All Saints’ Day Ecclesiasticus 2: 1 – 11
Sunday, November 6, 2011 Ephesians 1: 11 – 23
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 6: 20 - 36
“Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you;”
From the collect for All Saints’ Day
Three of my many treasures are a cookbook, a button box and a prayer. All three belonged to my maternal grandmother who died when I was but weeks old. And her cookbook, button box and the prayer she saved, tell me she was a good New England Congregationalist, practical, thrifty and not given to a lot of show. My grandmother would remove the buttons from worn out sweaters before consigning the sweaters to the trash in order to use the buttons again and the largest section in her cookbook was the section marked “Leftovers.”
I do not know who wrote the prayer my grandmother treasured and which ended up in my hands. I am reasonably sure she did not. “Lord,” the prayer begins, “thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older, and will someday be old.” What follows are a series of eight petitions beginning with, “Keep me from getting talkative, and particularly from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject on every occasion” and ending with “Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it all. But thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends at the end.”
One of the eight petitions reads as follows: “Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint. Some of them are so hard to live with but a sour man or woman is one of the crowning works of the devil.” My grandmother, I would venture to say, had little use for saints, preferring the company of those who like herself, lived life not in a monastery but in the mill town of Holyoke, Massachusetts.
The word “saint” comes from the Latin word “sanctus,” and means “holy.” For my grandmother and others of like mind, saints are not just holy but often “holier than thou,” making such persons, in the words of the prayer “hard to live with,” people who make the rest of us ordinary mortals feel diminished, less than what we ought to be. Saints are “perfect” people and, most of us are not inclined to think of ourselves as “perfect,” even less inclined to enjoy the company of someone who believes they, unlike us, are perfect.
So today as we celebrate All Saints’ Day, we remember all those who throughout the history of the Church have born witness to Christ in extraordinary ways as well as the words of my grandmother’s prayer: “Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint.” And I have to wonder when we prayed our opening collect this morning, asking God to “Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living,” we did so with our fingers crossed, hoping God will do no such thing!
All Saints’ Day is one of seven “high holy days” we observe during the church year, a principal feast day like Christmas and Easter. All Saints’ Day is observed on November 1, but may be celebrated, as we are doing today, on the following Sunday. All Saints’ Day originated early in the life of the church and we have references dating from 270 A.D., to a festival commemorating martyrs, those men and women who had died for their profession of faith. In time, the church came to celebrate not only the martyrs but all those whose lives have born witness to us of the glory of God revealed to us through Jesus Christ.
For most of us, the stories of the martyrs are now lost in libraries, among books that are gathering dust. The gruesome sagas of Christians torn apart by wild animals in the Roman Coliseum are just hard to read. Few doubt the veracity of the accounts but most Christians disbelieve anything of the sort would happen today. And here in Bowling Green, we would probably be justified in that belief.
Martyrs, of course, are not the only folk we deem to be saints. Mother Teresa comes to mind. Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, of natural causes, spent her life living and working among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. Her selfless devotion to those who have nothing and often die in a dirty street, makes our work as teachers or lawyers or farmers or parish priests or homemakers look a bit shallow. The story of Mother Teresa is not, like those of the early martyrs, lost on the shelf of some seminary library, but is, like the story of the early martyrs, hard for most of us to believe. What Mother Teresa did was simply extraordinary, beyond imagining for us ordinary folk.
The extraordinary stories of the saints, for us Episcopalians, are memorialized in a book we call Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a compendium of particular men and women who our General Convention deems worthy of our corporate remembrance. What we find in Lesser Feasts and Fasts is a calendar that includes Saint Mark, who we remember annually on April 25th and Saints Peter and Paul, who we remember on June 29. Mary Magdalene is on the calendar as is Martin Luther King, Jr. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a woman suffragette, remembered on July 20th. What we find in Lesser Feasts and Fasts is a list of those men and women in every generation, whose lives have reflected the presence of Christ. To be included in the calendar, a person will have demonstrated a heroic faith, love, goodness of life, joyousness, service to others for Christ’s sake, devotion, recognition by the faithful and historical perspective, which generally means those who are remembered have been dead for awhile.
For us Episcopalians, saints are not miracle workers but life givers, folk who do not walk on water but whose lives enable us to see Christ “more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow more nearly,” in the words of a hymn. The folk we remember did not literally raise anyone from the dead, but all in some way brought life into the midst of death. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example, at a time when women were deemed second class citizens said: “Not true!” and every woman in this congregation this day is a beneficiary of her work as well as that of Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Ross Tubman who we remember on the same day. Bearing witness to Christ and Christ’s life giving Spirit for all takes many forms and these women transformed our civic and eventually our ecclesiastical life.
Perfection, for us Episcopalians, is not a requirement for sainthood. And in the Preface to Lesser Feast and Fasts we read:
What we celebrate in the lives of the saints is the presence of Christ expressing itself in and through particular lives lived in the midst of specific historical circumstances. In the saints we are not dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection but human lives, in all their diversity, open to the motions of the Holy Spirit. Many a holy life, when carefully examined, will reveal flaws or the bias of a particular moment in history or ecclesial perspective: Attitudes toward those outside the Church, assumptions about gender, understandings of the world may appear to be defective and wrong. And what, in one age, was taken as virtue may at another time seem misguided. It should encourage us to realize that the saints, like us, are first and foremost redeemed sinners in whom the risen Christ’s words to St. Paul come to fulfillment, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
We remember the saints today, not in the hope (or perhaps, dismay) of being made perfect, but rather with the conviction that we ordinary human beings can be instruments of God’s grace, that by the power of the Holy Spirit we can, like those we call saints, do extraordinary things with our ordinary lives. No one here is beyond the pale of sainthood, because sainthood is not anything we accomplish, but rather what God can accomplish through us. In and through our ordinary lives, God can and does work miracles, bringing life out of death, joy out of sorrow, hope out of despair. We do not need to be perfect but we do need to be open to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit and trust that God will give us what we need to do what God would have us do. The lives of the saints are our assurance that God will not fail us.
