christmas-2020-st-peters.md

Christmas Eve 2020

St. Peter’s, Great Falls, SC

Incarnation as God’s remedy to great need.

There is an ancient tradition, from the earliest centuries of Christianity, that the sin and brokenness of the world as we know it was of such a weight, such a consequence, so much a burden, that the only remedy God had was to send His Son – the Incarnation.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. … Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.

So we read from the opening of John’s Gospel. It’s the appointed gospel reading for Christmas morning.

The need for the Incarnation was very great. And in response to the great need that we presented, God made the Word to become flesh. That’s what the word incarnation.

Great need

We’ve become accustomed to great need this past year. There was a great need for treatment of Covid-19. A great need for a vaccine against it. A great need for a remedy to the economic catastrophe that has been slowly unfolding as a result of the pandemic. A great need for the economic catastrophe rolling across rural America. A great need for the global catastrophe more slowly but more universally rolling across the globe. A great need in houses, in neighborhoods, in living rooms, and in homeless shelters, in hospitals overwhelmed, in the hungry, the sick, the dying, … and the list goes on.

This year of our Lord, 2020, has brought us many things that are not happy events. It has brought us need in immeasurable ways. It leaves us with a strong and vivid sense of our need for remedies.

The need …

• for hope
• for the ability to overcome evil
• for life in the face of the onslaught of aging and disease
• for love in a world that seems to honor avarice and selfishness

“The need is very great” – we can feel it in our bones. We can surely relate to it.

And God said, “I hear you. And I’m sending you Jesus – my beloved son.” Christmas – what brings us together tonight – is our celebration of the great remedy from God – the Incarnation.

The great story

The bidding prayer we heard at the beginning of tonight’s liturgy is written as an introduction and invitation to hearing the great story that we as Christians have to tell. I used it last year to introduce a reading from a very abbreviated retelling of the whole biblical story. Tonight I have not included even an abbreviated version. We’ll have to leave what I left out to a “between the lines” sort of story, listening for the story behind the words.

Last year’s version began “Once upon a time”, and it ended “The prince and princess get married and live happily ever after.”

For decades since I first heard that version I have thought that it was profoundly true to the spirit of the biblical story.

In just the last weeks I have heard another phrase that captures much of our story as well. It comes from the oldest epic poem that we have – at least the oldest that was written down. (Gilgamesh)

It is an old story
But one that can still be told
About a man who loved
And lost a friend to death …

The story we have to tell is an old, old story. But it’s always new. It’s about a great need and an even greater remedy. It’s an old story, but it can still be told because it is true and vast and important. It is the Christmas story.

Music

This year, for me, it was listening to Christmas music that opened up the story. I wasn’t hearing the remedy, God’s gift to us, until I listened over and over again to the music of the season, in preparation for tonight. It inspired me to try to provide some bit of echo of the music of Christmas for us tonight.

Is it nostalgia? Is it a desire for “normalcy” ? These are powerful enough for us this Christmas the year of our Lord 2020. Yes, but it is so much more.

The time is coming – and soon will be – when the pathways will be made straight. When hope will not just be possible but visible and tangible.

4 Every valley must be elevated and every mountain and hill leveled. The rough terrain will become a level plain, the rugged landscape a wide valley. 5 The splendor of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it at the same time. For the Lord has decreed it.” (Isaiah 40)

Hope for the remedy is well founded. The remedy is at hand. God is with us. Immanuel.

Blessed Christmas to one an all.

proper-18-2020-our-saviour.md

September 6, 2020: Ordinary Time, Proper 18

Opening

It is good to be back with you at The Church of Our Saviour. Last time I met with you – you still looked like a computer screen. And here we are, back at the computer screen. But it’s about to change, isn’t it? Next week a new chapter is being forged as you return to modified in-person worship.

It will be an exciting and adventurous time. An important time. You will be discovering a new way to be church, even as you seek to return to what you used to do. It will be the same, but different. It will provide unexpected experiences and spawn new hopes. “Faith, hope, and love abide – but the greatest of these is love.”

We gather today on Labor Day weekend. Again, it’s not like any Labor Day weekend I have known. But that can be a serendipitous thing. To be unique. To be unlike anything we’ve known.

Labor day, a day for parades and barbecues. Family gatherings and one last trip to the beach. But mostly that’s not what this Labor Day is going to be like.

All of the best discoveries of my life have been unlike anything I’ve known. Sights that I’ve seen. Mountains I’ve climbed. People I’ve met. Accomplishments I’ve enjoyed. Disappointments that have brought out my inner strength. They’ve all occurred from what was unexpected combined with some kind of openness to Grace.

So, a unique Labor Day. Just knowing that led me to Google “Labor Day.” One thing surprised me. It was that while most of the world observes “Labor Day”, most of the world observes it on May 1^st. It turns out that it’s another one of those arenas where most of the world is doing one thing but the US does something different, the most dramatic is the metric system. “Only three countries – the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar – still (mostly or officially) stick to the imperial system.”

Most of the world doesn’t follow the US pattern of keeping students away from school for months at a time. So, in education we’re an outlier.

Labor Day the outlier. Labor Day, the last Sunday before new beginnings. It really leads me to my knees before the Scripture of the day.

Scripture today

Today we hear about uniqueness. About a time like no other. A time established that will be for a memorial for the rest of the ages. We hear of the Exodus account of the observance of the first Passover.

And today we hear from Matthew’s gospel about how the smallest gathering there can be, the most seemingly inconsequential gathering in Jesus’ name, is sufficient to bring the presence of the Lord of heaven and earth, the king of Glory, the prince of peace.

Amazing, don’t you think?

As if the scripture for today points right to this moment in which we find ourselves, a unique moment in the life of our church, a day like no other, when the gathering we anticipate will be far smaller and more modest than we had hoped.

But we anticipate the very presence of God.

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.

Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough–you are, in fact, without yeast. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (1 Co. 5:7, NET Bible)

2 or 3 gathered in his name and he will be in the midst of them. So he says in Matthew 18. Christ. Passover lamb. Community gathered. Scripture is telling us something here.

What is God speaking to us?

One of my professors at seminary, oh so many years ago, would repeat over and over again one of those sound bytes that is true throughout the ages. Prof. Petersen would say, "Where 2 or 3 are gathered together – (and then he would pause, for a long time if needed, to give us time to speak the words we have heard in today’s reading) – and then he would add, “no, there you will have politics.”

This strange new world we are living into seems so permeated by politics. It is even more jarring than it was in 1980 when I was in the middle of seminary. Politics – the thing that we experience as dividing us so profoundly and we see no way out? What is God telling us today?

My teacher meant by his mantra that politics is not some all-powerful brew. It is simply the thing that happens between human beings whenever 2 or 3 come together. 2 or 3. That’s the smallest community there is. Even in the smallest community he said, you would find stuff of which politics is made. It’s made up of all that makes us human: language, emotions, delight, wonder, surprise, sadness, grief, hope, love … The list goes on and on. That’s what community is made of. And politics is made up of all those things.

Community. The human community.

In the late 80’s I was living in one of the old suburban churches in South Bend/Mishawaka, Indiana. We elected a bishop then. And on his first visit to that church where I was living, St. Paul’s, he told a story that I will never forget.

The story began in the Philippines during the 2^nd world war. His father was a missionary priest there when the war broke out and with the collapse of the US presence there many Americans were placed in interment camps. Frank Gray’s father and family were among them. His father continued his missionary work with the community around him for years until eventually the war was at an end and they were to be returned to the mainland.

The now Bp. Gray told this story in such a way that we were drawn into the presence of it. He described taking a ship to San Francisco, boarding a train (I’ve been on that train) bound for Chicago. Another short train ride to South Bend and the family disembarked and made straightway to the church and home of his grandfather – the Bishop of Northern Indiana. The church and the residence were none other than the St. Paul’s where I was living and we were all listening to his talk.

Frank Gray explained, slowing down for emphasis, that as he walked through the front doors of St. Paul’s, he was suddenly surprised by his first experience of “Church” as building. Up to that point in his life “Church” was people gathered. 2 or 3. Maybe more.

Community.

Passover. Our first reading today from Exodus. Passover is essentially a community event. It makes no sense as an individual thing because the one thing it requires is the telling of the story. The telling of the Exodus and deliverance by God. Unless you’re telling yourself a story, it requires a community. Whether it’s Passover in a magnificent palace or temple, or Passover in a barracks at Auschwitz, Passover is a community event where God is present.

Community. That’s what you have been. That’s what you shall be. However small you may be as you gather in this building for the first time in months – it will be sufficient. It will be just enough that the God of creation, the Lord of all, the Prince of Peace will show up.

So much for a community that is small. What I especially hear the Spirit telling us today, telling us about community, is that our perception of the size of community is far too small. If the Lord of the universe sees fit to show up for our tiny communities, then we must begin to expand our notion of what community is.

