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The Resurrection

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The Rev. Bradford Ayers Rundlett

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1st Corinthians 15:1-11
Mark 16:1-8

Bienvenido, buenas dias, Dios de Bendiga, y Feliz Pascua.

It’s all pretty far fetched isn’t it? What a first century Jew from Nazareth did, and what that meant, and still means. In the creeds we profess our belief that the Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe, became human, so thoroughly human in fact that he experienced everything we humans celebrate and endure; including death – we killed the Incarnate God, we sealed him in a tomb, but he defied death, walked out of his tomb, and ascended to some place somewhere called Heaven or the Kingdom of God.

Any one who says they don’t have some serious doubts and questions about that is flying on automatic pilot. It is incomprehensible. We surrender to it, and call it faith.

Today, Easter Sunday, we are immersed in a specific tenet of our faith – the resurrection; Jesus took our sin and conquered death. And there is so much more to that than words can convey. We have to hear it like the first century Jewish people heard and understood it. As the Jewish prophets said (and said, and said) we are imperfect; we have a problem with sin. Repentance rarely sticks.

According to the Bible, Hell is not like the inside of a volcano that’s about to blow it’s top; no demons with horns and pitchforks; no flames licking your eyelids. Jesus described Hell as eternal exile from God. Yes, there is some mention of fire and brimstone, but according to Jesus Hell is cold, dark, empty and lonely.

It’s as dark as the deepest depths of the ocean, where every last photon of light is crushed to oblivion.

It’s as dark and frigid as a moonless winter night in the most remote area of the Artic.

It’s as cold and lightless as the stone tomb in which the body of Jesus was laid to rest then sealed with a huge stone that could not be removed.

What does The Holy One do with unrepentant sinners? Is Hell real? Is it a place of perpetual torment? Does God send people there? If Hell is real, is Heaven also real? And how true are our images of either?

I don’t believe any of us can say for sure what happens after our final heartbeat. Eternal punishment seems rather severe, even for the worst of sins. I’ve done some things in my life that I’m not proud of, but by any standard everlasting torment sounds excessive and unjust, especially by a merciful God whose love is so completely encompassing and apparent in Jesus.

We’ve all had thoughts and actions we should never entertain. We are unquestionably guilty. What does God do with that? What does God do with us? Does God sentence us to everlasting agony? Is Jesus’ death in vain for some of us; is his death on the cross insufficient?

Wouldn’t the God we worship be heart-broken to see us wounded relentlessly and eternally? Can God’s love for us accommodate our expulsion?

The Epistles and Gospels tell us that God had a desperate plan to keep us out of Hell and in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus took our hatred, greed, laziness, hubris, lustful objectification, jealousy, and insatiable appetite – he took our offenses – every last one of them – and our punishment, and left all of it in the dark, cold depths of Hell, setting us free to live with compassion and generosity.

For our sake a Nazarene Jew, the Messiah, the Savior of the world was beaten, ridiculed, whipped until he had hardly any skin left on his back, then nailed onto a tall, rough, wooden cross for three interminable, excruciating hours; and there he died.

God designed an infallible plan to save us; it required a sacrifice. Jesus offered to be the sacrificial paschal lamb. He did what he had to do and no one else could do; he gave his life to save us.

His lifeless body was taken down, placed in the tomb neither he nor his family could afford, sealed by a massive rock, and guarded by Jewish and Roman soldiers. What happened after that we call “the Good News.” It is the Easter event. Like Good Friday there is great irony in the word “good.” Terrible agony is enveloped in unimaginable grace. Torture and death are the means of redemption. Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension are about love beyond comprehension.

Jesus was very succinct about our resurrection and admission to the Kingdom of God. And most of what he said was in parables. Is our resurrection and welcome to eternal life anything like we hope or imagine?

Epic poets Dante and Milton; artist Hieronymus Bosch, created frightening, detailed, depictions of how most of us imagine the more dreadful afterlife to be. However, most of that and what we believe is not in the Bible.

The word “hell” comes from the ancient Greek word Gehinnom  and the ancient Rabbinical Hebrew Gehinnam which is the name given to the valley southeast of Jerusalem – The Valley of Hinnon. The Canaanites sacrificed children to their gods and goddesses there. And all of the refuse of Jerusalem flowed down to The Valley of Hinnon and settled. It was a cursed place. Hell  (as we call it) was not an “other” world or afterlife, it was a smoldering, filthy, maggot infested heap of human refuse.

Jesus referred to Gehinnam in his run-ins with smug religious leaders who paraded around in fancy vestments, made a profit from the poor, and determined who could worship in the Temple. Jesus had little patience with corrupt leaders; his message to them was “If you treat other people like trash, you are trash, and the flames and maggots of Gehinnam will have you for dinner.” In one of his parables he described Hell as self-chosen exile to the cold and dark, perpetually separated from God, family, and friends.

Our sacred texts insist that the choice is ours; not God’s. God is infinitely merciful. Jesus takes the shame and blame for our arrogance, for our failure to care for each other, especially the poor, hungry, injured, diseased, and homeless. God has given us free will to accept or reject the mercy and grace offered.

Yes the poor of this world make us uncomfortable. They challenge our priorities; they expose our selfishness.

When my younger son Ethan, good friend Scott Zetlan, and I traveled to Haiti last July to cheer all of the graduates of the central highland region where – especially the individuals we support – we visited some of the families. It was a humbling and heartbreaking experience.  I will never forget one man saying to us “We realize some people think we have no value because we are poor.”

Jesus insisted that The Kingdom of Heaven is not another place, an alternate dimension. It is a community under construction here and now, by people with enough room in their hearts for everyone else. We are not waiting for Heaven to fall down out of the sky, fully constructed, with doors open only to the select few who qualify. We are called to create Easter communities, sanctuaries of compassion in this broken world, places of grace and hospitality, with doors wide open to everyone. No one is excluded.

The Kingdom of heaven is in communities where there is respect, nutritious food, good medical care, quality education, and compassion for everyone – no exceptions.

In the Book of Revelation John of Patmos declared that people from “every language, tribe, and nation” are welcome and will inhabit the City of God. 

Christ is our judge, but the mercy of God is greater than sin. God lets us decide – cold, dark, eternal solitude, or everlasting, boundless grace, compassion, and joy.

In this glorious and challenging season of Easter the only unforgiveable sin is the one we will not let God forgive; the sin we hold onto because we want to keep doing things we shouldn’t, our refusal to admit we are wrong, or our stubborn insistence that we are so bad God will never forgive us.

Easter is not a free pass into Never Never Land or a last minute rescue from The Perfect storm. Easter is an invitation to build the Kingdom of God – right here, right now – with open doors to everyone.

Recalling our covenant with God as composed in the sacramental service of Baptism “Will you [with God’s help] proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

“Will you [with God’s help] seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”

“Will you [with God’s help] strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

With open arms our Savior Christ invites all of us “Come beloved of God; inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ Our sovereign and Savior has declared, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my [sisters and] brothers, you did it to me.’

We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on this Easter Sunday, and acknowledge that it is not a once only event, but a perpetual offering of new and unending life in Jesus Christ. It is not a one-way ticket to eternal life in the Kingdom of God; it is the promise of new life now; today. It is the challenge to embrace one another, and build communities of compassion and justice.

When the disciples asked Jesus when God’s Kingdom would come, when the resurrection of all the faithful would occur, he said only God knows. Jesus would then redirect their attention to a world that needs help now; to people desperate for true faith, love, peace, and joy.

I believe there is more to life than whatever time we have in this skin. I believe there are mysteries and wonders beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. I believe there is more than enough grace to wipe away all our sins. I believe there is more to the resurrection, more to Easter, than Jesus conquering death and ascending to heaven; more even than pearly gates, saints and martyrs, a heavenly banquet, a mansion with room enough for everyone; more than angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim, and all the redeemed people of God. And someday we will be in Heaven to see for ourselves.

I believe as well that Easter is every moment of every day that we devote ourselves to loving God and our neighbors. It is the new life we are given today, and the new life we share. It is not fretting about tomorrow, but accepting our Savior’s promise of abundant life now.

Today is Easter. We have a Kingdom to build, people to welcome, and the gift of new life in Jesus Christ to share.

Feliz Pascua, y Dios de Bendiga.

Amen.