So, for all the saints of the Church of God, past, present and those yet to be born, let us give thanks, and pray that we each might glorify Christ in our own time.
Sunday, November 6, 2011 Ephesians 1: 11 – 23
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 6: 20 - 36
“Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you;”
From the collect for All Saints’ Day
Three of my many treasures are a cookbook, a button box and a prayer. All three belonged to my maternal grandmother who died when I was but weeks old. And her cookbook, button box and the prayer she saved, tell me she was a good New England Congregationalist, practical, thrifty and not given to a lot of show. My grandmother would remove the buttons from worn out sweaters before consigning the sweaters to the trash in order to use the buttons again and the largest section in her cookbook was the section marked “Leftovers.”
I do not know who wrote the prayer my grandmother treasured and which ended up in my hands. I am reasonably sure she did not. “Lord,” the prayer begins, “thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older, and will someday be old.” What follows are a series of eight petitions beginning with, “Keep me from getting talkative, and particularly from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject on every occasion” and ending with “Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it all. But thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends at the end.”
One of the eight petitions reads as follows: “Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint. Some of them are so hard to live with but a sour man or woman is one of the crowning works of the devil.” My grandmother, I would venture to say, had little use for saints, preferring the company of those who like herself, lived life not in a monastery but in the mill town of Holyoke, Massachusetts.
The word “saint” comes from the Latin word “sanctus,” and means “holy.” For my grandmother and others of like mind, saints are not just holy but often “holier than thou,” making such persons, in the words of the prayer “hard to live with,” people who make the rest of us ordinary mortals feel diminished, less than what we ought to be. Saints are “perfect” people and, most of us are not inclined to think of ourselves as “perfect,” even less inclined to enjoy the company of someone who believes they, unlike us, are perfect.
So today as we celebrate All Saints’ Day, we remember all those who throughout the history of the Church have born witness to Christ in extraordinary ways as well as the words of my grandmother’s prayer: “Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint.” And I have to wonder when we prayed our opening collect this morning, asking God to “Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living,” we did so with our fingers crossed, hoping God will do no such thing!
All Saints’ Day is one of seven “high holy days” we observe during the church year, a principal feast day like Christmas and Easter. All Saints’ Day is observed on November 1, but may be celebrated, as we are doing today, on the following Sunday. All Saints’ Day originated early in the life of the church and we have references dating from 270 A.D., to a festival commemorating martyrs, those men and women who had died for their profession of faith. In time, the church came to celebrate not only the martyrs but all those whose lives have born witness to us of the glory of God revealed to us through Jesus Christ.
For most of us, the stories of the martyrs are now lost in libraries, among books that are gathering dust. The gruesome sagas of Christians torn apart by wild animals in the Roman Coliseum are just hard to read. Few doubt the veracity of the accounts but most Christians disbelieve anything of the sort would happen today. And here in Bowling Green, we would probably be justified in that belief.
Martyrs, of course, are not the only folk we deem to be saints. Mother Teresa comes to mind. Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, of natural causes, spent her life living and working among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. Her selfless devotion to those who have nothing and often die in a dirty street, makes our work as teachers or lawyers or farmers or parish priests or homemakers look a bit shallow. The story of Mother Teresa is not, like those of the early martyrs, lost on the shelf of some seminary library, but is, like the story of the early martyrs, hard for most of us to believe. What Mother Teresa did was simply extraordinary, beyond imagining for us ordinary folk.
The extraordinary stories of the saints, for us Episcopalians, are memorialized in a book we call Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a compendium of particular men and women who our General Convention deems worthy of our corporate remembrance. What we find in Lesser Feasts and Fasts is a calendar that includes Saint Mark, who we remember annually on April 25th and Saints Peter and Paul, who we remember on June 29. Mary Magdalene is on the calendar as is Martin Luther King, Jr. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a woman suffragette, remembered on July 20th. What we find in Lesser Feasts and Fasts is a list of those men and women in every generation, whose lives have reflected the presence of Christ. To be included in the calendar, a person will have demonstrated a heroic faith, love, goodness of life, joyousness, service to others for Christ’s sake, devotion, recognition by the faithful and historical perspective, which generally means those who are remembered have been dead for awhile.
For us Episcopalians, saints are not miracle workers but life givers, folk who do not walk on water but whose lives enable us to see Christ “more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow more nearly,” in the words of a hymn. The folk we remember did not literally raise anyone from the dead, but all in some way brought life into the midst of death. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example, at a time when women were deemed second class citizens said: “Not true!” and every woman in this congregation this day is a beneficiary of her work as well as that of Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Ross Tubman who we remember on the same day. Bearing witness to Christ and Christ’s life giving Spirit for all takes many forms and these women transformed our civic and eventually our ecclesiastical life.
Perfection, for us Episcopalians, is not a requirement for sainthood. And in the Preface to Lesser Feast and Fasts we read:
What we celebrate in the lives of the saints is the presence of Christ expressing itself in and through particular lives lived in the midst of specific historical circumstances. In the saints we are not dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection but human lives, in all their diversity, open to the motions of the Holy Spirit. Many a holy life, when carefully examined, will reveal flaws or the bias of a particular moment in history or ecclesial perspective: Attitudes toward those outside the Church, assumptions about gender, understandings of the world may appear to be defective and wrong. And what, in one age, was taken as virtue may at another time seem misguided. It should encourage us to realize that the saints, like us, are first and foremost redeemed sinners in whom the risen Christ’s words to St. Paul come to fulfillment, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
We remember the saints today, not in the hope (or perhaps, dismay) of being made perfect, but rather with the conviction that we ordinary human beings can be instruments of God’s grace, that by the power of the Holy Spirit we can, like those we call saints, do extraordinary things with our ordinary lives. No one here is beyond the pale of sainthood, because sainthood is not anything we accomplish, but rather what God can accomplish through us. In and through our ordinary lives, God can and does work miracles, bringing life out of death, joy out of sorrow, hope out of despair. We do not need to be perfect but we do need to be open to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit and trust that God will give us what we need to do what God would have us do. The lives of the saints are our assurance that God will not fail us.