It is not those gathered around this church – even if it is the oldest in Rock Hill. Community is bigger than this city. It is bigger than this state. It is bigger than this country. It is bigger than all the places that use the metric system. It is big enough to hold all of humanity in its arms.

“He’s got the whole world, in his hands.” The spirit is telling us today that we need to sing that song and sing it loud enough that the whole world will see and know that Jesus is Lord – of all.

Notes

Lectionary

• Exodus 12
• Matthew 18

proper-7-2020.md

June 21, Third Sunday after Pentecost

(Proper 7): – Church of Our Saviour

Intractable difficulty of the gospel passage

The other day I was talking with the priest of another congregation about preaching on Trinity Sunday – which we observed two weeks ago. He said, “It’s one of those days in the year when you make a determined effort to find someone else to preach.”

Today’s Gospel passage presents another one of those kind of days. Really, if anybody finds the passage obvious or easy to grapple with I would welcome them to replace me.

Unfortunately, either they didn’t get in touch with me or I failed to reach out to the right people. Here I am.

First of all, this talk about a slave not being above a master – sounds too much like the pro-slavery arguments that have been wrested from the Bible for centuries. It makes me uncomfortable from the start.

The world-wide demonstrations that have been occurring these past few weeks makes me especially uncomfortable.

There’s a litany-like series of sayings from Jesus’ mouth that are breath-taking but also problematic to take literally:

• Nothing covered that won’t be revealed … – whoa, what does that mean?
• Fear – those who can kill the body and the soul
• Threat of: “whoever denies me …”
• Litany of how Jesus has not come to bring peace, has not come to reinforce the family – but perhaps to tear it apart. Set sons & daughters against fathers and mothers.
• Love mother and father over Jesus? …
• Finally the most straightforward thing: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

That’s not terribly comforting once you realize that for most of my life I’ve been on the side of those trying to find my life.

Jesus’ words are troubling, difficult to take at face value

“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

What does it all mean? What are we to make of it all?

Shall we just say that they add up to emphasizing that it is dangerous to follow Jesus? That if we are being faithful we will be persecuted?

Do we just pursue allegories and metaphors that allow us to skirt the biting nature of the passage?

One approach uses Clarence Jordan’s work to look for answers – the task is to move us out of our comfort zone. What seems familiar – what we think we know and take for granted – may well be deceptive.

Just to be clear: [the year is] 1942. You may be familiar with Jordan through his Cotton Patch translations of the New Testament or because the Habitat for Humanity movement originated from the Koinonia Farm.

[ … ] Jordan’s heroism comes through in his sense of humor. Once accused of fraternizing with Myles Horton, a reputed communist, Jordan retorted, “I really have trouble with your logic. I don’t think my talking to Myles Horton makes me a Communist any more than talking to you right now makes me a jackass.”

Likewise, when the Koinonia community tried selling peanuts from a roadside stand the Ku Klux Klan dynamited the stand. Stubborn like most saints for justice, Jordan put up another stand. It got blown up too. Finally, the Koinonia Farm resorted to mail-order ads: “Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia.” [Clarence Jordan](http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx commentary_id=99)

I kept looking for other ways to enter into the passage. Somewhat surprisingly I found it by way of association with Father’s Day.

Fathers

Over the years I have not often focused on secular holidays. For one reason or another in Hawai’i I was often not preaching on Father’s Day – wasn’t preaching on this day in the lectionary cycle.

The cultural association with fathers follows a kind of fickle path – or maybe I’m just aware of the complex path of my relationship with my father. My relationship has included:

• idolizing him
• rebelling against him
• just being angry with him
• spending decades trying to earn his acceptance
• beginning to find a peace with him only after he died

Our culture has known a variety of attitudes towards fathers:

• When I was a child there were shows like Father knows best
• Then there were decades of fathers being portrayed as bumbling, self-centered, fools
• Currently, the TV series, This is us, has shown a nuanced portrait of a father who knows how to love, is flawed, worshiped, and idolized.

The figure of Abraham as we heard last week would become the father of many nations. The traditional term is Patriarch. It’s just Latin for “head-father”. We heard about Abraham and his wife, Sarah, and their promised son, Isaac.

This week Abraham’s relationship to women gains a spotlight. We only get a tiny snapshot, but the whole picture is huge.

The saga of Abraham in addition to his wife, Sarah, has a vital role for Sarah’s servant and slave, Hagar. And her son Ishmael.

These two took on a prominence in the Quran and related early Muslim literature. They play a role in the striking importance of the 2nd born in the Bible. Ishmael, you see, was Abraham’s 1st born son.

Hagar has a relationship with God that in some striking ways is closer and more intimate than any other person in the Hebrew Scriptures, certainly in Genesis.

Abraham is a father who binds us together in all our diversity. He is flawed, far from perfect, but a father who links together a great disparate family – the human family.

Abraham

Abraham is the father who provides me with insight in today’s Gospel.

Abraham makes it clear to us that we live by God’s gracious gifts not by virtues that we are able to muster.

Abraham calls us to a unity that seems so difficult for us. How is it that we prefer division, and house divided against itself? Abraham wept over the pain and division that he effected and he became the father of many nations.

I’m reminded of the old Jewish story about Adam. The student asks the rabbi, “Why did God create humanity from just one man?” The rabbi answers, “It was so that no one would ever be able to say, ‘My father is better than your father.’”

Abraham is the first of the patriarchs. Yes, father fought against son, brothers against brothers, and on an on it goes.

But in the end there is only one father, one “Abba”.

I place myself in the camp that says Abraham is the father that binds us together

Abraham has provided another lesson for me over the years. It encourages me to look deeper, to take a second, third, and fourth look. It encourages me not to rest on my assumptions. Abraham call us to look again –

You see, after years of reading the Old Testament, years of teaching from and about the Old Testament, it was only about 15 years ago that I was stumped by a question that came from somewhere. It could have been a Jeopardy ® question. “Who was Abraham’s second wife?”

Sure enough, I looked, and there it was in Genesis 25. Her name was Keturah. There are only 2 brief mentions in the Bible about her. But there it is. Something I didn’t know was there, would not have predicted, but real enough.

There are so many things like that in our lives.

Abraham can remind us that what we assume is true may not be so. We owe it to ourselves to look again, a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time.

When we look again and again, the teaching of Jesus in today’s readings are about life-giving qualities of the Kingdom.

I put myself in the camp that understands Jesus’ words to –

• demand “Costly Grace”,
• demand accountability for the betrayals and failures we are prone to,
• knowing that the promise of “Abba” father will bring us to life in the end

It’s about New Eyes to see

With Abraham, I thought I knew what the story was about. From a young age I had heard the stories. I read the Bible as an adult. I taught the Bible as a priest. Yet it was a random question that caused me to cast out my preconceptions and assumptions, and to look deeper.

Not hearing or seeing what was there all along, I had missed the vital role of Hagar. The first woman to be on – as it were – a first name basis with God. She bore Abraham’s first child. God promised her in ways very similar to what God had promised Abraham. Hagar and her son are important. And their real prominence is only experienced in Islam.

Slavery and deliverance from slavery is an essential part of her story. The experience of being cast away, nearing death in the desert, and then fed and nurtured by God, these are a part of her story.

And she shares them with Jesus. It would seem we are called to follow in the footsteps.

Abraham leads me to be cautious about my own assumptions. And Abraham shows me that God makes straight lines out of our crooked scratching and wanderings.

Abraham leads me to a new way of seeing the Gospel itself.

In the kingdom, Discipleship is costly – Cheap Grace is no longer cost-effective. Gone are the days when faith was a comfortable affair – in my lifetime I have known many for whom their Christian faith was primarily an unchanging comfort zone. Bonhoeffer’s faith-filled confrontation with the evil culture around him is what gave us the term “cheap grace.” It was Jesus who proclaimed it first.

It really matters what we do or don’t do. Doing nothing is a decision nonetheless. There is accountability in the kingdom.

Great Reversal, that the first shall be last and the last shall be first – is in fact good news to those who recognize that they are but formed from the dirt of the earth, humus, and who know themselves in humility.

Tread lightly and softly as you look around you. Listen for the still small voice as well as the earthquakes. The signs of the times will be your guide, to lead you across the landscape of your calling.
Bless the Fathers.

proper-6-2020.md

June 14, 2020

Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6): – Church of Our Saviour & St. Paul’s

Old story about how “you can’t get there from here.”

Back in the 70’s there was a comedy team that produced a series of comic albums with the title “Bert and I”. They were set in the “down east” part of the country, Maine and environs. There was one story that I have not forgotten – largely because I have retold it from time to time.

