our sins. But there is more to the story than just that.

We know that on Sunday we will remember that he was born so that he could be raised from this slaughter. He was born to testify to the truth.

On Wednesday I preached at the noon service about the history of scapegoating and warned those gathered then that I planned to repeat those thoughts for this gathering.

We think of scapegoating as a dynamic that families and groups do to pick on one person.  The theory is that all systems need a scapegoat, someone to burden with their negativity. The systems theorists of the 1950s and 1960s who came up with this concept actually used the name of an ancient practice to indicate these human relational dynamics.

There was an annual ritual described in the Bible about this. In Leviticus Chapter 16 when Aaron was the High Priest and he was instructed what to do about the old scapegoat ritual in which the entire community would exile an actual goat.

On the “Day of Atonement” the high priest was instructed to symbolically lay all the sins of the people on one unfortunate goat, and the people would then beat the animal until it fled into the desert where presumably it would die of starvation, dehydration and isolation. It was a vivid symbolic act that helped to unite and free the children of Israel. Instead of owning their faults, this ritual allowed people to export them elsewhere—in this case onto an innocent animal.

The image of the scapegoat powerfully mirrors the universal, but largely unconscious, human need to transfer our guilt onto something or someone else by singling that other person out for unmerited negative treatment.

This pattern is seen in many facets of our society and our private, inner lives - so much so that we might call it “the sin of the world” (note that “sin” is singular in the Gospel of John, particularly John 1:29).

We humans largely hate or blame almost anything else rather than recognize our own weaknesses and negativity. “She made me do it.” “He is guilty.” “He deserves it.” “They are the problem.” “They are evil.” We seldom consciously know that we are scapegoating or projecting. It’s automatic, ingrained, and unconscious. As Jesus said, in one of his seven last words, people literally “do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

The Scriptures call such ignorant hatred “sin,” and Jesus came precisely to “take away” (John 1:29) our capacity to commit this sin. Jesus stood as the fully innocent one who was condemned by the highest authorities of both “church and state” (Jerusalem and Rome), an act that should create healthy suspicion about how wrong even the highest powers can be.   ~ Richard Rohr

So we have spent again this year, these forty days of Lent working on ourselves.  We spend this time in preparation for Good Friday so that we can purge ourselves of these tendencies we have to project and to scapegoat.  Because we all do this.  Because we are human.  But without our repentance, all of this ritual is pointless and Easter is disempowered and turned into mere bunnies and eggs.

With our repentance, however, we get to see and to hear and to experience the truth. 

Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” because Pilate is incapable of hearing the truth.

We get to hear the truth.

The very stones will shout it out.

Tall buildings may fall down or burn to the ground.

Waring people may continue to kill each other in the name of God.

Jesus, our paschal lamb, will make this final sacrifice.

The Lamb must go to slaughter.

But he will not be silenced.

Amen.

Maundy Thursday - April 19, 2019

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Tonight, we continue the journey to and through the cross that we started in Lent. 

The next three days are three of my favorite services and some of the most symbolic that we have in the church year. 

I don’t know about you, but sometimes what we do in liturgy has more effect on me than what we say. Sometimes a tangible demonstration is far more powerful than the words that we speak.

Walking the walk rather than talking the talk.

 Looking at these three services and working backwards…

On Saturday night we will hold the Easter Vigil and light the Pascal candle to proclaim the Good News of the resurrected Christ.

On Friday, we will stand watch and mourn over the tomb of our fallen Lord.

And tonight, Maundy Thursday, we have another of those schizoid services, as Kathy referred to Palm Sunday.

In just a few moments, we start with the touching ritual of foot washing, a demonstration of God’s love for us and our love for each other,

But then we conclude the service with the stripping of the altar, the preparation of the tomb for our Lord, which will end with Kathy silently washing the altar and turning out the lights.

If you look at these three days, it is all about incarnation and death and resurrection, with this odd little ritual of foot washing sticking out like that bunion on my right foot.

John’s Gospel doesn’t discuss the Passover meal, the Last Supper, other than that they are having it.  But the author emphasizes the foot washing scene, so clearly there is something significant going on here.

In 1st Century Palestine, foot washing upon entering the house at the end of the day was the standard practice.

People wore sandals and, considering the dusty dirt and stone roads and large number of animals that would be transiting (and leaving deposits) on the road, one’s feet were dirty at the end of the day.

When a guest arrived, in the case of ordinary people, the host furnished a basin of water, and the guests washed their own feet, but in the richer houses, a slave did the washing, and it was considered the lowliest of all services. [1]       

So think about Jesus’ actions in this Gospel passage.

During the Passover meal, he removes his outer robe and is left with a loose fitting inner robe (an oversized t-shirt, his only undergarment),[2]

So he was stripping down to his 1st century skivvies and taking on the role of the lowliest of servants.

