epiphany-2-2019-monroe.md

Homily 2 Epiphany – St. Paul’s Monroe

Jan. 19, 2020

Opening

Last week you may have heard me say that one of the reasons I became an episcopalian was that this church had wine in a single chalice and it burned real candles. I actually associate that with a particular service, Feb. 2 or Candlemas. That used to be a commonly celebrated evening service that featured – drum-roll, candles.

I know that wasn’t the first time I had been in an Episcopal Church. My uncle was the organist for the Cathedral in Quincy, Illinois. My earliest memory from that time was that the priest spent the entire sermon explaining why the Episcopal flag was on a higher step than the American flag. I wasn’t impressed with that. Even as a 7-8 year old I had an intuition that the Gospel was about more than that.

But I remember from a later period the candles and the chalice. I thought, “Now that’s the real deal!” Light. Somehow real light as opposed to the artificial light of electric light bulbs.

It wasn’t a scientific thing or a reasoned thought. It was a gut thing. Being a light to the nations, as the prophet says this morning.

Collect

Light is a theme that is associated with the season of Epiphany. The collect for today begins with: Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: …

The magi who began the season for us followed the light of a star to find the newborn child. And the season ends around the time of Candlemas, remembering the presentation of Jesus in the temple, 40 days after his birth.

Light serves as a beacon to light the way and to protect us from danger. Lighthouses.

Light illuminates the darkness both literally and physically as well as figuratively. Light bulbs are a shorthand sign for the illumination of a new idea, a piece of knowledge newly arrived at.

One view of the season of Epiphany is as a gradually unfolding manifestation of the Messiah to the world. From an obscure birth in a minor land of Mesopotamia, the world came to know the Messiah. It is an awesome transition. Epiphany is a time for noting particularly that unfolding and revealing.

The light of the world.

Readings

In today’s readings we do not hear that phrase first in the gospel, however, but from an author of many centuries before that time. The prophet Isaiah speaks God’s words to the people of Israel.

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;

I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

The prophet speaks to Israel as if the people were a single person, the “servant of the Lord.” You my people, God says, are my intimate friends and family. I have known you from before all time. I have watched you, says God to his people, I have watched you fall on your face, become a laughing stock to the nations. Yes, I’ve seen it all. I’ve witnessed your demise. But, I tell you, it’s not the end of the story.

Then God speaks with such poignance and rhetorical flourish. I love it when as so often is the case in scripture, that God’s voice is so filled with passion.

God says through the prophet, "just in case you let my love for you go to your head, I’m not going to just save you from the calamity you’ve got yourself into. No, though that may seem to you like an all but impossible thing, for me – for me – that is just a trifling thing.

No, instead and even bigger, vastly bigger, I am going to make you, the people who are my chosen, to be a light to the world. You will be the lighthouse to show the way for all the peoples of the earth that there is but one God.

The message we hear from Isaiah, coming from the time of the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians, is a landmark, totally outlandishly awesome, message to the world. No longer are the nations to imagine that there is one god for this people and another for that people. The message to the world is that there is only one God. For all people.

I think of the old Jewish story about Adam and Eve from the opening chapters of Genesis. The rabbi explains to the student why it is that God made at the very beginning just one human being. It is, he says, so that never will one person be able to say to another that “My father is better than your father.” We all, ultimately, have the same, one, father.

How quaint:

How is it that having heard the message that we are all one – at least 2,500 years ago – that we still don’t get it?

This Sunday we are in the midst of a week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It was originally proposed more than 100 years ago by a group of Christians who were inspired with an ecumenical vision of the unity of all Christians – even though we see everywhere the division.

It occurs each year between The Confession of St. Peter and The Conversion of St. Paul, the two mighty pillars of the early church, two traditions, often seeing themselves as at odds with one another. Such ecumenical work was a passionate vision for many earlier in the last century.

That vision didn’t last. Isaiah’s vision didn’t last. We still don’t get it. Today we live in a world of what some call tribalism, a time for standing alongside and defending one’s own particular traditions.

The message from God wasn’t “this group has my blessing and I hope that everybody will be just like them.” God’s message to us was, “I’m going to turn a light on and if you have eyes to see you will recognize in the new light that all people are my people.”

The saints we celebrate this week in our calendar span an amazing diversity – just within the Christian tradition. There is a Bishop from the 3rd century, martyrs from the 4th century, a Bishop from Britain in the 11th century, the author of the hymn “O little town of Bethlehem”, and the first woman priest ordained in the Anglican Communion, almost 80 years ago in Hong Kong.