A visitor is passing through town and stops to ask for directions. He receives a monologue that goes something like, “Waaall, ye go down here a piece and ya turn right at the big oak tree thaar, and the you go a ways …” After a series of such directions the voice says, “Ya know, come to think of it, you caaan’t get thaar from heeer.”

I thought of that story as I reflected on this week’s scripture readings and the gospel in particular. The church makes a gear shift change between last week and this week. We ended Trinity Sunday at the end of Matthew’s gospel. It is the Great Commission. Jesus has gathered his disciples and sends them out into the world to teach in his name and baptize new disciples and ends with a promise: “I will be with you always, to the end of the age.”

We have followed a cycle of thematic messages that stretches from Thanksgiving to Pentecost – or better, from Advent through the Easter Season, up to Trinity Sunday.

It feels to me something like a symphonic piece where the orchestra works through a basic theme, with different instruments, different modulations, and so on. We have traveled from birth to inauguration of the work of the Messiah up through his final death scene and ultimate deliverance – that scene we saw last week where Jesus returns to a mountain top scene and delivers the great commission.

Today we begin a season of messages that lasts until Thanksgiving. It is in the most general way about mission, about Jesus’ mission, beginning in Nazareth. We follow for some months now, Jesus’ own ministry.

The general lesson for us is that we should follow in his footsteps, that his ministry is our ministry.

If we are sent on a mission, it is appropriate that we be com-missioned.

As I understood that commissioning, we are sent as a community, all of us together. We are not to divide ourselves between those who have it figured out and those who don’t, between those who are poor and those who are powerful, between those who are despised and those who have millions of followers on Twitter.

That gets me back round to where I started. With the story about how do we get to where we’re going? Can we get there going the route we’re on?

We thought we knew where we were going

For centuries we have figured we knew what that great commissioning was for.

It explained how it was that a rag-tag group of Jesus’ followers turned into a world religion.

We just understood that that Great Commission was about spreading the word of Christ – as understood by those who were spreading it – to those who hadn’t heard, didn’t know the word of Christ as we understood it.

It was the basis for colonizing the New World.

Ultimately it was the motivation for sending missionaries to Africa and for growing our churches year by year.

We have focused on numbers, success measured by growth, reaching the unchurched, converting the barbarians, … but I wonder about that story from Bert and I.

What if we couldn’t get to our destination by going on the route we had chosen?

Abraham

I think about how our first reading today and I wonder if it can give us clues about we go about this mission for which we’ve been commissioned.

The Genesis reading is about a person and a time far removed from Jesus’ time or ours. The person is Abraham. He had been visited by 3 strangers – aliens, some folks not from around here. They had a strange promise from God to pass on to Abraham and Sarah. So strange they couldn’t really take it seriously. Sarah laughed.

But Abraham opened himself to the promise because he welcomed those strangers into his tent. He offered them hospitality, though he had no idea what it was all about. He just knew that’s what he had to do.

The promise from God delivered by those 3 strangers was that Abraham and Sarah would have a son and through them their offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, the grains of sand on the beach.

I guess that’s in part where we got the notion that our Great Commission is to increase our numbers.

My first important lessons about Middle-eastern hospitality came from my Old Testament professor in seminary. His name was Joseph Hunt. I think of him as a saint – but I won’t make this about him at the moment. He had lived and traveled among the Bedouin in the middle east and when he told stories about the power, the depth, and the importance of hospitality there, we believed him.

Hospitality was a quality of life there which very often meant the difference between life and death. Hospitality was more important than family feuds and war and peace between tribes and nations.

I learned about a similar approach to hospitality from a priest friend who thought that Wyoming was heaven on earth. [Well, there are some things about Wyoming that are pretty amazing – but this is not about Wyoming.] The people of Wyoming are proverbially fiercely independent. They go their own way and don’t treat fools kindly. Their nearest neighbor may live 20-30 miles away. But … there is a kind of fierce hospitality to be found in Wyoming, because the people there know that at any moment their life might depend on that neighbor.

Abraham offered hospitality to 3 strangers because he knew that it might well be strangers who would deliver the promise of God that would tell him where he was supposed to go.

I believe that God is like someone who would offered homemade chicken pot pie to a stranger. That may sound a little strange, but the thought that God would be at work in front of an oven and a stove, preparing a kind of meal for ordinary sorts of people – well that just makes perfect sense to me. I have like chicken pot pies since I was a youth. But I’ve only just learned in the past year that my wife makes the best chicken pot pie in the world. And she shared it with a virtual stranger the other day.

In heaven God serves Chicken Pot Pie – I’m sure of it – to strangers.

Jesus sent the 12 out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He said to go into the houses you meet and if they offer hospitality let God’s promise shine within it. If they don’t offer hospitality – well, just go on.

He commissioned them / us to pass on the good news – the Gospel – so that God’s grace is at hand and anyone witnessing would not want to miss it.

The Great Commission as I hear it is not about numbers, it’s not about balance sheets of some sort or another. It’s not about being the biggest and the best. It’s about recognizing that in 3 strangers from a foreign land may come the best news ever. It’s about embracing a promise that seems far-fetched and beyond anything but laughter – because it might well be God talking to us. Getting to our destination may well be like preparing Chicken Pot Pie.

A churning couple of weeks

These past couple of weeks our country has entered a kind of “George Floyd” moment. Folks that I know have either been unable to turn their eyes away from the news or have been so overwhelmed that they have turned the news off.

We have been commissioned. We, the church, have a mission. To our own country. Abraham’s radical hospitality can give us a clue about how to go about that. He knew that it was in what seemed outlandish and strange that God’s promise might well be found.

² Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13

Abraham received the word of God through the strangers. Jesus’ disciples received it directly from Jesus. In both cases, the mission was to go out to make it known that God’s work of grace was always at work, for healing, for reconciling, for justice among the people. Jesus said:

‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

One of the preachers this past week said that though we struggle and travail, God will prevail. You see he had read the end of the story.

The lion and the lamb lie down together. Isaiah.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Jesus.

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? God to Abraham.

I have heard the message clearly these past few weeks. The destination toward which we travel is clear enough. It is to rest in the hospitality of God – I think of it as accompanied by Chicken Pot Pie.

There may be pain and suffering along the way, but we need one another for the journey. All of us count. None of us has all the answers.

The routes we have taken in the past did not work. They were not going to get us to the destination to which we have been called.

And the profoundly good news is that God will get us there in the end.

And our song is Hallelujah, Anyhow.

Notes

• lectionary – Proper 6
• Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7) & Ps. 100
• or Exodus 19:2-8 & Ps. 116:1,10-17
• Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35—10:8,(9-23)

Abraham, Oaks of Mamre, promise, hospitality for 3 men, Sarah laughing, bore a son

justified by faith, while we still were sinners Christ died for us

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. … See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. … ” you will be persecuted

george-floyd-6-1-20.md

June 1, 2020

Minneapolis police chief says all four officers involved in George Floyd’s death bear responsibility - CNN

CNN report

As we tape this liturgy for broadcast in 6 days, we have no idea where the world is going to be. But we do know today that people from around the world have come together in solidarity to stand against the betrayal and injustice that was perpetrated on George Floyd last week.

The chief of police in Minneapolis said, “Mr. Floyd died in our hands and so I see that as being complicit,” Chief Medaria Arradondo told CNN’s Sara Sidner. “Silence and inaction, you’re complicit. If there was one solitary voice that would have intervened … that’s what I would have hoped for.”

Police officers around the world have knelt in solidarity with protesters. In a separate interview Sunday night, another police chief, this time from Floyd’s hometown, stood in solidarity.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told CNN he wants his department to provide escort services when George Floyd’s body returns to the city for his burial.

In my sermon for Trinity Sunday I take a perspective that is very broad — as if looking at the earth from the space station — and say that the time for division is past. Here, today, with my one small voice, I say, “The time when such injustice was ok is past.” Amos the prophet, thousands of years ago, said the same thing, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (5:24)

trinity-sunday-2020-monroe.md

June 7, Trinity Sunday: – Monroe

Celebrating a “doctrine” –

This is an unusual day in the Christian calendar. A day for celebrating and focusing on a “doctrine”, a “concept.” In the whole history of Christianity there are a few others, but none with the prominence of the feast of Trinity, occurring on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. It has been observed in its present form at least since the 14th c.

In the church calendar we usually focus on persons – Jesus, of course, mainly; disciples; Mary; Paul; present-day witnesses and saints … the impact of our faith on us – but on this day – our focus is on a doctrine.

For many people it’s not easy to get excited about a doctrine. There is a pretty long and deep tradition to distrust rational doctrines and to prefer the personal, that which you can touch or feel.

As an illustration of that, I had a parishioner at my church in Michigan City who was at first perplexed by the doctrine of the Trinity. Then, ultimately she was put off by the logic and rationality of it. She firmly believed in God. She had a sense of who and what Jesus was and even the Resurrected Jesus living today. But to proclaim a “three in one” as somehow vital to being a Christian seemed bizarre to her.