So, for all the saints of the Church of God, past, present and those yet to be born, let us give thanks, and pray that we each might glorify Christ in our own time.
The Twenty- Second Sunday After Pentecost Judges 4: 1 – 7
Sunday, November 13, 2011 I Thessalonians 5: 1 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 25: 14 – 30
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven will be as when a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them;”
Matthew 25: 14
This past week, a team of doctors at MCV successfully separated twin girls who were born joined together at their chest. The complex surgery which took twenty four hours to complete, had never been done at MCV and took place after months of preparation and planning. The surgical plan, however, could not be fully finalized until after surgery had begun because of the limits of our diagnostic tools; only in the operating room after this team of surgeons exposed the area where the girls were joined, could final decisions be made. The team simply could not know all of the problems they might encounter until after surgery had begun. At risk were the lives of two little girls from the Dominican Republic and the team did not know what they might be able to do until after they had committed to do surgery.
The risk was huge but so too was the possibility that these little girls might be able to live out their lives no longer joined together, able for the first time to walk on two feet rather than trying to walk with four.
This morning we hear the familiar parable of the talents from the gospel of Matthew. A “talent” is a sum of money, a large sum of money, as much as what a day laborer might earn in fifteen years. In the parable the master entrusts his property to three of his slaves, giving to one slave five talents, to another, two, and to a third, one. When the master returns, two of the slaves have used the talents the master gave them to make more talents. The third slave, however, has buried his talent in the ground and receives the master’s condemnation.
Our English word “talent” comes from this parable but no longer means a sum of money but rather our “gifts,” our special abilities such as woodworking or teaching or playing the piano. And we often hear this parable as an exhortation to use our gifts, our natural talents, sharing the talents God has given to us with others and not bury them in the ground. In the church, we often spend time helping one another to identify our particular talents, our gifts and graces, toward the end that we all might recognize that each of us do indeed have gifts we can share with others.
We may, though, feel the punch of this parable more acutely, if we return to the original meaning of “talent” as a large sum of money and not a spiritual gift. Three slaves are “entrusted” with a large sum of money. The first slave receives five talents – enough money to stop work and live out the rest of his life more than comfortably. The second slave receives two talents which would insure an early retirement at a minimum. Both slaves go off at once and do some trading. Both slaves double their investment. But both slaves could have lost everything.
The third slave who receives the smallest amount of money – just one talent – decides to do nothing, protecting his talent which he buries in the ground. This third slave decides to play things safe, afraid of losing what he has. He takes no risks, suffers no loss and enjoys no gains.
I want a fourth slave, a slave who, unlike the first two, does not risk losing everything and, unlike the third slave, does something with his money in the hope of making a profit. I want a slave who acts moderately, neither risking all of the money the master gives him, like the first two, but who neither refuses to invest any money in anything at all, like the third slave. I want a fourth slave, but, alas, we have no fourth slave – only three, two of whom do some high stake gambling and one that won’t play at all.
The first two slaves take a risk and risk taking is always fraught with the possibility of loss. This week’s surgery at MCV was high risk and the possibility that this team of surgeons would not be able to separate the girls or worse, lose one or both in their attempt to save them was ever present. But the hope that these little girls might have a reasonably normal life led their mother to “entrust” her daughters into the care of a team of doctors she did not know but in whose abilities she had to trust.
The master in our parable “entrusts” his property to his slaves before going away on a journey. The Greek verb can mean not only “to entrust,” but also “to give, to hand over and to betray.” Our evangelist Matthew will use the same word to describe what happens to Jesus, who will be “handed over” to be crucified. Jesus is “handed over” into the hands of others, some of whom will follow Jesus and some of whom will seek his death.
Jesus’ presence confronted first century Jews with a dilemma: “Was this man of God or not?” Like the property the master in our parable entrusts to his slaves, Jesus is “handed over” and first century Jews were faced with a quandary – should they follow or resist this man? The stakes were high as Jesus was quickly perceived to be a trouble maker and Rome did not like trouble makers. Many Jews, I suspect, simply played it safe, neither following nor resisting, but simply watching events unfold, preferring not to get involved.
We, of course, meet Jesus knowing the end of the story, the story of the resurrection, and perhaps forget the challenge Jesus posed to the Jews during his lifetime. And we all have grown up in a world in which the church was simply a fact of life, whether or not we wished to be involved. Membership in the church for most of us does not feel like a high stakes gamble. But we, just like the slaves in our parable this morning have been entrusted with a treasure and we too must decide how we will care for the treasure we have been given.
The vestry met this past Thursday evening and, as usual, was tasked with making decisions on behalf of the parish. Serving on a vestry can be a bit of a risk for many of us and some of us suffered a loss Thursday night, missing the opening plays of a big Virginia Tech game. The loss was endured and we set about making decisions, some of which were made without a lot of discussion and others which were more challenging and required more discussion. One of the tasks before us Thursday night was determining how much of our income in 2012 we would pledge to the diocese. We struggled to figure out how we might increase our pledge to the diocese in 2012 and meet the expressed hopes of the parish to honor clergy compensation guidelines. Financial decisions are especially difficult because none of us knows what the future will look like; our budget is bright today, but may not be so bright tomorrow. While that particular decision was not fraught with a lot of risk, it did come with some and tasked us to consider how much risk we are willing to incur. What we all know is that we can minimize the risks we take but we cannot avoid taking risks altogether.
And just as vestry decisions come with some risk, so too do our decisions regarding how, if, and when we will participate in our common life. Whenever and however we participate in our common life, we run the risk that others will disagree with us, ridicule us or take us to task. Doing nothing will always be safer than doing something.