Our calendar reminds us of the great expanse of saints who have lit the way for us – in the Christian tradition. But that’s not what the prophet was saying. He said, a light for all people – a light to the nations of the world. It’s too small a thing just to be a beacon of the unity of all Christians under one God. You shall be a light to all nations, he said. It’s a light to all people under one God, not a light to show the way for all people to become one of the nations.

This Epiphany light is a big deal.

The passionate call to unity

The world we live in is so divided. Our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, our nation, our world – they are divided into tribes, into us and them.

The words we hear today – and really throughout scripture – are so passionate when they tell us, “You want your own divisions to be healed? Your own local problems to be solved? That’s such a small thing. Wait til you see the big thing.”

We hear today from Paul’s opening of his letter to the Corinthians. First Corinthians. Like all of his letters – indeed like all letters in the ancient world – Paul opens with praise for his intended audience. He praises the saints in Corinth. He says he gives thanks to God all the time for the grace that has been shone through them. It sounds so pleasant – as far as we go in the reading today.

For the church in Corinth, you may remember, was fraught with deep and personal divisions. That’s why Paul’s writing the letter. His opening words of praise are a hook for his audience. They let themselves get hooked so that he can reel them in – to borrow a fishing metaphor.

Paul’s praise is filled with irony because he uses it as a hook to ask them, "What are you doing you Corinthians? You’re not bearing witness to the light of the world that binds us together. You’re filled with divisions. The light you’re shining intends to divide one faction from another.

And that’s not the gospel Paul has preached.

Closing

I am going out on a limb right now and I’m about to say something that some may find objectionable. But I believe it to be the truth in the depth of my being.

“There is only One God and God is God of all people, regardless of color, language, tradition, belief or any other thing that we can think of to divide us from one another.”

There is not a God for us and a god for them. There is one God for one people, the people of the earth. The message was proclaimed 2,500 years ago. It was true then. It’s true today. That we don’t get it or believe it or act on it doesn’t change its truth.

We fall short of being that light as the people fell short 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, and 2,500 years ago. That just serves to highlight our reliance on the grace which Paul preached. The grace that binds. The grace that heals. The grace that forgives. Amazing grace.

baptism-of-lord-2019-monroe.md

January 12:The First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

St. Paul’s, Monroe NC

Opening

Today we will be baptizing a child at the 10:30 Eucharist. Jameson Alexander Honeycutt by name. I will present today a very quick overview of the growth of my understanding of baptism. I am addressing all those who will be supporting Jameson in his journey of life. If he were about 20 years older I would address these remarks to him.

I take this approach not because my faith journey is particularly important. But to illustrate that baptism for ask of us is a lifelong journey. Perhaps a pilgrimage.

When I was a teenager I gave very little thought to baptism. My mother and my siblings all went to church every Sunday. I don’t think however that I saw very many baptisms because in those days baptisms were done outside of the Sunday service. Baptism was a private affair and indeed I think regarded primarily as a transaction between God and the infant. It was general practice in the Episcopal church that children were baptized not long after birth or at least when family could be gathered together.

I’m pretty sure that no one set out to instruct me about what baptism was all about so what I knew and thought about it I picked up from general information, and particularly what was stressed at the time of my own confirmation.

Somewhere I absorbed the notion that baptism was something that repaired original sin and thus assured that the infant was eligible for heaven. It was somehow about heaven and hell – but I didn’t have a clue about what I really believed or understood about those concepts.

1st Child

I mostly planned the baptism because of expectations that I placed on myself and that were probably projected onto me by the community around me.

I was by then on my way to seminary. The stakes for doing what was expected of you were increasing for me. There was an increasing need to understand. Probably it’s fair to say that my actually understanding was decreasing – headed for not understanding. As I studied and read, more and more deeply, listened to more and more theologians, I found that I understood baptism less and less but it seemed more and more important. Now, in the twilight of my career, I think understanding of the sacraments is really of only a minor concern. What is most important for me now, is trusting more and more completely on the unfathomable depth of Grace that God extends to us.

I learned at this time that there was an expectation that Easter was the very best time for baptisms. My first born was born just after Easter so we went with the 2^nd best – Pentecost.

He was baptized with sprinkles of water from a font – as we will here today. All the rest of my children were baptized with lots of water.