He humbles himself, strips himself and serves his disciples. 

One of my deacon school classmates noted:

·       Jesus washed Thomas’ feet, who would doubt him.

·       He washed Peter’s feet, who would deny him.

·       He washed Judas’ feet, who would betray him.[3]

He denies himself.  He empties himself in a manner that foreshadows how he will empty himself the next day. 

What an amazing act of God’s grace!

And he tells us, that we are to model our lives after him, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.[4]”

In other words, we should, like He did, strip ourselves down to our barest self (I’m talking figuratively here, OK…we don’t need to be wandering around in our skivvies up here). 

We need to strip ourselves down from our pretenses and airs and titles and self-importance and serve others.

I always thought that the “Maundy” in Maundy Thursday referred to foot-washing, but it actually comes from that Latin word “mandatum” that translates mandate or commandment.

This references, Jesus saying, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.[5]”

Once again, Jesus isn’t telling us what to believe, he’s telling us how to live.  To live a life of service and love to others.

And this is where washing of the feet ties into incarnation, death and resurrection. 

You see, it’s all about love and service.

God’s unending, immeasurable love, brought God incarnate into the world, in the form of Jesus, the Christ, the anointed one.

In service to us, Jesus washed feet, loved others, and then died on the cross, as a sacrifice in our names.

And, God’s love, resurrected the Christ.

You see the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus are like the actions I like so much in this liturgy.  Sure, he tells us he loves us, but these are tangible demonstrations of God’s limitless love.

Walking the walk.

So as you wash the feet of others and have your feet washed, I want you to look at the hands doing the washing and meditate on:

·       How God’s love has turned flawed, unworthy, sinners, like you and I, into God incarnate, the Body of Christ in the world, and how those hands, these hands,  truly are the hands of Christ.

·       Meditate on how God’s love, reflected in the service those hands do, can reach into the graves that we dig for ourselves and pull each other out of those graves[6] and

·       Meditate how God’s love offers both us, and those we serve, the resurrection of life in Christ.

Now let us strip ourselves down and make a tangible demonstration our love and service to God and to one another by the washing of feet.   

Let us walk the walk.

AMEN.

[1] “Washing of Feet”, Bible Study Tools website, https://www.biblestudytools.com/encyclopedias/isbe/washing-of-feet.html , retrieved March 24, 2018

[2] Msgr. Charles Pope, What Sort of Clothing Did People in Jesus’ Time Wear?, Community in Mission website,   http://blog.adw.org/2017/03/sort-clothing-people-jesus-time-wear/ , March 29, 2017, retrieved March 24, 2018    

[3] Rev. Katherine Ferguson, Maundy Thursday Sermon, March 29, 2018.

[4] John 13:14

[5] John 13:34

[6] This concept is one I first heard from Nadia Bolz-Weber.  I love the imagery.

Palm Sunday - Sunday, April 14, 2019

Palm Sunday, 2019

Baptism of Thomas Stone Iglehart

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, VA

Philippians 2:5-11

Luke 23:1-49

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Dunagan

There is a feast day in the church for about every saint and story in the Bible. We’ve been studying the saints this year during Lent and we’ve learned about some of them.  We don’t usually celebrate saints days because they are mostly on weekdays and we have come to be a Sunday morning only church. Lot’s has changed in the way we do church through the centuries.

But it used to be that people lived in villages and they would gather on the days set aside for certain feasts - like the Annunciation, the story of when the angel came to young Mary and asked her to bear the Christ Child.  Or the Transfiguration, the Ascension, the Baptism of Jesus, and Pentecost to name a few. We still do some of these special celebrations on Sunday’s when they roll around.

But today, well, I think our liturgy this morning needs a new name.  I’m thinking we should call this Schizoid Sunday or Multiple Personalities Sunday or something like that!  Because today, especially this year, we are actually celebrating three liturgies in one.

There used to be an extra Sunday in Lent called Passion Sunday in which we became very serious and did a dramatic reading of the passion according to John or sometimes Luke like we read this morning.  But Jon just read the shorter version from Luke to save time today. We’ll read the Passion According to St. John dramatically on Good Friday.

Somewhere along the way, and you can ask me later about the details, we merged that service into the service of Palm Sunday.  Palm Sunday is that special day when we remember that Jesus was celebrated and praised as he road a donkey into Jerusalem, when people hailed him King of the Jews and everyone was joyful. So since we merged these two services, we do the palms part and we feel glad and then we do the passion reading and we feel sad right after having processed jubilantly with palms. Sometimes all this feels confusing and weird.

And to add to the confusion, this year we are going to celebrate the liturgy of Holy Baptism in the middle. So, we started with a hymn of joy about Jesus as King and later Mason will play O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded because we must turn our attention to the difficult parts of the passion story that will unfold this week.