We end our vestry meetings with the short service of Compline. On Thursday night, we ended by praying:
O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live
in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day,
who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never
forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our common life does indeed depend upon all of us, and no one of us is any more or less valuable than anyone else. Working together to sustain and preserve what God has given to us will inevitably include some risk taking, both individually and corporately. We will make mistakes as we work together and we will have lots of opportunities to practice forgiving one another. Yet God seems to think that in and through our common life the whole world will be blessed. Let us all be comforted in knowing God is taking a much bigger risk than any one of us ever will!
Sunday, November 13, 2011 I Thessalonians 5: 1 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 25: 14 – 30
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven will be as when a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them;”
Matthew 25: 14
This past week, a team of doctors at MCV successfully separated twin girls who were born joined together at their chest. The complex surgery which took twenty four hours to complete, had never been done at MCV and took place after months of preparation and planning. The surgical plan, however, could not be fully finalized until after surgery had begun because of the limits of our diagnostic tools; only in the operating room after this team of surgeons exposed the area where the girls were joined, could final decisions be made. The team simply could not know all of the problems they might encounter until after surgery had begun. At risk were the lives of two little girls from the Dominican Republic and the team did not know what they might be able to do until after they had committed to do surgery.
The risk was huge but so too was the possibility that these little girls might be able to live out their lives no longer joined together, able for the first time to walk on two feet rather than trying to walk with four.
This morning we hear the familiar parable of the talents from the gospel of Matthew. A “talent” is a sum of money, a large sum of money, as much as what a day laborer might earn in fifteen years. In the parable the master entrusts his property to three of his slaves, giving to one slave five talents, to another, two, and to a third, one. When the master returns, two of the slaves have used the talents the master gave them to make more talents. The third slave, however, has buried his talent in the ground and receives the master’s condemnation.
Our English word “talent” comes from this parable but no longer means a sum of money but rather our “gifts,” our special abilities such as woodworking or teaching or playing the piano. And we often hear this parable as an exhortation to use our gifts, our natural talents, sharing the talents God has given to us with others and not bury them in the ground. In the church, we often spend time helping one another to identify our particular talents, our gifts and graces, toward the end that we all might recognize that each of us do indeed have gifts we can share with others.
We may, though, feel the punch of this parable more acutely, if we return to the original meaning of “talent” as a large sum of money and not a spiritual gift. Three slaves are “entrusted” with a large sum of money. The first slave receives five talents – enough money to stop work and live out the rest of his life more than comfortably. The second slave receives two talents which would insure an early retirement at a minimum. Both slaves go off at once and do some trading. Both slaves double their investment. But both slaves could have lost everything.
The third slave who receives the smallest amount of money – just one talent – decides to do nothing, protecting his talent which he buries in the ground. This third slave decides to play things safe, afraid of losing what he has. He takes no risks, suffers no loss and enjoys no gains.
I want a fourth slave, a slave who, unlike the first two, does not risk losing everything and, unlike the third slave, does something with his money in the hope of making a profit. I want a slave who acts moderately, neither risking all of the money the master gives him, like the first two, but who neither refuses to invest any money in anything at all, like the third slave. I want a fourth slave, but, alas, we have no fourth slave – only three, two of whom do some high stake gambling and one that won’t play at all.
The first two slaves take a risk and risk taking is always fraught with the possibility of loss. This week’s surgery at MCV was high risk and the possibility that this team of surgeons would not be able to separate the girls or worse, lose one or both in their attempt to save them was ever present. But the hope that these little girls might have a reasonably normal life led their mother to “entrust” her daughters into the care of a team of doctors she did not know but in whose abilities she had to trust.
The master in our parable “entrusts” his property to his slaves before going away on a journey. The Greek verb can mean not only “to entrust,” but also “to give, to hand over and to betray.” Our evangelist Matthew will use the same word to describe what happens to Jesus, who will be “handed over” to be crucified. Jesus is “handed over” into the hands of others, some of whom will follow Jesus and some of whom will seek his death.
Jesus’ presence confronted first century Jews with a dilemma: “Was this man of God or not?” Like the property the master in our parable entrusts to his slaves, Jesus is “handed over” and first century Jews were faced with a quandary – should they follow or resist this man? The stakes were high as Jesus was quickly perceived to be a trouble maker and Rome did not like trouble makers. Many Jews, I suspect, simply played it safe, neither following nor resisting, but simply watching events unfold, preferring not to get involved.
We, of course, meet Jesus knowing the end of the story, the story of the resurrection, and perhaps forget the challenge Jesus posed to the Jews during his lifetime. And we all have grown up in a world in which the church was simply a fact of life, whether or not we wished to be involved. Membership in the church for most of us does not feel like a high stakes gamble. But we, just like the slaves in our parable this morning have been entrusted with a treasure and we too must decide how we will care for the treasure we have been given.
The vestry met this past Thursday evening and, as usual, was tasked with making decisions on behalf of the parish. Serving on a vestry can be a bit of a risk for many of us and some of us suffered a loss Thursday night, missing the opening plays of a big Virginia Tech game. The loss was endured and we set about making decisions, some of which were made without a lot of discussion and others which were more challenging and required more discussion. One of the tasks before us Thursday night was determining how much of our income in 2012 we would pledge to the diocese. We struggled to figure out how we might increase our pledge to the diocese in 2012 and meet the expressed hopes of the parish to honor clergy compensation guidelines. Financial decisions are especially difficult because none of us knows what the future will look like; our budget is bright today, but may not be so bright tomorrow. While that particular decision was not fraught with a lot of risk, it did come with some and tasked us to consider how much risk we are willing to incur. What we all know is that we can minimize the risks we take but we cannot avoid taking risks altogether.
And just as vestry decisions come with some risk, so too do our decisions regarding how, if, and when we will participate in our common life. Whenever and however we participate in our common life, we run the risk that others will disagree with us, ridicule us or take us to task. Doing nothing will always be safer than doing something.
We end our vestry meetings with the short service of Compline. On Thursday night, we ended by praying:
O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live
in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day,
who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never
forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our common life does indeed depend upon all of us, and no one of us is any more or less valuable than anyone else. Working together to sustain and preserve what God has given to us will inevitably include some risk taking, both individually and corporately. We will make mistakes as we work together and we will have lots of opportunities to practice forgiving one another. Yet God seems to think that in and through our common life the whole world will be blessed. Let us all be comforted in knowing God is taking a much bigger risk than any one of us ever will!