2nd Child

Later when my 2^nd child came along, at the age of 2 weeks he needed abdominal surgery. Largely because of that his baptized was delayed until – yep, Pentecost.

My major fear at that time was of Julian dying. It wasn’t a concern with the afterlife. It was the life right in front of me.

Our seminary community had just experienced a traumatic death of a 2 year old. It involved a malfunctioning Ford transmission and our experience made national news. I had long conversations with mentors and peers about the role of baptism under those circumstances and they convinced me that the sacrament was very much an act of the community. Kind of a way for the Christian community to say, "She is one of us!"

Somewhere over the next few years I began to shift my experience and my understanding of what baptism was all about. I was moving from thinking of baptism along with a fear of death – experiencing baptism as a celebration of life. A radical development in my experience and understanding of baptism.

3rd Child

At the baptism of my 3rd child I tried to put each of those understandings of baptism into practice. Particularly challenging for me was trying to get lots of water into a church that was not set up for it and not accustomed to doing things other than the way we had always done them.

I found a very large industrial bakers mixing bowl. I rested it on a stand I found and surrounded it by flowers. Miriam was submerged in the water and all went as planned. I saw the determination of tradition however in the response of the rector – my boss. He said it had looked like we were cooking Miriam in a wok.

The point was

… that a large quantity of water was important. I came to appreciate that more and more as I became more and more convinced that baptism – as the other sacraments – was first and foremost a sacred symbol.

Sacred symbols warrant a lot more explanation. Sacred symbols are those things that effect what they signify. In more natural English: a sacred symbol brings about the very thing that it symbolizes and points toward.

The abundance of water that I came to want for the sacred symbol of baptism points to the abundance of God‘s love for his people. The sacrament causes that very thing to happen. Baptism is not a quiet gentle indicator of a grace we cannot see. It is the instrument by which untold millions before us – as well as an unknown number who will come after – live into an awareness and experience of life-giving grace. Amazing Grace.

At a later baptism I officiated at in Honolulu, we were in a garden area, standing in a large pool of water, having come from the Easter vigil, and the heavens themselves opened up as we stood in the pool of water. There is a photograph of my, the young man being baptized and the acolyte – one of my daughters – standing in the water being soaked by rain.

That is the way God’s grace works.

Orthodox teaching

There is an orthodox teaching that connects this sacred symbol – baptism – with the sacred task we have all been given – to live a life.

The Orthodox explain the meaning of baptism by comparing it to the 3 basic necessities for a newborn child: to be cleaned, to be clothed, and to be fed. Everything else is extra. And they correspond with the 3-fold nature of Orthodox baptisms.

clean child	baptism
feed child	Eucharist
Shelter child	anointing, chrism [confirmation]

We have a sacred symbol that connects baptism with life itself.

I tell you this …

I tell you these stories in order to make this point about baptism . Baptism is about a journey, the journey of living the life of a Christian.

Baptism is about growing into a deeper understanding, day by day, year-by-year as to what it means to be the body of Christ in the world of the living.

I tell you the stories to illustrate that all of you have similar stories of how you have grown more fully into the stature of Jesus Christ as you have lived your life. Jameson will do no less.

I tell you the stories because – if I had a lot more time --I would make it clear that I have fallen short over and over again from the goal that baptism sets before us. But I live by grace. The grace that lifts up the brokenhearted. The grace that mends the wounded. The grace that makes life worth living.

That is a little something of why we baptize Jameson today. We choose to give him the best armor that we know for the living of the life he has before him. He will need all of what Christ can give him. And so today we call him Christian…

Frederich Buechner wrote: A crazy, holy grace I have called it. Crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who can ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that wells up out of the lostness and pain of the world and of our own inner worlds?¹

Baptism is a guide to becoming an adult and it is the measure of our life long journey. Baptism is a pilgrimage in which we fall many times, but Grace lifts us back up.

Baptism makes one a part of the Body of Christ, irrevocably, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we ignore it for years at a time, Abba is with us.

Baptism provides the assurance that we are justified in putting our trust into the hands of the only one worthy of it – Abba

Grace

Father, I put myself in your hands;
Father I abandon myself to you,
I entrust myself to you.
Father do with me as it pleases you.
Whatever you do with me, I will thank you for it.
Giving thanks for anything, I am ready for anything,
I accept anything, give thanks for anything.