She was exceptionally good with children and I was really glad to have her in the church. But ultimately she decided to leave because the doctrine of the Trinity just didn’t work for her.

The Doctrine itself

The doctrine grew out of a need to try to find words, to understand, to proclaim – the relationship between Jesus and God. Christians began to separate from Judaism because Jesus had touched them – you can read the record of that in the New Testament. The power, the grace, holiness of this person Jesus somehow had to be explained in relation to the holiness, the grace, the power of God. What the church came up with was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity.

Clearly the Trinity gets at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. But what are we to make of it?

The creed

The creed, whether it is the baptismal creed we used last week or the Nicene Creed we use this week – is Trinitarian in structure. The sign of the cross is by tradition accompanied with the words: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Baptism is: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

One major strand of the theology of the Trinity focuses on the use of the word “persons.” Trinity as: “One God in Three Persons.” This is probably the most familiar logical formula we’re accustomed to.

Without question the most difficult class I took in Graduate School at Notre Dame was a seminar on the Trinity, taught by Catherine Lacugna. ¹

Her magnum opus, God for us : the Trinity and Christian life, seeks to move our appreciation and understanding of the doctrine away from a rational and logical argument and to make it possible to experience the Trinity through our own personal experience of salvation through Jesus.

I’m not sure how much better I understood the doctrine of the Trinity after taking her course. I said last week that after all these years I don’t really understand the meaning of baptism better than I did in my youthful attempts to live up to the expectations of being a Christian. It’s been a lifetime for me of trying to live into the meaning of baptism. That is no less true of the Trinity.

I make the sign of the cross in the name of the Trinity. And I pray every day, utilizing the language and even I might say the shape of the Trinity. Do I understand it? I’m working at being a Trinitarian Christian. I’m certainly not arrived.

Possibly the best way to say what I’m trying to say here is through the words of an African missionary by the name of Vincent Donovan.

In a classic work (Christianity Rediscovered), he tells his story of being a missioner in Africa and about what he learned of God among the Masai of Tanzania.

As I was nearing the end of the evangelization of the first six Masai communities, I began looking towards baptism. So I went to the old man Ndangoya’s community to prepare them for the final step.

I told them I had finished the imparting of the Christian message inasmuch as I could. I had taught them everything I knew about Christianity. Now it was up to them. They could reject it or accept it. I could do no more. If they did accept it, of course, it required public baptism. So I would go away for a week or so and give them the opportunity to make their judgment on the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they did accept it, then there would be baptism. However, baptism wasn’t automatic. Over the course of the year it had taken me to instruct them, I had gotten to know them very well indeed.

So I stood in front of the assembled community and began: “This old man sitting here has missed too many of our instruction meetings. He was always out herding cattle. He will not be baptized with the rest. These two on the side will be baptized because they always attended, and understood very well what we talked about. So did this young mother. She will be baptized. But that man there has obviously not understood the instructions. And that lady there has scarcely believed the gospel message. They cannot be baptized. And this warrior has not shown enough effort…”

The old man, Ndangova, stopped me politely but firmly, “Padri, why are you trying to break us up and separate us? During this whole year that you have been teaching us, we have talked about these things when you were not here, at night around the fire. Yes, there have been lazy ones in this community, but they have been helped by those with much energy. There are stupid ones in the community, but they have been helped by those who arc intelligent. Yes, there are ones with little faith in this village, bur they have been helped by those with much faith. Would you turn out and drive off the lazy ones and the ones with little faith and the stupid ones? From the first day I have spoken for these people. And I speak for them now. Now, on this day one year later, I can declare for them and for all this community, that we have reached the step in our lives where we can say, ‘We believe.’”—Vincent Donovan, from Christianity Rediscovered

For Donovan, this story illustrates why the faith we are living into as Christians is not an individual sort of thing. It is not, as many have been taught, just about an individual’s relationship to God. Our faith is a communitarian faith. It is a community built on and with Love. It is our basic experience of the one God – a community: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Believing vs. Doing

For centuries in the early centuries of the church a right understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity was the determining characteristic of whether one was on the right side of things. It was called orthodoxy. Orthodoxy was the thing that determined whether you were in the right party, on the right side of things. It never should have come down to that.

A way to understand this is as follows:

The earliest Christians experienced a new and powerful relationship with God through Jesus. It changed their lives. For centuries people could point to Christians as say, “See, he or she is one of them!” because of the lives they lived. It was the changed lives and the new and deeper experience of the Love of God that made these Christians distinctive.

Jesus, as we meet him in the New Testament, did not travel around Judea asking people if they believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He didn’t ask them, “What do you believe?” No, he said things like:

^{Matt 22:37} “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

Divide vs. Bring together

It is the Trinity that is distinctive about Christianity. Baptism is incorporation into that Trinitarian community. One God is bound together in the love of three persons. The baptismal community is identified as a community of love.

We have had enough of focusing on what divides us. It is time to stake our lives on what binds us together. There is nothing that does that better than the Living God, creator of all that is and that shall be.

What makes us Christian is the evidence that others see that Christians “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.” Where it is abundantly clear that Christians “strive for justice and peace among all
people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

It is the Living God who binds us together as one. The doctrine of the Trinity has the potential to overturn centuries of division and alienation – in the church, in our societies, in the human family that has been plagued with violence and slavery. Our baptismal faith as a Trinitarian faith has the potential to be transforming and unifying. It is time.

I dream of a time when the people of our land will look at a group of folks who bind up the broken hearted and who see common humanity where others see us vs. them – will look at this group of folks and say, “They must be Christians.”

We’re not there yet. Trinity Sunday can serve to beckon us to the reality St. Francis saw in his prayer:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy.

We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way, Lord. Thanks be to God.

Notes

lectionary

References

“Understanding the Trinity through the lens of love” Jun 23, 2011 by Thomas Gumbleton

“Trinity as Source, Word, and Spirit of Love: Relationship as Core of Reality” by Heidi Russell – LCWR National Assembly – August 9, 2018

---

1. Dale Hathaway’s note: The emergence and defeat of the doctrine of the Trinity. God’s economy revealed in Christ and the Holy Spirit ; The Cappadocian theology of divine relations ; Augustine and the Trinitarian economy of the soul ; Christian prayer and Trinitarian faith ; Thomas Aquinas’ theology of the Trinity ; The teaching of Gregory Palamas on God. Re-conceiving the doctrine of the Trinity in light of the mystery of salvation. The self-communication of God in Christ and the Spirit ; Persons in communion ; Trinity, theology and doxology ; Living Trinitarian faith. National Library of Australia ↩︎

pentecost-2020-monroe.md

May 31, The Day of Pentecost – Monroe

Whitsunday: white clothes of Pentecost.

In the BCP the collect for this day is titled: The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday

I first heard about the source of “Whit” in “Whitsunday” when my youngest children were being born.

Several different interpretations have been offered through the years. The title goes back many centuries. The first explanation I heard was that it had to do with the nasty weather in Britain in the months of March and April. Looking back many centuries before that, the custom was that Baptisms were most appropriately done on Easter. They usually included some form of taking your old clothes off and putting new clothes – after you had been dunked in water. By the middle ages baptisms were usually of infants, who might be unhappy with being dunked into the frigid water in the font. It might even be dangerous.

Since the next most advantageous time for baptism was the end of the Easter season – Pentecost – baptisms in Britain were often delayed for 50 days until the Feast of Pentecost. Now the norm, again, going back millenia, had been that when you came out of the water, having shed your old clothes and been washed in the water of baptism, you would be dressed in white garments. White – thus “White-Sunday” or “Whitsunday.”

Apparently there’s a competing explanation that attributes the “Whit” of “Whitsunday” to a form of the word “wit” – as in e.g. “the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain”. 500 years ago the word “wit” meant “knowledge.” Now, what happens on Pentecost? The knowledge and wisdom of the Holy Spirit is spread upon the newly formed church – the fuel that has run the church ever since. link here

Transition

Life is marked by change. Transitions are inherent in being alive. If you’re not changing you’re dead.

There was a transition for Jesus from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. There was a transition from Good Friday to Easter – Crucifixion to Resurrection. Ascension-tide – we’ve been in that since the feast of Ascension – marks another transition. Pentecost marks the time – well, the time for Christians that is “the rest of the story.” Pentecost and after is everything that happens after the infusion of the Spirit into the Church – all who would be followers of Jesus.

I thought about a memorable scene in episode 1 of the TV series “This is us.”

When Dr. K gave us the “sourest lemon” speech that Kate, Kevin, and Randall still quote.