Thanksgiving Eve Deuteronomy 8: 7 – 18
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 II Corinthians 9: 6 – 15
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 17: 11 – 19
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
Luke 17: 15
Tomorrow most Americans will sit down at a table laden with turkeys and hams, stuffing and sweet potatoes, and whatever else traditions dictate. Every year my mother served turnips and creamed onions which no one except my mother especially liked, but which had graced the Thanksgiving table of my mother’s youth and therefore, needed to be passed along to us, like it or not. Tomorrow many will share their meal with family and friends who they do not see often and for many, dinner will begin with someone saying grace.
Tomorrow, in homes and homeless shelters, folk will give thanks, sometimes in simple words uttered quickly with some embarrassment and sometimes with elegant phrases which have been carefully prepared. Around some tables folk will hold hands; at other tables, the children will be asked to offer the blessing. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and most folk tomorrow will either silently or aloud find a way to say “Thank you.”
Saying “thank you” is our natural response when we have received a gift. Tomorrow most folk will in some way “count their blessings” remembering the gifts they enjoy, gifts such as family or friends or simply the food they are about to enjoy. “Saying grace” is a ritual that recognizes what we humans do spontaneously all the time – when we receive a gift, we say “thank you.”
We say “thank you” when someone extends a kindness to us, inviting us to dinner or sending us flowers. We say “thank you” when someone offers to help us change a flat tire or gives us directions when we are lost. Last Sunday, after the beautiful choir anthem, we burst into applause, a spontaneous expression of gratitude for the gift the choir had given us.
“Thank you!” springs spontaneously from us at those moments when we realize we have been graced, favored, blessed in some way. We say “thank you” when the doctor tells us surgery was successful or the tumor was benign; we say “thank you” when after months of looking for work, the phone rings with an offer of employment. We say “thank you” when, after we have been without power for days, the lights suddenly come back on. At those moments, saying “thank you” comes naturally and spontaneously.
Expressing gratitude is an act of praise, an act that expresses our sense that some things in this world are worthy to be praised. We live in a morally neutral universe, a universe that is home to both good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. When we express gratitude, we are bearing witness to those things which are good and true and beautiful. Expressing gratitude, saying “thank you,” is akin to saying “I love you;” we praise those things which evoke our love.
Gratitude is the heart of worship, all worship, whether worship takes the form of a table grace, the silence of a Quaker meeting or the liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer. Worship acknowledges what we believe to be worthy of praise, the stuff of life that is noble and good and lovely. We are creatures who were created to give thanks, to be able to distinguish between those things that are worthy of praise and those things which are not.
In our reading tonight from the gospel of Luke, Jesus heals ten lepers, one of whom returns “praising God,” prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet. This leper kneels at Jesus’ feet as an act of worship, an act of thanksgiving for the gift of his healing. Over and over again in Luke’s gospel, we meet folk, who like these lepers, are rescued, delivered, healed, saved – in short given a gift – by Jesus. Tonight only one leper turns back to say “thank you.” The other nine, I suspect were just as grateful to be healed, but failed to say so. Lepers were outcasts and we perhaps can imagine that the nine who did not return, failed to do so because they were busy reuniting with family and friends.
In 2005, theologians David Ford and Daniel Hardy published a remarkable book called Living in Praise. “Praise of God,” they note, “is not necessary.” All ten lepers in our reading tonight are healed even though only one came back to say “thank you.” God does not need our gratitude to fill the world with blessing. God does not wait for us to become grateful before loving us. God loves us and we can or fail to respond with praise and thanksgiving. Hardy and Ford go on to note: “In a society dominated by efficiency and a functional assessment of everything, the whole ethos supports the despising of praise as futile.” Worship, in other words, doesn’t make much sense in a culture that privileges what we can do rather than who we are. We praise God not because we have to and certainly not as a means of meriting God’s blessing, but because we alone of all of God’s creation, can. We are creatures who can rejoice and we do whenever we encounter something of the goodness of God.
“The joy of God needs to be celebrated,” our authors argue, “as the central and embracing reality of the universe, and everything else seen in the light of this.” Would only that the whole world know that “coming to church” is at root an invitation to rejoice, to give thanks, to dance and to sing and to celebrate and not some sort of moral obligation imposed upon us by a dreary and joyless God.
When I was ten, giving thanks for the boiled and mashed turnips my mother always made on Thanksgiving was the farthest thing from my mind. I loved my mother’s turkey stuffing but could have done quite well, thank you very much, without the turnips. Only after I was grown with children of my own, did I come to appreciate that what my mother was passing on to me was not turnips, but something about where she came from and who she was, a gift I came to appreciate acutely after she had died. I still am not crazy about turnips but still give thanks for what I came to know of God’s love through my mother.
God does not wait to love us until we are good or grateful or even ready or able to ask for what we need. God does not need our praise to be God. What God wants is that we might see the goodness and the love of God at “all times and in all places,” rejoicing in the glory of God in the midst of a world that is skeptical of any power except our own and any gift that comes with no strings attached. We can do nothing to earn or merit God’s love but we can rejoice. We can give thanks. We can celebrate.
Tomorrow most folk will find a way to say “thank you.” That expression of gratitude, no matter how it is made, is an act of worship, a peculiarly human action, an act we were singularly created to be able to do. In the Church, we set aside not one day every year to be grateful, but one day every week to worship and rejoice. We believe that worship makes us more of who God created us to be, creatures who are able to bear witness to the joy and glory of God. In a world that is skeptical about God and suspicious about one another, a world that privileges the individual over the community, worship may be not just a peculiarly human act, but a moral act, the one act from which all our other actions spring.