Prayer of Abandonment of Blessed Charles de Foucauld

Notes

lectionary

• Isaiah 42 – the source of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism? – you are my chosen
• Acts 10 – Peter summary of the faith
• Matthew’s version: But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

During the week

January 18:The Confession of Saint Peter the Apostle

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1. From Buechner ~ originally published in The Sacred Journey and Listening to Your Life ↩︎

christmas-2-2020-monroe.md

January 5:The Second Sunday After Christmas Day

St. Paul’s, Monroe, NC

Opening

At the beginning of the liturgy, in the collect we prayed: "O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: "

At the “head” of the new year, incorporating the “new” gifts of Christmas, I can just begin to imagine what these words are getting at.

As we take stock of where we’ve been and try to imagine where we’re going, many of us can well-identify with the need for some kind of restoration.

The prophet Isaiah cries out with passioned voice.

And in some fashion or other we have responded to the cry with a yes! Yes I will sing your praises, Lord. Yes I will call out for help in time of need. Yes I will give you the glory.

In some way or another, at one time or another, each of us here this morning has heard a voice from beyond us, a voice that beckoned us, that invited us, that reassured us, that gave us strength when we needed it, that gave us a nudge when we needed nudging – and we have responded, “Ok, I’m coming with.”

Baptism as a “commissioning”

In a few moments we will be commissioning new vestry members. We will hear words that call to mind our baptism.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, we are all baptized by the one Spirit into one Body, and given gifts for a variety of ministries for the common good. Our purpose is to commission these persons in the Name of God and of this congregation to a special ministry to which they are called.

These brothers and sisters have said “yes” and as a result we “commission” them for a ministry.

The need for coordinating the various parts of the Body of Christ. I owe the profundity and insight of that sentence to a young man with cerebral palsy. Much of the world around him sees him as uncoordinated. They don’t see the depth of his faith in God, the riches of his devotion to helping others, and the glory of the love he has to give. He knows about coordination.

What do you do?

I heard an interview some years ago with a woman from Salt Lake City who went around the world teaching and organizing for care of the earth and building up the role of women in the world. Not generally issues that one identifies with Utah.

She noted that as she travels around the world, she is regularly asked by people wanting to get to know her, “What do you do?” Usually people are not looking for a thoughtful answer to the question – it’s a bit of a throw-away. But it is intended to get a reading on what this person does for work, often so that you know where he or she is in the pecking order of influence and power or prestige.

I was inspired to hear her response, and I have not forgotten it. In fact I use it sometimes. When people ask her, “What do you do?” she answers, “About what?”

In the opening of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul has heard what the Ephesians are doing. And he’s impressed.

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.

Paul knows that when one is called – when the voice sends a notice of attention – one has to respond. That to hear the calling, and to say YES – means that one is now commissioned for the Body of Christ.

The church recognizes the need to respond – recognizes the question “About what?” – when it addresses those who have said “yes” to baptism – a series of questions:

• Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? …
• Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? …
• Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? …
• Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? …
• Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? …

Next Sunday is The Baptism of the Lord

It is one of 5 appointed days that the Prayer Book recommends for baptisms.

This Sunday we are passing from a celebration of the Incarnation – Christmas – through the Epiphany, the recognition of the Lordship of Jesus – on to the moment when, as an adult, Jesus says, “Yes” to the voice. And his ministry begins.

Matthew

This account of the magi and their visit to Herod and then on to the Holy Family in Bethlehem, follows a similar pattern to what we have been describing. They have heard the calling – in their case it was a star. They have said, “Yes”, by the very act of setting out on their journey. They brought the gift of themselves to present as an offering. The same as we do each week when the plates are offered, with envelopes and gifts of various kinds – it’s our offering of ourselves.

Herod acted as the foil, the catalyst, for the magi’s “Yes.” Herod was frightened by the magi asking about the child and sent them on what he thought was his own self-serving agenda. He didn’t know that God was in charge.

He sends the magi to Bethlehem, and they approach the Holy Family and offer their gifts.

The Epiphany narrative

Whenever a Christmas pageant is put on, there is an expectations that there will be shepherds and there will be kings. Today’s gospel passage provides one of those expectations – the kings. And, of course, they would have traveled on camels. So there are camels.

But this comfortable narrative we are so familiar with, carries a message for each us, a message with great importance. The magi have heard a call. The call can come in an infinite number of ways. How it comes is not so important as our answer. And its a binary question. The answer is either yes or it is no. The magi said, “Yes.”

Having said yes they were prepared to do whatever it took to accomplish the assignment, the commission, of the call. They used Herod to help accomplish their mission. Herod, of course, thought that he was using them.

