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

The Rev. Mark A. Michael Interim Rector

“I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.”
– Exodus 16:4

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

The manna was a test. Of course, it was a mercy as well. God had led the Israelites into the wilderness of Sinai, a dangerous and desolate place of rocky hills and almost no vegetation. There was no food to be had at all. They had no idea where they were headed. They had only brought what they could gather in a night and carry on their backs. And here in the desert, God was faithful to His promises, and sent them a mysterious food that supplied what they really needed.

But it was a test. Because every morning the manna came with the dew, with twice as much on Fridays so they could rest on the Sabbath. There was no need to work for it and when kept overnight, it rotted in the pail. So the Israelites had to trust God that He would send more of it the next day. They had to rely on His promise that it was enough to keep them in good health and full strength. They had to be patient with the lack of variety.

And at first the Israelites failed the test rather extravagantly. They tried to store up more than they needed. They went out to look for it on the Sabbath. And above all, they grumbled about it. They pined for the fleshpots, the leeks and the garlic back by the Nile. And if you’ve ever lived on rations, or tried to lose weight with meal-replacement shakes, or if you’ve just been poor and reduced to macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles, well you would have a little sympathy for the Israelites. You could understand how much of a trial it can be to eat the same thing over and over again.
But at some point in those forty years that they lived on manna, things changed for the Israelites. They began to see this food as something more than convenient nutrition. When Moses glossed the event in his great farewell sermon that is the Book of Deuteronomy, he explained it this way:

“He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.”

The manna was a blessing because it came from God’s hand. To live day by day, expecting it in faith was to learn to trust in His goodness. Eating this mysterious bread opened the way to understanding this mysterious God.

The Israelites learned to love manna. The Psalms praise it as the bread of angels, the great food that fell in abundance. When the Ark of the Covenant would eventually be built to enshrine their great national treasures, it contained a pot of that manna, the bread of heaven. The rabbis would preserve old legends about it for centuries, and the longer ago it was, the grander the stories became.

There’s a bit of natural sentiment in that, like a long married couple looking back fondly on those shoe-leather chops in their first one-bedroom apartment. But there’s also gratitude in having faced the test and emerged from it wiser and stronger. The manna was for them like a relic of boot camp or the diploma framed on the wall. God freely chose Israel to be His people. There was no merit in it. It was all grace all the way from one side. But Israel also had to grow into that vocation, and living on manna was the test.

Jesus is also testing the crowd when he meets them by the lake in our Gospel lesson. He had feed them abundantly the day before. And now they are hungry again, and ready for another spectacle. They mention the manna to Jesus. Maybe he too could furnish the mysterious food, like clockwork every morning. No, Jesus tells them, God is doing something new now. The true bread from heaven is here, not just to feed you for a day, but—as in the old words of administration—to “preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” “Do not labor,” He tells them, “for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you.”

This is also a test, you see. “What do you really want from me?” Jesus is asking them. You can only receive the true abundance of God when you have learned to desire it rightly. It can be easy to pursue religion for the wrong reasons—to seek from Christ mere “food that perishes.” When I was serving in my last parish, I gave a lift to a hitchhiker once, a local character who made the rounds of all the churches. Noticing my clerical collar, he gave me a running catalogue of what every congregation in the county served at coffee hour. We Episcopalians were pretty far down his list, especially because no one seemed to have cigarettes to borrow. What exactly was the man looking for in the house of God? I wondered.

But to take it a bit deeper, how much more impure are that old man’s motives than coming to church to make an appearance among the right sort of people, or to just keep alive a family tradition. If we value life with God primarily because we think it will keep the kids from going off the rails, or because it gives us a kind of buzz of inner peace, our motives are not quite in the right order. President Eisenhower famously once said that “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” Eisenhower may have just been tactful. But I think he was talking about religion as “food that perishes,” religion that was valuable because it kept American society together and helped us resist the Communists. It’s not much different from valuing religion because about it helps inspire justice and peace and makes the world a better place. Archbishop William Temple, who was perhaps the greatest single architect of the British social welfare system was well aware of this danger, which could lurk behind the reforms he championed. He wrote in his great commentary on Saint John’s Gospel,

“Whenever we try to use our religion as a solution of our temporal problems, caring more for that than for God and His glory, we fall unto the same condemnation… If what is eternal is valued chiefly as a means to any temporal result, the true order is inverted, and it is likely that the eternal and the temporal goods will be missed alike.”