So give thanks tonight and tomorrow, wherever you are and however you choose. And I’ll see you all next Sunday.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 II Corinthians 9: 6 – 15
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 17: 11 – 19
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
Luke 17: 15
Tomorrow most Americans will sit down at a table laden with turkeys and hams, stuffing and sweet potatoes, and whatever else traditions dictate. Every year my mother served turnips and creamed onions which no one except my mother especially liked, but which had graced the Thanksgiving table of my mother’s youth and therefore, needed to be passed along to us, like it or not. Tomorrow many will share their meal with family and friends who they do not see often and for many, dinner will begin with someone saying grace.
Tomorrow, in homes and homeless shelters, folk will give thanks, sometimes in simple words uttered quickly with some embarrassment and sometimes with elegant phrases which have been carefully prepared. Around some tables folk will hold hands; at other tables, the children will be asked to offer the blessing. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and most folk tomorrow will either silently or aloud find a way to say “Thank you.”
Saying “thank you” is our natural response when we have received a gift. Tomorrow most folk will in some way “count their blessings” remembering the gifts they enjoy, gifts such as family or friends or simply the food they are about to enjoy. “Saying grace” is a ritual that recognizes what we humans do spontaneously all the time – when we receive a gift, we say “thank you.”
We say “thank you” when someone extends a kindness to us, inviting us to dinner or sending us flowers. We say “thank you” when someone offers to help us change a flat tire or gives us directions when we are lost. Last Sunday, after the beautiful choir anthem, we burst into applause, a spontaneous expression of gratitude for the gift the choir had given us.
“Thank you!” springs spontaneously from us at those moments when we realize we have been graced, favored, blessed in some way. We say “thank you” when the doctor tells us surgery was successful or the tumor was benign; we say “thank you” when after months of looking for work, the phone rings with an offer of employment. We say “thank you” when, after we have been without power for days, the lights suddenly come back on. At those moments, saying “thank you” comes naturally and spontaneously.
Expressing gratitude is an act of praise, an act that expresses our sense that some things in this world are worthy to be praised. We live in a morally neutral universe, a universe that is home to both good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. When we express gratitude, we are bearing witness to those things which are good and true and beautiful. Expressing gratitude, saying “thank you,” is akin to saying “I love you;” we praise those things which evoke our love.
Gratitude is the heart of worship, all worship, whether worship takes the form of a table grace, the silence of a Quaker meeting or the liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer. Worship acknowledges what we believe to be worthy of praise, the stuff of life that is noble and good and lovely. We are creatures who were created to give thanks, to be able to distinguish between those things that are worthy of praise and those things which are not.
In our reading tonight from the gospel of Luke, Jesus heals ten lepers, one of whom returns “praising God,” prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet. This leper kneels at Jesus’ feet as an act of worship, an act of thanksgiving for the gift of his healing. Over and over again in Luke’s gospel, we meet folk, who like these lepers, are rescued, delivered, healed, saved – in short given a gift – by Jesus. Tonight only one leper turns back to say “thank you.” The other nine, I suspect were just as grateful to be healed, but failed to say so. Lepers were outcasts and we perhaps can imagine that the nine who did not return, failed to do so because they were busy reuniting with family and friends.
In 2005, theologians David Ford and Daniel Hardy published a remarkable book called Living in Praise. “Praise of God,” they note, “is not necessary.” All ten lepers in our reading tonight are healed even though only one came back to say “thank you.” God does not need our gratitude to fill the world with blessing. God does not wait for us to become grateful before loving us. God loves us and we can or fail to respond with praise and thanksgiving. Hardy and Ford go on to note: “In a society dominated by efficiency and a functional assessment of everything, the whole ethos supports the despising of praise as futile.” Worship, in other words, doesn’t make much sense in a culture that privileges what we can do rather than who we are. We praise God not because we have to and certainly not as a means of meriting God’s blessing, but because we alone of all of God’s creation, can. We are creatures who can rejoice and we do whenever we encounter something of the goodness of God.
“The joy of God needs to be celebrated,” our authors argue, “as the central and embracing reality of the universe, and everything else seen in the light of this.” Would only that the whole world know that “coming to church” is at root an invitation to rejoice, to give thanks, to dance and to sing and to celebrate and not some sort of moral obligation imposed upon us by a dreary and joyless God.
When I was ten, giving thanks for the boiled and mashed turnips my mother always made on Thanksgiving was the farthest thing from my mind. I loved my mother’s turkey stuffing but could have done quite well, thank you very much, without the turnips. Only after I was grown with children of my own, did I come to appreciate that what my mother was passing on to me was not turnips, but something about where she came from and who she was, a gift I came to appreciate acutely after she had died. I still am not crazy about turnips but still give thanks for what I came to know of God’s love through my mother.
God does not wait to love us until we are good or grateful or even ready or able to ask for what we need. God does not need our praise to be God. What God wants is that we might see the goodness and the love of God at “all times and in all places,” rejoicing in the glory of God in the midst of a world that is skeptical of any power except our own and any gift that comes with no strings attached. We can do nothing to earn or merit God’s love but we can rejoice. We can give thanks. We can celebrate.
Tomorrow most folk will find a way to say “thank you.” That expression of gratitude, no matter how it is made, is an act of worship, a peculiarly human action, an act we were singularly created to be able to do. In the Church, we set aside not one day every year to be grateful, but one day every week to worship and rejoice. We believe that worship makes us more of who God created us to be, creatures who are able to bear witness to the joy and glory of God. In a world that is skeptical about God and suspicious about one another, a world that privileges the individual over the community, worship may be not just a peculiarly human act, but a moral act, the one act from which all our other actions spring.
So give thanks tonight and tomorrow, wherever you are and however you choose. And I’ll see you all next Sunday.
The First Sunday of Advent Isaiah 64: 1 – 9
Sunday, November 27, 2011 I Corinthians 1: 3 – 9
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 13: 24 – 37
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Mark 13: 31
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. To mark this change from one liturgical season to the next, our altar hangings have turned from green to blue, I have covered my alb with a beautiful chasuble and we are using the Rite I liturgy, not Rite II. These are all ways to help us “keep awake” as we turn away from Pentecost and the end of one liturgical year and begin our journey through Advent and the beginning of a new liturgical year.