Having said yes, and doing whatever it took to accomplish the mission, the action itself was to make a gift. No matter what we are called to do – in the end all that we can do is make a gift of it.

Our baptismal narrative starts with a yes and then outlines what the mission is. Then we make a gift of it – with our very lives. I close with a prayer that brings this together in a powerful way:

The world now is too dangerous
And too beautiful
For anything but love.

Love is a blessing.
So may your eyes be so blessed that you see God in everyone
Your lips - so you speak nothing but the truth
Your ears - so that you hear the cry of the poor

May your hands be so blessed that everything you touch becomes a sacrament
Your feet - so that you run to those who need you
And may your heart be so opened
So set on fire
That your love
Your love
Changes everything.
Amen.¹

Notes:

lectionary

Epiphany blessing

For use from the feast of the Epiphany through the following Sunday; and on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany in Year C.

May Almighty God, who led the Wise Men by the shining of a star to find the Christ, the Light from Light, lead you also, in your pilgrimage, to find the Lord. Amen.

May God, who sent the Holy Spirit to rest upon the Only- begotten at his baptism in the Jordan River, pour out that Spirit on you who have come to the waters of new birth. Amen.

May God, by the power that turned water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana, transform your lives and make glad your hearts. Amen.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you for ever. Amen.

or this

May Christ, the Son of God, be manifest in you, that your lives may be a light to the world; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you, and remain with you always. Amen.

Commissioning of Vestry members document before the offertory at both services. Who are the sponsors? Names of this year’s members? What are the “tokens” to be given them?

Jeremiah 31: return, mourning into rejoicing

“He who scattered Israel will gather him,
and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.”

For the Lord has ransomed Jacob,
and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.

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1. At least one place attributed to Burning Man 2015 link ↩︎

christmas-1-2019-monroe.md

December 29, 2019

The First Sunday After Christmas Day
St. Paul’s, Monroe

Introduction

Last week I called attention to the distinctive nature of Matthew’s gospel and the birth narrative in particular. Today we have an equally distinctive and very different gospel – John’s gospel.

None of the gospels came with a copyright or registration with national registry of authors. We don’t actually know the authors of any of the gospels – they are attributed as they are because of the names that later generations gave them. It has seemed a liberating thing to me because it has encouraged me to listen to each gospel on its own, with its own distinctive narrative, its own focus, its own personality if you will.

The magic time of Christmas itself is past.

We are in the echo time of Christmas. The emotions, whether pleasant or not so pleasant, have peaked in the last week. The church calls this the “octave” of Christmas – which is to say the week following Christmas. It ends, of course, with New Year’s Day.

But Christmas and Easter are such important feast days for the church – the Incarnation and the Resurrection – that they are celebrated not just for a week but for a season. The Easter season lasts for 50 days. The Christmas season until Epiphany (Jan 6) – which of course varies.

My mother and her sister, my aunt, helped me to establish what became my norm in the 1980’s to send out Christmas cards in the Christmas season not in Advent. I observe, then, Christmas for the whole "Christmas season.

The 1^st Sunday of Christmas comes in the middle of that season. The ripple, echo, of Christmas.

It is, then, an in-between time. [I’ve preached about such time on many occasions.] It is a particularly sacred time.

Isaiah

The first reading today ushers us into sacred time. It uses beautiful, evocative, poetic language to paint for us the reality of the universal redemption that the Incarnation delivers to us and was clearly promised through prophetic voices down through the ages.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,

so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,

In effect, Isaiah asks us in the opening reading from Scripture today, "Have you readied yourself to see the glory? Are you prepared?

As glorious as the invitation is, for the most part I have to answer for myself, “I’m not ready.”

Paul

Paul doesn’t very often speak to me as a poet. But he often speaks with power. He does so in today’s reading from his letter to the Galatians.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

As clear and straightforward a statement of what the Incarnation means as any I know. And then in a voice that for me rumbles through the ages:

“And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

On retreat the day before my ordination, our bishop spoke these words to us in one of his meditations. He spoke to us with the same kind of power that Paul must have used. I was transported. For a few hours that day – and on random days ever since – I am able to say, “Yes, I am set free. I am a child. God is not remote – but my Father. Abba.”

Sacred in between time.

John

When I was in my 20’s, like most young adults, I pretty much knew everything I needed know. I was kind of crafty then but in artistic kind of way. The crowning achievement of that period of my life was a harpsichord and clavichord that I built.