Perfect Imperfection: A Love Story

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Bryan Spoon, Seminarian

Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Todays’ reading from 1 John 4 is an absolutely beautiful passage about love.  Today I’d like to try something a little different.  I’d like to share a love story.  I’d like to invite you to picture someone in your mind’s eye who you deeply love.  Perhaps it is your mother, or father, or husband or wife.  We all have many people we love, so maybe it’s a bit hard to pick just one person.  If it’s hard to pick just one, maybe just picture yourself.  I invite you to picture someone, or yourself in your mind’s eye.  Feel free to close your eyes.  I’d like you to look at the person’s face.  See their eyes.  See their mouth; their eye brows, their hair.  Take a moment to soak in the picture of this person and all the love you have for them.  Even notice the imperfections.  If you are picturing your spouse, obviously there are no imperfections!  Take a moment to ask yourself, is there anyone else in all the world that looks just like this person?  Even an identical twin would have to say no.  Each human person is intricately and beautifully made.  Each human is approximately 75 trillion cells.  Every day I marvel at how beautiful each one of us is.  Every one of us is different.  It’s such a fact of life it is almost forgotten.  I think it is one of the most visible signs we have of God’s love for each and every one of us.

And yes, even our imperfections.  What does perfection really mean anyway??  In the Bible, the Hebrew term for peace is shalom.  But shalom also means wholeness, or to be complete.  The Greek term for perfection also means complete, whole, or wanting nothing.  So much of the concept of beauty in today’s culture is wrapped around photo-shopped images that are unattainable.  To be whole, to be perfect, to be complete is the gift that God has given each of us.  The Bible tells us that we are created in the image of God and that we are the Imago Dei.

I’d like to take a short segue to illustrate this point.

Has anyone been to the Statue of Liberty?  I was there years ago.  I took the tour where you can go up to the pedestal.  From the pedestal you can walk up a spiral staircase until you get to the very top of the statue.  It’s a little bit strange to be inside of her head.  From the inside, from the vantage of the stairs, the various metal sheets can be made out.  Each panel is bolted to the next.  Every smaller piece works together to make this huge tapestry of her gown.  When you finally get to the top of the statue, you’re in her crown.  If you’ve been there, or seen pictures, you might remember how there is a series of windows across the crown on her head.  From there it is an incredible view out onto New York.  It is a breathtaking site.  It’s kind of strange though.  Looking out of her crown so high up, you can also see her arm extending out.  It’s almost as if seeing out of her eyes.  It can almost give you the feeling that you are somehow just as large as she is.  In a sense, each one of us is like a Statue of Liberty.

Yes, this might sound like a crazy idea.  But does it sound any different than 1 Cor 6:19, “Do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit?”  Scripture reminds us that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Honestly I forget sometimes.  There are days that I don’t necessarily feel like a Holy Temple.  This broken, aching mess?  A Temple of the Holy Spirit?  Now that’s a good joke.

To consider our own bodies as something as grand and magnificent as the Statue of Liberty might make us feel uneasy.   But is this fear born of pride or is it born of fear from accepting God’s love story?

1 John 4 tells us that perfect love casts out all fear.  But fear can be a good thing.  It helps prevent us from making mistakes.  Walk next to the edge of a cliff and there will likely be some fear involved.  Fear will keep us from being prideful; like thinking some crazy idea that each one of us is more beautiful and intricate than the Statue of Liberty.

The word for fear that is used in 1 John 4 is phobos, which means dread or terror.  Our scripture today tells us that fear has to do with punishment.  This is a different fear than making mistakes or a fear of being prideful.  The word for punishment in Greek is kolasis, which means torment.  This is torment in the sense of extreme mental or physical pain.

From the knowledge I have gained from the medical setting, I understand reasonably well the way fear works in my mind. In the fear response my amygdala fires adrenaline to my adrenal glands.  In fear, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland send hormones to the adrenal glands to release stress hormones.  My blood pressure goes up, heart rate increases, and glucose is dumped into my system.  In fear we get ready for fight or flight.

Until we’re able to engage the fears of our life, those very things will have power over us.  Our physiology, or the way our Holy Temple works has much to tell us about love and fear.  When we choose love over fear, blood-flow to our frontal cortex of our brain increases.  The parietal lobes of our brains change as we begin to see God all around us in the world. The thalamus grows larger as our perception of reality changes. The effects of love on the brain have been shown in studies to be vastly more powerful than drugs.  In a most basic sense, love does indeed abide in us when we cast out fear. Love rewires us.  Our temples of the Holy Spirit change drastically in love.

There are so many things in and around us that draw us away from God’s love story it is ridiculous.  Over-consumption, addictions, cultures of violence, indifference, and silence toward people who are suffering.  This is the fear, pain and torment that our scripture is talking about.

With all that is wrong in the world, it might seem a little daunting that we can be effective.  Scripture says that perfect love casts out fear.  Scripture tells us that fear has not reached perfection in love.

Our consolation is that perfection is not to be all things.  Perfection does not mean that each one of us has to stand in the place of God.  Perfection means to have wholeness, to be complete, or wanting nothing.

If you look up perfection in the dictionary is will give a completely different definition.  The dictionary definition of perfection is to be completely free from any faults or defects.  The dictionary calls perfection as having every desirable quality and characteristic.

Our gospel tells us that Jesus is the true vine, and his Father is the vine-grower.  We don’t have to worry about being the vine, we only have to concern ourselves with bearing fruit.  We don’t have to be everything, nor the dictionary definition of perfection.  Only from the vine of Christ are we are called to bear fruit; like the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, or other fruits like hospitality, reverence, or forgiveness.

Hospitality is different from forgiveness, just as reverence is different from patience.  No single fruit of the spirit contains every single desired characteristic.

None of us can either claim perfection in every virtue or fruit of the Spirit.  There are some of us that come pretty close, but I doubt any one of us would claim that we’ve reached perfection in every category.

In the Bible God has well over 200 names.  Some theologians tell us that God has an infinite number of names.  Jehovah, He, She, Holy Wisdom, Adonay, El-Shaddai, Christ, Elohim, Wonderful Counselor, and on and on.  Not any single name of God gives us the totality of what God is.

Like there is diversity in the fruits of the Spirit, so too is there diversity in God’s names.  Each one of them shows a different picture of God.  This brings me back to how we are created in the image of God.  Each of us is infinitely unique.  Each of us is infinitely complex.  This is one way I am convinced of God’s love for us.

Every day I take time just to marvel at how different people are.  When I see people walking down the street, or in the check out line of the grocery store, I just marvel that they are an infinitely unique creation of God. It’s a wonderful way to practice our baptismal vows of seeing the dignity, worth and Christ in everyone.

Our gospel today invites us to abide in God’s love story.
Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

There is a quote by Marianne Williamson that I truly love.  The quote is, that “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”  To embrace our wholeness is a life of freedom.  To be honest about our imperfections, makes us fierce with reality.  Having the courage to accept our wholeness, despite our imperfections allows us to abide in God’s love.

To see ourselves, uniquely beautiful and intricately made, takes courage.  It is a courage to embrace that our imperfections are what make us perfect.  We are temples that God loves so deeply that he has made each and every one of us unique. There is no one else like you.  There is no one else like me.

May we abide in the knowledge that we are all part of God’s love story.  Each of us is written into God’s book of life.  May we help others realize this beautiful gift so that they too can abide in God.  And may our perfect love casts out all fear.

Thank You, Peter

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Mr. Bryan Spoon, Seminarian

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

It is likely we have all said or done something to someone we loved that caused their rebuke.  Perhaps we said something to our mother, father, husband, or wife, said something to a member of our family or to a friend that was the cause of frustration, hurt, or pain.

I’ve had plenty of bloopers in my own life.  Some funny, some pathetic, and some downright painful.  I’ve done things with the very best of intentions only to fall short and have to work through the pain and frustration of repairing a relationship.  And that is why I thank God we have the example of Peter.  When I look at his mistakes, it helps to put my mistakes in perspective.  Thank you Peter!

In today’s gospel Jesus is saying, yet again something very difficult to accept.  It’s difficult to understand.  Peter is listening to Jesus say, “those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”  “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

If we didn’t know the end of the story, these words of Jesus would sound mighty strange indeed.   The miracle worker, who speaks with authority, is saying that he will be rejected and suffer?  That doesn’t seem to compute.

Jesus’ words were competing with Peter’s hope for an earthly king to restore Israel.  Like many Israelites, Peter hoped for someone to lead the people away from foreign occupation, to usher in prosperity and peace.

Peter was familiar with scripture, particularly today’s lectionary readings.  Did not the scripture say that God promised Abraham and Sarah that they “shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

The bible is full of expectations about the Messiah.  It was thought that with the Messiah:

The whole world will worship the One God of Israel (Isaiah 2:11-17).  Evil and tyranny will not be able to stand (Isaiah 11:4).  Knowledge of God will fill the world (Isaiah 11:9).  He will include and attract people from all cultures and nations (Isaiah 11:10).  The ruined cities of Israel will be restored (Ezekiel 16:55).