Advent, the first of the seasons of the church year, means “coming,” and during Advent we look forward to the birth of Jesus on Christmas. Advent is also the season in which we look forward to the “second coming,” the return of Christ at the end of time. During Advent we remember that Christ has come and anticipate that day when Christ will come again.
Advent is the time in the church year when we are invited to remember that we live between the times, between the “already” and the “not yet.” During Advent, we remember that God came and lived as one of us, proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near, casting out demons, healing the sick, calming the seas and feeding thousands with a few loaves of bread. During Advent, we remember that the great hope of Israel – that one day God would make this world new, flooding this world with justice and joy and peace - was fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
But Advent is also a time when we are invited to “wake up” and see the suffering that surrounds us on all sides. God has come among us but the poor are still poor and the sick still die and the hungry remain unfed. God has come among us but the kingdom of God is yet to come. In Christ, God was making good on God’s promise to bring the world round right, but God has not finished and we wait between the times, in faith, which in the words of Hebrews is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” During Advent we are keeping watch for what is yet to come.
Advent always begins with a fearsome reading about the end times, a time when God will come again and establish God’s kingdom once and for all. God will bring in God’s kingdom with a cosmic display of power, darkening the sun and the moon and causing the stars to fall the heavens. And, we are promised on that fateful day, “the Son of Man will gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heavens.”
Our reading this first Sunday of Advent comes from the gospel of Mark. Most scholars believe that the gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel we have, written somewhere in or around 70 A.D. The gospel of Mark is the shortest of all the four gospels, includes no stories of Jesus’ birth and no appearances of the risen Christ. Mark’s favorite word is “immediately” and his gospel races along from Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan to the discovery of the empty tomb by three women. Mark’s gospel is also marked by an odd concern for secrecy – Jesus heals any number of folk and performs all kinds of miracles but is forever telling folk not to say anything.
Mark may have been writing in Rome, when in 64 A.D., Nero blamed Christians for a great fire that had broken out in Rome, sending them to their deaths in the coliseum. Later in 66 A.D., after the Jews in Jerusalem started actively resisting Roman rule, Rome marched on Jerusalem, destroying the Temple and killing thousands. And Mark was writing to a community that had not yet separated from their Jewish brothers and sisters. Mark’s community in 70 A.D. believed Christ was the long awaited Messiah but that claim had yet to cause a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews.
So Mark’s community is watching Christians die and watching as the fabric of Jewish life and practice unravel. The Temple was the focus of Jewish life and had been since King Solomon built the first Temple centuries earlier. And now the Temple was gone. And Mark’s community is convicted that God’s kingdom has come in Christ. A world was ending and Mark believed a new world was beginning.
Mark was very much living and writing between the times, between the end of one age and the beginning of another. Mark holds fast to his confession of faith in the midst of a world that is falling apart, a world that is being “de-created” by Rome. Mark either watched or clearly remembered his brothers and sisters dying under the hands of Rome and Mark held fast to his belief that in Jesus of Nazareth, the kingdom of God had come among us.
Mark is writing his gospel to give his community hope and encouragement in the midst of suffering and tribulation. But when we come to our text this morning, a text that assures us that Christ will come again and rescue his people, we often hear not a message of hope and encouragement but rather a message of fear and dread. And recent interpreters have played upon those fears with books such as those in the Left Behind Series, a series of sixteen books and now several motion pictures, which use images of the end times to scare folk into baptism. Mark’s intention is to encourage his community to hold fast to their confession of faith, to their hope that Christ will come again, to “keep awake” and not grow tired.
Many years I ago I met a woman who told me of a time years before when she was young and pregnant and her mother was dying. As new life grew inside this young woman, the reality that her mother might not live to see her new grandchild was more than this woman could bear. This woman could not imagine bringing this child into the world without her mother’s comfort and guidance. After her mother died, the woman told me that, as she stood at her mother’s open grave, she wanted to die as well. Her infant child was the only thing that kept her from taking her own life.
Many years later, she went to nursing school and became a nurse on the palliative care unit of a hospital, which is where I met her. On that unit she cared for the dying and their families and did so with great grace. She wondered if her own experience of death and resurrection had strangely formed her for the work she did. I had no doubt.
Advent, this journey we begin this morning and which will end with the birth of Christ on Christmas, is a journey of hope in the midst of a world that still suffers. Our evangelist Mark bids us to “keep awake” so that we might not become weary and give up hoping, or self-complacent and fail to share our hope with others, others whose hope is all but gone.
The earliest manuscripts we have of the gospel of Mark end with the discovery of the empty tomb by three women who encounter a young man dressed in a white robe who tells them Jesus is not there but has been raised. The last verse in those early manuscripts reads: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Of course, we wouldn’t be reading Mark’s gospel if the women had said nothing. But Mark’s strange ending leaves us wondering how we will tell a world that still suffers, that the tomb was empty? Is the empty tomb good news, a message of hope in a weary world or a message of condemnation in a world that is convicted we can save ourselves if we only try harder and thus, have no need for a saviour?
In Advent we wait, wait with all of God’s creation, for a final glorious new heaven and new earth. We wait with hope and in faith that the Christ who lived and died as one of us will come again and take us to himself. Keep awake this Advent, pay attention to those places that are not awash with Christmas lights, to the darkened homes and shuttered stores. Keep awake and pay attention to those who carry shopping bags full of their worldly possessions and not Christmas presents. Keep awake and pay attention to those who are not decorating Christmas trees but wondering where their next meal will come from. Keep awake and pay attention to those for whom this season is a reminder of those they have loved but with whom they will not share Christmas this year. Keep awake and do not grow weary for “this heaven and this earth will pass away,” but the love of Christ never will.