• “I like to think that one day you’ll be an old man like me talking a young man’s ear off explaining to him how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade. If you can do that, then maybe you will still be taking three babies home from this hospital, just maybe not the way you planned.”
• He forged their family with just two sentences.

It’s a foundational scene. In these few words much of the foundation of everything that follows is established. It’s established on a gift. That there is a gift is totally unexpected. The gift is life. Pentecost. This is us. It’s important.

Owen’s baptism:

In some ways much of my adult life has been formed by the feast of Pentecost. Clearly one of the most important events for me was the birth of my first born. Easter that year was Sunday, April 10, 1977. He was born May 11.

I was learning about what was expected of a Christian in those days and I had been taught that Easter was the appropriate time for baptism. I didn’t really understand what baptism was or what it meant.

• As an aside, I’d like to say that now that I’m older, I still don’t understand what baptism is or what it means. I know a lot of things about it – I’ve taught classes on it – but there is far more that I don’t know than that I do know. In fact it seems appropriate that the ancient church called it a mysterium.

It seems clear to me that the notion that the sacraments – baptism in particular – ought only be celebrated when we know what they mean – is ludicrous. Being born into new life in the power of the Spirit – that is a great mystery.

And it is Pentecost.

My oldest, Owen, was born a month too late to be baptized on Easter. A Pentecost baptism was the next best. So that’s what we did.

For various reasons, as it turned out, all the rest of my children were baptized on Pentecost. It started out as a kind of lemonade made from sour lemons. And it ended up being foundational, life-giving, all-important.

• By the time of my 2nd son, Julian I was determined that he would be baptized by the most appropriate method – dunking. He did training as a 4-month old by swimming in the bathtub. He was thrust under the waters of baptism and in some ways his was the most perfect. But it’s not really about the technique – is it – it’s about the Spirit.
• Miriam was next. She would follow in the footsteps of her big brother. She was older because she was born in the fall. We had to find the right size and shape of tub for her.
• By the time Lydia was set to be baptized on Pentecost, I was rector – I had more of a say in how things were going to go. But what I wanted was to make such a case before the congregation that they would recognize that this was the way to do baptism.
• The last, Emma. By then the pattern was established. And by then the congregation was beginning to get it – adults were coming to me asking, Would you do that for me?
• Ultimately the pattern established back when I was young would be celebrated in its fullest form with the baptism by immersion of a child in Honolulu. I was older. The child was a miracle in hundreds of different ways. We baptized him in a tub. And it poured down rain on us, just as we were getting into the water.
• Isaiah: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mAR3uUaAuPx8BPuB6
  

Pentecost

From Leonard Bernstein’s Mass

• For the Word created mud and got it going,
  it filled our empty brains with blood and set it flowing,
  and for thousands of regimes
  it’s endured all our follies and fancy schemes.
  It’s been tough, and yet it seems to be growing!
  O you people of power,
  your hour is now.
  You may plan to rule forever, but you never do somehow!
  So we wait in silent treason until reason is restored,
  and we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord.

The gift of the Spirit got it going in the beginning. The Pentecostal fire has been burning for so long – but we still desperately need the heat and energy. If Pentecost brings us “wit and wisdom” – all too often it’s in short supply. We need Pentecost. If it’s new life and a fresh clean white start – bring it on, for we need it.

Pentecost is vital in the life of the church. It’s promise is vital for the world we live in. And each of us lives because He lives in us.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Notes

lectionary

• Acts 2
• 1 CO 12: one body from many, gifts of the Holy Spirit
• John 20 or John 7

easter-7-2020-monroe.md

May 24:The Seventh Sunday of Easter:

The Sunday after the Ascension – Monroe

Ascension was last Thursday

It was the day we scheduled to record this our community celebration of the 6th week of Easter. One day revolving and emerging as another day, each linked and urging us into the presence of God.

Psalm 19

Heaven is declaring God’s glory;
the sky is proclaiming his handiwork.
² One day gushes the news to the next,
and one night informs another what needs to be known.

It is the Sunday between the feast of the Ascension and the feast of Pentecost. Ascension Day occuring on the 40th day of Easter. Pentecost occuring on the 50th day after Easter.

In another week, on Pentecost, we will observe a Week of weeks. That’s the magic of the 50 in the name of Pentecost.

The Christian festival of Pentecost is derived from the older and original Jewish feast of weeks. The week of weeks. In their case 50 days after Passover.

For me, this weaving of weavings of days and weeks, numbers and multiples of numbers, a feast deriving from the Exodus from Egypt woven and transformed into a feast of the Resurrection – for me – these are exciting and inviting messages and signs.

Today

Today we celebrate the presence of the Living God. Our masks don’t cause the Living God a moment’s pause.

Psalm 42

⁷ Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
⁸ By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.

Today we are here because Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead – today and tomorrow. Though we may be experiencing anxiety, or frustration, or fear, or excitement – This is the day the Lord has made.

The presence we mark today is sacred. Today is sacred. It is sacred because God has acted in it.

We live in a sacred time.

Standing on Holy Ground

Again this week I heard a particular song, repeated over and over. And it’s not just the music or the words that I heard repeated.

It’s the events, the moments, the places, the occasions – at which I have listened to the song and wept. The name of the song is Holy Ground. I read to you a few of the lines:

When I walked through the doors I sensed God’s presence
When I knew this was a place where love abounds
…
And we are standing in His presence on holy ground
…
For I know that there are angels all around
…
For we are standing in His presence on holy ground
…

I first heard the song in the 1990’s. It was introduced to me by a musician I didn’t think of as particularly holy or particularly charismatic.

But I knew that he had experienced the presence of the living God. And I thought of that this week, anticipating being here, recording this liturgy with a mask on, on a day which wasn’t the day we were observing, celebrating in a manner that we wouldn’t have chosen, marking the time as recorded in Luke’s gospel and Luke’s Acts of the Apostles when Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

Mark an “absence”?

The church has utilized Luke’s texts in its observance of Ascension and the Pentecostal flames marking the arrival of the Holy Spirit. The end of Luke’s gospel reads: “He led them out as far as Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them. As he blessed them, he left them and was taken up to heaven.”

In the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke, he describes with greater detail, a period of 40 days when Jesus appeared to his disciples. Then, “as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

For all of my life – and in fact for centuries and millenia – Ascensiontide commemorated a new kind of absence that began – according to Luke’s account – 40 days after the Resurrection.

I have preached about the new kind of absence that Ascension brought – with intention, of course, of proclaiming the new presence ushered in by the Holy Spirit.

Preaching on the absence becoming a presence. But not today.

It seemed to me that today, at this time, in this place, there isn’t room to preach on absence. We don’t proclaim the absence of Christ. We proclaim Christ is Risen. Alleluia.

Sacred / Profane

The time and place we live in can be experienced by some as an absence. Discourse in our country is being driven in the direction of freedom and liberty to do what we want. We rail against being prevented from this or that.

Quarantine is described as a privation, as a keeping apart.

Absence. Absence of the things we have grown to accustomed to. Absence of the fullness we want.

Sacred Presence

It seems to me that the gospel we preach is something different from the message of absence or lack that what we see and hear around us.

What we preach is the power and the life of the living God, all around us, especially in the challenging times, especially when we don’t feel it or see it.

As I pray here in this place I can look out at the absence around me. Pews are empty. I don’t see or hear the kind of feedback I am accustomed to in a gathering of Christians. I hear silence when I am accustomed to laughter and smiles, voices lifted up in song.

It’s tempting to focus on the absence. But I won’t do it.

We are standing on Holy Ground. It is in this silence that the living God rushes in. We preach not an absence but the fullness of God.

Presence of God

In both of his books, the author of Luke and Acts addresses someone named Theophilos. Perhaps that was a real person. Perhaps it is a kind of metaphor for all those who would come to know the presence of the living God. Literally, in the Greek, it means “Lover of God.”

The gospel is addressed to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear the living God in our midst. The gospel is addressed not to those who experience the absence but to those who bask in the presence of the living God.

If we are to perceive that “One day gushes the news to the next, and one night informs another what needs to be known” then we must listen and look closely.

When “Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your God’s cataracts” we must be ready to recognize the living God. It’s not about the deep and it’s not about the cataracts – it’s about the living God.

The Presence of God isn’t built on peacefulness and quiet. Peacefulness – shalom – is the product of the Presence.

The presence of God is not built on pleasant feelings. A feeling of gladness is the product of Presence.

Ascensiontide marks the anticipation of a fullness that awaits – but it’s not the fullness itself.

The Holy Spirit is the anticipation. It is the fullness. We wait in what may feel like an absence – for the presence of the Living God.