This scripture doesn’t fit too well with what Jesus is saying about the Son of Man suffering, being rejected by the elders and ultimately being killed.

So Peter takes Jesus aside and says something like this to him, “Your message of love, all those miracles you’ve been doing, these are real good things.  But all this bit about suffering, being rejected, being killed…I don’t think that’s quite how this campaign should go.  I don’t think it’s going to sit well with our focus groups.  And all that part about us laying down our lives…Let’s stand back and rethink this one a little bit.”

What’s Jesus’ response?  What does Jesus say?  Get behind me satan!  I can’t imagine a more difficult thing to hear for Peter.  I’ve been rebuked by a good number of people.  Sometimes in error, sometimes for a real blooper I made.  And sometimes I have been rebuked by people who I deeply love.  But to be told by The Lord that I am satan, that would be a tough one.  Being called a jerk or a coward, now that’s hard.  But The Lord called Peter his adversary.

I think Peter had the best of intentions.  Jesus’ teaching was pretty hard to swallow.  How hard it must have been for him to understand what Jesus was telling them.  In Acts 8, the Ethiopian treasurer is reading the same scripture that Jesus refers to here in the gospel of Mark.  The Ethiopian treasurer was reading Isaiah 53, and utterly confused by it.  Only through Philip’s help could he make sense of it.

Isaiah 53 reads:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away.

    Who could have imagined his future?

For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.  When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light;

he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;

because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors;

To a reasonable person, and to the Ethiopian treasurer, this scripture doesn’t seem to make any sense.  But looking at it in hindsight, God is it beautiful.

It says, “therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death”

That can only be said of one king, not the earthly king that Peter and Israel had been expecting, but the heavenly king, the king that had conquered death.

Sometimes life does not match at all our hopes or expectations, just like Jesus was not matching Peter’s hopes and expectations of the Messiah. Our assumptions often do not match with reality.  Life gets difficult.  It gets confusing.  It doesn’t follow a straight trajectory.  Suffering, conflict, difficulty and trauma are not rare but quite common in life.

There are two points where I find today’s scripture a powerful witness for our lives.  The first point is on trauma and mental health.

The National Center for PTSD reports that, “going through trauma is not rare. About 6 of every 10 (or 60%) of men and 5 of every 10 (or 50%) of women experience at least one trauma in their lives.”  That trauma can lead to real difficulties, like depression, anxiety, and stress.

In a national survey done by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), they found “that 45.9 million American adults aged 18 or older, or 20 percent of this age group, experienced mental illness in the past year.”  This number they found was not a static number, but a revolving number.  Of the 20 percent of the population suffering from depression or anxiety or other mental health problems, they found that it was 20 percent of the population at any one time.

It has been said that, “those who suffer mental illness are like ourselves, only more so.”

I imagine it must have been traumatic for Peter to have heard Jesus call him satan.  I can remember when I’ve had a boss question a particular project I’ve worked on to encourage me to do better.  I’ve had a loved one call me out about my actions.  Likely we all have.  These experiences can sometimes be traumatic, leaving us scarred by real anxiety or stress.  On the point of trauma and mental health, this example of Peter’s mistake with Jesus helps put my own life mistakes into context.  When I look at my mistakes and think about the anxiety and stress they might seem to invoke, I like to look at Peter as an example.  Peter made a real mistake with Jesus.  Can you imagine being called satan by our Lord?  If I try to imagine it, I think how much smaller my mistakes seem in comparison with Peter’s mistake.  If Peter could be forgiven from that, most certainly so could I be forgiven for what I have done.  When Christ presents himself to the apostles in the gospel of John, he offers Peter three opportunities to express his love for him.  Having denied him the three times during the trial and crucifixion, Peter was shown the forgiveness to bring him back into relationship.

The second point where this scripture inspires me is about leadership.  When we put ourselves in places of leadership, we generally assume more responsibility.  We accomplish more projects.  Say if we have taken on twenty projects.  If we’ve taken on leadership with twenty projects, there is a good chance that one of those projects we’re going to let it flop.  It’s not going to turn out as we hoped.  But this is another time where I like to look at this example of Peter.  If Peter, who kept working to be a disciple, a minister and an apostle of God’s word could keep going even after this mistake, of being called satan by our Lord, there’s no reason I can’t keep going after I’ve made a mistake.  To keep going even after I’ve failed even miserably.

After some real failures, Peter kept going and going.  He kept going all the way to the end.  By tradition it is believed that Peter was crucified.  It is believe though that he felt unworthy to be crucified as our Lord so requested to be crucified upside down.  This was a far cry and very different request than when he took The Lord aside and rebuked him in today’s gospel reading.

So what kind of life did Peter leave us with?  What kind of example?  What beautiful words he left us with, reminding us of who we are.  In 1 Peter 2:9, he reminds us that we are “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

If God could forgive Peter and use him, and give him such beautiful words, what more can God give to us?

Amen.

 

Drugs or Jesus

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by the Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” St. Luke 21:34

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

I’d been asked to give the prayer for the Law Day ceremony. This was an annual event in the little town where I last served, a gathering of the County Bar Association in the chamber of our handsome Victorian Courthouse. They’d recognize new lawyers, remember those who had died. There was a prayer and then an address, presented this year by Judge Burns, long respected on the bench, looking the quintessence of judicial dignity in his long black robes.

I was expecting something suitably grand and rhetorical on the meaning of law, liberally sprinkled with quotations from the Constitution and Blackstone’s Commentaries. But Judge Burns told us instead about a pending crisis. Cheap heroin was beginning to flood into our rural community. The police aren’t equipped to handle it, he said. We don’t have nearly enough treatment facilities. Petty crime is going to go through the roof. We’re going to see overdoses among the young, a whole new class of people incapable of holding jobs and participating in civic life.

This was about six years ago, and I was shocked, as were a few other people in the room. The tourist brochures said that we lived in “America’s most perfect village,” a place where “serious crime” brought to mind double-parking, not trafficking in hard drugs. But Judge Burns was mostly right, and as the drugs poured in, we were quickly overwhelmed. The hospital developed new overdose protocols. People started locking their doors. The county jail filled up. Parishioners needed to talk about what to do about their kids. By last spring, the church was hosting NARCAN trainings and making plans to send people into the pediatric ward to rock the babies of addicted mothers, who must be hospitalized for weeks until the drugs are out of their system.

And of course it wasn’t just rural communities like Cooperstown, New York that have been affected by this national epidemic of opioid addiction. A story in the Washington Post this week said that almost four in ten Americans know someone who has been addicted to prescription drugs,[1] and though the rates for heroin addiction are lower, they are climbing steadily. In 2013, the last year for which we have complete records, almost 25,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Another recent study found that for the first time in recorded history, the life expectancy for working class white males has actually declined, due primarily to rising rates of drug addiction.[2]

Public health experts are scrambling to find ways to explain all of this. In part, of course, it’s a supply problem. But it goes deeper than that. As small-town factories close, mines give out and weeds grow in the crop fields there are fewer and fewer opportunities for workers with limited training and higher education. For those who do go to college, debt loads can be crushing. Family structures are far less stable, with marriage rates continuing to decline among the poor. There are fewer social institutions to provide support and a sense of community in inner cities and rural areas.

And of course, we live in a deeply anxious time. Headlines scream of terrorist attacks and an international refugee crisis, school shootings, racial unrest, crude and divisive political rhetoric, ecological disasters. The Archbishop of Canterbury told General Synod in London this week that World War III has begun.[3] I don’t know if he’s right or not, but it wouldn’t shock me. I don’t think that a downed Russian plane in Turkey convinces a teenager in Northern Virginia to shoot up for the first time. But it’s hard to be hopeful in a world so saturated with there fear and uncertainty.   You can understand why someone would seek that kind of escape, even at the price of life itself.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus is describing the world turned upside down, an age of chaos and violence, the social landmarks strewn in disarray. This is a notoriously difficult passage to interpret. Sometimes Jesus seems to be talking about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, other times of his eventual return in glory, and sometimes of the world as we see it now—things falling apart, the center that cannot hold.

There are different ways to live in the midst of times of crisis, Jesus tells us. We can become weighed down with drunkenness and dissipation, consumed by the worries of this life, desperate to escape at any cost. Or we can be expectant, watching and praying for the coming of the only One who can truly deliver us. Country singer Tim McGraw put it this way a few years ago:

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We’re all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

Drugs or Jesus. I hadn’t noticed the way that Jesus presents the alternatives so sharply until this week. The theme turns up again in a parable He tells elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel, about the master who comes at an unexpected time and catches his servants drunk. Not just sleeping, or unaware, but drunk.[4] In his first Epistle Peter too, urges the faithful to be sober as they wait for Christ’s return.[5] The recovery community has stressed for decades now that addiction is really a spiritual problem, and I think we can trace that insight back to our Lord Himself. Addiction is not primarily about thrill-seeking or a lack of self-discipline. We live in slavery to drugs, or drink, pornography or the crowded social calendar because we are seeking transcendence and inner strength, and we choose the means that lies closest to hand.   Addiction is ultimately a failure of hope.