Sunday, November 27, 2011 I Corinthians 1: 3 – 9
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 13: 24 – 37
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Mark 13: 31
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. To mark this change from one liturgical season to the next, our altar hangings have turned from green to blue, I have covered my alb with a beautiful chasuble and we are using the Rite I liturgy, not Rite II. These are all ways to help us “keep awake” as we turn away from Pentecost and the end of one liturgical year and begin our journey through Advent and the beginning of a new liturgical year.
Advent, the first of the seasons of the church year, means “coming,” and during Advent we look forward to the birth of Jesus on Christmas. Advent is also the season in which we look forward to the “second coming,” the return of Christ at the end of time. During Advent we remember that Christ has come and anticipate that day when Christ will come again.
Advent is the time in the church year when we are invited to remember that we live between the times, between the “already” and the “not yet.” During Advent, we remember that God came and lived as one of us, proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near, casting out demons, healing the sick, calming the seas and feeding thousands with a few loaves of bread. During Advent, we remember that the great hope of Israel – that one day God would make this world new, flooding this world with justice and joy and peace - was fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
But Advent is also a time when we are invited to “wake up” and see the suffering that surrounds us on all sides. God has come among us but the poor are still poor and the sick still die and the hungry remain unfed. God has come among us but the kingdom of God is yet to come. In Christ, God was making good on God’s promise to bring the world round right, but God has not finished and we wait between the times, in faith, which in the words of Hebrews is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” During Advent we are keeping watch for what is yet to come.
Advent always begins with a fearsome reading about the end times, a time when God will come again and establish God’s kingdom once and for all. God will bring in God’s kingdom with a cosmic display of power, darkening the sun and the moon and causing the stars to fall the heavens. And, we are promised on that fateful day, “the Son of Man will gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heavens.”
Our reading this first Sunday of Advent comes from the gospel of Mark. Most scholars believe that the gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel we have, written somewhere in or around 70 A.D. The gospel of Mark is the shortest of all the four gospels, includes no stories of Jesus’ birth and no appearances of the risen Christ. Mark’s favorite word is “immediately” and his gospel races along from Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan to the discovery of the empty tomb by three women. Mark’s gospel is also marked by an odd concern for secrecy – Jesus heals any number of folk and performs all kinds of miracles but is forever telling folk not to say anything.
Mark may have been writing in Rome, when in 64 A.D., Nero blamed Christians for a great fire that had broken out in Rome, sending them to their deaths in the coliseum. Later in 66 A.D., after the Jews in Jerusalem started actively resisting Roman rule, Rome marched on Jerusalem, destroying the Temple and killing thousands. And Mark was writing to a community that had not yet separated from their Jewish brothers and sisters. Mark’s community in 70 A.D. believed Christ was the long awaited Messiah but that claim had yet to cause a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews.
So Mark’s community is watching Christians die and watching as the fabric of Jewish life and practice unravel. The Temple was the focus of Jewish life and had been since King Solomon built the first Temple centuries earlier. And now the Temple was gone. And Mark’s community is convicted that God’s kingdom has come in Christ. A world was ending and Mark believed a new world was beginning.
Mark was very much living and writing between the times, between the end of one age and the beginning of another. Mark holds fast to his confession of faith in the midst of a world that is falling apart, a world that is being “de-created” by Rome. Mark either watched or clearly remembered his brothers and sisters dying under the hands of Rome and Mark held fast to his belief that in Jesus of Nazareth, the kingdom of God had come among us.
Mark is writing his gospel to give his community hope and encouragement in the midst of suffering and tribulation. But when we come to our text this morning, a text that assures us that Christ will come again and rescue his people, we often hear not a message of hope and encouragement but rather a message of fear and dread. And recent interpreters have played upon those fears with books such as those in the Left Behind Series, a series of sixteen books and now several motion pictures, which use images of the end times to scare folk into baptism. Mark’s intention is to encourage his community to hold fast to their confession of faith, to their hope that Christ will come again, to “keep awake” and not grow tired.
Many years I ago I met a woman who told me of a time years before when she was young and pregnant and her mother was dying. As new life grew inside this young woman, the reality that her mother might not live to see her new grandchild was more than this woman could bear. This woman could not imagine bringing this child into the world without her mother’s comfort and guidance. After her mother died, the woman told me that, as she stood at her mother’s open grave, she wanted to die as well. Her infant child was the only thing that kept her from taking her own life.
Many years later, she went to nursing school and became a nurse on the palliative care unit of a hospital, which is where I met her. On that unit she cared for the dying and their families and did so with great grace. She wondered if her own experience of death and resurrection had strangely formed her for the work she did. I had no doubt.
Advent, this journey we begin this morning and which will end with the birth of Christ on Christmas, is a journey of hope in the midst of a world that still suffers. Our evangelist Mark bids us to “keep awake” so that we might not become weary and give up hoping, or self-complacent and fail to share our hope with others, others whose hope is all but gone.
The earliest manuscripts we have of the gospel of Mark end with the discovery of the empty tomb by three women who encounter a young man dressed in a white robe who tells them Jesus is not there but has been raised. The last verse in those early manuscripts reads: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Of course, we wouldn’t be reading Mark’s gospel if the women had said nothing. But Mark’s strange ending leaves us wondering how we will tell a world that still suffers, that the tomb was empty? Is the empty tomb good news, a message of hope in a weary world or a message of condemnation in a world that is convicted we can save ourselves if we only try harder and thus, have no need for a saviour?
In Advent we wait, wait with all of God’s creation, for a final glorious new heaven and new earth. We wait with hope and in faith that the Christ who lived and died as one of us will come again and take us to himself. Keep awake this Advent, pay attention to those places that are not awash with Christmas lights, to the darkened homes and shuttered stores. Keep awake and pay attention to those who carry shopping bags full of their worldly possessions and not Christmas presents. Keep awake and pay attention to those who are not decorating Christmas trees but wondering where their next meal will come from. Keep awake and pay attention to those for whom this season is a reminder of those they have loved but with whom they will not share Christmas this year. Keep awake and do not grow weary for “this heaven and this earth will pass away,” but the love of Christ never will.