Now, if you attend all the services this week you will participate in the reading of nearly 40 bible lessons. We will follow the story of when Jesus washed the feet of his disciple and then we will wash each other’s feet on Maundy Thursday. That same night we’ll celebrate the first communion and “do this in remembrance of him.” Then we’ll strip the altar and turn out the lights and live into the fact that Jesus died on the cross and stayed in the tomb for three days. It’s not easy liturgy.  It makes you uncomfortable. It’s meant to make you uncomfortable. Then, on Saturday night we’ll tell more of the story and celebrate an early Easter. Then next Sunday morning we’ll settle into the joy part and celebrate the resurrection. And then we’ll really feast at coffee hour and family gatherings.

Now, all this may seem schizoid, or confusing but while planning this morning’s service, I’ve come to feel very excited about this particular mash up of liturgies.

You see.  This morning we are going to drown young Stone Iglehart! He will die unto Christ.  Now, that’s a really scary idea and we know that he will only get a little wet and keep on living, right?  But this is not just a mere symbol of death we speak of. Baptism is the most important sacrament of the church, next to Holy Eucharist.  In our baptism we die unto Christ so that we can rise with him in the resurrection. In our baptism we die unto our selves, we die unto our selfish ways and we die with Christ and become one with him.

Then, as soon as young Stone is dried off we’ll anoint him with oil, the same oil that Jesus was anointed with by Mary of Bethany a week ago, the same oil we anoint each other with at our Noon Eucharist and Healing service on Wednesdays when we pray together for healing and wholeness, the same oil that the women took to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus on that first Easter morning. And he wasn’t there.

We will anoint Stone in this way because he will have died unto Christ and risen as Christ’s own forever.  We are anointed like royalty.

Nearly a hundred years ago, the Italian sculptor Guido Galletti created a statue of Jesus looking up towards heaven with his arms raised in orans position. Orans position is an ancient way of holding your arms when praying.  It is the way I hold my arms and my hands, palms up, when I lead us in the Eucharistic prayers and any prayer really. It is a prayer pose.

In 1954, the story goes, this statue, which is named Christ of the Abyss, somehow fell into the waters of the Italian Riviera and sank (near Portofino). (Apparently, he landed on his feet!) Coincidentally, this was right near the spot where a famous Italian diver (Duilo Merchant) had died. So, the statue was left where it sank as a beautiful memorial to that diver.  It is still there and a favorite spot to this day for scuba diving.

Ten or fifteen years later, someone built a replica of the Christ of the Abyss statue and gave it to Key Largo  who placed it in more shallow waters where you can see it from the surface. So, if you’d like to go see this lovely statue, you can do that a little closer to home. It weighs two tons and I have no idea how they got it into the water the way they did.

A colleague who was a military chaplain once told me he was traveling with the Army in Panama and was a part of a large transport of soldiers in several small vessels.  Each vessel had a local guide. The guide in my friend’s boat kept staring at this chaplain. His Army uniform had a cross or two on it so he was clearly a chaplain. The guide finally spoke to him, in Spanish.

Cristo es in el agua!

My friend, like me, did not speak much Spanish and wasn’t sure what he was saying.

Cristo es in el agua!

The chaplain strained to understand as the guide excitedly pointed to the water beneath them.

Cristo es in el agua!

Finally, the chaplain saw it.  The statue of Christ, in the water. Just like the one in Italy and Key Largo.

Cristo es in el agua! Christ is in the water!

The replica of this famous statue that stands in the port near Panama is said to represent the prayers of Jesus for the fishermen coming and going each day in their work.

Our reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians this morning is that lovely poem that is remembered as “The Christ Hymn.”  

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

Paul was explaining to the church in Philippi that facing the joy of the Christ the King and his resurrection at the same time as the agony of his crucifixion is not schizoid at all.  Paul points out that we are to “be in the same mind” as Jesus. So we must empty ourselves in our baptism.

Further, we must realize that we are commanded by Jesus to renounce Satan, turn to Jesus and “put our whole trust in his grace and love.”  That is the vow Stone’s parents and Godparents will take on his behalf this morning. And then we, all of us, will renew our own baptismal vows by saying - out loud, together, right here in front of God and everybody, that we believe, that we continue in the teachings and fellowship and the breaking of the bread and in the prayers, that we will strive for justice and “respect the dignity of every human being.” We made these vows when we were baptized and we repeat them now so that we can be one in Christ.

Christ is in the water and we are in Christ because of our baptism.  We can face the retelling of the passion because we know that, though we sad, and we might get wet, we have died unto him. And we have risen in him as well. And now we continue on our journey following Christ for the rest of our lives filled with joy, the joy of the king of kings. The joy of our salvation.

Amen.