In addition to craft sort of things, I was also on my way to embracing my Christian faith as an adult. For many people that’s the most important time in their faith-life. For some it happens in the 20’s. One of my closest friends had it happen to him in his 60’s. It’s too bad we don’t have a way of marking that liturgically and sacramentally.

Anyway I was working out my faith.

I got it into my head to carve a linoleum block that would feature the opening of John’s gospel in Greek. My plan then was to print from the block and give them as gifts.

Well, I spent several weeks carving the piece. John’s Prologue was etched around the outside edge and in the center were symbols of the classical Greek 4 elements: earth, air, fire, water.

It was pretty cool. But only after finishing it did I realize that for it to work it all had needed to be carved in reverse, mirror image. I spent weeks and it seemed useless. I was out of time, also.

I ended up printing on very thin Japanese rice paper that one could see through. I pulled a kind of victory out of a catastrophe.

But the real lesson for me has been somewhat different. It is often in the darkest hours of my life that I have been able to score the important victories of my life.

It’s an illustration of what I take to be a basic principle of life, that it is only in the empty places, the broken places, that we can really experience grace. – as sung by Leonard Cohen.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

In between time

In the 1980’s I was assigned the task by the rector of leading the youth of the parish. That’s the typical thing that a “curate” or “associate” is supposed to do. It doesn’t matter, of course, whether or not you have any particular gifts in that regard.

Well, I discovered along the way of trying to faithfully do what I was supposed to a set of workbooks for young people, edited by Lyman Coleman. I used them some and they were helpful. But much more importantly I discovered an edition of the Bible that he edited titled the Serendipity Bible. It had built into it a huge number of discussion questions, prompts for deeper reflection, and so on. In the intervening 30 years there have been many such Bibles published. But the Serendipity Bible was one of the first and by far has been the most useful to me in my ministry.

Do you know what the word serendipity means? “chance, accident, fluke” are some of the synonyms. For myself I’ve always thought of it as surprise. Serendipity means “coming out of the blue, so as to surprise us.”

What that Serendipity Bible did for me – and really continues to this day – was to convince me that God is most active – or probably I can most easily perceive – God’s presence and action in my life by looking for the surprises.

Where are the empty places? Where are the silences that are uncomfortable for me? What was I not expecting? Where are the in-between times? These are the kinds of questions that have been most important to me throughout my adult life.

They are the kind of questions that are vital I think to a useful self-examination – often done at the end of a day. Classically it has had the name examen. A time for looking back and asking how you’ve done during the past day. And among the questions I think you should ask are: “What surprised you this day?”

It will give you a clue as to what God is doing in your life. How he is working out his redemption in your life, right now.

Closing

When I went away on retreat prior to ordination I did not expect God to break in. I was intimidated by the bishop and thought that I wasn’t anything like him. I wasn’t expecting it, but:

I went away from that day expecting heaven to break in at any moment. And God has continued to break in – particularly at the times I didn’t expect it. Watch out!

And it doesn’t just happen at special times. Christmas. Ordinations. No, and even especially, it applies to the most ordinary times and places. A powerful expression of this ordinary sacred time was written about in a powerful book by Kathleen Norris. She was accustomed to her life as an author in the cosmopolitan world of New York city. And then – much to her surprise – she found herself living in, of all places, South Dakota.

Lots of emptiness there. Lots of potential boredom. But it was there that Kathleen discovered God at work. The incarnation. She wrote:

"As it turns out, the Plains have been essential not only for my own growth as a writer, they have formed me spiritually. I would even say they have made me a human being.

“St. Hilary, a fourth-century bishop (and patron saint against snake bites) once wrote, ‘Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.’ The magnificent sky above the Plains sometimes seems to sing this truth; angels seem possible in the wind-filled expanse.” — Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris.

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you,in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP)

Notes:

Christmas Season Blessing

May Almighty God, who sent his Son to take our nature upon him, bless you in this holy season, scatter the darkness of sin,and brighten your heart with the light of his holiness. Amen.

May God, who sent his angels to proclaim the glad news of the Savior’s birth, fill you with joy, and make you heralds of the Gospel. Amen.

May God, who in the Word made flesh joined heaven to earth and earth to heaven, give you his peace and favor. Amen.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you for ever. Amen.

or this

May Christ, who by his Incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly, fill you with his joy and peace; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,be among you, and remain with you always. Amen.

lectionary