And we have such a glorious hope to share with this troubled world. As the world falls apart around us, Jesus urges us to look ahead with confidence. In the end, Jesus will return to judge and heal the world, as our Old Testament lesson says, “to execute justice and righteousness in the land.” There will be perfect peace, swords beaten into plowshares, the poor lifted up, sickness of body, mind and spirit abolished forever. All will be filled with dazzling glory, and we will see Him face to face, our long-desired Savior, the world’s only true king.

And until then, Jesus promises to sustain those who trust in Him. He has given us His Spirit, the certain presence now of what is surely to come. Jesus feeds us with His Sacraments, filling us with the grace that gives us strength to push on in the way He has set before us. He proclaims to us His Word, those sacred promises repeated again and again so we cannot forget His goodness and steadfastness, His complete reliability.

We do not need to hide from the troubles of this world. We do not need to seek a cheap escape or artificial courage. The world is full of pain, but we do not fall into despair. To “remain on guard,” as Jesus calls it, is to look squarely at this world’s troubles, and to commit them to God in prayer, working all the while to do His will, even when we are misunderstood and rejected. We have a glorious hope, and there is no better time to share it. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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

[1] Bernstein, Lenny. “4 in 10 Know Someone Who Has Been Addicted to Painkillers.” The Washington Post. 24 Nov. 2015 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/4-in-10-know-someone-who-has-been-addicted-to-painkillers/2015/11/24/c5b71f2a-9224-11e5-b5e4-279b4501e8a6_story.html

[2] Samuelson, Robert. “The Life Expectancy Gap.” The Washington Post. 27 Sep. 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-life-expectancy-gap/2015/09/27/a8051094-63a4-11e5-9757-e49273f05f65_story.html

[3] Welby, Justin. “Presidential Address to the Church of England’s General Synod.” 24 Nov. 2015. http://www.anglicanink.com/article/world-war-iii-has-begun-archbishop-canterbury-tells-synod

[4] Luke 12:45.

[5] I Pet. 4:7.

Dwelling in God's House

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The Rev. Mark A. Michael Interim Rector

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

“How did we get a recliner and a coffee table up in the Rood Loft?” I asked Father Philip. “Oh,” he smiled, “I guess you haven’t heard the story about our anchoress.”

But let me back up a bit. I was a visit site seminarian at the time, and a member of the congregation and an altar server at Pusey House. Pusey House is technically not a church, but a “house of piety and learning,” and it’s the chaplaincy for high-church Anglican students at Oxford University. It is housed in a beautiful neo-Gothic chapel, designed by the great Temple Moore, and the chapel is dominated by a life-size rood, a statue of Jesus on the Cross with St. Mary and St. John. The rood is placed on a large platform called the rood-loft, a kind of balcony that goes across the breadth of the church about ten feet up, dividing the Chancel of the Church from the Nave.   If you’ve spent much time poking around old churches, you will know the Rood Screen, which is a smaller version of this—we had one in my last congregation that was maybe a foot wide. But the Rood Loft at Pusey House was really a room of its own, 6 or 8 feet wide, with a tall stone parapet on either side. I had been sent up onto it to retrieve some obscure liturgical implement, and that’s where I discovered the dusty recliner.

The Rood Loft, Father Philip went on to tell me, had been the home of Pusey’s resident anchoress for a few months a decade or so before. An anchoress is a person called by God to a life of solitary prayer. It’s a bit like a hermit, but while hermits tend to live in caves in the wilderness, anchorites or anchoresses live inside churches. Back in the Middle Ages they were quite common, and Julian of Norwich, the beloved mystic quoted by Rev. Mary Thorpe in her sermon last week, was an anchoress in the Church of Saint Julian in Norwich back in the fourteenth century. These days, they are much rarer. In fact, as far as I know, the one from Pusey’s Rood Loft may have been the only anchoress in the modern history of the Anglican Communion.

She was a rather eccentric old woman who had presented herself to Father Philip claiming she had a vocation, and in an uncharacteristic fit of whimsy—or maybe it was spiritual obedience–he agreed. Day and night, she stayed on the loft praying, reading and thinking. She ate MREs, and only came down the stairs for showers and bathroom breaks. For a while, it was deeply inspiring to everyone concerned, but then she went off her meds and things didn’t go so well. She began to snore on her recliner during Father Philip’s sermons, and she would sing loudly when she wasn’t supposed to. The breaking point came one Sunday morning, when she began throwing nuts at the priests while they were at the Altar celebrating High Mass. She was sent packing that afternoon.

Now I confess that, like most of you, I find the concept of living as an anchoress a bit strange. But there’s also something very powerful about making the house of God your home. I loved that Chapel: the dear friends who gathered in it, and the beautiful worship that was offered there, yes, but also the stained glass, the lingering smell of incense and the musty prayer books. The Chapel was a place of deep peace, where God seemed close at hand, “enthroned,” as the Psalmist says, “upon the praises” of his people.[1]

Today’s Psalm is about this longing to dwell in God’s House. It may well have been written by an ancient anchoress, someone who lived within Israel’s temple. For the Israelites, the temple was God’s dwelling in a singular way. He had commanded Solomon to build it, and its Holy of Holies contained the Ark of the Covenant. God’s Presence had rested there ever since He came with glory when the temple was dedicated by the king in the passage that is today’s Old Testament lesson. Every day, in the temple, God’s people gave thanks to Him for filling the world with good things and preserving their nation in peace. Every day, they sought forgiveness from Him in the sacrifice of atonement, and His mercy was poured out afresh. At the great festivals, Jews gathered from every part of the earth to remember His goodness in the past and ask His guidance for the future. It was their national home, the place where God was close at hand to renew and refresh them.

And naturally, some people felt drawn to remain there. The temple wasn’t just a matter of altars and prayer halls. Much of the complex was taken up with dormitory rooms. These were for the priests and Levites to stay during their duty shifts, and for these ancient anchorites, who dwelt in the house of the Lord, praising him, as the Psalm says, continually. You might recall one of them from the Gospels, the prophetess Anna, who had lived in the temple for many decades before rejoicing to see the infant Christ on the day of his presentation in the temple.

The Psalmist sings of the joy of abiding in such a holy and life-giving place. It is a beautiful place and a safe one, where God’s protection is assured, as He shelters His people like swallows in the shadow of the Altar. Above all, the Psalmist speaks of the joy that comes from being in God’s Presence in His holy house. The word “happy” recurs repeatedly in the translation we use—“blessed” is better, I think—a continued and sustaining gift from God. His presence fulfills the deepest desire of Psalmist’s soul, and it calls forth a deep exaltation. There flesh and heart cry out for the living God.   This is the language of destiny. We are made to be in God’s Presence, in the company of His holy people. This is our supreme good, the oft-hidden goal behind our straining after so many other things that never seem to satisfy.   It is a joy so great, that once we have found it, we would never want it to end. Remember how the most-loved Psalm of them all closes—“surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of our life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

But unlike the Psalmist, that Presence is first associated not with a place, but a Person. God’s mercy is poured out to us through the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and it is through Him that we draw nearest to the Father. In our Gospel lesson, this is what He means when he says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The temple was destroyed millennia ago, and the precious ark lost centuries before that. But Christ lives forever, raised in glory on the third day. He sustains us now by drawing us together and naming us His own, and then giving us His own precious Body and Blood, week by week in the Holy Eucharist.

This building is a holy place, a sanctuary, as the temple was long before. It is holy because Christ dwells within in it. The great sign of this mystery is the light that burns here day by day before the tabernacle, a word that recalls the shrine where God dwelt with His ancient people. In the tabernacle, we reserve the bread and wine that have been made Christ’s Body and Blood in at the Altar. It is good to bow to it when we enter the church and to pray before it, offering our praises and petitions to the One who dwells within it.

The call to serve God as an anchoress may be a rare one. But this longing for God’s Presence, this delight in the Holy Eucharist and this love for His house have an important place in the spiritual life of every disciple. These days, we tend to place great emphasis on doing God’s work in the world, being active, making things happen out there. There are many good things about that, and it’s true of course, that Christ is often found out in the bustle of the world, especially among His beloved poor. But our activism will be remarkably shallow if it is not nurtured by the blessing we find in here, singing God’s praises as the Psalmist did, resting in His Presence.   For the anchoress and the Psalmist, and also for each of us, He is the goal of all our striving, the source of our highest joy. Abide with Him now, until He calls you to your true and perfect home, to rejoice in His Presence in heaven forever.