What do you seek from me? What do you really crave? That’s what Christ was asking the crowds that day. Do you seek God because there is no higher good than to know, to love, and to serve Him? Or do you seek Him because you’ll better off for the seeking? God gives generously, and he won’t put you to the test until after you have already known His goodness. But for each of us, in time, that test will come.

In a few moments, we will share in the baptism of a child. But before we do, I will ask several questions. They are traditionally called the scrutinies—the testing questions. They probe the intentions and desires—who and what are being sought in this moment when a new Christian is made. “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness?” “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?” “Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?”

These questions are directed to the child, through His parents and godparents. But consider them carefully for yourself. Why are you here today? Are you seeking God or a just a little more for yourself? Are you prepared to love and serve God for His own sake? Your honest answer just might make you a real disciple for the first time.

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

the Rev. Mark A. Michael
Interim Rector

“He distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish, as much as they wanted.”
John 6:11

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

It didn’t take us long to see that Big Jim wasn’t like any other horse in the barn. He was several hands taller than the quarter horses, to begin with, and he ate an awful lot more. And he was our only horse with a glorious past. Big Jim arrived at our small farm through the auspices of Fred Goody, one of my father’s more eccentric friends. Fred was from the mountains of West Virginia, and had an astounding number of connections. Besides Big Jim, he brought us a coon dog and some rather odd pieces of furniture. You didn’t ask too many questions about Fred’s procurements, but we were given to understand that Big Jim was a thoroughbred, who had once been an item on the racetrack at Charles Town. His glory days were behind him, and our place was the stop that kept him from the glue factory.

For a thoroughbred, Big Jim was a remarkably calm and good natured animal, and I had no trouble catching him for his feedings every day. But after he’d been with us a few months, and had put on a few pounds, we out for a family ride on a Sunday afternoon. Dad was riding Big Jim, and we emerged from the woods into a long clearing. Dad wasn’t sure what the signal was, maybe something the horse heard or the way dad shifted in the saddle. But in an instant, it was as if Big Jim was rounding the final turn at Charles Town, the crowd cheering and the flags waving. He sprang into action, his muscles churning, his neck thrust forward. None of us had ever seen a horse move like that in our back field. Dad said it was the ride of his life, that it was like Jim was flying through the air. He would be leaning back a bit further in the saddle from then on, just in case Big Jim had a mind to relive old memories again.

We saw something new in Big Jim that day. His actions revealed something about who he really was that hadn’t been clear to us before. Big Jim showed himself a majestic animal, a champion, a creature to be handled with a bit of awe.

The miracles of Jesus are a bit like that Sunday afternoon in our back clearing. Of course they were occasions for relieving human needs: sickness, sorrow, hunger. And they were signs of Jesus’ deep human compassion for those in distress. But above all, they were intended to reveal Jesus’ identity, to confirm that He had been given divine power. When Jesus worked miracles, they identified Him as the long-promised Messiah, the One sent by God to bring His plan of salvation to completion.

And the miracle recounted in today’s Gospel, the feeding of the five thousand, is in some ways the most significant of them all. It is the only miracle described in all four of the Gospels, and in each Gospel it plays a central role in the unfolding story of Jesus’ life and mission. It was important because feeding hungry people always had a central role in God’s faithful care of His own. Our Vacation Bible School this week focused on God’s power, and we began last Monday with stories and songs that promised that God has the power to provide. That was a great way to start the week, because it is such an important theme in the Scripture. We might think of Psalm 145, which reads, in the majestic translation of the old Prayer Book,

“The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord, and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand, and fillest all things living with plenteousness.”[1]

God filled all things with plenteousness in creating a world of such abundance. And He had worked through patriarchs and prophets to relieve His people in their hunger. We might think of Joseph, raised by God to a position of authority in Egypt to open the storehouses to his hungry brothers and their families; or Moses, who prayed to the Lord, and was sent manna in the wilderness. There’s a very close parallel to the story in today’s Gospel in II Kings 4, when the prophet Elisha multiplied twenty loaves of bread to feed a hundred people, so much that there was even some left over.