Notes

Lectionary for Sunday and also lectionary for Ascension

easter-5-2020-monroe.md

Easter 5 – Monroe

Before I say anything more, I want to acknowledge a major secular feast that is marked tomorrow. Mother’s Day. It is a day that has traditionally been observed in churches with a variety of special events. At my church in Hawai’i the equivalent of St. Paul’s “E-males” serenaded the women of the parish. For some time it has seemed to me important to acknowledge the huge range of emotions and memories that are conjured up when we say “Mother.”

There is nostalgia but also anguish. There is celebration as well as sadness. Not all women become or are able to be mothers. I tried my hand at “mothering” for a while in the 1980’s.

What has seemed to bind us all together is the notion that we all have or have had mothers. We pray for our mothers. We pray for Grace and favor. We pray for forgiveness. We give thanks for mothers past and present. Thank you.

The times they are a changin’

I know it evokes Bob Dylan and the 1960’s. But it feels more true to me today than did even then. I spent a good bit of time this past week – along with many many others in the church – reflecting on how the church is going to transition toward opening up our sanctuaries and meeting spaces, our food pantries and our schools.

It seems clear to me that, as in society in general, there will be no return to the way life used to be.

We are going to be changed

As a church, as a people, & as a society we will emerge from this time changed

I don’t know what it’s going to look like. I think that there will be limitations on the numbers allowed into our spaces so that social distancing can be observed. I think communion is going to be different than we have known. I don’t know when the transition is going to happen, but I think it will begin soon.

If we focus on our natural resistance to change – you have heard I’m sure the old adage, “How many [ fill in the blank ] does it take to change a light bulb?” After you respond with, “How many?” the answer is, “Change?” If we focus on our resistance to change it is going to be difficult and painful.

Scripture today invites us to a different response. We can embrace the change because it is light and life.

A song

Once again this week I heard a song as I read these passages from the Bible. It was a song that I used to listen to over and over again, by John Michael Talbot. Today, so many years later, he looks the part of a biblical prophet, long flowing hair and a beard down to his waist, as if he has been alive for centuries. The song is “No longer strangers.” It evokes a vision of a people transformed by the grace of God:

Once you were strangers to the covenant
The promise of God
Born without hope, you were without God
In this world
We once were far off
We have now been brought near

No longer strangers
No longer aliens
Now we are citizens
With the saints
In the kingdom
Of God

Peter’s letter

In the 2nd reading today we hear similar words:
Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation …Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood

A people transformed.

You are a holy priesthood

"Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy."

called to model Jesus

Stephen

From the time I was an adolescent, at a time when this reading came around every year in the Sunday lectionary, I was hit upside the head with the awareness that Stephen was doing and saying what Jesus did and said.

When the time came for my ordination as a deacon, I was the last candidate from Colorado scheduled for ordination on June 2, 1982. There were 7 of us – the same as were ordained deacons that day with Stephen, so many centuries ago. My life changed that day. Some of it I can describe for you. Some of it is so intensely personal I don’t really have words for it. I joined the community that was originally formed by Stephen.

In today’s first reading we hear of the final moments of Stephen’s life. The first martyr for the faith. He took on the life of Jesus so thoroughly that he took on the death with some of the same responses that Jesus himself had shown.

Katie’s book

Mary Pat put into my hands this past week a book, Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful by Katie Davis Majors. The failures, the gaping holes, the woundedness of those who would follow Jesus – the trust required to take one step after another – the hope required to take on the garment of Christ in a broken world – these the author Katie freely acknowledges in her moving account of being a disciple, a missionary in today’s Uganda.

She is following in the footsteps of Stephen.

“Change” – conversion

I once made the claim in a gathering of the local clergy in Honolulu, that the fundamental experience of the Christian is conversion . I made that claim, knowing very well in my heart and head, that I meant something very much more than the conversion preached by many in the conservative evangelical church.

I meant, and intended to explain more fully, that what I meant was the basic process of moving from darkness to light, from futility to life in the fullness of God, that I think is quite explicitly taught in both the Old and New Testaments of our Bible.

I didn’t get the chance to do that, however, because one of my colleagues – a person who later became a good friend – took umbrage at my words. She was angry at what she took to be my faith stance. She didn’t know at the time that our positions were in fact very sympathetic.

I stick by my claim. To be a Christian is to change. We are called to become facsimiles of Jesus himself.

Sir, we would see Jesus

Philip speaks with such emotion and feeling in the 14th chapter of John. “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” As if all the longings of his whole life were reduced to these few words. As if he were saying, “Nothing else much matters. All the riches and knowledge I might have accrued are nothing compared to just a glimpse of God. Let me see.”

And Jesus himself responds with poignance and tenderness – with the kind of patience a loving parent shows day in and day out – “You’ve been with me all this time and you still haven’t got your gimpse? Philip, open your eyes and see .”

The pulpit

I have heard lots of sermons in my life. I think most of you will identify with that statement. Maybe you’ll identify with this: “The vast majority of them were forgotten in a very short time.” Very few of them do I remember for some length of time. One I remember from 35 years ago.

The preacher was a Episcopal priest and Emeritus Professor from Notre Dame. His name was Gerhardt Niemeyer. In time I would recognize that his theology and his approach to life in the church was radically different from my own. Yet I can clearly remember to this day the sermon he preached at St. James Cathedral on today’s text from the gospel of John.

He began it with a story from when he had been invited to preach at an old Lutheran church in his native Germany. He described an elaborate pulpit, enclosed and perched high. One had to climb a circular staircase to enter the pulpit. The day he described in his story he climbed those steps and entered the pupit and immediately latched his eyes on a small card tacked to the inside. No one could see it but the preacher. There in large letters were printed the words: " show us the Father, and we will be satisfied ".

Gerhardt went on to preach the message that all of us are commissioned to reveal to those around us the God and Father of us all. And to none is it more directly commissioned than it is to those called to preach.

I have remembered that message through countless sermons that I have myself preached.

A changed church

As we transition in coming weeks toward a changed church, one thing is clear to me. There is much about what we have been that is of relatively little importance. There are a few things that are of ultimate importance. One of them is the responsibility to reflect the Father to the world around us.

What is it going to look like?

Such a question can serve to guide us as we make decisions on how to be the church in a new, emerging world. It should somehow reflect God the Father. So that people can see.

• radical hospitality
• generosity
• emphasis on abundance of grace, not scarcity. There is enough for all of us.
• delight in creativity
• readiness to restore, heal, and strengthen the most broken and vulnerable

And I could go on and on.

To reflect the Father

Created in the image of God

The first chapter of Genesis glories in a God who creates things, takes delight in what is created, and pronounces it “Good!”

(26) Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.”

What is required of us is that we cooperate with this creator God.

Ready to put on Christ

We shall be courageous enough to become: “a chosen race, 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.”

We must be humble enough to follow in the path that Stephen walked – to walk the walk and talk the talk – that Jesus himself trod.

Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen .

easter-3-2020-monroe.md

April 26:The Third Sunday of Easter

Monroe (Sat 4/25)

Easter continued

We are still in Easter. In fact the Gospel reading is placed on Easter evening. So if you think time is moving in a strange fashion during this time of Corona Virus – you’re absolutely correct.
This episode in the Gospel of Luke – 2 of Jesus’ disciples on the road out of Jerusalem. Outside the city. Not yet to their destination. It is so well-known as to be almost a clichè. For that reason it is a passage that is for me scary to try to preach on.
It is the pattern of readings during Easter that we listen to a series of excerpts from the Acts of the Apostles. As if to say, “Having experienced the Resurrection – now, what are you going to do about it?”
Peter stands up boldly and preaches for all he’s worth. We heard the first part of this sermon last week. He continues. Imagine, if you will, the strongest, boldest, preacher you’ve ever heard or seen. That’s Peter. Next week’s reading tells us the effect of his preaching. The people were in awe. Wonders and signs were being done before their very eyes.

All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds* to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home* and ate their food with glad and generous* hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Peter was a heck of a preacher. That’s what he did in the light of the Resurrection.
We heard from the Epistle of 1 Peter last week and again for 4 more Sundays before we reach Pentecost. In this “epistle” we hear Peter in a letter or even a kind of lecture, a teaching. (Probably another writer, actually, the Greek is too polished to be Peter himself.)

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.* ²³You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God

It’s a more intimate setting than the narrative in Acts. Still very clearly a response to the Resurrection. The basic stuff of being a Christian.

An interesting time to be alive – to be a Christian.

Prine

On April 7, a singer-songwriter I have loved my whole adult life, died in Nashville. He died of Covid-19. But he had lots of underlying health conditions. He had lived a very full life.
I first heard of the singer, John Prine, in the early 1970’s. It was a time when the music I was hearing around me seemed to be nostalgic for the 60’s, somehow replayed, rehashed, but not very good. According to me who, in my 20’s, of course, knew everything there was to know.
I heard him as one bursting on the scene with a new and powerful voice and message. A singer who was real, heartfelt, and he somehow wasn’t going to be put down.
Maybe a little like the way people heard Jesus when he burst on the scene in Jerusalem, leading people like those two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
In one of Prine’s last albums, recorded just a few years ago a song begins:

When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain’t the afterlife grand?