 

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

[1] Psalm 22:3

Living the Creed: Jesus is Lord

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by Taylor Poindexter, Seminarian

“My kingdom is not from this world.” Christ the King Sunday was proposed by Pope Pius after World War One. He saw that nationalism was at its height, and he saw people all over the world who were willing to die for ideologies such as communism, fascism, and political democracy. It was the year Mussolini came into power, and the year when a huge KKK rally happened in DC. Pope Pius instituted a call back to alignment with Christ for the Catholic Church. He called for all Christians to recognize their creator, and to keep God’s commandments, and to not ignore God in their public lives. Anglicans, Lutherans and others followed suit as they recognized that Christians were placing all of their eggs in the baskets of governmental and economic systems. For 90 years now the feast has been celebrated, calling Christians to remember where their allegiances lie, to remember that Jesus is Lord, and that Christians are citizens of an alternative kingdom.

“Jesus is Lord” is the first creedal statement in the Christian tradition. This is an affront to an individualistic, self-focused way of life. My primary King, Lord, leader, is Jesus. If Jesus is Lord then I am not, and neither is my reputation, my accomplishments, or my ideologies. Being a Jesus-follower makes for a life that seeks a kingdom beyond those passing away on earth. Following Jesus is following a saving God, rather than all the worldly things that may promise to save us from the powers of death, but cannot deliver.

Pontius Pilate doesn’t seem to know what to do with Jesus. Jesus seems to have made his fellow Jews mad, but Pilate can’t do anything about an inter-religious spat. Pilate asks “are you the king of the Jews?” That’s the only question that can get Jesus into big trouble, crucifixion trouble. Jesus claiming kingship affronts the empire that Pilate represents. The only problem worth Pilate’s time is the one that Jesus answers with “You say that I am.” He interrogates Jesus and Jesus says “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” This truth to which Jesus refers is that he is God incarnate and that the kingdom he represents is out of this world, will not bend to the empire, will not bow to another ideology or king. The truth is that Jesus rules, the risen Christ rules, and that through baptism we are made citizens in that kingdom, committing to die and rise with him. We don’t know whether or not Pilate knew who he was dealing with, if he felt his nerves rising within him because he knew who Jesus might have been. But we can tell that Jesus was leading through questioning, even as he was being questioned. This truth, Jesus is Lord, means Pilate, and Caesar, are not.

If you decide to follow Jesus in this alternative kingdom, how do you know what God wants you to do? I asked a dear friend and mentor that question, she is the Episcopal Chaplain to JMU’s students, and she gave me advice that has stuck with me. She said, ask yourself, “Will this action help me to love God’s people more?” This theological question shapes how you think and act when you practice using it. “Does this help me love God’s people more?”

How do you follow Jesus? How do you choose to claim your citizenship in the kingdom of God, rather than in the kingdom of the world? Being a citizen of God’s kingdom sometimes means living by different norms. I was raised by caring, loving parents who instilled in me a big value for efficiency. I owe them an incredible debt for a lot of things, but even just that efficiency has been of great service to me! My Mom is very efficient, she’s the original multi-tasker. She worked from home so I got to watch her juggle different demands with grace. My Dad is a semi-retired economist, so I know a thing or two having to do with maximum efficiency from our dinner time conversation. As a result, I am a horrible grocery store companion-I can’t fathom buying anything that either isn’t in bulk, or that I can’t use for multiple dishes. I never go up the stairs empty handed-why not use my legs efficiently, and I tend not to waste too much time. And there’s that economic principle wherein it is most economical for people to do things that they are good at. It’s the principle that justifies outsourcing-an administrator hires a web designer to design a website. It makes most sense to make products where their raw components are readily available. Contractors complete projects for which they’re trained, rather than one office reinventing the wheel every time. These principles are deeply engrained in me, and they make sense. We need certain standards in any page economy or government. But sometimes, the norms of this kingdom just butt up against following Jesus into his kingdom. Sometimes the most efficient way, or the most economical way just doesn’t align with the norms of Christ’s kingdom. On campus, for instance, I work with the 5 demonstration gardens there, which we have developed to show church leaders how to engage their communities through work with gardening, food, sustainability, and justice. One of the biggest projects is the wheat we plant to harvest for the flour for our communion bread. I spend a lot of hours shoveling leaf compost, spreading chicken manure, hand sowing wheat seeds, and praying in a muddy field. Wheat is of course much more commonly produced in the heartland. And it’s a dollar in the grocery store! So why does the daughter of an extremely efficient pair of people spend time on these tasks? These tasks that I’m really not burly enough for, these tasks that take time away from other work on campus? Because it helps me to love God’s people more. When I invite my community to share in the planting, harvesting, milling and baking of our communion bread, I follow Jesus. When we learn together, pray together, share stories together, when we stoop together in solidarity with those who always work with their hands, we follow Jesus. It helps me love God’s people more. The rules of this earthly kingdom-efficiency, profit, don’t govern the kingdom in which Jesus reigns. The almighty doesn’t seem to operate on modern east-coast American metrics. The good habits of our age don’t necessarily pave the way to follow Christ.

Pope Pius’ idea continues to call us back into alignment with Christ the King. When we are members of Christ’s kingdom, we are invited to act in different ways. Yes, efficiency is important sometimes. But there are other practices that help you love God’s people more, that matter. Just as you vote, take out your trash and pay taxes, there is another set of expectations for citizens of God’s kingdom. Following the commandments, including the one about Sabbath, help to conform you to the culture of the kingdom of Christ. Sabbath was offered to those Israelites returning home after being held as slaves in Egypt, as God offered them one day a week where they only belong to God, and aren’t beholden to worldly powers. We are also offered that day, or hour, or afternoon, to pray, to unplug, to listen for God, to love God’s people, to leave room for those heart to heart conversations. Finding that inner and outer rest is so important, to honor your created body and to leave room for God to shape you, and to know God more closely. Taking Sabbath seriously is one way that we take part in God’s kingdom in transformational ways. Aligning ourselves as followers of Christ, embracing our place as citizens leaves room for God to work in us and through us.

And I wonder, when we seek to love God’s people more, how our rhetoric will be shaped, how our choices will be shaped, when it comes to the big questions of our age. How do we love God’s people more when they are refugees from a war-torn Syria, how do we love God’s people more when fear is an innate part of the culture of this world? Take heart and do not be afraid, for Christ’s kingdom invites you into live-saving, life-giving relationships. As members of Christ’s kingdom, Christ gives us the revelation we need to know, that Christ’s saving kingdom is the one to which we want to belong. Pilate wasn’t sure what this other king was about, but we have a little more information, and this King is the one I want to follow. The one I want to align myself with through prayer, Sabbath, listening, abiding and the action that flows from this citizenship in the kingdom.

So this saving Christ, this saving promise, this saving king, deserves our worship. And thus we turn to the altar, where Christ invites us to the feast set for his kingdom. It’s not about efficiency or fear other norms that rule our lives. It’s about God. It’s about the kingdom where we are already citizens, even as we fumble with our norms between these two worlds. Let us seek the things that help us to love God’s people more, let us act as the citizens of the kingdom God invites us to, let us live into the creed, Jesus is Lord.

Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist

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by the Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector

“And [God] gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.”
Ecclesiasticus 38:6

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

“Down in Guatemala,” he told me, “I had to be a real doctor, and it scared the heck out of me.” Now don’t get me wrong, according to the standards of the American Medical Association and the licensing agencies of his rather lucrative specialty, my parishioner was very much a real doctor. He had been in practice for decades and was highly regarded in our community, sought out by people in need of surgery. But things were different, he was telling me, when he went to Guatemala on a pharmacyincanada medical mission trip with his son’s church.

They were working in a remote area, with very minimal equipment, you see. There were no MRI machines and it was a day’s journey over rugged roads for an x-ray. They could do simple blood tests, and had a few diagnostic tools, and some basic medicines but that was about it. My parishioner said he had learned all about diagnosis back in medical school, but it was so much easier just to run a test and be sure. Here in Guatemala, he had to listen to the stories, mark just how people described their symptoms. It was really challenging work, and he wasn’t certain about a few of the cases he had seen. There were some maladies he just couldn’t treat.