That’s sort a junior varsity miracle, though, next to what Jesus does by the side of the Sea of Galilee. There’s even less material, just five loaves and two fish, and the crowd was much, much larger, and they are starving out in the wilderness. The disciples are rightfully overwhelmed by the task of buying enough provisions to give just a little to each of them. But Jesus isn’t thinking in term of snacks. He was aiming to “fill all things with plenteousness.” He took what was shared, and when He had blessed and broken it, He distributed it among them.

And how they enjoyed themselves, that hungry crowd, how they feasted on that unexpected abundance! Prudentius, the great hymnwriter of the Early Church captured the joyful spirit of the event and the wonder it awakened when he wrote:

The stuffed boy strives with undigested fare

The waiter groans beneath his heavy load.

Who can a great feast spread from stores so few?

Who but the maker of our frame and all

That nurtures it, who shaped the world from naught…

All that now is was naught: that nothingness

Was into being brought and bidden grow.

Small was the first creation, but it grew

Till it became a mighty universe.[2]

“Who can a great feast spread from stores so few?” The crowd goes there very quickly, with rather mixed results. Some of them remember old Elisha’s miracle, and are sure this Jesus must be a great prophet, returned to call the people back to God. Others remember Moses in the wilderness and are ready to crown him a new king of Israel.

And Jesus is prophet and king as well, of a certain kind. But He’s more than that. His disciples, and later the filled crowd, suffer from a failure of imagination.  He, as our Epistle lesson says, “is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think.” The superabundance of this miracle reveals that Jesus is not merely a prophet or king, but the “Maker of our frame and all.” Jesus is God Himself become one of us to cleanse us from sin and raise us to new life.

The twelve baskets left over point to a mission yet to be accomplished. There would be a new people of God, a new twelve tribes raised up from Jew and Gentile, slave and free, of all races and tongues. Jesus would sustain this new people with His own life, as He will go on to explain in the discourse that will form our Gospel lessons for the next month. There was plenty that day at the lake, but part of its bounty was that this feast pointed beyond itself. The baskets of bread and fish hint at the the living bread of the Eucharist, in which, as our Epistle says, we “know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” and are “filled with all the fulness of God.”

Over the past week or so, as I have been getting to know you here at Saint Timothy’s, it has become clear to me that Christ is present among you, and that you are thriving through the abundant life He alone can bring. I was talking with a parishioner this week who is actively involved in many ministries, but whose husband only worships here a few times a year. “Does he support you in being so involved in the Church?” I asked her. Without hesitation, she answered, “Yes, because he understands that the things I do here are what make me truly happy.” I think it’s like that with many of you.

It’s been wonderful to learn about how many of you are finding joy and fulfillment in your life by sharing your gifts and participating in so many different ministries. There must have been a hundred people involved in this week’s Bible school, as we taught some of our youngest disciples about God’s power to comfort, heal and forgive. We sent dozens of young people off to Dungannon yesterday to bring hope and relief in Christ’s Name to those in distress there. And I’ve talked to others about the pastoral ministry teams, the educational programs, the ministries to those who are hungry in this community. Your rector, who is so full of wisdom and compassion, cannot aggrenoxtabs say enough wonderful things about what is happening here.   Everything I have seen confirms my first impression that is a vibrant, caring and active community, where the Spirit is at work and lives are being changed.

Believe me, I’ve read the Sunday Post. There are lots of other places you could be today. There are lots of places in this area where you can get some guidance for your life, hear some good music, or help the poor. But you have chosen to come here, to be involved in this community. Because there’s a crucial difference here, something you can’t find in the concert hall, the op-ed page or the social services agency. Jesus is here in a unique and powerful way, and as He did by the sea so long ago, He gives abundantly still today. When we meet Him here, and receive the bread of His life, we are filled with His plenteousness.   Jesus is here and that makes all the difference.

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

[1] Ps. 145:15-16.

[2] qtd. In Oden, Thomas C. and Christopher Hall. Mark. The Ancient Christian Commentary Series. Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 1998, 87.