Prine sang about heaven as if he’d seen it, but also as if it was his own to furnish. Most of his characters don’t know what’s good for them. They drink and smoke until their organs fail. They go when they should stay and stay when they should go. They’re well-meaning but mostly directionless.¹
It’s as simple as that. It’s not complicated. Two guys walking along the road, sharing gossip about the unusual things going on in the city. Two guys looking a lot like you and me. Eager to hear a new voice. But not quite ready, yet, to hear the heavenly words they were about to hear.
As if they said to one another, “A heaven where the likes of you and me get in. Wouldn’t that be a place?” And then Jesus taught them, broke bread and shared it, and their hearts burned with awe and wonder.

Earth Day

50 years ago this past Wednesday the first Earth Day occurred. An anniversary intended from the first as a day to demonstrate support for good stewardship of our environment. I’m looking at a picture … [describe them]

Images of New Delhi, India on Oct. 28, 2019, left, and April 20, 2020. India’s air quality improved drastically during a nationwide lockdown to curb the coronavirus.


A headline in the news read: Economic disruptions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns present a unique environmental moment for action on climate change.
One might imagine that our global pandemic was good for the earth. 50 years of Earth days and we have finally done something good for the environment.
Not so good for humans though.
And that’s the most interesting thing for me. We have been so destructive for the environment, for the Earth. But we are part of the environment ourselves.
On this the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a little bit of the Resurrection has come to the environment. But here we are in our 3rd week of Easter and we still wrestle with the Resurrection. What are we going to do about it?
Preach like Peter?

Ramadan

Ramadan starts on Thursday, April 23 this year, and takes us all the way to Saturday, May 23.
It is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and is considered a holy month for Muslims. It marks the time when Allah revealed the first verses of the Quran to a caravan trader called Muhammad. All Muslims start fasting during Ramadan when they reach puberty, usually by the age of 14. Fasting occurs from sunrise to sunset, and a day of abstinence is broken by a night-time meal called Iftar. But when does fasting start?
Ramadan is being practiced this year, because of the Corona virus, in ways that it has never before been observed. Like Passover & Easter.
Muslims in Israel and the Palestinian territories were preparing Thursday to begin the holy month of Ramadan without visits to mosques or festive communal meals. The Islamic world struggles to balance the demands of religion with public safety in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus.
With traditional, communal meals for the poor, large fast-breaking dinners with family and friends called iftars, and cultural events after sunset canceled, the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims find themselves cut off from much of what makes the month special as authorities fight the pandemic. Israel Times

Learnings

These events lead me to several insights that are important – if they’re true.
The experience of the Resurrection affects everyone. Those of us who have figured it out – whatever it is. Those of us who don’t get it and imagine heaven to be a place to “get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band // Check into a swell hotel,” – ain’t the afterlife grand?
All of us are on the road to Emmaus. Emmaus is heaven, as it were. We only get there in the end. In the meantime. Here we are, walking along the road.
All of us are essential workers. We may feel insignificant or overlooked. We may feel unimportant. We are all as essential as those two pilgrims on the road to Emmaus.
The essential workers in our society tend to be the ones least appreciated by society at large. Too often in the past invisible. During this pandemic, suddenly they are well within our horizon. Pilgrims on the way to Emmaus are all around us. And we are on the pilgrimage with them.
Our mission – "If you choose to accept it – is to respond with what those two pilgrims on the road responded with:

• vulnerability,
• a willingness to welcome the stranger,
• ears to hear,
• a willingness to listen …

We’re all part of a magnificent and awesome system. The environment, the earth and indeed the whole surrounding universe, is all part of an intricate relatedness. In a song I first learned from Pete Seeger:

• Chorus

Somos el barco, somos el mar
Yo navego en ti, tu navegas en mi
We are the boat, we are the sea, I sail in you, you sail in me
The stream sings it to the river, the river sings it to the sea
The sea sings it to the boat that carries you and me – Chorus
The boat we are sailing in was built by many hands
And the sea we are sailing on, it touches every land – Chorus
So with our hopes we set the sails
And face the winds once more
And with our hearts we chart the waters never sailed before – Chorus
– Lorre Wyatt
For God’s part – he reveals, he embraces with love, he empowers where power is helpful, he shelters where weakness is stronger, he lights the way to Emmaus for the continuation of our journey.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us

The Passover was a hurried meal, hurried because the Israelites had to move, and move quickly. Our last full-participation in the Eucharist was, in every congregation throughout the church in the US, a kind of hurried meal. We felt the wilderness coming and had no idea what it would be like. Now we’re in it. The wilderness – though perhaps we can begin to see a destination on the distant horizon.
May our hearts be opened, as with those two on the road.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

And may we pray as with the prayer from Evening Prayer:
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.

Note

lectionary

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1. A Different Kind of Heaven; Paradise According to John Prine By Adam Willis April 14, 2020 ↩︎
   

easter-morning-2020-monroe.md

April 12:Easter Day – Monroe

Thin space – The time between times

It all comes down to an image for me. I saw it literally and frequently in Hawai’i. Sitting on a shore, looking out at the ocean, wistfully, peacefully, longing. A priest I knew once saw me doing that on the island of Moloka’i. He told me that when he saw me looking that way, across the lapping waves out to sea, it explained to him in a flash what it meant to live in Hawai’i.
What I was looking at was the intersection of the ocean and the land. At a certain point in that intersection it’s a little bit of ocean and a little bit of shore – but neither at the same time.
A poet and a philosopher by the name of John O’Donohue gave me that image as a metaphor for what the Irish Celtic spiritual tradition has called thin places. Thin places are where the distance between God and human is not very great. It is a place where the mundane is made sacred. It is a place where the grandeur and majesty of the divinity is made humble so that it can mingle with the likes of you and me.
Another way to think of thin places is that they are a time between times. It’s neither what came before nor what will come after. It is a place where, as Annie Dillard put it, God might break in at any moment and blast it to bits.
We are living through a thin place.

Then and Now

Then

Today is Easter Sunday. The narrative we have just heard is placed in Jerusalem, year circa 33 CE. There is turmoil that will explode in another generation into a general revolt which will be crushed in brutal fashion by Rome.
In a minor narrative, probably not noticed by most people, a holy man from the north of the country has descended upon the city. He offended religious leaders. He sparked passion among some as he performed miracles. He got caught between the political forces of the rulers and the ruled. He was executed.

The ¹ very first Easter the disciples were locked in their house. It was dangerous for them to come out. They were afraid. They wanted to believe the good news they heard from the women, that Jesus had risen. But it seemed too good to be true. They were living in a time of such despair and such fear. If they left their homes their lives and the lives of their loved ones might be at risk. Could a miracle really have happened? Could life really had won out over death? Could this time of terror and fear really be coming to an end?

Alone in their homes they dared to believe that hope was possible, that the long night was over and morning had broken, that God’s love was the most powerful of all, even though it didn’t seem quite real yet. Eventually, they were able to leave their homes, when the fear and danger had subsided, they went around celebrating and spreading the good news that Jesus was risen and love was the most powerful force on the earth

Now

Today we are quarantined behind the doors of our homes. If we leave our home, our own lives and the lives of our loved ones might be put in jeopardy. If we are homeless we are quarantined to our 6 foot section of pavement. It is dangerous to go out. We can’t see the enemy because the enemy is a virus. Scientists are not even sure whether it’s a living thing or not. One of the greatest threats is the threat of fear.
But you are here – mostly you are here in a virtual way, facilitated by the internet – you are here because for you in some sense or another the place of bondage and fear is not your home. Your true home is another sort of place. A place of shouts of joy, the play of children, singing the good news – it’s called gospel – a place of love not fear.
Emily Dickinson wrote a poem (#1383) that tells of the collapse of the distinction between then and now. It goes like this:
Long Years apart — can make no
Breach a second cannot fill —
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell —
The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand —

4 questions

At the seder meal shared at Passover, there is an important role for children. It’s one of the things I have loved about it. Children have a vital role to play. For too long our liturgies suffered from being a kind of “adults only” affair.
One of the crucial roles that children play is by asking what are called the “4 questions.”
Although they are called “The Four Questions,” really this part of the seder is one question with four answers. The central question is: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” source

• On all other nights we eat bread or matzah, while on this night we eat only matzah.
• On all other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables and herbs, but on this night we have to eat bitter herbs.
• On all other nights we don’t dip our vegetables in salt water, but on this night we dip them twice.
• On all other nights we eat while sitting upright, but on this night we eat reclining. (because in ancient times, a person who reclined at a meal was a free person, while slaves and servants stood)

The answer to the question is: this night is different because on this night Moses led us from slavery. For thousands of years rabbis have known that in the telling of the story of deliverance one lives (again) in the time of deliverance. The separation of then and now is erased – if only for a time.
The four questions of the children at the Haggadah are a variation of – why do we do this? What is the point? The rabbis answered that we tell the story because we are present as the Israelites escape from Egypt.
I said last week that we were beginning the essential story for those of us who profess to be Christians. We began the story as Jesus entered in triumph into Jerusalem – and then within the week was executed and buried. We began the story then but we finish the story now.
We don’t tell the story that takes a week to tell because we don’t know how it ends. We tell the story week by week because when we do we are there with Mary Magdalene with Peter and John and Thomas and all the rest. We are there and our lives are why we tell the story.
As the Passover telling of the story breaks down the distinction between past and future, so too does this story that we conclude today. We are there with Mary, confused at the empty tomb. We are Mary as the Lord calls our name. We are commissioned, along with Mary, to go forth to announce the good news.