Malpractice insurance companies, of course, don’t tolerate this much guesswork here, and that’s probably a good thing. But it was interesting to me that my parishioner didn’t think of his work within these narrow limits as useless.   “A real doctor,” that’s what he called himself, someone stretched to use all his ingenuity, to listen more carefully, to treat the whole person and not just the symptoms. He left that time in Guatemala a bit wistful about the more accurate and lucrative way he practiced medicine the rest of the year, and anxious to get back again to a place where he really do justice to his profession.

Today we give thanks to God for Saint Luke the Evangelist, called by Saint Paul, “the beloved physician.”[1] He is the patron saint of those who work in the various medical professions, and our Old Testament lesson appropriately gives thanks to God for the work these people do in bringing healing to the world. Now we don’t know anything at all about how Saint Luke practiced medicine, but as someone who worked in a time when there were even fewer diagnostic tools than my former parishioner found in that Guatemalan clinic, I think he must have gained the kind of skills that made for a “real doctor.”

You can see many of those on display in the third Gospel and the Book of Acts, which he wrote as an “orderly account”[2] of the life of Christ and of his earliest followers for a reader named Theophilus. First, he was a learned man, as all doctors have to be, a master of complicated patterns and unusual symptoms. Of all three Gospels, Saint Luke’s abounds most in historical and geographic detail, and there’s even more of this in the Book of Acts. When historians or Holy Land tour guides want to place a given Biblical event in time, it’s usually Saint Luke who provides the anchoring facts.

Saint Luke was also a very gifted storyteller, someone who had obviously been trained to listen carefully as people described their afflictions. Legend also says he was an artist, and I once saw a painting that was attributed to him, in the Syrian cathedral in Jerusalem. I’m not so sure about that, but Saint Luke certainly painted his accounts with colorful tidbits. And they give us a fuller understanding of, say, Christ’s gentleness toward the suffering and the boldness of Saint Paul. Many of the best known and loved stories from the life of Jesus are recorded only in his Gospel.   The Nativity story, for example: the Virgin Mary’s encounter with the Angel Gabriel, her joyful meeting with Elizabeth, the birth in the stable, the angels filling the Bethlehem sky with song, that’s only told in his Gospel. Those stories from the beginning are matched by extensive and evocative descriptions of Christ’s appearance after his resurrection at the end, especially the story of that mysterious encounter on the road to Emmaus, where Christ appeared to His disciples “in the breaking of bread.”[3] Luke alone recalled Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, and that sequence of tales about the joy of reconciliation that ends with the story of the prodigal son.

He also has what we might call a more inclusive vision, and was especially careful to recall the role of women and the poor in the Gospel stories. The great canticle of praise offered by Zechariah in chapter one, for example, is echoed by another sung by the Virgin Mary a few verses later. Simeon rejoices to receive Christ in the temple, and then so does Anna as well. Saint Luke tends to group Christ’s parables so that one that has a man as the protagonist, like the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, is followed immediately by one with a woman in the primary role, like the woman with the lost coin. He also recalled many of Christ’s teaching about the hazards of wealth, and God’s desire to bless and strengthen the poor, as in the dramatic sermon at Nazareth that serves as our Gospel lesson. Now, Saint Luke might have been more interested in outsiders because he was a Gentile himself. But his profession had also accustomed him to treat all kinds of people, men and women alike, “master or servant, bond or free,” as the Hippocratic Oath has always stated.

“[God] gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.” That’s what old Sirach said about the way doctors can lead others closer to God. He was talking of course, about their medical skills. But for Saint Luke, the saying was true in an even deeper sense. Because it was his skill as a doctor that trained him to bear witness to God’s most marvelous work, His redemption of the world through Christ, in a truly powerful and unique way. “Why are there four Gospels?,” I’m sometimes asked. Well because to see Christ in the full, we need four different observers: rabbinical Matthew, breathless Mark, meditative John, and Luke—the historian and storyteller, perhaps the one who had the widest vision of them all. Each of the Gospel writers gave a distinct account, shaped by his own passion, his own experience in the rest of life. God inspired them to write His word in the midst of their own stories, not in spite of them.

In Baptism we all promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,”[4] that is to say, we all promise to be evangelists. We each tell our own Gospel—not that we all write Holy Scripture, of course, but we tell the story recounted in Scripture in our own particular way. Your education, the work that consumes so much of your life, your experience as a spouse, a friend, a parent—these all shape the story you have been given to tell to others about God’s love and His purpose for human life. Maybe you haven’t thought much about this before. How is Christ revealed in the work of a paralegal, an accountant, the third chair clarinet in the high school band? What’s the spiritual value implicit in what you know about lesson plans, defense strategy or professional football? Every talent, every passion, all the truth we have learned, all the goodness and beauty we have created is meant to be drawn up in this noblest task of all—revealing God to the world. Think about your own story and how it tells the big story.   If you don’t know quite know to start, ask the good doctor for some help. He shows us all how to do it so very well.

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

[1] Col. 4:14

[2] Luke 1:3.

[3] Luke 24:35.

[4]“Holy Baptism,” Book of Common Prayer, 304.

Endings and Beginnings

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Rev. Mary Thorpe

Good morning. I’m Mary Thorpe, Director of Transition Ministry for the Diocese of Virginia, and I am honored to be here with you as you begin your time of transition from the leadership of Father Brad to the next rector whom God has prepared for you. I bring you the prayers and support of your bishops and your diocesan staff. My presence here today is an outward and visible sign of that support, and we will get to know each other better in the months to come.

But here we are today, and I’m sure it feels a little odd not to see Father Brad up front. Despite the farewell, despite the realization that it was time for him to have a well-deserved rest after serving here so faithfully for so long, today it just feels a little…abrupt.

It usually does. In our Old Testament reading today, we reflect upon a transition of kings. King David is dead, and his son, Solomon, the issue of his marriage to Bathsheba, now takes the throne.

It always surprises me when I read this passage how matter of fact the author is about the passing of David and the ascendance of Solomon to the throne. David was a mighty king and a very complicated human being. He did marvelous things in the name of God and he also did some pretty awful things – that whole incident with Bathsheba comes to mind. David is a big deal! Jesus’ lineage going back to David was cited as one proof of his kingship – he comes out of the root of Jesse, David’s father. So you’d figure that when he died, there would be more to the story than “yup, he’s gone. We’re on to Solomon now.”

Transitions in leadership seem to require more drama, more emotion, than a mere statement of the end of the man and the time of his tenure.

We know a little bit about that here, as we catch our breath and imagine the unimaginable – St Tim’s without Father Brad Rundlett at the helm. And yet here we are, and the sadness is still in our hearts, and the worry about the future of this place is hovering over some of us.

I’m here today to tell you that, in the wonderful words of Dame Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

And here’s where we can take our cue from the second part of the reading from 1 Kings: Solomon, David’s son by Bathsheba, ascends to the throne as calmly and as naturally as somebody getting on the Metro. And what’s the first thing Solomon does? He goes to talk with God, to offer sacrifices and ask God what God would like Solomon to do.

You’d think that Solomon would be feeling his oats, thinking, “wow, I get to be king just like dad, lots of power, lots of riches, lots of people fawning over me.” But his father has trained him well. His first task is not to put himself over everyone, it is to bow to the one who made him king, God Almighty. He offers sacrifices. God comes to him in a dream. Solomon speaks to God in humility: I’m just a child, really. How can I serve you, God? What do you want me to do? And God likes hearing this – humility is always a good starting point when taking on a new responsibility.

So God plants within Solomon a wise and discerning mind. God gives him untold wealth and long life as well, but the most important thing is the first thing – the ability to be a good leader, to help the people through the transition from the reign of David to this new era.

Now, Brad was not King David, and Mark is not Solomon, but there’s some wisdom about times of change of leadership that may apply in the case of St. Tim’s.

You are a healthy and loving parish, full of vitality and possibilities. You were well-guided by Fr. Brad – he encouraged lay leaders to lead, not simply to serve as implementers of his vision alone. So you’ve got good men and women who participate in vestry and in other areas of lay leadership who will help things continue to go and to grow.

With Father Brad’s retirement, however, there is a need for another priest to help this parish, as Father Brad helped this parish. Many things can be done by lay leaders, but some things really do need to be done by a priest.

You need your next ordained leader, your Solomon, who comes before the Lord with humility and says, “Lord, what do you want me to do to serve you and these people?”

The natural inclination is to look at Father Mark here, who came to support Father Brad in the last months of his ministry and who will serve as your interim priest during this time of transition, as your Solomon.

It is true that he is gifted, humble, and wise. But he is not your Solomon. To understand his role, think back on the prophet who served King David in the latter part of his reign – Nathan. Nathan, who had the strength to carry God’s displeasure about David’s taking of Bathsheba. Nathan, who had the strong, strong relationship with God to bear God’s words and wisdom to the king.