What is essential and what is incidental?

Over the years, I have tried to understand and to be clear to myself, my answer to the question, “What are the essentials? What is it that I believe in over all else?”
I have it down to a couple of things, but the most important can be expressed in a single phrase. Jesus Christ is risen today.
The essential point however is not the proclamation alone. It is our answer to what does it mean? What is the meaning of Christ is risen today in my life? Today? Here, now.
It has been so since ancient times.
It is the faith that motivates us, drives our getting up in the morning and our falling asleep at night. It is the faith that washes infants in the font of baptism. It is the faith that lays to rest the weary of soul. It is the faith that heals the sick and raises up the downtrodden. Jesus Christ is risen today.
There was a beautiful 90-year-old woman at my church in Indiana. She insisted on sitting in church with the children of the parish. The children had a special section just for them in the front of all the pews. She insisted on sitting there, in her wheel chair, with all the other children. They loved her and she loved them. She had such a deep faith. When she died and took her last breath she had the sweetest most peaceful smile settl on her face. Her obituary listed her as the head of the children’s corner at church.
She had lived with the words of the St Francis prayer. They hung in her living room. “It is only in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
She knew the faith of Mary standing there before the empty tomb. She knew what it meant that Jesus Christ is risen today. She was born into a life of joy. That’s what her smile meant.
Jesus Christ is risen today is truly the good news. Hallelujah.

Notes:

lectionary

Prayer for People Facing Great Uncertainty

God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart;
bring hope and courage to all
who wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make them the equal
of whatever lies ahead.
Bring them courage to endure what cannot be avoided,
for your will is health and wholeness;
you are God, and we need you.
Taken from A New Zealand Prayer Book—He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa’ (adapted)

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1. one source This year, we might get to experience a taste of what that first Easter was like, still in our homes daring to believe that hope is on the horizon. Then, after a while, when it is safe for all people, when it is the most loving choice, we will come out, gathering together, singing and shouting the good news that God brings life even out of death, that love always has the final say! … This year we might get the closest taste we have had yet to what that first Easter was like." – author unknown ↩︎
   

palm-sunday-2020-monroe.md

April 5, 2020: The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday – Monroe

This Day

Today is a strange day. Today the church wraps together Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. What used to be the two Sundays preceding Easter is now just one. And it is the first time the Eucharist has been celebrated in this place since March 8 – almost a month.
Palm Sunday for me has wonderful and joyous memories. My favorite part was the custom I developed at St. Mary’s in Honolulu. We would bless palms in the gathering room and then march in procession out the doors, through the parking lot, cross one of the major thoroughfares coming out of downtown, and sing as we passed McDonald’s. There was a dear little Japanese lady, Jane Oki was her name, it was her favorite too. One year we had a leading musician from the Hawaiian Waikiki scene playing his accordion as we sang and marched.
As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, with people singing and waving palms, the city was an intense place. There many factions fighting one another, both figuratively and literally. Passions were sometimes at the boiling point. There was deep resistance and resentment over the government – Roman at that point. And the bitter rivalry between the different branches of Judaism was enough to lead many to sense that the end was coming near.
In our own time – it’s funny as I wrote that paragraph above, it seemed like most of it could have been written about our own time.

Time of Crisis

There have been Mob actions from time immemorial. On Palm Sunday we begin with one. The crowds were gathered around Jesus in his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. We know how that one ended, right?
I continue to read and hear about the need to focus on facts over fear, calm over panic. It’s not always easy to sort out the difference. To separate the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, with shouts of joy and Hosannah – from the pathos, the passion, of the Lord abandoned, alone, dying.
Like the victims of Covid-19 we hear about. The people who die alone, whose loved ones say goodbye by phone or video, with no opportunity to hug or hold hands.
That’s Jesus at the end of today’s Gospel reading.

Speak to the people

The last two Sundays Mary Pat and I have watched, listened, sung, prayed with St. Paul’s in Morning Prayer. We have been blessed to be a part your life in Christ.
There’s a sense in which this past month has been the most momentous in the history of this parish.
The church that gathers at St. Paul’s in Monroe – though you can’t gather at the moment – is one that prays and makes music together, in praise of the goodness of God and the love that binds. Even if it can only be 2 or 3 gathered together, you are faithful and joyful and caring and determined. What a story you are!
One of the things I have grown to know more and more deeply is that it matters what stories we tell about ourselves.
If this is our story, what does it say about us?

• Do we tell the story to demonstrate that out of catastrophe comes a new beginning?
• Do we tell the story to pass the blame around?
• Do we tell the story to make the case that we are resourceful creations and we will find a solution?

We have seen and heard the stories of despair and sadness: choir in WA, nurses and doctors crying on TV, stories that make me cry.
We have seen and heard the stories of inspiration and generosity: landlord who wouldn’t accept rent for this month, signs in chalk on the sidewalks,
What story do we offer in the midst of this time of pandemic?

Stories

We are living in an exceptional time. Fewer and fewer people are questioning that. I remember hearing the question and asking others: “Do you know where you were when JFK was assassinated?” I still do. I remember vividly the circumstances when I learned about the events of 9/11. I remember the moment I learned about the Challenger disaster.
We are living through such a time. It’s not a moment. It’s an unfolding saga. Sometimes it seems like it is in slow motion. Sometimes it seems like there are an unfathomable number of things happening in flash of time.
Such times make us who we are. We are, as it were, formed by the catastrophes and events that happen during our lifetimes.
But also I would add by the stories we tell and retell. Some events get repeated from generation to generation and they are formative for the children and the grand-children – unto a 100 generations.
Such is the story we tell today, on Palm Sunday. We tell the story of Jesus’ death on the Cross on only 1 Sunday in the year. It’s too much – even at the length we have heard it today. It’s a story that takes a week to tell. We call it Holy Week.
This is in so many ways the one story that Christians have to tell. It is the story we tell over and over, year by year, century by century. We retell it because it is the one story the universe has to tell. It is the one story that says who we are as Christians. It is the story that forms and shapes us.

What is new for me

One of the things that has shifted for me in the past couple of weeks is that I have listened to blogs that I haven’t always taken the time to listen to. Sources of wisdom, insight, learning that I realize feed my soul. It’s been a little blessing in the midst of the upheaval we are living through.
There was a surprising bit of learning last week. Krista Tippet was interviewing an Italian theoretical physicist. Carlo Rovelli is his name. It was said of him that: “Carlo Rovelli takes up vast ideas beyond most of our imagining, like quanta, grains of space, and time and the heat of black holes.”
Such thoughts may not be your cup of tea, but it was evocative and inspiring for me. In my own words I heard him saying that in the larger framework of creation, there aren’t really things there are only relationships. There isn’t really time as past-present-future, there are only relationships and what he calls “happenings.”
The only thing that matters is our connectedness. Whether it is by ones or twos. Whether in a convention center or monastic cave, we are nothing but our relationships to one another. Whether we are at the point of triumph with Hosannah’s and waving palms, or we are at the withering solemnity of a lonely, suffering, death, we are never alone and bereft. “No man (or woman) is an island.”
And the story is not over. It takes a week to tell. Holy Week. And the end of the story is an empty tomb and there,

Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my sisters / brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”

Notes

lectionary

Psalm 118:

28 “You are my God, and I will thank you; *
you are my God, and I will exalt you.”
29 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; *
his mercy endures for ever.

Philippians 2:5-11

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

A Prayer for Our Uncertain Times

May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake.
May we who have no risk factors remember those most vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from home remember those who must choose between preserving their health and making their rent.
May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools close remember those who have no options.
May we who have to cancel our trips remember those who have no safe place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult of the economic market remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country, let us choose love.
And during this time when we may not be able to physically wrap our arms around each other, let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God to our neighbors. Amen.

• Submitted by Fr. Michael Graham, S.J.