Father Mark is, in fact, your Nathan. Nathan means “gift” and Father Mark is indeed a gift to you all. He will lead you, guide you, offer an honest assessment of what is working well and what you might consider as you enter into the next chapter of your parish’s life. His role is to prepare you all for your Solomon, your next rector.

This is what will happen in the months to come: your vestry will appoint a search committee, a small group of wise and discerning and prayerful people who will gather information about this beloved place, help discern where God is calling you next, and identify the kinds of gifts and graces your next rector will need so that he or she can help you get to where God is calling you next. They will, with the affirmation of the vestry, publish a document that will tell prospective candidates who you are and what you are looking for and then receive applications, winnowing through them until they come up with a final candidate whom they will recommend to the vestry. The vestry will meet the recommended candidate and –we hope – affirm the person. Assuming that all necessary due diligence is done by the search committee and by my office, a call will be issued and the name will be given to the Bishop, tacmeds.com who will approve of the call. The vestry will negotiate the terms of the letter of agreement and once all parties, including the Bishop, have signed it, you will have a new rector.

It’s not as quick as “David went to sleep with his ancestors and Solomon ascended to the throne.” We don’t have familial succession, as in the Davidic line. We need to discern and to seek, because in calling your next rector, it’s not like hiring someone. It’s much more like seeking a spouse. You are entering into a covenantal relationship, and as our sacrament of marriage says, “it is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently and deliberately.”

This all may seem like you are entering into a long process, and I can tell you that it will take some time, but only as much time as necessary to do the work of discernment, of hearing the voices of the parishioners of St. Tim’s, of listening to the murmurings of the Holy Spirit. It will take only that amount of time – no more, no less.

In the meantime, you have the blessing of your prophet Nathan, Father Mark, who will lead you, serve you, guide you and be a part of your lives, until your Solomon comes to you.

You will also have the guidance of my team at the Office of Transition Ministry to help your vestry and search committee with their work and to do the kind of due diligence that will ensure that you will have a gifted candidate without issues that will hinder their ability to serve you well. You will also have the prayers and support of your Bishops and all of the diocesan staff.

Transitions are rarely as swift and uneventful as the handoff from David to Solomon, but I assure we will do all in our power to make this a time of joyful self-discovery and a time of exploring possibilities rather than one of worry or slowing of momentum.

And where our power fails, then the strength of Jesus Christ, given to us each week when we kneel and receive the sacrament of his body and blood, will fill us with everything we need for the work set before us, this day and forever more.

Amen.

The Transfiguration

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The Rev. Leslie E. Chadwick

2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 sildenafildosage Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

 I got a phone call at 7 AM from an 85-year-old 8 o’clocker asking if we were going to have church today.  I said,  “Well, Brad and I will be there, but I’m not sure you should venture out.  I haven’t been out to see what the roads are like yet.” He said, “We’ll, I’ve been out to get the paper.” I asked, “Was it slick?”  He replied. “Crunchy.  But then again, I was barefoot.”  I said, “Alright.  You are made of something tougher than this South Georgia native.”  And so are all of you who made it here in ice, snow, and single-digit cold!  That’s what today’s sermon is about:  What we are made of.

Two different friends who had gone through difficult years told me recently,  “Times like these  give you a chance to see what you are made of.”  The phrase “what you are made of” stuck with me.  It made me wonder, “What am I made of? “  “What are we as a Church madeof?”

Difficult times are not the only times that give us a chance to see what we are made of; times that are sheer gift can do the same thing.

I would like to tell you about two mountaintop experiences I had in January.  One was during the Eucharist at Annual Council. I sat next to our delegates from St. Timothy’s surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses from the Diocese of Virginia, singing, praying, listening to the good news and basking in the radiance of God’s presence.  Brass thundered from the balcony; candles flickered; the choir sang a piece called “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place” from A German Requiem. Brahms had written this piece when his mother died and I knew the music backwards and forwards from performing it in college and graduate school. I knew how it had helped heal others in their grief. As the choir sang it, I felt as if time were compressed, suspended, that past, present, and future were together all at once.

The second mountaintop experience was a pilgrimage I took to Sewanee, Tennessee where I had gone to college.  Sewanee is a holy place for me.  I had not been back there for 17 years.  As I hiked through Shake Rag Hollow with my family and biked through campus by myself, I was filled with the joy of God’s presence in nature and in layers of memory.  I worshiped at Evensong in All Saints’ Chapel where I’d been a sacristan; at Morning Prayer in the seminary chapel; and in Otey Parish for the Eucharist. I felt as if time were compressed, suspended, that past, present and future were together all at once.

At times like these, we glimpse what we are made of as individuals and as the Church—we are more than the physical, yet deeply rooted in time and place. God has put something of the eternal in us and we are tethered to that even as we move from place to place and from experience to experience.  Letting go of one particular way we’ve known God does not mean we lose it.  God integrates all of our encounters with him, past, present, and future deep within us and within Himself.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul reminds the Church in Corinth just how deep their connection with God is.  He gives them a glimpse of who they are as the Church.  This community has felt disconnected from Paul, and the way they used to know God through him.  A lot has happened since Paul wrote his first letter to them. He had promised to visit them but it didn’t work out.  Once Paul finally made it there, his visit was painful and he followed up with a harsh letter.  He now urges them, “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart…We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.”

In refocusing them all on Jesus, Paul moves the community beyond petty bickering.  He lifts their minds back to what is eternal.  Seeing Jesus reminds us what we are made of: we are dust and more than dust. Paul continues, “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.”

In today’s gospel, Peter and James and John get a glimpse of that eternal weight of glory.  They get to see for an instant what cannot be seen when we have our noses pressed flush up against life:  Their vision is not just that all shall be well, but that all is well and whole and right. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near. Past, present, and future are together; time is suspended; Law, Prophets, and Gospel stand together in perfect harmony. In order to see this vision of God’s holiness, the disciples have to be led by Jesus up to a high mountain, apart, by themselves.  This is not a vision they can achieve on their own or while they are caught up in the drama and stress of their daily lives.  They have to let Jesus take them away from all that.

As they watch, they see who Jesus really is.  He is dust.  Man.  Human.  Just like them. And suddenly, his clothes become dazzling white such as no one on earth could bleach them.  He is wholly other, almost pure light.  And there with him Moses and Elijah show up, the great holy ones of Israel who represent the Law and the Prophets.  They talk with Jesus as if they are old friends.  Peter interrupts and blurts out, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let’s keep this moment going as long as we can.”  If Peter had had an I-phone, he would have been snapping pictures in “burst” mode and trying to capture the entire thing on video.  But the Evangelist excuses him, “[Bless his heart].  He didn’t know what to say—for they were terrified.”  As often happens on mountaintops, a cloud covers them.  And from the cloud there comes a voice.  God affirms what he had proclaimed at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  Then it’s all gone in a flash.  Law, Prophets, the dazzling white, the idea of making 3 tents, everything.  As if it had never happened.  “They saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.”

I asked my 6-year-old old after I told him this story, “What do you think Jesus is trying to show his disciples?”  He answered, “That he’s going to die.”  He’s right. The disciples are about to have to let go of the way they’ve known God. It may seem at times as if what they had experienced with Jesus never happened.  But the last phrase of the story gives me hope.  “Suddenly, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.”  When the radiance and joy of a mountaintop experience fades, what we are left with is “Jesus.”  And Jesus is enough.  If we listen to him, he leads us through the mire back into the radiant glory of God’s love, from death into resurrection.  He does that for the disciples and he does that for us.

As we come down from the mountaintop today, we descend back into the unknowns, uncertainties and drama of our lives.  We walk straight into Lent to journey the way of the cross. God shows us who Jesus is and orders us, “Listen to him!”  This is what we hear, “You are setting your minds not on divine things, but on human things.  Take up your cross and follow me.  Lose your life for the sake of the gospel, and save it. Whoever wants to be first, must be last and servant of all… Your sins are forgiven.  Do not fear, but only believe.”  [I say to the wind and waves, “Peace, be still.” To the demons, “Shut up and come out.”  To the sick and weak, “Go in peace, your faith has made you well.”]

This Lent, may we stay focused on Jesus.  He shows us the truth about what we are made of:  “You are formed of the earth; you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  And you are more than dust; you are, by my grace, God’s beloved; the God who called light into being, calls forth radiant light from your being and shines new light and strength into your hearts.  Jesus shows us the truth about who we are as the Church.  As we eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, past, present, and future come together all at once.  We lift our voices with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven as we cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Amen.

 

La Transfiguración

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Rev. Leslie E. Chadwick

2 Reyes 2:1-12
Salmo 50:1-6
Corintios 4:3-6
Marcos cost for viagra without insurance 9:2-9

“A veces pasas por situaciones en la vida que te dan la oportunidad de ver de que estas hecho.” Dos amistades diferentes me dijeron eso recientemente. Cada uno de ellos acababa de pasar por un ano muy difícil y al superar las dificultades se sintieron más fuertes y mejor preparados para enfrentar una nueva etapa en sus vidas. La frase” de lo que estas hecho”, quedo grabada en mi memoria. Me obligo a reflexionar “De que estoy hecha?”, “Como Iglesia, de que estamos hechos?”. No es solo los momentos difíciles que nos brindan la oportunidad de ver de qué estamos hechos; aquellos momentos que consideramos bendiciones pueden hacer lo mismo.

Yo quisiera relatarles dos experiencias extraordinarias que viví en Enero. Una fue durante la Eucaristía del Concilio Anual. Estaba sentada junta a los delegados de ST. Timothy, rodeada por una “nube” de testigos de la Diócesis de Virginia, cantando, orando, escuchándolas buenas nuevas y envolviéndome en la radiancia de la presencia de Dios. Desde el balcón sonaron los instrumentos, tiritaron las velas, el coro entono una pieza musical titulada “How lovely is thy dwelling place” (Que bello es su hogar), de una misa cantada alemana. Brahms escribió esta pieza cuando murió su madre y yo sabía su letra hacia atrás y hacia adelante por tantas veces que la cantaba en la Universidad y durante mis estudios de post-graduada. Sabia como este tema había ayudado a muchos sanar sus heridas y superar sus sufrimientos. Mientras el coro cantaba, sentí como si el tiempo se detuviera y quedara suspendido…que el pasado, presente y futuro se hubiesen unido.

La segunda experiencia fue durante un viaje a Sewanee, Tennessee donde fui a cursar estudios universitarios. Sewanee, para mí, es tierra santa. No había regresado a Sewanee en 17 años. Mientras caminaba por un sector llamado “Shake Rag Hollow” con mi familia y corría mi bicicleta por los predios del colegio, me sentí llena de júbilo por la presencia de Dios en la naturaleza y en los folios de mi memoria. Fui a rezar en la Capilla de Todos los Santos localizada en Evensong, donde serví como Sacristán durante las Oraciones Matinales en el seminario y en la Parroquia Otey durante la Eucaristía. Otra vez sentí como si el tiempo se hubiese detenido, suspendido y que el presente, pasado y futuro estuvieran juntos a ese preciso momento.

En momentos como esos experienciamos de que estamos hechos, como individuos y como Iglesia… somos más que la forma física con profundas raíces en el tiempo y el espacio. Dios ha puesto parte de lo extraneo en nosotros y estamos atados a ello aunque nos transportemos de lugar a lugar  y de experiencia a experiencia. Dejar ir de una manera particular que hemos conocido a Dios no significa que lo perdemos.  Dios integra todos nuestros encuentros con épasado, presente y futuro , en lo profundo de nosotros y dentro de sí mismo.

En su segunda carta a los Corintios, St. Paul recuerdala Iglesia en Corinto integra su conexión con Dios es.  Pablo brinda a ellos un vistazo de quien son ellos como Iglesia

Esta comunidad se ha sentido desconectado de Pablo , y la forma ellos solían experimentar el amor de Dios a través de él.  Han pasado muchas cosas desde que Pablo escribió su primera carta a ellos. Les había prometido visitar pero no pudo hacerlo. Cuando Pablo finalmente arribo, fue una visita dolorosa y a continuación les escribió una carta muy ruda. Ahora busca la reconciliación, les dice “Ya que se debe a la gracia de Dios que estemos unidos en este Ministerio, no perdamos la fe…no nos proclamemos a nosotros mismos; proclamemos a Jesucristo nuestro Señor”.

Reorientándolos hacia Jesús, Pablo se ayuda a sí mismo y asiste a los otros a sobrepasar el argumento. Levanta sus mentes de nuevo a lo que es eterno .  Mirando a Jesús por lo que representa y por quien lo escucha nos ensena quienes somos y de que estamos hechos. Somos polvo y somos más que polvo. Pablo dice a continuación, “ Aunque nuestra naturaleza externa se esté deteriorando, nuestra naturaleza interior está siendo renovada día tras día, porque esta aflicción  momentaria y pasajera nos está preparando para un paso a la gloria eterna que sobrepasa cualquier medida ya que miramos no a lo que podemos ver sino a lo oculto”.

En la lección de hoy, Pedro, Santiago (James) y Juan visualizan por un instante aquello que no se puede ver cuando tenemos nuestras narices presionadas contra la vida. Su visión no es que todo debe andar bien pero que todo está bien, completo y correcto. Los tiempos se han saciado y el reino de Dios se ha acercado. El pasado, presente y futuro esta juntos…el tiempo suspendido mientras las leyes, los profetas  y las enseñanzas se unen en perfecta armonía. De manera que pudiera apreciar esta visión de la santidad de Dios, los discípulos tienen que ser guiados por Jesús hasta lo alto de una montaña, apartados por si solos. Esta no es una visión que ellos pueden alcanzar por si solos o mientras sean prisioneros del drama y las presiones de su vida cotidiana. Necesita dejar que Jesús los separe de todo eso.

Mientras observan, entienden quien en realidad es Jesús. Él es polvo. Hombre. Humano. Como ellos. De repente su vestidura se torna un blanco lustroso como nadie en la tierra pueda blanquearla. Él es  totalmente otro, casi una luz pura. Allí aparecen con El, Moisés y Elías, los grandes santos de Israel que representan las leyes y los profetas. Hablan con Jesús como si fueran viejos amigos. Pedro interrumpe y dice “Rabino, es bueno que estemos aquí, tratemos de alargar este momento tanto como sea posible”. Si Pedro hubiese tenido un “I phone” hubiese tomado fotos sin detenerse y hubiese tratado de captar todo en video. Pero el Evangelista lo excusa (Que Dios lo Bendiga). Él no sabía que decir porque estaban aterrados. Como suele suceder en el tope de la Montana, una nube los cubre. Una voz se escucha desde la nube y Dios afirma lo que había proclamado durante el Bautismo de Jesús, “este es mi hijo, mi adorado, escúchenlo”. “Entonces todo desaparece en un instante. Los hombres de Leyes, los profetas, los vestidos de blanco lustroso y la idea de construir albergue, como si nunca hubiese sucedido. Nunca vieron a nadie acompañarlos, excepto a Jesús.”.

Le pregunté a mi hijo de 7 años de edad, hijo, después de que le dije a esta historia , ” ¿Qué crees que Jesús está tratando de mostrar a sus discípulos ? “Respondió Este , ” que va a morir . ” Tiene razón .Los discípulos están a punto de tener que dejar irla forma en que ‘ ll’ve conoce Dios. Puede parecer a veces como si lo que habían vivido con Jesús nunca sucedió.

Pero, esa última frase me da esperanza. ”Ellos no vieron a nadie acompañándole, solo a Jesús”. Cuando la radiancia del momento de júbilo se disipa, lo que nos queda es Jesús y Jesús es suficiente. Si lo escuchamos nos saca desde el lodo hasta la radiante gloria del amor de Dios; desde la muerte hasta la resurrección. El hace eso por sus discípulos y por nosotros.

Hoy, cuando bajamos de la cima de la Montana entramos directamente a Cuaresma. Navegamos hacia la cruz. Dios nos ensena quien es Jesús y nos ordena “ESCUCHENLO”. Y esto es lo que escuchamos, “están poniendo su mente no en las cosas divinas, sino en las cosas humanas, levanta tu cruz y sígueme. Da tu vida por las enseñanzas y sálvala. Aquel que quiera ser primero deberá ser el último servidor de todos…no temas, solo cree. Tus pecados son perdonados”. A los demonios, “cállense y de la cara”. Al enfermo y frágil “vaya en paz, su fe le ha curado”.

Que durante la cuaresma mantengamos nuestro enfoque en Jesús. Él nos dice la verdad sobre sobre de que estamos hechos. “Tú eres moldeado de la tierra, eres polvo y al polvo haz de volver. Eres más que polvo. Eres, por mi gracia, amado de Dios, el Dios que creo la luz, emite luz radiante de tu ser y brilla nueva luz y fuerza a sus corazones. Jesús nos ensena la verdad en cuanto a quienes somos como Iglesia. Mientras participamos del cuerpo y sangre de Cristo, pasado, presente y futuro se unen al mismo tiempo. Elevamos nuestras voces con Ángeles y Arcángeles y toda la compañía de la Gloria clamando “Santo, santo, santo, Amen.”

 

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